Blog Features

Blaugust 2021 On the Horizon

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Good Morning Friends! It is that time again, time to begin talking about Blaugust and as is our way around here I am officially announcing the rules of the upcoming event. For those who might not know what Blaugust is, the idea is pretty simple. Several years ago I started challenging my blogging friends to post something new each day during the month of August. Over the years the concept has morphed and bent, but this time around we are returning to the original concept of limiting the posts and event just to the month of August.

Why We Do BlaugusT

The why is pretty simple. The blogging community is nowhere near as large as it once was. Many of us have aged out of blogging with real-world responsibilities or just moved on to other time-consuming hobbies. Blaugust gives us a chance to infuse the community with a fresh lease on life as we court new bloggers to join the fray. Those of us who have been carrying the torch of blogging for decades now, can sometimes lose hope as our blogroll loses a few voices each year. I’ve come to learn that getting out and mingling and mentoring a new crop of fresh bloggers can give us the perspective to stay engaged and hopefully make this community thrive. The thing is… it has over the last several years as we migrated from “just blogs” to a bustling Discord community that takes place year round instead of just during this one month.

The Schedule

In past years we have had the concept of “themed” weeks and we are continuing that forward for 2021. However I have pruned back things a bit because the entire “month” had started to spill out over the course of six weeks. These themes are not mandatory by any means and serve as a guide post to give you some ideas if you falter on trying to come up with a topic.

  • Welcome to Blaugust Week – (August 1st-August 7th): The idea behind this week is to give folks time to spread their wings and get used to that daily blogging idea. For the Veteran bloggers, it is a great time to make a few posts related to helping New bloggers get started. These could be tips or tricks or just discussions about what helps you get started. Additionally it is a great time to get connected to the Blaugust Discord and meet the community as a whole.
  • Getting to Know You Week – (August 8th-August 14th): The idea behind this week is to let t he community know who you are and what some of your interests are. This is a great time to dip into that well of stories and tell us something interesting that has either happened to you or something about your specific spin on blogging.
  • Developer Appreciation Week – (August 15th-August 21st): The D.A.W. or Developer Appreciation Week is an event that used to happen in our blogging community but fell by the wayside. The idea behind it was it was a week to show our appreciation to the people that make all of those games that we love. The thing is over the years we have grown past just being a “gaming” thing, so for other communities it might be a time to reflect on your favorite Authors, Musicians or just Creatives in general.
  • Staying Motivated Week – (August 22nd-August 28th): You are getting close to the final stretch. The idea here is to share some of your secrets on how you have stayed motivated while blogging on a regular basis. You might share some tips or ideas you have for making topics happen when you are feeling uninspired. If you are fresh to the initiative you could talk about some of the ways you have managed to keep yourself engaged this year.
  • Lessons Learned Week – (August 29th-September 4th): This week is a reminder that the goal of Blaugust is to refresh the content creators out there for the coming year, and not necessarily to grind them so hard that they burn out in the process. Some folks are going to cross the finish line and immediately go dormant for awhile, and others are going to want to talk about the experience. This is a space reserved to have that cooldown lap as you process your thoughts about what just took place. Please note this year any posts in July or September will not count towards the Blaugust Awards (some wiggle room granted for timezones of course).

The Awards

It has become a tradition to hand out awards at the end of this process. The truth is for me these have become far less important than the interaction that happens within the community. That said I do see them adorning the sidebars of many blogs out there, so I am going to keep the tradition alive and well this year. For this more “classic” edition Blaugust, we are going to be limiting the contest aspect to only posts made within the month of August 2021. I will of course be adjusting slightly to account for the wild variety of timezones we will have participating in the event. For me the fact that you have signed up and you are joining this initiative is enough, but some folks are going to want to push for higher recognition.

  • Newbie Blogger Award – You did it! You created a new blog and we are extremely happy to welcome you into this raucous community. As a result we are going to recognize your efforts just for signing up.
  • Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the Month of August 2021.
  • Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the Month of August 2021.
  • Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the Month of August 2021.
  • Rainbow Diamond Award – You did it, you posted 31 or more posts during the month of August 2021.

Mentorship

One of the benefits of having done this at least once before more or less in this same style… is that we have existing infrastructure! We already have a batch of mentors ready to help the process, but if you feel like you would be best served in that role we are always open to more. Ultimately mentors should have at least two years of blogging experience under their belt in order to gauge the ebbs and flow of content creation in front of a live studio audience. We aren’t expecting perfection, just a willingness to share the lessons you have learned along the way with fledgling participants. If this sounds like you, please reach out to me on Discord and we can talk about your desire to become a Mentor.

The Details

  • The Sign-Up form for Blaugust 2021 can be found here. Only those who have signed up will be given credit towards the awards or included on any of the blogger lists.
  • The invite link to the Blaugust Discord can be found here. Participation in the Discord is entirely optional but also a great way to bounce ideas off the existing community.
  • When you share your content please use the hashtag #Blaugust2021 for tracking purpose and to make it easier for those watching along to see the new content.
  • Mingle with the participants of Blaugust 2021. Get out and see the blogs, read the posts, and comment frequently! These folks represent a social structure that you can lean on for advice in the coming years. I deeply value the ties I have made with other bloggers and started this process as an attempt to cement those and build new ones.
  • If you are so inclined there is a “Gaming Together” channel on Discord for those impromptu grouping activities. I believe last year there were a few games of Among Us that sprunt out of that channel for example.
  • Welcome to Blaugust 2021. As always if you have any questions please feel free to ask.
  • If you want an archive of all of the various logos and such from this year and past years of Blaugust, please check out the Blaugust Media Kit page.

Roulettes A Plenty

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Good Morning Friends! This morning I have promised a Blaugust preview to some folks that are anxiously awaiting information, but first, you have to wade through a Final Fantasy post. Last night I hit level 77 on my Paladin job and I have been focused on leveling it before really spending much time catching up on the MSQ. I could have easily ground this job to 80 by now, but I am trying my best not to actually mindlessly grind. Instead, I am zipping around the world doing a bunch of different activities, all of which slowly contribute to my leveling process. My working theory is if I can approach the game in a non-frenetic manner and focus more on community interaction, that it might just build the recipe for staying power in the game. The times I have been the happiest in Final Fantasy XIV are the times when I was not focused on a specific goal, but just sort of hanging out and letting the game pull me in this direction or that.

Whatever mental block I had about doing the roulette seems to have passed and pretty much every day I do at least three of them. The first that I get out of the way is the PVP Frontlines Roulette and while I have begun to grasp how each of the maps works… it is in truth just a rapid dose of experience that I am concerned about. From there I tend to do a leveling roulette, which often produces the least predictable results because there is such a wide range of leveling dungeons available. Lastly, I queue for the 50+ dungeon and one of the things that I am marveling at is just how many dungeons there are in this game that is still relevant. I am also shocked at just how fast I remember the specific boss mechanics of a given dungeon. I just start pulling and before long I am back in the flow of doing the dungeon and even remembering where most of the chests are. I do however think they might have removed a few chests at some point because I pulled back to a location that I am almost certain a chest used to be in Amdapor Keep.

The other thing that I have been doing a lot of is Hunt logs for Sacks of Nuts. I noticed the other day that there was some gear on the Hunt vendor that was ultimately a significant upgrade to my previous level 80 warrior tanking gear. So I am slowly acquiring pieces of that set through doing the daily hunts, which do not inconsequentially add up to a sizeable amount of free gil. The other focus that I am doing each day is my Beast Tribe dailies. I have wrapped up all of the ARR tribes other than the Ixal and have moved forward to finishing up the Vanu and starting the Vath. I am still doing at least three quests a day for Ixal, but I find the crafting dailies to be the most taxing and try my best to spend the rest of my allowances elsewhere. I will end up with a level 50 carpenter as a result of the Ixal quests, but that entire process of crafting is more than a bit draining. I realize there are easier ways to level but I honestly prefer to brute force craft than to drag it out forever.

Another thing that has happened is the release of the Endwalker Benchmark. You can download the Benchmark and it serves as a way to do a few different things. Firstly you can test out your gaming rig to determine how well it is going to run Endwalker when it releases. Secondly you can play with the character creator and save appearances that you can then load later in the full game, which allows you to really devote all the time you need to making sure you craft the perfect Bunny Boi. I crafted a Bun, and while I was surprised that I could have facial hair, it is still not really my jam. It is going to take an awful lot to pry me away from that Lala Life. I cranked all of the settings up to the maximum and ran the test at 4k and it came out as “Very High” with an average FPS of 98 which seems perfectly cromulent for Endwalking.

Over on the Blaugust discord there has been discussion about wanting details surrounding this years Blaugust. I am not quite ready to announce everything, but I thought I would at least give folks a preview of the calendar. This year is a reversion back to the more traditional pre-pandemic Blaugust as well as shortening the whole thing to largely take place within the month of August. Thursday July 15th I will be making the official “Announcement” post with all of the details contained within, but this calendar image should at least give you some idea of the plan. If you have ever participated in a Blaugust it is going to feel fairly familiar with no wild deviations this time around.

Mixtape Mondays: Hot Chicken Cold Stares

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Good Morning Friends! It is Monday morning and once again I am bringing you all a hand-crafted mixtape. For those uninitiated to this series, I greatly enjoy crafting Mixtapes and have since I was a youngster. Given that we no longer use tapes or burn CDs, the next best thing is to create carefully curated playlists on Spotify or YouTube. Along with this process, I also create custom album artwork since so much of the mixtape process was adorning the physical media with sharpies and other colorful markers. Instead of sending a tape to a specific person, I broadcast these out to all of my friends and readers on the internet. It makes me exceptionally happy when I hear back feedback from one of my friends as they enjoyed a specific musical blend.

Hot Chicken Cold Stares

There is a specific flavor of rock that I associate with bands like The White Stripes or The Kings of Leon. It is heavily distorted, jangly, and fuzzy around the edges and I am uncertain what you can actually call it. However given that both Jack White of the White Stripes and The Kings of Leon now record out of Nashville Tennessee, I mentally associate the particular sound with that scene. What else do I associate with Nashville… well hot chicken of course because I love it so. So this morning I bring you a Mixtape dedicated to that style of music and quite honestly… this is one of my favorites so far. I am certain it will be an acquired taste much like the capsaicin laced hot chicken that gives this blend its name. I also feel like it is important to pay homage to where I think the sound came from… with The Rolling Stones and The Animals.

  • Ruby – Kaiser Chiefs
  • Fell In Love With a Girl – The White Stripes
  • King of the Rodeo – Kings of Leon
  • Melatonin – Silversun Pickups
  • Come a Little Closer – Cage The Elephant
  • Hate To Say I Told You So – The Hives
  • Get Free – The Vines
  • Steady, As She Goes – The Raconteurs
  • Hang Me Up To Dry – Cold War Kids
  • Here It Goes Again – OK Go
  • Hash Pipe – Weezer
  • Paint It, Black – The Rolling Stones
  • Lonely Boy – The Black Keys
  • Reptilia – The Strokes
  • E-Pro – Beck
  • Flathead – The Fratellis
  • House Of The Rising Sun – The Animals.

Listen On Spotify

Listen On YouTube

Listen On Tidal

There is my latest Mixtape and with it, I hope signals the beginning of a wonderful week. This week I am transitioning back to remote work, and hopefully, that goes smoothly. Like I said above this is probably one of my favorite Mixtapes that I have created, and while it has been waiting on release I’ve listened to it for hours at a time. If you are tuning into this series late, you can find the entire archive of Mixtapes released to this point here:

Favorite Fridays – Usagi Kabuto

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Good Morning Friends! This morning I decided to make good on an idea that has been kicking around in my head. Mixtape Mondays have given me an anchor to the week, a focal point to sort of plan the entire week around. I had this idea of a second fixed point, but I am not entirely certain it will be as regular as the Monday offering has become. Favorite Fridays is a time for me to break out something that I love in a game, pop culture, or pretty much anything else I am passionate about and do a deep dive on it. It might be a favorite weapon or a location in a game that I absolutely cherish or maybe even a specific section of quest dialog that I greatly enjoy. Whatever the case it is time for me to explore that item in depth in post form.

Usagi Kabuto

There is one item in Final Fantasy XIV that has become more synonymous with my brand than pretty much anything else. It is a cosmetic hat known as the Usagi Kabuto, or “Bunny Hat” as I tend to refer to it. This single item has spent more time on my head in glamour form than pretty much any other item in the game. The truth is I largely stumbled upon it when I was first exploring the options of what I could use for glamour purposes. There isn’t anything special about it as items go, it is a Kabuto or a type of helmet often worn by Japanese warriors… most specifically associated with Samurai. That is the first thing in its favor because I have always had an attraction to that classic Samurai appearance.

The item first made its appearance as part of the Heavensturn event in 2011 and then was reprised briefly in 2014 as well… aka the first Heavensturn event for A Realm Reborn. Heavensturn for those unfamiliar is the in-game holiday in Final Fantasy XIV associated with the Lunar New Year and as a result, has a heavy association with whatever animal of the Chinese Zodiac represents a given year. For example, we are currently in the “Year of the Ox” and as a result, the Kabutos associated with that event featured an Oxhead. 2011 was the “Year of the Rabbit” which I believe would have been the very first Heavensturn in the original version of Final Fantasy XIV. When the event first game to A Realm Reborn Rabbit, Dragon and Sheep were all available for purchase.

I cannot say for certain what it is about the appearance that really drew me to it. It was however a happy coincidence that pretty much all of the Warrior-specific sets happened to be black and red, which meant the specific version of the Usagi Kabuto that I liked the most matched them perfectly. Over the years I have been a Bunny Warrior, a Bunny Bard, a Bunny Samurai, and most recently a Bunny Paladin. I even have the Gold Saucer-themed bunny ears so that I can craft “Bunny” outfits for things where this helm doesn’t exactly match. I realize that Zepla’s whole thing is calling her community “Buns” but I have been a Bunny Warrior since those early days of A Realm Reborn when we were first exploring this game.

There is just something about being a Lalafell and having a hyper-serious expression most of the time… and wearing a giant bunny hat that makes me happy. So many of my memories of this game… involved a cut scene where I was wearing this exact helmet. I used it so often that prior to the existence of glamour plates I carried around a stack of crystals and the hat on my person at all times so I could glamour over any other appearances.

In fact, I believe that it was “Bunny Bel” that was my very first commission that I had my good friend Ammo work on. It has pretty much graced the masthead of this website since the day it was created. If I was going to single out any specific version of Belghas to represent me as a whole… it would probably be that version. It is the incarnation of me that brings me the most joy, and now that I have come back to Final Fantasy XIV and embraced the bunny once again… my happiness quotient has increased significantly. So when I was trying to think about the single item that I wanted to kick this series off with, it was quickly evident what it had to be.

The only negative of the Usagi Kabuto is that since it has been largely inaccessible in the game since 2014 for some seven years there is now a pretty hefty price tag associated with it. In theory, if the pattern holds, it should make a reappearance during the Heavensturn event for 2023. I am not sure when they started this, but after a certain point, anything that was seasonal was no longer able to be listed on the Market board. It means those first few holiday events have items that fetch a hefty premium. I know both Thalen and Tamrielo made their in-game fortunes by selling housing items that were obtained from those first few events.

Square Enix now uses expired seasonal content as a way of propping up their cash shop, which honestly I feel is fair given that they churn out brand new seasonal events every single year with zero repeats that I am aware of. If you absolutely must follow in my footsteps and join the order of the bunny warrior, you can drop $3 to get your very own bind-on character version of the helmet. It features a slightly different item name, which I assume is to differentiate between the store-bought and market purchasable versions. If I ever got serious about playing on another server I would probably pick one of these up on the market so that I could still be the Bunny Warrior of Light there as well.