2015, A New and Better Year

Hey guys,
Steve here.
It’s 2015 already, something I find hard to believe. Though another year has come and gone, I don’t feel the necessity to write up a stats report, mainly due to the fact that writing such a report is quite tedious, and not really worth my time. However, one thing I will say, is that I only published 50 posts on this blog in 2014. That’s not only 65 less than the amount of posts published in 2013, but it also meant that 315 days of last year came and went without one single word from me.
With the new year, I plan to change that though. If I can help it, there will be no 46 day long gaps between posts, no more of those 3 and a half week late pod casts. Though I’ve always been a bit unreliable as far as podcast scheduling goes, it got way out of hand recently. Also, when reading through my posts from 2013 and early last year, I realized how much of a total slacker I’ve been recently. Posting once a month has had a profound affect on my connection with you guys, my readers, and it’s ended up resulting in my posts being vague summaries of a vast time period that, by the time I’d finally sit down to write, I’d forgotten nearly 75% of.
So starting now, I’ll once again focus on a 4 to 10 day blogging routine, such as the one I had in place around this time last year. I’m looking forward to this upcoming year, and the interesting things I’ll be able to blog about.
Anyways, that aside, I’ve had a great last week of Christmas vacation. I attended a couple of family functions, played games, stuffed my face full of candy, and shoved all thoughts of school out of my mind. In fact, the only learning I’ve done this week has been strictly piano related, and the only book I’ve read this week is the Blood of Olympus, the fifth book in the Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan. As for my new year celebration, it wasn’t too exciting, but it wasn’t at all bad. I went to church for a while, but ended up watching the new years countdown on TV.
These two short weeks sure went by way too fast, and next week will come to me as a slap in the face, as there is no staying up until 1 in the morning and getting up around 10 during the school week. I’m Kind of ready to get back into the normal routine, but at the same time not looking forward to the work.
That about wraps up this post. I hope you all had a great new year.
thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
PS. I enjoyed doing the 26th episode of the pod cast on Sunday. In fact, I’m still addicted to the game I demonstrated therein. More details on that in a later post.

Holiday updates

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Wow. It’s been nearly two months since anything, and that includes blog posts, pod casts, audio files… etc was posted here. One might think that I’ve settled into a once-a-month blogging routine, which, in a way, I have. However, with the coming of the new year, I plan to change that. In fact, I have the next two episodes of the podcast planned out, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy the games I plan to demonstrate, as they were picked by listeners of the podcast.
Since my last post, life has gone on, for the most part, as it always does–school, concerts, breaks and the like. But as you know, Christmas was yesterday, and that brought about a couple of interesting things:
for one, I got a piano. I’ve actually been wanting to learn piano for a while, and have recently found a visually impaired teacher who is pretty good. That being said, if I stay dedicated, which will more than likely be the case, I am pretty much set up to learn. I’m really looking forward to it.
also, at long last, Aprone has released version 3.4 of swamp, something I’ve been excited about for quite some time now. To my satisfaction, the new update comes with an extensive list of bug fixes and new features such as fully customizable crate missions and the fixing of some incredibly annoying sound bugs, among other things. Unfortunately, the new version is in upwards of 660 megabytes, and downloading it will be a real pain.
In other news, it is expected to get bitterly cold next week. Tomorrow, in fact, the temperature will likely fail to exceed 50, and Sunday will come without change. After it warms into the low to middle 50s on Monday, the temperatures will plunge into the 30s Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with the possibility of some wintery precipitation. As winter weather events, especially those that occur in Texas are so unpredictable, I’ll keep you up to date on the situation.
That concludes tonight’s post, but expect another one in a few days. Also, if you have the time, be sure to check out Episode 26 of the Steven D podcast, which is scheduled for Sunday, December 28. And finally, happy holidays to you all.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
P.S. Happy national Pajama day… hopefully you celebrated accordingly. 😀

Updates and questions

Hey guys,
Steve here.
I’m in a pretty awesome mood today–staar testing is all gone, I just had my coffee, and I get the privilege to write yet another blog post.
Well as the post title implies, I have a question for you readers–but no need to worry, it’s just a matter of filling out a small pole. So I was thinking… should I have a home page (an actual home page), or should the home page remain as it is, the blog entries.
Let me elaborate here. A home page, is what you’d see when first logging onto stevend.net. I was thinking about creating one of those, instead of showing blog entries on the home page as is being done currently. So, I’d kindly ask any and all readers of this post to fill out the pole below, and submit in your vote. In two weeks, (on April 16), I will decide based on the majority of votes whether or not to do a custom home page. So please vote, you have two weeks to do so.
[polldaddy poll=7937065]
Alright… with that knocked out of the way, let’s get on to the main body of this post.
First of all, I’d like to inform you about severe weather day, and the weather expected therein. On Monday, I said that the weather on Thursday April 3 (dubbed by me as severe weather day) was going to be severe; large hail, damaging winds, and isolated tornadoes. The forecast really hasn’t changed much, except that the storms are now most likely to hit mid to late morning, and the main severe weather threat is going to be east of where I live. So, hopefully, we will not be seeing any tornadoes in the near future.
On to life news, school has been boring (more than usual), because of staar testing. Basically, on both yesterday and today, I sat at a table for 5 hours, completing tests that were (no exaggeration), at least 60 questions. Not to mention, the English test which I took today, had like 6 stories in it. My goodness, state of Texas, why must you burden me with such horrendous and pointless work? I am a natural born relaxationist (don’t ask me if that’s a word, because I honestly don’t know)… so all that work was too much for me.
Anyway, besides school, I still haven’t programmed since last week… except maybe a bit on Sunday out of pure bordem. I plan to talk to my dad, and try to reason with him that my intentions aren’t to sell my software as of yet, but to release them as first programs. And if he thinks someone can steel it from me, (I think this is the case), I’ll need to let him know that I’m releasing this software as an executable, and not open source code, thus no one can modify the windows that are titled “trash by sQuad software” and “sQuad word.” because after all, despite my endless excited ranting about programming in the past months and years, he just told me last Thursday, after I’d spent 2 months of hard stressful work on 2 projects with quite a bit of potential. In fact, oddly enough, today marks exactly one month since I first began writing the code for Trash, and this Sunday will not only mark 2 months since the first lines of sQuad word were written, but also the day I began actually learning programming. So do you see where I’m coming from?
Moving on, I also have some news about the podcast. I know I said I couldn’t schedule episodes to the date, as we all know how that was going, but I can tell you the game of the day for the next few episodes… in case you’re interested. For episodes 20 and 21, I will continue my swamping with Steve series, and for episode 20 the campaign I’ll be playing is one called “twisted egg hunt.” It’s like an egg hunt, but there are also zombies; so not only do you have to find as many eggs as is possible in the allotted time period, but you also have to avoid having your brains eaten by zombies. Good times, good times.
Aside from that, episode 22 will have a review of the remarkable game my friend Danny is working on, the first of its kind. It’s called snow race, and is an accessible, multi player snowboarding game for the blind. I highly recommend you go to his website (the link will be at the bottom of the post) to check it out, because it’s a truly awesome game. So I guess you’d better look forward to episode 22, because that’s when snow race will be demonstrated.
That’s about it for podcast game of the days, but I’ll get some more games to test in later episodes. And while on the subject of podcasts, I can see a few of you’ve listened to episode 19? That is, after all, the most clicked link on my website in the last 3 days. Well I’m just glad you enjoy it.
———————-
Completely changing topics, let’s discuss my future for a while. This weekend, I don’t know what I’ll do as of yet, except goal ball. It seems like a while since I’ve gone to goal ball, though it’s probably only been two weeks. Also in my near future, I have a orchestra concert coming up on April 15 (we’re playing some good songs, but not the best songs we’ve learned. I think the songs we’re playing are songs we learned about 2 weeks ago). But for our orchestra concert on May 29, we’re playing some pretty awesome songs, so good that I’ve officially declared them “my jams.”
Also, we’re having a choir concert, however I don’t know exactly when that is. But for that, we’re singing “black burd” by the Beatles, and just the way you are by Bruno Mars.
Anyway, continuing with future events, on April 6 it will officially be 2 months until the last day of school. Also, there are only 7 more Monday’s left of school, but that’s not counting memorial day, which of course we have off.
Well I guess that about wraps up tonight’s post. Good night everyone, and I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your week, and look forward to another one of my posts.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
P.S. Here’s where to go to find out more about snow race:
the snow race page of danny’s website

getting back into it

Hey guys,
Steve here.

Few, that break went by fast… and here we are already half way done with the first school week of 2014… hard to believe, huh? I am going to get back into the swing of things (both in blogging, and school), seeing as how I haven’t produced a life update post in over a week now.
to tell you the truth, Newyears day was pretty much the only day I did anything in the last 4 or 5 days of Christmas break. On Wednesday (new years day), my mom, sister, and I went and saw MRs. Dawn again, and since she lives about 2 hours away, it took up our whole day. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were uneventful, however we all went to church on Sunday. As for Monday, that was the last chance I got to chill before… you guessed it… school. You know how I’ve been talking about playing swamp over the break? Well I didn’t realise this, but I spent in total 76 hours on swamp between Christmas day and January 6th. Yes, I actually spent the equivalent to 3 days and 3 nights streight on swamp, thuse only 14 of my 17 days weren’t spent on the game… talk about adicting games!
Back to my life, Tuesday was of course the start of school, and that is pretty much all I did Tuesday and yesterday, mainly because I was very tired after school and so I didn’t feel like doing anything else.
Also while on the subject of school, I can forget sleeping in until 7 on school mornings. My mom and dad switched schedules and job positions, so now I will have to start riding the bus to school in the morning. What does this mean for my sleep schedule? It means that from now on, I will have to get up at 5:45 on every school morning except Monday! On a posative note, mom and dad will be home every night (except I think Dad goes out of town on Monday nights so all except that night), and both will always be home on the weekends, so we get more family time.
On other news, unbelievably, something that would not normally be a good idea actually turned out to possibly save me a whole bunch of work. You know Stranded? well one day I decided that I wanted to take it to school with me and work on it when there was no work left for me to do in class, and so I put it on a flash drive. I believe that Stranded is still on that flash drive… but there is still the possibility that I deleted it. If I did, I will have to restart on the project… but if I don’t, I am looking at February 1 as a possible release date.
On the podcasting side of things, I didn’t do the podcast on Saturday because I was too lazy to create a campaign for swamping with Steve part ii. Fortunately, I created that campaign, and will be doing the podcast within the next couple days… after I come up with an intresting segment and tech tip to put in… and even that I’m starting to come up with ideas for.
On a final note, since school has started and there will be more going on, expect more frequent blog updates. I don’t update often during breaks, since I often take advantage of that time to relax and do absolutely nothing.

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

P.S. It’s day 994 of the blog folks! We only have 6 days until the 1000th day! If you want to count down, see the “1000th day” widget on the sidebar.

Life update and 2013 Annual report

Hey guys,
Steve here.

Believe it or not, but this happens to be the last post I will ever make in 2013. It certainly has been a great year… and I have the annual report to prove it.

As a start, I changed up, and began new things on this blog since January 1st of last year. They are as follows:

  • On February 19, 2013, I quit the “how my day went” entries, as I felt they were getting a bit repetitive
  • On March 3, I released Stranded part 1, the beginning of my action choose-your-own-story type book trilogy
  • On March 31, I did my first ever storm recording
  • on April 21, this blog turned 2 years old
  • on April 30, this blog reached 5000 views
  • on May 12, I began the Steven D Podcast
  • on June 18, I released Stranded part 2
  • On July 22, I switched my site’s files over to drop box
  • August 25 was one year after I purchased stevend.net
  • on September 22, I released the swamp campaign maker
  • on December 5, I got up to 100 followers
  • On December 9, I began the Monday’s musings entries
  • –I don’t remember dates for these things–

  • I changed several pages (deleting audio, recreation, jenga, bouncy balls, animal, cat, and weather, but keeping natural events, my audio game reviews and demonstrations, and weather radio forecasts
  • My writing and post quality increased this year (oh yeah it did)

As for stats, wordpress has created this report for my blog, and here it is

Here’s what you guys achieved:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,900 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Not only that, but you and I helped this blog achieve other awesome stats, and they are as below:
-In 2013, I published 115 posts (this being the 115th), growing the total number of posts to 722!
-In addition, I uploaded 20 pictures (7 mb worth), averaging out to about 2 pictures per month.
-Aparently, you really liked these posts and/or pages:
the podcasts page This was number 1, so I guess it was most viewed. I’m glad you enjoyed my podcast!
The close second, another seemingly popular page, was the gamebooks page, so I guess you loved my gamebooks.
Coming up at #3, although no longer existing, was the audio page.
In fourth place, *holds out a fourth place ribbon*, was the audio game reviews and demonstrations page. So I assume you thought my reviews and playthroughs were good?
And finally, bottoming out at #5 but still pretty awesome, was the no longer existing recreation page.
-All the traffic I got had to have come from some source(s), so here are the top 5 sources that people found my blog from:
In first place, *holds out a gold metal*, was the great website http://forum.audiogames.net. This is the audiogames.net forum, a place where I frequently post, and I have the link to my website at the bottom of my post signature.
Our runner up, *holds out a silver metal*, was http://stevendaughertysblog.wordpress.com. I plan to take this site down–it used to be the address of this website, now all that is on it is a post called “changed blog address” with a link to this site.
Not far behind our runner up, dmweb.usa.cc came in at 3rd place. *holds out a bronze metal* This is the website of the game Death Match that my friend Danny is making.
Coming in fourth place, *holds out a fourth place ribbon*, is http://users.smartgb.com. This happens to be where the guest book on the chat with steve page is hosted.
And finally, in last place but still bringing that good traffic, *holds out a fifth place ribbon* is mail.google.com. This means that people clicked on the link to my website directly from emails I sent them.
-As a final method of searching people used to find this site, you guys searched using a search engine. the 4 most common tags you used to find my blog were:
1. stevend.net
2. funny stories about eggs
3. where can you create a free blog
4. last time that hail in 75181.

Obviously, I am the new Mr. World Wide. Because in this year alone, people from 62 different countries viewed this site. Although the United States was the country where the most visitors came from, Germany and Canada were not too far behind.
On a last note, there were a few of you who gave a lot of feedback. As a start, Monday’s Musings 2: to be like my cat for a day… do I really want that, published on December 16, was the most commented on post of the year. The top 5 commenters are as follows:

1. Rebecca Dunn-she wrote 8 comments for this blog.
2. MRS. Moten, who wrote 7 comments.
3. DeWayne Handy wrote 6 comments.
4. Dadams8105 wrote 4 commentss. Visit her site at dawnadams.org.
5. Sharon wrote 4 comments.

And that about concludes the annual report for 2013, keep helping me produce these awesome stats!

With that out of the way, let me give you a brief life update. Since Thursday night, I have not done much. On Friday, the only productive thing I did was going to Walmart with my mom and getting craft supplies. On Saturday, I didn’t do much, besides playing lots of swamp and taking advantage of the oppertunity to relax. Sunday was pretty much the same, besides the morning church service. Yesterday and today were more or less the same–I just relaxed, and took advantage of the time to chill. I hope that I have more to talk about in the next life update.

I guess that about wraps up tonight’s post. I hope you enjoyed this post, and all other posts in 2013. Though this was the last post of the year, I hope you look forward to the posts that are published in 2014, and I also hope you have a great new year!

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Monday’s Musings 3: the true meaning of Christmas

Hey guys,
Steve here.

Christmas is here, whether we like it or not. Christmas, the great holiday it is, brings family time, great food, and cheerful music, a smile to every one’s face, presents, and most importantly the birth of Jesus Christ. I often find myself forgetting that last, but most important part of Christmas that defines its true meaning. I’m not what you’d call a religious person, however I still believe in god, go to church, and know Christ for who he is.
This not-so religiousness is most likely the reason why I find myself thinking that Christmas is only a time to spend with your family, eat great things, sing cheerful songs, and give to people… however I am remotely comforted by the thought that I’m not alone.
Proof of my theory is that people shorten the word “Christmas” with an abbreviation that leads me to believe that people who use it have forgotten, if only temporarily, the true meaning of Christmas. The particular abbreviation I am talking about is one I’m sure you have used, and that I’ve used as well. “Xmas,” although a very simple and seemingly harmless way to write “Christmas,” is very wrong, if you think about it (I didn’t even think about it until a few days ago when it was brought up at my church). When you write Xmas, little do you know that by putting “x” instead of “Christ,” you are basically Xing Christ’s name out of Christmas, this being the reason I refuse to use this particular abbreviation; the Christ in Christmas helps me remember the true meaning of Christmas, why this holiday is celebrated in the first place, and the truly remarkable man born on that day, over 2000 years ago.
So each year, as you shop, sing and listen to great songs of happiness, eat lots of tasty things, decorate, and spend time with your family, pause a moment to remember the true meaning of Christmas, just as I have to do 99% of the time.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

Latest news concerning Steven D: Winter storm causes extreme excitement, a strange thing or 2 about school, and out with the sister… temporarily anyway

Hey guys,
Steve here.

As I’m sure you know by reading my blog post about a week and a half ago, the winter storm that was expected to hit our area turned out to be a complete rip-off. The most recent one, which is supposed to begin shortly, has actually turned out to be worse than I last said in my Tuesday entry. Now, my weather radio (see the weather radio forecasts page for Update 2 which will be posted around 10:00 this evening), has told people “do not travel unless it is an emergency.” Not only that, but 1/2 inches of sleet, and 1/2 inches of ice accumulation are expected over night. Also, if it doesn’t sound obvious to you by now, there is also a winter storm warning in affect. Although the warning only extends through 6:00 tomorrow evening, temperatures will remain below freezing through mid day Sunday, and another round of wintery precipitation is expected Saturday through Sunday morning.
Besides weather, my sister has gone to Austin for the weekend. She is going down for an O&M (orientation & mobility) thing with our O&M teacher (I’ve been wrapped up in my life to know anything more about the trip). All this means for me, however, is that Libby will be gone for 3 days; piece and quiet at last :))).

In the title of this post, I recall saying something about a “strange thing or 2 about school.” What I meant by this was my progress report. As of right now, my grade in math exceeds that of orchestra. The math grade, 100, strangely tops the orchestra grade of 89. Although both grades are good, I still can’t believe that I’m making a better grade in one of the hardest core subjects than I am in some easy (just because it’s easy, doesn’t mean it’s not fun) alective class like orchestra.
While I’m still on the subject of school, I am proud to say that I’ve started my National History Day Project. I’m doing it over the underground railroad (the theme is rights and responsibilities). I will definately finish it by the due date (December 13, I think), and after that is out of the way I will do Stranded.

In the podcasting part of my life, I only have one more make-up episode to complete–Episode 15. Of course, I have episode 17 to do on Saturday, but that is a scheduled episode, and not one I have to make up. Also, as episode 14 was recorded, expect me to use my sony ICD-PX720 recorder to record most of the podcast, except of course the game of the day section.
By the way, while still on the topic of the podcast, I have all but one of the remaining episodes of 2013 completely planned out. Do not, however, think I’m going to spoil anything.

On another note, I recorded and submitted that review for main menu (the radio show that reviews products for blind people). And although this review was submitted Wednesday night, I still have yet to receive confirmation that the review is going to be included in this week’s edition of main menu.

Finally, I am still editing the website. The navigation menu is all kinds of messed up; links to certain pages such as blog test 2012 appearing twice in the menu. Fortunately for you however, I am working diligently to fix this issue. I hope you enjoy the new page names and site revisions! For more information about what I’m doing, see the site news page (I don’t know the exact url, so you’ll have to use my navigation menu (that page is in there).

Thank you for reading this post, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

P.s. I got my 100th follower! Thank you so much Nate $mith for being follower 100, and all you other wonder people for being follower 1 through 99!

Happy times and big stressers: a busy start to December

Hey guys,
Steve here.

As I write this post, I’m pretty tired. I want nothing more than another break right about now, as I have quite a bit to do in the next few days. Also, There is some weather stuff I’m excited about, and I’ll tell you about that in this post.

As far as my life, it has been exciting but stressful as I said in the post title. Not much happened after my blog post on Sunday, nothing big anyway. I did however get to spend time with the family–baking cookies, and even decorating the Christmas tree. By the way, my 1 and a half year old cat Bell is already loving the fact that she can (or thinks she can) take down the ornaments and play with them… silly cat!
Getting back to my life, I’ve been busy the last day or so (Yesterday not so much, but today and tomorrow… I am). As for today, I had school, and my orchestra concert afterward, yet there is still more for me to do. I have to do a review for a popular radio show for the blind called Main Menu, where people submit reviews of software and hardware that can be made accessible for blind people. On my review, I will be doing my digital recorder and the software used to convert recordings and change settings on the recorder.
As for tomorrow, I pretty much have the day planned out. It will be school, studying for a test which I will tell you about later on in the post, starting my history day project, church, and doing episode 15 of the podcast, which will be the last one I have to make up. After episode 15, Devin can hopefully join me once again. Sounds like a busy couple of days, right?
As for the test, it’s for Spanish. The amount of nervousness I feel about that is comparable to how my mom feels about the half marathon she is going to run on Sunday. The reason for me being so nervous, is that if I fail, I will fail the semester, and end up having to take Spanish 1 again. I really don’t want this, so please cross your fingers, or pray for me.
Back on the subject of life, I have a choir concert coming up next Thirsday. That is also a day before my history project is due… I think. My NJHS hours are due next Wednesday; I only have 1… but I guess if I get kicked out it will be one less stresser laid upon my life, and what did NJHS really do for me anyway?

At the beginning of this post, I briefly mentioned some exciting weather stuff going to happen. Coming up on Friday into Sunday, there is expected to be a possible winter weather event. I am not too optimistic about this; considering the wrip off I got last week. None the less, I will record and post weather updates starting tomorrow morning, and going through most likely Saturday or Sunday, so stay in tune to the weather radio forecasts page, as that will be the page where all the weather updates will go like last time.
I guess that about wraps up tonight’s post. I hope you enjoyed reading this, and please wish me good luck on that test. Well, you don’t actually have to :))), whether or not you choose to is up to you. Until my next post…

thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

P.s. I recall promising you a picture of the decorated Christmas tree in Sunday’s post, so here you go. Also is a picture of me baking cookies on Sunday night, and of me standing by the tree before the concert tonight. Also there’s a pic of me playing violin at the concert. Enjoy!

the decorated Christmas tree as I promised
me standing by the Christmas tree before tonight's concert
making cookies... mm.
Johny Rosin up your bow and play that fiddle hard...