| Issue #6 | June 21st, 2015 | Volume 1 |
Edition
Badges Earned
Crown (Exceptional Member)
- The Watchman
Poison Mushroom (Bio)
- Steroid Gamer
- Doc Croc
Maxim Tomato (Featured)
- Gingerbot
- ZB
- Action Zero
Anchor (RSS)
- ZB
Super Ball (120 Posts)
- The Watchman
Super Leaf (Author)
- Sarus Vakarian
- Rhutsczar
3-Up Moon (375 Posts)
- The Cubist
Acorn (50 Posts)
- Gingerbot
Propeller (40 Posts)
- ChronoSloth
- Justicescooby
Ice Flower (140 Posts)
- The Watchman
Mini Mushroom (30 Posts)
- Doc Croc
E-Tank (E3 Coverage)
- InfiniteKnife
Map (News)
- InfiniteKnife
Have you earned a badge that you haven't yet received? Let us know!
Fresh Meat:New Member Spotlight
Let's give a warm, crispy, greasy welcome to Nerd Bacon's newest Baconeers!
- Dak (Dakota)
- Superking (James)
Welcome to the meat grinder!
Member Appreciation
by The Cubist
I don't think anyone who's been watching the site over the last couple of weeks will disagree with our pick this time - The Watchman! The Watchman, also known to us around here as "David K.", is one of our longest standing Baconeers and really caught out attention with his incredible coverage of E3 2014. He managed to outdo himself this year, with around 20 E3 news pieces to his credit. It's dedication like this that keeps The Bacon turning!
Upcoming Twitch Events
Unfortunately, time got away from me and I didn't get the specifics of our upcoming Twitch shows. We hope that Monday night shows featuring a revolving door of streamers will manifest soon, but until it does, we'll be letting everyone know on an as-needed basis.
Don't forget that every Wednesday is Nerd Bacon Plays! hosted by InfiniteKnife. I believe he is running through the episodes of Resident Evil: Revelations 2.
Tune in again on Thursday nights for Girls Got Game with Sarus and Nerdy Friend!
HTML Tips and Tricks
Font Tricks
Ok, so maybe I went a little overboard with the horizontal lines last time, but I hope that some of you at least understood the basics behind creating them. This time we're going to tackle something a little simpler - font tricks. Some of these can be pulled off in a variety of ways, but I'm going to stick to the simplest.
Remember, to use these tips and tricks, click on the "Text" tab at the top right of the editing box.
Three of the most common tricks for altering text are right up there in the toolbar - italics, emboldening, and underlining - so I won't spend any time going over those. We will cover a few others, for whatever use you may find for them: Small Caps, strikethrough, overline, pre-formatted text, superscript, and subscript.
First we'll go over superscripts and subscripts; they're pretty easy. For superscripts, use the tag <sup>, then whatever text you want superscripted, followed by the closing tag, </sup>. For example, March 3rd would look like March 3<sup>rd</sup>.
Subscripts, though less useful, are used similarly with the <sub> tag. For instance textsubscript would look like text<sub>subscript</sub>.
Small caps turns lowercase letters into smaller uppercase letters and involves a slightly more complicated tag. It can be useful for things like titles and headings. It uses a span tag. Something like Title Here would look like this: <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Title Here</span>.
Pre-formatted text is useful for discussing technical things, such as those possibly encountered in a DIY project, like folder or file names. It's a nice alternative when you want to distinguish text without using something like quotation marks over and over. Pre-formatted text looks like this and uses a super easy tag - <code>. Like everything else it needs to be closed, so coded text would look like <code>coded text</code>.
Strikethrough used to be an option on the toolbar, though it has since disappeared. Again, this is a really easy tag - <del>. Be careful not to go overboard with this, though it can be appropriate at times. Example: errata looks like <del>errata</del>.
Lastly there's the overline feature, and I have no idea what use this has; if anyone does, let me know! Here's another instance where we need a span tag. So, overlined text would look like <span style="text-decoration: overline;">overlined text</span>.
You can combine many of these if you really need to (though not all are compatible with each other) but less is more and your point will be better taken with simplicity. Just for fun, Look At This Example
Did you know that...
You can adapt our rating system to fit your own style?
We have our Nerd Rating system outlined in detail on the site, though I'd like to take a moment to reiterate that, although we operate on a 10 point scale, we do allow for flexibility.
Most members are comfortable rating on a purely 10 point scale, with ratings such as 2, 4, 5, or 9. But what if you see even more divisions when you rate a game? What if you're more comfortable having 20 points? Well, all you need to do is add a "0.5" to each number and now you'll have 20 possible scores, like 3.5, 4, 7, or 8.5.
If you want to, you can take it even further, such as a 40 point scale with quarter points, scores like 1.25, 3, 4.25, 6.5, 7.75, or 9.25. Furthermore, if you're a really astute critic, you could bump it up to a full 100 point scale: 2.4, 3.1, 5.5, 6.6, or 8.3.
However, I would advise anyone looking to going into a 100 or even 40 point scale to really think about it: can you really clearly differentiate between a game deserving of a 7.1 and a 7.2? If you can, then go for it! But if you can't, don't just pluck these numbers out of thing air. Begin to really think about how many increments you can realistically "see" when it comes to evaluating a game.
Some members in the past have also used averages, individual rating aspects like gameplay and graphics, and averaging these components together. This is acceptable as well, so if you want to put that much thought into the rating that the game means, more power to you!
The important thing to remember is to keep the rating between 0 and 10 and to keep your rating style consistent. Although we all have different opinions on games, it's important to remember that what you rate as a 7 and what I rate as 7 roughly equate to our same level of appreciation for a game.
Nerd Bacon News: June 2015 (2)
We've got a slightly shorter edition of Greased this time around, mostly due to my week-long absence and lack of a reliable internet connection.
I haven't been able to keep up with our E3 coverage as much as I would've liked, but Nerdberry and Doc Croc have kept me well-informed of your efforts. We want to thank all of you who participated, both on the front lines and those you making sure that the news made it out there. Several of you did an amazing job, especially The Watchman, Gingerbot, Doc Croc, ChronoSloth, Justicescooby, and Rhutsczar.
Don't forget that we still have room for post-conference analysis and discussion, so keep the E3-related articles coming! Maybe you want to take a deeper look at some of the expo's developments, or maybe you want to spend some time speculating, or even putting together a Top 10 Best/Worst list pertaining to the show. We still have some time to keep up the E3 momentum so don't be shy!
Anyone out there interested in becoming a full-fledged reporter? You're still free to review games whenever you like, but being an actual reporter requires a minimum of 2 news pieces per week. We could really use another 2 or 3 of you guys and gals to crank out news on a regular basis, so let us know!
Newcomers! Where are you!?
We've had an impressive spate of newcomers join us during the past few months, but for some reason, very few of them are getting their wheels turning! Are you new to the site? Speak up! Don't be afraid to jump in and start reviewing what you're currently playing. Even if your article isn't perfect the first time we'll help you get into the swing of things. Everyone was new at some point - there will be a little period of adjustment but stick with us. The more you write, the easier it gets. And also don't forget to tune into our Twitch streams (look over in the right column) to get to know our members a little bit better.
For those of you who aren't new members, help make those who are new feel welcome. Comment on their articles, or, if you're an admin or other senior member, shoot them an email to welcome them to the fold and help them find their way around. And always keep in mind that we're always recruiting, so send anyone interested our way.
Like What You're Reading? Leave a Comment!
One of the best ways we can encourage each other as writers to continue doing what we're doing is by commenting on articles. Many of you already do a great job when it comes to leaving comments, so keep it up! Don't be insincere with your words, but if you like something and want to see more of it, be sure to tell the writer this!
Also, most writers will write back to any comments you leave, so follow up after you leave a comment ad keep the conversation going if possible. The "Recent Comments" box in the right sidebar will help with this, but comments may be rolling in too quickly. If you really want to keep up with the flow of comments on the site, subscribe to our Comments RSS Feed, which is distinct from our regular RSS Feed as it concentrates solely on comments. Still don't know what RSS is? Keep reading; the next section addresses RSS in a little more detail.
Finally it's important to remember that comments are not for pointing out errors! We appreciate those of you that stay attentive and want to help us appear as professional as possible, but part of appearing professional is not having comments on articles that point out typos, factual inconsistencies, or formatting errors. If you run across an issue like this, it's best to contact the writer directly if possible. However, this won't always be possible, in which case you should bring it to the attention of an administrator or editor. We'll be glad to fix these errors should you notice them, so don't hesitate to let us know!
If you find yourself spotting lots of inconsistencies, you may want to considering becoming our next editor...?
Keep Up with All of Nerd Bacon's Articles
We talked about this some way back in our very first issue of Greased, but with so many new articles popping up and so many of you still shrugging your shoulders at the mention of "RSS," let's take a second to go over it again.
When you subscribe to an RSS feed, your RSS reader will update you, in real time, when changes are made to a site. This is extremely useful for blogs and article-centric sites like ours. Instead of having to check it multiple times a day and look for newly published articles, you can receive updates that tell you what has been added and when.
Hopping onto our RSS feed is easier than you might think. Most browsers offer a simple RSS reader plugin. A quick search should bring up exactly what you need, such as "chrome rss plugin" or "opera rss plugin." These programs are small and fit right into your browser, adding an extra button or two. Then all you have to do is subscribe to the feed by plugging in the correct address for the feed. Nerd Bacon currently runs 2 feed: one for updates to the site (new articles) and another purely for the comments. You can plug these URLs straight into your RSS reader:
- Nerd Bacon RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/nerdbacon
- Nerd Bacon Comments RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/nerd-bacon-comments
Give it a try, and know exactly what's going on with Nerd Bacon when it happens. You can also keep up with other sites this way; many of them utilize RSS, just look for an icon similar to the one below!
When and if you do subscribe to our RSS feed, let us know and we'll pass along a shiny new Anchor Badge to add to your collection!
Review Spotlight
In the interest of time and the fact that we've been focusing primarily on the developments of E3 these last couple of weeks, we're going to skip the Review Spotlight this time around. You guys did a great job at cranking out articles though, so don't be discouraged!
Coming in July...
The dog days of summer can be a pretty bleak time for video game enthusiasts. After E3, there's not much to do but wait until the holiday season gears start turning around October. Once the last few E3 articles have trickled in, it's time to focus on the core of what Nerd Bacon is - reviews! We want to spend this time writing, writing, recruiting, and writing. A healthy dose of promotion wouldn't hurt either. As E3 dies down, here are some suggestions on how to keep things lively at The Bacon:
- Re-play some old favorites and review them!
- Get hooked on a franchise and become our resident expert.
- Grab a random game!
- Hook up an obscure system!
- Help us recruit motivated individuals. We've got a solid team behind us right now but more always = better.
- Take a look at our Bacon Badges and see how many you can earn (and don't forget to let me know!)
- You can get a badge for playing on a console by one of the major 5 companies: Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and Microsoft.
- Play a game on the Genesis, the Sega CD, and the 32X.
- Review 5 or more games from the same series...then move on to 10!
- Review a piece of hardware, draw up a Top 10 list, and if you're really brave, tackle a DIY project.
- Very soon we will be getting our Monday night Twitch show off the ground. Begin thinking about how you might want to participate and let's get a schedule off the ground. The more advance notice we have, the better.
- Help promote us! A few members have already stepped up to the plate to assist us with putting the word out on social media sites. A few others have expressed interest in helping us, and now that the E3 craziness is winding down, it's a great opportunity to reconnect with us and let us know how you can help. We also want to expand our reach to other social networks, and we need you to help! If you're familiar with any services that we don't currently have a presence on, we'd love to put you out there on the front lines.
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Following, adding, subscribing, friending us earns you a badge! It can be hard for us to tell when this happens, so please let us know!
CONTACT US
Administrators
- NerdBerry -
NerdBerry@NerdBacon.com - Promotion, advertising, funding, events, social networking, editing, concept & direction. - The Cubist -
TheCubist@NerdBacon.com - Tech support, maintenance (badges, newsletter, membership management, etc.), graphics, editing, concept & direction.
Assistant Admins
- Variand -
Variand@NerdBacon.com - Twitch support, site support, concept & direction. - ChronoSloth -
ChronoSloth@NerdBacon.com - Link supervisor, general management & maintenance. - InfiniteKnife -
InfiniteKnife@NerdBacon.com - Twitch support.
Editors
- Doc Croc -
DocCroc@NerdBacon.com - Editing, publication, and scheduling.
Authors
- The Watchman -
TheWatchman@NerdBacon.com - Current affairs specialist, head reporter. - Gingerbot -
Gingerbot@NerdBacon.com - Reporter. - Justicescooby -
Justicescooby@NerdBacon.com - Senior writer. - Steroid Gamer -
SteroidGamer@NerdBacon.com - Senior writer.
Get Involved! Get Greasy!
Hey! Listen up! We want you guys to help out and be a part of Greased! We'd love for you to send in comments, questions, and any other newsworthy information that might hold relevance to other members. We'll consider any other ideas you may have as well, so don't be shy. Make Greased yours!
Site Developments
Let's say hello to our 2 newest authors, Sarus Vakarian and Rhutsczar! We're really excited to see so many of you move up in rank with us; let's try to get some new blood equally interested! Members ZB and Action Zero are quickly approaching authorship themselves!
There will be an upcoming draft purge in the near future, probably within the next week or two. Most of you are familiar with these; it's something we do periodically to clean up clutter on the backend. When the purge hits, any drafts older than 1 month will be deleted, permanently. If you're concerned about any of your in-progress work getting trashed, don't fret. Obviously our first suggestion is to find the time to finish your article and submit it for publication! But if you can't do that just yet, find your draft, open it, make a small change, and then re-save it as a draft. This will change the "Last Modified" date to something more recent and spare it from deletion. Please do not mindlessly go through and update all of your drafts; make conscious, reasonable, and realistic decisions about what you'll be able to complete in a timely manner. You can always start a new draft.
Pretty soon we'll be sending out another email with specific details about the draft purge. Anything with a "Last Modified" date earlier than June 2015 will be deleted. You'll all have a couple of weeks to get things in order, so no real rush, but it is time to to start thinking about what you may want to do with those spare drafts lying around.
Currently we don't have any huge plans on the horizon. For some ideas about what we'll be doing around The Bacon for the next couple of months, scroll up and read over Coming in July... There are a couple of other things to draw some attention to however.
Member Evaluations will be trickling into you all's mailboxes sometime soon. If you've been with us less than 2 or 3 months you probably won't be getting one this time around. For the rest of you though, this will be a chance to see how you're doing in terms of cold, hard numbers. We keep careful track of everyone's performance and it's easy for us to see things like how many articles you've had published, how often you submit them, etc. Now we're going to take some time to let each and every one of you know how you're doing as well as give you some personal feedback regarding your performance and giving you the chance to speak up about any issues that may concern you.
These evaluations do take us some time to put together and coordinate since both David and I review them, so it may take some time for us to get all of them sent out. And don't worry, these aren't "evil report cards" or anything, just simple progress reports to let you know exactly how you're doing and how you're doing compared to the overall performance of the site's members.
You may also remember that we've had several discussions about re-tooling our approach to Twitch, mostly to keep it more relevant to the actual NerdBacon.com and how to draw Twitch viewers to the site itself. It may be a few more weeks before these efforts get off the ground in earnest, but we're definitely gearing up for a slight transition. We're open to ideas on how to better integrate our Twitch presence with the website proper, so feel free to chime in.
We also want to streamline our approach to promoting shows which will likely result in a semi-permanent schedule making its way to the sidebar on the site.
Finally, we would also like to start getting serious about our Monday night shows. If you're interested, go ahead and let us know. We'd like to line up as many streamers ahead of time as possible so that we can stick to a regular schedule. Pretty much anything goes, we're just looking to get more of you involved with streaming and get a mix of personalities and gaming preferences on the air in order to reflect the diversity of the site. We'll be glad to help you get set up on whatever platform you may be using and assist you with trial runs to make sure everything is running smoothly. As much advanced notice as possible is best, but feel free to come to us any time and we will do our best to accommodate.
Keep in mind that your stream doesn't have to be a "let's play" type of stream if you don't want it to be. If you've got an idea for a "show" that would be great, or if you want to show off some particular aspect of gaming such as speed runs, difficult accomplishments/unlockables/secrets, viewer request, etc. that would be great. Anything you can do to drive up interest in the site is acceptable, and we're greatly looking forward to more varied and diverse approaches to streaming. Don't restrict yourself - if you have an idea and want to run with it, let us know and we'll do our best to make it happen.
Until Next Time...
That's it for this issue, and again, thank all of you who participated in one way or another for our awesome coverage of E3. It'll be fun to look at our site traffic during the next issue of Greased and see just how many people we reached. We also owe you guys and girls a high five for holding down Nerd Bacon with both of us being so occupied. A few months ago activity would've ground to halt, but thanks to a tremendous level of commitment, The Bacon ran like a well oiled greased machine!
So for the next couple of weeks, stay on top of the post-E3 analysis, keep banging out the reviews, grab us some fresh meat for the frying pan, give some thought to being a reporter, and start brainstorming about how to make our upcoming Monday Twitch shows a massive success!
| Issue #6 | June 21st, 2015 | Volume 1 |