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This is just a little different than the typical "RFG Thanks for (insert month/year)".
I was going through some of my old blog entries and I found one I wrote as an open letter to the community. It was written 3 years after joining, but a mere 2 months after I really began to get involved with the community.
As I sit here now, my son is playing Pokepark on the Wii as I look at my TI-99/4A that I need to test so I can sell it. There have been a lot of changes for me personally as well as for the site in the time since that blog post. I have gone from grabbing everything in sight to being selective and selling off stuff that I have just to have it. I'm now a director on the site. We had a pretty big disaster on the site that easily could have been the end of the site potentially. I recovered what I could with what I had, losing a couple of years worth of forum posts and maybe 6 weeks of database submissions.
The forum was slow to come back, but here we are. We have a bunch of new members and old members who have returned. We have new bloggers and a new podcast. We are nearing in on 70,000 software entries and 5,000 hardware entries! We have a new server with more power and drive space for us to grow with! And we have continued to do so with just the support of the community and their donations. We have no plans to be sold or put up ads.
We're doing this on our own. I see and hear things happening elsewhere that I never want anything to happen here. We want you to communicate to us and let us know about any issues you have or any ideas to make things better. Together, we'll continue to get better as well as grow.
What this all boils down to is... thanks. Without the passion of the community, we wouldn't be here. Thanks to the bloggers for writing about your perspective. Thanks to all of the staff for your work on keeping that submission queue low. Thanks to everyone who was here before me who started the site right. Lastly, thanks to every member for making this a great place to be, day after day.
And as always, keep it on channel 3!
So, this is now painfully late. I was slow to edit, then once I had it, the file locked up and I lost all of my edits. In the middle of this, RF Generation had a major issue on the site, causing us to lose 3 years of forum posts and a couple of months of database work. But, here it is! Our awards show and also an interview with lisalover1!
0:00 - Intro
1:40 - Interview with lisalover1
33:37 - End of the Year Awards! (I know it's 2012 already!)
1:09:45 - Community Award Submissions
1:30:55 - Game Shout Out!
1:39:30 - Top 5 Reasons the GameCube is the best console ever!
1:40:35 - Top 5 Things we didn't find ourselves saying in 2011.
1:41:35 - Outro
Please leave us comments here, in the forums (they're back!), email us, call us, write us, telegraph... The contact information is in the episode!
Subscribe to the podcast with this RSS feed: http://rfgeneration.podomatic.com/rss2.xml
Find us in iTunes, rate, and subscribe!
It's been submitted at least twice, but still not in the Zune market (sorry WP7 folks!).
Enjoy!
The site is going down again.
Now, breathe.
This is planned downtime and it's for the better. Our host recently merged with another company and, along with this, they are changing our server configuration. We were on a VPS with 1GB of RAM and a meager 20GB of drive space. We are moving to a dedicated server with 4GB of RAM and dual 500GB drives! More everything! This should allow us to remain stable and hopefully lessen the database connection issues we have been experiencing.
This all goes down Saturday night at 10PM Central US time (3AM GMT). We will be placing the entire site in a maintenance mode. We did it Saturday night in case there were problems so we could have Sunday to fix it, again, if needed.
If you need your fix right away, please go ahead and bookmark this page to get to the IRC room.
See you when we're back!
Well, here we are, back up again. After over a week of downtime, we feel that we are ready to give this another shot as well as explain what had happened.
Last month, we were informed that our server was hosting a PayPal scam site. Our host was working with us to close up the exploit. It seems that whoever got in may have used more than an exploit. I found a couple of new domains on the server that were not set up by us. After further investigation, it was thought that they had the root password to the server. This fear was confirmed when the site went down.
Our initial check led us to the fact that our database tables had been dropped. That's bad.
[img width=423 height=315]http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lklne4CZne1qh7oxso1_500.png[/img]
This effectively removed our forum and game databases. We have been working to try to restore the forum from the information that was left on the server, but after all of the effort, we were stuck. Eddie was able to get the game database back from early December. This also included the blogs. The forum, however, was not so lucky.
The initial forum restoration that we found was from 2009. This included the member table. I happened to attempt to make a backup back in January, but it only partially backed up. Fortunately, this was successful in including the member list and even PMs. So, while we have now lost a ton of the forum, that can be recreated. The important part is that we were able to recover a fairly recent backup of the game DB and almost all of our members (not sure how many registered in the few weeks since my backup).
Now what happens? This experience has certainly left an impression on me as well as Dave, Eddie, and Mike. We will be implementing means to do (starting off) biweekly backups and as we get things honed in, we hope to get this down to possibly daily. We will also be working to have a system in place to test these backups and make sure they are good to prevent this sort of downtime in the future as well as making it easier for us to move hosts in the future should we need to do so.
We are very sorry that this has happened and that it was down for so long. We hope that it hasn't tarnished our image for you and that you continue to come back. Personally, I appreciate everyone that came in to the IRC room during the down time to keep the conversation going and your words of encouragement really meant a lot. The community has always been fantastic here and now that we're back up, I hope we continue to get stronger as a result. Thank you for your patience with me and my stubbornness to try everything I could to try to get it back to where it was before the disaster struck.
Welcome back to Channel 3!
So, I had a broken headset around episode 12, but didn't get around to getting a new headset until after I recorded this one. But this is now fixed ($25 later...)! Unfortunately, there are also some other glitches happening that we're ironing out, but I hope none of them made it in to the episode.
But there is good news! We did get another episode out and we're calling it our anniversary episode! We have our thoughts on the passing of Steve Jobs, a new segment called "While You Were Broke", our Game Shout-Outs!, the latest contest with details, and, of course, the Top 5.
BIG EDIT ABOUT THE CONTEST! After you solve the first clue, you need to find that game in the database. In the Game Trivia section, you will find the next clue. Find that game for the next one and so on. Find all 10 games and call or e-mail us your list first to win! Probably should have clarified that, but it's my first time trying this, so I expected some glitches.
Check out the FREE Cave Story game we mentioned here: http://www.cavestory.org/
Humble Bundle site (Frozen Synapse bundle is over by now): http://www.humblebundle.com/
Get the episode here: http://rfgeneration.podomatic.com or we're on iTunes!
0:00 - Intro
1:55 - What's New on Channel 3?
3:00 - News/Feature: Steve Jobs Dies at 56
14:32 - While You Were Broke
25:07 - Game Shout-Out!
37:35 - Top 5: iOS Apps We're Still Waiting On
38:06 - Outro
Get in contact with us as well! We're happy to hear from you. E-mail us at podcast@rfgeneration.com. Call us at (318) RFG TIP 5, that's 318-734-8475.
The NEW podcast subforum is located here: http://www.rfgeneration.c...orum/index.php?board=35.0
We hit the summer post-E3 lull and it luckily gave us a good excuse to be late... We'll cover some gaming news along with our Gaming Shout Outs before hitting our Top 5.
0:00 - Intro
2:00 - What's New on Channel 3?
4:27 - Gaming News
26:42 - Game Review: Catherine
42:20 - Game Shout Out!
55:40 - Top 5 Reasons Catherine is Already Game of the Year
56:33 - Outro
As always, you can comment in the forums, comment in this blog post, e-mail us, and even call us. We hope to be able to take your quick questions over any subject via e-mail at podcast@rfgeneration.com. You can also call us and leave a message! We can play your question or comment in the episode and we'll even respond to it! That number is (318) RFG-TIP5 or (318) 734-8475.
Download the podcast at http://rfgeneration.podomatic.com or on iTunes!
E3 has come and gone and, as usual, none of the content in our episodes is going to be breaking news. But we thought it was important to talk about and give our perspectives on.
Continue reading RF Generation Nation - Episode 13: E3? That's Still Around?
Apparently, we're becoming victims of our own success. You guys are actually digging what we're putting out and requesting more! This is why I feel bad about this episode. We had to hold off on recording while Jesse moved in to his new house (YAY!) and then (after beginning to edit), I realized that it is time to hang up the SOCOM USB headset. This episode is going to be a little strange...
Continue reading RF Generation Nation - Episode 12: More Delays than 3D Realms
So, we're late. Unfortunately, right after we recorded this one, I had some personal obligations to attend to, so the episode wasn't able to get edited quite as fast as I wanted. But here it is! We have (now outdated) information on the PSN outage, our Gaming Shout Outs, and our next installment of the Gaming History Museum where we cover the RC Pro Am series. Of course, we also have our Top 5. Also, we're still looking for more votes for the caption contest. Picture reminder is after the break.
Continue reading RF Generation Nation - Episode 11: Now It is the Beginning of a Fantastic Story
Here we go again! As per the suggestion we got from Fuyukaze, we have our first industry guest! Our guest has taken some time away from a very rigorous training schedule to spend with us!
EDIT: I forgot the link to the podcast! http://rfgeneration.podomatic.com
There are links on the page to subscribe in iTunes as well!
Continue reading RF Generation Nation - Episode 10: 2D Rules! 3D Drools!
Well, as some proof that they do exist, our guest this time is a girl gamer. slackur's wife joins us for a little chat about a few news stories as well as the topics you wanted to hear about!
Continue reading RF Generation Nation - Episode 9: Under the Sea
Hey everyone! Last minute show idea popped up. We wanted to get the community's input on some quick topics that you want us to talk about. Everything and anything about games: news, retro games, social effects of gaming on society, you name it!
The only problem is that we kind of came up with this on short notice, so you essentially have until tomorrow night... yeah... We dropped the ball. But we'll be sure to mention you in the podcast right along with your topic! Thanks!
We're back and we dragged yet another willing participant in with us! den68 joins us for this episode and, as will happen when talking about your 6000+ game collection, things get a little strange. Regardless, we want to thank Dennis for joining us and we hope you enjoy the episode! Also, because of the ridiculousness that was brought up, we're going to have a little caption contest. Details inside!
Continue reading RF Generation Nation - Episode 8: Furious Iron Fist
Here we are again! 7 episodes down and we have another new feature: The Sports Page!
00:00 - Intro
01:18 - What's New on Channel 3?
01:45 - Gaming News
23:15 - Game Shout Out!
33:34 - The Sports Page
39:33 - Top 5
40:11 - Outro
Continue reading RF Generation Nation - Episode 7: You Spoony Bard!
We have a new episode out with our first interview. This is another first for us, both on our delivery and for the recording itself. Please let us know if you had any issues actually hearing anything as well as any topic suggestions, interview suggestions, or anything else you want us to talk about in the locations below.
The Episode:
- 0:00: Intro
- 0:57: ReddMcKnight Interview
- 7:39: What's New on Channel 3?
- 8:32: Gaming News
- 26:52: Gaming Shoutout!/I'm Sorry...
- 36:50: Top 5
- 37:40: Outro
You can comment in the forums, comment in this blog post, e-mail us, and even call us. We hope to be able to take your quick questions over any subject via e-mail at podcast@rfgeneration.com. You can also call us and leave a message! We can play your question or comment in the episode and we'll even respond to it! That number is (318) RFG-TIP5 or (318) 734-8475.
Here is the forum thread to comment: http://www.rfgeneration.c...m/index.php?topic=10730.0
The podcast, as usual, can be found and subscribed at http://rfgeneration.podomatic.com as well as in iTunes!
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This is bickman2k's Blog.
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As much as the world has changed, our still somewhat niche spot as gamers has adapted to the times as well as the games. We have created our online museum of our past. We share our experiences about the present. And we will evolve together as the gaming community continues to change. I hope to write about some of my experiences with gaming, as well as on some topics that were not directly relevant to me, but to the community or you personally. |
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