Pocket Myriad.xyz : Site News
By Tilveran • August 4, 2019
Two Years to Catch Up On
Wow! I guess time has flown by. I’ll try to do a re-cap.
So, Get Cosy was published as a first edition e-book on Amazon. I wasn’t especially in love with it and started on a second edition, aimed at paperback, although I put that on hold to give the Windows Scrivener software some time to catch up with the Mac version. I’ll be getting back to that.
Also on the creative front, I’ve self-published a video game project from a few years ago here on Pocket Myriad.xyz. Rather than re-hash Pimander’s history one more time in this blog, you should go and read my commentary here, maybe read the lore, and play Pimander.
Pimander is currently free to download, as I write this, from it’s section on the site. Speaking of which, the Pimander section has all the information I had published elsewhere in one place. Probably. Unless I missed something. Lore, character bios, background info, behind the scenes and so on. I had a lot of fun making Pimander. Check it out!
I also returned to affiliate marketing for a while, resulting in a few product guides being written. I learned a bunch of new technologies in the process, and admittedly, some of the guides work better than others. The ASMR Gear Guide is pretty decently constructed, considering the vast amount of information I was having to structure. I hope at least one person finds it useful!
Technology-wise, the site has shifted WordPress theme again. I have a smartphone finally and I’ve been working hard on getting Pocket Myriad.xyz fit for mobile, which it certainly is now. The WordPress team have done an outstanding job with TwentySeventeen, the current theme, and everything feels a lot more, well, elegant and streamline.
The comment plugin also got itself switched just the other day to a combined Disqus, Facebook and WordPress comments plugin to give visitors the greatest flexibility yet. Choice is good, right? Ah, the previous plugin wasn’t always loading either so… yeah, that had to go. The contact form also went because the Captcha was being obnoxious. Mhmm. Plugins are forever coming and going it seems!
What’s next? Right, well I’ll probably be writing the occasional crazy article in Beyond Certainty, which is where all my bad ideas go to die, but on a more serious note I’ll be concentrating a lot more on writing books and doing the odd thing on my YouTube channel. I have gear now and everything! It would be such a shame to waste it.
I’m sure I’m skipping over some things, but that will do for now. I guess the final thing to mention is that “Cirian” is (mostly) in retirement, but obviously still around.
~Tilveran.
By Cirian · July 9, 2017
Books… and maybe no more Guild Wars 2
Yeah. So. Inactivity. First let’s get the “no more Guild Wars 2” out of the way. Story-wise I’m basically done with it and I want to move on. The game has had nearly 5 years of me and I want to do other things now.
That brings me to books. I’ve had a book written for a few months now sitting shadow published but unreleased. I’m going to be working on that release and follow-up book projects.
Theme updated to Hueman 3
For the last year or so the site has been running the final version of Hueman 2. Updating to Hueman 3 was actually quite a big step behind the scenes to make sure everything didn’t fall apart, and so far things look good. Hueman 3 is mobile first with the future in mind, but it will continue to look good on desktop and tablet as well (hopefully!).
~Cirian.
By Cirian · November 19, 2016
Comment system switched to Disqus Conditional Load
Many of the sites I use myself use the Disqus system and it’s really great to use one login for lots of sites. Plus of course you actually get notified when someone replies and you can manage all your conversations from the Disqus dashboard, not to mention use it to remember a site you forgot about. So I looked into getting Disqus for Pocket Myriad!
The standard Disqus plugin has a reputation for slowing down websites so that was unfortunate. However, Disqus Conditional Load is said to be even faster than native WordPress comments so that’s perfect. Now if you use Pocket Myriad you might find it a tiny bit faster on articles with a fair few comments on, like Cool Bodum Glass. That’s still worth looking at if you haven’t by the way…
One oddity if you commented before is that Gravatars are not supported by Disqus so peoples’ icons have been changed to a default one. A bit unfortunate but there you go.
So yeah, hopefully commenting is easier than ever and the barrier is even lower. Don’t be a stranger, be sure to leave a little feedback or just say hello. It’s all good. My only conundrum now is whether to use my WordPress name or my Disqus name 🙂
Happy holiday season,
~Cirian.
*Also known as Tilveran on Disqus, Twitter & YouTube!
By Cirian · February 12, 2016
Pocket Myriad.xyz gets Social
Site news! Readers will notice social sharing and following features have gone live across Pocket Myriad, so go ahead and use them. You can give feedback as usual in the comments below.
When I initially went looking for a social sharing option to add to WordPress (which powers this site), I went with a plugin called Jetpack. It seems to be the official solution but it well, let’s just say it has issues and I binned it and looked for another. Eventually (seeing as it’s a month since my last post!) I narrowed the options down to Social Media Feather, SumoMe and AddThis, eventually going for Social Media Feather by Synved for its speed and simplicity. If any of you lot have an opinion on plugins I’d love to hear from you in the comments! Going forward I’ll work hard to find the best features to add to Pocket Myriad and I hope you enjoy using the site as much as I do building it.
March Update
This month sees a transition to a new WordPress theme with a lot more features, including built-in follow buttons. I’ve also switched my sharing solution over to AddThis, which means the share counters have reset to zero again. Oh well! I hope you enjoy the new format and as usual, if you have any comments please leave them below.
Thanks for visiting.
~Cirian.
By Cirian · January 10, 2016
Hi everyone!
Ever since the start of Pocket Myriad I’ve been planning lifestyle posts in addition to blogging about great games like Guild Wars 2.
The New Year is the perfect time to start, and so I am adding a new category called Eureka! to cover real life things that I hope people will find neat and useful.
Enjoy, and Happy New Year.
~Cirian.
By Cirian · October 13, 2015
I’m just getting started over here and I’m pretty excited about what I’ll be able to bring. Use the menu at the top to navigate around and in time I’ll flesh the place out.
Enjoy,
~Cirian.