Blogs about psa

Games I've Beat.

Gender-based marketing is lazy and video game marketing has been lying to you. Here is a list of video games that I have beat. Where "beat" means variously beat the final boss, won all races or levels, or completed the story, as appropriate for the genre.

• Super Mario Brothers
• Tetris
• Maniac Mansion
• Sam & Max Hit the Road
• The Dig
• Day of the Tentacle
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
• The Secret of Monkey Island
• The Secret of Monkey Island 2
• Super Mario Brothers 3
• Super Mario World
• Super Mario Kart (SNES)
• Yoshi's Island
• Super Mario 64
• Paper Mario
• Super Paper Mario
• New Super Mario Brothers
• Super Mario 3D Land
• Hero's Quest / Quest for Glory I
• X-Men (Arcade)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
• The Legend of Zelda
• The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap
• The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D
• Street Fighter II (SNES)
• Super Street Fighter II (SNES)
• Final Fantasy (PlayStation)
• Final Fantasy III (Nintendo DS)
• Final Fantasy IV (II in the US)
• Mystic Quest
• Chrono Trigger
• Secret of Mana
• Final Fantasy III (VI in the US)
• Final Fantasy VII
• Final Fantasy VIII
• Legend of Mana
• Final Fantasy IX
• Final Fantasy X
• Final Fantasy X-2
• Final Fantasy XII
• Final Fantasy Tactics
• Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
• Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2
• Dragon Quest IX
• Vagrant Story
• SSX
• Katamari Damacy
• We Love Katamari
• Ico
• Kingdom Hearts
• Kingdom Hearts II
• Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
• Disgaea 2
• Mario Kart (DS)
• Tetris DS
• Plants Vs Zombies (XBLA)
• Costume Quest
• Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
• Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
• The World Ends With You
• Bravely Default
• Bravely Second
• Fire Emblem Awakening
• Fire Emblem Fates (Birthright)

Free Images.

Here are some sources for free images that you can use for your website, presentation, art project or whatever.

• Antique illustrations from
• Computer stock photos from
• Free stock photos from Unsplash
• Free stock photos from Pexels. They have some pretty nice HD wallpapers too.
• Photos by the US government at its agencies are public domain. This means that photos from (including the lovely ), , and many more that I haven't thought of.
• Historical Photos from http://nos.twnsnd.co/
• A small selection of historical and antique stock photos from Historical Stock Photos
• Free stock photos from Pic Jumbo (slightly spammy)
• Agricultural photos from the US Agricultrual Research Service
• Free stock photos from Every Stock Photo (a little spammy)
• Free stock photos from Free Pixels (a little spammy)
• Public domain photos from (more spammy)

There are also companies which will give you free photos or credits on your first sign-up or periodically: iStock, Adobe Stock (fotolia), Shutterstock and Creative Market. And both and will let you search for CC licensed photos.

Why I Finally Switched From GoDaddy.

I'd been using GoDaddy as registrar and host for several years. But a few months after I wrote Why I Still Use GoDaddy, For Now., I switched most of my stuff away from GoDaddy.

I had started having more technical problems with the blog hosting (some URL re-writes were failing). I'd identified that the cause was somewhere in the domain's configuration (not in my .htaccess file) by deleting .htaccess. I contacted GoDaddy's tech support (usually quite helpful), but after a few go-arounds, they declared that it was a code problem. I did technical support for years; I know when I'm being flushed.

As a female human, I'd felt un-valued by the company for a while. Then LifeHacker ran a DreamHost promo which brought the costs down to something that my inner cheapskate could deal with, so I said so long to GoDaddy. Getting everything set up at DreamHost was a breeze, and naturally, there were no URL rewriting problems over there.

PS - here's my referral link for DreamHost, if you're into that sort of thing: http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?1495678.

The Little Things in iOS 8.

I wasn't interested in any of iOS 8's "big" features in iOS 8, but there are a few small enhancements which are pretty useful:

• Mail.app will pull contact information from signatures and offer to import it into new or existing contacts. This is a huge time saver!
• When typing, the keyboard suggests whole words! (I know that most Android users have had this for a while.)
• Siri talks to Shazam, so now you can identify songs by asking Siri "what's playing?"
• Safari has "request desktop site" - so you can get the whole website from a poorly thought-out mobile site.

Q&A Anti-Patterns.

Here are some patterns to post-speech question and answer sessions that really ought to be avoided.

• Let me talk about my stuff for 3 minutes and then ask you a weak and marginally related question.

• When's the first time you used [x]?

• I love you! I just really really love you! Can I give you a hug?

  No.

• Let me tell you a horror story related to a thing I did.

In fact, it seems like the vast majority of questions asked at these times are a waste of time to everyone but the asker. Thank you to those who organize sessions with questions via Twitter or "at the pool" only.