So this week, the Gnome Stew blog went live, with a huge opening week. It was quite well received around the RPG blogosphere. I wrote an article on opening day on RPG Arguments. I have another article in the queue that should go out on Tuesday.

So how will Gnome Stew and Encoded Designs work together? I have been thinking about this during the week. I enjoy maintaining my own blog, in both the writing side as well as the actually configuration and administration of the software. I also like having a place where I can post about the games i am currently playing, so that months or even years from now, I can look back and remember those games.  So for those reasons I fully intend to keep Encoded Designs up and running.

On the flip side, I was one of the people who encouraged Martin to take Treasure Tables and make it into a multi-author site. Rather than transforming Treasure Tables, after a hiatus, Martin created Gnome Stew and invited me to contribute. Gnome Stew’s initial success comes from the momentum that Martin created with Treasure Tables with his excellent writing, as well the superb group of contributors and commenters, who frequented the site. Most of those contributors accepted Martin’s invitation and are now Gnomes. I have thought that a multi-author site of the caliber of Treasure Tables would be a sight to behold. If this week’s posts are any indication, Gnome Stew will be a home for excellent GM advice and thought. For all those reasons, I fully intend to keep my Gnome Hat and keep contributing to the Stew.

So how will I put it all together? Well, I am going to keep my Gnome Stew articles strictly focused on GMing techniques and theory. On this blog, I am going to write my Weekend Update, as well as more opinionated pieces about gaming. If there is any ranting to be done, it will be here. I will also use Encoded Designs to do my reviews of books and games, and post my GenCon advice.

I am going to contribute to Gnome Stew every week to 10 days. When I do post on Gnome Stew, I will post a cross link for it here.  For Encoded Designs, I will post my weekend update, and try for two articles a week. One will be a regular article and the other will be a comment piece on a blog article that I read somewhere else on the net.

I hope that clears things up and I hope that you brave few who have this site subscribed to will keep on subscribing, and will also head over to Gnome Stew and have a taste in some really great GMing articles and discussion.  For those of you who are coming in from Gnome Stew, I hope you will subscribe to this site, and enjoy the rest of my content.

Thanks.

For the few of you who are subscribed to this blog, you may have noticed that posting has been pretty low over the holiday’s and non-existent the past week or more. There has been good reason for this. And her name is Rose…

Meet Rose Marie. Born last Friday, at 4:01pm. She is doing great and my Wife is doing great. Everyone is home, and so we are now all adapting to our newest edition. I am on a gaming hiatus for the next few weeks as we get use to Rose and get her part of the routine of the house, and adapt the routine of the house to her.

Blog posts are going to be slow for the next week or so, while we all adapt to Rose. In addition, my lovely wife is also my Editor, so my posts for the next few weeks are not going to be quite as articulate, and are likely to be overloaded in commas, as well. So please keep your subscriptions to the site active, I promise that we will be fully up and running in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, I will put out some smaller posts and some linking posts to other articles that have caught my eye while reviewing my own subscriptions.

Merry Christmas to all of you online today.  There is no post today, but I will be back on Friday with some new content.  In the meantime, relax, enjoy your families, stack your presents into towers and marvel at them, and enjoy the day off.

Just a quick update. Spent some time this weekend getting things working on the site. Most notably is the theme is now running and the Encoded Designs logo is installed. I had to make some adjustments to the CSS and and some of the PHP files to get the logo installed correctly, and to act as a link back to the main site. But there is a wealth of info on the WordPress boards for how to do these things.

Just to ring my own bell, the Encoded Designs logo, is hand-made by me in CorelDraw. I have some basic CorelDraw skills that I first learned from a book back in 1993, when CoreDraw came on floppy disks.

Also this weekend, I wrote the About page. So look up above the logo for the About link and give it a click. There you will find an explanation about who I am, how I got the name DNAphil, what it means today, and just what are Encoded Designs.

I am planning to put up some real content later this week…so make sure you subscribe or come on Friday.

Last night and into the early hours this morning, I worked on setting up the new Encoded Designs site. My ISP offers an Installatron script for installing WordPress with a click of a button. The install was a snap, and in 5 minutes I had a site up and running.

DNAphil 1 ; WordPress 0

Then I tried to install some themes to give the site a look and feel that would be more to my taste. I found a number of great themes available and grabbed one to install. When I did, the site went blank. Nothing. No content, just a blank page. I have tried to find a solution for this online, but have not had much luck. I wound up falling asleep in front of the computer, and woke up and dragged myself to bed, without resolving the issue. So for now, the site will exist in it’s default theme.

DNAphil 1; WordPress 1

I have posted a question on the WordPress forums, so hopefully someone can come to my rescue and help me get a theme up and running.

Epilogue (11:28pm):

So 20 minutes after I posted on the WordPress fourms, I got the help I needed.  With a few posts going back and forth, a helpful WP user keyed me in that my problem was likely an FTP issue.  I did a little checking, and sure enough all the PHP files that I had FTP to the site were blank.  So I downloaded FileZilla and did a much better push of the theme folder to my website, and now we have this cool black theme.

Since it was my fault and not the WordPress software, I am taking their point away from them.

Final score:  DNAphil 1, WordPress 0

If you are one of the three or so people who have been following this site for the past several years, you know it it has undergone a few changes. Well today is the third major iteration of this site. DNAphil.com is now the home of Encoded Designs, a blog where I will be talking about a number of topics that enjoy:

• Role Playing Games (Table Top not Computer)
• Technology
• Lifehacking
• GTD

Over the next few days, I will be configuring the site, so make a note to keep visiting the site and see how this site evolves.