Blog News: Amazon Affiliation, New Phone and a Major Makeover

I've been a bit quiet for the last week or so, mainly because all the content I wrote for the Reclamation of Orberus campaign over the last few weeks (battle reports and narratives) were written in the quiet moments of my holiday when I had no hobby, video games or even internet available. Now I'm back at work and it's chewing up all my free time, and yet I still have all the best intentions in the world. Very infuriating but a man and his family need to eat so... what can you do?

Despite this, things have been going on in the background, and this is the reason I do these blog news updates in the first place - to keep you guys in the loop. Speaking of needing to eat...

You'll probably have noticed the pinned post on the blog, and that it's a post with a promotional offer for Amazon Prime. Going forward I will be adding links to particular products that are mentioned here on the blog. Purchases made through those links really helps the site so I do ask that if you see an item linked that appeals to you and you wish to buy, please use the links provided. It costs you nothing other than the price of the item and we make some commission off the back of it. Of course, as I said in my last blog update, I don't want anyone to feel pressured into buying something they don't need so please only make a purchase if you actually want the items linked.

As a hobby site, I have also reached out to a hobby store affiliate program, but as of yet I have not got a response. Maybe my request got lost in the mail somehow...

This is going to sound like a flex. It really isn't. I recently upgraded my phone to a Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, having moved away from my old trusty iPhone 13 Pro Max. I have been an iPhone loyalist for many years, probably for the last 15 or so years in fact, and whilst there's absolutely nothing wrong with the iPhones at all (in fact I really like them), I felt it was time for a change.

So how does this relate to the site exactly? Well I'm sure you've noticed (and I alluded to this on the blog's facebook page) that some graphics are different, just look at the headers and the blur effects on the thumbnail on this page for example. This has simply been because half the apps I used to edit the graphics on this blog are not available on the android platform, which is very annoying.

This can be seen as a good thing and a bad thing. The app I used to use allowed pinpoint accuracy in aligning my text and gave me a whole slew of fonts, not to mention the apple version of another app that I can still download onto my Google Pixel had so much more functionality on the Apple platform. I have looked and looked and I have found an adequate, if not perfect alternative on my new phone that is going to take some time to get used to. So if you see some different graphical styles on the site, that'll be why. Speaking of which...

The logo and site mascot got a glow up! I was playing with some of the AI functionality on my previously mentioned new phone and this new iteration of Major came up, so I thought... why not use it to mark a new era for the blog?

I plan on doing an article soon all about Major Mercenary and how he became my mascot, but for now all you need to know is that he has looked very flat and basic since his inception; even his previous look on the site was an updated look I never got to use in the Plastic Hammer series I used to animate and write for, but that story's for another time and another post.

Did you click the Reclamation of Orberus link at the top of the article? If so you may have noticed a substantial change to it's search page. Now, instead of linking to the standard blogger search page as it used to do, the Reclamation of Orberus option in the search bar now goes to a dedicated page with every related post included, as well as a handy-dandy table of contents at the top of the page to get you to the articles you really want to read about.

I had alluded to this happening in a previous update, back in the dark days where I just stamped the title of each update with a date (boring!) but it is now being implemented. Unfortunately this will be one of those "bit by bit" deals where I will be updating a section at a time, and that in itself will take time, however the blogger search functionality is incredibly flawed and often missed out articles for seemingly no reason whatsoever. This way you'll have access to every article you want to read without having to jump through hoops to read them, plus I can do some cool things other than just link articles using these pages. I have ideas on that front, but for now I'll need to keep you hanging a tad longer.