Blogs I like: Empty-Pocket EDH

I've been getting into Magic: the Gathering again (I mentioned this earlier).

A friend of mine, Brad, writes this neat blog about a specific format called EDH - short for Elder Dragon Highlander (and sometimes referred to as "Commander"). He, another friend, and I all play a few games of EDH- 100-card decks, three-player matches powered by Cockatrice. He's an excellent tutor, quite the deckbuilder, and a fine example of a gentleman.

I recommend Empty-Pocket EDH for folks looking to construct such decks for less than sixty dollars to a deck. As far as decks go, it's a bit limiting in terms of the higher-end cards you can purchase. As far as blogs I like go, it's an excellent and insightful read- updated at least once a week, it's a great way to get inside of EDH and tune up your game.

(FD: Brad and the Empty-Pocket EDH blog are part of the CCWK Content Network.)

Expanding the network.

This has been in the works for awhile, to be frank- Clean Cut / Well Kept is no longer the singular blog- I seek writers and photographers and artists alike to join a group of like-minded content publishers.

Our aim is to establish a readership and create an attractive, networked team of bloggers.

Cross-contamination to increase audience is common enough these days- note the rather daunting number of pop tracks that are of the format "Title - Artist A w/ Artist B feat Artist C" - A, B, and C are potentially exposed to all of the others' fans.

The idea behind the network is something like that, I'd suppose. If you're interested in joining, shoot me an e-mail at [ disposablenamenlos at gmail dot com ].

On the ground!

As you're reading this I am likely waking up in Germany.

I made it here safely (taking a flight from Newark to Berlin) and was pleasantly surprised by the local accomodations.

I'll have a miniblog going over at http://ccwkgermany.blogspot.com

I'll post something short over there each day, and will only be posting every other day until further notice.

Update: Tyrant.

After much huffing and puffing and google-searching, I have come to a conclusion:

There is no one deck that is typically successful on every mission in the campaign.

Rather, making faction-hate decks (anti-raider and anti-xeno, for instance) is 100% more effective.

Furthermore, purchasing packs is a good idea, and I figure saving up for the "elite" service is worthwhile.

I'm running Xeno hate, Raider hate, Imperial Mono, Bloodthirsty Rush, and Xeno muscle decks at the moment.

I've made it to mission 40ish, and have moved on to farming mission 34 (much more profitable than missions previous to 20).

Also: I've been working more with my f509 tablet, and I'm now starting to put more content up on visceralnadir. What say you?

Blogs I like: Visceral Nadir @ Blogger

I recently acquired a graphics tablet (a g-pen f509, to be specific) and have spent some time fooling around with it. The results are over at [ http://visceralnadir.blogspot.com/ ]. I plan on updating it with more than doodles once I acquire a camera, but for now it's mostly an artblog.

Let me know what you think (here or there).

Blogs I like: Culture Shock Survival @ Blogspot

An expatriate living in Costa Rica, [ http://cultureshock-survival.blogspot.com/ ] is a healthy perspective from the outside looking in- and an interesting source of content from someone who isn't a run-of-the-mill American (like myself).

Worth a read, certainly.

Blogs I like: Dogblog @ Tumblr

[ http://dogblogsf.tumblr.com/ ] is 99% pictures of puppies with the occasional chuckle-worthy caption.

It started over on [ http://www.automatedredemption.com/flavorcountry/dogblog/ ], where some older pictures are available.

Puppies!

Blogs I like: NerdSpiffy @ Blogspot

[ http://www.nerdspiffy.com/ ].

That's the link for an entertaining otaku-gamer-blog. The author's also something of an artist, but I'd prefer that their work be allowed to speak for itself.

Conveniently enough, there's also a neat (if somewhat new) cafepress with some cool products.

GET A LIFE? I HAVE TWO EXTRA.

Blogs I like: Simply Scotches @ Blogspot

By popular demand, here's a shoutout to a broseph out there who knows more about good scotch than I ever will...


"The true men's drink" is Scotch, apparently. I'm more of a water guy myself, but I've yet to encounter a more informative resource than Chris's blog. Folks thereabouts don't just "comment" on his posts- they keep it classy.

If you're attentive enough, you can even notice some subtle wordplay and accents hidden within his posts.

Definitely of interest if you enjoy libation.

Something I didn't know: scotch is delicious.

An aside, on the different sorts of blogging:

There's Blogger, which I use to post these sorts of things. It's got a relatively user-friendly interface that makes idea-to-post a very short and easily manageable process.

There's WordPress, which is kinda like Blogger but is a little easier to tweak and a little "classier." I use quotes because not all of WordPress is clean-cut and delicious.

There's tumblr, too, which is essentially hipster-blogging. It's an even more minimalistic interface than Blogger's, permits a fair amount of customization (beneath the hood), and implements a social networking aspect.

I will admit to having several of each of those, but I try to keep them relatively compartmentalized and try to minimize the amount of content bleed between blogs.

I guess MySpace and Facebook both have blogging sorts of things built in, but they're primarily social networking sites, so I'm unsure if they're worth mentioning.

Noteworthy amongst bloggers is Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post.

Also noteworthy is The Drudge Report, which is an easy go-to source for news.

There are certainly other Blogger users that I'd cite, but that's for another post.

Which bloggers do you consider noteworthy?