On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha...

Lately, between not posting and thinking about what I should do about that I've started playing this new game I found off of (Total)Fark: Trukz. It's basically a semi(ha!)-real-time truck driving simulation. That's right, a game based on hauling loads.

It's actually pretty cool if you like mostly text-based, stats-driven games. This post is pretty cool as well if you like hyphenated words.

You pick a city to start in, buy a truck, pick a destination and off you go. The driving part of the game mainly consists of you clicking through the legs of your journey until your driver is too tired to continue. You then have to wait to play again (in real time) until yer dude is okay to go.

He's right, you know.

You can push him, of course, as I did on my first trip (had to get those mobile homes to St Louis!), which ended up with him falling asleep at the wheel and wrecking. A man's got to know his limitations.

When you've finished your trip you get paid, then you pick a new destination, a new load and it all starts over.

I've glossed over some stuff of course; you have to keep track of fuel, you can upgrade your truck (like with a CB radio which allows in-game chat), join a company, buy stock, etc. It seems they update the features fairly regularly, so I guess it's somewhat new.

I don't know, I might get tired of it eventually, but it's something you don't have to devote hours of your day to. In fact, if you time it right, yer driver can go to bed when you do and you can send him on his way before you go to work.

It's like having a new friend that'll get all of your Black Dog references.

Redesign? No thanks, I'm already working on one

So yeah, I finally started up the site redesign the other day and it's actually going pretty well. It's early on right now, of course, but I sort of know where I want it to end up. It's just a matter of doing all the coding.

Basically the main difference is that everything will load into the same page, which I prefer. It makes it a lot easier for me to maintain the look and add improvements over time. And believe me, there's a lot to add in.

You can see it, if you want, by clicking here. A few words of warning:

1. right now it'll lock up if you try to read a blog article; also if you refresh the page when viewing it in Firefox

2. to refresh to the main page in Firefox you have to click into the address bar and hit 'enter' (or Ctrl+Shift+R, or however you do it personally), so that you reload the page entirely rather than refresh the content*

3. nothing is set in stone

Likely additions:

1. the rest of the content formatting, pictures, pretty stuff, etc. (it's pretty bare at this point)

2. a history list of pages you've viewed, probably in the top navigation

3. more narrow content area, with archive info (or other stuff that isn't an advertisement) on the sides

4. better page loading and navigational transitions

5. tons of shit I haven't thought of but will realize I need about an hour before I think I'm done

So if you like it, or hate it, or have any suggestions, I'd love to hear. Or, if you're completely ambivalent, give it a click and quietly say "Hm." to yourself. That is helpful as well.

*I use a hidden IFrame to load page content before formatting it for viewing; Firefox will save this content and refresh it along with the page which screws up my code - just for now