m0rd0r

1 year of blogging.

 bl0g  Comments Off on 1 year of blogging.
Apr 032012
 
My Blog Growth for 1 year.

My Blog Growth for 1 year.

On the 3-rd of April, one year ago I have changed the default “Hello world” example article of the freshly installed WordPress to something even more useless, so I don’t have to think of the first-starting-original-breathtaking article. (Well – I tried and failed) But It is the first article of this blog nevertheless.

It took me one week of head scratching to actually start writing articles.

(I was so full of ideas at this time – It was hard to start from anywhere. So I started cooking πŸ˜€ Literally πŸ˜€ Cooking is very calming hobby. Especially when you love to cook.)

So. One year later, I want to say…

Thank you!

To everyone who spent few minutes to read my blog. Even if it was just one article. It built to above 58k views for 1 year. (Not a miracle, but it kept me online and writing.)

To my best friend and partner Stivan Penev (PetelVA). Keep on Video blogging πŸ˜‰ you are natural. You just don’t know It yet.

To the Android RPG developers for making me wanting to play and write tutorials for 8-bit RPG games again:

To the other bloggers I followed so far:

  • Steve Pavlina (Thank you Steve! Your article about making money online motivated me to start this blog).
  • Darren Rowse (Thank you Darren for showing me you can actually make money from what you love to do).
  • Georgi Chorbadzhiyski (Thank you for showing me why Slackware is the Rolls Royce of all server Linux distributions).
  • Nako and Boyan (For being good friends and for adding me in your blogroll. It helped a lot!).
  • Iliyan (For showing me how a simple design can change everything).
  • All the guys in SEOMoz, ViperChill and CopyBlogger for helping me with tips.

What I learned.

Few things actually.

Don’t stop with just one blog.

You don’t have just one hobby and just one interest. Create a blog for everything you like.

  • Your job.
  • Your hobby.
  • Your other hobby.
  • Your experience with this.
  • Your experience with that.
  • Even your pet deserves one.

Domains cost around $12 per year. It’s not that expensive. And if you can’t afford it – get a sub-domain from any online blogging platform.

I successfully did another blog in HubPages. They provide really good platform for blogging if you can’t afford your own space in a hosting company. Sign in with HubPages (affiliate link). I actually did twice the revenue in HubPages compared to this blog in just 4 months.

You can still buy a domain and host the blog on your own computer at home if you can’t afford hosting. It takes few steps:

  1. Get real static public IP address from your ISP.
  2. Buy domain and set the IP address of your home PC as a DNS server.
  3. Install any Linux you are comfortable with.
  4. Setup a local DNS server and configure your domain inside.
  5. Install WordPress, PHP, MySQL.
  6. Start blogging.

Downfalls?

  • Bigger electricity bill (some hosting is actually cheaper than a home server kept online 24/7). But if your home PC is already online all the time – you don’t lose anything.
  • You have to patch and update everything manually.
  • Electricity blackouts or trigger-happy neighbor with a drill can ruin your up time.
  • You probably can’t afford server with dual/quad core Xeon processors and tons of RAM, so when your blog grows – you WILL need to get some form of hosting or buy a dedicated server and rack space.

Always use proper grammar and language.

For what it’s worth, a weblog is visible by everyone. It is your face in front of the world. Keep it clean.

And if you blog only occasionally and rarely someone reads you -> Bad grammar and unprofessional language will just make the things worse.

Nothing would disgust me more than a stupid article written in buddy talk, very bad grammar or using some “Black speech of Mordor” with unintelligible abbreviations like ROTFLMAOBTCASTC (Rolling on the floor laughing my @$$ off, biting the carpet and scaring the cat).

  • There is spell checker in WordPress (green icon with ABC on it).
  • There is spell checker in HubPages.
  • There is spell checker in Blogger.com.
  • There is spell checker in every Linux window manager.

All – Built-in. Use them.

One or two syntax or punctuation errors here and there can be acceptable, but you need to learn to always proof read an article.

The easiest way is to read it backwards. You are more prone to finding errors that way, because your brain does not try to complete the word and the sentence with just a glimpse.

Learn to accept criticism.

You are human.

You make mistakes.

Someone may not like this and leave you a comment. (“Somebody is wrong on the internet” syndrome)

And some comments are filled with cayenne pepper and battery acid.

If you can’t reply politely – Simply endure them. Don’t say anything.

And if you made mistake – fix it.

Keeping wrong data in the public domain is wrong. (Have a look at Wikipedia – Thousands of editors with enough knowledge to keep it clean)

Don’t over-optimize for SEO.

Write with passion instead.

If you start an article with the sole purpose to make the search engines happy – you will most probably make the article look like spam.

(Tried and failed.)

My experimental SEO-ed article stood on page 1 of Google for 2 weeks and generated 300 views. Then it was demoted by other, more interesting articles that actually explained the matter at hand. Not a single keyword was repeated more than once in those articles and still they got better rank than mine.

Why?

Because the search engines work for their users.

Make the users happy and your articles will have high rank.

Create spam articles and they will go in the toilet, where they belong.

With 100% success you can keep doing those 3 things only:

  1. Put the keyword in the Heading and in the URL (most blogging platforms do this for you)
  2. Put the keyword in the summary of the article (so it is present in the excerpt in search engines)
  3. Put the keyword just one more time in the text, either bold or in some sub-heading.

That’s everything you need if your article is genuine and interesting. Written with passion and from your own experience.

The search engine can count how many seconds user stood on a page, before using the search engine again. (Very simple check)

The search engine can count how many link on this page user followed before using the search engine again. (If the site uses analytics)

This is how “Bounce rate” is calculated.

If your articles bounce rate is above 75% – you are not interesting and useful enough. Rethink and rewrite articles with higher bounce rate and add links inside the text leading to more information in your older articles. (Disclaimer – this is valid for blogs only. Commerce sites have naturally higher bounce rate)

Delete or abandon articles with 100% bounce rate (user clicks back immediately or stays for less than 10 seconds). Even if you took some time researching something – if it is not interesting – why bother keeping it in development. Leave it to age. You may rewrite it later or add more relevant information.

Everyone will tell you this clichΓ©: “Content is king“. It is quite true.

Work on different green or seasonal topics.

Some articles you wrote year ago will revive from time to time, generating hundreds of views for 1 week and then get back to normal 1-2 views per day.

Those are called seasonal articles. (e.g. It is Easter soon, and my article for Easter eggs is getting views again – after almost year in silence).

Informational articles, tutorials and how-to’s are called green, because they receive small amounts of traffic every day. For years.

Write some green articles and your page rank will raise.

Authority in front of search engines is slow process and takes months. No rush. You will get there sooner or later.

Avoid dark background with white text design templates.

Even if it gives your blogΒ  the feeling of b4d@$$ h4XX0r site – It hurts the eyes.

Since the first days of pre-school, we read books with black letters on white paper.

It is normal for the eye to feel comfort reading it the same way on the screen. And it is scientifically proven – not just a habit.

Even Kevin Mitnick uses normal background and dark letters. And he is quite well proven hacker before most of you were even born.

Why I keep blogging.

What has driven me so far?

I started blogging after I did some search on “working from home“, “Make money online“, “passive income” and other neat stuff that was supposed to help me with additional income (in the world finance crisis and all).

Today I blog because I started to like it!

The best hobby I ever had is writing about my hobbies.

It is so rewarding, that I am almost sorry I make just small cash from It.

It deserves real dedication – all day long.

For this – I need to quit my day job.

(Still impossible ;( )

What almost made me stop blogging.

I got a small hit by

Panda algorithm.

Really small. (Huge portals like E-How and HubPages got hit very hard)

After 2 weeks, my page views turned back to normal.

It turned out, my site is okay – but it still made me think a bit and …

I decided my site is a bit too much heavy on ADs and removed some of them.

Surprisingly, this did not kill my revenue.

On the contrary – it remained the same and page views increased slowly.

This is what Panda algorithm is about after all – removing spam from Internet.

Writer’s block.

Yeah. I am not that much of a writer, but it happens.

You want to write, but you can’t.

Something is missing and you can’t find the words.

You start an article and can’t finish more than 500 words in total…

… and – Then you abandon it for later.

I have more than 10 articles staying in Draft for more than 6 months… their time will come … eventually.

Heavy competition.

Everyone on this planet is trying to Blog-for-money.

90% of the people quit as soon as they realize it is not “get rich overnight” as the scam sites promise.

But 30% of the 7 milliard people on the planet try to create their own blog, and the WEB is saturated with low quality articles and spam sites.

Some of them don’t quit and keep struggling.

Original article

Original article

Stolen article

Stolen article

Some of them steal your work and present it as their own.

It is a dog’s world. Everyone wants a bite from that juicy bone called “Work from home”.

Most of them will fail or Google will sandbox or demote them after they steal too much.

But some will remain and will pollute the web with spun articles filled with ADs and nonsense sentences like “Brand new Ralph Lauren Polo shirts are for Best Holiday Vacations when you develop Mesothelioma and speak with Las Vegas attourneys about best sport cars and student loans“.

Erm…!? WHAT?!

So if you want to rank on page 1 of search engines – you will be disappointed. There are still too many sites that will climb up focusing on few keywords just to shave the ADs revenue from the 1 million visits there.

Even if Google finds them and demotes them – they keep coming back with more spun articles and try to climb up to page 1.

You can’t kill the spammers, so you need to adapt…

7 billion people want to do nothing all-day-long and live in Hawaii with $10k salary.

The best you can do with such competition is to rank 1-st for some long-tail keyword that has 10k visits per month.

Don’t quit. Just wait patiently. The big G is watchful. Write some more interesting articles and do some more research.

Just don’t quit.

Summary.

For one year of blogging (and hubbing) I’ve done some stuff:

  • A bit more than 180 published articles total in all blogs (this is almost 1 article per 2 days).
  • Deleted above 1600 spamcomments πŸ˜€

    Spam comments in wordpress

    Spam comments in wordpress

  • Collected about EUR 65 in revenues. Sorry – not enough to quit my day job πŸ˜‰ but It paid the domain for few more years.
  • Learned how to SEO and decided it sucks. (have a look what happens with heavy SEO optimized sites recently).
  • Reached pageranks 2 and 3 on the 2 blogs currently in development WITHOUT much SEO.
  • Created lasting connections with other bloggers and hubbers.

Thank you again. It was pleasure to write something helpful for you.

 Posted by at 11:40 am
Mar 242012
 

Demon hunter walkthrough and maps

This part of the walkthrough is BONUS STAGE after you choose to save Perna . If you are not yet there, DON’T spoil your game story but refer to previous parts of the walkthrough:

Part 1 – About Kamael and Dubaq

Part 2 – About Inferno

Part 3 – About Stigia and Cave of Darkness

Part 4 – About Gehena

Part 5 – About Distia

Part 6 – About Marlborose and Makerusia

Part 7 – About Arbenus

Part 8 – About Minauross

Part 9 – About Tower of Punishment/Sin

5 things to do here:

  1. Grind like there is no tomorrow
  2. Kill Asmodeus
  3. Kill Blood Demon
  4. Kill Renin
  5. Try to find a way to save Perna πŸ˜€

The last seems impossible.

I’ve killed every single possible monster and every boss monster in all 11 areas of the game.

No Perna.

No Portal different than the 3 portals leading to the hard boss monsters on all 11 maps.

Anyway:

Hell mode is accessible from Dubaq base – there is new purple gate.

From this gate, you can access the hellmode or get back to normal (small icon top right on screen will say “hell”).

Everything in Hell mode starts from level 66-67. Slimes west of Dubaq now take 7-8 hits to kill. Dumpas and Varians east of base are level 70-73.

Drops are 100 times more rare, but quality gets better. Even slimes drop level 60+ junk.

Hunt monster cards while grinding. There is one for every monster. Even bosses. At 30% you get another 3 cubics (get them from any vendor in camps).

There are 3 new hunter quests that you can take in the 3 bases. They are all level 8 hunter, so I hope you took my advice to get you hunter level up. It’s not hard.

The bossess are:

Asmodeus (Evil God) given by Evan in Dubaq.

Blood demon (Fallen wood king) given by Hotsan in Naru.

Dark Ren (Dragon within darkness) given by Diran in Talagaron.

… but you will need hours of grinding to be high level enough to kill them.

Grinding places

Map of Inferno

Map of Inferno

Grind in Kamael until you get to level 74-75. All areas are suitable.

After level 74-75, go to Inferno map Flame of fire Devil-1. There are 6 Murians in a line. They are Levels 75-80. Very quick grinding and good drops. Fastes way to get here is to transport to Arbenus and get west to inferno (just use the portal). One map with rocktashas (ignore) and one map with 8 drakes. Also good for grinding if you like to jump alot.

Levels 79-85 can better be done in Cave of Darkness. Cave of eternity-1 is the map where the transport scroll takes you.
Go east,Β  killing everything in the next 3 maps, until you reach the room where you saw Perna naked. Save and then go west.
Rinse and repeat. Kuro’s fall very fast, but the dwarves have high evade and you will miss a lot.
Lots of level 4 soul stones to replace the ones in you items.Β  Limit is +10 for level 4 stones, opposed to +7 on level 3:

Cave of Darkness map

Map for the Cave of Darkness

When level 86+, give a chance to two maps in Distia:

Outside of Canal-2 has 6 Varians in a straight line. Levels 90-95. Not hard to kill when 86+ at all. The map is one map east from the teleport point, so it is easy to reach too.

Heart of chaos-3 has 6 poisoning wacooms and 11 kuros. VERY good xp, but needs quite a lot of jumping to gather them together for a quick mass kill skill. The best path to reach this map is to teleport to Makerusia and use the gate back to Distia. You will appear in the room below Bormenta the guardian…, just get one map east and start killing. Drops are often good level 75+ weapons and lots of L4 stoicism and immunity stones.

You can train here until level 96. Then the XP will start to be insufficient and training – slow:

Map of Distia

Map of Distia

Next good map is Mouth of Hell-1. Use teleport to Tower of Punishment/Sin and you are there.

Tower Of Punishment

Map for Tower of Punishment (Tower of Sin)

6 Hell versions of Varians and 2 hell versions of Hellons. Very heavy damage, so be prepared to save a lot.

I don’t know why, but this grinding map gives some level 60+ stuff. It’s quite useless so sell it, destroy it or keep it for your alt characters.

You will also collect some armors and guns and a lot of L3 breath/blood sucking soulstones.

Rarely there will be a skill soulstone drop. Approximately 1/500 kills.

When fed with grinding, go kill the bosses.

Bonus Boss fights

(you don’t need to be in Hell to kill them – they are accessible in normal mode too)

The easiest to find is the giant tree which killed Chu. Just go west from Talagaron camp to the room of Greed. There is a portal leading to the tree demon

Blood demon

Not hard, but one mistake and you die.

(The map where Blood demon is, is accessible by a portal in the same room where you fought Greed the first time.)

  1. His root attack does very heavy damage (5k damage), so move a lot while attacking. If you can’t run fast enough from the roots – reduce game speed.
  2. Spider attack will come in 3 spiders hanging from strings and then dissolving. It hits for 3k damage and poisons.
  3. Stun shout and summon trees is next and the blood demon will start using root again. If the stun succeeds you are off for 10 seconds. Enough for 2-3 root attacks. Heal or you are toast.

Beware: His shout attack always follows the spider attack and he will glow his eyes while opening his mouth.

When you see his mouth wide open – start dashing away quickly. Can’t get stunned while dashing!

Return to Hotsan in Naru camp. 2000 hunter points and 3000 gold for completing Fallen wood king.

Asmodeus.

This demon has tons of HP and hits quite hard. Took 25 minutes with a slasher.

Small room with 1 platform located from a portal in Arbenus – Essence of Doom-8 (North part of Arbenus, the most west part of the long corridor).

Asmodeus will start showing from both sides and punch you.

If you stick to one side, he will stay on the same (most of the time). If you run, he will switch sides!

4 attacks:

  • Punch will do 3k damage and sometimes stun. Jump in the air when you see him aim with his fists.
  • Scratch does moderate damage – about 1.5-2k. Bearable.
  • Charge will do 6k damage and you probably can’t avoid it most of the time. (The sign is, he will disappear for few seconds to one of the sides and come back charging. Either from the same side or the other.) Slashers can block this attack and take only 600 damage.
  • Lightning bolts. This attack starts soon after Asmodeus drops a forked spear on the ground. Damage is heavy, but the lightnings are rare and you will probably get hit just once.

In all cases – jump alot to avoid the fist attacks and try to avoid being hit by “Charge“. It definitely sucks and stuns.

You can’t use menu button while fighting, so if you are stunned – drink potion and hope he will not use “charge” more than once.

Return to Dubaq camp and return the quest for 2000 hunter points and 3000 gold.

Renin

He is in a portal in Tower of Punishment-1. The portal is in the North-east corner. You can save safely in the next map before the battle.

Renin is a skeleton of a black dragon with few attacks. Be sure you wing is charged or will soon be, before you enter this battle!

  • Dragon bite. Very nasty attack that sometimes pushes you back.
  • Fireball. Jump over it to avoid damage or enter deep in his body, but beware – he often uses Dragon bite then.

When he is below 50% HP, he starts using his next attack:

  • Meteor shower. 1500 damage per meteor. Go to the left, Meteors don’t reach you there and heal. Get back and hit him hard. Repeat until he is near 10% HP.
  • Soon after he goes below 10% he will start hitting with meteors like insane and you can die really fast.

Go deep in his body and hit with everything you got.

  1. Hit the wing and keep kicking with all skills that managed to recharge while everything is slow.
  2. Don’t stop. Heal like mad and keep hitting with your best skills.
  3. If he is still alive after the wing’s time compression dissipates, you will probably fall.

Go back to Talagaron camp and return the quest for 2000 hunter points and 3000 gold.

That’s all you can do in Hell mode so far.

How to save Perna?!

I don’t know.

Please, drop me a mail, a comment or a letter if you know the answer.

  • I’ve grinded like an idiot for 39 levels after I killed Hanin and Elen.
  • I’ve killed all 3 major Bonus Boss monsters in Hell mode.
  • I’ve killed every single boss monster on all the maps.
  • I’ve killed every minor boss monsters for which there was hunter quest.
  • I’ve traversed ALL maps.

No Perna.

No Portal.

No Elen.

No nothing.

I’ve read forums from 2010, when there was discussion about “Saving Perna being included in later patch/update of the game”. One of my readers knows Korean and checked the developer’s forum too (they say, there is a rumor about Perna being saved somehow).

So – Please. If you know something that we missed – leave a message down below and I will include it inside this walkthrough:

 Posted by at 11:43 am

Devil hunter walkthrough (and a short review)

 Gam3s  Comments Off on Devil hunter walkthrough (and a short review)
Mar 142012
 

I’ve always loved physics puzzle games.

There is some magic in “What will happen if I pull this first” when I explore a new level.

Devil Hunter is such game.

I’ve found It absolutely by lucky chance.

A dozen of people in my blog searched for it, thinking that my walkthroughs for Demon Hunter (another Android RPG) will help them pass a hard level.

So, I’ve checked the game, hoping that it will be another RPG I can play and write about.

It appeared I was wrong πŸ™‚

Devil Hunter level 10

Devil Hunter level 10

The game reminds me of “Incredible toons” and “Incredible machine“, but in Devil Hunter – You don’t need to save a cat and mouse. You need to kill demons instead.

In lots of ways πŸ™‚

You have some tools for this, that will do the job for you:

They will blow, push, explode, stab and any combination of this, so you kill all devils on the map.

The bomb has timer activated by the eye or by hitting hard surface, the hexagram disappears when clicked and releases what is above it, some bricks can slide sidewise from explosions, the bubble will blow and push everything around without killing and the spikes will do exactly what you think πŸ™‚ … kill demons.

So far, the game developers published 45 levels, but according to the growing interest, the game will soon be updated with lot more.

First ten levels are a breeze, only one of them will give you some resistance. Then the next 10 will be a bit harder, while the 30-ish and 40-ish levels will take a lot of head scratching πŸ™‚

If you don’t believe me – Download the Devil Hunter game from Android market. It is free.

Pleasant playing, and here is the walkthrough (It is complete in 5 parts, I will update it if/when EzJoy make more levels):

Walkthrough

 Posted by at 10:24 am