It appears that you've stumbled across my website in one way or another. In that case, welcome to my home on the internet. My name is Bay Phillips and I'm a web developer based out of Troy, New York. Please feel free to learn more about me, view my previous work or contact me if you think we should work together.

The DohGames auction over at Flippa wasn’t successful. There seemed to be a lot of interest; however, people didn’t seem too interested in the site without having the games come along with it. I wasn’t going to sell it for an even lower price than what I thought it was worth, especially because it doesn’t hurt me (financially) to hold onto the domain and rights.

That said, I’ve reimplemented the forums in the hopes that we can get more discussions on the future of DohGames. Please go create an account and make a thread.

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On the 13th of August, I made a post asking people what they thought I should do with DohGames. My auction for DohGames will expire in 5 days and still hasn’t reached its reserve price, so DG may not actually sell this time around. Therefore, one of the ideas that people came up with sounds more plausible and something I think would be interesting.

The idea would be to recreate DG as a community driven website. It would have the same format as before; however, there would be a greater amount of user interactions and contributions. Instead of me providing the downloads to the games, the users would submit URLs to other websites. The users would than vote the links up/down and the “best” links would be the first available. Everything else would be overhauled as well:

• - Users will be able to discuss the games with everyone on game specific threads. Think of it like a combination of forums/comments.
• - Uploading of game media that would also be ranked by the community, thus putting the best content first
• - User reviews and guides/walkthroughs can be submitted (what about links to guides?) that are also ranked
• - Tags/Categories to better suit the games. Thus, for example, we could have people vote on their favorite RPGs or their favorite SNES game.
• - ???

What else do you think should be in the new site? Keep in mind, this is all merely brainstorming and nothing is set yet. If we can get a solid idea going, I’d love to take it somewhere.

I’ve recently installed forums(removed on 8/22) on this website that can automatically integrate with all of my blog posts. My current issue is that there’s no need to have discussions on both the Disqus comments, as well as on the forums.

I need to choose one or the other, so what do you guys think? If I keep the Disqus comment system, you can login with whatever accounts you currently have (Facebook, Twitter etc) so there’s less work for the user. If I use the forum setup, people will have to register an account on here in order to post.
Which would you rather use?

*Edit* I’ve gone ahead and removed the forums as the Disqus comment system works out just as well, if not better.

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After I recently closed down DohGames, I had constantly been thinking about what I should do with it. If it were completely up to me, I wouldn’t change a thing; however, I can no longer safely provide downloads to the community. I do currently have DohGames listed for sale so that’s a possibility. But what if it doesn’t sell?

I’m keeping my webserver and am more than content with renewing the domain ($10 a year is something I can manage). So would it be possible to reinvent DohGames as some sort of gaming site, but without the downloads? There are already dozens, if not hundreds of gaming communities out there so there would have to be some sort of unique twist on it.

I currently don’t have many bright ideas, thus I’d like to ask you all what you think I should do with DohGames. Should I continue trying to sell the site to someone who may be able to continue providing the content? Or should we attempt to create some sort of community driven DohGames that will take the site in a new direction? Please leave a comment below, and if we can get some quality suggestions I’ll go over and compile them.

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If you’ve read or watched any news about the upcoming elections in 2010, and 2012, you’ll have noticed that some of the “hot” button issues are starting to pop up. Some of these issues include the state funding of abortions, gay marriage, or stem cell research. This is by no means a complete list; however, they’re recurring themes of political seasons that don’t ever seem to have any end in sight.

That got me thinking about why that may be. Clearly, the USA has a huge moral and ideological divide on what’s acceptable in our modern day society. This is due to our diverse backgrounds of ethnicity, faith and political belief. How in the world are we ever going to agree on an outcome that works out for both party’s best interests?

That got me thinking about an idea that I’m not familiar with: an Elective Tax. It would be, in essence, a tax that you either agree or not agree to pay in order to receive any of the benefits or services that it funds. Would that even be considered a tax?

If so, I’d like to use the issue of state-funded abortions to try to explain my point:

Let’s say I’m your average, middle class American who doesn’t object to the usage of abortions (this is an example, it may or may not be my stance on the issue). Because I believe it’s the right of a woman to choose, I am willing to pay an extra tax that would fund state-funded abortions. That means that if I ever need to use the services, I would be “covered” and able to use the resources at a health center that I’ve paid for.

With the increased usage of technology within our government, couldn’t it be possible to create a system that would allow a center to check if you’re eligible to have the operation? You could even keep track of how many times a person has had the operation in order to combat the issue of being using abortions several times. Details like that could be ironed out, but from a technological perspective, it’s possible.

So, am I crazy in thinking this way? Is an elective tax impossible and does it go completely against our tax system? Let me know what you think or if you know more about why something like this would work or not work.

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Back in the beginning of July, Steam had their Summer sale that featured hundreds, if not thousands, of deals for almost all of their games. Everyday there would be around ten or so “special” deals that could sometimes cut the cost of game by 86%. So how could I resist picking up games that would normally cost $10 for $1.50? Well, I couldn’t.

Throughout that whole ordeal, I purchased 16 new games. What the hell am I supposed to do with 16 new games, all at once? Was I really supposed to go through each, one at a time? I should have known better as I quickly discovered I have something called Gaming ADD.I wouldn’t doubt that other people have expressed their concerns for this affliction, be it in other blogs or forums, but I feel I need to explain what happens to me:

I would install one of my new games (for this example, let’s say it’s Overlord), and quickly boot it up. Upon starting my brand new campaign, I’d be faced with your standard tutorial. Press down on the spacebar to attack this pumpkin. Go test out your new spell on this dummy goblin. If your life gets too low, you can heal at these points. Okay, I get how to play this game. Let me get to the good stuff.

Sadly, that “good stuff” would never come as I’d finally get through the tutorial, remember that I had another 15 games to try playing out that just might be quicker into the action . I would promptly quit out of the game and end up back at Steam to install my next game.

Rinse and repeat 15 more times, and I’m here a month and a half later having played barely any of the games for more than 20 minutes.

And you want to know the worst part about all of it? Those 16 games cost me around $40 and I’m probably just going to do the same thing when Steam has it’s Winter sale… Steam has found a way for you to blow $40, and not feel remorseful about it whatsoever.

Let me know if you suffer from Gaming ADD and any ways you’ve conquered it.

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After mulling over various ideas and designs for a new website of mine, I’ve finally come up with what you see now. I’ve switched over from my custom Django website to the brand new WordPress 3.0 system.

I made the decision primarily because WordPress is able to do everything that I want with my own personal website right out of the box. I’m not dissing Django; in fact, I think it’s great and I will continue developing with it. I just wanted an easier system where I could make coding changes without having to restart my webserver.

Overall, I believe it came out well. I’ll be posting whatever I feel like it here. Topics could include web design, gaming, politics or whatever is crossing my mind at the time. Hopefully I’ll be able to create content that you all feel is worthy of discussing.

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