Shotgun Content 8: Shameless self-promotion edition

Me, me, me, me! It's all about me.
On this blog, at least....

• I'm writing now on another site, Top Cultured. I've even got me a new-fangled feature, entitled "Who Ya Got?", where I pit fictional characters and whatnot against one another in a theoretical fight. My writing there won't replace anything I do here, it's just another side project I'm working on.
  
  As always, I strive for a good read. Go check it out and let me know what you think!
  
  
• Another episode of the Fair Use Law (ep 202) has been released and is available for your listening pleasure.
  
  What's relevant about it is that starting with last week's episode, we had moved to a new hosting server. If you were listening to the podcast using the embedded players on the FUL website, you've likely already made the switch. If you were subscribed via iTunes, there's a new feed. You'll need to re-subscribe to us using this link:
  
  
  Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. I promise you we're being as inane as ever on the new hosting server (podbean).
  
  
• Though hardly breaking news, particularly given the speed of the internet, the TF2 Spy and Sniper packs were released last Thursday. To much of the community's disappointment, earning the new unlockables were no longer tied to the new achievements, but rather released randomly over time. Though I'm unsure if this has been fixed, anecdotal reports indicate that these unlock events would even give you stuff you've already unlocked previously.
  
  I don't like this new direction. Obviously, the lion's share of the fun of these packs are the unlockables. They radically change the way we play a given class. The precedent had been set that if you actively farm for 2 or so hours, you'd likely do enough to earn all of a class' unlockables. Not too huge of a time commitment, given the reward. In this new system, it wasn't uncommon for people to sink in 5+ hours and come away empty handed.
  
  I get why they changed the unlock system. It helps newer players get access to unlockable stuff without having to grind out achievements. This lets them just *play* the game (a novel idea). But Valve's implementation of it was less than Valve-perfect and they frustrated a lot of veterans in the process.
  
  
• Lastly: http://www.laserportraits.net/ LOL