Site Revamp Launch

Welcome the revamped version of Nerd Circle Online!

We’ve streamlined the menus down and broken down content lists via subject rather than via writer (with their most recent article being in a sub-menu next to their name in the content list), so things should look a bit smoother from here on out. There are a few minor things we still have left to do (mostly photos of all of us and getting confirmed dates for group streams) and a couple of sections will launch once they have actual content to add to them, but, for the most part, this is what the site will be looking like from now.

Like what you see? Feel free to contact us and let us know what you think of the revamp!

Nemo Atkins: Return & Other News

Nemo Atkins here. Just wanted to make two quick updates on here for everyone.

First of all, I’d like to confirm that I will be back to doing site stuff from tomorrow, as my ear issue is sorted. There won’t be an article actually going up tomorrow, as I have to focus on some offline work which I need to have done for Wednesday, but I will start working on articles from Monday (and I already know what I plan to cover for my return, although I won’t spoil it here!). Thank you to everyone who reads the site for their patience and apologies about the LONG silence over the last fortnight: I didn’t intend that to happen, but my offline stuff meant I had to change my priorities and I found myself running low on ideas for articles to do earlier than I thought I would.

Secondly, I have to apologise to those who have been watching my streams in advance, but there will be no stream this Friday. There is a very good and exciting reason for this, admittedly: I have a small part in an independent film which is filming on the Saturday and, as a result of travel stuff, I have to stay away from home, which means a stream simply isn’t going to be an option (especially since I doubt I’d be allowed to do a video game stream from my hotel room…). I do plan to return to streams from the 24th, though, and I’m hoping to try something a bit different for it, as I’d like to try to see if I can stream some different games from what I’ve been doing in the past. I’ll be doing a test stream on the 22nd to see how it all works out, so, if you want to watch me do a test stream, feel free to tune in then on Twitch from about half past five UK time. If you want to catch up on my previous streams, then I’ve saved the archives to my YouTube channel (available here) and you should be able to find all of them there.

 

Related to this, I want to quickly explain something for those of you already familiar with my YouTube channel who might notice some videos missing. I have opted to set all of my old non-stream videos to private and I have no current plans to change them back to public, as I don’t feel they represent who I am any more and I find their quality to be so poor that I cannot watch them without cringing. I haven’t deleted them (if only because I recognise that those videos are a part of what made me who I am today) and I might reconsider this decision in the future, but, for the time being, my channel will only be hosting the archives for my video game streams. I hope this clears up any potential questions on that subject and apologies if this means I’ve made a video you liked in the past completely unavailable to watch now!

Thank you again for your patience with regards to my ear issue and I hope that you’re all looking forward to my return to reviewing!

Nemo Atkins: Temporary Schedule Change

Hi, Nemo Atkins here. Due to an ongoing issue with pain in my right ear, I will be temporarily stepping down from doing music reviews and streaming. I don’t want to do it, but, unfortunately, there’s no practical way I can do the reviews while my ear is in the condition it is in.

This does NOT mean that I will not be doing articles for the site at all: in fact, with the exception of the Free Video Game reviews (which will continue as normal), the articles for the time being will instead be more discussion focused, talking about various things of interest to me as a geek.

As stressed in the title, this is a temporary schedule change: I fully intend to return to music reviews once my ear has recovered! For the time being, HeinzVarietyNerd and Andy Scarlett have kindly agreed to fill in for me on the music reviews to allow the site to have any reviews which are essential to be done completed on time. I will not reveal what they are specifically covering, but expect some interesting stuff to be covered during my temporary hiatus from music reviews.

I also hope that what I talk about will also be of interest, though I cannot promise this will occur!

We have also decided to bump Andy Scarlett up to being a full time member of the site while I am recovering. As a music and video game critic himself and a great writer in his own right, along with his willingness to help out, it felt like a natural choice to finally make him a full time member, especially as we had been debating doing that for a while anyway! This will be shown on the site as from the 24th of May (mostly due to offline stuff meaning that I can’t do all of the linking and whatnot today), so please feel free to read his content and offer him a warm welcome to the site!

Thank you for your understanding!

First Week Editorial

Well, it’s been the first week of the site so far and, well, I don’t think it’s gone too badly! I will admit, however, there have been problems behind the scenes: I’m still waiting to hear back from the person I intended to have join the site as our fourth person (I HAVE contacted them this time and I know they saw my message, I just didn’t get a response, so I might have to chase them up in the next few days to see what’s happening with them…) and my habit of being a bit of a workaholic has, unfortunately, resulted in me going beyond my role as an occasional writer. To be fair, the latter isn’t necessarily a bad thing (it’s more content, after all!), but I did specifically agree to keep my contributions to a minimum to allow me to focus on my stuff with Cuckoo Review and I feel that I’m potentially taking attention away from the other guys by writing too much.

So, at least for this week, I’m going to dial back what I personally write for the site. Part of this is because I have a deadline coming up for Cuckoo Review (which IS pretty important for me to get done on time, admittedly!), but there’s also the fact that I have a few books I’ve been meaning to read for the last few weeks and I think I should at least read them while I’ve got some free time and I’ve also kind of promised to do some work on a planned show for my radio station which I’m hoping will go live in the next few weeks (it’ll be a late night one off show, so I might ask if I can get a copy of the recording of the show to include in the podcast section of the site once I’ve done it), so I’ve got some stuff on my plate which I would like to focus on for this week.

Because of this, you’re likely to see only one article from me this week. I’m probably going to look at the Yu-Gi-Oh movie that was released a few years back (you know, that one which involved the time travel plot?), but I do also have a semi-complete review of 21st Century Breakdown which I might finish off if I don’t feel I’ve got enough to say about the film (which isn’t likely to be the case: I already know most of what I want to say about the film, it’s just a case of finding the time to re-watch the film to check I’ve not missed anything obvious that warrants commenting on and then actually writing it!)

In team related news, HVN does have a new article which he is working on that is going to be our site’s first discussion focused article (so, not a review). I’ll not spoil what it is, but it should be interesting to see his take on things, as he might have to comment on something as part of it which he is, erm…not particularly endeared to, to put it politely. Captain Phoenix doesn’t have any new content being worked on, to the best of my knowledge (which isn’t a lot, admittedly), but I feel I should offer a slightly late congratulation to him for qualifying to be a teacher this week, as I genuinely forgot to do that when he broke the news a few days ago (sorry about that!).

That’s about all the news for this week on the editor side of things!

We’re Out Of Beta…We’re Releasing On Time!

I know, referencing “Still Alive” by this point is far, FAR too late for it to be funny, but it seemed appropriate!

Anyway, despite a bunch of last minute changes and a few things still needing to be done (we still need to add a section for one contributor), we’re basically launched now! It’s been a lot of fun putting this site together (and, I’ll admit, a little bit stressful), but now, the hard work is done. So, to everyone coming to the site today, welcome and I hope you enjoy the content you find here!

We currently only have one bit of content up on the site (my review of Visitor’s 1993 self-titled debut album), but rest assured, we have content lined up for the next few days: HVN has a review of Beyond Earth that should be up tomorrow, I’m hoping to have a review of HuniePop done over the next day or two and I’m hoping to have something from Captain Phoenix soon enough. We’ll also have the introduction of a new contributor over the next few days, so expect to see some minor changes soon enough!

For now, though, take a look around the site and, if you run across any issues, drop me a message!

Nemo Atkins