Out with the old, in with the new. I was having too much trouble getting the new forum RSS feed to work with FeedInformer, so I thought, screw it. Why not upgrade? I went with FeedWind and produced a forum feed that displays much like the Twitter feed does. The only disadvantage is that this new feed will *only* display posts from Port Saiid, none of the other community boards will be featured anymore. However, several months ago almost all of those boards were officially declared "defunct" by their owners, so I don't think this should be a problem. I also changed up some of the colors to be a little more consistent and simplified the Port Saiid Twitter list's title.
Okay, the RSS Feed is back. I guess I should've held out a little bit longer, although it hasn't been updated in a year. Once things have settled in a little more, I'll try to get back to posting my updates to the forum that generates the feed. Since Yuku/Tapatalk reinstated RSS feeds on the forums, I'll work on getting the Port Saiid Pipeline back up next.
Some housekeeping - because the new forums stripped the quick links, I have brought back a very scaled-down version of the Memory Card that only includes the three largest FlyingOmelette.com subdomains and community friend site CodieKitty.com. Although DHN is defunct, it contains a wealth of community archives and reviews. RQ87 and RHH are still updated and have an enormous amount of gaming and cartoon-related content to explore. I also opted for the small banners instead of the icons I had before because it's easier to tell what they are.
The Hidden Object Games guide can now be found in the Guides menu to the left. It replaces the Zelda: Ocarina of Time guide because that's already featured under the Shrines menu and I don't need it in both places.
Minor fix: I changed the Twitter table to the right so that it won't bleed over the edge on mobile browsers anymore.
Until I can figure out how to create a site feed for new forum topics, I have embedded the Port Saiid Member Twitter List in the Pipeline's place for now. (In fact, we'll probably keep both even if I do figure out a solution for the Pipeline.) I have also updated my Yuku link in the above widgets, although you'll now need to have an account and be logged in to read it. Unfortunately, it will only show my posts from Port Saiid itself, not the other boards, but they're all pretty much defunct anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter. I have also done away with the site's RSS feed, which was generated by the old version of the forums, and quite frankly, was not very useful. I never did like keeping that updated because I had no way of knowing how many people were actually using it, and when I asked on the forums the general responses I got were, "I don't use it" and "I don't know what an RSS feed is". Once again, if anyone wants to be added to the Port Saiid Twitter List, just let me know.
Yuku, the service that hosts our forums, has gone through a transition to Tapatalk that has bricked the Port Saiid Pipeline. I do not know if there is any way to get it going again because the new version of the forums does not seem to have an RSS feed, which is what populated the topics on the Pipeline. We are going to look into alternatives (even if it's through something other than FeedInformer), but if we can't find a replacement, we might opt to embed a Twitter feed in its place. The forums are also using a barebones default design at the moment as the old skin was wiped out in the transition. Yuku is claiming a new WYSIWYG editor is in the works and once it's available, I'll work on creating a less generic design for Port Saiid.
Meanwhile, I haven't officially announced this until just now and I don't really have a place where it's permanently indexed on the site yet, but if you follow me on Twitter or saw it mentioned on the forums, I've been working on puzzle guides for the various Hidden Object Games I've completed:
The way this project got started was because I began to notice that a lot of HOG's reuse the same sorts of puzzles. (Common ones I see a lot are the "Battery Number Puzzle", the "Cat's Cradle", the "Color Matching Wheels", and "The Bucket Problem".) I wanted to start keeping track of how often I see the same kinds of puzzles in HOG's, and it turned into me writing guides on how to solve them as well. While some of these HOG's do have in-game strategy guides, or guides on other websites, some of them do not...and even for some of the ones with bonus chapters that do, the guides are missing the bonus chapter puzzles because they were written before that edition of the game was released. So, some of this could be helpful if you're really stuck on something in one of these games and can't find a solution anywhere.
If you follow my account on Twitter, then you probably know that I completed out 2016's Capsule Reviews awhile back. If you don't, I thought I'd let everyone know they're done. I didn't announce it earlier because I didn't update the index pages...and in fact, I still haven't, but since I also completed January 2017's Reviews, I thought I should mention it now and fix the index pages later. I've also done some slight adjustments on those pages to make them easier to read on widescreen monitors.
I managed to identify James's mystery song. It's "Keep Holdin' On" by Jack Wagner, from his 1985 album, Lighting Up the Night. I discovered I have a connecting memory to this. I looked to see what else Jack Wagner is known for. He's an actor from various soap operas and had a hit song in the 80's called "All I Need". I looked up "All I Need" on YouTube and recognized it as a song I'd heard on a soap opera when my mother used to watch them. I guess that makes sense.
Anyway, I bought the MP3 from Amazon and transcribed the lyrics to "Keep Holdin' On", since no one else has them:
(I let myself get swept away)
Eccentric tastes of delight
Keep me so warm through the night
Beside me
That question yet will arrive
I wonder is the world alive
Without me
There's nothing left in it for me
Look close and chances are you'll see the answer
Deep inside me
Keep holding on, holding on
To the dreams that make tomorrow
Keep holding on, holding on
Never let them turn to sorrow
Keep holding on,
Never stop holding on to your dreams
Temptation whispered my name
Since then I've never been the same
So lonely
I played the games and always won
Tried to pretend that I had fun
Illusions
Open your eyes and you will see
The simple life can always be the answer
Waiting for you
Keep holding on, holding on
To the dreams that make tomorrow
Keep holding on, holding on
Never let them turn to sorrow
Keep holding on,
Never stop holding on to your dreams
I let myself get swept away
Won't you listen to what I say?
Keep holding on, holding on
To the dreams that make tomorrow
Keep holding on, holding on
Never let them turn to sorrow
Keep holding on,
Never stop holding on to your dreams
Keep holding on, holding on
To the dreams that make tomorrow
Keep holding on, holding on
Never let them turn to sorrow
Keep holding on,
Never stop holding on to your dreams
Keep holding on, holding on
To the dreams that make tomorrow
Keep holding on, holding on
Never let them turn to sorrow
Keep holding on,
Never stop holding on...
Hello, FlyingOmelette.com visitors. Not a new admin, just a guest blogger. My name is James, and I'm one of the staffers of the DHN Community Archive. FO and Pero are doing this as a favor to me. I have a song mystery that I'm hoping someone can solve.
Since 2015, we've had a tradition of posting songs in the Port Saiid Music Forum. A few weeks ago, someone posted Stevie Wonder's "Hold On To Your Dream", which stoked a memory of another song I heard in the 80's that had lyrics about holding on to dreams, but was not the same as the Stevie Wonder song. I Googled the lyrics I could remember, thinking it would be identified shortly. The only lyrics I remember are the chorus, which went something like this:
"Keep holding on, holding on to the dreams that make tomorrow.
Keep holding on, never stop holding on.....to your dreams!"
After searching through several pages of results, I could not find a match. I inquired about the song on both Port Saiid and Twitter, and some people offered suggestions of other songs about holding onto dreams, but none were a match to what I remembered. I asked my older sister. She seemed to remember it, but her suggestions all turned out to be wrong, too. For all intents and purposes, it seems like this song simply does not exist.
I began to think I had imagined it, except I finally stumbled upon *one* reference to it in a posting on Amazon.com:
I'm positive that the song this person quoted is the same one I remember. He/she attributed it to Richard Marx, but I cannot find a Richard Marx song with these lyrics. I'm thinking they confused it with "Hold On to the Nights", which is not the same song. This song I remember was faster-paced. However, the vocalist was male, and the style was similar to 70's/80's bands like Jefferson Starship, Survivor, and Triumph.
FO found an archived webpage that also showed the same lyrics being quoted in a high school yearbook from 1988. The yearbook gave no artist for the lyrics, but it does prove the song had to have been from 1988 or earlier. I wondered if it would help to know that I lived in the Chicago area in the 80s because I thought it might have been something that was only popular locally, but that yearbook is from a high school in Masachusetts, so maybe not.
I'm hoping someone else remembers this song and can tell me what it is - the name of the song and the artist, and if there's some chance it's from a movie or TV show, what one?
If you know, either send it to the staff email, or contact me on Twitter: @JamesMendou
-James
Addendum By FO: Even if you don't know the title or artist for this song, but think you have heard it and have more information on it, such as more of the lyrics or where you may have heard it, please contact us anyway. The more we can learn about it, the better a chance we have of identifying it.
There's been a fad in the media lately of people finding glitches or odd tricks in old video games that may be somewhat obscure, but have actually been known and documented on various websites and videos for years, and acting like those tricks are completely new. The most recent case in point was people acting like the sliding glitches in Super Mario World were only recently unearthed when they not only appear in the top results on search engines for "Super Mario World glitches", but can also be found being performed in YouTube videos that are several years old. A good rule of thumb if you think you've discovered something in a game that's decades old and has been thoroughly played and dissected by now is to do a quick search (Bing, Google, whatever your choice site is) to see if someone has already mentioned it. Chances are, someone has, and there's probably also an explanation as to why it happens.
On that note, I found this in River City Ransom years ago, but never made a video until now. I didn't think it was necessary because I figured people would just try the trick themselves. However, now I'm concerned that someone will try it, and then claim they're the first to discover it. So, here it is:
This is what (sometimes) happens when you start a new game in River City Ransom, but don't touch any buttons. Enjoy!
Hello, everyone. I believe we may have (somewhat) solved a video game mystery that's over a decade old. Perhaps you remember that whole "L is Real 2041" mystery from Super Mario 64? In case you don't, there's a mysterious star statue in the castle courtyard that has a plaque with nearly indecipherable writing on it, as seen in my screenshot here:
Here is the tile ripped from the game in its native resolution:
For years, players thought the upper row said, "L is Real 2041", and deduced that it was some vague hint at Luigi being hidden somewhere in the game.
I think it's possible that we finally deciphered the tile's handwriting, although we can safely say it has nothing to do with Luigi and likely was never intended to.
It was already known for a few years that the upper row of letters actually says, "Eternal Star", not "L is Real 2041". The plaque being sitauted on a star sculpture, and the final level of Mario Party being called "Eternal Star", easily back up this theory.
But nobody was able to tell what the second row said, although many sources agreed it was likely an artist credit for whoever made the sculpture.
If we're right about what it says, well...it's nothing earth-shattering, but it makes the most sense of anything I've heard:
"Eternal Star By Super M", as in "Super Mario".
The real question is...what's the deal with this thing? Obviously, it has nothing to do with Luigi, but certainly it must have some purpose, right? I don't know, but I can speculate that since the final level of Mario Party is the Eternal Star, it may have been planned to have such a level in Super Mario 64 at one point, and maybe this was intended to be the gateway to it. Perhaps this was overruled by the developers wanting Bowser's final battlefield to take the shape of a star when he pounds the floor as the fight goes on instead of being on a star to begin with.
Credit goes to my co-admin, Minerva K Red for being the one who came up with this particular theory, although really it grew out of the combined efforts of the community's sleuthing:
Out with the old, in with the new. I was having too much trouble getting the new forum RSS feed to work with FeedInformer, so I thought, screw it. Why not upgrade? I went with FeedWind and produced a forum feed that displays much like the Twitter feed does. The only disadvantage is that this new feed will *only* display posts from Port Saiid, none of the other community boards will be featured anymore. However, several months ago almost all of those boards were officially declared "defunct" by their owners, so I don't think this should be a problem. I also changed up some of the colors to be a little more consistent and simplified the Port Saiid Twitter list's title.
Hello, FlyingOmelette.com visitors. Not a new admin, just a guest blogger. My name is James, and I'm one of the staffers of the DHN Community Archive. FO and Pero are doing this as a favor to me. I have a song mystery that I'm hoping someone can solve.
