New Site, Who Dis?

So, uh… yeah. I blew up the Mahjong Game DB.

Not that dramatically, though; I just opted not to renew my web hosting. I wasn’t updating the site, and having it built as a wiki was making me stress over formatting and standardized layouts for each game. Plus, learning a whole new content management system was distracting from the real thing I wanted to do, which is post content about mahjong games. Now, instead of paying for web hosting, I have my own web server I’m running out of my house (what could go wrong?), so I don’t have to pay hosting fees, and I’m running WordPress instead of MediaWiki, so I can focus on posting rather than formatting.

Not that it’s super important, but the server is a Core2 Quad Q8200S at it’s stock 2.33 GHz, 4 GB of DDR2 memory, a 120 GB Patriot Burst SSD, and an EVGA GTX 295 Hydro Copper. The CPU and GPU are both water cooled with a 240mm Primo Chill radiator, and the wiring is all hand made and sleeved in paracord. Above the components are two addressable RGB LED strips that are software controlled, but unfortunately only in Windows. The Windows installation has been wiped and CentOS has replaced it for a variety of reasons. If you want a better look at the server, check out this video I made shortly after finishing it. I originally put it together to be a period-correct gaming rig focusing on 2009 if I remember correctly. Since then I haven’t really played on it at all, so I figured I should repurpose the hardware.

Now that the server is up and running, I need a domain name. I could buy mahjonggamedb.com again, or redirect it here until it expires later this year, but I’ve never been that happy with the name. It’s long and hard to read. Now that the format of the site is changing I felt that the ‘db‘ (database) part no longer applied. What I really wanted was something like mahjong.game (yes, you can buy .game domain names for $20), but for whatever reason mahjong.game was going for $3,300. Per year! Somehow mahjong.art was going for nearly $6,000. I don’t… have any explanation for that. So I needed a new name. Luck for me, there are seemingly hundreds of TLDs (top-level domains) available now, so after the better part of an hour I settled on this one: mahjong.wtf.

Now that the site has been reborn as a WordPress blog, it also gives me the freedom to post other things that are mahjong-related. I can post a few reviews, some photos, guides, travel and event information, kind of whatever I feel like posting. I think having a looser format will make updating easier and more fun; neither of which I had with the old wiki.

So anyway, hopefully I can stick to my guns this time and post more. It won’t always be videos, because they take forever, but hopefully I can post interesting content for everyone.