April 23: A Cautious Recomendation of a Gaming Mouse Brand (And Updates About Several Other Things)

Well, my current mouse decided that NOW'S a good time to start dying. Granted, I've had the thing for nearly four years now (I bought in early-mid 2020), and it had zero issues until about a week ago, when it started to occasionally double-click, so that has to be saying something about it's durability. For those curious, the mouse in question was the Redragon M901-2. I honestly kind of bought it on a whim, looking for a good cheap-ish mouse under 50$, found it for around 35$, looked at the reviews, and bought it after reading a few.

I do honestly reccomend Redragon's mice, but I do have three main complaints about the mouse that honestly make me slightly cautious about reccomending it. First, some of them aren't true RGB, like the M901-2. It could do red, green, blue, yellow, and a pinkish-purple quite well, but almost any other color came out varying levels of dimmer than they should be, and it had no real way to cycle colors automatically. The mouse I bought to replace it, the M990, is true RGB, though, so this only applies to certain mice from the company, notably their older mice. This one's very minor, though, but the next one's my biggest gripe about it.

Second, the software for configuring the thing isn't the greatest. First, I had a slight bit of trouble even FINDING the software for the M901-2, as the box doesn't even come with a disc with it, but I was eventually able to track down a download link for it on the manufacturer's site.

I also had some trouble finding the right site for the M990's software, as the manufacturer has several sites, and the first one I checked I'm pretty sure was an older version that led to a 404 page when I tried to download the software (I had more luck trying redragonzone.com). Not only that, but the software is also a bit janky. Some things aren't explained well, it all looks like it came from the windows xp era despite being fairly recent, macros freeze the pointer while they're running, and more.

Lastly, the box usually comes with very little in terms of instructions. It just tells you the default configuration for all the buttons. No install cd, no link to where to find the software, no indication that the software even EXISTS unless you payed attention on the store page or happened to look it up online, no instructions on how to use the software, nothing except maybe a transport case for the mouse, a few stickers, and some weights you can add to the mouse. Granted, as I said before, the software can easilly be found on the manufacturer's site, and the software is still fairly straightforward to use, but you would think they would at least have a paper in the box telling you to go on the site to download the software, and that you need it to even configure the thing.

The mouse was still very good for the price despite these nitpicks. Really, its like the manufacturers put all the money into making sure the mouse itself works well and is durable, but skimped out on the few things they could afford to without affecting performance too much, like some of the cosmetic features. I would honestly reccomend Redragon's mice at least if your looking for a decent budget mouse. They aren't as good as some of the larger company's mice from what I can tell, but they are honestly still solid mice for the price.

Update About this Site's Development

I've finished the HTML Tutorial I was following along with, but I also decided that I should also look up CSS, Flexbox, and Scripting tutorials too. That way, I can make use of everything possible to make this site how I want it to be.

Updates on the site will probably start ramping up MAYBE. It really boils down to whether or not I'll think it's worth it to start working on the site again now, or if I want to wait until I've finished with all the tutorials I want to follow.

I do have quite a few ideas about how to improve this site, though. Here are just a few examples:

Switching up the general theme and possibly layout of each section of the site.

Adding to that, I want to theme the page of each review in the review section after the game the review is about.
I also had the idea to theme the initial page of the Computercraft Tutorials section, where you pick the part of the tutorial you want, by using a screenshot of a Computer program displaying the menu for that section. I've already coded the program needed for it, I just need to decorate the surrounding area in the modded Minecraft world I'm using, take the screenshots, and use scripting on this site to stitch everything together to look like the text is being highlighted when you hover over it.
I've also had the idea for the Computercraft Tutorials section to add in a few fun challenges you can do after the tutorials to test your knowledge.
I'm also debating on adding a section that has a few example programs and general-use programs I've made and felt like sharing. This will require editing the program from the second point of this section to add a third page to the menu, though...

Add a place for badges and blinkies
Fill in the about page.
Use some open-source scripts I've found over time to add a bit more flair to the site.

And more!

Game Dev Updates & Review Updates

It's still happening. I've even got quite a bit more ideas for that "farming sim/3d platformer/action rpg" idea I had. That one's honestly snowballed and became my most ambitious of my ideas, and my most fleshed-out so far. I'm honestly very excited to show off the ideas I had for it, but again, I want to hold off for now until I've started working on it at the earliest.

As for the review section, I also have quite a few other ideas for reviews (for example, there's a game I decided to recently try out on a whim and almost immediately decided that I should make a review for it for many reasons). I'll probably add in a review or two, or at least put down a section dedicated to the games I reccomend but won't make proper reviews for due to not really fitting what I want the review section to be. A few examples of categories that will be in there are either games I can't really review without unavoidably spoiling major parts of the game (like Outer Wilds or MyHouse.wad), or games that I feel everyone knows about (like Deltarune or Pizza Tower).

Monitor Issue Update

The package STILL hasn't come yet, and I'm honestly given up on it coming anytime soon if at all, so I'm going to also order a new monitor in a few days. As I said in the post about the monitor problems, if the package comes after buying a new one, then I'll probably replace whichever monitor I buy with the monitor that's in there (assuming it hasn't been smashed to heck and back, which is honestly a possibility).

I've also been waiting on starting to make games until after replacing my monitor at the earliest, just in case that issue decided to crop up again (thankfully, it hasn't happened since the post about it, but it's always been a "once every couple of months" thing).

Final Thoughts of Post

Anyway, Updates may start getting a bit more frequent, and I'll actually start on putting some actual content on the site and make it look much better.