Joel's Scattered Thoughts

Notes on things that interest me

Archive for June, 2008

Dealing with Murlocs as a Feral Druid

Jun 28

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

This may be blindingly obvious to some people but I was having problems dealing with murlocs as a feral druid. I’d stealth in, jump a murloc, and inevitably he’d run off and grab another group. I could switch forms and pull them back with moonfire but then I’d be energy starved when I switched back to cat.

Finally I figured out that the smart thing to do was pull with feral faerie fire. It seems to be a low aggro pull so there were fewer mobs pulled. It pulled the murlocs back to an already cleared area so when they ran they were less likely to pick up adds. I managed to nuke the rest of my murlocs without pulling more than two at a time.

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Group Organization: A Primer

Jun 27

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Carrots Love Tomatoes CoverAs a raid leader I always have trouble deciding who should should be in what group, especially for classes/specs I’m not very familiar with. The Hunter’s Mark has a primer on Group Organization which suggests which classes do well in groups with particular other classes. It reminds of that gardening book, Carrots Love Tomatoes and Roses Love Garlic.

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Bill C-61

Jun 27

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If you’re Canadian, please write a letter to your MP and Minister Jim Prentice about Bill C-61. If you want to do it quickly Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights has set up a quick way to write in.

Copyright needs restrictions because an over-broad copyright helps neither creators nor the public at large. Creators are denied the capability of building on the past and the public loses works that build on others and is discouraged from appreciating existing works. Would you write a better story if Shakespeare’s heirs could sue you for using words coined by Shakespeare? Shakespeare’s copyrighted words would include “lonely”, “fixture”, “madcap”, “torture”, “accused”, “advertising” and many many more words and phrases.

If you want more details as to why a more pervasive copyright should be opposed, read these speeches by Thomas Babington Macaulay in the 1840s. It’s amazing how little things change. The same arguments that were shot down 150 years ago are still being brought up as fresh new reasons why copyright needs to be everywhere. For a modern context see Eric Flint’s Salvos Against Big Brother columns particularly A Matter of Principle.

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Working At Home – The Office

Jun 27

Posted by Joel in General | 4 Comments

In DeHamerspace » Working At Home – The Office he describes how he set up a shed to serve as his office. I’m not sure how practical this would be for a Manitoba winter, but it’s at least something to consider should I ever have the need to set up a home office. The other nice thing is that such an office would be somewhat portable. Unfortunately, he didn’t say how much it cost him to set it up.

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Grid: Thinking within the Box(es)

Jun 26

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Resto4Life has a post on Grid: Thinking within the Box(es) with some pretty detailed customization instructions. This writeup has me thinking that I should look at Grid again, particularly since I’m healing on my paladin. Mystic Chicanery has a post on paladin healing using Grid and Clique. Thinking of Paladin healing, Crymoar’s Guide to Holy Paladin Addons and Macros looks like it has some good tips. The Light Natured forums also have a post on Setting up Grid and Clique

I’ve found that Pitbull works very nicely for 5 mans and some Kara healing but I suspect I could improve by using Grid. For me one of the funnest parts of Warcraft is that there’s always room for improvement and the improvement never feels that far away. All you need to improve is that one drop, or a couple more badges, or a slightly different skill rotation, or …

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PlanningWiz: plan and share room layouts

Jun 25

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Like many similar tools that I’ve noted, PlanningWiz: plan and share room layouts, might be useful for when we actually buy/build a place of our own.

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World PvP on My Shaman

Jun 25

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I recently engaged in some world PvP on my shaman – it started by accident, then reminded me why I’m playing on a PvE server now.

I was hunting tigers in Stranglethorn for one of Nessingwary’s slaughter the local wildlife quests. Tab, kill tiger, tab, kill tiger, tab, zap tiger…it has a name…oh crap! It was a flagged hunter’s pet – the hunter was a level above me and I suck at PvP. I tried, even popped my reincarnate but was completely owned. Then the hunter decided to camp me – fortunately I was able rez and pop ghost wolf fast enough to get out of range. He ended up chasing me all the way back to Grom’Gul. I lost my fire festival buffs which made me a sad little carebear.

I’d been thinking that I wouldn’t mind getting back on Flint come the expansion or possibly leveling Ali those last nine levels before Wrath. Incidents like this remind me why that’s not likely to happen. For me PvP outside of battlegrounds does get my heart pumping, but it almost always leaves me frustrated. My lack of skill is the problem and I’m not willing to practice enough to remedy that lack.

Carebears FTW!

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Mechanizing Your Guild (Part 1)

Jun 25

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Ciderhelm: Mechanizing Your Guild (Part 1) has a lot of good points. I listened to it a while back and used a fair number of the points in here in setting stuff up for our guild alliance. It seems to have cut down on the hassles.

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In The Midnight Hour

Jun 24

Posted by Joel in Books | 1 Comment

I recently finished reading In The Midnight Hour by Patti O’Shea. I received this book free in digital form from Tor’s Watch the Skies.

I have a soft spot for paranormal romances and this is a good one. This book pulled me in very quickly and kept on moving. Lately a lot of the books I’ve been reading have been suffering from lag: the story starts, then peters out, then resumes right at the end to encourage you to buy the sequel. This book does not do that – the action starts and keeps on moving the whole way through.

The base story actually resembles a classic fairy tale. Ryne, a magical troubleshooter, discovers a man under a curse, Deke. She tries to free him from the curse and discovers it’s going to be a lot more complicated than she’d first thought. The story is solid and the romance is woven in beautifully.

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Learn Bike Maintenance from The Bicycle Tutor

Jun 21

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Learn Bike Maintenance from The Bicycle Tutor ∞ Get Rich Slowly would be useful – the trouble is that so far I haven’t found much pleasure in working with my hands. Maybe it’s one of those things where if I did it more I’d like it more?

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Maps: Quikmaps Draws Directly onto Google Maps

Jun 18

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Maps: Quikmaps Draws Directly onto Google Maps looks like it would be useful.

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WP-SpamFree

Jun 18

Posted by Joel in General | 1 Comment

I tried out WP-SpamFree and from what I can see, it’s blocking all comments – not just spam. :( With no logging, there is no way to verify this. Foolishly I didn’t think to test this thoroughly before leaving it active for the last month. I just tried to post a comment to my blog from another browser and it wouldn’t let me. I have deactivated WP-SpamFree and will see how spam goes for the next while.

Made-in-America copyright law

Jun 15

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I find the current copyright law legislation that the government has tabled to be absolutely depressing. I’ve written to my MP and the ministers responsible for submitting this. I found that this editorial,Editorial: Made-in-America copyright law, gives a good overview of what common activities will be illegal if this passes. There is more insidiously nasty stuff in there too. See Michael Geist’s Blog if you want more details or ideas for what you can do to stop it.

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How a Hunter Starts Raiding

Jun 13

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The Hunter’s Mark » How a Hunter Starts Raiding has good advice – especially as I seem to be moving my hunter up into being my secondary raiding toon.

It’s kind of funny – I leveled a warrior to tank and a paladin to tank/heal as needed. I leveled my hunter for solo play. Oddly enough our guild alliance has enough tanks and healers that I hardly run my paladin anymore. If I’m not using my warrior to tank through some of the tougher bosses, the most useful role for me is generally DPS. Now to get my gear upgraded so that I’m contributing MQoSRDPS.

In our last run I didn’t do too badly: 4th DPS on Moroes, second for Opera (Oz), and 6th for Curator. The Curator fight was bad for my DPS for 2 reasons: one due to my role in the fight and the other due to me screwing up. First I was on flares (no big evocate hits) and second my pet kept dying (I didn’t hit mend pet nearly enough). It’s interesting seeing raids in a DPS role. I wish I had pulled in my hunter for the chess event at the end of the night – we wound up sharding some boots that would have been a big upgrade for her.

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PvP gear vs. dungeon loot

Jun 11

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Every time someone talks about how much S4 loot is better than T6 gear, God ganks little Timmy and takes away his white kitten.

And feeds it to Magtheridon.

metaquotes: mephron (in worldofwarcraft) on PvP gear vs. dungeon loot

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Lord of the Rings Online First Impressions

Jun 10

Posted by Joel in Games, General | No Comments

Jaimie and I tried out Lord of the Rings Online last night.  We used the standard resolution 14 day free trial.  We got our characters up to level 4.  It seems like a decent game, but I doubt I’ll be switching from WoW anytime soon.  At most I’d consider having it as a parallel subscription with WoW.

Sadly, none of the races or classes really appealed to me.  It’s not that there were any I hated, it’s more that they all seemed somewhat dull.  I tried an elven champion and then an elven guardian.  They were okay but neither of them seemed to do anything particularly interesting.  Level 4 may be a little early to judge that, so we’ll see.

It’s hard to figure out what the different abilities/stats mean.  My characters have something called Morale.  I did not see any indicators of how much moral they have,what morale does, or how I use it.   This is probably just a matter of getting used to it.

I liked having a new world to explore.  It’s fun not knowing exactly what is behind every bush or around every corner.  So far grouping while leveling looks to be a LOT easier than it is in WoW. 

We’ll see how it goes as the two weeks pass.  I’m really hoping that I discover something that makes the characters stand out for me.  If that happens there’s a decent chance that I would subscribe (at least until Wrath of the Lich King comes out). 

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Orphans of Chaos Quick Review

Jun 9

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Orphans of Chaos Cover I just finished reading Orphans of Chaos by John C. Wright.   I received this book free in digital form from Tor’s Watch the Skies. 

Quick spoiler-free summary – five orphan teenagers at a special school discover that they’re not who they’ve been told they are.  Their teachers are not who they appear to be.  As the book progresses the teenagers begin to unravel their identities as well as their teachers’. 

This book largely failed to impress me.  This is not due to any particular failing of the story.  The problem is mostly that it’s book one of a trilogy.  By the end of the book, little is resolved.  I had some idea of who’s who, but not really any idea of why it mattered.  I would recommend that you read this when you have the whole trilogy in front of you – if things get wrapped up nicely it’s probably worth reading.  It seems to me that there is little satisfaction to be gained from reading this one book at a time. 

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bfworkplace

Jun 7

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bfworkplace – Helping create effective workplaces looks like a good place to buy a computer desk. Now if only they actually listed some prices so that I could decide whether it’s worth giving them a call.

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Character Updates (June 08)

Jun 6

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I have a list of my toons and my take on them from February on my About Me page. Now that fourish months have passed, I’ve decided to update my perspectives. Nothing’s changed with my Andorhal toons, so that hasn’t been updated at all.

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Old (Febrary 08) Character Perspectives

Jun 6

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I’d made a list of my WoW characters on my About Me page back in February. I’ve decided to update it but I wanted to keep the old perspectives as well, hence this post.

Quel’dorei Characters – Feburary 2008

Arthemis is my blood elf hunter. She started out paired with Jaimie’s Arala, but we ended up running our two hunters together for maximum killing power. So now Arthemis and Diannia are burning through Outlands. Arthemis still has her springpaw lynx from level 10, Arge, as her pet. For some reason none of the other pets appealed. Arthemis was my second level 70 – I’ve run a few instances with her, but mostly she does dailies and disenchants.

Andromache is my blood elf paladin. She’s the one who started out with Diannia, Jaimie’s hunter. She’s my farming toon and fully specced out for paladin AOE grinding. I have a lot of fun with her, watching 5-6 mobs four levels higher die from beating themselves to death on her armor. She hit 70 and is now saving up for her epic flying mount. I’ve tanked most outland instances with her – mostly with the guild “The Train”. Paladin AOE tanking is lots of fun.

Tristam is my tauren warrior. He’s the one I play with my static group – me, Jaimie, Faith, Justin, and Dave. I love trying to keep my DPS-happy squishies alive – it keep the game exciting. He’s specced mostly into protection and most of the time we wind up taking down instance bosses that are still red to our group (i.e. many levels higher than us). He is also the GM of our guild, Sleep Deprived. He’s 70 and gets played as often as our group can match up our schedules.

Anzu is my tauren shaman. I’m a little frustrated with him – I just can’t seem to figure out the melee dps thing. I may switch him over to resto to help “The Train” level their own tank.

Merddyn is my blood elf warlock. I had to make one, blood elves just demand to be warlocks. I’m none too thrilled with his name, but since he’s paired with Jaimie’s Vivianne he had to be named some variant of Merlin. He runs with Jaimie’s shadow priest for a lot of dot-fear-win fun! He’s at 28 and may well stay there.

Emerys is my baby druid. Currently at level 11, he’s headed up to supply me with a third tank so I can tank with all three tanking classes.

AAAAANNNNDDD that’s all folks! I have a couple level 10ish alts here and there but I haven’t played them seriously so they don’t count. I’ve played all the classes in World of Warcraft and I have a really hard time deciding which is my favorite. At the moment, I’d say that I would be least likely to play a mage and most likely to play a paladin or a druid if I were starting from scratch. If I were starting on a new server again, I would make a hunter for the fast leveling and so that it could bankroll my other toons. It’s the people that make MMORPGs fun, so I would be happy to play any class if I had a solid group to level with.

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