Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

EduChoices lists 25 Places to Read Free Books Online.  With only 25 places listed it’s not surprising that they missed some that I look at frequently.  One big one that was missed is the Baen Free Library.  Another is Cory Doctrow’s site where he posts his novels and short stories.   For shorter stories, I like Eric Burns’ Banter Latte, though he seems to have quit writing there.

For a short while, Tor was offering free ebooks (currently they’re offering free short fiction).  I’d love to buy a lot of Tor’s books as ebooks, but I’m still waiting.  Kindle format for books doesn’t count - I’m not touching anything that has DRM that goes deeper than watermarking.  When I buy a book, I want to be able to read and reread it.  (If you want to know hy DRM is a bad idea for authors, publishers, and readers look at Eric Flint’s Salvos Against Big Brother columns.)

(via Copyfight)

EDIT: More books online

Google 404 Pages Help Your Web Visitors Find the Right Page looks like something I should implement. Now to see if I actually do…

I constantly struggle with trying to keep our house clean.  I have managed to form a few good cleaning habits, but there is a long, long way to go.  The key that I seem to be missing is doing a bit of housework every day rather than trying to do it in bursts. 

I tried FlyLady’s method for about 10 days, but I always felt that I was intruding on a ladies-only event.  Zen Habits had a post on Editing Your Rooms that looks to have some possibilities. 

Frankly, my big hope right now it that with the kids going back to school and getting back into a regular routine I’ll be able to get into a routine of cleaning house again.

There are a lot of WoW guides out there that will show you how to level quickly or how to make a pile of gold playing World of Warcraft.  Most of them will cost you $20-30.  I haven’t looked at most of these guides - I bought one gold making guide and I wasn’t too impressed with it.  I haven’t bought any of the leveling guides.  I would suggest that people use the free alternatives and save their cash.

Kunzite’s Gold Guide is a very good guide to making gold in WoW.  I particularly like his articulation of Opportunity Cost as a point that should always be kept in mind.  He gives both very general strategies and very specific ones.  I used most of the strategies that he outlines prior to reading the guide and they’ve worked very well for me.  I’m not focused on earning gold so I’m not rich, but I have bought 3 epic flying skills and I’m just waiting for more toons to hit 70 to buy more.

Jame’s Alliance and Horde Leveling Guides are very thorough guides for solo leveling a character from 1-70.  I’ve been using the Horde guides to level my druid and shaman and they make for very fast, straightforward leveling.  I leveled my other toons through running a a fair number of instances as well as questing, so I didn’t follow the guides for them.  I would recommend against using these guides for your first character as there’s a lot of fun to be had in exploring. 

Blogs and forums are probably the ultimate guides to World of Warcraft, but the information tends to be rather disjointed.  Once you have an idea what it is you want to know, I would suggest reading blogs that cover your chosen subject or visiting various forums such as Elitist Jerks, PlusHeal, TankSpot, MainTankadin, and many others. 

In my post on alts, I wrote that endgame is the end of fun.  This isn’t quite true.  As I level through the game, my focus is on leveling as quickly as I can.  Each ding gives me a thrill of accomplishment.  When I reach the level cap, that thrill is gone.  After a short time at max level, gear upgrades are fairly minimal -two steps forward and one step back. 

Why do I keep playing my max level characters?  I find that when I’m not getting a shiny new ability every couple of levels, I learn to use that abilities I have more skillfully.  Just on my warrior, I’ve learned to stance dance with grace, AOE tanking, using Shield Wall and Challenging Shout to keep the raid up, debuff maintenance, and how to DPS as a protection warrior.  All that and I still have plenty of room for improvement.  More skillful play isn’t as easy to quantify as a new level but it is satisfying.  It seems to me that endgame moves the focus from improving the character to improving the player.

However without the quantifiable improvement I start to get bored with endgame and I go start another alt.  I play each alt with more skill as I apply the lessons I’ve learned and having a new alt encourages me to better my skills.  As each alt hits endgame, they’re more prepared to play their role and I’m more aware of how they can be played well.  Skillfully playing the endgame is fun. 

I was reading an article on how an economics experiment managed to get worked to pick a lot more strawberries.  The line that struck me was:

Again, workers prioritized money over social ties, abandoning groups of friends to ally themselves with the most productive co-workers who would accept them.

To me this sounds a lot like guild hopping in World of Warcraft. The desire for rewards or for proof that you excel at the game often trumps social networks.

I’ve found that this is one of the most frustrating things about being a raid leader.  Everyone has a cutoff point at which the new epics are not worth the social cost to obtain them.  For some people reaching endgame or raiding for 3 hours straight costs them too much time that they’d rather spend socializing outside the game.  Once some people reach a certain level of gearing they stop playing or greatly cut back on their play time or roll another alt.  Still others form social networks that are specifically aimed at beating the final boss or getting that legendary gear.  As each person reaches their cutoff point, they have broken ties with those whose cutoff point was earlier and they are breaking ties with those whose cutoff point is higher.  Trying to balance cutoff points for a group is tricky and leads to hurt feelings.

There are a ton of podcasts out there.  They are informative, fun, and cover a lot of good topics.  I don’t listen to them.

The reason I don’t listen to them is simply that I have trouble with auditory learning.  I don’t retain things I hear nearly as well as I do things I read.  I’ve reached the end of many podcasts and asked myself "What were they talking about for the last hour?" 

I find myself in a cycle of finding interesting podcasts, listening to them, realizing I don’t have a clue what they’ve been talking about, and unsubscribing.  It seems that I can only listen to about an hour or two of podcasts per week.  Anything more goes in one ear and out the other. 

I wonder if a good speech to text program could help with this?  I don’t think the current technology is up to handling podcasts yet, but it doesn’t hurt to look into it.  I guess I’ll just have to live with the world not revolving around me. :) 

I had a guildie ask me over the weekend what I’m planning to do with my druid in the endgame.  My response was "Nothing."  I may do a couple of Karazhan runs with my alts if they get to 70 before Wrath comes out, but I really don’t plan to do endgame with them.  This seemed to strike him as very peculiar.

For me, endgame is the end of gaming.  In many ways it’s the end of fun.  It’s great to have a character that’s hit the level cap, but your character will no longer be picking up any interesting new abilities.   You’re done with achieving things on your own.  My max-level toons go fishing and run instances and that’s it.  I could do things such as killing six million Zaxxis or 25 dailies per toon per day or save up 214,748 Gold 36 Silver and 46 Copper.  Frankly those all strike me as rather dull activities. 

For fun, I start up another alt.  I try to level my alts as quickly as possible.  It’s not the journey so much as the feeling of accomplishment from hitting the next level.  I love it when I pick up a new ability at the trainer and I try to figure out how it can be useful to me.  There is a certain pleasure in knowing exactly where to go for quests. 

There is a thrill to tanking the latest boss in our raid progression.  I enjoy raid leading (most of the time).  Trying to top the DPS on my hunter is a challenge.  Destroying five player instances on my paladin is amusing.  Despite this, the most fun in WoW for me is leveling.

At 70, you can choose from one of three factions: Raider, PVP, and Casual. You then blame the other two factions for ‘ruining the game.’"

From The World Behind the World of Warcraft

While shopping for school supplies for the kids I noticed a subnotebook that looked as though it would function well as an ebook reader.  The price is comparable to that of an Amazon Kindle or a PDA and it looks like it would offer a lot more utility.  Download Squad talked about using one of these coupled with zero-footprint applications as a way of preserving privacy, particularly if you have to cross the US border.  It’s definitely worth checking into. 

Turn an Ubuntu/Debian System Into an IMAP Mail Server looks like a project I’ve considered.  The last time I looked into this it proved to be too much of a hassle.  Maybe the tech’s advanced enough for me to handle it.

World History Blog links to Jane Austen’s World. 

This blog brings Jane Austen, her novels, and the Regency Period alive through food, dress, social customs, and other 19th C. historical details.

I know that Jaimie likes to reread the occasional Jane Austen novel.  For a while there she enjoyed other regencies but she seems to have moved on to more contemporary romances. 

I don’t read a lot of romance novels, but they’re definitely worth reading.  Romance novels are as subject to Sturgeon’s Law as anything else.  The best thing about romance novels is that they’re one of the best guides for how to behave around ladies who read them.  You may not be tall, dark, handsome, and rich, but you can still act like a romantic hero.

"The hard part is having a wife who sees you the way you are. Hey, having one of those and keeping her in love with you is something of a challenge. If she notices that your hair is sort of thin on top"—he pointed to his own head—"and you’re sort of sloppy about pruning the weigela bushes and sometimes you don’t get around to taking out the garbage when she asks you to, how do you explain it? If she compares the waist size on your last set of briefs with the waist size on your new set of briefs, how are you supposed to persuade her that things aren’t settling, so to speak? A realistic wife—that would be a problem."

Marc was listening with fascination.

"But a member of the Romance Readers book club. Hey, Toby, it’s a cinch, if you do the husband business at a sort of minimum level. Basically, I mean, don’t get hauled home sodden drunk very often. Usually get there for supper on time and call when you can’t. Remember her birthday and anniversary with flowers. Which isn’t that hard, in spite of all the jokes. I keep Max’s birthday and our anniversary written on a note card on my machine. So, you see, just do that much. Your wife’s imagination will take care of all the rest. You see, she really wants to have a romantic, hunky, husband. So she’ll festoon you with all sorts of desired heroic qualities that you . . . ummm . . . may not actually have, like tinsel on a Christmas tree, and cheerfully ignore the fact that middle age is not just creeping up on you but has already arrived and taken up squatters’ rights on your midsection."
–1634-The Bavarian Crisis

Massively linked to a video preview of Free Realms.  It looks to have more to do and see than Club Penguin.  I hope that there’s enough of a game there to make things interesting.  If the system requirements are fairly low, it might be fun to play with the kids.  Eurogamer had another preview that really made it sound appealing I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

Tank Like a Girl continues their overview with Heroics order, part II: medium to tough.  I really like the detailed look at heroic instances including how tough they are and what the nasty parts are.  I had originally planned to do a lot more heroics than I ended up doing.  We moved into Kara after doing a few heroics and that pretty much took up our grouping time.  Maybe in Wrath we’ll do more heroics, but with all the new ten player raids I’m not betting on it. 

For a while there was a potion sickness effect in the beta of Wrath of the Lich King that kept people from consuming more than one potion per fight.  I really hope this mechanic makes it into the actual game. 

For those of you who didn’t raid before Burning Crusade, it wasn’t uncommon to have six or more elixir buffs up for progression raiding.  Raiding was an even more expensive proposition then.  Elixirs were then divided into Battle and Guardian elixirs and you could only have one of each or a flask up.  There was a great hue and cry that raid bosses would be impossible to beat.  Shockingly enough, the sky didn’t fall and there was still plenty of raiding and downing of raid bosses.

Anything that reduces the cost of raiding is fine by me!

Dungeons & Dragons Tiny Adventures looks like it might be fun. One of these days I want to get the new D&D 4 books, but it won’t be soon. (via Tor.com)

I love the idea of drawing on external resources in exams.  It seems to me that the way that most exams are currently done is silly.  I find it encouraging that some schools are trying new examination ideas.

Clive Thompson has a post up on Wired that discusses Weight Watchers as an RPG.  It’s really not much of a stretch. 

As with an RPG, you roll a virtual character, manage your inventory and resources, and try to achieve a goal. Weight Watchers’ points function precisely like hit points; each bite of food does damage until you’ve used up your daily amount, so you sleep and start all over again. Play well and you level up — by losing weight! And the more you play it, the more you discover interesting combinations of the rules that aren’t apparent at first. Hey, if I eat a fruit-granola breakfast and an egg-and-romaine lunch, I’ll have enough points to survive a greasy hamburger dinner for a treat!

It seems to me that the next step would be a barcode scanner or some such tied to your PDA so that you can do a quick swipe and see that this pack of granola bars would put you way over the top while that pack of sunflower seeds would leave you some wiggle room for a later treat. 

When will World of Workcraft become a reality and a fun game?  I remember reading a story in Analog that had people starting out by playing a high fantasy MMO then moving on to doing work that benefited society instead.  MMOs as a huge social positive may not be that far away.

In the interview How to Live the simple life, Tim Kasser recounts the following story. 

There is a story about a man who approached Gandhi and said that he’d been thinking about living a simpler life, but he didn’t feel like he could give up his collection of books. Gandhi is said to have replied, "As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you."

The question that keeps coming up in life is "What do you value the most?"  It could be argued that every choice you make comes down to this question.  Do you value the good looks of your dress shoes more than the comfort of your sandals?  Do you value keeping your word more than moving on to a better opportunity?  Do you value the health benefits of All Bran over the taste of Fruit Loops? 

Ultima IV had a unique character creation process.  You were given a series of questions that forced you to decide between two virtues.  For example, "A merchant owes thy friend money, now long past due. Thou dost see the same merchant drop a purse of gold. Dost thou: Honestly return the purse intact, or Justly give thy friend a portion of the gold first?" It is not that one virtue was inherently better than another, it was how you choose to rank them.

On one of the blogs I read someone posed the question "What would your ideal WoW party consist of?"  Here’s my answer as of late in Burning Crusade World of Warcraft. I am assuming you are forming up a group of level 1 people who are going to be instancing together from now to the expansion (and you are all reclusive millionaires so you can play as much as you want to before Wrath comes out and completely invalidates this).

Tank: Either a protection warrior or a protection paladin.  The warrior for their numerous "oh crap" buttons and sheer survivability and the paladin for their amazing AOE tanking abilities.  A bear druid would be a strong second place - the main reason I wouldn’t put them in first is that all those lovely plate and shield drops would get sharded.

Healer: I would go with a holy priest.  From what I’ve seen there are no situations where a priest is a bad choice for healing 5 mans.  In cases where the group is taking a lot of AOE damage, a paladin healer may not be able to keep up.  A restoration druid or shaman would also be a strong choice, but they’re not as versatile as a priest.  A discipline priest would probably work as a main healer as well, but I don’t know enough about them to say for certain. 

DPS/off-heal: I would pick either a elemental shaman, a balance druid, or a shadow priest.  All three should have a good sized mana pool and their gear should allow them to do a decent job of picking up heals if needed.  I would lean slightly toward the shaman for utility and so that mail caster gear doesn’t get sharded.  The shaman’s hourly self-resurrection would also be useful on rough runs. Retribution paladins and enhancement shaman are less likely to have the mana pool and gear to pick up on healing. 

DPS/utility: Mages take this hands down.  A warlock or rogue will probably pump out similar or slightly greater DPS but they’re nowhere near as useful.  Mages offer the best CC in the game for humanoids and beasts, portals to capital cities, food, and water.

DPS/support: I would lean toward a hunter for this role, particularly a hunter with improved traps.  A hunter’s traps provide CC for almost every mob in the game.  Hunters can pump out some very strong DPS.  A hunter with jumper cables can help with wipe protection.  That being said, it’s easy to argue for just picking another one from the DPS/off heal category.  An elemental shaman can bring totems for strong group buffs.  A shadow priest provides a steady stream of mana and health while DPSing.  A balance druid brings Gift of the Wild and a battle rez.

Here’s the party I’d make for running 5 person instances: protection paladin, holy priest, mage, elemental shaman, and shadow priest. The shadow priest could be replaced by a balance druid giving stronger off-tanking possibilities traded for weaker off heals/mana regeneration.

Classes/Specs I would not bring: Fury warriors,arms warriors, retribution paladins, rogues, warlocks, and enhancement shaman all bring DPS and utility to the group but their contributions pale when compared to those of the classes I’ve listed.  These classes all have strong places in raids or in PvP but they just aren’t useful enough for 5 player instances.