WoW Addiction makes day-time talk show

Great site here with vids about a WoW player who is addicted, and how is girlfriend turned to a talk show to help him face the reality of what was going on.

Tyra Show Link

This guy ignores his screaming child while playing….”(warcraft) is what is ruining our relationship”.

First they interview the girl and ask standard relationship questions, explain her perspective and get a feel for the story. Then the second vid shows the CDs being shredded as a ritual to break the addiction.

Pity you don’t need the Cds to play!

Firstly if this guy is as bad as he is made out, then yep, he’s got a problem. Job (40 hrs) + WoW (40 hrs) + Sleep = no time for anything else.

Secondly if he’s on my server I want him in the guild! Dedicated guys like this are comedy gold.

Wanted: Sanity and a Rental property in Adelaide

The rental market in Adelaide is insane. Due to the hoons in my area and a rent increase from the landlord; I looking for another place to live in Adelaide.

The market must be so very tight, as the properties are terrible, rentals high, and hundreds of people.

If you know of a good house, unit, flat in the city or southern suburbs – send me an email! [typhoon.andrew@gmail.com] My girlfriend and I are great tenants, and we’d love the inside scoop.

My full rant below…

Do you think dogbox on the 3rd floor in Adelaide is reasonable?
If you like very short walks to the city, then a monastic life in a shoe box; then I have the property for you. No heating, tiny bedrooms, and no storage space. Bugger.

How about 20+ people turning up for a rental inspection?
I hope one day we find that perfect house, but with the 100 of applicants – its a tough battle even getting above the clatter of feet. Some agents would kill to get 20 people to a house auction.

If I had a lazy few hundred thousand dollars at the moment, I’d buy a place to rent out here. Heck, I’d buy two. Its seriously insane.

Misspent Youth by Peter F. Hamilton (quick review)

A book for fans of Peter’s sci-fi work, or younger readers. The style or writing is very easy to read, and the story flows well. There are no complex plots which intersect or twist, which is a real change for one of Hamilton’s books, which is why I would not rate it as highly.

In short: good, but not grand.

Hamilton is a brilliant author, who has structured this book to be accessible rather than complex.

After reading a few of his other books, which are all large scale epic stories, it is a total change of pace. You’re almost better off not thinking this is a Hamilton book, and then read it with an open mind.

But I don’t fully understand the ending. The main character states openly that even though he’s in trouble at the end, he’d do it all again the same anyway. But then goes on to expose and damage the people who helped him have that experience.

Then again perhaps that is supposed to be part of the human element, a reflection of that character’s contradictions.

WoW player hits 70 in 28 hours

A player has hit the new level cap in just 28 hours. Impressive.

Its worth the read if you’re a WoW fan. If its fake then a few sites have been drawn into it.

http://www.pro-g.co.uk/news/17-01-2007-4522.html
http://www.worldofraids.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3441 (screen-shot here too)

This is a repost from my post on my Guild’s (Endeavour) forum site.

Basically says:

Gullerbone, a 24-year-old French WoW player, reached level 70 at 4:04 am (CET) on January 17, 2007. He is believed to be the world’s first.

He said: “Cau (the 1st European lvl 60) and I planned the exp(erience) route step by step, trying everything to make sure it was the most appropriate, the groups organization with the guild Millenium and their members. Each member rotated using a definite order to help me to grind on mobs, mostly with AE, surrounded with several guildmate healers, tanks, pullers etc…”

Gullerbone used a tactic of ‘tagging’ computer controlled enemies, which allowed him to achieve experience points even though his guildmates killed them.

When asked how many players he had help from, he said: “Well at first we had only five (during the first 10 hours or so) so that 10 of the members could get to lvl 62. Then in the morning we were 15 in order to kill the mobs at a faster rate. Finally in the evening, everyone was involved and we could gather a 35 man raid to help me in Netherstorm with our new lvl 62 doing most of the job.”

The fact that a player has managed to reach level 70 so fast will not please developers Blizzard, who had hoped to see the Burning Crusade occupy fans for at least a year.

IMHO the fact that you can do that is not a reason for us to get upset. The real challenge will be getting through the content.

Firefox console to control everything

I was annoyed with Firefox 2 always stealing back the PCs focus after I clicked a link outside the browser, or tabbed to a new program.

A 5 second Google search later found this page with excellent advise on how to fix this problem. It also shows how you can alter almost any of the setting in Firefox!

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/07/secr … owser.html

(edit): And another here which speeds Firefox up.
http://public.ccsds.org/sites/cwe/help/ … aspx?ID=10

MS breaks HTML email

MS has changed the functionality of HTML email in Outlook so that it no longer conforms to as much of the CSS standards as it previously did.

The link here has the article, and a huge number of comments. Here too.

Seriously I like the fact that the geeks are up in arms, but fail to recognise that the Business and normal users are the target of this change (typical community reaction = panic QQ).

As a rule (which I have no evidence for) geeks send plain text, or very simple RTF or HTML. But business workers like flashy graphics and borders.

Email management software (and there are a heap of vendors) will always need to support this, because thats what users expect from a message. A typical user does not differentiate their email from a web browser.

This presents a issue for internet software, but also an opportunity to grab the Outlook audience, and own them. What the Outlook community need is a plug-in that renders CSS styles correctly, and which can be set as the default email creation tool.

Then publish it to the whinge-net, then get the license revenue, then get purchased by MS.

Chart Throb by Ben Elton (quick review)

Ben Elton’s latest novel starts well, suggesting that his sharp and sarcastic wit will be applied to reality TV singing contests (ala Australian Idol). But it does not deliver.

Quick Summary: Promising, but gets repetitive very quickly, and dull by the end. Avoid it.

Most disapointing was the way the characters repeated the same phrases over and over, which while it may reflect the true nature of reality TV, is totally frustrating to read.

The plot was very very simple, and characterisation was not overly good; which is highly unusual for Ben Elton.

The twist at the end (which most of Elton’s books have) is not predictable, but also highly suspect.

Pandora’s Star by Peter E. Hamilton (quick review)

Pandora’s Star is a sci-fi novel by the established author Peter E. Hamilton.

In short: Excellent.
If you enjoy sci-fi or liked any of his other books (Reality Dysfunction, Neutronium Alchemist, Naked God to name a few), then this is worth the purchase.

The story is concluded (or so I’m told) in Judas Unchained.

The book begins humbly and opens into a full space opera style story. I grabbed the book while on holiday, and have consumed all 1200 pages very quickly.

Characterisation is very good, and the links to our own time are scattered throughout so we keep a frame of reference. A highlight for me was the reference and obvious knowledge of historic space exploration, as many of their problems are adapted to a futuristic context, and applied effectively.

This is also a book for the technology buffs, as all the super-science devices are well thought out, and their impact and application on the society are mixed within the story.

Be warned that this is definitely a book one of two, as nothing is really resolved in the first book, rather the book ends leaving a few good cliff hangers, and some excellent questions to ponder.

Tuesday’s patch v2.0.3 notes

The patch yesterday held some alterations, and hopefully they’ll announce a new round of bans for the nasty gold sellers who send in game mail.

Click through to read the notes. Thanks to a well prepared guild-mate for the notes via email.

This patch has changes for most classes, and it appears that Druids, Hunters and Rogues were particularly focused. Rogues and Druids get a talent refund. And we all get to check our mods again – not me though, I’ll wait till next week.

Also the macro / scripting language looks to have a few tweaks too.

More notes from Tuesday’s patch

As a follow-up this link and list is some extra changes that did not make the official list.

I don’t vouch for the accuracy of this (of anything in fact), but some interesting changes.

Source forum on Blizzard’s website here :

Back in the game

Howdy all,

Another new year and all sorts of goodies to look at already.

The warcraft cookie contest and artwork contest were particularly good in December, so check them out here.

Its also not long until millions of geeks take annual leave, or quit school / relationships / work to play the Warcraft expansion. Lets hope the hype is right, and also hope that the large download chugging away in background is almost all we need.

I’m expecting a huge spike in the number of players in every server, and look forward to the “place in queue” to gently count down to zero, and a new pile of newbie players to be born. Conversly most of the existing players will try the new races, but lets just wait and see exactly how many abandon old toons for the funky new models.

(Do the blood elves make a good sound when they die?)

I also expect to be downloading my mods again, and a fair amount of instability in the first few days. Hopefully as an Aussie our play times will be off-set enough to not suffer a total meltdown.