Edifier MP300

Th second little groovy audio system I have to try is the Edifier MP 300. Like its smaller Soundbar cousin, this unit is designed to be portable. But while the Soundbar unit is a single solid item, this unit is three separate pieces.

This lends itself to places where you want an unobtrusive sound unit, have limited space, but also are probably going to be setup for more than a few hours. For me this is perfect for our study, where space is a premium, but I stillwant good audio.

The unit produces far better sound that a laptop, and better than the crappy plastic pillar upright units that you see for sale in bargin bins by far.

The good:

• Sound quality is nice and full. More than enough to fill a study, bedroom, or small living area.
• Attractive design, which is a refreshing change from the black plastic or beige hardware seen in most rooms. Its also not overed in “extreme” icons and stupid symbols.
• Setup was easy when using with an iPhone, basically plug in and turn on.

The Bad:

• Many cables and cords, while needed are not handy if you have to pack up quickly. Thus the use in a semi-permanent or fixed position rather than a road device.
• I had a terrible time getting the unt to work correctly with my laptop’s audio port. After a good 20 minutes of playing around, I just piked and tested the iPhone hoolup. This is totally the opposite of the SoundBar which worked straight away. This is probably due to the laptop having pretty strange audio devices in teh windows system, so not a total mess.

Overall: I’d be ok to have a set of these speakers, but would probably hook them up to a desktop unit, rather than a laptop or portable device. They are good enough for most sound applications, but do not require an extensive nest of cables, and also not as bulky as a full 5.1 sound system, which would be totally under utilised in out home office.

I still have a full 5.1 sound system sitting in my garden shed, as it is too power intensive

RaidBot for DPS History

Another great tool – the RaidBot for DPS History. Like the State of DPS, this is a graphical presentation of the dps ranks, but in a line graph. As cool as the State of DPS is.

Nice to see the geek-programmers out there creating parsing tools.

The State of DPS

If you’re a dps fanatic, and like to keep in the loop on exactly which spec is progressing well, then check out http://stateofdps.com/

It takes the top 200 runs from the World of Logs project and supplies a ranking of the classes by dps output. You can further dig by class and by boss to really compare. Its really quite cool.

A note though – these logs are the best 1% people in the wow population, so do not expect to produce the same results. This site is a guide, so please treat it as such (until you can hit 22k dps, then you’ll be in the logs).

Best mistake p4.0.6 that I wish I knew

Here is a hotfix item in patch 4.0.6 which I wish I knew about before Blizzard patched it…

“Engineering Target Dummies are no longer able to taunt boss-level creatures”

Tell me that could not have been exploited in a wonderful manner. Drop a few target dummies, and watch the Tank’s head explode (this is bad behaviour). Or drop a few when your Tank dies at 1% and hope the dummies absorb enough swings. Source. Just say’n.

Being a guild officer

Over the years I’ve been an officer in a few guilds along the wow ride, and for better or worse it seems to keep happening. Probably it happens for the better in terms of slightly nudging the attitude of the fellow officers and guildies, and maybe for the worse in terms of my attention time and stress levels.

If you ever want to speak to a bunch of wow players who are sick of whinging and loot drama, just buy an officer a cold-brew; you’ll hear plenty. And god help you if you’re one of the loot-mongers and the officer has already had three drinks.

So in the spirit of sharing for everyone’s benefit, and also keeping myself sane, here is a few things about being an officer.

A good officer will:

• Be outwardly calm
• Seldom (if ever) speak openly against policy. May raise concerns internally amongst other officers and leadership.
• Operate within the boundaries of their perview. ie. Stick to the areas where others know they’re working.
• Always consider the style of the organisation, especially where it is dissimilar to what they are used to.
• Help reenforce and also continue to influence/enhance the style of the organisation. This means not trying to engineer change overnight, but maybe chance a policy for the better over a season.
• Officers will seek to learn from and communicate with each other.
• Officers will depend on each other, trust others, and delegate.
• Officers will follow the rules far more than every other member, including the leader.
• Step aside if they cannot follow the rules in the spirit they are intended.

Officers need:

• Boundaries of authority and action.
• Known points of escalation
• Power to move and act independandly of the leader
• A frequent point of communication with the leadership
• Can do things for the leadership which even the leadership cannot.
  • Eg, can hold to the principals when the leaders might be compromised by a friendship or personal involvement.

An officer will not:

• Call out a non-raid issue for discussion during a raid without a bloody good reason.
• Be a loot whore, greedy, or generally favour themselves over others.
• Disregard the spirit of a rule to enforce it strictly and without compassion.

Ok, that all said – why am I raising this?

Because I see many folks who are officers & leaders in name only. The kind of idiots who lead by reverse-example. Or just such poor selfish mongrels that they should be prohibited from controlling anything, but instead they get promoted for being the loudest.

So what also needs to be added to the list above, is that the leadership (be it one person or many) need to select officers carefully, and never just because the person is a mate, or a good raider, or loud. You’re just setting yourself up for a drama ride of your own creation.

Thankfully this is few and far between, and all I have to do is follow my own advice.

Happy killing.