Here's a nice pic of the human land at dusk.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
WoW Journal 04
Started an undead rogue last night. It's amazing how different the starting areas are. The Taurons have large grassy fields, the gnomes have a snowy forest, the humans have rolling countryside & woods, and the undead have a weird, creepy land. It really seems like different games. Anyway, was not happy with my undead rogue--rather, the world it lived in. I had a very difficult time finding the main questmaster, something that was really easy for Taurons & humans (don't remember the gnome). The newbie fodder creatures looked just like the undead from afar so I had a hard time finding things to kill.
Went back to my human ranger and completed the first non-newbie quest (explore a mine). After that, I went to the town center (not the newbie place, the next one) and had a flashback from Asheron's Call: Everyone was standing in the middle chatting and showing off their stuff. Some of the chars had really cool pets, like a floating black cloud genie thing. There were a couple of duels going on, so I watched them for a bit (looked interesting). It was late so I didn't do anything else.
Next time I will try a dark elf rogue. I like the rogues because they can sneak up to someone and backstab them (lvl 3 mobs lose about 1/3 of their health). They can also throw knifes to pull a mob to them, and can just barely get two thrown before they are too close. I like that ranged attacks have a minimum range so a char can't just shoot arrows at something that is clawing at it.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
WoW Journal 02
This time I created a little female Gnome Warlock (I thought Warlocks were MALE witches). She will supposedly be able to summon creatures, and I liked the Summoner in Nox, so it might work out well.
This race is a little harder to play if only because the first questgiver isn't obvious. I didn't see a quest giver until I leveled up. I also expected a big huge bull creature to be tougher than a little tiny girl thing but they appear to be about the same. Why even bother having different races if the only differences are a few race 'spells'?
Some guy kept following me around saying 'ha ha'. He wanted me to duel but I told him I was just starting and wanted to finish a quest, but he kept bothering me. I guess he thought I was a real girl since my avatar was female. He eventually went away but I had to deal with him for 20 minutes. Anyway, finished a few quests and shut it down.
WoW Journal 01
The install took about an hour. Its four disks and I guess compressed content. After the install it took another 15 minutes to get the latest patch. Was able to get 'Pangolyn', which is a made-up word (surprising how many times it has already been taken elsewhere), since Pango and Pangolin were already used.
Started with a Tauren (guess what it looks like! moo) Hunter, which is basically a D&D Ranger. It has a gun and an axe. Didn't realize I had a gun until the third or so level. Started in the Tauren newbie area, which basically has a Native American motif. I went to the first guy with an ! over his head, meaning he had a quest for me. He was right in front of me, couldn't miss him. Anyway, I think he told me to bring him some feathers (may have been a later quest). The place is crawling with easy-t0-kill walking birds, so I killed a few and got what I needed, along with lots of junk. I don't like the way the interface works--you can't tell how much something is worth unless you try to sell it. That wouldn't be a problem except you can only hold a few items, so you have to throw things away unless you go to the town every few minutes.
Anyway, I continued doing little quests (kill # of x; bring x to y; etc.) and leveling until I hit level 6, which took about two hours. It wasn't very exciting and I didn't come close to death, but this was the beginner area so I wasn't too worried about that. Eventually I did all of my class quests so I went to the next town over the ridge. I started seeing a lot of corpses on the ground, but the same old tigers and birds, which didn't make sense. Wait, those aren't the same! The birds are now level 10 and the tigers are actually wolves. These are more of a challenge, but still not that hard. I don't see how these guys were getting killed, unless they ran over here as level 1. I also saw a big rhino-looking animal, but it disappeared before I had a chance to attack it. I saw a herd of them later and killed a baby one.
I chose a role-playing server, but the general chat was not RP stuff (dude, that was l33t; anyone played CS:S?) so I don't think they enforce the chat like the server documentation said. 12:15, time to sleep.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Evolving Robots
Interesting article here. This guy programmed a couple of Lego MindStorms robots to get instructions from each other. Not really learning, just random changes to the core decisions, but successful ones keep going while unsuccessful ones die in corners. Caution: Contains a racy image of a fembot, so don't send this to immature individuals!
No More PlayStation 2?
Apparently their DualShock controller uses technology from Immersion corp. Read the article here. What about the other major game manufacturers? Isn't the mechanism basically the same? The Nintendo64 had an adapter for feedback years ago.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
WoW Only $40
Fry's will have World of Warcraft for $40 3/28/05 and 3/29/05. Noticed that a few places now have it for $45, but most are still $50 and more. I really want it but that's two weeks' allowance (wife allows me $20/week for junk). Wonder if that's just a two-day price or if that is good from now on. I'll get it at Circuit City since they price match + some %, forgot how much.
Friday, March 25, 2005
Doom 3 with No CD
I recently bought Doom 3 for about $20 at MicroCenter. I read that there were problems if you had CD emulators on your computer, even to the point that the program would not run unless you uninstalled the emulator. Anyway, I am using Virtual DAEMON 3.47 and it seems to work without a problem. I even found a tiny ISO of the game CD so I even play using the program.
Obviously, I bought the game, and I really oppose stealing games. I used to grab a few games out of newsgroups a few years ago but it's just not worth the risk to my PC, not to mention the legality of it. That being said, I do not want to use the CD every time I want to play a game. What if I scratch it? What if I lose it? Programs like DAEMON make it easy--just rip an ISO, copy it to your hard drive, then mount it. Takes up 650MB sometimes but that's not much space, and can be cheap if you don't install the entire game (run movies from CD, as an example).
I like Valve's way of doing things--validate the user over the Internet. Once you validate your game you can play without the CD at any time.
Defragmenting iPods
I find myself defragmenting my iPod about once a month. Well, I don't think I've even had it a month, and I've done it twice, but whatever. It is supposed to improve battery life since the drive doesn't have to thrash around as much. I don't know if that's true, but I like defragmented drives.
World of Warcraft
Anyone playing World of Warcraft? I played Asheron's Call when it was in Beta and continued to play it when it cost $10/month for about four months and really enjoyed it. I am about ready to get into something like that again, but I don't want to pay $50 for a game AND pay a monthly fee (why not make the game free? come on!) Maybe when it hits $20 somewhere...
VS.NET 2005 Beta Free
Visual Studio 2005 Beta products are apparently free. Good for people that want to check out .NET.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Dinosaur Soft Tissue Found
Apparently some dinosaur soft tissue was found. It is actually flexible. I find it hard to believe that it could last thousands of years, but I guess it's possible.
Pic of Dawn
Was curious, so I dug around until I found a picture of Dawn from The Dawn and Drew Show.
Found it in http://www.dawnanddrew.com/drew/photolog.
The Office in the US
NPR has an audio story about The Office in the US. I really liked the original version, and they are apparently copying the episodes and 'translating' them for the US audience, as opposed to just using the concept and creating new material. I really like Steve Carrell, but the clip they played was not impressive.
iPod Mini for $100
Well, approximately $100. MicroCenter is selling the old iPod Minis for $178 or something like that, and you get $75 off an iPod if you buy that day from a brand new MicroCenter credit card that you get approved that day, so it ends up being close to $100 after all is said and done. Not a bad deal! I'm still waiting on my $75...
New Post Button
I have added a new post button on the sidebar. Looks like it works! Yea! The e-mail system is very buggy and rejects 1/2 the time.
Doom 3 for $20
Doom 3 is only $20 at MicroCenter! The boxes are marked $40 in their store, and it was originally $60. Not sure how long this will last--there is no sale tag in the store.
Apple vs. Windows Photoshop Contest
Apple vs. Windows Photoshop contest. I'm surprised there are Apple bashers in the list!
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Spore!
Will Wright is amazing. I can't wait for Spore to come out. Listen to Gaming Steve's podcasts about his experience seeing it demonstrated.
Monday, March 21, 2005
Oblivion
I can't wait for this to come out! I never finish games like these but I usually spend about a year off-and-on just roaming through the world. It takes a fair amount of commitment to keep moving in the game because there is a lot you have to keep in your head. Anyway, I'm sure my current laptop will not be able to show off the game's new graphics. I had to buy a new card when Morrowind came out because it was way too slow on my PC. Official site
Dark Energy?
I've heard talk of dark energy recently in various tech podcasts and web pages. One of the speakers in the Dark Energy article from the 'In Our Time' podcast disliked the name 'dark energy' and tried to show that it was just Einstein's cosmological constant with a different value. His argument was that 'dark energy' sounds like 'dark matter'. Dark matter is just plain old matter that doesn't produce light (the Earth is dark matter, the sun is
not). Dark energy is not 'opposite' energy, because the concept can't be turned that way. Rather, he sees it as another force to oppose gravity.
The problem is that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. The previous thought was that expansion would slow down and eventually compress in a 'big crunch', which might start another 'big bang' (my personal opinion). However, nothing can explain it expanding faster and faster--it doesn't match any conceptual models we currently use in our daily lives. The only way for something to accelerate is if a force continually acts upon the object. Gravity works on energy as well as mass so it can't be either of these.
Gravity is the only known atomic force that has any influence beyond the molecular level. Its nature is still not completely understood, although it can be calculated. There is something that is working against gravity that is causing the accelerated expansion of the universe. The force of the 'big bang' should have given particles an initial velocity but it should not continue to act upon the particles after the event.
More ramblings to come on this.
jPodder 2.0
Trying the latest build this week. Works much better than the previous version (1.1). It doesn't have the ability to exclude a feed from downloads but I just put an "X" at the beginning of the URL to keep it out of the loop for a while.
I like the ability to pick and choose old 'casts in the feeds. This is really useful for new feeds. I was using nimiq but it only lets you specify the max # of 'casts to download--it doesn't let you pick the specific files.
Apple to buy TiVo?
Is this for real? That's an odd combination, especially with the lack
of support TiVo has for Macs.
Google news
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
CherryOS
Wired News:
CherryOS Not BS, Author Says
I wonder if it's just a scam to raise awareness of PearPC?
(update) Apparently it's for real, not a PearPC scam.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Monday, March 07, 2005
Podcasting
Podcasting is cool! iPodder.org :
I have become additcted to all of the science broadcasts out there.
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