Haibane.info

Month: May 2009

  • almost done with Teldrassil

    Zzamba is now a level 12 druid. The only quests I have left to do are Ursal and Oakenscowl; I also need to go get Blackmoss The Fetid’s heart. I have been routinely finding random people to group with for these quests, and thats been a lot of fun. Not only in the social sense, but also to see other players’ styles. I tend to be cautious as I enter a zone, carefully picking a target and then dropping spells on them from afar to soften them up as I close in for melee. Clearly I’m the most timid elf in Teldrassil because almost everyone else just runs straight to the nearest foe and starts slugging it out. It’s also humbling to see that most people I team with are lower level than I am, but way better at killing off enemies (in terms of speed and strategy). I suspect almost everyone I meet is playing an alt, though I did meet a couple of players even more noob than I.

    I have been using the mail a lot, sending a lot of gear and silver to my other players, especially poor dwarf Gganda who is only level 4 and thus doesn’t have access to a mailbox yet (haven’t found one yet, anyway, in the dwarven starting area playpen). I also started that blood elf paladin, Aelasha, and decided to keep her on Staghelm with the rest of my characters just for convenience.

    At any rate, once I am done with Teldrassil then I will be ready for Zzamba to do the druid quest for bear-form and move onwards to Darkshore. I will probably switch over to Gganda for a while once I’ve left Teldrassil though just to keep things balanced. To be honest, though, Gganda hasnt been as interesting to me; I’m more motivated to give Aelasha a run (the blood elf scenery is breathtaking, reminding me of the whole Dragonlance elven city. Its so techno in contrast to the night elves’ leafy burbs).

    I like the combinations I’ve done so far: human warrior, night elf druid, blood elf paladin, and dwarven rogue. I will probably do an undead mage for the fun of it, and an orc priest, at some point. I’m considering a repeat druid for the Tauren, too – they have that whole shamnistic, native american vibe going so it seems a natural fit.

  • guilty of fictional crimes

    Ogiue Maniax has a very important post about a man charged with a crime for possessing obscene manga. I was not familiar with the case prior to his post but it really is a chilling matter. As he points out,

    fiction should have every right to depict an aspect of reality while not being completely behold to it or the law. In other words, if fiction were to be forced to depict a world where everything is legally okay or turns out that way, fiction would die. Imagine Death Note without murder.

    It’s worth reading the whole post for the details. In a nutshell, what is being punished here is thoughtcrime.

  • The glory of Fez, and That 90s Show

    Sometimes, when you’re looking for something on YouTube, you end up finding hilarious material from fans that you’d never have been able to find otherwise. I was looking for video of Fez’s awesome “rule with an Iron Fist” comment from That 70s Show and came across this paradoy by a bunch of high school kids which is so hilarious it deserves some highlight. Fans of That 70s Show will appreciate this; everyone else, move along 🙂

    Since my original intention was to put some Fez up, here’s Fez versus the ninjas, enjoy:

  • hardware update

    I’ve taken the plunge, and ordered the ASRock mobo I mentioned earlier, as well as a Dual Core chip (E7400). I went with the E7400 instead of an E5200 (about $40 cheaper) or an E8400 ($50 more expensive) because it was matched to the FSB speed of the mobo, at 1066 MHz. The board does support the slower FSB (800 MHz) for the cheaper CPU but i want to broaden my upgrade path. The more expensive chips run at 1333 MHz so that (or higher) will have to wait for my next upgrade cycle which is not going to be for a long time.

    As I mentioned earlier I bought some DDR 400 RAM to upgrade the pc earlier which I can still use with this new board. In fact I have a plan; this PC is the second kids pc, which I have now outfitted for gaming and processing, but the original kids PC (whose temporary death motivated me to start this whole journey) is a really ancient dell that originally came shipped with Windows Me. So, what I can do is take the mobo and present P4 chip from the PC i am using now and use those to give it a boost as well. I can wait on this for a year or so, at which point i will also transfer over the old DDR 400 ram and the AGP graphics card too, and buy new DDR2 ram and a PCI-e graphics card for the more powerful machine. so, I will have have upgraded two PCs and not wasted anything. I’ll put Vista on that one too – its running Win 2K at present. at that point ill have two systems:

    1. kids PC alpha – ASUS P4s533-e mobo, P4, 2 GB DDR 400 ram, AGP 4x
    2. kids PC beta, gaming rig – Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2, DC2, 2 GB DDR2 667 ram, PCI-e

    its a little less than optimal but i think it worked out well, especially since i dont need to upgrade both systems right this minute but can wait on it a year or so, by which time the DDR2 and the PCI-e card should be even cheaper, and I’ll probably spring for a new hard drive for system 2 and transfer its IDE hard drive to system 1.

  • Finishing Elwynn

    My human character, a warrior named Aabde, has now completed all the quests in Elwynn Forest and reached level 12. One of the highlights was the griffin ride from Westfall to Stormwind; I should have taken some screenshots. The final two quests were to get rid of Hogger and Morgan the Collector; in both cases my timing was fortuitous in that I found other players to team with. Hogger in particular was a pain because the kobolds had a very low drop rate for the quest items (armbands), so we kept having to roam around that area and ambush every kobold we could find, and Hogger would keep respawning and attack us over and over. Still, it’s amazing how much more effective even a small group of two players is than going solo. I also managed to join a Guild – the first one that invited me while roaming around Stormwind City. Thus far my Guild membership hasn’t really been a material benefit but I figure it’s good to be affiliated for now. I am indebted to Anachronda’s character Chisa for the plethora of bags; thanks, man!

    So, at any rate, I’ve gone as far as I can in Elwynn at this stage. It seems the next thing to do is go to Westfall and start the quest chains there (kill X of this, Y of that… etc). I did venture east and discovered Three Corners, but there were all sorts of level 15 creatures roaming around, so I lost my nerve and turned back. Another option might be to take the tram to the Dwarven City and see what quests I can find up there. Any suggestions? Whats the natural pathway? (I do have one quest that will require a trip to Loch Modon).

    I also have picked up the leatherworking and minng skills, and have collected a pile of leather hides and copper ore, but am not cure how I go about turning this into money. Plus, I have earned two talent points, but that doesnt seem enough to actually buy any talents yet. I did catch a couple of fish, though. I want to get a bit more up to speed on these skills but am really unsure where to start.

    There is one other temptation, to shelve Aabde for a while and focus on my elf Zzamba instead. He just graduated from the playpen and is at level 6, so getting him up to level 10-12 will be a good diversion and change of pace. Well, change of scenery, any way.

    Anyone have any advice for me on where to go and what to do next?

  • Episode 1: a long, long time ago, in a fandom far, far away

    Today, May 19th marks the ten year anniversary of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.

    It’s been ten years. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe the excitement and the thrill and the magic of anticipation I felt back then. My friend Eric and I waited in line, for how long I don’t even recall, to get in on opening day at the Cinemark Theater in Katy on I-10, which will forever be my Star Wars theater. The months leading up to the release were amazing, with tidbits and screen shots leaking out from sites like TheForce.net, sites I reloaded obsessively. To this day, this teaser image still gives me the chills:

    Episode One: The Phantom Menace
    Episode One: The Phantom Menace

    And of course the pod race and the final battle with Darth Maul – the greatest star wars villain ever – were pure-adrenaline amazing enough to make all the annoyances worthwhile – even Jar Jar. Mostly.

    In a lot of ways Episode One let us all down, but the anticipation was something special, and an experience in and of itself. So, rock on Star Wars, with your Clone Wars and your CGI and your toy lines and your Anakin backpacks. Someday someone is gonna come along and pull a JJ Abrams on you, too.

  • Gurren Lagann: piercing the heavens with a drill

    I’ve been watching Gurren Lagann on Cartoon Network’s monday night anime block for the past couple of months, and have been really enjoying it. The design of the mecha are truly unique, gigantic faces as torsos, and the story is your classic young boy becomes a man, along with a big brother role model and love triangle on the side. Throw in your all-powerful (sorta) alien threat and scrappy humanity rising from the post-apocalyptic world and you’ve got a pretty solid series that isn’t surprising in any way, but still manages to be a lot of fun – and the technology deus ex machine that the hero Simon uses is just plain cool. There is a surprisingly mature introspection about Simon finding his identity not in being a flashy hero, but actually in the value of his humble profession (mining and digging) that lends the whole opera some serious emotional heft, too.

    Actually the whole series is very evocative of Robotech, which seems so blatant at times that I wonder if it is deliberate.

    For more substantive analysis, check out Drastic’s review (along with the iconic image of Yoko from the opener that should be a crowd-pleaser).

  • PSA: Sony Ericsson is not giving you a new laptop

    This is a public service announcement. No corporate company is going to give you thousands of dollars in hardware or software just because you forwarded an email around. In fact, no company can even track how many people you forwarded email to. It is impossible for a company to know this. It would be stupid for them to give you free stuff. So no, Microsoft is not giving you money, BMW is not giving you a car, and (the latest in this sort of garbage), Sony Ericsson is not giving you a T18 laptop. In fact, the T18 is a cell phone, not a laptop!

    The attached image to these annoying emails is below the fold for your derision and mockery.

    See more information on the hoax at Snopes.com. Also, Sony Ericsson has a denial on their web site. Here’s another disclaimer from them about the hoax, too.

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  • new trek for Star Trek: a contrarian view

    I’ve been cautiously optimistic about the new Trek reboot movie until now, but the final product let me with a bit of a “meh” response. Don’t get me wrong – I didn’t dislike the film, nor do I think they have ruined Trek or or committed any blasphemies. In a lot of ways I agree with the generally positive reviews that the movie seems to capture the essence of the 60s original series (TOS) in some way, only amped up and refreshed for modern sensibilities (i.e. more sex, more violence, more explosions. I’m not complaining).

    However I do still feel surprisingly un-invested in the outcome and direction that this new trek is taking us. I think this is because in a lot of ways, TOS was not “true” Trek for me – it was more of a backstory to the real Trek, namely the Next Generation (TNG). Not to say I didn’t like TOS either – it’s one of my favorite series of all time, up there with Galactica, Firefly, and yes, TNG. What made TOS great was not Kirk’s hypermasculinity or the short skirts. It was about the relationship between the three main characters, of whom Spock really stood out as the defining icon. The three of them formed a Holy Trinity of Science Fiction and every episode was ultimately as much about them as anything else. Others have written about how TOS was shaped by its Cold War conception and how it represented a positive vision for humanity unlike anything else ever written, but to me as a child, I didn’t really get all that. It was just simply a great show because it was cool.

    But while I loved TOS, it was the first set of movies that really sealed the deal and ignited my fandom. For anyone watching the series and then the first three movies in particular, there’s a gigantic disconnect. The reason is because the movies were where Trek grew up and embraced its science fiction heritage identity. Instead of social issues like racism or war, which were staples of the TV series, the movies delved into concepts like humanity, sacrifice, duty, identity, intelligence, and even destiny. The screen was bigger and the story expanded to match. And there were at last real consequences, with Spock and the Enterprise both sacrificed so that the others may live. Yes, they brought Spock back, but not without cost.

    When TNG started, it started out a bit schizophrenic, trying in some ways to evoke TOS (remember the male miniskirt? ugh) but also cognizant of the movies’ style too. Ultimately, in terms of both style and tone, TNG evolved beyond the movies and became something wholly new in its own right. TNG went for seven seasons – more than twice as long as TOS – and explored science fiction themes in incredible variety and depth. Just off the top of my head – Dharmok. Data’s trial. The Enterprise-C. “There are four lights!” And everything with Lt. Barclay. I’ve barely scratched the surface here – TNG had an incredible versatility and maturity to it, which I think helped reinvigorate science fiction as a whole genre, in both TV and literary forms.

    and now? (spoilers follow)

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  • system rebuild, need mobo advice

    my upgrade of the kids’ pc went well – especially since the older kids PC started working again too, so now I have two extra PCs. I am going to take over the newer system (newer being a highly relative term) and want to upgrade it even further. Earlier I just added an AG video card and some more RAM, but what I’d like to do is move away from the P4 platform and go dual-core. So my dilemma is that I need a mobo which:

    – supports dual-core processors (Intel, my preference)
    – supports AGP, not PCI Express
    – uses PC 3200 RAM (DDR)

    in other words, a board which supports modern processors but last-generation video cards and memory. Is this possible? Anyone have any suggestions? I am overwhelmed by the choices on newegg thus far and need some help here. I did find this board by ASRock which seems promising, but was hoping for a few more choices.