Not much blogging lately - I've been brewing up some bigger things  ...and playing an unholy amount of WoW.  Thus, you get more insight into the World that is... Warcraft. 

In Zul'Aman, there is a boss with a short mind control (MC) spell.  If someone in the team gets mind controlled, depending on what class that player is, the remaining 9 members must quickly follow these rules:

If the MC'ed player is a Ranged Fighter:
Incapacitate the player as harmlessly as possible.  Stun them or attract their attention onto something capable of taking their attack.

If the MC'ed player is a Healer (except Paladin):
Try to cancel any healing they may do to the enemy, but otherwise ignore them.

If the MC'ed player is a Melee Fighter or Tank (except Paladin):
If Main Tank, the Off-Tank steps into their roll immediately, grabbing the attention of the main boss as swiftly as possible. 
The controlled player can be slowed with a concussion effect to prevent them from reaching melee range on other players before the spell wears off.

If the MC'ed player is a Paladin:
The entire team must stop whatever they're doing.  Regardless of roll or abilities, all players must wildly and crazily attack the controlled player with every means at their disposal.

There is no tactical reason... we just all like hitting Paladins.
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Phil
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This Year's had some pretty amazing and crazy moments, and this blog, in the last few days we punched through 30000 hits!  Thanks in no small part to whoever does the google search 'All I need is a tall ship', goes to images, and then clicks on the starship pictures that bring him/her to my site... almost every single day (aren't track stats fun?).

So this post celebrates the blog, with the years top entries.  The comic depicts my 3 choices:

Box 1: Late one night in London town (isn't my depiction of the Thames great? I know - it looks like a photo but no really - it's just a comic drawing):
http://mercyonmysoul.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!8E4A7499E999D913!644.entry

Box 2: Getting picked up by security after a secret night landing in a classified base:
http://mercyonmysoul.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!8E4A7499E999D913!792.entry

Box 3: Looking out over NY City from the top of the Empire State Building:
http://mercyonmysoul.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!8E4A7499E999D913!775.entry
http://mercyonmysoul.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!8E4A7499E999D913!790.entry

Good... no - phenomenal times.  Absolutely priceless.
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Phil

Read a slashdot today that made me laugh.  The US military plan to integrate macs into their networks.  Hackers rarely target OSX (the Mac operating system) vulnerabilities, so they're splashing them around in the hopes it'll fox the would be casual hackers.  The slashdot crowd are quick to jump on their Mac Vs Windows sides of course, both making good points, the best of which the US military should probably pay attention to, but what made me laugh was the first two comments:

"The Army is integrating Macs into their IT network ... ... Macintosh computers have long been incompatible with a security keycard-reading system known as Common Access Cards system, or CAC, which is heavily used by the military. The Army's Apple program, created [in 2005], is working to change that."

Comment1: "i thought they don't allow gays in the military?!?"

Comment2: "There's no rule against being a Mac user in the military. You're just not allowed to tell people that you're a Mac user, and they're not allowed to ask if you're a Mac user."

Very witty - tickled me a bit.

Damn... I didn't do a comic for this one.  :-o  Ah well - this one doesn't count - it was just a quick aside.
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Phil
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We may as well face it, this is rapidly becoming a WoW blog.  I've posted this here only so people searching the web for tips might find it too - really this was just for my guildies.

More and more hunters are coming over to the darkside of BM, and as we're getting Lurker to 9% now I thought I'd post a thread to help those BM's get the most out of their new spec.  The macro isn't of my invention or anything, but it sure as hell works.  It's especially good for Hunters on a budget - Anael still wears some rubbish gear but this lets him compete.

First of all, this is the add-on of wonder:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/7960/

It's called quartz bar, and it will show you the 'swing' and casting times of your steady and auto shots.  Without this, it's near impossible to get the timing right.

Then, all you need to do, is cast steady shot while auto shot is in it's swing.  You'll see what I mean when you've seen the mod.  This mod also shows you when your sting is down so you wont forget to replace it.  Spam Kill Command all the time, and when it's active, it'll cut in, then get back to your swing.

If you really want to push up the damage though - you don't want to have your head all buried in steadyshot/autoshot/steadyshot/autoshot/killcommand/autoshot...  I have them on the bar, sometimes I feel like going old school and doing it myself, but generally, I prefer to have a cornetto ice cream in my off hand while raiding, and this macro will free you up for just that... or... whatever you might choose to do with a free hand.

Make a macro, call it 'DPS' or whatever, and put this script in it:

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/cast [exists,target=pettarget] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

Now you've got your auto, steady, and kill command all on one button.  Don't just spam it - look at your quartz bar swings - if you spam it too much you'll mess up the timing.

When you're not occupied by the base swing, you can concentrate on keeping your stings up, and, if you're really hot, weave in arcane shots from time to time - they're higher damage than Steady shot and instant cast, so don't interrupt the auto-swing much if you get it timed just right.  Multishot is also a valid replacement for a .5 second interruption of your swing, as it fires 3 shots that each have about half the damage a steady shot has (so 150% damage of a steady over all), with each shot having a chance to crit.  If you mis-time the multi though, you will have lost some potential DPS so drop it if you're not sure.

Obviously Multishot breaks CC's as well so careful when you're using it... sorry - that was stating the obvious but when you're competing on meters it's tempting.  >:D

Do Heal and Res your pets.  Throw a mend on if you see they're in trouble, and if they die, it's not a long cast (4 seconds) to bring them back.  Unlike Marksmen, your pet is 20-35% of your over all damage.  In a long boss fight, they are more than worth the time and mana cost of a BM res.  While we're on pets - in SSC a tanky pet is well worth the damage loss on the trash, so if you have them, Cats, Raptors, and Ravagers away and bring the Bears, Stalkers, and Turtles out.
For anyone who hasn't got this site - for all your pet info needs: http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/

Get your rep with violet eye up to get their lovely arrows/bullets as a minimum - you can of course buy them in Shattrath as well at your Aldor/Scryer ammo vendor (they're hiding but ask around if you haven't found them yet). 

If you need a scope, Engineers make them:

+10 dmg, http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23764
+12 dmg, http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23765
+28 Crit, http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23766

I recommend the +12 dmg - worth the extra cost.

Oh - I'd love to find out if Marksman damage pwns using the macro - if a marksman wants to try it, it could turn some interesting results.  /hug for all you hunters who are Marksman by the way - the trueshot aura is obviously a wonderful was to boost the BM damage output by a long way and your group presence is always noticed and much loved :D  Whenever I'm with a MM I always think, 'Well, at least 5% of my damage is theirs really'.

Hope this has been helpful to someone, I expect it'll cost me my place in top 5 :-P  But hey - if we down Lurker it'll be worth the sacrifice.
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Phil
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You might recall I recently posted about the demise of Gruul, and how now we're onto higher quests as a guild?  Well we are, and have been raiding a place called Serpentshrine Cavern (or SSC for short).

In this cavern there's a little fishing pond into which we cast our rods to summon the boss.  You get one or two little fish on your lines, then someone snags Lurker, and up he comes with a mighty woosh!  He's basically a big fish.  Having just killed half a dozen Gronn, who's teeth are the size of a person, looking on this barely over grown aquatic menace, who can't reach out of the water far enough to strike the ranged fighters, you feel a little sorry for the poor thing as it faces such legendary characters as ourselves.

(Ok, it is a fairly big fish... but it doesn't look half as impressive as a Gronn)

Then he hits you with a massive spurt of boiling hot water and projects your lifeless burnt body across halfway back to Stormwind, and suddenly... you feel a bit less cocky.

Turns out it doesn't get easier from here.  Pah!

The astute amongst you may notice I'm making a comic for every blog now.  This is mainly cos I can and because some cheeky little urchin requested I use more pictures in my blogging. 

What do we think of this new fangled comic led format? 

See - I'm the blogger that listens ;-)
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Phil
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I joined  MySpace because a friend once told me he was going to stop checking emails regularly and use MySpace for contacts instead.  Not wanting to loose contact I took the bullet, and soon felt obligated to check MySpace every day because an increasing number of friends started using it to message me instead of email.

Then we all got hot over FaceBook, and reluctantly I agreed to use that too.  So now, I log onto my PC, open a browser and my homepage displays all my emails in summary form, along with news, personal feeds, and basically anything that's new that I should know about, except FaceBook and MySpace, which I then go and check specially for messages.  Which isn't so bad as it keep people in regular contact in a way email didn't compel.  At first I had those sites email me when there was something to see, but they emailed me a million times a day under this system, so I disabled emails and just log in daily.  Unfortunately, the evil of FaceBook is not content to fill my inbox with a million messages telling me someone I once met 5 years ago while buying a hotdog in Spain has sneezed - no, it has lie to me, sending me an email that says, 'SOMEONE YOU KNOW AND LOVE HAS A VERY SPECIAL AND REALLY IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR YOU!  CLICK HERE TO READ THAT MESSAGE'.    You click, and you don't get to read a message at all!  You get asked if some third party nobodies can rape your FB account information and add some little box of distracting ugly crap on your page, but they promise, if you do, they will let you have this message that my dear good friend Pedro has lovingly crafted and urgently wants me to read.
My response to this is usually, 'If Pedro wanted me to get the message, he shouldn't have made it so hard to get.' and I delete the note.  Occasionally I have added the application though, and got the automated fake personal message that was sent by the app to all Pedro's friends when Pedro added the app and thoughtlessly clicked 'Yeah it's fine to spam all my friends with lies - I think most of them will probably appreciate it and I'm too lazy to uncheck the ones who probably wont'.  Then some third party morons have my email address.  My real email address that I gave in good faith that this site was useful for staying in touch with people I wanted to be able to contact me.  The third party then uses/sells my email address along with the other 10'000 they collected that day to a spam list and now what was a once clean Live Inbox, receives a folder of junk each day.  And of course... there's no way to go back on this now.. damage done.  My email is linked to this blog and my MSN and everything so changing it is a major pain. 

Siiigh.

I rant here only in part to voice my frustration, but mainly, as a warning to those who have not yet sucked on the lies of this virtual wonderland - stay away.  It's probably only one of the apps that sold my address, who knows which one, maybe it was a one off against FB's app provider policy but it only has to happen once and forever I will be annoyed. 

Facebook is the Herpes of the Internet.

I'll also mention a few times I've written long personal messages to someone through Facebook only to have them never arrive, and no drafts or sent items or anything... they're gone now... but we wont tell you that - in fact, we'll assure you it's arrived!  Ha!  Now they think you hate them!  You suck!

Anyway... I unfortunately do have Facebook now, so I may stay with it in order to reap it's 'benefits' of saying hi to old friends in compensation.  I've given up on the notifications though.  Before - every day I did click through them, 'Ignore', 'Ignore', 'Ignore', 'Ignore'... as spam should be treated.  Now there's too many.  My homepage said today '2 booze invitations!  And 26 other requests!'  Really?  Well screw you, I don't give a damn if someone has noticed that I'm 'walking everywhere on Facebook' or is curious to find out what kind of sex toy I am.  I no longer even look at notifications so if you insist on using FB to contact me, use a wall post, or a message, or I wont receive it.  And if you send me an email and I don't recieve that, it's because my spam blocker is now on high, and over-zealously deletes anything it thinks might be spam, but this is what FB's brought me to.

Right - I have to go - got to check all my 'social networking' sites for messages.  Boy it'd be nice to have some kind of central box people could direct messages too.  Perhaps it would tell me if there was new things in it so I don't even have to check it!  Ah... far off dreams... only dreams.
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Phil
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P.S. - I might call an end to pokes from now on too... they're just silly.

Obviously am looking for a job once more, so I've been going to interviews this week.  Yesterday I interviewed for a finance company and on my way to the 3rd floor, I shared the lift with two of their current employees, who broke out in a random brawl as soon as the doors closed and ceased fighting the instant they heard the ding as if nothing had happened.

Seems like a cool place to work to me!

The comic strip you see here was made using a very cool tool Will showed me, http://stripgenerator.com/ 

Much fun!
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Phil

This week, we have achieved several milestones in gaming experience...

Top of the bill, in WoW, in a single week, the guild have downed:

2 of these...

This is an Ogre Mage.  They use fiery magic or something and magical shields - pretty much kill the average adventurer in shot.

3 of these...

This being an Ogre Warlock.  This guy uses shadow magic to do his damage, while summon demonic hounds to fight at their side.

5 of these...

A Ogre Priest.  Yeah - Ogres have Priests, who knew?

4 of these...

This is a Shamen.  Several of these kills were special to me because I'm sometimes called on to 'tank' them, which means I'm the guy squaring off with it while the others in the party lay into him from behind.

2 of these...

You can't tell much in the picture here but this is a King Ogre and he's a fair bit bigger than the others.  My character is about the size of one of the other Ogres legs, I'd say I go up to this guys kneecap.  And in the virtual world, as in the real one, I'm pretty tall.

And... 2 of theeeeese...

This is a Gronn.  Specifically, this is Gruul the Dragonkiller.  To put it to some scale, I'm about the size of... well you see his fangs there?  I'm about as big as one of those.  You can understand why it takes 25 of us.

Anyway, downing Gruul is a major achievement in the World of Warcraft - a transition point for any guild as it develops into the higher game content.  We Rock :)

In other worlds, I've unlocked a few Team Fortress 2 achievements.  They're kinda like scout badges that you get when you've completed a certain task or challenge.  Today I got my 'Gray Matter' badge for example, which you get for shooting 25 people, specifically in the head, with a sniper rifle.  Other achievements include... hey actually - I'll make up a little picture of my achievements page:

I got 7 kills with a turret and some [expletive] 'demoman' blew it up just before 2 scouts ran into the room.  If he'd have only stepped out and got caught by my sentry... those 2 scouts wouldn't have known what hit them and bap badaa!  Sentry Gunner would have been unlocked.

I'm up to 875 with Hardcore, and the remaining 3 are achievements I don't know if I'll ever get really - they're things that aren't just down to me, but then, it is called Team Fortress 2.

I wrote this blog post in Windows Live Desktop writer and just dropped the images into the page as it promises will work... we're about to find out if it does or not.  Apologies if the visual effect\ of this post is not all I'd hoped it would be.

That's all for now.

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Phil
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If I never read books, why do I have 2 bookshelves full of them?  Who would read these books?  Why does anyone read books anymore?  Why is reading a web page a lesser source than a book?  If anything the book is likely to be significantly more outdated and its' smaller circulation would leave it prone to unchallenged errors/opinions and even if spotted, the readers have no way to directly post into the book that all other readers will see their point.  Maybe blogs are the new books?  Blogs and articles tend to be shorter though, but why not publish a whole book online with comment capability - throwing sticky notes onto the virtual pages.  I bet that does exist - it's probably annoying to move everyone's sticky notes out the way all the time, though the interface would be built with that problem in mind and default minimise comments or something.  Are web pages still the best we have?  RSS feeds not withstanding, aren't we past text yet?  I mean it's been a long time now since anyone really made an improvement on that and it seems like no-one's really trying.  Actually there's some research into direct brain interfaces, usb drive into the neck socket kinda thing but how long has that been going on and why isn't it appearing in some form yet?  It can't be easy to get a computer to interface with the brain I'm sure, but isn't that the wrong way round of looking at it - I mean, the brain is by far the more advanced machine with multi-level intelligence and adaptive neural nets - wouldn't it be easier to surgically implant a socket, plug in a PC, and then let the brain figure out the computer rather than the other way around?  Given enough time and the right sequential data cycle would the brain ever learn to incorporate that source of data?  Perhaps if it's done to a child, and the data is all relevant information to current situation, the brain will understand the input as it does an eye, and after a 'vocab' of electronic input has been developed enough, say by the teen years, you'd be able to download vast amounts of knowledge using that adhoc developed language.  If no-ones thought of that I should probably suggest it to someone, but where do you suggest that kind of thing?  I bet millions of  ordinary people have millions of brilliant, ground breaking ideas every day and just don't have an easily accessible outlet to get them to the people who could really use the innovation, so just let it pass them by.  We'd probably have cured cancer and have robot workers and eco-hover cars by now if we pooled the genius of mankind like that.  I suppose we have robot workers though, in production lines and such.  They might not even be great for the economy on a global scale.  What would happen if we did get effective humanoid robot workers to do all our labour?  It seems good but then the whole system of jobs and wealth and stuff would totally collapse, and the working man only has the vote and power in society because he controls the economy on a grass roots level - take that away and the social balance of power would flip out - all this population is a drain on resources after all and what would be the need for it?  It's not that ruling classes would be that cold... it's just that... no... no it is.  The more interesting question might be who the ruling class would be.  I suppose it would be the corporations who control the robots.  It'd be totally iRobot with the computers taking over in the end and I'm not up for that then we'll need Will smith to save us all and you know he's gonna be totally smug about that all the time after it's all over.  It's a shame there was so much product placement in that film, it wasn't too bad other than that.  Product placement was shown to make TV and film *more* realistic because brands are an every day part of life, but it really has to be subtle and spread evenly, not just shining a spotlight on the audi logo when the cars are in high speed chases.  I should probably tell film directors how to subtly use product placement... oh right - the easy access outlet for good ideas and messages isn't there... maybe I should start working on one of those.  Then again, if I'm building a revolution in innovation communication, who's going to bring the leet DPS down on Gruul in the raid tonight?  And who will tank the Shammy?  Actually, I'm not tanking that Shammy if I don't get a dedicated healer - really don't think that's too unreasonable a demand for a main tank.  Ok, arguable 'off-tank' as that ogre is technically an 'add' not the boss, but he's 10 times my size and elite so I'm gonna go ahead and call myself a main tank.  Not that I care about what kind of tank I am, I'm not meant to be good at tanking anyway.  I think that's something about me though - I take more pride in how well I can do things that I have no reason to be able to do well than I do in the things that I'm really specifically meant to do well on.  Like all my primary skills are ok and I'm pretty good at things I'm supposed to be good at, but I don't usually care as much about them as all the little things that surround a job that aren't really directly part of my skill set.  I wonder if there's a job that that would useful for.  Probably most jobs come to think of it, but something it's like... essential for.  Damn, my tea's gone cold :(  This tea isn't that great, probably been open too long.  What's weird about that is that black tea is black because it once needed to be treated for transport on sail ship from China to England or wherever, so it would maintain flavour for the long journey and not spoil as tea leaves or green teas would do, yet modern black tea, which arrives in the UK the same day it left China or wherever, loses it's flavour from when you open it in your cupboard.  Maybe my history of black tea is wrong there... I don't know where I got that idea from to be honest.  If I'm right, maybe all those Dukes and Earls of old simply drank pretty crap tea by modern standards.  Perhaps they only ever did get flavourless tea and would go ballistic with joy should they get to taste a cup of PG tips.  I should start carrying around a small supply of fresh PG tips on the off chance my day leads me into some form of time travel and I end up sitting with some long dead royalty.  I should make a fresh cup of tea as well.  What time's the raid?  Ooh, crap, better go.

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Phil
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Blizzard, owners of Warcraft are merging with Activision, owners of... some stuff... umm.. ooh, they make a lot of the Star Trek Games, oh, and Guitar Hero.  I'm sure they do lots of other things too but they're the only ones that come to my mind.

Combined, they're still smaller than the industry giant EA, but both Blizzard and Activision have solid fan bases and very very very lucrative franchises (WoW being chief amongst them), this merger is certainly setting them up to take at swing in EA's league.  It will be interesting to see what happens to the Blizzard franchise set though - in the past, Blizzard have stood their fans by not messing with a good thing.  Over the last 13 years (13ish?), they've sported only 3 main brands (Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo... and Starcraft is really just Warcraft with a a different backdrop), which they've not messed about with because the fans have loved them as they are.  Activision on the other hand are more the 'Let's do something completely different' kind of company, experimenting with hardware and game types, putting a new title on every production.  While the franchises will no doubt remain independent in many ways, in time, we might see a joint ethos shape their attitudes closer together.

To read more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7123582.stm
http://blizzard.com/press/activision-faq.shtml
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Phil