Google introduced a Rotten-Tomatoes-like film rating function today. Check it out. I like being able to get an idea of the average opinion on things like films, books, food, and music.
General
23
Feb 05
This nerd moment brought to you by…
Last night some guys from work and I grouped up for World of Warcraft. Before I quit for the night we did a bit of dueling and I actually did pretty well, especially considering my heals (healing spells) are pretty weak. Here’s a few good strategies when dueling with an affliction-specced warlock character:
Against warriors:
- Summon your succubus prior to PvP. When duel countdown begins set her to Seduce the target. She will wind-up Seduction before duel actually begins, which is most likely a bug. When Seduction hits the warrior will be mezzed preventing him from rushing you.
- Cast a couple of your DoT’s (damage over time spells) like Corruption or Curse of Agony, both of which are instacast (no casting time) with an affliction specification.
- Before Seduction interrupts from the damage cast Fear, making the warrior run off out of control.
- Cast any remaining DoT’s like Immolation or Siphon Life while the warrior is Feared.
- If warrior comes out of Fear, you can fear him again up to a total of three times per duel. This buys you a lot of time. In the mean time, you can also continue to Seduce. It’s all about preventing him from hitting you with a melee attack. Just keep applying the DoT’s while he runs around Feared. Any spells with more damage will interrupt the Fear effect.
- When the opponent’s hit points get low enough start using Drain Life, which drain the target’s life while adding to your own. By this time you will also need some heals, so use your Health Stone and healing potions or bandages.
- Eventually, once all the DoT’s stack you will start doing some serious damage. Just keep him out of melee range and under siege the entire time and you will eventually eat through all his armor and hitpoints. This same strategy works pretty well if you summon your Imp, except he will be unable to Seduce.
23
Feb 05
Egg timer
I like this photo I took at work of the egg timer on my desk. I use the timer occasionally to help me keep track of how much time I spend on certain tasks since I have trouble either spending too little or too much time on one thing. It comes in handy especially when I’m doing something I don’t want to do. I’ll tell myself to focus on that one thing for fifteen to twenty minutes. Although, I think I need to get one that doesn’t ring as loud.
22
Feb 05
Robotwisdom is back, Kottke drops out
- The elusive and amazing Jorn Borg has come out of hiding to resume his great info-deep and timely weblog, Robot Wisdom. That means I can put his link back up. Great news. His site is highly recommended.
- Jason Kottke of Kottke.org has quit his job to blog for a living! His plan is to earn the necessary revenue through visitor donations. This is daring, and I can’t wait to see what happens, especially since his site is not topical. Why is this interesting? Because we are entering an era where some people will be able to live and produce what they want via a system of micro-patronage. This is part of the fragmentation of the global economy into small, highly-profitable parallel economies. Micro business with a global reach. Big business will never go away, but it will be forced to compete with smaller, more agile groups. Significant economic activity now takes place largely among individuals, and it is easier than ever for small groups to make money quickly. You do not need to buy retail property and you are not limited by geography. Many people are now making a living selling goods and services to a global market without being “employed” in the classic sense. All this is made possible with the communication and efficiency enabled by software and networks. Micro-patronage is just one facet what’s possible.
Kottke has stated that he will not be using advertisements to earn revenue, which is a good idea for his site. In my opinion, accepting donations is not much different than using ads except that you spare your audience the visual annoyance intrinsic to advertising. I would go the donation route if I thought it was feasible. I’d like to see some figures on how donation revenues compare to advertising revenues for sites of equivalent traffice levels. My guess is advertising is still more lucrative since you are not depending strictly on the good will and beneficence of your audience, and since your revenue is tied to traffic you benefit directly from the number of people you bring to the site. Of course, as the number of advertisements increase, traffic and revenue should decrease as advertising clutter will alienate readers and ruin the aesthetic of the site.
21
Feb 05
Website changes
Here are a few changes to the site. I’ll need to check my AdSense account to see if my clicks have gone down as a result of the change over from the previous template, but I won’t be able to do that until Google has re-indexed the site. I’m curious how the horizontal banner will differ results-wise.
- Disabled descriptive post permalinks – This was interfering with the “previous entries” links.
- Added Google search form on the sidebar.
- Added Google ad banner to top of front page and removed vertical ads from sidebar.
- Archive sections now have the vertical ads.
- Added latest del.icio.us links to sidebar
20
Feb 05
Consumption Junction
Friday night I went to see Keanu’s new movie, Constantine, which is based on a comic book by Alan Moore, the creator of The Watchmen and From Hell. It was enjoyable, although you shouldn’t expect to leave feeling overwhelmed by it. The religious dimension to the film was interesting. I liked the idea that heaven and hell exist as parallel realities behind our everyday reality, and that some people are part angel or demon.
Afterwards, we walked over to Borders and I purchased the Baltazar Gracian (pronounced gray-thian) book of aphorisms, The Art of Worldly Wisdom. As a compilation of experience and advice it will make a nice companion to other similar books in my library like the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Michel de Montaigne’s Essays, and Nietzsche.
20
Feb 05
WordPress 1.5 Released!
The WordPress team has released its latest upgrade to the open-source, PHP-based blogging system. The major upgrade seems to do with their new templating system, which seems to be working pretty well, although I had to tweak out a few things to get their default template to work. As you can see, I have modified it a little and will be making more changes to it in the future. I had to turn off pretty permalinks to get the previous entry links to work. I’m using an image rotating script I found to make the header image swap randomly.
A few things are still needing work. For example, the feed links at the bottom of the page are not working correctly, or at least, they’re not for me. One thing I think will really help WordPress is that the new default template is nice. They’ve had trouble competing on the template front, but the adoption of the new templating system should create a lot of interest.
16
Feb 05
Info dump
- To the detriment of my own posting regularity I have ended up posting a lot more to my del.icio.us account than anywhere else. In the six months since September I have posted to it 432 times. Compare that with the 1561 entries I have posted to the blog over the past four years. That’s more than twice the frequency. Granted, the posts to del.icio.us are less substantial, but it is obvious that it is seeing a lot more activity from yours truly. With the del.icio.us Firefox extension you just have to right click a link or page to send it to del.icio.us. I dump much of the information I sift through directly into there. Since anything goes you can gather a good idea of the kind of stuff I’ve been reading about. Del.icio.us is a godsend for people who like to sift through massive amounts of varied information.
- I finally finished reading Pat Conroy’s novel “Beach Music“, which I’ve been nursing for a few months. Like most of his other books I’ve read (The Prince of Tides, The Lords of Discipline, The Great Santini) I could really relate to the story and the characters. Conroy also has an effusive, bittersweet style that I enjoy.
Now that I have read a few of his books I am starting to see a number of similarities among them all. Most of the characters possess a lot of the same personality traits, and the family circumstances are often strikingly similar. There is usually a harsh military father, a sibling with schizophrenia or mental illness, eccentric grandparents, and an overwhelmingly dominant yet fiercely loving mother figure. I’ve also noticed that several of Conroy’s female love interests are emotionally remote, and troubled. Usually his protagonists are in love with someone who is either unwilling or unable to love them back. His protagonists find some way to come to the rescue while also ultimately failing to achieve the love they want. Loss seems to be a common theme. It is interesting how Conroy resolves certain relationships. It’s hints at an actual lack of resolution the author might have felt when writing.
At times, I feel amibivalent about his work. Much of what he writes is only thinly disguised as fiction and you feel like you become a part of his very real and palpable family suffering and drama. There is so much of his raw emotional reality dripping from the writing. It makes me wonder what drives him to tell his story as fiction. Is it a desire to express something that still causes pain thereby creating distance from it? Does he want to confess to his readers but hide from their scrutiny? I can’t help but feel that there is something sadly narcissistic about turning important life experiences into novels. The pain is very real, but he wants to draw attention to it as well.
All that being said, I’ll probably check out the non-fiction work, “My Losing Season” next. Here are a couple related links:
14
Feb 05
Happy Valentine’s Day
I’m sending little invisible pulses of love out to you all. Make someone smile today.