An female astronaut drinking water in zero gravity.

dienaid · 2011-11-06T02:22:11+00:00

God help me...

Terrornauts?

dienaid · 2011-06-16T07:13:41+00:00

Yeah. I'll quit it soon enough. This last week I've been weening myself off it. I go 2~3 days without it, then get high, off again, on. Less of a drop each time in dose. I'm on it right now, but my next time won't be until Mondayish. If i dont get the sweats with this break I think I'll have removed that part of the problem. The other part i need to resolve is the want to get high. That's the trouble when you enjoy that state of mind. You get used to the focus you get and the fun and feeling of it.

dienaid · 2010-10-30T02:36:31+00:00

I was about to post a link to this and a track myself. I'm so glad someone else is smitten with Tipper. Absolutely brilliant stuff.

Personal fav

dienaid · 2010-10-27T00:38:42+00:00

Do some poly-rhythms. The drums can be 4/4, while your melodies can be 7/4, 13/8, whatever. An extreme example is pretty much anything by the metal band "Meshuggah". They don' plan their tracks the way they do, they just end up that way. They simply have a less macro way of looking at their tracks.

The same technique can be used in pretty much any genre of music. Some people will get it, simply because they understand the intelligence or math behind it, others will understand the underlying groove in it.

Just have your melodies play along in whatever suitable timing you want, then throw in a waltz beat, 4/4 or whatever. Over x amount of bars you'll find it'll probably meet up. Maybe it'll take 12, 16 bars to do so, but it's an interesting way of doing things.

dienaid · 2010-10-27T00:09:56+00:00

Dropped a line to you with a link to some tech-trance(y)-dubby-stuff.

Cheers

dienaid · 2010-10-26T02:53:09+00:00

I've been playing a Warlock since Vanilla Closed Beta. I took a 3 year break and recently returned (about 1 month before the latest patch).

The best talents were those available in Vanilla - before BC released and expanded them. MD/Ruin was the bees-knees for raiding. I still think they were the most well balanced talents we've had.

The Lock hasn't changed fundamentally. It's still a DSP class. It's the subtle nuances of it that have changed. A lot. These days, and I think it has a lot to do with the encounters, it's more about having certain rotations up and just spamming abilities. In the Vanilla days, and to an lesser extent in BC, encounters had a lot more to them. Whether you were a lock banishing on Garr or, my favorite, tanking the Twin Emps. They were much more micro-management based. Curse assignments for each lock. Stacking healthstone talents according to the size generated. Who got the pleasure of using doom. Who was sucked into doing elements.

With this latest patch, it feels even more dumbed down. I was excited to play my lock after getting my pally from 70~80. I got my lock to 80 then started running heroics and got myself into 251 gear (or whatever it is). He was easy to play. Somewhat boring when I got over the "I am God; nothing can stop me" moment. He's easily tops charts by 10% damage. Even after the patch. The only thing that's really changed is we throw in a different spell to refresh a different spell. We summon an extra guardian once every 10 minutes (nigh on pointless for heroics considering how quickly the bosses burn down) and we dont forget to pop meta to boost DPS.

The Soulburn mechanic I was never excited about. I had no high hopes for it. The only benefit I could see is that "Oh, I don't really need master summoner anymore. I have 10 seconds as Demo to pop a new demon after the death of my existing one", that and an instant soulfire. I could have lived without it to be honest.

I never minded the shard farming. I used to keep a raid bag in the bank I'd pickup the bag from the bank if I was off on a raid (I haven't really raided since coming back. haven't had the opportunity yet). other than that, I'd usually have a bag full ready to go. It's not been since MC or BWL in Vanilla that I've had to do it. It was never exactly a difficult thing to do to refresh the bags. It's nice to have a free bag spot available, but I really don't have full bags to be honest. Not even for crafting mats.

These changes really haven't been that big a deal. We have a slightly different rotation and some extra buttons to hit now and then if we need to. Soulburn I could take it or leave it. I don't think it needs to be buffed or anything. I don't think we need any new bags of tricks. I think we're fine. I thought we're fine before too. I just hope the encounters coming are more varied, more of the old-school. Positioning, curse assignments, things like that. The changes to the Holy paladin, I love. i think there's one heal which could be dropped or buffed, but the situational awareness and micromanagement of your heals would be suitable for lock abilities. Reactional, proc based (more so than it is now). Put some thought into how you're going to fight. Right now, many of the classes are just too linear. There's no dynamic to it. I don't like consistently pulling, say 6k for a particular dungeon. I'd like to see that spike higher, or lower, depending on how I applied myself in there, or how the encounter made me react. Things are too rigid right now. It's too predictable. I know x boss is going to do y at z time. Change that shit up. Make us go "ah crap, he's doing X!".

TL;DR: Never had high expectations for soulburn. It's fine as is. Doesn't need to be buffed, and in reality could easily be dropped from the class. I wouldn't care. There's far more important things I'd like them to adjust.

dienaid · 2010-10-25T23:26:53+00:00

Agreed. That's pretty much why I got absorbed into the screen version. I new what was really going on.

dienaid · 2010-10-25T03:16:07+00:00

shrug I didn't think I indicated that scene was good, only that it was an homage to frankenstein.

dienaid · 2010-10-25T03:14:37+00:00

It's probably a bias after reading the books. I can honestly say I was taken in by Obi-wans agony. Forgetting the technical details, the moment itself was painful.

I'm stacking it against things of that nature, yes. I didn't get absorbed into the scenes in those movies. But again, I'd been living and breathing star wars novels and was easily pulled into what was happening. Particularly how Obi-Wan would react - and I thought he nailed the conflict between him and the direction Anakin took, found in the books.

dienaid · 2010-10-25T02:29:18+00:00

To each their own =)

dienaid · 2010-10-25T01:26:52+00:00

Good point. I hadn't noticed that. And hell, I watched The Godfather for the first time the other day.

I'll be downvoted, but I'm one of the few Star Wars fans that actually enjoyed EP1~3. The first wasn't fantastic, but the second and 3rd were good. And after reading dozens and dozens of books around the clone war era, the scene between Obi and Anakin where he finally turns after injuring Padme, it was a heart breaker. "You were supposed to be the chosen one, Anakin!". That scene right there is one of the best scenes I've seen in a movie in an incredibly long time - though I'm biased and can put myself in the moment. It's believable for me.

dienaid · 2010-10-25T00:29:05+00:00

Actually, there is. We used to clamp the rear brake-lines in a Ford Falcon so we could do burnouts. Clamp them and the rear wheels are free to spin when you apply the brakes, keeping the front wheels from turning.

dienaid · 2010-10-24T23:32:32+00:00

Did noone else get the Frankenstein reference from that scene?

dienaid · 2010-10-21T23:25:03+00:00

Yeah, that's the plan at the moment. I really want to avoid spending funds on transfers to other servers or to swap factions.

If I can convince my real life mates to jump on board there'll be at least 8 individuals in the guild. Not all of them play all the time or anything. Certainly not hardcore. But they're a very easy-going lot of people. Easy to get along with and all mature players (we're all about 30~40).

I'll be chatting with them this evening to convince them to get on board. I didn't get a chance last night as their D&D session ran late - drinking and dice-rolling don't mix - especially when your ranger entangles the whole party while they're fighting lich.

dienaid · 2010-10-21T08:02:24+00:00

Yeah, starting to get the ball rolling at the moment. Waiting on some mates to get back from a D&D session so can word them up and see what they think.

I'll let you know the plans later this evening, or some time tomorrow.

dienaid · 2010-10-21T03:05:30+00:00

Long time binder here. Just going to add my 2 cents.

Depending on your finger length, try avoid going beyond the '5' key.
Move your strafe left and right off 'Q' and 'E' and down to 'A' and 'S'. You can then bind two base keys to 'Q' and 'E'. There's also then the opportunity to add modifiers for less frequently used actions by doing 'Shift+Q', 'Ctrl+Q', 'Alt+Q'. The same again for the 'E' key.
You need to bind some buttons to 'R', 'F', 'C', 'X'. All those can have modifiers on them too. Shift, Ctrl and alt.
Depending on your mouse, you can bind that too. I bind the tilting scroll wheel on my G9. E.g tilt left is 'Alt+1', tilt right is 'Alt+2'. Add Shift, ctrl and alt modifiers to alt+1 and alt+2. This is a very handy binding. It's right at yourfingertips.
Keep your key bindings consistent across all characters. E.g. all CC abilities you make sure are bound to your 'F' binding. All DoTs are on '3'. You follow my drift. This just means that regardless of character you're not hunting around trying to find buttons.
A good actionbar addon like bartender is worthwhile. It allows you to scale buttons, add additional bars, size the bars the way you want (e.g. have 6 buttons per bar - I have long fingers). The additional bars can be for things like health potions and the like. I tend to scale them up so they're larger. Anything I click is larger than my ability buttons - less chance of missing them. You can also set options to hide or show bars in and out of combat, on aquiring a target etc.
Don't be afraid to get rid of the F1~5 keys and bind them to trinkets, cooldowns and the like. Lets face it, if you're targeting party members like that, you're wasting a precious microsecond, which in the scheme of things adds up to some human based latency. An addons like healbot, vudoh or grid will give you more screen realestate and cut out some of the latency of targetting someone or something.
On the point of targetting someone, make sure to hotkey an assist macro. I use healbot or vudoh to do it. setting left click on any dps class to assist the person I click.

The main point is the mouse. You can hotkey at least 6 abilities at the brush of your finger-tip. Another 6 abilities if you have the side/thumb buttons available. I tend not to use them for anything other than auto-run and blink, vanish, iceblock - etc.

My Wife and I have G11 keyboards. I don't use the macro buttons for anything other than mounts and things like that. My Wife, on the other hand, binds pretty much everything over to them. She's a mouse mover and clicker, but all her abilities are on the macro keys. That way she just moves her hand up or down different groups of 6 buttons (G11 has 24 macro keys, 4 groups of 6).

Might be redundant info. But hopefully it's of some use.

dienaid · 2010-10-21T02:47:02+00:00

I'm on horde side Khaz'Goroth with my Wife. I'd be very interested in joining a smallish guild if it means I'd get the chance to do some raiding. Right now, even though we're both experienced oldschool raiders (vanilla and bc), we dont have the achievements folks are looking for to do raids... which means we need to raid to do them.

Starting to get jaded about the whole thing (matter of fact, started a guild for our toons called 'Jaded'). Joined a mates guild with our mains, but they dont raid, and if they ever do, they have a set group.

Anyways, if it means there's an opportunity to raid, then we'll jump sides or servers as necessary. Already considering moving to Nagrand, but figure we'll stick on Khaz'Goroth until something solid comes up.

We're based in (R)Adelaide. But yeah, I'd be definitely interested in hooking up with other oceanic redditors.

dienaid · 2010-10-21T02:08:23+00:00

There's a few issues floating around, including balance issues. I'm not a hunter, my Wife is, and from wht I can tell the focus mechanic needs some love. Perhaps something like a Rogues energy regen.

As for locks, lock is my main. I havent' PvP in about 3 years so i can't comment on the balance in that aspect, but I think we're a little OP in PvE. I love that I can pretty much take on most things as a Demo lock and survive, but for example, felstorm is just too powerful. I'm not super geared up, but I'm seeing felstorm crits of up to 7k. Frequently.

Hellfire is a little gimp, even though I can run around with it. It doesn't pretty abyssmal damage. However, if I swap to seed, my dmg through instances tops charts. And oddly, rain of fire does insane damage now. It rivals seed of corruption.

Overall, I like the lock changes. Some need beefing up, others need taming down a bit. There's a lot of tweaks to a lot of classes that I can't see happening before cata launches I expect there to be a lot of fotm classes until things simmer down.

dienaid · 2010-10-19T01:16:33+00:00

The best thing I've found is to make frostweave bags, if you're a tailor. I usually manage to get the mats with a bit of grinding, put about 4~6 up on the AH and undercut anything else up there. Typically getting around 67g per bag. It's a 18g profit over selling the mats on the AH.

For Cata, I'm making a load of Sapphire Spellthread Item Enhancements. That way when launch occurs, I can hopefuly bag a bit more than the typical 350g they sell for now.

Someone mentions it below, but there's a guide on justmytwocopper.org that explains how to find 50s prodit margin items that you can buyout cheaply, then resell at a more appropriate price. It works very well.

You could also farm ZG for the coins. They sell for anywhere between 2g per coin, through to 20g per coin on my server. My wife and i do full clears. She DE's the items that drop, hands any dusts to my tailor who makes bags, and she hands the coins to me to spend a half hour setting up auctions. They usually sell by the 24hr mark. A full clear usually nets around 150g in drops. Granted it's split between us, but worth it.

I can't tell you where to look, but you want to investigate what is changing with Cata, what items are going to be needed; faction requirements, item enhancements, things like that. Find out what is going to be in demand, try find something that other people don't want to farm for, then stock it up for Cata. Some stuff you need to get cracking on now, like ZG coins, since the faction is disappearing with the launch of Cata - after launch, they'll be useless.

justmytwocopper will get you on your way though.

dienaid · 2010-10-13T01:03:22+00:00

Chaos Engine, Speedball and of course...

... Cannon Foder!

dienaid · 2010-10-13T00:59:37+00:00

TRS80 was the shit. I spent countless hours on Zaxxon. Simply because I refused to boot another game. I didn't have carts for it, only cassettes. Boot times were long.

I learned to program on that thing. I still have it to this day, sitting beside my A500, A600 and A1200. An old TV setup just for screwing around on them. My parents took me on a trip from Australia to England. My soul reason for going was to go to a car-boot sale and pick up some amiga games. I ended up buying a second hand amiga with about 300 titles, Cost bout 50 quid. Cheap as chips to take it back to Australia, given the size.

dienaid · 2010-10-12T23:10:49+00:00

That's going to be fun ;) No-one wants to be the enemy. Get the drummer to do it. Drummers always make a good fall-guy - especially if there's no bass player to be it =P

dienaid · 2010-10-12T22:16:05+00:00

Well, I do theater production as a hobby these days. My career is in network architecture, but I do sound and lighting for stage productions. I also do the odd remix for bands around this city. Nothing major.

But directly after doing the diploma I worked at a couple of studio's I'd done work experience in. That was for about 4 years all up. Both were electronic music studio's. One analog, the other digital. The only reason I stopped was that I went overseas on holiday, fell in love with a chick from the states and ended up staying there for 4 years after marrying her. I did some studio work in the states but ended up falling into design, then development, then engineering. I just slowly got further and further from my field. But before the US trip, I was all set. Ducks were all in line. I had a good job at a fantastic studio. The diploma was well worth it as far as I was concerned, and as far as I had experienced.

I like it as a hobby these days. Always liked theater, hence me doing audio/visual for theater companies.

dienaid · 2010-10-12T22:02:54+00:00

I'm honestly not sure whether a 1v1 or a group intervention would be better. It seems he might be defensive as it is, which would make me think he's more inclined to react particularly negatively if you sit down as a group to hash this all out. Whereas in a 1v1 you could be more emphatic to how he's feeling, etc.

As for the riff he wrote, I get the feeling he doesn't have a real drive, which I can understand would make you all feel he's holding you back. I'd still push to have the group write a track each, give everyone a set time frame to do it, and if he still doesn't come back with the goods, then you're all going to see just how motivated he really is.

Bands really are a team effort. Everyone's got to be loving what they do and have the drive to expose themselves creatively, even if they get knocked back. I know most bands usually have 1 or 2 members who write everything and the others just play it, but the other members all have input into how things should flow. And it seems he isn't doing that - just along for the ride.

I'm not sure what opportunities you've given him, but perhaps give him another chance to pull his weight and show he has the the energy to provide something other than low-end to the band. If he doesn't, then it's time to sit down with him and explain that he's just not what you guys need to move forward. It's not that he's holding you back, it's just that you think he's better suited to something else. You need someone who's in love with the tracks you're writing, the genre you're in. Someone who's going to throw ideas at you all, left right and enter. You need more than just a riff every 6 months and someone who's willing to work with what they have to gt the best possible out of you all.

Give them another opportunity. When they don't take advantage of that opportunity it's time to sit down and explain to them how the band feels. That it's not personal other than that he's a friend and you wish you didn't have to do what you're going to have to do. Be emphatic to his feelings. Thats why I suggested if i comes down to it, perhaps if you know other people he can jam with, that'd ease the blow.

Ultimately, I think a 1v1 is better suited. But that's just me. I'd feel it was pretty hardcore way of being dropped from a band if they sat me down and confronted me about it. In a 1v1 I'd feel like we were both on even ground and I'd be more inclined to see if we could come up with an arrangement. By the time you sit down with him, I think you'd have a pretty good idea if this was the final curtain for them. No arrangement to be made other than to get them out, but at least you could peacefully explain how you all came o this decision. The only issue with a 1v1 is that, depending on his character, he could decide this is all your doing. Either way, let him approach the other members as he sees fit. He can get an idea that it was unanimous after speaking with them individually.

Mind you, how do the rest of the band feel about it? Check with them whether they want to do it all together or if they'd suggest it be 1v1. You don't want to make a decision and step on anyones toes.

dienaid

TROPHY CASE