Also Known As: Why Spelling and Grammar Matter On The Internet.

OK, so we don’t really know that many people who type things like that (as much as it may seem like it), but there is a much more common phrase I see on almost any forum or place of public discussion. Generally it’s when someone fails to write in the English language to the point that you actually have to slow down your reading because your brain is busy making heads or tails of the message instead of just browsing through it.

“lol dis not english test speling dosnt matter”

This is primarily an attitude that has cropped up with “the texting generation,” for which I feel embarrassed to be on the border of. Might I offer the following thoughts about texting (fair warning, it’s from the Boondocks, so if you are easily offended by language… Well, what are you doing reading one of my posts, anyway?):
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It’s important in business to always appreciate new and different approaches that catch you off guard. These approaches are far from being bad, too!

Having deftly slipped through our defenses we can learn a tremendous amount from asking ourselves ‘how the hell did that just happen?’ and going back over the experience step by step to find out.

So quite recently I was playing my 5-box shaman team, questing away in Dragonblight and minding my own business. I should probably explain before continuing that my shaman team are named after a group of Russian composers – their names are Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Balakirev, Antonovich and Porfiryevich.

So you can imagine my confusion when I received the following whisper: (continue reading…)

So you’re an ICC raider, eh? You say you hate how long it takes to get the Gunship started after everyone’s on board?

Then, I CHALLENGE YOU, SIR! How many times can you bounce in the air without landing using the gunship’s rocket pack? Keep in mind, most guilds probably aren’t going to wait around for you to get your best, so do it right the first time!

Here’s my best, so far:

A huge /wave at Tamarind of [Righteous Orbs] this week. Always enjoy reading his stuff and particularly when there are bees and bonnets involved! :p

No particularly difficult words in this one. Although, the final solution did have me double-checking google to make sure and apparently either way is acceptable. No idea what I’m talking about? You will!

Enjoy :)

Have been working on a few things in Photoshop lately and put this together over the weekend. It’s not really for anything, just a bit of playing around. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out just the same!

The verse was written by [Carl Sandburg] in 1918. Apart from being an interesting commentary on human nature I thought the verse used in the image was an interesting fit for the druid.

I find that one of the more fun things about the design process is starting out with just a vague concept and building on it. Anyone got any similar stuff to share?

Let me begin with the assumption that if I say RealID, everybody knows what I’m talking about. Now just in case you no speaka da English you don’t keep up on news, let me link you to a few articles so you can get yourself caught up on what the hell is going on.

What the @$#% is RealID

RealID for the forums

Whoops, no RealID for the forums

You back? Great.

So to summarize, Blizzard is very aware of this concept, courtesy of Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins over at Penny Arcade:

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Ok so although we’ve talked about Pristine Black Diamonds here, here and here already it continues to be one one of the trickier components of the insane grind for people to figure out.

Emage submitted some of his tips on getting diamonds recently. I was impressed at the simple and easy breakdown so I thought it was probably worth sharing :) Click the link below to see the full post, enjoy!

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Shout out to Gravity of [pwnwear.com] this week. Gravity runs a fantastic and well regarded DK tanking blog that I recommend having a poke around if you havent already. Even if you’re not a DK or a Tank there’s still a wealth of great info to be had.

Like myself Gravity has a background in real life people management and has written a lot of articles on leadership. He’s into statistical analysis, theorycrafting and different ways of applying real world strategy to the game. I should probably just stop there and add that he had me at ‘hello’ right? :p

As per the two paragraphs above the words in this week’s jumble are based around leadership. No made up words or names, enjoy :)

So just what is it that makes a ‘gifted gamer’ different?
Giftedness is a label typically bestowed to students who have demonstrated a superior mental ability. Giftedness arises from a physical difference in person’s brain (Clark, 1988).

It is important to note here that we are not talking about personal strengths. A personal strength is an assessment in comparison to yourself only. A gift, however, is a comparison of yourself to a (large) population. A gifted person’s weakness may still be way above the strength of an average person… Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, not everyone is gifted. (And not all ‘gifted’ people are equally gifted!) A gifted person is one who’s abilities are at least one standard deviation above the ‘norm’ in a large population. There is a significant difference between the the gifted person and the average person. Consider in intelligence one standard deviation below the norm can result in becoming labelled with a mental disability.

Psychologists have broken down the possible fundamental abilities that a person may be gifted in (in one, all or any combination) these are:

• Intellectual (e.g. fluid reasoning – inductive and deductive, crystallised verbal, spatial, memory, judgement and metacognition)
• Creative (e.g. inventiveness, problem-solving, imagination, originality)
• Socioaffective (perceptiveness, communication, empathy, tact, influence, leadership, persuasion)
• Sensorimotor (senses: visual, auditory, olfactive etc and motor: strength, reflex, endurance and coordination)

Ok, so if these are all the areas a person could be gifted in, just what is a gifted gamer…
Obviously they must be gifted in just the right areas that support the development of gaming talents. Lets have a look at how these various gifts, could be useful for gaming.

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I always appreciate interesting and innovative approaches to old problems. Over a decade ago in the relative lawlessness of pre-trammel Ultima Online you really needed to have your wits about you to not get screwed over.

There were always new scams and you had to make sure you were well researched and permanently ‘on guard’ to prevent yourself getting ripped off. I really enjoyed the savageness of this. As a result I always had an appreciation for scams that nearly got me because they took my abilities and awareness right to the edge.

So when I read [this article] today about select McDonalds restaurants in Sweden being used as polling places for the coming 2010 election I was intrigued to say the least.

Not only will people be able to vote at the McDonalds restaurants but they’ll be able to vote there up to two weeks ahead of time! The stated reasons for this initiative are to improve a historically lower voting rate in these areas and to create more engagement particularly from younger voters that frequent the establishments.

My initial reaction was that this was a bad idea. Mixing private enterprise and the democratic process? Never work! Then as I thought about it more over the course of the day I came to appreciate how clever this really was.

As the article didnt go into detail on how they’ll ensure the process is secure and the venue politically neutral I shall wear my [Yellow Hat] and assume those points ARE taken care of. So what, then, are the potential results of this initiative? Increased voter participation for the government and increased sales for McDonalds.

When I hear about clever ideas like this that potentially make for great synergies I always wonder why nobody thought of them until now. I’m not just talking about large scale stuff like this but even little process improvements in the workplace. Stuff that you never thought of but that hits you like a breath of fresh air and you make that “ahhhhhhh!” realisation.

Have you come up with ideas like this yourself? Been around when others had them? How much did they change things for you? I want to hear about your experiences with innovative concepts and clever ideas. Let’s have them!