Monthly Archives: July 2010
Warcraft Word Jumble – Well..Sorta :p
Hey Folks!
It’s been a crazy week for me, lots of (good) stuff happening at work and keeping me busy.
I got up at 5am on Friday to go and line up for my new iPhone 4. Very interesting experience! I live close to Canberra, which is Australia’s capital, so the store I lined up at was the main/best chance for me to get a phone at.
Now with that said, you’d think a reasonable amount of stock would be available for the launch right? I’ve read about the shortage of phones around the world so I was prepared for numbers to be smaller than expected but…
Seriously, have a guess right now how many they had in stock? I’ll write the answer >>here< < so after you’ve guessed click to see and let me know how close you were in the comments :)
Fortunately I walked away with one and so did my awesome girlfriend, Suzanne, who was a good enough sport to come along and keep me company.
So..the late running jumble this week! For starters it’s not really a jumble – instead I’ve rehashed one of the older competitions we did and have made it interactive. That way it’s easier for people to know if they’re right or wrong and get friends/etc involved.
Enjoy! Jumbles will resume as normal next week unless overwhelming feedback suggests something like this is better?
Lawlroflcopterwafflesnublololol!!11!11
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?):
Continue reading
Clever Concepts: Getting your foot in the door
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
Rocket Bouncing Challenge!
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:
Warcraft Word Jumble – Tamarind
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 :)
Photoshop – The Shifter
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?
Stranger Danger
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.
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:
Tips from Emage – Pristine Black Diamonds
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!
Warcraft Word Jumble – Gravity
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 :)
Demarcation of Gifted Gamers
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.