Author Archives: Saate
Fishing – One that didn’t get away
Sorry, couldnt resist the reference :p Have been uploading pics of a recent trip to New Zealand and thought this clip might be worthy enough to share!
We did an 8 day tour of the north island in New Zealand. One of the optional daytrips in the Bay of Islands was an afternoon on a fishing boat. I’d never caught a fish in my life so I thought it might be satisfying to be able to tick the “Caught a fish” box (must resist making additional achievement references! :p).
Pretty early on I caught an undersized fish that we threw back and I was happy, job done. My luck seemed to run out after that and I didnt have a bite until near the end of the afternoon – then hooked this one. Took about 20 minutes to bring in and being a complete novice I had no idea what I was doing. I was well and truly ready to give up (you can hear me say it!) but glad the group encouraged me to see it through to the end – an amazing experience I’ll remember for some time to come I think!
Pushing the button
I’ve been playing MMO’s for a long time now. My first big experience was with Ultima Online in 1999. In breaks between online games one of the fascinating things I’ve noticed is this great need I have for a ‘button to push’.
I’m speaking metaphorically of course, in this case specifically referring to this button:
During the second season of Lost, the survivors discovered a computer inside the Swan station which required the Numbers to be entered into it every 108 minutes. A timer set into the wall provided a continual countdown – and an alarm would sound as the timer neared zero. Entering the Numbers sequentially and pressing Execute (a.k.a. pushing the button) on the keyboard would cause the timer to reset to 108 minutes and begin the countdown anew. It was initially unclear what would happen if the button was not pushed.
When I stopped playing Everquest I bought a Playstation and got stuck into console gaming. Some great memories of Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy! I’d play one game until I’d finished it and move onto the next. I realised that instead of investing my attention in one item over a long arc of time I’d switched to investing my attention in multiple items over several short arcs of time.
Thinking about it even within the content of WoW that’s what I always needed. Some kind of plan or project in place that I’d work on each day and think about. Looking back it’s always the planning process and the journey itself that have been the most fun. I can actually remember feeling this distinct sense of emptiness for days after achieving the goals.
Interesting to reflect on I think. Having a ‘button to press’ isnt just restricted to gaming, either. I seem to always have a bunch of different projects I’m ‘working on’ that I happily pick up and put down at different times.
I’d be pretty interested to hear back from you guys on what your own activity arcs look like. What have you guys been up to, what are the things you work on each day in life? Do these things easily come to mind or are they hard to place? Are you happy?
Panographs – Orgrimmar versus Stormwind
A little bit of an Alliance versus Horde theme today. Have to say I was pretty amazed at the Orgrimmar shots! Where should I head next?
Posted in Screenshots
Northrend Panographs – Part 2
Next lot of Northrend screenshots including the much requested Icecrown:
Northrend Panographs
Took about 30 new shots today – here’s the first lot! Keep the suggestions coming :)
Kalimdor Panographs
Did a couple of requests from the Consortium thread tonight. Thanks to Supes for passing on the /console commands to improve the quality and format of the screenshot save files!
The files in my screenshots folder are up to 30mb/each in size so for the sake of practicality (and my server’s bandwidth!) I’ve converted them from the TGA to high quality JPG files. If you’re especially interested in any of them let me know and I can upload the original files.
Also a special shoutout to [Cthulhu Ftagn] who I’ve learned has (bizarrely!) had a great panogramic screenshots thread going on MMO-Champion forums for the last couple of week. Definitely worth checking out!
Panoramic Screenshots
Have been running WoW in triple-screen mode lately for a change. My setup runs with triple 27″ DELL U2711 screens so it makes for a pretty cool immersive experience! One cool thing I realised is that screenshots were saved at that same 7680×1440 resolution. I ended up taking a bunch of different shots to test it out:
Finally here’s a quick phone pic of how the screens are setup:
Let me know if there’s any locations you think might make cool shots and I’ll see what I can do :)
Warcraft Word Jumble – Latreau
Shout out to Latreau, a friend from EU-Argent Dawn, this week! He’s into gathering professions so that’s the theme for this one.
There are no warcraft-specific words so should be fairly easy. As far as I’m aware the scoring is still broken (giving an ‘error’ on completion).
I’m looking at changing that functionality to leave a timestamped comment when the jumble is completed. So until then leave a comment to let me know how you found the puzzle :)
Warcraft Word Jumble – Alto
Shout out to Alto of [Alto's Gold"ish" Advice] this week :)
Warcraft Word Jumble – Zevia
Hi Folks! After the recent holidays and a month overseas I’m back (thanks in no small part to cajoling from Zevia). As a thanks (and payback? :p) the weekly World Jumbles will be making a return!
I thought I might kick things off with one on Zevia’s favourite thing in the world – Archaeology!
Huge thanks to [Cal Henderson] for his help in updating some of the Jumble coding.
UPDATE: The scoring page seems to be returning an ‘error’ response. Looking into it, but it wont stop you solving the puzzle!