Category: Uncategorised

Review: Vitax Pepper Dust

As with all reviews, this is a personal opinion from my experiences, your experience may / will vary. Unfortunately this isn’t a positive review, as the dust hasn’t managed to shift a particularly persistent moggie or two from a patch of my garden which they appear to think is their personal litter tray.

So nice idea, eco friendly and all that is good, but effectiveness 2/10 at best.

Romford Police : “You can’t take photos here”

What is it with the Police in the UK, particularly those in London.

Guys, the law is very clear, it is not a crime to take a photo in a public place of other people, using the terrorism act makes you look like plods who will rummage through the statute book until you find something which fits what you want to achieve.  We know that there are police who really don’t like the idea of being photographed, to be honest it feels like you’re fed up of being called out on behaviour which would get the general public arrested and locked up.

And the Met’s own advice on dealing with Photographers : http://www.met.police.uk/about/photography.htm

[Edit: fixed broken link]

Glastonbury

Shepton Mallet (pop: ~10,000), approximately 2 miles as the crow flies from the Glastonbury festival site (closer than Glastonbury itself is). Approx pop: according to the news ~177,000, and 50,000 cars or so. Fortunately this year the bass beat didn’t make itself felt in the back garden.

Unfortunately those wonderful people leaving early on Monday did. Thank you all so much for the extra 30 minutes I spent in the car this morning, next time, please leave after rush hour.

Football

Right, England football fans.

  • We was not robbed
  • The hype in the media before & during was as stupid as ever
  • There will be a week of deconstruction and navel gazing.

As for the rest of us.

Thank feck it’s over for another four years.

realID, what does it mean to me?

RealID, it’ll be with us in the EU within days, so time to think about whether it’s good, bad or simply “a something”.

So, firstly, the low down from Blizzard

Everyone read and digested?  Good.

I must use it

There’s no requirement to use RealID, seriously, you don’t have to use it, if you don’t like what it does then don’t bloody well use it.

Real names

It shows your real name to people you have connected with using RealID (or more accurately the name you have registered your battlenet account under).This isn’t a problem for me generally but I can see it will be a problem for some people, with the wider sharing of names this is going to be a deal breaker for some.

Sharing account details

The two people connecting must share their battlenet email addresses to make the connection, once connected this information isn’t displayed anywhere.

“If you are using Real ID, your mutual Real ID friends, as well as their Real ID friends, will be able to see your first and last name (the name registered to the Battle.net account). You will also be able to see the first and last name of your Real ID friends and their Real ID friends. Your Battle.net account name (your email address) is not displayed to other players through the Real ID friends list. In addition, players with Real ID relationships will be able to view each other’s online status, Rich Presence information, and Broadcast messages, and will be able to see which character and game their Real ID friends are playing across supported Blizzard games.”This I’m not entirely convinced about and the language is vague towards the end (at least to my rules lawyer mind).

Removing friends

Right click, click, done.

Let’s build an example

We have the following players A, B, C & D

A & B become friends
B & C become friends
C & D become friends

Real Name

A can see B & C
B can see A, C & D
C can see A, B & D
D can see C & B

B & C become RealID friends

BattleNet account name (email address)

Not shown through the system

A & B become RealID friends

This I think is vague, I suspect that they’re referring only to direct relationships, if that’s true then

A can see B
B can see A & C
C can see B & D
D can see C

Online status, “Rich Presence Information”, Broadcast messages

If however it follows the same rules as for your real name then those rules apply.

All your toons across all games on that battlenet account are shared with your friends.No opt outs, so that toon you keep for slacking, it’s now visable.  That banking toon you’ve been owning the AH with… visible.

The million dollar question

Will I use it, probably, maybe, while there are people on WoW who know my real name and there are others who can guess from looking through Facebook and put two and two together it’s not something I’ve pushed out there.  I don’t like the friend of a friend information sharing, and if that includes online status etc etc I like it less.

Is big media starting to “get it”

One of the largest complaints from the public (or those who think) about books, music, video and the way the old media companies is the way they’ve failed to really grasp to the internet and the whole host of new ways in which content is being delivered and the way people want it.

One of our regular ‘car conversations’ when travelling a long distance and I’m not the only one awake as been what book publishers could do for those of us who want paper, we like paper, but also want the ability to read the book while travelling without lugging around a crate full of paperbacks (yes she can read that many in a week).  So the thought is that with each book a code is provided to download a copy of the book in an e-format of choice, one time use or locked to a person, exact mechanism is implementation stuff.  However the core idea is that the incremental cost of providing the e-version is minimal, everything is built up on computers to start with now.

So moving on, as one of the father’s day presents from the short (well, not so short) one, was Wolverine on DVD, random SF / fantasy fare, the brain will be left on the hook and the film will be taken for what it is.  The extra here is a code provided with the DVD, shove the DVD in the drive, watch iTunes fire up, enter the code and a few minutes later I have a copy which plays on the PC and on the iDevice.

Ok, there are discussions about DRM and locking to specific devices etc etc but I think on balance the industry is starting to get creative.

Manage your aggro for a happy tank

Taking a lead from Wrath of Nature who’s been reading Big Bear Butt I shall respond to the challenge to explain how to survive as dps without annoying the tank by ripping aggro and how to deal with it when I do.

By nature I’m a tank, I’m sure everyone who’s been past this place before has worked that out but I’ve got six 80’s, two of which are ICC25 geared and and another pair who are well geared, certainly enough for the first few ICC bosses on 10-man.  So I’ve seen it all, tanking, off-tanking, tank healing, raid healing, running like a loon healing and nuking the hell out of the ugly in melee and ranged camps.

I like to understand what the other parts of the team are up to when I’m trying to keep the big and ugly from nomming on their squishy faces.

So, for the purposes of this post I shall be considering Wubbles, a decently geared destro warlock, a “DestroGnome” if you will, also known as “Oh my god he’s gone and ripped aggro again”.

Single Targeting

The single biggest thing I can do to help the tank is nothing.  Do absolutely nothing, give him a GCD or two as necessary to get a lead.  There’s nothing like a threat lead to keep a tank happy.  If I really must do something then a quick curse just after the pull is fine, this also helps Omen work out what’s happening by generating threat to track.

With the rotation I’m using I spike threat at about the 4.5 second mark, so watching omen like a hawk is critical, make sure that before I pop the final move in the rotation assess whether I’m going to pull or not.  If I am, choose something else, keep the tank happy, tanks like to be the center of attention and hate it going to someone else.

This might mean I’m not the top of the dps charts.

So what, are the mobs dead, did I pull my weight, is everyone else alive, is the healer cursing or drinking on every pull because of the heavy healing?

It’s all good, an extra 5 seconds to kill the mob isn’t going to kill anyone except a certain class of “gogogogo” dps, and I’ll have words to say about them in a bit.

Multiple Targets

This is more of a problem, depending on the tank it’s highly likely that in a large trash pull there will be several mobs who only have proximity aggro on the tank, opening up instantly with rain of fire will mean collecting lots of new friends who wish to chat and show off their big weapons.

Again, give the tank a chance to spread his love around a bit before opening up with the big guns, spend a few cycles whacking the tank’s initial target before AoEing the universe to death.

Tools

Soulshatter: Horribly long cooldown for current heroic running but don’t be afraid to use it.

Caveat: Don’t soulshatter next to the healer, if you don’t play with a healer in the same room let me tell you that they swear like troopers when that happens.

Close to death: Can it be nuked before reaching me?  What about the dots, if I run around like a girl will it give them a chance to take it down?

The biggie, rule #1

Run to the tank

I cannot stress this enough, there’s nothing which annoys a tank more than having to chase a mob all over the instance because the dps is running away.  All the time the tank is chasing your mob they’re not building aggro on the others, which increases the chance of other mobs breaking making his life even harder.

Big furry and annoying

Unferth had his first heroic last night leading from the front kicking mobs and generally trying to keep ahead of the ICC10 geared dps from the guild.  On the whole it wasn’t too bad, doubly so when it’s considered he’s not gemmed, enchanted and is still running with chicken glyphs.

I need to do more work on where the keymappings are and get the threat moves settled into my brain a little more solidly than they are at the moment.  Including getting the AoE taunt into the space place as RD is on my tankadin (keep the tanking keys mapped to “similar” abilities, that’s the trick).

In general for single target threat I had no problem keeping it off the dps, ok the warlock in the guild got close more than a few times but he can do that to ‘wolf if I’m not paying attention.

Spreading the threat love around is going to be the trick to work on, I spent a fair amount of the time picking mobs back up off the DKs because they were walloping on my off-targets which I hadn’t built huge amounts of threat on.

However all said, a good start to his tanking career.