Ad-load fail

When Safari fails – which happens too often – sometimes I get stuff like this (screenshot taken on 9/18):

When an SI.com ad fails to load, it's good to know that you could always go to Wowhead instead.

How I was the last person ever to learn about Predator’s Swiftness!

So it’s two days after I published my personal PvP update, and I once again learned something new today. I sort of figured it out on my own, but I also partially figured it out as a result of reading Keeva’s Resto Druid Guide at Tree Bark Jacket.

See, I was reading her guide (which is an excellent guide, btw) because I’m thinking of ditching the tank spec for a while and having some fun with a resto PvP spec. I know, right? Crazy feral! Anyway, that’s story for another day.

In my previous post, I talked about how I suck at, among other things, using Cyclone. I was always under the impression that Cyclone could be an instant cast, but it never seemed to be one for me. While I was reading Keeva’s guide, I read about Nature’s Swiftness, which falls in the fifth tier of the restoration tree. I assumed that this was what people had been talking about, but that’s not a talent that a feral can have, so I let it go.

However, some of my heals with cast-times in WG have been instant casts… hmm…

It’s been haunting me.

Finally, it hit me this afternoon. I quickly logged in, opened my feral tree, and found Predatory Strikes. I feverishly read the tooltip, and then I ported to Ironforge and hit the dummy to see what the buff was called…

Predator’s Swiftness.

Yes!

Predator’s Swiftness is similar to Nature’s Swiftness except that it’s a proc instead of an ability. I think that’s what was confusing me more than usual (I’m a bit of a flake by nature). So I configured NeedToKnow to show me the buff along with everything else I track, and tried it out a few times. It works like a charm.

* * * * *

I’m kind of embarrassed that I didn’t know the details about (and use, except by accident) Predator’s Swiftness forever ago, but I’m also excited. This gives me something else to work with in the heat of battle!

So anyway, there’s one problem solved. Heals and Cyclones should come easier for me now.

* * * * *

I originally titled this post “L2P n00b!!1! lol,” but thought better of it… it’s still true, though!

Blackadder – a favorite clip: C is for Contrafibularity

Blackadder: a whole collection of awesome

I’ve been re-watching Blackadder: The Ultimate Edition (box set, 1983-’89) over the past couple of months. There were four separate series, each of which was set in a different historical period and starred Rowan Atkinson as Edmund Blackadder. While they’re all excellent, Blackadder the Third (1987) is my favorite.

In it, Edmund plays the servant to Hugh Laurie’s George, the Prince Regent. Laurie, known to most Americans as Dr. Gregory House, turns in a hilarious performance as the dunce-Prince Regent, and Atkinson’s Edmund is both witty and charming as he grovels and schemes toward his never-changing goal of amassing as much cash as he can.

One of my favorite clips is from the second episode, entitled Ink and Incapability. In it, the Prince Regent decides to become a patron of Dr. Johnson’s new book, the first English dictionary. Edmund, who does not like Dr. Johnson because he has never responded to Edmund’s submission of a novel, does his best to make the author feel as uncomfortable as possible. Enjoy!

Something fishy about this site

This morning, I was using the WordPress Tag Surfer when I came across this page. The language is pretty ridiculous. It looks… fishy. However, the site had no links, other than to its one and only post.

This is the site's front page

Here is a larger screenshot of the text portion (feel free to click for a larger pic if this is still not legible on your screen):

Look familiar, WoW players?

I don’t really need to comment any further about this, do I? I mean, it seems strange that this is not an email or in-game mail, and does not direct anyone to a website to put in an account password. I just found myself incredulous when I read it – there seems to be no purpose to it. I did report it to WordPress as spam, though. First time for everything.

I’m putting a humor tag on this post, even though I was shaking my head at it more than I was laughing.

Weekend grin: favorite search term

Yesterday, as I looked over my blog stats for this week, one search term from Wednesday stuck out like a sore thumb to me…

!!!

I had to chuckle…

I’ve mentioned before – I feel bad sometimes that people who are looking for good info on being a feral druid should find my blog. Almost all of my feral posts were anecdotal rather than strictly informational, with only a couple of exceptions. And while I certainly would have liked to be perfectly geared for ICC, I unfortunately was not!

So, to the person who found whichever post he/she read: Sorry, friend!

Friday afternoon haiku: The “new and improved” Hotmail

The interface sucks.

It logs me out too often.

Sorting’s still a joke.

>.<

I may import to gmail soon…

Photos from the first half of June

I haven’t posted many photos recently, so I figured I had better get in gear, empty my camera onto the computer, and see what I had.

I haven’t taken as many pictures as I would have liked. I have this habit of forgetting to take my camera with me when I walk sometimes. However, I did find a few beautiful (or interesting) pictures from the past couple of weeks.

Please click photos to see full-size versions.

* * * * *

The first two are from June 7th, when I decided to walk around the west end of town for a bit.

On Chestnut St.

Flower box

* * * * *

The next photo was taken during my walk to Central Market last Friday (June 11th).

Soldiers and Sailors Monument, Penn Square, Lancaster

Information on the Soldiers and Sailors monument can be found here.

* * * * *

There is a lot of construction going on in Lancaster right now, and on that same walk, I came across this door. It made me grin… you can see the construction workers coming down the stairs to thrash me for being a brat!

Eh... there's probably nothing of value in there anyway.

* * * * *

Finally, here is a picture of my view from the back porch today. After a couple of hazy days, today has been beautiful, with low humidity, a nice breeze, and temperatures in the mid 70s. I took this photo, and then I did about two hours of yard work.

A beautiful blue sky!

Recent links of interest

My personal output has been even lighter than usual over the past week. The main reason for this is that I am working on a long post about politics, and I’m struggling with wrapping it up. I need to write a conclusion, and I also need to think carefully about the cohesiveness of the piece before I post it, because I have a tendency to be less than concise when I write. So, there’s plenty of revision still to go with that one…

On Wednesday I made a day trip to visit with my brother and his family. It was a fun, crazy day, the only way it can be when 2-year-old twins (and a 6-month-old infant who’s teething and crawling) are involved!

I’ve also been reading a lot. Books. Yeah.

Meanwhile, here are a few highlights from the posts I’ve read over the past week or two.

Click here to read Krist Novoselic's May 4th post, "Analog Music & Cars in the Digital Age"

• Nirvana bassist / political activist Krist Novoselic has a blog on Seattle Weekly’s Reverb, where he posts twice a week on music and political issues. An avid lover of vinyl, he reviewed the Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street [Super Deluxe Edition] last Friday, and yesterday he reminisced about Shocking Blue, a classic but under-appreciated band from Holland whose “Love Buzz” Nirvana recorded for their first 7″ single. Krist is an affable and very intelligent guy who absolutely loves music, and his posts are a lot of fun to read.
• John (BBB) posted a humorous idea regarding the return of CC in Cataclysm, and ReversionLFM of Looking For More made it come to life!
• Andrew of Systemic Babble wrote a great rebuttal to an article on Gamesbrief by Nicholas Lovell, who stated that Steam’s “monopoly” on PC downloads would be the downfall of the PC game industry. The discussion in the comments is very interesting as well. Additionally, he recently posted a wonderful link to The Scale of the Universe, and Friday’s post regarding the most recent developments involving Israel really resonated with me.
• Jacemora, Druid of the Moon, followed up on the idea of using a Mangle-spam rotation. Mangle vs Shred seemed to be a popular question when the changes to Mangle and the Glyph of Mangle went live with Patch 3.3.3. Many ferals, myself included, seemed to feel at the time that Shred and its positional requirement were still the best option for high damage. His verdict: Shred is indeed the way to go.
• Gordon at We Fly Spitfires wrote an immensely popular (and very funny) post this week entitled MMO or Baby? He also has a review of the WoW Remote Auction House beta, and since he posts almost every day, there’s plenty of other good stuff to check out.
• In Wednesday’s Tree of Life post, Keredria talks about Christian guilds, and mentions that she may post more on religion in WoW in the future. I hope she does, because her post was entertaining and informative.
• Finally, Dr. Tom Bibey wrote about his favorite bookstores in a manner that made me immediately want to go book and music shopping at mom-and-pop stores… again… yes, I have a problem!

Enjoy! Hopefully I’ll finish the piece I mentioned above sooner than later… or some other legit post, at least.

Random linkage, new Gravatar

New Gravatar photo

Here are some links from the past week or so that have given me food for thought:

• John, the Big Bear Butt himself, posted a massive list of book recommendations on May 14th, and it has literally (um, no pun intended?) flipped my mental “to-read” list upside down. While I’m still working on finishing up a few books myself, I’ve found myself wondering what I’m going to read down the road, other than a few suggestions from friends. This post just opened up a can of whoop-ass on my feeble reading goals. My old guild master, Secure, has been recommending the Wheel of Time series for as long as I’ve known him, and this list just made that bug in my ear buzz a little louder… Book recommendations are never bad, as far as I’m concerned!
• Kara at Vomi Mot wrote a couple of days ago about Dungeons & Dragons and Christianity. Her article is a reaction to an article by William Schnoebelen of chick.com, in which he details his experiences with D&D, along with his road through witchcraft, satanism, and finally to Christianity. While I don’t have any opinions that I feel qualified to express here, I found her response to be well thought-out.
• My friend Greg at parkinthepark has some commentary and information on Voltage Pictures’ massive lawsuit against tens of thousands of people who pirated “The Hurt Locker” online. He also sent me a link to an article on the subject by Peter Serafinowicz at Gizmodo entitled “Why I Steal Movies… Even Ones I’m In.” This is a compelling battle to watch; as fast as technology and the behaviors of users evolve (and as much as producers and publishers of various media attempt to keep up), the collective business model is adapting with an alarming lack of swiftness. Check the links for more info.
• Gordon at We Fly Spitfires has posted several items that intrigue me (doesn’t he always? LOL!). On the 14th, he posted about his new toon he created, with backstory, for Age of Conan. The next day, his topic was Should I Purchase The Half-Price LotRO Lifetime Subscription? If I had a PC, I’d be tempted myself… May 17th brought an article about racism in MMOs, and yesterday’s post concerned the subject of the death of role-playing in MMOs.
• Andrew at Systemic Babble posted a link to an Impressive 3D Optical Illusion, as well as an article about a new measure proposed in Canada’s House of Commons by Liberal MP Keith Martin that would see Canada’s government encouraging parents to prevent their children from watching TV or playing video games one night per week.
• Larísa over at the Pink Pigtail Inn has an interesting idea: what if we all stopped blogging (and reading blogs) about World of Warcraft until Cataclysm is released? She also posted today about resistance to the concept that Blizzard is a business, while Tobold has a response to Larísa’s blogging proposal.
• Keredria at Tree of Life posted an educational article on Government Structures in WoW, based on information from wowwiki. Honestly, I’m ashamed to admit that this is a subject I had really never spent much time thinking about, but some of the governments they list for certain zones are fascinating.
• Finally, Ronnie James Dio died on Sunday morning of stomach cancer. The legendary vocalist was an inspiration and hero to several generations of rock and metal musicians, and his recordings with Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio, and Heaven and Hell are some of the most revered and respected of all time. You can google his name and find tons of information about him, but for a long list of remembrances and tributes, check out blabbermouth.net (links to their search results for “Dio”).

There it is: I’ve laid bare some of my internet/blog-reading interests for the past week… Now maybe I can go work on a real blog post of my own at some point today!

Six photos from Saturday

Last Tuesday, I ventured out for a stroll into Lancaster city. It was a dual-purpose walk: I needed to pick up a few things at the Central Market, and I also wanted to see some of the city’s beauty again.

I just moved back to Lancaster after being away for a couple of years. It’s a city with a lot of history, charm, and culture. In addition to Central Market, which is the oldest running farmer’s market in the U.S., there is a growing art district, a college-town atmosphere, a variety of musical attractions, many shoppes, cafes, and boutiques, a local minor league baseball team (Lancaster Barnstormers), museums, and so on.

While there are parts of the city that don’t do much for the eyes, there are several sections that are lovely to walk through. I walked to market again last Saturday, remembering to take my camera, and was able to get some good photos while I was out. Here are some highlights. Click the photos to see them in their glory!

Walnut @ Pine

I found a house on Walnut St. with these beautiful flowers on the windows.

Beautiful flower arrangement

A photo of the front of Thaddeus Stevens school on Charlotte Ave.

Thaddeus Stevens school

Here is one of my favorite homes in Lancaster City.

One of the houses that makes walking in Lancaster so rewarding

Eventually, I made it back home with my purchases from the market, and set about making lunch…

I wonder who gave me this mug...

…and my lunch accidentally turned out looking very classy, so I figured that I might as well take a picture of it, too!

A delicious lunch

Vietnamese egg rolls, fresh cucumbers with ranch and cheddar, and coffee. And it was delicious.

It was a beautiful spring day, and I’m happy to have gotten some time in with my camera. I’m looking forward to getting some more pics from around Lancaster and posting them at some point.