Changes and catching up

It’s been eight days since I posted anything. I have many possible excuses, including “busy” and “uninspired,” but I’ll make none. I don’t have to… but I have been busy and uninspired, for what it’s worth.

I made some updates to the site today. It wasn’t my intention to do so, but I logged on and somehow made my way back to Vomi Mot, where Kara turned me on to a new feature she had found: An RSS feed from her WoWarmory.com profile that can be placed on the sidebar of her site. Thinking this was the bee’s knees, I went to work figuring out how to make this happen for my page. I was able to get mine to work, sort of… it would list each item twice, for some reason, and it looked really messy. So I set off in search of a new theme that would make this possible, and started looking at some other things on my site. Here are the changes:

• New theme. I had been using Mistylook, which is apparently no longer an option, so I changed it to Connections, which is very similar to my old one but has some added features, including the inclusion of bullet points on my sidebar, which cleans things up very nicely.
• WoWarmory.com RSS widget on the sidebar.
• New title! Swipe, for the win! is retired, I guess. Since I can’t think of anything cool that is both non-WoW-related and something I want to use, I changed the title to reflect the fact that my druid does her best work from behind. [Shred] is where a lot of the damage I do comes from, and [Swipe] does not reflect as well on my play style (except on trash), so I took a page from the Pantera song and changed it. We’ll see how long it lasts.
• New Header. Since I changed the theme, I found that the header picture went back to default, and since Anacrusa had changed a lot in the past couple of months, I figured that a new screenshot was in order. She has a lot of new gear, as well as blue hair instead of purple, and a sweet new weapon, so I went back to the Sun Touched Pillar in Sholazar Basin and took a new photo. Why Sholazar? I don’t know, lots of plants and stuff?
• Cleaned up the Tags section a bit (there were too many – still are).
• Changed my nickname to my first name. I’m not a total noob anymore…
• Added a list of music, books and games I am currently into more than others.
• Subscription widget. I stuck one of these on the sidebar for the heck of it.
• Search widget. Ditto.

Things have been pretty busy lately. I’m not going to talk about work, but that’s been a major stressor.

Also, I’ve played WoW at least a little (and sometimes a lot) each day over the past couple of weeks. A quick look at my new WoWarmory.com widget will give you an idea of some of the stuff that I’ve been involved with. Each day it’s easy to run quick randoms on my druid and paladin, simply for the Emblems of Frost. We’ve attacked Icecrown Citadel weekly, and I’ve managed to get a couple of nice items (Ashen Band of Unmatched Vengeance, Whispering Fanged Skull) out of there. Feral druid drops have been sparse, and hunter mail has been plentiful, so I’ve mostly missed out there, but I’m hanging in there. I also got the Battered Hilt, and decided that the upgrade from doing the quests was good enough to do them. So now I’m sporting the Lightborn Spire, which is a pretty sweet mace! Combined with the trinket mentioned above, my unbuffed Critical Strike Rating rose from 59.16% to 64.44% in cat form, which is just amazing to me. I’m excited to see how well it works out this week in Icecrown.

Also, we finally took down Anub’arak as a guild to get the Call of the Crusade (25-man normal) achievement. No significant loot from there – I was rolling for trophies, but didn’t really come close, as usual.

I’ve also begun playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS) this past few days. I like it! The puzzles are fun, and I enjoy the problems they pose. They help me get ready for sleep, ending the day with a little challenge and the satisfaction of solving them. I’m definitely going to pick up the second one; although I’m not too keen on slogging through the story, I’m enjoying the game in general, and I know I’ll want to play …Diabolical Box when I’ve finished this one.

Finally, I have been continuing to load CDs onto my computer as Apple Lossless files, and that is going well – the music sounds great!

That’s about all to write about for now. I’ll have more sooner than later, I promise!

Oregon Trail for DSiWare

The past two weeks, I’ve finally seen a couple of games released on the DSi Shop that I’m interested in. A couple of weeks ago, it was Dragon’s Lair. This week, Oregon Trail was released.

Dragon’s Lair is tempting, but Oregon Trail is more tempting. We used to play it back in elementary school in the Apple II (!) lab back in the ’80s. It brings back memories, both good and bad (the 80s were a socially awkward time for me, unsurprisingly…). The main memory, though, is that it was fun, and I wish that we had had more time to play it back then.

So perhaps there’s some unfinished business?  /wink

DSiWare releases 12/14/09

Lately I have been checking out the DSi Shop in search of interesting games to play before I go to sleep, etc.

So far I have spent a total of 200 points ($2), on myNotebook, which I am actually finding quite useful. It’s an application that allows you to take notes and draw pictures in a notebook format. I’ve been using it kind of like a day-planner, making the kinds of lists that I would normally write on a Post-it and stick in my pocket… lists of things to do at work, games I’m interested in, things I’d like to accomplish once I get home from work, etc.

Last night, I downloaded Flipnote, which is a great little app that allows you to draw and write on blank pages and then alter them so that they can be played in a flipbook style. You can check out flipbooks that others have created and even upload your own so that others can see. I probably won’t get that involved in it, but as it was a free download, I figured that I could have some fun with it, in spite of my lack of artistic talent.

Other than that, I haven’t taken advantage of the DSi’s “Wares.” There are a few games that I am interested in checking out. One that I am most interested in is Art Style: Base 10, which is a puzzle game that appeals to my knack for numbers. I’ll probably pick that one up soon, as 500 points is not a bad value. The others in particular that interest me are Bookworm Express and Mario vs. Donkey Kong: More Minis, although being interested in them sort of makes me just want to buy the full versions.

It looks like Nintendo tries to release games on Mondays, and so I was excited to check out their newest offerings tonight. Here they are…

Littlest Pet Shop, Miami Nights, Bejeweled Twist, Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam and Master of Illusion Express: Matchmaker.

As Squido would say, lamesauce.

In general, there are two types of games that I would like to buy from this service: A) original games that are either new intellectual property or new games based on classics, and B) classic games, akin to those that are available on the Wii’s Virtual Console. As we get further from the launch of the DSi with no news of Option B happening, it seems less likely. So I’m trolling for games that fall into the Option A category. I’m not into any of the crap that came out today, though.

Disappointing. Oh well. There are 83 games up so far, and the system has only been out for eight months. I see a lot of potential for great games and apps that could be made for the DSi, and hopefully there will be more developers large and small out there who give the format a shot at providing something unique and exciting for people of all ages.