Warren & Toren decided to preview “Marine Biologist”, a new track from The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets‘ new album “The Shadow out of Tim”. They made it available as an M4a track, which requires iTunes, so I’ve converted it and can preview it streaming right here!
It’s back!
With the release of The Burning Crusade (TBC) expansion pack, my interest in World of Warcraft has been reinvigorated. Thanks to a friend at Blizzard I got into the beta for TBC and really enjoyed the starting areas for both the new races (Blood Elves and Draenei).
I decided to renew my subscription when TBC released in January and I’ve been playing steadily since. Some friends and I picked one of the brand new servers called “Velen” that came up on TBC’s release date so we wouldn’t be overshadowed by people who had been playing for years. It’s a “PvE” server, so there’s no unwanted PvP in the game. In other words, members of the opposing faction won’t be killing you as you quest unless you turn your PvP flag on. The tradeoff is that you can’t kill them either.
My main character is named Dawkins, an obvious homage to famous scientist, skeptic and athiest Richard Dawkins. It makes me chuckle that a character with “holy power” is named after someone who doesn’t believe in it. What’s great is that as you progress through the levels you find out that the Blood Elf paladins aren’t exactly all that holy and their power has been more siezed from than granted by a beneficent entity.
Here’s Dawkins on his new “Epic Mount”. When I first got it I showed it off to Mel and she starting sing-songing “You ride a unicorn, nyah, nyah…” but I instantly pointed out that the barding had six horns which made it a “Sexicorn” and that’s pretty damned cool.
Blizzard has a cool new feature called the Armory, which lets you view a character through an excellent web interface. Here’s the page for Dawkins, in case you want to check him out.
Unfortunately, most of the people who joined me on the new server haven’t been playing much. A lot of them are busy, others have high-level characters on other servers they’d rather level up first. So I’m putting out a call to friends who may have thought about trying out WoW but haven’t yet: join me! There’s a 10 day free trial so you can “try before you buy”, though it has a few restrictions (no trading, level cap of 20, chat channel limitations). But hey, it’s free and you can upgrade it to an unrestricted account at any time. I’m pretty sure the game should suggest the “Velen” server to anyone on the west coast who signs up, but if it doesn’t you can press “View Realm List” after it suggests and change to Velen to join me.
I love seeing friends show up in tv shows and commercials.
Got this in my email this morning from Colin McLean and thought I’d share!
Well, after much effort, Grace Elizabeth McLean entered the world at 10:42 pm last night. She weighed in at 8 lbs, 7 ounces, and a measurement of a whopping 55 centimeters! ( must be her Dad’s girl all right…) Mom and baby are doing very well, we’re all a little tired this morning. Thanks for all the kind thoughts, we’ll contact you all soon.
Here are the photos he sent along with them, though I’ve sized them down a bit:
Thanks Hooked On Spore. They’re giving the rumoured release date as September of this year. Just a rumour, of course, but it’d sure be nice.
Mel, Jess, Rob and I saw 300 at a matinee yesterday and got pretty much exactly what we wanted: a visceral, violent, entertaining, and incredibly stylish movie.
There are a few subplot additions to what’s in the comic which aren’t totally successful, but they certainly don’t diminish the movie. My only complaint is Xerxes’ voice and stature made me instantly think of old Star Trek villains. But maybe that’s what they wanted!
Saw this over on Warren’s Livejournal, but tracked down the original From Broken-TV.
It’s so true, and you’ve heard me talk about it here: Content publishers are so freaked out over piracy (whether it be DVD or video game) that they’re punishing legitimate purchasers with over-the-top DRM, DVD-in-the-tray requirements for PC Games, and annoying unskippable ads at the beginning of legitimate purchases.
They forget that they’re not just selling a product but an experience, and every step they take to taint that experience is simply pushing people towards buying untainted pirate copies instead.
I walked to Metropolis at Metrotown (which every just called “Metrotown” — their marketing guys should get with the program) on Sunday with my iPod and new in-ear headphones. These headphones cancel outside noise so all you hear is the music.
As I got close to the mall, Led Zepplin’s “No Quarter” started up:
The song was barely registering and I walked to the mall on autopilot. Right at 47 seconds in the mall’s automatic doors opened up and I entered and the drums came in and the music swelled. My mind unconsciously tried to reconcile this musical change with my concurrent change of venue and just couldn’t, and it took a few seconds before I became conscious of it myself, and I couldn’t help but just continue walking and enjoy it.
I don’t do drugs, but I imagine that walk through the mall was akin to being on ecstasy. I walked through the mall with a slight grin on my face and felt out of phase with the regular shoppers. The grin didn’t go away even after I had to talk the headphones off to talk to clerks to make a few purchases. That one surreal moment really did make my day — I was in a good mood the whole rest of it.
Especially afterwards when I played Texas Hold’Em at Rob & Jess’ place and took first place for the first time since we started playing! Maybe I should give John Paul Jones a cut of my winnings.
A fascinatiing transcript of a speech by Robert Sapolsky. It’s long, but take the time to read it all.
The purpose of science in understanding who we are as humans is not to rob us of our sense of mystery, not to cure us of our sense of mystery. The purpose of science is to constantly reinvent and reinvigorate that mystery. To always use it in a context where we are helping people in trying to resist the forces of ideology that we are all familiar with.
Recent Comments