Atomic Playboy

These are links I found interesting for 26/01 through 30/01:

• GlimmerBlocker — pAd blocker for Safari implemented as a non-intrusive proxy./p
• Noscope | Journal | Extra Image Tags Plugin — pThis is a very minimalistic WordPress plugin, which finds all images you insert into your posts, and wrap them in extra 's, so you can style the hell out of them./p
• The $300 Million Button — p”It's hard to imagine a form that could be simpler: two fields, two buttons, and one link. Yet, it turns out this form was preventing customers from purchasing products from a major e-commerce site, to the tune of $300,000,000 a year. What was even worse: the designers of the site had no clue there was even a problem.”/p
• Cops Talk Funny — p”From recruits in academies to senior officers and command staff, you talk funny when you take the stand. Is it in the water at the academies; is there a secret society where you're taught this special language?”/p
• Videogames outsell DVD and Blu-ray in 2008 — pRetail sales of videogames overtook that of DVD and Blu-ray for the first time, as sales of packaged media grew 6 per cent worldwide to hit USD 61 billion in 2008, according to Media Control GfK International./p

These are links I found interesting for January 25th through January 26th:

• Applescript support in Adium 1.2 and later — pAppleScript reference for hooks in Adium./p
• AppleScript Language Guide: Introduction to AppleScript Language Guide — pThis document is a guide to the AppleScript language—its lexical conventions, syntax, keywords, and other elements. It is intended primarily for use with AppleScript 2.0 or later and Mac OS X version 10.5 or later./p

This World of Goo trailer kind of makes me want a Wii. The combination of cutesy looks (somewhat Tim Burton-ish) and ominous, melancholy epic music tickles my brain in all the right spots.

So The Burning Crusade, the first expansion for World of Warcraft, got released about a month ago. And I’m thorougly enjoying it. It got a bit boring toward the end, when I hit level 60 with my second character — a troll mage this time; the first character was an orc hunter that I don’t play any longer.

My mage is now level 70 and slowly working on gaining access to the endgame content — heroic mode dungeons and Karazhan.

In addition to the mage I also started playing a blood elf paladin — blood elves are one of the two new races in the expansion, the other one being the squid-faced Draenei. I played a paladin for a bit on another server and quite liked it, but that was on the Alliance side. I’m Horde now, and until the arrival of the blood elves the Horde didn’t have access to paladins, just like the Alliance didn’t get any shamans.

With the two new races both sides have access to all nine classes. There’s some lore involved, but the real decision was probably that it got hard to tune encounters for two different sides, since shamans and paladins bring very different abilities with them. A major gripe has been that playing Alliance was considered “easy mode” for raiding due to all the defensive abilities a paladin has.

Zai, my paladin, just reached level 40 and got her Blood Knight mount, but I also bought the racial mount — the Elven Battle Chicken!

Left: Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese in The Terminator.

Right: Solid Snake from Metal Gear.

Sadly, Filerush has kicked the bucket. That was my premium place to get new game demos and trailers via torrent downloads. Where will I get that stuff now? Filerush had a nice, minimalistic stuff of new items without any intrusive ads. I don’t want to wade through crappy ads and uninteresting articles to get to the good stuff.

This image will only make sense to WoWers.

Yep, both Nefarion and Onyxia down during the same night. Nice going, Horde!

My hunter in World of Warcraft finally hit level 60, the max level in the game. So now I’ve finished the game. Time to play something else.

Or not. One might even say that the real game starts now, with the endgame content opening up for me. Tomorrow I’m going on my first Molten Core run, for some hot action. Since I’m a bit poorly equipped it might be very hot indeed, I could use more fire resistance items.

There’s really lots of stuff to do when you hit level 60. Apart from the obvious Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Zul’Gurrub runs, you can participate in battlegrounds to gain faction reputation and get cool stuff.

…well, that was pretty much it. But it’s not like that is something you do over a weekend. I wrote a long list of various equipment I’d like to get now that I’m 60, and that will keep me busy for a good long while.

I play a hunter, and we’re a pretty special class. We’re focusing on long-range damage with bows and guns, and have a tamed animal who does the close quarters battling for us (if things go as intended). I’m not as flashy in combat as the fireballs and pyrotechnics a mage slings, but I do a steady stream of damage instead of high bursts of damage like mages do.

And having a pet can be a great advantage; the pet can keep one enemy tied down while I deal with another one. My current pet is a Stranglethorn tigress.

Her name is Pinky.

Dystopia was finally released the other day, after about two years in development. So far it’s just a demo with a single map, but it still rocks.

Dystopia is a multiplayer mod for Half-Life 2 that takes elements from Starsiege: Tribes, Deus Ex and some cyberpunk and tosses it all into a blender. The result is an objective-based game where two teams, the Punks and the Corp Mercs fight against each other by taking over or defending objectives.

There are three armor classes for both teams, the standard light, medium and heavy, each class with its own set of available weapons. You’re equipped with a melee weapon, a light machine pistol and a heavy weapon of your own choosing. Then you get to the really interesting part: the implants.

Each armor class has a certain amount of slots for implants (think equipment) that give you certain abilities — thermal vision, stealth suit, sound wave triangulator, a cortex bomb… These all draw energy when activated, which replenishes slowly over time when no implants are running.

The most interesting implant is the Cyberdeck, which allows you to jack into cyberspace terminals. When you do this you enter a Tron-like world where you can hack items that affect the real world — open and close doors to help your team or restrict the other team, reprogram defense turrets to fire on the other team, and other stuff.

The fighting takes place in both cyberspace and the real world, and sometimes it takes a coordinated effort in both places so that your team isn’t torn to shreds by defense turrets when they try to open a door.

This is a great mod, and still only in its first beta stage. Future versions will include vehicles as well. I’m playing quite a bit with some guys from the Penny Arcade forums. If you see [PA]Echo on a server, that’s me.

The Escapist is a new e-zine featuring a ton of names that are well-known amongst the gaming intelligentsia — the first issue has an article by Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade, where I am a moderator on their forums.

You can read the stuff on the site, via feeds or as a downloadable PDF, and even have the PDF mailed to you when there’s a new issue.

The site looks good, though I would probably have a stroke if I started thinking about accessibility issues. Also, it’s very annoying that the site hijacks your arrow keys and PgUp/PgDn keys for site navigation.

Also, the site has lots of signs that tell me it’s powered by Ruby on Rails.

(Via Pixel Kill)