Hamster maintenance

January 20th, 2011

It’s maintenance day. Why do I always get an urge to game before 1pm on a Thursday? Ah well, I guess we need to allow time for the hamsters that keep the servers powered to be fed and watered properly.

I’m contemplating a post about alts, and tanking. Having had some time I started a small but fierce Guardian who, with much help along the way, is now running round Enedwaith terrorising anything that moves  - or at least would be if the servers were up. However she (always a she) hasn’t done much tanking along the way and I get the feeling it’s going to be a shock to the system, and to the kin who expect their tanks to know what they’re doing. Ho hum, will all make for an interesting blog post at least.

Whilst those posts get written here’s something I made earlier. My project for Christmas was a Yule calendar for the kin, which prompted a fun but unexpected extension. I’ve put a couple of shots below, though if you’re not in CoT and would like the full year please contact me. If you are then the link is in a thread in the Cellar (not Illmish’s cellar).

 

Off the back of these I also created a custom Windows 7 theme and a video which pretty much made itself. This may only be funny to LotRo gamers, and possibly only to my kin but it keeps me out of trouble and makes me smile. Enjoy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE4B6dB45NE

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Gaming, Home | 1 Comment »

Fads

January 17th, 2011
From fashion to diets I’d say avoid these like the plague, especially the ones that appear on Facebook but this … something about it just grabbed my interest. This is the album cover one. It works like this:

1 – Go to wikipedia and hit random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 – Go to quotationspage.com and hit random. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 – Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”. Third picture no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 – Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.
5 – Post it with this text in the “caption”.

I confess I dropped the bit at the end of 5 which said “tag the friends you want to do this” – if people want to have a go then great. It seems that quite a few people I know did and put some effort into font and layout. I liked them so much I wanted to put them somewhere a little easier to access, just in case anyone is ever short on inspiration for that tricky second album.

Airforce Fire Protection Badge

 

  Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ,
Posted in Home | No Comments »

Reading list 2011

January 14th, 2011

The Kindle has re-kindled (pun intended) my bookworm tendencies. At least 2 nights this week I’ve gone to bed at a reasonable hour, only to stay up to an unreasonable one reading. This got me thinking on what, and how many, books I read last year. I remember some vividly, for both good and bad reasons, whilst others I’d struggle to recall the plot let alone title. The actual number isn’t that important – I’m just curious.

Hence this post; an ongoing list of what I’ve read, what I’m reading and what’s coming up. I’ve included a few comments on what I thought, though they are not in any way intended to be a sensible review. All comments, disagreements and suggestions welcome. 

 

Currently Reading
Title: A Storm of Swords 1:Steel and Snow
Author: George R. R. Martin
Format: Paperback
First time or re-read: First time
Plot:Book3, Part 1 of the Game of Thrones epic series. Film rather than book fans may recognise the title as the first book has just been turned into a film. I haven’t picked this up yet this year so have lost the thread of the plot but I think we’re up to 4 Kings all vying for the main prize with various mystical subplots involving dragons and wolves, just in case you thought you’d worked out who was on what side. There is more than enough plotting and intrigue to keep even Blackadder amused.
Thoughts so far: You can tell it’s an epic when rather than having books 3 and 4 the author turns book 3 into 2 parts. At least I assume it’s 2 parts, there could well be more. I’d quite like to give up on the series now but I’m annoyingly intrigued.

   Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , ,
Posted in Home | No Comments »

To Kindle

January 3rd, 2011

/kindl/ [v.trans] Light or set fire. Arouse or inspire (an motion or feeling): a love of art was kindled in me. [intrans] (of an emotion) be aroused: she hesitated, suspicion kindling within her. [intrans] become impassioned or excited: the young man kindled at once.

My suggestion:
kindle [v] to read something you wouldn’t have otherwise read because it’s free.

Thanks to Mr P I now have a Kindle. This is a good thing, if only to reduce the weight of my luggage when heading off on holiday. The immediate impacts of this device are that I’m reading more often, though in smaller chunks, and I’m reading a lot of things I’d never have picked up in paper form.

I seem to find it a lot easier to just pick up and put down e-books in small doses. I can still read for very long periods and get as engrossed (don’t even bother trying to talk to me when I’m reading a good book unless you have my full and undivided attention – you may as well be talking to the wall otherwise, and you’d get a more useful answer from the wall for certain) but flicking the switch and putting it down doesn’t feel like that’s the end of the story for today. Maybe it’s because I don’t have to bookmark a page or can have multiple books on the go all at the point I left them or that the Kindle has no start up sequence makes it feel like grabbing 5 minutes with a book throughout the day is a possibility.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Home | No Comments »

Welcome to 2011

January 2nd, 2011

I’m not one for making resolutions or predictions (and most of the predictions I’ve read have been about various economic disasters in the making which doesn’t make for a cheery start to the year) though do take a look at @JamieT’s post to see whether Wired got it right. Will be back in 2014, Jamie.

Instead I was going to partially appropriate Jamie’s idea and post this yesterday with some screen shots in the spirit of kicking off a new year, though since I haven’t posted since August I didn’t think anyone would really notice another day off. I have wondered if there’s anyone out there reading this, other than me, but in a way it doesn’t matter. Re-reading some of last year’s entries have reminded me of why I game at a moment when I was wondering what the point was and some great things I got up to at home and abroad.

I’m of the opinion that change is a good thing but 2010 was quite a spectacular year for it and whilst everything is in a nice lull currently I suspect there is more (all good) on the horizon. So here is a very brief round up of the major themes of 2010 that made it into this blog that are likely to continue through 2011.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Home | No Comments »

« Older Entries