One of these headlines is not like the other… (click to embiggen)

[ljuser]bibliogrrl[/ljuser] hooked me up with: Robots! (not just robots, but robots!), breakfast meats, roadkill, naysayers, elegance.

and this is what you do: From [ljuser]bibliogrrl[/ljuser], it’s the WORDS meme. Reply to this entry with “WORDS” if you’d like me to choose some words for you to talk about.

Robots!

About two weeks ago, I voluntarily did a homework assignment for my AI class two weeks ahead of time. Why? Because I got to write a short paper about, and therefore got to research, a robot. I want a robot, friends. The first one of you to become independently wealthy is responsible for purchasing, or at least maintaining the $166,000-a-year lease on, my ASIMO. I need a child-sized robot that can recognize faces so that in 5 or 10 years, if my mom turns into one of those TV moms bugging me to produce grandchildren, I can point to the robot and say “but little ASIMO is my child! OF THE FUTURE!”

Breakfast meats

For my money, bacon is the king of breakfast meats. I know, I know, me and everyone else on the internets, but I’m serious. There’s almost nothing you can do to bacon (outside of burning it until it is a charred black mess) that would make me not want to eat bacon. I’m even okay with turkey bacon, even though I feel it’s kind of cheating yourself out of real bacony goodness. I’m also a fan of Bacon Salt, because sometimes you’re out of bacon, and your roommate’s cooked an extremely filling but bland baked macaroni and cheese dish, and someone forgot to come get their Christmas joke gift three-pack of Bacon Salt.

Purely hypothetical.

Roadkill

Kentucky has way too many deer. Ordinarily I never see them, but this week driving to and from my grandfather’s visitation, I was reminded that Route 8 is basically untamed country with a road in it, and holy crap, so many deer. At least they decided to stick to the side of the road instead of dropping by to say hello to my hood.

Naysayers

Do you know, I actually had to look up the definition of naysayer? I think I’d been using it wrong. Turns out, not only am I related to several of them, I’m friends with at least one - and hey, guess which people I tend to regularly avoid like the plague? I like to think I have a few important differences from a naysayer. Sure, I’m a blunt, sarcastic jerk, but I still tend to see the good in most situations. (Keyword: most.) I still don’t believe in ghosts, though.

Elegance

It’s difficult to define, but I know it when I see it - and it physically pains me when I cannot recreate it. Well, maybe pains isn’t the correct word. When I am writing, say, code that I know is elegant (my given medium), I am calm, confident, in control. When I am outside of elegant codework, everything seems jarring and difficult, and I myself tend to get jittery and lose focus if not actually forced to keep focus on the task at hand by some means. This is why I have so many half-finished, barely-started projects on my hands that I may never get back to.

The above is what would, in fact, happen if it were raining men. Thanks to the Crysis level editor for letting this happen. (via Destructoid)

If you were doing it in real life, it’d be called BASE jumping. However, if you were doing it in real life, you’d be lacking

• Scoring mechanisms

• A thumpin’ soundtrack

• Buildings that float in midair

What am I talking about? The latest indie PC game to catch my attention, AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity. Or Aaaaa! for short. Destructoid has a review of it up over here, but for the most part there’s not a lot to it - but it manages to remain entertaining all the same. You wouldn’t think you could get so much mileage out of jumping off of buildings, sticking as close to them as possible, waving to fans, flipping off protesters, slamming through scoring plates, and landing safely at the bottom, but… you can!

(This is actually a repost of an older post from a different blog of mine - but since it seems to be popular, I figured I’d repost it here, where it’ll probably get a little more coverage.)

Anyone attempting to install the new TinyFugue 5.0 beta (5.0b8 as of this writing) will run into a compilation error trying to compile it on Leopard:

malloc.c:15: error: syntax error before ‘mmalloc_base’
malloc.c:15: warning: initialization makes integer from pointer without a cast
malloc.c:15: warning: data definition has no type or storage class
make[1]: [malloc.o] Error 1
make: [files] Error 2

Just above line 13 of malloc.c, the line that reads #include “malloc.h”, add this:

include <sys/types.h>

And all is well.

Alright, so, here’s some answers to some questions and concerns, along with other stuff.

• I will not be vanishing from the blogosphere entirely. I’ll still be hanging out on Twitter, you can still find me on AIM as StoppableForce1, and I’ll be continuing to hang out in Blog Azeroth chat. Can’t get rid of me that easy. ;)

• The Stoppable Force (the website) will remain up at least until the domain name comes up for renewal, and maybe longer - as long as the info is still relevant and useful, I’ll keep it up for people. I may eventually move it under the midboss.com domain, but that’d be a bit more involved - we’ll see. for the forseeable future.

Can’t think of much else. If you have any other questions, feel free to leave comments and I’ll respond as best I can.

I used to develop software, did you know that? For fun. Everything from blogging tools to games, actual games, I took a stab at it just for fun. (The blog client this guy is talking about? Yeah, I made that.) I enjoyed doing it. Now, if I sit down at the computer, I’m there to play WoW.

I used to play other games, too. I’m a huge console gaming fan, still am. Own everything but an Xbox 360, and that’s only ‘cause it’s broken. Used to play TF2 with some regularity, used to get lost in RPGs on the DS or the PS2. I even like more casual games like Plants vs. Zombies. And I wasn’t kidding about the RPG thing. Ask my friends how often I raved about this or that game, and look at the stack of games sitting in my room, or in my apartment. Now, if I’m in my room, I’m probably going to the computer… to play WoW.

Did you know I used to be a regular roleplayer? I really don’t do any in-character, except on here, but I used to play regularly on several MUSHes. I’ve considered re-apping at one of them, which really set this whole thing in motion. Now I don’t even have MUSHClient installed because if I’m at a PC, my laptop or my desktop, I’m clicking the golden W in the navy circle.

I used to get out more. My friends still tell me nowadays they never see me, they miss me. I chalk it up to having three, no, four days a week where my evenings are tied up. I don’t miss going out to bars and getting utterly shitfaced (that’s just a result of growing up, I suppose), but I do miss regularly seeing people.

I used to exercise. Pretty regularly, too. I liked exercising. I wasn’t the healthiest person, no, but I did get into the kitchen and play around, I did walk or jog or lift a few weights from time to time. I’ve frankly turned into a slob over the course of the last year and a half. I have a closet - literally, a closet (I have two in my room) - full of laundry that needs to be done. I’ve gained a bunch of weight. I take less than 3000 steps a day. Let me repeat that: I walk fewer than 3000 steps a day.

I’ve had to take two semesters out of my graduate studies due to not doing homework. I bet you can guess why I didn’t do homework. I’ve started back this summer, and that’s the other reason for this post.

I used to blog about other things. I have a LiveJournal that’s fallen into complete disuse, I’ve started other blogs and stopped them before they’ve even started. I have a podcast with two of my friends - it’s probably the one thing I still do regularly. I used to like making films - the 48 Hour Film Project was one thing I always looked forward to every year. I missed it last year, for the first time in five years. I had a raid.

I can no longer tell you what my favorite TV show is. If you ask me why I stopped watching Heroes, I’ll tell you it’s because seasons 2 and 3 were absolutely stupid (and they were), but there’s no reason I haven’t started watching again. I occasionally catch something on the DVR but mostly it fills up before I get a chance to relax with it. I haven’t seen this entire season of House. I like House.

There’s a pattern here: every time I think of something I used to like doing, I realize I’ve stopped doing it because of WoW.

I guess in some respects I’ve still retained a lot of things other people haven’t. I’ve still got a great roommate and a fantastic girlfriend, I’m still only 4 classes away from finishing my Masters, I’ve still got a job I love doing even if it does stress me out from time to time. And WoW’s been beneficial in some aspects - or rather, blogging about WoW has been. I’ve made a ton of friends via my blog that I don’t think I would’ve met otherwise - hell, I almost became “internet famous” again. ;)

I’ve got a lot of things, but I really miss the things I don’t have anymore, all because I’m pouring my life into an MMO.

An MMO that’s really not fun anymore.

It stopped being fun a while ago and crossed into a realm halfway between addiction and obligation.

This isn’t an easy post for me to write, but gang, I’m done.

This is Stop, aka Queklain, aka Zulfon, aka a crapton of alts signing off.

I started playing with the WoW.com Profiles stuff today as a sort of experiment. It’s kinda neat, though still a few kinks I’d like to see worked out, but maybe I’m an unusual case. :)

Regardless, here’s my profile, which consists of me doing things with my shadow priest and a few duplicate posts as I eventually figure out that a /reload and re-upload won’t work because it doesn’t clear uploaded data.

C’est la vie.

You know the ones, the exploders - at the first hint of trouble, be it someone in the wrong place or someone asking a question on Vent at the wrong time, they’re the first ones to let their tempers flare. They’re quick with a “if you’re doing ________, you’re doing it wrong,” and they’ll snap at anyone who tries to calm them down. They may be raid leaders, they may be members, they may be officers. Maybe you’re a raid leader with one of these folks in your raid. Maybe you’re just a regular raider, in a position where you just have to suck it up and hope it’s not you they’re yelling at. Maybe it’s you.

How do you (or your raid group) deal with hot-tempered folks in raids? Sure, in progression, there’s bound to be some level of irritation as your raid throws themselves against bosses and endures huge repair bills, but I’m talking about those people who’re blowing up every week on any person for the tiniest thing wrong, even when it doesn’t affect what you’re doing because hey, you’ve got this boss on farm. The ones who raise their voices over trivial matters, and who - heaven forbid - can never be corrected on anything.

Every max-level DK has a delightful little spell at their disposal called Army of the Dead. For those of you who haven’t seen it, quizzed your friendly local death knight about it, or read the link, here’s the lowdown on it:

• 6-second channel, totally unlike any other DK spell. Each second summons an Army of the Dead Ghoul. They like to arrange themselves in a half-moon around you; it kinda looks like Thriller.

• It has a 20-minute cooldown, halved to 10 with 2/2 Night of the Dead. Unholy DKs will have this roughly every boss fight in a raid; others might have it every other boss fight (or every fight if you wipe a couple times.)

• While channeling, the DK takes 50% less damage from all sources. All of them.

• Once summoned, Army of the Dead Ghouls behave a lot like the unnamed ghouls summoned when an non-Unholy DK casts Raise Dead, leaping straight into combat with a delightful “eeeeaugh!” - but with one important difference: Army of the Dead Ghouls will taunt enemies. They will taunt anything not marked as a raid boss. This includes trash, instance bosses, adds of raid bosses, you name it. On the other hand, they will not taunt anything whose level is ?? (Boss).

• From my personal experience, they don’t like to change targets once they’re on a given target, but their given target at the beginning will be slightly random if there’s multiple choices because they’re summoned in a wide circle around you. However, sometimes they do seem to change targets, and I can’t find any rhyme or reason why.

As you can imagine, the Taunt feature is both a lifesaver and a total pain in the ass. For example, I once saved a Heroic UP run after the tank was wiped at 5% on Ymiron by letting my Army tank the boss. Sure, he only has to hit them once or twice to smush them, but that’s 6-12 hits that I or someone else doesn’t have to take. But at the same time, you’ve probably been in a group with a DK who’s summoned zombies that bring Gluth’s dinner to him like they have invisible maitre’d outfits on.

Make no mistake, the ghouls are a DPS boost - a pretty significant one. Not quite the most damaging thing you can do with 5 seconds of your time, but on fights where you can use them, it’s worth it. That said, where should you go for it? Here’s what I’ve found, in the places I’ve been.