The Game Dame

Even though I mostly play Horde, my favorite scene — hands down — comes from the Alliance camp on Azuremyst Isle when Admiral Odesyus discusses the evening’s dinner options with “Cookie” McWeaksauce, his chef. I laugh every time it plays across my screen.

PS: For those jerkfaces who steal other blogs’ content and “copyright” it as their own, you all can jump in a lake and bite me. I’m going to figure out how to put the screws to you people, you can bet your sweet bippy on that one.

I hate my new Wordpress theme. I need to change it back. Look for that tomorrow.

Update: I changed it. Still not 100% happy but at least not angry. I don’t think I’ll like any themes until I’m able to get my own self-hosted Wordpress.

Following the leads of Kestrel, Two-and-a-half Orcs, and JustOneAnna, here is my progress on the National Education Association’s list of Top 100 books. (Why can’t I find a link for this list??) As has been the case with the meme, I’ve bolded things I’ve read. However, my list offers a twist. Green underlining means it’s an all-time favorite; red means that I hated it. I put asterisks in front of my top, top favorite books on this list.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s me poorly playing my new Death Knight, Solareclipse, in Outland for your amusement. If you don’t want to see Wrath gameplay, don’t watch this! (However, to be fair, you won’t learn much since all the battles are played triple-time and the entire video is going for laughs anyway.)

Watch the movie on WeGame!

PS: Yes, I’m fiddling with the blog theme. Truth is, I’m just not happy with the standard themes. I want my own header but I also want to monkey with the color schemes. Seems like you can’t have pie with your cake here. The cake is a lie!!

I searched high and low for this answer on the web and got sent down a lot of rabbit holes so I’m posting the EASY version of it here for others to find. This article assumes that you have access to both a Windows machine and a Mac.

Suppose you have captured some game footage using Fraps, which saves clips in .AVI format. Now say that you want to use a background audio file for the movie (a song) that happens to be on your Mac. You will soon discover that your AVI video files play on the PC but not in iMovie and your audio files play on the Mac… but neither of them play well together. What to do?

Solution One – Move the song to the PC
It may seem that the easiest thing to do is move the song from the Mac to the PC. If the song you wish to use was ripped from your own CD onto iTunes, you’ll have no problem copying the MP3 file from your Mac to your PC and using it in Windows Movie Maker. However, if you purchased and downloaded the song via iTunes, you’ll find that, even though you can copy the source file to your PC, you cannot play the song on your PC or import it into Windows Movie Maker.

Solution Two – Move the video files to the Mac
So you try to go in the other direction. You want to move your video files to the Mac use iMovie and your preferred soundtrack. Well, iMovie does NOT like the Fraps .AVI format and will refuse to import the clips.

Solution Three – Convert the video files
You finally come to the conclusion that you need to get the Fraps AVI video files converted into something that you can use in iMovie. The easiest thing to do is to convert the Fraps AVI into an older AVI format that the iMovie codecs can read.

Don’t be scared. You don’t need to know what AVI means or what codecs are or the hairy copyright laws involving iTunes songs. Despite what you may have read before you came to this post, converting the movie clips is really very easy! You do not need a technical degree to accomplish the conversion.

Here are the simple steps:

• Download a piece of freeware called VirtualDub onto your PC. Extract the zip file and run the program. It doesn’t need to install; it comes ready to run after you extract it. (Click the image to see which icon to use.)

• Open the folder on your PC where the Fraps .AVI files are. If you didn’t change the Fraps default settings or move the AVI files, they should be in C:Fraps.

• Drag a Fraps video clip into the VirtualDub screen. This opens the clip in VirtualDub. You can also choose to use File | Open video file, but I find dragging easier. (Click the image to see where to drag your file in VirtualDub.)

• On the VirtualDub menu, choose File | Save old format AVI. (Click the image to see the menu choice highlighted.)

• Pick a NEW filename and a folder to save the converted file to. Don’t use the same filename and folder because you’ll overwrite your original clip.

• Off goes VirtualDub to convert your file! You can track the progress on the pop-up. (Click the image to see the progress bar.)

The new clip can be imported into iMovie now! As you might imagine, you’ll be seeing a cute little movie from me soon.

I guess some things will always hurt.

Someone might possibly be punking me. I can’t prove it (yet) but I’m beginning to suspect that something’s not on the level with one of the 128 blogs I read. Let’s just say that a dramatic marriage was announced and, despite my having a relative in the office of the county in question, no marriage license exists. My conclusion can only be one of the following: (1) the names or the city of the married people mentioned were incorrect or changed for privacy purposes, (2) the writer himself has been fooled by the people he’s writing about, or (3) the entire blog story line has been faked.

How can you tell if you’re being hoodwinked? Here are some things that make me suspicious of a person’s self-narrative. The more of these that are present, the more suspicious I get.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve tried to exclude spoilers from this post by talking about my general impressions or opinions while avoiding any specifics of gameplay. However, there is always the chance that I might goof up and say something that you would rather not have heard before playing the game yourself. If you are sensitive about such things, consider yourself warned about the presence of possible unintended spoilers.

• I’ve never played a tank at all. I’ve only played a melee class (rogue, paladin) up to level 30. The Death Knight is definitely a melee class and I’m specced Frost (which is a tanking spec, I think) and yet, I am having a blast playing this class! The spells, sound effects, class mechanics, backstory, starting level, everything: extremely fun.
• The DK is quite OP. I can take on multiple mobs 2 or 3 levels above me and survive just fine. I’ve soloed group quests and Elite mobs at my own level!! Although I haven’t tried to tackle an Elite above me, I think I could take it if it was +1 level. Solo playability is extremely high.
• Outland is littered with DKs on the beta server! Quite humorous seeing only one class running around.
• I’ve played all 3 specs — Frost, Unholy, and Blood. I’ve enjoyed Frost and Unholy the best. A lot of people are saying that Blood is better for leveling but I didn’t enjoy it that much or see much of an advantage over Unholy or Frost. Frost’s survivability is HUGE and the burst damage spells are way fun. Unholy was fun because you get a lot of gimmicks to go with it. Allegedly Unholy is a PvP spec, but I thought it was pretty good for leveling.
• Suddenly, I’m completely unafraid to duel. For that matter, I’m not very much afraid of any situation, unlike how I am on my shaman or warlock.
• It has been somewhat difficult (for me, anyway) to learn the new spells and talents as quickly as they are given to you. For example, you get 46 talent points over the course of your first level as a DK. They are awarded in chunks as you complete quests. It’s a lot to absorb. For the first 3 levels I was pretty much just mashing buttons, having no idea what any of my spells or talents did or in which situations to use them.
• However, I discovered there is a way to get in-game “training” on all your DK abilities! It’s an astonishingly good idea which I’d love to see extended to the other classes (but won’t be). If you stand near the DK trainers, they actually teach the NPCs around them to use their spells. If you listen in, you can learn too.

My thoughts about the new zones:

• I popped into the new continent of Northrend on my shaman just to take a peek at it.  IT’S GORGEOUS! The artwork is amazing. The environments are huge, beautiful, detailed. Some of the new mobs are breathtaking, not based off TBC or Classic mobs whatsoever. The new races are fascinating and well-executed. Some of them have ‘tude!
• There is a lot of humor in the new zone, from what I can tell.
• The quests are very fun and offer different experiences than TBC or Classic quest types. For example, my shaman was able to solo an escort quest! I won’t spoil the new quest types for you. Suffice it to say, they are original and fun.
• Things sometimes twitch after they’re dead! If you kill something in the water, its dead limbs seem to waft with the tide.
• The Death Knight starting zone is freaking amazing. Things in the environment and the NPCs’ behaviors actually change as you progress through through your quest lines. I was flabbergasted.
• I was fumbling with all my shaman’s buttons, missing my Totemus addon immensely, so I decided to save Northrend for my Death Knight. Since she’s at level 61 and you need to get to 68 to hit Northrend, it will be a while before I can report on further impressions of the new area.

I’d like to do BRK’s Orcapalooza, but it seems you need to have a pre-made team of 5 level 1 Orcs to join up. Anyone interested in joining me for it? Right now I have… let’s see… um, ONE whole person on my team, including myself. (I has a sad.) Write a comment here or send me an email and we’ll see if we can get a team of 5 to join up. There are REAL ACTUAL PRIZES and some junk! Should be lots of fun!

What is it?
BRK’s Orcapalooza scavenger hunt thingie (more details here)

When is it?
This coming Saturday, August 23 at 11pm GMT (click here to convert to your time zone).

Where is it?
Argent Dawn server, US

No idea why I picked this picture.

Partially to intrigue you into coming back, but mostly to remind me to write about these topics:

• Not gonna spoil Wrath for you
• Rant about intolerance (I bet it’s not what you think)
• Add more to the shaman wiki, promote it (including sending out email invites to bloggers)
• Another installment of story time!
• Shaman macros
• Threat management for Elemental shamans
• Blog hoaxes – how to tell if you are a victim of a fake storyline

Please feel free to vote for what you prefer me to make top priorities.