Oh hai thar.

Published on August 29, 2010 in The Blog. 0 Comments

This is the fifth time I’ve tried writing this entry, and for no reason it just seems like it’s hard to do. I started out by wanting to apologise, like I used to do, for not writing in here in ages. But the fact is that I’m not sorry; nor will anyone talk me into being sorry over it. Why? Daevacast has been taking a lot of my time, and ultimately what little cognitive capacity I have. New ways to get people engaged, new content for the podcast etc. And all in all, it’s been taking all the spare time I have; that and Double Experience on Knute. I want to get her to the point where I can run Kromede’s Trial on the day that 2.0 comes out. And it’s going to be harder work now because of the upward curve in levelling. But I’ll at least get to Fire Temple level. That means I can just grind the instance and nothing else.

I also said a while ago that I would stop paying for Xbox Live; I was doing nothing but playing on the PC at the time and nothing was changing. But when server maintenance started or when I’m rendering something I find myself going back to the lumbering Release-360. I’ve been playing Burnout Paradise, and the pick-up speed is just so refreshing for a driving game, much less a sandbox one. Colour-coding the events to make them easier to see on the map was just genius, and even though I may only have ten minutes spare it’s enough time to get a few events done or just mess about and find some decent shortcuts. Soul Caliber IV is another one I’ve been pulling out for a few quick fights. But I always play that online. With the new Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC coming out soon too, I know I’m going to be on it for a while on the 7th when it hits. Even if I just go through it all in a day.

Finding a new job hasn’t exactly been easy, either. Don’t get me wrong, I’m employed already and I know I should be thankful for that in a world where jobs are at a premium in themselves, and many people don’t have one. Honestly, that’s exactly the reason why I’m searching for another job; I am not appreciating where I work, and who I work with/for. Thinking like that, it makes sense to just find somewhere else, get out, and let someone else have that job. Someone who will appreciate it more than I do. I’m not enjoying working on the till like I used to. I like the customers, I like most of the people I work with, but that buzz about it just isn’t there any more. I’m holding out for a job with Asda at the new Langley Mill store; it’s going 24-hours and they’re recruiting pretty much every job in there minus the heads of department, it seems. And seeing that they even have a policy on what you can or cannot say in a blog, that alone says to me that they have a modern mindset for a modern marketplace. I think I’d fit in much better there, although I’ll have to use public transport until I have my license and my own car. Small sacrifices, I think, when I could be doing a job that fits me much better.

Expect me to disappear from the 7th to the 17th of September; got time off work to play Assault on Balaurea, and just general chill-out time. Hell, I might end up actually getting something done.

There’s always a chance!

If only I had Ctrl+Alt+Delete

Published on July 21, 2010 in The Blog. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Well, I finally got it done; Daevacast is up and running. Thanks to Zach giving me a massive hand by letting me use some space on his multi-site account. I was able to miss the largest overhead and just buy the domain name and call-in numbers cost a total of $26.49. So I think I have done well. It was mostly about elbow e-grease and now things are up and running, I just have to add new polls and keep up the episodes. And of course the twitter account.

Also; I passed my Driving Theory Test! 46/50 on the multiple choice questions, and 62/75 on the hazard perception. The pass for the questions was 43 if I remember right, and I was scoring a little above and a little below so I was worried I wouldn’t get it done. But I did! Hazard Perception wasn’t really too much of a problem for me, and that showed. I finished the Theory test in 10 minutes though. No, I didn’t rush.

Finally got Train2Game back up and running as well. After running through Google Calendar again (a big push from Google Apps on Daevacast was the cause, to be honest), I’m setting time aside to make sure that I get it done. And it’s pretty much on any day I’m not working. There’s no excuses, and the only reason for me to stop working on it is when I have to wait for fresh resources/assessments to be marked. I really want to keep it moving along now; I wasted nearly 10 months doing nothing and that’s going to be obvious when 2012 rolls around.

The opportunity I kept mentioning on Twitter, just as an added off-hand, was to be a Train2Game blogger. Basically, to write articles on the game industry or regurgitate industry-centric press releases. I thought about it, and pursued it a little, but the people that were involved just broke off contact. Evidently they found someone more suited. In hindsight it was the right thing; I don’t want to spread myself too thin, and doing a meta-project when I’m not even that far involved in the project itself is never a good thing.

EDIT: Yeah, this post was meant to be put out a week ago, but I kept delaying it.

Sort-of Review: Razer Naga

Published on July 9, 2010 in Aiontalk, Gaming and Tech. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Razer has been my peripheral maker of choice for a while now; I bought a Diamondback Plasma LtdEd a couple of years ago and haven’t looked back. Since then I had to replace the Diamondback with a 3G upgrade; the thin cable was smashed up against a lip on the back of my desk, and the amount of stress on it just made it snap inside. It served me well though, and the replacement hasn’t died yet.

Aion has drawn me to replace the Diamondback 3G with something that is more suited to the task; the Razer Naga. I first saw it in September ’09 when it had just come out and was the talk of everyone I spoke to who had even the vaguest interest in MMORPGs. The Naga is the epitome of hotkeys; it has a dedicated 12-grid of them, plus a pair next to the left mouse button.

The Naga was meant to be easy to control and easily customisable; Razer touted that they had to rewrite all the Profiling software especially for the Naga, that it made you a better MMO player simply by giving you access to all your skills, as well as other claims that I have to admit I doubted. As a caster class (Spiritmaster), I find myself having to stand still for my skills to complete, with a few instant cast spells. But even with a limited scope for improvement, I felt it very quickly. I had to rebind all my important keys, and changed the skill keys to select marked mobs. It was a real challenge at first and spent a little while just doing repeatable quests to get used to the layout, but it was working. I only ever stopped moving to change target and to use skills that required me to stay still.

It feels like Razer have a lot more pride in the product than usual; more than say the Diamondback or the DeathAdder. The solution that Razer represents in the Naga is a lot more complete, with the ‘trainers’ (stickable bits of rubber to train your thumb to the button positions) and the enhanced manuals. But inversely, Razer has always had pride in their peripherals. I think the extra push in presentation is due to MMO players being the most discerning. Every peripheral we buy is not only a cool piece of kit to sit on our desk; it’s an investment and something we’ll be spending a lot of time using. Hand cramps and RSI show up a lot quicker with MMO gamers down to the sheer amount of time that we spend on our computers.

I can say that the Razer Naga has made me a better player, and for any class that has mostly instant skills (In Aion, it would be mostly the Melee classes) this should be an instant-buy. For Cast-classes, I would also say get it. The price is reasonable for it’s calibre of product, and it also keeps your eyes focussed more on the screen and less on the keyboard when you have a full set of 60 buttons (12 with 5 modifier keys). Plus, the natural position the hand takes when on the mouse is seriously comfortable. For someone with fat fingers, this was a surprise and a welcome one at that.

If I had stars, I would Five Star it. However, I will say that if you have any interest in MMO gaming and find yourself removing your fingers from the WASD position during combat, you need this mouse to take your gaming up a notch.

Note: The interface that fakesteve talks about in the video wasn’t one that I used in Aion. Because of Aion’s embedded Macro interface and skill-bar layout, there hasn’t been a need to make an Add-on specifically for Aion. You bind your Naga’s buttons to the skillbar hotkeys, then change the skills the keys execute directly.

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