A change of scenery

2010-02-12T21:15:00.002Z

I'm moving across to Wordpress - the lure of the pretty templates has proved too strong...

Confession is good for the soul

2010-02-10T19:01:00.004Z

Second post – it must be time for a confession right? Perhaps just a small one…

I’m a UI-clutterbug.

Seriously. The idea of some spell or ability or profession being hidden away where I can’t see it is simply unbearable (what if I need to fish now now now?!), but the result is that my UI ends up with a ridiculous number of bars and little buttons all over. And, up until very recently, all these buttons and clutter have been residing on default Blizzard UI. Have you ever wondered about the type of person that enables (and then fills) all of the default Blizzard bars? The bottom bar 1 and 2, nestled between the silvery creatures, and the right bar 1 and 2 sitting flush up against the edge of the screen? And with most of those buttons not bound to any keys? Yeah, that would be me. The type of person that simply has to have every possible spell or ability on screen even if they’ve only been used perhaps twice in a yearlong WoW life? The type of person that has seriously considering devoting more buttons to non-combat pets and the ridiculous accessories they enjoy, having bought the lead, ball and bucket of soapy water from that chick in Dalaran? Yes, guilty as charged.

But now! Bartender 4 and I are getting acquainted and things are going rather swimmingly. It’s phenomenally easy to use and customise, and I really love being able to not only set bars to fade in and out but to shape them into squares rather than simply lines. I still have a long way to go of course, with keybinding and tweaking set to be a central theme for the next few ~~weeks~~ months (well, no need to rush things now is there?). I’m trying to settle on a simple-ish layout that I can use across characters with a minimum of alteration for different classes, and the numerous fantastic blog entries I’ve found on the subject (thank you Keeva in particular) have given me lots of ideas. It comes down to finding something that works on a personal level of course, and something that takes into account both my very finite ability to remember key bindings and the fact that I play on a 13” laptap using the trackpad as my mouse (ooh I should probably have kept that back for my next confession post. At least I didn’t spill the fact that I use the arrow keys to move my characters… oh wait.).

Up until recently (perhaps as a subconscious counteract to the button overkill) I’ve tried to keep my list of addons as short as possible, but this weekend past, heady from the success of Bartender, I decided that the time had come to set up a healing addon for my beloved baby druid Derla (yeah I’m not sure about the name either). I’m leveling her as balance and have been having an absolute blast, but the idea of healing someone other than myself has been buzzing around at the back of my head for a while now. I had a quick look around to see what the cool kids are using and downloaded Grid, Clique and Healbot to take a look at, but the bewildering options provided by the Grid+Clique combination (paired with the fact that I was seriously not in the mood to look up tutorials) soon led to those two being disabled – I promise I’ll get back to them sometime... Healbot, on the other hand, is phenomenally easy to use right out of the box! Setting different spells as different click combinations was pieced together before too long and I’m playing around with the colours/indicators to get it just right, but I was able to go into a battleground only a short while later and actually keep some people alive (albeit not for very long)!

But that, my friends, is a tale for another day.

Buff Plz

2010-02-08T22:41:00.001Z

Well, it finally happened. There I was, writing a quick note on a few emerging market goings-on, ticking away on the keyboard without a care in the world. I sit back to admire (er… proofread) my work and then it hits me – I’ve used World of Warcraft gaming terminology! There! In that paragraph talking about the Sri Lankan elections and the victory to which the incumbent has romped! “Buff”. As in, a good margin of victory will buff Rajapaksa and his party going into the April parliamentary elections.

Damn.

I think the most telling part is that it took me a good while to work out whether or not this was a legitimate (by which I mean non-gaming) use of the word (I’m still not entirely 100% sure to be perfectly honest). I’m taking this as a sign that I should listen to the small voice that’s been encouraging me to dip a toe into the murky waters of WoW blogging. I can’t imagine this blog will be anything other than a collection of rather random stories and pictures, reflecting what my characters and I are up to or describing something in-game that I’ve found interesting, quirky or just good fun.

Let’s see how this goes…

Safrocentric

A change of scenery

Confession is good for the soul

Buff Plz