Backlit Saturn

by on October 12, 2006 at 9:48 am
Posted In: News

I don’t keep track of what’s going on in astronomy and space exploration nearly as much as I’d like to. But Baron found this last night, and I thought I’d share:


(Click on the image to see it full size.)

This is an exaggerated color contrast version of a tiled collection of shots taken by the Cassini probe as it hung in Saturn’s shadow for twelve hours on 9/15. Go here to get all the details, and other versions of the shot.

The Sun is directly behind Saturn, creating that bright rim-light. Earth is visible in the shot, as a bright dot just above the left-side of the main rings, and just inside the first dim ring.

Looking between the Earth and the bright rings, you can just barely make out another ring (kind of reddish), that was discovered by this shot and in the same orbit as Saturn’s co-orbiting moons, Janus and Epimetheus.

Another new ring was discovered at the orbit of Pallene. It’s outside the dim ring, and inside the outer, hazy ring, but even knowing it’s there, I can’t make it out on this shot.

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More procrastination, more instances

by on October 10, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Posted In: MMO

Okay, it’s getting so I can’t remember what all we’re doing.

However, our most recent foray was (yet another) Blackrock Depths run. was not feeling well, and for once, there was no Blanc, Micca, or Shrimpette present. And for once, I was the party leader. Well, kinda, I guess I’m more of a ‘yeah, that sounds good’ type. Anyway it was Farmishi (who’s now 53, two levels up from last time in here), Blondiewood, Jariedthe, Thermidor and Noxlux. First task was doing a jailbreak run for Thermidor, who’d gotten his evidence last time. With monsters in the front area being green even for Farmishi, that went smoothly, and the jail break went well. We then proceeded to the bar (picking up the Windsor’s evidence for Jariedthe and Noxlux on the way), and got Hurley Blackbreath and a quest for Farmishi (but not the eyepatch Jariedthe is wanting). And then out the back for the Emperor. A bit tougher, but by this point, the unusual team was ‘gelling’ pretty well, and we kept moving at a good clip.

Then we got to the Lyceum. Which is a very different proposition. We did okay at first, getting one torch lit. Then the hour-long party buffs went out, we bogged down attempting a rebuff and got swarmed. As ususal, Farmishi was the last one down, but just doesn’t have the ability to finish off this kind of group on her own so she can attempt resurrecting party members. The second try also wiped from a bad set of circumstances without even seeing a torchbearer. The third time was the charm, we located a torchbearer, kept moving and got the doors open no problem.

After that, it was pretty simple. Fighting at the far end of the corridor of flamethrowers really helps. The Emperor fight was not bad. The main problem being that I just could not keep Moira’s attention, and she wanted to pick on Noxlux. Oh, and there were five captains (plus two from the jailbreak), so Anvilrage Captains: 26, Black Dragonscale Leggings plans: 0. (sigh) Farmishi got a couple of minor equipment upgrades, and Flame Wrath, a replacement for the venerable Blight.

Saturday (the day before) was an epic Stratholme run, where we effectively did both dead and live sides. It started… not so well, with some wipes. We did pull it together though. The first part was going in the back door, and effectively tracing the path of a 45-minute Baron run, without actually worrying about it (thank goodness, with our wipes). However, we did get through it, and we actually took down Baron Rivendare on the first try.

After that we crossed over to the ‘live’ side. This was to allow Noxlux to catch up on quests, and for the rest of us to get the head of Balnazzar (which starts a quest, and only after you turn in a quest to kill the guy next door…). That went fairly smoothly, especially compared to what the first couple attempts were like. After that we attempted another try at the “Hoarde” door, and wiped against the mini-boss there before calling it a night.

There’s been more, but I have to admit it’s mostly slipping my mind….

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A week off of WoW coming up?

by on October 2, 2006 at 9:14 am
Posted In: Gaming

Things are going quite well for Minions of the Fickle Muse/Moos (more on that later). And things have reached a fevered pitch with us getting new characters up and getting through the last corners of 5-man content.

However, Final Fantasy XII comes out in the US on 10/31. Me and Smudge have certainly been looking forward to it.

The latest preview certainly sounds interesting. I don’t know about the real-time aspect of the combat, but the gambits may make it work out. GameSpot reports the voice acting is very good, and it sounds like the plot will be interesting (as usual with FF).

Knowing Smudge, it’ll take about a week to get through it, once she gets it. So, I suppose her goal should be to get Micca and Shrimpette up to 60 a week ahead of Burning Crusade, so she has some time for FFXII. ^_^

(And the little guys are just too cute.)

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WoW Memeage!

by on September 22, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Posted In: MMO

Okay, I’m joining in on the fun, and posting a visual guide to my WoW characters:

First, my main, the little curmudgeon known as Dunain:

This isn’t quite true to life. There should be ale-stains on the tabbard….
And, as you can see…. Lance is huge….

My primary alt is Farmishi. She’s an old character of mine. …And after hearing all the sniping at Blizzard about how skimpy much of the female Plate armor is, she had to give it a try. (In the culture she’s from formal dueling armor looks like it came out of Outlanders, so it’s not a problem to her.) However, by and large, it’s just not that bad. She was happy with the Jade armor set, but her current equipment (3 levels later) is down to just the shield, everything else has been replaced. She’s also an armsmaster. That is, she keeps up with every weapon skill she has, and keeps one of each kind on her. Currently a level 51 Paladin, here’s her show armor, her current adventuring armor, and all her weapons:

My main for Minions of the Fickle Moos is a Troll frost mage named Malzina. After the last two, I don’t play on her as often as I’d like. I certainly like the movement control.

I also started a Night Elf warrior named Merisan with the idea that she would keep Smudge from having to always play Blanc. (We’re a bit short on warriors.) At my rate of play, Blanc should be able to retire in three years or so. I really like the two-handed action pose here….

Cylisia is a Night Elf priest, little sister of Blanc and constant companion of Honesty. She is a little unstable and prone to bouts of megalomania. Thankfully, Honesty is a stabilizing influence on her. She’s also going Discipline spec, and boy does she need it….

My member of Invaders of the Pass is a low-level undead warrior named Euphaline. The plan is to try out some PvP with her, but we’ll see if I get that far. Shotalia is a low-level Tauren shaman on Uldum, who I created to talk to an old friend, who has unfortunately had to quit due to financial issues. Fredregund is my first WoW character, still a mere level 18 Tauren druid on Dragonblight. She’s the one that got me sucked into WoW in the first place, before I created Dunain to go help out Blanc, because it was obvious that he needed someone to clean up the messes he was getting into…

I have a few other characters scattered about, but these are all the ones that I’m likely to play at any given time. And generally, I stick with the Minions of the Fickle Muse and Moos.

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The Tri-Weekend Roundup

by on September 19, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Posted In: MMO

Geez, really silly to put off posting when we’re in the middle of doing lots of instances. The stuff to talk about really piles up fast. Three weeks and six instance runs.

Back on Labor Day weekend we had a couple of big runs. After all the troubles with Stratholme I suggested we take a break and go do Dire Maul North. This was agreed to, and we had a very pleasant time doing what amounted to an off-the-cuff tribute run. We hadn’t planned on it, initially, but it soon became obvious that it was simpler than it looked. Had to send Blondiewood out for materials while I disconnected, logged in as Farmishi, created a Truesilver key, handed it to her, and logged back into Dunain…. Blondie then snuck back into where we were I and opened a locked door.

I haven’t been able to open locked chests and lockboxes with a Truesilver key in ages, and now there’s an instance door I can open…? Weird.

I was a little disappointed with the loot (from a hunter perspective), until we took a side-trip into DM East for Thermidor and the hunter book dropped. From there it was just a quick trip to get the first in the guild. That right there made my day.

The next day was our first run into Lower Blackrock Spire. Blackrock mountain is a huge place, with the biggest instance in the game going down (Blackrock Depths), and a raid instance below that (Molten Core), the two-part instance Blackrock Spire (Lower and Upper) going up, and a raid above that (Blackwing Lair). Had a few problems getting in, myself. One portion of the normal route has you looking at a dark wall, in shadowed area, and my monitor contrast wasn’t up to showing me a thing.

The instance itself was fun and a real good workout. We got a lot done, but had some notable failures: Urok’s minions wiped us, and then destroyed what was needed to summon him. The ending boss area taxed us at the end of a long run and we had to quit short of the goal when we couldn’t quite get the entire team back in the same area again (the problem with Druid healing: only one Rez per 1/2 hour).

The next weekend featured our second attempt at Lower Spire. I’m not sure if Urok went better or worse, but it still wiped us. However, we got ourselves through the important areas and took on Wyrmthalak. All-in-all, a bit of a rough run still, but we’re getting better.

Sunday was another BRD run as we continue getting people through all the quests there, and hunt for pants. Overall, it went very well, and quite fast. We got through the flamethrower room without any real incident. Tip: fight with party at the far door, not the near one, works much better. This time there were four Anvilrage Captains in the throne room. Count: 18 Captains, 0 plans.

This last weekend saw our return to what has been the bane of our guild: Scholomance. Stratholme is just cursed, this one kills us in the first two rooms.

The good news is that apparently it’s not just us. The first two rooms are much tougher than anything else in the instance short of the actual boss fights. With a couple problems (ahem), we made it through and had a great time with the rest of the instance. The main boss, Lord Barov, was a problem. He comes with two guards, and has a nasty area-effect damage field that effectively caused a wipe, as it had the party constantly low on health.

We had killed one guard, but got back to the room to discover he was back (apparently, the guards will respawn within seconds of a failed encounter, they really want you do deal with a group). So we tanked him at the bottom of the room, while we took care of the guards in the main part of the room to eliminate the area-effect. The plan generally worked, but I noted that I was still taking damage from the field. It didn’t seem to be as big of a problem, so it may drop off as you move away from him. Still it’s a big field of effect.

The last encounter of the night was going back and doing Jandice Barov. That was nasty. Skeletons that can’t be hit with magic. Zombies that play dead, and come back a minute later (Lance kept attacking, which probably kept us from having a really nasty surprise the first time). And that’s just the room leading up to her.

The boss fight was really nasty, as she splits into a couple dozen hard-hitting, magic immune duplicates, while forcefully detargeting you from the real one. That was a wipe. The second time, we asked our priest (Noxlux) to go shadow form (let’s take a moment to appreciate how often a priest hears that in an instance) and mind-flay her to slow her down and help get rid of the illusions. It worked quite well. Still a wild little combat, but that along with a hunter’s mark, and a targeting macro made it much easier.

Last Sunday was another in the unending series of BRD runs. I had recently got the plans for the Dark Iron Plate. As it (for once) didn’t demand a bunch of Molten Core materials, Blanc started eagerly buying up the massive amounts of Dark Iron Ore needed to make it. Luckily, Smudge noticed before the run that it was a Bind on Pickup item. Unless Blanc takes up Blacksmithing, he’ll never see it. (sigh) So Dunain paid him back for it (ouch!) and used it for further rep turn-ins with the Thorium Brotherhood (now 20% of the way to Revered).

The run itself was mostly errand-work and ended at the bar. Smudge is on new medication, and conked out at 10:30. Fortunately, Jariedthe was available to step into the party and main tank for the last hour. Thermidor had been leading the party, and the split between designator and tank does slow things down a bit. But the team did quite well, and and I think both of them did great in roles they haven’t seen much of.

Meanwhile, other things have been happening too. Farmishi has finally hit level 50 (actually 51 now) and is busily getting ready for a Sunken Temple run. This includes a Pally class quest that makes sure you get introduced to the Argent Dawn and Chillwind Point as fast as possible….

Also, we’ve been seeing a bit more of some of the ‘minor’ members of the guild lately. It’ll be while yet, but with luck we’ll have more high-level characters to help out in a bit. We keep hearing things like ‘you’re the best guild I’ve been in!’ (awww… *sniff*).

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