Kemi and Cubedouts Christmas Mix [Dubstep]

It's Christmas time, so here is a present from Dj Cubedout and Dj Kemi.

Dream Jobs - What You Do Instead

So here's a question...

What would your dream job be? and what job do you do instead?

When I left school back in 2004 I thought to myself hey, I want to be a Computer Technician... Wow how stupid was I. These years later I think too myself why!?!!? Why did I choose this.

The summer after college finished on the Computer course, I filmed a short Skateboarding video. Was a video of a friend, not the greatest quality but It was all we had. I'd not really made many videos in the past. But I thought too myself, wow, I could do this. I was addicted to extreme sports on TV and always wanted to go around making my own videos.

So that summer I decided screw it... Signed up for a film course at Truro College.

Dream achieved right? no... I attended for 4 weeks until I gave up. The teacher was incompetent and out of a class of 15 I was the last one to leave. I learned nothing except that the teachers computer was riddled with viruses, and left very disheartened.

I already had knowledge of editing and basic camera use, but I didn't have my own camera, and I went back into IT.

Now I'm 24 and wondering where my life is going. Jobs in the IT sector aren't amazing, and running a local business has proven quite a challenge to me.

I want to pursue my dream of making videos. YouTube offers a good platform where I can earn money from my content providing I can get the views, but I still have the first restriction... Cameras.

And now I need your help, where should I start? I have no money and I want to make this happen. If I can start with one camera then that's all good, but Ideally I need something of decent quality because posting videos like the old Skate video wont get watched in this day in age. Ideally I want something like a GoPro for certain shots and a decent camera for normal shots.

Who knows? I guess I'll figure it out eventually.

Stay frosty
-Professor Clutch

Trance Mix vol.1 - 2012 - by Dj Cubedout

SWTOR: Mobile Security

So this may become a rant as opposed too advice, or who knows? It could become both.

Here is the situation:

I quit playing SWTOR around the time Guild Wars 2 come out, maybe a week before.

After this time I rooted my Android phone which removed the Security Key application from my phone.

So SWTOR announces that It will become free too play, this is great! I reinstall the game, go to download updates ready for the day it goes F2P.

I enter my details then read.. "Security Key" yea... Can't log in. So I contact customer support explaining my situation hoping someone would be able to help me out.

Instead I get this lovely email back.

Greetings, 
Thank you for contacting us regarding your Star Wars: The Old Republic Account.
In order to better protect your account, all Billing, Subscription and Account Security issues are dealt with via our Customer Service telephone support.
You can contact our Customer Service team using a mobile phone, landline or VoIP (such as Skype, Viber, Google Voice etc.).
Please note that international call charges can be avoided by using a VoIP programme, as most major VoIP programmes offer free calls to US '1800 numbers'. If you have access to a VoIP with this option, our number is +11-855-467-9867.
You can contact us using a mobile phone or landline by clicking on the following link and finding our customer support telephone number for your specific country: http://www.swtor.com/support/helpcenter/5200
Customer support will be provided in English, French, and German only.
You can also avail of our self-help section on the website which contains many articles which can provide you with further information on our most frequently asked questions. For Account and Billing enquiries, you can visit our Help Center here: 
http://www.swtor.com/support/helpcenter/1863.
If you have any questions relating to our recently announced Free To Play option, you can view them in our Help Center here: 
http://www.swtor.com/support/helpcenter/6449.
Thank you for your patience and understanding, and we apologize for any inconvenience this issue has caused. Should you require further assistance with any other issues, please do not hesitate to contact us again. 

Regards, 
Protocol Droid M0-T0, Star Wars (tm): The Old Republic(tm) Customer Service

Ok, thanks Protocol Droid M0-T0 but I was hoping too get a response from an actual Human/Chiss/Twi'Lek what ever... But no, generic response.

"Fair enough" I think too myself as I start dialling their phone number. They must have a proper procedure on their phone network.

I listen too the menu, 2 for accounts, 2 for security... Nope nothing in here about authenticators. I listen to every option in every menu until I give up.

Contact them again explaining that the phone gave no option about authenticators, asking if I could once again please do this online?

Guess what they emailed back?

Yup that's right, the exact same email... Word for word, letter for letter, character for character...

Fine, Ill ring the damn number again and press any old option. "contact someone from billing" ok.

*orchestral music*

15 minutes later...

Some Professor and Doctor are telling me I'm a valued customer and my call will be answered soon...

15 minutes later... They are here again...

30 minutes later... Still no answer, I give up...

I have used the online robot support again and made very clear that their phone service sucks, their online service sucks, and if they wont help me online I wont bother playing their game ever again. Lets hope this triggers an actual living creature this time.

So I guess the advice I can give from this is... Always remove your Mobile Authenticator before doing anything which could loose your Authenticator, could be formatting, selling the phone, anything really... Because its an absolute pig to get back.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

Zombie Gangnam Style

So today I got really bored, and made this mashup of Zombie Nation and Gangnam Style...

Lets Play: Super Mario Brothers 3 - World 1

So here is the first of many, I will be posting several Lets Play videos over the coming weeks. Lets see how this goes.

If you like what you see, please like and subscribe.

Everyday I'm Shuffling (In Guild Wars 2)

So I've been playing Guild Wars 2, I was quite excited over the quality of the shuffle in the game, so I decided to post it. Here is the Human Female dance from Guild Wars 2

My Dj Shadow Remix

So I have produced a remix of an old track by DJ Shadow, Its a Drum n Bass version of the old track Blood On The Motorway. You can check it out here I spent a lot of time on the video.. At first Cinema 4d wouldn't render properly, then Sony Vegas wouldn't render properly... Ended up finishing on someone else's pc using Adobe Premier, taking 2 days in total to make the video. All that and its only a simple animation xD On another note, it seems that Blogger have removed the function to use the old interface. Its rather annoying as the new one is about as easy to navigate than walking into a maze blindfolded. Lets hope they fix this.

Update: Insane In The Membrane Guide For Mists Of Pandaria 5.0.4

Hello my nooblets.

I would just like to announce that the guide is up to date as far as I can see, I have renamed it too "Mists Of Pandaria Insane in the Membrane Guide 5.0.4" although the link still seems to say "Cataclysm" I assure you it is up to date.

http://angryspacegoat.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/cataclysm-insane-in-membrane-guide.html

I've added a small note at the top of the page which reads:

"5.0.4 notes As far as I can see in patch 5.0.4 the grind is the same. Where achievement sharing is concerned, all characters on your account will receive your insane title after the achievement is earned. Also as far as I can tell, you will have to earn all parts of the achievement on one character, the progress of achievements does not share between them."

I will be taking a break from World of Warcraft for a while as it is of my opinion that Mists of Pandaira is going to be the worse expansion ever made, although as soon as I get bored of Guild Wars 2 I'll probably check it out properly.

Although this does not mean that I will neglect the guide. I will keep checking in too see if anything has changed in relation to the acquisition of the achievement over time.

Good luck in MOP achievement hunters, and stay frosty.
-Professor Clutch

Windows 8: I'll Buy It If...

So I have been using the Windows 8 release preview for a month or two now. I must say, I really like it, although the only thing that puts me off is the lack of choice.

It would be nice if Microsoft would implement an option to enable the classic Start Menu that we have grown up with since Windows 95. Instead we are presented with a full screen UI as our only choice.



I have been using 3rd party software, a programme named ViStart has served me well since installing the preview. Although It does lack some functionality, like the ability to right click items within. Also I discovered sometimes while shutting down the PC it would present an error that has to be clicked off, otherwise the PC would not continue to shutdown (annoying to turn up to work to find the pc still on in the morning)

But all in all, I really like this operating system. It seems to run quite efficiently and the start is the only issue I have with this OS. You have done a good job Microsoft, pat yourself on your back (But only after you give us the Start option).

Regardless of the title, I am definitely going to be buying this OS and with a cheap upgrade offer of $40 until January its a bargain buy.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

World Of Warcraft And Its Direction

So I've been playing Wow for a very long time, I started at the end of Vanilla and got my first raiding experience within the Burning Crusade. I always heard the stories of Vanilla and how it was epic but many say Burning Crusade was the best expansion there ever was. Now I can't judge for Vanilla but out of BC WOTLK and Cata, I'm inclined to agree.

Recently a video come to my attention, the man makes a very good point. So I'll shut up here and let him do the talking. I must say I agreed with every single thing he said.



On another note, the Insane In the Membrane guide is up to date and can be found here. I hope its helpful.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

Free Dj Mix

So as some of you know I am a DJ, and I go by the name Dj Cubedout.

I have had a couple mixes up on Soundcloud for a while now but figured I'd share them here too.




There they are, enjoy them.

-Professor Clutch

The Old Blogger

Well, so it seems after my week of rage at the new Blogger interface, I finally found the way to turn it back to the old interface.

At the top of the screen there is a cog wheel and in there it says "Old Blogger Interface" Seems rather simple to be honest, why I didn't see it there before was just because I didn't give it a chance.

At least now I can keep my stuff up to date.

-Professor Clutch

I can't use this any more sorry. If anyone knows if I can change my Blogger back to how it used to look please let me know, until then I don't know how to use this. Fail on behalf of Google.

Dungeon Finder Behaviour

So I was in the dungeon finder today, and what has everyone become assholes? Really. Regardless of what level dungeon you are doing, remember that you are playing with real people.

Just seems some of those real people don't give a shit about others. Here's my example:

A healer rolls need on Grace of the Herald for his friend.

[14:03:31][P] [Cubed]: nice one, healer rolling on [Grace of the Herald]
[14:03:38][DG] [Fántálock]: for yebba
[14:03:42][P] [Akenez]: It's called OS babe.
[14:03:43][P] [Cubed]: thats mean
[14:03:50][P] [Cubed]: ms beforeo os
[14:04:01][P] [Akenez]: That's in raid
[14:04:06][P] [Cubed]: doesnt matte
[14:04:06][P] [Akenez]: This is dungeon mate
[14:04:08][P] [Cubed]: its rude
[14:04:24][DG] [Fántálock]: And healer needed for Yebba's ms :P
[14:04:28][DG] [Fántálock]: guess it counts
[14:04:31][P] [Cubed]: well no it doesnt
[14:04:34][P] [Cubed]: its unfair
[14:04:37][DG] [Fántálock]: kk
[14:04:38][P] [Akenez]: Cry me a river.
[14:04:40][P] [Akenez]: Idc.


I don't know, is it just me? I wouldn't act like an ass about it, I wouldn't do it over a class that was meant to have the item. Maybe if it was some scrub warrior who wanted agility I would step in. Or in this case a healer needing over a dps Id step in. I'm too nice to players who deserve it, not these assholes.

What are your thoughts? drop me a comment.

Mists Of Pandaria Insane in the Membrane Guide 5.4

This guide is up to date as of 5.3.0 and will be checked over when relevant patches hit during Mists of Pandaria.

5.2 notes From the patch notes I don't see anything different, its kinda hard for me to tell major changes now that every one of my characters has the title, so if you notice something please inform me.

5.1.0 notes no change, although I will be adding a little info based on Mists of Pandaira Darkmoon Cards in the future. The basic Idea is the same though.

5.0.4 notes As far as I can see in patch 5.0.4 the grind is the same. Where achievement sharing is concerned, all characters on your account will receive your insane title after the achievement is earned. Also as far as I can tell, you will have to earn all parts of the achievement on one character, the progress of achievements does not share between them.


So, I've seen a lot of guides around but none are really that up to date. So I figured I'd make my own.

First off, what is this? Insane in the membrane is an achievement which people farm out to obtain the title "the Insane". It involves obtaining certain reputations which are very time consuming to achieve.

The Reputations we will be grinding will be:


Bloodsail Buccaneers
Ravenholdt
Darkmoon Faire
Booty Bay
Everlook
Gadgetzan
Ratchet

So now you are thinking "wow all these reputations, where should I start?" Don't worry, I have a plan.

First we will start with Bloodsail Buccaneers.

Bloodsail Buccaneers

The target we are aiming for here is Honored. There is no need to go any farther unless you are farming exalted reputations.

A note on this reputation involving Steamwheedle Cartel. Originally you had to be exalted with Steamwheedle and honored with Bloodsail at the same time. More recently some say that this isn't the case, and may have been a bug at a certain point in time. As there hasn't been much response on this subject, to save a load of heart ache I would recommend keeping your Bloodsail reputation at honored during the achievement progress.

Now then, there are two ways we can go about this one. The first will be to find a couple friends, tank and a healer and farm the guards in Booty Bay. Since cataclysm these guards have had a major boost in stats and cannot be killed by conventional weapons.

The second way (which is boring I know) is to farm a single mob in Arathi Highlands. In the Arathi Highlands there is a place which you can see on your map below Stromgarde Keep named Faldir's Cove. In the old days you would have to swim there but now there is a path, and also you can fly now.

The guy we will be killing mostly is Shakes O'Breen, he has an extremely fast respawn rate. The two gnomes in the background of this screenshot will give you slightly more reputation but have a low respawn rate.

Bare in mind that this is probably the easiest part of the grind, and next we will move onto Ravenholdt.

Ravenholdt

The first stage of obtaining exalted with Ravenholdt is to kill Syndicate mobs. These can be found in Arathi Highlands at Northfold Manor and Stromgarde Keep.

For me I found it best to do laps around both areas to allow respawns, as you catch up really quickly. I would start at Stromgarde and go through the bottom level first. After those mobs mount up, fly over the wall to the top level, kill the mobs there, check in the houses. Follow along into the Keep and kill the guys in there. The named npcs don't reward reputation and if a lowbie is questing there I tend to not kill them if I can help it.

After clearing the keep, mount up again and fly over to Northfold Manor. Most of the mobs are in stealth, but can be seen reasonably well by an 85. Go around the farm in a circle and then fly back to Stromgarde, rinse and repeat until you get to 11999/12000 honored.

The next part will involve turning in Heavy Junk Boxes. These have to be Pick Pocketed by a Rogue from mobs usually around the level 50-60 area. The best place to farm these I found was actually in Blackrock Spire. I would stealth in around the first room of UBRS and then head down and pick pocket all of LBRS and on the walk back I could jump down to the ogres and their pockets had respawned. Work my way back up to UBRS again and all those had respawned too. Out of the instance and reset, start again.

If you don't have a rogue, all is not lost, but it will cost you. As I wanted to spend more time grinding my Steamwheedle reputations and less time in BRS I employed the services of a "Dwarf" Rogue (I thought he was a Dwarf, but turns out we are horde and he is Undead). He did a very good service I think 10g per box and I had my reputation up in no time. Its just a case of asking in trade or on the forums really.

You need to have 5 boxes per turn in, and each turn in will reward you with 75 reputation. 82.5 Reputation if you have guild perks. The best way I would recommend to find out how many you need, would be to visit Wowjuju. They have a rep calculator which will tell you how much you need based on perks and racials. All you need to do is insert your name and server and find your reputation, very simple and helpful website.

Now we have that sorted, onto our next reputation.

Darkmoon Faire

Now then, the Darkmoon Faire has become much easier and cheaper to obtain than previously.

Darkmoon Fair will begin on every first Sunday of a month, and end on the next Saturday. So you have a week to do all the daily quests, and profession quests.

The dailys are quite simple really. They reward 250 reputation each, or 275 with perks. A days gain will be 1250 reputation or 1375 with perks. And it will take you roughly 34 days worth of daily gains or 31 with perks. That works out around 5 months.

But 5 months is a long time. Each month you will be given extra quests to do based on what Professions you have, each profession has its own quest which you can obtain at the faire. They are usually quite easy. Also while dungeoning you obtain artifacts which reward a nice amount of reputation. They are as follows:

Mysterious Grimoire
Monstrous Egg
Imbued Crystal
Ornate Weapon
A Treatise on Strategy
Soothsayer's Runes
Adventurer's Journal
Banner of the Fallen
Captured Insignia

All of these can be found on the Auction House, but all drop from somewhere. A guide to farming these has been posted on Wowhead by Perculia which can be found here: Darkmoon Despoiler: A Guide to Farming Darkmoon Artifacts

Now to squeeze in that extra rep. If you aren't fussed about how long it will take, all the above is fine. But if you are really desperate and have no patience at all and a lot of gold doing nothing, then its Darkmoon Cards for you.

Darkmoon cards are collected together to form decks which reward nice trinkets or other things. For an epic deck you will receive 350 rep or 385 with perks, and for a lesser deck you will receive 25 rep or 27.5 with perks.

There are several ways you can go around this. If you have the money to invest I would recommend epic decks, but you will need to find an inscriber. With the epic decks you could possibly make a profit providing people buy your finished trinkets off you. The best way to make these is to buy loads of Cataclysm grade herbs, mill them all up. Turn your Blackfallow ink into Inferno Inks and create loads of Darkmoon Cards of Destruction.

The second way would be to create lesser decks. I found rogues decks to be nice and easy. They require Hunter's Ink to craft, which can be obtained by milling either Bruiseweed, Stranglekelp, Briarthorn, Mageroyal or Swiftthistle.

Epic decks must be turned in at the faire, but lesser decks can be used to summon an NPC from the faire to your location at any time of the month which will allow you to turn them in.

Next on our list...

Steamwheedle Cartel

Instead of listing each goblin faction separate, Its best to do them in one as they tie in with each other.

With this I found the best place was to start in Tanaris. There are two places you can do this in Tanaris, and the best depends on how many people you are with.

If you are alone I recommend the camp behind the Caverns of Time. You can go around it in circles with everything respawning in time for you to get back to each point.

If you have more than two people though, I would reccomend the camp where the fights are going on. This place is ideal to keep you in range of everyone for rep gains. The mobs in the area are on a set respawn, which means there has to be a certain amount of mobs up at one time. So if you are killing everything in sight super fast because there are loads of you at different points of the map, the more respawns you are going to get. I managed to get the last leg of my grind here.

The idea here in Tanaris is to kill until you get your reputation with Gadgetzhan to 11999/12000 Honored.

Once you have reached this, you now need to go to The Barrens. There is a little island here full of mobs which reward Ratchet reputation.

For this part keep watching your Gadgetzhan reputation. The idea here is to get it to exalted while on the island, then return to Tanaris for the rest of the reputation.

The reason here is, each kill for its own faction will stop at a certain point, and you have to max out the reputations with spillover rep. Doing it this way I found to be the least tedious.

Once that's all done, take a step back and congratulate yourself on your new insane title.

Its really simple but the problem is finding the patience to do it.

Websites I recommend in this guide:

Wowjuju Rep Calc
Darkmoon Despoiler: A Guide to Farming Darkmoon Artifacts

Getting my own title was hard work, but I'd like to thank the people who helped me along the way. You will most likely meet people along the way as others are doing the same, be friendly, group up. Good luck everyone.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch... the Insane

Mists of Pandaria Beta

So its that time again, Blizzard just lifted the NDA on Mop and the beta should be very very soon.

Now... since this NDA was lifted a load of info has surfaced. I'm not usually one to go back on my word... But it actually looks quite good. The screenshots look epic, I like the idea of having my own farm, and I hate Garosh so I'm glad he's going near the end.

One thing I have noticed is a lot of hate towards the Female Panda model, I don't see the problem. The female panda model made me change my mind completely about if a panda was ever going to be created on my account. Male panda can get out... Female panda isn't so bad.

So now really I just need to wait and see if I get chosen to test, I don't have the annual pass as I am unable to stick to it, so I'm going to have to wait and see. I didn't get into Wrath of the Lich King, and I didn't get into Cataclysm. Didn't try for Burning Crusade and wasn't around in original beta, not sure if this is why I don't get chosen but still. Blizzard give me a beta pass please.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

Archaeology

So here's what I want to talk about, Archaeology in wow.

In the last 2 or 3 days I decided to start leveling it again. First time was at the start of Cataclysm and now I'm doing so in 4.3.3... Wow... Really this has been buffed so hard.

Let me make a slight comparison here.

Clutch 1 - 525 took maybe a week. Rares on the way from 1 - 525 = 2. Each dig gave 1-3 fragments.

Clutchizie 1 - 525 = 2 days. Rares on the way from 1 - 525 = 10. Each dig gave 5-7 fragments.

Wow that is a clear buff, which makes it quite clear as to why so many more professors are around these days. I'm clearly mad that I'm doing archaeology again, but my Warrior is no longer named Clutch and I can't say Professor Clutch until I fix my Mage.

That's all I have to say really, I need something to rant about at the moment, nothing seems to be bothering me. If anyone has a subject they would like me to talk about please let me know, id be happy to get an opinion on it.

Stay Frosty
-Associate Professor Clutchizie

Rendering Times

So today I have been rendering a still image in Cinema 4d, so far 7 hours and 16 minutes. I'm starting to get frustrated with the epic power of my pc.



Last night I started to render the clip, it took 2 hours to get to the face on that elf and I noticed a problem. So had to stop it and fixed it this morning. Not expecting it to take this long I set it going and figured id spend the evening on wow or something. But no, its still here rendering.

The biggest problem is my PC is getting on to be 5 years old now, and it doesn't like the 2 main things present in this still. 1. Global Illumination 2. A massive Tree.

If I had the money I'd upgrade heavily, but I just don't. I like making these Warcraft scenes for friends in Wow, but as I get better at creating them, my pc gets worse at rendering them. My first scene took 10 minutes, my recent one took 5 hours. This ones 7 hours and still going... Maybe I need a better render engine, but what do I go for? What's faster and better looking for c4d?

If anyone has any suggestions I'd be glad to hear it.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

Update: 21:42 almost half way, xfire crashed in the night and hugged 50% of the cpu great...
Update2: Finished total time 26 hours 10 minutes 51 seconds
http://clutch26.deviantart.com/art/Camp-Fire-288150614

Wow Ironman Challenge: Update 2#

Hey, so I'm currently level 53, still going strong. But the last couple days I have been quite afk so only done 3 levels in 2 days...

I almost got myself killed saturday night coming home from the bar drunk, I'll not attempt that again.

The other night I was on the speedway in Thousand Needles, and I met the first and only Horde challenger I have seen so far. Hopefully will see some more soon, I'm slowly approaching outlands which I'll be less likely to see any others in.

That's about all I have to say for now really, will see what happens as it comes, I'm getting quite excited to reach outlands, level 60 is quite a mile stone if I can reach it.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch
Cubedout level 53 Draenei Hunter - Earthen Ring EU

Wow Ironman Challenge: Update 1#

Hey guys, so I thought I would update. Today I nearly died in Stonetalon mountains twice...

If I have any advice for Stonetalon it would be this... Don't get in that Balloon if you are a Hunter, I survived with 30 health it was quite a close one.

And two would be at the top where the old nelf village used to be, there are tentacles in the ground. Don't get close ffs, I got thrown into the air and dropped down to about 20 health, it was quite a twitching moment.

Other than that, I'm level 34 at the moment, still my original hunter. I'll keep you posted.

If you want to join the guild on Earthen Ring EU just whisper anyone in the guild.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

Cubedout Lv34 Iron Hunter - Earthen Ring EU

Wow Ironman Challenge

So today I discovered the Ironman Challenge. Basically the rules are this...

Level from 1-85 using the rules below.

Only White or Grey gear. No Heirlooms of any kind.
No transfer of gear, items, or money from any other character (yours or others).
No gear enhancements, including gems, enchanting, and reforging. Class abilities are allowed (eg. Rogue poisons, Shaman imbues).
No specialization, talent points, or glyphs. No pet talent points.
No professions or secondary skills, except for First Aid.
No potions, flasks, or elixirs except for required quest items.
No food buffs or other external buffs (including buffs from items and other players).
No groups or assistance from other characters, even if not grouped.
No dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, or arenas.
No guilds, except for level 1 guilds created specifically for the Ironman Challenge.
No Refer-A-Friend.
No addons which assist in combat and/or leveling (eg. leveling guides, Ovale).
THE BIG ONE: No deaths. Character death for any reason disqualifies the character
The following are allowed:

All class abilities, racials, and personal buffs.
All mounts, bags, and non-combat pets.
All quests, including holiday events and dailies.

-Taken from http://wowironman.com/rules

After seeing this I couldn't resist. So I looked at the leaderboard to see which realm had the most players on eu. Joined Earthen Ring and started.

Currently I am level 17 and Its now almost 6am so I'm going to bed... More tomorrow, feels good to be actually doing something in the game that I can actually be bothered to put effort into.

Current standings are here http://wowironman.com/ I am Cubedout a Hunter from Earthen Ring. http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/earthen-ring/Cubedout/advanced

My personal goal is 30, and anything after that is a bonus to be honest. I don't consider myself amazing at this game, but if I don't hit 30 Ill not be happy.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

My AM386

So today I have spent the entire day playing with an AMD 386 SX/SXL - 25. I obtained it several years ago and since has been sat in a box doing nothing.

So I figured, hey, lets get it out and see what's what and maybe see if I can sell it or something. I saw recently that they are classed as something called Vintage Computing. To someone like me this is a nice little computer, I wouldn't want to sell it. But I know I'll never use it. My days of tinkering with PC Hardware are all but gone.

So looking at it, what do I have? Its a really small computer, built obviously as a space saver. It runs a 25 mhz cpu with 1 and a half mb ram... Not sure the specific of that one as I didn't look enough.

But the big issue here is that it is missing a hard drive, I have the original floppy disk drive but no cable for it, as it has a different socket which converts into the standard format for the board. This is a problem, as a regular floppy disk drive is too long to fit in the case, also a regular floppy disk cable takes up space.

The other issue is that the front of the machine is missing, so no plastics making it look nice, its just a metal shell. This causes a problem because I can't identify what the actual computer is. I have been searching the net all day for what could be an ECS Book PC, but I can only find Book 2s and 3s. Which is annoying.

The BIOS string is 30-0100-D01131-0111111-070791-HT18C-F which only matches manufacturer and no boards listed online. I can't find it anywhere. There is a number on the board BP1000 which to what I found is the model number of some UPS Battery.

It seems impossible to find, but not only that it has a major major issue. Its CMOS Battery is a Dallas Real Time Clock chip with an inbuilt battery, which is flat. It means finding a new one which could prove impossible, or hacking it down the side and attaching a more modern battery. I'm not sure I want to start taking it apart because I have shaky hands and don't belong near a soldering iron.

One thing I will note before I finish this blog, If you have any idea what I'm talking about... IE what the board could be or what computer it was for, please let me know I would be very grateful.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

Dwarfy Mountain

So for the last couple days I have been spending time in Cinema 4d to produce something a little bigger than the Pig mount I designed a while ago.



But as you can tell I'm not very experienced in 3d work, after this I went on and produced another similar picture for a friend of mine which used the same grass and looked the same apart from it was her character riding a snail.

Now I moved onto my next project and its got slightly more detail than the last one, the last one took 15 minutes to render and I thought that was over the top, until this one took 5 hours to render. I hope you like it.



Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

I Appear To Have An Issue

I appear to have a Dwarf Issue

-Professor Clutch

More Downtime and SOPA

So its 5:45pm and I just get to my pc to play some tor. And I get the message above. Wow really?

1.1.0a Patch Notes - 1/19/2012


Operations


Karagga’s Palace

Fixed an issue that caused assigned loot bags in Karagga’s Palace to distribute items with class inappropriate stats.

PvP


Ilum

Players can no longer enter the opposing faction’s safe base area, thus preventing players from continually "camping" the other faction's base.
Turrets inside faction bases were not intended to be destroyed and are now immune to damage.
The population cap for instances of Ilum has been reduced to improve performance.
Implemented optimizations to improve performance on Ilum.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

Loading screens no longer appear when other players spawn nearby.

Was this really worth several hours of downtime? I feel like I'm paying for a game which is never available to play. Not only is this not worth patching on a day that isn't the usual patch/maintainableaintinence day (which google still doesn't correct for me) but until 8:30pm gmt? you have to be having a laugh?

SOPA
As you may know there was a blackout yesterday in protest of SOPA, I know not many people visit this blog but I put in my effort by blacking out for the day.

For those of you who don't know, SOPA is bad and will destroy the internet as we know it, go to http://americancensorship.org/ for more info.


Powertech

Back to tor, I re-rolled Powertech, I cant be bothered with my marauder any more, I have too much fun as a Powertech. I've gone shield tech so will be a tank, and currently level 23.

Here is a picture of a pretty boat I took on Balmora while levelling my PT.


Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

NASA Finds Double Star Planet Systems

So for someone like me this is really interesting, a planet orbiting two stars, being described as "like Tatooine from Star Wars" which is awesome.

I have always wondered what a system with two stars would be like for a planet, I would imagine very hot.

You can read more about it over on Space Fellowhip

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

Rest XP And Broken Strings

So I took a couple days off Star Wars this week in order to save up some rest xp. As I found myself too low for my content I figured taking a break would help me out. So I have spent the last couple days doing a mixture of things like...

Tidying up... Which didn't last too long.

Watching Only Fools and Horses, my brother bought the box set and has been lending me the dvds to watch, I'm now on series 7.. Or I just finished series 7, I missed the whole of series 5 so going back for that.

Playing Slide Guitar. My dad threw a steel bottleneck thing at me, so I have been having a play on that today and a bit last night, its quite fun. Although its not so fun being that I have a string missing... Yes I am an idiot and tuned it the wrong way and now haven't had the time to replace it.

Rest XP
So today I logged back onto SWTOR and I've got a nice healthy bar of rest. It seems to be about 2/3 of a level if I look at how much extra over my level I have, which is Ideal. It means that I wont be suffering much longer when I start to catch up with the content again.



I thought I had reached the content but upon getting sent here, it was quite clear that I hadn't. I'm currently on Belsavis at level 39, I was half way through 38 when I arrived and this is a 41+ planet. Oh well...

IRC

On another note, I got all my IRC channels back this week. It's been a very long time since I was on IRC, since I left my old house in fact. But I'm back on it, all the same people are there, doesn't seem like anything's changed much. Upon arriving back in some of my channels I was given my old rights back even though I wasn't even logged into the servers (accounts expired). But if anyone wants to chat to me I'm on a mixture of servers (Quakenet, MIXXnet, Stratics, GeekShed, Coldfront) and I'll be named Cubedout. Just do a whois and it will tell you where I am :)

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch

SWTOR: Disco Bubble and Captain Bryn

As you know this week I started a Sith Sorcerer after being told it had Disc Priest similarities.

Disco Bubble

Well today I reached level 14 and got what seems to be my alternative to my disco bubble Power Word: Shield. Well from what it seems it is a shield of electrickery and is named Static Barrier. From what I can tell it also has its similar Weakened Soul effect of which the name escapes me right now... I like this though, I'm looking forward to more levels.

Captain Bryn

So while levelling my marauder a week or two back, I stumbled across this NPC who had a Welsh accent, I loved this guy so much that when I went back levelling my Sorcerer I had to get it on video, its in two parts, first part is picking up the quest, second is handing it in. Although I did things slightly differently this time, last time I didn't know much about my choices for dark side and light side, this time he didn't shout at me which wasn't quite as entertaining.

But here he is in all his glory, Captain Bryn.

Part 1 - Collecting the mission.



"Mad scientist type. Likes weapons. Cyborgs. Droids. Ergonomic Chairs..." epic just epic.

Part 2 - Returning after the mission.




If you value time, skip this paragraph, I don't want any "well there's 30 seconds of my life I wont get back"
Well off to bed with me, spent another several hours waiting for server maintenance today... And OH MY GOD GOOGLE CHROME! I admit I cannot spell the word "maintenance" and the amount of times I have tried to type it yet its spell checker gives me maintained, impertinence, maintainable and daintiness... Just... Forget it... Stress over my own incompetence. Now I just wait for the two youtube videos to upload that I intend to put above before posting this... This piece of text is basically me bored waiting... Includes lots of pointless dots... COME ON!!!

On a final note my Marauder is currently level 38, and my Sorcerer 15. I plan on leaving the Marauder for a couple days maybe, I need some rest xp. Turns out I skipped a bunch of quests at low level and have been 3 levels behind for the whole duration. Now I must go to some planet where all my quests are Red and I can't be bothered with it again. So I'm saving rest then going to try some Flashpoints. Will see.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch
Do or do not, there is no try.

SWTOR: European Maintenance

I originally made this blog to rant about blizzard, but now I have a reason to rant about Bioware.

Server Maintenance

Yes they are doing a good job keeping the patches flowing and I can respect that, but this strikes me as annoying...

We are aiming for this weekly maintenance period to take place in an off-peak time for both North American and European players.

Scheduled Maintenance

Date: Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Time: 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) to 10AM CST (8AM PST/11AM EST/4PM GMT/5PM CET)

All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than eight hours.

Now, In the US this I would consider a time when less people will be playing. But 8am-4pm in the UK is silly. Not everyone works during this time, and from playing WOW I know a lot of people play at this time of the day.

The situation comes down to them dropping all servers at the same time. This isn't really acceptable seeing as though every other MMO are fairly capable of dropping EU and US servers at separate hours, even at game launch. I'm paying for a game I cannot play during the day, do they wan't me to watch Jeremy Kyle when I could be killing some innocent people because they have outgrown their usefulness?

Today isn't Wednesday, so yes this was yesterday... But today its gone down again, it went down at 9pm today to apply a patch, sure yes again I'm happy they are doing their best to keep the game up to date, but really still why do them together please? For the sake of your player base, if you wish to keep subs I would suggest changing this, what about people who only have Tuesdays off to play? you loose all those players because 8 hours of their days are spent waiting for your servers to come up.

Now that's out of the way...

Sith Inquisitor

During the early hours of the morn, I thought to myself "I wonder what class would be most like Disc Priest as I loved Disc PVP" followed by asking in guild. I got the response that Sith Sorcerer Corruption was similar. I'm told they have a bubble and a penance like spell. I don't know if this is right or not, but I certainly am interested. So today I started my Inquisitor and started leveling, All these starter abilities and the sheer amount of damage I do to mobs really makes me think I rolled the wrong class.

When I tried my first character(warrior), it took effort to kill, its still taking effort to kill. When I started Bounty Hunter stuff died, and now I started this, stuff dies again. But ill be going healer, people spoke about going healer, using their companions to tank and dps, and to dps/heal along with them. Apparently its efficient. Ill hope to spam more flashpoints really. I haven't been doing them, I should have... We shall see.

Stay Frosty
-Professor Clutch
KEEP FIRING ASSHOLES!

Hoth

Today I woke up at 12:30am. The last couple of days I have spent watching the Star Wars movies starting with the original films, then the more modern films. I figured as I'm playing the game I should at least catch up on the films, I had only seen the first one and part of the second and third. I'm glad I have watched them.

Last night I landed on Hoth, I'm now a level 37 Sith Marauder, It got me thinking the moment I arrived I was given a stim to protect me against the cold, so if the original star wars was 3500 years in the future why didn't Luke Skywalker have one when he almost froze to death? Not saying I'm better than Luke Skywalker but I haven't froze yet.

On another note, I want a Tauntaun mount please, thanks.

-Professor Clutch