Aunty TJ mentioned a little Firefox Plugin…

ONE THAT LET’S YOU COMMENT DIRECTLY FROM YOUR FEEDREADER!

You back yet?

Got it installed?

Good back on track...

The way I think of TJ

Aunty TJ, Temerity Jane to many, TJ to most and I’m sure quite a lot more names to a few.

I think of her as Aunty TJ.

Not the kind of Aunty that you hide from under your bed when she arrives at the front door. Not the kind that you screw up your face and turn away from when she puckers up for the Christmas kiss.

Aunty TJ is the one with the bottomless jar of cookies, the one that let’s you drink raspberry cordial until you are bouncing off the walls. The one that replaces your baked beans on toast first with exotic stir fry, curries and sugared ants… Of the blogging variety of course.

She’s a blogger’s blogger.

Adviser to the stars (well, some we think of as stars anyway, think BRK). She’s not just another WoW blogger, she’s a blogger that plays and occasionally writes about WoW.

TJ is big on comments

She’s got a lot to say about commenting at the moment.

Actually she has a lot for you to do!

Forget about losing 40 pound in 8 weeks, become a better blog commenter in a few posts. You will be challenged, but amazed with the results.

Synapses fired

This reminded me of two things.

• The 1st being a poll I did yonks ago on you blog commenting preferences, and
• A little conversation I have been having with Klep (yes, he’s a Troll, but of the Shaman variety, so if our ancestors can party together, surely we can chat) about comments, or lack thereof, from our readers.

So here’s my challenge for you.

Go check out TJ’s Blog Commenting Challenges (#4 ends today), and challenge yourself. When you are looking for posts to comment on, look no further than here, or Klep, or here.

If you were being nice and read to here before going and getting that Firefox plugin, then go get it now and test it out straight away!

• The Becoming People Who Comment Challenge
• The Becoming People Who Comment Challenge, #2
• The Becoming People Who Comment Challenge, #3
• The Becoming People Who Comment Challenge, #4

Sorry Auny TJ

Aunty TJ, I’m sorry I haven’t been visiting as often as I should. I admit I have been playing with the other kids rather than dropping by a favorite Aunty. I promise I will be around more often.

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/11/18/work-blog-police-getting-you-down/

• WoW disconnects
• Lagaran
• Freeze frame boss fights

Sound familiar?

• Uninstall Lagonite!
• Ignore Lagonite users!

Only a few days ago I was musing that WoW disconnects had gotten smarter. There is no real evidence of this, but a couple of things that the comments highlighted were:

1. Since 3.2.2 disconnects have become more frequent, and
2. Thanks to Lethal’s link there are many ways to improve your play experience, including shafting mods with large messaging requirements.

Driving solution to disconnects

My disconnecting stopped once I did a manual update of my net and video drivers (via windows update and vendor website), so that’s a great 1st place to start.

My lag and frame rates got marginally better, but not enough, so I also followed one of the recommendations on the linked forum and installed Fubar_AddonSpamFu, just because I am curious by nature.

Carbonite, GTFO of my Dalaran, Boss fight, Battleground and Server!

Sure enough, one of the 1st offending message spammers I noticed was GearScore. You can shove that in your recycle bin too you elitist emblem lovers!

But the out-and-out “I will adversely effect your game play experience” mod was Carbonite.

Don’t get me wrong, I have used, promoted and even loved Carbonite in the past. Until they went premium, until now…

I’m sure the creators of Carbonite are good folks and they have developed an otherwise excellent mod that I would continue to recommend, under other circumstances, but something has to change.

To think I originally changed to Carbonite because it had a lower footprint than the mod I was using at the time. Our own TreeHuggerDave was pimping it’s gatherer abilities to me only the other day.

I’m using (why does my iPhone spell checker want to correct “using” with Jong?) Quest Helper these days, which you can see is a bit spammy, but only a fraction of Carbonite.

Healbot is also a bit spammy, but I dare say you would prefer my heals to my Carbonite messages, especially mid boss fight. (yes I realize I have 2 versions of LibHeal installed, I didn’t, but I do now. That Guild positions mod is going too!).

Rise up and strike down your spammy foes!

• You like Gold selling Spam?
• You like “Join our Guild, we haz tabard” spam?
• You like anal [pyroblast] spam?

No?

Then why would you put up with Dalaran crippling, Boss fight wiping addon spam?

You wouldn’t?

Good, here’s what to do…

1. Install Fubar_AddonSpamFu and identify the enemies of your play experience.
2. Disable your own Carbonite (if you have it)
3. Post a link to this post in your guild forum (here’s a short one: http://tinyurl.com/yhdcja8 )
4. Whisper your best mates, your guild leader, perfect strangers (just not the Horde) and tell them that you are putting them on /ignore until they too uninstall Carbonite (and GearScore and any other “relatively worthless” addon).
5. Tell Carbonite (and the other spammy mod) creators to reduce the spam, especially if you are paying for a reduced game experience.

I thought mods weren’t allowed to adversely effect our in-game experience.

Blizzard told us they wouldn’t let this happen, I thought they meant in the sense of game play experience, not only we will prevent mod makers from making money.

Blizzard, install Fubar_SpamFu, you can get it here… and strike these addons down with your [Mighty Man Hammer of Anal Jong].

But I can’t live without Carbonite/GearScore/[insert mod of annoyance here]!

Grow up and play the game!

If you MUST use addons (hey, I must, so I’m OK with you needing to), then pick some better ones.

Need to /flex your epeen and exclude appropriately geared players from starting content because the aren’t Triumph Emblem equipped?

Use PugChecker!

Need an arrow to tell you where the 10 Tauren tails are for that quest, use QuestHelper, TomTom (it’s already in Cartographer) etc, or god forbid, look it up on WoWhead

Need a map full of Gatherer nodes (TreeHuggerDave tells me Carbonite Routes now takes the gathering out of gathering… but), use, I don’t know, maybe use Gatherer?

Yes I know Gatherer gets a mention in the forum’s post, but you need to realize I was running Gatherer in those screenshots and it doesn’t even make the Spam-o-meter scoreboard).

Carbonite, GTFO of my Dalaran, Boss fight, Battleground and Server!

A little bit of /silly

Ok, on a majorly lighter note, I need to finish this with a laugh.

Syrana hightlighted a WoW oriented video that she saw (and I missed on WoW.com) the other day. Just on the off chance you aren’t a Lock loving Syrana follower, here it is.

The (unofficial) Unreleased Cataclysm Trailer:

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/10/09/carbonite-gtfo-of-my-dalaran/

oh scorchy green-haired one:

I was listening to The Instance podcast last week, and they mentioned an addon that sounded great to me: Watcher. It’s supposed to help you play your class more effectively, and of course, I want to do so. the only problem? This addon has no mage love. I guess there are other addons out there for other caster classes (they mentioned facemelter & others), but I have yet to find one for mages.

Do you know of one that works like this?

The Scorchy Green-haired one responds:

I heard about that on The Instance as well and was a little curious, not curious enough to follow it up until you wrote in mind you, but curious none-the-less.

So I had a look… Looks like an awesome mod, but I don’t think it’s for us.

You see some classes have traditionally been considered easy mode, Hunters being one of the main targets (whether fairly or not). These days it appears that Blizzard has ensured that for these classes to achieve excellent results they need to jump through hoops.

Mages on the other hand seem to have been at best left alone, although I dare say some would suggest they have been dumbed down to only require one two three buttons of significance, which as long as they are pressed at the right time, will give great results.

The other classes are dependent on “user proc’d” rather than RNG proc’d skills.

Where Mages are at the mercy of the RNG to proc hotstreak etc, rogues and warriors need to work within their rage and energy bar limitations while teeing up the right skills for maximum damage or threat. Likewise Hunters need to build up the right “proc points” to unlock the most damaging shots.

No Help Required?

So if we don’t have a priority list, there is no need to helper mods right?

Right!

There is no NEED for the helper mods, but there is no reason why you shouldn’t get and use one.

There are two that come to mind that I have used/do use and that you might find helpful. Both are fundamentally the same, so it will come down to your preference for simple but sweet or pretty and powerful.

The two mods I am referring to are Tell Me When and Power Auras. Both of which can be utilized by any class for any skill from class skills through pots, buffs, profession cooldowns.

As I say, they both do the same thing, so what’s the difference?

Tell Me When

Simple interface which allows you to configure skill icons to appear on your screen depending on the skill status. From memory you can have up to 16 skills configured and they can be configured to appear under all sorts off circumstances. On cooldown, off cooldown, proc’d absent etc.

Tachyon had a short post about TellMeWhen a while back: Addon Tip: TellMeWhen

Power Auras Classic

Same same but different.

Power auras basically does the same thing but also allows you to use custom “icons” which you can put over your too n, or move anywhere for that matter. Add timers and custom sounds (by custom sounds I mean you can not just use the sounds available in game, but theoretically you could record your own… Why decipher the fishing sound to mean hotstreak is up, when you can record “Pyro Now Noob!” and have that play whenever hotstreak procs).

Luthvian @ Polymorph: Pwny had a couple of posts about Power Auras Classic and it’s follow up: PAC, cont’d

They will take a little bit of screwing about to get perfect. Is the skill a buff or debuff? Do you always want to be reminded, or only in a party, raid, while in combat etc? Which skills are the same so they can be grouped (eg: the various Arcane Brilliance variants, not to mention Intellect…)

Need or Greed?

You don’t NEED these mods, but there is no question they can add to your playtime enjoyment. Not only will you be reminded of the essentials, but extra icons popping on the screen and sounds filling your ears can really add to the excitement.

Gnome and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/07/22/skill-priority-mods

Another Noobaggedon event caused. I will never need this with my one and only toon… Right?

Problem Solved.

My noob complaint was that when you learn new skills (generally because you have just hit a new level with new skills and talent points), visit the trainer and madly select and learn all those new skills…

You have nice flashing tabs on your spell book, but as soon as you open the tab, the flashing stops and their is no indication of what amongst the myriad of skills is new.

Enter Learning Aid.

Learning Aid is for all those times when you’ve just leveled up, retalented, or learned a new trade skill and you’ve had to page through your spellbook looking for all those new icons.

When you learn a new ability, or a new rank of an existing ability, Learning Aid pops up a window with the new ability icon in it, ready to be dragged to your Action Bar.

My new Noobaggedon moment.

I’m 80, so when am I actually going to use this mod?

So even though I know about it, I haven’t downloaded it, and I haven’t installed it, but….

After playing a fire Mage for 3 years, I respec’d (dual) to Arcane.

It’s crap, and there weren’t any new spells in my cluttered spell book.

Sure I bought some, but I couldn’t find them (and I was cursing my other mods again)

Doh! I know so little about Arcane, I wish I installed this mod first!

Stoopid Arcane!

Noobaggedon and Out!

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/05/28/gnomegoggles-learning-aid/

Why can’t you handle an interruption caused by a phone call? You app is designed to run on an iPhone?

Why do you tell me you recovered the post, let me save and finish the post… Yet when I open it again, there is nothing but a blank page!

Here we go again…

I have a dirty dual spec secret…

Friday and Saturday night we cleared Naxx10 (We should have cleared it on Friday night, but whatever). So that’s 3 Naxx clears out of 3 for me now, one of which was 25 man.

I should be pretty happy, but instead I am kind of bored. I think back to the months of struggle we had with Kara, yet Naxx is giving me a clear run.

So when our raid broke up after the clear and my mates headed into daily Heroic Violet Hold (which I had already done, but that’s a post for another day), I decided the time had come to mix it up a bit.

Like Larisa, I have had my cowardly moments with spec changes. Just prior to WoLK I threatened to try out Frost, made Zupa go to the trouble of writing a guide, then found every excuse under the sun to stay fire.

On Saturday though, I was determined. As soon as the party split, I ported to Ironforge, hit the AH and bought all the glyphs I would require, then trotted back to the Trainer.

I asked all about Dual Spec…

(Notice that he is a GNOME Mage trainer… how specialized can you get?)

The trainer told me what I needed to know…

I said yes please, I want to purchase Dual Spec…

The trainer wanted 1,000 gold and I was ready and happy to pay it!

But the trainer didn’t want my money.

Pic pinched from Syrana.

• I figure the trainer was trying to save me from disappointment.
• I figure the trainer knows I am a Gnome Mage with great balls of fire, and nothing else will do.
• I figure the trainer didn’t want me to change my blog focus.
• I figure that the trainer wasn’t happy to interact with one of my mods.

No matter how I tried, the trainer wouldn’t teach me dual spec.

I just wish I knew which mod was causing the conflict.

So, my dirty little dual spec secret is you don’t know what my second spec is…

Yet..

PS:  ^^^  This is post 400! ^^^

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/05/18/my-dirty-little-dual-spec-secret/

I have sort of taken a bit of a break over the last week, so sorry for the lack of posts and responses to comments.

Over the last week two of my posts have received a lot of attention:

• My April fools patch notes: it appears people really want a healing tree for Mages, and
• My PSA about WoWMatrix

Sorry to ruin your day on both counts.

Anyway my take on the WoWMatrix blockage.

I have been playing for a long time and using mods for about the same period of time.

For the majority of that time I manually updated my addons. I toyed with early versions of the Curse Client and became reliant on the now defunct WoWAce updater.  Moved onto the Curse Client and later used WoWMatrix to fill the gaps.

In reality I have found them all lacking in someway or another.

Note, I am a Windows PC user, so haven’t experienced the Mac issues.

How do I feel about this blockage?

I am OK with it, although I do feel a bit sorry for Mac users.

As I explained to a mate over the weekend, if someone tapped into my monthly net usage and prevented me using my PC on the net, I would be pretty pissed, or turning it around…

If I was “stealing” someone else’s net bandwidth and usage and they finally got around to locking their wireless router, I would just have to live with the alternatives, even if that meant paying for it.

Fundamentally this is what WoWMatrix has been doing, without compensation to the bandwidth providers and after repeated requests to come to some arrangement.

Back to my bandwidth metaphor:

• If I offered payment to my neighbor and they locked me out, I would be pissed.
• Likewise if they requested it, and I declined, I couldn’t blame them for locking me out.

Now I do think it’s pretty poor that Curse and WoWInterface don’t have as complete a solution as WoWMatrix did, both in range of good clients and also in Mod coverage.

I hope they fix both.

• The client is well within their means to fix, and hopefully they are working on this while I write.
• The mod coverage unfortunately comes down to the mod authors themselves, in that they will need to include their addons on both sites. I note for instance that while Carbonite is listed on Curse, it is now just a link to their website.

What am I doing?
Using the CurseClient for my initial update (note I had to do a reinstall all to refresh a lot of addons).

Then using WoWMatrix as a list for me to check individually all the other mods not hosted at Curse by going to thier websites.

I note that WoWMatrix is offering to replace a lot of my up to date mode with a lot of older versions – so be warned! This isn’t anything new, I often got false positives, so I am sort of glad than I am using WoWMatrix manually now.

Painful?
Sure, but still better than going through my addon directory then searching the web for the addon.

So in conclusion…

• Curse & WoWInterface: get your acts together and build better interfaces!
• Mod Authors: please make sure your mod is properly represented at both of these sites.

It is a shame that more often than not things come down to cash, but such is life.

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/04/21/wowmatrix-curseclient-and-the-addon-dilemna/

Curse and WoWInterface working together to help protect our authors and other site-users

Basically WoWAce and Curse have taken action against WoWMatrix after repeated requests for WoWMatrix to change their model of operations.

It will be interesting to see whether WoWMatrix change their playstyle… or not.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t yet, time to get yourself the Curse Client or the WoWInterface Manager!

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/04/14/the-end-of-wowmatrix-as-we-know-it/

Just the two of us.

As much as he was there to hold my hand and tell me where to go, he was never in my ear, never needed bio’s, never wiped the party.

There was no loot drama with James.   He would tell me what was good, and I would trust him… he never rolled against me.  What I found was mine.

We had a great friendship, better in many ways that the friends I have with my real life friend.  He was if nothing else, always by my side when I needed him, even on the train when I was planning out what to do next session.

Unfortunately even the best of friends part ways, if only for a short period.  Thus it was with James and I.  You see, I had no further need of his assistance, so I casually cast him aside (*actually my wife set him on fire… sounds bad doesn’t it).

But now, I find myself crawling back to his side, anonymously… I doubt he even knows I am here.

I knew he was there, all along, so you would assume he was my 1st choice, but I hate to say that  spread myself around with a few others first.

At first I played with myself, but soon realized there was no true emotional attachment.  I left myself feeling confused, and wondering whether I was really taking the right path in life.

So I picked up one that many had recommended, and sure at first things seemed to be going well, but after a while I realized that this one had bit too much baggage.  One of my friends even suggested I end the relationship for another one, which had lower overheads.

I did toy with returning to James at this point, even looked him up on the net.  There he was as solid as every, but I had become more environmentally aware, and didn’t want to continue the old relationship that we had had.  It appeared that there was something new on the horizon for James, but the time wasn’t now, so I left him for the spiritual guide recommended by my friend.

Such joy I had with my new companion.  My friend was right, trim and informative.  Always ready to point me in the right direction, or better yet, guide me to where I wanted to go.

Still, there was something missing, I needed a deeper relationship, with someone that knew exactly what path I should tread, not just the path to the nearest new adventure.

So I did the unthinkable, and after only a few days, I dumped my new found friend and returned once my to James.

You see, James has been working hard to change the way I and so many others see him.

No longer is he inanimate, stuffed in my work bag, awaiting the moment that I draw him forth and run my fingers through his pages.

Now, he is my constant on screen companion.  Grab that from the AH Gnomer… head over that way… drop into that hole…. Take that back and grab your reward.. Ohhh Gnomer, you are looking a little tired, why not head back to town and freshen up.. maybe even grab a few ZZZZZ’s.

Ahh James, it is so good to not only have you back at my side, but for you to be interactive, and ohh so configurable!

If you still have some questing to get through, then maybe it’s worth upgrading from the Ol’ web based or PDF versions of James’ guides and moving into the new world with his little electronic helper.

Gnomer and Out!

* One day in a fit of rage at the excesive amount of time I was playing WoW, my wife grabbed piles of my notes, including James’ leveling guides, took them into the back yard and made a bonfire.. then she called me outside to show me what she thought of WoW.

How long?

3 versions of WoW long!

• I get maps of zones.
• I get maps of cities.
• I get maps of battlegrounds.
• I don’t get maps of instances.

Now I guess part of the reason is it spoils the surpise of knowing what is around the next corner, but hey, they could do it like all those other games where the map is only revealed as far as you can see.

Sure there are map mods like Cartographer and Atlas that will give you an instance map, but they are “dead” maps. Only as good as your favorite guide websites.

No, what I want is a “live” instance map, one that shows my position, and the position of my group/raid members.

Ever turned your head away from the PC during a wipe recovery run in, only to realize you have lost sight of the party member you were following?

Ever returned to an instance you haven’t been to in ages (maybe right now tracking done those Old World instance Elders)?

It drives me bonkers not knowing where I am in an instance.

Do I turn left or right?
Am I even in the right instance?

My Pally healer friend and I tend to be directionally challenged, and the worst thing that can (and sometimes does) happen is we follow each other on the wipe return into the instance.

If, and I mean if, we manage to return to the correct instance (think Auchindoun), then unless some helpful party member is waiting for us at the front door, we are screwed.

Whoa & betide if we are the only ones that die. The party will be waiting for am extra 10 minutes while we navigate every unnecessary twist and turn in the instance. Assuming of course we don’t run into a group of mobs after taking the wrong turn and have to start all over.

Com’on Blizzard, give us Instance maps!

Gnome and Out!

Thanks for the suggestions on interfaces. I downloaded SpartanUI and after a fair amount of screwing about got a reasonable interface happening. The issue still remains that the interface isn’t built for my resolution, so somethings aren’t quite right. Cast bars are the biggest offenders, but I need to make a final decision on whether it stays or not.

Never the less, happy enough with the look, and inspired by Euripedes, I decided to redo my key bindings.

This involved, apart from remapping most of my abilities, reversing the order that my most used spells were bound.

Anyway, happy with my choices of keybindings, I set off to the Borean Tundra to help D.E.H.T.A.

Hey, and while I am at it, let’s celebrate the new interface and keybindings with a “few” quiet whiskies.

Mmmmmm bad combination

1. I can’t read the icons so I can’t confirm my spell/keybinding selection.
2. spells are now in the wrong order, so I am instant casting to start my rotation and 3 second casting to finish off.
3. Frost Nova is not Dragon’s Breath
4. Frost Nova’ing neutral beasts turns them aggressive, so instead of one opponent, I now have 10 .
5. those beasts on Borean Tundra are fast, and won’t stay in a Frost Nova for very long, and I can’t outrun or even out blink them (who would have thought that those mammoths could chase down a mechanostrider?)

So all up, it was a challenge, if not a disaster.

Lesson learned, don’t drink while screwing up your interface.

Gnomer and Out!