Be warned, there’s a lot of waffle here! So much so I think I’ll have to insist you click to see more…

(EDIT: I’ve just realised how horrid the headings are in this theme. I can’t be bothered changing them now but hope to soon)

Games

WoW wise, I’ve slowed down since I hit lvl 80. It also helps I’ve finally got my Chef’s Hat, costing 100 Dalaran Awards. So I don’t have to do the daily cooking and fishing quests. Though if I have the time I do indulge on the chance I’ll get a rare item. I have been loving the random dungeon finder and runs are so quick with this that I can usually squeeze in a random normal, heroic, the Tournament dailies and the cooking/fishing quests in an hour-ish. The dungeon runs are pretty soulless as groups tend to be of the “GO!GO!GO!” variety. However my aim really is to gear up a little more (got some good healing gear, though need some decent leg and trinket items!) and then start looking for a family oriented guild. I’d love to start doing 10 man raids but most people organise this for 7pm ish which is bang in the middle of bathing and putting Hannah to bed. I’d want to start at about 9pm really as that gives me time to go to her if she hasn’t settled and hopefully anything after that Kat can deal with!

Still on the topic of games, I’m getting rather excited about Star Trek Online. In fact I’ve just pre-odered it after reading Tom Francis’s preview. I have no doubt certain aspects will be ropey (such as ground combat) but the idea of an MMO that lets you develop a party of characters is quite appealing, and of course ship combat.

Other than that I’ve picked up a few games in the sales:

• Osmos
• Braid
• Ben there, Dan that & Time Gentlemen Please (Double Pack)
• Red Faction 3
• Borderlands
• Braid

Some of those were very, very cheap in the Steam sale. I won’t go into detail about them all, but I’ve completed Ben there, Dan that (available free here), enjoyed quite a bit of Osmos, a few minutes on Braid and a few hours on Borderlands and Red Faction 3 each. The latter I was…a little dissapointed by. Red Faction 3 is great in concept, I think the problem is actually with me. I don’t like the GTA ‘living city’ style game, they’re a bit too free form? The demolition physics are fantastic, and the game is certainly great for a quick ‘blow everything up’ game but just didn’t grip me.

Borderlands on the other hand has the mechanics that appeal to me (an FPS Diablo, essentially) but the UI has not really been designed for the PC which just smacks of laziness. I shall try it multiplayer though where I think it’ll fare better.

Rob recently got Dawn of War 2, and we’ve played a bit of Last Stand and campaign co-op which seem quite fun.

Comics

I’ve just caught up with the recent Matt Fraction series of Iron Man and I have to say I’ve really enjoyed it! In addition to that I’ve continued with Dark Avengers, New Avengers, Astonishing X-Men and Captain America.

Dark Avengers I quite enjoy, I love Norman Osborne and am just waiting for him to finally snap. New Avengers is as usual a bit average but fun fluff.

Astonishing X-Men has just about recovered from the truly awful Warren Ellis initial run. I don’t know if he realised it was shit, or it’s the new artists or both, but it seems much better at the minute so I’ll stick with it. I’m hoping really that Joss Whedon returns to the series. Or actually if Kieron Gillen would. Gillen used to be my favourite games journalist a while back. I think all the awards made him a bit too pretentious for a while, but from the previews of his run on S.W.O.R.D (which is tightly linked with AXM), I think he could do the series well.

Captain America is getting back to being one of my favourite series. I have to say I’ve not enjoyed it much since Captain America died and Bucky took the mantle. I loved Bucky, but since he’s been Cap and they’ve OD’d on the WW2 stuff I’ve found it a bit of a bore, and dissapointed that during Dark Reign that a new Captain America hasn’t been the beacon of light for our heroes that he should have been. Though I do understand that Brian Michael Bendis has had the major heroes fail so that they can rise better than ever, which is pretty much what is happening. There’s only 1 issue left of the ‘Reborn’ series to go where Steve Rogers will return. Which I’m excited about because I love Steve. And the prospect of there being 2 Captain America’s is interesting, I wonder if Bucky will be renamed?

I’ve also started reading Ultimate Avengers, which has the brilliant Mark Millar returning to the Ultimates universe. So far I’ve really enjoyed it, quite a radical move to have the Red Skull as Cap’s son, and Cap going ape shit about it! I think this’ll be on my regulars list.

Last week I got the JMS (I can’t spell his full name…) trades of Thor. With Thor, Cap and Iron Man all returning to former glories soon for the up coming Marvel event ‘Siege’, I feel I need to complete the trilogy and get caught up. It also helps that there are Cap, Thor and Avengers movies in the works which has got me excited about these characters. In the next few weeks I think I’m actually going to bite the bullet and subscribe to these titles from a comics. Yes I know it’s about 3 times more expensive than waiting for the trades, but the 6 month plus wait for those is too long!

Other stuff

Well work is work. Nothing much to note. My degree is going ok, submitted my first assignment for the new course last week, I think I’ve done ok. My other course starts in a couple of weeks so yay, double the work!

Hannah wise she’s of course as lovely as ever. The super cute thing at the moment is that she really loves books, always bringing them to us to read to her. One of them has flaps that reveal pictures, and one of those is a tiger mask. So we say “Tiger, rarrrgh!” and she says “Rarrrgh!” back! It’s so funny. It’s impressive too that she can be looking through the book on her own and she will recognise the picture and say ‘”Rarrrgh!”. However she some times gets it wrong, and apparently a giraffe and an elephant also go “Rarrrgh!”…

Anyway I shall try and update more, which I always say but hey, perhaps I’ll keep to it this time?

Yeah I can understand the counter arguments. Centralising everything to Google creates a monopoly, less visits to the actual websites means less revenue from ads etc. But still, it’d be cool. Perhaps make the feature optional? Commercial websites could make it a perk of being a paid subscriber? I don’t know.

In other news, I’ve got my MAC code from Virgin and going begging back to Zen Internet. I got pissed at Zen when I went over my limit and they charged extortionate amounts for additional bandwidth. After months of shitty pings and streaming video using Virgin I’d gladly pony up the extra £10 for top quality service. Despite the price, I always had a great connection with Zen and they have won multiple awards for it.

This should mean more time for WoW, rather than the roll a 6 system I’m going through. I don’t get huge amounts of free time (even less as the work from my OU course picks up soon) and when I do I like to play WoW. There’s nothing more annoying that logging on to see a ping between 1000-20000ms before being disconnected. I’m really enjoying playing my druid and I dinged 75 last night making this the highest character I’ve played. I’m about 500g off Epic Flight Form (despite having to wait to lvl77 and another 1k to use it in Northrend) and really enjoying the lore in Northrend. I’m looking forward once I hit 80 to taking my time to find read all the little interesting books and doing missed quests, fishing in Dalaran for coins and doing all the obscure achievements.

Warcrack indeed

A little bit of druid love then. I love this class. You can do pretty much all the main play types with one character (with dual/re-spec anyway). Want to be a ranged DPS/mage? Normal or Moonkin form. A warrior/tank? Bear form. Rouge/melee DPS? Cat form. Healer? Tree form. Added to that the greatness that is instant cast travel, flight and aquatic form and you have what is pretty much the most versatile class in the game. I spend most of my time in Cat Form doing PvE, and have dual talent specced as a restoration druid that I use mostly in instances.

So the second notable thing, and of course the best, is the fact that Hannah can now walk! Nursery phoned one day to say Hannah was projectile vomiting and needed picking up. I was off work with the same illness so was the one that went to pick her up. When I got there they asked if she was walking at home, to which I said no of course. She had taken 6 unaided steps at nursery that day! Then at home she did it again, all the while being ill. As opposed to me who was a useless lump on the sofa most of the day. She usually walks for at least a little bit every day now and she’s building up confidence. It was brilliant that first time we saw her do it, both myself and Kat got very misty eyed when she did it! It’s amazing how proud you feel at each milestone they meet.

So that was October then. We’re now just a month away from Hannah’s 1st birthday which is unbelievable. That year has gone REALLY fast and she has changed so much. It’s been a fantastic year because of her, and the first of many.

So due to all the work I’ve been doing recently I’ve had little play time. WoW is calling to me. My copy of WOTLK arrived today. My character is 68 now so I can technically go to Northrend but I remember going to Outland at 58 and not really being prepared enough. Not only that, but I have only experienced 3 zones from BC so far and feel I’d be missing out as the BC content so far has been quite enjoyable. Plus I need to get all that gold still for a flying mount and the training that goes with that. In aid of this I’ve decided to use my lvl 20 warrior Moonrock as a banking character. I’ve kitted him out in a nice looking cloth outfit and positioned him in the very quiet city of Exodar. I am trying my luck with Auctioneer, finding bargains and selling them on for profit. I shall see how that pans out, it’s another activity along with fishing that I can easily do while holding Hannah, or if I just need a quick break from work.

Website wise I’ve changed the theme. I like the background but it makes everything too dull. I do want to play with it as I like the layout of this theme. I’ve also added a Twitter sidebar. My Tweets have been updating my Facebook status, but the two don’t really mesh well grammatically. Facebook really is for your status, Twitter is a little more flexible. So I shall split the two. I’m sure nobody reads this website anyway, I don’t publish it really. I might start adding a link to it and a Twitter box in my signature on various forums. 

Well I suppose I’d better get on with some work, it won’t do itself.

Oh before I go, I’d like to say Lost returns tomorrow night for a double bill. 

There’s no other word for it really than *SQUEEEEEEEE!!!*

It would have been better if I’d gone and posted directly after said events to go into detail but never mind. I’m actually working on getting up a website for the baby related stuff. I’m playing about with coding it myself but if I can’t cobble something together myself by November I’ll either go for WordPress or (if it’s a boy) I’ll use iWeb. Yeah not everyone in the world will want to know about our kid but it’ll be an easy way for Kat’s family especially to keep up to date with what’s going on without needing a Facebook account. I’ll try and be sensible with privacy though.

Work wise it is the last week this week, YAAAAAY! Finish on Thursday. I’ll be a little bit sad as I’ll be saying goodbye to my form group. They’ll still be there, but I’ve got a Y7 form next year. On the one hand I’ll miss my current lot, but on the other they’re becoming a pain in the arse, have been since Christmas. They’re all getting their rush of hormones and it’s really changed them. Still love them though.

Got back into WoW recently. Today I’ve re-rolled because several SCM folk (under the guise of Velocity Gaming) have started up. It’s nice actually as I’ve known a few of these people for years via the SCM forum. Perhaps I’ll manage to get a character past lvl 42 this time!

Plans for the summer hols are basically to get the house ready for the baby. Within the first couple of weeks actually we expect to have decorated the nursery and at least bought a pram, if not the whole shebang.

Anyway, I should perhaps go to bed now.