Jay McGavren's Journal

2006-10-23

Wow… Okami is… beautiful. I can’t believe we didn’t get it sooner.

Gameplay-wise, it’s an obvious attempt to eat some of Wind Waker’s market, but I don’t care. The presentation is just so fucking gorgeous.

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2006-10-18

OK, so I’m getting pretty involved with World of Warcraft. I know I won’t have a lot of time to devote to the game, though, so I’m probably only going to do 1 character (2 if I have to change servers for some reason). It looks like my Tauren Druid was a pretty good (lucky) choice.

I want my character to mesh well with other people’s in raids/parties/etc. So here’s my plan for talent growth:

  • Max Mark of the Wild in Restoration tree: I'm told it's the best buff in the game, and I can start upgrading it immediately at level 10.
  • Max entire feral combat tree: From there, I'll turn my attention solely to feral combat, with these goals:
    • Boost my bear's threat level, to hold the attention of monsters so I can serve as a tank.
    • Boost my cat's stealth, for quick kills while soloing.
    • Get cat's travel speed bonus, which is available 10 levels before the travel form, to get around the world faster (it'll be a long time before I get a mount).
    • Eventually earn Leader of the Pack, which will boost the entire party's stats.
  • Alchemist/herbalist: I've already gotten quite a few useful leather items from "jdredd5150" and "mr_mooph", so I'm hoping this will let me create some useful potions instead.

I hope I understand the pros/cons of these abilities right, ‘cause it’s gonna take a long time to earn ‘em…

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2006-10-18

Diana left the garage door cracked last night, and both she and her mom were pretty sure no one could have squeezed under it. But this morning I found it standing wide open, and her car door ajar.

Looks like all they took were her music CDs; her stereo was still in place, as were all the other contents of the garage. Musta been some kid, because a junkie would’ve then gone into the house (through the unlocked inner door) and taken purses/electronics/lives/etc.

I told Diana not to bother with a police report. But hopefully she’ll start locking her car even when it’s in the garage, as I’ve been doing.

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2006-10-12

You know, if I had never gotten into ROM hacking, I might have made a good genetic researcher…

> MIT World » : DNA Mutation, Repair and the Environment

> Samson wants to figure out how to protect cells against > carcinogenic effects in the environment, and whether a > tumor cell will be susceptible to treatment. She has been > painstakingly studying the Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast > organism, trying to identify all the factors that determine > whether or not DNA damaging agents kill or mutate cells. > She interrogated each of this organism’s 5,800 genes, > “asking one by one, which of you is making a product that’s > important to helping a cell recover from damage.” In what > was a “huge surprise,” Samson learned that there are more > than 2,000 gene products involved in helping a yeast cell > repair itself, “from areas of the cell never suspected > before for being important” in this way.

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/387/

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2006-09-25

Those of you who like gangster flicks should definitely Netflix yourself a copy of City of God. It’s the next Goodfellas, only in Portugese.

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