Found In the Woods

I purchased my first album on iTunes today. Riceboy Sleeps, by Jónsi & Alex. (link to the video EPK) This album is one of those moody, reverberating mood pieces that is just so pleasant to listen to. This one has moments where you’re transported into the center of the earth then floating high up in the rafters of some ancient cathedral, the whole while completely wrapped up and drenched with sound. The movement of the music in this album feels very much like the rhythm of ocean waves; somewhat regular, but varying enough so as to not be enough to set your watch by. Some of the textures remind me of Neil Young’s soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man where you feel immersed in an environment where the sound just wraps around you, tantalizing and soothing. Many albums fit this criteria, some do a better job than others at successfully mind-melding with the listener and offering some form of aural transcendence, but this one does the job and does it well. I’ve given it a good once through, and now I’m in for my second, eager to feel that warm fuzzy wrap around me and take me to another place.

I’m completely addicted to this show. I’m not able to receive it on our cable package but thankfully there is an awful lot of it on YouTube. LONG LIVE THE STIG.

Let me set the scene… You’re in a raid and you’ve just downed a new boss. You clicky on the boss to see what he dropped and you see it’s a cloth item. You wear cloth. It’s a head piece. Your head piece is already pretty good, but you wear cloth! It’s a DPS caster piece. You’re a DPS caster! OMG! Well, the loot master is calling for rolls on the item now, time is ticking and you are going cross eyed. Do you roll? Is it an upgrade? Is it a cross-grade? Is it a downgrade? Does that dirt-eating warlock need it more? I’m gonna give you my own perspective on some of these things as well as try to help you understand how I personally figure out what loot I roll on, what I search for and how I do it.
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Got this in my work inbox this morning.

Sean McDevitt was my impromptu B&W Photo class professor back in 1996. One of the best professors I’d get while at UD. Just learned so much about artistic processes and vision in that class. Really a turning point for me.

I discovered his website this afternoon.

http://www.seanmcdevitt.net

easier to find links here:
http://www.seanmcdevitt.net/DJ.html

“Blizzard touted him as the anti thrall . . All I see is a 7 year old D&D player”

– Matt

Some people jab at me for playing a lot of WoW, but on the flipside I point directly at this steamy pile of shit:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/In-Loving-Memory-of-Lawrence-Kutner-on-House/63172043443?v=feed&story_fbid=62328588089&nctrct=1239135106140

For those of you unlucky souls who can’t see this, it’s a tribute page on Facebook for a character on a show called House. The character, played by Kal Penn, is named Dr. Kutner, and apparently he died in the TV show. Yes, Dr. Kutner died. Not Kal Penn. The page is entitled “In Loving Memory of Lawrence Kutner on House”. At first I thought this was a joke. But then I read on. And got scared. Not only is it not a joke, but people, who are obviously VERY detached from reality or complete media whores/slaves, have posted replies like these:

Matt Waas at 7:34am April 7
I still can’t wrap my head around this. I cried like a little baby at the end of the show. I don’t understand a single bit of it…. But why was Taub so disconnected from his death. He was the closest to him and it seems like he was just pushing it away as if it didn’t happen. Sure he cried at the end… we all did. I sure as hell hope that this is some kind of bad dream that someone is having. I don’t know what to think of House and its writers. Bad move.

Carol Ann Knell at 6:58am April 7
We were very saddened by the death of Lawrence Kutner. He is really a loss.What a sad day for all.

Melissa Joy Blumkin at 7:26am April 7
I am sooo upset. I saw the blood on the floorand was liek omg omg plz let him livee! Then when i found out it was suiside I was liek no its gotta be a mistake!!. I ♥ U 4ever Kutnerrr After house ofcourse you were my Fav doctor ♥ ♥

Denise Cooper Felty at 7:56am April 7
That was sad. I hope my boss hires a grief counselor and offers me some time off, I could use it!! I think it sucks big time but I understand why they did it. It’s another mystery for House to solve. I would’ve preferred either one of the other two though. The next couple weeks should be awesome. I love House.

Debra Martin at 9:53am April 7
I DIDN’T KNOW HIM PERSONELY BUT I REALLY LIKED WATCHING HIM ON HOUSE. HE SEEMED LIKE SUCH A NICE YOUNG MAN. HE WAS OBVISLY HURTING IN SOME WAY AND I WISH SOMEONE CLOSE TO HIM COULD HAVE SEEN IT IN TIME TO STOP WHAT HE DID. HE WILL BE MISSED ALLOT BY ALL WHO KNEW AND WATCHED HIM…….. MY CONDOLENCES TO HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS AND PEOPLE LIKE ME WHO WATCHED AND LIKED HIM…….. REST IN PEACE LAWRENCE…………

I love this last one from someone who OBVIOUSLY WORKS IN THE ACCOUNTING DEPARTMENT. The comments on the pages go on and on like this. Some folks are level-headed, discussing the character and the implications of him leaving the show, how it will affect the storyline, the actor’s choice/reasons for leaving, etc. But so many more of the posts are heartfelt “OMG” and “WTF” posts, with people expressing real emotion to the “loss” of this character. Wow. This is mind boggling. I will never in my life come close to comprehending this nonsense. It just completely baffles me. How shallow are these people… and I suspect that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Sad.

Last night our guild was supposed to work on Kel’thuzad for the first time, but due to a long string of reasons, our group was halved by real life. No, really! Check this out:

Rylinn – her RAM actually exploded. Like, popped apart inside of her PC exploded.
Necrobringer – had to work late (surprise meeting)
Nirvelli – had to work
Bruxtus – had an emergency and had to go to hospital
Migdemuerto – No idea… burrito overtime?
Dhemori & Diagrianna – MIA!

Was a little disappointing after a really incredible effort this past weekend but that just means we have a week to get gear tweaked up and stronger for our group. I’m banking on at least 3.5 quarters cleared this Saturday night so we can focus on Sapphiron & Kel’thuzad on Sun/Mon. The group is really feeling good, we are gelling and having a blast.

I’m blown away by everyone’s effort and I’m really excited about the future. I just wish we had enough for two groups (or maybe a 25-man effort) because people are getting left out (can only fit ten people in a ten-man group). I hate not inviting/leaving people out/asking them to sit out… if it were up to me, we’d take as many as we could whenever we could and have the dungeon scale for us. But, alas, we can’t.

In other news, I got my hunter, Hossenfeffer, to 78. I really love playing the hunter but I just can’t find the time to devote to him. Lately I’ve been bored with Beast Mastery and considering switching to Marksmanship. I need a good build, though. Survival is just too wacky for me. Over the weekend I leveled my Druid, Darstynne, up to 47 as well. He’s my Jewelcrafter/Leatherworker and got some love a couple weeks ago. It took a some good time, searching the AH for creative ways to work with all the years of mats I’d accumulated in my bank and level up the JC. I got his JC to 300, and LW to 254. Not sure what I’ll do with him as I have so many friends who are skilled JC/LW. I guess I wanted to have some fun with it – too many characters, at the moment. I probably should just can the LW/JC and do Skinning/Herbalism or something more profitable. It’s nice to have a guild that has resources!

The idea of working toward some of the more difficult raid achievements has crossed my mind, and unfortunately with the eminence of patch 3.1 I think they are impossible. It’s my own fault, really, from the getgo choosing to level my warrior first in WotLK when I should have leveled my Priest. I had a much greater opportunity to get into a larger raid group with my priest, and I have barely raided with Dobrhaltar at all. I miss tanking, but I do love healing. So lessons learned. Moving forward I won’t make that mistake, regardless of my warrior pride. Ulduar is going to be coming soon, I’ve got a Monday night group ready to go and I am really excited to get going with that.

Yes, I know. Maybe it’s because I grew up with his big smiley face, but this spam just doesn’t bother me. I think it is funny, though, that the speech bubble is coming out of the gold microphone and not Ed McMahon’s mouth. If I only had some extra gold laying around.

I found this post about making sense of popular video formats & codecs on Gizmodo quite informing. A snippet:

H.261 is not a term you have to worry about, but it’s the technology that most video standards and codecs were originally based on. Originating in 1990, it’s the first major digital video compression standard, and like other “H” standards, it was developed by the International Telecommunication Union. This one was primarily for teleconferencing over ISDN lines, and as such, it looks like ass.