tala @ so-phobic

Arwen at the WYRM boards discovered user bars. I’ve become addicted to making them.

I made one for my Guild Wars mesmer, Nymeria:

User bars for the games I play or have played:

It’s fun to make them. I get to practice some Photoshop and ImageReady skills. I plan to make more for each guild I’ve been in, and for Ruby/Ruby on Rails users, and prolly more for GW. Is it obvious that I am sooo bored?

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It all started with 43folders, and its great PIM/GTD article on the Hipster PDA. Now I’m addicted to 43Things (and Places, and Persons), and even AllConsuming! These sites are great! They’re way, way better than that site that load so slowly, with pages customized by people who don’t even know the basics of web design - scrolling marquee text on a Friendster profile anyone?

43Things and AllConsuming lets you build a social network based on shared interests and goals. I love how I can list my goals on 43Things and get support from other people through cheers. I’ve also made contact with a Makati-based person who’s also learning Ruby. We’re looking for a local support group.Maybe we could even establish one? Now all I have to do is achieve my listed goals one by one, so that I can share how much worth doing they are, and help other people in my network.

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Here’s an insightful post about Re-introducing the _Real_ Windows Vista. It’s hilariously funny, especially considering the wait for Vista’s release.

Credits to tauquil.com.

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From the RF Philippines website:

In our desire to give you the best game experience ever, RF Online Philippines installed a game patch yesterday, November 2, 2005 to address bugs and help enforce some of our game rules. Unfortunately, the game patch caused more problems than improvements that we expected.

Lol.

I’ve been juggling 4 games these past few weeks: pRO, Silkroad Online, RF-Ph Online, and Guild Wars. So far, GW is still the best among the last 3.

I restarted my Mesmer/Elementalist, so I’m a level 3 n00b right now. Had some trouble getting my name. I wanted to name her Lady Nym, after Nymeria Sand, one of Oberyn Martell’s Sand Snakes, but it was taken. So were Nymeria Sand, Nymeria Martell, and Nymeria Targaryen. I already have a Nymeria Silvermoon, so I named her Nymeria Stardust instead. I made Gwen follow me around, talking about how she wants to be a adventurer when she grows up, and constantly asking me if we were there yet. Nix told me that post Searing, Gwen appears as an Elementalist and tries to burn everyone. Lol. So much for the sunny, idealistic kid.

I love how user-friendly GW can be. I have no sense of direction at all, and big maps overwhelm me. I like the feature of GW where a green arrow indicating the general direction of the NPC I need to talk to appears on the map. I also love the idea of pinning the towns I’ve been to so that I can just “teleport” back and forth for storage, or to sell items, or to meet up with people. I’ve been collecting a lot of quests. Right now I’m in Wizard’s Folly, doing quests to unlock more Mesmer skills. I just love how the Mesmer looks. They should change the Mesmer dance next patch though. I don’t really dig the Irish jig. No offense meant.

Silkroad is half-grind, half quest. It’s supposedly free for life. There was a wipe yesterday, so my level 5 n00b is gone, and I’d have to restart, maybe tonight. I hope they’ve fixed some of the translations. I spent a whole lot of time trying to do my first quest. The instructions said to talk to an NPC located near the South gate. Turns out, he was at the West gate. Lol. The grind factor is incorporated in the quests. You have to kill 30 or 40 so and so monsters for a so and so reward. I picked this cute Chinese girl with a 1-handed sword. But I tried using a bow too. Bows are okay for low level characters. The bow range is pretty good. I don’t get as beat up as when using the sword. I don’t have a shield yet, so the bow worked for me till level 3. By level 5, I’ve increased the skills that enhance sword damage, so I switched to sthe sword again. Oh, plus I ran out of arrows, teehee. It rained ingame while I was killing Mangyangs. Pretty cool. When I started looking for Mr. South-but-actually-West NPC, the sun was still shining (this is all ingame). I completed 3 other quests until early evening, and promptly gave up on that darned NPC since there was going to be a wipe anyway. I messed up some skill points because the interface wasn’t intuitive. The tabs that had the other skills didn’t look like tabs and weren’t labelled. All the while I just thought that I haven’t unlocked the other skills yet because I don’t have the prereqs. So I got some ice skills when what I wanted to get were the fire ones.

As for RF, I was overwhelmed by the size of the map, hahaha. Omg. Plus, it was a bit lonely being a Corite. I also had trouble with my first mission because the dialog box with the instructions was offscreen. My usual resolution is 1024×768. Does RF have a minimum resolution requirement? Did I miss that? Nothing in the system requirements. Anyway, I took a screenie so that I could ask around the RF boards. Turns out that Print Screen doesn’t work. Ctrl + O is the command. How intuitive can you get huh? I’ll try again tonight, and if it happens, I’ll make sure to get a screenie.

As for RO, I’m still sieging with Rose Croix. My sieges with them have been my best siege experiences so far. Kind of reminiscent of the Rei days.

I’m still deciding whether to try Flyff. It looks a bit like ROSE, and I don’t like the way ROSE looks. Too cartoonish. RO is all I can stomach. What I really want to try out is Anak Bathala, an MMORPG set in ancient Philippines. I heard they’re currently on open beta. Will investigate further.

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Posted in FoxTrot Comics:

Now here’s the cool part. Someone actually solved it:

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