They Cost Not Lots

Today has been somewhat of a blast with three new soft-synths to play with. I just purchased the Korg Legacy Collection (Digital Edition) which emulates the M1 and the Wavestation, and also "Viral Outbreak", a VSTi based on the sounds of the awesome Virus TI. There are some very fat and lush sounds to be had here, but also a lot of new info to take in, so it will be a little while before I am doing more than just tweaking presets. I have Viral Outbreak as a Reason Refill as well as a VSTi, which is nice because I am still more comfortable and knowledgeable working in Reason than I am in Cubase. With a VSTi collection that is starting to rival my Reason rack, however, I'm soon going to have to shift my production focus away from Reason and really grab Cubase by the horns. Come on Props! Give us VST support in Reason 5! :)

Whilst the general trend of the Black Orc has remained the same during these next 10 levels, there have been some noticeable changes and of course a slew of new skills. I have taken the mastery path of "Da Toughest", the path dedicated to survivability, and the stats on my gear are weighted Toughness > Wounds > Strength > Initiative > Weapon skill. Whilst the general trend of survivability > dps holds true for levels 10-20, a change I noticed to previous levels is that DPS drops off considerably, and when I say considerably I mean by a very large factor (or so it seems). In contrast, survivability increases only slightly, and is then situational. By situational I mean that there is a difference in the survivability increase depending on whether we are discussing PVE or PVP, and whether we are solo or grouped. The general feel of the Black Orc from 10-20, particularly in the later stage of the bracket, is similar to that of a protection speced Paladin from WoW. That is to say, you are tough as nails... one really tough cookie... but hit like a 3 year old girl with the palsy using a wet noodle for a weapon!

The first 10 levels of my Black Orc have been very enjoyable ones. Thus far, it seems pretty obvious that this class is all about the tanking. It is NOT the equivalent of a WoW fury warrior. The bulk of the skills gained in these first ten levels are geared towards defensively buffing yourself or, on the more offensive side of things, debuffing enemies and being a right royal pain in the arse to them. There are very few pure DPS skills though. By the end of level 10, Black Orcs have the core skills they need to be an effective PVE and PVP tank. They have the ability to taunt mobs and enemy players and a number of useful skills to help defend their allies. There are however very few skills of the type that include "causes addition threat" in the tooltip. I'm sure these will come later. Overall the class has a feel of survivability > damage, and when it comes to survivability the Black Orc has it in spades. "Da Toughest" is the coolest skill ever (gained very early on too) and goes a long way to making the Black Orc the survival machine that he is. Each weapon swing gives a 25% chance to proc an increase in Wounds and a self heal. It is awesome and if it gets nerfed I think I will seriously roll up into the fetal position and cry!

Seems EA/Mythic made a tremendous screw up and released a crap load of faulty DVD's here in Australia (dodgy warpatch.exe files). If you are having problems launching the game after install because there is no icon for you to click on and because the warpatch.exe file does nothing other than open up a DOS window for a few seconds and then quit, read on. A solution is at hand.

Hooray! After putting my name in the beta-test lottery all those months ago, I've finally been invited to participate in the "Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning" closed beta testing. A little late, what, with the open beta testing not that far off, and the release only a couple of months away, but pretty cool nevertheless. I seem to have been part of the latest intake, to be used for oceanic testing. Now to just to wait out the very, VERY, slow download of the 9 gig client...

A few weeks ago I discovered that my brother-in-law became a born again idiot. He has given his heart to the invisible sky fairy and joined the ranks of those mindless zombies that we call Christians. All well and good. If he wants to believe in fairy tails then that is his own business. I might find it worthy of ridicule, but it is still his right and who am I to stop him. A problem has arisen however, as he seems determined to take my niece and nephew strolling down the yellow brick road as well.

In a previous entry, I reported how I was pretty much over WoW at this point in time. After years of playing it, it just no longer seemed to have any appeal. At the time of writing that I was pretty much sure that the whole genre of MMO was stale and that there was very little that could be done to make it as appealing as it once was to me. I was wrong. Enter Age of Conan.

The other day I was talking to a friend about the one thing that was lacking in my studio set up was the ability to get a nice fat bass sound. The soft synths I have just don't cut it, and anyways, there are times when a good old fashioned bass guitar is just the sound you need. To get the right bass guitar sound though, you got to shell out the dosh for a nice guitar.... not an option at the moment. My friend suggested hyper-sampling some bass into Reason's NN-XT or NN-19. This was a good suggestion but requires a lot of work. More than I could be bothered to do. Thankfully, two days later Propellerheads software answered my prayers.

Well, after a number of years of playing World of Warcraft, at least one of which was spent as a totally hopeless addict, the luster seems to finally be wearing off. You see, over the past month or so, I've logged onto my account less than half a dozen times. To give some contrast consider this: I am currently on leave from work and have spent about 2 hours in total playing the game during a 2 week period. Last time that I was on leave from work, I spent close to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week PVPing. My how things have changed!

The emerging moral psychology
by Dan Jones, Prospect Magazine

Reposted from:
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10126

Experimental results are beginning to shed light on the psychological foundations of our moral beliefs

Long thought to be a topic of enquiry within the humanities, the nature of human morality is increasingly being scrutinised by the natural sciences. This shift is now beginning to provide impressive intellectual returns on investment. Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, economists, primatologists and anthropologists, all borrowing liberally from each others' insights, are putting together a novel picture of morality—a trend that University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt has described as the "new synthesis in moral psychology." The picture emerging shows the moral sense to be the product of biologically evolved and culturally sensitive brain systems that together make up the human "moral faculty."