Starting from the bottom

Because we all have to start somewhere, right?

Anyway, you’ve probably noticed that part of the new banner is up and running. Rumor has it that this has greatly improved the load time on the site. My apologies to anyone that was having difficulties before. Except Tel. No apologies for you!

Playing around with different brush packs has been a lot of fun and I’ve come up with ideas for banners/signature panes that I don’t think would have occurred to me otherwise.

For instance, I was playing around with various “grunge” and “distressed” brushes, no real goal in mind.

Suddenly, the landscape of chipped sandstone started to pop off the page at me.

A splash of blood later and it was off to the WoW Model Viewer to start throwing together some poses for my baby warrior.

Pussy Plate

Warning: If the title didn’t already tip you off, there stands to be a fair amount of vulgarity in this post. If you don’t like it, don’t read it.

Recently there’s been a bit of buzz in the blogosphere about the cultural effects of transmogrification (wow, my spell check actually likes that word), particularly in regards to why people may choose the types of outfits they do, how others perceive them, and what the proper terms are we should be using to insult each other, or at the very least, label each other.

In particular, I would like to point to MMO Melting Pot for calling my attention to Apple Cider’s post titled Let’s Get Rid of “Slut Plate” Forever and Terri over at the F word with her post, You’ll catch your death in that. Go read them if you can, it’s OK, I’ll wait a minute.

I’ll be honest, I hadn’t heard the term “slut plate” before this post. So I imagine the “landslide usage” is either in the official forums (which I avoid) or in trade chat (which I ignore). Or it could be a local thing in her realm/battlegroup.

Might be on to something

So the other day I uploaded a post here but I accidentally published it immediately.

Normally, I write them the day or two before and schedule the post to go out the next available morning, bright and early.

Oops.

But I discovered something about directly publishing a post instead of scheduling one:

WordPress attempts to suggest tags for the post.

The Banner Saga

No, nothing to do with Bruce Banner, rather the saga of clearcasting’s banner.

Once upon a time, I made a banner for this blog.

I don’t even remember what the first banner looked like. I think it just said “clearcasting” with the stock photo of a moon that came with the blog theme I had picked.

Inspired by watching all the cool machinima out there, I learned a bit about the WoW Model Viewer and went to work.

Wrath was in full swing.

Arioch was my undisputed main.

I was enamored with T9.

The banner of Arioch performing his idle “looking around” animation was born.

It’s going on my body

Crank up the way back machine!

Today, boys and girls, we’re going back in time to May 12th, 2009.

For those of you that don’t have a way back machine, I’ll provide a handy link here: http://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/i-want-to-put-it-on-my-body-wont-you-help-me-please/

Wow.

That was nearly 3 years ago, where does the time go?

Anyway, the gist of the post is that I had created a T-shirt design and I was looking for ideas on how to get it made with a minimum of fuss and cost.

An offer I couldn’t refuse

It must be a sign that *someone* thinks I have decent traffic to this site when this sort of thing happens.

I found a generous offer in my email box last week.

It reads:

Hi ,

I created a Teaching Degree site called [nofreeadvertisinghere.com].
It serves as a great resource for new students looking to find all the
info they need on getting a Master’s Degree in Teaching.

Not quite WoW related

No, I’m not jumping ship to go swing a lightsaber.

But I’m toying with an idea.

Oh, and I have a D3 update, let’s do that first.

So there is expected to be a D3 beta character wipe next week. I’ll be starting over from scratch so this time I can take some notes and whatnot on the play experience to pass on to you guys.

Oh, look a squirrel!

And back to my idea…

But what about my pets?!?!?!

Presented with little comment:

Original can be found here: http://us.battle.net/blizzcon/en/blog/4338369/2012_Battlenet_World_Championship_Event-1_25_2012

Two things:

I seem to be missing something…

Working on my absurdly overpowered baby warrior in little spurts.

I broke down and got him the helm and shoulders and cloak to go with the chest and axe… and I got him a full set of the same in the tanking flavor.

Obviously substituting the 1-handed sword for the 2-handed axe.

Although, I have healed an instance or two with a low-level tank insisting that it was just as good as having a shield… he made me say unkind things. There was possibly gnashing of teeth and questions regarding his parentage and drug use.

And obviously I made yet another blood elf.

Respect My Authority!

Hi, I’m an encounter mechanic.

I’m everything that happens in an encounter other than a boss smacking your tank in the face.

I’m what provides difference to encounters and hopefully makes them at least slightly more invigorating than stomping a training dummy in to the ground.

If I’m not there, people bitch that the encounters are boring.

If I’m too similar to a previously used mechanic, people complain that I’m not creative enough.

So in theory, everyone thinks I’m a great guy.

Why, then, does no one respect me once they’ve moved up a level or two?