Thursday, June 14, 2012

TyL: Watching Your Package Travel.


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Apparently, it's cost effective to ship to Toronto, ON, CA, from Nashville, TN, US, via Calgary, AB, CA.

The Map should be enough explanation for why I find this surprising.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

TyL: From Extensive Beta Experience.

People are apparently searching my blog for an answer to the following question: "what happens with characters mop beta"

I can happily answer this, assuming the inquiry is inline with wanting to know what happens when the beta ends: they get deleted. With extreme prejudice. It involves submersion into magnetic fields and the screams of billions of bits of virtual characters data snuffed out in slow, agonizing, torture.

You know that scene with the Shoe in Roger Rabbit? Worse.

So, no, you won't be able to take your level 85 Pandaren Monk over to the live server, nor your painstakingly grifted AH Gold, or anything else you get over there. Just enjoy your lead time, find - and report! - some of what's broke, maybe spot some of the things you might want to do/get ready to streamline your levelling, and get out when you're not having fun anymore.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

TotD: When the Alien Archaeologists...

... sit down to try and read through the collective remains of our civilization's records the thing that will throw them for the greatest loop won't be the number of languages or dialects. No, what's really going to throw them is trying to figure out which half of the planet reads left to right and which reads right to left.

And then they're going to find the languages written in vertical columns...

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

TotD: Sherlock S2

Moriarty never intended to kill Sherlock, just make him disappear in the most debasing way possible.

The running theme of the season is Sherlock's rise to fame, starting in Scandal and peaking in Reichenbach. Can you be an effective private detective if everyone knows who you are? Sherlock answers that question himself in a throwaway line in Scandal that could be conveniently summed as: "No". Just as importantly, from Moriarty's point of view, can you fight a shadow war with someone the press keeps the spotlight on? Hell no: that's bad for business and if your business is criminal you don't want to be the known enemy of someone playing centre stage of a media circus.

So, you'd want them off the board but... if that's the case... what's all the talk of an IOU about? Despite the malicious posture, Sherlock's never really stopped Moriarty from doing anything of note yet - he's been more of a thorn - so what's he owed outright for? Well... lets go back to Scandal: it's established in the opening and towards the end that Moriarty and Irene Adler have a working relationship of sorts. Given the outcome of that case, could Moriarty feel that he owes Sherlock a favour? The character's always been designed around a twisted morality when it comes to such things.

So, could he feel that he needs to help Sherlock regain his anonymity to clear a debt and let them get back to their private game? If so, how can he do so thoroughly and without looking like he's trying to do Holmes a favour? Destroy his reputation with extreme prejudice and then rig his death?

Hell, working out the mechanics of that while staying a step in front of Holmes might just be fun too...