Nocturnimal

Panzerbjorn

2009-08-16T00:29:00.000-07:00

I am pretty happy with how this bear turned out. Sculpt makes me think of the panzer bjorn from The Golden Compass / His Dark Materials series.

I tried to build up to something I was happy with via layers. I did added coats to lighten the fur and darken the armor. (The spikes on the armor are the remains of the original color for instance).

The "target area" for the paintbrush on many of the details was incredibly small.

The chain mail on the kilt was dry brushed, which took two attempts before it came out acceptably.

This miniature is pretty incredible. It looks like the concept art was done by Chris Walton, who has a deviantArt blog. I haven't found the sculptor yet unfortunately.

Druid #2

2009-08-16T00:23:00.000-07:00

I next painted the second of druid pair I bought. More practice. Instead of dry brushing the raised texture on the arm, leg, chest and shoulder armor I directly painted it.

I somehow never took a picture, so will update this once I get one in tomorrow's daylight.

First druid in macro mode

2009-08-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

I got some help on how to get macro mode and re-shot the first mini I completed. Clicking the picture shows it in detail.

I wanted to record this green one again on the blog because up close I can see how when I tried to dry-brush the gold raised edges of the armor over green, the result was a bit sloppy. It looks good on the table though.

Tale of Two Drakes

2009-08-15T23:53:00.000-07:00

Next I wanted to add some detail to a guard drake mini I had been getting some fun out of, by doing a simple wash and brightening up the colors. The difference on a table is pretty striking.

Notice the as-is drake doesn't have eyes!

2009-08-15T23:44:00.000-07:00

After that one druid with the green & gold armor, I fished out a plastic mini that was strangely unpainted despite being a bit detailed. The paint job is obviously pretty flawed, though I did get some experience with watering down my paints and trying to get better with my brush control. When I saw the photo I noticed I completely missed the detail of the broken heart on the giant thing on his chest.

To be fair, the thing looks okay set on a table from the distance of actual use, which is the quality standard I am trying to meet with these things.

Big Mini update

2009-08-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

Some miniature painting I've done. Documenting my learning curve. Older stuff first.

About painting... I like the focused state involved, both mentally and physically. There feels like a transition to go from normal movement to the ultra fine motor control, and an interesting perception shift where the area being painted seems to fill the visual focal point. It isn't the same as using a magnifying glass.

The pictures on the blog page can be clicked to actually see the blown up version of the image in detail.

First (Two) Miniatures

2009-05-04T22:03:00.000-07:00

#1 Finished Front

#1 Finished Back

#2 Cloak washed with watery black

#2 Cloak with reddish wash on fur trim

First Miniature

2009-04-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

Basecoat vs Primer

Basecoat close-up

50% grey 50% water washes

Proto Mash-up

2008-09-06T20:34:00.000-07:00

A Frank Sinatra & Elvis medley where Elvis is singing Witchcraft and Sinatra Love Me Tender.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5UtgLF7pjc

2008-08-03T22:17:00.000-07:00

San Jose Earthquakes 3, LA Galaxies 2!

A fun time, even if some miscommunication meant I ended up with a sunburn.

Noticed some great footwork by forward #17 (Arturo Alvarez), who also made one of the goals (with another player).

Couch to 5k

2008-06-10T10:31:00.000-07:00

I'm starting up a couch to 5k program, which uses interval training to slowly go from not running at all to a 3 mile run, over 9 weeks. Still on week one of the schedule from the Cool Running website. I had to buy new shoes and went with some great Nike's, part of the Nike+ line that has a wireless sensor insert in the sole of the shoe that sends info on the run to a "sports band", a small lcd watch band. The great part is the main part of the band detaches and has a usb interface, so I can plug it into my computer and upload stats to Nike's run tracking website.

Supposedly I can embed my stats in a webpage, so I thought I'd try that with this post. Not so impressive but this is my first week of running in maybe 13 years.

Caldo Verde... delicious

2008-06-04T23:39:00.000-07:00

The Portuguese stew Caldo Verde plus cornbread, from Cook's Illustrated Soups & Stews magazine, was a big win for our side*.

The stew was mostly kale and chorizo, with chicken broth thickened by potatoes (mashed up) and starting from onions and garlic. The local grocery had Niman Ranch Chorizo without nitrates, everyone was low sodium, and the strong flavors from the kale, chorizo and potatoes came together in a savory wonderland.

Alongside I made cornbread, which turned out to be very simple and came out with a golden brown crust and strong corn flavor and more bread-like consistency. It wasn't the small crumb, un-browned, somewhat bland brownie size cornbread that shows up in restaurants.

The entire meal was very easy to make and mostly was collecting + combining style cooking. The mini prep again made for fast onion chopping and garlic mincing, while a blender did the combination work for the cornbread.

All together it made 4 large meals with a bonus plate stacked with spare cornbread, which I confess I ate 3 pieces late one night as a snack. Everything was so good!

* The good guys of course!

Chomps So Far...

2008-05-14T20:42:00.000-07:00

Comments on recipes from the Cook's Illustrated The New Best Recipe book:

Tuna Noodle Casserole
Tasty but different from my casserole experience by having no cheese! Featured lots of mushrooms and peas. Prep work took a long time, partly due to a mistake in measuring at one point.

Classic Brownies
Unlike thick or fudgey brownies these were incredibly cake-like and crumbly. So while they couldn't be eaten without a fork and bordered on dry eaten alone, they were incredible with vanilla ice cream.

Served without roasted walnuts because I failed at three attempts to toast walnut chunks I bought. It seemed like an outer husk or layer of the walnut was separating and burning which gave them a charred popcorn taste.

Gazpacho
This was perfect for the warm weather the past month, and the easiest to make so far. Without the mini-prep I recently picked up at Target this would have involved a lot of tedious chopping and tears from the onions. This is definitely one to make again, though I need to buy some containers so I can freeze portions.

Divining Developer Intent 1

2008-03-19T20:15:00.000-07:00

I think it is possible to guess what the Warcraft game developers will be doing to improve (buff) or weaken (nerf) the character classes in the game, at least for the player-vs-player side of the game leading up to the next expansion. This would be useful because the main factor in the game is time, and it is unfortunate to put a lot of time towards a specific character set up only to find that it will never be viable for a desired activity. Knowing what changes might come means a player can properly set their expectations about their character.

In World of Warcraft, players make decisions about their character's abilities which are called specs (from specification). But to support a spec time is spent to collect gear to supports that particular spec. When talking about recent game changes, the developers have stated that not all common specs will be viable in competitive environments at the end of the game, such as the pvp Arena competition and presumably the harder pve raids. In some cases there has been a complete reversal on whether a spec should be viable for either pvp or pve. If it were possible to guess what changes and tweaks developers will be making for a class, a person could avoid sinking time and effort into something that is not intended to be viable.

It seems with warcraft the developers are at least partially using metrics from across their player base to guide them in whether a class can be improved or weakened. In advance of their 2.4 patch a developer has been posting information which when put together gives hints at how classes will be changed in the future, going into the next expansion. Is it possible to look at these posts together and make predictions on what changes the developers have in mind? I think that especially with Arena pvp, this is possible.

Continued...

Divining Developer Intent 2

2008-04-25T09:57:00.000-07:00

To finally finish the previous post, an informative post by a developer showed class breakdown in the higher rated pvp arena and described how these numbers are guiding their class balancing decisions. Instead of making models of class capabilities using different gear set ups, like some of the number crunching subscribers, the developers describe their decisions as coming from the population breakdown winning the arena vs what they expect for the breakdown. One developer specifically describes plans to nerf a class because the representation on winning teams, and then how plans to nerf the class were shelved once the class population settled back to where they wanted it.

Since developers are improving or weakening based on this method, it seems to me that looking at their chart would give an idea of what they planned on doing. Classes with low representation would be improved and high representation reduced. Besides the one time snapshot provided by the developer, the data from players who use web spiders to gather all arena results can be used to look for population changes. While we don't know what numbers the developers are using, since only the ratio was shown, we can see the changes over time in population info pulled from the arena website.

Excerpted here is a developer post showing the numbers. I've set as red values under 100%.

>>Kalgan
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5103773379&postId=51032556993&sid=1#74

One of the things we look at is class representation in arenas (although normalized for class popularity). In this particular chart, a value of 100% means the class is represented as we'd expect, a value over 100% means the class is represented that much more often than we'd expect, a value below 100% means they're represented less than we'd want (obviously this chart doesn't include a spec breakdown in any way).

one other detail regarding the chart, this one is set at 2200+ rating.


          2v2       3v3       5v5
Druid     276.0%    184.0%     80.5%
Hunter     43.0%     50.2%     43.0%
Mage        8.7%     96.0%     96.0%
Paladin    19.7%     29.5%    147.4%
Priest    113.3%    164.8%    185.4%
Shaman     37.8%     50.4%    138.6%
Rogue     144.2%    175.1%     61.8%
Warlock   149.2%     93.2%    111.9%
Warrio    130.4%     90.7%     79.3%

Here's 1850...


Druid     184.0%    138.0%     92.0%
Hunter     50.2%     50.2%     50.2%
Mage       61.1%     87.3%     87.3%
Paladin    68.8%     88.4%    137.6%
Priest    133.9%    133.9%    154.5%
Shaman     75.6%     88.2%    138.6%
Rogue     154.5%    154.5%     82.4%
Warlock   121.2%    102.5%    102.5%
Warrior    90.7%     85.0%     85.0%

Locks are doing pretty well overall, but what had us worried was that it appeared to us a month ago or so as though warlocks were on an uptrend. However, the evidence is strong that that trend is reversing, which means significant nerfs aren't really what we want right now (we really don't know where those numbers will settle down).
>>

Even though the 3v3 arenas are what they based their tournament with cash prizes around, and once a blizzard employee posted that 5v5 was what they were making balance decisions around, the planned warlock nerf would seem to have been over their numbers in 2v2 matches.

Unfortunately one thing missing from these numbers is a breakdown by class talent specification. Some websites spidering the arena results have started collecting this information, and initially it looks like one spec tends to dominate for most classes. Most mages are frost, most druids are restoration and priests discipline to provide a few examples. From the following developer statement, it seems like they are picking one talent build to be the pvp one per class, and doing balancing around that spec. Things change (shadow priests spec going from pvp to pve with the first expansion) but at any one time, they only expect one talent spec to be viable.

>>Drysc
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=5282311045&postId=52353696188&sid=1#10

I do pretty well in battlegrounds with mine, but if I'm going to want to be viable in higher end competition then I would be well advised to respec. That isn't to say that shadow priests won't one day be more viable than they are now in PvP, or that changes may not come for other specs to help them become more viable. The point is that not every spec for every class should be expected to be as viable as the next for each aspect of the game.
>>

What does this all mean? That players need to try and guess what developers when thinking about their play goals. Trying to succeed at arenas or in raids with a class-talent spec that is not supported by the developers will be an exercise in frustration. Another thing which stands out is that any class that can heal will be balanced around healing, even if the class is described as a hybrid and talent points are not spent to improve healing. These hybrids in particular should expect that their main design goal will be healing or providing damage boosting buffs to non-healing classes.

My Dreams My Rules?

2008-04-02T01:17:00.000-07:00

Sleep during this on-call period has short and frequently interrupted. But I've done a ton of work and problem solving both for the job and apparently in dreams. I had a persistent anxiety dream that I edited my way out of twice, without going fully lucid and without rejecting the premise and exiting sleep.

You know the character in Heroes, Claire's Dad, the person with the wire rim glasses and large, sort of creepy smile? Well I started in a giant empty drugstore to refill a prescription or something, as the store announced it was closing and the lights went off. And standing between me and the exit was that character, frozen with one arm raised and illuminated by pale light from through the sliding doors, highlighting the glasses and the smile. It was a surprise appearance straight from a classic pop-up-style horror movie. But I was immediately confronting it and saying "I know what you are trying to do... you think you're doing that so well don't you" as I approached. He was kept frozen as I carefully walked around and outside, and any sort of anxiety by prevented activity or confrontation was preempted.

The follow up was being in a room and feeling that somehow I had left my backpack in the store, now closed, and would lose my notepads, sketchbook, etc. The things were lost, what would I do style anxiety. But then I sat in a chair looking at a spot in the corner, and with focused concentration repeated "the bag is not there, it is here... the bag is not there, it is here". And it was there.

Afterwards things went to dreams as dreams.

For my fifth year service award...

2008-04-01T02:56:00.000-07:00

You'll be traveling the post apocalyptic wasteland in style with your new Jensen Radio Ensemble! Fall asleep to the soothing sounds of the automatic emergency broadcast recording. Find fuel, water, and non-radioactive dinner scorpions with your self powered flashlight. And be prepared for some playtime in the snow as your portable weather station lets you know when nuclear winter fun is about to begin. Ear buds and carrying strap included.

Dream Travel

2008-03-19T19:35:00.000-07:00

I spontaneously learned to teleport in a dream last night, while walking in the crowded downtown of "non-specific dream city." After teleporting a block the surprise of what happened made me lucid enough to look ahead another block and think I wanted to be over there. And it worked.

With dream changing lucidity there seems to be a threshold where too much awareness feels like it will lead to waking up. Like in this case after the second teleport the dream started to come apart, but by looking down and just thinking about the small movements of turning, it was possible to let go of lucidity and go back into the dream.

First Post

2008-03-15T23:02:00.000-07:00

Night-time walks, raccoons, deer, friendly cats, computer games, pretzels.