Obinice's Corner

The following is a list of all the addons that I use in World of Warcraft, and why they are so useful. Check out the screenshots I took to give you a good idea of what each add-on does (just reading heaps of text can be very boring!). I highly recommend all of them!

All of these addons are available ether at Curse.com's Addons page, or at Wowinterface.com.

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Atlas

Blizzard included beautiful maps for every area of Azeroth except instances. You can still see the area surrounding you in the mini-map when you're in an instance, but never the overall layout of the entire dungeon. This is where Atlas comes in. Atlas has a map for every instance in the game. The maps are marked with the locations of bosses and other points of interest. Atlas also includes maps of battlegrounds, dungeon locations, flight points, and outdoor raid bosses.

Click here for Atlas screenshot

AtlasQuest

AtlasQuest is a plugin for the Atlas add-on that displays a list of quests for each dungeon along with information and rewards for those quests. Currently all dungeons and battlegrounds are supported along with the majority of their quests.

Click here for AtlasQuest screenshot

Auctioneer Advanced

Auctioneer Advanced is an add-on that allows you to view information about an item that may be useful in helping you determine what it's worth.

Straight out of the box, Auctioneer knows much about many items in the game, and will tell you many things about the item when you move your mouse over the item in the game.

When you go to the auction house for the first time after installing auctioneer, you will see a new button marked "Scan" at the bottom of the Auction window's browse pane. Clicking on this button will put the Auction window into an automatic scanning process which will look at the current market snapshot and record statistical data about the prices and quantities of items at the auction house.

Once the market analysis has completed, you will notice additional information about the items in the tooltips when you mouse over them.

Summary: It helps you an awful lot when trying to decide how much an item is worth, or how well/badly it will sell in the Auction House. It is also useful to Enchanters as it gives them a bunch of info (see the screenshots below for some idea of what is provided). It is a must have for everybody.

Important Note: When I originally wrote this & took the screenshot it was for Auctioneer Advanced. As near as i can tell, that has now been turned into the primary and only version of Auctioneer, and been renamed as such. Don't go looking for Auctioneer Advanced any more, it's not around. Auctioneer is what you want.

Click here for Auctioneer Advanced screenshot

Bagnon
Bagnon is a group of add-ons that improve the way the player manages their inventory. The interface is a single, fully customisable (opacity, rows/columns, colour) display for your inventory (on any of your characters) and one for your bank. You can view your bank from anywhere, tooltip info is added to items to show which characters of yours have the item and where that item is stored (see smaller screenshot below to see how this feature looks, though I only have one character), and there’s a bunch of options.

Click here for Bagnon screenshot 1
Click here for Bagnon screenshot 2

Bartender 4

Bartender 4 provides unmatched flexibility and functionality for your Action Buttons. The below screenshot of Bartender 3 in action shows only my own personal configuration. This thing is fully customisable and you might set yours up to look completely different.

You control opacity, scale, padding, you can split up bars into rows, set the number of buttons per bar (1-12), you can move the bars around wherever you like (including your XP & rep bars) and get everything set up just how you like it, before locking it all in place. It is a must have.

Click here for Bartender 3 screenshot (I couldn't be bothered taking a screenshot of v4, besides they'd look the same in this screeny, as this is my personal set up)

Doublewide

This is a simple add-on for a simple idea -- pull the quest log into side-by-side areas so it's double wide instead of cramping the size of the quest list.

Click here for Doublewide screenshot

Gatherer

Gatherer is an add-on for herbalists, miners and treasure hunters in World of Warcraft. It's main purpose is to track the closest plants, deposits and treasure locations on your mini-map.

The add-on does not track like a tracking ability does, rather it "remembers" where you have found various items in the past. It does this whenever you gather (perform herbalism, mining or opening) on an item, and records the specific map location in its history. From then on, whenever the item comes into range of being one of the closest 1-25 (configurable) items to your present location, it will pop up on you mini-map. You can also see drop rates for specific locations.

When you view your World Map, you will also see the item locations marked on the particular map you are viewing there. You can customise the amount of items visible on both the mini-map and world map, as well as their icon size and opacity. Also, you can select which items not to show. For example in the screenshot I’ve shown here you only see herbs on the world map, and only herbs & treasure on the mini-map. This is because I’m a herbalist and have no need to see mining locations.

Click here for Gatherer screenshot

Gatherer Database (DB: Wowhead)

This is a little plugin for the Gatherer add-on that adds a load of locations to the Gatherer database. That’s why I have a bunch of herb locations in the above screenshot rather than just a few. Most of them are added by the additional locations database. No need for a screenshot.

Prat

Prat is a framework for chat modules, and comes with a bunch of them. I won’t go into detail as I don’t use half of them but among the more useful is the ability to add a timestamp to messages, specific sounds to specific types of messages, chat logging, URL copying, character colours based on character class, clearing the chat frame, the list goes on.

Here’s a screenshot from the development webpage showing a few of the features that can be enabled/disabled/customised etc, actually in use.

Click here for Prat screenshot

QuestHelper

QuestHelper shows your quest objectives on the map. It provides a pointer on the mini-map for where to go next, as well as customisable quest prioritising (or automatic, to let QH calculate the quickest order in which you should complete your quest objectives).

I can’t see how anyone can enjoy WoW without this add-on. Of all the add-ons in this list, this is by far the most important. Without it, I would literally have no idea where to go for half of my quest objectives.

The below screenshot shows one waypoint on the world map (hover over to see tooltip) as well as the directional arrow on the minimap (you can’t see it very well but it’s pointing north, hover over to see tooltip).

Click here for QuestHelper screenshot

Yatlas

Yatlas provides a mini-map based map of the world in rather high detail. It can be viewed in normal or full screen mode. It shows the location of the player, party members, locations of interest and graveyards.

You click and drag to move the map around and use the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out. The below screenshot shows the normal mode, it’s not zoomed in as far as it can go, but it gives you some idea of what the map is like. I find it rather useful, especially for areas that you can easily get turned around in. Sometimes the world map just isn’t detailed enough.

Important Note: Yatlas doesn't seem to work with WoW v3.0 at the moment, I'm not sure if that will change or not in the future.

Click here for Yatlas screenshot

AtlasLoot Enhanced (Late addition to this post)

To quote the author "AtlasLoot Enhanced is an UI mod allowing for loot tables of bosses to be browsed whenever needed within the game. It can access full item tooltips, show drop rates, allow items to be chat linked and to use the dressing room."

It can be integrated very nicely with another mod I've mentioned in this post called Atlas. The screenshot shows AtlasLoot Enhanced integrated with Atlas.

Click here for AtlasLoot Enhanced screenshot (I didn't take it)

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A final few notes on different topics, I bottled the wine I made a few days ago. Not got around to trying it properly yet, going to test its strength by drinking it and seeing what happens! I might get back to you on that.

Also, I've got my hands on all of Star Trek Voyager & Enterprise. I must say, Voyager is a lot of fun to watch, and I love the Doctor character.

Oh and finally, remember I made an image of my PCs HDD so that I wouldn't have to reinstall Windows and all my software again? Well I applied that image last night, worked a treat! The most difficulty I had was with World of Warcraft (which required 1.6GB of update patches & all my addons were out of date).

Until next time!

Today as ever, I have a lot to talk about. So let's get started.

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The name sounds dodgy, but it's JUST a webcomic George & I are working on. We started it earlier this week, and have been throwing in bits and bobs, so I feel it's safe to mention it now.

You'll find the website very bare, but that's how we like it. No point making it all complex just to display a comic strip, is there?

Click to go to the first strip.

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Emma's Visit

Emma's a friend of mine (whose blog can be found here), and she came up to Manchester on the 24th of August to spend a week mucking about. We bought bubble blowing guns (which are totally great and awesome and if you don't think so you are a fool). We also spent quite some time playing Mad Tracks. It's quite a nice simple Xbox Arcade game, one that I've certainly got my moneys worth.

We also visited an amazing store that she'd never seen before, called Hawkins Bazaar! That place is just down right amazing. I could spend a hour in that place with all the cool things to play with (where we got the bubble blowers, as well as a fun card game called Mullet Power).

Oh, and Emma hadn't seen Back to the Future ether! Oh. My. God. It's only the best movie (trilogy) ever. Anyway, we watched them and I do believe she enjoyed them (did you?). I know I certainly did. I want to watch them again right now....

Uh, for those of you who can't put two and two together, that's Emma.

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Mock The Week

Mock the Week is (to quote Wikipedia) a "British topical panel game". It reminds me of That Was The Week That Was, a show from a few decades ago. I love the show anyway, which is why I mention it now. I just started watching it again, it's got a series running at the moment (Thursdays, BBC2) that I'm rather into. I just wanted to mention it here and share the laughter. Go and watch it, especially if you're into politics/current affairs.

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My secondary desktop, not quite so fixed

I said so didn't I? Well, not here. But I told other people, that PC is never fixed. One problem goes away, another crops up. Now, it's overheating while doing simple tasks. It can take sitting idle just fine, but do enough to get it thinking and pow.

Luckily all is not as bad as it seems, as my sister mainly uses that PC not me . Still, I want it in working order. I checked out all the current cooling within the case, I even applied some new thermal paste to the CPU (I realised it actually did need it when I took off the heatsink), which actually did improve CPU temps on idle. Fixing the problem though? No such luck. But, I have a few alleys of investigation still to go down, one of them leading straight to my new PSU.

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Rock Band Online

I've had a crack at Rock band's online scene, now that I have an Xbox Live Gold account. What can I say? It's good. I've experienced no lag, or any glitches like that (though occasionally issues pop up in connectivity that require me to not only reset the Xbox, but my whole network).

I do have one complaint though, people leaving early. What the hell? You're in the middle of a tug of war song, and winning, and the other person just quits. Why play the game if you don't intend to finish the song? It thoroughly annoys me.

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Too Human

I have a lot to say about Too Human, but since I can't be bothered I'll concentrate on only a few points. I will say this first though, the voice acting was good.

1. Atrocious save game system. Let's say you're 60% of the way through a level, and you've just beaten a hard group of enemies, a boss, or you're just leaving the game for awhile and you want to save the game. So, you do so. But then if need be to come and reload your save game, what's this? I'm way back at 50% through the level!

   To put it simply, unlike decent games where when you save a game it reloads right where you saved, this thing seems to have checkpoints, too few and far between for my liking. Manys a time have I had to play 15 minutes of a level I had already done!

2. Almost nonexistent storyline. It was unimaginative rubbish, that even I could have come up with. While the premise of the game was great, and they could have done a lot of interesting stuff with the Norse mythology, they didn't.
3. Too much combat. Linking in with the above point, there was too much combat and not enough storyline. The combat system was fun, there were lots of drops, but we want substance, not padding!

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Firefly

I've recently got back into watching Firefly, a sci-fi cut short way before its time. I've found an apt description of Firefly is "cowboys in space". All I can say folks, is go look it up. It's one of the best sci-fi shows ever made. Oh, and I threw in a YouTube video below this paragraph of a bunch of pretty good scenes from the show. It doesn't show the whole picture, to be honest, but it's good enough for starters!

Mal: "Appears we got here just in the nick of time. Whaddya suppose that makes us?" Zoe: "Big damn heroes, sir." Mal: "Ain't we just!"

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A few other things I couldn't be bothered to elaborate on in what would surely become an amazingly huge post if I did:

1. Razor blades cost too much. Seriously, how expensive can it be to produce the things? What a rip off.
2. My new coat is awesome. The water runs right off it. I know it's hardly a new invention, but it's the first coat I've had with it on, and it rocks.
3. Xbox headsets, Rock Band compatibility. I had to go out and buy a brand new Xbox headset, because the ones I have won't plug into the Rock Band drum set. WTF?...
4. Guitar Hero: World Tour. It's pretty much just another Rock Band, especially since the instruments I have will be compatible. I'm certainly getting it, and so should you.
5. Dual Layered DVDs. How come I can't find these for sale anywhere but specialised computery stuff stores? Tescos, WH-Smiths, Asda, various other stores too. All sorts of DVDs, CDs, minidisks even (people still use those?). But no dual layered DVDs. Again I say, WTF?...
6. Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch is an awesome song. Listen to it, and decide for yourself.

Owls, Everyone is fond of Owls, Except from Mice and Shrews, and Simon Cowells!

If you'd prefer to see the better quality original (looping) flash version of Owls (as opposed to the Youtube video above), head over to Weebls-Stuff. Anyway, today's entry is going to be high on topics but low on content and high on content . I've got lots of things to talk about!

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Skype Phones

My parents recently came to me and asked me to look for cheaper landline telephone deals, as with the large increase in home bills (gas, electricity etc) we need to cut back somewhere. I immediately thought about Skype, as I had previously looked into their rates.

To make a long story short, Skype is brilliant. We're going to save around £200 a year using it. Once I realised how much we'd save, I had to find a phone handset that everybody in the house could use. I Googled around for Skype handsets, and found that they all required ether a PC running Skype (not very useful for my non-computer literate parents), or they required a WiFi connection (which has a very short range and well, no).

Luckily I found the RTX Dualphone 3088, which is lovely in that you just plug it into your router, no PC required. Nice and simple for everybody to use, exactly what I wanted. Here's a lovely picture of it, because I know how much you like pictures.

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My secondary desktop PC is finally fixed!

It's been many months since Terminator (hey, I didn't name it ), my secondary desktop PC (the one my sister uses) broke. I won't go into detail about how it was broken, or why, or how I fixed it. I'll just say that it took a long time, lots of thinking and assistance, and a few days ago I got it running Windows again. I'm quite pleased

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Classic Doctor Who (1963 - 1989)

I've been watching the Classic Doctor Who over the past few weeks, starting at the first serial "An Unearthly Child". I've currently worked my way up to number five. I must say, I'm enjoying the experience immensely!

I get a peak at the Doctor's young life, as it were, and he was quite a different man indeed! A devoted explorative scientist, but at the same time, not always so eager to leave the comfort of the TARDIS. Not a cruel man, but also sometimes rather rude and arrogant. It's slowly toned down, episode to episode, as the Doctor is constructed into the basic building blocks of the character that we can all recognise and love today

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Runescape Graphics Update

I don't care if you like it or not, Runescape is brilliant . It was however, lacking in a few areas. I'm very glad to see that it's improved greatly in one area, which is resolution.

Playing Runescape years ago on 800x600 was fine, even 1024x768 was bearable. But now that we all run resolutions higher than that (my current being 1680x1050), the original small Runescape window seems to be ever shrinking. To the point where to play it properly I had to lower the resolution on my screen!

Now though, Runescape can be played on a much larger resizeable window, with full screen mode, as well as some other nice additions like anti-aliasing, and improved textures. It retains that simplistic Runescape charm that's instantly recogniseable from any screenshot, but now it's way more fun to play. Below is a shrunk down screenshot to give you a little idea of what full screen play looks like, though if you want to see it properly go sign up and try it out.

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Star Wars: Force Unleashed

It's that time of the year again, when a bunch of games are released. One of the few I'm most interested in, is Force Unleashed. It's set between Episodes 3 & 4, and you play Darth Vader's secret apprentice. It looks like jolly good fun, and it's available on pretty much every platform you might want it on.

The demo's out on the 21st of August, and the game's released on the 19th of September. Watch out for it.

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Spore

We all know what Spore is by now, and if you don't, go read the first paragraph of it's wiki page. It's out on the 5th of September, and it is going to be awesome. I only quickly mention it here, because I'm greatly looking forward to making Obioids (or some such permutation), and dominating the galaxy with my impressive architecture (as well as wiping out all creatures made of enlarged walking genetals).

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Thanks to a good friend of mine who let me borrow all of the Deep Space Nine DVDs recently, I've been able to fully aquaint myself with the show, it's characters and plot. It is now my favourite Star Trek series, and I'll tell you why.

Star Trek TNG used the same idea as TOS. Take a ship, go explore the universe. This is fun, and brilliant, and awesome! But, it lacks an ongoing storyline, with real ongoing character depth. The show as a whole, lacks a beginning, middle and end. Quite right too, as it was always episodic, and never an ongoing drama (nor was it meant to be).

Star Trek Voyager had a sort of ongoing storyline, in that it was a ship trying to get home, and making new allies and enemies along the way. But, there's only so much scope you can put to a story based on a small ship that never says in one place.

Now, how about Deep Space Nine? A starbase in a key Alpha Quadrant location? That thing's seen wormhole aliens, false gods, war, love, betrayal, and so on. For me, it got most interesting around seasons 6 & 7, where each episode felt more and more like it should say "to be continued" at the end. Everything became tied together, with so many threads leaving you wondering what will happen next here, there, to this person, to that person.

Even though DS9 ended in 1999, to me it ended mere days ago. In some ways it's not even ended yet! I've finished reading the Mission Gamma book series, as well as Rising Son, and I'm on to Unity now, which is supposed to wrap things up nicely.

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Art Gallery Adverts

Finally, I've noticed that my Art Gallery has some Googley adverts in the top right of each page (I may have previously mentioned this, I don't remember). Anyway, I block almost all adverts on all the PCs in my house with great efficiency, which is why I didn't even realise my Art Gallery's template had snuck a banner advert in until now.

When I have the time, I'll find the file that contains the code, and fix this little problem. I will NOT have advertisments on my website, they are annoying and horrible things. At least these banners appear to be black text on a white background, and rather unobtrusive (which is partly why I'm not dealing with it straight away). It will be dealt with, I can assure you.

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Ok, thanks for reading this far. I hope you found my interests and thoughts um, interesting I'm sure I'll be back at some point to throw more of them at you.

On saturday (26th July) I finally picked up my bespoke suit! I've wanted one for years, but there were always good reasons not to get one. Now though, I have. After some searching I finally found a tailors that could give me what I wanted. The place is called James Personal Tailors.

Anyway, I have a few pictures of the finished thing from a few days ago (had my hair cut since & beard is gone ), I've not got my tie on in these pics though:

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Next, we have Batman: The Dark Knight. An amazing film. I'm no good at reviews or anything like that, so let me just say this. Dark Knight is the best film I'm likely to see this year, it's got a great cast, plot & score. It's not for kids, and I went to see it on an IMAX screen (it looked...well, awesome).

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Next, there's Supreme Commander. It's a game that came out about a year and a half ago. Today I came across my copy again, and decided it would be great to reinstall it and play.

Immediately, I remembered why I love that game. The graphics are great, and it's like Age of Empires, but set in the future. It really is such fun game to play, and gives a good mutliplayer RTS experience too. I love commanding an army over a battlefield, completing ether set objectives, or objectives for my own personal strategy of victory.

It's just one of those gems of PC gaming, and everybody should give it a go. Oh, and did I mention, it has nukes? Below are two screenshots. Not the best ever, but still.

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Finally, we come to Facebook. It's the latest big social networking site (think MySpace, but way better). I have an account, and unlike terrible websites like MySpace, I actually log in pretty often. Why? I'll tell you why.

1. Official Facebook adverts are all text based, no annoying banner images. (Update: They do have banners, though updating your hosts file should fix that)
2. You are unable to change the "theme" of your profile, all profiles are created using a nice minimalistic theme. You don't like it? Go use MySpace and leave me alone.
3. There are plugins/widgets called "Applications" that anybody can create, that can be added to your profile. While these can sometimes be abused (ie. having too many of them), and they can also sometimes be completely useless, there are a few gems out there, one of which I'll mention in a moment.

Anyway I mention it here because I've added an application to monitor this blog's RSS feed, and display it on my profile (see screenshot of how it appears below).

Nifty huh? There's also a little "Profile Badge" feature that I might throw on the right hand side of this blog at some point. It's a bit like a forum signature, you know? Just shows some basic info that gets updated.

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I always seem to add something after the "finally", don't I? Well I just thought I'd mention that I updated my website's software today, nothing major. It reminded me why I don't like doing it, though. Hacks. I modify files here there and everywhere, and never really make a good worklog of what it is I've done. So when it comes to updating, and my hacks are all overwritten, I'm annoyed, lol.

Firstly, let's talk about re-installing Windows XP.

BEAR WITH ME HERE, THERE'S A POINT TO ALL THIS PRETEXT....

Windows has a half-life, and after 6-9 months becomes too slow and problematic to bear. So, every 6 months I re-format my hard drive and re-install Windows.

It's a process that takes many hours, infact I found myself having to go to bed and finish the next day. Installing Windows itself isn't a long or difficult process, but getting it back to just how I like it is.

There is software that needs to be installed and updated (Zone Alarm, Norton Antivirus, etc) as well as other software I like to have installed (Windows Blinds, TeraCopy, Remote Admin, Photoshop, VLC Player, Smart FTP, Firefox, etc) and all of this takes time.

Then there are the little things in Windows you have to set right, like not creating Thumbs.db files, showing file extensions (why hide them? very annoying!), getting rid of Doctor Watson (that thing is useless & causes all sorts of problems), and so on.

All in all, it is a long and arduous process. In the end, I am left with a system running perfectly. Exactly as I want it! That makes it all worth while.

This time around, once the system was completely ready for use, I created a Disk Image of my PC's hard disk (which after compression was around 18GB ) using a freeware app called DriveImage XML.

AND NOW FOR THE POINT OF ALL THIS PRETEXT....

Next time I want to reinstall Windows, instead of wasting hours installing and configuring software, I can just restore the Disk Image I saved to my hard drive, and the system will be exactly as it was when I saved the image.

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Second on my list today is Cleaning my PC.

I like to clean my PC when I've re-installed Windows. That way it looks shiny and new on the screen, and shiny and new in the case

Cleaning my PC and desk area took me most of today. If you want to clean your PC, you have to do it right, especially since you only plan to do it two or three times a year. I clean all the fans and as many of the components as I can easilly reach/remove carefully. I clean the case, tidy the cables, etc.

I also give the monitor, printer, router, cable modem, speakers, mouse, mouse mat, external HDD enclosure, and drink mat a clean As for the keyboard, I remove all the keys and clean them, as well as the spaces under the keys (that can get very dirty!). Oh, and I give the desk a wipe with a cloth, and tidy up.

Anyway this post has been very text heavy. Here's a few pictures for you. First pic is the PC in the middle of being cleaned with bits hanging out/removed. Second pic is the whole setup clean and running again this evening, shortly before making this post:

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Oh, and finally we have Family Guy.

Ever see that show? I have a few times, but only recently after watching a whole season realised just how funny it is. Perhaps it's also partly because I'm a little older since I last watched it. Anyway I found a random "video tribute" to my favourite Family Guy character Stewie, and put it in below.

Until next time!

UPDATE!...

I just found this awesome spoof video for Batman: Dark Knight (which reminds me, I forgot to mention it in my post today). This guy does an excellent Heath Ledger Joker impersonation! I've embedded the video below. I went to see Dark Knight on an IMAX screen (my first time too), it was totally awesome. The best film of the year, now go and see it.