Friday, July 27

World of Warcraft: it's over between us


World of Warcraft: it's over between us
Originally uploaded by thatjonesboy.

It seems like only yesterday I was running from Redridge to Stormwind to hand in my next quest, but now it seems the all the mana's run dry and I just can't give anymore.

It wasn't always this way. There were many mornings when I'd struggle to lift my mouse hand to the work desk after another all-nighter trying to find the fine gold thread needed for Menara Voidrender to make my Enchanted Gold Bloodrobe. I wasn't the only one - WoW was the talk of even non-geeky brunches and weekend newspaper columns.

In its heyday I was sitting down to dinner in a posh restaurant in Palo Alto with Ben from Bluepulse, loudly discussing some aspect of WoW, and the mid-40s couple at the next table invited themselves to join our table and tell us all about their guild and its adventures. They were both MBAs, both in corporate finance, they had a family, but they also played WoW very, very seriously. Everybody was on Warcraft.

Now, I don't know anyone who's still using WoW as a gaming environment, much less a business social networking platform ;-)

It's time to end this, WoW. According to the screendump you haven't done it for me since April. You'll be better off with someone younger, less socially-confident, and unaware that the LOTR series were originally novels.

Why is it not doing it for me anymore? Mostly because despite the massive patches I downloaded each month, and even when the Burning Crusade expansion came out, for a poor PvP player like me, all you ever offered me was more of the same...

...run/fly/swim along the following convoluted route for the next three hours solid, try not to get killed by the people and things along the way, try and figure out how to kill the thing at the other end, and then keep killing it until it drops the thing I need to bring back here. Then, if it's not breakfast time yet, send me on another wild goosechase in this other direction for another hour to get my ass whupped by a succession of spotty teens waiting around for chumps to run by again and again and again and...

Most of all, I got heartily sick of being used to wipe the floor by other players who memorised all the optimal formulas for success. Nobody should have to remember that the latest patch means the Curse of the Elements and Curse of Shadow now have a duration of 2 minutes when used on PvP targets! I just want to zap stuff, make large explosions, run around in my very own special effects movie, and get killed about as randomly as I kill others.

So, it's not me, it's you. I have finally remembered to cancel before my subscription auto-renews for another three months - no, I'm not interested in another second chance.

I feel better about myself now.

iPrecioussss... it's coming, it's coming!


iPhone headed to one Mr A Jones
Originally uploaded by Shodokan.

How many people can say they've had the CEO of a white-hot mobile social networking startup stand in queues at several Apple Stores in a week already busy with board meetings, just to secure them an 8GB iPhone?

Only me, I'm sure.

Ben Keighran, your hair needs some work, but your heart's in the right place.

Thanks, mate.

Wednesday, July 25

Whem lightpole marketing fails...


Whem lightpole marketing fails
Originally uploaded by thatjonesboy.

...the whole neighbourhood knows it.

Still, this example does suck badly, even in a market of mostly lowpoints.

Tuesday, July 24

Threadlessly devoted to tees

I'm a bit of a tee-shirt addict, spending maybe $50 a month to support my habit, so it's not like I'm doing coke or anything (I tell myself in a lame attempt to justify it.)

The Embroidaries - Threadless, Best T-shirts Ever

This design is the best I've seen in quite some time - can't wait for it to arrive ...and Spring to come.

Meanwhile, I try not to think about the carbon generated by FedEx shipping my shirts to me from the US.

Monday, July 23

Sweet purchasing joy!


Sweet purchasing joy!
Originally uploaded by thatjonesboy.

The only good thing about leaving my 4Gb iPod Nano in the Rajah of Shimla's car on the way to Sarahan was that after two weeks of iDeprivation I'm back in Sydney and get to buy another one.

The joy of opening a new Apple product never fades for me, even if I've bought the same product before.

This black 8Gb looked like a small version of the mysterious monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It looked so good I washed my hands before I opened it. How does Apple do it?

(Photo edited using pxn8.com)

Friday, July 20

High school flashbacks painfully funny


findX.gif
Originally uploaded by lloydshep.

Lloyd's collection of funny answers scanned from maths and physics exam papers is the best I've ever seen.

I was that crap and maths and physics too, but nowhere near that funny or brave.

Here's the rest of them.

Wednesday, July 18

My Simpsons avatar


My Simpsons avatar
Originally uploaded by thatjonesboy.

Kinda-sorta looks like me. Thanks Atariboy. Do your own on simpsonsmovie.com

Hello? Are you still there?

You are? Well, it would be my fault entirely if you weren't still here. Like the n00biest of bloggers I drifted off to go exploring the Indian side of the Himalayas for three weeks without telling the blogosphere that I was going away, or when I'd be back. More professional bloggers would have been posting 'daily links' type posts from internet cafes in tiny mountain villages, but I was having too much fun with a Leica V-Lux, D-Lux, C-Lux and even an M8 (hah! bet you were expecting a 'B-Lux' next) while pro bloggers were hunched over crawling analogue interweb connections - sucked in!

I kept an analogue journal of the trip which I'll transcribe to the blog shortly, and I'm still uploading hundreds of 10mb JPGs to the Flickr account, so stay tuned for my best shots.

While I was gone, some practical jokers tried to set themselves on fire and crash their car into an airport terminal. But it was Glasgow airport, and it takes more than a flaming jeep to do any real damage to anything Glaswegian. You can head-butt my uncle Jim repeatedly until you knock yourself unconscious and he'll use your limp body to wipe the floor of the pub clean of your blood (he and the rest of my mum's family are Glaswegian.)

Apple launched the iPhone - the Product I Must Acquire Before I Die From Not Having One but according to Ben and Luke I need to sign up for a three year phone plan with AT&T with a US credit card and a US social security number to get one. And then find a way to get it to work in Australia.

In fact, screw using it as a phone! I need a new iPod urgently, since I accidentally left my Nano in the passenger door storage of the Raja of Shimla's personal Suzuki Vitara (long story, but there was a taxi strike and our guide managed to persuade them to lend us the Raja's driver and his 4WD to drive us eight hours to Sarahan...)

If I could use an iPhone just as an iPod, for iPhoto storage, and as an iCal/Addressbook/iSync-driven PIM, that would make me happy enough for the time-being.

In fact, maybe that's how Apple should address international markets where it has trouble securing an exclusive telco deal - sell an unsubsidized handset as an iPod/iPhoto/PIM device with the phone components disabled until Apple can show potential telco suitors that it can grow local sales without the help of the telco.

Or maybe I'm still crazy from altitude sickness? What do you think?

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