Sundries

Well, I’ve done it.  I’m a switcher:

As soon as I heard that Blizzard now allows faction changes I put in to have my 4 year old human mage Ogiue go horde!  Now she’s a L80 undead mage and also a member of the greatest, as well as largest, guild in the world -- Alea Iacta Est.

I’m working on getting my hit count up higher and doing some research on the instances so I can join one of the many raid groups in the guild.  I’ve also started working on getting my Netherwing reputation up so I can get access to a whole new set of mounts to fly around with.  I’m hoping to hit honored with Neterwing tomorrow night.

**James.

With my interest in Japanese culture I’m surprised it took me so long to check out the world of quality Japanese Sake.  I did some self education on the Internet about Sake and then found a few places that let you order online.  I prefer to order stuff like this online as it gives me plenty of time to research the products and go over my selection.

Since I’m also getting into photography I figured I’d setup a clean and simple little backdrop and take some pictures of the pretty bottles!!!

First one is Setsugetsubijin.  This is a Junmai Ginjo which is a pure sake, it only contains water, rice, yeast, and koji mold.  Don’t worry, this is not a bad mold.  This mold helps break down the starch in the rice to sugars which the yeast can use to ferment.  This bottle is 720ml and is 14% – 15% alcohol by volume:

Next is Gekkeikan Sake – Black & Gold.  It’s 750ml and is also 14% – 15% alcohol by volume:

Finally I got a bottle of Hakutsuru Junmai Ginjo Sake which is a 720ml bottle at 14.5% alcohol by volume.

I did get a few more items.  I got a bottle of Japanese Plum Wine to try out since I’ve never had it.

Unfortunately the label got torn during packaging but it’s the least interesting looking bottle of the bunch so it’s not a big deal.

I also bot a bottle of Redstone Meadery’s Black Raspberry Nectar Mead.  The mead is 750ml and about 8% alcohol by volume.  I’ve only had mead about 3 or 4 times before and it has always been just heavenly!!!

I’m hoping to get some time this weekend to try some of these out.  I almost never drink anymore so I’ve really become quite a lightweight when it comes to alcohol.  I’m sure they will seem a bit too strong for me at first till I get used to alcohol again.

Kampai !!!

I got my Nikon D60 in last night and I love it.  I know it’s just an entry level DSLR but since I’m coming from a 2 megapixel point and shoot I’m very happy.  It took about 1.5 hours to get the battery charged so I spent that time going over the basic functions thorugh the manual.

Thankfully everything seems to be in good working condition.  I was a bit worries considering the condition the box it was shipped in looked like:

On a side note:  “UPS – You suck!!!”

As I mentioned, thankfully nothing seems to have been affected by it’s rough journey.  I haven’t used the telephoto or wide angle lens yet but they look fine.  I was only really concerned about the camera and it’s main lens and they are fine.  Obviously I can’t take a picture of the D60 with the D60 so I had to use my Canon for that one as well:

Once I got it charged up and running I was planning to take an official “first picture with the new camera” shot but I wasn’t prepared for one thing; the shutter release button is very sensitive.  On my point and shoot there is a big difference between the 1/2 way point to meter and focus and doing a full button press to take the image.  On the Nikon you need to have a very light touch to keep from automatically taking an image.

I first tried to try out the auto-focus and meter reading and ended up taking a very poor looking picture of the free camera bag that came in the kit I bought.  Ugh, not even worth keeping.  I did take another 40 or 50 shots while working on how to adjust things.  I did finally take a few shots that I’m pretty happy with:

I’m not very happy with having a still life setup area using sheets of contruction paper for taking phtographs on.  The contruction paper has such a rough and grainy surface it’s almost like having noise in the image that isn’t really there.  I’ll try picking up some sheets of foam board and setup a new photo booth for smaller images.

I’m also starting a new blog to do my photograph updates but I’m still not finished getting things adjusted.  I’m also installing Gallery2 to have a display on my own site so I don’t just rely on Flickr.  Before I move on to displaying images on Flickr I’m going to do testing to understand my camera more.

**James.

Well I finally reached Exalted with the Nagrand faction of Mag’har:

Having PeterFile, my Goriladin, made this so much easier.  I almost never had to fight one mob at a time.  It was mostly 3-4 at a time, sometimes even was able to get 5 at a time.  No problem and doesn’t take much longer one at a time.

The main thing I wanted was a new mount, the same one I got on my mage that I posted about before.  The only thing is with the addition of the new achievements in the game I really want to get the 50 mount achievement so I figured it’s a good time to get started:

At about 80 gold each it didn’t really set me back much money.  I’m very eager to finish getting my orgrimar faction up so I can get my Wolf mounts.

**James

Well, WOW patch 3.0.2 hit a few days ago and boy did it hit hard.

To make a long story nice and short – few of my addons are updated and working yet and I’ve lost access to both of my epix land mounts and I’m still waiting for Blizzard to fix that but I do have a Core Hound now:

He is the Spawn of Uvuros Core Hound, isn’t he cute?  If you are a hunter looking to tame one of these you will find the biggest problem being that there will be 2 or 3 other hunters in the area looking to tame one as well.  Finding one before someone else is tough.  The other trick to tame these is to make sure you use your ice trap to hold him of course but don’t stand too close as his fire breath attack has some range to it.

It’s best to lay your trap down as he’s walking in your direction then back up about 20 feet or so.  Start your taming spell to agro him and pull him into the trap.  I was able to tame him just as the ice trap was about to break and since his fire breath couldn’t hit me the channeling wasn’t broken at all.

Once again the toughest part of this was thinking of a name I’m happy with.  Some variations I though of but couldn’t use or decided against were:

• GENSHIKEN
• Loli-chan
• Loli Pedo Fiend
• Ichigo Mashimaro
• Souichiro
• Inuyasha

I really was close to going with Inuyasha since he is a dog demon and so is my pet but I thought that may be too obvious.  I also almost went with his brothers name of Sesshomaru which I like but since I’m not a huge Inuyasha fan I decided against it

I also prefer cute and funny anime which brought me to think about Ichigo Mashimaro, a fantastic show, but the name wouldn’t fit.  I figured if I just went with Ichigo everybody would think, “Oh, Ichigo from Bleach..” but that would be wrong…  Not that I don’t like Bleach.  I decided to go with Mashimaro which is really just the Japanese pronunciation for the English word Marshmellow.  I liked the contrast of a soft, spongy, sweet desert topping and my double headed, green lava dripping, demon dog.

They did shrink him a good amount compared to what we saw in some of the videos from the beta but he’s still pretty big.  He also still makes a nice loud stomping sound when he walks around.  So far it hasn’t pissed me off yet, well see how it goes in a few weeks.

The other benefit over getting this version rather then the Red or White ones is his level.  He’s already L69 where the other ones will only auto level to 5 levels below your own, or L65.  That’s just more time needed to put into leveling your pet before Wrath of the Lich King comes out.  Plus, I really like green.

Core Hounds are ferocity pets (High DPS) which isn’t unlike my cat Momiji that I have.  I’m going to start looking for a good tanking pet to get now as well.  I really want to get a rhino since they are just so freakin’ huge but I’m also interested in the Gorilla for their AOE ability.  I’ll have to do some further reading before I decide which to go with.

**James