Creeping...

On Blogging: Filtering Comment Spam

creep.nospam@nospam.creeptheprophet.com (Creep) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:15:00 -1200

I like using my current blogging platform Blogengine.net because, well, the little coding experience I have is mostly in the .net coding languages. Lately though I've been seeing a bunch of comments on my old posts that are really just folks posting "comments" to try to get free link backs to their websites.

Here's the thing, I don't have any form of advertisement on my site. At this point it's 100% non commercial and pretty much just serves as my own little web programming sandbox.This site doesn't get a lot of hits and yeah, I don't actively advertise it (aside from adding the site to a couple of places just to see how they worked).

Safe to say it really makes me cranky when folks are basically adding links on my site, to commercial sites, via comments. None of the comments have been rude, trolling or too grammatically incorrect, so really I could just leave them alone. Honestly though it feels like these folks would be trying to take advantage of my readers and what little work I do, heh, to make a buck. :P Forget that!

I've implemented and worked with WordPress on a few sites and I like the fact that it's able to moderate comments from unknown users while letting folks who've been previously approved post comments immediately. I really wish that Blogengine.net had the same feature. I'm sure it's coming in a future release, but personally I'm not sure if I want to wait it out.

I do feel lucky though, other bloggers deal with probably spam comments like these, but also deal with folks who are just plain rude, obnoxious or stupid (sometimes all of the above), in comments. Why? I point to Penny Arcade's Internet Dickwad Theory (Anonymity + Normal Person + Internet Audience = Asshat). The more time I spend on the net, the more proof I see of it's existence.

There's also some other cool features and WordPress plug-ins that I could use on the site. I've been saving up screenshots of the best and worst game names I can find. Mostly because I wanted to do a regular post on them. I've been holding out from going the way of the php, but meh, I don't really feel like re-inventing the wheel every time I need something (not to mention the fact that sometimes my wheels just don't come out quite right >.< ). So I guess it's time for a change. Don't worry things should be back to normal pretty quickly, but there may be some down time in the next few days.

LotRO: A Little Diffrent from the Norm

creep.nospam@nospam.creeptheprophet.com (Creep) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:04:00 -1200

Me and Savvy Outside of Bree

So the Kinship decided on a Hauberk to wear for Kin events and whatnot. It's kind of scaly so it fits with the theme of our Kinship pretty well. (Smaug, the Kin's namesake is a dragon). Before stoing the hauberk for the night Savvy and I rode thought Bree wearing the new colors and I figured I'd grab a snapshot for the Kin website.

I'd picked up the idea for a Kin Hauberk after seeing a mounted patrol event by the Kin "Sons of Numenor". It's a pretty impressive show seeing that group all on horseback all wearing the same colors. They usually have a pic posted of their event on their webby (link). I'm not saying that Smaug's will get quite that organized any time soon. After recent events though we are in sore need of a little Esprit De Corp so to speak.

We've gained two promising new members recently, but we've also lost two of our core members. It was tough at first, but it really seems like we're rallying again and we're moving on. For the most part a lot of last night was spent on a trip to Rivendell for one of our newer Kin members (something we seem to do on a regular basis these days), and hunting ore for a Kinmate who's leveling up to be the Kinship Weaponsmith. Last night's ore gathering fest and Rivendell run pretty much summed up what the Kin's all about. We all log on to play together and help each other out. We don't just log on yack a bit in Kin chat and go off our seperate ways. Ok there's still a lot of that, I mean even I want to go out exploring on my own sometimes (seems to be when I get the most done). But I'm not running around alone ALL of the time, which is how I felt while playing WoW.

LotRO: Riding with Style, Right into that Tree....

creep.nospam@nospam.creeptheprophet.com (Creep) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:20:00 -1200

Woo Hooo! Finally hit 35 AND made enough to pay for the mount. I still had the festival tokens and ticket in the bank so I was able to pick up a lovely Summer Festival horse. This is actually pretty huge for my slack-tastic self. Usually I barely manage to scrape enough up for a standard mount, and typically that's about 3 levels AFTER the minimum purchase level. Guess I'm getting the hang of this stuff. Ok MAYBE.

I also have my own little Dwarf house so I'm feeling pretty good. I think though instead of rushing off for more levels, I'm actually going to take a step back and work on my Traits and work on building up a nice cash cushion in the bank. As it is too I need to grind rep with the Metalsmith's guild so that I can get my hands on those handy recipes. I have some Kin members that I'd like to get some good armour made for. I'm sort of acting as the Kin's Heavy Armour officer. If I see someone needs some better gear I make some for them. That is assuming that I can make something better. Yeah grinding Metalsmith is a pain in my rump. A great big one. But really that's also an entire topic in and of its self.

This evening I did spend quite a LOT of time riding around. I enjoy just riding around sometimes. Yeah I know it's not me, its the gal on the horse in a little window on my computer, but it's still something I enjoy anyway for some strange reason. Hey if people can collect stamps, I can ride the friggin horse. Now granted it's not quite as much fun to ride as a Rune-Keeper than it is to ride as a Death Knight. Path of Frost is still one of my all time favorite Death Knight abilities from WoW. For mean Death Knight became the ultimate in explorer ready classes, because well, Geistig the Death Knight could go ANYWHERE she wanted. That and being undead just kind of upped her creep factor to 10 and most things just left her alone.

As a nice squishy healer Geistig the Rune-Keeper doesn't fare quite as well as Geistig the Death Knight. But if I get her good gear and make sure her talents are boosted up, Geistig the Rune-Keeper fairs pretty well.

So now that I have my house and my horse, next up is GETTING those traits up to snuff via going back and completing deeds. I've also got to refill my coin box since buying the friggin horse took a good chunk of change. The horse cost more than the HOUSE! Geeze! So that means I'll also be hunting hides and ore incessantly over the next few days if or even into next week, just getting those things in order. I'm really looking forward to taking a bit of a break from leveling for a bit. I mean sure getting into new places and getting new skills is fun and all, but I'd MUCH rather take it at a slower pace then I have been as of late. I don't see them shutting down the LotRO servers any time soon so that means that 60 can wait right where it is. It'll be there when I get to it. Besides, LotRO is a game that you can enjoy as your leveling, not JUST at the end game. Kind of a nice change really. I feel like I'm getting my money's worth since I can enjoy playing the whole game, not just the tail end of it.

As for other games, I was talking to H00ligan in game the other day. I really do miss getting to play with all of the folks I'd had a chance to meet in Aftermath and while playing WoW. Even Scary's commented that it'd be cool if we all get a chance to play together some time in the future. For now though I'm not really seeing any of the upcoming games as much more than the standard MMO fare. I am keeping my eye on a lesser watched title I've seen mentioned in Massively a few times called Heroes of Telara. That one actually DOES sound different from the standard game experience since they plan on looking at server side coding and creating real time game impacting changes that are brought on by the actions of the players. Not sure how that's going to pan out, BUT if they make it happen, I'd love to try it out. Yep that one gets a *squee*

Ok well off for some sleep.

~Creep

It's Not Just ME

creep.nospam@nospam.creeptheprophet.com (Creep) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:36:00 -1200

OK so I did a quick peruse though the lol blogs and found a winner on Graph Jam.

see more Funny Graphs

Yes I laughed, I laughed mightily.

Peripherals on a Rampage

creep.nospam@nospam.creeptheprophet.com (Creep) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:11:00 -1200

So there I was yesterday, running through the wilds of Middle Earth with Kin mates, just getting into a new zone, so close to level 35 (the level I can get my mount) that I'm getting goose bumps.

Then the most random thing occurs. I lose control of my computer. >.< No seriously. All of a sudden my character starts moving it's self. The computer is typing in keystrokes and even mouse clicks over and over. I shut down the game and bring it back up. SAME thing. Now though the computer is continuing to type the same text and repeat the same mouse clicks OUTSIDE of the game.

I swap out my mouse, log into the game, same thing happens. I shut down the system and swap out my keyboard. Same thing happens. I log out, start in safe mode, run SpyBot to remove some happy Microsoft input files, restart and finally I have my computer back for a little while. I log back into LotRO and everything is good again for a little while. I'm running around working on level 35, and trying to grind out for the last bit of gold I need. Then I've got to log out to run errands.

For some reason when I get back, I swap back to my original keyboard and mouse, I log into LotRO and try to open up the chest in my house. Boom! Text appears in my chat window and my toon starts moving again all by its self. The exact same crap as before.

At this point I'm positive that it's LotRO. I swap back out to the basic keyboard and mouse (no software required), but still every time I start the game and interact with an item via the right mouse button, my computer acts like it's possessed. I shut down and repeat the save mode process and this time I also uninstall LotRO and reinstall LotRO. So now I'm testing the game by logging on. Ooooo everything is working so far, but none of my toons are available except for a random hunter I created but never logged in (Jagergeist the Hunter Ghost, nice huh?). So I figure, hey, I'll log in for an hour or so just to see if the bug repeats its self. Everything works just fine and next thing I know it's way past my bed time, but the Hunter is level 7 and ready to move up in middle earth.

Then this morning, feeling confident that I've FINALLY beaten the bug, I go to log in. Next thing I know my compy is acting posessed again and trying to type direction keys into the password box. >.<

You can just imagine how it sounded in my living room "well duh that's because wsad is NOT my password you ..... " and we'll cut things short there, but you get the picture.

I left my computer this morning in Safe Mode, running AVG hoping like hell that I don't have a keylogger on my system. Regardless, I just can't get this off my mind. I hate it when there's something wrong with my computer. It's like my kid, and any parent with a sick child knows what it's like to worry about a sick child. At least for parents though their child doesn't run on Windows... *sigh*

Here I am, 3 paces away from a full nuke and pave (reinstalling the operating system and staring from scratch). Don't get me wrong, my system could use some cleaning, but when you run Windows Vista, it takes a very long time to get all of the updates reinstalled, to get all of the software I use reinstalled blah blah blah. That AND running into work on a Monday, you can just IMAGINE the mood I'm in.

So while I take a break and try to do some research and see if I can find anyone else out there who's had the same problem. I check the LotRO forums, no dice. I take a look at keyloggers related to LotRO, but I still don't see the same thing I'd seen my system do. That and keyloggers typically record keystrokes, really only macros record the keystrokes and then play it back.

That got me thinking, what if it's my keyboard or my mouse. My mouse a Microsoft SideWinder, HAS been acting kind of tweaky lately so I figure I'll start there. My leads me to this post (LINK) where a fellow SideWinder user had the same trouble. One of the users is a WoW player and reports the same trouble I've seen with my system, just in LotRO. So he's running around UBRS, next thing he knows his character is moving it's self. Safe to say, just a LITTLE disconcerting.

The SideWinder mouse is able to record macros for use in games. Fan friggin' tastic. Well every once in a while, Intellisense kicks in and just decides to record a happy macro and bind it to the right mouse button. Yay!

So yeah, my system acting possessed whenever I hit the right mouse button, yep. Oh and a discovery of a new happy "macro" folder in my documents... check.

I did delete a macro I'd found in the Documents folder this morning before leaving for work and I'm thinking that should do the trick.

I am stoked though because this means that it's not the game, it's just my mouse and I need to update my mouse drivers. Chances are that the drivers for the SideWinder X8 which comes with a happy "record macro" button on the mouse, could be part of the issue at hand. Well we'll see won't we. To be fair, I can't blame the SideWinder for the whole mess, Intellisense managed to repeat the recorded macro even when I switched out for a Logitec mouse. Fun huh?

I'm also happy that I'll still be able to use my rather pricy keyboard (Cyborg by Saitek) and mouse (the Microsoft SideWinder). I do think however I need to dink around with the Intellisense settings and make sure that this happy little "spontaneous macro recording" event doesn't repeat its self.

I'm really happy that it looks like it's just the mouse to blame. I'm actually enjoying LotRO and the Kin I've found myself in. I have to say though, when I though all of this was related to the game, I really was about ready to just uninstall it and walk. Once again it just proves to me that players WILL NOT play a buggy game. It's why I stopped playing Runes of Magic and Free Realms. Any games where you can't use chat, the interface is unresponsive, and/or the quests are borked, isn't anything I'm going to waste my time or my money on. May seem flippant, but hey everyone has there preferences. I think one of the reasons I played WoW for as long as I did play was because the game was stable. Ok that and I met some cool people that made the game worthwhile. Though me and Savvy my LotRO partner in crime, left games what weren't working for us to play LotRO because it WAS stable. It's also graphically beautiful, but again, another story.

Now HOPEFULLY I can get to 35. I'm beginning to think whatever gods of gaming exist are dead set against me, but I can be pretty stubborn myself.

LotRO: Working Towards 35 and Getting a House

creep.nospam@nospam.creeptheprophet.com (Creep) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:37:00 -1200

So in LotRO you're eligible for picking up your mount at level 35 (well level 35 and plopping down 4 gold and 220 silver or thereabouts). I'm pretty excited about getting my mount really. I participated in the Summer Festival fishing quests and ended up with enough festival coins to pick up a festival horse. I still have to plunk down coin for the horse, but for the first time in playing an MMO I've actually worked on getting a special mount. Granted this wasn't the hardest one in LotRO to pick up by any means, but I actually did it.

I have to admit, grinding enough gold for my mount and getting through the last couple of levels to 35 has had me down lately. I'd been putting off getting myself a house until after I'd picked up a mount, and that was also wearing on me. I was starting to feel like my progress was slowing to a crawl.Yep the game started to feel like work.... Gah.

I have been successful though in saving up, auctioning materials, keeping my bags clean and selling everything I can, and even running once in a while to save on travel costs. The amount I've had in the bank has been tempting me pretty sorely to buy a house. I'd been wanting to buy one since I found out that LotRO had housing. I've just been putting off actually getting a house for a variety of reasons. Last night though I ran around with Savvy house hunting, and eventually I just had to face the fact that I really wanted a place. Savvy did offer to share a house, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that even if I WAS saving up for a mount, I'd been holding off on getting a house for WAY too long and I was due.

Though Savvy picked up a Hobbit house (with a kick awesome view), I searched through the same neighborhood and just didn't see anything that said "buy MEEEEEE". Not that I was actually listening for the houses to talk to me, I'm not quite that nuts. While I wanted a house in the same neighborhood Savvy had purchased in, I just didn't find anything there that I really wanted. There were a few houses in other neighborhoods I contemplated getting but then it occurred to me, if I wasn't going to buy in the same neighborhood as Savvy, I probably didn't need to get a Hobbit house. Since I'm a Metalsmith I need access to the Superior forge found in Thorin's Gate for crafting at Artisan Level (and probably up I'd imagine). Well it'd mean a silly amount of travel to have to ride out there all of the time. So I decided to take a quick look at the Dwarf housing to see if there was anything I liked there so that I'd have a quick port to Thorin's Gate as well as a home.

Sure enough I found an awesome house, next to a waterfall, no houses right next door, and a nice sharp drop off one side (great for those unwelcome guests). I ran some quests to pick up some furniture for it, got a chest, placed some items, set permissions, and well just felt giddy the rest of the night. It's something that I'd been waiting out, and to pick up a cool place (there were only about 3 or 4 of the same address available out of all the neighborhoods), well it made me feel like I'd actually accomplished something. Now I've got something to look forward to, a place to stash my junk, hang up those fishing trophies that have been clogging up my inventory, and play music without worring about disturbing anyone.

I'm totally stoked.

Yep that does mean that I'll have to make back the amount I had saved for the mount, but that just takes time (and patience hehe). I've got a feeling that when I do get my mount, the experience will be pretty similar, and I'm looking forward to it.

LotRO: Rune-Keeper Update Ding 29 & Artisan Metalsmith

creep.nospam@nospam.creeptheprophet.com (Creep) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:55:34 -1200

I'm very excited. I'm almost halfway to the level cap! I can already start working on Return to Rivendell by killing 150 Orc. Sad part is that shouldn't be too terribly tough since they're friggin everywhere.

Now Artisan Metalsmith... *sheesh*! Metalsmith is a pain to level. I've been mostly making tools for the Auction House. They don't sell super well but they also don't cost an arm, a leg, or half a lifetime to produce. There's a whole set of armour at the Expert level that I just haven't bothered producing because not only would I need to get the tailoring elements (because I haven't bothered leveling my Tailoring at all), but I'd also need to get polished rubies from a Jeweler AND scour the wilderness for mobs that drop Ruby Shards. While I'd prefer to make some nice heavy armour for the Kinsmen that can wear it, I'm pretty much stuck to making tools. I have purchased decently prices Saphire Shards at the Auction House to produce Forge-Crafted gear. The sad part is that a good portion of folks in the Kin already have better gear than the Forge-Crafted gear and I'm not skilled enough to make the super gear at that level yet. That and getting special components and hoping to get a critical super product when you're making an item from a one time use recipe and using rare drop components is probably a lot like praying for rain in the desert.

At least though I am up to making Steel crafting tools and I've purchased or picked up a few recipes. Last night I produced and distributed some of the tools to Kin members. There still some Kin members I didn't get tools out to, but hopefully I'll be able to collect a little ore tonight and plug away at the list. Why am I doing this you ask? Because I can! The folks in my Kin have been very helpful to me and I'd like to be able to return the favor in any way I can. Since I can't really afford to craft uber armour right now, that's sort of out, but I can make tools. Steel tools in particular increase the chances of producing +stat items (or crit crafted items) when crafting. With my Steel Smithing Hammer, I've got a 65% crit chance on Tier 1 items. That's not to say that I've actually produced anything that's crit as of yet (aside from the random Bronze Ingot), but I'm ever hopeful.

The Book 8 Crafting changes also made Crit Crafting a LOT easier. Instead of getting a drop that says "this item can be used for crafting" and just vendoring it because it's taking up space in my bags, I can now mine the Crit Crafting ingredients as I'm mining for ore and it says right on the item which profession can use it. Now I just have to remember to start sending the Crit Crafting ingredients I can't use to Kin members instead of vendoring them like an idiot.

As for my Rune-Keeper side I'm also running around fully Traited for healing. *giggles* Typically when leveling healers, I NEVER want to set myself up for healing until further along in the game. Healers usually can heal really well, but can't kill anything and tend to be squished pretty quickly. So really unless I know I'm going to be running in groups for the most part, I set up my healy types as hybrid DPS/healers or as full DPS and then switch over closer to end game. The downside is that I do play later than most folks and I don't always get a chance to quest with others. I could just answer every "looking for fellowship" call I see and gain experience that way, but there's sometimes that I just want to run around on my own, collecting goodies and killing anything that moves. :D So last night I figured I'd run around and do a little mining. I'd killed some critters too close to the nodes and noticed they dropped quest items, and next thing I know I'm running across the countryside gathering and slaughtering. Heh, it was quite nice. I'm really happy to see that I CAN solo even though I'm set up for healing.

Keep in mind though, I also have some decent gear. I make and carry a Rune-Keeper Chisel, and 3 of the 4 Virtues I have equipped are already at level 2. I think these things boost my abilities just enough that I'm able to perfom to expectations. Well at least up to my expectations.

I was asked by a Kin member if I'd prefer DPS over healing. Since for me healing is instinctual, I know I'm going to try to heal whenever I'm in a group. That pretty much made the question a no contest for me. I'm enjoying healing as a Rune-Keeper and I want to keep doing it. Sure I could set up Geistig to do all kinds of damage, but then as soon as I'm in an instance, I wouldn't be able to do what I really WANT to do which is heal. Don't get me wrong, I know that I COULD heal even if set up for DPS, it'd be technically possible. The thing is that I wouldn't be able to heal as efficiently or effectively as I can when I'm all traited up for healing. What I'd noticed when running as a hybrid is that my heals weren't strong enough to keep one person going as I moved on to heal the next person. I also noticed that I ran out of Power VERY quickly. No Power means no heals and no heals can mean a dead group. That just doesn't work for me. If I'm going to assume the role of healer, then I really feel like I should have the tools I need to heal effectively. Granted I still need some more experience, but I really feel like I'm getting a handle on what I need to do AND I feel like I'm able to keep a group going. I still get pretty panicky because I don't have a ton of experience (and hence) confidence in myself yet, BUT at least I've tried to make things a little easier on myself. I'm traited out to reduce threat, increase the power of my heals, and decrease the Power required to cast my heals. But that's all a topic for another day.

Safe to say I'm still happy that I switched over to Rune-Keeper and I'm looking forward to seeing just what they're capable of. :D

Downloading....

creep.nospam@nospam.creeptheprophet.com (Creep) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:57:00 -1200

Well LotRO Book 8 was released today for the US servers so now my system is doing the download thing. Chances are I won't be able to login tonight. Then again a nice night relaxing at home and watching some movies doesn't sound too bad.

On a positive note, I couldn't sleep last night so I completed a few quests getting Geistig to 25. So hopefully when I log in I'll be able to start working on 26. I feel like I'm falling behind the other Kin members a bit. It's been cool to be able to keep up with them this far, but it'd be nice to be able to be roughly the same level. Not sure when/how I'll catch up, but hey you never know.

LotRO: House of the Crazy Cat Lady

creep.nospam@nospam.creeptheprophet.com (Creep) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:58:00 -1200

So last night after taking Weathertop for a second time and getting halfway to 25, it was time to return to Bree and get in some serious crafting. Ok so AFTER getting into some serious crafting I decided to do some running around Bree. I'd seen a hunter running around on the roof tops and I really wanted to get up there. If nothing else it'd make for some great screenshots. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to get up there (though I tried lemme tell you) but I did find a door that I hadn't noticed before.

So despite the little voices that say "this could get you killed idiot" I opened the door and walked on in. At first I didn't notice the name of the room, I just noticed that it was FULL of cats. I joked with Savvy that I'd found the Crazy Cat Lady's house as I made my way out of the house and back out to complete my rooftop mission. Savvy of course said "Screenshot!", so I ran back in to get a screenshot. This time I noticed the location text that actually said "The Crazy Cat Lady's House".

While the house failed to be full of monsters that could nom on my head, I did almost meet my end by dying of laughter. >.<

So here's one of the better screenshots of the room FULL of cats.

Pretty much the evening left me with two questions, why is it that a lot of games seem to have a crazy cat lady's house somehwere in the game, and second, why is it the Hunters get to have all the fun (ie, the guy on the roof that I never managed to replicate)?

LotRO: Epic Quest Night and Adventures Galore

creep.nospam@nospam.creeptheprophet.com (Creep) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:46:00 -1200

Talk about a fun weekend! So on Friday Night I trailed behind the Kin as we grouped up in a Fellowship to complete some of the Epic Quest line (aka the Book Quests). Safe to say it was pretty interesting stuff. Both the quests themselves, the members of the Kin roleplaying a bit as we went, and yep kicking butt once we got there. Here's the crew working on one of the quests. I'm of course at teh back with my happy healing rock trying to draw as little attention to myself as possble, while still making the group glow nice and green:

We have a couple folks in the Kinship that have played LotRO and other games at a more Hard Core pace so they know when it's time to start pounding on things and just how to do it. We had some solid strategy behind us as we cut through book 2 and the Kin members made their way into book 3. I'm lagging a little behind in that I spent a good part of the week working on crafting as opposed to leveling. I was able to keep up healing even though we were getting into content a little too big for my britches. Fortunately we did have a Minstrel with us because by the time we got to the end of the book 2 quests I was stretched pretty thin, even with a healing talent loaded and a lot of stat bumping traits equipped. Phew those are tough.

Though as the weekend bore on I was glad to see that as I level healing even became stronger. I'm really happy about that.

So here's the thing I love about my new Kin. So one thing I've always enjoyed about playing MMO's is getting into the next zone ahead of schedule, even running through deadly mobs to get there. Well an almost all Kin Fellowship I was in on Saturday decided to make a run for Rivendell. In the Movie the Lord of the Rings, this is where they took Frodo after he'd been stabbed by one of the Ring Wraiths, (those nasty all black riders in the beginning of the movie).

Getting there however was not a walk in the park. A bunch of us even died at one point when we'd garnered too much attention from the local wildlife. It was SO worth the trip though. The zone is beautiful. Me and Savvy probably spent a good hour just running around and taking screenshots. *giggle* Since Geistig is an Elf, she'll end up with a port here after I do some work and she hits 35 or so, it'll be nice to head back here regularly just to fish and enjoy the scenery. Too bad there's no houses here, but meh, the zone where there are Elf houses are quite nice.

On other news I did manage to get a website set up for the new guild and several guild members are helping me get it set up and ready to go. Safe to say I'm really excited to be a part of this guild.