Chris Worfolk's Blog

I was there! I didn’t get on until about 7 pm, only having an hour to go on but it was cool anyway. I was actually the third to last person to say something, “bye all! UTC rules!” and indeed the two after me were yells, so I believe I was the last person to say anything on the channels. That is just in Stormwind though, each region has its own channels.

We all partied down. You can use /dance to dance and dance we did! There were like over a hundred players in Stormwind alone I think and many where dancing. I also tried drinking too although I downed 3 bottles of weak stuff and one bottle of very strong stuff and still didn’t manage to get past tipsy.

I did a lot of screenshot taking too. Fond memories until I can get hold of the game on Friday. Hopefully everything will run smooth and by the end of the weekend I will be kick ass strong. Anyway less on that on more on how the final time played out. I was on EN Server 19 and it was closed down at around 8:05.

There was no real official countdown although at 8 there were several bell chimes. Then a notice appeared in everyones chat windows a few minutes past saying shutdown in 30 seconds. The aforementioned seconds later, the game disconnected from the server.

We partied with GMs (game masters) as well. One named Moof was a giant Tauren (yes, a horde characters although much bigger) as well as a giant chicken and cat. Those were fun times.

It was a judgment day special so there was plenty of death of course as well. There were demons running round in the entrance to Stormwind and this giant rock type creature that looked bigger than the Ancient Protectors that stalk Darnassus. It took me several deaths to run my way into Stormwind.

We were hoping to battle them but 20 of us fighting the little demon didn’t do any damage. That was a bit sucky as they should have made it so we could at least fight them if there were enough of us. All in all though, an awesome experience.

As you do, I was browsing other various blogs and checked on to see if
there were any new posts on the Dot Net Show blog. I couldn’t actually
remember what there was there last time so I am not 100% sure whether
there are new posts or not since I last visit but I think there were as
I found something interesting.

Check out this entry
about the Active Directory Federation Services episode. It was actually
posted like 3 months ago but the important thing is there is a great
picture of Robert Hess! I need to get round to updating my Robert Hess fan site, and indeed the entire 4xd.net site which I never fully finished.

I know there are a few other of the sub-sites on 4xd.net that have
broken links that need fixing due to how I build them. I can’t even
remember what I used to build them now although I also know that I need
to switch the advertising server over to the Worfolk Online ad server rather than running it on a separate one as it does currently.

I am also considering updating pLog soon which is the software behind this blog. They announced a week ago that pLog 1.0 is almost ready. I look forward to seeing what they have come up with.

Ok I have got to speak out against this – I used Opera before although I haven’t used it for ages (I never used it as my default browser). I installed it a while ago to do some testing and it does look cool but after some time spent using it, I can say that it is pretty crap to be honest.

It displays forms weird. I can make by peace with that but I am still left wondering why. Also, access keys are crazy. You hold shirt down and press Esc. Then you take your fingers off and press the access key – each time you want to use an access key. Why can’t companies produce software that does it like Mozilla? Alt + key is all we need!

Also my toolbar disappeared. I tried to drag a link onto my homepage button to make it my homepage and a load of buttons disappeared. So I restored my default toolbar and they all disappeared! I managed to fix it now but what is going on with that.

Also the adverts are getting more annoying. I mean ok, Opera might want to make a profit but how about business licensing or something? I wouldn’t mind the adverts or paying if the software was better than the free alternatives, but it just isn’t.

Humans would be much better without emotions, no ups and downs. Of course that is more obvious when you’re in a down but then again I have no doubt I would say the same thing when I am at a peak. But anyway, there is a lot of depressing stuff happening. I am actually on a break this week but for some reason it doesn’t feel like a holiday.

I have an open day at the Leeds University school of computing to go to today. I really don’t want to go; I have better things to do like crawling into a small ball on the floor. It is just so stressful, just going out to a university drains so much energy from me. I really cannot put together the energy to care.

Also I have an entire week to wait for World of Warcraft. I just want the beta to end so that the main game can come out and I can get on with playing it. I have lost much interest now that they have said the characters are going to be wiped as it is just like, what is the point you know.

I also have to book yet another driving test. I have never really been that bothered about passing, I just don’t want to have to drive anymore. I was never a real fan of it anyway so I just want to get that over with.

Plus there are loads of other things. I haven’t picked up my guitar in a week and I want to actually learn that. My websites need work as I have been so busy playing WoW. I need to do loads of work on my coursework to get the grades I need. You would think this would invoke some kind of reaction from me, but no.

Actually it wasn’t just us two – it was pretty much all NTL customers in Leeds, York, Harrogate, Middlesborough and Huddersfield. NTL suffered a rather large network failure last night at around 8 pm. My internet did not come back on until 12 noon today which was mighty annoying.

Last night I actually got some guides written for World of Warcraft just because I was unable to play ;). I was about to do a trade with someone when I was disconnected from the server. Although I have managed to grag myself away from the game this afternoon to do a little work.

There is a reason why I managed to drag myself of WoW actually and it isn’t will power. It is the fact that my character will be wiped when the game officially launches. So it feels a little pointless. When it launches next Friday though I will be once again totally addicted to the game :D.

I also need to catch up with my daily news sites as due to the downtime yesterday I was unable to post anything. I will probably just back date the stories though as it isn’t my fault if my connection went down. It did suck badly though.

Ok so I finally got my call from Warner Brothers. He was a really nice guy actually, maybe it is just the American accent but anyways basically the problem was as expected, confusion between my site and the official site.

Being the nice guy I am, I said I would change the site name which is why the site is now entitled The OC Perspective. That is of small importance compared to what is currently consuming my life however – Blizzard Entertainment‘s World of Warcraft is slowly taking hold of me and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

This game is so awesome! I was up at 6 am playing it this morning excluding taking time out for a few school engagements and early this morning taking some time out to fail a 3rd driving test, I have been playing all day. So long doing the work I needed to do.

It was worth it though I am already a level 7 and am approaching level 8. I also started tailoring and got up to about level 15 on that, what I really want to get up to though is being able to make bags. I need to be level 30 or something to do that though and my recipies need leather now. I might become a skinner.

There is no doubt that I shall be writing more on this subject but I really am so busy playing the game I don’t know when. I haven’t been back to Buffy Talk for ages and that is like my online home. Once I get past the first mad addiction however, I should have more free time.

So basically, I was sat at home at around 2 pm finishing my lunch before I had to head back to school. Then I got thinking. How could I have an hour less that ends at 2:50. There is only 40 minutes considering that my lesson does not start for another ten minutes.

Then something occurred to me. My lesson starts at ten to not ten past ;). Ok, I was a little freaked that this happened although what freaked me out more was the fact that when I got there everyone was sat down and working. James doesn’t usually turn up anywhere near on time.

I had a post to make which I was thinking about earlier. It might have been about the above event to be honest. But anyway to fill you in, I’m sitting around waiting at the moment. I am downloading the World of Warcraft beta which should finish in a few hours (it is 93% done now).

That said I need to do some DVD burning before then to clear space on my hard drive. I am stuck to using MSN Messenger at the moment as I don’t want to have to load Trillian while I have the download taking up so much memory. There is therefore a lot of killing time on various websites – like Nerd Federation ;).

I am also waiting for my phone call which I am hoping will come today and end the waiting. Then tomorrow I have another driving test so I have to be ready by 8:37 for that. That said though that is about the time I normally leave for school. Oh and I need to remember to take my lucky troll.

I decided that I should perhaps install Opera to check my site compatibility in other browsers. I already test in Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 6, as well as Internet Explorer 5.0 when I have the chance at school but hey, there is always room for more testing.

Google Ads look a little weird as they have underlines on the Served by Google Ads although other than that sites like Fallen Nation and Erica Planet which use tables as well as CSS still look fine. Celeb State has a few problems with the CSS though and Gamer Forge will look the same I guess.

The search box isn’t perfect but looks cool and the scroll bars in the selectable menus look good. However those boxes, like IE do not support transparent backgrounds which sucks. Opera doesn’t seem to be too cool with defining margins in CSS with spaces round various places on different pages.

This margin thing is causing some real problems actually, on my Anthony Stewart Head fan site, it pushes the big container div right and over the background. Ok it doesn’t look too bad but still, what is up with this margin thing?

As for the Opera browser itself, I am not too keen on it. There is a lot of clutter ever after I took out one of the bars which the Amazon search on it. I might try removing more but there is also adverts. And I have finally gotten used to the shortcuts in Firefox but none of them seem to work in Opera.

Where is Control + L to get to my location bar? Why does Control + T to open up a new tab bring up a box with my favourites in? Ok I realise why but I think standardising shortcut keys would be better. It does look really cool though ;).

Well it is Sunday night. I still haven’t had my phone call from the WB although there is still another hour and a half to go. As expected look like I will be getting it early in the week though. As for the weekend it hasn’t been that productive, I got some stuff done but when I thought about it, it just seemed to disappear.

I have another driving test Tuesday and you know what they said – 4th time lucky. As it happens this is my 3rd test but I was to give myself a little bit of room in case I mess up again so I’m sticking with 4th time lucky. I am thinking about taking my troll as my Buddha does not seem to be filled with luck at the moment.

That is actually true of my exams. The only I thought went best was my media exam which I actually forgot my Buddha. The other two exams I had I did ok in but no brilliant. Well that is just my opinion as I don’t actually get my results until March. I am actually quite interested to see what I got. I actually need good greats now if I want to get into Leeds University.

I actually have another open day coming up at Leeds although I think it is going to distract me from playing World of Warcraft. I signed up the beta program and am currently downloading although I have been since Friday and am only 46% done. It is one big download.

Well there is World of Warcraft but anyway, I was thinking – I need some direction. What projects should I be moving on to? At the moment I am pretty busy doing various things and random jobs but I have some time coming up and I need to use the time wisely. Or maybe just eating a lot and lie around all day.

One of my possibilities is to get back to work on Authority Forums. It is a website where you can pick a topic such as Buffy or One Tree Hill (those are the demo topics I am currently using) and find the biggest forums on that topic. I will definitely have that marked as for work.

Content is also an important strain on time. I need to write some new reviews for Gamer Forge and more stories for Worfolk News. Plus there are always sites to finish off, Worfolk Creative is in need of some work to finish it off too.

Plus I also wanted to make a top list site for online games (massive multiplayer browser based games) such as Black Nova Traders, Paranormal Deathmatch, World at War, etc. That is another script that calls on my time.

Don’t get me wrong, I do have a lot to do. I simply need to channel it into specific categories I guess. The ones I am going to focus on I think will be Authority Forums and the online games top list.