ESRI – Tweet4Trees Sponsor
Our second Tweet4Trees sponsor is our friends over at ESRI. Our Tweet4Trees campaign is part of our fourth anniversary celebration and is a pledge to recognize our listeners and readers by donating to tree planting charities based on the number of twitter followers we have as of our 4th anniversary episode on July 15. It is also a pledge to support the environment where we can. ESRI has clearly shown their support for environmental change over the years in numerous ways including support for the Society for Conservation GIS, recognition of the Green Belt Movement, this year’s ESRI International User Conference keynote by Willie Smits entitled “Designs for the Environment: Rebuilding Forests”. These are just a few of the ways ESRI has supported awareness of the environment.
Since 1969, ESRI® has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world’s mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.
While we most often focus on ESRI’s software on the podcast and blog, they offer a wealth of options including training, professional services, enterprise support, customization, and others to support end-user needs. These services are conducted and supported by a group of great folks as we have found out over the last few years in interviews and conversations with ESRI employees.
We would like to thank ESRI for supporting our Tweet4Trees campaign and for helping us to make it to four years.
Plane Crash in Indian Ocean
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A Yemeni airliner with 150 people on board has crashed in the Indian Ocean near the Comoros archipelago. "We don’t know if there are any survivors," Comoros vice-president Idi Nadhoim told Reuters news agency. The Airbus 310 was operated by the Yemeni state carrier Yemenia Air. The details of the flight are not known. However reports say there was a flight from Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, due about 0230 (0030 BST). That flight was a connecting flight from Paris. The three islands of Comoros are about 300km (190 miles) northwest of Madagascar in the Mozambique channel. The exact location of the crash was not immediately known. But a civil aviation official told the BBC that the plane was probably a few kilometres from the airport in the capital, Moroni, when it crashed. Weather conditions had not been good for several days, he added. A resident near the airport told the BBC about 100 people were trying to get into the airport to find out more information, but without much success. On 1 June an Air France Airbus 330 travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris plunged into the Atlantic, killing all 228 people on board. The cause of that crash has not been identified. |
RECENT AIR CRASHES
1 June: An Air France Airbus plane travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappears in the Atlantic with 228 people on board
12 February: A passenger plane crashes into a house in Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground
8 February: A passenger plane crashes into a river in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, killing 24 people, most of whom were from the same family
So, yeah.. looks like that guy who landed the plane in the Hudson River needs to spread his knowledge to others in his profession. I’m sure the airliners are loving all this negative attention when travel is already at a low.
People be dyin’ fo real.
Spiritual Guidance: Tier 9 healing bonuses
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new UI and addons blog for WoW. A brief look at the tier 9 sets and the origins of those who it is named after: Velen and Zabra Hexx.
We’re getting more news as the weeks go by. Last week, tier 9 information was released. As some of you may know, the upcoming Crusader’s Coliseum is slated to drop tier 9 items. All classes are getting three levels of the latest tier. I’m assuming one set drops from normal (10-man), heroic (25-man), and heroic hard mode.
Continue reading Spiritual Guidance: Tier 9 healing bonuses
Filed under: Priest, Raiding, Lore, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Spiritual Guidance: Tier 9 healing bonuses originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Patch 3.2 PTR Tier 9 reawakens faction pride and… homogeneity?
When Blizzard announced that the new Tier 9 sets with Patch 3.2 would be faction-specific, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who thought how awesome that would be. It would mark the first time tier sets would be themed to a faction. It was something many players had been asking for. But as the saying goes, “be careful what you wish for…” In this case, players such as myself are actually going to see the return of faction-specific armor except that there’s one niggling detail we’d forgotten about the first faction-specific gear sets (Level 60 PvP) — they were armor class-based.
That’s right. As wonderful as many players thought those faction-specific armor sets were, they were actually somewhat homogenous in that classes that shared the same armor type (i.e., cloth, leather, plate) had the same models. Apparently this is Blizzard’s philosophy with armor set design: either the class sets are faction-neutral but look distinct from each other or they are faction-specific but look the same across armor class. The only time Blizzard broke from tradition was with the much-maligned Sunwell Plateau gear which was both faction-neutral and shared a look across armor class. It felt lazy.
Continue reading Patch 3.2 PTR Tier 9 reawakens faction pride and… homogeneity?
Filed under: Patches, Items, Analysis / Opinion
Patch 3.2 PTR Tier 9 reawakens faction pride and… homogeneity? originally appeared on WoW.com on Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Photo’s from Disneyland
Glad to be home, next stop Las Vegas twice for work.
A VerySpatial Podcast – Episode 206
A VerySpatial Podcast
Shownotes – Episode 206
June 28, 2009
Main Topic: Our conversation with Drew Davidson of Carnegie Mellon University’s ETC
Click for the detailed shownotes
Music
News
- National Applications Office Closes before it Opens
- First American Spatial Solutions Unveils First-Ever Comprehensive National Cadastre layer
- PopSci(Popular Science Magazine) does Augmented Reality
- Software
- –OSM in CarbonTools Pro
- –OpenLayers 2.8
- –ArcGIS 9.3.1 Desktop Download Layer Package Patch
- Spatial Analysis Online
- This week we feature our conversation with Drew Davidson, Director of ETC Pittsburgh, from the 2009 Game Education Summit
- GeoPrinter
Web Corner
Main topic
Tip of the Week
Events
- GeoNorth 2009: 4-6 August, Fairbanks, AK
- Crime Mapping: 19-22 August, New Orleans, LA
- GeoImaging User Group Conference 2009: 28-29 September, St. Anne’s College, Oxford, UK
- AfricaGIS 2009: 26-29 October, Kampala, Uganda
This week A Very Spatial Podcast is sponsored by ESRI.
This year the ESRI International User Conference is more social than ever! Be a part of the conversation by following along on Twitter at twitter.com/esriuc. You can also join the community on Facebook at the Official ESRI UC page. To learn more about the ESRI International User Conference visit www.esri.com/uc.
Great Wow NPC quotes（humans）, which is your favourite one?
Human Male -"Cover for me. I gotta whiz behind a tree"
Human Male -"So, an Orc walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. The bartender says "Hey, where’d you get that?" The parrot says, "Durotar. They got’em all over the place."
Human Male -"A duck walked into an apothecary and he said, "Give me some chapstick, and put it on my bill"
Human Male -"How does a Tauren hide in a cherry tree? He pains his hooves red."
Human Male -"A guy walked up to me and said, "Im a tee pee, Im a Wigwam, Im a tee pee, Im a Wigwam." I said, "relax man, your too tense!"
Human Male -"So, I have this idea for a great movie. It’s about two Gnomes who find a bracelet of power, and they have to take it to the Burning Steppes and cast it into the Cauldron. Along the way, they’re trailed by a murloc named Gottom who’s obsessed with the bracelet and the nine bracelet bogeymen. It could be a three parter called "Ruler of the Bracelet". The first part would be called "The Brotherhood of the Bracelet", followed by "A Couple of Towers", with the climactic ending called "Hey, the King’s back".
Human Female -"Why does everyone automatically assume I know tailoring and cooking?"
Human Female -"Do you ever feel like you’re not in charge of your own destiny, like…you’re being controlled by an invisible hand."
Human Female -"Sometimes, I have trouble controling the volume OF MY VOICE!"
Human Female -"I like to fart in the tub."
Human Female -"Westfall makes my ass itch."
Human Female -"Me and my girlfriends exchange clothes all the time, we’re all the same size."
Human Female -"I can’t find anywhere to get my nails done."
Human Female -"I can’t wait till this quest is done and I can look for another Garibaldi artifact."
Please wait for more…….this is only about humans.
Great Wow NPC quotes（humans）, which is your favourite one?
Human Male -"Cover for me. I gotta whiz behind a tree"
Human Male -"So, an Orc walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. The bartender says "Hey, where’d you get that?" The parrot says, "Durotar. They got’em all over the place."
Human Male -"A duck walked into an apothecary and he said, "Give me some chapstick, and put it on my bill"
Human Male -"How does a Tauren hide in a cherry tree? He pains his hooves red."
Human Male -"A guy walked up to me and said, "Im a tee pee, Im a Wigwam, Im a tee pee, Im a Wigwam." I said, "relax man, your too tense!"
Human Male -"So, I have this idea for a great movie. It’s about two Gnomes who find a bracelet of power, and they have to take it to the Burning Steppes and cast it into the Cauldron. Along the way, they’re trailed by a murloc named Gottom who’s obsessed with the bracelet and the nine bracelet bogeymen. It could be a three parter called "Ruler of the Bracelet". The first part would be called "The Brotherhood of the Bracelet", followed by "A Couple of Towers", with the climactic ending called "Hey, the King’s back".
Human Female -"Why does everyone automatically assume I know tailoring and cooking?"
Human Female -"Do you ever feel like you’re not in charge of your own destiny, like…you’re being controlled by an invisible hand."
Human Female -"Sometimes, I have trouble controling the volume OF MY VOICE!"
Human Female -"I like to fart in the tub."
Human Female -"Westfall makes my ass itch."
Human Female -"Me and my girlfriends exchange clothes all the time, we’re all the same size."
Human Female -"I can’t find anywhere to get my nails done."
Human Female -"I can’t wait till this quest is done and I can look for another Garibaldi artifact."
Please wait for more…….this is only about humans.
The Monster Within: A Move Marathon
The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)
Altered States (Ken Russell, 1980)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)
Species (Roger Donaldson, 1995)
I’ve never seen any of these before. I threw Species on there just cause. I imagine it’ll be something of a guilty pleasure. Heck, maybe not. Look at that cast! Two, count ‘em TWO, academy award winners 
I’ll go in order top to bottom.
Review: Munchkin
Ever since I first went away to school and got broadband, I’ve read quite a few webcomics. One of the regulars in my rotation is still Dork Tower by John Kovalic. One thing led to another, and during my Livejournal craze of the first couple years of the 21st century, I added his feed to my friends list. What does all this have to do with Steve Jackson Games’ Munchkin? Well, John is the artist for all of the images in the Munchkin games, and he would update his progress in his blog entries. For the longest time, the game was on my list to pick up, but I never really remembered it when I had the opportunity to buy it. Last year, as mentioned on my personal blog, I finally picked it up. After several game nights featuring only Munchkin games, I feel confident saying that it is one of my favorite games of all time.
COMPONENTS
One of the most interesting features of the core game is its simplicity. I don’t mean that it’s too easy to play, or that it poses no mental challenge, but that the game materials themselves are not unnecessarily complex. The edition that I purchased comes with two sets of cards (Doors and Treasures), an instruction book, and a single die. That’s all that it takes to form one of the most enthralling game experiences of my board game history. The die is just a standard d6, but the cards and the instruction manual are really what stand out.
RULES
Wait – the instruction manual? That’s right, the manual is terrific. It is written very much tongue-in-cheek, with lines like “Any other disputes should be settled by loud arguments among the players, with the owner of the game having the last word” (Munchkin official rules).
The cards are the gem of this board game. Kovalic did (and does) an amazing job illustrating the cards in a way that makes them informative while hilarious. Each card is unique because even similar cards (such as class cards) are differentiated by gender or some other marker. Some of the curses and such have had my group laughing hysterically.
DIFFICULTY
Munchkin was designed specifically to bring the RPG style gameplay to an audience not necessarily familiar or comfortable with that style. Because of this, the game strives to make all situations in game fathomable and straightforward. It took my group only a couple of complete rounds to grasp it enough for gameplay actions to be second nature and strategy to become a factor.
FUN FACTOR
A large amount of the enjoyment we pull out of playing Munchkin is derived from how crazy and excited we can get while playing. As far as my group is concerned, this is not a game to be played quietly. One of my cousins was a thief and was constantly yelling out ‘”BACKSTAB!” to everyone (even if he wasn’t capable of doing it at that time), and on another round a different player tried to play two Warrior class cards on himself, prompting a stream of double class jokes for a few nights afterward.
OVERALL
Especially considering the low cost of the core game, Munchkin is an overwhelming winner in my book. The expansions are not needed to have fun playing this game, but I intend to at least pick up some of them. Even with just the original set, the game varies enough through turn order, luck of the draw, and crazy item swiping and trading that the replay value is huge.
