Earlier this year, near the end of Summer (September of 2009) I went out to Lake Pleasant with my kayak and my photo gear. I paddled out to the middle of the lake and sat in the muffling sounds of a 15 knot wind, water slapping against the side of my kayak and I heard the SCREECH of a familiar friend, a Desert Nesting Bald Eagle.

I had 30 lbs of camera equipment, sitting between my knees. I paddled hard,  trying my best to track straight as waves easily washed over the bow of my kayak. I looked up to see the eagle flying by with a wide mouthed bass in its talons. It was easily the biggest Bass I’ve seen snagged by any fisherman in my 3 years here in Arizona.  As it flew by me, headed for a large rock formation, I  paddle aggressively towards the same shore as a 28′ bayliner zoomed past me and exploding the already rough water around me. It seems that even here in the middle of a water world I can’t escape the combustion engine.

From my kayak, I snapped nearly 150 photos and was fortunate to witness some 35 Black Headed vultures and Turkey Vultures all descending in formation and surrounding this feeding king of the sky and warrior hunter of  water.

When I finally made it to the 10 foot rock face, I tied my kayak off and slung my lens and camera across my back and in my flip flops, scaled to the top of the rock. I had arrived just  in time to capture this Eagle surrounded by the scavenging Vultures.

A wild Bald Eagles Screech brings chills to any observers soul. It speaks a language we all comprehend,  though we can’t exactly translate it.    Then I shot this photo.

I feel this is my purpose for living here in the desert. There are between than 125-175 Desert Nesting Bald Eagles throughout the entire United States. 98% of whom all reside in Arizona. Unlike other Bald Eagles, these birds DO NOT migrate. They’re measurably smaller and have differing patterns of behavior to their cousins spread throughout the rest of North America.  They’ve been listed as an Endangered Species and are in a fight for their survival. No other species of Bald Eagle nests in such high heat and low humidity. It also suffers the highest mortality rate of any nesting species. There are thought to be only a few dozen breeding pairs left on Earth. All of which live in Arizona.*

If anyone would like to make a donation to my efforts, please feel free to contact me at kayaksurfer25@yahoo.com. I hope to release a book this year with some of the incredible images and stories from other observers. I hope to raise support for their protection and preservation through my photography.

for more information on the Desert Nesting Bald Eagle please check out the following link

* http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/birds/desert_nesting_bald_eagle/index.html

These fab images are for L’Officiel Brazil’s Winter issue and feature Lydia Hears who looks stunning in this pin-up/princess gone bad style shoot. I love the styling so feminine and enchanting it’s something different from what I usually go for. Oh and I love the last shot, imagine a princess doing that Naughty Naughty lol.

Styling: Mia Morgan

Photography By: Gomillion & Leupold

IMG|SOURCE: FGR

]]> http://i4aperture.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/i-love-the-holidays/ Thu, 17 Dec 2009 04:31:08 +0000 i4aperture http://i4aperture.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/i-love-the-holidays/

….nobody around me likes the holidays…..

And just in case anyone doesn’t know this.. I’ve taken all the photos on this photo journal- DJ Cordero

Enchanters in WoW have it great. They provide a service that is required by every single raider – one enchant on each item, replaced every time an item is replaced. And they also have the sole means of producing their own raw materials. So if you want to buy an enchantment, you have two choices:

- Either buy it direct from an enchanter or buy the scroll of enchantment from the auction house

- Buy raw materials from an an enchanter/auction house, and pay someone to make the enchant with them

This is the only profession in WoW which is the sole supplier of both raw materials and finished items. A lot of people level enchanting on an alt and use it solely to break down unwanted items into materials to sell. (I have an alt enchanter, so I’m not just complaining about being cut out of this market because I’m not.) Because enchanters hold the monopoly on disenchanting, groups often ask them (if there is one in the group) to disenchant unwanted bind-0n-pickup items which turns them into materials that can be rolled for and traded.

The big problem with enchanting is that so many of the potential raw goods are wasted. Every time someone sells an unwanted green drop to the vendor, it’s a waste of enchanting material. Every time an enchanter in a group doesn’t disenchant unwanted blue drops, it’s a waste of enchanting material. You don’t see this so much with ore, herbs, leather, and cloth. If people gather or collect those and don’t need them, they get sold on the auction house.

But try selling unwanted green items on the auction house? No one buys. Enchanters have cheaper ways to acquire dust which usually involve finding something that is cheap to craft , then making a ton and disenchanting them. It might be that they’d buy green items if the profit margin was large enough, but actually vendors are happy to pay a few gold for the items too, and they’re expensive to list. (Unlike enchanting materials, which you can list on the AH for free.)

What this all ends up meaning is that if you aren’t an enchanter, you have no way to gain the full potential from your unwanted magic item (and you will have TONS because they give them out like candy as quest rewards). You’ll still have to pay the enchanter twice, once when you buy the raw materials and again when you pay for the actual finished enchantment.

In patch 3.3, it will be easier for groups to disenchant unwanted drops if there is an enchanter in the group. Enchanters have been unhappy about this because there isn’t even an option to ask the enchanter if they want to do it. If you have someone in your group with that craftskill at a high enough level, then there will be an option to automatically disenchant and distribute the resulting materials when an item drops. (I think it goes need/greed/disenchant.)

The only reason an enchanter might object to this is because they want to keep their monopoly on raw materials and keep the profits high (or because they can’t be bothered, which the new patch will fix). Why else would they let a valuable raw material go to be sold to a vendor because they’re unwilling to disenchant?

But I think this doesn’t go far enough.

Really there should be disenchanting NPCs in the major cities. If people want to cash in their unwanted magical items  for dust, let them do it. And enchanters, like tailors, could simply have the chance to proc extra shards and dust when they do the disenchanting themselves.

That means it would still be worth keeping that disenchanting alt and it would still be profitable to disenchant items yourself. Enchanters would still retain the skill-perk of being able to enchant their rings. But fewer green items would be wasted, the tradeskill would be easier and cheaper to level because there would be more materials around, and non-enchanters wouldn’t get gouged all over the place — it might even encourage more people to buy enchants even if they don’t raid.

Also, like inscription, they should let enchanters trade in current tier dust for lower level dust. That would encourage people to put up more lower level enchants, or make more dust available for people levelling the tradeskill.

Sharing another wallpaper site–never get tired of them!  My favorites include:

(7) Enchanted Forest

(37) Survivor

(38) Distraction

(43) Leaf and Water

(48) A Dark Starry Night Wallpaper

_________________________________________

See all 66 images here.

Warlock Tier 10

This post will be updated as the patch notes are changed.

Well, with patch 3.3 looming ever closer I’ve decided it’s finally time to do a review of the patch notes and take a look at what we can expect, both as Warlocks and in general. Today, we’re going to look at the new features (from a Warlock point of view) that stand out to me as well as anything notable to do with other classes, and tomorrow we’ll examine the actual (much more exciting) Warlock changes themselves in detail. Here we go!

Meeting Stones: To use any Meeting Stone, it is only required that the character’s minimum level be 15. There is no maximum character level requirement for any Meeting Stone.

This is a very useful change for people who want to boost lower level characters, or even for people who previously would have been just slightly too low or high to use the stone when in a normal group and would keep the others waiting. I can also see the meeting stones being used as a method of transportation now – “Hey mister, can you summon me using that stone for two gold?”. At least it might relieve the pressure on us Warlocks to do it!

Area-of-Effect Damage Caps: We’ve redesigned the way area damage is capped when hitting many targets. Instead of a hard cap on total damage done, the game now caps the total damage done at a value equal to the damage the spell would do if it hit 10 targets. In other words, if a spell does 1000 damage to each target, it would hit up to 10 targets for 1000 each, but with more than 10 targets, each target would take 1000 damage divided by the number of targets. 20 targets would be hit for 500 damage each in that example.

This is pretty self-explanatory, but simply put, they’re preventing AoE damage spells from doing too much damage by giving the spells a damage cap. If you’re attacking 10 mobs or less, you’ll see no change from how it works currently, but if you’re attacking more than 10, you’ll only do as much damage as if there were 10, and the damage will be divided equally up between the mobs. I can see why this change is needed – Rain of Fire, for example, does some pretty crazy damage sometimes, and the dps does spiral out of control.

Pet Resilience: All player pets now get 100% of their master’s resilience.

Fantastic change for us! Our pets will be significantly less squishy in PvP now, making them harder to kill and reducing the time we’ll have to spend re-summoning them.

Lay on Hands: This ability will place Forbearance on the paladin if used on his or herself. It will not place Forbearance on others.

This Paladin change is going to be great for those of us who hate fighting them – Forbearance is the debuff which prevents Paladins from using their bubbles or wings, meaning we’ll no longer have to effectively kill one three times since they will need to choose between a bubble and a LoH. So we’re just killing them twice now.

New option – Castable Debuffs: Enabling this will cause only debuffs you have cast on an enemy target to appear.

Really, it depends on how you like your debuffs (read: DoTs) to be displayed, or even if you have them displayed at all, as to how major this change is for you. For those of us who do use the default UI to manage their ticking spells of doom, this change should help quite a bit, because unless you really care as to whether that Warrior has Sundered, you can now turn off all debuffs except your own. They should be much easier to find amongst the many with this change enabled, and indeed they should also show up larger so they’ll be easier to see, too.

New option – Consolidate Buffs: Enabling this adds a buff consolidation box near the mini-map. Very short term buffs (e.g. Replenishment) and very long term buffs (e.g. Prayer of Fortitude) are filtered into the buff box. The icons are stacked here, but they can still be seen by moving the mouse cursor over the buff box. Long term buffs will move out of the box when they are about to expire. Buffs such as important procs (e.g. Art of War, Maelstrom Weapon), cooldowns (e.g. Bloodlust / Heroism, Combustion) or limited in range (e.g. totems and paladin auras) are always displayed.

You’ll never be without your beloved Metamorphosis ever again.

Enchant Weapon – Black Magic: This enchantment now sometimes increases haste rating for the caster rather than inflicting the caster’s target with a damage-over-time effect. It is also now triggered by landing any harmful spell rather than inflicting damage with a spell.

I’m unsure as to the exact nature of this change (how much haste, how often, etc), but I do have a feeling it will be a dps increase for anyone out there using it. Putting another DoT on a target is nice, but it only affects that one creature, and I don’t think it’s affected by your spell power or anything like that. A haste increase will raise your dps against anything that you’re attacking, even if you change targets, and benefits all of your spells.

• Target Effects: When this UI feature is activated, Fear, Silence, Frostbolt, and Hamstring will all now display text over the target’s head indicating what type of effect has been applied.

Nice and easy now to see who you’ve sent screaming in Fear, and who’s still to go.

Warlock T10 2P Bonus – The critical strike chance of your Shadowbolt, Incinerate, and Corruption spells is increased by 5%.

Warlock T10 4P Bonus – Each time your Immolate and Unstable Affliction spells deal periodic damage, you have a 15% chance to gain 12% spell haste for 10 sec.

These are the two set bonuses from the Tier 10 (Icecrown Citadel raid) items. The two piece is nice, with a simple 5% damage boost to all our staple spells for each spec, and the four piece is perhaps aimed more towards Destruction and Affliction Warlocks, with some tasty hasty. However, Demonology specs which use Immolate will still benefit here, and most of them do, so this ain’t a problem. You can see what the set itself looks like at the top of the post, in case you were blind and missed it on the way down.

Overall? I’m pretty happy with all of the above, and I can’t find much to complain about. Let’s hope the same is true of next time, when we examine the fun and exciting Warlock class changes!

Vel.

Hone your gardening and matching skills in this delightful puzzle game. With three gameplay modes, you can collect custom garden upgrades, arrange tiles to match patterns, or kick back and enjoy endless entertainment. Enchanted Gardens lets you create the gardens of your dreams without getting your hands dirty!

3 gameplay modes.

Hundreds of levels.

5 gardens to restore.

System Requirements:

OS: Windows 2000/XP/VISTA

CPU: 600MHz or faster Processor

RAM: 128 MB

It Takes Just A second To Say Thanks,

It Takes Longer To The Work On This.

Enchanted Gardens

Out door furniture mainly consists of Garden Furniture and Picnic Furniture. We can look for a variety of out door fittings know., Teak Patio Furniture, เน Caf Folding Table, Garden Arm Chair, Flip Table, Slide Chair, Sailor Folding Arm Chair, Teak Lounger, Steamer, Serving Tray, Trolley Bar Cart, Round Coffee Table, Dining Bench, Garden Bridge etc. A garden is beautiful and done only because the flowers and plants, but also by the garden เน d cor. Needless to say, apart from beautiful rose flowers your garden needs some garden d cor เน! Picture a fountain, sundial, or other piece of the garden d cor เน mixing among your flowers. Garden furniture sets are both comfortable and stylish. A set of rustic furniture, a modern set, or any other style garden make a living. When we speak of garden furniture, maybe we can finally choose Teak Furniture for durability and style. Teak Furniture are legendary weather resistance and also brings peace of mind. Now you can imagine how it would be to relax on one of the swings and gliders watching the sun below the horizon, sipping a cup of tea, chat with friends, reading a book. Certainly it is a pleasure to sit and relax on the porch swings and gliders.

Teak wood is expensive and often called Timeless Teak. Regardless of the ages, is a traditional teak wood. When we talk about the quality of teak we remember Burma teak was discovered by the Royal Botanical Society of Naturalists Burma. Teak wood outdoor furniture door is preferred because it is astonishingly stronger than English Oak. It is incredibly durable, virtually impervious to the elements, insects and rot. In combination with a fine grade Burmese teak craftsmanship makes permanent a complete เน Garden D cor. Garden Sand Garden Arches Bridge to a central point to your garden. A garden can also be equipped with picnic tables quality place, such as lawn furniture Top Bench Tables, chairs Adirondack Rocker, etc. A wooden park shelter, Banquet Setup, Avenue Tree Bench adds beauty to a public park or corporate lounge making a public park and live a corporate lounge a wonderful place to relax during rest time or after work schedule.

Quality Hand Crafted shelters, chalets in a park attracts the children to visit the park regularly. Quality garden benches with advanced features and timeless design, the characteristics of a Garden เน D cor. A well-designed Garden Furniture has a hint of modern trends, but retain the character of our cultural background reminiscent. Wood jungle gyms, sandboxes, garden forts, rabbit cages, kennels, bird boxes, nesting boxes, poker tables, snooker tables children, wooden garden lights and many other garden decor make a garden more than a living place.

Each timber unit should be treated and oiled to prolong her life if left outside. Natural colors and themes are dominating the latest in outdoor furniture. Sumptuous halls with waterproof materials, take heart in the outdoor living areas. Walkway light wooden houses built on or lights are used to line a walkway or a driveway to greet the entrance, sidewalk, or door. Garden Arbors with bench to add meeting space that literally can be “grown up” a garden. The sides of the bank giving trellis vineyards and green space that can grow roses. As with most outdoor projects, is the best bower made of Redwood or cedar to withstand weather.

I made the plunge this weekend and dropped Herblism in favor of enchanting.  My two tradeskills are now Inscription and Enchanting. My main reason for changing to enchanting is to obtain the spell power ring enchants.  Also on my realm, Northrend herbs are pretty cheap so buying them to craft is definitely still feasible to make a profit.

I thought it might be interesting to look at each of the crafting skills to get an idea how each may benefit a healer.  I just assumed I would benefit more from enchanting than any other tradeskill.  I should have done this analysis before I made my switch, but oh well.  My goal is to obtain the most spell power possible.

Alchemy - Alchemists are able to make and use Philosopher’s Stones. The healing version is a trinket that adds 59 spell power, 50 haste and increases the mana and health gained from potions by 40%.

There are definitely other trinkets out there that have more spell power on them.  The haste is nice.  The 40% to potions used to be uber before WotLK, but now that you can’t chain potions anymore I’m not sure it’s really that beneficial.  Bottom line is there isn’t enough spell power on this trinket for me to justify switching to Alchemy.

There are also some other alchemy only potions out there, but again I don’t really think these potions are good enough to justify having Alchemy as my dual crafting skill.  The best flask with Mixology provides 47 more spell power over the Frost Wyrm Flask.

Blacksmithing – The best benefit that Blacksmiths get is the ability to add a gem socket to both their bracers and their gloves.  Using the best spell power gem available this translates directly to 46 spell power.  This is the same amount of spell power that the ring enchants from enchanting provide.  Enchanting also has more synergy with my class than Blacksmithing.  So changing to Blacksmithing doesn’t make much sense for me.

Enchanting – The ring enchants add 46 spell power.  Also, enables you to enchant your own gear.  It is also fairly easy to make money from enchanting without a companion tradeskill.

Engineering – Engineering is somewhat hard to compare with the other crafting skills.  You are able to make and use several interesting items, but none of them are large bumps to spell power.

Inscription – A scribes main benefit is the ability to use the inscription only shoulder enchants.  The scribe shoulder enchant gives you 70 Spell power and 6 mp/5.  The enchant is 46 more spell power than the exalted Sons of Hodir enchant, so an added benefit is that you get to skip the reputation work.

Jewelcrafting – Allows you to craft and use 3 Runed Dragon’s Eye gems.  These add up to 48 spell power benefit over using Runed Cardinal Rubies.  This is the highest reliable pure spell power boost that you can get via a crafting skill.

Leatherworking – Leatherworkers are able to enchant bracers with 76 spell power.  This is 46 more than the normal  enchant provides.

There are some very nice leatherwork based armor for resto druids, but most of these are BoE.  So people have this option whether they are Leatherworkers or not.

Tailoring – Allows you to embroider a cloak to provide a chance to gain 295 spell power for 15 seconds while casting a spell.  According to the folks over at EJ, this enchant adds 73.75 spell power at the cost of the 23 haste enchant.

After looking at the data, it appears that in terms of raw spell power my best bet would have been Jewelcrafting and Tailoring.  This combination provides 121 spell power (assuming 25% uptime on the cloak enchant).  My combination provides a constant 92 spell power.  I’m still in the process of raising enchanting to 400 so that I can take advantage of the ring enchants.  I wish I would have performed this analysis beforehand.  I would have probably went with tailoring instead of enchanting.  Once I build my gold supply back to a reasonable level, I may consider changing again.

I had fever, something I used to ignore, but this time it refused to leave me, even after seveal days.
My wife and our neighbours persuade me to approach a doctor in a christian institution, I am not certain whether it was a church, near our quarter at Shirwad, where  a nun doctor examined me and prescribed medicines. She took my bood for testing. I heard her saying : he is very strange; no complaning or grumbling, as if it is nothing, even though he is having high fever.
When my bood test results were shown, she told me to  postpone taking medicines for some days. She collected some plants from their land and told me to grind it into a paste and eat a portion daily and see her on the fourth day. Of course, it had no effect on my blood sugar level, but this very fact that she took so much trouble for me, gives me a strange sense of attachment, now whenever I recall it.
I was nervous. I had seen the plight of many diabetic patients, includig my mother; can I escape  their plight?
Dieting reduced my body fat which was very high. I looked like a stand on which my skin is hung.
Pichai, my officer, advised me to try “diabetic tea”, a very bitter soup, obtained by boiling a special tea for ten minutes. So I stoppped medicines. When this tea became difficult to get, I stopped taking rice and depended on eggs, morning, noon and evening, with plenty of vegetables, milk and curd. Now I use soyabean regularly, reducing eggs to six in a day. My blood sugar remans aroung 200 units.
In that nun doctor’s hospital, I noticed something which impressed me. The hearth of the kitchen was outside, to avoid the nuisance of smoke.The boiler is connected to the stove, heated by the steam. Why  not try it in houses, where plenty of wood fuel is available?
When we settled at CS puram village, we thought that it was the end of our journey, as far as physical movemwnt is concerned.
It was the first time we had a home of our own, it was in my wife’s name and she felt contended and happy. In our system, the first time a bride is ceremoniously received at the groom’s home, is called kudiveppu. She never had it because we had no home.
My philosophy was, and still is, that constructing a home is meaningless in the industrialised society, because our life depends on a job, unlike in an agricutural society, where we are bound to the land  we  own. In our society, it is very rare that a girl is given in marriage to a homeless boy.
After constructing a boundary wall in the rear, and making some alterations inside the house to make it airy, we had exhausted whatever savings we had; and spent the days, taking bath in the river, going to the three temples, one of Guruvayurappan at the west end of the village, consisting of two rows of houses, separated by a wide avenue, Ganesh temple at the east end and a very old Shiva temple, a little away, further east, where the settlement ends and rice fields begin.

 My morning walks were exploratory, enjoying the pure air, there being no industry within a distance of ten miles, crossing the river and experiencing the view from the oposite bank, when the village look enchanting. Ideal for weaving a love story, romantic and ending in happy marriage!
There was a festival almost every month. The people in the village, all brahmins (no admission for others) depending on money coming from Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi, in that order, having to do nothing else but watch any new face coming along, for which pastime, a suitable veranda, from one end to the other, is availablle, are eager to have  any activity involving a good meal,which the festivals provide.

The temples are owned by all those who have ownership of the houses in the village.

Whatever our need, mention it to the man or woman next door, and a solution will be found ! Very good for new comers.

OK i probably have something better to do but now im here again,

Now i update, but in  a while i maybe dosent post any more so enjoy it now.

This link you should see, Alison

That series of photos makes my heart hurt, still i think it can be good, or? I love that his way of following his daughter growing up is with these ‘non political’ pictures of her smoking, shaving her hair of and all other things that she had to deal with gowing up.

Radcliffs own words about his photographs of Alison:

The significance of these pictures emerges in retrospect. I realize as I look at them, that I created a visual life story of Alison, capturing moments in her metamorphosis from infant to woman-her relationships with friends, her rebellion, and underlying it all, her relationship with me, a constant throughout her life. I wanted to photograph her in all her extremes, and to be part of these times in her life without judging or censoring. Only in this way would I have a true portrait of Alison.

As i watch this serie of photos Pitcard from The Man Behind C flows around in my head.

I have added descriptions of the various types of magical sciences to the wiki.

Arts and Sciences

We followed the road out of Phoenix to an historic town named Miami, Arizona. After winding through deserts, mountains, canyons, bridges and tunnels we happened upon the curious looking town. Miami is Mining country. The city seemed cocooned by the walls of worn, stripped mountains and rolling hills. Its streets lined with obvious architectural treasures awaiting their time for revitalization. Miami has evidence of a once vibrant past. Worn from the toils of growth.. its now resting in this cocoon…metamorphosing the old and patiently awaiting a new Spring to emerge.

When we first received word that the Abyssal Shatter enchanting spell would be coming to the game we asked our resident enchanting expert if she would be interested in conducting some testing on the ability. She was keen on the idea so we sent a whole bunch of gold over and told her to get busy. A week later, when we hadn’t heard from her, we realized she took this to mean ‘free shopping spree’ and not ‘collect Abyss Crystals’ so we gave her more specific instructions and yet more gold with which to buy up inexpensive Crystals. Shortly after the Abyssal Shatter ability went live we had our results (and she still had her motorcycle). At any rate, the following are the results of our tests.

This chart shows the results of each shatter (click it for larger image)

Detailed Results

Number of Crystals Shattered: 128
Cosmic Essence Returned: 89
Infinite Dust Returned: 39
Percent Chance to Receive Essence: 69.53%
Percent Chance to Receive Dust: 30.47%

Cosmic Essence Results

Lowest Amount Received: 1
Highest Amount Received: 6
Average Amount Received: 2.99
Total Amount Collected: 266

Infinite Dust Results

Lowest Amount Received: 7
Highest Amount Received: 19
Average Amount Received: 9.79
Total Amount Collected: 382

We hope you find this information useful for your own enchanting purposes. Please note that all published results are from live servers and not test realms.

Ok, Diary, so I am sure you have probably already noticed I am a rather inquisitive creature… so much so that perhaps I’m sure I come off a bit “noobish” at times… and for that I apologize   I have been playing a rogue my whole “WoW-life” and I am not going to lie and say I’m uberleet and know everything there is to know about the class.

To be completely honest, this blog was created as a way to chronicle my journey to learn to play my class better… to pass from “newbie” to “knowledgable” in all things rogue.

I feel, however, that in some aspects of the game, I have excelled naturally.  Making gold, for example, has never been an issue for me.  In real-life, I am not the richest person monetarily, so I find it appealing to be able to have an abundance of gold in this fantasy world we play in… not only for my own personal advancement, but to be able to give to other people/guildies.

I play the AH.  I feel I play it pretty well; through alot of trial and error, plus a working knowledge of the needs of a WoW community, I have been able to amass enormous amounts of gold, (I don’t feel I need to indicate HOW MUCH, needless to say I can pay for whatever I truly need in the game).  This isn’t a secret, nor is it something I am SELLING LOL.

Just thought, today, as a change, I would give a few tips to anyone serious about making money through the WoW Auction House.  Again, this is all just trial and error knowledge I have gained.  Enjoy !

—————-

#1 - People are LAZY – People would rather pay a premium to buy mats/recipies for leveling than to go and get them themselves.  (See altaholicism).  An example of this is a level 55 jewelcrafting recipe that is available for purchase from a vendor in Eastern Plaguelands.  I happen to be up in that area pretty consistently while I was running Stratholme for Runecloth, (rep).  I buy the recipe for like 50s every hour or so, (limited supply), can turn around and sell it on my server’s AH for about 5g… that is a heck of a profit margin, and that is just ONE example.

#2 – People are UNINFORMED – The mass majority of people who post things on AH probably don’t know how much something is really worth… but rather just post something similar to what other items are selling for… the problem with this is the market, (like any real-life market), can fluctuate wildly depending on the time of day, day of week, and other factors such as patch releases and downtime.   Being aware of an items true worth is the first step in making money on the AH.

#3 – People are IMPATIENT – goes along with people being uninformed… people are impatient.  Buying low and selling high is a staple of any investment plan… however people usually just want a quick sell… which causes a profit opportunity to anyone willing to wait out a glutted market.

#4 – People like OPTIONS – just like convenience stores vs. bulk stores, some people like to buy full stacks of materials, vs. other people who have limited amounts of funds and/or smaller needs for said materials…  when it comes to almost all markets within WoW, there are two sub-markets… the full-stack market and the short-stack market.  Looking at a trade-material market, for example, usually shows a market that has either one or both markets being unserved… if there is a ton of 20 stacks being loaded into AH at lower than competitive prices, look to make sure of what the average price is for shorter stack sizes, (i.e. 1, 5, and 10 stacks)… depending on the market, you can usually charger a higher price for short-stacks at a cost of a longer flip, (i.e. a profit).

#5 - People are ILL-PREPARED – most people who use the AH are looking for a short-term, short-sighted profit, and not really looking to make long-term goals for wealth accumulation.  Investing some time and energy into things such as addons, leveling guides, and progression mats, can make all the difference in finding and capitalizing on big deals.

Find below my list of my top 5 things to sell for profit on AH, vs. my bottom 5 things to avoid like the plague.  Again, this is all must IMHO

Top 5

#5 -Reputation Items – You have to be careful with this one, because some types of reputation grinding, (ie. Sporeggar) is not as easy to sell as, say, Hodir reputation… (btw.  Relics of Ulduar is probably my number one selling item on most days… people are desperate to get exalted for the shoulder enchant there… )

#4 -Enchanting Materials – you can focus on one or both types of markets, the leveling market, (read, mid-level, such as Greater Nether, Small and Large Brilliant Shards), or high-level, such as Cosmic Essences and Abyss Crystals.  Stay away from lower level mats as their profit margins are low and they are easier to come by.

#3 – Milling Goods – (i.e herbs)…  a flavor of the month type of skill set… many are taking their alts higher up into the Inscription tradeset, causing a need for many mid-level herbs, (i.e. netherbloom, briarthorn, mageroyal)… avoid lower and higher level herbs as they are easier to come by, (ie. lower levels are easier to pick, higher levels are easier to glut into the market).

#2 -Basic Trade Goods – (i.e. leathers, clothes, herbs, ores and bars) this is the majority of where I do my business… remember to fill both short and full stack markets and wait for a good loading time, (i.e. early in the weekend, during the week as necessary)

#1 – Middle Level Gems – (i.e. Citrine, Blue Sapphires, Star Rubies, Large Opals, etc)… due to the resurgence of jewelcrafting, many are either respecing their mains or skilling up their alts… there is a level of ignorance with these mid-level gems, (i.e. before Lich King, Citrine was lucky to sell for 1g a piece… now it easily sells for 11g on our server)… while a bit hard to come by, you will feel like you hit a homerun everytime you find these as they sell very quickly and almost always grab top-dollar.

Bottom 5

#5 -  Top Level Gear -  dabbling in level 80 gear has been, in my experience a “break-even” type of market in that the number of options available for purchase at lvl 80 is fairly limited due to progression available gear, as well as subject to the leveling of different tradeskills, (i.e. Blacksmithing, Leather-Working).  It is hard to corner a market that has a very select group buying and a very large group selling.

#4 – Pets – some people swear by pet selling… and there is SOME gold there as long as you are willing to farm the pets and are also willing to undercut the competition… I hate farming pets, so UNLESS I find a CRAZY deal on a pet, I generally stay away from these.  Sure, there are tons of people out there collecting these, but at the prohibitive cost of most of these, the buying is sporadic and slow at best, backing up the market… glut causes lower prices, increasing your chances of losing your profit margin in repeat AH postings.

#3 – Glyphs - there are a TON of glyphs being sold online… cheap and available… but the problem here is the market is SO glutted right now with these types of articles it is nearly impossible to make any type of flip profit on the straight glyphs, (there are some that tell me that Inscribers can make a profit on these… however as a buy/sell flipper, I avoid these unless I find a CRAZY deal.

#2 – Quest Items – again, we are talking about a VERY limited number of players that would even NEED this type of item at any given time.  Given the almost universal availability of quest items NEARBY a quest hub, running to a AH to pick up something laying on the group nearby is ridiculous and a sure-fire way to lose money… not to be confused with reputation items, (see above #5).

#1 – Leveling Gear – unless you have an Enchanter you are trying to level, stay away from speculative buying of gear under level 80… gear is so specific to each class, so you are limited WHO would be interested in a specific piece of gear… PLUS quest rewards usually are better than anything available through AH, and is “free” considering you are willing to put time into doing the quest, which most people are since you are LEVELING anyways…. PLUS leveling has become much faster nowadays, meaning that while people are needing to upgrade gear more often, they are less apt to spend top-dollar on gear that is going to be replaced in the next few days.

That’s all I’ll write about today… someday in the future I will write how I spend 30 – 60 minutes a day and make nearly 10 times as much as I could earn doing dailies during that timeframe.  Keep trying and learning from your AH mistakes, and you’ll be an AH banker pimp in no time

Until next time,

/stab

ENCHANTS, REAL ENERGY FOR PIXILATED MEN!

Priest, the only reason I tolerate you is due to your steady supply of gear enhancement via shards. Now make yourself useful and cook me raid food, okay?…

Class, we are Death Knights, we run around with armor made of the hardest metals, and laugh in the face of doom. Last time we talked about what to gem with in our one Red Socket we should be using, so how about we stay on that topic of gear enhancement? Yes, everyone’s favorite thing to do after they get a new piece of loot, go give a damn squishy money to enhance your gear!

There are 5 slots of gear that we have to worry about getting an enchant on, those being the Chest, Cloak, Bracers, Gloves, and Boots. For every other Tank you would have to count their various weaponry, but we get “free enchants” to those because Blizz loves us. It’s the least they could do when they ship us off to be devoured by various bosses!

As with Death Knight Tanking, there are various options for you to choose when enchanting your equipment, of course there are always right and wrong ones. As in, if you enchant for spell power, you are doing it very wrong. Obviously one must still be aware, but hopefully today it will become a sixth sense as to what enchants you should be using as a Death Knight Tank.

Munchy, I think that Gnome in the back is already lost, ’tis a shame Timmy, you were SUCH a great learner. Yes that was sarcasm, go escort him out boy!

Well, while he goes about his business, how about we actually start the festivities and learn a bit about what we are supposed to be enchanting our gear for.

“Munchy… just want… to play…”
*SPLAT*
“Munchy… broke… Gnome…”

Pet Biscuits, they work on children too!

Cloak: Although we have yet to be able to use these as hoods like a traditional “cloak”, we use these pieces of cloth for making us look like a superhero, as well as increasing some of our Tank stats. There are two options that you could choose to enchant your cloak with, and really it depends on how much Defense Skill you have as to which of the options you will be choosing.

Enchant Cloak- Titanweave is the first you should look at as a Tank. This has 16 Defense Rating on it to contribute to your skill, so for argument’s sake, about 3 Defense Skill. If you take a look at your character sheet under defenses you should see a number next to Defense that is 540, if it is lower than this number use this enchant. Simple, right?

Enchant Cloak- Mighty Armor is your second option you should think about, however only decide upon this if you are over or at the 540 Defense Cap. This contributes a whopping 225 armor to your Death Knight, which honestly, is mediocre to be blunt. Though going a bit too far over the Defense Cap is not a healthy thing either, so in a sense this is the lesser of two evils.

I told you I convinced him to do it!

Chest: Our Chest armor protects one of the most important parts of our body as a Tank. No, not your Heart, your Liver!  Joking aside, the Chest armor you wear is sturdy and hard, made of only the finest metals, so you should enchant it as such! There are two very common enchants, and one that I like to put up here due to a more creative reason.

Enchant Chest- Powerful Stats is your first of the three options you will be presented today, and it is certainly a creative one to use as a Tank. Honestly, it is not recommended to use in my opinion, but it will definitely not hurt you seeing as it increases every stat you have by 10 points. That is 10 more Stamina, 10 more Strength, and 10 more Agility in terms of Tanking, so think of it like this A bit of Health, some more Threat and Parry, and a tiny bit of Armor. Not my personal choice, but it is certainly justifiable if you do pick it.

Enchant Chest- Greater Defense can be compared to our Cloak Equivalent, except it gives about 4.5 Defense Skill. As I said before, you should only take straight up “D” when you honestly need it to be at the cap of 540 Defense Skill, so for a DWer or a new Tank this is your best friend.

Enchant Chest- Super Health is probably the better choice for a Tank that is over the Dcap enough to not need the 4 (and change) Defense Skill. Thankfully there is no math to do here to see exactly how much HP you get, as it tells you right on the tool tip, +275 Health. Yes, I am willing to say as of 3.2.2 it is the best HP enchant for a Death Knight Tank.

See I AM a "Higher Being"!

Bracers: These bad boys go on your wrists, to make a long story short they are like any other piece of your equipment, a fine crafted piece of plate that enhances our ability to Tank. They are generally very small and most of the time not even noticed when we look at ourselves in the mirror and /flex. Rest assured though, they have one of the best enchants to Tank with. Yes, there is only one chance I am even going to bother giving to you as a Tank.

Enchant Bracer- Major Stamina is the best contributor to your Hit Points out of any and all of the enchants we have discussed recently. Though the materials are slightly expensive, it is well worth the gold you spend. A MAJOR amount of Stamina, +40 to be exact, is put onto your gear when you place this on your Bracers. To give you an example of how much HP you get, let us just say a bit over 400 HP without doing much Math. Exactly, I do not even need a decent look at Math to tell you how mandatory this is!

Gloves: Why do you never get a finger slashed off by those damn Feral Defenders in Uld’s Cat Woman fight? Gauntlets, large gauntlets that look stylish and delicious! Generally they force our Bracers to go into hiding, but who do we care? They look and feel so god damn sweet it does not matter if we had to go naked just to wear these! Like the Bracers there is generally one and only one enchant I will use on my gloves, and that is neglecting even the fact that I am an Engineer! Meaning I would rather this over the 850 Armor the tinker gives me!

Enchant Gloves- Armsman is my name, and giving you 2% Threat and 10 Parry is my game. 2% Threat is a decent number if you think about it, whatever you can get as a passive bonus to your Threat output is greeted with open arms. The 10 Parry is not horrible but it certainly is not a make or break sort of deal in my opinion, still it is a great bonus for an already decent Enchant.

And THIS is why I am Leveling Frost...

Boots: Our giant greaves of terror clunk upon the floor like a herd of elephant-people, thus explaining to all of you why we did not get a Stealth ability. My only problem with these things, not including the lack of being sneaky, would be that we can not do a Round-House Kick to Flame Levi as demonstrated in that link there. Here I will link the alternative, but alas only an engineer can think about using this.

“Yo, guys, launch me, I can one-shot this bizznitch!”
“FALCONNNN KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICK”

Enchant Boots- Greater Fortitude is the Enchant that any non-idiotic person would be using on their Boots. The +22 Stam is delicious, trust me it really is very nice! Doing some basic math once again, scaling by 1 Stam = 10 HP we can see that it increases our HP by 220 points, which of course is not bad, it is more than any non-epic gem could do for us. So if you do not want to end up as crazy as yours truly take this and do not look back!

Nitro Boosts if you take a look at the 22 bonus to Crit Rating you will start laughing at me. Obviously it is stupid to cut myself short of 220 HP, BUT not if you use this thing creatively enough. Let us take any boss with an avoidable AOE Nova/Breath of any sort, one that could potentially kill you dead so to speak. How about good ol’ Ony? She Deep Breathes like a pro, she has been doing that trick for 5years now so obviously one hit of this stuff could potentially kill you. Let us say she is deep breathing on the opposite side of you, you are not going to make it, may as well give up right?

“ENERGY LEGS!”, screams a blue blur dashing past you. Yes, that asshole with the blue hair just survived.

Worth the lack of 220 HP, possibly at some points it is. I know I have saved a few raids due to my ability to get in and out of fights easily, but if I was in an actual hardcore raid guild I would obviously need to change to the +22 Stam.

Conclusions: Everything is straight-forward, correct? Exclude the NitroBoosts and we can all say yes it does! Like I said before, a lot of this goes by what YOU need as a Tank, thus why Blizz put a few enchants on a boat sailing to Northrend. And then of course made them beat the livin’ shit outta each other!

Not a bad job today class, even through my ceaseless blabbing you neglected to fidget once. To keep you all oh so excited we will finish up with the rest of our gear enhancement lessons! I promise though, it will be quite a bit easier to grasp!

The Enchanting ability, Abyssal Shatter, was hotfixed onto EU servers this morning.  This ability allows for conversion of Abyss Crystals into either Infinite Dust or Greater Cosmic Essence.  If the spell results are left unchanged, there will be significant economic impact.

• Abyss Crystals will rise in price.
• Infinite Dust will drop in price.
• Greater Cosmic Essence will drop in price.

Shattering crystals requires an enchanting skill of 445 and can reportedly yield as many as 18 dusts or 4 essences.

Prices are already starting to move on EU servers to reflect the above stated changes.  Players on US servers have somewhat of an advantage here in that, since they did not yet receive the hotfix, they have an early warning of the impending change.  US early adapters will be able to play a bit of insider trading and move the markets before they move themselves.

It is worth noting that there will also be some trickle down consequences on related enchantment materials markets such as enchanted vellums and other items that require these materials but this change may require more time to take effect. 

Over the long haul, it would be our expectation that the prices of Infinite Dust, Greater Cosmic Essence and Abyss Crystals will all normalize such that the price of 1 Abyss Crystal, 15-18 Infinite Dust, and 2-3 Greater Cosmic Essence all equal about the same amount.  Until this happens, however, there will be ample opportunity to take advantage of price disparity.

According to MMO-Champion, Abyssal Shatter is live on EU realms, and presumably will be live soon on US realms.

Abyssal shatter lets you break an abyss crystal into some more pedestrian mats: infinite dust and greater cosmic essences. This means that the price for abyss crystals might start raising again, after the ridiculous drop they saw when people started 5 of them every 15 minutes in ToC regular. I’m working on finding an average enchanting materials yield per shatter- I’ll update when I have one.

Edit: an average reported in wowhead for 25 shatters (which is not enough data to be incredibly accurate, but is enough to get an idea of scale) is 2.25 greater cosmic essences and 4 infinite dusts per shatter.

On my realm, normal mats cost is 13g for a GCE, and 3.5g for a dust. That puts the floor value of abyss crystals firmly above 40g, and they’ve been going for as low as 25g since ToC was launched.

In the meanwhile the summer is doing its business as usual. Every once in a while summer rains break up the predominantly hot days and so now and then a cool sea breeze full of oxygen makes you go light in your head. Clear thinking, peculiarly enough, is not happening for the most of us since spring. Successes taste different. The smell of friendship, love, danger and risk is in the air.
A lot of us come back from more beautiful and warm places. Places where things like passion, temperament and love have a complete different meaning and significance. Places where we might never come back again, and where we adapted our behaviour there to that knowledge. With our return stories come back with us. Stories of large and small dimensions. Strong and weak stories, but also stories that deserve several pages in a novel…

Me? I went to Serbia. And no, I did not behave like I would never see the place again. Many, many more times I will visit this place. I will find a way to stay there more than in any other place on our beautiful little globe. Which reminds me…

It was an early Saturday morning. Most Belgrade rooftops were complimented by the orange glow of sunrise. It must have been the sixth time that holiday I saw the sun rise and, I assure you, it was not because I woke up that early. That morning I was walking back from bringing a special girl home after an odd night’s out.
Temperatures did not drop below 28 degrees Celsius that week, not even at night. This particular morning however, a perfect temperature was surrounding my skin. While I was making up my mind whether I was feeling, hearing or smelling happiness, my heart told me this was the place it calls home. A shiver ran down my spine.
Walking and then stopping at a corner to look up once more, I realized I still had to find my friend before we could both drop into coma on our beds. Our ways had split earlier when a girl he met that same night took him inside at her place, to be precise.
Suddenly a quote jumped in my mind: “No matter how you shake and dance, the last few drops land on your pants”. Simply brilliant. I didn’t remember where I heard it though. Immediately I decided to pee against the corner I was standing at. When you have to go, you have to go. Shaking and dancing I looked up my friend’s name in my phone. Joe. Joe Srbija. Joe’s one night Hottie. Yes… that’s how her number was saved in my phone. Why I couldn’t call him on his phone was a wild guess for me, but I was still a bit too drunk mind. Nevertheless I pressed the green button. She picked up the phone and I told her I’d be there in a few. Joe took over her phone and prematurely told me what had just arisen on his side of the connection. We hung up.
Trying to catch a sniff of pljeskavice while passing Loki I saw them at a distance standing outside. I waved. They waved back. As I came closer I asked them how it was. She looked at me a little suspicious and told me she was sure I already knew what happened.
‘I do. But did you have fun? Did it feel good?’ I asked while looking at both of them. It did. I asked her if she wanted a last kiss, at which she replied positively. Slowly I moved my lips towards hers. She turned her head away. The joke was clearly not appreciated. As she leaned over to kiss Joe goodbye I noticed her right breast showed a bit of nipple sticking out above her top.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ he said. He didn’t, but he later assured me she had his e-mail address.
While we were searching for a taxi, Joe told me all about his little adventure. The blowjob got ranked in his top five. And the top five did not mean by five different girls. The blowjob ranked in the top five of times. He furthermore liked it because she was a highly educated girl. I believe her name was Tanja. She claimed to be promoted in Art history.
‘Girls who can do it like that in the Netherlands are usually pretty dirty, uneducated kind of girls. Or just disciplined but still a little dumb’, he claimed.
‘With this one you can at least talk before, after and in between.’ Yeah right, as if that was possible. But still, it does not weaken her claims.
It had all taken place in the entrance hall of Tanja’s building, as she was afraid to wake up her roommate. Joe liked the setting. ‘The old communist entrance hall’, as he referred to it, was also ranked top notch in his book. As a big surprise Tanja’s roommate came in during the action. While we were both laughing about the image of Joe trying to (as fast a he could) get his tool back in the orange and white swimming pants he wore that night, we walked up towards the Kalemegdan citadel in search of a taxi there. Still none around. The roommate, as the story goes, had been laughing really hard, while Joe’s girl got pretty angry. Why didn’t she let her know she wasn’t home? A question she spoke out. What would have been if they could have had access to her bedroom? A question she did not speak out.

And me? I couldn’t care less… I had something different on my mind. All I could think about was the girl I just brought home and her enchanting pit black hair…