Anub is down, finally after a really long and difficult road, and I dont mean the attempts. I would estimate that we used no more than 100 to 115 attempts to get him down in total, but the attendance issues were very frustrating.

Call of the Grand Crusader!

And the Screenie… Gratz Crypt Friends

As if the hard mode version of the Anub’arak encounter was not challenging enough, we seemed to run into even more problems over the past few nights of attempts. We finally got a raid together to get back into ToTGC. For the past three to four weeks, we have just let Anub’arak fester with more 48-50 attempts left on the counter, and people were getting frustrated. Attendance seemed to be at a new low for wrath of the lich king standards, and even though multiple guilds disbanded for similar reasons over the past month, recruitment was spotty at best. Then, we finally got the people online, in the raid and ready to go, and it seemed like blizzard started patching 3.3 a bit early.

The return of a brutallus mechanic

For those of you that never had the pleasure of fighting Brutallus pre nerf, it was quite an encounter, healing was extremely stressful, and dps has to be at the very top of their game, and tanks dropped like flies. Most guilds’ first kills were after the enrage timer, ours was with all of our holy pally’s bubbled and taunt bouncing him with RD. As if Sunwell was not already perfectly tuned for the top end guilds, which I believe it was, Blizzard introduced a new mechanic to the game.

Brutal PWN – Brutallus targets multiple raid members and instantly severs their connections to the blizzard servers, causing them to disconnect.

The last two nights of Anub’arak attempts were littered with this mechanic, most prevalently by one of our disc priests mid phase three and our main tank in the phase 1 to phase 2 transitions. Every attempt at some point during the encounter, our tank would disconnect. And, every attempt with in the first minute of the phase three transition our disc priest would disconnect. The tank disconnects were painful but we could recover from them with tricks, salvs, and pro grips of extra permafrost when anub burrowed right on top of the patch where the add were being tanked by yours truly. It was quite a bit harder to survive the encounter when one of your two disc priests disappears when he is needed the most.

Needless to say, last night was riddled with painful wipes deep into phase three. While we have plenty of attempts remaining for the rest of the week to get him down, it seems as though blizzard has decided that this will not happen. our best hunter, our best druid and one of our best priests seemed to downgrade their computers and internet connections with in the past few weeks, and we have been suffering as a result.

Coming up next…

I know that I was suppose to work on gear comparisons for all of the Icecrown loot that is going to drop in the next few weeks, but I got side tracked by the EH calculator and raiding. Really I think that calculator will provide all of the answers that are needed with respect to the bonus armor versus set pieces debate. We shall see where today takes me…

I grew up snowboarding and skateboarding, it’s all I did 24-7.  Making ramps, learning tricks, driving to new locations, reading magazines, riding fakie, ollies, nollies, frontside, backside, switch, kickflips, rodeos, 3’s, 5’s, hips, powder, pipes, snowmobiles, hiking, setups, gear etc.  As I result I got pretty good in both sports and couldn’t wait for the next day.  This was before dedicated parks, magic carpets (like escalator on a hill) and tow ropes were in place which have enabled kids to progress even faster…  It’s amazing how far the sports have progressed.

90’s – halfpipe

90's halfpipe - small, not uniform, difficult to learn on

Today’s halfpipe

Today's halfpipe - uniform, large, easier to learn on, more initimidating

Which brings me to commercial real estate industry and how slow it is to adopt change.  It’s an industry that has exceptional resources and influence which needs to embrace and fast track pr0gressive ideas/technologies and models for our living environment.  This is a discussion that excites me and is primary driver in my career.  If you’d like to discuss your ideas with someone that is dedicated to changing the ways things are done I encourage you to call, write, twitter, email, and sit down with me.  Otherwise you can find me touring buildings, walking city streets, networking, talking with property owners, writing proposals, creating deal structure, showing property, uploading real estate data, creating proformas, selling, leasing, and looking forward to the next day of change 24/7.

When we train, it is always a great idea to have quantifiable goals. What this means is that we should strive to have goals that we can measure. The best way we have found to do this is to focus on performance goals. An example of this is of your dead lift increases from 100 kg to 150 kgs, this is a measurable indicator of progress. With this in mind, here are some performance standards that we have our clients try and achieve.

Dead Lift – 3x BW

Squat – 2.5x BW

Bench – 2x BW

Chin Ups – 20 reps

Pistol Squats – 10 reps

Dips – 25 reps

One Arm Push Ups – 10 reps each

Kettle bell Snatches – No. of reps that equal body weight (80 kg = 80 reps) in 5 minutes

Squat Thrusts – 100 reps straight

Hand Walk Outs – 10 reps from toes

These are some of the standards we try to eventually aim for. They are intentionally set quite high, so as to give our clients (and ourselves!) something to strive for. We have many more of these which are modified for different clients of differing abilities, orthopedic profiles and goals. As an example of this, I have one female client in her 50’s who can successfully perform 6 pistol squats on each leg, 6 one arm push ups and 5 chin ups. She is well on her way to achieving some of these goals. Good luck and let me know how you are going achieving these goals!!!

I’m back! After a long vacation and a subsequent holiday, I am back to blogging full time. Although I got one blog in on the couch while my parents watched some football, I really have not had much time for my blog. Well with the holidays gone, and the next one 24 days away, I have a few weeks of solid posts regarding my favorite flavors of the month. The Christmas Tree is up, I am back to work, and I am back to blogging! I wanted to talk a bit about a spreadsheet I have been developing.

Creating a user friendly interface

After breaking down all of the information that went into Theck’s new formula, it is now time to deal with real world application, sure the calculations and derivations that it took to get to those last three formulas, with all of the variables defined are interesting, however most of us do not see the Matrix as code, we just want something simple and easy to work with to understand if we should swap out a gear set in between fights. This is where I come in. I have begun to create a spreadsheet that the greater community can use to evaluate gear choices, and I wanted to discus it in further detail here so that people know what it is about and have the opportunity to provide feedback before its grand unveiling.

This is my first draft of the UI. It is a basic excel spreadsheet with the formulas already built in. It provides descriptions for all of the fields that you need to fill in and will export the final values to specific fields with in the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is color coded to allow for a “gear evaluations for dummies” type feel. The pink (because we are paladins) is all of the information that you should get from both your character screen during a raid, as well as WWS, WOL, etc parses. The green cells are values that you must input in order to give you the calculation’s results, and the yellow cells are constants that MAY be changed but are pretty standard for normal gearing, raid buffs, and consumables. It is also important to note that I kept the yellow cells visible so that other tank classes could alter those values based on their talents, racial abilities, etc and still use the tool.

I just want to also provide the disclaimer that I am by no means an excel genius. In fact, I am no where near the expert levels of the program, however I do use spreadsheets on a daily basis at my job and I like them to be formatted, user friendly, and overall specific to the task at hand. So please be gentle when critiquing the simplistic nature of the sheet, as it only provides relative information for quick evaluation in between pulls and nothing more.

How to use the spreadsheet

There are three specific things that this spreadsheet can tell you, and all of them require a bit more interpretation once you have gotten the information that it provides. I would like to go over each of these important pieces of information one by one and tell you what they are and what we can do with our new found information.

Definitions up front:
X – Percent of total damage taken which was from Bleed Damage
Y – Percent of total damage taken which was from Magic Damage
H – Your total raid buffed health value
A – Your total raid buffed armor
Ma – Your total raid buffed reduction in incoming damage from Armor

Effective Health Calculator

The first and foremost thing that this spreadsheet gives you is an absolute value for your effective health which accounts for physical, bleed, and magic damage. This number is relative to the gear you are wearing, the encounter you are tanking, and all of the talents, consumables, and buffs that you have. When you input all of the values that are required by the spreadsheet, H, A, X, Y, and Ma, you will get a number at the bottom. This is your effective health. This value alone does not really give you much information, but what it does give you is a starting point.

What you should do with this information is compare it with different gear choices, armor and stamina values, as well as resistances to establish mathematically which gear set is the best set for a given encounter. Which ever set gives you the highest effective health value is the one that you should be wearing for a given encounter with set X and Y values. As each encounter has different X and Y values, your evaluations have to be done on a boss by boss basis.

Change in Stamina and Change in Armor Calcuators

The second thing that the spreadsheet will calculate for you is a change in stamina. We all know that the general rule for the stamina to armor ratio is that 1 stamina is roughly equal to 11.7 armor. However how do we evaluate this ratio with the new understanding of relative X and Y values during a given fight. The relative benefit we see from armor changes as X and Y increase, and this calculator will tell you what change in armor is required to give you the same effective health benefit as a similar change in Stamina. Specifically, if you know the relative X and Y values for a fight, and you want to compare pieces, you can plug in the change in Stamina and Armor of a given slot into the spreadsheet and it will give you relative values of the counter part which would provide the same amount of effective health.

To provide you with an example, If you wanted to check to see if a bonus armor piece of gear was as good as that piece with 15 more stamina, you would input your relative values of X and Y into the spread sheet and then type 15 into the dS (or change in Stamina) cell on the spreadsheet and the spreadsheet would output the relative amount of armor required to equal 15 stamina with respect to effective health. This is a powerful tool when assembling gear sets for progression content, where surviving burst is your most important job.

The third thing that the spreadsheet does is the exact mirror of the evaluation above. It will calculate a change in armor and give you its relative stamina value for any given fight, provided that you input X and Y values. So, you can see how much stamina a given piece of gear has to have to eclipse the bonus armor that you have on another piece.

Conclusions…

As you can see, all of these calculations are relative, and they do not provide absolute answers, but guidelines. You can not type a few values into the spreadsheet and get out a best in slot, time to live gear set. This is a very specific tool for a very specific, however powerful, purpose. It will allow you to compare gear sets for given fights to tell you which one will provide you with the most effective health for surviving burst. It will also provide you with modified Stamina to Armor ratios for any fight, accounting for all magical and bleed damage that you take. And it will give you everything you need to understand if you can survive the burst that just killed you by swapping gear.

However, it is important to understand that if you provide the wrong data for the specific required fields, it will provide you with the wrong answer. You must evaluate where you want to obtain X and Y from the parses, and use the correct situations and values in order to get the proper outcome. If you do this, it will help you immensely in your struggles to get past tank checks, but only if you select the correct values.

In this chapter, the Nephites start a three-year period in peace, with only a few issues of dissension to deal with (v. 1-2).  The next year, they started to have a lot of contention and dissension, and many Nephites left Zarahemla for the land Northward, even into the land that was called Desolate or Desolation (v. 3-6).  These people began to build homes out of cement and populate the land from sea to sea (v. 7-8 ).  They had little wood and used shipping to get it, some even lived in tents until they could get wood (v. 9-11).  Many of the people of Ammon went Northward also (v. 12).

“A hundreth part . . . cannot be contained in this work”

“And now there are many records kept of the proceedings of this people, by many of this people, which are particular and very large, concerning them (v. 13).  But behold, a hundredth part of the proceedings of this people, yea, the account of the Lamanites and of the Nephites, and their wars, and contentions, and dissensions, and their preaching, and their prophecies, and their shipping and their building of ships, and their building of temples, and of synagogues and their sanctuaries, and their righteousness, and their wickedness, and their murders, and their robbings, and their plundering, and all manner of abominations and whoredoms, cannot be contained in this work (v. 14).  But behold, there are many books and many records of every kind, and they have been kept chiefly by the Nephites (v. 15).”

Not even 1/100th, or 1 percent, of records of the Nephites and Lamanites are included in the Book of Mormon.  The rest were handed down by the Nephites among each other, until the Nephites no longer existed because of their wickedness (v. 16).  And many Nephite records were hidden in the Hill Cumorah (according to Journal of Discourses, 19:38).

An increase of pride

Over the space of ten years, the Nephite’s pride and contention changed a lot.  From 43-45 (years of the reign of judges), there was mostly peace in the land.  Then in 46, the contention it was high enough to make the Nephites want to leave in great numbers.

“And now I return again to mine account; therefore, what I have spoken had passed after there had been great contentions, and disturbances, and wars, and dissensions, among the people of Nephi (v. 17). . . And it came to pass that there was still great contention in the land, yea, even in the forty and seventh year, and also in the forty and eighth year (v. 18 ).”  The contention continued to be a high level through the 48th year.

Helaman continued as Chief judge, and was still a righteous leader (v. 20).  He had two righteous sons, Nephi and Lehi (v. 21).  ”And it came to pass that the wars and contentions began to cease, in a small degree, among the people of the Nephites, in the latter end of the forty and eighth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi (v. 22).”  At the end of the 48th year, the contention was at a Medium level.

“And it came to pass in the forty and ninth year of the reign of the judges, there was continual peace established in the land, all save it were the secret combinations which Gadianton the robber had established in the more settled parts of the land, which at that time were not known unto those who were at the head of government; therefore they were not destroyed out of the land (v. 23).”  The 49th year started with a low level of contention among the Nephites.

“And it came to pass that in this same year there was exceedingly great prosperity in the church, insomuch that there were thousands who did join themselves unto the church and were baptized unto repentance (v. 24).  And so great was the prosperity of the church, and so many the blessings which were poured out upon the people, that even the high priests and the teachers were themselves astonished beyond measure (v. 25).  And it came to pass that the work of the Lord did prosper unto the baptizing and uniting to the church of God, many souls, yea, even tens of thousands (v. 26).  Thus we may see that the Lord is merciful unto all who will, in the sincerity of their hearts, call upon his holy name (v. 27).  Yea, thus we see that the gate of heaven is open unto all, even to those who will believe on the name of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God (v. 28 ).  Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the man of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked (v. 29)—And land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers, to go no more out (v. 30).  And in this year there was continual rejoicing in the land of Zarahemla, and in all the regions round about, even in all the land which was possessed by the Nephites (v. 31).”  In this time of nearly total peace, the church grew and prospered and the people were blessed for their righteousness.

“And it came to pass that there was peace and exceedingly great joy in the remainder of the forty and ninth year; yea, and also there was continual peace and great joy in the fiftieth year of the reign of the judges (v. 32).”  There was no contention in the rest of the 49th year and also the 50th year.

“And in the fifty and first year of the reign of the judges there was peace also, save it were the pride which began to enter into the church—not into the church of God, but into the hearts of the people who professed to belong to the church of God (v. 33)—And they were lifted up in pride, even to the persecution of many of their brethren. Now this was a great evil, which did cause the more humble part of the people to suffer great persecutions, and to wade through much affliction (v. 34).  Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God (v. 35).”  In the 51st year the contention level was low, just some of the church members began to have some pride and persecute those who had less prosperity.

“And it came to pass that the fifty and second year ended in peace also, save it were the exceedingly great pride which had gotten into the hearts of the people; and it was because of their exceedingly great riches and their prosperity in the land; and it did grow upon them from day to day (v. 36).”  The pride was high in the 52nd year, but the contentions continued at a low level.

“And it came to pass in the fifty and third year of the reign of the judges, Helaman died, and his eldest son Nephi began to reign in his stead. And it came to pass that he did fill the judgment-seat with justice and equity; yea, he did keep the commandments of God, and did walk in the ways of his father.”

So from the 43rd to the 53rd year of the reign of judges there was quite a bit of peace and low levels of contentions, with high contentions for about three years and medium contentions for part of a year.  The times when the Nephites were more righteous, they had more peace and prospered by the blessings of the Lord.  As they prospered, some became prideful.  Some of the people who saw how prosperous the church was, decided to join the church.  When the people began to focus on how prosperous they were becoming, they lost sight of the point and became prideful.  This can happen so quickly, because prosperity brings satisfaction and people will cling to that.

This chapter gives a few different descriptions of pride; “a little pride (v. 1)”, “the pride which began to enter (v. 33)”, “lifted up in pride (v. 34)”, and exceedingly great pride (v. 36)”.  This is the cycle of pride; it starts with just a little that begins to enter our hearts, then with more pride our heart become lifted up, until there is an exceedingly great amount of pride.  I think that the church today is greatly prosperous, and also has a good deal of pride among the members, just like the Nephites at the end of that 10-year period.  We also have a lot of humble members who have not seen the same kinds of prosperity as others.  Those that become prideful today, are bound by Satan with temptations for greater things and with selfishness.  I think to avoid this, we need to have a more thankful heart to all that God gives us.  When we remember that God has blessed us with our prosperity, we remember that we need to give back to Him, through service and good works to others.  When we make and keep our sacred temple covenants, we keep our hearts humble and willing give back to the church and help those who are poor and in need, leaving the selfishness out of our hearts.

Wax and righteousness

A candle is made by dipping a wick (a piece of string) into wax and then into water to harden, and then back into the wax for another layer.  This is done until the candle is as thick as wanted.  Then while hot, the wax can be molded or carved into a desired shape.

In verse 35 (see above), it says they fasted, prayed often and waxed stronger in their humility.  I think it means that each time we do what we have been commanded to do, such as fasting and praying, we put on another layer of wax, making our spirits stronger or thicker.  Every time we do something to strengthen our testimony of Jesus Christ, we dip into the wax of the gospel and then allow that layer to harden before adding a new layer.  As we add more layers we become more difficult to break down and we become firmer in the faith.  For instance, the first layer may be having the faith to be baptized.  Then we add a layer of attending church and partaking of the sacrament.  Next a layer of accepting a calling.  Then a layer of preparation for greater covenants, followed by a layer of receiving our endowments in the temple, and so on.  These steps are the steps of our progression in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We cannot expect (or be expected) to jump into the wax and build one giant solid layer at once.  It just doesn’t work that way.  This is why we should all be aware that everyone is working at their own pace in their progression and we are not all one the same step.  It is also good to be aware that we need each others good examples and words of guidance and teaching to help us to progress to the next level.  This is why we have the church.  For us to come together and help one another.

This verse also says that through waxing stronger, we can purify and sanctify our hearts by yielding our hearts to God.  The more faith we develop in God, the more we allow Him to control our hearts.  We find ways to put our desires aside and do as the Lord would have us do.  Because faith is an action, we cannot show our faith in God, without allowing Him to have what we would normally guard the most.  This is also a process.  Sometimes it takes many steps of progression for us to give our hearts fully to the Lord.  And this is okay as long as we are taking the steps towards giving it entirely to Him.  The Lord knows us and will not expect us to run faster than we have strength.  We will blessed for our constant work towards becoming like Him.

Ever have one of those days?  weeks?  Hell, a whole month?

One day you are rapidly knocking down content — you find door #3, you open it, there’s a monster, and you smash it until there is nothing left but some trifles (epics!!!) in the corner — and then, the mojo is gone.  Your raid team doesn’t know the meaning of the word RAID or TEAM and you spend the night thinking…

Maybe I should take up knitting.  I haven’t washed my hair today — that’d be way more fun than dying for the fifteenth time tonight on a boss that was on farm a month ago.

What Not to Do at Your Next Fail Raid

• Do not show up at your raider’s doorstep holding their puppy/kitten hostage and threatening to perform horrible acts of torture to said cute, fuzzy animal unless they show up with their raid faces…. and take some Prozac if this seemed like an acceptable solution
• Do not give your raiders a thirty minute “pep talk” that consists of telling them how much they fail and your utter disgust with their pixellated avatars still wasting your bandwidth… it’s not peppy, it’s not fun, and chances are you’ll lose some raiders
• Unless you have a guild scapegoat — yes, they will know who they are before the shit ever hits the fan — do not find one.
• If you are a raid leader or guild officer you are not allowed to quit the raid or the guild because things are tough.  It’s tempting — but you will precipitate the beginning of the end of your guild.
• If for some reason you’re one of those guilds that has actual punishments for poor raiding performance (DKP MINUS!) replace a raid slot before bankrupting your raider’s account — just sayin’.
• Do not revert to giving out raid strategies like you’re talking to a bunch of 2 year olds… yes, I know they have the motor control of a bunch of toddlers at the moment, but talking like they are will not help them push the buttons better.

So What CAN I Do?

• Call a break.  If your raiders can’t discover their inner zen by having a smoke, grabbing a drink, or unloading that awesome chili dog from lunch, it may just be a bad raid night.
• Take a look at replacing some heads — no one likes replacing people during a raid.  However, sometimes people come tired, stressed, and totally not in the mood.  Sometimes, you, oh mighty leader of the raid, made some poor choices in putting together the group — 7 paladins?  Maybe some of the problem isn’t fail raiders it’s poor composition.
• Try a different boss.  Wiping time after time (especially on farm content) is frustrating for everyone.  Take a step back, kill something else, get the good mojo going, then come back and smash the thing.
• Take a focused look at who is showing regularly for raids.  Chances are, your farm content team is not the team showing up to raid.  If that’s the case, you may be carrying raiders who are 1) too weak to be on your regular raiding team, 2) are green behind the ears on the content, or 3) have genuine gear / character issues which must be resolved outside the raid.  You can either train your “backup” team who’s showing up regularly enough to fill your raid slots or recruit — choose wisely.
• Raid till you wipe — if you’re stuck in a rut of wiping on farm content, sometimes this tip helps keep raiders focused in and interested in doing a good job to get to new content.  If you wipe, you call the raid, that simple.  Should be used sparingly.
• Cancel a raid week.  This makes progression raiders cry and casual raiders standing around on raid night going “WTF do I do now???”  This is a clear message from the leadership that you are tired too — tired of being responsible for getting a group together, energized and ready to go, only to end up frustrated and feeling rejected by the very people you’re trying to lead.  Should be used sparingly.

Raiding angst is a part of the WoW experience for most raiders that I’ve talked to who actually persist with a regular raiding team for any amount of time.  Learning how to effectively manage your team — whether they be burned out, just don’t get it, or totally new — can be the making or breaking of raiding for your guild.  In my experience, very few people deal well with constant exposure to critiques and criticisms, and will happily transfer their character to a different guild if they feel uncomfortable with their position in the guild.

If you are an officer involved with coordinating raiding for your guild, be aware that raiding is as important for your raiders as it is for you (for the most part).  People in raiding guilds like to raid — they want the camaraderie and accomplishment of raiding just as much as you do!  However, if progress stalls for an inconsiderable amount of time, you will be held responsible by your raiders — as a person in a position of authority with the ability to make changes to raid times/recruitment status/raid slots you are expected to tackle any problems preventing the raid team from moving forward.

Here’s hoping that you never have to tell your raiders to not stand in the fire.

First off, I would like to wish everyone a late happy tryptophan day. Now on to the matter at hand…

Here at my house this weekend, we have had my whole family staying at my house. My aunts from Mississippi, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania all drove down to my parents house in Atlanta.

One of my uncles loves to take pictures and since this is the age of social networking, I proceeded to upload all of the pictures to Facebook. The photos consisted of candid, yet in my eyes, presentable, moments. But when my aunts discovered the album, they begged and pleaded for them to be removed. I didn’t budge and first but I removes just about half the pictures at the request of my grandmother.

This leads me to the topic at hand: Why are people in this country so overly concerned with their appearance? I can understand if your eyes were closed in a couple of the picture, but deleting all of images because we capture in your true element. My aunt have always taught me to be proud of who I am. Yet they get offended when they do not have on their designer clothes and their make-up.

Does this mean that you put on a fake persona every time you walk out of your front door? This hypersensitivity hinders the progress of all American people. People are always afraid of what people think when most of the time, no one is even judging them. Come on people.

As we progress…

This is a sensible question really.  Knowing I’m in the middle of editing one book and getting it ready to be published and that I already have two wip’s that need a lot of polish, I’ve decided to not start drafting any other stories until after I move in January.  This means getting familiar again with a work in progress that I thought I had put aside for the time being.

There are a lot of problems with this work in progress but the one I’m trying to sort out first goes by the name Derrick.  Derrick is a ridiculous name and I know it isn’t right but that is his name for the time being and that is the least of this particular characters problems.

See, Derrick starts out in the very opening scene as a very impressive and strong, if emotionally immature, young man.  It is a great scene where he lords his power as a mage over a group of commoners (or non-magic users).  It really sets the tone for how the world works and all and all that particular scene works.

Jump a half-dozen chapters further a long.  Oh.  What is Derrick doing?  He is playing a childish prank on someone a lot stronger than him and then running away.  If you are wondering why the scene actually serves to show the other character’s explosive temper which is kind of an important part of the plot later on but Derrick’s actions do not make sense.  Not if he is the same Derrick who appeared back in chapter one.

Skip ahead again.  Now what is he doing?  He’s giving the best friend, morale boosting speech to someone who was about to collapse.  He is thoughtful and well-spoken and considerate.  No.  It can’t be the same character.

And so on.

Poor Derrick is facing an identity crisis.  More importantly, I am facing a crisis.  All of these scenes are important to the plot but the character makes no sense at all and his progression is random.  Actually, his progression is simple.  I need a character to do this to cause that.  Throw him in.  That seems to be how he has gone along and that does not work.  Yes, he is a minor character in the grand scheme of things but that is no excuse for not plotting out a logical character arc.  I’m either going to have to figure a way for Derrick to do all the things he needs to do, in a way that allows him to stay true to his character, or I’m going to have to find someone else to fill the spot in the scene, someone who makes sense.

Poor Derrick.

Written by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website.
_________________

Good songs usually present a balance of unique ideas with tried and true techniques. Usually, you’ll want that balanced in favour of the predictability that tried and true offers. A song that is too unique will often leave listeners confused, and boredom quickly sets in. However, the opposite situation of too much predictability also causes boredom. What’s a songwriter to do?

Getting a song out to the listener actually requires two important steps. Step one relates to song structure: you need to write a song that is architecturally strong. Step two relates to song presentation: the way you perform the song can often have as much or more impact on the listener’s reaction as the solidness of the songwriting technique.

Good songs exhibit a rather nebulous quality called momentum. That attribute refers to song energy. Energy keeps listeners interested because when energy slowly builds, it causes the listener to stay with it in much the same way that a good drama keeps people watching by building to a dramatic climax. Good lyrics have a way of forcing the audience to keep listening for “what happens next”. Good chords present tension and resolution at all the right moments in a manner that keeps listeners hooked. Good melodic development, hand-in-hand with instrumentation, usually provides a contour that works with lyric and harmony to entice the listener forward.

Boredom sets in when one of those elements is neglected. Why songs fail can be a complicated issue of one element simply not working well with another. There are things you can do to ensure that your song keeps listeners hooked. Here are some of the regular suspects that keep listeners from connecting positively with your song. Some of the factors relate to song structure, while others relate to the final presentation:

1. Chord Progression with Too Many Chords. A chord progression takes the listener on a journey, and too many chords is like trying to see too many landmarks on that journey. Your brain just can’t process it all. If you find that you’re using 16, 17 or more chords in your song, try to scale back.
2. Chord Progressions that Don’t Offer Resolution. A chord progression is a bit like breathing in the sense that a breath inward causes a “tension” that is resolved with a breath outward. Success is when there is a balance of tension (breathing inward) and release (breathing outward). Good chord progressions offer the sonic version of the same thing. Chord progressions will have moments of tension (dominant chords, suspensions, etc.) and then release (tonic chords or other harmonic resolutions). Check your chord progressions to be sure that moments of creative license are balanced with a good dose of predictable resolution.
3. Instrumentations That are Boring. If your song structure is strong, but you then present the song with a mindless strumming guitar from beginning to end, you could be short-changing your song’s effectiveness. Look for ways to involve other instruments. It’s amazing what simply adding a few french horn notes, a flute solo, or using a different chording instrument can do to the success of your song.
4. Melodies That are Too Flat. Some songs, if the lyric is making an important social or political comment, will do nicely with a flat melody. But if your melody is boring you, it will likely bore the listener as well. Find ways to incorporate leaps into the melodic structure, and do it at moments that support emotion-laden words in your text.
5. Songs That are Too Slow or Too Fast. Experiment with the tempo of your song. You’ll see that tempo has a major impact in the overall effect of your song’s presentation. If it feels that the energy of the song never rises enough to support the lyric, try a faster tempo. If the whole thing sounds energetic but frantic, slow it down just a touch.
6. Songs That are in the Wrong Key. Most singers like to place a song somewhat comfortably within the outer boundaries of their vocal range. But if a lyric is intense, you may be missing an opportunity to support that lyric with the proper intensity in the voice. (Peter Gabriel singing the end of “Supper’s Ready” on their Foxtrot album is a perfect example of how a high tessitura can add to the effectiveness of the voice.

So once you’ve written your song, your job is just beginning. Now you need to ensure that the listener gets the full impact of what you’re tying to communicate to the world.
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Gary Ewer’s songwriting e-books are designed to help unleash the songwriter within you. If you’re struggling, trying to get your songs working, you’re wasting time. These songwriting e-books will get you going in the right direction: CLICK HERE.

We all know that good communication skills translate into better jobs.

No matter how good we are in a particular vocation, it is the ability to clearly and correctly put forth our ideas that makes us stand out from the crowd. I know some excellent sales professionals, teachers, accountants and others who are restricted in their career options because of their inadequate communication skills.

Don’t let this happen to you. Choose 2 Win!! Make the difference to your life and put your career in the fast track. Enhance your Business English skills with The Academy of Applied Languages.

Written by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website.
Follow Gary on Twitter for songwriting tips, news and more.
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An inverted chord means that you’ve moved the root of a chord to some upper position, leaving a note other than the root as the lowest sounding note. It’s a really great device that will add colour to your musical palette. But chord inversions have to be treated with a bit of care; randomly opting for an inversion can lead to a chord progression that sounds a bit disorganized.

A triad is a three-note chord that includes a root, a third and a fifth. For example, in C major, a C triad is comprised of a C, E and G played simultaneously. With the root on the bottom, you get this triad in its most stable position.

By moving the root upward and away from its bottom position, you now have the 3rd of the chord as the lowest-sounding note (C/E). This triad, called a first inversion triad, is slightly less stable, in the sense that we usually don’t end musical phrases with this type of chord. Ends of phrases need the solidity that comes from having the root at the bottom.

One other possibility for triads is to place the 5th at the bottom, and this gives us an even-less stable triad (C/G). This chord begs for a resolution to G (i.e., C/G  - G – C).

But to say that a triad is unstable is by no means a criticism. In fact, you will find that musical progressions sound fresh and interesting when they are comprised of a balance of root position and inverted chords. The question is… how do we know when to use them?

Here are some quick tips to guide you:

1. Use an inversion to animate a static bass line. If your progression requires your bass to do a lot of jumping by 4ths and 5ths, you can smooth this out and get the line moving by using an inversion. Here’s an example: C  F  C  G  C, with each chord played for 4 beats. Try modifying it with inversions (each chord played for 2 beats:) C  C/E  F  F/A  C  C  G  G/B  C
2. Use an inversion to make a boring progression more interesting. Related to point 1 above, if your progression has you dwelling on one chord for a long period of time, get the bass line involved by creating inversions.
3. If your melody line moves from the 3rd of a chord to an upper root of the chord, you can mirror that motion by moving the bass from the root of the chord up to the 3rd. It creates interesting interplay between melody and bass.

There are times when you need to be careful about using inversions:

1. If the melody and bass line are on the same note, don’t invert the next chord if it means both melody and bass move to the same note (i.e., avoid parallel octaves).
2. Be careful about leaping to inversions if there seems to be no good need or reason. For example, this might be hard to make work: C  F/A  Dm  G/B… etc. These inversions will often result in the ear being confused.
3. Avoid inversions if it means that the bass note following the inversion is an augmented 4th or diminished 5th away. In other words, this will be a bit hard on the ear: C  G/B  F, because the bass moving from the note B to F will be somewhat unpleasant.

Inversions can be a great way to make an otherwise boring progression a bit more interesting, and can get some motion in your bass line, but as with most elements at your disposal, be careful how you use it.
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Gary Ewer’s Songwriting E-books can clear up the mystery of chord progressions, melodies, lyrics and other vital elements of your songs. If you’re ready to unleash your songwriting potential, click here to read more.

Yesterday was a strange day.

Came home from work, totally smashed, went to bed. The guild did ToGC10 and banged their heads against the faction champions (hey, what else? I bet Twin Valkyr will be easier).
At some point they had a Priest disconnect and not coming back, so they decided to go for S3D 10man. Luckily for me I had just woken up and got to power up my computer and WoW (thanks to the girlfriend in said raid) and so off we went to TOS.

After a few 20% wipes with unlucky Flame Waves and then summoning an Alchemist alt and handing out some Speed Potions, we nailed it.

On the one hand we’re happy, on the other hand it really feels cheated now, with much better gear (well, not for all of us, some are still knee-deep in Naxx gear). I think we really should have tried it more often half a year ago.

Anyway, one hour well spent, some 30g repairs each, 9x new “of the Nightfall” and one mount.

This was the lineup:

• 1 DK tank who had already done it
• 1 Holy Pally – healing
• 2 Arcane Mages
• 1 Blood DK
• 1 Retri Pally kiting the first drake
• 1 Elemental Shammy
• 1 Destro Warlock
• 1 Enhancement Shammy
• 1 Assassination Rogue – yours truly

Yeah I know I normally do this on monday, but you know what, it’s my blog!

1. Reading a great book this week, “The Consolations of Philosophy’  by Alain De Botton. This book skillfully integrates some of the great philosophers and integrates them into solving modern problems. It is extremely well written and entertaining. Its is always a good thing for me personally to read books that aren’t about training or nutrition! They keep me sane. To check it out, click on the link below.

The Consolations of Philosophy

2. I’m sick of people bagging on Mike Boyle. I don’t agree with him entirely but so what! That doesn’t make him an idiot, or me better or any of the other garbage spewed over the internet. For those of you who don’t know (or aren’t as big a strength and conditioning geek as me) Mike recently told the world he doesn’t use back squats. So f*%$ing what! A whole bunch of practitioners who think they are God’s gift to health are criticizing Mike calling him an idiot and a bad example because he has had back pain. What a load of shit! Having back pain probably makes you more qualified to help people get over it! Experience yields perspective and Mike has 25 years of it! What people need to do in this industry is get over their ego’s realize that they don’t know it all and can learn from anyone. I personally have listened to Mike to re-evaluate my use of back squats. I still use them, just my use of them will change. And on another note, if his posts encourage more single leg training, I’m all for it.

3. Of Machines is one of the best new bands I have heard in ages. A great mix of experimental music and post hardcore, awesome to listen to and chill out to! Highly recommended!

4. Training song of the week: Kings and Queens by 30 seconds to Mars

See you soon!

Yesterday, Blizzard announced their plan for opening up Icecrown Citadel in 3.3. While I was reading it, I couldn’t help but think, “Wow, this is going to be extremely unpopular with the top raid guilds.” However, I have to admit… this wasn’t exactly out of the blue. Blizzard has been firing warning shots across the bows of said vessels for the last year, introducing a lot of changes that have been less than popular with the ’serious’ raiding population. Unfortunately, now it seems more like they’re shooting to kill.

Let me outline, in brief, The Plan™:

1. Icecrown Citadel (ICC) will not be fully open immediately at patch launch. Instead, its four sections (The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls) will open independently with one or more weeks in between. Each section contains several boss encounters, plus trash.
2. Sections 2, 3 & 4 each contain a ‘final’ boss that must be killed in order to unlock the Lich King encounter for that raid instance.
3. Raid teams will have a limited number of cumulative attempts to defeat these bosses as well as the Lich King.
4. The number of attempts starts small (5) but increases to, eventually, 15 once all the content is released.
5. Heroic modes are toggled on/of on a per-boss basis, but are not available until after the Lich King has been defeated once on Normal mode.
6. At some point after ICC is fully unlocked, the number of attempts per week will gradually increase.
7. Also at some point after ICC is fully unlocked, an instance-wide buff that increases the raid team’s damage/healing/hit points will be introduced. This buff will also scale up over time, essentially ‘nerfing’ the instance to make it easier to defeat. This buff can be disabled.

So, basically, it’s Trial of the Crusader plus Algalon plus Sunwell with an added sprinkling of magic ‘make the casuals happy’ dust. Pardon me while I bash my head repeatedly against my desk.

Ok, moving on.

Blizzard seems to be attempting to put the brakes on raid progression in ICC, for reasons that I can only speculate upon. What cracks me up is this, which is a direct quote from their announcement:

“We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace.”

Wow, really? Since when did it become Blizzard’s job to determine what sort of pace is most enjoyable for me? What’s next, timed raid instances? You have 2 hours to work on this raid instance today… really, it will be much more enjoyable for you that way. Call me paranoid, but the code already exists in the game to despawn bosses and teleport people out based on a timer. (VoA, anyone?)

On the whole, I really am discouraged by this announcement and concerned for the health of already-struggling raid guilds around the world. Long-time raiders seem to be becoming more and more disenchanted with raiding and the game in general, and while I’m not usually one to go all Chicken Little I would definitely say there has been something of a mass exodus going on. For the last year, Blizzard has made great strides toward bringing endgame content to the casual player. (Something that has not been terribly well-received by the raid guilds.) However, with ICC it seems like they’re shifting from bringing the casual players up to raid level to bringing the raid level down to them. The repercussions have yet to be felt, but I worry they will be significant.

More perspectives:

• How limited attempts risk to make raiding more dull. – The Pink Pigtail Inn
• Icecrown: The self-nerfing raid. – Welcome to Spinksville
• Disappointing news for raid progression in Icecrown. – StratFu

Alright, so I just read the news on raid progression in patch 3.3.  MMO-Champion posted the news from the blues here.

Here’s the short and sweet version:  You can only do heroic versions of the fights after beating the Lich King once.  That’s for both 10 and 25 man.  Not so bad, right?  Clear it once to learn the fights, and away you go on heroic.  Well that’s not the end of it.

Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point we can’t give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I’ll update the community so they can plan appropriately.

You read that right, gentle readers.  No burning through to beat Arthas on release night.  And no heroic versions before Arthas is killed 3 months after 3.3 drops.  This may be the mechanism by which they push Cataclysm back and ultimately extend the life of WotLK.

by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website:
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In general, the energy near the end of your song should be more than the energy at the beginning. That rising energy is not a constant; it ebbs and flows in a generally-upward direction, much like a successful stock market chart. The latter part of your verse as it moves into your chorus needs to be featuring rising energy, and you can use your chord choices to help.

Let’s set up a typical scenario: A song in C major, with a verse and a chorus that both begin with a C chord, and are both 32 beats long. If this is the case, you’ll gain an energy boost for your chorus if the verse ends on the dominant chord (G or G7). This creates a strong sense of expectancy and tension that is resolved by the chorus’ C chord.

Now, let’s invent a progression for our verse. Try two beats for each chord:

C  Eb  F  C  || C  Eb  F  C

That will do nicely for the first 8 beats of our verse. We now want to create a progression that gets us from the verse to the chorus. Here’s a great technique: Take the verse progression and transpose it upward by a 4th. For the listener, it’s as if you’ve at least momentarily changed key, and it gives the entire song a shot of energy:

C  Eb  F  C  || C  Eb  F  C || F  Ab  Bb  F

As you can see, it moves the energy somewhat aggressively in an upward direction. We’ve now got to add four more chords that get us not just to the chorus, but begs for the chorus. In other words, we need to let the final chord of the verse be G. Try this:

C  Eb  F  C  || C  Eb  F  C || F  Ab  Bb  F || F  Ab  Bb  G||

If you look at the roots of each chord, you’re looking at a series of upward-moving bass notes (upward musical gestures create energy), then an abrupt transposition upward (creating more energy), building to a dominant chord at the end, which sets up the chorus to be the most energetic part of the song.

Returning to do Verse 2 means that you can allow energy to dissipate a bit, which is perfect for rebuilding the energy plan. And you should try variations on this. For example, you may want to start the chorus on the vi-chord (Am) to give a sense of variety, and maybe avoid those distinctive flat chords, for the same reason.

And of course, hand-in-hand with chord energy are all the other tools you should be using to contour the energy of your song: varying the instrumentation, dynamics, vocal and instrumental range, and lyrical content. Successfully controlling these factors gives you a song that listeners will want to stick with and listen to over and over.
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If songwriting has gone from being a joy to being a frustration, there’s a book for that! “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” bundle of six e-books were written to get you enjoying songwriting again. They’re downloadable, and you can be reading all about why some songs succeed while others fail, moments from now. Click here to get started.

Expect the M Class trucks at Collective very soon..

‘Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food’

Above is a great quote, yet it is sadly one that is rarely adhered to. What I am going to write about today is some particularly poor food choices that will negatively impact on your health.

Dangers of Wheat and other Grains

Wheat and grains are staples in the diet of modern man. This is in direct opposition to what we have evolved to eat. Farming of grains did not become common place until about 10 000 years ago, which is a flash in regards to human evolution.

It takes around 10 000 years for the human genome to change one tenth of one percent. This is an incredibly subtle change and it is highly unlikely our digestive machinery has changed to accommodate large amounts of grains. The daily recommended allowance of between 6-11 serves of grains a day is a recipe for disaster for the vast majority of the population.

The most widely consumed forms of grains, processed breads and cereals are practically devoid of any nutritional value. They contain very little fibre, are primarily made up of carbohydrates and have had nearly all vitamins and minerals stripped. When you see that a grain has been fortified with a nutrient, such as calcium, it is a sure sign that the food is not good for you!

Grains also contain a highly allergenic substance called gluten. This substance puts a massive strain on the digestive organs. This can lead to their breakdown with illnesses such as celiac disease, chronic indigestion, candida albicans and allergies forming. By preparing the grains in the manner we will describe below you will avoid these problems and vastly increase the nutritional quality of the grains!

There are some grains that we recommend and one of these is oats, particularly organic oats. Oats are high in fibre, B vitamins, calcium, potassium, magnesium, phosphorous and iron. They are also low in gluten. We recommend when having oats that you soak them overnight in water with a teaspoon of sea salt. This will break down the oats making them far easier to digest and will also release their nutrients. To cook in the morning, simply add to 1 cup of boiling water and simmer for a few minutes. This will only take around 5 minutes to prepare a healthy breakfast.

We recommend eating oats with some butter or coconut milk to add some healthy fats to the meal and improve the stability of blood sugar levels.

Other recommended grains include quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and spelt. Ideally if you choose to eat these it is best to either eat them first thing in the morning or after a training session when your body is most receptive to carbohydrates.

Dairy: The truth about milk

Dairy is considered to be one of the optimal foods for improving health. It has continually been hammered into us that we need dairy foods for adequate daily calcium intake. What we need to ask is: are dairy products the best source of calcium and what dangers are inherent in dairy foods?

Some people lack intestinal lactase, an enzyme that allows us to digest lactose, a sugar that is present in milk. If you lack this enzyme, dairy may not be the best option for you. Symptoms such as a runny nose or coughing after consuming dairy are key indicators of this.

Our key issues with dairy are the processes of pasteurization and homogenization. These processes are designed to improve the cleanliness of milk. What pasteurization does to milk is quite astounding: vitamin C loss is generally greater than 50%, the loss of other water soluble vitamins is as high as 80%, it reduces the bio-availability of chloride, magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, sodium, calcium (leading to doubts over milks effectiveness to provide calcium) and sulphur. The last and perhaps largest issue with pasteurization is the elimination of enzymes. Enzymes are what allow us to digest our food effectively.

Homogenization effectively redistributes the fat through out the milk to prevent cream rising to the top. This has been linked to increased allergies from milk, heart disease and reduced absorption of calcium.

With dairy products we recommend reducing or even eliminating your consumption of all conventional products. If you can find it (it is now stocked in nearly all supermarkets) biodynamic yoghurt is a great source of beneficial bacteria and proteins. If you have milk allergies this will still be a problem but you can have either goats or sheep yoghurt, which contains no lactose and is much friendlier on the human gut. These are available in most health food stores.

The final product we do recommend if you can find it is organic raw milk. Raw milk is a treasure trove of valuable enzymes, proteins, beneficial fats and other nutrients. If you can find it, it is a very beneficial addition to your diet.

Alcohol

Alcohol is another area of nutrition that is highly controversial. There is much research studying the nutritional value of red wine and its ability to help in many different disease states.

We do not really recommend the consumption of any alcohol at DC Health due to its negative effects on blood sugar. When you drink alcohol it drastically increases your blood sugar levels and in turn your body produces a surge of insulin. This lowers blood sugar rapidly and leads to people eating anything they can to balance their sugar levels.

Beer is another highly controversial subject. There is ample research to suggest that beer has a strongly estrogenic effect on our hormonal systems. This effect will lead to excess weight gain and in men it very negatively depletes their testosterone levels.

If you do choose to drink alcohol we recommend that you do so in extreme moderation and when you do drink, choose to eat some fatty foods (cheese is perfect). This will combat the negative effect alcohol has on blood sugar.

Next time I will talk about the dangers of one of the most controversial foods around, Soy. Until next time, healthy eating!

Lately I have been coming across people that really have an issue with life! It seems like EVERY little thing puts them in an irreversible funk. Bad breakups, work-related stress, forgetting to set your DVR for Grey’s Anatomy. All of these things are enough to make you scream. But is it enough to make you swear off being an approachable human being?  I mean, we all have problems, but at the end of the day we have life. LOOK AT THE BIG PICTURE! Don’t sweat the small stuff. Lingering on the negative will only break you down in the long run! I am all about progression. Always strive to level up in your life, and if something is hindering you from getting to the next level, LET IT GO!

Sometimes, we all need some extra motivation to get us to where we want to go.

Who motivates you?

Who are you accountable to?

We all need to look for mentors and coaches to help us.

Take responsibility

Never give up