Unbearably HoT

When I’m not fine-tuning my gear, farming or leveling a plethora of alts, I enjoy collecting non-combat pets. A waste of bank space, right? With at least six different gear sets on my druid, I couldn’t agree more, but somehow I’m attached to all the critters I’ve accumulated over the years.

Inventory woes, however, are going the way of the buffalo in Wrath of the Lich King. According to a blue post on the General Discussion forums:

Players will be able to “learn” a mount or non-combat pet much like learning a spell, recipe, or new ability, and these creatures will then show up on a new Pet tab within the Character Info section of the interface. Players will be able to access and preview their learned mounts and vanity pets through this tab.

I imagine this has a lot to do with the new “achievement” system; if certain achievements require you to collect a 50+ non-combat pets, where are you supposed to store them? Regardless, I’m not complaining, and I feel a lot less pressure to get rid of the not-quite-so-special animals in favor of the rarer drops.

If they’re all “summons” in a similar vein to the paladin and warlock mounts, I anticipate making a ridiculous /castsequence macro to bring up a random pet every time I hit the button.

Something fun like that anyway.

For those folks who have any experience with insurance, July and December represent the lion’s share of the year’s workload—new groups go out to bid in the summer and old groups renew in the winter. Anyone who happens to be involved in either of those processes ends up getting slaughtered with inescapable deadlines and unpaid overtime, and beyond keeping house, working, and farming Amani War Bears on the reset, I’ve been sleeping.

That’s not entirely true. With the help of Phaelia, my internet help guru, I’ve been making some invisible changes to this site that will hopefully improve things in the long run. Somehow, in my search for a layout that I felt accurately represented what I was trying to portray, I picked out one of the most stubborn, finicky, widget-drive bitches out there, and when I say I’ve been hung up on my sidebar for weeks trying to fix it, I’m not kidding.

But that’s been sorted. I finally upgraded WordPress after being made to feel like I was semi retarded and totally out-of-date for worrying about losing anything—I had a backup, right? (For once, I can say that was something I figured out how to do on my own.) So I’ve eliminated a few security issues, allowed for the installation of some handy plug-ins, and fixed my blogroll. You know, the abomination of links that I threw up and had to manually edit every single time I needed to make a change.

With a quick trick from BlogAzeroth and Phae’s help with manually overriding my category widgets, I’m now capabale of editing links strictly from my site’s backend. This is fantastic, and I feel like less of a slacker for not having things properly updated.

More to come soon!

The long awaited 5-7-5 results are here!

I apologize for the delay, but with the storms in the Midwest, finally starting my shiny new job and making some other, tough decisions, I’ve been busier than anticipated. I received a wide variety of haiku, some from folks I know and bloggers most readers might recognize, and also from some pretty cool people I haven’t had the opportunity to meet yet. My mailbox is still bulging with the surprising amount of entries, and Bellwether even managed to e-mail me at 11:59 PM EST last Friday, when the contest officially ended. I’d like to thank everyone who contributed or mentioned this little endeavor to friends, and I hope that you either had fun participating or will enjoy reading them today!

Congratulations to Eustashius of Faux Paws fame for winning the main event (and gift card)—and giving me a good laugh!

Here are just a few of the other great entries!

Edgeworth from LF3 More actually submitted a haiku in Japanese that follows all the original rules, and his inclusion of the kanji and hiragana really allows for a visual experience of how the haiku reads.

Aeolos from Wanderings of the Meandering Mind offers a feral druid’s summer safety wisdom:

Phaelia from Resto4Life submitted a series of Northrend themed haiku and took the “seasonal” or “nature” theme to heart:

Ahmen from Moonguard offered a whimsical view of the giant, lumbering bear, and I’m reminded of how totally sweet it’d be if Dire Bear form displayed armor. Or, you know, at least a cape.

And finally, Korryna, also known as Valenna from Parry! Dodge! Spin! pays homage to the Darnassian deity:

I suppose I need to submit a few of my own, and since I’ve been accused of hopping on the anti-boomkin bandwagon, a few fat-bird flavored haiku:

Additionally, Lycentia wrote a Rawrberry flavored haiku-chain that I’d like to share but couldn’t justifiably “consider” in the contest.

Thanks again to everyone who participated, and I promise more updates soon!

Just a reminder that the 5-7-5 Summer Haiku Contest will be ending tomorrow, and the last submissions will be taken at 11:59, EST on Friday the 13th! Get your submissions in soon so you can be eligible for the prize! 

When I was first convinced to start writing a druid-themed blog, it was with the intention of creating an audience interested in both druids and high-end raid content. I don’t ever recall reading many other blogs geared in a similar fashion until recently, and it’s (dare I say) refreshing reading the trials and tribulations of others riding the progression bandwagon in the writings of folks such as Lume the Mad or Chick GM. But before I totally digress, I’d like to just take a minute to step back from Warcraft here and address what I mentioned in the very first sentence: creating an audience.


Here, I am making a few assumptions:

1. While bloggers must be writing in some fashion for themselves, they are also writing in a public venue in which they want to be seen.
2. You, as a blogger, do not want to alienate a potential audience and you, as a reader, do not want to feel alienated by a particular blog. Here, I’m talking about a potential audience within a topic itself; for example, I wouldn’t want to discourage druid readers. Generating interest from anyone else is an added bonus.
3. You, as a blogger, want to allow open discourse, in some capacity, and you, as a reader, do not want to be ignored.

Keeping the above items in mind, here are a few suggestions that I try to follow for anyone who’s curious or struggling with a fledgling site:

1. Update Frequently: I admittedly have a hard time doing this, especially when my schedule lately looks a little something like Go to Work, Come Home, Cook Dinner, Raid, Sleep. But the more often you update, the better the chances are that people will frequently check out your work to see what’s new. Similarly, as a reader, I really enjoy following specific blogs and look forward to new content. I am not, however, part of the Twitter camp, nor do I think that “updating frequently” means interjecting with every stray thought I happen to have during the day—for the purposes of my blog, anyway. While that might be…interesting, I don’t think the people who read Unbearably HoT want that. If I’m wrong, please let me know.




2. Track Site Statistics: While this offers a work-procrastinating opportunity for every Type A, OCD individual out there, integrating some sort of tracker into your website, like StatCounter, allows you to view a comprehensive breakdown of the traffic your site is receiving: how many hits, unique hits, recent keyword activity, websites that people clicked through to get to yours, popular pages, exit pages, etc. I am generally most interested in the amount of daily traffic as it correlates to days-of-the-week (when most people tend to drop by), where people are coming from (who’s linking to me) and what folks typed into Google to get them to my blog (keyword activity). This shows me when it’s most opportune to post in order to “please” the greatest numbers of stoppers-by. This kind of information might also surprise you—a post you might have viewed as silly, inconsequential or difficult to read may end up being the most popular thing you ever wrote. Go figure.




3. Comment: Don’t be afraid to comment elsewhere. Discuss. But more importantly, respond. While there are certainly blogs out there with entries generating 40+ comments a day, I’m going out on a limb and postulating that most, or at least many, WoW bloggers don’t usually get more than 20 and often less than 10. If folks bothered to leave you some kind of feedback, even if it’s something to the tune of HI I LIKE YOUR LAYOUT ALSO O’DOYLE RULES!, it’s just common courtesy to respond in some way, even if it’s simply a “Thank you”. Similarly, if someone comments with a correction or a controversial opinion, before you dismiss him or her outright or call him or her “rude”, take a minute, recheck your facts, math, whatever, and respond graciously and thoughtfully. We all make mistakes, and we all tend to make incorrect assumptions at one point or another. Additionally, while most theorycrafting is standard, take a minute and ascertain where this person is coming from—are they raiding Karazhan and you’re working on Illidan? Different specs, gear levels and levels of raiding might necessitate different rules or ideas. Meet halfway.




4. Determine Readability: This goes beyond the basics of good grammar, structure and spelling. I come from a background of writing dense scientific papers, rather erudite literary critcism and, to balance it all out, humorous nonfiction. It’s pretty easy to figure out which of those most people would probably read, and I try to recognize my tendency to write obscenely long sentences and make everything a little bit more conversational. To get an idea of how your writing compares to known standards, the intrepid writer can perform a Flesch/Kincaide test. Flesch Tests are statistical analyses of a selected body of work that utilizes this formula:
   
   206.835 – 1.015(total words/total sentences) – 84.6(total syllables/total words) .
   
   High scores indicate an easier to read document, while lower scores generally indicate denser, more difficult prose. For reference, Reader’s Digest scores around 65, a basic insurance policy scores around 45 and Nature would probably score in the mid-twenties. The Kincaid portion of the test scores your writing and calculates the basic grade level of your work (10 being a sophomore level). This post, for example, scores a 43.2 with a 12.0 reading level and definitely isn’t hard to read. Most public media caters to a sophomore or lower reading level. It’s interesting to see where you end up on the spectrum.
   
   
   Don’t let the math scare you—if you use WP, you can download a plug-in called FD Word Stats. Additionally, going to Tools>Options>Spelling & Grammar>Check Show Readability Statistics will allow you to perform the same tests in Microsoft Word. Just run a standard Spelling & Grammar check, and the stats will display at the end.

So even when you’re supposedly writing for yourself, take a moment to reflect on your personal motivations and slip yourself into the shoes of the reader—what do you like to see as a member of the “audience”?


I have some rather ridiculous WoW related news to report on later, but that’s it for now. In the meantime—what do you want to hear from me that I don’t already discuss?

In the very near future, you might notice that certain boxes on the sidebar are disappearing. Why’s that? You don’t want to link to anything else anymore?


YES I HATE EVERYONE.


Not really. I’m moving all major links to other WoW Bloggers (previously titled “Reads”) and References to the Blogroll page you can find at the top of the screen. This will hopefully streamline things a little more, clutter the mainpage less, and organize outgoing links in a more readily accessible format.


Comments are always appreciated.