Martha.net
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In Pursuit of Rabbits
Aug 31st
I have been doing some pondering lately, mostly about five-years plans and ‘perfect’ days, and I think I may be chasing the wrong rabbit.
Society has convinced us that we’re meant to run in circles chasing a prize agreed upon as ‘sufficiently rabbit-like’ and we spend our formative years in anticipation of running that race. Once we’re let loose on the track we do our best to run the way we’ve been taught. If we succeed or fail… we just line up and do it all over again.
So why don’t more of us start chasing the real rabbits when given the chance? (Only one of the dogs in the photo swapped targets).
Because no one else does.
We are all individuals, unique little snowflakes in a blizzard of humanity, but most of us aren’t mean to live individually. We survive and thrive because of the people around us (and sometimes in spite of them), but it’s finding acceptance in a group that really motivates our little lizard brains. We chase the fake rabbits because the crowd only cheers when we’re running in circles.
Think of the last time you were really proud of an accomplishment at work, or school, or in your personal life. Were your friends also proud? Your family? There’s a good bet that someone you value was doing the happy dance right along with you.
Now think of how you would have felt if no one else was cheering.
Sure, we’re told we should only please ourselves and that living our lives to please others will only end in Doom, but do you know anyone who has managed to please themselves without pleasing others? (We’re not including sociopaths here, for obvious reasons.)
That’s why experts tell you to exercise with a buddy and to surround yourself with positive people, to find friends that emulate the traits you’d like to have. They’re the kind of people who will celebrate your shared milestones, because pleasing yourself isn’t enough.
Maybe I don’t need to focus on finding just the right rabbit– maybe I need to focus on finding people who have already found theirs.
Profitina’s Mini Me (painted 200?)
Aug 30th
Profitina
Mold: Breyer Stablemate Paso Fino (G2)
Color: Chestnut Frame Overo
Medium: Acrylics and Pastels
This is a portrait horse that was painted for Emily Woodward (yay for notes!) and that I was actually rather proud of the way it turned out.
I did get better at the portrait models as I went along, but I was always petrified that I was going to mess them up. Doing a normal custom for someone is easy, a bay is a bay is a bay… but when it’s your bay, then it’s Bay with capital B. And letters twenty feet high. And on fire. … Did I mention I’m not planning on doing any more portrait horses? *sighs*
Looking back at it now, the tail could have been a little darker and she might be a tad too red– As an artist (and a bit of a perfectionist) I can always pick out flaws or things I wish I had done better, but Emily was happy with her and in the end that’s all that matters!
Profitina
Profitina
Profitina - Source
Finding a New Story to Tell
Aug 29th
It has been a bit of a crazy month and my latest Novel_in_90 fell by the wayside much more rapidly than I feared.
The main fault, I think, was starting with an established storyline. I spent a good bit of time cat-waxing over trying to get everything to match up well with what had gone before. (Sadly an even larger chunk of time was spent trying to track down all of the files in which ‘what had come before’ were saved.)
So this time I’m going to start with a blank page and slightly more organized intentions.
I’ve plotted out an hour each morning in which to get the 750 words done, and a bit of time in the evening to format it properly for posting. This attempt will be a bit more linear and thus an entertaining read (I hope) for anyone who wants to follow the madness.
Now I’m off to setup the treadmill-laptop for the first of the four 15 minute writing sessions I hope to get done today. We’ll see how the wordcounts roll…
Hunter Talents : Levels 10-14
Aug 26th
Pre-Research Talents
Until Cataclysm comes and changes life as we know it, listed below are the talents available to hunters for levels 10 through 14. Once you hit level 15 the next tier of talents are unlocked (assuming you have put all five points into one talent tree). I’d recommend picking one tree and sticking to it, at least until you get a better feel for which one best fits the way you play.
Beast Mastery is the default leveling spec for soloing hunters, when you are dual-boxing you have the luxury of being able to mix and match. I’m sticking to cookie cutter BM talent builds for now, but I may look into broadening my range when I hit the ability to dual-spec (Dual Talent Specialization) at 40. Comments here are thusly focused on talent usefulness when looking through the BM spec, but I may update them if I go back and try leveling a different way.
Since it only costs 1 gold to change things around, I have a feeling I’ll be playing with the build a lot as I go along.
Improved Aspect of the Hawk
Improved Aspect of the Hawk : Beast Mastery
While Aspect of the Hawk or Dragonhawk is active, all normal ranged attacks have a 10% chance of increasing ranged attack speed by 3/6/9/12/15% for 12 sec.
This talent increases your speed, thus increasing your DPS… but only 10% of the time. I wasn’t reading the talents carefully enough whiles leveling and I picked this talent over Endurance Training because of the theoretical increase. After reading around a bit, I found that it wasn’t worth the points until I’m at a level where a speed increase 10% of the time would make a significant difference. Level 10 is not that level. (Nor is 22, which is when I started paying attention to my builds. *sighs*)
Endurance Training
Endurance Training : Beast Mastery
Increases the health of your pet by 2/4/6/8/10% and your total health by 1/2/3/4/5%.
This is the talent I respec’d into. While increasing health isn’t something that gives a direct DPS increase, it does factor into keeping the pets alive longer… which means keeping the mobs out of melee range and from Om Nom Nom’ing on my tasty hunters. Since I’m choosing to focus around a melee-phobic playstyle for this dual-boxing team, I’m finding that talents and abilities that focus on the pets rather than on my hunter’s DPS tend to be more useful.
Improved Concussive Shot
Improved Concussive Shot : Marksmanship
Increases the duration of your Concussive Shot’s daze effect by 1/2 sec.
This was one of the talents I was tempted to take early on, but since I have the luxury of being able to land alternating Concussive Shots, I didn’t take it. From the comments I’ve found online, it was really only a useful talent pre-nerf when it gave up to a 20% chance of stun instead of an increased duration. There are notes in the Wiki that it could be a useful PvP talent, but since daze only affects movement and not spellcasting… it’s not that useful there either.
Focused Aim
Focused Aim : Marksmanship
Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Steady Shot by 23/46/70%, and increases your chance to hit by 1/2/3%.
Everything I can find online about this talent is in relation to it’s affects on Steady Shot which is a level 50 ability. While the increase in hit percentage is nice, it looks like this talent is focused primarily on folks looking to reach hit cap… which makes little sense considering this is a first tier talent.
I’m very glad things are getting such a shake-up when Cataclysm rolls around, there are just too many odd talents that are either useless or placed oddly in the tree.
Lethal Shots
Lethal Shots : Marksmanship
Increases your critical strike chance with ranged weapons by 1/2/3/4/5%.
This is a must have talent for final builds, no matter what set of comments you look at. Since a critical strike causes an additional 100% physical damage (plus causes other things to proc) it’s definitely something you want to pick up… just probably not yet. Most leveling guides I’ve found for Beast Mastery have us coming back to pick up this skill somewhere between level 50 and 60.
Improved Tracking
Improved Tracking : Survival
While tracking Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids and Undead, all damage done to those types by the Hunter is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%.
While a 5% damage bonus would be nice, none of the BM leveling guides seem to recommend taking this talent. It does seem to pop up in raiding builds, but it appears to be something I can safely skip for now.
Hawk Eye
Hawk Eye : Survival
Increases the range of your ranged weapons by 2/4/6 yards.
Extra range is nice… but not nice enough to put points into. From the comments online this is primarily a PvP talent, but I can see where it might be useful when raiding or PvE’ing. Right now, I’m looking for the most bang for my buck and this just isn’t interesting enough to sink points into.
Savage Strikes
Savage Strikes : Survival
Increases the critical strike chance of Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and Counterattack by 10%.
Since I’ve banished melee spells from my action bars, I can say with 100% certainty that this would be a useless talent for me. Depending on your own build, you may disagree.
20 Minutes of Something
Aug 25th
seilF emiT
At my workplace we are allowed two 10 minute breaks in addition to lunch, workload permitting. I’ve very rarely ever taken these breaks since a) I had too much work, b) I don’t smoke and c) my friends take theirs at times that don’t match up with my own work habits.
But as things have slowed down a bit, I’m now at the point where taking the two breaks would not impact my job performance. Since I’m not going to take up smoking and my friends won’t be there, I’m rather stumped about what to do with them. I have the feeling I should be doing Something, since the point of them is to give us a bit of downtime in which to recoup.
Sadly, the only thing I can think of doing as a break from a workday in which I stare at the computer all day… is to stare at the computer some more.
I’m not sure if we are allowed to access blogs from work on our breaks… but I wonder if it could hurt to ask. *ponders* 10 minutes isn’t much, but having polished my Word Sprinting skills last NaNoWriMo, I can get out a decent volume in uber-rough draft.
If I roughed out one post per break, that would give me two posts to polish once I got home. It’s much easier to sit down and edit after a workday of Left-brain heavy work than to start something new. Plus I have plenty of things that need drafting! (I’ve been making a list of things I’d like to write about for each of the blogs, but I’ve never gotten around to doing much more that the titles.)
If they say no, I’ll have to think of something else… which may involve sketchbooks and art supplies.
Or interpretive dance.
Danny Boy (painted 200?)
Aug 23rd
Danny Boy
Mold: Breyer Stablemate Cantering Foal (G2)
Color: Chestnut Roan Leopard Appaloosa
Medium: Acrylics
I honestly can’t say if this was meant to be a roan first and then turned into an appaloosa or if it started out as an appy and just looks roan-ish. Either way, it’s a fun color (if possibly not realistic) and I love the way the splatterpaint looks when it comes out right. Florentine Flip was a paint to create, but the technique was definitely a keeper.
The photos don’t do him justice, the colors have much more depth in person. You can’t tell from these, but the splatterpaint was actually in different shades. I varied between the darker and lighter shades in order to get the roaning effect. Lots of time for such a little horse, but worth it!
She’s another one of those horses that I regret selling (hence my current vow not to sell anything unless someone else really wants it). Ah well, in theory I can always paint another one! In practice, of course, it’s not that easy…
Danny Boy
Danny Boy
All Together Now (or: From Many, One.)
Aug 22nd
Blog Cascade
My husband made a very good point earlier today that has had me breaking out the note-cards and playing around with possibilities. He mentioned that he thought it would make more sense if I just combined everything into one blog instead of splitting things out into separate blogs.
Having one blog would mean less logging in and out of the various WordPress Dashboards. Less password and username forgetfulness. Less fiddling with the nine thousand email addresses. Less addon and theme updates to install. Less backups to store. Less tracking tools to manage. Basically, less headaches in general.
It would allow me to have one website, one email address, and one core identity online, instead of the rather fractured one I have now.
Hobby Disconnect
Originally I had split out my blogs because my interests/hobbies/topics have very little overlap (Model Horses vs World of Warcraft). I did the same thing on my LiveJournal with filters, but I’m serious thinking of declaring a do-over in both locations. Simplification is a key focus in my life at the moment and it’s interesting to consider what the negatives would be from falling back into a ‘all Martha, all the time’ setting.
The main negative I can think of would be a lack of focus, since the topics do have very little overlap. A loss of focus might mean a loss of readers, but I have very little traffic to the various blogs that doesn’t come in through a search engine to start with. Those few places that do link to the old pages can be handled with a simple redirect setup with my hosting provider.
(Speaking of which, I’ll have to reset all of the Google analytics and AdSense settings, and make sure the redirection and reposting doesn’t get me blacklisted by accident (eek!).)
Comics Sans Away!
Another negative would be a loss of the visual distinctiveness that each blog currently has. The only website that really requires a separate WordPress theme is the comic strip (Camera Angles), so although they all have very different looks there isn’t anything forcing the differentiation. Having them separated is nice, but I’m not sure if the trade-off is worth it in the time an energy it takes me to maintain them all.
Something that’s not so much a negative as a massive undertaking would be having to sort out the best way to reorganize the Categories and Tags, but I didn’t put much thought into them to start with, so I suppose it couldn’t hurt to sit down and plan things out for once.
I’ll be poking about in the settings and trying out some ideas, so don’t panic if things look a little different (i.e. ‘broken’)… I’m just experimenting.
Tuesday Blues
Aug 17th
There’s nothing quite like realizing you have forgotten it is garbage day (again) to make one feel like an accomplished adult.
After all, it’s not as if the garbage truck is some sort of stealth vehicle that nips in and out on random mornings and steals your trash like an anti-Santa. They are not chaotic beings pulled along by strange attractors, that may or may not pass by my house on any given morning. They are not quantum units that only sometimes exist in Euclidean space (ah Wikipedia, I should know better than to start playing in thee) or ghosts of garbage trucks past that collect only memories…
Nope, they come every Tuesday morning at roughly 8:30, baring holidays or hurricanes.
They have done this for the entire seven years we have lived in this house.
I’m going to go curl up in a corner, sip my coffee, and pretend that I was well aware of this fact prior to opening my front door and seeing that my neighbors are all actual adults and not just pretending.
Sip.
Magpie Summer (painted 200?)
Aug 16th
Magpie Summer
Mold: Breyer Stablemate Saddlebred (G1)
Color: Dark Bay
Medium: Acrylics
This little lady was my first shot at painting this older mold. You’d think by the time I got to her that I would have done one already… but I always feel odd customizing the older molds. There’s something sort of wasteful about customizing things you can’t replace. At least she was body quality, so I didn’t feel as guilty!
This mold has lost a lot of the details over the years, so I figured I’d go for a more classic bay with just a touch of chrome. I was trying to mimic the feel of the Hagen-Renaker chinas I remember seeing in all the hobby and art stores. Simple, but I think she turned out pretty beautiful as well.
Amusingly I am now having the same bits of reluctance about customizing the G2s. Which is silly, considering I gave away an entire box full of bodies at the last Hampton Roads Classic and I still have a box and a half left. Still… when you can’t buy more. *shrugs* At least almost all of them are already in the processes of being painted, so all I have to do is finish them.
Magpie Summer
Magpie Summer
Magpie Summer
Hunter – Hunter Leveling – Level 24
Aug 16th
(Sorry for skipping ahead, I got caught up in questing and I made it to 24 before I finished the earlier posts.)
At level 24 we pick up another rank in Raptor Strike (boo) and two new abilities.
Beast Lore
Beast Lore
“Gather information about the target beast. The tooltip will display damage, health, armor, any special resistances, and diet. In addition, Beast Lore will reveal whether or not the creature is tameable and what abilities the tamed creature has.”
Beast Lore Screenshot
When you cast this on a beast (which includes beast bosses, other hunters’ pets, Shamans in wolf form, and druids in cat/bear/travel form) it will show you information about the critter when you then mouse over it. It gives hunter’s a way to see what abilities pets had before they were tamed–which is sort of useless, assuming you’ve used Petopia to pick out your pet ahead of time.
I’m assuming this was much more useful back in the day when the different skins on the pets meant something. Depending on the beast, it might have unqiue talents, higher stats, or other such goodness. Now a pig is a pig is a tenacity pet– regardless of what it was before you tamed it.
Track Hidden
Track Hidden
“Greatly increases stealth detection and shows hidden units within detection range on the minimap. Only one form of tracking can be active at a time.”
While it’s nice to turn this on when the stealthed felines are making your life miserable in the Thousand Needles, it’s not that useful a skill outside of PvP. You won’t see anything pop up on the minimap before it’s right on top of you, since the ability doesn’t up your stealth detection to omnipotence… just a few more feet and a few levels higher. Outside of those specific times when you have to avoid the Annoying Invisible Critters, it’s not that useful.
Talent Point
This level’s talent point is going into Unleashed Fury again. I’m still not sold on putting two points into Pathfinding, even if I am doing a lot of running around. Next level we’ll get to the next tier (yay!)
So, all in all, level 24 is sort of a wash. Ah well, still recovering from the insanity that was level 20!
Leveling Guides (or: How to Learn From My Mistakes)
Aug 14th
The Foursome of DOOM
I was taking stock of the blog this week and realized I’ve wandered off a bit from where I wanted to be with it. While I had planned on the various ‘what I learned today’ posts from my own leveling, I meant to focus more on helpful content for other folks just beginning to dual-box themselves. When I started out I had a hard time finding good guides on how to play and what skills and talents were more effective than others.
Which is not to say there aren’t good guides out there… I just couldn’t find them. Most of the multi-boxing websites focus on five man teams, which are amazing to watch, but I just don’t have that kind of bankroll. $30 a month is more or less my limit for money I’m willing to spend (unless I can find a way to make the hobby pay for itself! *daydreams*)
Home Sweet Home
In order to keep myself more on track for what topics I should be covering, I’ve started dual-boxing leveling guides for each of the different pairs. They are listed under the Pages drop-down, but I may move that around later. For now I’m mostly just linking to the posts I’ve already written, but I’ll be working on expanding them to be as useful as possible. (If you have any requests or questions, just let me know!)
I’ve been going about this randomly so far and looking back there are places where I’ll need to level alts just to get the screenshots and whatnot that I need. Which is annoying, but I can always use more alts, so it’s not horrible either. Heck, anything under 20 is just for fun anyway.
So, I’ve got the Hunter – Hunter leveling guide roughed out and I will be working primarily on that guide this weekend.
Although I do have some ideas for new pairs to try…
Lament and Fallow
If You Build It… They Will Bounce
Aug 11th
The real joy of tools like Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics is that you can find out just how much of the internet looks at your webpages for 10 seconds or less. In my case, it’s all of it.
Which is to be expected for two basically brand new blogs (even if the model horse website has been around for a bit), but my goal is to improve those numbers by the end of this month. I’m not setting and hard goals for percentage improvement yet, I’m just looking to see if anything I can do will bring those numbers up.
Perish Twice, my blog on dual-boxing in World of Warcraft currently has a score of 90.76% Bounce Rate, 00:00:10 Avg. Time on Site and 96.74% New Visits.
Custom-Models.com, my blog about model horses isn’t currently tracked by Google Analytics, so there’s no place to go but up!
In order to increase the length of time people spend on my blogs (and to decrease the bounce rate), I need to focus in on what people are looking for when they drop by. Most likely my pitiful numbers are because folks surfed in expecting something that I didn’t provide. So let’s check out the warcraft blog, since it’s the only one I have data on at the moment.
What Do They Want?
First step is to figure out the most popular thing on the blog, which at the moment is the post about controlling Hunter Pets. It gets a whopping 15.38% of the site traffic, which could mean I have a good topic I need to expand upon.
Using Analytics I can then drill down and check on each of these pages to how they got here (google, links, etc), and how long they stayed before leaving, and if they went to another page or just headed out again. Most importantly, I can see what keyword brought people here (ie what were they looking for?)
- city of heroes pet macros
- pet macros aggresive
- basic hunter macros turn on off growl
- can hunter pets be keybound
- cast feed pet macro
- city of heroes macro pet
- dual boxing macro
- how to macro your pet abilities to your attacks
- hunter dual box pet talents
- hunter pet dungeon turn off growl
Well, sadly two of the ten items are things relating to another game, and although I did love playing my Mastermind over at City of Heroes… that’s not what this blog is about. But thankfully the rest of the items are things the post was actually focusing on. Still, the average time spent on the page and the bounce rate make it unlikely they are finding what they need.
So now we step back a moment.
Pretendy-Fun-Time Games
Close your eyes (or don’t, because it’s hard to read with your eyes closed) and imagine you are a surfer. You have typed in “cast feed pet macro” and you see the post for Pets, Pet Macros, and Stupid Things MeatShield Does. Now open your eyes. Was this what you were looking for?
Well, no. The bits I was looking for were at the very bottom of the post — and it’s a long post. Being a jaded internet surfer and not wanting to waste my time, I click back and try another search engine link.
So I went back and added bookmarks to the top of the post, allowing people to hop to the bits they were interested in. Since 40% of the incoming search terms were referencing information actually found on the page, we’ll see if that increases any of the page stats. (And I’ll keep it in mind for any longer posts I write in the future.)
Lather, Rinse, Repeat
I’ll need to go back and do this for every post that Google shows anyone surfing in on. I need to take the content I already have and make sure that people know they have found what they are looking for. I’ll also need to make notes on which topics seem to interest the travelers most, because that’s while I’ll need to focus on for my next blogging adventures.
Which will take a good bit of time, and it’s why I’m not setting and specific goals for how I want my traffic patterns to change. I’m certainly no expert on how to keep readers reading, but I figure I’ll learn as I go.
(Next week I’ll work on developing the ‘keywords’ that I want each blog to be aiming for…)
Finding Solitude (or: Chasing Internet Squirrels)
Aug 10th
I’ve started to wonder recently if the idea that a writer needs to seek out a quiet place to work is a personal fallacy. I’ve held it to be true for– well, nigh on forever at this point, but when I think back across the years it has rarely ever been true.
“I write best up at the cabin in Maine.”
We went up to my grandparents cabin in Maine every summer when I was a kid. For a month or two we’d spend time playing on the rocky seashore, fishing, and enjoying our break from ‘real life’. (Which included running water, telephones, but thankfully not electricity.)
We read books, wrote books, played boardgames with the assembled extended family and went garage sale-ing on the weekends. We reveled in all the things that there wasn’t time for at home and it was pure unadulterated bliss.
It’s true that I wrote the most (and the most freely) in Maine, but it was rarely ever alone. I had grand fun co-authoring stories with my brother as well as writing while a thousand other things were going on in the background. It could be just as true to say ‘I write best with family.’ Which makes me miss Maine and family something fierce… Someday I will find a job that gives me ample vacation time, or allows two month sabbaticals every few years. *sighs*
‘I write best alone in the quiet.”
Hah. I can’t actually think of a time where this was ever true. Even now, having moved my computer into my own little office area, I’m pausing to have conversations with my husband, pet the dogs and listen to dissertations on ‘why monkeys suck’ from the cat (who is annoyed I am petting the dogs and not her). This is not quiet, nor alone in any stretch of the definition. Add to that the fact that my most prolific writing for NaNoWriMo came in the form of weekly Write-ins and I really can’t pin down when I started thinking this was a personal truth.
Now I’ll admit to the same cat-waxing tendencies as anyone else. Looking for the perfect secluded place to write, away from distractions and temptation is an acceptable method of avoiding putting words on a page… but for me, it might be worse if I actually found what I was looking for.
So maybe it’s time I redefined solitude. *skritches the Fluffy!Puppy head* Maybe it has more to do with surrounding myself with things that encourage writing (like NaNo or siblings) rather than trying to reduce the things that don’t (the internet in general). While I love spending my time chasing internet squirrels (Stumble, Farmville, Etsy), there are a thousand things offline that also ‘need doing’ so I can’t every really escape the chance for procrastination.
But darned if I’m not going to miss Maine anyways. *sighs*
Splashdown (painted 200?)
Aug 9th
Splashdown
Mold: Breyer Stablemate Thoroughbred (G2)
Color: Lineback Yellow Dun Splash Overo
Medium: Acrylics and Pastels
What did I do before pastels? No, seriously… this is one of the later horses, as you can tell by the photos, and one of my favorites.
The basecoat for this model was the light yellow that still peeks through in places. All of the rest was very slow, very careful layering of tans and browns. The dappling, the faint pinking on the nose– I have to say I really love what you can accomplish with chalk pastels! Of course they take nigh on forever to do and only lend themselves to very soft colorings. For some horses I’d rather have the ‘pop’ of acrylics, but in certain situations I do love the softness.
I do need to take some time and link out to the other model horses artists out there– there are some flat out amazing painters out there. Horses sculpted and painted so realistically that on first look most people assume they are real. Which has led to some amusement value for the model horse tack makers, since their prices are often in line with the real thing. (Ah my hobby, how I love it!)
Splashdown
Splashdown
Splashdown
Splashdown
Novel_in_90 Reboot (Redux?)
Aug 8th
I’ve started playing in the Novel_in_90 LiveJournal community again, thanks to a post on Friday asking when the next round was starting. (There aren’t rounds, as such, it’s a ‘jump in at any time’ setup in which you are aiming for a personal 90 day run.)
I’d been looking at ways to get back into the daily writing rhythms and the community slipped my mind for some reason. Amusingly I had even started fiddling without outlines for this year’s NaNoWriMo and was chomping at the bit to get started. I hadn’t really forgotten about the comm, but it hadn’t been on the top of my mind either. It’s one of those ‘sounds like a good idea!’ that you routinely forget exists until you stumble over it again.
The comm has been relatively quiet recently, so I’m taking the opportunity to psych myself up and be at least mildly entertaining to the other folks who are coming to play. I’ve made the 750 word count two days in a row and if I can just keep that momentum rolling through the work week, I should be set. I’m thinking of devoting time in the morning to writing, which would be a nice change from my routine of mindlessly surfing the interwebs. (Chasing Internet Squirrels, FTW!)
So if anyone else is interested, come on by Novel_in_90 and join in the fun!