AlphaRalpha's view

Trying to get all the Tricks or Treats Achievements in World of Warcraft before the holiday ends. Tricks and Treats of Azeroth:

Complete the Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms and Outland Tricks and Treats achievements.

During the Hallow’s End event, each inn has a Candy Bucket which both starts and ends this quest. Clicking a candy bucket offers the option to take a handful of candy; taking the handful of candy completes and gives you credit for the quest. There is no separate turn-in. Each candy bucket has a separate instance of this quest. You can loot each one once during the event.

Candy Buckets can only be found in inns that allow you to set your hearthstone there. Buildings that look like inns but have noinnkeeper, such as in Moonglade, do not have Candy Buckets.

The search is on for a new laptop/notebook. The must have list is an ability to play games to some level; i.e. I expect to be able to do World of Warcraft level of gaming, i.e. I don’t want it choking on a simple 5-man raid with WoW’s cartoony graphics. I don’t expect unbelievable framerates and killer sound, but gaming requires a base level of horseppower that will be what I want from a new computer, the trick will be finding one at a reasonable price.

The Asus G51 notebook got a refresh to keep it up to date, getting a core i7 Intel processor and nVidia GTX 260M graphics. From a review at notebookreview.com:

The ASUS G51J has a few solid improvements over the older G51VX, most notably the shift from the Intel Q9000 to the Intel Core i7-720QM processor. This change shaved roughly 5 seconds off its wPrime score alone. 3DMark06 performance went up as well, but we didn’t see that much of a boost in actual gameplay. PCMark05 is also down, but it is hard to say if it was related to hardware or operating system differences. Overall users who are interested in purchasing this notebook should look at one item; the price. With specifications improving or staying equal, ASUS dropped the price $200, from $1,699 to $1,499.

here is a very recent video of Battlefield 2 running on a G51 (ostensibly):

via Anime News Network and TokyoMango

A middle aged man in Kobe set his room on fire and eventually burned down his house because his mother had thrown out his Gundam toy collection:

This past weekend, a 29-year old man named Yoshifumi Takabe burned down the large two-story house in Kobe that he shared with his mom. It was a suspected suicide & murder attempt based on the fact that his mother had thrown away his collection of Gundam figurines. At least that’s what he told police when he was arrested on Sunday.

The suspect reportedly doused his room with kerosene and lit it with a lighter around 2:10 p.m. on Sunday. The resulting fire eventually burned down the two-story house, which was about 250 square meters (about 2,700 square feet) and made partially from wood. The suspect reportedly doused his room with kerosene and lit it with a lighter around 2:10 p.m. on Sunday. The resulting fire eventually burned down the two-story house, which was about 250 square meters (about 2,700 square feet) and made partially from wood. According to the police, the suspect said that his mother had gotten rid of his “valuable” Gundam plastic models, so he wanted to kill himself.

words fail me …

The folks at Engadget posted an extensive review of the new Olympus EP-1 camera. Finally get a new micro four-thirds camera to go with the Panasonic GH-1. The blend of retro styling with micro four-thirds format combine for a truly gadget lust inspiring platform.

They say the LCD screen on the back was a bit hard to use in daylight, which is not a good thing, IMHO.

Problems with the color saturation, not so good out of the box although that can be fixed.

The video results are impressive. I really like the 720p out put.

Their verdict is a thumbs up. But I personally wish the Olympus would adopt the SDHC memory card standard that almost every one else uses.

Update: I stand corrected, it turns out that the EP-1 uses SDcards, good news there.

This is being reposted all over the web but it deserves it, Mr. Kunio Kato getting his Oscar for Best Director and slipping a reference to the classic song into his acceptance speech:

Had lunch at the La Fogata Grill in Pickerington today. Had the Chimichanga Suprema and a Beef Tamale. It was really good. Will go back again sometime.