Stephen Torrence has done a great service by recording and sharing a number of his translations of songs that catch his attention into American Sign Language (ASL).

HowStuffWorks.com interviewed Stephen to get some insight into the process he goes through in writing his translations and the details may surprise you.  The effort he puts into each of his translations shows, and it’s no wonder!  Each one of his recordings are the result of take after take, he’s not simply taking the words of the songs and dryly regurgitating them—he’s  carefully performing each phrase and verse, employing full use of his face and manner to great effect.

So, if you have even a passing interest in ASL and seeing some impressive performances, I recommend you take a look at Stephen’s collection on his YouTube page.

And with that, I leave you with the song that got me here: Stephen’s excellent performance of Jonathan Coulton’s “Still Alive,” Enjoy.

Credit goes to Kit for finding this amazing video first.  He showed it to me a while back, and I just now got to watching it since my web speed was increased.

Here’s some before/after images showing my improvement after being enlightened by Andantonius.

Before:

After:

If one looks closely, the color blending, highlights,  and shading are of considerably higher quality!

Thanks to Andantonius, my future work is sure to be something I can take pride in.

The simplest way to run two instances of WoW

Brian had mentioned on more than one occasion the practice of “multiboxing” which as best as I can define: a single user running two ore more World of Warcraft accounts at the same time.

I had always precieved that there was a certain level of complexity to operating two machines at the same time (multiple keyboards/mice, using KVM, etc.) however, it’s really quite simple:

• World of Warcraft permits mulitple instances as-is.
• WoW also has a ‘Windowed mode’ for reducing your gaming experience down to a manageable 1024×768 or even 800×600 window.

Now the final ingredient to this recipe is my trusty 1st-generation G15 keyboard:

Equipped with a gratuitous 18(!) macro keys (which was later revised to a manageable 6 in the second revision), setting ready-made commands up is a snap:

For this demonstration, my “slave” account is my wife’s level 62 priest who makes a good heal-bot <g>

The basic multiboxing strategy is as follows:

1. Set ‘slave’ character to follow the ‘master’ character – this is accomplished by hard-coding the sequence into a G15 macro titled “Follow Me”:
   1. Alt-Tab, to change focus from the master window to the slave’s window.
   2. “/target <character name>” this command, hard-coded to the master character’s name guarantees the right character is being followed.
   3. “/f” – to set the slave character to follow
   4. Alt-Tab  to return focus to the master’s window.
2. Use slave healer & support functions when necessary – this requires the use of multiple “G-Keys” my personal preference is to use two macro sets (M1 and M2) one for solo multiboxing, and one for full group use.  This is accomplished in much the same way that the follow command is accomplished:
   1. Alt-Tab
   2. F1, F2, F3, F4, or F5 to select the desired party member (note: use one G-key per party member)
   3. Cast desired spell
   4. Alt-Tab  to return focus to the master’s window.

Note that during battle, healers need to be standing still to get their heals cast, so be sure to use the “stop follow” command

So the layout for a priest command set on the G15 would go something like this:

This layout resides in memory set one (M1) on my keyboard its purpose is for soloing with the multibox slave assisting the master.

Set 2′s (M2) macro layout focuses on full party play such as instances or group quests by switching up the layout to cover heals/buffs for up to five party members Note the use of two major spells in columnar format:

Note that the importance of the Start/Stop Following Master commands is not to be underestimated!  To avoid interrupting healing spells during cast, the slave needs to be stationary.  Forcing the master to remember to hold still during critical healing moments is not an effective way to go about it, quickly “parking” the healer with the “Stop Following” (Alt+Tab, down arrow, Alt+Tab) command resolves this.

Isle of Quel’Danas

1. The Air Strikes Must Continue – very simple… just go along for the ride. Make sure you put the bomb in a hot key, targeting the units is tricky, and you don’t want to do this out of your backpack or even a sidebar. If you dont’ get all the guys on the first run, no big deal, you can go again, the enemy totals don’t reset after each run

2. Erratic Behavior/Further Conversions – Pick this quest over the other one in the area… the sentries are yellow until attacked, and are much easier to take down. Go around the north shore, staying on the beach… otherwise you will aggro the undead guys. Once you kill an erratic sentry, loot it before using the crystal on it… they drop motes of mana, and you can’t loot after you’ve transformed it with the crystal.

3. Know Your Ley Lines - The key here is not aggroing mobs going in… this usually isn’t too hard as there are plenty of horde/alliance players doing this for you already! You must go to three separate locations in all.

After these three quests, use your scroll you received as a reward to port back to Shattrath.

Throne of Kil’jaeden (northern Hellfire)

4. Blast the Gateway – A great help here is that you can charge your living flare by helping kill other elementals, even ones horde have aggroed! It takes about 8-10 elementals to charge it up, so this defintely helps. You also get a nice pack of shattered sun supplies, which has a green or better item inside.

5. Blood for Blood – Kill the demons, until you have 4 units of blood, Then pull one of the elites and use a single siphon charge on it… it takes a moment, but they will turn in into emaciated fel bloods, and you can kill them with ease. Respawn here is very quick, so make sure you are fighting in a corner. When you turn in, you can choose between Aldor or Scryer marks (5), which is a nice bonus.

6. Kazzak Must be Tickled – not a very well known quest, but very easy to do, especially since you’re already in the area. Just walk up to Kazzak, type /tickle, and he’ll fall over laughing. A few wacks with your weapon of choice, and you’re done… Seriously…

This one’s for you, Brian, Congratulations!

When one hits 70, they are suddenly open to a vast array of special quests called daily quests.  Daily quests earn an average of 10 gold, and can be repeated once a day.  Many daily quests, or “dailies” must be unlocked before they can be performed.  The process to obtain these dailies usually manifests itself in the form of chain quests that are three or four quests long, although they may be fewer or greater in number.

Dailies appear on your minimap as blue exclamation marks.  They aren’t to be confused with repeatable quests, characterized by blue question marks, which are able to be done as many times as one wants, and are used to generate reputation with certain factions rather than give money.

The first Daily I suggest to pick up starts as a chain quest from a Sha’Tari Skyguard representative standing beside the flight master in Shattrath City with a pet riding nether ray.  This is of course, after you have purchased your first flying mount.  That ability is gained from taking a quest from the flight master himself, that takes you to Wildhammer Stronghold in Shadowmoon Valley.  There you purchase a flying mount and riding ability for 200 gold and 800 gold respectively, coming to a total of 1000 gold.  Flying mounts are required for a great deal of dailies.

After you’ve picked up a flying mount, head back to Shattrath and look to the Skyguard mentioned above.  She will give you a quest to take care of a number of ogres residing in the hills above the city.  After this is done, you are directed to a place in Terokkar Forest called Blackwing Landing.  You can spot the encampment by its distinctive neon glowing landing pad much like something a helicopter would land at.

You can see in the upper right corner where the landing pad is.  This area is just southeast of Allerian Stronghold in Terokkar Forest.

There, you speak to the commanding officer in charge to get a quest that becomes a daily after the first performance.  You must fly your griffon to the tops of Arakkoan platforms and buildings, and drop explosive charges onto giant owl eggs.  This quest can be dangerous, as Kaliri, the owls whose eggs you are bombing, are active sky sentries for the Arakkoa,  If one aggroes onto you in the sky, the best thing to do is either dive towards the lake below, or to head for one of the close platforms on which the eggs rest.  If you don’t, the bird will most likely dismount you by force, and you’ll be at the mercy of whatever surface you land on.

Also in the vicinity of the egg bombing daily is another quest that relocates itself to random spots every day.  There is a Sha’tari Skyguard trapped in a cage in the tree-top homes of the Arakkoa.  He will ask you to escort him out of the treetops and fight any guards that spawn along the way.  As far as I am aware, this quest is soloable in all areas of its relocation.  I have only done it once or twice before, as my main concern is usually to bomb the eggs in “Fires Over Skettis” and then high-tail it to another area to complete more dailies.

Next Issue: Blade’s Edge Mountains and the Og’rila.