Today Nokia will announce that in order to increase investor confidence and foster brand loyalty all Nokia Symbian phones in the world will receive two free Nokia-themed games.

The first game will be Angry Nokias – Nokias have discovered that other phones are taking their market share away and now they are very, very angry! Fling cool and shiny Nokia phone and destroy the competition. Complete all free 30 levels and be first to collect all golden Ovi’s by gathering MeeGo and Windows Phone 7 logos in the levels!

The other game that is sure to be an instant hit among true Nokia fans will be the Nokia Ninja – you are a humble user and sales people are throwing phones at you – all kinds of phones. But beware – most of those phones are not Nokias! Use your finger to slice trough the competition, rake up combos and achievements! But be careful – you do not want to slice trough a Nokia phone! Only trough instant brand recognition you can rake up truly great scores in this game.

Nokia – connecting people.

(P.S. Check the date)

So I set aside some money and started considering the options. In short, I could get another laptop OR get a regular computer for the same price but with twice the power. After considering all the laptop options up to 1000LVL, I decided to get a regular computer and if/when I’ll need to travel I’ll either take one of the old laptops with me or get a new netbook.

Now comes the fun part – choosing the components!

So far my choices are as follows:

• 1080p LCD/TN monitor with a built-in DVB-T TV receiver, around 23″ – around 180 LVL (comparable options without the TV receiver are around 50 LVL cheaper, getting an extra digital TV in the house is a nice extra)
• Intel Core i5 processor and a corresponding motherboard from ASUS with 4 RAM slots and 1 video card slot (I like ASUS hardware and the TurboBoost technology of i5 sounds a very nice alternative to buying a high-Ghz dual core setup) – 125 LVL + 80 LVL
• NVidia 250GTS video card (for my WoW raiding fun) – 60 LVL
• 2*2Gb of DDR3 1600 KINGSTON RAM with lifetime warranty, leaving 2 slots for expansion later – 60 LVL
• 1 Tb HDD (Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ got great scores in recent digital times reviews) – 55 LVL
• Chieftec 500W PSU and case (good experience with them so far and good reviews) – 70 LVL
• Blueray player with DVD-RW (why not at this price?) – 60 LVL

And that is it – a great setup that will last me a few years for around 700 LVL and it will have more partial upgradability than my laptop that I paid twice as much 3 years ago.

Any tips? Did I miss anything? Is it likely that anything in the above list will cause me any trouble in latest Ubuntu/Debian installations?

Update: got all of the above, except 500 Gb HDD of the same kind (faster, cooler, but higher price per Gb) and no Blueray (no drive in LV at the moment and did not want to wait a few weeks). The results are good, but I wish I would have gone with a 5 LVL more expensive video card that has a quieter cooler. Now I am buying a separate video card cooler for around 20 LVL that will be both more efficient and much quieter than the stock cooler I have – Zalman VF1000 is the model. Has not arrived yet.

P.S. It looks like updating a post in WP, automatically bumps it back into the Planet feed. Sorry

It is not a secret anymore that mages of all talent specs will be getting a present when patch 2.3.2 hits the live realms – the Ice Block will be available from any friendly mage trainer for a nominal fee. Currently this spell requires a whopping 21 point investment into the Frost talent tree. With patch 2.3.2 Ice Block will become trainable to all mages, Ice Barrier will take it’s place in the talent tree and a new awesome talent – Icy Veins will take the place of the Ice Barrier, so that even frost mages have a new toy to gain in this 2.3.2 mage winterly fiesta.

While there is a significant proportion of mages that are frost for PVP or grinding survival purposes, a large proportion of mage population have never used Ice Block or haven’t used it for a while. For that reason, the rest of this article (after the break) will explore all the great uses of Ice Block, that all of you can look forward when patch 2.3.2 hits the live realms (or sooner, if this article convinces you to re-spec frost ).

So, what does the Ice Block do? When you cast the Ice Block, it purges you from all debuffs and releases you from all snares, you get frozen solid into a large block of ice (same look as hunter’s ice trap) and for 10 seconds you are immune to all damage, but unable to do anything – no moving, casting anything, no bandages, nothing.

Getting rid of: Ice Block is a buff, so you can get out of the Ice Block by right-clicking it off at any time. Another way for keyboard-addicted mages is to press Ice Block keybinding button again (after the global cooldown is done). Enemy shamans can purge it off you and priests can mass dispel your Ice Block in PVP.

Cooldown: the Ice Block is on 5 minute cooldown, which can be ended early using the Cold Snap talent from the mage frost tree. To prevent mages casting two ice blocks back to back by using the Cold Snap, Blizzard added the Hypothermia debuff (in 2.1) that prevents you from casting the Ice Block 30 seconds after the last cast.

The main use of Ice Block is to survive pulling aggro in groups. While we all know that “good mages don’t draw aggro”, experienced players can easily show situations when drawing aggro is not mages fault and surviving that can be the difference between a wipe and a win. When Ice Block is used, your threat is NOT reduced, so you need to stay inside the Ice Block at least until you are under 130% of the tanks threat. After you Ice Block, the mob will run to the next person on the threat list. If your tank is dead, Ice Block will send the mob to another DPS or healer giving you a couple seconds to nuke it when it will be running back to you again. I have seen a few bosses loose their last 2-3% of health running between mages with Ice Block and hunters with Feign Death after a unfortunate death of the main tank.

Ice Block is a great way to get rid of almost all debuffs that exist in the game: warlock DoTs, stuns, snares, polymorph, mind control … Even boss debuffs go away in a snap – Garrote from Moroes, Demonic Chains from Illhoof and many more deadly debuffs are no threat to a mage with an Ice Block ready.

Ice Block can be used as an alternative to Slow Fall if you’re out of Light Feathers. Just do not cast it too high in the air – if the 10 seconds tick by and you haven’t hit the land yet .. you could as well kiss 10% of your durability goodbye.

When solo grinding there is noone to draw aggro from you, so the mobs will continue to beat on your personal icy sculpture, however during that time your Water Elemental or other battle pets could be dishing some damage, your cooldowns will tick down and also you will also regenerate some mana inside the Ice Block. The Ice Block could thus make the difference between your death and Frost Nova+Blink+Blizzard and their death.

Have you had some fun experience with Ice Block? Leave a comment so that others could repeat it too!

In order of celebration I will embrace consumerism and get me two things: World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade expansion and a cat. Next week I will be going around animal shelters and cat owners in Riga in a search for a 1-2 months old black, male kitten. It has been my dream to have a cat again since my last cat died of old age 3 years ago. Unfortunately I lived in dormitories where they did not allow pets or in UK. But now, I can finally get one. I am very exited about that

1. Take a recent Wine version. Any version from this year (2007) will do. Debian and Ubuntu users can either use the wine from the latest releases of the distros or use the winehq.org repositories.
2. Install WoW via the usual installer
3. Edit $WOW/WTF/Config.wtf and add following lines:
   
SET gxApi "OpenGL"
SET SoundOutputSystem "1"
SET SoundBufferSize "100"

4. Run ‘wine regedit’ and set HKEY_CURRENT_USER->Software->Wine->OpenGL->DisabledExtensions to “GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object” (you will need to create this string value)

That is it! You can now simple run ‘wine WoW.exe’ and play the game. Updates also work perfectly. The speed is a bit faster then in the other operating systems and (just like in MacOs X) you can have all your software opened on one virtual desktop, WoW on another and switch between them instantly.

However the main theme of this post is the Game On! exhibition in the London’s Science Museum. They have the best games playable there starting with the classic Pong, Lara Croft, Bomberman, Mortal Combat and up to Halo 2 on XBox 360. Even my non-gamer friend lastguru found a thing to drool upon – his childhood obsession: Elite.

Update: Almost forgot to mention – the exhibition is great: it shows the evolution of gaming and allows to experience the most important games again and it also brings a huge amount of joy to anyone who has ever played these games before – the return to childhood is imminent. I never expected that something as simple as the original Pong can be so exciting in a good company. Very recommended!

Debconf6 this year was also the venue of an Assasination game. The idea is that there are people playing the game who are ordered in a circle. Each of them only know the name of the person in front of them – the one they have to assassinate. The killing takes place by touching the marks upper body with a (clean) sock. The assassin must hold the sock in the moment of contact and nobody who is playing can see the event. If a player sees the assassination, it is void and must be repeated, but no sooner then on the next day. Before the death a killed assassin must utter the name of his mark, which then becomes the mark of the killer.

My first mark was a guy that I did not know. I had to wait a day for him to arrive. I also had no idea how he looked because there is no available photo of him online. That made my job a bit harder. I tried to find him among people going from the lunch to the Enrico’s speech, but missed him.

And on the way back I was assassinated myself. Bugger. I think I can publish it now, because this information will not affect the game except maybe make people be a bit more careful when walking to the tower and back – it is a nice assassination spot.

I guess being recognizable because of this blog is a big disadvantage in this game.

This Saturday we had an installfest in LAKA with a topic of free games. It came to me to make my own top 10 of free Linux time wasting games that are packaged for Debian. Here we have the list for future reference:

Honorable mention – Battle for Wesnoth: a turn based strategy game with a lot of scenarios for single player and also with multiplayer support.

1. Enigma – A fine puzzle of precision ball moving around large and complex landscapes with a lot of different of tools and quirks

1. Bygfoot – A football team manager with a lot of nice extra tools like transfers, injuries, salaries, sponsorship deals and a nice comentary for the games themselves. I only would love to see some kind of an online mode either in runtime mode or in turn-per-day mode.

1. Blob wars – Funny and bloody as hell. Think Rambo as a bruised blob shooting other blobs and rescuing another blobs. Got a lot of laughs during the presentation.

1. Pingus – Lemmings clone just with penguins. Nice graphics and control. Looks like there is a lot of levels too. Wonderful intro.

1. LiquidWar – A very addictive and abstract game of liquid domination. Nothing much to explain – just play it with your friends or against a bunch of AI players.

1. Tecnoballz – Arcanoid on steroids … x4 … with a shop … and bosses … and ballz … lots of ballz. Must see.

1. Scorched3D – The best 3D graphics I have ever seen for a free software project. Same old addictive blowing stuff up with nukes that we all love since Scorched Earth and Worms. Gameplay is better then the latest Worms. Great multiplayer fun. I only with the camera would be more intelligent.

1. Frozen Bubble – instant classic of free software gaming. Wit and precision required. Fun supplied.

1. Neverball – Great graphics. Wacky gameplay. Tilt the world with your mouse. Do not fall off. Try the harder levels for even more fun.

1. Powermanga – Just plain fly and shoot. With powerups. Lots of powerups. Especially note the last powerup that upgrades your ship to a new model which has new weapons to upgrade. Waves and waves of enemies with an occasional big boss. Sadly no multiplayer.

Note: sometime later this week I will also add screenshots to the list.