ally ell eahell at the eahore

by   •   Highlights
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

A few weeks ago, Ed let me know that the S key on his keyboard had broken. This is how he informed me of his tragedy:

He ended up going to a keyboard key website and ordering the letter S for his particular brand and model of laptop.

This is where the story gets juicy.

Apparently, the company from which he ordered his replacement key couldn’t fulfill his order, and sent him this message:

Hello,

The “S” key is currently out of stock for your laptop model. Unfortunately, this part is also very rare and we are not able to acquire it for you at this time. The good news is we do have several options:

1. If you have the original key cap, we can send you the hinges (plastic clips) and rubber cup that fit underneath the key. With these pieces you will be able to fix your keyboard.

2. If you don’t have the key cap, we can remove a random key from the keyboard and place a professional keyboard key sticker of the letter “S” on the key cap. This way, it will look very close to the original.

3. We can sell you a brand new complete keyboard for $78 shipped.

Please let us know how you wish to proceed, so we could further assist you.

This was (literally) a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a genius plan I had come up with. I instructed Ed to respond with the following email:

Hi,

I would like to go with option 2, but without the ticker (I know where my key is, o a blank key is fine). o, pleae end me a blank key cap, hinge, and rubber cup.

Thank,

Ed

After literally laughing non-stop at my own joke for a few minutes, I finally calmed down enough to hear that Ed had followed through with my wishes. He let me know that he had copied, pasted, and sent that exact email back to the laptop key replacement company.

I found out today that Ed had finally received his key in the mail. Apparently they didn’t have any blank key caps, so they sent him a random one instead, which ended up being “Q.”

He tried to install it himself, but he had some problems because the original laptop manufacturer had glued the rubber dome on the base of the keyboard and made key replacement nearly impossible.

He called me over for help, so I went over to his house and installed the key for him.

So now, when something sad happens to Ed, he has two Q keys so he can QQ more effectively.

 

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I’ve been playing a lot of Sylvanas lately

by   •   Heroes of the Storm, Notes
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I’ve started playing a lot more Heroes of the Storm recently, and I’ve formed a particular liking for Sylvanas. She seems to be a hero that, if left unattended, can cause massive destruction to the enemy team. Due to her great pushing power, as well as decent mobility, I’ve been playing her a lot and trying to figure out the best way to abuse her skill set.

Similar to how I’ve done in the past with Diablo, I decided to use my blog as dumping ground for my thoughts and notes. I decided to go through Sylvanas’ talents and pick out the ones I feel would be viable to use.

This isn’t necessarily designed for public use, and more of a place for me to organize my thoughts; it’s also def­i­nite­ly not guaranteed to be “correct,” and shouldn’t be used as a guide. Still, I decided to post it publicly in case there are people who are completely lost, and would like a starting point for theorizing about Sylvanas’ talents.

Like always, I recommend using guides as a way to help you direct your thinking, rather than something that you should mindlessly follow.

Tier 1

  • Lost Soul: Reduces the cooldown of Shadow Dagger by 2 seconds. I think this two seconds is a huge deal, because often times, when I need to use this ability, there’s a few seconds left on the cooldown and I don’t get maximum value from it. It’ll also be helpful in team fights, as being able to use this ability more often means I get to heal more off my Tier 7 talent.
  • With the Wind: Increases Withering Fire’s range by 25%. I used to use this talent, but decided that lower Shadow Dagger cooldown is a bit better. This helps with long-range poke, but if I’m basic attacking my opponent at the same time, I don’t feel like this 25% is worth that much anymore.

Tier 4

  • Paralysis: Increases duration of Black Arrows by 100%. This talent synergizes well with the Tier 13 talent Overwhelming Affliction, as well as helps Sylvanas out when clearing mercenary camps. This talent allows Sylvanas to solo a siege camp while taking no damage by constantly basic attacking one monster and using Withering Fire on the other. It refills just in time for Black Arrows to reapply before running out.
  • Ranger’s Ambush: Using Haunting Wave to teleport refills all charges of Withering Fire. This ability is good for bursting people down, but I feel as if it’s outclassed by the synergy between Paralysis and Overwhelming Affliction.

Tier 7

  • Life Drain: Shadow Dagger heals you for 10 each time it spreads to a new enemy. I think having sustain on Heroes of the Storm is extremely important, and this allows Sylvanas to stay healthy and lets your healer save their cooldowns for someone else. During fights, this can be used as a baiting mechanic when people are focusing you down, because you can throw out your Shadow Dagger and keep healing. If you’re forced out of a fight, you can go over to a nearby minion wave, heal back up, and rejoin the fight.
  • Unstable Poison: Minions and Mercenaries that die under the effects of Black Arrows explode, dealing 75 damage to nearby enemies. I guess this talent is fine for a double-support composition where you need more damage and you have plenty of healing from your allies. This feels like more of a surprise talent where people run away into a minion wave, then die for it because they don’t expect their own minions to blow up and hurt them.

Tier 10

  • Wailing Arrow: Shoot an arrow that can be reactivated to deal 200 damage and silencing ene­mies in an area for 2.5 seconds. The arrow detonates automatically when it reaches maxi­mum range. This heroic ability deals a good amount of damage and disables the enemies from using abilities. This seems way too good to ever be a second choice behind the other heroic, Possession. All Possession seems to do is give you more pushing power, which I believe Sylvanas has plenty of. Possession also encourages constant laning and split pushing, which is counter­productive in Heroes of the Storm.

Tier 13

  • Overwhelming Affliction: Black Arrows now also applies to Heroes, slowing their Movement Speed by 5% for the duration. Stacks up to 5 times. This synergizes well with Paralysis, and can cripple the enemy team over the span of a long team fight. This stacks up to 5 times, which means that you have a 25% slow – yes, this means you slow people as much as Jaina does, and she is a frost mage. This movement will massively turn fights into your favor because low-mobility heroes now have even lower mobility, and anyone with a gap closer can easily catch up and lock them down.
  • Spell Shield: Upon taking Ability Damage, reduce that damage and further Ability Damage by 50% for 2 seconds. Can only trigger once every 30 seconds. This seems like an okay talent if you’re getting focused down a lot and the enemy team has a lot of burst damage. However, this seems like a talent better fit for someone with no mobility abilities who ends up getting forced to tank through spells. Sylvanas should be able to get away, so Overwhelming Affliction generally seems like a better idea in most situations.

Tier 16

  • Cold Embrace: Shadow Dagger makes enemies Vulnerable, taking 25% more damage, but the range of Shadow Dagger is reduced by 25%. By this point in the game, you should be constantly moving around with your team, and making enemies vulnerable will help out a lot during team fights. Remember that Shadow Dagger spreads a lot, and already has its cooldown reduced from the tier 1 talent, so this will be a massive damage boost during team fights. Shadow Dagger already has a pretty long range, and this range reduction shouldn’t cause much of a problem – I barely even notice it.

Tier 20

  • Deafening Blast: Enemies at the center of Wailing Arrow’s explosion take 50% more damage and are silenced for twice as long. If you’re able to initiate with this spell and catch a large number of people, you basically have five seconds to kill the enemy team, which has effectively been reduced in usefulness to a bunch of minions (because they can’t use their abilities anymore). The damage increase and silence duration increase seems too good, as it brings way too much powerful utility to your team. Mix this in with the vulnerability from Shadow Dagger and a good Sylvanas initiation could mean an instant team fight win.
  • Fury of the Storm: Every 5 seconds, your next basic attack will deal an additional 20 damage to the target, and 20 damage to all nearby Minions and Mercenaries. I’ve taken this talent once to save my Core and won the game off of it. This is obviously a very situational talent that should only be taken if you are about to lose the game to minions, and the only way you can clear all of them quickly enough is to use Fury of the Storm.

 

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Every time I play League of Legends, I get reminded why I hate playing it

by   •   League of Legends
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I’ve had a lot of problems playing League of Legends. I’ve completely stopped playing it for months at a time, and when I do end up returning, I do it very reluctantly.

I absolutely love watching it – I think it’s a great spectator sport, and love keeping up with the professional scene. I watch a lot of the games, and interact with the eSports aspect of it quite a bit.

Unfortunately, actually playing the game is a completely different story.

Out of all the games I’ve played, League of Legends has literally the trashiest community. Notice how I said “the trashiest,” and not “one of the trashiest,” because I literally do not know of any group of people who are as bad as the group that make up League of Legends players.

(Note: I do not play Counter Strike, Call of Duty, or any first-person shooters, but still, I included them in my judgment. Sure, you might have little boys screaming and swearing at you through their headsets, but they’re just that – little boys. They’re children who are growing up and having an identity crisis, and not necessarily bad people.)

I have quite a few friends who successfully and profitably produce content related to League of Legends. I help them out a bit in particular areas, and it inspires and motivates me to start doing that kind of work independently rather than just being an assistant.

But, if I’m going to make my own content, I obviously need original footage to use, which means I need to play the game. (Yes, I realize that I can cast other people’s games, and I already do that, but the best way to raise your popularity is to use your own content and build yourself up as a personality.)

I decided I was going to try and turn “Heighlights” into a series. I was somewhat satisfied with how the first episode came out, and I had some aspirations for what I would do for future episodes.

On this mission, I played some more Heimerdinger games, when this happened:

If you’re not familiar with League of Legends’ advanced play, you might have some difficulty figuring out what’s going on.

In the current meta and state of the Summoner’s Rift map, a very easy way to get ahead in top lane is to do a jungle camp. There are two different ways you can do this – you can either take Teleport, kill the camp at level 1 and hit level 2 off of it, recall back to base, then Teleport back to top lane … or, you can be Heimerdinger, set up turrets, solo the camp, then walk to lane with Ignite instead of Teleport.

I was being Heimerdinger, obviously, so I was doing the second option.

Unfortunately, my pants-on-head retarded jungler by the name of “TopCarriesU” didn’t understand that.

Normally, I kill Gromp when I’m on the southwest side of the map, and the golems (or whatever their new names are now) when I’m on the northeast side of the map. My jungler generally has no problem with me doing this because he can very easily start on the opposite side of the map (where he will get the help of both his ADC and support), and because there are plenty of camps to go around at level 1.

But for some reason, my Kha’Zix had a problem with me getting ahead in lane.

Instead of just going to bottom lane and starting his golems, getting the help of his ADC and support, he instead decides to sit on the other side of the wall as I do Gromp. When it gets into Smite range, he takes it, reducing the amount of XP I get from it so I don’t hit level 2 off of it.

The worst part is that I didn’t even all-in on the Gromp, because I assumed that Kha’Zix would also be attacking the Gromp. I never realized someone could be so spiteful that they would sit on the other side of the wall to make sure they could screw over their “ally” to maximum efficiency.

(Note: All-inning a jungle camp means putting down all three available turrets before it spawns, then juggling aggro between yourself and the turrets just enough that by the time the camp dies, you re­gen­er­ate to full health and walk back to lane completely healthy at level 2.)

Needless to say, after this had happened, I instantly left the game.

I see no reason to play with someone who wants me to do badly.

This isn’t a rare occurrence either. I just happen to be using this example because I was streaming at the time and was able to take a screenshot to accompany my story.

And if you’re considering playing League of Legends, this is something you should take into consideration. Sure, anyone could “deal with it,” but the real question is, do you really want to?

I sure don’t.

 

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K.H. Kim’s 15th Biannual Taekwondo Tournament

by   •   General
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Back on November 2nd of last year, I went to K.H. Kim’s 14th Biannual Taekwondo Tournament (and posted about it on Google+ and my website). I went again this year for the 15th tournament, again as a coach.

I had Emma, one of my students, be my assistant for this tournament. Unfortunately, she’s a little too young to actually be a real coach’s assistant, so I instead gave her my camera for the event and asked her to take photos.

The quality of the photos were pretty much what you would expect from a nine-year-old girl (a lot of blurry and a lot of selfies), but she still managed to get a bunch of good shots.

Unfortunately, I have chosen not to post those publicly on my website in order to protect the privacy of the underaged competitors (and if I were to have chosen to post them, there are a lot of liabilities that go along with it that I don’t want to deal with).

However, I do have one shot that I can post, and that’s the full group photo of everyone competing, as well as the staff:

I’m not in the photo because I went as more of a private coach rather than a staff member, even though I was associated with the school the assistant director owns. I was instead on the other side of the shot, escorting my assistant so she wouldn’t get trampled by all the people.

Yes, that is indeed fake grass – apparently the main competition area had a capacity of 420 people, so they used this field as the waiting area so there wouldn’t be a fire hazard due to exceeding capacity. It was also the place where the opening ceremony happened.

This is one of those tournaments where everyone is a winner – they split the competitors up into very small groups, and they award small trophies to every participant. So, the placement isn’t really that significant (at least, not very significant relative to other more legitimate tournaments), but I’m still pretty impressed at the performances from some of my academy’s students.

My primary role there was to make sure the students were feeling comfortable. From what I’ve perceived, the most common reason students underperform is because of nervousness due to sudden exposure to a novel environment.

By being there, chatting with them, and helping them practice their routines in the new location before they’re out to get judged, it accustoms them to the new setting and helps them relax a bit. That will reduce the chances of the students losing confidence, forgetting sequences, and/or disregarding the technicalities that may reduce their presentation score.

And finally, one thing that was particularly memorable to me was a girl with a limb-control-related disability who participated in board breaking. I’m not entirely sure what handicap she had, and I’m not medically educated enough to even take a guess, but simply put, she could barely walk straight.

Each round is judged relatively, meaning, students of similar age and skill level compete against each other. Obviously, this girl with the handicap had to be placed in her own division, as there was nobody else there who would be on fair judging grounds as her.

She did end up missing a few attempts, but ultimately, she broke all three boards in her sequence, received a standing ovation, and got the one and only perfect score of 10.0 in the entire tournament.

Some people might wonder why she deserves to be given a 10.0, but when you look at taekwondo from a traditional viewpoint as to what it’s intended to be – a martial art revolving around discipline, designed to build your character and better every aspect of your life – it’s pretty understandable why this girl deserved the score she got.

It takes a lot of courage and confidence to go to a tournament and perform your art in front of hundreds of people. The fact that this girl already achieved a level of mental maturity high enough to accept her handicap and not allow it to hold her back shows that she overcame a huge hurdle in her life already – a hurdle of such a magnitude most people her age haven’t even encountered yet.

 

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“Heroes of the Dorm” still doesn’t meet the high standards of eSports

by   •   Heroes of the Storm
 

This post is over 11 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Blizzard said that they listened to our feedback regarding the original Heroes of the Storm “Heroes of the Dorm” broadcasts, and made some changes.

They published a blog post stating that a lot more scenes had been added, but pretty much spent most of the time justifying why it’s not possible to include all this information on an ESPN broadcast. The tl;dr version is that TV screens come in a lot of different shapes and sizes, and they need to simplify the broadcast interface in order to make the viewing experience good for everyone.

If that’s the case, then Blizzard made a mistake broadcasting eSports on national television.

As League of Legends analyst Christopher “MonteCristo” Mykles said, “In some ways it feels like a step back­ward to be on TV.”

In my opinion, there are two very easy ways to fix this.

The first is to have two different live streams, one for television and one for the Internet (through an outlet like YouTube Live or Twitch). The casting would be the same, but the video would be more in-depth and have a more informative overlay for the people who elect to watch online.

The second is to just broadcast the more informative overlay to the television viewers, and just add black bars to the top and bottom for those who still have 4:3 ratio televisions.

Technology, especially technology relating to the Internet, is evolving way too fast to be accommodating for television viewers.

A lot of new games nowadays are released only online through digital download. Game companies aren’t going to burn the game onto a DVD (or a dual-layer DVD for most new games) and ship it to your front door. If you have slow Internet, you’re just gonna have to let it run for a few days. You adapt to the game companies; they don’t adapt to you. The same should be for the Heroes of the Storm broadcast – the viewers adapt to the game companies; the game companies don’t adapt to the viewers.

(Note: Yes, there are some prerequisites for this statement to be effective. The game company should research the viewers and make sure that the highest standard is set for their broadcast. But, after that, the broadcast should not have to adjust and accommodate to every obscure outlier with an old television set.)

(Second note: It’s not like these outliers are being restricted from viewing. They’ll see the broadcast, it’ll just have black bars on the top and bottom, similar to how we see them on YouTube for videos that aren’t 16:9. On the other hand, a lot of gamers who really do care about Heroes of the Storm ARE being restricted from viewing because they don’t have an ESPN subscription.)

Sure, my ranting here isn’t going to change much. But, in my opinion, it’s not something that can just be ignored either. And hopefully, as eSports continues to grow, better solutions can be found to broadcast problems like the ones ESPN is facing right now.

 

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