I’ve been using Boogie Boards – Eraseable LCD tablets for a couple of years now. These are very cool / cheap tablets that you can press a button to erase.
I saw my first one at Walmart and later found a later model that was plain rather than electric green. I have two next to me and use them all the time to write down notes while I’m playing MMO games. They are especially useful while crafting to keep track of which items you’ll need to gather or purchase to continue your crafting or whatever. But they make great shopping lists and “Refrigerator Notepads” since some have magnets on the back to stick on the Fridge.
Some notes while crafting
If you have not seen these, you scribble on them with a stylus, and then press a button to erase the whole thing instantly. They contain a tiny watch battery which lasts for years, and can be easily replaced. If you want a permanent copy of what you wrote, just take a picture with your phone. You might want to increase the contrast which is easily done with the photo camera app.
Breakthrough – Partial Erase
Well there’s been a breakthrough in this space! Another company, NewYes has made a version that has Partial Erase. After pressing a button, you use the Eraser on the Stylus to erase parts of the screen. Press another button twice to erase the entire screen. Very cool.
As you can see I’m making progress training my Disciple of the Hand and Land jobs. It’s going pretty well. Sometimes I spend a little Gil on some items to avoid chasing around to mine or gather items, and sometimes I go out for a long Mining / Chopping session and then combine that with running around to fill in some of the Gathering logs. Mining and Botany were already open when I started, so they are a little ahead of the others. I tend to go to a capital city and then work there a while to level the jobs that are placed there. So Carpenter / Leatherworker in Gridania for a while, then off to Limsa for Blacksmith / Armorer. Tomorrow it will be Weaver / Alchemist turn in Ul’dah. I’m hoping I don’t find out later that Culinarian / Fishing is required for Facet armor.
Preparing to Craft
One of the big problems that took an hour or so was to clean out my inventory, armory and retainers to prepare to craft. After saving quite a few gear pieces, and other nonsense encountered while leveling, it was quite a chore to clean up to free up space for leveling nine crafting jobs at the same time.
I’m investigating crafting to see if there are any roadblocks and which jobs I need to level. I’m wondering if I need to level Alchemist, and I come across this:
Of course I have SMN / SCH jobs, so yes I need to level ALC to create Facet weapons. And further searching shows this:
We have seen an increasing escalation of difficulty for Job Quest Instances. Of course, for Shadowbringers, there are just too many “Jobs” to have a train of Job Quests for each job, so the designers have given us “Role” quests.
Well, the instances for these are way over the top. I’m not interested in learning to RAID. I spent an evening watching the Eden’s Gate (Savage) Raid on Twitch. I’m no expert, but the whole fight was about a dozen failures, one after another, as one or another member messed some fiddly bit of mechanics by being off by a foot length and causing a wipe. And the whole fight was one Boss on a platform.
Borrrrrrrrrring.
I like the design of the MSQ dungeons. Near the end of Shadowbringers, Mt Gulg is a nice dungeon. and I’ve done it a few times with a Red Mage. It’s a little fiddly at the end, and the Boss animations can cover the Trust members that you need to follow to avoid the hits that are not well Telegraphed. But I’ve made it through several times.
Grand Company Adventurer Squadrons and the Shadowbringers Trust System share some common goals apparently, but each have their own advantages and drawbacks, as well as some common drawbacks. We’ve talked about Trusts here before. Since then I’ve had some more experience with them and have started to use Squadrons. Here are some observations:
Bottom Line:
Maybe Adventurer Squadrons are popular. Only Square Enix knows. Nobody can see your squad members. And nobody can participate with you and them in a dungeon to see how well they are trained. Nice Gear, Mounts, Minions, Glamour and Dye are popular features in all MMO games because they can be seen by other players. I’ll bet that Hidden features like Retainer Glamour, and Squads are not popular because they are completely hidden from others.
I’ve wired my house for Ethernet and Phone. But here let’s just talk about the Ethernet wiring. Here is my problem:
There are four places where I’ve wired Ethernet around the house to places where I use Ethernet switches to distribute to multiple devices. Three cables leave the house near the Router, and then each cable enters the house at a different place. Once near the computer where I’m sitting now. One to the back of the Entertainment system, and one in the back room where there are several more computers.
My router / Cable Modem and one of the End Points where I have a Switch
I’ve wired the house for 1GB Ethernet using Cat5 Cable. This was done several years ago. But for any new installation, using Cat6 for an eventual speed of 10GB would be best. Even if your present equipment is not capable of this, it’s much easier to change equipment than doing the wiring again.
Outside Wiring
Here’s what the cable runs look like around the house. I did not run using crawl space or attic. The back portion of my house is on slab and there is no attic there. So I needed to run things outside around the house.
The places where two cables are close together are phone wires, which are all on a continuous loop. I no longer use the phone loop, since I use wireless phones throughout the house with a base station and 3 satellite phones. I suggest not wiring any phone circuits, but only Ethernet. My phone lines are carried over the same type of wire as the Ethernet.
Notice that the cable is not noticeable when it has been painted. The large black pipe is a black water pipe that I split and screwed to the house to carry the cables so that I could easily change or add more if needed. This is probably not necessary if you are doing a single run. When I had my house painted a few years ago, I had them tape the black pipe so that it would not fill up with Paint and be a mess. When the tape came off, it looked very neat and tidy.
Remember that Ethernet is run with a single point to point wire for each remote connection. The wire entries to the house are sealed with Caulk to keep out moisture and insects.
Drilling through the House
I used a drill like this to drill through the house. Be careful and stay away from outlets so that you don’t drill through a power circuit.
I used a surface mount box and modular connectors once inside the house. But there are better tiny boxes now.
Running the Wire
Direct Burial cable is the best type to use. Gel in the cable keeps it dry when it is outside in the rain over the years. You can buy it increments of 100ft online for about $30 / 100ft. And they will ship it in one roll, so if you get 300ft, you get one roll, not three. No joints outside.
These tiny little boxes screw to the wall and you use a Punch Down tool to terminate the cable to the connector in the box, which just snaps shut after it’s screwed to the wall. You can buy these boxes with more then one connection in them if you need to.
Use the staple gun to staple the wire to the outside of the house up under the eaves or wherever it will be less visible. Be very careful not to puncture the cable with the staples. There are other screw on or nail type hangers for cable too. Those might be less of an issue in terms of accidents on the cable. You might price these tools / cable / boxes locally, but my guess it’s far cheaper to buy them online, even with shipping.
From the Wall Box to Your Computer
You’ll use some patch cords to go from the wall plug to the computer. And you can run the box to the wall near the computer desk/ TV or whatever you’re connecting. Patch cords come in any sizes you need, and putting them behind and under furniture is fine. But obviously you don’t want them running on the floor where you can trip or step on them. If you need two connections on opposite walls of a room, then you can run two cable lengths around the house. Or I guess it’s possible to run to inside the house, to a switch as below, then back out and around to the other wall and back inside. You’ll use patch cords and a two outlet box on the first connection to jumper the connection back outside around the house to the second connection. It is not possible to Daisy Chain Ethernet connections. Each “Y” requires a switch.
For connecting both a computer or two and a TV or other device to the cable, just use a switch like this. Make sure your switch is as fast as you want the connection to work. Computers on the same network are not limited by the speed of the router or internet connection but by the cable, interfaces in the devices and switches.
Switches come with various numbers of ports: 5, 8 and larger sizes and are reasonably priced, as you can see.
Pretty easy to wire your house for Ethernet and these connections are much more reliable than WiFi. :ww
So I guess Reddit really doesn’t want to be a Social Network or Foster Participation. I had some opinions about FFXIV Trusts, so I looked up some relevant threads and made some comments. Two comments over the course of 30 min or so and I got this.
You are doing that too much. Try again in 6 minutes.
What a crock. SIX MINUTES? I can see a throttle for 1 minute to keep out spammers. But 6 minutes after two comments? Guess Reddit is off my list for social participation with the world.
Ok, so we can play the Leveling Dungeons of Shadowbringers using an AI. But have you noticed?
The Trust Members don’t have MP bars? Shouldn’t they be playing with the same rules that we are using?
Have you noticed that Trusts seem to rez healers? I mean without Alisaie [a Red Mage with Heal and Rez] in the group. I noticed that Alphinaud [scholar] died and Alisaie was not in the group I chose, but all of a sudden he was back quick as the blink of an eye. Someone cheated. Another Trust Member had Rez that shouldn’t have.
Things happen too fast. We are not just doing this for their benefit, but we are playing for my benefit and if Trust AIs do things too quickly then I don’t get a chance to learn. For example on one run with me as GNB, playing Holminster, and fighting Tesleen we wiped. Ok, I don’t expect perfect runs with Trusts. But what happened? Did I not stack quick enough so we lost too many Trust members? I did not die, but all of a sudden, quicker than the eye could follow, we were back at the beginning. Please don’t do that. I didn’t get my learning opportunity.
But these minor issues overlook a larger issue. I think the restrictions show that the AI for Trusts have been programmed the wrong way. I don’t think they are using Deep Learning. Here’s why I think that and why I think they should.
I’ve recently started playing Shadowbringers in FFXIV. The first time through Holminster Switch, the first dungeon, I used a matched party of real people and played as a Red Mage. I’m playing Gunbreaker as my primary job, with White Mage and Red Mage as secondary roles.
Typically I don’t play Tank on high level dungeons, but choose DPS roles since they draw less comment if I mess up. However, I have found that Tank Roles are more survivable and more fun in the Solo Instances. For example, in The Oracle of Light solo duty, the tank is a lot of fun to play, and the earlier, tougher A Requiem for Heroes was reasonable as a Gunbreaker.
I need to level my Gunbreaker. I’ve decided to push it ahead to 80 or almost 80 before continuing with Shadowbringers.
When FFXIV announced Trusts for Shadowbringers, I was skeptical. I had played Mercenaries way back in 2011 with Guild Wars. But there are no complicated mechanics or skill combos in Guild Wars. The skills are separate and each have their old cool-down / resource issue. Also, the mobs [no dungeons so no bosses] don’t have complicated mechanics. They just do their skills at you and you do skills back. GW Mercenaries work pretty well. FFXIV skills and mob / boss mechanics are a lot more complicated.
A while ago I made some Fairy Light Globes. 100mm Glass Christmas ornament globes with a Fairy LED Light String in them. I display them in groups of three in two places in the house. Recently I touched the power supplies – Wall Wart supplies producing 3.5 Volts – and noticed that one of them was warmer. Odd. All the light strings were bought at the same time. I got out my FLIR thermal camera and this is what I found.
One of the globes is hotter then the others. Using a KillaWatt measuring device, I found that the warm globe is drawing 3 watts, and other others don’t draw enough to move the value from zero. So this is what is making the power supply for that globe warmer. I have swapped the power supplies and the globe – Fairly Light String actually – is different, not the power supply. Odd. I have no idea why.
I’ve recently started playing Shadowbringers in FFXIV. The first time through 
Windy Weather 