AIKA – A New MMO to Try

AIKA is a recently released Free-To-Play MMO. You can find it here for the United States and here for other nations around the world. You should be careful to get your client from the correct place, or it will not work – I learned the hard way. The Global site isn’t very forthcoming with the information about the countries it supports. It’s there, but not obvious.

Demon Flayer - Warrior

My experience in AIKA is mixed. [I have no idea how to pronounce this. I guess it does not translate easily from the Korean.] There is a Wiki for AIKA, which has much useful information, but is not nearly as complete as the one for Guild Wars.

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2Moons – Global Extinction Event

WindyFlayer level 71 Helm
WindyFlayer level 71 Helm

On 26 August 2010, the planet of 2Moons was hit with a comet and all life was extinguished. The event was unforeseen. Since astronomy is not a popular endeavor in 2Moons, because folks are too busy with the grind of leveling up, nobody saw the comet coming until the planet had been hit and was completely destroyed.

There are rumors that the neighboring planet of Playdom, maker of those lousy little browser based time wasters in Facebook and Twitter, actually steered the comet toward the world of 2Moons, but this is only a rumor.

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The Solar Flare

I just made this movie. Linda and Robbie discuss the recent Solar Flare and how it is going to change their lives during the next few weeks until it subsides.

I made this movie using State software from the XtraNormal site. I tried to make the movie online, but I had to pay for some unknown number of points to be allowed to publish the movie, but thankfully I was able to download the State software for free and make the movie on my desktop and then manually publish it to youtube. The choices of characters and scenes are very limited using State.

Enjoy and consider how dependent you are on your wireless devices.

Gulf Coast Oil Cleanup

Gulf Coast Oil Cleanup

Creative Commons License
Gulf Coast Cleanup Ideas and all associated materials by Darrell Duffy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The oil coming ashore on the gulf coast is making a terrible mess. In order to save the wetlands, the wildlife and the seafood industries of the area it is clear that the oil will need to be cleaned up, but this is not going to be the same problem as we faced in Alaska. Men in haz-mat suits with brushes and steam hoses are not going to be able to tackle the problem. So how might this problem be solved?
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A Ritualist and April Fool

Seitung Armor 45 rating
Seitung Armor in Green

My name is Windy Summoner. I was born on April 1st, 2010 on Shing Jea Island and began my training with Master Togo. My mission was to train to level 20 in Kaineng City and then emigrate to Elona to assist the Sunspears with the battle to save Elona from Night Fall. As a Ritualist I control the spirits of nature to help in my battles.

My weaker Seitung Armor was green in keeping with the forest colors of the island. But shortly after moving to the City, I found that Seitung armor was way too expensive since it required 32 Monstrous Claws which were 1800G each. This meant that my armor would have cost well over 40P [40,000G]. I was able to obtain Canthan maximum strength armor for 5P [5000G] and decided it should be purple. The market price for Monstrous Claws seemed very unusual.

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Personal Cloud Databases – DHX QT Shows Promise

As we have seen in previous articles, I’ve been looking at what we might call Personal Cloud Databases. There are many Cloud Data tools out there. I found a review article here, and then looked at these and other alternatives.

  • ZOHO Creator – 3 apps free. $15/mo basic plan.
  • Dabble DB – free public data. $24/mo for private data. Very cool concepts.
  • Web Office – $53/mo includes data.
  • Google Docs – Free. No database. Spreadsheet only.
  • BaseCamp – No free option. Starts at $24/mo.
  • Windows Azure – Clearly not personal. Impossible to tell what it would cost.

And there are more, mostly pitched at small businesses and enterprises, and expensive. At least very expensive compared with Blogging or Photo Galleries. So my question is: Why are database tools so expensive compared with Blogging and Photo tools, which are usually free or almost free? The reason I believe is Open Source.

I think there is a very interesting opportunity for a platform, like WordPress for personal data tables.

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DHX Quick Tables

As you may remember from a previous article, I have been using ZOHO creator to store MMO game data while I play the game to keep track of my characters and their loot. I was not happy with the ZOHO solution due to it’s high cost – $15/mo beyond 3 databases [applications]. While I have not yet exceeded that, I desire a solution that will live on my hosting service where I have unlimited storage/databases.

I have found a solution with DHX Quick Tables, and for now I’m using that as we will see. Continue reading “DHX Quick Tables”