Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Why I missed Blizzcon


This was my big project. :) He was born at 4:01pm, October 24. Julie, you called it.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Virtual Blizzcon, Mounts, Etc

Happy Blizzcon to those attending, and to the vast masses who, like me, are stuck with a virtual ticket, I'll be there watching opening ceremonies with you this afternoon. ;)

It's Hallow's Eve in-game, which means attempts again at the Horseman's mount. I already have my 100-mount achievement, but hey, it's another mount, might as well, yaknow? One of the funny things about the holiday dailies (since I don't really bother with random dungeon finder or heroics anymore) is when I'm recognized but thought of as an imposter. Just yesterday the first thing that was said in group was, "Summergale is a tauren." Well, yes, that was true a year or so ago... Most of the time I'm believed when I claim to be the real thing. Yes, if you see a troll shaman on Nesingwary named Summergale, that's actually me. Maybe next time, just for fun, I'll play along that I named her as a 'tribute'. ;)

Speaking of mounts, after many, many weeks of trying, I finally got the Brunnhildar polar bear. Eh, the daily took all of 5 minutes a day and I didn't have much else to do. I still don't have a green protodrake though, and I've been picking up Oracle eggs most every week. No, I won't be impressed that you got your protodrake after 2 weeks, I had a guildie who got *two* drakes in the first month or two. If you've opened more than 120 eggs and still don't have your drake either, *then* I'll be impressed.

I've been completely out of touch on Twitter lately, and mostly because I'd been too lazy to update Twitterific. It's updated now, I might actually start paying attention or tweeting again. Apropos since I started the Twitter account last year so I could tweet from Blizzcon, and then went and left my phone charger at home so I spent the entire con being uber conservative on battery usage.

I rarely blog about shammy stuff, but with Cata around the corner and ZG gaining popularity in the short term what with the mounts becoming no longer available, I'm on what's bound to be a futile quest. And I don't just mean the mounts, I mean I'm pursuing something I know I won't finish. Wushoolay's Charm of Spirits. +320 spell power to lightning shield for 20 seconds. Fun toy to use with Fulmination. I must try it. I've had Hazza'rah's Dream Thread in my bank for a year or two now. I'm going to see how many more Edge of Madness bits I can get. This is futile because I have almost certainly missed my window: Renataki was the EoM boss on Monday this week, and he won't be back around again until November 29th. The only chance I have to get my trinket is if 4.0.3 isn't released until November 30th, the VERY last week before Cata, and IF the EoM boss is based on when the instance is first created, ie, since the reset is on Tuesday that week, if I don't zone into ZG until Monday to create my raid id I'd have a shot of Renataki. Anyway, super-duper long shot, but I'm gonna give it a try. :)

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Life, the blogoverse, and meta-questions

Well, it's been a while! Life's been chugging along, my guild's having the usual summer slump, and raiding is once again getting a tad dull in anticipation of the next expansion. I've taken to reading a few elemental shaman blogs, and it took reading through a few posts before I realized that two of the bloggers were women. I wonder if it's something in particular about women who play ele shammies that makes us like to write blogs. Or it's just a coincidence. We have a handful of women still in my guild, probably split equally between DPS/tank and healing.

I think part of the reason I haven't updated the blog in so many months is that I've been using Twitter to get my short thoughts out instead of letting them build up over the month and then writing a large post. I've tried tying my Facebook page to Twitter, but I want Twitter to update the FB status, not for FB to update Twitter.

There was a bit of flurry on the Ulduar comments lately on YouTube about folks being excited that I actually do read nearly every comment on the video. And then came more questions. I hope no one has taken it terribly personally that I don't respond to each and every comment personally. There are questions that, I confess, I will always ignore. For example, "What's the original song?" Guys, it's in the video credits. This actually brings up something else that's been on my mind, a bit of a delicate topic. I like hearing from fans who say they like the vids. I'm happy to interact a bit and thank them for watching. I'm flattered when people want to track me down just to give me a compliment; who wouldn't be? It's not uncommon for folks to try to extend the conversation. Perfectly understandable, I myself would also love to keep chatting with someone whose work I respected once I'd found them and they responded. However, please understand that while I don't mind chatting about interesting stuff, and I realize that many folks will want to ask similar questions like when my next vid is coming out, it sets off a red flag when I'm asked questions that have really obvious or easy to find answers. What realm am I on, what class do I play, etc. That, and quoting my own lyrics back to me really trigger the fan-radar and say clearer than anything, "I can't think of anything else to say so I'm going to start grasping at straws just so I can keep talking with you." Again, flattering, but that's when it crosses the line from appreciative fan to annoying fanboy/fangirl. All I ask is that before you start pumping me with questions, see if the answers are really obvious first, and please realize that quoting my lyrics back to me does not in fact give the impression you were hoping for. Instead of saying, "hop on my mechano hog lol", tell me something I *don't* know, like, "I love singing this at the top of my lungs and annoying my little brother."

The most common question I get that isn't addressed anywhere ridiculously publicly is when I'm going to make another vid. (This blog doesn't have a huge ginormous readership, so I will still be happy to answer this one if you track me down, especially as the answer may change in a month.) Right now, I don't know. Nyhm is on a WoW hiatus, likely until Cata comes out. Ulduar was done in a fit of inspiration, and I haven't been hit with anything I've liked as much. I've started writing a couple other spoofs, but nothing has been inspired enough to get finished. I think my next project is going to be just an excuse for me to sing something. I have a few songs that I just love to sing, so I've thought about recording them and seeing who I can talk into making something pretty video-wise to look at while the music goes.

I've tweeted about it, but it's official, I am not going to Blizzcon this year. Sad panda. Unfortunately I knew as soon as the weekend was announced that I wasn't going to be able to go, so I didn't even try to scrounge up tickets. On the bright side, I've got a pretty awesome personal project in the works (which is directly related to why I can't go) that I'll most likely post about shortly after Blizzcon. Fair warning, it's an RL project, it's not Warcraft, it's not a new movie, and it's got nothing to do with my singing. But since it's rather important to me on a personal level, I'll at least want to show off the results once it's done. Especially since finishing it is so important that it's going to keep me from Blizzcon. I'll try to find time to at least get some more singing up sometime between now and then, though!

Friday, March 12, 2010

PuG Podcast and Social Networking

Hi folks! Bit of an update.

First, I'm going to be on a podcast! http://omfg.fm is home to a lot of WoW and gaming related podcasts, and Jesse Cox hosts "PuG" every Saturday evening at 7pm Eastern. This week is a "Girls of WoW" episode, and yours truly will be featured along with the machinima artist Quixotica and Panserbjørne of YouTube's "Trade Chat". I unfortunately won't be able to stay for the whole episode, but I should be on for the first half hour.

I've actually had a Twitter feed and a Facebook fan page up for a while now, but I suppose they haven't been very well publicized:

http://www.twitter.com/madcowsummer
http://www.facebook.com/summergale

I twitter a few times a month or whenever I feel like it. I started up the twitter feed for Blizzcon, and unfortunately being a Cow of Little Brain, I forgot my iPhone charger so I spent the entire con trying to mooch charges off other attendees and tweeting much less than I wanted to. My recent tweets are off to the right on my blog page if you don't actually have a twitter account.

The facebook page is legit and is my official page, but there's not a whole lot on it atm. 138 fans for almost no publicity, I can't really complain. :) But hey, if you want to go fan it, I'll keep monitoring the page and try to be better about announcements!

Speaking of fans, I've got over 11,000 subscribers on YouTube -- when did that happen?? Thanks for subscribing! I'm sorry I don't put out more content, I'll try to get some of my projects off the ground. Would any of you folks be interested in just more of my singing, even if there's no video attached? What if it's not even WoW-specific, but just me playing around with the mic and my audio software? It wouldn't be too hard to put together a few pretty screenshots to look at while the audio's going, but it wouldn't be anything I'd actually call "machinima".

For those wondering, yes, I technically have a MySpace account (http://www.myspace.com/madcowsummer) but I never log into it and there's no music on it because I just never got into MySpace. Only so much one troll can do! :)

Friday, January 15, 2010

One to Watch: Isolte

I just heard something I had to share with you guys. I was going to do a more thorough "first post of 2010", but I wanted to share this vid quick before I finished crafting that other post.

This girl has got to be my Alliance counterpart or something. She has as many Draenei as I have Tauren (or did before I caved and racechanged the shaman to a Troll, she writes some of her own lyrics and finds some great machinima artists to do her vids, her grasp of parody vocal production is pro, and her vocal talent and skill are among the best I've heard in the WoW community. Check it out and enjoy!