The project out of the box will allow you to use a pc connected Arduino board to turn on/off a remote control power adapter. I intend on using this to turn on/off my lounge room heater.

Why not just use a reasonably cheap timer power adapter I hear you say… well..

1. I want this device accessible via a web browser (pc, phone etc) over the internet.
2. I want it to not plug into a pc but instead be accessible over my home wireless network.
3. I want it to track ambient temperature of my lounge room so it can be graphed by munin or mrtg

Moving on from that I would like it to automatically turn on the heater on weekdays around an hour before I get home from work but to only do so if the temperature inside is under a certain threshold.

Given that this device would technically only be relevant for the winter months there is nothing really stopping me from altering the code to interact with an air conditioner during the summer

Didn’t get any photo’s but there are a few on the nin.com site. They played a bunch of new and old songs which was really cool. I grew up listening to NIN so it was fuckin’ great seeing them live.

I’ve instead decided to follow one of the good players across to another realm to a decent end game raiding guild so I’m really looking forward to it. I’m just trying to figure out how to say bye to people, not really one of my strengths ..

World of Warcraft – Contrary to speculation, I haven’t actually played much WoW over my holidays. Sure I have played it a bit, but there was a little over a week where I didn’t even log on. Of course this was over christmas, new years etc where I just had too much other shit going on. Was probably the longest time I’ve had away from it in a long time. There were certainly withdrawal symptoms happening though One thing is for sure though, the current content is just too freakin boring… the whole Naxxramas 10 man and 25 man is pathetic, no incentive to do 25′s when you can just do 10′s and get almost the same quality gear. the content is also WAY too easy, we’re burning through this content like a hot knife through butter.. I understand that they want the average joe to be able to experience end game content, but those hard core raiders who play specifically for end game progression have been slapped with a wet fish… On top of this a lot of classes are also in a bad shape after the expansion which has also resulted in a number of ppl leaving the game which has directly impacted our end game raiding To make matters worse our best raid leader has transferred and our guild master has decided to step down. I’m not too sure where this is going to leave the guild or if they are going to be able to recover. I guess I’m back into the same boat I was 7-8 months ago , looking for a decently progressed end game raiding guild that needs a Warlock

I’m sure there’s plenty of other crap thats happened that I’ve missed. I really should update this more often – but not as often as those wacky kids and their twitters ;P Yes I’m lookin at you both Daveg & Skywalka!

If you get a chance to see TBE on their current tour, do it!

As I had suspected that we would down Vashj I was busy recording each attempt using the built in recording that is available in the native World of Warcraft Mac client. As a bit of a stuff around I thought I’d whip something up in iMovie which I conveniently have installed on my Macbook Pro. In no time at all I had a video put together. This is my very first attempt at an in game video so it is really dodgy but I enjoyed making it and will probably do more down the track to get my experience up and obviously try to get better at them. Unfortunately I wasn’t aware of how severe the video and audio degradation is when something is uploaded to youtube so the resulting youtube vid is really *really* shit when compared with the movie file that I uploaded.

Enjoy.

I’ve also switched guilds, pretty much due to the fact that the previous one were only really caring about gearing up IRL friends and ex-raiders from previous alliance guilds who were rerolling horde characters on Nagrand. There was was no real push for progression, and it showed considering we went from 3rd highest progressed horde guild on the realm to something like 7th.. At the end of the day, I got tired of helping others get new gear when the officers of the guild refused to do content that allowed me to gear up. Considering I had an almost flawless attendance and pretty much always topped the damage meters I embarked on the search for another guild. As events unfolded over the past few weeks, I ended up moving into a new guild along with the Main Tank from my old guild.

Its only been a few days so far now but these guys are certainly serious about end game content with raid stats analysed after each raid and raid members expected to explain why performance was low and how they are to improve as appropriate etc. While most would consider this really anal, I actually do like it as we don’t have people slacking off like I had in the previous guild. I recall a number of people who used to AFK on trash pulls and only put in *some* effort on boss attempts and even then it was a really half assed effort. It was then up to the hard working raiders to take up the slack and it was getting a littel too taxing over time. I’m however pretty happy with the new guild so far, and I do expect to be meeting Illidan Stormrage in the not too distant future.

Back to the gear topic, I now have a full Tier 6 content ready shadow destruction set, an affliction counterpart (not that I’ll actually go back to affliction I don’t think) and what is starting to turn into a nice little PvP set, with almost 400 resilience too. The ~400 resilience on my PvP set is rather nice as I don’t seem to be dying as quick as I used to, but death is really inevitable considering I’m just a little clothie after all.. As one can guess from my previous comment, I’ve made the switch from affliction to the classic 0/21/40 destruction spec now that I have sufficient +hit rating and I must say its been really *really* cool. The only drawback I found is the lack of mobility that I’ve been so used to with affliction spec, but I can live with that, I just need to start working on my +haste stats. I’m exceeding my expectations on the damage meters, and able to pwn some serious ass in PvP on those wacky nights where I feel the need to do battlegrounds, or grind honor for that matter for silly PvP items needed for PvE encounters (oh why Blizzard, why?!) such as the Medallion of the Horde trinket needed for the Archimonde fight.

I’m rambling now.. forgive me ;P

On another slightly wow related topic, I love this song, but in particular the machinima movies this dude makes which include WoW models & scenery along with other games like Unreal Tournament. Enjoy.