Best site on teh interwebz

http://www.icanhascheezburger.com

League of Legends

My friends have been talking a lot about this game from Riot that mimic DotA.

I decided to give it a try after my friend got me a beta key!

At first i did not get the hang of the game because of all the unknown heroes [refered to as Champions] in this game.

But today I started playing again and I really liked it! If you played/liked DotA then 90% you will like this game.

First of all, your hero gets the classic 3 abilities with 1 ultimate, but you get two more abilities that depends on your level on the online game and not in the current game. These abilities are chosen regardless of the champion you chose to play.

But most of these abilities have very high cooldown and are very useful regardless of the champion you choose, some of them heal, others blink and some of them add temporary movement speed while cancelling collusion.

The shop in LoL [League of Legends, stupid letters :/] is well built and items are sorted according to their effects.

What I liked in the shop is that the shop suggests items for you depending on your hero, so if you are new like me you can follow the suggested items to have good effect in the game

The game overall i well designed, and I think the balance is decent so I think I will play this game more

The website of the game is www.leagueoflegends.com and as of writing this post the Open Beta is on and you can register and download the game

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

Hey again, I was excited in the past few days about the information about the new World of Warcraft expansion called Cataclysm!

Unlike the past expansion, this one does not introduce a new continent but instead focuses on improving the long-forgotten Azeroth!

First of all, the level cap will be raised to 85 which is strange, since blizzard are used to increase the level cap by 10 every expansion. In my opinion this is a very nice thing and should be done long time ago.

The level increase by 5 instead of 10 helps at not forgetting all content quickly, as the gear u gain at level 80 would still be viable at 85.

Also, the revamp of Azeroth is exactly what this game needed in the past 2 years, since throughout leveling you tend to get a lot of stupid gear like a cloth with agility, plate/mail with spirit and so on…

Another thing about revamping Azeroth is changing some current zones and adding more zones, for example:

-The long-forgotten Azshara will be a level 10-20 leveling zone.

-The biggest zone in Azeroth will be split into two zones, and yes i mean the Barrens.

-The first appearing of the Kingdom of Gilneas [to the south of Silverpine forest]

-Uldum! which was the target of many many player questions.

And of course many more!

Another thing that I liked is the new class-race combinations which some of them as far as I know are related to warcraft lore:

-Taurens have started asking questions about the Earthmother, The Earthmother in their religion has 2 eyes, The moon [Elune] and the sun [An’she], Many of the taurens decided to follow the Light as another aspect of the Earthmother, which gave the taurens both Paladin and Priest classes.

-If you ventured enough through Northrend, you will see a lot of places where dwarves are tied to lightning and rocks, even the Vault of Archavon you will see three bosses: The Storm Watcher, The Earth watcher and in 3.2.2 they will add the Flame Watcher, if you can recall what a shaman in warcraft 3 says: “Storm, Earth and Fire, Heed my call!”, So dwarves through the knowledge of these three elements gained access to Shaman class!

-Trolls, you saw them in many dungeons related to animals, in Zul’Furrak you saw them tied to serpents. In Zul’Gurub you saw them tied to panthers, bats and tigers. And in Zul’Aman you saw their bonds with bears, lynxes and birds. So I think it’s very logical to give trolls access to Druidism [My favorite!].

 

One more thing i am excited about is the guild leveling idea, from what I have read it goes like this:

Every time someone in the guild does something big, like max up a profession or a guild group killing a boss, Guild exp will be awarded. The guild will have its own talent trees with many exciting things like reduce durability loss on wipes, reduce repair costs and mass summon/resurrection.

 

There are a lot more to read about it on MMO-Champion web site!

Asus EeePC 1000-HE

I have always been amazed by the idea of netbooks. A cheap replacement for laptop used mostly for browsing.

So yesterday I went with one of my friends to see the prices and specs, I had put my mind on one of three choices:

1- Toshiba netbook with 6cell battery. [130KD]

2- Asus EeePC 1000-HE with 6cell battery. [119KD]

3- An HP-Compaq netbook with built in HSDPA modem. [not sure but I think around 105KD?]

And as seen from the topic I got the Asus one because its cheap and I am cheap .

When I decided to go for Asus i chose the black color, but what I did not know that the black colored Asus wasn’t a 1000HE but instead it was 1000H. These two models are identical except for the 6cell battery with the HE, What was funny that the seller did not know and insisted that the black one was with the 6cell battery. Not to mention the seller was going to give us the laptop on the show instead of a sealed one.

After many checks to see if the black one came with enhanced battery or not I decided to go for the gold laptop just to be sure that it was 1000HE.

Laptop specs:

Intel Atom N280/1.66GHz, 1GB DDR2 RAM, Intel GMA950 VGA Card, 160GB HDD, Wireless 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth, 10″ TFT Display with 1024×600 resolution, 1.3 MP camera.

The netbook was slightly heavy compared to other ones, I think about 1.25-1.5KG, but i guess this is because the Laptop-sized keyboard and the 10.1″ screen.

As for the battery I think the laptop can sustain at least 5hrs of continuous usage, but i have not measured it myself.

First thing to do! install UBUNTU!! Thank god for Wubi

Ubuntu recognized everything without any problems, sound/video/wireless were working flawlessly, yet i have not figured a way to connect to the internet using bluetooth and my E90 in Ubuntu.

[Edit: I managed to connect by bluetooth successfully using a program called "Blueman" under ubuntu]

Here are some pictures i took on the go: