Project Paradox

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been following the previews of Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition and are frothing at the mouth to get the books. You’re also a bit miffed at the idea of dropping $100+ on the books. As it turns out, though, you can have your cake and eat it too. The best deal I managed to find for these books ended up costing me just under $17 per book, a far cry from the list price of $104.95 for all three. Here’s how I did it:

1. Apply any organizational discounts. At B&N, organizational discounts stack with coupon discounts. For example, I’m a AAA member, so I started by logging in through AAA.com/barnesandnoble to get a 5% discount. If you’ve got any sort of organizational discount that applies, like the B&N membership discount or the Geico Privileges discount, be sure to give it a try.
    
2. Add it to your shopping cart. Go to the 4th Edition Core Rulebook Gift Set product page. This is where the lion’s share of your discount comes in; Barnes & Noble cuts 35% off the list price and gives you free shipping for preordering. Select Preorder to add it to your cart.
    
3. Apply your coupon discount. Proceed through checkout. When prompted for a coupon code, enter Y8Y8E9R if you’re a new customer to receive a 25% discount. Of course, you can get the new customer discount even as an existing customer if you’re sly enough to have a spouse or good friend place the order for you. The coupon expires on May 26th, but you should be able to find similar coupons if you order after this date. Here’s the page where I found the coupon codes for you latecomers.
    
4. Select free shipping. Be sure to choose the best free shipping option available. For me, this was expedited free shipping, which takes three to five business days.
    
5. Wait with rapt anticipation. Count the days until June 11-13, when your books should arrive in the mail.

Following these steps, I managed to get the full set for $50.95, or just under $17 apiece. Your mileage may vary. First-time B&N customers who don’t have any organizational discounts should be able to get the set for a little over $54, which is still a pretty good deal.

Share your thoughts. Has anyone found a way to (legally) get the books any cheaper?

For those who don’t know, in addition to writing for this blog, I also blog professionally elsewhere. One of my most recent articles on the 10 Most Marketable Web Development Skills actually appeared on Read/Write Web, a popular web technology blog with over 150,000 subscribers.

Of course, with so many eyes, criticisms were to be expected. First and foremost, the article shouldn’t have been numbered; many of the readers interpreted it as an attempt to rank the web development skills against one another, when in fact they were listed in alphabetical order. Thankfully, I got the editor to correct this and note the ordering.

As for the list itself, surprisingly few people disagreed. This came as a bit of a shock, considering the list was about 25% research and 75% professional experience. The only noteworthy exception was that many felt ASP should have been replaced by ColdFusion. If I could go back and make that change now, I would, but I’m not about to compromise the integrity of the article after it’s already been published, discussed, and Dugg.

All in all, I’m happy with how the article faired. It’s definitely earned a prominent place in my writing portfolio. If you haven’t read it yet, you can catch it over on Read/Write Web. It stands as a pretty good guide to marketable web development skills. Just substitute ASP for ColdFusion and you’ll be on the right track.

My three-year-old, like all other children his age, is fond of mimicking his parents. Monkey see, monkey do, right? Unfortunately, we spend a good deal of our free time on the computer, which makes him want to play with it as well, particularly when we aren’t looking. He hasn’t managed to do anything catastrophic yet, but I constantly find random gibberish that he managed to input in odd places.

Thankfully, I came across a super-simple program called ToddlerTrap (via Lifehacker). Just run the program and all keyboard and mouse input is disabled. Your toddler can hit buttons and keys all day long, but they’re unlikely to bullseye the red X that exits the program. It even captures the last key entered, so you know whether or not your little rascal has been up to his or her old tricks.

Scott Adams, the author of the Dilbert comic strip, recently published a book named, “Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey-Brain!” He didn’t wait for some stuffy “professionals” to review it, though. Instead, he decided to run a contest for the funniest book reviews. Here are a some of my favorite submissions. You can also check out the full list of winners over on Scott’s blog (thanks for the link, Simon).

As a smokin’ hot woman, I found this book hilariously funny and I’d seriously consider making out with any guy I saw reading it.
- Diana Wales

I HAVE to buy this book! My kidnappers had a copy but my dad foolishly paid the ransom an hour too soon.
- Richard Factor

Even though this book killed my father, broke my brother’s legs, sold my mother into a life of prostitution, burnt our home to ashes, and left me an orphan on the street, jitter-bugging for pennies, I can not stay mad at it…it is just too funny.
- Kevin Allen

A delightful read…it has everything; humor, words, dangling participles, and did I detect a hint of nutmeg?
- Chris Bachman

I was reading this to my mother when she died. She refused to enter the light until I had finished.
- Geoff Bonvallet

I don’t want to say that this is the best book ever written, but as I slid it into my bookshelf a chorus of angels began to sing and my other novels were engulfed in holy flame. I guess that’s a little ambiguous, though.
- Ryan

Before I found this, I was a pathetic, depressed, underappreciated, overworked, sexually impotent, joyless shell of a man. Now, I’m all those things with a funny book.
- Kevin

Most of the time, I create build guides for my own edification; researching what others consider the best build really helps me optimize my own character. Not too long ago, I posted a feral druid build that managed to get some attention over at Wowhead. Based on the feedback I read there, I’d like to offer some revisions for levels 62 through 70 of the feral druid build.

Level 62: Nature’s Grasp. Apparently, this can be cast in any form, which makes it significantly more useful than I had originally thought. I can see it being handy for dealing with adds or running away in PvP, as well as dealing with pesky rogues and warriors in PvP.

Level 63-67: Predatory Instincts. I’ll go ahead and admit it; between Sharpened Claws, Leader of the Pack, and plenty of agility-enhancing gear, I crit a lot. Improving crit damage, then, isn’t a bad idea. The area effect avoidance is really just icing on the cake.

Level 68-70: Natural Shapeshifter. If you don’t PvP very often, this is your best choice. If you do, go with Primal Tenacity instead. The little added resistance to stuns and fears can help in fights against hunters, rogues, warlocks, and priests.

As always, here’s the visual breakdown of the revised feral druid build.

I remember watching the original Wizard of Oz movie as a child. Even though it was almost half a century old by the first time I watched it, the story was still enjoyable for its imagination. Like any true classic, it’s timeless, able to appeal to audiences even decades after its first release.

I found Tin Man, a TV mini-series based on the original Wizard of Oz, to be a welcome update to the Wizard of Oz genre. Some purists would probably disagree, but I felt that it added depth to the original storyline. It retains many of the original elements of the story while expanding on them in unique and imaginative ways, bringing the O.Z. alive.

In case you haven’t had a chance to see it, I won’t go into the details of the story. My only minor criticism was Zooey Deschannel’s acting. I’m not sure if it was intended as part of DG’s character, but she didn’t seem to portray emotion very well. Other than that, everything was above par, at least as far as TV movies go.

If you haven’t had a chance to see it yet, I suggest you check out the official Tin Man website for the next showing. Even if you miss it once, Tin Man’s the sort of series that they’re bound to be rerun over and over again.

I can’t profess much expertise with cryptography, but I hate form spammers as much as the next guy. That’s why I designed this simple math captcha in PHP. Just include the input code in your form and the output code in your form processor. A new form field will appear asking submitters to solve an easy text-based math problem (e.g., “Two plus seven?” or “Sixteen divided by eight?”). If that problem is answered incorrectly, or the form is more than an hour old, the submission will be denied as invalid.

Note that this script is designed to block simple spambots. A dedicated human spammer or a more sophisticated bot will still be able to bypass it. If you’re looking for something more robust, I recommend giving reCAPTCHA a try. Of course, I’m also happy to improve the script for anyone who cares to offer constructive feedback.

I’m smart, frugal, and internet savvy, so you’d think this concept would have occurred to me before now. After all, you can buy nearly anything online nowadays, usually for much less than you’d pay at a store. Until very recently, though, I had it in my head that you simply couldn’t buy glasses online, that it took an expert to make them the perfect fit and prescription.

According to “Adventures in $40 eyeglasses” (via LifeHacker), though, I couldn’t be more wrong. All you really need are a few simple measurements (e.g., pupil distance, lense width, arm length, etc.), your prescription, and an understanding of what it all means. You only need an expert for the eye exam; after that, you apparently have everything you need to know.

I scanned through the article’s comments, and the author’s experience seems legitimate. As for where to buy glasses online, a lot of commenters spoke highly of Zenni Optical and Goggles4u. Not a single one mentioned any dissatisfaction, which is surprising. More importantly, nobody mentioned paying more than $100, and many said they paid less than $50. In several cases, people bought multiple pairs, all with the same quality that you’d pay $100s for at LensCrafters.

Granted, the jury is still out on laser eye surgery. I know my wife is too squeamish to go through with it, though, so we’ll probably be buying glasses online for her. I’ll be sure to give an update on the experience after we’ve given it a try. After reading the article, though, I am decidedly… opti-mistic.

Consider, for a moment, how much time you spend using a mouse every day of your life. With all that practice, you probably think you’re pretty agile with that little cursor…

Well, think again. Mouse avoider is a flash game designed to pit your manual dexterity against a sly little man hell bent on stealing your cursor. Don’t be fooled; he’s faster than he looks. He’ll jump around, bounce off the walls and ceiling, fire missiles and bombs at you… anything to get rid of your mouse cursor. All you can do is avoid his attempts for as long as possible.

The game’s much more clever than it appears at first. It seems like, the longer you have it open, the more new moves the little man uses against you. He’ll throw bigger missiles, immolate himself, teleport, or create a seemingly inescapable chain of explosions. All of this is in contrast to his earlier moves, so stay on your toes… err, fingers. Also, don’t get spooked enough to move your cursor off the flash screen, or else your points will drop back to zero.

Chimerus, my tauren druid, is into his sixties now, and barely a day goes by that someone doesn’t ask if I want to be in their guild. I understand their reasoning; an unguilded, high-level druid who’s almost ready for end-game content is a rare commodity indeed. Almost universally, I politely decline their invitation and leave it at that.

What bugs me is the mentality that getting into a guild is a goal that I’m expected to have. It never even occurs to other players that I don’t, in fact, want to be in a guild. Yes, you heard me right. I don’t want to be in a guild. In case you find that difficult to understand, here are five reasons why I think guilds are overrated.

1. Scheduling pressure. I’m a casual player, so my free time is not wholly dominated by Warcraft. There’s also time with my family, side jobs, hobbies, and chores to consider. I can’t always be available to do instances and raids. Unfortunately, I haven’t been in a guild yet that didn’t expect me to treat group activities like a second job. End-game raiding guilds are particularly bad for this.
    
2. Social obligation. In the time I do play Warcraft, I want to have fun, which usually involves advancing my own characters. In a guild, however, high-level characters are often expected to assist low-level characters with tough quests and instance runs. I’m not necessarily against lending a hand, but it can become a pain when you’re asked too often. It’s even more annoying when the tables are turned and other guild members refuse to follow suit.
    
3. Chatter. I usually only keep one chat channel open, and that’s a private channel for family and friends. Occasionally, I’ll keep General chat open when it isn’t too noisy (i.e., not in the Barrens). In a guild, however, it’s expected that you’ll keep guild chat open and not only listen to all the inane chatter, but contribute to it as well. Sorry, but I have better things to focus on than random conversation.
    
4. Internal politics. More than a few guilds I’ve been a part of dissolved or suffered mass attrition as a result of internal politics. One member says or does something that rubs another the wrong way, lines get drawn in the sand, and, before you know it, there are hurt feelings and bad morale. I play Warcraft to have fun, thanks, and situations like that are anything but.
    
5. Inactivity. In contrast to the frustrations already mentioned, which are typical of more active guilds, inactive guilds strain logic. Why, exactly, would I be in a guild that doesn’t actually do anything as a group? That’s pretty much the same as being guildless to begin with. Then again, it might stop people from constantly asking me to join their guild…

I think that sums it up pretty well. To clarify, I’m not an asocial person. I just find that being in a guild more often diminishes than increases my enjoyment of the game. And why am I playing at all if not to have fun?