Greetings, carbon-based bipeds! Got some cool links for ya.

60,000-Piece Lego Star Wars Hoth Diorama Features LEDs, Footprints -the docking bay with the Falcon in it is so very very cool.  /drool

Today’s Penny Arcade - I miss playing pen & paper Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, I miss having the time to do it. *sigh*

Buildings That Could Be Mistaken For Famous Spaceships - Portugal’s Pavilhão Atlântico is missing from there. It not only looks like Star Wars’ Imperial Senate, but also like a UFO.

While I’m on a sci-fi roll, check out this R2-D2 army dancing.

Also, I can’t avoid mentioning the death of Majel Barret, the voice of the Enterprise at age 76. RIP. :\

Oh, meantime people have asked me for clarification on my last post’s ‘Not having to run around doing favours for people during my very short vacations.’. I thought it was pretty self explanatory, but I’ll clarify. When I am vacationing, it’s common for people (who usually have more free time than myself all through the year), to call me and ask ‘you’re on vacations this week, aren’t you?’ and then proceed to ask me to go here or there to do something while they’re working. Although I usually don’t mind, and although it’s not even a matter of me feeling antisocial this year, I really have craploads of stuff to do of my own. Planning a wedding and making stuff for it takes a lot of time and patience. ;)

Exhausted. That’s how I’ve been feeling during most of the week, due to work pressures and the like. That’s the major reason why I haven’t posted anything non-screenshot this week.

Just thought I’d let you know I’m still alive, and I hope to survive until my X-Mas vacations. Next week I’m still working Monday and Tuesday, which from what I have learned will also be pressure-full days with tons of stuff to do at work before going on vacations. I hope I don’t have to stay here until 4 a.m. of X-Mas Eve (or X-Mas Eve’s eve). ;)

Amazing as it may sound, despite my love for X-Mas trees we haven’t set up ours yet. That will have to be done this Saturday so we place the already bought gits beneath it. I hope we don’t get electrocuted in the process, since we’ve kept the X-Mas lights from last year in the attic, which is moist as hell.

Anyway, Saturday I have a X-Mas dinner with friends (had another, pleasent one last week with other friends) which I’m hoping, considering who is going, proves to be as fun as Dave and Van’s birthday dinner.

You know what I’d really like for X-Mas? Sleep. Rest. More sleep. Not having to run around doing favours for people during my very short vacations. And not having to worry about so much work-related stuff.

I already have plans for my vacations: design stuff for the wedding (for the invitations, etc.), and possibly make some stuff already if I end up going do-it-yourself with the invitations.

As you may have noticed I’ve been mostly posting screenshots of my adventures in Northrend, the continent of the Wrath of the Lich King, as opposed to posting amazingly elaborate texts as you are all used to (cough).

I’ve been mostly busy both on my personal time and at work. I’m trying to optimize my free time use, and so far have managed to do more stuff than usual. Other than playing World of Warcraft (dinged 78 yesterday, woohoo!), I’ve managed to finish reading two graphic novels that my friend Jorge gave me for my birthday - All Star Superman vol. 1 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly and Demo: The Collection by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan.

Both had interesting plots and characters, and I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I, not being the greatest Superman fan (he can do about everything - where’s the fun in that?), loved how Morrison picked up Superman’s character and made him actually interesting in my view. Demo is a collection of short stories about people with special abilities, which I liked as a whole and could relate to a couple of the characters there.

I also read a bit more of The Tipping Point, which is an interesting enough book for me to have finished already, but lately for some reason I can’t seem to focus enough on anything when I’m commuting home from work. So that pretty much screws me out of what would me my primary reading time for that. I usually save pocket books or manga to when I’m commuting and leave graphic novels for home or for when I won’t have to walk around with them too much, since they are larger than what is convenient for me to carry around every day. Maybe I’ll recover from my semi-comatose after work state and pick up my reading pace soon so I can move on to read other stuff.

Meantime, while browsing around I found some interesting things I thought I’d share:

Steampunked Star Wars - steampunk versions of characters, vehicles, etc. from the Star Wars universe.

How to Design Characters the Square Enix Way - funny, but actually consistent with what we see in most Square Enix games.

110 Creative Advertisement For Inspiration - some very well thought of advertisements.

And that’s all for now. Brace yourselves for the very likely possibility that I will resume my posting of various WotLK screenshots. Because I’m really, really lazy.

And in the halls of Stormwind Keep I knelt before our once lost king. King Varian Wyrnn had returned to us.

Not much is happening here, so I’ll post links to some interesting news and articles I’ve found recently.
Japanese make cakes that look like sushi. As delicious as I am sure they are, I prefer actual sushi.

It seems that in Japan, students also do what Portuguese students used to do until coffee shops/restaurants started banning them - study there. Dany Choo asks why people do this. Speaking for myself, when I used to study in my college’s bar, I did it because not only did I have company there (both from my degree and other degrees, so it wasn’t just a matter of helping each other out), I’d study a lot better there than if I locked myself at home all day. For me it’s harder to be productive if I feel I have to do just that one thing.

To finalize this, I looks like Gardening Mama, will be coming out next Spring. It’s a game that’s like my beloved Cooking Mama game but directed to gardening. It’s a long wait but I’ll somehow manage to live.

This past three-day weekend was a much needed break from every day stuff. We went on a short shopping spree Friday night. We had a small dinner party with some friends at our place on Saturday, went to my sweety’s family farm on Sunday, to the movies Sunday night (Madagascar 2 is high on amusement, by the way), and then slacked the entire Monday at home, watching TV shows and playing Wrath of the Lich King.

I even managed to play a couple of the games I’ve been wanting to play for a while now. On Cooking Mama 2, I’ve finished unlocking recipes on the ‘normal’ mode, unless you get some if you get complete silver medals or above on every recipe. I’ll have to check a FAQ to see that. So anyway, I started the part of the game, where you cook for virtual friends, and already have 5 unlocked friends total.

I’ve also played some Wrath of the Lich King, although I didn’t level even once, since I’ve practically only played on Monday afternoon. I got near level 75 though, and got my reputation with the Kalu’ak up quite a bit. I am little over 14k reputation away from Exhalted, my pet penguin (btw check out this site about WoW pets) and new fishing pole. If I do the three dailies every day, totalling 1500 reputation, I’ll get to Exhalted in less than two weeks. A plus on this faction rep is also the fact that I can get a new 2-handed weapon at level 78, which is good because my current one kind of sucks. It’s much easier getting faction reputation in this expansion than it was before, not to mention less boring - the dailies I’ve seen so far aren’t the usual ‘kill 10 boars’ ones. There’s a particular Kalu’ak daily that comes to mind - you have to bait/kite a Sea Bull near a Sea Cow so they mate.

Oh, I also got a haircut and hair color change on my hunter. After almost four years, I’ve finally let her hair grow and become a very pretty white instead of blue. Let’s see if I like it. At first I had only switched the hair from short to long, but It was very odd playing her like that. Maybe with white hair it’s less awkward.

I’m going to get an epic flying mount for the hunter at level 77, which isn’t too far away, so I’m starting to save some gold, even though I can already afford it if I get the gold from my ex-main character, so I’m not too broke after that. That plus the 1000 gold we have to pay to get the flying ability in Northrend, makes 6000 gold, so I’ll have to skip getting the pretty Armored Snowy Gryphon. I’ll just get a regular Swift Purple Gryphon for now.

Aesthetically speaking, what I’m starting to get desperate about now is a new tabard. I am sick of all the ones I have and want a pretty new one. Maybe I’ll get the Argent Crusade one.

Oh, I finally visited Dalaran, and it’s a very cool-looking main city. I liked the daily cooking quest, which made me walk around a bit within the city to get some ingredients, while sightseeing.

While I’m on the subject of games, it seems that Baldur’s Gate, and NeverWinter Nights are going to be ‘revived’. I hope they come out decent enough to play. If I want hack & slash I’ll go for Diablo III, m’kay guys?