The Chinsese WoW Token Sure is Worth a Lot

Just recently I've created a new Twitter account to get rid of all the unnecessary distractions I had followed and only get to the core of it. I also followed @WoWTokens, which basically keeps you updated on the WoW Token prices. And that made me realise something.

What you may have noticed there is that WOW Tokens go for just under 80k gold in China. That's absolutely crazy in my opinion: the EU version currently goes for only 50k and in the US a WoW token takes only 30k gold out of your pocket and that's while the price for US is climbing.

And that's not all I found out: the Koren token goes for 190k and the Taiwanese one goes for 180k so it seems to me this isn't just pure coincidence. And I've already got an explanation.

We all work for a living, no matter where on Earth we live. But our pay checks do vary depending on where we work and unfortunately big companies see opportunities in "poor" countries like China and Taiwan to milk their industry even further. Causing most people there to live on the edge between debt and living on the streets.

This is just another case of the worth of a currency varying on where you are: we all pay exactly as much when converted to dollars, but someone from Taiwan or Korea will value it a lot more as the tokens are a lot more rare there (because nobody can actually buy them).

In the US, however, we have the opposite: people that have loads of money to spare because they unknowingly milk the other continents' industries. And they value it a lot less as it's a lot more common to have lying around.

This isn't meant to be boring, this is meant to give you an insight on how even gaming can show you how unfair the world economy is. This makes me wonder what happened in history to get us from equality to the one milking the other for every last cent.

New Helicopter With Legs

CNET just released a news flash that shows a helicopter that "lands like an insect" with its legs instead of skids. It just seemed like such a funny idea that I had to read it through.

In the beginning I didn't really get why DARPA would even bother making this: it just seems like the kind of thing an overly funded Japanese company would create. Yet it does have a very significant advantage over regular skids: it can land on uneven surfaces due to its robotic legs. 

That's right, while you may not have thought of it (because you most likely never had to) those skids are very impractical for landing in, for example, natural-disaster zones and so on. And they took care of that with what might be one of the biggest breakthroughs in helicopter technology lately. And this would be best used for good. That's awesome.

This is what I call a positive, useful breakthrough that should be celebrated.

StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void Opening Cinematic

Yesterday, Blizzard posted a cinematic for StarCraft II. If you're a hyperactive tech guy like me, you've probably already read the article about it on TechCrunch. As I always do with these, I'll give you my opinion and point of view in a nice blog post.

I think this cinematic really looks awesome. While StarCraft may not be my cup of tea at all, this cinematic alone made me consider at least trying it out. What harm could it do apart from getting me addicted to yet another video game?

It looked better graphics-wise than any WoW cinematic I've ever seen. There's obviously a huge war going on as we're going to take back Aiur and battle the massive swarm that has plagued it (sounds a lot like what the Forsaken are doing to me, just here you don't seem to have a choice of what side you take).

As I'm experienced with video editing and rendering I know how much time and effort must've went into this cinematic and how much money Blizzard spent on this fantastic work of art. The day they make the story into a movie with as good quality as that cinematic is going to be a very happy day for me, I reckon.

And with BlizzCon coming soon I don't think that'll be the only awesome footage we see, so be prepared or else... "You are not prepared!"

Apart from that I can't really give you any suggestions for what to expect as I'm not familiar with StarCraft at all.

2015 Road to BlizzCon

BlizzCon is getting closer and we have already got ourselves a cool teaser trailer! Oh boy do I love myself some teasers, for some reason they're the only type of advertisement that doesn't get me all annoyed and yelling at AdBlock to work.

It looks like the biggest event of the year for every WoW fan out there (wether you go there or not, there's always some cool content to look through and it generally gives you an idea of the future of the game). That's what it is every single year and that's not about to change: this year, it happens in Prague, Czech Republic. More specifically in the O2 arena.

The one thing I'm looking forward to is more information about the Legion expansion. I just can't get enough of those big updates and I always get so hyped about them. Unfortunately though, my attention span is extremely short and there's always something else to distract me. Perhaps I should monetize this blog in the future and even get paid for going to these events and documenting them, that would be absolutely awesome if I were able to do something like that.

Of course there's going to be some surprises as always and while you guys might have hoped for some extreme rumor-mill-ran-wild scenario on this blog, I'd have to disappoint you if you were. All I can say is I wish I could be there to see all of it for myself.

I'm hyped, not only because it's a big thing but because WoW is a big part of my life. I've spent years and years playing the game and everything that happens to it is something that changes in my life.

Call of Duty®: Black Ops III - Multiplayer Beta Trailer

The multiplayer beta for Call of Duty®: Black Ops III is scheduled to open on august 19th, so it's only one week away as its trailer was just uploaded 25 minutes before thee writing of this post. This is my opinion on it.

The hype is real for this game! Seriously, they're doing an incredible job at promoting the third game in their Black Ops series. From what I've seen so far, it's going to be even better than BO2 and I haven't even invested that many hours into looking for clues of what it may contain. All I've done so far is read what others have found and I'm as excited as can get for Black Ops 3.

In terms of this particular trailer, it's really powerful and tells you a lot about what the gameplay will actually look like. This is the kind of stuff that you would expect from a great Call of Duty montage, just better.

I'm really hyped about the underwater combat as that should really give you a new and unique experience. It might obviously not be as fast-paced as what we are used to, but it will give long-time players something special, something they've never done before in Call of Duty. And that's a good thing for CoD to do, because the games are very similar to eachother so they need to give their players a good reason to start playing the next title.

Unfortunately it looks like a pretty graphics intensive game, and my PC can't really keep up with those anymore. But I'll be happy watching gameplays from YouTubers like Ali-A while playing other fun games like RuneScape.

Got Screwed by the Local Mall (well, sort of)

I went to the local mall for groceries and I noticed that they hid some tech accessories between the cheeses and the wines, so I decided to take a closer look and ended up buying a $5 7-port USB hub and a $7 tablet cover for my Lenovo A8. I got (semi-)screwed.

You know, some things are just too good to be true and when they seem like they are, they probably are. Let's start ranting about the USB hub. I have only one problem with it: it prevents my PC from booting up when I forget to unplug it. And that's a problem. You see, I planned on using this so that I could charge my various devices (eReader, tablet, smartphone, I'm planning on getting a smartwatch once I have the money) while still not having to give up my mouse, keyboard, headset and microphone. I need a ton of USB ports for that. And that's why my brain told me to buy this USB hub: I've been looking for one for quite a while now and I really don't like paying more than I need to as I can really use the money for other stuff like food, paying my bills and eventually buying new devices like the smartwatch I'm planning on buying. Seriously, I can use some savings. So I bought it and I pretty much wasted five bucks there.

Then, of course, there's the tablet cover. Now that one I can actually live with. It's a little bit low quality for my liking but hey, I can deal with that. It does exactly what I expected it to do and even a little better. So that kind of made up for my five bucks getting pretty much stolen by the mall. If they informed me about the products a little better instead of just putting it in the shelf with a price tag I would've happily paid the full $12 for the tablet cover alone and I would've left the USB hub where it was in the shelf. But then again, that's one other fool like me that gets tricked into buying that junk less. So I saved somebody $5. Or I could just plug it into the electricity outlet in my wall and use it as a 7-port wall charger? I'll try that.

That's it for this rant, I'm really happy with the tablet cover so I guess I can just let the USB hub problem go. For now.

I'm not even going to put pictures in because that would mean I'd be talking bad about a specific brand and I don't want to ruin anyone's business. If you make 7-port USB hubs, however, please try to use it and then reboot the PC it's connected to. You'll be a little bit disappointed if it's you, though.

My Lenovo A8-50 tablet (Review)

I've bought a tablet: a Lenovo A8. Here's what I think of it so far.

The unboxing was a pleasure. The tablet was a bit hard to get out of its box, but after only five seconds of trying to get my finger in between the box and the tablet I was able to get it out. One small hint for those who are planning to order it: get it out by lifting one of the corners first, that's a little bit easier than the sides.

After getting it out of its box I was greeted by the 8" HD display that simply looks good. It's exactly what you need from it and then some, so I'm honestly really happy about it. I don't mind seeing a couple of pixels, certainly not at this price point, but I was unable to spot any while holding it in a natural way. Of course if you stick it up against your nose you'll be able to see some pixels, but you can't blame Lenovo for that. That's simply the way it is.

The camera works really good for what it is, but I honestly don't see why you'd need anything but a simple front facing camera for Skype on a tablet. Seriously, if you want to take a picture use either your smartphone or an actual camera. Just leave the tablet out of that.

The design also looks really good in my opinion, my sister was a bit grossed out by its "unusual" blue color but I honestly like that it's not a part of the boring sea of black and white devices while still not looking like a child's toy. The blue isn't distracting at all like other colors of tablets you can get.

The buttons aren't as instinctive as I'd like: they just seem a bit odd. I think it's because of them being placed a little bit more to the back of the device than I'm used to from my smartphone.

As you may be able to see on the picture, the buttons are actually placed on the back side of the tablet instead of on the front. You need to really watch it closely to notice shich side the screen is on, though.

Anyways, my overall opinion on it is that it's a great tablet at an affordable price, so if you're looking for a decent tablet you should really consider the Lenovo A8.

Review: IKEA Fingal Chair

I've recently bought an IKEA Fingal chair (it costs only 40 dollars) and I've been planning on writing a review about it for quite a while now. As I've been busy with some work in and around the house I was unable to write it until today.

First of all, let's talk about putting the chair together. The box contained only the back and the seat of the chair, so I was a bit worried that we forgot a box at the store but everything ended up being alright as IKEA apparently chose to hide all of those parts in the back of the chair. 

Those were held together by a rubber band that is attached to the inside of the back of the chair (this band keeps the shape into the back of the chair). The bad part about this band is that you constantly feel it pushing against your lower back, and as back problems are common in my family I see that as a pretty big issue.

Putting it together was pretty easy, it only took about ten minutes once I figured out where all of the parts were. The manual made me a little bit scared when I read it online, but once I had the chair in front of me it all made perfect sense and I was able to figure it out in no time. This isn't really what you would expect from IKEA, and I'm happy about it.

The arm rests are very hard, so once you've been working for a couple of hours it starts to hurt your arms a little. If they weren't essential for the chair (they keep the back and the seat together) I would probably replace them with more comfortable arm rests.

The seat itself feels good. I'm now able to work for longer periods of time with less pain. That's what I bought the chair for, so it does the trick.

The wheels don't roll as smoothly as you would want, but that's also the reason why IKEA sells floor protectors: plastic "carpets" that protect your floor against any damage done by the wheels. I honestly don't think you need those when the chair is still new, but after about half a year the wheels will probably start to wear down a little bit and I'll be happy I bought the protector.

In terms of "bang for the buck", this chair is absolutely amazing. I don't think that you can find a desk chair this comfortable for the same price anywhere else.

If you're looking for a cheap desk chair so you can save up for a more permanent solution, you should really look at the Fingal because it's both cheap and good.

IKEAHackers Website - Awesome Way to Pimp Your Interior

I've just recently stumbled upon a website called IKEAhackers and I couldn't help but talk about it on here because I think it's just generally awesome. Why is it so awesome, you might ask? I'll tell you right now.

Everyone probably has the problem of furniture being too expensive for them to afford at least once in their life. It's a common problem, young people just need more than they can afford. That's the way the economy is right now. IKEA is a cheap alternative for expensive brands, but it's very limited as compared to the huge amount of personalities and lifestyles that require the perfect house interior.

Well, problem solved for those that can't find the perfect furniture at IKEA: there's an extremely large community of "IKEA Hackers" that modify IKEA furniture to fit their needs. The nice part of it is: you can read through all of their projects and potential inspiration on a website called IKEAhackers. Seriously, It's awesome.

It's all well-organized thanks to its creator still being dedicated to delivering the best user experience possible. You can even subscribe to a newsletter that will tell you about the website developer's favorite hacks so that you don't have to read through everything on the website to find only a couple of ideas that you truly find creative and well-made.

The website has had some problems regarding IKEA wanting it to either stop running ads or turn in their domain name, but those were resolved without any lawyers getting involved so the website isn't going anywhere. That honestly makes me happy. If they had sued IKEAHackers for its name I would have probably boycotted IKEA as it's a generally awesome website that everyone has to visit.

I personally found one very simple hack on the website that I'm planning on doing myself pretty soon: a very cheap headset holder. I've been looking for a cheap alternative for one of those things for quite a while now, and this thing will really help me make my desk more organized.

Apart from that, I think the intended use of IKEA's furniture will suffice for now as I haven't really ran into any major furniture problems in or around my rooms that can't be solved very cheap (or even for free) so far.

That's it for this post, I hope at least one of you can use this website to solve a frustrating problem in or around your house. It's truly awesome and the people on there are so creative that I think there's no way you can visit this website without getting some inspiration from it. Everyone needs furniture.

My Strange Addiction of RuneScape

RuneScape can't be considered a game you can play into the early hours, yet I still find myself enjoying the game more than I first thought I would. Here's my story of how I got into the game and why I think it's so addicting. 

This is all just my story, so those who want a full review of the game should wait for a while because with how much I play RuneScape I won't be able to hold back from making a review on it.

Years ago, when I was still very young (way too young to fully understand English), I saw my brother and his friends play RuneScape. This is in the true Old School times, the game had not even barely gotten as far as the 07 version that people consider "Old School" now. It just seemed so cool to me that they were all interacting with eachother on this game even though they weren't talking to eachother like they would on the playing grounds, for example. They all had a smile on their face as they were trading their items in front of the Lumbridge Castle.

The Lumbridge Castle as of 2007

I imeadiately wanted to know more about it. When we arrived at home, I asked my brother to make an account for me. The one think I remember in particular is me not liking the need to choose yet another password I'd have to remember, so I used "nietleuk" as a password (Dutch for "not fun"). All of a sudden, I found myself in this alternate reality. It wasn't like the real world, but it didn't have to be: it was a place where I was able to interact with people from all around the globe without the need of spending countless hours in your car (air plane tickets were too expensive for our family). It was almost even divine.

My story, further on, was kind of like that of all other long-time gamers: I got hooked on the stuff, I loved the people I interacted with most as much as I loved my friends in real life. My life at school was great, I was not any different from the other kids and I truly had the time of my life.

That was until I skipped a year of school because of my "extraordinary" intelligence. The other kids were so jealous of me that they all picked on me. I was the outsider, the one that was given an unfair advantage and they wanted to take that advantage away from me no matter what. Thus I was bullied for years and years.

Unlike most other "nerds" that shared this fate, I was able to interact with girls just fine. Honestly, I had more female friends than male friends and by the time I left high school, I had already had three pretty long relationships. They were all ended just as quickly as they had began: the first one had to move for her parents' jobs, the second one went to a school so far away from my village that it was impossible to stay in contact with her and the third one turned out to like me only for the fact that I was the one that stood up for her when she was bullied (and getting myself in an even worse position in the process) so she left me once the bullies lost interest in her. I still hate her for using me like that, but I guess everyone gets a major slap in the face every once in a while.

Why are they relevant? Because they gave me bragging rights on RuneScape and they made me look cool. Unlike some other scumbags I no longer needed to lie to my clanmates when talking about love and relationships as we often did (very awkward to do over the internet without knowing who you're talking to, I know). That made me proud.

Others got some ingame cash as a gift for their so-called "marriage" but were forced to admit their lies only a week later. Those guys tried to go after me a couple of times, trying to make me "snap" and tell them that I had been lying too. But I hadn't been lying, so I was safe and they decided to admit that only a year later and ended up handing in all of the gifts I had given them for their lies over the course of that year. I was rich, all of a sudden.

That gained me respect in the game. That made me from just a clanmate into the cool guy. the one everyone wanted to be. Yet all I really was was a nerd behind his desk, telling his online friends the worst jokes you could find on the internet and having a good time. And the guys at school noticed that I had to be doing something in my free time and that it sure wasn't sports or hanging out with my friends and causing some fuss over the most stupid of things, so I was an outsider in yet another aspect and they trived upon that.

Their increased bullying caused me to not do homework, made me hide in a shell where all that really mattered was me and RuneScape. And eventually also MineCraft, Tribal Wars and such. It made me grab for whatever made me feel good, and that was mostly fast food and candy. So I got pretty fat all because they pushed me into a state where the only reliable entertainment I had was my PC.

I'm currently still trying to get rid of that weight. I have so much to look forward to in the future, and a terrible physical condition would ruin most of that. So at the moment I'm doing my best to grab for some actual strawberries instead of strawberry icecream, for an apple instead of a cookie and so on. It's actually easier than I had first imagined: you don't have to completely give up everything you like in life just to become healthier. All you need to do is force yourself to actually do it. The rest just comes with that.

And this is where all of that brought me, writing about my life online. My friends, that I now actually have, would probably think that it's incredibly weird of me to talk about my life so openly online as compared to in real life. In person I hate talking about myself. I hate talking in general. I can type my thoughts faster than I can express them using my mouth. This is what I'm used to. This is my life, and I welcome you to it. Please ignore the mess that is my past, and the cloud that hides my future from me. I've gotten used to those by now.

Please don't see this as me trying to get compassion, I honestly don't care about wether or not people are actually reading this. It's just a way for me to feel like I've actually expressed myself for once, and I must say it feels very good.

That's it for today's post, it's a little bit of a long one but in order to tell you guys about how I got into RuneScape I had to tell you about a very large part of my life story. I'm sorry for those of you that want straight up information, this was just the way I felt most comfortable with sharing this.

First Ever Oral Exam

I've just had my first ever oral exam earlier today, and I wanted to tell you guys about how it went and what the whole experience felt like to me.

First of all, I want to thank my English teacher for making it that easy. I mean, seriously, I'm in my third year of high school and I get questions like "What do you think of our school" on my oral exam. That's just outrageous. The fact of the matter is, I'm pretty sure I've passed this exam.

It wasn't like your average oral exam where you basically have a monologue with only you and your teacher in the room, it was easier than that. We were divided in groups of three students and assigned a theme and some questions. Then we got one minute of preparation, even though I still think she only gave us half a minute, and had to start a natural conversation with eachother about the theme we were assigned including the answers to the questions we were posed.

Ofcourse, this wasn't hard at all and I was put in a group with a girl that's really good at English in my opinion (it isn't our native language) and a guy that wasn't as good at it but was really doing his best to do as good as possible.

It seemed so short, the conversation was stopped by the teacher in no time and we went home earlier than most others (we all had to arrive at the same time, but once you were done you were allowed to leave and we were one of the early groups). I left with a smile on my face as I just knew that I'd get excellent results for this oral exam.

That's it for this post, it's really just a small filler while I'm still doing exams as I don't have that much time to write any big articles yet. When I'm done, it'll be a long holiday and I'll be able to write loads of amazing articles for you guys to read. We'll get through these harsh times.

My switch from AZERTY to QWERTY

Just yesterday, I switched keyboards from AZERTY to QWERTY. This post is going to be a struggle to write as I'm not completely used to it yet, but I guess it's worth it as the QWERTY layout matches my needs most.

The first thing I did when I got into the QWERTY side of things was check out the differences in the layouts. The letters aren't that much of a struggle to get used to, apart from the letter M being in a completely different spot without any clear reason as to why.

Of course, there's some more advantages to this layout. You pretty much don't need the Alt Gr button, so you can use that one for keybinds in games (for example having to press both Alt Gr and a number to heal yourself in WoW).

I must say that my new keyboard feels extremely good compared to my old one. The button presses feel a lot smoother instead of constantly having that clicking noise. The space bar is pretty loud, but I guess every keyboard has its flaw and a loud spacebar isn't that much of a problem.

Also, a pretty big flaw (for people that live in Europe) is that it doesn't have the Euro sign on it so that could become a bit of a struggle in the future.

So far, I really like the experience of QWERTY compared to AZERTY. I'm probably going to run into some issues with the QWERTY layout pretty soon, so stay tuned for more keyboard layout madness.

My experience with G2A

G2A is a website where you can buy games under their actual retail value with over 99% customer satisfaction. I decided to check it out quite a while ago, and this is my opinion on the website.

First of all, I want to talk about their referal system. You can actually earn a little bit of money to spend on games by referring people to the website (if they actually buy something). That's really awesome, as they basically give you games for referring people to the website and the longer you've been referring people, the more you get out of it, I really like that.

Also, you don't have to spend that money on games on their website, you can also get it transferred to your Paypal account (but who wants cash when you can get games instead). Essentially you could make this a form of profit for your online business like a YouTube channel or blog if the ad revenue can't keep you going.

You don't notice any price changes if you've been referred to the site compared to people that found out on their own, they don't take the money from the people that you referred to the site (if they did, that'd be pretty messed up imo).

Their overall service is great. The website looks good, it functions exactly the way you'd expect it to and it's generally a good experience. I don't know about the customer service yet because I haven't actually needed that so far.

That's it for this review on G2A, I hope you all enjoyed.

My Opinion on the Story of Kael'thas Sunstrider (WoW Lore)

Nobbel87 just released a video about the full story of Kael'thas Sunstrider, and as I'm very interested in the lore of World of Warcraft and have watched many of Nobbel's videos before.

The story starts off when about how Sylvanas and the High Elves fought against Arthas and the Undead in the absense. It also talks about Quel'thalas, the Highborn, the Naga and many more big elements in the lore of World of Warcraft.

The city of Quel'thalas

I think Blizzard did a great job at this storyline and the beginning of it was so awesome that you wouldn't expect it to ever turn bad. Until he had to serve Grand Marshal Garithos. That guy is probably the most selfish (and honestly even dumb) leader in the history of World of Warcraft. He didn't even want to admit that Prince Kael'thas made a smart decision by working together with the "vile" Naga who also despised the "vile" Undead.

Lady Vashj

That was until Lady Vashj decided to bring him to Outland for him to serve the demon Illidan. This is where the storyline kind of stopped making sense for me: first he hesitated to even accept a gift from Lady Vashj because she was a servant of Illidan and then he just goes ahead and marches into Outland to serve Illidan along with her. Why? If the earlier part of the storyline was right, he was more than wise enough to know that taking the path of the demons was a lot less honorable of a decision than facing Garithos and perhaps dieing in the process. 

Illidan Stormrage

Taking the decision of staring death in the eyes was a decision only a strong leader could have made, and apparently his addiction to magic had driven him so mad that he saw no other way out than to side with the demon Illidan, who he had despised before he made this decision, and possibly allow the demon to force his people into slavery. That could've happened. You never know what's on a demon like Illidan's mind.

The demon promised him more magic than the elf could ever imagine, and immeadiately made the guy his right hand while that same elf had helped the people who damned him by forcing him into retreat on his mission to destroy the Lich King, forced the hatred of Kil'jaeden upon the demon and still Stormrage trusted Kael'thas that much. That sounsd kind of fishy, but I guess Illidan knew how desperate the elves were as he, too, turned to Fel magic to feed his addiction.

Fel Magic

The second fight against the Lich King, with Arthas defending the King and the elves helping the demon Illidan Stormrage, failed as well and they were forced into retreat once again. What a fail, even with the help of yet another race Illidan couldn't kill a single man. Why didn't the elves help the demon in his fight against the Lich King, and where were the Scourge? I guess they didn't think their cutscenes through...

Illidan and the Lich King facing off

Now, the humans came back in. They were helped by the Naaru this time, so you'd expect the humans to win easily. That's not the case, however. Tempest Keep, while easily being able to teleport away, ended up getting captured and the Naaru didn't even care about it. Wait... What? The Naaru didn't care about their own home getting invaded by an evil force? Almost everyone would be mad and imeadiately taking arms to reclaim what's theirs, but apparently these beings were so "Holy" that they didn't even care about it.

M'uru, the Naaru that stayed in Tempest Keep

The elves got more and more heavily addicted to this new Fel magic and they were corrupted (just like the Orcs were before them), even though Kael'thas told Vashj that "his people would never be that desperate". As they got corrupted, their eyes turned from blue to green. This is only minor compared to the Orcs fully turning green, but it's still a sign of their corruption.

Kael'thas teamed up with Kil'jaeden, so he was now the puppet of an even more powerful and evil being. Akama told Illidan about it and just like that, Illidan was now after his servant Kael'thas. He didn't kill the elf himself, though, we as players ended up killing the guy. But not actually killing him, he was reborn. Deformed yet alive. In World of Warcraft, an important character in the lore can't just be killed by killing them once: they always end up coming back (see the Lich King leaving Illidan for dead in Northrend, yet the demon getting saved by his servants and him actually returning). That's something pretty weird about the game and I think they made the decision because it's too hard to keep a game going with all-new characters every expansion so re-using characters was probably the smartest decision and it adds a sense of mystery to the lore.

His second version ended up getting killed too, but he had already set events in motion and the Burning Legion was coming to Azeroth. They ended up coming, but the invasion was stopped and the Legion was blocked out of our reality.

It's an extremely exciting storyline with a whole lot to talk about. Out of all storylines I know within the game, this one will really stay on my mind for the longest time. I've even rewatched the full thing just for the sake of hearing the tale once again. The fact you can actually do that, means Blizzard sure did an amazing job at making their lore interesting and exciting.

New Earphones & Exams Coming Soon

It's been a while since I last posted a life-update, so I decided that I should probably keep you guys updated with the latest news in my life.

I got new earphones as the ones I was prevously using weren't even mine and they weren't good enough for me. I know, I know, you should always be grateful about being able to lend something and I really was, but if earphones don't sound good they get annoying after some time so I decided to buy myself a new pair.

Ofcourse, I did some research on relatively cheap earphones with decent to good quality and I ended up finding some. Not much later, I got a package from China and my Xiaomi Piston III was wrapped in an enormous load of plastic protection and duct tape keeping it safe during its shipment. The earbuds themselves came in a box that looked like it could carry a thousand dollar watch (but the plastic reminded me that I bought a pair of €20 earphones and not a piece of jewelry) and they were in perfect shape. 

They don't feel like an expensive piece of art, but that's really not necessary when they look cool and sound as good as a €150 pair of earphones. They sound better than my €65 headset (not designed for gaming, gaming headsets generally sound worse than regular ones) even though I was extremely surprised to hear the amazing quality coming out of my headset back when I bought it.

The next topic I want to talk about really quickly is a whole lot less exciting than my new earphones. I have exams coming up, so I won't be able to spend as much time on blogging as I spend on it at the moment. Please note that I am still going to come back to my usual "schedule" once the exams are over and that I'd never forget about this blog in only a couple of weeks' time.

That's it for this life-update, I hope you all enjoyed it and if you have any advise on how to get the most out of my new earphones please comment on this post as I'll happily reply to any comments that I get on this blog.

Player Power Has Decided - Icthlarin vs. Amascut is Coming!

Image by Originally Famous (http://blogagamerslife.blogspot.be/)

If you're into RuneScape and check their website on a daily basis like I do, you probably know about this already. There was a poll about what Halloween Event they should add, and the idea of Icthlarin and Amascut facing off against eachother won with pride.

As you can see, there was the choice between Spectres of War, Icthlarin vs Amascut and a sequel to the Broken Home quest. A vast minority didn't mind what they added, the Broken Home sequel was only just a tiny bit more popular than not caring about it and Spectres of War was popular amongst a quarter of the people who voted. Almost half of the players wanted the Icthlarin vs Amascut event, so there's no doubt they're adding that one.

I'm personally really excited about this because I'm really into the Desert storylines and I'll definately check the event out once it's there.

This is, by the way, going to be a Mini World Event so it's going to be like Tuska but on a smaller scale and less impacting to the overall lore of the game. This will be a one-time event, so you can't expect to see Icthlarin and Amascut facing off against eachother for millenia.

RuneScape Behind The Scenes 151: June Updates Coming to RuneScape (My Opinion)

A new episode of RuneScape Behind The Scenes has been released. This one covers the June updates coming to RuneScape, so I was immeadiately eager to see what it featured.

First of all, Mod Mark talked about the Tuska World Event. I'm personally extremely hyped about this one and I've spent a lot of time damaging Tuska with that amazing-looking spear.

There's one problem about it for me though: there's no Spear override that suits the Cursed Reaver overrides so I ended up going with the weapon that came as a default with that set instead. I do have the Zamorak override unlocked just to be certain I have it whenever I decide to change up my appearance, though!

I did actually think he overdid his description of the world event as it's not as exciting as he tells us it is. I'm not saying the event isn't good, it's just not as action-packed as Mark claims.

Then, the Slayer Belt. It's extremely satisfying to see that they've added this thing as I've always hated that whenever I train Slayer I need to take all of these items with me in my inventory. They've made a seperate belt for it, which I think was unnecessary: just add an icon to the Toolbelt interface and make that into the so-called "Slayer Belt" and everyone is satisfied.

Dragonsseed did a good job at creating a list of all items he'd like to see added to this belt and I think that the Ninja team was probably extremely pleased to see so much of their work had been done for them by one of the players. The community clearly agreed with his idea, and it ended up getting added to the game.

Adamant and Runite Dragons seem extremely cool for the high levels too, in my opinion. It's just unfortunate that my Ironman account isn't even close to good enough to reaching those levels and quests so I don't see the point of getting hyped up about them just yet.

Also, the hero-turned-god V has returned to Relekka and you can meet him to fight the dragonkin in some awesome raids.

Finally, the Lumbridge Crater is going to be turned into a huge Beach Party where you can play through some cool Summer-styled minigames and gain quite a bit of XP (as Mod Mark promises). I'm definately going to check that one out and if it's worth covering I'll probably create a blog post about that event when it has been released and I've had enough time to cover it.

Apart from that, they added some new headpieces and other outfits to the game. This is interesting for those who are looking for a new appearance, but they'll be staying around anyways and I already have an outfit so I won't really get into them any time soon.

I am, ofcourse, still going to make an opinionated review on the Tuska World Event, so stay tuned for that one. I'll see you all later!

This Month in WoW - June 2015 (My Opinion)

Yesterday, there was a news-flash on the World of Warcraft home page talking about what to expect this month. I couldn't help but read through it and write my opinion on what they've promised us towards the near future, so let's get right into the news.

Events

Ofcourse, every month features some special events. June isn't going to be any different than what we're used to, and I'm personally pretty darn exited about what's coming up.

Midsummer Fire Festival (June 21st - July 5th)

Loads of fire all over the place. There is no element more beautiful than fire in my opinion, so the thought of a whole fire festival alone makes me happy.

But what makes this even more exciting is the fact that the Frost Lord Ahune will be there for you to fight and acquire a special pet called the "Frigid Frostling".

As you can see, it looks like your average elemental but I still think that the ice variant of these looks best so if I were you, I'd make sure I got this thing because it'd be awesome to have this thing follow you around.

The Return of the Darkmoon Faire (June 7th - 14th)

That's right: the Darkmoon Faire is coming back once again so you can have your daily dose of fun in the world of Azeroth for a full week. Not to mention some of the cool-looking rewards you can get there, but those aren't anything new so I don't feel the need to cover them. You can check them out by yourself next week.

Tournaments

We all love seeing man-on-man combat, but don't necessarily feel the urge to go to arms ourselves. That's why we watch tournaments on Twitch, but you'd miss these if you didn't have their schedules so you can check those out on either their respective websites or the official WoW news post.

Updates

In terms of updates, Blizzard didn't really announce anything in their post. Don't worry though: we all know that Blizzard won't sit still and will keep working on improving the game as much as possible so that we can keep playing new content.

RuneScape Podcast #48: Diversions, Distractions and Deaths (My Opinion)

In this episode of the RuneScape Podcast, the special guests are from the Ninja Team. The Ninja team does loads of smaller updates that are frequently requested by the players so that the game gets optimized even in the little details.

Wow, these guys really don't sit still, do they? The amount of additions to the game these guys just summed up is huge. I follow some of these guys on Twitter so that I get to see the smaller updates that are coming up in the near future as quickly as possible, but I never imagined it actually being the Ninja team being as active as they are.

Another thing I loved to hear is that they released an update for Free2Play. I'll need to dive into that and I will probably make a post about that pretty soon.

They also told us to submit any ideas to RuneLabs instead of sending it to anywhere else. This is something I think is unnecessary to notice: if people can't be bothered to go over to RuneLabs to submit their ideas, they probably don't think their ideas are that important at all. If it doesn't make it in RuneLabs, the community doesn't really want it. That's the way it works with RuneScape since the release of RuneLabs.

A quite interesting thing to note is that this is already the second podcast in line that is about the Ninja team. These guys are quite popular as they provide small tweaks whenever they get requested a lot and that is something that loads of MMO's should probably concider having a seperate team for as the community really has loads of cool ideas. I mean, seriously, the community are the people that pay for the game and keep it up and running. Why not give them the right to speak up for themselves and let them tell Jagex exactly what they want?

All of the questions they answered, ofcourse, come from the forums so if you want them to dive into any questions you might have about the game, simply go to the forums on the official RuneScape website. You'll get your answers in no time.

If you have suggestions for the game, simply head over to the RuneLabs section of the official web-site and you can submit it right away. If it gets loads of votes, Jagex will concider adding your idea to the game and your idea could be added in no time.

Hacker Takes Over Plane!?

The FBI claims that a hacker has taken over control of a plane while it was flying in mid-air, the man denies this.

Hacking can have some serious consequences, even joking about it can get you arrested in some cases. A tweet from Chris Roberts (@Sidragon1) jokes about "playing with EICAS messages" as he "finds himself on a 737/800". Well, the FBI claims he actually did that and arrested him.

I personally don't know much about what he was planning on doing but I know enough about software to understand that no system is flawless and there is always a way for someone to take control of whatever system you're using.

His electronics, including a MacBook Pro, were taken by the police.

The FBI also claims that he has told them he was actually able to take control over the Thrust Management Computer using the entertainment system in the airplane. This gave him the ability of steering the plane and he was able to tell the plane to climb. This seemed like an unstable command, because only one of the engines actually started to climb so that the plane moved sideways. At least that's what the Canadian APTN National News says.

When Chris talked to Wired, he told them a completely different story. He told them he did about fifteen experiments on other flights to gain access to the plane network, but that he never did more than just take a look. He claims he only performed a climbing command in a virtual test in stead of on an actual airplane. Roberts said he didn't interfere with any plane while in flight.

He was actually kicked off the plane for this tweet, which I think is a good thing as any interferance with an airplane's system could result in the whole thing crashing and when that happens, people die. You wouldn't want to have to live with the fact that your curiosity has killed people, would you?

Conclusion: don't even joke around about stuff like that, plane pilots don't like jokes.

Filming at the Music Academy

One of my passions is filming and photography, I love playing around with designs. Today, I went to film for the music academy and I had some interesting experiences there so I decided to tell you all about what happened.

We had one spare battery so that one of us (me along with another student at the academy) could run out of battery charge before we'd start to lose footage. We thought this wouldn't be a problem as both cameras indicated that their batteries were doing just fine. So we set up our cameras and waited for the event to start.

Three minutes into the event I noticed my battery was going down extremely fast. It only took three minutes for the thing to go from indicating the battery was full of charge to it automatically shutting of because it had no electricity left.

Ofcourse I went and checked the spare battery because I thought I could use that one for the rest of the event, but my friend had already used that one because his battery had only 50% charge left at the start of the event and I couldn't find his used battery.

I was honestly pissed at this point, but I wasn't allowed to show the audience that there was trouble so I pretty much just stood there watching the event without having to pay (maybe that's a new way to get "free tickets"?"

After the event I told the other guy about my battery problems and he showed me that the other battery was at the other side of the room, recharging. I felt so stupid because I should've went to ask him where it was but I didn't do that for the purpose of not disturbing the audience.

What I learned from this is that you should always keep on trying to find a way to achieve your goals and that the time or effort it takes doesn't really matter as long as you succeed.

I didn't do that and they were unhappy about me not providing them any of the promised footage.

Apple Support Calls Me Rebecca!?

I decided to call Apple Support about a question I had about the Apple Watch, just because I wanted to know more about how it actually works with the iPhone (I might concider buying it). This is what happened.

Getting through to the customer support service was easy. I didn't have to do anything fancy, I just started Hangouts and called the USA phone number because that one is free and for some reason the Belgian 0800 number (which should, by law, be free too) complained about me not having enough money on my Hangouts to make the call.

Suddenly I hear a male voice say "Hi Rebecca, are you calling about your recent repair?". I freaked out because I thought I had done something wrong and called from someone else's number, so I was seriously speachless. The guy proceeded and told me to press 1 if it was about the repair and 2 if it wasn't. I honestly should've pressed 1 in order to see if they'd kick me off the call or not but I didn't want to do any harm to this "Rebecca" so I pressed 2 and he asked me what it was about. I was confused, so I really didn't know what to answer. I ended up asking the question but didn't get any reply so I hung up.

I think this is very weird and I decided to make a post about it just to see if anyone else has been experiencing this and if I did anything wrong by trying to make a call to the USA number while I live in Belgium.

If you know any more about this issue, please tell me by leaving a comment on this post.

Guy shows Middle Finger to Monkey, gets a Dropkick to the FACE

I just saw an awesome viral video on YouTube and wanted to share my opinion about it with you guys.

What  you see here is a monkey that knows what the middle finger means and understands that he shouldn't get disrespected by this... human. The quality of the video is not the best I've ever seen, but that doesn't take anything away from how funny it is.

The guy thinks he can get away with publically disrespecting an animal by showing it his middle finger. Well, it didn't really work out for you this time! The monkey jumped up and dropkicked the guy, so that he made himself look like a fool instead of acting all "cool" by disrespecting an animal that is probably more intelligent than he is himself.

Another funny aspect of this video is... the comment section. I've picked out my favorite comments on this video and will tell you what I think of them.

Well, David Manhart, that's one true thing. But... before you want to disrespect someone, get your research done. As far as I know, their name is spelled with a K instead of a C. Ouch.

Good question. To be honest, I think the monkey is more "evolved" than this particular guy, but when it comes to the species itself I have to give you my biased opinion of us being the most "evolved" as we have managed to rule all of Earth.

Good idea. You don't want to look like a fool in front of over 5 million people!

That's it for this post, I hope you have all enjoyed.

My Opinion on the Apple Watch

This is not going to be an experience-based review, this is just me giving my opinion on the Apple Watch as the internet presents it. I get the information used to form my own opinion from the official Apple Watch page and various other blogs that have made reviews about it.

Apple went with a simple, modern and generally beautiful design. If what they claim on their website is true, this watch would be a very good buy. The only big flaw that I found out about on other blogs and that Apple didn't even mention on their website is that you need an iPhone in order to be able to use it. I guess my Motorola Moto E 4G (2015) simply won't do the trick when it comes down to using the Apple Watch.

They're apparently using the digital crown on the side of the watch as a main user input, but it also has a touchscreen on it so that you can also use it as if it's just a smartphone wrapped around your wrist. I really like this idea, even though I'm not really sure if it'll work that well.

Another thing we're not used to seeing from Apple but we will be seeing on the Apple Watch is a large amount of personalisation options. I really like that you're able to choose the looks on just about every single aspect of your watch so that your device is truly unique.

That's it for this quick opinionated review, I don't have the watch myself so I can't really do a more in-depth review while still being sure the information I provide is correct and reliable.

My Move from Firefox to Chrome

As you might have noticed because of me actually having posted some Google Chrome App reviews recently, I've changed browsers from Mozilla Firefox to Google Chrome. In this post, I'll cover why I downloaded Chrome in the first place and why I ended up sticking with it.

Okay, first of all I want to tell you guys that I don't want to hate on Firefox and I think that it's a great browser and does exactly what it needs to do. I really liked Firefox and I still think that for those who use their browser for productivity purposes only it's probably the perfect browser.

The big problem here is: I don't try to be as productive as possible with my internet experience.

The reason why I downloaded Google Chrome is because I wanted to see the difference between YouTube videos in 30 FPS and 60 FPS. It turns out you can't actually notice the difference, but that doesn't really matter as I ended up sticking around anyways. Here's why.

I like some stuff to do on the side, a never-ending journey of finding out about new functions you can use to make your computer as personal as possible. This usually makes me pretty productive in the long run, but that's just because I always end up choosing the apps/programs that make my PC/smartphone as fast to use as possible (due to me not liking to waste loads of time knowing that it could actually be done faster).

And that's where Google Chrome comes in. Its App Store makes me able to add an almost infinite amount of apps to my browser so that I can get the most out of my browser. In fact, I'm using the MyMusicCloud app to listen to my music without the need of a thousand songs being stored on my laptop (this app will come in extremely handy in the future, because I usually fill my phone and laptop up with thousands of songs within a month and decide to delete most of it just to stumble upon the same problem a month later).
Firefox just didn't do the job in this aspect: it has extensions, but good Firefox extensions are harder to find than apps on Google's extremely user-friendly App Store.
That, apart from me liking the Chrome design more than the Firefox one, is pretty much the reason why I stuck around with Chrome.

Bashur: 18 million Volts of forgiveness!? (Bashur tasers his genitals!!!)

Some people have a weird way of getting back together and forgiving each other for whatever they may have done. We all know that. But Bashur and Clara take it to a whole new level: they made a video of them tasering each other in order to "forgive" each other.

If you actually feel the need to taser your partner for what they've done to you, you probably shouldn't get back together in the first place, let alone have gotten in a relationship in the first place. But they ended up getting together and while she's clearly just in it for the money, he goes with it. It's his choice really, but in my opinion the decisions he's making right now are, in my opinion, not very smart.

What I found very funny in the video is that Bashur didn't believe the taser actually hurt so he was foolish enough to put 18 million volts of electricity onto his genitals. Yes, he actually did that. Well, after seeing that I can kind of see why he's still unable to see that Clara is, in fact, a pure gold digger. Seriously, Bash, you should listen to Keemstar a bit more often because you honestly don't even have a clue of what people like Clara are able to get away with and Keemstar is smarter than he might seem (especially when you take into account that he's covering rumors like all the time).

I found the video very interesting and I hope you did too.

Google Chrome App Review: Drumbit - Creating Music for Beginners

Drumbit is basically just a kind of soundboard you can use to create sound loops using various pre-made kits, so that creating music is now easier than ever before.

While apps like these really aren't new (you'll find quite a couple on any app store out there), they keep on convincing me to try them out. It's just something that I really love to do: create little loops of music and eventually, if they sound good, put them together and create myself a little song.
This one was really nice. Unlike with most others that I've tried out so far, you can actually choose every single sound. It's built up in a grid of squares, where you basically check the squares of the right instrument at the right spot in the timeline. This timeline consists of 16 beats, something that should probably get expanded in a future update because it's really not enough if you want to create a professional-sounding loop.

You also have the usual volume for every single instrument. This one isn't smooth like you'd expect it to be, but it doesn't have that annoying stutter either. It's pretty much like the volume on a smartphone: limited yet good enough.

A feature I really liked to play around with was the different kits. The coolest thing I've been doing with this is just creating a nice loop in one kit, and trying out what it sounds like in the other kits. It turns out that this actually... works! I really liked the different "songs" that I was able to create using this little trick and I think João Carlos Santos (the creator of the app) probably wanted this to be like that so that people could explore music in a different way. I know I'm just jumping to conclusions here, but he seems like a music genius to me.

I think that if you're planning on getting into music more than just putting the radio on every now and then to see what the newest trends are, you should at least try this app out to get a taste of how easy it can be to create music.
That's it for now, if you want to get the app just search it up on the Chrome Web Store.

Google Chrome App Review: TweetDeck

I've just tried out a Google Chrome app called Tweetdeck, and I decided to make a review on it. You guys might be seeing more reviews like these coming up in the future, so let's get started.

It's essentially just a tool for your Twitter account that makes it easier to keep up with everything going on on there. It's made by Twitter itself, so you don't have to worry about any spam randomly appearing on your twitter account.

It puts the various pages Twitter has (messages, activity, mentions and so on) on a single page. You can change it up the way you like it: you can choose what appears and where it appears and much more, but I'll leave all of that for you guys to discover.

A really interesting feature that I will use quite a lot is a little page that shows you the various keyboard shortcuts that are on this thing. There's a lot, so it'll take me some time to get used to.

As you can see, it makes what you can do with it pretty clear. All of these shortcuts are pretty logic, but it'll still take me a lot of time to get used to as I've already stated before.

Another cool-looking panel is the New Tweet one. You can access it by either using the "N" shortcut on your keyboard or clicking the icon on the top-left corner of your screen.

Apart from it looking good, it also supports a feature that I did not yet know of. You can actually schedule tweets! This is something that I haven't really found any use for yet, but I just KNOW will come in handy some day.

As you can see, it looks very good while not being so big that you can no longer see any new tweets.

That's really all you can say about the TweetDeck App. You can find it by clicking here or searching for it in the Chrome Web Store.