Father Xmas

I take it you grew up in Canada or Alaska. For us in the lower 48 in the US, unless we live along the Canadian border, and even then, the Aurora is a rarity. Tonight is no exception, just a bit better chance.

The estimated Kp right now is a 6. You can use these maps to see if that's enough for where you live.

North America
Eurasia

Sadly for me, or par for the course when something interesting is happening in space, it's clouding over.

Yes, it's more like a train that straddles the road than a bus but still it's a disaster waiting to happen.

Those maps are updated every hour or two as the satellite measuring it passes overhead. The effected area moves as the Earth rotates. The arrow on the map points toward the sun at the time the readings were taken.

Here's the National Geographic article that caught my eye and current satellite readings of the particle flux and magnetic field fluctuation. You can see the change in the graphs as the CME starts to hit us.

and Aurora Australis

Due to solar activity directed our way, their is a good chance that lower latitude cities across the globe may get to see the Aurora this evening, baring weather and light pollution.

It should peak sometime in the hours around your local midnight.

Current Aurora Map Northern Hemisphere

Current Aurora Map Southern Hemisphere

If check the map near midnight and if it's red over you, then you should be able to see it.

Obviously not the Chinese.

Don't forget, The Wolfman was a blatant ripoff of the Twilight saga.

1. The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr

2. Crusade

3. Threshold

4. The Prisoner

5. Firefly

6. Warehouse 13

7. Kolchak: the Night Stalker

8. Nowhere Man - flipped a coin

Then there are the item packs. You can buy these separately but they're $5 cheaper if you buy it with the game addition it came with which includes an additional month.

Good Vs Evil items are very nice and the Mac one (works on PCs too) gives you nifty wings and armor.

Slot Accuracy first in attacks. Everything else is meaningless if you don't hit.

Slot Endurance Reduction before Recharge Reduction. Other way around and you will find yourself running out of Endurance faster.

Enhancement Diversification soft caps bonuses to around the value of 3 Single Origin enhancements of your level. That's why you see people saying no more than three of the same enhancement.

Most players eventually six slot all their attacks. Common configurations are 1 Acc/3 Dam/1 End Red/1 Rech or 2 Acc/3 Dam/1 End Red and relying on Hasten for the recharge enhancement. With created and well planned use of Set Invention Origin Enhancements, you may be able to get away with fewer slots in your attacks.

I have Super Jumped capped with just Jump enhancement in it and Hurdle so no additional slots.

Well it's a lot less expensive than the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad app controlled Parrot AR Drone ($299) but the Parrot one gives you a live feed.

See that rocks. I love the old time radio/serial/magazine pulp heroes.

For those who aren't fans, the folks in the large frame at the top of this comic are from left to right.

Clark "Doc" Savage, Jr.
Kent Allard - AKA The Shadow
Jim "Red" Albright - AKA Captain Midnight, leader of the Secret Squadron
Richard Wentworth - AKA The Spider
Brett Reid - AKA The Green Hornet

Well I wouldn't say USB 3.0 is a gimmick, external HD manufacturers are embracing this big time since it lifts the 30-35MB/s cap that USB 2.0 had and now USB 3.0 external drives can run almost as fast as their internal SATA counterparts.

SATA III aka 6Gb/s is pretty much a gimmick and is currently useful only to a limited number of SSD drives at the moment. Conventional hard drives are just starting to exceed SATA I limits and are nowhere near close to SATA II limits of 3Gb/s.

That's the big question, what do you consider to be "cheap"? What do you consider to be a "smooth" frame rate?

Of course saying it will be driving a 1920x1200 monitor will make any inexpensive system seem poor if your plan is to run all games at that resolution.

1. Neon Genesis Evangelion

2. Cowboy Bebop

3. Spider-Man: The New Animated Series aka MTV's Spider-Man

4. Martian Successor Nadesico

5. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

6. Police Squad!

7. Archer

8. The Tick

For more in depth information, Paragon Wiki is your friend and the Player's Guide is a good place to start.

Notice everyone has their opinion/favorite architype (class) to start with.

Scrappers are pretty much killing machines. Once they mature think of Wolverine hopped up on caffeine.

Tankers are your proverbial meat shield, lots of HP and damage mitigation. They can take a lot of abuse but don't deliver anywhere near the damage of a Scrapper or a Blaster. But if you like being mobbed by, well mobs, Tanker is the way to go.

Blasters can do a lot of damage but are awful breakable with no defenses to speak of other than running away. Most of my blasters fly for that reason.

Defenders are the Buff/Debuf specialist with similar but weaker attacks as Blasters.

Controllers ... well ... control, stopping, sleeping, blinding single or multiple critters and have a weaker version of the buffs/debufs of Defenders. But they do get a pet usually at Level 32 to help with the heavy lifting. Illusion Controllers get several short duration pets earlier.

So if you like to get up close and personal with your targets, Scrappers and Blasters. If you want to hang back while doing damage, Blasters and Defenders. If you like playing with your targets then a Controller can be fun.

And here is and old but still relevant guide to new players crossing over from other MMOs.

Enjoy.

Oh, and send any Mac technical questions to the Mac Users forum. CuppaManga is the resident Mac guru there.

I think my Katana scrapper took the Body Mastery pool for Focused Accuracy.

Actually simply logging out and back in again should clear it up.

From what I understand what the PhysX card buys you over the current CPU emulation is more packing peanuts, shell casings and debris visible at one time.

The only benchmark I remember seeing was from a long time ago in AnandTech around the time CoV and PhysX first came out. Not sure how relative the performance of a 2.93GHz Core 2 dual core coupled with an nVidia 7950GX2 compares with current CPUs and video cards.

Well depending how long you have been away they did lower or introduce limits on how many critters you can have aggro on. There are also new limits on the number of critters an AoE affects and taunts only affect 5.

Days of herding maps are long gone.

Paragon Wiki: Limits

That would be more of a power animation customization. Power emanating from open hand Vs closed fist. My D3's snipe is closed fist.

And I agree with Roderick, it's never been disclosed if a power animation or set was shelved for potential CW/TM issues. I can't think any that have been removed or alter other than some MA kick animations from way back.