everyAir - How to play WOW on your iPad

on the iPad 2:

and on the iPhone 4.....

And even over 3G on iPhone 4:

some more screenshots:

....sort of

http://www.everyair.net/

- Everyair is another remote desktop solution similar to microsoft remote desktop, logmein, vnc, etc. except the focus here is on quick framerates and gaming rather than general desktop use. Think of it as running your own personal OnLive service.

- The iOS client is a universal app and is $5.

- There is a server install for windows or osx. I say install loosely since all you have to do is unzip it and run the exe. I've only tried this with windows so far.

- There is one huge drawback currently. There's no sound. The developer has promised sound in the next major release which will be 1.2.

- Framerates are great over wifi and the controls are pretty responsive with little lag. Video quality isn't half bad. All the usual gestures are there to scale, pinch to zoom, and scroll around. There is a handy button on the top right that automatically scales to full screen for the current foreground application.

- The virtual gamepad isn't too bad and is mapped to the arrow keys for the left stick and by default the mouse to the right stick. You can even toggle right click on which is handy in World of Warcraft so it acts like mouse look.

- I wish I could move the virtual keyboard to the top so I could see my chat window at the same time.

- I tried to use a bluetooth keyboard but that didn't work.

- It only officially supports wifi but it does indeed work over the internet and even 3G. All you have to do is forward ports: 9793-9893 and know you external WAN IP address (domain names do not work). You can require a password but I'm not so sure how secure this thing is. Official internet support is coming in a future build. For now I'm not going to leave the server running or the ports forwarded. If I need to fire it up remotely I can always use logmein and setup everything to get it going and then switch to everyAir. 3G works surprisingly well. The video above is on lowest quality but I also tried on medium and it also worked fine. Controls lag a bit probably due to 3G latency but other than that it really does work.

- The framerates are great so you can even use it to watch flashvideo or surf flash sites on your desktop browser. It's not that great for general desktop application use since it doesn't even emulate a scroll wheel like logmein does.

- Obviously this works with any games you might have, some types of games better than others.

- The server program is still a bit buggy. I wasn't able to connect both my iPad 2 and iPhone at the same time (or maybe that's just not supported). Then, when I went to shut down the program it would crash.

- Maybe with a custom wow UI with large buttons you might be able to do some quests but I don't think I would try a 5 man with this thing quite yet.

- Fullscreen didn't work so well for me. It caused some flickering. Instead, I just ran wow in a windowed mode which worked fine.

I'm pretty floored that this thing actually works. It's some really impressive tech. I'm not entirely sure how practical this is but it sure is neat to mess with. EveryAir has huge potential.

Highly Recommended!

UPDATE: Looks like they got bought out and stopped development. Booo. But they do plan to open source the client and server.

UPDATE: 4/8/2011

- There's another alternative:

http://www.splashtop.com/remote

- I tried it briefly. The good: It has sound!, performance is pretty good especially for flash video, it supports bluetooth keyboards, It's more polished overall especially the server software.

- The bad: It performs best when you let it change your desktop resolution to match the native ipad resolution (1024X768). Performance suffers quite a bit if you leave it at your desktop resolution (mine is at 1920X1080). Having your resolution change and then firing up wow will mangle your carefully crafted custom UI that was designed for 1920X1080 so that right there makes this a poor choice for gaming.

- The keyboard support is kind of odd (you must pop up the mini virtual keyboard to put it in keyboard mode). On a bluetooth keyboard there is a pause before the repeat kicks in while holding down a key. So if you hit "w" to move forward there is a pause before your toon continues to move forward. You can't chord keys (like alt+1) without hitting the virtual alt key in the app and then you can hit 1 on your physical keyboard. It's really awkward.

- On the virtual keyboard it's even worse. It doesn't repeat at all. You have to rapidly tap "w" to keep moving forward. It's basically completely unusable for gaming.

- It only has two quality settings: Smooth and sharp. Smooth is good for gaming/video, sharp is good for text. There is no in between slider like everyAir.

- It's not a universal app. They want $5 for the iPad version and $2 for the iPhone version.

- Scroll wheel is implemented (two finger scrolling) but it's slow....a lot slower than logmein.

- There is no handy scale to full screen for current active window.

- It doesn't support fullscreen games at all where everyAir kind of tries to.

- It strictly forces aspect ratio (this can be good or bad) when scaling.

- There are no virtual game pad controls. This is a huge deal for gaming and really makes this worthless for anything more complicated than simple mouse driven games.

- Overall, splashtop is definitely designed for more general purpose use and less for gaming. I can see it being useful for viewing flash based sites (I watched some hulu and it looked very good). But for gaming I think everyAir has a lot more potential (especially once they get sound working).

UPDATE: 4/18/2011

- I tried another one called crazyremote.

- The lite version is free and lets you try out their gaming/performance mode for a few days. The universal paid version is $20!!!!

- Performance isn't too bad. It feels similar to splashtop.

- It has sound.

- Resolution is changed.

- Only works in windowed mode.

- It's keyboard implementation is much better. You can also have a series of well laid out sets of keys used commonly in games (like arrow keys or wsad). These work quite well. The big thing it's sill missing though are the virtual control pads like everyAir has. Without a way to map the mouse to a thumb pad it makes certain games like MMO's very hard to play. Developers need to understand that controls are everything when it comes to making a pc game playable on an iPad.

- I like it over all but not $20 like! The price is way too high IMO.

Fixing Your Own XBOX 360

- So my old falcon based XBOX 360 Arcade finally died with an E74 error (usually means gpu or ana/hana hardware scaler chip problem). This is the third xbox to die on me but the first one out of warranty so I was thinking maybe I can try fixing it myself. If your 360 is still in warranty then I would highly recommend you just warranty repair your 360. This fix should work for RROD too.

Things you need:

- XClamp Repair Kit for about $10 from amazon.

- I already had some Arctic Silver 5 which if you build pc's you should already have. The repair kit comes with thermal paste but I prefer as5.

- Isopropyl alcohol. Again, the kit comes with cleaning solution which I did use but I like to finish off with a good wipe of Isopropyl alcohol.

- Heat gun for about $32 from amazon. They go as cheap as $10 when on sale though. Just make sure it has 2 temperature settings.

- A nice Torx driver bit set. I bought this one from radio shack for $16 a while back (needed it for other projects.) Specifically, you need a T8 and T10 which this set has. The repair kit comes with some but I hear those are cheaply made and you do NOT want to risk stripping the screws on your 360 or you will have a very hard time taking it apart.

- A good jewelry/precision screwdriver set.

- adjustable wrench for removing the existing screws attached to the heatsinks.

- The repair kit comes with a sheet of paper with a URL that directs to 2 pdf's: one for disassembly and one for repair. Go ahead and look over those. But the most helpful things are this series of youtube videos. The disassembly video was spot on. I used my jewelry screwdriver for most of it. I used the tool from the repair kit for taking off the back panel which made popping in all the tabs really easy.

- So after taking apart the 360, removing both heatsinks, and cleaning everything really well (I used both solutions from the kit and then finally some Isopropyl alcohol) it was time for the heat gun (you do this in place of the baking process from the pdf).

- I more or less followed the heat gun video. To create my heat barrier I just cut up a cardboard box into strips, taped it around the chips I wanted to heat like show in the video, and then covered with aluminum foil. I then took a baking sheet covered in more foil and stuck the motherboard on that. I then put the baking sheet on top of some pot heat pads. I suggest you do this outside since it's probably not a good idea to breath in a lot of vaporized solder or whatever smell this process creates.

- Make sure you keep moving the heat gun in circles. Never hold it in place for even a second.

- Let it all cool off for 45min before putting the heat sinks back on and follow the pdf instructions to make sure you get the order of the washers correct.

- Reassembly goes a lot faster. Note: You don't need the black 8 X T8 torx screws anymore. This is also covered in the pdf.

I've played several hours now without any issues. It's as good as new. In fact with the xclamp fix I'm guessing it is better than new. Now that I've done it I'm sure I could do it a lot faster. The entire process took about 3 hrs. I still have an original xenon XBOX 360 (no hdmi) that I'm just waiting for it to die. If it does it's good to know I can fix it for $10 and a couple hours of work. It was not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. If you've built pc's before then this repair should be pretty easy. Besides, it was kind of a fun project to do, and you learn all about your xbox 360 inside and out.

UPDATE: 3/30/2011

- I've put in probably over 25 hrs of play on this repaired xbox over the past 2 months, and it is still working great!

Playstation Move

NOTE: This is an old post I wrote about a year ago that I never got around finishing up and posting.  But I figure I would just go ahead and post it as is.

So I picked a move bundle, 3 extra move controller (got two of them for $37.50 each with a gamestop coupon), and one navigation controller.

- Cheap bastards continue the tradition of not including any usb cables for charging.
- Setup was easy enough. I positioned the camera right below my HDTV.
- The controls feel good in the hands but the big glowing ball in different colors makes you look rather comical.

Sports Champions
- The pointer tracked very smoothly and precisely on the screen. It has a nice calibration screen before each sport that shows you where to stand and has you move the wand to shoulder height, down at your side, and belt height.
- Archery is pretty fun and works pretty well. I finished the bronze level and my arms were pretty tired by now. Fun, but didn't seem that much different than wii sports resort with motion plus at least from a performance perspective.
- Next up was Gladiator. Now THIS was fun. Playing solo with two move controllers is rather awesome. One controls the shield and the other the weapon. The buttons let you dodge, jump back, shield bash, or activate a super attack once you charge up the meter from successfully blocking attacks. Location of your attacks and blocks is pretty key. There's actually a bit of depth. Dodging too much makes you stumble and leaves you open. The only way to avoid a shield bash is a dodge. A missed shield bash opens you up for attack. You can thrust and the speed and strength of the swing seems at least partially taken into account. It's not perfect but it's a marked improvement over what I've seen on Wii. Next, I let my kids at it. In single move controller mode you have to use the trigger to toggle between weapon/shield controls. Other than that it still works pretty well. They had a blast flailing around.
- Table tennis felt off to me. I've played quite a bit in real life and this still doesn't feel right. Placement of the ball is difficult. You can't slice. Spinning is hit and miss. It was pretty disappointing overall.
- Kids played some beach volleyball which had a nice co-op option. It seemed fun but I didn't get a chance to try it.

Time Crisis: Razing Storm
- The calibration is more accurate than the demo. Tracking and aiming is pretty smooth.
- After some time the tracking tends to drift. If you aim too far out of the screen then the crosshair no longer lines up with where you are point and is off center. You can try nudging it back by aiming way off screen in the other direction or you can recalibrate but this is really annoying and needs to be fixed.
- Having to press the move button on TOP of the controller to control going behind shield cover/reload is retarded feeling. At least support using a separate ps3 controller or the navigation controller. Come on Namco!
- Graphics are pretty good and it's nice having 2 players share the same screen vs the horrible tiny 2 screens in time crisis 4 during co-op.
- The game is really short but as a bonus you get some sort of pirate game and a complete copy of Time Crisis 4 on the same disc. As far as I can tell there have been no updates to this version of time crisis 4 except adding move support.
- Guncon 3 is also supported.
- Let me rant a bit about light gun games in general. I love this genre ever since Virtua Cop (which is still one of my all time favorites). For those of you who have played paintball, air soft, gone to a firing range you know what it feels like to fire a gun, how to at least line up your sights and aim properly. If you have an accurate light gun that mimics a semi automatic pistol that requires reloading, with actual sights on the plastic gun that work and NO crosshair on screen you actually have a semi realistic simulation that requires actual aiming and some skill to play. What the current genre of light gun games have become are fully automatic guns with a crosshair on screen where you just wave your controller around and literally hose down everything that moves. Just sit back and enjoy the chaotic display of graphical effects with almost no gameplay involved. Younger kids might enjoy this but I find this experience extremely shallow. I really do miss Virtua Cop on Sega Saturn and Virtua Cop 2 on dreamcast. Those were nearly arcade perfect ports with a great gun peripheral. I think I still have all that stuff but they don't work with LCD TV's.

The Shoot
- Now this is a nice contrast compared to where the Time Crisis series is heading. This game actually rewards accuracy with a multiplier and earning power ups. It's all about making accurate single shots. I still don't have real iron sights on my plastic gun, and there is still a crosshair painted on the screen, but it's a step in the right direction.
- So the premise is a movie shoot and you are shooting these popup fake wooden bad guys (think Hogan's Alley). I actually like this change of pace in presentation. You want to make accurate consecutive shots without missing to increase your multiplier and earn you special moves. To pull off these moves you have to either shoot at the ground, sky, or spin around (this last one does slow motion bullet time). Here's the problem. It has the EXACT same issue as time crisis. If you spin around it completely throws the calibration off and the crosshair is no longer centered where the gun is pointing. This issue needs to be fixed or move is essentially dead for light gun games. I can't tell you how annoying this is.
- You actually have to move your body left/right to dodge some attacks or duck to avoid others.
- Occasionally you have some scripted moments where you have a quick draw showdown with a boss or something.
- Out of the two light gun games I would probably go with The Shoot. It uses more features of move and actually requires a bit more interaction than your typical light gun game.

PlayStation Move Shooting Attachment
- It's $20 from amazon.
- It feels pretty good in your hands.
- The move controller is easy to get in and out without having to remove the wrist strap.
- The trigger action feels pretty good.
- There are no sights.
- Looks like stubby gun with a big glowing ball on the end.

PS3 Move Quad Charger
- So this old Nyko ps3 controller charger that works great for my dual shock 3 doesn't seem to work with playstation move.
- So I picked up this PS3 Move charger for $20. It will charge up to two 2 controllers, 2 navigation controllers, and has 2 additional usb ports to charge whatever you want (dual shock 3, more move controllers, etc).
- It has clear LED lights to indicate if it is charging or if charging has completed and an on/off switch on the back. I kind of like to leave the controllers in the charger with it off and use it like a stand.
- Highly Recommended. It's only $20 from amazon with free shipping. It works very well and charges all my ps3 accessories.

Recommended but you might want to wait. You'll definitely want at least 2 of the move controllers but consider getting 4. I don't have any games that use the navigation controller but you apparently can use a regular ps3 controller instead if you want. Remember, the navigation controller is basically just a dual shock 3 chopped in half and made to fit in one hand. It has no motion/move technology in it. It's a lot of money to spend for very little content right now. But if you've got the money to blow it was better than expected (for non light gun games). As soon as my arm heals I'll be playing more of that gladiator game. Also, don't let sony fool you into thinking this is cheaper than Kinect. The bundle is $100, move is $50 each, and navigation is $30. So for just two players you will spend at least $150. For my setup with 4 move controllers and a navigation controller that is already over $250 even with discounts. Add the charger and shooting attachements (I picked up 2) and I'm now looking at $315 and this is before buying games.

World of Warcraft: Life as a Mage in 4.0.1

This article seems to cover the new mage stuff pretty well:
http://www.manaobscura.com/2010/10/the-mage-4-0-compendium/

more info:
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104767-fire_cataclysm_discussion_updated_4_01_a/
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104277-arcane_cataclysm_discussion/
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104774-frost_cataclysm_discussion/

FIRE
This is the fire build I'm currently running :
http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#o0oZdfhrk0RRsfoM:zVbskMomV
- Another option instead of mage armor is to spec into improved scorch and spam that for free to help mana issues.
- There are definitely some points you can move around based on personal preference. Cauterize is cool and can save your bacon. You don't dps well if you are dead. If Cauterize triggers you should immediately ice block to remove the burning or if that is on CD pop mage ward and/or mana shield to give your healers more time to get you topped up. Molten shields and Blazing speed are mostly for pvp so leave those off. I left off improved scorch b/c mana wasn't really an issue. I picked up firestarter because I like the flexibility of dpsing while on the move. Impact goes with improved fireblast and I like the range. This really is more for aoe so it's not exactly optimized for single target dps but impact is so much fun. I'm loaded with haste so I took a point out of netherwind presence and kept two in piercing ice. As you can see I made some sacrifices in single target dps for range, mobility, utility, and survivability.
- Glyphs (note glyphs are currently kind of messed up and aren't catagorized correctly): living bomb, mage armor, pyroblast | molten armor, fireball, evocation | slow fall, arcane brilliance, monkey
- Mana burn is higher than before but wasn't an issue at all in lower ICC. Threat seems higher than before and I think higher than arcane so pulling aggro especially in larger trash mobs can be an issue.
- I'm not sure what the best way to reforge yet. I regem'd like 7 gems and reforged one piece of armor to get to hit cap. Make sure you replace any spirit gems you have. I went with more crit since I'm pretty haste loaded coming from arcane. I reforged my one other piece that had spirit into crit. Would mastery have been better?

Single target rotation:
- scorch, living bomb, flame orb (when you get to lvl 81 in cata). There is a school of thought to open up with living bomb and then scorch. The trade off is having living bomb up earlier (It's your #2 source of damage) at a potential loss of crit ticks. Either way I doubt this makes a huge difference.
- spam fireball
- renew living bomb AFTER it explodes
- hot streak proc -> pyroblast (which also renews scorch debuff so if it proc's often enough you'll never have to scorch again which is usually the case. The debuff lasts 30 sec)
- You want to stack as many big dots as you can before firing combustion. So wait for at least an ignite proc and probably a big crit like a hot streak pryoblast before firing off combustion. So remember ONLY fire combustion when the target has these DOTS: Ignite, Living bomb, and Pyroblast. I use power auras classics to help track ignite for me. I guess DoTimer would work too. Just found this: CombustionHelper which is all kinds of awesome. Install it now!
- I've been playing around with CD timing. I think it's best to blow everything you have except combustion. Get some BIG dots going, get that hot streak proc pyroblast, and then hit combustion for the biggest combined DOT.
- Spam scorch, fire blast and maybe flamestrike if you have the mana to keep dps up if you have to be moving.
- impact proc -> fire blast if the boss has adds. For single target encounters just ignore impact. Working in the fire blast when there is no movement is an overall dps loss.
- I found this nice flow chart that is pretty close to what I do.

AOE rotation:
- blastwave. If it hits 2 or more targets you get an automatic flame strike. Otherwise flame strike. If the fight is short you might try spamming flame strike 3-4 times. The idea is that the initial hit from flame strike is big enough that it overcomes clipping the dot but it's a big mana drain.
- living bomb 3 targets. I highly recommend mage nuggets to keep track of how many living bombs you have going.
- if impact procs then make sure your target has at least living bomb and fire blast immediately. This will automatically spread living bomb and probably get your 3 max. If you get lucky you might have a hot streak proc too so you can work pyro in there which would also get spread around by impact. But most of the time don't bother fishing for hot streak b/c impact will probably wear off before you get it. UPDATE: apparently there is currently a bug that prevents pyroblast! from spreading with impact.
- spam fireball

- You can pretty much stick with molten armor and burn for a good 8 min maybe. If you get below 10% mana and all gems/evoc is on CD then you might consider switching to mage armor. With the glyph you will actually GAIN mana while still spamming. This was on dummies so in a raid environment I bet mana is even less of an issue.
- On glyphing MI: The fireballs they cast do hit harder but take long to cast. It's about a wash as far as dps goes.


FROST

level 80: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#obbZoZff0hsIszMo:MmoMkqomM
level 85: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#ohhZbZffMhsIszMo:MmoMkqomM

Single target rotation:
frostfire orb (level 81) , pet freeze, deep freeze
when fingers of frost procs: deep freeze if off cool down otherwise ice lance
Frostfire bolt when brain freeze procs preferably with FoF.
don't forget pet freeze whenever it comes off of cd but make sure you use up any stacks of fingers of frost first.
spam frostbolt.

This actually looks pretty fun and might be even raid viable.

- The current flavor of the month is definitely fire, and I'm really enjoying it. Frost still lags a good 1-1.5K dps behind fire. I tried arcane briefly (build I'm using). It's still very bursty so for very short fights (< style="font-weight: bold;">Custom UI
- Fire requires a slightly different UI than arcane. I've setup power auras classic to track combustion, ignite, and Critical mass. I let the built in power auras take care of impact and hot streak. I then use mage nuggets to track living bombs. I really like the counter. I'm experimenting with DoTimer to track things like blast wave and flame strike dots.
- A few addons I use seem to be abandoned so I've switched them out. Cowtip -> startip, elkbuffbars -> satrina buff frames, and sexycooldown -> coolline. Pretty much everything else I use has been updated.
- One thing that really sucks though is blizzard now prevents addons to toggle off buffs by right clicking. This affects both elkbuffbars and sbf. If you use the default buff/debuff frames it works fine but I hate the default buff frames. The alternative is just create /cancelaura spellname macros.
- I've been trying out some new grid plugins.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/gridstatusdungeonrole.aspx
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/grid-status-raid-icons.aspx
and this so I have more places to display the icons:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/grid-indicator-side-icons.aspx
- NOTE: There is currently a graphics issue where if you change your bottom viewport you will get weird results with water on the 2 highest settings. Just set water to fair or lower and you'll be fine. Hopefully Blizzard fixes this issue soon.

UPDATE 12/3/2010 (4.0.3a)

- I dropped star tip for tiptac. Star tip is just too buggy.

- Carbonite has a really neat map but it's a really big heavy addon. I disabled a lot of the other stuff though but I do like the map. Just don't merge it with your minimap!

Time Machine over samba shares (smb)

- I've been backing up my macbook pro's with 2.5" hdd in external enclosures. It works well enough but it's a bit of a hassle to have to dig out the portable hard drive and hook it up. A 2gb time capsule is a ridiculous $500! A 2TB hard drive runs $90 and the top of the line netgear wndr3700 wireless router is $150. I refuse to pay a $260 apple tax. I already have a windows 7 x64 machine that is on 24/7 with 2TB just sitting there ready to be used.
- So I started looking around to see if I could use time machine on snow leopard to backup to a windows (samba) share.
I started with this key hint: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090905212640957 (read the comments about some potential risks though I'm willing to live with them).
- I decided to use the provided script here:
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=184462
- Here are some additional tips. Make sure you do this first so time machine will show unsupported volumes:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/10/how-to-enable-time-machine-on-unsupported-volumes/

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

- Make sure you share the exact folder you want the backup to be in. Example if you want to save your backups into d:\backup make sure you create a share at the backup level and not at d:\. This way when you mount the samba share if you look in /Volumes you should see /Volumes/backup.
- If you are cutting and pasting on how to run the script there is an extra space after "sh" that needs to be removed. I also sudo it just to be safe.

sudo sh ./makeImage.sh 500 /Volumes/backup

- For my two macbooks each with 500gb hard drives with about 320gb dedicated to osx (the rest to bootcamp) I made the sparse bundle 500gb each.
- After doing all the above I was able to use time machine with a windows share. I would recommend gigabit ethernet for the initial backup but wireless works fine too.
- I also found the default backup frequency of every hour too frequent. Instead I just run time machine manually whenever I want to backup (probably about once a week):
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090122063202910
- Lots of time machine info: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html
- Some people seemed to have problems getting this to work. Some suggestions made were to use the ip address to mount instead of the machine name and use an all numeric password for the share. I didn't have to do any of this since it just worked for me.

This little hack makes time machine a lot more convenient and sure is a LOT cheaper than a time capsule.