Must be February

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

( Large in extent image behind cut )

A new month, so time for a new desktop background. I had been using art shared from other people, but this time chose a screenshot I'd taken in Celestia a few days before.

The perspective is from the surface of Deimos, looking down to Mars below. Much closer than our moon to Earth. If you look along the terminator marking day from night, a white spot is visible. That is Phobos, the other moon, caught in its (less than) 8 hour orbit at a dramatic moment.

Apart from its large crater Stickney (not shown), Phobos is famous for its low and fast orbit, which contrary to that of our moon is decaying lower and faster. When it drops not much lower, tidal forces from Mars will tear it apart and for awhile Mars may be ringed until those fragments rain down upon its surface.

Deimos gets much less love, but perhaps when it is the last moon remaining this will change.

Game-Journals: WoW (Starlost, Antikata)

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Starlost

Wow. They want a lot of killing from me today. Got new boots to replace the ones I made, that's sad.

I found tin! Yeeee.

Silver, wowwwwwwww. Silver silver silver! Gonna put that in to replace the silver I borrowed from the guild. >_>

Carrying wayyyyy to much. Dunno what to do about it.

Antikata

I had been sent to finish cleansing the Agamand Mills, but the Scourge were too thick within the crypts. Facing so many foes at once is not a task we mages are suited for. Though I resolved to force my through with careful and firm progress, I still had not made far into the depths before I was set upon by four or more and fled back out of the crypt.

That was too much. I picked my way down the cliffside, skidding a couple of times badly, until finally I dropped myself into the ocean and swam round the headland in search of safe shores. Curiosity got the better of me, and peeking at a chest in the mouth of a dead fish saw a swarm of murlocs after me, so I ran all the way back to Brill. I am sure my frost armour is the only reason I can manage such escapes, allowing me to outpace any who dare strike me.

Since it seems I must regather myself before attempting the final cleansing of those crypts I have taken myself south, to deliver some messages and make my first visit to Undercity. I had never got to visit here in life but I am sure it is much changed. With the surface in ruins, how could it not be?

Musication

Lately for book-acquisition I have been using the nifty site Booko which attempts to solve Australia's book price problem by comparing online retailers from around the world (including shipping and currency conversion) to determine the cheapest source for any given book. It has not been perfect so far, as I have not found anywhere willing to sell me Volume Five of Excel Saga which is quite disappointing.

But, quite nifty-seeming over all, so I am wondering if anyone knows of a similar site or tool for purchasing music. Failing that, if people know a variety of music stores which could be checked out in search of music, that would also be helpful. The names of music-selling places I know currently are: HMV, Sanity, iTunes (foreign currency), and Amazon (also foreign currency).

At this moment I have not searched on my own for such, and am about to - with intent to report back on findings later. I quite like learning and sharing as a social activity though, so want to also approach the wisdom of others.

Edit: Seems Amazon does not do music downloads to Australia; I assume hardcopies can still be ordered from the .com, .co.uk or .ca stores though. So far it looks like most of the online music vendors I've heard of, except Apple, do not sell in Australia. Sometimes I continue to be surprised how behind Europe and North America Australia is in this whole online thing - it is one thing I do look forward to about being in the US, not being geographically locked out of most of the cool stuff I hear about.

Others I've heard of mostly because they are integrated with music players I use include 7digital, Jamendo and Magnatune, which seem worth a look for availability but apart from 7digital seem unlikely to have other than indie artists (which I'd be interested in, but there are also more famous signed artists I'd want to purchase albums of also, making that maybe not a complete solution). But I shall investigate directly.

Mostly am using Wikipedia's comparison page as a reference, as apart from the Invisible Hand extension I have yet to find a tool which may be helpful in the way Booko is.