As can be seen from the proposed learning outcomes I will need to make sure the following concepts are expressed and understood by the students

• The value of pseudocode
• How to express ideas in psuedocode and standard format
• How to decide on the best language for the problem
• How to convert from psuedocode to application language
• How to desk-check
• How to write testcases for the finished algorithm

These are obviously the central concepts the students will need to understand, as well as the skills they will need to learn and demonstrate by the end of the lesson/s covered by this lesson plan while the materials they will need will initially be a notebook and pen before moving onto a computer with a development environment, a web server will also be needed if the students decide to write a web-based application rather than an OS-based application.

With the decision made it narrowed down my choices to druid or paladin and given I already have Jhentar and Samara as level 70+ paladins but have never leveled a druid past 20 I figured druid it was…have to say though that Blizzard announcing faction change ability in the future helped make that choice a lot easier.

Anyway, I now have Knyter at level 80 and fairly well geared for tanking and healing heroics, have tanked a couple so far with no issues and a few with some issues (mostly caused now by dps outgearing me and not waiting for agro to be sorted) and am actually enjoying the change enough that I haven’t played alliance side for a few weeks.

I am also getting the urge to multibox as well so we can avoid having to find anyone to group with so assuming I can boost effectively with Knyter grouping with 3 lowbies I’m going to RAF 2 accounts and level pal + 2 shaman to 60 and then use the 30 levels from the 2 shaman each to boost a shaman from 30-60 on Knyters account and the account the paladin is leveled on…this should give me the most flexibility in terms of level 80 groupage as well as give me a pal + 4 shaman team to level from 60 to 80.

The day didn’t start out too well as we awoke to find it raining but undeterred we got ready and headed downstairs for our taxi, only to find it not there. A quick call to the cab company and it seems the booking we made at 11pm the previous night wasn’t in the system so ask for a cab to be sent round asap as we had to get to the airport. 15 minutes goes by and still no cab and time for another call which finally leads to a cab arriving 5 minutes later…the driver then proceeds to almost lose control of the cab about 3 times on the way to the airport and I can see this being a very long day.

Once we hit the airport things went a little bit more smoothly with nothing major happening between canberra and sydney. The flight has a very weird feeling to it though, as it’s only 25 minutes in the air it feels like, just as they turn off the seatbelt sign because of hitting flying altitude, they turn it back on to get ready for landing.

Things started to get better at sydney, the rain had cleared and we got a small upgrade from economy to economy plus. Checking in and heading on through to the plan was fairly painless with the only real security point coming just as we headed into the United departure area with a full body wanding but other than that the security didn’t really seem intrusive at all which was better than I had thought it would be now.

On the plan finally and things took a small dive as the seats, which we had been told had an extra 5″ of room on them, were very tightly packed and it wasn’t possible for us to sit comfortably without being pressed against each other or another passenger in our aisle. The flight itself was long, boring and annoying…the cramped confines making it hard to eat the meals without elbowing the person next to you as you cut things and getting out to use the bathrooms was an excersize in mass movement depending on relative position to the aisle as it wasn’t possible to slide past a person in their seat.

The plane was reasonably old it seems, with ill-fitting and fauly equipment abounding but the service was quick and good and the meals were better than I was expecting…well except the scambled eggs for breakfast what which has a consistency that took me back to the taste and feel of my mothers first attempts at scambled eggs in a microwave when they first became available, hard, rubbery and grey inside but they were still tasty imho though my gf didn’t really think so….probably better to ake her opinion on this over mine though so I’d avoid the eggs on a United flight if you can.

The only other slightly interesting part of the flight was the guy in out row of three seats that had like 5 gins in about 20 minutes after takeoff and was cut-off by the staff for an hour or so, but he seemed like an alright guy and pretty much just crashed for most of the flight like we tried to. Apart from that the flight was very uneventful as the raid had cleared and I think we hit one pocket of turbulence that had us have to put our seatbelts on, but it lasted like 30 seconds….the rest of the time we were flying at about 10km up and around 950km/h.

On arriving at LAX after 13 hours (thankfully we were on schedule, though headwinds for a bot made it look doubtful for a while) I was expecting long delays to get through immigration and customs but we were though in about 30 minutes, including around 10 minutes waiting for baggage. The only difference I noticed we had to go through was having our index fingers scanned and photo taken at immigration but even that only took a few minutes and was very uninvasive. Finally, after about 17 hours of travel (and arriving 15 minutes before we had left australia, freaky timezone thing) we had exited the airport and arrived in Los Angeles, now we just had to find out shuttle.

The shuttle was easy to find, being almost right outside the exit of the airport, so that was cool and in about 30 minutes we began the trip to anaheim and our hotel. On the shuttle were a local couple heading home from some trip so I took the opportunity to quiz them on a few things such as places to go, places to eat etc and get some info on Las Vegas as well since they go their with a bowling league a few times a year. They were pretty cool to talk to and their home was in a town called Fullerton so we got to see a little bit of real world locations too, instead of just the tourist areas, and that was nice but after that it was about another 20 minutes to our hotel and so finally, after about 18 hours, we hit our hotel and had a chance to crash for a while.

After about 3 hour nap we got up and headed to Disneyland to grab our tickets for there and universal studios as well as see the fireworks which is only put on on saturday nights. Let me say, off the bat, the only really annoying thing I noticed was that to get our tickets for universal studios (and Sea World and San Diego Zoo, but we wont have time to use those) we had to go into Disneyland itself and so spend one of our 3 days of the pass on that…I can see how this could have really screwed us up if we hadn’t got in till like 10pm and had to go to universal the next day (which we do), as there would be no time at all to get any thing seen at all and it seems there is a LOT to see.

Before we went in we had a look around Downtown Disney, which is the shopping and restaurant area before you get in to Disneyland itself, and had dinner at the House of Blues which was actually really nice and reasonably priced with food + drinks for two coming in at $37. Here was the first real difference between australia and america, when we ordered a hamburger the waiter asked how we wanted it cooked (nice to have a choice if you prefer meat medium, etc) and then there was the tipping issue…I didn’t just have to tip the waiter but when I went in to the bathroom there was a guy in there to keep it safe, hand towels etc and had to tip him as well (though it was worth it as the taps and toilets here are very weird, will get to it in a bit). Overall, in the first day of being here, I think I have tipped more often and more total than I have in the rest of my life in australia and so that’s something to be mindful of.

After dinner we went back to having a look around and ended up buying a Fossil watch each as they were a good price and I needed a watch as I had left mine with a broken band back at home. After this we were both feeling the effects of the plane trip in our backs and feet but pushed on in to Disney as we needed to get the ticket for universal and see the fireworks at 9.30pm. Let me just say, entering Disney is not as you would expect it…the first thing to know is that Disneyland is actually two parks, Disneyland itself and Disney Adventures opposite it with the two entrances coming off the Downtown Disney walkway.

Once we got though the entrance into Disney land we were greeted by a lot of lighting and sparkles but noticed a lack of any characters walking around. Given however we only got as far as the end of Main Street I’m thinking they might only hang out in the three park areas and not the second shopping area (seems they get you coming in and going out for souviners but cant blame them really) but it just seemed strange not to walk straight into a Mickey Mouse walking around as you enter…the only other possibility is thye dont do them at night.

The initial area though the entrance is a shopping area called Main Street which is pretty much just stores selling Disney mrchandise and food/drinks so not much really to report there so we continued walking around and trying to find a spot to watch the fireworks display as we’d been ready to head back to the hotel for about the last hour…..we really should have just gone back when we were ready to as when the time came for the fireworks we were told they’d be delayed due to safety concerns with winds in higher elevations. This was the end for us so we headed on back out to Downtown Disney, at which time the familiar explosive sounds of fireworks started up and while we could turn around to see them a little bit, the full spectacle of them over the Enchanted Castle was missed.

Thankfully Disneyland is only around a 5-10 minute walk from our hotel so we were soon back in our room and getting ready for sleep and preparing for another big day tomorrow at Universal Studios with the bus arriving to pick us up at 8:15am so stay tuned for more tomorrow about that.

Photos will be up at some stage, so stay tuned and keep reading.

I’d also like to firstly say thanks to Suvega for his thread on his dailies routine that gave me the basis for the 3 macros I use in this routine.

Phase 1:

1. Send 1 character to QD Isle, have rest at Shat (helps at the end of the night to use the Dalarian Teleport scroll on 4 characters and leave one at QD, or have a mage), and have the character at DQ grab Rediscovering Your Roots and head to Shat
2. At Shat have all characters grab Sunfury Attack Plans
3. Head east out of Shat up to Razorfang Ridge, have group loot on FFA and kill Razorthorn Flayers (which will drop Razorthorn Flayer Gland) until you have 1 gland on each character
4. Have each character use a gland on a ravager each (make sure the ravager is moving before you use a gland on it…they like to go into evade mode up there and then you waste the gland)
5. Once all characters have a ravager each go up to a mound of dirt and use the following macro on all characters. The ravagers will dig up one Razorthorn Root each, grab one per character and move to the next mound until you have 5 of them each

/cast Expose Razorthorn Root

6. Mount up and head northeast until you hit the Throne of Kil’Jaeden and the quest giver there
7. Grab Blood for Blood and Blast the Gateway then have everyone use their Sizzling Embers to get the little fireball ready
8. Start running round and killing Incandecent Fel Sparks until your balls level up to unstable status (the Fel Sparks will also level up your balls if you are just near them when they die as well, so if you see someone killing one run over to them and benefit, or if you are already killing one pull it over and let everyone benefit).
9. While doing this also kill 4 Wrath Herald and loot them with your main char to get 4 Demonic Blood to power your Fel Siphon
10. Once you have the 4 bloods, go find Felblood Initiates, use the Fel Siphon on one and tap it at the same time with one of your other characters to stop someone getting the credit for it. Once the drain has channeled the mob will turn into an Emaciated Felblood but WAIT until you see it lose its amour and turn to a white skin before killing it or you won’t get credit
11. Once you have killed the 4 initiates, run back through the demonic gateway with your unstable fireballs to blow it up and hand in the quests there
12. Fly back over to Honor Hold and get a bird to Area 52
13. Run up to Manaforge B’Nar and kill mobs until Sunfury Attack Plans drop. It’s random drop with round 20% droprate I think but it’s group lootable.

Phase 2:

14. Head back to Shat and go through the portal to QD, drop down into the bottom of the building and grab The Battle Must Go On, Know Your Ley Lines and The Air Strikes Must Continue
15. Leave the building and head southeast to the Dawning Square, kill 6 demons and the Emmisary of Hate (though will usually find it already dead) and have your main use the banner on it to finish The Battle Must Go On for the group. Also have your main use the astromancer crystal near the portal for part 1 of Know Your Lay Line
16. Head back up to the building north of the square, where the armorer is, grab Keeping The Enemy At Bay on the first floor landing and Crush the Dawnblade on the top floor
17. Head back down and noth to the boat on the right of the inn, grab Disrupt The Greengill Coast here
18. Head east to the greengill coast, kill Darkspine Sirens and loot the Orb of Murloc Control that each one drops on your main then proceed to use them on murlocs as you head west to the small shrine in the water
19. Have your main use the astromancer crystal at the shrine, all in group will get second part of Know Your Ley Lines done
20. Head back west to the boat and hand in Disrupt The Green Gill Coast
21. Head west to the inn, hand in Rediscovering Your Roots
22. Head west to the flightmaster, have all characters right-click to bring up the gossip screen with him and then use the following macro on all characters to have them mount and fly at the same time for The Air Strikes Must Continue

/script SelectGossipOption(1)

23. Hotkey the arcane charges for this quest and then once you are in the dead scar just spam and target. It will likely take a few flights before you work out the positions of the mobs you need and even then it may take 2 flights to complete the quest depending on number of people also doing it and your accuracy
24. Have everyone right click the guy next to the flight master again and use the following macro to start all characters at the same time on Keeping The Enemy At Bay

/script SelectGossipOption(2)

25. Again, hotkey the flaming oil and use if once on the mast of each ship you pass on the flight path to set fire to the sails of each ship. For the third ship wait until you turn and fly up past it’s side to be in range.
26. Once you land, stay on the first ship and kill the 6 Dawnblade Reservists you need there as I found it’s annoying to get onto the other ships, need to jump and move up out of the water so usually will accept a wait time on that boat
27. Once the quest is completed have all characters right click the dragonhawk and use the Dead Scar macro to head back to QD
28. Head south into the small building with the quatermaster in it and grab Further Conversions then back out and head south to the Dawnblade area
29. Kill dawnblades as you go for Crush the Dawnblade and head into the big building to find 3 summoners around a blood crystal. The summoners are always in evade mode on Proudmoore so I’m not sure if they will agro or not, but head in there and have your main use the astromancer crystal to finish off Know Your Ley Lines
30. Once you have finished Crush the Dawnblade go SW and kill any Erratic Sentry you see, have your main use the Attuned Crystal Core on them until you have 5 and then head back to QD center

Phase 3:

31. Hand in Further Conversions at the quartermaster building
32. Hand in Know Your Ley Lines, The Air Strikes Must Continue and The Battle Must Go On in the center building
33. Head to armory building and hand in Keeping The Enemy At Bay and then up the top to hand in Crush The Dawnblade
34. Head back to Shat (I use the teleport scrolls from Know Your Ley Lines because if you don’t you can’t hand it in again until you destory them) and hand in Sunfury Attack Plans

Results:

At the end of this run you will get ~115g, 2700 SSO rep and 15 Sunwell Supplies giving you at least 15 greens to DE and a chance at a Badge of Justice per supply and will usually take about an hour or so depending on how co-operative the Razorfang Flayers and Sunfury mobs are being for the Glands and Plans.

Shareable Quests:

* Crush the dawnblade
* Disrupt the greengill coast
* Sunfury attack plans
* Rediscovering your roots

Unshareable Quests:

* Further conversions
* The battle must go on
* The air strikes must continue
* Know your ley lines
* Keeping the enemy at bay
* Blood for blood
* Blast the gateway

Looking over it, the only thing I could really salvage were the 2 7800GTX’s and the hard drives since when I decided to test the PSU with another older mobo/cpu I had, that cpu lasted about 5 seconds before frying as well so I figure the PSU was effectively dead and don’t want to take the risk. The hard drives were all PATA, which posed a small problem (this box was my file server) until I found an item called a TeraBox at the computer markets…it’s a small box with a 150W PSU that holds up to 4 PATA drives (to 2GB total) and can either have them set as individual drives or seen as one and then connects to a PC through USB. Given I have previously had issues with spanned drives, I have set these up as individual drives and has worked flawlessly so far under XP, Vista and a Mac, the only issue found with the Mac was I had to let the Mac reformat one of the drives to be able to write to it since it seems they can read NTFS but not write to it.

With the drives sorted, and my mind already set on what I wanted out of the new PC (quad core, sli, 8Gb RAM), I decided that I could get by with just getting the RAM, CPU, Motherboard and case/PSU this week and use the GTX’s initially to see if I need to look at upgrading to the 9800 series (either GTX or GX2) so off to the markets I went this weekend and grabbed what I needed, to be pleasently surprised. I ended up getting an evga 780i motherboard, 8Gb of PNY RAM (though a little annoyed, thought it was 5-5-5-15 but is 5-5-5-18), a Q6600 CPU and a cheapish case with PSU for $800. The case I gimped myself with as my current main machine was in a Super Lanboy case with a 650W Antec PSU so decided to put the new build in that and so just needed something to hold the current build of Q6600, 4Gb, 9600GT and this seems to be holding well. If it becomes an issue I intend to grab an Antec 900 case and 850W modular PSU anyway so it’s not a major problem to have that machine out of action for a week till the next markets.

I spent all saturday putting the new pc together (well also taking the other one apart and putting it back together in the new box) and installing Vista64 SP1 which all went reasonably quickly, the only concern I had was the new botherboard has an 8 pin power2 while my PSU only had a 4 pin but reading the manual it seems the 8 pin is only needed if running quad SLI so I gave the 4 pin a try and the system fired up and appears stable still.

Once built and in place I ran the first testto see if I could see any improvement in multiboxing World of Warcraft, and I put one monitor on on card, the second monitor on the other and had SLI disabled (mainly because I intend to run 4 monitors on this machine) and found the effect to be disasterous…I was getting single digit framerates on all 5 instances of WoW which was unacceptable, machine was turned off and both monitors plugged into card 1.

For the second attempt, I’m not sure what the issue is but I am getting only around 15fps on all 5 instances when running at the same time, and only around 35fps when running a single instance of WoW which is about 1/2 of what I was seeing with a single 7800GTX under XP32 SP3…at this stage I am thinking it is something to do with having the SLI bridge in place between the two cards, so I’ll likely try taking that off tonight and see if I see any improvement, and I also have to see if going to SLI shows me any upgrades with FSX.

At this stage I’m happy with the new pc, but not ecstatic since I haven’t seen the improvements I’d expected and found one of the reasons for going with a new SLI build (running monitors on all cards) is likely not going to work. It might be the 7800’s that are the issue so the next phase will be to finialise what I planned and add either 2 9800GTX’s or 2 9800GX2’s, so will update this once I get them in place and tested.

Currently I’m going to boost the 3 new shaman + 1 other up to outland using Smara with the following outline:

• 1 – 10 – Newbie zone
• 10 – 15- Deadmines
• 15 – 20 – Stockades
• 20 – 40 – SM
• 40 – 50 – BRD
• 50 – 55 – Scholo/Strat
• 55+ – Outland

Once I hit 55 with them I’ll (likely)  stop worrying about the 4th boostee and just start running with Smara + Baanmee + 3 other shaman through Ramparts until they hit 60 and then drop Baanmee from the group and add in my friends warrior while continuing to use Smara to tank them through to 70.

Once the 3 shaman are at 70 I’ll be able to either run the current Five Fingers or Smara + 4 Shaman as dictacted by what I’m doing, eg Smara + Shaman for PvP, but also it could be easier to gear Smara up more quickly using just the shaman and then have him essentially boost the current group through instances for loot or badges by having him outgear the instances. This is dependent on me being able to use the shaman as effectively in instances as others have shown is possible in videos either on youtube or in the video forum at http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums.

I’ve got the 3 new shaman created already so it’s just a matter of leveling them up to 10 now to get them over to deadmines, and will likely do that tonight after I run my 10 welfare epic games and then tomorrow before maintenence. I think that will be the better way to do it as Smara is currently in Azeroth leveling up mining after I dropped blacksmithing on him as discussed earlier, got him up to 55 last night so guessing it will be another day or two to get him up to 300 and then it’s off to instancing properly with the Five Fingers. One side-effect of picking up mining with Smara is that I can drop it on Ivanasukle now which I was going to do with the intention of her grabbing inscription when WotLK releases but now I think I’ll put that onto a deathknight and grab tailoring on Ivana for the bop purple Spellfire items that seem to be great dps upgrades according to http://www.maxdps.com and some of the best I’ll get outside of sneaking them into a black temple raid somehow so just makes sense really.

I’ve changed over from using ItemStats to display the tooltip popups for WoW items to being powered by WoWHead as it includes quests and spells in it’s available items and seems to get updated more often than ItemStats (which hasn’t been updated since Feb 2007) and is a single line of code to add if I update or redo the site, as opposed to the voodoo I had to do to get ItemStats to work initially.

Hopefully no-one will notice any broken posts while I go back and update where I need to but if you do, it should be fixed fairly quickly.

I put it in last night for a quick 30 minute while I waited for chicken to defrost before I cooked dinner…4 hours later I managed to put it down long enough to go cook, eat and get back to it. The missions flow on easily from each other, the story is actually really good (yes, I was suprised because I had low expectations for it) and, for me, the best part has been the upgraded physics.

Each vehicle has very distinct physics and handling and should actually make it necessary to make good choices for each mission. For example, trucks/vans handle like crap and understeer like a bitch so you won’t want to be taking one of those for a chase mission…on the other hand, something like the Maclaren Mercedes style car is beautiful to drive, handles corners like it’s on rails but is slightly fragile so it would not be a good choice for a mission that requires ramming an opponent out of their car. This leads to players having to make more decisions about missions apart from just what weapons to take, and more choices and decisions is always a good thing in a game.

Now onto what may be the most controvertial subject regarding the game, sex and censorship. Yes, the game has been censored in Australia and no-one is quite sure what that entails (R* isn’t talking at this stage, most likely to avoid giving out spoilers on the game and that’s fair enough) but after what I saw last night I would say some of it is the sex in the game. Without giving away spoilers I hope, last night I picked up a hooker to see what happened and once you go to a secluded area the camera pulls back to show the rear bumper and lights of your car with some bouncing and that’s it. One of the other ways sex is involved in the game is through girlfriends for Niko and getting them to invite you up to their place so I worked on that for a little bit last night too and managed to get invited up, again the camera just cuts to an outside view of the apartment they are in, there are sounds and the controller rumbles and that’s it. Taking these two instances into account and comparing them against what has been said by R* about the game I think we can safely conclude that these are likely places that censorship has been put in and to me it doesn’t impact on the game or the story so I don’t have a problem with it, though it was funny that the hooker was allowed to say “So, you going to fuck me like the nasty bitch I am?” when I picked her up but then we go to a G rated cut-scene…guess it just goes to show the double standards that are prevalent in regards to games still.

I haven’t bothered trying multiplayer yet, and likely won’t until I finish the single player game and given I’m about 13% finished after around 6 hours I don’t see myself getting into the multiplayer aspect for a few weeks but when the single-player is honestly this good I don’t think I want to split the experience up until I’ve fully experienced it.