• Extravigator is a new luxury travel site. Pretty nice.
• Is the most prolific reviewer on Amazon a real person? You decide.
• I want to be Jill Greenberg when I grow up. Her new Ursine series looks amazing.

• Great AppleInsider piece on the evolution of Mail.app. It's one in a series of pieces they are doing called "Road Mac OS X Leopard.
• M & M Survival of the Fittest
• SNL Digital Short: People Getting Punched Just Before Eating Features some funny cameos.
• Bodega. I found this video to be excellent and funny.
• shadowClipboard is a really well designed full featured clipboard manager for Mac OS X.

• NPR : José González in Concert This is fantastic. I have been a huge fan of his for about two years now, and this show is a good showcase of why. He was also excellent on Conan on Friday night.

I haven’t done a link post in a while. I’m way behind on my rss feeds after doing a mental health day on Friday.

• This 25 minute live Prefuse73 set from Tokyo is awesome and worth the download.
• An Aperture User Looks at Adobe Lightroom
• The Rawking Refuses To Stop! has a great post with live versions of most of the songs on the just announced and soon to be released Radiohead album. I have listened to all of them once at least now, and the quality of the recordings is excellent, as are these new songs.
• There's a new UI coming with the next version of Pathfinder. Looks good, the longer I use Pathfinder, the more I loathe the Finder from Apple.
• Starting tomorrow, Starbucks is giving away music. Looking at the list of expected artists, I don't see much that interests me.
• I gave the Amazon MP3 store a try last week. It's great to see some competition for Apple in this area. They have been able to run rampant for long enough, and competition is always a good thing.
• Went to see Rilo Kiley at the Variety Playhouse on Saturday night. They put on a great show, as expected, however, George Harrison wants his guitar riff back. I'll pretty much go see anything that Jenny Lewis is involved with from here on out.

Well, here I am two weeks in. Still smoke free. Still very much wanting to smoke. I can say, with some level of certainty that Chantix is working out very well for me. It’s made life easier than the patch has in the past, and I don’t feel medicated either. Quitting is never going to be easy, no matter what method you use, but the level of discomfort with this method is the least I have had. As far as side effects go, the only thing I notice is some nausea in the morning after I take the first dose of the day. I suspect that I would not have this if I ate before taking the pill.

I'm hoping that the urges will lessen as the third week begins. There is no doubt that it's going to take me a while before I feel comfortable. I won't be able to drink beer for at least a couple of months, which sucks because it's football season, and the baseball playoffs are about to start.

Today, I try again, for the fourth time, to quit smoking. I could talk for a while about the circumstances of my other attempts failing, but in the end I can only blame myself for those failures. In one case, I stopped smoking for an entire year and relapsed, so I know that I can do the stopping thing with some level of confidence. This time, I am using Chantix, a pretty new drug from Phizer. It blocks the receptors that nicotine stimulates to create dopamine, and in turn produces some replacement dopamine of it’s own. I have been taking it for eight days now, and with this method of quitting, you smoke for the first week. Meanwhile the Chantix is making the nicotine absorbtion go down more every day. So in a sense, you are dealing with the physical side of the addiction while you are still smoking. After taking it for a week, you stop smoking, and today is that day for me. Yesterday, my smokes tasted awful and offered none of the satisfaction they used to, which means the Chantix is working.

As I have tried quitting before, I have some experience with the patch and Zyban to compare this to. Chantix seems to make dealing with the physical part of the addiction a non-issue. The first day without smokes is always tough, and today has been no exception, but in a sense it's easy because, despite the discomfort, you are very focused on the fact that you are quitting, at least I am. I am using some visualization to help myself too, something that I must have picked up somewhere, but don't remember reading about. I also feel like I am set up better to quit now than I have ever been. Alcohol should be a non-issue, and I live with a lovely non-smoking, stable woman who has promised to be supportive.

My reasons for quitting are myriad. In the end, I want to live. I care some about the three dollars and fifty cents a day I was spending on cigarettes, but I'm far more interested in tasting my food. It's scary getting ready to quit and stepping off that ledge like I did last night, but the payoff, while not immediate in some cases, is totally worth it. In summary, I am not looking forward to the challenges of the next six weeks of mental wrestling, but I am prepared to deal with them and I will. You can't stop me, you can only hope to contain me.

Since I use my iPod as an external disk drive quite often, I was very excited by the new iPod Classic, which came in a 160Gb size. I ordered one last week and it arrived today. Oddly it arrived in some kind of diagnostic mode, which I played with and took a bunch of pictures of this morning. There's a Flickr set of said pictures here.

• gSync Syncs iCal with Google calendar and vice versa. 20 bucks.
• Yay. Jason is back from his paternity leave.
• This iPhone bookmarklet article is a must read. I thought I already linked to it, but I guess not.
• How to write a book, the short honest truth. I'm seriously thinking through writing a book.
• Tip: Don't Design Site Navigation like ads. I've personally seen this more than once. What looks pretty is not always what users will click on. It's hard to convince non-Web people of this fact.
• Goodbye, cruel Word As time goes on, it seems like more and more people are looking for alternatives to Microsoft Bloatfice.

• Awesome New York Times Profile on Rick Rubin. For some reason, William Gibson's BigEnd Character kept popping into my head as I read this.
• MarsEdit 2 hits the street. It's a really great update, and one that I was happy to beta test for the last few months.

• MarsEdit's New Look I'm posting this with MarsEdit, as a matter of fact.
• 7 Ways to Text Message for Productivity
• Awesome Wood Grain iPhone Wallpaper

We posted our first foray into iPhone land today.

You can get there by going to http://iphone.superdeluxe.com on your iPhone. Currently, you can watch a selection of Super Deluxe videos on your iPhone.

• Five Things I Wish I`d Known about BioShock (spoiler free!)
• Great Handbrake review/howto. Rip to AppleTv and iPhone from DVD's.
• Is all HDTV programming the same?
• Diet Coke is 99% Water
• What nine of the world's largest websites are running on an interesting mix of stuff. You will notice that Oracle doesn't even get a column.
• What the iPhone specs don't tell you. Mr. Hockenberry continues to monkey around with his iPhone and share his very interesting results with us.
• How to Tweak Your iPhone to Impress Buddies, Mom, and the Boss

• Super Deluxe content, now on Joost

I've referred to the fact that I am the Guildmaster(GM) of a World of Warcraft Raiding guild before. You learn a lot about yourself and other people being the leader of a group of 70 people, and I thought I would write a couple of posts about my experiences. World of Warcraft is unlike any game before it in some ways, although it takes a lot of its lineage from the other MMO's that came before it.

First some basic information about our guild. It's roughly two years old. I was not the original GM, but I was one of the founding members. I was the Raid Leader for the first six months of the guild's existence. I will talk a little more about that role later, but I had the role of GM sort of thrust upon me when the membership was unhappy with the original GM. I didn't really want to be GM, and I think in some ways that has made me a much better GM. We have had, at most, about a hundred members.

We raid four days a week on a regular schedule. Most of our members are adults, and I have had everything from State Department diplomats to lawyers and doctors to college students and warehouse workers in the guild. I would guess that the average age of our guild would be something like 28. Raiding, for those who don't know anything about games like WoW, is when a large group of players get together to tackle game encounters that require everyone in the twenty five man group (it used to be 40) to effectively play their role well. The encounters range from very simple ones which last 5-10 minutes, to very complicated ones that last up to 30 minutes. The learning curve of a particular encounter can be anywhere from a couple of hours to a few weeks. When your guild has mastered an encounter, they move on to the next one in the learning ladder, and the previous one is said to be "on farm status".

Our guild ranked around 500 in the world and 200 in the US in terms of progression. That's not terrible by any means, but it's not nearly as hardcore as some folks. In the past, we cleared Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, AQ40, and almost had cleared Naxx when Burning Crusade came out. Currently, we are working on Kael'thas Sunstrider, the last boss in Tempest Keep, who is sort of a gateway boss to the second half of raiding in Burning Crusade. It's a brutal encounter, with 5 phases that require learning. We've been working on it for three or four weeks now, and should finally get it done in the next day or two. On our particular server, we are the third most progressed guild, and one of the oldest raiding guilds.

So, with that background, here's some observations. First, being a GM can be a very lonely job. You have to be the voice of reason, the source of discipline, and ultimately keep order where 50-70 personalities are involved. You have to try and gauge morale while continuously trying encounters and failing over and over until you succeed. Interestingly enough, this aspect of being a GM is very similar to my day job of managing people. Once you cross that line into being a boss, your relationships with your guildmates will change. You now hold the ultimate power where all things guild are concerned. It requires, above all else, patience. People want raid invites, and things from the guild bank, and they will leap up and down to do things for you if you ask. It's tough to remain impartial, and to keep things as fair as you can.

When you are a GM of a raiding guild, you are always hiring. In order to keep pace with the other guilds on your server, you have to keep killing bosses. If you don't have enough people of one class that is required for an encounter, it can stunt your progression, and people are constantly coming and going. People decide they want to play with an old friend and leave your guild, or get a "better offer" from a more progressed guild. Recruiting is a full time job, and as a result, I have two officers whose only job is recruitment, which is critical because I don't play every night. We have a set process for evaluating candidates, and I would say we actually take about 5% of the people who apply when we have openings. Of course, once you hire someone new, you have to then train them in the various encounters you already have on farm status. It's a never ending treadmill that you just have to get used to as a GM.

Reliable infrastructure is important. It's critical that you have a guild forum, a dkp accounting system and a voice chat server for the guild, and that these three things are reliable. The forum gives the membership a place to discuss things out of game, a housing for your rules and regulations, and a place to post your "strategies" on how bosses get killed. It also gives your potential applicants a place to post their applications for your evaluation. A fair dkp system is the lifeblood of any guild. It's purpose is to make sure that "loot" is distributed in a manner that is in line with each person's contribution to the guild. This can be a real pain in the arse, as you have to then enter four raids worth of attendance and loot every week. However, it's incredibly important that this get done. Finally, without voice chat, you won't get very far. It's critical to succeeding at the complex encounters. It's also critical to fostering the social relationships that make the game worth playing.

I'll do a part two to this soon. If there are particular things you are curious about, post in the comments, and I will trey to address them.

I now have AC again. Thank the good lord. Here's some links for today.

• I like BookTour and all, it's just depressing to see all the great authors people in other cities get that we do not in Atlanta.
• McSweeney's Comedy by Numbers Video. On Super Deluxe, of course.
• We discovered last night that FoodNetwork HD has been added to our Comcast lineup. We are very happy about this. I would link to the Comcast channel lineup, but their Web site is pathetic.
• I bought an Apple iPhone Bluetooth Headset over the weekend. Here's an excellent review. My quick take is that this is the easiest to deal with headset ever, and I highly recommend it.
• I created a tumblr log. It's a mash up of my flickr feed, twitter updates, delicious links, and last.fm feed. I'm going to play with using this as my link blog. I wonder if MarsEdit posts to tumblr blogs. Will have to look into that.
• John from Cincinnati was cancelled. It was interesting, but clearly wasn't something that would have the broad appeal of other HBO shows. I watched the first few episodes and then lost interest.
• Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball looks, well, awesome.

Yankees Hall Of Famer Phil Rizzuto Died. As a child, I must have watched a thousand games with him broadcasting and giving shouts out to his peeps in Florida. Just the mention of his name conjurs up memories of sitting in my grandparents living room watching the Yanks with my grandfather. Holy Cow.

• 756* Shirt Ordered. Bonds used.
• More excellent iPhone Wallpaper
• The BBC’s Fifteen Web Principles Number 2 is my favorite.
• The Anatomy of An Album Leak

Having fun here today, lots going on and I am in meetings from 9:30-3:30 straight.

• Quicksilver is going open source.
• The Framework Formally Known as ’Prints
• I fancy myself a Synthesizer
• For some reason I really want one of these new wireless Apple keyboards.
• Wii firmware 3.0 Oh yeah, I finally got a Wii last week. We are loving the damn thing.
• If you are a .Mac user and the new 10Gb of space is not showing up you need to read this, it fixed me up.
• I continue to be somewhat excited about Hellgate: London. Here's a video of some gameplay that explains why a little.
• More information on flying mounts in Northrend and Death Knight in the next WoW expansion.
• 50+ Social Bookmarking sites.
• Naxxramas 25man in Northrend: Tigole interview

On the heels of my girlfriend's appendix fun, I got a severe case of poison ivy doing yard work. I am now on steroids. Hopefully this will clear up the poison ivy fast.

• A 3-Step Cure for Digital Packrats, and How to Know If You’re One of Them
• 101 Greatest George Carlin Quotes

Had a rough couple of days as my lady friend had her appendix out yesterday. Getting my week on track.

• The Forge · Return On Development Interesting but fundamentally flawed look at Harry Potter and World of Warcraft. Worth a read.
• Good William Gibson Interview Spook Country comes out next month, I can't wait.
• iPhone Haiku
• Parallels to VMWare Disk Image Conversion I am contemplating the switch, since VMWare will win this development war.
• Google Optimized for the iPhone
• Awesome "I Believe in Science" Shirts Take that Creationism.
• attention profiling mark-up language
• How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart

• Facebook Acquires Parakey I think this might be a bigger deal than most people realize.

• FoldSpy is a great idea.

• Video: Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash just awesome.

• Securing your iPhone's traffic
• Nothing too "Lite" about new $299 TiVo Series 3 unit This is awesome news because, well, the Comcast HD DVR sucks balls.
• We made a major update to Super Deluxe yesterday. We added video views, a playlist player, series, and a bunch of other features, and did a slight redesign in the process. Note: This update was code named Jaws.

• 199 iPhone Wallpapers I've been changing mine every day.
• iTrapped Creative people rock.
• A Peek at MarsEdit 2 I'm a proud beta tester. He's doing some great stuff, and I am using it to post this.
• Leaflets More iPhone apps. These look nice.
• Shopping tip, if you have a Costco Membership, buy $50 prepaid iTunes gift cards for $45. That's 10% off your iTunes purchases basically.
• Smarter Ways to Work with PDF's (OSX) They only briefly mention DevonThink, which is what I use as a catalog of PDF's on my machines.
• Unclutterer: Gamer clutter

• The next WoW content patch will contain The Dungeon of Zul'Aman
• Moneymaker, the first song/video from the new Rilo Kiley. Hi Jenny.
• You can now watch a daily Super Deluxe video in an iGoogle Widget. (add widget)
• Firefox optimized for G5 and Intel Macs.
• iPhoneDrive Sweeet. Keep your files on your iPhone.
• Terra Nova: Our avatars, ourselves The conclusions from this research mirror my personal opinions, which have sometimes been hotly contested on the WoW forums. Also, Nagrand is my favorite zone too.
• inCase blogs about the cool "Topo" pattern on the back of my iPhone case Downloadable wallpapers for computer and iPhone alike too.