The problem: My wife was driving the Rodeo with the cruise control on. She tried to press the COAST button and she said there was a weird sound and then the ABS light came on and the cruise wouldn’t work. Upon further investigation I found that all of the following did not work: power windows, four wheel drive, cruise control, rear windshield wiper, intermittent setting on front windshield wiper. Also the ABS light was on constantly. Immediately I went to the fuse panel and saw that there is a 30 amp circuit breaker for the power windows and it was popped. Since it is a circuit breaker I just pushed the switch back into place to complete the circuit. This did not fix the problem. I then tested the circuit breaker with a multi-meter (in the ohm setting) to make sure the circuit was being completed by the breaker and it was. I then checked fuses that corresponded to some of the problems I was having (i.e. the rear wiper fuse) and they were all good.

At this point I was stumped. I did some looking online and some people stated that there was some control module near the passenger side of the vehicle that controlled these things. I wasn’t too thrilled to hear this, but I did find one person who had the same exact symptoms and said that there was a 15amp fuse that continually blew on his Rodeo, but never said which one. I decided to check all of my 15amp fuses to see if any were blown and while doing this, I noticed that my spare 15amp fuse was gone, which indicated the previous owner probably had to use it at some point. Finally I found the fuse that was blown! It was the 15amp fuse for the ignition module (top row, just left of a 20amp fuse), which made no sense to me at all. I bought a pack of 15 amp fuses and put one in and voila! It works! Now I just have to tell my wife not to use the coast setting again. There must be a wiring issue that is causing a short to happen when this button is pressed, but seeing as I never use that setting and I don’t have the money to bring it into the shop, this will have to do! Hopefully this blog post helps others in a similar position as myself. It’s no fun searching the net for answers and coming up mostly empty.

This just wasn’t working, so I decided to start writing the parts that I was inspired to write and then towards the end I’ll put them all together and write the transitions.  Needless to say, it has worked wonders.  I’ve pushed far ahead into the story and it’s coming along better than I could have imagined.  Now when I sit down to write I can bang out 6-10 pages in a one hour timespan on average.  If I’m really inspired I can do even more than that.

Another thing that I found helpful was outlining.  I always hated outlining and brainstorming in high school and college.  Probably because it was always a part of an assignment!  I began writing down little plot ideas that I had and I even began writing a glossary for the entire world that I’ve created in the novel.  This has been a huge help because I can write down details about characters as I dream them up and change them on the fly.  What really inspired this was the myriad amount of wikis that exist on the web for video games and books alike.  I enjoy the style a wiki presents and it has really helped further my writing.  I found that I had a better idea of who a character was and how they would act when I put the proverbial “pen to the paper” and could focus more on developing the scene.

One more thing that I found that helped (probably not so relevant to a story with an already established world) was to sketch a map of the world and to mark all of the different places that exist in the story onto it.  I always struggle with creating names for characters and places on the spot.  With the map, I have already put a lot of thought into the names of the places outside of the writing environment, which, again, made writing the actual story that much easier.

From the sounds of this blog you’d think I already have the story finished, right?  Not even close I’m afraid, but that’s okay.  I’m going to take my time with it and let it develop how it should.  I am fortunate enough to have a highly intelligent wife who loves to read (it’s her main hobby) and who isn’t afraid to point out my shortcomings in writing.  She’s also a good resource on how to format the book.  I’m going to let a few willing souls proofread it a couple of times for me and make suggestions as to what they’d like to see happen in the plot/which characters they would like developed more, etc etc. One of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, did this same sort of thing for his newest book The Graveyard Book and he seemed to really like that way of doing it.  The book was amazing by the way.

I will probably post chapter previews to this site as I feel they are in good enough “shape” to do so.  I don’t think many people look at this site yet anyways, so it’ll be fine.  If you’ve read all of this, thanks.  I appreciate it.

Until next time.

The Clouds Above the Wing The Clouds Above the Wing Daniel Black A short story about duck hunting

The novel/novella has a working title right now of “Lampwick the Great” (likely to change upon finish) and follows the life of a young boy named Lampwick.  Lampwick goes to live with his Uncle Charlie in a town called Leetshire after his obnoxious mother decides she no longer wants him around.  He soon discovers after his arrival that his uncle Charlie has a talking cat  and a house that is far beyond anything that would be considered normal.   It’s a fantasy story at heart, but I’m trying my hand at throwing a good amount of humor in with it too.  The world I’m creating for the story is going to be quite large and it’s taking me a long time to really eek out all of the details.   I have about 35 pages of the story written and I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface yet.  My highest hopes in writing rest upon this story and if I can execute it well I think a lot of people will enjoy it.  I’m trying to make it a nice fast read (kinda like Arthur C. Clarke’s stories), where you won’t really dwell on any one thing for too long.  I like those kind of stories because it makes you not want to put it down and really gets you interested in what’s going to happen next.   I will try and put up the first few pages from that story as well.  Keep checking back for updates.

So recently I cancelled my WoW (World of Warcraft) subscription because I hadn’t played the game for a good amount of time in a few months. The positive is that Blizzard (who makes WoW) keeps all your account info on hand so you can come back and pick up right where you left off anytime you want. In the meantime, I decided to pick up Guild Wars, another popular MMORPG that has no monthly fee associated with it. I picked up Guild Wars Factions, which is the first expansion in the Guild Wars series. I will now compare both games for you so you can decide which one to buy for yourself. I was unable to find a good comparison when I was shopping, which is why I’m writing this one now.

World of Warcraft

In my opinion this is one of the best games ever created. Period. The most primitive object of the game is to level your character up to the highest level possible (as time stands now that level cap is 70) by doing quests and killing various monsters. It’s pretty straight forward and at times the quests do get a bit repetitive and boring. However, there is so much to do that you won’t feel the grinding crunch too often.

Here are the pros:

• Excellent user interface that is completely customizable

• HUGE game world to run around and explore

• Tons of fun to team up with some of your friends and do quests/dungeons

• Lots of instanced dungeons with varied enemies and loot

• The PVP battlegrounds (especially Alterac Valley) are a blast

• The graphics are awesome – some people complain that they aren’t very realistic and more cartoonish, but I really enjoy the cartoonish nature of the graphics. It totally works. Also the game doesn’t slow down much on a lower end system

• The lore in this game is very deep and worth caring about

• An excellent auctioning system (sometimes I’d play the game just to go out and get items and then sell them at the auction house)

• A deep and involved crafting system ( who doesn’t like crafting their own gear?!)

• You can create an unlimited number of characters – feel free to experiment with every class

Here are the cons:

• More and more of your time is required the higher you level. After 60 you really need to invest a lot of time to get better equipment.

• PVP is much harder after level 60 if you are a casual gamer who doesn’t have the luxury of time to go and do 6-10 hour raids for the top equipment. After 60 PVP becomes much more about how well equipped your character is rather than how much skill you have over your character.

• Finding capable parties for instances/dungeons can be a very long process and sometimes impossible

• If you don’t make friends it gets lonely and harder to level

Guild Wars

Comparing Guild Wars and WoW is kinda like comparing apples to oranges. They are two different experiences completely. Though they are in the same genre and are often compared to each other, they aren’t very similar.

Guild Wars has a level cap of 20 and is designed with the casual gamer in mind. The big tag line of the game is that it’s built around it’s PVP element. You can create a PvE character (a char who you will build from the ground up and follow a storyline) or jump in with a level 20 PVP character. You can customize all the PVP characters’ equipment on the fly as well as their skills.

Here are the pros:

• Henchmen system is a great idea. Instead of wasting time trying to find people to party with, you can hire computer controlled henchmen. While they may not be as good as human players (sometimes) they are awesome for people who only want to log on for a half an hour to hammer out a quest.

• Having a secondary class to pick from is great. It allows you to create hybrid classes and this can be fun.

• Only allowing the player to take 8 skills at a time with them out in the field adds a layer of strategy.

• The graphics are very nice and can run on a low end system

• The salvaging system is kind of neat

Here are the cons:

• I’m not totally sold on the fact that every time you step out of town you are in your own instanced copy of the world. You will never see any other players out in the field unless they are in your party ahead of time. Feels a bit lonely out here!

• You can’t jump. How can you have a PVP based game with no jumping!?

• The PVP is pretty lackluster in my experience. Some of the PVP elements that sound fun never happen because they are poorly populated and an opposing team never shows up. Most people battle in the arenas which just doesn’t do anything for me. If you like one on one combat you will like the arenas. However, since you can’t jump and the combat interface feels so clunky, it’s hard to see how skill plays much of a factor in PVP.

• There isn’t much diversity of in game items. If you’ve seen a low level Cantha Vest you’ve seen a high level Cantha Vest. They look the same (unless you dye them, then the color changes).

• No auction house to speak of

• You can’t fall off of cliffs. It really doesn’t feel like a free form world at all.

• It’s impossible to pull one monster at a time and strategically take down one group. If you try to pull one monster, all other monsters within their range (which is pretty far by the way) come charging at you. Sometimes you’ll find yourself doing okay against a group of 6 enemies until another group of 6 happens to walk within 80 feet of the fight and decides to jump in. Takes the strategic feeling of pulling monsters (something WoW does so well) and dispatching them one at a time away.

• No dungeons (at least in Factions) where you can go repeatedly to get some nice loot

• No real crafting system (it’s kind of a pseudo crafting system)

• The user interface really isn’t that great. It’d be nice to see other players’ name tags above their head like in WoW. The font used doesn’t constitute a “clean” feeling UI either.

Overall I’d recommend WoW over GW. In fact, playing GW recently has made me want to reactivate my WoW account in the worst way. I guess absence makes the heart grow fonder. If you’re a casual gamer, you’ll enjoy the lower levels of WoW and you’ll probably enjoy the entire GW experience. But if you want the complete package, go for WoW.

~D-Rock

The first moon, Agarab, was large, rocky and devoid of any life.  Its landscape was characterized by large mountains and deep, treacherous valleys. 

The second moon, Il Nori was the most peculiar moon of all.  There was no water on the surface, yet its landscape was full of vegetation.   It is theorized that not far below the surface there must be a large ocean, but no one can be certain. 

The third moon was a tiny world of ice known as Olion.  It was locked in place, never moving from its position on the shadowed side of Cymptoria.  It was because of this orbital lock that its surface was icy, cold and unwelcoming. 

The fourth moon was an average sized world known as Lanternum.  It was covered mostly in water, but had two continents separated from each other by a great number of miles.  The first continent was known as Lunaris and was covered with forests, lakes and large hills. The trees of Lunaris were very colorful; comparable to the trees of autumn on Earth.

 Small villages known as “hermitages” dotted the Lunarian countryside.  Cadot’s Landing was the only large town on Lanternum, which was situated on the northwest coast.   It contained about 2,000 people.   The second continent, known only as Exocontinent, was a barren and dark wasteland.  No one dared to take more than a few steps onto its charred shorelines. 

Lanternum was unique in that it had its own moon; a small desert covered stone known as Ipso.  Its rusty brown surface illuminated the night sky a few days a month, but for the most part it stayed hidden from the eyes of the Lanternians. 

And so it is here on the diverse and thriving Lanternum that our story unfolds. 

Both shows will feature around 8 bands, so there will be lots of music going on!  Rumor has it that we’re gonna be playing right in front of the headliner at the He-Brews show, so we’ll probably be hitting the stage pretty late (around 9 or 10).  I think we are gonna try and play an earlier spot at the Trailer Trash Bash so that the kiddies aren’t too tired out for us.  The Relentless have a tendency to wear ‘em right out, so hopefully we open for them!

In other band news, we have an album for sale if you’re interested.  It’s entitled “Starbound” and contains 5 songs.  We’re asking $5 for them and the proceeds from the cds will go towards gas money and/or a trailer to haul our gear around in so that we can ultimately save gas money by taking fewer vehicles.  We’re also gonna start working on recording our next album since we have a bunch of new songs since the last one and we’re dying for you to hear them. 

D-Rock

To begin, we’ll assume you are using the standard tuning of EADGBe. That tuning goes from the thickest string (E) to the thinnest string (e). So let’s look at a standard tab. Below the tab illustrates a simple riff played across E and A strings.

What does that mean you ask? You read the numbers from left to right, no matter what position they are vertically. You start by playing the “0″ on the E string, which stands for open. This means that you will not put your finger on any of the frets to play that note. Next comes the “2″. You will place your finger on the 2nd fret of the E string to play that note and so on. After you play the little sequence on the E string you will play the sequence on the A string (since you are reading from left to right). Pretty easy stuff huh? Next we will look at chords. Keep the whole left to right notion in your mind.

Numbers stacked on top of each other are played together at the same time to form chords. Above you have (in order) a G chord, an E chord and a C chord. All the notes are played at the same time. Each chord represents one strum. If there are 4 G chords right next to each other you will strum that chord 4 times.

Next we’ll look at some more advanced tab symbols. Look at the tab below:

I’m sure you’re saying, “What in the world are all those symbols!?”. Well I’ll tell ya!
First we’ll look at the “3p0″ phrase. The “p” stands for pull-off. You will pick the 3 note and then pull your finger off almost instantly to an open note, or “0″. Try it a few times, it’ll probably take a little getting used to. Next we have the “0h2″ phrase. The “h” stands for hammer-on. This is basically the opposite of the pull-off. You play the 0 note and immediately place your finger on the 2 note. Try this a few times to get used to it and make it sound right. You can do some really cool sounding things with hammer-ons and pull-offs. Have a listen to the intro riff of “Over the Hills and Far Away” by Led Zeppelin. Jimmy Page is employing the use of hammers and pulls all over the place.
Next we have the “2/3\2″ phrase. The “/” means slide up to a note and the “\” means to slide down to a note. So in this phrase you pick the 2 note and then slide your finger to the 3 note and back down to the 2 note again. You only pick once — there is no need to pick in between the notes. It’ll lose the cool sliding effect.
Finally you’ll notice the chord with the “x” in the middle of it. The “x” stands for a dampened string. Basically you just hold your finger over the string and pick it. You will get kind of a dead sound. The particular chord you see on the example tab is known as a C octave. Octaves are really cool sounding, especially when played over top of some solid power chords. I really like to slide the octaves around. If you’ve ever heard my band Pseudocell’s song “Lotus Sky” you will hear me sliding a whole bunch of octaves around in the chorus.

Well that’s all for now. That should be enough to get you started. Go out and find yourself a tab for your favorite song and start learning! Below is a great site for tablature and tutorials:

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com

Feel free to ask any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.

D-Rock

So, what is it that you’re looking at you ask?  This site is a conglomeration of all of my various projects from music, stories, poems, photography, artwork and whatever else I feel like putting in here.  The main page will be reserved for my day to day thoughts and ramblings.  The other pages will pertain to the musical projects in my life at the moment — Pseudocell and Hollow Frequency.  The stories page will contain snippets of stories I’ve been working on and in some cases, perhaps a full story or two (well…if I ever finish one!).  I enjoy photography and even more than that I enjoy photo manipulation.  Please don’t misunderstand me when I say manipulation — I love adjusting the quality of the photos to make something unique/better than what it really is.  And yes, I’ve been known to “manipulate” a few photos and make something fake look real (see: Trout Picture). 

All in all I hope you enjoy your visit to my site.  I hope you don’t think I’m strange, but I do hope you think I’m funny and interesting, but let’s face it: you’re entitled to your opinion either way.  Enjoy!

P.S. – Feel free to leave comments, suggestions, feedback whenever you feel moved to do so.  I enjoy reading what you think about my work and in most cases I will even write you back!

~D-Rock~