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Lemondrop and Fireball review: Impossibly small, surprisingly powerful synths
Lemondrop and Fireball review
Apple TV+ acquires Werner Herzog's meteorite documentary 'Fireball'
When Apple TV+ launched, the space drama For All Mankind was immediately well-received, and now Apple has acquired a space documentary. Directed by Werner Herzog — taking a break from his Mandalorian duties — and professor Clive Oppenheimer, Fireball promises to help viewers “discover how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future. The two previously collaborated on other documentaries, including their volcano deep-dive Into the Inferno, which premiered on Netflix in 2016.
HTC Droid Incredible 4G parties down with FCC, ready for Verizon?
Can't get enough of the FCC approval gossip? For some reason, neither can we. In the middle of what seems like a flood of new devices trying to get prepped for their inevitable US debut, the HTC PJ53100 appears to stand out above many of the rest. Why? It's boasting LTE band 13, which is Verizon's piece of 700MHz real estate. And while it doesn't come right out and proudly proclaim exactly what it is, we're rather certain this is the HTC Droid Incredible HD -- also known as the Fireball. Any other details? Nothing worth writing home about, sadly, but we have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of this smartphone pretty darn soon.
Arcane Brilliance: MoP talent calculator changes for mages, part 2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we finish what we started in our last cloumn, which will involve wild speculation, irresponsible levels of optimism, and a giddy and in all likelihood unwarranted sense of unchecked excitement about tooltips. If you missed part one, what were you thinking? We talked about the updated Mists of Pandaria talents and even made some disparaging comments about warlocks. It was super fun -- you should go check it out. But hurry up about it. Because we have new spells to discuss. Like that one up there in the picture. It's rad. Arcane spells Arcane Charge An Arcane Charge, generated by Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles, and consumed by Arcane Barrage. Stacks up to 4 times (Passive). This is a brand new spell, and it's by far the single biggest game-changer for arcane mages in the new calculator. You pick it up if you spec arcane at level 10, alongside good old Arcane Blast, and it changes how that spell works, along with every other major arcane nuke.
Radiangames wants you to have fun during the zombie apocalypse
If we learned one thing in the Girl Scouts (don't judge -- you'd join for the Thin Mints too), it was to always be prepared... for the zombie apocalypse. Sure, you have a crossbow, an axe and a stash of high-powered weaponry in the barn out back, but what about the downtime? Yahtzee is fun for two weeks, or until you suspect Grandma of loading the dice, but after that you'll need to find some other entertainment. The Quadtastic Launch Collection from Radiangames offers four new titles for PC and Mac, at a $10 pre-order price. The Collection drops Jan. 24 and will be $12 from then on out -- it includes Inferno+, Ballistic, Slydris and Fireball, all styled in the same techno-pretty tone as Radiangames' previous title, Super Crossfire, which was included in the Indie Royale New Year's Bundle. Radiangames will donate a sliding percentage of sales to Child's Play and St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital charities, so even if you don't care about the zombie apocalypse, you can care about some kids in need.
HTC Fireball and LG Spectrum may bring global awesomeness to Verizon's LTE lineup
Separately, the HTC Fireball and LG Spectrum have made their appearances in Verizon's internal system before. But together, in the screenshot above, they're actually much more than just a couple silly names -- they're responsible for ushering in the beginning of an era (potentially). We have yet to see an LTE device on Big Red's lineup that can double as a world phone, but these two phones appear to have the international roaming capability. We're expecting to see them show up at CES, so we'll keep our fingers crossed. In the meantime, we'll just assume the "O" listed in the Global Phone category stands for ohhhh yeah.
HTC Fireball getting ready to scorch Verizon's 4G lineup?
Hey, we've always said that Verizon LTE is blazing fast, so it seems appropriate to name products in its lineup accordingly. A leaked screenshot of Big Red's internal system, brought to us by Droid Life, indicates that this very well may be the case, as a new device called the HTC Fireball (ADR6410L) just popped up. Aside from its inclusion of the next-gen data speeds, nothing else is known about the gadget; heck, we don't even know for sure if it's going to have the same name (we're half-expecting it to be renamed as something Beats-related). Regardless of its name, if the screenshot above is accurate, we may soon have another quietly brilliant device hanging out next to the Rezound.
Arcane Brilliance: Time to talk about the mage tier 13 set bonuses
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we take a look at the newly announced and quickly revised mage tier 13 set bonuses. I've provided a picture of the tier 13 helm above. Also, I am a liar. So yeah, that isn't really the mage tier 13 helm at all. No matter how desperately I want it to be. Still, any clothing that makes me look like a time chicken wizard is welcome. But we've spent enough time in past columns discussing the appearance of our tier 13 set. It's high time we started the conversation about the actual set bonuses this gear will provide. And what a conversation it will be ... Mage tier 13 set bonuses: Two-piece bonus Your Arcane Blast has a 100% chance, and your Fireball and Frostbolt spells have a 50% chance, to grant Stolen Time, increasing your haste rating by 50 for 30 seconds and stacking up to 10 times. When Arcane Power, Combustion, or Icy Veins expires, all stacks of Stolen Time are lost. Four-piece bonus Each stack of Stolen Time also reduces the cooldown of Arcane Power by 7 seconds, Combustion by 4 seconds, and Icy Veins by 6 seconds. All right -- let's discuss, shall we?
Intel shows disaster management tech at IDF, casts fireballs
Intel put some disaster management tech on display during a pre-IDF event yesterday and lucky for you, we got some hands-on time. The showcase focused on three main areas of disaster management: mitigation, preparedness and response. It included technologies such as connectivity provisions for disabled networks, energy management for distressed power grids, and -- by far to most impressive item on display -- fireballs! These spherical, rugged, low-cost, autonomous sensors are designed to be thrown into a fire and report data such as temperature, free-volatiles and air quality to first responder trucks via WiFi. Vital information such as the hottest spot and the chemical composition of a fire can be sent to both the firefighters' smartphones and the backend offices. Initial readings make it easier to assess the situation before sending in human life. Check out the fireballs and more of this disaster management tech in our gallery below. %Gallery-133298% Dante Cesa contributed to this report.
Arcane Brilliance: Beginner's guide to being a mage
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we're taking a trip through the first 20 levels of the game, which are now eternal. The important thing to remember about rolling a mage is that you've made the right choice; congratulations. Between the newly adopted unending demo, the extended Recruit-a-Friend promotion, and the freshly bargain-priced WoW/The Burning Crusade bundle, it seems Blizzard is making a concerted effort to woo new players. And from my limited viewpoint, it seems to be working. I have a brother, a year and some change younger than me, who doesn't live near me. This sucks, because he and I have absolutely everything in common. We grew up taking turns watching each other play Shining Force, or designing Dungeons & Dragons campaigns to force each other to play through, but then college, family, and career separated us. I'm here in Las Vegas playing copious amounts of video games and ignoring my kids, and he's at Purdue, working on his doctorate and just generally making me ashamed of the waste my life has become. Naturally, I've been trying for years to drag him down to my level. Thus far he's resisted, but when I notified him of these new opportunities to play the game on the cheap, he finally took the plunge. And rolled a warrior. Sigh. Oh well. At least it wasn't a warlock, right?
The Daily Grind: Does MMO magic need a revolution?
While the concept of magic in a fantasy setting (or something like nanos in a sci-fi setting) seems to offer unlimited potential and possibilities, MMO magic systems are almost depressingly routine. Ooh, I'm a fire mage, I cast... fireball! Ooh, I will suck out some of your life and inject it into my bloodstream and then star in a popular RomVamp series! Ooh, I will now summon something from the heavens to cave your skull in if you'd be so kind as to stop hitting me for the next five seconds! Honestly, is it time that MMOs see a revolution in the magic department? Where's the danger of magic, the elaborate preparations, the imaginative systems that we read about in the fantasy series but never see in games? If I never have to see someone's hands light up all glowy-like before he thrusts them out and a ball of liquid hate spews forth, I wouldn't complain. So what do you think? Are developers too complacent with how magic's been portrayed in MMOs? Do we need new systems to make magic come alive, or is it fine as is? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Arcane Brilliance: On the 12th tier and the set bonuses thereof
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we'll be discussing the Firelands patch and the sweet new mage gear it will be providing to us. Also, what is that thing sticking out of our helmets? Is that a tail? Made of fire? A flaming headtail of magical might? So we're only a few weeks into patch 4.1, and already our sights are focused squarely on patch 4.2. You can hardly blame us, though. I mean, while I am thoroughly enjoying the current patch, what with its freshly recycled 5-man content and its new Dungeon Finder Call to Arms that I don't seem to benefit from in the slightest (my queue times are right back up to 30 minutes, thanks), but I think we can all agree that for a major content patch, 4.1 was substantially light on ... well, content. Not so with 4.2. Patch 4.2 will be bringing us the Firelands, which is apparently a raid where epic cupcakes fall from the sky like rain, hardcore raiders experience orgasms just by zoning in, and we all ride flaming unicorns across lava bridges to do battle with volcanic dragon manticores. I'm not kidding. The entire raid sounds like something you'd see painted across the side of a rock band tour van in the '70s. We're also getting two new daily quest areas with their own epic loot vendors, and yes, the game's first legendary staff. And no, it doesn't have spirit on it. New raid content means new tier sets, and this time around, we're reaching a cool dozen. The tier 12 set bonuses are interesting, to say the least, and bear a bit of looking at. Keep in mind, though, as we discuss these bonuses that we're still early in the PTR process, and everything on the test realms right now is entirely subject to change -- which is, in this case, a very good thing.
Kinect + projector = augmented reality fireballs (video)
We've seen fancy augmented reality projection before, but we've rarely been able to take it home -- now, it seems Microsoft's hack-friendly Kinect can bring the same trick to the consumer realm. Elliot Woods took the idea that Kinect can map a three-dimensional space and twisted it to his own devious ends -- that is, throwing traditional Street Fighter fireball blasts, complete with the sound effect. What's impressive here, though, isn't the size of his hadouken, but rather the light it's made of -- each is a virtual dynamic light source casting light on the room's real objects to create virtual shadows on the surfaces that stick out. Sounds lovely, but if you can't wrap your head around all that, you'll find all the hot fireball action you need in the video after the break at roughly the five minute mark.
Arcane Brilliance: News and notes for mages from PTR patch 4.0.6
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, a magical journey awaits ... a fantastic voyage through a mystical realm. I speak, of course, of the Public Test Realm, and the wondrous patch notes that dwell therein. Now before we begin, I should make it clear that mages aren't getting anything even remotely earth-shattering in patch 4.0.6. It's not like Blizzard is letting us autofire while moving or anything. But a patch is still a patch. Things are going to change, and though mages have been left largely un-fiddled-around-with (at least in comparison to many other classes), we do have some incoming alterations to be aware of. So with our expectations in an appropriately subdued state, let's peek beyond the jump for an annotated look at what be happening, yo.
Arcane Brilliance: Random postpatchery
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, Arcane Brilliance brings you a random collection of thoughts, impressions, half-baked ideas, and unprovoked hatred for warlocks spawned in the wake of the single most significant patch in the history of WoW. But then again ... except for the patch part, that pretty much describes every Arcane Brilliance, right? I thought I'd throw that picture of the tier 11 mage set up there to start the article because it looks so awesome. Someone in the comments section last week suggested I spend an entire column waxing poetic about how cool our tier 11 looks, and I want you to know that I gave the idea serious consideration. Could I come up with a thousand words on one set of gear? Yes, yes I could. Would it be worth reading? No, probably not. But did I want to do it anyway? Yes, yes I did. Let's leave it at this: I really, really want to put that flaming skull mask on my mage's face, and I don't care how many warlocks raid bosses I have to kill to make that happen. So now that the insanity of patch week has come and gone, how are you coping? Got your mage's specs all sorted out? Comfortable with your new spell rotation yet? Updated all your addons? Disconnected a few dozen times trying to summon the Headless Horseman? If you're still looking for a bit of help, check out last week's column on mage specs, glyphs, and spell rotations for a basic primer. This week, I figure I'd just spend the column going over a bunch of stuff I ran out of room to mention last week, along with a few new things that have occurred to me during this week's play.
Arcane Brilliance: Catching up on mage Cataclysm changes
Each week, Arcane Brilliance steps out of a portal from parts unknown, bringing with it a knapsack full of delicious mage content conjured expressly for your consumption. Try not to overconsume, though. Nothing's worse than waking up one morning to discover your robes don't fit and your fingers are too chubby to waggle your wand properly. And after that culinary intro joke, it's time we got to the meat of the matter -- specifically, the Cataclysm beta and the constant mage changes going on therein. Each week (and sometimes more than once during each week), a new beta build hits that brings more new stuff for mages. Sometimes these changes are big, and sometimes they're not, but I feel like it's high time we spent a column talking about the more recent ones. I've let like five builds go by without dealing specifically with this stuff, so we'd better get going. I figure we'll start with the most important change and move forward from there.
Arcane Brilliance: Fire 101
It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that believes there is no such thing as too much Pyroblast. You can certainly have not enough Pyroblast, as any fire mage who is desperately praying to the RNG gods for a second consecutive crit so that Hot Streak will grant him an instant one can attest. But you can never have too much. Never. Since publishing Arcane 101 and Frost 101, for our series of class 101 guides, I've received numerous requests for Fire 101. Where is it? When is it coming? Why haven't you written it yet? There's even one guy who I swear has emailed me pretty much daily inquiring as to Fire 101's whereabouts. These emails progressed steadily in their tone and verbiage from mild annoyance to frustrated desperation, to thinly veiled threats to do me bodily harm. It wasn't long before the emails began coming with increasingly creepy pictures attached: first one of a road map with a thumbtack in the southwestern portion of Nevada, then one of the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign, then one of the street where I live, then one of my house, my driveway, and so on. The picture contained in yesterday's email was of a naked man who wasn't me standing in my bathroom brandishing a large knife. So, I've decided that today is the day! Now, please ... get out of my bathroom, crazynakedguy@iwillstabyouinthefacechrisbelt.com. As always, these posts come with a small disclaimer: these are meant to be basic guides covering a general overview of the spec from a PvE perspective. This one is meant as an introduction to Fire. It will not help you maximize your DPS on heroic 25-man Lich King. It will, however, help you get some idea of what the fire spec is, and how to go about playing it. Without further ado, I bring you Fire 101.
Arcane Brilliance: The state of the mage, volume 4 of 72
It's time again for another Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that would like to present, once again, its multi-annual state of the mage address. My fellow mages, we are awesome. First of all, you might be wondering why only 72 volumes. I'll be honest: it has to do with the great zombie apocalypse of 2037. I don't want to give too much away, but let's just say it severely impairs my ability to write. To be frank, the last 15 parts are pretty much just "braiiinns...warlocks....suuuuck...brains...braiiiins..." repeated over and over for a thousand words or so. After that, my zombie-self just loses interest. Some of you may wonder how those columns will be any different from the ones I write now. To you, I say bite me. I've extolled upon the state of mages on three previous occasions. It's actually interesting to go back and look over those ancient texts from our current perspective. Oh, the silly things we were worried about back then! Fire PvP... ha! Spirit, less than useful? What a ridiculous concern! Oh... how far we've come. Ignore my sarcasm. I'm not actually unhappy at all with the current state of mages. We are, as I stated in the opening blurb, awesome. Join me after the break and we'll look at where we are as a class in 2010.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Life and Death
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition. Today we're fielding a lot of questions on the Light and the Shadow, and Life and Death. I don't know why, really, that's just how things happened! Trends like that are always fun, like the week or two where we had nothing but dragon questions. It makes picking out themes really easy!Emorich asked... I was under the impression that C'Thun wasn't dead. I thought we simply stopped him. After all, we were attacking one of his eyeballs, hardly a vital organ. Is Kil'Jaeden dead too? I thought we basically just pushed him back through the portal and now he's really pissed.
Castcounting macro counts your spellcasts
Xalit is entertaining himself before the expansion by crafting some macros, and he's come up with a pretty clever one that will count the number of times you cast a certain spell. He's got a few different versions (including one that pushes the total out to "say" occasionally), but here's probably the most helpful:/cast Water Shield/run i="Water Shield" if ws==nil then ws=0 end t=GetSpellCooldown(i) if t==b then else c=0 end b=GetSpellCooldown(i) if b==t and c==0 then ws=ws+1 c=1 endWhich will both cast Water Shield for you (obviously, you'll have to change the name if you want to count casts of a different spell), and then use:/run SendChatMessage(ws,"SAY")To kick the count out to the Say chat channel. Naysayers among you may say "well that's pointless," and they're kind of right -- it doesn't really matter how many times you cast something, and the macro doesn't do anything else for you besides update a variable to keep track of that number.But it is interesting to see just how many times, say, you pressed the Fireball button during the raid last night, and maybe there is some use for this information somewhere (maybe checking the frequency of use or viability of certain spells or trinkets?). Might be a good macro to have when you want to know more about what you're casting.
