repairing
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Preparing for Wrath Day 2: The dying wallet
Off a question on professions we recently took in Ask A Beta Tester, it occurred to me that it would probably be helpful to provide players with a few ballpark figures on budgetary expectations for Northrend. Blizzard's been pretty frank about its desire to reduce ingame inflation, so it's reasonable to expect a number of compelling demands made on your e-wallet (especially if legions of grasping guild leaders worldwide get their wish and start taxing the living hell out of you). Bottom line? You're going to bleed gold out of your ears unless you exercise some financial restraint. But...whatever. Screaming over the ingame cost of everything keeps me from looking at my real-life stock portfolio. I need a drink.PROFESSIONS: Your first few minutes on the continent, no matter where you land, are going to be pretty expensive if you train up your tradeskills immediately. Polar22 in the AABT comments provided an extremely helpful link to WarcraftEcon confirming that each major and minor trade skill, with the exception of First Aid, will cost 35g to level to Grand Master. First Aid is more expensive at 50g. So, assuming you train your two major tradeskills in addition to Fishing, Cooking, and First Aid, count on being out 190g in addition to whatever it will cost you to train new recipes. WarcraftEcon estimates the total damage for an average player will clock in around 400-500g for these initial recipes and the Grand Master skill-up. That sounds broadly accurate from my experience in the beta, so plan on toting 500g along if you want all of your professions trained up immediately. The bleed begins!
Synthetic rubber mends itself after being sliced
Self-healing materials are far from revolutionary, but a team of gurus at France's National Center for Scientific Research has teamed up with Arkema to create a newfangled material that can literally reattach itself if simply pressed together after a break. Reportedly, the self-mending takes place due to weak hydrogen bonds that mesh networks of ditopic and tritopic molecules back together, essentially acting as a kind of "atomic glue." The matter is able to reconnect with any long lost pieces at room temperature (at least 68°F), and apparently, creators are already looking to commercialize their discovery and get products on the shelves within two years. So much for breakaway cables, eh?[Via Physorg]
Everything you need to know about Repairing Permissions (and more)
The 'Repair Permissions' function of Disk Utility has been under quite a bit of speculation as of late. There are those in one camp, such as John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who believe repairing (restoring, resetting, etc.) permissions is not much more than voodoo, while others in the support end of the Mac OS X community swear by it as the first line of defense. So what's a confused Mac OS X user to do when trying to draw up a formidable troubleshooting game plan? Heading over to Dan Frakes' Repairing permissions: what you need to know article at Macworld is a great first step at trying to cut through all the confusion. Dan dissects virtually every aspect of the permissions repair process, from explaining what exactly 'permissions' are, to a few specific situations when it's a good idea to add the operation to your troubleshooting tool-belt. It's an informative read that helps demystify this much-debated aspect of Mac OS X.
