Alteil EX 13: Legacy of Darkness

Christmas came early with the release of Alteil's EX 13 expansion. And from what I've seen so far, it looks like Solar Kingdom and Wizard Kingdom seem to be the best picks from this bunch. I still haven't seen the Lawtia cards though, and I'll try to post about those if I see them in play and think they have potential.

Solar Kingdom gets two new level 3 cards that will probably work best with an HK Lapierre deck. Both have AGIs below 2, and while one serves as a tank, the other acts as a reviver.

Wizard Kingdom gets another AGI unit in Leyte, a level 2 card that might work well with Wizard Kingdom AGI decks that seem to be prevalent in Folrart Arena. But I'm more excited about the level 5 card that has the ability to return cards that are HP 0 or lower.

The gowen cards seem kinda meh at this point, but I've been wrong before.

I'm excited to see how these new cards will affect the existing playground and whether new metas will arise.

Below is a preview of the cards I've seen so far.

 

 

 

The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug

Warning: Spoiler Alert

Without giving too much away, here are my thoughts on the second installment of the Hobbit Trilogy

The Good

• The dwarfs' barrel escape is something to watch out for. It is both funny and entertaining.
• Evangeline Lily is officially my favorite elf, dare I say it, my favorite TLOR character. Have a feeling they will kill her off in some heroic fashion in the 3rd installment. Wouldn't mind seeing Lily in more heroine action roles. She could be Kate Beckinsale 2.0. 
• Finally, we see Sauron in action, not just some evil eye gazing at the good guys
• The movie kept my attention the entire time, unlike the first Hobbit movie
• No musical numbers here

The Bad

• Still lots of questions and still leaves you hanging in the end - what would you expect from the second movie in a trilogy?
• I respect Benedict Cumberbatch as an actor and for what he has done with Sherlock Holmes. But giving Smaug a voice, in my opinion, lessened the scariness of the dragon. Perhaps only when Bilbo Baggins was wearing the ring, should the dragon have had a voice, much like the scene with the spiders. Perhaps the 3rd installment will explain why Smaug has been dormant all this time and fill all the answers that will tie this trilogy to the TLOR trilogy. Or I could just read the books...
• Legolas seems to have become more serious in reverse timeline. Wonder why he becomes carefree later on in the series if he doesn't get the girl

The Ugly

• Orcs
• The human water town inhabitants

This sequel is better in my opinion than the first Hobbit movie. Go for it if you're planning on watching in a theater this holiday season.

Windows 7 Installation

The past two days have been tough but the Lord is merciful.

• Both SATA drives failed for some reason. Probably a delayed write failure.
• Primary drive which contained the OS would boot up to the windows logo, then encounter just a black screen
• Secondary drive had no OS
• Both drives were still seen in BIOS
• after enabling S.M.A.R.T. in BIOS, both drives encountered an error "Hard Disk Error"
• This made me suspect that both drives might be failing (highly unlikely but wierd things have happened before)
• Purchased a new HDD
• After much difficulty (perhaps due to old media) Windows 7 was installed in the new HDD
• Hooked up the secondary drive (the one with no OS) to this new primary drive. Both seen in BIOS, but in windows explorer, the secondary drive cannot be seen. Checked "disk management". Secondary drive has a yellow triangle with an exclamation point. Cannot be manipulated (format, partitioned, etc). Installed EaseUS recovery software and was able to get some files off the HDD. Would have gotten more out if not for the 2 GB limit (encouraging the user to upgrade). Just recovered the important files. Just for the record, tried several other recovery software like Pandora, Puran, etc. but none of these were helpful in this scenario. Wish there was better software than EaseUS since that 2 GB restriction is a difficulty if you have HDD sizes in the hundred GB range
• Thankfully, the old primary HDD was seen when hooked up as a secondary drive. Volumes seemed to be intact. Running chkdsk on each drive as of this writing. Will update this post if there are interesting developments. 

Update:

• The computer has been locking up more frequently since the hard drive replacement. CPU usage seems to spike during these times and applications show a NOT RESPONDING tag.
• Experienced several BSODs, and one was BAD POOL CALLER. Might be related to the Windows updates that the computer was installing automatically so I disabled these
• Probably a MOBO, PROC, MEMORY issue, so I might as well look into the possibility of replacing all these three plus the power supply, because as a unit, these devices have been together for about 5 years now. It has been a good run, but now, my MOBO may be damaging my drives.
• Just thankful that data has been recovered and transferred to other storage media. Will update this post if the MOBO et al replacement was a success and all the troubleshooting issues have been cleared.

Update 12/29/2013:

•  Replaced the MOBO, and with that, had to replace the PROCESSOR, RAM, POWER SUPPLY, and even DVD drive since all of my previous drives were IDE based and the new mother boards only support SATA devices. Even had to replace memory because my old one was DDR2 and the new board requires DDR3.
• PROC is a 3.4 GHz AMD A4-5300 APU with Radeon HD 7480D
• Board is an MSi FM2-A55M-E33
• RAM is 4GB
• Windows detected most devices except the sound and the built-in NIC (Ethernet / LAN port). Windows installed generic sound drivers for the audio but I couldn't hear anything from my speakers. Tried updating all drivers with the DVD that came with the MOBO. Started with chipset, then progressed from video, to audio, then finally LAN. Catalyst Control Center was giving all sorts of errors from explorer has stopped working to Load MMdriver has stopped working. (Perhaps because I've updated the chipset drivers AFTER installing a bunch of other software - VLC Player, photo editing, etc.) But at least I got the sound driver installed in the process and I finally heard the Windows chime when logging in. So after some research, I decided to uninstall Catalyst Control Center. Surprisingly, the sound still works even after uninstalling, but then there was this unplugged - plugged annoyance. Followed this YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCQOTBXFznw to change the settings of Realtek Audio controls. No more annoying pop-ups.

The Flash is a guest on Arrow

Spoiler Alert: Read at your own risk

Well, it is still unsure if Barry Allen will done the red suit, but a young version of him is a CSI helping out Oliver's team on the latest episode of Arrow.

I'm not sure if this young Allen already has super powers. He always seems to be delayed for meetings, but "miraculously" gets there in time. There was even one point in the show when it appeared like it would be his origin story. He was in a room with Felicity and there was a thunderstorm outside the building while he was going through some chemicals stacked on a shelf. (And is it me, or is Felicity getting hotter and hotter with each episode. She's even better looking than Canary in this one. Rawr!) This was a ticklish treat for die hard DC comic fans, but alas, it wasn't going to be.

Allen also talks about how his mother was murdered by some "blur" and that when he was chasing the criminal, he somehow found himself 20 blocks away. That might mean that he already has super speed, and might even be the "criminal" - accidentally killing his own mom, while his dad takes the fall for him. Mere speculation at this point, and fans (including myself) will just have to see how this two-parter (perhaps more) will turn out.

Have always been a Flash fan, including the TV series during the 90s. Wish they would revive the series, if in case Arrow doesn't stay on too long. But from the way the stories for this season have been written, I'm hooked. (From Black Canary to Ra's al Ghul, hope they can maintain the interest).

Still, being captured at the last part of the show tells me that this young Allen probably still doesn't have powers. Contrast that with kid flash's first appearance on Smallville. They kind of messed with the timeline considering that kid flash in a way is Barry's nephew, or was it grand nephew. Of course, this Arrow universe could simply be an alternate one.

Stay tuned for the next episode and find out if there will be a Green Arrow Flash tag team / fight scene.

Thanks to the producers and directors of Arrow for this holiday treat!