There is a very simple explanation for why I haven’t been posting: I haven’t done a link roundup in two weeks, and I feel like I need to do that before I can post anything else here. Unfortunately, I also haven’t found the time to go through my RSS feeds and pull out my favorite posts! So I have a conundrum: don’t post until I get my act together, or give up on the link posts from the last two weeks and move forward. I’m sure you know how difficult a decision this is for someone like me. :)

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been.

(Nota bene: I’ve already written this post once. If I seem a little terse here, that’s why.)

I’ve been reading over the comments left on this blog, and it occurs to me that a lot of the disagreement I’m seeing might stem from a misconception about where I’m coming from. I see a lot of bloggers, forum posters, and WOW personalities adopting an attitude of “of course I’m right” or “of course Elitist Jerks/the Big Name Bloggers/the WOW devs are right”, and I’m doing my best to avoid that here. My goal is for Duct Tape to be a place where hypotheses are floated to see if the facts fit. I have no interest in treating what the Big Names say as though it’s holy writ; I want to try things out and see if they work. At the moment, my attention’s on Haste as a desirable Discipline Priest stat, and I do think it’s a valid course to pursue, but if it doesn’t work out, I’m not bound to it. I’ll just move on to the next hypothesis.

An important corollary to this is that the positions I take on this blog are going to change over time. That’s by design. It does nobody any good for me to insist on sticking with an idea after it’s been proven wrong. (But see above; “that’s not what thus-and-such says” or “that’s not the conventional wisdom” doesn’t count as proof!)

The bottom line is this: I’m here to experiment and figure things out. If you’re more interested in Being Right than in figuring out what right is, perhaps this isn’t the place for you.

I’ve shuffled some things around on the server, and hopefully now the old etherjammer.com/wowblog/* links will redirect to ducttape.etherjammer.com/* . Specifically, this should mean that RSS readers using www.etherjammer.com/wowblog/feed should start updating again! If you’re still having trouble, please let me know below.

It turns out that the first two days of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog are things I’ve already done (the WWSGD elevator pitch) or things I already have a habit of doing (my Linkathon list posts). Here, without further ado: my favorite posts from the WOW blogs I read from the last week, in Google Reader order:

• So You Want to Be a WOW Blogger from Aspect of the Hare, by Pike
• Top Secret BRK Project from Big Red Kitty, by Temerity Jane
• Teaching with WOW from Bob’s Casual Huntering WOW Blog
• Your Warlock’s Achievement Is Lacking from Destructive Reach, by Saresa
• Hannelore’s Crystal for Mana Mana from The Egotistical Priest, by Hannelore
• Steps to Leveling Reputation from Escapist Scrawl, by Shawndra
• Mini-pet collecting: is it wrong? from Holy Discipline, by Anea
• Bring the Player, Not the Discipline Priest from Holy Dueg!, by Dueg
• 20 Questions with Nance from The Hunting Lodge, by Brigwyn
• Sometimes, I’m a Bitch from For the Bubbles, by Ambrosyne
• Synergy from Less QQ, More PewPew, by Dan
• Out with the old, and in with the new! from Master’s Call, by Faulsey
• Answering the Bell from Me and My Ghoul, by Grimtorn
• 4 Useful WWS Filters for 3 Drakes from Mend Pet, by Brajana
• Manually Installing Addons: A Beginner’s Guide from No Stock UI
• Sniper Training Revisited from OutDPS!, by Euripides (I love Euripides’s enthusiasm in his titles! He also seems very enthusiastic about post tags.)
• It’s a Hum-Drum Life from Pixelated Executioner, by Pix
• Members Wanted! from pw: bubble, by Renee
• Blog Achievements: 100 Posts from Sideshow and Syrana, by Syrana (Congratulations!)
• A Word with Brigwyn Lee from Slow Wolf, by Klinderas
• Day Dawns from Stabilized Effort Scope, by Rilgon
• 10 Things All Protection Warriors Should Know from Tank Like A Girl, by Kadomi
• I never take off my pajamas. from Temerity Jane, by TJ
• Ten Commandments for All Tanks from Through the Eyes of Death, by Arrens
• Ten Commandments From a Priestess from Warpriestess, by Arcania
• Friday Five: Breaking Out in Song from When Enraged, by Jezriyah
• Story of a Textbook Gquit from World of Matticus, by Matt
• Simpler Times from World of Warcraft, Eh?, by Kelly
• To know, know, know me… from Zannniee’s, by Zannniee (I always have to struggle to get the right number of “n”s in that)

Trivia: I’ve added three WOW blogs to my blogroll since I started writing this list.

If there’s a blog you think I should be reading (especially if it’s yours, and especially especially if we talk on Twitter!), let me know in the comments!

Every other year, Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger runs a mini-workshop on blogging, called 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. This year I’ve decided to participate, for both Duct Tape and Lost in Translation.

Day 1 of 31DBBB is Write an Elevator Pitch: a 30-second/150-word description of what the blog’s about. I was having trouble with this until I ran into a serendipitous error. Last week, I switched the address of this blog from http://www.etherjammer.com/wowblog/ to http://ducttape.etherjammer.com/; the ducttape. subdomain points at the /wowblog/ directory, so I didn’t think there would be any problem. Turns out, though, that some functions in WordPress rely on the address in the URL bar of your browser being correct to work properly; in particular, going to /wowblog/ just doesn’t work anymore – WordPress throws a 404 error! (Going to subpages, like /wowblog/feed/ to pick a random example out of the air, throws an Internal Server Error, which is even more fun.)

This isn’t a shaggy dog story, I promise. See, when you get the 404 error page from /wowblog/, you can click on the “go back to the main page” button at the bottom to get to ducttape., which solves the problem. But for some reason, this unsets the cookie that my What Would Seth Godin Do? plugin uses, and so I started seeing the tag at the top of the blog again.

In the WWSGD tag, as it happens, is an elevator pitch for Duct Tape and a Prayer.

Reproduced here, then, for your reading pleasure: the Elevator Pitch!

Welcome to Duct Tape and a Prayer, a World of Warcraft blog focusing on priests and healing, with occasional tangents into other classes and facets of World of Warcraft. In this place, in the words of Dr. Horrible, the status is not quo; my opinions can, do, and will differ from conventional wisdom, and I’ll do my best to back them up where I can. I welcome comments and discussion, but if you’re the sort of person who starts sentences with “Obviously…” or believes that there’s a One True Way to play the game, you might not be in the right place.

I’m considering a new site icon for this blog. Would you please tell me what you think of this?

In no particular order, my favorite posts from the WOW blogosphere this week. But first, a special mention: my guildie, Dan Howell – otherwise known as BigRedKitty – is retiring from World of Warcraft and WOW blogging to spend more time with his family. Good luck and godspeed, Dan.

Also leaving the WOWblogosphere this week is Omen, from Omen Scourge. Omen, best wishes and good luck getting things back on track.

1. Building a Better Beast-Master Pre-3.1 from Aspect of the Hare, by Pike
2. All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Party from Destructive Reach, by Saresa
3. And They Would All Go Down Together from Egotistical Priest, by Zasp (please be kind and don’t overload their bandwidth this month! ;)
4. Melee Priest from Holy Discipline, by Anea
5. The Value of WOW from Holy Dueg!, by Dueg (if you read one post from this list, make it this one)
6. WOW Podcast List from The Hunting Lodge, by Brigwyn
7. Milking the Silver Hand Economy from Less QQ, More PewPew, by Dan
8. Well, At Least Someone Around Here Has Been Busy from Master’s Call, by Faulsey
9. Achievement Guide: Lovin’ Squirrels and Killin’ Snakes from Mend Pet, by Brajana
10. Twitter Musings from Pixelated Executioner, by Pix
11. It’s A Hum-Drum Time from Rune Tap, by Lyliith (It’s okay to be getting tired of WOW, Lyl, I promise.)
12. Naxxtastic: A Small Guild’s First Attempt from Sideshow and Syrana, by Syrana
13. You’re Marked For Death… By Anyone Around! from Stabilized Effort Scope, by Rilgon
14. Heroics killer in the making? from Tank Like A Girl, by Kadomi
15. The science of relationships from Temerity Jane, by TJ
16. Say Hi to No Stock UI! from World of Matticus, by Matt
17. We Were Pretty Goddamn Stupid from World of Warcraft, Eh?, by Kelly

Anyone else I should be reading? Do I follow your Twitter but not know you have a blog? Leave a comment!

Here are my favorite posts from the last week from the WOW blogs that I read. If there’s an order, I invite you to find it! Also: as of this post I’m including the author’s Twitter link if I know it. If I haven’t linked you, let me know what your Twitter username is so we can connect!

• Meet the Jynx from Girls Don’t Play Games
• Shot Rotations: Why We Don’t Macro Them Anymore from The Hunting Lodge, by Brigwyn
• Heigan Dancing Lessons for Your Pet, Movie Included from Aspect of the Hare, by Pikestaff
• Spirit Beast Phalanx from Big Red Kitty
• The S.O., the WoW, & the Deal from Holy Discipline, by Anea
• The Straw That Broke Dueg’s Back from Holy Dueg!, by Dueg
• Really, Silver Hand? Really? from Less QQ, More PewPew by Daniel
• Achievements: the New Progression from Mend Pet, by Brajana
• Anujaresh: Epilogue / Dreams and Shadows, Part 1 from Pixelated Executioner, by Pix
• Under the Helm: Why We Are Hated from RuneTap, by Lyliith
• Rapid Recuperation is Hard from Stabilized Effort Scope, by Rilgon
• G13 Revisited from Tank Like A Girl, by Kadomi
• Major Tanking Glyphs in 3.1 from The Scourge
• To Sleep, Perchance to Cramp from Temerity Jane, by TJ
• A Healer’s Most Important Skill from World of Matticus, by Matt
• This Comic Has the Space Goat Seal of Approval from World of Warcraft, Eh?, by Cadistra

As always, if you have any recommendations, leave a comment!

I’ve been receiving a number of pissing-contest comments recently. (No, I haven’t approved all of them, or even most of them.) Mostly they take the form of “well, this contradicts what conventional wisdom says I should think, so clearly you are wrong“. Mostly, also, they are from – as Slashdot so elegantly puts it – anonymous cowards.

I use my real name on this blog. All I ask is that if you want to leave a comment, you provide some way to consistently identify yourself; I don’t care if you use “Marilyn Monroe” as long as there’s some consistency between comments. Since I started Duct Tape, I’ve trusted commenters to do this on their own, but it’s clear that there’s a certain segment of the commenting population that I simply can’t trust that way. It sucks, because I know that in order to cut out the people who are doing the wrong thing, I have to put an extra burden on the people who are already doing the right thing, but I hope in the end it makes this a more pleasant place to be.

The bottom line is that I’ve decided to enable comment registration. Basically, you need to register as a user here at Duct Tape before you comment. Accountability goes a long way toward cutting down on comments like “you’re wrong because you just are!” (and didn’t we get over that in the fourth grade, guys? really). Registration should be a quick and easy process, but if you have any trouble with it, drop me a line by email (canthony AT etherjammer.com) or on Twitter (@etherjammer) and I’ll see what I can do.

I just realized that I haven’t posted here since last week. That’s the consequence of not really playing WOW since then, I think. (Now that I have a replacement hard drive for my laptop and a replacement power supply for my desktop, though, I’m mostly back in business.)

While I’m gearing back up, here are my favorite posts from the WOW blogs I read from the last week, roughly in order of the blogs’ titles:

• Miracles Can Happen from Aspect of the Hare
• Spirit Beast Pull-Toy from Big Red Kitty
• Six-Word WOW Stories from Holy Discipline
• Raidiquette: The Lost Art of Not Being an Ass from Holy Dueg!
• My Power Auras Setup from Mend Pet
• I Hope We Have An Exchange Receipt from Pixelated Executioner (and not just because Pix namechecks me!)
• Dispelling the Myth – Mail-Wearing Mages We’re Not! from Stabilized Effort Scope
• Things That Make Kadomi Happy from Tank Like A Girl
• Evolution of Personal Professions from The Scourge
• Polymorph: Memesheep from When Enraged
• 5 Reasons Why the PTR Sucks from World of Matticus

A few special mentions, too:

• Rilgon, of Stabilized Effort Scope (linked above), turned 23 this week. Happy birthday, Rilgon!
• Kelly A., the creator of World of Warcraft, Eh?, posted two caricatures of Dueg, Anea, and her own characters: Stop Doin’ That and Cadistra Do-Right.