Excerpt:

collision detection: A bioterror attack in World of Warcraft
Dig this: An Ebola-like epidemic is raging in World of Warcraft, the enormously popular online game — and it’s killing players left and right. The trouble began when Blizzard, the company that runs World of Warcraft, introduced a new opponent called Hakkar, the “god of blood”. When you fight him, as a defense he infects you with something called “Corrupted Blood”, which shaves off your hit points so rapidly that your character dies very quickly. Problem is, the Blood is infectious — get close enough to another player and you’ll pass on the disease.

I discovered the 9rules site via Creating Passionate Users. If you’re looking for a way to find the creme de la creme of weblogs, this is certainly a really good place to start. My Newsgator/Feeddemon article count just grew a bit. :)

Excerpt from the ‘About’ page:

9rules network
Overview
About the 9rules Network

The 9rules Network is about building a community of high quality websites as well as a community of highly discerning readers. Content is king and looking good helps. We add sites that meet these rigorous standards and leave bribe money under our keyboards.

Many people hear the word “weblog” and go running to Google to find weblogs on their favorite topics, but weeding through the crap to find the cream is a daunting task. Fortunately there are hundreds of thousands of great websites and weblogs that provide quality content, and our goal is to connect hungry readers with passionate writers so that they can live in harmony.

The 9rules Network is about great content, and if any website/weblog/wiki produces that on a regular basis then who are we to filter them out. Passionate writers don’t need to be tied down to vernacular. Great weblog. Great website. We don’t discriminate.
It’s For Everyone Readers and writers unite

The network is here for both experienced writers and bloggers, for newer authors trying to gain a foothold, and for the millions of readers who flock to sites in our network everyday. Site authors can join the network and boost their audience, newer authors can get some help from more experienced members, and web users now have a place to find great content on the web. 9rules is for everyone.

Excerpt:

The Week Magazine
The evolution of the Big Easy
Its French Quarter is actually Spanish, many of its streets are below sea level, and many of its former public officials and judges are in jail. How did New Orleans become the nation’s most eccentric city?
9/16/2005

Why was the city built below sea level?
Founded in a marsh in 1718, Nouvelle-Orl�ans has always been a victim of its location. The French chose the site, on a crescent of soggy land extending into the Mississippi River, because it was the last landing place before the river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico; they envisioned it as a booming port serving fur trappers and other traders, and a fitting capital for France’s burgeoning North American empire. But in its first four years of existence, the settlement was leveled four times by hurricanes. Engineers begged the French commander, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, to relocate above the swamp, calling it a place “where God never intended a city to be built” and where “only the madness of commercial lust could ever have tempted men to occupy.” But de Bienville refused, unwilling to forsake its strategic location.

This looks entirely too awesome! I’ve been toying with Gallery2, and obviously already have WordPress going. The combination of the two will be a lot of fun, assuming setting it up isn’t too great a headache. :)

WordPress Gallery2 – WPG2 Main Page
WPG2 is a WordPress Plug-in that embeds Gallery2 within WordPress to share photos, videos and any other Gallery2 content seamlessly into the WordPress Sidebar and Blog entries. The current version of WPG2 is RC2, released on August 22nd, 2005.

Have I mentioned lately how awesome the Creating Passionate Users blog is, in particular how much I agree with their teaching/learning methodologies? They rock, man.

Excerpt:

Creating Passionate Users: Foo Camp: ad-hoc learning
A lot of adult learning environments (including colleges) do have scenarios in which the students/learners are asked to help evolve the course itself… including taking turns presenting some of the material, but these kinds of activities are the exception, when they should be a key component. I’ve argued with instructors for years over this–as they claim, “Students didn’t come here to be taught by other students who don’t know anything–they came here to get the facts from ME, the expert.”

Oh really? If you drill down, you’d find that most of the students/learners are there to learn. They may have been conditioned through tradition that this means the student listens (and does the occasional “lab exercise”) while the expert dispenses facts and knowledge, but that doesn’t mean it’s truly what most learners want. They want to learn.

And surprisingly little real, deep learning comes from sitting in a chair listening. Think about it… you often learn best (or at least, most memorably) when you’re suddenly thrown in the deep end of a situation where you must figure something out in order to keep going or fix a problem. We learn from doing, and we learn from interacting and discussing with others.

But we often learn best that which we have to teach.
It’s only when you have to explain something to someone else that you really find out how little you understand. And that realization motivates you and points to the right direction for getting the rest of the story.