Star Trek Online Login Bug Fix

Recently Star Trek Online went Free to Play and there was a major overhaul in how it logs in now that Cryptic is under Perfect World. When I tried to log in today there was a new option to log in using a Perfect World account or to use a Cryptic account. Well.. I tried to click the circle next to Cryptic but it wouldn’t work. AT ALL. No amount of trying made it work. Tried reinstalling… nada. An hour later a friend of mine sent me a link to a post on the official Star Trek Online forums.

The problem is that the launcher is using Internet Explorer with scripts. If you’re like me and have IE locked down as much as possible (only for those stupid enough to use it on my computer, I prefer Firefox) then that is why. You need to enable javascript using the following steps:

1. Open IE (7/8/9).
2. Tools -> Internet Options
3. Click “Security” tab.
4. Click “Trusted Sites”. (The Green Checkmark icon)
5. Click “Sites” button.
6. Temporarily uncheck the “Require server verification” box.
7. Type http://launcher.startrekonline.com into the “Add this website to the zone” field and click “Add”.
8. Type http://launcher.champions-online.com into the “Add this website to the zone” field and click “Add”.
9. (If you desire, you can recheck the “server verification” box now!)
10. Click the “Close” button to close the Trusted Sites window.
11. Click “OK” to close the IE Options Window.
12. Close all instances of IE.
13. Close all launcher instances and then restart any of our launchers.

Original post by ZeroniusRex

 

I’m reposting this information because I wasn’t able to even get to the forums my account stuff was so screwed up.

Review: Baby Banana Brush

Product: Baby Banana Brush
Purchased at: Babies R’ Us

After I found out I was pregnant with my first daughter I sat at my computer scouring the Babies R’ Us website for things to put on my baby registry. One of the things I stumbled upon was this Baby Banana Brush. It had a lot of very positive reviews from parents saying how much their child loved to use this as a teething aid and how much they loved it. I put it on my registry and went about my business.

Fast forward in time. My daughter was around three or four months old and I was thinking she might have started teething. She was chewing on stuff and drooling excessively, all classic signs. I dig through all the new baby stuff and pull this out hoping she’ll like chewing on it like the rest of the reviewers said their kids did. Well, she showed little to no interest in it. I think she held onto it a bit, but nothing much else. I sighed and put it with the rest of her toiletries she still had no use for… like her hairbrush.

Now my little angle is 9 months old and I feel like I need to go get a couple more of these. Around eight and a half months I came across her banana brush again, washed it off, and it’s been a struggle to keep up with it ever since. To say she loves it is putting it mildly. It pleases me to no end that it was NOT a wasted purchase. The first time I had tried to give it to her was just too early. She wasn’t even teething back then, doesn’t even have her first tooth yet. Now that she is proper teething she is near inseparable from it.

What is so great about this?

For starters, unlike a lot of other teethers I’ve found, this one she can comfortably hold in her hand. It’s not big and bulky. The curved design fits prefect in her hand, with just enough girth for her to get a good grip without being either too large or small. She will on occasion turn it wrong end up to nom on the studded bottom, but she mostly seems to like the feel of the bristles. Traditional teethers put most of the ‘chewing’ focus on the front part of the mouth, yet for months now my daughter is always shoving things towards the back of her mouth where her molars will be. I’m not sure if that’s just instinct or if that’s where her pain is. In any case, with the Baby Banana Brush she is able to move the brush head back to where she wants it the most, not forced to stay towards the front of the mouth.

Some parents might be concerned with the possibility of choking since there is no guard to prevent it from going farther back in the throat. The designers gave the Banana Brush it’s curve so that it’s less likely to go down the throat. I’ve watched my daughter with it, and a few times she’s gotten it a bit farther back than she wanted, but she’s always handled it with ease and there have never been any real issues with it. The manufacture does say the the Original Banana Brush is for 12 months or older. For any child under that they do make a specific Teething version that has handles that not only make it easier for younger babies but also act as a choking guard.

My hope is that my little girl will continue to love her Banana Brush and it will make it easier for me to get her in the habit of brushing her teeth with little to no fuss. Time will tell.

All in all I highly recommend this product to any parent. I might be trying out the Teething version soon.

Mom & Baby Product Reviews

Wow.. I haven’t posted in almost a year. Sheesh. A lot has happened since then. I’ve had my baby and I’m thoroughly enjoying my new roll as Stay-At-Home Mom. It’s a tough job, but for once my life feels like it has a real purpose. That being said I feel the need to start posting some reviews of things that pertain to my new job. These will be things for both me and my baby that I feel the need to review because I honestly think that they have made my life easier… or harder. If I get positive feedback from these reviews I might start doing a lot of them, maybe even making a whole new blog for them that is themed completely around those things. For now I’m going to simply post them all here as this blog is for anything that I feel like posting.

Anyone have any requests? Are you looking for specific product reviews or possibly looking for something to help you with a certain area in your mommy/baby life? For now I’m going to just post what I feel strongly about.

Upcoming reviews: Baby Banana Brush, Mrs. Smith’s Bags, WubbaNub, Robeez, Wrapsody Breeze, and more.

Basic Ways to Protect Yourself Online

Recently one of my relatives asked me how to get their personal information removed from Google. I had to inform them that you pretty much can’t. Google isn’t the culprit, but the website where you have listed your information (aka Facebook & others). What most people don’t realize is that Google is only collecting publicly available information. It’s not datamining private information. Most people think of Google as being like the phone book where you can contact the phone company to be unlisted. This is actually a wrong comparison. The phone company is providing the service of a phone number and listing those who are using their service. Google isn’t providing the service (unless you’re using your Google Account/Profile). The comparison I used was that of a newspaper who reports a publicly listed police report with a person’s name and city of residence. At that point, anyone can take that name/city and use the phonebook to find their address and phone number. You don’t complain to the newspaper (well, most of the time) because the information is publicly available. It’s up to that person to contact the phone company and tell them to be ‘unlisted’. Because remember, while you might complain to Google, there are many other search engines out there, some big some small, and all have access to public information that’s on the net.

The same applies to the internet and website profiles. Probably 90% of websites with profiles allow those profiles to be listed in Google and other search engines by default. Almost all of them have options to be ‘unlisted’, but you have to make that setting change yourself. If that site does NOT have an option to be ‘unlisted’, then immediately remove your information, delete your account and don’t use that site.

The burden of responsibility falls on YOU the user.

Yes, it sounds like it would be a lot of work, but only at first if you haven’t been following ‘safe surfing’ practices. After that, it’s only a matter of following some simple rules. Here are the ones that I follow:

New Silver Phoenix Designs

Many many moons ago, I had created a small side business called Silver Phoenix Designs that was for small web design. Obviously it never took off and when I lost my webspace I let it fall into obscurity, only dragging out the name when I ventured into AMV creating and a few other things. Since then I haven’t used it at all… until now.

After hearing how many people would like to buy it, I’ve made a few things over on CafePress under the store name Silver Phoenix Designs. Right now it’s just a basic store with a few t-shirts, buttons, a magnet and a bumper sticker. I’ve had requests for more bumper stickers but sadly the basic store only lets you have one version of any type of product. If folks start buying stuff I’ll consider upgrading to a premium store and adding more things (like a ‘grandchild’ version of the bumper sticker I’ve had requests for).

LibDataBroker Addons for World of Warcraft

A friend of mine asked me what addons I was using to clean up my minimap. I gave her the short answer quickly, but thought I might as well write an article about everything because 140 characters was not hardly enough. Below I’ll explain what LDB is, why I use it, and how to get started with it.

First off, what is LibDataBroker (LDB)? I think the best way to describe it to non-techies is a type of RSS feed for addons. In RSS you have two things: RSS Readers and RSS feeds. The readers are called “LDB Displays” and are either bar addons like Titan/Fubar or can be modular based ones that scatter around your screen as you wish. The feeds are addons that provide information for the displays to.. well.. display. Addons such as Atlas, Auctioneer, Gatherer, IceHud, Pitbull, ArkInventory (just to name a few) include LDB feeds, mostly to include icons on the bar that open their configuration panels, though so do more. Other addons have separate plugins available and they typically have more functionality than simply opening a configuration panel. Fishing Buddy, Deadly Boss Mods are just two I can think of off hand. Then you have LDB only addons that require you to have a LDB Display or you can’t even use it. Plugins like Auditor, WhisperWhisper, Broker_Portals, and lots more.

Addons Galore

Because I can’t simply leave well enough alone, I’ve found myself constantly adding to my User Interface (UI) since my last post. First, here is a screenshot of my UI. ((Out of party, I know)) There is actually a hidden second bar at the top (which I forgot to label as Chocolate Bar) where I keep the broker plugins for things like all of Auctioneer, Gatherer, IceHud, Pitbull. Things that are for configuration menus but don’t give me actual information. Deadly Boss Mods has for some odd reason stopped showing up on Broker and went back to my minimap and I’m not sure why. EDIT: I figured out why. When DBM last updated I deleted all the DMB folders, and forgot that the LDB addon was separate.

Here is the full list of Addons I am currently running. Feel free to ask questions about them. I might go into further detail about specific addons later.

• WoWHead Client – Because I feel like contributing to the site.
• Addon Control Panel – Not sure if I’m going to keep this.
• Ara Broker Guild Friends – Simple and easy to use.
• Ara Broker Tradeskills – Best broker professions addon I’ve found.
• Archy – Can’t do Archeology without it.
• ArkInventory – Can’t play WoW without this. Inventory replacement addon. I could probably do an entire article just on this. Also comes with a bunch of broker plugins: Currency, Money, Bags, Item Tracker, Mounts, and Pets (maybe a few others). You can also hotkey summoning mounts/pets.
• Atlas – Useful at times, but not sure if I’m going to keep it. Might turn it off unless I go into an instance.
• Auctioneer Advanced – Use it too much.
• Auditor – Best addon I’ve found to keep track of your expenses.
• Broker Portals – Works good for easy access to thinks like Hearthstone and other teleport functions.
• Chocolate Bar – LibDataBroker display addon.
• Deadly Boss Mods – If you do instances or raids this is almost mandatory.
• DoTimer – Highly customizable to monitor your DoTs and HoTs, as well as cooldowns and buffs.
• Factionizer – Expands your reputation pane, includes telling you what dailies you can do and how long it will take you to get your rep up. Still being updated for Cata changes though.
• Fishing Buddy – Adds click to fish, easy swapping to fishing gear and more.
• Fishing Buddy Broker – LDB plugin for Fishing Buddy to keep your minimap clean.
• Fishing Buddy Outfit Display Frame – (optional) Adds an outfit frame to tell it what your fishing gear is. You can use the default Equp Manager or Outfitter instead. I prefer this.
• Gatherer – Tracks gathering nodes for miners and herbalist, as well as other things.
• Gryphons Remover – Simple addon to remove the gryphon artwork. If you have an action bar mod this probably isn’t needed.
• IceHUD – Adds player, target, and pet health/mana bars in the center of the screen around your avatar.  Added this because I kept not noticing when I was dying in instances. Might remove it once I tweek Pitbull some more.
• Magic Runes – For my Death Knight. Better Rune, Runic Power, and disease tracking.
• Move Anything – So I could move the Tol Barad timer and breath/fatigue bars. Litterally allows you to move any of the default Blizzard UI elements around.
• Omen Threat Meter – Monitors the threat of you and your party. Tanks know when to step things up, DPS knows when to tone down so not to pull aggro.
• PitBull v4 – Total Unit Frame replacement. Highly customizable, but does take a bit to really get it to look how you want. Sadly right now the ‘configuration’ modes are broke so if you’re not picky like me it could be very frustrating. If you want your frames to look a certain way, THIS is the addon to do it. Simple workaround is to actually be in a party/raid to tweek those frames (suggest getting pet classes to help you or you won’t get party pet frames to work right).
• Postal – Adds functionality to your mailbox like mass open, easy delete, addressbook, auto fill (better than Blizz’s dropdown box), etc.
• Prat v3 – Chat addon. Adds a TON of features like shortening channel names, coloring RealID names, Alt/Main linking, etc.
• ShuckIt – Broker plugin that shows when you have a ‘container’ to loot and adds a macro for easy opening.
• Skillet – Tradeskill frame replacement. Adds more room, a queue, shopping list, and more.
• Tidy Plates – Changes the ‘name plates’ you can get to appear over the heads of mobs/players.
• TipTac – Tooltip customization addon.
• TomTom – Waypoint addon. I only needed this to help me find all the Lunar Festival elders. Might keep it for Archeology but other than that don’t really have a need for it anymore.
• Volumizer – Broker plugin that adds easy access volume control.
• WhisperWhisper – Broker plugin that shows you who last whispered you, and keeps a record of incoming/outgoing conversations. Preserves across sessions and characters. Also works with RealID. Very basic. If you’re looking for more powerful whisper display I suggest WIM.

WoW Cataclysm Addons

So yes, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is out and I’m back playing again. My husband Quutar peordered the Collectors Edition for me so I’d have a matched set. So now I have CEs of WoW and all it’s expansions. Went ahead and got a two month timecard to see if I’ll stick around with it. I’m not the only one of my friends who is coming back after a long absence and many have once again asked me about Addons and Mods for WoW.

To start off with, the new default User Interface (UI) of WoW is amazing. Unless you have specific needs, you really don’t need to mod much of anything anymore. I suggest to everyone to first play with a clean, non-addon UI for a bit before going Addon crazy. Find out what you simply just can NOT live without, and go from there.

Before I go into a list of Addons you might want to try, I’m first going to tell you a few addons you need to get rid of and why.

• TomTom – Blizzard had pretty much included this in it’s default UI. It’s even tied into the new quest system to show you where your quest objectives are. I actually like this better because it’s more of a general area and still makes things fun for me, rather than exact coordinates which make the game pretty boring if you ask me.
• Lightheaded – Again, Blizzard has pretty much included this into the default UI. The new quest log and quest tracker are utterly amazing. Every quest has been reworded to include more details about where you should be looking and for what, tied in with the map to show you entire areas that glow where the objectives can be found. Since I started playing again two weeks ago, I’ve only had to look up a quest ONCE and it was because I was being a dumbass and not looking -behind- me, not to mention being patient for the quest item to respawn on the ground.
• Any Quest Tracker replacement – Absolutely do NOT get any quest tracker replacement addon. The default tracker does things that addons can screw up: it shows the item you need to use with a clickable button so you don’t have to go searching in your bags; occasionally it will auto popup with a new quest either from killing a mob or reaching a certain area in an instance; it will auto update to allow you to turn in a completed quest and pick up the next leg in the quest chain without going back to the quest giver (only on certain quest, mostly in instances).
• Any Map replacement – The new map is sexy. Period. The big map now includes your quest log and tracker, shows your objectives on the map including the highlighted areas for said quest. You can now also shrink the map to see a movable area map that doesn’t completely obscure your UI. The ONLY type of map addons you might consider are minimap tweeks like “SexyMap” that simply only change the frame.

That covers the Addons to stay away from. Did I mention that most if not all of the above addon types are huge and lag inducing? Now let’s get into the Addons you might want to look at.

Star Trek Online and Subspace Radio

I know I haven’t posed in forever, but I had pretty much stopped trying out new iPhone Apps and quit playing World of Warcraft so I really haven’t had much to say.

My husband Quutar started playing Star Trek Online (STO), and when Steam had a sale on it a few months ago and he gave it to me as a gift. I’ve been playing it ever since. While yes, it has a way still to go, the game I find very fun and am looking forward to whatever Cryptic has in store for it. So far I have one Federation character of each class: Engineer, Science, and Tactical. Both my Eng and Sci are up to Lieutenant Commander, but my Tactician is only an Ensign. While I enjoy my Science character, I have to admit I like my Engineer the most. Like a lot of people I endure ground combat when I can’t do space combat. It’s not that it’s bad, I just don’t enjoy it as much.

Not only did Quutar get me to start playing STO, but told me about  Subspace Radio, a player run streaming radio station for the Star Trek audience. He had been listening to it for awhile and the station manager had been trying to get him to be a DJ, which he said, “No, but I have a geek wife!” After talking with the station manager and thinking about it for a good long while, I went ahead and said yes. My first show, the Voyage Through Sound, will air live on Tue, May 4 at 19:00 GMT (3pm EDT) till 22:00 GMT (6pm EDT). It’s an incharacter show with my Science character Lethann Aeda, a trill female who’s mission is to explore the uncharted areas of the galaxy and really enjoys Earth music from the late 20th – early 21st centuries. After organizing and re-organizing my playlist for the show numerous times, I hope there are plenty of people listening. We’ll see how it all goes.

WoW Addon Updates 4/19

Addons updated since April 6, 2009:

 

Note: Due to the release of the 3.1 patch, this list is very extensive. I’ve sorted it somewhat alphabetically, but due to how large the list is did not denote which addons I do not use so be careful if you are picking up new addons that they do not overlap.