Blizzard has now opened the Opt-In for the Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Beta. You just need to go to your account management screen and choose “Wrath of the Lich King Beta Opt-In” option in the bottom of the page.

Opting in doesn’t mean you are going to be able to play the beta, but you will be added to a list of potential beta testers. After that you just need to wait until Blizzard releases the beta.

Billy Mitchell of Hollywood, Florida, has finally reached the end of the game without loosing a single life. wow. That’s 256 levels of dots and ghosts and dots and some fruit and did I mention dots? It took him 6 hours of boredom but he did it. Woohoo

Read Wired article here.

I would bet that he is now trying to do the same for Ms. Pacman. Go go Billy!!!

Apple just released Mac OS X 10.5.4. This new version brings only bug fixes and minor changes. No awesomeness here but a good update for Mac users. 

10.5.4 Fix List:

General

• Includes recent Apple security updates.
• Resolves an issue with saving and reopening Adobe Creative Suite 3 files on a remote server.
• Includes additional RAW image support for several cameras.
• Addresses an issue that may result in a partially installed X11 application.
• Improves L2TP VPN client reliability.

AirPort

• Addresses AirPort reliability issues with 5GHz networks.
• Addresses AirPort issues that may result in slower performance in Logic Studio or MainStage.

iCal

• Improves overall iCal reliability for meeting requests, cancellation notices, delegation, and syncing with iPhone.
• Resolves an issue that prevents deleting an iCal event without notifying the creator.
• Addresses an issue in which events in all calendars affect availability. A checkbox now enables information-only calendars to be transparent from free/busy lookups.
• Resolves a UI issue preventing delegated calendars from showing up as a separate window.
• Addresses an issue with copying and pasting attendees from one event to another.
• Resolves an issue in which iCal may not delete events after a specified time interval, even when set to do so in iCal preferences.
• Addresses an issue in which To Dos cannot be marked private.

Safari

• Addresses a potential performance issue when loading secure web pages.
• Resolves issues that may be encountered when accessing secure web pages with client certificates that reside on a smart card.

Spaces and Exposé

• Addresses an issue in which switching from a space with a Finder window keeps the Finder as the active application instead of the application residing in the destination space.
• Fixes an issue in which dragging an application from the list of application assignments in Spaces System Preferences does not assign the application to the desired space.
• Resolves an Exposé issue that may result in only a subset of windows being shown.

Source: Trusted Reviews

“Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is a massively-multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) based on the world and works of acclaimed author Robert E. Howard.  In Age of Conan, players enter Hyboria with thousands of their friends and enemies to live, fight, and explore the dark and brutal world of King Conan. “ 

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is about to be opened to the mere mortals that didn’t have the chance to pre-order it. People that pre-ordered it had the chance to start playing earlier and also had a nice extra added to their account, the most popular being a nice mount.

Tomorrow, the 23th will be the official release of the game. Some people have already started playing it and they say it’s simply fabulous. One of the greatest features in this game is the ability characters have to do finishing moves like cutting heads out

It is a very good competitor to World of Warcraft. More than 1 million people have pre-ordered the game. Let’s see if it meets the expectations

You can visit the official homepage here: http://www.ageofconan.com/

Quick SQL tip that I find useful. If you want just the date part of a datetime value, the following neat expression yields it:

SELECT DATEADD(d, 0, DATEDIFF(d, 0, datetime_column))

This is useful for comparing dates. Alternative approaches include casting to string, and comparing the date parts (day, month, year) separately. The context determines which is most appropriate.

Gently provided by SK.