How do you curse other players worlds as a Gravelord Servant? How to PVP as a Gravelord Servant? Why does it take so long to initiate PvP as a Gravelord Servant? What are the benefits of joining the Gravelord Servant covenant? Do other players see a Gravelord Servant summoning sign? Why don’t I see a sign after using an Eye of Death as a Gravelord Servant? How do I join the Gravelord Servants? How do I get Eye of Death items?

Upon initial reading about this covenant, I was pretty excited – it sounded like this would be a fun way to initiate PVP while maintaining the home advantage of using estus flasks. However, you will likely come to see below that the Gravelord Servant Covenant is not an ideal choice.

How do I start PVP and/or curse others as a Gravelord Servant?

In order to PVP, you will need to first join the Gravelord Servant Covenant (see below). Once you are a servant, you will need to be a human. Some websites claim you need to be in an area where you have not defeated the boss, but I found this was not the case — I used the Eye of Death in the Depths long after killing the Gaping Dragon.

Effects of Using the Eye Of Death

When you meet the above criteria, you will be able to use the Eye of Death item. Once used, you will see a cool smoky black aura around your character. This indicates you have cursed the worlds of 3 other players (note–this is the advertised effect, though it may not be working properly, even in the new 1.05 patch in 2012).

What happens to a player cursed by a Gravelord Servant using an Eye of Death?

Those cursed players now have extra, stronger “black phantom” enemies appear in their world. For example instead of one Black Knight, there will be two, and one will be extra strong. I have read that if one of the players you have cursed dies in their world, you will receive half of their souls (and they will only be able to regain half when they retrieve their bloodstain). I have not seen this happen however.

Also of note is that these extra black phantom mobs DO drop items, so I believe that some players actually want to be cursed and use this to farm items and souls more quickly–in which case they would not come to your world and fight you to end the curse.

Here is a video that shows the more powerful black phantom mobs (see the reddish looking glow around one of the black knights):

Do cursed players see any sign in their world that they can use to invade you?

Yes, a player cursed by a Gravelord Servant will see a sign similar to a summoning sign. It will be white with black smoke and will say “Touch the Sign of the Gravelord Servant”. The cursed players can use this to come into your world and fight you. The sign will appear in their world where you used the eye of death, just like other signs (note that the Gravelord Servant who used the Eye of Death does not see any sign or marking, however).

It also appears that other players may see your sign without being cursed at all. The extra powerful black phantom (BP) enemies may not have appeared in their world at all. I have seen been on the receiving end of this and also seen reports on forums of this being the case.

Below is a video that shows the extra Black Phantom (BP) enemies and at 50 seconds in, you can see the Gravelord Sign (white, with black smoke) on the ground:

Where do I get the Eye of Death items?

There are several locations where you can pick up or purchase about 9 of these items without doing any PvP. 3 are located in the Catacombs, 3 are located in the Tomb of Giants, and 3 can be purchased from Patches after defeating Gravelord Nito (back in Firelink Shrine). See the Dark Souls wiki for here for details on finding these.

The best way to get Eyes of Death is to farm them from the cursed frogs found in the lower parts of the depths. After patch 1.05, they now drop quite regularly. I would recommend using the Covetous Gold Serpent Ring and a few humanity, then farming them. You can run a circle through the Depths and farm Humanity from the rats and Eyes of Death from the frogs at the same time. You should get 1-2 of each (at least) on each run.

Why does it take so long to PVP as a Gravelord Servant? / Why doesn’t anything happen when I use an Eye of Death? / Why doesn’t anyone invade me as a Gravelord Servant?

Very good questions. Unfortunately PVP for Gravelord Servants is extremely slow or completely broken. There are a number of possible reasons, all of which likely contribute to this problem. People have reported (and I have also experienced this to be true) that you will only get a couple of PvP fights per hour as a Gravelord Servant. Obviously this would be extremely boring, so it is not a very popular covenant. Here are some possible reasons for this:

• Server issues that were never fixed — possibly you are not even successfully cursing anyone at all when using the Eye of Death.
• Some players may want to be cursed, and thus not fight you, because it speeds up farming
• Some players may not want to PvP at all, and also not understand that the extra powerful enemies in their world are related to you cursing them.
• Players may not understand how to use your Gravelord Sign that appears in their world.
• Players who are cursed by you may just give up and quit, or possibly restart their game to remove the curse.

The result is that you will be spending a LOT of time waiting to fight people, and you may not even be cursing anyone successfully–there’s no way to know what is happening in other player’s games. I would instead suggest joining just to get the Gravelord Sword and the 2 miracles (farm the cursed frogs in the depths to get 10 eye of death for the upgraded miracle). Then join another covenant that is better for PvP.

What do I get by joining the Gravelord Servant Covenant?

You get the powerful Gravelord Sword, which is upgraded with Demon Titanite. Using your strong thrust attack, this often inflicts toxic status on enemies. You also get the Gravelord Sword Dance miracle, which is an area attack that makes ghostly red swords pop out of the ground and deal damage. After turning in 10 Eye of Deaths to Gravelord Nito, you will be given the Gravelord Greatsword Dance miracle, which is a stronger version. Note that these miracles have no stat requirements to use! Using different talismans, you can make the damage scale of either Intelligence or Faith. These spells do look pretty impressive, but as with most of the area of effect spells, they take a very long time to cast and are not very effective in PvP.

How do I join the Gravelord Servant Covenant?

You will need to have at least 1 Eye of Death in your inventory. See the Dark Souls wiki for here for details on finding these. Then, go to the Catacombs to where the Titanite Demon (also called Prowling Demon) is, in the long hallway near the blacksmith / spiked wheel skeletons. You will see an open coffin in this hallway on the left, and when you approach, you will be able to lay down in the coffin. Wait about 30 seconds to 1 minute, and you will be transported to Nito (who will not be hostile). There, you can join the covenant–very easy way to get a powerful sword.

Note that you MUST join the covenant before killing Gravelord Nito in the Tomb of Giants. Also note that you can’t turn in any more Eyes of Death after killing him, so make sure you get the second miracle before proceeding on. Keep in mind that once you get to the end of the game, you wont be able to switch back and forth between this covenant like you can with most other covenants.

What happens in a PVP fight with a Gravelord Servant?

From the perspective of the Gravelord Servant, you will get a message that a Spirit of Vengeance has invaded your world. Note that they may not appear at the place where you used your Eye of Death, especially if you have been moving around different locations in your world. Below is a video of a Gravelord Servant being invaded by a player they cursed:

And below is a video from the perspective of another, non-Gravelord Servant player, who was cursed and decided to fight the Gravelord Servant. Note that here the player who was cursed won, and received humanity and an eye of death, as well as a small number of souls. After successfully defeating the Gravelord, they received the message “Disasters are gone after the defeat of the Gravelord Servant”

Conclusion & Recommendations / Strategies:

As mentioned above, it appears the Gravelord Servant Covenant is one step away from being completely broken and pointless. This is current as of the Dark Souls 1.05 patch in 2012, and it does not appear it will ever be changed.

I’d recommend just joining the covenant, getting the Gravelord Sword and 2 miracles, then joining another covenant. Don’t waste time trying to PvP as a Gravelord because you will probably be waiting 30 minutes to an hour before seeing any sort of action. I have tested this at a number of locations and levels and this has been what other people around the internet have also reported.

If you really want to try to PvP as a Gravelord, I’d suggest using your Eye of Death in the main PvP locations: Anor Londo: around where Ornstein and Smough were, Darkroot Garden: in the forest (through the door with the Crest of Artorias, use the eye at the bottom of those stairs), and in the Kiln of the First Flame: right after walking down the white/foggy stairs (this is where most people PvP and farm). Good luck and prepare to wait a long time!

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Using a Homeward Bone will remove the Eye of Death aura from you. Most likely this means your curse of other people’s worlds has ended and you will never be invaded by them. You would need to use another Eye of Death, which means this is a bad covenant to use while you try to farm.
• If the Gravelord Servant dies or disconnects from their game, any players who they had cursed will receive a message similar to “Disasters have been removed” and their world will return to normal without needing to fight.

Feel free to leave a comment with any new information or experiences with the Gravelord Covenant!

Homedics NMS-350 Neck and Shoulder Massager - Click to View on Amazon.com

Exclusive Review from A Real User of the Homedics NMS-350 (Daydull.com)

After one too many mornings and nights of neck pain, caused by long hours at a computer desk (or the occassional all-night gaming/working session), I set out to research and find a good value, effective neck massager. I was not sure how much it would help so my main consideration was a cost effective, but still high performance product.

As with all Daydull reviews, all reviews are about products I have purchased myself and have used fully in the same way any buyer would hope to use the item. I do not review hundreds of products and crank out reviews — this is a product I have used for weeks and know the ins and outs of.

Performance

The NMS-350 does a very good job relaxing your neck muscles and a decent job on the upper back shoulder muscles. You will need to use the handles and hold the device in place to have it affect your shoulder muscles, but this was not a big deal for me. Generally I preferred the neck massage.. The rotating/moving shiatsu pieces plus the heat were very effective. I did not enjoy the vibration mode because it vibrates your entire head. If you are trying to view a screen or read with the vibration on, your vision will actually be blurred! However, it was still completely effective without vibration turned on.

Design & Quality

I had a couple simple, but overlookable issues with the design of this product. First, the on-off button for the heat switch is not the type of button that sticks down when you push it. Since the heat takes a couple of minutes to become noticeable, its often hard to figure out if you’ve turned the heat on or off. It may cause you to sit around for an extra 5 minutes waiting for heat when its actually switched off.

The other issue I had was with the mesh fabric covering the neck “Shiatsu” massagers (which you can see in the above photo). The fabric is stitched in such a way that one of the stitching / seams overlaps the exact point where the device will be pressing into your skin. It is not noticeable at first, but after prolonged use I sometimes felt some irritation from the seem stitching rubbing the same spot on the skin. This could have easily been fixed by moving the stitching over a bit. I am also considering just cutting off the fabric as I don’t believe it really serves any purpose.

The power cord should be long enough to reach any outlet. The only issue I ran into was it was almost too short when used in the living room because an outlet except at a wall across from the couch. At a computer desk it will never be a concern however.

Other than the two above minor issues, the build quality is top-notch. It feels like a good quality product, has a good weight to it, but isn’t heavy, and fits over your shoulders perfectly. The material is a dense, comfortable cushiony soft nylon-esque material. You can grab the handles on each side and move it around to different parts on your neck or shoulder for extra spot treatment. The controls are easy to use and intuitive.

Value

The Homedics NMS-350 appears to be a very high price to performance product. I researched and tested a number of other similar products before purchasing, and decided on this unit. It can be purchased for about $30 on Amazon and is the highest rated, most popular product of its type anywhere near this price range. I would easily recommend this product over a Sharper Image or other higher priced product. You would need to spend over $100 to get anything significantly better.

Summary

Pros:

• Heat & Shiatsu works very well together to relax neck
• Extremely cheap, much better value than other options
• Great reviews, best product in this price range
• Sleek design
• High build quality

Cons:

• Vibration mode not as effective as Shiatsu
• Heat switch should be more obvious if it is on or off
• Stitching on rotating Shiatsu “nodes” can rub your skin

Conclusion

I hope you have benefitted from this review. As with my previous reviews, I only review products that I have used for weeks and have a full understanding of. If you decide to purchase this product, please click my Amazon link first. This will not affect your purchase in any way, but amazon offers a small percent of your payment back to us for advertising on any purchases you make after clicking the link.

If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them — just leave a comment!

This guide will cover secret tips that aren’t explained in-game, as well as all the basics, other important things that can affect if you get matched up at all, and any rumors that are unconfirmed as of yet.

Troubleshooting Multiplayer Summoning in Dark Souls – Secret & Lesser Known Tips on Getting Matched Up

Try these things if you are having trouble being summoned

• Open the ports on your router for the PS3. Sometimes this is not necessary, but after doing this I immediately saw an increase in summoning activity. This was the main piece of information that helped me. Go to the “Port Forwarding” section of your router and open/forward the following ports:
  TCP Ports: 80, 443, 5223
  UDP Ports: 3478, 3479, 3658
• Also if your router has the option, set your Playstation 3 or Xbox 360′s IP address as the DMZ. This makes sure there are not firewall / router issues blocking any connections.
• Play during peak hours, such as evenings and weekends.
• Look for and place summoning signs near bonfires and right in front of the fog gates to area bosses.
• If everything above fails, try resetting your PS3 as you may have been randomly placed on a low population server. If this is the case you will probably see very few orange info signs / tips and bloodstains.
• Make sure you are the proper level for the current area. Currently, Dark Souls is set up to only match people +/- 10% levels. At level 20, this is only +/- 2 levels, so can be very restrictive. See the article HERE for the recommended summoner level for each area.
• Matchups are prioritized by the covenant of each player. If you have joined one of the harder to find or less popular covenants, you may be less likely to find summons. The most popular early game covenant is likely The Way of White, from the cleric in Firelink Shrine. Also popular for co-op play is the Warrior of Sunlight – talk to Solair of Astoria / pray at the Altar of Sunlight (take a right at the bonfire under the bridge fire dragon in the Undead Parish). The Warrior of Sunlight covenant allows you to be summoned as a gold phantom instead of white. It requires 50 faith, but there are ways around that – read the Wiki about the Warrior of Sunlight covenant here

To Get Help in Your Game (Summon Others)

You need help beating a boss and want to have others join your game to help.

1. Do NOT use your white soapstone item. If your sign is down in your game, you will not be able to get help from others (when you use this item, this causes it to appear in other players’ games so they can bring you into THEIR game.)
2. You must be human. If you are hollow, which happens whenever you die, just go to a bonfire and select the option to spend 1 humanity to return to human. If you currently have 0 humanity you will need to find one or use a humanity item from your inventory.
3. You cannot have already killed the area boss in your current area in your game.
4. To summon other players into your world, once you are human, look around for a white sign on the ground and select OK to summon help. Look for these white signs on the ground near bonfires close to bosses and right in front of the gray fog boss gate (where it says “traverse the white light”). This is where people will most likely place them.

Extra Notes on Getting Help in Your Game (Summon Others):

• You probably won’t find any help until after the bridge with the Hellkite / Drake that spews fire. This is because other players need the white soapstone item in order to help you — so you probably wont find help until after the Taurus Demon, depending on your path.
• Some bosses may have more activity. Popular bosses would be any boss that can be reached quickly from a bonfire and bosses that can be killed quickly and give a lot of souls. Other players will want to farm these bosses for souls. The Gaping Dragon and Iron Golem are two bosses that are fairly popular in the early & mid parts of the game.
• Note that you can summon multiple people at a time. This is great to ensure you don’t waste humanity getting killed with a white phantom that doesn’t help.
• Be sure to use your Estus Flask to heal white phantoms that join your game to help you! Using yours will heal everyone in the game. They can’t use their own Estus Flask so will need help healing.

To Join Another Game To Help Someone Else (Being Summoned)

Joining another players game can be a fun cooperative play experience and can also be very beneficial in order to farm large amounts of souls in a small amount of time. The are also other various in game benefits from assisting other players.

1. Place your white soapstone summoning sign in front of the gray fog boss doors (where you get the message “traverse the white light”). You could also try placing the white sign near a bonfire if you want to help someone through more of the level. This may be a good idea of the path to the boss happens to be tough.
2. Being hollow is completely fine. You do not need to be human to help others.
3. Your area boss can already be dead, that is fine also.
4. Stay in the area. If you get the message that your summoning sign has disappeared, you’ve gone to far and will have to go back and replace it. You do not need to stay right on top of your sign however. If I am trying to farm a boss repeatedly, I will generally place the sign and then kill the rest of the enemies in the area. Eventually you will be summoned and once the connection goes through you will be transported back to your sign.
5. Place your sign in front of bosses that people are likely to need help on.
6. Play during peak hours, such as on weekends and during the evenings. This will increase the activity of other players looking for help.

Extra Notes on Joining Other People’s Games to Help Them (Being Summoned)

• Re-Place your White Summon Sign. If you have tried all of the above and are still having trouble, it may help to replace your white summoning sign every minute or so. There are unconfirmed reports that this may help “refresh” you in the multiplayer queue. You may also want to try sitting at a bonfire every now and then.
• Try restarting your PS3. If you are not seeing many orange “info” signs or bloodstains from other players, you may be on a low population server. Dark Souls multiplayer is split up into multiple different servers and there will be times where you are randomly placed on a server with very few people. Try restarting the game and possibly resetting your PS3 if this is the case.

This guide is current at this time. There are rumors of a possible patch coming to the game that may change the way network play works, but this has not arrived yet. The article will be updated if anything changes.

Hopefully this will help some people out as I found the summoning process to be pretty confusing at first, with very little in-game explanations. Before researching and looking into this, I was waiting for 30 minutes at a time without any coop action. I am now able to repeatedly fight some bosses every 5 minutes or so as a white phantom, and was able to get help quickly (just a couple minutes waiting) on a boss I was having trouble with.

With the non-linear layout of the game, it is sometimes very tough to know what area to visit next, so this will also ensure you aren’t too outmatched by the enemies in the area.

Dark Souls Recommended Summoner Level for Areas:

Undead Burg ( 5 – 10 )
Undead Parish ( 10 – 20 )
Lower Undead Burg ( 20 – 30 )
The Depths ( 20 – 30 )
Blighttown ( 30 – 40 )
Quelaag’s Domain ( 35+ )
The Catacombs ( 30 – 50 )

The Great Hollow ( 50+ )
Ash Lake ( 50+ )
Darkroot Garden ( 20+ )
Darkroot Basin ( 35+ )
Valley of Drakes ( 40 – 60 )
Undead Asylum Revisited ( 30 – 40 )

Sen’s Fortress ( 40+ )
Anor Londo ( 45+ )
Painted World of Ariamis ( 60+ )
New Londo Ruins ( 60+ )
The Duke’s Archives ( 60+ )

The Abyss ( 50 – 70 )
Crystal Cave ( 50+ )
Tomb of the Giants ( 70+ )
Demon Ruins ( 60+ )
Lost Izalith ( 75+ )
Kiln of the First Flame ( 60 – 80 )

The Motorola Droid X

The Motorola Droid X has a huge feature not fully explained to most potential customers. Before purchasing a Droid X, the HDMI-out port was a huge selling point. Unfortunately I did not do enough research at the time since there are some pretty important limitations.

One would expect to be able to use the HDMI-out connection to watch movies and play games on a nice TV over the HDMI connection. I had dreams of watching Netflix and Hulu anywhere I wanted using this.

Unfortunately, out of the box the only thing you can do with the HDMI-out is look at your pictures in the built in Gallery app!

App to the Rescue – RealHDMI

Luckily, there is an option in the Android Market called RealHDMI. It is made specifically for the Droid X only, and enables the HDMI out to display whatever would normally be on your screen. So, this means you CAN play games and browse youtube just fine. RealHDMI brings a feature that should be enabled out of the box to you. It used to cost about $1.99, but now in early 2011 it appears to be around $4.00. Still probably worth it if this is something you plan to use a lot.

Droid X Hardware Limitation

Unfortunately, because of the internal hardware of the Droid X, it is impossible for the device to ever have both the HDMI-out video signal and the phone’s screen active and refreshing at the same time. This means you can have video and sound coming out of a TV, but your Droid X screen will be frozen. And, ultimately, this means that to navigate menus you have to sort of “guess” where the buttons would be when using the Droid X touchscreen. Thats fine for scrolling through pictures, but not for browsing multiple youtube clips.

Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Blockbuster Streaming

At the time of this writing in early 2011, Netflix and Hulu don’t have an Android app that allows you to stream video. The iOS devices like the iPhone do have this app, and it works well on them so I have high hopes. Both Netflix and Hulu have publicly announced that these apps will be available soon. Most reports seem to think this will be Quarter 1 of 2011.

The Blockbuster app is available now, but unfortunately also has severe limitations. Instead of having full unlimited access to stream content, you have to rent individual movies for a limited time at almost $4.00 a pop. Most importantly though, HDMI is completely disabled due to copyright restrictions–meaning your only choice is to watch the movie on the tiny screen. Certainly not worth it.

Conclusion and Other Options

I do have high hopes for the upcoming Netflix and Hulu Plus apps, but can only pray that they will work with HDMI out (even if the Real HDMI app workaround is necessary). Even if this is possible, it will be somewhat of a hassle because you’ll need to “guess” where buttons are when navigating on your frozen device’s screen.

With the rise of streaming services and the increasing gap in selection and quality vs. cable tv, I’ve stopped watching cable and have moved to choosing what I’d like to watch and streaming it. I had hoped the Droid X could be the device that would allow access to this , but it appears this is too early for all this functionality.

Instead, I am considering a separate streaming device such as a Boxee. As a side note, I can’t wait for the Android / Droid X apps to catch up to the iOS apps. I love the Droid X, but there are a few major apps that still need to make it over. Luckily Android is catching up quickly, and its also important to note that these i-Apps were not released until about mid 2010 and that you also can’t do video out to your TV with them.

It is slightly confusing as to which model this is, since PNY has multiple “Attache” models at each capacity. Specifically, I tested the Attache Micro Slide 8GB, which currently comes in a white and silver packaging. This is slighlty different than the regular Attache 8GB which comes in a black/gold package. I do not know if the difference is only the “Slide” feature, or if the memory itself is different. I assume the internal memory would be very similar if not exactly the same however.

Here are the details on the product I tested with the results directly below:

Product number: P-FDU8GBSL-EF
PNY Attache Micro Slide
8 GB Capacity

Sequential Read: 32.71 MB/s
Sequential Write: 8.227 MB/s

512K Random Read: 34.88 MB/s
512K Random Write: 1.488 MB/s

4K Random Read: 3.777 MB/s
4K Random Write: 0.011 MB/s

Conclusion:

I am no expert, but I can provide the basics. Great read speed, but poor random write speed.  This means this would not be an ideal choice for Windows readyboost, since it recommends 1.75 MB/s 512K random write speed, or to store and access lots of smaller files. However, this should be a great choice for loading movies or other media files such as to bring from your computer to home entertainment PS3 / Xbox 360.

Hope this helps!

Rendering Previews

Trying to render previews on the fly is the #1 reason Adobe Lightroom bogs down and feels frustratingly slow for almost all users, but the best part is it is easily fixed! Even with fast computers and plenty of RAM, high megapixel RAW files take quite a while to be processed so they can be displayed in full quality on screen. This is where previews come in–you can force Lightroom to render all the previews for any photos all at once so when you are working through multiple photos, the previews will already be processed and ready to display.

How to render previews for photos already in your collection:

• Select all photos you would like to preview
  (Ctrl-A selects all photos in the current folder, OR click on the first photo, then Shift-Left Click on the last photo and all photos in the range will be selected)
• Go to the Library drop down menu at the top of the screen
• Select Previews, then “Render Standard Previews” or “Render 1:1 Previews”
• All selected photos will then have their previews rendered. This will take a medium to long while so go do something else in the meantime.

How to render previews when you import files:

• Lightroom 3: Click the import button, then on the right side of the screen you will see “File Handling” – this contains the option to have previews rendered automatically whenever you import.
• Lightroom 2: In the Import pop up dialog box, locate the Initial Previews setting and choose Standard or 1:1.

Should you choose 1:1 or Standard Preview rendering?

• 1:1 – select this when you will be quickly using the develop view for manually processing many photos at once. However, 1:1 previews take a VERY long time to initially render. Expect to be waiting for 30 minutes for a couple hundred photos to render (depending on megapixels, computer speed, etc).
• Standard – this should be your default choice. Once standard previews are rendered you will be able to quickly go through your photos in the Library view, which is great for culling out bad photos or if you only plan to edit /process a few. Initial render time is something like 1/10th of the time 1:1 previews would take.

I am not sure why Adobe has not yet worked in either different default settings or added in some prominent help text that explains this at least the first time you import photos. The only official information about this is in Adobe’s Lightroom performance problems TechNote. This is an extremely common problem and this is the reason Lightroom gets a bad name for being slow.

Change Standard Preview Resolution

Standard previews will generally be your ideal choice. To maximize the perfomance to quality of using them, you should select the proper resolution for your screen. Go to the Edit Menu > Catalog Settings > File Handling tab. Here you can change the Standard Preview resolution. Generally, a 19″ monitor should use 1024 pixels, a 22″ monitor 1440 pixels, 24″ monitor 1680 pixels, and any larger monitors should use the maximum 2048 pixels. (These are general rules, check into your specific monitor’s resolution, then subtract about 20% from the width resolution to find how big standard previews will be likely to be displayed.)

If performance is still an issue, try using the lowest 1024 setting regardless of your monitor size. This is still a good quality for using the Library grid view.

Disable Nvidia’s Nview Desktop Manager

Also mentioned on Adobe’s Lightroom performance problems TechNote.  This can cause some driver/software issues and bog things down.

If you have any questions or comments, as always please post them in the contents below–I read them all! If you like my articles it would be great if you help pay for this site’s hosting by clicking on ads or using the Amazon Referral button you see in the sidebar. More info in the Support section (see the top of the page). Thanks!

Wildlife photography has huge demands on your equipment

For most bird and other (wilderness) animal photography, such as squirrels, foxes, rabbits, badgers…heck, even wolves, lions, tigers, and any other skittish creature you won’t be able to get close to, there are a few must-haves for equipment. This article assumes you plan to go with Canon compatible equipment and are on a budget. At this point in time, the only real competitors are Nikon and Canon for quality, variety, and value.

Lens

For bird photography, it is generally recommended to use a 500mm focal length or more to get shots “close enough” to birds. However, on a budget, you may be able to get by with a 300mm or 400mm lens.

Another option is to use a teleconverter, on a 300mm lens, however keep in mind teleconverters are not compatible with all lenses and they reduce the light allowed to the sensor–meaning your shutter speed will suffer. The lens must already have a large max aperture, such as f/4 or f/2.8 and these lenses are usually very spendy at $1500+ (pretty much out of the “budget” range).

Side note: I would definitely recommend a prime lens. The reason for this is zoom lenses will cost considerably more for the same quality. For bird and critter photography with, say a 75-300mm zoom lens, you would almost always be 100% zoomed anyway. You may as well get some extra performance from your telephoto lens.

And finally, rather than hiking and hunting down birds, you can bring them to you! Set up a birdfeeder and a birdbath — even a squirrel feeder (but stay away from any tiger feeders), and photograph them from physically much closer and near your home. This reduces the demand on your lens.

Recommendations:

• Entry Level – $165
  Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM
  This is a great value for starting out to see what exactly you want to see in your telephoto lens
  You may be able to get some still shots of birds in trees on calm days, but movement will give you trouble with focusing and slow shutter speeds
  You will want to make sure to get this USM version (faster and quieter focusing) since it is only $20 more
  

• Mid Level – $500
  Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
  On crop sensor bodies, you will have that nice extra range
  

• Mid Budget – $500
  Sigma 300mm f/4 APO Tele Macro HSM
  No longer available new, but you may be able to find it used. Also note that on some camera bodies autofocus or other features may not work properly.
  Not quite up to the below Canon 300mm f/4L, but reasonably close and half the price
  Teleconverter is an option for even more range, though its recommended to stick with a 1.4x as images lose sharpness with a 2x teleconverter

• Upper end – $1100  + $200 = $1300
  Canon EF 300mm f/4L IS USM
  Will actually perform as over 400mm on a crop sensor body
  Can accept a 1.4x or 2x teleconverter for more range
  Probably your best choice without spending 2x as much or more
  You will probably want to spend the $200 extra for a teleconverter
  

• Upper end – $1000
  Sigma 150-500mm f/5-6.3
  Not as recommended as the Canon EF 300mm f/4L above, unless you need the zoom range
  You won’t be able to use a teleconverter, BUT you do get the extra range without it
  Save a few hundred from the Canon EF 300mm f/4L above by going with this
  

Tripod

Criteria to look for are stability, quick release.

Recommendations: Manfrotto 3021 + ballhead

Camera Body

Honestly, this is the least of your concerns. There are advantages and differences in camera bodies, but in this case your lens is your primary concern. Obviously there are benefits to more modern and more expensive DSLR bodies. A higher Mega-pixel resolution will allow you to do larger prints and more cropping, which is important. Full frame DSLR bodies (such as the Canon 5D) are more expensive and generally provide noticeably more detail, even given the same Megapixel count. Cropped bodies have smaller sensors which means slightly less detail captured.

However, cropped bodies provide a HUGE advantage for telephoto lenses, which is what we need for bird photography. Cropped sensor bodies effectively increase the focal length (more zoom) on lenses because of differences in placement of the sensor and the lens in their design. For telephoto photography on a budget, I can only recommend cropped DSLR bodies for this reason. Currently, for a budget, I would recommend the Canon Rebel T1i DSLR body. It is not the newest, so it has dropped in price. It also has the newer Digic 4 processor, which noticeably improves image quality on high ISO (noisy/grainy) photos. Any old Canon Rebel models do not have this.

• Recommended: Canon Rebel T1i DSLR Body
• Cropped sensor means cheaper, lighter lenses with more zoom
• First DSLR body in the Rebel series to offer Digic 4 processor
• By choosing the Rebel T1i over the T2i or more expensive body, you save a few hundred dollars. Spend the money instead on a step-up in your telephoto lens! This will yield much more noticeably improved results.
• You can choose to get the 18-55mm kit lens together with the T1i for about $100 more. It is a decent lens and is a good budget choice for regular usage (portraits, family, landscape etc) but will NOT be useful for wildlife photography.

Conclusion

You should be able to use the information given here to match your budget to what you want. If at all possible, I would certainly recommend choosing one of the $1000 range lenses recommended here. If you decide to go cheaper, I guarantee you will be frustrated and fighting with many blurry shots that are not quite zoomed in as much as you would like. It may very well ruin the fun of nature photography, but that is a personal choice. You may want to start with the cheap lens just to see if you enjoy spending time doing this and are willing to make the full investment.

I hope this article has helped you. If you have any questions, comments, or would like to add your own opinions, please leave a comment. I will definitely read it and get back to you. If you decide to purchase one of the products listed here from Amazon (which generally offers the cheapest prices), please click on the link in this article that will take you to Amazon. If you then purchase without closing your browser it will help support this site and more articles like this. Thanks!

Recently I was unfortunate enough to get a random error while editing some articles in WordPress. All I had done was update a few articles and made no major changes to anything. Suddenly, on most pages of the site – and even in the wordpress admin dashboard, I would get the following error repeated a dozen or more times at the top of the page:

Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]: Compilation failed: nothing to repeat at offset 1 in [yoursite]/wp-includes/classes.php on line 210

Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]: Compilation failed: nothing to repeat at offset 1 in [yoursite]/wp-includes/classes.php on line 211

At one point, while browsing through different categories, I also received the following error and the page did not even load fully:

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at [yoursite]/wp-includes/classes.php:210) in [yoursite]/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 890

The Solution!

Luckily, after a few hours of some very unhelpful google research, then plenty of trial and error on my end, I was able to find the solution.

The problem apparently was caused by some sort of corruption with the permalinks structure. Also pointing to this fact is that lines 210 and 211 in classes.php (see the error message) have to do with permalink searching / matching if you read around a bit in that file. So, realizing this, I disabled all of my plugins (I believe the culprit here was probably Dean’s Permalinks Migration, but I disabled them all to be sure), then went into the WordPress Permalinks settings (under the Settings header in the admin dashboard). There I switched back to the first default setting, which is for %post_id% only, saved the settings, verified the site was now working, then switched back to my custom permalinks setting. Keep in mind plugins were disabled while doing this. This did NOT work when I had tried it earlier with plugins still enabled.

The problem was now fixed!

Also possibly of note is that my previous and current permalinks structure was set at /%category%/%postname%/ – which after further research is SEO (search engine optimization) friendly, however it is very hard on your server load and wordpress setup. This may have led partly to the problem, or it may not have. A better setup would be /%year%/%monthnum%/%category%/%postname%/ since having a numerical start to your permalinks structure fixes this problem. I will probably switch over to this in the near future.

Monday Night Combat

What is it?

Monday Night Combat is a 1200 Microsoft Point ($12-15) Xbox Live Arcade title released Jully 11, 2010. It is a FPS (first person shooter), team based strategic multiplayer game (wow that was a mouthful).  Gameplay-wise, it is a cross between Team Fortress 2 and DotA (Defense of the Ancients). This is a confusing prospect and certainly requires a bit more explanation, so read more below. Theme-wise, it has a classic Smash TV sports gameshow feel with arena-style competition complete with a loud announcer and screaming fans sound effects.

How much does it cost?

Monday Night Combat (MNC) is currently available only on the Xbox 360 arcade and costs 1200 Microsoft Points. This is equal to about $12 or $15 depending on where you get your points from.

What is the gameplay like?

As mentioned above, it could be said MNC is a cross between two popular games. Team Fortress 2 because of its simple, semi-cartoony graphics style, and class-based, very different gameplay roles. (For example, a tank and an assassin).

Defense of the Ancients would be the other half. (DotA requires a bit of explanation–it is a Warcraft 3 custom map/mod where each player controls one hero and tries to push through to the enemy’s base. Each team has static defense turrets as well as constantly spawning computer controlled waves of minions. This is also similar to League of Legends (LOL) and Heroes of Newerth (HoN).

How does MNC combine these? You have the constant waves of minions spawning that try to attack the enemies base. You control a single unit as a standard FPS style, and try to help your minions to destroy the enemy base. Opposing you are human enemy players as well as the enemy team’s minions and static defenses. Both team’s minions and bases are ultimately equal, so each individual player has to make strategic decisions as well as pull off skill based aiming and maneuvers in order to come out ahead.

If you take a moment to consider, the idea sounds like a perfect combination of those skill-based “twitch” shooters along with real time strategy games and some forward-looking thinking.

More to come…

More will come, please be sure to check back as I continue to explore the game, learn the ins and outs, and do research in order to provide some insightful articles on this website. As always, if you have any questions I’ll be happy to answer them. To learn more, see below

Official Website of Monday Night Combat:

http://www.uberent.com/

Youtube Gameplay Video:

Developer Gameplay/Walkthrough Video