here's the blood necro build i'm playing with right now:

awaken the blood, soul leech, vampiric gaze, mark of subversion, life siphon, dark pact, well of blood, and res signet. i've got 15 attribute points for blood magic (17 when awaken the blood is active) and the rest for soul leeching.

it's working pretty well and even giving me nice win streaks on weak teams. well of blood is so great. just tell your team before the match about it so they know to stand in it. the whole team will then have +7 health regen for 22 seconds. use soul leech to stop monks and mark of subversion on enemy casters. this build could use some more damage dealing. i think i might drop life siphon because once people start dying and i can get a well of blood up then i don't need life siphon anymore.

i went shopping to get a usb cable so i could put some movies on my psp in preparation for a looong airplane flight. i was pleasantly surprised to find a nice package with not only the usb cable but also a nine inch nails dvd! it's a little cheesy cuz most of it is only parts of music videos, but hey this is awesome... a nin dvd should come free with every electronics purchase! :)

korean numbers are weird. there's actually two different sets of words used for the numbers. there is a set of korean words for counting things and a set of chinese based words for things like phone numbers and addresses. this is totally bizarre! and i thought the usa was backwards for not using the metric system...

hex edit a shader compiled with the HLSL compiler and you'll see it has added a bunch of extra data. it has an embedded constant table and a big fat string saying the compiler version. if you are making an intro this is wasting bytes! here's the easiest way to strip that out. compile in two steps instead of one:

fxc /nologo /EPixelShader /Tps_1_1 shaders.fx > shaderPs.psh
psa /FhshaderPs.h /Vns_psData shaderPs.psh

microsoft's HLSL compiler is nice.  it's amazing that you can do the math
behind the ps1.1 texm3x3vspec instruction and the compiler recognizes it and
emits a single instruction.  when it does that you get the feeling that
the compiler is a sentient genius carefully studying and optimizing your
code.  but of course cruel reality eventually steps in and spits in your
face! here are some some examples of the HLSL compiler making baby jesus cry:

1. you've gotta do some extra key punching to get ps1.1 lrp emitted. for
   example...
   

   float4 a = tex2D(sampler0, texCoord0);
   float4 b = tex2D(sampler1, texCoord1);
   return lerp(a, b, Blend);
   

   produces:

   ps_1_1
   def c1, 0, 0, 0, -1
   def c2, 0, 0, 0, 1
   tex t0
   tex t1
   mul r0.w, c0.w, c1.w
   add r0.w, r0.w, c2.w
   mul r1, t1, c0.w
   mad r0, t0, r0.w, r1
   

   
   egads! not what we wanted. easy enough, just change the last line to lerp(a, b,
   saturate(Blend))...

   ps_1_1
   tex t0
   tex t1
   mov_sat r0.w, c0.w
   lrp r0, r0.w, t1, t0
   

   mov_sat r0.w, c0.w certainly sucks when we know the constant is already between 0 and 1.
   i haven't found anyway to hint to HLSL that that's the case yet. hopefully this doesn't turn
   into much extra work for the driver or the shader unit. i haven't tried measuring it yet.
   
   
   

2. there's no way to get HLSL compiler to emit the texbem instruction! sure, i understand
   why but that doesn't make the sting go away! hmm sure would be nice to support only
   HLSL... no stop!! **bam** kick to the nuts!
   
   
   

3. i've got a shader where i blend between two premultiplied alpha textures. the details
   are unimportant but here's a small snippet of what HLSL compiler emitted:

   ...
   mov r0.w, r0.w
   +lrp r0.xyz, t0.w, r0, r1
   ...
   

   
   mov r0.w, r0.w?!!! sure at least it co-issued... but is this supposed to be a joke?
   baby jesus isn't laughing.
   
   
   

4. here's the HLSL compiler getting all sloppy on a vertex shader

   oPos.x  = dot(position, transpose(WorldViewProjection)[0]);
   oPos.y  = dot(position, transpose(WorldViewProjection)[1]);
   oPos.zw = dot(position, transpose(WorldViewProjection)[2]);
   

   
   produced

   dp4 r0.x, v0, c0
   dp4 r0.y, v0, c1
   dp4 r0.z, v0, c2
   mov oPos, r0.xyzz
   

   
   instead of

   dp4 oPos.x,  v0, c0
   dp4 oPos.y,  v0, c1
   dp4 oPos.zw, v0, c2
   

come on HLSL compiler, you can do better! i saw what you did with texm3x3vspec.
i believe in you!!