Fean77's Opera Blog

I spoke with a new aquaintance and Warcraft player named Hexin Zhao on MSN messenger the other day. I found out that he creates World of Warcraft statues, customized to a player's toon. He wants to sell them in the US and he lives in China.

He wants to charge 150 US dollars because the process to create the statues takes as long as seven days and the materials used to craft the statue are rice powder, honey, and other natural (and non-toxic) ingredients and this method of using these ingredients is from traditional Chinese folkart. I think these statues have the potential to become collectibles of value since no one in China has really taken this folkart medium and applied it to WoW before.

I discussed the price with him at length, and after some time I concluded that 150 dollars is fair to ask for the effort and the quality of the statues given their manner of construction and collectible potential. I would ask those of you who read this to offer your input on this issue to give me some additional perspective. He also indicated that he will pay the shipping costs for deliveries so that the cost is the flat fee of 150 U.S. dollars. I am seriously considering purchasing a statue of my Starrion toon.

Anyhow, I hope some of you will check out the links I place here and let me know what you think? I want to help him get the message out about these statues, and hope to buy one myself when I have money to spare.

Picture slide show of two examples of statues:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25504387@N07/show

Website that he has put up for his art:
http://www.wowequips.com/

You folks have as much or more savvy than I do and I'd like your honest opinions if you would indulge me; both in ideas for promoting, as well as viability of price. Thanks!

I just changed my desktop wallpaper to an image of clouds which I found at www.free-background-wallpaper.com. This site had really great wallpaper images with no pop-up advertisements. The images were high quality and simply saved by right-clicking and selecting the save option, so no zip file downloads or anything like that, which means no crapware being downloaded along with the images. Refreshing to have a site offer free stuff without hassle.

Again, and as usual, I liked this site and thought others might benefit from and appreciate it in the same way I did, so I'm sharing.

The Sims On Stage website allows people to sing karaoke songs which are then stored on the website for others to critique and rate.

I recently joined this site and created a free account. It starts users with a social networking/blog type page, with the additional functionality of having a studio of one's own karaoke recordings.

The website has a web application that makes it possible for a user to sing songs with nothing but a mic (though webcam can also be used to add video of one's self singing).

So I started out with my profile page, then I recorded a couple of songs by searching the website, then selecting a song I wanted to sing. The website displays the words to the song, and plays the music, while recording my voice as I sing. I actually re-recorded them a couple of times until I was satisfied with my performance.

I also recorded a poem that I wrote (the site supports poetry and comedy skits in addition to karaoke).

Then I went to other user pages and left comments for them on their songs, as well as rated them using the 5-star rating system. Other users returned the favor, and a couple even subscribed to my page as "fans."

All in all it was pretty entertaining so I thought I would share.

Nothing like a little skirmish with space orcs to start your day.