A Rabbit's Eye View

Earth Day?

2012-02-06T18:31:00.001-08:00

This will be a short post, but I just had to share it.

Does this seem wrong to anyone else:

I mean really, let's cut down trees and make funny shapes out of the paper to promote not cutting down trees.

People need to be aware of their sources

2012-02-06T18:26:00.001-08:00

Today on the radio I heard a news story about an Army doctor who refused to go to Afghanistan because he doesn't believe that President Obama was born inside of the United States. If this were true, then President Obama wouldn't legally be president.

Okay, so there are so many problems with this. I have no idea where this stupid rumor started, but it is stupid. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, the legal birth certificate has been presented. Much like the stupid rumor that Obama is/was a Muslim. In any case, isn't it a bit stupid to do something that risks a court marshaling without actually checking your facts, and figuring out what the source of your information is? I mean really, this guy is probably going to goto jail now, for the simple fact that he didn't check his information out.

I'm not turning this into a political post, I'm not going to comment on how the president is doing, and whether I like him or not. I'm just pointing out that it's possible for people to get through school (apparently all the way through med school!) without learning that one must be critical of everything one hears.

Economics Courses

2012-02-06T18:25:00.001-08:00

Everyone who votes needs to take an intro level macro economics college course taught by someone of a politically moderate background. So few people actually realize how our society works, and get angry with our government over the wrong things. I don't care if you're a liberal, conservative, or moderate minded person, if you don't understand what the government can and can't do to start with, you won't be angry when they fail to do the things they shouldn't be able to anyway.

For instance, in the latest election, the Democrats lost a lot of seats in the house and in the senate. That's fine, but the reason a lot of people are angry is because the economy didn't turn around, which isn't something the people you are voting on had any real control over anyway! Starting a sluggish economy can take a long time, and is quite difficult. While it's true that fiscally the government does have some things it can do to jump start the economy, generally none of the options they have are very good solutions. To fix a sluggish economy it's generally better to use monetary tools, which aren't in the hands of congress at all! In fact, the people responsible for monetary policy were appointed by our former president, George W. Bush. Now, monetary wise, almost everything is being done that can be done to get things moving again. So that leaves the fiscal issue, which unfortunately were in gridlock between the two parties. Neither side really wanted to compromise. The Republicans wanted tax cuts and spending cuts, the Democrats wanted spending increases (raising the deficit), and neither sided wanted to compromise. When a deal was finally struck (which is actually a deal that might achieve something), both sides weren't happy with it!

Further, a lot of Republicans are upset with congress for deficit spending, which is the exact thing you should be doing in a recession/depression anyway! Achieving a public debt of zero is really something we shouldn't be aiming for. Until you hit a debt to GDP ratio of around 100%, generally speaking a country shouldn't be too worried. For example look at this wikipedia article (yes wikipedia is the devil, blah blah blah, I know, but they had convenient results that should be mostly accurate) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_public_debt. Look at the Bottom of the list and the top of the list. Would you rather your country was like those in the bottom of the list (low debt to GDP), the top of the list (high to moderate debt to GDP), or better yet, near the upper middle where most of the most successful countries in the world are located?

These are just things for you to think about. Like I said, I don't really care if you vote Liberal, Conservative, Moderate, Democrat, Republican, Green, or Libertarian, all I care about is that you make an educated vote and don't listen to what all the bullshit out there. Go take a intro to macro economics course at your local community college. It will be cheap, and you'll learn things that will allow you to think for yourself when it comes time to fill the ballot box.

Polite Conversation

2012-02-06T18:24:00.000-08:00

There is a piece of advice that it seems many people have never received. It is not polite to discuss politics or religion unless you are invited to do so by others. When you decide to bring either of these things up, it's entirely possible that you will offend someone in your group.

There are two major political parties in the United States, each of which hold 40-50% of the population. This means that there's a 40-50% chance you could offend someone solely based on any political statement you make. While I suspect a majority of the population of the United States would self-identify as Christian, this doesn't mean that it's any safer to make a religious statement either.

I'm not going to point any fingers here, all I'm asking is that you please try and be aware of what you're saying before you say it. Sometimes it's extremely easy to offend someone without attempting to, even if they're not someone that would typically be thought of as a sensitive person. Just because you've offended someone doesn't necessarily mean they will say anything about it, or confront you about it. Some people will be more likely to begin to feel like you are an idiot, or stop thinking that anything you have to say has any value.

So please think before you speak or you will risk people around you thinking that you're an ignorant moron.

Blog Re-Launch

2012-02-06T18:20:00.000-08:00

Obviously I haven't posted here in a while, and I think that has something to do with the fact that my blog was really too specific to only one part of my life. So with this post I'm relaunching the blog with a new name: "A Rabbit's Eye View". I had another blog briefly that I posted a few things on that I'll be moving over here tonight. So what's the new blog about? Observations I make about life, and about what I'm doing in my life. You will of course continue to see a lot of posts about nerdy stuff since that's still a part of my life. Here's what I've been up to: I'm a Chico State Applied Mathematics Major, I'm allergic to gluten apparently, and I've been building a small robot in my spare time. In any case, you'll see this changing over the next few days, so right now my blog looks a little like ass, but stick with me as I work on it.

Why does the new Parasite Eve game have to be for the PSP?!

2011-03-25T10:28:00.000-07:00

I mean really square enix, why do you keep releasing psp only games that are sequels or prequels to some of the most awesome games of the past? I'd get it for the 360, even if it only had psp quality graphics just because it's parasite eve. My PSP has been broken for 2 years, and this is the first time I've even remotely cared.

I wonder what kind of market study SE did to make them think that a new parasite eve game would be best suited to the PSP? Are they trying to kill the series (which has been dead for a generation anyway) for good?

Magic 6 card booster packs? Wtf?

2011-03-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

Apparently I've been living under a rock. While I've been back playing magic for about a year now (and heavily playing for about 5 months now), I hadn't heard of or seen these before.

For those not in the know, here's a picture of the one I just purchased and opened:

As you can see, it clearly says 6-Card Booster Pack at the bottom. From what I've read on the internet, it seems there's no guarantee of getting a rare in one of these, but it's an interesting idea none the less. It's just a shame that it's almost always going to have at least 2 garbage cards in (basic land and a token/tips card).

There's an article about these things here: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/119.

And just for the record, what I ended up pulling?

1 Plain, 1 Spiraling Duelist, 1 Phyrexian Digester, 1 Virulent Wound (Love this card, but I have more than enough already), 1 Ardent Recruit, 1 Crush, and 1 Poison Counter.

I probably won't be buying another one of these packs, but it did interest me. I think they'd find people a whole lot more likely to buy these if they didn't include the basic land or token/tip card and instead just threw two more commons in. It would also help if they bumped up the chances of getting a rare just a tad.

Mirrodin Besieged Tournament Recap

2011-02-01T12:37:00.000-08:00

I went to the pre-release tournament for the new magic set (coming out on the 4th) Mirrodin Besieged. I was extremely excited for the release and chose the Mirran side of things.

What I didn't realize before playing was that we only got 3 packs of our chosen faction, and then we got 3 packs from Scars also for our deck build. I did get the one card I wanted the most: Thopter Assembly, but aside from that I drew a lot of things that ended up being really slow to get out (which isn't a problem that metalcraft decks have been having). As it was, I think I had a decent deck, not great just decent.

However I ran into TERRIBLE luck. I was running 16 mana in my 40 card deck, with 3 mana myr, so I had tons of mana. Despite this, in two separate games I drew my 7 cards and had 1 mana, so I mulligan'd down to 6 and had 1 mana, so I mulligan'd down to 5 and had 1 mana. At that point I kept because statistically I would only get 1 mana on a 4 card hand anyway. I might have kept a 1 mana hand if I'd had anything remotely playable if I drew land, but most of what I had was expensive anyway. I ended up finishing somewhere near the middle of the pack, mostly because I was matched up on two of my losses I suspect, but I don't feel like I got a very good feel for the current set.

Hopefully I'll have time to play again soon, maybe in a draft format or something.

Mirrodin Besieged Pre-Release Today!

2011-01-29T09:02:00.000-08:00

I'm so excited! I'm playing for the Mirran side. I'll edit this post with a recap tonight to let you know how it goes.

Adventures in programming

2011-01-26T21:05:00.001-08:00

I just started CSCI-21 at Butte College (Programs and Algorithms II). This is a class that uses c++ (incidentally we'll be using classes in the class, see what I did there =P). In my prior c++ class we just did all our compiling and everything through the IDE, but I just spent my evening learning how to use g++ and how to create basic makefiles, huzzah!

HP doesn't deserve your support

2011-01-15T19:57:00.000-08:00

There was a time when Hewlett-Packard was THE name in printers. This is no longer the case. While some of their printers still show decent hardware reliability, it's no longer up to the level it used to be. This is all old news though, and anyone buying a printer for less than $1000 shouldn't be surprised.

Where you might find yourself surprised is that they're building obsolescence into their products now. For example, the HP Laserjet 1012. My parents own two of these things, they work great and have for years (and based on the number of people on the internet with the same problem we're facing, this is a great little printer), but there's a problem. HP has decided that they won't release drivers for this printer for Windows 7. This isn't a case of this printer being overlooked, many people have contacted all levels of the company to let them know that there are no windows 7 x64 drivers for this printer, but they have been ignored. There are all kinds of hacks on the internet for getting this printer to work, but they're inconsistent. Some solutions work for some people, other solutions work for others, and for many no solutions work at all.

So here it is, maybe someone will see this and it will influence their decision. Don't buy HP products if you want to have support going forward. All those "off" name brands that many wouldn't normally think to buy (meaning anything that's not Epson or HP) all seem to be doing better with support for their hardware in Windows 7 x64 than HP does. The message here? Paying extra for a HP instead of a kodak or lexmark or something is a waste of money. So please, stop giving HP money, so that that maybe they'll remember what earned them their place to begin with. It will be a cold day in hell before I give HP another dollar of my money. It's time for companies to be held accountable for how they treat their customers. If they don't want to support their customers, then there customers shouldn't support them!

History of the Bat Mobile

2011-01-07T12:50:00.001-08:00

My cousin just posted this to facebook, and I feel like it needs to be reposted here:

http://nerdapproved.com/misc-weirdness/the-70-year-evolution-of-the-batmobile-infographic/

Enjoy!

Dungeons of the Unforgiven FAQ updated again

2011-01-06T20:19:00.000-08:00

What, I've already had an update this year, and it's only the 6th? Yep! Actually it was posted a couple of days ago, but I forgot to come over here to announce it. The biggest highlights of the update include: Lots of new memlocks for the newest version of dosbox, some sections have been cleaned up, and another cheat sort of thing has been included.

I'm actually planning on releasing another version soon that will have even more updates. This should be exciting for all 2 of you out there in the world that actually play this game still!

A Game of Thrones the Board Game

2011-01-06T20:10:00.000-08:00

My wife, bought me "A Game of Thrones" The board game and all I can say is WOW. Our friend Sara came over today and we played it for the first time. Around 3 and a half hours later we finished our first game with me the winner, but only just barely.

The game is based on George RR Martin's a Song of Ice and Fire, and it won best board game a few years back. It's quite possibly the most complicated game I've ever played. If you've played the game Risk before, it's similar to that, except with many more things going on at the same time.

I think next time we play we should be able to get through the game quite a bit quicker, as part of that 3 and a half hours was us reading the instruction manual as we went (all 18 pages of it!). I can't wait to play it again, and hopefully with 5 people next time.

Multiplication

2010-12-14T09:55:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across a trick for multiplication last night that I hadn't seen before that I just had to share. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. At this point it's mostly useful as a trick to show off to people, since I can do math like that in my head most of the time anyway, or if I have a piece of paper it will be just as fast for me to use traditional methods. In any case here it is:

What do you think?

A busy blogging day

2010-12-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

New layout, huzzah. It's kind of "old school", but I think it's an improvement.

Also, I've made some minor updates to how syntax highlighter is working with my blog.

Finally, it has come to my attention that all of the external links I have to my little c++ programs are now dead. That code is gone forever now as I had some hardware failure that wiped out the code itself. No big loss really since it's code that anyone who's completed an intro to programming course could bang out, but I wanted to make sure people were aware of it in case they actually wanted some of that code.

Next semester I'll be doing programming again, and I will be posting code again. I'm not sure where I'll host it, but any posts before this one that had external links to code are GONE.

What I've been up to

2010-12-03T10:16:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted since before the semester started, and here we are with only 2 weeks left in the semester. This has been the hardest and most time consuming semester I've had in college. The only class that I'm taking that would probably interest anyone reading this is that I'm taking (and getting an A in) calculus.

As far as nerdy stuff going on in my life, there's not as much as I'd like. However here are the highlights:

1. My laptop is broken, I've got a new one on order from Toshiba. It will be my first laptop that isn't pre-owned, and will be a HUGE upgrade from my incredibly slow old one. I'm probably going to dual boot it, but even still I don't know how much I will actually boot into windows, since the last time I dual booted I hardly ever used windows.

2. I've played a few more magic tournaments. I've competed in 2 more drafts and a sealed tournament, all in seals of mirrodin (spelling?). I'm going to be competing in a two-headed giant tournament on the 12th as well, at Chico Magic. In the last 3 magic tournaments I've competed in I've drawn/drafted cards that have allowed me to break even on the cost by selling them on ebay. It's been pretty awesome.

3. I got a kindle. It's fantastic, and by fantastic I mean absolutely wonderful.

4. I've got one of the highest, if not the highest grade in my calculus class. It's actually pretty easy.

Next semester I'm taking Calculus 2, Linear Algebra, Programs and Algorithms 2, and possibly a class on MAPLE also. It should be an interesting semester!

New update to my DotU FAQ on gamefaqs

2010-08-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

Just in case anyone is wondering. The new FAQ puts out a new game tip, corrects a few typos, and puts in some words of warning for those trying to play the game in dosbox v0.73 on linux. I really wish I could get the game truly working for sure in ubuntu, because I do really enjoy dungeons of the unforgiven.

My nerdiest adventure yet? Possibly.

2010-07-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while because I haven't been up to anything nerdier than my dungeons and dragons in a couple of months now. HOWEVER, last night I had quite the adventure. Last night at midnight magic 11 launched! There was a draft tournament that cost $12 to enter (essentially the cost of the 3 packs you would use in the game). Unfortunately, we didn't understand the tournament setup, so there were WAY more games to play than I thought, so Patty was forced to hang out and just watch until like 4am (sorry!).

It was definitely an interesting experience. I ended up losing the first 2 games of my first match, which cost me that match. I tweaked my deck a little and won the first two games of my next match, which won me a match! However, I then proceeded to lose the first 2 games of my 3rd (and final) match. The tournament was setup so that the top four players moved to the next round, and I wasn't one of them so I was out. As a consolation prize I got to draw 3 face down cards out of some face down fanned out group of 2 or 3 booster packs. I drew 3 rares, though none of them are particularly spectacular. I ended up doing a little better in the tournament than Matt did, BUT he drew a card or two more valuable than I did. In the end he thinks he'll break even if he lists the cards on ebay, which is pretty awesome. It's definitely something I'd do again, just hopefully not at midnight again lol!

.net 1.1 and windows 7

2010-06-27T18:21:00.001-07:00

As some of you are probably aware, windows 7 and .net 1.1 don't play well together. This can be a problem if you want to install quickbooks 2007 in windows 7 for instance. Well I found a work around presented in this post:

http://saranspot.blogspot.com/2009/02/installing-dotnet-framework-11-on.html

Now if you get an error about improper command line syntax, what that means is that you need to delete the quotes from the line you copy and pasted in, and retype them, because for some reason it copies the wrong ones.

Hope this helps! (Yet another reason I've switched to Ubuntu for all my day to day stuff).

After 2 months of R&D I bring you...

2010-05-25T19:40:00.000-07:00

BOBERT!

Bobert is the final revision (number 4 that is) of our robot named "Bob". I had very little to do with the actual design of the robot and even less to do with the construction of the robot. What I did have a lot to do with though is the programming. I was the programmer for the team and programmed the autonomous run you can see in the video below.

Bobert's goal in life was to drive up a handicap ramp on campus, do a u-turn, drive back down, and stop at approximately his starting location. We were the only group to complete the challenge, with the second furthest group only making it to the second turn. We came up with some ideas for designing him that most of the class ended up copying near the end because they couldn't figure out any other way to do it.

Without further delay, I present to BOBERT!

Don't Panic

2010-05-25T13:48:00.001-07:00

http://www.towelday.org/

Just had our third Dungeons and Dragons session last night...

2010-05-24T18:31:00.000-07:00

It went well. We played later than we've played before, we had a larger group than we've had before as well. We made it further than we've done in the past as well. The party completed three combat encounters. We're losing a player though, which is a little sad, but they just don't have the time necessary for a 4th edition campaign.

We're looking at starting a second campaign and splitting some players off (while keeping some overlapping players), and doing an audio podcast of the second campaign. I'm not sure what I'll do for hosting yet (perhaps megaupload?), if you have any suggestions let me know

Dungeons and Dragons: Our first session

2010-05-09T13:36:00.001-07:00

So I just ran the first leg of our D&D campaign. It went really well. I'll be posting about our adventures on this blog fairly regularly. Our adventure so far:

---

The adventuring company, RPP Inc, headed out from Rithwic in search of their friend and mentor Douven Stahl. While inquiring for information about the town of Winterhaven (Douven's last known whereabouts), the party took on a quest to map a keep in the area (which the party later found out may be haunted and may be the home of a tribe of goblins), as well as a job to investigate death cult activity in the area.

On the way to Winterhaven the party was ambushed by a group of kobolds. After much struggle, and a very open competition between our dwarven cleric and our elven ranger, the kobolds were slain. Little did the party know that this was a common problem in the area, and the local lord ended up hiring the party to dispatch the rest of the kobolds. The party, after a failed attempt at intimidating an old man, for access to his tower, and then a failed attempt at breaking into this same tower, the party has learned that this old man (Valthrun) is actually a source of great knowledge and is very helpful. Additionally, our elven ranger was brutally shot down in his attempt to flirt with a local elven hunter in the common room at Wrafton's Inn. The next morning the party headed out of town, determined to head South toward where the kobolds den appears to be, as well as in the general direction of the Dragon Burial Site that Douven came to investigate.

However, as soon as the party was out of site from the village, they were ambushed by Kobolds who were bent on avenging the death of their comrades. This time the kobolds had brought some of their bigger brothers, including a wyrmpriest. The party decided to use strategy to attempt to defeat the kobolds this time. The elven ranger, sensing danger immediately jumped to the top of a boulder beside the road and readied his bow. The rest of the party was taken entirely by surprise as 3 Kobold Dragonshields, 1 Kobold Skirmisher, and a Kobold Wyrmpriest sprang out of hiding. The kobolds, realizing they couldn't reach the parties ranger, because of their small stature, concentrated on moving to the rest of the party. The rogue dove for the bushes, where she fired bolts from her crossbow at the kobolds from hiding. The rest of the party did their best to flank individual kobolds and bring them down, while the ranger and the wyrmpriest traded fire, arrows for acidic energy balls.

The last kobold living had retreated to the bushes after being severely wounded, while the rest of it's comrades fought on. The party approached this kobold and attempted to get the kobold to surrender. In it's fear it accidentally let the name "Irontooth" slip out. It had more fear of what this "Irontooth" would do if it surrendered than what the party would do if it didn't. The party finished the encounter by throwing a firepot into the bushes, burning them to the ground as well as the Kobold to it's death. The party had won a great victory, but it had been a close thing. Searching the Kobold Wyrmpriests remains, the party found a carved obsidian figurine in the shape of a dragon. Inscribed upon the bottom of the figure is the symbol for the god Orcus, lord of the undead. This is where our party left off.

----

More to come as our adventure continues.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx"

2010-05-01T21:35:00.001-07:00

I just finished burning the cd and am about to install it on my laptop. I will keep you posted.

post # 10000000

2010-05-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

Lots of people do a 100th post on their blog. But where's the fun in that? So I'll keep this post nice and short. This is my 2^7th post.

Thanks for being a reader!

Dungeons and Dragons

2010-05-01T21:27:00.000-07:00

So after my post about not really having any D&D experience I decided to rectify that. I picked up the 4th edition core books and read them (well the player's handbook and half the dungeon masters guide so far, but I'm making progress). I also posted on Craigslist about starting a group, and I've done it.

My first game is 1 week from today, and I'm really excited. I will be the Dungeon Master, so I've been working on my quest with all my free time. If things go well I may just make posts about D&D a regular part of my blog.

It's time for the professional world to catch on

2010-04-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

Internet Explorer isn't the standard anymore. If you have a website that ONLY functions in Internet Explorer, then you are losing sales/clicks/whatever. It's entirely possible to develop a website that works great in all major browsers. When you code to the IE standard however you code to a broken standard. A standard that doesn't even stay consistent between versions! So I'm looking at you MLS websites. Get your act together and stop building bloated shitty websites that don't work in anything except Internet Explorer. I started actively recommending against using Internet Explorer at all 10 years ago. I'm not the only person who works on other peoples computers who has been doing the same thing. 3rd Party browsers are continually gaining market share and they aren't going anywhere. All you are doing is limiting your customer base when you run/pay for a website that only works in Internet Explorer.

If your HTML monkey only knows how to code for Internet Explorer it's time to fire him and step into the 21st century. Hire someone who has some idea what the hell they're doing.

Does anyone even like quicktime?

2010-04-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

I'm not referring to the file format itself, but I mean the program.

The reason I ask is because I've never met anyone that did. However if you use iTunes (and if you have an iPod you probably do), it gets installed. It associates itself with all kinds of file formats by default, and you have to actually go into the options to change them, you don't get the option during the install process (of iTunes at least). So why does this piss me off so much?

Tif image files. Quicktime associates itself with them for some stupid as hell reason. Windows already has a perfectly adequate Tif viewer built into it, I can't for the life of me think of a single reason I'd want a music/video player to receive the file association for an image format. It even goes so far as to insert itself into your web browsers (well internet explorer at least, I'll post another rant explaining this one after this post). To save a file that quicktime opens from the web you need to buy the pro version. So if you have say a flash application that has a link to open a tif file it will open the tif in a new window, and quicktime takes over with no chance to just save the file. Then you have to buy quicktime to save the file from the webpage. Fuck you Apple, I don't want to buy quicktime. If my wife didn't have an iPod I wouldn't even have quicktime installed. I've corrected the issue (I think) by disassociating tif images with quicktime, but that's something I really shouldn't have had to do.

So here's my plea Apple. Pull your heads out of your asses and stop trying to make Quicktime the default application for so many things when you do a driveby install of it with iTunes. If someone is sadistic enough to install it without requiring it for iTunes, feel free to drag them through the coals, but the innocent bystanders don't deserve to be fucked with like this.

How Mario got his name (and Italian heritage)

2010-04-26T15:13:00.001-07:00

Here's the link: http://technologizer.com/2010/04/25/mario/

Slashdot summary:
"In 1981, tiny Nintendo of America was getting ready to release Donkey Kong. When the company's landlord, Mario Segale, demanded back rent, Nintendo staffers named the game's barrel-jumping protagonist after him. Almost thirty years later, neither Nintendo — which continues to crank out Mario games — nor Segale — now a wealthy, secretive Washington State real estate developer — like to talk about how one of video games' iconic characters got his name and Italian heritage. Technologizer's Benj Edwards has researched the story for years and provides the most detailed account to date."

Rock Tumbling

2010-04-14T22:16:00.000-07:00

So I haven't posted about this for a while, because I've been rather discouraged.

The motor we designed the big tumbler with is very old. It's also very inefficient it seems. Also our idea of just greasing up holes for the rods to run in aren't nearly as maintenance free as I'd like. All this combined lead to a $700 electricity bill a couple months ago. Everything has been on hold since then.

So what does this leave me with? Well I've sourced a much newer (though still at least 10 years old) motor that's rated for less power. It should use less power at all levels of the spectrum because it's newer and should be more efficient, but also because it's a less powerful motor. The motor turns at half the speed of the old motor though, so it will require an additional pulley to make it work.

I really should add bearings to all of the rods as well to make it so the tumbler will run more efficiently. But that's A LOT of bearings to buy. So I guess what this all adds up to is that I think I'm going to be designing a Rocky Mk II.

I'm going to eliminate the 5 Gallon bucket step with this version I think. The cost of grit to actually run a barrel that size would be monstrous, I just don't have those kinds of resources. I would still like to keep the 12 Lb barrel spot, and I'd definitely want to keep the littler barrel spots. This would greatly reduce the required height for this thing though, and would maybe allow me to make it be a table top sort of thing. I'd need to buy at least 10 bearings though, maybe more if I wanted to reuse the same pulleys (and I'd just as soon not have to buy as many pulleys since they're $$$ heh).

Domo Arigatou Mr. Roboto!

2010-04-14T22:09:00.000-07:00

=So I've (inadvertently) been keeping a secret from this blog it seems. For the last 2 or 3 weeks in my Intro to computer science class we've been working with robots. We're divided into several teams making robots drive up and down ramps and around corners.

Now when I say robot, I mean something like a heavier duty erector set, with the ability to do some programming on it. We've got some version of this bundle to work with: http://www.vexrobotics.com/products/classroom-bundles/ which is pretty cool I guess. I've been in charge of doing the programming for the thing, which fits me nicely, but I've been struggling with convincing others how to do some of the stuff in the code. A lot of this I think comes from the fact that I'm thinking of it as a programmer and of the code being easier to debug with my method, whereas they don't really know what the code looks like, so they don't understand their method that sounds easy on paper will actually make the code a lot more complex. It just makes me glad I'm not going to be a programmer for a living.

Maybe when I get a little bit further I'll take a video of it and upload it.

I want a smartphone

2010-04-14T21:57:00.000-07:00

This.

No seriously, I think I really do want a smart phone, but that $30 a month commitment is holding me back. Over the course of 2 years that's $720, OUCH! If I was to buy one, it would likely be the HTC Droid Eris or whatever it is on Verizon, since that's my carrier (currently, that may be changing soon), but I'd definitely want to wait until it had received it's Android 2.0 update.

In any case, just thought you (likely nonexistent) readers would like to know what I've been thinking about.

Borderlands (my rating at the end)

2010-04-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

This is the game I was looking for. Well not exactly, but it's damn close. I've been playing it nearly non-stop for days now, and am actually planning on taking a break for a few days from it. This is one of the few reasons this post is actually getting made lol.

So how does the game go? It's a first person shooter. It's also a role playing game. You level up and gain skills and proficiencies and health and all that good stuff. Guns have different stats that make them better or worse than other guns. There are countless (that's not quite true, but let's pretend it is) different weapons to find. So what does this add up to? A semi-skill based shooter that is heavily loot oriented, which is pretty much as perfect of an idea for a game as I can think of.

So what are my complaints? It's a little too easy to exploit the game, which leads to lots of 12 year olds who think they're badass cause they have hacked items... until you kick them from your game, which I would hope leaves them feeling slightly less badass. It also lacks a robust economy. Fixing the economy would require some pretty big changes to the game I would suspect. To implement all my ideas they would likely have to actually have a Borderlands 2 instead of just an expansion or patch.

So what improvements or changes would I like to see in the game?
Economy:
-Fix the duping and modding. This has to be the first step to having a working economy.
-Create some kind of collectible item that can be traded that everyone will have some use for. Maybe a key to a chest or something that has a chance to drop good loot, something like that.
-A secure trading method. This isn't necessarily required, but it would be nice. It might also be useful as a step towards removing duping as you could change how saving works if you have a secure trade method.
Gameplay
-New characters and/or skill trees for the existing characters. Give us more options for how to play. It seems like each character has only 1 or two really viable builds, give us some more options so we can have more, different, specialized characters or people can become less specialized and more diversified. In any case, this would add a lot to the game.
-A way to move items between characters on an account would be awesome as well.
-I'd love it if guns had slots that modifications could be put into to change them, similar to the way guns worked in Hellgate. This would further increase the number of guns and all that in the game.

Now I know that no one of any ability to make these changes happen will ever see this, but those are my ideas. Maybe these couple of days without playing will give me a shot at having a different nerdy adventure.

----------
Rating information:

Parents, this game isn't for kids. How I'd break it down?

Sexuality: PG-13
Language: R
Violence: R

That is to say that there's no nudity per se, but there is a character with a fair amount of her assets hanging out so to speak. The game is absolutely full of swearing. There's swearing up one side and down the other. As far as the violence goes, yeah it's animated, but that doesn't matter. If you're okay with your child seeing people dismembered, decapitated, burned with acid, burned with fire, electrocuted, and blown to pieces, then you'll be okay with what you see in this game. It's not usual in this game though to shoot someones head or limbs off in this game though, in fact after the first hour or two, it's more unusual to see this not happen to everything you kill.

I do not condone the usage of "leet-speak" but...

2010-03-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

(5:36:31 PM) Me: i 5pe4k 1337, d0 j00?
(5:36:46 PM) Patty: NO I DO NOT, nerd.
(5:37:10 PM) Patty: I could read that
(5:37:14 PM) Patty: proof I married a nerd.

I couldn't help but post that snippet of conversation.

Forza 3 Vinyls

2010-03-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

So I've been doing more work with Vinyls in Forza 3. I'm still not awesome or anything, but I feel like I'm definitely improving. Here's a R3 Class Nissan 370z I whipped up last night.

As usual for pictures on my blog, click it for a bigger version. If you like the design and would like one (without my gamertag below the cards of course), leave me a note with your gamertag and I'll gift you it. I've only got something like 10 achievements left in the game, but they're big, so I'm nowhere near done yet. It'll be hard to go back and get the last achievement I need in Forza 2 after getting used to Forza 3.

Google Apps

2010-03-23T13:53:00.000-07:00

All I can say is: WOW!

I've been wanting an email at a domain that I controlled for a while now. Well this is the answer I was looking for. For free I can have 50 users at my domain with 7GB of storage for each one for email, full pop3 and/or imap support, and a bunch of other real neat stuff.

So for the cost of a domain name ($5 a year for mine) I've got a personal email at a domain that I own!

Dungeons and Dragons

2010-03-16T21:18:00.000-07:00

So here it is, a post about Dungeons and Dragons on a blog titled "Anatomy of a Nerdgasm". Big surprise, right? Well here's the surprise, I've only ever played once or twice, and I don't really think those times count.

Why don't the times I've tried it count? Well that's mostly because my friends were only really interested in "winning", which is not exactly conductive to a good role playing experience. If they weren't getting good experience or loot they weren't interested. The friends I did have that wanted to role play only wanted to be extremely goofy, and that didn't fit in with the rest of the group. It turned into a largely disjointed farce.

I find myself reading blog posts by Gabe over at Penny-Arcade and feeling tremendous envy. I would love to get into a group like that, it sounds like a lot of fun, but I have no idea how to go about doing so. Now I do have a couple of nephews that I could maybe get interested, but even that's iffy. One of them is a bit young (he's 13, but he's an immature 13) and the other has role played, but only some vampire game with his mom. I also have a friend that I see sometimes who has done some role playing, and who I think would be interested, but he lives a couple of hours away and he's very busy anyway. This doesn't really seem like the most ideal group to try playing with, especially since none of us actually really has much if any experience.

I personally would really like, perhaps after getting some experience actually playing to see how things work, to be a DM, since I feel like I've got a lot of ideas that could be interesting. Of course I would also be totally willing to just join an established group and play along if there's already a DM.

So, if you're reading this and already have a group, want to form a group, or something along those lines, and live in Northern California, let me know, cause I'd love to talk to you.

Happy Pi Day!

2010-03-14T12:18:00.001-07:00

Just think, 5 years from today it will be 03/14/15 ... will that be mega-pi-day?

I really meant to make this post yesterday...

2010-03-12T10:27:00.000-08:00

but I didn't, so get over it. In any case, Happy (Belated) Birthday Douglas Adams. I realize he's dead, but his books are awesome. I heard him mentioned on the Writer's Almanac yesterday morning and that's when I decided to make this post, since I hadn't had any idea that yesterday was his birthday.

Manga: Please Save my Earth

2010-03-12T10:14:00.000-08:00

I finished reading the manga Please Save My Earth finally. While I've been a fan of anime for many years (I have a hard time determining if I watched Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball (not z), or Ronin Warriors (Samurai Troopers) first, and in which years they all started being played here in the US), I wasn't really aware of anime actually being something special until 1997. Around this same period of time I lived in the Bay Area of California and we had two PBS channels: KQED (Cable channel 9 at the time) and KTEH (Cable channel 10 at the time). KTEH had a Sunday night Sci-Fi block that included the likes of Dr. Who, Red Dwarf, and anime.

KTEH was extremely unique in that they were one of the very few places to actually show uncut subtitled anime. Let me say this again, on a tv channel they showed uncut Japanese language audio English subtitled anime (okay so they did show some dubbed anime as well). As a high school student without a job in an era before broadband internet, this was really the only exposure to new anime I was likely to get, and it had a huge influence in my tastes in anime. I was introduced to serious dramas like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Key the Metal Idol as well as off the wall comedies like Urusei Yatsura and Tenchi Universe. I was also during this time introduced to the anime Please Save my Earth.

For those of you who've seen the anime OVA (there's a movie too that I have not watched), you know that the story pretty much abruptly ends at the end of episode 6 with nothing in the story being resolved. Let me assure you, the story goes MUCH further than the OVA takes you. There are a couple of somewhat intense scenes in the anime, but the story becomes more and more intense as it goes on. Starting somewhere half way through the story it starts rapidly building tension and it doesn't let up until right at the end. I've had some scanlations of the Manga for many years now that I read (and quite frankly had started to read many times, but never got far because the first volume of the manga is almost identical to the anime). Upon going to write this blog now though I do see that there is an actual release of it here in the US, so you should do yourself a favor and pick them up. I linked to the first volume earlier in the post and I see that you can get the first volume used for a penny right now on Amazon.com! I'd also really recommend this to anyone who likes a tension filled mystery with some romance and sci-fi elements. In any case, I wish I'd finished reading it sooner! I think next I'll tackle Kare Kano.

Finder Wyvernspur

2010-03-01T16:40:00.000-08:00

So this weekend we went to visit a friend, who shall remain nameless (some of you are probably grinning right now), who works for a company that also shall remain nameless. He works in the IT department, and fairly regularly ends up with discarded computer hardware (I believe he's supposed to dispose of it, but instead he gets rid of the serial numbers and wipes the hard drives).

Well said nameless friend, who incidentally is not a bard (at least I don't suspect he's a bard), has recently decided he doesn't have time to sort out this assorted hardware, and gave a bunch to me. In any case, this weekend I received 8 laptops in various states and configurations! There were 3 P4 1.7 Ghz laptops, and then 5 'other' P3 laptops (I haven't even managed to figure out the cpu speed on 3 of them yet.

Well the faster, larger, and newer P4 laptops didn't have 802.11 cards in them (despite the factory specs listing them), and in fact weren't even wired with antennas. Here's where the fun part starts. A few of the P3 laptops were equipped with said antennas. So the obvious solution? Transplant the antennas!

I didn't really find much information about a procedure like this online, in fact most people seem to take it for granted that a laptop that doesn't come pre-wired with antennas will never have them. Well, it really wasn't that hard. The first complete transplant took me around 4 hours (I was watching tv at the time too however), and it's what I'm posting this from now. Going from no antennas with an internal 802.11 card to one with antennas is night and day! The second transplant I did took me a more modest 2 and a half hours, and I believe I may have placed the antennas in slightly better places (but not a big difference really). I managed to blister my thumb with the tiny screw driver I had to use also.

In any case, the moral of the story: "If you take a laptop apart, you will have spare screws when you're done re-assembling it."

Car Vinyl Pictures (as promised)

2010-02-24T14:51:00.000-08:00

So I'm not awesome at this or anything, at least not yet, but here's my best accomplishments yet ( the Maserati pics were just some vinyls I stuck on a car to take screenshots, I don't actually drive around like that.

Here we have my Datsun 510 in mid-drift (not to be confused with a midriff lol). Notice the bunny and carrot on the hood, and the fading rabbits and name emblem on the side.

And here's the Maserati (which I've now used once to take these photos and that's it):

More to come as I get better and all that.

Success!

2010-02-22T08:55:00.000-08:00

So the grafting of the new power tip onto my laptop's power supply worked. The tip isn't a perfect replacement, but it functions better than the old one! The wire is thinner, so I was worried about it being able to handle the current, but it was rated for up to 125v @ 3A, and my power supply is 19.5V @ 6.15A, so it should be able to handle it just fine (and has charged the laptop up twice now without getting warm). The new tip was $7 from radio shack, and a wire that had a spot for the new tip to plug into was another $4. All and all an excellent investment, since a new power supply is many times more expensive.

The solder job, and electrical tape wrap is much cleaner than my last solder job, but I'm not going to take pictures of something so boring.

What I've been up to

2010-02-21T21:15:00.000-08:00

So I got Forza 3, basically for free, a couple of weeks ago. And that's really what's been occupying a ton of my free time. I seem to be really addicted to making vinyl kits for decorating cars (something I didn't mess with AT ALL in any of the previous games).

When I get a little better I'll have to post some here, but I've actually managed to even sell one for 1,000 credits in game!

I've also been doing some tinkering around with wxWidgets. We had to write a reverse polish notation calculator in visual basic for my csci-3 class. Well... I hate VB, so I did it in c++ with wxWidgets instead. I created the app without using a wysiwyg editor, so I'm quite proud of myself.

Now I'm going to have to cut this post short because I need to go solder a new tip on my laptop before school tomorrow since it developed a short! Please see my rant on the quality of sony computers from a week or two ago for more details *sigh*.

Castle Age Calculator v1.2.0 (final?)

2010-02-15T14:04:00.000-08:00

So I know I posted about the application dying and all that, but I've received a couple of requests for an updated version, so I've done just that.

Castle Age Calculator:

This is a program for determining the best property to buy next to get the quickest return on investment.

Current Version: 1.2.0 (final?)

New Features:
*Update to the buying labels. Things to buy next show a yellow "Buy Next" and things you can buy 10 of and are the next thing you should buy will now say "Buy 10 Now!"
*Better parsing of input so that you can copy and paste gold in directly with commas and all and it won't choke on the input.
*The new lands have been added in this update.
*Neither level limits or levels to buy a particular land type are accounted for.

Download (No more tiny url's because of abusers and incompetents on the official forums):
*Windows Release(WINE compatible): http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OLM1XSOQ
*Linux Release: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IUGDFXS7
*Source Code: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XK2ISNA2
*Old Spreadsheet Version: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkDCrPPgHo-OdEE0TUx5NjRtclpockdtaGJGR2R3R2c&hl=en
--Spreadsheet version numbers do not match and isn't updated anymore.

Installation:
*Windows Release: Unzip into a folder and run the .exe, no setup necessary.
*Linux Release: You may need to install the libwxgtk2.8 libraries for this to work on your system.
*Source Code: This file has all of the source code and project files necessary to compile in code::blocks if you have wxWidgets properly setup and C::B configured to find and use it.

Upcoming Changes:
*Changes coming soon for sure:
--General maintenance?
*Other changes:
--None planned

As usual if you like my program, let me know! If you can think of any changes I should make to the functionality, let me know and we'll talk.

I cannot vouch for any version of this program that isn't in the links in this thread, as this is open source and someone else could compile a version with malware in it!

Death of an Application

2010-02-11T15:34:00.000-08:00

So the people behind Castle Age made some changes to how the game works. Among those changes are some caps on the amount of each land you can own and derive income from. I won't go into the pros and cons, but it's needless to say that there are tons of people cheering them and tons cursing them for what is essentially a nerf. In any case, one of the results of these changes is that the castle age calculator, as it is now, is obsolete.

There were some changes in the works to add functionality to the calculator that would bring some use to my program, though the interest in these changes alone were no where near as large as the interest in the program itself. This leaves me with the choice of making the necessary changes to the program to reflect the changes (and which would still result in a program that isn't all that useful), and then tack on some addons that a few people will use. I could also just create a new application from scratch that would do what the addons would. Or option C, let the application stay as is, which is essentially useless, and let it fade away into memory.

I'm leaning toward option C. There isn't even really enough information out there to do finish the addon's functionality without a lot of research. There just doesn't seem to be enough need for me to keep working on this. I do miss having something like this to work on though. I enjoy this almost more than playing the game itself. So with this post, I bid you goodbye Castle Age Calculator.

Large Hadron Collider Rap

2010-02-07T17:08:00.000-08:00

So this post is about something that's actually pretty old it appears, but I only just discovered it and thought it was so awesome I had to share it:

CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.

This is an example of the nerdcore music genre, which I'm really starting to fall in love with. I found the link to this video on this blog post: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2008/07/rappin-physics.html

Sony makes shitty hardware

2010-02-04T12:06:00.000-08:00

Just in case anyone is wondering that is.

If you're reading my blog you're probably already someone who has some ideas about things like hardware already, so you probably already know how shitty Sony's computers are, but for those of you who found me through google because of this post because you wanted to know if you should buy a Vaio, do yourself a favor and just fucking don't.

This laptop, which hasn't had a hard life, had it's hard drive die just out of warranty (admittedly it was a samsung brand drive). But after replacing the drive with something else it's been running strong except for a few BIG issues.

First, keys randomly stop working on the keyboard. I think it's likely a speck of dust has found its way between the plunger and the actual circuit for the keyboard and this is why it's stopped working. The key that has issues moves around fairly often, though it seems to have an affinity for the a key as it goes back there more often.

Clean the keyboard out you say? Nope, not going to happen. When you pop off the keys you have about a 25% chance (btw I had to hit the five 3 times to get it to register, same with the percentage sign) of actually breaking the key so that it can't go back on. What a wonderful design decision!

The battery is actually doing okay considering this thing is plugged in most of the time. It certainly hasn't caught fire and tried to kill me at least, which is always a plus from a sony battery. However, the power supply has it's issues. The plug only works when it's plugged in at certain angles, that is to say, you have to drape a portion of the cord over the top left corner of the screen or it doesn't power/charge the laptop.

Now today I was just using the computer like always and all of a sudden it said I was on battery power. So I go to check the connector, and it's hot. Not just a little hot either, it's melt rubber hot.
FANTASTIC! So I pull it out shut down the pc and unplug it so it has a chance to cool. Guess what, the power supplies LED is was no longer lighting up (had to hit the i twice for each i in lighting), fortunately it seems now that at it's an hour later it's working again... almost. That is to say that when it's plugged in, it thinks it's plugged in, but it's not providing enough power to actually charge the laptop, it seems to be just slowing the rate at which it discharges. GREAT!

The DVD-drive in this thing has never been real reliable. I've taken it apart, cleaned the lens and oiled the rails in it, and now it kind of works, which is a vast improvement over not working at all. But it's just another indicator of the build quality.

Finally, they made a decision regarding sticking a video chipset in this thing that was almost immediately abandoned by the industry again. I've got a video chipset that has windows xp drivers. That's it. The xp drivers don't work in vista or 7 either, and as far as I can tell there are no drivers for Linux either. So unless I want to run xp forever I'm stuck with no video acceleration.

So in short, don't buy a sony computer unless you want built in obsolescence from a device that could catch fire and kill you. For all you know, if you have a sony laptop, it might be planning to burn your house down right now while you read this.

thinkingInCamelCase

2010-02-03T15:04:00.000-08:00

So I've been working on my Castle Age Calculator a lot lately in my free time. I've enjoyed having a program that people actually find useful and that I can add updates to as I come up with ideas for it and as others give me suggestions for it. In fact, I just released a new version yesterday and you can see: http://www.castleageforums.com/cforum/showthread.php?t=15252 for information on it. There's been a side effect of all this work however:

I started typing something last night and I actually typed it in camel-case at first. Of course I immediately noticed what I had done, and made the necessary corrections. I chose camel-case as the method I would use for naming variables in programming last semester. For those who don't know what camel-case is, it's essentially a way of putting words together without spaces but while maintaining some readability. There are some variations, but the method I use starts the words with a lowercase, and then each additional word starts with an uppercase letter. So for instance look at the title of this post. Normally you'd write it as "Thinking In Camel Case" or "Thinking in camel case." But the way I wrote it was "thinkingInCamelCase", which is how you write when using camel-case.

Advertising

2010-01-30T12:06:00.000-08:00

So I'm a poor college student. As a result, I've changed the advertisements on my blog a little bit. If you think the advertisements are too intrusive, please let me know and maybe I can find a better layout. Your opinion, as a reader, does matter to me!

Castle Age Land Calculator v1.1 Release!

2010-01-27T20:48:00.000-08:00

Castle Age Land Calculator:

This is a program for determining the best property to buy next to get the quickest return on investment.

Current Version: 1.1 (Windows release 1.1.1 contains a renamed executable as I forgot the .exe originally, this is the only difference).

New Features:
*Your saved file is now automatically loaded when you start the program
*New buttons
--There are now buttons to increase and decrease the number of each property you own. You no longer have to manually type the number of properties in.
*Changed buttons
--The calculate button has been removed as changing any field automatically recalculates all items.
--Calculate has been replaced with Reset which will reset everything to zero!

Download:
*Windows Release(WINE compatible): http://tinyurl.com/CACalcv1-1-1w
*Linux Release: http://tinyurl.com/CACalcv1-1l
*Source Code: http://tinyurl.com/CACalcv1-1s

Installation:
*Windows Release: Unzip into a folder and run the .exe, no setup necessary.
*Linux Release: You may need to install the libwxgtk2.8 libraries for this to work on your system.
*Source Code: This file has all of the source code and project files necessary to compile in code::blocks if you have wxWidgets properly setup and C::B configured to find and use it.

Upcoming Changes:
*Changes coming soon for sure:
--Better parsing of input, no longer will commas be an issue!
*Other changes:
--None yet!

As usual if you like my program, let me know! If you can think of any changes I should make to the functionality, let me know and we'll talk.

I cannot vouch for any version of this program that isn't in the links in this thread, as this is open source and someone else could compile a version with malware in it!

Cross Compiling wxWidget c++ applications in Ubuntu (9.10)

2010-01-25T17:29:00.000-08:00

Last post today, I promise!

Here's a little guide I decided to put together to help walk other noobs through the process of getting this setup, since I had a helluva time getting it working right until I got some help that straightened me out. Your mileage may vary, but I think this might be a little easier to follow, at least as far as getting the win32 compiler and wxwidgets windows libraries on your system and in the right places.

1. You need MinGW32 (in terminal)
A-- sudo apt-get install mingw32

2. You need the wxWidgets cross compiled library
A-- Add these repositories to your software sources:
i--- deb http://apt.jenslody.de/ any main
ii-- deb-src http://apt.jenslody.de/ any main

B-- Get the keys to use the repository (in terminal):
i--- sudo apt-get update
ii-- sudo apt-get install jens-lody-debian-keyring

C-- Install the libraries (in terminal):
i--- sudo apt-get install libwxmsw2.8-dev

From here you should be able to follow the directions at where it says preparing code::blocks: http://wiki.codeblocks.org/index.php?title=Cross_Compiling_wxWidgets_Applications_on_Linux to get everything working right, except for a few small errors in the document. For one, when you get to the fixing build options section, it will have two different entries for other linker options. The top one (saying to add this: `wx-config --host=i586-mingw32msvc --static --cflags` ) should actually be for your other compiler settings, not the linker settings.

Now I didn't try out the debugging stuff because my application worked fine, so I can't offer any guidance on that, but hopefully that clears things up a bit. Until someone told me that I needed the libwxmsw2.8-dev library I had NO idea what I was doing.

Keep in mind that wxWidgets apps for windows and Linux may be slightly different (in the gui sense). As a result, something that you've designed and looks great in Linux may be awkward or wrong in windows (of note here is horizontal alignments that you set). Hopefully this helps someone else out there so they don't spend hours pulling their hair out trying to figure this out, since the wxwidgets library name you need isn't especially obvious.

I want to offer special thanks to SevenMachines from UbuntuForums.org for pointing me in the right direction for getting that library.

Why I haven't been posting lately...

2010-01-25T17:07:00.000-08:00

Excuses are like assholes, everyone has one.

But seriously, I've been using firefox-3.7 (minefield) for a while now. Well... it seems when I open up blogger to update my blog lately, it causes minefield to floor the cpu. Absolutely all idle cpu taken up. FANTASTIC! So why not use 3.6, which is now in beta instead of alpha anyway? Because it doesn't work anymore. As of about a week ago trying to start firefox-3.6 crashes and gives me errors. So why not use 3.5? Well I do like to be on the edge of things, but it also seems to have disappeared from my system.

So here I am posting from... *drumroll* Chromium! So far I am liking it for the most part, it's a little smoother, but the default color scheme is a little too "windows" for me, so I'll have to play with it. My only real gripe is a lack of good gmail notifiers for it (in that I want one I can put a few accounts into without using google apps for your domain). I'm not sure why this seems like such a stretch since chromium and gmail are both google.

In any case, until something catastrophically prevents me from using chromium I guess it's my new browser of choice!

Castle Age Land Calculator

2010-01-25T17:03:00.000-08:00

So I actually released this several days ago, and my next post will detail why I didn't post about it then.

I wrote a land calculator to replace the spreadsheet I made. I used c++ and wxwidgets and cross compiled it for both windows and Linux. I've not actually packaged up a Linux binary, mostly because I wouldn't want to include the binaries myself, and partly because it's so easy for a default install of code::blocks with wxwidgets installed to compile for yourself. Without further delay:

http://tinyurl.com/CastleAgeCalc-windows (windows binary)
http://tinyurl.com/CastleAgeCalc-source (source code)
http://tinyurl.com/castleageland (old spreadsheet)

I'm going to be working on an update in the near future to change how some of the interface looks and acts, but functionality will be the same unless someone points out a bug to me. Hopefully you'll find it useful, and if for some reason you can't get the source to compile and do want a Linux binary, just let me know and I will compile and upload one.

I'm going to get some funny looks for this one

2010-01-25T16:56:00.000-08:00

So I can't be the only person who thinks this way. When I am trying to do a calculation in my head, I rapidly break it down into smaller parts. E.g. If I were to try and multiply 116,000 times 0.05 in my head I would do it like this:

116000 * .01 = 1160
1160 * 5 = 5800

Now I realize that's a fairly simplistic example, but that's essentially the process I use whenever I'm trying to do math in my head. It really shocks people when I'm able to spit out answers like that, but it's really not all that hard if you can remember a few small things:

Anytime you multiply something by .1 you just move the decimal over 1 place to the left. When you multiply by .01 you move it over two places to the left (letting us drop two zeros like above). But we're not trying to multiply 116,000 by .01, we're trying to multiply it by .05. Well 5 * .01 = .05. Therefore we can take our number that we just dropped two digits from and multiply it by 5. While this may not be trivial to some people in their heads, it's certainly simpler than the original problem. If you know your multiplication tables up through 12x12 in your head you should have no problem doing this with a scrap of paper, and if you're good at visualizing things you shouldn't even need the paper.

This method doesn't work for more complex numbers, but if you're not worried about an exact figure it can be used to ballpark things very easily.

For instance: 123,456 * .4356. In this case it might be most expedient to do it a little bit at a time. If we might instead multiply out 123,000 and 124,000 both in our head times .4 and .5. The range our answer will fall into will be between the smallest and the largest number, but likely will be toward the lower end since we would round down at the points that we truncated our numbers.

Now, where this can be applied in real life?

You want to buy something at the store that costs $54.73 normally. It's 42% off (making it $31.74). How much does it cost? Well there's a few different approaches we can take:

We could try and figure out what 60% of $55 is. This can be broken down to 55 * .6, which can be simplified to 55 * .1 * 6 or 5.5 * 6. This can be further broken down to 5 * 6 + .5 * 6, or 30 + 3. That wasn't so bad, right? Well $33 is pretty close to 31.74, and if anything is an overestimation (which is what you'd want if you were trying to decide if you could afford something).

Another way we could look at it is $54 times 60% (since 100% - 40% = 60%). This breaks down in a very similar manner to 5 * 6 + .4 * 6 or 30 + 2.4 or 32.40, which is closer still, but still not quite right.

What if instead we rounded the dollars up to $55 like the first try and instead actually kept the 42% off and didn't drop the 2%? This would mean we'd be doing 55 * .58 or 5 * 5.8 + .5 * 5.8. This is slightly more complicated, we're dealing with more decimals now. It's still feasible to do this in your head, but unless you're really comfortable with decimals it might be best to not bother trying to be this accurate. For completeness sake it's 29 + 2.9 or 31.90, which is significantly closer, but the question is, will the knowledge that you're 50 cents closer to the actual price be worth the extra time you spent thinking about it?

There are other approaches we can take also, and in some situations they're much more useful in some situations. If you're dealing with a regular fractional amount, like say 33% off, then you could divide your number by 3 and subtract it from the total. However, how the heck do you divide $27.99 by 3 in your head (incidentally this isn't that bad, it's 9.33, making your final price be $18.66)? There's no real reason to, why not break it down like above? If we instead figured that 27 and 30 are both divisible by 3, then those are the two whole number ranges we have to deal with. In this case that means you'll have a savings between 9 and 10 dollars. In the grand scheme of things we're only talking about a difference between the two of 1 dollar, which isn't that great of a difference. You could think of it even simpler like this. 33% = 1/3. So if you're going to divide by 3 to get your answer, just round up to 30, since that's a very easy fraction in your head, 10! You know you rounded up though, so your actual savings will be a little less than $10. This figure works great when you're trying to just do a quick guestimate.

In any case, like I said, I can't be the only person who does this kind of stuff in their head. If you can follow what I did above and remember it, chances are you can save yourself time and wonder if you have to know an approximate number. The key is just to break it down into bits and pieces you can work with without a calculator and then re-assemble them when you're done.

Rocky up and running

2010-01-18T14:25:00.000-08:00

Here's a video of the tumbler finally together and running. I don't really have any other barrels to run on it yet (the drain pipe will become a larger barrel, as will the 5 gallon bucket, but they're not ready yet. I've got a batch going in the little barrel at the top right now, and it's turning at almost the exact same speed as the little tumbler I had turned before it seized up.

The video quality is a little low because I took the video with my digital camera and not a digital camcorder.

Another day of working on Rocky

2010-01-17T22:24:00.000-08:00

The title of this post is a lie, we worked on it for two more days. Still no new photos, we're getting very close to being complete that I've decided to wait until it's complete to show it off.

Yesterday we got the top layer turning... kind of. However, it was very tough to start with lots of slipping. When we hand turned the top a few times to 'break it loose' it would turn. We needed a smaller belt to drive the middle layer though, so we called it a day.

This morning I went over to Tractor Supply Company (which has some really fun stuff) and bought the belt I needed. So we mounted up the top layer (we'd let it turn only clamped in last night), and put the belt on the middle layer and mounted that layer as well.

It didn't turn. To be honest, the only thing that turned was the first transmission and part of the lowest level. The belts were slipping on everything else, and 'breaking it loose' didn't work. Then just as I went to turn it off, everything stopped. Fortunately we didn't burn the motor up, we'd only tripped a breaker. Well, with a 1/2 horsepower motor, we should have been able to turn the rods with unweighted. This told us that our drilling 5/8" holes for 5/8" rods, even when packed with grease, would not work. If we'd been thinking we would have drilled 11/16" holes to start with. We made the decision to pull ALL of the rods back out and use a rasp in a drill to widen the holes, and in the process we discovered that my father had not drilled all of the holes at the same places. We were trying to turn something that wasn't even straight, no wonder it didn't work.

So here we are at the end of the days work, and I've got everything except the top two rails rebuilt, and the lower levels turn easily. I can hand turn the motor and turn all of the rails that have been connected so far, which is a huge improvement over the previous days build when we could barely hand turn an individual rod. Photos to come tomorrow when it's all done!

Big Rock Tumbler Build: Day 3

2010-01-12T23:38:00.000-08:00

No real photos today as I didn't make much progress, I'll probably post some more tomorrow when I have more time to work on it.

Essentially we got the drilling for the next level done, as well as putting the (hosed) rods through it. This level isn't yet mounted up, and we've run into a problem. It seems that because of the pulley sizes I need for the correct speed at this level, I can't drive this level in the same way.

We've had some severe pulley woes as well. We (thought) we needed a 3" pulley. So we bought one. Get it home and someone had shoved one with a different bore into the packaging and returned it to the store. We returned that one and bought a different 3" pulley that had the right bore. Today I figured out we actually needed a 4" pulley, so I returned the 3" and got a 4" one. Now... today I'm thinking that I need to redo some math and see if I can use smaller pulleys for the top level so we don't run into the drive issue I have in the middle level. What does this really mean? It means I may be returning the pulley tomorrow for this same exact spot and going with something else! UGH!

I also still need a name for this thing. I'm toying with calling it Rocky. Not just because it's a rock tumbler, but also because it's kind of a frankensteins monster sort of thing, ala Rocky Horror, but with (far) less sexuality attached.

I love spreadsheets

2010-01-12T23:18:00.000-08:00

I'm kind of a giant nerd (if the blog title didn't give it away). In any case, I love a good spreadsheet. I make spreadsheets for all kinds of things. I have a hard time playing any kind of game that involved planning or data manipulation without setting one up. In the past I've kept my spreadsheets private and not shared them. Well this time I've decided to share!

I made this for the facebook game Castle Age. It helps plan when you should buy land. I built it in excel 2007 and then moved it over to google docs so that anyone can use it. You won't be able to modify it without downloading it and saving it though. In any case here it is: http://tinyurl.com/CastleAgeLand.

A new challenger appears!

2010-01-08T20:00:00.000-08:00

Some good friends have just had their first child. I fully expect Adam to turn his new son into as big of a nerd as we are, and make us all proud!

Python

2010-01-08T19:57:00.000-08:00

I'm toying with learning the programming language Python, however I have no idea what I'd use it for, so I'm not sure if I should bother. It seems like it'd be pretty easy to pick up and learn, and it's certainly easier to do some things than in C++ (where I've done most of my limited amount of programming), but it also seems slower and less efficient so I'm not sure I should bother.

In any case, if anyone reads this and cares to weigh in, please do so!

My little tumbler locked up!

2010-01-08T19:50:00.000-08:00

So I went out to check my rock tumbler today to see how it was going and it wasn't turning, and the motor housing was quite hot to the touch! Well I took it apart, cleaned out the rails as best as I was able to, and re-oiled it. After putting it back together it will turn again now, but it still seems a little slow (eyeballing it at about 30 RPM).

All the more reason to get the big tumbler finished soon I guess.

Interactive LED Coffee Table

2010-01-07T15:46:00.000-08:00

I WANT ONE!!!!!!!

Seriously, I do. They come in black now too, so you don't have to have orange (though if you had a cat the color of the one in the video, I suppose they would match lol).

Build it yourself kits here: http://evilmadscience.com/majors/150-panelkits

Pre-built here: http://evilmadscience.com/majors/46-tables

The problem with accessories

2010-01-07T15:28:00.000-08:00

I posted this in reply to a message saying this on an xbox 360 discussion on facebook. It's a bit long winded, but I think it really demonstrates the issues microsoft is facing with natal, and Nintendo is facing with the wii motion plus accessory (and possibly the balance board, though that's seen a fair amount of market adoption, even if nothing besides wii fit(plus) has really used it appropriately). The message I'm replying to reads:

"what u mean never take off! all xbox accessories r good i have lips and dj hero and i think there wicked something for the whole family to play!!!"

And my posting reads:
"What I mean is that console accessories historically fall very flat on their faces. Go look at what console accessories and expansions have done historically in every other case and you will see they've pretty much universally failed.

On the sega master system there were only a few games that used the 3d glasses.

On the nes there were only a few games that used the zapper, ROB, or the mat.

On the Genesis the sega cd did have some good games, but in general it and the 32x were flops. I can't really speak to the enforcer gun or any of the other guns.

On the snes, very few games used the super scope 6. Very few games were super game boy enabled for the super gameboy, meaning most of the games for it were regular gameboy games. Very few games used the multi tap either, it seems like there were more nes games that used that systems multi tap.

On the N64, the 64DD didn't even make it to the US.

On the Saturn, Dreamcast, and PS1 very few games used the guns for those respective systems. Very few games used the analog saturn controller, though the PS1 dual shock DID take off! Not a lot of game used the multi tap or the direct connect between two consoles. The dreamcast had a maracas controller that one game used and a twin sticks controller that I believe only one game used. Saturn also had a twin sticks controller that may have only been used by one game.

The PS2 did seem to have a few more light gun games than was typical. In this (and to some degree in the dreamcast and ps1 also) we start to see game accessories designed for a single game (for instance DDR pads). These are somewhat of a success as the games weren't total flops and you basically had to have the accessory if you really wanted to experience the gameplay. Despite this, the accessories served little to no purpose outside of that one game. This is essentially where we still are today.

The wii has the motion plus accessory, which many people think should have been packaged in from the beginning. I haven't seen any impact from this yet, but it seems a bit early to rule on whether this is a flop or not. Natal isn't out yet, and you never know, it might actually get used a lot, but history shows that we're likely to get a few games that use it right at the beginning and then no more. I can't really comment on the ps3 stuff (sixaxis (sp?) and their upcoming wand thing) as I don't really have any experience with it.

The issue comes down to the fact that game developers don't want to release a game that only some people will be able to play (e.g. those with natal), so they develop the game to be primarily (or entirely) played without it. This lack of games results in consumers not seeing a real need for it, so it doesn't reach market saturation. Because consumers aren't buying it, developers still don't see a need to use it. It's a cycle. The easiest ways to reach that market saturation are to have it be very inexpensive and/or to include it with new console sales. Microsoft is unlikely to do either, so I think we're looking at a situation where we'll have another failed accessory UNLESS someone designs a (or hopefully several) awesome applications for it that the gaming public decides are must haves."

Building the rock tumbler: Day Two

2010-01-02T17:31:00.000-08:00

So we made some revisions to the design today as you'll see in the photos below.

We decided not to use the PVC as a bearing. Instead we drilled some 5/8" holes through the 4"x4" and put some automotive grease in the holes. This seems to be adequate, there's more friction than I'd like, but it does run. Perhaps with some running time it will free up a little bit more and run smoother. Going up to the next size drill bit we had introduced just a little too much slop.

Additionally, the clear rubber tubing we bought to line the rods with just didn't fit all that well, so we cut up an old garden hose and lined it with that.

Additionally, we were originally were only going to drive one rod of each level (which is contrary to what most people were suggesting), due to cost reasons (pulleys are $$$), however we figured out that one rod just wouldn't drive the 5 gallon bucket, so we ended up driving both ends, but in a different way than I originally intended. We need another pulley before we can put the next level in, but here's the progress as of today:

As you can see, we've moved the motor further back, to allow for a much shorter transmission than we'd originally intended. We are also driving both rods at the same time like this, which makes things work much better.

More to come in a few days when I get a 3" pulley and can put the next layer on.

Building the (giant) rock tumbler: Day One

2010-01-01T18:07:00.000-08:00

So my parents 'gave' me a rock tumbler for Christmas. And what I mean by that is they bought the materials and my father is helping me design and build it. It's pretty ambitious actually.

It's going to be a tower of 4 levels. The bottom level will have a motor, the second level will be a large barrel (more on that below), the medium level will be able to drive 12 Pound Lortone barrels, and the top layer will drive 3 pound thumler barrels.

The large barrel at the bottom is going to be a 5 gallon bucket, with the fore knowledge that this will chew these things up and they will have to be replaced from time to time. It will also have room to drive 3 12 pound barrels, and at least 4 3 pound barrels.

I'll go ahead and post my materials on this post in addition to the photos so far, though we haven't made it too far since we figured out we don't have a drill bit in the right size for a piece.

Our parts so far (subject to change):

-5 8' 2"x4" of wood
-1 8' 4"x4" of wood
-6 5/8" steel rods
-some scraps of plywood
-a 1/2 hp continuous duty 3450 RPM AC motor I had laying around
-some pvc piping that fits around the steel rods to be packed with grease for bearrings
-The pulleys necessary to drive the shafts at the correct speed (more on this in another post)
-Belts for the pulleys
-And some rubber hose that fits around the steel rods to help create friction to rotate the barrels

The motor is actually going to be oriented a little differently than this since I came up with a minor revision to how we would gear the motor down that will also allow us to use less materials and run a little nicer.

More photos as we make more progress. I'm going to have to come up with a name for this thing...

Vandread

2009-12-31T21:46:00.000-08:00

So I've been watching more anime with my nephew James. I've been showing him things that I used to watch when I was about his age (and slightly older) as far as anime. I've recently introduced him to Martian Successor (Mobile Battleship on our shore) Nadesico, and he loved it. We watched the movie the other day and it was alright, though not up to the quality of the series itself. It didn't have the same tone to it (this was the first time I'd ever watched the movie truthfully, even though I loved the series).

However, after we finished Nadesico we started watching Vandread, which I also haven't watched in many years. I had forgotten how much I loved this anime, and am looking forward to watching the rest of it with my nephew, since he seems to be enjoying it too.

All of this really got me looking at my anime out there too, and I see that I have the Vision of Escaflowne out there also, so I feel like watching that again too. It's like a retro anime revival!

Castle Age?!

2009-12-31T21:36:00.000-08:00

So I've been playing Castle Age on Facebook A LOT lately. The thing I like about it is that it's a lot like a modern version of LORD, which is a game that I've enjoyed immensely over the years. There are more direct descendants of LORD that are truer to the original like LOGD, a few copies of which even run on facebook, but none of them really integrate with the friends portion of facebook like castle age does.

If you're on facebook, and you enjoy LORD or LOGDm then you really should give it a shot.

If you are playing, or want to play, here are a few links to get in on the action with me:

First: to join my army (and for me to join yours): http://apps.facebook.com/castle_age//index.php?tp=cht&lka=100000183612579&buf=1

Second: to join my elite guard (and for me to join yours): http://apps.facebook.com/castle_age/party.php?twt=jneg&jneg=true&user=100000183612579&lka=100000183612579&etw=9&ref=nf

Now, that I've made my little confession, hopefully I can stop being such a friend whore on facebook lol.

NSFW: Dickerdoodles

2009-12-28T21:43:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I won't post any of the actual pictures, and as such this post itself shouldn't be offensive, but following the links will show you some pretty offensive pictures that may be hilarious to some.

For the second year in a row Penny Arcade has had a contest to make dickerdoodles. What are dickerdoodles you ask? Well they're penis shaped cookies. The three favorites of the authors win some prizes.

With no further introduction here's the 2009 finalists. Here are the 2007 entries. If you look around enough I'm sure you can find the excellent 2008 entries as well.

Game Review: Dante's Inferno

2009-12-28T21:23:00.000-08:00

Dante's Inferno is a game coming out next month for the psp, ps3, and xbox 360. This game is rated M for mature, and they seriously mean it.

For those parents who may not have made the connection (I hope you have) a rating of M in a game is supposed to be equivalent to an R rating for a film. For years and years games have been appropriately rated M for violence, but not for nudity. That is to say, the slightest bit of nudity would result in an AO (or what would commonly be treated as an X rated movie) rating, and wouldn't be sold in stores. This included even the amount you might find in a movie rated PG-13. This has been changing over the last few years, and the amount of nudity found in a game rated M may be similar to an R rated film (though likely still less than may be present in a R rated film).

Dante's Inferno is a game based on (at least the first part of) The Divine Comedy, which is a poem from the early 1300's in Italy. The story seems to be very interesting, which isn't really too much of a stretch considering what a classic it's based upon. The gameplay is very similar to Devil May Cry, which is to say you're going to be killing lots and lots and lots of bad guys. That is to say the game is extremely violent, though it appears that most of the violence will be against demons (though I did have to kill some 70 or so 'humans' in the first part of the demo, so your mileage may vary). There was a fair amount of female torso nudity present in the demo, which I'm sure will be present in the game as well. I find it pretty likely that there will be more present in the final game.

So here's what I'm getting at, this game (based on the demo) is firmly in the R level film rating. The demo didn't feature 'full frontal' nudity, and the violence, while graphic, isn't particularly realistic and isn't typically against humans. There's plenty of material here to object to though, whether you find demons, nudity, or violence objectionable. However, if you're comfortable with your child watching R rated films, there's not really anything here to worry about. If you feel like you're not sure that ALL R rated films are appropriate for your child, you should skip this one for the kids.

Movie Review: Coraline

2009-12-28T21:03:00.000-08:00

So we watched Coraline this evening, which has been out for quite a while. Kids that want to see it likely already have seen it. As such, this is more of a starting point than anything else.

To start with, the only things in this movie that are 'inappropriate' for children will fly right over their head. There's a few spots that are mildly suggestive, but their so subtle that my wife didn't even notice them.

Where this movie really stands out though is that it is creepy. It's downright scary at some points. As such, despite the PG rating on this film, I really wouldn't recommend it for small children, even with parents present. My 8 year old nephew (who saw it independently from us) was genuinely scared by the movie. However, at the same time, a child too old will likely not want to watch it because it will be a 'kids movie'. This movie may appeal to those that liked The Nightmare Before Christmas and/or the Corpse Bride.

For adults, I would say that this movie provides a somewhat interesting story, so adults won't likely be bored by the movie.

Movie and Game Ratings

2009-12-28T20:48:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to start commenting on this blog about this topic for a while now, and to hopefully offer some guidance to parents out there as to appropriateness of titles to help them make educated decisions for a while now. While I myself am not a parent, I can have no issue recognizing that there are some things that should and shouldn't be viewed by children.

I'm a very strong proponent of parents making educated decisions about what they allow their children to do. These days there's just too much media out there though for parents to consume all of it before they allow their children to view it. Video games, television, movies, and books can all have a huge influence on what a child views as acceptable and how a child acts as they grow up.

While I certainly won't be able to provide guidance on all games and movies, I'll provide information on those that I do encounter.

First up will be the movie Coraline (okay, so I'm a bit late on this one) and Dante's Inferno (it's not out yet, but from the demo I feel fairly confident I can break this one down).

So wait... Tony Stark is Sherlock Holmes?!

2009-12-25T21:22:00.000-08:00

Our family has a tradition of going and seeing a movie on Christmas. We go almost every year. This year my parents, my wife, and I all went to see Sherlock Holmes. It was alright, definitely interesting, though a big slow. I've never read the books (one of those things I've not gotten to yet), but I never imaged Holmes as being so arrogant. It really reminded me of how Downey Jr. played Tony Stark in the first Iron Man movie.

And here's where we get to the fun bit. There was a trailer for Iron Man 2 attached. I don't know if this is the first movie to have the trailer, but it certainly has me excited (not so much because of what was in the trailer, but instead because the first movie was awesome and this means the second is coming soon).

In any case, here's the HD version of the trailer (which runs like ass for me on my laptop with ubuntu, but what are you going to do?), for those of you who would like a non-HD version, youtube can probably provide it too:

Second Batch of Sea Glass

2009-12-24T15:51:00.000-08:00

So I started a second batch of sea glass with the reject pieces from the first batch and another broken up bottle.

Well, after tumbling it for a week, I don't think I put enough water in it. Opening up the barrel showed that the sand wasn't totally broken down, and it was almost like cement on the bottom and top of the barrel as well as on much of the glass.

I pulled a few more pieces of finished glass out after that run, and added a little more fresh glass. The fresh glass is green again (like the first run, the second was clear), but it's a different shade.

Crackdown

2009-12-24T15:49:00.000-08:00

So I'm essentially done with Crackdown. That is to say the only achievements left in the game will take forever and a half to get. I beat the game a couple of weeks ago already, and have been playing it a lot and am basically burned out on it.

That said, I can't wait for the sequel! Four player co-op is going to be amazing. I've moved back to playing Mass Effect after many many months. I'm going to beat the game a few more times to get some more of the achievements. I'm not expecting any games for Christmas, but that doesn't bother me since I still have so many games in my 'backlog' that I need to get through first.

Magic: The Gathering

2009-12-18T23:57:00.000-08:00

Rayma, you need to make sure the boys aren't around if you are reading this!!!!!!!!!!

We're giving away some magic cards for christmas.

In any case, here are the photos:

Here the boxes are side by side. They both look about the same size, but that's because of a Styrofoam piece in the smaller box so that things don't move around as much. But what are those wads of fabric?

Why... they appear to be sacks! But, what could possibly be in them?

Sea glass! Why would I put sea glass in with the magic cards? Well sometimes it's useful to have counters to use to keep track of things, like life, in the game.

My wife made the bags for me today while she was feeling crafty. If you're interested in something like this for yourself or someone else (as far as the counters and sacks go), let me know and maybe we can work something out.

Rock and Glass(???) Tumbling Updates (photos)

2009-12-18T23:43:00.000-08:00

So I've been meaning to post some photos of the progress for a while now, but first I couldn't find my camera, then it was finals week...

In any case, here's how it went:

These are the rocks (that I cared about there were a lot of 'filler' rocks I didn't care about also) before they were tumbled at all. As you can see I broke some of them down from larger rocks.

These are the rocks (with the 'filler') in the barrel

And here they are with the 60/90 silicon carbide grit (exciting, right!).

And now the water (and yes there is a little bit too much water in there, more on that below).

And here are the rocks (with the 'filler') after the first tumble. You can't relly see the details here, but everything was noticeably more round.

These rocks in the top corner re the rocks I'm moving to the bin for the next level of grinding (find grain). The two green ones will likely not work out in the end, but I want to see how they go.

Did you know that you can make sea glass in a rock tumbler? This is after 4 or so days in the tumbler with play sand instead of expensive silicon carbide grit. It's not quite as rounded as real sea glass, though I imagine more time in the tumbler would do the job. This was a wine bottle.

Here's more of a close up. None of the edges are sharp. I pressed each side into my skin and not only did it not cut me, but it didn't even feel sharp!

Here's another neat looking picture in a bag. What's the bag for you ask? Well you'll just have to see my next blog post and see!

CSCI-14... The End

2009-12-17T13:11:00.000-08:00

The final is over, finally! I've got at least 100% in the class going into the final, so I'm sure I'll get an A in the class.

Is it vacation time? Yes, but only for a couple of weeks, then it's back to winter session. Once Spring session starts, I'm (re)taking intro to computer science (because I received a bad grade it in the past due to apathy) and a video game design class. I don't know if I'll stick with the video game design class, but I'm going to go to a class or two and check it out.

Not a fan of the Were-Hog

2009-12-15T18:07:00.000-08:00

So I've been wanting to play a sonic game lately, and I don't want to play one with a wired controller (I find wires to be such a pain in the arse). That pretty much means a wii game or a xbox 360 game. Well I picked up both Sonic Unleashed and Sonic (2006). I haven't tried Sonic yet, but I did play Sonic Unleashed for a bit. The regular Sonic levels are alright, but the were-hog levels are SO tedious. Also, the fact that the 'hub' levels don't let you go back and replay the levels you just played (at least not early in the game) pretty much irritates the hell out of me. What's the point of making me walk through stupid hub levels if I can't redo a stage I just did while it's fresh in my mind to try and get a better score?

It seems like the Sonic Team fell into the same trap they've been falling into for the last several years. They think a Sonic game has to be more complicated than it needs to be. Get rid of the hub levels. Get rid of the were-hog. Get rid of everyone except sonic, tails, and knuckles (as playable characters). Don't make knuckles dig for crap and don't put tails in a giant robot. Don't make me try and control all three at once. Just give me a game full of levels like those found in sonic adventure 1 and 2 for sonic, levels like sonic adventure 1 for tails, and come up with some new mechanic for knuckles. Don't make me walk around town and talk to people, just let me play sonic the way it was meant to be played!

Dungeons of the Unforgiven FAQ update

2009-12-11T01:13:00.000-08:00

I just posted a major update to my FAQ for Moraff's Dungeons of the Unforgiven to gamefaqs.com. It will probably take a day or two before it appears, but it represents a couple of hours of work on my part. I completely rewrote the setup section, and included several tweaks that make it run a lot better in dosbox. The size of the file went from 76K to 88K.

It's been a while

2009-12-10T09:58:00.000-08:00

As some of you know, we've had some interesting things going on this month. I won't go into them here since they're not nerdy at all. I'm also studying for finals next week, so that's been going on as well. So what have I been up to lately?

Rocks:
I've had my rocks tumbling for 9 days now. I'm going to open them up tomorrow and wash them off. I'm out of coarse grit, and don't have money for more, so I'm going to tumble some sea glass up for a while until I have money for more coarse grit.

Games:
I beat Professor Layton and the Curious Village. It was great. If you're a fan of puzzles and riddles, do yourself a favor and pick it up. It can be had cheap now, and I picked it up on goozex. I'm going to turn around and get rid of it again on goozex now, because I don't think I'd have any interest in going through the puzzles I already finished. A quick hint for those playing this game, there's enough coins to use 2 or so on every puzzle in the game if you find them all, so don't worry about it too much if you feel like you need to use one once in a while. I definitely plan on getting the sequel Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box. The end of Curious Village says To Be Continued, so you should probably play it first.

When I've played 360 lately, I've been playing Crackdown. I don't typically like sandbox games, at least I don't typically like GTA games. However, the fact that you essentially have super powers really makes this game amazingly fun. It's also super cheap now, and the game has co-op. I haven't beat the game yet, I'm working on the other achievements in the game that I can get so far. If you're still playing this old game and want to join me in a co-op game, add me to your friends list, my gamercard can be seen to the right.

CSCI-14:
We've been working on an implementation of the game Battleship. I got mine working, though it's certainly not pretty. However, my code is incredibly ugly because I didn't have time to do things properly, so I'm not going to post the code.

Philosophy (yes I'm in a philosophy class this semester):
I thought I had an A, but it appears I actually have a B currently. It looks like even if I get full credit on the final the best I can get in the class is a B, and if I don't take the final I'll get a C in the class. So while I don't have to worry about passing the class now, it's disappointing that I can't get an A in the class anymore, and is actually hurting my motivation to write the final paper.

So that's what I've been up to. I've got finals next week, so don't expect too much out of me until after then. Hopefully I'll have something new, fun, and nerdy going on by then.

Rock Tumbling Update

2009-12-03T09:46:00.000-08:00

I got my tumbler oiled up when I got my supplies in the mail on Tuesday and got it tumbling. Everything seems to be working great. I opened the barrel up to take a look after 24 hours to make sure everything looked right inside, and it was pretty frothy, which I'm told is normal.

I'm planning on doing a big picture post next Tuesday after a week or so of tumbling. I'll have before and after pictures, so hopefully we'll see some changes, but there is a fair amount of agate in the batch, which can take a long time.

Tesla Coils as instruments

2009-12-02T10:39:00.000-08:00

So wow, who would have thought it:

This is all possible because of something called a Zeusaphone, which is essentially a tesla coil that generates sound.

Some other fun videos:

(Mario starts at around 36 seconds).

(starts about 40 seconds in).

There are many others out there as well, but these are the ones I had the most fun with. I'll post an update on my rock tumbling activities later this evening.

It's been an interesting month

2009-11-30T11:42:00.000-08:00

Though not necessarily for nerdiness.

I failed at NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. I didn't post every day, though I made it pretty far into the month before I failed. Despite this, I did average 1 post per day, by having more than one post on many days.

I've been playing some video games lately, but aside from that I haven't really done anything nerdy in a few days. I've been really busy doing stuff with my family, and also we had something pretty serious happen in our family Saturday night. I will of course continue to post my nerdy adventures as I have them, but perhaps not quite as rapidly as I did during November.

Rock Hunting

2009-11-25T18:18:00.000-08:00

So I went out to the river today with my wife and collected a lot of rocks. I have no idea what most of them are called, but I know I got a little bit of agate and a few jaspers.

Some of the rocks are just too big, so I decided to break them with a hammer. I put them inside of a towel to help stop flying rocks.

DO NOT DO THIS WITH A TOWEL YOU CARE ABOUT.

Seriously, I don't know what I was thinking. I basically shredded a dish towel, *sigh*. In any case, I'll get some pictures of the ones I'm going to start tumbling before I start them.

I also bought some real grits for tumbling today, and a real barrel for my rock tumbler! I think I'm in pretty good shape now.

Huzzah for updates

2009-11-25T18:16:00.000-08:00

So for the first time since 'switching' to Ubuntu (I still use windows for work stuff that won't run in wine) I've had an update break something. I had been using the alpha of firefox 3.6 for a while, and when I jumped to Karmic last month I switched up to firefox 3.6 beta. Well todays updates broke it. It will not load up for me anymore.

Fortunately, the firefox 3.7 alpha has been out for a while now, and it seems that there is actual support for it in the plugins now, so I'm running it. There are a couple of changes I am liking a lot from 3.6 (and 3.5 as well). Most noticeable to me is that when I open a new tab with a webpage, the icon for the webpages homepage doesn't show up right away, instead you get a little clock icon that shows you how far along in the loading it is. I think this is really great.

Rock Tumbling with Play Sand

2009-11-22T11:29:00.000-08:00

So the rocks I'm tumbling are fairly soft I've read, so maybe that's why I'm having some success. Despite what I said, I couldn't wait for Monday to see how things were going, so I opened up my cannister the day after my last rock tumbling post, and there was no change. Nothing. Even the sand was still the same.

So I went out on a limb, went outside, gathered up some more rocks (of different types, and likely mostly much harder), and added them to my barrel. I added a bunch more sand to my barrel, and then refilled it with water. I let 24 more hours pass and guess what? The water in the barrel is basically mud. The sand is almost entirely gone having been crushed into a very very fine material. After washing all of it out of my barrel and looking at my rocks, I see a noticeable change. They are definitely more rounded and less rough. So there's one for play sand working (on Serpentinite rock at least).

The down side? I need to wash it out and add more sand every day it looks like. The sand breaks down SO fast. I guess that's one of the advantages of using some of the actual rock tumbling media. Still, that stuff is much more expensive than play sand, so I think I can probably save money by tumbling with play sand for a while before I start with the actual media. As far as the later steps are concerned, I'll definitely need to buy some finder grained actual rock tumbling media to make the rocks truly shine. I also need to go out and collect some more serpentinite to tumble with the ones I want to keep so that I can stop tumbling with the harder rocks (since I've read it's best to tumble things with like hardness materials).

Testdisk

2009-11-19T11:22:00.000-08:00

Wow, all I can say is wow. If you need a powerful tool for file management, give this a shot. Testdisk will do all kinds of things, including undeleting files that have been deleted from the recycle bin (though the more time that has passed since the delete, the worse your chances of it working are). It's available for many operating systems and can open many file systems.

An "Evolution" of Mozilla Thunderbird

2009-11-18T18:33:00.000-08:00

So back when I used Windows as my primary operating system, I used Thunderbird exclusively as it was so far superior to outlook express.

When I moved to Ubuntu I noticed that the default mail client installed was Evolution and not Thunderbird. I knew there was a Thunderbird client for Linux, but I figured if Evolution was the default client it was probably worth trying. It worked fine.

So here comes Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. Evolution is not the default mail client in it. I can't recall if Thunderbird was installed by default or if nothing was, but I think it was Thunderbird. In any case, I ended up with Thunderbird for the last few weeks. And all I can say is wow, it seems to run terribly on my laptop. I finally got fed up with it this evening, installed Evolution, and removed Thunderbird. Evolution runs great, I'm not really sure what was up with Thunderbird, but I'm glad I finally switched back. I hear there's even an Evolution client for windows now. I'd encourage anyone who isn't entirely happy with their current mail client to give it a shot.

Rock Tumbling: Day 2

2009-11-17T22:38:00.000-08:00

So my Rock's have officially tumbled for 24 hours now. I'd guess that I don't have enough rocks in the thing, and possibly too much sand, so I have no idea if I'm making any progress. I've managed to gather that sand isn't all that effective for rock tumbling, even for the first step, but I have 100 pounds of it, so why not use it up first. I just wish I could fast forward a couple of weeks and see if I'm making any progress or if I need to adjust my formula. I have no problem with the idea that it will take weeks to finish these rocks, I mostly am just irritated that I don't know if I'm wasting my first week or two.

I'm going to go look at the sand each day (the barrel I'm using isn't entirely opaque, so I can see in it a little) to see if it's breaking down too much. Assuming the sand I put in there survives until next Monday, I plan on dumping it all out, adding some small rocks, filling it back up with water, and using less sand this time. Unless of course I see a difference in how the rocks look, in which case I may just stick with what I'm doing until I'm ready to move on to the next step (at least a few weeks from now).

I need to source some tumbling media. I have a bag full of a powder marked as "polish" from wherever this tumbler (minus barrel) came from. I have no idea what grit the material is, or what it's even made of, but I would assume that since it's marked as polish it is what it says. I've heard that there is a harbor freight local to us, and their website does list rock tumblers (of reportedly low quality) and rock tumbling media. The price for the media seems a little steep, so I need to research to see if I can get better prices elsewhere, but I'm quite frankly clueless as to where to look. I plan on taking some pictures of my rocks that are in the tumbler come Monday. I wish I'd taken pictures before they went in, but I'm guessing they won't have changed much except for possibly being cleaner (or dirtier?) and wet. If things are looking interesting at all I'll certainly post about it.

I also plan on going out for some more of the rock I'm tumbling this weekend to add to my course batch, since I feel like I may not have enough rocks in there. I'm not exactly ready to call myself a rock hound... so maybe I'm a rock hunter?

I go through phases in my gaming

2009-11-17T22:29:00.000-08:00

sometimes the phases change rather rapidly too. For instance, right now I'm not really playing my 360 much. I haven't really been playing my wii either. I mostly want a good RPG to play on my dinosaur (er... laptop) or my ds. I'm having a helluva time finding one to play though. I am getting the first professor layton game in the mail this week, so hopefully that will keep me interested for a while. In general though I feel as if I'm spinning since I'm hopping from game to game so fast. One night I play Lufia 2, one night I play Zelda 3, one night I try out weird RPGs on the laptop that are open source and not very polished or complete, heck I've even been playing some generic silly RPG on facebook called "The Fellowship".

In any case, I'm at one of those weird times where I think I need to play video games with someone to get interested in sticking with one for a little bit again. The problem with this is I have no interest in playing a MMORPG (with the exception of if I could get ragnarok online working playing that for a short period of time or if I could somehow play Asheron's Call for free). Alas, I don't really have any friends in my area who are into video games. Then again, I don't really have much in the way of friends in the area anyway.

In any case, there's a free xbox live gold weekend this weekend if you're anywhere but Europe, and a free one the following weekend in Europe. See this link for details: Major Nelson - upcoming free xbox live weekends. I plan on being in 1vs100 this weekend to celebrate being finished with another section of my science class and hopefully passing the test, so wish me luck.

Coding

2009-11-16T19:00:00.000-08:00

So I set today aside to work on my CSCI-14 lab 4, battleship.

That was the plan at least. However today I DID NOT feel like coding. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Partially it's probably still irritation that I'm not allowed to use Object Oriented Programming for the assignment, even though it seems particularly suited to it.

In any case, I was lazy today, and didn't do any of the coding I was supposed to do. I'm toying with skipping this assignment entirely, moving on to lab 5, and then making up the points lost by doing the extra credit assignment (which I've completed once before, but lost in a backup issue, see previous blog posts). In any case, I really just want to go tumble some rocks now, but I can't. So... maybe I'll get some coding done on Wednesay.

Rock Tumbling

2009-11-16T18:57:00.000-08:00

So I'm planning on building a rock tumbler. I want something a bit bigger and hopefully more durable than the cheap tumblers available.

I'm thinking of building something that will at least do paint can sized barrels, but I'd ideally like to go for 5 gallon drum sized barrels.

I've got a spare 3,450 RPM motor laying around, so I'm going to have to really step that beast down to make this work, I'll post some pics of how it's going when I've got the time and money to start the build.

Another thought I had was of maybe doing an exercise bike powered tumbler, but I'd need to find a free donor bike to do it, and it would only be to supplement my electrically powered tumbler ideas. I'm also trying to decide if it would be feasible to buy an electric drill and make a small tumbler with that as the base. Just some things to ponder.

Child's play charity 2009

2009-11-15T17:51:00.000-08:00

So I haven't had the money to donate to Child's Play since the first year it started. I'm lame, and I'm poor, and it sucks. This year I still don't have any money to donate to Child's Play, which means I'm still lame, and poor, and suck.

Despite this, if you have the ability to, you should really consider donating to the charity. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail about what the charity is about and all that, the website does an excellent job themselves, but if you're reading this blog chances are you're the kind of person that has made this charity a success, and even if you can't afford to donate this year, for whatever reason, you should at least try and spread the word, because the more that gets donated the better off those kids will be. And the more that gets donated, the more positive press the video game community will get.

So without further delay, click the controller to be taken to the charities web page:

http://www.childsplaycharity.org

NaBloPoMo

2009-11-15T10:32:00.001-08:00

Egads, I've failed! I didn't make a post yesterday, *sigh*.

Despite this fact, many of the days I've posted more than once, so I've got more posts on my blog than there have been days this month and I'm ahead of the curve, kind of. That is, I've still got an average posts per day, even with yesterdays lack of a post greater than 1, I think. I haven't crunched the numbers, but most days see at least two posts, so I can't help but think I'm ahead of the curve.

In any case, I still intend to post every day for the rest of the month. Tomorrow I'm going to spend most of the day coding for my CSCI-14 assignment.

Fun with scanmem

2009-11-13T23:00:00.000-08:00

So, last year during the process of writing my Dungeons of the Unforgiven FAQ I discovered and started messing with a little program for windows called Cheat Engine. Essentially it lets you search for values in memory and edit them. An excellent way to hack computer games.

Well, when I switched to Ubuntu I discovered that Cheat Engine was one of those things I would have to forgo. Cheat Engine can be installed via Wine, and it even works, but it will only see processes running in Wine.

Here's where a little program called Scanmem comes into play. It's a CLI memory searcher and editor. It's not quite as robust as Cheat Engine in some ways, but it's also quicker and I suspect it will work for any process in linux, though I'm not sure if it will work for processes running in wine...

If you've ever wanted to make a game easier in Linux give it a shot, it's not hard to figure out. And if you've ever wanted to cheat at a game in windows, try out Cheat Engine.

Kind of a lame post for todays NaBloPoMo, but I spent my whole day working on a project for school, so I didn't do anything too interesting. More later this evening after I have a chance to unwind perhaps.

Final Fantasy Tactics A2

2009-11-12T22:27:00.000-08:00

So I've been playing this game for about a week now, and I'm 10% of the way through the game or so. It's not terrible. It's better than some of the reviews led me to believe it would be. Despite this turn of events, I'm not going to finish the game. Why? Simply put, it's not nearly as good as the first game. Playing A2 feels like they took a winning formula (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance), and mucked it up. Many of the good factors found in the first game are still present, but at the same time, some of the changes just make the game not as fun. So here we go as far as my complaints:

First, because the penalties for breaking the laws are basically a slap on the wrist (in some ways), it doesn't seem like as big of a deal if you break them. That is, now you can no longer use phoenix downs when you break the law, you lose your perks (for that battle only), and you don't get as much "loot" (more on this later) if you break the law.

Second, because enemies don't use items and don't care about loot, they are exempt from the laws. What a fantastic idea, one sided laws. The fact that the laws could be manipulated to hinder your enemy too was half the fun of the original game. There is only one law at a time now, which makes it easier to manage, but even still it wasn't too hard to manage in the first game. The law for each encounter is preset, no more moving around until you get the laws you want to fight with, which wouldn't be such a big deal if it wasn't for the fact that enemies are immune to the laws. Also gone are the cards that let you change the laws.

Third, you have to complete quests to unlock some of the jobs. This wouldn't be so bad if you could do all of them at the beginning, but you can't. This isn't such a big deal, except it pretty much means that no one will want to do a second play through.

Fourth, even if you manage to unlock a job, there's no guarantee that you will have the ability to get any weapons the class can learn skills from or even use at that point in the game.

Fifth, much more limited random encounters. It used to be that there were rival clans all over the place that you could fight for exp and AP that didn't advance the story. I'm something like 10 hours into the game and so far have seen ONE random encounter. This makes it hard to gain extra levels and skills without advancing the storyline. Also, all units gain experience at the end of battle instead of individual units gaining experience during the course of battle. This makes gaining levels themselves much slower, because all the tricks for gaining tons of xp no longer work. There is a plus side though, all units in your clan now gain AP every battle, not just those in the party, which makes choosing units a little easier.

Sixth, the story. I mean really, they took the story and made it much less epic feeling. The first story felt much more epic, without trying to feel epic. I'm 10ish hours into the game, and I still don't really find anyone in the story interesting or compelling, nor do I find the story interesting really. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the protagonist of the story doesn't find it interesting either.

So the things I do like? The loot system is interesting. Finding (seemingly) random items that you then give to the shop so they can get new items (that you then have to buy, they're not free). No longer is it setup so that as you gain levels, new items appear in the shop. Instead, you dictate what items are in the shop, and sometimes you have to choose between what items you unlock because multiple items will use the same piece of loot. Of course, unless you've found a copy of the item in battle or something ahead of time, you won't know for sure what item you're unlocking for the shop until you commit to making it. The other thing I really liked was that they increased the number of jobs. That's really about it.

There are some changes that I feel rather neutral about, for instance the perks (which are special abilities you get for the course of the battle as long as you obey the law, except they're so minor they don't really matter). There are also auctions for controlling areas in the game. They really seem like they're more trouble than they're worth, and seem to detract from the pace of the game. Most side quests can be dispatched now, and dispatches can have up to 6 people in them, but doing so results in less xp, so it's a bad idea to do so.

What it comes down to, the magic is just not there for me this time. And to make sure it's not just that I'm bored of the gameplay, I have been playing some of the original game at the same time, and I've gotta say, I'd rather just keep playing the original, because I feel like it's a lot closer to what I want to play. If they'd made A2 behave basically the same as the first game, but with more jobs, abilities, and new quests I would have been much happier. The new story is pretty much blah, but the gameplay would have been enough to keep me playing if they hadn't messed it up so much.

Well, since I'm not finishing A2, I've got it relisted on goozex, and since it hasn't decreased in value on the site, as soon as I get a trade on it, I'll have had a shot at playing as much of the game as I wanted to at the cost of me shipping it to someone else (less than $2) and one trade credit ($1). Not bad at all. Instead I'm going to try out the first Professor Layton game. Everyone raves about the game, so we'll see how it goes. I also considered Disgaea DS. I've tried Disgaea on both the PS2 and the PSP, and as much as I've tried to like the game, I just can't seem to get into it. I get how the game works, and the story is amusing, but it just doesn't click with me like final fantasy tactics advance did. The more I look through the DS games out there right now, the less games I see that look like they're really good, which is a shame. There are plenty of good GBA games, hell plenty of good GB games (which won't play in the DS). I wish they'd port some of the old games to the DS, or when I get a DSi, put some of the old GB games on an app store or something. I'd love to play Final Fantasy Adventure again.

I didn't mention it on my post before this one today, but today was day twelve of NaBloPoMo.

Firefox in Ubuntu

2009-11-12T21:56:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I've been using Karmic for a week or so now. Everything works mostly the same-ish, except firefox. I know I know, you're going to say, just disable IPv6 and use IPv4 and problem solved.

That's not the problem. The problem is that firefox 3.5 seems to be running poorly on Karmic for me. In all fairness though, I was running 3.6 on Jaunty not 3.5, so comparing apples to apples isn't really any fair. So this evening I went and downloaded 3.6 beta to see if it speeds things up for me. I haven't played with it much, but I figured I'd post on how to get the nightly builds on ubuntu if you want them (which means support for firefox 3.6 beta and firefox 3.7 alpha). You need to add a software repository. I found the directions I used here. I did of course have to modify the directions sort of to work with Karmic. In any case, I did this:

1. Went to system->Administration->Software Sources
2. Other Software Tab
3. Add... button
4. in the box (since I'm using karmic instead of jaunty) deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
5. Hit close
6. Now I didn't have to download any keys like the instructions on the link provided.
7. Open terminal
8. sudo apt-get install firefox-3.6 or sudo apt-get install firefox-3.7

At this point I had firefox 3.6 and 3.7 installed. I played around with both a little bit, and 3.7 pretty much crashed like crazy, but that's not really unexpected for an alpha. Worth noting is that many add-ons compatible with 3.5 aren't compatible with 3.6 and are really not likely to work in 3.7. One of the gmail notifiers that does (gmail notifier) I CANNOT get to work in firefox. The one I've been using in 3.5 doesn't work in 3.6 yet, but if you do look around there are some that work great, for instance "Gmail Checker" seems to work fine and gets the job done though.

Another application that I'd played around a little bit with 3.5, Ghostery, which seems to be good for blocking tracking cookies and stuff, isn't compatible yet. I hadn't really seen any performance benefit from it though, and it was mostly irritating. Adblock seems to still work, which really is the bread and butter of firefox addons anyway though. In any case, I'll report back later on how it works, but it does seem to be a little quicker than 3.5 was, so it should make me happier.

Edit: 30 minutes later. Things seem to be running a little bit quicker, like I said. However, one of my biggest gripes is still present, and the fact that I'm now comparing 3.6 beta on karmic to 3.6 alpha on jaunty, leads me to believe it's likely an issue with ubuntu. Sometimes, firefox just stops loading pages. It won't do it. It just sits there FOREVER, and will not load the page. The only fix seems to be restarting firefox, at which time pages start loading instantly again. Go figure. Maybe this is related to the IPv6 thing afterall, though I don't know why it would load just fine when I first start the browser then ten minutes later become an issue. Oh well, I guess I'll disable IPv6 for a couple of days and see if that fixes things up.

Microsoft Banning Modded Xbox 360s

2009-11-11T18:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it's been all over the gaming sites and message boards on the internet that Microsoft has been banning modded Xbox 360s.

There are a lot of people that are really horrified that it's happening, but I mean is it really a surprise? They did this with the original Xbox when you modded it. There were methods for getting around the detection with the original Xbox, but if you went online while the mod was enabled you were banned. My understanding is that this time around there were ways to be stealthy. Either way, who cares.

If you modded (or had your console modded by someone else) your 360, then you knew the risks. First of all, you're infringing copyrights when you use the system with pirated games. Further, you may in fact be violating the DMCA by modding the console at all. So you get banned from being on live for having a modded console, big deal, play your pirated games offline only OR buy a new system and don't mod it this time. It's really rather simple, and threatening the lives of Microsoft employees isn't going to change anything, but may land you in jail.

For those who are gloating about all the consoles being banned, stop. I mean really, just stop. No one cares, and the more you post about it the longer everyone is going to talk about this non-issue. The more it's talked about, the more people are going to go out and figure out how to mod their console, which is the exact opposite of what the industry needs. The more interest there is in modding the console, the faster people are going to figure out a new way around the system checks. In some ways, I'm sort of surprised a method similar to that used by the original xbox isn't in place for modders. It used to be that a lot of mod chips had a switch on the outside of the xbox for you to switch. If you flipped the mod chip on your had an awesome entertainment machine that could be used to stream movies and run all kinds of things from emulators to homebrew games and could also be used for piracy. If you flipped the switch off before turning the system on, then it appeared to microsoft as if you basically had an unmodded xbox. If you had a larger hard drive installed for all those fun applications, then the xbox still only saw it as the original 8GB drive. Sure you couldn't go online in "stealth mode" or whatever it is that 360 users do now, but at least it was easy to insure you didn't get banned.

Now to all of you out there who have a modded console that was just banned and you're wanting to ditch it to get a new system that can go online. Please, for the love of all that's good, let the people you are selling the system to know that it is banned. If the numbers I've read of are accurate, there could be as many as 600,000 more people who have been banned in the last week or so. That's as many as 600,000 banned xbox 360's potentially entering the marketplace, with buyers possibly being unaware before they are purchased. It's a bad time to be in the market for a used 360. If you are going to buy a used 360 (not something that's I'd ever really advise anyway) make sure it's from a reputable source. If it's from gamestop, make sure you test it right away to make sure it can get online so you can exchange it. If it's from a person directly, make sure it's someone that you know, so you can pitch it through their front window if the system is banned (or harass them until they give you your money back, but you know, whatever works for you). If you don't care about online play, now might actually be a very good time to pick up a banned xbox 360 for your gaming pleasure. Not only can this be a good way to get your foot in the door for the next generation of gaming (though without online play), but the 360 can do all kinds of other neat things like streaming music and video from your pc. If I owned more than one TV, I might be tempted to go out and look for some banned xbox 360's for just that purpose as it's great having the ability to stream tv shows and other media from my pc to the tv without having to deal with discs and all that. Further, if you live in an area with no broadband access, you wouldn't care about having online anyway, so all the more reason to try and find a banned xbox 360 at a good price.

All in all, people are making a bigger deal out of this than it really is. The people that pirate games probably wouldn't have bought them anyway, so it's no big loss to Microsoft that they're pirating (with the exception of if Microsoft makes a loss on the system, and the loss of revenue from running xbox love, because no matter what you say, the fee for having a gold account does not cover the operating costs). This really leaves only two reasons for the massive swinging of the ban hammer: First, it helps reduce hackers and cheaters from online games, and Second (I think this is the bigger reason), it sets an example. Our society is all about punishment by example. Prison isn't well noted for it's ability to reform people. What prison does do, to some degree at least, is deter people from committing crimes, as they don't want to goto prison. This is the same thing. People don't want to get hit with the ban hammer, so they don't mod. Those that modded, knowing the risk, aren't going to be phased by the ban hammer and will likely just do it again.

This post brought to you by day 11 of NaBloPoMo.