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Been trying out another new hot MMORPG lately. Tabula Rasa, by the same guy who did Ultima Online back in the day. Richard Garriot’s Tabula Rasa. How large does your ego need to be if you insist on putting you’r fucking name in the TITLE of the game. It’s literaly called “Richard Garriot’s Tabula Rasa”, which feels more than a little 90’s to me. It has a nice interface, though nowhere near WoW in flexibility or CoH in sheer goodness. It’s got collect-everythin-quests, which very much appeals to me, since I’m kind of anal. I’m told there’s a story, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. The controls work, even if it’s a bit too FPS for my tastes. It works in Linux, though not as good as in Windows. I place TR firmly amongst the more interresting  MMO’s. I’m contemplating paying for a month, since I get CoX for free for at least one additional month due to me having introduced new players to it.

(I get cocks for free. Heh =)

Oh, and now, when Uru Live’s been cancelled, I find out they didn’t delete my char after all. They just claimed they did. To make me stay. And now it’s too late to go back. I hate everything.

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Life with Linux, week two…

A week ago, I decided to – finally – begin my move to Linux. Not the first time I try, but this time, it seems like Ubuntu is at least mature enough for me to stay. I still dualboot, since some stuff just won’t play nice (games, mostly). I run Photoshop and InDesign in a VirtualBox shell, which means they only get access to about half of my RAM, but they work and they work well. And as for the rest of my usual gripes, they have all been addressed. Foobar2000 has given way to MPD + gbemol. ID3-TagIT was discarded in favour of EasyTAG, WingIDE (for Python programming) had a Linux version (which, btw, I’m probably going to pay for one of these days. It’s that good) and so did wxFormBuilder, most of what PsiWin could do, I can do using PLPtools – and better. Except for conversion of transfered documents. I can’t seem to get Psiconv to work properly on my files. Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice are, of course, identical. DaemonTools has its counterpart in AcetoneISO2, font managing works just swell with FontMatrix, I read my digital comix with Comix, still use Putty and Mumble, Brasero is a rather competent CD burner and if it isn’t enough, Nero exists on the Linux platform as well. I use a combination of BitlBee and X-chat to do all my IM stuff, distraction-free. The XBMC port for Linux works very well, which is really important for my next project…

So, what are my thoughts? It all works very well. I used to feel awkward in Linux, constricted and disturbed. I used to itch to get back to windows. That’s usually why I end up going back to that monster of an OS with my proverbial tail between my legs. Not this time. Whanever I boot up Windows now, I feel strange. Like I’m wearing the wrong size in clothes or something. It’s very annoying. Luckily, I only boot into Windows to play certain games, like City of Heroes or Tunguska. Linux is no longer a strange land to me, but more like a new apartment. All my old furniture is there, and the whole thing feels more and more like a home. Too bad I couldn’t find a good spot for that gigantic sofa, or I’d be able to move out completely from my old apartment.

It’s good to be home, in any case.

Expect more reports as things progress.

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Just got my latest project up and running – a 3ghz P4 given to me by my parents. It was in seriously bad condition – incredible amounts of dust and what might be the dumbest cooling solution I’ve ever seen made the beast extremely hesitant to even start, much less run for extended periods of time. The parents had just bought a spanking new Dual Core Something (can you smell the envy?), and unloaded this piece of crap on my doorstep. At my request, of course – I’d been the one to try to fix the problem countless times before, and as their toll-free tech support I guess they felt they owed me something.

I kept the motherboard and processor and the two 256 mb RAM sticks, put it all in my own extremely good-looking and easily cooled chassi. The S-ATA disk also made the cut – but the cooling system was scrapped, and I brought my own graphics card. And thus, from the remnants of my then-current 2.4 ghz 1gb RAM machine and my parents’ discarded 3ghz 512mb RAM scrap-heap, I built myself a Frankenstein’s Monster. I’ve been trying to make it behave. The CPU fan is still too loud (but that might be fixed in the next series of upgrades), and sometimes this strange beast misbehaves – but it seems to be rather stable now, with CPU temps around 47-71 (as opposed to 80-96. Yes, celsius).

I just managed to install three new fans. Two were simple replacements for two that were way too loud (and let me tell you, replacing them was no easy task – this chassi is mostly easy to work with, but this was a monstrous task, fully comparable to doing anything with a Compaq *shudder*), and one was added. The whole thing is still way too loud, but it works – and it’s stable.

For the moment, that is enough.

Next step: Identify sounds, try to limit them at minimum expense.

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Most of my computers over they years have all been slightly old. As in, I can’t remember ever owning somthing that’s actually state of the art… But anyways, as I wait for the hard drive check on my old computer to finish so I can safely transfer the C and D partitions from my old harddrive to my shiny new *ahem* erh, slightly used but still better SATA drive… I thought I’d begin documenting my computer upgrades etc. I’m a nerd, after all – and it’s nice to have something for posterity.

Anyways, let’s get started. This is more or less archaeology, people. Archaeology of my memory. It’s a shaky science,so don’t expect any stable dating or anything.

The first computer I got for my very own self was a Pentium 133. In fact, I got two of those in short succession – Memory fails regarding their previous owners, but I do remember people elsewhere were sporting shiny new 450 pentiums. The 133’s ran Windows ’98 and did so reasonably well, they had enough RAM for me to have a home-LAN with people playing Starcraft. Good times.

I think I remember getting my dad’s old 233 or 350 Pentium when they got something slightly newer and shinier at some point, and getting rid of one of the 133’s. The other is long since lost in time and space. This was in the old, golden days when HUT was my home and a pretty nice place to hang out.

In 2000, I got my first job. October, I think it was. Something like that. It was just for three months, but it was a paycheck… Wait a minute, this has to have been before the HUT days, for I got that job in 2000,when I lived in a kinda-hippie collective… So I guess I had a 233 or 450 or so when I was living at HUT… Anyways, for my new paycheck I got, of course, a computer. A pretty cheap one. Got it pretty cheap. It was a 1ghz P4, and it still serves me good – it’s the server this here page is served from. Vastly upgraded since then of course, with extra RAM and stuff.

Oh, look at that, the disk scan is done. Time to run, but there’ll be more to this…

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OK, new webserver Lighttpd in place, old webservser stopped-but-not-scrapped-quite-yet, and all seems well. It was a very easy migration, I must say. The Ubuntu package of Lighttpd performed admirably, setting up 90% of all necessary options for me. I just installed, activated two modules (server status and fastCGI), entered all of my virtual hosts in the config file. That whole project seems stable enough right now, which means I spent all of 3 hours on the project. Including a lot of testing etc, and also I’m doing my laundry at the same time… Cool.

Anyways, for now I’ve sacrificed my Frets on Fire online server, but that’s more or less OK, really – I don’t play much since I got my Guitar Hero guitar anyways.

…and some stats:

Before the change, there were 11 Apache processes running. Afterwards, there are 6 PHP-CGI processes running and one Lighttpd process. The table below should explain everything (all numbers are in mb’s):

Apache: PHP-CGI: Lighttpd: PHP-CGI + Lighttpd:
Virtual memory: 11*33=333mb 6*25=150mb 5,2 155,2
Resident memory: 11*11=121 6*6,6=39,6 5,2 44,8
Virtual Memory: 11*25=225 5,2 280,2
Resident Memory: 11*6,6=72,6 1,9 75,5

…and in case anyone missed the point here, the table clearly (?) shows that my current setup takes all of 44 mb’s of resident memory, while the previous setup ate 121 mb’s. And even if I scaled up the number of PHP-CGI processes used so they mateched the number of processes Apache used, it’s STILL be 75,5 versus 212 mb’s.

I’ve also switched to Dillo for my webbrowsing needs on the server, where i used to use Epiphany, and Top is currently my favorite when it comes to process management, where I used to use gnome-system-monitor.

My next project will be to change from uTorrent via Wine to rTorrent. Then, the only RAM thieves left will be MySQL at 23 mb’s and Linuxdcpp at 51. And yes, Linuxdcpp is absolutely necessary – it’s the only linux client allowed at the hubs I frequent. The alternative would be dc++ via wine, and that’s just not happening. Noone will be happer then me should I be able to switch to DCTC or something…

Anyways, the hunt for more memory continues. Over and out.

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Having become fed up with the memoryhog that is the Apache webserver, I’ve begun looking at alternatives. The one standing out at the moment is Lighttpd . Youtube, Wikipedia and other large sites use it, from what I undernstand – and it’s extremely minimalistic and efficient, saving memory and system resources. Those of you who know me known that A) I tend to switch software pretty often, seemingly just because I like trying out new software, and B) that I’m a die-hard minimalist, especially when it comes to system resources. I run Blackbox, for crying out loud.

Anyways, Lighttpd seems like a great fit. However, I know next to nothing about how it actually works… Over the past years I’ve come to know at least enough of Apache to make me a passable webmaster, but Lighttpd is a strange beast. It’s all greek to me. And there, perhaps, lie part of what attracts me – I thoroughly enjoy fiddling around with new systems and new software, tweaking and modding until I’ve mastered whatever-it-is.

Just to be on the safe side, I’ll make the move one site at a time. Perhaps starting with my webapps, who use nothing more than the odd bit of PHP and none of that crispy MySQL goodness. Did I just make a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference involving MySQL? I guess I kind of did. Anyways, one site at a time… My server has about 7-800 mb RAM, which is WAY too little for a monster like Apache. Hopefully, this’ll help.

I guess I’ll post some kind of update here later on. Also, I’m thinking about chaning my Wine+uTorrent setup for rTorrent, simply because I can, but that’s another topic for another post.

Strap yourselves in, people. These next few days might be a bit bumpy on the omegarpg server…

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Contrary to popular opinion, robots aren’t enough to save anything. Robots are, of course, inherently cool – but they need to be put in context.

I’m talking about RF Online. I saw the game at a local store, went home and looked it up, discovered that it had recently been made free-as-in-beer. I downloaded the client (laughing inwardly at anyone who ever bought it), got myself a free account (laughing outwardly at anyone who ever payed for their accounts), and gleefully started playing. The game impressed me at first by being beautiful. Absolutely stunning. Think Phantasy Star but not as cheesy. And with way cooler robots. Very nice. and didn’t seem to demand much in terms of system resources, either. Very nice. and it has robots, which are very cool. Did I mention the robots?

Anyways, I created my character (three playable races, one of which is a race of robots, so it wasn’t much of a choice) and begain playing. Pretty nice controls. A not-too-bad combat system and the experience system, in which you become better at the stuff you actually do, is nice… Erh, OK, quests come automatically as you level up… And they don’t seem to be connected, or have any sort of plot… And this is my twentieth mission in a row that’s just “kill 20 of X”… Waiiiitaminute, this was made by koreans, wasn’t it?

And there it was. Inescapable, unavaidable. A korean MMO. I tried playing for a while, but ultimately, koreans just can’t make good MMO’s. OK, they got loads of stuff to kill and a couple of cool abilities, but koreans are, judging from the kind of games they produce, very fond of mindless hacking of identical enemies, lack of plot, and not playing socially.

So – Robots aside, RF Online is crap. The robots are still very cool, but they’d need to be in a game that didn’t suck ass. Too bad, this game actually looked good, played well etc. If it had only hade some more social gaming/role-playing elements and perhaps, i dunno, a plot or fifteen, it might’ve been good.

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These past few days, I’ve been searching for a competent IDE for creating WxWidgets interfaces, primarily for the Python programming language. The reason for this is that I’m working on a small project to get my creative programming-juices flowing again – Tempest’s on its way, but I needed some kind of “learning” project in order to get my Python programming skills up to “moderately skilled” level before I tackle the continuous challenge that is Tempest. This new project of mine is a managing software for the PSP – most, if not all, of the managers out there are too limited or just plain too buggy for my tastes. The project is going well – I wrote a couple of functions that decode the PSP’s various files to get info like savegame details or PNG files, and now I mostly need – the interface.

Anyways, here are my results (windows software only):

FarPy GUIE

Pretty neat and very user-friendly, outputs Python code – but in striving for usability it leaves out all kinds of advanced functionality, like Spacers – and Spacers are absolutely necessary if you need your inteface to have a scalable window.

Boa Constructor

From what I’ve been told, the best and the greatest. I hate multi window layouts in software, and the inteface of Boa Constructor is very, very advanced – and incredibly klunky. Here’s an interface that does it all when it comes to Python programming, but the interface makes everything extremely painful. I’m sure the software is mightily powerful, but it’s just not for me. Next!

Visual Wx

One of the better ones. Has a bad habit of naming controls and refusing to let me rename them to stuff I can actually remember, and the visual display of what I’m working on sometimes doesn’t update correctly. Has rudimentary support for custom components, but nothing fancy. Some weird graphical bugs, rather ugly buttons and complete lack of help files for the actual interface lowers the score. Supports XRC input/output, which is always nice. Interrestingly, importing some XRC’s from wxFormBuilder actually makes the prog crash and some stuff seems to not import correctly… Can generate code for Python, C++, Lua, Perl and Ruby (=impressive) but the same project cannot, as far as I can tell, export to multiple languages. If you created a Python project, then it is and always will be a Python project.

WxDesigner

Non-free editor, and it kinda shows. Pretty sleek interface, does its job and does it well. The main problem here is its lack of custom components – I need a special version of BitmapButtons, and it’s not supported. Why don’t more of these have a module-based structure? Anyways, WxDesigner supports C++, Python and Perl, and as far as I can tell, the same project can be used to export multiple kinds of code…

wxFormBuilder

Excellent in terms of interface and usability. Easy to use, and relatively complete in terms of functionality. There are no help files or support for custom controls, but there’s a moddable structure and though it can’t export directly to Python, it does generate XRC files. One very suprising and excellent interface feature is that every control and property are explained in a small box – no more checking the online manual to find out what WX_WHATEVER does…

Anyways, having done this research and tested every wxWidgets IDE from here to eternity, I decided, in the end, to use the XRC  intermediary format for my UI needs, which meant choosing wxFormBuilder. It had the best interface, creating stuff really is a breeze compared to, say, WxDesigner. And it’s free. The XRC format provides another clear advantage: I can work on the core functions and the GUI stuff separately, and as long as certain core stuff remains the same – the names of certain forms and events – I can work freely on one without bothering with the other. This also makes it possible for possible future users to create their own user interfaces if they think mine suck, and it also makes it more sensible to create “placeholder” purely functional interfaces to test the core functions, and only later caring about aesthetics.

I’ve also done some new research when it comes to crossplatform programming languages and their respective executable/runtime sizes. Java’s too big, FreePascal too much of a hassle (and it produces 11-13 mb EXE’s)… Well you know, the usual list. FreePascal was the only real newcomer, and it fell seriously short despite being based on one of the first programming languages I ever learned (Turbo Pascal 6). C++ is really the only contender to Python, and I simply find Python to be more intuitive, if slightly slower. No matter, processing speed really isn’t an issue in most of my projects. Perhaps I’ll learn C++ some day – after all, wxWidgets exist for C++ as well, which means my XRC files will work even if I change programming language (how cool is that?).

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When did companies decide they could afford to treat their customer like a criminal?

Recently, the long-awaited spiritual successor Bioshock hit the shelves. I was excited – until I learned what copy protection they’d used.

OK, first, they use SecuROM. Which places a bunch of unknown drivers etc in my Windows, and forces my DVD-rom to read damaged sectors. This is bad enough in itself, in that it punishes the regular consumer, without stopping anyone from making a slightly less legal download from isohunt etc.

Second, they use online activation. You can only activate the game online twice. What the fuck? Twice? Oh, yeah, their uninstaller connects to their server and resets the thing, yeah… So in short, every god damned time I need to uninstall the thing I need to make real fucking sure the drunken midgets running my ISP don’t press the wrong button? Bah, good luck with that. My internet connection is twitchier than a spastic on cocaine rehab. And what happens if Windows works its magic (crashes horribly) and I need to urgently format everything and begin anew? It’s been known to happen (and no, I’m not an ordinary user. XP, properly set up, almost never crashes for the normal user. But I’m not one, so just drop it). Then, my activation is lost forever!

This is so damn stupid I don’t even know where to start.

  • It will only prohibit the legal users from accessing their copy, just as the only people who’ll need to have their game CD/DVD in the drive are the same legal users. Soo, a crack and keygen will come out, and then the slightly less legal community will have all of the benefits, and none of the hassle.
  • Treating customers this way is so wrong it’s ridiculous. It’s practically driving people to illegally downloading the game.
  • I don’t want weird drivers or rootkits on my computer. Seriously, I don’t. I don’t feel comfortable having that kind of crap sitting there, collecting data on my habits. Sure, I got a firewall – but hell, it’s the principle.
  • I don’t want my DVD-rom ruined by forcing it to read damaged sectors. I paid good money for my computer, I put it togeather myself, and I don’t like it when companies thing they have the right to ruin my property. Property is theft, indeed.

When the game is old enough to be sold in shops specializing in used games, I’ll probably buy it. The graphics are astounding, and the aesthetics even more so. The game seems like fun. I really want to buy this one, helping the developers, etc – but by golly I Will Not Spend Money On DRM! I will not help these people justify their crappy schemes using my purchase as validation. And from what I heat, many others say the same thing: This aggression will not stand!