Saturday, January 15, 2011

I'm hungry

Thank you, dear neighbors, for talking loud and slamming your door shut on the way home from the bars. As I'm told by the speed addict in the alleyway, sleep *is* a poor substitute for coffee.

Time for the Diner!

Friday, January 14, 2011

Conversations With Myself

Where is my mind? *drools*

I'm taking a melatonin pill, Valerian root pill, and going to bed. No sunlight 'til Saturday!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Custom Customized Firewall OTW!

Just ordered a Jetway NC92-330-LF Dual Core Atom Mini-ITX Mainboard
image of nc92-330-lf motherboard

with add on 3x 10/100/1000 Intel LAN Module,

3 port 1 gigabit ethernet daughtercard

that I'm going to put inside my 1920's Breakfaster

image of 1920s breakfaster aluminum hotplate toaster

and install a firewall on for my home computers!

I still have to figure out the power supply but figured I'd wait to see how well it fits before ordering that and maybe a compact flash or fixed disk.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

My systems are so secure...

...not even *I* know how to get into them!

I was playing around with encrypted partitions on my Ubuntu server. I forgot the password. D'oh!

I needed to reformat and upgrade as part of my trying to automate my backup and recovery scheme. I could *swear* I put the password on a little piece of paper. A little piece of magic paper. Magic disappearing paper. Hmm.

Did I mention KeePass is a part of my overall backup schemes in general? D'oh! D'oh! D'oh!

Idle Hands and Space Opera

I've been playing Eve Online. It is an interesting game but I don't know if it really is worth playing long term. I've been thinking of creating my own game, mainly because so many of the games I want to play because of the visuals - eve online being one of them - fail to engage me in an expressive way.

I don't mean just fun. I like 'twitch' gaming - being a first person mode where I control every move, similar to being a fighter pilot, but Eve is slow ship movement and learning skill points over a long period of time to allow you to perform certain functions. Since you accumulate skill points second by second, you have to choose what you want to learn and spend time waiting for those skills to finish.

Since I've unfortunately been sick the past few days, it has been somewhat relaxing to start mining and drift off to sleep (damn being tired from this nasal infection!) and wake and target a new asteroid to mine.
snapshot of a iteron mark 3 hauler from eve online
It takes quite a long time for my mining laser to pulverize the rock and pull it into the hold.

One of the other aspects of Eve Online - curiously it seems to be the primary purpose of the game yet I don't think it readily supports it being the primary focus in terms of game theory objectives and rewards - is ship to ship combat. I've been blown up while on a recent mission. So I'm working to get the skills to fly a space cruiser: a Gallente Vexor
snapshot of vexor space cruiser from eve online

So I do enjoy the visuals of space and the ships, but crave something more imaginative in terms of creating custom ships and building planet resources and fleets. I've played role-playing games that were very similar in the past - this one very much reminds me of Traveler, except instead of rolling a character you slowly build up the skills for your character - but there isn't much Eve Online does to help encourage role-playing.