WCN

Blog??

Tehto — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 05:04:00 GMT

...Wow. I have a blog, and I didn't even realize I had a blog! I just googled myself and a blank page popped up, so I decided to sign in and sure enough, I have a blog. >_> <_< all because I signed up for top web comics so I could keep my favorites list in one place.

Finally getting over a cold

RichardM — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 18:53:00 GMT

Been sick all weekend, the crappiest time to get sick. ;)

But now that I'm getting better, hopefully I can step up my productivity. What was meant to be a good solid sunday to spend working ended up me being asleep the whole day.

Last Thursday I packed up and came home, determined to get as much done for leisuretime as possible before I start whatever new position. Unfortunately of course that means when I'm home sick I still feel obligated to work, instead of sleeping it off. :( Dan might want to fire me because I'm not at work using the 512kilobit internet connection and using a sub$300 dollar computer, but if so, at least I know I got more done for him before he did, regardless of what he wants. So if he fires me for being too productive then I can feel justified, and since I plan on putting my two weeks in soon, it ultimately doesn't matter.

Of course being sick made me even more bitter about the fact that Dan took away my health benefits, if I needed antibiotics or something I'd have to take care of it myself (ie expensive), sometimes I wish I were more unethical or didn't care about my work so much. sigh... I have to do the best job I can for him as long as hes paying, I can just hope he stops paying me soon so I can drop the whole thing. ;)

A New Year and a list of tasks

RichardM — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 20:23:00 GMT

So I thought the holidays would give me plenty of time to work. It gave me plenty of time alright, but not to work. ;) I swamped myself a while back and I got a bit stressed out, so now I'm trying to ease back into working more, but not so much I get burnt out.

Anyways, I did find the time to update the WCN network to SP2, which seems to have made things faster, more efficient, etc.

I also mirrored the dndorks crew blogs on dndorks, which means people see each of our various blogs over there, and can click to read them.

So what do I want to do?

A new interface for prof_Sai's game, yes I haven't forgetten you, its just been rough the past couple weeks.

Visible scripts for dndorks. I want a tab that lets you see the script for the comic, and a search box to search the scripts. I'm a little wary about giving out secrets, but then again, some people have trouble discerning the little tidbits I write in, so maybe it will be for the best. The negative here: everyone will see my typos. ;)

The Dndorks Store! This online store is nearly ready and mostly needs to be populated with inventory. Once done, we'll close the ebay dndorks store and begin putting up shirts, posters, digital media like modules, etc, we'll see where it goes, I'm a bit excited about this.

The TWC alternate lists, Ranking days. These should be cool, an optional champion list, and some more ways for comics to participate to get notice.

All in all I want to do more fun things to get people motivated and participating in the online comic community. And of course I'd like more people to interact with webcomic.net and to play role-playing games on dndorks.com

Hope everyone has a happy new year!

Upcoming TWC Changes

RichardM — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:47:00 GMT

A few people, around 30 or so, have noticed the small text link, "+ Favorites" on the TWC comic list and begun using it. In addition to the normal way of ordering the list by number of votes, soon there will be special days where the list will be ordered in different ways.

One of the ways the list will be ordered is by how many people have a comic as their favorite. It will be a designated day, maybe the second to last day of the month. I'd make it the last day of the month, but I think I might want to bring back Random Day.

Any comments?

Game situation - no time

RichardM — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 22:14:00 GMT

So Jenn caught up and exceeded me on Zelda. I wonder if I'll ever finish it now? I've been working so much I haven't been playing DDO, which is sort of bugging me, because I really want to level up my character and do the "really" fun stuff at higher levels.

I'm in a new beta, but can't talk about it because of a NDA. :( Its really cool though! I actually wasn't excited about the game but now I am.

I still haven't played Wii golf, but I hear its really fun. Unfortunately it doesn't have many holes so I haven't been too motivated to give it a try. I also haven't played wii boxing, but it looked sort of boring.

Wii sports was the #1 wii game in Japan, which I can understand, the other games other than Zelda don't attract my attention that much. Of course here in the US, Wii Sports was free with the system, so we won't know whether Americans would have been as prone to buying it.

Day # 4 with my Zune. I'm still loving it. At first I was worried about it dying before I got home from work, but I've been pleasantly pleased with the battery time. I ordered a Zune car pack and should get it tomorrow, 4 buck overnight shipping from Amazon, gotta love it!

One thing with the Zune is that I see the album art on the big 3" screen with every song and its kind of cool, I never really payed attention to the album art with Rhapsody, but now I find myself looking it over because I'll be holding the zune in my hand looking for various tracks and such. I'm sure ipod users are long used to his, but its new to me, so I'll continue to be happy about it.

Not having had a mp3 player before, I'm still shocked when I turn off the car and am still listening to music. Of course after I have the car pack, then the music will be coming out of the car speakers so it will be back to normal, but for now I'm surprised.

I'm in a decent mood, but I haven't been working out enough so I'm getting a bit of a headache. Possibly I'm getting sick too, I was coughing this morning. Dang everyone around me being sick! I blame all you people!

Social Update

RichardM — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 06:14:00 GMT

So my zune lasted about 10 hours before it died on me. I listened to two 45 minute long podcasts I'm subscribed to for the last hour or so of it, which I assume use more energy than just the normal mp3s. I say that because the battery bar seemed like it had quite a bit more life before I started listening to the podcasts.

I'm pretty happy with that, and I ordered a car charger for it.

I join "the social"

RichardM — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:25:00 GMT

I picked up a Microsoft Zune yesterday. I was growing really sick of the radio on the way home from the office, decided I finally needed a mp3 player.

So I looked at an ipod but I neither want to pay 99 cents a song nor do I want to use torrents or illegal file sharing services. I "kinda" looked at some of the playforsure players, but not too seriously. I wanted the zune all along, I spent two weeks deliberating the decision, now I have it.

Its black with dark neon blue highlights, it looks slick. Unlimited music for 15 bucks a month, which for me, is a good deal. It has 30GB, I've only filled a gig or so so far. It has a huge screen, which since I really like music videos I hope to make some use of later on. And last night I hacked my registry so I can use it like a portable hard drive through "my computer".

I need gadgets to go along with it, some sort of way to make it interface with my car stereo (and no, not the radio gadget, we had problems in California because of how congested their radio stations are). I'll probably use the tape deck adapter, barring if I can figure out how to splice a plug into my lexus stereo somehow.

Overall, I'm happy, it works, the screen is pretty and large, and I'm testing the battery life today. The selling factor for me was my voracious consumption of new music and the unlimited music for 15 a month, I can see that people who listen to the same music all the time probably would prefer the ipod or whatever.

I'll post again after my battery test is done. :)

MMOs: the evils of buying money online or not

RichardM — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 21:19:00 GMT

I really hate spending 30 hours leveling up my character, only to group with someone and they tell me they paid for a leveling service and have only played 2 hours.

I mean, how unfair is it that I had fun for 30 hours leveling my character and then rich corporate executive guy who only plays for 5 hours a week already has a maxed out character?

Or even worse, I played for 25 hours doing the hardest dungeons imaginable refining my skills until finally I could beat the dragon to get the uber +5 vorpal sword and Joe exec guy again comes in and starts swinging away not just with a +5 vorpal sword but a +5 tower shield of invulnerability too!

Its really disgusting, its like this rich guy thinks he should be allowed to do all the fun stuff at the end of the game without putting in long hours building his character up. I don't care if he can't play all day like I can, he has to "earn" the right to have fun, and by earning, I don't mean earning the money to buy his way to having fun.

Oh wait, I got possessed by some poor emo teenager kid for a moment there. By all means, if you don't have time to play a game as much as your guildmates but still want to join them doing all the high level stuff, pay IGE or someone to shortcut to the end. After all, its your money and the fun is worth whatever you feel like paying, don't let some insecure person get you down just because they were bored grinding for 80% of their play to get where you got with 50 bucks.

MMO developers say it unbalances the game when people buy stuff online, I don't think so. I think they don't like the fact that they only create 20-30 hours of entertaining gameplay so they simply create 200-300 hours of repetitive play and they know if someone pays to skip the boring content they'll cancel their account after going through the entertaining gameplay.

Well good! People "should" play to have fun, and game developers should create enough "fun" content to keep people playing month after month, all without grinding.

And lastly, people shouldn't compare themselves to other people for validation. Get some self-esteem people! Be proud of leveling for 50+ hours, or be proud of the fact that though you're a workaholic, you still get to experience the best parts of the games you play. Or be proud of finding time to game at all!

PoxNora rocks!

RichardM — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:52:00 GMT

So I signed up for poxnora a few days ago, but didn't really mess with it because I like to play people I know. So I got Jason and Jenn to sign up.

I played Jason last night. My hordes of the undead (free sample army) against Jason's powers of nature.

The first game, I cut him off from his nora font (points you get to bring out runes every turn) unknowingly and after a very long game, finally figured out I should probably be going after his tower (sort of like life points in magic). So I won that one pretty handily.

The second game, we didn't start out with any nora fonts and we both charged for the fonts. Back and forth we fought for them until finally he got one and I had one. The game was on, we both charged for each other's towers, meanwhile fending off attacks on our fonts.

For a while he had a bit of an edge, tossing out monsoons to blanket the areas with enough moisture to keep his giant octopus alive (they suffocate on dry land). It was tough, I had brought out my toughest units early on and he had trounced them when I had tried to go in for the kill.

Meanwhile I hadn't defended my tower and Jason had brought several large units (a crocodile rider and a giant rhino bull thing) next to my tower. I brought out an executioner (big slow unit) to defend my tower, but it didn't look like it was going to be enough.

Then I played my trump rune (runes), Mobilization, a rune that lets every unit do another 5 Action points worth of actions. All my units attacked again, severely damaging his units. BAM! My 2nd mobilization, everyone attacked again!

The tide had turned, a term very appropriate when fighting the forces of nature. ;)

It was a tough battle, but I finally got the 2nd font, then swarmed across both bridges while trying to defend my wounded tower. The game ended with my tower having only 2 hp left.

It was good, long, and tense, and it gave me a better idea of what the game "could" be, which I liked.

I "might" buy some runes rather than using the free ones, but you get 6 free armies and they are pretty cool. I highly recommend checking it out, if only so you can say you played it, and its free. http://www.poxnora.com

First Impressions of the Wii

RichardM — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:06:00 GMT

So we got a Wii last Monday. Luckily it seems that not too many people were aware that RC Willies had Wii's and that they were closed on the Wii Launch day so would still have them the day after. :)

What do I think? Well, I've really only played Zelda and the sports games, though I did play around with the menus as well as the online services.

The menu is slow. Thats my first impression, they have a lost of fade in fade out effects which cause the UI to seem slow after the first few transition effects. Ever seen a powerpoint presention right after someone has learned how to do the transition effects and they're everywhere? Thats the Wii to me. The interface is also "soft", my impression is that of clouds. Its probably great for children, I kinda wish there were themes you could change out to reflect different personalities.

It gives you the ability to make things called "miis" which are like user avatars for the various members of your household. Kind of like profiles in the xbox360, the mii's can be used in things like the players in the sports games to both track scores as well as give a bit more identity in games. I kinda like them, and Jenn really liked them. better than just the 360 profiles IMO.

The graphics are mediocre, but then, you don't buy Nintendo for the most beautiful graphics.

Ok, the controllers. These are the star for the Wii, and they are awesome! We played tennis and bowling for several hours, so much that our arms were a bit sore in ways like playing real tennis! I'm not sure if it can work for all games, but it can definitely be used for "new" style games that previously couldn't exist.

The Wii comes with wifi out of the box and you can purchase a wired dongle. Personally we have a gigabit network plug behind our tv so I'd much prefer the wired dongle. Unfortunately I didn't know you needed a dongle, so don't have one yet, so we had to use our wifi. Which is fine I suppose, but while I understand some people like wifi, I'm not one of them. We have wifi for the laptops, if at all possible we try and use the wired network since its easier, has less latency, etc.

The internet was a bit slow, kept telling me I needed to update before using X feature even though it was already updated, etc. I'm not sure its ready, but it seemed like I could buy games and am considering buying super mario 64, if so, I'll post here how it plays with the new controllers, presuming I don't buy an old style controller just for the old games.

One thing I didn't like. The wireless controllers use normal AA batteries. Why no rechargable pack like the xbox360? I read about a product coming out in January that will hadle rechargin the controllers, but personally I hate the idea that every 20-30 hours I'll need to switch out batteries. This really seemed like a bad decision, and I'm not sure why they didn't go with lithium rechargables lke everyone else, or at least offer recharagable accessories or something.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the Wii. It was a good purchase, and allows for some fun party games. Its not for the most serious games, but its good for "relaxing" and it should be a good "training" console to get non-gamers into other things like the xbox360.

Why I'm not interested in the PS3

RichardM — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 20:41:00 GMT

I'm a techie, I love gizmos, and I hear a lot of misinformation about a lot of things, but none more so than the ps3. I have a lot of issues with Sony.

BlueRay. Yes its technically better than HDDVD. Well, we have HDDVD, and its beautiful! Most comparisons I've seen online say that the current generation of HDDVD looks better than Blue-Ray. I know that its an aspect of the compression tech and the blue-ray will catch up. But so what? HDDVD is an evolutionary progression of the technology rather than a revolutionary one, its logical that it would be improved all the way around rather than coming out the gate with problems. HDDVD is cheaper, for the players, for the disks, to produce, etc I hate blueray, it seems to me just another attempt by Sony to corner the media market, and IMO I don't think Sony would be a good shepherd of any technology, let alone one that I love, which is collecting movies. I want blueray to fail because I don't like Sony controlling the format. I feel more comfortable with hddvd and its more open tenants.

Internet: PS3's internet is FREE! Oh wait, so is the silver package for Xbox360. You can play multiplayer for ps3 for free though! Well yeah, you get what you pay for. No shared friends list, the ps3 online service is slow, and downloads are clunky.

Exclusivity: Sony has done a great job getting exclusive contracts with many game developers. While this is a nice thing for Sony I'm sure, its pretty crappy for me. Personally I like to see the same game come out for multiple platforms so that everyone can choose which platform they'd prefer. Luckily with all the missteps Sony's made, we might see more square games on other platforms, not just their side games.

Wireless that isn't really wireless: You have to sync the controllers with the ps3 by plugging it in. What? The xbox360 and nintendo remotes are awesome and easy.

Bad Imitation: By all means I like the Japanese trait of focusing on improving ideas rather than coming up with new ones, but the PS3 just copied a bunch of features without really improving them :(

Hubris: Man, we've seen so many remarks the president of SEO telling us how everything that sounded negative didn't matter because its PLAYSTATION. WTH? Instead of telling us brand matters, why not focus on telling us quality matters.

The PS3 is junky, you want to see next gen hi-def graphics with innovative game play? Check out Gears of War on the xbox360. Fantastic game, fantastic multiplayer. AMAZING graphics. You want to see something "different", not just better versions of what has already been out there? Bowling for the Wii. I was fascinated to see me using all the same skills from real bowling to bowl in the Wii. Its effectively a simulator for all sorts of games, very very impressive.

Now don't get me wrong, in 6 months they might have upgraded the PS3 in so many ways that it doesn't even look like the same box. Then I might be "Oh wow, I love my ps3!!!", but I believe in a mutable personality, and right now, I don't like the PS3, nor do I like what it indicates Sony thinks about its customers.

The Case for Comic Avatars

RichardM — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 17:07:00 GMT

We introduced the comic avatars to act as a CAPTCHA device, blocking bots.

But then we began using silent captcha, interacting with the browser and making sure the same IP doesn't vote too fast, so I got rid of the captcha test, and made it so the avatar just sponsors the vote.

Why is it there? Well, for the people who introduce good looking avatars, they have chances of acquiring a new fan with each vote for each comic. The more popular comics get more votes, the more votes there are the more they expose voters to other comics.

Thats the idea anyways. I think its working out, every once in a while I know I check out a comic because of its avatar. I think I can encourage it more, and with that in mind I'll be emphasizing the avatars and rebuilding the admin a third time. I also want to make it so people don't have to keep resubmitting, they submit once they're in the rotation, they can update when they want.

For that matter, I'm working on a new system for comic owners and fans a like, introducing things like favorite comics and such for those who like to vote on a regular basis.

Gave up Iced Tea

RichardM — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:54:00 GMT

So I normally drink about 2 quarts of unsweetened iced tea. I really love iced tea.

Unfortunately more and more it becomes apparant that I'm either diabetic or on the verge, probably a result of drinking 2-3 liters of coca-cola every day of my life until my mid-twenties, when I switched to diet coke, then about a year ago, when I switched to iced tea.

Lately I began to get really light headed after a lot of iced tea, my head would feel foggy. I don't get energy from caffeine, haven't for years and years, if anything I often have gotten tired from a lot of caffeine. So a couple days ago, I stopped drinking the iced tea, just plain ice water.

So unfortunately I have been feeling better. Why unfortunately? Because that means the caffeine was probably the issue. I don't really even miss it, which bugs me even more. I really like the anti-cancer aspects of tea, but I guess I'll find a supplement or something if I really want it.

Damn the attraction of C#!!!!!!!!

RichardM — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 02:07:00 GMT

Ugh, so I started writing some things in C#, then started a new website in C#, then switched back to vb.net because vb.net feels more natural to write .aspx pages in, when suddenly I felt that writing DIM to declare variables was ungainly.

Agh. Unfortunately I want the cleanness of C#, with the IDE support that vb.net possesses in VS2005, and no semi-colons. I don't feel the need to stream several things on one line, or break up long lines of inline code (I can turn word wrap if that was my goal, which I don't), so line breaks are a fine way to end a line of code for me.

Sigh....maybe one day I'll fully switch to C#, but its unlikely, vb.net is so easy to ready, and better for working with non-developers with.

The demise of Invasion

RichardM — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 01:47:00 GMT

So I'm finally watching the copy of Invasion I bought a few weeks ago, and dang, I had forgotten how good this series was!

I was trying to think about what caused the demise of this show.

First off, its not humorous. You don't even get a few moments of humor like you have in Lost with Hurley.

Second, the show was delayed due to hurricane Katrina, possibly causing everyone to lose interest by the time it was finally produced.

Third, its sci-fi.

Obviously it being sci-fi partially lead to the death of the show. but I think hurrican Katrina helped hammer in the nails to this coffin. Granted, surface and threshold didn't survive either, despite Surface being of excellent quality and Threshold being absolutely fantastic!. But Threshold at least still has a bit of a chance via sci-fi (they are showing season 1 on sci-fi!).

Its really unfortunate, but due to the way the schows are produced, 5-6 million viewers just isn't enough. I sure wish that someone would come up with an idea where we sell the shows to the public. Basically a website is put up and everyone prepays for that season's DVDs. If enough buy them, then the show is made, otherwise it isn't, or they try to sell it more conventionaly. With this type of scenario, they could then go ahead and sell the show to television studios and make the extra profit they want (need?) to, but do it from a position of comfort knowing that their minimum goal was already met.

Apple Itunes Customer Service can be ok, sometimes you just have to pressure them a bit

RichardM — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 23:10:00 GMT

So first of all, I like owning media (owning, as in legally purchasing it), specifically tv shows and music videos. I don't like watching television. I tried using a tivo, but it just hasn't worked out for me, as I prefer to watch things on my third monitor.

So anyways, I have over a large collection of music videos, but it doesn't make me happy for the most part because its all average to good quality rips from satellite streams or dvd rips without a consistent level of quality. I don't like buying the dvds of music videos because I want to have them in playlists the way other people have music playlists, and I got sick of the amount of work necessary to rip large amounts of dvds.

So I finally buckled down and started buying itunes videos a couple months ago, which isn't the best quality, but satisfactory, and for 2 bucks a piece, I thought it was pretty decent. I slowly began replacing my free downloaded music videos with the more consistent quality itunes videos as I played them a lot. The itunes music videos were at 320x240 or some such small resolution

So then last Tuesday, they release an upgraded client, and in small text they also mention they doubled the resolution! Thats right, something they should be screaming from the rooftops for those of us A/V nuts, is that they now have 640x480 or so resolution videos, which is pretty nice!

As soon as I read the press release, I opened itunes and began looking around for how to redownload my purchased videos in the new resolution.

I couldn't find it.

I begin searching the help documentation. Apparantly you only get 1 download....ever. So I complain to them that I would like the new resolution. They tell me to read the ToS, and they're sorry.

So I e-mail them back, tell them I understand the terms may only give me 1 download, but that I had purchased several music videos on Sunday, and that if they had told me I could wait until Tuesday to get double th resolution for the same price, I would have, and that I want to escalate the issue. I pointed out to them that most state consumer protection laws provide protection if I were to buy something like this instore, and I also pointed out that if they won't let me escalate the issue, I'll just end up talking to my credit card company.

Well, after the long e-mail, I receive a message back that they gave me back all of September's downloads!

I thought that was a reasonable compromise, and while it bothers me that I'll have to repurchase the 15-20 tracks before September that I purchased, at least I got the most recent ones back.

Ultimately I think Apple should have had a better customer policy than that, and I definitely think if you've downloaded anything recently, definitely ask for your higher resolution videos if you didn't already get it!

For an example of a company that is doing things right, get this e-mail I got from Amazon a couple days ago regarding the preorder of Smallville Season 5 I got last wednesday.

Greetings from Amazon.com.

We thought you'd like to know that the price of your pre-release title went down between shipment (the time we charged you) and the release date, and that we saved you some money! Since your item was covered under our Pre-order Price Guarantee, you automatically received a refund.

-----------------------------------------------

"Smallville - The Complete Fifth Season" DVD

Original Price: $0.00

Price you were charged: $41.80

Lowest price before release date: $37.99

Quantity: 1

Additional savings: $3.81

Tax refunded: $0.00

We have initiated a refund of $3.81. You will receive an additional email when this refund is processed.

Now why can't more companies do things like that? I didn't request it, I already had smallville season 5 sitting on my desk. Why did they do that? Because they want to keep their customers.

Which ultimately is more than Itunes can say, because I'm looking forward to Microsoft's Zune product and accompanying media store. I'm fairly certain Microsoft will look more towards those of us who don't use a portal media device and are dedicated to only using our pc's to watch media, or want to stream it to our xbox 360, or whatever we want to do with it. :)

D&D tabletop Supplements

RichardM — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 22:02:00 GMT

I think I'm kinda spoiled in how I like to run tabletop D&D. But my quest for the ultimate tabletop experience continues onward!

Today I received my Canon IP6000D photoprinter. What does a photoprinter have to do with D&D supplements? Well, I'm playing a swordsage in Scott's campaign and it has various stances and maneuvers which are used up or switched out constantly through a battle. The concept is cool and makes battles interactive, really a lot of fun, but would be a little complex to remember or keep track of just via pen and paper.

They recommended cards, so then I started thinking about how I wish I could print individual cards. I mean, I can print card shaped things and cut them out, I could even buy business cards that have been pre-perforated for easy tearing. But what I really want is something with a bit of finesse, a bit more quality, and I want to be able to do it without wasting extra paper.

So I started wondering why they hadn't made cardstock printers that could print smaller paper, like index cards. I began searching the net, and eventually found that many photo printers can print on common index cards like what you'd get from a drug store.

So thus I did some more research, and the canon ip6000D seems very efficient in it's ink use (important, going to be going through these cards quite a bit probably), prints quickly, and, best of all, I found it on Amazon for less than one hundred!

So its sitting here next to me, and I'm kinda poking at my desk hoping a space large enough opens up for it without me sacrificing too much of my very necessary and valuable clutter, and wishing I had already made up some templates in MSWord or even better, had programmed something up in Visual Studio.

Maybe I can work up something with dndorks.com and a pdf generator.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to playing with my shiny new cards, and have lots of other ideas. Like TSR's old products with spell cards and equipment cards. Nifty ideas, but you ended up with lots of junk that you'd never use, and not enough of what you did use, further, if anything happened with the cards you were basically ruining the set, where as these will be disposable and easily reprinted as necessary. :)

Hmm, what other gadgets do we have?

Battlemaps: Well, I picked up four 4'x5' battlemaps for cheap by calling and asking for industry misprints (very small errors, it means there is nothing wrong with folding them up with maps and using a blank one if we want to reuse one).

Miniatures: We went through many different miniature ideas over the years. We tried magenight, but the bases were too large and none of the creatures were really D&D. Then we tried cardboard counters, which were ok, but hard to keep track of or find. Of course we started with metal miniatures, but its hard to cart around dozens and dozens of metal miniatures without damaging them (especially the little swords in foam cases and whatnot). Finally we've found what looks to be our permanent solution, the D&D plastic miniatures, probably 9-10 boxes so far, easily stored, cheap enough I don't feel too bad when one of our animals eats one (still annoying, I just don't feel "too" bad). These are great, especially the new clear plastic, something that easily exceeds what metal could ever do, check out the large fire elemental, one of my favorites from the recent set.

Laptops: We have 3 laptops at the table right now. My dream is to have 1 laptop and all tablet pcs for the players, but we're not quite there yet. Still, my campaign manager on dndorks.com is coming along, and we're using it more and more at the gaming table.

What I'm still hoping for.

I have yet to come up with a good solution to providing sound effects at the gaming table. I'd love to be able to click a couple buttons and have a loud growl, wolf howl, crashing waves, rumbling stone, etc. I was kinda thinking radio DJ's must use something good for this because it seems like they use sound effects pretty effortlessly. Of course niche software like that is probably pretty pricey...

A projector: I've seen those setups where you have a projector above the gaming table and have it projecting the battlemap onto the table, and I have hope for it. Its a big reason why I'm practicing my campaign cartographer and dundjinni skills, so that I can maybe use them with a projector.

Upcoming Games I'm looking forward to

RichardM — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 16:51:00 GMT

In order of priority but not order of release.

DDO - Issue3. Ok, its not an "upcoming game" as much as it is an upcoming patch, but I'm really looking forward to this. An illithid who sucks out feats from your brain in return for gold is a nice Eberron way of handling a very MMO issue, character respecs. Combat changes making ranged characters more viable (being able to move while reloading is going to be "fantastic"). consensual pvp (I generally don't like pvp, but it can be fun here and there), and of course more dungeons. :)

Eve Online - Kali. Space exploration, salvage operations? I think this is going to be great. With the remnants of the old agent system completely removed, this should be good.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance: I'm a big fan of the 2 x-men games they released using this engine, and hoping that this game will be even better. Whats nice is they are doing some heavy advertising of it, here is my obligatory banner for my vip.

Might and Magic - Dark Messiah. This game should be fantastic, I downloaded the 1.5 gig demo and it was really done very well. I don't usually have time for single-player adventure games, but I'll give this game a good try.

Anything else upcoming? I can't think of it. Anyone play in Eve or DDO (or going to give them a try)? Check out the dndorks MMO page for information about playing with us now and again.

"The Internet Can't be Free?" WTH?!?!

RichardM — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 05:44:00 GMT

As some people know, I've been a big proponent of net neutrality, as most sane people do (minus those who stand to get money by double charging content providers for un-impeded net access, I'm sure they're sane too, just greedy bastards ;).

with that in mind I've added a little thing to the right, it comes from this site:

I like the idea that its possible the bloggers and other tech-savvy people out there might be able to get government represenatatives to you know, "represent" us without millions of dollars being spent on lobbying for it.

You know its bad when your DM says...

RichardM — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 15:55:00 GMT

"Whats going to be your replacement character?"

In our ongoing Eberron campaign using the official WotC modules, I started the game with a human artificer. He was a tank, prepared to bust heads and take names via the use of his self-buffs.

That all ended while he was pursuing a vampire and encountered a weretiger. Just one mighty slash and a failed save was enough to temporarily end Alric the artificer's career, as Alric became more interested in prowling the forests as a tiger than pursuing his adventuring career.

He could have continued on, but at the time we weren't prepared for my character to gain 8 ECL, so I let that character go on a private sojourn and brought in a Elvish priest of the undying court.

I thought it was better because the group didn't have any healing magic really, other than my artificer's scrolls and potions, which was breaking him money-wise because at the time the group wasn't contributing towards my costs.

I took the phbII expanded cleric feature to have my cleric spontaneously cast protection spells instead of healing magic, took the feats from the phbII that allowed him to use turning checks to generate waves of positive energy healing everyone or increase the amount healed per die, and later on, had one of his arms grafted with the the essence of one of his "deities" a member of the undying court. With a touch of his arm now, he could give someone fast healing 3 for 3 rounds every hour.

The elf was ripped apart by a troll one adventure later.... Luckily Alric, having cured himself, had pretended to work for the Emerald claw so was actually "ahead" of the party, and rejoined his comrades.

Alric was a very different person, timid, afraid. During his journeys he had lost his homonculous messenger Custos, and had crafted a new companion, Trappy, a cheerful packmate (walking treasure chest) able to carry must of Alric's gear, as well as throw alchemist's fire and what not.

So Alric was doing very well, rather than scrolls and potions, this time Alric had focused on his superior crafting abilities to create large amounts of armor, weapons, acid, alchemists fire, etc. Alric had a pair of specially crafted gauntlets of blasting which were pricy, but would never run out. Combine them with a few more standard eternal wands, and this Alric wouldn't become poor nor have to wade into battle.

Then the omnious words come from my wife (the DM), "What's going to be your replacement character?"

Ack! No, not Alric! He managed to avoid the mummy's rot, avoided suffocating from the drowned, overcame the adversity of becoming something so sinful as a lycanthrope, managed to tie himself off when he heard water behind the next door so as to avoid being crushed by the impending tidal wave of water, survived the gargantuan scorpion god, only to face some doom in the last 7 pages of the adventure? Oh wait, orcs don't have a level adjustment? Oh, ok.

Welcome Grugg, a member of the gatekeepers, a sect of Druids having received instructions from a green dragon millenia ago on how to overcome the threat of the aberrations and their creators, the god-like Dalkyr. 5 levels of druid, 2 levels of ranger, and all incredibly mighty orc! A strength of 22, a wisdom of 14, and the feat that allows orc double axe to be considered a martial weapon, this is one druid you don't want to face in melee. 54 hit points, high AC from his magical dragonhide armor, and plenty of strong summoned pets via his augment summoning feat.

I'm looking forward to this monster, the nature loving but savage orc, with his full attack routine of +10/+10 dealing 1d8+9 damage with his mw orc double axe. I hope Alric survives, in which case I'll bring Grugg in on another adventure, but if he doesn't, Grugg should be a fun replacement.

The (not so) secret war - SEO & my disgust with it

RichardM — Wed, 31 May 2006 15:07:00 GMT

Anyone else notice the amount of junk you find on search engines these days? Do you know how to get a web page up to the top in the search engines? If you have a product on a page and you want to sell it, but there is already a lot of competition out there, do you know how to compete with them?

Unfortunately a lot of people do know how to compete with an already entrenched product on the web, create web pages about that product, and lots of them. Right at this moment, tens of thousands of web designers are creating hundreds of thousands of web pages about some product they're supposed to help sell in the hopes that by introducing a thousand web pages about the same subject, at least a few of them will do well in the search engines. Further, by having them link back and forth, they are creating their own web of pages that may give themselves link popularity.

So imagine that there are 1,000,000 different products looking to be sold on the web. Imagine company B wants his products to be above company A. Company B sees that Company A has 100 links from people who like his product and about 35 pages on Company A's website. Company B decides that he'll create 100 pages about his product, then pay a web designer to create 300 websites giving 300 links to his product's web page.

Six months or so goes by, now Company B is above Company A. Company A knows he has a better product, but now hes doing less sales and doesn't understand why hes on page 2 and a bunch of gibberish pages are now on page 1 selling company B's product. Company A hires a new, less scrupulous web designer (unfortunately like myself :() who explains the system. Now Company A, through outsourcing to Thai web developers who work for pennies on the hour, has 600 websites giving 600 more links on top of his original valid 100 links.

Of course, now Company B has to compete, and launches more websites. Oh, Google devalues multiple links from the same subnet? (that means if you use the same or similar IP address Google will reduce and reduce the amount of link popularity those sites give you) Thats easy, you just buy several of those 10 bucks a year web hosting companies and spread them out. Oh, Google doesn't like duplicate content? A savvy programmer can write a program that searches the search engines for the keywords they want to succeed, grabs the most successful pages, and pulls pieces of their content to create gibberish that does very well on the search engines.

Its disgusting, and I think its ruining the internet. At one point in time, before I really knew better, I programmatically created over 7 million pages, launching several thousand websites simultaneously. I didn't really think that I was creating junk for the search engines, they were meant to be placeholders as our business model took off and our content developers wrote valid, interesting content to fill the pages. It proved to be successful, but I had to take it down because I came the realization I could never come up with the amount of content to fill all the pages. The business model itself wasn't necessarily bad, but the pre-creation of pages that would be there after it became successful probably was.

Look at a site like travelnice.com, its created dozens of websites that are primarily selling the same product, essentially making it so that many searches for Las Vegas travel related things will end up not giving you multiple choices, no, rather it gives you multiple ways of "how do you want to buy from travel nice today?" I mention travelnice because its a company I'm expected to outdo. But where will it stop? Is there an alternate way to outdo someone besides creating mass amounts of junk? More relevant links on existing real sites would do well to help, but not enough IMO. Too bad DMOZ never quite took off the way in the way Google did, a human edited search engine might be just the ticket.

How can it be solved? I don't know. IMO, google with its immense resoruces needs to hire a team of about 10-20 people, and put 90 day bans on any website that participates in such a way. Use a computer algorithm to monitor competitive keyword areas, the strike team begins doing searches in that category, banning each and every site (just the 90 day bans) that uses this despicable practice until the returned results end up clean. Check back again in 90 days, if they haven't removed themselves from the network of junk, give the site the Google kiss of death, permaban.

Make it very clear via press releases what is going on, any website that values its internet business will close down their network of sites, and, I believe, the net will be much cleaner for it.

Best way to handle multiple updates via a repeater?

RichardM — Wed, 24 May 2006 17:54:00 GMT

Ok, I program mostly in vb.net. Vb.net provides a nifty control called the gridview, which I use quite a bit. Gridviews are basically just a tabular layout with built in sorting and paging capabilities.

One thing some developers like about gridviews, is that it has built in support for inline editing. I almost never use them for that though. Why?

1) Because most of my objects are too complicated to "look good" while being edited via a single line table.

2) If it something simple, its probably something that ideally the user wants to update simultaneously multiple records, which gridviews aren't good at.

So what do I use? The repeater. A very basic control, it just repeats a collection of objects. You can bind the properties of the objects to either display their info or bind them to properties of asp.net controls.

Something I need a lot lately is to display text boxes, drop down boxes, calendar pickers, etc, all in a format that allows the user to edit all of them simultaneously.

I'm going to write down how I do it currently, in the hopes that I can look at it later on and optimize it a bit, maybe someone else can help with some comments too.

So I might have a repeater like so
[code]
<asp:Repeater id="repeat1" runat="server">
<ItemTemplate><asp:TextBox id="txtvalue" runat="server" value='<%# eval("property1")%>'></ItemTemplate></asp:Repeater>
[/code]

I bind it to a dataset, often one that I store in viewstate (I don't normally care about the download time for admins, as the whole point of showing multiple edits is that it minimizes postbacks).

Then, when the user hits "save", it runs this code.
updatevalues()
Savevalues()

The important part is the updatevalues, as anyone can save the dataset to the database. The dataset has to be updated with the new values entered by the user.

Dim objtime As TextBox

Dim i As Integer = 0

For x As Integer = 0 To Me.Times.Count - 1

If Not Me.Times(x).RowState = Data.DataRowState.Deleted And Not Me.Times(x).RowState = Data.DataRowState.Detached Then

objtime = CType(Me.dlisttimes.Items(i).FindControl("txtvalue"), TextBox)

Me.Times(x).BeginEdit()

Me.Times(x).Time = objtime.value

Me.Times(x).EndEdit()

i = i + 1

End If

Me.Times = Times

This is the centerpiece of the code, and it works fairly well. I have to check if the rowstate is deleted because I usually provide a small button that allows deletion of a record, but until they actually "save" to the database, the datarow is sitting in the database waiting to be deleted.

Is there a better way? I don't know, more efficient? Probably. What matters to me most of the time is maintainability of code, which is something I still want to improve on with the above snippet.

Code Monkey Like You

RichardM — Fri, 19 May 2006 21:06:00 GMT

I usually complain on here about various things, but here is something a bit more fun.

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/lyrics/code-monkey

Check it out, its pretty cool, I bought it since I like to support things like this, but you can listen to it off the site as well.

Example:

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
With big warm fuzzy secret heart:
Code Monkey like you

I thought it would sound like crap, but it actually sounds kinda catchy. :)

Atlas, love to hate it

RichardM — Tue, 16 May 2006 15:07:00 GMT

I've been really intensively using Atlas in every project I work on lately. Of course its beta, and the product I've been focusing on using, the atlas extenders, is also in beta. Which basically means its really frustrating to use. ;)

I do love how good they make me look though. :) I'm in the middle of reverse engineering an online program that the company I'm currently working for is currently paying thousands of dollars a month to use. The product I'm replacing is slow, internet intensive, doesn't do what they want, and the company is difficult to work with.

So of course in addition to weaning the company off of this mediocre, expensive product, I'm also improving it every step of the way, and Atlas is responsible for a good chunk of those improvements.

BUT, it takes a lot more thought on how to make the best use of the technology it offers, and a lot of the extenders are "close" but not quite what I want, so occasionally I have to modify the sample controls, which I'm trying to avoid because the next time they refresh the project, all my changes will be lost. Of course I'm hoping that the next refresh has the things I've modified or improved built in, I think they will.

Just now I spent half an hour trying to figure out why my drop downs wouldn't cascade. I'd choose an option from the parent drop down, but nothing would happen with the child drop down. So then I began hard-coding the web service responsible for the child drop down, and the drop down showed values. Ok, that told me the web service is working. So I look a bit more, then a bit more, then I remote desktop home and look at my code that works at home, everything is good.

You see, the last time I had a problem like this, my web service was a bit wonky, so I thought the problem was somehow with the web service. I'm working on it, looking through, comparing code, I improve a couple things. Then I figure out how to get the web service to tell me the code being sent to it from the parent control. Its empty.

Wha? Oh dang, I forgot to set the parent control! DOH!

Immigrant walkout day! I love it

RichardM — Mon, 01 May 2006 16:08:00 GMT

Dang, traffic was nice today, just zoomed to work in probably 2/3 of the time it normally takes. All the workers at mcdonalds looked like they had been called in from their day off, they were in plain clothes. the food was fresher than normal, faster than normal, and the ice tea, which had been bad the past 4 times I got it, is fantastic!

Dang, I wish more days were immigrant walkout day. Heck, if they just never came back to work, imagine the US.

A lot of things wouldn't get be getting done, because a lot of jobs currently don't pay enough to attract the attention of a lo of Americans. Some vegetables/fruits would become scarse and thus their prices would go up. A lot of janitorial companies would have to raise their prices because they'd have less employees.

Of course the immigrants who never came back to work would end up having to go to some other country, because they can't afford to stay here if they aren't working.

But then imagine a few months down the road. The pay rates for these menial jobs would go up to attract American legal workers. Companies that are currently using cheap labor would end up spending money on R&D to come up with better non-menial ways to accomplish the same jobs the lower-paid immigrants were doing before.

More of the menial jobs would be taxed appropriately, since right now they are avoiding being taxed by being paid under the table, then even worse, sending their money out of the country where it is neither taxed for income nor is it taxed when used to buy goods and services. This would increase our country's tax coffers which would help with the economy. When menial jobs are increased in pay rates, skilled IT workers like me would end up getting raises.

So thus illegal immigrant leaving = me getting raise. I like it!

Don't get me wrong, immigration is great, the legal kind, like what my great grandparents had to do when they fled Prussia. And even the illegals that are here (you know, the ones that aren't terrorists looking to harm this country) I could probably accept being given work visas or something.

But for gosh sake illegals, STOP sending your money out of the country! Spend it here on movies, blue jeans, and CDs, buy fancy cars, etc, we need your tax money. ^_^