Our minds cannot repel logic of that magnitude!
Rants & Raves
What if I were a Dwarf Fortress character?
Jan 20th
So this morning in the standard IRC channel that myself and a few friends troll throughout the working day in order to maintain sanity, a friend of mine promptly went into a craze, describing me as if I was a dwarf from the awesome game Dwarf Fortress and you had just examined me. This came promptly after I went into a rant referring to myself in the third-person complaining about the hassles of budgets and money. So this is, apparently, what I would say if I were in Dwarf Fortress and you inquired about my thoughts:
Jiffy has been irritated about money lately. He slept in a fantastic bedroom recently. He spoke to a friend recently. He was satisfied at work lately. He admired own fine Bed recently.
Jiffy is a worshipper of Freedomassurance the Constitution of the United States.
Jiffy likes Tungsten, video games, Lizzy, dogs for their loyalty and tentacle demons for their corrupt intentions.
Jiffy is quick to anger. He is somewhat reserved. He finds rules confining. He is self-disciplined. He needs alcohol to get through the working day. He likes working outdoors and grumbles only mildly at inclement weather.
Now, to be perfectly honest, all of this is perfectly describing of me – with the exception of liking tentacle demons for their corrupt intentions. That part I’m not too sure about. But all in all, great job, and kudos to thp!
Contact Form Issues
Jan 5th
Hello everybody! I just now noticed (and corrected) an issue with the contact form. Previously, I was not able to see any of your messages, or even who the messages came from, due to my not setting up the plugin properly. If you have ever sent me a message through the contact form (there’s only three of you), if you could please send your message again I’ll do my best to get back to you in a ridiculously fast manner!
Happy New Year!
Jan 5th
Well everybody! Since it’s been a while, here’s to doing what I do best: waiting months before giving anybody an update! So, here’s the update! It’s a new year (happy new year everybody, btw), and with a new year I usually decide to make a ton of changes, so here’s the game-plan!
This weekend I plan on getting the next release of the WordPress-SMF Bridge Plugin completed. This is a major bugfix release that was made possible by all the fine folks reporting issues with the plugin!
Secondly, most major categories are going to be split into subdomains that are going to act like separate blogs. Notably, my rounds through my new Dwarven Fortress, Beerdragon the Apex of Man, will be available for reading at dwarffort.jonnyfunfun.com, gaming-related posts will be available at gaming.jonnyfunfun.com, programming-related posts will be available at programming.jonnyfunfun.com, and the projects page will be forwarding you to my Google Code profile page and from there you will be able to choose where you want to go. Each of these subdomains will have a different look and feel about them (hopefully, if I can get it working) that is a bit more appropriate for the topic. The main site will also be receiving a facelift.
Now, on that note, changes to my website are not the only things coming down the pipe. On top of that, Vault Head Games is going to make a splash while we rigorously start working on our first iPhone app – so that website will be receiving some well-needed, and far over-due TLC. I will also be starting a new job on the 11th, which being less of a drive and better hours is going to provide much more time for me to actually keep this blog up and moving.
So, with all that, happy new year everybody, and let’s make a big splash here in 2010!
Lots of things in the pipe – busted hand keeping it back
Nov 16th
Okay, so first thing is first – there’s a lot of things in the pipe that I haven’t gotten to announcing. Namely, my projects have been moved from their old Redmine-powered site, and they are now being hosted between GitHub and Google Code. They will be posted shortly with each of their individual details. Also in the pipe is another website of mine, followed closely by another project that has yet to catch the wind!
Now, on a rather grim note – what’s been holding most of this back? Well, a few weeks ago I busted up my hand really good. Now, it’s not in a cast, but what I do have is some really awesome damage to the muscles and ligaments. That means that typing is followed by a boatload of pain, almost promptly followed by painkillers, and this process will continue for, what the doctor says, up to three weeks. Lovely.
Happy Hero Day
Mar 9th
Okay, so I seriously could not make this shit up if I tried. I am officially calling March 9th (conveniently the day after my anniversary), Hero Day – and here’s why.
First off, I wake up an hour late this morning. All the clocks in the house were set for the Daylight Savings Bullshit switch…except the one that really mattered: the alarm clock. So I wake up an hour late and get on the road an hour late. As I’m driving in to work, the weather, which started off as rain, turns to snow. I continue driving north, and it turns to sleet. Nobody is driving any slower than they were in the rain. Approximately 15 minutes south of work, I spot two cars in the ditch next across from one another. I slow down and as I approach, I realized that one of the cars was messed up – I mean royally messed up. So, I stop. Turns out this lady lost control of her car, and rolled her car over 5 times before stopping. So I’m there for a good hour an a half, nearly 45 minutes treating the lady myself before the ambulance arrives.
Then, later tonight, while I’m on my way home, I stop by Staples to get some packing supplies for the move. All is fine and day until I leave and spot a group of people crowded around a woman lying in the parking lot. I get in my car, drive over, and immediately try to find out what’s going on. Nobody knows the lady, and nobody really knows what’s going on. I go to check for a pulse – guess what, I got none. So, not even 12 hours after the fact, I’m rolled up on another EMS situation. Time to start CPR. I was able to get the woman back around enough to gasp for air, and continue breathing for 5 seconds or so, before she goes out again. Luckily, the ambulance rolls up at that time, and they bring out the defib.
Long story short, watch out Western New York – on March 9th, this man is out to roll up when you need help the most and lend a hand. So, from here on out, March 9th is officially Hero Day in my book.
Windows 7 Woes
Feb 16th
After a successful install of the Windows 7 Beta (32-bit) on my wife’s Toshiba Satellite notebook, I decided to undertake the install of the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Beta on my desktop – which is a home-built machine with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+, a Sapphire ATI Radeon HD3850 graphics card, 4gb of memory, and over 2TB of storage. The install went fine, and was very simple after I got over trying to back up 126gb worth of documents and music. Apparently I need to add another hard drive to my 1.5TB RAID-5 array, as there is only 12.1gb free. As a result, I got smart and moved my documents to their own separate 200gb partition on my 750gb system drive. Luckily, from here on out, I won’t have to worry about backing them up when I wipe the windows partition.
Anyways, so it goes through installing, works just great, comes up with the “preparing to start Windows for the first time” screen, and then it hits me. BSOD in t3h face. Apparently, I suffer from a common problem with certain ATI Radeon HD cards and the drivers that the Windows 7 Beta ships with. The BSOD came up with a fault regarding resetting the display driver and its inability to respond in a certain amount of time (stop 0×116 from the file atikmdag.sys). Supposedly, the work-around includes doing a very basic install of Vista, installing the latest Catalyst beta drivers, and then performing an upgrade to Windows 7. That’s fine and dandy, but I don’t have a Vista x64 disc and nor do I have the urge to download it simply to install a beta operating system that is going to cease to function on August 1st anyways.
Great job, though, Micro$oft in your inability to create a beta for the “latest and greatest” of your operating systems that works fine for the 50% or so of the population that uses ATI cards. For those of you who have ATI cards, specifically any of the Radeon HD series, don’t try performing a straight-up install of Windows 7. Instead, save yourself the trouble, and upgrade an already working Vista/XP install with the Catalyst beta drivers.
Recent Downtimes
Feb 12th
Okay, so I would like to explain my recent downtimes, especially since people have been pestering me about it now that I’m managing my own dedicated. Apparently in Gentoo, every time from within Webmin I make a change to the IPtables firewall and click its own “apply configuration” button, IPtables flushes all the rules, and doesn’t load the new ones. And since my default policy for the chain INPUT is DROP…you see where I’m going with this? Yeah, not a good idea to use Webmin to manage IPtables from here on out.
Possibly Moving to a new Dedicated Server
Jan 26th
So I rarely like to ask people for money, let alone putting up a fundraiser on my website, but this time I’ve broken down. To make a long story short, I believe that I have expanded beyond the capabilities of my Virtual Private Server – let alone the fact that I’m not entirely satisfied with the performance of it. As a result, I’m pushing to move this website, the entire RicePaddy Network, as well as Vault Head Games’ (my company) many websites to a new entirely dedicated server – Gentoo-powered, of course! By doing this, I will be able to do significantly more with my hosting and I’ll be able to offer all the accomidations that I wanted the RicePaddy Network to give the public. Also, I am starting some development on a web browser-based, persistend, turn-based space strategy and conquest game. If we end up getting the funds required for a full quarter, I will switch to a dedicated server and the game, from Vault Head Games, will go public. So, without further delay – here are the details! For a full quarter of the dedicated server, the cost is approximately $149. The setup fees and fees for the additional IP addresses that I require are not included in this figure, and I plan on covering them. Here’s the deal – if I can get at least half of this figure donated, so approximately $75, I will cover the rest and we will go live with our first game! So, use the Chip-In module below, and help make the network better and bring forth a new browser-based strategy game! Also, as an added bonus, for everybody who donates – you will receive some classified perks in the game, one of which includes it being able to play the game with no advertisements (since it will be ad-sponsored)!
