My Geek Notes

I’ve heard about this program for a while but never actually taken a look at it. Basically, for $375, you can get legal licenses for a ton of Microsoft software. You can read about the details here: https://empower-isv.one.microsoft.com/isv/programguide/Default.aspx

Some of the software you get on the cheap:

• Windows Server 2003
• Windows Vista (Business or Enterprise)
• SQL Server 2005
• Sharepoint Portal Server 2007
• MSDN Universal License and four user licenses! (worth its weight in gold - good thing DVDs don’t weigh much)

The requirements for enrollment are pretty basic. Simply announce production development and release it within 12 - 24 months. Easy enough. If you’re a software developer already, odds are good you’ve got a project already floating around your hard drive that with a little effort could be polished up to meet these requirements.

Well, my family and I are making a trip to N.California this weekend and I must say I’m starting to get really excited! There are several reasons to be excited about visiting God’s country! Majestic vistas, slightly humid air, etc. but all pale in comparison to the experience that is IN-N-OUT Burger! Yes, my mouth water’s at the mere mention of the name!! I’ll take 2 Double-Double’s Animal Style please.

Recently I’ve run into some issues with the way phpMyAdmin handles themes in the 2.10.x release. It appears that in 2.9.2 they changed the way some of the styles were set in the css files.

The result is that none of the themes that I regularly use, “Very small, and Arctic Ocean” look right. The most annoying thing is the tr.hover and tr.marker style are set so that when you browse data it makes the row text that your highlighting disappear. I know your saying why don’t you change the style in the css file? We’ll it’s not that simple, it appears that 2.9.2 made a lot of changes with regard to layout and themes. I can only guess that since none of the themes I use have been updated yet that the theme designers have found it a little difficult as well.

Generally I’m all for keeping up with the latest version in order to keep up with bug fixes and security patches but since the whole purpose of phpMyAdmin is to make it easier to manage your database and the data in that database, not being able to see the info in the row you selected is just not going to work.

So the version that I’ve found that works is 2.8.2.4

I’m hoping that the theme designers out there are working on getting their themes to work with the latest version of phpMyAdmin. Good Luck.

No not Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeon and Dragon.

In 1975, TSR, Inc. began publishing The Strategic Review. At the time, roleplaying games were still seen as a sub-genre of the wargaming industry, and the magazine was designed not only to support Dungeons & Dragons and TSR’s other games, but also to cover wargaming in general. In short order, however, the popularity and growth of Dungeons & Dragons made it clear that the game had not only separated itself from its wargaming origins, but had launched an entirely new industry unto itself. The following year, after only seven issues, TSR canceled The Strategic Review and replaced it with The Dragon which later became Dragon Magazine and then Dragon.

I took that paragraph from the Wikipedia on Dragon (the magazine). Well that’s all over. Yesterday it was announced that Wizards of the Coast is not going to renew Paizo’s license to publish Dragon (or Dungeon) magazine. WotC is going to move it all online. In general I’m not a Luddite (or neo-luddite, or post-neo-anarcho-primitive.) I’ll read something off of the computer without any problem, but there’s something about a book or a magazine, that still makes them pretty good vectors for information. They’re durable, portable, tactilely satisfying, pretty, nice-smelling, arousing … okay I better stop, but the point is that electronic distribution is not the same.

Even more than Dragon I’m going to miss Dungeon (first published in 1986). My relationship with that magazine is complicated. My own little company, currently in a coma, DireKobold, was initially set up as a direct competitor to Dungeon, later when I realized that wasn’t going to work, I made a valiant attempt to get them to use my software with their adventures, there’s still a little flicker of hope there so I won’t go into enormous detail, suffice it to say, that I could not imagine anything cooler in the world than picking up a Dungeon magazine and finding a paragraph instructing people on how to order an enhanced PDF version of the adventure (wired up with my software). And it wasn’t just that they’d be using my software the magazine itself was that amazing, just about all by itself.

In any case I’m going to miss them. Count me among those that are not ready just yet to damn WotC’s online versions, but they’re going to have to do something pretty cool to capture that magic that was those two venerable magazines…

The end of the third era…

So I played the Order of the Stick Adventure Game (hereafter referred to as OotS:AG) last Saturday. In preparation for playing I spent quite a bit of time on the GiantITP.com forums reading up on the game. The general consensus was that it’s long… To this I can attest, I even took some preemptive measures to shorten it and it still was after 1 am when we finished (we started slightly after 6:00 pm). Still it was a lot of fun, but at 6+ hours in length a lot of people have asked me if I would play it again. And the answer to that is….

Definitely. In fact experiencing the flaws of OotS:AG has made me even more eager to play it. A great game is merely enjoyable to play, a good game is only slightly less enjoyable to play with the added enjoyment of triggering my inner game designer. “There’s a great game inside OotS:AG waiting to be let out, and I’m the one to do it.” In particular I like the idea of shticks (a great play on words). Shticks represent the basic abilities, weapons, and special qualities of each character. They also represent the characters leveling up. So you might have a shtick for a sword, or for diplomacy, or for armor, or one that allows you to do special things with the loot (Haley in particular.)

Shticks are so cool in fact that it makes me want to create an actual RPG system based on shticks. I don’t think I will have too much else to do, but my experience, particularly playing in the family campaign is that the world could use a really simple RPG system and yes I know there are some out there, (and if anyone says Amber:Diceless I’ll rip out your spleen) the point I’m trying to make is that it’s rare to come across a simple system that is really compelling, mostly you focus on the features you’ve given up for the sake of simplicity, but that wasn’t how I felt about OotS:AG.

In any case I will be playing again, though obviously with some modifications. I already made the modification of starting characters out with more shticks (4) and loot (6). In addition I think I might fool around with the number of rooms in a level, and the number of levels. Also I think having a big enough surface to lay out everything all at once will really help (we ended up playing from a table while constructing the dungeon on the floor.) As my house rules develop I’ll keep you posted.

Also if you haven’t checked out the webcomic the game is based on I urge you to do so ASAP. If you have any happy memories of playing D&D this comic will make you laugh until your spleen ruptures, which will possibly be fatal, but trust me it’s worth it.

The Order of the Stick

In a life or death situation never trust a raven

I killed everything on medium but the last two flying bosses. I almost got one, but he got away. Stupid game.

I’ve heard several complaints from first time Wacom users - frustrated with the stylus not performing like a pencil or other real mediums. My first question to those people is - “Have you adjusted your brush settings?” More often than not they say no … or say that they don’t know what to set there brush settings at. So, in an effort to educate I’m creating this little tutorial.

First things first. Locate your brush settings panel in Photoshop CS1 +. Window>Brushes (F5) Now that you’re in the brush settings panel you can follow the different configurations for brushes below:

My Favorite - Multi-Purpose Brush (click image to see full-size)

Sketching - #2 Pencil (click image to see full-size)

Well, that should get you started. Don’t be afraid to experiment a little with the settings for your desired results. Check back often … I’ll try to add more brushes to this list on a periodic basis.

There are very few people in Hollywood that I would care to meet and Josh Long is one of them; he just seems like a pretty cool guy. If you don’t know who I’m talking about … he’s the Mac in those hilarious commercials, he was the guy in Dodge Ball who is the first hit with a wrench, and he is now in the new Die Hard movie with Bruce Willis. I’ve yet to see him in a show I didn’t like.

I’m stumped as to what to plug today, so I’ll just have to point out the sweet Firefox plugin list that sprocketrocket posted earlier today. I use some of the ones that he mentioned, but not all of them. In fact, there are some that I need to check out as they look very handy. Thanks sprocket!

In the news, in the news. There are a few things of interest, one being the upcoming Lyrid Meteor Shower which should be visible on the mornings of April 22 and 23. Other news about space comes from the Seattle Times in an article about how Japan is now trying to catch up with China who is the current leader in Asia’s space race. Between Asia, the US, and that Virgin guy in the UK, we just may be vacationing in space pretty soon.

Since I couldn’t find a good list anywhere else (insert sarcastic context here), here’s mine:

1. Google Browser Sync - syncs bookmarks, history, cookies, and passwords across multiple computers.
2. Add N Edit Cookies - edit cookies one at a time. Handy for development
3. ColorZilla - a handy color picking tool.
4. Firebug - edit and fiddle with css, html, javascript, etc. in any webpage.  A must have for any web developer.
5. Flashgot - pair this with your favorite download manager for easy downloading of multiple files.
6. Gmail Manager - toolbar to keep a watch on multiple gmail accounts.
7. IE View Lite - opens pages in IE for those websites that just don’t look right or work in Firefox.
8. ShowIP - shows the IP of the server to which you’re connecting in the address bar. Nice if you’ve messed with your host file and are unsure of which domain is pointing where.
9. Tamper Data - mess with any of the HTTP headers, cookies, or other form elements prior to posting back a web page. Always interesting to see what’s getting sent in a given web request.
10. Web Developer - I use this less now that I’ve found Firebug, but still gets plenty of use in my daily development activities.

Darn you to heck Hallamigo for ever sending me the link to this filthy game. Utterly irresponsible of you.