XPensive Software

Recently I've been getting much more enthusiastic about using Linux, having used Fedora Core something (4?) the summer before last while working on a project for the Cogent Computing ARC and doing a lot of work over the last few months with Gumstix (which come with some Linux distro, can't remember what) and Ubuntu. Then there's Knoppix which I'm using in its LiveCD form as a host system to develop my own distro based off of the guide at Linux From Scratch. Basically, I'm thinking of migrating almost all the things I do over to Linux in some form or another, possibly only keeping Windows (specifically XP, not Vista, see below) to play various games on and stuff. Besides, all the useful tools are written for Linux anyway...

This decision has been helped slightly by my discovery of various items in the Vista EULA, as mentioned here (3 pages for you =P ) and here, and I won't even go into the "Trusted Computing" nonsense or the related insane pushing of DRM at the system level (right down to the hardware itself).

As a side-note, I'd like to point you to this purely because I hate iTunes with a vengeance.

Anyway, I think that's enough to read for now. My feelings towards Windows have moved very fast towards dropping it recently, and that doesn't seem like it's going to change anytime soon.

Deja Vu

It turns out that Overlord can't post to his blog as LiveJournal looks at the timestamp, decides he's posting from an alternate reality, and rejects him faster than Lordi at the Hilton. That of course means I'm posting here to annoy him =P For those not in the UK, we're transitioning out of/into (I can never remember which) daylight savings time, so we have just had our second 1am for tonight. I think he may just be trying to post an entry before the time on the last one he posted though, whereas I'm not, which may be why the system isn't liking it.

Last night we had pink pancakes. Yes, pink :-D We decided to mix some red food colouring in for wierdness value. Not much else to say about that really.

This morning brought a nice surprise for me. At about 11-ish I think Gina answered her mobile and then suddenly hopped out of bed and ran off, "I have to go, I'll be back in about 20 minutes". Anyway, I dozed off back to sleep and when I woke up there was a wrapped package on the pillow next to me. Intrigued, I unwrapped it and what did I find? Megatokyo volume 4 :-D :-D I tried to get it ages ago but the Forbidden Planet here wasn't stocking it. Turns out Gina got them to order one in for me without me even knowing, I was rather insanely happy for the rest of the day.

That's all for now I think, time to read more of MT 4 :-D

Sony = Ultimate Lose

Sony have sued Lik-Sang out of existence, I guess that's about where I stop buying anything Sony. My only planned purchases were some PSP bits and a PS2 which I doubt would make any impact on their profits, but still, the principle is there and they're plummeting anyway, which is probably why they felt the need to be this retarded. Info.

According to Sony they are "trying to protect consumers from being sold hardware that does not conform to strict EU or UK consumer safety standards, due to voltage supply differences et cetera". That would be the hardware that includes genuine Sony power adapters with the appropriate safety markings for various countries would it?

Lik-Sang is a huge loss, not only to people who regularly import, but also apparently to Sony employees:

Sony Europe's very own top directors repeatedly got their Sony PSP hard or software imports in nicely packed Lik-Sang parcels with free Lik-Sang Mugs or Lik-Sang Badge Holders, starting just two days after Japan's official release, as early as 14th of December 2004 (more than nine months earlier than the legal action). The list of PSP related Sony Europe orders reads like the who's who of the videogames industry, and includes Ray Maguire (Managing Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd), Alan Duncan (UK Marketing Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd), Chris Sorrell (Creative Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd), Rob Parkin (Development Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited), just to name a few.

I can only hope that Lik-Sang come back under a different name, or that the courts see that Sony are only doing this to desperately grab money and prevent themselves from going under due to their own dumbass decisions.

Job Ad

Preference will be given to handicapped applicants if equally qualified.

Yay for discrimination against able people *rolls eyes*

Death Metal Druids

Two conversations (IRC followed by MSN). What can I say, everyone loves the idea.

Kemp: I love that the Pope declared rock to be anti-religion, thus vindicating a lot of people's music choice
Kemp: he seems to have also forgotten that Christianity isn't the only religion
Kemp: what if there's specifically a religion related to rock, how would that fit his anti-religion idea?
Kemp: also all the religions that just don't care what we listen to
NYRelics: i believe stonehenge was just a giant amphitheather :)
Kemp: f'ing yes
NYRelics: they powered their instruments by the earth lines *g*
Kemp: can you imagine a druid death metal band
NYRelics: hgahaha
NYRelics: nope :)
Kemp: they have the long hair to flail around :D
NYRelics: that would be a good act to bring out
NYRelics: yea
NYRelics: surrounded by little evil figurines made out ofwood
NYRelics: and entrails
NYRelics: :0
NYRelics: We're Druids! ROCK ON!

Overlord: LMAO DEATH METAL DRUIDS
Overlord: Dude, that would be so awesome to see
Kemp: yes, yes it would
Overlord: GAIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA *death metal solo*
Kemp: this must happen

Other Death Metal Druid posts:
Overlord

Me and Overlord are now the only results on Google for "Death metal druids" :-D

Robin Hood

I've been watching watching the BBC's new Robin Hood series and I must say I am rather impressed by it, against my expectations. If we ignore the use of hair gel and synthetic fabrics in that time period, along with making it slightly cleaner than it would have been (presumably due to it being the BBC), and some cases of "interesting" physics, then it's quite a good series. I have no idea how historically accurate it is but I like the angle they took with it, and I'm glad they didn't start at the usual place of Robin being the "stealing from the rich to give to the poor" guy with no backstory for how he actually got there, for once he is something other than a random guy who just wants to be nice. Basically he's been away fighting with King Richard in the Crusades (thus his access to Saracen weapons) and when he gets back he sees how corrupt the local authorities have become, gets stripped of his titles (the fact that he was a noble is something that isn't mentioned a lot in other tellings, though the Disney cartoon probably isn't too good a reference for me to use =P ), and ends up making life as hard as possible for the Sheriff and Guy (of Gisbourne), who coincedentally is believed to have had his own legend going on which got absorbed into the Robin Hood one. For more info on the Crusades hit your favourite info source (Wikipedia is always useful), though a summary of the particular one going on here (if my interpretation of the information is right) can be found here:

The Third Crusade, 1189–92, followed on the capture (1187) of Jerusalem by Saladin and the defeat of Guy of Lusignan, Reginald of Châtillon, and Raymond of Tripoli at Hattin. The crusade was preached by Pope Gregory VIII but was directed by its leaders—Richard I of England, Philip II of France, and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I.

(Emphasis mine)

If I picked out the wrong Richard then feel free to moan at me, my knowledge of our old rulers is at about the same level as my knowledge of structural engineering, ie virtually zero.

Anyway, definatly something to watch if you have some time or bandwidth* spare.


* I do not endorse piracy, download from legitimate sources only =P

BBC News

Just some random BBC News posts pulled off my news reader (and a couple that were linked to from them).

Experts create invisibility cloak
This one is fun. They managed to get what they call a "metamaterial" to redirect microwaves around an object and recombine on the other side, thus making the object near-invisible to a detector. They say that with nano-scale engineering it could be made to work with visible light as well. How would you know where you put the thing though?

US Congress steps into cyberspace
Apparently they're appointing people to check out online transactions (which occasionally involve real money) in the interests of understanding them better. They say there's no plans to start trying to tax these, but I think we all know how much their word is worth. Which leads smoothly onto...

China's full-time computer gamers
These dudes build up gold in games like World of Warcraft and then sell it for real cash. It's a (more than) full-time job but I guess it could be fun...

And finally, Basra troops 'on another planet'
When the US can support our troops better than we can then maybe we need to rethink how we treat them.


Update:
Single on memory stick for Keane
I'm quite impressed by this, releasing a single on a USB stick. You get the video for the single as well, and it's on a 512MB stick that you can use as per any other stick. Not bad for £3.99.

Food and Thought

Last night me and Gina ate at Nandos. We went there last Sunday because the Chinese had stopped cooking things for the buffet and what was left wasn't really worth it (even with the generous discount they offered us). When this Sunday rolled around we decided to go there again as it really is a great place as long as you like lots of chicken. Long story short, we ordered quite a bit. We had a chicken breast burger and chips each (mine the least hot possible of course), along with two pittas, garlic bread, and five chicken wings. I had the idea of buttering half a pitta (the butter was completely melted and thus rocked) and rolling it up with chicken off one of the wings in it, the wings being a very nice barbequed/flame-grilled flavour. That was possibly my favourite thing I ate that night, I had another two of them and Gina also had one and decided she would have more next time. We in fact had to order another pitta to make the last two, bringing the total count up to three pittas consumed. I was quite full at the end of it all. I probably won't be getting garlic bread next time as their ones taste different to the frozen store-bought ones which I'm so used to (they have corrupted my taste buds), it is something you should try at least once though as the different flavour might be something you like.

Someone we discussed momentarily while we were there was the diminishing quality of our leaders and suchlike. We started off on Martin Luther King and moved onto the fact that we don't hear any good speeches these days, I commented that the last good speech I remember hearing was in the movie Independence Day =P It also occured to me that the most famous philosopher of our time is one Tyler Durden, who isn't even real in any sense. Oh well, maybe things like that are meant to gradually become virtual, who knows?

For Iris

Click me

'Nuff said =P

Enough Already

I can't help noticing that virtually any new service launched by Microsoft recently has been a near direct copy of a Google product, sometimes even with the same name. If we ignore the search engine for now (Google's being far superior always), we currently have the more well-known ones of

Google Desktop Search -> Microsoft Desktop Search
Google Earth -> Microsoft Virtual Earth
Google Maps -> Whatever MS ended up calling it

And now Microsoft are going to also be making available online spreadsheet and wordprocessor applications, very much identical to one of Google's latest offerings. When will the madness end? Will MS soon be constructing their own moonbase? Can they even come up with original ideas anymore? Could they ever come up with a new idea? Only time will tell.

Personally I don't care either way, I'll be using Google's offerings thank you very much.

Sleepy Kemp

Today (well, yesterday now) was the day of the 3D-Mintegration conference thingy, which is a contraction of miniaturisation and integration in case you were wondering. Despite my preconception of this sort of thing being very stuffy and academic it was actually quite fun, all the people I met were very nice (even the ones with some control over my funding) and free food is always welcomed by poor students such as myself =P As it was at Loughborough Uni I decided to stay at my parent's house tonight (it's like 10 minutes away) and get some things done, such as getting my hair cut and organising things for my graduation which is creeping closer each day. Also Sarah (home Sarah) is getting a new kitten tomorrow morning so I'll probably go say hi to it before heading back to Cov.

Anywho, not as much sleep per night as I'm used to plus wine with my dinner makes me a sleepy Kemp, so I'll be off to bed now.

Water Load of ****

Yes, that's a bad pun, so sue me. Actually, please don't.

Anywho, today we have an installment of "How many WTFs can you spot" and my target is a Severn Trent Water bill that I happen to have skimmed. So without further ado, let's get started, and remember that they're charging this for the what is pretty much the most important thing needed for survival.

• The first item on the list of charges is a "minimum charge" to inflate the bill if you have a reasonable sized pipe coming into the property. Not large, just reasonable. On my sample bill here this charge is as much as all the other charges added together.


• Next up would be the fact that they don't just charge you for the water you use. Oh no, that would be sensible. They in fact charge you twice for it: once for supplying it and once for removing it.


• The two standing charges. Once again, one standing charge for supplying water and one for removing it.

I'm ignoring the fact that they charge all this for something which quite literally falls from the sky on a regular basis. They, however, don't ignore this, which leads to the final charge that they manage to squeeze in:

• A charge for the very fact that water falls from the sky. Literally, they charge you for the rain that happens in the region of your house. There are not big enough letters to type WTF with for this one.

Then there's all the miscellaneous things, like if your meter is faulty they will charge you for the privelige of having it fixed. Any leakage after where your supply splits off from the main pipe is of course charged to you and they'll take their own sweet time fixing that (if you even find out while they charge you for the lost water).

I love how all the literature accompanying the bill has to mention at least once that their price rises and pricing scheme in general are within the limits set by the appropriate governing body. Of course they are ST... say it enough and people might think it means you're not ripping them off.

Dawn of War + Tactics

In comment to my previous post I said

Meh, I remember why I stopped playing it now anyway. As of about 15 mins in you have more resources than you can spend and then it just becomes a matter of throwing in unit after unit until someone breaks through. Can a have a side-order of tactics with that meatgrinder? Oh you're all out, ok.

I thought I'd expand that a bit as an actual post.

The basic problem in Dawn of War (and a lot of other RTS games) is that it devolves so very easily into creating the biggest wedge of units you can and throwing them at the big wedge that the enemy created. A massive brawl ensues and whoever makes it out with stuff left alive will be able to cause enough damage to cripple the enemy's ability to make subsequent wedges. The AI doesn't help this at all as this appears to be the one and only tactic it is capable of. You're playing along nicely and suddenly one of the aforementioned wedges hits your defenses. While you're busy fighting them off the computer (having a much better ability to do things on opposite sides of the map than a human has) can build up another wedge and do the same again. It all comes down to only having two tactics against the computer:

• Play defensively and be safe in the knowledge that the computer will break through and win.


• Go on the offensive early in the game. This is very risky as mistakes will cost you dearly.


• Go on the offensive around when the computer does and be forced to use the same tactics to break through the masses of units.

All in all, not the most inspiring set of choices. There is one last one of course, building enough defenses to withstand the uber-attack while your forces take a route round the side. That is verging on real tactics (*shock*) but it only works if the computer hasn't pulled the same trick as you and loaded out on defenses, otherwise it'll redeploy its units to meet your attack while you're breaking your way through and you're back at a big brawl again. The Eldar of course have much more sneaky and cunning tactics they can use, but in the end they only postpone the inevitable choice of one of those courses of action.

There's my thoughts on DoW tactics anyway, I'm sure Ben and Iris will be pleased I've ripped into the game they've been playing recently =P

Back

Yes, I'm alive still and I finally have a connection, though for various reasons it's slightly unstable right now and maxes out at a mere 2Mb/s but I have plans to fix that. I'm (kinda) enrolled on my PhD at last, just a few more things to chase up, things were easier as an under-grad when things were done for you, lol. Other than that I'm pretty much catching up on what I need to know for what I'll be doing, mainly the documentation for things mentioned here and stuff for the module I'll be lecturing in (yes, they're letting me loose with real people, no, they won't be subjected to me every week =P). Don't think there's really much else to say at the moment, plus my muse is on vacation so writing isn't my strong point right now. Adios.

Edit:
On a random note, I've reinstalled Dawn of War and I've been downloading the patches (they must all be applied in order). I noticed this little gem in the patch notes:

v1.30:
Reduced Scout accuracy while moving from .55 to .35.

v1.40:
Scouts were inadvertently given an accuracy penalty while moving in the 1.3 patch. This penalty has been removed.

As Overlord said, "Inadvertant my arse".

Final Day of Home

My final countdown post, off to Cov tomorrow and all the lonliness and lack of connection inherent therein *tiny violin plays* Not much happened today really, just checking all my packing and wondering what I will end up remembering tomorrow and packing at the literal last minute. Watched Metallica's S&M concert again and was reminded of the unhuman speed and accuracy Hetfield and Hammett have on their guitars (Hammett in particular), some of the closeups are quite insane. Iris has a new layout on her blog which I quite like. Think that's everything. Ciao to everyone at home, and hi to everyone at Coventry (which is almost no-one until term starts really).

1/18/21/22

Guitars, Hedgehogs and Packing

Time for today's countdown post I believe, we'll conveniently ignore the fact that it's nearly tomorrow.

I was randomly improvising on my guitar earlier and accidently came up with something I actually like the sound of, which was a surprise with me not exactly being amazing on the thing yet :-P I messed around with it a while and then recreated it in Guitar Pro for further messing around without having me screw it up. Added a bit of percussion to it and extended it some and I'm quite fond of it now, it may be sucky compared to almost anything out there but it's mine :-)

As for packing... yeah... it's kinda moving along at about the pace of a sleeping snail. It'll be done of course, but it may require some last-minute chucking of things into bags. Then we have to fit it all into the car, which is a task in itself as no matter how much I leave behind there's always more than the last time, I think my stuff gradually expands to fill the available space in the bags. This one looks like it may be the first two-trip job ever despite me not bringing anywhere near the amount of junk I normally do :-S

Changing topic again, I saw a hedgehog today! A real one. I can't believe I've never seen one before (well, not one that is in one piece anyway), but I have now :-) It looked to be quite young and it was pretty damn fast too, I was quite amused at the way they walk with the legs frantically moving under them and how they almost seem to glide despite the aforementioned frantic moving.

And changing topic once again, for the last time and strangely enough going pretty much back to the first topic, I'm moving to my new place on Saturday (or Sunday possibly) so Friday will be my last countdown update. Ciao until then guys and girls :-)

2/19/22/23

More bits

Extra (and entirely coincedental) discussion of dubs versus subs here. Also, I just realised all the options for the dubbing and subtitles in both english and japanese were available to me if I'd have bothered to look *slaps forehead* Guess I'll just have to watch it again with japanese dubbing and english subs ;-)

I'm currently in the middle of packing (or trying to be bothered to pack). I really can't find motivation, I have waaaay too much stuff hanging around here and once I've sorted out the stuff I'm taking with me I need to make the stuff I'm leaving behind all neat. Speaking of money (how many would notice the incorrect bridge if I didn't point it out?), I went to the bank and increased my overdraft limit a bit so now I only need to scrounge together £30 rather than £380. That's rather a large difference and so much easier, I can once again cease worrying about where money's going to be coming from. Just need to make sure I get paid before the end of October :-P

Think that's about all in terms of today's updates. Stay tuned for more soon.

3/20/23/24

Bits and Pieces

I finally got to watch the first episode of Standalone Complex (Ghost In The Shell's series) and I have to say it was everything I expected it to be. The artwork and plot were as good as ever, and the rendering in the intro credits is beautiful. The only problem was that it was the english dub (well, american I guess) rather than the subbed version. I much prefer subtitles to redubs as they tend to completely screw up the character's voices and I don't mind reading. It wasn't too bad though, none of the voices made me cringe except for the first time I heard the Major speak. Is it just me or is her voice a bit too soft in the dub?

In terms of the PSP it's all go.
Homebrew on all firmwares, check; Ability to launch (almost) any firmware fully working from 1.5, check; Several modchip designs, check. Anything you wanna do is pretty much there between that lot :-) My own personal favourite is emulation though, and N64 emulation is getting pretty damn good thanks to Daedalus.

I think that's about all for today, much packing to do and probably much packing still to do the day before I move.

Countdowns:
4 days to new place, 21 days to enrolment, 24 days to Gina, 25 days to everyone else

Soon to be departed

Just a heads-up in case my lax updating schedule becomes even more so. I'm going to be moving into my new place next Saturday (the 2nd September) and I won't have a net connection for at least a month probably while I sort it out. In the freakish event that I don't even have a phone line to shove ADSL down I'll make a post from somewhere else to let you know (the two or three people who occasionally glance in here). It's going to be wierd without my own net access (obviously I'll still have it in the labs or library basement in the worst case, I hope at least). I went a single night without it when the router messed up and I couldn't be bothered reseting it and probably waking everyone up in the process, and that was annoying as hell. I didn't realise how much I rely on the net as an information source and a way of having contact with people at strange hours of the day/night. Simple everyday things like grabbing some guitar tabs or checking the news weren't possible, and I lost count of the number of times I did something that relied on having a connection without thinking. Oh well, guess I'll have more time to spend doing other things, though exactly what these things are I have no idea. Addicted to the net? Me? Never.

On the coding front I've been getting back into writing things for my OS, once again in order to teach me things outside of OS deving. In this case it's the idea of lock-free linked lists (concurrent traversal/insertion/deletion without the overhead of locking access to the list) and fine-tuning some of my C++ techniques (it may not be apparent, but I do have techniques =P).

Anywho, 7 days til I move into my new place, 24 days til enrolment, 27 days til I see Gina again, 28 days til I see most of the rest of the crowd again, the countdowns continue.

Games Workshop

About time for this post I think. I play various games produced by Games Workshop (though some not any more, but that's another story related to broken rules and power gamers) and I continue to be amazed at the number of people who have no idea what the games are even about and yet still try to make jokes about them and fail horribly at it due to said lack of knowledge. If you want to make fun of something then you need at least a basic knowledge of it in order for the jokes to actually make sense and thus be funny, so here's an intro course into what doesn't make sense.

I see you play Games Workshop then

This one should be the most obviously nonsensical and yet still pops up. I wish I had the money to buy sufficient shares to be able to control GW policy and make their success or failure my own private game, but unfortunately I don't. There is no game called Games Workshop, it's a company.

Got your Warhammers in that case then?

Kinda related to the above, where they use the name of the company for a game, here they use the name of a game for the miniatures. They are called miniatures, models, figures, in fact anything you want that makes sense. This question is likely to prompt a response in the vein of "Yes, I have a medieval armoury at home and figured that it'd be fun to lug huge weapons of war around all day."

That's a game for kids

Ok, fair enough, some aspects of it are designed to appeal to kids. Thing is that people often relate it to the toy soldiers they had when they were younger, ignoring the fact that this is an actual game with rules (occasionally far too many of them), tactics and whatever else that elevates it above the level of walking little plastic men around saying "bang, bang, he's dead." A lot of the background is a lot darker than the stuff most young kids will be reading, the rules can get quite complex, and you have to have a grasp of maths and tactics if you want to actually get anywhere with it. These people probably wouldn't walk up to some historical wargamers and say that, but because GW games are easier to get into and have a sci-fi/fantasy (depending which game) aspect it apparently is an entirely different matter.

There you go, three often encountered phrases and why they're wrong. So now that's out the way, what do I actually do myself? Well I used to play 40K (short for Warhammer 40,000) but I'm not too fond of the rules system nor the local people who play it so I mainly just get the occasional nice model for the modelling/painting aspect of it these days. I started on Fantasy (short for Warhammer Fantasy Battles, you can guess why we shorten that =P ) and that's on hold for now, but I do like the system as it encourages proper tactics as long as you avoid certain things/people. Then there's Inquisitor, a larger scale system at 54mm compared to 40K/Fantasy's 28mm though it does seem even larger than that, which is set in the same universe as 40K. This is interesting as GW designed it as a role-play game with a focus on combat and it certainly succeeds at that and some of the models have great conversion potential. The game I currently play is Epic (short for Epic 40,000), which is also set in the 40K universe but is far smaller scale with a human-sized figure being barely a couple of mm high. This allows battles involving huge armies and the rules system certainly favours the use of tactics involving entire formations rather than individual squads (as it should be really). There are also various other games set in both the 40K and Fantasy universes, but these are the ones I've had direct involvement with at some point.

And there we go again with the big posts, and this one didn't even really get anywhere in terms of making a point. Oh well.