Can I just mention one thing up front? It’s 2012.

That’s important to note because it’s been almost 20 years since the Internet started becoming a common household thing. The first website using HTTP went live over 20 years ago, in 1991.

We care about this because during the 1990′s, the web went from a way of displaying and publishing simple interlinking documents to a format that can display animated images, flash graphics, 3D animations, videos, and more. And in the ’90s, the web was fucking ugly.

As soon as some guy realised he could add an animated GIF image, websites en masse were adorned with flickering flames, blood dripping horizontal bars, garish wallpapers that induced epilepsy in people who had no history of the disorder, all manner of counters, tickers, animated buttons, and even sound.

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I updated my TH-STATS script to v1.02.

It’s an MPL script for Mystic BBS’s that shows top 5 callers & downloaders. Took some work getting the sort routine to function correctly, but after a couple of attempts, and with more data coming into my BBS, I’m pretty sure I’ve nailed it.

A couple of weeks back, some friends and I started talking on Facebook, reminiscing about the old times. One thing led to another and I started a group to have a reunion pissup. Currently at 76 member, we’re having a pissup at the end of next month, and a lot of those people I’ve just lost touch with and haven’t seen in years.

But as part of that, I missed actually running a BBS. So I started one up. Maybe it’s temporary, but if you telnet to oldschool.geek.nz, you’ll get access. I’ve got an auto-validator, so you won’t have to wait for me to upgrade your access before you can post.

The BBS is called TEKHAVEN for the time being. As I say, I’m not sure if I want to keep it running permanently. Well, I do, and maybe the name is OK, but ideally I’d like it on a dedicated box with its own domain name. It’s possible my friends are only logging on for a few weeks to sate their nostalgia, but once it’s done its dash, there will be a-tumbleweedin’.

Whether you’re on Linux, Wintendows, or OS-X, go grab SyncTerm. It’s a great package that shows the ANSI graphic screens beautifully. It even comes with a wide array of fonts, so if you log in to an Amiga board, there are Amiga Topaz fonts for you to select. If you log in to a C=64 BBS, yes, there are C=64 fonts too.

The other option for the BBS to stay permanent is to use it as a support board for my BBS mods… assuming I write any more.

Last night I wrote up a call/download top stat mod using Mystic BBS‘s Pascal-like MPL language. Check out my Mystic BBS Mods page for it and any others I might write.

I keep wasting my money on these damn things, but from now on, that’s probably going to stop.

People rave over games like the Elder Scrolls series, and Skyrim seems to be the new P. Gamers the world over, who wouldn’t normally play RPGs, are getting turned on to Skyrim and it’s driving up interest in more RPGs.

As a roleplayer, you might think that I should be under the deluded impression that this is a good thing. But, well, you may have guessed by my belittling tone, that I think that’s complete poo.

Computer games just can’t, on any level, fit the bill of a real roleplaying game. A tabletop RPG — you know, the Dungeons & Dragons kind. The one you play with dice, write your characters out on sheets of paper, and sit around a table being sociable with beer, pizza, junk food, and good friends.Why, you ask?

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The last release of Mac OS-X showed that Apple were going to eventually merge OS-X (their desktop OS) and iOS (their tablet OS). I was just kinda hoping it would take longer.

10.7 added new and annoying features like auto-hiding the scroll bars of windows, and in fact, initially when they unhid, I had to aim for fucking ages to try and click on the little fuckers. I quickly (but not quick enough for my sanity to keep ahold of itself) found out that I had to click about half a centimetre above or below where the scroll bar actually appeared on the screen. And this didn’t fix the issue when the scroll bar was less than half a centimetre away from top or bottom of the window. Then my only choice was to use the scroll wheel. This was eventually fixed in an update, but I would have thought that got a bit of testing snuck in there before release. More fool me.

The auto-hiding of scrollbars also extended to the horizontal plane, so when a window, like Finder, wasn’t wide enough to accommodate all the fields, a horizontal scrollbar would appear. And it would hide the last row of text. Luckily they thought of that, because it was possible to scroll a wee bit extra on the vertical axis, and that would scroll the window up a bit more, like a kind of buffer zone. But you had to hold it there, hovering in limbo, because as soon as you let go of the mouse, or the fingers on the touch-pad, it’d snap back to the hidden state.

So yeah, I had to scroll down vertically to see what it was thoughtfully hiding on the horizontal. This hasn’t been fixed yet.

And now 10.8 is coming out, as a digital only, mind you — and that’s probably the only thing I liked about 10.7, it was cheap at something like US$35 as a digital download, as opposed to probably $150-odd if I was to buy a physical copy — so now those who want physical copies can’t. You’ll have to make your own recovery discs. And hopefully you’ll do it before your system dies, otherwise you’re reamed.

I think that this is driving home that Apple are probably going to get to the point where their desktops are just throw-away items. Hard drive died? Ah well, no biggie. Buy a new machine.

In 10.8, they’ve also added something called Gatekeeper, a feature which only lets you install apps that are approved by them. In other words, only stuff from the App Store. You can get around this by clicking past all the warnings, but how long before you can’t? You can’t on iOS. It’s App Store or the highway buddy. My prediction is that within the next couple of releases, OS-X and iOS will be one OS, the exact same interface for their tablets, phones, and desktops.

Initially I figured that they did this — and they’re far from the only ones — to save the user from the trouble of complexities of life, you know, like thought. And I always assumed that this could be good for the end users who aren’t “computer people.” But recently, having my Dad use GMail — and my own personal frustrations with all the Google apps and their fucking whitespace for ‘Nam — I’ve found that having only one way to do things IS FUCKING BULLSHIT. Even for the technophobes like my Dad. Hell, especially for the technophobes, for whom when an icon changes or moves 2mm, they are absolutely fucked. Not even just a little rimjob. Utterly fucked. Retraining ahoy motherfuckers.

Seriously, I feel that this new age of dumbed down app UIs not being configurable is a backward step. It’s condescending and it’s elitist. It’s like, hey, we know how you want to use the app, or how you should use the app, so that’s it. If you want to do it a different way, you can just get bent. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s their apps, but when features that make them infinitely more usable are nothing more complex than gorram tickboxes and displaying or not displaying part of an interface, then why do they stick to their guns so diligently?

Hell, even Google succumbed and added features to GMail and Reader that cut down all that whitespace. It was just a drop-down menu. That’s all it takes sometimes. Because you know what the alternative is?

Users walk. Like me. Now that my Mac has an Intel CPU, I’m just going to install Linux on it. Screw Apple, and screw iOS-X. Or maybe they’ll call it OS-Xi. Then it’ll sound like Oh! Sexy when pronounced.

No thanks, I’ll wait for Oh! Usable.

There’s a first person shooter called Gotham City Imposters that’s available exclusively on Steam. And this game looks really fucking good. The premise is that Batman has left Gotham so all the low-end crims and punks come out to wreak havoc on the city. But to balance it out, there are a lot of wanna-be non-super-heroes who try to put them back in their place. Of course, because they don’t have super-powers (well, neither does Batman, so I don’t know why he’s called a super hero), they use guns.

GCI is only US$15, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. Not too much to lose if it sucks. I spent more than that on Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine to find that it’s a 3rd person shooter with terrible controls and an awkward viewing angle.

My machine met all the specs. Minimum requirement was Windows XP or Windows 7 running latest patches. So I buckled down and installed all the latest patches on my XP SP2 installation. This didn’t update it to SP3 like I was expecting, but that wasn’t specified in GCI’s minimum requirements. It just said XP. When it finally finished downloading the 5GB two hours later (which I’d normally have to pay for in this country, but I’m with Snap Internet who maintain a Steam cache and don’t bill me the traffic (awesome)), I clicked on the Play button which does the install the first time round.

Up pops a dialogue box with the product key, gives me the option to copy to clipboard, then click Play once more.

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Over the long weekend, I did a punk photoshoot with my friend Caz.

Out here in Wainui there was an old high school that I think had been gutted by fire and was abandoned, and half demolished. I had assumed most of the damage was from local vandals, but as it turns out there was some official work under way to tear the place down. Most of which had left the main school building as just the foundation with only one side still standing.

So we went ahead with it anyway because there was still some interesting scenery. Complemented by her bringing along a crossbow.

Awesome shoot, awesome model. But I need to practise more with my lighting and maybe get some bigger lights. The flash I was using didn’t really have too much effect outside in the light.

I believe those of us too old to believe in all-knowing, and allegedly all-powerful magical beings in the sky who choose not to use their power for good on this rock we call home, need a new holiday.

Christmas is irrelevant. Only the hardened Christians believe that Christ still belongs in Christmas, while everyone else just seems to treat it as a time to spend time with friends and family and to give them unwanted gifts. Sometimes ones that you’ve received in previous years that you’ve rewrapped for someone else. The whole event is a sham.

Who actually likes spending time with their families? Right, well, those that do don’t need to wait until the end of the year to go see them. Go see them on their birthdays, go see them when something exciting has happened in your life, or just go see them when you’re hungry. They’ll feed you.

If you need to be motivated by peer pressure into being a loving and giving person once a year, then that love is probably pretty shallow. Read the rest of this entry »

So yesterday I found I had Internet access. The work they did on my line last week must have worked.

So now I can catch up with Rift, download the beta of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and look at lots of naked women. Yay. Oh and hook up my PS3 again, and download long-needed updates for my computers.

And pay bills.

As a mod on Reddit’s /r/rpg “forum,” I had the opportunity to get a preview copy of the Legend RPG, soon to be released by Rule of Cool.

Interesting things about this release:

• It’s a d20 system aimed to be simpler than 3.5 (and possibly Pathfinder)
• It’s getting an initial digital-only release
• All proceeds are going to the Child’s Play charity
• The target price is expected to be in the US$8-10 region*

Other supplements will follow, and there has been mention of a forthcoming monster manual type book, and they will also eventually see print releases. The preview copy I got had no setting background, other than flavour text of the races, and it had no creatures ready for the GM to use. However, there are a bunch of racial tracks than can be used to generate monsters. More on that later.
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