Monologue

I bought an Olympus XZ-1 yesterday at Sitex!

It was raining heavily earlier so I took a picture of it. This shot is after post in Photoshop.

You may encounter this error:

libtool: link: `Downloads/rxtx-2.2pre2/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/I2CImp.lo’ is not a valid libtool object

To fix this, follow these steps:
1 – Get the results of uname -r
2 – Edit /usr/include/linux/version.h and add a new line
UTS_RELEASE “”

Try compiling again!

Cos I always forget…
You can do this:
unzip -p <jar_file> META-INF/MANIFEST.MF

Ever forget what branch you’re working on?

With this little snippet in your .bash_profile (or .bash_rc), you’ll never forget!

Got this from a colleague, so source unknown.

function parse_git_branch {
ref=$(git symbolic-ref HEAD 2> /dev/null) || return
echo " ("${ref#refs/heads/}") "
}

TEAL="\[\e[0;36m\]"
GREEN="\[\e[0;32m\]"
TEAL_BOLD="\[\e[1;36m\]"
YELLOW="\[\e[0;33m\]"
ANSI_RESET="\[\e[0m\]"

export PS1="$GREEN\h $TEAL_BOLD[\w]$YELLOW\$(parse_git_branch)$GREEN\$ $ANSI_RESET"

And you get this:

The word in brackets will be the current branch you’re working on.

Woot!
After 1 man day worth of hacking, I finally managed to get Gitorious to work (semi) properly on my shared dreamhost account.

Initial setup is pretty easy; dreamhost rocks and already has the cool stuff like RoR, Passenger, and Git.

The first step is to create a subdomain (mine is git.angelystor.com) with a *separate* user. When you set up the subdomain, remember to select Passenger. Dreamhost doesn’t allow you to run a separate server (like Webrick) under it, so you gotta use Passenger).

Next, follow the steps to get Gitorious and set it up.

I followed the basic steps here: http://cjohansen.no/en/ruby/setting_up_gitorious_on_your_own_server

However, to get it to work on Dreamhost, the following steps are required:

First off though, the end result:

1. Gitorious (web) is run off git.angelystor.com using git_user
2. Poller is run using git_poller
3. ActiveMQ is run using git_activemq
4. Repos are in a common directory which all the config files point to (say /home/xyz/gitrepo), git_user and git_poller should be able to write to this directory.

====
0.
All users need to have the gitorious and config. The same config works for all.

1.
Create a subdomain using a new user (git_user)
Make sure Passenger is checked
Copy Gitorious to /home/git_user/git.domain.com

2.
Create a new user git_poller
In its version of gitorious, run script/poller run
If (3) is done correctly, it will connect and you won’t see connection timeout messages.

3.
Gitorious requires ActiveMQ, which is an Apache opensource message queuing system. It’s pretty nifty but boy is it heavy memory wise. Dreamhost will barf on your process.

However, Dreamhost segments memory by user, so you can do this:

1. Open activemq/conf/activemq.xml
2. Look for the line <import resource=”jetty.xml”/> and disable it

This will disable jetty + camel + the web management interface, but Gitorious doesn’t need that. It just requires a message system that uses stomp.

After that, run bin/activemq start

4.
IMPORTANT final step.
Because you can’t make softlinks into /usr/bin, gitorious won’t be able to find the gitorious script required to do git operations. So you need to add that into your PATH variable.
For eg:
nano ~/.bashrc
export PATH=$PATH:/home/git_user/gitorious/script

====

That should do it!

I decided not to run git-daemon, ssh was good enough.

====

I had a big block earlier because my .ssh/authorized_keys was wrong
So if you have a remote hang up error, check that file too!
It should read command=gitorious blah blah blah

====

Hope it works for you!

Yay! Pumped over my Gitorious installation. It is one of the prettier looking Git management tools around. Don’t need to pony up the $ to github now~

It’s an… interesting question. Why does it lag so badly when used for MMOs?

During vanilla wow days, I was using Starhub, and my average latency was 1500 ms.

In Rift, it’s a pretty cool 250 ms, but once it hits a certain time belt, boom. Latency goes through the roof. It keeps going up and down and up and down.

I finally hooked up my old ADSL to my gaming computer and lo! No more lag.

Sad.

And my Starhub is the best 100mbps line and my ADSL is the cheapest 6mbps package.

Quests .. ah don’t we all hate them? Especially the kill 10 mobs, collect 20 items.

Dang! I’m supposed to be the hero of the world, but here am I being a terrorist, an assassin, a courier, a jack of all trades.

Also, in an effort to reuse the same areas, games make you go to the same area, but do a different quest. The worst offender by far is Rift.

A typical scenario goes like this:

Quest Giver: Hey there! Can you help me? Kill 10 of those guys in Moonshade, I’ll give you this really cool item and money.
Player: Sure thing!
*comes back after killing 10 guys*
Done!
QG: Oops I forgot to tell you.. mind going back there again? Kill those exact same guys but please take their weapons and bring them back this time.
Player: … all right..
*done*
QG: Oh … this is really embarrassing, but can you go back there and destroy those altars you saw in that area? Sorry about the run but it’s really important!

At this point, depending on how irritating the area is, I’ll just abandon the quest. If this happened IRL, I would have smacked the person on the head. Seriously. WTF.

So well this got me to thinking, in MMOs especially, levelling is seen as a necessary evil to get to the max level to enjoy end game content (well there are others who really love the levelling experience of course). Quests used to be (well they still are) talking about the overarching storyline and such, but it has just devolved into a waypoint on your map and a counter on the right side of your screen. Hardly anyone really reads quests anymore.

So…What about do away with levels in the first place? Everyone starts as a max level (or well, levelwise, end game ready) character. (Naturally they can’t do high tier stuff due to gear and skills).

So a toon starts out with a small set of abilities, and he does quests to unlock more abilities. And quests can be smarter too, rather than just give u a kill X piecemeal.

Like say, I’ve just started the game, and I’m talking to this NPC:
NPC: Say, we are trying to smack these stupid cultists. Care to help us?
Me: Sure!
NPC : Well, I don’t really know you for now, but what about start with this? Kill 10 cultists. Also, having 8 of their weapons would be good, and 10 of their supply crates. Also our overarching goal is to kill this Summoner Ted.

So I’m off on my way. When I do the quest, I can report back anytime I’m done with those objectives, aka each item is a quest that she has given me. (with its respective rewards and $ and xp) But I don’t need to return until it’s the end, if I so wished it.

So after more objectives met, she can give me a final one, but still give credit (reduced xp/$) for every 10 cultists or so that I have killed. At the end of it, she could give me a new ability too.

If I’m a mage, and I really like fire, I can go with the Fire dudes faction and just do quests there to get more fire spells.

Of course this will also have to be balanced with talent points and such.

Yes! I think I may have fixed my horrible Rift lag spikes with crappy ISP Starhub (rather, suckhub)

Here’s the link:

http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?90515-High-Latency-Spikes-Any-update-Trion/page8

In short, pull up your firewall and block ports 6520 – 6540 for Rift.

I used Comodo, so I just added the rule there.

If you don’t have a software firewall, you can plug it into your router. The downside is those ports are blocked for every application rather than on an application basis.

Been playing the new Dawn of War game/expansion, Retribution. Finished the Tyranid campaign, was pretty fun. If only they had heroes for the Tyranids rather than troops. It was rather short too. Like 10 missions or so. Now trying Imperial Guard. Don’t really like the style of the Inquisitor, why the heck does she have an I on her hat?!? I thought they weren’t supposed to be THAT obvious!

Last Stand is still a blast. New map rocks. If only level 20s had new stuff. And where are my Necrons!!

Let’s see if this word press application works. If it does, then I should theoretically be able to blog more!