Debian

Writing and Code

2008-02-25T06:00:00Z

Ah, the two pleasures of life for me: writing and programming. I've been writing a short series lately. Just 2-3k words per day, but I'm enjoying it. Not entirely polished and pretty though. I'm trying to work on my writing craft, trying to make my words a bit more interesting to read about. I'm posting it on a random forum where it is on-topic, Like usual, I don't get a lot of comments on it. So, my goal is to write so people want to comment on it. That and I have this idea that I'm not a good writer. Mainly because people don't really get excited about most of my work. There are the few pieces that will get 20-30 comments, but most of them average about 0.1 comment, which is not a good trend. And I want to succeed as a writer, it is something I love to do.

On the other side, I'm working on CuteGod still. Mostly with getting things organized and maybe documenting my sprite library. I rushed CuteGod out the first time and it shows. I need to polish up some of the core libraries, like the GUI processing. I also pulled PlanetCute library out from the Sprite3 library and put it into CuteGod. No reason to make that generic when I'm moving away from it.

Yep, I decided that PlanetCute is nice, but there should be a different style, one that is easier to select things. So I think I'm going to create an isometric version of the game and let you pick between the PlanetCute and isometric depending on your preferences. Bit more work, but I think it will create a more entertaining game.

I also realized that the music I picked up from the always excellent Toucan Music, while free isn't the right "free" for Debian. So, I need to find different music and sound effects for the game. If I can't find a musican who wants to work for the right type of free, I'm going to have to make music that is the right type of free. Free is such a complicated word, you know. There is Creative Commons by-sa license (byline and share-alike), which is the most common CC license you can find for music, but only CC sa/3.0 is apparently considered "free" in Debian's eyes. On Toucan, all the files are licenses CC by-sa/2.5. So, free isn't free enough for Debian.

Why Debian? Because I use it and I want to see my game packaged and shared to others. And, if Debian accept it, chances are, the threshold for being put into other distributions is also lowered.

Slogging Through the Snow

2008-02-13T06:00:00Z

Not many interesting things happening right now. Mostly doing these 10-12 hour days for the last week and a half, crashing when I get home. Started changing my ordering from fast food when I'm in a hurry though, that's good. Instead of a double-quarter pounder meal, I'm getting a fry and salad. Just a few less calories, but you have to start small. Or at least that is what I'm telling myself.

Last night, I got a box of HERO Games books, mostly bestiary and Metamorphs. I saw they had a "damaged" version for sale, so I ordered it. I figured that it would be torn or have a hole in it. But, as long as I could use it for my game, I would be fine.

"Damaged" to them is less damage than I do to my books in the first month. It was $5 less on the cover price and there was just a bit of gunk on the front cover. So, getting damaged books a lot more from them. I do like the HERO system a lot more than say Exalted, but I like the Exalted universe more than most of the universes from Hero.

Of course, HERO suffers from the same problem that I feel Palladium suffers: one major developer. On one hand, it is very consistent (unlike RIFTS in my opinion), but there is so much on one person. There is also no doubt that he loves it.

I want to make a HERO game books, mainly for my steampunk world, Fedora, and Fightertype's Itrifore universe. While I'm killing time between compiles and developing, I've been playing around with ideas for the following:

CuteGod improvements, including a different tile set that is easier to see.
Ponies Among Us: I know that I won't get it done in time, haven't touched it for two weeks now, but I still want to finish it.
Wind, Bear, and Moon rewrite
Calpluta: Just a game in the style of Kingdom of Loathing that is keeping me occupied.
Various library stuff.
Finishing up the Meritous packaging for Debian.
A steampunk story due tomorrow at Steam Punk Magazine. This one is not based on my Fedora world. Instead it is more of a classic Victorian age one (I hope).

So, lots of things to work on. This weekend, we aren't having gaming because Fightertype bowed out (she is suppose to run on the weekend I gave up). I could have run, but I'm planning on being just generally sick and burned out, so figured I could just take it easy instead.

Weaving my life

2008-02-09T06:00:00Z

This week, I got my first non-Mono package into Debian: Meritous. Its a little arcade game that I found on Play This Thing, noticed it was written with SDL, and sent an email to the author to see if I could package it. Twenty-three days later, it was uploaded and sitting in the NEW queue, waiting for some minor changes. Its kind of nice, doing something small, though it adds to my list of Things I Must Do for the next couple of years.

I saw that Steampunk Magazine has their submission guidelines for issue #5. I didn't submit anything to #4, two rejections in a row kind of depressed me, but I have a good idea for #5 so I'm probably going to do it.

I'm going to GenCon 2008 this year. Already got my badge and my hotel room reserved. Even if I do get another job (*hope*), I should be able to explain this as a pre-existing commitment, which it is. I'm not going to run a game though, not enough time and I felt... well, I felt that it wasn't really worth it to run games at the convention. I might run a pick-up game, though, depending on my mood. And probably lust after the Impossibly Cute Twenty-Something Gamers along with Fluffy.

Frustrated with coding, college, and career. Though, I managed to develop this very sweet numerical system for the Complete Clothier that can handle a couple thousand values all being changed in real time and dynamically cascade the changes out to the same thousand values. All while updating the screen. Very cool. This version is also about two orders of magnitude faster than the other one, which is even more of of a bonus.

I'm breaking though. I've put in 10-12 hour days this week, on top of college, and my foolish attempts to maintain the various projects I've been working on. I've bounced through a couple communities to distract me slightly, but I'm feeling like I'm beginning to strip gears a bit. This weekend, I hope to get a bit of coding down, maybe a short story or two, and play some video games. Fluffy is sick and we don't have gaming, so its going to be a quiet weekend.

Also thinking about stripping out the huge number of tags I use.

Boiling Pots

2008-02-03T06:00:00Z

Woke up yesterday thinking about Itrifore, Fedora, both of my unpublished novels, and everything else in the world. Stress is a really crappy thing, you know?

I need to work on some resumes, mainly to create variants that won't scare the hell out of people seeing exactly how many different things I've done in my life. It's a lot, I've been a very busy beaver these last twenty years. Tomorrow, I should have a pair of development resumes (C# and web in general). And then to poke the recruiters.

This is coupled with work itself. My boss is demanding I work overtime to get something done. This is not something I'm looking forward to. One, because I'm afraid I'll burn out with 2-3 weeks of 60-80 hour work weeks to get something done. And it is the project that I feel is a complete waste of money for the last three years and killing everyone to get it done in three weeks won't change that fact. It's important to her, and from my impression, it is more important than anything else in the world right now, including paying her employees on time.

As she announced to the company:

"If you want to get paid on time, you are in the wrong company."

But, I have college to work on and I won't have the energy or time to write my papers if I'm working every damn moment of the night.

I'm getting a hankering to write again. Ponies Among Us isn't going to make it. If I'm looking and 2-3 more weeks of overtime, which means I have no creativity left to write or program, I lost any and all chance to actually complete the game on time.

This. Royally. Sucks.

Yeah, I might have no made it, but I would be willing to do overtime to try getting it at least minimally working. This is what happened last year, maybe I'm not ready to make a game yet. Well, I've been thinking about CuteGod as well. I'm going to try really hard not to get any new projects and just work on things for a while. Give up on 4E6, I mean really give up the hope and just work on little things to get them done.

I'm not going to drop Ponies though. I love the idea too much. I'll just let it get in the boiling pot of ideas and interests. That is related to Itrifore. I like the HERO system and the more I use it, the more comfortable I'm with it. And I really want to write up Fightertype world in the system; if only to make her play the game again.

This is a year of transition for me. I'm planning on it. I'm planning on quitting my job and finding a new one in efforts to be happier with my bankroll and myself. I don't want to be upset at my boss, I don't want to be this personally involved with the company and be so utterly helpless at the same time.

Debian Obligations

2008-01-03T06:00:00Z

I found out that code I put into one of the Debian packages about six to eight months ago was broken. It was for cli-common, which is one of those packages that most of the C# and .NET packages require, but it wasn't used until right before the holidays. I knew there was a problem with it, I just couldn't figure out how to duplicate it enough to fix it.

I hate that. Even though I know that donating work to open source projects, including Debian, is basically just doing something to help the community, I still treat it as a normal project. And one thing I hate doing is pushing out code that has a flaw. Well, meebey fixed it for me and things are working smoother now, but I'll need to keep it in mind.

And that reminded me of everything else I feel that I owe Debian. As one of my donated duties, I help maintain some of the packages (xsp, mod-mono, and a bunch of related ones) not to mention I want to get my own libraries up on Debian. Plus, meebey is interested in my MfGames.OpenDocument library, which lets you edit OpenOffice.org documents without needing that program. So, just a few more things to pile up on the heap.

Character Builder (91%)
World Builder (2%)
Kitteh Braik (7%)
Case of the Morning Zombies (Edit #1, 0 of 37 chapters)

Productivity

2007-11-29T06:00:00Z

Still sick, imagine that. At least I didn't wake up at noon like yesterday. Instead, I actually had a rather nice day creating graphics with very little programming. I finished the blocks for CuteGod, including animating the grass and water ones (except the main water, oops). So, that should all be ready for the actually programming bit.

Last night, I worked on the beginnings of MfGames.Updater. It won't be done by the end of the week, but I can fake it with a zip file and the data structures I have now. I got some really good feedback on #mono, so I might make updater generic enough that others can use it for their own C#/.NET applications. I also spent most of yesterday cleaning up my libraries a bit, splitting Sprite3 from CuteGod (which needs to be done for Ponies) and getting things to stand on their own. I'm also splitting the Debian-specific stuff of my libraries from the main library, just because they aren't in sync most of the time.

I also redid part of my Moonfire Games website. Mainly to add the tabs on the top of the page, a about page for Glorious Saber, and clean up for the strip #018 that I also got done today. Plus, two people gave me some really nice compliments on the comic, mostly about it being funny which is the entire point.

Oh, and I posted my cheesecake recipe online for those who like it.

So, I've had a pretty busy couple of days. Tomorrow, I'm planning on working on Updater and getting CuteGod ready again. My plan is to have 0.2 alpha out on Sunday night or Monday morning (probably Monday morning).

Case of the Morning Zombies (Edit #1, 0 of 37 chapters)

Being sick and plans for this week

2007-11-26T06:00:00Z

I got sick this weekend. Seriously sucks, but it was pretty predictable with Fluffy being sick the week before. Always seems to happen around this time of year, but at least I have the week off to properly enjoy it.

So, Case of the Morning Zombies draft is done and I'm on my next round of projects, fixing up CuteGod and working on the stuff for Ponies Among Us. Last night and this morning, I finally tracked down that damn bug with 32/64-bit operating systems on Tao.FreeType. Got it polished up and checked in this morning. That means that CuteGod *should* work on amd64 flawlessly with the next version coming out. Now just to clean up the horrendous code, repackage some files, and get through a 80+ list of things that I think it should include. Heh.

Meebey asked me to work on Debian packages a bit, so I spent a few hours this morning updating XSP and mod-mono to the latest version. Not working on the log4net stuff quite yet, but I'm hoping to get to that later this week. That will get all of my Debian obligations done for a few months (I hope) and let me focus on Ponies.

I guess the next focus is to work on cleaning up my various libraries, getting them broken up properly (Sprite3 and CuteGod are being split), and work on getting the file downloader/updater working. Then... I don't know, probably just trying to move forward so by Friday, everything is Super Green.

Case of the Morning Zombies (Edit #1, 0 of 37 chapters)

Crappy NaNoWriMo, AMD64 Debian, and CuteGod

2007-11-14T06:00:00Z

"Oh, the horror, oh the pain. I cannot make my deadline for NaNoWriMo. The anguish. The suffering. Why did I ever start it?"

Okay, enough feeding antonstrout the despair of a NaNo'er. I had a terrible day writing yesterday, mostly because of stress at work (you *might* be able to go on vacation if you got what you said done done on Friday despite all the other things I gave you), finding a new addictive game (Windows and Linux versions!) to play, and screwing around with settings and installing programs.

I finally got the AMD64 version of Debian installed on my machine. I have to say, it looks almost identical to the old one, which is in itself, an amazing thing. The boot 4.0r1 CD didn't work, but the boot testing DVD did and everything went in smoothly. Since I had /home on a separate partition, I didn't even have to backup my data (interestingly, I have backups of this stuff). Even things I didn't think would work, such as Flash, worked beautifully.

And to add a cherry to the top, I actually found the bug everyone is getting with CuteGod! Yeah, getting a bug is a point of cheer, mainly because if I can see it, I can fix it. Just as soon as I get through NaNoWriMo. I'm planning on having a second alpha of the game at the end of the month with probably a new installer, a few new tiles, and other nifties.

Case of the Morning Zombies (NaNoWriMo, 26,930 of 75,000 words)

NaNoWriMo Day 1

2007-11-07T06:00:00Z

I'm a sprint writer. I can get a fair amount of words out of a story in a relatively short period of time. However, I can't maintain a steady rate in my writing. Part of it is my commitements and part of it is that I would get burned out too easily. So, seven days late into NaNoWriMo, I finally got started. Yeah, I had a lot of goals to finish before then, and my deadline wooshed right past me while thumbing its nose. The stories I worked on have a slightly higher chance of getting my name out than the NaNoWriMo and CuteGod had the little work to do, but I finally got started.

The first thing I realized is that while I have been thinking about Case of the Morning Zombies for a few months, I actually never sat down and created notes on it. Things like what chapter goes where and what order of events. Oops. An hour of fast work got out the first ten chapters in outline form and I got to writing.

I had a good night, not a great one, but a good night. Just over six thousand words in three hours. I noticed a few things already. I'm having a very large problem with passive voice. Way too may "was" in my writing and its beginning to get obvious. More so when I'm rushing through the story to get it done instead of editing it. Probably time to work on that part of my craft a bit faster.

The other is the pacing. I aimed for about two thousand words a chapter, but I'm already on chapter five. I don't have the rest of them planned, but I'm afraid it will end up a short novel (somewhere around 75k words) instead of the full length novel I'm aiming for. Thinking about it, as long as I hid my minimum goal of 75k words, I think I'm pretty happy with it.

So, a great first day. :) Today, however, I need to work out and finish up Glorious Saber, so I suspect no writing. Thursday and Friday I plan on working on Morning Zombies, Saturday I have Exalted and Sunday I'm reinstalling my operating system to fix a bug with CuteGod.

Case of the Morning Zombies (NaNoWriMo, 6,286 of 75,000 words)

Commitments

2007-11-06T06:00:00Z

The reason I wasn't starting NaNoWriMo last night was because I was going to play Exalted in a game run by a friend-who-shall-not-be-named. I didn't start anything or do anything serious because I only had an hour or so between the time I get home from work and I leave. So, I couldn't do anything in that hour either since I like to eat or something. When I got there, I found out that she didn't have anything planned nor did she remember that she had this commitment.

I also found out from her husband why he didn't show up at the Changeling game that I ran on Sunday. Something serious? Not really. He got a new computer and spent the entire day futzing with it. He didn't call, he didn't send an email, he didn't tell anyone that he wasn't going to show up, despite spending two entire weeks talking about it.

I have commitments. I have quite a few of them. I run Exalted every other week and Changeling every four weeks. I have my comic, Glorious Saber, due on Thursdays for the last fifteen weeks. I have my commitments to Debian, my open-source projects, and my games. Excluding the ones dealing with development, which is on-going, I make a very clear point of calling and telling people when I can't show up. I don't cancel on the same day of gaming, unless I'm seriously sick. Even then, I call every single player to tell them I can't make it. When I'm in a game, I may be late by 15-30 minutes, but I show up. If I can't, I tell them.

It is hard when people don't give you the same respect. When someone runs a game, I want to know before I leave my house that they won't be there. If they say they'll be there, I want to know when they aren't. In my case, I have players that drive 2-3 HOURS to get to my game and I make sure they know before they leave because of the distance they drive. That and one of my prior DM's would decide 5-10 minutes before gaming that he couldn't be bothered to run.

I told myself I would do 26 strips of Glorious Saber and I will do at least 26. If I don't think it is doing as well as I hope, I'll stop at 26. That is a half year of comics to see if the idea is sound. I'm on 15 (including last week's filler), but I will do 26 comics. I said I would. I have a commitment and I owe it to the people who may or may not be reading it to finish it.

Case of the Morning Zombies (NaNoWriMo, 0 of 100,000 words)

Considering a Masters (Edited)

2007-10-08T05:00:00Z

Last Friday, me and Fluffy went over to help Evyl to help grab a chest of drawers from her ex-husband's place. He just got kicked out and left a bunch of crap that he didn't want and she wanted it, plus I had a big enough car. As a form of thanks, she took us out to yummy IHOP.

Over dinner, we got to talk about future plans. In specific if Fluffy and I were considering our masters. We have both been thinking about it. For me, it makes financial sense since it would be easier to get a job outside of Company X if it ever comes to that. My projects for this year are pretty well packed, with NaNoWriMo next month and working on Ponies Among Us for the four months after that. I was vaguely considering starting next year in January back at Capella. Yeah, it would be tight and a pain in the ass, but I will always find an excuse not to do it if I chose. I really don't like getting further in debt either.

The problem with college is projects. Pretty much my days and nights are filled up with work and everything else I do. To start up a new long-term project, like going to school for two to three years, means something has to suffer. Right now, I am spread out all over the place with writing, gaming, and programming. I have my obligations to my gaming group to keep on running every other week for Exalted and every four weeks for Changeling. I have my Debian and other open-source projects that I've started and continue to maintain. I have my desire to be a writer, and to keep writing stories. I also have my one a year novel goal I wanted to maintain. Naturally, I also have Fluffy, since I like that whole being married thing.

So, something has to give. I highly doubt that graduate school is going to be as easy as undergraduate for me the third time around. I think I allocated almost two entire hours a week for two years and graduated with a 4.0 and ~~magna~~summa cum laude. I suspect that when I've already experienced everything in the class, it is easier to write. Plus, the bulk of the Capella coursework is writing essays (I'm good at writing), conversing via forum posts (I'm good at writing), and figuring out the technical details (which I've already done in my various jobs).

I don't like school, but it is something I should do. I know I should do it, it would make it easier for the Master Plan, easier to get a job, and maybe a bit easier to earn the respect of a certain parental unit (though, the doctorate program after the masters would probably be a more effective goal for that).

I know, that as long as I can game and write, I won't burn out. Long hours are nothing as long as the written word is in front of me. It pretty much means I can't give up those, which means Fluffy or programming. Since Fluffy would hurt me, it means that I'm going to have to drastically reduce my programming projects, and probably a bit of writing.

Decisions, decisions.

Edit: Looking at my diploma, it says summa cum laude, not magna cum laude. Drawbacks of writing without looking at the diploma two rooms away.

Summer Biking: (326.1 of 400.0 km)

Ouch

2007-09-04T05:00:00Z

It is a good thing I had my tetanus shot when I fell off my bike a few years ago. This morning, as I was rushing to get the dogs into the car, I accidentally stepped on one of the many rusty nails that litter my garage after our home improvement project. Fortunately, it didn't go all the way through, but it did leave a rather nasty puncture wound that occasionally reminds me that I need to do something about that.

Last night, I noticed that my new MythTV box didn't have any schedule data. So, I stayed up way too late upgrading it. I had to stop near midnight, but at least I have schedule data, but it just can't change the channel on the unit or from the remote. Oops. Guess what I'm fixing first thing this evening when I get home? :) That way, Fluffy won't have to suffer without having her DVR. Interestingly, the Debian Multimedia guy did the right thing and didn't move the latest version into stable, which means I had to compile it from scratch. No big deal, just time. I also know what is wrong, so that shouldn't be too hard to fix it up.

The online map editor may become something a tad more... big. Talking to the guy, it sounds like he'd like to put it in a large framework for campaign management. This has some appeal, of course, since I've tried to create one of those for some time now. We'll see how it turns out, of course, there is a big step between talking about something and actually starting it, much less finishing it.

Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal
Summer Biking: (236.7 / 400.0 km)

Feedback!

2007-08-08T05:00:00Z

CuteGod Development: (44 / 172 requirements)
Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal
Summer Biking: (203.5 / 400.0 km)

I am still working on this home improvement project. Fortunately, it looks like the end is in sight at least, which always brightens my day. One out of three rooms done, just a bit of grouting repair, and cleaning up and things should be much easier. We are going to try doing the base painting coat in the dining room but otherwise not much else tonight.

Originally, I planned on working on Debian work I owe people, but apparently they need 25 days for the process, so I couldn't do anything while Fluffy was at Hapkido. So, I putzed around instead of doing something productive.

But, I did have very good news. After the two years I've been working on Wind, Bear, and Moon, I actually got some good feedback! Scienceprincess, who deals with children in that age category, pointed out some really good things. I'll get a better list of suggestions later, but I'm just so happy I got something! Now to clean up the English that is technically correct but not really "young reader." Apparently, I'm a very formal writer (which makes sense given my past) but I use informal stuff in speech (as my old writing teacher told me to do). Reminds me of the comment of someone reading my first novel: "Are you capable of using contractions?" :) Its the strangest thing, in writing, I actually have to make a point of using contractions since I typically write "cannot" instead of "can't." We won't even get into if the period should be outside a double quote (").

So, still moving forward on this home project. I need to do some coding projects in the next week, to handle my obligations on the computer side of things. My csharp-mode needs a bit of love as does my MediaWiki CategoryCloud plugin. I'm glad I don't have to do much with the Debian stuff, but I really should work on Getting Things Done(tm) before I get horribly distracted by GenCon.

I am so looking forward to GenCon.

Moving Forward

2007-07-19T05:00:00Z

CuteGod Development: (44 / 172 requirements)
Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal
Summer Biking: (194.4 / 400.0 km)

When going back to the beginning,
After almost reaching to the end,
One must remember to look back
And remember exactly how far they got
Instead of focusing on
What they almost made
Or what they nearly reached.

Interestingly, this last rejection really didn't bother me that much. I mean, yes I wasn't the happiest in the world, but for a form letter (Dear Creator:) it just "was." Though, when I got home, I really didn't have the energy to do much, so I just worked on cleaning up my Debian packages and finished a short story that has been hanging over me for a while. I'll be submitting it today (email submissions). I'll also be looking for a new publisher for Muddy Reflections, I think I have two more on my short list then I'll have to start doing the Writers Market thing again. Tonight, I'll either write or start outlining Peg and Sue are Lost in Space (title changes daily) and/or Case of the Morning Zombies.

Oh, last night, I made the entire trip from work without getting off, including the evil hill. This makes only the second time I've actually made it and I really need to get my bike into the shop since it is really hard without being able to use the hill-climbing gear.

Low-Hanging Fruit Week

2007-07-18T05:00:00Z

CuteGod Development: (44 / 172 requirements)
Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal
Muddy Reflections Reading
Summer Biking: (183.8 / 400.0 km)

Today, I'm rode my bike into work again. Just as yesterday and I am very, very exhausted. I know that my body will adapt to doing 20 km two days in a row (had to walk almost three meters though yesterday), but it isn't fun until the rest of me adapts. As my dad says, my struggle comes from the extra weight I'm carrying (i.e. a polite way of saying I'm fat). I can consistently average about 38 minutes to go 10 km, including both ways. Which is pretty good, given that the way home is uphill most of the way.

The ride in was pretty good, mainly because I was excited that I finally got something off my chest. There was some work with dh_creatclipolicy that has been hanging over me for the last couple of months, my obligations to the Open Source community, and I've been stalling. Last night, I finally got off my ass and made it work. It just needs some cosmetic changes, maybe a bug fix or three, and I should finally be able to say it is done.

I have no energy for CuteGod, as I knew I wouldn't. I found a good (free) installer maker, so I'll be able to offer an installer program the next round. I also was made one of the project developers for BooGame since I'm going to be adding some features to it. And, to my surprise, I was made one of the project leadertypes for prebuild. Again, that is because I'm going to scratch an itch I have and make it a bit better to use. One thing I like about the OSS community, sometimes you can just send in changes and sometimes you just step forward to help everyone. Admitedly, I haven't done much with CeGui# or SDL.NET, both of which I'm developers for, though I have submitted code to both (a Irrlicht.NET backend and the "Moonfire Demos" which have since been removed, respectively).

I think this week is "get rid of small things" week. Trying to knock off a couple of things that have been haunting me. Depending on my mood, I might try to write a short story or two. I have a (hopefully better) story for Steam Punk Magazine which I want to write. Plus, getting read to tile my living room (I have 54 boxes of tile on my sun porch which thankfully has a concrete floor to handle the weight) and GenCon and my vacation next week. Oh, and gaming this Saturday.

It's going to be a busy set of weeks coming up.

Weekend Stuff

2007-06-25T05:00:00Z

Â» My Father's Bike: 0.714 (28,567 / 40,000 words)
Â» Wind, Bear, and Moon Query: 0.000 (0 / 26 weeks)
Â» Summer Biking: 0.184 (73.4 / 400 km)

Forgot to grab the meterage from my bike computer, but I did get some kilometers in on Friday. This weekend, Fluffy was in Iowa and fightertype and uteck were enjoying their anniversary weekend, so I was babysitting four dogs, including one who was senile and one who is still learning the joys of bladder control. Hasn't gotten there yet, but it is really hard to get anything done when you are watching that many dogs.

I did get some writing on My Father's Bike but I'm getting more and more unhappy with it as a whole. It doesn't really feel... fully formed, I guess is a way of saying it. I might be just letting it drift a bit more while I work on CuteGod for a little bit. If I'm still having trouble writing it by the end of June, I'll just start up my next writing project, which is fully-formed and ready to be written.

Finished up another round of Debian packaging for XSP and mod_mono. Nice to get some of my "support my community" projects done. Speaking of community, I also got much further along in my Exalted XML Schema project. I may have at least one person who thinks it is a good idea. Now to get Anathema to import/export and maybe get someone to write a charm editor. Well, its a dream at least.

Gaming was pretty fun. Characters almost died, heroic rescues were enacted. Traps were there and I think I got the right mix of dangerous and solvable. Most of the time, they are either "squish, you are dead!" or "I'm sorry, could you pretend to even be hampered by it?" Characters survived, but it was close. I like that actually. Having a threat of danger actually in the game instead of deus ex machima, which I'm guilty of, and reasonable attempts to save members. We did have a brief discussion about money (another blog entry coming up) and I think fightertype and I came up with an alternative.

And here are some picture of Inigo, for those who like to look at puppies:

If you click on them, you'll get bigger versions. I hope you enjoy! He is a sweetie. Also, very quiet. This is a problem since he doesn't even whine to be let out or when he wants attention. Just quietly does what he is doing.

Fear of Submission

2007-06-21T05:00:00Z

Â» My Father's Bike: 0.570 (22,814 / 40,000 words)
Â» Wind, Bear, and Moon Query: 0.000 (0 / 26 weeks)
Â» Muddy Reflections Query: 0.333 (4 / 12 weeks)
Â» Summer Biking: 0.184 (73.4 / 400 km)

Still no writing, but I did spend most of the night updating the XSP packages for Debian with meebey's help. That felt nice, getting something done and learning a whole bunch about Debian packaging to boot.

While I did no writing, I am sitting next to a huge packet proposal for Mirrorstone. I had a choice of just a single book or proposal a series. I decided to take a risk and actually write out the entire proposal for all five books that are part of Wind, Bear, and Moon. I mean, I always wrote it with the intent of future plots and apparently four more books is what it would come out to. 70 pages later, I have a thick envelope that I desperately want to throw in a garbage can for some reason. Just sitting there.

I have no clue how to describe how nervous and scared I am to actually send it. I mean, I'm actually terrified. Fear of rejection, I guess. But, also fear that I finally got a chance to show my "writing novels" skill instead showing my "writing query letter" skills and that I'm going to blow it. I'm afraid that, given this opportunity to let my writing speak for me, that I'm not that great of a writer. I picked what I felt are the best three chapters in the novel, and yet deep down inside, I'm as frightened as a yellow electric rat in a blender.

Why am I so afraid?

Main Site Changed

2007-02-01T06:00:00Z

It took a bit, but I think I finally got the look and appearance of the main brokentypewriterpress.com site to look pretty good. I also started adding some content by adding the four stories that I've had public for some years now. They are a bit older in terms of my writing resurgance, they were mostly written in 2000 and 2001, but I'm still pretty proud of them. One of them, Moon Dancer, actually won first place in a fan-fiction contest over at Clan of the Cats.

It does remind me that I need to start writing more stories. At one point, I toyed with the idea of writing one story a month. With the last three novels (last four years really), I've also had a major writing project each year. This year, I'm not planning on writing a novel, so twelve short stories might be a better idea.

Other than that, I've been working on getting a Debian testing environment setup so I can track down some of these really annoying bugs with XSP and other packages. It's taking a bit, mainly because I'm doing this as a qemu partition instead of locally. Some bugs can't be duplicated by an established development environment. And once I figured that out, it only took 20 minutes to find that bug.

The next three weeks are still going to be hell for work and I still have that frustrating wait about my novel.

Working too hard and random stuff

2007-01-26T06:00:00Z

I switch the KDE in the last couple of days. Apparently, it is a mix of 3.4 and 3.5, but I'm pretty happy with it. I got tons of options to set, managed to get the windows pretty much where I want them, and decided to reeducate myself into using Ctrl-F* instead of Alt-F* to switch virtual terminals. Cosmetically, it is a bit getting used to, but I'll adapt, I always do.

I'm also working on getting my Debian packages working again. I found qemu for doing virtual terms, so hopefully I can duplicate some of the more complicated bugs and start getting things done "properly." I've pretty much given up on wanting to be a Debian Developer but I can still do package maintenance until they find someone else better.

I feel broken today, both with a general hated of my body and of the too many things to do on my list. I'm going to focus on 1-2 things this weekend and see if I can get them better and struggle to finish up stuff so I can get to my other goals. I might be pushing back the drawing and Japanese stuff to the third quarter, just to focus on Exalted and writing for a bit. Its kind of frustrating, mainly because I have this drive to do things, just not enough time and energy to do it. With work lately, I haven't really had the energy to do anything much at all. In fact, for having the last ten years being only about 60% busy and pretty damn happy, I'm now closer to 95% busy without a break in sight. It isn't really fun since I need an extend break. I might just take a week off or so, if my boss would let me, in the next month or so. It isn't like I don't have the days, I should be around 45 days of paid vacation/sick time this year.

Last Sunday, we were suppose to do holiday gifts with my mother. However she had a "terrible day" and "just forgot" about it. In reality, she was more interested in the Bears game than anything else. The leftovers and the mess we saw pretty much told us that story. This is from the lady who takes great pride in the important of a holiday and has a lot of rules of what types of gives you can buy (no gift cards, they are an insult). We ended up just taking most of the presents home and opened them, I got a really nice set of origami calendars and packets, a really cool dictionary of mythological creatures. That should be interesting when I work on the fantasy creatures for Fedora and my other worlds.

Speaking of worlds, I saw a really interesting stain on the oven and decided it would make a perfect continent. So, I got a picture of it and I'll probably turn it into a nice pretty map, like the Exalted Map of Creation.

I also got one of the "thank you" gifts from donations I made this year. I did around $1,600 this year to various blogs, web sites, and other places. I'm hoping to give at least two thousand this year in donations to those who create things on the Internet. Its one of the those important things in my life.

Debian's XSP and mod-mono 1.1.17

2006-09-07T05:00:00Z

Since I was back at the UMKT stuff, I had to get my XSP and mod-mono working. And Debian just came out with the 1.1.17 version, so I updated the XSP and mod-mono packages on my repository (0pre1 for mod-mono and 0pre2 for XSP). They work out very nicely so far.

Playing with new computer

2006-06-06T05:00:00Z

I got an identical computer at home for what I just got at work. This one is going to be very different. The first thing I did was head over to Best Buy to pick up a new SATA hard drive. Even though I handed the girl the gift certificate (200 USD from my mom for graduating!), she forgot, so I had to go through the checkout process twice; apparently when they void an order, it stays on your credit card for twenty-four hours. If I didn't happen to pay it down a little, it would have meant I was coming back today. Fortunately, I could handle it.

I picked up a 500 GB SATA drive. Yeah, its about twice the size of the original drive, but I've always come to the conclusion you should buy as much as you can comfortably afford. With the gift certificate and a 35 USD pack of Light-Scribe DVD+R (which Fluffy can't use apparently), it only came out to 118 USD. Pretty good deal.

I left Windows XP on the 250 GB and set up the 500 GB as Linux. Sadly, I didn't have any CDR's in the house, so I ended up using a blank DVD+R (not the Light-Scribe ones) to get Debian bootstrapped over to the new partition. Then, I spent a couple hours getting things installed. I finished up just as I was rebuilding part of the bed (we switched sides because of my shoulder).

It will be strange not to worry about drive space for a while. I've been surviving on 60 GB for everything on my laptop for about a year now. Now, I have 750 GB on a single machine that is faster, has more ram, and a better graphics card.

I'm doomed.

xorg.conf, ATI drivers, Radeon M9

2006-04-18T05:00:00Z

Spent most of the day dealing with an annoying problem of dist-upgrade when half of xorg was in sid but the other half wasn't. Of course, like the mono project, xorg split into a bunch of packages with naturally broke everything. And, I use(d) fglrx as my driver, so that broke. Naturally.

So, I took the chance and moved over to the ATI radeon driver instead of the fglrx. I don't use a lot of 3D at the moment, so it probably won't affect me, but I did spend the entire day trying to get it working.

Gave up trying to use "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" and just went with hand-editing the file. Still haven't gotten DRI working properly, haven't figure out how. I also have trouble with the laptop verses attached monitor setup that I use at home and at work. Right now, I just disable the laptop screen until I can figure out why it turns so stupid at 1280x1024. The laptop is fine, but the attached monitor is always about 90% of the laptop, despite the fact I want them all at the same setting (or the laptop smaller).

I got just about everything else working, so its at least usuable.

Lots of Debian Packages

2006-04-14T05:00:00Z

Spent a good hunk of the day working on mysql, tao, and log4net packaging for Debian. And it looks like most of it is going to be pushing out into sid really soon now. And that is a very good thing. Now, just to get a DD to advocate me. :)

log4net and Tao packaging

2006-03-30T06:00:00Z

Packaging log4net and tao is fun. Hopefully, I will actually finish when the Debian CIL policy stablizes on 0.4.0. I'm pretty proud of something I did, dh_installcligac, which sets up a late install of the GAC files, which means we don't have to package the already installed .dll as part of the package.

Assembly Versions

2006-03-22T06:00:00Z

Packaging assemblies is always a pain in the rear. More so when you are doing it without being one of the developers. On the #debian-mono channel, I got into a discussion about how to handle breaking stuff. One of the things that came out of that inclusive thing is how to map versions to other versions.

The main part is if you have version 1.2.9 and 1.2.10. Files linked to 1.2.9 won't work if you uninstall it for 1.2.10. You can create a policy file to get around this, though, which works out very nicely.

<assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
  <dependentAssembly>
   <assemblyIdentity name="bob" publicKeyToken="0499830f33a4a9f7" />
      <bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.2.9.0-1.2.9.9" newVersion="1.2.10.0" />   
  </dependentAssembly>
</assemblyBinding>

This basically has anything in the 1.2.9.* range actually use 1.2.10.0. Obviously, you need to version your file when you do this. To create the policy, you do this:

al /link:b.policy /out:policy.1.2.bob.dll /keyfile:bob.snk
gacutil /i policy.1.2.bob.dll

The "1.2" is important. "1.2.9" won't work and "1" won't work either. Of course, that means you have a couple nasty options. As an assembly writer, you really should have breaking changes be in the first two version numbers (x.y) because you can't easily create a policy that changes half-way. If version 1.2.9 has a policy for 1.2.0.0 to 1.2.8.9, then 1.2.10 breaks things, then later you have 1.2.12 that replaces .10, then you'd have to have two policies.

Now, you can get around this by changing SNK files every time you break something. The policy is based on that, but it would require you do remember to actually test for breakage, then change your key, if you insist on doing a x.y.z breaking change. If you stick with x.y breaking changes (or my preference of x), then the package builders can do something easily (without changing the key).

Tao on Debian

2006-03-07T06:00:00Z

Worked on the Debian packages for Tao. Had to figure out the documentation system (monodoc) before it is getting ready to be released into the wild. Hopefully, tomorrow I'll have it start the Debian Developer side of the process. I also send out an email to one of the DD's about keysigning in Iowa City since I'm going to be there in a few weeks. Failing that, I'll see about a DD in the area (Chicagoland).

xsp, mod-mono, log4net

2006-02-15T06:00:00Z

A lot has happened today, so I have to write all about it. I actually got xsp 1.1.13-1 and mod-mono 1.1.13-1 uploaded for inclusion into sid. Salz and meebey mentioned I should start the New Maintainer process for Debian. Very nice little ego boost for the middle of the day.

I also was working on liblog4net-cil for Debian next. It should be a fairly fast process, since it has been stable, I just have to clean out the (other people's) bugs and it will be ready. Good thing I've been using it for eight months now, which means its pretty stable for me.

XSP and mod-mono for Debian

2006-02-05T06:00:00Z

On Friday night, I was working on getting xsp and mod-mono upgraded to version 1.1.13 on the Debian repository. I had a little trouble with the version stepping, they got a lot pickier about version numbers between the mono, xsp, and mod-mono source packages than before. So, I got a bunch of help getting something that would help prevent this and checked it into the repository. If all goes well, next week I should have it stable enough to push/sponsered out.