August 2011
2 posts
Exploring Padrino
I’ve finally decided to test the “Padrino” waters again.
I’ve heard a lot of good things about it lately, and a recent benchmark blew my fucking mind.
So here I am, looking at the website, in my terminal, and with an editor open.
A word about Padrino first:
It’s not an MVC framework, despite what the website says and how familiar that architecture feels.
It’s...
Anonymous asked: Why do the links in your left-hand sidebar go to facebook.com, twitter.com and flickr.com and not your profile on each site?
January 2011
1 post
Of Grand Importance, A Tale (Part 2)
The bard plucked at his lute with a zen like focus, “We continue the tale from where we left off. Can any of you tell me what happened last?” Many of the children squealed and raised their tiny hands. “Oh! The Prince died!” “No that hasn’t happened yet, stupid!” “I know! The smelly Zed left Ruby for that other place.” “Python!”...
November 2010
2 posts
Anonymous asked: Are some of the entires on the Birds of War wiki not updated? The Korean Empire seems to be missing quite a bit compared to the entry on this blog.
http://birdsofwar.wikidot.com/region:korea
http://birdsofwar.wikidot.com/region:korea
Anonymous asked: What do you feel about your banning from the RPG.net forums?
September 2010
29 posts
[Notes] Birds Of War: Asia
China
Mysterious and large, China remains a thorn in the colonialist powers palm as one of the few great powers in the world that can fend off an direct attack. China has, over the year, employed both science and mysticism to keep itself from becoming just another Euro-Unity state. The Great Wall of Element Air keeps the Armée de l’Air’s finest from dominating the sky. The Great Wall...
[Notes] Birds Of War: Latin America
Spain
Ruler: Emperor Karl I
Capitol: Vienna, Austria
Francisco Fraco was once a powerful general in the Army of Alphonso IX, King of Spain. But when the King refused the Generals request to marry Princess Isabella, the General grew bitter and angry. In short order, he set about installing his own officers in positions of importance around the nation, moving deftly to create a crisis with...
[Notes] Birds Of War: North America
West Indies
Once the property of Britain, the entire area is over run by pirates, with local governments constantly destabilized. Britain is debating what to do here, but it’s stretched thin by recent events elsewhere.
US The Virgin Islands
Controlling Power: Self-Governed
Governor: Governor Michael Anderson, Admiral Ashley H. Robertson
These small islands, St. Croix, St. Thomas...
[Notes] Birds Of War: European Powers
European Major Powers
The major powers of Europe are the industrial powerhouse of Great Britain, The less industrial but technologically advanced France, and the aggressively expansionist Nazi Germany. The three powers are relatively balanced at this time, but the balance is constantly shifting in Germany’s favor.
England’s world wide empire is logistically challenged, while...
Pulp Organization: Vril Society
Leader: Maria Orsic, Master Aetheric Medium
Allegiance: Greater German Reich
Headquarters: Castle Asgard, Germany
Initially the All-German Society for Metaphysics (German: Alldeutsche Gesellschaft für Metaphysik), the all-female organization known as the Vril Society was founded sometime before 1919. Official unclassified Reich documents are unusually cryptic about the specifics of the...
[Notes] Birds Of War: NPC, Nikolai Tesla
Nationality: Stateless
Birth Place: Austria-Hungary
Ethnicity: Croatian
Birthdate: July 9, 1856 (84)
Concept: Brilliant/Mad Scientist
“I find your lack of faith in the Powers of Science disturbing.”
Origins
Nikola Tesla was born in Croatia, Austria-Hungary on July 9, 1856. He now approaches his 84th year. He was the electrical engineer who invented the AC (alternating...
[Notes] Birds Of War: NPC, Chesty Fullerman
Concept: Mayor of New York City, Secret Unionist
“I SAY! Lets take a spot of Brandy in the parlor, where we can speak freely.”
Origins
Once a dedicated politician in the United States Senate, he held the third most powerful position in the nation: Speaker of the House. When the United States came crashing down, Chesty Fullerman held hopes of holding it all together. The defeat...
[Notes] Birds Of War: NPC, Camazotz
Aliases: Prof John Smith
Nationality: British/Xibalban
Birth Place: Reading, GB; Oaxaca
Birthdate: Apr 5, 1898; Nov 1, 1939
“I bring you word from Xibalba. That word is… death.”
Origins
Professor John Smith, a British archaeologist, went deep into the rugged hills of Oaxaca. What terrifying secret he found there is unclear, but it changed him. Running for his life, he...
[Notes] Birds Of War: Fiction, Black Skies
Black Skies
“We were there for the Queen, but God was not on our side.”
The sirens rang, loud, I could barely hear my teacher shouting to move us to the closet. That’s what we were told to do in the event of an air raid. Move to the closet and hope to god the 50mm rounds wouldn’t pierce through the paper thin walls and rip us apart. The sirens were so damn loud, I hear them even...
[Notes] Birds Of War: Fiction, An Interesting Day
An Interesting Day
…still your father refuses me permission to marry, but I will not relent. I will meet you in Maracaibo, even if to hold you with but my eyes once again. Until then, I remain,
Yours in faith and heart,
Baron Richard Devillaers.
Setting the quill back in the Inkwell, Richard turned to look out the plastiglass window that was the front ‘wall’ of...
[Notes] Birds Of War: Fiction, A Journey To The...
A Journey to the East
Minister of Foreign Affairs Lord Adam Frakes-Sturgill
Excerpts from his Diary - 9 March 1938 to 15 May 1938
9 March 1938 - Trans-Manchurian Railroad
Port Arthur, en route to Hanseong
Considering the fact Manchuria is largely a warzone between China and Korea, the Trans-Manchurian railroad runs remarkably well. After all, while there is an armistice in place, as...
[Notes] Birds Of War: Comics
The Further Adventures of…
Gaston LeCroix and Madam Solace in… The Steel Falcon!
El Diablo Rojo and Thomas Majors III in… The Red Devil Strikes Again!
3 tags
[Notes] Birds Of War: The Introduction
Current date is December, 1939 and the world is not as we know it. The major powers are fractured, ruined images of themselves. The beacon of liberty, the United States, is now a twisted jigsaw of competing nations. The Japanese war machine was destroyed before it could get traction. The Bolshevik Revolution of Russia ground down in to a war of attrition that did little but destroy all central...
1 tag
[Notes] Hero's Call: The City
Call For Heroes: A FATE Adventure is a game based in a original fantasy setting. Players will be either Heroes or Villains in the Two Forest Village, a budding area of both mirth and dread. The Empire Gerbani is drowning in its own misery and weariness. The soldiers fight on two fronts, at the deserts to the south where the prospect of gold and riches drew the lecherous eyes of kings and nobles...
1 tag
[Notes] Hero's Call: The Elves
Tall and lithe are the Elven slaves, weak in all but reflexes and pride. They live to near impossible ages that vastly out span mortals by ten fold. Most elves are pale skinned things with long ears and sharp crow like faces. Their bodies meant for swift travel through heavy forest and living in the trees. Many new Elven generation are stronger, thicker, and breed for slavery as labor and...
[Notes] Broken Generation
“John Clellon Holmes… and I were sitting around trying to think up the meaning of the Lost Generation and the subsequent existentialism and I said ‘You know John, this is really a beat generation’; and he leapt up and said, ‘That’s it, that’s right!’”
Jack Kerouac
2022
Warp Point Technology. Unstable, unreliable,...
[Notes] Vitae Nocturnus: Disciplines
Universal
These disciplines are open to any and all vampires, they are not clan restricted. Some Vampires never learn any of the Universal disciplines but are worse off for it. Many of these disciplines are what make Vampires in mythology, as they are the most common.
Auspex
Supernatural Senses and Perception. (Drawing From: Auspex)
Heightened Senses : Spend 1V to add Blood Skill to...
[Notes] Vitae Nocturnus: Primum
Primum
“Where is he? Where is your Brother, Cain?”
The LORD
The Primum (Latin for “First”) are the Vampire Clans who can trace their linage straight back to the very first marked by Cain’s curse. The Vampires who find themselves a part of the First Children Of Cain are by no means the best or most powerful. In many cases Primum are looked down...
[Notes] Vitae Nocturnus: Questions
What is World of Darkness?
The World Of Darkness is a setting based on modern real life Earth, except a lot more shitty. Terrible events in history ended either worse or happened on a much larger scale. The tone for the setting is the dark and dystopia clawing for survival in the pitch black. Creatures that should not exist except in folklore or bed time stories do exist.
What are...
3 tags
[Notes] Dark Times: Table Of Contents
Introduction
The Fates of Mortals
Words From The Author
The Witchcraft Of Lovecraft
On Creative Commons
Table Of Contents
Under The Dark Skies
The World
England
The Wealthy
The Poor
The Unseen
Of English Brood
France
The Lust
The Knowledge
The Power
Of Frankish Blood
Germany
The Villages
The Forests
The Mountains
Of Germanic Stock
The Cults Of Madness
...
4 tags
[Notes] Colossus: Cold Steel
Colossus: Cold Steel
The Metal Warrior Roleplaying Game
The Metal Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Earth fame,
With conquering limbs astride from star to star;
Here at our meteor-washed, Jupiter Gates shall stand
A mighty warrior with a fusion cell, whose laser
Is the imprisoned lightning, and his name
Father of Lions. From his beacon-hand
Glows system-wide welcome;...
4 tags
A History In Hobbies [AHIH - part 1]
My first video game was on the Apple II. A cell-based 2D shooter Star Wars game. I don’t think I ever learned the name. I was about five years old. It was our family’s first computer. My father won it from a grocery store lottery. My father had no idea what to make of it and largely ignored it before selling it to pay rent. My next gaming machine was a Nintendo used from the thrift...
An Open Letter To Allie Brosh
To: Allie Brosh, of Hyperbole And A Half
Subject: Of Great Import And Such
Dear Person Who Reads This Letter And Others Who Might Be Looking Over The Reader’s Shoulder Even If That Is Rude And You Know You Shouldn’t Be Doing It,
I am a writer and a programmer. In fact I am such a writer and programmer that I am writing a book about programming. This book is called Learn You An...
RDoc sucks, lets make gem-runes
So here’s a post. A post about how much RDoc sucks. It’s one of those posts, really. The kind that you read and think, “Yeah, man that does suck. I’ve never really liked it.” It’s not however, like those posts where you read and think, “Wow, this guy is just complaining. Why doesn’t he do anything to fix the situation?” I wouldn’t write...
chapter-one.md,... →
This is chapter one, complete, for the book: Learn You An Ruby For Awesome Power. Total time to write: 5 hours.
The Hacker's Path
Start with both Python and Ruby. These will give you two great, popular, easy to understand, languages to start with. You can do anything from desktop applications to web applications to server scripts to games…Learning these languages will also give you an idea of what kind of direction you want to go in for the future. Learn using these books (Both free and web/pdf based), since...
krainboltgreene: Why did anyone think a case sensitive file system was a good thing?
krainboltgreene: I mean if you need TheDatabase and thedatabase to be different files, clearly you need to rethink your strategy.
arubin: Why?
krainboltgreene: arubin: Why? Because case sensitivity expects the person to be exactly correct in case every time, and one case difference means targeting the wrong file. Anytime you expect coders to be perfect every time you're going to set yourself up for pain.
krainboltgreene: See: rm -f -r /
krainboltgreene: In the end OS specific directories are lower case anyhow (Probably because of mistakes), and the user shouldn't be bothered with case.
arubin: I expect coders to be wrong most of the time because most of them suck.
arubin: But that is besides the point.
krainboltgreene: Exactly!
krainboltgreene: That's not besides the point, that /is/ the point.
August 2010
6 posts
Identity on the internet is a lie. Anyone saying otherwise is exercising fancy footwork and smoky mirrors.
Sinatra + 1.9.2-p0
So, having problems with the Sinatra gem once you upgraded or installed 1.9.2-p0? Hey, it’s cool. I’ve got the fix.
First it seems like the run code is borked, so you need this piece:
set :run, true
Second you’ll need to tell Sinatra where the views are located (assuming you need to):
set :views, File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/views'
Thirdly you’ll need to tell...
8 tags
Getting Ready To Develop With Ruby [Ubuntu]
First, this assumes you’ve got a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.04 (But any version around that should work).
Second, we’re going to also assume you want to do this right from the start, and we’re using RVM for version management.
Thirdly, we’ve decided to use gedit for graphical editor and nano for command line editor. A lot of people are going to be screaming that you...
nona: krainbolt greene?
krainboltgreene: Hello.
nona: can I talk here for aminuate if u dont mind?
krainboltgreene: That is fine.
nona: are u aprogrammer?
krainboltgreene: Yes, I am a programmer.
nona: me too
krainboltgreene: Great!
nona: i have abig problem?
nona: two problem
krainboltgreene: A programming problem?
nona: one of them realated to my work
nona: krainboltgreene?
krainboltgreene: Go ahead.
nona: I need u very much
nona: first
nona: where are u from?
nona: yeah
nona: USA
krainboltgreene: The USA.
nona: its said USA
nona: no the USA
nona: :)
krainboltgreene: So how can I help you?
nona: okay
nona: no
nona: okay
nona: Iam Anormal developper for 2 years
nona: normal means
nona: C#,Java application
krainboltgreene: Alright.
nona: then I talk diplome in GIS programming for 9 months
nona: took
nona: sorry took
krainboltgreene: Ok.
nona: okay
nona: so i work now as ?GIs developper
nona: okay
nona: but I feel that i hate to work in this field as GIS I mean
krainboltgreene: Alright.
nona: but i found ajob
nona: and iam afraid to leave it
krainboltgreene: OK
nona: are u understand me
krainboltgreene: Yep!
nona: really i dont how to think
nona: or what will I do?
krainboltgreene: Working at a job that you hate will ultimately make you bitter and jaded. It isn't good for your moral, and eventually the people you work with will feel it.
krainboltgreene: If your next job is secure enough, I suggest taking it.
krainboltgreene: Life isn't worth living without a few risks, I believe.
nona: but many of projects depends on me
krainboltgreene: Would your boss be sympathetic to your situation? Perhaps you can work part time as a consultant until they find a replacement?
krainboltgreene: This may turn out to be profitable as well as better for your moral.
nona: yeah
nona: thanks alot krainboltgreene
Paragons Of Steel, Shadow, & Sorcery [I]
Lets talk Collectible Card Games, because it’s been floating around my noggin for a bit now. Collectible Card Games or Trading Card Games are card games where two or more people come together to play a card game using decks they’ve built from their collection. This means that each deck in play can be entirely unique or absolutely similar. A TCG you may have heard of is Magic: The...
"What makes [an RPG] rules-lite?"
This question was asked on Reddit:
There are plenty of rules-lite games (and games that are light on rules) floating around out there. What really makes one rules-lite, and what makes for a good rules-lite game? I want something easy and simple to run one-shots with every couple of weeks for some new gamers.
It’s my personal opinion that in the last thirty-six years† a majority of the...
July 2010
7 posts
4 tags
Warrior, Rogue & Mage: A Fantasy Heartbreaker...
Recently one of my Twitter and Facebook friends Michael Wolf, lead writer for Stargazer’s World, released a roleplaying game for public consumption. The game is called Warrior, Rogue & Mage and is available on DriveThruRPG, although if you don’t want to give DRPG your credit card info I suggest you bug Mr. Wolf for a direct download link. Better yet, get him to seed a torrent.
Raw...
RDC's tips to dealing with Bane
This is an old post by a former associate. It’s his personal tips for dealing with me (I used to go by the name “Mr. Bane”). Quite cute, I think :)
RDC’s tips to dealing with Bane
If you have Bane helping with your project, congratulations! You have a very potent but also very dangerous force driving your game forward. This force requires much hands-on attention...
4 tags
CSS Through The Looking Glass
I know so very little about the world, the universe, and the people around me. With that said I can be confidant in saying that I know that Cascading Style Sheet syntax is terrible.
If you’re reading this blog and don’t know what Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are then I here’s a little introduction:
Developed by: World Wide Web Consortium
Initially Released: 17 December...
Raven: A Swift Email
Yeah, I said it. The world needs a fast and light weight email client that isn’t terminal based. It needs to be focused around doing two things: Reading and sending. In fact, it needs to be incredible at sending emails, specifically it needs to be awesome at writing emails. I propose a project that does just that.
Features
Simple UI. Make it astoundingly easy to send an email, and read...
Things I Need To Do
Here’s a list of things I want, and need, to do if I want to further my career as a hacker:
Learn how to program in Haskell.
Learn to use the Rails web framework.
Learn to use Fossil.
Finish Whiskey-Jack.
Finish Dice-Envy.
Not a particularly long list of things, but these things are pretty complicated. For instance Haskell is a Purely functional language. Purely Functional languages...
2010.07.17 00:44:16
Alright. Fine. I finally give in. I need to learn a functional programming language. I’ve tried before and given up. First I tried Erlang and it was too complex and strange. Then I tried Haskell and it went from simple to crazy. Then I picked up Clojure and I was like “Woah. Verbose!”
Learning Ruby has really punched a hole in my mind. Ruby was my first language and has really...
June 2010
6 posts
05:58:22 2010.04.04
In the last two weeks I had decided to learn Rails. I’ve always had the resources to learn, but I’ve always found something else distracting to do. In meeting with other local developers at the Eugene, Oregon Web Developer Meetup (very creative name) I talked with at least three Rails developers with jobs developing in Rails locally. This inspired me to learn.
Yet again I found...
12:21:57 2010.03.31
I’ve always been someone who is critical of how computer filesystems are shaping up these days. I think my biggest contention is that these developers can’t come up with a memorable name at all. Most people who care about this topic will shrug that off as a small thing (If they don’t suggest it’s a feature).
Which is fine by me because I have a ton of ammo lef to throw at...
06:34:01 2010.03.27
The Wireless Initiative
Atlas is an angry titan, but it is folly to believe that we could live without him.
The world of 2071 is a wireless one. What this means is that the end users of the Matrix don’t have wires trailing between themselves and the informational infrastructure of the world. This does not mean that wired connections are unheard of or even that they are rare. Indeed,...