So depression is a pretty bloody annoying thing. I've been dealing with all the crap associated pre-treatment for a while, and it's pretty painful. You don't really notice until it becomes such a problem you're not even sure that anything can be done about it.
After that? Medicine. There's a lot of arguments against medicating problems, but I've studied psychology for 5 years now and think I can make an informed decision about myself. Would I wish it on everyone? No, but for me it's been the right path.
After that I've managed to settle back into mostly-normal. The first week of drugs was the worst, they were doing nothing except perhaps making it worse. Second week was about the same, but the third week was different.... It doesn't really happen directly, you don't notice "hey it's not all crap any more", it just stops being crap.... then after a while you notice everything isn't crap, but it's not quite done.
You see, the medicine has set dosages for different "levels" of depression. I'm on about mid-way, but it goes from 5mg through to "lots" of mg. Unless you're on "ALL THE MG" then you'll have days that are better, and days that are worse. I've been struggling through a week that's gotten worse that culminated in a day that was truly dreadful. The medicine did help, I'd hate to think what I'd have been like without it acting a a buffer, but after so long being fine it hits you harder than ever.
The worst part is that on some level you know what's happening, but you can't break out of it. You can see that it's all going south, and that it's going to have a negative impact on all involved, but you can't just decide to stop.
Still, onwards and upwards? I'm on month 5 now and my doctor is suggesting that I could try to lower the dose. As I'm going to have a very hard term next year I've decided to keep it steady so that it won't interfere with my studies, and hopefully after that I'll be able to reduce it and perhaps even beat it.
I'm not entirely sure why I wrote this, but it's cathartic to write a load of swirling thoughts down, and even if you're just narrating to yourself it helps to order it and make sense of the whole thing.
~Longeye~
Monday, 17 December 2012
Sunday, 8 April 2012
A GMs' Job
A post?! Oh my!
A post NOT about Minecraft!! This cannot be!
Alas it is, I've had a recent chance (due to being far too ill to do much else) to do a little thinking, and an issue that's been bugging me for a while has been resolved. I'm going to use a real life person as the basis for this, but I'm not going to tell you who they are and I want it to stay that way. There will be flames otherwise, and so I am not going to tell you who they are, and I don't want you to base your opinions on who you think they are.
In case you don't know, a GM is a "Games Master", sometimes called a DM (Dungeon Master, though this refers more to D&D) they run tabletop RPG games for groups of people. They come up with the adventure, act as the monsters and NPC's that the players encounter, and apply the rules when they're needed. this is important background information because this story starts like so; "There's this GM..."
There's this GM who gives out advice and stories. This is the person I'm using who I don't want ID'd. Now their advice is generally pretty sound; it's stuff that aspiring, new and veteran GMs should pay heed to, and it is useful to listen to it reflectively (applying it to your own experiences).
Now the stories have always got me, for some reason the adventure/campaign stories made this GM sound bad, and whenever I try to discuss this with fans of the GM I can't quite put my finger on why... When the fans get defensive I suddenly have no way to explore why I think they're bad. This is where my thinking comes in, and the title.
What is a GMs' job? A lot of people have a lot of ideas about this. In D&D they have a line in the DMs' manual which I shall paraphrase, I don't have the book to hand; "To mediate between the players and the rules.". This would suggest their job is to apply the rules at the right times, and to apply player actions at the right time. This is wrong.
Some games think that the GMs' job is to try, within the bounds of the rules, to kill the players. They pile on as many monsters as they're allowed as many traps as possible and do their best to kill everyone. This is also wrong.
I could go on for a few more examples but I'm not really 100% yet so I'll cut this short; a GMs' job is summarised as only one thing; to take a pile of books, hundreds of rules, thousands of combinations and a set of players... and to turn all of that into fun for those players. That's all.
Looking back again, this is the big problem I have with that GMs games. They sound great fun to run (from the GM's point of view) but they don't sound like fun to play in. They sound frustrating, over the top, brow-beating and formulaic. Looking through their tips it's also apparent that one is missing, and it's the big one. "The GMs' Rule". They do point out that there are no rules for GMing, and that all their advice differs depending on the situation... but there is one rule.
"The GM is there for the players, not the other way around." Any GM who forgets this should just write all their games off now; they'll all be crap. A GM is there to provide the players with fun, the players are not there to provide a setting for the GM to have fun in. If the GM has fun as a result of the players having fun, that's a good start. That sort of GM does the best. The GM who puts their own fun and their own rules and stories above player fun isn't doing it right.
As a conclusion I have two bits of advice; one for players and one for GMs of all nature:
A post NOT about Minecraft!! This cannot be!
Alas it is, I've had a recent chance (due to being far too ill to do much else) to do a little thinking, and an issue that's been bugging me for a while has been resolved. I'm going to use a real life person as the basis for this, but I'm not going to tell you who they are and I want it to stay that way. There will be flames otherwise, and so I am not going to tell you who they are, and I don't want you to base your opinions on who you think they are.
In case you don't know, a GM is a "Games Master", sometimes called a DM (Dungeon Master, though this refers more to D&D) they run tabletop RPG games for groups of people. They come up with the adventure, act as the monsters and NPC's that the players encounter, and apply the rules when they're needed. this is important background information because this story starts like so; "There's this GM..."
There's this GM who gives out advice and stories. This is the person I'm using who I don't want ID'd. Now their advice is generally pretty sound; it's stuff that aspiring, new and veteran GMs should pay heed to, and it is useful to listen to it reflectively (applying it to your own experiences).
Now the stories have always got me, for some reason the adventure/campaign stories made this GM sound bad, and whenever I try to discuss this with fans of the GM I can't quite put my finger on why... When the fans get defensive I suddenly have no way to explore why I think they're bad. This is where my thinking comes in, and the title.
What is a GMs' job? A lot of people have a lot of ideas about this. In D&D they have a line in the DMs' manual which I shall paraphrase, I don't have the book to hand; "To mediate between the players and the rules.". This would suggest their job is to apply the rules at the right times, and to apply player actions at the right time. This is wrong.
Some games think that the GMs' job is to try, within the bounds of the rules, to kill the players. They pile on as many monsters as they're allowed as many traps as possible and do their best to kill everyone. This is also wrong.
I could go on for a few more examples but I'm not really 100% yet so I'll cut this short; a GMs' job is summarised as only one thing; to take a pile of books, hundreds of rules, thousands of combinations and a set of players... and to turn all of that into fun for those players. That's all.
Looking back again, this is the big problem I have with that GMs games. They sound great fun to run (from the GM's point of view) but they don't sound like fun to play in. They sound frustrating, over the top, brow-beating and formulaic. Looking through their tips it's also apparent that one is missing, and it's the big one. "The GMs' Rule". They do point out that there are no rules for GMing, and that all their advice differs depending on the situation... but there is one rule.
"The GM is there for the players, not the other way around." Any GM who forgets this should just write all their games off now; they'll all be crap. A GM is there to provide the players with fun, the players are not there to provide a setting for the GM to have fun in. If the GM has fun as a result of the players having fun, that's a good start. That sort of GM does the best. The GM who puts their own fun and their own rules and stories above player fun isn't doing it right.
As a conclusion I have two bits of advice; one for players and one for GMs of all nature:
- Players; if you're not having fun (or if a particular aspect of gameplay isn't fun) tell your GM! GMing is an incredibly stressful thing to do, and a GM has to hold so much information in their head that it is very easy to overlook players not getting on with a certain thing. If you mention it to them, GMs should be happy to change or fix it for you, so that more fun is had.
- GM's; there is no rule in any system that is so important it cannot be sacrificed to increase the amount of fun people have. Some (like "this weapon 1-hit-kills everything") aren't much much fun if they only apply to one person, and they make the game boring if everyone has them (even if the player thinks it'll be better) so you have to decide in the long run if it'll improve gameplay or not, but in general if a rule is causing a lack of fun for even a moment you should ditch or change it.
- At the end of the day all RPG's are games. If you're not having fun playing a game; you're not doing it wrong, the game is.
That's about all I've got for now, I hope it's made sense. I would like to state that I don't have anything against the person (if you think you know who they are, read the introduction) or their advice (which I've pointed out is good), my only problem with them is that I think they've forgotten this point, and they're not putting too much emphasis on rules rather than fun.
I also would like to point out that if any of my current or past GMs are reading this; I'm not talking about you please don't kill me! You're all good ;)
Lastly; to people who I have GM'd before, I am aware that I'm guilty of doing this sometimes, and that there has been lack of fun at points... I'm learning, and I'm doing my best to get better, and I would also appreciate you taking note of my advice to players. I'm sure many GMs would.
Lastly; to people who I have GM'd before, I am aware that I'm guilty of doing this sometimes, and that there has been lack of fun at points... I'm learning, and I'm doing my best to get better, and I would also appreciate you taking note of my advice to players. I'm sure many GMs would.
Feel free to let me know your opinions on my conclusions or my reasoning, but take note of my proviso's about the GM in my tales. This isn't really about them, so much as the lessons I learnt pondering them.
Ciao for now!
~Longeye~
EDIT: I am aware that I "owe" a post about the server's one year birthday; I'm working on it right now and it should be up soon (work allowing).
~Longeye~
EDIT: I am aware that I "owe" a post about the server's one year birthday; I'm working on it right now and it should be up soon (work allowing).
Thursday, 29 September 2011
The Minecraft Server part II
Here it is, the part 2 bit. First off I would have updated earlier, but nice as the new interface is it doesn't load on my computer. I've been working for a few days trying to get it up, and only just managed it.
RECAP!
*Woobly dissolve effect with added spinning*
The server was set up, there were a few minor problems along the way with player behavior and I was both perplexed by the popularity and amazed by the builds.
*Woobly- yeah what he said.*
The state of the server right now is this; I have a brand new map updated for version 1.8, on Friday I'll be making an update for 1.9 including generating a new map. I have 30 registered players, of which 15 are regular, and currently 3 more in talks on the "waiting list" (oh yeah, I have one of them now). I've got a set of mods, no permissions system and a bit of a headache.
Let's pull back a bit and go over this. Since last time things worked perfectly, the server grew at a good rate and nothing went really wrong. There were hiccups with some mods, they either didn't want to work or had bugs and such. I very quickly found a set that did work and stuck with it. The permissions system also had a few bugs, sometimes a player wouldn't be allowed on and sometimes it would allow people to do things they shouldn't. More on this later.
The builds? They were simply amazing. After Rapture we all went our separate ways. Some of up built smaller projects, some bigger. The end result was too big to talk about, there were thousands. A few of note would be a scale model of the titanic, El Adira, a city that was MASSIVE and built mainly by one player with assistance from a few others sometimes... There was Serenity (a personal favorite) and a working railway system... mansions, housing, mines, underground conglomerates and more that even I didn't know about! I did my best to keep up to date with the builds, but I could do it.
We decided after a while to rebuild the Settlement as it stood. We thought it had become a bit sprawling for the starting point, and it needed a makeover. This took the form of BURNING a lot of it (fun) and starting again. Except it didn't go quite right. It got started, then people thought it needed to be bigger so went somewhere else.
The New City, as it became known, was not much bigger in terms of blocks, but on flatter and better ground. It started quite nicely with walls (that later got a little out of hand and look a bit odd) and a few paths and such... then it got very out of control. Temples (big ones) dominated parts of the city, a fully functional beach was built but the housing took the form of a single hotel. A few other builds were placed, but nothing resembling a city was built... there was no flow or theme, just a set of buildings in a wall.
One player did manage to do something I found amazing, and build a working telegraph system from the Settlement to the New City. It spanned some thousand blocks and went right of rapture, and carried a Morse code signal.
In the end I must admit I was frustrated by the disorder of the cities (except El Adira which was exactly what I was thinking, except in a desert) and so I built my own. Draccrest was a rather large 150x150 block city that was a single solid mass of buildings. It took quite a long time, each building taking around an hour to complete because I filled them all with a mass of tricks such as redstone doors, secret passageways and even a whole black market (covered in black wool).
On the building front things went well, work progressed rapidly and the map became quickly populated with very interesting things. On the player front it was a little different, some people did things wrong as a one off, some kept pushing lightly. A group of people who knew each other in real life kept messing with each others builds. I didn't really have much of a problem if it was good natured messing, but a few times it got a little out of hand, and several times I thought that had they been doing it to someone who was't "in on it" I'd have handed out bans. What was I to do? They were quite happy to do it to each other, they were messing around in a good natured and friendly way... was that still griefing?
In the end I decided it wasn't, but cautioned them to tone it down a bit. One of them did have a habit of being a bit of a mega-troll though. Remember the TnT canyon? The player has become a form of server myth now, people say that you've "done a [player]" when someone blows something up. He also had a habit of drawing phallus in the world rather largely so that they'd show up on the map. I had warned him a few times about it as the maps (and server) are supposed to be "Family Friendly". I don't mind people swearing or insulting as long as they know everyone present is over 16, but we have a few players who are under (around the 12 mark) so nothing rude can be left around, like in signs/maps.
This player decided it would be funny to try and troll me a few times about "building a phallus" and eventually I had enough, and I thought this time he really had. When he started I made him a promise, if he did it again I would lock him in a bedrock phallus without any way of getting out. This time I did. He wasn't happy. He only spent about half an hour in it, but it was more the warning that was there.
By this time the server was big, and I was doing a lot of work... it was taking more and more time each day to keep things running, and stuff kept falling through the cracks. Nothing major, just things like mods failing, permissions messing up in small ways. All of it was fixable, but it took more and more time. Eventually I had an idea.
I opened up to ask for help, any of the players (or not even players) could give me a hand with something and gain the Godling rank, a sub-branch of the Administrator rank. They could basically do anything on the server, with the promise they would be good.
The first player to offer help was the infamous TnTer himself. He wanted to help out on the website, and I'll admit I initially didn't trust him. He'd done a lot of things to make me not trust him, so I was hesitant. I did give him the chance, and to date he has been a great help.
Shortly afterwards another player, one of the longest running, helped me run a facebook group for the server. Things started leveling out a bit, but again I found I wasn't playing minecraft much, or at all, and I'm still not.
Then came the dreaded 1.8 announcement. We started planning and plotting. As a group it was decided that the map should be reset for 1.8, partly because of the new terrain generation features, but mostly because it was getting cluttered and we needed a fresh start. Things happened.
We thought the best way to get a new map "in character" would be an apocalypse. It would give up the chance to go underground and emerge into a new world. That was the plan. We built ourselves a Glowstone Reactor, MASSIVE thing... then we left a few problems with it. One of the coolant towers leaked into the ocean, and we corrupted the ground around it to "poison" the landscape. Then other players joined in. The landscape was scarred, the trees "petrified" (turned to stone, literally) and massive meteor storms happened in the cities. Builds were burnt, and people really got into the spirit of the thing! Some was just destruction, but some of it was more controlled decay.
The best bit was The Bunker. One player built a mansion house with a small bunker under it. I say small; it wasn't. Not at all. It had two levels, about 10 rooms, storage, crafting rooms, a meeting room, a full infirmary and a stronghold. It was all underground and well protected. Then other people got their hands on it and it got bigger still. More rooms were added, a large store for a boat (don't ask), a swimming pool and saunas, a Spleef arena (a minecraft sport) and food/water supplies. It was fantastic.
Then 1.8 came out, and the server was shut down. We all retreated into the bunker.
Over the next week or so the server was down, I force generated a world 4000x4000 blocks (which took a while to learn to do) and then used MCEdit to pull builds out of the old server and place them in the new one. There were only a few that were being saved; Rapture, El Adira, the Space Cannon and the Bunker (obviously). I dropped them into the world (quite messily in some cases) and "decayed" them. Rapture was inside a mountain, El Adira had layers of sand on top of it...
We began playing a 1.8 server for a while. There was fun, problems, mischief and mayhem... but that was all a fortnight ago, so I'll leave the story there for now. In the next installment it'll be the 1.9 server up (I'm upgrading tomorrow), the trouble with fast releases on a server and getting money or not.
I'm interested to hear about any of your experiences, have you played 1.8/1.9 yet? What do you think about them?
Ciao for now,
~Longeye~
RECAP!
*Woobly dissolve effect with added spinning*
The server was set up, there were a few minor problems along the way with player behavior and I was both perplexed by the popularity and amazed by the builds.
*Woobly- yeah what he said.*
The state of the server right now is this; I have a brand new map updated for version 1.8, on Friday I'll be making an update for 1.9 including generating a new map. I have 30 registered players, of which 15 are regular, and currently 3 more in talks on the "waiting list" (oh yeah, I have one of them now). I've got a set of mods, no permissions system and a bit of a headache.
Let's pull back a bit and go over this. Since last time things worked perfectly, the server grew at a good rate and nothing went really wrong. There were hiccups with some mods, they either didn't want to work or had bugs and such. I very quickly found a set that did work and stuck with it. The permissions system also had a few bugs, sometimes a player wouldn't be allowed on and sometimes it would allow people to do things they shouldn't. More on this later.
The builds? They were simply amazing. After Rapture we all went our separate ways. Some of up built smaller projects, some bigger. The end result was too big to talk about, there were thousands. A few of note would be a scale model of the titanic, El Adira, a city that was MASSIVE and built mainly by one player with assistance from a few others sometimes... There was Serenity (a personal favorite) and a working railway system... mansions, housing, mines, underground conglomerates and more that even I didn't know about! I did my best to keep up to date with the builds, but I could do it.
We decided after a while to rebuild the Settlement as it stood. We thought it had become a bit sprawling for the starting point, and it needed a makeover. This took the form of BURNING a lot of it (fun) and starting again. Except it didn't go quite right. It got started, then people thought it needed to be bigger so went somewhere else.
The New City, as it became known, was not much bigger in terms of blocks, but on flatter and better ground. It started quite nicely with walls (that later got a little out of hand and look a bit odd) and a few paths and such... then it got very out of control. Temples (big ones) dominated parts of the city, a fully functional beach was built but the housing took the form of a single hotel. A few other builds were placed, but nothing resembling a city was built... there was no flow or theme, just a set of buildings in a wall.
One player did manage to do something I found amazing, and build a working telegraph system from the Settlement to the New City. It spanned some thousand blocks and went right of rapture, and carried a Morse code signal.
In the end I must admit I was frustrated by the disorder of the cities (except El Adira which was exactly what I was thinking, except in a desert) and so I built my own. Draccrest was a rather large 150x150 block city that was a single solid mass of buildings. It took quite a long time, each building taking around an hour to complete because I filled them all with a mass of tricks such as redstone doors, secret passageways and even a whole black market (covered in black wool).
On the building front things went well, work progressed rapidly and the map became quickly populated with very interesting things. On the player front it was a little different, some people did things wrong as a one off, some kept pushing lightly. A group of people who knew each other in real life kept messing with each others builds. I didn't really have much of a problem if it was good natured messing, but a few times it got a little out of hand, and several times I thought that had they been doing it to someone who was't "in on it" I'd have handed out bans. What was I to do? They were quite happy to do it to each other, they were messing around in a good natured and friendly way... was that still griefing?
In the end I decided it wasn't, but cautioned them to tone it down a bit. One of them did have a habit of being a bit of a mega-troll though. Remember the TnT canyon? The player has become a form of server myth now, people say that you've "done a [player]" when someone blows something up. He also had a habit of drawing phallus in the world rather largely so that they'd show up on the map. I had warned him a few times about it as the maps (and server) are supposed to be "Family Friendly". I don't mind people swearing or insulting as long as they know everyone present is over 16, but we have a few players who are under (around the 12 mark) so nothing rude can be left around, like in signs/maps.
This player decided it would be funny to try and troll me a few times about "building a phallus" and eventually I had enough, and I thought this time he really had. When he started I made him a promise, if he did it again I would lock him in a bedrock phallus without any way of getting out. This time I did. He wasn't happy. He only spent about half an hour in it, but it was more the warning that was there.
By this time the server was big, and I was doing a lot of work... it was taking more and more time each day to keep things running, and stuff kept falling through the cracks. Nothing major, just things like mods failing, permissions messing up in small ways. All of it was fixable, but it took more and more time. Eventually I had an idea.
I opened up to ask for help, any of the players (or not even players) could give me a hand with something and gain the Godling rank, a sub-branch of the Administrator rank. They could basically do anything on the server, with the promise they would be good.
The first player to offer help was the infamous TnTer himself. He wanted to help out on the website, and I'll admit I initially didn't trust him. He'd done a lot of things to make me not trust him, so I was hesitant. I did give him the chance, and to date he has been a great help.
Shortly afterwards another player, one of the longest running, helped me run a facebook group for the server. Things started leveling out a bit, but again I found I wasn't playing minecraft much, or at all, and I'm still not.
Then came the dreaded 1.8 announcement. We started planning and plotting. As a group it was decided that the map should be reset for 1.8, partly because of the new terrain generation features, but mostly because it was getting cluttered and we needed a fresh start. Things happened.
We thought the best way to get a new map "in character" would be an apocalypse. It would give up the chance to go underground and emerge into a new world. That was the plan. We built ourselves a Glowstone Reactor, MASSIVE thing... then we left a few problems with it. One of the coolant towers leaked into the ocean, and we corrupted the ground around it to "poison" the landscape. Then other players joined in. The landscape was scarred, the trees "petrified" (turned to stone, literally) and massive meteor storms happened in the cities. Builds were burnt, and people really got into the spirit of the thing! Some was just destruction, but some of it was more controlled decay.
The best bit was The Bunker. One player built a mansion house with a small bunker under it. I say small; it wasn't. Not at all. It had two levels, about 10 rooms, storage, crafting rooms, a meeting room, a full infirmary and a stronghold. It was all underground and well protected. Then other people got their hands on it and it got bigger still. More rooms were added, a large store for a boat (don't ask), a swimming pool and saunas, a Spleef arena (a minecraft sport) and food/water supplies. It was fantastic.
Then 1.8 came out, and the server was shut down. We all retreated into the bunker.
Over the next week or so the server was down, I force generated a world 4000x4000 blocks (which took a while to learn to do) and then used MCEdit to pull builds out of the old server and place them in the new one. There were only a few that were being saved; Rapture, El Adira, the Space Cannon and the Bunker (obviously). I dropped them into the world (quite messily in some cases) and "decayed" them. Rapture was inside a mountain, El Adira had layers of sand on top of it...
We began playing a 1.8 server for a while. There was fun, problems, mischief and mayhem... but that was all a fortnight ago, so I'll leave the story there for now. In the next installment it'll be the 1.9 server up (I'm upgrading tomorrow), the trouble with fast releases on a server and getting money or not.
I'm interested to hear about any of your experiences, have you played 1.8/1.9 yet? What do you think about them?
Ciao for now,
~Longeye~
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Turning this thing AROUND!
Okay, I'm not a very good blogger. I never write things, a rather major impairment I feel. Mostly I think it's because my blog was so undefined that there were too many possibilities for me, and so I did nothing. Partially it's because I'm lazy. Either way, that's changing!
I'm going to switch this blog from a blog about "STUFF" to a blog about "Dorks and Dorkettes!". What's the difference? Well I'm not doing game reviews for one. I will do reviews of products I use in the Dorks and Dorkettes management, and I'll also do reviews on things that I use to make things that I use in Dorks and Dorkettes management (for example the nice little java tool I wrote that orders my thoughts... more on that later).
All in all I'll be trying to post more often, but I might not. I'll do my best, but the aim of this will be to try and do this whole blog thing better. I'll certain update the Server post I made and fix the spelling mistakes (I'm much more into reading things through before posting now) and I'll also be posting another one, of what's happened several months on.
With the Dorks and Dorkettes domain comes a lot; a website, a server, a blog, shortly coming an Android App section, D&D stuff, RP stuff, Steampunk stuff and Minecraft stuff. There is more, but it's a bit late here now so I won't go into it here. I will later though. I'm going to post things here that might not make sense to all of you as well, possibly a post about the RP I run, or another I'm involved in. If a post contains information you won't get, I'll be sure to put an opening paragraph stating that it contains stuff that isn't relevant to everyone and I'll also direct you to somewhere you can find out if you wish to get involved and make it relevant to you.
Hopefully this makes sense, I'm going to do my best to keep this place a little tidier and to post things here that interest me now, but that are focused at the Dorks and Dorkettes space. That should give me some aid in writing, and also keep me a bit more motivated. We'll see how it goes.
Ciao for now,
~Longeye~
I'm going to switch this blog from a blog about "STUFF" to a blog about "Dorks and Dorkettes!". What's the difference? Well I'm not doing game reviews for one. I will do reviews of products I use in the Dorks and Dorkettes management, and I'll also do reviews on things that I use to make things that I use in Dorks and Dorkettes management (for example the nice little java tool I wrote that orders my thoughts... more on that later).
All in all I'll be trying to post more often, but I might not. I'll do my best, but the aim of this will be to try and do this whole blog thing better. I'll certain update the Server post I made and fix the spelling mistakes (I'm much more into reading things through before posting now) and I'll also be posting another one, of what's happened several months on.
With the Dorks and Dorkettes domain comes a lot; a website, a server, a blog, shortly coming an Android App section, D&D stuff, RP stuff, Steampunk stuff and Minecraft stuff. There is more, but it's a bit late here now so I won't go into it here. I will later though. I'm going to post things here that might not make sense to all of you as well, possibly a post about the RP I run, or another I'm involved in. If a post contains information you won't get, I'll be sure to put an opening paragraph stating that it contains stuff that isn't relevant to everyone and I'll also direct you to somewhere you can find out if you wish to get involved and make it relevant to you.
Hopefully this makes sense, I'm going to do my best to keep this place a little tidier and to post things here that interest me now, but that are focused at the Dorks and Dorkettes space. That should give me some aid in writing, and also keep me a bit more motivated. We'll see how it goes.
Ciao for now,
~Longeye~
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
Starting a Game Server
Well I did say I might do this, and you’ve forced my hand! Back story!
*woobly dissolve effect*
About “some time ago” I decided I quite liked the game of Minecraft. It’s good fun, building stuff and putting it to the test. I then decided that multi-player was fun, but that Minecraft could be so much better withthe removal of ‘Griefers’, people who intentionally destroy things.
With this in mind I turned my thoughts to a forum I frequent, Brass Goggles. It is a favourite of mine as it is full of polite and well mannered people, who resolve their arguments through honest discussion. It’s amazing, to say the least. I thought that it might just be possible to find people on this forum who would want to play Minecraft with me! Two or three people maybe, who could join in and we could build some of those ‘Epic level’ structures you see Notch occasionally post about.
So I started a general interest thread, and after a while realised there would be enough people to make it worth my while, so set about setting one up.
*woobly dissolve effect*
That’s that done. Now onto the actual writing bit.
I started off doing a little bit of looking around, seeing how I could go about this. Seeing as this was only about 3-4 months ago I was already starting to get into computers in a more technical way and was planning how much it would take to set up a server of my own to run (literally a box in my house that I would host from). It takes a lot. Yes it’s possible, but I didn’t have the income to set it up at the start. Instead I looked at 3rd party hosting.
I’ll admit at this point I was naive and I found one company via facebook and went with it. It was a silly thing to do, as three weeks later I had been charged but not received any server space. I opened several ‘Tickets’ with them and got nothing, eventually opening a paypal dispute and getting my money back that way.
Shortly after (after doing some real research) I found ServerCraft1. I found their prices reasonable and set up a Tier 2 server (1-8 people). At this point I had very little idea how it all worked so I basically blundered through the setup and build a MINE!
Yes, all that time and energy, and I built a mine. But that’s okay, because within moments another player (who later became an Administrator as well... did I spoil the ending?) logged on, and together we built a mine that reached down to bedrock layer and back again. A gigantic staircase three wide, four high and one hundred and fifty deep! Using the stone we built our crude shelters, and then the same player went and built a wall surrounding the entire area we dubbed the Settlement. Our first home in Minecraft. It was fantastic.
Over the next few days more people logged on. The first player, GG, went to build himself a Mountain Manor... a HUGE work that he built entirely by hand, and to this day is one of the biggest single person structures built.
Other people built things like a large Dock area, a telescope, the start of an Airship Mooring point, and Airship to match... it snowballed very quickly.
Soon we had structures going up left right and center, a communal mine that we placed all our excess materials in was developed and put to good use... Things were going well.
Suddenly, more people wanted to join! I was, I’ll be honest, a little confused. Why were people signing up to the Forum JUST to play on my server?
Then I realised, up to that point the rules had been very lax and yet (here’s the key point) Nothing Had Gone Wrong! If you don't play Minecraft you might not get the enormity, but I wasn’t watching every move everyone made, and yet nobody was blowing stuff up! The server worked, and was played by genuinely nice people! It was amazing.
After this point new members joined quite quickly, even people from the Forum I had watched and respected for a long time. It went well. There was lag issues, the server wasn’t powerful enough to cope, but we managed.
It was around this point I discovered Mods. Up to now I’d modded minecraft on my own. I’d either downloaded and installed them, or simply written a few using a handy piece of software. I thought that for a mod to work it HAD to be on the client (the part of the program on your computer). Then I discovered Bukkit. This was a revolutionary (for me) bit of kit, that allowed ANY Bukkit mods to be installed on the server! It was really amazing, and I spent hours pouring over their archives to find mods that would make my server awesome! I found things I didn’t even think were possible, and grabbed all I could! At one point my server was running around 15 mods, some big like the Stargate Mod and other small like the Torch Missile Mod (lets you throw torches at walls).
Then the server had problems. It began to crash a lot, and data was being lost. This wasn’t good. I spent hours pouring over server logs, checking code in the various mods and testing endlessly... Eventually, and after a brief conversation with ServerCraft, I realized it was because too many mods were working at once, and it couldn’t cope. From that point on I was limited to WorldEdit, CraftBook and a few other more minor ones2. This was a blow, but we managed somehow!
There was, however, a problem. It was bound to happen, and it eventually did. There were disagreements.
Up until now there had been only a few minor “I wanted that bit of land” and “Oh I’m sorry, just knock that down then and I’ll build over here.” moments. It wasn’t any single person’s fault, but when two people clash sometimes they just rebound over and over, until eventually things are said and done that shouldn’t be.
This is what happened. One of the people involved happened to be my brother, and you better believe I was Furious at him for it. Not all of it was his fault, but a great deal he could have avoided if he’d been a bit more careful, or nicer. Still it was time to step in and be an Administrator (capital A for important things). This was a bit of an odd moment for me. I was actually quite worried that either I’d be too hard enough on everyone and it would happen again, or worse I would be too hard and mess things up. To this day I still don’t know how well I did.
There were a few other problems, on player blew the equivalent of the Grand Canyon in the floor (I’m really not joking, it was enormous) and I was angry for a while, but after a few rule changes and a quite word here and there it’s now an in-joke that we have a resident demolitions expert! Seriously if you’re reading this you know who you are and put that damned TnT down this instant! Yes, I can see you hiding it behind your back, put it Down! No don’t put a lever on top of it...
Anyway, the server had hit a rough patch. There were now more people on that I had ever thought could be the case, twenty registered players! That was a lot! It had reached the point where everyone could get along on their own, and it needed a few rules and guides to make sure that people could say “you can’t do that, because this says so” rather than “you can’t do that because I say so”. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one that stops a lot of arguments. A lot of the rules were decided by committee anyway.
After a little bit (abut a week) it smoothed out, and the server returned to a happy flow. Since then we haven’t had a single problem of that nature. Nobody has fallen out, nobody has broken a rule (in a serious way...) and everything worked out well.
Rapture. This can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but when one person suggested it it meant a community project.
We decided to build Rapture based on the city from BioShock. Now we knew we were never going to get a scale or even lookalike version, so instead went for the ‘feel’ of the city, and worked from there up. It took about a month, and God help us would have taken a lot longer if we hadn’t set a deadline. The end result is some thousand blocks in each direction (except up) and completely submerged. It’s awesome. Seriously, I can’t describe how amazing it was to see a city we’d all worked so hard on just vanish underwater, and now when I fly over it I can still see parts of it there! It’s fantastic!
This was the moment I realised we now had a community, not just a group of players. We’d all banded together and (bar a few minor annoyances of “I’m still building here!”) built something amazing! There was no way we could have done it on our own, it was too big, but together we had an Epic Build.
Then came the website. I already owned the DorksandDorkettes domain space with a few sites on it, so I expanded it to house a minecraft site as well. I added lists of commands, the rules, player lists, links to various bits and over the weeks I added tutorials, build pages and now just started adding competitions!
There was so much stuff! It took hours a day to get it all there, and I still spend at least an hour every evening going over everything, making sure it all works and updating what needs to be updated.
This was the moment I realised just how much effort it took to run a server this big (and 20 people IS big for me!). For a while I was constantly exhausted whenever I started, I began to lose motivation to actually do anything, and I hadn’t built a thing for weeks!
Then I was given two blessings.
The first was the players. They were fantastic, friendly and active and dear Lord did they build. In one evening a pair of them built a new warehouse... it was twenty times the size of the old, categorized and impenetrable. I was awestruck. It was shortly after that (and the submarines, and the bridges, and the docks, and those damned HUGE ships... the resort, the designer houses... the list really does go on and on... I can’t list everything here) that I realised I was having fun just being online, looking at other people’s buildings and talking to everyone. This helped bring back my enthusiasm for Minecraft and that’s currently where I’m at now.
Throughout this journey I’ve learnt a lot. I’ve learnt how to set up and run a Servercraft Minecraft server. That’s rather specific knowledge I’ll admit, but I’ve also learnt how to help people, how to resolve arguments and ease tensions in what, I hope anyway, is a reasonable manner. I’ve learnt my own limits and what annoys me, and learnt to control that anger when it does pop up and treat myself just like any other player as well when I’m Administrating things3.
The most important thing I’ve learnt though? Work. Work work work work work. It’s always there, it always needs doing and it never sleeps. When you think it’s done, it isn’t... you’ve just missed something that still needs doing.
I learnt how much it takes to run a server. Updating the website, keeping up to date on the forum, thinking of new things to add, making sure everyone was getting along and having a presence in all of this takes its toll. Even now whilst I type this I have the Server Monitor screen open and I can see that there are a couple of people online building something. If something were to go wrong, I’m already watching so I’ll know right away and be able to fix it.
Sometimes I think “why am I doing this? Is this actually fun, because that’s why I started this!” but I realise that yes... it is fun. Odd as it sounds, it is fun. Keeping everything running, seeing people enjoy it and seeing it all work as I’d hoped it would isn’t just fun, it’s amazing!
Sometimes I do get tired of it and take a break, but forcing myself to go back and just do it has been a great help. I think that just by setting this up and running it I’ve changed, not dramatically of course, but I think I’ve found a new side to ‘work’ that is enjoyable... the end result. I’d never appreciated it as much before this server, and I have all the wonderful people of Brass Goggles to thank for it!
I think that’s about it for now, I'll probably get round to that ACII review I’ve been promising, but then again I might go off on a complete tangent and talk about Mods and their place in games (3 guesses which I chose!)...
Have you set up a server? Or a club, or game or anything like that? How did it go? What were your experiences? Did you have troubles?
Failing that are you a gamer? What are your experiences of servers from your point of view? I’d like to hear all of this! Well, I’ll see you all later.
Ciao for now,
~Longeye~
1I don’t normally like plugs, but at this point I feel I should say that ServerCraft have been brilliant. They get back to me within 24 hours, they’re polite and helpful, have offered tips here and there and recently upgraded their file-transfer system to allow complete control over everything. They are fantastic and if you are setting up a server yourself I highly recommend them.
2We did have a REALLY great mod at one point called MoveCraft, that allowed us to build ships, boats and anything else we could think of (including drills) and have them move around! Unfortunately this was partly to blame for all the crashes, as it used a LOT of memory a lot of the time.
3This may seem like an odd concept, but think of it logically... I have two persona's when I play. One is Player Longeye... he builds things and engages in banter with people. The other is Administrator Longeye. He moderates things and hands out punishments, fixing things where he can. What if Player Longeye’s house is blown up? Player Longeye wants to go blow up that guys house, but Administrator Longeye knows he can’t do that. That’s the idea behind the Administrating myself, as it were.
*woobly dissolve effect*
About “some time ago” I decided I quite liked the game of Minecraft. It’s good fun, building stuff and putting it to the test. I then decided that multi-player was fun, but that Minecraft could be so much better withthe removal of ‘Griefers’, people who intentionally destroy things.
With this in mind I turned my thoughts to a forum I frequent, Brass Goggles. It is a favourite of mine as it is full of polite and well mannered people, who resolve their arguments through honest discussion. It’s amazing, to say the least. I thought that it might just be possible to find people on this forum who would want to play Minecraft with me! Two or three people maybe, who could join in and we could build some of those ‘Epic level’ structures you see Notch occasionally post about.
So I started a general interest thread, and after a while realised there would be enough people to make it worth my while, so set about setting one up.
*woobly dissolve effect*
That’s that done. Now onto the actual writing bit.
I started off doing a little bit of looking around, seeing how I could go about this. Seeing as this was only about 3-4 months ago I was already starting to get into computers in a more technical way and was planning how much it would take to set up a server of my own to run (literally a box in my house that I would host from). It takes a lot. Yes it’s possible, but I didn’t have the income to set it up at the start. Instead I looked at 3rd party hosting.
I’ll admit at this point I was naive and I found one company via facebook and went with it. It was a silly thing to do, as three weeks later I had been charged but not received any server space. I opened several ‘Tickets’ with them and got nothing, eventually opening a paypal dispute and getting my money back that way.
Shortly after (after doing some real research) I found ServerCraft1. I found their prices reasonable and set up a Tier 2 server (1-8 people). At this point I had very little idea how it all worked so I basically blundered through the setup and build a MINE!
Yes, all that time and energy, and I built a mine. But that’s okay, because within moments another player (who later became an Administrator as well... did I spoil the ending?) logged on, and together we built a mine that reached down to bedrock layer and back again. A gigantic staircase three wide, four high and one hundred and fifty deep! Using the stone we built our crude shelters, and then the same player went and built a wall surrounding the entire area we dubbed the Settlement. Our first home in Minecraft. It was fantastic.
Over the next few days more people logged on. The first player, GG, went to build himself a Mountain Manor... a HUGE work that he built entirely by hand, and to this day is one of the biggest single person structures built.
Other people built things like a large Dock area, a telescope, the start of an Airship Mooring point, and Airship to match... it snowballed very quickly.
Soon we had structures going up left right and center, a communal mine that we placed all our excess materials in was developed and put to good use... Things were going well.
Suddenly, more people wanted to join! I was, I’ll be honest, a little confused. Why were people signing up to the Forum JUST to play on my server?
Then I realised, up to that point the rules had been very lax and yet (here’s the key point) Nothing Had Gone Wrong! If you don't play Minecraft you might not get the enormity, but I wasn’t watching every move everyone made, and yet nobody was blowing stuff up! The server worked, and was played by genuinely nice people! It was amazing.
After this point new members joined quite quickly, even people from the Forum I had watched and respected for a long time. It went well. There was lag issues, the server wasn’t powerful enough to cope, but we managed.
It was around this point I discovered Mods. Up to now I’d modded minecraft on my own. I’d either downloaded and installed them, or simply written a few using a handy piece of software. I thought that for a mod to work it HAD to be on the client (the part of the program on your computer). Then I discovered Bukkit. This was a revolutionary (for me) bit of kit, that allowed ANY Bukkit mods to be installed on the server! It was really amazing, and I spent hours pouring over their archives to find mods that would make my server awesome! I found things I didn’t even think were possible, and grabbed all I could! At one point my server was running around 15 mods, some big like the Stargate Mod and other small like the Torch Missile Mod (lets you throw torches at walls).
Then the server had problems. It began to crash a lot, and data was being lost. This wasn’t good. I spent hours pouring over server logs, checking code in the various mods and testing endlessly... Eventually, and after a brief conversation with ServerCraft, I realized it was because too many mods were working at once, and it couldn’t cope. From that point on I was limited to WorldEdit, CraftBook and a few other more minor ones2. This was a blow, but we managed somehow!
There was, however, a problem. It was bound to happen, and it eventually did. There were disagreements.
Up until now there had been only a few minor “I wanted that bit of land” and “Oh I’m sorry, just knock that down then and I’ll build over here.” moments. It wasn’t any single person’s fault, but when two people clash sometimes they just rebound over and over, until eventually things are said and done that shouldn’t be.
This is what happened. One of the people involved happened to be my brother, and you better believe I was Furious at him for it. Not all of it was his fault, but a great deal he could have avoided if he’d been a bit more careful, or nicer. Still it was time to step in and be an Administrator (capital A for important things). This was a bit of an odd moment for me. I was actually quite worried that either I’d be too hard enough on everyone and it would happen again, or worse I would be too hard and mess things up. To this day I still don’t know how well I did.
There were a few other problems, on player blew the equivalent of the Grand Canyon in the floor (I’m really not joking, it was enormous) and I was angry for a while, but after a few rule changes and a quite word here and there it’s now an in-joke that we have a resident demolitions expert! Seriously if you’re reading this you know who you are and put that damned TnT down this instant! Yes, I can see you hiding it behind your back, put it Down! No don’t put a lever on top of it...
Anyway, the server had hit a rough patch. There were now more people on that I had ever thought could be the case, twenty registered players! That was a lot! It had reached the point where everyone could get along on their own, and it needed a few rules and guides to make sure that people could say “you can’t do that, because this says so” rather than “you can’t do that because I say so”. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one that stops a lot of arguments. A lot of the rules were decided by committee anyway.
After a little bit (abut a week) it smoothed out, and the server returned to a happy flow. Since then we haven’t had a single problem of that nature. Nobody has fallen out, nobody has broken a rule (in a serious way...) and everything worked out well.
Rapture. This can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but when one person suggested it it meant a community project.
We decided to build Rapture based on the city from BioShock. Now we knew we were never going to get a scale or even lookalike version, so instead went for the ‘feel’ of the city, and worked from there up. It took about a month, and God help us would have taken a lot longer if we hadn’t set a deadline. The end result is some thousand blocks in each direction (except up) and completely submerged. It’s awesome. Seriously, I can’t describe how amazing it was to see a city we’d all worked so hard on just vanish underwater, and now when I fly over it I can still see parts of it there! It’s fantastic!
This was the moment I realised we now had a community, not just a group of players. We’d all banded together and (bar a few minor annoyances of “I’m still building here!”) built something amazing! There was no way we could have done it on our own, it was too big, but together we had an Epic Build.
Then came the website. I already owned the DorksandDorkettes domain space with a few sites on it, so I expanded it to house a minecraft site as well. I added lists of commands, the rules, player lists, links to various bits and over the weeks I added tutorials, build pages and now just started adding competitions!
There was so much stuff! It took hours a day to get it all there, and I still spend at least an hour every evening going over everything, making sure it all works and updating what needs to be updated.
This was the moment I realised just how much effort it took to run a server this big (and 20 people IS big for me!). For a while I was constantly exhausted whenever I started, I began to lose motivation to actually do anything, and I hadn’t built a thing for weeks!
Then I was given two blessings.
The first was the players. They were fantastic, friendly and active and dear Lord did they build. In one evening a pair of them built a new warehouse... it was twenty times the size of the old, categorized and impenetrable. I was awestruck. It was shortly after that (and the submarines, and the bridges, and the docks, and those damned HUGE ships... the resort, the designer houses... the list really does go on and on... I can’t list everything here) that I realised I was having fun just being online, looking at other people’s buildings and talking to everyone. This helped bring back my enthusiasm for Minecraft and that’s currently where I’m at now.
Throughout this journey I’ve learnt a lot. I’ve learnt how to set up and run a Servercraft Minecraft server. That’s rather specific knowledge I’ll admit, but I’ve also learnt how to help people, how to resolve arguments and ease tensions in what, I hope anyway, is a reasonable manner. I’ve learnt my own limits and what annoys me, and learnt to control that anger when it does pop up and treat myself just like any other player as well when I’m Administrating things3.
The most important thing I’ve learnt though? Work. Work work work work work. It’s always there, it always needs doing and it never sleeps. When you think it’s done, it isn’t... you’ve just missed something that still needs doing.
I learnt how much it takes to run a server. Updating the website, keeping up to date on the forum, thinking of new things to add, making sure everyone was getting along and having a presence in all of this takes its toll. Even now whilst I type this I have the Server Monitor screen open and I can see that there are a couple of people online building something. If something were to go wrong, I’m already watching so I’ll know right away and be able to fix it.
Sometimes I think “why am I doing this? Is this actually fun, because that’s why I started this!” but I realise that yes... it is fun. Odd as it sounds, it is fun. Keeping everything running, seeing people enjoy it and seeing it all work as I’d hoped it would isn’t just fun, it’s amazing!
Sometimes I do get tired of it and take a break, but forcing myself to go back and just do it has been a great help. I think that just by setting this up and running it I’ve changed, not dramatically of course, but I think I’ve found a new side to ‘work’ that is enjoyable... the end result. I’d never appreciated it as much before this server, and I have all the wonderful people of Brass Goggles to thank for it!
I think that’s about it for now, I'll probably get round to that ACII review I’ve been promising, but then again I might go off on a complete tangent and talk about Mods and their place in games (3 guesses which I chose!)...
Have you set up a server? Or a club, or game or anything like that? How did it go? What were your experiences? Did you have troubles?
Failing that are you a gamer? What are your experiences of servers from your point of view? I’d like to hear all of this! Well, I’ll see you all later.
Ciao for now,
~Longeye~
1I don’t normally like plugs, but at this point I feel I should say that ServerCraft have been brilliant. They get back to me within 24 hours, they’re polite and helpful, have offered tips here and there and recently upgraded their file-transfer system to allow complete control over everything. They are fantastic and if you are setting up a server yourself I highly recommend them.
2We did have a REALLY great mod at one point called MoveCraft, that allowed us to build ships, boats and anything else we could think of (including drills) and have them move around! Unfortunately this was partly to blame for all the crashes, as it used a LOT of memory a lot of the time.
3This may seem like an odd concept, but think of it logically... I have two persona's when I play. One is Player Longeye... he builds things and engages in banter with people. The other is Administrator Longeye. He moderates things and hands out punishments, fixing things where he can. What if Player Longeye’s house is blown up? Player Longeye wants to go blow up that guys house, but Administrator Longeye knows he can’t do that. That’s the idea behind the Administrating myself, as it were.
Sunday, 19 June 2011
About me, about this
Hello there,
This is my first entry, and I believe it to be customary to introduce myself and what I'm going to be doing. That said, here I go!
I am Augustus Longeye. "Wait!" I hear you cry, "Surely that's not your real name?" and the answer is No, it is not. I go by a few names online, but the name I most associate with and the name I do most stuff with (i.e. have a large enough profile) is Longeye's. Longeye was actually a character I wrote for a short (steampunk) story a while ago, but liked him too much to put him through all the tortures I had planned for his second story, and therefore kept him for myself. Fun!
Now what do I do? Why I study! I'm studying Psychology as a BSc but in my spare time I learn anything that catches my eye. At the moment this is programming languages (for those who care I'm working on Java primarily after going through HTML, JavaScript, C++ and Jython) but it is as liable to change as the English weather is!
Now what is the point of this blog? I thought long and hard about what sort of thing I wanted to add to the internet. I could do book reviews I read a lot so it would fit. I could go game reviews; I play games a LOT but don't have the money to keep up a successful game review blog. I could do a blog on technology! I like technology, it captures both my shiny-thing addiction and also my love of technical things that do stuff.
I declined each of these for one reason or another, but mostly because I wanted to do something unique (or at least rare!) for my blog. You get a hundred blogs all the same, what do you do? You have one that's different, you know what to go for. In the end I settled.
This blog will cover a variety of 'nerdy' things. It will include reviews of games, reviews of books, reviews of programming languages (though these will be very infrequent), posts on technology, new and old, posts on the state of the world and posts generally on things I find interesting. I hope some of these will also interest you!
I'll try to keep things in categories as much as I can, but who knows where this will go? I certainly don't!
I hope this has cleared up who I am, what I'm doing and maybe even a little into why I'm doing it. Maybe it hasn't. One thing is for sure though, I ramble! You'll notice this quickly, but I do get to points as well.
If you have any suggestions about something you'd like me to do/review/look at then please send them in. I'm always happy to learn new things.
For now,
~Longeye~
This is my first entry, and I believe it to be customary to introduce myself and what I'm going to be doing. That said, here I go!
I am Augustus Longeye. "Wait!" I hear you cry, "Surely that's not your real name?" and the answer is No, it is not. I go by a few names online, but the name I most associate with and the name I do most stuff with (i.e. have a large enough profile) is Longeye's. Longeye was actually a character I wrote for a short (steampunk) story a while ago, but liked him too much to put him through all the tortures I had planned for his second story, and therefore kept him for myself. Fun!
Now what do I do? Why I study! I'm studying Psychology as a BSc but in my spare time I learn anything that catches my eye. At the moment this is programming languages (for those who care I'm working on Java primarily after going through HTML, JavaScript, C++ and Jython) but it is as liable to change as the English weather is!
Now what is the point of this blog? I thought long and hard about what sort of thing I wanted to add to the internet. I could do book reviews I read a lot so it would fit. I could go game reviews; I play games a LOT but don't have the money to keep up a successful game review blog. I could do a blog on technology! I like technology, it captures both my shiny-thing addiction and also my love of technical things that do stuff.
I declined each of these for one reason or another, but mostly because I wanted to do something unique (or at least rare!) for my blog. You get a hundred blogs all the same, what do you do? You have one that's different, you know what to go for. In the end I settled.
This blog will cover a variety of 'nerdy' things. It will include reviews of games, reviews of books, reviews of programming languages (though these will be very infrequent), posts on technology, new and old, posts on the state of the world and posts generally on things I find interesting. I hope some of these will also interest you!
I'll try to keep things in categories as much as I can, but who knows where this will go? I certainly don't!
I hope this has cleared up who I am, what I'm doing and maybe even a little into why I'm doing it. Maybe it hasn't. One thing is for sure though, I ramble! You'll notice this quickly, but I do get to points as well.
If you have any suggestions about something you'd like me to do/review/look at then please send them in. I'm always happy to learn new things.
For now,
~Longeye~
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