Author Archives: fdiv_bug

Windows Vista & the Ventrilo Overlay

Posted by on December 27, 2008 2 comments

I picked up a copy of Warhammer Online this past week, and have been quite enjoying it. Enjoying it enough that I’ve joined a guild. So far they seem to be a pretty decent, if somewhat sarcastic and crass, group of people; I should fit right in. They require the use of Ventrilo for voice chat, which is a pretty reasonable requirement for a guild that’s going to do PvP combat.

There are some quirks with Ventrilo and Vista, however, and I wanted to make mention of them here in the hopes that they might be useful to other people. Note that these tips were only tested with Warhammer Online and they may or may not apply to other games, and while this was done on 64-bit Vista, both Ventrilo and Warhammer Online were the 32-bit versions so they should behave the same on 32-bit Vista. Your mileage may vary.

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Why a PlayStation 3?

Posted by on March 11, 2008 No comments

This weekend I finally decided to throw my vote in to the next-generation console fight when I went and bought a PlayStation 3 (PS3). I picked up a pre-owned 40GB model from a local GameStop along with Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga and Burnout Paradise. I’d been thinking a while over which console interested me most, and which one offered the most compelling games, and here’s what it all boiled down to.

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In Soviet Russia, LiveJournal Blogs on You!

Posted by on December 5, 2007 1 comment

First off, apologies for this post’s title.  It had to be done, though.  On Monday, LiveJournal was sold to a Russian company.  When I first read about it, one eyebrow raised slightly, but I didn’t think much of it.  Then I started noticing comments coming in from my friends and colleagues talking about how they felt about it.

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A Couple of Links

Posted by on November 12, 2007 No comments

I don’t usually just post links, but these are too great to not share.

The Nerd Handbook
This explains so much about me and “my people” that it borders on the uncanny. Everyone who is dating, has ever dated, or is planning on dating a nerd/geek needs to read this.
Installing MySQL on Ubuntu
A sarcastic response to a post by Dan Benjamin about how to install the MySQL database on Mac OS X. It still floors me when Mac people talk about how great it is that you can install software by hand, from source. We got over that years and years ago in the Linux world, FreeBSD’s Ports has been a solid solution for many years as well, and they’re even getting past it in Solaris. Mac OS X has MacPorts and lots of people use it, but there’s still a great deal of software-management-by-hand done in that world.

64-bit Vista with an OEM Activation

Posted by on September 28, 2007 3 comments

I got a new Dell Latitude D630 recently, and I wanted to try using Windows Vista to see if I could get my work done with it. The short story is, I can, and it’s actually pretty nice. But there’s more to it than that.

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The Gold Tier Tournament

Posted by on September 16, 2007 No comments

Earlier today — well, yesterday as of the time I’m writing this — I went to my Friendly Local Game Store and participated in the Gold Tier tournament they were running for Magic: The Gathering. I was running a rather inexpensive Sliver deck and didn’t expect to do so well but to have some fun anyway. I took first place, and had lots of fun. The big prize was a box of booster packs of the forthcoming Lorwyn set, but I also got three packs of Tenth Edition, a rather decent duffel bag, a nice plastic deck box, and a Magic: The Gathering toboggan hat.

I’ve been playing Magic on and off for over ten years, and I’ve only ever made it past the second round of a tournament once or twice in my life. I love the game, but I’ve never considered myself to be a top player, even amongst the local player base. Maybe I need to reconsider my position on that.

I just wanted to thank Sci-Fi Genre for hosting the tournament, Wizards for continuing to make the game so engaging and entertaining long after people thought the fad would die, and mostly to the other players in the tournament for throwing their best games and best decks at me. It was an exhilarating blast, folks, and I look forward to seeing what Lorwyn has in store for us.

My New Phone

Posted by on June 30, 2007 No comments

Like lots of people I got a new phone yesterday. It’s sleek, high-tech, and has lots of cool features. It’s also not an iPhone. No, I got myself a Cingular 3125, running Windows Mobile 5.0. In fact, I don’t even want an iPhone. I’ll tell you why, by way of talking about what I’ve been doing with my phone.

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Live Resizing of RAID5 Arrays in Linux

Posted by on June 8, 2007 1 comment

A friend of mine asked about the benefits of software RAID versus hardware RAID in Linux, and I proceeded to voice my support for the former. It was then brought up that online resizing was one of her concerns, and I set about to figure out how to do just that. These instructions were crafted in a CentOS 5 virtual machine, and come with no warranty or guarantee of any sort; I put them here on the off chance that they might help someone.

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Scooters!

Posted by on May 28, 2007 10 comments

Since we’ll be moving soon, and I’ll be closer to work and able to traverse somewhat safer neighborhoods to get there, I’m thinking of getting a motor scooter. The gas mileage of some of these guys is nuts — 60+ MPG — and they’re safe, cool, and just downright fun. I realized that Durham is laid out such that one can get around to the major districts — ATC, Ninth Street, Downtown, New Hope Commons, Der Ãœbertarget — on surface streets, most of which have 35-45 MPH speed limits. If it worked out I’d sell my car, and that alone would cut down on my expenses just in insurance and taxes, not to mention fuel. There are a whole lot of options to choose from, though, and that’s where the trouble begins.

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Issue Trackers and Project Management

Posted by on May 20, 2007 1 comment

I’m going to be pushing a software project I’ve been working on out into the open source world sometime in the near future, so I’ve been considering what I want to use to keep track of the software’s development. I initially started by creating a RubyForge project for it, because the tool is written in Ruby and that’s just what you do with Ruby projects, but I’ve also been thinking about Trac and Launchpad.

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