Pith and Vinegar

I know, I haven’t updated this page in forever. I’ve been focusing on school. As a result, I’m currently on track to get 95% or better in all my classes. Exams are next week; I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Yesterday at 9am, people in my program were able to pick their timetable for next semester. My first class was at 10, and it generally takes me an hour to get to school. So the point when I got into class was my first chance to pick.

The schedule’s a lot more full than this semester has been; this semester I had four classes (technically five, but I was exempt from Communications). Next semester I have seven.

Anyhow, I was picking my timetable an hour after the gates opened. Part of the process included picking an elective. Options were: Art of the Western World, Children’s Literature, Video Games & Online Communities, War & Society: Through the Ages, Coping with Stress, Spanish for Nafta, Canadian Politics, Human Sexuality, Parallel Universes, and Powerful Pictures: Today’s Visual Clutter.

Video Games and Parallel Universes were both full. After an hour. Checking back now a day and a half later, Coping with Stress is also full.

So I picked Human Sexuality. It’s an interest of mine; we’ll see how that goes. My inner twelve-year-old is amused that the course code is SS169.

My latest obsession which I’ll forget about in six months is Star Wars: A New Hope – Revisited by faneditor adywan.

Adywan’s goal here was to complete the half-assed work that Lucasfilm did on the Special Edition, while culling the worst of George Lucas’ excesses. The idea was to better ensure that each movie flows better with the rest. Not everyone’s happy with his changes, of course, but as with most fanedits, this is the one that adywan wanted, so it’s the one he made.

So we’ve got continuity fixes: troopers that fall over now get shot before they do. Guns that fire lasers now have corresponding muzzle flashes, and guns with muzzle flashes now have lasers. Luke’s light saber is now a consistent width, and blue, instead of cycling between white, pale green, and blue. Vader’s light saber is red instead of pink. R2D2′s lights cycle between red and blue, like they do in the rest of the saga. Vader’s chest-plate lights blink. The furry hand that Obi-Wan chops off in the Cantina scene is now the hand of one of the characters actually present.

We’ve got the trimming of Lucasisms: no more superfluous Mos Eisley droids acting funny for the camera. No more rontos running through the middle of every take. The scene with Jabba which Lucas added back in has been taken back out. Solo stepping on Jabba’s tail makes Jabba look non-threatening, and all of the pertinent information from that scene is already covered with Greedo in the Cantina. Oh yeah, and HAN SHOOTS FIRST.

Then he added a bunch more stuff. The Death Star II in Return of the Jedi was orbiting the forest moon of Endor. Why is the Death Star I floating in empty space? Well, now it’s got its own planet up until the time they announce the station is fully-operational.

New graphics were added everywhere, including some places which really bugged me even in the SE. The countdown timer on the Death Star readout (“20 minutes until we’re in range”) now correctly matches the dialogue. I’m sure dot-cloud technology was top-of-the-line in 1977, but with the rest of the saga it’s unbelievably archaic. It’s also highly inaccurate – the Death Star laser array is about twice as big as it’s supposed to be, and it’s on the equator rather than squarely in the northern hemisphere. Now it looks much more like the holograms in ROTJ and Attack of the Clones.

There were a few pleasant surprises too, like this hologram display:

The entire final battle’s been altered and re-edited. Stars can now be seen behind X-wing pilots’ heads. Yavin is visible through a lot of the angles. More background combat. A line’s taken from the radio play so that Luke actually reacts to the death of his best friend.

This thing took two years for him to finish, and it’s worth it. This is now my definitive version of Star Wars.

He’s nearing completion on Empire Strikes Back Revisited. Only a few teaser shots and a trailer have been released, but already the difference is striking. Primarily, he fixed the horrible colour coding of the DVDs (the whole movie was tinted blue to varying degrees).

(GOUT below is “George’s Original Unaltered Trilogy”)

Colour correction, new background

Colour correction

New Emperor taken from a ROTJ still, lips taken from DVD, dialogue returned to as close as possible to the GOUT version

It’ll be out in early 2011. I’m really looking forward to it. He’s been buying up ship models, making location models, and he’s got a bunch of people with costumes to act as extras for insertion. Then comes ROTJ, where apparently the ending will be quite different. He’s crazy, but I love it.

Finally he’ll be ripping apart the prequel trilogy, which will be very different. The major change will be in Ep III. You know how “Vader is Luke’s father” is the huge spoiler for ESB? If you watch the series in order, that’s not really a spoiler at all. It’s painfully obvious in Ep III. That will be changing.

Anyhow, ramble ramble ramble. It’s very good, and you should check it out.

So, I’ve applied for college, been offered a spot, and accepted. I’m doing “Computer Systems Technician: Software Support,” which is fancy talk for “programming.”

Yesterday I went up to do my assessment at Mohawk College. It’s a mandatory thing, but, they point out, is only for assessing my current level of ability and won’t affect my entry into the course.

There were two general sections: Communications and Technology Math. Communications was broken down into a 500-word essay (timed for one hour) and a multiple-choice reading-comprehension section. Technology Math was also multiple-choice and timed, and featured ten different sections.

No spellcheck, no calculators, nothing.

So how’d I do? Considering I haven’t done any of this stuff in over a decade, quite well, I thought.

My essay was graded 5/6, which my invigilator called “very good.” Reading comprehension was 120/120, which had her excited. She was late showing me my marks because she had to show that part around to the other invigilators. Apparently they don’t see it very often.

Math? Well…. I blew through the first five sections (“Business Math”) with no difficulty. Easy as pie. Then I got to algebra. What is (3x²2y³)/4x³? Damned if I know. Went downhill from there. There were some where I guessed, and some which I left blank because I had no clue whatsoever.

So I got 69% on Math. They’re looking for at least 80%.

They did, however, give me a URL which should help brush up on my skills, and also offered a free tutoring service for the summer.

So things are looking pretty good so far.

So earlier this year (mid-January), some friends of mine gifted me two months’ worth of time on World of Warcraft. Thus, this time expired on March 14th. On March 10th or so, I got a reminder that my time was due to expire. After this point, I didn’t look at my account, because I knew what its status was. Or so I thought.

Last week I got a notice from Blizzard that my WoW account was being closed due to a violation of the Terms of Service. Specifically, my account had been involved in the exchange of in-game materials (items and currency) for real-world money.

So I did what most people would do. I tried logging in to my account on the Battle.net site so I could check my account status. Username seemed to work. My old password seemed to work. I was asked to type in the six-digit code on my Battle.net Authenticator.

I don’t own a Battle.net Authenticator.

Uh-oh.

Presumably, whoever currently controls my account owns one.

So I sent a response to Blizzard about my situation, being as helpful as possible; I included my current IP address so they could do their best to compare it to their records. Yesterday they responded, saying they were forwarding all their relevant data to a “specialist” to go over, but in the meantime they’ve changed my account’s password so that, if it has been appropriated, the other party can’t do anything with it either.

The longest period they could have had my account is about five weeks. Hopefully they haven’t done too much damage to my existing characters in that time. If they have, and even if I never get access to that account ever again, it’s not a huge deal. It’s more an annoyance than anything else, one which I would rather avoid if possible. What really bugs me, I think, is the character assassination. I don’t want Blizzard to think I’m a guy who runs around buying and selling in-game commodities, even if it’s only a notation somewhere in a computer. I like to think I’m a pretty decent, honourable guy.

None of my characters were very high-level. I think the highest was around 45, and that one didn’t often get played. Most were around the mid-20s. None of them had any particularly rare gear. I didn’t keep much in the bank except for a few items I’d be able to use once I’d gained a level or two, and Seasonal items which weren’t any good outside their respective holidays.

I did make a killing on the auction house with a couple of them, so they had several hundred gold. That’s the only thing I could consider a major loss, but I could recoup that given enough time with my mining pick.

Oh, well. I should hear back from the specialist in a few days. Wish me luck.

WARNING: EXCESSIVE NERDOSITY. AVOID CONTACT WITH EYES. SEEK MEDICAL ASSISTANCE IF CONTAMINATION IS SUSPECTED.

I recently helped overhaul Requiem of Dreams, an old World of Darkness RPG chat site. Most of it was a code copy/paste job from its WOD sister-site, Dark Providence. The big task was the creation of an oWOD dice roller.

Now, people have been making oWOD dice rollers of various flavours since White Wolf fans first got online in the mid-’90s. But I think mine may be the most comprehensive one ever devised. Let me walk you through it. While the modern WOD has one book for all the rules and everything else refers to them (with the occasional tweak), the oWOD books didn’t have a central oWOD rulebook. Every game published its own set of rules. For the most part, those rules were identical, but everything worked just differently enough to give me a headache.

In general: You roll your dice pool (e.g. 5 10-sided dice). Any result above the set difficulty of the action (e.g. 6) is considered a success. Difficulties go from 2 to 10. Any 1s which turn up will subtract a success from the total. If you’ve purchased a Specialty in a certain area (e.g. a hacking specialty on your Computer skill) then on Specialty-related rolls you get to reroll 10s recursively.

Vampire: As normal.
Werewolf: On specialties, 10s do not reroll recursively.
Mage: Difficulties can raise above 10. Difficulties are treated as 9, with the difference being subtracted from the number of successes.
Wraith: 2nd Edition Rules. 10s rolled on specialties are not recursive.
Changeling: 2nd Edition Rules.
Hunter: On specialties, 1s are not subtracted from successes.
Demon: As normal.
Orpheus: If a double-specialty applies (one on Attribute, one on Ability), 9s may be rerolled as well.

In Revised rules (everything but Wraith and Changeling), if you roll 1s but no successes, you botch (dramatic failure). Even a single success alongside a dozen 1s will just net you a failure. In second edition, anytime 1s outnumber successes is a botch. So it’s way easier to botch in 2nd ed. Initiative is also rolled quite differently.

Of course, it was only after I’d written the 2nd edition code that I found out it wasn’t being used; RoD had standardized to use Revised rolls for Initiative and botching. Yay.

Orpheus’ 9-again rule also wasn’t implemented because the venue is ostensibly never going to be used. And there are a couple of fiddly bits I need to account for, like Changeling has some innate kith abilities that let them ignore botches in some cases.

But by and large? Done. When you pick your character, it automatically figures out what game you’re playing, and thus figures out what rule variants to apply. Took me foreeever, but it seems to be working. I’m happy with how it worked out.

And yes, it figures out your Initiative automatically for Init rolls.

I can’t seem to convince anyone to join me in Myst Online: Uru Live, despite it being FREE. Free to login, free to play, no requirement to use real money to buy the “good” equipment. Free.

So I’m forced to resort to showing off pretty pictures from the game to entice people.

The important part for those of you reading a summary via a feed: it’s free.

I’m torn between describing the history of the Myst/Uru franchise and why this is important, and describing the in-character historical backdrop against which Uru plays out.

In brief, this is the second time Uru has returned, and may be the first time any MMO has gone open-source. Prior knowledge of the Myst series is useful, but not necessary. You just have to like puzzles.

Uru takes place on Earth in the present. “Uru” has its origins in the Sumerian, and connotes “deep city.” There’s a happy coincidence that the name spells out “you are you,” as many people make avatars representative of themselves. There are no orcs or elves here.

Not long ago, a group of explorers uncovered the remains of an ancient civilization in an immense cave beneath the New Mexico desert. The city – and its civilization – were called the D’ni. The main characters of the other Myst series were the last remnants of this civilization. The explorers wanted to restore the city and founded the “D’ni Restoration Council.” Many individuals (the players) felt a “calling” to join them, and thus find themselves in the New Mexico desert. But Yeesha, last of the D’ni, may not be dead, and may have different goals in mind for the restoration.

Anything else would be spoiling things. You’ll do best to find out for yourself. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

If you want an invite code, which will put you in the same Neighbourhood as me so we can find each other faster, I’ll be happy to help out.

10 years ago today, on December 12, 1999, the world saw the introduction of the greatest game ever released. Planescape: Torment (it’s also Wikipedia’s Featured Article for the day).

Okay, maybe not the greatest, but it’s certainly up there. It’s still getting attention 10 years later. I was a big fan of Planescape from the first time the box set was released in 1994. The game line had ended in 1998, but I still loved it, and Torment had been in production for a while, so I still had something to look forward to.

It used the Infinity Engine of Baldur’s Gate fame, but before Baldur’s Gate was released. It was a D&D game, but broke every convention they could get away with, as was appropriate to Planescape. No elves or goblins, no swords, one of the first games with moral choices that mattered (i.e. being a bastard wasn’t an objectively wrong choice, although it might have consequences in-game), sympathetic undead, travel to other planes… it was fantastic.

As we know, I liked the setting so much I got it as a tattoo in 2000. Nearly 10 years on and I don’t regret it.

Unfortunately, Torment never got a sequel, although fans have made several of their own unofficial sequels over the years.

Thanks to everyone connected to the game for making such an impact on me.

A few of my other social intertube 2.0 places, I made cryptic remarks about some things going on earlier this week. Three things. I said I’d spill the beans later. Also, I haven’t made a real post in a bajillionty years.

Mid-September, I saw an entry in the Classifieds section for “26 paid full-time positions.” Including a couple of computer-related spots. I called ‘em. It’s a federal internship program that the YMCA runs. 26 10-month spots for non-high school grads, 10 6-month spots for grads. While I graduated college, I never got my high school, so I was eligible. This is the first and probably last time my lack of high school is an advantage.

I went to an information seminar. They ran a bunch of those through later September and early October, with probably a thousand or so people altogether, about 20-30 people per seminar. Not everyone was interested in continuing, but I did.

October 16th was “program interviews,” where they individually interview everyone interested to determine their eligibility for the program, and to see what they’d get out of it. Not everyone was recommended to proceed. I was.

October 20-22nd was Assessment Week, where the remaining 130-odd people went through… well, assessments. What our linguistic skill levels are, creating a successful resume, how to prepare for an interview, determining our “barriers to employment,” and so on. We also made our final selection for which of the available jobs we wanted. It was very useful, even without considering the internship. I’ve been using the same basic resume for 10 years, and after Assessment I finally figured out why it hasn’t gotten me any hits. There was a bit of attrition; by the end of the three days there were only about 100 of us left.

October 27th and 28th was sort of a “debriefing” where we got the results of Assessment Week, and then based on those results we got informed if we were going on to the next step: interviews with the prospective Mentors. I did. I got three interviews lined up: two on November 2nd (this past Monday) and one on November 3rd (Tuesday).

I showed up, and did fairly well. I did okay on the first two, but I felt like I nailed the third interview, probably because I was more comfortable by that point. That position was the one I wanted most, so it worked out well.

November 4th and 5th (Wed and Thurs) the Y was supposed to call people back to let them know if they’d been accepted. I didn’t get a call Wednesday, which was disheartening. I did get a call around 3:30pm on Thursday.

I didn’t get any of them.

So that’s what the “Damnit” status message was about. It’s irritating, but it’s nothing world-ending. They do a few internship rollouts a year, and I’m eligible until I hit 31 in June, so they already added me to the January rollout. I may even be able to apply to the same positions. We’ll see.

Cross your fingers.

I realize I haven’t updated at all lately. Until I get together some actual content, I’m just going to reminisce.

Tomorrow, GeoCities closes forever.

I put my first website on GeoCities back in about 1996. It’s so old that even the Wayback Machine’s only records are those of the guy who snapped up the address behind me.

Those were back in the wild days without usernames, but instead “neighbourhoods” and “addresses.” I was in Area51/Vault/1863.

In fact, I just found a very old Guestbook entry I made at Mimir.net, which was originally hosted at Athens/7117, which references my old website.

I later made a World of Darkness fan page there, at TimesSquare/Fortress/6967, which the Wayback actually has, surprisingly enough.

I used GeoCities for maybe two years back, more than ten years ago. While some people are weeping for the loss of their Internet adolescence, I jumped ship as soon as something else became available. In my case, in 1999-ish while GeoCities was advertising 2MB of storage (wow, 2MB!), freeservers.com began advertising 11MB. While GeoCities actually altered the HTML files, such that if you re-downloaded them you’d need to remove the extra banner code, freeservers did it dynamically.

The index.html page is in the Wayback, but all it is is a definition of frames. And the frame contents are apparently blocked due to a robots.txt exclusion. So nothing viewable there, although I think I still have it backed up on my hard drive after all this time.

2000-ish I began administrating http://www.newbremen.net for White Wolf’s New Bremen chat. 2001 I first bought wolf-spoor.org.

So I’m not terribly sad to see GeoCities go. Like many people, I was sort of surprised to find out that it’s still around. Good times while they lasted, but I moved on a long time ago.