Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Welcome to the future

I am posting this wirelessly on a newly-Ubuntu'd laptop. Spent the entire weekend trying to make a USB wireless dongle I bought at Fry's work in Debian, including muc h use of ndiswrapper et al.

Finally said to hell with it and installed Ubuntu. Works about the same as Debian, except I was able to get the FR-300 USB installed and working in about 4 hours.

There is a reason that my wireless key is a very complex phrase of profanity.

Friday, September 17, 2010

September is re-evaluate and retrench month

September is more than half over, and I'm pondering what worked and what didn't:

  1. The Great Miscellaneous Item Purge of August: Awesome, except for the huge number of items still not stowed fully. The girls' rooms and the downstairs are much less likely to be targets of huge, avoidable messes.

  2. Having Daria in day care as needed: Awesomely flexible. Daria is also more likely to go to day care willingly.

  3. The Reduction-Of-Red-40-Project: Awesome, definitely worth the effort.

  4. Computer projects: Bleah. All over the place on this. Bought a little wireless keyboard for the downstairs media pc, and love it. Bought a new power supply for the upstairs media pc, and it didn't work... that means possibly dead motherboard including cpu and memory. Have been experimenting with Linux wireless, which is a huge pain in Debian. I need to try it in Ubuntu to see what's up for that distribution. Have a number of dead/dying computers that need triage decisions.

  5. The Great Attention-Sucking Reduction Purge: I deleted 80% of the Facebook games I play and don't miss them.

Other thoughts: played Thunderstone x2 with Alex, Magic x3 with Tim, also Race For The Galaxy with Lee. Board game day with Troy et al., was Can't Stop and Puerto Rico x2, Board game day at Nich's was Pizarro & Company with Amy Pike et al., and an abstract prototype of Nich's with Kevin Nunn. Also Glory To Rome with Chris B.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Get Lamp is great

So I've seen some of GET LAMP, a documentary by Jason Scott. It is excellent, and deserves a place of honor in every nerd's DVD collection. GET LAMP traces the history of a genre, and has shockingly-good subtitles.

Am I glad I bought it? Absolutely. More to come as I see more.

Monday, September 06, 2010

Owlcon 2011 - I'll be there

OwlCon is the Rice University gaming convention. Next one is January 28-30, and I've registered to run games on Saturday, January 29th. I'll be doing an 18IA prototype playtest session, and also a spotlight on Houston designers session. Get in free for running only 2 four-hour slots, etc., etc.

Other than that, I introduced a group of church friends to Can't Stop and Puerto Rico (won twice, but an uphill battle).

In geek news, I took the girls to Fry's Electronics to return something I didn't need, and bought a little wireless keyboard/trackball combo. I love it so far. I also bought a power supply for a dead computer, and I spent some time yesterday swapping it out. Apprehension is holding me back from powering it up. Well, apprehension and the need for extension cables inside - I won't be able to close the case as-is. Am thinking of constructing a monstrosity.