Monthly Archives: October 2010

Ubuntu 10.10

I’ve been using Ubuntu as my main Linux distribution since 2005.  Not that I used it that much, but not until 9.04 was it good enough to use as my main laptop OS.  Before that I just ran it as a virtual machine or on spare pieces of junk lying around.

It’s been getting prettier every update, with the exception of 10.04, the update that put minimize and maximize buttons on the wrong side of a window in emulation of MacOS.  To me MacOS has always felt like a clunky, thrown-together, visually distracting OS that makes it very annoying to get anything useful done — BSD UNIX from 1990 with a few coats of paint sprayed on.  Luckily it’s just a quick config setting to put the buttons back where they belong.

The latest, 10.10, changes its primary font to something that almost looks a little cartoony compared to the previous font, but after spending a few days getting used to it I really like it.  It’s crisper, cleaner, and smoother, but it does emphasize how poor some of the web fonts are that it ships with, especially Arial, which is far too wide compared with its counterparts on Windows and OSX, and Times New Roman, which is so thin and weak that it’s hard on the eyes.

Canonical has accomplished their mission — they’ve made Linux a usable desktop OS.  In the process they’ve dragged others kicking and screaming into the future.  Fedora, for instance, has improved its look greatly ever since Ubuntu started making them look bad.

I still prefer Windows 7, but if I have two systems I’ll take one of each.  Each one has better apps for certain tasks and I can get more done with access to both.

A Bunch of Spells

Nearly three dozen spells were made functional today:

Air Elementalist

* Airy Starshell
* Hypnotic Pattern
* Telekinesis

Cleric

* Create Water
* Detect Poison
* Group Heal
* Know Alignment
* Silence
* Turn Undead

Druid

* Analyze Balance
* Harbor of Balance
* Twilight

Earth Elementalist

* Earthen Starshell
* Earthen Tomb
* Stornogs Spheres

Fire Elementalist

* Fiery Starshell
* Group Globe

Illusionist

* Cowardice
* Demi Shadow Magic
* Dispel Invisible
* Hypnotic Pattern
* Mirage Arcana
* Mass Invisibility
* Misdirection
* Phantasmal Killer

Necromancer

* Cloak of Fear
* Heal Undead
* Protect Undead

Ranger

* Dazzle

Shaman

* Greater Ravenflight
* Greater Sustenance

Sorcerer

* Infravision
* Meteor Swarm

Water Elementalist

* Adaptation
* Watery Starshell

In addition, some immortal commands were improved to make development easier and some “to caster” spell messages that were previously not shown are now shown.

Damage type vulnerability, which had only been partially implemented, is fully functional now.

Opera: My New Favorite Browser

For the longest time Firefox has been my favorite browser, with Internet Explorer second.  Firefox was the most user-friendly and where FF didn’t work very well or crashed, IE was always a reliable fallback.  I don’t mean IE6.  That was an exploding turd.

Other than consuming more memory and CPU, over the past few years Firefox hasn’t really improved at all.  It hasn’t become more user-friendly, more stable, or more fun to use.  That’s not really a problem — it’s always been perfectly usable — but it’s left room for other browsers to pass them up.

Well, not everyone is as inept as the developers of Konqueror.  Doing some memory and CPU benchmarking for work led me to try a few browsers I hadn’t spent any time with before — Opera, Safari, Seamonkey, Aurora, Epiphany, etc.  For the most part they were just your average Webkit-based or Gecko-based cookie-cutter browsers without much going for them.  Except Opera.

I only spent a little while with it, but for the purposes of the project I was working on, it was the most consistent across operating systems (Linux, Windows, MacOS), most consistently standards-compliant , and most reliable.  I used it enough that I got used to the interface, which is nice because it just gets the hell out of the way and leaves plenty of room for the sites its displaying.  Even better, the behavior and options (open in new tab vs. open in new background tab, search bar has ‘paste and go’ option, etc.) cater precisely to the way I want to use the web.

I really like the Internet Explorer 9 beta and it’s better than any IE yet, but it doesn’t make the greatest use of screen real estate.

I’m sold on Opera.  I’ve made it my primary because it’s the best choice if you use multiple operating systems.

A Few Spell Fixes

I think I remembered what I was working on — spells.

Ten more spells were made functional today:

Air Elementalist

* Chill of the Windsaber
* Hurricane

Cleric

* Destroy Undead

Druid

* Sunburst
* Sunray

Illusionist

* Shadow Magic

Psionicist

* Detonate
* Neural Fragmentation

Shaman

* Greater Mending

Water Elementalist

* Tidal Wave

Visual Studio 2010

Three months ago I switched from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010 as my main development environment.  Functionally it’s the same as it’s always been, but there are two things about it I consider great improvements.

First, the UI:  It looks so a lot better and cleaner than earlier versions.  It’s not that older versions were ugly, but it has a cleaner look and is much easier on the eye.

Next, C++ Development:  For the last few versions of VS, C++ developers have pretty much been shafted — no real feature improvements for the most part with all the love going to C#.  C++ received a major boost, gaining just-in-time compilation and error-detection intellisense almost exactly like C# has always had.  It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it is excellent for speeding up the code-compile-fix cycle.

Only a small portion of Basternae code is in C++, just the client and the Basternae 2 to 3 zone converter, but it is a lot more pleasant to write with Visual Studio 2010.

This project started on Visual Studio 2003, so now we’ve been through four versions.

Now Where Was I?

OK, now that I’ve travelled halfway across the planet, built a good bit of software for a startup (not done yet, but it’s settled down to a saner pace), and unpacked a ton of boxes, it might be a good time to start working on Basternae a bit more.

Except…  I can’t remember where I was and what needed to be done (or priority levels for things that need to happen).

So, could someone go ahead and log into the MUD and tell me what the heck I need to work on?

Basternae.org port 4502.

Seriously, I could use a project manager.  Anyone want to volunteer?