Guitar Hero 3 & Etc

I don’t know if my blog is ready to expand to gaming. I don’t care, I’m going there.

I got Ann GH3 (to it’s friends) for Wii, as we have one. ADDICTING. REALLY.

I’m glad we have kids who nap, otherwise I’d be spending/wasting much more time faux rocking. It is precious when your 3 year old asks you to rock more though, and gets agitated when you don’t immediately. That’s a fan base worth housing and feeding!

Anyway, it’s an awesome game, I’m picky about calling games awesome - there you have it. Be warned: it’s a massively addicting game, that’s REALLY difficult to master, masquerading as a casual game. I can frag and grind with the best of them (ok, the pretty good), but I couldn’t 5 star on easy until I had practiced a few hours. Casual games do NOT require practice

Caution 2: I see this really driving “Learn electric guitar” package sales. I know I’m mulling it around. If anyone has a friend that wants to ditch a beat up old electric guitar, leave a note.

Happy New Year and Cheers to anyone who has this on their RSS feed still.

Brian

VW Hype Machine

To: VW Hype Machine

Dear Hype Machine,
I’m sorry to inform you most people use “virtual worlds” for gaming. Yes, gaming. I know it upsets you to hear the truth. I understand. You just want to create a new hype bubble to write stories about and IPO with. It’s completely natural! It’s true though - MMORPGS - EVE, WoW, Ultima Online, Meridian 59’s (back in ‘96!) usage eclipses even the most optimistic stats Linden can put out.

How could this have happened?

It has to be said, even lame games are more fun with other people playing them. How do you think WoW got to be the hit it is? It’s a horrible grindfest. But it’s the framework wrapped around rich social interaction. It’s a shared unreality that people can play in. Yes, play. Sure networking happens, business happens. That’s just what happens when people get together. You don’t have to force it.

Look I know the truth is hard to embrace when it’s so contrary to your world view. Look at the evidence. Put down the Linden stats. Everyone knows they are crap. How much does Blizzard gross? Go on look it up - I’ll wait. How long was Ultima Online - online. It was a trick question, it’s still running.

Making avatars is fun! This isn’t a problem to solve. I’m looking at you IBM VP. I’ve never heard a WoW player whine that they can’t move their ‘toon’ to a different environment. They take about 60 seconds to generate. People - gasp - enjoy playing different avatars!

Second life, with it’s infinitely customizable avatar/content system, is a great idea. When you you can make it something that a person can pick up in an hour with no 3d modeling or programming background - let the media know.

I’m sorry Hype Machine, many of us tried to use Second Life. Many of us WANTED it not to look like a bargin bin game from 95, sans gaming element. Really! Making the avatar go from second life to Google Earth is far from a killer app.

I hope you pick yourself up and move on Hype Machine, this is a dead horse.

Yours not so much,
Brian

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I wholly endorse OmniGroup’s OmniPlan application. I’ve been using it this weekend for the first time and have not found it lacking in any area. If you have an Apple and you do things, you should try the free trial.

I have been laying out a series of projects for the woefully small group web/digital/computery group at my employer. In doing so with OmniPlan, I’ve found it to be far superior to sticking dates into Excel in a vain attempt at creating a chart that may appear, to the uncouth, as a Gantt chart. If you are trying to use Excel in this fashion, I’m sure you know you’re being silly.

I’ve only used the task/date assignment functions and have yet to get into assigning resources and such. I’m hoping to use OmniPlan to populate team calendars with all sorts of milestones, tasks and minutiae that would otherwise be lost in a shuffle of email.

The user interface is intuitive. I watched a few screencasts and started using it. If you use OmniGraffle, you’ll immediately see significant areas of similarity as soon as you open the ‘inspect’ window.

Given I know who reads my blog (”hi!”), by and large, I’ll keep you all posted.

Recipe for wildcard dns entry -> apache [handling static content & location pass-through] -> balancer proxy [ passing to mongrel backend]

I didn’t find anything QUITE like this, so maybe someone will find this helpful. This is one of those situations where you know apache can do it, it’s just a matter of finding the right combination of tools.
This was wrapped in a virtualhost, with wildcard DNS entries pointing to it, for which you have to use IP-based virtual hosting.

Keep in mind, to have this work (and your apache to parse the conf file) you have load mod_proxy, proxy_balancer_module, proxy_connect_module, and proxy_http_module. Since we are using rewrite, mod_rewrite : )

The FreeBSD ports version of apache 2.2.x compiles all those modules as DSO’s, so you have to be sure find them all in the httpd.conf file.

Two (I believe different) authors have bits incorporated here, thanks to those authors. The file based “site maintenance” rule and the snippet for testing if there is a static file to serve.

This was my first serious encounter with mod_rewrite, so perhaps there are some inefficiencies here.

#Not doing forward proxying
ProxyRequests Off

#need this for my rulez
RewriteEngine on

#logging, rewrite is complex
RewriteLog “/data/www/vhosts/mysitenameorwhatever.com/logs/rewrite.log”
RewriteLogLevel 1

<Proxy * >
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Proxy >

#don’t proxy
#this is part that got me a bit messed up
#this is why i have the PT option later (pass through)
<Location /balancer-manager>

SetHandler balancer-manager

Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from xxx.81.145.xxx
Allow from xxx.70.19.xxx
</Location>

#to skip processing on valid locations etc
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/balancer-manager
RewriteRule .* %{REQUEST_URI} [QSA,PT]

# Check for maintenance file. Let apache load it if it exists
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/system/maintenance.html -f
RewriteRule . /system/maintenance.html [L]

# Rewrite index to check for static
RewriteRule ^/$ /index.html [QSA]

# Let apache serve static files (send everything via mod_proxy that
# is *no* static file (!-f)
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule .* balancer://my_cluster%{REQUEST_URI} [L,P,QSA]

<Proxy balancer://my_cluster>
BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:3000
BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:3001
BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:3002
</Proxy>

VPS - meh, FreeBSD woohoo

I’m done with VPS. On some level for the reasons I noted in my other post. The price difference between a lowend dedicated server and a high end VPS account is very thin. I was pining for the days when I ran FreeBSD on production machines, so now I’m the proud renter of one athlon x2 with 2GB of ram. More importantly it’s has a shiny happy version 6.2 of FreeBSD on it.

FreeBSD has come a long way. Binary security updates (I wish I knew how to see what they were addressing though - I’m sure I just haven’t found it yet) with zero configuration, simple port updating, all the features I grew to love in the past - accf_http(9), the wonderful (for me) file layout, the memory footprint, /etc/rc.conf. I could go on and on and on. If you’re reading this you should really try FreeBSD. Here are some resources to get you started. Before any of you linux freaks start harping that “X does this too”, I use and enjoy linux in my work and at home. You can do almost anything you want these days with any major OS, much is personal taste and enjoyment.

duh, the site
The official community made manual

My pointers:
- Read /etc/defaults/rc.conf - the knobs built into this are an amazing time saver. Laziness transmuted to good system administration - example, you can setup bind in a chrooted environment out of the box. Woo!
- Read man hier(7) if you are used to linux, Solaris, etc. It’s a nice clear look at the file layout.
- Try using ports: they can save you loads of time and fix things you’re not even aware of. Most ports install additional configuration items for /etc/rc.conf - convenience!!
- When you run into something you’d want to change, but can’t find where check sysctl(8). It’s the interface to twiddle with the kernel while running.
- Ports pointer #2 - some things are better installed as a package. A prime example could be (depending on your needs of course) vim.
- If you are running apache, freeBSD supports accept filters as noted above as well as sendfile(2), depending on your needs could be quite helpful
- The official mailings lists have some really nice and helpful people

Dedicated vs VPS hosting

I have always had the luxury of having a dedicated server(s) for whatever I’m working on. I even have a static IP DSL connection from Speakeasy so I can run my own ’stuff’.

Recently, my DSL was out. For 2+ weeks. My family was throwing things at me as our email server was now sitting behind a very dead Internet connection. Uh Ohs!! Our secondary MX started clearing out our queue. Uh OHS!!!

My natural reaction was to go see how dedicated server prices are these days. Very low! But ever the miser, I wanted more, more savings! I soon discovered that the hosting industry has responded by offering virtual private servers. No - I have not been shopping for hosting lately I was really impressed by the industry, after that transcendent pride was over, I was saddened by the marketing associated with these accounts.

One of the cool things VPS technology SHOULD let you state is how many VPS customers are on a given box, and what that box has under the hood. It would be great to know I get 1/10th of a quad core Dell with SCSI RAID 5. The hosting company gets to put 10 accounts on that cheapish box, and I get 1/10 of a FAR nicer machine than I wanted to afford on my own.

For whatever reason, the stat that most VPS hosting places advertise as the big differentiator on the packages is RAM allotment (other than the sundry disk and bandwidth allotment). I get this. You throw up apache and mysql and suddenly you have a lot less free RAM on your moderate traffic site. I do NOT get why CPU is any less important. My big complaint against shared hosting is the ability to throw PHP/Perl/Whatever onto the box by just ANYONE. You get 20 or 30 anyones together, one or two are bound to be a bad coder. Really bad. Worse still - malicious. I know the last time I was on a shared hosting account my first inclination was to use find to look for world writable files of interest….

Having said that, I am enjoying my time with Spry VPS. I’ve never used a ‘control panel’ before, but I see the attraction of Plesk/CPanel now. It’s just to quick and easy. Damn lazyness.

Separation & Integration on the Web - part 1 of a miniseries

Reference some nice IBM info: developerWorks Spaces - this is a nice succinct document describing the New Way ™.

Having been a web developing professional for nigh 11+ years (depending on what year you read this, clearly), I have been perpetrator, victim and critic of mixed up nature of coding for the web. As anyone with a history in this field can tell you there are many camps surrounding this nefarious ogre.

Lets meet the cast of characters:

Perpetrator - though clearly that’s a loaded label. I’m sure they don’t see themselves this way. They are just getting a job done. Probably, it’s a boring job they’ve done before almost verbatim. Code, Approve, Invoice, Next. I don’t slight these people, yet I do. They mix their PHP business logic into their presentation HTML like it was nothing. Some even defend this abomination. Well let me tell you, you suck! Maintaining or editing that code is a nightmare. If you never have to maintain code, you must make your customers hate you. You are not the bomb. You are the unbomb!

Victim - This is the graying code jockey in the corner. Most offices of any size have one. The effects of spaghetti code, incomprehensible documentation and bizarre standards have taken their toll on this brave soul. A moment of silence for those who languish in this purgatory. Boohoo.

Critic - The over-the-top evangelist that no doubt will raise their hand when the CTO asks if anyone would like to discuss anything at the IT quarterly meeting. What they ask about will be whatever is trendy. “When are we adopting linux - snicker”, “Can new apps be rolled out in Rails - snicker”. Very secure in their snickering and “pointed” questions, they laugh from their lofty MVC pedestal while mashing together web services in the blink of an eye. These people, unsurprisingly, also suck. I won’t expound on why, because I am in this camp, for better or worse.

gazpacho + vodka = why do I have to be so brilliant?

I just had some of the best gazpacho I’ve ever had. I, being unable to turn of my brain, was thinking, “How to improve this? I wish there was a bloody mary available that had this much vegetal goodness!”

OH! Brilliant idea! A super quality gazpacho with a shot or 3 of vodka! Oh will the wonders never cease. I hope not, because seriously, that was some great gazpacho. If you are in Chicago, or visiting, eat at Jerry’s, west of downtown (soon coming to Wicker Park I’m told). They consistently have superb sandwiches and occasionally amazing soups.

Why Brian, Why?

I broke down. I am doing it. It is against my nature. Kinda. I’m sure. I hope. I am writing things for other people to read.

Does a blog have to be ego stroking? Is the idea that people would come to my site, above others, to read what I have to say an inherently egotistical action? Is that bad? I suppose it’s a matter of degrees. People who know me, which I can only assume, are the only audience of this, know I have often said rude and perhaps hurtful things about people who blog. Some of my good friends blog. How do I resolve this internal drama?

I accept the hypocrisy. I fear I am stricken with A.N.S.

I believe this was coined in Saul of the Mole Men on Adult Swim. A.N.S resolves to Arrogant Nerd Syndrome. It’s main, and from what I know, only symptom is a preemptive hating of those that could possibly say something nasty about me. IF they go down that route, I can safely laugh at whatever they have to say because, why, they BLOG. Those arrogant pricks. Oh yes I TOTALLY care about your grocery shopping, intelligence level of your spawn, your dislike of the Microsoft Zune. Tell me more about you! You who are the center of my universe.

A.N.S is a struggle. I live day to day with this, I hope to someday beat it. Thank you for reading my blabble.