Posts made by Arkandel

@Ghost One of my saddest realisations I never seem to see coming ahead of time is when people I consider 'good friends' turn out to be 'good specific activity buddies' instead when I socialize with them out of context.

Once the realization sinks in that absent of the subject matter we usually talk about there really isn't that much we can talk about it's just downhill from there. And it's weird because in many cases I was having a blast with such folks, we're having fun... but once we take a step back and away from that comfortable bubble of familiar material it gets kinda awkward.

Or, worse, as you mention... the conversation just circles right back to the usual stuff. In your case it's LARP but I've seen it go to WoW or basketball in my circles, and it'd be nice to have more friendships transcending hobbies.

... The money-borrowing parts though were a big no-no.

@ixokai That's actually pretty neat. One more question - how much bandwidth would you say a MU* consumes including running a wiki on it, per month? Trying to figure out the right plan here.

@ixokai: What do you get in the way of system access through linode? For instance can you add your own cron jobs? Install packages (doubtful, but I'm hoping they'd have git otherwise). What about your .htaccess or similar access levels?

I.e. how much rope do you get to hang yourself with without buying a corporate level subscription?

@skew Remember if you have SSH access then you can transfer files, or edit them remotely, through any number of clients.

@skew said in Project X:

When you say SSH shell, PHP/MySQL... you mean, access directly to those things through the website?

Well, ideally it'd be an actual linux shell I can log onto. I like hands on.

@ixokai said in Project X:

On the hosting question I can't recommend Linode more. And I'm not even giving you a referral link.

If I buy hosting I might as well give one of you losers something to show for it, so you might as well.

(and thanks!)

@Thenomain said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I am one of those people who would like to "blame" their family and for projects for interrupting any time, but as advice people who do exercise often have for people who don't, the key Number One thing you have to do is start.

In my experience one of the unexpected bottlenecks between people and getting fitter is that they consider fitness to be a binary goal; either they are doing The Thing - defined as something they saw on TV, read in a magazine or just like the sound of - or they just won't start.

The result of that is that if anything sands in the way between this ideal diet ("I would do <X> but I'm allergic to it"), the absolute optimal exercise ("I want to do <Y> but I've a chronic injury that prevents me") or even way more commonly just a lack of a whole lot of time ("I can't do 3 hours of exercise <Z> a week, I only have two hours free") then they won't do anything at all.

The thing is... almost anything is better for you than sitting on your couch eating sugar-coated sugar. Just go out there, fix what you can fix in your diet and do the best you can, see how it works after a few weeks - obsessing about the scale on a day to day basis is an exercise in futility at best - and adjust as needed. It's not all or nothing.

I couldn't think of a more dramatic title for the thread at short notice.

Anyway, I'm doing a web-based MU-related project of my own. For now it's in early stages of coding, and there's so much to do from scratch it's going to be a while before I have enough pieces for something to be ran [i]on[/i] it - but it is actually moving. There's a world people can log onto, rooms to walk around, and the next step is elevated privileges and a +job system.

Here's where you come in, maybe. There are two things I'm looking for at this stage.

1. Very much so, someone who's good at making things look pretty. I'm not a web designer and I'm too focused on functionality now, not presentation or UI - but someone has to. If you might be that someone, let me know.

2. Eventually I'll want to run an actual game to showcase these features. Do you have a cool pitch? The only requirements at this stage is that it can't be too niche, it won't be a sex game, and that I'd rather keep the mechanics light - everything else, including theme (original or inspired by a table-top RPG) is up for grabs.

Let me know, thanks.

P.S. Any suggestions for hosting would be welcome. For now I'm running everything on my own Linux box, but that's not a long-term solution. I'd want something that gives me an ssh shell, PHP/MySQL and access to cron.

Isaac Asimov, talking about the social impact of automation... in 1985.

A Dragonlance movie?

@Rook The problem is rarely that some players pick more optimized builds than others, simply because PvP is a rarity.

The real issue is very often PrPs are tuned for the upper echelons of twinkery, which sets the bar pretty high. If I'm making sure my scenes so they can challenge combat monsters whose every XP is surgically spent to maximize their dice pools then the regular Joe (whose concept could be also combaty, but who hasn't taken extra care) might very easily get stomped hard.

Then suddenly you have PCs who're supposed to be generally on par with each other - created around the same time, similarly focused, and about the same activity levels - be on completely different levels of competence when entering plots.

@SG If you think about it, why not? What's gonna happen, lung cancer?

@Vorpal They are not. They're because Snyder's daughter died, and he couldn't work for the time being, so Whedon was wrapping it up for them.

But it was already said not much would be changed, these are finishing touches and it'll very much be Snyder's film.

Jaime Lannister versus Cthulhu... written by George R.R. Martin.

@Vorpal That's just classic Hollywood. "We made shitty movies with shitty plots and terrible acting, but the reason they failed is because they were about <X>". See Batman Forever ('the public is tired of Batman'), Catwoman ('a female superhero?'), etc.

@Thenomain Although he does, it's pretty commonplace for leaders to exploit terrorism attacks to push their agendas through fear. Theresa May sure pushed hard for internet regulation before the bodies were even cold, not to mention before anyone knows if those involved used the internet in any way to plan or carry out the attack.

I'd watch the hell out of a Wizcops series.

I dislike 3D. It doesn't add anything to the experience 99% of the time (at least for me) and if I forget to have contact lenses on that day those glasses are annoying to wear over my own.

@Auspice True. And while I have a good TV and whatnot, I still prefer the movie theatre for many reasons - for starters it's a social experience. I'm going out with someone else, maybe having supper first and not just sitting in my own living room which is what I do anyway most nights.

The other reason is I like being part of an audience. For all the occasional idiots with cellphones and talking loudly can do, it still feels more intense. The energy on that opening night of The Force Awakens was awesome, I loved it. It wouldn't have been the same at home.