Did You Know: Off-Site Backups

Did you know that you can use crontab to push your backups off-site? You'd need to first decide how. SFTP? Dropbox? Pigeons?

We here at Eldritch Industries are using Google Drive. (Because I was asked.) Thanks to @Glitch, here's the code we're using:

#!/bin/bash
# 
# takes the last two touched files and uses the google drive cli
# 
# the last two touched files will be the flatfile (*.tar.gz) and 
# the sql file (*.sql.gz)
# 
# this is pretty specific to eldritchmux
# 
BACKUPS="/home/mu/eldritch/game/backups"
BINLOC="__REDACTED__"
GDRIVEFOLDER="__REDACTED__"
# 
for DUMP in $(ls -Atr $BACKUPS/*.gz | tail -2)
do
  $BINLOC/drive-linux-amd64 upload -f $DUMP -p $GDRIVEFOLDER
done

Does it work? Boy howdy does it work. We have it running 10 minutes after the other two backups: One for Flatfile, one for SQL. (Are you using SQL and not backing it up? Why?) That is, the | tail -2 means it will back up the two most recently touched (usually created) files in the directory. Adjust this number for the number of files that count as "recent".

Likewise thanks to @Chime for her earlier work on Mu* server maintenance, for the SQL dump script this is also using.

I have no other horse in this race than keeping Eldritch drama-free, but I continue my belief that open is better than closed.

=============================== Announcements ================================
Message: 1/104                     Posted        Author
Siteban: Rostam                    Wed Oct 28    Thenomain
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After being asked to look into a player here by their connections to Reno and 
RtK, I have decided to remove Rostam from EldritchMUX.

The reasoning behind this concerns mainly his behavior as Rex on Reno, who was 
accused by several players of OOC emotional manipulation. After talking about 
this with Reno staff, I decided that this behavior was likely to repeat and 
asked Rostam to leave the game. He agreed.

I expect this to have some fallout off the game, if not on, so let me preface to 
say that while it was Deviant who asked me to look into this, the reason behind 
my decision was the history of drama and not any drama slap-fight that Dev and 
Rostam had on another game. They're grown men and can sulk in their rooms.

As Rostam was by his own admission involved in nothing, I don't forsee any 
issues on the game but if someone has questions or issues of any IC or OOC 
nature, please let me know. (Page or put in a Bug request. Yeah, really.)

Thanks everyone, and enjoy your day.
==============================================================================

@faraday said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

I hate static descs and would much prefer just tossing a brief note in my set pose about what my character's wearing

This is what I see more than not these days, but I still use descs to get across mood and general persona via the description.

Back In The Day (tm), it was multidescers. Descs were not static, and you looked at someone as your part of joining the scene. This has changed, obviously, but expectations and games need to shift as informed by what people are doing.

I, for one, welcome our not-using-multidescers-any-more overlords.

@Rook said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

Doesn't matter @HelloProject why the coder is coding, just that they are coding. The audience doesn't change - you're always coding for the users of your code, not yourself. That's the point.

And this is the answer. If you decide to make a game for the Anime crowd, you still have to look at your audience, whether it's policy, descriptions, layout, or code. The final part of the triangle is: Headstaff is at the mercy of players.

Not the coder. Not other staffers. But absolutely the players. Some games can get away with treating some of their players like shit because they are offering a limited product or there's enough people to keep them afloat, but that's the kind of symbiotic relationship that you want with your players.

But if players don't want to use a certain bit of code, they won't. Players will put code on themselves to turn 'where' into '+where' if that's what they're used to, or help people create macros for their client of choice. They will do this in spite of you or what you want.

@Bennie said:

It takes like three seconds or less to cut the BS I write in purely for my lulls and to read an actual point:

It takes even less time to not muddle your point and even less time not complaining that someone lull'd on your lull, you poor boy.

(Some people's children, I swear.)

@arkandel said in Staff and ethics:

So while we're on the subject of rules... do you think it's better for staff to create a detailed set of policies, or keep it to generic "don't be an asshole" guidelines?

Yes.

Policies are there to create a direction, and that direction should absolutely be "don't be an asshole". When you work for a company, you can't easily claim that something wasn't explicitly written down as a reason why they can't fire you. And yet companies still have a detailed set of policies known as The Employee Handbook.

In fact, companies start with a general statement, often called a Mission Statement, and break it down by degrees from there. It works. You know that if you take a Tier Four character then you're expected to submit two scene logs a week in order to encourage scenes and RP on the game. You shouldn't need to be explicitly told that you also shouldn't use those scenes as a way to hilite your other character.

There are things you shouldn't need explicit rules about, because the implicit rules already touch on it. But there should also be explicit rules so that people can have a reference.

There are things that shouldn't even need implicit rules. "Don't be a jerk" is one, though as quickly mentioned that's an opinion as much as anything else. Every game should have a section called "What We Expect", or "What We Don't Do Here".

So yes. "Don't Be a Jerk" means ... what? Also, what else should I know?

--

And for fuck's sake, people, make sure the staff are seen following the rules or someone knows they're being talked to when they're not.

I've seen this as staff and player too many times to count:

Staff: You were a jerk.
Player: I was being goaded by this other staffer.
Staff: This isn't about them.

Yes, yes it is about them. This is about staff not upholding the values that staff is talking down to a player about. Not talking to this other staffer makes this staffer complicit and undermines their ability to effectively dole out ethics-based punishments. All that the staffer would need to say is:

Staff: I'll be talking to them shortly.

Or even:

Staff: We can talk about them in a minute. For now, you were being a jerk.

That's it. Cronyism is bad enough in our daily lives; we don't need to continue it in our funtimes.

@WTFE said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

@Thenomain said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

This is me changing my mind and making a post just to point you out as someone who may know what they're doing but has no interest in helping the hobby.

The hobby has absolutely zero interest in being helped. Look in this thread: a bunch of grognards being told "you know, this could be made simpler" are frothing at the mouth about how it's ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL that there be bizarre prefixes in front of commands because ... REASONS! DIFFERENT, CONTRADICTORY REASONS!

It's easy to pick and choose what you want from noise. I've been picking and choosing more interesting iterations of discussions, watching movement made not on this thread but seeing how people react to the changes that have been made. You've specifically ignored my agreeing with you in order to wank all over the parts you don't like all for your own ego.

Grognard is you.

This hobby is dead.

Then get out of our way to plant flowers in its corpse and make something of it. You know nothing, Jon Snow.

So I amuse myself by poking at the grognards and watching them say utterly idiotic things from a perspective of complete ignorance. It passes the time.

As you've been a teacher, I find your attitude toward people making mistakes and learning from them reprehensible. If you're not interested in education, then get out of my attempt to find a solution and be a grognard in the Hog Pit where your attitude belongs.

@Goldfish

I read it for you and I really hate Mage, Awakening at least. The Paths/Orders section saves it. Giving the big bad enemies the same treatment as everyone else made it shine for me.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Court of Popular Opinion. It's not always right but by god it's always loud.

We should be so lucky that the mods on a forum allow us to even have this discussion. This is not only what makes us popular, but it's what makes us Wora.

That is all.

@surreality said in Earning stuff:

@thenomain said in Earning stuff:

What actions lead to what rewards are both set down by news files and the unwritten rules implied by the actions of staff.

Another thing we should do is endeavor to write the rules down, not leave them unwritten. Especially when it comes to what is expected from staff.

Do we? Because there are many rules that once written down become shackles and are used to argue against us, which distracts us from the importance of play.

@Tempest said in Sin City Chronicles:

@surreality When the people involved are going to put in 0 work beyond copy/pasting code from another game, why would they?

Just so you know, I'm offended by this statement. It's not a spazz-worthy offense, but I feel that you're taking the code I've worked over five years building up and boiling it down to a "copy/paste" scenario.

(note: A lot of us wish my code was a copy/paste scenario!)

You could have said this constructively. You could have said, "Yeah, but after open, what do you have planned?" It's a challenge, sure, but it gets to the core of your issues more than unsubstantiated insults.

If you don't think I'm continuing to tweak and add to my code, to take requests and consider them, then maybe you need to take a step back and think about who you're summarizing. I'm already regretting some of the XP/Beat system code changes I'm going to have to do for this game, but I'm willing to because Reasons, mostly because I'm proud of my code. You don't have to be, that's fine, but it'd be more helpful to reel back the shotgun approach of complaining; you're less likely to hit a bystander.

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Are we not allowed to criticize?

Am I not allowed to criticize the criticism? I don't think "I think this topic is stupid" should be mistaken for "you aren't allowed to have opinions". I'm making my case. You're making yours.

How many 'and most of the time I moderate it just makes things worse' does a mod get

You're going to have to be clearer on how her recent post made anything worse. I sure as hell don't see that she was:

modding for the fun of it

Maybe the 'Not Mod Voice', but I didn't see that. Maybe it was in the Hog Pit. The thought of it was kind of funny to me, but I don't know the exact context.

and instead save it for really critical problems

You mean like people thinking about pulling an attack on a game using Soapbox as its base?

Then yes, we agree.

I would have preferred if she waited for it to be an actual thing, but as far as mistakes go the worst I see is that she was blind to how others might react to it without having her knowledge.

Which has been prevalent in this thread by others who have been criticizing tone, which comes largely from their own view on things without explaining where their view comes from and expecting others to just agree with them.

Or as @wolfs says, endless back and forth.

It's easy to say someone is tone-deaf. It's much harder to prove it. The best we can do is try and discover what each other means by it and hopefully come to an understanding about it. If people don't want to come to an understanding then while I personally believe that they should stay out of the discussion, things can still be learned by those willing to try.

@insomnia

Don’t you know that nothing changed except for technology starting 1943? No new clothes, no new songs. Except for “Take Me Home, Contry Roads” for some reason. I guess John Denver crosses all timelines. He saw all the doors and what’s behind all the doors.

Really he’s just given up our reality to sacrifice himself to save a very young Jim Henson from his under sea prison with Frank Oz.

—

It pays to never, ever look closely at Fallout.

Code Update: copious sobbing sounds

I cannot think of a single tool that beats the tactile feel of dice, and a sheet of paper to doodle on, preferably with character stats on it. I prefer, myself, to sit at a table with straight-backed chairs, and a BattleMat when appropriate.

Have someone write a log. Here are the logs of one of our campaigns. Four years. One giant rabbit hole. AD&D 2nd Edition.

Er, sorry, I have to go read all of these right now.

@ganymede said in Development Thread: Sacred Seed:

Let's get back to the game development discussions, please.

To be fair, cheerleading and positive feedback is incredibly important to even have game development discussions. Several of us—edit: including key players like myself and Chime—have pretty much given up on the hobby because of the incessant negativity and apathetic and sometimes even active abuse of people in this hobby.

In the meantime, we wait for Cobalt to decide if she wants to share her thoughts knowing that at any moment someone can make fun of her. What you're seeing is the people of this board trying to get back to that point by, e.g., cheerleading and deflecting negativity because they want to know what happens next. This is the kind of board you wanted; complaining about it now (and I see Ark's +1 Me Too vote) is kind of disingenuous.

And believe me, @Cobaltasaurus, a lot of us want to know what happens next. In your own time.

@lotherio said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:

There seems some interest in original sci fi/fantasy/space opera, but seems very niche these days

Arx is about big visions and doing big things. I sincerely doubt people won't be able to get into a Space Opera style game these days.

The key is to give people something to do, and they'll enjoy whatever genre you put in front of them, especially if they have some dispensation toward that genre or setting to begin with.

@cobaltasaurus said in Midnight MUSH:

@Thenomain loves him some FATE.

No, these are bold words:

Bring it.

@Bad-at-Lurking said in The OOC Masquerade ?:

Obviously, if a game's wiki or somebody's page asserts that information on it is strictly OOC, I don't use it.

You know what? I'm going to make a strong statement:

Assume that a Wiki is OOC first. Did your character learn this information through interactions on the game? No? Then it's OOC.

If you want to use the information, do it. I'm all for people using the information, especially using the information as a way to contact someone if they can use the information and the best way to do so. This is Table Talk. This is social interaction. This. Is. Awesome.

What is IC? What is OOC? If people use their common sense, treat each other with politeness and consideration, and treat the game world with consideration, then who in the world cares?

Well, I don't.