A New Penguin, CCNA2, Ars Magica, Socialising, Dunedin

[tcpip]

So I finally ditched Mandrake and played around with a couple of distros for server-level fun. OpenSolaris was even installed at one stage, albeit briefly. FreeBSD, the preferred option, didn't want to install and I'm not man enough to fight it. Finally settled on Fedora. Then began the tiresome process of getting Python, Zope and Plone up and going. They don't talk to each other very well at all. If PHPWebsite was fully standards compliant I wouldn't bother with this nonsense.

Last week I passed the CCNA semester 2 theory exam. It was held out-of-sync because myself and the other student (yes, the class has had a 80%+ drop-out rate) were having problems with the prac test, so the instructor put that off until this week and sprung the exam on us instead. I rather suspect that if I actually had the opportunity to study for it I would have done better than the 77% that I received. It's good enough for now.

Gaming this past week has only consisted of Ars Magica. The Storyguide has placed us on the Calf of Man, a desolate windswept place far from civilization. My character, as a Greek scholar, is already beginning to feel exiled. I am increasingly of the opinion that the setting - minus the inter-House politics - is magnificant and the system is both flawed and incomplete.

In a fairly social week, I started with hasimir's gathering at the Gin Palace. There was fine conversation and some amusement at the fact that everyone present had an el-jay account. Later, an end-of-year gathering for the Henry George Foundation, with an excellent speech by Bob Knowles. Finally, went to caseopaya's end of year work function and had a very enjoyable time.

Have been reading books on network games and decided that would be a great profession; I would get to combine all my interests into one. Planning to go to the Dunedin Linux Conf in January. I have a mad dream of a dozen people taking over a disused warehouse in Dunedin and turning it into an IT centre of great repute. But who would join me in such a venture at the end of the earth?

Comments

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you may not have installed all the plone products. Do plone products show up if you in /control_panel/products/ in the zmi?

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

The setting is definitely the best bit of Ars Magica. The much praised magic system has its moments, but its really more the magic system concepts than the execution. There are definitely some serious system flaws, I've never liked combat for a start, and its too bookkeeping heavy.

It certainly has some oddities. Magicians can end up caring more about their achievements in down time rather "active" play!

I recommend getting a copy of The Mysteries, if possible, adds to the background significantly (though some aspects of it made it into the core rules in ArsM5. And some of the area books are very well done.

What about the inter-house politics don't you like? One of the nicer facets of the game, I think, especially as it can be quite subtle in ArsM (compared to, say, Mark Rein*splat*Hagens later uses of the concept in the WOD games).

Re: Ubuntu is most certainly NOT Debian.

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

Eh. Depends on your definitions and prejudices.

I tend to divide distros into Debianish, Red-Hattish and Gentooish, that is,
do they primarily use apt, rpm or source for package management. (I can't think of any other widespread method, off the top of my head.)

Ubuntu is definitely in the Debianish camp, alongside Knoppix.
Fedora, SuSe and Mandrakeiva are Red-Hattish.

None of this says that Ubuntu is Debian, but there is definitely a visible familial heritage and a similarity in processes and procedures. They aren't the same, but they are closely related.

Re: Heh. I should read the userinfo, shouldn't I?

[tatjna.livejournal.com]

Likewise, which is why Dargaville very nearly did my head in.

Re: Ubuntu is most certainly NOT Debian.

[imajica-lj.livejournal.com]

I have to say that the packaging system dujoir is really not a great way to "divide distros" or operating systems for that matter.

The people building the software and doing the packaging most defiantly is however.

For instance:
apt (or rather aptitude and dpkg) was created for Debian but is now in more than one ports tree collection)
So do we say "FREEBSD IS DEBIAN"?
No, this statement would be wrong...clearly, clearly wrong :)
Aptitude has different patch and package maintainers, depending nominally on the resources available to the people making the OS.
Damien feel free to jump in any time dude :)

[allezbleu.livejournal.com]

el-jay?

more like

el-gay


but thats just me ;)

[lula-neith.livejournal.com]

Congrats on passing the theory exam. Best wishes on getting into the gaming as a profession. Linux is great, I hear. I like the idea that it's free. Microsoft is evil. Sorry just time to hit the highlights. I'm at work.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Nothing like a broad-ranging brief commentary... Having researched the issue at some length it is reasonable to say that Microsoft does what every other private competitive enterprise does - it pushes the law to the fullest extent to become a private monopoly. There really isn't much of a surprise there.

Whilst I support the Linux ideology (open-source/free software), on a technical level I'd much prefer FreeBSD. Linux is "just fine" as a server-level technology, but if I had the money to throw away, I think I'd lean towards Microsoft's Server 2003 and IIS 6.0 - they actually did a good job with that (hey, it only took them ten years to get NT right!). Most however will respond "too little, too late"

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Heh. More than a handful of left-handed monks and all-rounders present....

Re: Ubuntu is most certainly NOT Debian.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Maybe Debian is now BSD. That would be a good thing ;-)

Re: Heh. I should read the userinfo, shouldn't I?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Go to realestate.co.nz and search for listing 1358.

Ow! My eyes, my eyes!

Ahh, Daraville.

Re: Ubuntu is most certainly NOT Debian.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree as well, indeed I can't think of any other basic dividing line to determine the familial relationships between Linux distributions.

All use a Linux kernel (I think we can safely agree on that).

Next step up really is package management, of which I suppose apt, rpm or portage are the three main points of demarcation (along with tgz for Slackware and insane genuises).

Default environment I suppose is important for end-users as is standard applications. But in terms of mimetic heritage that's "skin colour" really...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

You are quite right about the magic system. The concept is brilliant, certainly as adaptable as the Hero system in principle, but the actual execution really isn't that good.

The combat system only requires too much bookkeeping insofar that initiative and fatigue rolls are made every round, imo. The optional rule for a separate roll for defense I find speeds up play. Otherwise I found that it was largely a non-issue.

The concept of competing houses was good and they seem fairly well delineated. To be truer to the setting however, I would have preferred a stronger attachement to cultural and religious beliefs - more like competing RuneQuest cults.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yes, from ATContentTypes to validation, they are all there. :/

Re: Ubuntu is most certainly NOT Debian.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Right from the source.

http://ianmurdock.com/?p=153
http://ianmurdock.com/?p=167

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I was forced to install Novell SuSe a week or two ago.

Apparently that's the recommended distro for my laptop (HP Compaq nx5000); the sound card and the wireless work with it (thanks HP). Problem is recent events in Novell make SUSE's future look a bit dark.

Last time I had Solaris for Intel installed, it was a pretty hideous beast with a fairly short hardware compatibility list, (which at the time didn't include the most popular network card on the market).

I believe that is still the case. I couldn't get a connection up and running either :/

The Java version of KDE looks cute tho'.

[zey.livejournal.com]

I couldn't get a connection up and running either :/

Back then, IIRC, the card in question was a Realtek. There was third-party hacked in support for them, but, it took quite an effort to get it working.

I seem to remember the video card support for X being pretty dire too. Even where supported, you'd get wierd shimmering and the screen would skip 100 rows to the left so the mouse pointer and where it "hit" in an application were in different places. Really wonky stuff. That was all back in the Solaris 7 era though.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

They have largely replaced unemployment benefits etc with "community wages", which isn't entirely a disaster, I was referring more to the local level social services which seem to be relatively intact.

WRT to workplace relations etc., I believe the following is a sober, honest appraisal.

http://www.actu.asn.au/ecc/news/1054011745_8155.html

heh

[imajica-lj.livejournal.com]

well the thing about Ian is ... um well Ian is ... um ... does anyone know if there is a way to say that you actually respect the achievements of someone who is in fact an insane crack monkey?

Ah yes, Ian enjoys my full support.

Re: heh

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ian Murdock, Eric Raymond... Richard Stallman.

Yes, I respect insane crack monkeys.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

The conception of houses in ArsM5 has changed somewhat, so that some of them are effectively cults (mystery cults, to be specific) and others are solidly based around the idea of lineage, which also seems to be quite true to the setting to me.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yes, I understand they are more like schools of philosophy, but that's just colour albeit good colour.

What I was referring to was something more akin to the cultural ties between House Bjornaer and Nordic/Germanic cultures, the Celtic House Diedne etc. Now if that was expanded to include Slavic Magi, Magyar Magi, Berber Magi, Turkic Magi etc that would be really cool - and very RuneQuest-y

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Yes, I understand they are more like schools of philosophy, but that's just colour albeit good colour.

Actually, one of the subtler reconfigurations of the background in recent years is that while all the houses might appear like that on the surface, only some of them is that really the truth. Those houses that are mystery cults are actually cults (but allow for significant philosophical variation given the shared beliefs and obsessions), and those houses that are lineage based actually allow for large differences in philosophy (eg the Bonisagus/Trianoma split) yet are bound together by custom.

And for those houses that are mystery based, there is more than just colour to it.

What I was referring to was something more akin to the cultural ties between House Bjornaer and Nordic/Germanic cultures, the Celtic House Diedne etc. Now if that was expanded to include Slavic Magi, Magyar Magi, Berber Magi, Turkic Magi etc that would be really cool - and very RuneQuest-y

Multiple answers to this one

1) the various culturally specific magic traditions are addressed quite well in the various area supplements for ArsM4, many of which introduce cultural hedge magic traditions (they have done pictish gruagach, slavic pagan magicians, arabic magicians, norse magicians and shamans, finnish weather workers, etc). That they are by default hedge magicians under the rules of the Order means they are usually harder to fit into the game as magi PCs though natural antagonists. But ruleswise, the games effort to cover cultural magic traditions is very strong, more than any other I can think of. You need to buy a lot of supplements for this, though.

2) I think the conception of hermetic magic as something greater than a single cultures conception of magic, something that crosses cultural boundaries, actually adds to the game. It lifts the conception of what magi do above mundane politics, and makes the game accessible to those who don't want to steep themselves in specific medieval cultures. Ars magica is already at too much risk of becoming a game for history buffs (standard ars magica joke:"In order to play this game you will need a 10 sided dice and a degree in medieval history."

3) Thinking in game, associating the houses too much with mundane groupings would have been a mistake early order figures like Bonisagus and Trianoma would have fought hard to prevent, foreseeing an order that splintered along mundane political lines. In doing so they would be fighting for an unrealistic ideal, as culturally specific schools of magic would arise, but the conflicts between the ideal and the reality have been handled in background with the creation of Ex Miscellanea (as a dumping ground for those odd traditions, conceived as a conscious reaction to the orders somewhat exclusionary nature).

4) I like mystery cults and lineages as fundamental mechanisms of the order more than cultural schools (which can be seen as mystery cults and lineages done with less subtly and detail, if your lineages are differentiated enough - which for the reasons in answers 2 & 3 they *mostly* aren't, but the mechanism is there). They allow for much more variation (is their one single magical school that should arise from, say, Greece or Rome? Both had several magical traditions), and also make it clearer that magicians are always individuals, and always exceptional within their culture.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

1) Fair enough. I suspected this was the case.

2) Yes, that's quite OK. I don't mind the idea of Hermetic Magic and indeed competing schools within it existing across the Greco-Roman world.

As for the medieval history bit, I actually don't mind this.. 'Cept of course, I'd prefer players to end up being a medieval history buff through playing the game.

3) I notice that there is a lot of Ex Misc. people in Scotland, Wales and Ireland and probably a few in Brittany as well.. Closet House Diedne members? ;-)

4) More than one lineage per culture is fine.

Re: Heh. I should read the userinfo, shouldn't I?

[tatjna.livejournal.com]

*hands you a spork*

You even considered that?