Published by james on November 20, 2005
in Site.
I spent a little bit of time last night tweaking the site, added my Diggs to the right-hand column as well as working on the server itself to prep for the alpha launch of the campaign database. There is also a new Static page, aptly titled Campaign Database, where I’ll be making most of the updates about the project as well as making the code for it available. At the moment the project is still centered on tweaking the 3.5 SRD to be relational and searchable, a bit of a task but I am hoping to make headway on it this week.
Beyond the coding project, I’m looking to post some more in the story of The Assassin and his arch rivals, Donny and The Blue Demon as well as maybe posting the start to a short story here as well. I could use the time/energy excuse but that wouldn’t cut it as I have been sinking both into the campaign database. For now, I’ll go with short term creative insolvency. With the week off and the house to myself I should get some things done whether or not I’m wearing pants.
Another quick note, I got to spend about a good three hours today tweaking Ruby on Rails to set up the campaign database and I was able to get an amazing about of work done. Mind you it was all on the command line, which for coding is not the most efficient in my world. So in skimming Digg tonight, I found a couple of links in yet another Ruby posting, one of which is for a RAD environment: RadRails. I’m going to give it a test drive during my little break, if anything it’ll sure beat coding with nano on the server via SSH. 
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how I was going to bring together the chocolate and peanut butter that is databases and D&D–yes, all very geeky–and how OpenOffice Base failed me miserably. Well, I stumbled on an even better plan this time–we’ll call it (chocolate + peanut butter) * girls in bikinis–Ruby on Rails.
This afternoon I sucked in the 3.5 SRD, thanks to the fine folks over at the d20-xml group, and started fleshing out the structure using Ruby on Rails. I’ve been looking for a reason to really put RoR through its paces while learning more about it and this project seemed to be a good way to do it.
So far there is nothing groundbreaking, I’m going concentrate on making the SRD searchable and relational. After that I’ll begin fleshing out the tables and modules necessary to allow it to track characters and campaign data. I have next week off so I might get some coding done then and maybe will have something live in a couple of weeks for people to take for a spin.
Infection Facts
- Twenty popular music titles contain the rootkit.
- 568,200, one in six, DNS servers know about the Sony addresses.
- 165 countries are reporting back to Sony.
- National security and civil infrastructure networks are among those reporting back.
The more I read about this the more disgusted I become, not just with the sheer arrogance of Sony and First 4 Internet but with the laxity that Microsoft and computer users have approached security. Disgust with Microsoft for building and selling an easily compromised product and disgust with the average user for not taking the time to think about taking the steps to secure his or her computer. That trojan crawling into your PC doesn’t just affect you, it impacts the computing environment for everyone on the network ( read: Internet) both economically and performance wise.
In summary:
- Sony and First 4 Internet, you can both burn in hell.
- Microsoft, this is the reason I dropped your janky OS and tell everyone who asks that they should buy a Mac or use Linux.
- Average Joe, get your head out of your ass. You put locks on your doors, alarms on your cars, take cold medicine when you have the sniffles, tell me, how is this any different?
via Boing Boing, Digg and Wired
After blazing through the Foundation Series I am finding it excruciatingly slow going reading The Mote In God’s Eye. Not that it isn’t a good read, because it certainly is, but for some reason I’m lacking the motivation to tackle a narrative arc that is longer than 500 words. With my mind cluttered as it is at the moment with ideas and concepts it should be no surprise that my thirst is lacking.
So far, I have chewed my way through 250+ pages of The Mote In God’s Eye and it has been a fairly entertaining read. Niven and Pournelle crafted a book that reads much like a tale of naval high adventure from the late Victorian period replete with the tension between sexes and the long simmering competition between the scientific establishment and the military. I cannot help but hum passages from Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore while reading. Don’t get me wrong, though, it a solid read and the blending of archaic customs and language feels natural and appropriate to a novel about the exploration of uncharted territories.
As an aside, I learned this week that the setting of the novel is actually a real location named the Helix Nebula and is some 450 light years away from Earth. Here’s a particularly nice photo of it from the Hubble Site:
Contrary to what Kansas might think, science is cool.
