The New Wave

It's that time again. All the "cool kids" are porting their blog to Mephisto. Naturally, when I heard about this from a fellow Twitterer, I jumped on it, learned about Mephisto, and got really excited. (As I write this, I'm running a test Rails server with Mephisto.) Interestingly enough, I'd just started to pick up Rails the week earlier.

The point of this is that I'll finally be doing what I've been planning to do for a few years: get a personal domain. Expect the big move to happen by next month.

Some things I like about Mephisto:

• Nice built-in markup languages


• Very small (hooray Rails!)


• It isn't Blogger!


• Easy template customization


• Gorgeous admin interface


• "publish with impunity"

Also, of course, since this is a Rails app, it could be another learning opportunity for me as I poke around the source.

"Open Source meets Gaming" meets moral judgement

I found a fellow college blogger. Smart guy, great web dev. I came across his post about two open source games, OpenArena and Frets on Fire (both of which you are now obligated to check out), and I found this comment by someone called "L":

Why would you rather not pay for games, when the rest of your site indicates you are willing to pay for Photoshop, music, and Apple’s cell phone GUIs - all of which have free alternatives. Strange that you draw the line at games - which take developers an terrific amount of individual effort to produce (unlike music and GUIs which are derivative works). How do you feel about purchasing books?

This is an interesting opinion; I've had similar thoughts myself on previous occasions, but now it sounds silly in hindsight: is free software immoral?

My response:

...I [too] spend tons on software I need just to finish the next assignment, leaving me with no more money for games, except perhaps the occasional DS cart. The difference is that I actually need the software that I’m shelling out for. I couldn’t go through CS 3505 without Parallels. Also, these people like to develop free games. They get the warm fuzzies from giving to the public. They get paid by other means. Sometimes it’s the ads on their site, sometimes they get donations, (I make a point to donate a little bit to any project I find worthwhile) and sometimes corporations give funds to OSS projects or hire OSS developers [in order to] improve their public image.

I don’t see how this can be immoral in any way. What’s immoral is to steal software from developers who make their profit mainly from sales. (v.i. the underground Blizzard CD key market)

Finally, you’d be surprised how much effort goes into much of independent music and software GUIs. iPhone was certainly not built in a day; nearly every component of it was custom-crafted. (still, I agree with Taylor that it’s too early to even consider buying one.)

Oh, and books? It’s the same kind of mixed case: if I need the right book for the job, I’ll most likely look for it at the library, and if I think I’ll need it later as a reference, I’ll buy it. If it’s just a one-shot project, or if an online tutorial gives me enough info, I probably won’t. Some authors and publishers are now releasing the full text of their books online as well as putting them on shelves. In such cases, I’ll download it first, but if I end up using it frequently, not only is it a courtesy to support [the] author [by] buying it, but the book itself is a lot more tangible (which is always a good thing).

I get the feeling that a lot of college students feel the same way about software and books.

What do you think about this?

tinywind and filepic; no, wait...

It's often the simple and elegant that's overlooked. I just found two file/image/video hosts, tinypic and filewind, today after some targeted googling and I'm impressed. They have very few and unobtrusive ads, very good upload speed, and a brainlessly simple interface with none of the gimmicks of other, more popular hosts, but I'd never heard of them in my travels across the blagosquare.

Let me know whether you've heard of either of these before and what you think of them.

Certified user of my own pink squishy stuff

Userbars are an interesting idea; you make a bunch of shiny 350x19px PNGs each showing off something interesting or unique about you and put them in a neat little stack in your forum sig for all to see. It's not an entirely bad idea, and their aesthetic is quite chic, but the vast majority of them are basically product endorsements—empty expressions of fanboi-ness:






So, to all you mindless userbar users of userdom,¹ It's great that you're speaking your mind and all, showing off your obssesions, but who really cares?² Maybe after you've done something useful with your f4nboi ski11z you'll deserve to slap this one up next to your other digital trophies:



(I don't deserve credit for the above graphic; I don't know its true composer.)

¹Please note how I phrased that. I'm not speaking against all users of userbars, just the mindless ones.

²Say, I could make a userbar for my pento project...

CheeseHunt

It's done!! We stayed up until 2 Monday morning, but it's done. We've implemented a complete betting system into Half-Life 2. (OK, not quite HL2...a toned-down, non-violent HL2 mod designed by our instructor.) Check the link for the details (although there aren't very many...yet). I may open up our Google Group's access control, so you can further peruse the twisted minds behind the creation, but until then, I leave you with some slightly disappointing and not quite representative screens:

cs3500/hwfinprjD

As I've mentioned before, our CS 3500 final project is a Half-Life 2 mod, based upon the instructor's prepared capture-the-flag-ish mod. Although I can't currently disclose the specifics, my team's mod spilts the players into two roles: flag hunters and gamblers. The hunters go about their business, hunting down each flag and getting points and whatnot, while shooting each other with modified weapons (including the Jagerbomber, which blurs the opponent's vision =) to stifle their progress. The gamblers oversee the gameplay and make bets on each of the players, while being able to influence the outcome in various ways (secret!). It's coming together quite nicely, and might become more interesting as we merge our project with those of other teams (as required by the assignment). I'll be sure to describe how it all turned out, once this is over in a few weeks, and I might even post download links!

Pasco Grate!

If you're not happy with your browsing experience, you must be using

(gasp)
IE.

That's not good.



Do it! BROWSE HAPPY!!