Funny Story. To me anyway,

    Originally I was going to share part of this as a passing comment on my patreon account but decided that it was too long so I cut it while thinking "But I kinda want to share this story." Then I remembered what Anthony Hargis said in a comment,

"Do what makes you happy. I haven't had a gaming group in years. If that's all I wanted to write about, I'd really have nothing to say. Write what you feel, you'll be happier for it and your blog will be all the better for it too."

I took this mean blog about whatever I want to so I decided to bring the Story over here,

     So at the moment I am switching computers again after recently having had my macbook power cable burn out for the idk 3rd-5th time something like that. But I did get another computer running just this last week and so now I am using that,

     How I got the computer started when my wife was leaving to go shopping and called me outside and told me there was a shopping cart in the dumpster down the street. She could see it sticking out of the dumpster from our yard. I figured buying a cart like that can cost between 1-3 hundred dollars last I knew so no harm in checking it out. Turned out to be a shorter one with two baskets and a bottom shelf all metal but the kind of style you might see at a dollar store. All the company logo's had been removed by who ever likely stole it but since it was in the trash why not take it out.

     That's when I saw underneath it was a busted up looking computer. Since we were down to one barely functioning laptop that can't run most games without overheating even using 2-3 fans and its internal cooling fan. I decided to take a look at this dumpster computer.

     One second my wife is driving by in the car thinking I'm pulling a cart out of a dumpster, the next second I have jumped inside the dumpster and am shouting "Yes! Yes!"

     I could tell from the sticker on the case that it was a windows vista computer and based on how nice the outside metal and plastic was I could tell it was likely new enough to be dual core. Not only that but the case had been opened and the removable panel was missing, telling me two things."

    One; someone tried to repair it and threw it away. Meaning it wasn't thrown out just from being to old. Two; I could see two ram chips, a dvd drive, a hard drive, power supply, cooling fan, motherboard. This would be worth taking just for the parts alone.

     After having sailed across the sea with my victorious bounty of pirate treasure. I was now in my living room with my old broken vista computer I always thought I could fix and this new one I had acquired.

    Using a CD I got form college with windows 7 on it and about an hour of fighting with the new computer I got it to boot with a new operating system. Unfortunately the product key on my CD seems to no longer be valid so I am left with windows saying it is not genuine until I buy a new key, but now that I could look at the computer properties it indeed was dual core, and 64 bit with 2 GB of RAM.

     So from my broken computer I pulled out two 1.5 GB RAM sticks and the old hard drive and dvd drive and added the ram to the new computer, mounted and connected the hard drive and lazily left the dvd drive lying around.

     Booting back up the new computer it was now running smoothly and showing 5 GB of RAM and an unknown device which is likely the hard drive I need to find a way to make work. Maybe it needs drivers or something something about a IDE switch needing to be set to slave idk.

     But this desktop was running great, turned out it has no real capability to play 3d games, hopefully a graphics card can be added, but with 5 GB of RAM and no over heating problems it was amzing to be able to surf the internet while installing steam and running slim drivers and even netflix worked very well. Oh yeah, we did have an old windows XP desktop we inherited but it takes it 5 mins to load chrome and can't play netflix at all.

     Also from the dumpster a nice looking keyboard, not sticky or anything, but a quarter of the keys don't seam to register. No mouse, but it did come with a nice monitor with built in speakers so all I had to down was track down an old audio cable and now I have a desktop with sound. The XP desktop's speakers weren't working for some reason.

     So there is my family excited to be having some good luck and now we have two working computers and a crumby shopping cart when my wife decides to go do her homework on her laptop. I had been using it to play The Binding of Isaac so she logs me out and logs into her account but nothing seams to be working. She can't launch chrome or firefox and eventually realizes nothing will run.

     So she does her home work on our new dumpster computer while I power off her lap top and find it now won't boot back up, startup repairs gets stuck on a black screen, booting windows gets stuck on the starting windows screen and booting from my CD goes to a black screen with a curser.

     Safe mode doesn't work, low resolution mode doesn't work. Idk, I guess something is broken with the graphics driver based on my google research but anyway it's not working at all and only one or two days after I finally got the motivation to get back to working on my making video games.

     So for better or worse we are back to only one working computer and although it is working faster and nicer then the laptop it has a non valid copy of windows and can't play 3d video games.

     Kinda funny, Kinda sucky, Long Post.

If you read clear to here then cheers mate.

heromedel (Blue Jester needs new computer, badly)

Why I hate (supposed) free to play.

This was originaly a comment in respones to The Hammer Strikes post about the free to play take over.

I just wish they wouldn't call it free to play and then pressure you into buying things or getting a premium account. Its not free to play if most of all the cool stuff costs money or worse invites. That's just an extended demo.

I hate it even worse when you do a search for a free game, find one, get signed up and then after you are playing get bombard with being asked to pay money.

For me though I don't like anything that distracts from the game, when you play an oldschool console and turn the game on that's it, your playing a game. Can you imagine playing super mario world with it constantly blocking levels until you pay more money or get more referrals and with ads and a chat thing blocking half the screen.

I don't like monthly subscriptions but saying its free when its not bugs me. For this reason I usually play games where I can host my own server. I really prefer to pay for the game once and be done unless an insanely cool expansion is released a year or more later.

Diablo 3 is going to be better then all the MMO's out there (not saying it is an MMO) but It's only going to cost once. I'm not saying one format will work for all games, but I pretty much stop playing on the spot if asked for more money while in game.

Codecademy

Thie year is code year for  codecademy.com which means that you can sign up to get free weekly lessons emailed to you. They claim to be able to teach you to make websites, games, and apps. They also have places where you can practice in javascript, ruby and one other online.

I have taken the first lesson and am about to take an extra one and here is what I like about it so far. The lesson have you typing in a box right on the same page as the text your reading, so far. Which means I'm not switching between windows.

Also the lessons are organized by exercises and by completing them you gain score, and earn achievements. Each lesson tries to get you to do work for yourself but also comes with a hint button and some of the code filled out where needed.

It all felt very stream lined and simple, and at least for now I really looking foward to my futures lessons, which is such a difference compared to almost any other programming lesson, which to me seam to normaly come in walls of text that are not very clear.

The weekly course does not look like it will be strictly for one programming language, however it does look like javascript will be focused on alot. (Everything seams to be getting web based these days.)

UPDATE:

I have now completed the noraml easy lessons as well as their currently availble extra lessons except for 2 questions in JavaScript Quickstart guide, its lesson 8, Q: 7 and 8 so if anyone can help me with those two questions, that'd be greatly appreciated.

Also if your new to codecademy don't worry about me being stuck their its a more advanced lesson and not one that you ever even need to do.

Review: Live Free or Die Hard

I recently watched all the diehard movies and then realized there was a fourth one I had never seen, Live Free or Die Hard. When it comes to movies I feel there is two different ways to approach them, either judge them on their own merit or compare them to what they are based off of.

On its own merit I'm not sure how strongly this movie stands, its an interesting mix of modern technology, terrorism and old school action movie with some really nice scenes, such as hitting a helicopter with a car. However its where the movie comes from that it really shines.

As a Bruce Willis fan I thought it was great movie, with all the classic Bruce Willis Features, estranged from his family and having a really bad day he kicks the crap out of everyone who pisses him off while still remaining the good guy.

As a Diehard movie it managed to continue the films nicely enough and bring it into the 21st century.

 I love watching John McCain as he fights terrorist from Diehard with a car phone in a limo and using a radio to talk to police outside the building, Diehard 2 where his wife brags about the 90'S having airphones and faxs, clear through to Live Free or Diehard where he teams up with, well a hacker, and if it weren't his computer skills John McCain might not have known what to do at all.

Now when I give stars here is how I do it.

1 star,  I hated this movie and wish I could give 0 stars but netflix doesn't have that option.
2 stars, for some reason I just dont want to watch this movie or probably any like it
3 stars, this movie was ok, tolerable, I might watch it but not love it
4 stars, I really like this movie and will probably like anything similar
5 stars, I loved this and want more, please please give me more.

I rarely ever give anything 5 stars,

Too be fair I gave this movie 4 stars, Its a good action movie, and a great sequel if you like Diehard Films. But since I look forward to any action movie with Bruce Willis in it I actually gave it 5 stars. I'm not saying that it breaks many, if any molds or barriers. And I'm not saying it redefines any genres.

I'm just saying I was not disappointed, I would watch this movie again and plan too in the future and cant wait for the next installment. Which I believe is in pre-production as, A Good Day to Diehard.

Free .pdfs for Halloween on rpgnow.com

rpgnow.com currently has little pumpkin pictures throughout its site that if you click on it will add a .pdf to your cart and discount it so it's free. So far I have found like 4 pumpkins. Two on the main page, one in my library and forget where I found the other one.


So I got Profane Miracles, Living in a Zombieland, All Flesh Must be Eaten Revised and Supernatural Adventures, all for free.

If you find any more pumpkins tell me where they are!

UPDATE:






I found this list at rpg.net




1) Event announcement.
2) Home page.
3) Wishlist.
4) Quickstart = Trick
5) FAQ = Trick
6) Contact us.
7) Newsletter
8) Free stuff
9) My Library
10) Orders updated since last download
11) Products awaiting review
12) Contact Options
13) Newletters