Saturday, September 27, 2003

Memorex Mini-CD MP3 Player

So... I finally broke down and bought a new CD/MP3 player. Nothing really wrong with the old one (Rio Volt PSX100 except for the size (regular portable CD players are a bit bulky), so I've been looking for either a flash card MP3 player or a mini-CD player. (Mini-CDs are 8cm across and hold 185-210Mb instead of the 650-700Mb of regular CDs.) Finally, I saw the Memorex MPD8081 for $50 at Amazon which is way cheaper/easier then any flash-based player solution would be.

The reviews for it seem to be more good then bad (unlike previous mini-CD MP3 players like the TEAC). Size is around 4"x4"x1.2" which makes it a little thick, but still smaller then my old RioVolt (which is 5.5" wide). Small enough to fit in a coat pocket, and the mini-CDs are easier to tote around then their bulkier cousins.

I also found that with the full-size CDs holding 8-10 hours of music, that it's difficult to put enough of the same genre/energy/style onto a CD (unless you're talking 2 hour dance tracks). This isn't a big deal in the car where I can easily glance over and hit the "next track" button. But when you're riding down the trail, it's much more difficult. Plus, usually after an hour or so, I'm ready to switch discs anyway so media that holds 2-3 hours is about the right size.

The fact that I have a stack of 50 mini CD-Rs sitting on the shelf helped influence the decision a bit too. (grin)

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 9:01 PM

Monday, September 22, 2003

Angband Screenies

Screenies from my level 23 mage. Cleaning out orc nests like these are great for experience!

This is a shot after cleaning out the majority of the nest. The entire area to the right of the purple mage figure was filled with all variants of orcs. (19x5 squares or 95 orcs) Fortunately the door was on the far end, so I was able to sneak down the sides, draw half a dozen out then run back west and slaughter them in the long corridor.


Anytime you clear out a nest, you've got to have places to put all of the junk that drops. In this case, I put all of the junk drops on the west wall, so-so drops along the north wall, and good drops on the east wall. (Sometimes I put items down prior to tackling the nest.)


This is the list of equipment that he's wearing.



posted by Wuphon's Reach at 7:06 PM

Computer Stupidities

Just a link to a site with a bunch of stupid user stories.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 2:06 PM

GPG A-Z

(a.k.a. the quick guide to setting up a new key pair, an update to my previous blog entry.)

My first assumption is that you've gotten GPG up and running. So we'll skip past all of those steps.

1. Go to the GPG folder, run "gpg --gen-key" and follow the prompts. The FAQ is useful, but recommended settings are "DSA and ElGamal", 1024 or 2048 bits, and 1 year expiration.

2. Use the command "gpg --export -a emailaddress@yourdomain.net" to spit your public key (never publish your private key!) out to the screen (or you may want to pipe it into a text file using the command "gpg --export -a emailaddress@yourdomain.net > mykeys.txt").

3. Use the MIT key server to publish your public key (using the text file that you generated in the previous step). Or use the following command to publish all of your public keys to the key server: "gpg --send-keys --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net". You should also send copies of your public key to anyone else that you know who uses PGP/GPG (they can then import your public key block). The commerical version of PGP uses a different set of key servers, but anyone who uses the commercial product can submit public keys that you give them.

4. Make a secure backup copy of your key-ring files (secring.gpg and pubring.gpg).

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 2:01 PM

Angband

Well, I dug up UMoria v5.5.2 again out of my archives and started mucking around with playing it. UMoria is an old text-mode adventure game like Rogue / Hack / Nethack where you move your character (literally a character in the shape of '@'!) around the screen and delve into the dungeon of Moria to go after the Balrog. There's half a dozen races and half a dozen classes (or so) to choose from - rule set is similar to AD&D. It's not real-time, there's no fancy graphics or sounds, just good solid game play. And it still runs fine under WinXP (as well as a bunch of other operating systems, or you can compile the source to run on the O/S of your choice).

However, since UMoria has not been updated in forever, I started looking around to see if it had been updated and where I could download the newer version... and found it's successor is called "Angband".

There's actually two dozen or so active variants of Angband (it's open-source) - but since I wanted a simple update to UMoria, I went after plain vanilla Angband (also known as v3.03). There is now a windows version that runs in a window and you can choose the font size. In addition, there are 'tile sets' that you can pick from to make it semi-graphical in nature (I run with David Gervais' 32x32 tiles). They also added very simple sounds which are good for getting feedback that a door opened or that a monster died.

So what have they added in terms of content between when they branched off from UMoria? Oh, quite a few things. Unique monsters (like Wormtongue) that inhabit levels of the dungeon and will keep popping up until you kill them off forever. (Nice feature, because it gives you lots of mini-bosses as you dive down into the dungeon.) New weapons like the Westernesse weapons and a new store in town called the Black Market. The end-game monsters have also changed. They've also added magical items called 'rods' which are like wands, but instead of a limited number of charges, you're allowed to cast them once and then wait a dozen or two dozen turns for the rod to recharge.

One of the bigger changes is the "level feelings" that you get when entering a new level of the dungeon. These messages are supposed to give you an idea of how hard or how worthwhile it will be to explore every corner of the level. A feeling of 'superb' means that you're almost guaranteed to encounter a bunch of monsters that are way out of depth (say from 1000' deep when you're only at 300' deep), that there will be good treasure, and that it's going to be a nasty business clearing the level. One of the superb levels around 300' took me probably 2 hours to clear a room that had at least 100 cave orcs, black orcs, half-orcs, etc. (The key is to pull away 2-5 at a time by using terrain to your advantage.) When I was done, I had filled a large room with all of the treasure drops (good drops in one corner, junk drops along the other wall) and I then had to pick and choose which items to leave behind.

Another new feature is the macro abilities. This lets you do stuff like tag items so that you have to confirm that you want to use the item with a yes/no prompt. (I do this to my Word-of-Recall scrolls.) Or when you're carrying a few wands, you can tag each wand with a number, which lets you refer to your wands by number instead of their current letter position in the inventory (which changes frequently).

Links:

Thangorodrim (central site)

Angband FAQ part 1

Angband FAQ part 2 (some spoilers)

Macro FAQ

After playing all weekend, I have a level 22 Elf Mage with some half-decent toys. I've only gone as deep as 400' and spend most of my time around 350' currently. At that depth, I'm able to dispatch most mobs just by using my (3) rods (Lightning Bolt, Fire Bolt, Frost Bolt) without expending any mana. Plus, this gives me a hefty margin for when I encounter a 'superb' level feeling.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 11:13 AM