Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Thursday Dec 20, 2012

Filed under: Personal 184 comments

 Postcards From Linux Part 1: Welcome to LinuxPrevious Post

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Mouse vs. Keyboard 

If I’m going to indulge this pipe-dream of Linux-using, then it’s time to stop fussing around in Minecraft and work on something serious. It’s time to see if I can use Linux to program. If I can’t do that, then I ought to walk away now before I get too comfortable.

Going by the comments yesterday, it seems like Eclipse is the go-to IDE for coders on Linux. (IDE means “Integrated development environment”, and is to coding what a word processor is to writing) I open the Software manager and install it. It seems to work fine, except…

For a quick test, I input the classic Hello World program to find that Eclipse can’t find <stdio.h>. This is very strange. I expected some confusion and growing pains in moving to Linux, although I didn’t expect them quite this soon or quite this simple. For completeness, I try the C++ variant of Hello World, and discover that it doesn’t know what to make of <iostream>.

This is such a basic, fundamental failure that I don’t know where to begin. Imagine if word processors would only let you use a word if it was in the dictionary. Now imagine a word processor that came without any dictionary. That’s what we have here. This is a C development environment that doesn’t know C.

Is this a problem with Eclipse? A problem with my Linux install? A problem with how I set up this project? I don’t know, and so I don’t know where to look for answers. In bemused frustration (yes that’s possible) I turn to Twitter. My tweeps suggest that code::blocks is a good IDE to use. So I install that.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Postcards From Linux Part 2:
How Do I Work This?”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Postcards From Linux Part 1: Welcome to LinuxPrevious Post

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Mouse vs. Keyboard 

184 comments

The Walking Dead EP9: Dangerous In Tent

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Dec 19, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 112 comments

 Mass Effect EP20: The Last ElevatorPrevious Post

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Link (YouTube)

As Rutskarn blabed at the top of the episode, he’s right now in the depths of the Aunty Paladin’s Kid-Helping Extravaganza, a week-long marathon of tabletop gaming and chicanery, all in the name of helping tiny baby children peoples. I’d suggest you avoid the official webpage, which is nothing more than information and a link to the stream in question where you can watch the endless cavalcade of 24/7 gaming for free. You don’t want that. If you did go to the stream, someone in the chat might be able to explain to you what a “pygmy space moose” is, how it ties into the game they played earlier, and how it relates to me.

So, again, just stay here and watch spoiler Warning and don’t bother with Aunty Paladin’s Kid-Helping Extravaganza.

Also, this post was supposed to go up yesterday but I forgot what day it was. I blame Linux.

I think a big contributing factor to my dislike of Larry was that I played through the first two episodes back-to-back. So for me this conversation at the gazebo took place about an hour after he tried to murder me. If I’d waited weeks in between episodes like most players, then maybe my irritation would have subsided a bit. Also, his whole thing about “just looking out for his daughter” actually made me dislike him more. It made him a jerk and a towering hypocrite, since he wanted to kill someone else’s kid without even making sure Duck had been bitten. And then he never owned up to just how totally stupid and wrong he’d been about the whole thing and about how his wrongness made a tense situation worse. And then the entire group was put in peril trying to get him medicine and someone died as a result. And then he tried to kill me after I saved his life.

So yeah, when I got to the gazebo conversation the whole “he just cares about his daughter” thing just didn’t work for me as an excuse. Ken left someone to die to save his own son, and felt bad about it later. Larry tried to murder someone to protect his not-in-harm’s-way daughter who can take care of herself, and never regretted it.

In short: Larry is a good character but a horrible person.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Mass Effect EP20: The Last ElevatorPrevious Post

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Postcards From Linux Part 1: Welcome to Linux

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Dec 19, 2012

Filed under: Personal 71 comments

 The Thing That BrokePrevious Post

Next PostPostcards From Linux Part 2:
How Do I Work This? 

So I’m using Linux Mint now. I’ve been installing Linux now and again over the years. It’s always interesting, but eventually I end up back on Windows after running into a problem with an unreasonably difficult solution, or discovering some bit of needed software just isn’t available. Each time I try Linux, I make it a little farther before I hit the point of “it would be easier to return to Windows than to put up with this.”

I haven’t gone back to Windows 7 because in order to properly install Win 7 this time I really ought to go in, back up EVERYTHING, and re-partition my hard drive so it makes some kind of logical sense. I’m not eager to do that, which is why we’re having this Linux Adventure of Discovery and Bafflement! and not just sucking it up and installing Windows.

We’re on day five of the experiment now. Here are a bunch of random observations about the experience so far:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Postcards From Linux Part 1: Welcome to Linux”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 The Thing That BrokePrevious Post

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How Do I Work This? 

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The Thing That Broke

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 18, 2012

Filed under: Personal 133 comments

 This Space Intentionally Left BlankPrevious Post

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It was the strangest thing. My computer would just lock up. Now, locking up isn’t an exotic problem by any stretch, but I’ve never had a machine lock up in this way. It begins with me alt-tabbing over to a window I haven’t used in a while, and the window just flat-out refuses to wake back up. Other than the one zonked window, everything seems fine, but the machine is actually in a death spiral now and there’s nothing I can do to save it. I can wait, or I can click on another window, or hit alt-Tab again. It doesn’t matter. In about ten seconds the mouse cursor will stop moving, and few seconds later the sound will begin stuttering and the machine will be borked.

Diagnosis

I can use the computer for hours without problems. I can even play games, which taxes basically every part of the machine. No problem. But if I walk away for twenty minutes it will be dead when I get back. Note that this is the inverse of how problems usually manifest. Usually the machine will fail when it’s being pushed, not when it’s idle.

Once the machine dies, it seems to recover incrementally. The first boot attempt will stall while the BIOS is still getting things going. Then I reboot again and I’ll get to the boot loader where I can pick which operating system to use. (Windows 7 or Ubuntu, the latter being installed mostly as a novelty.) If I boot into Win 7, then it will stall on the black logo screen. I’ll reboot again and I’ll get all the way to the blue logo screen, or perhaps get a brief glimpse of the desktop before it dies again. But after N attempts, it boots fine and the machine seems normal again. Once I successfully boot, the machine acts like nothing was wrong.

This problem leads to weeks of bafflement and confusion. It’s a problem with Win 7! My graphics card is overheating! The power supply is dying! The memory is going bad! I’ve seen a lot of sick machines in my day, but I’ve never seen one exhibit these symptoms in this pattern. I scan the hard drive, I test the memory, I re-install drivers. Everything seems fine. I’d blame Windows 7 (just because Ubuntu seems to work and I’m out of hardware to blame) but this doesn’t feel like a software problem.

There really is no upper limit on the number of random tests and guesses you can make, so usually I noodle around until I get bored with the problem and go back to ignoring it. At some point I begin to suspect the machine is simply haunted.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Thing That Broke”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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133 comments

Mass Effect EP20: The Last Elevator

By Shamus Posted Monday Dec 17, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 63 comments

 Mass Effect EP19: Exposition SurgePrevious Post

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Link (YouTube)

And so it ends. Er, again. I don’t think I have anything more to say about the game at this point. I’ve played it several times, written about it, watched the Spoiler Warning play-through twice, and referenced it time and again during our review and LP’s of the subsequent games. This might be the most analyzed game on the site by this point, which is strange to me.

Mass Effect is not really that central to my gaming identity. I’ve spent more time in Minecraft than in all of my repeated play-throughs of all of the Mass Effect games combined. In fact, it’s possible I’ve spent more time with just the Technic pack than with Mass Effect. I spent far more time with Borderlands, Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim, than with any Mass Effect game. I’ve spent more hours with the Half-Life franchise than with the Mass Effect franchise.

I think the controversy surrounding the games and the developer had the effect of magnifying the perceived importance of this title, at least on my site. I would like to take this time to say that whatever we think of the game, good or ill, I would officially like to move on.

Except I just remembered that I took some more potshots at the game in this week’s upcoming Walking Dead Episodes.

Okay, I hope to move on eventually. Thanks for watching.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Mass Effect EP19: Exposition SurgePrevious Post

Next PostThe Walking Dead EP9: Dangerous In Tent 

63 comments

Random Notes from Far Cry 3: Part 3

By Chris Posted Monday Dec 17, 2012

Filed under: Game Reviews 40 comments

 Random Notes on Far Cry 3: Part 2Previous Post

Next PostKerbal Space Program: Something Different 

Note: Up until this point I've tried to keep the discussion more or less spoiler free, but at this point I'm going to be talking about the whole game. Consider yourself Spoiler Warned.

Far Cry 3 is a game that wants to â€˜about' something very, very much – but it's not really sure how to go about doing that. Some games do so almost entirely through narrative, like Spec Ops: The Line. Other games use mechanics as a metaphor, like Lim. Far Cry 3 doesn't seem particularly interested in either – the narrative is a pretty straightforward revenge tale and the mechanics have largely moved away from having any inherent thematic content. Instead the game tries to use bits and pieces of every bit of itself to give a vague impression of what it wants to discuss – and in so doing is pretty ineffectual overall.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Random Notes from Far Cry 3: Part 3”

Chris Franklin

 Random Notes on Far Cry 3: Part 2Previous Post

Next PostKerbal Space Program: Something Different 

40 comments

Mass Effect EP19: Exposition Surge

By Shamus Posted Sunday Dec 16, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 92 comments

 Mass Effect EP18: Bow Chicka Wow WowPrevious Post

Next PostMass Effect EP20: The Last Elevator 

Link (YouTube)

At five minutes into the episode, Josh and I both deliberately keep quiet while an NPC talks? At length? Who are these people? These impostors aren’t the Spoiler Warning crew I know!

This is my favorite part of the game. The meeting with Vigil is pretty much the heart of the Mass Effect 1 experience for me. I think most people cite the meeting with Sovereign as the big turning point in the game, but this meeting with Vigil is the part where the game really hooked me.

What would it be like for a newcomer to play the games in reverse order, I wonder? Both the first and last games have an encounter with an “oracle” of sorts, and both moments use the same musical cues. Here at the end of the reverse-playthrough we have a meeting with Vigil the shapeless construct, missing his Jamaican accent, who doesn’t seem to know anything about the catalyst, and is surrounded by statues of clearly non-Prothean beings. And where the hell is Cerberus? Nobody even mentions TIM at all! Why is Liara such a child all of a sudden? Why don’t my guns need bullets now? THIS GAME SUCKS!

Actually, if the comments I see are any indication, the backwards player won’t ever reach this point: They’ll be driven off by the mushy combat mechanics before they ever assume direct control of the Normandy from Anderson.

Anyway, great moment. Loved the voice work of David Shaughnessy as Vigil.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Mass Effect EP18: Bow Chicka Wow WowPrevious Post

Next PostMass Effect EP20: The Last Elevator 

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