Sean Middleditch

Wee, I got my laptop working 100% now. I am happy Sean. ^,^

So I’m thinking of how best to simulate weather in AweMUD. I have several needs:

• Different climates.
• Separate regions with similar climates but different weather (i.e., two deserts, one having a sand storm, the other having normal sunny dry weather)
• Variance in severity of weather.
• Configurable weather patterns.

I have most of it figured out. The only hard part left is the pattern selection. I.e., if it’s current thunderstorming in a temperate region, what algorithm should I use to pick a severity in a pattern? I.e., how should it decide if it should start moving towards severity 1 in the Sunny pattern, severity 3 in the storming pattern, and so on?

Installed kernel 2.4.22-pre2 on my Compaq Presario 700 US laptop. Amazingly, power management (ACPI) works excellently. The fan is off most of the time, the machine only gets warm (not burning hot), and works fine.

Except, that is, for my wireless PCMCIA card. I consistantly get IRQ conflicts from the orinoco driver. With the stock RH9 kernel, the wireless card worked perfectly.

Searching online, it seems to be a bug in kernels 2.4.21 and later; many people on many different machines with (and without, iirc) ACPI installed get IRQ conflicts from PCMCIA devices. I’ve yet to find a resolution.

When I’m in the mood for hour long compiles again, I might try finding a recent ACPI patch for 2.4.20 and seeing if that works. All I need is the ACPI working for power management; I don’t need any other new features from 2.4.21 onward. Or perhaps FreeBSD 5.1 will work; 5.0 worked with the wireless, but ACPI support was less than stellar (no thermal control that I could tell, at least not on my notebook model), and the sound chip wasn’t supported properly.

Still, the few hours I spent on the porch today trying to get the damnable wireless card working were quite enjoyable. I can’t wait to be able to sit out there while using the notebook productively. ;-)

The web forums on my employer’s website have become incredibly popular lately. Tons and tons of residents discussing (read: bitching and yelling) about variuos issues. Amazingly, all on topic issues, too!

The sudden burst of usage, of which are several technically inclined people, have kept me busy all day. I’ve found now demands and need for several features that weren’t there yesterday, like automatic signatures, easier sign up, stale topics, better quoting methods, and more. It’s actually fun. Or was, anyways, until I finished all those featuers. ;-)

mx: You don’t need to generate code from Glade. In fact, you shouldn’t generate code from glade. Simply use the XML file and libglade. Libglade reads the glade XML file at runtime to build the UI. This makes tweaking the UI very easy (no recompilation), and is fully language agnostic; most any language that has GTK bindings also has libglade bindings.

Do most programmers have a seething wrath for people who are not only inexperienced, but believe they know everything under the Sun?

I swear I waste too much time arguing with people like that. I start out trying to give them useful facts/help, perhaps correcting assumptions or misinformation of theirs. Then I just end up getting my decade and more of experience thrown in my face.

It probably doesn’t help that I get rather, well, mean, when people act stupid. Not in that they don’t know something (nobody knows everything), but when they refuse to accept corrections, or otherwise do foolish things. For example, to constantly bash Java over and over using very inaccurate “facts” to do so. (Why I waste time defending Java of all things is beyond me; I just hate people propogating lies, I guess.)

I am now officially $11,000 in debt. For my silly truck. On the upside, the payments will be smaller than they were while I was leasing the vehicle, adn I can change my insurance around a bit now to reduce those payments too.

There is always too much to do. :(

I started writing up the draft specification for the Simple MUD Protocol (or SMP). Ya, I know, SMP is already a rather high profile acronym in computer science - but we’re really running out of acronyms that aren’t used a lot. Anyways, the latest draft is online here.

The draft is maybe 60% done. The actual protocol specification done, the requirements/discussion part (i.e., why did I design this) is done, and a whole section on implementation ideas/notes is done.

The remaining bits are (besides fixes/cleanups) are the package/namespace definition, and an actual working sample implementation coders can plug into their MUD codebases. I’m planning on getting this document all done before putting anything truly public (I think of Advogato less as public, and more as a group of friends; weird, considering I don’t personally know anyone here).

I’d love any feedback from people experienced in network protocols, to let me know if I’m just smoking the peace pipe in regards to this thing or not. General style/typo/etc. comments/suggestions are always welcome, as well. ^,^

I’m curious what draws people to MUDs. Or, to be more blunt, what draws ****ing stupid people to MUDs. As can be found on Kyndig, I’ve ranted a bit about this before.

As you can also see on the above site, people with the worst language and communications skills imaginable seem to be fascinated with the idea of making their own text-based MUD. Why would someone who spells, say, appreciate as apreceat, possibly want to make a text-based game? They obviously don’t have much respect or love of language.

And before someone says, “But perhaps English is not their native language, Sean, and the MUD they make will be in their language, so their English skills don’t matter,” let me note that most of the people making those posts also seem to want it to always be based on DBZ (Dragonball Z), and to have lots of fighting and “kewl” loot, etc. - they sound far more like the stereotypical stupid American kid, than a non-English speaker merely trying to communicate in a language they have little experience in.

Continuing on my MUD rant, I also wonder why so many completely inept coders are drawn to MUDs. Some of the more popular MUD codebases around are so full of bugs and major security holes it makes me sick. The code is near unreadable, and usually obviously written by someone who really wasn’t comfortable with C (that being the language I assume they were trying to write in…).

The number of “I need hlep pleaz now kan u right teh code 4 me!?!!~” posts I see on MUD boards and maillists far outranks the number of similar posts I see on non-MUD coder channels. Hell, most of the beginner coder boards I’ve browsed thru had more experienced and intelligent people posting help requests.

I am perhaps simply being overly critical of the MUD community. Certainly, there are tons of very bright coders in the MUD community, many of them far better than I. I just can’t help shake the feeling that the MUD community simply seems to have many more vocal, inept idiots in it than other communities I’ve participated in.

Heck, I almost wish all I had to deal with in MUDs was Bowie (thanks for reminding me of that idiot, xach - I had almost managed to repress all my memories of him from the GNOME lists. ;-)

Managed to be fairly productive on AweMUD lately. Working MCCPv2 support, a new action system, and more. This thing might actually get up to a truly usable state soon. ^,^

Having trouble hacking on the code. My 3D math experience is, well, limited to copying crap out of books. And almost everything I need to hack on needs at least a tiny bit of 3D math experience.

This has resulted in me actually being a bit afriad to touch the code, for fear I’ll majorly screw it up. On the upside, I know exactly what I need to do (the process), I just have to get a bit more familiar with how to get it done (the math).

Meetings. Lots of meetings. Looks like they might start keeping me busy for a while. Which will seriously cut into my AweMUD hacking time. It’s all website update stuff too, which is my least favorite job function.

On the upside, these meetings have brought me to the Recreation Center at the Township, where I’ve found out there are actually other employees near my age at the Township, who are female, who are cute, and are also geeks. This is a good thing for me. ^,^