UFO: Alien Invasion development build for MacOSX
I was getting a little tired with version 2.2.1 of UFO: Alien Invasion, so I decided to try my hand at the trunk version. Building it wasn’t that much trouble and since there are no nightly/dev releases for MacOSX yet, I’ve decided to publish it on the web. As a torrent, of course.
You can find the torrent here. Please keep in mind that I’m no developer, so any problems should not be reported here, unless you’re confident it has to do with my packaging it. Hope you enjoy it!
Update: If you’re on IPv6, the torrent is available at SixXS’s IPv6 Only tracker.
Pikatim, I choose you!
For reference, Blah Tafelpoot is one of my characters in D&D 
Yes, I’m a geek. Su me.
Hours of fun for my dog
Recipe:
- One large Kong,
- About 250g of diced chicken filet,
- A freezer.
Combine the first two, put the result in the freezer for a night and Aagje has hours of fun!
Dungeons & Dragons: Return of the Weekend (after)
You might remember that I wrote about my D&D weekend before. Well, my friends left a few hours ago. I’m just about doing the dishes and some final cleaning.
Best. Weekend. Ever.
I had so much fun, seeing my old friends again and playing a game that I forgot I liked so much. It was great, people arrived Friday around 19:00 and we all ordered pizza. Most of them needed to fine-tune their character a little (Joke even had to create her character!), so it took several hours before we were ready to start.
But once we were ready, we played until 3:00. And the next day we started around 13:00 and played till about 1:00 (I was so tired that I needed to stop). Joke and Remko cooked for us and Wilko, Steef and I did the dishes.
The game was awesome. My preparation sucked (I’m the Dungeon Master), but the players amply made up for it. They were great, still the same different characters as years ago. Even though the game is great, the social interaction with these friends is just awesome. Everyone is different, but we can get along so friggin’ great.
Thanks people, for coming over and having a great weekend. I miss you already.
Hopefully, we get to do this again next year, maybe a little longer than one weekend.
Wolf in the snow
Ok, so she’s not really a wolf. But she did have a lot of fun in the snow. Click the photo for more text (for some reason WordPress does this a bit strange).
Aagje with a white snout
Dungeons & Dragons: Return of the Weekend
When I was a student in Eindhoven, I had a bi-weekly play group. We played Dungeons & Dragons, with either Martijn or me as DM. Although we often had “outsiders” (who were no outsider at all, while playing, to be frank), there was this core group that was always there. Martijn, Wilko, Remko, Stefanie (Steef) and Joke. And me, of course. I have a lot of wonderful friends who I really like to spend time with, but those Wednesdays in Eindhoven with our D&D group were one of the best of my life.
Every year we went away with the group for a whole weekend. Somewhere to a camping, in a tent, and play all weekend long. The six of us. That was really a whole lot of fun.
After a while the group split up, due to circumstances. Time was becoming an issue, so was distance. I still lived in Puth, so I had to travel and make sleeping arrangement. Now the sleeping arrangements were never a problem, but I do not like sleeping in someone else’s room, honestly. Nothing to do with the person, I just sleep best in my own bed. But people also finished school and moved away and our nights were less frequent and eventually stopped altogether.
For each of them I still have a typical persona in my head with whom I associate them. Remko was the brute, the barbarian, unsofisticated but friendly. In real life he was normal sized, maybe a bit small and young, but he played the big guys. Wilko usually played the Aragorn-types, silent but deadly. Wilko is a large chap, in height that is, not so much in weight. But it suited him, playing the shadow. Steef was the feminine woman of the party, she tried to play the wise dryad-type, but in my memory she only half succeeded (sorry Steef), but that was okay, because it added a lot of flair to her playstyle. She also was very intuitive and I’m not fully sure, but I think she saw through most of the plots I threw in front of the party. Joke is Rowena. I actually mix up the names sometimes in my head. Rowena was a female barbarian, which she might have modeled a bit after Remko’s character, but she gave it her own twist. Rowena was fairly smart (for a barbarian) and I’m very sure that Joke sometimes had trouble “dumbing down” her character. Lastly Martijn. My fellow DM. He and I just played very well together. We made chars that complimented each other, gnomes that were silly together and we just played along.
Man, I had so much fun with that.
So last week Martijn emailed everyone that it was time for a reunion. Bi-weekly would not be possible (time, distance, etc.), but just for one weekend. With me as DM. So I kind of forced them to come here, since otherwise I wouldn’t know what to do with Aagje, but I’m sooo looking forward to it. It’s probably going to be the last weekend of April, but we’ll see. Everyone was very enthusiastic about it. Some of them I haven’t seen for years. Really, really looking forward to it.
Birthdayparty
Celebrated my birthday yesterday and I had a wonderful day. My step sister (of eleven) helped me the whole afternoon with the shopping and getting ready and most of my friends came for the evening and actualy stayed for a long time. Which seems to indicate that they had fun.
In all honesty, the party was probably more a “thank you” towards my friends, because they all helped me quite a lot these last few months. During the evening I mentally gave them all a separate role. My coworkers, who listened to me whine often enough, but never complained about it. My best friend, who always agreed with me about the issue, no matter what it was about. That sounds a bit shallow, but at times that’s exactly what I need, simply someone who just agrees. My best ladyfriend, who had her own troubles, but was still there to talk to me and dispell some negative notions I had about myself. My dad and his wife, who always had time to sit around the kitchen table and drink coffee with me. My dad’s best friend, who made some important decisions for later when they were needed and when no one else thought about it. And of course Aagje, who was always ready to cheer me up and who I almost repayed with considering to give her away to someone else.
I had a great evening and I think everyone else enjoyed themselves as well. That’s important, good times with good friends.
MacPorts, Qt4 and PyQT
This is simply written down for references. If you want to use PyQt with the qt4-mac port from macports, you need to do several things, because (a) there are no PyQt bindings in Macports yet for qt4 and (b) py-sip is version 4.6 while you need 4.7 for the PyQt bindings:
- Execute the following commands:
sudo port install python24 python_select sudo python_select python24 cd /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/python/py-sip
- Edit the Portfile and change the following things:
- Change the following lines:
version 4.7.1
checksums md5 083a4241ce63f9d44fbadc8f3c6d6f42 - Remove the other two lines with the checksums or comment them out
- Change the following lines:
- Execute the following commands:
port install py-sip
port install qt4-mac - You can do this while qt4-mac is building:
- Download the PyQt bindings for Mac from here.
- Unzip it and go to that directory.
- Execute the following commands:
python configure.pymakesudo make install
Done!
Edit: This will work, mostly, but pyuic seems to be broken 
Edit 20-3-2008: You can find more info in my latest post about this.
IRC
#interlink [13:00] <tim> bah bah, mijn muzieksmaak begint echt slecht te worden [13:00] * tim heeft zojuist alle CDs die hij nog niet had van Loreena McKennitt toegevoegd aan zijn iTunes winkelwagen [13:04] * bart geeft tim wat M.I.A. [13:04] * Stephan geeft tim wat Tristania [13:05] * rink geeft tim wat Tiamat [13:08] * tim is blij te zien dat hij dus niet de enige is met slechte muzieksmaak.
Een maand slopen en verven
Foto’s van onze site zijn weer bijgewerkt. We hebben hard gewerkt, maar het is helaas nog niet zo heel erg te zien. Was voornamelijk voorbereiden op andere zaken. Onder de vloerbedekking die op de trap lag, zat een hele dikke, harde lijmlaag, die er toch echt vanaf moest. Monique is daar bijna twee weken mee bezig geweest, enkel schuren en schrapen. Nu moet de vloer in de voorkamer nog. En dat moet deze week af zijn, want volgende week komt de tegelzetter de vloer leggen.
Romance in books written by females
Last week, I finished reading The Black Magician’s Trilogy by Trudi Canavan. Although I really liked the serie (a 9 on a scale of 10), I’m a bit troubled by a trend I see often with female writers. You’d expect that women would like it more when the romance within a story is honest and straight forward. Well, that’s how I like romance in a story. Very old-fashioned, probably, but I still believe in the whole one-love-for-life idea. Honesty towards oneself and specifically towards the other person in a relation I keep in high regard.
During the whole story, I can sympathise quite well with Sonea, the protagonist of the story. But near the end, when she chooses for another lover than the guy who she kind of started a relationship with. And not by telling him, but by simply making the decision. When her former lover finds her in the arms of her new lover, he’s obviously a bit upset about it. But how does she react?
“[Sonea] thought back to the days she had spent with [Dorrien] in the Guild. It seemed a long time ago. Had he hoped he would regain her interest one day? Though she had made no promises, she felt a pang of guilt. Her heart was Akkarin’s. She had never felt this strongly about Dorrien.”
I mean, WTF? That’s just mean. And they say it’s usually the guys who break a girl’s heart. Well, I’m not buying that anymore. When it comes to love and feelings, it’s usually the girl who reacts in the most unthoughtful manner. Who ever said you should spare a woman’s heart clearly was very, very confused.
The thing that gripes me the most about this, is that I’ve seen this so often before. The girl “follows her heart” and in the process, she really, really hurts someone else. I don’t know how it was in “the old days”, but lately, I’ve seen this more and more often. It bothers me. I’ve been treated myself that way often and the sting actually comes back in full force when I read something here. The way she so casually brushes over his feelings.
I’ve noted it more often in stories written by women than in stories written by men, I think. And by the way the hurted guy acts in the rest of the story, Trudi really expected him to be over it without too much trouble. Which for me busts a feeling of plausability within the story.
As I said, I liked the trilogy overall, but I’m not that appreciative about the turning around in the romance. Makes me feel bad. (But, considering how an author usually wants to touch you, good or bad, this could be what the writer intended.)
The Future of Broadcast/Entertainment/Television
A few days ago I watched a lecture by Mark Pesce at the Australian Film Television and Radio School about the future of TV distribution in the age of P2P networks and I really had the idea that the guy hit the mark right on the head. He talks about how the new Battlestar Galactica series announced the end of broadcasting television. He has some really good arguments. If you have the time and if you’re interested in that sort of thing, go have a watch!
And just today, I saw the first glimmer (or better yet, supernova!) of how mr. Pesce hit the nail right on his head. The first episode of Stranger Things. The series is apparantly created without funding whatsoever, except probably the stuff the creators themselves put into it. They’re using short stories of Scott Sigler, if you’re into books, podcasts and stories, you might know that guy from Earthcore, the podiobook. The first episode of Stranger Things is about 30 minutes long, 640×480, looks great maximized on my 17″ iMac and is a story in the line of the old Twilight Zone episodes. A bit less dark, in my opinion. And my god, it’s absolutely brilliant. Go watch it and taste the stuff of the future!
The evolution of BS
The Seanachai, my favourite podcast, talks about St. Valentine’s Day and makes some striking observations:
“[...] Anyway, pope Gelato described Saint Valentine as ‘among those whose names are justly revered among men, but whose acts are only known to God’. From this we can deduce two facts. One: Bullshit had fully evolved by the late fifth century.”
Go listen if you want to hear more.
Free MMORPG
Sounds very interesting.
You know you’ve got too much spare time when…
(click thumbnail for larger view)
At least now I know you can run a Xen kernel on a Parallels virtual machine and actually experiment with it…
Blizzard loves Mac users
From the changelog from 1.12.0:
Mac
- Added support for controlling iTunes from within World of Warcraft. You can bind a set of keys for play/pause, next track, back track and volume up and down.
I already love this patch. Even though it cripples Warlock’s Howl of Terror even further.
[Edit] And they added support for Growl in the Blizzard Downloader! How cool!
Proeflezers gezocht
De vakantie van Monique en mij was heerlijk. We hebben een hele week niks gedaan. Uiteraard een paar keer met het hondje wezen wandelen (samen of alleen) en inkopen gedaan in de dorps-Spar, maar verder hebben we in het huisje zitten lezen of praten of tv kijken of film kijken (ik had wat films meegenomen). Mijn boeken, Katherine Kerr‘s The Black Raven en The Fire Dragon. Helaas heb ik The Gold Falcon, 10e en laatste boek uit deze serie, nog niet in mijn bezit en het waren ook de enige twee boeken die ik meegenomen had. Dus ik ben weer eens gaan schrijven.
Uiteindelijk zal ik het verhaal denk ik gewoon hier op mijn blog zetten. Maar ik zou het wel prettig vinden als er mensen zijn die het verhaal eerst willen lezen en me van allerlei commentaar willen voorzien. Niet alleen spelfouten en grammaticafouten, maar ook zinnen die niet lekker lopen en verhaalwendingen die onlogisch zijn. Bij voorkeur dus mensen die wel eens regelmatig Fantasy lezen. Interesse? Laat even een berichtje achter en ik stuur je het eerste hoofdstuk. Het wordt een kort verhaal, misschien net 30 A4tjes lang, maar ik heb nog geen idee of ik dat al ga halen. Ik heb er ook nog geen naam voor, maar wel al een werktitel: “Vuur”.
Het is een hele tijd geleden dat ik voor het laatst geprobeerd heb om weer echt iets te schrijven, dus ik kan niet beloven dat het de moeite waard zal zijn. Maar ik zal je moeite in ieder geval waarderen.
Tom Waits
Lang niet altijd vind ik zijn muziek leuk of heb ik er zin in. Maar om de één of andere reden krijg ik er momenteel kippenvel van. Prettig gevoel.
