Brian's Blog

In my usual fashion of swinging between things in an almost extreme way I've once again gotten gaming on my mind. This time it's a Magic: The Gathering. For those who don't know, MTG is a collectible card game. As in it's a game where the game pieces have the potential to have value. In some rare cases, extreme value. For example, the single most valuable card ever printed is the Black Lotus which is going for $1000 to $2000 on ebay, depending on which edition it is. Way back when I was seriously into this stuff it was going for about $375 and I used to choke at that price for a piece of cardboard but now I wish I bought one or two of them. Unfortunately I just missed the last edition that this, and other expensive and powerful card were printed so I never had a chance to get one in a booster pack.

So, over the past couple of weeks I've been heading over to a local game shop called The Encounter. This is the kind of place you can walk in and generally find someone (usually kids) playing some sort of game. Unfortunately it's usually Yu-gi-oh but there are still many older MTG players there along with some Warhammer and I hear the occasional D&D. Watching those kids play I can say that the game has changed a lot over the past 5+ years that it's been since I looked at it. Actually, I'm not so sure I like the way the game is played now. It's almost too fast and relies on using cards in such a way as to be able to search through your library and pull out cards rather then using the luck of the draw and playing skill to win.

Tonight I'm heading over to an old friend that I haven't seen in years to play a little old school Magic for old time sake. It should be fun.

I've always wanted to figure out how to stream my music collection to wherever I happen to be but never really took time to research what I'd need. Then I came across an Newsforge article about Slimserver. In a nutshell Slimserver is a streaming server designed for the hardware players they have at Slimdevices but it happens to work with pretty much any other player able to handle streams. I've used it with xmms and winamp so far and it works nice.

I downloaded the .tar.gz for Linux but it's available in rpm and even has a Windows version. It was pretty easy to install on Slackware too. It wasn't as easy as running the exe on Windows but still pretty darn painless if you read the docs. Basically I just uncompressed it, stuck the resulting directory in my home directory, and ran build-perl-modules.pl to build some perl modules then ran slimserver.pl to start up the server. From that point it was a simple matter of accessing the web interface and configure it.

The only odd thing is that each player that you connect with has a separate playlist unless you use Softsqueeze with which it lets you synchronize the playlists between different Softsqueeze instances. Otherwise, if you use anything other than Softsqueeze you have to load the playlist for each one. Not a huge pain, especially since I imagine Slimserver isn't designed to be a multicast server.

The web interface is pretty slick too. You can browse your collection by Artist, Album, Artwork, Genre, Year, and folder. You can also save different playlists and browse by those. The playlists you create can be loaded by any player that is connected. The search function is powerfull too. In the advances search you can search on attributes like bitrate, file format, file length, in addition to the normal searches like Track, Artist, Album, etc. Or there is just the simple search that searches titles.

Of additional coolness is the Softsqueeze player is already integrated into the Slimserver and it written in Java. You can follow a link that will install it on your system or run it as a Java applet. Supposedly Softsqueeze is able to connect to your stream via an ssh tunnel without having to run putty or ssh on the command line to setup a tunnel. I haven't tried that part yet though.

Right now I have my collection streaming to me at work through an ssh tunnel established with Putty. It sounds darn good too. At least on my crappy laptop speakers. Speaking of quality there is a setting to limit the bitrate of the stream. So, if you limit your bitrate to 128k and the song itself is encoded at 320k it will convert it on the fly for you. Which is nice if you are on a slower connection.

This weekend the wife and I took the kids up to the Camp Biff cabin. We had a pretty good time except that Ellie seemed kind of "off" most of the weekend. She really didn't seem to want to do much of anything other than stay at the cabin and play games. In spite of her attitude we got her outside a bit to do nature thing. We went fishing for sunnies for a little but her attention span was short so we caught one fish off the boat launch at Pecks and then went back to the cabin. We got out for a walk down the Camp Biff trail which is usually very pretty. I was hoping the Mountain Laurel would still be in bloom but I must have just missed it's height. The trail is almost like waking in a fantasy world when the Laurel is in full bloom. The last time I was there at the right time the entire woods smelled sweet and there were flowers as far as you could see and big multicolored dragon flies going back and forth. That with the gurgling of the stream that runs along the trail makes for a pleasant walk. We did manage to get out on the boat a little and rowed around the lake. Angie slept through it and Ellie was cranky so we decided to head back in and got to the dock just before a thunderstorm hit. That was good timing.

The weekend wasn't the best one I've ever had at Biff with Ellie being cranky and not herself for some odd reason. She said she had a good time though and would go back again which is good. Even so though, it's better than being at work!

I'm going to be going back up again in about a week for some serious drink... Uhh, I mean fishing with the guys. I haven't really gotten any good fishing in yet this season. I'm looking forward to that.

The pictures of this weekend are in the gallery.

One of the guys (dstate I think) who frequents the LVLUG irc channel pointed out Shakeskin.com. The purpose of this site it seems is for you to shake your head round while keeping your face as limp as you can and taking a snapshot in mid shake. Makes for some funny facial expressions.

I must be tired, because this thing really cracked me up. Don't I look so purdy in my picture?

Time for bed before I hurt myself.

Ev3R w4n+ 2 +4lk l1k3 4n 3l1+3 h4ck3R? W3ll n0w yA c4n 4nd yA d0n'+ 3v3n n33d 2 R3dUc3 yA IQ.

That translated is:

Ever want to talk like an elite hacker? Well now you can and you don't even need to reduce your IQ.

This ever so useful but mildly amusing tool is at http://www.julian-bez.de/tools/. Kind of reminds me of the Ebonics Translator. Remember Ebonics? Now that was a joke.

Check this out from Blogthings.

Your Brain is 53.33% Female, 46.67% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

Mentally I'm more a woman than a man! Well, at least that doesn't carry over into the physical world.

Now, excuse me while I finish doing my nails...