Privateer News

Givin’ the Pain

Several things have come up in the past week or so about the creators of my favorite campaign setting, the Iron Kingdoms.

  • The Monsternomicon Volume II has been officially delayed to early July. (link)
  • Founding staff artist Brian Snoddy‘s last project with the Privateers was the Monsternomicon Volume II. He finished his part in that project back in November and has since moved on to other things. (link)
  • Mike and Alison McVey, two notables involved in the miniatures and hobby-arts aspects of the Privateer Press product lines, have moved back to England and are no longer affiliated with the company, (link)

My, but that’s a lot to chew on. The departure of Snoddy is quite a blow. Years ago when I was first exposed to the Witchfire Trilogy, it was the outstanding black and white artwork that first hooked my attention and helped shape my conception of the setting. I very much look forward to whatever his next project is.

Quality Assurance

This is what makes English majors snap and kill 32 people

Loose means not rigidly fastened or securely attached, and has several other meanings that are closely related to this concept. When used as a verb, it means to set free from attachment or constraint.

I frequently run into sloppy writing in fansubs. They’re produced free-of-charge by enthusiasts that are doing a service to the freeloading public, so slip-ups are to be quickly forgiven and forgotten. This one happens to be a pet peeve of mine, and ironic given the context of the dialogue. Maybe if young people hasn’t lost interest in reading, this travesty of syntax would never have happened.

Guitar Licensing

Murder Princess

Upon looking around for some new anime to watch, I have stumbled across something I’ve noticed for a long time but have never written about. The Japanese market lacks the necessary gag reflex, antibodies, lymphatic system, or whatever it is that keeps really bad rock music from floating to the surface. Warning the “exhibit” links below lead to Youtube content with extremely lame music, and are not recommended for the faint of heart.
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linux: rmtil

Penguins signify Linux

I’m not a Linux guru by any means, but one of my favorite programs over the years has been joe, a text editor with an interface that is nearly-identical to Wordstar, the first word processing software I ever used. Joe makes handy little backup files whenever you edit a text document, named filename~, with the tilde character denoting that it is an old version. After a long day of wrenching away on code, this can result in a lot of clutter. For this reason, the sysadmins at my benevolent employer brewed up the following shell script ages ago:

#!/bin/sh
rm -fv *~
rm -fv .*~

They named it rmtil, and I’ve run it many hundreds of times over the years. Having just implemented it on my own server, I figured I’d put it somewhere others could benefit from it as well. Put it somewhere in your $PATH with execute and read permissions (chmod 755) and rejoice!

*edit (2007.05.10): Bosco wrote this version of rmtil as a Solaris-friendly modification of the original.

Spirit of the Century

Spirit of the Century

The flagship game book for FATE 3.0 by Evil Hat Games, Spirit of the Century is 420 pages of the action, adventure, and damn-the-details Science that we associate with early 20th century pulp writing. Clearly not an endeavor that takes itself too seriously, the authors mold the inherent flexibility of the FATE rule system to suit the over-the-top attitude of the genre.

The character generation system encourages players to treat their creations like the heroes from the works of Edgar Ruce Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and the like. Player characters are assumed to be exceptional, but benefit through the FATE rules by having some exploitable aspects that make the GM’s life easier.

The particulars of the rules set aside the tedious record-keeping that bogs down so many RPGs, with broadly-applicable aspects and skill, built-in mechanisms to allow players to introduce convenient circumstances into the adventure though declarations of facts, and a system of character stunts that allow several of the rules to be bent in specific ways. This is where the underlying FATE system really shines: by focusing the amorphous multi-purpose FATE system into a single genre of death-defying bravado, two-fisted action and mad science, you can hang a very flexible game around a strong skeleton.
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PPPoE on Actiontec gt704-wg

Actiontec gt704-wg ADSL bridge with integrated wireless router

The Actiontec is a device that has been available at several retail electronics stores, including Radio Shack. It provides three means of connection, via Ethernet, 802.11b/g, and USB, which makes it rather appealing when you aren’t quite sure what kind of computer configurations will be making use of it. Other models are also available, including a bridge and a “triple-play” oriented gt724 model that are beyond the scope of this article.

To disable PPPoE on an otherwise-functional Actiontec gt704-wg, use the following steps:

  1. Configure the client computer to be physically connected to the Actiontec. Make sure it’s using a local IP address like 192.168.0.5 for itself, with a gateway of 192.168.0.1 and subnet mask of 255.255.255.0
  2. In the web browser of your preference, surf to http://192.168.0.1/ to get the Actiontec’s web interface. Unless it has been previously assigned a new password, you should not be challenged to provide one.
  3. A menu will appear. Select the first option, “Setup / Configuration.”
  4. You will be prompted to select a basic setup, a wireless setup, or an advanced setup. Here is also where you can assign an administrative username and password. Select “Basic Setup” to continue.
  5. Presuming that the modem is already connected to the DSL line, click “next” on the following page.
  6. You will be prompted to select the means of authentication. Select “My ISP does not require a username and password.” Click “next.”
  7. You will be prompted to save your changes and restart the Actiontec.Click the “Save and Restart” button, and wait for it to reboot.