Cip’s Thoughts & Co

Communist Liberal

I always considered myself more of a liberal kind of guy. Guess I was wrong.

It must be bunnies!

If you recognize where this came from originally, good for you!

 
(Press the Play button)

If you know someone who keeps blaming things on other people, perhaps this might help explaining his or her arrogance? :-)

Sex in The City

Generally speaking I’m not much of an enthusiast when it comes to romantic movies, and I never really followed Sex And The City but even I must admit that the movie qualifies for the subtitle “Epic Lovestory”.

Disclaimer: I watched the movie out and made this post out of free will.

Userfriendly OpenTibia(?) Followup

This time I don’t have this huge story to tell or anything, I just wanted to point out that after being inactive on Otfans for a while I decided to check out the Lounge - more specifically the Computer and Internet section (Yes, I’m a nerd. Isn’t it obvious?) - and I found a couple of threads that seemed interesting.

Anyhow, this guy Anco has a problem so I try to help him out with it, and of course it only took a few minutes before I got flamed for telling him to google processes he weren’t sure what they did. The response was pretty much “Don’t tell him to use google, be constructive!“. Since I’m such a nice guy I clarified my message with how to proceed and why (as detailed as I could), but I’d like to offer my sincerest apologies to the jackass who gave me a lesson in Cocksmoking because I think I forgot how to explain how to type the URL in the addressfield.

Sorry Scottie, but in the future perhaps you should consider being constructive yourself. :-)

Userfriendly OpenTibia(?)

There are two types of OT Server owners, the ones who maintain a server for fun, to obtain all the items and achieve all the goals he or she never could in regular Tibia for varying reasons. Then there’s the people who want to create the server for the community to use, either as a free alternative to ordinary Tibia or as a partially seperate game with custom content such as using a different map.

When we look at free alternatives to other games, such as EVEmulator or the EVERLAST Server for EVE Online who together barely have 1600 members we quickly realize that there are far less people interested in making their own EVE servers. Even WCell for World of Warcraft with their 600 registered members is a relatively small community. Sure, there are bigger ones out there such as Emupedia but they host a wide variety of projects for various games, so measuring their membercount (62000) wouldn’t be accurate. Digging deeper into the “private server” sphere we can find the Battlenet emulator PvPGN with it’s 1094 members.

No matter how you look at it, you’ll end up with the same conclusion as me. OpenTibia is rather unique. I’m going to assume that all the members on Otland were at some point registered on Otfans when I measure OpenTibia’s followers in the tens of thousands (10,495 members have visited Otfans in the past 14 days, they have over 39000 registered members). I have never encountered a larger and more concentrated “private server” community than the one of OpenTibia.

I can imagine it’s hard being the administrator of a website such as Otfans, you have to make tough decisions that affect thousands of users and set a good example not only for your followers, but also for colleagues in the same field. Even though I appreciate most of the changes made on Otfans while I’ve been a member I can’t help to think that some things could’ve been handled smoother.

From what I’ve read, the initial dispute between Otfans and Otland was surprisingly enough based on an immature brawl between staff members on respective sites. Although I can understand the tension between the parties I do think it’s about time they start a dialogue about cooperation rather than censoring the other’s name on their forums. An everlasting dispute will reflect negatively on both communities in terms of members, development progress, and general welfare.

Being a newbie is never easy, you have all these questions and no clue where to start looking for answers. When it comes to OpenTibia it’s even worse! The populus resents their former selves as if they are the plague, and not just any plague, the one of curiousity!

It’s time to start thinking about what we really want. Do we want Otservlist filled with servers of all kinds - like we all remember it was - or do we need to divide it into the two categories it currently seems to consist of? I vote no for an Otservlist with Elite and Newbie categories. It’s come to the point where it is nearly impossible for a newcomer to find answers and to evolve as an OTserver administrator.

Clean up the Tutorials section on Otfans, encourage and reward users who collaborate with real guides and not flimsy rantings about how to post. Nobody gains from telling people where to ask questions rather than answering them and then, for future reference, explaining where questions on the subject should be asked.

Another hot topic is the XML format which alot of users resent. I don’t see why people wouldn’t be allowed to choose other than the developers lacking time or being plain lazy. It’s easy for new users to understand and edit, it doesn’t decrease performance for the average user who - admittedly - only use the server to connect by himself or perhaps show some friends on a LAN party.

Should the user be advanced enough, or gain the skills required to run a database, good for him. Should he decide to run a popular server online with the XML format, too bad for the users, but the fact remains that performance is not everything.

From my point of view (Note that I don’t actually have statistics on this) there has been a notable decrease in user growth within the whole community the last year or so. And if you ask me it’s because of both the hate against our less knowing members and the constant battle between Otfans and Otland.

To round this entry off I would like to reach out to the staffs of the involved sites and urge you to come to your senses, nobody gains from this. Where did the fun times go when it was all about making a server just like (and now with the additional goal of being better!) Tibia? Remember that we do have a common enemy of sorts.

There, I got it off my chest.

An empty bloodstain

I grew up in a village frowning upon the poverty among its inhabitants. My first memories are all about rejection and violence.

Me and my brother could not afford to enter the travelling circus that was visiting, and as I recall it, it was a rainy day and all I had been talking about the last few weeks was the circus that was coming to town. But the big grownup in the entrence wouldn’t let us in simply because we did not have money. We got to spend the evening trying to peak inside the big tent while the rain was pouring outside.

The shipwreck at the playground was a fairly disliked attraction among the kids, however me and my brother appreciated the solitude it provided us with aswell as the raw and realistic nature of the ship. But this particular day there were some other kids at the boat. And appearantly sharing wasn’t their thing. They threw stones at us which we dodged, it even appeared as fun for a moment, until I got hit by one right in my face.
With a seriously messed up nose we retreated, defeated by inequit abuse of strength. As we came closer to home a stranger appeared and asked me what happened - by that time we had only passed twenty pedestrians whom all appeared to be temporarily blind to my blood and deaf to my crying - he wiped the majority of the blood of my face with his jacket and took a look at my teeth which appeared to have survived the confrontation with the stone. After the mysterious humanitarian had helped us home to grandmother’s building we never saw him again, but the memory of his deed lives on within me until this very day.

I cannot tell for sure how long that passed between that day and the day we moved to a less poor town, but I know that it did not change alot for me, or my family.

I want to believe that there is a humanitarian inside all of us. There isn’t.

Cryptic government expects clear terrorist communications

Contrary to the wishes of their voters, the Sweden has adopted a law which allows the government to eavesdrop on all communications within the country. This was achieved by pulling stunts, dramatic scenes with crying politicians, and the promise of strict controlmeasures to ensure the privacy of the population.

Of course, when everything I do in front of the computer takes a sidetrip into the National Defence Radio Establishment’s servers it’s hard to appreciate the promises of protected privacy.

So why did they pull such a stupid thing out of their asses?
Nobody knows, but it’s supposed to be for an improved defense against terrorist attacks, which is something that has never in the history of the country been recorded to occur.

Now what does this mean for the everyday computeruser such as yourself?
If you connect to a client or server located in Sweden it means all the traffic between the two of you is being analyzed by the National Defence Radio Establishment. Of course you can encrypt your traffic and thus keep what’s yours to yourself. But be aware that they do have machines running with the sole purpose of decrypting messages so that they can be analyzed. I recommend using a 1024 bit encryption to make sure you are a real pain in the ass.

Should you be forced to speak on the phone with a swede, please mention “packages” and “showtime”. Pretend you’re Usama and that you went to a school which actually teaches english. =)

Of course, real terrorists have been using encryptions for a long time, but the government doesn’t know that so it’ll be fun messing with them even though I am guaranteed never to get through customs in the U.S. (Yes, we do flag suspects as possible terrorists and as far as I know we will share the information with the yankees).

Big brother is watching you.

SVN outsourcing - An alternative to theft

All too often I see communities maintained and updated by a single person. This phenomena is very common especially in the world of OpenTibia and appears for several reasons, the most common one is that the server itself is very easy to setup and maintain, and to let others help you with the server usually means to trust what makes your server unique in the hands of an unknown associate whom you only know over the internet.

But trust me when I say that this does not have to apply to you! There are several tools that will allow you not only to get things done faster by dividing the work, but also to make sure that only the files that are essential for your associate’s progress are at risk of theft.

To make sure neither of the staff members have an outdated copy of their working directory you will want to use the SVN protocol. And of course you only want them to access the files or directories in which they are working.

It is with these reasons in mind that I recommend the VisualSVN Server (It’s free, dont worry), it is based on an Apache but stripped down to the very core and equipped with a nifty graphical interface using the Windows Management Console. You can set up usergroups, users and folder/file permissions as you please.
Personally I have set it up so that there is one usergroup for each folder (One for Actions, one for Creaturescripts, and so on) and then I simply add my users to the usergroups (folders) that they will need to modify in order to do their work.

An essential tool when working in team is somewhere to communicate and coordinate the work, for this I recommend a forum (phpBB is free) where you either discuss all projects/tasks in one board, or one board for each category of work. It may seem very serious to label all threads with a hint of what kind of task(s) it relates to, but it is in fact very helpful for all users, so this is a recommended practise.

Using the SVN in the mentioned manner and perhaps making the discussion board public will allow you to outsource your work and still stay safe as long as your most essential files are safe (I dont recommend giving anyone access to admin.xml, config.lua, or the main .otbm file). Your end-users get the chance to improve their favourite server and you get more time to watch pr0n, it’s a win-win situation!

If all this seems too advanced for you it doesn’t bother me. Feel free to keep doing all the work by yourself and let the project consume all your free time.
If it on the other hand seems helpful and you decide to consider using any of these strategies in your project, good for you! Let me know if you have any questions about making the work more efficient.

With the future in the horizon

Shutting down or resetting a community to make way for updates and new content is never easy nor fun. You will always hear the tiny voice in the midst of your head screaming “Dont do it! You are destroying everything you hold dear!”.

But no matter what people say, living in the past is never a good idea.
Sure, some of your customers may prefer the comfortable feeling of something they know inside out, they know where to find everything. The unknown that lies behind the hills scares them, because they cannot control everything that happens from there on.

But what about the other 90% of your userbase? The ones who get tired of the stuff they so eagerly explored and revisited so many times. They will eventually stop using your service and go somewhere else.

Even though the new update may bring you something to do for a long time into the future, some users still want their fair share of attention. And as far as attentionwhores goes, I think the whinging ones are pretty much worst. They can be amusing from time to time though. For example, first you recieve angry letters about how you are destroying the community by allowing it to evolve into something better and removing the “oldschool” feeling. Then you recieve several letters, from the same conservatist, proposing several changes that wouldn’t even have made it to the dustbin back in the day.

Speaking of old times, do you remember the Columbus fellow? The guy who took a piece of wood and floated all the way to the Big Apple? Yeah, him.
I’m willing to bet my last pringles that there were whingers back then too. Like say, this jolly fellow! (Yes. I am aware that he remained stupid long after Columbus died and had already proven the world was not flat.)
“Don’t do it Christoffer! You will fall over the border that nobody has even proven to exist!”

“Okay, let’s go back to church.”

Progress without progress

I started using computers back in 94 when we were the only family in the whole appartment complex who owned one. It was a Compaq with MS-DOS on it, me and my older brother had lists with commands you could type and stuff would happen on it. For example, if you typed “Games” it would automatically go to the Games folder. Mother, sweet as she is, had placed .bat files there so we only had to type the name of the games to play them, rather than changing directories and stuff.

Me and my brother were first introduced to the internet sometime in 96 when we went to our dad’s place and saw him playing Command & Conquer, he explained that he was playing with his friends and later we played Transport Tycoon via serial cable.

So here we are, 12 years later. With computers almost 20 times as fast as they were back in the good ol’ days and ethernet cables jacked directly into our veins. My family now has about 10 computers, I have a triplehead setup (three screens) and a laptop on the side of that. But we still wait those long seconds for the programs to start. How come the hardware always seem to be just about enough for the software to run? Are we smarter now and make more advanced programs (Please, dont answer that.), or are the hardware developers just too lazy to create something that is actually ahead of the software developers?

I’d like to see a computer without loading screens, just once.