Blog updates

Ryan

I’m sorry about the lack of updates here lately. I’m having a bit of a problem with WordPress. I can’t edit any postings, which is a slight pain. I also can’t figure out why this problem popped up. I’m using the SVN version, and if I revert all the files it is still broken (but a new install works fine). i started debugging the problem, and the SQL query that grabs the list of posting is extremly fubar, but unfortunalty the SQL query is built very dynamically so it’s not easy to fix.

Free vServer during beta phase

Ryaneuserv, i7g5$fEm, linux, Server, vServer

I just stumbled accross this website: https://ssl.euserv.de/produkte/vserver/betatest.php where you can order a vServer for free during the beta phase. The beta phase is planned to last till the end of 2009. For more details, have a look at the link (there are a few thing not allowed to use the server for, mainly high traffic and illegal stuff).

An order key is required, just have a look at the tags of this posting …. one of them is a bit “strange” ๐Ÿ˜‰

website IP, Deviant Art

Ryan1 Comment on website IP, Deviant Artdeviant art, dns, Foto

Sorry for the problem with the website. Seems my DNS Provider decided to do a rollback and the old IP was active for dopefish.de (www.dopefish.de still worked). Both DNS entries now point to the new IP again.

In my last posting I forgot to mention I set up an account over at Deviant Art where I am posting pictures of mine I actually find worthwhile looking at. Not that I find the rest of my pictures outright bad, but they are more average and sorted by events/vacations. The ones I post at Deviant Art are pictures I find are above (my) average and worth the time to have a look. Currently not too many, but the collection will hopefully grow.

Gaming & Photo

RyanFoto, Lens, PS3, Wii

Haven’t posted here for a while, so I’ll catch up on events. I got two new lenses for my camera, both Nikon. The 50mm 1.4 and the 18-200mm 3.5-5.6. Both very good lenses, and it seems that either Nikon heard the complaints about the 18-200 and fixed the design, or I am just plain lucky because mine has no creeping when used vertically. Very cool. And words can’t describe how great the 50/1.4 is in low-light situations.

New games: Street Fighter IV (PS3) and Wii Fit

I played Street Fighter IV at the Games Convention in Leipzig last year, and it was fun. I liked the good old Street Fighter II Turbo on the SNES, so I went and pre-orderd the new version on Amazon. Since the British pound is so weak lately, I bought it on the Amazon UK website. Importing it from the Brits is about 15โ‚ฌ cheaper than buying it in Amazon DE ๐Ÿ˜‰
Anyway, the game is tons of fun, and I can safely encourage anyone who like the II Version, to go out and buy it. Probably the best 2D Fighter out there. Even though you play on a 2D plane, the 3D graphics are good. The comic like shading is cool. But there are also some downsides to the game. First and foremost: it is f***ing hard. Now I know I’m not the youngest anymore, and I never was an uber-pro at this kind of game, but I kinda expected to have a slight chance at winning when I set the difficulty setting to super easy mode. Nah, it’s not hard, but you can still run into opponents that will kick your ass. Medium is … hard, I can’t say much about medium since I cant seem to get farther than 3 or 4 rounds before the computer starts whipping my ass. And don’t even get me going at the ranked online matches. Selecting “Find someone near my rank” seems to have zero affect. More often than not I’ll end up with some “hyped up teen drinking red bull” as an opponent and I feel like the match happens in fast forward and I’m just a spectator.

Wii Fit: Yeah, we finally got around to buying one. Not much to say here that hasn’t already been said a thousand timea before on the Internet. It’s fun and interesting ๐Ÿ˜‰

I think I’ll add another widget here on the right with my online gaming pseudonyms so friends have an easier time keeping track of me.

Mythtv Update & New online games

RyanGames, Kingsage, Myth, MythTV

Last weekend my htpc didn’t record a show it should have, turned out it couldn’t fetch EPG data anymore (and therefore didn’t know the show was running, I should have it email me if it completely runs out of EPG data). Anyway, I thought updating the system would be a good idea … fixing EPG was easy, fixing the stuff the update broke took me 2 days. The solution was easy, restore the original /etc/X11/xorg.conf since the one the update generated kinda broke GLX on my Nvidia 6200 which resulted in the wierdest problems. The Myth GUI worked partially, live TV etc. was no problem, but the menus didn’t show (or only parts showed).ย  The first step was to chmod -x the script myth uses to shutdown the pc, you have aboud 15 second to do so after the pc has started because ofย  “ok, I’m running … ok, the frontend stopped(crashed), I’ll shutdown in 15 seconds”.ย  After finding out, that the new xorg.conf from ubuntu 8.10 sucks for me, the solution was an easy “cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup && cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.old /etc/X11/xorg.conf”

I started plaing a new browsergame this week, Kings Age. It’s a simple”build cities, expand, fight” thing. But the graphics are ok, and it’s easy to play (log in once a day and put some actions in the queue).