Xenoveritas's blog

Dear Windows,

Pressing Cancel in the Sound and Audio Devices dialog does not mean "reset the volume to the level it was prior to opening the dialog, overwriting changes made via other volume controls after opening the dialog." It means "don't apply any changes I've made."

Thanks.

P.S.

I'm sure my upstairs neighbor would also appreciate not having the volume on my computer jump from 5% to 100%.

So I'm trying to build an Eclipse application using Eclipse's ANT toolset. This would allow me to build an Eclipse application from the command line without having to go through the Eclipse GUI.

But whenever I try and run the build script, I get the following errors (path names changed):

Just thought I'd mention it. I've got some kind of killer cold (flu?) and it just won't die. I've been getting somewhat better than I have been, but I'm still not exactly feeling better.

Ah well. Hopefully plenty of rest and I'll be feeling fine tomorrow.

I wanted to create an actual comparison, but I can't find any really good photos and I'm too lazy.

So instead I'm just going to observe that Harry Shearer looks like Bruce Perens.

Most video game RPGs have essentially given up on what pencil-and-paper RPG players would consider the roleplaying aspect of the genre and have instead decided to focus solely on being combat simulators. With the majority of gameplay focused on the combat system, the combat system becomes one of the central points of the game. The story, if there is one, serves only as an explanation for why the baddies keep on getting stronger.

Usually. Some stories don't even explain that. Why are the guards in the Great City far weaker than the lowliest grunt stationed at Some Guy's Farm? Who knows.

Here's how to create an RPG combat system that truly sucks.

So, Christmas is coming, and everyone knows what that means: time to send people stupid Christmas catalogs. (Sorry, holiday catalogs, they don't care what you believe as long as you'll part with money.)

So, as I am a single, childless 25 year old male who is renting, I have currently received:

• Terry's Village - a catalog that appears to specialize in home decorating thingies.
• Young Explorers - "Creative educational products" - i.e., toys for kids.
• Hearth Song - another toy catalog, although on the "old fashioned fun" side
• The Paragon - clearly aimed at women over 30

In a recent discussion about hosting Open Source projects, SourceForge inevitably came up. I recommended against it, siting stability concerns. I'd had severe issues with accessing a CVS repository I needed for a project. Where by "severe issues" I mean "worked once in the span of two weeks."

But that was quite a while ago. So I couldn't help but wonder if I was being unfair to SourceForge. Maybe they'd improved.

Well, I can't seem to access SourceForge-hosted websites right now.

I guess they're just as unstable as ever.

I seem to recall Sun announcing they were going to open source Java, with some hints that Java 6 would be released open source around October.

Well, it's October. Actually, it's late October.

Where's Java SE 6, open or not? Java SE 6, Beta 2 has been available for months, since May if I recall correctly. (A beta, at least, if not beta 2 itself.)

It's fall 2006. Where's Java SE 6? Why have there been no status updates? When are they going to release it?

Bleach has been doing filler about the Bount, a group of soul-sucking vampires (or something stupid like that). So I present the current list of Bount, complete with a small portrait of each one. Read More for the full list.

Internet Explorer 7 is finally out. And... my site still doesn't work in it. Blarg.

I guess this means I'm finally going to have to get around to fixing Drupal's JavaScript to properly resize text areas instead of the current JavaScript which misplaces it due to the margins.

Plus several annoying rendering glitches remain (backgrounds randomly disappear while scrolling) leaving me with a page that just doesn't quite work.