Sierra Kilo

Ditto… except…

WoW character recustomization is one form of RMT* that I find acceptible, however. It does nothing to affect gameplay, so let the newbs swap genders and get DragonballZ haircuts all day long (their micropayments may even help subsidize an eventual monthly payment decrease).

Character Transfers are another form of RMT that I’m not opposed to. The only exception would be if the game used a finite material-like system (like UO’s original system) where transferring a character with items could throw off the balance by removing material from one “shard” and adding it to another.

Restrings and color customization is also an acceptable form of RMT for me unless the customized form of the item is also available in the loot pool. If colored armor sets are available in drops, they should not be available via RMT because they represent a player’s “hard earned effort” to collect said armor. Another form of this is organizations. If I am a member of the Order of the Blue Star, I wouldn’t mind paying for a cloak bearing my guild’s crest.

Any form of RMT that is visible in-game to other players should be flagged as such (possibly by a badge next to the player’s name or in his profile). This could do several things: advertise that the red armor set is only available via RMT, advertise that the player is a lazy, spoiled rich kid, advertise that the player is narcissistic, or advertise that the player is very centered on roleplaying.

The key to incorporating RMT in a game is to not spoil the core gameplay by tipping the balance toward the RMTers.

* For the uninitiated, RMT = Real Money Trading – a form of virtual economy where players can spend real money for virtual goods/services in a game.

I have been tinkering with my home automation project here and there. The big part is going to be the web control interface, so I have been trying to get the hang of css for the layout. The software that I’ll be using has a web front-end that uses Python scripts to interface with the software and send the signals to the devices. The problem is that I wanted a complete home control panel (see previous post) to do everything. Not quite sure how I’ll do all of the wiring up, but here’s the design I have so far. It shows our Twitter statuses when Twitter is working and has buttons for easy device status toggling.

A friend of mine pointed me to the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin a few weeks ago. Until then, it was a long, painful process that ended up broken several times. Now, it’s just a few clicks…complete with site and database backups.

The version 2.7 upgrade broke my Fluency Admin administration plugin, which I really liked, but the new administration panel works much better than the previous stock panel did.

I’ve been tinkering with some web development lately and really enjoy seeing sites that are well-laid-out, simple, functional, and easy-to-use. So far, I like what I see.

Here’s what went down last night:

Laura:
what are you doing?

Steven:
reading

Laura:
where?

Steven:
oklahoma

Laura:
i mean, upstairs or downstairs, [smartypants]!

Steven:
down

Laura:
ahh
ok
are you watching tv too?

Steven:
yes

Laura:
ok
i want to watch the office but it recorded down there

Steven:
that’s fine…i’m not really paying attention to it

Laura:
ok
you should update your status

I don’t see anything wrong with communicating via IM. I sometimes chat with coworkers in the next cube over IM (usually because we both have headphones on). I just though it was funny that my wife didn’t just come downstairs to see what I was up to and relies on my Twitter status. Not sure if that reflects badly on her, on me, or on us both

In a related topic, I’m starting to get back into my home automation hobby. I’m hoping that Apple will update the Mac Mini soon (hopefully at MacWorld in January). When they do, here’s what I’d like to do:

• Install Indigo to handle some Insteon components
• Driveway lights
• Front Door lights
• Entry (or Kitchen) light
• Door sensors (later – Front, back, patio, garage)
• Roaming lamp modules (later – for Christmas lights and other stuff)
• Set up some rules for Adium Instant Messenger
• If IM is from trusted source, parse message and execute commands (turn on/off lights, return status, etc)
• If IM is from trusted source and contains a Torrent link, begin downloading (for movies, TV shows, etc)
• Set up webcam to either take snapshots every few seconds or stream live video of downstairs
• Create a mobile-friendly website to view home status (secure, of course)
• View webcam shots/video
• Display light status
• Display current download status
• Display router status
• Display family status (Twitter/Facebook/etc)
• Display family calendar
• Upload/Browse/Download files (web-based FTP?)
• View/Edit a Wiki (I love my slightly-modified version of W2)
• Set up Plex/XBMC/Boxee media server
• Integrate with Indigo
• Integrate with Hulu
• Integrate with Netflix (queue and streaming)
• Integrate with Google Reader
• Integrate with Adium (I wonder if that’s possible with some simple AppleScripts?)

So, it’s a pretty ambitious project, but I’ve been trying to merge all of this stuff for a while now with different projects and levels of success. I think Mac is a good solution. I only wish .Net was fully compatible with Mac (the IDE and the runtime…yes, I know about Mono, but it’s not a very user-friendly setup) so that I could use and build on what I already know (ASP.net/C#) instead of using what little I know of PHP or having to learn Objective-C. Buffing my HTML/CSS/JavaScript skills will carry over to my professional life, though, so it’s not all bad. Now, if I can only get Laura to use a shared calendar for family stuff that can sync with our phones…

Sorry for the Twitter daily digest duplicates. TwitterTools did it! I turned it off until it’s fixed, so if you’re used to seeing it, it’ll be back eventually. I deleted the dupes, so now the site should look like the normal, stale Sierra Kilo.

• Winding down. Music too loud to chat. http://snipurl.com/5ime4 #

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• @mattbeer me and 11 girls. 3 are his sisters, 1 is a cousin, and the rest are friends. Can’t talk him into making a move. 2 are worthy in reply to Mattbeer #
• Winding down. Music too loud to chat. http://snipurl.com/5ime4 #

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• E sick this morning. Mom’s watching her while I do a little work from their place. Dr appt at 1230. Prolly bronchitis/cold cuz she’s coffing #
• Steven E sick this morning. Mom’s watching her while I do a little work from their place. Dr appt at 1230. Prolly… http://ff.im/-2nZK #
• wow…friendfeed is double/triple posting everything…looks like that feature gets turned off… #
• Waiting to drop off rx for E. #
• E is running around screaming, so it seems she’s feeling much better. Still has lots of congestion in her chest, but I’d say she’s better #
• updated my WordPress install…that was a beating, but I also fixed some admin stuff so I can now edit pre-2.x posts! Also, permalinks work #
• Foot, Nov 13, 2008 http://ff.im/-2wYP #
• Walking the dog, my bi-daily ritual unwind. Listening to some David gilmour. Good stuff. E is doing well enough to go to school tomorrow #
• Shiny Cat in Sauce! Yummy! I love FailBlog.org http://ff.im/-2Ams #

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I want DiceWars (single and/or multi-player) for the iPhone! Multi-player aside, this is a great casual game. I’d also like to see some kind of turn-based multi-player game for the iPhone. Something that would email/text you when it’s your turn and skip your turn if you haven’t taken it in a certain amount of time (4-6 hours?).

A few friends and I play on the web once in a while, which is great, but it might work better with shorter turns on a mobile platform. If your turn could be played in about 60 seconds and you were notified on your device that it’s your turn, it might work better for my friends and I.

We played a lot of Risk (aka “Rikks”) in college, but now that we’ve all got our own thing going on (work, wife, kids, etc), it’s difficult to get everyone together. A turn-based “play-when-you-can-but-don’t-hold-everyone-else-up” game is what could work for us.

So I was doing some website housecleaning (upgrading wordpress, plugins, etc.) and ended up nearly hosing the works. In the end, I actually fixed a year-long problem I had with a previous upgrade and cleaning up the whole site. Basically, I fell into a big pile of it and came out smelling fresh and clean That’s rare.

I’m not sure what the deal is in the past few weeks, but a metric ton of my old classmates have finally discovered Facebook, so we’ve been “friending up”. I’m not a huge social networking web guy, but I usually get an account at the new flavor-of-the-day just to check it out. I’ve been on Facebook for years. One problem I’ve had is that I don’t really want to give up Twitter. SMS mobile notifications are a great way to keep up with people and few other social networking sites use it. Plus, I hate having 18 different places to have to update. Well, I figured out a way to update everything with my very latest status. It’s pretty convoluted, but works:

1. Set up TwitterTools plugin on my website. This updates Twitter with new posts from my website.
2. Set up FriendFeed.com with all of my websites (blog, flickr, twitter, netflix, etc).
3. Add the FriendFeed application on Facebook.
4. Add the Twitter application on Facebook. Set the Twitter app to set my Facebook status.
5. Set FriendFeed to update Twitter (under Account->Feed Publishing) with everything except Twitter, Facebook, my website, and Brightkite (since those post to Twitter automatically anyway).

With those things set up, I can post to Twitter (using Twinkle on iPhone), take mobile photos and upload to Flickr (using AirMe on iPhone), check in at a location (using Brightkite on iPhone), write a post, clip a picture from the web (using Asaph bookmarklet), add a Netflix, or whatever, and my status is always up-to-date (FriendFeed does most of the heavy-lifting). Of course, I still have to check Facebook to see what my friends are doing, since most of them don’t use Twitter, but at least it’s only one site. Oh, and if anyone still uses MySpace, you’re out-of-luck because I’ll never see your site. I had a login for all of 5 minutes before the site drove me crazy.