Internet, we have a crisis. Encyclopedia Dramatica was killed. The owner was offered a large sum of money to buy the site so a company could wipe their page off of ED. And she took it.

Thankfully, Anonymous has stemmed the bleeding from the severed limb. Encyclopedia Dramatic has been regenerated at http://encyclopediadramatica.ch/.

I don't want to imagine what would have happened if the horrors in the back of the internet were suddenly forced into the rest of it. I just hope enough Anons are smart enough to find that link to the new one.

<rant2 date = 1-18-11>
Greetings from LinuxLand. I've just installed Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) and got dial up working. It took at least eight hours of solid work. First, I got the ISO file. Then, I run it through DaemonTools and see that to do the fullest install, I have to boot from CD. And since I was using a virtual drive, I obviously can't boot from it. Luckily, my cousin bought and forgot a pack of music CD-Rs last time she was here. I grab one of those and try to burn the ISO. Nero spits out the disc and says the drive was empty. I put in another. Nero spits it out and says the drive is empty. I research the problem for a long time, figure out that Nero's just being oversensitive about not wanting to turn a disc into a frisbee. So I download another CD burner, and actually manage to successfully burn the ISO. So I restart, trying to boot from disc.

I then discover that USB keyboards do not work during the critical part of BIOS where I get to choose what system to boot to. I end up booting to Windows by default. I research how to fix that little problem, because I don't want to have to use an old-style keyboard all the time just to select something to boot to. For future reference, there's a BIOS setting you can get to early on with an old-style keyboard. You know that stuff that appears right when you turn on your computer, that says something like "Push DEL for Setup"? Whatever key it says is what you should push. So I go in there, toggle the setting that was for some stupid reason defaulted to disable USB keyboards and mice. I reboot again.

I get to select Ubuntu this time. It starts up the purple Ubuntu load screen and... kicks me out to the BusyBox prompt with an error "Unable to find a medium containing a live file system". Which is dumb, because the installer it should be running from disc will go about making a partition, aka a file system space for Ubuntu to work in. I reboot in Windows, and research some more. There isn't a good answer. The problem is rare. People make dumb suggestions like "maybe your Live Disc is corrupt", when the thing runs just fine in Windows, not to mention the load screen works, etc. So instead of doing a full install, I give up on that train of thought and just install through Windows. Surprisingly, it works. I reboot into Ubuntu, and it successfully loads up the graphical interface. Everything seems to work just fine.

I go into Administration->Network Connections. There's options to set up all sorts of internet connections - except dial up. I reboot in Windows and research how to do it. It says there's an Administration->Network menu with a tab that has what I need. I reboot in Ubuntu and check - nope. I reboot in Windows and see why it isn't there. I need to download a package to get it. Notice the Catch-22 here - to get internet, you need internet. If it wasn't for me having a dual-boot setup for Windows, I would be fried here. I find how to get to files on the Windows C drive, so I can transfer it. I download that package. Reboot in Ubuntu. Transfer it over. Install it. Administration->Network exists then, except... the tab I need is completely missing. Everything else I need is there, but that one tab isn't. I reboot in Windows. Turns out that tab may not be the best way to go about things. Being open source, there's many different files and packages to do the same thing, and you get to pick and choose which you download. GNOME PPP Dialer is what I go with. I download it and its dependencies. Reboot in Ubuntu, and install them. I open up PPP Dialer.

I put in the username, password, and dial number. I dial an- wait, no I don't. The default modem doesn't exist. I go to that tab and autodetect modem. It can't detect a modem at all on my machine. I reboot in Windows and research. It may be skipping over a modem that actually exists. I check what my modem is, an Agere Softmodem, installed in PCI slot 2. I reboot in Ubuntu and select PCI slot 2, and dia- nope. It is a different error though. "Input/Output Error". I reboot in Windows and research.

Softmodems, also known as Winmodems, do not play well with Linux. There is a way to deal with the problem, but it will be hard. Hard enough that most people recommend paying $20 for a hardmodem and waiting a month for it to arrive, and then to go through the trouble of physically installing the thing. But no, I'm willing to wrestle with it. There is a website, http://www.linmodems.org, that is all about handling the issue. I have to download scanModem for Ubuntu to find out what chipset I'm using. So I do. I reboot in Ubuntu, install, and run the thing. It puts out a very technical and complicated file (has hex codes and such), but it tells me what chipset I'm using. I reboot in Windows. From what the file tells me, I download a precompiled driver. I reboot in Ubuntu. I install the file. I follow what the instructions, including Terminal instructions and... wait, error during one of the commands. What does "-e requires -E" even mean? I reboot in Windows and research. I need to compile the raw C files using Terminal. I download them, and reboot in Ubuntu.

I follow the instructions and compile the raw files in Terminal, and actually get the .ko files. I follow the instructions, and finally get a new driver file to point PPP Dialer to. I do that, dial, and it actually starts working... and then, right when it should have connected, it stops and says it failed. I check the log file. The modem is working. It dials. It gets a carrier... and then immediately drops it, right as the "Welcome to [provider].net!" message comes through. Apparently there's a timeout problem or something. I reboot in Windows and research. Well, that problem is rare. But there's some things I can try to modify in wvdial.config. I reboot in Ubuntu and open the file and start typin- wait, "Read-Only"? What's up with that? I go to the properties. "Settings cannot be modified because you are not the owner". What the heck, Ubuntu. I came to you partially because Windows was doing pretty much the same thing. I reboot in Windows and research.

I can apparently get at it from Terminal with the "sudo" command to run it as a super user. I reboot in Ubuntu and... discover that I have no clue how to get into the directory containing it from Terminal. And I can't move it because it's in the root level space. I look for a graphical "run as super user" thing. None exists. I reboot in Windows and research. People say stuff like "You really shouldn't need to, you can do it through Terminal with 'sudo'." without saying how to do it graphically. But eventually, eventually, I find the Terminal commands that will unlock user "Root", who has god powers over the system. I do it, and run as user Root. It works. I am RootKala. I tweak the wvdial settings. Dial. Fail. Tweak. Dial. Fail. Enable Stupid Mode and disable check for carrier, and add a ton of delay before disconnecting. Dial. And finally, a full day after I started the whole process, it connects. I am online.

I am probably going to use Ubuntu for anything that I don't specifically need Windows for. From a principle standpoint, I love free, open source things. From a practical standpoint, it is very reactive and very moddable. Having a dual-boot system is also a huge security boost. If a virus affects one system, or something brings down my internet somehow (like I had happen on Windows once when a new add-on brought down Firefox's ability to start up), I have the other system to work through the trouble.

Tl:dr -- Ubuntu was easy to set up through Windows, when I did exactly that. Dial up with a softmodem was probably the hardest computer thing I have ever had the displeasure of attempting, that actually succeeded.
</rant2>

<rant>
So I've had this same Windows XP computer for like seven years now. One day, my computer freezes. Okay, not that odd, I had quite a lot of things up, the computer's old, it happens occasionally. I restart, expecting to pick up right where I left off due to firefox restore, autosaves on all my important documents, and a habit of saving frequently. That all worked. But when I restarted, there was another problem.

Due to "recent hardware changes" (I haven't touched the hardware since I installed a new video card and fan a couple years ago), XP decided that it needed to be activated again. My computer, which I had activated several years ago, decided to have amnesia about our entire relationship, and then said it was going to leave me in three days.

It smells phishy. So I research it. Apparently, other people have the same problem. But viruses that cause it are rare and besides, the login screen is nigh impossible for anything but Windows itself to get at. So I go and attempt to activate Windows on the official site. Microsoft hates Firefox users, makes me download a specialized plugin that I intend to rip right back out after the thing is done. I refresh the page, go through the activation, and... it says the activation didn't succeed for a reason it doesn't say. Would I like to buy Windows 7?

F*** no.

This is why I prefer open source software. If you offer a worse product for pay than others make for free, then you shouldn't be surprised when people flock to the free alternative. Heck, even if it isn't free: stop deliberately crippling your services and then telling people to buy the "latest and greatest". Eventually, I manage to get it to go through by doing Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Activate Windows->By Internet.

I'm downloading Ubuntu right now. Even if it is huge over my dial-up connection. The Linux branches may be in third place of popularity and heck, they very well may suck. I don't know. But with Microsoft just threatening to make my computer disobey me after I've bought it, and Apple being worse with what I've read about their products, Linux can't be that bad. From now on I'm only going with Microsoft stuff as a last resort. Or if they somehow manage to make something without allowing other users to be the authority after they've bought it. Otherwise they're really just saying "I'll let you play with my toy for $100, but I'm taking it back with no refund whenever I feel like it."
</rant>

It turns out that http://adventurer.freeforums.org was not taken, so I snatched it up. Now I just need users to populate it. Wow, no one ever reads journals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_the_Halls

Troll the ancient Yule tide carol.

No I'm not. I think that is an incredible overreaction to the whole leaked notes drama going on. You don't like how the admins are running the site? Don't donate. Suggest better ways to run things. Concerned about note security? Well you always should have been. I happen to have a forum and apparently all notes by every user ever are one click away. Not to mention that you're entrusting your data to a site controversial enough to be a prime hack target, while not large enough to sue properly for mishandling your data. Use proper email, if Microsoft or Google gets hacked it will be a global scale drama.

If you read the notes, fine, whatever. If you do, the only way I feel it can be morally justified is if you can handle it appropriately. I personally just noticed the most prolific ones on image boards around. If you want to totally want to ignore any information related to the leak, leave now. I'll give you a few dots so you have room to stop reading if you want to.
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Okay? Good. Now, I don't know everything about what is going on, and most people both here and elsewhere have even less of an idea. I am only interested in this kind of thing because it's a bit of excitement, and one of the few ways to work towards actually improving a community, is to enlighten people about what the heck is going on. There are a couple points that the prolific notes are about.

The highest point of drama going down is the leaked Zaush note. Mentioning his name is not free reign to attack him or whatever. Don't be stupid, and actually learn about what is going on. See, when no one knows what is going on people assume the worst. As far as I can tell, what happened is that Zaush and some lady had a thing going on. They knew each other for months, and Zaush kept trying to make things more serious. She apparently lives hours away, came over one day, and got a topless massage. The next day she came over, Zaush was wanting sex. She was a little creeped out but didn't say no or make any move to go away. Was it because Zaush was intimidating her into doing it? Was she making it up to get back at a relationship gone bad? Was it even worse than the note implies? Was the simple html opened up in notepad and edited? We don't know. The whole thing is concerning, but it's no reason to start flaming him or calling any user wants to discuss what is going on as pro-rape. The whole thing about whether we should even read leaked information is questionable.

Next up is that a mod-who-will-not-be-named has a long list of notes recording abuses of power, including banning/suspending/whatever users based on borderline harrassment/free speech, banning users on AUP violations skirting the border without discussing it with other mods, and banning users based on angering the mod alone. It is disturbing but again remember that the notes are html.

Then there's the whole thing about Dragoneer not reporting people who had questionable evidence gathered on them performing illegal activites, and telling them to lie low in some cases. The only way he would be legally bound to report these things is if he knew for a fact said user was performing illegal activities. As it is, he seems to be using the sort of judgement you would use as a friend and independent person who disagrees with a law. Civil disobedience and all that. But again, there is only a small part of the picture shown by the notes.

And finally, the method of entry of the hacker. As far as I can tell, what happened is that some site totally unrelated to FA got passwords leaked. An admin happened to have an account there, and like most people, uses the same password on many different sites. FA happened to be one, and FA is a prime target because of how notoriously bad furries react and how notoriously lax security measures here. So the hacker gets admin access, grabs notes, and deletes the galleries of a few popular furs. Pretty much promptly leaves. Said hacker figures lulz.net is as good of a place as any to dump the goods. Lulz being a sort of furry 4chan. Which is to say, a place most people hate for no reason I can find, while they're generally nonserious people who love chaos, and will gladly take something like this an raise their own form of drama. Big inter-site war pretty much immediately that route. Anyway, he uploads the archives to a random host, posts links, then leaves forever.

The people there download notes, screenshot the most noteworthy stuff, post it back, and suddenly everyone here and there hears "OMG X IS A RAPIST AND Y IS CORRUPT". People make ill-informed decisions, leave FOREVAR, purge data, and generally only learn for the moment that you shouldn't trust your precious private data to a prime hack target with lax security and admins who can read every single note every user has ever written. So here we are with paladins of privacy on one side and raving conspiracy lunatics on the other, instead of people discussing this rationally and figuring out what Notegate really means for the state of the community.

You can read more at the blog or grab the download at the code page.

This update ran me over like a steamroller. But I did finish it, it was a huge piece of work, and you can check it out at my blog and google code sites.

Yeah, it's out.

I uploaded Adventurer 0.0.1.7 last night as code.google.com/p/adventurerroguelike. I should have posted this journal then, but ah well.

And yes, I fixed it to where you can play as any creature in the bestiary. If you're willing to go into Encyclopedia Adventura/Creatures.txt then you can easily mod in your own creatures to play as or have appear in the game.

The new version is out, with towns and people that will trade items with you. As always, project at http://code.google.com/p/adventurerroguelike and the blog at http://adventurerroguelike.blogspot.com

Next version will let you play as any creature in the game, which I suppose should increase its appeal here as well as being just all-around awesome.

Yeah, no intent to stir up trouble, I just saw that 3Dinoz has been suspended for a week due to "AUP violations" and Drages has been permanently banned due to subverting a 48-hour ban cause unknown.

I assume the AUP line in question is the following:

"3D Renderers - Pre-packaged or downloadable models may ONLY be used if they contain significant modification to separate them from the stock model (e.g. must contain original textures). Re-colors and hue-shifts do not constitute "content"."

I thought 3Dinoz made his own models. In either case, he does animations as well. And Drages does use Poser models, but he does some impressive animations with them. So I'm just wondering... does not converting from a stationary model to a fully animated model, in an animation which is obviously user-created content, count as "significant modification"?

I would think such a thing would lead to heavy discussion amongst the admins until a clear line is drawn, and if a line is drawn, a warning before bans since it is a borderline thing.

And moreso than that, shouts to their pages are being deleted and commenters are being banned. Isn't that harsh, and further, counterproductive? Don't we want discussion about what does and does not break policy? Do we not want people using words rather than digital attacks?

I mean, I can understand warning then banning if it has been decided amongst the mods that a violation has indeed taken place, but what I'm seeing from the mod-restricted information is that 3Dinoz was immediately suspended for a week with no warnings, Drages was suspended 48 hours with no warnings, and when he got back in just to write a journal, was perma-banned.

So I don't know. It's not enough for me to leave this site, but it is something that I heavily disapprove of, and I hope that people do discuss and think about this, especially all the mods and admins of FA.

Let's all set a good example by discussing this calmly but with great concern. Perhaps refuse to donate where you otherwise would have, unless some major changes to how mods handle borderline cases takes place, and the way comments during drama are handled. But definitely not anything illegal or directly damaging to the site, that would make the users just as bad or worse about silencing people's ways to handle themselves.

Also, any flame wars that spark because of this are just going to, from me, going to get both sides considered, mocked if the response is stupid, logically debated if logical fallacies are brought up. Read TvTropes "Don't Shoot The Message" for my thoughts on people defending my own positions poorly.

Also, preemptively, I'm bringing up another thing:

"Submissions intended to harass, slander or otherwise disrupt usage of the site will not be tolerated. This includes, but is not limited to, content which is racist, bigoted or otherwise offensive towards any particular sexuality, philosophy or religion. Submissions in which a user's character(s) are used without their permission may, in some instances, be viewed as harassment, and will be handled on an individual basis. "

Let's keep it to actual intelligent discussion and not harrassment and flames, mmkay?

Also, I wonder if I even have enough readers to warrant that lengthy warning about how discussions should take place.

And then, vast stretches of untamed wilderness. The green forest stretches endlessly in all directions. Dungeons are hidden around the world, waiting for an adventurer to find them.

Yes you all, I have made an overworld. Although unlike I said before, towns are not yet part of it. I pretty quickly figured that before I start putting in more individual one-map-tile locations, I need a backdrop for it. Namely, an immense forest. That's the biggest thing I worked on the past week, along with web classes and work getting ready for moving. However, there is one more big thing about this update. Something so important it requires a new line and a special formatting:

****************************************
*ADVENTURER NOW WORKS ON 64-BIT SYSTEMS*
****************************************

Or at least, as far as I can tell. I found that a person I know has a 64-bit system, had them test old Adventurer and tell me what the crash log put out. It seemed to be to do with the Sdl.dll not being 64-bit. But I couldn't find one, so stumped, I went on #RGRD. There, a person (whose name I really must write down one of these days so he/she may be properly noted here) said they thought a simple tweak to the .csproj file may fix the actual problem. I did it, sent it off to 64-bit guy, and it ran perfectly. So I assume the 64-bit problem is now fixed for everyone. Tell me if it isn't. And yes, you have #RGRD to thank again for helping a new developer put out better stuff faster.

As for next week, I'll see about getting towns in proper, and maybe some other stuff.

As always, main page:
http://code.google.com/p/adventurerroguelike

Blog:
http://adventurerroguelike.blogspot.com

Good news everyone! I got around to updating. I didn't realize how fast the days were going by. But what's going on in this update is mostly that I added traps. Namely tripwires. If you or a monster walks on one unaware, you trip and are stunned for a couple turns. Related to that, you can build a trap by [u]sing the proper items. And also, you can dismantle a trap by [k]ick/dismantling it. De-limbed monsters drop said body part as an item on the ground, and dead monsters leave behind corpses. Also, I added a couple more items like flails.

I also had a lot of "almost-happened"s. I was going to make it to where pathfinding accounts for the attributes of a monster and its capability of working on the environment. Mostly, being able to path through closed doors if they can open them. Well, they increased the processing required for pathfinding to the point that it got laggy. So while it totally worked, I had to undo it until I can get that working more efficiently. Also, I started to improve the pathfinding so that instead of checking every single step, it checks once and all steps go into a monster's memory as a queue. That I can totally do. I was just burnt out in the brain on pathfinding after the doors fiasco, and I had more important things to work on. Maybe next update.

And now... my plans for next update. I don't care how much work it takes, but I am going to work on the things that will make Adventurer different from other roguelikes. I am going to work on the overworld - at the very least a town. Let's get out of that dreary dungeon.

I figure I may as well keep a journal, even though it'll be just one of thousands that pile up every day. :3

I'll start posting about Adventurer updates, and progress on the next version. Or I may just write about other random stuff. So, Adventurer is up to 0.0.1.3. I never fully understood the format of version numbers.They're just a way of marking the differences between versions. So for my version numbering, the numbers probably don't make much sense. So here's how I'll break it down.
the 0.0.0.X part is the difference between releases. I'll occasionally tag a letter on the end of that for my own purposes, like if I'm about to rewrite a bunch of code and need to save a copy in case I accidentally trash it.

The 0.0.X.0 part is the difference of something more major, or if I think I've just gone enough versions to warrant it. Like the SDL update was enough to kick that number up one. The 0.X.0.0 part is super major, whole-arc-completion type things. Like if I've done enough work on the dungeon diving part, that'll bump a version number. If I do enough in world exploration, I'll bump it a version number. Right now is the single-dungeon arc, though I may introduce world exploration before that.

And finally, the X.0.0.0 part is when there is such a large jump, it is pretty much a different game. This will likely be years before being flipped. It may flip if there is a major split in design philosophies. Like if it becomes more graphical (like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup), then it may be called "Adventurer 2.X.X.X). So maybe all that will explain what little sense the version numbers make.

As for progress on # I got a cool new tool called CombineSuite. It lets me compare class files for differences and similarities between them, and edit them accordingly. I used this to bring my super secret project built off the Adventurer engine up to date with the upgrades since I first worked on it. I also brought into Adventurer some improvements I made in the super secret project. I'm considering letting people in on the super secret project. I'm unsure if it should really be linked to Adventurer though. It isn't exactly 'professional', though it may be popular here. Give me some comments related to that.

Next I'll be working on getting more things working that are relevant to the body part systems, like having creatures react more realistically to doors in their way. Slimes that work by sound and smell, rather than sight. Canines that are very sensitive to smell. Perhaps some more interesting tools to start working with, like traps you can set up. Or having potions affect things when they're broken onto a creature. That kind of thing.

My new year's resolution is to be more active in the online community. I launched this account, which I plan on actually using a lot to post submissions and journals and comments on.

So for something to discuss, I'll likely be raving about some of my most loved gaming moments. This journal's entry is inspired by Starcraft: Brood Wars.

There is one mission where you are assaulting a huge Terran Base. In the previous mission, I took out their Battlecruiser capability rather than their Nuclear capability. So the mission starts, I have a large base, with three outposts. "Nuclear Launch Detected", three times in a row. Hrm... *Boom, Boom, Boom* There went the outpost bases. Alright, let's block up the entrances so tha-

"NNNUCLEARLLLAUNCHDEDETECTDETECTED"

My base has more nukes raining down than rain. Only command center survives.

Why this is awesome - purely for those twenty seconds I thought it was over, interrupted by a glitching echoing warning that results in "OH SHI-".