Asymptomatic

We had a discussion at work the other day, and again on IRC recently, about what to name our computers. At first this might sound like a silly thing, especially to people who use a single home computer, but for people with more than one at home or who use computers every day at work, it's something that you probably end up thinking about at some point.

All of my computers at home are named after "characters" in books. This computer is Defiant, named after a spaceship in Bill Baldwin's Galactic Convoy novel. My file server is Naruto after the manga character, and my notebook is named Runcible, after a much higher-tech device that is the center of the Neal Stephenson novel The Diamond Age.

I tend to be pragmatic about my server naming because there are just too darn many of them to remember, but many people and organizations give them more fanciful names. For example, A Small Orange uses characters from the show Lost to name their servers, as I noticed when editing some of my content on Hurley....

I read a post by Jacob Santos in which he lists a few reasons why he will not switch to Habari.

First, let me say that I'm glad you have reasons for your decision, and that you've chosen something you believe in. I think a lot of people pick their tools because it's what the next guy uses, without really thinking about whether its best. Now... Let me try to change your mind. ;)

1. Given that Habari does a bit more to organize things, I think it's fair to find a few more directories. If you look in detail at Habari's directory structure you'll see that even though there are more directories, they all make sense when you know what they're for. /system is for core files. /user is for your files. /3rdparty is for things you've installed that other people have written. ...

I would like to offer my comparison between the games Rock Band and Guitar Hero, but first I will mention something about my broken Rock Band drum set.

I bought Rock Band for myself before Christmas, having had a great time with Guitar Hero 2, and wanting to try out the crazy drum setup. I've been playing for a while, and my snare drum (the red one on the far left) has gradually stopped working well. It's at the point now that I have to bang on the drum really hard just to get it to register.

I've seen videos on the web about other people having trouble with their drum sets. Apparently, there were some issues with the early models (which I'm sure is what I have considering I pre-paid for mine) that are fixed in later revisions. EA is being awesome about replacing the broken drum kits. I've visited their site and ordered my free drum kit replacement. Hopefully I'll be swapping out the drums early next week.

That said, let me get into my comparison between the games, and what I think they should do with the next version of Rock Band and/or Guitar Hero. more

I just realized something interesting about rolling dice online. Forgive my geek side for showing for a moment.

I've been messing with modules for JibbyBot (a phenny bot for IRC), trying to pick up a little Python here and there, and something I thought to possibly implement is a dice-rolling module that would let you specify die-rolls in D&D format. I suppose a brief tutorial is in order.

In Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), there are several different polyhedral dice. When the game wants you to roll a specific die, it will specify the number of sides on the die to roll. So for the frequent opportunity you get to roll a 20-sided die, the game will specify this with a shorthand syntax, "d20", which is really short for "1d20", meaning to roll the 20-sided die one time. If the game needs you to roll a 6-sided die three times, the shorthand would look like "3d6". There are also things that let you add or subtract a constant value from the roll, like in "3d6+2", but that's not quite relevant for the interesting thought I have come across....

I had a most amazing experience today. At lunch I finally stopped at a place that I've been eyeing for months. It's a "traditional" barber shop called "Shaving Grace".

I've been needing a good haircut for weeks now, my last cut falling woefully short of adequate. My bangs have been falling forward onto my forehead in an annoyingly straight line. The most remarkable thing about the woman who cut my hair was not her skill, but the hacking smoker's cough she'd erupt into occaasionally. Ick.

So this barber shop... In the lobby were pool tables, comfy leather couches, and boxes of cigars. See? Not so much a hair stylist as an actual barber. A good first impression....