Top of Cool

Corvus over at Man Bytes Blog has issued the following meme discussion:

You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:

1. one weapon.
2. one song blasting on the speakers.
3. one famous person to fight alongside you

This is so easy.

1. The trusty Halberd. Corvus’s shovel is definitely a good choice, but I think I want something a little longer, and a little sharper.

2. “Doomsday Clock” by Smashing Pumpkins.

3. The Rock. Seems like a nice guy, and I think he could be trusted to watch my back and hold his own against the zombies.

(I admit that this is kind of cheating for me. I’ve read World War Z.)

Sorry… bad pun… I’ll apologize for that, right now.

In any event, the latest Carnival of Gamers is up. I just read the notification in Bloglines, so I haven’t read any of the articles. Looks like a lot of good stuff though. I can’t wait to dig in…

I have created a simple Wordpress widget to display my own Bloglines subscriptions. Feel free to download it and use it on your own blog. It has a simple configuration form so that you can set the widget title and enter your Bloglines username.

If you aren’t familiar with Wordpress or Widgets, Wordpress is the content management software I use to display all of our wonderful weblog posts. A widget is a kind of “plugin-within-a-plugin” that allows me to quickly customize the content of my sidebar.

Download: My Bloglines widget

Also, if anyone has any bugs and/or feedback about this widget, please send me some email at finster [at] gmail [dot] com and please include “Bloglines Widget” in the subject.

Well, I’m installing a Counter-Strike: Source server on my FreeBSD box here. Hopefully, I can get it up and running on here. The server is designed to run on Linux, so I figured I would document my procedures and steps that I took, so if anyone else wanted to get HLDS running on a FreeBSD box, maybe my humble efforts will be helpful.

I’m pretty much planning on following these instructions I found via Google.

I’ve done all of this so far:

1) adduser hlds && passwd hlds
2) su hlds
3) cd ~
4) wget http://www.steampowered.com/download/hldsupdatetool.bin
5) chmod +x hldsupdatetool.bin && ./hldsupdatetool.bin
5a) If you see an error about not finding /bin/uncompress type ln -s /bin/gunzip /bin/uncompress && ./hldsupdatetool.bin
6) ./steam -command update -game gamename -dir ~/hlds -username yoursteamaccountgoeshere -password yourrealpasswordgoeshere
6a) Replace gamename above with cstrike for CS, tfc for TFC, dod for Day of Defeat, “counter-strike source” for CS:S (yes, you need the quotations)
7) The tool will probably update itself, and then begin downloading the files. Eat a snack or get off your behind for a bit, and take a walk. This can take awhile.

So, right now, I’m just waiting for everything to download to my server. I’ll update when that finishes…

Okay, so the download is finished. I have now downloaded phpUA and PHPAdmin as well. I think I’m going to try and install PHPAdmin first.

Update: Bleh. Trying to install addons is worse than pulling teeth. It seems that most of the documentation predates the Source Dedicated Server, and when it doesn’t the documentation is usually flat out wrong. For now, the server itself runs great… but the addons are a completely different issue…

Update 2: I managed to get mani-admin-plugin installed and working. I gives me all of the functionality I wanted, and then some. I also installed Webmin and set up an interface theough Webmin to start and stop the server, and edit some of the config files. So far, it seems to be running pretty smoothly. If anyone has a desire to check out the server, simply add a server with the address of “www.topofcool.com:27015″ and you’ll be able to get on.

Just going over some of my recent spam emails…

This one is titled Re: Pharablmacy News. Now, even if I did send an email about Pharmacy News that this “bartomeu demasi” could reply to, I’m pretty sure I know how to spell “pharmacy”.

Next…

The Ultimate Online Pharmaceutical: Vliwagra

If you’re going to go to the trouble to spell “pharmaceutical” correctly, Viagra shouldn’t be THAT hard. I mean, come on, do you really think I’ll be more likely to read an email about “Vliwagra”?

Hey how r u

If my friend sent me an email with THAT in the subject, I would no longer allow them to be my friend.

My good friend “zavier” sent this one: You blase of being undersized. I am.

Uh… sounds like a personal problem, buddy.

Well, join us next time, when I explore the intricacies of SAD TO HAVE SHORT BIGGER 2″ NOW AT NEW LOW. Yes… new low, indeed.

Yes. Yes, I do.

Google’s ads are sometimes eerily intelligent in the questions they might pose.

AFK Gamer had a link to The Leeroy Jenkins Soundboard.

And in case you have not been intorduced to the World of Warcraft hilarity that is: The Leeroy Jenkins video.

Leeroy Jenkins is the funniest thing on the internet since the Star Wars Kid.

The Optimus Prime of keyboards.

So, my domain is still MIA. I’m told it will be back soon, though. Despite the fact that NO ONE can read this, right now, I had to link to this awesome blog post.

I participated in the Carnival of Gamers, and Matthew Gallant at CGOnline was rather critical of the whole affair. Josh at Cathode Tan responded.

What I find absolutely entertaining is the flame war that ensues in the comments area of Josh’s blog. Go read these comments. Now. All two of you reading this blog… go do it!

Update: The flame war continues over at damnedmachines.com!

Update II: Oh, and my domain is back. Excellent!

Contrary to what Gamespy is reporting, BitTorrent is not shut down. See.

Gamespy’s reporter is writing about the shut down of a single torrent site. The BitTorrent client and technology are very much still active. This writer is just an idiot. Or maybe it’s the editor, who knows over there anymore.

CNN reported today that Federal agents have launched a campaign on users of BitTorrent Software used to steal data files from the internet.

This is also erroneous. The campaign was NOT against bittorrent users. It was against the pirate websites that post torrents to things such as “Episode III” before they’re released.

“Our goal is to shut down as much of this illegal operation as quickly as possible to stem the serious financial damage to the victims of this high-tech piracy — the people who labor to produce these copyrighted materials,” said John Richter, acting assistant attorney general in the Justice Department.

You know what this proves? George Lucas has control of the Justice Department. Here’s how I imagine it going down.

George Lucas: OMFG! Episode III is on teh intarweb? People can see it without paying $10 a ticket? RICK! TO THE SKYWALKER CAVE! We’ve got to call the President!

Rick McCallum: As you command, Master.

George Lucas: President? It’s important that you stem the serious financial damage this is wreaking upon my empir^H^H^H^H^H I mean, my legitimate business. I’M A VICTIM!!!!111oneone

UPDATE: Apparently, Gamespy has now altered the headline to more correctly say, “Bittorrent site shut down” instead of, “Bittorrent shut down.” So, kudos to Gamespy for correcting their HEADLINE to be more correct… now if only they would leave their game reviews alone. Note that they have still not corrected the erroneous content of the article itself.