On Friday the 15th I attended my graduation ceremony of the Kingston University Class of ’09. Everything was planned to perfection, I must admit. It was a rare thing to see everything work so flawlessly and the proceeding to advance in such a fluid manner. Understand that I am not saying that Kingston university is usually unorganized, on the contrary, I’m saying that it simply felt perfect.
I’d like to thank the University for being an excellent educational institute. On the whole, the staff and faculty have always been helpful and present which was a very rewarding experience and in vast contrast to the Greek university.
I got all the merchandise that was on offer, simply because I could. I realize it is an expression of consumerism, but they are also memorabilia, like my T-shirt and sweater with all the names of the graduates, engraved frames with the logo of the University, mugs and engraved champagne glasses.
Also, in the free graduate grab bag there were two pins that were of a surprising wit. Don’t get me wrong, English humor is very nice and good, but it is of a certain flavor that does not match that of the pins.
They read: “Pro-gram-mer: an organism that turns caffeine to code”, and “127.0.0.1 no place like it”
I have no words. ME2 voice acting stars are just phenomenal as you can very well see in this video.
Fans of SciFi should recognize everyone here and I’m (finally) really excited about playing this game. Just like Mass Effect was a great adventure and a brilliant experience, I’m now expecting great things from Mass Effect 2.
I’ve said before that voice acting makes a game, and with the stars on display here, the script can really come alive. And the folks over at BioWare have PROVED that they can produce an amazing storyline.
P.S. Soooo looking forward to hearing “Worf” again…
Seems like someone else thought as I did about MMO betas and it was Massively.com
They have asked MMO developers the same questions about betas and there are some interesting points to read in this Q&A. I will not express an opinion as I have already done so, for one, and the views of each developer is plainly laid out. Just go read it and see for yourself.
Next I saw the Corsair Flash Voyager GT 128 128GB flash drive. It was more about curiosity to see this massive drive. The site also had a review on it. This drive costs £310.47. Quite a lot, but more surprisingly, not all that faster, with 31MB/s read and 23MB/s write.
So speed-wise, the drives are the same, so how about size-wise? For the 8GB drive you get 475.45MB per pound, while for the 128GB you get 422.17MB per pound. Not that big of a difference, but still more than 10% worse.
But here comes the real blow. In the review, the 128GB flash drive is pitted against the Corsair X128, a solid state drive with eSATA connection. Costs £321.97 and averages 94.2MB/s and 91.9MB/s for read and write respectively. Look at this page again and do the math.
It has been noted that this router has a problem with the setup of the Remote Access feature of WHS. It plays nice with the UPnP protocol and the WHS reports as having setup the router successfully, but it turns out that there is a problem and the (name).homeserver.com is not accessible, pointing instead to your router admin page.
The reason for it is that the router will not forward the 443 port required and reserves it for its own use, hence when the https connection is established it just points to the router.
There are two ways to deal with it. One, you force the router to release port 443 and all is well, and two, translate any port you wish to 443 for the server. Solution one is described here but I dont like it. It means forcing your router to do something it doesnt want to which one never knows what it can cause, and the proccess itself is not so easy and requires a certain knowledge that not everyone has.
The second option, however is far simpler and easy. All one need to do is forward other ports and some have even suggested to point the one above it (i.e. instead of 443, forward 444). Now here are two points that need to be made.
1. This solution does work. As the router does not restrict other ports except 443, forwarding any port you want to the server with a trigger for 443 will work.
2. This can cause major problem if you are not a little careful. As I said, some suggested using port 444 to handle the server. Port 444, however, is quite common, used in pagers all over the world and could trouble you.
For this reason, I would suggest that you go here and find a port that is not showing. Then use this to call your server and have your router catch that port and forward it to the server with a 443 translation.
Here is how (in pictures). Enter your router and go to the port forwarding page. Put a name for the scheme and create a blank one.
Type in the ports and hit Add after each one. Make sure that the protocol is set to TCP, not any or UDP.
After you reach this point, click on Assign a game or application to a local network device.
This final image is what you should end up with.
The address I am using for my WHS is of my own choosing, simply because I have a certain addressing scheme in my head (router at the end of the subnet, then servers, with printers at the start and everything else starting from 64 onward – for a standard 255.255.255.0 subnet). You will of course replace that with the address of your own WHS.
Now all you have to do is let people know that the proper address for them to log in to your site is:
https://(name).homeserver.com:395/remote
and that is all.
It seems that Microsoft is inaccurate in how you can get a WHS key for 120 day. In this page it tells you that you can either stick with the 30days evaluation or join Microsoft Connect to get a 120 days key. However that is not the case. After joining I tried to get one, but the site was not giving me one. In the troubleshooting section I read about many other users that were having the same problem and it turns out that what you have to do is download a different WHS version AFTER you join the MS Connect program.
While WHS seems to be working great, having it work for 120 days would provide a better understanding of its features, many of which are set on a monthly basis, which is something people in the program have pointed out. However, till this time there is no official response as to the misleading suggestion that you get a key after joining (which is not true; you get a new .iso to burn) or as to why the feature to get a key even exists in the site.
I would have liked to be able to test the monthly backup settings before buying it, but the platform suits me well enough and I’m fairly impressed, so I will buy it as a gift to myself during xmas.
So I finally decided to do this thanks to, in no small part, the fact that you can download it straight from Microsoft and have 30 days of full use (or 120 if you do some other stuff mentioned there, which I intend to do shortly). But the old PC I was using as a Network Attached Storage (NAS) was a little too weak for this. However it is not too weak to become the new communications PC (running only Skype and Chrome). So begun the switch.
NEW SCHEME:
1. WHS: Old CommsPC with the GPU from NAS as the WHS doesn’t require anything really.
2. CommsPC: Old NAS with the X1950Pro (because you never know… and it did provide me with a benefit I did not foresee at the beginning, more about that later)
Stage 1: X1950 in the Pentium machine, all well, installed Skype and Chrome, sound check in Skype, done.
Stage 2: Siluro in AMD machine.
Problem 1: Machine will not start, not even bios. The MSI m/b would throw beeps, one long two short (code for error with VGA). So I removed the Siluro thinking it was toast and pulled into active service a retired Manli FX5200. Same problem. I was getting worried and upset. I knew Siluro worked, it was working in the NAS. Tried it again, still beeped. Changed the cards many times, for no good reason really, but as a trained PC user and builder my instincts were good and one time Siluro worked. Perhaps the AGP connector is getting peculiar in its old age…
Problem 2: WHS bootable DVD would not boot. Well, not exactly, the system would find the bootable disc and it would seem to try to do it, but every time it did so, the VGA signal was getting cut off and the monitor would go to sleep since it detected no signal. This was much harder to figure out. Tried removing power consuming devices one by one till I was left with only the VGA and a hard drive. Didn’t help. Tried another DVD drive I had around, a Plextor reader (instead of the normal Phillips writer), still nothing. Many, many crazy things later I decided to go irrational. Again, for no reason, I changed the connection between VGA and Monitor from a D-Sub to a DVI. All worked fine. There goes the D-Sub connection of the card (broken or temperamental stuff start piling up).
Stage 3: Installing the WHS.
Problem 3: This was just a matter of personal preference, but when I build a system I like partitioning it. And I don’t like logical partitions all that much. So WHS complained that I did not have 65GB of space in the primary disk drive. Of course not, it was a WD 36GB Raptor. Remove that, change it with a WD 500GB disk, installation commenced.
After very few input I had to give the installation starting working and never bothered me again. After about an hour I was confronted with a bare desktop and a warning to (paraphrasing) “please logoff and work from the Connection app from your other PCs as messing around locally can really screw up stuff, thank you”. Very well, but of course, I had to check it out first.
Problem 4: No network installed. No worries, I said naively, run the Network setup wizard. It would not of course, and after the second time that the wizard simply vanished after I started it, I went to the System module in Control Panel. Ethernet card detected but not installed. This was really surprising, especially considering it had detected and installed the Siluro FX5600 perfectly. Why would a server know more about VGA cards (which can easily be substituted with a generic VGA driver since they are only needed for the initial setup as they go head-less for the remainder of their service) than NICs is beyond me. I downloaded the driver pack for the motherboard from the MSI website and put it in my USB stick. WHS saw the stick and I did an update driver for the NIC (stands for Network Interface Card, if you were wondering). WHS said there is no driver for it in the stick. Trying to calm down, I run the setup program from the stick, which specifically said that it would install the Ethernet driver. Finished fine, rebooting the system, still the driver was missing. I then thought to go to the source; searched for Realtek Gigabit drivers, found a driver pack, and that did the job. At long last.
Everything from then on was (and still is great). Pointed my PC to \\server\Software and found the installation for the WHS Connect app that allows management of the server. Too tired to do anything more, disconnected the server and put it back where the NAS was (hidden away with just power and net cable connected). Put the new Comms PC behind my TFTs and was suddenly overcome with a desire to use the ViewSonic’s vertical orientation feature. This will give me better view of documents and browsing which is now its sole purpose. The Sapphire helped immensely by using the CCC (Catalyst Control Center) to rotate the resolution and everything worked perfectly.
I am researching Windows Home Server prior to the installation of it in the coming days and I found out this little bit of info from Microsoft herself. It is contained in the Windows Home Server Technical Brief for Drive Extender at the end of the brief, also to be found as general tip in the Wikipedia entry for WHS in the section Features - Shadow Copy.
Disabling Volume ShadowCopy Services and reclaiming the disk space
1. Run mstsc.exe to start a Remote Desktop Connection session to your home server.
Caution
Be careful when using a Remote Desktop Connection to your home server. You can damage Windows Home Server functionality if you use it incorrectly.
2. Open a Command Prompt, Click Start, Run and type CMD
3. To delete all of the existing volume shadow copy snapshots and reclaim the disk space used by the snapshots, type vssadmin delete shadows /all
4. To disable the Windows Home Server storage manager service from taking future snapshots, type regedit
5. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Home Server\Storage Manager\Volumes.
6. Find a sub key which has a MountPoint value equal to D:
7. Under that key set the value of SnapPeriod to 0
I consider this an important tip as it is not every day a company tells you not to use a feature in their software.
How can anyone say such a thing? And who believes it? Who doesn’t remember?
Perino may try to “spin” 9/11 (although even trying to is an insult to all the people that died) all she wants but what are the reporters doing there? Oh, pardon me… it’s FOX News. That explains it…
What is the best MMO? Most would say WoW and I can understand that. But here is a thought; there is currently not one MMO that is as good as it can be. Some are better than others, but all of them have something missing.
Having been playing MMOs since the very beginning (barring Ultima Online), I have played a great many of them. I’m always amazed at how people say that this feature was “stolen” from that game as if this is a bad thing. If that was the case then UO did most of it first and if “stealing” features was forbidden then the MMO market not have seen some of its current gems.
While I’m very happy these gems exist and have played / play most of them, I want that one bar of platinum. So here is a list of features that I would like to see in one game.
Classless progression. The old archetypes of tank, melee DPS, range DPS, healer, controller are done to their end. I have a friend that plays a tank archetype but has twisted the skills and items he wears so much that he is not the best melee DPS. I also feel that defining a class for a gamer leads to more standard deployments of skills (the templates that many sites have) than if you leave them alone to choose what they think is cool. Games that did not have classes were riddled with people that had completely different skill sets and they were enjoying themselves more because it was their character.
Strong player driven economy. While most would think that WoW is a good example, I would be willing to bet that most of them don’t know about EVE’s market. Plan for big economy please, with a crafting system that can make many things but output only a limited amount of items, just like EVE. I think all future developers should take a deep look at EVE crafting/market system and learn from it. Don’t give me a crafting profession that makes the top tier item in 40 seconds, give me a way to make (random numbers to follow) 1000 items, all of some value or need, top tier items to be made in hours, not seconds, and a way to make 10 of them at the same time.
Purpose. DAoC still stands in my mind as the single best game in terms of purpose. Spent a year leveling up my character and then three years playing the same character in which he never changed his items, instead he was getting new skills from PvPing. Saying that in today’s world seems insane to most. No new item in three years? Yes, back then the world was much simpler (or confined); if you wanted items and raiding you went to EverQuest, if you wanted persistent war you went to DAoC. It worked, and to a degree still does as there are servers open for those games. Modern equivalents are Warhammer (for DAoC) and WoW (for EverQuest). But here is the difference; Warhammer even has raiding in it, while WoW does not have any significant war elements. Battlegrounds and arenas are PvP raiding providing nothing for character progression other than more items. The world itself needs to feel alive and changing. You cannot understand the feeling of spending two or three hours in one map fighting over the castles in the area. It was not two months ago that I enjoyed such a feeling in Warhammer when we were trying to defend a castle for three hours. I cannot make it justice in words alone.
Early Travel method. Champions Online is not to be praised for a great many deal of things. However it has nailed one thing; early travel powers. Running around a vast area does not add to any game. Give players the means to go where they need to or want to. Let them appreciate the content, not the pretty rocks the path is made of.
Keep it simple, stupid! Photorealism means nothing unless it is perfect or damn near perfect. It is something that robotic engineers (of all people) have stumbled on when trying to make their life like robots. People accept something easier if it has characteristics of human nature but obviously is not human, than a near copy which might even make them afraid of it. It is an instinctual response to dismiss something that tries to be something it is not. The closer something is not the thing it tries to be, the more apprehensive we become of it. It needs to be VERY similar or clearly dissimilar. Look at all the realistic graphics (Vanguard, EQ2, etc.) and you can easily see the differences, no matter how impressive it may be. Impressive wears out. Now look at WoW and Aion, both are completely stylized to their respective fields (Western and Eastern feel) and both are beautiful, and more importantly smoother than Vanguard ever was…
