A little bit about me

Dungeons & Dragons™ introduced Challenge Rating (CR) as a tool to help game masters gauge whether a monster would provide an appropriate challenge for their party. In theory, matching CR to party level should create balanced, engaging encounters. In practice, however, the system suffers from fundamental flaws that leave many DMs frustrated with wildly unpredictable encounter difficulty. The CR value is often assigned capriciously and inaccurately, based on theoretical assumptions that rarely match actual play, and frequently goes unrevised when rules changes significantly alter a monster's effectiveness. Decades ago, White Dwarf magazine proposed an alternative: Monster Marks, a mathematical system for calculating encounter difficulty based on concrete mechanical factors. While the original formula predates modern D&D editions, its underlying principles can be updated and adapted to provide game masters with the precision tool they need to craft encounters that hit their in...

Introduction In the previous post we set up Huginn in Docker, giving you your own self-hosted automation platform. Now it’s time to do something fun with it! In this guide, we’ll walk through creating a Huginn Scenario that checks the daily weather forecast and tells you what to wear when heading outside.  Scenarios are containers of agents, and have properties that we will make use of in future posts. This scenario will: Use a weather API to get your local forecast Analyze temperature and conditions Recommend clothing (e.g., "wear a jacket" or "shorts are fine today") Send you the advice by email or another notification agent Let’s get started! Step 1: Create a New Scenario In Huginn, a Scenario is a collection of agents that work together. After logging into your Huginn dashboard: Click Scenarios on the top nav bar Click New Scenario Choose an appropriate icon, such as the cloud Name it something like Weather Outfit Advisor (Optional) Add ...

How to Install Huginn with Docker: A Step-by-Step Guide for Tinkerers Introduction   If you're the kind of Linux user who loves automation, self-hosting, and experimenting with new tools, Huginn might be your next favorite project. Think of it as your own personal version of IFTTT, but completely under your control. With Huginn, you can create agents that monitor websites, send notifications, scrape data, and even automate workflows. In this guide, we'll walk through deploying Huginn using Docker Compose. It's a fairly straightforward setup, but we’ll dive into the details to make sure everything runs smoothly. By the end, you'll have a fully functional Huginn instance ready for automation magic. What is Huginn?   Huginn is an open-source system for building agents that perform automated tasks online. These agents can do things like: Monitor websites for changes Send email or chat notifications Scrape web pages Interact with APIs Automate workflows with condition...

Symantec anti-virus has just told me that the tool I have downloaded is suspect, and has deleted the file for me, so that I am a safe and happy drone on the Internet. The message was: " WS.Reputation.1 is a detection for files that have a low reputation score based on analyzing data from Symantec’s community of users and therefore are likely to be security risks. Detections of this type are based on Symantec’s reputation-based security technology. Because this detection is based on a reputation score, it does not represent a specific class of threat like adware or spyware, but instead applies to all threat categories. " So, if not enough people use a special purpose tool for a small industry, that file downloaded from the company must be bad and is automatically deleted to protect me. Good-bye Symantec anti-virus. And your solution, Symantec, of: " WHITE-LISTING Software developers who want to accelerate the reputation building process for their new software applicat...

Discussing “Net Neutrality” is like discussing “Gasoline Neutrality for your car. Ford motor company does not have an exclusive deal with British Petroleum so that you have to buy BP gasoline to get optimum fuel efficiency. In much the same way, net neutrality is a given when what you are purchasing is bandwidth, not connection to specific services. The neutrality of the Internet needs to be maintained in the same way that long distance providers are not allowed to be partial to any specific local carrier. If Comcast or AT&T is allowed to select who you are going to get access to at full speed, what is to stop them from extorting money from Google or any large content provider to allow unfettered access? The Internet is a utility in this modern day and age, and must be treated as such and legislated in the same vein.

Net Neutrality is really a misnomer; it’s not just about neutrality. Calling Common Carrier requirements for Internet providers “Net Neutrality” is like calling your car gasoline neutral. If Ford or General Motors made an exclusive deal with Exxon-Mobile so that their vehicles only got the rated gas mileage using that brand of gasoline, and all others would produce sub-par results, there would be no question about legislating against that. So why then are the carriers allowed to try to hold content providers hostage over bandwidth and performance? When I purchase Internet access through my ISP, I am buying bandwidth to the net at large, not to the companies that have cooperative agreements with my provider. I expect that the content provider may throttle requests and responses to mitigate issues such as being slashdoted and having unusually large amounts of traffic at an unpredictable moment, but that is in their business model not in the business of the Internet Provider who has so...

This time Google found the hint I was looking for. I use SciTe to edit when I am working on Python projects. But on the brand new machine running Vista it was coughing up the "No module named ..." error. A couple of Google searches later, I actually found this blog that had the answer to editing the Windows path and XPATH variables to find Python. One would think that the Windows installer for Python would have done that already, but apparently not. *sigh* And now back to my regularly scheduled programming projects.

Well, first let me say that I just watched a movie whose characters are all marionettes. That should put the rest into a little more perspective. The theme of Strings is that we are all bound to one another. The metaphor of strings is obvious in the strings that control the actors, but is also carried throughout the story in other more subtle ways. When our hero is exposed to the world outside the city, he sees some of these connections, and has some shown to him. The story itself is a hero saga, with our hero the young price setting forth to avenge his father that he wrongly believes to have been slain by their historical enemies. Of course there is an evil uncle who is furthering this for his own ends, being control of the kingdom, but that is about as trite as the story gets. Our young prince disguises himself and leaves the city with his general alone to seek the rebels who he believes murdered his father, leaving behind his sister in the clutches of the evil uncle and his henc...

learning a new trick is always a difficult proposition. The new trick I am attempting to master this time is the use of dictation with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It actually feels somewhat silly to sit and talk to your computer. Which is doubly so for me given that I was raised reading science fiction. Teaching this old dog new trick of using dictation software instead of typing is going to take a bit more practice than I had expected. I hope that at the end of this process dictation will prove faster than typing and I may yet get a few short stories into electronic ink.

Web Worker Daily was a lovely article on rescuing an unproductive day. I really have to thank them for reminding me to turn the music on. Drowning out the conversations from the cubes around the floor, and the noises of the toys the folks around here use to help adjust attitude when taking support calls is a godsend. Pandora really helps in providing the soundtrack I actually want to listen to. Setting up a channel for 80s bubble-gum pop music, or loud, stompy industrial, is great for fixing a broken day.

Stanislaw Lem is a brilliant author. This is the first book of stories about pilot (or cadet, in the first story) Pirx of the space service. We open with Pirx as a cadet, learning to fly the atomic rocket. This is almost identical to the rockets described by Charles Stross in his current science fiction stories, which is rather telling in terms of the perception of atomic fission as the source of energy for rockets in space. But I digress. Pirx is worried about his performance, and comparing himself to the best and brightest in his class. I know that I did that through highschool and college as well. But when Pirx emerges from the simulator that he thought was a real training flight he finds that his overthinking of things has led him to land while the bright boy crashed his simulator into the moor. Pirx is an everyman of a character who thinks too much, and analyzes too much. He is worried that his name will impact his ability to get a date. "I'm Pirx" doesn...

Charles Stross once again delivers a romping good read. Cramming in a good number of the current trendy terms and concepts from the singularist camp, Accelerando is a fast forward look at what might happen if the computers do take over. Uploading into the net, external mental components, ability to fork yourself into multiple versions, these are the wet dreams of the technorati. The cat as the family curse is a nice subplot, but does seem a bit Deus Ex Machine; the whole story being centered around the machines does tend to lend itself to those sorts of plot devices however. The idea of a robotic cat that is upgradable really is a nice extension of the Aibo and other products currently on the market. The idea put forth of a Matrioshka brain instead of a Dyson Sphere as the final outcome of a solar system that has uploaded itself is very compelling. Given the change from consuming all resources to support the human form, to consuming all resources to support the virtual worlds, ...

I keep forgetting how much having music in my life helps me. My creativity always seems to be a little higher when I have music playing in the background. I must say a thanks to a few friends who turned me on the www.pandora.com where I can build a radio station that plays my favorite hits without commercial interruption. Unfortunately most of the creativity is now going to get turned into doing a large project for work that suddenly became a top priority, but at least I am creating content of some form.

I'm afraid I have to beg procrastination in this case. Just too distracted by reading blogs to write in mine. The days are still way too short, and I am way too sleepy most of the time. I really had the best of intentions, which still amount to a rather empty journal compared the the loft goals of the new year.

self mating socks Okay, maybe not the best product name in the world, but what does an engineer know about naming products. We just call them like we see them. It all started one morning when my wife was complaining yet again about not being able to find an actual pair of socks. Naturally I offered to help, but the question "aren't these a pair?" was met with a snort and the look, clearly indicating that I couldn't tell that those two socks were not really identical. This ritual had been performed almost daily since we were married, but for some reason this morning it struck a nerve and I was determined to use technology to solve the problem once and for all. Socks that would find each other. Self mating socks. For several days I thought about socks and socks and socks. The first problem is that you buy more socks that just a single pair. So how would each pair know that they were not the same as the other two pairs from that bag. That and how to make what ever...

Banlieue 13 Or District 13, if you have the American release. An action move by Luc Besson in the spirit of "The Transporter" or "Wasabi", staring David Bell as Leito and Cyril Raffaelli as Capt. Damien Tomaso. The movie is in what amount to three acts. In the first act we meet Leito the local boy who is trying to keep his building from becoming a graffiti covered haven for crime. He is busy trying to get rid of some drugs when K2 (who has his name shaved into his head) and the hard boys show up to reposes said drugs. Things get worse from there. Leitos big mistake comes at the end of the act. In act two we meet Damien the local cop with a bad attitude. He spends the act taking down the local crime ring gambling establishment. I should note that the take-down of the big boss is fabulous and makes the gang in Oceans 11 and 12 look like complete amatures. Act three is when our unlikely pair of heros team up to take on the local crime boss of District ...

The growth of high-rise assisted living buildings here in Seattle is startling. There is one gowing up in a rather dubious location on Denny with a rather steep walk to and from the local grocery, transit, etc. So why are these popping up like giant mushrooms in the wet weather? Well, in looking at the statistics for population and aging, I see that the Baby Boomers are all aging rapidly and will be living in those assisted living communities in the next twenty years. According to the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging by 2030 approximately 20% of the population of the US will be over 60. That is a huge amount of population needing elderly care of some form. With so many people moving from homes to assisted living, or moving in with the kids or grandkids to be taken care of, I think that the 2020's housing market will be an interesting slide. However, the rise of high-rise assisted care buildings in the 10's will be great.

Time to think on what I want for the new year, and what I want rid of from the old. I think it's time for a wardrobe purge, among other things. As well as maybe a cleaning of the bookcases. The goal this year is to land and complete at least one freelance project. Either software or writing, not really sure yet which it will be, but one must be bid, granted, completed and billed. The other goal is to update this journal much more often. I will take once a day on week days, but that is the minimum.

Once again Mr. Stross delivers an excellent read. Following our protagonists from their strange and divergent starting points, through their journeys and ending up at a common meeting point was quite the ride. The only down-side was that the bad guys feel a little too much like Nazis. Calling them the Remastered makes sense, but still sounds a little too much like the Master Race to me. On the plus side, having an AI as the Deus ex is vastly amusing and handled very well. Knowing that there is something watching through time to keep humans in line really helps drive some of the more subtle parts of the story. The view of technology in the future is also quite excellent and deep. From implants that allow you to talk to the computer network and get e-mail in your head to the young girl noticing that hers are no where near state of the art compared to those on the plant she arrives at give a good insight into the future of strange and personal technology. Throwing in biotechnology as ...

I guess it's just a habit from being a kid. I love silly games. Cheap-ass games (tm) like "Give me the brain" are fun to just sit with friends and play. So when something like http://helixville.myminicity.com/ comes across my friends list, I usually have to give it a look. In this case, I think this could be fun. Get all your friends to click on the link to your town, and build it up to world domination. These sorts of games unfortunately tend to go the way of fashion, and not last long enough to really get serious play and game strategy, but we will see.