I snagged a copy of Wrath of the Lich King on my way home last Thursday, got it installed, and was promptly greeted with a 2 hour wait to get online thanks to the insane queues that have popped up after the release.
Maybe it's just a function of the server being overcrowded, but I really, really don't like playing this expansion. Mobs respawn as you're killing them, and a bunch of quests form a kind of bottleneck where the NPC will become unavailable for turnins if someone else beats you to him and starts goofy animation sequence for the next phase or where you're stuck waiting in line to kill some special mob to complete a quest.
My real gripe, however, is that the fun part of the game had been raiding, not levelling up. And now that I'm forced to do it again, I really think I'd rather not.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
active directory authentication for linux
Found this article via Linux Weekly News.
Personally, I don't like AD as the sole repository of all auth info. I see nothing wrong with using LDAP for auth (and the author makes a mistake in saying that you can change/reset passwords in LDAP), replication is tricky to setup but simple to maintain, and you can dump everything to a flat file for easy integration with your backup system.
But this article is a pretty good overview of how Linux nss <-> Windows AD works (not to mention a good summary of why directory services rock and a little historical context), and I haven't seen an explanation of how to use winbind before, so... here's the link.
Personally, I don't like AD as the sole repository of all auth info. I see nothing wrong with using LDAP for auth (and the author makes a mistake in saying that you can change/reset passwords in LDAP), replication is tricky to setup but simple to maintain, and you can dump everything to a flat file for easy integration with your backup system.
But this article is a pretty good overview of how Linux nss <-> Windows AD works (not to mention a good summary of why directory services rock and a little historical context), and I haven't seen an explanation of how to use winbind before, so... here's the link.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
the zen of programming
Programmers get paid to write lines of source code.
Good programmers get paid to delete them.
Awww... c'mon. That was clever. :(
Any rate, the distinction occurred to me as I was slogging through a project a couple weeks ago as I was revising some work on a project. Code written for a specific application seems to generally sort itself out a few revisions, and you find that as objects and APIs mature, you need less and less code to get the job done.
End result is that I seem to end with less SLOC in my final version than I had in my 2nd revision and everything just feels more snug.
Good programmers get paid to delete them.
Awww... c'mon. That was clever. :(
Any rate, the distinction occurred to me as I was slogging through a project a couple weeks ago as I was revising some work on a project. Code written for a specific application seems to generally sort itself out a few revisions, and you find that as objects and APIs mature, you need less and less code to get the job done.
End result is that I seem to end with less SLOC in my final version than I had in my 2nd revision and everything just feels more snug.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
vmware esxi is free
Just found out that VMWare's ESXi offering is free. It's basically a hypervisor based virtual server offering... like Xen, but without the need for hardware VT support to run unmodified hosts.
MS Azure
Did a little investigation into the announcement of Azure. It basically sounds like MS's response to Google App Engine, except for ASP.net. And apparently giving you access to a bunch of Live services for your web app. And integrated with the Visual Studio EE stuff.
Might be of interest to folks looking to get some experience with MS's enterprise tools without actually having to shell out cash for them.
Might be of interest to folks looking to get some experience with MS's enterprise tools without actually having to shell out cash for them.
Monday, October 20, 2008
F#
Noticed this in the safari rss feed: Expert F#.
I had no idea such a beast existed, let alone had existed long enough for someone to become an expert in it. ;)
tl;dr version: It's a functional programming language for .Net. They talk about OCaml a lot.
After messing around with Erlang, I found that I really, really like functional programming. You skip a lot of the shullbit and get straight down to business of working with the data... the problem for everyday use is that the users kind of like all that shullbit, and so that's what you get paid to write. I'd been thinking that the only way to sneak functional programming in would be as a web/system service, but if it's a .Net assembly... \o/
Will have to check it out more later.
I had no idea such a beast existed, let alone had existed long enough for someone to become an expert in it. ;)
tl;dr version: It's a functional programming language for .Net. They talk about OCaml a lot.
After messing around with Erlang, I found that I really, really like functional programming. You skip a lot of the shullbit and get straight down to business of working with the data... the problem for everyday use is that the users kind of like all that shullbit, and so that's what you get paid to write. I'd been thinking that the only way to sneak functional programming in would be as a web/system service, but if it's a .Net assembly... \o/
Will have to check it out more later.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
dead robot society
Found an interesting podcast about writing: Dead Robots Society. Some interesting discussions about stuff like Campbell's Hero Arch and how it applies to not just books and movies, but news and video games, how to handle dialog in a story, a tool called Dramatica you can use to analyze your plots, and an interview with an independent publisher that gives some insight into the business side of things.
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