danielcolomb.com » INTERNETS!

The Wonderful World of Minecraft

Dan — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 09:21:57 +0000

I’ve been playing quite a lot of Minecraft lately, I even have my own server up and running. You’re welcome to join in on the fun! Just connect to krandor.dyndns.org. Our world isn’t very big right now, we’ve been mainly working on crafting stuff and playing with all the stuff you can make… and well, being on the quest to find lots of iron and diamond But i do think we’ve made some pretty neat structures.

I love the sunrises

Carnes has built a rock making machine, as well as a pretty sweet wheat garden, all on top of an elevated fortress surrounded by lava moats.

Our first tree fort

I’ve been mainly running around exploring the world and caverns. Those caverns can get dark, expansive, and SCARY!

Another project we’ve been working on is getting a rail system going, because walking across the world can take a long time!

I started this post quite a while ago, and since then have taken quite a big break from the game. But recently I’ve gotten back into it, and even have a few friends on the server regularly. There are also some mods installed on the server which allow us to specify certain areas as safe from monster spawns, set up our own shops to sell things, and even have a dynamically updated map that shows the live goings on of the server!

kinda had an accident with some flint and steel

Carnes’ current project is to construct a quest for us to run at one point. He’s off somewhere on the map sculpting land and building stuff so we can all go and run the quest together! I can’t wait!

My house!

If you want to check out what our world looks like, click here. This may not be the most up-to-date render, but it does have the most detail. If you’d like to check out our realtime map, check it out here!

Server Details:
For game connection — krandor.dyndns.org
For high quality map render — krandor.dyndns.org/mc/maps/map.html
For live dynamic map render — krandor.dyndns.org:8123

I loath creepers…

A few weeks in the making

Dan — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:57:37 +0000

Over the last few weeks i’ve been collecting links i think are neat or interesting or adorable or funny. So some of these links aren’t even current events (in Internet terms, when yesterday’s news is already old news and no one cares anymore), but I’d still like to share them. I think here in the future i’ll be posting some more stuff with actual content. Things have been kinda blah lately. I think we might go shoosting this weekend, I’ll be sure to take pictures if we do.

Benoît Mandelbrot Has Passed Away
Honestly I don’t know much about Mandelbrot sets or Fractal geometry, but i do recognize that Mandelbrot was a genius. Enough so that he even has songs written about him (Mandelbrot Set).

Angry NES’s version of Cee Lo’s “F*ck You”

I like this song.

MySQL Fanboy’s GIS Articles
Not everyone is into GIS, but i think it could have some really neat applications in mobile development.

Raytheon XOS2 — Pretty cool
I think before long we’re going to have real life bipedal weapons platforms. Gundams and Evas and Dragonauts!

Perceived Wealth Distribution and Reality
I found this interesting. It seems that people think the income gap is a lot smaller than it actually is..

Americans don’t know much about religion
This i found amusing, mainly because I know so many people who think themselves quite religious, but then when you want to have actual discussion or debate about theological issues they can’t seem to defend their positions.

Arduino UNO FAQ on LadyAda.net
For those of you who use Arduinos and are interested in how the new UNO’s differ from the older series. Take a look here.

Tupperware Computing!

Dan — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:16:20 +0000

A few days ago my roommate got a box of random electronic parts donated to him. Most of the stuff was junk, only good to salvage parts off of. But there were two items that we did find of interest. Two motherboards that seemed like they were still in pretty good condition.

What if we could get them up and running again?

And so our weekend project was started!

First we got an old power supply and some old RAM we had laying around and plugged everything up to see if it would even turn on. That turned out to be a bit more trouble than we initially thought we’d have. Sean searched the internet for the manual to the motherboard and we found the pins that the power button was to plug up to. One small problem, we didn’t have a power button. So while Sean got something together, we used a set of hemostats to bridge the pins and power on the pile of parts. Something was wrong though, the monitor we had hooked up to it didn’t show anything. and since we didn’t have a PC speaker, we couldn’t hear beep codes. We almost resorted to the ancient art of poke-at-it-with-a-screwdriver when i noticed a jumper in between the two RAM banks. I pulled it out and tried the power and BAM! POST! By this time Sean had gotten a power button and a light soldered together for us to use. Now we needed some sort of boot up medium, and we decided that a USB drive would be optimal. We got a 2GB drive from Walmart and loaded it up with Lubuntu.

After tweaking the BIOS settings a bit we finally were able to boot off the USB drive and get to the boot menu for the drive. On our first attempt to boot from the drive we got a kernel panic so we decided to test the RAM. That ended up being a good idea, since we discovered all of our extra DDR RAM was bad. Into the trash with that stuff! Luckily there was a second bank of RAM slots on the motherboard which supported SDRAM, an older format of RAM.

Sean pulled out the motherboard for one of his first computers, Jenny, and luckily it still had RAM in it’s banks! Thank god for hording computer parts We pulled out two of the ram sticks and tested them. They were good to go! We booted up and tada! We got a loading screen. It seemed to take forever to load, then we noticed we’d forgotten to put in the second chip of RAM, whoops :3

Now we’re in the process of updating the Ubuntu core and then we’re going to see if we can get some sort of clustering up and running. It would be neat to get a farm up and running.

There are more pictures on my flickr account

outrageous to some; rational to others

Dan — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:02:08 +0000

Obama invokes ‘state secrets’ claim to dismiss suit against targeting of U.S. citizen al-Aulaqi

When i first read about this, i was outraged! I thought that we had taken one of our own citizens and just decided to execute them without reason, without a trial, without a chance of self-defense. But when i read the original article (linked above), there were some things that caught my eye. First was the link to a previous story, giving a bit more history about al-Aulaqi and why he was put on the — second thing that caught my eye — capture-or-kill list. The operative words are CAPTURE or KILL. This means that he’s not being executed or assassinated, he’s a wanted man. I make the connection between this and the posters from the Old West, “WANTED: Dead or Alive”.

I can see how people might be upset that we’re going after one of our own citizens, but if that citizen has blatantly turned his back on our country and everything it stands for (good and bad), and is openly trying to harm it. I don’t see why we have to extend a hand and say, “Come back, we’ll give you a trial in our extremely flawed and overly complicated legal system”. We will either capture you and treat you as an enemy of the state, or if it comes down to it, we won’t hesitate to kill you. This doesn’t mean though that we’re just going to shoot you when we see you.

If this guy is actually a cleric, and not really a terrorist like the mounds of evidence seem to show, then he should turn himself over.

Things and stuff and happenings

Dan — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:54:57 +0000

Last night I went to see The National play in Louisville. The show was great! What really impressed me the most was their special guest, Owen Pallett. What he can do with a violin, and a mixer is pretty awesome. After his show, I went and got two of his albums. I’ve been listening to them since then! I should be uploading pictures soon.

Things I’ve been collecting over the last week. Posts that I thought were pretty interesting — to me anyway.

Building the Wall
I remember going to the Vietnam Memorial while we lived in Maryland — about 15 years ago. I don’t think it really meant anything to me, I just thought it was cool to see so many names on a shiny black wall. I think if I were to go now it would mean a whole lot more — after having served in the military.

4chan takes on the MPAA
So after hiring a company to DDoS bittorrent trackers who wouldn’t comply with their requests to take down certain material, 4chan had planned to DDoS the hired company. Well it seems that someone beat them to the punch. So what do the hordes of Anon at do? Go after the MPAA itself! It only took 8 minutes for them to take the site down. It made me lul.

From single-core to quad-core in less than a year
Multi-core phones would be amazing! That, coupled with the concept phone by Mozilla (linked below), would probably be enough for most people — who just surf the web, check email, and play Farmville.

Nifty Artwork
I think the fact that I’ve been watching Mad Men like a.. well.. mad man lately attracted me to this page. I want a suit like Don Draper.

Obama talks about taxes and strengthening the economy
While i don’t agree with everything this administration is doing / has done, I do think that taxing people more evenly would make things simpler and help bridge gaps between social groups. I’d like to see a day when we all pay the same amount in taxes, instead of this confusing system of earned and unearned income, capital earnings, donations to charities, etc. How about we all just pay 15 or 20 percent of our income? I think that would make things much easier, not just in terms of administrating and collecting, but also planning for what you’ve got to pay. But of course, a simple idea like this would probably just get screwed up by the government. It’s sad we can’t trust them to do something simple.

Paul Lekakis – Boom Boom
I lol’d at this, thanks Katie.

Wind Power!
Let’s see who else will pony up the big bucks and commit to something of this size? Or would there be more protests that a wind farm 20 miles off shore would disrupt the scenery?

Old People know stuff, kinda
I watched this video of Walter Breuning talking about his life, and what advice he has for the current generation. You’ll have to watch what he says though, some things are exaggerated a little. It’s still really neat to hear first hand accounts of times so long ago from someone who actually lived them!

Community Wi-Fi?
While the speeds are slow compared to N, the range is so much better. I could see community Wi-Fi or Municipal WiFi using this technology.

Phone of the future!?
How great would it be if your phone became the end-all-be-all tool you’d use? Instead of having to have a laptop, a phone, a projector, a watch, and a list of other gadgets, you could have one piece of technology to take many of those items and consolidate them into one. The big thing that really appeals to me is being able to carry your information in “physical” form around with you, instead of having to rely on some sort of “cloud” storage. With newer phones now also being multi-core, a phone like the Seabird would have more than enough power to handle web browsing, email, watching online videos, along with most office type applications.

Full Moon Beer
This sounds interesting. Being a lover of beer, I would definitely try it at least once.

I love fall weather
I think it’s the colors and lower temperatures. I can’t wait to get a motorcycle (something like this or this) and be able to ride around in this weather.

oh.. and this:

and this:

Things of the day

Dan — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:12:18 +0000

Happy Birfday Supah Mario Brudders! — is it weird that this makes me feel kinda old? I used to love playing Mario Bros on the NES, i never beat it or really got that far in it, but i just like the music and jumping on koopa troopahs. (I know this is from yesterday, I started this blog then, and it’s stretched over a day or so )

Indestructible 3-ring Binder — this looks like something a post-apocalyptic bean counter would carry around with him.

Don’t want to shed out 500 bucks for MS Project? Try Gantt Project. — something an old coworker and i were talking about brought me across this. He was saying that often times he was working from home after work to get things done. Besides adding extra stress to your life, after you’re off shift, you shouldn’t have to put in extra hours (especially if you’re not being paid for them). Being able to give management a project plan, detailing what tasks need to be done, how long they’ll take, and when the estimated completion date is, should allow him to have more time at home NOT being a slave to the man

About time the US started really upgrading it’s network infrastructure. — I was astounded when i read the number ’1Gbps’! That’s how fast my local network at home is. I could only imagine having that kind of speed for the internet! Not only would that let me do more things with my server(s), but download speeds and gaming would be so faaaaaaaaaast!

Pandas love to party! — it’s true. they love teh cakes. but they don’t quite move-it-move-it

I love this house! — I love it when people incorporate their environment into their home-building.

The database nerd in me likes reading about stuff like this — I always find it amazing when you can aggregate and search data efficiently. Especially when you’re talking about the amount and size that Google has to deal with.

This is old, but I still find it funny — I think it’s a combination of people not knowing how to use computers, and then believing everything they read on the internets.

New MC Frontalot.

Last but not least, Happy Birthday to my dad! If you’re friends with him on Facebook, go wish him a happy B-Day

A run around the Internet

Dan — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 18:23:31 +0000

I’ve been perusing the internet today, while waiting on RM stuff to get done and I’ve found some pretty neat things. In no particular order:

Woven Steel Wallet!
I think the idea is neat and it supposedly blocks RFID from being read. But at 75 bucks, I think it’s a bit pricey.

The United States of Inequality
To be honest, I didn’t read the entire article, mainly because it’s quite long, but from what I read I thought it was an interesting take on the traditional thoughts on what economists call, “The Great Divergence”. Even though everyone seems to be blaming the government for something (legitimate complaints or not) this seems to take data gathered over multiple administrations and comes up with a rather interesting hypothesis.

Tractor Beams are becoming REAL!
It’s the nerd in me that finds this awesome. How awesome would it be to fire a beam at something and it moves toward you!? Granted the technology is nowhere near fruition, but the idea that there’s a possibility of it being a reality is awesome.

Pictures I think are neato. Nuff said.

Detroit is not dead.
I found this rather refreshing. A look at what people are doing in Detroit to rebuild and reclaim, even though the rest of the world seems to think the city is dead.

funny fings i’f found on dah intarwebs

Dan — Wed, 05 May 2010 02:30:47 +0000

Entertaining and funny stuff

break dancin’ kitteh

my car is a canoe!

attack of the ROFLCopters!

popup kitteh

lol priest

lookin’ for wild womens

step away from windows XP

fwendship

Less funny, more interesting or cool

Ok, something i found that’s not really funny. Just really awing. I mean, i don’t consider myself rich. But in the big picture, maybe i am?
How rich are you?

Also.. We have tons of nukes out there. Kinda scary. What’s scarier, is thinking about how many are unaccounted for?
Just how many nukes does the US have?

I wish i could do cool shit like this.

I have my computer back!

Dan — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:42:06 +0000

So at work they’re distributing a new baseline for all the computers. My machine got it about 2 weeks ago. The updates were pretty simple, upgrade from Office 2003 to 2007, IE 6 to 8, Security Updates etc etc. Last week at some point my computer died, it would start up and as soon as the windows loading screen would appear I would get a BSOD and the computer would reboot. That was on a tuesday. Wednesday, Desktop Support comes and picks my computer up to try and recover the machine. I don’t have a computer for the rest of the week.

Over the weekend I didn’t do much, played Eve on Friday and Saturday morning, then ran some errands and in the afternoon drove down to Nashville to see a show. The show was alright, the venue could have been better, but the bands made up for the fact that there was no drinking, smoking, moshing, crowd surfing, cursing or any other fun activities that one usually partakes in while at a show. Rcktwn is the fail. On sunday we drive back and once i get home I play some more Eve

On the topic of Eve, i figure i’ll give an update of the goings on of Krandor delMarniol. Krandor’s left Legion of Black Mesa because many of the members have left or stopped playing. Krandor has found a new home with some old friends in UKM (United Kingdom Mayhem) who have many more active players than Legion of Black Mesa did. So far things are pretty good, besides the whole Circle-of-Two getting reset by Northern Coalition thing. While things are pretty turbulent up there UKM has decided to pull it’s industrial assets out of 0.0 and try to find a good empire home for them. After that is done, I think i’ll take Krandor back out to 0.0 to help in the effort to keep our home constellation.

OK, back to real life. This week starts and i still don’t have a computer. I don’t get it back until Wednesday (a whole week later). So I took some half-days and went home early, did laundry, ran some errands, etc.

Now it’s Thursday and I have my computer back up and running (though still not completely updated). It’s good to be able to get back to work

Lanwar

Dan — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:44:25 +0000

It’s monday again And it’s back to the real-life grind. This weekend was a lot of fun. Let’s all hop into the way-back-machine and i can tell you of my adventures!

Thursday – 9 July 2009

I wake up around 7-ish to find that my backup of all my music from my old server (natalie) to the new server (natasha) had failed sometime during the night .. sad panda indeed! So i restarted the transfer hoping that i would be able to get a few more gigs of music over to the new server before it was time to hit the road. As i waited i watched the new episode of Top Gear and Bleach. It was getting close to leaving time so i shut down all my machines and began to dismantle all the connections. Then i remembered that my computer only had a 10/100 NIC in it, and that if i was to do any proper leeching i should probably take the gigabit card out of natalie and put it in my desktop (allison). I did this and rebooted my machine to make sure that the new card worked. Well, of course it didn’t. So i hopped on my laptop, headed over to the DLink website and grabbed the drivers.

I hit the road sometime around noon (instead of 10am like i’d planned). I got to the U of L campus around 1-ish and unloaded my gear. Dark (Vickers) was nice enough to get my stuff up to my seat while i went and parked my car. I get to the main hall and find my seat. I begin to get everything hooked up when i realize i’d forgotten my wireless reciever for my keyboard and mouse at the house! I quickly went and set up natasha up on server row and then headed out to walmart for a cheap keyboard and mouse. I got a logitech keyboard for 11 bucks and a mouse for 9. Not bad for a quick buy with no shopping around. I get back and set up my computer and start the process of making sure everything works. Internet, check, Steam online, check, remote connection to my server, check. Everything looks good to go! So what’s a person to do now? PLAY GAMES! I played some Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, and a few other games. In the middle of a game of Left 4 Dead we hear this huge POW! Dark’s power supply had blown up! So a few people who were also having computer issues left with him to try and find replacement parts. Sean and Kristina made it up that night to get their stuff set up and played a few games too. Thursday has started to blur into Friday..

Friday – 10 July 2009

I woke up around 6am in front of my keyboard. I’d tried sleeping on the floor, but without a pillow it wasn’t comfortable enough to get a good night’s sleep. Even my day pack wasn’t soft enough. So i just put my head down and got a few hours of sleep. I hopped into the local IRC server and chatted with some of the other gamers that were just woken up/still awake. After walking to my car to get my some fresh clothes and brush my teeth i came back in to grab a quick bite to eat and see what all i could find on the network to leech. Oh so much goodness!

I really can’t keep straight all the stuff i got. Mainly games i’d wanted to try out but never wanted to spend money on due to hearing mixed reviews. I got some movies that i’d wanted to see, but for the same reason as the games i never bought. Maybe i’ll actually get the ones i really like

DODGEBALL!! That’s right, we had a dodgeball tournament. Real life dodgeball, not some weird computer version. We had a team in. The prizes weren’t bad for a for-fun tourney: 6 and 4 GB sets for the first and second place team isn’t a bad deal!! We only made it three rounds before we got beaten. If you want, there’s footage on youtube, just search for “Million Man Lan 8″ and there should be a bunch of videos. It was fun none-the-less. Well, back to gaming!

Around 1 or 2 AM i decided that i would catch a ride to the hotel that some of the guys had gotten, a real bed (or maybe atleast nice floor) and a shower was well in order! when we got there it was only me and AK and.. i got a bed! it was so nice to be able to sleep in something like a normal sleeping position!

Saturday – 11 July 2009

I wake up, take a shower, and head with the rest back to the gaming hall. We get there, play some games and prep for the Left 4 Dead tournament we’d signed up for. There were a total of 10 teams, so the last 4 teams to sign up had to battle for actual tournament slots (10 teams don’t fit into a binary tournament setup). we were one of the first, so we got a free pass to the second round It wasn’t good enough though, our first match we had to go up against another xBS team. We played hard and we came out victorious! Our second match didn’t go so well. The other team got through to the end as survivors and took a huge lead. That was the only time that anyone finished a map, all the rest of the maps the survivors died. But like the dodgeball, we were there for fun, and not so much the prizes.

Moar gaming…

Falling asleep in the back of my car…

Sunday – 12 July 2009

I wake up in my car thinking.. i should have cracked the windows..

I change clothes, brush my teeth, and head back to the hall to find that it was only me, Sean, and Kristina left from our group. I guess everyone else packed it up late in the night. So what should one do about this? Get some last minute leeching done!! I was getting some really impressive speeds from some of the FTP servers people had running. Up to 10MB/s. Around 10 I started to pack up my computer and haul stuff to my car. Sean and Kristina finally woke up and did the same. We went to Denny’s for breakfast and then headed back home.

Once at the house i cleaned up my area in the office a bit (might as well since the computers were out) and then set my computers up again. I then took a most needed shower and thought i’d take a nap. That nap ended at midnight.

So right now my body is totally confused as to what time it really is. And my sleep schedule will probably be pretty messed up for the next few days. But it was well worth it. I think i’m going to go to the next one in January.