Getting back to reading

Posted by Chris on January 4, 2012 0

I’ve been trying to read more again lately – I used to do that constantly. Having the Kindle app on my phone since last year helped a little, and getting an actual Kindle for Christmas was even better :) Plus actual books that I’ve been reading.

Eric Flint was suggested to me as an author to read a long time ago, and I finally got around to starting one of his books this week. 1632, the first in a series/universe of books. I’m only 14% into it, but it’s pretty good so far. A few books in the series are available for free via the Baen Free Library, and other ebooks are reasonbly priced ($4-6), available in multiple formats, and DRM-free. Worth checking out if alternate history science fiction sounds good to you.

Fileserver update

Posted by Chris on December 13, 2011 0

Well, after doing some more research and playing around with things in VirtualBox, I think I’ll be using Debian+XFS after all. ZFS seems like it would be great if I didn’t have plans to extend my RAID array. Now I guess I have to play around more with md+lvm+xfs things to see just how it works. And find out how it handles spreading things out over multiple RAID5 arrays – seems like lvm can do that from the little I read, I just don’t know if it’s a good idea or not.

And make sure that Sick Beard and SABnzbd work fine on there as well. Other than that, I don’t really need anything else running on there that I can think of.

Fileserver plans

Posted by Chris on December 8, 2011 0

My ReadyNAS is pretty much full, so I’m planning on building a server to replace it – see server-todo for some parts I’m considering.

I was going to go with Linux and XFS, but after some initial research, FreeBSD with ZFS sounds better. As long as I can add new drives in the future and expand the RAID array. For example, I have 4x2TB drives in RAID5 and I’d want to add a 5th to it. Anyone know offhand how easy that would be? Well, the actual question should be assuming 4x2TB drives in RAID-Z, how easy is it to add a 5th drive? And more after that?

Posted originally via my phone while at work, so it was a bit brief. I was poking around a bit at FreeNAS (in a VM) and it seemed interesting but more limited than I want. A proper BSD installation couldn’t hurt, since I’m not afraid to mess around with the system. Even if I don’t have BSD-specific experience, my Linux usage years ago should help somewhat with a command line and overall ideas. And actually, I might rethink the motherboard choice, and go with ECC RAM. I’ve never read much on that, so I don’t know what my options are.

chrisgNL’s photostream

Posted by Chris on June 27, 2011 0
DSCF2103 DSCF2102 DSCF2101 DSCF2099 DSCF2098 DSCF2097
DSCF2096 DSCF2095 Bedroom Laundry / Bathroom Kitchen Kitchen
Kitchen Dining Room Dining Room Living Room Living Room

chrisgNL’s photostream on Flickr.

Pictures of outside of our new place, including the great view!

E-Readers

Posted by Chris on June 17, 2011 1

I finally was able to check out a Kindle in person, since The Source started to sell them. I must say, I was pretty impressed. Page transitions were much faster than the Kobo I tried at Coles, and overall the device just felt better in my hands. I wanted one anyway, but after playing with an actual device a little bit, I’m sure of it now. Not right now, but it’s definitely on my list of toys to get.

Ripping DVDs

Posted by Chris on April 9, 2011 0

I’ve been poking around a bit lately at ripping some of the TV shows I have on DVD to MKV format, so I can store them on my ReadyNAS NV+ and play them via XBMC on whatever computer on my network. After some issues, I think I have it figured out. It doesn’t help that the show I was trying first is Supernatural, and there are more titles on the disc than there are shows, because some have recaps and some don’t. And they aren’t in any sensible order, so you have to watch the video to see which episode it is.

Season 1 Disc 1
title00: S01E01 46:22
title01: S01E04 42:08
title02: S01E04 41:13 (no recap)
title04: S01E02 43:10
title05: S01E03 43:27
title07: S01E02 41:33 (no recap)
title08: S01E03 42:32 (no recap)

See how annoying that is? Hopefully some of my other shows aren’t so bad. It doesn’t help that I haven’t seen past episode 9 of season 1 yet, so I can’t easily tell what episode sometime is.

Anyway, I’ve decided on using MakeMKV to grab things from the disc, and then run it through Handbrake to convert into the format I want. For some reason ripping directly with Handbrake causes it to have all sorts of audio and video glitches (on my Windows system, it does work fine – although slower – on my Mac). But since I don’t want to encode all of it anyway, the extra step works fine.

At some point I plan to pick up a Zotac Zbox HD-ID40-U to use as a HTPC. It’s currently on sale at NCIX but I’m going to wait until at least the summer to see what spare cash I’ll have for something like this. I’ve seen some reviews and video of how well it works, and I’m impressed. Perfect for what I want it for. I already have a hard drive and 4GB of memory lying around from my laptop, so it won’t cost me as much. And I’d likely stick Ubuntu on there so I don’t have to pick up another copy of Windows 7 (I miss playing around with Linux anyway).

Disappointment

Posted by Chris on April 7, 2011 3

We finally got around to playing Settlers of Catan with four people, and I found it to be rather long and boring. With a lot of downtime between your turns. I also had a couple of games of Memoir ’44 last weekend, and that was a lot of fun. Looking forward to more games of that.

In work news, our yearly inventory is finally over, and it apparently went well. We sure put enough work into it, and I’m glad it’s done. Next thing to look forward to after some long weekends are my holidays! Can’t wait. Even if I have no plans, it’s just nice to be off.

Oops…

Posted by Chris on March 21, 2011 0

If I had paid attention when I placed that last order for games, I would have noticed that Red November was actually a pre-order. And would likely be at least a 5-6 month wait since it hasn’t even started reprinting yet. I didn’t really want to hold up my entire order because of that, so I switched it out for Memoir ’44 – probably one of the top games on my list that I don’t have yet. Great service from Starlit Citadel made that pretty easy :)

Bacon! No wait, games!

Posted by Chris on March 18, 2011 0

Well, bacon is awesome of course, but that’s not really the point here. Just ordered a few more games. I was planning on getting an expansion or two for Dominion (Intrigue and Prosperity) and/or something else but Starlit Citadel was out of stock on the card sleeves I use, so I’ll wait on that. I wanted to get the Pandemic expansion, but it’s apparently out of print at the moment. Likely to be reprinted, hopefully at least.

So here’s what I ended up buying:

Dust I had planned on getting anyway, but the others are all more recent discoveries. Since the majority of my board game time is just two players, I was really focused on finding games that play well with two. Ascension is another deck-building card game, though with different sorts of mechanics than Dominion, and much easier setup/teardown from what I can tell. Red November sounds like a fun and quick co-op game. And Neuroshima Hex is sort of a tile laying wargame that seems to have fairly basic rules but lots of potential for strategy.

On the digital side of things, I’ve decided to stop playing MMOs altogether. Rift is pretty awesome, but I just don’t have the motivation to play anything in that genre anymore. A little burned out on it, I suppose. And wanting better content. EVE Online is another one I enjoyed playing from time to time, but also got bored often with it. There are plenty of other fun games I have for PC/Xbox360/PS3 to play. I am looking forward to Diablo 3 whenever it comes out, of course.

I’m not sure how, but my site had been infected with something for a little while (thanks Gavin). As far as I can tell, it’s cleaned up now. Let me know if something weird happens or breaks.

Games, soon…ish

Posted by Chris on January 31, 2011 0

Well, I don’t know about soon, but I think this is what I’m going to get next in the way of board games.

Yomi is a pretty neat looking card game – I may just check out the print-and-play version of it to see if I want to pick up the whole thing. Dust seems to be a fun version of Risk. The Pandemic expansion adds some cool things, along with crazy hard versions of the game which I probably won’t try just yet. And Zombie Dice to fill out the shopping cart to get free shipping, though it sounds like a quick fun game anyway.

Some of the games I’ve gotten have gotten quite a bit of play and have been fun. Others haven’t been quite as impressive for various reasons. Race for the Galaxy didn’t go over well, though I think that might have been from being overwhelmed with everything in the game. I’ve found some rules to gradually introduce parts of the game, I might give that a try to see how it goes. I haven’t even tried to play Twilight Struggle yet. After a poor introduction to RftG, I want to be more sure of the rules and how the game is played before I attempt that one.

I guess the regular games with my girlfriend tend to be Dominion, Carcassonne and Pandemic, with Ticket to Ride and Battle Line getting a fair amount of play and interest as well. Stone Age was fun, we just haven’t gotten around to playing it since the first time. I keep getting my ass kicked at Dominion lately, and I’m not sure I’ve ever beaten her at Battle Line (only a handful of plays, but still…). Not that I mind losing, the playing is the fun part :) Going to give Alhambra a try tonight, probably along with my sister and mother playing too.

Things could change before actually buying more, of course. Time will tell :) I’m just very pleased that I’ve been able to spend so much quality time with my girlfriend, and friends and family, playing games together.