White Russian (or "wasn't I meant to do something here?")

I finally got around to flashing my WRT54GL with the rather spiffy openwrt firmware (White Russian 0.9 release). Considering I had been intending to do so ever since I got the thing early in the year, this represents a rather impressive feat of procrastination on my part (although not yet an awe-inspiring feat, such as my intention to finish working through the Communication Theory text book I bought while doing my M.)

The process was competely painless. In fact, it was so painless I'm almost feeling cheated. Isn't getting Linux running on exotic hardware the way you proven your geekiness? In addition to the extremely simple install (point router at firmware, press upgrade, wait), the upgrade process retained the wireless network settings, so I didn't even have to configure anything to get my wireless network going again.
Very convenient.

Now, having finally flashed the the thing, I can move doing a proper compartmentalised wireless setup up my todo list. Check back in six months or so.

Zombies!!!

So, on Friday I was up way too late (4 am in the morning), because of a game Zombies!!!, which I nearly, but not quite, won (I rolled a 4, when I needed a 5). Although, given the way my rolling had gone, it was required some late good fortune to get me that close to winning.

Some observations to come out of the session.

• Rolling three successive rolls below 4 when on the the Town Square, and a "no bullets may be used effect" is in play really sucks.
• The extra cards from the guts counters added by the university expansion really changes the balance for events. It's much more likely you'll have a useful event in hand, and thus more events are changed
  
• The mall expansion, being much more compact, and with the ease of moving between shops provided by the airducts, is significantly unbalanced when compared to the the town and university. We should never have allowed Kevin to camp in the mall as we did.
• When trailing badly on Zombies, the fact that the trailing player can place the Helipad makes wandering away from everyone else a viable approach, as you can place the Helipad near yourself. As other players aren't around though, you do have to deal with all the Zombies nearby alone, which can suck badly.
• Having different expansions running, with different possible Helipad locations, makes this less viable, though.
• Zombies!!! remains a seriously cool concept, and, if shipping weren't so bloody expensive, I'd be buying it
• I should have brought Jonathon Coulton's Re: Your Brains to be played at some point during the game
  

In other zombie related news, Fluxx now has a Zombie version (want (really, really want)).

CTPUG 6

So, this Saturday was the 6th CTPUG meeting. We had a reasonable turnout, and the talks seemed to go down well. The python on the S60 has me thinking that, when my current cellphone contract is up for renewal, I need to get me something that can run python (not because I really have any great use for python on a phone, being someone who still mainly uses a cellphone for talking to people, but it'll generally be a cool think to have).

The pylons talk was interesting for me from a underlying technology point of view. I'm not nearly involved enough in web stuff to be that concerned about the differences between the frameworks, but the WSGI stuff is something that looks worth getting acquainted with.

After the talk, a bunch of us eventually ended up a Pancho's for supper. Pancho's serve impressively sized potions, which is just as well, as I needed the food to balance out the margarita's I had. Pleasant enough way to spent the time, be carefully picking my way back along the N2.

CTPUG 7 is scheduled for the 17th of November, which will almost certainly be the last one for 2007.