/var/log/orava

People say that your dreams
are the only things that save ya.
Come on baby in our dreams,
we can live on misbehavior.

The weekend is starting up, the sun is shining, and this song – from what’s is still one of the best albums I’ve heard during the last 5 or so years – manages to reflect my mental state perfectly. It’s a very good state, in case you’re wondering. The song itself is open to interpretation, like so many great songs are.

It’s “Rebellion (Lies)” from Arcade Fire’s “Funeral” album, in case you don’t know.

Also worth checking out are these fantastic live performances of Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels), Neighborhood #3 (Power Out), No Cars Go and Wake Up.

God, I want to see these guys live, someday.

We finally managed to run a session of Exalted last Sunday, after some scheduling difficulties. The characters, now in the Northern trapper town of Wangler’s Knob, did some expected things (talk with the locals, set out for the even-farther North) and some slightly unexpected ones (ambushed a Dragonblood expedition in the middle of the snowy wilderness). It was a logical (if ruthless) thing to do, and it was great – the fight was the biggest one we’ve had yet, and Khamyn met the limits of his invulnerability for the first time; I was pretty sure he was a goner for a small while there. It was tight, they were facing 9 skilled Wood Aspects plus their retinue. It was also great because of the moral problems it caused and will cause – since they were the ones attacking without warning in the middle of the night, supported by a demon horde (yes, really)… who exactly are the bad guys here? The fact that the target Dragonbloods had actually been quite pleasant to the characters previously adds some fuel to that fire. While it was a bit unexpected (I expected potential violence, but at a different time and place), storywise this was good. The massive fight ate up much of the playtime, but it also gave us a chance to practice the combat mechanics.

Outside that version of Creation, real-life swordplay has involved a lot less flashy gymnastics and a lot more old-fashioned sweat and repetition of basic moves. My heel, which was giving me serious problems last Wednesday and Thursday, has apparently healed; good, since tendon/joint pains are something that I’m extremely wary of. Tuesday’s basic training went well, and yesterday’s rapier also. While tiring and sweaty, rapier didn’t kill my arm too badly this time round. Maybe some little strength is returning, an iota at a time.

This week I’ve been coding quite a bit on my free time, for a change. I’ve been following Ruby on Rails since it was at version 1.0 and have done some small toy test apps, but to date I haven’t really built anything biggger with it. I’ve had plans, sure, but somehow just never got started – part of that is just an overabundance of stuff I’d like to code, I could never decide what to do. I’d like a wiki that works just like I want, I’d want a nice simple photo gallery, I’d like lots of tools to help with rpg gamemastering, I’d like a pony… well, scratch the pony, but you get the drift.

Rails is (really!) great, and it allows you to develop more or less as fast as with PHP without needing to touch the Mindshatteringly Horrid Piece of Shit(tm) that is PHP. You can write web apps in an “agile” fashion while keeping the architecture clean, with a level of abstraction that I like. It’s somewhere between the over-engineered N-levels-of-cumbersome-abstraction maze of J2EE and the “easy web apps for people who don’t know how to code” of PHP. Me likes.

…but naturally there’s some setup involved when you want a system with user management and authentication, deployment with Mongrel & Capistrano, and all that stuff. The restful authentication plugin makes building a user auth system a bit less painful, but it’s still quite a bit of work (I’ve been following hints from various sources). So there’s quite a bit of startup intertia involved whenever you want to write a non-toy app. It’s a whole lot less intertia than with most other system, but it’s there, still.

Anyway, I realized that I don’t need to write N separate web apps, each duplicating a large part of this functionality – I can just write one app, with lots of subsystems, expanding them as needed and using one user auth system for all. Since this will be mostly for my own use and I don’t need to worry about it being modular and useful for others, keeping the apps separate would just involve (a lot) more work for me and bring no real benefit.

So I’ve been coding during evenings, using a snapshot of the new Rails 2.1 and using all the new conventions and toys (REST, named paths, named scopes, etc). It’s been fun, it’s been a while since I had a coding project, and I’ve been learning a lot of practical Rails stuff at the same time.

To date, I have a working (if simplistic) wiki, a user authentication system with email confirmation, and the beginnings of an Exalted character builder/manager tool for my Exalted game. Deployment is handled by Capistrano, and the thing runs on a (currenly single) Mongrel instance with Apache proxying. The intention is to expand it with a blog engine at some point, and maybe move this blog over – but that’s (far) in the future. That would also need some sort of image upload capability, which overlaps with the photo gallery I’d also like to have one of these days. Work work.

In any case, it’s a fun project.

Otherwise it’s been pretty quiet. Went to basic swords training on Tuesday, was fun – but somehow managed to do something bad to my heel. Didn’t notice anything that evening, but the next day it was very sore and I had to limp along. Janka thinks I may have inadvertently over-stretched my Achilles tendon (or some such) before it was warmed up properly, but that’s just a theory. In any case, it seems to be getting better now and it hardly hurts at all even if I stretch the sore spot… so should be able to go to training next week without problem. It might have been ok to go yesterday, but I tend to be very careful when it comes to foot/joint/tendon problems. I’d much rather miss out one week than to really aggravate some spot, that an easy recipe for getting problems that will need weeks or months to heal. Sore muscles, no problem. Seriously hurting tendons or joints? Danger sign. For me, at least.

I’m still a bit mystified by what caused the thing, but sometimes these things happen. My body is telling me that something is (or was) wrong, so that’s that.

Looks to be a busy weekend, a party on Saturday and an Exalted game to run on Sunday. Need to squeeze in some game prep today and Saturday, even though I’m mostly ready… some details still need fleshing out.

The weather acted up a bit over the weekend so we ended up mostly staying inside. I had planned on going swimming on Sunday, but the cold weather plus rainy drizzle didn’t make that option too tempting. Saturday was (partly) nice and sunny, though… but it was a bit cold, still. I tried reading outside a few times, but had to come in after a while due to the cold.

We want our summer back, dammit!

A not-too-bad weekend anyway; we made some experimental food (hot sweet-sour chicken on Saturday, Indian-style vegetarian wraps on Sunday) and did lots of “indoor rest and relaxation” stuff. I read a bit, played around with the newest (alpha) version of Ruby on Rails, and watched the second season of Torchwood and the latest batch of Doctor Who episodes. To my surprise, the Torchwood stuff turned out to be the best of the bunch; Doctor Who has been pretty mediocre lately, while Torchwood seems to slowly be getting into stride. It’s still not brilliant, but a lot better that season one imho.

With Flashbacks II, it’s time for another batch of classic Paranoia modules converted to Paranoia XP. These are a bit more of the slapstick/pun variety than the batch in the first Flashbacks volume, but they are lots of fun to read – and to play, I suspect. The worst of the pun names have been changed in keeping with Paranoia XP’s slightly more serious tone and some references to new Paranoia XP stuff has been added, but generally the storylines (what little I remember of them) are unchanged.

First off, there’s Orcbusters, which is one long D&D spoof. An interdimensional rift transports three wizards and their henchman into Alpha Complex, with predictable results. Naturally, the action takes place mostly in DND and TSR sectors, but there’s a nice opportunity for the Troubleshooters to go on a genuine dungeon crawl. I’m sure they’ll appreciate the opportunity. Oh, and there’s a Wandering Monster Table.

Second, there’s Clones In Space, in which the Troubleshooters get send to orbit, thanks to a new “experimental high-speed elevator”. Naturally, space contains mad robots, aliens (who want our women), and all the other cliches direct from TV and movies. Probability of successful return to Alpha Complex? Low. Really low. Probability of explosive decompression? 99.999%.

Lastly, there’s the classic The People’s Glorious Revolutionary Adventure. Here the players get to play loyal servants of the Communist Controlled Complex Population (CCCP), under the benevolent eye of Tovarich Computer, the Big Red One. They get the glorious opportunity to be the people’s vanguard in the attack against the imperialist oppressor pig-dog lackeys of Alpha Complex. They also get to wield heavy weaponry, and do lots of stuff players in Paranoia games usually don’t get to do. They also get to do a lot of things that are quite traditional, like get screwed by Catch-22 bureaucracy, get shot at, get incomplete instructions and gear, etc. There’s also a lot of borch to slurp through.

While the adventures in Flashbacks contained most of my personal favorites from among the classics, these three are also great. I’m not sure if I’ve ever played them (maybe Clones in Space, long long time ago), but as usual for good Paranoia modules they are a hell of a lot of fun to read. Good stuff.

Some small notes that don’t really merit a separate post…

• Good things about our house #N: having two showers means that if one should break (as one did, by starting to drip ceaselessly), you still have the other one and don’t need to fix the thing right now! (just “asap” will do).

• The Cat Containment System (tm) is not fully operational and functioning. In other words, we finally completed the extra fencing on top of our yard fence, so that we can now let the cats out into the yard without too much furry leakage. Seems catproof so far; there is one theoretical escape route but that should vanish Saturday when we get a certain tree cut down. Who knows, maybe the felines will start digging an escape tunnel next – stay tuned.

• I’m slowly dipping my toes into miniatures. Having been fascinated with Dream Pod 9’s Heavy Gear roleplaying game for a long time, I’m now getting into the miniatures wargame side of that game. The new tactical system (Blitz!) has been getting a ton of praise from various directions, and the new expanded Heavy Gear Blitz! Locked & Loaded rulebook should be shipping in my direction next week. After I get that, I’ll decide what factions appeal to me most and get a few starter squads… and after that, I’ll actually need to learn how to assemble and paint the things. Scary. I’m not sure if there are many (or any) Heavy Gear tactical players in the Helsinki area, but if nothing else I can recruit some friends to help with playtesting. Don’t know exactly why, but even though “mechs” as a concept has always left me cold, the smaller power-armor style that Heavy Gear uses triggers all my “kewl!” buttons. The rpg rocks, and I’m hoping the miniatures game will too.

• The Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity ransom is now at $15750 (of $20k), so it needs 85 more pledges/pre-orders to be a “go!”. Still 12 days to go on that, no panic yet – but it’s hard to predict how this will go. So… if you’re on the fence on this, now would be a good time to throw in your $50. Even if you later decide you don’t need the book, it’s a limited printing of 1000 and the previous such (Eyes Only) sold out very fast. In other words, you can easily make a profit on eBay later, if needed (when available, Eyes Only has been eBay:ing for around $90-$100). Of course, the real reason to get this is to get some more great DG stuff. Not enough of that in the world.

Greg A. Vaughan’s River Into Darkness is an attempt to do a D&D version of the classic “African river journey” story, but it only succeeds partially. Some bits are very nice; I liked the opening town of Bloodcove (despite the silly name), and the almost-paddlesteamer boat is a fun idea.

However, the encounters along the way seem a bit disjointed and not all that exciting, and the finale is maybe a bit too open-ended. Sure, it’s nice to give the PCs lots of freedom to choose, but some more detail on the consequences either way would have been nice. With a good GM and some extra prep, I’m sure this would be a fun romp to run/play, especially if you feel like some “out in the wilderness” action to give your outdoors specialist characters a chance to shine.

This isn’t bad by any means, just a bit lackluster compared to other Paizo modules.

…and so begins a new Paizo adventure path, The Curse of the Crimson Throne. Judging by beginnings, it looks to be at least as good as the previous one; Edge of Anarchy (by Nicolas Logue) sets up the action quite nicely. It’s also an urban adventure set, which is a nice change of pace and provides lots of varied encounter options.

Without giving away too many spoilers, the story is set in the city of Korvosa, where the failing health of the king is about to cause civil unrest and worse. The players are people who originally just set out to get revenge on a certain crime boss, but quickly get sucked into higher-level dealings.

It’s quite nice. On the plus side, it’s a set of loosely connected mini-adventures, which gives the thing quite a bit of flexibility. On the minus side, that same flexibility can be a problem; the players are expected to do some very specific things based on sometimes very flimsy clues and prompting. Also, the beginning link from the crimelord thing to bigger issues is extremely tenuous, I can easily see players either missing it entirely or deciding to ignore it. I’m pretty sure that this thing needs quite a bit of extra GM work to make it play naturally, because you have to have a “plan B” and “plan C” ready for every time the players do something other than what’s expected. Which will be “most of the time”, most likely. So, unless you want to blatantly railroad things, read this through at least twice and do some extra prep before running it.

Is it worth that? I’d say yes, easily. The main plot is quite interesting here, and the whole urban environment thing opens up tons of opportunities. In addition, the encounters themselves tend to be pleasantly varied (no, it’s not only combat all the time). In order for this to work the PCs also need to have approriate motivations, but to Paizo’s credit that’s discussed at some length in the Player Guide to this adventure path. It’s actually nice to see a D&D adventure that takes a stance on what types of motivations the players need in order for things to work, not just “generate some characters and declare them a ‘party’”.

Other than the adventure, the book(let) contains the usual assortment: an article (this time on the local gypsy variants), a fiction “Pathfinder journal” piece, and some new monsters. I’ve always liked the fiction bits in these, and this one was especially good. I’m a tiny bit annoyed at Paizo’s near-1:1 copying of some things – the Varisians are (fantasy) gypsies down to styles of dress, then we have a people who are pretty direct Native American copies, and then there’s the fantasy Egypt copy of “Osirion”, etc etc. It probably wouldn’t have killed them to throw a bit of extra originality into those. I like Exalted’s style of mixing things up a lot more – you might get a vaguely Babylonian culture that’s mixed together with African tribalism, or a people who combine bits of Viking culture with Native American stuff. It creates cultures that are a lot more interesting and have recognizable “handles” without being copies, whereas here they just seem like generic copies with little flavor of their own. It’s not a huge problem, just a small gripe I have.

Overall, a good start to a new city-based adventure path, we’ll see where it goes.

With The Waste Lands, the Dark Tower story moves into gear. While quite good, the first two books spent most of their pages in establishing the characters and the in laying story foundations. Here that’s mostly done with, and we get a strange sort of road trip. A good one, mind.

Roland starts training Eddie and Susannah to be Gunslingers, which proves to be suprisingly easy (largely due to the heavy hand of Fate, always present in this story). To complicate matters, a version of Jake who hasn’t died yet (due to time-travel weirdness) joins them, and proves to be one more member of their Ka-tet, their group-bound-together-by-fate. The fact that Jake’s survival, due to Roland’s actions in the previous book, creates a paradox is one critical issue that takes up the first half or so of the book – Jake must switch worlds, or both he and Roland are doomed.

The second half of the book sees the group finally moving towards the mythical Dark Tower “at the center”, with each having decided that it’s something they really want to do. This part of the book is the strongest, in my mind; we get haunting visions of a world slowly winding down and meet lots of strange characters – Oy the heroic bumbler, the Tick-Tock Man & his Greys, and finally Blaine (the Pain). The strange mixing of different historical periods continues – while the feel of Mid-World is largely Old West to begin with, by the time the group makes it to Lud it’s more of a post-apocalypse wasteland, with deranged computers, ruined high-tech cities, and ultra-tech railways. A strange mix, but it works and emphasizes the strange way time works (or doesn’t) in Mid-World, and how everything is really winding down, growing sick. I really liked many of the anachronistic scenes in the book (including the one with the not-quite-bear in the beginning). They create a fairly unique “feel” to the story.

This series is proving to be better than I expected. So far it’s been a really good read, and while the story meanders quite a bit it felt fitting; this is very much a “the journey is more important than the destination” thing. Sure, it gets a bit too self-important at times, and I’m not wild about this book ending on a sort of cliffhanger… but those are quite small niggles. I’m interested in seeing what happens next, and that’s the most important thing.

Every time I start exercising again after a lapse, I’m (newly) amazed by what a difference it makes. Even though objectively the physical changes are slow, immediately I start feeling… different. Better. More aware of my body, of being in control of all my movements (part of that is just sore muscles, of course :), and a general feeling of being focused and less stressed-out.

The thing is, there are no shortcuts to that, even though millions of drug & nutrition advertisers (and spammers) may try to convince you otherwise. You have to get out there and do exhausting stuff, and keep doing it. There is no easy something that you can take once per day to improve everything, or a nice course where you can exchange a pile of cash for general “physical improvement”. It doesn’t work like that – and maybe that’s the reason why most people nowadays tend to be in crappy shape. Regular exercise is hard, and requires both time and enough strength of will to go to classes (or the gym, or running, or…) even when you’d much rather just stay home and rest, when you’re having a bad, exhausting day and just don’t feel like it.

The “I’ll skip it today, and do it tomorrow” thing is bad, since “tomorrow” so easily becomes “next week”, and that morphs into “next month”, and suddenly you’re a stressed-out, depressed couch potato (again). The good thing about that is that you’ll get a lot on company on IRC when you complain about how depressed and stressed you are, how your body is acting up, yadda yadda. The bad thing is that it’s a downward spiral, and nobody’s going to break it except you, yourself. That’s a hard lesson in these often so soft times.

I say the above with a “been there, done that” viewpoint. Got the t-shirt, too.

Let’s see how it goes this time. Uimastadion, the best place to swim in Helsinki, is open again (yay!). Went there last Sunday and it was great, despite the place being pretty full. Being able to swim outside, in a proper-size pool, is wonderful.

On the more regular side, I’ve started swords training again. The longsword basic course started up last Tuesday, and I’m attending that with a “let’s see how this thing works, again” mentality. Janka also decided to return to swords after some years of doing other stuff, so she’s there, too – and it seems that half the city is, also. Last Tuesday saw the salle full of oldtimers, the “beginner course” seems to be half-full of returning people. In addition, a few old friends with no prior swords experience turned up as well. So we have a somewhat weird (but fun) “beginner” course crowd.

In addition to Tuesday’s longsword basics, I’m aiming at doing (at least) one rapier class per week. The rapier is a great weapon (it’s a big reason Janka decided to come back, also), but it needs a lot of body strength and I’m not quite there yet. It’s returning, slowly.

So… if I manage to keep to a minimum 2 x 2h swords training per week regimen, plus some swimming etc on the side, I should be back in reasonable shape at some point.

Hmm. Should either fix my ancient bike or get a new one. Biking to work (10km or so) would be a good idea, and besides it’s fun.