A few Thoughts turn to PC-BSD

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Considering recent threads in the PC-BSD forums, largely centred around the projects deficiencies I’ve made a decision.

I have the DVD version of PC-BSD 7.1.1 x86 down loading, when it is complete, I’ll load it into a virtual machine for testing. Once that is done, I will conduct a ‘deep’ inspection of the systems current state—including the source code. The aim of it is to analyze the distributions weak spots, noting the areas where it does need improvement. After that is completed, I intend to publish my catalogue of the projects deficiencies along with suggested paths for improvement. It’ll probably be posted here on my LiveJournal, with links shared in the appropriate forums and mailing lists.

Why do I feel like doing this? Well, PC-BSD while it has some good qualities, generally fails (in my honest opinion) because of how it is handled. As I have often said and people can feel free to quote me on it, PC-BSD feels like a project born in Kris Moore’s garage: that never left. And like wise, as I have often expressed, PC-BSD development practices do *NOT* reflect those of a real BSD project.

In my experience getting anything done there, that is also worth doing: has usually been caused by the community screaming the developers ears off… perhaps consistently so. So writing an open letter might poke the project into cleaning up their ship, or at least demonstrate to the rest of us what “Not to do”, lol.

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No luck what so ever in trying to get to sleep, I logged off with about 9 minutes of battery power left on my laptop, and spent the rest of the night pondering as usual. It might’ve been 0400-0500Q by the time I finally crashed.

Woke up around 0830Q, having dreamed of Buzz Lightyear leading the Predacons against Optimus Primal and the Maximals, in an attempt to renew the Beast Wars. I know everything is well, when my dreams are total non sense lol.

So much for a nights sleep…

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Well I tried, I really did try! Woke up from a nap and was so tired, I decided to skip the shower, shave, and computer for tonight, and just go to bed and try to get some sleep for a change. Just took care of odds and ends, threw on The Simpsons Movie for something to watch, and made ready to pass out.

Then her royal pain woke up and needed her back scratched, then she woke up Willow who decided to tackle me; *sigh* it is just impossible to win some times!!!!

Upon sleep proving to be a hopeless affair, I gave up and dug up some strawberry ice cream for a quick snack. Largely gave up junk food a long time ago, but sometimes I’m in the mood for something sweet. Finished the movie a lit’ bit ago, then decided to boot the laptop off batter power, and try and pass some time.

Si much for a nights sleep…

I’m sorry, but do I look like a moron?

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I spent some time getting stuff sorted on SourceForge, until I was interrupted by [SAS]_Rct_ESCRT, who was being plagued by a trio of Dummköpfe terrorizing our SAS Proving Grounds server. After resolving trouble via remote, I chose to enter the server and deal with things “Personally” and give the vagrant offender one last chance. In the end, these trouble makers with many names were sorted when the worst was banned. The screen shot below sums up him and his friends efforts:

One thing I failed to tell them in that moment, is I was also the Web Admin from before, who Feldjäger tried to convince me his buddy was talking to 8=). On top of that, I also forgot to mention that I had kicked him previously, but I didn’t want them to feel tooo stupid.

Maybe I am not terribly bright at times, but hey, I am not a fool!

Pissin’ thunder!

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Today we’ve barely had any rain down here, just thunder; yet every darn time we get plenty of either in just the right spots, it’s virtually impossible to keep a steady internet connection!

I managed to survive work, just one more day and I’m free for a couple days… free to be stuck at home anyway, lol. I got home maybe around 1900Z, but I honestly have no idea where the day has gone +S. The most i can remember is making the web’rounds, discussing software over GTalk, and letting a friend dig me into reading X86 Assembly code for a few hours!

Right now, I’m just to freaking tired to get anything done, but to wide awake to just pass out and sleep. So far it seems to be fairly consistent, that once I logoff and lay down, that my brain goes bonkers :-(. On the upside, my dreams have been taking a much more positive light lately, then they have been for the past month or two.

What I really need is an exceptionally long vacation, just get away from it all…. where the most pressing worry, is where to have dinner! Ugh, but that ain’t likely to happen in my life time :'(

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I made it off to work with a bleeding toe again, not as bad as yesterday though, I really miss having 10 healthy toes… but at least nothing landed on my foot today, for a change. Getting through today was an exercise in exhaustion, my stomach wasn’t very happy. I blame it on having 4 helpings of food last night but nothing to eat this morning :/. After getting home, I had a quick cookie to tide it over until dinner time.

Nearly twisted my left hand and fingers off getting the car loaded, had a bad slam into the car frame. I was able to send my arm into the motion to minimize the strain on the joints, but two of my fingers are still sore from it. They’re not going to get any rest either, because while much of the illiterate-majority of computer users are largely mouse bound, I’ll hang someone by their rats tail if I can’t go keyboarding! I type with ten fingers at mental speed, so if I couldn’t type, it would be like a normal person losing their voice lol. The trobbs are starting to subside somewhat, hopefully it won’t be swollen by work tomorrow. Maybe I’ll grab some server time tonight as a stress test.

Last night I took about an hours break from existing projects, to work on a rough prototype for part of an “SAS Realism” skin that I’m interested in making for SWAT 4. There are two different directions I can see it going in, so I started work on a mock up of one. In working on Cara’s armour vest, I had to do a little removal operation on the textures in order to get the text just right; doing that is pretty trivial but left it rather unsightly. In order to make it look good, I had to learn something new, which created a very nice looking end result for the vest textures. To solve the problem, I just looked at it like a sketch and tried to adapt what I would have done to paper, to the laptop in front of me. I chose to take an hours break and work on the mockup so I could refine the technique a bit more, might come in very handy with the next phase in doing Caras skins.

When I was at work, I was thinking a bit more about starting to draw again. The more I learn about the computer side of things, the more it looks like the same concepts are used with a different set of tools. At every opportunity to prove other wise, my mother constantly manages to prove that I can say *nothing* around her without paying a price for anything she finds disagreeable 8=). So, I’m probably not going to return to using paper anytime soon; especially when computers are better creators of privacy around here. Doing graphics on computers has never been my strong point, but it consistently gets easier the more I have to work on images. Someday maybe I’ll be able to do whatever I want through software like GIMP and Photoshop; and it is always nice to have something time consuming to work on, it can be very good therapy. I think I’m going to give it a go in the near future.

With my brain in a deeper level of thought from all of that, I also came up with some ideas needed for moving a program I would like to write into implementation phase. I’m always happier when I’m working on some code then when I’m not. The down side of course, is it usually means much less sleep! Since it was working on her custom skins that started this logic chain, I’ll probably have to thank or curse at Cara later on lol.

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Only had like 2 or 3 hours sleep last night at the most, and should we say, mornings here just reinforce, feeling like nothing but an asset in the equation :-(.

Been experimenting some in GIMP on a few things related to SWAT 4 skins; also to my joy, the DDS plugin compiles and builds fine on FreeBSD. I kind of like working on images in GIMP, doing something decent can really be time consuming, and since I’m rather inexperienced at putting such software through it’s paces, it incorporates a measure of exploration as well. Because the display on my desktop, basically makes anything involving blacks impossible to work with, I’ve been using my laptop more and more for image stuffs. Really, I prefer the touch pad; for everything I’ve thrown at it, except for gaming. (My laptop isn’t capable of running many FPS games.).

There is a lot of stuff I wish I could learn about software like GIMP and Photoshop, but all in all, I just can’t see myself doing that much work. There are just some things that I can see most effectively done in software, and other things that I just can’t quiet put into words… but could likely take a wild crack at with the right (artists) tools.

When I was younger, I used to spend a lot of time drawing, I loved to sketch and to doodle. It’s been more then just many moons, since I last drew anything by hand. Heck, the last time I even held a pen in hand, was probably at the doctors office… lol. Really, I’m not sure exactly why or when I stopped drawing, but it was probably between 2002-2003 or so.

Technically, I’m not to old to start again, and with the right level of applied effort, I could learn much more then I did. But, I think such would be more trouble then it’s worth, and worse, likely break down further what privacy I have offline. My mother studied as a cartoonist, so obviously she would likely want to butt her noise into things; and shall we say, things that I do to relax, I generally do not wish to be “Disturbed” over. That being said, the best things I ever drew while growing up, were probably drawn in the dark, by nothing more then TV light! Digging out more then a No.2 pencil would also be pushing the limits at my stealth skills considerably, and I’m very good at most things clandestine…

All of my life, I have looked for forms of expression…Things that let me put what I’m feeling into motion, let it take some shape and be free. Although arguably such things could be considered a form of communication, I’ve never cared to much about using it as such, so much as for its own sake. Personally, I consider myself somewhat self-centered—which is an attribute I utterly hate. But, for me it has mostly been a way of ‘surviving’ without being erased by the world around me. You could say that in my world and in my family, it is very easy to become trampled over here.

Sigh, sometimes I really don’t like my life.

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It’s just a few more days left to go…. Tues, Weds, Thurs, Fri; then I have 3 days off work. THe miserable thing, I haven’t a damn thing to do, that doesn’t come from popping from the todo list!

Right now it’s just as if everything is passing, but nothing is moving. Damn it, this is unnerving. I feel like I could be awake for another couple hours… probably will be tossing and turning for at least an hour. I wonder tentatively if I’ll ever find peace. Whenever I lay down to sleep, there’s nothing to occupy my mind as it drifts to sleep; as such it gains an unhindered measure of exploration. The thoughts never end, never. Ironically during the day, if I have nothing to occupy my mind with, I end up getting drowsy: at night I end up wide fsckin’ awake!!!

Peace ceased to be apart of my life a very long time ago. That which remains, is black and empty, maybe it will always be so.

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This lack of sleep is driving me crazy… is it really to much to ask for, a simple bit of peace? Why is it so hard to come by such a trifle, it’s just sleep. Going nuts.

So far I’ve managed to write a quick script, that should take care of updating my laptop tomorrow afternoon; took to long getting the files downloaded to worry about running them tonight lol. That however, just passes the time, it doesn’t fill it. To easy, there’s no challenge in it and not very much distraction either :'(. At least, it’ll save me the trouble of another week-long update cycle, if I keep pace with things (like normal).

Tried reading some of the Count of Monte Cristo, but not even that calms my mind. Sometimes the past can be a path riddled with glass, if you have a long memory; and I have a very long memory. Sigh, 0430 local has passed… time to be heading to bed, if I’m ever going to get up on time tomorrow.

I’m so tired of all this shit,what does rest even feel like? Does it even have a sensation to it? I haven’t known it in such a long time. As darkness comes, the light retreats; as sun rises, so does the flames.

Fresnal Melee, SAS style

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It was the last round planned for most of us, and I got elected as Element Leader… so I called for something totally insane!

I ordered everyone to sling their weapons and skip the tac aids – none would be used. We then inserted into Fresnal station and made it half way through one of the largest maps before taking any causalities. Cara died by enemy shotgun shell, after weaving into my line-of-melee, then COT died by the same suspects 12g, when the guy fired while being beaten to death by two SWAT officers lol.

Walker and I then moved on and continued to clear the map…. the suspects never knew what hit them. I made it until being killed in a lag spike, sigh. In RvS at least when you lag out, you’re hard to kill, in SWAT you just become bullet-bait.

If it wasn’t for Walker firing one LTL Bean Bag round into a suspect about to flee the map, we would’ve completed the entire map with NO weapons or tactical aids what so ever. And if it wasn’t for extenuating sircumstances, no one on our team would have died most likely!

Perhaps we are crazy as lunes, or just enjoy a challenge. With no weapons, one has to move fast, and SWAT 4 doesn’t lend itself to unarmed combat as readily as real life does; slow punching but 2m distance is not a good trade off. The real key to it, is mastering the angles involved in the confortation—and beating the enemy senseless. It’s even possible to take 2-3 suspects at once given the right stuff. Until Cara stopped exploiting the angles, it was an interesting 5-vs-1 pistols to fists fight for a moment on the next map lol.