Only two years after it came out, I finally played 4th Edition D&D. Some of you may remember that my my first impression of 4E was not entirely favorable. Now that I’ve actually played it, I have rather more to say. But first, here’s how the adventure and the game session went.
It is Never a Good Time to Change Your Password
Published on April 24, 2010
Many people, including (I am embarrassed to say) myself, have given people advice to periodically change their computer passwords. The more I learn about computer security and human factors, the more I come to realize this is fundamentally bad advice.
A Boston Globe article from a couple of weeks ago explains this far better than I could.
My new recommendation: don’t use passwords at all. Use pass phrases: entire phrases or sentences all mashed together into one word, or better yet, strung together with unexpected*punctuation^marks. Memorize them to the extent you can, and use a “password vault” program for those you can’t. Don’t change them unless you have to.
E-Books and DRM
Published on April 10, 2010
E-books and devices with which to read them are gaining popularity. If you are thinking of getting an e-reader, there is something you need to understand about e-books: digital rights management, or DRM for short.
DRM is what used to be called “copy protection:” it’s software that prevents you from making copies of an e-book (or a movie, or a computer program, or an audio recording, or any other digital media). DRM goes beyond just copy protection though. You may have noticed that most programs have a “save” or “save as” function, which could be used to make copies of whatever data is loaded into the program. To prevent you from making copies, then, DRM software must prevent you from loading the data (e-book, video, etc.) into just any old program. It must limit you to loading the data into programs that can’t save it.
Data Recovered
Published on April 8, 2010
Just to let everyone know, I’ve had some help in recovering the data from my old blog posts. A friend from work had software that had archived most of the posts automatically and he sent me a copy of the archive. And, another reader pointed out that I could retrieve anything else that may still be missing from Google cache. So, it should be possible to reconstruct all the articles.
That will take a bit of time, though.
The End of History
Published on April 4, 2010
For those of you who have been reading my blog, I’ve got some bad news. Due to an error on my part, all the past articles and comments have been lost. For all intents and purposes, The Runes of Binaria is starting over with a blank slate.
The End of History continued »
How to Fix Any Computer Problem
Published on August 24, 2009
I’m going to let you in on a secret. Becoming a computer guru isn’t actually that hard. In fact it doesn’t even require a lot of brains. Here’s the secret:
This is a bit tongue-in-cheek of course, perhaps even a bit unkind, but it raises a serious point. Most people are perfectly capable of learning computer skills — even programming. At any age. Don’t be intimidated. Keep trying. Read the help, even if you don’t fully understand it. You’ll find that you have some small successes, and those lead to small insights, and before you know it, it will start to make sense.
Tools for Tabletop Gaming
Published on August 9, 2009
I have a D&D gaming group that meets infrequently (every three or four months) because the players live far apart. We experimented with playing online but I wasn’t really happy with the software we were using. So a few days ago, I searched for other electronic tools for tabletop gaming.
What I Found
I found a great site at www.rpgvirtualtabletop.com that compares several different programs for online gaming. A “Virtual tabletop” is any software that is meant to do the job of a physical gaming table: providing a map display, “miniatures” (little icons you can move around to show where the characters and monsters are), a dice roller, and usually some kind of chat. If you’re interested in playing tabletop RPGs online, that site is a good starting point to see what’s available.
My New Favorite
My new favorite game aid is called InitiatveTool, part of the RPTools suite. My D&D group has a large party (7 player characters plus an animal companion) and they often encounter groups of a dozen or more humanoids. Rolling initiative and sorting all the characters into initiative order can be quite a production. I used to do this by hand.
PCGen has a feature that will do this (on the GMGen tab) but PCGen is a serious memory hog and it gets seriously bogged down after loading that many characters and their opponents.
Enter InitiativeTool. It is much more lightweight than PCGen and does not run out of memory after loading all the combatants in the battle. It does quite a bit more than just keep track of initiative. As you can see from the screenshot, it also displays a character sheet for the character or monster whose turn it is.
InitiativeTool tracks initiative in the left pane and displays a character sheet in the right
InitiativeTool includes handy timers to keep track of events such as when a spell expires. I am quite impressed with it but I do have to mention two drawbacks to the tool. First, the RPTools developers have done their level best to hide any kind of documentation. Supposedly there are forums and a Wiki but I have not been able to find them. Second, data entry into InitiativeTool is a royal pain. The interface is a tree view of the data structure of the character and you have to expand and collapse each node in order to edit it. No fun for typing in 7 PCs and 20 orcs. I’m pleased to say, InitiativeTool ships with pre-loaded statistics for all the monsters in the 3.5 SRD, so you rarely have to type in the monsters; and there is a work-around to avoid typing the PCs as well, but it is not perfect.
If you want to give InitiativeTool a try, I recommend you use the stable version (1.0.b24 at the time of this writing). Anything more recent will probably have spiffy new features, but it’s hit and miss as to which of them will be working. I’ve tried it both ways — the stable version provides a better experience.
InitiativeTool-PCGen Compatibility
The best thing about InitiativeTool is that it can load data created by other tools. That way you do not have to use its tortuous data-entry interface. Recent versions of PCGen (5.14 and later) can export a character sheet to InitiativeTool format. Simply use File -> export -> To Text and choose the cryptically-named csheet_InitTool.rpgrp. This creates an output file that can then be read into InitiativeTool as a “group” of characters.
In a lot of ways, this offers the best of both worlds. PCGen is great for editing a character and checking all the arithmetic, but it can’t really handle more than two or three characters at a time. InitiativeTools is good for displaying many characters at a time but for creating and editing characters, it’s less powerful and a lot less convenient to use than PCGen.
My experience with this is that it works pretty well for the stable version of InitiativeTool. For some characters, there are some slight errors in the output file that cause InitiativeTool to fail to load it. For me, this had mostly to do with the location of the character portraits (stored in the “token” tag of the .rpgrp file). I was able to open the .rpgrp file with a text editor, hand-edit it to delete the offending “token” tags, and then the file loaded fine. So for the stable version of InitiativeTool, the feature has some inconveniences but it works. I tried loading the same (fixed) file into the latest unstable version, and it wouldn’t load at all. This is why I recommend against the unstable version.
It appears the RPTools team is also working on their own character editor called CharTool. I tried it but could not figure out how to make it produce output that can be loaded into InitiativeTool, and as I’ve said the RPTools documentation is missing in action. My guess is that CharTool is in the pretty early stages of development and its integration with InitiativeTool isn’t done yet.
New Page on my Blog
I’ve created a new page on this blog for Electronic Game Aids. I’ll update that from time to time as I discover new software that I find useful.
Windows 7, +1 month
Published on June 14, 2009
It’s been a bit over a month since I installed Windows 7 and on the outside chance there is anyone reading this blog, I thought I would give an update on my impressions.
It’s Slow
Windows 7 is sluggish — at least on my machine (3.00 GHz Pentium with 1 GB RAM). My hardware is a couple of years old, I admit. Mostly I notice the sluggishness when I open a folder or the Control Panel and Windows takes 3-5 seconds to draw in the contents. Launching a program can take a while.
What I think this means is that Microsoft designed Windows 7 for a more powerful computer than I have. Here’s another reason not to upgrade: if you install Windows 7 on an existing computer, you may find that it runs like molasses. Better to wait until you want to buy a new computer anyway, and just get one with Windows 7 pre-installed.
It’s Much Better than Vista
Windows Vista is going to die a quick and well-deserved death. Without going into the details of what made Vista such an epic failure, let me say this: Windows versions are the opposite of Star Trek movies. Only the odd-numbered ones are good.
If you do happen to be in the market for a new PC, don’t buy one now. They’d spoil it by installing Vista. Wait 6 or 8 months and you can get Windows 7 instead.
More to Come
I’ll write more details about what is good and bad with Windows 7 over the next several days/weeks. In a nutshell, it seems pretty good, but needs a powerful, new machine to run well.
Windows 7 Release Candidate
Published on May 13, 2009
Mainly out of professional interest, I downloaded and installed a trial copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, which is now available to the general public.
Before you run out and install a copy yourself, heed my advice: do not try this at home! Microsoft is not releasing this software so regular users can get a free copy of Windows! They’re doing it so professional and expert users can try out the nearly-finished software and find and report bugs or other problems. In other words, this is a public test, not a sales promotion.
In fact, I would advise most people not to “upgrade” even when Windows 7 becomes available for sale. Installing a new operating system is neither fun nor enlightening, and it is almost certain to cause something about your computer to stop working. For most users, it’s smarter to just wait it’s time to buy a new computer, and then get one with Windows 7 pre-installed.
Windows 7 License Agreement
I should say a few words about the Windows 7 license agreement, because it contains some odious terms that undermine consumer rights. This has become typical of commercial software these days.
The first thing to note is that the evaluation copy of WIndows 7 will stop working after June, 2010. Anyone who has installed it will have to either buy a new copy and re-install it, or go back to their old operating system. This is perfectly fair; it’s an evaluation copy. It’s clearly announced in the license agreement. None the less, a number of people on slashdot seemed shocked and outraged that their “free” copy of Windows won’t last forever.
The expiration date isn’t the problem. The really odious thing in the license agreement is the activation clause. When you first install Windows 7, and at unspecified times after that, Windows 7 contacts Microsoft to make sure, as Microsoft puts it, “your copy of Windows is genuine.” That means they’re looking in a database to see if you’ve paid. If they ever get the impression your copy is not “genuine,” Microsoft has what amounts to a kill switch they can use to shut down your computer. If this is at all a chilling prospect, then don’t buy an iPhone.
Here’s an important point: the need for activation means Windows 7 will only work on one computer. Ever. You can’t install it on one machine and then later move it to another. Microsoft considers that “piracy” — even if you were to uninstall it from the first computer. I’m serious. So don’t pay money for Windows 7 except as part of a brand-new computer.
Installation
Installation of Windows 7 didn’t go smoothly for me. The first problem was that the installer gave me two options, to “upgrade” my current copy of Windows or “clean install” (which is horrible grammar, but it means writing over my current copy of Windows and erasing everything it knows about my computer and all my other software). So I tried “upgrade” to see how it would work. It didn’t.
The problem was that the “upgrade” only works if you are upgrading from Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later. At the time, I had Windows 2000 installed. This is not a big deal, but the installer could easily have determined that and told me the hard truth: the only way I was getting Windows 7 onto my system was a clean installation. Instead it teased me and wasted my time by letting me think the upgrade was worth trying.
The truth is, I was emotionally prepared to blow away my old copy of Windows. What I was not prepared for was for the “clean install” to stop halfway through with a thoroughly unhelpful error message to the effect, “Windows 7 didn’t install properly. Please try again.” No mention of why.
I’ve got a news flash for ya. If a computer tries to do something, and it doesn’t work, and it tries again, there’s a darned good chance it won’t work again. So a better message would be,
Windows 7 didn’t install properly. We’re too lazy to figure out why or even give you a hint. Don’t even bother trying again until you solve this little mystery. Good luck.
It turns out, my hard drive was too full. The installer had helpfully backed up my old copy of Windows 2000 when I tried the upgrade earlier, and now there was not enough space for Windows 7. I figured this out by guessing. Microsoft didn’t put on a Web page information about how much disk space you actually need, as far as I can tell. They just sort of figured everyone has plenty of disk space.
See why I said, “don’t try this at home?”
To be continued…