Ben vs TeX Font Installation

Since I recently re-installed Debian on my machine, I've naturally got tons of software to install and configure. One crucial piece of software was, of course, TeX.

Now, seeing as I've got some funny hobbies, I needed to install an astrological symbol font. This has caused problems in the past. I located the correct file tree, created several required directories, copied a bunch of files, ran a couple of commands, and... voila! It worked. Just like that. No extra hassle.

I guess practise installing it on a couple of different systems earlier has been of some benefit. And I was smart enough to google up some decent instructions first.

(For the record, the correct local tree for installing packages in TeX Live on Debian Squeeze appears to be '/usr/local/share/texmf'.)

Home Sweet Un*x

So I'd been using Debian's unstable GNU/Linux distro for about a year now, when, a few weeks ago, a system update royally messed it up. The system wouldn't even boot. Probably it would've been fixable, but I thought, why bother, it's about time to re-install the system anyway and get rid of a year's worth of unnecessary clutter.

Somehow it took me several weeks to actually get round to it (during which time I was stuck with Mac OS X, without access to any of my files). But here I am again. I decided to stick with Debian (it still seems to be the best distro around), but I installed a (mere) testing distribution this time. I've recently had too much trouble with the unstable one for the slightly more bleeding edge software to be tempting enough.

Not that the testing distro's totally without problems (hey, it's still called 'testing', ain't it). I soon discovered I had to switch to an older kernel because of a strange visual glitch in X. But I'm back in GNU/Linux, I've got all my files handy again (most notably my music collection) and all systems are go, it would seem.

Dreams from the Fresh Kills, Pt 3

Update: Third session of Dreams from the Fresh Kills online.

Well, this is a surprise. Another session of my current RPG played, and barely more than half a month since the last!

In this session the characters found an old fashioned opium den hidden aboard the famous Staten Island ferry. I'm not sure where that idea popped into my head from, but I loved it instantly when it did. Things are certainly getting strange, and the clues the players are finding only raise more questions. Which is, of course, as it should be.

This isn't the sort of game that can go on forever, though. We've played three sessions now, I think we must reach some kind of climax in just a handful more more sessions, or we'll just be dragging it on needlessly. Perhaps I should already be thinking about what to run next...

Dreams from the Fresh Kills, Pt 2

Update: Second session of Dreams from the Fresh Kills online.

Oh yeah, I forgot to post the usual update about running a session of my current RPG, Dreams from the Fresh Kills, a couple weeks ago. Once again there was a lengthy break between sessions. Nothing new for our group, alas. Nothing much to add, all the relevant information is on that page.

I'm also currently re-running Beyond the Bridge for a different group. I won't be posting any additional write-ups about that, though, as the story's essentially the same, even though the characters are different, of course, and I've made little tweaks here and there.

A Touch of Vertigo Vol. 2

Nearly two years ago I wrote about the Vertigo tarot deck by Dave McKean. Well, I finally got to buy it last summer. I meant to write about it then, but, as it goes, I've been really lazy in my occult 'dabbling'. I finally got around to taking a closer look, and so far I like it.

Like all of McKean's work, the images are eerie, abstract, imaginative and often bordering on the grotesque. The suits and names are all traditional. I like the court cards a lot. The Page, although called such, is obviously female, as it should be. The small cards bear no titles, which is probably usually best, as authors tend to differ on them (I've come to prefer Crowley's versions myself). They're naturally the most abstract cards of the deck, but mostly seem to fit in reasonably with traditional interpretations (though not always).

The trumps are perhaps the most controversial, as they feature characters from Vertigo Comics (even though McKean's style is so abstract that many are almost unrecognisable). Some of these suit the cards very well. Consider Death of the Endless for the trump titled Death, for example. And Constantine as the Fool makes me smile. Some, however, differ somewhat from my ideas of the trumps. Also, some unnecessary changes have been made to the astrological attributions of the trumps (which are marked on the cards).

Right now this deck ranks among my favourites and is certainly usable. It's not a perfect deck (none I've tried yet is), but it holds a definite appeal, and not only due to the geek factor. Who knows, it might even become my primary deck for the foreseeable future. But of course it's early days, and I've always been fickle in these matters.

For the record, if and when I buy another deck, it will almost certainly be Crowley's Thoth deck.

Tehafek, ze'e hak

It was a lazy friday afternoon. So what's the natural thing for a sane person like me to do? Make up a language, of course.

Of course it didn't come quite out of the blue. There's been a seed of an idea buried in my head for a good while, with one or two thoughts about the basic mechanics of the language. But I'd never really thought seriously about making it reality.

When I decided to give it a shot, the language almost seemed to create itself. Things just fell into place naturally, over the past weekend. Of course it's very, very far from being anything like complete. But I think I've already got down most parts of a workable grammar and some primitive vocabulary. There's no name for it yet, apart from 'Tehafa', which is just the word for 'language'.

Here's a rendition of Bashō's famous haiku:

esu etuu valap
valaga ada'e tabep
la'o ratap

(old small lake
frog leaps in
water’s sound)

The question now is, of course, what am I going to do with it? The natural option is of course to use the language as the basis for a fantasy world. I already have Wyrmvoid, of course, but that is tailored for D&D style high fantasy. This should be something more personal, more original. And it should be a lasting world, not something I'll discard when the next neat idea comes along. It's not like I'm going to make up a new language every weekend.

(The post title translates as: 'I speak, therefore I am.')

The Secret Update

The occult. Ooh. Spooky.

Except it's not. The word might mean 'secret' or 'hidden', but all the secrets of ancient secret societies have long since been published. In today's world it's just a metaphor.

So what does it mean then? It's just another word for spirituality, really. For meditation, the search for enlightenment, and all that. Europe's equivalent for yoga or Zen Buddhism. Quite boring really, most people would likely think. All these complicated philosophical and psychological concepts, countless holy words and spirits and angels and whatnot. But all they're really for is to get you in the right mood, to inspire you, to make you a better human being.

Now, I think I had a point beyond word definitions... Oh yeah, I've been adding stuff in the spirituality section. Articles that deal with my world view and understanding of occult concepts. Strange ideas that most people won't find even remotely interesting, which I mostly write to put my own thoughts in order rather than to benefit others.

Questing for MMOs

Wow (no pun intended), time really does fly. A whole month since my last post? What have I been up to? Oh yeah, a whole lotta nothing...

I've never had any interest in online gaming. Playing games to me has been something akin to watching movies or reading books: it's about stories, and larger than life characters, the kind you tend to find in (more or less) linear games. There's no place for other people in games like that. And, frankly, I'm not that interested in the company of total strangers anyway.

But I keep running into the MMORPG world wherever I turn: I started watching The Guild, and it was fun. Friends talk about them. And of course it's hard to surf the geeky websites I surf without constantly hearing about them. So I start thinking: am I missing out on something? And suddenly I find myself yearning to explore a new world, with a character I've created myself, instead of following a character in someone else's story.

Probably I'll just get bored in no time at all and return to my usual console adventures. But might as well give it a shot, I thought. Which is when I ran into a wall. Namely, was there any MMORPG I could play even if I wanted to? First, there's no way I'm going to pay a huge monthly subscription fee. Ok, there's a fair amount of games out there that are free to play. But getting one to work on my machine is a whole other matter, seeing as I run GNU/Linux, on a 2007 model MacBook, which doesn't exactly boast huge amounts of memory or graphics capabilities.

Now, there's a fair amount of Windows games that should run with Wine. I tried several, with no luck. Native GNU/Linux games aren't exactly bountiful. There's PlaneShift, an open source project (with proprietary content) that looks interesting, but the listed system requirements looked too daunting to even try it... (Namely, they explicitly listed a newer model graphics card than the one in my MacBook.)

Then there's The Mana World, which I should make particular mention of as I recently posted about games that are entirely Free Software. This project aims to create a totally free 2D MMORPG, with an appearance similar to mid-90's console RPG's. It's very much a work in progress, however, and doesn't yet offer much in the way of races, classes or other character customisation, or story... In short, nothing really to hook me. Still, it does run on my machine, and I respect it for the Free Software approach, even though I doubt I'll spend much time playing it as it is now.

I'd pretty much given up hope of finding anything else, when I ran into Regnum Online, which, surprisingly enough, has a GNU/Linux client available. Even more surprisingly, it actually seems to run, more or less (at least with all graphics options set to minimum). It's much too early to say if the game is any good, or even if it's stable enough to actually play. As I said, most likely I'll get bored in no time and move on to something different. But at least I'd have tried.

In Memoriam: Robert Holdstock

Just heard that author Robert Holdstock has departed from this reality. I don't really know much about him as a person, but his Mythago Wood novels made a lasting impression. Back when I first read Mythago Wood, late in the 90's I think, it was a very refreshing experience in comparison to the clichéd high fantasy I read much of back then. Holdstock, along with people like Neil Gaiman, taught me just how original and imaginative fantasy could be.

Wing Commanding

Update: Review of Wing Commander: Prophecy.

Back in the mid-90's there were two main game genres me and my friends were playing: fantasy strategy (namely Master of Mana and Heroes of Might and Magic II) and space combat simulations.

The game that introduced me to the latter genre, and probably the game of the genre I played most at the time, was Star Wars: TIE Fighter. (This was also around the peak period of my Star Wars fandom.) The other main proponent of the genre is, of course, the Wing Commander series. I bought Wing Commander III, IV and Prophecy back in the day.

Another defining feature of that era, however, was my lack of patience with games. I rarely beat anything, really. I played Wing Commander III some, but never got very far. IV I never really got around to playing at all. Prophecy I played most of the three, I think. I remember running into trouble in a mission somewhere close to halfway into the game and getting sidetracked with something else, never returning to it. (Which happens to me far too often, even now, although I have beaten plenty of games since.)

The games sat in a cupboard for years, until recently I got a sudden urge to revisit those golden years. Of course running them on my modern GNU/Linux system would likely be difficult. This proved to be the case for Wing Commander III. (It did start with DOSBox but suffered frequent crashes.) I didn't even try IV. However, I was surprised to find that Prophecy ran perfectly with Wine.

It's a week later and I've finally beaten a Wing Commander game for the first time. And it still was lots of fun.