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Leevi's blog

-ummm, just some random stuff about me and my hobbies

Conky

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This is how my Conky setup looks like. No idea where I snatched the original .conkyrc file, but it looked nice so I copied it and made some minor adjustments to it. Wallpaper is from Interfacelift

Still using Ubuntu 8.10, never got around upgrading to 9.04 and now the 9.10 is out. Apparently you cannot upgrade 8.10 directly to 9.10, so I think I'll make a clean 9.10 install in few days, clean installations always work better.

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What a great place I live in /s

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I was away for a weekend and when I came back home, there was only 15 Celsius inside. Heating doesn't work right, radiators are all cold. Winter is already here, so it would be nice if it would be fixed soon, before it gets really cold.

Sometimes I think that this place is a slum. Like last week some wasted kid knocked on my door and tried to get inside. Took him awhile to understand that he was in a wrong place. He left, but 5-10 minutes later I start hearing loud bashing from the floor below me. I put my shoes on and handcuffs* in my pocket and went to see what was happening

The wasted kid was bashing the door down with a little cabin door. I called the police and the kid tries run away, he didn't get very far:

You can't really recognize the guy from the picture (thanks to his dirty hippie hair and bad image quality), so I suppose it's alright to put this up here. He didn't smell of alcohol, but he was really wasted and he was "seeing colors", talking odd things and asking the same things every few minutes, he was definitely high on something.

Police had a busy Friday evening, it was about 18:30 when I called them and they arrived an hour later :wait: Long wait, but this wasn't a priority case, perp was already cuffed and just waiting for pick up.

Funny thing btw, someone tried to bash the same door down with a bicycle stand less than a year ago...

*real handcuffs, not some pink furry handcuffs - and they are for work, not for fun! :zip:

New additions to my bookshelf

After reading the first two books of Honorverse books (check the previous blog entry for those), I decided to buy the next book(s). Originally I thought that I would only buy two or three books, but by the time I got around ordering the books, the 3rd book was sold out and so was the 4th. So, instead of buying the next two books in the series I ordered the rest of the Honorverse books they had p: and since the bookshop gives free delivery if the order costs more than 80€ I ordered few other books as well.


Maybe I went little bit overboard, but these books should keep me busy for awhile.

Most of the books were only 6,20€ and even the most expensive book was only 13,90€. All in all, I bought 15 books and they cost me 120€. There would have been 3 more Honorverse books that I could have ordered, but they were hardbacks and they cost 3 times as much as paperback does, so no thanks to those.

My bookshelf contains:
David Weber Honorverse books
  • Flag in Exile
  • Honor Among Enemies
  • Ashes of Victory
  • War of Honor
  • At All Costs

Glen Cook
  • Chronicles of the Black Company
  • The Books of the South

Steven Erikson The Malazan Book of the Fallen series
  • Gardens of the Moon
  • Deadhouse Gates
  • Memories of Ice
  • House of Chains
  • Midnight Tides
  • The Bonehunters
  • Reaper's Gale
  • Toll the Hounds

Robin Hobb - The Tawny Man Trilogy
Richard Matheson - I am Legend
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Jules Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth
Robert Louis Stevenson - Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Terry Pratchett - Thud!
Terry Pratchett - Wintersmith
Terry Pratchett - Making Money
Terry Pratchett - Valon tanssi (The Light Fantastic)
Terry Pratchett - Mort
George Orwell - Vuonna 1984
Douglas Adams - Linnunradankäsikirja liftareille (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
George W.M. Reynolds - Wagner the Werewolf
J.R.R. Tolkien - Taru sormusten herrasta (The Lord of the Rings)
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
The Compete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

Comics:
Ian McDonald - Bruno the Bandit
Ian McDonald - Bruno: Mad as Hell
Ian McDonald - Bruno Most Wanted

Pete Abrams - Worship the Comic
Pete Abrams - Is it not Nifty?

Free book: On Basilisk Station

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Finished reading David Weber's book On Basilisk Station. It's a military scifi book about starship commander Honor Harrington who is banished to Basilisk Station, place where all the miserable failures are sent to serve, after she failed in wargames. If that wouldn't be bad enough, the enemy is planning to capture Basilisk Station (with a cunning plan™).

It ain't the best book in the world, but it's still a fun little story. There were lots of things that annoyed me in the book. Most characters were pretty shallow. Main character is almost omnipotent and all-knowing Mary Sue type of person. Author goes off topic few times - like in the middle of final battle, two ships are chasing each others and reader suddenly gets a long history lesson about the ships propulsion systems. Never the less, despite it's flaws I liked it.

On Basilisk Station is the first book in the series, so it might be little bit raw and rough on the edges, but it got my attention and I am definitely going to check out more of Mr. Weber's books. Read a better review about the book in http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-743-43571-0.html they only gave it 3 out of 10 points :D

The book (and many more) is available for free from publishers website http://www.baen.com/library/

More nitpicking about the end battle, contains a spoiler so http://rot13.org/
Va gur raq onggyr Ubabe Uneevatgba snprf n D-fuvc uggc://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/D-fuvc znffvir servtugre, zhpu ovttre + orggre nezberq naq nezrq guna Uneevatgba'f fznyy yvtug pehvfre. Gur guvat gung obguref zr nobhg gung fuvc gung vg jnf pbairegrq sebz n erny servtugre, fb gurl onfvpnyyl gbbx n pvivyvna pnetb irffry ncneg, nqqrq gbaf bs nezbe, jrncbaf naq bgure zvyvgnel tenqr fghss naq chg gurz nyy gbtrgure. Juvpu V jbhyq rkcrpg gb or irel rkcrafvir. Zhpu zber rkcrafvir guna ohvyqvat n arj fuvc, naq gur thlf gung znqr vg jrer nyernql arne onaxehcgpl, fb ab zhpu frafr gurer. Jbhyq unir orra zhpu purncre naq rnfvre (+ snfgre) whfg gb gnxr n jnefuvc naq nqq cnegf gb vg va beqre gb znxr vg ybbx yvxr n servtugre.


Edit: Tuesday, July 28 2009

Finished reading the 2nd book in the series, The Honor of the Queen and it was definitely better than the 1st book. Honor Harrington isn't such a mary sue anymore and Honorverse is looking more and more interesting. 3rd book is also freely available, but maybe I should buy it, paperback costs only 6,20 € in my local bookstore...

The Black Lotus - Starstruck

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Few years ago I heard this tune on Slayradio, a great tune and there's this woman in the middle of it saying:

(male voice) "What do they want?
(female voice) "To destroy all life that is not their own. They believe only they have the right to exist in the universe. That all other life forms are inferior and must be exterminated."


She sounds very lovely. Wondered for a long time about where that quote was or if it was specifically made for that song. Today, I watched that video and read the comments (ha, most of the comments on Youtube could be written by parrots - mindlessly repeating something funny said on the video, usually it's better not to read the comments), anyways, found out that it's from a movie, and most importantly from a movie that I have seen! Babylon 5: Thirdspace. As a movie it ain't that great (none of the B5 movies are), but it's pretty decent - for a made for TV movie, definitely worth watching if you are a scifi fan. It's strange that I didn't recognise the quote myself, to my defence it sounds very different in the movie. Maybe I should buy the B5 movies collection box, it's been too long since I watched them.

Here's a .Wav file from the movie http://b5.cs.uwyo.edu/bab5/snds/antilife.wav (Check http://b5.cs.uwyo.edu/bab5/b5-a.html for transcript of that file and lots of other wav files). Very different isn't it, in the song she sounds much more machine like. Don't know what they did to her voice in the song, but I like it, I like it a lot.

Music for that video was made by Olof 'Blaizer' Gustafsson, if you like it MP3 is available from here http://mp3.ziphoid.com/Blaizer_-_StarStruck.mp3 Better quality video can be downloaded from there too.

Bible

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Found something really funny when reading Urban Dictionary.

Definition for Bible:
An ancient novel full of murder, corruption, homosexuality, bestiality, incest and cruelty. It is often read to children on Sunday.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bible
Funny, but true and therefore sad.


About me?

The types of characters you play in games tell a lot of a person and even just the games themselves tell something about the person. So, instead of telling about me, I think will write something about the games I play and the characters I make.

I suppose it would be good to start with the games that I currently have installed. Jagged Alliance 2, SWAT 4, Oblivion and Galactic Civilizations II - Ultimate Edition. That pretty much sums up my game taste - strategy, RPGs and some shooters.

In RPGs, my characters aren't smart enough to be wizards and not strong enough to be fighters, so I go with something in between. Rogues, Rangers and such. Playing clerics is out of the question as I am an atheist, although I wouldn't play a cleric, been thinking about trying a Monk, they seem like a nice class. Anyways, for example, when I played Baldur's Gate 2 my character was a Ranger with the Stalker kit (prestige class I think, I only dabble with RPGs, I am not a licensed D&D nerd :D )


Stalkers serve as covert intelligence gatherers, comfortable in both wilderness and urban settings. They are the spies, informants, and interrogators, and their mastery of stealth makes them deadly opponents.


That is the kind of character I always end up making in RPGs. That little ranger was very much like me. In Oblivion I made a bard, jack of all trades, rubbish in everything P: Maybe I should finish that game one day... that or start again. After countless deaths I got frustraded with one quest (Painted trolls!) and stopped playing it.

Nethack
http://alt.org/nethack/player-all.php?player=Leevi
That's the stats and scores how I play, pretty much Rogue all the time (except the times when I typo in the character making). I keep trying and trying and I never get very deep, so hard game, but it's still fun to play.

To find out how I play in strategy games, you have to play against me. I am not just going to reveal information that could be used to defeat me :wink:

In Shooters I try to be support fighter, healing people and helping others to clear rooms (coming few steps behind the first people), just in time to help them or patch them up if they already took care of things. If I go first I usually end up dying, I am not in a hurry to die, so better to let others go in before me. Here are my stats from America's Army (don't play it anymore though) http://aaotracker.com/usertracker.php?userid=412331



This is my first blog, hang on and maybe I will make more posts :smile:
-Leevi