Yet another blog

So I’ve bit the bullet again and started yet another blog called The Wesnoth Journals.

Since I’m not in the mood of repeating myself, you’re welcome to check the second post on the reasons why I took the effort.

The whole issue took me around 6 hours to complete, between which my host suffered a load of doom which pretty much make my site unavailable as I was about to present it to the forum. Argh! In any case, fortunately they resolved it relatively fast and I managed to polish it before I went to bed.

Currently it is powered by a Wordpress blog and a Gallery installation, linked via WPG2, much like my own site. This is the kind of thing why you love free software (and Dreamhost with their one-click installs. Without any extra money at all, within half a day, I’ve set up and configured a passable site that can fill a gap.

This is especially my opportunity to check out what Gallery can do when there are actually multiple users and need of correct categorization. Until now, my own gallery is used only by my which just does not give it enough to work with. Είδομεν…

So, take a look, and let me know if you see something blatant missing.

PS: If you can be bothered, remind me how to redirect http://wordpress.dbzer0.com to http://wordpress.dbzer0.com/blog

Cheers!

Qunu

Δεν ξέρω πόσοι το έχουν δει μέχρι τώρα αλλά πρόσφατα, πριν 14 μέρες για να είμαστε ακριβείς, ξεκίνησε μια νέα δικτυακή υπηρεσία, σε άλφα στάδιο ακόμα, εν ονόματι Qunu.

What’s Qunu? Qunu is a next-generation expertise matching service. We use instant messaging to connect — in real time — people who have software or tech-related questions with experts who are passionate and willing to help

Φαίνεται πολύ ενδιαφέρον project, κυρίως για τον τρόπο που δουλέβει, μιας και δεν χρειάζεται να παρακολουθείς συνέχεια ένα κανάλι του Irc ή ένα συγκεκριμένο forum αλλα αντιθέτος, οι ειδοποιήσεις έρχονται σε πραγματικό χρόνο στο desktop σου μέσω της εφαρμογής IM που έχεις επιλέξει.

Το μόνο που χρειάζεται για να γραφτείς είναι μια σύνδεση με το jabber και μετά να βάλεις σαν σύνδεσμο τον χρήστη quser@qunu.com. Αφού το κάνεις αυτό χρησιμοποιείς τις εντολές του bot ή την ιστοσελίδα του qunu για να δηλώσεις σε ποια πράγματα έχεις γνωση και ενδιαφέρεσαι να προσφέρεις βοήθεια. Υποτίθεται οτι δηλώνεις μόνο software θέματα αλλα πολλοί, ανάμεσα τους και εγώ, έχουν δηλώσει και διάφορα άλλα στα οποία μπορούν να προσφέρουν βοήθεια, π.χ. ice skating.
Λόγο του digg effect (Η σελίδα έχει digg-αριστεί 2 φορές μέχρι τώρα) οι Servers έχουν αρχίσει να “λιώνουν”, οπότε την ώρα συγγραφής αυτού του κειμένου η υπηρεσία δεν δουλέβει και τόσο καλά αλλα αυτό δεν αναμένεται να κρατήσει πολύ ακόμα.

Τα τελευταία νέα είναι οτι μέχρι τώρα έχουν γραφτεί 500 χρήστες (απο τους 875 συνολικά) οι οποίοι δηλώνουν ό,τι μπορούν να βοηθήσουν στο Linux, αυτό και μόνο δείχνει πόσο πιο μπροστά είναι οι Λινουξάδες όσον αφορά και την ανακάλυψη νέων υπηρεσιών και στην διάθεση τους να βοηθήσουν τον υπόλοιπο κόσμο.

Για όποιον ενδιαφέρεται, εγώ έχω γραφτεί μέσω του λογαριασμού μου db0@jabber.org μιας και ο αρχικός λογαριασμός μου, στο qunu δεν μπορούσε να συνδεθεί λόγο φόρτου των servers.
Το Qunu μπορείς να το βρείς απο εδώ: http://www.qunu.com

Γουέσνοθ

Δεν το έχω αναφέρει μέχρι τώρα, αλλα έχω αρχίσει να προσφέρω στο Wesnoth τον τελευταίο καιρό. Κυρίως δημιουργώ ένα campaign, εν ονόματι Forgotten Legacy καθώς και να κάνω επιδιορθώσεις στα κείμενα απο άλλα campaigns.
Δυστυχώς η μικρή διάρκεια προσοχής μου, με αποτρέπει απο το να προχωρήσω γρήγορα με το δικό μου (έχω κάνει μόνο 3 σενάρια μέχρι τώρα) αλλα ευτυχώς οι επιδιοθώσεις είναι πιο χαλαρές.
Το πιο δύσκολο campaign να σουλουπώσω φυσικά είναι το Legend of Wesmere στο οποίο τα κείμενα είναι επιεικώς απαραδεκτα. Μιλάμε ώρες ώρες νομίζω οτι το έγραψε παιδάκι του δημοτικού, για τόσο χάλι λέμε.
Ευτυχως τώρα για αλλαγή άρχισα να φτιάχνω το Invasion of Arendia το οποίο είναι πολύ πιο καλοφτιαγμένο και έχει επίσης και καλύτερο σενάριο. Πρίν απο λίγο έστειλα τις αλλαγές μου στον δημιουργό του και κατενθουσιάστηκε (θα μου πεις, σχολείο πηγαίνει ακόμα οπότε αναμενόμενο).

Πάντως αξίζει να το παίξεις το [tag]Wesnoth[/tag] τώρα. Αφότου πήγε στην 1.1 version έχει αναβαθμιστεί πολύ και σιγά σιγά πλησιάζει στην κρισιμη μάζα απο Developers στην οποία η ανάπτυξη του θα γίνεται με πολύ γοργούς ρυθμούς.
Εαν είχαμε και περισσότερους ζωγράφους & σχεδιαστές θα ήταν καλύτερα φυσικά (Εαν το διαβάζεις αυτό και έχεις όρεξη να επιδείξεις την τέχνη σου σε ένα μέρος που θα την δει πολύς κόσμος, άμε μια βόλτα απο εκεί.) αλλα ακόμα και τώρα τα πράγματα προχωράνε όμορφα.

Kiwifying

Using my newfound admin powers over at KiwiLyrics I’ve started a new project called Kiwified Albums.

It is about fixing the lyrics of albums to be as faithful to the song while showing as much info as possible.

Is you are a perfectionist or just like reading good lyrics, check it out and help if you so wish.

Admin of Fruit

I’ve just been made a SysOp over at Kiwilyrics. Sweet.
The other admins are either missing or too busy so that will allow me to fix some things that have fallen by the wayside.

In case you don’t know it, Kiwilyrics is a lyrics site using the wiki engine. This is especially helpful in the case of lyrics since there are usually a lot of typos and other mistakes. In other sites, if they allow lyrics submitions at all, you have to submit the lyrics to the admins and hope they are allowed soon. If the site sports a quick response time, that usually means that the lyrics are not reviewed at all. Fixing bad submitions is almost impossible, since the responce times are greater still.

The beauty of the wiki is that you have the power to change something immediately and it is also very hard to destroy things. See a mistype as you read a lyrics? Fixing it is only two clicks away.
Missing a song? Submit it yourself immediately. Hell, submit the whole album. Kiwizer makes that braindead easy (although it still has one or two bugs)

Bow before me for I am Op.

Time to relax or get bored?

Well, my [tag]vacation[/tag] time is finally here and damn if I know what to do with it. I’ve got two full weeks and I really want to get on some kind of vacation but seeing as all my friends are either working, already on vacation or avoiding me, I think that in the end I’ll be left here to rot. The only bright thing in the future is a friend of mine that has volunteered to take me with her on vacation with another friend of hers and another friend of mine that may go to Chalkidiki and may take me with him.
Bah! Couldn’t be vaguer.

It’s my fault in the end I think, I never found friends that were doing this thing and now that I’m looking, it’s too late. I haven’t even managed to find company to go to the beach with, and lets not get on the subject of “friends” that forget you so easily after 6 years. Yes I’m bitter.

In the meantime I’ve been spending my time working on Wikipedia. It’s a noble cause and at least I feel that my time is wasted on something worthy, instead of, for example, games. Currently I’ve been working on Savatage and before that on Blind Guardian, mainly filling in albums or album information. Took me a while but I got them where I like them, now I’m thinking what to move on to next. And to think that all this was inspired by Kiwilyrics ever since I’ve started putting artist links to wikipedia on its pages.

Other than that, boring stuff, I’ve been desperately trying to find some new friends to go out with, and one I did have has gone to the army. It’s sad not to have someone to call isn’t it?

Of Lyrics and Kiwis.

I am sick and tired of Lyrc, which is the default lyrics database for amaroK. It has a crappy layout and search capabilities, the lyrics are many times missing, duplicated or badly submitted and the user has no power other than submitting new ones, which as a feature is badly designed as well. I want to contribute but ignoring the fact it is very tiresome to do so, their forum is in spanish or something as well which means it is very hard to communicate with someone in charge.

Disgusted I started looking for an alternative, even prepared to go as far as to found my own wiki lyrics site if I didn’t find one. Luckily I did and it exceeded my expectations. Its name is Kiwilyrics which is a smart play on the word wiki.

– Interjection –
In case you aren’t very active on the WWW (although I can’t see how you’ve got here otherwise), a [tag]wiki[/tag] is a web page who’s content is submitted and edited by its user base. The most famous example of a wiki is of course Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. Here’s what it has to say about Wikis. You can find my profile there as well under Db0.
–

Back to the subject at hand then. I got so worked up with Kiwilyrics that I even created a Firefox search engine which you can find here. My goal is to make [tag]amaroK[/tag] use kiwilyrics as a lyrics database since I know they will implement wikipedia (and thus the wiki engine) in some way at version 2. Hell, I may even become a developer just to code such a feature in myself.

So to all who might be reading this, get active. Go to Kiwilyrics and submit the albums you can’t find or fix obvious errors.