The biggest problem with CW’s Batwoman, is a lack of problems.

Nov29

So you’d expect that a post-Batman Gotham would be a pretty awesome setting to stick a crime-fighting vigilante and have a measure of success.

Gotham, a city best described as as completely corrupt, crime from top to bottom, from street thugs all the way up to boardrooms and old-money.
A city that lead to the creation and rise of The Bat because the authorities couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything about the problems.

The Bat was a symbol of fear and terror to the bad people, the problem was that a costumed vigilante lead to the rise of costumed criminals.
Be it success or otherwise, the Bat, at some point three years prior to Batwoman, left Gotham.
This would leave some sort of a void, a void that would end up attracting criminals and bad-people to fill it.

Supposedly the void left by The Bat would be the reason why Kate Kane’s father’s private security force ended up moving in to town.
This situation would lead to a rise in crime, gangs, thugs, boardroom misfits and so on.
And yet, it didn’t, none of them showed up to play.
The Crows, the Cops, the Authorities, none of them are dirty.

Seriously, this version of Gotham doesn’t need a masked vigilante.

All Gotham has is a bunch of family drama.

Kate’s crazed sister and her gang, who want revenge because their father stopped looking  for the sister because the step-mother falsified some evidence, is all we have to look forward to.

Alice/Beth abducts Kate’s ex-girlfriend, which is the trigger point for Kate returning and everything going bad. Family Drama.

And thus, Gotham is too clean.

The world we want to live in.

Nov3

So I guess there are three simple questions to ask a person in power to determine if they’re a good choice.

First off: What is Paradise?
This is really a personal thing for them, it could vary quite dramatically based on their belief system or how they were raised, or even where they were raised. The point is that they define it.

Second: Do you want to live in Paradise?
This is the present, not some future afterlife type scenario, but if it existed right now would you want to live in it?

Third: What are you willing or doing to make Paradise a reality?
It can be something as simple as planting some trees (such as twenty million that TeamTrees is working on right now, a lot of youtube channels have jumped on board) or something more complicated like developing drought resistant crops.

It’s pretty clear that groups like the current Australian government (in 2019 for future readers) doesn’t care about making Australia a better place, just the lives of the few. It doesn’t matter to them what happens in the future, because they won’t have to try and live through it.

Like who wouldn’t want clean drinking water, food, and air, today?
Declaring that you don’t care if others have access to those things once you have them shows the kind of person you are.

So in the end, if you want to make the world a slightly better place for tomorrow, you can do something as simple as donate to #teamtrees where every dollar (assuming USD) donated leads to another tree being planted, with the goal being 20 million by the start of next year.
Thanks to the internet, that’s over twelve million of the target planted (well I don’t actually know how quickly they get planted after the money is donated) with just under two months remaining so far.
Forget Awareness, plant a tree today!

The end of The Abyss as we know it.

Jun11

Obscure and unusual title, I know, but it might mean something to friends of mine.

Long story somewhat short, back when I was living in a place by myself with my very own broadband connection to myself, I chose to acquire a modem with Wifi.
Since then (and this is over two devices) I’ve used the SSID The Abyss.

I kept that SSID alive as I moved through a few places, just for convenience really.
Hell, my Netgear DG834G has held up nicely, so no need to replace it.

When I moved in to the house I’m currently in, their was an Apple Airport in place, however I couldn’t be bothered trying to use it due to the highly complicated password I could never remember even if I wanted to.
So out came The Abyss, disabling pretty much all features and using it as a dumb hotspot enabled switch.

A few years later and the housemate chooses to upgrade the puny Airport to an Ubiquiti Unifi, a product of some seriously greater capability.
No sponsoring or anything involved, but seriously Ubiquiti make some nice hardware.
They’re æsthetically pleasing as well, but no idea how the plastic handles long-term UV exposure.

Seriously we’ve got full house coverage of all devices, right down to passing through double brick walls for anywhere on the property.
I don’t have much in the way of AC devices, but my Ns and Gs are more than happy with it.

And so, after logging in all my smart devices and desktop PC to the Unifi’s SSID, I finally unplugged The Abyss and put it to rest.

Maybe in time I shall revive The Abyss for common usage, but if I do, it’ll probably be hosted on some wonderful Ubiquiti based hardware that doesn’t feel like a relic from last decade.

Maybe, just maybe.

AmK.

CenoLAN – The Saga begins!

Jun2

And so, another trip around the sun, and a birthday LAN for me.

This first day is a fairly quiet affair, with four of us so far.

Up until recently we’ve been playing Hexen 2 – Portal of Praevus.
My housemate, Pendragon, has been uttering sounds of extreme glee as he butchers furniture and other forms of wood products. I have a feeling he’s unleashing years of woodworking fury.
My beardymate Will, well he drowned in the toilet. He did this after I asked if he’d like to jump in the toilet.
Gyix has meanwhile been trying to kill the rest of us.
They’re all doing horrible things with sheep.

More will be posted as more games happen, but soon the pizza of day one will arrive.

*Edit 1*
Well we attempted a few things after pizza and garlic bread.
First was Blood, which launched successfully, however I forgot to turn on the monsters and we turned it in a Bloodbath.
We tried SWP for Shadow Warrior, but due to a combination of a firewall, and me dying, the game kinda died.
Duke 3d using eduke, well two of the four launched successfully.

*Edit 2*
Day 2 arrived, a bunch of my friends turned up like Wolfmother, tOrN, Sorrowborn.
Added to this was Pendragon’s best mate, Kaput.
All in all 8 of us, the perfect number that I’d aimed at.

A few things were tried, like me working to get a Doomsday server launching for shenanigans, which of course failed as the damned thing wouldn’t launch, and for some crazy reason the creator doesn’t want to use Listen servers.
So I abandoned it.

Brutal Doom 64, though, was surprisingly easy through the use of Doomseeker.
We all managed to get in there and die a lot of times.

Food was ordered, Dominos for day 2 as Pizza hut was day 1.
I acquired some chicken orb type things, they were delicious.

We tried out a project we called DTA, I think it was Dawn of Tiberium, but well it didn’t scale nicely, and the T100 really didn’t like it.
Also, it’s probably problematic when I spawn with nuclear silos and an AI helper who wants to take my units for a ride.

An attempt was made for Quake using UQE, problem being that setting up a listen server for 5+ players just wasn’t easy. It’s 4 out of the box, but you want more you need to command line it.

Eventually we jumped back over to Blood, in episode 6, and watched the friendly fire begin, we even managed to get past the aqueduct level with minimal casualties (and by minimal I mean mostly accidents).

As the evening wore on, and the consumption of Dick ended, tOrN and Wolfmother headed off back over to the dark side of the city (it’s a strange country over there, it’s like there are no trees and no civilisation beyond broadband internet).
The Manager (beardymate Will) and I settled down to some green apple vodka.

Day 3, remaining was pretty much Sorrowborn, Pendragon and myself.
It was much more relaxed, some food, some shopping at a surprisingly rare EB sale, and some watching of anime and stuff.

A good end to a good weekend.

10/10, would Doom again.

Take care of yourselves, nobody else will.

Mar25

So I never really took where I lived in to account for my exercise requirements, and it seems that’s been one of the missing elements in keeping this gamer body healthy.

After a hard day of gaming, like raiding and stuff, naturally you end up feeling exhausted, and so the inclination is to take the easy way out, order takeaway, or drive off somewhere to find something.
What I’m saying is that after sitting on my arse all day playing games, that I’ve then sat on my arse to go and get food, after which I’d return to sitting on my arse playing more games.
It’s just way too easy to do it.

I of course now realise that is exactly my problem.
A car makes it far too convenient to avoid a simple walk down the shops.
That walk of course can make a huge difference for me staying healthy.

Back when I was a kid, a teenager and all that, I lived in a country town, I personally didn’t have a car, so if I wanted to go somewhere by myself I had to either walk or ride my bike.
The shops were around a kilometer away, and yet I thought nothing about the distance.
I also walked the dogs.

When I first moved to the city, I still walked to the shops, driving was a rarity.
If I wanted food, I’d walk to get it, it made perfect sense.

After that things went downhill, and I started driving everywhere to get food.
I didn’t go for walks, didn’t really ride a bike, it was just easier to drive.
I got used to doing it.

I’m guessing that the increased driving for close things coincided with my weight gain.

So given that I dislike being an overweight male gamer (not judging others, I just personally am not enjoying it), and that this year I’ve chosen to get back in to shape gradually, I’m going to begin walking to the shops again.
I did it tonight, it was easy, it felt good.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, a simple walk to the shops regularly is beneficial in the long-term, don’t force yourself, don’t let yourself get to the point that you feel unhappy in your skin.
I waited far too long before doing something about it, but I’m not letting that stop me.

Besides, spending an hour away from the computer or console a day shouldn’t kill you.

So long and thanks for all the fangs – The end of a chronicle in my life.

Nov2

So, way back in 2003, my life took an interesting path after a random encounter at a pizza shop.

I overheard some people chatting about a rather unusual subject, vampires, specifically a game called Vampire: The Masquerade.
This piqued my curiosity, as up until then my only exposure to it being VtM Redemption on PC.
After a comment on the unusual subject matter, they invited me to join them to chat.
I ended up going to my first ever role-playing game that very weekend.

I tried a few game sessions, and then I joined a LARP organisation then called The Camarilla (White Wolf Fan-Club of Australia).
Back then I had a lot of fun with them for the most part, it was a strange and new world for me.

The club was the reason I took my first voyage towards inner Melbourne by myself (to visit a neighbouring game, since back then we actually had two here running  together,) it was also the reason for my first interstate trip for a big event up in Canberra.
However it was around then I should have realised that maybe the club wasn’t the supportive element it appeared to be.

While I was up there at this particular big event, due to all the stress, the unknown, the unfamiliar, with no way to recover, I had a rather significant depressive episode.
What made it worse was the fact that I actually got reprimanded for my distressing behaviour..
I should have known then what I know now, that it was not the right place for me.

Over the next few years we shifted over to a new game system, then referred to as the New World of Darkness, I made many friends, but the good couldn’t last.
A lack of developed social skills, misunderstandings, and so on, ended up with me being suspended from the club for 6 months.
Straight away my social-life was ripped away from me, my apparent friends didn’t want to have anything to do with me, it was an agonising time and I was resentful for it.

When I returned, things were different, people were different, I was different.
Some time later things started splintering, and the majority of the core local club members decided to go off and form their own new organisation, where they didn’t have to bother with interstaters.

After that, the local Beyond the Sunset domain was never really the same, members left, and I was left behind.
I pretty much lost touch with the rest of the people who pulled me in to the World of Darkness, they left, they didn’t want to maintain connections.
Eventually I unfriended them on Facebook, there was nothing left there for me.

I tried to keep things going here in Melbourne for BtS, but the people who remained up and left.
The club domain closed and I continued with a troupe game using the newest rules and doing what I thought people wanted.
I kept that up for over a year, yet numbers dropped to the point it wasn’t worth continuing.

Most recently there was an attempt to get things running again, via use of an independent domain of the club, with the power of the internet to run games, and the potential for running connected local live sessions.
However the direction it ended up taking proved to not be beneficial for my headspace.
What was once intended to give people without a domain a chance to play ended up as something allowing people from all the domains to play, completely drowning out those like myself.
So I started pulling back.

The online communication medium chosen was constantly flooded by conversation between really enthusiastic people, I was drowning in it.
There was nothing really holding me with the first online game that was chosen to run (voted for by people not of the domain) with no buy-in, no connections despite having a chronicle length character from the past few years. So I left the server, nobody seems to have noticed.

I left the Facebook group, because it was no longer a place just for domain members, but for everyone, and I had no friends there, so I left it, nobody seems to have noticed.

I even wanted to try and get something running locally, but no real traction, and I could see that I’d have to fight the club to get what I envisioned.

And so, with this, after thirteen years, with very little to show for it, with people not even acknowledging what I’ve attempted to do with no training or support, with people not even giving a damn that I’m no longer there – I leave the club that could have been so much more, but ultimately ended up a disappointing failure in my times of need.

I’m walking away from Beyond The Sunset, the club formerly known as The Camarilla (White-Wolf Fan Club of Australia) back when I first joined over a decade ago.
This is my way of burning that final bridge and saying farewell.

I do hope that with those few true friends I’ve made over the years, who’ve stuck with me, who still talk to me, that we can stay in touch and have good times.
It just won’t be in a club that no longer resembles what I first joined.

For the last time,
AU2003100609

Garlic Bread LAN v17 – Return of the Domino

Aug24

So it’s another one of those times of year again (well it happens like 4 times a year) where LANslide open up registrations for yet another jam-packed and bound to be amazeballs event.

First, let’s get the important business out of the way, I want you to go here.
This of course lets you register and get in early.

Now that you’ve all gone and registered for the event (if you haven’t, then why not? you should totally register) you should now be poised to have a great time.

The crazy people who organise and run these events keep coming up with new, and old, ways to get people engaged and interacting.
I mean last time we had ghetto pass the parcel. There was also pass the GPU box, but all those boxes contained was disappointment.

We’ve had Gangbeasts tournaments, which is serious business.
I mean come on, do you risk coming near me? I will kill us all, as many of us as possible while falling to my death, taking you with me.
Then contrasting with that, Street Fighter V.

Doughnuts on strings? many have attempted to eat them.

Watermelon consumption? It happened, it was messy, we all had a great time.

Seriously though, if you’re available, you should come and join us.
There may even be garlic bread.

AmK

Many LANs make light work.

Apr14

About time I got around to posting something new from the aardvark front.

It’s been a pretty busy past month in a crazy way as I elected to join some friends on part of their House of Doge LANsploration Adventure.

To begin with, last month we had eLeague hosted up in Sydney, where a whole group of us Melbournites travelled up, some by plane, others such as myself by car in a convoy.
Didn’t really know what to expect, I just knew there was no way I was going to realistically transport my desktop machine (which could in many ways have been used as a desk itself, or a seat, or even a coffee table if I drank coffee, what I’m saying is it was big.)
So I borrowed a gaming laptop from my good friend tOrN and along I went.
The main thing I did while there was play Paragon against the AI, watching the Nvidia drivers on the Venom constantly crap themselves, and the foliage flicker like crazy. Finding humans is difficult when they need to pay money to get in to early access.
I also jumped in a deathmatch of the new Unreal Tournament, where I ran around trying to kill people with the Impact Hammer. Good times.

After we got home I had a bit of time to myself doing next to nothing.

The start of this month was of course LANslide.
A much shorter journey was involved.
I’m certain I played games that weekend, and I know there was cake, prizes being launched at head-height, and doughnut shenanigans.
There was of course also the Doom closed beta, which Tofuboi and myself decided to take for a spin. I’m apparently not terrible when running at 800+ms latency.
This  was also the weekend where Babymetal’s Metal Resistance was released, and the Telstra unmetered data Sunday occured (I only acquired something like 63gig of Steam and Epic games.)

Last weekend a considerable number of Melbournites made a trip down to Traralgon for ROFL LAN.
This event was very much like the LANs of 10+ years ago, a whole group of stress-free people in a hall playing games, no eSports, 7 Bishies, 30+ parmas and 1 fish and chips, crazy parking, and one person ending up contained within something they shouldn’t.
Seriously this was the type of event that has the soul of the events of old.
These days there’s generally too much focus on the big competitions, big prizes, big sponsors. ROFL didn’t involve any of those.

Of course after I got home from ROFL I took it upon myself to transfer my gaming PC back in to my Air540 case, and my productivity machine slash fileserver in to my behemoth.
After lugging something bigger than many people I know around, I finally took the smart option. I have many injuries from the transition between cases.

This coming weekend I finish my journey on the LANsploration adventure with RespawnLAN.
It’s the time of the Doom open beta, and I have no idea what else I’ll be doing.
There are many games I’d like to play with others, but unless I can bludgeon people in to submission I don’t see them happening.

There are many more events coming up like RF LAN, LAN of the Damned, and so on. I just don’t see myself making the journey west of Melbourne to get to them.

I suppose I’ll end up focusing my attentions on my planned upcoming Beast: the Primordial chronicle, where I’m sure my players will find some way to set the environment and themselves on fire.
The goal of course will be taking it to LARP scale.

AmK.

Two Thousand and Sixteen – The New Things

Jan9

So we ticked over to a new year just over a week ago, from 2015 to 2016, many people will have no doubt mad new years resolutions they’ve already broken.

Not me though, I made no resolutions, I made generalised plans.

First off, as many a gamer, my sleeping patterns suck, getting up after 4pm and going to bed at maybe 7 or 8 am is not conducive to getting anything done involving other people within the time-zone.
However from new years day and onwards I’ve been waking up in the morning without effort, and heading to sleep around midnight.

I also refuse to fit the stereotype of an overweight foul-smelling gamer.
I’d had some serious weight gain to the point I significantly exceeded the mass of my father.
Late last year I managed to lose around 8 kilograms, and this year I plan to lose another 8.

My main gaming PC is due for some upgrades, first on the list is a new monitor, then after that probably a new GPU.

The main plan I have to implement is to build a fully functional micro-system for LANning and such, that I can fit in my backpack.
The timeframe is up until PAX Aus this year.
While I could probably save up and get a laptop to accomplish the same goal, it won’t get me the same satisfaction or aesthetic outcome.
And well this way I  can purchase and assemble over time.

And finally I plan to organise my bedroom and stuff in general.
I have way too much with no idea what exactly I have.

These aren’t hard-locked goals, they’re more vague intentions of things I want to do this year.

So far I’m doing well at it.

AmK