Got the website up and running, some things are still works in progress, but I like the look of it so far. Please feel free to browse around at your leisure, and if you want to ask me a question or leave a comment or something, just give me an email at knightsteeple@yahoo.com.

Well, we all waited with baited breath for for the final Potter to arrive, and arrive it did. Carol and I were in line at 10pm, and got our books at about 1 o'clock in the morning. When we arrived, the barnes and noble we had reserved our copies at was packed to fire code limits, something the good booksellers struggled with throughout the night. There were many strange and odd people there, something we expected and almost looked forward too- robes, wands, writings on skin and cloth... Its always an interesting experience at a Harry Potter release night, and as this was the last one, I felt we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we were not there. As for the book itself? I haven't finished it. I want to savour every last little bit, something that is best done at night to my mind, with a cup of hot tea in hand and rain pattering at the window (luckily, Newport is going to be a bit wet for the next few days). I will tell you this though, it is VERY difficult to put the book down.

In other news, I put a new article up in the Text area, about getting around MS Word 2003 document protection. Its quite silly, really... get openoffice instead.

Also, check this out. I thought it was sweet- Harry Potter Wands

Well, I hadn't checked Rsnake's page in a little bit, and let me tell you I certainly missed out. He was holding a little challenge, in the spirit of the blackhat conference, and had posted some clues and such. I got the first one, but that's really not special because a lobotomized Hellen Keller could have gotten it. What was cool about the challenge though was the use of stenography to hide information in images. You use a specialized program to hide the information in an image, and then use a similar or the same program to decrypt the hidden contents of the image. Tres cool... If you are interested, some good tools for this include S-Tools, Camouflage, and Camera/Shy. I hear that in China, sometimes people use this to pass information around that their government deems inappropriate, and also to circumnavigate the great firewall. Good for them.

Alright, so check this out- Remote Exploit. The tool that this site offers, Backtrack (V2) is a really amazing thing. You can download it for free (although donations are encouraged) as an ISO, and boot right from it. Its a Linux variant os that is chock full of resources, tools and apps for remote reconnaissance and exploitation, and can be mounted as well as run strait from the disk. You can use it from the command line, but it has a very attractive GUI with onscreen instructions that make it easy to use. I have not even really begun to explore it yet, but I can't wait to see the possibilities. In other news, the Bourne Ultimatum will be coming out soon (Friday I think). I don't know about you, but I am of the opinion that the Bourne series is among the finest in spy flicks ever, and despite what you may think about Matt Damon (MATT DAMON. MATT DAMON), he rocks pretty hard in those movies. So I'm excited.

This weekend was very productive, I must say. Down in the magical land of Vermont, I saw Rob and Amy (Carol's sister and soon to be brother-in-law). In addition to helping them a great deal in building a sort of wedding archway (and by helping a great deal I mean rolling around in the grass and playing with a soccer ball), Rob helped me finish my Animal Age calculator program. The kicker is that he managed to figure it all out during the commercial breaks while watching Pysch. It works like a charm, and the C++ source can be found here Also, I managed to finish off all of the Basic Missions at HTS, and found an especially sweet Firefox plugin that lets you manipulate cookies. Its called the AnEC Cookie Editor. Finally, to top it off we went and saw the Bourne Ultimatum. It was pretty brilliant, and Matt Damon does indeed rock.

7Aug2007- In cool world, all you have to do is put your hands in your pockets and look bored. The rosey cheeks do lose you some points though...

Well, it wasn't really woe, was it? A long weekend was had by me, and it was quite cool. For Carol's birthday celebration, we toured the Ausable Chasm, a large cleft in the earth in New York. Then we tubed down its wet veins, and had lunch at a restaurant where the waitress took our beers before we were done with them! The SHAME! I also got to ride the Ferry from Vermont to New York for the first time... its the little things... I have been working on some painting for the past few weeks, much of it centered around a game called Warmachine. I find myself gravitating to it, rather than Warhammer, of late. There are provisions in the rules for such things as slamming an opponent through a wall, or picking up a smaller opponent and throwing it into a wall... I am intrigued, but have yet to play a really serious game, but I intend to remedy that soon. I would really like to start posting pictures of my painted models, but until I procure a camera capable of taking the close up detail shots necessary, I suppose I will have to be the sole recipient of the beauty they emit.

Carol also found this. Can anyone say "best Halloween party ever?" I certainly can.

The past couple of weeks have had me concentrating a great deal on a favorite pastime of mine, which would be (somewhat obviously) gaming.

I enjoy both pc gaming, and tabletop gaming (as well as any other form of gaming, truth be told, be it console, card, or otherwise) and as I have a couple of weeks break before I immerse myself into the wonderful world of college learning, I have had ample time in indulge in this pastime.

Firstly, I have been tabletop gaming. I used to be an avid Warhammer/Warhammer 40K gamer, but recently the sweet siren call of Warmachine has been tempting me. Its a steampunk game, with an interesting background as a pen and paper rpg, and a pretty wicked tabletop strategy game. The other day, while I was playing a practice game at Newport Hobby House, one of my warjacks (a giant metal monstrosity with the force of a locomotive) threw an opposing model across the table into a wall, promptly crippling it. It then moved behind a wall to cower, and presumable, mewl in distress. I was completely hooked after that.

As for PC gaming, my other main vice, it is truly an exciting time. I received the latest Maximum PC in the mail recently, and it was chock full of deep gaming promises. There are a slew of direct X 10 games in the forecast (a forecast hopefully much more accurate than the local weather forecast) that look absolutely stunning. I know that looks aren't everything, but with games.... really... they are. In my experience, if a game company invests so much in good graphics, they are not going to let the storytelling fall to the wayside. It would simply be and inexcusable waste of money. Some of the games I am looking forward to playing include Crysis, Bioshock, Shadowrun, Unreal Tournament Trois (in addition to that being a bit of French for you uneducated heathens, I have never played any Unreal Tournament version. I think that its about time to start), and the Agency, as well as Hellgate London and a slew of others.

Truly, it is time to upgrade to two nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX's in SLI. But now I must choose between new Warmachine models and the graphics of my dreams...

Truly, a conundrum. One MOST pleasant to contemplate.

So I have begun the process of learning Java! Yay for me. I am reading the Just Java book, Peter van der Linden's guide to the language and its very interesting so far. The biggest thing that has caught my eye is the fact that there are no acual objects in the Java language, just references to those objects. So say you have a reference type Learn, and you want to have an object variable of Learn type. You have to declare it
"Learn yourvariables;" and then you have to fill it wil the object address, as it is pointing to null right now. Thus, "yourvariables = new Learn( )". The reason they do this is mostly for memory management apparently. This allows the compiler to manage the allocation and reclamation of memory, rather than the programmer, which makes things more efficient and less likely to be prone to memory errors. Pretty cool, eh?

Also, I just posted a bunch of models that I took pictures of recently with Rob's camera at Coolminiornot. My username is pheven, just type that into the artist field under browse categories to find them. I will post some higher res pictures of them on this site soon.

Also, this one is for Stu.

There, are you happy you silly little man? Are you?!?

Well, I received my two GeForce 8800 GTS cards from Tiger Direct today. They arrived in perfect condition, and with two copies of Lost Planet to boot. After being snooty and showing them around at work, I went home and (after a hearty dinner) started in on the installation.

I went ahead and read my manual for the nForce 680i SLI motherboard I have. It had good step by step instructions if you need them, but I wanted to make sure the power was correct for the cards and that everything would be compatible. Thankfully, it looked like it was, so I proceeded.

After I opened the boxes and took the cards out, I got a pleasant little surprise- there was an additional copy of Lost Planet in each box! Who’d of though? So now, I have four copies of this game, and from what I hear it is terrific.

The installation was a bit of an annoyance, but more due to my poor preparation than anything else. I had neglected to bring my computer repair kit home from work, so in order to unscrew the old video card and the protector plate, I hunted about for a proper implement. After trying several varieties of knife, fork, and spoon, I finally found a knife that fit and got to unscrewing.

Everything came apart with ease, but as I was installing the first 8800 card I noticed that it was brushing rather closely with the power connections on the hard drive. Mine is a Falcon Northwest computer however, so I had plenty of space to remove the hard drive and move it one slot over in the hard drive bay. This gave me the space I needed to install the card, fully seat it, and connect the power cable from the power supply. I popped the other card in after that, and connected the power as well. I had entertained notions of leaving my old 7600 card in to handle CPU physics, but that was crushed by the fact my new cards were absolutely monstrous in size, and really left no space for the little card in the middle. Oh well…

It was at this point that something rather unfortunate happened… as I was screwing in the last screw for the last card, my butterfingers kicked in and the little bugger slipped out of my grasp. I had the bad luck to drop it right behind the card as well! I was forced to remove the card, and fetch some chopsticks I had on hand to fish the little bastard out.

After that little escapade, both cards were in, had power, and looked good to go… except for the SLI bridge between the cards. Crap. I looked high and low, but eventually had to cede that it was not included with the board, which it should have been. I sighed and put the cover back on, powered up and let the drivers install. The system restarted, and I then opened up the Nvidia control panel and enabled SLI. After another reboot, everything was working just fine, and I was looking for answers about that bridge. Did I need it? Really?

Apparently so. For some other models, a bridge is not necessary, but if you are going to have two 8800 cards in SLI you want the bridge. The framerates would we crap and your investment would be wasted. I needed that bridge.
I decided to call Falcon Northwest customer service to see what could have happened. A timely call from Carol informed me that it was not too late to call, as they were on Pacific time due to their Oregon location. It was busy the first time, but to my surprise the second time I was answered on the first ring. I was answered by a tech named Thomas, to whom I explained my problem. I asked if maybe it could be taped to the inside of the case- I could have missed it. Nope, he said, it should have been shipped with the board, but as it is a small piece it may have been left out. To my surprise, he offered to ship me the bridge, overnight delivery, at no charge. What service! We even had a bit of a chat about gaming, as he entered my information in (now I HAVE to get Bioshock…). I should have the bridge by Friday.

So for my first foray into SLI, not bad. Plus, I know that Falcon Northwest will be receiving all of my computer business, should I choose to purchase another one instead of building. I’ll let you know how the bridge works out, when it comes.

The Hills of Los Angeles are Burning

First off, I just want to wish all mi amigos in southern California the best. Please, if you need to evacuate, do so, and do not walk towards the pretty lights. They are bad. BAD. I’ve been following the news coverage, and it’s not pretty. Well, the fires are pretty, but the damage they do is certainly not.

Aside from that, things are going well. Halloween is getting closer, and Carol and I decided to experiment with carving artificial pumpkins. My idea was that they would last forever, so you could do something really cool and not have to worry about it rotting into mush. A noble intent, however the pumpkins proved exceedingly difficult to carve. They are made from a type of rather elastic foam, so you have to push really hard to get the tools into the pumpkin, and its hard to get a good shape without causing damage to other delicate areas of the design. Aside from that, there is a lot of crumbly foamy mess. Carol finished my pumpkin for me, as I was rather frustrated with it. It looks great though, its just a pain to do.

In the computer front, I have been getting accustomed to my new Macbook Pro. I have to say, despite my reservations about OSX, it is without a doubt hands down the best laptop I have ever owned. Sleek and powerful, it is certainly a good investment. I spent the first few days getting some software for it, including OpenOffice (ported for Mac) and the full Macromedia CS3 suite for Mac. Also, I downloaded an application called JGrasp, which is super great for Java programming. I started my programming class too, so its been a big help so far.

That’s all for now. If anything else cool happens this week, a post will be made!

I Remember Halloween!

I don't know about you, but as far as holidays go, Halloween is just about the best ever. The smells, the sights and the sounds are all compounded by the unique atmosphere that this particular season brings. There are pumpkins aplenty, both to carve and to eat in pies and soups (especially soups...) and the bite of the fall weather coupled with the leaves changing and falling adds that air of melancholy which is so conductive to deep, strange thoughts. Its time to read Lovecraft books, drink tea and cider, and prepare for the coming winter. Its pretty sweet.

So, in keeping with that, Carol and I went ahead and jumped right into the season. First, we signed up for something we had been meaning to do all throughout the summer, the Newport Ghost Walk. Led by an amusing ex teacher in a cape and top hat, bearing a lantern and a briefcase full of ghostly pictures, we set out to tackle the spooks of downtown Newport. We learned of eternally burning ships, lost boys in pirate tunnels deep beneath the cobbled streets, mass hangings, and which restaurants the dead are most likely to frequent. While none of this changed my opinion on the existence of spirits, it was very interesting to hear about how historical the city of Newport really is. While not old in the European sense, it is still steeped in fascinating American history.

The next day, after a bit of searching, we found a place that not only had a corn maze (apparently a staple of fall festivities in the strange northeast...), but that very same corn maze was made in the theme of none other than Harry Potter. Needless to say, we were sold. The maze was pretty fun, and we found our way out the first time fairly quickly (there is a trick I heard of a while ago, that if you keep following the right hand wall or side in a maze, then you are guaranteed to find your way out. It may not be the quickest way, but its certainly guaranteed. I cannot tell you how many games whose dungeons have been thwarted by me using that trick).

So we found our way through twice, visiting a little oasis in the middle of the maze, named after the famous Hogs Head, where we decided to be adventurous and sample some Bertie Bott's beans. Unfortunately, we must have gotten the box made by the more twisted employees, because there was barely a cherry or lemon flavor to be had in the mix of sardine, sausage, rotten egg, vomit and boogers. If we got a grass, we considered ourselves lucky.

After that, we headed over to a park near downtown Newport, where we toured a candlelit pumpkin trail. It was pretty magical, and we got there at just the right time, missing most of the crowds but still getting the full benefit of the pumpkins lit from within in a cold forest.

Post pumpkin-jaunt, we had a mediocre dinner at a place called Christies, and concluded the night with some pumpkin spiced coffees. A fitting end to the weekend indeed. Yay for Halloween!

Oblivious Oblivion

What a week, what a week. Over the past three weeks, some jackass has set a fire in the barracks near where I live once a week, causing the fire department and police to arrive, and for everyone to be rousted out of their beds by the fire alarms. No fun, especially at three in the morning. So with that going on, they have decided to start a fire and security watch, which will be stood by the barracks residents every day, on a rotating watchbill. You know what that means? Time for me to move out, that’s what.

Anywhoo, in other, less smoky and annoying fronts, I’ve been playing more and more Oblivion, but with a couple of mods added in for flavor. I have a dragon, a companion, a wizards tower, wicked cool armor and wicked cool spells. Its really fun, so long as you choose mods which don’t unbalance the game. Unless your into that sort of thing, like killer sheeps and anime characters. Then that’s cool, I guess. A good place to find mods is Tesnexus Check out the top 100 list.

Also, I posed a silly little trick in the Goodies section of the text page. It allows you to hide folders (not securely, mind you) from someone casually browsing your computer. It wouldn’t stop someone who knows what they are doing, but its still cool nonetheless. Also, check this out- the microsculptor. THAT is attention to detail. Oh, and this. Gamer girls! GO GO!

I leave you with this. Bat for Lashes!

Weekend Wedding

What a great weekend! Not only was it long, it was eventful and full of fun. I went to Vermont, more specifically Waitsfield, for the wedding of Carol’s sister Amy and her fiancée Rob (of previous programming fame on this site). We stayed in a ski lodge with about 12+ beds, and we filled almost every one. Their friends were wonderful, and I got to meet a slew of intelligent, funny people. The wedding itself was picturesque, the weather was accommodating, the speeches touching, the company excellent, and even Cooper, their strangely proportioned lab/basset hound mix (you need to see him to believe it) was well behaved throughout the ceremony. In short, it was GREAT!! Here are some pictures from Betty's camera-

Also, I got my SLI bridge all installed. I have cranked up Oblivion to its full potential and its beautiful, and F.E.A.R. has no more graphics issues either (there were some lines across the screen when I got into deep shadow, which is unfortunate because most of the game is deep shadow).

Also, my laptop took a crap, so I am looking for a new one. I just need something that I can do some programming with… nothing fancy. I have a desktop for that. Any suggestions? knightsteeple@yahoo.com

 

Awesome Exploration

Last weekend was pretty awesome, despite the saga of Sprint mentioned below. Carol and I went to this place in Newport called Breton Point State Park, where the ruins of the Egyptologist Theodore Davis' house are. It burned down, and none of his heirs even resided in it even before that, because it was apparently cursed by Egyptian magic or somesuch. Anyway, its supposed to be haunted. All thats left of it is the decaying barn and mill tower, as well as the servants quarters, which are where the park's main office is. It was not all that spooky, but i bet if we went back at night that would certainly change. Anyway, here are some pictures. There was also a kite fair that day too. Here are the pics.

Customer Service anyone?