Older stuff...

Oh no! They screwed up Stratego!

I don't know how long ago this was, but it seems Hasbro has screwed with the rules to Stratego. Why? For the record, in the real version of the rules, the pieces went from 1 to 9, the lower numbers were more powerful, and the Miner was 8. I guess they just thought today's kids were too stupid to understand that a lower number could be a higher rank. This set is also crap in that it comes with a bunch of blank pieces and a set of stickers that you have to put on them. I guess you could always make your own stickers.

However, it seems that last year they released a "Nostalgia Edition" (see end of page) with the original rank numbering. It's pretty bad when "original rules" becomes a feature for selling a board game.

What's new with fanboy.net?

Ushicon 2002 pictures are now up. I still have to work on A-Kon 13 and AnimeFest 2002 pictures.

What's new with fanboy.net?

I finally got my A-Kon 12 pictures up, only a year late! I've still got to do A-Kon 13, Ushicon, and Anime Fest 2002, but at least I've written up some captions already. Now all that's left is a lot of Photoshop work.

What's new with fanboy.net?

The new DSL works. The technician isn't here yet, but I got it working on my spare Alcatel modem. Routing must have been turned on while I was out for the weekend. I was able to get two 380KB downloads running at the same time, so I think I have the full speed, too. Now for the hard part: getting everything switched over.

What's new with fanboy.net?

Since my old DSL provider (jump.net) got borged into hosting.com (what a gay name), and service continues to decay (last week they switched off the old jump.net news server in favor of the ALGX news server, which doesn't retain normal sized binaries parts), I'm switching over to SBC for DSL. I've ordered the kick-ass DSL to replace it: 6 megs down, 384K up, and no usage limits. Eat that, Roadrunner wimps!

My install date is Monday, but I just set up the wiring and hooked up my spare modem. Sure enough, it got carrier, which means I've already been patched in. Too bad I don't know what my new IP address block is, or I'd start kicking some bandwidth ass. Come to think of it, I haven't even told them what e-mail address I want yet.

Link of the Week

Need to improve your jan-ken skills? Try the International Rock, Paper, Scissors Society! When you're done with that, check out the results of The Second Annual RoShamBo Programming Competition.

Link of the Week

Got a bad case of "numb thumb"? Want to look like a complete dork and Playstation fanboy? Then these are for you! They're the Playstation thumb shoes!

Link of the Week

From the same folks who brought you Tare-Panda, it's Beer Chan! A nice touch is the little bar graph which says this character is not for kids, but is for college students, office ladies (!) and some other group I can't identify because there's not enough resolution on the kanji (probably shufu=housewife). The creator's comment reads: "I don't drink beer myself, but I want beer-drinkers and non-beer-drinkers alike to come to love Beer Chan. This character is especially for beer-drinking fathers!"

Check out all their other wonderful Happy Fun Characters, like Afro-Ken, the dog with the rainbow afro hair, and those yummy edible kittens (mmm... tako-yaki kittens...).

Update 2002/05/27

What's new with fanboy.net?

The first day of UshiCon has turned out pretty decent for me. I got to see a lot of friends and even got play a game of Go with Largo. The game was finishing in the second corner, and I had just surprised myself by making a good life/death play (C19 B19 B18), when he played the B33r Gambit -- he had to leave to get beer. For what it's worth, this was my seventh game against a human, and the first on a full board.

I got a lot of good cosplay pictures (I promise to get them up in less than nine months this time, along with last year's A-Kon pictures), there was no rush to get to opening ceremonies, and best of all, no elevators. And my hotel room is just around the corner from all the action. Right now I'm back at home about to make a last-minute touch-up to my costume for tomorrow. And to get my TCP/IP fix.

One interesting thing: at the opening ceremonies, they had all the convention newbies raise their hands. Easily over half the audience raised their hand. Wow. For that matter, there were quite a few well done costumes as well; better than average in my experience. Or maybe it's just that I was so busy snapping pictures.

What's new with fanboy.net?

I've got the site re-done using mod_perl such that every page is generated on the fly using perl code, including the menu area on the left side. Now maybe I can start doing something with fanboy.net again.

What's new with fanboy.net?

The DSL got hooked up yesterday, a day early. But again the ATM circuit number was wrong (I needed an 8/35 because of my ancient Alcatel 1000). Later in the day, the DSL guy called me and said he needed to come over to fix things from my side. That's when I found out that even though I was only about 7500 feet from the phone company, I was still on a "remote terminal" (which can only be a good thing because that means my distance would be even less.) And apparently the circuit number can't be changed on RT DSLAMs. Fortunately, I was able to quickly bring up the modem's web interface and he showed me how to change it.

The bad news in all this is that my fixed IP address block changed, even though I was told it would't (and after I expected it would!) So I have to go through all the trouble of getting my DNS set up properly. If I did everything right, fanboy.net should re-appear on Friday or Saturday.

What's new with fanboy.net?

I just finished making a simple, but much better look for this web site. It's all driven by a few shell scripts and a couple of sed scripts, which can instantly rebuild all the pages with a single command.

Also, I still haven't started on my three days worth of A-Kon 12 pictures yet. I should be getting them online sometime next week.

What's new with fanboy.net?

A-Kon 12 is just around the corner, and I'm ready for it. And it looks like I've found a house that's only about 7500 feet from the phone company building (and 5-10 minutes from work!), so I should be getting fast internet again. (In San Antonio I was about 8000 feet away and had enough line quality for 2.7 Mb/sec.) Expect this web site to disappear for 1-3 weeks (longer if SWB "loses" my move order again) sometime in July. Since I'm not changing cities, I should be able to keep the same IP address block this time.

I even found a spare DSL modem for $50 today. This is good because a co-worker got some stuff wiped out from lightning this week (like a 24-port Cisco switch!), and DSL is the last thing I want to do without!

What's new with fanboy.net?

It's been an interesting few months since I've moved to Austin. I'm on my second job here (a keeper this time) and starting to look for a house. I expect to be fully settled in in about 3-4 months, at which time there will be another 3 weeks or so offline to get the DSL switched over. Until then, I don't plan to do much with the fanboy.net domain.

As for the Slash site, that didn't work out very well. I had no time to advertise it, but then again, at least it didn't get glommed by some shady "we'll handle your site for you and forget to pay you for it" dotcom company.

The links to central Texas anime fan stuff are now at http://fanboy.net/links/.