Another GIMP fractal image, for starters. Whipped it together because I was tiring of my blue one.

With that out of the way, next is to mention that I have taken my friends’ suggestions and am looking at finally implementing the paper folding game (aka Storycraft) for the web, and this time I’m setting out to get everything mostly finished before releasing to the public. I’ve started a little design (yes, really) in Umbrello, hopefully it won’t be too long before I’m implementing.

Lastly, I neglected to mention that the other half of my Jpop shipment came: Ai Takaoka’s Sunny. Rie fu’s realm is the ballad, whereas Sunny is a much more energetic pop that borders on rock. Pretty good stuff. I love getting music on a whim. Which reminds me that I still have some eMusic surfing to do tonight…

… definitely going to get a new case. Installed the new PSU (quieter, reliably starts when I press the power button) and DVD-RW (also quieter, actually reads discs), and the case has annoyed me for the last time.

I got my Logitech Z-5500 speakers today, and they kick some serious ass. They don’t have the same digital in as the digital out on my Audigy 2 (Z-5500’s coax vs. Audigy 2’s 3.5mm stereo jack), but going over the direct six channel analog seems just as clear to my only pseudotrained ears, so I don’t think that will be a big hang up. In any event, the Audigy 2 mixer has separate volume controls for the three outputs, and they work, so I think that’s sufficient enough? I’m too busy enjoying the speakers at the moment to really care too much.

Also on the subject of audio, I logged into eMusic today and noticed that they have audiobooks for sale, including an unabridged Moby Dick clocking in at just a hair over 24 hours. Insane. And the audiobook thing is pretty cool too, although I haven’t browsed too much of the catalog yet.

I’ve been spending the past couple days doing two things: updating the installs on my various boxes, and gaming (well, okay, there was work too).

The big update is that I finally bothered to bring the MythTV network up to speed here, meaning I’m finally pulling from Schedules Direct for the TV listings, meaning MythTV is actually recording shows again. Very exciting, in a “hooray ‘normalcy’” kind of way. At least they dropped the cost from $15/3 months to $15/6 months. Next up on that front is getting Samba running on that box so that the lowly Windows slaves can get/put files. Although I would really like to get more of the network wired…

Gaming-wise, some marathon sessions of Arkham Horror were played on Friday; one was barely a win, another took hours upon hours but resulted in our greatest score yet. Some pictures are in the gallery. Also, my canned adventure campaign started yesterday. Dubbed “Expedition to Undermountainweb Pits” (until Peter comes up with a better name), it starts out as quite the PC devourer. The party spent a fair amount of time running and avoiding danger, but they’re on their way to getting through the first part of Undermountain, and gaining a couple levels in the process. I’m quite pleased by everyone’s intelligent play, for the most part. They’re certainly going to need to keep that up.

Finally, I’ve been bouncing around getting a new desktop for a while; it’s starting to show its age, and unfortunately

• AMD has been sucking lately, with no real return in sight
• the hardware has almost no upgrade path (AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+, DDR1)

so I’m really only looking at a replacement of the big hardware bits. But, just because I’m dragging my feet on the hardware a bit, I’ve decided to split the upgrade into phases.

The first, which is already in progress, is to get a better speaker system with more balls (and also something a bit better shielded so that I’m not picking up christian rock, up here on the second floor), a new DVD-RW drive as my current one is at best failing, and a new power supply to replace the one the dog tripped over the cord for at a LAN party, making its ability to power the system on very spotty. To fill those needs, I went with the Logitech Z-5500, a LITEON DVD-RW, and a Thermaltake W0106RU.

Phase two, however, is gigantic; new motherboard, (almost certainly Intel) processor, and DDR2 memory. I don’t think new hard drives are in order, but it may happen anyway; in any event, I’ll need to make room for a Windows XP install for gaming, and reinstall Gentoo (new processor arch and everything). A new case may come too, as my current one is varying levels of frustrating. Phase three is a new video card, pure and simple.

So that’s my technology roadmap. In the pipe dream realm is convincing everyone I talk to on the tubes to switch to an XMPP-compliant IM network. A real Jabber service would be nice (such as *coughcough* my own), but even Google Talk would be better than the hodge podge of featureless, crippled, and closed IM services we use now.

A bunch of micro updates, but first, the motivation behind this post is to shout to the empty that I have a new camera — a Nikon D40, which is a remarkable improvement from my old camera, which by Gen Con had left a permanent sour taste in my mouth. So far, however, my new camera has been a dream, and with it comes a renewed desire to get into “real” photography, or at least enough photography to make a passing stab at something resembling “art” or “good".

Not to say that the celebratory picture included is anything of the sort; merely, it is dice. That I took a picture of.

In other news, gaming. The IRC group did end up playing True20 the day after my post, and the realspace group has been holding strong with Iron Heroes, although by all accounts, this coming weekend shall be my D&D game, starting in Undermountain. Otherwise, we’ve been playing games such as Arkham Horror (my gods, a fourth expansion — Kingsport Horror — is due in November) and The Settlers of Catan, and it’s been glorious.

Rie fu’s Rie fu, incidentally, is quite lovely, and I’ve been looping it often since it came.

It’s been a couple months since moving to Madison, and my parents’ house still is the first thing I think of when I think of “home", Madison feels odd as a home city (especially since I still can’t really navigate it that well), and I still feel slightly like a visitor here at the shared house.

I think maybe I was expecting a sudden realization, a pop that yeah — this is home now, but I guess it will continue to be a gradual process.

More unnatural-feeling was explaining to Dan that the majority of the gang was not terribly interested in gaming on Monday as they had to buck up for their classes starting on Tuesday, and — definitely with a pop, this time — it dawned on me that I’m no longer part of that crowd. Tuesday is just another workday. Odd, almost. In the hubbub of moving and real work and everything, I never really noticed my summer going by, but I can definitely now note the inverse, that this is only the second time I can remember where the end of summer did not mean the start of something new.

Bizarre, really. But enough rambling about that. Nothing new with the server, my new Iron Heroes character died on Friday (not sure if I’ll follow through with the taboo of playing his “brother” next), Shards of Jade nearly happened, but not quite, today (Saturday), and it’s looking the same for Sunday. But I did buy myself some J-pop.