Since my move to Ubuntu, I have found that, for a gamer with tastes like mine, there is nothing to fear in stepping away from the Window. So before I go on, I’ll define “tastes like mine”. First, I am not a fan of first person shooters. I have nothing against the form itself, I just don’t enjoy playing. I am, however, a fan of turn based strategy games. So I will concentrate on this field. So, I will list a few good options for open source games, most available on Linux, Windows, and Mac.

First, the first really well done Linux based strategy game, online casinoThe Battle for Wesnoth. Wesnoth is a turn based strategy game, on a hex map, in tolkien or D&D type setting. One may play as any of a number of factions, all with different types of units, which happen to be fairly well balanced. An interesting aspect of the game is that one’s units will level up after gaining sufficient experience. They attain new powers, improve their stats, and look different. This really makes the game enjoyable. Here are some screeenshots.

Second, an indispensable fixture in computer games, civilizations. The open source civ clone is known as freeciv. This game can function in a way that is indistinguishable from Civ2. The designers have reproduced the functionality, the AI, and all other aspects of the game with great fidelity. The only major difference is the improved interface, which is welcomed.

Third, and similar to the second, is freecol. This is a clone of colonization, another carrier to noise ratioSid Meyer game. While this project is still in alpha phase of development, it is entirely functional, and reliable.

A note on the above, I only intend to speak for the build of each game which is found in the Ubuntu repositories. I have not tried any of these on Windows, though each does provide a Windows version. Those of you using Ubuntu may go to System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager and do a search for each of the above games. Simply install the proper package and go to Applications->Games-> X, where X is the name of the game you installed.

I know there are a tonne of Firefly fans out there. For those of you in the know, this will be a bright point of your day.

“The Hero of Canton” - a song by The Browncoats

Russ Carnhan is the Representative for the 3rd Missouri House of Reps. district. Today I wrote him to express my opinion of his vote on the $700 Billion bail-out bill.

Dear Sir,

Your vote on the recent wall street bail-out bill is extremely disappointing. As a person who works for a living, I am keenly aware of the purchasing power of the U.S. Dollar. As you may have noticed, this purchasing power has been eroding steadily for the last 100 years, and has recently accelerated its decline. Your vote to debase the currency by at least $700 Billion this Monday is extremely damaging to those who do not own investment banks or receive contributions from them. This additional money, in addition to driving up commodity prices across the board, will also permit the firms which have proven to be not economically viable to continue in operation. You will be personally responsible for prolonging the downturn by preventing the failed investments and the overpriced securities from clearing out of the market, if you press forward with this approach to any further attempts to pass a bail-out bill.

My question to you, and I would very much appreciate a reply, is this:

You swore to uphold the constitution when you were sworn into office. The constitution forms the ground rules for our federal government. Where in the federal constitution do you find the authority to grant the treasury secretary the ability to become a purchaser of failed securities? Do you not feel restricted by the 10th amendment, and its explicit reservation of all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government to the people and the states?

Robespierre

I will soon release the code for the Gnome App I wrote to generate these…

Cellular Automata Tapestry

I’ve been working on the Cellular Automata Gnome App a bit more and have composed a nice looking run and saved it as a single file, a tapestry.

Recently I have been experimenting with GUI programming, specifically with GTK+ and Gnome. I first developed a Gnome app to referee and display othello games between AI’s developed for a class I was taking(more on this later). I then moved on to cellular automata. Specifically, the one dimensional CA’s mentioned in the wikipedia article, based on Wolfram notation. I have attached some images of the program running, some filling up with one rule, others toggled between several rules.

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Friends of mine are currently traveling through Morocco on their honeymoon. They are blogging about their experiences at The Train to Marrakesh. Watch for interesting content.

I was walking through the forest when I entered a clearing and discovered… secret sausages.

Here is a video of Nomad, a robot that my partner and I programmed as an assignment for graduate school. The name Nomad comes from a Star Trek episode called “The Changeling”. Our Nomad was programmed to utilize the wavefront algorithm in order to navigate the course. The competition was set up as predator vs prey, with half of the teams designated predators, and the other half as prey. The objective for the prey was to get from the starting position to one of two goals on the other side of the arena, then to play a song indicating that the robot knows it reached its objective. The goal of the predator was to tag the prey before it could reach one of the goals, also singing once this was accomplished, to indicate that the robot knew it had tagged the prey. Nomad was programmed as a prey-bot.