Grumpy Gamer

Here is my first Grumpy Gamer post from my new Linux laptop!

Installation basically went OK. There was some confusion because I don’t want to dual boot into Windows, I want Windows gone gone gone from this laptop. I had to disable a thing call RST and turn some stuff off in the BIOS I don’t understand, but in the end it’s all working with a minimal amount of swearing.

Two issues I see right away is I really miss Little Snitch. It’s a great Mac firewall that monitors all out going internet connects by program and allows you to selectively block them for a given duration (with a nice UI including a map showing where in the world it’s trying to connect to). If you’ve never run with something like this, it’s damn scary how many programs try and connect to the internet. Not sure if there is anything like it on Linux.

I use One Password a lot. There is a Linux version, but it seems to only be available with their horrible subscription. I’ll have to investigate more.

Update 1

I miss dropbox. That might be an issue for working the game as we rely on dropbox a lot. It’s not that there aren’t other services like it, it more that the entire team uses it and I can’t make everyone switch. I might be stuck using the web interface.

Slack won’t run. It launches and then quits. I can use the web interface if I have to.

I really miss the cmd key for copy/paste in the terminal. My laptop has one of those silly Windows keys, I want to remap that so it can copy/paste/undo across all apps.

It’s going to be at least a week before the machine “feels” right.

My linux Laptop (Dell XPS 13) arrives today. I tried to order it from Dell, but ended up canceling the order twice. Every time I order something from a on-line store not named Amazon I’m repeatably shocked at how bad it is. I eventually canceled both incorrect orders and just bought the same laptop from Amazon for the same price and it took 2 days to arrive, not the 9-15 days directly from Del. There is a reason Amazon is eating everyones lunch.

Enough ranting about Dell. On a lot of levels, Amazon is also a crappy company in that they don’t pay taxes, screw over Seattle, refuse employee attempts to unionize, etc, etc, etc. But they do know how to ship stuff and run a website. If I had 140 billion dollars I’d sure as hell be super nice to my employees.

I digress again…

Anyway, my Linux laptop arrives today… wait it’s not actually a Linux laptop, it’s a Windows laptop because Dell doesn’t make a Linux laptop with a 512GB SSD, so I had to buy a Windows one and will install Linux as soon as it arrives.

My goal is to see how far I can get developing my new game on directly on Linux and not the Mac (I haven’t developed on Windows in years). Can I ditch the Mac and go 100% Linux?

For working on the “game”, this shouldn’t be a problem once the engine runs on Linux. The few custom tools I use (Wimpy, for example) and all built from the same code the engine is, so once it’s working under Linux, they should compile as well.

The real issue is going to be developing the “engine”, which I spend most of my day doing. Writing C/C++ code in a nice text editor and compiling it isn’t really the issue. It’s mostly that I’ve gotten very used to the visual debugging found in Xcode and Visual Studio.

It seems that Linux IDEs are really behind in this. Once I get started I’ll explore it deeper and I hope I’m wrong.

I’ve been a full-time Mac user for 20 years but Apple seems to get more and more paranoid and authoritarian as time goes buy. I would love to move to Linux, but I don’t know if I can without making a lot of productivity sacrifices.

I’m going to install Ubuntu Budgie going solely on the fact that I like the looks. I’ve resigned myself to installing Linux several times before I find something I like.

We’ll see… I have my finger crossed.

It really boggles my mind when people refuse to wear a mask*. These same people don’t refused to wear pants because it violates their freedom of express or first amendment rights.

These are the same idiots that gave us Trump. And yes, they are idiots.

I do like that masks have become a fashion statement for some. When I’m out and about, I’m always on the lookout for great and creative masks.

*Legitimate medical reason aside, but I have yet to hear of one put forth by an actual doctor.

The view out my window.

via Laughing Squid

…it just got a little shittier

They used to be a great counter culture site and now they are just a shopping channel. I’m sure it makes them a lot of money, but they have lost all respect and authority in my eyes. They have joined the ranks of sell-outs. I’m sure they all drive BMWs.

Does anyone know a good tool that can convert a dynamic website into a static website?

The Thimbleweed Park blog was built using PHP and a MongoDB database and it’s quite complex. The website won’t ever change and I like to turn it into a static site so I can host the files somewhere else and can shut down the server.

Ideally it would be a tool that you just point at the url and it scrapes the site, producing a bunch of .html files.

Does such a thing exist?

Given everything going on the America right now, I don’t feel like a celebratory post about a game. So I’ll do a factual one: Delores is now on GOG.

If I hear one more person say “this is not who we are” I’ll scream. This may not be who we want to be, but it is exactly who we are.