I’m a big proponent of D&D, and even play when I have the chance. 
One thing I really liked about 3rd edition was the Open Gaming License. It’s true that I never have produced a product for use with D&D, but it was nice knowing that if I wanted to, I could.
One of the rumors I had heard was that the OGL was going away with 4th Edition. That is not true thankfully. Wizards has outlined their support for the new OGL for use with the new edition.
One of the presents I got for Christmas was an R4DS. It’s a cool little device that allows homebrew programming on the Nintendo DS. Since then I’ve been messing around with it as time allows. Today, I finally got my “black triangle” as Jay Barnson calls it.
Red squares. However, these aren’t just red squares, but a more or less full pipeline from GIMP to the DS.
There are lots of little samples that can do this, so I can understand why this isn’t that impressive upon first look. However, it now means that I can now take a full tile map and display it. Work should progress rather quickly now, or at least as quickly as I can find time.
This will eventually turn into a tetris clone of some sort. I’d like to make it multiplayer via the download play on the DS. Then I could play my wife, who is the family tetris master.
I received my laptop from the repair center on Friday. Three weeks to the day it came back.
I have a nice 17″ HP Pavilion “entertainment laptop”. The case around the screen and the hinge on the left side (as seen from sitting at the laptop) cracked. When I took it into the repair center, they told me that they had seen this type of problem before and that it was apparently a design flaw in the case. That was of little comfort to me at the time.
They also assured me that it should be back in a week. Of course, it was an estimate. The repair center blamed HP for the delay in shipping necessary parts. All in all, it doesn’t matter to me who was to blame. I’m just happy to have the thing back.
Would I purchase another HP? I certainly will reconsider it. It’s funny because I’ve had two other HP computers and never had any problems, so this was an eye opener in regards to service.
My laptop suffered serious injury on 12/22. I had to return it for servicing to HP. I think a little bit of my soul went with it.
My wife was initially happy. “We won’t have to compete with your computer during the holidays.” Now I think she wants to say “I can’t wait for your computer to get back so you won’t be so grumpy.”
Actually, I’m not that bad, so she says. Still, I can’t wait to get back to working on CLeaR Scheme, my scheme compiler for .NET (there, I just let the cat out of the bag, though 1) noone was really looking in the bag, and 2) even the cat herself just whimpered a “Meh.” to the anouncement. ).
I’ve talked to the service guys and their current estimate is another week from yesterday. And I’m frustrated that it is going to take so long. I miss being able to write my programs. Is something wrong with me?
The other item that adds the question mark to the holidays is that we’ve been riding a wave of sickness. It happened the day after my kids got out of school, and has slowly been spreading between us. It’s the nasty stomach flu too, and it lasts up to 4 days, not just a 24 hour wham, bam, thank you ma’am.
So, in short, I’m behind at work due to the laptop breaking, I’m feeling sick to my stomach, and I’m going through programming withdrawals. Happy New Year to you!
Still, I should count my blessings:
1) Noone is dead.
2) Our family did get some really cool gifts, including an R4DS for homebrew on the Nintendo DS.
3) Our family was able to help make some less fortunate families the recipients of some other cool gifts and holiday cheer.
4) I’ve finally been able to play some of the video games piling up on the to do list. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is really fun. (See how far behind I am!)
If the laptop breaks again out of warranty, I’m just going to bite the bullet and get a MacBook Pro.
