I've been looking at mapping tools for tabletop rpg gaming, and by far the most capable one I've found to date is Maptool, from rptools: http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=maptool.  I've been hoping to make use of this with a couple of laptops in a face to face game.   While this is conceived as an aid to long distance gaming, it's capabilities (especially the fog of war and vision handling) seem useful even for an in-person game.

It's really quite a powerful tool, and offers:

• shared maps visible to all players
• movement measuring
• movable tokens representing players and other, non players
• vision blocking
• light sources
• fog of war with automatic reveal

The demos at their tutorial site are pretty exciting, and got me really pumped to start using this.

I've spent quite a bit of time working to convert a traditional module, which I have in paper form, into a Maptool campaign.  I chose one of the basic dungeon crawl style adventures, the old AD&D module B2 Keep on the Borderlands.

I started by scanning the 2 page map from the module, stitching the maps together, and then creating maps in the Maptool campaign.  Actually, I created two maps, one for the surface, and one for the dungeon layers.

Then for the dungeon layer in particular, I thought the easiest path forward was to just import the scan as a background / map image.  This has the risk of revealing information to the players like traps or secret doors, which I'm dealing with by either covering up key stuff on the map or just extending trust to the players.

I then draw a huge vision blocking rectangle over the whole dungeon map, and carved out exceptions on a tunnel by room basis.  I further covered the whole map with fog of war.

That said, there's been a number of issues that've prevented me from using this map so far:

• The user interface is, at best, clunky and non-friendly:
• Consistently, operations that should be obvious in the UI are non-obvious.  
• Scrolling the map is right click drag, instead of left click drag on any open map area.  There are no visual controls to scroll (e.g. the google maps rosette)
• To reverse the sense of an operation, hold down the shift key.  For example, drawing a vision blocking rect with shift held down removes vision blocking from an area.  Hold the shift key, click a token and drag to change it's facing.  Things like this should be a separate control.
• The UI is inconsistent.  For example, clicking a token to select it doesn't always work on the first click.  
• When moving tokens, enabling snap to grid has the effect of visually displacing the token destination from the apparent token position, and tokens can end up somewhere different than expected.  With large vision blocking areas set, players can easily accidentally lose their token in an area where they can't see it to click on it again.
• If there's multiple 'player' tokens on the map, it's not always obvious which player token's vision is being used to reveal stuff on each player's map.  Nor does there appear to be a way to select which player token is used for which connected player.
• I've had problems with different java versions on linux
• I've had problems with loading a large campaign map from network connected clients, on a lan.
• The interactions between vision blocking and fog of war are weird.   I have instances on my map where stuff which is completely covered by a vision blocking rect are shown as having been revealed to the player.  Reapplying fog of war to these areas have no effect.  Note that players can't see into the area.

Unfortunately, the problems above have been significant enough that so far it's stopped me from using this. I'm really bummed, 'cause I'm enthused about the possibilities here and have put a lot of time into making this map.  I'm still working on it, and hope to be successful at some point.  I'm also willing to put in quite a bit of time and learning on my own sake.  However I'm not going to impose a tool that requires a considerable UI learning curve on my players.  Have to see how this goes.


-- Pat

Port Knocking

I just implemented port knocking on one of my internet facing servers.  A decent article on it is here: http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine/implement-port-knocking-security-knockd

The server setup was pretty dang simple.  Make sure your firewall has a few failback rules before you implement this, of course.  In particular, hand enter one for the subnet of the workstation you're ssh'ing is from, and make sure you have an ESTABLISHED, RELATED rule.  My default rules look like this:

iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p icmp -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
 
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --source MYNET/MYNETMASK --dport 22 -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited

The only wrinkle I found was writing scripts for doing the knocking.  I had used the package recommended in the article, 'knockd', and it comes with a client 'knock'.  Unfortunately, I found the 'knock' utility knocked too fast.  Additionally, macports didn't appear to have a port of it for OSX.  What I did was to use a script using "nc -z" with some sleeps, which is both portable and worked.   

Here's a (sanitized) copy of my knock script.  No, these aren't the real ports I'm using :-)

#!/bin/sh

for p in 12345 23456 34567 45678 56789 ; do
    nc -v -z myserver.domain.top $p
    sleep 1
done


Just remember to put enough sequence time (parameter 'seq_timeout') in your /etc/knockd.conf script for the above to finish.  With a 1 second sleep, try about 2-3 times the sequence time as the number of ports you're knocking.

Luck!

My review of Square / SquareUp

So, some while ago, I downloaded a copy of the Square payment application for my android phone. For those unfamiliar with it, it's a small credit card payment app for your Apple or Android smart phone.  Home page is here: https://squareup.com/.   I should note that Intuit also has a competing product.

The basics of it is that you set up an account with Square, you link it to a bank account, and you accept payments via your phone.  They send you a little card reader plugin that is supposed to plug into your smart phone's microphone/headset jack, but you can also manually enter a credit card number, which is fortunate.

With the default account, they charge a small per transaction fee, I think 2.75%.  Less than traditional credit cards, but they limit how much per week you can process.

I generally like it - my only complaint is that I've never gotten the funky card reader to operate, and have always had to manually key in the credit card numbers.  I've tried this with 3 different card reader widgets (two from Square, and one I bought at Radio Shack), and on three different android devices: my HTC Evo 4G, my wife's HTC Evo Slide, and a hacked Nook Color tablet running CyanogenMod.   This is doubly a bummer, 'cause Square charges you an extra 1/4% on manually entered card numbers.

Nonetheless, give it a try.  It's a nifty tool.

-- Pat

A short rant about Fedora:

Sorry Fedora, you've lost me. 

I've been a linux devotee since around '93 or so, my first install was the SLS linux distro from a stack 'o floppies downloaded painfully via modem.  I've been a professional sysadmin specializing mostly in linux (with some other unix flavors) for about a decade and a half now.

Ergo, I've gotten very familiar with lots of different linux setups.

Unfortunately, though, fedora is moving sharply away from what I considered to be one of the best features of linux and unix like os's overall: discoverability.

Don't know where something is configured?  A "grep -R" or "find . -type f | xargs grep" has a very high likelyhood of finding it.  Once you get a hit, then you have some context you can use in a "man -k" or google search.  Voila, one more configuration issue solved.

Unfortunately, with the sharp turn toward opaque tools (journal, systemd, network-manager) fedora is breaking away from this, and sadly the rest of linux land appears to be following. 

I always rather despised having to use special tools to find errors in windows (event viewer), now I have to do the same in fedora (journalWhateverTheHeckItsNamed).  I hate not having the system config and startup in a an obvious, known, transparent and readable location (what, /etc/rc.d/init.d/ is empty?!  Blargh, I hate having to find, and then try to read XML.)  Whups -- I need to do something slightly out of the 'standard' laptop network setup, like a static IP and a bridge for a VM setup, uh, where do I configure that again?  Oh, my system moved and needs to be renamed, uh, where is that at?

Sure change is good, yadda yadda.   Transparency, though, is better.

-- Pat

p.s. and da** solaris for doing the same, but earlier and worse.  Can't even edit /etc/nsswitch.conf on sol 11 anymore ...

My Keepon - disappointing

Just this weekend my daughter purchased a My Keepon robot from the local outlet of toys r us. I have to say, I'm kind of disappointed. My expectations were set by two different videos of a Keepon robot dancing to Spoon's "I turn my camera on" and "Don't you Evah".

Compared to the Keepon robot in those videos, the toy my daughter purchased is unfortunately lame. Specifically, it'll only dance for perhaps 10-15 seconds before stopping for up to 10 seconds to reset itself. It's dancing is also notably less smooth and expressive compared to the videos.

Unfortunately, there also doesn't appear to be any capability for future software upgrades or other improvements. In short, it's not yet worth the money.

-- Pat

Allen PIttman Martial Arts Seminar

Martial Arts Seminar

(Flyer in PDF format)

with

Allen Pittman

Friday, Mar 11

through

Sunday, Mar 13

Featuring instruction in holistic health and martial arts training, both Eastern and Western

See Mr. Pittman's biography at: http://www.apittman.com/ptt/index.html

Hosted At:

MankatoMartialArts.com - 201 North Victory Dr, Mankato - (507) 386-7400

Friday	Saturday	Sunday
8:00-9:00 – Yoga for Physical Conditioning	8:00-9:00 – Yoga / Meditation open session	8:00-12:00 – Principles of Internal Arts (limited*)
Private Lessons (limited*)	10:00-12:00 – Introduction to Internal Martial Arts
	1:30-5:30 – Principles of Internal Arts (limited*)	1:30-5:30 – Principles of Internal Arts (limited*)
5:30-6:30 – Celtic Wrestling

(*) indicates limited attendance, contact Kyro Lantsberger for availability

FEES: $50 / 1 session ; $75 / 2 sessions ; $100 / 3 or more sessions

Private Lessons: $96 / hour

Contact: Kyro Lantsberger, kyro_lantsberger@yahoo.com 507-456-3697

Electronics triumph !

Last Sunday, I woke to find our house had no internet. This was puzzling, since we still had our landline phone service, and both our phone and internet come through the same fiber DSL router, provided by our fantastic locally owned community phone company.

Some dismayed investigation later determined that the issue was that our ninja cats had successfully bypassed the protective cover I'd devised for our router, and cat pee had dribbled into the actual router and fried at least one component.

Of course, while this is going on I get paged for a modestly significant VMWare outage for work, in which about a dozen virtual servers were effected; and before all this happened my lovely spouse got a call that her church's regular piano player was sick, and could she come and play; so I had all the kids and planned to take them to church with me; but one of the cars wouldn't start in the cold due to an old battery; and, well, you get the picture.

Yah, it was a pretty cruddy Sunday.

So, after getting back from fixing the issues at work later that night, and thoroughly but carefully cleaning the router's circuit board (with clean water, a old, soft toothbrush, just a tad of gentle, unscented dish soap, and more clean water), and drying it, I examined the board closely under a magnifying glass. I soon found this chip, which I had cleaned quite a bit of crud off of, with several of it's leads burned through:

New chip - top view	New chip - bottom view

The soldering job, my first surface mount work, turned out to not be nearly as scary as I feared (thanks to members of my local linux and hardware lug for great advice), other than the small size and considerable eye strain, even using a stand mounted magnifying glass.

I went back downstairs, plugged it in, and to my great joy, it worked!

Total cost, about $25.

I'd not at all mind doing a similar job again, the only thing I'd prefer to do differently is to have a better lighting and magnifying setup. Perhaps a large, stand mounted, self lit magnifying glass, or maybe some good work lights and one of those jeweler's loupes which can attach to a pair of glasses.

Anyway, all told, success! Much money saved, a yet more cat proof DSL router providing me service as I type this post, and a happy Pat. :-)