OnyxRaven Blog

• Zomg Cats
• More Cats
• Beatboxing will always be cool.
• The Internet is for Porn.

  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5430343841227974645

• The Big Lebowski in 5 Seconds.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXYMqHdsGwk

• Best Music Video Ever?

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bAN7Ts0xBo

Bash History
This post turned me onto the fact that the bash history is actually relatively powerful - moreso than I thought at first. You can use positional references and regular expressions much like in a vi command. The bash man page on the subject has all of the options, but no examples, which is probably why I skimmed over it before.

Screen in Cygwin
I’ve been using screen for years in linux to help manage multiple windows, and processes which I want to persist between login sessions (either long running processes that I want to be able to check in on, or things like irc which I dont want to have to disconnect/reconnect all the time). I’m sort of limited on the boxes I have access to lately, but I have the whole cygwin suite set up on my home machine, so I’m using that as a viable alternative. The bummer is, screen is not one of the officially supported packages by Cygwin. There have been a few patches and builds of screen, and the one I’ve found works the best is this version of 3.9.15.

This comes with a caveat though. For whatever reason, regular ‘reattach’ (-r) doesnt work under cygwin, but the flag to login to an existing attached session (-x) seems to always work (Thanks for the tip). So where I used to use ’screen -r’, I now use ’screen -x’ and it seems to work nicely.

[Update]: After using it for a while, it looks like a non-forced disconnect (like SIGHUP from the ssh session going away) puts it in the same state as screen -r (it’ll just sit there). Worse, it looks like it’ll detect the session as dead potentially. I’m looking into this. If anyone out there has info please let me know!

I’ve got some more tips on how to use Cygwin, but I’ll have to add those later.

Theres lots of discussion around This Tobolds Post, regarding Talent builds/specs in WoW. The main request here is to be able to have two specs, one for grouping (raiding), one for pvp.

Heres a possible implementation:

• Buying an extra spec slot is much like a Hunter buying a pet stable, it costs money, and to switch it, you have to go to a stable master. Much the same way, class trainers (why not use the current class trainers, since they already do the talent reset functionality) would be able to sell you a slot - for a pretty penny (probably as much as the upper cap of talent reset, 50g?).
• To add a spec to an empty, you must reset your talents at the going rate (max 50g) - your previous build then gets saved in that slot.
• To switch between specs, just visit a trainer and select the spec (no, or low, ongoing charge)
• To change the stored spec is just like adding a spec, you must reset and your old spec will be saved
• You could buy extra slots (for extra money), and it would work like a first-in first-out queue, where resetting ’saves’ your spec, and the last one falls off.

I’m actually somewhat questioning the FIFO mechanic there, though. I think it provides a challenge and prevents template-of-the-day syndrome better, but it could be a bit of a pain to manage. Maybe the better way is to just have multiple slots that can be changed out with an interface just like the pet stable.

Challenges:

• Interface - though it could be pretty simple (represent a talent build via an icon you can drag around, just like the pet stable
• Talents that are Skills/Spells - when you change spec, those items need to go away, which means removing or greying them out from an actionbar - certainly not a showstopper, just somewhat inconvenient, but the talent reset already has this issue

I’ve always been a big fan of flexibility - frankly, I think you should be able to switch your class for work/money something like you can in FFXI - it helps those of us with major alt-itis. Doing this with the talents is definitely a way to get there.

This was sold not long after I posted this in 2007.  Keeping the post here for posterity.  These other items are still available though (believe it or not).

2 door coupe, 5 speed manual, black

Excellent condition inside and out, 143,600 mi

New tires, muffler, exterior paint, battery and clutch

CD stereo with sub-woofer, tinted windows, Denji projection headlamps, clear front corners (OEM parts still available)

$3300

(previous items for sale still available)