Moving house, electronically

At OSCON I discovered Ballerina, which almost immediately joined my list of favorite programming languages. Ballerina currently runs on top of Java 8. When I tried running it at bidalaka.com, I discovered that Bluehost has disallowed Java.

This occasioned a search for a new host, and I eventually settled on A2. They have an "Unmanaged VPS" option where you get your own virtual host and the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot if you so desire. Ballerina worked beautifully there.

Reacquainting myself with Unix admindom, some things have changed a lot and some haven't. Adding a user account, for instance, no longer involves editing multiple files; there's a nice simple command. OTOH, httpd still needs lots of poking and prodding to get it to the point where it does anything useful.

Yesterday I migrated bidalaka.com to the new host. Web service is working. Mail service is working. I still need to get a webmail program working, but I do remember how to use the Unix mail program.

And I have a lovely new thing which uses Ballerina, but that's for another post...

Random character generator and a randomly generated character

Pathfinder's second edition does a lot of things I applaud, but one big issue for me is character backgrounds. You have to pick one from a list of standardized backgrounds that provide both stat modifiers and the character's backstory, and many character concepts may find that none fits well. Even the official blog post meant to get us all excited about the new character creation system ran into this problem.

Also, while I think the overall approach that 2e uses is best for people who know exactly what they want, and that will be most gamers, I miss randomness.

So I made a thing for randomly generating character outlines. You get a random heritage, background, and class specialty (if applicable), and then build a character around that.

With the SO witnessing, I rolled up an arctic elf wizard, specializing in abjuration, with a Barrister background. (Yes, there are a few weirdly specialized backgrounds in the list.) An ironic result, since part of this exercise is to break out of the box, and I tend to play spellcasters when left to my own devices. And the first character I randomly generated by first edition PFS rules was also a wizard. But, I belong to that cranky old school of gamers which believe that you have to play the first thing you roll, which is why the button disappears after you roll. At least there's an unusual combination with lawyering background, since Pathfinder elves tend to be chaotic-aligned and not so much about following procedures.

So, Losseyel hails from the icy Lands of the Linnorm Kings, where she gained a reputation as a negotiator between her small elven community and the various local kingdoms. When she was not being useful, though, her pedantic insistence on following rules made her tiresome to the other elves, and they eventually convinced her that more of the world could benefit from her talents. She meant to settle in Absalom, but discovered along the way that she rather enjoyed travel, and soon joined the Pathfinders. During her training, she became entirely at ease with human society, even taking up worship of one of their gods: Abadar, deity of law, commerce, civilization, and following the damn instructions.

Losseyel has an arctic fox familiar, and she goes into battle with mage armor and a rapier. Yes, line things up right in this edition and your wizard can use a sword.

I like her! Now I just need to find a game.

Weekly diary, August 11, 2019

Most of my evenings this week were consumed by tech stuff. Partly the move, and partly an effort to set up my next project.

Cat

Marlene, in an unguarded moment, showing off her furry belly. She's a shorthair, but she has a very thick coat.

Fandom

Anime commentary got posted. Everything I'm still watching is so far above my original expectations, even Dr. Stone, which had my highest hopes for the season.

I am deeply jealous of everyone who will be physically attending Worldcon. You'd all better have enough fun to justify that jealousy.

Gaming

A little bit of Fire Emblem, a little bit of Fallen London, and I finally tried starting Sunless Skies. I liked what I saw, but then it crashed twice in a row. For something that had such a long beta pre-release, that's very disappointing.

With PbP Gameday VIII approaching, set up the campaign for the scenario I'm going to run.

Books and media

Read another section of Adam Smith, but events keep intervening to keep me from posting about it. Read Yendi, which was good but irritating with all the references to other events I haven't read about yet. Planning to switch to chronological order after I read Teckla, since I already have it and won't be able to stop myself.

Didn't read anything very memorable in politics this week.