Mystic Paint

For anyone who doesn’t know what Linux is, it is an operating system, which means that it is the basic software that turns what would otherwise be an electric paperweight into something called a computer. If you are reading this, statistically your computer is probably running one of the Microsoft Windows operating systems. You can think of Ubuntu as an alternative to Windows.

How different is Ubuntu from Windows? Well, you might say it is as different from Windows as a Macintosh is. If that doesn’t describe it well enough for you, basically you can do all the same things on Ubuntu as you can in Winodws or on a Mac, but will likely do it with different software than you would have in Windows or on a Mac.

If you already have Windows, why should you care about Linux and/or Ubuntu? To an average person, knowing an alternative to Windows means you will have the knowledge required to be a more savvy consumer as far as computers are concerned, and with all honesty, depending exclusively on Microsoft is a little like putting all your eggs into one basket. If you are a technical minded person, interested in programming, interested in tech support, or see yourself managing technology for a business or corporation, you absolutely NEED to learn about Linux or you may find yourself falling behind your peers.

Is Ubuntu strictly for novice computer users? No, it isn’t, but it is very nice for novice computer users. Experienced Linux users will find it does essentially everything that any Linux distribution can do, but is simply a very nice concise set of defaults. If you want to compare it with Windows, you may think of it as an easy to use, clean system that is free of all that shareware and advertising that seem to pile on heavier and heavier in each new version of Windows on systems purchased from PC manufacturers.

From what perspective am I writing about this? Well, my first computer was a Commodore Vic 20 (it still works). My first IBM compatible system was a 386 running DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0. Collecting older versions of DOS and Windows was a bit of a fun hobby, and reading about them is fun computer history and trivia. Anyone who is wondering, Windows 1 can be run from a pair of 5¼ inch floppy disks on an 8086 system with no hard drive. Since my 386 I’ve dealt with pretty much every version of Windows, and have been performing PC and server support since 486 roamed the earth. As for Linux, I dabbled with Slackware back in the late 90’s, but finding no software that interested me at the time, I abandoned Linux until a couple of years ago. I tinkered with many many distros, and decided I liked Debian a whole lot. I liked Debain enough that I resisted even trying Ubuntu, but when I finally did try I decided it was absolutely terrific. Ubuntu filled me with enthusiasm that the older versions Windows used to provide, back before Microsoft seemed to loose their way and sort-of ruined Windows. I realize that there are people who actually like Windows Vista, but having supported so many other versions, Vista just seems sour by comparison to older superior versions of Windows. Ah NT4, how I love thee… Anyhow, With Vista’s general crumminess, and Ubuntu’s ability to run great even on older hardware, there has never been a better time to switch to Linux. Just so I don’t leave them out, Macintosh are fine, but I ain’t made of Money; When you buy a Mac, you buy into a world of fairly pricey Apple products.

Time to get to the meat. As I type this, it is September of 2007. Ubuntu 7.10 is set for release in October. I’ve been tinkering with the beta of Ubuntu for a couple of months, and have had it installed as the OS on my tablet PC for roughly a month. Prior to that, my tablet was running Ubuntu 7.04, and prior to that my tablet was running Windows XP.

Installation went fine. The “test system” is a Toshiba Satellite R10 tablet PC, with Intel chipsets running though most of it. Intel is good about Linux driver support, so already my system had a good advantage and Ubuntu 7.10 detected all my device, just as 7.04 had before. The tablet functionality from my understanding comes from a Wacom chip, and Ubuntu saw and let me use my pen just fine. My only real compliant might be that Ubuntu doesn’t know when I flip my screen around. To be fair, Windows didn’t see it either. Back when the system ran Windows, flipping the screen was something that was handled by utilities that came from Toshiba. It’s not that big of a deal, because I can just rotate the whole thing myself easily enough, but the option would have been nice. On the whole it detected my hardware better than Windows XP, which is expected because it is a newer OS than Windows XP.

In all honesty, when I first downloaded and ran the iso for 7.10 I was very wary of it. From what I could see at the time it bore a great resemblance to 7.04, but lacked any of the stability that 7.04 had. happily this seems to have cleared up, especially in the past few weeks. I must have downloaded half a gig or updates in the last month alone, and the difference has been very noticeable. Thats not to say that is has all the kinks worked out yet. Gnome still pauses and goes gray a little every now and then when I’m browsing folders, but it hasn’t been restarting in a while. The only real standout in instability for me has been the Gnu Image Manipulation Program. Ubuntu 7.10 comes with a GIMP 2.4 release candidate installed, and it is still far from stable.

If you don’t deal with editing photos, you may not be bothered by the lack of a stable functioning GIMP, but I use it a lot, and it irritates me no end. GIMP 2.4 on Ubuntu 7.10 currently locks up in several situations. It may lock up during an image resize, it may lock up when creating a new image, and it may lock up while perusing the preferences menus. The SVG import has yet to function correctly for me, which bugs me somewhat because the graphics for this site are essentially built using SVG and PNG. I remain hopeful that these issues will be resolved soon, so that I can use my tablet PC the way I would like to. On the bright side, GIMP 2.4 does seem to have an improved toolbox, with a a few nice new features. The menus seem to have a different layout than GIMP 2.2 had, which actually bugs me a little because I liked them the way they were. I don’t think it will be hard to get accustomed to.

As for eye candy. Ubuntu 7.04 came with Beryl, but Ubuntu 7.10 comes with Compiz Fusion to provide it’s eye candy. It has been pretty slick. My tablet has an Intel graphics chipset, so unlike owners of Nvidia and ATI, my system ran it with pretty much no effort. Whether owners of those more powerful graphics chipsets get rewarded with better and fancier effects I couldn’t say. This is a tablet PC, so thoughts of upgrading my video card are not very realistic and therefore not something I generally put much concern into. Anyhow, Ive got wobbly windows that stick to the sides of my screen like boiled spaghetti, detaching like snagged springs when I pull far enough. This kind of fun can only hurt my productivity, but I like it and I’m keeping it. Up until a few minutes ago, it gave me a nice rotating cube for my desktops, but at the moment it’s giving me sliding desktops. Nothing wrong with sliding desktops, it’s very clean looking and quick, but these effects are about fun and I think I’m going to look into turning my rotating cube back on.

PDF creation. To many people, PDF’s may not be important. PDF isn’t perfect, but hey, they print how they look and almost any computer made in the last 20 years can read them. Ubuntu comes with OpenOffice, which has terrific PDF export ability. For any apps that don’t have PDF export abilty, you can print to an imaginary printer that will create PDFs from essentially any application that can print. In Ubuntu 7.04 PDF support provided by the cups-pdf package was pretty easy to grab and install. In Ubuntu 7.10 it comes pre-installed. On the surface that seems good, but they seem to have goofed a little on it. Rather than asking you where to leave the file, and rather than simply putting in your documents or on your desktop, it defaults to leaving the output in the /var/spool/cups-pdf/ANONYMOUS directory. To new folks the PDF may as well not exist, because they won’t know where it is. As if hiding it weren’t enough, the permissions on that folder are fairly restrictive, so you need root access to do anything with it. Hopefully they will address this problem. To anyone compelled to compare this with Windows, Windows simply doesn’t come with the ability to print to PDFs at all, though if you want you can go out and look for software to do that (I recommend PDF Creator).

OpenOffice is included with Ubuntu, and with Ubuntu 7.10 they are even nice enough to create a link for the drawing application. Just as with previous versions, OpenOffice is swell. It supports the OpenDocument standard format, as well as many proprietary formats including but not limited to most Microsoft Office document formats. One of the oddest things to realize when transitioning away from Microsoft products, has been how obvious that is is that there are two worlds of document out there. There are documents supported and used by Microsoft, and then there is essentially everyone else in the world. This barrier is something that Microsoft has created to help retain customers by making it hard for them to switch away, and for the most part it works out for Microsoft. In their defense, they didn’t invent the idea of vendor lock-in, they were just the ones who were successful at it.

For the most part, the remained of the software that comes with Ubuntu 7.10 is the same that comes with 7.04. The menus have changed, and while the preference menu may still be a little on the long side, it’s still very usable. One minor, but excellent change is what you receive when you change desktop background via right-clicking the desktop, you get nice tabbed access to many other display settings. There are other ways in there, but this is pleasant change. The only downside to this change, is that when setting the wallpaper from within the Gnome image viewer, the wallpaper dialog is not loaded as it was in Ubuntu 7.04. With the dialog not being displayed, the wallpaper you are setting is not necessarily kept in the wallpaper memory for easy access later. This is really only an issue if you are using the image viewer to populate the list with several wallpapers at once, and an easy workaround is to simply open the dialog yourself before you start and let it sit in the background. If you are using Windows, you are kind missing out in regards to wallpaper selection. I’m actually a bit surprised I haven’t seen any third party apps to approximate this function in Windows. Unlike Windows, you can use PNG and SVG in addition to the image formats you may be used to, all the while enjoying many more scaling options and a memory of the Wallpapers you have used before along with the customized settings of that wallpaper.

I could go on about minutia forever, but to wrap it it, Ubuntu 7.10 is pretty darn nice. While a month ago I wasn’t sure it would be ready when they released it, it seems pretty obvious now that it will be. In fact, it might be nice to beat the rush and just go ahead and get the thing now.

In my mind I have a storyline, several stories really, centering on a character. I’ve been putting thought into it for long while now, and with setting up this site I feel like I’m getting closer to actually producing something. Regardless, it seems I am easily distracted, and have managed to sidetrack myself.

My latest distraction has come in the form of a map.
http://langford.deviantart.com/art/Zelda-Map-58364184
This map is supposed to be a representation of the cumulative territory of several Legend of Zelda games. All the Zelda games seem to box you in, so naturally there are always thoughts about what might be over the walls that surround you. Using cheat codes you will see that you are surrounded by a horrifyingly empty void, from which there can be no escape. Ignoring that, one can assume that there may be unexplored locations that are simply unreachable, possibly locations from one Zelda game that are simply unrepresented in the game you happen to be in. That is where the map comes in.

The simplest way to explain the map I want to make, is to say that I want to start with a simple enough map of Hyrule as represented in twilight Princess, then fill in the unknown areas with information from the various other Zelda games. Having played several of the games, there is a general feeling that they reuse elements of the games, while not attempting to recreate the old games. For example, there is usually a location regarded as “Death Mountain”, somewhere on the map, and near to it a cemetery of some sort. Deserts are generally represented, usually containing some abandoned buildings from some lost ancient group of people, and there are usually magically unnavigable forests of some type.

It should go without saying that simply overlaying existing game maps to get a view of the world will only get you a limited amount of satisfaction, but what surprised me was actually that that was not necessarily the case on some of the more recent games. For the most part, the 3D Zelda titles seemed to have geography that were eerily compatible, and stranger still, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess overlay one another remarkably well. The line ups are probably for the most part coincidental, but, but fun to find none the less. I have even considered trying to devise a kind of “Hyrule Archaeological Study” on some of the areas, to give more meaning to some of the ruins that seem to appear in some of the games, because many may be explainable by way of the games that preceded them. Perhaps a wiki of some sort to let others do it, or maybe I’ll just donate my finished map to some other page and let others do what they wish with it. Chances are I will want to hold on to my finished map, just so I can keep it updated when the next game eventually comes out.

The map is nowhere near complete right now, and currently consists of around 60 sheets of notebook paper taped up on an empty wall. If I assume that can do one square a week, then it would take a whole year, so I really need to ramp up my effort and make a point to go much faster than that. Hopefully I can find time to work on it every day, and finish in full color in a couple of months. When I finish it, I intend to put it on display here and probably also on DeviantArt, so that I can order prints of the thing for myself.

I’ve been playing Twilight Princess for a couple of weeks, and I don’t know completely what I think about it. To me, I guess it seemed like a really good Zelda, but unfinished. Then again, I have just finished the palace of twilight, so I still have a little bit to go before I see the end. Still though, I know I’m close to the end, yet I feel like it should be the halfway point.

The dungeons were far simpler than the ones in the three previous Zelda, but since they are somewhat formulaic, that’s not necessarily an unwelcome change. I have to say, while I was playing, there was a point where I found myself feeling a little exhausted simply gaining access to some of the early temples, which kinda makes up for their simplicity.

The map was huge and pretty, but it just seemed so deserted. Hyrule’s population doesn’t seem big enough to continue. The only real city in it was castle town. Sure, the Zora and the Gorons have their corners of the map, but their domains consist mainly of a huge hall that everyone just hangs out in at all hours of the day and night. Maybe that puts it on par with OOT, and OOT was (still is) great, but I kinda expect them to advance upwards in newer games. Also, even when I find a place with people, most of them won’t talk to me except to advance the plot.

There seems to be a big lack of side quests in the game. Let’s face it, at the heart of every Zelda game so far, you are an exterminator crawling meticulously over the countryside until you touch every part of it. The side quests that OOT, MM, and WW had in them let you almost feel like you were choosing your path. There are a few non-required side quests in TP, but not that many, and the magic armor really isn’t all that spiffy once you actually have it.

The cave of ordeals. It seems like a simple enough concept, and I felt accomplished to have survived through it, even if at the end I had only 2½ hearts left. The problem is, it is gratuitous. I know I just complained about side quests, but honestly, it doesn’t fit the game. What the cave of ordeals really tells me, is that the game is holding back. It tells me that they could have kicked my ass mercilessly at any time during the real levels, but for some reason have been taking it easy on me.

Midna is a nifty character, and a welcome new plot line, but even though she is there the whole game, she really doesn’t contribute all that much as it goes. She acts as the whip that tells me I have to go to the next part, and near the beginning she facilitates jumping high up, but then she just fades into my shadow, peeking out during cut scenes. Geez, if you’re going to ride naked on my back for half the game, at least have something constructive to say afterwards. Still a cool character mostly though, enough so that it’s a shame Zelda games have a habit of mostly not keeping that kind of addition in future releases.

The opening of new areas. It’s pretty much a given that a Zelda game, and pretty much most games, won’t let you into a new area until you have finished the previous one, but really they did very little to mask that fact in TP. In OOT and MM, you pretty much couldn’t get into a new area until you have the right toys to get in with. WW was the same way, plus you were completely lost looking at a map at the same time. At points in TP, I couldn’t get into an area, simply because I hadn’t talked to the next person in the stories plot line yet. It wasn’t a matter of following clues to discover who I had to talk to, no; Midna said talk to whomever, so I had to talk to whomever.

Epona the useless horse. By the time I got full use of Epona, I could warp. By the time I could call her whenever I wanted, I could warp anywhere I wanted on the whole map, including places the horse couldn’t reach. I guess I could ride her for fun, if there were any place to go to. Too bad though, because she thunders across the fields in a very fun and satisfying way.

My useless toys. The clawshot is useful, the double clawshot is useful, but everything else was useful for about the last half of a single dungeon, and a small bit here and there later. If you are going to make the dungeons in such a way that I don’t need the previous toys much, you could have gone ahead and let me finish them in any order I wanted. Maybe this complaint really belongs in the pile of reasons I think the game should be longer. Every dungeon gives me a new toy, and teaches me to use it, but then it’s time to play with a different new toy. If the game were longer on the other hand, maybe I could use the toys I already have for a little while longer.

What happened to the Rito? This goes to that thing about neat stuff not making it into the next versions of Zelda. Did they turn out to be Hylians with a thing for bird cosplay? Did the avian flu get them? I guess they are pretending they never made Wind Waker, but honestly that was a great version of Zelda.

What do I want? I guess I want more of the same, but different, you know? Consider this; OOT was great, except for the parts where MM was better. The people and environment in MM was terrific, even if the quest didn’t have the traditional Zelda feel. Yes, they reused a lot, but it was really very good. It was an opportunity to give something slightly more refined, without too much new effort. Yes, I want a new Zelda that will have all sorts of new and interesting things, but hey Nintendo, as long as you developed all the cool stuff for Twilight Princess, how about going ahead and making a bit more of the same while you have it, or maybe a direct sequel? Save Gannon for the next full legend, and bring in a fresh lesser villain that Link and Midna can whoop on for a while. Concentrate on increasing the dwindling population of Hyrule, giving the NPC’s more personality, and plenty of bonus optional quests.

Edit:

Tuesday I sat down and finished up Twilight Princess. The final boss fights were easier than I anticipated, but overall a satisfying end, especially the last fight. I won’t say much more about it, so as to avoid spoilers.

Anyhow, having finished Twilight Princess, I decided to take another shot at Wind Waker. I deleted my old save games and started from the beginning. Having a vague recollection of my surroundings and what’s going on makes the first part go fairly smoothly, but it is still enjoyable. It didn’t take long until I was in the fortress, and while I was sneaking around under a barrel, feeling like I need to pee while I’m waiting for one of those pig monster guys to pass, it suddenly occurred to me that WW may have been the better game. OK, saying it’s simply better may be too strong, but at the least I think that I may like WW better than TP. Here is why.

Every Zelda game is basically a predefined list of goals, all of which must be completed in more or less a particular order, but in the end the only way to actually lose the game is to give up and quit. That brings me to my first reason; TP is too easy to beat. Maybe they wanted to make it easier to compensate for the Wii’s new unfamiliar controls, or maybe they wanted to appeal to younger players, I don’t know, but the end result is that I knew that if I simply kept walking forward swinging my sword and going where Midna told me, I would reach the end. There simply weren’t very many real puzzles. WW on the other hand has riddles, maps, and secrets hidden in a way that I might never find them. WW makes you collect clues to reach certain goals, and makes it challenging. Link may look older in TP than in WW, but actual gameplay in WW is designed for older players who have more patience. If I just want to follow a story, I can watch a DVD, but in a game I want to make the story. In TP you follow the story, and in WW you make it, maybe not fully, but more so than in TP.

WW is not OOT. TP is very similar to OOT, and OOT is an epic game, but honestly, OOT is big enough that if I wanted to repeat that experience, I could just play OOT again. In fact, OOT is downloadable for around $10 on the Wii, although I won’t be buying that way because I already have the GC disk. TP is a terrific tribute to the qualities that make OOT great, and in many ways an improvement on OOT, but WW is a great game without being a direct imitation of OOT. If future versions of Zelda are going to be imitations of old versions, we may only have ourselves to blame, for not appreciating WW enough.

WW is a very polished game. The NPC’s in WW have personalities, interests, and places to be, where in TP many of the people only speak to tell you who you really should be talking to, or they run around randomly to create ambiance. Ambiance is not a good substitute for substance. Maybe TP was rushed to shelves because the Wii was being released, so they just didn’t have time to program all the little people, but I would have been willing to wait a while longer if I could have gotten a more complete game.

WW makes you walk to work. I have to drive for about 15 minutes each morning to get to work, and if I had warp points in real life, things would be swell. That’s the problem though, it’s not believable. How can I feel like I’m saving the kingdom of Hyrule, when even commuting is easy? Why did we love Epona so much in OOT? We loved her because up until that point we had to walk, uphill in both directions. In TP I didn’t even need the Epona they gave me. A free horse, but I didn’t need it! TP spoils gamers rotten, and in the process makes it harder to feel like Hyrule is a real place or that the quest is real. WW requires travel time, and you even have to look for parking. Sure, the boat occasionally could have stood to go a little faster, but when you went someplace, it was like reaching a real place.

I guess in an ideal situation, TP would have been released years ago, and WW would have been released recently. That wand would have gone well with the Wii controller. That hindsight is great stuff. Anyhow, everything is subjective, and everyone will have different opinions, so feel free to feel differently about anything I said. If anyone here never owned WW, I encourage you to go out and buy/rent/steal it.

I customized my site template, and managed to get the thing to validate.
Should it matter to me that it now validates? I dunno, I guess it doesn’t hurt. I’m more concerned with having the page display correctly in different browsers (still doesn’t yet), but validation is supposed to help with that, so good then I guess.

On the subject of content displaying correctly, it seems that my site host (Yahoo), uses the wrong HTML header when hosting SVG files. This really throws a wrench into my design plans, and irritates me to no end. After a couple of weeks of volleying emails back and forth between their tech support and even calling them on the phone, they pretty much declared themselves helpless and said they couldn’t fix it. Supposedly if I want it to work, it has to be done via a “feature request”, whatever the heck that is. The fact is, the server attempts to support the file format, but uses pre-y2k settings, so fails to actually support SVG. It failed for the last seven years, and will probably continue to fail for the foreseeable future.

Yet another note, the subject of what kind of content this site will contain has once again crossed my mind. Although I thought I had resolved the question, I find myself contemplating some kind of animation instead of the comics strip I had initially considered. Why the change? I’m just thinking that there are more than enough web-comics out there, and the amount of control I could have over video in regards to timing and movement makes it so preferable to motionless comics. The downside is that it presents a lot more work, and as only one person, the question of voices and music becomes more complicated. Also, I have yet to see a nice way of importing pleasant SVG drawings into the crude SWF format, and certainly not with the software I can currently afford.