"Ellumiel" from the Ukraine, at Deviantart.  I think I might use these photos as a model for Utena as seen by Doug in "real life" when I write that Step.

Thanks to "Bushido" over at the EPU forums for the pointer.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

...for an April Fools' joke that apparently some lawyers didn't get.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

...and this movie is either going to be crazy awesome, or it will suck rocks.
Given it's coming out in January, the "let's throw out the stuff that's gone bad" month in the movie release calendar, I think I know which way that will go -- but I might go see it anyway.
See the trailer here.  (German website, but English trailer.  I think that says something right there, as I can't seem to find it on YouTube or anywhere else.)
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

So does he... and now the folks who weren't into gaming back in 1980 (or alive in 1980 - now I feel old) can get http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG30-2327]a copy for only 99 cents over the cover price.

I must double-check my collection, and find out whether this is one of the issues I'm missing...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

So, apparently due out on 08/17, War Witch has announced some new info about some changes coming with GR
http://community.livejournal.com/city_o ... 52919.html

Quote:Important System Information from War Witch
Hey everyone,
I know you’ve been asking for some new Going Rogue information, and I’ve got some exciting news that I’d like to share with all of you.
Here at Paragon Studios, we’ve been hard at work preparing our newest expansion, Going Rogue, for prime time. One of our major features, the alignment system that allows our players to switch sides, has presented the perfect opportunity for us to improve Hero and Villain auction and trading dynamics. In order to make the alignment switching system the most fun and rewarding experience possible, we’ve made a few key improvements based on beta tester and internal studio feedback.
Here’s a brief list of these upgrades:
* Heroes and Villains can now trade and gift each other in Co-Op zones (except in PvP zones)
* Players can Global Email (GleeMail) INF and most items to their characters regardless of alignment (some restrictions apply)
* The Auction House markets for Heroes and Villains will become ONE
Wait. What?
Yes. You heard me, we’re merging the markets. After looking at how the system has performed in beta, we thought long and hard about the Markets themselves. This important improvement seemed to make everything more accessible and streamlined, allowing every character to participate. Keeping the markets divided would require significant on-going development support, and we needed to take this into consideration. But, most importantly we wanted to produce the most fun system possible, and this decision reflects that.
These changes are very exciting and will simplify not only the way we create content, but provide freedom for you to play your characters the way you choose.

http://www.slate.com/id/2257107/pagenum/all/#p2
Not new for anyone who's heard of Naruto (who's not very ninjay anyway), but interesting.

Bill Staines,
Wild
Wild Heart
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

Okay, I've got a little problem that's been annoyingly persistent.  As the folks who went through my "Rise of the Shadow Circle" arc will recall, there was a fade-in collection item representing the placement of an unfriendly little gizmo in the villain's lair.  It was located in the "end zone", which was basically just the final room -- and because completing it activated a destroyable object, the players could actually see the destroyable object spawn, along with its guards.
The problem here (other than the aesthetic one) is that I didn't set the collection item's location to "back" -- I set it to "middle".  But it insists on spawning in the end room.  Setting it to "front" makes it appear in the front, no problem.  And with the right map I might well do that if I can find no better solution.  That, or set it to random, but that would be a less satisfactory solution.  Oh, and I've made sure I don't have too many other things located in the middle zone, which I suspect would bump it to one of the other zones.
Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone's seen this behavior before, and if it's a bug, if anyone knows a better workaround than the ones I've come up with on my own.
Thanks.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

So, not inspired by but coinciding with the discussion involving WiFi security over in Politics, I've acquired a netbook and have started looking into seriously securing the communications, both for use at home and for use elsewhere. So, that pretty much means a VPN.

I have an OpenVPN server set up on a system I have running PuppyLinux, with configuration that's supposed to make all the traffic go through the VPN. With *that* going, the client couldn't get to the internet at all, actually a good sign. Then I got the firewall set up with rules I'm pretty sure are supposed to cause the PuppyLinux machine to do NAT for the client system. Now I can get to the internet from the client.

The problem is, I'm still not absolutely certain that the wireless communication is all going through the vpn encryption. I was under the impression that when the gateway redirection was working, traceroute was supposed to show a path that goes through the vpn server somewhere, and it isn't. Based on a forum post from someone else trying to do a similar setup, I tried installing Wireshark on both the client and the server. Which showed me that *something* is definately going on. When I go to a website on the client, there's activity on the server machine, and on the client it shows all sorts of stuff involving SSL exchanges that doesn't happen normally. But that post suggested that all the traffic leaving the wireless interface on the client should be in the form of UDP packets, since I have it configured for UDP. It shows a lot more stuff. But I'm not sure that this isn't it also showing the traffic to the virtual interface formed by the VPN software. I'd have expected *that* to appear when I have it set to capture on the virtual interface, but when I do that... it shows absolutely nothing. Since I don't actually know what I'm *doing* with this program, maybe I don't have the right configuration for what I'm looking for.

So, basically. Anyone have any idea how I can tell for certain that my traffic is getting encrypted the way it's supposed to be?

-Morgan.

Okay, so pretty much anyone that writes/reads fanfic on the web knows about Fanfiction.net... but are there others out there?
I already know of one: http://archiveofourown.org/
How is this group?  How well kept is their site and servers?  From what little I've seen their site is reasonably fast and clean, but I think that's mostly due to a lack of adservices.    So what else is known about them?
And are their any other similar sites out there?