• Played in a 5150 (by Two Hour Wargames) game. As the name suggests, it is a pretty quick system, but I’d argue that it was only so quick because half the people knew how to play, and it is *very* bloody. We played two games in two hours. The mechanic which makes it so bloody is that every time you take fire, you roll a check. If you pass, you get to return fire… and then the other guy gets to make the same check. This continues until someone routs, runs out of ammo, dies, or fails the check. The system is about as complex as battletech or 40k, which is acceptable for most folks, but I’m not really interested in picking up another set of reasonably complex rules unless they really speak to me. These don’t.

• As always, there’s lots of stuff in the dealer’s area, including a few lines of 15mm modern. I’m finding I like the smaller scales as opposed to the large ones. For fantasy or small squad or team-based games, 15-30mm is nice. However, when doing armies, the ground scale gets stupid (my 6″ long tank can only shoot 48″!!!) and the armies get expensive. I think it’s better to buy 15mm figures, base them individually, and just play with the 25mm scale rules. For smaller stuff (6mm), base in groups and run like that.

• I also found some guys selling micro armor for about $1 per mini, new, which is considerably less than GHQ. The quality seems decent too, but the modern selection seems limited to US and Russian. However, since SO many countries use Russian equipment, this is not as bad as it sounds.

• I also spent some time with the bored people at the painting university (well, I shouldn’t say bored per se – they were painting or otherwise working on things, but they weren’t teaching them). A very nice lady named Dorothy from The War Store sat with me for about an hour, and cleared up a lot of what I’ve been doing wrong all these years.
  • There is a DEMONSTRABLE difference between cheap brushes and good brushes. Good brushes end up being more expensive, but they last longer, so it is a wash in the end.
  • There is also a similar difference between paints. Craft paints work well at the thicknesses at which they come, maybe a little thinner. However, the size of the individual bits of pigment is quite large, so they end up not thinning out as well – they get chunky and grainy.
  • Liz and I quickly realized the above things (quality mattering) when it comes to house paint – I don’t know why we thought differently when it came to model paint.
  • Gloss paints seal the model, so that will TOTALLY mess up any washes you’re trying to do.
  • She also introduced me to a wonderful idea, the wet palette. The idea is that it is a plastic box, with a wet sponge in the bottom, and a special paper (somewhat like wax paper or butcher paper) above that. Paints go on the paper, and the sponge keeps it moist for hours. Seal up the box, and it will last for days or weeks – no more mixing a color only to have it dry out too fast!

And now, some pictures…

I should note that it runs just fine under wine (tested: 1.1.31 aka the one which ships with Ubuntu 9.10).

Oh, and for the curious, the maintainers of the WineHQ AppDB drop “old” versions of Wine, without respect to what is currently shipping in distros. Try to be nice and submit a compatibility report and it will be rejected if you try to fudge the version number. KEEP OLD VERSIONS IN THE SELECT LIST. Lamers.

With additional notes from:
http://www.stgraber.org/2009/11/06/lxc-containers-or-extremely-fast-virtualization
http://linux-vserver.org/Upstart_issues
http://lxc.teegra.net/

1.) Note that you likely want to create a separate partition for machines and put the machines there.

2.) apt-get install lxc debootstrap
(Note – this is pretty inefficient in terms of space. The lxc setup does allow for read-only mounts of things. So, it can have its own /etc and html docs but share binaries and libraries with the host. But, I didn’t do it that way for ease of backups)

3.) Set up cgroup
mkdir /var/cgroup
mount -t cgroup cgroup /var/cgroup

probably want to add it to /etc/fstab as well:
cgroup /var/cgroup cgroup defaults 0 0

4.) Add a bridged network interface:
brctl addbr br0
brctl setfd br0 0
- bring up the bridge with a given IP
ifconfig br0 promisc up
- add the existing interface and set it to a bad
brctl addif br0 wlan0
ifconfig wlan0 0.0.0.0 up

5.) Bootstrap a basic system
mkdir machine
sudo debootstrap --arch i386 karmic machine

6.) Create a config file:
lxc.utsname = my_ssh_container
lxc.network.type = veth
lxc.network.flags = up
lxc.network.link = br0
lxc.network.ipv4 = 192.168.9.151/24
lxc.network.name = eth0
lxc.mount = /var/lxc-machines/machine/fstab
lxc.rootfs = /var/lxc-machines/machine/rootfs


7.) Create the machine:
lxc-create -n trac -f /var/lxc-machines/machine/config

8.) edit the appropriate files on the guest
/etc/fstab:
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
- /etc/resolv.conf
- /etc/hosts
- /etc/hostname
– Set them up correctly

/etc/init
- remove the following files:
rm control-alt-delete.conf hwclock.conf \
hwclock-save.conf mountall.conf mountall-net.conf \
mountall-reboot.conf mountall-shell.conf \
networking.conf procps.conf rsyslog-kmsg.conf \
tty2.conf tty3.conf tty4.conf tty5.conf \
tty6.conf upstart-udev-bridge.conf

- Create lxc.conf to generate things:
start on startup
script

       >/etc/mtab
       mount -a
       initctl emit virtual-filesystems
       initctl emit local-filesystems
       initctl emit remote-filesystems
       initctl emit filesystem
       ifdown eth0
       ifup eth0

end script

- /etc/apt
grab the sources.list from the host (if guest is same as host) or make one

- /etc/init/rc.sysinit.conf and change the line:
start on filesystem and net-device-up IFACE=lo
to:
start on filesystem
Important: This seems to be fragile in that system updates seem to put it back. If all your machines won’t boot suddenly, check this.

- bootstrap a basic bash so the various nice utilities work:
lxc-start -n trac bash

- add user.
- add admin group
- set sudoers to allow admin group
- add user to admin group
- Generate locale: sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8

9.) Start the machine:
lxc-start -n machine init &

Start for real:
lxc-start -n machine

10.) Notes:

Console:
sudo lxc-console -n machine

Debugging:
lxc-start -l DEBUG -o $(tty) --name machine

When running several:

java -jar something.jar

GNU ps actually shows which is which, because it includes the name of the jar file.

Windows just shows javaw.exe for all of them, so you don’t know what you’re killing.

This does not currently apply to the states, as this was an appeal from a DC court, and thus is strictly federal.

I should mention that, were it still in effect, this would likely have resulted in the overturning of the assault weapons ban. After all, the ruling was that they can’t ban guns (defacto ban or actual).

Now, McDonald v. Chicago may very well incorporate this down to the states.

If that happens, expect the state assault weapons bans to go be overturned, and the very restrictive gun registration requirements (say, NY City)

I would expect the more reasonable ones (say NY State) to stick around.

So, for me, this is a net win – no more “NY Compliant” black rifles, but I still need to wait for 2 weeks to buy a handgun.

That said, the handgun registry served two purposes:

1. You got background checked by the Sheriff before getting your new gun
2. Your handguns are recorded in a registry

The gun registry and corresponding ballistic databank have been cited as abject failures by every independent study done on them.

The background check is redundant with the federal NICS check.

It would be nice of politicians were rational, saved some money, and abolished these useless enterprises. However, I don’t hold out much hope for that happening. It seems easier to enact laws than get rid of them.

Win.

(More to come. I’ll also be updating the community docs once I have all the kinks ironed out.)

Given:

• computers have become a sufficient commodity that everyone has their own
• disk space (eg fast local storage) is cheap

We can evaluate our objectives in that context:

1. Centralized application distribution is no longer necessary in that sense. Just add an additional in-house repository to your clients’ existing repository list and you’ve done the same thing, only with fast local storage. I mean, I suppose you could still install them to /usr/local, but it wouldn’t be a network mount.
2. On the individual machine side, I’d also tend to install things like video games in /usr/local, so that all users could share them – except there’s only one user on the machine, so what’s the point? For that matter, rather than installing whatever it was on two machines, just install it in your homedir and sync it amongst machines. For that matter, if it doesn’t work in the machine, just exclude it from the sync list.

I suppose that this isn’t really revolutionary, but I just realized that I was doing it stupidly, so I figured I’d share.

Lizzy, my father in law and I went to the Saratoga gun show today. Of note:

• Ammo prices to be back down to reasonably sane levels.
• Several vendors had black rifles, with prices being reasonable. New SR 556 and Sig 556 rifles were in the $1500 range. I didn’t see a Sig 516, but considering it’s not on their website yet, that’s unsurprising. There were also some very nice US and Russian production AK’s for about $800.
• Stag arms is also apparently doing a piston drive AR for a reasonable price as well, the Model 8. The price on that was very close to MSRP, however, at $1100. Still, it’s an $1100 piston drive AR, which is a bit more the speed I’m looking at.. just not today.
• I was very tempted by a fixer-upper M1 Garand (visible rust under the bluing, lots of bluing worn off, crappy plastic stock) for $700, but I didn’t even bother to pull it off the rack because the last thing I need right now is another project.
• There was a tempting Savage in .30-06 with crappy scope for $270, but the barrel had some visible rust on it as well. Once again, I could have fixed it up, but if I was going to buy a Savage, I’d want one of those accu-triggers. Still, that’s a rifle you can not feel bad about getting a little wet out in a stand or something. But, I passed.
• There was another nice Remington in 7mm Rem Mag, for $575, but it was too nice. Nicely blued, beautiful wood, but I’d feel bad getting that one wet.
• I did, however, find a used Taurus PT145 (this the current production one, mine is older) for $300 (with the two factory mags and standard white dot sights). I’d had my eye on the newer and smaller PT745, but after handling the 145, it really wasn’t that small This looks to have been someone’s carry gun, given a decent amount of wear at the muzzle. However, the gun is clean, the two mags brand new, the feed ramp slick, no sign of wear at the ramp, etc. Carried a lot and shot a little, by the looks of it, which is always a good thing.

So, weerdbeard can stop nagging me about replacing my .25 auto.