Umbral Echoes Blog

I decided to spend my 30th birthday with the White Wolf/CCP crew at The Grand Masquerade in New Orleans this year. And man was it a blast.  I had planned to do this in one post, but realized that would be a gargantuan post, so I'll do this piecemeal. So…

Day 1: Wednesday

Lauren and I drove down, got stuck behind a wreck on I-10 for over an hour, and checked in to The Roosevelt around 11. The early day was busy with work and I didn't think to eat, so the only meal I had was an Arby's meal around 3pm. This will be important in a little bit.

The hotel was… well, "fucking amazing" doesn't cover it. Opulent, gorgeous, refined, luxurious, and then some. I booked a suite, and I'm damn glad I did — not because the normal rooms are bad (they're also amazing), but the suites are that fucking sweet. Yeah, I just said that. A picture of the foyer is above, and the main bedroom is below.After having been cooped up in the car for so long, I was ready to explore. Lauren, having had to get up at 3am that morning, understandably wanted some sleep.  So, off I went to Bourbon Street alone.

Are you starting to see where that "only ate once that day" might come into play?

So I wander down Bourbon St. and find that it's pretty much exactly as I'd expected: every single establishment is either a bar, a bar with food (for some reason, they seem to think that margaritas and pizza go together as well as peanut butter and chocolate), or a strip club. None seemed to stand out until I saw a place that purported to have the most beers on Bourbon St. So I sat down and had myself an Arrogant Bastard (shut up, just shut up — it's a tasty beer!)… which ended up being $10.50. Leave it to me to find the only expensive alcohol on Bourbon St.

As I was finishing my tres-expensive beer, I got texts from some of the White Wolf crew telling me to join them at karaoke. I had a hard time figuring it out, since most of them were too drunk to correctly relay the name, but eventually figured it out to be the Cat's Meow. So I head that way, already tipsy from my one pint of high-grav beer.

I arrive to what I expect: lots of drunken White Wolf people, having pretty much taken over the place. Craig recommends the Hurricanes, I go get one. It is a $7.50 bucket of rum. Sweet, sweet rum. I take one sip and know this is dangerous. I go do the social butterfly thing, and after talking to Chris McDonough and giving him some completely heterosexual man-hugs, I look over to find my drink… stolen. For the first time in my life, I had my drink stolen. I felt robbed, I felt raped, I felt… okay well seriously I was only slightly annoyed.

"What the fuck?! Son of a…. well fuck it, they're only $7.50."

I should have taken the drink being stolen as a sign to stop. But I was only halfway through it, and I'm not a quitter. So I manned up and got another Huge Bucket of Rum^TM.  Remember how I said I'd only eaten once?  Yeah.

I don't remember a lot after that, other than stumbling home, buying Lauren a hot dog and having a bite of it myself, and then a few hours worshiping the porcelain goddess. At one point I was seriously wondering if I had alcohol poisoning. But I made it through, and around 5am went into restful slumber. Or to put it another way, I passed the fuck out.

Thus ended Day 1 of my grand adventure in New Orleans.

This post is in relation to the World of Darkness Online MMO that was recently announced at The Grand Masquerade. I've heard a few gripes that seem to come up a lot in various forms and forums, and I would like to address them here. Most of my thoughts boil down to: stop making assumptions, and have patience.

They aren't adding in X supernatural type, so I'm not going to play this game!

So what have they said?

The top-level points below have been outright stated (mostly at The Grand Masquerade), sub-points are logical extensions that others have drawn.

• It will be a player-driven game with lots of social and political elements.
  • Giving power to the players is a double-edged sword. So while they might not have mechanics to stop someone from talking in netspeak and being a douche, other players will presumably have the power to smack that bitch down¹.
• The themes that the game explores will be: Mystery, Romance, Power, Danger.
• It will be an adult game, that aims to invoke emotion in you.
• Vampires will be the only supernatural player characters, but stuff from the other games will be present in some form. Also, there will be the option to play a human, though no specifics on that were given.
  •  Other supernaturals will most likely be environmental content, NPCs, that sort of thing.
  •  Humans will likely be ghouls or blood dolls, but maybe we could see some human vampire hunter PCs too.
• Character customizability and aesthetics will be big in this game. They have even hired a fashion consultant.
• They want to make the game as accessible as possible, and this is one of their criteria for success. So they want it to be fun for both hardcore and casual gamers.
• They also want to cater to an array of players by having three ways you can play the game: sandbox (open-ended like EVE), theme park (traditional MMOs like WoW), and coffee shop (social). These playstyles will be interconnected, with each one feeding to and from one of the others.
• The game will not be combat-intensive, unless you choose to play it that way.
  •  Being the biggest social/political mover and shaker will garner you far more power than being the strongest fighter.
• Factions and territories will be a big part of the game.
• The game will have gay clubs.
• The game will be fully PvP, but that's not to say that you can be attacked anywhere. If you don't want to get attacked, you might want to hang around Elysium a lot.
  • This will probably be like any LARP. If you go down a dark alleyway, you might get jumped by your enemies, or even some random person. On the other hand, if the person jumping you breaks the Masquerade, they're in for trouble.
• Some Disciplines will not be included because they're impossible to have in an MMO, like Temporis.

There are some other things, mostly other nitty-gritty stuff like they are using Scrum development methodologies, have already spent like 314 man-years (which equals one Shane DeFreest year)  in development, etc. But that's the core of what is publicly known about the game so far.

I run an unmoderated roleplaying chat, and I've been wanting to upgrade the chat software I'm using (currently Flash chat from Tufat.com) to something a little better. Most of the "better" packages require having a Flash server installed, but Adobe's is pretty expensive. There's an open-source alternative written in Java called Red5.

However, Red5 currently suffers from pretty bad documentation. So, here's a tutorial on how to install Red5 0.9.1 under CentOS 5.

1. Get root access (I'm not sure if this step is really necessary, but it was in my case)
   From the command prompt, execute:
   sudo -i
    
2. Install Java
   From the command prompt, execute:
   yum -y install java-1.6.0-openjdk java-1.6.0-openjdk-devel
    
3. Install Ant
   From the command prompt, execute:
   cd /usr/src
   wget http://opensource.become.com/apache/ant/binaries/apache-ant-1.7.1-bin.tar.gz
   tar zxvf apache-ant-1.7.1-bin.tar.gz
   mv apache-ant-1.7.1/ /usr/local/ant
    
4. Export variables for Ant and Java
   From the command prompt, execute:
   export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/ant
   export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java
   export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/ant/bin
   export CLASSPATH=.:$JAVA_HOME/lib/classes.zip
   echo 'export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/ant' >> /etc/bashrc
   echo 'export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java' >> /etc/bashrc
   echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/ant/bin' >> /etc/bashrc
   echo 'export CLASSPATH=.:$JAVA_HOME/lib/classes.zip' >> /etc/bashrc
    
5. Download and install Red5 Server
   From the command prompt, execute:
   cd /usr/src
   svn checkout http://red5.googlecode.com/svn/java/server/trunk/red5
   mv red5 /usr/local/
   cd /usr/local/red5
   ant prepare
   ant dist

    

   You should see lots of output, and at the end it should say "Build successful."  If you see some errors instead of that, it's probably because you don't have Java or Ant installed correctly.  I'm not really experienced enough to give troubleshooting tips with that.
    

6. (Optional) Edit Red5 config file
   By default, the config sets Red5 up to bind to all IPs.  If you don't want it to do that, edit red5/conf/red5.properties file, and anywhere you see the IP 0.0.0.0 replace it with your server's actual IP address. You can find this IP by executing this command:
   /sbin/ifconfig eth0| grep 'inet addr:'
   Then use the IP address listed directly after "inet addr:"
    
7. Install Tomcat container
   This is necessary to make it so that you can verify your installation and administer it via the web.

    

   1. Create the directory red5/plugins.
   2. Go to http://www.red5.org/wiki/AppServer/JEEContainerPlugins, download the pre-compiled Tomcat JAR and save it to red5/plugins
   3. Look inside of that Tomcat JAR (you can rename it to .zip and unzip it if need be), extract the jee-container.xml file, replace your current red5/conf/jee-container.xml file with that one.
   4. Go to http://code.google.com/p/red5/source/browse/#svn/repository/tomcat, save the latest version of each file there to red5/plugins
      • As of when this guide was written, this includes 6.0.26 of Catalina and Jasper and Tomcat-Coyote, and 6.0.20 of Tomcat-dbcp, Tomcat-juli, and Tomcat-juli-adapters
         
8. Start Red5 and test installation
   From the command prompt in the /usr/local/red5 directory, execute:
   ./red5.sh
   If all goes well, that should end with something to the effect of "[INFO] [Launcher:/installer] org.red5.server.service.Installer – Installer service created".  If it hangs at "Bootstrap complete," that most likely means that you did not correctly install the Tomcat container in the previous step.

Note that when you launch from the command line, if you kill that terminal window then Red5 will stop running as well. In not too long I'm going to update this tutorial to show you how to get around that.

It seems to me that the vast majority of people have political beliefs that benefit their situation. That seems natural, but then again, isn't selfishness something that we as humans try to work past? Civilization exists for the greater good of everyone, after all.

But again, it seems that most people are unable to grasp this, or at best they justify selfishness with logic instead of looking at things logically from the get-go. The rich say, "Less taxes on the rich!" The poor and middle class say, "More taxes on the rich!" This is normal, and people who hold selfish political beliefs generally don't interest me. It's expected. Though sometimes their systems of self-justification are interesting, ranging from thought-provoking to absurd.

What really pique my interest are people whose political views don't benefit themselves, or people like themselves. The person who says, "You know, I'd be okay with paying more taxes." The rich woman who says, "I think welfare is a necessary part of our society." The all-American country boy who says, "Shit, let more Mexicans in — they're just takin' the jobs we don't wanna do anyway!" The unemployed man who says, "I think unemployment benefits are too high." The girl eligible for disability who says, "I don't need this." The retired person who says, "I don't think there should be social security."

I personally hold some political beliefs that definitely don't benefit me. I think that taxes need to be higher — though I also think that government spending needs to be more efficient. I'm fine with the near-fact that people in my generation will pay social security but not get anything back from it. Not all of my political beliefs are that way, of course, but a few are. And though I know a few people who are the same, it seems that by and large, such people are very much in the minority.

This would seem to me to lead toward a tyranny of the majority. If 75% of the (voting) people realize that they can take resources from everyone else, and they vote for candidates that enact laws which benefit them (at cost to others), then… well, I think you can see where this is headed.

This line of thought always leads me to this quote, which is often attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler though its origins are still unclear (some attribute it to Alexis de Tocqueville):

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.

Sounds a little scary, huh?

I will start this out by saying that DragonCon was my first convention ever. I went on a lark at the last minute in 2003 thanks to a friend, and had an absolute blast. I met tons of new and completely awesome people (I'm still good friends with my roommates from the first year), saw lots of cool panels, took hundreds of pictures, and got almost no sleep because I was too excited to waste my time sleeping.

Since then, the convention has gotten different for me, and in general. I hardly take any pictures. Yes, it's full of awesome costumes. They'll be there next year too. And the year after. I go to fewer panels. As time goes on, DragonCon is more about hanging out with friends and partying than it is seeing celebs or sitting in on panels. Many of those friends, I only get to see once a year at DragonCon, in fact. So generally I plan one or two panel-type things to do per day, max, and otherwise just fly by the seat of my pants.

Caveat: A lot of this might seem very doom and gloom. My intent here is to prepare you for the worst. Things aren't necessarily this bad, but if you go in prepared for what could happen, you will have a much better con experience.

What you came here for

Okay, enough with the reminiscing. DragonCon, if done improperly, is a torturous thing. Some bits of advice actually come from the pitfalls the poor E experienced in that linked blog post. So here are some tips to get you through the convention:

• Parking: Don't park downtown. For the love of Cthulu, just don't do it. If you're lucky, it will only be absurdly expensive. If you're not lucky, you'll get your car booted. Most of the little lots that seem like they're cheap will "reset" at 6am, so you have to pay again around 6-7am or have your car booted (which will cost you about $75). They are especially bad about doing this on Saturday morning, when the parade is. I speak from experience (see picture to the right). So where do you park? The convention hotels are all right by the Peachtree MARTA rail station, so I highly advise that you park at a MARTA station with long-term parking, and take the train down. Some MARTA stations will charge $5 per day, and some are free. For those of you who have never taken public transportation before: don't panic. It's very easy, and safe, and after you've done it you'll laugh at yourself for being so nervous about it.
• Hotels: Book at one of the convention hotels, in October or November. Whenever they open up, book a room at one of the convention hotels (preferably Marriott, Hyatt, or Hilton). It's well worth it to have your room right there, without having to take a cab or train back. They are expensive though; with taxes, plan on paying around $200 per night.
• Hotel check-in: Do it early, request a low floor. Elevator wait times are absurd. Really, really absurd. At 1am, you seriously might have to wait 30+ minutes to get on an elevator. So if you can get a floor low enough that you can just use the stairs, do it. Also, by "early" I mean, get there around 11am on Thursday. Have a job or something else that prevents you from coming until Friday? Pray that some non-convention-goer left a room on Friday. Otherwise, you're fucked.
• Elevators: Go down to go up (and vice-versa). It's sad that people do this, because it actually slows down the elevators overall. But because so many other people do it, you sort of have to, in order to get anywhere. So no matter which direction you're going, push both buttons, and hop on the first elevator with a spot regardless of which way it's going.
• Badge lines: Bring a book. This year, on-site registration (the people who didn't get one ahead of time) had very short lines, like 30 minutes or less. For those who wanted to save money and pre-registered? 5-6 hour waits. No exaggeration. However, I'm betting that because of that serious dichotomy, more people will pay on-site next year. So either way, plan on staying a while. I suggest getting in line Thursday or Friday morning, about an hour before the lines actually open up. That way you'll only have around 2 hours total waiting, and it won't be in the blistering hot Atlanta sun.
  Edit: Next year they're supposed to be using a barcode scanning system that will speed things up. Cross your fingers and hope that it works; if so, waits should be more like 1-2 hours max.
  • Alternatively, you can do what I did and get an eternal badge. This is if you know you're going to be coming to at least 10 more Dragon*Cons, otherwise it's not worth it. But if you are, you pay 10x the going rate for on-site registration (this last year that meant $1,000), and you get a forever pass. Now, you still have to get a badge each year, you just don't have to pay for it and you get in a special eternals-only line, which has almost no wait.
• Celebrity panels: Watch them on Dragon*Con TV. Seriously. It's either that, or get in line 3 hours before the panel begins. If you only get there an hour early, you won't get in. This also applies to otherwise popular panels, like the Buffy Horror Picture Show, and pretty much anything to do with Firefly. Lines literally wrap around the hotels for these panels. If someone is being organized about it, they'll count and say, "Everyone past here won't get in." That level of organization and thought is a very rare occurrence though.
  Edit: This isn't necessarily true in all cases (mainly for popular celebs/shows, though sometimes even then you'll get lucky), but it's best to plan ahead. If you get there 3 hours early and no one is in line, go do something else for 30-45 minutes then come back.
• Room parties: find where they are, and go to them. DigiTribe usually has an awesome open roomparty all weekend long. They don't charge for booze, but they gladly accept donations, so please toss 'em a few bucks so that they don't run out on Friday night. There are other cool room parties, but sometimes you just have to know someone throwing one, to know where they are.
• Drinking: Know your limits, stick to one type of drink. Trust me, it is Bad News^TM to start off with beer, move to vodka crans, then finish the night off with a Jaeger bomb. Other normal drinking rules apply: know your limits, eat well beforehand, and if you're female don't leave your drink unattended (I've never heard of someone getting slipped something in their drink at DCon, but better safe than sorry). Also, stock up on Saturday. Beer and liquor cannot be sold at bars on Sunday in Georgia (only at bars). Yeah, fuck the Bible Belt and our teetotalling governor. Also, don't buy drinks at Pulse in the Marriott. They're stupid expensive, like $16 for a Grey Goose martini expensive. Rum buckets are the way to go, generally available at the bar on the smoker's deck of the Hyatt. $12 for about 6-8 shots of rum in a tasty mixed drink. Cross the street from Marriott to Hyatt, go up the stairs, and the smoker's deck is the area right before all the glass doors.
• Eating: bring snacks, don't expect to get a seat in the food court. The places in the food court are actually pretty decent at getting people their food quickly. And they are amazingly nice for having to deal with such a horde of people. But there is simply not enough seating for everyone. So be prepared to go back to your hotel room to eat, or to camp out on the floor somewhere. Also, bring snacks. Not only can they help you wait until after the lunch/dinner rush, they come in quite handy at 3am when you're plastered and really need something other than booze to put in your stomach. There's only one good 24-hour food place near the convention, the Metro Café Diner.
• Buying stuff: avoid impulse buys (generally). What I do is take a picture of things I want on Friday (along with the price tag and booth it's at), then on Saturday or Sunday if I still want them, I'll buy. However, if there's only one or two of what you want left, this rule doesn't necessarily apply. This year, I lost out on getting a sweet leather mask because I waited too long.
• Walking around: be careful where you walk. This actually consists of a few parts:
  • Do not, under any circumstances, just stop where you are. Step off to the side, then stop. If you can't find a place outside of traffic in the immediate vicinity, then keep walking until you do. Otherwise the fifty people behind you will keep moving forward while you're trying to stop, and you are the loser in that equation. This applies everywhere with crowds, including the dealer rooms.
  • Don't rush into empty pockets in crowds. If you're in a really crowded area and you see a big empty pocket? Look again; there's someone trying to set up a picture there. They've probably been trying to do so for the past few minutes because dumbasses keep getting in their way. Do not be one of those dumbasses.
  • When you get to the bottom of escalators, keep moving. If there are people not moving in front of you when you get to the bottom, yell at them. If they don't respond immediately, push them the fuck out of the way. Screw politeness; this is safety. People get hurt because of stop-ups at the bottom of the escalator. If you stop, even if it's because someone in front of you is stopped, expect to be pushed. Really, the people behind you have absolutely no choice in the matter — that escalator sure as hell isn't stopping, after all. (Note: usually there will be hotel security staff making sure that people keep moving. Do not be angry at them; they keep things sane.)
    
• Waiting in lines: be sociable. You'll be surprised at the awesome people you will meet while waiting in line. Plus, it helps pass the time.

I think that about covers my advice. What do you think; is there anything I left out?

Edits/additions based on feedback

• Bathe. Do this, every day. If you need to, bathe once in the morning and once in the afternoon or evening. Remember the rule of thumb: if you can smell yourself at all, other people smell it ten times worse. And if you really hate the funk on others, carry a small bottle of Febreeze and spritz people who stink around you. Be nice about it, and they'll probably even thank you, since most geeks don't seem to be aware of the statement in bold above. The same goes for bad breath — carry some gum with you and offer it to people with halitosis when having a conversation. If you talk to enough people, this will happen.
• Beggars: ignore them. Whenever you go even a half-block from the hotel, beggars will ask you for money. They all have a story ("I just need a buck or two to pay for a bus ride back to my family in <city>"). These stories are not true. Do not give them money. Do not tell them "no." The only defense is to pretend like they don't exist. Seriously, even if they get in your personal space, just ignore them. Have a conversation with your friend as if the beggar were incorporeal and invisible. This is the only way to get them to go away. If you tell them, "Sorry I don't have cash," or anything else, they will pester you even more, because you have acknowledged their existence.
• Health: beware the con crud. You've got tens of thousands of people packed into a small area. So carry water with you, don't share drinks or food, wash your hands before eating, and bring some vitamin C along. And if you don't like secondhand smoke, avoid all smoking areas at all costs, especially the smoker's deck at the Hyatt (just outside the Hyatt series of glass doors on the way to the Marriott). Also, if you're drunk, beware the stairs down from there to the street — they will test your equilibrium.
• Costumes and clothing: think it through. First off, they don't call it Hotlanta for nothin'. You're going to be walking around in the heat, so keep this in mind when you're planning your costume. And if you're doing body paint, use sealers so it doesn't run everywhere when you start sweating. Also, you're going to be doing a lot of walking. Ladies (and guys), this means wear comfortable shoes. At the very least, have a backup plan for when those sexy 4-inch stilettos get unbearable. If you're making a complex costume, remember that at some point, you're going to need to use the restroom. Make sure your costume can accommodate that.
• Be nice, and have thick skin. This weekend is fun, but also stressful for a lot of people. A lot of the people here are introverts, and don't do well in large crowds. So try to be nice to them. Also treat the convention staff and hotel staff well. They have to put up with a lot of shit. Don't add to it. They might even be short with you; if so, be nice — you'll be surprised how far you can go with that (apparently this doesn't work on the dicktards who boot cars in the parking lots though).

There were a few neat improvements in iOS 4.1. It had some smaller bug fixes of course, like fixing the proximity sensor so that you're less likely to hit the mute or end call buttons with your cheek while you're talking. Neither has happened to me, but my girlfriend did once suffer from the accidental mute issue. It also has a game interaction feature, where you can invite friends to join in on games, earn achievements (I couldn't personally care less, but there seems to be a craze over achievements in the gaming world), and that sort of thing.

But there were two big updates that really interested me personally: high-def uploads, and HDR photos.

High-Def Uploads

Now the built-in movie uploader (which can upload to YouTube) is able to upload in full 720p high-def. if you're on a WiFi network. It used to force the resolution down, so my first iPhone 4 test video actually got uploaded as low-def.

HDR Photos

HDR stands for "high dynamic range." You only really need to use this option if the photo you're taking has very bright and/or very dark areas that you want to come out better. The phone snaps 2 shots in quick succession and uses some magic to combine them into one good shot with (more) consistent lighting.

Here's an example, normal on left, HDR on right:

You can click the images for higher-resolution versions.  However, this doesn't really do much for photos that aren't high-contrast. Here's an example of a normal and HDR version of a picture with consistent lighting:

The second one actually looks worse, in my opinion — a little more washed-out (since it's darkening the really light areas and lightening the dark areas). So make sure to only use this option when you need it.