Friday 1st December, 2006
This site has some great visualisations of how different sorting algorithms work. It not only demonstrates how they work, but their comparative speeds as well. If you've ever used sorting algorithms in your code, I think you'll find this interesting. (Requires Java.)
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Tuesday 7th November, 2006
When I tell my World of Warcraft/EverQuest-playing friends that I play Slash'EM, they usually raise their eyebrows and give me a slightly condescending smile before going on to explain how they prefer 3D graphics, interaction, etc. The fact is that comparing WoW/EQ to Slash'EM is like comparing movies to books. Did you read the Harry Potter books? Did you then go and see the movies? Slightly disappointed? Not quite what you expected? Then you'll have an inkling of what I'm on about.
As with reading, some imagination is required. Compared to it's more modern peers, Slash'EM and its relatives are extremely challenging. If you get it wrong, your character dies. Sometimes your character will die in seemingly grossly unfair circumstances. And it's permanent, unlike in certain other games. C'est la vie. This game hasn't been designed to pander to the requirements of the "I want it all and I want it now" crew.
It's a bit sad that such a fine open source game is easier to install on Windows than it is to install onto many Linux systems. So, hopefully this article will address that issue.
Wednesday 11th October, 2006
I like my desktop to show the correct time. As for my servers, I consider it essential. There are a number of solutions for this. Depending on your platform, these include:
The focus of this article is OpenNTPD running on Linux, although I imagine that much of this will be relevant for other supported operating systems.