Fly For Fun! A WoW replacement?

I've been searching for a way to play an on-line role playing game (MMORPG) without the $15/mo bill. Until this weekend I couldn't find anything better than World of Warcraft (WOW), which has the $15/mo bill. (And if I want to play with my 9-year old it comes out to $30.)

Then I fond Fly For Fun. (flyff) Check it out! http://flyff.gpotato.com In less than 12 hours, at level 20 you can engage in 3-D aerial combat! The game is FREE. The client is free. The playtime is free. It is a bit of a grindfest, until you meet some folks who will group with you. There is world-wide dueling. There is a PK server if you go in for that. The only time you pay is if you want the extra "edge". For example you can buy potions that give you unlimited mana or health for 20 minutes, or a flying mount that goes faster than the in-game versions. It's a better deal than the other MMORPGs because you only pay for what you want, and that probably depends on how into the game you are.

Also, this is the first free MMORPG I've seen that lets you jump, and has good 3-D effects.

Enjoy!

Installing and Running Tomcat on Ubuntu

This link was pretty helpful: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=44006 except that the instructions for installing sun-jre and sun-j2sdk don't work. So of course Tomcat doesn't run.

How to fix? It seemed like java was installed. In fact java -version and javac -help gave good results. But where? It took some digging. I found the update-alternatives helpful. It helped me find where java was REALLY installed. On my system when I do:
$ update-alternatives --display java
I get the following:
java - status is auto.
link currently points to /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/java
/usr/bin/gij-4.2 - priority 42
slave java.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/gij-4.2.1.gz
/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/java - priority 53
slave java.1.gz: /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/man/man1/java.1.gz
Current `best' version is /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/java.

So the trick to getting Tomcat to start per the instructions was to set
$ export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun

Installing and running open-vm-tools on Ubuntu

1. Built the VMWare appliance. Followed these excellent instructions. Used Ubuntu 7.10 desktop. Set up a 30GB virtual drive and a bridged network. Used 512MB.
   
2. Figured out that USED to have to use the VMWare Workstation to install the tools on your VMWare appliance if you've not got the tools on the guest. BUT VMWare just this September made the tools open source and you can build your own. Downloaded the source here. Droped the source directory into my home directory and built there.
   
3. Read the README. Ran configure and make as instructed.
4. Anytime I got an error, I read the message and figured out what libraries were missing. Then I went and found those and used apt-get install to install them. At the bottom of this post I've listed a bunch of libraries I had to install. If you don't know how to use apt or the package manager for your system, go buy and read the "Linux Phrasebook" by Scott Granneman. Scott covers both Debian apt, Red Hat RPM, and YUM.
   
5. Got to the point where I had everything built without errors in an open-vm-tools directory. After some experimentation ran the following 2 commands from the root of the build directory to get the seamless mouseover and copy-paste to work between the VM appliance and the Windows XP host. (Which is the main reason I wanted to install the tools.)
   

$ sudo vmware-user/vmware-user &
$ sudo guestd/guestd &

Hope this helps!

Following are some of the package dependencies. (From: http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/archive/index.php/t-755.html )

# core dependancies (for stable/development)
sudo apt-get install build-essential libxcomposite-dev libpng-dev libsm-dev libxrandr-dev libxdamage-dev libxinerama-dev libstartup-notification0-dev libgconf2-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev

# for gtk (also installs cairo-dev)
sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev libwnck-dev

# for metacity
sudo apt-get install libmetacity-dev

# for svg (--enable-librsvg)
sudo apt-get install librsvg2-dev

# for dbus
sudo apt-get install libdbus-1-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev

# for fuse
sudo apt-get install libfuse-dev

# for gnome-integration
sudo apt-get install libgnome-desktop-dev libgnome-window-settings-dev

# additional things needed for downloading/compiling from git
sudo apt-get install gitweb curl autoconf automake automake1.9 libtool intltool libxslt1-dev xsltproc

Ann Coulter's "If Democrates Had Any Brains"

Saw Ann's book If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans in the bookstore. How about a book titled If Ann Coulter Had Any Brains, She'd Be A Man. She'd earn more, get laid on a regular basis, and could even stick it to other guys. I suspect there's enough material here for book. Feel free to take the title and run!