The Mind Of OverlordTomala
Food/Drink

Belly of zen

It’s been awhile since I’ve done much in the kitchen. During the holidays we were so pressed for time that we had to live on unsatisfying pre packaged food just to fill ourselves, but that hell is over or at the very least reduced. I bought a bunch of vegetables today and made soba noodle bowls with a cucumber salad and some pot stickers on the side. I would have made my own sauces but was sorely lacking in the soy sauce dept, fortunately I had my emergency Asian sauces to save the day!

It felt good to eat a healthier meal, plus its been so long since I’ve done anything Asian. Everything had the right amount of seasoning and spice to it.

Now to plot my next dinner menu…

Site Related / Technology

Auf wiedersehen Gutenberg

In a recent update to WordPress (starting with 5.0 IIRC) they changed the text editor style to a new version called Gutenberg that changes the way you write your posts. This was being tested in earlier versions of WordPress as a mere plugin, out of curiocity I took a quick look at it during that period and went back to the regular style at the time just because I didn’t have much time to scope it out. Fast forward to the 5.0 update and now everyone has to use it (unless you install the classic editor plugin). I was tempted to go back to the classic editor myself, but then I decided to test myself by writing some posts with it.

Upon immediate glance I can tell this is designed for posting via smart devices… that’s strike 1. It’s great to include more devices so you can give writers a chance to post their thoughts or content from almost anywhere, but at the same time you shouldn’t neglect your other audience that holds a powerful tool that most mobile users sorely lack, a well sized keyboard to type on.

Gutenberg’s most praised feature is the “block” system… because this is 2018 and blocks are a thing. Instead of having a small toolbar and clicking an icon, like blockquoting something or posting an image, you click a plus and choose if you want an image, a quote, hell even a paragraph! You know, something you could write NATURALLY! Again, it makes more sense on mobile… but on PC that’s just an added step. Though not to completely bash it I do like being able to move paragraphs and other blocks around if I feel the need to arrange something.

I’ve mainly gone back to using the classic editor plugin. I like some of the ideas they’ve put into the new editor, but the inconveniences outweigh the new features. I’ll stick with the classic editor for now.

All in an Overlord's day / Gaming

Holiday Open Thread

I hope everyone is having a good holiday. Mine was nice and quiet, opened presents, ate holiday candy, drank tea, and enjoyed not having to work. The only drama I had to endure was Humble Bundle’s failed attempts at gift receiving from another friend. For whatever reason I’m not getting Humble Bundle emails, and apparently this is a common issue mainly with people who use Microsoft’s email service, which is interesting since I run my own private email server. Meaning that if I want to receive games through humble bundle I have to have someone send the key to me straight.

I also made some more game purchases, both for myself and others. They’re downloaded and ready for whenever I’m ready. I was more in a Crash Bandicoot mood today… ok there was also a little Skyrim and Quake Champions… also visited TF2 long enough to get my free swag.

Tomorrow I’ll see about getting back into working on gamer porn, but not without having a little fun first. :trollface:

Gaming

Dipping into my childhood

With the Steam Winter Sale in full swing I gleefully used my free gift card to pick up something I’ve had my eye on ever since they announced a PC release. I’ve been playing the Crash Bandicoot Trilogy, and so far I have to say it’s a really solid port, and I’m not even playing it on Windows. I’ve been trying my best to Crash Crash under Linux, but I manage to keep a rock solid 60 FPS for most of the game, and even then I only see dipping in few areas, at as little as 43 FPS. I played a bit of it on my laptop too, and that stayed at a steady 30 FPS on battery. I spent a good chunk of my day in bed continuing to find some break point where the game might self destruct, but it keeps trotting along just fine. Given this title came out on PC back in March and it runs this well is extremely impressive.

I forgot that you could play as Coco in some of the levels (more so than the originals), which I thought was cool. It was actually around this time years and years ago that I got a Playstation 1 as a gift with some games, and Crash Bandicoot 2 was one of them. I never did get to play games 1 and 3 unless I was over at a relatives house. So it’s nice to finally get a hold of the trilogy. I do plan on playing this along side roms of the original games just to see how different each one is. I’ve had them in my collection for awhile now, but with my vast and infinite library it can be difficult to keep up with.

I’m thinking tomorrow I’ll do something Christmasy. I can think of a few games depending on who happens to be around at the time.

Technology

AMD Trades Oculus Support For SteamVR Support

AMD released their new 18.12.2 driver; Featuring a new addition to AMD’s Radeon Adrenalin Software that will enable users to stream their games to Android and iOS via the AMD Link App, including SteamVR across a wide selection of VR Headsets, however… it appears Oculus headsets will no longer be supported by AMD.

AMD’s Radeon ReLive for VR feature won’t support Oculus devices, despite at first being claimed to. The functionality allows for Radeon graphics card owners to stream PC virtual reality games to standalone headsets. Unfortunately, this is inherently tied to SteamVR, which puts it on Facebook’s bad side. Therefore, as AMD has now informed us, it will not support any Oculus devices.

Apparently AMD’s choice to support SteamVR was a step too far, looks like NVidia now has their own exclusive headset… and they didn’t even have to bribe anybody! :trollface: But seriously, that move is going to cost Oculus a pretty penny

Not that any of this matters to me. Facebook’s involvement was enough to discourage me from ever buying into it. The HTC Vive looks sexier by comparison… although I’m not sure if my eyes could handle VR.

Technology1

Paying to be guinea pigs

As if Alexa sharing a local neighbor’s echo information wasn’t bad enough…

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Millions of users of Amazon’s Echo speakers have grown accustomed to the soothing strains of Alexa, the human-sounding virtual assistant that can tell them the weather, order takeout and handle other basic tasks in response to a voice command.

So a customer was shocked last year when Alexa blurted out: “Kill your foster parents.”

I’ll admit, that line really pulled me into the rest of the article. It also reminded me of a story that I heard from one old man who owns one of these Echo’s, apparently his was shouting out “Praise Satan” among other things.

Meanwhile the news just keeps getting better:

Alexa has also chatted with users about sex acts. She gave a discourse on dog defecation. And this summer, a hack Amazon traced back to China may have exposed some customers’ data, according to five people familiar with the events.

Companies like Amazon and Microsoft are blatantly making average everyday end users into beta testers for their products. Microsoft has recently stated that they’ve made it so that every single person using their operating system is a guinea pig. It seems that modern day devices, programs and projects all seem to be stuck in the alpha or beta stage, and Jeff Bezo’s is taking a fairly similar stance with Alexa:

The project has been important to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who signed off on using the company’s customers as guinea pigs, one of the people said. Amazon has been willing to accept the risk of public blunders to stress-test the technology in real life and move Alexa faster up the learning curve, the person said.

Translation: Thank you for beta testing the future!

The privacy implications may be even messier. Consumers might not realize that some of their most sensitive conversations are being recorded by Amazon’s devices, information that could be highly prized by criminals, law enforcement, marketers and others. On Thursday, Amazon said a “human error” let an Alexa customer in Germany access another user’s voice recordings accidentally.

Right now the only “human error” that I see is owning one of these if you value your privacy. Again, this would be another case where I would look at building my own, or at the very least hack these devices if applicable.

Technology1

The Internet Of Things and Stuff

Oh Canada…

Leave it to the Canadians to hack into someone’s security system and politely tell them that it’s insecure, then finish it off with an apology. :v: 

Seriously though, it was a nice gesture and better than the alternate universe version where someone hacks into his security camera and starts livestreaming it to Twitch. Stuff like this is the reason why I wouldn’t want to invest in the smart-enabled setups. If it’s connected to the internet there’s a good chance someone will see it.

All of these electronics are made overseas, on the backs of cheap labor with the idea of turning a profit while providing some form of convenience to the consumer. Things like security are not going to be a top priority in most cases, unless you decide to make your own. If I were to buy a security camera or system I would probably make my own setup using a Raspberry Pi kit. It would be cheaper, have no hidden fees and ideally it would be much more secure.

But, if you thought the above story was bad enough…

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – A user of Amazon’s (AMZN.O) Alexa voice assistant in Germany got access to more than a thousand recordings from another user because of “a human error” by the company.

The customer had asked to listen back to recordings of his own activities made by Alexa but he was also able to access 1,700 audio files from a stranger when Amazon sent him a link, German trade publication c’t reported.


There’s this funny thing I’ve noticed over the years. A good chunk of the people that I know who happen to own these devices and praise how convenient they are also happen to fear things like the government spying on them (as if they were that important to begin with) and yet they have no problems signing over their privacy to corporations that collect data on their users to sell them more stuff.

We seriously need to have laws put in place that encourage companies to do a better job securing their merchandise.


Gaming3

One is silver and the other’s dead

Life is like a box of melons

I got an extremely small portion of one of my videos done today. I spent a good couple hours on animating one character in one scene that still needs refining. I took a break and played a little Skyrim, one of the many games installed onto one of my new drives. It seems to be performing better, key word being “seems” since I’ve crashed twice, but its been about an hour in between each crash.

Do you get to the red light district often? Oh what am I saying… you never left!

I mainly did the same thing that I did in Fallout 4, wander around from place to place killing a bunch of bandits, and Silver Hands despite not becoming a werewolf.. Given that I have more silver than they do I would think they would hire me and make me their leader… but alas, they made the pitiful mistake of trying to slay me with their tarnished silver weapons. I only fall at the sight of extremely polished cutlery dammit. :zorak: 

Gaming4

All work and no play makes me a dull Overlord

After fixing all of my websites, and doing the dusting I wasn’t able to get to last week I felt I deserved to goof off for the sake of goofing off. I’m currently in Vault 75 snooping around. It was a vault located under a school, making it easy for children to get to safety when the nuke went off… or so it starts out that way, further reading makes it look like when the children got older they met a not so happy ending; their organs were harvested and were used to put a curse on Vault 76! Anyone is free to leave the vault, but upon doing so they are forever doomed to wander a wasteland that contains unspeakable horrors like no other! Such as moon walking enemies, immortal enemies, phantom painus in the anus, and sudden disconnection from The Holy Goddess Beth Esda. .. I might be paraphrasing.

Site Related1

MORE DAYS LATER

Soooo I had an almost pants shitting experience… during my lunch break the other day I checked my email only to discover that my website(s) have been deactivated due to a malware attack. :rick: Imagine having to mentally process this while being stuck a mile away from being able to do a fucking thing. :zorak: Eventually when I did get home I went through the malware scan provided by my webhost, backed off all of my files is, deleted everything, installed a fresh version of WordPress via FTP and got a hold of BlueHost to scan my server and give me the go ahead to go back online. I cleaned out the infected files in my blog install (I only had 4) and as you can see I’m up and running again with all of my posts and settings in check. Other blogs that I run through this domain will be following suit, with my brother being the next one to deploy. Fortunately it only added three files to his install, and I didn’t have to edit any lines.

Once that is taken care of I’ll have a lot of catching up to do on not just blogging, but all of the other shit I put off to try and fix this. I guess it’s another blessing I got those new hard drives. I’ll be planning to make backups more frequently. Setting the blog back up was easier this time around.

I may have more good news too; I found my old database holding my old posts among other things, and I may be able to recover those and make my blog whole again. I’ll experiment on a test site to see if I can get it to work, but if I can that would make me really happy.