Month: August 2007

DiGRA 2007 program announced

As the DiGRA Japan team just announced, they have just released the full program for DiGRA 2007 conference. Quickly glancing through, the very first impression: looks promising! Take a look at: http://www.digra2007.jp/Program.html.

Edit: The second look: there seems to be some timing conflicts in this version, though. E.g. in Friday at 16:30 one is forced to choose between MMORPG symposium and the panel session of RPGs (“Character, Player, Game”). The audience for both is pretty much the same, though. There are overlaps also in game design research presentations (Aki Järvinen and Jesper Juul having their sessions at the same time in Saturday), but I suppose it is impossible to avoid totally such overlaps in a conference that is so tightly focused on game studies as DiGRA conferences are. Hope there will be some finetuning of the program yet, though.

Ubuntu troubles

I have now spent more than a week trying to sort out the various troubles I have been having with my Ubuntu linux server. I have upgraded to the most latest versions, then given up and downgraded. I even bought a new hard disk and did a totally clean, new install of the 6.06 LTS server release to get the most absolutely stable version of Ubuntu possible. Yet, I still continue to have issues with the Postfix mail server and now Samba/CUPS printer sharing is working no longer either. I just have to give up, far too much time and energy has been spent to this.

I have consulted and used most of the available how-to guides and installation manuals, including:

I suppose that in most cases most contemporary operating systems work, most of time. But I think these things are still far too fragile to really serve people reliably — each server needs couple of admins to hold its hand, rather than the other way around, having the reliability needed to serve its users.

Ubuntu, WordPress, Copyblogger

As you might see from the site, I am currently evaluating a new style for this blog. Upgraded into Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty, setting the WordPress into its most recent version 2.2.1, it became apparent that I needed either a thorough rewrite of the old theme I had been using, or find a new one that would support the new functionalities. The one that I have chosen is ‘Copyblogger‘ theme by Chris Pearson. I liked the style because it is typographically clear, simple, yet visually strong. It is also fully compatible with Worpress 2.2+, supporting widgets and opening up opportunities for more customisation. I have tweaked yet only little bit with its code, but under the hood I have several new plugins doing their work. Hope you like the style too — and please tell me if you notice anything odd. This site is even more ‘under construction’ than usual for some time now. If I’d only have a more powerful server, to speed things up a bit…
Ubuntu, WordPress, Copyblogger