It's protocol-compatible (with a few caveats); that is, an application written to use Redis will run happily against Edis.
But it uses an on-disk, log-structured database (Google's LevelDB, in fact) rather than an in-memory datastore. So it's not as fast, but it's not limited by the size of your memory either.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
04:15 PM
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Thursday, December 29
Simonses
While I'm posting Youtube videos of stuff I'm slightly too young to remember, I sure remember this:
But I don't think I ever saw this:
[wavy lines]That was such an awesome show.[/wavy lines]
Yeah, just kidding, even us Aussies can pick those out.
I don't know if those are the actors' natural accents or if the show did that to make the brothers characters more distinctive. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it worked.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, December 29 2011 11:31 AM (PiXy!)
6
Seems to be natural. McRaney grew up in Mississippi. Parker is from Maryland.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, December 29 2011 12:58 PM (+rSRq)
7
The spammer who is afflicting Brickmuppet right now has also been spamming me, which means he is logged in. (I've been deletinng the spams as they've been appearing.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, December 31 2011 01:59 PM (+rSRq)
1
Looks like they added a snow biome in today's patch, too...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Saturday, December 31 2011 05:31 AM (GJQTS)
2
Thanks for pointing out the sale--which is good for another 15 hours or so as I write this; I picked up a copy. Now to figure out how to play.
Posted by: Rick C at Monday, January 02 2012 12:30 PM (/5bLf)
3
1. Hit things with other things.
2. Talk to the guide, assuming he's still around. Mine died and I his replacement got lost in the mail for days, which made my early experience with the game somewhat awkward.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, January 02 2012 10:31 PM (PiXy!)
4
I restarted several times, and from the little I figured out ahead of time I got houses built quick.
One thing i learned is you always spawn in the same place; I got killed twice when I started playing in what turned out to be the middle of the night. Now I level off the area and build a house so I can spawn in safety.
Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, January 03 2012 07:03 AM (/5bLf)
So I was looking for something to do while my keyboard dried out* and this is what I found: The best explanation of what Terraria is about that I've yet seen.**
* I spilled my drink on it, after which it wasn't working terribly well, so I took it outside and hosed it down to get the sugary liquid out... And now it doesn't work at all. I'm typing this on the spare PS/2 keyboard I keep for when the BIOS decides it can't see my usual wireless keyboard.
** For values of "best" slightly skewed from normality.
1
That's cool how he stands in his bathtub, and all the sharks and jellyfish show up.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, December 28 2011 02:40 AM (+rSRq)
2
You mean that doesn't happen to you, Steven? I can't tell you how many times I've gotten out of my shower and had to fight off random sharks and jellyfish. It isn't usually a problem, except when I'm running late for work.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Wednesday, December 28 2011 03:09 AM (f/6aJ)
3
Just as long as you get gems and glow sticks out of it.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, December 28 2011 05:01 AM (+rSRq)
Doesn't apply in Terraria-land. I rescued the wrench wench (the Mechanic) from captivity and can now start building fancy stuff. I have a bomb factory (churns out a new bomb every ten seconds, very handy since they cost 5 silver coins each) and I just tried setting up a little fountain outside Pixy Base.
And turned it off before it flooded my house: More water comes out the outlet pump than goes in the inlet pump.
I can think of some interesting uses for that...
I tunnel my way up into my first floating island, cunningly avoiding the circling harpies...
Today I've managed to knock off the first two bosses (the Eye of Cthulhu and the Eater of Worlds), score a full set of Demonite items (sword, axe, hammer, pickaxe, bow, helmet, armour, greaves), and have enough ore left over from my mining expedition to afford a Minishark ("Half shark, half gun, completely awesome.")
Skeletron awaits.
For those who haven't played it, Terraria is what Nethack would be if it were reimagined as a 2D platformer around 1992.* I haven't yet got to the neat parts where you can build mechanical widgets like the obsidian generator or the goldfish dispenser: I have to rescue the game's wrench wench from the Dungeon where Skeletron stands guard, and pre-shark, I got splatted fairly quickly.
Update: Twenty minutes later, Skeletron is no more. What a difference full-auto makes! Particularly if you're upgrading from an axe...
* Though it would have been rather impractical the way it's actually implemented - with a large world, the game uses around 600MB of RAM, which would have cost something like $20,000 at that time.
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Thursday, December 22
Emerald Anaconda
This is real code:
# Python
def readfile():
for line in open("/some/file"):
yield line
# Ruby
readfile.to_enum.each do |line|
puts line
end
# Python
def iterate_list():
for item in [ 1, 2, 3 ]:
yield item
At least, it's real code if you are running RubyPython.
You can embed JavaScript in Ruby, and Lua in Python, so that gives you four languages in a single environment. Five if you count CoffeeScript, which is a CoffeeScript to JavaScript compiler written in CoffeeScript.*
And you can of course chain things so that Lua can call back to Python which calls back to Ruby which calls a CoffeeScript function which you precompiled to JavaScript.**
* They used magic. ** Because it was there.
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Posted by: RickC at Thursday, December 22 2011 11:42 AM (VKVOz)
2
You can. I've never played it multiplayer, for that matter. (Should try sometime, though...)
It's definitely more of an exploration game than Minecraft. Most of the building I do is on the lines of "I need this to get around easier" or "I want to fight the boss here" or "I'll grow my underground mushrooms here", instead of Minecraft's sand-castle-box feel. On the other hand, the game part is realized a lot better - durable equipment, and lots of it, means you're generally working towards a goal (i.e. "get better gear") and with a specific goal in mind (beyond "dig and hope I hit something good"). There's a few boss monsters and monster events, and a good variety of weird stuff.
Definitely worth what I paid for it.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Thursday, December 22 2011 12:35 PM (pWQz4)
3
I'm thinking of running up a mee.nu Terraria server - partly to experiment with Windows Server.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, December 22 2011 01:18 PM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Friday, December 23 2011 11:27 AM (pWQz4)
5
Thanks to you mentioning it to me the other day, Pixy, I've got hooked again. Gah! I've also not played multiplayer, but colour me interested if you get a server going.
Posted by: Artee at Friday, December 23 2011 01:22 PM (5blmT)
NooooOoOo 12/9 (Fri - 8:25): Did you DG summon the AgentBrand? Because when he said last drop, he also said badger, so I was kinda thinking he meant the Frozen Rose. He also said it after the last Zenovia went down too... Mappy 12/9 (Fri - 8:50): Anyone with The Beast, remember to get your Fresh Fruit today. Cactusshin 12/9 (Fri - 9:09): No--it's just a freak coincidence. Once my WKai goes down, I plan on summoning Jasticus, Fayt, and Zenovia for my own ultra badger.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, December 10 2011 02:47 AM (+rSRq)
2
I'm starting to burn out on Billy, I'm afraid... been there, done that, got everything worth getting, more or less. These days I just sign in when I want to play some hanafuda. Kind of sad, really...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Saturday, December 10 2011 09:21 AM (pWQz4)
3
Incidentally, Pixy, Brick, Ubu, you guys need any SNEs?
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Saturday, December 10 2011 02:50 PM (pWQz4)
4
I actually play the game, and some conversations (like that one) lose me totally.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, December 10 2011 03:03 PM (Nf6le)
5
Thanks Avatar, but my main and both my alts managed to score Over 11000s before 11/11/11, so I'm good for SNEs.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, December 10 2011 05:59 PM (PiXy!)
6
Pretty sure Duck has 'em too (though if you don't, I've got some going to waste...)
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Saturday, December 10 2011 06:03 PM (GJQTS)
7
Nope, Operation Get Wonderduck An Over 11000 was quite successful, and occurred well before EleventyEleven. I've got a plethora of SNEs. But thanks for the offer.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Sunday, December 11 2011 02:20 PM (f/6aJ)
The last comment was either lucky, or was tailored to the content of the blog, as it mentioned a specific anime, then plugged some product that was entirely irrelevant.
You have rather impressively persistent spammers.
Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, December 14 2011 02:41 AM (W1q7B)
I've had parts sitting around to upgrade Nagi, my Windows 7 box, for about a year now. The problem is that I haven't had any time when I could shut it down and do the upgrades.
So what I did instead was buy a few more parts so I can build a whole new computer. The config is a bit of a mish-mash, a mixture of 2010 and 2011 components: A Phenom X4 945, which is not exactly new, but with a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 motherboard and 16GB of DDR3-1600 memory.
8 x 1TB Seagate 7200.11 drives (which is what I already had sitting around; drives are too damn expensive at the moment). And a pair of Radeon 6770 video cards; combined they'll give me the speed of a 6970 for about 40% less expense, and drive 8 monitors at once into the bargain.*
Parts have shipped to the office, where I'll pick them up on Monday, so I can build the system, hopefully, some time after Christmas.
Nagi is three years old now and hasn't ever been reinstalled - I upgraded from the original Vista install to Windows 7 early this year - and is slowly succumbing to bit rot, so it's time for a change. Once Shana is up and running I'll probably reinstall Nagi with the latest Windows Server.
* I don't actually have 8 monitors, but it's the thought that counts.
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Monday, December 05
Someone Forgot To Tell The Weather Fairies
It's December now. That's summer in the Southern Hemisphere. The weather right now would be considered only moderately chilly... Were itfor the middle of winter.
I prefer cool weather to hot, but seriously baby, it's cold outside.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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1
Wait....I was recruiting. What do we do?...Did I miss a memo?
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Saturday, December 03 2011 02:38 PM (DOX7h)
2
If you hadn't already gotten me on a previous drive, I would have succumbed this time.
Although I don't think the spammers are likely to play. Well, spammer (singular so far) since it's obviously the same IP.
Posted by: Hypozeuxis at Saturday, December 03 2011 04:27 PM (5eWak)
3
Years ago when I was running a site that was getting spammed I used JS to create a hidden form field; the code would silently drop the submission without it. So far--probably 5 years later--as far as I know it's still effective. So that it would help trick the spammers, the only thing that didn't happen was the insert into the DB. Don't know if the spammers are smarter yet, but a simple trick like that might continue to work.
Posted by: RickC at Sunday, December 04 2011 09:28 AM (VKVOz)
J Greely has a trick like that he uses on his site. When you hit the "post" button, some Javascript runs and redirects you somehow. I don't remember the details; the point is that if the Javascript doesn't run, then instead of your comment being posted, you are automatically blacklisted.
Those kinds of things can work pretty well, but only if they're rare and obscure. If they become widespread then the spammers will change their spamming code, and then they don't work any more.
The only thing I know of that does really work and will keep working is captchas, even though everyone hates them. Handled properly, spambots can't fool them.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sunday, December 04 2011 10:37 AM (+rSRq)
5
Brickmuppet, I saw your recruitment post and thought I'd pitch in too.
RickC - yeah, I have a hidden form field, and even a decoy form. It helps, but it's not perfect.
Steven - yep, I didn't want to do Javascript tricks in my original deployment, but these days it's probably not going to cause any problems. If you turn off Javascript, 98% of the web will break anyway.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, December 04 2011 10:38 AM (PiXy!)
6
Completely off-topic, but... whatever happened to Trixie's posts?
Posted by: Wonderduck at Monday, December 05 2011 02:14 PM (2YMZG)
7
They're in the system, but the far-future dates give it indigestion.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, December 05 2011 10:43 PM (PiXy!)
8
My trick is simply to use JS to replace the POST URL for the form. So, anyone grabbing the raw HTML (directly or out of Google's cache) will fail, and my log-scanner sees your attempt to reach that URL and adds your IP address to the firewall's block list for a while. It's quite effective, largely because it's different from what other people use; no one is going to go to the effort of customizing their tools to get past it, because the payoff is too small.
A less-severe alternative would be to have the non-JS version of the form force moderation or extra spam checks. I've been thinking about switching to that method when I upgrade my server, and adding randomization to both the JS and non-JS URLs, so that, say, today /post/43wrdfvk works and /post/tg34grtg fails.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Tuesday, December 06 2011 10:43 AM (fpXGN)
My trick worked probably because the site was relatively low volume; I don't think there was much payoff, and we didn't get much spam.
My goal was to get the effect that I wanted with minimum effort, and it worked. I don't run the site any longer, and I don't bother to read the public-facing forums so I don't know if it is still effective, but I had plans for several other tiers of countering.
Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, December 07 2011 01:20 AM (fXrun)
10
Pixy, any chance of getting a link to them? I remember them being quite entertaining.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, December 10 2011 03:04 PM (Nf6le)
