wil . alambre . ca

My name is Wil Alambre and this is my website! I’m a thirty-something web developer that lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. You can find out more about me by using the navigation menu above, or browse through my collect blog articles and interesting links below...

The Gimli in-character newspaper has been updated for Aug 22nd. Headlines include...

• West End Becomes Gangland Killing Zone
• Pulling The Plug On Bad Luck Building
• GRHA Announces Mandatory Seminar
• Catholic Christian Conference
• Local Club Lives Again
• Advertisements

On Wednesday, the members of the Amalgamated Transit Union (Local 1505) will vote on a settlement reached three weeks ago by union executives and city transit managers. The new agreement calls for wage increases through 2010 and sends the issue of Sunday work to an arbitrator. A joint committee of managers an union members would also try to settle other union grievances.

The city's and the union's last contract expired in January of this year, and there have been rumbles ever since, largely to do with driver scheduling. Earlier this summer, the union stopped working voluntary overtime, a move that reduced the number of buses on city streets during morning rush hours. Without drivers working overtime, the city cannot currently run its full complement of buses at peak periods. Union members have also complained about having to work regular stretches of seven consecutive days and working splitting shifts.

The city took out an advertisement in Monday's Free Press warning riders of the possibility of a transit strike as early as Thursday morning. It asked riders to check Winnipeg Transit's website at www.winnipegtransit.com for details about the strike vote Wednesday evening.

Winnipeg bus drivers have not hit the picket line since 1976.

Source

MobileMe users received emails tonight from Apple, letting them know their subscriptions have been extended by an additional sixty days.

We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make. To recognize our users' patience, we are giving every MobileMe subscriber as of today a free 60 day extension. This is in addition to the one month extension most subscribers have already received. We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe's launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around. Read this article for more details.

The MobileMe Team

Eligible individuals are those with an active MobileMe account as of August 19. This sixty day extension comes after several other thirty day extensions, all in attempts by Apple to apologize for the bugs in it's mobile web application suite.

Source

Yes, it is true! As of last Saturday night, I have officially stepped up as Assistant Storyteller for our local One World By Night vampire LARP. Or, as someone once intelligently put it, "paying my dues" :) The position of Head Storyteller is confidently filled by Reddz, fulfilling our goatee-and-long-hair quota.

Also, our game has undergone a long-expected name change. Formerly known as Fred By Night, the vampire LARP will now be know as Sang Nordique! ... though I expect it’ll be called "the fred game" or "the gimli game" for a while. Not panic citizens, the Ministry Of Truth is already hard at work!

Reddz and I will have a sit-down in the near future to discuss our dark age of tyranny ... er, I mean our upcoming plot ideas. Also, I will soon be exposed to storyteller and organization email lists that, I have been assured, will drive me to drinking. Finally, we’ll be re-booting the game website in the next couple weeks... mainly ’cause we’re a pair of computer savvy geeks, and I’m a web developer by trade.

In the meantime, Seth is "away-ish" in the same way Kory’s Lasombra was "around-ish". At the moment, he’s available as a travelling character for our semi-occasional Fargo excursions and, hey, isn’t Conclave coming up soon?. I’m still undecided as to what to do with him long-term, though. Eventually I’m certain I’ll want to play again (or Reddz will finally have enough of me asking to bring in a cyborg-zombie-dinosaur NPC... come-on, it’d be awesome) but if you asked me right now, I’d say I’d want to try a different clan. Seth will probably disappear into Grapevine saved-file limbo or get passed on to some Subcoord for a do-whatever-you-want type NPC?

Anyway, am excited and looking forward to participating in the game from the "other side". Now if you excuse me, I have to work on my proposal...

*clears throat*

BZZZZRRROOOAARRRZZZAAIINNSS!

Come on! Full of awesome! :D

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Camarilla Of Gimli,

I will have two Lesser Harpies. Jacob Torvil of Clan Tremere will carry my Dedicated when acting in the duties of Lesser Harpy. As well as Mr. E of Clan Ravnos will be another one of my Lesser Harpies and he will carry my other Dedicated name, while acting in the duties of a Lesser Harpy.

Seneschal Mynos presided over Court and said that we should all go help Fargo in their efforts against the Sabbat there. And then left Court very shortly after that for Fargo, North Dakota

Well, The Primogen Council has an problem with that, the fact that we should divert efforts from here, when we have to fortify and rebuild Gimli. When there are problems here that we should take care of. The reasoning of the Primogen Council is that Gimli is our primary responsibility, Gimli is where we need to take care of first.

The Primogen Council was insulted by this, and after speaking with the Primogen Council and getting their thoughts on this issue. How can I respect someone that shows no concern for home? How can I respect someone that is too busy taking care of other Domains issue when this person is Senschal here and their responsibilities lie here.

I can't. Mynos of Clan Brujah, Seneschal of Gimli, I no longer find you Respected in the eyes of the Camarilla.

Courtney Gallagher
Harpy of Gimli, Manitoba

Special field agents, make sure to clearly mark your department-issued hardware with Directorate for Science and Technology approved wallpapers.

*Etiquette to cover spelling titles and politics to cover proper adjectives*

Ladies and Gentlemen of Gimli,

Few announcements from last Court.

Prince Solnaria has declared that the Ramada Marlborough is now and Elysium along with the Gimli Art Gallery. She has also declared that the Forks are now the personal feeding grounds of Courtney Gallagher.

Prince Solnaria wanted to remind the Court, that Independents do not have the same protection or rights as a Camarilla Citizens.

With the support of Clan Brujah, Clan Nosferatu, Clan Toreador and Clan Ventrue, I am the current Harpy of Gimli until the Primogen Council sees fits. As well as Phillipe of Clan Samedi, has loaned me his Brave name when I am doing Harpy duties.

Clan Gangrel has abstained.

A few matters of Prestation that must be dealt with, I wish it were more pleasant news.

Max of Clan Tremere has welched on a Boon that he owed, by doing so that is a strippable offense. He is no longer seen as Resourceful in the eyes of the Camarilla.

As well as Mr. Alan Landis is no longer seen as a Defender of the Camarilla, to be polite not doing the job of the Harpy properly. Perhaps if within a month time he can prove to this office that he is fully aware of what the boundaries and responsibilities of the Harpyship is, then it can be returned.

For the naming of a Lesser Harpy, right now it is Jacob Torvil of Clan Tremere, and he will have my Dedicated name.

I will be seeking a second Lesser Harpy, those who wish can apply to me privately.

Courtney Gallagher
Harpy of Gimli

It’s a good time to be a comic book geek. It’s getting to be that you can’t surf the web without tripping over some big-screen movie awesomeness!

The first is the first six minutes of Dark Knight, the sequel to Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. If you’re still on the fence about this movie, trust me, this will convince you that this film will rock!

The second is the teaser trailer to Watchmen, directed by 300’s Zack Snyder. I’ve been passing around my copy of the graphic novel, trying to get my friends to read it before the film version comes out. For those of you who have read it, you’re probably at least as impressed by how close to the comic this movie looks as I am!

Presenting what’s sure to be and favourite shirt that they do not already own :P... actually, I might have to pick one of these up myself! Click on the image below to go to the online store.

Breaking News Update! Found an even better coffee shirt! And, for our intrepid storyteller staff, the message serves a dual purpose! :P Again, just click on the image below to go to the online store.

7-11 convenience stores all over celebrate their birthday by giving away free Slurpees on July 11th, while supplies last!

I found some time around my crazy busy schedule to add a little more functionality to the Truup character sheet app. It's still definitely in early, early alpha (pretty much deep in the why-even-bother-showing-it phase of development), but those interested in following along and making suggestions should start to see some improvements.

First of all, I removed the zero option in number pulldowns, so now you can no longer choose to add "Brawl x0" to your sheet. Those bad entires were being tossed rather than being saved, and it was only confusing people anyway. This should solve the "I added my traits but it didn't save them" issue people were having.

Some elements of a sheet now have an area that you can leave a little note. It currently doesn't really do anything fancy, other than leaving a message to yourself (but in the future, this may be messages from yourself and your storytellers). They are accessible from the "Edit" mode, but I'll be pulling them into the "View" sheet mode soon.

I added version history to character sheets. Every time you make an edit to an existing character sheet, the previous version is filed away for reference. Just the "Version" pulldown on the top-right-hand corner of the character sheet to see past versions! You can't edit those past version, or do much of anything really... but with the addition of notes, you can track changes and why. I'm thinking of adding extra functionality to colour or mark what changes were made between versions, depending on how easy/hard it is. Hm.

I'm currently playing with various style changes. Nothing is permanent yet, and I fully expect the styles to fall apart in some browsers (mostly IE). Apologies to those trying the alpha site out and seeing a jumble... but while I have your attention, can I recommend Firefox 3? :)

Anyway, feel free to continue using it. Any feedback or suggestions are welcome :)

Blood Bowl is a fantasy football video game, based on the board game of the same name, which was produced by Games Workshop under their Warhammer Fantasy label. I’ve never played a Blood Bowl game, something I’m sure some of my friends will happily correct one day, but so far this trailer does a kick-ass job of getting me interested!

I didn’t realize this is technically the third game. There was a 1995 Blood Bowl game as well as a 2004 Chaos League game. Might have to track one or both of them down :)

Hello all! If you haven't heard yet, I'm interested in building an online Grapevine clone using the CakePHP 1.2 framework. Ideally, this will provide any World Of Darkness LARPer and their storytellers a place to build and organize their character sheets. Keep in mind though, like Grapevine before it, Truup will be an administrative tool, not a character generator; you will still need all the appropriate books.

I'm going to try develop this pretty openly; I'll try to keep these news posts running when new features are available, and try to keep the site open to the public. In the near future, I expect to even allow commenting on these updates, but for the time being, you can leave feedback on the mirrored LiveJournal posts. However, this is a free time project for me, and I work on it when I feel like it... so don't be surprised by long stretches of nothing happening. :)

Right now, people are able to register, login, and manage their Laws Of The Night Revised character sheets. There's very little in the way of documentation or help text, so you're on your own right now. Also, be aware that I may need to revert and/or erase data as part of the development process, so I don't recommend relying on it at the moment. Nonetheless, have fun!

Our LARP game Saturday night broke out in a pretty decent-sized combat scene. It didn’t last long, but our resident Samedi, played by Chad discovered some clans will jump at an opportunity... sometimes at the exact same moment!

As always, the truth is stretched for the sake of comic entertainment! :)

Brujah: Blarg! Rah! Woo woo woo! Frenzy! Frenzy! Frenzy!

Clan Toreador: Oh no! The stakes, they do nothing! Keep stabbing!

Phillipe: Samedi power time! Touch Brujah! Ooey gooey rot effect activate!

Clan Toreador: Ew!

Brujah: Ow! holy f#$k that hurts!

Clan Toreador: Stake Brujah! Stabbity stabbity stab stab stab!

Brujah: ... *staked*

Phillipe: Whew! Glad that’s over with! Good job everyone!

Clan Toreador: ... *look at each other, then at Samedi again*

Phillipe: Uh oh...

Clan Toreador: Stake Samedi! Stabbity stabbity stab stab stab!

I’ve updated my Flickr account with a couple pictures I snapped yesterday. We were hunkered down at the board room table, downing caffeinated beverages while slamming out some code. :)

You can click here to see all my Visual Lizard related photos. Feel free to leave us a comment... we might even reply, assuming you can pry us away from our work! :P

Update: During one of our late night work sessions last week, we captured some wicked pictures of the weather outside the office. See below:

You can see a few more shots at my flickr page as well - http://www.flickr.com/photos/julianmoffatt/.

Whenever I build my character sheet, I always list Abilities and Lores under different headings, despite the fact the rulebook has them as the same thing. In my opinion, they are not: Abilities represent things your character has experience with, but Lores represent things your character knows. The difference between having done something a couple times before, and knowing something for a fact.

Take the Occult Ability for an example... it represents a character is used to dealing with such things and certain people, that they can recognize when things start getting weird, that he has some past experience in tip-toe-ing around this subject. Things that you can retests on. A Tremere is casting a ritual and fucks it up, oops, kncked over that candle... but he has two points in Occult Ability, he should have know better than to make such a mistake, he can have a retest.

It does not mean he knows what a Garou is, that they learn thier Gifts from Spirits, that they can move into the Umbra, etc. Those subjects are covered by Lores, representing how much truth a character knows. In our game, this rarely (if ever) comes up for retests, instead being a simple level-check to see if that character knows or recognizes something. Do you have any Garou Lore, and if so, how much? Okay, then you know what a Black Spiral Dancer is, yes.

A main problem comes when there’s a seperation in what a character supposedly "knows" or "has done" and what the character’s sheet says he knows or has done. This comes up when a character’s background says he’s "several hundred years old" or has "done and seen all these things", but does not have the Abilities or Lores to back them up. Bobby Brujah has been in both World Wars, Vietnam, and various mid-east conflicts, but has absolutely no Firearms ability. Tommy Tremere has read the scrolls at the library of Alexandria, perused the tomes at the Vatican, and studied in the secret places of his clans, but has no points of Lores to represent this. In this case, an ST will usually have to defer to what the sheet actually says, no matter how well written the backstory... afterall, that’s what the sheet is for; an absolute list of what your character can and can not do, what your character does and does not know.

Lore can admittedly be very gummy. Nick Nosferatu has seen Tremere do rituals and magic, has been to their secret Chantry, has met the Regent, etc, but has never actually put any Lore on his sheet. Sorry, then according to his character sheet, Nick Nosferatu does not know any Tremere Lore. Or, to put it a little better, Nick Nosferatu does not believe any of which he saw, does not remember anything he heard, and/or did not think it significant at the time. Magic? Neat parlor tricks and trickery of some Disciplines maybe, but not real magic... otherwise Tremere would rule the world, right? Chantry? I’m not sure, I think that was the name of a street or hotel they were at? Regent? Yeah, that was his first name wasn’t it? Okay guy... was he someone important or something?

I think most STs are fairly forgiving on Lores, as there is a fairly fuzzy line there, but if a character has good reason to know something that is represented by a Lore, that player should be putting that on the character’s sheet (however the mechanics work in your game, in ours, it’s a 1Xp purchase). You write to the STs and explain what you saw or heard or experienced that justifies the Lore. The STs can confirm that, and possibly approve the Lore, giving both the STs and the player a for-sure-for-sure stamp on a character sheet that this character does know this as fact.

It’s both a game mechanic and an administrative thing: when dealing with a player base of 20 to 30 people, an ST can not and does not remember everything single detail about every single background and every single encounter about every single character. It’s impossible. And not necessary. If an ST needs to know what a character can and can not do, does and does not know, he refers to a sheet. That sheet is gospel. And sorry, when an ST has to coordinate a game of said 20 to 30 people, he or she does not have time to discuss why a player "should" know this because of "such and such an encounter" in the past... your "flawless logic" can not pierce the impenetrable combination of "we don’t have time for this right now", "this isn’t logical real life, this is a game with specific rules", and the big winner of "then why didn’t you buy the Lore at the time?"

Just stumbled upon a new music video while trying to set up a YouTube account. Never heard of Bo Burnham before, but this little music video is both fun and clever, in my opinion...

And with any luck, not only will this video will properly post onto my blog, but people might actually get to view it too! Craziness! :)

Daniel Floyd, a student of Savannah College of Art and Design has made a nine-minute presentation for his Media Theory class that covers the troubled relationship between video games and sex.

Ross Miller at Joystiq described it well when he said "Floyd covers the history, the current state of affairs, and how we might progress as an industry in incorporating sex in a mature way. Admittedly inspired by Zero Punctuation, the video is very entertaining and easy to follow."

View video at Youtube.com