RIOT photo directory

- Posted in Uncategorized by

I'm adding a photo gallery to my website. It's gonna take a while, because I have years of accumulated photos. I've uploaded 1,221 image files while watching Netflix with S this evening. And I still have plenty of photo directories to process with RIOT. I'll resume tomorrow with S's Aunt M's pics.

Working in Corbin, Kentucky tomorrow

- Posted in Uncategorized by

It was a wild day at work. Full moon? I don't know. I'm going to work in Corbin on Monday. A new counselor is starting, and I'm going to observe/assist CR in onboarding her. I think we'll take her out to lunch as well. Then, she can watch me doing my 14:30 EST group, after which I'll hit the road and be home before running my 5:30 group.

It's been a hard day for S, as it's the anniversary of J's death. We stayed home from church.

I'm doing some reading on the .NET MAUI Development Stack. It looks as if this new tech may really advance my years-long wish to be able to do multi-platform development using .NET.

.NET MAUI abstracts the implementation of a UI element from its logical description. You can describe the UI using XAML, a platform-neutral language based on XML. For example, the XAML fragment below shows the description of a button control:

<Button Text="Click me"
    SemanticProperties.Hint="Counts the number of times you click"
    Clicked="OnCounterClicked"
    HorizontalOptions="Center" />

Autoscroll webpage

- Posted in Coding by

Today, I changed the font face of blog posts to Lato, and the color from black to a dark gray (i.e., #494949). I'm using the clean theme with HTMLy. The style.css file is located in /themes/clean/

I'm wanting to learn coding skills so that I can create games that run in people's browsers and that may use some connectivity to a website. I'm not even really sure where to start, so I'm just reading some articles -- here's one; here's another.

I have a player in my mythweaver game that has some javascript background, so I'm gonna pick his brain. We'll see where it leads...

Also, the echoed output from my count_entries.php webpage is lengthy. I found a solution to make it auto-scroll to the bottom of the page after a one second delay.

I also found a javascript solution to scroll the above page to the bottom automatically, so that I see the summary data at the end of the page:

<script>
    function autoScrolling() {   
    window.scrollTo(0,document.body.scrollHeight); }         
    setInterval(autoScrolling, 1000);
</script>

Placing the above javascript inside the tags of a webpage will cause the page to scroll to the bottom one second after loading.

Family pictures

- Posted in Uncategorized by

A little over a week ago, dad had his fifth heavenly birthday. Everybody dies. I understand that. It's the natural order. But I sure do miss our Saturday morning coffees and chit-chat. I miss talking guns, family genealogy, computers, religion, and other things with him. Dad could converse intelligently on a wide array of topics. He was well-read but also just a smart man. I'm thankful that he didn't linger for a long period while suffering. I hope that his faith and medication gave him comfort during those last few days he was alive in March, 2018. Dad had a stroke on or near March 13, 2018, and was gone three days later. He loved to read science-fiction, and was always giving me a book he'd just finished. He also liked to piddle around in his shop, a little fifteen by thirty prefab on concrete pillars. He did some gunsmithing, some reloading. A year or two before he really got bad, I helped him repair the small deck attached to that building, and he was proud as a peacock when we finished. I wish I'd hugged him and told him I love him more often. Below is one of the last -- perhaps the very last -- pictures of dad with all of us. I wish I knew exactly when the picture was made. The old truck pictured here belonged to a long-time neighbor and farmer. Dad had it for many years, and it has now gone to our preacher, who uses it for him own farming. I can remember many a time using that truck to haul one of dad's riding lawn mowers to Russell Springs for repair. It was loud and proud.

Wikidpad as possible alternative to local CMS

- Posted in Uncategorized by

I've been revisiting some previously trialed software for desktop knowledgebase management. For me, Zim wins over the extremely capable but way-too-many-bells-and-whistles-for-me Wikidpad. Trillium wasn't bad, but Zim wins because it is instantly available to me whether I'm on my desktop or laptop PC, a la Dropbox. And, Zim can publish an entire notebook to HTML that is easily uploaded to a website subdirectory and navigated.

CEU on domestic violence

- Posted in Uncategorized by

Whew, I finally got the Pesi CEU course of EMDR completed. It had an 88-question test and I scored a 96%, earning 14.75 CEUs as a Kentucky counselor. Glad that's done. Now I can renew my licensure with the board.

I uploaded my history of earned CEU credits to my pCloud account, Box account, OneDrive, and Dropbox. Today's completed course brings me to 17.75 hours for 2022 (I did a 3-hr Domestic Violence training).

Still interested in solo gaming

- Posted in gaming by

If you haven't read Part I (I confess, that domain is no more) of this, feel free to peruse it before returning here.

I mentioned previously that I've been reading Scarlet Heroes. This is a well-done Kickstarted project. The setting, in particular, is fleshed-out quite nicely, and gives an interesting Tolkienesque twist to the origin of elves -- or perhaps not so much their origins as their mortality and afterlife. As with many other rules systems I've read, I'm perusing this work to cherry-pick mechanics and kewl concepts.

With regard to my aspirations to start a solo game, I'm still leaning toward Brandon McFadden's Tiny D6 for a very simple combat mechanic. I like that there aren't modifiers to rolls that must be remembered. Combat using TD is simple: you get two actions, so you can move/attack, attack/attack, or move/move.

Be aware, as you continue reading, that some of what I write below constitutes deviations from Tiny D6 rules. In fact, I go more than a little far afield of the TD6 RAW. Hopefully, my infatuation with my own spin on this rules set won’t fall victim to Wandering Eyes.

If you wear light armor in combat but do not have the Light Armor Proficiency trait, then when you are struck in combat, make a Test with Disadvantage. If you succeed, the light armor absorbs 1 point of the damage. If, instead, you do possess the Light Armor Proficiency trait, make a standard Test (i.e., 2d6) and the armor absorbs 1 point of damage if your Test succeeds.

You may not purchase the Heavy Armor Proficiency trait unless you already have the Light Armor Proficiency trait. If you wear heavy armor during combat without the Heavy Armor Proficiency trait, every test you make during that combat is at Disadvantage and the armor absorbs 2 points of damage on a successful Test. If you have the Heavy Armor Proficiency trait and are struck in combat, a successful Test on 2d6 negates two points of damage.

I'm not a fan of TD's rule that heavy weapons all have a ten-foot reach. I would agree that some do (polearms, for instance, or a long spear). I would tweak the rules to say that attacking with a heavy weapon requires both your actions for a given combat round -- therefore you can't make two attacks in a round with a Heavy weapon.

Heavy weapons deal two damage on a successful hit, 3 points if all dice turn up '6'. Note: 3 points of damage isn't possible if your melee attack with a Heavy weapon is made at Disadvantage. If you use a Heavy weapon in combat without possessing the Heavy Weapon Proficiency [Weapon Type] trait, all tests are made with Disadvantage.

Heavy weapons require both hands to wield, so you can't use a shield with them. You start play with a Light Weapon Proficiency [weapon-type] trait, and one other trait of your choosing. You can only attain the Proficiency trait with a particular type of heavy weapon after attaining the Proficiency trait with its Light weapon counterpart. If you have Light Weapon Proficiency [Swords], then you may purchase Heavy Weapon Proficiency [Swords].

For the sake of simplicity in a solo-RPG situation, I would simply rule that, when using ranged weapons (bows, javelins), any target you can see is within range, and I would therefore eschew range penalties.

I really like the core dice mechanic in TD: roll 2d6. If either die comes up a '5' or '6', your Test succeeds. Disadvantage means you use a single d6, while Advantage means you use 3d6.

Shield use: when you use a shield in combat but do not have the Shield Bearer trait, you may Test 1d6 when hit in combat and if that test succeeds you may negate that attack; the advantage of using a shield -- even without the Shield Bearer trait -- is this chance that you avoid damage, without having to sacrifice one of your two combat round actions.

When using a shield with the Shield Bearer trait, you may Test 2d6 when hit in combat and if that test succeeds you may negate that attack.

Light armor: use is highly recommended to be paired with the Light Armor Proficiency trait. If you possess that trait, wearing light armor permits use of Evade; otherwise, it doesn't. If you wear Light Armor without the Light Armor Proficiency trait, checks for damage reduction via the armor are made with Disadvantage. Otherwise, when hit, make a standard 2d6 test to shrug off 1 point of damage — assuming you’ve not already avoided damage via Evade or Goblin Agility. Note: it is possible (with good die rolls) to ward off 1 point of damage with a shield, and another point via light armor.

Heavy Armor: Requires Heavy Armor proficiency. Does not permit use of Evade. When hit, make a standard 2d6 test to shrug off up to 2 points of damage. You cannot gain Heavy Armor proficiency without first becoming proficient in Light Armor. Wearing Heavy armor without the associated proficiency trait forces all rolls made in combat to have Disadvantage. Furthermore, even with the appropriate proficiency trait, wearing Heavy Armor causes Disadvantage on any Athletics/Acrobatics type checks. Note: it is possible (with good die rolls) to ward off 1 point of damage with a shield, and two more points via heavy armor.

When you use the special action Focus or Evade, it uses up one of your two actions for the round. Therefore, when using one or both of the above special actions, you cannot attack with a heavy weapon that turn.

Over the weekend, I've read Dirk Stanley's Mere Anarchy. Nice job, Dirk! Atmospheric and approachable. I especially like the tables for fleshing out dungeons, and could possibly incorporate them into a C# companion app for soloing.

Capture console output in C#

- Posted in Coding by

The following C# source code demonstrates how to capture the output of a console program:

Unresolved assembly reference

- Posted in Coding by

Sometimes you'll get “Unresolved assembly reference not allowed” when attempting to use ILMerge. To avoid this, specify the full path to the framework you're targeting, like this:

ilmerge /targetplatform:v4,"C:WindowsMicrosoft.NETFramework64v4.0.30319" /out:merged.exe myprogram.exe mylib1.dll mylib2.dll

ZipFolder

- Posted in Coding by

using ZipFolder from the Windows command-line

ZipFolder is a nifty little Windows command-line utility that is passed two arguments: (1) the folder that is to be compressed into a .zip archive, and (2) the name of the resulting archive (with .zip extension)

Note: this utility requires that you have installed the .NET Framework 3.5 but Windows should prompt you to install it, if it is missing.

The usefulness of this CLI utility lies in the fact that we can leverage it from programming code. Aside from that scenario, most Windows users won't find much reason to use it.

↓ZipFolder

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