I found out that Peter Baird Olson, aka Peabo from the FSF died last week in a yacht explosion. I spoke to him a few weeks ago at LibrePlanet 2017. Sorry to hear that he has died, but it’s nice to know he was still yachting until the end.

Peabo was an interesting character. He liked electronics and science fiction and soup, and we all knew that about him. What most people didn’t know so well was his love of yachting.

He was in my pilot, Good Call Bad Call a few years ago. I’ll dig up some footage of him for a memorial.

UPDATE: memorial below. Also see his memorial page.

So, this was the week that Rik Mayall died, and I’ve been watching a lot of old episodes of The Young Ones and Bottom.

Another show he was in, is the frequently overlooked Filthy Rich and Catflap, in which Rik Mayall plays Richie Rich, a failed generic TV showbiz type. The opening sequence has a ton of scenes from all over London, many of which are quite hard to see without the ability to skip frame by frame through the video. Which is what I did.

Some interesting items in there, including the Raymond Revuebar, which was home to The Comic Strip. All in all, it does a good job of putting the show in a gritty, dirtier version of London than we see in either The Young Ones (actually filmed in Bristol) or Bottom (presumably filmed at the BBC in West London) — this version of London is rarely seen in the show itself, which is often contained in Richie’s modern 80s apartment with brightly colored furniture and dead milkmen in the closets.

Also, the end credits are a lot of fun, with these various still images of the cast being played out in over the credits. Many of the actors are given single pages of the credits to themselves too, which is nice.

Note that “Additional material: Rik Mayall” feels somewhat buried, also for reasons that are likely lost to time now.

Alamo 100 is a list of 100 great movies by Alamo Drafthouse employees.

Here’s a list of 10 movies I’ve seen or would like to see.

1. Short Circuit 2
2. Filofax
3. Mannequin 2
4. Hackers
5. The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
6. Orang U: An Ape Goes To College
7. UHF
8. Manimal (not a movie)
9. Cool Runnings
10. Mac and Me 2

If this had come out a couple of weeks ago, I could have started this by saying, “A new article, it’s a Christmas miracle!” Instead, I just sort of reappear awkwardly. Ah well, why break tradition, I suppose. Well, the holidays are over, to the delight of many a parent, shopper, employee, or pretty much anyone. Maybe if the Christmas decorations in my mall didn’t go up mid-October, the season wouldn’t seem to last so damned long. Instead, we get to experience a nearly three month test of monetary endurance and emotional integrity. The holiday season claims many a victim.

Read the classic review

1800pt Dwarfs Roster (Standard)

Dwarfs (Standard) Selections:

Solid Units (1225pts)

• Berserker Brock-Riders Regiment (245pts)Vicious

  Brew of Haste (15pts) (Brew of Haste)

• Bulwarkers Horde (250pts)Phalanx

  Fire Oil (5pts) (Fire Oil)

• Ironguard Regiment (130pts)
• Ironwatch Regiment (140pts)crossbows (Piercing (1)), Piercing Arrow (10pts) (Piercing Arrow)
• Rangers Horde (350pts)Crushing Strength (1), Vanguard

  Blasting Arrow (20pts) (Blasting Arrow), Light crossbows (treat as bows)

• Shieldbreakers Regiment (110pts)Crushing Strength (1)

War Engines (165pts)

• Ironbelcher Cannon (85pts)Blast (2d6+1), Elite (if within 6″ of a Warsmith), Grapeshot, Piercing (4)
• Ironbelcher Organ Gun (80pts)Elite (if within 6″ of a Warsmith), Piercing (2), Range 24″

Heroes/ Monsters (410pts)

• Battle Driller (50pts)Crushing Strength (1), Individual
• Dwarf King (160pts)Crushing Strength (1), Individual, Inspiring

  Da Boomstick (30pts) (Zap (3))

• Steel Behemoth (200pts)Breath Attack (10), Crushing Strength (3)

Profile Summary:

• Name	Unit Size	Sp	Me	Ra	De	At	Ne
  Berserker Brock-Riders Troop	10	8	4+	–	4+	30	20/22

• Name	Unit Size	Sp	Me	Ra	De	At	Ne
  Driller	1	4	4+	–	5+	2d6	10/12
  King	1	4	3+	–	6+	5	14/16

• Name	Unit Size	Sp	Me	Ra	De	At	Ne
  Bulwarkers Horde	40	4	4+	–	5+	20	21/23
  Ironguard Regiment	20	4	3+	–	5+	10	6
  Ironwatch Regiment	20	4	4+	5+	4+	10	14/16
  Rangers Horde	40	4	4+	4+	4+	20	21/23
  Shieldbreakers Regiment	20	4	4+	–	4+	10	14/16

• Name	Unit Size	Sp	Me	Ra	De	At	Ne
  Steel Behemoth	1	3	6+	–	6+	20	16/18

• Name	Unit Size	Sp	Me	Ra	De	At	Ne
  Ironbelcher Cannon	1	4	–	5+	5+	1	10/12
  Ironbelcher Organ Gun	1	4	–	5+	5+	15	10/12

Roster Rule Summary:

• Army Special Rule: Headstrong: Whenever a unit begins a turn Wavering, it rolls a die. On a 4+ it shrugs off the effects of Wavering and can act normally that turn.

Selection Rule Summary:

• Blasting Arrow: Roll one of the unit’s ranged attacks separately. This one attack only counts as Blast (d6). Can only be used by normal ranged attacks.
• Breath Attack (10): Ranged attack, roll 10 dice instead of the At value. Range 12″, hits on 4+ unmodified.
• Brew of Haste: +1 Speed.
• Crushing Strength (1): Melee hits have a +1 modifier when rolling to damage.
• Crushing Strength (3): Melee hits have a +3 modifier when rolling to damage.
• Elite (if within 6″ of a Warsmith): Whenever the unit rolls to hit or to damage, it can re-roll one of the dice that failed to hit/damage.
• Fire Oil: Successful ranged or melee damage from this unit against a unit with Regeneration causes the target unit to lose Regeneration for the rest of the game
• Individual: The unit does not have any flank or rear facings.
  When shooting against this unit, enemies suffer an additional -1 penalty on their rolls to hit. The unit also has the Nimble special rule.
• Inspiring: If the unit or any friendly units within 6″ of it are Routed, the opponent must re-roll that Nerve test.
• Piercing (1): All ranged hits inflicted by the unit have a +1 modifier when rolling to damage.
• Piercing (2): All ranged hits inflicted by the unit have a +2 modifier when rolling to damage.
• Piercing (4): All ranged hits inflicted by the unit have a +4 modifier when rolling to damage.
• Piercing Arrow: Roll one of the unit’s ranged attacks separately. This one attack only counts as Piercing (4). Can only be used by normal ranged attacks.
• Zap (3): The unit has a ranged attack. You roll (n) dice for this ranged attack rather than using the Attacks value of the unit. This attack has a range of 24”³, always hits on 4+ (regardless of modifiers) and is Piercing (1).

Twenty years ago today, my friend Jonathan Nadeau was in a car accident and lost his sight, permanently. Jonathan is now a free software activist, who through his non-profit organization, the Accessible Computing Foundation, has released the first version of Sonar GNU/Linux, a custom version of Ubuntu with blind users in mind.

I’ve not seen this before, but its rather sweet. A page dedicated to various police dogs.

via memorial2001.

I’ve been busy with a contracting gig — a new role for me, doing a mixture of sysadmin and development work. Mostly sysadmin work right now, as I attempt to tune a large authenticated Drupal instance and eventually migrate it to a new Drupal release.

I’m doing a lot of work with RT, Nginx, Varnish, ikiwiki and Xen, many of which I’ve used before in various places.

It’s a lot of fun.