Best PC games in this decade

I decided to take the decision to list the best games of this decade for the PC platform. They have been selected with no order of genre, they are only listed here because I liked them and I played them a lot, I still love them every minute of my poor life.

5 - Warcraft 3: Reign Of Chaos (2002, Blizzard).



4 - Dead Space (2008, EA Redwood Shores).



3 - Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption (2000, Nihilistic Software).



2 - Half Life 2 (2004, Valve).



1 - Mass Effect (2007 (X360)/2008 (PC), Bioware).



Probably other games could also be listed, but really, this is not easy as you think; in 10 years there have been zillions of released games and it's hard to remember more than a few. Only those that were GOTY (Game Of The Year) probably will be remembered for the eternity.

XBPS 0.3 released!

I've just released version 0.3 of the XBPS utilities. This is the result of two months of development in the HEAD branch stored in the bazaar repository.

Please go to https://launchpad.net/xbps/head/0.3 to see the release notes.

XBPS main website

XBPS has advanced to the point where it's fully working and featureful, ok, there are still some missing features like detecting conflicting packages, installing a binary package directly from an archive (without using repositories) and more... but it's good to the point that I'm pleased to create the public web site. Don't forget that you can see its current state and future development at:

https://launchpad.net/xbps

Not to mention that I didn't want to waste much time on creating the web pages, so this time I used plain text files that are converted to XHTML with asciidoc... what a great tool! it saved me a lot of time in writing the XML/XSLT or XHTML files directly.

The web site contains instructions for testing XBPS in your favourite GNU/Linux x86 distribution, via the static binaries that I provide in the `xbps-devel-static` binary package. So enjoy it, and let me know if you have tried it!

http://xbps.nopcode.org/

XBPS: x86 first live ISO image for pre-testing

I didn't want to make this public yet, because there are some critical features missing in XBPS but a friend of mine has put it publicly so here it is... I have built a live image (thanks to my infamous xbps-mklive shell script!) of the GNU/Linux distribution I'm building with XBPS for x86 (more archs to follow in the future).

This contains the minimal base system packages, you can look at the full list in the top level directory of the ISO image (packages.txt). The bootloader (isolinux) will show you three options to boot from, live image, live image running from RAM and boot first HD detected by the BIOS.

Obviously if you have more than 105MB of RAM you can choose the 2nd option, it will run much faster. By default it will use a spanish keymap/locale, you can override it in the bootloader (pressing the TAB key and changing keymap and locale to your prefered settings).

http://lolcathost.org/b/xbps

XBPS: restarting services while upgrading packages

I've just implemented support in XBPS to restart services that a package provides while upgrading packages, such as is implemented in dpkg (I mean theoretically, I haven't looked at the source code).

The attached picture illustrates what I'm talking about: openssh-server-5.2p1_2 is currently installed and sshd running, a new version is available now: 5.3p1. Before removing the installed package, sshd is stopped, new package is unpacked and again sshd (from new version) is started.

The code in shell script is implemented in a trigger, and the package manager doesn't know anything about its details because that's only handled in the INSTALL/REMOVE scripts that are run when a package is removed/installed. The main reason for this is that the package manager itself does not need to know about all this for future possible changes or improvements.

By the way, I've moved the project to Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/xbps

The build templates are still stored in the GIT repository at: http://repo.or.cz/w/xbps.git

Soon I will provide a live image to test XBPS and all its features... stay tuned and enjoy responsibly! heh.

Mass Effect 2 - Subject Zero Trailer

A new friend has been discovered for Mass Effect 2: Subject Zero. She looks like an Assari with the biotic powers and all that stuff, but a lot more aggressive than the others seen in Mass Effect.

Commander Shepard: "She's dangerous, powerful and extremely violent, exactly what I'm looking for".

Can't wait for this game, I hope I'm not dead before the game is out! heh.

Monkey Island 2 in 3D with Cryengine? you are joking...

What would you think about having a Monkey Island game with the Crysis' Cryengine 3D engine? surely you'll think that won't be possible. Someone made this possible, and the video is really AWESOME!

Mass Effect 2 - GamesCom 09 Trailer

Here's the latest Mass Effect 2 trailer via GC09. Awesome! I have to finish the XBOX 360 version of the first part one of these days now...

Another video of XBPS in action

XBPS is advancing slowly but it's at the point where major features work without any problem. Today I recorded a video with VMWare in a VM, of a system built with my package manager, and it will show you some features about it.

I can only tell you that XBPS is still far to be finished, but I'm trying to make it featureful as other alternatives, i.e pacman, pkg_install, dpkg/apt, etc. Of course for me performance matters, otherwise I wouldn't have started it.

Many more optimizations can be done, I'm sure. This video shows some implemented features that can be found in the current code as of August '09.

XBOX 360 with a Full HD 22' Monitor

Finally I decided to buy the XBOX 360, and just for the case I also bought a Full HD 22' Monitor. This is an XBOX 360 Pro, with 60GB HDD, Gears Of War 2 and Sega SuperStars Tennis. I'm only missing a Home Cinema with true Dolby 5.1 surround sound to really enjoy fully the next-gen videogames.

Gears Of War 2 is awesome, bad thing is that I ended the game in the easiest level by mistake and now I'm playing again in normal level... sigh.

Best of E3 2009

After watching almost all videos made by gametrailers from the E3 of this year, I can say that I've been impressed by three games. Well, the third one may not be qualified as a game, but it will be used to play games.

• The Last Guardian (PS3)
• God Of War 3 (PS3)
• Project Natal (XBOX360)

These days I'm thinking that perhaps buying a next-gen console will be a great choice, and I'll save some money in the future as well. The PS3 is too expensive, and the XBOX360 will have Project Natal; I'm not sure which one will buy.

Mass Effect 2 - Prelude to E3

One of the best games I played in my life, Mass Effect, will have soon a sequel. I loved any minute playing the first game, from the beggining until the end. It's one of the few REAL nextgen games that appeared for PC and X360!

Here's the trailer for its sequel from www.gametrailers.com

I can't wait for this amazing game to appear!

The world's most dangerous drug - Meth

Yesterday I had the pleasure to watch a National Geographic's documental about the world's most dangerous drug, the meta amphetamine; also known just as Meth.

This documental talks about the Meth in 74 minutes; luckily it's not very common in Spain, but unfortunately it is in Asia and USA. The video shows you some real cases with its effects and post-effects at long place; I've been very surprised in how the drugaddicts have been degraded physically after a while taking the drug.

Here's an official short intro about it, from the National Geographic channel in youtube. Watch it, and think about it if someone offers or recommends you this drug anytime!

First Sara Romero's videos!

Here are the videos that I captured today of my second daughter Sara. She's pretty just like her daddy, heh. Enjoy!





Compared to the video that I made for Leyre back in 2006, they aren't so different!

The Gathering - Mandylion

This is an album that I've heard a bunch of times, one of the bests ever. I discovered this band back in 1999, when a friend of mine was a fan of them. One of my previous computers (now dead) was named Mandylion due to this album, RIP.

You won't be dissapointed, you'll love it.

Testing out OpenRC - An Universal init system

Talking yesterday with Roy Marples, the author of dhcpcd (among other things) he told me that perhaps I'd be insterested in another of his projects: OpenRC.

OpenRC provides a portable way to start, stop and keep track of services at boot/shutdown, just like the SystemV or BSD style init scripts.

I have to say that I'm very happy with the result after probing it, and definitly I'll use it for my distro. I only needed some tweaks and created some scripts for udev and others. I made a video showing up how the boot process looks like now.



Comparing with previous init scripts that I used (by using RC scripts from Arch and NetBSD's rc.d) doesn't seem to change much, just a few seconds faster.

Kudos for Roy for such great stuff, I'd be nice if I had knew about OpenRC before!

Some mistakes in shell programming

I've been seeing too many mistakes recently related to shell programming, due to some implemented features in GNU Bash (that are really cool if it were the only available shell on the planet). Let me tell you that it's really bad, because if those are used in some critical code to detect some implemented features, they can lead to serious problems in the build stage of the application, as I've seen with GNU autoconf generated configure scripts.

I'm posting this because I've spent a while detecting why libusb didn't have a symbol required by a dependent application; surprisingly that was due to the first mistake I'm explaining below in a configure script.

One of the most famous that you are probably aware of is the == operator used in conditionals. Remember that GNU Bash is the only shell that accepts the following:

if [ "$foo" == "$blah" ]; then
    ...
fi

and another one that I've just seen coming from the xorg detection block in GNU configure scripts (didn't see it until now):

BLAH="goo foo boob"
BLAH+="baobab anotherone"

This is a great mistake! those two examples (surely there will be many more) are relaying in GNU Bash for correct operation! think about it, relaying in such specific features won't do any good for all us.

Real Madrid's Pepe vs Getafe

Couldn't resist to add a post about the soccer match that yesterday I watched on TV: Real Madrid vs Getafe. Both are from Madrid, Spain; Getafe is a modest team that never won something important in the first division. Anyway in my opinion, Getafe played good and was better than Real Madrid. In minute 87, Pepe attacked Casquero from Getafe (with two kicks) and was injured with Penalty. Not enough for Pepe still punched Alvin.

Don't miss the attached picture and video, this is one of most amazing that I've seen in long time (source http://www.marca.com).

XBPS starting up

Today I discovered that VMWare Workstation is able to record videos in realtime of a running VM, and just to test it I recorded a video showing up the Linux distribution that I'm building through the XBPS package manager, built from scratch.

To remind you, the distribution probably will be called LSXL aka "LeyreSaraXtraemeLaura" Linux, not very original but will work for now until I found something better. Also this video doesn't show many things, but probably will provide more videos showing some XBPS implemented features. To watch it correctly it's better to click in the video and using the HD version in youtube.

libarchive-2.7.0 and openssl requirement

So libarchive 2.7.0 was released today, and after updating the package I noticed that the library required libcrypto, WTF? with XBPS that means it's not good, because libarchive is one of the few packages required to build the xbps-base-chroot meta-pkg. The configure script looks for some OpenSSL headers/functions and if they are found, OpenSSL is linked automagically.

I want to avoid having extra dependencies for a core library as libarchive is, even more if the feature that this dependency requires is rarely used (such as in my case)... so I made a simple patch that adds an option (--without-openssl) and reported it in http://code.google.com/p/libarchive/issues/detail?id=22

I hope that the developers do understand this and commit it just in time for the next version!

Testing out bootchart with XBPS

I wanted to try out bootchart with the system I'm building through XBPS, just for curiosity; the results are not too bad: 25 seconds for a basic text system that starts network through dhcpcd, and some services like sshd, metalog, cron, portmap, mountd, nfsd, nfs locking, dbus and HAL. This can be improved if network is started graphically (via NetworkManager), and some services are not run by default, like setting the time via NTP; but for now I'm not too worried. For the record this is running in a VM with VMWare in Windows.

The GNU/Linux system I'm building uses sysvinit and BSD style initscripts, by using some portions from Archlinux rc scripts and the NetBSD's rc.d framework. It will be interesting to run bootchart again when I have a fully GNOME desktop, just for comparision with other distributions.

The Linux kernel map

Long time after my previous post... well, I've been busy with XBPS (that allows me to build my own Linux distribution) and real life. But tonight I've seen something that I'm really surprised about: there's a site where you can navigate through all the layers available in the Linux kernel, like you do with Google Maps.

It's fucking cool, You can even zoom in/out and click on any part you are interested. Great work for the folks that made it, really. I suggest you to look at it if you haven't seen it before:

http://www.makelinux.net/kernel_map#sd

XBPS is reaching soon a fully usable state, where it will be able to compete at least with pacman, dpkg and pkg_install from NetBSD; but don't want to talk about it until it's complete. I'll only tell you that it's fast, really fast!

Say hello to Sara Romero

My second daughter Sara was born past tuesday at 8:00 AM with 2.98kg of weight. I haven't had until now any minute to rest because a baby and a child take all your time, but now I've found some peaceful minutes to post.

Here is a picture of Sara, the quality is not good because I captured it with my cellular phone. Happy new year, it seems I'll be really busy from now on.