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I found out that VMWare is doing a contest to win a Macbook Air. You need to post a video to YouTube with the tag ‘switchtofusion‘. I decided to do an entry a while ago. However, I have been busy with a lot of different things and was unable to do the wonderful video ’showing off’ what VMWare can do. I am a VMWare NUT, and I LOVE Fusion even more. (It was one of the deciding factors in my going Mac)

In it’s stead, I decided to throw together a quick video of why I switched from World of Warcraft to VMWare Fusion. (I know, I know.. it’s not the same type of app. I just thought it would be fun) Enjoy:

Anyways, I do want to say that I have been a virtualization user for quite some time. From the very early days of VMWare (geez, what years ago). I have tried Parallels, Virtual PC, and a host of others. I have not found anything to work quite as well as VMWare does. I use all of their products, Fusion, GSX/ESX, Server, and Workstation.

I was really happy when they came out with a Mac version, VMWare Fusion. It was very instrumental in my switching over to the Mac platform. I have to say, that I am quite pleased with how it runs. I really like the Unity interface. (See my MacVista post in this blog) I love the seamless integration. It just plain ROCKS!

OK OK, I’ll stop raving about it, I just wanted to share all of this with you.

GO BUY VMWare Fusion! If you don’t have a Mac, GO BUY A MAC, THEN BUY VMWare Fusion!

See more about switching to fusion: http://www.vmware.com/switchtofusion/

Recently, we have been making the switch to the Mac platform here.  Angel and Andrew have switched almost entirely.  Dana’s kind of stuck in a windows world (shame).  Well, let me say this.  The only drawback from being on the mac platform is the lack of good games for the mac.   If you are purely or 95% a gamer, then the mac platform is not for you.  This is odd to me, since the mac platform bodes well for graphics, multi-tasking etc.

With all that said,  I have need to have some sort of game to play.  So, we decided to try World of Warcraft.  Some of you know, I have been an avid MMO player for over 10 years.  I have played the gamut of them.  From Meridian 59, EverQuest, Earth and Beyond, EVE, Entropia Universe, EverQuest II, Shadowbane, Star Wars Galaxies, and a host of others.

We pushed back on World of Warcraft because it seemed very easy to play. Almost TOO easy.  Well, I must say, almost a week playing and it IS easy.  However, it’s not so easy that it takes the fun out of the game play.  It’s actually a good balance between ease of play and fun. (get back to me in a couple weeks and I’ll let you know more as well)

We also decided to join a good friend of ours on a PvP server.  I am surprised I went this route, since I am not big into PvP, but the way I look at it, if the PvE play style gets boring to me, I can always PvP.

So, if you are interested in joining us in World of Warcraft or WoW as some call it.  We’re on the Gorgonnash (US) servers and we’re Alliance based.  My in game main character is Zenshinzo.  Send me a tell if you pop in. We’re currently in my friend’s guild. However, as things progress this may change.

Hope to see you!

I while back ago, Angel, Dana, and myself were invited to become “Ambassadors” for the online virtual world of Entropia Universe. This entails us working in their booth during CES - the Consumer Electronics Show in our home town of Las Vegas, Nevada.

We met the likes of Skalman, Neomaven, Jenna Star Mercury, Buzz Erik Lightyear, Neverdie, Robroy, Myhn Ah Byrd, Casay, Linden the Chosen Avery, Zephram ZC Chochrane and more. 

Throughout the convention I took a lot of pictures.  Check them out:

Entropia Universe at CES 2008

Pictures from CES 2008 with the Entropia Universe booth and party with NEVERDIE.

433 Photos

Some of the pictures in the album were from NEVERDIE’s party at the Crib Suite at the palms.  (Warning: Some of the pics are r-rated)

All and all it was a good time and a lot of work.  We met some new friends and are excited again to move forward for plans within Entropia.

If you are a interested in playing or checking it out, go to www.Entropia-Universe.com and if you are looking for a good society to join and have some help learning the mechanics of the virtual world, check out our society at www.ZOKU.eu and say hey to me Zentro “Zen” Zatsu.

Press Blurb:

Entropia Universe is the only virtual world with a real cash economy.  With over 670,000 registered accounts from more than 200 countries, its business model is entirely unique with free client software and no monthly subscription fee.  Entropia allows players to explore animal-filled wildernesses and large expanding cities that offer a variety of entertainment and social interaction for its participants while earning cash without having to deposit money.  Entropia will be the first virtual world to go public on a major international stock exchange.  The IPO will be filed by Credit Suisse by the thrid quarter of 2008.

I thought I’d add that up there since I had to say something similar to that about a thousand times….  LOL

We had a good time and would gladly do it again.  See you in Entropia!

This will probably be my last post for 2007.  A lot has happened in the last month.  We moved to a better and semi-permanent location.  We found a place in Henderson, NV we liked and it will be our “home base” as we do plan to travel in the coming year.   It’s a nice 3 bedroom apartment, townhouse style with attached garage.  Pictures below:

New Apartment 2007

Our new apartment in Henderson

31 Photos

We had a good Christmas.  Draylan got lots of presents.  I am telling you we spoil the hell out of my son.  If we don’t do it, he has plenty of aunts and uncles that do it for us.  lol

I am still playing Entropia Universe.  I have been meaning to get more time in world but I have been busy with the move and all.

I have found another time sink however.  It comes in the form of a PS3 game called Eye of Judgement.  It’s a hybrid console and collectable card game similar to Magic: The Gathering and Yu Gi Oh.  It’s played using the Playstation Eye and a game board where you lay cards down and they battle.  I’ve never been into card games before, but this one has me hooked.  We’ve started a local Saturday night “Eye of Judgment” night where some of our friends get together and we play.  If you are in the Las Vegas/Henderson area and play Eye of Judgment, give a comment or send me a note and we’ll send you an invite.

Anyways, I want to wish you all a Happy New Year!  2008 wil Rock!

For a long time now, I have wanted to run an Internet radio station.  Since I have been back in Entropia Universe, I have been hanging out on Club Neverdie a lot.  They have a live music stream that goes into the virtual world.  

Recently, they opened their stream for rental.  This interested me, so I am going to rent the stream during an event I will be hosting on Club Neverdie.  I found out they use SAM Broadcaster and Windows Media Services for their stream.  I’ve been a user SAM Broadcaster for a bit, but it was always one of those things that got pushed aside for other projects. I decided to take another look and set up some stuff with my servers.

First off, I set up one of my servers in my Data-center as a streaming audio server.  For this, I used the Icecast2 server for Linux.  Fairly straight forward set-up.  I installed Centos 5, then did an install of Icecast and edited the config files to the settings I liked.

I then installed SAM Broadcaster on one of my laptops and plugged in one of my portable HD’s with a copy of my MP3 collection and had SAM catalog it.  This too was fairly straightforward.  After the install and cataloging of my mp3’s, I set up a stream to my Icecast2 server and I was broadcasting on the Internet.  Good stuff.

This config is all fine and dandy for most people that just want to broadcast occaisionally.  For people that require constant or continuous 24/7 streams, I saw a slight flaw, your internet connection would be constantly used in sending the broadcast out to the server.  So, I came up with a plan.  Read on…

Read the complete Post.

For some time now, I had been migrating data and stuff off of our large server at the data-center.  It had a couple failing drives and I was going to have the company re-do the machine.  To prepare for this, several months ago, we moved most of the sites off that box.  One of these was the Order of Z guild website.  (a guild I run that covers several games and is many years old)

In the migration process (a few months back)  I had issues with the database transfer, so I kept the pointer and old database running to the old box.  Now, normally I am very careful about taking notes and notating what I have done with what.  For some reason, I did not flag this in my server configuration notes that I keep.

Fast forward to present day,  a couple weeks ago, I started disabling services on the box to be re-done.  I double checked everything.  This machine had several virtual machines running on it, and I turned each down one at a time and waited a day before proceeding. (to ensure no customer/client services were not interrupted) I did do the double check on the host server (which was also the main DB server).  I saw the OZ database and just assumed that it was the old one. (part of the reason for this was that I had created the new DB on the new box, when I was attempting transfer, it had data so I assumed it was being used)

So, I flag the support team and let them know that that box is ready for re-doing.  They confirm with me that it will loose all it’s data.  I say “Yep! Go for it!”.

About four hours later.  I go to the Order of Z site, I get this error message.  Long story short, I figure we got hacked.  NOPE,  I had them wipe the database remember!  DOH! 

Anyways, I do have a few back ups, I will be looking through them to see which is the most recent.  I will get the site back up and running.   I will probably take the time this time to do some of the upgrades I wanted to do.

 In the mean time, the teamspeak server is still up.  I am still working on my new guild in Entropia Universe, www.zoku.euyou guys are all welcome to come join us. (Janu and Thor have been in-game)  We have some interesting people, you guys are also welcome to join the forum if you miss shooting the shit.

If you’re an Order of Z member and have any thoughts on the matter, please comment.

As some of you know, I have been the long standing leader of the gaming guild “Order of Z” ( www.orderofz.com ).  We tried to form a chapter in the MMO/Virtual World Entropia Universe ( www.entropiauniverse.com ) several years ago and it was just not for most of our players.  Since I went back to Entropia, Order of Z was pretty much dead.  So, I decided to leave and find a society that I could be a part of.  I had no real desire to lead up a new society. 

I found Entropia Asia, and met several good players and new friends during my stay in that society.  For several reasons, it was not a solid “fit” and I decided to break off.  After a few days of thought, I decided what the hell and I formed my own society ZOKU ( www.zoku.eu ).  Some of the members of Entropia Asia have come over to help me get it going.

I’ve been working hard on our website and setting some of the policies I feel are needed to run a society well within Entropia Universe.  Things are going smooth and we’re getting things going.

So, if you want to find us, we’re in Entropia Universe when the real world does not get in the way.  At least Angel and I are.  Dana has an avatar, but she’s been going well in Everquest II and she’s happy in there for now.  My character name is Zentro Zen Zatsu and Angel is Angel AngelGirl Zatsu.

We can be contacted through the www.zoku.eu site. 

Well, since I have been too lazy to blog, I have decided at least to try to do a weekly update on Sun/Mon and see if I can stick to it.

This past week, we have been prepping for Draylan’s first ever day in school.  He starts Kindergarten in about 4.5 hours.  WOW, time flies.  I remember when he was born.  Seems like yesterday.  He’s got his haircut (Mohawk of course), he chose some new shoes and an outfit.  He’s raring to go!  (I’ll try and post some pictures when I can)

On the Linux side of things, I am designing a new server for home.  I’ll post the specs when I get it all figured out.  I am getting ready to play with MediaTomb and see how that does as a DLNA server.  We’ve decided to move again soon, so we’re gonna postpone the LinuxMCE configs till we get in the new place.

Well, I’ve been preparing for two larger projects, one of which will be my first non-adult endeavor on the web.  This should be interesting, yet again, I will post more on this when we get a solid framework up.

The last several months, I have been so busy with getting things going, that I have not had time to do any gaming or anything along those lines.  As you know, I went back to Entropia Universe almost 2 weeks ago and I am playing when I can.  I have joined a great society, Entropia Asia, and I am working on getting a website set up for them.  When it is completed it will be at http://www.entropia-asia.com I hope to get it done in the next couple of weeks and I am gonna have Andrew (www.hoodyhoo.com) work on a couple logo designs and see how they like it.

Anyways, that’s it for now.  

I used to play Entropia Universe when it was called Project Entropia and I stopped playing about 2 years ago. I have logged in and out over the past 2 years. I have always felt that this was the direction online worlds and gaming should or is going.

For a while now, I have been waiting for the “next big game” and all of the MMO’s out there are basically the same. The only real difference to me is the depth (or lack of) that they provide. So far, I have been unimpressed by what I have seen.

I have decided to give Entropia Universe another go. It has a very unique system. It allows for exchange of in-game money to real money and vice versa. So you are not paying for a subscription to play. You are actually depositing into the game economy like a tourist when you play. Although, unlike most tourist, you can earn money while visiting. Think of it as visiting a country on both a work and pleasure visa. You can spend money (and you can spend a LOT) while visiting thereby enhancing the local economy, or you can enjoy the world and work in the world and make something out of it.

I think this time around, I am gonna stick to it a bit longer. The last time I played, I was in hardcore gaming mode. I put a couple grand into the game and got bored of it because I thought of it as just a game. This time around, when I play, I am not looking at it as just a game, I am looking at it as everything I do, every item I spend or allow to decay, that that’s my money going away, and I want it back!

Some of you know that I have been running a gaming guild called the Order of Z for quite some years. I had a bunch of my guild join me in Project Entropia but they soon got tired of it. This time logging in, I removed myself from the Order of Z society and I am looking to join Entropia Asia… Although, in my travels so far, I met a good group of guys at www.honest-entropians.com …. If it doesn’t work out with Entropia Asia, I may give Honest Entropians a go.

Cheers

Yes, I caved, we got a Wii.

More on this later…