Month: August 2020

Crypto Game Rules

ASullivanLeave a comment
To make a new receiving address:
 
Launch new application. It should sync in a couple seconds.
 
Click “File” > “Receiving Addresses”.
 
In the new windows, click “New” and enter a label of your choosing (this doesn’t matter, I just use localhost).
 
Hit OK and send this to me so I can sync these between everyone.
 
 
Address book
 
Click on “File” > “Sending Addresses” to pull this up
 

 

Coin links:

Windows: https://aasullivan.com/pub/euthoniscoin-qt.7z
Linux: https://aasullivan.com/pub/euthoniscoin-qt-linux.tar.gz

 

How to earn coin:

  • Each user will start with 1000 EC (EuthonisCoin) paid out of the vault.
  • Every Thursday, get 100 (maybe 1000 if I can mine enough in between) when you sign on to play or hang out. Every game we play on Thursday after 7PM with 2 or more people: Additional 100 Coin.
  • Any time we’re playing with 3 or more people, earn the same as Thursdays (If I’m not around, keep track and I’ll send the coins when possible)

Wagers can be made or can “pay off” players for certain fun (IE Pay Chwaee 100 Coin to skip his next turn in worms; Pay 500 Coin to reverse your keyboard or controller while playing).

 

Ongoing rules/ideas:

  • 100 coin: whoever can complete an objective first in KF2 (all other players pay 10 to this person)
  • 500 coin: take a drink/hit.
  • 1000 coin: talk in a funny accent until a round is over/Say a certain word in every sentence
  • 1000 coin: skip turn in Worms
  • 2000 coin: only use one type of unit in SC2
  • 2500 coin: only use starting weapons in KF2
  • 2500 coin: skip one entire hole in Golf
  • 5000 coin: reverse keyboard/controller for the round/match

 

Addresses:
Aaron: 8ZpPdqSQ7S45XuH3EGAqpSKrmmX7UtkVZs // (subject to change, hasn’t recovered yet)
Andrew: 8MY2tYd2rF7jUEfgoCzMLMxgGwzzhT6EXU
Billy: 8LcFH7VkCsys3a3AUjdMaAdTbjTMLjxfGf
Brit: 8RDmxuasLqsSmhKeZ3MYspBav7JdDndnwH // (subject to change, hasn’t recovered yet)
Chwaee: 8aWBYf2zNT66Wf2gQsPBBGpbQtz41EwpjR
euthonis: 8bNLSb41YW45FfLDfm8kRTjwBNM2WVbZVG
Kuabarra: 8UPiUfx4zoHoxNDBeegBoCaDnbcbzkMdNC
John: 8Kb3NLNQzyaFRuJ976P63Vr9Pok2SdUr8A // (subject to change, hasn’t recovered yet)

 

Other ideas:

  • Lottery: Donate coins to a pool as a reward for something (maybe winning Golf after skipping a hole? Most kills in KF2 while only using starting weapon?). Could also dump a bonus from the mining system to someone as well.
Clearing old instance of EuthonisCoin:
 
  • Make sure the application is closed.
  • Delete former application and/or folder containing it
  • Hit buttons: “WIN + R” OR hit the start menu, type “run”, Enter
  • Enter %APPDATA% and press OK
  • Delete folder “EuthonisCoin”
  • Close explorer window and relaunch application and it should connect once more and update.

RG350P Handheld First Impressions

ASullivan

After saving up for this handheld, I pulled the trigger on this recently and have been pretty impressed overall. The system runs buttery smooth, comes preconfigured with a large number of emulators and ROMs and just generally feels like a solid little handheld from the hay-day of Gameboy goodness.

Running at 100 bucks with a micro-SD card, the system isn’t super expensive when compared to my Nintendo DS with a custom Kart to run roms (about 90 bucks total and much more limited in what it can do in comparison). This handheld even plays PSX roms without issue and has excellent loading times when compared to my playing times as a child.

Things of note:

  • Quick to boot. Plays games very well once you find the right roms. Surprised it plays PSX roms as well as it does (Vigilante 8, Driver, Crash Team Racing each for 30 mins or more without issue).
  • The system will randomly not boot (stuck on black screen) but hitting the reset button immediately resets and fixes it.
  • Came with 32GB MicroSD card loaded with ROMS which makes managing them much easier. Comes with a bunch of emulators (including DOSBOX which is neat) and all are preconfigured and just work which is excellent.
  • Lots of menu options that make it pretty solid to use. Can also save game states to come back to them if the games don’t support saving (very neat feature).
  • Worth 100 bucks? I’d say so for sure, especially with the loaded SD card.

I’m going to be spending a lot of time tinkering with this. It appears it supports networking (guessing via one of the two USB-C ports) so will need to check that out for easier ROM management off my internal SFTP server. In the meantime, I’ll be reliving my childhood on a 4 inch screen.

unRAID: capacity and ease of use over performance

ASullivan

I’ve been looking over various NAS (Network-Attached-Storage) operating systems for some time now. Naturally, there’s two big players in the game that everyone seems to go to: FreeNAS and unRAID. Both boast a considerable user base, community add on support and a ton of customization but one big difference at a quick glance: FreeNAS, as the name implies, is free while unRAID is a pay for licensed OS. But a quick glance only shows so much.

After spending several months going back and forth, I decided to do some testing with unRAID. One of the biggest reasons was my mix of various extra hard drives I have that I wanted to use in the pool for the software RAID configuration. FreeNAS requires matching disks in pairs and I have odd sets of drives ranging from 4, 8 and 12TB capacities. I initially did some testing on an old 2U with 6 X 1TB disks to test and get used to the GUI. I then upgraded one of the disks in the array to a 2TB disk to see the process. Spoiler: stupid easy and straight forward, exactly what I want. It was time to go big on the build.

I purchased a Dell R510XD server for this project: 32GB ECC RAM, twin 6 core Xeons and 12 bay capacity; Perfect amount of drive bays and overkill on CPU and RAM for future proofing. Unfortunately, this was the beginning of a bit of a tough learning process…

Being new to software RAID, I forgot to take into account the hardware RAID card. The H700 card onboard does not support JBOD (Just a bunch of a disks) which allows an operating system to see ALL individual disks and build the software raid from this. I had to bite the bullet and order another RAID card and cables that would support the proper config. 50 bucks later, I was in business.

The initial configuration was this: (2) 12TB disks for parity, (4) 8TB disks and (5) 4TB disks for the storage pool. With the dual parity disks, this allows up to 2 disks to fail without data loss. The initial RAID parity burn in took about 30 hours which isn’t bad over all. Unfortunately, I soon found the write speeds with the software RAID to be less than stellar, something unRAID is known for. I took the next step of adding a 1TB SSD as a cache disk to mitigate this issue and can now sustain gigabit throughput on uploads without issue.

Onto the software side of things, I’ve added a few of the usual plugins (Community Applications, Calibre, Plex and others). The installs take all of 30 seconds and typically run with a dedicated docket instance, something I’ve never tinkered with prior but am quickly falling in love with for its simplicity and ease of maintenance. The software RAID seems robust, the GUI is sleek and modern and everything is snappy and well laid out. I went through and upgraded capacity replacing one 4TB disk with an 8TB (about 20 hours to burn in) and this again was quick and painless.

One quick thing of note: One of the biggest differences besides the disk loadouts between unRAID and FreeNAS is the performance. FreeNAS boasts considerably higher read/write speeds due to the way the parity works (excellent video summarizing this here). The other is that changing the array (modifying disks, adding, removing, etc) takes considerably more work and effort including CLI management of disks. As someone who’s broken a number of *NIX systems on the CLI, this was a bit of a deal breaker for me. Another difference because of the disk management being different: You can add just ONE more disk at a time to unraid, whereas FreeNAS requires matching pairs to work.

All in all, I’m shocked at how well this project has come together. With the current config, I’m at 56TB raw, 51.8TB usable capacity. The system is used both as a file dump for all my stuff and as a redundant backup system from several other systems due to its capacity. I would definitely recommending trying the software out for free and see how you like it and if it’s for you or your business.

Quick take: Slower than FreeNAS, more capacity, make sure you have a JBOD support RAID card or direct pass through on SATA.