Oscillating Interest

Just a quick note to any readers who are used to the old layout: I switched it so it better matches my full website and no longer uses widgets that would break certain layouts. Hope to post something interesting in the near future.

Many people have asked me about how exactly Steam Family Sharing works so I'll try and cover some of the tricks and special cases not covered in Steam's FAQ Sharing games with a child, parent, sibling, room mate or other person you live with is often quite simple when you use a shared computer. However, I'd like to cover the other scenario: sharing with friends. I like explaining concepts through examples so to go through all of these examples we will use two friends, Alice and Bob, who live in separate homes, use separate computers, and want to share games. For the purposes of example I will give them each a small library of games: Alice's Games: Hotline Miami (only Alice owns) FTL (both Alice and Bob own) Dota 2 (Free to Play so both Alice and Bob 'own' it) Bob's Games: Crypt of the NecroDancer (only Bob owns) FTL (both Alice and Bob own) Dota 2 (Free to Play so both Alice and Bob 'own' it) Alright great now we'v

I've been a running and playing Dungeons & Dragons off and on for the last decade. Recently I feel I've upped my game and found some useful tricks, props, and techniques that have helped enhance the game I'm currently running for my players and feel this would be useful for other DMs new and old. Today's post is about Rumours, that little blurb of plothook filled text at the beginning of a module that you're supposed to give to your players somehow. My problem with plot hooks and rumours is I was never sure how to present them to my players without feeling artificial. I was browsing the DnD subreddit one day and I either found this idea or I realized it was a good one: The bag of rumours.  Overview I'm currently using  Sly Flourish's Lazy DM  ideas for adventure design but to make things more sandbox/open world I have thrown in a combination of   Critical Hits ' 5x5 method. This means I have several adventures 'on the go' that have a

Background I decided to buy a Chromecast to replace my Raspberry Pi as a Plex client and general streaming device.  I use a few services quite regularly for watching shows and these are a requirement for me to consider a new set-top box for the TV.  My "Streaming Trinity" is:  Crunchyroll  - for legal anime subs. (Ad-based and subscription options) Netflix  - for movies, TV, and legal anime dubs (subscription) and  Plex  - for local media on my computer and I'm trying out some 'channels' as well to watch videos from official websites such as CBC and Discovery (Paid mobile apps,Free web/desktop clients, optional subscription or one-time lifetime unlock, requires a computer for a server) The Chromecast had my trinity and more so for about $50 CAD (after shipping and tax) I figured it was worth a shot! I also purchased it in the timeframe to receive $20 on Google Play (this offer is over now, sorry). I heard you can also purchase them in-stores

Update: I've added some more apps and updated the prices on Swiftkey since it is free now. I've also added explanations to the differences between the free and paid versions of apps. Any extra details in the description/new apps are prefaced with Update or New This is my primer to Android apps. There are some apps I install on any Android device I have, either because I feel it's necessary, enhances the experience, or is just plain cool. To help remind myself which apps these are and to cut down on the number of times I have to copy and paste links for people I've compiled this list. (All prices are from the Canadian Google Play Store at the time of writing) Keyboard Swiftkey - Play Store Free ! - Official Site This is my favourite keyboard app. I like it because of its themes, the Flow mode, and its word prediction (which is great!). To be fair, I haven't tried the new Android Kitkat keyboard, so it may have improved significantly. However, the adva

The Heartbleed bug is the trending topic online this week and I hope to consolidate some resources and explain what the issue is. The end of this post contains many links that will also help explain the situation. What is it?  It is a security vulnerability that has existed in the OpenSSL software library for two years. Heartbleed allows an attacker to read data that would otherwise be considered protected. This includes things like passwords, emails, and private keys. Unfortunately this act of reading data is undetectable, so we must assume that all passwords have been stolen and an attacker has copied all the private keys. For those unfamiliar with public-key cryptography, a private key is what identifies someone online, allowing them to read encrypted messages sent to them. This can also allows someone to pretend they are Facebook and perform other such attacks.  OpenSSL is used by the most popular web server on the internet, Apache  (approximately 66% of web sites

Ads I've noticed a lot of activity on my blog recently and I've decided to include a small Google Ads widget on the side of the page to help maintain the cost of running my main website. If you find the ads too intrusive please let me know in the comments. Films I have just taken a course from the Department of Film Studies at my university and to help review for the exam I may be posting some movie reviews/analysis. This strays from the general theme of technology on the blog so far, but is one of my interests so I hope that you, Reader, find it interesting too.