Daniel Ruth
Owner of this website. See my bio page if you want to know more;)
Review: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book1)
Note: My friends and I formed a book club. Time on our hands during the pandemic.
Review by Daniel Ruth
Overall Score:
The premise of the book is that a man from our general era has arranged to have his head preserved upon death. In the future, he is to be revived once medical science has advanced to a sufficient degree. He dies almost immediately after and things take a turn for the worse as he wakes up in a future dystopia where his mind has been translated into software. He makes the best of it by becoming the heart of a spaceship probe sent to explore and ready planets for colony ships to be sent afterward. Things fall apart.
I won't go into plot details, though it is fairly straightforward. There is a twist in the beginning but its, not a huge surprise if your paying attention. On the surface, the story is a bit fluffy, it's almost typical Kindle Unlimited fare, where there is a minor crisis, a major crisis, and then the end (broadly speaking). Rinse and repeat for the next story in the series. Still, it was enjoyable for what it was. I thought it was a bit short and read the entire trilogy in a day and a half. My sensibilities on length may be suspect though since I saw the hardcopy my friend ordered and it was a respectable size.
There are several elements worth mentioning. First is the meaning of life. Really. If you clone someone and kill the original its murder, right? The original is dead and the clone is, at best, a twin brother. Lets take it a step further. If you copy that original into software and then delete that software, is it murder? What if you copy it first? If you are that AI and copy yourself to go into a hazardous situation is it morally right? All these questions are explored. Without the 'soul' or religious context, it is simplified a bit but it's still an interesting conversation.
The second element is transhumanism. The next step in human evolution. Generally, this is portrayed by cyborgs but this book isn't the first to go the AI route. Some of the issues he explores take a bit of twisting to the world in order to fit right, generally leading to a pretty depressing view on humans. Since many of these situations mirror our present reality it can be argued how realistic they are. Overall, the protagonist gets a pretty poor view of the human race.
The third element is what I found most striking. What does immortality mean? I mean everyone wants to live forever, right? What if everyone died around you? What if only you and clones went on? It could get pretty grim... but who doesn't want immortality even if you have to deal with that? It's an interesting journey and I like the slow evolution of his philosophy as this situation slowly sinks in. It doesn't show up so much in the first book but later in the series this becomes the core. When this is resolved in the third book and it ends it feels like an excellent wrap up of a trilogy even as some of the events march on. Perhaps too much so. I almost feel that if a fourth book comes out I may not really need to read it. I would, of course, but it just felt perfect.
There were aliens. Some good and some bad, but it wasn't really what I was reading the book for. The interaction with the primitive civilization may be fascinating if that's what you're interested in but its just not my cup of tea. It wasn't bad and as time marches on it reinforces the isolation of immortality but not my thing. The evil aliens were... evil. They were genocidal and irredeemable. A fair villain if a bit two dimensional. The moral implications were only lightly touched upon, but that wasn't terrible. No one wants to feel bad for defending yourself and despite the darker tones of the novel and exploration of what it means to be alone together (OMG a pandemic reference), I didn't really pay attention to the grimdark until it was pointed out.
Generally, I hate novels that split the point of view. I want a single POV or, at most two, so I can develop a rapport with the main character. This novel did split the point of views but it was understandable since they were all Bob. Sometimes it got a bit confusing on which Bob was doing what, and I occasionally wondered if I had some dyslexic tendencies when I stopped I tried to figure out why the Bob I thought I was reading about turned out to be another. I think that might just be me. There were a lot of Bobs.
On the whole, this was a pleasant read. Dark undertones aside it was... not a wild ride, more like a steady tour of a small section of the universe. There was fighting, philosophy, and the meaning of life. What more could you want?
Deadwood - Game 7 - 07/18/2020
Brian started by informing us that we should have gotten an advancement last time. Some people who already had a plan in place took it but most deferred until they had some time to research. We were still given the choice of using the portal to get directly into the church by the Indian Spirit. Brian attempted to share that map but it wouldn’t load for anybody. We restarted, cleared cache, etc but it was a big distraction. Eventually, everyone but Jon was able to see it. He used the shared Skype image and did the best he could. Brian enticed Buster into not taking the portal by invoking his Skeptic hindrance for a free fate chip. It helped that Paul hadn’t arrived yet so he couldn’t argue. Everyone else jumped into the portal, eventually. Buster took the horses back to town which took an hour. When he arrived at the church, he found it buttoned up and the doors glowing with strange purple light. He heard no gunfire and saw no signs of a battle. He attempted to get the marshal and his useless deputies to come help but they did not. He ended up at the hotel, hoping to rally the few allies we had in this town. The rest of the players ended up emerging from various mirrors throughout the town. Each was handled one at a time. Some did some investigation but eventually, everyone gathered at the hotel. Only Hawthorne managed to get an ally, Laura Giles, to join us.
So back at the church, we examined our options. Thomas considered avoiding the doors by climbing up but the only other entrance was the bell tower which was 3+ stories up. Possible but not trivial. Virgil then took the bull by the horns, said a prayer, and attempted to open the door. To no one’s surprise, it did not. The cultists had removed the big stone cross from the church so we used that as a battering ram and busted the doors open. Inside the pews had been cast aside to make room for a huge pentagram on the floor. Around it was all the brothers and sisters, A through U. At the pulpit was the Reverend, casting some spell to gate a demon into the pentagram. At his side was his deacon. Cards were dealt and things started moving. Quick moving players got into the church entrance but it quickly became clogged with all the minions. Thomas did manage to get a hit on the Reverend which thankfully disrupted his spell before it got too crowded. Onacona managed to get to the stairs up to the landing above before that path was cut off. Laura got a high card and ended up in the front lines, to her woe.
What followed was a battle of attrition. With so many enemies, it took a long time for a round to complete. We managed to get a few shots through to the villains but mostly it was grinding through the minions. Occasionally one would hit and do exploding damage which then soaked up fate chips to stay alive. I’ll hit a few highlights, most of which center around the adventure cards. Phoebe Ann, through a complicated series of moves and at least one fate chip, managed to weave her way into the room opposite the stairs only to discover there were no stairs on that side. The preacher’s first action was to cast an AOE Fear spell which ate up some fate chips to avoid. Brian played a card that enticed him to pontificate on his evil plans and lose a turn. When a turn takes over an hour, that was a big deal. Big John kicked ass in hand to hand with these guys. He particularly benefited from the unlimited opportunity attacks in this system. Laura was almost killed but somehow managed to stay up. Jon played a card to get +2 damage against the cultists but then found Virgil an easy target. He quickly ran out of fate chips and was almost taken out. But Dave Green played a card that turned any hit into a critical failure. So, the killing blow turned into a trip over the nearby cross which took out the minion. Onacona was followed up to the landing. When attacked, Dave played a card that turned a miss into a hit against another nearby minion. So, he tossed his attacker off the landing and hit another guy below. Andy played a card that brought in allies from an unexpected source. After consideration, Brian brought the Pearl Gang into the action. He rolled randomly for where and Jon managed to root for an 8 and get them through the hated windows to everyone’s delight. However, they got rocked their first round and didn’t have that big an impact other than divert some of the minions away from us.
So, most of the minions were cleared out in a couple rounds but most of our fate chips were as well. When we finally got shots on the villains, Brian started using those fate dice to keep them up. The Reverend cast a magic missile which hurt. He then cast a domination spell, trying to turn Hawthorne over to his side. But he saved with ease (i.e. exploding) and laughed it off. But then he drew a Joker and did the magic missile again. He hit Thomas with a raise and did 3 wounds. He played a fate chip to reduce it to one wound but kept his last fate chip for the next attack. He then hit Pearl and wounded her. Then he hit Hawthorne with more exploded damage. He had no chips left and there were no cards left to save him. He was bleeding out, losing a die of Vigor permanently from the gut shot. He made one death save (based on his new lowered Vigor) and at -3 from his wounds. Onacona ran to his aid but missed his medicine roll. Andy made 2 more death saves before anyone could help him. But the next round, Thomas drew a Joker after spending the whole fight at the bottom. With that +2, his second shot hit with a raise. That extra die exploded twice for a big hit. The Reverend was out of fate chips and finally fell. A flame of fire coming out of the bullet hole in his black heart. The deacon was then blasted, mostly by the Pearl Gang gals and it was over.
Eventually, the first aid guys managed to save the dying doctor. We stopped at that point with wounded all around to be tended. Andy made another Vigor roll to keep his Ailing hindrance from becoming terminal. We were granted another advance which put us up to Seasoned. That grants access to a new list of Edges so there were some discussions about options people were considering. Brian said that we will likely be declared heroes of the town and we should consider what job/role we might want. Andy, for example, plans to challenge the Marshal to a duel and run him out of town. Obviously, Buster will try to get the newspaper going again. Phoebe Ann would like to run the theater however Miss Bella is still there so that’ll be complicated. We assume Virgil will take over the church. Some of the others aren’t so obvious. Perhaps deputies for John and Thomas. I’m not sure where Onacona would fit other than hermit in the woods.
Three Sheets to the Page
Working with Joomla doesn't make you an internet guru by any means. In fact, one of my friends mocks it as a crutch that keeps you from the really powerful tools. Joomla isn't alone, he mocks all the content management systems(CMS). While I don't completely agree he does have some good points. You can actually make some really good looking pages with just html, css and java. It's just a lot of work, especially for large webpages or interactive pages. Getting good with these three tools is even recommended by people who work with Joomla too since it allows you to do some pretty powerful modifications of the basic Joomla pages and the modules themselves.
So, why do I even mention this? Well, I am limited in how much I can write with screaming children roaming in the wilds (the living room, the bedrooms, and the dining room) so I turned towards some things that I can mostly put down and pick back up when the wave of children has passed. So I picked up some books on HTML, CSS, java, and Linux and have been going through them. Most of it makes sense though the actual implementation can get messy. Browsers allow you to inspect the Styles that define the webpage's look but trying to pin down a change has been challenging. Fun and frustrating in turns. Also as I make more changes I have to ask myself if I actually made my webpage look better or just messier.
I think I picked up the basics of HTML pretty quickly, though the fancy stuff is beyond me writing it from scratch. Though I can usually follow it if it's given to me. CSS also wasn't too bad. Writing your own CSS is easier than trying to slip in your own changes in someone else's CSS code. I have literally spent hours trying to track down the correct class name to use. Java is much harder. The basic language looks simple and then you see a shortened bit of code that does what your four lines did and you are back to "Huh?"
The Unix training book has been slow going too, but that's okay. As some may recall I set up a Synology NAS box a while back and then discovered that the box was a real Linux computer that could run almost all Linux stuff and set up my Joomla website on it. My friend (the same jerk) mocked it as... you got it, a "crutch" that keeps you from working directly with the Linux command line and really taking control of your system. I was mostly okay with that since I wasn't ready to dig too deep into the rabbit hole at the time. Since then Synology messed up a few times and figuring out why has been a pain in the butt. So I got the book, set up a Ubuntu Virtual box, and started to practice on the command line. Then I got a Rasberry pie and practiced on its command line. While I still need a reference book to get the command's syntax right and absolutely use Google to do the fancy stuff, these days I can understand what the commands do and the file structure and permissions don't seem to be written in code (though technically they are....). Yay!
My wife and kids are out at the inlaws for a few days so I'll probably take a break from learning to actually write a bit.
Its a Bug Hunt!
These last few weeks I have been hunting down bugs on my Joomla website. I had two web addresses due to the service Synology offers. So I kept having an issue where parts of the address would be mixed up. Joomla has a redirect module but it doesn't have a default wildcard redirect. So I did a little research on htaccess files and, more by trial and error than skill, figured out how to redirect everything to the main address. So I think most of the 404 errors are fixed. Googles robots are still sniffing around the old addresses but they should eventually figure things out for themselves.
I have brought my old fanfiction back onto this site. I cleaned it up and added a chapter to it. I have another chapter I'll add once I check it a few more times for errors. I never get them all. I added an Archive of some surviving records from older games. Its a bit dry but for me, it's very nostalgic.
I also added a UPS to protect my computer and Synology NAS. It hosts this site so if it goes down so does it. There aren't too many power outages yet but it should be good for an hour or so. Of course, PG&E threatened days of power outages so there isn't much to be done about that.
This is a copy of my authors notes from the fanfiction's last chapter. Since it says most of my thoughts I didn't want to retype something similar: As some may be aware of I wrote a few books, a children's book that pretty much dead in the water, as well as another story where I was experimenting with the litRPG genre. However, through this, I have been distracted by the thought that I never really finished my first (and only) Ranma fanfiction. I was also distracted by two screaming six-year-olds (even now, one is crying in my ear), but I can only solve one of them. So, I decided to come back to this and see if I could finish it. I am close to the end so it would be a shame to leave it unfinished. I have gone through the previous chapters and fixed a lot of grammar errors. As with most of my works, I am limited in my proofreaders, and proofing your own stories is a losing proposition. It seems every time I read through it I find more things. Grammarly and Microsoft Word are getting better but each time they find new things. It's pretty weird.
An amusing side story is that a long time ago (over 20 years), I wanted to continue this story after the Old Ones story was wrapped up. Ranma was going to go to China and learn Immortal Cultivation. Palladium's old China books hinted at this by name dropping "Internal Alchemy" but didn't actually go into any details about it but what they did hint at sounded extremely awesome. In fact, they dropped the entire martial arts concept until its later "new" China books that went in an entirely new direction. I didn't even really realize what "Internal Alchemy" was until I got into Wuxia and Xianxia a few years ago. Then I was "Oh! That's what that is. How cool, Ranma would totally go for that!" Anyway, I will barely finish this series, let alone a sequel but if anyone knows a story where Ranma does Cultivation let me know. I would soo love to read that.
Oh, one of my kids loves the Ranma anime and the other one hates Ranma but loves Sailor Moon. I was telling them about crossover fanfiction where they meet but I don't think they understood.
Children's Story Update: See the WP blog to the right to see my original update of this. Since then I have published the works I completed on the "Books" part of this site. It also includes the audio of me reading the original version, complete with the Evil Mrs.Potatohead. My girls saw me working on this and actually remembered it! They offered to draw in the Princesses themselves and furiously started drawing for at least fifteen minutes. Then they got bored and as they left for greener pastures they commanded me to include a Prince in the story. This must be mommy's influence because if I have my way they won't be seeing any princes until they are least 30;)
Deadwood has begun
Andy's game is postponed due to Andy moving. Several games have cropped up, mostly using the Savage Worlds ruleset. Deadwoods is one of these subsets that uses Savage Worlds. Brian is kind enough to run a campaign through this dry time. Paul also has a Savage Worlds campaign running, however, I do not know enough about his game to publish anything. Jon will also be running Fantasy Trip as a side game. Anyone is welcome to post on this site about their game and if they want help filling out blogs or pages regarding their game I will be happy to lend a hand.
The Archive is Open
I like Dave's blogs very much. They are fun and they give the ephemeral feelings of the weekly games the illusion that they can last forever. So I was able to coax Dave into unearthing more stories of bygone eras. The Archives are open and I hope that Dave will supply us with more memories in the future!
As a side note, if anyone else wants to use the site as records of their adventures I am completely open to that. Basically the Blogs in the accounts are completely open to anyone, though use of the "Read More" is a bit quirky. Adding header Pictures is tricky, though embedding them is trivial. Likewise, Articles are just like web-pages and can be linked to each other... just like standard webpages.
Can You Hear Me Now... again
Can you feel the deja vue? I do! I published a blog with this name a few days ago. Then I had an issue with the permissions of the main config file and had to restore a backup. I am pretty sure that when the backup program reinstalls the system it re-sets the permission. Thus it's an easy way to avoid trying to fix the issue the hard way. I thought the backup was up to date but it was missing my latest post. So...this is mainly from memory. It should suffice.
So... I installed a lot of features into the web site. Community Builder you all know about, right? Of course, you did. Basically its a set of modules that allow you to put in a profile and connect to other people on the site. It's a neat little thing, I was vaguely hoping my gamer friends would use to organize their games, schedules and chat about the game. Usually, we send back and forth about 50 e-mails about the game between sessions and this seemed a decent way to communicate. One of them actually records the events and I have been posting his recap under his name (with his permission). It hasn't caught on yet but the dream hasn't died.
The base package is nice but it isn't configured, so it took a little work to massage it into place. It has the profile, blogs, and articles for the registrants and connects nicely with the site forum and IM modules. Then I got the addons such as Video and picture galleries able to add to the profiles and then there are the groups. Basically groups are clubs, hobbies or interests you join and can post blogs, galleries message boards and private forums. Then I got an instant messaging module to chat with other members logged in. I may have gone overboard but it was fun. there's a more detailed breakdown of the features and how to use them under the Community top menu
Finally, to the title reference... I fixed the Amazon blog reference that pointed to my website blog (as opposed to the Wordpress blog). So you can now hear that if you want. Though you might be hearing double on this post.
To the Pain!
There's been an issue with the site for a while that forced it to use PHP 5.6. If you know what that means... Congratulations! Basically it is an old standard that hasn't been updated in ages. Think Windows 7. Initially, I thought that my Synology NAS just couldn't change to PHP7.3. Then I found out after chasing my tail for over a year that it actually had been (but I didn't think it had since there was no indicator but every time I changed it to the newer PHP version the site would go down. It was very confusing and frustrating and confusing.
As I was fiddling around with the webserver settings I read an article on how someone had fixed a similar issue in Wordpress by uninstalling WP in Synology and then restoring a copy of the installation without going through Synology's installer. So I uninstalled it but when I tried to re-install it through Akeeda I found Akeeba had lost permission to create folders. Oops. Okay, I tried to reinstall Joomla. Somehow the Synology installer had lost permission to install it. ?!?!? Next, I used Hyperbackup to reinstall the original Joomla setup but now I lost connection to the database even when I was in PHP 5.6. I went into PHPmyadmin and although I could see everything I didn't have permissions to make changes. It also forced me to add special character to my password.
So I fiddled around with the install since I still have no idea its the database. I mess things up but no big deal. I have Akeeba, right? Its permissions got fixed when I restored the install with Hyperbackup. But... it warns me that the database may not accept my special character... the very same one that MariaDB forced on me. The restore fails. Can't connect to the database. Well, now it has to be a database issue so I go into PHPMyAdmin and I can't even log in. I reset the passwords from the front of Maria and it still doesn't work. I uninstall Mariadb 10 and PHPMyAdmin and reinstall them and the same thing happens. So I install MariaDB 5 and PHPMyAdmin. I can't log in as a user but I can login as the root. I change the configuration.PHP to the root user and suddenly everything works. In PHP 5.6 AND 7.3.
So mostly fixed. I am not happy about using the root identity but I can't log into the user no matter how many times I change the password. I suppose I may work up the courage to reinstall MariaDB 10 again but...ugh.
Sample Game News
Due to the lovely epidemic we are enjoying, we are all sheltering in place. During this time we are tentatively playing once a week with possibly more sessions padding the remaining time. See David's blog summaries for the all the most recent games... and even the old ones.
To Go Where No Man Has Gone Before
So RPGs have been a hobby for me for years. A cousin introduced me to the Palladium Fantasy RPG and the Palladium world in its various incarnations has been my favorite ever since. Today Palladium has an entire Megaverse of content but that old Fantasy RPG has its place in my heart. However, I moved and it's been hard to get a Rifts game going either as a player or a GM since then. Setting up a webcam and Skyping just didn't work. Years passed again. For a while I played various incarnations of D&D with my local friends in my new home. Every other week I'd troupe over to a friend's and we'd sit down at the table and roll some dice. But time passed, we got old, had kids, moved out of state and had various mid-life crises. We tried long-distance playing again. Again the webcam came out and failed. After some fumbling around we started to use an online gaming platform called Fantasy Grounds combined with Skype. It started out a bit clunky but after a few years the D&D ruleset and more specifically the 5e ruleset because very polished. It's endorsed by Wizards of the Coast, which seems very wise considering I have pretty much bought all the content at least twice so I could have the hard copy AND play online with the reference material.
And yet... and yet... what about the game system I actually gave a darn about? Well, Palladium is still coming out with content but without people to play with, I really haven't kept up. Every few years I would sit down with a serious face at my computer and Google up a storm trying to find some way to play Rifts online. Roll 20 had some online games but I had invested too much energy in Fantasy Grounds to redo it all in Roll 20. SO fast forward a few weeks ago. I sit down, do another search and I get a reference pop up. Someone named "Damned" had made a very flexible ruleset for Fantasy Grounds. It's not perfect but with a little bit of spit and polish, it may just work. I dug into the tutorials for extensions, stumbled around a bit in the xml and lua files and came up with a slight modification that I think will work with Fantasy Grounds and Damned's MoreCore ruleset. Fortunately, Damned is very responsive to questions. I feel a bit guilty for wasting his time but with his help, I have something I put together with an online tutorial on YouTube. I still don't actually have a campaign to play but it was fun to put together. If this interests you check out my Youtube tutorial!
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