Category: mini-blog

2006: KRC’s website jumps over to WordPress+MediaWiki
2010-2015: Korea Herald Business jumps to WordPress . New Korea Times English site and Woori Radio is made with WordPress
2016: Radio Seoul jumps to WordPress

Way ahead of the times.

Mordor: Depths of Dejenol is one game I had almost forgotten that I played it. But it’s likely that some nightmares when dreaming probably derived from the experience of falling into a pit to a deeper level on Mordor.

I can’t even pinpoint the years I played this game. The game was released in 1995, but I was playing the demo version of what seemed like a pre-1.0 version. It just feels like I played this game after Baldur’s Gate, which was around 1998-99. I can’t remember who introduced me to the game – it was probably Sungwoo(sp?) . I recall the person introducing me to the game, and me spending months trying to minmax the race and class characteristics based on specific higher level spell and weapon requirements, and just starting to pick up intro level teleportation type spells, then visited Sungwoo and saw him playing with very advanced characters, flying over pits, etc. Which was a pretty standard experience on every game he introduced me to. I actually don’t recall Sungwoo’s correct name – the older brother’s name started with S, younger started with J. I must have spent at least one year on this game. Did dad play it? Did brother?

The game’s help file extensively documented every aspect of the game, very much like wiki sites of these days. I think the scariest description of something that could go wrong was teleporting your party into a wall (rock tile). The thought of your body meshed into a wall, instantly dead, unable to see anything, was terrifying. This description was in the helpfile for lower level playthrough because it was part of the Morgue resurrection service – the resurrection service said “if you just died, it’s not that expensive. If you died by teleeporting into a wall, chances of success are low and also more expensive”

I’m surprised I could remember the name of the game. I could recall it was “Mordor something”, so after some googling was able to find references to the game. Probably easier to remember given the other mordor in middle earth.

The most incredible of all this is that the game is still selling for $15 – it ships a boxed set. And the binaries are still Windows 3.1 binaries – the updated demo file shows the developer did some touches in 2012 so that it can install up to Windows XP (although it’s unclear whether the actual game works on XP)

Hmm so this was actually an earlier DnD experience than Baldur’s Gate, although Mordor is more of a hack & slash..

Working on the @civiCRM Service Inquiry Form https://krcla.ourpowerbase.net/service2 and finding this dilemma:

Going from the multi-column form https://krcla.ourpowerbase.net/en/k/service to a flat structure, the service categorization came out cumbersome so instead I tried a two-pronged approach:

• have them first select the big categories of IRP/HAP/Housing, and then show a second list that goes into depth. (useful)
• detect key words from the client describing their problem in the paragraph box, and auto categorize. since conditional “set to” creates unchangeable variables, create a checkbox to deactivate feature. (very nice)

The problem is that the two methods each work, but canj’t be in place simultaneously. The second list method relies on the IRP sublist, HAP sublist being hidden and making them shown depending on which larger category was chosen. Because these lists are hidden, I can’t make the keyword detection both show the sublist and make selection from the sublist at the same time. If I just tell it to choose an item from the sublist, the sublist shows up (as per sublist conditional, not the keyword detection conditional), but no choice is made.

Which feature to kill, which feature to kill…

When four screens comes in handy

I dreamt that we were having a press conference to announce the Know Your Rights android app. It was someone tall and big (Karn? Staff 1) and.. Staff 2 ? doing the conference, I was sitting in the audience side. The dream started when the conference ended, and Staff 2 was about to say “Thank you for coming..”.

So I quickly went to Staff 2 and told them that they hadn’t done the live phone demonstration yet. “Oh ok”. “We will show you how to install and use the app”.

While this was happening, another staff, Staff 3, had already connected to Chromecast and for some reason was stuck trying to find the app among four superhero posters on the TV screen.. like the Incredible Four or something. Staff 3 I think was white.. they were like “where is it? It’s supposed to be around here..” So I went to the staff and said “Let me connect my phone, we can make this quicker” but Staff 3 started screaming “no, I can do it! This is when I need to practice”

I could feel the reporters wanted to leave, since they were mostly done anyways. Then I realized that this was not June 3rd, the date for which (insde the dream at least) the conference was scheduled for – it was May 23rd.. or 30th? So I started thinking “what happened? Was this a press conf on something else and Staff 1 figured this was the time to announce the app?” That’s how the dream ended.

I guess it highlights the importance of coordinating time information properly.

I was watching this EU4 meme vid and at the end of it there was the first two seconds of God Save The Queen. I was like.. hey now, I now this song! Played the full song and yup, it’s one of the church anthems.

Today i assigned myself to open doors for the polls for the la elections. The idea was to get to bed at 10pm, but as a result of poor planning (…) I ended up sleeping at 2am, thinking “im so fucked”.

Still managed to get up at 5:15am, went to office, helped with table layouts, did some housekeeping, and figured instead of working straight from 5am to 9pm like back in the day, given we have support staff for election questions, i should go sleep and round down the work hours to 8. S

i slept from 10am to 1:30pm. And dreamt that i hsd returned to the office only to find pollworkers packing stuff up, at 2pm, citing a self assessment by the poll inspector to decide that “this poll is not worth it based on the turnout so far”. I was very shocked, so tried to double check it with other staff. Is this true? You can just close shop because of low turnout? At some point even dayne was there. After they fully persuaded me that the poll was really closing, i ensured the “closed” and “what to do if a voter shows up here” notice bulletin was visible on the walls, and i think on our website too.

There was a bus stop right in front of the office, probably the 204. But i couldn’t see it clearly, and started walking, passed under a bridge, went to a bus station but found no posts indicating the bus i needed, and walked back, all lost.. till i called an uber, i think.

Then i woke up, and it suddenly dawned on me that no such poll closing had happened. It was still 2pm. Very confusing.

Huh, weird. The difficulties of a service+organizing organization where the non-politicized public views the org as a good thing because of the serivce and is puzzled by its (“useless”) engagement in organizing, could be similar to (I imagine) challenges in more established unions where the union is nicely providing various workplace benefits from the employer to its members, but its nonpoliticized members have a hard time justifying the other side of the union – resources spent in political action and the broader union movement and organizing.