Hi there!
Personal blog of Erlend AakreWelcome to my blog containing sporadic personal ramblings, coding, electronics, D&D and anything else.
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Conyberry map (Forgotten Realms)
After a nice 3.5 year break from blogging I’ve decided to put up some of the stuff I’ve been making for Dungeonds & Dragons.
I’m currently running a campaign that started with Lost Mines of Phandelver in Phandalin, so have created a few maps and other stuff in the area that might be useful for other people running the same setting.
Conyberry
Not super interesting, but if your party is passing through Conyberry on the Triboar trail, enjoy this small map of this quaint little farming community
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D-Link DCH-Z510 Siren with Smartthings
I just got my D-Link DCH-Z510 Siren and trying to set up a rudimentary alarm system by connecting it straight to smartthings (not using any D-Link apps or products.
NOTE: If you are trying to get this siren working and have not connected it yet, you might want to skip the first step
First step
Impatiently connect the siren, discover new devices. Smartthings discovers it as “Aeon Labs Siren (Gen 5)”.
In the app I can turn it on and off, it makes a lot of sound (well, 110 decibel). However going into it’s settings I’m unable to change the siren sound, no matter which one it’s set to (1-5) it sounds the same.
Second step
To be fair I was not expecting step 1 to work particularly well, time to try using the custom device handler Grab that code and fire up the SmartThings IDE and add it as a device type (I highly recommend going for the github integration)
Now since we have already connected it, let’s exclude it, then add it again with the correct device handler. Go to the device on the app, under Things, select it, click settings (cog icon) and remove. To complete the exclude double tap the small button at the back of the siren (use a toothpick or similar).
NOTE: The siren has an anti-tamper function, removing the back cover will be loud and surprising :D
Update
I don’t know if my siren or me myself is cursed, but after faffing about for way too long I gave up on getting the custom device handler to work. It does however work great as a siren using the generic “Aeon Labs Siren (Gen 5)” device type, this means it only does the siren sound but that’s really all I’m looking for now as I’m setting up a google home anounce server locally to do any other notification.
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New blog, jekyll and github
I used to have a blog back in the days. Using Wordpress to host my own site, custom theme and plugins and all sorts of nifty stuff. Sadly most of the content is long lost (I might have a look and see if I have a backup export somewhere, if no there is always the WayBack machine which I might use to recover a post or two.
And after a 5 year break I feel it’s time to start blogging again, mostly it will probably be infrequent stuff about software development, game development and maybe even a few arduino projects.
After looking at solutions like Wordpress and Tumblr, I decided to go with something simpler and less userfriendly and ended up with Jekyll, which is pretty damn awesome as it uses git, github and markdown to power the website. This means I can edit everything as I would any project using git, and just push it to github to update the blog. Getting it to work was a breeze (mainly just forking https://github.com/Gaohaoyang/gaohaoyang.github.io and started editing)
I also always have full controll of the data, and since the blog lives on github and my github account is always mirrored locally I won’t have to worry about backups
Update: 2017-10-25
Been over a year since I made this post, and in a fit of productivity sparked by reading my friends awesome blog I’ve decided to actually start using it, and using the WayBack machine to resurrect some blog posts from my old site, putting them up using the waybackmachine tag
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Fedcon 2011 - Day 3
2011-06-11Saturday 30.04.2011
The “main” day of the convention, but did not do anything worth mentioning until the Guinnes world record in number of people in star trek uniforms from Las Vegas was broken. Previous record was 550 people, new one is almost 700.
After that I went to the Nicole de Boer panel, followed by the Sean Maher panel, both which where fun. At 16:00 I missed the Paul McGillion & Kate Hewlett panel, to get my picture taken with Scott Bakula, and at 17:30 I took a picture with Marina Sirtis.
And like ALL the times when I got my picture taken, the weirdo German photographer kept yelling out ZZ Top :) At 17:30 There was a dinner at the Maritim with Gameforge (the developers of Startrek Infinite space), which incidentally was the first time on the convetion where I ate something that resembeled normal food. This was very fun as I got ot talk to some of the developers and the guys at Gameforge, but unfortunately this meant I missed the photoshoot with Sean Maher :( But did get to take lots of pictures of people in costumes, I’ll upload many more of them to picasa when I get them organized
The dinner finished at 20:00, just in time for the Nicole de Boer photoshoot, which was 20 minutes delayed. After that I hit the bar, drank some Jägermeister and got back to catch the end of the Scott Bakula Panel.. At the very end he promoted Garrett Wang to Lt. :D
Got to talk to lots of nice people today, and had lots of fun =)
I think this guy might have been selling droids with bad motivators:
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Fedcon 2011 - Day 2
2011-06-10Friday 29.04.2011
Up early, eating my sliced German bread with nutella and coke (maintaining a healthy diet while at a convention is always my top priority).
I arrived at the convention in time for the photoshoot with Kate Hewlet at 10:00, and she was really nice to everyone who had their picture taken.
I listened to the Robert Duncan McNeill panel, which was very funny and included alot of humor between Robert and Garret Wang.
For some reason I missed the Scott Bakula fotosession at noon, and the 13:30 photoshoot with garret wang was cancelled, as was the 14:30 photoshoot with Paul Watson. From 12 to 18 there was mainly the autograph sessions, but I did not bother getting any this year.
I did however meet some nice people at the Sea Shepherd booth, and got to have my picture taken with captain Watson, after all he doesn’t have that many Norwegian fans. I also took a weirdly posed picture with Paul McGillion which I’m curious how will turn out, I guess the Indiana Jones hat will be the recurring themes from this years Fedcon pictures of me.
I walked around alot, and ran into Zach again, and ended up being his photographer for a little while.
At the infinite space both, I got to play another mission, where you defend a space station against 3 waves of klingon attacks. I also got to study the game on a HD tv and the graphics again managed to amaze me, considering it’s a browser game (I might even have to stop using the term “browser game” as an insult).
The controls also seemed better today, and I got to see a bit of the lobby, and menus (crew, items, ships, etc..) and I’m now looking even more forward until the game is released (sometime this summer a very loose rumor said, but I kinda doubt it.. I’d guess no earlier than the last quarter for 2011).
For dinner I had nesquik chocolate milk and cold pancakes from the airport grocery store :) a substantial nutritional improvement from last nights dinner, which shall remain nameless. I actually considered heating up vegetarian bratwursts with the hair dryer in my hotel room, but ultimately decided against it :)
After all that walking around it was great to sit down in the main convention hall at 18:00 to take in the interviews. Richard Dean Anderson was a lot more fun than I was expecting (never seen him live or doing panels before), and lots of people in Stargate uniforms got on stage and gave him a gift or award or something like that.
Paul McGillion followed and was also great. Same goes for Scott Bakula who was really funny, and did a surprising amount of singing. This is only my second convention so haven’t seen Marina Sirtis before (think she’s been to Fedcon like 6-7 times), she was very funny and told all sorts of interesting stories, it’s funny how she’s the complete opposite of Troi :)
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Fedcon 2011 - Day 1
2011-06-09Thursday 28.04.2011
First day of the convention, up “early” for a shower and breakfast. Got to the convention hotel around 11. but kept walking between several places to get those sponsor tickets I won from GameForge (the makers of Star Trek Infinite Space).
Having used 1 hour to finally get my badge (and being sent back and forth between about 10 of the Fedcon crew), I went to the Infinite Space booth, and got to test a development build of the game. I liked the game, the graphics is very nice, the controls were OK but some features were obviously missing. The mission you played in that particular development build was a bit disappointing story wise, and seemed a bit rushed (but what can you expect from a developer build?), but it showed off a bit of the mission system, and it seems pretty good. All in all, I think it may turn out very good, and I’m looking forward to follow the game progress to alpha/beta testing.
I kept walking around the convetion area, looking at booths, etc.. And then this Indiana Jones hat literally begged me to buy it (and by literally I mean figuretively), and by begged I mean “it was there” and by buy I mean “to exchange a common currency for goods or services”. I met a few people from Fedcon 2 years ago, which was nice, and some people from the German star trek forum said hi (or guten tag) :) Also I ran into Zach from Hailing Frequency and Trek Radio at the infinite space booth, which was fun.
I waited over an hour to get my photo taken with RDA (and if you don’t know who RDA is, you should really be ashamed of yourself).
Garret Wang did a really good job of being MC, and was alot of fun at his own panel and the Opening Ceremony.
At 21:00 it was time for the Wil Wheaton Panel, and at the time of writing I’m 90% sure it was the highlight of the entire Fedcon Trip. Wil Wheaton is just amazing (not just because he’s a fellow geek, gamer, skeptic, sci-fi fan, etc..) He’s always funny, intelligent and entertaining. A few quotes: “I’m a skeptic” (for posterity), and in regard to the recent Sony fuck up: “Sony puts DRM on EVERYTHING, but store your personal information in a text file.. Genius!” :) Also he talked alot about his roles on TNG and the Big Bang theory (Eureka was never mentioned, but he did mention The Guild in passing a few times :) )
After that I was pretty tired, so I opted out of whatever happens at the maritim after closing, and took a cab back to my hotel.
- Arcturus - Hufsa English Translation
- Wolves of Welton extended (maps)
- Simple Sitemap on Github pages
- Old Man's Child English Translation
- Mere of Dead men map (Forgotten Realms)
- Leilon map (Forgotten Realms)
- Conyberry map (Forgotten Realms)
- D-Link DCH-Z510 Siren with Smartthings
- New blog, jekyll and github
- Fedcon 2011 - Day 3