James Tauber's Blog 2008/05/06
LOTRO on VMware Fusion
I've hardly played Lord of the Rings Online at all the last six months and not at all the last three.
My only copy of Windows is a VMware Fusion instance and LOTRO doesn't work on VMware Fusion. That is...until now.
I was excited to hear that the new VMware Fusion 2.0 beta 1 supported pixel shaders in DirectX 9 and I wondered if that meant LOTRO would work. I downloaded the beta, which JUST WORKED with my existing VM (which wasn't even shut down). I spent an hour or so updating LOTRO but my first attempt to start the game failed.
The error message was different, though. Instead of being about the graphics adapter it was a complaint about a Game Error 127. A Google search revealed this post and so I tried making the config change they suggested there.
And BINGO! I can now run Lord of the Rings Online on VMware Fusion!
I haven't tweaked the settings yet to see if it's playable but I'm hopeful.
VMware, you are amazing!
UPDATE: I played LOTRO for a little bit tonight. I had to turn sound off as it was too jittery. Graphics were fine, though, on Low detail and low resolution. The mouse look problem mentioned in the comments was easily fixed by just going to options and changing the mouse look sensitivity.
by James Tauber : Created on May 6, 2008 : Last modified May 6, 2008 : Categories os_x lotro : 8 comments (permalink)
Reusable Django Apps And Introducing Tabula Rasa
The excellent 42 Topics blog has a post entitled Popularizing Django — Or Reusable apps considered harmful which makes (or attempts to make) the case for packaged apps over reusable apps.
He raises some good points, although of course the packaged apps he's talking about still use reusable apps so he's not actually talking about there being a problem with reusable apps per se, just that there should be packaged apps as well.
I mentioned the django-hotclub group in a comment on that post as I'd really like the discussion to take place there.
I also, in that comment, mention something I'm working on tentatively called Tabula Rasa. (I'm toying with a Greek name rather than Latin but something tells me people are more comfortable with tabula rather than grammateion)
Basically, the goal of Tabula Rasa is an out-of-the-box Django-based website with everything but the domain-specific functionality.
So far it's just my new django-email-confirmation app tied together with password change and reset, login/logout, with the beginnings of a tab-style UI. There's a ton more I want to refactor out of my existing websites to put into it as well as adding support for OpenID and the stuff I'm starting to do for django-friends.
Even if one doesn't use Tabula Rasa as the starting point of a website, I'm hoping it will prove very useful for another goal, namely a "host" project to develop and tryout reusable apps.
One of the challenges I know I've always had with writing or trying out reusable apps is the need for a project to provide the scaffolding.
So Tabula Rasa will hopefully serve that dual purpose.
UPDATE: I've decided to switch to the Greek word pinax suggested below by Orestis Markou.
UPDATE 2: Now see Introducing Pinax.
by James Tauber : Created on May 6, 2008 : Last modified May 9, 2008 : Categories django : 9 comments (permalink)