Summer time! But we're underground doing stuff.

Well, we've been here an entire season now. A whole three months. Kivish found some smoky quartz while mining out the area where the mason's workshop now sits. It isn't terribly valuable, but some gems are better than no gems. We also struck tetrahedrite, which is an ore of copper. We'll probably end up swimming in the stuff eventually, but for now it's quite handy. As mentioned, we built the mason's workshop, much to Inod's delight. We also have workshops for carpentry, gem cutting/setting, and mechanics. Mafol didn't find any fish in the central or western swamps. That's okay though, because we don't have any place to clean the fish, so they'd rot pretty quickly anyway. Kivish is mining out office space for himself, as well as bedrooms for all of us. Hopefully tomorrow we'll get all the rooms furnished. It will be nice to sleep on something that isn't the floor.

Domas Sazirimush - Bio

Domas is our woodcutter and farmer. He is 66 years old, born on the 10th of Hematite in the year 185. Like Mafol, he is built like a tank. Unlike poor Mafol, he has great intuition and a good memory. He is strong, slow to tire, rarely sick, tough, and agile. He can be very focused, and he has a good kinesthetic sense. He is slow to anger, easily moved to pity, and comfortable in social situations. He has little talent for art and cracks his knuckles when he's bored. He and Inod recently started a romantic relationship.

Domas Sazirimush, Woodcutter/Farmer

Moving Day

Today we got Kivish and Domas to take a break from their respective mining and tree-chopping, and we all stood around the caravan for a drink. I sense productivity in our future.

We (Domas) did manage to set up a small farm plot to grow plump helmets in. Plump helmets are purple mushrooms, grown underground. They're one of the most versatile and fast-growing crops known to dwarf-kind. We can eat them raw, stew them, and, most importantly, make wine out of them.

After a bit of administrative confusion, we got the wagon torn down and all the stuff brought in to the new stockpile in the fortress. Tomorrow, we'll probably dig deeper underground and set up some workshops, so we can do... workshoppy things...

Mafol Cattensterus - Bio

Mafol Cattensterus is our fisherdwarf. He is 65 years old, and his birthday is on the 22nd of Felsite, in the year 186. He is built like a tank, and roughly as impervious as one. He is almost never sick. However, he is rather clumsy. The unfortunate fellow has a large deficit of willpower, a poor memory, almost no talent for music, and a lousy intellect. In accordance with his willpower, he tends to do whatever feels right at the time, which leads to overindulgence. He doesn't handle stress very well, so he tends to be reserved in conversation, and really avoids people when he can. He's nice enough though, and we all like him. He chews his lips intently when he's thinking, and we all secretly wonder how he maintains any lips at all.

Mafol Cattensterus, Fisherdwarf

Kivish Etascilob - Bio

    Our expedition leader, Kivish Etascilob, is also our best miner. He is 86 years old, and his birthday is the 23rd of Limestone, in the year 165. He is well-organized and thrill-seeking, though he is easily discouraged. He is willing to compromise on issues when necessary. Very grounded in reality, he has little imagination.
    Physically, he is agile and heals quickly, but is also quick to tire. He has a lot of willpower and a feel for music, as well as a shortage of creativity and patience. He has auburn hair, and looks much like this:

Kivish Etascilob, Miner/Expedition Leader

A New Adventure

We are an expedition of eight (myself and seven others) from the dwarven nation of The Picks of Confinement. Our expedition is called The Purple Seal, and we are settling a new land called Zustashmonom, "Ancientpapers." We expect a caravan carrying fresh supplies shortly before Winter, but it is Spring now. We will need to produce food and drink of our own to survive until then.

Today, we began cutting down an area of trees and delving secure lodgings in the side of a nearby mountain. There are no fish to be found in the Eastern Swamps, so Mafol is sitting about on the caravan doing bupkis. Like me. Perhaps there will be more exciting news in a few days when we begin farming.

Strike the earth!

Linux, OpenJDK, Pulseaudio, Catacomb Snatch, and You!

When I first tried to play Mojang's Mojam game, Catacomb Snatch, I was immediately met with crashing and, consequently, my own sadness. Looking at the garbled errors, I saw that it had something to do with the audio. To make a long story short, it seems that OpenJDK has a bug in it which prevents it and pulseaudio from playing nice together.

I was able to resolve the problem by installing Sun's JRE. I recognize that this isn't a perfect solution, but if you just want to play the game, you might not care where your JRE came from. This is a very well written guide for installing Sun Java on a Fedora/RHEL/CentOS machine: http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2010/install-sun-oracle-java-jdk-jre-6-on-fedora-centos-red-hat-rhel/ It may be a bit heady if you aren't terribly familiar with Linux, but you should be able to muddle through alright. If you're on Ubuntu, check this out: https://github.com/flexiondotorg/oab-java6

Once I verified that I was running Sun Java, I attempted to run CS again. No crashing! Unfortunately, the sound wasn't working anymore. On a hunch, I tried running it with padsp. My sound now works perfectly. Running a program with padsp is really simple. Instead of typing:

java -jar mojam.jar

I just typed instead:

padsp java -jar mojam.jar

Enjoy playing Catacomb Snatch! (You will, trust me.)