Warboid World
Just got a letter from Peter giving me his blessings to resurrect Warboid World under an open source license. It looks like the license for the server-engine may end up being QPL. I expect the clients for playing the game will be under whatever license their authors choose.

No, QPL isn't my favourite license, but it does serve the important purpose of allowing the original author(s) the ability to spin-off closed-source variants. There's also nothing to say we can't do a TrollTech later on and go from QPL to QPL/GPL.

Tim's Party
Tim from work had his 21st yesterday, and made an open invition to all the office if people wanted to come. Most fun I've had in a group for a long time, the night really kicked off well.

We went to a place called the "Glow Bar", which had the most (or possibly second-most) amazing toilets I had seen -- pretty much everything (the washbasins, the hand-dryer, the urinal) was a mirror, which certainly made bathroom ettique interesting. It's a shame that rcp wasn't there, I'm sure he would have loved it.

I left that a somewhat reasonable time, aware of me having to work the next day. Kat came to work with a hangover, and Dan didn't arrive at all. All up, a fantastic night was had by all.

Growing things
Wow, I knew that radishes grew quickly, but I'm still very impressed by my collection of them. It's been about a month and they're already of a quite edible size.

Melbourne Cup
To some people, it's a horse race. For myself and many others, it's a day off work. Spent the day cycling around Melbourne -- Merri Creek to Darebin Creek (REALLY pretty in spots) and then to the Yarra River. Collected a bunch of wild garlic that the recent rains had washed up, and got to meditate on a rock in the middle of the Darebin creek. Wonderful day, I'm still feeling good about it.

PBMs
Got in contact with Peter Read of Dynamic Games, who really got me into PBMs and lots of other tactical and strategic games when I was about 12 years old. The game that I was thinking of was called "Warboid World", and no, it's no longer being run.

I'm hoping to convince Peter to let me have a stab at resurrecting Warboid World and some of the other PBM games that I remember from my youth. These could hopefully be re-released as Open Source to be run in a more Internet-aware enviornment, using an E-mail or web interface to play the games. I feel this is much better than the games dying out completely.

PBM
Still have this weird desire to play really old PBMs that don't seem to be around anymore. I might well take up the idea of re-coding the one I want to play most from memory in C++, simply because I know just how long it's been since I've really done anything in C++ and how rusty my skills in that area have become. Perl may be the swiss-army chainsaw of the Internet, but that doesn't mean I can't get mental RSI from using it.

Finance::Quote
1.04 (minor bugfixes) is out so that people will stop being scared by a couple of oddities in the test suite. Having hit the SourceForge top fifty also makes me feel good.

Jon Orwant wants me to write another TPJ article. Got to get a draft to him by the end of this week.

Lazy Days
Had Fri, Sat, Sun and Tues off work. My goodness it's been fabulous. I've been spending my time cycling around what must be some of the most beautiful parts of Melbourne, learning how to do fun things with power tools at the new house, and generally having a very relaxing time. I really don't want to go back to work -- I want to be a student again with those endless summer holidays.

Play By Mail
For some reason I've had an incredible urge to play a very old PBM game I used to play back in my youth. The game was run by Peter Read of Dynamic Games, and I can't remember the name, except that it involved robots and a hexagonal map and bases and tunnels and a sensor net and stuff. Different robots had different powers -- some could build new sensors, some were good at fighting, some were fast, some could build tunnels, some could sense tunnels being built, and some very special ones could even make use of Satellite Orbital Lasers at blat things from a distance.

Unfortunately, after a fair bit of searching, I couldn't find anything that looked like the game, nor do I know where my old rule-booklets are. I could try re-writing it based upon my memories of it from about 10 years ago, and wait until either (a) I get a cease-and-desist from some laywers, in which case I've found the original game, or (b) I finish it and go looking for players.

I don't suppose anyone else can remember the game at all? If you do, please drop me a mail (pjf at CPANdotORG), I'd very much appreciate hearing from you.

Finance::Quote
Slowly catching up to Exult in the most-active lists on SourceForge. F::Q is currently sitting on 64.

House
Going to play with power-tools this weekend. I hope I don't lose any body parts.

Work
Stupidly busy. I'm looking forward to the Xmas holidays.