It was a productive Sunday.

I woke up 5 in the morning, with the intent to play in an online D&D game, using Hamachi and Maptools to build a virtual table with some folks in Brazil. However, although Hamachi has a linux client in their webpage, I couldn’t get the client to connect with the network, and the game ended up being cancelled.

I tried to go back to bed after that, to wake up at a saner time, but couldn’t sleep. So instead I took the extra time to upgrade my laptop from ubuntu 8.04 to 9 (stopping at 8.10 in the meantime), and cleaning my room. Updating the system solved the problem I was having with audacity not playing my audio files. And while cleaning my room, I was able to throw away about three big bags of stuff I was not going to need anymore, and finally find some of my winter clothing I thought missing. I also found a very cool set of 3D castle tiles for dungeons and dragons which I completely forgot I had – I’m eager for using those in my live campaign, although they probably won’t come into play until the current adventure arc is over, and the players return to the fantastic-europe themed kingdom.

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Late morning I went to talk to my Landlord, a old lady who lives in the same apartment as myself. For a while I have been planning to have a roommate move in, and now that I have someone in mind, I went to ask her (and most importantly, her daughter’s) permission – which they gave me without any problems. If all goes well, my roommate should be moving in by December – more news about that then :-)

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In the afternoon, I went to Akihabara, the famous electronics neighborhood of Tokyo – It has been a while that I haven’t been there, although I pass nearby every Thursdays on the way to my RPG sessions. It was a great weather, so I went by bike. My first goal there was to sell a bunch of DS games which I was not playing anymore – mostly completed tactical combat games. I was surprised at the fairly good prices I got for my games – an average of 1500 yens for each game (the price for buying used games is around 2000-3000 and the price for new games is around 4000). I also got one of my glasses fixed.

While window shopping, I found a wireless headphone – something I wanted for ages – for 1500Y – much less than I expected to buy it. I almost bought it right away, but I’ll wait for some part time jobs to come through first. I also saw some street vendors pawing off R4’s (the cartridge that allows you to play homebrew and pirated games on the DS) – The Japanese government has banned the sale of these cartridges so you can’t find them on normal stores anymore. This was a very stupid move, as there are loads of legal and useful software that you can install in your DS via R4. I have a music player, lemmings, and an RPG dice roller, all legal.

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Back at home, I saw the movie “Us Now”, recommended by my friend Raffaels. It is a Creative Commons licensed movie you can download for free and legally at their website. It documents the growth of “community enterprises” – services that are powered by direct interaction and communication of its user’s communities – things like social networks, wikipedia, youtube, couchsurfing, etc. Some of the most extreme and interesting examples were: Zopa, a P2P financial service, My Team, a football team managed by polls among the team’s fans, and Slice the Pie, a P2P music label.

I found the extent and variety of ideas interesting and refreshing. Some, like Zopa, I was a little doubtful about, and reading their foruns and some internet reports didn’t allay my doubts. Others, like Slice the Pie, seems more feasible and thriving. The main idea of the movie is that this increasing P2P communities being generated among the diverse services will eventually encompass even government itself. While in fact there is hope that greater connectivity may allow greater participation of the population
in political activities in developed countries – my experience with online communities is that it also disconnect members from each other’s humanity (the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory) – which makes me doubt a bit if this is actually a good thing in every field.

Anyway, I suggest that you download and see this movie. It is food for thought.