Hello, this site is to host a forum dedicated to some of my hobbies, including Tabletop Roleplaying Games. You can find a link to the forums in the menu system above.
Additionally I'm maintaining a Blog which records some of the nature of my work as a programmer and Network/PC Support and AS400/ISeries Support and Programming using RPGILE. It also contains a blog detailing my experiences and observations to do with Tabletop Roleplaying games. You can read my blog directly via the linked text above.
Alternatively you can see the more recent blog entries below.
You may find other content here as time goes on. Anyway have a browse around and see what you think. Feel free to register and comment if you like.
Posted by: afurness, March 15, 2012, 11:45:58 AM Category: Tabletop Roleplaying Games
**UPDATE** It looks like an offer is being made to the Hobbit pub owners to pay a nominal £100 license fee to stay as they are. You can read the details in a BBC article.
There’s this LOTR themed pub in Portswood, Southampton in England, United Kingdom that’s being threatened with being forced to remove all Hobbit, Lord of the rings [...]
Posted by: afurness, February 03, 2012, 07:49:15 AM Category: Networking and PCs
Here’s a nice offer I found, DAZ are offering Daz Studio 4 Pro, Bryce 7 Pro and Hexagon 2.5 for FREE! I expect they’re coming out with a new version or something soon. Whatever the case, grab it while it lasts.
Many years ago in my teens, I played “Advanced Dungeons and dragons 1st Edition” and had a great time with it. After playing 2nd Edition dungeons and Dragons for a while and generally being unimpressed, I moved onto other RPGs (Stormbringer, Runequest, Rolemaster etc etc). This means I missed the [...]
Posted by: afurness, December 26, 2011, 10:40:54 PM Category: Networking and PCs
It seems that the Google Chrome browser print preview function, which seems to be mandatory messes up printing from the browser. So if you’re on a site and want to print a recipe or something, from Chrome, when you select “Print” it pops up with a “Print Preview” page before you can print it. This sounds great, apart from this print preview [...]
Posted by: afurness, September 05, 2011, 07:09:03 PM Category: Gadgets
I’ve created a Kobo Touch “Cover up” cover review. I recently felt the need to get some sort of a cover for my Kobo Touch as it gets shoved in my backpack when I’m out and about and it needs some protection from scuffs and drops. Video below:
I quite like that it doesn’t use elastic straps to hold it in [...]
Posted by: afurness, August 12, 2011, 09:59:15 AM Category: Networking and PCs
Ever since installing Office 2010 on some PCs (and only on Windows 7 PCs) I have found that when attaching archives (whether imported from previous version of outlook or created new in Outlook 2010) , after a while Outlook just crashed and additionally often Windows itself would freeze up so you’d have to manually power off and restart.
Posted by: afurness, August 12, 2011, 08:56:47 AM Category: HyperV R2
One of the Virtual machines I support is a SBS2008 machine. Ever since I created it, I noticed that every minute or so it just stops for a few seconds, then comes back (although no tasks are lost, they just get queued).
I’ve spent quite some time investigating this and tried many things, such as making various adjustments to the resource [...]
Posted by: afurness, July 08, 2011, 01:47:38 PM Category: Networking and PCs
Here’s an obscure one. I noticed there were 2 DNS entries for our main server (SBS2008) , which is odd, as there’s only one Network adaptor.
This was causing all sorts of DNS problems, as this rogue IP address was getting a DNS entry with the same name as our DC (the server in question). So anyway I went looking all [...]
Posted by: afurness, June 06, 2011, 05:31:52 PM Category: Web-Site Development
I’ve found since I’ve installed WordPress on my site I’ve been getting loads of spam in the comments boxes.
To stop this I’ve installed WP-reCAPTCHA a visual verification function to block bots etc. So far it seems to be working very well. If you have WordPress, it’s worth getting this, especially as it’s free.
Posted by: afurness, February 24, 2012, 11:54:54 AM Category: Gadgets
My Samsung 226BW 22 inch LCD monitor started flickering on and off recently. After some searching online it turned out this particular model of the the Samsung range, 226BW had dodgy capacitors.
So I found this YT video which shows you how to replace the dodgy capacitors.
Sure enough, after opening up my monitor, the capacitors in the video were the culprits. A few [...]
Posted by: afurness, February 03, 2012, 07:42:55 AM Category: Microsoft Exchange 2007
So a user wanted to create a “Meeting Room” via Outlook/Exchange 2007. After some investigation I found this can;t be done via the Outlook client. It has to be done within Exchange 2007 itself. It’s pretty straight forward really. You create a new mailbox as a type “Room” and set it to auto accept.
It’s has the feel of a more “old School” Fantasy RPG. At first glance this game looks very simplistic and the rules ARE pretty basic, but easily adaptable. Using the rules in their core form is perfect for running a European style [...]
I thought it would be nice to post some Action Computer RPGs that are coming up this year (or possibly early next year).
Well everyone knows of Diablo 3 coming out this year some time, but apparently it’s loaded with DRM, auction houses and you must be online to play it. The other thing that made me laugh was they have [...]
Posted by: afurness, August 30, 2011, 12:02:45 PM Category: Networking and PCs
So a new PC came in today to set up. It was installed with Windows 7, 64 bit. It had pre-installed Office Home and business 2010 32 bit installed. I noticed that it didn’t have Service pack 1 installed, so I tried to install it. However when running the install I eventually got a popup just saying “Service pack failed [...]
Posted by: afurness, August 12, 2011, 09:33:51 AM Category: Networking and PCs
A couple of Outlook 2010 (although there WAS one Outlook 2007 user with the same problem) users were complaining that emails that have had HTML copy/pasted from Bugzilla reports were getting cut off halfway after that have sent them out. Strangely the first time they sent them out, it was fine. They often send the email to themselves as a [...]
Posted by: afurness, July 21, 2011, 12:25:18 PM Category: Gadgets
Kobo Touch Ereader
I got a Kobo Touch Ereader recently. I managed to get it from the USA, as it’s not released over here in the UK yet.
The Kindle
I’ve been wanting to get an eReader for some time, but the Kindle, although popular and a decent eReader has some limitations that I wasn’t too happy about, namely:
Many moons ago (Circa 1999) there was a Computer Roleplaying Game called “Neverwinter Nights”. This was made by Bioware and based on the Version 3 Dungeons and Dragons rules.
This game was hugely successful, not so much for the single player aspect of the game, but that you could create Modules/worlds etc of your own using a toolset provided with the [...]
Posted by: afurness, June 16, 2011, 10:23:40 PM Category: Mongoose Runequest 2 Roleplaying Game
Mongoose Publishing, the makers of many games, including MRQ2, recently dropped the Glorantha gaming world, this meant also having to drop the Runequest name. So they initially decided to go with renaming MRQ2 to Wayfarer.
For whatever reasons, most likely as there was already an RPg called Wayfarers out there, they renamed to Legend instead.
Interestingly the renamed product is going to [...]
Posted by: afurness, May 24, 2011, 09:08:00 AM Category: Networking and PCs
Whilst setting up a PC with Windows 7 Professional 64 bit I was setting up OFfice Professional Plus 2010, 64 bit. I got this strange message during the install “Office 2010 Professional Plus encountered an error during setup”. No futher information like an error code that might actually be helpful. So anyway, after some experimentation I searched the temp folder [...]
