Sixgun Productions Blog

Sixgun Productions is Going on Strike

fabsh — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:49:53 +0000

Written by Fab on January 15, 2012

All Sixgun Production sites (including LXnews) will go on strike on Wednesday, January 18th. Our sites will go completely dark for 24 hours that day, all you will be able to see is this page. I have explained why we are concerned about SOPA/PIPA in this video post and I believe we have to make a stand against such incredibly dangerous legislation, even if it concerns a country that neither Dan nor I live in.

I am sorry that you will not be able to reach our site that day but I place the blame for this inconvenience squarely on the shoulders of the United States Congress and Senate houses as well as the representatives of the RIAA, MPAA and anyone else pushing these horrible laws.

If you have comments, please post them in this Google+ conversation.

A Message About SOPA

fabsh — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:16:58 +0000

Written by Fab on January 14, 2011

Oppose SOPA and PIPA. Join the fight today!

Operation: Hammer of Righteousness

fabsh — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:51:47 +0000

Written by Fab on January 3, 2012

I am taking the new year as an occasion to kick myself swiftly in the behind and to attack some stuff that I have pushed on the ever-growing "to do" pile for way too long. All of this should have been done at some point or other in 2011 and now I've had it with the slacking and I'm finally doing it. Since I've been reading a lot of Warhammer 40K in recent times, I've dubbed this project Operation: Hammer of Righteousness to give the whole thing sufficient kickass-ness. As part of this undertaking I will be picking up a lot of Sixgun-related loose ends. The objectives are as follows:

Sort out the Sixgun Forum — I will reorganise the forum according to the fields of interest that our shows cover. I will also do away with posting feedback threads for each individual show's episodes; I figure the listeners will start a topic on something if they have feedback about it.
Get the next Planetfall out of the door — I want to release the next BoW: Planetfall episode as soon as possible.
Import the Linux Outlaws episodes from the old site — I have to finally move the older Linux Outlaws episodes from the old site to this one.
Import the old blog posts — There's still a ton of old blog posts I need to bring over to this site as well.
Upgrade the servers — the Sixgun servers are due for an upgrade and I want to move them from CentOS to Debian. This is a huge undertaking but it has to be done. When I migrated to CentOS, I had no idea that the distro has no supported upgrade path and I'm now paying the price for not having done my research thoroughly back then.

All of this is a lot of work but I can't really push it away much further, I have to get all of this done. I just hope I can actually do it in a reasonable amount of time. I'm counting on the dogged determination of the Imperial Fists to see me through!

If you have some feedback on this, feel free to comment in this Google+ thread.

Book Review: The Flight of the Eisenstein

fabsh — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 09:14:56 +0000

Written by Fab on December 27, 2011

4/5 Stars: Really liked it

The Flight of the Eisenstein centres around Death Guard Captain Nathaniel Garro, how he came to avoid the massacre of Isstvan III and seized the Imperial frigate Eisenstein in an attempt to flee to Terra and bring news of Horus' treachery to the Emperor. It also features the appearance of Ignacius Grulgor and the first Plague Marines, a foreshadowing of what is to come for the Death Guard legion.

Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro

All in all, the book is well written an executed. This owes a lot to the character of Garro who is the embodiment of a loyalist Space Marine but also, in sharp contrast to Garviel Loken from the earlier books, starts to embrace religion and the Lectitio Divinitatus which makes for a very interesting personal component to this book.

The pace of the story is generally relatively slow but tightens up considerably around the great battle scenes with the Death Guard soldiers that have turned into Plague Marines. As you would expect from any story where Nurgle is involved that heavily, the descriptions are quite graphic and disgusting and nothing for the too faint of heart. Having said that, I don't much expect any squirmish readers to read Space Marine novels, though. The story reminded me a lot of The Empire Strikes Back in places, especially the very last scene which echoes the last scene in that movie somewhat. This is, of course, a good thing.

I must say I really enjoy the doubling-back on events which we have witnessed before as it is employed in this story to shed more light on the period surrounding Horus' initial betrayal and I like the pace that the series is setting in general. I like that they aren't burning up their material and give the galaxy-changing events that are unfolding before us as much time as they deserve, almost in a historical treatise kind of way — except in the form of enthralling novels. The book is a worthy entry in the Horus Heresy saga and I can't wait for the next installment.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus Review

fabsh — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:32:41 +0000

Written by Fab on December 21, 2011

In case you hadn't seen my earlier unboxing and preliminary review video of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus or if you are interested in learning more about the phone, I have now posted an in-depth review of the phone and of Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" on YouTube:

NaNoWriMo: I Did It!

fabsh — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:07:00 +0000

Written by Fab on December 1, 2011

I can hardly believe it, but I actually won NaNoWriMo! My final first draft came in at 50,102 words. Now, the manuscript is a horribly unedited mess with loads of mistakes in it and the layout is basically nonexistant, but hey, editing is for December and beyond, as we wrimos say.

Throughout the whole process, I used git to version control my documents and I synced my tree almost every night to Gitorious so you could say that this novel is a truely open source effort. I wrote it mostly using Focuswriter, which is an awesome tool and if you haven't checked it out, you definitely should. It's available for Windows, Mac and pretty much every Linux distro under the sun. I can't recommend it highly enough, it got me through this effort and was a big part of why I stuck with it.

I've already gotten some very nice criticism, which quite frankly is a minor wonder with the sorry state of the first draft, but if you want to have a read go ahead, it's all there on my Gitorious repo. Once I have done a few edits, I'll probably put out an ebook version that I might even put on the Kindle store and if people really like this story, I'd also love to create a podiobook from it. But right now I'm just happy that I managed to win this thing and I'm really proud about that. Now that I'm done, I might even have time to podcast again...

Calling All Minecrafters!

fabsh — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 18:01:09 +0000

Written by Fab on November 22, 2011

With the official release of Minecraft and the reboot of our Minecraft show, I think this is the perfect time to overhaul our community Minecraft server. Things have slowed down a lot there lately and I think it would be best if we started over with a new map so that we can take advantage of the new terrain generation. I am also looking to possibly enabling mobs on the server and removing the cruft from the whitelist as well. For all of this, I need your help. I want your input on where we should take the server next. Please comment on this Google+ thread or in the forums and tell me what you would like to see. You can also follow +Sixgun Mining Co. for more info on when the new server will be up and running and what we eventually decide to do with it. I will also make the old map available for download once I've shut the server down for the refit.

Please, take part and tell me what you would most like to see out of our new Minecraft server. Let's build this brave new blocky world together!

Bunch of Creepers Reboot

fabsh — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:22:28 +0000

Written by Fab on November 18, 2011

Thomas and I have decided to reboot Bunch of Creepers and start from scratch with new episodes and a new map. In light of my audio troubles and limited time to record right now and the fact that Minecraft will be properly released today, we thought that was the best thing to do. We will also change several things about the show (including modifying the name, most likely) to make it even better. We also want you to join us as guests if you think you are up for the task. For more information, please watch this video where I explain all the reasoning and what we want to change in more detail:

Painting a Space Marine

fabsh — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:58:08 +0000

Written by Fab on November 11, 2011

I recorded a time-lapse video of me painting a Space Marine miniature for my custom Death Wardens chapter. Three hours of work condensed into nine minutes and in glorious 1080p.

Video Update & NaNoWriMo

fabsh — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:40:04 +0000

Written by Fab on November 9, 2011

A quick video update about what has been happening in my life, including NaNoWriMo.