Posted by Roadwolf on January 16, 2025
Family Blog and Journal
I tossed together a website to archive and record our family memories. https://pack.roadwolf.ca/is a place where family can easily view and comment on our family adventures which I wouldn't normally post publically. It is a walled photo vault where most photos are protected and only accessable by approved visitors. You won't need an account of any kind, just an email address you can access. And if we happen to know you, you will get approved.
If you are friends or family, stop on by! Let me know what you think. Read more
Posted by Roadwolf on October 31, 2024
Blog and Journal Thoughts and Politics
Much of the year, I have heard people stressing out about the election. Me, I kept my involvement as mostly passive, with a dismal view of how the election would go. I figured there would be election manipulation no matter what, and the deeper powers would get the outcome they desire. To some extent I still believe this, but I am hopeful based on encouraging polls that the country will swing back to a red leader. Read more
Posted by Roadwolf on September 5, 2024
Blog and Journal Hobbies Thoughts and Politics
I have been having a lot of fun and doing a great deal of research related to, what is essentially, my virtual model railroad. My RailOps project is pretty much at Alpha testing stage now, and I will happily provide a link for interested parties to apply for an account. My SVNO rail line, runs from Northern Ontario through New York and is headed down the East side of the Mississippi River. Currently the Southern terminus is near Columbus, Ohio.
The current rail network is made up of four rail companies. And it seems that railcars and goods are interchanging betweem them just fine. Currently I have over 300 industries, trading over 400 different products. There are supply chains and for sure a need to link suppliers up with consumers.
As I expand my rail network, and also develop and define the industries to handle realistic material and create a realistic supply chain, I am learning more and more about our world. I will say that I am utterly shocked about just how many different products and chemicals are made from just Natural Gas, Air and Water. It is bewildering. Another thing I stumbled across was this gem below. What kind of mine or operation was this? This is located just along my SVNO mainline coming into Ohio from West of Pittsburgh. At first very little information could be found about it. Read more
Posted by Roadwolf on August 17, 2024
Blog and Journal Hobbies
I have trains moving on my virtual model rail network now. I have railcars being exchanged and being loaded at industries. Seems good, right? It is!
But I ran into an issue. In my testing, I have the ability to add railcars to whatever company I see fit. It is like a cheat code. But there was a little mix up in the coding. I had a Bulk Railcar Add feature, which would add a group of a user defined number oif railcars under the chosen company's name, starting at a user defined numbering scheme, and counting up.
So I went and said okay, I want some hopper cars to carry some coal. Maybe 25 of them, and let's start numbering them at 33500?
So that made 33500 hopper cars, with the numbering starting at 25. It looks like I got some input variables switched around. Oh well, easy fix.
What wasn't quite as easy of a fix was the intense issues that I ran into when those 33500 railcars, all ending up in a single railyard, began being sorted at that railyard. The program bogged down the system and I eventually had to stop all processes and delete all railcars to fix it. So this displayed to me that there is obviously a limitation. Which is good to understand, especially early on.
33500 railcars is only a small fraction of the total real railcars in the North American system. There are well over a million railcars out there roaming the tracks in real life. So, if 33500 could bog down the scripting, and this was intended to be a representation of the real network, then I have to rethink how things are done.
Original Concept:
The main plan was to have a web page based multiplayer rail network, all hosted on one of my web servers, and able to be played interactively by no more than 100 or so people.
Possible Secondary Concept:
I was thinking last night that it could be possible to use the base framework, mostly from the industry and materials standpoint, and use that as a basis for a standalone version of the game where a single player could work on their own network, locally on their own computer. It would use the industries, materials, and processes that are defined, but their track and rail system would be stored and operated locally.
The original concept could still work in conjuction with that also, and since there will be limited space for multiplayer, it might be a premium feature.
I am thinking that this will all need to be hosted on my own box, as I think it will need the processing power of a full server, and not just a virtual space in a shared server. I do have a couple WAMP servers running from my little server farm, but the infrastructure was never built out to such an extent to really support such an operation. I do intend on setting up a LAMP server anyhow, in order to handle the open-elevation hosting as apparently that doesn't work well on WAMP. So we shall see. I do know I am likely going to be getting another static IP soon, and a fiber connection, so that will better facilitate hosting.
UPDATE:
I was able to move things over to my existing server without much hastle. There are still a few things to figure out, but for the most part things seem happy. Since my local server is WAMP based, it is a little different from the Linux system I was used to running on, so things like CRON jobs are a little different now. I am working on setting those up when time permits. The CRON jobs are important for the project as they are what handle the progression of time and movement of trains and materials.
For those interested, i'll link to the public information portion:
Global Material stats: http://dev.railops.us/public/publicstats.php
Global Map: http://dev.railops.us/public/publicmap.php
Currently I am just using HTTP and not HTTPS. So it will be all like *** WARNING THIS SITE ISNT SECURE *** but.... it's just a basic website. It's not like it will be asking for any payment info or phone numbers. I plan on getting HTTPS set up soon enough. Read more
Posted by Roadwolf on May 28, 2024
Blog and Journal Gaming
For the last several months I have been working on a new digital project. The inspiration of which is from my SVNO fictional model railroad. However the concept of this project goes beyond just the SVNO. Read more
Posted by Roadwolf on May 4, 2024
Blog and Journal
I recently ran an image recovery on an old drive. Here are some old images from the Mix when I was between the ages of 18 and 20 or so. Enjoy.
I believe this was taken during the construction of the Moose.... It's a Toronto thing? Read more
Posted by Roadwolf on March 23, 2024
Blog and Journal
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Posted by Roadwolf on March 9, 2024
Blog and Journal Adventures
This winter has been super mild. With the exception of a 2 week long storm in January, we have had a lovely winter. Seeing Crocus' flowers bloom in February was impressive, and also meant the start of Maple Sugar season was indeed early. I was boiling sap on the 11th of February! I am still collecting sap now too, but some days it is slow. So far from my single maple sugar tree, with a single tap I have collected six, fifteen gallon buckets of sap. I have boiled some of it down, and plan on boiling it down to finished bottles at the end of the collection period. Luckily maple syrup is one such thing that can be processed in stages to reduce it, and reduce it more.
Read more
Posted by Roadwolf on February 26, 2024
Blog and Journal
I am recalling this from the depths of my youthful memory. I was about 24 years old, and still working at the radio station. I was a Broadcast Engineer for Standard Radio Inc, which owned CFRB 1010 AM, Mix 99.9 FM and EZ Rock 97.3 in Toronto at the time. My duties were wide ranging. My tasks included maintaining the transmitters, both in the CN tower and at the CFRB's site in Clarksville, Ontario. I also maintained the studio equipment, took care of all the locks and security devices for the radio station, cleaned the studios, and took care of equipment inventory. I repaired broken equipment, which most often was headphones. I ordered balanced broadcast lines for remotes, or ISDN lines for live music events. I also often set up equipment and mixed bands which came in to preform live. Read more
Posted by Roadwolf on January 7, 2024
Blog and Journal
There are a number of projects I want to work on this coming year. We shall see what I have time for, with balancing being a Dad and a loving partner, and also earning enough money to support the household. But in any case, the following is a list of projects I feel would be ideal to focus on. This post is more for my own use, to allow me to focus my energy and plan things out. Read more
