THE BEGINNNING...it was a dark and stormy night.
After being challenged by ZombieRus to try his SOASE validator, I present here a diary of my descent into madness as I attempt from scratch to utilize his SOASE validator plug-in. May this record serve as a warning to those uninitiated who attempt to follow in my footsteps--I pray that I will survive and at the least, others will be spared the insanity I am certain I must inevitably face as I brave once more the world of open source developers...may He have mercy on my soul.
For those who see this and say, "What the hell does he mean"?..."What is he talking about?"--all I can answer is, "Be grateful that the things of which I speak ye know not". If you must ask, I can not--nay will not tell. Innocence deserves protection. Go with God my children...go quickly before the madness draws you in too!
May the great one curse eternally those who eschew GUI and delight in command line prompt!
CHAPTER ONE... fate breaks the first seal.
Before the undead contacted me, googlish fate had me stumble accross ...the SOASE Validator Arcanus.
My first young and foolish impression: Wow--this looks exactly like what I might be looking for to save me the trouble of having to hunt through every period and comma as I try to teach myself SOASE modding!
Cool, it's an open source project--I love open source and am a fan/supporter.
My...this guy is definetly a developer--way more info than I know what to do with.Hmmm--it requires Eclipse. I wonder what that is? Strange, I don't see any direct link on his website to it. I'll do a google search.
Hmm...either it's a brand of gum, a comic publisher or its some sort of java sdk that's apparently another open source project...or is it a Sun official download? I dunno.
Eureka! I have found the site and...several...different versions of the Eclipse spell. They seem to serve different mystical functions.
I stumble on a part of the SOASE plug-in datasets provided on the project source page that seem to apply to what I am looking for (string descriptions for abilities).
Sadly, can't decipher the magical glyphs of the developer's notes easily enough to apprehend the function at a glance and continued reading has allowed the malfarious technomage dev's incantations to induce a state of technocoma.
Looks like this might be more a developer's sandbox for the initiated inner circle of sorceror's apprentices than a practical tool to quickly help me into modeling SOASE. Bummer.
I take two aspirin, bow to the East, say a, "hail Mary", throw salt over my shoulder and to try to further dull my mental confusion and pain I return once more frustrated to the SOASE forums. I am certain Lovecraft got his beginnings here and I look quickly under my desk for Cthulhu before continuing on.
CHAPTER TWO...Darkness Rising.
I notice a newer post on forum and with a flinch of remembered pain, I quickly make sign of the cross and flee in terror to another thread.
A unshakable sense of foreboding suddenly comes over me and Isee a PM miraculously (nefariously?) appears--asking me to beta evaluate by returning to the dark side of open source developing once more.
Still lured by the promise of string file riches, I foolishly accept the invitation and steel my mind for my encounter with more programming Sith lords.
CHAPTER THREE...any fool can do it...so I volunteer.
Once more I draw my trusty google sword--now re-empowered by the great onewith a return to relevant and actually valid search algorithms--and locate what I believe is the mythical eclipse version I may want.
Stabbing blindly in the dark with only a cryptic reference to some version of this "Eclipse"--glimpsed in an inset image in the project documentation--as my guide, I invoke the 64 bit version. I resist the temptation to trust in heirarchical site links and references or seemingly helpful "read me" documentation as I know from experience this leads one to the same damnation one receives following automated telephone queue prompts with my local internet provider. Wheels within wheels...never ending circles of hell.
After a download that seems eternal, I sprinkle holy water over my monitor (carefully to avoid the ventilation holes and my keyboard) and then I run the exe--not sure if I will be consumed by dark forces of frustration and software incompatability.
Nothing seems to happen and then a form of gui appears..and I am surprised it is without a puff of black smoke and a chorus of demonic shrieks. It seems to offer some functionality of which I have no clue how to begin to use.
I return to the SOASE plugin project page seeking the secret wisdom of the risen dead and relying on zombie magic to enable me to merge the two arcana of Eclipse and this dark plugin.
I struggle within myself once more to resist the urge to curse the liche who invited me back to the world of evil devspeak but I will not speak ill of the undead and invoke their curse. Time to try to follow the instructions now as I know posts on the forum would only attract hoardes of evil codemongers who would shout a cackling chorus of, "It's simple!" and then try to befuddle me with more technospeak that is anything but simple.
I go now to pray and meditate..to load resources...to call functions..and to fight for my eternal soul and operating system as I now try to use the dark powers I have called. Fate willing, I shall return to chronicle what befalls me. If I am not seen here again then know my doom was determined long beforehand. No amount of karma can save me now.
Where am I now?
