Otter's Home

Greetings!

This is my little home here in the RW site.

I founded this MU originally, and barring a time when I retired and handed it over to another for a few months (who handed it back) I've been Chief the entire time.

My IC home is in Mossflower. Do +reach otter=home for directions to my pond.

Fair warning: while I have the final say in the event of conflict resolution, I see the mission as the basis for decisions, not the common ideals of "fair". If you think something isn't fair, that argument is going to have to be backed with specifics related to the mission statement. And a formal definition of "fair" with an objective means to determine fairness implicit within it.

On the other hand, if someone is causing you grief, let me know. I may tell you that what they are doing isn't against the policies and you'll have to deal with it, but it's worth asking because players who seek to cause trouble to others (who seek to cause trouble not who you don't like) are in breach of the mission, which is To support and encourage the enjoyment of the players. I know that mission because I wrote it.

I am not Brian Jacques. I am Brian Jones, a software engineer. For my RL business see Grindwork Corporation.

OOC bits

In having the privilege of hosting and running MUs and shipping a MU version, I've had the chance to watch many MUs succeed and fail. I've assembled a MU Management Suite in order to give some direction to new wizards. It does not say "Do x." Instead, it says, "Decide among X, Y, and Z, and here's some of the consequences of those choices." In other words, it is not prescriptive, but rather guides new Wizards into thinking about specifics early so they can decide what their policies should be.

This Mu Management series is here.

I also run Limitless Knowledge Association which is the non-profit in support of literacy and critical thinking that hosts these MUs. That you are reading this indicates you have literacy--too many don't.

For Learning Tree International I used to teach a variety of classes for working software engineers. These are college courses with university credit. Meaning I suppose that I am also a bona-fide university-level instructor, though the courses run as one very intense week instead of over a term or semester. If you have questions on any of the following, I can get as formal as you wish to understand it.

A quick list of courses I taught.

• Introductory or Advanced C++ including templates and the STL
• Object Oriented Analysis and Design with UML including the use of CASE tools and project management with Unified Software Development Process
• Standard Systems Analysis complete with functional, data, and object modelling
• TCP/IP Programming
• Multi-threaded C/C++
• Cross-platform development
• Unix scripting and operations

In short, I teach everything needed to design, build, and deploy MUCKs. Which is amusing since Limitless Knowledge hosts the Nameless MUCK Codebase Project(though its site is currently down) which is the software that Redwall MUCK runs. It's an open-source MUCK server complete with native Windows portability and installer. Ah, yes, the joys of cross-platform. If you want to run your own MUCK, or just learn MUF or play with it, fetch this and put it on your home machine and away you go. You'll be a wizard of your own world.

If you have a technical interest, you can also talk to me about:

• Lisp (we develop with Lisp commercially)
• Java (I'm a Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform -- means I took the exam)
• MUF
• MPI
• Coding of bots for MU*s
• Mu Hosting issues, scripting, etc.
• SQL - because you never know when you'll have a real DBMS

Finis

I'm busy a lot, as the above list likely implies, so when you don't see me, it's not because I am not interested. If I didn't have to generate revenue and had unlimited time, I'd be around a lot more building MU software and other wonderful things.

I'd even be RPing at times (seldom, but still...). Yes, Otter has an IC history, and lives not too distant from the Abbey in the woods.