Problem: Log into your unix/linux/solaris/whatever account and bring up screen.  Launch Vim and in insert mode use the arrow keys to move your cursor. Up arrow inserts 0A or A, Down arrow inserts B, etc.

Solution: The best solution I found was this one which instructs you to use:

:set term=builtin_ansi

which I dropped into my .vimrc file. There are more solutions involving remapping keys, setting macros and tons of other over-the-top kind of stuff. Why its only problem in Putty using Screen (I’ve tested some other permutations) is beyond me.

While on the topic of Vim, if you’re using Windows you might want to check out intellisense for Vim, two of my favorite things.

**EDIT**

Ok, that doesn’t really solve the problem AND it disables syntax coloring. The problem, I’ve discovered, is that Vim is reading it’s terminal setting from Screen and using ’screen’ as it’s terminal type.  Instead you’ll want to set it to xterm. I recommend adding:

set term=xterm 

to your .vimrc

Several pages deep I found the solution to my problem and a very interesting comment that spurred me to this post. They predicted that the death of google would be google itself - trillions of pages indexed saying: “just google it.” I wish I could remember what the question was I was searching for or who the poster was, but I cannot. Whoever you are, astute commenter, I salute you!

M: Other people.

D: Oh, right. Of course.

One of my new projects is to digitize all of my paper records. I’m eager to reduce the piles of paper I’ve been keeping (I’m aweful about filing them when I should and they just end up cluttering my desk).  I’ve already moved all of my bills over to e-bills, but I still get an impressive pile of paper mail. I’ll let you know how my paperless home-office works out.

SwapLibrary -Sync your device with multiple libraries (only two actually, but who needs more that that?)

NemusSync - Sync your calendar with your google calendar!

Games! - GemLogic, ParkingLot, Lexitron - enough goodies to fill a 45 minute commute

ruBooks - Use your touch like an ebook reader

I haven’t look into the legality of this but I’m sure its not 100% legit. This is why I’m a big fan of open source. I think the iPod Touch is great, but I’d really like a better ToDo list application. I could either(pre sdk) cross my fingers an hope that apple does something about it or take the law into my hands and jailbreak+write something myself.  If the iDevice operating system was open (like linux or BSD or etc…) I could joined the community of active developers, learned a lot of things about a really interesting project and give something back. Ah well, its a dream world where companies write open source software and still make money (or so I’m told).

Anyway, put that economic stimulus package to good use and go buy yourself an iPhone or iPod Touch.

First and foremost, reading for pleasure. There’s a pile of books that I’ve been meaning to pick up and now that I’m not burried under text books I’ll take a stab at some of them. On the top of my list: The Last Samurai, Midnight’s Children, The Translator and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. We’ll see if I can at least get through those, hopefully more.

I’ll be moving in June to a new place with a little more space and hopefully I’ll be able to set up a little workshop/office/not my bedroom space where I can tinker a bit. I’ve been meaning to work on some simple electronic projects (CVS camera hack, TV-B-Gone) and maybe I’ll finally get a chance to. This may be pushing into the not-truly-achievable part of my list, but we’ll see.

Things I liked:

This game is hard, I’ve played three times and haven’t come close to beating it. Even with such a slim chance of winning I find it incredibly fun. The cooperative game play element is refreshing, keeping everyone playing invested in the game, while the element of a traitor keeps you on your toes. The turns are quick and everybody’s luck is the same - because it’s cooperative nobody ‘wins’ while everyone else loses.

Things I don’t like:

The first time set up takes a long, long time. This is balanced by the quick game play, but when you’re introducing a new player (or worse, a group of them) it can be a task to explain the rules and get everybody up and running. I would like explanation to take less than ten minutes. Also, with only one positive action per turn I feel its hard to get things done. This might be a problem in the strategy we’ve been using, but it seems that it is too easy to lose quests. But maybe thats what keeps it fun, I’m still debating this point. My last complaint is the figurines and their somewhat low quality. I’ve got a couple who don’t stand up straight or feel a little delicate, but this is a minor complaint.

Overall I think the game is quite a bit of fun, challenging, well made and its certainly going to provide many more enjoyable hours of game play.

To help speed up the re-familiarization process with the rules I’ve compiled an abbreviated list, the quick play set of rules (see below the cut)

============  Quick Rules for Shadows Over Camelot  =================

Purpose of the Game
———————–
Earn 7 white swords out of 12 by completing quests, etc.

Ways to lose the game
———————–
 - If 12 Siege engines appear
 - or 7 black swords are on the round table 
 - or all knights dead

Setup
———————–
 Every player receives 
  - 1 Merlin card
  - 5 white cards

Round progression
———————–
Phase 1: Progression of Evil
 - Draw a black card
 - or place a siege engine
 - or lose a life point 

Phase 2: Heroic Action
 - (if in Camelot) draw 2 white cards
 - or (if in Camelot) fight siege engines
 - or move to a quest or back to Camelot
 - or play special white card
 - or play a card related to a quest you are on
 - or discard three of the same card and heal on life point
** a player may choose to lose one life point to perform one additional
   DIFFERENT heroic action per turn.

Quests
———————–
 Saxons/Picts
  - to win quest a series of cards, 1-5, must be played before 4 Saxons/Picts 	arrive
  - This is a group quest, cards remain when players leave.
  - When the quest is won or lost it is cleared and is started again.

 Black Knight
  - make two sets of matching cards with a point value greater than the four cards
    of the black knight.
  - This is a solo quest. If the player leaves the cards played are discarded.
  - When the quest is won or lost it is cleared and is started again.

 Lancelot’s Armor 
  - Same as black knight, but requires a set of two and a set of three. 
  - This is a solo quest, when the knight leaves the cards are discarded.
  - When the quest is lost the armor is removed from the game, the board is flipped 	over
  - and the Dragon’s Quest is started.

 Excalibur
  - Any white card may be discarded to move Excalibur to the near side of the lake.
  - This is a group quest, Excalibur’s position does not move when knights leave the quest.
  - When Excalibur reaches the far side of the lake it is lost forever and is removed from the game. 	Flip the quest over and follow the instructions.

Holy Grail
  - Grail cards are placed from light to dark side. When seven grail cards are on the quest card 	the grail is won. 
  - If a Despair card is drawn it is played from dark side to light. To remove a 	dark card a light card 	must be played to clear the spot. A new grail card  must the be played to fill the spot.
  - This is a group quest. Grail cards remain on the board if a knight leaves the quest. If the grail is 	lost it is removed from the board and is out of play.

Combat
——————
Siege Engines:
 - A knight plays his/her fight cards and rolls the d8. If the knights fight points 
   are less than or equal the die roll the knight loses.
 - A knight may play a Merlin card a remove a siege engine instead of playing
   fight cards.

I recently ran into an error while using Vim on my university shell account:

E667 Fsync Failed

It turns out that the error was caused by Vim’s inability to write to disk. I had a core dump that was using up most of my disk quota which prevented vim from allocating space to save the file. Once I deleted the dump, freeing up some space, I was good to go.