The BossBattle.net FAQ
Here is some information about me and my website. No one has actually sent me these questions, but they are the sort of questions I might imagine someone browsing the site asking.
Me and the site
Q: Who are you?
A: Ben B. Bainton is my name. On the Internet I often go by the alias elcalen. I live in Finland, and, as I write this, I'm a university student, majoring in English, and taking way too long to graduate... Some have called me a hippie (and I don't object), or a nerd (again, not against my will). The catch-all title 'geek' is perhaps the best pick, and I certainly identify myself as such.
Q: Why this site?
A: Who in today's world doesn't have a homepage? I want mine to contain material that someone, somewhere might find interesting, amusing or useful. My passion is imagination, and particularly the realms of fantasy and science fiction, so this is what my site will focus on. Imagination and creation come in many forms. Writing is one of the most obvious. I also want to promote video games as a form of art and a valuable medium for storytelling.
Q: What does the name (Boss Battle) mean?
A: Once upon a time, video games were commonly divided into stages. At the end of each stage you'd have to fight a bigger and stronger enemy, commonly called a boss. These boss battles are often the most impressive, fun and memorable parts of a game. The name of my site is, thus, a token of my admiration for video games, both as entertainment and an art form.
Q: How can I contact you?
A: My email address should be at the bottom of each page. I do use IRC, but I'm very rarely on any public channel where you might reach me. I'm on Facebook, too, but generally speaking I don't accept friend requests from people I don't actually know.
Q: Can I link to your site?
A: Certainly. If you need buttons or banners you can find some here. (Naturally I'd prefer it if you'd store graphics on your own server, even though bandwidth at the present isn't really an issue.)
Q: Can I use material from your site?
A: Much of the original material on my site, such as my RPG settings, is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. Under the terms of this licence you're free to modify and redistribute material as long as you credit me as the original creator and release derivative works under a similar license. This obviously does not include any copyrighted material, such as images from video games, which I have used with a fair use rationale.
I'll try to add a Creative Commons licence statement to any relevant sections, but not all areas that might possibly be of interest have one yet. If in doubt, ask.
Q: How did you create this site? Did you create the graphics?
A: I use GNU Emacs as my editor. I have used an extension for it called Emacs Muse, which can generate html from text files with a very simple markup, to create most of this website. The blog section is managed via Blogger.com. Most of the decorations used are from the Open Clip Art Library. Screenshots from video games are from various web sources (or in some cases taken by me), and can probably be regarded as 'fair use'. All image editing has been done with GIMP.
Roleplaying games
Q: What's a roleplaying game, or RPG?
A: When I talk about roleplaying games (outside of video game -related sections), I'm referring to so called 'pen and paper' or 'tabletop' roleplaying games, a genre of games created in the 1970s with the release of the famous Dungeons & Dragons. It is easiest to think of these games as a type of interactive storytelling, where one person (the Game Master) narrates a story he or she has prepared in advance, while other players take on the roles of the main characters and decide how their individual characters react to the events of the story, which is thus shaped through the dialogue of the Game Master and the players. A set of rules is often used in order to bring structure to the game, to indicate what a character is capable of (by representing his or her skills with a set of numerical values), and to bring excitement by including an element of chance (i.e. die rolling).
The genre of video games referred to with the same name was originally influenced by 'pen and paper' games (and particularly Dungeons & Dragons), and shares some features with them, such as the representation of skills with numerical values, and the improvement of these skills by means of gaining experience points. Many such games, however, and particularly the very popular Japanese RPG titles (such as the Final Fantasy series) involve little more 'role playing' than any other genre of video games, having very linear storylines and very little choice about the characters' personality. Character 'stats' and their improvement remain an important aspect, however, and are the most obvious link to the genre's origins. (Today's 'pen and paper' RPGs, however, have evolved from primarily tactical games into more serious storytelling, and place significantly less emphasis on numbers and gaining 'experience'.)
Computers, hackers etc.
Q: You often talk about Free Software. What's up with that?
A: The Free Software movement is something I care deeply about. The idea is that users of software should have rights as well, the right to use software how they wish, the right to improve and adapt the software to their needs and to share improvements for the benefit of the user community. Big, proprietary, monopolistic companies like Microsoft are making this difficult in today's world, but there are alternatives. The homepage of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation have much more information about the issues involved. This page has some information about free software for Windows users.
Q: What's the difference between GNU/Linux and Linux?
A: In common use of the terms, there is no difference. Although the operating system is often called just Linux, it started out as the GNU project, aimed to create a Free Software operating system. This system adopted a kernel (the core of the operating system, which deals with communication between software and hardware) called Linux, created by Linus Torvalds.
The term Linux properly refers to the kernel and not the whole operating system, which included GNU software created before Linux. GNU/Linux thus stands for a version of the GNU operating system using the Linux kernel, which is the most commonly used version of GNU, but not the only one.
Q: What about the difference between Open Source and Free Software?
A: These two concepts have much in common, but have different ideological backgrounds. Free Software is about ideals, about fundamental rights. Open Source software often forgets this side and focuses more on the practicality of the open source development model. Which is good as far as it goes, but is really only half the story. While much of the software described as Open Source can be considered Free Software, this isn't necessarily always the case. Freedom requires more than available source code.
Most importantly, the Free Software ideology works towards the freedom of all software, while Open Source projects tend to work on just one piece of software, possibly while embracing other, proprietary software at the same time. Which is obviously not cool.
Q: What's the funny emblem with the dots at the bottom of the page?
A: That's a proposed universal hacker emblem. (The actual pattern is apparently called a glider, and is from the mathematical simulation called the Game of Life.)
Q: So are you a hacker?
A: Not really. Although I'm not a stranger to computer programming, I've never been skilled or enthusiastic enough to really think of myself as a hacker. However, my interests, attitudes and values are often similar to those of the hacker community, as is my taste in software (how many people would want to write a novel with Emacs?), which is why I have the emblem on my website.
Q: Aren't hackers people who break into other people's computers and spread viruses and stuff?
A: There are other underground cultures that use the term, and the media seem to have fixated on one particular usage. This culture has nothing to do with the hackers that I'm referring to. Many people prefer to call those people crackers. Hackers, as I use the term, are people who enjoy computer programming (and other related activities), and 'hacking' is simply the act of creating and editing program code. The culture originated in university circles (MIT, for instance), and today the term is commonly encounterend in connection with the Free Software community. While hackers generally are anti-authoritarian and non-conformist by nature, this does not mean they accept or are interested in illegal activities.
Q: What hardware/software do you use?
A: As of this writing I'm almost exclusively using a MacBook (2.16GHz Core 2 Duo), which I got in the summer of 2007. I like the convenience of a small laptop and I doubt I'd ever switch back to a desktop machine. For a good while I used Mac OS X, but soon grew tired of its shortcomings as a Unix system and its proprietary nature. So in early 2009 I decided to return to Debian GNU/Linux. The environment I use isn't exactly mainstream. My primary window manager is StumpWM, a tiling, keyboard oriented and very customisable window manager written entirely in Common Lisp, pretty much the exact opposite of heavy desktop interfaces of the Windows variety. I rely a lot on the command line and my terminal emulator of choice is rxvt-unicode. At the moment I'm not using any kind of file manager, relying entirely on the command line interface for such needs.
As for other software, I use GNU Emacs for most of my writing (and coding), with tools like LaTeX and Emacs Muse for formatting. Sometimes I use OpenOffice.org or Scribus for writing/formatting needs not suitable for Emacs. I use GIMP for image manipulation, Firefox and Conkeror for web browsing, Irssi for IRC and other instant messaging (via BitlBee), MPD (with NCMPCPP as my main client) for playing music, and VLC for video playback.
Spirituality and occultism
Q: The links page contains links to occult websites. What's up with that?
A: I don't talk a lot about spirituality in public (simply because I feel it is a deeply personal topic and not really of interest to anyone else), but spirituality is important to me. I prefer an approach to spirituality that is active and creative, yet deeply personal and private. I've discovered that occultism is the perfect way for me to express my spirituality.
Q: Does that mean you worship the devil?!
A: Certainly not! The majority of Western occultism has nothing to do with any kind of devil-worship or satanism, quite the contrary. Occult practices could, in my opinion, be compared to yoga or Buddhist meditation. It's a quest for self-improvement and enlightenment. Furthermore, occult practices in themselves are mostly independent of religion and can be adapted to fit in with almost any theology or worldview.
Q: So what religion do you belong to?
A: Like most Finns, I was raised Christian, but long ago came to the conclusion that it wasn't the right path for me. Deep down, I'm essentially agnostic. I don't believe Man can have any real knowledge about the ultimate structure and meaning of the universe. This does not mean that religion is without value, though. But it does mean that no religion is more correct than another, and each one of us should pick a set of religious symbols that best appeals to them and helps them improve as human beings.
Personally I identify myself as a Neo-Pagan, and more specifically as Wiccan, although I don't belong to any group or follow any specific school's teachings (eclectic solitary Wicca would be the technical term, I guess). Wicca's essentially syncretist nature and emphasis on practical, active worship appeal to me. My theology is essentially pantheist. The surrounding world itself, in its endless complexity and layers and interaction, is the ultimate deity. The polytheist deities of Pagan religions I see as various aspects of this world, as well as of the internal world of every being. In addition to strictly Pagan ideas, I've taken a lot of influence from occult philosophy, particularly qabalah (its so-called hermetic form developed in Western occult circles, not any strictly Jewish tradition, nor the popular version that's recently gained publicity through celebrity practitioners).
Q: What exactly do you mean with occult practices?
A: The main elements of (practical) occultism could perhaps be grouped under divination and magic. Divination includes such things as tarot and astrology, both of which I'm interested in. I don't believe in 'fortune telling', but rather that divination processes help us organize our thoughts and get in touch with our unconscious.
Magic includes various practices from simple folk remedies and prayers to more complex ritual magic, which is usually concerned with directing a spiritual force (often pictured as a deity or angel) to create some effect. The most common form of ritual magic is probably the act of creating and consecrating a talisman for some specific purpose. Again, this is not just superstition, but something approached analytically and philosophically, with emphasis on the psychological significance of ritual and symbols.
A third branch of occultism is of course alchemy, but that's rather difficult to practice these days, and I haven't really found any interest in it thus far.
Q: Will you do a spell or make a talisman for me?
A: Generally speaking, no. I might consider it if you're a close friend and I feel this is something that I want and need to do. The general opinion in occult circles is that magic should not be for sale, and should never been done lightly. Greed can make you blind to ethical issues involved. Astrological and tarot readings are another matter, and I could consider doing them (for a suitable compensation), but as of yet I'm too inexperienced in both fields to recommend my services to anyone.
Q: So what is the key to enlightenment?
A: If you can resolve the dilemma that all religious symbols (including deities) are essentially human creations, yet are all true and valuable, you're off to a good start...
