Monday, April 30, 2007
Something for Dilliwag
While I was browsing a "post an interesting image to a thread" thread on a messageboard I frequent, I saw the following, and I had to share. I think I found Dilliwag's next computer. :)
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Happy Camper
I love video games. I like old video games. I have emulators for every console I have ever owned, and the games I used to play. One of my favorite consoles was the Saturn. Died fairly quickly in the US, but had a fairly long life in Japan. I loved the Clockwork Knight games, the Panzer Dragoon games, and there were scads of RPGs on it (Working Designs did 4 or so games for it, plus the Shining Force games, Shining in the Darkness and others). My favorite game for the system, and my favorite shooter of all time is Radiant Silvergun.
I bought this game imported when it was out, and it had a limited release IIRC, and I got one of the last one available for import.* Well I love this game. I enjoy shooters but I am not good at them. This one has a difference from the rest of the genre - instead of power-ups you pick up and you play (and then loose when you die), your weapons (and you have 6 of them) gain powerlevel as you kill things with that weapon. So if I shoot down lots of stuff with the "a" button my "a" weapon gets better.
When the game ends you can save your game - it doesn't save your progress, but it saves your weapon levels. So in a couple of days, when you play some more your weapons are as powerful as they were at the end of the last game. So you blow through early levels much faster. For someone who isn't all that great with shooters, this is a great blessing.
Then our Saturn died. The internal battery went kaput - it wouldn't keep saves. And trying to find a working Saturn in the area or a replacement batter was difficult and/or expensive.
So I kept trying emulators. The primary one I looked at was Satourne. Nifty little game, and on my old machine before I had a 3-d card it ran at about 15 frames a second (60 is standard for the console). So I gave up.
Then I got a 3-d card and it ran at about 25-30 fps. So I gave up.
Then I got the Phoenix, and it ran at 40-45 fps. I tried for a while, but a 25% speed drop was still too much, so I gave up.
There is another Saturn emulator, SSF, but it had some beefy reqs - a 64 bit athalon or a dual core. I had completely drove it out of memory. But in searching for a Jaguar emulator (Just so I could play Aliens vs Predator again dang it) I ran across SSF. And I thought, wait, I have a 64 bit processor, a beefy 3-d card and lots of memory.
It worked.
So I've been playing Radiant Silvergun, and am ripping a bunch of my old Saturn games to isos to mount on my virtual drive to game with (As a lot of them are irreplaceable I don't want to use the actual games in play.)
I be a happy camper.
* I never knew that the original was as popular as it was. Years later I was surfing a message board and someone who had a pirate of the game wanted an original. A reply commented about having deep pockets. So I checked ebay - it was going for $400 to $500! I had a genuine rarity on my hands. O keep good care of that baby.
I just checked ebay again - someone has a new, unopened copy listing at $1,000. Wow.
I bought this game imported when it was out, and it had a limited release IIRC, and I got one of the last one available for import.* Well I love this game. I enjoy shooters but I am not good at them. This one has a difference from the rest of the genre - instead of power-ups you pick up and you play (and then loose when you die), your weapons (and you have 6 of them) gain powerlevel as you kill things with that weapon. So if I shoot down lots of stuff with the "a" button my "a" weapon gets better.
When the game ends you can save your game - it doesn't save your progress, but it saves your weapon levels. So in a couple of days, when you play some more your weapons are as powerful as they were at the end of the last game. So you blow through early levels much faster. For someone who isn't all that great with shooters, this is a great blessing.
Then our Saturn died. The internal battery went kaput - it wouldn't keep saves. And trying to find a working Saturn in the area or a replacement batter was difficult and/or expensive.
So I kept trying emulators. The primary one I looked at was Satourne. Nifty little game, and on my old machine before I had a 3-d card it ran at about 15 frames a second (60 is standard for the console). So I gave up.
Then I got a 3-d card and it ran at about 25-30 fps. So I gave up.
Then I got the Phoenix, and it ran at 40-45 fps. I tried for a while, but a 25% speed drop was still too much, so I gave up.
There is another Saturn emulator, SSF, but it had some beefy reqs - a 64 bit athalon or a dual core. I had completely drove it out of memory. But in searching for a Jaguar emulator (Just so I could play Aliens vs Predator again dang it) I ran across SSF. And I thought, wait, I have a 64 bit processor, a beefy 3-d card and lots of memory.
It worked.
So I've been playing Radiant Silvergun, and am ripping a bunch of my old Saturn games to isos to mount on my virtual drive to game with (As a lot of them are irreplaceable I don't want to use the actual games in play.)
I be a happy camper.
* I never knew that the original was as popular as it was. Years later I was surfing a message board and someone who had a pirate of the game wanted an original. A reply commented about having deep pockets. So I checked ebay - it was going for $400 to $500! I had a genuine rarity on my hands. O keep good care of that baby.
I just checked ebay again - someone has a new, unopened copy listing at $1,000. Wow.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Weekend memes a day and half behind
Music Memiors
Top 5 classic rock songs that are a classic annoyance to your ears.
I'll limit myself to one a band, but there are a few bands that I can just about leave.
1) Lying eyes - Eagles
2) Rock and Roll part 2* - Gary Glitter (I don't mind part 1 - it has lyrics)
3) Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin. Overplayed. Overhyped. Overdone.
4) Still haven't found what I'm looking for - U2 (this one was tough, I had to pick my least favorite of the annoying overplayed and overrespected U2 songs).
5) Sympathy for the Devil - Stones. I hate the stones.
* for those that don't know, that is the arena rock "Hey" song.
Friday's Feast
* One time I actidently hit a sprinkler head with the mower. I didn't notice. When he did, he made me dig through the grass and find it. No we had a little 2 foot area between the garage and the fence that we dumped the grass. Years worth of grass. I had to dig through that in midday sun in june for hours (after having mowed the lawn) and I couldn't come in until I found it.
I ended up out of school for almost week due to heat stroke, and to this day I still react very very badly to heat, I have to drink a gallon and a half of water a day to stay hydrated. And that was only one incident.
I hate yardwork.
Top 5 classic rock songs that are a classic annoyance to your ears.
I'll limit myself to one a band, but there are a few bands that I can just about leave.
1) Lying eyes - Eagles
2) Rock and Roll part 2* - Gary Glitter (I don't mind part 1 - it has lyrics)
3) Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin. Overplayed. Overhyped. Overdone.
4) Still haven't found what I'm looking for - U2 (this one was tough, I had to pick my least favorite of the annoying overplayed and overrespected U2 songs).
5) Sympathy for the Devil - Stones. I hate the stones.
* for those that don't know, that is the arena rock "Hey" song.
Friday's Feast
Appetizer
How fast can you type?
Last time I was tested about 40 words a minute
Soup
What is your favorite online game?
I don't play games online - I consider videogaming to be a single player thing. Given that I do enjoy flash games, and this is a really good one. Yeah, I love doom, and never have played a multiplayer game of it. I avoid MMORPGs - I would likely end up spending way too much time doing them and getting in trouble with the wife.. so I just say no.
Salad
On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 as highest), how intelligent do you think you are?
9.5 or so. I scored genius on those standardised tests. And outside of my game group, and my wife, I don't know that many people who are as smart as I am.
Yeah, modest too. But you asked.
Main Course
Name three of your best teachers from your school years.
No First names, I don't want to impinge on anyone's privacy.
Mrs. Sheffield - my Junior and Senior high school english teacher. Wonderful person, and we kept in touch for years after I graduated. She gave me a copy of The Little Prince for a graduation present.
Mrs Bridwell. Jr high english, drama and journalism. The teacher that got me into Mensa. One of the few teacher in Jr high that I respected for raw intelligence.
Mr Halley - College Communications. Great teacher, and I really enjoyed his classes. He made me think and pushed me. We'd also known each other for years, as I dated his daughter in Jr High. :)
Dessert
What are your plans for this upcoming weekend?
Yardwork. Ick. That is why this is so late. Spent 3 hours on the yard. Ugg.
I hate yardwork. My father was a nut about landscaping, everything had to be perfect, and he made me do it - and he was an alcoholic, so when I made the teensiest tiniest mistake I got landed on hard*. Same with gardening. I still cannot garden to this day - I just don't like it.
* One time I actidently hit a sprinkler head with the mower. I didn't notice. When he did, he made me dig through the grass and find it. No we had a little 2 foot area between the garage and the fence that we dumped the grass. Years worth of grass. I had to dig through that in midday sun in june for hours (after having mowed the lawn) and I couldn't come in until I found it.
I ended up out of school for almost week due to heat stroke, and to this day I still react very very badly to heat, I have to drink a gallon and a half of water a day to stay hydrated. And that was only one incident.
I hate yardwork.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Another one
This blog is not normally something I post much about social issues, or politics, and I did one the other day. Imagine my surprise at reading something that I just had to post shortly thereafter. This is from the National Review
Signs of Intelligence?
By Fred Thompson
One of the things that's got to be going through a lot of peoples' minds now is how one man with two handguns, that he had to reload time and time again, could go from classroom to classroom on the Virginia Tech campus without being stopped. Much of the answer can be found in policies put in place by the university itself.
Virginia, like 39 other states, allows citizens with training and legal permits to carry concealed weapons. That means that Virginians regularly sit in movie theaters and eat in restaurants among armed citizens. They walk, joke, and rub shoulders everyday with people who responsibly carry firearms — and are far safer than they would be in San Francisco, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, or Washington, D.C., where such permits are difficult or impossible to obtain.
The statistics are clear. Communities that recognize and grant Second Amendment rights to responsible adults have a significantly lower incidence of violent crime than those that do not. More to the point, incarcerated criminals tell criminologists that they consider local gun laws when they decide what sort of crime they will commit, and where they will do so.
Still, there are a lot of people who are just offended by the notion that people can carry guns around. They view everybody, or at least many of us, as potential murderers prevented only by the lack of a convenient weapon. Virginia Tech administrators overrode Virginia state law and threatened to expel or fire anybody who brings a weapon onto campus.
In recent years, however, armed Americans — not on-duty police officers — have successfully prevented a number of attempted mass murders. Evidence from Israel, where many teachers have weapons and have stopped serious terror attacks, has been documented. Supporting, though contrary, evidence from Great Britain, where strict gun controls have led to violent crime rates far higher than ours, is also common knowledge.
So Virginians asked their legislators to change the university's "concealed carry" policy to exempt people 21 years of age or older who have passed background checks and taken training classes. The university, however, lobbied against that bill, and a top administrator subsequently praised the legislature for blocking the measure.
The logic behind this attitude baffles me, but I suspect it has to do with a basic difference in worldviews. Some people think that power should exist only at the top, and everybody else should rely on "the authorities" for protection.
Despite such attitudes, average Americans have always made up the front line against crime. Through programs like Neighborhood Watch and Amber Alert, we are stopping and catching criminals daily. Normal people tackled "shoe bomber" Richard Reid as he was trying to blow up an airliner. It was a truck driver who found the D.C. snipers. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that civilians use firearms to prevent at least a half million crimes annually.
When people capable of performing acts of heroism are discouraged or denied the opportunity, our society is all the poorer. And from the selfless examples of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to Virginia Tech professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed himself to save his students earlier this week, we know what extraordinary acts of heroism ordinary citizens are capable of.
Many other universities have been swayed by an anti-gun, anti-self defense ideology. I respect their right to hold those views, but I challenge their decision to deny Americans the right to protect themselves on their campuses — and then proudly advertise that fact to any and all.
Whenever I've seen one of those "Gun-free Zone" signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.
-Fred Thompson
And I agree 100%. I don't like guns, I have never fired one, I never will, I will never own one. But legally owning guns is one of foundational rights. I mean #2 on the bill of rights, just after speech/religion/press.
Signs of Intelligence?
By Fred Thompson
One of the things that's got to be going through a lot of peoples' minds now is how one man with two handguns, that he had to reload time and time again, could go from classroom to classroom on the Virginia Tech campus without being stopped. Much of the answer can be found in policies put in place by the university itself.
Virginia, like 39 other states, allows citizens with training and legal permits to carry concealed weapons. That means that Virginians regularly sit in movie theaters and eat in restaurants among armed citizens. They walk, joke, and rub shoulders everyday with people who responsibly carry firearms — and are far safer than they would be in San Francisco, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, or Washington, D.C., where such permits are difficult or impossible to obtain.
The statistics are clear. Communities that recognize and grant Second Amendment rights to responsible adults have a significantly lower incidence of violent crime than those that do not. More to the point, incarcerated criminals tell criminologists that they consider local gun laws when they decide what sort of crime they will commit, and where they will do so.
Still, there are a lot of people who are just offended by the notion that people can carry guns around. They view everybody, or at least many of us, as potential murderers prevented only by the lack of a convenient weapon. Virginia Tech administrators overrode Virginia state law and threatened to expel or fire anybody who brings a weapon onto campus.
In recent years, however, armed Americans — not on-duty police officers — have successfully prevented a number of attempted mass murders. Evidence from Israel, where many teachers have weapons and have stopped serious terror attacks, has been documented. Supporting, though contrary, evidence from Great Britain, where strict gun controls have led to violent crime rates far higher than ours, is also common knowledge.
So Virginians asked their legislators to change the university's "concealed carry" policy to exempt people 21 years of age or older who have passed background checks and taken training classes. The university, however, lobbied against that bill, and a top administrator subsequently praised the legislature for blocking the measure.
The logic behind this attitude baffles me, but I suspect it has to do with a basic difference in worldviews. Some people think that power should exist only at the top, and everybody else should rely on "the authorities" for protection.
Despite such attitudes, average Americans have always made up the front line against crime. Through programs like Neighborhood Watch and Amber Alert, we are stopping and catching criminals daily. Normal people tackled "shoe bomber" Richard Reid as he was trying to blow up an airliner. It was a truck driver who found the D.C. snipers. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that civilians use firearms to prevent at least a half million crimes annually.
When people capable of performing acts of heroism are discouraged or denied the opportunity, our society is all the poorer. And from the selfless examples of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to Virginia Tech professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed himself to save his students earlier this week, we know what extraordinary acts of heroism ordinary citizens are capable of.
Many other universities have been swayed by an anti-gun, anti-self defense ideology. I respect their right to hold those views, but I challenge their decision to deny Americans the right to protect themselves on their campuses — and then proudly advertise that fact to any and all.
Whenever I've seen one of those "Gun-free Zone" signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.
-Fred Thompson
And I agree 100%. I don't like guns, I have never fired one, I never will, I will never own one. But legally owning guns is one of foundational rights. I mean #2 on the bill of rights, just after speech/religion/press.
Switch
A rather amusing video about switching telephone carries. Back in the long distance wars the wife and I played the game well, and make about 300 bucks with the "We'll pay you X dollars to switch" deals. :)
Friday, April 20, 2007
It's Friday
First off the Feast
And the Music Memiors
Top 5 album "killers." (you know, songs that ruined an album in one way or another)
I don't have many... so this is a tough one, and it's almost never about the quality of a song - I listened to full CDs, and took the good with the bad, and these days, I rip all my music to a hard drive, so if I had anything I didn't like I just don't pick it. :)
The best I can do... (and you will see a theme here)
Not Now John from The Final Cut - Pink Floyd. Loved the song when I heard it on the radio, bought the album, and the lyrics were different. The F word was there. So I never listened to it again, until I got online and could find the radio version. The copy of The Final Cut that I have has the obscured version on my hard drive.
The water from The Light by Spock's Beard. A concept song that is 20 minutes or so long that is the entire life of the character. In the middle there is the argument section, 2 minutes of "F you" (immediately followed by 2 minutes of "I'm Sorry"). I understand the concept, but again I don't want that language in the stuff I listened to - so I ripped the CD to the hard drive, pulled out my wave editor, and chopped that section from the song, and burned the altered CD.
Get your hands off my woman and Givin' Up on Permission to land by The Darkness. I love these guys but both those songs have the F word all over them. So I bought the CD at Wal-mart, so I am happy. :)
I can't think of any other songs that I felt the need to drop or change from any other album/CD I've had.
Appetizer
What is your favorite kind of bread?
Wonder white classic sandwich.
Soup
When was the last time you bought a new pillow?
Years, probably about 4 years ago.
Salad
Approximately how many hours per week do you spend surfing the ‘net?
8 to 10. I spend about an hour a day hitting messageboards, news sites, blogs and such. I try not to do more than that. But it isn't all in one chunk.
Main Course
What’s the highest you remember your temperature being?
103 - I was a kid and had chickenpox.
Dessert
Fill in the blanks: When I ____________, I _____________.
When I get depressed, I pull into an emotional turtle shell.
And the Music Memiors
Top 5 album "killers." (you know, songs that ruined an album in one way or another)
I don't have many... so this is a tough one, and it's almost never about the quality of a song - I listened to full CDs, and took the good with the bad, and these days, I rip all my music to a hard drive, so if I had anything I didn't like I just don't pick it. :)
The best I can do... (and you will see a theme here)
Not Now John from The Final Cut - Pink Floyd. Loved the song when I heard it on the radio, bought the album, and the lyrics were different. The F word was there. So I never listened to it again, until I got online and could find the radio version. The copy of The Final Cut that I have has the obscured version on my hard drive.
The water from The Light by Spock's Beard. A concept song that is 20 minutes or so long that is the entire life of the character. In the middle there is the argument section, 2 minutes of "F you" (immediately followed by 2 minutes of "I'm Sorry"). I understand the concept, but again I don't want that language in the stuff I listened to - so I ripped the CD to the hard drive, pulled out my wave editor, and chopped that section from the song, and burned the altered CD.
Get your hands off my woman and Givin' Up on Permission to land by The Darkness. I love these guys but both those songs have the F word all over them. So I bought the CD at Wal-mart, so I am happy. :)
I can't think of any other songs that I felt the need to drop or change from any other album/CD I've had.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Something Right
The supreme court handed down a ruling that did the right thing - it upheld the partial birth abortion ban. Hopefully this in an indication of the mood and approach of the court for the future.
I just hope that Bush can get one more justice appointed before he leaves office.
I just hope that Bush can get one more justice appointed before he leaves office.