f-log

just another web log
28 Jun 2003 13:09 -- no distributed network project statistics for the mo
Finished reading yet another book "Gods & Legions", which is an excellent story based on the historical facts about a Roman emperor called Julian. Full of heroics, bloody battles, betrayal, mystysim and much much more, very good read.
Still no silent drives so I sent an email which included phrases like "Please oh please deliver me from whining drives", "I going to Sue, she will know what to do" and "If you are the intended recipient then congratulations". Not sure how this would go down I was happy to received a reply stating how entertaining the office thought it was and not to worry the drives should ship very soon.
Other sarcastic things, I have been dilergently uploading to http://www.fotolog.net/muhnamuhna everyday (except weekends) including a picture of the shiny lift panel from the office. So I used a small label printer and stuck the following on the item in question "Lift Panel (not instruction)" and was quite impressed that everyone that saw it laughed out loud !!
Tried another media/CDROM based Linux distro GeeXboX 0.90-3en but it not only failed to boot but shut down the laptop >:( my quest continues !

25 Jun 2003 20:01 -- no distributed network project statistics for the mo
We all learn from our mistakes and so what did I learn ?
Not to try and mount a CDROM drive vertically without first checking it would read the disks that way round :(
We shall speak of this never again >:(

24 Jun 2003 18:49 -- no distributed network project statistics for the mo
Sorry for the delay in uploading the old updates let alone adding new ones, reason is I am still awaiting the silent drives >:(
But they should arrive tomorrow or Thursday, been very odd without Linux, though I have been trying some CD based distros on my laptop. MovieX and MovieX2 (second one is in X first one is not) and Whomp all three are based on one premise, boot and play media, commonly video media. Took me a while to get the settings right to get MovieX2 to boot but once it did (I disabled USB and enable OSS) I had no problem playing any media file (it mounts the win32 drives automagicaly), even AVIs that I could not play in windows media player. It even played DVDs BUT only unencumbered disks i.e. http://www.mindcandy.com , due to licensing issues etc the libDCCS is not included. When I tried the same with MovieX (not 2) the play back was very jerky and with Whomp I could find no keyboard shortcuts to select items on the DVD menu, so all I could see was the title/intro :(
Once I have my Linux setup back and running I can compile my own version of MovieX2 WITH the DVD decoder library.
Strapped on the CDROM drive to the far side of the case with string wire and padded with bubble wrap, does not look to good but will be hidden from view. Had a bit of a problem getting the IDE cables to reach, they are now under a lot of tension ;)

17 Jun 2003 19:41 -- no distributed network project statistics for the mo
Finished duct taping the old 3 1/2 drive bay to the new hole on top of my case, I lined it with bubble wrap in the hope it will be slightly noise resistant (you never know) and finalized the deal buy adding a hood made out of cardboard leading to the back of the machine (or side, depending on which way you look at it).
Of course I now have nowhere for the floppy drive to sit so I decided as I never use it I will store it and connect it again if necessary.
The other CDROM drive on the other had is going to be strapped to the far side of the case (as both side panels are removable).
Looks a bit sorry for its self but it is the functionality I crave, oh and I DID know when I order that the silent drives would not even be in stock until tomorrow.

16 Jun 2003 19:35 -- no distributed network project statistics for the mo
Well of course I meant http://www.fotolog.net/muhnamuhna , not quite sure why I choose the muppet song and todays picture is of sort of a muppet ;)
My updates are like buses, you wait ages for one and loads come at once.
And I am expecting this one to be delayed also, but with good reason.
I am modding again, this time I am trying something I have not seen anywhere, a heat chimney, simple a hole in the top of the case with a duct tube to remove the excess heat and allow for better air flow. I am also waiting for delivery of two silent drives from the often mentioned http://www.quietpc.com and will not re-seal the box until I have them, I WILL be losing one of my CDROM drives from its 5 1/4 bay but trying to relocate it to outside the box !!
I saw Matrix Reloaded and I can say it IS a GOOD film BUT the fighting is VERY BORING after 28 seconds, but sadly the fighting is over 50% of the movie, and of course I did see the Matrix Revolutions trailer after the credits (and there were a LOT of credits) and loved it to bits !!
Finished reading Nineteen Eighty-Four, talk about quintisential reading !! best book I have ever read ? if it is not I can not think what is! buy this book now!!!!
No updates on the subliminal static project but then I have been busy getting burnt (OW!) in the sun all weekend, red as a +12v power lead ;)

13 Jun 2003 20:57 -- no distributed network project statistics for the mo
I found this cool site http://www.fotolog.net its free to sign up and is getting bigger by the minute (I saw updates at least every 20 seconds).
I tried it out and (may) try putting up a picture regularly http://www.fotolog.net/mahnamahna
I have been recently playing Armagetron which is a light cycles game (ala Tron) but with AMAZING graphics,play-ability and STYLE !
On my Linux machine at 800x600 I get 30+ fps even with all the reflections, transparency, anti-aliasing etc !
Being open source you can edit the textures (I did) and make playing unique there is also a win32 port and MoviePack that makes the models,sounds,GFX etc very authentic, but you have to download this separately, oh and did I mention you can play multiplayer and against 21 AI opponents.
More than anything this game is damn addictive, with 10 rounds that can take minutes or seconds and then it simply starts again, but it is unlikely you will notice what with the smooth camera movements and stunning overall STYLE !!
New DVD to watch Brazil, have not seen that for a long time and reading 1984 has made me yearn for it, even though I can not remember hardly anything about it.

9 Jun 2003 19:50 -- no distributed network project statistics for the mo
You know I said I need a front end for MPlayer ? well it appears it has one(ish) but not be default.
I had to recompile using the --enable-gui option on the ./configure command and download some skins from the website (lots to choose from) then unpack the the skins into the right folder and tell MPlayer to use them, eggs sell lent !
I finished reading Hacking Linux Exposed, a VERY worthwhile book, looking at all types of hacking/cracking with extensive detail on how to do it, strictly for testing purposes obviously ;)
If you remember back to a while ago I was trying to get a free phone from t-mobile, well I now have a free phone from O2, a Samsung V200 or Matrix phone. This is a serious bit of kit that came with (in the box not an extra) a spare battery, hands kit, charger, data cable and software. The phone itself is very compact with a basic LCD on the outer case and then a high definition (128x128x65k) bright color LCD on the inside, it also has a camera and uses 40 channel polyphonic ring tones, sweeet. the software is a very welcome addition with easy uploading of images from the phone and equal ease for downloading ring tones and images from the PC, but it also allows easy management of phone numbers and schedule items, not to mention access to all sent/received calls and SMS messages.
Only thing is it is only Windows, speaking of which, I needed a nine pin serial connection for the data cable and my laptop has non so I bought a cheap converter from http://www.maplin.co.uk only to find the CD was dodgy, the Linux machine had no problem reading it, and I re-burnt it with no hassle.

5 Jun 2003 21:09 -- no distributed network project statistics for the mo
CD ripping was easy, just used GRIP, which is what I was using to play audio CDs and ended up with a load of OGG files, which work fine in XMMS.
Now the CD burning thing was a bit more interesting, had to change lilo.conf and (shudder) reboot and then modprobe ide-scsi to get the drive recognized.
But the creation process was easy, interestingly you need to create a complete ISO before sending it to the CD burner, which took a while, but you can even mount the ISO file as a normal file system, cool !
I will not be using the CD writer in the Linux box often but it is still nice to know.
My WinXP laptop has a DVDCDRW but since my fun with codecs it plays DVD at 20 fps :(
I bought Matrix Revisited some months ago, because it said on the back extra features and 128mins I had no reason to NOT expect the original Matrix movie.
But no it is 128 mins of behind the scenes, hmmmm, lots of good stuff and even stuff for the new matrix movies but damn it ! I wanted to watch the Matrix, at least I have it on VCD ;) http://www.coolvcd.com
I may rip out my CDR drive from the Linux machine to allow both my hard drives to be encased in silent drives from http://www.quietpc.com

3 Jun 2003 20:26 -- no distributed network project statistics for the mo
I finally got www.blender.org the weird thing is it does not need to be complied, and run off one file so does not even need to be installed.
I have the original Return to Castle Wolfenstein for the PC so I was very impressed when a stand alone add on was released free of charge and for Linux (as well as PC) called Enemy Terrortries it was almost 300mb, just need the time to install it.
I still have not tried CD audio ripping and CD burning in Linux, but I got some new CDs so lets check it out.

1 Jun 2003 20:27 -- no distributed network project statistics for the mo
So you wan to know why June 1st post is in the May2003.html file ?
Simple, the script that checks the date only checks when first run and for some reason I left the vi session open over night so when I saved it the month change over check had been completed the night before, but the time stamp was still correct.
I have been seriously playing around with the screen saver hack, tried tilling, random seeding and all sorts, in the end I have settled for the high speed routine of five pre-rendered frames played randomly with odd offsets.
I am now having fun trying to get the XPM load code to integrate from the XFlame hack ....

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