It's just a few days
before the festive season '08 edition kicks off. As is so often the
case at this time of year, I'm empty of all thoughts and emotion, apart
from lists of things to do and buy, which are *thankfully* done now.
Random comments and observations will now follow in the order that my
mind bothers to recall them.
I caught up with Leon "Mr Pink" O'Reilly on the Atariscne IRC channel a
week or so ago. He is still around, and making moves to start prodding
some old source code into life on STEEM. The usual disclaimers for
breath-holding are in full force, but wait and see for more news from
that direction.
My mobycam clips taken at the Alternative Party have been combined into
a single feature-length entity, assuming that 'feature length' is
around sixteen minutes. I can't be arsed to post a direct link, but you
can grab it from the usual place .
The makers of the Atari ST hard drive SD-card replacement gizmo
'Satandisk' (see several entries ago) are actively developing a new and
completely revamped version called 'UltraSatan'.This has some nice
extras like being able to access higher capacity SD-cards. It also
includes *two* slots for SD-cards, so you can write from one to the
other in situ without switching off and needing to use a third party
go-between PeeCee to transfer data. Oh yes, they are hot-swappable too.
I'm seriously tempted, as this should be reasonably priced, even with
the currently dire Pound Sterling to Euro exchange rate.
There are new versions of the Hatari and Aranym Atari emulators. Both
of these claim some sort of Falcon '030 compatibility, and Aranym
claims to have improved theirs. I've got to introduce both of these to
my laptop sometime over the Xmas holidays. A little project if (when) I
get bored.
There was a work-provided Xmas party with a free bar! Yaay! It was a
free bar with terms and conditions though, so not so yaay! after all.
As part of the establishment in question having a "No being sick all
over the carpet" policy, they refused to serve doubles, and there was a
no-no on neat spirits without mixers as well. I managed to get around
the latter issue later on in the evening though. Mainly by convincing
people with colds that a neat whisky was fine for medicinal purposes,
and could they get me one from the bar whilst they were at it?
Finally, here's an interesting page-grab which
shows how old this
ascii-art thing really is.
Before they had computers in any meaningful
sense, really. Just click on
the thumbnail
to the left to get the full
picture. If you were
doing it with this analogue clunky typewriter
medium, I guess you would
have to plan
very carefully
what your next move was
going to be!
Okay, I think that will sort things out for now. I'll be back around
the beginning of the new year, thinking new year thoughts...
25th
November.
The Alternative Party has been and gone
and left a splattering of random and mostly pleasurable memories. It
was the biggest event of its kind ever. It had some of the best live
acts going, which was quite a long way from the first fumbling noodling
around of the organisers friends on stage with a load of gear but not
quite sure what do do with it. The 'arty' side of Alt reached new
heights too, and we had even more of our Atari friends present this
time around. As sort of hinted at in the last log entry, there was a
new Atari STe demo released, namely the Dead Hackers More or Less Zero. It
survived the rather lame and dismal competition viewing process, where
the meaning of 'idiot proof' had been tested beyond destruction. (Even
allowing for my previous exposure to the less than smooth run-through's
of Alt Party demo competitions.) A previous generation of Atari
hardware was also given the top spot at Alt Party, namely the VCS 2600,
of old style space invaders games from the late seventies, in the form
of an extremely hardware thrashing demo called Doctor by Trilobit.
There will be a full report in the next issue of Alive Mag, due really
soon(ish) now, honest! This includes all our post-party adventures,
including helping one Martin Eric-Racine move house to another country
from Finland, and getting trapped overnight in that country, due to a
fundamental miscalculation of ferry times! There may well even be an
update of the Alt Party page, along with all the other stuff that's
fallen behind horribly on here! In the meantime, here's a couple of
piccies.
Setok
and
Marycloud
paying
homage to the steampunk theme..
As it was the 10th anniversary, there was birthday
cake!!
Apart from Alt Party,
just the weekend before, we (Me, Felice, Paula and Nicky) took a trip
down to North Devon, in a celebration of the New York matrimonial
mash-up, which took place at around that time last year, as you may all
recall. One of the more alcoholically enjoying themselves relatives at
the wedding reception promised an offer of free accommodation in a
place called Ilfracombe. This offer turned out to be genuine, so it
was, that we all took ourselves off down there. There's not a lot to
say really. The place itself was beautiful, we mostly managed to avoid
getting rained on, and managed to take in a few of the sights of North
Devon in an autumnal fashion, whilst dodging the surfer dudes in their
elderly Volkswagen camper vans, which seem to be fifty percent of the
motorised traffic around there. A few 'Four go Mad In Devon' styled
pictures were taken, here's a couple for you.
Felice, Nicky and Paula from left to right at Lynmouth
harbour..
There's someone
on
the phone asking for a Mr
Alfred Hitchcock?!
Since then, it's been a distinctly unexciting time. We've had an early
taste of winter, we're in the build-up period to Xmas, which will get
more and more emphasised as the weeks go by. I'm slowly putting
together Xmas lists and final things to do for the forthcoming issue of
Alive. I expect the next update will be nudging up against the festive
season, so there, we're done for now.
17th
October.
Lurgy identified?!?
It's now an
unpleasant if rapidly fading memory, but I think I might have found out
what was ailing me for August and a large part of September. The
website linky below gave me a lot of information that led me to a
better than 95% diagnosis of what my lurgy was. One of those things that people
don't realise what it is
Yes, it was whooping cough! There are still a lot of people at work
with it, I sympathise, knowing that they may still have some weeks to
put up with the worst part. Coincidentally, the day after my last post,
the 21st September was my first relatively 'normal' day for a while,
where it could be said I was starting to really get better. There are a
few lingering after-effects remaining, but nothing like what I was
coughing up before!
Changing the subject
completely, you might recall that a couple of past entries had a little
bit of an obsession with Kitlers, or Hitler-cats. Well I was planning
to set up a modest addendum to the feline tribute page with my small
collection of Kitler pics, but someone much better organised beat me to
it with a whole website dedicated to the subject, damn them! Never
mind, here's the linky, Meow
Heil!
And
that's quite enough territorial demands from the feline population for
now!
The Alt Party is next week, so close that I can smell it! Or perhaps my
sleeping bag needs a wash? There seems to be a lot of Atari bods going
now, even some people who have never been to one of these before, and
I'm also going to get to see some people I've not seen in the flesh for
years (Hi Evil! It was the last Error in Line I believe?) There has
even been some Atari related code made for it, with a neat invitro from
Paradox as evidenced by the sepia-toned screenshot below. There may be
the slightest possibility of something appearing at the party itself,
but we'll see!
I'll be back in the aftermath period, so see you all later...
20th September.
Lurgy special, regurgitated....
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a
job in an open plan office. Choose
a job in an open plan office that has randomly working air
conditioning. Choose a job in an open plan office in a building that
should have been 'redeveloped' (demolished) at least five years ago.
Choose a job in a office where the Oxford English Dictionary people
hastily breeze through wearing biohazard suits to refresh their entry
for 'sick building'. Choose
a
summer
which
didn't really happen here but turned into one long
sickly autumn instead. Choose
to
catch
something
that gets all your attention for the next four
weeks. Choose to watch everyone else get it as well. Choose to pick up
an opportunistic successor infection whilst your immune system is still
knackered from the first one. Choose to cough up copious amounts of
lung snot at night. Choose your future. Choose life. But why would I
want to do a thing like that? Ahh, I did! I made my coughy fevered bed,
so I have to lie in it. - With some sort of apology to Irvine Welsh, I
guess.
A surprise update leaps in, as a slow recovery from the 'thing' mentioned last time is
interrupted by a fellow-travelling virus, even before the after-effects
of the other one have completely gone. So it's occasional outbreaks of
a coughing apocalypse, dizzy spells and headaches, not to mention the
lung snot I mentioned before. It'll get better, one day....
In other news, a mobycam grab which was going to feature in this update
had an unexpected promotion to the pages of the leading satirical mag, 'Private Eye'. It can be found at
the bottom of page 24 (Literary review aka 'Bookworm') in issue 1219,
the current one on sale at time of updating this entry.
But we all love Jezza,
don't we?! This earned me a nice crisp tenner (£10).
UK readers will need no
further description or elaboration. Others might want to know that
Jeremy Clarkson is a professional media troll, very good at what he
does. He can be intermittently amusing, especially on the motoring tele
programme 'Top Gear'. But to a lot of people his style and humour is a
big turn-off. The picture was taken at the premises of WH Smug in
Northampton, when they were in the middle of a reorganisation. I get
the feeling that the juxtaposition of category and reading matter was a
deliberate joke on the part of a member of staff. Good job I was there
to make sure it remained for posterity!
That'll do for now. Next time I'll be in a better frame of mind and
body for updating.
31st August.
It's been a while, so a
big update is due. Since the last time, The first thing that happened
in June was something of extreme shittiness, as Molly, the dafter and
more openly affectionate member of the family feline menagerie died.
She had been losing weight for some months beforehand. An initial vets
visit gave us
some early hope that this was due to an easily controllable (by drugs)
hyperactive thyroid gland. But a few more weeks later and it became
apparent there was something else going on as well which was killing
off her red blood cells and ultimately that was the end. The vets were
very good, and tried to do everything they could to help her. Here's a
picture of
how I prefer to remember her. Molly, you were a silly cat, but very
loving, you will be missed.
Molly being mobycammed, wants to see
what's going
on..
Meanwhile, Cloe sees no evil whatsover...
The feline tribute page will get the usual update soon. The other cat
Cloe is still very much alive and healthy, and seems to have expanded
her normally quiet and sensible personality to fill some of the space
left by Molly pretty well. If it goes much further, we may be talking
in terms of some kind of after-life possession by Molly?!
Of more general and less dismal matters, Nicky and I did something
completely different
for our summer holiday, namely avoiding the sunnier parts of the world
and going to Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, a known sun-dodging
country! Well we managed to carve out a good time there, having the use
of a comfortable apartment near the city centre in one of the 'antique'
districts of Edinburgh free of charge as it was provided by a family
member
of Nicky's was a good start. We managed to take in a number of the
sights, including the zoo and the castle, pictures are attached below.
Here's a recipe for Scottish-style artery-killer cheeseburgers, this
was picked up from our local chippy, which is a tourist recommended
place, and seems to be a joint Italian-Lithuanian operation.
1. Everyone else's cheeseburgers,
processed cheese slice and meat in a bun with salad, garnish, McDonalds
stylee, whatever...
2. Scottish style, take one processed
cheese slice, place on top of a frozen burger, dip in batter and
deep-fry! Enjoy, and die!
Gunners-eye
view from the
castle looking down to the city
centre..
Rhino-plasty at the zoo!
As for the rest of it, I've finished my Alive 15 stuff, but no-one else
did, so there was not a release at the Evoke Party after all. Gives me
time to add some more stuff at least. I'm also experimenting with
adding a compact flash as a replacement hard drive to my CT60 with (so
far) partial success. This works perfectly well in normal Falcon 030
mode, but does not want to know when running as a CT60. There remains a
definite question mark over the health of the current 'Travelstar' IBM
IDE internal drive (known as 'Deathstar' for its reliability in certain
quarters!) and I'm not totally sure there isn't an issue developing
with the CT60 itself, or the area around the expansion port as it does
not like to boot sometimes, and randomly freezes at other times? I
suspect an upgrade of my HD-Driver version might help with the CF
problem at least, more later, as they say.
August was dominated by some strange lurgey type thing which gave me,
and a lot of other people at work, the
cough
from
hell. It's been about four weeks. In keeping with the
brief and terse style of this miniblog, I'll gloss over the sleepless
nights, interrupted sleep when able to sleep, the coughing and choking
fits that result in out of body experiences, and a general malaise
where your horizons shrink to just getting through the next few
minutes. Still, I'm getting over it now.
I ought to be updating the Geek pages too, as I've got a new addition
to my hardware family. This is a laptop, a Dell Latitude D610, not the
Asus EE-PC or Advent sub-notebook I envisioned getting at the start of
the
summer. The reason for that is that the Dell comes as a secondhand
machine, courtesy of Felice's current place of employment, COMPLETELY FREE OF CHARGE! As a two
year old lappy of a good spec, it is more than an adequate addition to
the family. It might need a bit of money spending on it, as in needing
a replacement for the rather worn battery, but it is still a major
bargain even with that. It will be replacing the old Compaq tower, and
the space where that currently goes will ultimately see the rehoming of
Kev 'Taff' Davies Milan '040 into it, whenever he finally manages to
get that to me?!
Ok, all for now, the brand new and revamped Alt Party, is coming up at the end
of October, we're all ready for it. Might get an update in before then,
if not, then you'll hear all about it next time!
8th May.
Outline '08, we're back
from Outline! It was the best one yet. I guess I wasn't the only person
missing out from last year. Most of the usual suspects were there, even
some, like Sh3 and MSG, who made a special last minute trip to get
there. Of the rest, I'm sure we'll be back for next year, as it is
better than 99% certain that we will get another edition next year.
The competitions came back to a more active focus and a higher standard
than in the last year or so. Apart from three proper and decent demo
entries from Checkpoint, Paradox, and a combined Lineout and RG
team, there was also a fake (cough!) entry from some other people. We
also only just missed out on a new CT60 demo and (Falcon?) 4ktro from
Mikro as well, and I'm pretty sure that there were a couple of other
might-have-beens still awaiting their chance at some future date. So
not quite a Fried Bits or Error in Line vintage, but close enough.
Although using the tried and trusted car/skipful of retro-computery
stuff in the boot combo, we varied our route this year, to the party
place at Teh Boemsgoed, made famous or notorious by the 2005 Outline
party. Instead of taking the ferry from Harwich (aka 'Toilet by Sea') to the Hoek van
Holland, we opted for a swift dose of the Channel Tunnel instead. The
reason for this was mainly due to the convenient and fast Stena
Discovery being pulled from the route and replaced by a slower ship
instead. The Eurotunnel was fast and handy, even allowing you to take
an earlier train if you were early, which we did. Apart from there
being more driving in general, we still shaved a couple of hours off
our normal trip timing.
Here's a couple of pictures from the party. A full report will appear
in the next edition of Alive Magazine, which will be due for an August
release.
The partyhall, complete with Atari
banner.
Felice
and Earx in a coke-drinking live act watching pose!
In other party
news, with the help of the Nature Brothers, we tried to install the
Ethernat, which has only been sitting around for a couple of years.
Apart from a false alarm with my replacement Mint operating system,
we've taken most of the
requisite steps, and all I have to do is plug the thing back in.
Anyway, must dash, party report to finish..
April 20th.
Outline '08, we're off to Outline! It's all booked and paid for. The
party famine is finally being broken. And yes, I am aware of a little something being made by some people
closely
affiliated to me intended for this edition of Outline as well.
Watch this space in the early part of May. One thing I can add, is that
the Satandisk, mentioned several entries ago, seems to be holding up
well as a development environment - oops!
Of other news, not too much, I recently travelled up to York for a few
days for a family members wedding, the first since the big New York
trip last year. We're still groping around for some kind of 'what to do
next' for the summer (Nicky asking about this one), and I'm looking at
a likely visit to the new and revived Alt Party at the end of October.
On the CT60 side of things, a few SDL game ports are coming forward,
with some hopefully non-idle chat about porting some demos from other
platforms to it as well. One or two people may have already taken steps
to doing this? I hope they feel up to sharing their results with the
rest of us soon!
One last thing before I go away, I'd like to share the cunningly
oldschool ascii interpretation of the Outline 'busy Atari bee' logo
with you.
[] [] [][][][][][][]
[] [] [][] [][]
[][][][][][][][] [][][][] []
[] [] [] [][][][][] []
[][][] [] [][][][] [][]
[][][] [][] [][][] [] []
[] [] [] [] [] []
[][][] [] [][][]
[][] [] [] [] [][]
[][] [][] []
[] [][][][] [] [][][][][]
[] [][][][] [] [] []
[] [][][] [][] [] [][][]
[] [][] [] [][] [] [] []
[][] [] [] [][][] [] []
[][][][][] [][][][][]
Lovely eh! And I'm just a
little bit jealous of the ascii design skills used, but only a little
bit, as the revenge is on the way! -- Damn
and
Oops
again!
March 8th 2008.
Lifesign, just a little
lifesign, let you know I'm still here.
I've just returned to CiH-GHQ in the last few days, there are no more
knee replacements affecting parental members of the family to take
place anymore. It has taken this long to update the page, because like
the last time, nothing interesting at all happened within the last
couple of months.
On a good news front, I have managed to pre-book the time off for
Outline '08, which is going to take place from the 1st to the 4th May,
so if I want to do something for that party, I had really better start
soon! One excuse for my laziness has a sort of clue in the last entry,
where you see the picture of Molly sitting in front of my screen. She
is such a loving and happy cat, she always put herself between me and
the computer, one way or another. Sitting on my lap, paws resting on
the keyboard, leading to all sorts of hilarious shift key-repeat errors
and unexpected movements onscreen was another of her specialities. Now
I have no cat-related distractions, and some free time to actually be
able to call my own, maybe we can get on?
Little picture, Paula would appreciate this one, having a polar bear
fetish and all.
Ok, that's it again, should have a bit more to tell next time.
December 24th.
I-i-i-i-t's Xmuss! So
in the immortal words of Slade, we are staring down the barrel of
another festive season. The knee-op thing didn't take place on the 17th
December due to a variety of reasons, not least of which was one of the
surgeon's family members experiencing a medical emergency all of their
very own which forced a sudden cancellation. This is now due to go
ahead for the 28th, so at least we get a normal Xmas before the
knee-challenged party is whisked off for another hopefully more
successful attempt.
You might be interested to know that I managed to get my hands on the
rarer than plutonium Nintendo DS in the end. Amazingly it was from the
retail shed of someone with whom I had dealings with a long long time
ago, back in the Wellingborough computer club days in the early to
mid-nineties. This was none other than the man who once had a
£499 1MB Atari Falcon on sale for five years without ever selling
it, give it up for Ralph Kotecha! You da man! I guess that his
relatively hidden location meant he was able to keep hold of his stock
just a litle bit longer than anyone else.
I'm off work right until the new year now, so time to put my feet up a
bit. Here's a couple of miscellaneous cat pictures that I took today
with the mobycam.
Molly
wants to have a go on my
Mini-Mac! Or is it just the mouse she is interested
in?
Cloe narrowly avoids being wrapped up in Xmas paper and getting stuffed
under the tree!
I suppose I ought to be doing a litle bit of something creative and
possibly Atariscene related in the following days, I guess I'm waiting
for the boredom to hit properly. Just give it a couple of days then
we'll see! Anyways, merry Xmas, Joyeux Noel, and whatever the Swedish
greeting might be (May all your reindeer be nice and tight?!) See you
all in the new year. Yo, 2008, I'm talkin' to YOU, sucker!
December 9th.
Here we go, it's
knee-replacement, episode deux folks!
The 'sort of Novemberish' speculation, a couple or so entries ago
actually turned into the 17th December, where we were hoping for 'sort
of January' instead. I guess that orthopaedic surgeons want to get in a
bit of overtime to squeeze some cash for that last minute Xmas bargain?
It is going to make Xmas itself interesting, at least the affected
party will be out of hospital before the 25th, but no vigorous
dance-based party games are allowed! Also the depth and quality of my
New Years celebrations might well take a hit, typical, just when I
managed to actually book the time off I wanted for a change!
Still waiting for Milan '040, no hurry Kev, I'm infinitely patient!
Of other tech toys, I'm on the never-ending Nintendo Xmas quest, in
this case, not for the Wii, which is rarer than an unsecured
weapons-grade plutonium stockpile, but for the nearly as unavailable
Nintendo DS. In the very few places where they are on sale, the retail
trade insist on 'bundling' them with not particularly attractive games
for the late middle-aged demographic I'm buying the DS for. Just when
Nintendo deserve a cheer for finally starting to break away from their
over-specific age-related niche marketing, the retail and distribution
trade come over all dinosaurish and insist on foisting full-price
copies of "Barbie Doll Attack"
and "Bratz Cannibal Holocaust"
on everybody! (Rant mode off.) I'll try to get a further update in
around Xmas, and let you know how that all went in the end.
Still on tech toys, and whilst on the premises of 'Toys-R-Us' (ugh!) I
spotted a minature laptop, which upon closer examination, was not one
of those fake kiddy laptop early learning toys, but was an actual real
laptop, about half the size of the traditional chunky square flat
Windowze-driven room-heaters we all know and love. Upon even closer
examination, it appears to be very close to this machine
with it's hardware spec. Also it appears to be running some form of
Linux, features Mozilla Thunderbird as the in-box browser, has wi-fi
and a camera built in. I didn't linger too long, but if it is not
actually a direct knock-off of the OLPC, it seems to be very closely
"inspired" by it. Remembering what I was really there for, I restrained
my hand from going for the credit card...
A quick couple of mobycam pictures to brighten up an otherwise
dull entry.
The Fmsx emulator running on my just about
working MInt set-up on the CT60 Falcy.
Paula with neighbours Hitlercat (quite
a charming creature in spite of appearances!)
I've not totally turned off my creative side either, I'm starting to
get idea's for another issue of Alive Mag, and I've been working on a
collaborative alternative history project, sort of cannibalistic evil
magical beings versus a 1940's tech-level human race in a total war
setting. The first couple of excerpts from my side are done, I'll let
you know more later, probably through the electronic pages of Alive Mag.
I think this will take us nicely to the Xmas period. I've got a bit
more spare time there than I normally get, due to overbooking of spare
holiday in case my first and second choices didn't come off! So I think
I'll update some more around then.
October 27th.
There have been many
statements made by famous people, whose words reach down the ages in
such a profound manner, that their meaning remains powerfully timeless
even to this day.
Off the top of my head, I can think of words like "The eagle has landed"
- Neil Armstrong. Or perhaps "I have a dream"
- Martin Luther King, or even "Get out of yo' bed and
do something, yo' lazy child!" (Martin Luther King's mother.)
We're not forgetting Adolf Hitler's final Berlin bunker utterance, in
the dying days of the 3rd Reich. "Eva, ven I'm dead und
gone, who vill look affter mein cuddly toy froggie Humfrey?!"
(You made that last one up, didn't you, CiH, you git!)
Well it is time to add some more famous words of huge consequence to
the record books, as I will now say that "FELICE HAS GOT MARRIED!"
I'm now talking about the New York trip in a past tense, and Felice was
forced into his best suit at gunpoint (well, an electric shaver in
plastic bag disguised to look like a gun), and driven in company with
myself by a maniac Yellow cab driver to the Empire State building, and
the deed was done on the 55th floor of said building, when the stretch
limo bringing the female half of this famous marital glueing-together
managed to force its way through the NY traffic, ten minutes late. So
congratulations to Miss Paula Thomas, who is now Mrs Paula Spowart, or
is it Felice is now Mr Paula Thomas? I get so easily confused these
days? I nearly forgot, Nicky came out with us as well, and did a nice
job as bridesmaid. I think
Felice appreciated my best man's speech detailing some of his more
memorable past exploits, the other family members certainly did!
I have got pictorial proof, lots and lots of pictures, so I'll see if I
can pop something suitable onto these pages.
All together now, ahhhh! - Nicely
emphasises the 'Just Married" and
'New York' aspects as well.
