Month: January 2004

Kung Hei Fat Choy

Happy Chinese New Year for those of you into that. Its the year of the Monkey by the way. According to 12 Zodiac my forecast is not that great 🙁

This will be an average year for you. The good news is, as long as you keep a low profile this year, there will be no major ups and downs like the roller coaster ride some other people have this year.

Patience and caution should be your motto. Think once, twice and even three times before you act and speak. Most importantly, you must refrain yourself from visiting the sick or attending funerals. nstead, try to go to as many weddings as possible this year. Better yet, if there is wedding or celebration in the family, it will bring the good vibes and good luck and turn this year to a much better year for you.

There will be few lucky stars on your side, but the luck will not be constant. Therefore, it is wise to consolidate this year rather than to expand.

F-Communications and SOMA Records to start montly night in Sydney

Word on the street (and apparently this weeks 3D World) is that F-Communications of France and Soma Records of Scotland are starting up a monthly night in Sydney at the Bourbon (formerly the infamous Bourbon and Beefsteak). Apparently the lineup for the coming months are as follows:

  • February – AlexKid and Hipp-E
  • March – Llorca and Master H
  • April – Funk D’Void and The Youngsters Live
  • Sometime – SLAM and Laurent Garnier Live

After the finishing of Tech-Ni-Kal 2 weeks back, things were looking a bit grim in Sydney. But perhaps things are going to be good this year.

Theo Parrish dates

The dates for Theo Parrish have been confirmed. They are as follows:

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 27TH 2004 – MELBOURNE (MISCHIEF PARTY)
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 28TH 2004 – SYDNEY (MISCHIEF PARTY)
FRIDAY MARCH 5TH 2004- NEWCASTLE
MARCH 07th 2004 – ADELAIDE
MARCH 10th – ADELAIDE as part of the WOMAD festival

I think I’ll have to hit up both the Sydney and Newcastle parties for this one. 😀

Theo Parrish hitting Sydney

Goddam, I’ve been busting to say something about this for ages! Don’t you know how damn hard it is for me to keep a secret?!? Anyway, apparently he’ll be playing at the Bourbon on Saturday 28th February presented by Mischief (a house night put on by Melbourne’s illustrious Honky Tonks). Lets just hope it doesn’t fall through like all the other times. But atleast this time there has been some sort of official announcement, instead of unfounded rumour.

XMAME 0.78.1 released

Looks like XMAME slipped out the other day. Changes in this version are:

  • Everything from MAME 0.78 and MESS 0.78.You can now “make tools” without first having to “make osdepend”. Fixed a couple of minor problems with src/unix/Makefile and src/unix/unix.mak. (Adam Di Carlo)
  • Rearranged a bit of code to allow the MESS tools to build.
  • Added JOY_SDL to the makefile so that the SDL joystick plugin can be enabled for non-SDL targets. The SDL target still enables the plugin without requiring JOY_SDL to be set.
  • The ALSA module now builds against ALSA 1.0. Fixes Bugzilla bug 501.
  • Changed the abbreviation of “-pause_brightness” to “-pbrt” to prevent a conflict with “-playback”.
  • Added double buffering, enabled via “-doublebuf”, to the SDL target. (Thomas Jarosch)
  • Deprecated the SDL target’s “-modenumber” in favor of “-vidmode_w” and “-vidmode_h”. (Thomas Jarosch)
  • Updated the included zlib library to 1.2.1, which should be faster than 1.1.4.
  • Fixed an infrequent spurious error reported by zlib 1.2.1. (Mark Adler)
  • OpenVMS support should be close now. (Robert Alan Byer)
  • Changed the man path to $(PREFIX)/man/man6, which is more FHS-compliant according to Andre Majorel.

The source is available over here. Its looks like there is no RPM packages from FreshRPMs yet though. For the list of newly supported games, refer to my previous post on the release of MAME 0.78,

Frigid back from the dead

Wow, Frigid is coming back again. Good one guys!

We can finally announce it… FRIGID IS BACK FROM THE DEAD… after leading surgeons have worked on the corpse, like a Haitian voodoo zombie, it is back. With a few sneaky twists… FRIGID starts again weekly on SUNDAY FEB 29. The best news is that it will be a return to plush loungeroom surrounding not seen since the heyday af the Dendy (1997-8) and it is FREE ENTRY, and that it will be in NEWTOWN! At the newly refurbished @Newtown (the old Newtown RSL). There will be a full first six weeks of lineups available shortly, and some extra special surprises for Easter…

Honestly, we all thought it Frigid wasn’t coming back… but somehow it has – on terms that everyone will like – FREE, Newtown, excellent sound system, lots of comfy seating, dinner and food available, well priced RSL drinks… And everyone is excited and energised. Its just like 1996 all over again… and not only Frigid is back, Club Kooky is coming back too (to the new Club 77)! But it will now be known officially as “Not Kooky”… amazing isn’t it.

Think – if its really 1996 all over again – then we may be so lucky as to have a regime change this year as well in the USA and Australia.

Setting up a Linux box as an iTunes Server redux

Following up on my post on Setting up a Linux box as an iTunes Server, it would appear that someone has taken alot of the hardwork out of setting this up. The Multi-Threaded DAAP Daemon has everything you need to get a linux box started as an iTunes server. All that’s needed is to install the software (available as RPMs for Fedora Core 1, Redhat Linux 9 and Debian), created a directory with the music in it, tell the configuration file where the mp3s are, and start the service. Away you go! And it also has a web interface for configuration as well.

Setting up a Linux box as an iTunes Server

Both Mac OS X Hints have articles on setting up a Linux box as an iTunes Server. Basically three things are required: the Apple Rendezvous multicast DNS advertiser, a daapd service and a Samba share called “music”. Very nice. This could solve the problem of having music spread across a couple of computers at home. Now all I need is a larger hard drive for my server.

Currently there are no rpm packages for Rendezvous or daapd, so I guess I could build some of those up during the week. Also of note (to perhaps put in the daapd package) is an init script for the daapd service.

Continue reading “Setting up a Linux box as an iTunes Server”

Kenny is coming…

From Peacefrog:

Kenny Larkin – The Narcissist
The Narcissist: Debut album on Peacefrog from Detroit legend Kenny Larkin, set for release 1 March 2004.
11 tracks of some of the finest electronic soul music around, the making of a definite future classic.
A worldwide tour is being scheduled for the time of the album release. Details will be posted soon.
Also look out for a private pressing and 12-inch single in the coming months.

It also looks like they’re going to hit us with a new Moodyman LP and also a new Marco Passarani EP. Bring it on!

Daniel Bell – The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!

Daniel Bell mix coverI’ve been completely digging the new mix CD of Daniel Bell’s called “The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!”. An awesome mix of minimal house and a fantastic followup to the “The Button Down Mind” released on Tresor a couple of years back.

Click more for the tracklisting…
Continue reading “Daniel Bell – The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!”

Weapons of Mass Distraction exhibition opening night

WOMD CrowdVarious game consolesNintendo PowergloveSharp Twin Famicom

So last night I hit up the Weapons of Mass Distraction exhibition opening night with Rozie, Adam, Thommy (sorry for making you miss the bus, sorry for giving you a lift there mate! :P) and Hal. BJ rocked up later as well. Absolutely heaps of consoles, Hanimex’s, Sega’s, Nintendo’s, ColecoVision’s, Intellivision’s and other systems I’ve never heard of or seen before. Crazy stuff. There was also artwork there from Caib, Shute, Boots, Sayno and others. Rozie even decided to buy one of the pieces. Wow, our first piece of bought art!

And there are photos of pretty much every console in the exhibtion in my gallery.

Old school gaming exhibition starts this week

This week the Weapons of Mass Distraction exhibition starts. The opening night is actually tonight. Things kick off at 6pm apparently. Details (again) are:

Weapons of Mass Distraction
50+ machines from the 1970s/80s and assorted gaming parapharnalia
opens January 8th – February 4th, 2004
location Spacejunk Industries, 30 Pittwater Rd, Manly. NSW. Australia
marktronics@hotmail.com for more info