I ordered for myself the Sega History Collection from Ningyoushi. Kickass.
Month: December 2004
‘Tis the Season to Spend Money
I don’t usually do the post Christmas sales at all. That’s the highly skilled territory of my Mother and Sister but this year since I was up in Newcastle staying at my Sister’s house, I thought I’d join her at (agh!) 7am or so when David Jones opened in Kotara. Luckily Kotara DJ’s isn’t like Sydney DJ’s on the day of the post-Christmas sales. Infact there was barely anyone around so it was a perfect time to go shopping. No waiting to try clothes on or anything like that. Got myself some shirts and new pair of jeans. Saved about $200 or so. Can’t complain about that. The best part of the day was when we headed to Charlestown. I got bored waiting for my Sister and Rozie, so I wandered down to Big W and check out the games section for any bargains (like I had with DJ’s, Toys-R-Us, K-Mart and Myer previously). Much to my pleasure they had Nintendo Gameboy Advances in there for $50. That’s right! $50!!! Score!!! OK, its not that big a deal considering it isn’t the backlit SP version and I guess they’re just trying to move this older stock to make way for the impending Nintendo DS, but hey… $50!! Down from $108. Yeah…
Post-xmas Pondering
Over Christmas I kept hearing about supposed left-wing, commie, politically correct, no fun, non-demoninational peoples ruining “everyone elses'” fun by trying to make things less “Christian”. Err, who are these supposed people (besides perhaps Clover Moore)? Do they really exist? Then again, I don’t know anyone who actually likes Shannon Noel but the guy seems to sell lots of records… perhaps its time to expand my social network.
Holy Retro-Controller Crap on a (joy)Stick Batman!
Now this is the kinda shit that totally gives me the horn (besides going into a newsagent and finding my monthly copy of Retro Gamer Magazine). Sega are to (re)release a USB version of their Sega Saturn controller and Sega Logistics and SNK Playmore are to (re)release a PS2 (not PS/2) version of the TOTALLY kickass Neo Geo Arcade joystick. Also worth noting is that a company called Retrozone sell USB modded versions of NES, SNES, Intellivision, Atari/C64, Genesis/Megadrive, Colecovision and PC Engine/Turbografx 16 controllers.
Xanga Liberation Front
After Giv liberated Beta from her old Xanga blog, last night I finally got around to liberating Joanne and Bec’s from their old Xanga blogs. You can now find Joanne here (pending her iluvkeanu.com domain ;-)) and Bec here.
One thing that I couldn’t find in the past is some sort of Xanga export tool. If you want blog exporting on Xanga, you need to pay for it with a Xanga Premium Account. Yeah, riiight. Luckily XRIP came to the rescue. XRIP is just a php script that dumps all of your Xanga posts into a MovableType post file which most blogging software these days can import happily (including WordPress, which is what Bec and Joanne’s blogs are now running.) It required a bit of sed’ing to remove some of the nasty formatting that Xanga puts into its posts, but after that it was all good. Then follow the WordPress Movable Type import guide, voila! No more Xanga.
So now the girls get new blogs and get to keep their old posts (including Beta as well :D) Now onto those pesky LiveJournals 😉
Glenda, the Plan 9 Bunny
Out of all the operating system mascots out there, Plan 9 has to have the damn cutest one of the lot with Glenda the Plan 9 Bunny.
Xscreensaver Annoyance
My work laptop, when I’m at work is usually connected to an external CRT monitor which runs at 1280×1024. Due to some really annoying bug in XFree86, it wouldn’t display any screensavers at the full screensize. Instead it would run the screensaver at the resolution of the LCD panel in the laptop (which in the case of my laptop was 1024×768). So today at lunchtime I finally had enough, and after a bit of googling I found the solution on JWZ‘s website (the author of Xscreensaver). To fix the problem, edit ~/.xscreensaver and put in the rather appropriate GetViewPortIsFullOfLies:True at the bottom of the file (or just set GetViewPortIsFullOfLies to True if its already there).
Torrents gone
slashdot.org had been reporting recently that the MPAA had been going after bittorrent sites. Looks like things have come to pass as SuprNova and Torrentbits are now “offline”.
Meh
The Simpsons – Hungry Hungry Homer
Homer: Kids, how would you like to go to Blockoland?
Bart and Lisa: Meh.
Homer: But the TV gave me the impression that…
Bart: We said, “Meh”.
Lisa: M-E-H. Meh.
Stencil Art
Hey, I like stencil art as much as the next guy (perhaps even more) and I have pretty much zero artistic ability, but don’t you think buying pre-made stencils is a tad lame?
And now the fun is over
Now I’m back at work. That ain’t so cool. But the fun stuff I got up to last week:
- Going to Tamarama beach on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in the scorching heat
- Seeing hip Aussie twee-poppers Architecture in Helsinki at the Kirk in the Slurrry (oh how I wish that I got to see Man Jam there 😉 )
- Djing at Tonic in the Cross (seeing some random dude happily gurning to Recloose’s “Up and Up” put a big smile on my face and made it all worth it)
- Drinking way too much at my 10 year school reunion at the Coogee Bay Hotel
- Finally after all these years getting to see Kenny Larkin DJ in Sydney
When I get the chance, I’ll put some pictures up of AIH and Kenny Larkin.
Update: As always Rozie beat me to it and put up the photos of Kenny Larkin up on her gallery.
Frontier First Encounters under Linux
Running in the window (it can run in fullscreen mode as well) is the JJFFE version of David Braben’s Frontier First Encounters (Elite 3). The desktop is GNOME 2.8 under Ubuntu Linux 4.10 “The Warty Warthog”. Getting FFE to compile is a snap, but you’ll need to download the rest of the game files from the Elite Club.
Also worth checking out (if you can grab it) is Elite: The New Kind. Its a reverse engineered version of the BBC version of Elite. Unfortunately due to copyright issues, I probably shouldn’t link to anywhere the source is. If you manage to track it down, you can use my Makefile to compile it under Linux. One thing I’d love to be able to do (and can’t figure out if it can) is whether it can run in windowed mode. I fear that the now unavailable EliteGL source code might be the key to getting it going.
Hot in the City
Hmmm. First day of summer. I’m loving it. This week I’ve been lucky enough to be off from work, so there’s no need to be whinging about the temperature. I’ve been to the beach Sunday, twice yesterday (Tuesday) and today. This morning the water was warm. The previous days required a moment or two to adjust to the water, but today, damnnnn it was perfect! Yesterday afternoon and this morning I took my bodyboard out. Yesterday was fun with some decent but small waves out the back of Tamarama. This morning due to the high tide, there was only a dumpy shorebreak on offer which gave me a couple of decentish waves. Still great to get out in to the water though. And not be at work. I think I’ll have to do it again tomorrow and Friday as well. Perhaps if I have time, Saturday and Sunday. Back to work next Monday though. Booo!
Tonight, Architecture in Helsinki are playing at Spectrum in Darlinghurst (the old Lizard Lounge I think…) Apparently they’re also playing at the Kirk in the Slurry as well on Thursday. If I’ve got nothing better to, and if I enjoy them today, I guess I’ll go hit up that gig as well… after I’ve been to the beach of course.
Update:
For those Architecture in Helsinki fans who are in other states, they’re playing Sunday night (Dec 5th) in Brisbane at the Zoo, Thursday 9th December in Ballarat at the Karova Lounge and then Friday 10th December in Adelaide at Jive. They’ve already played Melbourne, Sydney and Newcastle so far.