You know, I just realized that I haven't written in this journal for a really, really long time. Therefore, I feel compelled to write this following entry:

Recently, I bought a super-old generic gamepad at a tag-sale for $1. I hooked it up to my linux-box, /MrCher/Duronas (don't ask about how it came to be called that), and found that my kernel (the one used by Mandrake Linux 9.2) couldn't detect any devices plugged into the joystick port, which this specific gamepad used. Sadly, I rebooted the computer and chose to boot FreeDOS on LILO. When I did this, I attempted to play Wolf3d with my new gamepad. Immediately, upon starting a new game with the gamepad enabled, I started turning around in circles, without pressing any buttons whatsoever.

...

I can't help but laugh at this, eventually it worked when I attempted to reconfigure the gamepad from within DOS, but it still was partially antagonizing.

Hopefully with a couple of kernel upgrades and some tinkering, I can get the good old /dev/js1 working. But, as of now, my generic gamepad sits idle....

...maybe I'll just buy a USB Gamepad instead.


Update: I ended up dishing out the cash and buying a USB gamepad. Mandrake 9.2 detects it, but the kernel doesn't making a proper device file for it. It is now in my best interests to just recompile my kernel and start from scratch. This should be difficult for me, considering that I'm only a linux hobbyist and a complete neophyte with kernel upgrades and such. Oh well, there isn't anything incredibly important on my linux partition that I don't have a back up of.

Today, after virtually a month or so of searching, I have found a way to create an (S)VCD. Why create an (S)VCD, you ask? Well, for one, conventional CDs are much cheaper than DVDs these days, and often burn faster. Besides, an (S)VCD is capable of about a half-hour of video, which is really all you need for things like concerts and stuff. DVDs on the other hand, give you hours and hours of time for video, which you'll probably never use. Also, (S)VCDs can be played on a variety of standard DVD Players.

Anyhoo, the software I found to do this is GNU VCDImager, an open-source terminal-tool for creating (S)VCDs. It appears to be pretty high quality, however I personally would use something like VCDtoolsX for a more user-friendly interface with a GUI. So....I may finally make a VCD of Don't Copy That Floppy. Yeah....

I decided to have some fun with the Mozilla PrefBar tonight and played around with the user agents a bit to see which "browser" would load Microsoft.com fastest. First, I went with Mozilla 1.0 on Windows 98. It simply would not load. Netscape 4.7 loaded perfectly although some of the graphics on the home site were missing. With Netscape 6 on Linux it loaded a tad slower, but was perfect except for the same graphics. Hmmm... Same with IE 5 for Mac. When I changed the user agent to IE6/WinXP, it asked me if I would like to participate in a survey to see how people used "Internet Explorer" and the Microsoft homepage, which, due its extreme humorous nature, I accepted . This time, I noted, the "missing graphics" loaded. Maybe, Microsoft is trying to brainwash people into believing that the current browser being used is inferior, by making it so that only certain content loads? Hmmm... I wonder why a worldwide monopoly that wants everybody to use only their products would do such a thing? It makes me wonder. (snicker, snicker) Please note that all of this experimentation was done on the same computer with the same browser (Mozilla), and no reboots were necessary. Again, I only manipulated the user agents.

Simply hilarious, is it not?

After preparing for a long weekend, I decided to play BreakOut. Eventually, I got bored (obviously), so I decided to design a couple of levels to play with a similar theme: extreme impossibility. At first it went well, but soon I became weary. Wait a minute!?!? Why have I nothing better to do than play BreakOut? Oh yeah, the computer I was playing it on was a newly made PC and I hadn't gotten around to networking it yet, and I was just plain bored. Anyhoo, after getting frustrated a bit, I retired to the couch for Star Trek. The first episode I didn't quite recognize, but I felt like I had seen the second episode before, like deja-vu, but not quite. Also, I began to devise excuses for not getting done with various projects I'm supposed to get done with this weekend like, "I was attacked by a bunch of rabid leprachauns who came out of the tile!!!"

Somehow, however, I feel that this excuse will not work, and neither will the one about old ladies with guns and a hostage situation..... ....or even the excuse that an ancient Belgian spirit entrapped me in a bottle.

--Boris Skratchunkov the III