Simple Pleasures
- Take a box of six eggs.
- Use them all at once, and put the empty shells back in the box.
- Close the lid of the box, and squeeze it until the shells break into hundreds of pieces with a lovely crackling sound.
- Experience near-orgasmic delight.
Disclaimer: May not work if you're not me. link | 0 comment(s) | links to this post
Saturday, July 21, 2007
C64
I never owned a C64 in its heyday, serving with religious zeal on the side of the ZX Spectrum during the great "my-computer-is-better-than-your-computer" wars which took place in the playgrounds of the nation during the 80s. Eventually, however, I had to admit that there were some pretty great games to be had on the 64, and I bought one second-hand from a friend-of-a-friend.
The advent of full-speed emulation of these old machines, coupled with the fact that I never acquired a floppy-disk drive for it and had to sit and wait for games to load from tape, meant that it never got the attention it deserved.
Anyway, this afternoon I rescued it from the cupboard, gave it a good clean, and fired it up for the first time in years. Unfortunately, the only tape I could find to test on it was proto-Sims software toy Little Computer People, but it loaded without a hitch, and is just as charming, if a little shallow, as it was in 1986. I was sure I had others kicking about, but I don't know what happened to them.
The picture from the C64, on the same channel as the VCS, looked great. This is slightly worrying, however, as I was hoping that the distortion on the VCS was down to some factor other than the machine itself. The fact that the C64 looks so good on that telly suggests otherwise. I dont think it's anything fatal, and the VCS is still perfectly playable, but it could probably be doing with a new RF lead, and unfortunately these are hard-wired on those old models. Bah.
Anyway, C64s don't go for a whole lot on eBay, and I don't have much in the way of games or peripherals for it, so I reckon the cost of sipping + a pint is probably fair. Anyone?
Update: This has now been sold. link | 0 comment(s) | links to this post
History For Sale
As part of an ongoing mission to declutter my life and make some room, I'm selling some of my old and dusty toys. First up is my old Atari 2600 and games...
It'll be sad to see it go, but I can't honestly say that it's seen much daylight in the years since I bought it off eBay. However, I did spend a very pleasant couple of hours this afternoon cleaning it up, plugging it in, and thoroughly testing each and every game. It seems to be in perfect working order, though there was a bit of ghosting on the screen. I suspect that's down to either local interference or a modern LCD tv struggling a bit with a crappy old analogue signal. It was still perfectly playable, anyway.
Call me a massive geek if you like, but I think it's a thing of genuine beauty, partly because of its nostalgic place in video game history, partly because its games are still fun, despite being unbelievably primitive by today's standards, and partly because of its amazing 1970's design. Come on Apple - where's my faux-woodgrain iPod?
Anyone want to make me an offer before it gets thrown to the eBay wolves? It comes with two joysticks, two paddles, and the following games:
Boxed
Circus Atari
Combat
Golf
Outlaw
Pac-Man
Space Invaders
Unboxed
Dig Dug
Pitfall II
Pole Position
Star Raiders (Can't guarantee this one works, since it requires the numeric keypad add-on which I don't have.)
Update: This has now been sold. link | 0 comment(s) | links to this post
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Pidgin
Where I work we use MSN Messenger a lot. Partly because it's useful to chat to people who are not in the office, and partly because we're all lazy computer geeks with poor social skills who would rather type at someone than take off our headphones, stand up and walk the length of two desks in order to ask them a question.
The official Messenger client is, however, pretty mince. Well, not mince, but certainly annoying, and continually shows you ads, so I prefer to use a free alternative that allows me to connect to more than one network at a time. For a while I used the free version of Trillian on my work Windows box, but there was kinda buggy, not updated very often, and had a lot of niggly and annoying little "features" that I didn't like. I longed for a PC version of the lovely Adium client that I use on the Mac...
... and, lo and behold, it turns out that there is one. Well, sort of. Pidgin is built on the same codebase and comes pretty close. Its feature set seems to be identical, and its GUI is laid out in a very similar manner. Unfortunately, it uses the GTK+ toolkit on Windows, which means that it's nowhere near as pretty as its Mac stablemate, but I've been using it for a couple of weeks now and I'm quite happy to put Trillian out to pasture, at least until they come out with a spiffy new version for those of us not willing to pay through the nose, but that seems unlikely. Ok, so neither Pidgin nor Adium support video or voice calls, but I never use those things anyway.
Labels: software
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, July 16, 2007
Iceland officially "Happiest place in the world"*
According to some study or other.
It is a place I'd love to return to, but could I live there? It'd certainly be an adventure, but I don't know how I'd cope with those long winter nights. I find winter in Glasgow hard enough.
* - Well, ok, in Europe. I really should actually read the things I post about first.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Supersoggy
Back from a very wet Birmingham and the very loud Supersonic festival. It looked like it was going to be a bit of a washout when we arrived on Friday, and after getting something to eat and checking into our accomodation we took a look at the downpour outside and decided to give the short opening evening of the festival a miss and ended up just staying in and watching telly.
Fortunately the sun came out on Saturday and dried the city out, allowing us to toddle around the shops and check out the botanic gardens before heading over to the Custard Factory for some sonic abuse. I won't go into the actual bands, since a Diskant article is on the cards, but a good and loud time was had by all present.
This morning the rain returned with a vengence, and our wee prop plane go a bit of a battering on its way back to Glasgow. Now I'm full of takeaway Chinese and wondering if I've got tomorrow off or not. I put in for the holiday last week through the work intranet but never got a confirmation, so I might be working and I might not. Bah.
When I clicked "Post and publish" on my first version of this entry, Poster threw an exception and lost it. Believe it or not, this is a good thing, since it's allowed me to spot and fix a bug. I lose posts so you don't have to!
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Currently...
(So much is happening and so little is bloggable. For now, anyway. But in order to breath some kind of life into this thing I'll take memetic inspiration from Marceline on the Diskant weblog and do a quick "catchup" post.)
Listening:
The last record I bought was the debut by Bracken, which was purchased from Monorail purely on the basis that it was on the Anticon label, and they can seemingly do no wrong. This is no exception and may be my favourite album this year so far. I guess I should probably review it properly some time.
My iPod, however, is largely playing host to old episodes of In Our Time, the Radio 4 programme in which Merlvyn Bragg chats to three academic types about history, science and philosophy. The site only allows you to download the last episode, but a workmate has been archiving them for the past year or so, and I've set myself the marathon task of listening to each one, as well as the new ones when they come out.
Imagine a world in which, in order to listen to a radio programme or watch TV, you had to sit in front of a little box at exactly the right time! Apparently people used to do that! Madness.
Reading:
The lecturer who took the writing course I've just finished repeatedly recommended Raymond Carver as a master of the short story, so I'm finally getting round to reading his collection "Cathedral". His style is very clipped and minimal, which is refreshing if a little dry at times, but they are all expertly constructed. Like Bukowski but without the rage.
Watching:
Nothing on TV, since Doctor Who finished. Well, ok, and the odd episode of Big Brother, which has caught me more this year than the last few, but not in the same obsessive way as the first few years.
Last night we watched The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada which was fabulous. Tommy Lee Jones is, as they say, "the man."
Anticipating:
Supersonic this weekend. Also, NYC in August. And other stuff I can't talk about yet.
Working on:
Poster is still in progress, and will see a beta release one of these days. Just to prove it really exists, here's a wee screenshot...
Plus occasional tunes, occasional writing, and occasional paralysing panic when I realise that I've got a million more important things I should be doing, like getting the flat cleaned up and on the market.
Labels: books, diary, games, movies, music, poster
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this post