Techno is great: The Sequel + Half-life 2 Info

Date: 1/30/04 at 3:41AM

In school we got our hands dirty. I mean this as a figure of speech of course. The class got to tear apart old IBMs. The motherboards weren’t old, but they sure were outdated. Now-a-days I can just screw those babies to the frame with no troubles, the IDE ports aren’t on a separate board like those ones were. But what a pain in the ass to unplug everything! This particular curcuit board was even wedged against the side with a plastic board underneath. Another pain in the ass is documenting all the plug-ins, and ports inside the computer. I had this nifty idea of using ‘post its’ on the IDE cables. Next week if this computer doesn’t work I could of ESDed it. Abbreviations for electrostatic discharge. We have these super cool ESD bracelets we wear. If I had these a year ago and knew what I was doing, I wouldn’t of spent all that money on new motherboards.

Today I was downloading more ATB albums off the Internet. I only got another 60 MB off iMESH, and another 50 MB off ripcast. I know, who cares how much mp3s I get of the Internet. There are many people who download 100s of songs in a day. Let’s not start that argument. Continuing on, I think some good tunes are ATB and Paul Van Dyke rave mix - DJ Special K and Sunscreen. Sunscreen sounds like Reggie mixed with trance. Not bad. I have some of his other songs like My Dream, Fields of Love, 9am, Let U Go, etc. Don’t get me wrong I’m still in rock artists just not as much anymore. My friends sometime caught me listening to Metallica, SotD, Black Sabbath, and Romstine. Whatever’s on 93X anyways. Go ahead, go to 93x.com. Now that is Hardcore, trance is my softer side.

Unlike other days, I rate this day a 3/5 because it’s not horrible, not very good. I’m trying out this new file sharing tool called Overnet Pro 0.52, and I’m not sure I like it. It’s another network that does the same thing as my usual uses of iMesh and Limewire. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won't. I’m a little afraid to use Kazaa because my connections get deleted or close often. This doesn’t occur with iMesh or Limewire much at all, or if it does, it's my isp reconnecting, which shouldn't effect the hosts. I have an older version, 2.1. Kazaa now is at 2.6. All I know is that Kazaa! 2.1 still works. I don't know if Kazaa knows it's awful reconnection issues. I'm not the one whos goign to email them and say, I think there is something seriously wrong with your client, because I can't find the hosts I want once I'm disconnected. That's my reason - Kazaa sucks.

Remembering back to a couple segments ago, I commented on the Doom III engine, and how great that’ll be. Now, I think I’m going to comment on Valve Software’s new Source engine used primary for Half-Life 2. No doubt, Valve Software will make a ton of money leasing the source code out to other developers. You know, I haven’t played Half-life for 2 years, it could have been the graphics, or it could be that the game wasn’t fresh. Half-life had the Counter-strike Mod that most Half-life fans have tried. Half-life 2 is more commando based game like counter-strike. When I see Half-life 2, I think of the Resident Evil port on Gamecube. One reason I can think of – it looks like a Western European town. The mansion on RE1 and RE2 looked European with all the old paintings, stained glass, and gloomy, eerie sets. Half-life 2 is going to have some unusually realistic zombies as seen in the screenshots. If you want to read Half-life 2 – head over to Half-life2.com. IGN.com also has a good article on this game. Valve was working on the source engine shortly after Half-life was released. That must be 5 ½ years already. To keep it short I was amazed at the screenshots, the game looks really cool. It's going to be awesome on a lan when it comes out. Just like the original. Maybe someone will release a map pack including all the original Half-life missions. If it ain't broken, why fix it, right?

In game shot of the PC version of Valve's Half-life 2. There are better screenshots I'm sure.

Used the multimeter today at home. I wasn't sticking the ends into wall sockets. I was in the heat room of the basement, trying out the alligator clamps Dad gave me last week. I took readings. I think it was 360 Volts. Of course, I could go outside and clamp it to the electric meter (that box outside that measures voltage usage of the whole house) Then I got a N64, and things were lighting up. That’s before I got old, and what changed? I’m still playing games. Games improved, but same as 7 years ago, I’m pushing the same buttons, sitting in the same chair, watching the same television, and loosing sleep over it. And than I ask myself why? It’s an answer only a gamer can answer. I play less then half as much as I did in 1999 or even 2000. This is an improvement, is it not?

The Internet, unlike games, inspired me to do a lot more. It inspired me to create a website about games, to read up on games, to read up on the Minnesota Vikings, and to write about myself. The Internet got me to download Mp3s, find programs that would rip mp3s, and those that would listen too them. The Internet inspired me to talk to my friends through IM. Most of all, the Internet gave me a reason to stay up late. And play Diablo 2 all night long.

Techno is great

Date: 1/28/04 at 3:53AM

So no one liked my last entry? Only 4 views! Well, I’m gonna try again, and write something that doesn’t have anything to do with computers. Am I suppose to write depressing entries? Write how the world is against us, and how we are hurt by it? No, I DON'T write like that. I’m happy, I don't need depression in my life, it’s a waste of time!

Why is there so many people listening to techno on places like Shoutcast.com? Twenty-five percent of listeners prefer a variety of music over one genre. The number one station at shoutwave.com is Digitally Imported, a trance station online, free, and with no advertisements. I only listen to Live365, and Shoutcast’s music. I was into trance since 2001. Sure, I listen to 93x, a rock station in the Twin Cities, because I want to fit in plus they have some interesting talk shows in the morning. I can tell difference between the bands. Paul Oakenfold is really good artist. I heard somewhere that a lot of people heard of Mauro Picotto. There aren’t any lyrics in songs of this type, this beat or pulse. The music is rated by how good the beat is. I still like ATB. He’s remixes are relaxing music, I don’t know if it is incredible. One song I thought was incredible was Zombie Nation’s Ahahahaha Remix. I also have 12 Ministry of Sound soundtracks. These songs are played during soccer games in Europe. Chicane is also a good artist. My techno collection is about 2 Gigabytes, there’s many songs I’ve haven’t listened too closely. There is a place in Minneapolis called 101 Blue on Hennepin Ave that is a DJ House/Techno/Rock dancing hall. I should go there some time. I don’t know anyone who has been there. I’ve been doing good, almost completely forgot the ascendant yesterday.

I guess when you’re a computer person in the Industrial Networking field, you don’t meet any nice looking blondes, 19, who’re interested in computer technical stuff, cars or videogames. I definably won’t go on blind dates, I know that. I’m shy towards talking to girls often, that’s exactly why they aren’t crazy about me. *Sniff* I wonder if any girls my age like Anime? I’m not a strong / hardcore anime fan. I watch Space Ghost Coast to Coast when it’s on (use to be 10pm on Cartoon Network), but it’s never on anymore so I just stop watching it. I sometimes catch Family Guy, but that the show does’t interested me. (If I’m going to watch TV I’ll watch a Western. I like Westerns.) Cartoons should not be this low of quality. Remember Looney Tunes? – Those were some high quality cartoons. I mean the crazy rabbit tales, no cheesy animation, just original as all gets out because a lot of them were directed by Chuck Jones (cartoon director.) Tom and Jerry was also a great cartoon I watched when I was a kid. Now 10 year olds are into Spongebob Square Pants and Dexter’s Labitory. I’m sorry for those of you who liked Felix the Cat. I didn’t like him.

I giving DeCESS to everyone

Date: 1/27/04 at 2:15PM

So you, my fans, liked my open source dvd entry? I got over 50 hits on that entry, and I only wrote two paragraphs. This entry should be the biggest entry I had. Look yourself by placing the pointer over the blog title sometime. Did you know that some wise-crack business guy is trying to sue open source because it’s free? Why can’t people just leave Linux’s open source programmers alone. There is also some company wanting to sue Linux because it uses ASCII code and that company help create ASCII. Companies CAN NOT copyright binary code. Last article I read, the Supreme Court is currently dropping charges. There has been talk a while back that Linux source code should be switched to Unicode which is 16 bits per character instead of 7 bits. The advantage of Unicode is for those counties with odd symbols like Japan and China to able to have source code in Chinese or Japanese instead of our Latin languages or A, B, C, D, etc. Since UNIX was developed in America (AT&T) it was mostly compiled in English, this didn’t help other countries much. Early UNIX programmers must of spoke and read English.

Webpage here: http://zdnet.com.com...102-11_2-518300.html. I found out that the DeCESS file I downloaded was a key element because it decompresses essential plug-in VOB files. Believe it or not, DVD Copy Control Association was created to license DVD to Hollywood producers. It’s another Linux verses Media Industry all over. Oh well, here is a link for DeCESS plugin. I put it on my server for the curious to download. It’s the latest version I think. http://www.pressente...~scampbel/decess.zip (25 KB) DeCESS is meant to work with Linux. I don’t know if DeCESS will work as a plugin for Mplayer. If I find what it belongs too, I’ll let you know in my next entry. If so, that would be really great if it would work. I know that there is software that will backup your DVD video with Windows. I found something else called Gordian Knot Pack, and Gordian Knot Rip Pack. http://prdownloads.s...rge.net/gordianknot/ I knew there had to be some package with sourceforge.org. The archive file contains DVDDecrypter 3.1.7.0, vStrip 0.8f CSS, DVD2AVI 1.76 CLI, DVD2AVIdg 1.0.0, BeSweet 1.5b23, azidts 0.1, vsfilter, Decomb 5.1, fluxsmooth, Convolution3D, Deen, TomsMoComp, AviSynth 2.53, VobSub 2.23, VirtualDubMod 1.5.10.1, Nandub RC2 lumafix ecffix, AviMuxGUI 1.13, chapterXtractor 0.962 and Robot4Rip 0.5. This program has exe files, so it’s meant for Windows only. Here is another good link, http://www.doom9.org....html?/software2.htm. I also checked out DVD Shrink’s webpage. Find the link from Doom9’s website. I am currently downloading from this page. It seems to be a good reference on all I need.

I crashed my Jeep today on the way to school. The damage was minor, though I had a ride, it sucked. I went in the ditch, and the impact was forceful enough to inflate my airbag. I walked out of it with no injuries. It’s important to turn off the engine, which I did. My fault wasn’t that there was a car in front of me who slowed down, my fault came later. Maybe he swerved to, no? I The conditions were icy and I lost control of the vehicle, and I slammed on my brakes. I had 4 wheel drive in gear which should have prevented me from losing control. I’m mad at my vehicle, 4 wheel drive didn’t save me from this disaster. Fortunately, I didn’t do any damage to anyone, but I broke a tree or two, and a fence. This happened in front of a Sheriff’s truck. I had instant backup. The tow truck came about 20 minutes later, and the Jeep got out by it’s own. I’ll be able to get back on the road in a few days so I’m happy about that. I thought I was done for when I got home, but my Dad said, “You’ve learned your lesson, didn’t you?” This is a lesson for all of you drivers; always have your vehicle in 4-wheel drive in winter. There goes my perfect driving record.

I was playing Playstation 2 to get my mind off things. You could say I was a little shaken up today after I got home. Grand Thief Auto 3 was the game I was playing. A videogame has no rules I reminded myself, real life has rules, and the cops aren’t crazy like they are in the game. Endless cop cars try to put your car out of commission any way possible. I wouldn’t be able to out drive a cop car today, no possible way.

Another dull Weekend. But all is not lost.

Date: 1/25/04 at 12:15PM

I am remembering back to my first year of high school. I just came back from another school I was going too. I was voted for prom of 1999. I was only 16. I was dreaming of a flash back of that time. Adam Graf and Megan Hinbuck got the most votes of anyone, so they were the King & Queen of the freshman prom. The school spit the times up by grade. No one cared if you stayed the whole night. Anyway in reality, I went to prom, but I didn’t dance with a girl. Even now I don’t have a girl in my life. I forget how I got voted in. Every school has a student board. They make arrangements for special events. Then my dream continued to be more fantasy then real life. The entire night was about finding just how I got so popular that year. I was in track and field, and cross-country that year. My dream had a couple scenes of me sprinting 2nd and then first. And the crowd cheered. Ann was also part of this. All of it wasn’t true, but I had a girl in my life, her name was Ann Redmon. She was also in both events. In real life, I never asked this girl out. This all took place on the week of prom (same week as homecoming) in the winter. Then I played in band, and played my instrument well at the basketball game. Ann and I danced that night at prom. I quoted Shakespeare to her and she liked it. She and I didn’t care about anyone else. But during all of this, I wondered, was I doing all of this myself? I invited Randy (big friend of mine) to prom. He just sat, and watched us dance to the bad R&B singles. I hate R&B and pop, not showing hated towards the tunes of course. It was really vivid in my mind, and I remember it well. Enough of this fantasy rubbish now.

Randy and I were supposed to do something today, but he had things to do. Randy drives his car a lot, and he has a girl friend who is younger then he is. Bob also has a girl friend too. You know what this means! It means they have girlfriends, and I don’t (which is true), which also translates to I have nothing to do today, and neither one of them can come over and have good time. Not very good friends are they?

I updated my webpage again today. It now looks cooler. And I’ve been playing Final Fantasy X-2, and Diablo 2 off and on today. My cousin, who is in the Navy, is going to play from Pensacola, Florida. There is a naval academy there, probably Pensacola Naval Academy. He just bought the Diablo 2 Battle Set a week ago. I always wanted to play with him. I’m about 18% complete with Final Fantasy X-2. We could play an ip connection game, which would be faster then BattleNet itself, but it would be long distance. It’s over the Internet why would it be long distance? I know I don’t like it.

To sum this entry – I had a dream about a girl, randy couldn’t come over today and I’m playing Diablo 2 on the Internet like I always do ….

Oh yeah, I own a lot of PS2 games. Hehehe. Thirty-two in all. I know that everyone likes PS2, and dislikes Gamecube and Xbox. Why is that? Too many Final Fantasy fans out there! Well guess what, Gamecube is getting one Final Fantasy title. By the way I like Final Fantasy 7, 8, 10 and 10-2. Haven’t played Tactics or FFIX. I hear IX Is better then VIII though but not better then FFVII. Final Fantasy VII I heard was the reason some people bought Playstation. Either that or was it Metal Gear Solid, maybe it was both? I bought a Playstation in 2002 and PS2 in 2003 so played those consoles very late. Anyhow I watched my friend play my copy of Final Fantasy VII and it looked okay. He said it was a technical marvel in 1997, which for some reason still looks above average today. I know this was before Metal Gear Solid, Crash Bandicoot 3 and Gran Tranismo 2 came out. I only played Gran Transimo 2 because I am a little shy towards older Playstation games, before 1999 anyways.

Nintendo was getting FFVII, but Squaresoft ran out of cartridge space so the developer withdrawed. Why Nintendo didn’t you add a cd drive, like the Sega CD, to the N64 instead of that stupid disc drive only released in Japan? Maybe then you’ve wouldn’t of lost Squaresoft and all your RPGs. Maybe Square-Enix will develop regularly for Nintendo on Gamecube’s predecessor. Square and Nintendo partnered and created a studio called Game Designer’s Studio which help create Crystal Chronicles. Square games are fine with Playstation, but it just seems more authentic on a Nintendo platform. I think. IGN.com translated this developer with this summery, “Development subsidiary created by SquareSoft. Headed by Square director Akitoshi Kawazu, who worked on the Legend of Mana series. Game Designer's Studio, with money from the Hiroshi Yamauchi (owner of the Seattle Mariners, and former Nintendo President) setup 'Q Fund,' is specifically focused on creating products for Nintendo's GameCube console. The company's first project for the platform is Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, an RPG based on Square's enormously popular series.” The game developer doesn’t have their own webpage yet.

I am not sure why Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within failed at the box office. It was graphically superior to anything before it. The movie was much better looking then any of Disney / Pixar’s films, and had a huge budget of over 100 million all funded by Square Pictures. If you couldn’t tell I am a recent Final Fantasy and console RPG fan, then you haven't been paying much attention to this blog lately because I'm all about playing the latest role playing games. I like the largest, most detailed games avalible.

Duck Hunt 3D is fun, so is Highway Pursuit

Date: 1/22/04 at 8:45PM

Yesterday, I told my friend Bob that having a blog is fun which got him to sign up. Asking him was easy. He asked me why he should put information out on the web. I responded, “Blogs are fun. It’s good when you know people and you can catch up their lives.” He had a website at Angelfire for a short time. He said to me he really didn’t want to add pictures to it or update it. Bob doesn’t like to use a spell checker so he misspells a lot of words, but he writes so much that he joined Modblog. He’s at Bobrt.modblog.com.

Today I went to school and downloaded MP3s off shoutcast.com. I got at least 40 MBs with QCD. I also was downloading free games from www.gamehippo.com while I streamed radio stations. I found out that I really like Duck Hunt 3D, and Highway Pursuit (Spy Hunter clone.) Duck Hunt 3D is a fun game. The original Duck Hunt was packaged with the Nintendo Entertainment System. There has never been a Duck Hunt 2, like there should be. The clay shooting option is really fun - as fun as Duck Hunt itself. The midi sounds redneckish. For a 2.5 MB download it is really worth it, although yeah might as well laugh at the seriously outdated graphics. Highway Pursuit was okay for a 3.7 MB download. In my opinion, It’s better then a lot of freeware games and can never beat the orginal Spy Hunter for the NES. Don’t turn down a free download, especially those two above. Midway Game’s re-make of Spy Hunter didn’t receive good reviews. Santa Slayer is also funny and worth a download. What I really want on my pc is Code Red: Martian’s Attack, it’s a first person shooter using the Quake II engine, which is now open source. It’s made by former Quake II level designers. On Sourceforge.com, where I get my open source software, Quake is being re-developed running on OpenGL on Linux. Why download Quake when Quake II is also open source? Why not make Quake II for Linux? Wait, someone already has. Linux programmers will just have to start over. And if you want to run Quake II on Linux, all you have to do is boot Quake II with DOSemu [dosemu, ../windows/c:, ../Quake II/Quakeii.bat.] Install and play. The Quake III engine will be open source in 2 years or less. I heard this official message off PlanetQuake.com a year ago. Some freeware dos games can already work with DOSemu. Do you believe someone is still wasting their time, and making maps for Quake II? Quake fan’s are waiting for Doom III more then they are Quake 4 because they were originally Doom fans. I am waiting for Doom III too. I’ll buy it the first week it comes out. Quake 4 is being developed by id Software, and co-developed by Raven Software of Madison, Wisconsin. That’s my state! I don’t know if Quake 4 will use the Doom III engine or not? Either way Doom III is going to look really good when it comes out. The game will use the most state-of-the-art graphics in a PC game. The game is also developed for Xbox, but some of us don’t like X-Box because lack of good games or just hate Microsoft for what they are. Some of you gamers may have already heard this, but

- A computer programmer(s) shouldn’t release a console. (Bill Gates founder of Microsoft and Nolan Bushnell, Atari’s founder, and founder of Pong)
- A card company shouldn’t make consoles. (Nintendo)
- An American airplane simulator retailer shouldn’t make arcade games. (SErviceGAmes)
- And a television manufacture(s) should stay away from making games. (Sony, Magnavox)
- None of them did.

I read this off a message board somewhere, and thought it was quite good. The online multiplayer success of this game is forecasted to be greater then Quake III. We rather play on our Playstation 2s though so we might see Quake IV or Doom III on Playstation 2. I mean I don’t know for sure, but it would make a lot of sense.

I'm getting a Fluke Meter, they are fun.

Date: 1/21/04 at 12:44AM

Trouble has gotten me again – in school – I’m short of credits. I need one more credit to be a half-time student at WITC. I saw that life as been disappointing this week. Students there aren’t getting to know me too well, and above all else I couldn’t download anything. I have a minor speech disorder but I am not effected by it. I love to download programs, and mp3s off shoutcast.com. I download techno mostly. I use Ripcast at home and Quintessential Player 4.11 at school. I discovered “QCD” 2 months ago finding it can rip from any streaming radio station on the web. The college’s firewall doesn’t block it which means it totally rocks! I am still with those “people without a care.” It’s mostly a computer geek deer hunter crowd. I got stuck in this crowd because I had two choices: Go to UofW or WITC. I picked WITC. Only thing I missed about the University is that I will never again be able to burn videos to DVD. I’m too cheap to buy my own video editing software. If you know what I’m talking about when I say uncompressed video data is absolutely huge! Then I have to take that data and compress it in MPEG which takes a long time anyway. It would be nice if Mom got a digital video camera. Apple makes a solid ‘video editing’ software called iMovie. iMovie is not for PC which makes me angry.

It’s funny that people prefer Apple OSX over Windows XP. OSX is pretty stable but by the same time there aren’t any FAT32 Emulators for it. Windows is awesome, many users would agree. I’ve been on a G5 with Intel Pentium 4 and 512 MB RAM. It was super fast. Did you know that it was Apple that came out with the firewire port first – the fastest transfer port available on the PowerPC/IBMPC? The university has twoG5s for video editing I remember. The Media room I had as an intern for had 12 G4s. I found that those computers had small hard drives. That’s all the University could afford. It was my only experience with an Apple. Apple makes it so it’s nearly impossible to run OSX on a PC. I know because I copied a installation disc myself and it didn't run.

I was running Halo on my pc. Halo runs better without the patch then it does with it. I know I installed the 1.02 patch and the game crashed. I downloaded v1.031 hoping that it would fix the bug. The game requires high specs to run anything higher then 800/600. The patch is suppose to speed up the physics engine which runs at 30 frames all the time and slow downs are possible. I bought the game last November, and haven’t played it until today. Very noticeably Bungie / GearBox added to the original single player game and made it longer. There is a tutorial in Halo now. I like tutorials though because they help a lot. The game looks very clean and crisp like it does on Xbox. The game does support anti-analyzing/anti-buffering which makes it look even better. The Internet says gamers will not see Halo 2 on the PC for 2 more years. Halo is not the best looking first person shooter, but it’s really easy to copy! The game play is good. The game does have GameSpy as an online server with support up to 16 players which adds to the longevity of the game. I’m not interested in Halo because I’m into Morrowind. I’ll play it because it was on Xbox (I also own the Xbox version) and got very good reader reviews.

Tomorrow I’m going back to the videogame store to pick up some used videogames. It’s a hobby of mine. Should I pick up racing games or an action game like Blood Rayne? Or should I spend money on none and get another 64MB thumb stick. Thumb sticks are fun but pricy. That’s why I should buy an external hard drive. I spoke of getting one before – why didn’t I? I blew the cash on a Gameboy Advance SP. Tomorrow I won’t be able to do much because I’ll be home reading college books, taking notes, doing math. We all have been there – extra long hours on homework. I’m not the lucky one; there are Youth Options students there now and they are full time. Some adults are going to get their network specialist A++ certificate when they graduate from high school. When I was in high school, my choices were limited to two classes: Intro to DOS and Intro to Linux. Why even get started in Linux when you’re not going to use it in my field which is Industrial Neworking Technician. I am taking this field instead of network specialist because I don’t like taking Cisco 3 and 4. It would be nice to have those on my file, but it’s going to be hell from what I heard. I would be more likely be hired by someone. Companies are looking for the best and I have to have good grades to compete. Cisco Corp. is always making revisions on there online website and books. And they really are technical in their books. It is Cisco that I hate, not the whole Industrial Networking field. ]
Check out these websites:

http://www.quinnware.com/news.html home of QCD
http://www.xoteck.com/ripcast/download.php

I may be negative in the upper paragraphs, but my week, my life for that matter, hasn’t been bad…it’s been good for the most part. One thing cool happened this week though after all the treacherous introductions for back to school. I’m going to get a Fluke amp meter. When you go into this field, you gotta have one of these. They are highly durable. I will have this meter my whole life, and Fluke has a lifetime guarantee on it. I will need it to measure leakage in horizontal data cables (shielded twisted pair / unshielded twisted pair, and patch cable)

I hope everything turns around in college for me…it is a little ugly right now. My friend Bob is sick so I couldn’t see him this week, plus he now works at 3:30 to late, and I won’t see him later. I need someone to hang out with, and he’s seems to be the only person right now. Revisions to this entry soon…

open source DVD player not found ... sucks

Date: 1/16/04 at 11:58PM

I came across source code today that I never thought I download. I came across it because I wanted software that would run DVDs on Linux. Like always, I did a search on Google. Everything else in Linux there has to be a rpm file or at least source code to compile. I couldn’t find any special programs that would read VOB files (DVD video files.) Vob reminds me too much of vorbis. I wonder if there is a connection? I came across an interesting file called DeCSS. The file seems to be well known to the programming community because it’s been downloaded over 10,000 times. The source code can be downloaded through telnet so I went to download it at decess.zoy.net, like what it said on the web, and downloaded decess.c. C stands for C++ source file. So all I have to do is ‘chmod 700’ this file, and used the up arrow to re-execute the file. I know nothing about the source code. And guess what…it didn’t work. It’s hopeless - I will never find an open source dvd player. So I went to sourceforge.org. I typed in DVD player. Mplayer shows up, but I already have that program.

So what happened next after I failed to find an open source dvd player? I played Morrowind, than played Diablo 2 online through Battlenet. To my delight my account was still up. I did some ‘role playing’, then wrote this passage you see before you which makes it Midnight. I have a level 36 Amazon. I heard some talk online about a Diablo 2 mod that makes monsters drop more on a closed Battlenet server when the user hosts a game.

I had better days

Date: 1/15/04 at 7:15PM

I feel that I had some crazy times in high school, and it’s time to grow up a little. Free to have any conversation if you could get someone to listen to you. Damn it - there is no more special treatment. Joyce, my hardware/software installation teacher, is letting people talk about porn, sperm in class. I know what many of you are thinking “What? Whoa...Sweet? You mean no one cares?” Joyce cares; she knows it’s just one of ‘their’ crazy thoughts. Everyone 18 in the whole world has gotten caught looking up porn on the Internet. I admit I also got caught – but that was over 2 years ago. I will never admit I looked at porn except this one time. Its grouse, it’s not proper. I felt embarrassed in class. I was smart enough not to comment on it. Ah-ha! Take that you porn downloader perverts you! Bottom line, porn is crazy stuff. It’s addictive. It’s not good for you.

I’m playing Morrowind. My shield really does the trick in melee combat. My character has a Steel Shield, Steel Armor, and a Bastard Sword. I want to show off my character to you guys. I also have Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of the Year for Xbox, but the PC version looks better in my opinion. I got this game and the expansion packs Bloodmoon, and Tribunal before Bethesda released the 40 dollar value package exclusive to Best Buy. It’s an awesome deal. I recommend this game to any person with cash at hand because it’s so huge for one, has good graphics, and has customizable stuff, but requires a Pentium III or better to play. In the game, if you come across a soul gem, you can go to a mage’s guild and find someone who can enchant your sword or shield, etc. I also have a mod that replaces the textures with higher resolution textures which makes the game look a bit better. I am hoping someone will develop a mod that will make this game multiplayer. In fact I ran a search with Google, and didn’t find anything. Picture below:

Yesterday was the highlight of the whole week

Date: 1/12/04 at 2:37PM

The whole week I must say was B-O-R-I-N-G! I watched a couple dvds over break. I am deeply sorry about the lack of updates…. I was working on videogames, going places, and downloading map packs for Quake III including the patch over a modem. Then I am sort of playing a combination of games, Elder Scrolls III for PC, Final Fantasy X-2, and Xenosaga. Last night, my friend Bob had a videogame party and it kinda rocked. After an hour everyone, except me, was sick of games. Bob has a new Playstation 2. He got one because he always wanted to own one, but never really had the money, so it was a gift from his parents. I brought over Soul Caliber II, Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution, and Madden 2002. He has copies of MK Deadly Alliance, and Aggressive Inline. MK was the most played game there. Coming to his house was the most fun I had the whole week. There were 3 friends of his, and everyone likes the blood. Blood is over-rated. I stayed over there for 5 hours until 1:30AM. Bob has a huge (9.5 GBytes) MP3 collection that takes up a lot of his hard drive. Most of his music is a combination of goth metal, and regular heavy metal. I took his Black Sabbath, Metallica, Slipknot, Emblem, and Romstine music. Not that I listen to them at all, but I also have a growing collection. I have a 20 Gbyte Apple Ipod, and I want to upload all the songs I can possibly get on it.

I downloaded this extremely cool software called Alcohol 120%, and it copies everything. I was looking for the 1.4.7 version on Google since that can be patched. Alcohol-soft.com says it can copy Playstation 2 games, and general copyrighted software with no problems. Alcohol 120% is guaranteed to copy laser-locked software, Safe-locked software versions 1 and 2 what ever they are, and much, much more. So far I haven’t had any trouble with it. I got Hellfire, Vampire: Masquerades, Dungeon Siege, and Quake III to work.

I have to spread the word that WindowsBlinds 4.2 isn’t that great. It will slow your computer down some and the themes will get old. The idea of skinning the whole Windows GUI comes from Linux, more from the KDE desktop because KDE themes will change everything. I like skinning my Winamp and Trillian programs.

I haven’t played Lord of Destruction for 3 weeks now, and my account is deleted which means I lost all that time I put in. It doesn’t bother me. Diablo 2 is quickly becoming dated. I played the game so much … well over 3 years. With all those new better looking, longer MMORPGS coming out, I have a hard choice to make if I am going to put money into them. I’m still playing Elder Scrolls III Morrowind from last year. I looked at the new Horizons MMORPG, but it’s online only, and there is no way I will go online if it’s not free. I have a copy of Final Fantasy XI, but I can’t play it without someone opening my account for me. I would love to play it. The next big game coming out this year is Dungeon Siege II and it’s going to be really cool because it has Dungeon Siege concept, which was great, with much improved graphics, new locations, and the mod community will be huge like it is with Neverwinter Nights. I only put in 10 hours a week in these games.

I redesigned my Geocities website *again*, and called my new template version 2004 instead of version 8.0. I agree that multiple windows, and frames are great, but I see room for improvement too. Eventually I want everything to blend together like a jigsaw puzzle. Everything crossed over fine except I need to add an extra window to the shell template for the videogames reviews so they don’t open a new browser window. My website is at http://www.geocities...rs101/7.1_index.html. My website skills don’t go past Template 7.0. Most of you know how cool some of those game sites look … because they are above-average. Those sites are designed by nurds for nurds. I know I should spend a little more time on the logo since it is the central theme of my webpage. If you don’t like this new template, you can also go back to the 7.0 version which has the same exact information.

So what now, after Christmas has past, do I want to spend my hard earned cash on? I bought a 40-watt 5 piece surround sound speaker set off Tigerdirect.com. It still sounds cool and alive with only hearing 2 speakers, and the bass sub speaker. I want to get a new videogame called Mario Kart Double Dash. I was a fan of Mario Kart 64 – that’s why. A lot of people my age like Mario Kart. I am a little worried about owning a lesser game or is it? Better graphics doesn’t mean better game play. Does it? Crime: Streets of LA sounds cool too and so does Beyond Good and Evil, but I can’t afford all of those games at once. It’s funny that I thought of renting a game once in a while, but the local movie rental doesn’t have all the games I want. And the good ones are always rented.

I'm starting the second semester of school on Thursday. I get to learn how to build computers from the ground up. I am only a part time student at WITC New Richmond. I most probably will re-take a class teaching Linux. I know that Linux is used in mainframe administration, but isn't UNIX used more then Linux. All 'terminal' commands apply for both operating systems. I forgot the VI (v improved) script so I can't code and compile any UNIX commands. In system administration I will need to know how to code custom ping / file transfer tools for Linux/UNIX. I am hoping that I'll meet someone that's friendly to me there. I am not a programmer so I won't learn Perl or C++.

I got a NES today just for the heck of it

Date: 1/6/04 at 6:12AM

Our nation is on high alert says the news. We may have lost a lot more marines over seas compared to Operation Desert Storm. It’s interesting that in 1991, under the Bush Administration, we plowed our way into Baghdad without any causalities. Now the USA gets disappearances in helicopter crashes, and detonated car bombs. Though threw all that we got ourselves a dictator. Remember in the movie “Canadian Bacon” (John Candy stars) the United States was picking enemies and they first picked the Russians, although they also went through some terrorist groups. It’s funny that the movie missed the most important one, Al Bled Mohammad. President Bush is probably sending the elite Delta Force, Omega Force, and the US Rangers after him as we speak. Hollywood should definitely make a movie after the events of September 11. I would go see it.

Yesterday, I bought a NES first from a licensed videogame dealer in River Falls. I knew which games I wanted for it, but I didn’t want to spend too much money on it. After some debate, I concluded to get one which later happened to be two. I’ve been playing Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 through JNES on Windows since 1999. It’s fun to have to real thing. Why did I spend 60 dollars on an outdated machine when I could play it on PC for free? Well there are just some things that are fun to play as they were meant to be. That and the fact that I can say I own one. I also got a Super Nintendo with Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, and Super Mario World because I couldn’t make up my mind whether or not I wanted one or the other. This may be a bad habit to get into for some people I think but I’ve been collecting games on 7 different consoles for 5 years now. I wanted a little old school in my game collection. My way of thinking is people spend money on CDs, DVDs and entertainment like speakers, and gas while I just spend a large sum of my money on videogames, and gas. Most people only watch DVDs less then 5 times. You can only listen to a CD for so long – 6 months right? I have a MP3 player with 1800 songs on it, so why spend money on CDs. My advice for any one reading this is go out and spend 300 dollars on a MP3 player, and you’ll save money from than on after. It doesn’t have to be illegal if you have the original CDs.

Joined the John Birch Society!

I needed to be with an organization standing for freedom. anti-totalitarian, particularly anti-socialist and anti-communist. I decided to join after seeing that Australian in high school. Great organization. I got this business card for my wallet.