Thursday, December 31, 1:56 CST
Oh, but this is sweet.

I got all sorts of cool stuff for Christmas, and a couple of things are worth linking to:

My Aunt Connie has been trying to introduce some Culture (tm) into my life for quite a while now, and this year she bought me a couple of CD's. Copland: The Music of America (Beef: It's What's For Dinner!), and Grieg: Peer Gynt Suites 1 & 2, Holberg Suite are both excellent. I've been playing Hall of the Mountain King repeatedly at high volume.

For those times when you're forced to write on actual paper, nothing beats a Pilot Rolling Ball. I could go on at great length about how much I love writing with these pens. And I got a box of 12, which means I'm set for the rest of the school year. Ok, yeah, so I'm a geek.

p1k3 / 1998 / 12 / 31

Wednesday, December 30, 11:41 CST
Well, I'm back.

I read Hackers, by Steven Levy recently. Though by no means complete or objective, it's a fascinating history of the early years of the computer revolution, and Levy explains what "hacker" really means (as opposed to the mass-media's "evil people who break into computers and do terrible things we don't really understand" BS) better than any other mainstream author I've read. I noticed after reading it that it's referenced in The Jargon File.

There's been a new issue of Phrack out for a while. Something I always enjoy skimming through, despite my near total lack of comprehension.

tags: history, reading

p1k3 / 1998 / 12 / 30

Thursday, December 24, 23:50 CST
Wow. Christmas Eve already.

Happy Holidays out to LWQuestie, Saalon, Gurney, Gulthek, kitten, FoolsRun, Data, Annakie (*thwack*), Vash, RifRaf (boom!), moon, Ruxandra, Capper-Deluxe, Axquat, MlitiaGrl, GaretJax, MeanStreak, Hawk, Wyrdrune, tvb, Cornjob, Zach (or is that with a k? I can never remember...), Maples, Bronweg, Xandar, Journeyman, DrMarcus, JohnLennon, Swooop, cat, wombat, Arial, Donna, Ben, and everyone I'm no doubt forgetting. :)

I saw Enemy of the State last night. Enjoyed it quite a bit. On top of being a pretty good action flick, it's an attack on the people who're doing their best to turn this country into a police state. Sure, it has its fair share of computer/technology BS, but it's more than made up for by all the little (and not so little) digs at the NSA & company. (And hey, we could all use a little more paranoia in our lives, right?)

I'm heading to Kansas with my family first thing tomorrow morning, so no updates for several days, but after that I'm going to do my best to start updating every day (I've never let a lack of content stop me before), and hopefully I'll have time over the vacation to actually get some stuff done (cleaning up this site, a big chunk of the Daemonsong tech bible, maybe even some homework...).

In the meantime, Merry Christmas all! (All 2 of you who read this ;) )

p1k3 / 1998 / 12 / 24

Saturday, December 19, 16:10 CST
Well, I saw The Prince of Egypt last night.

To make it short, go see this movie.

Why? Hands down, the best animation I've ever seen, an incredible cast, and a faithful and powerful retelling of a great story.

Sure, I could quibble - I wish Dreamworks had resisted the temptation to make a musical, and it should've been longer - but in the end, The Prince of Egypt is one of the best animated films I've seen, and I hope we see more like it.

p1k3 / 1998 / 12 / 19

Tuesday, December 15, 23:48 CST
Well, I finally installed Debian, after which getting PPP to work took all of 30 seconds. Nearly as painless as Win95's dial-up networking, and far more convenient once it's set up.

All in all, I think I prefer Debian to Red Hat, though from what I can see they're both quality distributions. Now if only I could get my video card to do 16 bpp at 800x600 under X...

The Daemonsong site has received an overhaul (no more JavaScript), and I'm told episode 202 will be out shortly.

I scanned another piece of non-art a while back.

Is this, you ask, worth even the relatively tiny amount of bandwidth that transferring it would waste? Probably not. Then again, that applies to the rest of this page. :)

p1k3 / 1998 / 12 / 15

Thursday, December 10, 18:50 CST
Ok, so I lied. It's been more than a couple of days. I should really learn not to make statements like that.

Anyway, a bunch of stuff to ramble about here...

I finally watched the last episode of Babylon 5, "Sleeping in Light". A powerful episode, and a fitting end to one of the greatest series I've ever seen. The naysayers can gripe all they want - despite the obstacles it faced, B5 managed to redefine SF tv, and be entertaining and involving in the process.

I've been messing around quite a bit with Linux since I first got it installed (not that I have much choice - I don't even have a Win/DOS partition at the moment). I'm still clueless, but I think I'm hooked.

The command line is powerful and flexible, and there're tons of cool text based apps to play around with (is it me, or is not being forced to use a GUI a wonderful thing?). The GUI, when I want one, is stylish, functional, and somehow just plain refreshing to use.

On the downside, I still don't have PPP working, but I understand that's a weakness of Red Hat. Maybe it's time to give Debian a try. :)

I noticed on Gurney's page that there's a tidbit over on Ain't It Cool News about the possibility of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein, being filmed. TMiaHM is among my favorite Heinlein novels, and it's probably the most filmable. In fact, I've often thought that with the right director, a good screenwriter, and a big enough budget, it could make a truly great movie.

But we all know that's not going to happen.

I'd rather wait for a time when RAH's work can be reproduced faithfully on screen by people who really care (even if it takes a few decades) than see another Starship Troopers. *sigh*

On the plus side, at least Verhoeven (may he spend eternity in one of his own films) didn't get his hands on this one.

I also see Gurney's working on a real-time strategy game. As crowded as the RTS genre is with lame C&C and Warcraft clones, it sounds like he's got some pretty good ideas. (Most of them collected from rec.games.design.)

tags: sfnal, technical, tv

p1k3 / 1998 / 12 / 10

Saturday, December 5, 22:39 CST
Well, I've been messing around with it all day, and I finally have a working Linux installation (RedHat 5.2).

I haven't the faintest idea what I'm doing. I've been reduced to the status of clueless newbie.

This is too cool for words.

More updates tomorrow or the next day. I'm off to watch MST3K.

tags: technical

p1k3 / 1998 / 12 / 5