Thursday, July 30, 12:47 CDT
I'm downloading mIRC v5.41 as I type this. It's just
a bugfix release, but it looks to be worth getting.
Thursday, July 30, 12:47 CDT
I'm downloading mIRC v5.41 as I type this. It's just
a bugfix release, but it looks to be worth getting.
Wednesday, July 29, 22:53 CDT
I noticed that a mIRC script I started, a simple artillery
game called mIRC Tanks, was still sitting there unfinished. I spent a couple hours on it, and
it's pretty much done. I just need to add some multiplayer stuff, and I'll post it here.
Amazing how I put most of the stuff I planned to do this summer off until the last three weeks before school, ain't it?
Tuesday, July 28, 23:40 CDT
I woke up this morning with a vague sense of dread. At first I thought it was just lingering from
that dream wherein my house was invaded by aliens (a la Aliens), and I wound up battling
them with only a shotgun and a rapidly dwindling ammo supply. Then I remembered that school
starts in three weeks.
I can feel the boredom building up already... *shudder*
Monday, July 27, 23:50 CDT
Finally got that review written.
If you happen to have some free time next Sunday evening, and enjoy SF trivia, stop by irc.graffiti.com around 8 Eastern. Gurney's running a trivia contest in #TriviaBlitz, with an actual prize(!), and it's gone well so far. (Notice how I've completely abandoned the pretense that someone aside from people I chat with might ever read this?)
I coulda won that last one, if I hadn't missed a round and a half of questions... Came out tied and was defeated by a Lord of the Rings question. Which book, I am reminded, I really need to read again.
Saturday, July 25, 14:01 CDT
I just finished
A Fire Upon the
Deep, by Vernor Vinge. It's a great read, chock full of Big Ideas and interesting
characters. Well worth a read, especially if you're a fan of galaxy-spanning space opera.
I'll write a full review here in a bit.
Friday, July 24, 22:02 CDT
The Amazon.com
Associates Program, if you haven't heard of it,
is a brilliant piece of marketing. It lets people link to books on Amazon, and if someone happens
to follow one of their links and buy a book, they receive a small fraction of the sales.
Obviously the only way anyone (aside from Amazon.com) will make any money on this is if they have a reasonably high traffic site, and put some real effort into selling books. Which of course means there's not much reason for someone like me to join, since there's not the faintest chance anyone will ever buy a book off this page.
I joined anyway, mostly because I think the idea is pretty cool, and because it's nice to be able to link directly to a book.
Thursday, July 16, 23:56 CDT
Everything, from the folks that bring us
Slashdot.org, is one of the coolest ideas I've seen in ages.
It's something like a cross between a message board (think a web version of USENET) and a
database (think the IMDb), with a healthy dash of Darwinism
thrown in.
Like the new color scheme? I'm just playing around with it, so it'll probably change considerably before I settle on something. The nifty thing is, I only have to edit one file. I love Server Side Includes.
Tuesday, July 14, 17:29 CDT
Uploaded the first section of the Dæmonsong
Tech Bible yesterday, after a couple of false starts. There's not much there yet, but it'll
grow with time.
Got rid of that projects page, as it was out of date and wasn't really serving any purpose. I also split the software section of my links off into a seperate page.
Saturday, July 11, 12:33 CDT
I've been playing through Dink Smallwood, a shareware
RPG for Win95 that was on the PC Gamer CD this month. It's
reminiscent of some of those old top-down Nintendo RPG's, but with decent graphics and sound.
Perhaps better described as an adventure game. The registered version also allows for a
remarkable degree of customization, which means this could be the Quake of shareware RPG's.
At any rate, it's worth checking out, though it is a sizeable download (14 megs). The stated requirements are a p100 w/16 mb RAM, 70 mb hard drive space, and DirectX 5, but it seems to run ok on my p75. This definitely goes on my Shareware I Really Oughta Register list.
Friday, July 10, 14:29 CDT
Just remembered to move the June updates to the old updates
file.
Friday, July 10, 14:24 CDT
A few links to Stuff Worth Reading:
There were quite a few old events.scifi.com regulars in #World'sEndTavern on irc.graffiti.com last night, and we got to talking about the possibility of a second Con-events-ion. It's tentatively scheduled for June of '99, in Dallas. Considering that there were three people at the first one, this doesn't strike me as terribly realistic. OTOH, given a minor miracle, you never know what could happen...
Tuesday, July 7, 21:11 CDT
I'm in St. Charles, IL. I'll probably be getting home sometime tomorrow
night.
Gurney's written up an account of the Con-events-ion, and he should have some scanned pics up shortly, as well as a copy of the 3D tic-tac-toe game he wrote in QBasic (it's a long story).
There's a new episode of Dæmonsong up. On a related note, I'll probably be putting the first small portion of the new DS Tech Bible up on the site in a few days.
Saturday, July 4, 22:10 EDT
I'm sitting on the steps of the Freer Gallery (on the Mall in
Washington DC) with my family. The fireworks ended a while back, and
we're waiting for the flood of people heading home to abate. We'll
probably be here for hours.
The Con-events-ion, such as it was, is officially over. Gurney and Hawk just headed East in search of a way onto the Metro. All in all, we had a good time, especially considering that there were only 3 of us (ahem).