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2003.10.03 ~08 "School of Rock" ads blitz
While the TV ads for FFTA (helpline?) are freaky, the ads blitz for
"School of Rock" is now beyond annoying. And an ads blitz it is. I
can't surf thirty channels without being spammed by another ad for that
frickin' movie. From what I can glean from the ads barrage, the movie
seems to have a rather mediocre premise -- fake teacher hijacks
classroom for his own end. So why does this movie get a spam campaign
that would put MSOE viruses to shame, and yet good indie movies don't?
Um, never mind. Hollywood movie and money, 'nuff said. Nevertheless,
the ads for this movie is at spam level. Someone needs to make a
spamassassin for TV cards.
The ads' annoyances are enough to make me want to swear to never ever
watch this movie, even if the copyright expires (which would presumably
happen some time after Quantum Mechanics becomes a Jr. High topic) and
random people tear up the movie into unrecognizable spliced clips.
Which is just as well, since I'd be dead of old age before the copyright
expires.
2003.09.26 ~09 Final Fantasy Tactics Advance help-/hint-line ads
Since about mid-summer, I've been yearning for "Final Fantasy Tactics
Advance", the port of the Squaresoft RPG(?) "Final Fantasy Tactics" for
Sony Playstation to the Nintendo Gameboy Advance. When last I checked
with a game store some time in August, I could've sworn they said it
wasn't due until November, but here it is, released in September. It
rather took me by surprise, when reviews for FFTA started popping up.
I still have not gotten FFTA. Recently there have been a spat of TV ads
for some FFTA help line. These ads feature, in a nutshell, freaks.
Presumably representative of people manning(?) the help line, they look
like freaks, sound like freaks, talk like freaks. I get the feeling
these people wasted more pencils on pencil-and-paper RPG than on
schoolwork/homework. These TV ads are rather disconcerting, and
discourage my purchase(?) of FFTA. Not only the feeling of association
with these nut jobs, but also the unease of thinking how they're reaping
(exploiting?) the difficulty of FFTA. Each time I pass by a FFTA
cartridge, I can't help but think of some delusional schizophrenic
wearing an off-blonde wig with a telephone to his head, speaking in a
tone reserved for exorcisms while extolling the virtues of Chocobos.
It's a disconcerting image. And it really turns me off from FFTA.
I was really looking forward to getting my Time Mage to help my Monk
kick some goblin ass, too.
2003.06.19 ~10 Palm OS 5 and Linux
The Palm OS 5 Simulator is the primary tool supplied by PalmSource,
Inc., for debugging and testing Palm OS apps for Palm OS 5.
Most Palm OS 5 devices use a variant of the ARM CPU, a little-endian
CPU. Pre-OS5 devices primarily used a derivative of the Motorola 68xxx
family of CPUs, which are big-endian CPUs. To retain compatibility with
older apps, Palm OS 5 has a m68k sort-of-kind-of-emulator layer called
PACE (Palm Application Compatibility Environment). As I understand it,
PACE is more of a translation layer than emulation, but in any case, the
point of PACE is so that m68k-compiled PalmOS apps can run on the
ARM-based devices.
In any case, the Palm OS 5 Simulator isn't an emulator in the same sense
of the Palm OS Emulator (POSE). The Simulator, currently available only
only for MS-Windows, uses host-native code, instead of code targeting
for a particular Palm device. I'm not sure what the exact mechanics
are, but I'm assuming there's some sort of Palm OS 5 library targeted
for win32-x86 involved somewhere. I haven't bothered looking at, much
less downloading, the Simulator because of its current bigotry.
The end result is that I can't test nor debug ZBoxZ under Palm OS 5,
unless I get a Windows machine, which is not likely to happen. Another
option is trying to run WINE, but I munged up my WINE setup badly.
Lastly, plex86 or vmware, but those involve a Microsoft tax. An
expensive option is to cough up the cash for an actual Palm OS 5 device,
such as a Zire 71, one of the Tungstens, or a Sony CLIE with a camera.
Anyway, my primary bitch-and-whine is that I can't test for Palm OS 5
using a linux-based machine.
2003.05.18 ~06 Subtlety in TV ad for Microsoft Windows Server 2003
There's a TV ad for Windows Server 2003. The ad presents a party going
on at some office company, presumably because they saved money (as
hinted later). The ad focuses on a "manager type" asking a "techie
type" what's going on; the latter says something about moving over to
Windows Server 2003, reducing domains from hundreds to just four, this
and that, etc. In response to a blank look, the "technie type" reduces
the explanation to "we're saving over 2 million dollars".
One thing I didn't understand about the ad is how a company buried under
a Microsoft lock-in can possibly spend 2 million dollars less, much less
a single buck. I take it for granted that once a company dedicates to
using Microsoft products, they're stuck in an endless loop of buy-more-
Microsoft-stuff (in the form of upgrades and "services", such as tech
support). The claim of saving money in the ad made even less sense to
me, since Microsoft, as a for-profit corporation, wouldn't want their
customers to spend less on their "products" and "services". Then I
received a flash of insight when I paid more attention to the term
"ActiveDirectory" mentioned in the commercial. But, of course... LDAP
wasn't MSIE-style-integrated into prior versions of Windows, so
third-party providers of LDAP flourished.
Then the ad started making sense. Microsoft wasn't promoting cutting
off a stream of revenues to themselves... they're promoting customers to
shunt the cash flow entirely over to Microsoft that otherwise would have
gone to Microsoft's partners and competitors. That's how the office
company portrayed in the ad would save $2M by going down to Windows
Server 2003. They cut off the n million dollars going to Microsoft's
partners and competitors, and give a portion of that cash to Microsoft
(boosting MS's own revenue at the expense of others). The expenditure
in the company's books would show a $2M reduction, Microsoft's books
would show a cash boost of some amount, and the books of Microsoft's
partners and competitors would show reduced revenues.
Devilishly clever. The wording in the ad, I mean.
2003.05.09 ~11 Patents, a moment of zen
US Patents System -- a non-market government instrumentation designed to
promote free-market competition by forbidding free-market competition.
2003.04.03 ~01 USB solid-state storage devices
Is it just me, or do those little USB solid-state storage mechanisms (those
small enough to hang on a keychain) eerily hint at Star Trek-style isolinear
chips?
On a related random thought, these things are small enough that, if they were
to be cheap enough, could be used as, say, business cards, the way shaped
mini-CDs can be used to hold business-card data. Or as a means of distributing
resumes. Flash the info to a solid-state device of a couple MB that's about
the size of a stick of gum, distribute. Recycle. etc.
2003.03.19 ~07 BAFO BF-120 IrDA<->USB dongle
So, I went to Fry's Electronics (in Manhattan Beach, the one with the
Hawaii theme -- coincidentally, also the smallest of the Fry's stores)
to get a new fuse to replace the one I blew in my multimeter (a cheap-o
one that only measures up to 250mA; I tested the current through two
full batteries in series (400mA) for a split second). This led to that,
and for the next few hours I kind roamed around the store floor looking
at this and that.
As I started to wind down on whatever hell this phenomenom is called (I
think it's the same one that induces women to wander for hours through
clothing stores without buying a single article), I finally stumbled
across the only IrDA-over-USB doohickey in the entire store. A BAFO
BF-120 IrDA dongle. It's a IrDA dongle that connects via USB, instead
of connectors on the mainboard that directly wire to IrDA controllers.
I basically bought the thing on impulse, with intent to use the existing
TV/VCR/cable/etc. remote controls we have at home to control my PC.
Should that fail, plan B is to use the IrDA for Palm syncing.
The BF-120 comes in three variants, apparently each with a different
IrDA chipset, if the packaged manual is any hint. The dongle has a
label on the flatter surface, towards the USB plug, that indicates the
particular Windows driver to install (so I assume the three different
labels indicate three different chipsets). A synthesis of information
from /proc and the web revealed that (a) if the label reads "V6102F",
it's a SigmaTel Ir4200 (STIr4200) chip, (b) there is no existing driver
in linux for the STIr4200 chip, (c) the full technical specs for the
STIr4200 (down to the physical packaging!) are available with little
fuss. These docs should suffice for writing a driver.
My options at this point were (A) return the doohickey and hunt for
another IrDA dongle, (B) wait for someone else to write the missing
drivers, (C) write the damned thing myself.
I was about to go with A when our dear local Mr. chunky mentioned he has
the same device. Bought at the same store. But at different times. I
switched over to option C, partly as a challenge. I printed out the
docs, and have been mulling over the 22 pages of it for 3 hours, at the
time of this writing.
If only I knew how to program Linux drivers...
It's learnin' time.
Life: No Life found.
Project:
1. Project FI, Quake 3 mod (
http://www.icculus.org/fi/)
a. provide an extensible environment for a Q3 mod. The intended notion is that of "mutators" in Unreal Tournament.
b. FI:WFC, a more faithful reproduction of Q2WF for Q3 than WFA.
2. QuakeScheme
* Extensible language for Project FI.
* Builds on TinySCHEME (
http://tinyscheme.sourceforge.net/)
* Deal with idiosyncrasies of Q3VM not handled by most other Scheme impls.
3. Q3VM libc
* Implementation of Standard C Library for Q3VM bytecode.
* Implementation of a subset of Single Unix Specification v2 (SUS v2).
* Help import third-party library into Q3VM.
4. QS GUI/widget set
a. Need to research advanced OO and GUI of Scheme derivatives and Common Lisp.
b. Replication/extension of boxy widgets in Q3TA (Q3 PR 1.27+).
c. Pie menus -- just to annoy theoddone33.
5. Q3 compilation toolchain
[X] q3lcc sources (official version out with Q3A SDK 1.32)
[X] q3asm - get static to work, dammit.
[ ] q3as - assemble-only (.asm to .o).
[ ] q3ld - link-only (.o/.a to .qvm).
5. PalmOS stuff
a. PiNGer (gfx viewer)
* generalize interface to a "any-gfx" viewer (libpnm?)
b. ZBoxZ (file manager)
* beef up its appness: menus, dialogs, pen actions
6. Blender development (
http://www.blender.org)