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Established : July 1996 Please bookmark this location only : http://move.to/moose |
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Added
Shoegazer's Confessions of an 80s arcade nut: Scramble's landscape of fuchsia - fuchsia !!!
to the
Arcade Games Annecdotes section of my web page.
I laughed out loud at the fuchsia bit. Very poetic. Gold, pure gold. Thanks Shoegazer !! :) Shoegazer also runs these two excellent web sites:
Anyway, today we finally have some good news, thanks to Chesley Sullenberger III, the pilot of this plane: US plane crashes into NY river, all safe Even though I was 10,000 miles from where this happened and know no-one involved, this has really made my day !! Thanks Chesley !! :)
For those who may be interested, here are some of my favourites: Special thanks to Francis for the heads-up.
I am searching for these long lost arcade games so that they can be backed-up, preserved, and added to emulators like MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). Recently, there has been quite a lot of discussion about these games on the following web sites: The main aim of my recent posts is to let others know that I'm still searching. However, an interesting lead has cropped up for "Lunar Lander on Steroids" .... (read MAMEWorld's MAME Chat Forums for details). Hopefully the games will turn up one day. But time is running out ... Even if these games are being looked after somewhere and still work, they are still in danger of bit rot, ROM decay, and eventual failure because of age, corrosion, etc.
My Daewoo Lanos car died on the side of the road last Thursday night ... :( The oil problems that had been haunting
it for years (that mechanics told me could only be fixed by completely rebuilding the entire engine)
finally ended it's life when the engine finally siezed up. I purchased it brand new in mid-1999,
it had never been driven hard or thrashed, and it had only done 205,000 Km.
Now that it's broken down, I've spoken to mechanics and used car dealers and they all say that my experiences are quite common - Daewoo's, particularly the Lanos, are apparently renowned for oil problems / oil faults and that their engine "is not a good motor". Anyway, I have been thinking about electric cars for well over a decade now, but it never made any kind of sense to scrap a perfectly good petrol engine. However, now my petrol engine is dead, I'm seriously thinking of converting my car to electric instead of buying another petrol car (or getting a reconditioned petrol engine). At this stage, after a brief search of the internet, the Electricity4Gas guide (about $80 AUD) looks pretty good, and I'm thinking of buying it. However, I am worried that it will list parts, suppliers, etc that are in the USA and that it wont help me much in Australia. If anyone knows of good value conversion kits (available in Australia), or has done Electric Car conversions (in Australia) and has any advice or guides for me, then please please email me. :)
10 Ways you can tell an IT worker is *NOT* up to the job: Yes, I've actually seen someone do number 10. Sorry Mum, I let the cat out of the bag !! ;) Oh the humanity ... ;)
My hard work on the software I wrote to check Bingo cards ( see below) has paid off nicely, and it was a great fun little project. Just hope there's a season 2 ...
Here's the results for my first try:
 How evil are you?
Anyway, until this problem is sorted out, please do NOT use my moose AT move.to email address. I don't intend to recompile ALL of my software again just to update my email address on the "About ..." screen. (This is about 1-2 days of work to recompile, rebuild the ZIPs, update readme files, upload, release, etc). However, I have gone through ALL of my web pages and updated my email address - so any Email me links are correct. Please use this email address: Email me.
People can also play along at home, because anyone can download FREE Bingo cards here: http://au.bingo.yahoo.com/national-bingo-night/print/ Even for players at home, the prizes can be generous - if 5 numbers come up in the shaded area of a game, then you win $100 and also go into the draw to win $10,000 !! You can get the Bingo Numbers that came up (if you missed any, etc): http://nationalbingo.com.au/
Anyway, in Week 1, I downloaded a bunch of bingo cards, and shuffled these on screen and marked off numbers (I didn't print them because I didn't want to waste paper / trees).
Shuffling and marking off 10 cards (30 games) on screen was a bit of work, but manageable and fun.
For Week 2 and 3, I wrote a program to help me generate a WORD document with 20 bingo cards (60 games) per side of an A3 page, and I played bingo this way for these weeks. But, marking off 40+ cards is hard work !! (But still fun for a while !) For Week 4, I vastly extended my program to extract the data from the Bingo game card PDFs and automatically check the numbers against the cards - you simply key in the numbers that have been drawn for each game, select the shaded cells orientation for each game and click the "Check Cards" button and away my program goes. Since then, I've been downloading heaps ... errr, I mean downloading my limit of 10 ... bingo cards each week, and then running my program against them to see if we have won. No more marking off games by hand, simply kick back, have a few glasses of wine, eat some cheese and biscuits, etc and take it easy. So far, no luck winning any money .... But, I like a challenge, and once I get my teeth into something ... Here is a screen shot - click on the screen shot for an expanded version. The user interface still needs polishing, but it processes lots of cards *very* quickly. I've thought about polishing my program and releasing it as shareware, but I've already seen how this story ends ... See below. People will yet again just rip off my work - like they did with all of my shareware. 10,000+ hours of work down the toilet. Thanks bastards !!! The TV program is due to end in 2 more weeks. If a new Bingo season starts (e.g. next year), then I may think again about trying to do something commercial-ish with my program ... Definitely no trial versions, shareware versions, or honesty box system this time though - I know all about human nature now ! Keywords: Australia, National Bingo Night, bingo, TV, bingo card checking, bingo card checker, card checking, win, automatic, automated, software, program, windows,
Recently, I've been scouring the net to try and put together an episode guide for all of the different parts, and I have succedded for all except "Chaos at the Chateau". You can download version 1.0 of my episode guide here: A_Place_In__Series_Episode_Guide__v1.0.pdf
Student Results Merger is a program to help you handle / merge / process student and other results that are allocated some sort of unique ID. This is a BUG FIX release !!! The changes for this release include: While the program was developed for the purpose of processing student results, it could also be used to process cycling race, horse race, swimming race, or keeping track of workers or volunteers, and/or various other results / details. This program comes with full on-line help and a step-by-step user guide with screen shots.
If your answer is YES to any of these questions, then maybe you need one of these amazing and very reasonably priced USB Toy Rocket Launchers: Or this fiendish device: Err, then again, maybe you just need to get a job with people who are responsible and mature ... ;)
ALL of the following 52 programs were SHAREWARE (which costed $5-$20 AUD - or approximately $2.50-$10 US - to register), and they are now totally free:
HOWEVER: If you would like to support my efforts, and would like to send me a donation, then please feel free to do so by clicking on the "PayPal Donate" icon on the Help ? About screen. (But I'm not holding my breath .... The reason why all of my hard work is now freeware is that the vast majority of people will not pay even a few lousy dollars for something that they can get for free. It is the crackers' fault, because they provide the tools that enable people to do this. And, it seems that the only way to beat the crackers is to give everything away for free.) Please Note: Before making the decision to just give everything away for FREE, I had actively explored other options for more than several years. For example: So, maybe it was a stupid idea ? Maybe I'm just naive ? Anyway, who cares, it is too late now. My software is now FREE. Enjoy !
Student Results Merger is a program to help you handle / merge / process student and other results that are allocated some sort of unique ID. The changes for this release include: While the program was developed for the purpose of processing student results, it could also be used to process cycling race, horse race, swimming race, or keeping track of workers or volunteers, and/or various other results / details. This program comes with full on-line help and a step-by-step user guide with screen shots.
In addition, if it turns out that humans are NOT causing significant global warming, then: Just because I believe that the "Anti-Human Caused Climate Change" camp have some very good arguments, it does not mean that I am suddenly a coal burning environmental anarchist in the pay of the oil companies. Just wanted to make this clear. :)
Tony Jones, the presenter of the ABC program that included this documentary, interviewed Martin Durkin (the writer and director of the The Great Global Warming Swindle). Actually, "interviewed" is probably too nice of a word, Tony Jones actually turned-up the heat on Durkin, so much so that some people might prefer to call it a very well researched attack. The main thrust of Tony Jones' / ABC's attack on the documentary included: All of these are very fair comments and criticisms, and I certainly believe that probing questions, like these, should be asked and that people should maintain healthy levels of skepticism. So, I applaud Tony Jones probing interview. However, it is a shame that Tony Jones and the ABC do not subject other items, such as "Pro-Human Caused Climate Change" documentaries, news items, reports, Al Gore, or the IPCC reports, to the same levels of scruitiny. The scruitiny certainly does appear to be shamefully one-sided at the ABC, at least in this case. Before, during, and following the program, viewers were invited to post their thoughts on ABC forums. And a lively discussion ensued, which was great to see, as viewers and members of the panel continued the discussions. Unfortunately, ABC's servers (or server admins) weren't up to the job, and everything soon crawled to a halt as it became overloaded, making it nigh on impossible to join in any discussion, especially on dial-up internet. Oh well ... Today, I've been reading some of the ABC forum posts, and, from what I have seen so far, they seem to indicate healthy levels of discussion and debate on both sides. It is also a shame that other pressing issues, such as Peak Oil and the world's Exponential Population Increase (where the poorest people on the planet are continuing to "breed like flies" without being able to support themselves or their families) are not receiving the same levels of coverage, scruitiny, debate, or action.
Anyway, back in June-2004 I stumbled across a WEB site called Still Waiting for the Greenhouse. At the time, I remember that this web site initially made my blood boil. I could not fathom why someone would try and deny that climate change was happening. Surely, they are either an idiot or they must be being paid-off by some oil or coal company. After all, I had read so much material (literally 1,000's of articles, journal papers, reports, etc) and seen so much news footage, environmental programs, etc that said Humans are causing Global Warming, that I thought that this must be a fact. However, rather than get angry or upset, I decided to check out the claims being made and determine the truth for myself. Since then, I have read many 100's more reports and articles from those that claim Global Warming is NOT caused by Human's or Human Activity. As well as reading these, I have also watched the following videos (all at least 3 times each over the past few months): All videos that start with a plus sign "+" above are "Pro-Human Caused Climate Change", and all videos that start with a minus sign "-" are "Anti-Human Caused Climate Change". One of the program above - The Denial Machine (item 14 in the list) - is particularly interesting because one of the "scientific whores", who claimed that there were no known ill effects from smoking in the 1970's, is being wheeled out again to claim that Climate Change is NOT caused by humans. This severely dents the credibility of at least one person in the Anti-Human Caused Climate Change camp. As you can see, in spite of extensive searching, the "Pro-Human Caused Climate Change" videos vastly outnumber the "Anti-Human Caused Climate Change" videos (by more than 4:1 in my collection), as the topic does for all types of media whether it be documentaries, TV news reports, written reports, newspaper articles, etc. We are simply flooded with the message that humans are causing global warming and that we may all soon be doomed to live in a world with extreme drought, extreme storms, etc. After watching all of these videos several times and doing enormous amounts of background reading on these topics, here is the general gist of where things stand: Furthermore, the "Anti-Human Caused Climate Change" camp do have some extremely strong and rational arguments that the "Pro-Human Caused Climate Change" camp simply have not been able to refute. Indeed, the "Pro-Human Caused Climate Change" camp seem to be more interested in hysterical and irrational arguments than in truly analysing or exploring the science. As a result of my extensive research, I am now leaning towards the "Anti-Human Caused Climate Change" camp. That is, I am tending towards believing that humans and human activity have negligible impact on the climate. However, I am, as always, keeping a skeptical and open mind. In addition, I think that before we rush out and spend BILLIONS of dollars of tax payers money on curbing CO2 emissions, we had better make darn sure that the data has been correctly interpreted and that the appropriate course(s) of action are being pursued and for the right reasons !! After all, there is NO POINT AT ALL in spending money on a perceived solution that has nothing to do with a perceived problem. Anyway, the reason why I mention all of this now is that one of the documentaries above, The Great Global Warming Swindle (item 22 on the list), is going to be aired for the first time here in Australia tonight (at 8:00 PM on ABC TV - in just 3 hours time), and it is bound to stir up a hornest nest. I wonder how many people will do anything like the volume of research I have done before they jump to any conclusions ? I wonder how many people will do anything like the volume of research I have done before they attack someone for their beliefs or put forward hysterical and irrational or unfounded arguments ? Anyway, I'll probably hop on ABC's forums after the show tonight and see how people have reacted ... and maybe I'll stir things up a bit there as well ... ;)
Here's
a cute little WEB site to enable you to create your own Simpson's avitar.
And, err, yep, that's me on the left, complete with a T-Shirt that has a picture of Santa's Little Helper with antlers - which is about as close as you can get to a Moose in the Simpson's universe. :) Build your own Simpson's avitar here:
On a related "maintenance" note, I notice that my web page counters (at the bottom) are no longer working (again). Seems the web site I was linking to for free counter services is gone. I'll fix this in the near future as well.
However, for a change, I was bored at work on Friday and scratching around for distractions (as you do ;), so I was hunting around on my hard-drive trying to see where all my space had gone (as you do ;), and pretty soon I found and started watching some old videos of the scoring bugs in Computer Space (as you do - NOT ;), and then decided "What the hell, I'll do a quick search on "Computer Space Simulator" in Google and see what pops-up". Anyway, there weren't many hits !! ;) and pretty soon I found this thread on the Yak Yak forums where people have said some kind things about my Computer Space Simulator software, and some old timers even remember visiting my humble web site way back when Emulation News sites weren't "dime a dozen" - which was very nice to hear !! Thanks guys - you really made my day !! :)
Seeing that I mentioned this on the
Yak Yak forums
earlier today, I thought that I should probably mention it here as well ... ;)
I've got lots of projects "on the go" at the moment (err, hang on, some things never change ... ;), but one that has been on the backburner for ages (i.e. decades), and now getting more of my attention is a "UFO Master Blaster" simulator. I purchased one of these great little hand held games out of my hard earned pocket money way back in the late 1970's (in my early teens), and still have it, and it still works !! (That's actually a scan of my game's box that you see here). Since the the early 1980's, I have often thought of developing a simulator for this game. However, it is only after the late 1980's that the average home computer was powerful enough and had nice enough graphics and sound that they could do the game justice. So, decades later, the time is definitely well over due for me to do a simulator of this game. There are still lots of issues to iron out before I can make much progress, such as fixing my game's fire button (I can't solder to save myself), finding the best way to record decent quality sound samples, scanning and reproducing the graphics (there is no pause button - need to use the flat battery trick that I still remember from 25+ years ago), etc. And, then I have weeks of analysis, programming, etc work to do - to make my simulator as close as possible to the real game. There are mountains of work in this - just look at the development log at the end of the manual for my Computer Space Simulator to see for yourself, and I wont have Kevin's help this time. Gaaawwwddd !! ;) So, if anyone knows of any other project to emulate or simulate "UFO Master Blaster", then please Email me and let me know asap, because this information could save me weeks of wasted work, and I might instead be able to concentrate on helping someone else's project along. You can read more about "UFO Master Blaster" here: And, on related news, if all goes well, I'll also be releasing an update to my Computer Space Simulator within a few months or so which supports the scoring bugs, etc. You read it here second - that's right, Yak Yak found out first !! ;)
It is not everyday (or even every year) that I get excited about computer / video monitor developments,
but some incredible developments are under way and some amazing products have been released lately.
In particular, Sharp Triple Directional Viewing LCD and the
Radius 320 Seamless LCD are interesting.
While, the Radius 320 is a big, sexy monitor that would be great for desktop use - especially for those of us with dozens of applications running and many windows open all day. I know what I want for Christmas Santa !! Mom ?? Anyone ?? LOL. ;)
Happy 10th birthday Moose's Software Valley !!!It is almost unheard of on the internet for a web site to last for 5 years, let alone 10 years. However, that is just what Moose's Software Valley has done, which is pretty amazing in our world of constant change. When I started this site, there was no such thing as $5 or $10 shareware - this was completely unheard of. The minimum price for Shareware in 1996 was something like $25 US - not $5 AUD !!! (which is only about $3 US) So, I tested the water with a bunch of little programs - just to see what the potential market was like - with the philosophy "Stack in high, sell it CHEAP !!!". I wanted to turn the shareware market on its head, by selling great software at rediculously low prices - prices so low that people would not bother to steal the software or download hacks or cracks for it, but would instead be happy to hand over the paltry registration fee.
Looking back, many of my early programs (in particular) should never have been released as shareware, but I figured "What the hell, I'll put them out there and see if they sell". And to my suprise, they started selling like hotcakes within 24-48 hours of Moose's Software Valley going live, and, for a while, I thought I was onto a *real* winner. So, I got stuck into developing more and more shareware and today I have a catalog of 85 programs (comprised of 53 Shareware + 29 Freeware + 3 Apple ][ freeware programs). But, alas, soon the whole fabric of the internet changed. Pretty soon I realised that even at rediculously low "give away" prices, most people will still go right out of their way to avoid paying for something, and that they will quite happily put their PCs and their own personal data at risk and use illegal cracks and hacks (that often contain viruses, trojans, spyware, etc) to break software so they can use full versions of it for free.
In the past 10 years, Moose's Software Valley has had well over 500,000 visitors (since going live in late July - very early August, 1996).
The total number of visitors to all of my pages is well over 1 Million. Which is not too bad in 10 years I guess ... Anyway, I wouldn't say Moose's Software Valley has been a success, and it certainly hasn't been a financial success, but it has always been interesting, it has mostly been fun, and I have met some terrific people and, sadly, also a few extreme arsewipes !! ;) (or asswipes as Americans would say). Will Moose's Software Valley last another 10 years ?? Probably not, but only time will tell ...
Anyway, this site, and my web pages, no longer use Java and there are no more HTML Frames. Hopefully, visitors will notice a nice speed-up !! :)
In addition, I have also started using an Upper Engine Lubricant (UEL) - it costed $68 for 5 litres, and you add a small amount to your petrol tank before filling up. For my small car, which has a 50 litre petrol tank, I add 25 ml of UEL - which costs about 25 * $68 / (5 * 1000) = $0.34 which is less than $0.01 per litre of fuel ! This UEL increased my car's miles / gallon by an additional 12.8%:
So, instead of getting 700 Km on a tank of fuel, I now get 790 - which saves me around $6.97 in fuel per tank of fuel, while costing just $0.34 for the Upper Engine Lubricant (UEL) per tank of fuel (for my car). That is a NET saving of $6.63 per tank of fuel for my car. So, it is well worth doing !! UELs also reduce engine wear and tear, improving the life of your engine, reducing maintenance, etc. If UELs provide similar efficiency improvements in all petrol and diesel cars, trucks, etc (and the manufacturer assures me that it does) and everyone started using them, then we could all spend 10-12% less on fuel overnight and entire countries could reduce their fuel consumption by 10-12%, which could reduce the global demand for oil, help conserve precious oil and fuel reserves, and also help the environment (less fuel used for the same journey = less pollution / greenhouse gas !). Talk about a Win, Win, Win situation !! In fact, I believe that such fuel additives should be made MANDATORY, or better yet, premixed into the fuel at the petrol bowser (for an additional charge of a cent a litre).
Last night there was a very well done special on Peak Oil on Australian ABC's Four Corners program. As well as providing the Program Transcript, ABC have been kind enough to also provide extended video coverage (viewable from your browser), a reply forum, and links to loads of relevant documentation and reports. I believe that this is essential reading / viewing for every human on the planet. I kid you not !! For more information, visit ABC's Four Corners web site.
As a result of this weight loss: It has been hard work so far - it feels like I've walked and jogged half way round the planet and I've eaten my way through acres of celery, cabbage, and broccoli - but it will all be worth it in the end. ;) At my current rates, I should get to my target weight within the next month. As always, I'm pushing hard to make this happen ... ;) Here's a summary of my progress after exercising and dieting for the past 163 days:
There's now only 1 part of my life which isn't a complete success, and this has always been the most difficult part of life. If all goes well, then I will be turning my attention to that next. Which part you ask ? Well, I'll give you a hint: how many dates do you think an overweight computer programmer gets ? ;)
Student Results Merger is a program to help you handle / merge / process student and other results that are allocated some sort of unique ID. The changes for this release include:
While the program was developed for the purpose of processing student results, it could also be used to process cycling race, horse race, swimming race, or keeping track of workers or volunteers, and/or various other results / details. This program comes with full on-line help and a step-by-step user guide with screen shots.
Student Results Merger is a program to help you handle / merge / process student and other results that are allocated some sort of unique ID. The changes for this release include:
While the program was developed for the purpose of processing student results, it could also be used to process cycling race, horse race, swimming race, or keeping track of workers or volunteers, and/or various other results / details. This program comes with full on-line help and a step-by-step user guide with screen shots.
For as long as I can remember, one of my life's goals has been to sail the world in my own yacht. Recently, I purchased a small yacht, and have been enjoying sailing around the pristine and spectacularly beautiful islands and bays around the Capricorn Coast, Queensland, Australia where I live. Anyway, here are some very recent pictures of sailing with Boogle (click on them for enlargements):
More photos to come soon ... ;)
I've had a desk job for the last ~20 years (mostly as a computer programmer, a renowned job for "fatties"). Even though I've never been a junk food-aholic, I do love my food, and I'm ashamed to say that the weight has slowly been packing on over the years, and I haven't exercised properly. Last year, for a part-time job, I started ghost-writing lots of health related articles and ebooks, and I soon realised just how serious excess weight was to your health and what complications it could cause. This work got me to take a long hard look at myself. I used to describe my physical appearance as a "full framed Aussie male", that is, someone who is tall, broad shouldered, a little stocky, and strong. But, earlier this year I suddenly realised that I had developed quite a gut and was very unfit. I was 120 KG and had suddenly crossed the boundary from looking "strong but stocky" to looking "pretty chubby / fat", I decided to do something serious about it. So, back in February - instead of going away on holidays to Europe or wherever for a month as I usually do - I turned my house into a mini health farm and spent the entire month changing my life style and eating habits for good: A couple of weeks later, the Aussie version of "The Biggest Loser" was just starting on TV, so I got into the habbit of working out while watching this and other TV programs (Simpsons, News, etc). Another huge help was finding out about Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and calories burned during different types of exercises and monitoring everything I eat (thanks to Calorie King's book) - it all goes into a spreadsheet with my current weight, etc so I can see how I'm going, and a summary is displayed on a graph. For me this effort has paid off and worked well. In the end, it all came down to watching what I eat, counting calroies, regular exercise, and making sure that my calorie input is a LOT LESS than what I am using / need. i.e. Calorie Intake < Calories Expended. Here's my progress after 96 days:
At my current rates, I should get to my target weight sometime in July, 2006. I'm pushing hard to make this happen ...
Anyway, while catching up on Red Vs Blue, I decided to take a look over at Machinima.com as it had been a while since my last visit and I also checked out a few recent newsgroup postings there and found this interesting post:
In addition, boxcutter was also talking about the new Fresh Baked Video Games TV show on Spike TV. More info and 3 sample videos here: Judging from the sample videos, the show looks pretty stupid - but very, very funny - and right up my alley. Shame I don't have cable or satellite .... If you have cable or satellite, make sure you check it out ... and send me DVD's if you can record them !! LOL !! Just kidding !! ;) UPDATE - 23-Jan-2006: Check out Noah's WEB Site for further information and Medievil Weapon videos and other clips from Fresh Baked Video Games.
Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly. It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century. We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren. We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us. Two days from now, I will present my energy proposals to the Congress. Its members will be my partners and they have already given me a great deal of valuable advice. Many of these proposals will be unpopular. Some will cause you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices. The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation. Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war" -- except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy. I know that some of you may doubt that we face real energy shortages. The 1973 gasoline lines are gone, and our homes are warm again. But our energy problem is worse tonight than it was in 1973 or a few weeks ago in the dead of winter. It is worse because more waste has occurred, and more time has passed by without our planning for the future. And it will get worse every day until we act. The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about six percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last five years. Our nation's independence of economic and political action is becoming increasingly constrained. Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce. The world now uses about 60 million barrels of oil a day and demand increases each year about 5 percent. This means that just to stay even we need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every nine months, or a new Saudi Arabia every three years. Obviously, this cannot continue. We must look back in history to understand our energy problem. Twice in the last several hundred years there has been a transition in the way people use energy. The first was about 200 years ago, away from wood -- which had provided about 90 percent of all fuel -- to coal, which was more efficient. This change became the basis of the Industrial Revolution. The second change took place in this century, with the growing use of oil and natural gas. They were more convenient and cheaper than coal, and the supply seemed to be almost without limit. They made possible the age of automobile and airplane travel. Nearly everyone who is alive today grew up during this age and we have never known anything different. Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power. The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950s, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940s. During the 1960s, we used twice as much as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind's previous history. World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970s and 1980s by 5 percent a year as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade. I know that many of you have suspected that some supplies of oil and gas are being withheld. You may be right, but suspicions about oil companies cannot change the fact that we are running out of petroleum. All of us have heard about the large oil fields on Alaska's North Slope. In a few years when the North Slope is producing fully, its total output will be just about equal to two years' increase in our nation's energy demand. Each new inventory of world oil reserves has been more disturbing than the last. World oil production can probably keep going up for another six or eight years. But some time in the 1980s it can't go up much more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that. But we do have a choice about how we will spend the next few years. Each American uses the energy equivalent of 60 barrels of oil per person each year. Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan and Sweden. One choice is to continue doing what we have been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years. Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would continue to carry only one person -- the driver -- while our public transportation system continues to decline. We can delay insulating our houses, and they will continue to lose about 50 percent of their heat in waste. We can continue using scarce oil and natural to generate electricity, and continue wasting two-thirds of their fuel value in the process. If we do not act, then by 1985 we will be using 33 percent more energy than we do today. We can't substantially increase our domestic production, so we would need to import twice as much oil as we do now. Supplies will be uncertain. The cost will keep going up. Six years ago, we paid $3.7 billion for imported oil. Last year we spent $37 billion -- nearly ten times as much -- and this year we may spend over $45 billion. Unless we act, we will spend more than $550 billion for imported oil by 1985 -- more than $2,500 a year for every man, woman, and child in America. Along with that money we will continue losing American jobs and becoming increasingly vulnerable to supply interruptions. Now we have a choice. But if we wait, we will live in fear of embargoes. We could endanger our freedom as a sovereign nation to act in foreign affairs. Within ten years we would not be able to import enough oil -- from any country, at any acceptable price. If we wait, and do not act, then our factories will not be able to keep our people on the job with reduced supplies of fuel. Too few of our utilities will have switched to coal, our most abundant energy source. We will not be ready to keep our transportation system running with smaller, more efficient cars and a better network of buses, trains and public transportation. We will feel mounting pressure to plunder the environment. We will have a crash program to build more nuclear plants, strip-mine and burn more coal, and drill more offshore wells than we will need if we begin to conserve now. Inflation will soar, production will go down, people will lose their jobs. Intense competition will build up among nations and among the different regions within our own country. If we fail to act soon, we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions. But we still have another choice. We can begin to prepare right now. We can decide to act while there is time. That is the concept of the energy policy we will present on Wednesday. Our national energy plan is based on ten fundamental principles. The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices. The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems -- wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once. The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve. The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve, just as the consumers will. The energy producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer. The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it. The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement costs of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford. The eighth principle is that government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason I am working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy, to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy. The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can't continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy. The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century. These ten principles have guided the development of the policy I would describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday. Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals, to measure our progress toward a stable energy system. These are the goals we set for 1985: --Reduce the annual growth rate in our energy demand to less than two percent. --Reduce gasoline consumption by ten percent below its current level. --Cut in half the portion of United States oil which is imported, from a potential level of 16 million barrels to six million barrels a day. --Establish a strategic petroleum reserve of one billion barrels, more than six months' supply. --Increase our coal production by about two thirds to more than 1 billion tons a year. --Insulate 90 percent of American homes and all new buildings. --Use solar energy in more than two and one-half million houses. We will monitor our progress toward these goals year by year. Our plan will call for stricter conservation measures if we fall behind. I cant tell you that these measures will be easy, nor will they be popular. But I think most of you realize that a policy which does not ask for changes or sacrifices would not be an effective policy. This plan is essential to protect our jobs, our environment, our standard of living, and our future. Whether this plan truly makes a difference will be decided not here in Washington, but in every town and every factory, in every home an don every highway and every farm. I believe this can be a positive challenge. There is something especially American in the kinds of changes we have to make. We have been proud, through our history of being efficient people. We have been proud of our leadership in the world. Now we have a chance again to give the world a positive example. And we have been proud of our vision of the future. We have always wanted to give our children and grandchildren a world richer in possibilities than we've had. They are the ones we must provide for now. They are the ones who will suffer most if we don't act. I've given you some of the principles of the plan. I am sure each of you will find something you don't like about the specifics of our proposal. It will demand that we make sacrifices and changes in our lives. To some degree, the sacrifices will be painful -- but so is any meaningful sacrifice. It will lead to some higher costs, and to some greater inconveniences for everyone. But the sacrifices will be gradual, realistic and necessary. Above all, they will be fair. No one will gain an unfair advantage through this plan. No one will be asked to bear an unfair burden. We will monitor the accuracy of data from the oil and natural gas companies, so that we will know their true production, supplies, reserves, and profits. The citizens who insist on driving large, unnecessarily powerful cars must expect to pay more for that luxury. We can be sure that all the special interest groups in the country will attack the part of this plan that affects them directly. They will say that sacrifice is fine, as long as other people do it, but that their sacrifice is unreasonable, or unfair, or harmful to the country. If they succeed, then the burden on the ordinary citizen, who is not organized into an interest group, would be crushing. There should be only one test for this program: whether it will help our country. Other generation of Americans have faced and mastered great challenges. I have faith that meeting this challenge will make our own lives even richer. If you will join me so that we can work together with patriotism and courage, we will again prove that our great nation can lead the world into an age of peace, independence and freedom. Jimmy Carter, "The President's Proposed Energy Policy." 18 April 1977. Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. XXXXIII, No. 14, May 1, 1977, pp. 418-420.
A transcript is available here : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html
There are a lot of people in Australia bleating about the "harsh penalties" metered out to drug users, drug addicts, drug dealers and drug mules, and some people are even demanding that the Australian Government should do more to help these people. But hang on a sec, I don't want my tax dollars being used to defend or support drug users, drug addicts, drug dealers or drug mules. EVER ! In fact, I DEMAND that my tax dollars are NOT used for these purposes. I work hard for my money, I pay a lot of tax, and I don't want this squandered on supporting or helping parasites and criminals. These are ILLEGAL drugs. They are ILLEGAL for good reason, they are EXTREMELY dangerous. There are huge signs all over Singapore and Indonesian airports warning of the penalties of drugs possession or drug trafficking. These are NOT "party drugs". They are NOT "recreational drugs". I find these terms extremely offensive, it makes them seem like the drugs are OK, or even beneficial. But, these are downright dangerous illegal drugs. Anyone who takes these drugs is breaking the law, but all evidence suggests that drug addicts and drug users believe that they are somehow better than everyone else and that they are somehow above the law and that they have some sort of right to take illegal drugs. HOW DARE YOU !! At best, these people will be a future burden on the health care system, the legal system, and so on. In fact, my tax dollars will probably end up supporting them for their entire lives on the pension or DOLE, because they wont be employable and it is also likely that they will never be useful or productive members of society. In fact, by buying illegal drugs to support their nasty habbits, they are supporting criminals and criminal drug dealers in Australia, making Australia a worse place to live and undermining the fabric of our society, causing an increase in violence, crime, and multitude of other serious issues. Imagine how much better the world would be without drug users, drug addicts, drug dealers and drug mules ? I support Indonesia and Singapore's so-called "tough" laws. I would like to personally and publicly thank these countries for standing tough against the parasites and criminals. It is a shame that the Australian Government and Australian Legal System don't start doing the same. Death to all drug users, drug addicts, drug dealers and drug mules !!! Or, at the very least, lets lock all of them away until they learn to obey the law and make full ammends for their parasitic, criminal behaviour. OK, OK, "death" *might* be a little too harsh, but let's at the very least bring back good old "hard labour" to make these parasites and criminals understand that what they are doing is wrong and totally unacceptable.
From: Mike O'Malley Sent: Tuesday, 7 December 2004 12:19 PM To: 'catalyst@your.abc.net.au' Subject: Peak Oil on Catalyst A terrific topic for Catalyst would be Peak Oil. We depend on oil for many things : If oil production is peaking or is about to peak - as many claim around the globe right now - and there is not enough supply to satiate the increasing demand - then there could be far reaching consequences. Increasing prices of oil (an just about everything else) will be just the start. If we cannot afford to grow or transport our food, what will happen ? If we cannot afford to mine coal / uranium to generate electricity, what will happen ? Some people predict a very dire future for humans. I'm taking a more hardline approach - I hope that any shortage in oil will finally force us into : and that we may be able to engineer our way out of this mess at the 11th hour. WEB Links : If you would like a hand to research this topic, then I would sure like to help. I've been trying to discover the real truth for several months now - and I would like to have an opportunity to interview Shell, BP, OPEC, etc people to see what they say.
Michael
In the subsequent replies I got from the Catalyst team, it was obvious that they didn't know about Peak Oil and had not considered it as a potential Catalyst topic before. So, it was probably my email that "inspired" their coverage. It is a shame that they didn't say thanks or mention my name in the credits ... ;) A transcript is available here : ABC Catalyst - 24-Nov-2005 - Peak Oil Transcript. You can read some of my previous coverage of Peak Oil here.
Just updating the "progress" of my previous comments about a
Stunt Cycle Simulator on 29-Apr-2005 ....
Forgot to mention it here, but I received a DVD of digital camera pictures, digital camera video, and sound recordings of a real Stunt Cycle machine back in July, 2005. I'd like to thank Mike again (and publicly this time ! ;), for his efforts and for the expenses he incurred to record, prepare, and post this DVD to me. Thanks Mike !! :) Things have been so busy lately, that I haven't had much of a chance to look at it - but it fell out of my "Inbox" a couple of days ago (when I picked up a wodge of paper work), so it is still there and I will get to it "one of these days" ... Promise !! ;) As I have said all along, I cannot guarantee that this will result in a simulator or an emulator, but it is certainly good to have this material safely archived for the time when someone wants to work on a Stunt Cycle simulator or emulator.
In related news (to Stunt Cycle above), the public response to my
Computer Space Simulator v1.0
which was released on
11 May, 2005,
has been "underwhelming" and "disappointing". Of the very few people who commented on it,
about all anyone seemed to have to say about my months of work was
"where are the scoring bugs and hyperspace" (that the original machine had) ....
So, this took the wind out of my sails, and I haven't had the time, energy or inclination to do any work on it since. However, recently I have been in touch with Kevin at Computer Space Fan and I should begin work on v1.1 sometime in the near-ish future. The new version will support ALL of the quirks of the original machine : scoring bugs and hyperspace - so it will be 99.9% accurate. I'm still preparing myself for the usual "underwhelming" and "disappointing" feedback however ... Why can't people be happy and grateful for what they receive for FREE ?? Bah !
I just had an enjoyable trip down memory lane, reading the
Microsoft Windows 1983 pre-Version 1.0 demo
article from the December 1983 issue of BYTE Magazine.
The article is a review of Windows just prior to the release of v1.0 way back in 1983, and it received a lot of praise from BYTE magazine's reviewers and they clearly saw the future potential of the product. As an old Apple ][ user, I particularly liked the picture of the Apple II with a PC emulator card running Microsoft Windows !! What a mighty machine the ][ was !!
Yiikes, found some more pictures of the poor ugly little dog reported below.
I have also read some articles about him - he might be ugly, but his owners love him to bits - and rightly so as well. God bless you little hell dog. God bless you. ;)
Yiikes, the poor ugly dog I reported yesterday is all over the internet.
After a bit of searching, I managed to find another picture of the ugliest dog.
N.B. Click on the image to see a bigger picture of this pooch. I wonder if he looks like his owners .. Anyway, you can read more about this here :
In Electronics World, Sep 2004, as I have just found out, there was an amazing article
on a new Tongue Display Unit (TDU).
This new tongue mounted electronic device is enabling blind people to see simple images. These people may never have seen anything in their life, and all of a sudden they can see simple images. Incredible !! And what's even more amazing is that the images and information are processed by Visual Cortex area of the blind person's brain. So, the Visual Cortex in blind people is still alive and fully active, even though it had never been used for visual processing before, AND the tongue can be used as a gatweay to that area of the brain. Absolutely and utterly amazing !!! And, imagine "watching" pornos with this thing ??? ;) ;) Special thanks to Francis O for emailing me about this !! :) Anyway, you can read more about this here :
Is this a face that even a mother couldn't love ???
N.B. Click on the image to see a bigger picture of this pooch.
As an avid dog lover, I never thought I would say that any dog was utterly and truly ugly, but after receiving an email early today, I can now admit that there is at least one hideously ugly dog on the planet !! ;) ;) According to the email:
The tiny dog has no hair, if you don't count the yellowish-white tuft erupting from his head. His wrinkled brown skin is covered with splotches, a line of warts marches down his snout, his blind eyes are an alien, milky white and a fleshy flap of skin hangs from his withered neck. And then there's the Austin Powers teeth that jut at odd angles from his mouth. He's so ugly even the judges recoiled when he was placed on the judging table, said his proud owner, Susie Lockheed, of Santa Barbara."People are always horrified when I kiss him. He may turn into a prince yet. He's definitely a toad," she said. "I always thought he'd be great on greeting cards or on a commercial for Rogaine." Sam, who's pushing 15, has something of a cult following after winning the contest - and fans' hearts - for three years running. Last year, huge crowds gathered around Sam and Lockheed at a local parade and Lockheed said she received letters and calls about her pup for weeks. "So many people have told me they've got his picture on their refrigerator. He certainly has a little cult following," she said. "I did years of professional musical theater and never achieved the fame Sam has." Sam will appear in this weekend's Fourth of July parade in Santa Barbara, but the recent events may be the cap on a long, ugly career. Lockheed says Sam's now suffering from congestive heart failure, lung and kidney problems and has definitely slowed down in his twilight years. Still, he enjoys regular gourmet meals of sirloin steak, cheese balls, roasted chicken and flan (so he'll swallow his multiple pills). He also passes occasional weekends at the Gaviota ranch of Lockheed's boyfriend, where the World's Ugliest Dog rides in the back of an ATV with his few remaining hairs wafting in the wind. Yiiikes, that's an ugly dog !!! ;) Special thanks to Elaine A for emailing me about this !! :)
For two decades Mac users have beat their chests and derided the PC, blindly spouting half-baked, biased, mis-information from Apple's marketting machine at every opportunity. However, despite this, the Mac has slowly and surely become a carbon-copy of the PC. In recent years, Macs have taken on / copied all of the significant internal hardware / features of PCs - Macs now have the same IDE harddrives as the PC, the same AGP / PCI / PCI-X buses and graphics cards as the PC, the same memory chips as the PC, and so on. And, Macs have adopted a Unix based OS - which is basically a custom version of Unix / Linux - something that has been running happily on PCs for decades. Mac users now have a command line - which they claimed was another of "their" innovations - but PC's have had a command line since day 1. About the only remaining thing differentiating recent Macs from PCs are the Mac's IBM PowerPC CPU. Oh yes, that, and the fact that Apple only has 2.3% market-share, versus the PC's 97.7%. LOL !! ;) However, I found out a few minutes ago that the Mac looks set to take the final step and become a fully fledged PC by switching to an Intel CPU :
So, perhaps soon, all you will be able to buy is a PC with an Intel CPU running some flavour of either Windows or Unix (e.g. Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS/X / Tiger, or whatever). Frankly, I don't particularly care which OS I use - Windows or some Unix variant - as long as it is extremely stable, user friendly, allows me to turn off all of the graphical bells and whistles crap, and does what I want how I want. The PC has finally killed the Mac as a "different" hardware platform. However, this is hardly suprising. Like all previous "battles", the outcome was inevitable from the start and the PC won in the long run - just like it did with the :
All were swept aside by the unstoppable and unbeatable PC. Long live the PC - the undisputed king of all prior computers and consoles. The sad thing is that I'm not sure how I feel about all this. I'm certainly not "joyous". For a start, it was kinda nice having the PC Vs Mac rivalry - and I've got quite accustomed to it over the past 20 years. It was also nice knowing that those unwashed, angry, religious war, fanatical, hysterical, over-emotional Mac users were "over there" and away from me and my beloved PCs. And I'm already feelin' kinda dirty - all of those unwashed Mac users will soon be "over here" and using and supporting the PC and beating their little hairless chests in religious battles against who knows what ... Actually, that's a good point. What will they find to fight against now ?? What will they hysterically attack now ?? What FUD from Apple's marketting machine will these ex-Macers blindly swallow and fight against now ?? Hmmm, maybe it's time I found another machine. Anyone have a spare NeXT ? ;) ;) As J. Eric Smith of Geek.Com said earlier today :
Why not indeed Eric - I couldn't have said it better myself. ;) Anyway, you can read more about this here :
Central Queensland University
are holding the 3rd annual
CQ Junior Robotics Competition
on 7-Aug-2005.
Students from high schools in the surrounding region - usually within a radius of about 400 Km -
will enter robots that compete in the three main events : Robot Soccer, Dance, and
Rescue (aka "Follow the Trail"). It's a great event, and the young people who enter
really get a lot out of it and have a lot of fun.
As usual, I will be helping out at the competition, refereeing the Robot Soccer, etc.
Don't just take my word for it, my Robot Simulator is also recommended by CQ Junior Robotics - see the Robot Simulator link on the competition's main page.
Rob Hubbard's name should be recognized by almost everyone who played computer games on the
Commodore 64, Atari ST, Amstrad, Amiga or (to a lesser extent) the PC.
Rob composed and created the music for 100's of games during the period from 1985 to 1997. One of my favourite pieces of computer music of all time is the music from ZOIDs - an old Commodore 64 game. (Click here to download / play ZOIDs.MID). However, after almost a decade of silence, Rob is returning to composing and creating computer game music and (of all things) mobile phone ring-tones. You can read more about this here : You can read more about Rob Hubbard's here :
At the
Classic Gaming Expo UK
on 13-Aug-2005 you will be able to play :
and, I have just read that you will also be able to play all 68 of the Retro Remakes One Switch Competition entries, which includes the one switch version of my Computer Space Simulator. So, our One-Switch games will be featured at a prestigious, international gaming event. Pretty amazing news !! ;) Update: Fixed the date fo CGE-UK - it is on the 13-Aug-2005.
I've only just received an email about this, but apparently some sort of International Pun Contest late last year had these winning entries : I have searched quite a bit with Google , but have not been able to find the original source of the contest or verify the contest or check out any other entries yet. If anyone can shed more light on any of this, please Email me.
I received a copy of this software when it was released and I enjoyed exploring and racing solar cars. The software was truly innovative for its time, and you could race solar cars, design and build your own solar cars (from a limited set of options), and test them out on test tracks, etc. No other software since has allowed you to do anything like this with solar cars. However, I always wondered why they released it for the Apple ][ (a fiesty little machine that was way past it's use by date by then, but still refused to die despite Apple Inc's best efforts to kill it off). At that time, they could have made an infinitely better / sexier / more user-friendly version for the PC or Mac. Somewhere in the intervening years, I lost or loaned my Sunraycer disks to somebody.
In Feb, 2005, I stopped off in Hawaii on a round the world trip to visit Mike Ching (from Kula Software - http://www.angelfire.com/hi/kulasoft/ ) specially to pick up the only copy of the working disks that I had been able to find after years of posting messages on the comp.emulators.apple2 and comp.sys.apple2 newsgroups. I also spent a few hours trying to help Mike get his Apple <-> PC transfers setup and working, but something fishy was going on, and ADT wasn't playing ball at all with his setup. When I got back home to Australia following this trip, I went to backup and trasnfer the disks and found that my Apple ][c no longer worked. After several months of trying to fix it - reseating all of the socketable chips, replacing the Monitor BIOS with the self-test version (thanks to David Wilson of Wollongong, Australia), etc, etc - I still did not have a working Apple ][, so I could not investigate or transfer the working SunRaycer disks.
Mike tried various methods to transfer the SunRaycer disks but the resulting disk images would NOT work under emulation on the PC. As an experiment, he transferred working Sunraycer disks over to the PC as DSK (not NIB via SST !!) and then back again to the Apple ][ as DSK, and they booted fine on the Apple ][, but still would NOT work under any of the Apple ][ emulators out there (AppleWin, Apple PC, Apple OASIS, MESS, etc, etc) on the PC. So, the disks must be using some sneaky or undocumented feature at boot. There were 2 ways to fix this - fix the disk images or ammend the emulators to support whatever is happening. Seeing it is only 2 disks in this boat so far, I reckoned that fixing the disks may be the easiest / fastest way forward. The emulators could wait until later. The first step was to find what was going on. So, I posted a request for help on comp.emulators.apple2 , and Thomas Lai stepped forward to check out the disks and see if he could fix them. I emailed them to him that night.
So, now we know what is wrong. If the emulator authors want to think about adding support for this, then that would be terrific as well. The current - unmodified - Sunraycer disk images on Asimov might then work / be OK. These fixed / working images of all 3 Sunraycer disks have now been uploaded to the central repository for all Apple ][ software ftp.apple.asimov.net.
Special thanks to :for their help with this !! Thanks guys - it has been a pleasure working with you and you have helped save more ancient software from oblivion.
Downloads :
Here's quite a funny article about Evolution Vs Creationism by the Canadian Cynic. Well worth the read !! ;) LOL !! ;)
Within a few days of Microsoft releasing the X-Box 360 Specs, Sony has released the Playstation 3 Specs. Both are very impressive - featuring powerful processors, massive RAM, powerful graphics and sound processors. The age of super consoles is dawning ... And, it's going to be a vicious battle between Microsoft and Sony - and that should be great for the consumer - especially at X-Mas ... For the first time in years, I am seriously tempted to buy one of these babies when they are released later this year - or next year, because we will probably have to wait again in Australia. :( It will sure be interesting to see the games line-up for each console. You can read more about these here :
Holy mackrel - yet another new program !!! That's 5 brand new programs released so far in May, 2005. Birthday and Event Reminder allows you to easily keep track of birthdays, anniversaries, school reunions, and other important annual events. A range of functionality is provided with the program to help you add, update, change, or delete events, and then report on the events occuring within a specified number of days. You can copy and paste this report into emails or print it. This program should be very useful for helping you keep forwarned of all important dates, so that you give yourself plenty of time to organise and prepare for birthdays, anniversaries, and so on. Import functionality is also provided so that you can import / load data from other date / event reminder programs directly into Birthday and Event Reminder without having to re-type anything. Now, there is NO EXCUSE for forgetting or leaving things until the last minute !!! ;) Special thanks to Egil L for suggesting / requesting this program. Egil has received a free registration to this program and will receive a share of the profits if the program sells like hot cakes. This is my 85th program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (53 Shareware + 29 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
Student Results Merger is a program to help you handle / merge / process student results. While the program was developed for the purpose of processing student results, it could also be used to process cycling race, horse race, swimming race, or keeping track of workers or volunteers, and/or various other results / details. This program comes with full on-line help and a step-by-step user guide with screen shots. This is my 84th program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (53 Shareware + 28 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
A few days ago, I was told by someone - let's call her Miss Pleasant - which is really quite funny, because she was anything but pleasant and, as it turned out, she did in fact live in Pleasant Street. Anyway, Miss Pleasant told me that it was perfectly OK for her or anyone else to use cracked / pirated versions of my software because some of it hasn't been updated since November 2002, and it should therefore be declared "unsupported" and "abandonware". Well, little Miss Pleasant, let's step into the real world for a second and review the facts :
And, I've emailed Fever at Discreet Logistics, Kevin at Retro Blast and, of course, Kevin at Computer Space Fan (Kevin's advice was invaluable during the development of the simulator). And, I've also entered the simulator in the Retro Remakes / One Switch game programming competition : So, that should hopefully spread the word about the simulator. :)
Like the vast majority of my software, Computer Space Simulator is for Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, or later. The game play in Computer Space consists of you controlling a Rocket and attacking and avoiding the computer controlled enemy Saucers that are trying to shoot you or collide with you. You have an infinite number of lives, but each game has a set time limit. The object of the game is to have a higher score than the enemy at the end of the time limit. This simulator supports the following modes of operation : A multitude of game settings and options are provided, so you can create your own variations of the game and customise things to any required level of difficulty. You can also share your game variations with friends via the Load / Save settings buttons and functionality provided with the simulator. At any time you can restore the correct / factory default settings via the "Restore" button. See the On-Line help for further details. I've entered a special One Button / One Switch version in the Retro-Remakes One Click programming competition - mentioned on 10-May-2005 below. You can download the One Click version here. I'll let you know how the competition goes !! Wish me luck ! ;) Special thanks to Kevin at Computer Space Fan for all of his advice, testing, feedback, checking, support, and encouragement during the development of this simulator. Oh, one more thing, make sure you visit Kevin's Computer Space Fan web site for a wealth of information, pictures, videos, sights, sounds, history, trivia, and more about Computer Space. This is my 83nd program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (52 Shareware + 28 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
Sorry, errrmm, did I say yacht ?? Well, it's more like a cruise liner : Pretty awesome, I must say !! Anyway, you can read more about it here :
Here's an interesting idea ... With games becomming ever so complex and requiring even more buttons, keys, etc, it is quite nice and refreshing to see that there is a push to make games as simple to control / play as possible - requiring just a single key to start and play a game. Not only that, but Retro-Remakes are holding a competition for programmers around the world to enter their own home-brew one-switch games.
I'm going to enter a one switch version of a very famous game - more about this very soon !! ;)
The competition closing date is: 11:59pm on the 11th May, 2005 (UK Time, GTM+0). So, if you want to get an entry in, get coding !! Anyway, you can read more about it here :
Robot Simulator
and another program of mine,
Solar System Simulator
, were
This is my 82nd program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (52 Shareware + 27 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
Font Reviewer allows you to view all fonts installed on your computer and see any text you like written in any or all of the fonts that you select. Font Reviewer was developed to make selecting the best font for the job as simple, fast, easy, and painless as possible. This is my 81st program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (51 Shareware + 27 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
However, I thought I would display them here as well, as they provide another demonstration of what you can do with Mosaic Maker Extractor.
These mosaics were created with my Mosaic Maker Extractor program.
Mosaic Maker Extractor enables you to create mosaics or pull them apart again into their component images (tiles). A mosaic is a big picture made out of lots of little pictures. So, with Mosaic Maker Extractor, you can create your own mosaics or extract the tiles from existing mosaics for further use in other mosaics. This is my 80th program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (50 Shareware + 27 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
Rest assured though that I have been busy coding as well, and that I do have some exciting new and updated software to release in the coming month or so - including :
One thing that has really gripped my attention recently are Mosaics. i.e. big pictures made out of lots of little pictures. Unfortunately, I don't have an artistic bone in my body - I can't sing, dance, paint, draw, or sculpt so I could never draw / make a mosaic by hand - but the one thing I am really good at (and love doing) is writing software. So, I have been working on some mosaic creation software recently. Below is an early picture based on my pampered pooch, Boogle.
If all goes well, then I will also release this program in the near future. Update: After searching today on the internet, the only existing Mosaic programs I could find were shareware programs costing $29.95 US or more - YIIIKKKESSS !!! ;) ;) However, don't panic, as with all of my shareware, the selling price for my program will be as low as possible - much lower than this competition, and it will contain more features, and have much better user support. Stay tuned ... ;) If anyone wants further information about any of this software, would like to take part in BETA testing, or would like to be notified when I release it, then please Email me and let me know. Oh, yes, one last point, I've also taken down my Christmas decorations ... ;)
"Playing my cards very close to my chest" has certainly been my motto since setting up Moose's Valley in mid-1996. And, as such, extremely few of my real life projects or activities are mentioned on my web pages. However, because of increasingly dire reports from scientists and environmental groups about our environment, I feel that it is time for me to come "out of the closet" over the environment and conservation. Whether or not you personally believe in the Greenhouse Effect or Global Warming or Climate Change - and, yes, there are many people out there who don't - it is impossible to ignore the signs that our planet's environment is under increasing stress.
It is difficult to comprehend the scale of the problems that these things might cause in the future. What we are doing clearly isn't substainable. The way people are clearing trees, the way people are fishing, the way people are living, the way we are using energy and resources, and the rate some people are breeding simply isn't sustainable. We must strive for a sustainable future, otherwise we could have a painful future. As you might expect from someone called "Moose" and whose website is "Moose's Valley", I am seriously and deeply concerned about our environment and conservation, and have been for as long as I can remember. Since mid-1994, my family and I have had a net positive impact on the environment. i.e. I purchased enough tree filled land so that any pollution caused by our activities (e.g. driving the car, using electricity, etc) were more than offset by the photosynthesis and environmental benefits of the trees on this land. However, as the years went by, I have become increasingly worried about our environment, and decided 5+ years ago that I must do more. Today, I own more than 140 acres of land, and some of this is prime land that would have been cleared by developers long ago if I hadn't purchased it. I am also seriously into energy conservation - my house primarily uses low energy light globes, energy efficient appliances, off peak / solar hot water, and I turn appliances off rather than leave them in standby mode. In addition, I car pool to work each day, drive one of the smallest, most economical and most "environmentally friendly" cars available (at the time of purchase - mid-1999), and walk rather than drive whenever possible. And, I recycle what I can - including plastic, metal, aluminium cans, etc. One of my long standing dreams has been to set-up an electricity grid connected clean energy farm. Finally, after more than 3 years of searching for a suitable clean energy farm site, I finally found and purchased a near-perfect 100 acre site in May, 2004 with the sole aim of setting up my own grid connected clean energy farm. This property satisfied all 19 of my criteria for a clean energy farm site. In early June 2004, I organised and conducted a community meeting of the 30 closest neighbouring properties to try and get people interested in helping the environment and taking part in projects for the generation of renewable energy. I was hoping to turn the local area into the Clean Energy Capital of Central Queensland, Australia. At this meeting, I discussed the pros and cons and details of more than a dozen forms of clean, renewable electricity generation, and emphasised that I was mostly interested in those that had the lowest possible risks to bats, birds and animals, and presented the lowest possible noise and visual impacts. Sadly, the community response from this meeting was very disappointing. Property owners / residents from only 4 out of the 30 properties invited turned up, and all of these were (at best) very negative about the whole "clean energy farm" idea. They claimed that they were all for saving the environment, but they didn't want anything in or near their back yards. Good old NIMBY syndrome (Not in My Back Yard) had raised it's ugly head. One guy, who was particularly ignorant, nasty and spoiling for a fight at this meeting, said that if I even put one solar panel on my barn's roof, then he would go to the council and put in complaints about me "industrialising the countryside". Such is life - sadly, people like this do exist on our planet ... Since December 2003, I have been heavily researching all known types of clean, renewable energy, and I've been keeping my eye on recent developments in dozens of areas and countries. The biggest problem with current clean, renewable energy technologies are that they aren't cheap to implement or install. If they were, then every man and his dog would have solar cells and mini-wind turbines or whatever on their roofs. Also, so few of the technologies are available commercially for small scale activities. You are basically limited to Wind Turbines or Photo-Voltaic Cells for anything less than a multi-MW commercial installation. However, this situation looks set to change in the near future, as many other forms of clean electricity generation come onto the market. e.g. Stirling Engines, Solar Concentrators, etc. I am also increasingly concerned about the spectre of "Peak Oil". For anyone who doesn't know what this is / means, click here to do a Google search on "Peak Oil". Keep in mind however, that there is a lot of near hysterical hype out there, and anyone with an axe to grind or money to make (by selling you books, videos, etc) should be treated with a high level of scepticism. At this stage, I believe that the truth about "Peak Oil" is probably more in line with : Winning the Oil Endgame than Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash. (The former is far more balanced and says we can engineer our way out of the coming crisis if we work together and start ASAP. Whereas the later says that there will be savage resource wars and that 95%+ of the population will die out within the next 5-10 years. I hope the former is more accurate, but who can really say for sure ?). OK, so where am I going with all of this rambling ? Well, in a nut shell, I'm saying that not everyone on the planet is part of the rat race. A lot of people out there are taking decisive and significant steps to do what they can to save our environment and push the change over to clean, environmentally friendly energies as soon as possible. Stay tuned .... if all goes well, then I could be announcing some good / positive news in the near future. And, if all goes well, then I will also be making some of my Renewable Energy research, analyses, articles, presentations, and news letters available here for download in the future. One thing I have learned is that we cannot wait for our governments to bail us out of this mess. It is going to take a massive grass roots effort to save the environment, with lots of "people power" pushing / supporting / funding the innovative car makers to change over to electric cars, hydrogen cars, etc and help electricity generators to change over / set-up clean, renewable energy, etc. So, if you are worried about the environment, you really only have to ask yourself one question : What am *I* doing to save the environment ? (Hint: "Nothing" is not a satisfactory answer !)
Anyway, an article today said :
Which is pretty amazing - and incredibly stupid if you ask me - talk about more money than sense ... ;) Here is what some the Geek.Com guys said in response :
Ahhh well, anyway, I found it funny ... ;)
Which is pretty darn freaky, I must say ... ;) Back in the late 1970's, I read about how scientists had hooked electrodes up to the muscles of a Sparrow, and put it in front of a flight simulator, and it was flying the jet plane (in the simulation) properly. But, man-made rat brains flying planes is in a whole new league all together ... Next they'll be talking about Franken-Rats and all sorts of things. Anyway, you can read more about it here :
This computing monster consists of 10,248 Intel Itanium 2 processors. The previous champion was IBM's Blue Gene/L (36 teraflops) which knocked NEC's Earth Simulator (35 teraflops) from top place. You can read more more about this here :
I'm thinking of writing a stand alone program to generate similar artwork, and allow the user to control various settings. Maybe even a screen saver ...
I got all of these games from Games Market - Australia and their mail order service was very fast, friendly, and professional, and I will definitely buy games through them again in the future. These games are all "oldies" now, and were all at budget prices ($10-$20 AUD), but that's all my poor old Pentium III rig will handle ... I know my PC is ancient in the scheme of things, but it is beautiful to use and 100% stable, and it's been such a joy to use that I'm really gonna miss it when I finally do upgrade. *SOB* !! ;) Also, I'm trying to hold off upgrading until something really **FAST** comes out that'll run MAME's most demanding game at full speed ... An ~8-10 GHz P4 or equivalent CPU should just about do it ... ;) I'm still on the lookout for Aquanox 2 Revelation for a reasonable price in Australia. So, if anyone has it (and wants to sell it) or knows where to buy it, then Email me.
Apparently, an elderly Romanian man mistook his penis for a chicken's neck, cut it off and his dog rushed up and ate it. You can read more about it here :
Microsoft's Paul Allen, who financed the program, Richard Branson, who recently founded Virgin Galactic for space tourism, and Burt Rutan greeted the newly minted astronaut and pilot of Space Ship One, Brian Binnie, on the runway after the flight. The day of common place space travel has definitely taken a big step forward - and about time as well, imho !! ;) You can check read more about it here :
However, thanks to living in the information age, you can look at up-to-the-minute video cam pictures and seismograph readings and see the volcanic ballet unfold. You can check these out / read more about it here :
If you own either or preferably both of these games and would like to sell them, please email me and let me know the following details :
What this really means is that they will buy votes, do all the wrong things, and shut half of the population up by giving them welfare instead of doing the right things to create jobs, save the environment, conserve resources, and get people working and off their arses. Anyway, there are some funny radio ads about Telstra (Australia's major communication's company) shipping jobs to India - as is also happening in the USA, the UK, and other countries. Apart from being an incredibly short signted action, and getting products and services that simply cannot compare with the quality of our home grown products and services, shipping jobs to India is also very bad for Australia and Australia's future. Anyway, enough of my soap boxing. Here are MP3's of the radio ads - have a listen and a laugh.
N.B. I recorded these myself off the radio and MP3'd them. There is a chance that these ads might be copyrighted material, but they DO NOT say that are copyrighted at all. If the Australian Labour Party or any copyright holders want these ads removed, then please email me and let me know and I will comply. You'd think they would be smarter than this and be happy for the free advertising I'm giving them though ... ;)
Did I mention that it also tells the time ?? The 4 hour battery life can be extended by slowing down the satellite polling, and it will get better in the future. You can recharge it from a 9v battery. Solar cells would help. At $699 US it's not cheap - but look at what it does. When I was hang gliding (late 1980's), you could NOT buy an altimeter for this price, let alone something that does all this. You can read more about it here :
My moose@move.to email address is playing up and emails aren't getting through. It seems that the email redirection service I use at http://www.v3.com/ has dropped the ball (yet again). However, I can't really complain about their service, because it is a free service after all ... Still, the regular email issues and their lack of response are becoming a pain ... Anyway, if you send me an email and I haven't replied within a few days then the chances are that your email didn't arrive because of my email issues. So, here's an alternate email address that you can use until my main email address is repaired again : Email me. (This is my work email address). I'll keep working to try and resolve the issues asap ...
In this new version, the program runs automatically following installation, and the lack of sound is fixed. Thanks go to David S for reporting the sound issues ! :)
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Quantrix have developed beautiful, sleek financial modelling software - that is clearly based on "Lotus Improv" but is written in Java - and it costs $990 US (or $250 US for the Academic version). Thanks to Maarten B for the update / information.
Special thanks to David C for pushing me to do this yesterday. Up until recently, I could not regsiter for PayPal because you had to supply a US address - but I live in Australia, so I couldn't do this honestly. As a result, I could not register for PayPal. However, David C checked things out and found out that I could now register legally and honestly as an Australian - so I did this straight away. Anyway, please PayPal all money to this email address : moose@move.to . I've updated the How / Why Purchase Moose's Software ??? (i.e. How to Register) page to reflect this as well - PayPal is now listed as option #1 as it's probably the easiest and safest method all round. Hopefully, PayPal should help boost the sales of my software !! ;) PayPal will also make it easier for me to continue to make donations and support worthy causes, such as : David C : I have sent you a few emails, but they keep bouncing - please clean out your inbox asap. ;) Also, I want to send you a free registration to a program of your choice to say thanks for your support and kind feedback. :)
Update : 21-May-2004
Email Address Obscurifier can help you to obscure the email addresses on your web page(s) so that they act the same and function the same as before, but so that they cannot easily be accessed / identified by email harvesting programs used by people who send unsolicited junk email (SPAM) to 1,000's of internet users. This is my 79th program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (49 Shareware + 27 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
My moose@move.to email address is playing up and emails aren't getting through. If you send me an email and I haven't replied within a few days then the chances are that : Anyway, here's an alternate email address that you can use until my main email address is repaired again : Email me. (This is my work email address). Also, I've also set-up a Guest Book which you can use to leave messages as well : Sorry about the banner ads on the Guest Book's web site - it was the best "free" Guest Book that I could find at short notice. Email subject line hints, tips, and suggestions :
Follow these suggestions and there is a much greater chance that I'll see and reply to your email. :)
This program was only updated yesterday, but I've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes - and this new functionality is worth releasing straight away. This new version adds this functionality : If you get a high score, then make the appropriate row of the high score table visible. i.e. scroll the display down / up to reveal the row of the high score table where you just entered your score.
In this new version, you can select the sounds for each category, and even select "No Sound". Thanks go to Jonathan H for requesting this functionality ! :)
I've been working extremely hard by doing 1 full-time and 3 part-time jobs - actually, this isn't unusual at all for me as I've been doing this for many years. (Well, someone has to support all of the people on the dole, "compo", etc here in Australia !! ;)) Anyway, I reckon that I probably deserve a nice, long holiday more than just about anyone else on the planet right now !! ;)) This year, I'm heading to Hong Kong, UK, Europe, and the USA (New York and LA) for about 26 days. And, I'm taking someone along with me who is very dear to my heart, and who has stood by me through the good and the bad times, and who has also worked extremely hard all of her life (and still does) and has never really had a decent holiday, and she's never been outside of our Australia's immediate vicinity (Australia, New Zealand, Fiji). So, who is this mystery person ? Well, it's my mother, who I affectionately call "Chookie" - I'm taking her away on the first decent holiday of her life. Anyway, as a result of all of this travel, I wont be able to answer any emails or process any orders until I get back on Wednesday, March 3, 2004. I might upload some holiday pictures here when I get back - so stay tuned ... :)
4-Feb-2003 - UPDATE : Removed the Debugging message displayed when you run the program.
This is my special version of this fun and highly addictive dice game, Yahtzee. This is my 78th program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (49 Shareware + 26 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
The program also contains Mouse Odometer functionality. i.e. it can display the number of left / right mouse botton clicks and/or the distance the mouse pointer has travelled in Km or Miles. Also, the program contains a CPU Usage Drop Adviser (which is great for knowing when your PC has finished a big job - like virus checking your PC, defragmenting the harddrive, etc).
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Are the people at work annoying you ? Playing practicle jokes ? Bombarding you with wadded-up
pieces of paper or paper aeroplanes ?
Or, at least, that was the theory. The reality turned out to be very different ...
Anyway, 85 programs is pretty impressive.
This volume of shareware and freeware software by a single author is (as far as I can tell)
completely unheard of on the internet, and there is a chance that
I might just be the world's most prolific (and also least successful !) shareware / freeware author.
Actually the exact number of visitors as of today is 534,735 visitors, which
consists of 489,951 visitors up until December 10, 2002
and another 44,784 since December 11, 2002 = 534,735 visitors -
and that is just on my main Index page,
which many visitors bypass as a result of clicking on links in search engines.
Apart from discussing the topic, this topic also provided links to two truly inspired and hilarious new
machinima videos (produced using the
Ever Quest 2 game engine I believe):
SunRaycer is an ancient program for
For the past few years I have been trying to play SunRaycer again under
emulation on my PC. However, NONE of the disk images on
In the meantime, back in Hawaii, Mike Ching was having problems setting up
ADT on his Apple ][, so I sent him over my Apple ][ floppy disk containing
ADT, SST, Copy ][+, DDD, etc. i.e. everything needed to transfer disk
images between the Apple ][ and the PC. The disk image for this disk has
been available on
The next morning, Thomas forwarded me working Sunraycer disks. According
to Thomas :
Robot Simulator allows you to simulate and control
your own virtual robot(s) on screen - aka Leggo
Mind Storms robots, but without the flat batteries
or the other hassles.
By using a simple command language (called RoboSlang),
you can control your virtual robots on screen, to make
them move around, dance, follow lines, and explore
their virtual world.
This program has been in "on again / off again" development for over
12 months now, and I have put an enormous amount of effort into this program.
demonstrated and show cased on a big projection screen
before current and prospective students, staff, and the general public all day
during
Included with the program (after installation) are sample scripts, a
sample robot, a selection of background images, a full on-line help, and
a RoboSlang script reference manual with loads of examples.
The TRIAL version of the program is fully functional with the exception that you cannot change robots.
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Upload new version of
Date & Time (v1.92)
to my FREE Computer Programs Page.
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- Fully texture-mapped walls, floors, and ceilings
- Non-Orthogonal Walls
- Variable Height Floors and Ceilings
- Palette Translation
- Environment Animation and Morphing
- Light Diminishing and Light Sourcing-so distant objects are enshrouded in darkness, unless a light source is nearby
- 256-Color VGA graphics
- Status read-outs in your helmet
- Tons of punch-packing power-ups and wicked weapons
- Explore a seamless world-inside and outside
- Four players at once on LANS, two by modem
Today is Doom's 10th Birthday. It was on December 10, 1993 that
Id Software
dropped the 100 megaton bomb on the gaming community that was Doom.
While Id's previous title, Wolfenstein 3-D, was a huge hit and firmly established the company as a serious player in the action gaming genre, it was Doom that annihilated everything that came before it and set the standard for games for many years to come.
Doom was an amazing First Person Shooter (FPS) game. Even though Doom was the successor to other FPS games, such as Id's Wolfenstein 3-D, etc - it was the first game to really gain world wide acceptance / recognition.
Doom was a true killer application,
and many 1,000's of people purchased PCs and network cards / cables (or null modem cables)
just so they could play Doom in the comfort of their own homes.
Compared to today, the home computer landscape was very different in 1993 - many people were still using Commodore 64's for games, but people with more money (or more serious gaming habits / addictions ;) had Amiga 500's, Atari ST's, or PCs, or a console, such as a NES, Mega-Drive, or PC Engine. And, the power of those 1993 machines was *very* modest compared to modern PCs / consoles.
A typical PC in 1993 was a 386SX-20 MHz, with 2 MB of RAM, and a 40 MB hard-drive. CD-Drives (i.e. CD readers) still weren't common on any machine because they were still far too expensive. Most people had sound cards in their PC. A lucky few had 486 PCs with 4 MB of memory ... they were really powerful beasts of machines in those days.
Many (like me) had been using the PC as a games machine for many years (in my case, since 1985),
but the users of other systems - Amiga and Atari users in particular - used to try and bash the PC
at every opportunity by saying that their games were so much better, or had
more colours on the screen at once, or had better sound / music.
And, at this stage in the game (particularly with sound), they were often right.
However, then along came Doom, and this game not only silenced the criticisms of Amiga and Atari users, it turned them into instant PC fans, and they flocked in their 1,000's to buy PCs just so that they could play Doom.
At the time, stores like Electronics Boutique had almost equal shelf space dedicated to PC and
Amiga games - the two kings of home computer gaming at the time.
However, after Doom was released, the Amiga declined very quickly, and pretty soon, PC games also filled
the game shelves which were previously occupied by Amiga games.
I was working in England when Doom was released. I remember at the time, that my brother, Frank, phoned me from Australia and said "Oh Mike, you've got to get Doom - you've just got to get Doom - get down to the shop now and buy it - NOW !!!". I was busy at work and could not get away at lunchtime, but he phoned me again after lunch to see if I had purchased it yet - and nagged me to do so immediately.
So, after work, I went and purchased a PC magazine with the shareware Doom on the cover.
That night, I played it and (by about 3 AM in the morning) I had finished and explored all
10 levels of shareware Doom and found quite a few of the secrets.
At 8:00 AM the next morning,
I was waiting outside Electronics Boutique to buy the full version of the game.
I was well and truly hooked !!
Within a week, a friend and I had a 2 computer home network set-up at my house, and we were playing 2 player Doom games via a null modem cable. We could play co-operatively or Death match, but more often than not, it was us against Doom's evil demons of hell.
Within a very short period, 3 other friends and I were regularly meeting at each other's houses and playing 4
player network games of Doom all night, while having a few beers, and eating snacks and pizza and
gulping down coffee in between games.
It was a real social event - and that was the real beauty of Doom - it was a great single player game,
but it was an awesome game to play with friends.
Doom 2 was released a year (or so) later, and then friends and I were regularly getting together and playing 8 player LAN games - it was great fun.
Doom 1/2 still have enormous nostalgic value for me because of these great times.
And, pretty soon, all sorts of *FREE* Level Editors were being released - so you could design your own levels. Also, CDs full of 500 *FREE* Doom Levels were on the covers of PC magazines - and you could very easily play these additional levels via a simple command. Then came the incredible *FREE* Total Conversions - such as Alien Doom, etc - where people had completely changed Doom's graphics, monsters, sounds, weapons, menus, title screen, interface, etc to make it a completely new game and experience. And all of these extras were 100% FREE for people that had purchased Doom. They were created by Doom players for Doom players and given away free of charge.
Doom was incredibly advanced for its time, and some of it's features included :
Doom and Doom 2 were amazing games, and they certainly changed the games landscape forever.
And, by finally making the PC the undisputed king of home computer gaming, PC games and
capabilities hit high gear, and many game developers switched to support the PC, and/or gave
the PC a lot more respect as a games platform.
Thanks to Id software releasing the source code for the game to the public, the game still lives on today, and there are many new versions of Doom that allow you to play with awesome new graphical effects on fast, modern PCs.
Further interesting links :
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Back in September, I reported some of the issues that I have been having with various TV Tuner cards that I have been plugging into my PC. However, I can report that the problems are now - as far as possible - resolved - although the achieved resolution of these problems leaves a lot to be desired ...
After spending many hours trying various TV Tuner cards, various primary graphics cards, various OS's (Windows 98 and XP), reinstalling OS's from scratch (onto spare hadddisks), downloading and installing the latest drivers, and various other things, I still could not receive anything but static in any TV tuner card that I tried in my PC.
But, the problem in the end turned out to be the aerial signal - i.e. the reception – so I had to buy a booster and get some connections re-joined and everything worked fine.
Prior to buying this booster, my TV picture had been reasonable but not perfect.
The reason why I did not consider that the TV signal / aerial was a problem previously was entirely due to the advice I had been given by staff in my local Harvey Norman store.
This store has many dozens of TVs hooked up to a single antenna (via god knows how many boosters), but by the time the TV aerial cable reached the technicians room at the back of the store, no TV could receive any watch-able signal - all they got was a mass of static. However, they demonstrated that TV cards could still receive near picture perfect TV - even in the technicians back room.
They said (and demonstrated to me) that PCs with TV cards could handle TV signals that were far below anything that any TV could handle. So, what would appear as a mass of static on a TV was actually a very nice picture on a TV card in a PC.
Their senior technicians told me this, and they demonstrated this with a TV and a TV card in a PC.
So, for these reasons, I felt confident that my TV reception wasn't to blame for my PC TV Tuner problems. My TV reception wasn't perfect, but it was infinitely better than Harvey Norman's back room.
However, for some reason it turned out that the reception was my problem, and that my TV Tuner card required better reception than my TV - contrary to what Harvey Norman claimed (and demonstrated).
Unfortunately, where I live, I still get a less than perfect picture (even after the booster was installed) and digital TV doesn’t work in my area of Queensland, Australia – so I’m still not happy.
And, due to reception issues in my area, I cannot use my second aerial point in my house (and it has now been disconnected by the guys who installed the booster).
So my TV card is virtually useless now - if I want to hook it up, then I have to unplug my TV and use my TV's aerial socket - a pain in the neck.
This isn’t the TV card’s fault though – this is a reception issue.
So, it looks like I've already got a nice present for my brother for Christmas .... ;))
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- The text string "Tempest " appears 100,927,970 times and takes up
770 MB or 63.3% of the disk space, and in one place on the disk this string appears
consecutively 3,269,376 times. That's a truck-load of Tempests !! ;)
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N.B. The "Tempest " string is actually due to the way Quantum's Fireball Tempest
hard-drives are initialised / tested in the factory. Visit
F-Secure
for more information about this.
- The hex code string "$00 $00 $00 $00 $00 $00 $00 $00" appears 13,199,548
times and takes up 101 MB or 8.3% of the disk space.
- There are huge swathes of other repeated, redundant, and/or duplicate data.
Over the past few days, just for laughs, I've been analysing the contents of a San Francisco Rush Hard-drive (HDD) from a real coin-operated video arcade machine with some software that I have been creating "on-the-fly" to help me do this.
The San Francisco Rush HDD has a formatted capacity of 1.18 GB.
A summary of some of the overall results of this analysis are :
Here is a portion of one of the many graphs that I created to help me analyse / understand the data patterns :
Yesterday, I posted a message on the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) General / Serious Message Board to see what the guys there had to say about all of this.
And, just for kicks, I was seriously thinking about developing a utility to generate an image of the HDD from the smallest possible set of files / data - the aim was to make this significantly smaller than MAME's current SFRush CHD - and this might have been be useful for anyone who is trying to replace a broken hard-drive on their SFRush machine.
However, the next version of MAME's CHDMan will take care of all of this redundancy, restoration, and more, so I wont continue with this project now.
Still, I did find some interesting data patterns and some suprising results, and it also gave me an excuse to produce a swag of interesting graphs and software to help me analyse this data - and all of this was pretty good fun.
If anyone would like a copy of this data, let me know.
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- Step through directories full of spam email,
- View just the email headers or the entire email,
- View each spam email's contents with colour coding
- Select text (such as IP addresses, email addresses, etc) at the click of the mouse button, and add these to a list of unique items (which can be incorporated into a block file),
- And do various other things.
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Upload a brand new program called
Spam Analysis Tool (v1.0)
to my FREE Computer Programs (Freeware) Page.
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Spam Analysis Tool is especially designed for use by Mail System Administrators, or anyone else who runs an email server or wants to block spam / junk emails.
SPAM (i.e unsolicited junk email) is a rotten scurge that is annoying millions of internet users and causing all sorts of havoc due to clogged mail boxes and clogged servers, not to mention the nasty payloads (viruses, trojans, etc) that many spam emails contain.
Most email clients (such as Outlook) allow you to save emails to your harddisk with the headers intact. e.g. in Outlook, simply drag and drop the spam emails to a directory on your harddisk. (Do not open them or run any programs they contain).
Once saved to your hard-drive with the email headers intact, these spam emails can be analysed so that their real source can be identified, and then all emails from this source can be blocked in the future. Doing this will help reduce the volumes of spam that you receive in the future.
Spam Analysis Tool enables you to :
This is my 77th program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (48 Shareware + 26 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
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Upload new version of
Binary Clock (v1.1)
to my $5 Computer Programs (Shareware) Page.
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Binary Clock is a "for fun" program that displays a re-sizable binary clock - that is, a clock where the time is displayed via the binary number system (base 2) instead of the decimal number system (base 10).
This version adds several new features and options - such as the option to use 4 or 6 bits for each digit.
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Upload new version of
Date & Time (v1.91)
to my FREE Computer Programs Page.
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Upload a brand new program called
Binary Clock (v1.0)
to my $5 Computer Programs (Shareware) Page.
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Binary Clock is a "for fun" program that displays a re-sizable binary clock - that is, a clock where the time is displayed via the binary number system (base 2) instead of the decimal number system (base 10).
A whole range (in fact, some people would probably say "a whole overkill") of settings, graphics, and options are available via the settings menu.
This is my 76th program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (48 Shareware + 25 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
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Upload new version of
Date & Time (v1.9)
to my FREE Computer Programs Page.
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The glacial paced, half-baked, ill-conceived roll out of DVD technology looks set to
continue - ermmm, at an even slower pace.
Yes, that's right folks - by April 2004 (or sometime - who knows when - there after) we might (hopefully) start seeing double-capacity DVD+R drives and media.
Big spanking deal !!! These 8.5GB DVD+R drives are only about 5-6 years over due ! All I can say is come on Blu-Ray ... ;))
You can read more about this here :
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Upload new version of
ROM Clone Zip Manager (v1.3)
to my FREE Computer Programs Page.
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ROM Clone Zip Manager can delete redundant / duplicate files from inside Clone ROM ZIPs.
That is, ROM Clone Zip Manager scans your Clone ROM ZIP files (in all directories you specify) and compares each file inside these against the files inside the Parent ROM ZIP file, and if an identical file is found (with the same name and CRC) then it is deleted from the Clone ROM ZIP file.
In adition, you can backup the files (and extract them to another directory) before they are deleted from inside the Clone ROM ZIP file.
ROM Clone Zip Manager also enables you to move all Clone ZIP files to another directory of your choice.
I wrote this program and ran it against my MAME ZIP files, and, in less than 2 minutes, it had saved me a whopping 191 MB of disk space !
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These are very expensive (10's of $1,000's of US dollars per CPU), special purpose, custom made CPUs, and aren't for general use, so, sadly, we wont be seeing these in our desktop PCs or games consoles any time soon ... ;) You can read more about this here :
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As a result : I haven't done these things in the past because spam wasn't really a problem - my filters, etc were stopping most of it. But, all of a sudden over the past few weeks, the volume of spam has increased exponentially and the nasty, dirty tricks used by spam-mongers have become even more unacceptable (if that is possible). If this isn't sufficient, then I'm moving to JavaScript decrypted "on the fly" email tags - that have been adaptively / mutatively encrypted - and this will certainly stop the bastards. In the next few weeks I'll probably release one or two programs (that I am working on now along these lines) and that help will other people to fight spam - including average PC users and mail system administrators. They've pissed me off one too many time, and now I'm fighting the good fight against these scum. I hope you join the fight too ! :)
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All in all, this was an extremely, embarrassingly simple change to MAME, but it took me a few minutes to work out what I had to change and where everything went (in the 1+ million lines - 47+ MB - of MAME source code). Please note, these Test ROMs are not even as exciting as the good old Sente Diagnostic Cartridge. i.e. they are almost on a par with "watching paint dry" ... ;) But, this is my first ever MAME WIP ... :) Here is Mame_v0.74_ Source_Changes __SI_GAL_Test_ROMs.zip a 123 KB ZIP file which contains the following : Special thanks to Paul Sommers and Chris Hardy for dumping / verifying these ROMs. I've got a few other test roms here (somewhere ... ;), so I may also add support for those as well in the future.
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This week, I've spent well over 10 hours trying to get a brand-new
Pinnacle PC TV Pro card working in my PC, and so far, it simply will NOT work.
All I get is static, the card will NOT find any channels.
- Install Pinnacle card and software and follow the instructions to the letter.
- Quick Scan TV - Australia, Antenna, PAL - nothing but static - no chanels were found.
- Full Scan TV - Australia, Antenna, PAL - still nothing but static - no chanels found.
- Double check cable, Pinnacle card, and software.
- Check Hardware Device Settings under Control Panel - everything reported as working correctly - no device or other conflicts.
- Run DXDiag and check everything out.
- Full Scan TV - Australia, Antenna, PAL, PAL M, PAL N, PAL DK, and PAL I - still nothing but static - no chanels found.
- Try another Areal lead and Full Scan TV - Australia, Antenna, PAL, PAL M, PAL N, PAL DK, and PAL I - still nothing but static - no chanels found.
- Test both leads with TV and both work 100%.
- Try another antenna socket and Full Scan TV - Australia, Antenna, PAL, PAL M, PAL N, PAL DK, and PAL I - still nothing but static - no chanels found.
- Full Scan TV - Australia, Antenna, PAL - still nothing but static - no chanels found.
- Install PPE - PCI Performance Enhancer and Reboot.
- Full Scan TV - Australia, Antenna, PAL - still nothing but static - no chanels found.
- Check Pinnacle's WEB Site and discussion forums and read *ALL* posts where people are having problems with their Pinnacle cards - and there were many of these !!!
- Download DirectX v9.0b (32 MB), the DirectX v9.0b TV Tuner Fix, latest nVidia drivers, and the latest Pinnacle drivers.
- That's a whopping 93 MB of downloads folks !!
- Moved Pinnacle Card to another PCI slot - as recommended in the Pinnacle discussion forums.
- Full Scan TV - Australia, Antenna, PAL - still nothing but static - no chanels found.
- Moved Pinnacle Card to another PCI slot #2 - as recommended in the Pinnacle discussion forums.
- Full Scan TV - Australia, Antenna, PAL - still nothing but static - no chanels found.
- Install PPE - PCI Performance Enhancer - v1.11 - PPE111.exe and Reboot - as recommended in the Pinnacle discussion forums.
- Full Scan TV - Australia, Antenna, PAL - still nothing but static - no chanels found.
- Installed latest Pinnacle drivers : PinnaclePCTVUpdate550.exe and Reboot - as recommended in the Pinnacle discussion forums.
- Full Scan TV - Australia, Antenna, PAL - still nothing but static - no chanels found.
- Install latest nVidia GForce2 - TNT2 Drivers - v45.23 - Aug 13, 2003 and Reboot - as recommended in the Pinnacle discussion forums.
- Run DXDiag and check everything out.
- Full Scan TV - Australia, Antenna, PAL - still nothing but static - no chanels found.
- Install DirectX 9.0b - as recommended in the Pinnacle discussion forums.
- Install Non-NTSC TV Tuner Hotfix for DirectX 9.0b (KB825116) - DirectX9b-KB825116-x86-ENU.exe
- Reboot PC.
- Check Hardware Device Settings under Control Panel - everything reported as working correctly - no device or other conflicts.
- Run DXDiag and check everything out.
- Full Scan TV - Australia, Antenna, PAL - still nothing but static - no chanels found.
- my PowerColor TNT2 M64 AGP video card with Video IN/Out and TV Out
- and the Pinnacle PC TV Pro card ??
I live in Queensland Australia, and my PC 's details are : Pentium III 700 MHz, Windows XP Pro, 256 MB RAM, PowerColor TNT2 M64 AGP video card with Video IN/Out and TV Out, 3COM network card, Soundblaster 128, and a brand-new Pinnacle PC TV Pro card.
I have an external roof-top antenna hooked up to my Pinnacle PC TV Pro card. The antenna and cables I use work perfectly with my TVs.
Here's a quick summary of most of what I have tried so far :
So far I've spent well over 10 hours on this, and I'm just about ready to forget the whole thing as a bad joke.
Either that or I'll completely reinstall Windows XP onto a fresh hard-drive and try again with a clean system.
I've started to suspect that there could there be some sort of unreported issue / conflict between :
However, Windows' Hardware Device Manager reports none, and the Pinnacle software reports none.
Or, could there be some conflict / mismatch between the TV areal and the card ??
N.B. I also purchased a V-Gear PC TV card and this could not find any channels either - no matter what I tried. So, the problem must be with my PC ???
What could be wrong ? Anyone got any ideas ?
Should I forget this card and buy and try a Leadtek TV2000 XP Video/TV Deluxe instead (for less than half the price) ??
Has anyone had any experience with the Pinnacle PC TV Pro card or the Leadtek TV2000 XP Video/TV Deluxe ?
Earlier today, I posted a message and reported ALL of the above on Pinnacle's Discussion Forums and I now await some sort of useful answer.
If anyone can help with this, please Email me.
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Upload a new version of
MAME 32 INI Tools (v1.2)
to my FREE Computer Programs (Freeware) Page.
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This new version adds support for Official MAME 32.
Since MAME v0.65 onwards, I have only used MAME 32 PLUS. But, today I downloaded the Official MAME 32 to check this program worked with it, and I was shocked to find lots of differences. Never mind, Official MAME 32 and MAME 32 Plus are now supported.
Official MAME 32 and MAME 32 Plus both store the ROM information in different INI files, in different locations, and they have different formats and keys.
I don't know if this program works with Stretch MAME 32, Thunder MAME, Fast MAME or any other versions of Windows 32 GUI MAME, and I haven't got the time or energy to check this.
If anyone uses a version of Windows GUI MAME 32 that does NOT appear to be supported by this program, then please let me know and Email me a copy of the INI file, and I will add in support and email you a new version of the program.
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The popular
BBC TV series Dr Who
has celebrated it's 40th anniversary !!
Between 1963 and 1989, 700 episodes were made, and they are now all being shown again on ABC TV here in Australia - starting tonight at 6:00 PM. I'll certainly be tuning in an watching at least some (and maybe all ;) of them again. Ahhh, it will be great to see Romana again - incredibly intelligent, beautiful, loyal, blonde, mysterious, slim, interesting, strong, independent, resourceful, ... what more could a man want !! ;)) |
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And, just like the original Apple I, this replica will come without a keyboard, case, monitor, or power supply - customers will have to add their own !! Unlike the original Apple I, the replica machine does NOT have a casette tape interface - so you will need to type in BASIC and assembler programs by hand - just like almost everyone had to do in the "good old days" !! :) You can read more about this here :
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As of today, the bidding for the "New Folder" has reached a whopping 126.99 UK pounds - that's around $360 Aussie dollars !! Thanks to Retrogames for this information.
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Upload a new version of
Stop Watch (v3.3)
to my $5 Computer Programs (Shareware) Page.
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Diamond is expected to be the next generation semiconductor material because of its high thermal conductivity, high breakdown voltage, and high carrier mobility. 200-300 GHz devices are planned for the future. In comparison, the latest Intel Pentium 4 CPU operates at just 3.2 GHz. You can read more about this here :
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These images were generated courtesy of my Solar System Simulator program, and they are the result of simulations of the orbit of Mars over 32 and 108 Earth years respectively of elapsed time (but calculated and drawn in a few seconds on my PC). Every 2 years or so, Mars' orbit brings it relatively close to Earth. (In the first image above, you can see that Mars has approached closely to Earth 15 times in 32 years). Actually, even at its closest approach, Mars is still 55.8 Million Kilometers from Earth - which is still 142 times further away than the Moon. Every now and again, because of the effects of the Sun, Jupiter, etc, Mars may approach slighty closer to Earth than normal. (Don't get too excited, we are only talking about 20,000 kilometers closer at the very most folks - which isn't much compared to 54.7 Million Kilometers). According to NASA, Mars is now (i.e. today !!) closer to Earth than it may have been for 60,000 or so years. A series of unmaned probes from NASA, the European Space Agency, and Japan are streaking towards Mars as we speak. Hopefully, these missions will all be successful, and we can answer some important questions, such as : Is there or was there ever life on Mars ? Hopefully these missions will pave the way for setting-up a human colony on Mars in the future, so that the human race can begin to learn to live and travel in space. And, to celebrate all of this, I have created the above images, uploaded a new version of Solar System Simulator (a few days ago), checked out Mars through my own telescope (and stared at it for hours at night over the past few weeks), and tonight I'm heading to a little observatory at Central Queensland University (where I work as a lecturer / tutor) to study Mars through a series of telescopes. And, to round this off, I will probably rewatch the awesome BBC series "Planets" and Sam Neil's "Space" - both of which I have on DVD and thoroughly enjoy watching. (They are the most watched DVDs in my collection ;) You can read more about this here :
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Solar System Simulator
is a program to help you visualise
the solar system, compare the planets, and find out more about
the planets, or help you produce your own reports or assignments on the planets.
This program includes :
This program should be interesting to people of all ages !! Enjoy !! :)
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Update last night's release of MAME 32 INI Tools (v1.1) to include the processing of a new key in MAME 32's INI files. (Keeping the same v1.1 version number). |
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Upload a new version of
MAME 32 INI Tools (v1.1)
to my FREE Computer Programs (Freeware) Page.
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MAME32 INI Tools is an unofficial companion utility / tool for the official MAME 32 Arcade Machine Emulator for Windows 95 / 98 / NT / 2000, which can be downloaded seperately from : http://www.mame.net
This new version supports the latest MAME 32 INI file keys and values - which (for some known reason) were changed recently.
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- Astronaut's Chronometer (v1.6)
- Mouse Odometer (v1.6)
- Periodic Table of Elements (v2.1)
- RAM / Swap Monitor (v4.7)
- Basic / Quick
- Medium
- High
- Industrial Strength
- Department of Defense
- You've Got to be Joking
Then, in May 2003, SCO sent letters to 1,500 companies warning them that they could be held liable for IP violations in Linux. Now, it looks like SCO have got the rest of the Linux world in their sights, including desktop Linux users. SCO is giving Linux users a chance to "go legal" on their OS if they pay $699 US to SCO now (for a single CPU server). Or, if you wait until after October 15, 2003, prices for the OS for a single CPU server will start at $1,399 US. Pricing for desktop, embedded, and other systems are still to be announced. So, you can imagine just what kind of bruha this is causing amongst Linux Users on the internet ... ;) To top this off, according to the blurb at the bottom of SCO's Press Release :
Yeah, right - haaah hah - good one guys !! ;) Ahhhhh, I can already smell the sweet stench of Reverse Engineering .... ;)) You can read more about this here :
This new version just fixes an icon and a tool tip on a button - thanks goes to Twisty at Mame World for reporting this !! :)
Even though the first public release was only yesterday, I got stuck into adding lots of enhancements and new features last night. Hope you find it useful !
MAME Benchmarker is utility / tool which can help you benchmark the running of the Windows Command Line MAME or the DOS MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) :
MAME Benchmarker enables you to choose which games to benchmark, which command line parameters to use when running MAME, and then benchmark these games within MAME. After the benchmarking is complete, a TAB separated report is displayed and you can easily copy and paste this into a spreadsheet to allow you to compare these results with other benchmark results, graph the results, etc. This is my 75th program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (47 Shareware + 25 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
MAME32 Screen Shot Organiser is an unofficial companion utility / tool for the official MAME 32 Arcade Machine Emulator for Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, etc which can be downloaded seperately from : http://www.mame.net MAME32 Screen Shot Organiser simply enables you to view and drag and drop (with the mouse) screen shots so that you can arrange your screen shots for each parent game and its clones with ease. This could be useful for anyone who wants to arrange their screen shots in a certain way. e.g. show the title screen for each parent game of each set, and then show various screen shots of each game in action for the clones. This is my 74th program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (47 Shareware + 24 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
MAME32 INI Tools is an unofficial companion utility / tool for the official MAME 32 Arcade Machine Emulator for Windows 95 / 98 / NT / 2000, which can be downloaded seperately from : http://www.mame.net This is my 73rd program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (47 Shareware + 23 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
I did a Google search on "COG.MOV" a few minutes ago, and there were 89 hits. And, I also did another Google search on "Honda +Cog" and there were 777 hits. Because this commercial is so clever, within the coming days / weeks, these numbers will probably increase !!! ;) N.B. If you want to watch this movie on your PC, then various internet sites - including Honda's own WEB Site - will enable you to download the commercial. Note that there are high resolution versions of this commercial floating around on the internet - with file sizes bigger than 11+ MB - and these are much better quality than the far more common 3 MB and 5 MB versions. You can read more about this here :
The following sanitization levels are supported by this program : Once sanitized (at the highest sanitization level), the data in your deleted files can never again be recovered, and no hacker - no matter how clever - should ever be able to view any data contained in your deleted files. This processing should be highly desirable for anyone who is selling or replacing their PC - especially if the PC contained any sensitive or personal or confidential data. Price rise from $5 AUD - this program is now a $10 AUD program.
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Upload a new version of
RAM / Swapfile Monitor (v4.6)
to my $10 Computer Programs (Shareware) Page.
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The program also contains Mouse Odometer functionality. i.e. it can display the number of left / right mouse botton clicks and/or the distance the mouse pointer has travelled in Km or Miles.
Also, the program contains a CPU Usage Drop Adviser (which is great for knowing when your PC has finished a big job - like virus checking your PC, defragmenting the harddrive, etc).
NEC has just built a supercomputer, called Earth Simulator, which is 5 times faster than
the IBM "ASCI White" system that was (until recently) ranked No. 1.
The computer's 35 teraflops of performance, 5,120 CPUs and 10 terabytes of RAM are used to
model a virtual earth down to a 1-km resolution. The simulation will be studied by researchers
to examine the effects of global warming on climate change, acid rain and other types of air
pollution, tectonic plate movement, and other earthwide phenomena.
(Yeah, right, and I bet they have some pretty decent games running as well !! - Moose ;)
Now a new version of the game, called
