Thursday, July 31, 2003

Half-Life 2 Undelayed -- 8:34 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Vivendi is now saying that Half-Life 2 is still on schedule for a September 30 release. This news comes from a Vivendi spokesperson via HomeLan Fed. She says that they are "working toward the Sept. 30 ship date" and called the original report "a misscommunication" (sic). Thanks Blue's News.

Grip 3.1.1 Encoding Fix -- 4:33 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I finally managed to figure out how to get my favorite MP3 ripper/encoder, Grip, to encode MP3s properly. When compiling it, I had to use this configuration switch:

./configure --disable-cdpar

That kept it from building cdparanoia into the program itself. If I didn't do that, the track would rip but it would never encode.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 12:04 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Nothing like the threat of a natural gas explosion to liven up an otherwise laid-back town. Somebody ran into a natural gas substation (or whatever they call them) yesterday. There was supposed to be an evacuation of most of the town. By the time I found out about it (several hours later from a passing motorist) and got everyone packed up, we heard on the radio that it had been called off. There was certainly some confusion on the part of law enforcement with this one. Thankfully no one was seriously hurt or killed to my knowledge. I did get to enjoy a nice cool shower this morning since we could be without gas until tomorrow night.

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

The Gamer’s PDA? -- 8:27 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Now THIS is a cool idea. CNNFN has the scoop on the Tapwave Zodiac, a PalmOS-based PDA geared towards gamers. Popular Mechanics has some information too, including a picture. The specs and the price are pretty impressive too. For $299 you get a 480x320x16bit screen, 32M memory, 200 Mhz Motorola ARM9 CPU, dual SD slots, ATI Imageon video, Yamaha audio, Bluetooth networking, two lithium ion batteries, and "rumble" features. For $399 you get 128M memory and a VGA digital camera. The whole thing's supposed to weigh 6 oz. It will play all PalmOS games, plus they have people porting games to it (including Neverwinter Nights and Doom II). Naturally, it will play MP3s too. Tapwave's website doesn't have much on it now. This is definitely one to keep an eye on.

Operating Systems Used -- 1:38 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Slashdot has kind of an interesting poll asking how many OSes you've used for at least an hour. Let's see, not counting revisions, my list would look like this:

1. VIC-20 OS (whatever that is)
2. Commodore PET OS (ditto)
3. Commodore 128 OS (ditto)
4. CP/M (on the aforementioned Commodore 128)
5. MS/PC/DR-DOS (2.x-6.x)
6. Windows (286-98)
7. OS/2
8. PalmOS
9. Linux (kernel 2.2.x and 2.4.x)

Of course, that doesn't count whatever would qualify as an OS on my cellphone. I've fiddled around with various Apple and Atari computers over the years too. I also didn't distinguish between Linux distros that I've used, including Red Hat 5.x-8, Mandrake 7.x-9.x, SuSE 8.2, and currently Slackware 9.0.

The Master comments: Here's my list:

1. Apple DOS 3.3
2. Apple ProDOS 1.x/2.x/8/16
3. VIC-20 OS (actually, I think this is juat a ROM BASIC, but anyway)
4. AMIGA OS
5. VAX VMS (not sure of version)
6. IBM/Ms/etc DOS (2.x-6.x)
7. UniSys UNIX v5.4
8. Windows (3.1,3.11,95,98,ME,2000)
9. UnixWare 2.x-7.x
10. Red Hat Linux 6-7.x

J.t.Qbe comments: This could be fun:

1. Timex-Sinclair ZX81 (may just have been ROM BASIC)
2. Commodore PET and CBM(don't remember much about them)
3. PC/MS DOS 2.x - 7
4. Windows 3.1/95/98/NT4/2K
5. OS/2
6. Minix
7. SCO OpenWhatever
8. Unixware
9. QNX
10. BSD (Free, Net, Open)
11. Linux (Slackware, Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Caldera, Storm)
12. Solaris 2.5 - 8
13. VMS
14. PalmOS
15. BeOS

Wait, did I say "fun", or "pathetic?"

Half-Life 2 Delayed? -- 10:35 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Reports are circulating that one of the most anticipated games of the year, Half-Life 2, might be delayed to the holiday season. Gamespot has some details from Vivendi, the game's publisher. I guess we'll see what happens with this. Release dates are notoriously hard to nail down.

Past Two Days' News

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