Trackers.. more nostalgia
Yesterday one of my emacs friends at work tried to introduce me to the .s3m file (Scream Tracker module). I dont know what I felt (coziness, warmth, envy... kinda wierd). I remember using those trackers to make an X-Files .s3m (unsuccessfully, coz it needs more than the software to make music you see) I had tried out most of the tracker programs (Impulse, Fast tracker/XM, Protracker, even the linux program sound-tracker which kinda creates most of the tracker mods). These files are a cross between midi and pcm files in that they have musical notes in them and pcm samples corresponding to instruments. The player streches and shrinks the samples depending on the note.

I remember Thomas K. John (one of my college mates and a good hand at the keyboard) telling me that just one sample is not enough for wave table synthesis. He also explained that for every fourth note you need a fresh sample otherwise the music would start becoming unrealistic (wonder why). Any ways I had a certain pride in kinda having known about the olden days cool thing. Most games used it for game music. There are songs with claps, cries (in general many things being said/sung) as samples and notes referring to them. I had once come across a small executable (dos) which plays a tracker module wired into it over the PC speaker (using the speaker old inertia trick).

Talking of old time music, if you are an old PC person check out Old School (for some nostalgic moments). Was just going throug these pages. I am not a true old PC guy but I've seen a couple of
games and programs from that era (thanks to PC quest magazine) and have written a few programs in GW-BASIC as well ;) Some times you wish to say a lot (the way I felt when JP introduced s3m to me) and just cant say a word or just start blabberring about all the stuff (with your brain pushing too much out of your mouth).

[Screeeeeeeeeeeeech]

Phew.. I broke the chain of thought. It rained heavily this morning and my pants were all wet.
- posted by Anil @ 9:20 AM 0 comments

 
The second half of the power post/tower
The second half of the power post is done. a.k.a a beautiful daytime worth of doing stuff on squarehead blown. I had mentioned the first half in an early July post. Had gotten drenched on that day and the freak cold still gives me headache (read sinusitis).

Just the same thing happened : I wake up looking at a stopping ceiling fan. I spent the day reading the 5-point-someone. It was nice to read about engineering college life and all. I sense that he has a bit of Douglas Adams (H2G2) style (the line "... the rodent had other ideas on his own demise .."). I am not able to describe it (I am sure a couple of my friends can). Guess its mostly like using a similie or metaphor based on something that is like orthogonal (a.k.a average-of(exculsive, un-related, complementary, perpendicular)) to the thing you are writing about (Gee.. correct me) and yet have a similar number of dimensions and have same set of functions (yeah.. I am feeling outrageously analytic).

I think I've wandered off in the analysis.. I'll try to understand and put the thing on paper/page (I envy Raju for his skills on this one) (later). Wonder why I get tired easily these days (the sinusitis is getting the better of me). Back to steaming (and regular this time). This reminds me about getting a better chair for working/playing on my machine. The one I use now is a dining chair (rest is obvious).

Goodness - Look at my train of thoughts: Analysis -> Stopping it -> Tired -> Chair -> Comfort -> Going out for dinner -> Cooking -> Gas connection -> fuel shortage - [Stop evaluation]. I guess I am the laziest person in my circles (Mom is right).
- posted by Anil @ 7:01 AM 0 comments

 
MAGiC
It becomes clearer on why one feels throttled using windows. Today I was after some programming that involved using dynamic linking in set-top-box. Its more like trying to make a (messy, by external standards) program have one of its components dynamically linked. I am comfortable with the code I can see but not the one I cannot. Chasing the flow I find there is nothing apparently visible in two consecutive statements that could probably cause a memory protection fault. The scare I get from imagining the probable situation where the underlying layer ([Not so] opentv) might be guilty is pretty ugly. What I am trying to say is this : Open systems - breathe easy.. I don't like magic in computer software (and believing that its magical - though it appears that way often).

New interest in a peculiar kind of painting by Tim and Greg brothers. Found it in a WindowMaker theme called StormWatch that I recently got.

Trying to shake off the uneasiness of not having fixed or found the problem.

- posted by Anil @ 8:21 AM 0 comments

 
It came and its over.
Hardly a week and I've exhausted my 1Gig bandwidth quota. The dist-upgrade is to blame. Apart from crossing 1Gig it gave me a few hours of sweating with broken libc.

Notes on game scripting: I know its quite generic a statement, but the article was nice. Something reminds me of what went wrong (years ago) when my prof asked me about whats good : game performing differently on varying power of hardware or remaining same. I got the question wrong and said that its to stay the same thinking of just the simluation clock (on my test bed things were so slow that my simulation clock was hitting (or was hit by) the system badly - which I realized a year ago running the program on faster system). [Regret] [.]
- posted by Anil @ 9:12 AM 0 comments

 
DSL speeds, feeling bad and ssh tunnelling.u
Who requires fast connection anyway ? (I had to ask that). Just after the first day of my shiny new ADSL connection one of my friends at IBM (Vasu) sez the office network has improved and is giving him 200kBps on weekdays and upto 1.5MBps on weekends. Back home/room my bro calls up and says hes got a 54MBps connection at his place in the US (with a giggle when I told him about my new link). Looks like people are bent on making me feel bad.

How do I get to freenode at office ? The nincompoops have blocked irc. I've gotta get somebody to tunnel my request through. Somebody help me !!

Just got a fix for the blogger problem with styles. Try adding the style div {clear:none !important} somewhere in your style section.. Got the fix here.
- posted by Anil @ 9:35 AM 0 comments

 
Broadband ! Load us up..
The much awaited ADSL connection comes... And I am banned from freenode.net :( boooohooooo mummmmieeeeee. Not bad a speed (but not close to the AT&T stuff I used to see at IBM). But then you have UDP (I guess so - from the advertisement with online games being mentioned). What more when you have your bed close to you ? You can drop asleep whenever you want (dont have to ride back home before that).

Am pretty much excited about all the configuration to be done. I've already put up a small firewall with IP tables... the rules need a lot more of work. It was simpler at office (IBM I meant) with a couple of servers to be put as proxies.. Let us see..

Got Google talk working. If you are wondering what to 'get working' in g-talk well actually it did not work with gaim. Had to use bitlbee login to port 5222, fail, login using 5223 work and then back with Gaim and it works.. funny.

Distupgrade ? Well its going to have to wait... "Operational readiness testing" (tm) to be done before the ceremony.
- posted by Anil @ 10:33 AM 0 comments

 
Sanitarium, Sanity and stuff
It was great to play that 1998 game again. Sanitarium has a setting similar to Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and (vaguely) Vanilla sky. All portrayal of dreams and the way they are affected by the surroundings never fail to impress me.

Finishing un-finished games of the mid 1990's is my latest job for the weekends.
- posted by Anil @ 4:29 AM 0 comments