A Totally Awesome Remake

After many, many hours of gaming with good friemds, I must put a glowing reference to the remake of Doom that has kept us going for so long.

Witness ZDaemon, a multiplayer client/server port of Doom, with capture-the-flag mods available. It includes features such as auto-WAD find/download, as well as an Internet game-finder.

Add cross-platform compatibility to the list of growing features, and you have an excellent combination of modern-era Doomage!

(Things sure have progressed since the days of SuperSer serial-cable networks...)

Linux Gaming: Just Not There Yet

I'd like to think that I'm a relatively competent Linux geek. I can admit it by now. I even did my part to contribute and test out the forefront of Linux gaming, through a subscription to Transgaming, a company that specializes with a product that builds off the non-Windows-emulator WINE.

The verdict: we're not there yet. The final straw came for me when the much-advertised Half-Life 2 utterly failed to work out of the box as advertised. (Heck, they even came out with a special release of the software specifically for the game!

My opinion: emulation simply isn't going to work in the long run. We need games that run natively on Linux, period -- as sad as that makes me to write. I suppose my Windows partition can get dusted off to play the latest and greatest that I've gotten my hands on this season -- but from now on, my wallet is going to be voting for Linux-compatible games, such as Id's Doom 3.

Note to Self: Buy Good Power Supplies

Fires can be fun, but not when they are from computers -- or when said computers are spewing smoke into your bedroom! I'm just glad I was around this evening right by the computer when it happened -- so as to catch it before it became much, much worse. After airing out the place, I performed an autopsy of my recently rebuilt gateway machine. Diagnosis: power supply melting down, vaporizing a plastic inductor sheath.

Let this be a lesson: buy high-quality power supplies for when you're rebuilding a computer from spare parts. Don't just use "that one I've got in my closet." That, and have a fire extinguisher on hand if you need it.

Is random stuff blowing up / catching on fire the curse of the graduate student? I don't mind it when it happens in the lab, but I do mind when it follows me home from work!

Retro Gaming + Assembly + Spare time = ...

I'm a big fan of the good old-fashioned 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System. I enjoy the fun of playing the classics with a real Nintendo controller, as opposed to on emulators. That's why I built an interface to my computer to do just that.

However, I've been one-upped by many people who have taken further steps. People such as those who are writing the emulators we all enjoy. People such as those who are devoted hardware hackers.

I was so impressed by one of them that I had to give it a glowing review -- meet the Devtendo! Who wouldn't want to couple their PC to the NES through its controller port?

High on my wishlist is a programmable flash-ROM based NES cartridge... and it seems like people are working on it.

More Bush Science

Ok, even though we have a majority in the federal government that frowns upon sex in general, under any circumstances (except when it's for making babies, when it's less sinful), I'd at least expect Congress to support measures to reduce teen pregnancy and STD transmission.

Heck, morals aside, it can be seen as a pragmatic position! Teen pregnancy and STD's are bad things for the US.

That said, it seems like the radical right have been up to it again. I'm sick of seeing deliberate misinformation being propagated in textbooks designed for children -- especially ones who have been demonstrating that they desparately need simple facts that could save their lives!

Who would have thought that saying something like the following would be so controversial: "Condoms are not foolproof. Abstinence from _all_ sexual activity is the only 100% sure way to avoid pregnancy. But, condoms are proven to reduce the chances of pregnancy and STD transmission." Getting basic biology facts wrong at this point should be near criminal.

I suppose it's just the first of many examples to come in the next for years to blur religion, school, science, and politics in a move that gets Congress and the Administration short-term political gains at an untold cost to an entire generation of American children.

Energy Policy and ANWR Oil

With the newfound Republican majority in the Senate, President Bush's new energy policy will focus on a contentious issue: drilling oil in Alaska's ANWR wildlife reserve. The theory: there's 11 billion barrels of oil out in there. We can then extract the oil. The realistic argument: There's lots and lots of wildlife that has already been disturbed by previous drilling. Plus, we'd need to build a new pipeline for the oil anyway. But the pipelines aren't an issue. There's support for $20 billion for that. For $20 billion, the US could build two ITER's for itself! I suppose the prospect of environmentally safe fusion power isn't worth funding on a reasonable level. After all, fusion would last humanity the rest of its existence, while oil can last us (depending on who you ask) 50-150 years.

The Wonders of Electronic Voting and Ohio

Well, now that Kerry has conceded the race, the AP (and CNN) have reported that electronic voting machines gave Bush thousands of extra votes.

Granted, this has only ben proven in one county. Who's to say that it didn't happen elsewhere? It's not like there's a voter-verifiable paper trail or anything like that. This is just another story that really gets to me -- electronic voting is a Bad Idea in its current implementation.

When the computer scientists and electrical engineers building the voting machines are giving them a thumbs up (and better yet, the software that they're running is open source, for interested persons to inspect), THEN I'll consider the prospect of e-voting.

Bush Wins 2nd Term

I, like millions of other Americans, have stared at the newspapers and television reports with disbelief at the state of the Presidential election.

When we see the Supreme Court stacked with conservatives willing to overturn Roe v. Wade, privitization of Social Security, polluters continuing to write our environmental protection laws, science committee members disappearing from Presidential teams because the facts they advocated ran counter to Administration policy, it's not because I supported it! No, sir -- I can proudly say that I opposed all of these things Nov. 2.

How bad to things need to get before the average American will actually open their eyes to the world? Do we need to write discrimination into the Constitution? ("All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others," to quote Orwell.) Maybe with an _informed_ electorate things would have been different. But our crappy schools don't produce (on average) citizens of the world -- or even of the US.

I'm sad. Sad for the state of the Nation, sad for the state of science in the country, and sad for the millions of people in the middle class that are continuing to be stomped on by the Good Ole' Boys in Washington.

At least MN and WI both made the right choices...

Exile Not Dead!

I am pleasantly surprised to find that the Exile team has actually resurfaced from the depths of DNS on a new web host.

Let's see what becomes of the project now; I'm still waiting to see their demo release!

Lost Hydrogen Bomb Found

Over at CNN I found a disturbing story about a hydrogen bomb that was lost off the coast of Georgia (yes, the USA Georgia) in the height of the Cold War.

Well, we found it. While the Air Force insists that the bomb has no plutonium trigger (so that it can't go thermonuclear) and should remain 'irretrivably lost.'

I don't suppose it's too bad in this case (some of the others cited at the end of the article are far worse) -- but it reminds me of a quote from Broken Arrow: "I don't know what scares me more. The fact that we've lost a nuclear weapon, or that it happens so often you have a name for it!"

Exile Project Dead?

Well, after a little over two weeks of DNS bounces, it would appear that the Ultima VIII:Exile project has closed up shop after several years.

The idea was a great one -- re-create Pagan with the assistance of the Neverwinter Nights game engine. To fix lingering plot holes (and discuss them at great length).

The Exile project was what made me excited about Ultima again, and was repsonsible for motivating me to create my Ultima 8 guide. It's a shame to see it go.

Fun with Plasma

I figured it'd be a good idea to update the main page, since I haven't done so in quite some time! The main reason behind this has been my new position as a grad student at UW-Madison researching plasma physics with the Pegasus Toroidal Experiment research group (website here).

I've been doing all sorts of stuff, from computer programming to plumbing. It's been fun playing with things like plasma guns! (Nope, no Doom-esque destruction -- thankfully -- but pretty cool nonetheless.)

I suppose I'll just have to see how my rosy opinion of the job changes when classes start, although I think it'd be pretty hard to change my opinion that doing fusion research is both cool and fun at the same time.

This Land...

A family member referred me to this wonderful flash parody that I think is worth the 3.7 MB download!

Rare Quick and Good Action in Washington

It seems like President Bush will be signing a new bill soon -- and it's one that just about everyone can agree on: reforming the school lunch program so that it's easier for hungry, poor kids can get free lunches. (This is S.2507 for those who are interested.) Not bad for a bill introduced on June 7th. If only this nonpartisan action could be more regular on the hill! (Then again, it is an election year... who wouldn't vote for this bill?)

Story on CNN here.

Nuclear Arms Control, right from the Bush Campaign

I read a very scary quote today from Rep. Porter Goss, R-FL, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, from an article on CNN, in reference to a Kerry speech claiming the Bush administration has reduced funding for accounting of nuclear materials that are capable for building nuclear weapons:

"I also think it's unrealistic and dangerously naive to assume that we're going to get all the nukes in a lockbox somehow," Goss said.

"I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. The effort is worthwhile, but I don't think you're ever going to get 100 percent."

I think it's great that something as important as keeping tabs on nuclear weapons is such a high priority.

What about that bomb that slips through the cracks?

A Bit of Social Commentary

I was alerted to the existence of an educational and fun game the other day regarding our President, George W. Bush.

It is a bit crude at times, but I believe that it is well worth playing through at least once.

Give it a look: http://www.emogame.com/bushgame.html

!Fun With System Crashes

After approximately 18 months of service, my expleteve deleted Maxtor 96147H8 hard drive began randomly failing on sector read/writes.

A Maxtor representative arrogantly blamed me for the hard drive failure, accusing me of dropping the drive. When given a hardware diagnostic code from Maxtor scanning software, the representative confirmed that the drive was defective.

Of course, the stated minimum lifetime of the drive is five years. While the warranty on the drive expired last November. Which means I am out of a POS hard drive.

Linux was able to warn me that the drive was on fire and falling from the heavens. Windows just crashed. Fortunately, I was able to recover much of the (important) data on the drive and save to a local NTFS partition.

When I removed the defective drive (and unfortunately my new Linux partition), Windows happily told me that I had a pirated copy and refused to boot. So -- I get to nuke my Windows partition too!

So, I've spent more than 6 hours today messing around with my machines, getting angry at Maxtor for making such crappy products -- and then blaming me for their failure. ("Total Customer Satisfaction" my ass.)

Moral of the story: Maxtor and Microsoft both suck.

20 More Reasons to Dislike Microsoft

Well, it looks like we get to patch away some 20-odd new complete security vulnerabilities with the latest patches from Microsoft. I, for one, am sick of the whole process! I don't like having complete remote exploits on systems that are facing the Internet. So, I'm working on Making the Switch to Fedora Linux, the latest incarnation of Red Hat's old desktop distribution. Things have been going well so far! For those without the requisite free time to learn a new (and really fun) OS, I guess it's time to visit Windows Update again...