Journals

Military junkyard time!

Ok, so today i was on a private military junkyard. There is a lot of junk there, scrap metal, weapon parts, missile parts, old computers, etc.

I climbed more than 50 times up and down trough everything. There are lots of 1980s hardware components there, most of it is in no way near usable shape, but i managed to scrap some stuff.
What i found interesting out there is this Hard Disc drive from 1980s:You see, this thing is from 1982, and it weights around 20kg. It has 2 connectors on it, and a ticket. On the ticket it says:

700MB Mainframe Data drive

Imagine that! 700MB in early 1980s! And its like 20kg. Amazing if you ask me. Imagine that monster mainframe with such a hard drive in that time, pretty cool. Also it was made in Korea.
When i think about it, most of the things on that junk yard were from Korea and Chips Japan.

Ive found some IBM computers, DOS era, 1986 or so, but they were in a horrible shape, most of them were rusted and squished/smashed. What i found EXTREMELY interesting, is that an IBM with an 20MHz cpu had a PCI like card in it, and PCI was made in 1993! This is quite amazing, that IBM also had on-board EGA, memory modules + extension, an addon card with memory chips on it, and an HDD SCSI adapter card (Old SCSI).
I couldnt take pictures so i cant show you how many cool stuff is there.
Any way, take a look at these, i took these pictures for a friend of mine, electronics engineer, that i trade parts with.

http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/6229/img1833uj.jpg
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/530/img1834oz.jpg
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/4280/img1835o.jpg
http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/2948/img1836r.jpg
http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/2679/img1837p.jpg
http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/2186/img1838mr.jpg
http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/2071/img1839kg.jpg
http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/5416/img1840rq.jpg
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/3070/img1845xm.jpg
http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/6660/img1846p.jpg
http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/9959/img1847uu.jpg
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/6200/img1849jd.jpg
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/3553/img1850y.jpg
http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/4681/img1851gy.jpg
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/9544/img1852x.jpg
http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/3710/img1853u.jpg

You can see processors and addon cards, pay attention to the PCI like card.
Also, i found an Sound Blaster CT1600 PRO2, with that i have 2 PRO cards from Sound blaster ISA age, CT2230 and CT1600, only CT1500 left :>

Hope you find this journal as interesting as much as i found exploring this junk yard. Damn my hands hurt from moving all that junk :I

Went GoodWill Hunting again yesterday. Found quite a few PC games like:
Postal
Rainbow 6
Air Warrior 2
Blade Runner: The Game
And for the grand finale:
Quake 2! Awesome!

Unbelievable. I actually found some of my really old maps on an old obscure CD lost in my cupboard. Playing through them and some are so awful but there's some goodness in there.

Who thinks I should bundle them up and post them in the vault? I reckon someone will have some fun with these and I'd like to see what people think about my old stuff.

I found maps I'd completely forgotten I'd made.

I ate some trout yesterday......from Australia...

I was thinking about fish names and then I realized that "carp" is "crap" in my language.

Another terrible mod play through for you all. As requested, I played through MCPOKER again. It was worse than I remember and it is now gone from my hard drive forever.

Really boring playthrough here

Again, let me know of any awful mods (no more troll mods) and I will run through them. Cheers.

A few days ago there was this massive electric storm. A voltage peak came in and screwed up my router, and through it, the cable modem and the ethernet port on my computer.

I just happened to have a spare router (Linksys, it sucks but it'll do) and the ISP sent me a new cable modem today. So I bought a PCI Ethernet card and it all seems to work now.

While I was at it, I did some general cleanup and replaced the ANCIENT thermal paste on the processor. 8 years of continuous usage should be enough to warrant such cleanup.

Star Trek: The Original Seried - Remastered: ReviewRight. So, i'm making my way through the Original Star Trek Series now, after previously watching ST:Enterprise And ST:Voyager recently.

My first impression is for the time, i feel the physical props and sets are pretty damn good for the time, if not so much the writing and makeup, and i keep reminding myself that a show of this nature had been done/tried before not.

For those unaware, Paramount has updated all the original video/beam/viewscreen effects of the show with up-to-date CGI, which makes the shows much easier on the eyes if you've ever watched the original original series.I've obviously caught rerun episodes of Star Trek on the tube before, but not with any regularity, and i'd rarely sit through an entire episode. Watching the episodes concurrently is pretty interesting and great improvements are made very early in the series from the first episode.

Character development and the "feel" of Spock and the others is much improved for the most part by episode 3 or 4, but the writing just seems to stay pretty cheeze/bad for every episode i've watched. Again, I keep reminding myself this show was made in the late '60s, but implausible plot lines remain implausible, and over-simplified plots remain too simple.

That said, you can't help but enjoy the interplay between the original cast, as they all "click" together very well, which now makes it easy to understand how they were able to take re-purpose the original series into a very successful movie franchise with the same players.Though i'm enjoying the show for the most part, I am finding myself FF though some episodes or skipping altogether because the story is sometimes that bad. I have high hopes that seasons 2 and 3 will improve the overall believability of the show.

Verdict: The worst Star Trek series i've watched, but it's the first, so you still have to hold a place in your heart for genesis of the franchise. =P

Nextup for me after watching seasons 2 and 3, will be ST:Deep Space Nine, which i can't wait to watch. ^_^

I fucking hate dubstep.
Try to convince me that dubstep is good.
I'll listen to your songs and I'll tell you if you have converted me.
Edit: Well that was a learning experience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3rhQc666Sg

Nobody here speaks Russian do they?
I decided to open the little tin that came with my gas mask, and inside I found several round, clear disks and two small pieces of paper, which seemed to be instructions for use and manufacturer's info. I've heard they're supposed to be antifog lens inserts, or some kind of emergency replacement lens, but I'd prefer to know for sure. I spent some time copying the characters into Google Translate, but that didn't provide much clarification other than the fact that they were manufactured in 1972. I've made an image of the text, as I'm not sure if TWHL works with cyrillic text, and the pieces of paper were too small to get a clear enough photo with my iPod.The top paragraph is printed on one side of one sheet, the second on the other side, and the two characters at the bottom are stamped on the tin. The second piece of paper only had the number 44 on it.

I've a slight confession to make. I've no idea if Archie knows of this place , but a good few years ago this shop , the "Jolly Rodger" managed to break about every piracy law ever. The guy literally just bought games , bypassed their security systems , and then sold them for a much lower price.My confession is that this is how I acquired my first copy of Half-Life , along with opposing force and a shit ton of maps. At the time I was only about 8 so I didn't give a shit , but then some time ago - when Steam started to become prevalent - I decided I'd go out and genuinely buy the game. When I activated the game , I'd also managed to get Opposing force and Blue shift with it as well! Rewarding me for being a genuine customer for once!

I just had to give money to Valve for what they've done!

Got a playthrough video for you guys.

So I played through a mod called The Night Things. I chose that mod because it had a pretty low rating on Planet Phillip and I thought it might be entertaining to do a video playthrough with commentary after last weeks live playthrough had a total viewer count of 1 person.

Here's the vid.

If you know of any terrible SP mods that you want me to play through in a video then let me know. Links always helpful.

Cry of Fear journal: Not what you would expect if you read this.

So the first thing I'd like to say about this mod is the 1.6 GB download size. I think this is a good thing because it means moar content, which is definitely better than less new content. I commend the team for putting more than 2 GB of work into this mod. Now on to the mod gameplay by 2muchvideogames.

I went into the mod and typed 'map t0a0'
And so, Simon got off at the Hazard course, where a holographic assistant will show him how to use the Hazardous Environment Suit. Unlike most people in Black Mesa, Simon has a stamina bar and he soon got tired from bunnyhopping around like an idiot. The door opens.

Simon moves around in his HEV suit until maybe it can fit him like a second skin. But it didn't, and he accidentally fell into the canal below. Simon apparently has a very strong allergic reaction or something to water, because as soon as he goes underwater, everything turns pale while not unlike the effects of a flashbang. Fps also drop drastically. Simon wades through the water by waving his arms like a swimmer, but apparently the water has so strong of an reaction on him that Simon, still dazed, makes swimming movements with his arms even when out of the water! So, cry of fear when you go swimming.

Simon, unlike most people, cannot fathom ladders. He does not know what to do with them, similar to Chell from Portal. Ladders remain a mystery for these fine-minded individuals.

Simon jumps through pipes and crawls under pipes, under the supervision of nobody. He then learns to jump into pipes, and when he does, the holographic assistant (who hasn't said a thing since Simon's arrival) suddenly blurts out 'Nice job.'

Simon makes several more jumps with the help of a running start, which drains his stamina. But there is one more style of jumping he needs to learn. Long jumping requires its own module, that Simon equips. With it, Simon jumps like a headcrab clear across the room and worthy of an Olympic medal. But up ahead was a lift.

Goaded by the silent holographic assistant, Simon rides the lift up, and now that he is up here there is only one way down. Simon did his best to hit the floor below and resulted in breaking his leg. Simon limps to the next area, where there was no wall mounted healthkit.

Up ahead are some boxes that block Simon's way. There was nothing on the table. Simon jumped over the boxes, but there was no way he could break the grating to proceed. Simon sought to cheat his way through, but found that there was no quicksaving in the game! He issued a Cry of fear. How can he do anything without the quicksaving? I think he's screwed.

POSTMORTEM: Subject failed to complete the Hazard Course.

Yeah.

So Frictional Games and The Chinese Room (of Dear Esther fame) are working together on the next Amnesia game, "A Machine for Pigs".

They're shaking up the formula and getting some genuine writing talent backing them. If you've followed Frictionals dev-blogs you'll see they've done some major work on the HPL engine, too. Very exciting.