(formerly)tangentmind.org

Ok...so maybe it's the sound card manufacturers fault about the mixer settings and not alsa. Still, I have found proof of what I'm talkinag about.. Nasty.

There was an article on Gamasutra a few days ago about Steve Purcell, the creator of Sam and Max. Apparently he's working at Pixar now, and has been for a while. He has this to say about getting back into video games, "Would I get back into games? Sure. The [Sam & Max] license is back in in my hands now so we'll see what happens in the near future. In the meantime, when I'm not working at Pixar, I'm exploring other bizarre concepts, doing some painting, and cobbling together material for my website which will be called Spudvision.com."

So, the Sam and Max license is back in his hands now...I think, and hope, that that means there will be a new Sam and Max game sometime soon. You can read the full article here.

Steve Purcell owning the license might be part of the reason why these Sam and Max animations by Joe White, an animator for Sam and Max 2, popped up on his web page. I'm not sure if all, or any of them were part of Sam and Max 2. My favorite one is Jango Fett running. It's pretty much just him running, but I think it's classic.

Mixnmojo.com
Also, if you've played a Lucas Arts adventure game. Mixnmojo.com might be an interesting site to frequent.

Maybe it's not alsa's fault, but after multiple attempts and many hour spent just trying to find out how to set, in Linux, ALSA's damn mixer settings so that the audio comes out of the channels like it does in Windows, I still can't get it. 5.1 just won't work right. There are like 50 different mixer settings in alsamixer. How many years has ALSA been around? They can't just write a more simple mixer or at least an explanation of what all those settings do? I just want 5.1 audio. I don't want to waste my damn time screwing around with this crap that should have been polished ages ago. RTFM? What manual? I check the stupid manuals and found no explanation of the stupid mixer settings.

Maybe I just need to find a better search engine, because google lately seems to almost never give me anything I'm looking for. It's all just forum links where someone say something stupid...or a blog where someone says something stupid. Waste of time.

I would stick with Windows permanently for the sole reason that audio works the way it should, but the stupid OS blue screens on me when I try to watch movies. I really hate computers. They never evolve, they only get faster.

I'm not up to date on my GUI terminology, but you know those menus that roll out like the Windows start menu? Well, most of those menus have sub menus that have sub menus etc...I just thought of a good way to improve them. The sub menus should all have a double click feature where you can assign a default link in that submenu to that submenu. For example, instead of opening up the mozilla firefox directory and clicking on "mozilla firefox" you can simply double click the mozilla firefox sub menu and it automatically opens the mozilla firefox link. I think that would be neat and helpful.

Also, as long as I'm on User Interfaces. I think that the real issue with Linux not overtaking the desktop world is simple. It seems like most linux programmers believe that everyone should read the manual before knowing how to use the software. However, simply graphical user interfaces shold never really need a manual. I mean, all the simple configurations and actions should be easily accessible by searching through a couple of menus or options. No one should ever have to touch a console. Furthermore, half the time, or more, the manual is the problem itself. Not all linux programs are well documented. Sometimes it takes an hour of reading just to find some simple mundane option. All simple mundane tasks should be have a simple interface, like a light switch. Imagine if you had to open up a console on your wall every time you wanted to turn the light off and on. What a huge waste of time and energy. Furthermore, many people want an interface that doesn't require a manual simply because they don't really have the time to read manuals or they simpley would rather do something more productive like...I dunno cure cancer or make a living or love their wife and kids. That's a large portion of the working world. As long as Open Source user interfaces cannot accomplish the simplicity of the light switch for simple tasks, then open source software will never be right for a large portion of the working world.


Note to self:
Next time in Gentoo try out audio software(hydrogen, ardour, wired, and rosegarden)
and fix that damned ALSA channel problem - might require a kernel update/recompile
or install Ubuntu and hope it doesn't have the problem

I just had a thought while I was making some chocolate milk for myself. I believ that everything consumable in this world is probably toxic in large enough quantities and everything in this world is probably non-toxic in small enough quantities too. Therefore, what the FDA should do about food and the obesity epidemic is tell people what quantites are linked with weight gain, or diabetes or whatever the problem with consuming to much of that food is. There should be warning, or a least a comment telling where to find more information. For example, they could simply but a generic notice with a link. For example, something like "Warning: consuming more than 1 serving of this product per day has been linked with excessive weight gain. For more information see http://www.fda.gov/stopeatingsomuchfatso/ or call 1800fdalove" or something similar. Or maybe something more simple like, "Eating too much of products in this food may cause diabetes. See http://www.fda.gov/diabetes/"

It would be an incredibly good way to warn people about how much is too much. The costs of studies to validate some of the claims may be enormous though. I think it would be worth it. Most of the studies have probably already been done anyway. I mean, at least on generic stuff like partially hydrogenated oils and sugar. As it is, I think the FDA just kind of leaves us to fend for ourselves. Bastards.

Random link of the moment:
http://www.mixnmojo.com/ - If you've ever played a game made or published by Lucas Arts, this is a sight you might want to check out. Especiallyl if you were a fan of Lucas Arts original content like Monkey Island or Maniac Mansion. There is news about LAs latest stuff and what the ex-employees of Lucas Arts are doing now.

If you, or anyone you know is using or even ever thinking a bout using the file sharing client "Emule" then you absolutely must block some IPs for security reasons. Now, you could get some software that would compile a large list for you but the nice folks at bluetack.co.uk have a pregenerate large list. I don't now how often they update it, but it's basically a text file and it's over 6 Mbs now. I couple years ago it was at least half that, and probably a sixth. That's a lot of ips.

In emule you can simply go to options, and then copy and paste the url in "Update from URl", press load, and after some downloading of the file, you're done. Much safer, much more secure. The ipfilter.dat url might work in other file sharing clients too. Amule is one possibility.

Disclaimer: I'm not promoting the sharing of copyright material. If you can buy it, and it's worth buying, do so. It's always more satisfying that way, anyway. However, it can be nice to try before you buy...especially on $30,000 software, or music you've never heard a note of, but that's not to the point...I think. Whatever. I'm tired.

I was thinking that if I keep posting stuff on here that I learn, eventually I'll be able to simply search this blog for all the things that I forget. When I get alzheimers at an incredibly early age and can't remember where I put the underwear that I thought I was wearing, I can always search this blog and find out some of the things I've forgotten. Whoopie!

So, I was trying to get this SIS 6326(I think that's right...) video card to use Direct Rendering on this old computer I have in my room, in Ubuntu Linux. SIS's video drivers for linux(SIS's video department is now a separate ocmpany called XGI), and subsequently XGI's, really suck.

So one guy, Thomas Winischhofer, out of the goodness of his heart and necessity(he had a laptop with an SIS chipset) wrote a driver for them and has continued to maintain it. While I was looking for some info on trying to get Direct Rendering to work, I happened across something on the forum that he said that I thought was really funny. Someone asked him what someone would have to do to develop a video driver for a video chipset and this was his reply:

"Method A)

1. Find hardware documentation
2. Read hardware documentation
3. Add support for memory size detection, memory bandwidth calculation, mode setting, HWCursor, 2D acceleration, eventually Xv by providing driver primitives that do all this.
4. Spend time with your girlfriend.
5. Be happy.

Method B)

1. Spend days and nights for weeks to figure out how the hardware might work, by writing different values to registers and try to find out what they do.
2. Help your girlfriend to move out of your appartment.
3. Spend further days and nights to figure out how the hardware might work.
4. Eventually implement memory size detection and mode switching to the driver.
5. Be spammed by folks claiming the driver is "dead slow", and demanding futher features.
6: Get stuck with driver development for nearly 5 years.

Method C)

1. Spend weeks with trying to find out how hardware works that you don't even have, by sending out driver binaries to folks and analyzing logs that come back days later.
2.-6. like Method B).

While A) is to be preferred, it often is B) or C) in reality."


It's kind of sad, because it's true, but I think it's funny.

Tom Cruise kills Oprah

I think I kind of overreacted about Buslink. I was just mad because my mp3 player didn't work. Their website seems to be in some kind flux. I was looking at it yesterday and it changed the same day. I check it the next day and it changed again. It could be a little more professional looking too. They have a support forum but it's not linked to. I think maybe the support is run by one guy. He was the one I saw most in the forum and I think he might be the same guy I talked to when I called the support. Maybe it wasn't the same guy I talked to, but it's at least the same guy who e-mailed me after I called. I never got a reply from the e-mail I sent. Maybe the support guy(Spike is his name) was just too busy.
This is what happened when I called tech support. I called, got an automated message. Pressed 1 for PC products, music started playing. It was "It's a beautiful morning" or whatever that song is called...I think birds were tweating. A voice said "Ahhhh, what a great day" then an automated message was heard and the voice said "Well it was!" and at the point the support guy picked up(possibly Spike?). I think he just said "Hello" so I kind of stammered and then told him my mp3 player didn't work and told him what was wrong with it. He told me he would e-mail me a bios flashing program and then, if it didn't work, e-mail support and tell them I needed to replace it.
That was it. He really didn't say much. He didn't lead me through anything. He just said he would send me the e-mail. I didn't know if I should stay on the line and wait for it to come or just hang up. I hung up, but he didn't say bye or good luck or thank you for calling or anything so I wondered if maybe I was supposed to stay on the line. The e-mail had instructions for running the program. I used it and it worked. What's odd is that the bios revision in the flash utility was exactly the same as the one on my mp3 player, so it didn't flash it to a newer version. Maybe the rom got corrupted or something. I don't know.

Edit: I just checked and there is a new option called "Navigation", I think it allows me to flip through the songs and displays about three of them, instead of only the one that it displays in normal mp3 mode. So, it must be different. There are many differen't 3-in-1 mp3 player based on the same sigmatel design. They all look very similar though. Kind of like this. I have read they some of them have different functionality though. Most, if not all, of them have this little multifunctional toggle on the top that works as a button and can move back and forth from navigation. My toggle lets me fast forward reverse and change songs. The volume is a separate thing but I don't think all of them work that way so this bios might be for those devices that don't have the tracking toggle or something. I dunno.

This whole ordeal makes me wonder if maybe buslink is only like a few employees. I don't think buslink is too bad, but if you're looking for a 3-in-1 mp3 player device with the sigmatel design, one of them with usb 2.0 support might work better than the buslink device which uses USB 1.1.

For the record, the problem I had was that I was copying a file on the mp3 player and weird files and folder started showing up on the device. I couldn't delete them or alter them in any way. They had weird character names like you might see if you went to a japanese sight and didn't have a japanese font. The files either said they were 0kb in size or that they were something insane like 60 GB. After that, the device said it was full and that it had no mp3s or voice files on it. The "about" section said that the device was 32mb - it really has 256mb - and had no space free. So I formatted it, but that didn't help; it only got rid of the weird files. I could copy files onto it but the device still said it had no space and no mp3 and was 32mb.

I can post the firmware flashing utility if anyone else out there has this problem and and needs to fix it.
Note: I used the words firmware, rom, and bios interchangeably.

I think I can safely say, don't buy buslink devices. Their website doesn't have any support and the buslink mp3 player that I bought has decided to stop working right. The Buslink device might work right, but if you need drivers or manuals or support, you're probably going to have to search for it. Their support e-mail address doesn't even work, and I wouldn't be suprised if their phone number didn't work either. I don't know if they're going out of business or what, but that's just ridiculous.

Also, the CPB is not going to slash funding for NPR and PBS, but to quote moveon.org:
"Your petition signatures and phone calls helped restore $100 million of funding for NPR, PBS and local public stations. But public broadcasting is still under attack. On the same day the House restored funding, Kenneth Tomlinson, the Republican chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), rammed through his choice for CPB's new president: a former Republican National Committee co-chair.

Tomlinson is on a crusade to inject his politics into public broadcasting. He insisted on a new PBS show devoted to the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board. And he's under investigation for secretly spending our tax dollars on a "liberal bias" witch hunt to intimidate journalists at NPR and PBS. Many people, including 68 members of Congress, are calling on Tomlinson to resign for attempting a partisan takeover of public broadcasting."

I think this article is incredibly believable, and probably true. Ipod is bigger than Mac now. That might be why Apple doesn't seem to be bothered by the fact that they will probably lose huge amounts of PC sales right before they transition. Maybe there's a little more behind it though. Maybe Intel has a vested interest in it too, like "I, Cringely's" article said.

Whatever. I swear the whole technology world has always been this big scam. Just big executvies preying on their intelligent, dilligent workers and then preying on their customers. Bunch of black hearted con artists.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.org/ - The best Audio ripper out there
http://www.vcdimager.org/ - The best free vcd tool I've found
http://www.burnatonce.com/ - The best free 1:1 cd copying software for windows. Will burn vcdimager images.

Also, I made an 8 second animation for 3dsMax class. You can find it here. Unless I hit my 10 mb a month bandwidth limit or whatever. Which means that the video file was downloaded ~20 times.

I stole a carpet from another room and put it under my chair so it doesn't role as much. I also got a new air conditioner for my room, so hopefully, once it's actually installed which may be as much as weeks from now, it won't get so hot.

The cost of my doctors visits and medicine is now closer to $350 and will jump by about $65-80 if I go and buy zyrtec. I'm waiting to see if I can get some free samples to see how it will affects me. I've already bought one expensive prescription that I stopped taking because of how it affected me, so I'd rather not make the same mistake again. At least this time I remembered to ask whether there was a generic brand that was cheaper. There's not.

I'm not factoring in the cost of my glasses either, which was about $190, and I'm still having trouble focusing and getting headaches from wearing them. I will probably also be going to a psychiatrist, because the doctor seems to think that what I'm suffering from is psychological. She may be right to a certain degree, but mood disorders I can handle. Constantly feeling intoxicated and not being able to rememember anything, I can't; I don't believe that has a psychological cause.

I don't currently know how I will pay for college next semester, so I think I might not go. At least then I will have more time to try to figure out what's wrong with me. Maybe I'll just move to Canada. Medical expenses are much cheaper up there.

http://www.moveon.org/publicbroadcasting/

"The House is threatening to slash half of the public funding for NPR and PBS, starting with "Sesame Street," "Reading Rainbow" and other commercial-free children's shows. Sign our petition to Congress opposing these massive cuts to public broadcasting."

This is no joke. The world would be an altogether worse place to live without public broadcasting. Help keep it alive.

http://www.ftc.gov/spam/

http://www.archive.org/details/night_of_the_living_dead

From 1968. The one that started it all.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_Security_Enhancement_Act_of_2003:
"Some commentators speculated that Ashcroft did not actually believe that any of the measures outlined in the bill would be passed, but that he deliberately asked for such radical measures to preclude controversy when a trimmed down version is later introduced which contains somewhat less far-reaching plans. It has also been suggested that, had the text of the bill not been leaked, the administration would have delayed its deployment to co-incide with a future terrorist attack in an attempt to secure a wider basis for approval of its measures."

Future terrorist attack? WTF? Did the government let the first attack happen to gain approval for something(i.e. The war on terrorism, the patriot act, the war on iraq, etc.)? Were they planning to do it again?

The Domestic Security Enhancement Act is considered the "Patriot Act II", as if the first wasn't enough. Scary stuff. John Ashcroft is a raving, psychotic lunatic. I am overjoyed that he resigned as Attorney General.

While his resignation probably makes the United States a safer place for everyone to live, I'm still seriously considering moving to Canada when I get the chance. After paying over $200 for a doctor's visit that, I don't think, even really helped the decision seems a little more wise.

I had this idea years ago. Via is pretty cool sometimes.

Once again I totally messed up my interview with the doctor. I couldnt' remember what I wanted to say or what she said or anything. I just kind of rambled and she told me she thought I should take some allergy medication and see a psychiatrists. I told her I didn't have any money and couldn't continue treatment. She told me there was a psychiatrist place that didn't cost money, or something like that, but I don't remember what it was called. I've had this urge, since I left the doctors office to burst into tears or throw myself in front of a car, or tear something apart or curse until my air runs out. I tried to take a walk and listen to "Life the Universe and Everything" audio tape to make myself feel better, and I think I felt better while I was walking but quickly felt much worse after I got home, and reality set back in, and the dog ate my food, like she always does when I leave it where she can reach it. Often when she does that it makes me want to kill her and I have to resist the urge. Today the desire suddenly jumped upon me a couple times and I couldn't resist the urge to kick her lightly.

I feel like I'm losing control of everything. I feel like I have no control over my thoughts or my memories or my life or anything. I feel like I'm slipping into this deep dark pit of helplessness. I can imagine that it might feel somewhat like being stuck in a nursing home. Maybe I'm getting dementia and alzheimers. I think I might take a nap.

I wish I was 7 again so I could tell everyone that I'm bored as hell, and I don't want drugs, I just want something interesting and challenging to do. It probably wouldn't help.

I think maybe I'll take a nap, or find a nice quite corner to sob.

I went by the eye doctor place(Optomologists? Opthomologists? Whichever, whatever...) and they told me that the vision thing was normal and after a three day weekend of excessive computer screen watching my brain should realise that the eyes no longer have to work so hard to focus and just relax. I was convinced that this must be true, so hopefully my eyes should be lolling about in the shade sipping magaritas in no time...maybe a week at most(which coincidentally is exactly when my class shall be over).

I also stole a little rug to put under my chair so it won't roll around so much and my room isn't so hot today because it cooled down outside from the rain.

I am about to go see the physician doctor in an hour so I can tell them how nasty the lexapro is and tell them that I'm too poor to continue with any sort of treatment. Whoopie!

I will probably repost then.

CARTOONS
The Internet Archive has a bunch of classic cartoons that have fallen into Public Domain because no one updated the copyright. They are quite awesome. Some could use some restoration, but overall they are not too bad. Lots of Betty Boop, Superman and some other Fleischer Cartoons. I will probably post more on the Fleischer Brothers and how, if things had been different, they could have been bigger than Walt Disney later.

In the mean time, check out the 'toons! Edit: there are more cartoons than just the "Film Chest" vintage cartoons. The Film Chest ones may be better quality though.

Wal-Mart also has some of the same cartoons on DVDs for $1, but the quality of the remastering varies greatly but DVDs are generally better quality video with a good deineterlacer.

For now, I must go get food before the appointment. I've been losing weight the last few years and I was all the way down to 140 lbs, from what was once around 160. I've decided to try to overeat to see if I can gain any of it back.

The food awaits...