Captains Log

This will be a little different from previous log entries, today I'm writing about Tyrranus. This is a strategy game that you can play on the net. One of its strong points is its simplicity. It requires no download, no plug-ins or special java-enabled browsers. This also means though that it has none of the fancy graphics we've come to expect. It leaves the game up to your imagination and strategy planning ability. Basically you start with a planet that produces a certain amount of ships per turn, you use these to invade/conquer other planets and by acquiring new technology you can improve the ability of your ships, and the production of your planets. The goal is not total control of the universe but simply to "ascend" which is to reach a high level of technology. Then you get to start over again. There are a few different games to play in each with different time scales. The one I play has one turn every hour and as most travel between planets takes between 5-8 hours, I can log in once or twice a day and keep up with the action easily enough. Give it a try at; WERDNA

Today's topic: MuLinux (microlinux)-Written by M.Andreoli, m.andreoli@tin.it, ITALY, this is a version of linux where he has gone to great lengths to cut out unnecessary items. As a result you have a system that fits on a single floppy, add a few extras like the x-windows gui, vnc(described in my previous log entry), a c compiler etc.. and it still only amounts to a half dozen floppies. One of it's greatest appeals though is it's ability to run entirely in memory, this is great for a variety of reasons. First it enables someone to try out linux without making any permanent changes to their hard-drive. This avoids the re-partitioning that many beginners are nervous about(and rightly so as you can easily lose the contents of your hard drive with the wrong fdisk command). It also means you can run machines with no hard drive- just boot from the floppy then mount nfs from a server and off you go. If you only run it in memory none of the settings you choose are permanent so it's great for a quick trial of linux or just logging in temporarily. You'll need at least 2 floppies to try it out- the first is used to boot to a linux environment needed to format the second floppy (this is necessary as it uses special formatting to fit 1.77mb on the floppy). Another nice thing is that it will run on a 386 with 8mb of ram (I don't recommend trying the x-windows gui on one of these though) and runs great on a 486 with 16mb. So dust off that old pc and give it a try :) MuLinux

Today I'll write about VNC. This is a great application that lets you view a computer desktop remotely. What uses does this serve? Well I'll describe how I use it on my network- I have one machine in my living room, which I play games on, surf the net, watch dvd movies with and play around with video recording. This is networked with my computer room where I have my Linux server and several "project" computers I'm working on. In the bedroom I have a computer that answers my phone and serves as a gateway for my network to access the Internet, to avoid conflicts with the answering software I had to disable the dial on demand feature of this machine. Then in order to connect to the net I had to go into the bedroom and start the connection, then I could access it from the other machines. Now I can open a vnc window- start the dial up and surf away, all from the living room. I can also view my linux server X-desktop from within windows. Which means most of the time I don't even need a monitor hooked up to my server. And I can run a lot of my linux apps on my network with out rebooting my windows machine to linux. So check it out at; VNC

Now that I've started this log we'll see how many entries I make:) Today I'm writing about MAME (multi-arcade machine emulator). This software enables your pc to emulate the hardware in arcade machines. I've already mentioned this in my page about my arcade controller, but you don't need a custom controller to try MAME, It works with keyboard, mouse and joysticks. There are several versions for different platforms. The Dos version boasts the most compatability with a wide variety of games, but I had difficulty getting it to work with my soundblaster live(I don't have any free irq's for its Dos support to use) So I'm using the win32 version in windows98 and an x-mame version in linux. You can find links to all these at www.mame.net MAME

You also need Rom's to play the games. ROMS are the chips that make up the actual game program in an arcade machine. You can get these from old arcade machines or video junkpiles. Owning these entitles you to download rom-images which are zip files containing the programing that was in the original chips. These are mostly available at www.mame.dk. -happy gaming Roms

Check out; DivX:)

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