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5-30-2007: Musings on four wheels
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This is the car of my dreams:
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This is the car of my nightmares:
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Scratch that out. This is the car of my nightmares:
Nothing like a cramped, underpowered scooter with tendencies for the brakes to fail, the engine to stall at the worst possible moments, the body to rust into powder, and/or for the electrical circuits to smoke and congeal together when all was said and done. Believe me: We used to own one!
5-27-2007: It's never too early for Halloween...
Thank John Passfield and the kind souls at Apogee and 3D Realms: Halloween Harry, the cult DOS computer game of 1993 also known as Alien Carnage, has been re-released as freeware!
The premise revolves around rescuing hostages held captive by zombies and alien invaders, and there are a number of innovative touches. The game itself had a rather convoluted history: A year after the fact it was reissued with a different title and a shuffled mission order; the former sounding more generic and the latter explaining why in its "Alien Carnage" incarnation crucial hints like "Remember 'R' for radar mode!" aren't dropped on the player until three-quarters of the way through.
![[Alien Carnage title screen]](new/carnage1.png)
![[Halloween Harry in action]](new/carnage2.png)
While a bit overshadowed by some of the other titles of its era like Doom, Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage had perhaps the best music, sound effects, and graphics of any side-scrolling game.
A caveat, though: Compatibility issues with newer computers were what caused this game to be discontinued from sale to begin with, so getting it running might be an adventure in and of itself. I have no issues running Alien Carnage on my P3/Win95 machine: A bit surprising, since the shareware version prompts me with a runtime error on the same system. Your mileage may vary, and it's worth checking out if you can!
5-17-2007: "Suffering the irrevocable judgment of God," indeed.
Jerry Falwell, televangelistic bigot and religious nut extraordinaire, died.
Cue the strains of "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead..."
5-6-2007: Time's Up
Wow: After four years at WVU, I'm ready to graduate. My finals week is over, and the commencement for the College of Creative Arts is just a weekend away.
One side-effect of graduating, however, is the fact that the days of this website being located at a WVU URL are numbered. Does anyone have suggestions of what to do concerning website hosting and the like?
Just in case the real site goes dead, I have an "outpost" at LiveJournal saved up for the purpose. It may come in handy for posting updates and the like in the immediate future, so don't forget to bookmark the link!
4-29-2007: Library (End-of-semester browser rant)
At the end of a semester's worth of research papers, there are few feelings better than returning all your cited books and interlibrary loan materials to the place they came. I don't know where I'd be without the libraries at WVU: They've proven their worth so many times that it's easy to lose count!
One thing in the libraries I've never found particularly useful, though, are the computers: I can search the catalog itself from home, and the software provided on the site leaves something to be desired. Although most of the staff computers surprisingly have Firefox installed, for the plebeian masses this option is not available. So, what this leaves is simple: The sight of dozens of students tied to computers, all willingly using Internet Explorer, day after day and year after year. For a guy like me, it's sufficient to drive one mad!
There's a guy in the Morgantown Linux user group who mans the library's computer systems, which tends to put himself in an awkward spotlight more often than not. In his words, he'd roll out Mozilla Firefox to the library "in a heartbeat"...if not for some IE-only tool about history consolidation he and the staff are too used to using. Never mind that this hasn't prevented Firefox from being deployed elsewhere at the university to some degree...and that before the library used Internet Explorer, they (and practically everyone else) used Netscape and got along just fine without the tool.
Of course, this is just one of many things that make me mad about the course of the "browser wars:" People jumped ship from Netscape to IE against their better judgment, then became dependent on proprietary IE-only features that made it difficult to jump back to Netscape/Mozilla. Which, beyond a doubt, was exactly what Microsoft wanted to begin with.
Now, back to my final research paper...
4-23-2007: All hail WVU's new lord and master
David Hardesty has been the president of West Virginia University for over eleven years. While I won't say he's perfect by any means, I have to say he's done a pretty good job at administering the place over the last decade.
But no more: Dr. Hardesty is retiring this summer, thus providing the need for a new president to take the reins. So, do the people who decide these things select Daniel Bernstine, a president of Portland State University? Or candidate Duane Nellis, provost at Kansas State and former dean at WVU? No, they select one Michael Garrison, an person with almost no higher-ed experience at all. In fact, all he really had going for him were his political connections...which may well have been why he was picked to begin with.
While the feedback in the paper in the wake of the news seems to paint a rosy picture, the actual mood prevailing on campus is more along the lines of "I'm glad I'm graduating now," and one veteran faculty senator has resigned.
Oh well; did I expect anything better?
4-18-2007: Reminisce and Report
There was a candlelight vigil at Woodburn Circle this evening in rememberance of Monday's shootings. It was impressive how many students were in attendance...the whole field was filled. I was there, too: It seemed the least I could do.
Growing up, my parents did their best to reinforce to me the concept that there was injustice in the world. I can't help but wonder if I'm a little tougher (and more cynical) because of that.
On a completely different and slightly more uplifting note, I noticed that Mozilla Thunderbird 2 was finally released today. Like Firefox 2, it has plenty of new features (extra-long toolbar notwithstanding). Unfortunately also like Firefox 2, it doesn't work reliably on Windows 95: It freezes out of nowhere if you click on the wrong message. It lasted long enough for me to snag a screenshot of, though.
If you're one of the other 99% who can run it, though, it's worth checking out. And checking your WVU MIX mail with too, no doubt.
4-16-2007: Crazy World
There were shootings on the Virginia Tech campus today. 33 people died...and I fear that number will get bigger. :-(
It's creepy. Blacksburg is only a couple counties away from my hometown. I've visited the city plenty of times, and Virginia Tech was my solid number-two choice when picking out colleges four years ago. It's a great place.
I can only imagine how awful it would be to have a friend or relative in college die...especially near graduation time. Even if you don't, it's news that shakes yourself up. It's not worth living your life in paranoia or fear over, though.
4-12-2007: The Electric Company to return?
Remember The Electric Company, the hilarious educationally-themed sketch show of 1971 to 1977?
I've heard rumors about the show being revived as a new program off and on again for some time, although nothing "official" has ever materialized. That was then: Just a few days ago, the news you see at right materialized at the bottom of this page.
In one hand, this is great news. I like The Electric Company as much as anyone; the concepts reinforced in the original show are timeless in implication, and sketch comedy never grows old. There are few intelligent shows oriented towards first- through fourth-grade kids any more, and a new series—if pulled off well—would be wonderful.
I have apprehensions, though; not least being that every new show CTW has cranked out from Ghostwriter on has been mediocre at best. Being revived years after the fact worked for Doctor Who, but cases like that are often the exception to the rule. Would a new series position itself as a "retro" '70s show, or something fresh, relevant, and not overly-sentimental? I hardly think the original Electric Company would have had any success if it had portrayed itself as a "retro" '40s show in the 1970s. Would a new cast be as talented as the Skip Hinnant et al of yore? Are they having auditions? Why don't they revive Square One TV too while they're at it?
I guess we'll find out in due course.
4-7-2007: The Computing & Technology Symposium: No More?
April is a month I tend to look forward to. The annual WVU Computing & Technology Symposium trade show comes around during that time: Two days of companies, departments, and vendors from all over manning tables, demonstrating technologies, and doling out souvenirs for the taking. In other words: Fun! I've enjoyed the annual CTS the last three years I've been here.
This year, though, I haven't heard a single word about the CTS being planned. The event is conspicuously absent from the WVU calendar. The designated website is now a dead link. Which all seems to lead to a simple conclusion: That after a decade and a half, they threw in the towel. Phooey.
I had been looking forward to deciding which Netscape/Mozilla T-shirt to wear to this year's event: A moot point now. Oh well; there's no COMDEX any more, either.
4-3-2007: The Diffusion of Wal-Mart and Economies of Density
Anyone else find this map creepy?
3-29-2007: Essential Firefox Extensions
One nice thing about Mozilla Firefox is how modular it is: A whole bunch of third-party functionality plugins (or "extensions") are available for the taking, and which IE fans can only dream of.
Obviously, some of these extensions are more useful than others. Some I can personally vouch for:
ChatZilla
A handy and simple-to-use Internet Relay Chat client that acts as a seamless component of the browser: An indispensible thing to have, assuming you can access IRC to begin with! This was actually bundled by default in the Mozilla suite of yore, and still is in SeaMonkey today.
Adblock Plus
This tool allows images and other types of content (such as Flash and IFrames) to be selectively blocked or hidden from view. Although primarily intended as a means of avoiding ads, the tool is highly flexible, supports wildcards, and allows you to block most anything you find annoying. Don't like the image right there? Right-click and Adblock it! There are plenty of possibilities. Browser performance does seem more sluggish with this extension enabled, though.
phpBB User Hide
This extension is a bit on the self-indulgant side, but indispensible nevertheless. It allows posts by specific members on phpBB-based forums to be ignored from sight: A fine thing to have whenever frequenting a message board compromised by, say, a poster who makes insults and inflammatory political statements at every opportunity. Unfortunately, this extension hasn't been updated for some time (although the 1.3 version available here works fine with Firefox 1.5...drop the file into your Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\extensions\ folder or the equivalent as necessary).
3-16-2007: Storm Front on the Dell
My mind must be on computers this time of year. Fully half of the entries I've posted in the last couple months have been on that sort of topic.
On that note, Dell has created something that I've actually found somewhat interesting: An "Idea Storm" website soliciting suggestions from people to improve their products. Imagine that!
Somewhat surprisingly, the number one proposal is offering "Pre-Installed Linux:" A nice idea actually, although I have a feeling that it would inevitably be half-arsed in its execution. Knowing Dell, "pre-installed Linux" would probably amount to one unpopular distribution being made available on one particular model of computer, unpromoted and hidden away on the website, priced more than an equivalent Windows Vista-infested machine, and quietly dropped several months after the fact due to "poor sales." Assuming such an option even came to fruition to begin with: In all likelihood, as soon as Microsoft got wind of the news, Dell could probably kiss their Windows volume discount goodbye.
Forgive me for being so pessimistic. I already have a set of suggestions for what computers should be like, although at this point I don't expect any OEM to act satisfactorily upon them.
Most of the proposals sound good to some degree (Incidentally, the blatant "Close your Indian call centers" idea seems to have conveniently vanished from the front page), but none of them change the fact that Dell is second only to Apple as the least likely company I'd consider buying a computer from. Any way the "Idea Storm" can do away with poor quality, proprietary components, mediocre service, and too many computers sold for their own good?
This is Andrew Turnbull, on his surprisingly-durable P3/Win95 box, signing off.
3-12-2007: Time Switching (pt. II)
Stop the press! As the case may be, you don't need to resort to setting your computer's clock the manual way twice a year after all.
In Windows 95 (and presumably other versions), there's a handy utility on your CD-ROM at admin\apptools\tzedit\tzedit.exe that allows time zone and Daylight Savings changes to be directly edited. With your current time zone selected, click the "Edit" button and change the "Start Day" to the second Sunday of March and the "Last Day" to the first Sunday of November. Then, you should be all set for years to come:
![[Edit Time Zone dialogue]](new/edittimezone.png)
(Thanks to Don for letting me know about this.)
3-11-2007: Time Switching
Daylight savings time is starting up early this year.
Personally I don't see how turning the clock forward four weeks early carries any benefit (I'd just as soon they get rid of DST altogether), but neither is this a big deal. Just set your computer's clock the manual way: That's what I had to do twice a year (before Windows 95) anyway.
As a side note, I decided to overcome my reluctance of using JavaScript to add a comment tally to the link below. Enjoy!
3-4-2007: IRC Idiocy
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is one of many Internet protocols (such as HTTP, FTP, e-mail, and Gopher) that exist, allowing in its own case for real-time chat conversations online.
Access to the system at WVU has been a bit on the screwy side, however. Until recently it was possible to connect to IRC channels on-campus without incident (as long as it wasn't by port 6667). For the last few months, however, any attempts on my part to connect to an IRC channel (regardless of port) have simply resulted in Chatzilla timing out.
To try getting to the bottom of things, I decided to inquire what the official residental network policy concerning IRC was. The reply was thus:
Mr. Turnbull,
We don't have a policy against using it, but the standard IRC ports are blocked because the University was the victim of many virus attacks using those ports.
ResNet Staff
West Virginia University Division of Student Affairs
The Morgantown Linux User Group mailing list paints a different picture, however:
All,
Just wanted to clarify my understanding of the situation. WVU OIT's blocking of irc is not just simple port filtering. They are instead doing stateful inspection and dropping any irc traffic. If it were simple port blocking, I'd be able to connect to freenode on port 80 as freenode runs an irc server on port 80 as well as the well known ports for irc. I'm doing what I can to get irc re-enabled, but it's slow going. Unfortunately, people at OIT seem to think irc is evil. Using their logic they should shut down all http and https traffic since sometimes those protocols are used in hacking.
IRC has in fact been blocked at WVU. I'm doing what I can to apply pressure to get it re-enabled but the process is going slowly. Welcome to bureaucracy. The good news is I think there is hope to get IRC re-enabled. The bad news is I think it is going to take months.
Regardless of the exact means, the fact seems to remain that IRC is for all intents and purposes unusable at WVU. This is doubly ironic not only because proprietary chat tools like AIM remain usable (and installed on lab computers!), but because official campus entities such as the library and aforementioned Linux user group use (or have used) chat on IRC channels themselves!
I'll leave my judgment at that note, although I won't hesitate to mention that the university has adopted "paranoid sledgehammer" IT policies many a time before. (*cough* *hack* MIX *cough*)