Slashdot Mirror

One cool feature mentioned in 4.5 is "iMix", which publishes your playlists to the iTMS for all to see. So out of curiosity, I tried to publish my "top 25 most played" playlist. Out of the 25 songs on the list, only seven were available at iTMS.

Sure, one could argue that I have eclectic taste in music, but on the other hand, they are missing some pretty big names: Radiohead, Frank Zappa, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Chick Corea...

On an unrelated note, I wonder if iTMS is going to start offering lossless files. That would be cool.

Since version 2, Winamp has been notorious for playing MOD, XM, S3M, and related files inaccurately. It fudges up a lot of the effects, particularly portamento (note slide) and key-off commands. You all should be using ModPlug Player to play these formats! It ain't perfect but it's the best Windows player there is.

Why get this player? So that you can drink deeply from the cup of BBS\Internet history! Check out some MOD sites and dig some chippy goodness!

SHAMELESS PLUG -- Be sure to scope out my MODs as well!

Here's a (hopefully) fast mirror for your enjoyment:
One
Two
Three

(Should finish uploading in a sec, be patient)

Here's a (hopefully) fast mirror for your enjoyment:
One
Two
Three

(Should finish uploading in a sec, be patient)

Here's a (hopefully) fast mirror for your enjoyment:
One
Two
Three

(Should finish uploading in a sec, be patient)

Mirror here

Picture of the Black Hole

Picture of the Black Hole

Here is a mirror of the Geocities-hosted Scotty quotes when/if the bandwidth overflows or whatever.
Just, uh, be gentle.

Mirror for the poor slashdotted site.

I haven't gotten this thing to recognize my card.

Since the page seems to be loading slow, I've mirrored it here.

Nuff respect to groups like ACiD and ICE for doing what they do with pride. While these two are arguably the biggest players in the ANSI and now "VGA" scene, they're certainly not the only ones still doing it and actively discussing it.

Be sure to check out telnet BBS's - same as the old POTS equivalent but with way more lines and generally better bandwidth (althogh displaying ANSI's is smoother via dialup). A list of active telnet BBS's can be found at The BBS Corner.

Before there was ANSI art there was ASCII. It's a little cheesy and rudamentary but it takes a lot of talent to represent visual art as typographic characters. IRC-ers will dig the ASCII block fonts. For some info on the history of PC art check out Textfiles.com Art.

Parallel to the art scene were the MOD (music module) and demo (megademo\intro\loader) scenes. These disciplines all began in the C64 days, most often seen accompanying cracked games with chippy SID tunes. Warez and demo began together as a sort of cyber-Pangea and though they have separated and flourished in their own way, they still occasionally accompany oneanother to this day. Thanks to products like Sk@le Tracker and ModPlug Tracker the MOD scene is still kicking.

While the popularity of ANSI has declined over the years, megademos are more popular than ever (particularly in Finland, Belgium, Germany, and thereabouts). Demo parties are bigger and badder than ever and are even covered on national television. For a very entertaining primer on the demo scene pick up a copy of the Mind Candy DVD Vol. 1. It's the best $16 you'll ever spend.

ANSI and demos seem to have shared a similar fate. ANSI, in all its blocky glory, is a testement to the speed and limitations of its time - the very definition of zeitgeist. As artists grew in number and in skill, more advanced techniques such as shading and emulating texture were implemented, but there's only so much that can be done with the medium. Demos, by definition, have much more freedom and were, in earlier times, a competition to code the newest, coolest, most efficient realtime effects. 3D video accelerators all but destroyed this pursuit and now the megademo has become more of a demonstration of design than coding. For all the demos you could ever hope to watch, check out The Hornet Archive.

And check out my MODs!

Well never see ads like this or this.
I made them myself in Photoshop!

Well never see ads like this or this.
I made them myself in Photoshop!

"The Build program is a kick. Building systems from salvaged parts gives is giving me a whole different perspective." Couldn't agree more. Combines my addiction with all things computer-related with something beneficial to society. Plus the place looks any living space I have been/will be in, except they have a hell of a lot more dead hardware than I could ever accumulate (although I did get a few "whoas" when I brought in all of this stuff in along with a 6x4x2' box full of other computer miscellany to donate).

Caught this one in Heathrow on my way back from Paris last April.

Works for me with the official November 7 nightly build. [Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6a) Gecko/20031107 Firebird/0.7+] http://s87708598.onlinehome.us/images/fb_gagsdate. jpg is a screenshot of it working. Paint Shop Pro was used to capture the cursor in the shot.

http://s86952514.onlinehome.us/files/games/halflif e2/hl2_src.rar

(btw, many guys pretend having successfully compiled it.. with vc 6 or .net)