First "Infogrames" buys Atari (computers/consoles), and now Midway (who seemed to just swallow up Atari Games (arcade)) is dropping coin-op.
Madness!!!!
Daleks and Borg (Was Re:Blake's 7, et al.)
on
Andromeda
·
· Score: 1
That reminds me...
I really want to make some kind of goofy video game that pits StarTrek's Borg ("assimilate! assimilate!") against Dr.Who's Daleks ("exterminate! exterminate!")
I've watched a few episodes of Andromeda and found it cheesy at best. I try to avoid it when possible. Fortunately, the other night, I caught another episode of Earth: Final Conflict. It's fairly enjoyable most of the time. The movement and style of the Talons is just so fun to watch. It can be a hokey show, but seems to have a good sense of continuity that shows like Star Trek, ST:NG and ST:Bore-ager lacked greatly.
Which brings me to my point... I can't believe that (while skimming) I didn't see anyone mention the classic BBC sci-fi "Blake's 7"! A show in which they killed off main characters! (And I don't mean the occasional "Tasha Yar" every couple of series) Oh, and they STAYED dead (unlike most original Trek characters)
B7 was also not crawling with token aliens like many other shows do. Star Trek shows are all about 8 or 10 humans, one vulcan, and the flavor-of-the-week alien-or-android. Blake's7 was about a galaxy inhabited by Earthling humans who colonized the stars. That allowed for (1)cheaper production costs;) and (2)more focus on the fight against the tyrannical federation <cough> than on battling the latest "worse than the last kind of alien" foes that shows like ST:DS9 and ST:Voyager kept pulling out of their asses.:)
Not that I don't enjoy Star Trek... I just like Blake's 7 (oh, and Babylon 5) better.;)
Well, I use Linux... no idea how the Windows folks do this. Anyway, here 'goes:
1. PPPD is running on the host (workstation)
2. Agenda is connected to the TTY that PPP is on
3. Tap "System -> Network" on the Agenda
4. Open the "Direct Serial" network connection
5. Tap "Start"
Actually, the "BUY HERE" button went up yesterday, a day after it was 'officially released' at Comdex.
Before that, it was a big "DEVELOPERS BUY HERE" link. I'm surprised you missed it!
One thing I HATE about the site is their use of obnoxious bouncing animated GIFs. (A cool side effect of going to the page is the nifty dual-sinewaves my CPU meeter applet draws, though. Ugh)
(And as for not searching myself, it could've been something convoluted like "www.somecompany.de/mobile/lisapda/" or something:) That, and I was taking off for lunch;) )
Thanks for the plug.:) Two games I played a lot on my Palm (other than Mah Jongg and Solitaire) are Galax and Invaders. Simple enough to code, so I wrote my own.
Soon after starting Aliens, someone mentioned that an ancient Galaga-style game I wrote under Solaris actually ships with the Yopy PDA! Bizarre!
Yes, the software is GPL and available.
Go to http://developer.agendacomputing.com/
From the FTP site, you can download source for pretty much everything.
If you mean grabbing your phone list and schedule off of the Agenda and using it in Outlook... yes, you need Windows.
If you mean transfering files, backing up your PDA, and grabbing your phone list and schedule off of the Agenad and using it on [your favorite Linux PIMs]... no, you don't need Windows. You can use Linux.
Agenda has an RSYNC daemon running by default. I don't have Windows, so I don't know about using Agenda with it, but under Linux, you simply set up PPPD on one of your serial ports (stick it in "/etc/inittab" to have it running all the time), plug your Agenda on, tap "Network", tap "Direct Serial", tap "Start".
All of a sudden, there's a mini LAN between your Agenda (IP 10.1.1.2, for example) and your PC (IP 10.1.1.3). (Edit "/etc/hosts" to turn those IPs into human-readable host names like "agenda" and "workstation".)
Depending on what app. you use on the Linux end, it shouldn't be too hard to read in pretty much any of the PIM data off of the Agenda.
I imagine that apps. which currently inherently support PalmOS will soon support Agenda. That's just the way Open Source is.
-bill!
(who needs to upload his GnomeCard file to his Agenda)
The screenshots I took of Atari800 running on the Agenda were done by running the program on the Agenda, and displaying it on the Agenda.
Then, I ran "xwd" on the workstation, with the Agenda set as the display. A crosshair cursor popped up on my Agenda's LCD and I tapped the screen. "Beep!" "Beep!" Suddenly a ".xwd" screenshot image file was stored on my workstation!
The 160x240 can be a bit of a pain... but when people ask how it compares to the Palm, I can say "it's a little higher rez.";)
The greyscale is great, too. X applications that are happy in 8bit or 16bit or 32bit mode on a real PC seem to do just fine on the Agenda's greyscale display. Props to whoever's working on the X server.
I'm practically done. It was incredibly easy. Developing it on the PC end wasn't hard (I obviously had some experience coding X apps), and making what I wrote run on the Agenda was a matter of using a cross-compiler.
Porting Atari800 has proven quite easy, as well. I had it cross compiled and up and running (albeit slowly) on the Agenda in less than a half an hour.
Of course, if you want to stick to the "standard look and feel" of applications already written for the Agenda, the tool to use is FLTK (Fast/Light Toolkit).
And does this mean it has apps that are unstable to the point you would ever have to kill them?
Nope. I think the only process I've killed on my agenda is the keyboard app... and that's because I wanted to restart to test out a new keyboard layout file I was working on.
I just updated to "Matrix" (the latest builds of the kernel and applications) and, man, is this thing sweet. My Palm's days are numbered.
Slashdot Mirror
Think of it is Linux with X a viable solution in lowly powered low memory environments? NO WAY
Actually, my 66Mhz, 8MB RAM Agenda PDA running Linux 2.4.10 and XFree86 works QUITE well, considering.
I haven't played with it myself, but 'miniRuby' is available for the AgendaVR3 PDA (which also runs Linux).
;)
Then again, NetHack and Apache are available on the Agenda, too.
HILARIOUS! :)
-bill!
(missing Blake's 7, thanks to Enterprise)
First "Infogrames" buys Atari (computers/consoles), and now Midway (who seemed to just swallow up Atari Games (arcade)) is dropping coin-op.
Madness!!!!
I really want to make some kind of goofy video game that pits StarTrek's Borg ("assimilate! assimilate!") against Dr.Who's Daleks ("exterminate! exterminate!")
Hehehehe...
Which brings me to my point... I can't believe that (while skimming) I didn't see anyone mention the classic BBC sci-fi "Blake's 7"! A show in which they killed off main characters! (And I don't mean the occasional "Tasha Yar" every couple of series) Oh, and they STAYED dead (unlike most original Trek characters)
B7 was also not crawling with token aliens like many other shows do. Star Trek shows are all about 8 or 10 humans, one vulcan, and the flavor-of-the-week alien-or-android. Blake's7 was about a galaxy inhabited by Earthling humans who colonized the stars. That allowed for (1)cheaper production costs ;) and (2)more focus on the fight against the tyrannical federation <cough> than on battling the latest "worse than the last kind of alien" foes that shows like ST:DS9 and ST:Voyager kept pulling out of their asses. :)
Not that I don't enjoy Star Trek... I just like Blake's 7 (oh, and Babylon 5) better. ;)
Yopy, in my opinion, is in a whole different market. Their hardware costs about 4 times as much, and sports a color display.
There's room for both systems. Agenda's the lower end one. Yopy will be the higher end. Just like there's room for iPaqs and Palms today.
How are you networking with that?
Well, I use Linux... no idea how the Windows folks do this. Anyway, here 'goes:
1. PPPD is running on the host (workstation)
2. Agenda is connected to the TTY that PPP is on
3. Tap "System -> Network" on the Agenda
4. Open the "Direct Serial" network connection
5. Tap "Start"
Voila!
Actually, the "BUY HERE" button went up yesterday, a day after it was 'officially released' at Comdex.
Before that, it was a big "DEVELOPERS BUY HERE" link. I'm surprised you missed it!
One thing I HATE about the site is their use of obnoxious bouncing animated GIFs. (A cool side effect of going to the page is the nifty dual-sinewaves my CPU meeter applet draws, though. Ugh)
Very cool! Thanks for the link!
:) That, and I was taking off for lunch ;) )
(And as for not searching myself, it could've been something convoluted like "www.somecompany.de/mobile/lisapda/" or something
Thanks for the plug. :) Two games I played a lot on my Palm (other than Mah Jongg and Solitaire) are Galax and Invaders. Simple enough to code, so I wrote my own.
Soon after starting Aliens, someone mentioned that an ancient Galaga-style game I wrote under Solaris actually ships with the Yopy PDA! Bizarre!
Yes, the software is GPL and available.
Go to http://developer.agendacomputing.com/
From the FTP site, you can download source for pretty much everything.
Got an URL? Agenda "announced" coming out with a Linux PDA long ago. So did Samsung. Has Lisa Systems actually DELIVERED one? Thanks!
-bill!
Good question! That'd be quite nifty!
Semi-related: I've been considering compiling pilot-link for it and see if I can backup my Palm onto my Agenda. Time to dig up an RS232 gender-bender.
-bill!
No wonder applications are klunky.
Says who? You? Do you have an Agenda?
I do! IMHO, the applications are not "klunky."
My Agenda's running Kernel 2.4.0pre9
-bill!
Woah... Have you not seen Andy's Agenda Help Page?
Follow his instructions, step by step (literally, cut and paste commands from the web page into an xterm), and you're set!
It depends on what you mean by "Sync."
If you mean grabbing your phone list and schedule off of the Agenda and using it in Outlook... yes, you need Windows.
If you mean transfering files, backing up your PDA, and grabbing your phone list and schedule off of the Agenad and using it on [your favorite Linux PIMs]... no, you don't need Windows. You can use Linux.
Agenda has an RSYNC daemon running by default. I don't have Windows, so I don't know about using Agenda with it, but under Linux, you simply set up PPPD on one of your serial ports (stick it in "/etc/inittab" to have it running all the time), plug your Agenda on, tap "Network", tap "Direct Serial", tap "Start".
All of a sudden, there's a mini LAN between your Agenda (IP 10.1.1.2, for example) and your PC (IP 10.1.1.3). (Edit "/etc/hosts" to turn those IPs into human-readable host names like "agenda" and "workstation".)
Depending on what app. you use on the Linux end, it shouldn't be too hard to read in pretty much any of the PIM data off of the Agenda.
I imagine that apps. which currently inherently support PalmOS will soon support Agenda. That's just the way Open Source is.
-bill!
(who needs to upload his GnomeCard file to his Agenda)
PS shows:
-bill!
and vice-versa!
The screenshots I took of Atari800 running on the Agenda were done by running the program on the Agenda, and displaying it on the Agenda.
Then, I ran "xwd" on the workstation, with the Agenda set as the display. A crosshair cursor popped up on my Agenda's LCD and I tapped the screen. "Beep!" "Beep!" Suddenly a ".xwd" screenshot image file was stored on my workstation!
In other words:
Developing for this PDA is a f**king breeze!
The 160x240 can be a bit of a pain... but when people ask how it compares to the Palm, I can say "it's a little higher rez." ;)
The greyscale is great, too. X applications that are happy in 8bit or 16bit or 32bit mode on a real PC seem to do just fine on the Agenda's greyscale display. Props to whoever's working on the X server.
Is it running X?
:^/
Yes, it's running X. About a week and a half ago I began writing a simple game for the Agenda from scratch (you may have seen it mentioned on LinuxGames.com and the Linux Game Tome.
I'm practically done. It was incredibly easy. Developing it on the PC end wasn't hard (I obviously had some experience coding X apps), and making what I wrote run on the Agenda was a matter of using a cross-compiler.
Porting Atari800 has proven quite easy, as well. I had it cross compiled and up and running (albeit slowly) on the Agenda in less than a half an hour.
Of course, if you want to stick to the "standard look and feel" of applications already written for the Agenda, the tool to use is FLTK (Fast/Light Toolkit).
It's a C++ lib, though.
Does this mean its fully multitasking?
Yep
And does this mean it has apps that are unstable to the point you would ever have to kill them?
Nope. I think the only process I've killed on my agenda is the keyboard app... and that's because I wanted to restart to test out a new keyboard layout file I was working on.
I just updated to "Matrix" (the latest builds of the kernel and applications) and, man, is this thing sweet. My Palm's days are numbered.
Check ftp://orasoft.org/pub/agenda/ for Apache for Agenda.
I've been porting Atari800 (the near-perfect Atari 8-bit emulator for Linux) to the Agenda.
newbreedsoftware.com/agenda-atari800/ - Enjoy!