1998 Blog
I'm such a slack bastard. The Zeta News is sooo neglected and it's been a month since I have added anything to my plan - not that anyone ever reads it.
We had another gig the other night at the Kings X Hotel (The Rooftop) which was pretty good. This was the best setup we've ever had and the most people! Still, the organisers weren't able to break even ;( We arrived onsite around 5pm and I didn't get home until almost 7am the next morning! That was one big night.
I'll be going in the Sydney to Woollongong bike ride this Sunday (92km). I'm sure it's going to hurt 
Problem is that I won't be able to pick up Ruwani from the airport when she gets back!
Wow, it's been ages since my last update. This is what has happened:
- Went up to Brisbane over the long weekend to see Ruwani, I was getting computer withdrawal symptoms
- I almost destroyed my motherboard last night, it's like brand new too. I was sooo upset with myself but it turned out to be OK in the end.
- I have painted my computer matt black and it looks awesome. There is a light mounted behind the front grill which looks great also (this is the reason for number 2 happening!).
What a downer, my girlfriend called from Brisbane this morning to tell me she has to stay on another month (added onto the month she has to spend there already).
This morning I did a really rough estimate on how much tax I have paid and how much I should have paid. It looks like i'll end up with a $1000 (or around that) tax return! Good for me cause at the moment i'm _over_ my spending limits (-$120) and this should fix me up for the next couple months. If I look carefully and claim deductions etc... I might be able to boost this to $1200/$1300!!!
I was walking to buy my lunch today when I smelt something pretty bad. The crane at the worksite nextdoor was lifting the workers "poobox" onto the road and I just happened to walk by at that moment!
Bit of a break from updating this .plan and the Zeta News. I'd better get cracking!
I'm doing only doing one subject at Uni this semester on Wednesday nights. It's called "Electromagnetics" and it's extremely difficult. Oh well the stuff we cover is pretty interesting so I should do ok in the end.
We ordered all these NC (Network Computers) from Uniden. They are _really_ small and kick arse, i didn't buy one cause I would have troubles trying to put a SB AWE64 card inside + they aren't upgradable except for disk/ram. It would also be cheaper if I just bought a second hand P100 or something. Anyways DP has one which he said I can borrow anytime (well he hasn't said this yet but he will).
Those lamers over at Telstra have realised that having "unlimited" accounts is a bad thing cause it attracts leechers which cost them _more_ than the $49.95 (or whatever) they charge per month. Looks like there is a current stop on new users and the whole thing is to be revised in September.
I've clued out the bum I pass almost every morning from the bus station to work. To the average Joe he looks like he has an apple juice (donated?) every morning - you know the container, clear, small, glass etc... BUT, one morning I saw him topping up .......... with BEER! What a sham.
I just did a backward roll while on my chair! Below is a detailed event description of the accident:
I was visiting Nick in his new office to ask/tell/borrow/hurt etc... Now to save time I decided to wheel there on my chair. On the way back (I travel backwards on chairs) my wheels got caught on the plastic carpet mat which caused me to perform some minor gymnastics. Luckily I was unhurt, but it looks like Tanya will take some time to recover...
Oh, I've finished upgrading my friends computer which works pretty well now. It's running Win98 (aahhhh!) but I managed to turn off all it's user enhancements (really just 0.5-1sec delays on anything you do).
Damnit! I've been busy and haven't updated this thing for ages! I'll do another pointed list of event like last entry:
- We hired a new guy at Zeta - David Formosa.
- Ruwani (my girlfriend) has gone away for 3 weeks back home to Perth ;(
- Setup the 486 in the house to act as an Internet gateway. It is running a web service where you can start a ppp connection just by clicking a link (CGI). This is work in progress and I have a few things to add to make it more stable (plus a logoff function).
- Found out my Uni marks for Software Development - a Distinction!!!! (75/100). I went pretty poorly in the exam however...
- Instead of upgrading the 486 (which nobody in the house seems interested in) i'm selling my bits to my friend David C. We're upgrading his 486 to a P200 on a HX mb, 64Mb RAM, 4.3Gb Quantum HDD, G100 Matrox video (fast), and a Sony CD-ROM drive...
- David was on holidays last week and we were really bogged down with work!
- I didn't get any TAB shares whatsoever plus they've had my money for about a month the bastards!!!
Again i've been lazy with adding updates. Well i'll fill you in on what has been happening over the month:
- Very busy at work as usual!
- Just finished my (2) Uni exams yesterday and now I'm on holidays for a month! Network Theory requires a total mark of 50/100 to pass the subject and I had already received 46 marks from classwork! That meant I only needed 4/40 in the exam to pass the subject
- Bought myself a P233MMX CPU mainly because I needed another CPU for the Pentium motherboard I have in the house doing nothing. I chucked the CPU in my machine, changed some jumpers and now I have it running at 3.5x75Mhz = 266Mhz (ish). Wow, the difference isn't too much noticable (from 200Mhz non-MMX) but on performing some Quake2 benchmarking the difference is pretty clear. Q2 went from 19.5ish -> 26ish (non-3DFX) and from 26ish -> 30ish (3DFX). The linux kernel now compiles in 3mins and 52seconds!
- David got a CD-ROM burner
I get the Monster 3D card last friday and had massive troubles getting it to work. In the end I just connected up and downloaded the latest drivers - removed then reinstalled the card and woop! IT WORKED. Man, Quake2 runs like a dream - up from 19.5ish FPS @ 320x240 to 26+ FPS @ 640x480!!!
I'll be part of another youth dance event on Friday 31-of JULY! This time we have almost 2 months of preparation instead of 2/3 weeks
Long weekend this weekend - but i'll be spending my time doing stupid Uni work. It's end of Uni and I have to catch up on the last couple of assignments :(
My bedroom was filled with equipment on the weekend. I had 2 chairs worth of free space and they were taken up by me and my friend. We had a mixer, mixing desk, keyboard, 2 complete computer systems, my audio equipment, and 2 huge speakers! We were practising mixing my friends tracks and just general mucking about.
I've bought myself a Monster 3D card for only $145!!! It is being delivered tomorrow COD (hopefully).
It's been a week since the last plan update damnit. I'm falling way behind in freqency over David - arrrh!.
Well last friday night was pretty good. I loved being up there on stage but unfortunately there wasn't that many people to play to ;( The lacky organisation and only 1 weeks advertising for a Youth event meant only 30 people or so turned up (when around 200 can fit in the hall).
The sound system was rooted. This friend of the organiser who was going to bring the sound equipment didn't even turn up! So Jansen (the organiser) had to bring his home system which just couldn't handle much power. I was pretty dissapointed in the sound quality and it just wasn't loud enough
We'll be putting on more organised parties every month starting 17-of July. Hopefully we can start to bring in the crowds and get some known DJ's to play also.
On Tuesday I got myself a haircut so I wouldn't be burnt too bad at Uni
I'm helping out my friend perform tonight. The gig starts at 7:30pm at the Youth Center in Frenchs Forest (corner of Warringah Rd and Forest Way). We're on at around 10:30 and lasting about 1 hour. We'll be using 2 computers, a deck (turntable if you're not with the hot words) and a mixer to make some pretty wicked music. See Ya there!
Last night I went to my friends house to pickup my mobile phone and while I was there decided to get my hair cut. That last decision was a mistake I might get my mummy to shave off most my hair to fix the problem!
Yesterday was my sisters birthday and I haven't even talked to her yet!
I haven't been doing anything too interesting lately thus the reason for a lack of .plan updating. Last weekend however I was at my friends party and found an ice cube in my pocket! Because of my slightly alcoholic blood stream I couldn't remember how it got there
The bastard (also known as David) now has a 3dfx card and what's more he reckons it does good. Well i'm not going to be left behind so i'm going out on the weekend to buy one of those el-cheapo anti-glare screens. I won't have any glare and the fuzziness introduced will excede any kind of bi-linear filtering the 3dfx can produce!
If anyone is interested i'll be helping my friend Roger perform a 1hr live set at a Forrest Youth Dance on Friday 15-of May. This one should be sick shit - i will be helping Roger beat mix between 2 computers!!
later (ps: need intel pentium cpu)
To fix up my fathers computer _fast_ I found a store here in the City which just happened to have the exact same motherboard which I bought for a small $90.00. I ripped the healthy bios chip from the new board and shoved it into my dads - all worked fine. BUT, now I had another motherboard which cost me dollars and didn't work.
Over the weekend I went in search for an answer on the net and found a few good places. http://www.ping.be/bios/ is a great site and contains everything you need to know about bios, upgrades, settings, and recovery. I used a recovery method from here to restore the stuffed up bios and I now have a fully functioning spare Pentium motherboard.
In other news - the other night I had a dream where I was semi-electrocuted which wasn't very fun!
Well Easter went pretty well, had a nice 4day long weekend. On Saturday I went to the Easter Show at the new Homebush location. Much more spacey but the show was much the same - lots of crowds and expensive food. Sunday we had friends over and I had a big score with the Easter eggs I'll be eating chocolate for months to come!
Nothing else really happened over the weekend except that I stuffed up my dads BIOS on his computer last night (damnit!). I may have to get a new motherboard to fix it - what a waste...
On Saturday I helped out my fellow AusBONE members with sorting out the AusBONE rack in glebe. I went because I wanted to see all this equipment and to meet some other dudes in the business. We started off around 8:30am and didn't finish until after 3:00pm! A good result is that all the routers are connected to the switch using cables "crimped by Jason".
Because of the Ausbone thing above I had to get up early on Saturday (at 7:00am) and this is usually the one day in the week when I can get a decent amount of sleep. Well, no biggie I say, i'll just sleep in on Sunday morning. But I ended up having even less sleep so now i'm feeling pretty tired so I might even go to bed early tonight!
I've got myself a new motherboard/CPU (P150). I popped the P150 into my current computer and overclocked the thing to 200Mhz (naughty!). I'm pretty happy with Quake2 now clocking myself 19.7 fps compared to the wimpy 13.1 my Cyrix P200+ was giving me. Quake has gone overload jumping from 23 fps (which was good enough) to over 37 fps!!
I'm thinking I might add an articles section to the Quake pages which can talk about things like Quake/Quake2 performance etc...
Damnit! Last night didn't go off as expected on the Quake2 server. I didn't have time to make sure it was working correctly and it wasnt. The server was running as many Quake2 processes as it could handle and if you were connected from home it was lagged as hell. Oh well i've fixed it up now so hopefully if I connect over the weekend it will work
See ya Monday
I've made some further changes to the frag ladder script. It now keeps track of kills and works out a "score" based on your frags, suicides, and kills. This way the person who wins the compo should be a good player, not one that hangs on the server 24hrs a day.
I hope you've got your ass into gear cause I'm going to woop it tonight! Yup, we've got a big game happening tonight from 9:30pm on the Quake2 server. My logging is going to be off but Todd has something which will do the trick.
My friends at uni remembered that I had my birthday and bought me this excelent Drum'n'Bass cd... thanking them very muchly!
Ok everybody the quake pages have changed location, you should now check out http://quake.zeta.org.au/ They now include the frag ladders and updated news/files (wow!).
We had a close call last night. I was leaving the building around 7:00pm and downstairs there were 4 (yes four baby!) fire trucks with lights blazing and sirens flashing. It looked like there was a fire up the top of the building across the street from us. I didn't have time to hang around so that was it. Later that night I watched a show on tv where a guy admitted to killing a dog when going for his "P's" (this has nothing to do with the fire).
Since Todd offered a real (money) reason to get the frag log done - i've done it It adds the entries from the standard log files produced with QuakeWorld or Quake2 (with fraglogfile mod) to my fragladder.log file and then removes them. The script then generates HTML code for our uses to find out who is number one (well probably me anyway ). To save any problem the script only updates the fragladder.log file every 10mins max. The script is called as cgi-bin from the Zeta Quake pages.
I made a new graphic to go along with the frag ladder - this is only a still pic and didn't take very long. I really wanted to get a Quake2 guy in the dying moments but that would have proved way way to difficult to capture!
(a couple hours later)
I've made some changes and separted the stuff into 2 scripts, one that write a html table and updates the logs, which the other calls the first and creates a complete html page. This way I can create a single qw and q2 frag ladder page.
It's been a while since the last update so here it is!
A lot is happening here at Zeta as usual - we're trying to get ourselves connected with Ausbone before the end of this month. Ausbone will allow us to have free News (currently a pretty major monthly expense), free traffic between other Sydney Ausbone members like ZIP and CIA, and cheap inter-australia traffic. The other added bonus is the Quake/Quake2 servers that will be running out of the Ausbone SYD-BONE exchange. This will be free to Ausbone members and of course with around 8 Sydney ISPs hanging off the server there is bound to be loads of players!
I want to invest some money in a new processor/motherboard - Quake2 sucks on a Cyrix 6x86 P200+ If you wanna play quake make sure you get Intel!
The PC show was just like every other PC show. The reason why I go is to see some of the latest bits and pieces on show - stuff I wouldn't normally see except perhaps in 10 years time
One of the most impressive things were the Creative and Diamond Voodoo2 based 3D accelerator cards. The Creative stand had two test machines running side-by-side one with a Voodoo1 card the other with a Voodoo2. I thought the Voodoo1 card was fast and looked a treat, but the Voodoo2 card was blistering fast! Creative expect the 12Mb card to retail for $599 so you're going to be in for some hefty handouts to get yourself one of these babies....
I went to Uni yesterday. I'm enrolled in Network Theory (the class I failed) and Software Engineering. Looks like i've got a heap of work ahead of me so I guess my weekends are going to filled with Uni stuff ;(
Another problem is with Network Theory. Last time we had this dude Venkat who has an Indian accent was so strong that I would get headaches trying to decrypt his speech. This time I have a new lecturer (thank goodness) but Venkat is taking the part-timers tutorial class!!!!
I'm going to the PC'98 show this arvo - i'll fill you in tomorrow!
I decided to keep a .plan (well i've got to keep up with the competition )
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