main on RRX

2009 Jeep Patriot

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

“Not Great, Not Terrible”

Consumer Reports has a good review of this Jeep, and I can confirm its mediocrity. The cockpit does feel cramped and closed-in. I went for the model with manual transmission, so at least it felt like driving a real car. There’s no way I’d buy a Patriot with automatic transmission: those felt like I was driving a sewing machine. Hard to believe transmission made the difference, but there you have it.

Amateur Radio

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been a licensed amateur radio operator since 2002. I’m no longer active in the hobby, mostly because it’s not really possible to operate from my current QTH. I’m still a member of the Whisky Lover’s Amateur Radio Club and the 3905 Century Club. I’m happy to participate in contests like Field Day when I can. But my days of operating from home are over.

Previously I did have some content here about building home-made j-poles and assembling TinyTrak APRS trackers. But let’s face it, there are dozens of websites and Youtube channels out there dedicated to doing these things, and they do a much better job of it than I ever could.

Backups

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

2024 Update

This article was originally written over a decade ago, but I’m going to leave the original intact below. There’s still a lot of relevant good advice there. But my backup strategy has changed. Take this piece of shell script:

backup-chunks.sh

dd bs=1048576 iflag=fullblock count=131072 | \
    pv -p -t -e -r -a -b -T -s 128G - | \
    tee /mnt/backup/${chunk_filename} | \
    (md5sum | sed s/-$/${chunk_filename}/g > /mnt/backup/${md5_filename})

When piped from ‘zfs send’, this splits the ZFS stream into 128GB chunks. These chunks can then be placed on any number of external hard drives of any size. It makes backing up large ZFS volumes easy (a 20TB volume can be split among three 8TB external disks for example).

Bookmarks

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Computing

Gaming

Music & Sound

Scene

Artists

Breakpoint 2008

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A Fish Out of Water

Ever since I was a kid, I had a deep appreciation and respect for the demoscene. I instantly fell in love with Starshine, Ice Frontier, and Bridge to the Universe. Never in my life did I think I would have an opportunity to mingle with the talented computer hackers, musicians, and artists that made up the core of the demoscene engine. But, back in 2008, it happened. This is my story.

Cheapo Vegas

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

“It’s better to talk about before”

Cheapo Vegas was a website started by Matt Weatherford and Mark Sinclair in 1999. It was a spinoff of their main site, Big Empire, which itself was created as a tongue-in-cheek way to poke fun at Las Vegas. The “cheap” part of Cheapo Vegas was inspired by their Big Empire articles such as “Las Vegas on 25¢ a Day” where you could learn the depths of depravity people would go down to get all things cheap or free. Their trip reports are entertaining exploits of a bunch of young guys having fun in Las Vegas on the cheap.

CKIZ

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In 1986, Yvan Lebel noticed that teenagers around Pincher Creek had a problem: they were bored. Too much energy and too few places to positively direct it. So, he met with a bunch of kids and asked them what they’d like to do. What kind of hobbies would they find interesting and fun? One idea that came from those brainstorming sessions was a radio station.

Building a radio station from scratch isn’t cheap, so in 1987 with Lebel’s help, the kids began fundraising for what they called “TEEN Radio”. By early 1988, TEEN Radio had rented offices on the top floor of Pincher Creek’s iconic Lebel Mansion, and renovated two rooms to become soundproof sound studios. As of 2020, those rooms are still there at the top of Lebel Mansion, and thanks to the soundproofing, they’re among the quietest in that century-old structure.

Color in Terminals

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Rich color in terminals is nothing new, and its use by the general public probably peaked in the mid-90’s with the use of DOS-based dial-up bulletin board systems. Consider this screenshot of TradeWars 2002, where it’s easy to see key figures and messages:

Even the intro screens looked gorgeous in the terminal:

Unfortunately, many modern Linux shell sessions still look like this:

Commodore 64

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The first computer I ever owned. Decades later, I enjoy repairing and modifying these as a hobby. Hopefully keeping track of my progress will actually inspire me to get these all done.

Serial No. S00031606

Silver label, very low serial number, 326298 board, Revision A. Bought second hand in College Station, TX. It’s clearly been refurbished at least once before by the prior owner(s). Here’s what it looks like they did:

Disk Jockey

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A company called Diskology makes a great product called the Disk Jockey (“DJ”). I own two of these, one attached to my home server, and another on my workstation. This is a fantastic product, albeit with a few minor quirks.

In its simplest form, the DJ operates like any of your run-of-the-mill hard drive dock. Even better, it can function as a two disk dock. On the back are connectors for eSATA and USB, although I tend to prefer eSATA for performance reasons. Scoff at eSATA if you like, and I’ve had my fair share of bullshit with it not working, but this device is rock solid so far as eSATA goes.

Fernandotel

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instead of repeating myself, I’ll paste the HISTORY file from Fernandotel here:

Fernandotel is a clone of Murder Motel, a simple BBS door game that was popular for its time. Like many of its predecessors (Hamurabi/Kingdom, Star Trader/Trade Wars, Spacewar/Star Trek), Murder Motel has a long history of an original that was copied, forked, and iterated upon.

Murder Motel was originally written as a game for DMBBS, a Commodore 64 BBS. It was written by Sean Wagle and first released as a proprietary DMBBS module in 1988. It was written in BASIC.

Hack405

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

README:

This project, written in 2016 for the cc65 compiler, is a simple Commodore 64 VIC-II text mode clone of a popular hacking mini-game. It was written to be the centrepiece of an escape room where the players had to restore power to a damaged operations centre.

The software originally made use of semaphore files to signal to the escape room hardware (switches, LED’s, sounds, music, etc) that various events happened. These bits of code have been commented out.

IRC

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I first signed on to IRC in 1994 and instantly fell in love with it. It’s still a passion of mine and you can still find me there. Odds are pretty good I’ll be there until the day I die. When I first found IRC, I was just a kid in a small town. The ability to talk to anyone from anywhere about any niche subject I was interested in was powerful and intoxicating. I learned more about computing from people on IRC than I ever did in any school.

Liechtenstein

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve always wanted to visit a micro-state. There’s just something neat about paying a visit to a truly sovereign country that is smaller than most cities. Liechtenstein is certainly no exception; it’s been settled in one form or another since the Roman days, and has been recognized as a sovereign country for longer than my home country of Canada has.

So, Liechtenstein has always been on my list of ‘must visit’ countries, if only to say that I’ve set foot on the soil there. My original plan called for a train ride from Munich into the heart of Liechtenstein, a short two hour visit, and then back to Munich. But there was something that wasn’t glamorous enough about this plan. It needed something else.

Linux as a Router/Firewall Appliance in the 1990's

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

On February 3, 2024, this article was posted on Slashdot:

I found this amusing for many reasons, but mostly because the performance of Linux as a cheap “roll your own” router is what helped bring it to prominence in the first place.

The Slashdot article and eggegick’s question are particularly anachronistic when you consider that what eggegick’s asking for has been possible since the 1990’s.

LODOS

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Taking its name from a Turkish word for a specific southwesterly wind that can sometimes become dangerous, LODOS is a fork of FluffOS.

LODOS is a modern re-imagining of a classic LPmud driver, but without concern for backwards compatibility. It is intended to be used to write new, modern mudlibs from scratch.

Extensions and modifications made in LODOS include:

Acknowledging that LPC is not C: LPC files must always end in .lpc (including #include files), and never .c or .h file extensions.

Magic: The Gathering

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been playing Magic since the release of 4th Edition in 1995. I was a super casual player back then, but my fondest memories were of 40-card decks (the minimum legal deck size at the time) slinging it out in huge multiplayer games on the kitchen table. Cards like Sol Ring, Royal Assassin, Demonic Tutor, and Swords to Plowshares were all staples in this early multiplayer casual “format”. Today my favourite formats Commander and Brawl are reminders of these early days.

Mechanical Keyboards

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

IBM Model M

There’s not much to say here that hasn’t been explained elsewhere, but it’s important to remember that at one time it was nearly impossible to buy a new mechanical keyboard. In the late 90’s it looked like the only way to get that delicious clicky feeling was to carefully maintain your old Model M, and I did just that for decades. The future looked like a mushy, rubber-domed wasteland.

Nuremberg Rally Grounds

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

It’s February 6th, 2008, and I’m in Nuremberg, Germany. Being such a fan of history (mostly cold war history, but World War II history piques my interest as well,) I never thought that I’d be in a place so rich with history. Not just World War II history, but ancient Roman history, and medieval history as well. I’ve been here for the past week on an assignment for the company I’m employed by. The hours have been long, which hasn’t given me a whole lot of time to explore my surroundings, but this is my first Saturday off and I wasn’t about to miss the opportunity to go exploring.

OpenTTD

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

OpenTTD is an open source clone of the Transport Tycoon series of transport business simulation games. This game has tremendous depth and replayability thanks to decades of open source development. While it’s a lot of fun to play, especially multiplayer, the default gameplay quickly becomes old or stale to experienced players:

There’s a runaway effect where if you accumulate enough wealth, it’s almost impossible to lose. The game quickly degrades into a painting game where you can run transportation networks virtually anywhere without penalty.
The variety of industries is low, making it easy to connect all available industries in a short amount of time. There are only so many times you can transport the same type of cargo over and over before boredom sets in.
Industries disappear if you don’t transport cargo to them within a few years, leaving the map an empty wasteland instead of a puzzle of industries waiting to be serviced.
Towns grow too easily, and the snowball effect of delivering more passengers and mail to grow them (which in turn generates more passengers and mail) is more powerful than any freight combination.
Rail upgrades are tedious when monorail and maglev become available. To upgrade from one type to another, you need to move all existing trains to a depot, sell them all, upgrade the tracks, then create all new trains of the new type. That’s not realistic, and it’s not fun.
Passengers are just cargo and don’t feel like a unique part of the rail network.

The authors of OpenTTD have done a great job of allowing the game to be expanded and modified through the use of NewGRF sets. NewGRF sets are easy to explore, download, and install directly from OpenTTD’s main menu. These sets can be cosmetic or alter gameplay (or both). I’ll be focusing on some NewGRF sets that I think make the gameplay more challenging and interesting.

Repeatable Music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The concept of repeatable music is an old thing, most obviously used in video games, where you need to loop the same track over and over. There are a lot of tools and music formats out there to handle this: mod, s3m, it, spc, and so on, are all designed to allow infinitely looping music. It was easy to programmatically loop music with any vintage sound chip: the Commodore 64’s SID, Ad-Lib’s YM3812, SNES SPC700, and so on.

Retro Gaming

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I used to be a pretty big game collector. Anything that would come along, I’d just buy it if it was retro. At some point I realized this was an unhealthy habit, and it was a hobby that required no skill besides. The only skill required to collect old video games is money. That’s it. With enough money you can buy whatever collection you want, right now.

Gone are the days when you could pick up a box of NES games at a garage sale for five bucks, now everyone thinks their old games are worth a fortune. Sometimes they’re right.

Stadium Gate Station

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The BC pavilion at Expo ’86. Stadium Gate Station can be seen at the far end of the monorail track in the center of the photo. Courtesy of Jerrye and Roy Klotz MD.

The theme of the 1986 World Exposition in Vancouver was Transportation. Vancouver’s state of the art driverless, computer-driven SkyTrain mass transit system had just opened, showcasing the best in Canadian engineering talent. The expo grounds were filled with varying examples of transportation. Japan had its HSST high-speed rail system on display. Gondolas transported expo-goers high above from one podium to the next, giving breathtaking views of the expo grounds. Water ferries carried passengers across False Creek from one area of the expo to the next. The history of world transportation was chronicled at Expo ’86, from the steam engine to modern magnetic propulsion.

sysop.menu

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This was a project that allowed anyone on the Internet to instantaneously deploy an old DOS-based bulletin board system from their web browser. The board was then persistently reachable on a TCP port that anyone could connect to, even if whoever deployed it never came back.

In the above example, a stock PCBoard 15.0 BBS was reachable at sysop.menu:4163.

This was a collaboration with echicken, and it was partially meant to light-heartedly poke fun at the glut of stock Synchronet boards. It seemed like what people enjoyed most about Synchronet was clicking through a Windows installer to be able to say “I’m a sysop now!” What better way to feed that urge than by having a website that lets you do the same thing but with even fewer clicks?

Tempest

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

“I want to design it for a guy who’s totally frazzled by his job and needs a way to temporarily escape. There’s a certain class of games… where you just get into a trance when you’re playing them. As long as you’re in this trance you’ll do fine.” – Dave Theurer, designer and programmer of the original Atari Tempest.

Tempest was a popular arcade game in its own right, but it wasn’t until Tempest 2000 that I became enraptured with the series. The seizure-inducing flashes of light, bright colors, electronic soundtrack, and twitchy gameplay all just hit home for me. There’s no need to rehash what’s been said elsewhere: Tempest 2000 is one of the best arcade shooters out there and Jeff Minter established himself as a sort of godfather of this kind of twitchy, flashy, over-the-top game.

The Canadian Rockies

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Canadian Rocky Mountains. How I feel when I visit is how most people must feel when they go to church. It’s beautiful, majestic, makes me feel small, refreshes the mind, and will endure long after I’m gone.

If you visit only once, do yourself a favour and drive down the Icefields Parkway. Going on an “all inclusive tour” on a bus packed full of tourists is the wrong way to experience this. The Icefields Parkway is, hands down, the most beautiful drive on the planet. Do it without a schedule, take your time, and camp along the way. Hike as many trails as you can. Turn your phone off - there’s no service anyway. Explore. Discover.

The Chinese Goatse Incident

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

On April 17, 2013, someone from hkgolden.com (a sort-of, kind-of Hong Kong version of 4chan) decided to create a post featuring music and pictures of various Hong Kong and Japanese pop idols. The problem with this? They hotlinked to an image hosted on the same server that hosts what you’re reading now. The resulting load from the traffic crashed the server. After putting some caching in place with Varnish to handle the load, I decided to have some fun by replacing the hotlinked image with goatse.

The Wizard - A Tour of Filming Locations Around Reno

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

(Originally written in 2016, rewritten in 2024.)

As a kid in 1989, I saw this film on opening night and it became a lifelong favourite, bad reviews be damned. So in 2016 I decided to indulge my childish fantasy by trying to visit as many filming locations as I could. After all, what better thing to do in the spirit of the film than go on a cross-country road trip?

Vimy Ridge

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Battle of Vimy Ridge is the most important battle in all of Canadian history. It was also a very important strategic win by the allied forces in World War I, where Canadians and other Commonwealth troops smashed through hardened German trenches that had been solidified for years thanks to the war of attrition. The battle is taught to every Canadian child in school, and represents a turning point in Canada’s independence from Great Britain.

ZZX

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background

There are a lot of open source automated ZFS replication solutions out there, and most of them approach the problem from a “backup” point of view. However, treating ZFS like a backup tool downplays a lot of its strengths, which can be used to create a powerful replication system.

Instead of yet another backup tool or snapshot job scheduler, I wanted a replication system capable of:

Bi-directional configuration. That is to say, if a machine is sending ZFS streams, it should be able to start receiving streams back if so configured (effectively a poor man’s HA, a form of warm failover.)