A friend of mine has been playing old video games lately using emulator software on his PC. Most of the games he was playing were Nintendo games or Sega games, but I talked him into running a Playstation emulator as well. When I got home after that I then tried to do something similar with my PC, but I could not get the Playstation emulator to work rightly. That's OK though, because I do not have a lot of time for games in these days.
If you like old games, and if you are using a web browser that is HTML5 compliant on a desktop computer (such as Opera for Windows, or Chrome 7, or Firefox 4, or Safari 5 for Macintosh) then I might recommend trying out a game called Biolab Disaster. I like the game because it is simple and entertaining, and because it doesn't take much time to complete. Also, you don't need to install it, you can just visit the web-page if you click here.
An academic technical note: I think Adobe Flash is a much better way to do those kinds of things, at this time, but I can also appreciate the possibilities of web browsers being capable of more rich content, even without employing Adobe Flash Player.
MUSIC:
I wanted to share some music that is perhaps less of a great performance than we can hear from the recordings of great musical groups like El Ethnic Legist, NS Boys, SHiFT, and our other favorite bands. I'm not certain about this but it may be mostly synthetic sound that is presented in the following video clip. Perhaps seeing my friend's indulgence in Super Mario Brothers games has reminded me that I've been a lover of synthetic music as well as organic music, historically. Here's links: Rupture on Youtube, Rupture Video Download.
This video clip is a recording of a "demo" which was authored by a group called "ASD," or Andromeda Software Development. The "demo" is a kind of show or demonstration of the PC's hardware's potential, and also of the authors' technical expertise and creativity. Instead of observing the recorded video and excessively-processed sound via YouTube, persons with a Windows-based PC have the option of downloading and running the program which will cause the computer to perform the dance live (or at least in higher fidelity.) You can download the program or view this demo's page at pouet.org.
Note: Pressing the Escape key should cause the program to exit, once it's running. It can be started by running the "ASD-Rapture.exe" file and then clicking "Run." I've had problems with it on my PC when I choose unusual screen resolutions, but it seems to work well if I choose 800x600 or 1024x768 or 1280x1024. If your PC is very slow or if it doesn't have a video card, you may want to deselect "Antialiased" and choose a low resolution like 800x600.
I found a neat piece of software for managing iPods and iPhones and such, that's a kind of alternative to using iTunes. I don't like iTunes because it always tries to contact Apple over the internet and rudely reports error messages if it's not allowed to. This new program, called CopyTransManager, has its own quirks but in my opinion it's still much preferable to iTunes. It's much simpler, I think.
The version I downloaded was free, and I downloaded the zip file instead of the installer, although the installer might be easier for most people. (I think there might also be an option of paying money for a better, non-free version.) The program I un-zipped didn't work correctly until I did "run as Administrator" with it once, by right-clicking the program, but after that one time it then worked well when being run normally.
This program also tries to contact it's home on the internet, but this can be quickly disabled via the settings tab. This program doesn't handle applications for the iPhone, from what I've read, but personally I only use it for my iPod Shuffle and it does everything that need it for quite nicely. The only thing I don't like about it is that when I drag an mp3 file into the CopyTrans window, I have to wait a short while before I can get a response from either the window I dragged the file from or the window I dragged it to.
SKUNKTRACKS SITE:
I don't have much to show as far as new developments on our website, although I have made it a serious goal to complete some major changes, and add a lot of function to the site, by November. I believe there is some news on Crochet's page, though.
MOVIES and TV:
Recently I said that I thought the new Futurama episodes were getting better and might even get to be as good as the first five seasons. I have to retract that appraisal, I don't think it will get to be as good as it was in the past. The character named Bender has been ruined. Instead of being funny in a sadistic way, he is now a whiny, crying, sentimental character that isn't very funny anymore. South Park wouldn't be funny if the Eric Cartman character was sad and weak and whiny, the show called Dexter was ruined when the main character became sad and weak and whiny, and Futurama seems to have been ruined with Bender becoming sad and weak and whiny. It may be true that I am sad about it and whining about it, but at least I can recognize the tragedy of such behavior. Television is disappointing.
ECOLOGY:
The idea of "global warming" has been fed to us for about 20 years now, in my experience. Personally I can't say whether our planet has been warming or cooling over the past decade or two, because I can find data supporting either claim. It seems to have become a matter of religious opinion more than a matter of scientific fact. There's definitely a lot of propaganda out there telling us that with every breath we're all ruining the planet, but it seems to be for the cause of promoting a tax upon the entire world, in order to allow global authority to a group of power-hungry eugenicists.
I say: as long as terrestrial plant life is not being stomped out too rapidly, carbon dioxide is great.
I find it absurd and offensive that we're all being fed such silly ideas, supposedly with the cause of saving the planet. Carbon dioxide is basically the least dangerous gas that our machines are emitting, to earthly life. I wish so much money and work could be devoted to more real global problems, instead. Worrying about asteroids hitting the earth would be a better use of time.
On the planet Mars the ice caps have shown some melting in recent years, but I doubt it's because of a surplus of humans using gasoline there.
Here's a real problem: companies of mad scientists out there releasing genetically engineered monstrosities into the environment which are designed to replace natural plants and animals, not to mention the viri and bacteria they're playing with.
PERSONAL:
Recently I wrote a big article, which I posted on my facebook page, about risks to the health and/or existence of potential future generations of people, particularly in the U.S. In retrospect, I may feel silly about all of it being on my facebook page the next time I am looking for a new job, but I still consider it to be an important thing for people to be concerned about before it's too late to fix.
Please take good care of yourself and your people.
I haven't messed with any new & unfamiliar software since my last Ameba post, but the other day I was noticing that Windows doesn't have any way to burn .iso images to a CD/DVD, by default, and I remembered there was a new release of Infra Recorder recently (also available as a portable application for USB drives.) Free high-quality programs like this can save us from having to purchase licenses for more expensive software such as PowerISO or "Nero Burning ROM."
SKUNKTRACKS SITE:
There is great news about our webpage! I discovered that our generous hosting service company, dreamhost, has added some database functions to our hosting plan. What it means is that I will not be required to develop my own database management software, for the website, because they now provide good database software at no additional charge. I wish I learned about this as soon as the change was made, and I still don't know when they added that service to our hosting plan, but it is very exciting for me. I'm all hyper about it. ^^
In short: this will make it much easier to develop software for the site, and we can expect to see new features on the site in the coming days and weeks.
MOVIES:
I watched a few movies recently. Usually I find documentaries more interesting than fictional movies, the documentary about HAARP devices that I watched recently was quite interesting despite the fact that there was just one guy talking for the entire length of it. The movies I watched were Minority Report, Screamers, and Soylent Green. Screamers wasn't so interesting, it was about machines exterminating humans until one of them fell in love with a human and helped him escape. Minority Report was also a bit bland to my taste, aside from the point they made that if a person can see the future then they have a choice about whether or not things will go that way. Soylent Green was more interesting, despite the dated special effects (it's from 1973.)
In the movie Soylent Green, Charlton Heston plays a police officer in an unfriendly future scenario. In this story almost everyone is extremely poor and dependent upon the state for handouts of food rations, resulting in frequent riots. This resonates with the current economic decline we can see transpiring in the US; already we have unruly mobs of people protesting the fact that they may not have their housing expenses paid for by the state indefinitely. The current proliferation of gene-hacked (or GMO) plants (and animals) is almost certainly going to result in an agricultural crisis and a scarcity of food which is safe to eat. At the end of the movie it is mentioned that the notion of there being any more food to be found in the ocean was a lie. This brings to my mind the current world-wide problems of massive amounts of oil spewing into the ocean. I think many people neglect to consider that if the ocean life all dies, then we humans will all die.
PERSONAL:
I've been happy, lately. Part of the reason is the nice weather. Part of the reason is that I feel the threat of world war has been pushed back for many months, at least. The obfuscated history of my country's current president has been discovered, if not yet widely accepted or repeated. Another reason for my recent happiness is my renewed ambition and excitement about the Skunktracks.com site, thanks to the newly available features granted by our web hosting provider.
My dog Cesar is happy and seems to be healthy. My family is mostly happy. Crochet seems to be happy. My friends are fine. My laptop isn't completely fried, I found that it just needs a new fan installed. Haha, I'm not sure what else matters besides family, friends, and electronics. Freedom is very important to me, and its future seems to be threatened, but I and many others will be doing what we can to preserve it. After all, individual liberty and spirituality are definitively crucial to terrestrial humanity. I think so, anyway.
MUSIC:
I suppose it would only be propper to present some nice music selections. I'm sure that most people have heard Maroon 5's This Love, maybe also Adele's Right As Rain. That's what I've been listening to from Youtube, this week. I suppose a nice Metallica song would be good to throw in, also.
