Comments for Oldskooler Ramblings

Comment on Punish Floppy Disks For Fun And Profit by Inspired Chaos

Inspired Chaos — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:31:35 +0000

This reminds me of the 8-bit 80mb “Hardcard” that’s in storage somewhere. Full length monster that was my first personal storage in the Twinhead 286 that my father and I shared.

Comment on Punish Floppy Disks For Fun And Profit by Trixter

Trixter — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:29:32 +0000

Believe it not, I thought about that. I have the stacker 1.0 (8-bit) and 2.0 (16-bit) cards, so it would very possible to do a comparison between those and with/without their respective v1.0 and 2.0 software; I think a 6MHz 286 would do nicely. And then for good measure put PC DOS 2000 on there so that the very last version of stacker (4.0) could be tested without any hardware. And maybe DRDOS 6.0 to try SuperStor.

Problem is, what would the test suite be? Average compression ratio, sure, but what else? Streaming read from a large compressed text file? Streaming read from a large uncompressable file?

Anyway, that’s way in the future. Finishing v1 of montone currently.

Comment on Punish Floppy Disks For Fun And Profit by Chris

Chris — Fri, 16 May 2008 05:33:55 +0000

Whats next, benchmarks of whole disk compression using the hardware assist cards vs. software?

Comment on Punish Floppy Disks For Fun And Profit by Trixter

Trixter — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:27:03 +0000

I didn’t bother, because restore speed is nowhere near as important as backup speed. You backup every night; you hopefully NEVER restore.

Comment on Punish Floppy Disks For Fun And Profit by Alkivar

Alkivar — Mon, 12 May 2008 04:49:41 +0000

you should test restore speed as well, I wonder if those proprietary backup formats unpack as quickly.

Comment on Stop me if you’ve heard this one before by zpinzane

zpinzane — Fri, 09 May 2008 05:57:24 +0000

I wasn’t familiar with either of the tracks you posted here. But to be fair, that Skaven track is a monster of an “ambient” track. And considering (after assuming) that it was composed about a million years ago in a simple tracking program, it’s easy to be awed. Very nice composition.

I’m not sure how it compares to Memories of Medusa though. Nice selection of tracks on that mix. Maybe your musical genius lays in sequencing? ;)

Comment on Stop me if you’ve heard this one before by Chris

Chris — Mon, 05 May 2008 06:03:12 +0000

Heh, Network is one of the in-game tracks for Bejeweled (which uses a few of Skaven’s tracks). FWIW, most tracker and trance artists (the genre that most ex-demo trackers seem to produce nowadays) don’t have a “formal” background in music. If anything, it makes their work more interesting since they aren’t constrained by the concepts of beats and measures. Patterns are more important to them it seems. I’m envious of anybody that has the ability to make music…cause I sure can’t. (my parents went deaf when they gave me a Casio SK-1 keyboard) Its best that I stay an avid listener, at least I’m good at that.

I’m envious that you can program an app that makes sounds on a 8088 in such a short period of time and then whip up Adlib support so quickly. I never had any programming experience in DOS or anything hardware related…its not easy from what I can see. I’ve got to try MONOTONE in DOSBox… not too many older PCs around at the moment. (I had to trim down the collection, depressing)

Anyway….enough rambling…. I think most people go through cycles like this. I do from time to time, just keep up the good work.

Comment on It must be my time of the month again by Inspired Chaos

Inspired Chaos — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:46:25 +0000

COURAGE! *fist-o-solidarity*

Comment on It must be my time of the month again by Optimus

Optimus — Fri, 02 May 2008 09:26:52 +0000

I can feel you.

Seeing that my limited energy and motivation doesn’t help me even at 10% to fulfill what I was planning to do. All these years. In the demoscene. Currently I am not having any plans. I am not coding any demo these days, but I still code random things whenever I have few time left after work, like trying things I never had the opportunity before to code, but not for a release, not for a plan (even though secretly I would like to release a new demo again one day).

For some reasons I always had the urge to release something, like being anxious about the result and not enjoying the trip, I still have it secretly but recently I decided to change my plans (after it was the 8th time/year to be anxious and depressed about my vanity). I secretly still believe in focusing into something big or my wish to release a good demo, but I am currently retired and have hope for a come back when I get better.

Oh, and I have a job now and other things to do in my life this period so it’s getting even more hard for me. But I do want to come back, the wish is always breeding inside me :P

Comment on It must be my time of the month again by zpinzane

zpinzane — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:44:41 +0000

The thing that made the most sense to me about this post was the last line. That was pretty appropriate.
I also think the previous comments here are pretty on point.
You can’t get down on yourself because you haven’t spent the last month slavishly editing the Blockparty videos. Comparing your output to Jason’s is unfair; that’s what he does. I’m sure you wife (and child? children?) would disagree that you need to spend more time on your hobbies. And I mean all of this in a completely positive way to all parties involved.
It’s often easier to look at the things we’re not accomplishing and feel stressed about them to look at the things we have accomplished and feel proud.
All that being said, it probably just is your time of the month. Have some pickles and ice cream. :)