Author Archives: DMZ

Extended versus expanded memory

This will going to date me as sure as cutting me open and counting my rings. I just dug this notbook up, and it contains a couple pages of notes like

Mem total used free
Conv 640 69 571
Upper 0 0 0
Adapter 128 128 0
XMS 3328 1088 2240
total 4096 1285 2811

device c:\dossetver.exe
device c:\dos\himem.sys
dos = high
files = 30

This is followed by alternate versions of the same format, except optimizing for EMS instead of XMS (emm386.exe, baby)… pages of “devicehigh /L: 2,12048=c:\dos\setver.exe”

I realize, when I look at stuff like this, why I get so annoyed when I look at my task list and see even trivial apps that shouldn’t be running at all (I’m looking at you, Apple) taking 4 megs of memory. It used to take forever to get Wing Commander to run. It was crazy.

I feel like saying “Gamers today. You don’t know how good you’ve got it.” and then pointing at myself and laughing. What in the world drove me to waste days – days! Working on crap like that? Trying to get games to run in DOS back when they were really pushing it was a lot like tearing down and rebuilding your house every time someone came over for dinner.

“What? You need to grate cheese? Oh no!”

And we put up with it! We loved it! Wow, were we all morons.

On power disparity in Google Street View

Here’s something I don’t think has been brought up in all the reactions I’ve seen so far: Google demonstrates the difference in power and respect for government authority. The watchers can go unwatched.

Let’s say that I’m Citizen Derek, and I’m shown on Google Streets bringing something really expensive like a plasma television into my house* — or pick your reason. If I want that picture removed, I can’t do it. Similarly, if Google’s got a super-high-resolution view of my house in Google Earth and I’m worried about a stalker, I’m equally screwed.

But if I’m Vice President Derek, I can get my house blurred off. The government has the ability to achieve a level of privacy that individuals are entirely denied.

This is a reversal of long-standing tradition, that functions of government should be open and that the activities and property of private citizens should be private. This is a very good reason to find the whole exercise unsettling, even if you can’t precisely state why — it is unsettling.

* I own a nine-year old 32″ where the picture bends on the far-left side, if you’re curious

Seeing the looming end of the personal disclosure

Ruskoff’s written about this, but there’s this weird line in public space, where you can either live your life pretty much entirely in public or say nothing at all that isn’t directly book-related.

I see a lot of this related to USSM stuff, and it’s always a little shocking. I drove down to see my parents this morning, and ended up cooking breakfast. When I got back, the game had started, so I tossed up a game thread with a quick note on my lateness… and that became “I live with my mother”

Really? I don’t understand how ticked at me you have to be to say that. But it’s like the flat tire thing – explaining that it took me forever to figure out how to winch down the spare tire on a Grand Caravan became “can’t change a flat” lol ha ha ha.

I’d say that it’s a symptom of internet discourse, but it came out in the Cheater’s Guide book reviews, too, when my acknowledgment to my agent —

Thanks are due to my agent, Sydelle Kramer, who was willing to help me figure out which book idea I could do well with, whip up a good proposal, and find it a home.

was quoted to sound like a three-year project was a get-rich scheme, and then was quoted by people who hadn’t read the book to support that. I mean, the alternative is

I’d like to thank my agent, Sydelle Kramer, for a number of things. First, discussing with me several book concepts, including possible markets for each, which ones suited my interests and strengths, and then …

I don’t write a thank you like that, though.

I guess the larger question is: does being open about this stuff do enough good that it outweighs the annoying stuff, the intentional misreading, all that good stuff? How do you measure that? How long before I get called ‘whiny’ for wondering this in public?

Or am I, like Rushkoff, going to eventually swap HLWT into something blander and work-only?

Death Ride 2007

Joel and I did an 80-mile ride yesterday, up Cayuse Pass and back (a good chunk over 4,000 ft of climbing, most of it in the last 6m up to the pass). We’d been calling it “DeathRide 2007” for a while, since the plan was “Go up 410 until we die”.

Turns out there’s a real Death Ride, and it makes ours look wimpy. Here’s the site.

50% more distance, about 3.5 times the elevation gain. I imagine it as being the worst part of our Death Ride, where I almost couldn’t keep the pedals turning and felt like I really would die, running longer, a couple times over.

We’re all nuts, bikers.

Notes on sub-DeathRide 2007:
– Watching Joel’s climb on that last six miles was crazy. Dude climbs those long, steady grades like a goat.
– Having insects wing off your cheeks while descending at 40 is painful
– When they hit your glasses, they’ll actually disintegrate
– At one of the campgrounds, we stopped for water and it was some of the most delicious water I’ve ever had. I highly recommend it. I believe it was on the descent just after the FS-7175 turnoff, but I’m sure it was on the left, after the Crystal Mountain road.

Gamer cache

My parents cleaned out their garage and handed back to me a couple boxes of books and other good stuff. But I was overjoyed to discover:

The Ancient Art of War, on one 5 1/4th” disk, including absolutely pristine manual.
Pirates! (the original, accept no imitation)
Wing Commander
Wing Commander 2, including the 3.5″ disks with the voices
Full Throttle

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get Ancient Art of War off an entirely obsolete and unusable format so I can play it again. I’m pretty psyched about this possibility.

Today’s rejection

A much-revised Cubs of Democracy, in about two weeks. Note but nothing I could go back and re-write on, I think (they weren’t grabbed). I’m starting to wonder if it’s really a good thing to get quick turnarounds, even if they’re with notes.

Sigh. Little depressing: I can see where it’s not a thrill-a-minute ride, where the setting/characters/etc are more interesting than the basic confrontation, which is the problem, but I’m rather fond of it.

Back to working on Archipelago then, in the hopes that larger central confrontation can sell itself.

Or, possibly, a guide to deciphering rejection notes. :p

Or, maybe, I should chill out, go to Clarion West, hopefully get better, and see what I want to do.

The end of my PC gaming

I realized, with the release of Halo 2, that part of my life’s ending. I’m not upgrading to Vista – I wrote about it earlier, but the DRM we-own-your-machine-you-just-lease-it is finally too onerous for me, and I’m calling it quits (side note: Google’s acquisition of Feedburner made me realize exactly how much data Google now has available to it, and it scared me).

I started playing games on PCs back when I had to play Adventure, or type them in from the back of magazines, and I’d inevitably typo on some DATA statement and fubar the whole thing. I could talk your ear off about my favorite games and what they meant, why they were awesome, and how they influenced games that came after them (more so than I could for books, say, which I took a bunch of college courses on).

Now that’s it. It feels, weirdly, like I’ve decided never to watch television again, or read a book. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is quite likely to be the last boxed game I buy, with stuff off Steam — the Half-Life episodes and Portal (Bring me Portallll!!) until they go Vista-only, too.

I can’t explain why I’ve been willing to put up with DRM on my games (as long as it’s not Starforce or particularly horrible) and even the ridiculous Windows Genuine Advantage on XP but drew the line at Vista’s hobbling. And I’m not confident that I won’t eventually be forced onto a disagreeable platform. But there it is: it started with Adventure and other text games, and this is where the end comes.

I’m sad.

When the end result is not kept in mind

I was browsing a tech site today doing research, and noted that someone was going back through old articles and spamming the crap out of them (for adult friend finder). I thought “hey, I’ve got a second, I’ll report that –” I hit the handy button, and I was presented with a “Sign up for your free membership!” screen — there was no way to report abuse on the site without registering, and registering meant giving up a huge amount of personal information and opting out of newsletters. I gave up.

Enjoy your defacement, guys.