Efficient Inefficency

So I recently downloaded DASM, an assembler for 6502 microprocessor (and several others, or so they say). I'm fairly interested in learning the gist of how Atari games were/are made. Anyway, DASM is a command line program. According to the tutorial I'm following, the appropriate arguments for getting the Atari-style 6502 Assembly is:

dasm filename.asm -lfilename.txt -f3 -v5 -ofilename.bin

As you can see, that's a fairly lengthy command to type over and over. Fortunately, you can arrow up. But with stella, geany, rm, cd, mv, cp, and occasionally nano in the mix, hitting up can get confusing. So, I racked my brain (quite unsuccessfully) over that bash tutorial I read through awhile back. Then I racked through google (a tad more successfully). My intent was to be able to type dasm "filename.asm" and have the script handle the rest of that stuff.

Five hours later...

#!/bin/bash exec < $1 if [ -e $1 ]; then echo ${#1} adjustedlength=$[ ${#1} - 4 ] newfiles=${1:0:$adjustedlength} `echo dasm $1 -l$newfiles.txt -f3 -v5 -o$newfiles.bin` else echo "File does not exist." fi

Yes... five hours later. I'm certainly not the best basher in da house. But if I compile thousands and thousands of kernels/games with DASM, it'll probably balance out. heh. I'm sort of tempted to figure out how to add a delete argument to it. As previously noted, the thing creates three files in one go.

Space Invaders vs. Galaxian (And why Galaxian is better!)

I'm taking time out of my admittedly less than busy day to rant about a trivial issue. Galaxian only has 250 fans, but that crappy proto-shooter Space Invaders has 20k. Sure, Space Invaders did it first, but Space Invaders also did it wrong. Shields and moving in place? Too easy. Galaxian has the added excitement of dogfights, and it's later phases are hard... not at all like Space Invaders.

Well, at least Galaga has a good following.

How my (spare) Hard Disk Gparted me

As I rambled elsewhere the other day, I'm trying to get my spare desktop to install puppy Linux. Terror is beginning to consume me; for you see, I've realized that the machine's hard disk is shot. No matter what program I use, fdisk, cfdisk, gparted, whatever the debian installation cd uses, whatever the mandriva cd uses, and whatever the ubuntu 8.10 cd uses, it won't read.

Ever the silly one, I tried sticking it in the cd rom drive's jumper (and of course doing vice versa for the hard drive's jumper). Same result. Then, I switched 'em back and tried a different connector wire doodle (technical term there). Finally, I tried switched the jumpers again with the new connector. Btw, each time I'd load one of my several installation cds and attempt to partition. ZERO SUCCESS.

I'm not sure how it happened, but it probably happened during one of my numerous reformats/partitionings. Woe is me, but it's not so bad. I've got a couple of spare hard drives around here... somewhere. Just a matter of finding them... which is probably going to be more difficult than getting this one to work. I know that one of those is smaller than this one's (which is also quite small at a scant 6 GB. I'd just boot it from a pen drive if the BIOS would allow it.).

There is one last trick up my sleeve before chunking the disk, and that is to connect that hard disk to my working desktop and try to reformat it from a halfway stable machine. Could work... but I kind of doubt it. ;)

Witch-hunt!

I'm tired of hearing about things the government has banned or is in the process of banning for drug wars. My inhaler is the first of which, but granted that is partially for the ozone as well (which is kind of ludicrous when one looks at the other far more harmful things to the environment).

They've also banned bath salts. I hope that, some day, they discover that cheeseburgers are a key ingredient in meth. Besides, they're far more harmful to both your health and the environment (cow production, GLOBAL WARMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

Then people will know how I feel. It's not right for the government can get away with the shit they get away with.

Oh magnificent Windows...

Ubuntu has spoiled me, I suppose. The sky is the limit on the random things you can do to your pc. But with windows, there are limitations. Granted, Windows 7 has some pretty good functionality, from what I hear. However, the Starter Edition is completely void of any real functionality. You can't even change your wallpaper unless you really work at it.

And that brings me to the subject of this rant: Making Windows feel more like Ubuntu. That's the dream. Sometimes, I have to use this netbook, and I feel so uncomfortable with these weird picture menus and all of that jazz. So, downloaded an Ubuntu theme, and quickly realized the Starter Edition has no theme abilities. Not dissuaded, I began to look for a workaround. And sure enough, you can change your wallpaper. I was thinking that it'd be easy... just logging in as administrator and replacing the wallpaper jpeg... but it actually required assigning permissions in the registry. Thanks to the several tutorials out there.

Now, Microsoft took time out of their day to ensure that you wouldn't be able to change too much. Because if you do change too much, you'll eventually muck up and their defense mechanism will shift your wallpaper back to the ugly blue Windows 7 paper. Wtf? Someone in their camp must have thought, "We've gotta guard jpeg: with our lives if necessary!"

The Login screen was pretty easy to change, and they actually allow you ti import Ubuntu Sound Effects (or any other type), albeit much more difficultly than the heftier versions of Seven.

Ideally, I want to swap out those Icons for an Ubuntu/Xubuntu style menu. Not sure how to proceed, but hopefully the rest of the crap isn't as viciously guarded as the wallpaper. heh

My PC's Journey Back to Functionality

For starters, the graphics card discussed here is the ProSavage8 KM266/KL266 with the xserver-xorg-video-savage driver. In the event some unfortunate Linux using soul with similar problems finds this, perhaps my journey will be of some use.

It started in Ubuntu 10.04. The display would glitch up when logging in and logging out. After noticing that I was using the latest version of the xorg display driver, I took a gambit and updated to 10.10. Yep, that's when the chaos really started.

After I got it installed, I couldn't get past the GDM. Ubuntu would abruptly crash and return to the login screen. So, I deleted ~/.config/monitors.xml, which caused Ubuntu to search for an acceptable resolution. This worked, but more problems arose. Whenever the pc went idle, it would crash and return to the GDM. It did the same whenever I'd attempt to change the resolution, and also whenever I attempted to open any program which involved resolution changes (i.e. certain games).Furthermore, it would even fizz out when watching mpg videos.

So, the search was on for some solution. I disabled the screensaver to stop the idling crashes, and did my best to avoid performing any action that would result in crashes. After trying numerous things, I eventually resolved to create an xorg.conf file. That didn't work. So, I switched to the alternative xserver-xorg-video-vesa driver. That sort of did it, but then the pc was crashing on shut down. Horrible!

Then, earlier today, I did some searching over at launchpad.net, glancing over the savage driver versions. I thought I'd attempt to install the Ubuntu 9.10 savage driver. Couldn't hurt, right? Well, anyway, I found a new version of the savage driver which hasn't been put into the repositories as of yet. There is at least one fairly minor quirk on the startup, but this version of savage is a hundred times better than the currently used version. (xserver-xorg-video-savage 1:2.3.1-2ubuntu2.1. See the list at this page.) It works. I can change resolutions, log on, log off, shut down, and play 2D games again. Nice.

A Rambling about Twilight Princess

I was reading a review of "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" earlier, and I found myself realizing that it was the same "party line," if you will, that I'd heard from hundreds of other people. Opinions and facts are all too easily absorbed in this manner. One person with a loudspeaker can gain hundreds of followers because people often simply absorb the things they hear.

Anyway, that's just the nature of humanity, and while it might raise a few interesting ideas for philosophical rants, it's slightly beyond the scope of what I wish to ramble about. I wanted to do a review of my own.

Graphics: I like them.
Audio: It has its moments, but the main motif of the game (Hyrule Field intro) is awful. It feels very forced, I don't think it lives up to some of the previous tracks in the series. This track is laid over "Midna's Lament" and gets some play in the Sacred Forest Meadow if I'm not mistaken, and pretty well ruins whatever it touches.
Controls: Terrible.
Storyline:Pretty good! I like the fact that they brought Ganon back again. Bring him back every time. Zant sucked, and I"m pretty sure that if Ganon hadn't appeared, the cries from the faithful would have been "He's not as good as Ganon!" Mario has Bowser/King Koopa, Mega Man has Dr. Wily, and Link has Ganon(dorf). The in-game specifics were ok. I liked the setting and how ties were forged to previous games.

That's pretty much it.