Welcome to the News Page. Or more often, the ranting page, because nothing seems to make any logical sense. This is where I whinge about Sony, one of the banes of my life, (although not so much these days,) mobile ’phones, fizzing FaceBook, automatic software updates and Windows, the OSs I still need that were put together by the work experience kid. (And Windows 10 seems like it was done by the work experience kid of the 1st work experience kid. ) Plus anything else that frustrates and ticks me off, which is a lot these days, as well as providing news about cool gaming related stuff that I’m interested in and willing to share with everyone. :-D There’s also other boring news about what I’ve been up to on certain days. I try to keep it trimmed to the last 2 years, except for a few minor things I want to preserve. If you get your butt down to the bottom of the page, you’ll find a table of my 5 most recently played games also. So strap yourself in, grab a pinch of salt, and be prepared for me letting off steam! Toot!

Monday, 1st Of June, 2015
Today’s current mood:
• HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? Or more importantly, do you know who he is? This chap is an “extra” in various TV shows and movies, and mostly always from Britain. He’s appeared in Harry Potter twice, Die Another Day, Hustle twice, Poirot: Elephants Can Remember (as the Crime Author Of The Year announcer), possibly in One Chance, Love Actually, Marple: The Blue Geranium, and maybe Bridget Jones’ Diary. I even enquired at ITV, but they didn’t know, and told me to try IMDb. Yeah well, like I wouldn’t have tried that already. He’s never credited for the shows he’s in, so it’s almost impossible to find out. I even scoured a casting website for extra actors once, trying to spot him. One site suggested he may be Edward Wills IV, but I don’t have any other proof that that’s true. So, if you know, write to me and let me know.
• Someone reckoned it might snow today, but it hasn’t. At least not where I am.

Tuesday, 12th Of July, 2016
Today’s current mood:
• Did anybody notice that if you re-arrange the letters of Bill Gates, you can get “labels git?” Makes you wonder about those Windows stickers!

Tuesday, 29th of December, 2020
Today’s current mood:
• (14:33) I’ve almost completed the main lot of soldering for my 2nd L.E.D. chaser. I just have to wait for my resistors from Jaycar now. Although I did find that one that went missing! The one out of my grandfather’s old record player. As you can see to the right, there are wires going all over the place again. But I still need room to get the I.C.s in there yet, so they can’t go tightly across the sockets. The very top row is going to be positive, and the bottom one will be negative, and I’ll connect up a strip of thin wire across each little pad bit when I’m done.
Yesterday I stuffed up, and “bridged” the solder across where it shouldn’t’ve gone. You can see how I fixed it in the picture to the left, but the gap is so minute, you can’t tell too well if it’s touching or not. A test with the multi-meter confirmed that there’s no connection. I put it right up on the 20 MΩ setting to make sure, and there was no reading, so it looks like I got away with it. Keep in mind that those little rings on the circuit board are like 2 mm or so in size, so this is shown quite a lot bigger!
• (15:56) Check out this tutorial on making your own 555 timer from discrete components. No wonder they made the I.C. to replace all that stuff! I also learnt that it has those numbers, because of the 3 5 kΩ resistors inside it. I didn’t read through the whole thing on this tutorial, but it’s there if you’re interested to know how it works, and what makes it up.

Thursday, 31st of December, 2020
Today’s current mood:
• (18:34) Somebody at YouTube nicked that Sonic & Sally video that my Dad let me upload, so I reported it, and hopefully I’ll get a reply soon. Fizzin’ Google wanted you to have an account with them to report it from the actual page, but I found an e-mail & postal address to use instead. Hopefully I won’t have to send a paper letter in the mail.
• Almost onto the next year! That means Lawrence Of Arabia tonight. Well, a large portion of it, anyway. My usual thing to watch for the transition of a new year. I still have some new Korean pop songs to potentially see tonight, plus that Christmas one from Super Junior, so do check the list up further for any new entries. Although I’ll mention them down here as well.

Friday, 1st of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:48) Happy new year! Happy new decade, and all that malarkey.
• I’ve been pondering about another titler program for my Macs, and I want to see if I can come up with a way to do hue changes. I can define colours using the HSV (Hue, Saturation & brightnesss Value) method, but I’m not sure about retrieving them that way.
• (15:36) Yeah, so this year will be 30 years since Sonic The Hedgehog 1 came out on the Mega Drive. That was also the 1st year I went to the ACT. It’s 20 years ago this year that Sonic Adventure 2 came out then! Yikes! Where did that time go? Plus the European version of Skies Of Arcadia.
• (18:37) I might make up a simple flashing dealie with a red & blue L.E.D. too, using a multivibrator type circuit. (No, it isn’t some kind of brilliant sex toy.) According to the 2nd Fun Way book of Dick Smith’s, this type of circuit was developed about 101 years ago. (About 102 later this year.) But yeah, I’ll be using transistors, rather than valves. Anyway, I remembered that I have a bunch of unused 10 μF capacitors, plus I’ve also got 4 NPN transistors still in their cardboard strip thing. Plus I haven’t used those last lot of 22 kΩ resistors from Jaycar, so they might do. It might run a bit fast though. I’ll find out. I need to use a higher value resistor for the blue L.E.D., because it’s much brighter than the red, so I’ll just wait for those 4.7 kΩ ones coming from Jaycar, hopefully next week.
If you do a picture search on the web for “LED flasher multivibrator circuit” or “LED flasher flip flop circuit,” you can see what I’m on about.

Sunday, 3rd of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (23:39) I started on my L.E.D. flasher circuit. Well, mounting the components in a piece of cardboard. Not completely professional, but it will do for this simple dealie. Apart from the L.E.D.s and their specific resistors, it’s only really 6 other components.
• I’m still going with my 2nd watch of I Will Never Let You Go. I’m up to episode 35 next. Dongfang Shi & Hua Buqi are in the desert following a snake @ the moment. So if that means nothing to you, check it out!
• It’s a bit early for any week 1 previews of new Korean MVs, but there’s still one that should be out for the last week of December last year yet, which I haven’t seen. Ooh, and it’s 10 years of APink in April, I think, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a few choons out this year. Well, you’d think so. Red Velvet had their 5th anniversary in 2019, and they had like 5 music videos out that I knew of.

Monday, 4th of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:28) Just as I’d said about it being too early for any previews of songs from this year, last night, I found the link to such a video! Ha ha.
• Plus, my goodies from Jaycar have arrived too, so I now have the resistors to proceed with my chaser circuit #2. Although I still haven’t found a box to put it in. I wanted to recycle something.
• (17:05) So there was another storm earlier, and while that happened, I got on with soldering in the new stuff from Jaycar and mostly completing my flasher circuit. That came out a bit uneven, which means I learnt that those circuits need to be pretty balanced in all regards, including the L.E.D.s. By using 2 different L.E.D.s with different resistors in series with them, it caused the (blue) L.E.D. with the higher value resistor, not to go completely off, but just go dim. Maybe it would’ve been more off with higher value capacitors, like 100 μF or something. The flash rate was even though, because when I tested using a 33 μF capacitor on the other (red) L.E.D.’s side, it changed the timing. The blue L.E.D. went more off, but the red one had more time on. So perhaps I’ll remove the higher value resistor, and make them both the same, and then use 2 of the same L.E.D.s instead. Maybe 2 yellow ones or something. There probably is some way to balance it out, but figged if I know how. Somebody with more experience would know.
• (19:31) It seems I got an impossible bargain with my new roll of solder! It’s got 102% of its contents! 60% tin, 40% lead and 2% flux! LOL. The other side of the electronics industry that isn’t quite as accurate as that of circuit design. Yeah, it should be 59% tin, 39% lead and 2% flux.
• Anyhoo, I changed the resistors to match each other for the L.E.D.s in my flip flop flasher fingy and used both yellow L.E.D.s, and now it’s even Steven.
• (23:24) Seeing as my new year’s resolution from last year is up, on not looking up any more depressing Microsoft stuff, I had a quick squizz on Saturday to see if there was anything worth mentioning from last year, (regarding Windows 10,) but I think the only thing that stood out was some deal about an update to WordPad that added ads to that as well! Holey moley. Here’s a quote from a person’s video @ YouTube: “Have to laugh at win ten users being suckers this is next level sickening to see.” Mind the grammar and lack of punctuation there, but yeah. Although I didn’t watch it.
All those years people spent money on protecting their PCs from adware and other malware, and here we are with Microsoft doing stunts like this. They should get in on that Indian scamming while they’re at it.

Tuesday, 5th of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (15:19) I wasn’t sure if you could get cyan L.E.D.s, but after having another look at eBay, it seems you can! They’re not so common though, compared to the other colours. I also got a little wavelength picture of colours, and I’d say just under 500 nm would be a good shade. Some of the sellers specify this too. Somebody’s selling 100 of them in 3 mm size for $7.95, which is very good. I might get some later in the year. I’ve spent WA-A-A-AY too much money at eBay in recent times. And I still have something on the way as well!
• I changed one of the yellow L.E.D.s in my flasher circuit for a purple one, and that wasn’t far off in brightness, so that’s made it a little more swish looking. A bit more interesting, or whatever.

Wednesday, 6th of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:01) My folks were telling me earlier that they ran into Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban this morning. “Ah, hob-nobbing with the celeb’s now!” I said. If I said we actually knew them, I’d probably be getting e-mail laid on for a change. It’s like Nicholas Hammond from The Sound Of Music & Robyn Nevin who popped up a couple of times. If you lived in L.A. in America, you’d probably spot a few famous faces from time to time as well, I guess. We were only there on holiday and saw Ronn Moss.
• (22:39) Solder solder solder. It’s nearly all I did today. Oh yeah — one of the plugs from Jaycar had a short circuit between the 2… parts. Uh, yeah. Anyway, I soldered up 4 others as a kind of quadruple adaptor for my new power supply. Then, when I went to put it on my shelf, I picked up my 1st new chaser box, and pressed the top L.E.D.s in accidentally with my thumb. So I opened it up to fix it, and another wire popped off. So, like I said, I’d redo it with those pluggable polarising header socket thingos, and I spent probably over 3 hours doing that after dinner tonight. I connected 3 L.E.D.s in reverse by mistake, ’cos my brain was already half with it, but I got it all done in the end. It’s pretty rugged now. Oh I have a dodgy picture of the mess of wires too, so you can compare it with last time.
• (23:05) Don’t you reckon there’s a slight resemblence between John Malkovich and Richard Wilson?

Thursday, 7th of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:02) Here’s an idea I had in bed last night. I was thinking of doing some semi-spherical dome kinds of objects made possibly from some kind of moulding resin, which I could sit over some of my L.E.D.s. I’ve never done that before, so I’m not sure where to start. I did this image on the left in Art Of Illusion to show you the kind of shape I mean. The 2 at the back seem to have an optical illusion that suggests there’s an indentation around the edge, but the foreground example shows the mesh in a more plain form. I wanted to go for a frosted kind of look to diffuse the light from the L.E.D.s, and I suspect you might need to add something to the resin, or get some specific kind to do that. Maybe you could add some powdered quartz or something. I dunno.
• (16:33) I was just looking up the likes of those Aerolux flower bulbs on eBay. They’re not cheap for the original vintage ones. One of those’d be a real nice addition to my Shelf Of Light. But which was new instead and made for 240 V. And not any of those knock-off L.E.D. based things either. I’m all for L.E.D.s as you know, but I don’t want them personally in fake “neon” looking lighting.
You can also get neon tube style flowers on eBay, but expect to pay over $200 or so. I wouldn’t mind one of those SunnyLife neon flamingo lamps.

Friday, 8th of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:45) I found some preview videos of Japanese songs today too, so I’ll be checking them out later! Plus I have a few videos on stuff to do with resin moulding. Although if it costs a fortune to do this stuff, I won’t bother. I’m not going to take it up as some full time hobby. It’s a handful of cool shapes for my L.E.D.s & that’ll be it.
• I sent Jaycar another message about my stuffed plug, but there’s been no repsonse yet. I got some other e-mail from my credit union saying about some web site I could go to for my statement, but they’re supposed to send it by e-mail, so I sent them a message too. And there’s been no repsonse yet from YouTube regarding my Dad’s video that was nicked. So yeah, a lot of feeling up in the air.
• One thing I am glad about, are the cool temperatures! This is one of the coldest Summers I can recall. I mean it’s almost the middle of the season, & I’ve got a fan heater going! It’s good for my computers too. (Not the heater; the cooler temperature.)
• I need to get my brain into gear, and think where I can find some “scrap” sheets of plastic. Stuff around 11 cm², which will fit nicely on my constructions of used ice block sticks. It’s gotta be non-transparent as well.
• (23:22) I checked out a handful of Japanese music videos, but only 1 was half decent.
• A Korean one called On&On by Hong Eunki isn’t too bad. The ending’s a bit cr@p though. It’s dated from the end of last year, but those dates are usually a little before they actually come out, so it’s probably more of a this year one.

Wednesday, 13th of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:20) I ran into some trouble with Art Of Illusion for another animation I’m doing. I decided to use version 3 on my 2018 PC, since it usually doesn’t foul things up, but this time it did. For some reason, the moving glass objects I did, were losing their reflectivity and refractions at certain parts of the scene. I didn’t have “reduce accuracy for distant objects” turned on, and I had the ray tree thing cranked up too. Although when I tested it with version 2.5 on my main PC, cranking that down by half still didn’t cause the same problem. So I dunno. Something weird going on there. I’m doing it with version 2.5 now instead, except it has a bad habit of not drawing objects / bits of objects now & then. I reckon that’s related to the newer version of Java that I have installed in Windows 7. What the randomness of re-doing it, and it working properly a 2nd time around is, I couldn’t say.
• YouTube responded and said that video that was nicked is now gone, so I’m glad they dealt with that.
• (14:58) All right then — I got the animation done. It took 1 hour, 22 minutes & 5 seconds, and it only runs for 4 seconds at 50 f.p.s. I’m going to use it with my Video Titler program. I had to get AOI to redo 22 of the 200 frames it did, and some of them had to be done twice as well! Things kept vanishing from the scene and sometimes parts of objects too.

Saturday, 16th of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (20:25) I checked out a couple of Japanese MVs by SARD Underground, which I thought were all right. There’s Hitomi Sorasanai De, which I looked at tonight and Nemurenai Yoru Wo Daite, which I saw 5 days ago. Do have a squizz if you’re intrigued.
• My 2018 PC chucked a wobbly again today. Holey &^%$. Anyhoo, I went to the lav’, and when I came back I decided to take out the RAM and the right side stick’s contacts were filthy! So I dunno how they got like that. I took out some old cotton buds from next to my GameCube, which I usually keep for cleaning my Saturn’s backup memory cartridge, and gave all the 4 sticks a clean. Then, it worked again! So I’m not sure if THAT was the complete cause of my woes or something that just seemed that way.

Sunday, 17th of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:58) I found some frosted acrylic balls, but so far only from overseas, which is good that they exist, but not in terms of postage costs. But yeah, something like that in a 3 cm size would be ideal for my L.E.D.s, to be cool looking, diffusing kinds of covers. You could just cut them in half and drill a little hole in the middle. People seem to use them for custom jewellery, but I guess they aren’t a very popular thing. I also considered fish tank frosted glass pebbles, but they mightn’t be quite right. They are easier to find though.
• (22:40) Oh hell! My Dad was talking to me yesterday, and said: “Can you find me a new monitor?” Struth. What a headache. I can’t seem to find any ones that are ideal. A lot of them seem to be these f***ing wide-@$$ things. We’re not in a freakin’ movie cinema. Why would you want a wide screen anyway? They all look like the tops and bottoms have been sliced off. And it’s gotta be 40 cm wide or less. Of course they’re usually measured from corner to corner. And they still seem to be in f***ing imperial measurements like it was the 1950s or something. There shouldn’t be ANY imperial measurements left in Australia. It’s been 55 sodding years since the change over occured now.

Monday, 18th of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:33) I’ve got 2 new videos of Korean MV previews to watch this evening, so hopefully something’ll be good. There hasn’t been anything good this year yet. I had higher hopes for this month.
• I think I’ll tell Dad to find his own monitor! I don’t want to get stressed & waste my time on it. HP don’t make my model of monitor any more, which is understandable, since it’s 11 years or so old now, but you can still get some unused ones on eBay. There was 1 in Germany and 1 in South Korea, I think. I’m up to 32 459 hours on the back light thingy in my own one now, which is more than the guarantee offered, I think. Yeah, it’s lasted really well. I remember when I got it, it was hard to get used to, but you want to keep it out of any strong light sources that would face the LCD and keep the brightness down to about 30%. I also like how it has 2 inputs, which I probably have taken for granted. It’s a pity the USB hub in it died, but I guess that was only a little bonus feature.
• That light bulb at the Livermore fire station in California has been running for 120 years this year. (If you click on the link, it still says 117 years in the background, but they just haven’t updated it.)
On a side note, I’d still be interested to see the likes of plasma bulbs; not to replace any other types of light bulbs, but just as another method of lighting. I probably mentioned this before, but there was a cool video of somebody who’d done their own electrode-less plasma balls, and one or 2 of them there would’ve been ideal for lighting, because they were just a fuzzy white blob, rather than the tendrils of plasma you see in more “regular” plasma balls. I think this is the link to the video. The particular type is in the later part of it, ’cos this person has some other wiggly ones in this as well.

Thursday, 21st of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (15:34) I’ve got a big ol’ vintage transformer from out in the garage which I was thinking of maybe using again for something. I’m not sure what it’s out of. It might’ve been from my Nanna’s old Philips record player thing. I dunno. Compared with those new plug-pack sized ones, this is a monster. It’s like 8 × bigger, probably. It’s in a wooden box, which I opened to check the wiring & insulation on, since I haven’t used it in years. It was okay. The output seems to be about 11 V, according to my multimeter. I’m going to check it with a slightly more accurate digital one as well, and see. As I said in July last year, I’ve got 8 bridge rectifiers, and I could use one of them with it to get some DC action.
• (15:53) All right then, the digital multimeter said it was between 12 V exactly and 12.4 V, as it seemed to be fluctuating. It’d be nice to get a fancy black box for it with a window, and then wire it up really nice inside and put it to some kind of use. I used to run a 12 V halogen light bulb on it, and it seemed fine with that, and I think they need about 4 amps of oomph. So, it’s probably got plenty of power to run some simple electronic gizmos. Although, even though my bridge rectifiers are rated for 3 amps, I would need a voltage regulator rated for the same. Or I just won’t load it up that much. They’ve got some good deals on eBay for 7809 regulators (which will cut back to 9 V), and I’d probably want a filter capacitor as well. You lose a couple of volts from your rectifier, so the regulator would probably be pretty happy. They should have a heat sink on them though.
• (16:32) I connected up one of the bridge rectifiers, and got about 9 V out of it then. At least according to my analogue multimeter. The digital one seemed to have a fit for some reason! It was showing 28 V & higher! Huh?! Maybe it likes a more filtered DC supply. Although I’m sure I’ve tested other non-filtered transformers and it’s been all right. So I dunno.

Friday, 22nd of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (15:30) Today’s been a bit of a bust. I was going to complete 2 more L.E.D. thingos, but the plastic I was going to use for the top “lid” / panel / cover bits ended up cracking. Tomorrow though, I’m going to go out and see if I can find some rough quartz by the road-side. I want to see if it’s possible to drill a hole in it without it shattering or cracking. It’s about 7 on old Moh’s scale of hardness, so I dunno how that compares to other stone, like for stone cutting drills. Well, if I have success I do, and if not, then it’s an experiment to learn by.
• I looked up cyan L.E.D.s on eBay again, and found some around the 490 nm wavelength of colour, which would be better than 500. There really isn’t much in it. You have to be quite precise with those measurements, because 565 nm is like bordering on yellow, and 440 nm is in the purple region. So yeah, 490 to 495 nm would be ideal, I think.
• Yesterday, I tested out that transformer with the rectifier again, and connected both multimeters in parallel, and the digital one behaved itself then. It said about 10 V. I dunno what was giving it the false readings.
• (16:04) Oh yeah — here’s another kind of fun Korean choon that I found a few days ago: Doom Doom Cha by Twin Girls.

Saturday, 23rd of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:56) I came back with like 2 bits of quartz from the side of the road that were worth keeping out of the other chunks I collected up. So I didn’t have much luck. Phwoar, and it was like 36°C out there too, so with my usual black coat on, it was pretty hot. I guess I could’ve taken it off, but it kept my arms from getting burnt.
• (19:18) Pink Fantasy have a new MV out called Lemon Candy, which was… tolerable I suppose. I think they kind of peaked with Fantasy from 2 years ago.

Sunday, 24th of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (15:54) There are a few neon Sega signs on eBay at the moment. I spotted one seller who had 3 of them for just over $100, but you paid like $85.90 for the postage fee. Given the size of it (43.18 cm), and that it’s glass, is probably to be expected. And it was coming from like Hong Kong or some place.
• I’ve got 2 more Chinese choons to look @ later, & see if they’re any good. Like from September last year. I found a video of previews yesterday from that month, you see. There was one called Ying Xiang Weilai De Feng from AKB48 Team SH, which was fairly good. I think it translated to something like: Facing The Wind Of The Future. I also watched Letting Go, or Can’t Let Go, or something, by Hana Kuk, which sounded quite a bit like Hongchen Xiangkan from Legend Of The Phoenix. Well, I reckon it did.
• (23:44) Here are the links to more songs, which I should’ve mentioned earlier:
• Your Ocean by Hoppipolla
• With Your Everything by Ben (This seems to be related to some game.)

Tuesday, 26th of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:00) Happy Australia Day! I was thinking in the bathroom earlier what things are good about Australia. No active volcanoes on the mainland to worry about, no earthquakes, some of the best diamonds and opals in the world, the Great Barrier Reef, no having to leave tips in restaurants and hotels, great beaches, kangaroos & emus of course, golden eagles, the famous buildings of Sydney, like the Opera House, Centrepoint Tower & the Harbour Bridge, clean drinkable water, and yeah… plenty of other stuff I’m sure.
It’s too hot for me for a BBQ today. And we don’t have 1 anyhow. But yeah, a sausage sandwich with some onion & ketchup would be pretty sweet.

Wednesday, 27th of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (19:08) Today’s joke:
How does a plant get out of trouble?
It has an escape root.
• (20:30) I’m just watching David Suchet On The Orient Express again, and David said that the 1st train trip was on the 13th of August, 1888, which means that the mention of it in Shanghai Noon, which was set in 1881, was 7 years too early.

Friday, 29th of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:45) Blast! My UPS just failed on me. I was in the middle of writing some stuff, and wooshka! The power just went completely off. I was like: “What?! What just happened?! What the f*** happened to my UPS?!!!” It just switched off! There was like some kind of brief disturbance which caused the light in the room to go out, but the computer went off entirely. I thought the power supply in it had died, but I looked down and saw that my UPS was off. So I’ve ordered a new one from eBay from what looks to be a good brand. Plus I saved over $100 getting it from there than Office Works. It’s a CyberPower one, and it’s got a higher power output rating too. This MGE one of mine has been acting suspicious recently, as I said before, so I think it’s had its day. It’s probably 11½ years old now. I tried it manually just after the failure and it worked fine though. I shut down the computer, and then pulled the plug from my power board, and the UPS stayed on. The circuit breaker never popped out on the back, so it couldn’t have been to do with that.

Sunday, 31st of January, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (23:26) Hopefully I’ll have some sheets of plastic tomorrow to finish my L.E.D. flower thing, and my flip flop circuit flasher thing.
I’m just looking at frosted acrylic flowers on eBay. This is one category that isn’t short of supplies! Some of these’d be nice with L.E.D.s, although you’d have to enlarge the holes in them. They’re supposed to be for jewellery, but you could adapt them to other uses, I reckon.

Monday, 1st of Febbo, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (15:33) Well, my flasher thingy is now in its home made “box.” Once the glue’s dry tomorrow, I’ll see about getting a picture & showing that off. I had to fiddle with one of the L.E.D. socket doodads, which was screwy & had the wires falling out of it. As for my L.E.D. flower, that might be Wednesday, due to painting and more drilling required of the plastic.

Tuesday, 2nd of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (18:49) My new UPS has turned up already! It was only sent yesterday too. Phwoar, and it’s probably twice as heavy as the old one. Just over 9 kg. I was letting it charge up, since it takes 8 hours. But the display says it is charged. So I dunno. This is really fabbo with the display on the front. It shows you all sorts of stuff. Voltage in and out, power frequency, power consumption, time left in the battery, the level of charge and yeah. I wish my old one had all that. From the looks of it, my main PC is using about 122 W of juice, (including the monitor) when it’s not making much use of the CPU. It goes up to about 136 when you make it do stuff. So that’s lower than the 720 W this UPS is capable of. It should be okay to run my Power Mac as well. I’ll have to test that and see what reading it gives. Its power supply (— the Mac —) can deliver 600 W, but that’s probably fully loaded with the expansion slots, stuff on the USB and FireWire ports, full CPU use & 2 hard drives. Anyway, usually when there’s a power failure, I’m quick to respond in shutting things down.
• (22:01) Hopefully I’ll have some new Mac software this year to share, if I can come up with some new ideas. I know I haven’t had any requests for my titler programs yet, but I may come up with something irresistable. Even if it does something else. I’m going to add a bit more flair to the controls too; Mac OS X already looks really sweet (— well, the revisions I have —), so I want to build upon that and give my newer programs more of a wow factor.
• (23:08) Here are a couple of wonky photos of my new L.E.D. thingos. On the left is the flip flop circuit, which flashes between a yellow & purple L.E.D. The camera seems to show it more blue looking though. Yep, I used up a bunch of ice block sticks to make the “box” part. These “projects” were always aimed @ using recycled stuff. Mmm, & on the right, the flower, which has rubber bands to hold the lid down while the glue sets. I think I should have made the cardboard holder inside bigger, so the bolts weren’t so close to the L.E.D.s. Despite its simplicity, it still has quite a lot of wire inside. I just soldered directly to these L.E.D.s rather than using those header socket dealies. The 4 green L.E.D.s are regular low brightness ones from yonks ago. I’ve probably had these since the early 1990s. They’re using a 390 Ω resistor, the single orange one is using a 22 kΩ one, and the purple ones are using 6.8 kΩ, to try & equalise the brightness.
• I’ve got a little “pet” spider in the kitchen @ the moment. I reckon it’s a baby huntsman type, but I’m not sure. It has no web. It just wanders around the ceiling. It’s probably only just over 1 cm in size with its legs included, so it’s only tiny. I’ve grown a bit fond of seeing it now. Each day I say: “Ooh — where’s my little spider friend gone to?” So, here’s a picture of it.

Wednesday, 3rd of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (15:45) I had a look at the power usage of my Power Mac G5 with my new UPS, and it’s probably using about 100 W more than my main PC. But still well within the 720 W maximum range if there’s a power failure, when both computers are on.
• I hope there’ll be some better Korean pop tunes this month. Last month sucked like a vacuum cleaner. I think there were about 3 songs that were good. I have a feeling that if APink do something for their 10th anniversary, it’ll be in April, because that was the month they started in 2011. Dumhdurum came out last year in April and Everybody Ready? came out in April, 2019. So that’s what I reckon.

Thursday, 4th of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:58) This month my Software Review Of The Moment will be of iMovie 6 & iDVD 7, and as usual, that should be on the 9th, unless I forget to upload the other files.
• (17:20) Ha ha! In a story I write at home, I mentioned that you should have a meal between dinner and breakfast called dickfast, because you have brunch between breakfast and lunch, and possibly linner between lunch and dinner. Or lunner maybe. So I had a look on the web to see if somebody else’d had the same thought, and I actually found 2 instances of it! Hee hee hee.

Friday, 5th of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:43) I was going to say on Wednesday that if APink have a new album out, they should call it something suggestive, like Pink Bits. If the songs were all good, I’d buy it! I’m sure they have some very nice pink bits too. Hee hee. They might be too “lady like” to go for such a title.
• (15:17) Oh yeah — my little spider friend died. I found her / him dead on the floor last night. Awww! So I stuck it in my diary with some sticky tape. It probably starved. There aren’t exactly many bugs in the house to eat. Although, I’ve had this little puny spider near my bed for ages, and it’s still alive. I touched it with a tissue last night to see if it was still kicking, and it ran off in a hurry. Now it’s taken up a new location by the edge of the window.

Saturday, 6th of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (23:27) I’ve been trying to work out a good layout for the L.E.D.s of my 2nd chaser circuit. I’m probably going to have 4 on at a time with this one, so it’s just as well I’m using that ULN2803APG I.C. to take all the load. I know a lot of chaser circuits out there just have the L.E.D.s connected to the 4017 counter, but after reading that forum dealie last year, I didn’t feel it was worth the risk of overloading it. I may put this one in another ice block stick box, since I’m making a double sized one @ the moment. Here’s a funny face prototype animation on the left, which is probably one of the better ideas. It almost feels a bit Mayan or something. So yeah, I don’t want to put any old thing together & then find out it sucks, so I’ve been doing lots of test videos on my PC.
I basically just make up a bunch of 0.5 cm circles in Corel DRAW, then I can print that out in the shape I like and drill the holes exactly where I want them. I’ll have to find more plastic again.

Tuesday, 9th of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (17:00) I tried to find that old nVidia TNT demo again, but had no luck. If it wasn’t by nVidia, then somebody else did it to show off their video cards. If only I knew what it was called. That’d be a step in the right direction. I sent e-mail to nVidia again, requesting help in finding it, but they never replied 2 years ago, so who knows if they will this time? I tried video searches and picture searches, and just got completely irrelevant cr*p. I’m sure it was interactive too, because you could zoom into the lion head and see the little bug on it. I dunno if it was a butterfly, or a bee, or a lady bird or what. It was like 22 years ago. I know it was to showcase the video cards’ ability to do large textures. I think the lion was golden looking, with enviroment mapping, although that might’ve been something you could alter in the demo. And there was a pool of rippling water in front of it, like it was a fountain. And this was all on some roof top penthouse with a marble floor. Mmm. This has really eluded me.

Friday, 12th of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:33) I vacuum cleaned under my bed and then re-did the sheets & stuff today. Whew! Thank fig for the air conditioner. Plus, my plush flamingo toy from eBay turned up. Hooray! It looks so good too! They said March, but it got here much earlier (from like Hong Kong, I think). Ha ha — & fizzin’ eBay — they said it had arrived tomorrow again! What is WITH that? Their clock must be a day out. It even says in their e-mail: “Dropped off: 13-Feb”, and at like 4 o’clock in the morning. I don’t think so! It was more like about 9:00. I mean, there aren’t even any other countries that far ahead of us in time either.
• (15:24) Hee hee — here’s a picture now of the flamingo. She’s really quite big. (This is just the medium size!) I think it should be a female perhaps. I need a glass display case for my better plush toys. Like Sonic, Knuckles, Tails & Cream as well. & my home made chao. Anyway, this is the seller @ eBay where I got the flamingo from. They seem to do more in the range of electronic goods.

Saturday, 13th of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (15:37) I ended up melting down an old candle to make diffusing covers for the L.E.D.s on my flip flop flasher circuit doodad, instead of using resin. From a distance the result’s pretty much what I wanted anyhow. I used the hole in a glass candle holder as the mould, and smeared it lightly first with olive oil before pouring the liquid wax in. This then kept it from sticking. It was one of those little white-ish candles like you see in restaurants, so I used its metal base as the “melting pot,” which I held over a lit candle with a pair of pliers. Once the wax’d gone semi-firm, I poked another old L.E.D. into the centre, and this then made a good hole to allow the wax to be placed over the L.E.D.s in the flasher circuit, which you can see the picture of back on the 2nd of this month.
• I discovered that I can do windows for my Mac programs which have no title bar. So I could make a custom representation of that too, with my own graphics to make for a bit of a change. I know I could do the close and maximise buttons, but I’m not sure about the yellow minimise one. I’d have to check on that. There’d have to be a command in the programming language which would let you instruct the window to minimise itself.
• (17:13) I found another glass candle holder in a cupboard which has a hexagonal gap in the base. That could be interesting to use as a mould too. I filled it up with 70 ml of water, so uh… yeah! I dunno what size candle to melt down for that. There’s stacks of wax on eBay for sale. I had a look last night.
• I just need a rugged / thick piece of black plastic, around 23 × 12 cm for my 2nd chaser circuit, and I can then put the L.E.D.s in and get it up and going. I am going to do it like the face which I mentioned on the 6th.

Monday, 15th of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:55) Here’s a song that was all right. It’s called The Night by Ha Jun Seok. Although I found myself watching what the traffic was doing more than the dude. Ah, we really need a bunch of new, happy, vibrant songs. Some of the recent Korean stuff has just been depressingly bad. Too many soft ballads that’d put you to sleep or make you want to jump off a cliff, songs with that blood curdling guitar squeaking, other bizarre things that sound like the composers and singers were stoned when they did them and more of that f***ing rap bull$#!+ that I don’t even consider to be singing at all. It all just sounds the same, with each “song” being equally as cr@p as the last one that came along. Maybe I need to put more effort into finding some other Chinese tunes.
• Speaking of things Chinese, I was reading about the Imperial Mountain Resort in Chengde. That is some huge place! Emperors from the Qing dynasty period used to go there in the Summer to get a bit more cool, since it’s about 200 km north-east from Beijing. It covers about 564 ha of land, and has a 10 km wall surrounding it. Not only that, but there are several temples further out. The most famous is the Putuo Zongcheng Temple, which is a smaller replica of one in Tibet. I think it takes up about 22 ha of land, and it certainly looks pretty sprawling. I reckon you could spend a week checking just the resort area out. There’s a hotel there, which I think is called Qiwanglou, & it’s inside the wall area.

Wednesday, 17th of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (19:36) Here’s another song worth checking out: Guardians by Sumi Jo & Rain. It’s computer animated, and the singing’s rather impressive, especially that mega high sounding last note. I looked at a translation of the lyrics too, and they seemed quite pleasant too.

Friday, 19th of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:14) Anyone remember the Philips DCC? (Digital Compact Cassette) If you’re only in your teens or early 20s, you may not know of it. I was thinking about it in the bathroom this morning. I don’t think that really stuck around all that long. I’ve heard more about those obscure American 8 track cartridge things than the DCC. I don’t remember how expensive it was, but it seemed like it would’ve been a cheaper alternative to CDs, where people could also play their current collection of regular cassettes too. What you had was a cassette in the same style as a “regular” one, that stored the audio as digital information instead. How good the quality was, I don’t know, but I think you still would’ve had that same issue of how tape stretches, and unless the players accounted for this by reading ahead, things would probably go quite wonky. The advantage of CDs is that they’re a randomly accessable form of storage, where as the cassettes were sequential. I think being able to program what tracks you wanted, and skipping stuff very fast, was a bigger appeal for CDs in comparison. Plus you can also use them for storing other data too, apart from just audio. (Well, in the broader sense over all.) Perhaps the erase-able nature of the cassettes was a plus, which I assume could be done, because at that stage, I don’t think they had re-writable CDs.
I remember in high school, in my electronic media class, we had a DAT recorder. (Digital Audio Tape.) This was another digital cassette based system, which must have been of a lot higher quality, because it cost $5000 in the mid 1990s. I think they were always aimed more for professional use though, and I think the cassette was smaller too.

Saturday, 20th of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (0:26) Back in 2016 I did a 3D rendition of my Nanna’s old Ocean brand oil heater, and completely from memory, since it had been something like 22 years since I’d last seen it. It’s 27 years now. Anyway, I uploaded the original image to DeviantArt 5 years ago, and somebody commented that they’d never seen anything like it before, and that it looked like some kind of industrial style heater. Well tonight I did a search on the web and found one just like it in a sample stock photo of an old flyer for it. Or 1 very similar. I was fairly close, but decided to update my Art Of Illusion file to make it a bit closer to what the company once had. This is the new result on the left. It’s not 100% accurate, but it looks pretty close. In the 2016 version I had 8 tubes, but it really has 11. I also adjusted the wheel holders. Ocean describe it as “portable electric central heating.” It has “Danger-proof oil filled seamless steel tubes, heated by an easily replaceable electric immersion element.” Unlike my original version, the flyer actually says it runs on “All voltages; A.C. or D.C.” It was probably made in the 1950s. This is the colour of the one my Nanna had. It could get pretty hot, and had a water tray to keep the humidity in the room. You could also hang your wet washing over it, and the flyer mentions this. When I was a kid I knocked it over, but it survived. It was fairly weighty I think. Nanna just called it “the Ocean.” “Put the clothes / washing on the Ocean.” she’d say. It was mostly always in her “sun room” @ the front of the house. It must have been well made, because apart from the temperature switch, it was still running fine in 1994. It got chucked unfortunately after my Nanna died.

Sunday, 21st of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:57) For some reason, Windows XP has been putting other directories under my “Temp” one, of History, Cookies & Temporary Internet Files, which is weird, ’cos they’ve never been there before. And it’s being a right jerk trying to prevent me from deleting them. That “Temp” location is only supposed to be for temporary files, and it should be easy to clean it out. So, what’s causing the OS to make these other directories now? It almost seemed like something related to f***ing Internet Explorer, which I don’t even use. I don’t see what else could be related to a History directory anyhow. There’s no part of Windows that uses that, that I know of. Usually the History & Temporary Internet Files directories are in the level above. Like C:\Documents And Settings\user\Local Settings
Anyway, who knows? It’s not like it’s taking up much room there. I just wondered what caused it to suddenly do that.

Monday, 22nd of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (0:08) I decided to capture some video action of Teddy Utopia for a DVD I haven’t finished yet, and I almost had a melt-down when I discovered I’d left one of the music files out. Including on the CD I did. So that threw a big spanner in the works. I had to go and find what happened to it. And somewhere in there, some weird $#!+ happened to the built-in search feature of Windows XP, but I was too pi$$€d off to get a screen shot at the time. Anyhoo, I got a new CD image file created. Plus I remembered the custom icon. Mac OS X Leopard’s Disk Utility can do hybrid images, which I don’t think the one in Tiger allows for. The newer one does like HFS, something and UDF.
There’s still a bug with the loading part of the game, where if you choose to load a new file, and cancel, it goes back to the title screen. I just couldn’t be bothered to fix it. It should just do nothing if you cancel.
• (14:21) I fixed my Teddy Utopia game, (I hope,) so that now when you cancel a file load, it just reverts back to where it was. It wasn’t written too well in the first place for dealing with that. Ah well, I can only blame myself.
• (22:15) LOL! I went to the toilet, and the power went off again! Well, my new UPS saved me for the 1st time. But what is it with going to the bathroom and the electricity just sodding off like that?

Sunday, 28th of February, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (19:44) Ah, the last day of Summer. Good riddance too! Not that it was that hot this year, and in December.
• SHINee have a new MV out called Don’t Call Me, which is their 1st in a couple of years, I think. It sucked though. I’m currently getting some other MVs which I saw previews of, to see if they’re any good. If I reckon so, I’ll mention them here.
• (20:39) Nope. Nothing really great. Ah, this month has been a bigger bust than some woman with an over-inflated boob job. I really thought the start of this year was going to packed to the hilt with great new inspired tunes, but it’s been the same drivel and cr@p as usual. I think 2018 & 2019 started out better.

Monday, 1st of March, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:46) Hooray! Hooray! It’s Autumn. Although it’s actually a bit warm today @ 29°C.
• I checked out 2 MVs from SING Girls last night, which I’d never seen before, from last year, and they weren’t too bad. One was called Phantom, I think, and the other one translated to something like: Outside The Heart Of The Arena, but that’s using a translation web site, so it might be a bit inaccurate. I read that one of the girls left the group in 2018 for various reasons, including not being overly fond of their traditional style. But I like it. Maybe from a Chinese person’s perspective, it’s been done to death, but I’m not Chinese, so I find some of their traditional music influence to be quite intriguing. Especially the instruments you don’t hear so much in English music.
• (16:48) You know how there’s like the Intel Core 2 Duo, and Intel Core i7? Well, they should do a new CPU called the Intel Core Blimey.
• (17:14) Ha ha! How about that? I took this screen shot of Pale Moon asking me about some freakin’ cookie back in 2016, and named it: “Dunno If My PC'll Last That Much Longer”, but it has! I’m still using it right now, and that date was 2 months ago. Not that I accepted the cookie anyway, but at the time, it seemed like a long while that it had to go before it expired. I was just going through my various computer related screen shots and spotted it.
• On the 9th, as usual, I’ll have a new software review, and this month it’s Open Office 3.3

Thursday, 4th of March, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (22:21) Here are a few Japanese MVs I found, so check ’em out!
• Official Hige Dandism — Universe
• Boys & Men — Doeryaa JUMP!
• Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra — Tajuu Rokou (Featuring Kawakami Youhei, whoever the heck that is.)
• Momoiro Clover Z — PLAY! — the video’s a bit… eh… so so, but the song’s pretty cheery.

Sunday, 7th of March, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (17:16) Here’s a sample image of a little program I wrote today. As you can see, it’s for Windows. (It’ll work in Windows ’95 & later.) Not very fancy shmancy looking, but then Windows 10 is on the verge of going backwards into text mode anyway. Anyhoo, I just made it ’cos I felt like it. You can do the calculations on a calculator fairly easily as it is. You just click on whichever number you want to change, and then type in a new one. It’s best to put the ratio numbers in 1st, then when you change either of the upper numbers, the opposite one updates according to the aspect ratio. Because I did it at 320 × 240 pixels, it will go into full screen mode if you click on the maximise button, so I put a little message there, in case I give it away, so people know how to get it back to a windowed mode.
It’s most useful for multiple images, ’cos then you only have to click once, enter the new number, and it will give you the answer as you type. So, if I have a picture of say 1200 × 630 pixels, and I want to “pad” that out to a 16:9 aspect, I can type in the aspect to the program, and then 1200 at the top, and it will tell me it should be 675 pixels high. You can get the program now from my Downloads Page.

Monday, 8th of March, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:44) Twin Girls seemingly have a new MV out called North & South Women, but I haven’t found the link to it yet. Their other one, um, Doom Doom Cha, was hard to find too.
• (20:37) Ah ha! I found the link a few minutes ago. It may also seem to translate to Man & Woman, but when I copied the Korean text, it did translate to North & South Women, but I have no clue, as I don’t speak any Korean. The only word I know of is sipeo, I don’t even know what it means. Oh, and kungkwangdae, which I think means “my heart.” But enough of the jibbering, here is the link for this song. Also, Yang Yoseop (from Highlight) & Jeong Eunji of APink - Love Day (2021 version.) Plus one from 2016, apparently. Ooh, and I almost forgot, The Hill Of Wind by ZanHyang. This is more traditional sounding, and yeah, what’s that freaky instrument with all the pipes?
• (20:49) To answer my own question, it’s a Bamboo Sheng. Look it up, and you’ll find out about it.

Wednesday, 10th of March, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (19:22) I had a clean up of my teeth at the dentist today, but I have to go back next week on Friday for a filling. The doc’ took 2 X-ray piccies and spotted a cavity. D’oh. But it’s in the early stages, so it won’t be a big deal.
• I got some weird errors in Windows XP () earlier, which I’ve never seen before. Some EventSystem error, which was trying to read from a file on one of my CDs or DVDs, except it looked more like something from the Windows XP installation CD than anything. I’d never heard of it. Then a Volume Shadow Copy Service error, which I read isn’t a big deal. Although it sounds like it would be. Plus, this was only supposed to happen in Safe Mode! Well, I haven’t done that since last month. After I restarted, it didn’t happen again. And it didn’t occur the 1st time I turned on my PC either. Although the clock stopped again.

Sunday, 14th of March, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (16:49) My parents’ll’ve been married for 49 years tomorrow.
• I reckon if I see less than 16 great Korean MVs this year, I’m calling it quits. Let’s be generous and say there’s about 75 new music videos per week. (I watched one dealie, and it was more like 90 though.) Anyway, that would be 3900 per year. And out of that many, I probably like, say 39 of them. That’s like 1%. It hardly seems worth it. I think I’ll have to make more of an effort on finding the Chinese stuff. There is a preview dealie at YouTube that does Japanese ones each week, and that’s been interesting to have a look at too. I’ve got 2 I want to see this evening when I put my better headphones on, so if I see anything perky / epic, I’ll be sure to mention it here, if I find a link to it.
• (19:34) Ads are a pain in the bum, but sometimes there are a few classics which stick in your mind, years later. Here are a few memorable TV ads:
• BlockOut Shutters — I can almost do the entire thing off by heart! “NO! And I’ll show you why!” Then he gets tackled to the ground by the ol’ granny at the end. I’ve got this in better quality and smoother from one of my own video cassettes too.
• Chris Marshall’s Organ Warehouse (3 Day Sale) — “As Donna & I say: Have a musical day!” I could always remember that bit, but I couldn’t remember the guy’s name until I looked it up. Lucky we didn’t see his own organ. LOL. Struth he could yap at a high speed. Free rock watches huh? Just for calling in. I bet they went quick.
• Light Up Canterbury — Ha ha ha. Holey mackerel. Light Up Canterbury. They were ALWAYS closing down! Weren’t they “Light Up Somewhere Else” & closed down there too? I think it was just an excuse to have a sale. After 20 years their lease was up, the dude says. Yeah, I think they took about 20 years to close the place down in the end.
• Tony Packard — I knew some joint was “up the Windsor Road!” But I couldn’t remember what. Get rid of your old bomb car and get a new one. “Let me do it right for yoooou!”
Hee hee — these must date me a bit.
• (20:25) Here’s another funny one: Hahn Premium Light. It says 2004, but I have a video of it from 2003, but yeah — close enough. The guy just hurls himself into the tub and floods the place. That really would’ve hurt, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was made of rubber somewhere, or something. There were others of these too.

Monday, 15th of March, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:10) I called up Beagle today about issues they seem to be having with their FTP server, in terms of slow down, but they said they’re not going to be supporting the web hosting any more. Although the guy said he’d look into it. So this maybe the end of my time with Beagle. In which case, I will let you know if I change ISPs and what the new one will be if possible. If I can’t log-in here towards the end, please try and look me up again elsewhere on the web. My site will still look the same though.
Last night I had a whole stack of troubles logging in with massive slow down and yeah… it just not working!
• As for the Japanese songs, I’ll get around to mentioning them later.
• (19:56) Here are a few of the Japanese MVs I looked at (both old-ish & new):
* New Direction by Takano Akira
* Sexy Zone — Let’s Music
* Lovers by Sumika
* MAGIC by Sumika
* Lamp by Sumika
Yeah, this Sumika band does some rather upbeat, kind of traditional looking stuff.

Wednesday, 17th of March, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:17) In sad news, Yaphet Kotto died the other day. On the 14th. I mostly remember him from James Bond: Live & Let Die. I didn’t know his great-grandfather was a king. (Not James Bond — Yaphet Kotto.)
• I feel a bit sick & tired today. Like literally. I watched 2 episodes of The King’s Woman last night and couldn’t do much else. I felt so knackered.
• (23:37) Here’s another Japanese song called Tarinai Sakunai by Fujifabric. I hope I got that ’round the right way. It’s rather good too!

Tuesday, 23rd of March, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:51) I found some more Chinese music video preview videos, so hopefully there’ll be something good in one of them. You mightn’t think so, but in comparison, finding the Korean tunes is super easy. I’ll have find out what “new pop music” is written as in Chinese, and then search with that!
• Here’s a recent Korean MV which I thought was nice-ish: In Hongdae by IGWI.
• (16:00) Windows XP is about 20 years old some time this year. Although I’ve only been using it for 15 years. That’s pretty good going though, hey? I think my Logitech keyboard is about 20-ish as well. It was to replace the Acer keyboard we had in 1995, and it’s still working fine. My Lite-On CD burner is 18 years old this year — another item built to last!

Wednesday, 24th of March, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (22:22) Here’s a nice, more traditional Chinese song, called something along the lines of Standing On The Grassland Looking At Beijing, depending what translation you get. This is by Wulan Tuya, who’s a singer from Mongolia.

Thursday, 25th of March, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:01) Next month’s software review will be Winamp 2.8. I’ve also made some minor additions to my Corel DRAW 8 review, which will appear again in September.
• I did some rotating flag animations today for some personal stuff I’m doing, and they only took just over 4 minutes each for my 2018 PC to render, so that was good. It was a pretty simple scene with only 100 frames.

Friday, 26th of March, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (18:28) Here’s the new $100 note. I finally got one to add to my collection. The black parts on the slightly left central section are actually metallic, and don’t scan too well. Don’t go printing out your own copies now! Ha ha. It’s a bit small for that. This one has the micro printing too, like the 1st polymer $10 notes had. You can actually read it with good eye sight in strong sunlight, without magnification. Well, I can. I did these at 1200 d.p.i., so on the compo, it’s pretty easy to make out. Dame Nellie Melba says: “If you wish to understand me at all… you must understand first and foremost that I am an Australian.” & it just repeats that over & over.
• I don’t really have much against the British royalos, but I reckon once Queen Elizabeth #2’s gone, they should have somebody Aussie on the money. Like in regards to the $5 note and the coins. Maybe Mary McKillop or somebody, unless she’s already on one of them, and I can’t remember. When they 1st introduced the plastic $10 notes back in the late 1980s or whenever it was, they had some Aboriginal dude on there, if I remember right & a ship on the other side. They should do something like that again. Actually, there was a $5 note with Henry Parkes and Catherine Helen Spence, and no sign of Queen Liz. So maybe once she’s passed on, some time in the future, it might be good to revert to them.
• (19:36) Ah! Here’s a site selling some rare editions of the $10 I was on about. They should do one along the lines of this one again, I reckon. I think that was pretty good looking.

Wednesday, 31st of March, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (20:37) Here’s another Korean MV I was looking for: Sha Ru Ru by Park Minju.

Sunday, 4th of April, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:21) Happy Easter!
• Yesterday & today, I was trying to write a text editor program on my Power Mac for Windows, (— yeah, you can do that —) but it didn’t work out too well. So I’ve abandoned it now. It was pretty bloated in size as well for what it did. Also, some of the stuff didn’t work as expected compared to how it ran on Mac OS X.

Tuesday, 6th of April, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (21:38) Here’s 1 new Korean MV so far, with a bit of a semi-trot feeling, would you say? Look out for the Twin Girls in there too! It’s called Ppurr by HooniYongi.
• (22:12) Here’s one by Yoon Jong Shin called Monster. It’s like Dural from V.F. 5 meets 1980s rainbow colouring with a touch of 1960s psychedelic-ness.
• Also: Hush by Kim Sung Kyu (of Infinite). The bass is a bit strong in this one, I reckon, so adjust your equaliser / tone control.
• (22:28) We also have Stalker from 3YE, which is probably the best I’ve heard from them. It was okay.

Saturday, 10th of April, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:14) Prince Philip from over in England, died last night. I didn’t think he’d be going on much longer. Well, he almost made it to 100.
• Yesterday I ordered a pressie for Mothers’ Day from eBay, so let’s see if their clock’s still in the future this time ’round.

Monday, 12th of April, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:19) Rosé from BLACKPINK has a new solo MV out called Gone, & it’s in English. I haven’t watched it yet, but I saw a preview. Also Wendy from Red Velvet has her own one called Like Water. I’ve got 14 weeks worth of Japanese song previews to watch from last year & 2 videos of Korean tunes for week 1 & 2 of this month. Ooooh, so yeah, I’ll get to them soon-ish and see if anything’s to my taste. If anything’s good, I’ll mention it here. Plus I’ll mention Rosé & Wendy’s videos when I get the proper links.
• (17:48) Gone by Rosé
• Like Water by Wendy
I didn’t really fancy either of them.
• (23:29) Well, my watching of Japanese music previews paid off! I found the sock blower of the year. And it probably would’ve blown my shoes off as well. Aaliyah from 9bic. A real perky sounding song that felt like it could’ve come from some cool adventure game! Oh, and it just seemed to get better as it went along. I was amazed the 1st time, and then when I went to watch it the 2nd time, I was worried it mightn’t have the same impact, but it was equally as good! So if you want something to brighten you up and make you move a bit, this is the one!

Tuesday, 13th of April, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (23:22) I watched The Darjeeling Limited this evening, which is actually going to be a present for Mothers’ Day. I had to check it to make sure the disc was in good nick. I knew the sheila on the train from Poirot: Cat Among The Pigeons, and the main assistant dude from The Grand Budapest Hotel, even though that’s a newer show than T.D.L. When I heard Champs Elysees @ the end, I thought: I know this! Troglauer Buam used it for Mei Is Des Schee. Anyway, the movie was good, if not a little strange, but I think that’s a trademark of Wes Anderson. The DVD had Hotel Chevalier on there as well, which you can watch together with the main movie.
You’re probably thinking, what’s with all the links? I’m not getting paid for them. They’re just there for your convenience.

Thursday, 15th of April, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (17:52) Weren’t APink supposed to have a comeback music video this month? Hopefully anyhow. April’s half cooked already. It’ll be May before you know it.
• I’ll have to do a table of my fave Japanese songs that I found this year too. Although that includes ones from last year. I’m just finding what I can from whatever year. Back in 2017 when I got my Cowon X9 and felt like some fresh Japanese tunes, I turned to the Korean stuff because it was easier to find, and I didn’t really care. But now that this year’s sucked so far, as far as the Korean stuff’s concerned, I’m making more effort to look elsewhere. I tried to find Mongolian music too, but without a great deal of luck. Maybe I should try African music @ some stage. Hmm…

Friday, 16th of April, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (22:24) I was looking up some more videos of old lifts / elevators if you prefer, and then thought: I wonder if there are any of wooden escalators… And there are! Quite a few from Macy’s in America, and surprisingly, ones that used to be at Wynyard railway station in Sydney up until 2017. I would’ve gone there to see them, if I knew. Town Hall had them too, but I dunno if there still are any there. Who’s old enough to remember the ones at David Jones in Sydney? They had a different sound about them too. Kind of more clunky. This might sound mean, but it used to be a little amusing when people with high heel shoes almost got them stuck in the thick gaps between the wooden strips. They technically should have been lifted out at the end anyhow. And the old lifts at Myer, and David Jones too, with the gates and the drivers, and the sensations on your guts from the fast stops & starts. I’m sure Myer still had those in 1994. And the Strand Arcade still had drivers around 2000. I’m sure they did. I’ve got a bit of one of the lifts there on a video, with the part of the old controller gizmo, even though it doesn’t do anything now. And they used to have swing out doors (like a room door), and no inner doors either. When the drivers were present anyhow.

Tuesday, 20th of April, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:37) APink’s new MV is out. I think this is the link. I think it’s supposed to have a kind of computer generated feel to the music or something. I guess it does a bit. It wasn’t too bad. It sounded a bit more cheery than Dumhdurum last year.
• (13:15) I was just looking at KPopTown, and it seems there’s a new album on the way from Oh My Girl, which I’m not sure I knew about. I didn’t see anything about APink’s new dealie though. You can also get a record of Wendy’s new Like Water song, & it looks like it’s actually transparent. Even though I didn’t fancy the song, it looks pretty cool. I remember a really flexible transparent record years ago (that somebody in my family had), but I dunno what it was. Something from the 1980s probably.
• (16:06) Sodding Open Orifice 2 died on me twice in the last 2 days. It was the same cause both times. Copying text from WordPad instantly caused it to die, and go into a state of CPU hogging zombie-ness. It must monitor the clipboard or something. I was prepared for it this second time, and had saved the stuff I was doing, instead of losing ½ a page of typing like yesterday. It tried to recover yesterday, and claimed it had, but that was a huge load of B.S. It went back about 3 files prior to what I was up to, and saved nothing at all of what I lost. I think it forgets to update the dictionaries when it crashes too. I added a new word in and it wasn’t there later. It does remember the automatic word corrections though. Luckily. I’m always hitting 2 keys together and typing something kooky, so it’s good to have it fix stuff on the fly.

Thursday, 22nd of April, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (0:23) I should be off to bed! But I found some more interesting tunes this evening, including one from Kazakhstan called Kuirshyktar by Kesh You. That was from 2015 though, but I’d never seen it before. Also Spacecraft by Sui Sui Duck, (from 2019) who are a group that do a lot of music of the digital / electronic genre. This one could’ve finished better, but it’s quite unusual and kind of funky. A Korean one which stood out a bit, is the new I Got Ya by Jung Yong Hwa, from the show, Sell Your Haunted House. This is just the audio only unfortunately. Lastly, Blush by Zom Marie from Thailand. Although the song’s in English. Are they your cup of tea? Check ’em out and see!

Tuesday, 27th of April, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:58) Actually, I do feel a bit sleepy again. So I’m going to use that sleepy face again.
• I seem to be having such little luck finding any lists of new Chinese music that I’ve now started to try searching in Chinese instead of English. I’m getting some pretty odd results here, so maybe the translation of "new songs” isn’t too accurate. There always seems to be pictures on these preview pics of Dilraba Dilmurat, and even though I find her to be gorgeous looking, I dunno how relevant she is. Yeah, us English speakers are lucky to get the Korean music names in English and so many preview videos of what’s newly released, also in the same language. Without them, people like me’d have no clue about new songs from there. I only know of about one Japanese preview dealie, and that’s The DX. So without them, I’d be clueless with Japanese music as well. Hee hee — I’m certainly not going to learn a whole bunch of other languages just to look up new songs though either.
• (22:37) Today’s bonus joke: Why does the father of the bride bring scales to a wedding?
To give the bride a weigh.

Wednesday, 28th of April, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (22:11) Ahh! I had a very nice steak tonight at the hotel. Oooh — they had the fire lit tonight, so it was nice and cosy.
• Check out this young kid called Lim Seo Won with Shoulder Dance. Man, she looks about 10 years old or something. Also, check out The Day by Yun Sen Ae & Don’t Say Goodbye by DooRi of Venus.
• (22:39) Today’s bonus joke: Why don’t many people hang clocks on their belt?
It’s a waist of time.

Thursday, 29th of April, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (19:37) I reckon it’d be pretty sweet if Sega did an all-in-1 kind of retro console with all their Model 2 board games on it, like how they did those Mega Drive ones with built-in games. (Which you probably can still get.) You could have 2 controllers like the XBOX 360 pad, which would be ideal in my book, and maybe 2 light guns for Virtua Cop 1 & 2 + The House Of The Dead. You’d just plug it in to ya TV, turn it on, select the game you wanted, and off you’d go! I think the Model 2 board had a pretty strong line up of titles too. Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter 2, The House Of The Dead, Sega Rally, Motor Raid, Last Bronx, Dead Or Alive, Fighting Vipers, Virtua Cop 1 & 2, Manx TT, Top Skater, WaveRunner, Indy 500, maybe those slightly iffy Jaleco racing games, (OverRev and Super GT 24h), Dynamite Cop, Rail Chase 2, Sonic The Fighters, Sega Ski Super G, Sega Touring Car Championship, Sega Water Ski & maybe Zero Gunner. Virtual On would be popular too. Heck, that line up poops on what the 32X had if you ask me, so I’d buy it!!! (& there were other games it had too, like Pilot Kids, Dynamite Baseball & Virtua Striker.) Struth. If the quality was good, including the controllers, I’d plonk down $200 for that & no worries. Ah well, we can dream I suppose…

Friday, 30th of April, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (22:00) Tomorrow, probably, I’m going to do another titler program with lots of random dots, which fade into a background colour. Both of which can change colour depending on a bitmap. Pretty simple, but it should be effective, I reckon. I’m going to jazz up the background behind the controls this time as well. Make it look like I put more effort and artistic-ness into it.

Saturday, 1st of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (17:41) Here’s a sample of my new Super Dots titler program! It took a bit of tweaking to get it how I liked, and it’s better at 25 f.p.s., rather than 50, because that’s a little too fast. I did a fancier background image for the controls too. Let me know if you want it, and I’ll send it by e-mail. Although I may actually offer this one to download, since it’s only about 1.01 MB.
Anyway, it uses a 2 pixel high bitmap strip to determine the background and glowing dot colours. You can have whatever you want then. The dots can be any shape too, and bigger / smaller.
• (22:08) Wiggly lines seem to be popular from what I’ve noticed, so maybe I’ll do a titler with them and some other weird, moving shapes. You can draw a pre-made wavy line and trim its alpha channel, but if you want curved ends, it’s best to have the program do one in “real time,” using a bit of mathematics, and then add circles to the end points. Anyway, I’ll think about whether I really want to do that.

Sunday, 2nd of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (15:20) I just fixed my headphones the other day, and then fixed them again today! First there was a break on the left side wires, and then one on the right. I ended up replacing the whole cord today, since there were wire strands popping out of the old plug too. But now, the new plug, which I got at Altronics, is a bit dodgy. The black plastic insulation on the tip area is a bit narrow, compared with the metal, so it keeps catching on the sockets. Plus it doesn’t line up properly with my extension cord’s socket. So I ordered another one from eBay, which I hope will be better, but it’s often hard to tell. This is a gold plated one with a metal cover too. It only cost $6 with free postage, so cheaper than the likes of Jaycar, who would’ve charged $8 postage on top of the base price. Plus with that last plug I got from them, which they ignored my e-mail messages about, I’m inclined to look elsewhere, huh?
I did ponder about putting a stereo socket in the headphones, where the wires usually go, to which you’d just plug in a sex changing extension cord, and running 2 wires over the top to the other speaker. It’d probably last longer, and if you stepped on the cord or got it caught in some fashion, at least it would disconnect instead of breaking the wires. Plus the plug could spin in the socket as well.

Monday, 3rd of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (16:09) Ah good, my site’s working again. Something must’ve happened at Beagle yesterday, and it only seems to have been fixed just now. I sent a message, and maybe they’ll reply and say: “It was this that & the other that conked out.” Maybe.
• The new video of Japanese MV previews from The DX is out @ last for week 2 of April. Whew! I was beginning to wonder if it’d ever happen. Even though I didn’t spot any great songs, at least I got to see it.
• I did check out some African songs recently too, but I only saw 10, none of which I fancied, so that isn’t much to go on. I might look again later @ some stage.
• (17:02) Holey moley! I was just watching a video, and found out about radioactive toothpaste! Yikes! (Which was deliberately made that way.) Not only that, when I went to look it up, I also found out about cigarettes with radium (!), other toothpaste containing thorium, and a company from Denver Colorado, called The Colorado Radium Products Company, which made a thing called a Rayode, which allowed you to make your own radioactive drinking water! Flippin’ heck! “The Rayode will last a lifetime.” it says. Yeah, you mightn’t though. I’m sure that’d be great for the locations the sewage went to as well. Struth. The radioactive smokes sounded perfectly suicidal. Their slogan should’ve been: Don’t just try to get cancer with regular cigarettes, accelerate it with our included radium!

Wednesday, 5th of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (17:22) I had a go of Oblivion again last night, which I haven’t really played properly in ages. I’d still like to make a joint of some kind up to the north west region of Hermaeus Mora’s shrine. I’ve just never really done any big plug-ins for Oblivion. I’m confident with Morrowind of course, but things might be a bit different for The Elder Scrolls 4. Does having Shivering Isles installed change the dependencies or not? When you open the Construction Set, it seems to have everything from the add-on pack listed in there as well.
• (19:08) I read through some tutorials to do with Oblivion this evening, and quite a bit of building a house is the same as how you’d do it in Morrowind, but there are some differences. It seems with objects, you can now click the OK button, which was a big no-no for Morrowind. You always cancelled or closed windows, or you’d affect the master object. Unless that was your intention. The object ID system seems a bit different too. If I do decide to make something, I’ll start slowly and small! Then I can get an idea of how things work. I’d probably do a test file first to see what dependencies it has. If it tells you that. When you make a plug-in for Morrowind, it says what parent masters it has in the Construction Set. (Like Tribunal & Bloodmoon.) But if Oblivion uses an updated ESM file to add Shivering Isles, how will that work? Maybe simply not using any Shivering Isles items is the key, but I feel there’s more to it than that. Especially if it has stuff for new script functions and the like.
Anyhoo, I only have it installed on my “2018 PC,” since it has 8 GB of RAM, and my main PC only has 1. They recommend 2 GB for the Construction Set. Mmm, if I was going to add a new building to Morrowind, I’d know exactly what to do right now. I’d just slap it in there, bung in the doors and all that, ’cos I’ve done it so many times before.

Saturday, 8th of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:43) So, I had to fix my regular Sennheiser headphones a 4th time today! The 1st time, there was a break in the wires to the left speaker. So I fixed that. 2. Then a day or 2 later, one occured in the right side as well. I couldn’t determine where the break was though, and replaced the entire (original) cord with some UNUSED triple core stuff from Jaycar, and a new plug from Altronics. 3. The plug was iffy, with what looked like a distortion in it, and the black insulators in the tip weren’t wide enough. So I ordered a gold one off eBay. I soldered that on yesterday. 4. Then today, there was somehow a break in the white wire inside the new cord! How that happened, I have no idea. So I had to chuck that, and put on some other wires instead! Flippin’ heck! How does a new, unused cord have internal damage like that? And the wire that was broken, is one of a pair that are bonded together by their insulation. (One red, one white.) And that pair of wires are inside an outer, common copper wire with the outer grey insulation around the entire thing. I could understand if it was like a mm or 2 from where I soldered the wire on, perhaps caused by stress when I removed the insulation, but it was about 15 cm up the cord somewhere.
• The other day, I noticed that the Dark Mace icons from the Dark Seducers in Shivering Isles, weren’t showing up in the game. I think I may’ve had that problem in the past, but anyway, I did a fix for it yesterday, which you can now download from my site here. (See the Downloads / Oblivion page.) Basically, the icon was missing, and the Construction Set was saying “where the fig is it?” as well. I basically copied this other 64 × 64 pixel version that did exist, and edited its alpha channel, to remove this extra bit it didn’t need to show.

Sunday, 9th of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:48) Struth! I thought my 2nd hard drive for my main computer had died or something. I turned it on as usual, and there was no wallpaper image for the desktop area in Windows. So that put me in a panic. I rebooted the thing, and still nothing. It didn’t seem to be listed when the BIOS went through the stuff either. So I turned it all off, and noticed the purple LED in the caddy wasn’t lit. So I unplugged the power supply for it, and checked it with my multi-meter. Nothing showed up. Although it was fine last night. So I thought, “Well, it looks like the power supply’s dead. 2 A? I dunno if I have one elsewhere that’s that powerful.” I found a 1.5 A rated one for another portable drive, and went to try that. I went to check its plug polarity first, and it showed no power either! What?! It turned out the fizzing power board plug to the UPS had slipped out by like 2 mm! The sodding sockets on this new one are so ridiculously loose, it’d come out to the point where it wasn’t connecting! I dunno what DUMBO made the sockets on this, but they’re a completely clueless knob-head. Don’t these idiots test these things in the factory?! I should write to CyberPower about it.

Monday, 10th of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (17:11) My new Westinghouse extension cord (for my headphones) turned up today, but the socket’s a bit tight. Even on that new loose-ish gold plug. If it’s not one thing, it’s the other.
• Here’s a recent MV from Sumika, called Shake & Shake, which I saw 4 days ago. It’s a bit repetitive in the lyrics, but it’s perky sounding.
• There’s still been sod all out of Korea lately that I’ve liked (music wise). It really is shaping up to be my last year looking at anything from there at this rate. Duetto have a new MV out called The Moon, and while their singing is great as usual, the song was a boring piece of $#!+€.
• Last week I mentioned about that radioactive toothpaste, and today I read an article about this American chap who drank over 1 400 little (56.7 gram) bottles of Radithor (over 5 years), back around 1927. It was awful. It pretty much disintegrated his head. He had to have his jaw removed, had 2 teeth left, and holes in his skull were exposing his brain. He’d promoted the stuff too, and even gave samples to his friends and his horses. In the end he’d taken in 3.6 × the lethal amount of radium and was buried in a lead lined coffin. So yeah, all that cr*p was just bogus in terms of what the companies were promising.
• (19:16) I got a really nice, respectful reply from CyberPower, so I hope they don’t stumble on my site here and find the bit about dumbos and knob-heads. They even offered to possibly replace the UPS, but it probably isn’t worth the inconvenience. If they take my comments on board and make positive changes to their future units, and mine doesn’t cr*p out entirely, I guess that will be enough. Hopefully. Unless my plugs start dropping out like loose petals on old flowers or something.

Tuesday, 11th of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (19:01) I’ve probably mentioned this in the past, but I’ve got an old American book which belonged to my great-grandfather, called Fortunes In Formulas. This copy was published in 1939, so it’s quite old, and some of the stuff in here nearly makes your jaw pop open in surprise. Some of the ingredients are considered quite dangerous these days, and some of the stuff would be illegal as well. It’s aimed at allowing regular people to make their own products from the base chemicals, rather than having to go out and buy more expensive pre-made stuff. I bookmarked a couple of beauties here on page 211 for cold & cough mixtures. One cough syrup calls for 6 grains (I think about 0.065 grams) of heroin! Holey moley! Where are you going to find that legally these days? Then further down the page is a cough “balsam” with morphine acetate. Following that is another cough syrup with camphorated tincture of opium! Woo yeah! The whole lot of those’d be taboo these days. There are also formulas that contain white lead, asbestos and mercury. Ooh, and one of things was even quite racist sounding too. “Skin Bleach For Negroes” it says. Ooh dear, that’s pretty bad. By that standard there should be a corresponding formula to make people with light skin a bit darker. But there are some recipes in there for food and drinks, which might be worth a crack, if I can understand some of the bizarre terms in it. There’s recipes for chocolate, beers, absinthe, condiments, lemonades of various types & confectionary. Some of the ingredients I’ve never heard of in my life. For confectionary colours, it says for Carmine Green, use Woodruff (Waldmeister), Rosa 2, Dextrine and potato flour. I have no clue what those first 3 things are. Of course being this old, all the measurements are in imperial, so it mostly goes over my head. Not only that, but there are measurements I’ve never heard of either. Like minims, grains, scruples, and fluidrachms. Although under glass grinding fluid, it has cubic centimetres and grams, so a few metric bits got through, and there is a conversion section as well.
There’s also a section on explosives, including gunpowder, dynamite, Berge’s Blasting Powder & fulminating powder to name a few. Plus types of cheese, cosmetics, perfumes, inks, cholera remedies, chewing gum, embalming fluids, types of solder, and also a short section on early colour photography.

Wednesday, 12th of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:42) I got another reply from CyberPower. It seems they really do care about their customers’ experiences and feedback. The person who wrote to me said they’d definitely pass on my concerns and what not. I feel a bit bad about the dumbo & knob-head comment on Sunday, now it seems they’re actually taking it in and are going to possibly rectify the issue. Not that I said those words in my messages to them.
• (12:58) Ah, dang, Norman Lloyd died 2 days ago. I was hoping he’d make it to the end of the year. Ah well, he got to like 106½ or so, so that was good going.

Sunday, 16th of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (17:03) I’ve got 6 new Oblivion related screen shots lined up for my page of them, on Wednesday. 2 funny ones and some other pretty pictures.
• I finally finished converting & editing my 9th directory load of Oblivion screen shots today. They’d only been waiting for about 11 years to get done. It came to 1047 files in the end. Then I have 199 more to do in my 10th directory!

Monday, 17th of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (17:00) Whew! Here’s a sexy looking new MV, called Amasia by Pyoapple. It’s not the best song, but if you like cute looking girlies, this is worth @ least 1 look, I reckon.

Tuesday, 18th of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (22:49) Today’s bonus joke:
How did Noah find his way ’round at night time?
He had an ark lamp.

Wednesday, 19th of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (0:00) Today’s daft joke:
• The 3 great bridges of San Francisco: The Bay Bridge, The Golden Gate Bridge & Nash Bridges.
• (0:10) Yeah, the Screen Shots Of The Moment page has been updated again now.

Thursday, 27th of May, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:37) Struth, where’s the month going to? All that time waiting for May to come around again, and now it’s almost gone.
• Here’s a new Korean MV which I liked & thought was a little bit more unique with its… uh… channel panning thing. It’s called Feel Me Up by Ice Cream. A suggestive name, huh?
• This new gold plug (— see the 2nd of May —) I got for my headphones is getting to be a pain. It doesn’t connect properly, and you have to keep spinning it and fiddling around to get it right. I think I’ll de-solder it and use the plug, and a short length of the cord, from my old PSB headphones. I know that plug’s good. I might look into that tonight.

Thursday, 3rd of June, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:42) Here are 2 new music videos from Joy of Red Velvet: Je T’aime & Hello. Plus Ggoma by Tae Ho, which I meant to look @ the other day. It seems things are picking up a bit now in the Korean music line up. It must be ’cos they’ve gone into Summer in the northern hemisphere, but we need some good cheery tunes for Winter!

Thursday, 10th of June, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (23:05) Here’s an English song for a change: Nathan Evans — Wellerman (Sea Shanty) - 220Kid & Billen Ted Remix. I thought that was quite catchy, and you could hum along to it pretty well too. If you fancy a little something instrumental from Korea, check out Challengers by Jane, Funtwo & Jack Thammarat. The ending’s a bit abrupt, like too many songs, but the rest of it’s well worth a listen. It feels like it could go well with OutRun 2 or something. If you want more music, check out the Japanese Distance by Flumpool. This one finishes abruptly too.
• (23:33) Here’s another MV to check out: From China, the really nice Ruhua by Interesting + Pai Gu Jiao Zhu. (I didn’t do that translation, so don’t shoot me if it’s wrong.)

Friday, 11th of June, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:00) It was 17 years between 1986 and 2003, and that was pretty much the gap between the original OutRun and OutRun 2. It’s now been 18 years since 2003! Can you believe it?! Maybe Sega should consider an OutRun 3 game now.
• (22:52) Sneakers by Ha Sung Woon isn’t too bad.

Saturday, 12th of June, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (20:39) Holey moley. I was just watching some videos of this British dude who collects vacuum cleaners of all things. They were everywhere! In his garage, in his house, in the attic… it was like an infestation more than a collection! He had a bunch of old Macs which I checked out a video of first. He had 3 of mine too. An iMac G4, iMac G5 and Power Mac G5. But the vacuum cleaners! My word — he didn’t even remember what he had! I think there were more cleaners than carpet from what I could see. I saw one like my Nanna’s and some really old ones (1930-ish) that would’ve been interesting, but the rest of them didn’t do much for me. From what the guy said, it sounded like he worked on them and sold them too. I think we have about 3 vacuum cleaners. The Hoover one my Nanna had, which I mentioned, which is more sentimental these days, (although it does work,) a new Vax thing (which actually uses loads more power than the old one) and a mini pull-around-by-the-hose dealie, which just packed it in. (Some modern plastic piece of cr@p, which was about 5 years old @ best.)
There’s another video result I have here about some fella who collects washing machines! Imagine the room they’d take up! Not to mention the pipes if you were using more than 1 @ a time. We’ve got a Hoover washing machine (which was actually made in Australia), that makes a heck of a racket and shakes the whole room around just about. So that’s more than enough. It’s got L.E.D.s and almost flat buttons, so it looks fairly new. I think it’s from about 2000 or so. Back prior to that, when I was a kid, my Mum had this open top Pope brand one with a ringer. It had some electrical fault that kept switching off the circuit breaker doodad. Earth leakage I guess. Or whatever you like to call it.
• (22:16) Here’s a video of an American chap who collected somewhere in the range of 1 500 washing machines! Mostly vintage and antique ones. He had to build 2 warehouses to store them all. I hope he’s wearing clean clothes!

Monday, 14th of June, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (23:22) I’ve been doing a clock program (for my Macs) yesterday & today. It’s going to have a handful of different styles, chimes, an alarm, & synthesised speech announcements. I did “fancy” clocks for Windows in the past. About 16 years or so ago. This one’s a little intense on the CPU usage for the analogue style clock you see here, so I added an adjustment option to let you choose how often the image updates occur. The L.E.D. mode is much more efficient, & I’ll see what happens for further styles that I add.
I was using a slide-out options menu, but it was causing issues, so I did a detached window, which is placed ideally out of the way of the main window, depending on your resolution and where the main window’s located.

Wednesday, 16th of June, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (20:53) I added a sliding wooden clock to my new program, of my own divising, which has raised gold numbers and dots. A centre point on the display points at the current time value. There are 3 sliders — hours, minutes & seconds. I still have to add the alarm function. Of course, it wouldn’t be a very good multi-clock program without a nixie tube clock, so I did one of those too.
I’m using MIDI files for the chimes. I’ve done the Westminster one so far, but I may do the Whittington chime as well. My Nana had that on her clock. I’ll have to figure the notes out though, and that’ll be a laugh! I’m clueless when it comes to reading music, and knowing what note’s what. I’ve got a little program for Windows that lets you make MIDI files with your typing keyboard.

Friday, 18th of June, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (15:37) You can now get my Fancy Clocks program for Mac OS X. (Up to Snow Leopard.) I added the Whittington chime option, like I mentioned on Wednesday, and that took an age to figure out, last night. If you don’t have an appropriate Mac, get yourself a virtual machine program and install Mac OS X Tiger. That’s what I say. And if not, well, I guess you’ll miss out. Ha ha. I think all the bugs are squished, and I fixed up the wrong MIDI files at the last moment.
• (20:44) I noticed a video result tonight for some Russian chap who makes nixie tubes. Apparently he’s close to the only person who does. I think most companies stopped making them back in the 1970s. L.E.D.s probably do use less power for displays, but you wouldn’t think nixie tubes would use THAT much juice. They’re just a fancy neon bulb of sorts, where the gas glows around the electrode number. They’re not like filament type bulbs.
I remember them used in an old cash register at a butcher shop in the town where my Nana lived, and that was my first sighting of them. I didn’t know what they were until years later. That would’ve been the early 1980s, and it was probably 2002 before I found out what they were called.

Saturday, 19th of June, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (16:31) I spent a while trying to find cash registers with nixie tubes, but pretty much found nothing. I’m wondering now if it was some scales at the butcher shop all those years ago, which had the nixie tubes instead. There used to be a little people counter, I think, at Grace Bro’s @ Penrith Plaza pre-1992, which might’ve had some mini nixie tubes, but I can’t remember too well now. It might have been something else.
I also looked up nixie tube clocks on eBay, and found quite a lot from the Ukraine. They weren’t too cheap either. Probably $200 or so and up. Then again, people pay a lot more than that for mechanical clocks. There are some fake nixie tube clocks you can get now too, which are L.E.D. lit numbers, probably done in the same fashion as the ones @ the very bottom of this page. That’s nice & all, but if I was looking for nixie tube clocks, I’d want the real deal. It makes me wonder if other gases would work besides neon, or if they could be coloured like neon tubes. I think they “dope” them with other elements, don’t they? Or something. Maybe it’s half a century (or more) too late to be thinking that now.

Sunday, 20th of June, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:13) Last night I was fiddling with my Mac game, Teddy Utopia, and thought I’d see what’d happen if I compiled it for Windows. Well, it actually runs really well! Much better than the Mac rendition, I partially dread to admit. Although the sound effects are a bit delayed. But CPU usage is a lot lower. I tried it on my HP laptop PC as well, and that was just as good, and it was no effort at all for my 2018 PC of course. It was like 1% CPU usage or something. I also tried it on the minimum requirements of Windows ’98 with QuickTime 5, and it was rather sluggish. Although that was in a virtual machine. But I dunno if that really had much to do with it, because the real CPU usage was minimal. But yeah, Windows 2000 through to Windows 7 (with QuickTime 7.2) was great! So I made a new CD of it for myself with a hybrid file system in Disk Utility in Mac OS X Leopard. That way it’ll be read with Windows too, without having to install any HFS support. Ah, I’ll have to find some kind of decent file storage site on the ’net and that way people can download it. It’s about 194.92 MB without the music. I did use public domain music, but I’m not sure if there was any crediting required, based on what the site said from where I got the tunes. With the music, it’s 356 MB.

Friday, 25th of June, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:19) Oooh! I made up the potion I really wanted to make, last night in T.E.S. 4: Oblivion. I wanted something for when I’m lurking about in dungeonous kinds of places that had Chameleon, Light & Detect Life. So I looked through my ingredients chests, and wrote down what I should go for. & then I found the ultimate combo! An Alocasia Fruit, an Onion, a Screaming Maw and a Wisp Core. And to my surprise, you get 5 positive effects in the one potion! Sweet! As well as the Detect Life, Chameleon and Light properties, you also get Restore Fatigue and Restore Health. I’ve probably got about 50 Alocasia Fruit now, since I almost stripped the Mania side of the Shivering Isles bare, but I am a bit short on Screaming Maws, so I’ll have to go back to a cave there and look for them. I think Dunroot Barrow, or something, has a good amount. I couldn’t remember where you found the Wisp Core ingredients either, but there’s a bunch of the plants in Bliss, which makes for a good starting point.
I was considering enchanting a pair of Daedric Gauntlets with the spells, but it seems you can only put one spell onto 1 piece of armour. What a rip off that is, compared with Morrowind. You didn’t even have to have Constant Effect in Morrowind either. In fact that was much more expensive. Plus gauntlets were 2 separate items in Morrowind as well. Left & right. I didn’t try it, but I think you might be able to do 2 separate boots in Morrowind too. Boots, as a piece of armour, use both left & right foot and ankle areas of your body. But if you only set it to one foot and ankle, I think it should theoretically only go on 1 foot. The body parts aren’t specific to any side of your body either. But the game would still name one boot as “boots” probably. There’s like a tail thing too, for the Argonian and Khajiit races, and that didn’t seem to get much use from what I could tell.

Monday, 28th of June, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (15:48) I finally found a Chinese MV I wanted to see, called Like True As False by Wang Haoxin. It’s from a comedy show from Hong Kong, called Al Cappuccino. Hee hee — I always said Al Pacino’s middle name should’ve been Cap. If you watch the video, you can see a temple looking place, from the inside, which looks like the Man Mo temple that they used for Shenmue 2. You can get the DVDs of the show off eBay too. I think I’d wanna see a sample 1 off the ’net first before I forked out for it. The DVDs have apparently got English subtitles for us poor sods who don’t speak Chinese.
• Here’s another good MV called The Paramount Show by ProducePandas.
• (16:55) How many web sites out there seemed to have degenerated into a sucky looking knock off of Windows 8 now, huh? IMDb seems to be taking a downward slide, DeviantArt went off (despite the UI designers on the site), & even Viki looks a bit icky. I want to know from you, the reader, if you’ve found sites that look more ornate and elegant than my own! Of course, nothing controversial, illegal, filled with porn or anything distasteful, please. And don’t be disheartened if I disagree either. But yep, stuff about Egyptian knick-knacks, fancy custom diary covers, sites on architecture… whatever. I want to see more web sites that make you go: “Wow! They really made this look amazing.”

Tuesday, 29th of June, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (21:46) Guess what I’ve been doing today? Making my 1st proper Oblivion plug-in is what! It’s about time, huh? Since I’ve had the game for 15 years now. Longer than I had the PC version of Morrowind. It’s going to be a house in the Talos Plaza District of the Imperial City. I’m going to make it about 11 grand, which seems pretty reasonable, considering the prices of the other houses you can buy. It’s going to have a “secret” basement, and hopefully a magical travel ring, like ones in Morrowind. Fast travel may be a “thing” of Oblivion, but it still takes up in-game time. I want something that does instantaneous travel. I think there was something like this offered in Knights Of The Nine, but I don’t have that expansion. Of course that means I’ll have to write a script, which seems a bit daunting. In Morrowind — no worries! I wrote scripts like I was in love with them, but Oblivion is obviously going to be different, and I’ll have to learn the new ways.

Wednesday, 30th of June, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (20:53) I had a Big Mac for dinner tonight for a change.
• My Talos Plaza Manor plug-in for Oblivion’s going well. I like how the game now lets you have a different cell ID from its name. I did a bunch of potted plants. They really didn’t focus much on plant pots after Morrowind. The pot used for the indoor Nirnroots is some old pot from the ruined forts, with some shrunken sewer dirt slung in the top. That’s one thing that’s better now — a greater range of object scaling! Morrowind let you scale objects from 0.5 through to 2, and if you wanted another number, you had to use a script to change the size in-game, which was no good for object placement. Anyhoo, I made 2 NIF files for windows, which I didn’t plan to do. But I wanted windows in my upstairs alcove, and it lined up with the outside piece of the building too. I had to use a BSA file extractor program, as well as good ol’ NIFSkope. It seems you could make a ring to teleport you somewhere else. I’ve only read a little bit of the scripts & how they’re done now.

Friday, 2nd of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (22:09) I’ve done 3 scripts for my house now! I never intended to do any. I converted a crystal from the Ayleid ruins to offer restoration like the chapel altars. Well, it had no collision, didn’t it? So as an activator, it didn’t show up any indication in-game that it did anything. So I had loads of “fun” in NIFSkope, adding collision to it, and making it something which was immovable. At one stage, its collision was falling away into the scenery, and leaving the object behind! LOL. I got that fixed though, and it works as intended now.
I also got the teleporting ring happening, but since there seems to be no MenuTest command for Oblivion, unlike Morrowind, you don’t actually travel until you close your menu from equipping the ring that the script’s attached to. Since it’s Ayleid in origin, it takes you to various Ayleid ruins, near to main cities. Plus it takes you back home. So it’s ideal for dungeons you don’t want to walk back through again. You can just leave and head home. But there’s no faked Mark & Recall feature. Although, it won’t work from the Shivering Isles, because the portals that take you there and back, set a bunch of variables and stuff that need to be done, and I don’t want to mess with that. Stuff to do with your bounty, the Gate Keeper and what not. Even the Grey Cowl thing from the Grey Fox has been updated for the Shivering Isles with some head-spinning scripting.
Then the 3rd script — something I wanted for Morrowind, but could never get working. Either because I never did it quite right, or it just didn’t work as expected. And it’s a “portable chest.” Or more specifically, a chest which is located in a fixed location, but can be accessed from anywhere. This time it DOES work! I read a warning that the script shouldn’t be attached to the container, like it was trying to open itself. It should be targeted (to its reference name) from an activator or a quest script. Well, that was a no-brainer for my purposes anyway. I tested it on an Activator @ 1st, and that worked from a different cell, and then I put it on a bottle that you can carry. And that worked too! Hooray! Of course it has to ask you whether you want to access the chest, pick the bottle up or do nothing. Hopefully there’s none of that 72 hour bug business like in Morrowind. I’ll have to go the Shivering Isles, rest up for just over 3 days, save, quit, reload, and try it again. If it works fine then, then it’s in permanently. Oh, but it’ll be so good! Especially going through the dungeons in the S.I., and I can’t get to the Ayleid Sanctum (by Phoenix T’ril) to dump my loads of loot.
• There’s a vehicle horn sound in As Time Goes By, which always reminds me of the violin @ the start of Wings Of Kynareth (by Jeremy Soule) from Oblivion. Every time I hear the toot, I start humming the song. I had to put it on now to play.
• Anyhoo, I’ll have this plug-in of mine available here on my site when it’s done.

Saturday, 3rd of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (17:12) I’ve almost completed my Talos Plaza Manor plug-in for Oblivion. I’m having a strange issue with the restorative crystals in the sub-basement not making any sound when they should. I might have to tweak the script and see what I can get happening. I figured the spell would make a noise anyway when its cast, but it doesn’t want to.
• I found that it’s the region editor in the Construction Set that determines the boundaries of Cyrodiil, but they still don’t seem to be shown in the Render Window by any means that I can find. Now that I’ve got a tiny bit of experience making this house, there are 2 other areas where I’d like to put stuff in the game, and one spot in particular, is a place I’ve long wanted something at. And that’s at X: -64695.4 & Y: 170509.44 on the map. Or around about there. It’s close to the meeting point of the borders of Cyrodiil, Hammerfell & Skyrim. I walked up there years ago, and said: “There’s nothing up here.” I really would’ve liked another cave, or mine, Ayleid ruin or something to go to there. There’s even a stairway to the south which leads to that region. I looked up that official… oh… what’s it called? Thing-a-me-bob’s Tower, and it seems to be closer to Bruma anyway. I obviously don’t have it, regardless. Another spot I’d like for a nice Cheydinhal type manor, possibly with some kind of suitable tower nearby, is at X: 210057.95, Y: -12332.06, to the east of Abandoned Mine. There’s a nice flat spot on the hill, which would be ideal, and it’s very pretty there. I’d probably whack in some test objects first, go there, make sure you can walk around them, and then carry on. Again, another right-near-the-invisible-boundary location.
• Oh yeah! I did that test last night with my remote access chest. I slept for 4 days in the Shivering Isles, saved the game, quit, reloaded, and it still worked. So there were no worries there.

Monday, 5th of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:21) I had troubles again on the weekend uploading files to Beagle’s server. I don’t know why it’s happening, and they don’t seem to know either. On Saturday night at about 21:00 or so, it just cr@pped out entirely. It couldn’t retrieve the list of files or let me upload, and when it did, it was going at about 80 bytes per second. Whether something’s overloading it or what, I have no idea. I just want to let everyone know that if things take a turn for the worse, please try to find me on the web again @ wherever I may end up. The site’s still going to be called the same thing and all. I don’t know if / when I’ll be able to update all my files @ DeviantArt with any new addresses or the like. For the mean time I’m hopefully still going to be here for a bit longer.

Tuesday, 6th of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:29) I had a great dream this morning about this skipping video game called Vapour Rope. They were demonstrating it @ some shopping centre. It was on a console of some kind, and you held these 2 skipping rope controllers and did various moves with music going. I did this example picture in A.O.I. to show you a concept of what it could look like. I think Nintendo has a skipping game, so this could be from some rival company perhaps. Ha ha — if you want to buy it off me, give me 10 grand, mention my name, & it’s a deal.

Thursday, 8th of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (22:22) I’ve been making another plug-in of houses for Oblivion. Mostly because I want to. During writing some scripts, I noticed I somehow fudged up the timing part of the ring script for Talos Plaza Manor, but the issue is insignificant. The timing part doesn’t really need to be there anyhow. Anyway, it’s correct this time. I was going to have a doorway method of teleporters to various other cities, but it stuffs up your fast travel timing. Because you close the distance across the map, travelling from west to east takes like 3 minutes or something. So I did away with that. Unfortunately if you have a companion, you won’t be able to have them follow you in this method. Unless they can just jump to you anyhow. Mmm — you really need to be careful.

Sunday, 11th of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:46) I was looking at the windows in Oblivion, and the bump mapping they use is really weird. It initially looks like a strange purple bitmap, but on further observation, it seems that each colour channel does something different. The blue seems to be an inversion of the regular bump, the alpha channel controls how glossy it is, and the red and green don’t seem to make much sense at all. I dunno why they chose to do it that way, and not use a regular greyscale height based bitmap. That’s the correct way to do it in 3D graphics programs. If anyone’d like to write in and explain what Bethesda were doing here, that might be interesting to know. It looked like quite a lot more awkward and time consuming over the usual method. This probably also explains why the bump maps look so blocky in the game. The texture compression is affecting certain channels more than others, significantly lowering the quality. They’d have been better off to use uncompressed greyscale images in my opinion, like I did for Morrowind, and pretty much everything else I’ve made.
• So yep, I have 2 houses so far for this 2nd Oblivion plug-in. One’s actually over near a fort that you get in Knights Of The Nine, where Mehrunes Razor is, and I only found this out from a video I was watching. Luckily they don’t clash, but I don’t have K.O.T.N. anyway. The other house is a fort style joint in the Shivering Isles on the Mania side. It was going to be called Xetterend, but then I realised that the X places are pretty much all on the Dementia side, so I called it something else. I’m probably going to have a upper class Leyawiin house on an island perhaps, down that way too. Something better than that joint you buy that’s like a shack. Well, you’ll have to buy this place too.
Oh yeah! And for the one in the Shivering Isles, you’ll only need to purchase it prior to becoming Sheogorath. Once you’ve gained his powers, the locks to the joint will yield to you, since you’re running the realm from then on.

Tuesday, 13th of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:26) Those houses in Leyawiin (, in T.E.S. 4: Oblivion, of course,) seem quite inaccurate between their interiors & exteriors. You often see a 3 or 4 storey building, but inside, it’s only got 2 levels. Plus they have more windows on the inside than what exist on the outside, and chimneys on the outside that don’t have a fireplace internally. What happened there ever?
• I also looked at dialogue, but I can’t work out how the text matches up with the sound files for the voices. It must be specified somewhere. It’d be good if I could add hired guards to my places that just used speech that came with the game. I could do it with Morrowind — no worries! There isn’t speech when you’re interacting with a character most of the time anyway. Although with Oblivion, they now have topic IDs and topic writing, which is much better than Morrowind. It didn’t have IDs for topics; just the topic name, which could clash with other mods.
• It seems you can have potions that fortify your skills in the Construction Set, but I don’t remember if any existed in the game. And there may not’ve been ingredients to make them either.
• I want to know if you can just place a “HorseMarker” & your horse’ll go to the nearest one when you go indoors. I did a search for that on the web, and found absolutely nothing about it.

Thursday, 15th of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (17:14) Flippin’ burgers! I spent over an hour this afternoon, trying to change the textures on 3 paintings for Oblivion. It seems that even if you don’t want to use a bump map, you still do, because otherwise, it comes out too dark. How the f**k does that make any sense? The way they implemented that bump mapping is so peculiar. To cut a long story short, the trick is to just use a really small white bitmap with a completely transparent alpha channel, and the texture will come out correctly with no bump, and be at the right brightness. From my testing, it seems they used the blue channel more as a… like a specular highlight, based on the colour of surrounding lights. I think it might actually be the green channel that’s the bump height, but then it doesn’t make sense for how the windows implemented it. So, I dunno what they were doing. Maybe somebody knows how it works. It makes me wonder if it is a proper bump map, or more of an illusion. Although in the game, the stuff that is bumpy does tend to look correct, based on where the light’s coming from.
If you take a look at this example on the right, you can see how regular bump mapping is done, if you don’t already know. The top image is the source bitmap, and the bottom is the the result of it as a bump. The lighter parts of the image make for the height, and the darker parts make for the indentations. There are 2 light sources to the top left. So I guess Bethesda tried to squeeze a whole bunch of control elements into the one image, which is a bit confusing.
I also read about how NPC dialogue was done, but seems you can easily stuff it up, if you’re not careful. Another thing I still can’t figure out, is how the voice sound files are linked to the text. It must be somewhere there. How else would the game know which ones to pick?
I’d also like to know how some meshes are reflected off the water, and others aren’t. You’d think it’d just reflect everything, but I guess that must be too intensive.
(23:57) Oooh, I just feel like an egg sandwich for lunch tomorrow. I think I’ll have to see about having one. Um… anyway I found another cool spot with a great view for a 4th house of sorts for my Houses Collection plug-in. Kind of north-west of Broken Promises Cave, over passed Chorrol. I think I should do it like a mini fort, I reckon. Something compact, instead of the more sprawling houses I’ve done already. It’ll need a tower for the view of course. All the places have to have a great view. I’m hoping to make a verandah for the joint near Leyawiin, but connecting it realistically up to the interior is also my goal. The back of the central part of the interior, where that mysterious exterior chimney is, is all just stairs. I was also wondering about putting in some kind of bonus merchant, but I still feel wary about the NPCs in Oblivion. Perhaps I could just copy some other merchant, give them a new I.D., more gold and make ’em look sexy, but I have another 3rd party merchant plug-in (that I mentioned before), and the dude’s inventory never seems to empty out. Usually when you go back to a merchant, the stuff you sold them sods off after 3 days or so. This guy keeps it forever. I think it must be something to do with being a plug-in. I couldn’t see any particular reason from analysing the mod to suggest otherwise. Anyway, I can always do a test run of a NPC merchant, see what happens, and if I’m not happy, just revert back to a previous ESP file that I’ve done.

Friday, 16th of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (22:02) I added a place called Fort Setback to the location I mentioned last night. It’s got a great lookout tower on the hill behind it, where you can see Chorrol, Skingrad, Kvatch & the edge of the Imperial City. It’s a bit of a pain to get to, but once you do, you can fast travel there, and use the teleporting item too. (Which I haven’t made yet.) The inside has a hallway that goes to the tower, and a room off to the right where everything else is. There’s room for a garden at the back, before you hit the ol’ invisible border.

Monday, 19th of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (0:20) I ended up putting a merchant girl into my Houses Collection plug-in after all. She’s at the most expensive house — Topaz On The Water, near Leyawiin. She doesn’t have any custom speech, but she does read a book and sleep down in the cellar. I couldn’t work out if there was a way to get such NPCs to clear out their inventories after selling them stuff. I said the other day about this. So I gave the woman a script to do it on the minimum of a daily basis. It just checks that if the day changes, to do it. There is a slight chance that if you leave on one day of the week, and come back on the same day in the future, it might not happen, but it will the next day that doesn’t match. I realise that in the PC version of Morrowind, merchants keep all the stuff you sell them, but in Oblivion they don’t. And I want to keep it that way for this plug-in. In any case, if you have the Construction Set, you could just remove the script from her before you start, if you wanted. In Morrowind, containers with a negative count of an item seem to respawn instantly when owned by a mechant. Like the next time you buy from them. But in Oblivion, it seems to take that 3 day period to occur.

Saturday, 24th of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:19) I’ve almost finished my Houses Collection plug-in for Oblivion. I was doing more testing of it yesterday, and I got the last issues sorted out.
• Beagle’s FTP server is still giving me issues, and it looks like I’m going to close my account with them, if they can’t fix it. So this could be good bye from this address, if you’re reading this now. Please keep your eyes peeled for me on the web, possibly with an ISP called Swoop.

Monday, 26th of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (15:21) The Swoop deal is out. They’ve ended their hosting support! What am I? Cursed or something? They were offering 500 MB of space just 4 months ago, and then they told me today that it ended years ago, or something. So I dunno. I sent a message to another company called IIG, I think it was, so I’ll see if they reply with what I need. I also read up about using your own server at home, but there are a lot of issues with this, and it’s mostly the initial cost. 1stly, I’d need another computer that would run ALL THE TIME. 2ndly, a 2nd UPS to keep it running during a power failure. But ideally, professional companies would have backup power supplies that could run for days on end. The next problem is the slow upload speed. Unless I got Internet access with something like a 10 MB per second upload speed, everyone’s going to experience sluggish downloads. Although I don’t think my site is all that heavily used anyhow. (And I sure wouldn’t be using my main PC with its utter CR@P network thing. It can barely maintain 400 KB per second on our LAN.) And then you’re also paying for the electricity to run the computer, and maintenance of it, like hard drive failures and anything else that pops off. So you know what, if this all goes south, and you’re reading this now, I’d recommend you save the stuff you like from my site now, and keep your own personal copy. Don’t re-upload it though. Apart from stuff I have given permission for.

Wednesday, 28th of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:15) Well, I have some sad news. My site here is going. I just received a message from the owner of Beagle, saying that on the 28th of August, there will be no more hosting. It’s been mostly good these past 14 years or so, since the fall of Tel Pacific, but now it’s time for me to move somewhere else. Thanks to those of you who wrote in about my Morrowind plug-ins too. Please feel free to contact me at my Lavabit e-mail address, as I’m in limbo about how long I’ll still be with Beagle. If there are any plug-ins, programs or what not that you want, do write to me, and I can still provide them once the site’s gone. I’m currently waiting to hear back from a company called IIG about hosting, so keep your eyes peeled for me SOMEWHERE on the web. I will definitely be getting paid hosting, hopefully for a good price. If you’re doing a web search, you can try stuff like “John Kahler Sega review” or “JMK Morrowind” or something, and hopefully I’ll pop up again. I don’t know how long that will take for a transition to occur, but hopefully pretty quickly.

Friday, 30th of July, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (22:50) Well, the site isn’t dead yet. I finally started on finishing up my 2nd L.E.D. chaser circuit, which I mentioned on the 6th of February. I just have to do the 16 little sockets for the magenta L.E.D.s that make up the “mouth”, connect them all to the output pins of the ULN2803APG I.C., & the common connections, add the power socket & switch, stick it in the box, and it should be ready to go.
• I think I noticed a light which shouldn’t’ve been there, in the saloon, in Back To The Future 3 this evening. Like something from the crew. It was like when the Doc was waking up from the whisky.

Sunday, 1st of August, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:46) I finished my 2nd L.E.D. chaser off last night. Here’s a picture! This was a 1 second exposure, so all the L.E.D.s appear to be on at once. Head on back to the 6th of February to see how it animates. The mouth L.E.D.s do actually look more magenta than this in reality. So there you go; I was able to recycle a bunch of stuff to make the box. Lots of ice block sticks, a piece of cardboard that I turned black with Noodler’s Ink, and some rubber bands & string. I hung it under my “Shelf Of Light” and ran the wires up to an old film can, which has the switch and 3.5 mm power socket. That then connects to the splitter thingy in the old magnesium tablets jar, to get power from my switch mode power supply. So yep, you can do quite a bit of stuff with recycled goods.
• Today’s bonus joke: What do you call a doctor made of Lego?
A plastic surgeon.
• (19:10) So apparently Microsoft really are doing Windows 11 now. Or it’s out or something. From the video results I saw, it still looks the same as Windows 8, unfortunately. Not that I’m ever going back to Windows again anyhow, but it seemed worth a mention, I s’pose. All that malarkey about Windows 10 being the end was a load of old hoo-ha. Hoo hoo! Hoo hoo hoo! Ha! (Just doing a little dance there.)
• In more interesting “news,” it was apparently 45 years ago, last month, that the Z80 CPU 1st came out.

Thursday, 5th of August, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:32) Well, my site will be moving now to I.I.G. I will try to get the new address mentioned here as soon as I can. It should be along the lines of jmk.drag.net.au, unless that’s taken already. The chap I spoke to said I can set things up to automatically redirect… well, I’ll do that if I can figure it out! Ha ha. I think some of the stuff he said was a bit over my head, or stuff I hadn’t considered. Anyway, they said leave off fixing the NBN related part of it for now. Things with that are in the process of changing. Anyway, the staff there seemed very friendly and helpful, and didn’t try to get me off the ’phone or anything. I was on there for quite a while. And they said they can tweak stuff about the account to what I was told in their e-mail, if stuff isn’t quite right based on what I filled out in the application.
• Ooh, and I have another mini plug-in done for Oblivion, which is probably a bit more customised to my own “needs.” It basically adds buttons to the Hall Of Epochs and guards room place thing, to allow you to return to the upper part of the Imperial Palace, once you’ve done the big heist quest for the Thieves’ Guild. Plus it adds a key to open the door in Unmarked Cave, although somebody else has probably done this too. I’ll try to get around to uploading that eventually.

Friday, 6th of August, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:29) All right then, this is the new address to go to for my site now: http://jmk.drag.net.au/ I’m currently uploading my files as I type this, so they should be done by the time anybody reads this. I had to get a new FTP program, because the server likes a more secure connection. Plus there were a bunch of pre-defined directories already there, which I knew nothing about, so I had to find the correct one to make it work. If of course, you’re at the new address, congratulations on finding it so quickly!

Tuesday, 10th of August, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:40) I’m slowly getting things done related to my site now. The software review for this month is uploaded. I’m going to try to get ALL my Morrowind plug-ins available here now, since I have much more room. I have to update the e-mail addresses in all the “read me” files.

Friday, 13th of August, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (16:31) All righty! I’m getting Mousehunt & Shanghai Knights for my birthday this year. I’ve seen Mousehunt, like yonks ago, but I’ve never seen S.K. And tomorrow is my Dad’s birthday.
• Yep, all my Morrowind plug-ins should be available now from the site here. Ooh, I do still have to add that newest Oblivion one as well. I’ll get to that soon.
• (19:04) Here’s a question you can try answering, because I have no clue! I tried looking it up, and found nothing about it really. Anyway, under my desk, I have a little “night light”, which is basically a neon bulb in a small white plug. I use it to make sure there’s power coming out of my UPS, after the issue with the plug becoming loose. When the light’s off in the room, it flickers like crazy, and sometimes goes off completely, yet if you shine just a bit of light from a torch at it, it stabilises. What is it about the light that makes it steady? Send your answers to my usual e-mail addresses!

Monday, 16th of August, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (17:21) I decided to look up any new Steps MVs last night, and found quite a few from the last few years. Perhaps I should’ve looked sooner! Anyway, here are a couple I recommend:
* Scared Of The Dark
* Something In Your Eyes
And if you want a feel-good, upbeat kind of song, check out Sumika’s new one called Jasmine, from the end of July. Oh yeah, and this Vietnamese one from January 2017, called Ði Về Ðâu from Tiên Tiên is really worth a look as well.

Wednesday, 18th of August, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:03) Red Velvet have a new MV out called Queendom. It wasn’t really my cuppa tea, but it seemed perky.
• I’m just backing up my 3rd DVD of The Amazing Race 16, which cracked, probably when I knocked the case on the floor last night. I’m using Burn CDCC, which I don’t usually use for dual layer DVDs, so hopefully it will work fine. It hasn’t stuffed up so far, so let’s see…
• (13:07) Well, it’s hit the “read verifying” stage, so I guess that’s a good sign. I had a look on the web for this program and dual layer DVDs, and didn’t really find anyone mentioning their success or failure with it. It’s not exactly in the realm of Nero’s popularity, I suppose. It only burns ISO files anyway.
• In Oblivion the other night, I found this burnt out looking joint with some skulls, a chest, and lots of cobwebs, up in the Valus Mountains, kind of north from Malada. I thought it might be where an Oblivion gate was supposed to open, but nope! I checked the Construction Set, and there was none there. A bit further south was a strange way shrine with no activator, and a chest on it. So that was kind of unusual.
• (13:28) That DVD burnt fine.

Monday, 23rd of August, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (16:10) I was pondering doing a music page for the site here, but I’m not sure. If I went to somebody else’s site and read through what they liked, I’m not sure how much it would convince me to check out any of their recommendations. I look through those weekly previews of songs from Korea, which I get to see and hear, and that still doesn’t convince me.
• I backed up my BWitched albums last night & today. Then I found Sweet Like Chocolate from Shanks & Bigfoot, although that’s not as good as I remember it. Plus Friends Forever [Graduation] from Vitamin C, which I don’t really fancy much any more either. I’ve got a cardboard box of CDs that really need to go in some kind of new rack or something.
• Oh yeah! See that dude at the top of the page? The Mystery Man? I saw him in Shanghai Knights as well. I wonder who he is.

Monday, 13th of September, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (19:47) If you want to see some Japanese chicks by the pool in their bikinis, check out Welcome by SuperGirls. Whew! The song’s a bit generic though, like most of these ones with the massive group of girls. The one with the dark green bikini is a real looker.
• Yeah, so I did the new Music Page of course. I still have more of it to fill in yet.
• STAYC have a new MV out as well, which isn’t too bad, called Stereotype. I wouldn’t gush over it, but the girls look great, it’s got good dance moves, and seems to be presented pretty well.

Thursday, 16th of September, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:48) Struth — what a lot of faffing about today. I changed the light bulb in my bedroom, and 5 minutes later, it exploded! F***! Some Olsent brand thing. It was one of those ones with the halogen style dealie inside the outer glass bulb. It was only the outer glass that broke, so it must have been heat related. I was just standing by the computer, after having just turned it on, and then: “POP!” Glass went all over the place. Actually the filament died as well. So I had to carefully walk around with a torch to make sure I didn’t stand on any, picking what pieces up I could see, then vacuum clean the carpet. Later, wearing goggles, and using a thick rubber gardening glove, I got some pliers and had to twist out the remnants of the bulb from the socket. It was a standard bayonet cap type one, so it only needed a little twist. But more glass fell out on my arm, and oh… what a chore. Luckily nothing went onto my bed. This is why I never look at a light bulb when I turn it on, ’cos I’ve had bulbs explode in the past too. It’s pretty rare though. So, I might see about a new lamp shade that’s completely enclosed. The glass one I have now took the impact of the thing going pop, but it’s still open underneath.
• (16:39) So, I have this little plug pack type 300 mA 6 V transformer, which was SUPPOSED to have a DC output. I hadn’t used it for years, and decided to see if its voltage was accurate with a multi-meter for my 8 L.E.D.s that I want to put under the desk. It showed up as nothing. I listened to it and heard it humming and tried it again. All I got was 0.5 volts. So I figured: Maybe some component’s died in there. After getting it sawn open, what was inside? Just the figgin’ transformer! WTF?! Where’s the rectification? There wasn’t any in sight. I figured maybe they put 2 diodes under the heat shrink tube around the output wires, but nope! So, why did it say it was DC on the label? Anyway, it showed up as about 7 volts AC. I chopped the old cord, and put some wires on myself. At one stage I thought there was rectification in the plug, but the multi-meter showed no sign of any kind of polarity. What a f***ing crock of $#!+!!! No wonder it didn’t work properly with my rotating crystal display thingo. Anyway, I have a bridge rectifier, and that will probably drop the voltage down to 5.8 V or something. Isn’t it about a 1.2 V drop over 2 diodes? Something. I’ll measure it again before I use it. I’ll probably just use the same resistors I’d use for 9 V operation, and run the L.E.D.s at lower power. They’re still pretty bright. I don’t have a voltage regulator, so that might make up for any power fluctuations then.
• (17:08) Yep, I got 5.88 V using the rectifier. So I guess that’ll be the way to go.

Friday, 17th of September, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (17:03) Sir Clive Sinclair died yesterday. He was 81. I knew him mostly from the computers he designed. Plus a pocket sized TV with a CRT.
Also Norm MacDonald went the other day too.
• I ordered 10 mini SPDT toggle switches off eBay for $13 today, and I’ll use one for my new box of 8 L.E.D.s for under my desk. I cracked out my Canon camera, and noticed there is quite a bit of flickering from the L.E.D.s, so it might need a filter capacitor in parallel with the output of the bridge rectifier. Although, you can’t really see any flickering just by looking @ them. I’ve got a 1500 μF capacitor from my box of odds & sods, so that might do. I think it came out of a power supply years ago.
• (20:16) I added the capacitor I had to the proceedings, and after that, no noticeable flickering on the camera. So that smoothed things out. I wondered if it was still good, ’cos it’s probably 30+ years old. Although that’s not really fair, because I’ve older electronic gizmos than that.
• (22:22) If you like vintage electric gizmos, here’s a picture of an old transformer that belonged to my Dad’s uncle. (My Nana’s brother.) Check out that whopping great capacitor. Yikes. Uncle Ken was involved in a lot of electrical stuff, so his house had all these neat goodies. He made his own transformers, there was a complicated doorbell dealie, he had train sets, a speaker system around the rooms of the house, including in the kitchen cupboards and even a real traffic light, that changed colours. All kinds of intriguing things. He even had this really old carbon filament light bulb, which he showed me back in my teen years, I think it was. I got a photo of it, after he died in 2014, but I think it got chucked, or something terrible. Plus everything was really neatly arranged and labelled in a professional manner, unlike my dodgy, slap-it-together methods.
Lastly, cop a load of these old model train controllers! They look like something out of Back To The Future 3. How old do you reckon they are? I think the train set was saved by somebody in the family.
So there you go; I hope some of you found this stuff of interest.

Monday, 20th of September, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:43) La Poem have a new MV out for their song, Oasis. I thought it was pretty good, and it ended well too. Chuu from LOOΠΔ + Kim Yohan (of Wei) & Eric Bellinger did a song for World Vision called World Is One 2021, which was rather good sounding.

Wednesday, 22nd of September, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (17:18) I found out from IIG (— my site host —) that there’d been an earthquake (!) in Victoria this morning! It’s very rare to get earthquakes in Australia, because the country has no fault lines under it. Apparently what happened was the tectonic plate of the country hit the one of the Pacific region, or some such thing, and this caused some shift in pressure. Back when I was a kid there was 1 in Newcastle, but this was completely human made, because it was a result of mines collapsing.
• I got my switches today, so I’ve screwed one in for my box thingo of L.E.D.s for under my desk. I just have to wait for the glue to dry on the ice block stick that I put it in.

Monday, 4th of October, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (23:44) I’ve got a little something on the way, which I’m keeping a surprise for now. It’s not earth shattering though.
• Here’s a great new song: In My Space by Kim Woojin (of Stray Kids).

Thursday, 14th of October, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:28) My birthday tomorrow! Oooh yeah! Back to 25 this year. I’m still waiting on something to arrive, which should’ve been here by now, but anyway, I’ll let you know when it does turn up.
• Other famous people’s birthdays tomorrow are: Yoon Jong Shin, Dong Hae from Super Junior, Penny Marshall, Stephen Tompkinson, Tanya Roberts, Larry Miller, Mario Puzo, Princess Ferguson, P.G. Wodehouse, Bárbara Lombardo (who’s on the same year as me too) and Prince Christian from Denmark.

Friday, 15th of October, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:19) All righty — welcome to the best day of the year! Hee hee. And just on time, my order from Japan has turned up today! Yep, I got myself Hi-Fi POPS from Oresama! It came out in 2018, but I liked the samples I listened to of it, and thought I would get it. It cost a fortune, but if you live in Japan, it’s only about $27 or so, which isn’t too bad. (¥3000.) I got it from CD Japan, and their service was really good! I got a ¥500 discount for my first order, plus another discount offered later, because it was my birthday this month! Although I didn’t get to use that, since that was after I made the order.
Anyway, there are 12 tracks in total, and you can also get an alternative version of the CD, which comes with a bonus BD of the music videos, I suppose. But since I don’t have a BD player, I just got the CD on its own. The tracks are:
1. Hi-Fi Train
2. Ryuusei Dance Furoa (Meteor Dance Floor)
3. Cute Cute
4. Kirei Na Mono Bakari
5. Dare Mo Ga Dareka Wo
6. Mimi Moto De Tsukamae Te
7. Ne. Kamisama?
8. Trip Trip Trip
9. Hello Eve
10. Sweet Room
11. Wandadoraibu (Wonder Drive)
12. Ginga (Album Mix)
That’s translated of course from a lot of the Japanese writing. The audio quality is as you would hope, with no over-amplified looking tracks. I haven’t looked through the cover booklet yet, but I expect it’s filled with loads of great pictures. If you like Ginga, be sure to check out the DressUp Cover #1 remix dealie as well.
All the tracks are great, and most are quite upbeat, although Sweet Room is closer to a ballad of sorts. This is Oresama’s 2nd album, and I’d say their 1st one is probably worth a look too. Doramachikku on the 1st one is a pretty nifty track.
• (15:48) I had a look at the album booklet dealie, and inside are all the song lyrics, plus some nifty pictures as well.

Thursday, 21st of October, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (19:33) There’s some current problem with downloading archive files from my site, which I’m waiting to hear back about. ZIP & RAR files may not do anything from the links to them in certain browsers, such as Safari, or newer Mozilla based ones (such as Firefox or Pale Moon). If you have Opera or an older version of Firefox, or even Netscape installed, you may have more luck, or a download manager, like GetRight. Until I get an answer to the problem, this is the only solution I have for now. I wasn’t aware the problem existed until tonight.
Also, if you’re still going to my site at Beagle, that address will probably be gone by the 28th.

Sunday, 24th of October, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (15:00) The issue with downloading those files may have been to the server’s over-sensitive security settings rejecting certain browsers, but which ones was not made clear, or why it was limited to those types of files in particular. I was able to test it with Firefox 93 under Linux, and the problem didn’t show up, so if you have a more recent browser, it might not be a problem.
• Yeah, I think this will be the last year I bother with the Korean music. I’m not enjoying going through the preview videos each week, and just seeing cr@p after more cr@p. There’s no point if I don’t enjoy it. I may just check every now & then on groups & people who’ve had some level of consistency, such as APink, Red Velvet, maybe that Kim Woojin chap and La Poem.

Saturday, 30th of October, 2021
Mum’s birthday
Today’s current mood:
• (22:20) It’s about time for some news, and the best is my Inner Depths plug-in for Oblivion! If you know of my ones from Morrowind, then this is similar to that. I’m going to have at least 11 zones, each featuring mostly different enemies. I’ve started on doing all new, fresh bandits, with a much better variety than what you get in the game. While Oblivion (and even Morrowind), levels up your loot and enemies as you do, I want to take a more randomised approach, but with weaker enemies to start, and tougher ones at the end of all the zones. There’s also going to be a slight story to part of it, and a nice & special place to end up at.

Sunday, 7th of November, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (20:24) I’m still going with Inner Depths: Oblivion 1. I have 1 more zone to do for the locations. But there are more bandits to do, marauders, conjurers and vampires. Today I did more of the Undisturbed Crypt, as I called it, levelled lists of Daedra and various containers. It’s going to feature stuff from Shivering Isles as well, so you will need that.
• I’ve got 6 new videos of Korean pop MVs to check out eventually. I see Laboum has a new tune out. It’s been a while since they did something. But I’ve got a headache, and I feel knackered, so it might take a while to get to them. I need to check for new Japanese songs as well.

Friday, 12th of November, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:04) I finally remembered to update the Software Review Of The Moment page. I meant to do it on the 9th, but I’ve been so busy with my new Oblivion plug-in, I forgot.

Monday, 15th of November, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (22:52) Inner Depths: Oblivion 1 is getting nearer to completion. I added a tent to the fort, which is where you start, and you can store your goods safely there. Mmm, and that’s all I have to say about it for now.
• (23:33) I was watching a video last night about old stuff underground in some part of England, and one of the items was an Internet radio. That’s right — by a company called Internet, of all things! I decided to look up about it, and it was indeed correct. You might have trouble finding it, doing a search for “Internet Radio,” ’cos you’ll get all new, irrelevant results about new radios related to the Internet. But do a picture search with the model, S-1000, and you’ll find it. (Just type in Internet radio "S-1000" and you should get some pictures at a search site.)

Friday, 19th of November, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (12:49) Inner Depths: Oblivion 1 is done, by the way, and you can download it now. Just head to The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Page.
• Last night I was making up some flags with food. Although not all countries would be that easy. Italy was the best. I had basil, spaghetti & chopped tomatoes. For France, I had a blue steak, garlic and red wine. England was chips and ketchup. (That’s like St. George’s cross dealie. Not the whole Union Jack flag.) Japan’s sushi on rice, and China’s egg noodles on Sichuan chillies. Although you couldn’t tell the noodles too well, since the stars only take up a small portion of the flag. I think for Ireland you could have something in green, Irish stew and Irish whiskey.
• (13:38) I think Germany could be Black Forest cake, bratwurst and beer.

Saturday, 20th of November, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:47) Awww — Bart (the bear) died 6 days ago. He was 21. I only saw him in We Bought A Zoo & Game Of Thrones.

Tuesday, 23rd of November, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (16:11) Next month I’ll be having a collection of 10 mini “reviews” for my Software Review Of The Moment. Then I’ll probably do Windows 10 again for January next year.

Friday, 26th of November, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (21:51) I got some more bargain L.E.D.s from Phipps on eBay. $9.95 for 50 white L.E.D.s! (About 14 000 m.c.d. brightness.) Holey moley; you’d be lucky to pay less than 10 × that price in some stores. I’m not being given anything to promote this; I’m just pointing out a good deal. So, that’s just a touch under 20¢ each! Wooo! (Although they’re actually for Christmas.)
When I think back to the 1980s, you could only get regular, low brightness red L.E.D.s for that price. But then, they didn’t have white ones back then anyhow.
• (23:12) I found my old Tandy Doodads, Thinga Majigs, Watcha Macallits, Bits & Pieces catalogue from 1992, with its range of L.E.D.s. They did have blue ones by this year, but not at Tandy, unfortunately. The cheapest on offer were probably the 3 mm ones for about 50¢ each, but you paid like $1 for 2, since they only came in packets. The brightest they had was a 10 mm red L.E.D. of 5000 m.c.d. for $6.95. If you got a packet of assorted L.E.D.s, you were looking at about 20¢ each, and sometimes you got some really unusual ones in there, like triangle shaped ones, square ones and rectangle types.

Friday, 3rd of December, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (16:38) I was hoping to find a lot more interesting videos of home made L.E.D. based clocks on the ’net, but I didn’t really find all that much. There was an interesting one in Texas, America, made completely of discrete components. (No I.C.s that is.) I’ve been wondering about making my own clock using green 7 segment displays. (8 segments with the points of course. ) Hmm. But I’d have to get some clock kit, because it’s beyond me to design such a circuit. Or get a free circuit diagram off the web somewhere. I’d just have 4 of the 7 segment dealies, with no seconds probably. You’d probably have 4 I.C.s to run the L.E.D.s, and then they’d connect somehow to… who knows what! LOL. And there’d probably be a crystal to keep the thing accurate, I guess.
• There was also some bull$#!++er on YouTube promoting these “battery-less” circuits for clocks, that wouldn’t have a hope of working. It’s like some of these other fake free energy videos that are just a con. So it pays to be careful what stuff you attempt to make, ’cos you might just be getting diddled.

Friday, 10th of December, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (16:15) F***king Microsoft has really hit beyond rock bottom. Promoting porn now?! Are you freakin’ joking?! I was just reading about it, and not only that, but mentions of it in e-mail people had received, stuff hosted by them, and in messages in Windows regarding their OS testing thing. The insider dealie. Was it somebody from the company who had a thing against them, or have they just gone completely off the rails now? I swear they’re going to just self destruct one of these days, when the majority of people have got completely fed up. Plus the 2-faced gits have been putting out more anti-competitive propaganda regarding Google’s Chrome browser, when their own Edge browser is based on it now anyway! How does that make sense?!
• Only 15 days to Christmas now! Hooray!
• I’m trying to get through the last of the Korean music video previews I got, just in case anything good comes along, so I can add it to my end of the year list. Then that’s it. I’ll have to put more effort into finding tunes from other countries, I think. China and Kazakhstan perhaps.
• (22:02) I’d be interested to connect up a whole packet of those 14 000 m.c.d. L.E.D.s from Phipps, and see if that would put out enough light to do my whole bedroom. That would work out to 700 000 m.c.d. brightness in total, which would be 700 candelas I guess. You could run the lot with just 5 ½ watt resistors. The total power load would be just 2 W, and you’d need a power supply capable of at least 1 amp. Maybe give or take a bit, depending on the component tolerances. (You’d be putting 0.4 watts of load on each resistor for 2 V, 20 mA L.E.D.s, according to my calculations. Tell me if I’ve gone wrong here somewhere!) If you ran the L.E.D.s a little underpowered, by using a higher value resistor than they needed, they’d probably last for 20 or more years maybe. Although it’s hard to predict it. As I’ve said before, I’ve had L.E.D.s that have literally run for decades, which are turned on pretty close to permanently. Although they aren’t high brightness ones. But THAT said, I haven’t had any high brightness ones that have ever failed either.
Anyhoo, I have another couple of personal, lower brightness projects to have fun with yet, which’ll be more like night lights, running on rechargeable batteries. I’m going to do something pretty, hopefully with quartz crystals.
• (23:04) Here’s a tip! If you’re looking for one of those plugs which you put into a light bulb socket, you should look for a “B22 adaptor plug.” In case you’re clueless, these were used more so in the earlier times of last century. They’re like the end of a light bulb, but designed to run other appliances up to 5 A. Of course, not for anything which needs an earth connection though. Did you know, they actually had double adaptors for light sockets too? Yep. Anyway, there seems to be a good source of the B22 plugs on eBay from Sri Lanka, which have a nice brown, bakelite appearance.

Saturday, 11th of December, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (19:50) On the 17th of September this year, I mentioned some old model train controllers. Head back up and see the picture. Seen it? Good. They were actually custom made by Uncle Ken, according to my Dad, from old full size tram controllers. His work allowed him to acquire all sorts of electrical equipment that was being sold off from peculiar places.
• (23:09) Here’s something interesting. Well, to me anyway! Tandy actually had an alarm clock with blue L.E.D.s, according to my old 1992 - 1993 catalogue. Although from the look of pictures on the web of it, I think it’s really a gas plasma display. They had 2 other clocks with green L.E.D.s which I’d buy right now, if I wasn’t 28 years too late to get them. Bah!

Monday, 13th of December, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (19:22) Things have been a bit iffy with Lavabit lately, with internal server errors, and other stuff ups, so hopefully they’ll soon get that fixed. In the mean time, it might be a good idea to send your e-mail to my other address, which you can find in the “Contacting Me Terms & Conditions” page.

Thursday, 16th of December, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:46) Next month, for January, 2022, I was going to have the Windows 10 review again for my Software Review Of The Moment, but I’m not in a very good mood regarding Microsoft. So I might have something else instead. I’d kind of like to take a look at BeOS, but I’m not sure if I could be bothered. Starting with an OS you’ve never used before means learning a lot of new stuff, and acquiring software, tweaking stuff no doubt and what not. Wasn’t it written for PowerPC CPUs to begin with? And then later an Intel CPU rendition? I wonder if that means the software was often done for both, like Mac OS X’s “universal binaries.”

Tuesday, 21st of December, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (13:46) I only noticed last night that La Poem have a new MV out for their song, Sunshine. That was rather great! Although I’m still inclined to like Oasis more.
• Only 4 days to Chrissy! Ooh yeah! And the freezer’s loaded up with nice cool ice blocks and 3 ice cream sandwiches this year as well.

Monday, 27th of December, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (19:11) Ooh — I hope everybody had a fabbo Christmas. It felt a bit rushed for me really, and maybe not as good as previous years.
• I will be having another table of my favourite Korean tunes for this year, but it might be at the end of January next year before I get it done, since I have such little interest in going through all the previews right now.
• I got my white L.E.D.s for Chrissy too, but they really do need their 3 V rating to be bright enough. I was going to run them on 2.4 V from a couple of AAA size rechargeable batteries, but they were too dull. In fact, one of my blue ones was as well. So now I’ll have to get another battery holder for 3 batteries, and knock the voltage up to 3.6. Although the joint where I got the previous battery holders on eBay is having a holiday until the 10th of January. I ordered some resistors too for a good price, but I’m not sure when they’ll be sent. They’re coming from Katherine in the NT, so it might take some time.
• Oh yeah, in regards to what I said on the 16th, I think BeOS programs were done in a “fat” style, from what I read, which means they had both Intel & PowerPC machine code, like Mac programs were often done. Although I think later ones were just done for Intel CPUs. Apparently only pre-PowerPC G3 CPUs can run BeOS in terms of Macs. As for me, I’d probably just run the Intel version via VirtualBox I guess.

Tuesday, 28th of December, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (14:40) Here’s a pretty nifty song I just found from 10 days or so ago: Mou Ii Kai by Mimi. I like the speedy feel of it.
• I’m pretty up to date now with the Korean music, after watching all the preview videos I had to do. But there wasn’t much worth mentioning. I thought I was going to see something good in one new song from Laboum, but that fell apart mid way through with some utter cr@p bit. Plus Oh My Girl had some really $#!+ new song too, which was disappointing, considering how they’ve had some really good tunes. Of course there are a lot of Christmas tunes right now, and that’s brilliant, but after Christmas, you don’t really feel like watching them again until the next one comes ’round.

Wednesday, 29th of December, 2021
Today’s current mood:
• (16:29) I did another program for Mac OS X last night & today. One that slides bitmaps up the screen for credits in iMovie. iMovie 6 does let you do credits, but just as text that you type in. I wanted a bit more flexibility, so I made my own program, and with bitmaps, you can have whatever look you like. I might offer this one to download, but I dunno if many people’d be interested.
• (23:09) Ooh yeah! 20 years of my web site next year. I’d probably only had it in action for a couple of months before I went overseas to Britain. I don’t think I have much planned though. Ha ha. So don’t worry about rocking up one day, and it looking bizarre all of a sudden.

Saturday, 1st of January, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:33) Happy new year!
• All right, it’s time for my table of all the best Korean songs I found during 2021! This was converted from an Open Office file I did during 2021:
As usual these are all my personal preference. I don’t care about sales amounts, other popularity levels or past success. After all, even some of my more favourite groups have had songs that just really stunk.

1. Your Ocean by Hoppipolla	This one hits a good high point with the instrumental bit at around 3:20, and the dude with the cello is a nice difference to most band types of groups. It’s not a cheery song, but it sounds really good. It goes for about 4 minutes & 46 seconds, but the video has an extra bit at the end which has it go to 5 minutes & 24 seconds.
2. Guardians by Sumi Jo & Rain	This feels like it could come from some movie, and the video is all computer animated with some magical looking stuff going on. There are 2 main characters, who I assume are the guardians, and they have cyan-ish looking hair. The singing is quite operatic and impressive sounding, especially the really high note at the end. It would’ve been nice if it’d been at like 50 f.p.s., but I suppose you can’t have everything.
3. Doom Doom Cha by Twin Girls	I’m not sure what to think of this one. It looks like fun though. It may’ve actually come out in 2020, but it was on a list for this year, so that means I only saw it this year too!
4. Insomnia by Yukika	This is kind of dreamy feeling and mellow. It’s not the usual thing I’d go for, but it wasn’t too bad. It takes quite a while to grow on you. The video’s another one of those ones that looks fatter than a pregnant rhino, and like you’re squinting through some slit. Although at the end there’s a mention that they used Ubuntu to make it, so I guess it’s good to see Linux getting more use.
5. Sha Ru Ru by Park Minju	Another trot kind of feeling song, if I’m correct. The link for this was a right pain to find, so here it is to the side. This is probably just there for being one of the best songs of the year, in my opinion.
6. Feel Me Up by Ice Cream	This is a pretty pleasant song, which has some cool bits of channel “panning” I suppose you’d call it, although I don’t know how well it works. I like the idea; I just don’t know if it sounds 100% correct. It ends well with a funky effect that sounds like something from a video game. And uh, how can you not like the name?! This one took quite a few listens to grow on me, but I like it now, and I feel more used to that “panning” kind of thing.
7. Ggoma by Tae Ho	This is quite a bit different from the usual stuff you hear, and feels a bit more jazzy. Or something.
8. Hello by Joy (of Red Velvet)	This is a pretty perky song, and it’s nice to see Joy doing a solo tune.
9. Challengers by Jane, Funtwo & Jack Thammarat	This is a completely instrumental tune with 3 dudes playing electric guitars. It sounds like something which’d go well with the likes of OutRun 2 perhaps. I reckon the ending could’ve been a bit better and more satisfying though. That said, I really like it, and I think you need to listen to it a few times before you really enjoy it.
10. Sneakers by Ha Sung Woon	This is rather quite good. Quite perky and lots of views of his shoes.
11. Free To Fly (2021 version) by Kangta	This is kind of spacey looking. I never saw the original. I think it might have been in 2007, but I’m not sure of that. The girl’s smile is cute @ the end. (About 4:51) I think this has grown on me even more, watching it a few times.
12. Left33Right33 by Miss T & Mr. BoomBox	There’s that woman who was in Ppurr. I dunno who she is. I’ve watched this one a lot, so it should probably be one of the best on the list.
13. Oasis by La Poem	If you want something a bit more operatic, this is a rather good one. The chaps go up on the roof of the same building as Park Hyunho in Money Money Money.
14. In My Space by Kim Woojin (of Stray Kids)	This one’s surprisingly good, and this dude sure can hit a nice high note. The song ends better than My Growing Pains as well.
15. Be Deep by Tae Jin Son + Wendy (of Red Velvet)
16. Sunshine by La Poem	This needs 2 listens I reckon. The La Poem quality of singing is out in full force, but at the moment, I’m still inclined to prefer Oasis. (#13) Maybe ’cos I’m more used to it, but I think it ends more epically.
17. Part Time Lover by Gaho	It took a bit of time for me to get into this one, but I must’ve sensed something good about it in the brief preview I saw, before I watched the whole thing. I’d say give it a few whirls & see if you like it.
	Other Interesting Mentions:
One Day by Kook Kyu Hee	This is a pleasant sounding song, plus it has a nice teddy bear as well. ^_^
With Your Everything by Ben	This is a promotion for a multi-player game that you’d play via the Internet, called Trickster M, so expect to see lots of imagery and videos to entice you in to playing it. Of course I’m going to do that, just ’cos I saw this.
In Hongdae by IGWI	This is a nice, easy going song. The table looks really pretty too! So that’s a visual bonus. It’s kind of repetitive though with all the “ap ap ap” business.
Man & Woman / North & South Women (/ Something like that) by Twin Girls	Twin Girls are back with another pleasant tune. It’s got a bit of that… what is it? Trot kinda feel? Something along those lines.
Love Day by Yang Yoseop of Highlight & Jeong Eunji of APink	This is a newer version of the same song they did in 2016. It’s pretty nice.
The Hill Of Wind by ZanHyang	This has a traditional kind of feeling to it. I’ve never seen one of those instruments with the pipes sticking up before either. It’s called a Bamboo Sheng. I’m sure there are oodles of people who knew that, but I didn’t until this one.
My Starry Love by Lim Young Woong
Hush by Kim Sung Kyu of Infinite	The bass is a bit strong in this one, and it’s too loud as well, so you might want to fiddle with your equaliser for this MV. It’s a strong kind of ballad style song, I’d say. You think the ending’s going to be a bit quick, but luckily there’s an extra bit that almost finishes it off well. It’s okay @ the end, but it could be a tad better.
Alley Captain by Springs	The song’s not bad, and rather catchy for most of it, but the video looks really cheap. Like it was done on some old mobile telephone or something, ’cos it looks wobbly and cr*p. It felt like it had potential, but I think the song even could’ve been slightly better too.
Thank You by APink	The group’s 10th anniversary song. It was pretty good, but I just couldn’t bring myself to really gush over it. I don’t think it had quite the level of impact as Dumhdurum from last year, plus it doesn’t finish well either.
The Day by Yun Sen Ae	This is a bit of a ballad with an emotional kind of overtone, I reckon.
Shoulder Dance by Lim Seo Won	This one’s worth checking out to see how great this kid is. She only looks about 10, but you can tell she’s pretty talented.
Don’t Say Goodbye by DooRi (of Venus)
Amasia by Pyoapple	I just like this one ’cos the chick looks so hot & cute! But that is a bit shallow. The song’s so-so.
Ppurr by HooniYongi	This is an electronic dance kind of thing, I suppose. It sounds pretty good, but it doesn’t have a cheery feeling about it that I like. The Twin Girls also make an appearance in there, & maybe the other people are related to the genre too. I dunno. One of the other sheilas looked like somebody from Venus.
Je T’aime by Joy (of Red Velvet)	This is a kind of one-take, out-of-the-studio sounding one. Joy sounding a bit more “live” and in person. The song name sounds French. It’s okay, but I like Hello better.
Stop by Minimani	Some of this reminds of me of some other song, but I’m not sure what. It’s okay. I wouldn’t gush over it though.
Rain by ReVorn	I like the dude’s voice in this one.
See You Again by Han Seung Woo (of Victon)
Door by Kwon Eun Bi (previously of IZ*ONE)	This is semi-pleasant, but the finish is cr@pola. Too many songs just have these sucky abrupt endings, and this is no exception.
Tick-Tock (Electronic Dance Music Version) by Shin Mi Rae
Stereotype by STAYC
World Is One 2021 by Chuu (of LOOΠΔ) + Kim Yohan (of Wei) & Eric Bellinger	This is a song to help promote World Vision.
My Growing Pains by Kim Woojin
Make It by 2PM	Despite what looks like the world coming to an end, the most important thing for the chaps is that woman they find so hot.
Money Money Money by Park Hyunho	This is a dance feeling kind of song, and it has a good kind of constantly moving vibe about it.
Bbeong by Jeongho
Stardust by Younha	This is a really nice song, which I may put as one of the best for the year. The break at 3:27-ish is a bit too long though, although I suspect that if you buy it, it could be different from the MV.
Sirius by Cignature (Live)

So yep! That’s my list for now. If I find any other songs I like that came out last year, I’ll add them on there. Please let me know if any of the links are stuffed as well, and I’ll see to fixing them.
• (15:47) Up next, the Japanese songs I made a list of during 2021. This has a lot of older stuff as well, but probably not more than 10 years old, I would say.

1. Lamp by Sumika	This song seems more like it was from somewhere outside of Japan. It’s got a folk music kind of feel about it. Super worth checking out! It’ll have you back for more!
2. Magic by Sumika	An olden style song that’s very perky and will leave you feeling great!
3. Lovers by Sumika
4. Universe by Official Hige Dandism	This is very pleasing in sound. It’s related to some Doraemon movie, I think.
5. Aaliyah by 9bic	This is absolutely amazing! The 1st time you hear it, it’ll blow your socks off! It just sounds so satisfying. It’s fast, perky and catchy. Wow wow wow! It’s definitely got a mostly computer generated / electronic sound to it. Like, instead of “regular” instruments. One of the dudes’ voices sounds a bit out of whack though. Like he can’t hit the right notes.
6. Haru Yo, Koi by Ayumi Hamasaki	A traditional sounding song from Avex Trax. Super nice, and kinda classy too. This deserves a few watches.
7. Gimmme! by Oresama	This one’s got cute teddy bears! But some bad ones too. I think it’s to do with some show called Sleepy Princess In The Demon Castle. You’ve gotta love the dancing bed at the end as well.
8. Peach by Otsuka Ai (Tomggg Remix)	This one’s quite unusual, but I found it grew on me over time. Actually, I haven’t heard the original version either, so I can’t say how different it is.
9. Kisu No Hanabira (Chou) by HKT48
10. Wake Me Up by TriEchoes. (A cover of a song by Avicii, and played on kotos.)
11. Sukitte Itteyo by Juice=Juice Dance Shot Version Close Up Version (This one’s more dull, & the girls look a bit bored.)
12. Let’s Music by Sexy Zone
13. Tarinai Sakunai by Fujifabric
14. New Direction by Takano Akira	This one’s got a great, fresh, positive feeling about it, and the special effects in the background with the glowing stuff in the clouds and beams, look really superb.
15. Dreamin’ On by Da-iCE
16. Doeryaa JUMP! by Boys And Men
17. Ame Nochi Hare by Generations (From Exile Tribe)
18. Tajuu Rokou by Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra (Featuring Kawakami Youhei)	The ending on this one’s a bit abrupt for my liking.
19. Caliburne ~Story Of The Legendary Sword~ by Team Grimoire (from MaiMai)	I found this one in 2018. I don’t have the link to hand. I saw a video of somebody playing the game with this tune, and really liked it.
20. Rock Tonight by WARPs Japanese Chinese	From what I gather, this is their 1st song, and it’s also available in Chinese. It kind of feels like something Michael Jackson would’ve done. I think WARPs are also related to Avex Trax.
21. Spacecraft by Sui Sui Duck	This is a real electronic / computer generated sounding tune, despite the more regular looking instruments in the video. Well, 1 guitar anyway. It’s got more of a synthesised sound, and this is apparently consistent to this group. It’s quite unusual and unique, and although it doesn’t end too brilliantly, I did find it kind of catchy.
22. Whenever You Call by Arashi	This is a pretty good song, and it’s in English.
23. Shake & Shake by Sumika	A rather cheery tune, which feels a bit like the style of Lovers, I think.
24. Nai Nai by ReoNa	This sounds like something good for when you go off the rails. It ends well too.
25. Distance by Flumpool	Check out that truck in it with the chandelier!
26. Jasmine by Sumika	Another great, old style song with a happy kind of feeling about it. Jasmine wants to make shoes, but her father’s lackeys try to bring her back home. She meets another girl called Jasmine, who looks like her twin, and they swap places.
27. Ginga by Oresama	This means Galaxy in Japanese, and the music video is like a comic book. It’s really cute though and has a bit of a story to it, plus the lyrics in Romajii. (That’s Japanese for Romanised.) After listening to other Oresama tunes from their MVs, I wanted to get the CD with this song on it. It’s from their 2nd album, Hi-Fi POPS.
28. Doramachikku by Oresama	This is basically Dramatic. A cartoony one from 2015, which I also only found recently. Well, I only found out about Oresama this year anyhow. This is from their 1st album, which is just called Oresama.
29. Meteor Dance Floor by Oresama	This is from Mahoujin Guru Guru apparently. I have no idea though.
30. Hi-Fi Train by Oresama	This is a good looking one, and the train’s loaded with speakers on the front, and looks really nifty inside too.
31. Wonder Drive by Oresama	The name sounds like a Sega console. The WonderMega was a combo of the Mega CD and Mega Drive. Anyway, the video has a bit of a retro vibe in some places. This is on the Hi-Fi POPS CD as well.
32. Trip Trip Trip by Oresama	Another one from their 2nd album, which is also really good, of course! The MV starts off like something from a RPG, but this part isn’t on the CD.
33. Mou Ii Kai by Mimi	This is pretty good. It’s not much of a MV — just the lyrics and some drawings, but I think the song’s enjoyable enough to make up for that.
	Other Interesting Mentions:
IZA!! by EMPiRE
Anata Ga Iru by Wacci	The acrobatics are worth a peek on their own.
Shinkai by Eve	This is done with a quite strange cartoon, in which the girl seems to rescue an opposite of herself, or something. You might have to read up about this one to understand it.
Lifetime by SixTONES
Final Piece by Hyde	This seems to be in English mostly.

Sunday, 9th of January, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (14:41) I’ve got another “lamp” thing of sorts, made with more ice cream sticks, with 5 of my white L.E.D.s that I got for Christmas. I’m just using a 9 V power supply with 330 Ω resistors, which is ideal, since these L.E.D.s are rated at between 3 & 3.4 V. They’re definitely bright enough, and just testing it with 3 of them put out a lot of light. When I get all 5 in, it’s going to be strong enough for a bedside table light, I reckon. Not that I’ll be putting it in that location. Anyway, I’ve ordered a packet of 60 mixed acrylic flower “beads” off eBay, of varying sizes, and I’m going to drill out their 1 mm holes to 3 mm, then use them as mini lamp shades for the L.E.D.s & make them look pretty. Actually, it’d probably work better with 3 mm L.E.D.s, but the 5 mm ones should be okay as well. The pin spacing is still the same. I cut up a green drinking straw and put it over the 3 wire pairs closest to the front, to make it look a bit neater as well.
• I’d like to do a really big lotus flower out of L.E.D.s, but I think it would take an awful lot, and I’d probably need… I dunno… 75 of them or something, and like a 1.5 amp power supply to take the load. Could you imagine the light coming out of that? It’d be enough to light the entire room up, I think. I could use a mix of white, green, magenta and maybe yellow ones. But I’d probably want a big PCB to mount them all on, rather than using those little sockets, ’cos that would be too crazy.
• (14:55) I just did an image search on the web for LED lotus flowers, but didn’t spot anything like the idea I had. More along the lines of plastic flowers lit with L.E.D.s, rather than an outline of the shape of the flower made from individual ones. These ones look pretty though.

Tuesday, 11th of January, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (15:00) I finally found an old Dick Smith catalogue last night. Well most of one. I was hoping to locate an old copy for a while, but couldn’t find where I’d put them since we moved house at the end of 2012. Anyway, this one’s from 1993, so that’s 29 years ago, people! I wanted to get a look at what the products and prices were from back then, and this was quite interesting. Especially the computer related stuff. Oh, and mobile ’phones! So, for all those of you in the northern hemisphere, grab a nice hot chocolate with marshmallows, put your feet up and get ready for some more reminiscing. Or if you’re on my side of the planet, open up something cool & fizzy!
Compared with my old 1992 - 1993 Tandy catalogue, the Dick Smith one certainly has a different feel. Tandy of course were aimed at selling their own brands of products, where as ol’ Dicky seemed to stock more commonly known brands, like Sanyo, Sony & so forth. Plus Dick Smith was more about the components and kits of electronics. They also had a much bigger focus on communication radios, because Dick Smith himself was into this kind of thing. He even mentioned his licence thing of VK2ZIP in his Fun Way books. Anyway, one of the most expensive communication devices was the Yaesu FT-1000 Deluxe HF All-Mode Tranceiver, which cost $5995! This thing’s got more knobs than a hardware store, more buttons than a shirt factory and not only an analogue meter but a super wide numeric display as well of some kind. I don’t think Tandy had anything remotely like this kind of stuff. Dicko also had antennas, Morse code keys and all sorts of things related to communication equipment.
Anyway, they did have a blue L.E.D. this year, and it was listed under special types. “Normal” L.E.D.s were red, green, yellow & orange, and these were 50¢ each. But the blue one was $3.25! So this is what freaked me out as a kid, I think. Ha ha. Since it was 6½ × the value. Absolutely no white, magenta, cyan or purple ones back then. Plus, high brightness was limited to 1 in red at 1000 m.c.d. A bit different these days, that’s for sure. You could get a bulk pack of 100 regular low brightness L.E.D.s for $19.95, which would’ve been just under 20¢ each, so that’s pretty good. But these days you could get high brightness ones for that kind of price.
Let’s look at computer related stuff next. You could get a 4 MHz Z80A CPU for $5.95. That sounds quite reasonable, I would say. (The prices vary widely on eBay at the moment, from less than that to quite a lot more.) There’s another one here listed as a V20-88MHz, which was a high performance 8088 CPU replacement, and that was $19.95. But I don’t think that would be 88 MHz in speed, somehow. Not in 1993, and not for that type of CPU either. A 12.5 MHz Intel 80287-XL maths co-processor would cost you $299! Yikes. I think they became built in by the time we got our 75 MHz Pentium 1 CPU based computer in 1995. As for RAM, you could get 4 MB for $399! Wow, it sure makes me feel as though we take stuff for granted now, with computer prices.
A 16 bit Creative Sound Blaster card would cost you $499! Holey beep! It did come with a lot of software though, plus a microphone. There was also a Video Blaster for $799, which allowed you to capture video and get pictures, with a bunch of neat goodies… but dang! Whose hard drive could even store much video back then? It certainly wouldn’t have been the likes of DV quality. You’d probably record a minute and fill the entire drive if it was! For the same price, you could get a multimedia kit, which came with a CD drive, Sound Blaster Pro and 3 bonus CDs of software.
Over the page is LANtastic for Windows, which comes with a network card and cord for 2 PCs. The transfer rate of the card is 10 Mbits per second, which was probably mega fast back then. The price? $1199! Good grief! You could get a whole computer for that now, and not even need any extra networking goodies. For $559, you could get a 250 MB cassette backup drive, with a data rate of 500 KB per second. Thank goodness we have flash memory units now.
Here’s a funny bit: “Imagine receiving a large document at 300 b.p.s. — you could bake a leg of lamb while you wait.” LOL. But with this QuickComm Spirit 2 modem, for $649, you can go up to 57 600 b.p.s., and it also handled faxes. A standard floppy disk drive would cost you $129, and a “graphics accelerator” card would cost you $249. It only did 15 bit colour, and no, it wasn’t the kind of 3D accelerator card you’d get now, that worked with Open GL and all that — this just sped drawing operations up by up to 10 times. Various cables were about the only thing Dick Smith had for Apple computers.
They had a 2 button control pad for $39.95, which looks a bit minimal. Ooh, and a graphics tablet for $249. Throw away your mouse, they said.
In terms of software, the most expensive item was “The Microsoft Office.” Ah! They dropped that the business since then. And that was $849! Cha-ching! Microsoft Word on its own was $549. Holey macaroni! WordPerfect, in its pre-Corel days, was $495. Also for sale was Windows 3.1 for $169, Lotus 1-2-3 (for Windows) for $699, and some old Star Trek screen saver for $69! For a sodding screen saver! You’ve gotta be joking. Microsoft Money was $10 cheaper than that. Corel DRAW! 3 was $329, Geoworks Pro was $199 & Microsoft’s DOS 6 was $99. So yeah, those were the days when you could probably blow 10 or more grand on a computer setup.
Oh yeah, now where are those freaking ’phones? Like in America, they called them cellular ’phones in the catalogue, unlike mobile ’phones these days. These seemed to be more related to installing in vehicles too. There are no prices listed, so they must’ve been expensive, and you could also get loan ’phones, instead of buying them. You also got instant access to Telecom Mobile Net. Not Telstra back then, but old Telecom. And then again, was there even anyone else?
(Onto the next 3 pages:) Ah, the old Sharp EL-6073 Memo Master. I still have mine, and it was $29.95. The battery lasted for yonks in this thing. I only changed it once since about 1993. I had some girls’ ’phone numbers from school in mine. Although they’re probably not much use now.
If you wanted to really blow your cash at Dick Smith, you could get a Teletext Decoder Mark 2! It was a kit for $319, and if you didn’t have a VCR, you could pay $139 for another kit, which was a tuner module required for it. Holey penné! You’d have to be a real couch potato with a need for teletext to get that, and then make the thing yourself. The combined cost would’ve been $458. They already sold a 34 cm Telefunken TV with a Teletext feature built in for $499.
So if you want to know anything else they had back then, you can just ask me. Unless there’s a web site of old catalogues out there somewhere. It’s amazing what old catalogues get sold off on eBay. I guess people buy them for doing TV shows in the past, or for collecting or whatever. As I said back in September, my old 1997 Jaycar catalogue looks brand new, so it might have a bit of value still. Not a “dog ear” corner in sight.
• (19:02) Ooh yeah — I worked out a lotus design in Photo-Paint, and it came to 225 L.E.D.s! So, mmm. I don’t think I’ll do that somehow. I think it worked out to 4.5 amps of juice they’d need, but only 9 W of total power. Assuming I calculated that right. Although the 54 white L.E.D.s might have used a bit more.

Sunday, 23rd of January, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (19:11) I was going to have a look at my Sharp EL-6073 Memo Master 100, but its battery’s completely dead. Then I went to take a photo of it, and my camera’s battery ran out of oomph as well! It wasn’t meant to be. So I’ll need a new CR-2016 battery for the organiser, hopefully tomorrow. The previous one was about 29 years old after all. On the back it says it uses 0.0002 W of power. So that’s like 0.2 milliwatts, or 200 microwatts. It’s supposed to last for 2000 hours of constant use. The memory capacity of the organiser is just 1888 bytes, although numbers only take up half a byte in the number field. There are some interesting calculation tips in the back too, including how to do more complicated calculations, like numbers to the power of other ones, which isn’t something you’d normally think it did. For instance: (4³)². You just press 4 × = = × = & you get 4096. Although trying the same thing on the calculator in Windows here had the same result too.
One thing that was handy, was using the telephone function as storage for constants, so you could multiply by a number that was always kept, like for pi, or stuff for metric conversions.
• Yep, it’ll be the 8th of March that my site’s been on the web for 20 years. Although over 3 different ISPs.

Saturday, 29th of January, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (20:13) I was looking on an interactive map for Wuppertal in Germany, and later I decided to have a peek around the border of Belgium & the Netherlands. I was like: What’s with all these border lines around this town? It was like somebody had a fit drawing the map. It’s a place called Baarle-Hertog, and its divisions go back to the middle ages, and the borders of Belgium & the Netherlands are still all over the shop. It’s really hilarious! They all get along, but the borders are jiggling about in a crazy fashion, with markings across car parking spaces, into shops and along the side of a restaurant. Holey moley! It’d be a good attraction for its obscurity. It’s worse than that Llívia joint, which is part of Spain, but in France, or something.

Sunday, 30th of January, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (14:39) Holey moley! I just finished typing up the hand written stuff of my story, The 2nd 2 Year Holiday, which is about my grandparents. I started it in about February 1994, (when I was 13 years old,) and decided to start typing it up in mid 1999. Almost 23 years later, and it’s done! Struth, it took long enough. I realised about 9 years ago that I’d have to pull my finger out & get it completed, because at the rate I’d been typing it up until then, I’d be dead before it got finished. It takes up 1053 pages in typed form, and 1784 pages in my hand writing. (It has pictures as well.) Following that though, are probably another 1000 pages which I’ve only typed, and just printed out. I started writing it in Microsoft Works 3, then moved to Microsoft Word, when a friend of mine had it, then I think I had it in AbiWord, and then moved to Open Office, which I’ve used ever since. I made each file 100 pages, and I also did PDF files of them all. It feels a bit funny to have it done now. My pink clothes peg that I used to mark where I was up to, can retire at last. Of course I’m still typing up the new stuff — it’s like one of those soap operas on the TV that just keeps going & going.

Tuesday, 1st of February, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:28) This month’s software review will be back to Corel CHART at last. That’ll be on the 9th as usual.
• Um… dang… I forgot what I was going to write about. Oh yeah! I was reading about Oresama’s 3rd album last night, Continew World. You get 2 CDs and a 2022 calendar! The 1st CD is the regular new songs, and the 2nd one is the DressUp Cover remixes. Pretty sweet. I don’t think I’ll be getting it though. It’s pretty expensive getting imported stuff. Anyway, I think it came out about the 27th of October last year, which was after I got Hi-Fi POPS.

Thursday, 3rd of February, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (14:13) You can hear just about all the songs from Continew World off YouTube for free. Although certainly not at CD quality, but pretty good all the same. Yeah, so I don’t think I’ll be buying that one. I didn’t fancy some of the tracks I heard.
• Back on the 11th of September, 2020, I yacked about possibly doing an audio level display using L.E.D.s and a LM3914 I.C., but after going through the information on that I.C. again today, I don’t think it would be quite right for my use. It seems more aimed at L.E.D.s which are all the same, or of exactly the same brightness, and the ones I have aren’t matched in any way. The green ones are the brightest, probably followed by the magenta, the purple one is quite weak, as is the red, and yeah… you’d need different resistors for each one, to equalise them. Maybe you could do that with the LM3914 dealie, but I’m not sure. And being unsure about something is what I want to avoid. It just seems to mention using one resistor for controlling the brightness of all the L.E.D.s. I think I might look towards the Dick Smith Fun Way book method, despite it using more components. It has individual resistors per L.E.D., and uses a transistor to turn each one on. From what I read, those BC548 transistors can handle up to 100 mA, so that’s more than any of my L.E.D.s require. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll jump into doing that immediately. I’d have to buy a whole bunch of components for it first, probably a large PCB, and really, it’s not something I currently want to spend money on.
• I looked at a video of the 100 most viewed French songs @ YouTube last night. What a waste of time that was! How many viewers actually enjoyed them though?! This is why I don’t like looking at “best” songs and “top” levels and stuff, ’cos it’s based on other people’s opinions (which suck) and sales. I only want to see new releases with no prejudice on how good / bad the songs are. Then I can make up my own mind. But yeah, it is still so hard to find foreign music, especially from China, and even India. If you ask me, the Korean stuff is still the easiest to get. Even easier than English (and American) music. Let’s do a search for videos on the web, saying: new songs January 2022 — what do you know? K-Pop is the 2nd result, with more mentions below. If you search in other languages you get some different results, but not much. Then you’re expected to understand the language to find the music, which I don’t.
If you want to see a broad range of Korean music videos, one person from YouTube I would recommend, is DJ Digital, who does a weekly in case you missed it (ICYMI) video of newly released songs. It’s divided up into colour coded genres, so you can go straight to what you want. For Japanese, have a look for JPKRCH’s monthly top 40 picks, which usually have a couple of good tunes, and SK4 who puts out pretty regular new MVs as they find them, by the looks of it.

Sunday, 6th of February, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (22:15) Ha ha ha! Look at what I found in the old Dick Smith catalogue! This really made my night, what with all this other bollocks about so called “smart ’phones” these days. This one talks back too! So you’ll really get an ear full. So think about this, all of you mobile ’phone users. (Just click on the image to see it @ full size.)
Oh hey! The power button L.E.D. on my PC just came back on. My writing must’ve been a good omen. I always say it’s a good omen when it comes back on.

Thursday, 10th of February, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (12:59) Hands up who knows what a tattie-bogle is? I didn’t know either until I looked it up. It’s a Scottish scarecrow for minding potato fields. For some reason it popped into my head at some unholy hour of this morning, so I wrote it down on my note pad and went back to sleep. All I can think of, is that it must’ve been somebody’s user name somewhere. Like at eBay, DeviantArt, or on YouTube perhaps. I couldn’t find it in either of my dictionaries. In fact, I had to do a search on the web with suggestions to see if it’d come up, and when it did, I didn’t know what the results would be. Strange, huh? I wonder where I heard it.
• (13:12) Ha ha! I remember where I heard that thing now. It was a web site for a XBOX 360 control pad driver for Mac OS X. The bizarre stuff ya brain thinks up in the wee hours of the morning, laddy.

Monday, 14th of February, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (18:12) Flippin’ heck. I spent most of the afternoon waiting for Windows XP to check my 2ndary hard drive, after the Monkey’s Audio plug-in reported an error about a corrupt file I had playing in Winamp. After getting out my backup DVD, I confirmed it was corrupt with a “hex editor”, and that it had changed significantly. But the disk check didn’t report any errors. It just said: Disk Check Complete. Or something like that, and that was it. No log file or anything, even after waiting probably 6 hours or so. So if there were no bad blocks, or whatever, on the disk, how did that file get like that overnight or last night? I played it yesterday, and it was fine. Did something foul up when I shut down my computer? Usually if bad areas of any disk are discovered, Windows will add it to the Event Viewer logs. Like when I plug in my Cowon X9, it will say there are errors on it’s 2nd “drive,” but it’s just because the card slot is empty. But anyway, there are no hard drive errors (apparently). The date of the APE file was the same as my backup copy as well, so it wasn’t showing any evidence of (it) having been changed. Very weird.
• Anyway, I was going to check out some MVs from the Japanese duo, GARNiDELiA. The chick in it, MARiA, has a very intriguing look.

Tuesday, 15th of February, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:43) No issues today with my music, it would seem. The only other thing I can think of which might have caused some trouble, might have been This Is My File, but I wasn’t unlocking anything on my hard drive caddy. Probably only a flash memory unit. Perhaps I’ll avoid using it.
• I looked at a bunch of GARNiDELiA MVs, but I didn’t like much of their music. Mirai was kind of good, but it didn’t end the best. Aikotoba wasn’t too bad, and Otomeno Kokoroe, which I saw last year, was sort of okay. I think MARiA’s looks are more stunning than the music. She really seems quite mesmerising. As for Toku, who knows? I’m not interested in looking at blokes.
• (21:57) Australia’s a pretty big joint, so tonight I thought I’d get a map picture of the country, and then see how many other countries I could fit into the space at the same scale. Although rotation was required in some instances. In fact, you can get San Marino, Singapore, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong & Macau all into Lake Eyre, and still have room to spare. (That’s in S.A.) As for the rest of the country, I fitted in Spain, Portugal, Denmark, North Macedonia, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Israel, Lebanon, Cambodia, all of Britain, the United Arab Emirates, both Koreas, Austria, Cuba, Nepal, Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Plus Jamaica into the upper part of Tasmania. And there was still a huge portion of S.A. free, which was taken up by the writing I used to point out the countries that’d fit into the lake. On the flip side, I should see how much of Australia will fit into Russia, ’cos that joint is humongous.

Thursday, 17th of February, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (22:44) I think we’ve all seen single & double cassette recorders, but what about triple?! I was looking up old Japanese TV ads today, and spotted one by accident, and yeah — there were quite a few made by various companies. National and General both had one, plus some company called Yorx, which I’d never heard of. Ah, I used to use cassettes all the time when I was a kid, but I haven’t used any for years unfortunately. I’ve still got a lot of them though, including ones older than myself, which my grandparents had. I remember when we used to record stuff at primary school, and the other kids’d be surprised by their own voices, but I was used to it, since I did a lot of recording at home.
A lot of my old ones wore out over the years, but I still have the remnants of my very first one; a light blue “Gaf Control” radio & cassette recorder combo. What a weird brand name. It was probably some generic thing other companies slapped their name on. One of the switches broke off, the transformer died with a flash from the power point, the tuning knob came off, the handle busted off, the door broke off, and I think the plastic for the tuning area came out too. I didn’t treat it the best when I was just a kid, I suppose.

Friday, 18th of February, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (16:17) Check this dude out: Dimash Qudaibergen, who I believe is from Kazakhstan. Tell me that’s not one of the highest pitch male voices you’ve ever heard. He’s like a boy soprano, except he’s a man now.

Monday, 21st of February, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:49) Ha ha! F**king WinRAR. I was just compressing 2 files, and the progress bar decided to go backwards! It got to 100%, then kept going, then jumped back to 80%. Eugene Roshal, my friend, you goofed on that one.
• I’ve been looking up a few other songs from around the world in countries I don’t usually look at stuff from, and yeah, that’s been a waste of time as well. It’s really hard to find something good. It’d be great if Oresama did a MV for Chewy Candy.
• Ah, I’ll be so glad when sodding Summer is over & done with, and we get onto mid-Autumn. The amount of storms this year, and @ the end of 2021, have just been crazy around here. Plus I hate the humidity as well. Last night was horrible. Thank goodness I don’t live in northern Australia. When I’m tucked up in bed in May with 2 blankets and 3 quilts on, I’ll be happy.

Wednesday, 23rd of February, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (16:22) I found a web site from New Zealand, which had some Philips radio & record player hi-fi systems very similar to the one my Nanna had at Coogee. This FZ886A model would be the closest, I would say. I think the Z in the model was specific to New Zealand, because I also read about other FX800 series ones, which must’ve been from Europe, perhaps. It made me feel a bit whimsical and longing to bring back memories of my early years, when I was about 3 or 4 years old. When you want to bring back something from your past that you can’t. Anyway, I wrote to the person who did the site, and perhaps they might have something interesting to say.
What’s interesting to note, are the 3 speakers. I knew it had 3! I just knew it. I was almost convinced I was wrong in recent times, by seeing another one with 2. I was right about the Philips Miniwatt valves and magic eye. That I worked out myself anyway. I wasn’t aware of the special 800Ω speakers though.

Friday, 4th of March, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:26) This month’s Software Review Of The Moment will be returning to the triple dealie of Cog + MacAmp Lite X + XMPlay.
• Here are a few more music videos I found recently, which might be worth a squizz!
» Believe by Rothy (2022)
» Sabotage by Ryokuōshoku Shakai (2019)
» Angle by Trio Ohashi (Yesterday)
» Swee2wink Love Letter by 2wink (2022)
» Bunny by Surii + Kagami Oto Ren (2022)

Saturday, 5th of March, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:02) Good grief — Shane Warne died yesterday of a heart attack in Thailand! Holey moley. I wouldn’t have picked that happening to him. He was only 53 as well.

Saturday, 12th of March, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:22) I was thinking of finally getting off my butt & looking at BeOS, but I’m a bit hazy about whether the professional rendition of version 5 is free to download. The personal edition is intended to be downloaded for free, but you only get about 512 MB or so of space, and you have to have Windows ’98 or Windows ME installed to reboot to it, or something. So that’s a bit iffy. (I think you must have the professional edition for Macs.) The pro’ version has its own bootable CD & installs on its own, which I’d rather do. Also, I read that version 4 is more stable. So what software there is and how much of it needs version 5 instead, is hard to say if you’ve never used it before. The earlier versions were made for PowerPC CPUs, including pre-G3 Macs, but the last version of BeOS was apparently only for Intel CPUs. Anyway, I only feel about ½ bothered to look @ it at the moment. I dunno about graphics acceleration either. I think it used OpenGL for stuff, but what video cards would it support? And would that work for this OS in a virtual machine?
Anyway, BeOS has a nice appearance about it. The icons are all kind of isometric looking. I dunno what’s available for it in terms of word processors, graphics programs and the like. It was aimed more at audio & video work. If the BeBox computer had a PowerPC CPU, and was released in 1995, the company must have been quick off the mark to do it, because that was the same year that Apple introduced the CPU. (It was designed by Apple, IBM & Motorola.) Then again, I suppose Sega were using them in 1996 as well for the Model 3 board.

Sunday, 13th of March, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (15:25) I’ve been trying to find that nVidia TNT demo again. The one with the lion & the penthouse / whatever it was. Who the heck knows what ever happened to it? It’s one of those things lost forever. I sent another message to nVidia, but whether they’ll reply is hard to say. I even offered to host it myself, if it isn’t humongous. That’d be pretty neat, if I had the only site to have it. It’s a pity it isn’t just on the nVidia web site with all their GeForce demos. For a moment I was beginning to wonder if it was for PowerVR cards, but then remembered that archived web site I read, which mentioned it for TNT video cards as well. Maybe it was a screen saver. But I’m pretty sure it was interactive, ’cos you could zoom in on the lion. Anyway, I’m currently downloading a driver CD “image,” which does have some GeForce demos, so maybe it might be on there too.
• (16:20) No luck with the 1st CD I tried. It was more to do with the GeForce 2, it seemed. It had the Grass & Toy Soldiers demos, but I didn’t spot anything like the one I’m after.

Tuesday, 15th of March, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (12:28) It’s my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary today.
• I finally found that lone piece of Bloodgrass in Oblivion, when I was playing it last night, in the Great Forest. I’d seen it years ago, and thought: “What’s this doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” Well it turns out that an Oblivion gate could have opened there, but it never did, because I ended the main quest before I ever went to that region. Anyway, it’s about half way between Ceyatatar & Fort Wooden Hand. If an Oblivion gate did open for you, (if you have the game,) it will make sense. If not, it just seems to be a suspicious sprout of it growing through a grassy covered rock. The location is approximately at X: -35747.14, Y: 38725.2 & Z: 6091.48.

Saturday, 19th of March, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (14:34) I saw a dude picking mushrooms in Oblivion last night. Honmund was his name. I didn’t even realise people went out picking anything, and I’ve been playing the game since 2006! Ha ha. It took long enough to notice this going on. Anyway, his AI dealie has him finding Clouded Funnel Caps on the weekends, if certain parts of the main quest aren’t active. Probably during the attack on Bruma.
At my Verdant View Manor, I have a horse stable, where I’ve stuck the unicorn from Harcane Grove. Anyway, it keeps trying to get back there, despite the gates. Last night I thought it was safely held in place, so I set off west to Ondo, and the horse comes zooming over me like it leapt off a mountain! Then it goes nuts, chasing after 3 deer! LOL! It wouldn’t stop until I killed them all. Then I could ride it back again. But dang — it took some damage from the jump. It must’ve leapt about 100 m or more.
Also, this horse up near where Honmund was, walked into a rock and just vanished! It must have “teleported” back to where it was supposed to be. It’s the Twilight Zone in that game sometimes. Speaking of which, the other day it decided to reset my play time back to 0. Probably around the 7th of this month. But really, I’ve just passed 1200 hours. Last night, I think it was. So that’s 50 days.
I kind of feel like making another plug-in, but I dunno what though. Maybe something with wilderness outposts for Imperial Legion guards. Then you could see them fighting more creatures. Plus maybe you could rest in the places and trade goods too. I should do a fun dealie with a staff that has a scripted enchantment to give somebody a bounty. If you can do that. And one to resurrect somebody. Although that’s kind of cheating on both accounts, if you ask me.

Tuesday, 22nd of March, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:19) So I did start on a new plug-in for Oblivion, called Cyrodiilic Outposts. Now there’ll be places to stop off at in the wild, where you can sleep, store things and be protected by the local guards as well. The game has all those ruined forts, but none of them seem to be in use by the “good guys.” Oblivion has barely any female members of the Imperial Legion, & possibly none at all. Although I think there is one sheila who’s related to a Dark Brotherhood quest. So I decided to have some sheilas in there. It seems there is female speech for when you get arrested and stuff too. This is something that made me wonder if it was why they avoided women guards. Another thing I noticed, is that NPCs are immune to the invisible border. (The boundary which stops you going into places like Morrowind, Skyrim, Hammerfell, etc.) One of my guards was coming back for a snooze, and he was in an area I couldn’t get to. There are actually path nodes out there in those locations too, because I think they’re automatically generated by some dealie in the Construction Set.

Monday, 28th of March, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (20:50) Ooh, Red Velvet have a new Japanese tune out called Wildside. It wasn’t quite what I’d go for, but some bits of it were okay.

Thursday, 7th of April, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (19:49) Yeah, um… Cyrodiilic Outposts is nearing completion for The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. I didn’t use anything from Shivering Isles, but I don’t know if that’ll necessarily mean you won’t need that expansion. I have to finish checking everything’s working fine with the guard patrols and other NPCs 1st, and add some more decorative stuff. But you’ll get 10 joints to go to. Most of which seem to be on the eastern side of Cyrodiil.
• I was thinking about how Morrowind seems to have more joinable factions than Oblivion too. Let’s see, what’d you get to join in Oblivion? The Fighters’ Guild, the Thieves’ Guild, the Mages’ Guild, the Dark Brotherhood, and I think the Knights Of The Nine, if you had that expansion, which I don’t. Plus there were some minor factions you got to be in for doing a handful of tasks, like the Order Of The Virtuous Blood, Knights Of The White Stallion and Knights Of The Thorn, or something. And there was a faction for the Shivering Isles as well. In Morrowind though, you got to join the the Fighters’ Guild, the Thieves’ Guild, the Mages’ Guild, the Morag Tong, the Imperial Legion, the Imperial Cult, one of the 3 Great Houses, (Hlaalu, Redoran or Telvanni,) the Temple & the East Empire Company (in Bloodmoon). Plus I think you got an honourary position in the Ashlanders, and I forget about the Twin Lamps. Maybe that too. You also had the ability to join with one of the 3 vampire clans, rather than just being a generic kind of vampire in Oblivion. Not that I ever did that either.

Monday, 11th of April, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (22:04) I was looking at a way to get interlaced videos into non-interlaced @ 50 Hz tonight. I recalled that you could do that with AVDemux, but it’s a bit buggy, and I had white parts of the video coming out in black! Then, I finally worked out how to do it with JES De-Interlacer. You can read how on my Computer Page.
I figured if I ever put any videos back on my site, I’d have them at the full frame rate.

Tuesday, 12th of April, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (17:20) Ah good! Things have been going even more right for me today. I finally worked out how to get FFMPEG to do that de-interlace method as well. Huzzah! I should be able to do that on both my Macs and main PC now. That will save a lot of room in terms of disk space, when compared with JES De-Interlacer. The general gist of the command line is:
ffmpeg -i InterlacedVideo.mpg -vf "yadif=1:-1" -vcodec mjpeg -r 50 -b 16000k -ac 2 -acodec pcm_s16le ProgressiveOutput.avi
You just change that -1 to 0 or 1, or something in the yadif part, if the field order is wrong. YADIF is just short for Yet Another De Interlace Filter. You could use a MOV container instead of AVI or a different codec instead of MJPEG too. I just did it like this for testing purposes with a DVD source. So there you go. This is another solution! And it’s the proper deal. It doesn’t just knock it up to 50 Hz and duplicate the frames. Each frame is different. I may add this feature to my AV-Friendly front-end program too, if I feel it’s worthwhile.

Wednesday, 13th of April, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:58) I’ve updated AV-Friendly to version 1.3 now, and if you have a compatible copy of Mac OS X, then you can run it. (It must support PowerPC programs.) If not, install one in a virtual machine! Ha ha. Leopard is suitable. I made it for my Power Mac and other Macs, so why not share it with other people who might be able to run it too?
I’ll have to check about distributing FFMPEG again. That is hard to find for older Macs, so if I can give out the copy I have, then that could be useful to some people who have an interest.

Saturday, 16th of April, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (22:13) I added 2 more Japanese MVs to this year’s page of them. I think I’m just going to concentrate on music from there @ the moment, unless some random thing comes along that I like.

Sunday, 17th of April, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (12:05) Happy Easter!

Friday, 22nd of April, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (15:22) Yeah, the fridge cr*pped out on Easter Sunday, after 35 years of faithful service. (Actually, it was going down hill maybe a week before that. And a screw fell out of it years ago.) This new one’s got electronic bits in it. L.E.D.s and little buttons to control the temperature. It’s a bit fancy. The old one just had a thermostat knob, and the light bulb. What more do you need? I’d be happy with a fridge from the 1950s.
• I just ordered a 2nd hand alarm clock off eBay for my “Shelf Of Light” as I call it, in my bedroom. I wanted one up there, so when I’m on my back with my headphones on, I don’t have to turn way over to see the one on the bedside table. It’s an electronic type one. Blue L.E.D.s & a radio as well. I won’t need the radio, but which ones don’t have one? I won’t need the alarm either. It’s got a 24 hour or 12 hour setting, so that’s good. I tried looking for new clocks, but a lot of them are just weird, and gimmicky with stupid features I’d never use. They even have ones with USB ports on them. WTF would you need a USB port on a freakin’ clock for?!! Computers already have a clock built in. What would you be transferring from it?! Plug in your keyboard to adjust the time or something. And some other ones are these ridiculously huge clocks that would light up the whole room. Plus ones with projectors. What the fudge? Gimmicks, gimmicks, gimmicks! I don’t need all that B.S. I almost thought of making one myself, but it probably would’ve cost more. I’d have to track down a clock circuit off the ’net, buy four 7 segment displays, maybe a PCB, the I.C.s for it, a power supply, a box… You start to get the picture of the costs piling up.
• There’s an Ayleid joint in Oblivion that was never put in, from what I can see in the Construction Set. I don’t remember the name. The outdoor cell is named for it, but all that’s there, is an Ayleid well. If nobody’s created it, or it wasn’t part of Knights Of The Nine, I might take a crack at it one day. Otherwise, I’ll just leave it.
I hope none of my places from Cyrodiilic Outposts conflict with things from K.O.T.N., but as I never bought it, I dunno a great deal about the extra stuff. Apart from that tower up near Bruma way.

Sunday, 24th of April, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (14:28) That Ayleid joint that was never done for Oblivion, was called Ulkanen, in the Tamriel cell name. But somebody’s already made a plug-in that adds their interpretation of it.
• After I ordered that clock radio 2 days ago, I decided to look up other old models from the 1970s & 1980s. One that was surprisingly feature packed, was the Realistic Chronosette-237 from Tandy / Radio Shack. This was more like a nicely done radio & cassette recorder with a clock thrown in, rather than the clock being the main attraction. It had stereo microphone inputs, a headphones socket, tone & balance control, and even an auxilary connection to which you could also probably use as an alarm, going by the rotary switches. It also had a L.E.D. to say when it was recording and a counter for the cassette as well. If you do an image search for it, you should pick up some nifty pictures. It’s got a nice look about it. As for that snooze button, you wouldn’t want to be too off your face trying to press that from your bed, or you’d hit one of the other 6 buttons in the region.
If you want to see some more classic electronic clocks, and one that was more like electro-mechanical, check out this American site called Electronics USA.
• I’ve been thinking about doing that level display doodad again, to put near my computers. But I still dunno if I want to spend the money on it yet. If I go back to the LM3914 I.C. based design, I may get some cyan L.E.D.s, which should look nice. There’s a place in Australia selling 3 mm ones on eBay. I think I’ll have 2 inputs as well, and use RCA sockets for everything audio related. They last better than those phono ones.
When I could get off my butt, I’ll have a browse for some other circuit designs too. One I got was from a video I watched of somebody soldering to a LM3194N I.C., in a basic set-up, and if that works, then that would do. I don’t need anything too fancy.

Monday, 25th of April, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:27) Hooray! I finally went up to level 38 in Oblivion last night, after something like 12 years. (Although I hadn’t played it between 2013 & 2021.) My Hand To Hand skill going up is what did it for that last notch. I guess I can get training again now. That was another thing you got diddled with, compared with Morrowind. You could train as much as you liked in Morrowind, not just 5 times per level. Plus trainers had 3 of their best skills to teach you. Plus you could fortify a trainer’s skill using a spell and they’d teach you something else.
Anyway, I also went back to Fort Strand, and found a whole bunch of armour, and a sword, which I must’ve left there years ago. I could’ve sworn I’d been back through that place in recent times. Bjalfi The Contemptible was still there, rotting away, and magically, his weapon, Rockshatter, had returned to his corpse. So I just took it again, and then realised you can’t drop it, because it’s a “quest item.” But I completed that yonks ago, so I had to look up its form ID in the Construction Set and undo its quest status. (SetQuestObject 00014EC2 0) There are actually several versions of the weapon, based on what level you are.
• (14:53) Yesterday, I found a nice looking power amplifier by Akai from 1980. The model UC-W5. It had a level indicator that looked like a vacuum fluorescent display / gas plasma display / one of those styles. The pre-amplifier which went with it, was the UC-A5. It has an auxilary connection, but nothing that says for a CD player. Because CD players didn’t exist then, that’s why. It was a couple more years later. Has the division between pre-amplifiers and power amplifiers faded, would you say? I thought most of them were just the one thing these days. I remember as a kid, going to the Sydney Hi-Fi store at Penrith, and was stunned by the prices of the equipment in there. Maybe it wasn’t right for the area, or perhaps people just didn’t want expensive audio systems, and so they closed. Maybe now’s a good time to collect older audio equipment that’s being sold off cheap on eBay, so you can finally get the chance to grab something you missed out on 25 to 30 years ago. And there were some really nice looking pieces of equipment too. That nice aluminium look to the knobs and cases, I currently find very appealing. I like looking at those kinds of things on the web, but I dunno if I’d really make any purchases, because I probably wouldn’t use the thing. I already have other audio equipment from the past which doesn’t see a lot of use.

Tuesday, 25th of April, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (12:22) I was watching Black Adder 2: Money, the other night, and didn’t realise that the bishop was the same guy that played that German guy in Indiana Jones & The Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Toht, apparently. Ronald Lacey’s his name. So he had a red hot poker in both those shows.
Oh good heavens! He was in Z Cars as well. Who wasn’t in that show?
• Oblivion’s been acting a bit weird again with its bugs. I’ve had a couple of instances in recent times, where 2 of an object appears in an enemy’s inventory, when really you only get one of it. I dunno what that’s about. Also, it still has the nasty habit of getting stolen items mixed up. Stuff that’s marked as nicked, sometimes loses its stolen status when you stick it in another container, and last night items that weren’t stolen became stolen, because the next item down the list of the same type was. In Morrowind though, you couldn’t even tell. And I think sometimes whole object types became stolen if one was, or something. At least in Morrowind, you could sell stolen items to anyone, except the original owner, who’d nick ’em back.

Saturday, 30th of April, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (20:06) I ordered 100 cyan L.E.D.s today for just $7.50! What a bargain! They’re about 500 nm on the colour wavelength dealie, so that’s probably closer to turquoise, rather than exactly on cyan. 490 nm is probably more cyan-ish. But anyway, I did want them a touch more on the green side, so they should be ideal.
• I’m still working out what I’ll do about my audio level display. I got some new prices (off eBay), and it’s come out cheaper so far than what I worked out 2 years ago. Although adding in the power supply & box may push it closer to $100. I found some dual gang potentiometers from China, some aluminium knobs and the LM3914 I.C.s as well. The rest I tried to find from here in Australia. Well, for my test list anyway. I haven’t bought anything apart from the L.E.D.s yet. Actually, I might get a bread board first, before I start soldering, so I can test how things’ll work, and if I’m on the right track.

Tuesday, 3rd of May, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (20:06) Check out this digest movie for Heesey’s new CD, 33. (Double 3.) Apart from tracks 1 & 12, I liked the rest. You can hear the tracks on YouTube as well. Only One Love Song, which is track 6, sounds like something from out of the 1960s or something. Especially with the “bup shoo wuddy” business. Other recommended tracks:
9. Samba No. 9
8. Thunder Gate Shuffle
10. Super Hyper Ultra Extra
11. Infinity Of My Groove
2. Rock ’N’ Roll Survivor
3. Double 3
J!T!T!T! from one of his other albums is great as well. Especially if you’re in the mood to check out a big collection of electric guitars.

Saturday, 7th of May, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (12:23) Ooh boy. My main PC didn’t want to start up properly this morning. Although it’s obviously fine now, since I’m typing this. It didn’t even beep, so something was wrong. I tried loosening and tightening the video card, and after that it was okay for one start up, but then not again later. It tried it again, and blew out some dust with my compressed air can, and now it’s all right. Maybe the cold temperature overnight and this morning caused something to shift a bit. I dunno. It was running pretty warmly yesterday, and it’s never done something quite like this before. I hope it doesn’t die. I’m too dependant on it!

Monday, 9th of May, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (20:52) I got my cyan L.E.D.s today, but I also ordered some ice blue ones tonight, which I think might be closer to what colour I want. (Which are of 490 nm wavelength.) The cyan ones are more of a bluey-green. They’re really nice though, all the same.
They’re probably like this colour, where what I’m after is more like this.
Anyway, you should see some of the other stuff this store has! Long L.E.D.s, 8 mm hexagonal ones, oval ones which look like ice blocks, and even flexible silicone strips, which I asked about. They have a whole stack of tiny L.E.D.s inside them, it seems. They’ve also got square, rectangle and ~1 cm square block kind of shaped ones too. It was like being a kid in a lolly shop checking them all out. The place is based in Queensland, so if you’re an Aussie & want to shop locally for L.E.D.s on eBay, check this joint out.

Wednesday, 11th of May, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (12:41) All right — I ended up ordering a 5 pack of LM3915 I.C.s yesterday. I watched a video on how the LM3914, LM3915, & LM3916 integrated circuits all work in the same kind of circuit, next to each other, and after more reading, I felt the LM3915 was more appropriate for my level display dealie.
Today though, I ordered a bread board, so I can chop up some bread. Ha ha! No, just kidding. It’s to put components into for testing purposes. I want to test out one of my new I.C.s first, and see what happens before I start soldering stuff. I have 2 variations of the final circuit to try as well. I’m wondering if I should use my purple L.E.D.s, since they’re not so intense. Although, I still have to see what these ice blue ones are like. Maybe if I put a ½ watt resistor of a few kΩ in series with the common connection of the L.E.D.s it might reduce their brightness, and at the same time take some of the load off the I.C.’s internal current reduction dealie.
I read at multiple places that the LM3914, LM3915 & LM3916 I.C.s have gone out of production by the original manufacturer, National Semiconductors, but you still seem to be able to get 3rd party ones easily enough. There was a LM3909 I.C. as well, that Dick Smith had for flashing individual L.E.D.s. I only ever bought one of those, and it was probably close to 30 years back.

Saturday, 14th of May, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:19) My LM3915N I.C.s turned up yesterday, which was quick. I’m still waiting on the bread board & ice blue L.E.D.s. I did find one box on eBay, but I think it clips together, so I might re-search for something with screws. I like the look of the aluminium boxes, but as it conducts electricity, I think I’ll stick with plastic.
• Last night I found some pictures on the web of my Nana & Pa’s audio systems. They had a Briconic quadraphonic record player & radio, which also had inputs for 2 cassette recorders, using those DIN type connectors, or whatever they’re called. I think the radio must’ve been for AM only, since there doesn’t seem to be any band changing option. It had 2 headphones sockets — 1 for the rear speakers, and one for the front ones. I remember the speakers my grandparents had as well. They had the smaller back ones on wall mounted shelves, and the big front ones on the floor. I reckon it was probably from the 1960s or 1970s, since quadraphonic stuff faded out after that. I’m pretty sure it used transistors. I don’t think it would’ve had valves. Anyway, something snuffed it, and Pa dismantled it. All that’s left are the buttons and the front panel, which I have. These were the kind of radio buttons that give their name to the ones you see in various computer programs. Pressing 1 would pop the other ones out. It basically had a spring loaded bar, which would cause other buttons to disengage from their pressed status.
Anyway, after that, they got a NEC M-255, the model apparently is. I reckon it must’ve been in the late 1980s or around 1991, because they got their CD player (a Sony CDP-190) around that time, and the old Briconic system had no inputs for that kind of thing. As for the NEC doodad, it had a record player, 3 band radio (FM, AM & SW), & double cassette players. There was also a level display with red square L.E.D.s, a 5 level equaliser, & 2 microphone inputs. You can look it up on the web yourself, but it’s pretty hard to find.
As for Briconic, I’m pretty sure they were an Aussie company. I don’t know how long they lasted for. If they are still around, well struth, I haven’t heard of them again.

Wednesday, 18th of May, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (14:44) Some time ago I was looking at the back of the dunny rolls packet, and thinking that Sorbent should do a thing like the intro to The Pretender: There are toilet rolls among us. Paper with the ability to wipe anyone’s backside. In 1952, a corporation known as Sorbent isolated a young toilet roll named Jarod and exploited his softness for their butt holes. Then one day, their toilet paper rolled away.
Plus, some company that makes cotton buds could have a cute drawing on the packet like this one that I did some time ago. Maybe it could be for a special kids version perhaps.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Japanese have some cute bathroom related products.

Thursday, 19th of May, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (17:10) My new ice blue L.E.D.s turned up today! They probably are closer to a good cyan, and not overly saturated. So in certain conditions, you could almost mistake them for a white L.E.D. with a blue tinge. They’re rated at 2.8 to 3.1 V, and on a button battery, they’re very bright! If I put them into my level display circuit, I think I’d want to reduce their brightness significantly, so I can look at them and not have my eyes blown away by up to 20 on at once.
• I’ve also been reading up more about the LM3915 I.C. today, hoping some of it would sink in. My main concern is the heat level. With 10 L.E.D.s lit @ once, these integrated circuits apparently get quite hot with a large amount of current being drawn. A lot of people recommend L.E.D.s of only 10 or so mA. The strange thing is, that even regular low brightness L.E.D.s at Jaycar, years ago, were rated for 30 mA, and my new high brightness ones are only about 20 or so. The resistor at pin 7 is supposed to be a reference for how much current the I.C. is to set for each L.E.D. So, if I increase that to a higher value than the typical 1.2 kΩ resistor shown in most examples, will that reduce amount of heat as well, or should I use a 1 watt resistor in series with the common connection of all the L.E.D.s? The thing is, these ice blue L.E.D.s that I want to use are really bright anyway, so if I can cut back their brightness and save some heat from the I.C. then it’s a 2-in-1 bonus. The specification data for the LM3915 says that the current drawn out of the reference voltage pin, which is number 7, determines the L.E.D. current. So surely using a higher value resistor would reduce the current that’s drawn. Perhaps something like 3.3 kΩ would be better.
I did a test of the L.E.D.s in a basic circuit with a 9 V battery, using a high value resistor like that, in my experiment box thing, and it was a lot more dull. Although the values don’t work in quite the same manner with the LM3915 I.C.s. When my breadboard turns up, I’ll be able to do some tests.

Tuesday, 24th of May, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (12:55) Ooh! I was just watching new Japanese MV previews, and found one by Dreams Come True, and it’s a sung rendition of the original Green Hill Zone music from Sonic The Hedgehog. Check it out here. If you don’t like that one, there’s also a computer animated one as well, but you’ll need to look that up yourself.

Tuesday, 31st of May, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (20:39) Next month’s software review will be an updated dealie of Winamp 2.8
• I added screen shots to my Titlers Page, so you can see what they do now. Well, most of them.

Wednesday, 1st of June, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:57) You can now download FireWorx, Video Titler & Hypno-Shapes 2 from my Titlers Page! Hooray! But if you want any others, you’ll have to ask me still. And yes, please do write in and let me know what you think.
• (21:53) My capacitors & resistors arrived today, so I was able to get on with my level display circuit testing. You need a diode in the circuit for the 1 µF capacitor to be charged, and it’s this capacitor which keeps the L.E.D.s steadily lit, which is paramount for the “dot” mode. One problem is that the diode’s voltage drop causes pretty much no activity with the L.E.D.s unless you crank the volume to full, so I’m going to try adding a transistor to boost the sound level. Ideally anyway! I think I got a bit in over my head on this one, but anyway, I’ll keep going. You can add resistors in series with the L.E.D.s, not just to take the load off the LM3915 I.C., but to reduce brightness further. Although the more L.E.D.s which come on, the more of them go dim, so it may be necessary to use 10 resistors — 1 per L.E.D. — instead of just 1 for the lot. I didn’t see any issues with this on my bread board. But I’d have to order more resistors to do that. I had it cranked up to like 22 kΩ to get the brightness down as well. Those new ice blue L.E.D.s are just insanely bright, and I have to look at them straight on. At least if I do that, I know I’ll be protecting them from being run at too high a power level, and the I.C. from taking on their load.
Anyway, when I’m done, I might release my take on the circuit, which will be guaranteed to work! Although don’t get me to explain it! I’m not an electronics expert. Just a dabbler.

Friday, 3rd of June, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (20:56) I decided to get some LM386 I.C.s and try them to amplify the audio to my LM3915 I.C.s. I’ll need 2 of each for stereo. I’ve seen other circuits using these for such purposes. I tried various things with single transistors, but I don’t think they have enough oomph. At least the ones I have.
This is my volume level for listening to music with my noise cancelling headphones, so you can see that I don’t have things cranked very high out of my computer, and that’s why I need some more grunt to the input of the LM3915 dealie. Although during the day, I use my normal headphones, which do require more amplification from my compo, so I need to control the input level with a variable resistor.
Yeah, so when I get this sorted, I’ll maybe make some new page on the site and give out the circuit diagram. Hopefully with some level of explanation.

Wednesday, 8th of June, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (15:38) Here’s another pretty shnazzy looking amplifier — the Pioneer SA9800 from 1978. What’s a little different, is that the volume knob works in an anti-clockwise fashion to make things louder. I looked these up on eBay — you could still be paying around $2000 for one in top condition. So it must be a very good quality model to be getting that price after 44 years. Apparently, these weigh in at 18.4 kg! Holey moley!
• Tomorrow — the Winamp review again, as I said. Hopefully I won’t forget.

Friday, 10th of June, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (16:37) I ordered a bunch more electronic goodies off eBay now that I have my level display circuit finalised. My LM386 I.C.s turned up yesterday, and after a bit of a headache of working stuff out, I got there in the end. I got a 100 kΩ dual gang variable resistor & aluminium knob from China, since that was cheaper. Some of those knobs are a rip off price from here. One knob for like $12 or something. F**k off! I know it was 22 years ago, but in the 2000 Jaycar catalogue, you could get a large black aluminium knob for about $3.
What else did I get? Oh, a 3PDT toggle switch for $7.65, (which is pretty reasonable,) a 9 V 660 mA PowerTran switch mode plug-pack style power supply for $28.70, with the postage cost, 25 more resistors for $2.80, which is just okay, and 20 I.C. sockets, since they came in packs of 10. (18 pin & 8 pin.) I still have to get chrome LED holders, but you can’t seem to get ones with rubber insert pieces like Tandy used to have. They just seem to be one brand now with a plastic “grip” piece. So long as it does grip. Plus 6 RCA sockets, which I’m also having trouble with. Jaycar used to have a 6 way panel mounted set of sockets for $2.25 or something in 2006, but do you think I can find anything like that on eBay, or for that price? No-o-o-o-o! It’s all rip-off prices. I really would’ve thought there’d be loads more of them. I’ve been trying to buy only from Australia, ’cos I don’t want to pay any f**king Get Stuffed Tax on overseas items. The freaking government. They’ll only waste it anyway. Ooh, and I still need to find a decent looking box. I don’t want this project looking like a cheap pile of junk. Plus I still have to order a 2.1 mm power socket. You know the kind. The ones with the central pin.
Mmm, so I’ll show you my circuit diagram once I get it nicely drawn up, and perhaps I’ll have a sub-page off the Gadgets Page of electronic doodads. Other circuits you can make for yourself. I might add a chaser circuit and a L.E.D. flasher, and how to make a regulated power supply as well. But yeah, I’ll only stick to what I know, because I’m certainly not an expert in electronics.

Monday, 13th of June, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (23:33) Almost 2 years ago, on the 22nd of July, I said: “I was trying to work out what this show was that I saw years ago with this chick in it, whose name I don’t know. I think I have a bit of it still, on a video cassette somewhere.” Anyway, I tracked down who she was. It was Belinda Cotterill, and she was in Over The Hill with Georgie Parker. I dunno how old she is, but probably a few years more than me.
• This morning in bed, my Sennheiser PXC 480 headphones stuffed up. On the right side, it started up this kind of feedback sound, like when you put a microphone too close to the speaker of the amplifier they’re both attached to. I thought: “That sounds funny.” It was lucky I’d woken up to pause my CD player. So I dunno what happened. They’re okay now. I really don’t want to have to fork out over $200 for another pair.

Tuesday, 14th of June, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (12:25) In sad news, Philip Baker Hall died 2 days ago. I saw him in about 7 various shows. Seinfeld, Air Force 1, Ghostbusters 2, The Truman Show, Rush Hour, Psycho & The Rock. Well, he got to 90, so that was pretty good.

Thursday, 23rd of June, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (16:32) I started the soldering today for my audio level display gizmo. I got the 4 I.C. sockets done in a flash. It was working out the best positions for the other components that took some time. Once I could no longer see straight, and things were getting a bit dark, I threw in the towel for the day. I’ll do some more tomorrow. You really need good lighting to see what you’re doing. Anyway, I pretty much got all of the left channel stuff done, so now I just need to look at that and duplicate it for the right side. I’m still waiting on stuff to arrive from China though, plus my RCA sockets. I still need to order a good box for it all, but there aren’t many big ones on eBay, like 20 cm in height, and a lot of them are a rip off in price too. Oh, I said that the other day, didn’t I?
Unfortunately the metal L.E.D. holders I got depend on the L.E.D.s to have a “skirt” / fatter piece of plastic at the bottom. But with the ice blue ones I bought, these don’t have that, so they just slide straight out. I figured the hole in the top would be slightly smaller than 5 mm, to prevent that, like the old Tandy ones used to be like. Luckily the plug-able header, polarising thingo sockets I’ll be using, will hold them in.
I’ll need something like 32 holes in the box. 20 for the L.E.D. holders, 4 for the switches, 6 for the RCA sockets, 1 for the power socket & 1 for the variable resistor. Ooh, and maybe another 4 small ones to bolt the PCB to. I should use PCB spacers but that’d be more to buy.
Hopefully I can keep the length of the wires to the L.E.D.s below 15 cm, to prevent any of that oscillation business that the LM3915 I.C.s are sensitive to. Apart from them, there’ll be 3 or 4 wires to the PCB for the bar mode switches, 4 from the variable resistor, 2 from the power socket, and 3 from the RCA sockets. There’ll be 2 pairs of input sockets, with a switch to select which one you want, and in parallel, will be the output sockets, which also run to the PCB for the circuit to monitor the sound levels.
• I got a world map from 1924 last night, and one from 1820! (Off the Internet.) There sure were a lot of differences. In Western Australia, the 1820 one mentioned Edels Land & Lions Land. I didn’t know about that. Lions Land looked around the Margaret River region, south of Perth, and Edels Land looked to be around Geraldton. Plus it said New Holland of course, which I knew it used to be. India was Hindoostan, Korea was one country of course, but spelt as Corea. Then Persia, instead of Iran, the Russian Empire, which says about the Government Of Yakutsk, or something, and Tungusi. I think Finland was even part of Russia once, and it just says Lapland. Oh yeah, Siam, instead of Thailand, & it also has: “Papua Or New Guinea,” which is also like that on the 1924 map. Plus Sumatra, instead of Malaysia, and America didn’t seem to have anything like the states you see now. There was a bit in the middle which said Assinpoels, and bits about where the various Indians were.
Around where Abkhazia is, it says Circassia, and then Georgia underneath. In a more recent atlas we have from the 1980s, it doesn’t even mention Georgia. Or barely anything separately in the USSR, as it was @ the time. If you look up Georgia in the index, it points to the state in America. Greece didn’t seem to be mentioned on the 1820 map either — it seemed to be combined with Turkey. It does say Usbecks, for where Uzbekistan is, and Ethiopia, as it is now, seems to be there on the 1820 map, but Abyssinia on the 1924 map.
Mmm, so if you’ve done geography all your life, all this is probably like: Yeah, yeah, yeah… But I found it a bit of an eye-opener in places. It’d be interesting to go back to like 1720 maybe, and see a map from even further back.

Friday, 24th of June, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (16:46) Day 2 of the level display soldering today. Here’s the incomplete circuit board. I still have to add the larger filter capacitor yet, plus all the off-board stuff. The L.E.D.s, switches & sockets. As you can see, I’m using extra resistors for each L.E.D. to ensure a more consistent brightness. If you just use 1, the brightness of all of them goes down, the more that come on. Plus, they’re of different values as well, because the L.E.D.s are of different brightnesses. I’ll be using ice blue (490 nm), turquoise (500 nm) and magenta. The magenta ones are actually weaker in brightness, but they’re still pretty bright all the same. Ooh yes! I still have to put in the integrated circuits, but they’ll be done last thing, pretty much. The transistors at the bottom are just acting as diodes, since I didn’t have any decent little signal diodes. They (— the transistors —) seemed to work fine on the bread board.
Those leaning capacitors aren’t under stress or anything. They’d only fit in next to the I.C. sockets on a bit of an angle, so they were quite comfy. Then I soldered them in. I was using Blu-Tack in some instances to hold stuff. I trimmed all the wires 1st before soldering, which made it neater. I’ve had the 4 dark blue (10 µF) capacitors for years, so I hope they’re still okay. I don’t even remember where they came from. Somebody gave them to me I think. Maybe 23 or more years ago. All the other stuff is brand new.
I still have to order a box, so I can complete all this. Of course, when I do, I’ll let you know how well it works and if I ran into any issues. It was fine on the bread board, so it’s the same circuit here. This is neat compared to the wires going all over the place on that thing as well!

Tuesday, 28th of June, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:30) Oh my gosh! Mary Mara who was in Nash Bridges drowned 2 days ago! That’s really sad to find out. She was 61.

Friday, 1st of July, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (17:41) My box from Jaycar turned up, so tomorrow I’m going to start drilling to complete my level display doodad. I got a UB2 sized Jiffy box in the end. I’m probably going to put the PCB on the front cover in the centre, with the L.E.D.s on either side, and that will make things much simpler, and keep the wire length short too.
• I’ve been thinking about offering some animated flags from Art Of Illusion. I dunno yet. They mostly just spin around, but I did some with other spinning elements too, like the Korean flag, with the central blue & red piece turning. They’ve mostly been for personal DVDs of mine, and saying: The following content is from this country. That kind of thing. But I don’t want to take requests, because there are just so many flags, and some of them are a bit too complex. Especially San Marino. The leaves, the ribbon, the crown, the castle towers and stuff. All the ones I’ve done since probably last year some time, are South Korea, Japan, Germany, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Belgium, Austria, Britain, Thailand & Abkhazia. I’ve also done non-rotating ones of Iceland, Switzerland & America (/ USA).

Thursday, 7th of July, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:16) I noticed another weird thing in Oblivion in my recent playing. If you have a summoned Dremora Lord, then paralyse your enemy, then pickpocket them while they’re down on the ground, this somehow offends the Dremora, and they start attacking you!
• On Saturday, my Software Review Of The Moment will go on to my titler programs (part 1) again.
• (20:11) I was looking for new MVs as usual, and thought I’d check out Loveade by Viviz. I thought: “Gee, that chick looks like Eunha from GFriend.” But clonk me on the head with a rolling pin! Because: Duh! It IS her! GFriend’s contract came to an end last year, and now SinB, Eunha and Umji have become this new trio.
Apparently Baby Soul was the only member of Lovelyz who wished to renew their contract.

Thursday, 14th of July, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:43) I’ve almost finished my audio level display… thing. Circuit thing in a box. I just need the variable resistor to turn up from China. It must be coming by a boat, it’s that slow. I had other stuff from there turn up much sooner. Apart from that, all the other soldering is done. The PCB is bolted in and it’s looking fairly good. Not quite as good as a flash Marantz amplifier, but not as cheap looking as my ice block stick boxes that I made before either. I’m a touch nervous that it won’t work, but it’s the same thing as I did on the breadboard, so it should.
• I was playing Oblivion again last night, as usual, and the same thing happened with a bandit as that scalon that didn’t collapse when it died. The body just sort of froze there. That’s twice in recent times, and it’s never happened before. Even when I reloaded the game, the bandit was still standing. When I cleared off elsewhere, and came back later on a horse, he’d fallen down.
• (23:33) Damn. My Power Mac G5 just cocked up again. It froze the other day trying to load Mac OS X Leopard, and tonight it froze again while I was checking the system error logs. (Not that much of it is understandable unless you work for Apple.) It’s not even doing the grey screen thing where it tells you to restart it. It just stops, and the fans do that kind of safety thing by going full blast. It’s running okay at the moment. As for what the issue is, it could be anything without some kind of report on what’s up. I might run that test CD again tomorrow. The Apple hardware check thingy. The hard drive data cable is a bit stressed looking in the case, but I don’t know if the hard drive suddenly being disconnected would cause a full system freeze up. You’d think it would at least panic and report it. I got some dust off the motherboard, but that may not’ve done anything. I read a thing where somebody said one of their CPUs vanished from the Activity Monitor! Yikes! How did that not stop their entire computer?
Well, it may’ve lasted me 6 years, but it is 17 years old in total now, which is a long time for a computer.

Friday, 15th of July, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:18) I’ve got the Apple Hardware Test CD running on my Power Mac G5 now. It’s up to the RAM check but it’s not done anything for a while. It says it may become unresponsive. I’ll give it until 14:00 or so, and see what happens. What’s odd, is the L.E.D. in the mouse has gone off too. The logic board (/ motherboard) passed the test, apparently. I remember when I ran it before in 2018, when I had that issue with the “airport” card, and the RAM test took an age. I think it was about 2 hours. I dunno.
• (13:46) Dang. Something screwed up royally! The USB lost all power, so my KVM switch box turned off, meaning there was no signal any more to the monitor. It seemed to happen around the time I plugged in a 2nd mouse. Something’s screwy, that’s for certain. I held in the power button, and it turned off. Then I turned it back on, and it started fine. I’m running the quick test this time, but I think we can conclude from the extended one, that something’s severely wrong. Damn.
• (19:09) No-o-o-o-o-o-o! It looks like my Power Mac G5 is well & truly dead. It just kept getting worse as they day went on. I tried cleaning the RAM contacts, but it made no difference. Plus I also checked the video card, but it was fine. That is something I never want to have to try & put back in a 2nd time! It was a real pain. Later on, the computer started making strange tones! Not the usual “DONG!” sound, but “boop boop boop” kind of noises. It turns out these are informing you about the RAM / CPU being iffy. 1 noise is no RAM, 2 is incompatible RAM, 3 is no good banks of RAM, 4 is to do with the boot ROM & 5 is a dead CPU. I was getting the 2 & 3 ones. I also learnt that the sticks of RAM have to be in pairs from the centre out. So the 2 inner slots must have a matched pair, then if you add more RAM, it’s the next 2 slots out from the middle and so on. Anyway, I think it must be the motherboard, because I tried swapping the RAM around, and surely all the sticks can’t have died.
• (22:35) What a cursed night it’s been. I cracked out my newest portable hard drive to get the backup copy of my iMovie project I’d been working on, on my Power Mac, and for some reason, part of it couldn’t be read. So, I dunno if my Power Mac, in its kooky state, made some mess of the file system last night, or what. So I had to get the drive out of the Power Mac, which was a right chore, stick it in my… what is it? Dock thingy, and then connect that to my MacBook to get the project off there. I verified the other portable drive, and it said nothing was wrong. So who knows? My iMac G5 couldn’t read it properly either. It started reading fast, and then trickled down to nothing. What do you make of that? Why didn’t Mac OS X have a fit when it was writing the stuff? Maybe the drive’s a con. “Oh yes, it wrote fine, it wrote fine, uh huh, uh huh.” There goes the data down the potty.

Friday, 22th of July, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (17:52) I dunno if something’s up with my MacBook now, but getting iDVD to process my iMovie project that I was working on when my Power Mac failed, is taking WAY longer than usual. Ordinarily, it would take about 3½ hours to process a 1½ hour DVD. It’s jumped to over 5 hours to go now. What the fig? There’s nothing CPU specific, surely, about iMovie projects. Although, even JES De-Interlacer has been running about ½ the speed as my Power Mac. It’s like the MacBook’s CPU’s gone to half speed or something. I put on iStat Pro, and it says the fan’s running fine. I wonder if it’s related to that SMC reset thing I did, when the battery konked out in 2020.
• (19:20) On further reading, it may be reducing the CPU speed because the battery’s failed. This is so it doesn’t take too much power from the power supply. I wasn’t aware it did that. This is the 1st time I’ve had it do something so CPU intensive in years. I don’t think my HP laptop computer does that.
• (20:00) Yeah, I’ll have to see how fast my iMac G5 is at processing iDVD projects. It’ll probably be about the same as my MacBook @ half speed. I can always run a test and cancel it. I’ll have to get a 2nd hand 2008 model Mac Pro or something. They’re around $500 or so on eBay, and I don’t want to fork out any more money at the moment for stuff.
• Oh yeah, I got my audio level display doodad together, but the capacitors seem to be knackered. I should’ve known better & not used ones from 20+ years ago. So today I removed 3 of the 4 of the old ones. I’m going to bypass the other one, without having to de-solder it, since it was just a matter of cutting another wire. Then next week, I’ll hopefully have fresh replacements. What a pain! Yeah, the left channel was showing up as worse than the right, even when I swapped the plugs. Then it was fading away, so to me that points to old capacitors losing the ability to hold a charge.

Saturday, 23rd of July, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:42) The DVD I was doing, was number 13 in a series, and the unlucky number struck hard again last night! Just after I’d copied the IMG file to my main PC for burning, I backed up the iMovie project from my MacBook and then turned it off. Then I figured I’d better backup the iDVD project too, ’cos I forgot it. What happened? The sodding hard drive packed it in! It wouldn’t start up again from it! I couldn’t believe it! First my Power Mac’s motherboard dies, and now this! I put the Mac OS X Leopard install DVD in to my MacBook and ran Disk Utility, but nothing else even showed up! Just the DVD was listed. F**K! I took the drive out and tried it from my dock doodad, and still nothing. I also tried it today with my iMac G5, and it showed nothing either. Luckily I have a backup drive for my MacBook, which I copied back in 2015 or so. So I’ve put that in there now. Struth in a booth with no roof! What a torment. I dunno if I’ll back this drive up again, ’cos if my MacBook’s only going to run at half speed with the dead battery, it might be time to let it rest in peace. I might aim for the Mac Pro perhaps. But that might not be until next year. Unless something affordable turns up on eBay, and I can wangle it for a combo birthday and Christmas present. Mac OS X Snow Leopard came out in August 2009, and that was the last revision of the OS to run PowerPC programs. Sodding Apple and their lack of compatibility. Anyway, I think this might be the last Mac I get for a long while. (The potential Mac Pro.) I might go to emulation of the operating systems then with PearPC or running the Intel ones in a virtual machine, or something.
Yeah, I doubt I’ll have another period of my life where I have 7 working computers. Although that’s now down to 6.
• (16:05) I cracked out my HP laptop PC earlier to see if it was running at the full speed, since I think its battery’s a bit stuffed, and it was. Well, the DirectX diagnostics thing said it was at ~1.7 GHz. Then again, it is a different computer, so maybe only Apple do their laptop computers with CPU speed crippling when the battery fails. Anyway, the poor old clock was a bit fast — 9 years and a month fast! It’d gone on to August 2031! Holey beep!
• I got my Power Mac G5 to stay on long enough to recover a few files off it. But then it snuffed it again. Maybe it’s a heat related fault. Anyhoo, I think I have most of the important stuff off it. And I can still read that hard drive, unlike my sodding MacBook’s one. I mean it’s not even partially stuffed. It just threw in the towel like the 1st one did in 2012. Instant death and no hope of recovering anything. I need to get some huge SD cards or flash memory units (— like 500+ GB each), and backup a 2nd copy of everything on my portable hard drives. I just don’t know if I trust them for the long term. I’ve got a flash memory unit that survived the washing machine, so they can’t be too cr@p. I think it’s when you use them all the time that they die. But for long term storage, with the occasional read and write, they probably last for yonks.

Friday, 29th of July, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (17:07) For those of you with an interest in The Elder Scrolls, I’ve started on Inner Depths: Oblivion 2 now. Well, 5 days ago. I’ve done about 5 main zones so far. I’m going to get all the structural work done first before I start doing levelled lists, enemies and so on. The initial joint you go to, is a small castle, down the hill from Hame. It will be taken over by bandits. I plan to give the NPCs schedules as well. Although there are some “blocked” areas I might have to take into consideration.
I had to crack out my ¼ sized sewer tunnel again from I.D.: O. 1, since parts of the sewer don’t always line up too well. Plus I had to make a copy of a sliding door, which had Forward & Backward animation names. It seems they need to be labelled Open & Close for doors to work. So I did that in NIFSkope. I also have an idea of doing this “Daedric Cube,” which will operate slightly like the Horadric Cube from Diablo 2. In Oblivion, you have 3 grades of gems: Flawed, normal and flawless. So I thought you could put a couple of lower quality ones in the cube and have it magically make them the next quality up. But of course, it won’t end there! Those gems need a purpose, and with some other feature, you’ll be able to get enchanted arrows which correspond to each type of gem. Plus some other choices, if I can think of something.

Saturday, 6th of August, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (22:50) I finally completed my LED level display today. That bread board was throwing me right off with its loose connections by the end, and had me questioning my choice of resistors. In the end, the 470 kΩ ones were right. They turned up in the mail yesterday.
• As for Inner Depths: Oblivion 2, I did sod all of that today. I’ve got all 20 vampires done, and 7 marauders. There are going to be at least 106 new NPCs in this one, 100 of which are randomly picked from the levelled lists. They nearly all have travelling routines, so conflicts will arise with enemies! Not conflicts to stuff up your game in any way — conflicts of fighting each other. All the main zones are complete, but they still need decorating and having containers of loot added.
• Swing by to my DeviantArt gallery for some 50 year old photos from my Dad, one of which is an old lighthouse in Sydney which no longer exists. It’ll be his birthday on the 14th too, and this year, he’ll be 75.

Wednesday, 24th of August, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (12:50) So, I discovered a nasty bug in Oblivion yesterday, which should be no surprise, considering Bethesda’s famous record of game kookiness. For all I know, a whole bunch of people already know of this. Anyway, after much testing and trying old saves, it would seem that pretty much any take-able item which was created with a new ID by an ESP file, and “placed” in a visible manner, will be deleted by the game if you drop it in an exterior cell. (That is, just about all the ones where you can see the sky.) What a bummer, ’cos I have such an item for Inner Depths: Oblivion 2. Items which are newly created though, and placed in containers, don’t have this problem. The thing is, I can’t put my item in a container, because it has to have a reference name that a script targets. Plus it has to be set to a persistent reference. So yeah — what a pain! Other items which are specified by the master file (Oblivion.esm), don’t have this problem at all of course. They probably would’ve noticed it anyway.

Thursday, 25th of August, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (14:12) I might have said this before, but if you stick an earphone in your ear, then you must stick an iPhone in your eye, and then cover it with an iPad.
• Inner Depths: Oblivion 2 should be done soon-ish. I’m going to play through and test stuff in a jiffy.

Friday, 2nd of September, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (17:15) In case nobody noticed, I made a new page for that video I have of Sonic & Sally @ Sega World, which my Dad recorded back around 2000-ish, give or take a year. Maybe take a year or 2, more likely. I’ve been trying to see if I ever put it on 1 of my video cassettes, but it hasn’t shown up yet. I’ve got dozens of them — a lot of which have no writing to say what’s on there. So I’ve been trying to make the effort to write down the various stuff. Then I accidentally erased a couple of seconds of Shania Twain at the 1998 Smash Hits Poll Winners Party, because the protection tab was still present. So I broke that off, and another video’s one too. How quickly I’d forgotten about such things, since I haven’t used a video cassette in probably 11 years. Thanks, LG, for putting the record button right above the fast forward one.
• Inner Depths: Oblivion 2 was done the other day as well, if you didn’t notice. Head to the Oblivion review page and grab it up!

Sunday, 4th of September, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (17:38) Well, I had some luck of sorts. Dad looked up his files and found that Sonic & Sally video on a DVD. It was recorded in January 1998. So at least I have a specific time for it now. The difference though, was that Dad was talking during it. Only a little bit. I used VLC to record a MPG file, and then, using a combination of VirtualDub & FFMPEG, I was able to recombine the audio stream from my other copy, back to the new one, since the length was the same down to the frames, pretty much. It does look nicer at 50 f.p.s., but I’m not totally convinced that the quality is any better. Anyway, I’ll upload the new one, I guess. It is a bit darker looking, because the older one was actually brightened up.

Tuesday, 6th of September, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (15:39) Here’s a new picture of a few old electrical items I have in an old ice cream tub. I was looking up pictures of vintage transformers last night. As usual, I got images of the freakin’ toys, which I don’t give a rat’s butt hole about. Anyway, I found a photo of a door bell transformer, and it reminded me of my Nana’s aunty, who had one for her door bell. It was just screwed to the floor in her lounge room. I thought: “You’d want to have the primary side connected to the door bell button, or the thing’d be using power all the time.” It was pretty big too, from memory. Maybe 12 cm high. Anyhoo, I went on to looking up door bell transformers then, and came across a door bell that looked almost exactly like a relay I have. And that’s the top part of my picture. So whether somebody had adapted it to be a door bell, or this one I have was once too, I dunno. The difference is, there’s no gap on mine, in the lid, for a bell piece. (That’s the lid / cover on the left.) But it would vibrate, if you had the switch connected in series with the coils, because it turns off when the power is applied. I don’t even know where it came from. I thought it was from my Nanna’s place at Coogee, but perhaps not. The relay coils are rated at 250 Ω, and they’re connected in series. You probably want about 12 V to get this to turn on. I tried it with a 9V battery, and it did nothing.
At the same time, I also found my old B22 light bulb plug. That’ll save me ordering more from Sri Lanka. This one was made in England. Now if I make my own L.E.D. based lamp, I can use this to plug it into the socket on the ceiling. Next is a 240 V rated door bell button. Who knows where that came from? It says: “A.C. ONLY” on it. Would it really matter? 3rdly at the bottom: Check out that monster of a switch! Now that has some serious connections! (Plus it has 2 sets. So it’s like a 2P3T thing but with about 4 contacts all changing at once with 2 more at the top doing stuff. Holey moley!) My Dad got these years ago from a surplus store in Sydney. They were out of telephone exhange joint. If you need to switch multiple things at once, these bad boys are ideal. Where do you see switches these days with all those connections? Lastly, one heck of a relay too! This was from the same shop, apparently. This has 5 connection points just for the coils! There seem to be 2 on this, or 1 with a central connection. And they’re rated at 2 kΩ each. (The digital multi-meter I tested it with said 1990 ohms, so pretty close.) Check out all the switching connections too! And there’s a pair of them! You just don’t see stuff like this in your electronic stores. Dad also used to use these back in the day as point changers on his model railway. He replaced them all with ones made specifically for the job though a long time ago. These seem to work fine on 12 V, but if you’re running a lot, you need a tranformer than can handle a good load, like 2 amps or more.
• Anyhow, yesterday, I looked at my big transformer, which I think was in my Nanna’s old Philips record player. The one I’ve mentioned in the past. I worked out that the red wires are 1 secondary winding, and the black ones are the other. And they’re both about 6 V, connected in series to make 12. I thought the black was one side, and the red was the other side, so they could be phase matched, for wiring in parallel or series, but apparently not. That said, I dunno why it has 2 separate windings of the same voltage. Maybe they kept the valve heaters separate from the light bulbs? My Dad’s uncle dealt with it, while I was a kid, since he manufactured transformers, and I think he lopped off the higher voltage connections from it. I was aiming to put it in a new box. I mentioned this back in January, last year. I’ve been looking on eBay, but I must be looking for the wrong thing as usual, because the line up of electrical boxes is just very limited and weird. I want to get a voltage regulator too, and run some electronic things off it. It fluctuates all over the place otherwise.
• I’ve got an old selenium rectifier somewhere too, out of a model railway controller, or something. That might be interesting to try fiddling with again one day.

Friday, 9th of September, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (12:15) I’m sure everybody knows by now that, sadly, Queen Elizabeth #2 has passed on. She was at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. It was either today or late last night by our time here in Australia, but the 8th over there anyhow. I’m not sure the exact time. It’s almost hard to believe, because she was like a part of our lives in a way. Not necessarily somebody you thought of all the time, but she was somebody who was always there. We’ve seen other rulers who’ve died, but probably none who’ll make as great an impact on the world as Queen Elizabeth. It’ll be strange to think of a “King Charles” now. He was always Prince Charles. For new kids being born, that’ll be something they’re used to now. It’s going to be pretty tough for him initially. First to lose his mum, and then having to face becoming a king. What will happen in regards to Camilla? I dunno if she was even permitted to become another queen. I don’t think that would go down too well with some people. If it was Princess Diana, she’d’ve been made the Queen in a flash, I think. Over at IMDb, they still have him as Prince Charles. Maybe they’ll change that soon. I guess once the crowning ceremony has taken place.
I guess there’ll be a huge ceremony in England for the Queen. She was their longest ruling person in history. All that malarkey about people saying she was going to step down never happened either. She went right to the end.

Monday, 12th of September, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (16:06) I’m going to be doing a L.E.D. “sequencer” for my birthday. Or around about that time. This time it’s going to use a 4015 I.C., which is a dual 4 bit shift register, and you can do a nifty piling up kind of effect, rather than a chasing dealie. Actually, you can do some spiffy patterns, if you can work out how to set the bits. I’m going to use the 555 timer again, like in my other chaser circuits that I made, plus the Toshiba ULN2803APG I.C. to take the load.

Wednesday, 14th of September, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (15:05) All right! Here are 9 of my L.E.D.s all in a row, as I tested various resistors to try and get a good consistent brightness level between all these colours. (Click on the image to see it bigger.) The rainbow got a bit chromatically out of order at the end there too. So we have regular blue, ice blue, turquoise, green, yellow, orange, purple, red and magenta. That purple one is a queer LED. It looks really bright from that angle in the picture, but in reality, from the top, it’s the weakest of all of them. (And no, it’s not a frosted type either. They’re all colourless & clear.) Perhaps the camera’s responding to UV light coming out of it that I can’t see. I dunno. For the magenta L.E.D., I used a 4.7 kΩ resistor, for red: 560 Ω, purple: 390 Ω, orange: 560 Ω, yellow: 560 Ω, green: 22 kΩ, turquoise: 22 kΩ, ice blue: 22 kΩ and 10 kΩ for the blue. Of course I don’t have every single value of resistor in my drawer, and these values won’t apply to everyone, because L.E.D.s vary from brand to brand. The total amount of current, according to my multi-meter, was 40 mA, which was lower than I thought. That was off a 9 V battery.
Apart from the ice blue and turquoise L.E.D.s, I got the rest from Phipps. My prototype circuit boards turned up from them today too, which was quick. Only 2 days. I’m still waiting on transistors, the CD4015B I.C.s, and some perspex. But I have to wait for my birthday next month for assembling stuff. I still have to order some PCB spacers and a power plug. One of those 2.1 mm central pin ones. On top of that, I still have to decide what I’m going to do about my old transformer, and re-boxing it into something nicer.

Thursday, 22nd of September, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (15:43) It’s funny how you get these sites saying about FaceBook apparently tracking what you’re up to, even if you don’t use it. Just do what I did and block ’em entirely! That’s the easy solution. If you have a browser extension like Block Site, (for Mozilla browsers,) you can black list every site you don’t want to load.
• Be aware of fake e-mail from FaceBook too. I got one the other day claiming to be some aid to helping you log in, but it’s really some loop hole people are using to try and gain access to various accounts. Who targeted my address, I couldn’t say, but they probably get other people to do it for them, possibly to prevent themselves being implicated.
• I’ve been looking for more inspiration in doing something arty with my L.E.D.s, and those vintage Aerolux “electric flowers” are on my mind again. Somebody really needs to bring these back! I’d have one in every room! It’d be good if you could shape your own L.E.D.s, but the closest thing I saw to that was some chap making resin moulds to go over them. Anyway, stick around for next month, when I should hopefully have that new “sequencer” thing done.
• I also took a bit of an interest in some apparently “retro” I.C.s; the MM5387 & MM5314, which are pretty much an entire clock. Apart from a few external components, including the 7 segment displays, and buttons, the rest is nearly done for you. So that might be a project to attempt in the future. Maybe next year some time.

Friday, 23rd of September, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (15:28) If you like vintage electronic clocks, here’s a really interesting one, which I found yesterday! The Russian Elektronika 7-06M. If you saw a picture of it without knowing the date, you might be mistaken into thinking it was something new with L.E.D.s, but nope! Those appear to be some kind of nifty vacuum fluorescent tube things, each with 7 dots. I’ve never seen ones like this before. Rather than using a single V.F.D., they’ve gone for these dotty tube things. Perhaps they could be replaced more easily.
• (22:45) I went looking for transformer cases on eBay, and got the ruddy toys again. Holey cow! “Metal project case” is a better search under industrial supplies. But they keep coming up with these AWFUL blue coloured things. They’re probably well made, but why that colour?! Eugh! Why not a deep rosy pink, or black, white, grey or a murky green? As it is, they look like something out of the 1950s. Yeah, so I finally measured that transformer of mine, and it is quite big. About 12 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm high. You can put 3 little plug-pack transformers in their case, side by side in that space. And that’s just the width! All up, you could probably get about 9 or more in that 3D volume. So I need a case a few cm bigger to get the other stuff in there, like the PCB of rectification and regulation components. I’d also like to add a volt meter, plastic windows and maybe a L.E.D. or 2 to light it up. A little bit of presentation, you know! I’ll have to weigh it too. I reckon it could be 1.5 kg perhaps. Hmmm… it’s probably going to cost a bit to do though. I reckon it could pass $75, meaning it’s a labour of love.
• (23:49) So yeah, here’s a picture of the old thing, plus some writing to point out what’s what, if you didn’t know. If anyone knows what the numbers on the left are, let me know! I’m pretty certain it’s the Philips one from my Nanna’s old record player & radio, so it might be a Philips specific thing. Anyway, you can’t say too much more about a transformer really. I’ll just leave it in this wooden box until I’m ready to move it to its new case.

Saturday, 1st of October, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (12:47) Yesterday, I was reading a little bit about the Japanese trio, Perfume. Apparently they’ve been going for about 20 years, and if so, that would make their youngest member, A-Chan, only 13 years old at the time. Personally, I think most of their music’s quite weird, but I do like their presentation. They always seem to have proper looking music videos & not some half-@r$€d amateur looking thing around somebody’s bedroom. I also like how they have closely matching clothes, and you can almost always pick who’s who from their hair as well. They always seem to have the same hair styles. I like their outfits in Time Warp, so check that out if you have time.

Monday, 3rd of October, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (21:59) While I’m focussed on dealing with electronic things and transformers, I decided to have a snoop inside another one I’ve had for years. My grandparents gave it to me along with an old View Master dealie. (If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a gizmo you look into to see stereoscopic images on film, which are mounted in a circular carboard disc.) The transformer just provides 6 V for the light bulb. But on opening its base, what else did I find? Multiple connections suggesting it came out of some old valve based appliance. It had a connection marked “C” for common, then 4 V & 6 V. Next up were 3 connections for 2 out of phase 385 V… uh connections. (D’oh. I said connections twice.) So that winding would’ve been 770 V from end to end, but with the central “tap.” You usually see that with valve equipment, with the 2 ends of the winding going to a rectifier, and the single output from the (rectifier) valve being the positive, with the negative connections in the circuit going to the chassis and central point of this high voltage transformer winding. Anyway, it also seemed to have 3 primary winding connections for variations in voltage, and another 2 at the end which looked like they said 5 V and 2A, which seemed a bit odd. But yeah; I have no idea what it came out of. It’s pretty large as well, but it’s mounted on a block of wood.
If I’m correct about the one above being the Philips one I think it is, it probably would’ve had a winding for 45 V as well, because the valves for the audio output had heaters that ran on this voltage, rather than 6.3 V. UL84 is the type they most likely would’ve been. (Based on a similar model I have the schematic diagram for.)

Sunday, 9th of October, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:28) I got a good shock in Oblivion last night. I went back to the Shivering Isles to get some more Withering Moon for Reflect Spell potions, and ended up staying longer than I thought, while I looked around the Dementia side of the land. I went down to Vitharn way, and Xiditte, and then headed further west. As I went along, a map icon popped up on the compass in the light beige colour. I thought: “Holey beep! A place I haven’t found?!” And I think I’d just been thinking that it’d be nice to find some joint I’d never been to. Well then I did! Corpserot Passage! The funny thing is, I’d been pretty close by it before, but obviously not close enough to the map marker. It turns out to be one of the prisons for the Shivering Isles. Unfortunately, you can’t explore it all, because roots block your path. Well, unless you get sent there. I got some good loot from it though. Wow the grummites were being a pain last night. They seemed to be everywhere. They’re like the goblins from Cyrodiil. Just painfully hard to kill off. They seem to be excellent at blocking and knowing exactly when to strike and overwhelm you with hits.

Monday, 10th of October, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (12:51) All right! Last night, I was playing Oblivion again, and I got myself a new Perfect Madness Bow made from Cutter, since I picked up a matrix In Corpserot Prison. It’s better than my Bow Of Storms, or whatever it was called. The Daedric one. So I’ve put that into retirement on top of a wardrobe. Then, back on Nirn, I went to sell some stuff, and got my Illusion skill up a notch when I charmed the person. But more importantly, I finally reached Master level of Mercantile! Woooo! It took long enough. So now, anyone you can trade with, has an extra 500 gold pieces, on top of any investments you made as well. So that’s like 1000 extra gold for them. I presume you can still do investments now too. I’d have to check on that.
I’m ¹/₅ of the way to going up to level 43. Only my Blunt & Hand To Hand skills can be increased further from my major skills.

Wednesday, 12th of October, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:10) Dang. I think my secondary hard drive for my main PC really is having issues. I put my usual music on, and I got an error message pop up from the FLAC decoder. That made my heart sink. I had problems like this before, and thought it was related to an unlocking program I got called “ThisIsMyFile,” but I haven’t used that in ages. So I got my backup hard drive out, and yep, the file had changed. I ran it by a hex editor program, and it showed the 1st mismatch. So I ordered a new ~1 TB “surveillance” hard drive off eBay. These ones are supposed to have a high reliability for writing actions. I got a Western Digital Blue one again, which is the same as the one I have now, apart from the “surveillance” designation. *Sigh.* I’ll have to copy the older one to it somehow as well. I might put the new drive into my 2018 PC and plug the caddy into that as well, and just do it that way. Then swap the new one over with the one that’s in my caddy now. So long as it isn’t the caddy that’s got issues. The weird thing is, no other files seem to be corrupt. Maybe I play the same music too often. There haven’t been any errors reported to Windows though. Usually if a drive had bad sectors / blocks, you’d get a red error message in the event viewer. I’ve got them for improperly inserted SD cards and a dodgy DVD I had, so you’d think it would show for this. I dunno. The other thing is, you can’t check its S.M.A.(A.)R.T. status, because seemingly that can only be done if it’s connected directly to the motherboard. Anyway, I think it’s about 7½ years old, so it’s probably due for replacement.

Sunday, 16th of October, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (16:27) No hard drive yet. It’ll probably be this week.
• Tomorrow I should start on the soldering of my new L.E.D. “sequencer” circuit. Yesterday, which was my birthday, I set it up on my little bread board, and it ran fine, although the start position was offset by 4 L.E.D.s. So it was just as well I noticed that. I could change the inputs to the ULN2803APG I.C., but I can just leave it and make the L.E.D.s connect to the right pins anyway. That’ll save me changing my printed schematic diagram, and causing confusion. So L.E.D.s for #1 will connect to pin 14, then 2 = 13, 3 = 12, 4 = 11, 5 = 18 and so on until 8 = 15. I know what I’m doing anyway. I printed out a “grid” of dots at actual size for the circuit board, so I know what co-ordinates all the L.E.D.s have to go to, and how I’m positioning the 3 I.C.s as well.
• I found out about a show from 5 years ago called Babylon Berlin, which is a German TV show. It sounds rather intriguing. It’s set back in the 1920s and early 1930s from what I gather. I don’t understand German though, so it’d have to have English subtitles, and I think it’s on some pay TV station overseas, so my chances of seeing it are probably slim. Unless they do DVDs of it with subtitles.

Monday, 17th of October, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (20:27) I got a bit of soldering done today. Up until my eyes wore out. On the left is a sample of how the thing will animate. But you’ll be able to adjust the speed.
My new hard drive hasn’t turned up yet, but I have a feeling it might be tomorrow, so more soldering may have to wait until Wednesday. At least I won’t be doing much in the way of drilling this time. There’s only one socket, and it’ll be on the end of some long wires. No switches, big potentiometers or LED holders to deal with either.

Thursday, 20th of October, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (18:57) Today was my 4th day of soldering for my happy face doodad. It’s taking much longer than I expected. I’m still waiting on my replacement hard drive to rock up, so I may or may not get more soldering done tomorrow. It’s mostly just lengths of wire to measure out, cut and solder in now. Most of which are on the back of the board to keep the central area looking neat.

Saturday, 22nd of October, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (23:25) My new hard drive turned up today, (— yes, on Saturday —) so I spent most of my time copying my other one to it. Then this evening there were storms, so I had to stop a couple of times. While the storms were happening, I got a bit more soldering in, so tomorrow will make 7 days of it. Just a few more wires to go, and it’ll be done. I just have to finish connecting the L.E.D.s in parallel horizontally, and then the cathodes vertically on just one side for the matching ones that come on together from top to bottom.

Monday, 24th of October, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (22:05) Hooray! I finally finished my L.E.D. sequencer thingo. With the perspex front, and protective cardboard rear. That’s to protect the wall when I hang it up. What’s mildly interesting, is that the purple L.E.D.s on the upper level (3rd row from the bottom), are slightly more red. I can only assume it’s a variation in the current limiting resistor over the one for the lower pair, and that has something to do with the colouring. In fact the yellow ones will go quite orange on a low amount of juice. Anyway, it worked pretty close to perfectly when I 1st tried it, except for the upper blue L.E.D.s not coming on. (5th row up from the bottom.) It turned out a blob of solder, I thought was a complete blob, actually had a microscopic gap in it. After a re-melt with the soldering iron, it was fine. The white L.E.D.s, as I think I said before, are connected in series. 4 groups of 3 in series, making the total 12, allowing for 3 V each off the 9 V supply. Although they’ll go up to 3.4 V each. Because I reduced the brightness of the other L.E.D.s to match the intensity of the purple ones, the white ones really stand out.
• (22:53) The 12 white L.E.D.s only draw about 26 mA or so of current. I just did a test with my multi-meter in the exact same way they’re connected on the circuit board. So that’s not too bad. I dunno how much the whole thing uses.

Tuesday, 1st of November, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:32) I’ve just completed another house plug-in for Oblivion. This time it’s called: Ayleid Mansion. It’s located on the Orange Road, south-west of Bruma, and there’s even an entertainer who juggles and dances. Plus a cleaning woman, and 2 other shop keepers. It’ll cost you 39 grand, but you get a pretty impressive joint, with lots of display space in the Grand Gallery, and there’s also a transportation room too. I’ll upload it soon-ish, so keep your eyes peeled on the main page for when I announce it.
• I’m also thinking of doing a mesh fix pack, which will allow for some corrections to the meshes in the game. Stuff I can fix that is. There’s that weird one in the forts with the bits that are transparent, some of the Ayleid metal work could use higher level thresholds on the alpha channels, and there was something else too, but I can’t remember what! Anyway, as this won’t need plug-in files to work, I can update it at any time, and you can choose what meshes you want, and don’t want. Somebody else might’ve done a similar thing, but you can always choose from mine or theirs.

Wednesday, 9th of November, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (13:51) I knew things were going to be weird today. I had a whole heap of trouble with eBay. 2 or 3 local printing supply shops have just up and gone from where I live, so I resorted to the Internet to get a new yellow toner cartridge. You had to send a message to the seller on eBay about which colour you wanted, but the sodding send “button” (if you could call it that) didn’t work! So I logged out, and went to try Firefox 93 in Tiny Core Linux, and nothing! The site didn’t even load! Every other site I tried did. So I tried Pale Moon in Windows 7, and the same thing! It said it couldn’t establish a connection to eBay. All the other sites I tried worked. And this was all prior to logging back in of course. So I dunno what’s figged up with them. I had to find the ’phone number for the shop (outside of using eBay), and call them. Although I got the wrong number at 1st, and found somebody else with the same name. Anyway, I got it sorted out in the end. Plus, eBay seems to have their dates back to front. They had some offer that was supposed to expire on the 11th day of the 13th month this year. I don’t think so.
• (23:46) I found a song from Armenia tonight, and the “video” was just a still picture. But it had an interesting looking church. So I thought, all right — let’s see if I can find it. And it was no worry! A few minutes later I knew its name, and then found it on the map, and when it was built. The place is Marmashen Monastery, which is not far from the border of Turkey. It was built between 986 to 1029.
• Here’s a video I found of somebody playing Inu No Osanpo, that NAOMI dog walking game. If there was a Dreamcast version, I wonder if it would’ve been possible to play it with something like the fishing rod…

Friday, 11th of November, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (19:14) I figured out what was up with my 2018 PC not loading eBay from Pale Moon or in Firefox 93 under Linux. It was Microsoft’s fault! LOL. Basically, if it wasn’t for all the sneaky back door accessing of sites on the ’net when you run Oblivion, I wouldn’t need to block I.P. addresses in the firewall program thing. Apparently eBay must’ve somehow fallen into one of the ranges of addresses I specified. The send button ended up working again today anyway.
I decided to pull my finger out today & decide on what stuff I want for this transformer project I’m going to do after Christmas. It’s going to be a pretty loaded power supply! (Not that kind of loaded, or overloaded!) I found a seller on eBay with a good range of (panel mounted) volt meters, and then I just need one for amps. I also need a small circuit board, 7809 voltage regulator + a heat sink, maybe something like a 4700 µF capacitor, and the box. I have pretty much everything else. It’d be nice to light up the meters with L.E.D.s, but they might be hard to mount. I was going to have 2 L.E.D.s lighting up the transformer itself, just to be flash, but I don’t want the thing glowing like Las Vegas. It should be subtle.

Saturday, 12th of November, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (16:37) I took my old transformer out of its wooden box today at last. It only needed to have the primary winding wires de-soldered, and the rest was in terminal strips. (So, out with the screw driver.) Wow it felt heavy to lift out with just my thumbs and index fingers by the bolts. I put it on the scales, and it came to 2.8 kg. If you threw that at somebody’s head, you’d probably crack their skull. It’s just a big chunk of metal. Anyway, it’s probably a touch smaller than my initial measurements in the box it was in, so it should fit fine in a new one I spotted on eBay. There’s no brand written on it anywhere. But it looks pretty similar to another one in a New Zealand Philips radio & record player combo thing, so I’d say it is the one from my Nanna’s old audio system from the 1950s. The primary winding wires are a little short, so I’m going to solder on some new, longer ones, cover them with heat-shrink tubing, and run the new ones to a terminal strip, which’ll be bolted to the case. That will prevent any damage to the transformer if the cord gets pulled on. But I will be using 2 plastic cable clamps in a “S-bend” of the cord, so it’s nicely held in. The whole project will probably cost around $80, so a real labour of love for something you could buy from the shops for much less, and in a much smaller box for a lot less weight!
I also tested the primary winding resistance. It’s only about 200 & something ohms, but then a new transformer I have is only about 1 kΩ. Plus I had it running recently, so I know it’s working fine.
This picture is the side that was facing the bottom of the box, which you didn’t see on the 23rd of September. It’s pretty plain and to the point. It’s been sprayed with some kind of silvery looking paint. The metal’s iron, I’d say, since it has patches of rust. The part around the windings is like a thick paper.

Wednesday, 16th of November, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (22:42) I was watching One Foot In The Grave — The Affair Of The Hollow Lady, which is episode 3 of series 5. In the credits they had the woman in the hospital as Edna Monterel, but it’s just Doreen Mantle’s name, with the letters rearranged. They even have a page for her at IMDb.

Thursday, 17th of November, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (15:38) I just tried another couple of MVs — one from France & one from South Korea. Nope. Both cr@p. I never have any luck with French music anyway. I shouldn’t’ve bothered with the Korean one, especially after last year’s mediocre line up from there. This year’s album of the year is definitely shaping up to be 33 from Heesey, I reckon. Nothing else really pulled me in that much to see what the rest of the tracks were like, and the fact that I liked the majority of the album too, makes it the winner for me. That said, it was only this year that I found out about QU4RTZ, and I really liked a lot of their cheery, cute, upbeat songs. Very much what I’ve been looking for! It’s a pity they didn’t have any official MVs. It was only because of an unofficial one that I found out about them. What is it? The Love Live series or something? Some computer game? I have no idea.
But the year isn’t over yet, so I guess something else impressive could still be coming too! On the whole, this year’s had quite a lot of great songs. I’ve mostly been focussing on Japan, but I have found stuff from a few other places too. If you haven’t had a squizz, pop on over to my list of music videos for this year.
• The box for the transformer above turned up like yesterday, or Tuesday, or some time. It’s going to be a bit more of a squeeze than I thought, but it should be fine. The voltage regulators and capacitors turned up today as well. If I do a L.E.D. for the meter, I might have to glue it in place, or use a terminal strip to hold it.

Friday, 18th of November, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (14:57) I’ve got 2 MP4 files being converted from the same source, in the same manner, on my MacBook and my iMac G5. Even with my MacBook running at half speed (since the battery’s stuffed), the iMac G5 is only about 86.6% as fast. So at 2.1 GHz, it still can’t beat the Intel Core 2 Duo at 1 GHz it seems. (The iMac G5 has a single core PowerPC G5 CPU, in case you missed that elsewhere on my site and had no clue to begin with.) The RAM might be slower too in the iMac. I dunno. I wish my Power Mac G5 was working properly. It’d beat them both in the MacBook’s current state. I’ll have to save up for a 2nd hand Mac Pro, and put that to use. As long as it lasts for several years.

Sunday, 27th of November, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (14:41) If you want to see something impressive, check out these chain reaction videos! The Blue Marble and Magnets & Marbles. These are at 50 Hz too, so they’re nice and smooth.

Sunday, 4th of December, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (12:32) Here’s a car you don’t see much. (Unless you own one.) The Pagani Zonda C12. Hasn’t Horacio Pagani been spotted in Monaco? That’s where this is, back in May, 1999 — the year the car 1st appeared. I can’t say it IS his car, but it’s certainly one of the 1st Pagani Zondas. These are from a video my Dad got when he was there that year, near that snazzy casino.
I was watching a video last night by this chap called Doug DeMuro, about the Pagani Zonda S Roadster. The guy went into every brain numbing detail about it, but it was interesting to learn a few aspects I wasn’t aware of. He said the one he reviewed was only one of very few in America, and the 1st one he’d seen for real. I’ve only ever seen one at the Sydney Motor Show. That was a S rendition of it, in yellow.
There was a black Jaguar XJ-220 at Monaco that night as well, and that car is pretty rare too. If you have Need For Speed 2, you’ll know it. I actually found out about that Doug chap while looking up about quirky cars, I think, in 2018. And I spotted his one about that Yugo from Yugoslavia. Then the other day I watched one about the BMW Isetta.
• (15:15) Actually, after looking at a video of the Motor Show from 2008, the Pagani Zonda S that was there, was the Roadster one as well. It had the open top, and it looked like it said Roadster above the radio. I dunno how much it was worth here in Australia.

Monday, 12th of December, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (14:19) Yeah, this year’s been pretty great, music wise, if my page of best MVs for this year is anything to go by. At least up until maybe August. I felt things kind of dwindled down in the stuff I liked though. It’s been a bit like 2019 with the Korean music. There seemed to be a big gap after July (that year), and I was wondering if I’d ever hear anything good again. And it isn’t just from Japan either, this year. I’ve been looking at music from other countries as well, but I mustn’t be picking the right stuff. That said, I was glad to find out about Heesey (this year), as well as QU4RTZ.
• I’ve started decorating the Christmas tree, but I don’t usually do it all in 1 day. The old lights are still working, thank goodness, which are older than my Mum. So they might be about 80 or so.

Saturday, 17th of December, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (15:26) Ooh! Almost Christmas! Just 8 days to go! For anybody who’s feeling generous, (such as rich readers from Dubai,) here are some pressie ideas you can send me!
• QU4RTZ CDs from Japan
• A flamingo neon lamp thingy
• An Aurora plasma ball from Canada
• A 8 GB or 16 GB SD card
• Some 500-ish GB flash memory units
• 33 from Heesey
• Some new regular (non noise cancelling) headphones from Sennheiser

Yep, those items would be good.
• (16:24) As for what I said on the 3rd of October about my Nanna’s old Philips record player & radio combo thing having UL84 valves, that’s probably not true after all. It would seem that the models here may have used an Australian only valve; the 6BH5. But it says it’s a RF / IF amplifier, so that might not be right either as far as powering the speakers. And this one has a 6.3 V heater.
• (18:12) Actually, after further reading, it’s the 6M5 valve, which was used for the output on similar audio systems, and it’s apparently equivalent to the EL80. So this should explain why my transformer seemingly has no 45 V winding, which I was inclined to think, based on the similar New Zealand models. Philips must’ve made a lot of circuit variations for similar models. This Grand 177A is the closest model I’ve seen to my Nanna’s record player + radio. What you can’t see though, since it’s shown from the left, is the volume knob embedded in the right side of the cabinet.
• (19:26) I’ve been looking through more Philips RadioPlayers, as the company seemed to call them, and found the Beethoven 178A, which looks even closer to my Nanna’s one, I think. Especially since this has a magic eye valve. Plus, if you go to the 7th image, you can see the side mounted volume knob. Holey moley! It’s been nigh on 40 years since I saw the real thing. This one has the correct record player — the AG1000 — but I’m not sure about that central knob. This was a pretty expensive piece of equipment at £204.75 in Aussie money back in 1955! My Grandpa always bought my Nanna the best stuff though. If it was this model. But something very similar, if not.

Wednesday, 21st of December, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (19:00) Yesterday I completed a 3D rendition of the Philips Beethoven 178A, and you can check that out @ DeviantArt. It took about 3 days to get it done! But my computer only took 37 seconds to render it.
• It’ll be my Nanna’s birthday on the 23rd. If she was still around, she’d be 120. Kashiyuka from Perfume has her birthday then as well. Except she’s 86 years younger.
• There’s a shed load of pressies under our Christmas tree this year, so it looks to be a good one. I ordered some heat sinks for my transformer project back in November, but they never turned up! I got my money back, and the 2nd lot I ordered (from somebody else) turned up yesterday, so that was good. Just in time to make it under the tree.
• I haven’t found any more decent songs lately. Maybe something good’ll turn up @ the start of next year. Maybe too many performers’ve gone on holiday.

Thursday, 22nd of December, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (22:54) I think I’ll call it quits for hoping for any more decent music videos this year. All the good stuff’s probably being held back for next year. It’s also everyone cashing in on Christmas now too. I like some traditional Chrissy tunes, but like my Mum says, after Christmas, you don’t fancy hearing them again.
• As usual, I won’t be doing anything on the ’net on Christmas Day. No checking e-mail or anything.

Tuesday, 27th of December, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (16:13) I soldered in the main components for my new power supply today, to a mini PCB, as you can see to the left. I’m going to get the transformer in the box first, before I put this in there with it. Anyway, I did test this circuit to the left, and it was pretty good! I had my plasma ball transformer, which has a 15 V AC output, so I tested it with that. The multi-meter said 8.92 V, so pretty close to the 9 V rating of the regulator. The diode on the right is there, just in case. It’s to suppress any remaining charge from inductive components, like relays or motors that I may run on it. They may not affect the voltage regulator, but I wasn’t too sure. It’s obviously connected with its anode to negative, or it would just virtually make a short circuit.
So, for those of you who don’t know, from left to right, we have the bridge rectifier, filter capacitor, 7809 voltage regulator, a small value ceramic disc capacitor, and the power diode. I’ll also be adding resitors for internal lighting with L.E.D.s. I was going to have one for the meter, but light doesn’t go through it from the back, sadly.
• Click on the picture on the right to see the circuit diagram of the completed dealie. It’s got more bits than the one on the Electronics Circuits Page too. It’s supposed to use a 0.1 µF capacitor on the output side of the voltage regulator, but I didn’t have any, and 0.022 µF was the next best thing. It still seems to be functioning correctly.

Friday, 30th of December, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (20:09) I’ve been doing electrical and electronic related things all day, just about. I just put a new plug on the soldering iron. The old one’d cracked, and if you weren’t careful, you could touch the prongs from inside the power board, so I didn’t want to risk that. Before that, I tested a rocker switch with a neon, which was fine, fixed my headphones again, and earlier I was drilling holes in my new box for my power supply project. Plus enough filing to last a lifetime.
Anyway, I tested my cable clamps, and I think I can get the cord to hold fine without any S-bend shape. I’m going to run it from the front left corner, to the front right corner for the 1st clamp, then have a 2nd @ the back. Then it’ll connect to a terminal strip, from which I’ll run the other wires to the switch. I should have some pictures when it’s done.

Saturday, 31st of December, 2022
Today’s current mood:
• (19:17) Day 3 of the box drilling. So, this is the box I got off eBay. Like nearly all the sellers on there, they’re pretty much these water resistant things, ’cos they must think everybody wants to mount them outside for some reason. Another thing I can’t figure out is all the strange attachment points in the bottom, and what they were intended for. Especially the ones on the left and right, which have brass pieces for bolts. I had to use a mini, spinning, cutting tool to slice the left one off. The holes you see in the base are for the transformer bolts. The square hole is for the window I wanted, the rectangle one at the top of the picture is for the power switch, the messy one on the right is for the meter, and the oval one near the hinge, is for the fuse holder. Other ones in the bottom are for the circuit board, terminal strip & cable clamps. I also put some air holes on the sides. But I won’t be running it all day long. Just a bit in the evenings, probably.
Yeah, so I was drilling, cutting, filing and even melting this thing to get the holes I wanted. I need some kind of LASER cutting gizmo, I reckon. As for the L.E.D.s, I’ll just be having an internal one, in ice blue. That was a real shame that the meter didn’t let light through it. It would’ve been really nice with one of my turquoise L.E.D.s.
On the whole, I probably should’ve got a better box, like some small PC case. This wasn’t really the masterpiece I visualised. It’s more practical than anything.
Tomorrow: Soldering, and attaching the stuff to the case. I’m going to use some string for the circuit board, but most other stuff will use nuts and bolts. The power switch is pressure fitted with sideways clips, the fuse holder has its own nut, the meter has built-in bolts, and supplied nuts too, and there should be some nuts & bolts in the garage for the terminal strip.

Sunday, 1st of January, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (23:45) Happy New Year!
• I spent most of today assembling my power supply. I ran into quite a few hurdles along the way, unfortunately. I still have to put the plug on for the output, but the main part of it’s working. You can check out the interior. Naturally you wouldn’t run it, exposed like this. I’m not happy with the packing tape as extra insulation for the primary winding wires, so I’ll replace that with thicker heat-shrink tubing, when I can get some. I’ll have to desolder the wires to slip it on though. I did use some electrical tape 1st, but it had lost its stickiness, and just half peeled back off. I really wanted to avoid sticky things. I also had to enlarge the hole for the meter. It should’ve been done as a 4.9 cm hole from the get go, and then had the bolt holes drilled next to it. I really did that the hard way. The transformer is resting on 2 pieces of wood, because otherwise the outer winding would be under pressure on the bottom of the case. I used a dentist’s mirror last night to confirm it had a gap.

Monday, 2nd of January, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (15:34) I won’t be doing a list of best songs for last year on this page, because I’ve already done them on The 2022 Music Videos Page. I still have a bunch of videos to check out from last year, so more may be added to the list at any time. That goes for any other pages in the past, if something crops up which I didn’t know about. Be sure to check the Music Page for tunes without videos as well.
• (18:14) I tested my new power supply with the L.E.D. sequencer which I finished on the 24th of October. It worked perfectly! It used up to about 180 mA with all the L.E.D.s on. You could see the meter’s needle going up & down as they went on and off.
Getting back to the transformer itself, I think it has the two 6 volt windings, because the rectifier in the Philips “Beethoven” 178A had a directly heated cathode. (So the heater was connected on one side, to the high voltage output.) It was a 5V4G. So perhaps it wasn’t suitable to have the light bulbs connected to that as well.
• Well, I have 17 more MVs to check out soon, from various countries, so I’d better get on with that!

Tuesday, 3rd of January, 2023
Today’s current mood: +
• (14:14) Ah, I’ve got so many music video previews to finish up watching from last year. It’s getting a bit tiring and dreadful to have to face them. I’ve got 3 more weeks of stuff to watch from November, 3 more from December, and 7 whole music videos I got today. I just speed up all the preview ones when I find something cr@p. Which is most of the songs anyway.
• I ordered a box / packet / some kind of thing, of 530 pieces of heat shrink tubing yesterday. So I’ll never need to buy that again! No more spending now!
• I’ll add the 2023 music video page to the site when a song that’s great from this year appears. I’ve got a bunch from Vietnam to check out, but I don’t usually have much luck from there. It’s probably going to be mostly Japanese stuff again this year.

Monday, 9th of January, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (12:19) It’s 60 years ago this year that the compact cassette was 1st revealed. It was invented by Lou Ottens, who I believe died a couple of years or so back. He worked with Philips, and was also behind the creation of the compact disc, which was actually invented in 1972! Can you believe it?! But it took 10 years for them to be something you could buy. It’s hard to believe they go back to just over 40 years in terms of public availability. I wonder if the 1972 invention had them storing 650 MB of data, because that would’ve been humongous for back then. Even in 1982, that would’ve been a lot. Then of course, they went up to 703 MB later on, and that’s pretty much still the standard for blank ones you can buy.
• (15:22) My perspex, heat shrink tubing and a SD card for my Canon camera all turned up in the mail today. So, I was able to complete my power supply project with the window on the front. I also redid the wires for the primary side of the transformer, and got rid of that awful electrical & packing tape. I was hoping to use 4 nuts and bolts from my box of PCB spacers to hold the perspex window on, but they were too short! So I just used some string for now. One of the great and more overlooked items in the electronics industry. In any case, the whole thing isn’t overly visible anyway, because I’ve put it behind my Dreamcast on my shelf of game consoles. Now it’s within reach of my latest L.E.D. sequencer. It was supposed to be a bit artistic and fancy looking, but it ended up rather plain and just functional, as you can see. Ah well. Later, I’ll make up a multi-adaptor, with about 4 plugs and 1 socket, so I can plug more stuff into the power supply. As long as I don’t go beyond that 1 amp limit.

Saturday, 14th of January, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (22:07) Last night I thought I’d try making up a circuit with a microphone for my main PC. I found 2 electret microphones in my box of left over components, and I still have 2 unused battery holders, so something powered by a couple of my rechargeable AAA size batteries seemed like a good plan! If you want to read more, head on over to the Electronic Circuits Page.

Monday, 16th of January, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (14:46) I think my ISP’s been wiped out. Or something between them and myself. Apparently there’ve been floods and loads of rain up in Queensland, where they’re based, so maybe that’s the issue. So if you’re reading this, things are back to normal, obviously.
• It was predicted that it might be 24°C today, but I think it’s been hotter, really. I woke up at 8 something o’clock this morning, and was roasting. I had to fling all my bed covers and stuff off. Ah — come back, Winter! I want it more like 8°C.
• In case you missed it, I completed making that microphone circuit, and I recorded a sample sound file, which you can listen to here, if you want to know how well it went. Some web browsers may play this directly, but you can save the link if you prefer. Anyway, I thought it went really well! You could hear everything. My fans running, a little screw I dropped next to it, and other stuff. Although in the sample sound, it’s just me reading a tongue twister and my PC’s fan.
• (18:19) I hope I’m not going to have trouble with my credit union again. I seem to have to keep nagging them to send my quarterly statement, and they can never get their $#!+ together. I suggested that somebody added it to their “to do list.” Now I get some weird e-mail from them, asking to talk to me on the ’phone about it. What is that about ever? This is the reason I gave the Condomless Bank the finger, because they said they could send you a statement whenever, and they never stuck to it.

Wednesday, 18th of January, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (0:07) I’ve been looking up early CD players tonight. Some interesting ones to check out, are the NEC CD-803 from 1982, the Hitachi / Lo-D DAD-1000 and Philips’ very original CD-100. I also found out about my Nanna’s National Panasonic RF-507 radio. It was a bit older than I thought. 1978, it says. I thought it might’ve been from the 1980s. Another radio I got more information on, is my STC (Rambler) Transistor 7 from around 1960. I got it at a garage sale, next door to my other Nana’s house, back when I was a kid. Mine’s a grey model. It has a different power & volume knob shown to this one though. I think this person’s one’s been replaced. If you go to the ad for it, you can see the gold centre version, which is the original knob.
I’ll have to get my Mum on the case to finding a Stromberg-Carlson radio which my Nanna had as well. And possibly an old (reel to reel) tape recorder my Mum had as well.

Thursday, 19th of January, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (16:11) I’ve had it with that f**king Transport Mutual Credit Union. I’ve told them I’m going to close my accounts with them, apart from my term deposit one. They just will not give me my statement. The stubborn c*nts just want me to use some freaking web site of theirs to do stuff, and I keep telling them I’m not going to do it that way. I already agreed to change to e-mail from the paper statements, and now they want to change things again! They could never get their $#!+ together and automatically send the statements either. I had to remind them every 4 months. So I’m going to change to another credit union and see if they can serve me better. Hopefully without any weird surprises or inconvenient changes that only suit themselves.

Saturday, 28th of January, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (22:20) I’ve got another plug-in in progress for Oblivion at the moment, which adds more loot to the castles of Cyrodiil, and the Imperial Palace. While there are loads of containers in the castles, a lot of the loot is pretty worthless, and these places should have lots of expensive goodies. So with some level of subtlety, I’ve been adding new containers with more expensive, respawning loot. Not just stuff that comes with the game, but other items I’ve made too. New gems, more booze, ceramic ware, and some expensive metal bars as well. It’s early days yet though. I’m also going to recommend my “A Little More Access” plug-in, which will let you back into the top levels of the Imperial Palace after the Thieves’ Guild main quest is over. Since all the stuff you’ll be acquiring will be stolen, I also aim to add a fence to purchase it, since in Oblivion, traders somehow magically know what your stolen items are, and won’t touch them.

Friday, 3rd of February, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (0:17) My Castle Riches plug-in is now available from the Oblivion review page. I completed testing and tweaking it, so it should be good to try out. If you ever fancied more loot in the castles, which is actually worth something, this could be for you! There are close to 50 new objects, including over a dozen new gems, Dwemer artifacts, vases, metal bars, jewelled eggs and 4 new varieties of booze.

Thursday, 9th of February, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (0:25) The new software review is uploaded. Although, it’s the multiple small programs this month.
• I was pondering making an intercom for the house. This one looks pretty sensible. I’ve got 3 of those LM386 I.C.s already, and this is a single battery design too. There are some slightly odd circuits out there which need batteries in both ends. Those little 57 mm 8 Ω ¼ watt speakers seem a bit hard to get off eBay in Australia. I’d have to get some from China, I think. Or maybe something a bit stronger. Those LM386 I.C.s are usually for powering 1 W speakers. There’s no buzz feature for this intercom as you can see, (assuming you can understand it,) but that’s not paramount really. Dick Smith’s intercom from Fun Way 2 had what looks like a 2 transistor pre-amplifier and a push-pull amplifier stage for the output, but with 3 transformers as well. (Two 1 kΩ to 8 Ω ones and a 3 kΩ matching one.) This has a buzz feature as well, by making the amplifier work like an oscillator through positive feedback.

Friday, 10th of February, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (13:53) I was reading that back in 1990, apparently only 1% of the population of Australia had a mobile ’phone. Now though, it’s around 90%, with some people having MORE than 1 mobile ’phone. (Struth!) It’d be interesting to do a survey to work out why so many people have them now. Plus, do people feel they need one, do people enjoy having one, or not? Have people given in to peer pressure, thinking they should have one? Do you find your ’phone to be a nuisance? Do you find other people who use them to be irritating? Have the ones with included cameras made people lazy about getting a real camera? Do you prefer to use your mobile ’phone rather than a proper, fixed position house telephone? How much money do you spend on your ’phone(s)? What did you pay for it initially? If you want to write in with your thoughts, please feel free! And if you’re from overseas, that’s okay too.
I’ve always found it hard to understand why anybody would actually want to use a mobile ’phone out of any sense of desire. I wouldn’t want people ringing me up and bothering me while I’m out. I can understand if it was for business purposes, like if you were a doctor, or involved with the stock market and stuff like that. The other thing that’s odd, is how palm top computers, like the Palm brand ones, seemed to fade away, yet current ’phones’ve become more like PDAs than anything else. Is it the ’phone feature specifically that’s the primary attraction, or just better company promotions?
Plus if you’re with a mobile ’phone company, would you be willing to pay me $500 000 or more to use one? Send in your responses, people!

Thursday, 16th of February, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (16:26) I hope there are a few more QU4RTZ songs this year. I’m not keeping an eye on what’s happening with them to really know. But if they’re done, it was great while it lasted.
I finally watched a MV by Nicolae Guta (from Romania). He’s this chap who seems to have new video out every day or 2. He was different from what I expected.
Apart from that, I also watched a bunch of utter cr*p MVs, which were a huge waste of time. Some of the stuff is either so offensive or just completely depressing. I dunno how some of these people ever get their music published. The standards must just be dropping all the time. And they expect the public to pay for the junk! You’ve got to be awesome and amazing for me to buy any CDs these days.

Friday, 17th of February, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (13:17) Our Sunbeam AT40 ToasterMatic toaster made it to 50 years old. I’m just having some toast out of it now. So yep — it lasted 50 × longer than its warranty. It might go for another 50 years! And out-live me.
• I had an intense dream this morning about electronic related stuff. My main computer acting up, a cassette recorder I had connected to it, screwing me ’round somehow, and trying to turn off that “Clear Type” font anti-aliasing on an iMac with Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Normally you have System Preferences, but it’d been changed to some weird name, like “Bono.” I was really psyched up and a bit angry feeling in the dream too, so when I woke up I was really spaced out.
• (13:37) It’s funny how they told me at Beagle that they were no longer offering the site hosting, and that would be closed down, yet my site @ the old address is still there! Not that I can log in any more & get rid of it. Anyway, it still acts as a notification to the new address here now.
I also re-submitted my site to search engines again yesterday, because I did a search for some stuff that I know only exists here, and it wasn’t showing up. I did all that when I started at the new address, but apparently for some search sites, it still hasn’t sunk in. The Beagle address one is still coming up though.
• (16:24) I was looking through Panasonic radios from 1958 to 1972, and discovered the RF-60 headphones, which had a built-in FM radio. I thought: “Those look like the ones that Philip had in The Towering Inferno.” So I got out the DVD, and yeah, I think they are. I didn’t see anything else on the web about it though. Anyway, they weigh 825 g! Phwoar! A bit of a neck wrecker. Were my PSB headphones that heavy? You could also plug cords in each side and connect them to another amplfier, so you could listen to a record, cassette or whatever. The volume control only had soft, medium and loud, but there was a balance control on one side, which was interesting.

Saturday, 18th of February, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (19:07) Our Netcomm router thing’s gone tits-up permanently by the looks of it. It’s been playing up for ages. Every time there’s a storm, we turn it off, and then when you turn it back on, it doesn’t work properly. So, it looks like we’ll have to get a new one from the computer shop. Or Harvey Norman, or some place. What a bummer! I had things to do on the Internet too. It’s just as well I didn’t want to transfer stuff to my MacBook using its Airport wotsit, because there’s no “Wi-Fi” transmission from the router. It’s completely stuffed. My PC couldn’t access it by its I.P. address either.

Sunday, 19th of February, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (15:07) I found a Radio Master brand radio at an antique kind of shop today. I don’t recall that brand before. One of those big floor model ones, probably from the 1930s or 1940s. It had a huge dial, and it was mostly taken up by the radio station letters. Then at the bottom was a tiny short wave section, which mentioned other countries, but only had the numerical markings in metres, rather than MHz. It has the AM frequency range though, at the top, but in reverse order. You can check out a picture. I had to use my flash, because it was too dark, and I didn’t exactly have room to set up a tripod. I had my camera half stuck in a gramophone trying to fit it all in. I don’t know if that speaker cloth’s original. It looks very odd with the red stripes.
• I also got a photo of a Philips colour TV from probably around… hmm… 1978 to 1982 maybe. But it’s very fuzzy, because I didn’t use the flash, and couldn’t hold the camera steady for better quality.
• No luck at Hardly Normal with the router tooter. They don’t stock any with the VOIP feature! That’s really weird. How are people supposed to use their ’phones? So, tomorrow, we’re going to try at the computer shop. Perhaps they can order one in. NetGear might be a good brand, like our hub, or D-Link, if they’re still around, and making such things. Until then, no Internet access or telephone!
• (20:42) Check out these old mobile ’phone ads from about 30½ years ago. This bit of newspaper’s been folded up in a drawer for close to the same amount of time, so I didn’t give them time to flatten out. They’re both from the Daily Telegraph Mirror on the 25th of August 1992. I couldn’t even tell you if that snooze-paper still exists. I don’t think NEC makes mobile ’phones any more. (Actually, I never realised they did.) All you hear about these days is Apple, and figging Samsung. This one on the right’s from prior to the 8 digit ’phone number change too. 02 was the Sydney area, but now it’s like the whole state. Anyway, check out the price! $5 short of $1600! Fwoooo! Then again some of the ones now are probably about that too. They must’ve rushed this ad, because the capitalisation of the words is all over the shop.
Anyway, these ads were in the small business section. Every Tom, Dick & Harry weren’t obsessed with the things like these days.
• (22:16) I was trying to find my little white pocket sized Sanyo radio. At least I think it’s a Sanyo one. But all I came across were a bunch of other things I’d forgotten about for the last decade or so. And I swear there was a Sanyo RP-5115 radio somewhere too, but I didn’t see any sign of it in the house.
When I was a kid I wanted to do a display of old radios, but more along the lines of valve based ones. I seem to have decent amount of transistor based ones to do such a thing though.

Monday, 20th of February, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (14:27) The computer shop chap looked up routers @ Office Works, and found none there either with a VOIP feature. Even he thought that was weird. So now we’re waiting on one from I.I.G., who are going to pre-configure it. So of course when you’re reading this, we’ll be back in action. I’ll be interested to get back to eBay to look up what routers are available and with what features.

Saturday, 25th of February, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (23:55) I was looking up those Little Miss books on eBay — holey moley! They’re worth a fortune now. When I was a kid, the Mr. Men books were about 75¢ each, or less maybe. I guess that was close to 40 years ago. Even the bigger books like Mr. Silly On The Farm were only 60p in English money, which is about $1.05. I still have all the Mr. Men books from prior to Little Miss appearing. So they might be worth a bit more now. I’ve also got Mr. Happy At The Seaside, 2 of The Mr. Men Times Table Books, Mr. Tickle In The Park, Mr. Nosey Follows His Nose, Mr. Greedy Goes Shopping, and as I said, Mr. Silly On The Farm. Let’s see if you can get them on like eBay still…
• Yep! 2 listings of pre-owned books of Mr. Happy At The Seaside. The 1st one is $24.95, & the 2nd is $17.60! Holey figs! I’d better put mine in a safe!

Wednesday, 1st of March, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (13:41) It looks like our telephone’s packed it in. I thought something was up regarding the settings in our new router dealie, and got on to I.I.G. about it, but they were seeing no issues, and suggested trying a different ’phone. Well, the only thing I have close, is a (dial up type of) modem, so I thought, let’s try ringing in to that. And yeah, the router was acting more normally on its ’phone indicator then, even though the modem couldn’t answer the call. So it looks like we’ll need to get a new telephone tomorrow.

Thursday, 2nd of March, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (16:14) I ordered a new ’phone off eBay today for about $37. That should be here by the 10th. So no ’phone calls for a few days. It’ll be like going back to 110 or so years ago. Ah well, people back then survived perfectly well without them. They had heaps of those rotary dial style telephones on eBay as well, but probably with tone dialling now, rather than the old pulse dialling. Plus quite a few vintage ones too. People could use them to make intercoms. If you don’t know about that, you can look it up. It’s possible to connect 2 telephones together with a 9 V battery in series, and possibly a resistor, I think, and you can use them around your house or one in your shed or whatever. Yep. I’ve never tried that though, as I don’t have any old ’phones lying around.
As well as our ’phone dying, the oven started sparking last night too.
• I donated some more pictures to that Radio Museum web site, of a General GC 211 colour TV from about 1985, and my grandfather’s Sharp System-CD550E(GY), so I’ll put links here in case somebody’s interested, once I hear back.

Saturday, 4th of March, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (14:19) In case you didn’t notice, I’ve given my Morrowind “sub site” a visual overhaul.

Wednesday, 8th of March, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (13:49) The new telephone turned up on Monday. It’s a Y043, apparently by Orrin. Hopefully it’ll last longer than that V-Tech thing. There really are some obscure brands these days. Anyway, it seems to be aimed for Indian users, because the instruction manual mentions 2 area codes in India. Even though the ’phone was made in China. The other thing that’s weird is the “Ocean Blue” L.E.D. they keep going on about, like it was some amazing new thing. It just lights up the LCD on it. Anyway, it even has a calculator and an alarm in case somebody’s listening in on your call. But I don’t think that would work with the router, because the audio’s converted to some kind of data that’d be interpreted by IIG or whatever. Plus it’s got 8 choices of rings, I think. So yeah, rather feature packed for a telephone. Some of those old pulse dialling telephones with the dial you spin ’round probably last a good length of time. They seem to keep showing up on eBay, and I’ve often seen ones in antique shops, so maybe they’re pretty rugged. I saw some of those ones with a magneto the other day too.

Tuesday, 14th of March, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (19:50) I’m really tempted to get a couple of those QU4RTZ CDs from Japan at the moment, and a 3rd one related to the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club / Love Live! series dealie thing, in a broader sense. Like, whether it includes the QU4RTZ members or not. I’ve been looking at a site which lists all the tunes, and listening to which ones I can find on YouTube. Oh! And I found some QU4RTZ figurines too, which were all sold out. They were reasonably priced as well. I was feeling quite mesmerised and happy earlier! I think there were about 2 songs I didn’t fancy, but most of them are brilliant, and consistently good. I don’t want to spend too much, because getting foreign stuff is pretty expensive as far as music’s concerned. I’d probably get Enjoy It!, maybe Make-Up Session ABC and… ooh boy… how can I limit myself to just 3?!!!! Well, some other one anyway.
• (23:53) Actually, I think Make-Up Session ABC is only part of an album dealie. But Enjoy It! also comes with 4 Seasons, which is also great.

Wednesday, 15th of March, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (18:07) Oh dear heavens — all the figgin’ mobile ’phone stuff I seemed to run into today. I got a message from the credit union about some program they suggested you have, then a thing on the web, and then when I was on the ’phone with the bank. But 1st, the good news! I ordered 2 of the QU4RTZ CDs from CD Japan! I had a bit more money in the bank than I thought. So: Yay! I got Enjoy It! & Pastel. Ooooh! They have instumental versions too, and yapping from the girls, which I won’t be able to understand. That cost $48.20, or ¥4334. Oh, but I got a discount too, because I had 300 points still. So that was a nice sweetener. Anyway, when I placed the order it did some check with your card provider, and it fouled up with the NAB, saying it couldn’t authenticate me. Whatever THAT means. Then it said please have your mobile ’phone number registered with the bank. Well, I don’t have a f***ing mobile ’phone! It said to ring the number on the back of your card. So I did that, which was a number in Victoria, and after being cut off somehow, and ringing back, and going through all the voice recognition stuff, and 2 humans, the woman asked if she could send me a SMS message. So I said: “Well, you can’t, because I don’t have a mobile ’phone.” Anyway, there turned out to be no restrictions on the card, and it was some cock-up with the store’s choice of verification stuff, or something. So I borrowed an American Express card off somebody else, and did the order all over again from a newer version of Firefox in Tiny Core Linux, and then it worked.
But yeah, don’t go assuming everybody has a mobile ’phone, people! As they said in The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert: “Assumption is the mother of all f*** ups.” Or as Benny Hill put it: “When you assume, you make an ASS out of U & ME.”
• (18:52) Last night I did a web search of: “Is modern music depressing?” And several sites were listed saying that it was. Well, from a majority perspective. They said since the 1990s, music has generally become darker, angrier and written in a lower key. So that’s quite sad really. Plus people have started turning to listening to older music. Well, I really need perky, cheery stuff. There should be more funny songs as well. Not just like Weird Al Yankovic, but ones written initially to be funny. Now, here’s a good one from close to 100 years ago! The Laughing Policeman.
• (23:12) Um… oh yes! Next month for the Software Review Of The Moment, I’ll be having a look at Windows XP, since I’ve been using it for over 16 years now. I wrote it 2 days ago.

Saturday, 18th of March, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (12:33) So much for Autumn. It’s was over 30°C yesterday and today. Then tomorrow, it’s supposedly going to be 36°C!!! Holey beepin’ struth! I dread to think how hot it’ll be in Sydney. Probably 46°C or something. But on Monday, it could be down to 18°C, and that’s more like it! Ah, I want to see snow this coming Winter.

Sunday, 19th of March, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (12:41) Yep — it’s hot all right.
• I was wondering last night how much time people spend on finding new music. I don’t know if anybody’s done a survey on that. It is quite time consuming to look up the stuff that I check out each day from only a small selection of countries. I did find a couple of web sites which mentioned this, but I think it was more to do with people who were dedicated to finding music from their favourite genres. It’d be interesting to get this information from maybe 10 000 random people.

Tuesday, 21st of March, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (19:50) I think I got lucky with those QU4RTZ songs. I looked through more of the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club related songs, but in comparison, a large chunk of them were really cr@p. So I think I’ll call it quits for the Love Live! stuff now, and check out some other tunes. I got about 27 good songs though, so that wasn’t too bad, I suppose. Some of the last ones I listened to just seemed to really overuse the electric guitars. They were just too intense. I know the Japanese are big on them in the forefront, but eventually I got sick of hearing them. I thought I might check out some stuff from that Ensemble Stars!! game, but I’m in 2 minds about that.
Anyway, my QU4RTZ CDs are on the way, and those particular songs WILL be excellent.
• The temperature’s more like Autumn now. I’ve got the heater back on. So much for Sunday. It went from 37°C down to about 18°C yesterday.

Wednesday, 22nd of March, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (15:17) I was thinking about people having jet lag. Well, if you went somewhere before the invention of jet engines or on a plane with like an external propellor, it’d be more like internal combustion lag. You’d come home and say: “Ooh, I’m so tired after that flight. I must have internal combustion lag.” Although it does sound like something’s going to eventually explode inside your body, but it’s taking its time about it.

Wednesday, 29th of March, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (14:39) Hooray! My QU4RTZ CDs arrived today! Enjoy It! and Pastel. I got some photos before I opened the plastic covers too. As usual with Japanese CDs and other optical discs, they have the edge cards (on the side of the box) and there are some bonus goodies inside the covers too. Enjoy It! came with a Rina Tennoji card, which I’m really glad to have got, and Pastel came with a sticker that’s the same as the cover. There were also some other cards with some kind of unique code that you can use on some web site for something. Ha ha! I’m not sure what though, as I can’t read Japanese. Well, very little of it. The edge card of Pastel also mentions the 22nd of May this year. Maybe that’s an end of production date? I don’t know. It says “made” (which I think would be pronounced like mah-deh) after it, which seems to mean “as far as”, or “up to”, according to my dictionary.
Anyway, Enjoy It! runs for 16 minutes with the 4 tracks. I haven’t put Pastel in yet to listen to.
• In other news, I’ve also started on a 3rd Inner Depths plug-in for Oblivion, which is so far entirely based around an Ayleid ruin to the east of Anvil. Construction hit a standstill though when my new CDs turned up.
• (15:03) All right, onto listening to my Pastel CD now. This one has a 5th track called Feeling The Sky, where the girlies talk about stuff, I think. Not that I’ll be able to understand it. It goes for 9 minutes and 58 seconds. Oh yeah! The cover for this has a special plastic looking coating with “holographic” hearts, and as you move it about, they grow and shrink in a rainbow of colours. Inside you get the lyrics as well, but again, you’d have to be able to understand Japanese. Michi No Saki is only written in Japanese too, so it was lucky I already knew what it was called.
Anyway, I’ll update the Music Page with the new goodies some time later today.

Friday, 31st of March, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (22:34) I noticed another funny thing in One Foot In The Grave tonight, which I hadn’t spotted before. In series 4, episode 2, when Mr. Swainey’s fixing Victor’s food disposal gizmo under the sink, he’s reading a manual which says Recording & Playback! It’s odd, because that’s the same one when Victor unintentionally gave away his VCRs.

Saturday, 32nd of March, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (0:01) Keep your pants on for the 1st of April. It seems that due to fluctuations with the sun’s gravity, and the earth’s orbit being a bit slower this year, we’re to have a 32nd of March.
• In other news, it seems that Microsoft’s finally given up on Windows, & IBM are going to jump in to release a new OS while the going’s good. Hopefully this will be the decent operating system we’ve been crying out for.
• I’ll also be making another trip to Siberia at the end of the year to avoid the Summer all together.

Tuesday, 4th of April, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (22:46) I’m still going with Inner Depths: Oblivion 3. I’ve got the 10 main zones done, plus a shop. I’m going to add more areas yet. I’m falling behind again with what new music’s out though too.
• Obviously there wasn’t really a 32nd of March either.

Wednesday, 5th of April, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (19:32) Today’s progress on Inner Depths: Oblivion 3 was making levelled lists, although I have a lot more to do yet. That’s always pretty dull. I have to make the NPCs too. I might have about 60 or so. I dunno yet. I know that’s less than last time. And the 1st time too.

Thursday, 6th of April, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (19:57) And now for the 19:57 news with your host, John Kahler:
Thank you, Claire. Today in Inner Depths: Oblivion 3, I completed the levelled lists, and got 6 smugglers done. This time there are going to be 4 groups of power levels, with easier, group 1 enemies at the start, and harder, group 4 enemies towards the end. But within each group, it could be a randomly picked bandit, marauder, smuggler or pirate. So this time fights really should break out, unlike how I intended with Inner Depths: Oblivion 2. Well, they could, but they didn’t really happen as often as I wanted. There are also 3 grades of levelled lists for weapons and armour, so the easier enemies will have worse stuff, and harder ones will have any kind of gear, including low quality stuff.

Saturday, 8th of April, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (12:19) Oh no! Paul Cattermole from S Club 7 died! It was 2 days ago, and apparently the cause is unknown. This is very sad news.
• (19:26) I had a good day doing more stuff for Inner Depths: Oblivion 3. I got containers put in, beds and seats too. Tomorrow I’ll start on the pirates.

Sunday, 9th of April, 2023
Easter
Today’s current mood:
• (12:43) I was fiddling around with a thing for Inner Depths: Oblivion 3 last night and discovered something about meshes for Oblivion. It seems you have to also choose “face normals” in NIFSkope, and as a result, potentially “smooth normals” as well. Otherwise the meshes tend to look a bit odd. So I’m going to go through the meshes I made from scratch for Oblivion, and update my plug-ins. So if you got something for Oblivion from me in the past, you might want to update it. This will not affect your game in any way. Only ESP file changes can stuff things up. Hopefully I will let you know here when this is done.
• I also added another mesh the other day that I corrected, to that mesh fix pack. It was the gas trap from the Ayleid ruins. I added an alpha channel threshold to make it smoother.
• My Software Review Of The Moment has now been changed for this month. It’s Windows XP for the 1st time.
• (13:32) Okay, I’ve updated the meshes for Castle Riches and the window in Ayleid Mansion, although I think that one will be more subtle. If you got either of these plug-ins from me before, you can consider whether you want the mesh updates. You’ll be able to tell which meshes were updated by the more recent file dates.
• (20:22) I did 6 pirates for Inner Depths: Oblivion 3 today, but I spent more time working on a tiled scorpion to put on the floor in one of the zones. In the game, there’s a book called Gelebourne’s Journal which speaks of an Ayleid place somewhere, which has a huge stylised mosaic spider as a trap. This doesn’t actually show up in any of the ruins in the game. So I thought I would do a little scorpion instead, for my joint. It took a while to get it semi-decent. So it, and 2 other glowing scorpions on the walls, now activate certain things.

Wednesday, 12th of April, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (16:48) I’ve got all 80 NPCs done for Inner Depths: Oblivion 3. I did the 20 bandits today. I did 5 new gems which weren’t in my Castle Riches plug-in, but I still want to do 5 or more other new items which could be smuggled. Although I don’t know what. What things would smugglers be interested in? Or pirates? I’ve done crates of skooma.

Friday, 14th of April, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (15:38) Financial Friday, it’s been. I’ve been organising the closing of an investment I’ve had for about 21 years, which hasn’t been performing too well over the last 6 years. I rang the N.A.B. about 5 times, but nobody seemed to be there to answer the call. It’s more like a bank twig than a branch there. I was also on the ’phone with the investment joint, and I had to print out some PDF files to update my details, since they were still set to the Commonwealth Bank. I then have to wait until I hear back from them about that, and then I can send in the next lot of forms to transfer the money. Then I’ll need to create a new term deposit account at the bank, and transfer the money from my regular account to it. It’d be good if they had a 4 year one or something, with higher interest. Mmm. So I got sod all done of Inner Depths: Oblivion 3 today, or much of anything else. But since Wednesday, I did come up with 3 more smuggled items. Perfume, caviar and silk. The perfume’s using a mesh I made for Morrowind, but I obviously changed its textures to use ones from Oblivion, and I had to add a Havok shape as well, so when you drop it, it tumbles about and all that.

Saturday, 15th of April, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (16:02) I haven’t got back to I.D.: O. 3 yet. Maybe tomorrow. It might be complete by the end of the month.
• Anyway, I did a test to see if my (Cowon) X9 can play M4A files, but nope. It just says: Invalid file. Ah well. It was worth a try. It might’ve been a nice surprise if it could. I’ll have to convert any M4A files I have to either FLAC or Monkey’s Audio instead. They’ll take up more room, but I don’t want to recompress any in a lossy fashion.
• Well, I have some other Love Live! related song links to add to my Music Page, so I shall go and do that now.

Tuesday, 18th of April, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (22:52) I called the bank on Monday, since my statements for March still haven’t arrived. They said they’d been sent on the 31st (of March), and that maybe Easter had held things up. But that was 9 days ago, and still nothing. That’s 4 letters from them so far that haven’t got to me. So I’m going to see them in person and get them to print them there, or send them again. I dunno if it’s figgin’ Australia Post who’s to blame or what. Probably. Other people have had missing mail lately as well. So I dunno what the f**k they’re doing. I got my QU4RTZ CDs from JAPAN faster than this!
• Then surprisingly, I got a new Visa card from the credit union, on the account I emptied. So perhaps they don’t consider it closed.
• The Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra have a new MV out. Oikoshiteku Hoshi, which translates to something like: Overtaking Stars. It’s done at a (horse) race course, so maybe they’re aiming for some kind of track record.
• I.D.: O. 3 is almost done. I did 2 books for it today, and a 3rd one which might be a bit rude for it. But it is funny.

Wednesday, 19th of April, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (20:30) Oh no! That Underground History site’s gone! Aww. I liked reading about the old abandoned stations on there. What a bummer! I was talking about the Bull & Bush station after dinner this evening.
• I got my statements from the bank in person. The woman said if they don’t turn up again, I can call a ’phone number to see what’s up.

Sunday, 23rd of April, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (12:23) Ah, no more Dame Edna! Poor Barry Humphries died yesterday. He’d had hip surgery, apparently, and things went downhill from that. He was 89.
• In case you missed it, I released Inner Depths: Oblivion 3 the other day. Check The Oblivion Review Page dealie.

Friday, 28th of April, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (13:12) Oh no! Jerry Springer died yesterday. Struth. First it was Barry Humphries, and now him. Who’ll be next ever?
• (23:40) I’m still doing my 2023 MV page, in case anybody had thought it’d come to a standstill. I just haven’t found anything else good enough to put on it.

Sunday, 30th of April, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (15:55) Here’s something I thought was a bit interesting: Probably about 5 years ago, I saw a bunch of L.E.D.s hanging down at Market City in Sydney, most likely for Christmas time, so I thought I’d get a photo of them. When I checked it on the camera, I couldn’t believe it! They were all off! This then proved that they were flickering @ a very fast speed, and the camera caught them at the exact moment they were off. To your eyes you couldn’t tell though. So I took the picture again, and this time they were on. It’s probably a method for reducing their perceived brightness that reduces the load on the components doing it. You would need one really tough variable resistor that could handle a lot of power otherwise.

Saturday, 6th of May, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (13:44) Apparently it could be 0°C tomorrow. Brrr! Although it’d be nice to see some snow this year.
• I thought I’d look up the alphabet of Georgia yesterday, but they actually have 3 of them. Although 2 of them aren’t even all that well understood even by the people who live there, supposedly. Anyway, this turned out to be beneficial, because I was able to translate some Georgian text from a bitmap I got off ICQ yonks ago. It was an ad for tours / travel stuff. It’s also 20 years ago that they changed their flag to the one with the red crosses. The central one is to do with Saint George, like the English flag, and the smaller ones are to do with a Jerusalem cross, or something.
I also wrote out a file of Hiragana & Katakana characters from Japan, to try and get them memorised better. Maybe I can read more bits of Japanese more easily then.

Tuesday, 9th of May, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (13:28) The weirdest thing ever just happened! I turned on the computer at the front of the house where the printer is, to print out something for Mother’s Day, and inexplicably, the printer just decides to print out a picture from The King’s Woman! What the fiddly-f***?! Where the hell did it come from?! I haven’t watched The King’s Woman since last night! And I never took any screen shots of it to print! I just can’t work it out. It was a picture of Gongsun Li saying: “No.” I don’t even have any recent screen shots from the show like that. I am literally stumped as to how that even happened.
• (13:37) After searching my 2ndary hard drive, I did find a picture like that, but how did it randomly print?! It was from 2 years ago as well. It doesn’t make sense. Even if Windows XP has its quirks, I’ve never seen it start randomly choosing images to print.

Thursday, 11th of May, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (20:38) I’m going to start on Story Of Yanxi Palace tonight. Loads of people have said it’s excellent, so fingers crossed they’re right! I heard about it in 2019, or early 2020, back when I started on the other Chinese shows I looked @. It’s got 70 episodes, so: Whew! A real long one. If each one goes for 45 minutes, that’s 52½ hours. There are several sites, where you can watch it officially. I might take the YouTube route this time, but it’s also at Viki, where I saw the other shows. Speaking of which, I just finished my 2nd watch of The King’s Woman the other night. It only took me about 2 years to get around to that! Ha ha. Then last night I watched The Palace again.
• (23:00) I got through the 1st episode of Story Of Yanxi Palace. Phwoar — I had to pause a lot to read the subtitles. Not only that, there were translation notes as well! But I guess that helped you to understand stuff. It was mostly a translation to American, rather than proper English, but I kind of suspected it might be. Just about ALL these things are. Although The King’s Woman was a mixture. Anyway, S.O.Y.P. was kind of interesting to a point. It wasn’t very gripping from the 1st episode. I think it might appeal more to people with a deep interest in the finer details of past Chinese culture. The architecture, clothing & embroidery were very impressive though. That’s my observations from the 1st episode off YouTube anyway. I’m not sure if I feel any great urge to watch any more though.
• I’ve also got 2 hands full of music videos to catch up on, so I wish I could stop my clocks to drag the night out a bit longer.

Saturday, 13th of May, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (15:20) I decided to watch Legend Of The Phoenix again last night. (My 2nd watch ever.) I got through 2 episodes. That is such a great show if you feel like watching something Chinese. The inside rooms in the palace are really beautiful, and if you’re into clothes, there’s some fancy outfits too. Especially the Empress’s head-ware. It’s got 41 episodes, so it’s not overly long. The music is really good as well, especially the introduction tune, which gives it a really classy feeling. If you’ve watched lots of Chinese shows before, you’ll recognise bits from Hengdian World Studios, which they seem to use for everything over there.

Monday, 15th of May, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (12:56) I called the bank today and got their statement issue sorted out. For some reason they hadn’t been set to come to me in the mail. There must’ve been a mistake when I set the accounts up. Not by me though. Perhaps they’re too pushy & assumptive about people wanting to use their web based services. Then, like before, the chap asked if he could send me a SMS message, and I said: “No. Because I don’t have a mobile ’phone.” LOL. Holey moley. The mobile telephone infestation on the planet now is just ridiculous. I’m getting sick of seeing them in music videos as well, as if they’re something we should all somehow relate to, or something. You’d think people’d be fed up with them.
• I watched episodes 3 & 4 of Legend Of The Phoenix last night, which was great. They went too quick. No ’phones in there, that’s for sure. It’s probably set over 1000 years ago or something, but it’s all fictional.

Thursday, 18th of May, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (16:11) It’s been 20 years since OutRun 2 came out this year, and 30 years since Virtua Fighter! Holey moley! That was the same year of Cool Spot as well. Next year, it will be 40 years since the 1st Apple Macintosh computer.
• (17:04) My UPS saved 2 of my computers from going off about 16 minutes or so ago. I had my MacBook converting a video, and whoosh! The light just went off, plus my clock. It came back on in about 15 seconds maybe. The power went off this morning for 20 minutes too and several towns got knocked out, so I dunno what snuffed it. Mmm… so without my MacBook’s battery working now, it’s just as well I have been plugging it into my UPS for such events. I got ready to shut down my main PC, but the juice kicked back in before I closed all my programs. I had 45 minutes anyway, but the battery recharge time on the UPS is 8 hours, so you don’t want to drain it completely. Well, as long as the power stays on for dinner now. I remember last year, I was cooking a steak, and it went off. Holey moley. But it came back on maybe a minute later at the most. Our neighbours have a backup generator.

Thursday, 25th of May, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (12:19) The power company changed our meters today. Well, their meters. They weren’t ours to begin with. So that took about 40-ish minutes. Now it’s apparently just a single meter, instead of the 2 we had previously. They gave us a month’s notice about it, which was good. As long as the new ones survive a jolt from any lightning.
• I watched 3 epsiodes of Legend Of The Phoenix last night. I was really getting into it. Then I looked up about some of the actors, and I couldn’t believe how many of them were younger than me! I’m either getting old, or the new people look older these days than what they really are.

Saturday, 3rd of June, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (12:42) I spent a lot of yesterday looking up stuff again about the Imperial Mountain Resort in Chengde (which is north-east of Beijing). I’ve got a couple of maps of the entire joint, but finding pictures of the places listed is very difficult. Looking up stuff in Chinese worked a bit better, but I really need some kind of conversion web site that can do Pinyin into Hanzi. If that’s possible. I did find 1, but it didn’t work. It just came up with a bunch of error messages. It was easier getting information on things in Guilin and Shanghai. Probably because they’re more popular with English speaking tourists perhaps. Oh! But one thing I did find of interest, were a collection of old photos from about 1920, of the resort. That was really surprising after looking at stuff from there a couple of years ago, when I 1st found out about it. Seeing how some of the buildings had been so dilapidated, and how the landscape seemed more bare, was quite the eye opener. At the same time, recognising some of the stuff from over 100 years ago was an interesting feeling too.
• I’ve only got 4 episodes of Legend Of The Phoenix to go now! Aww! It was getting so good when I was looking at it last night. It’s on YouTube now as well, with subtitles, which I don’t think it was originally. Or when I saw it 3 years ago anyhow.

Thursday, 8th of June, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (14:25) It seemed something got a bit loose with my video card again yesterday, in my main PC. I lifted it up to push the glass back to where it should be on the desk, and it must’ve got slightly disconnected or something. So I loosened and re-tightened its bolt, and then when I went to try it again, I’d forgotten to plug the monitor back in. Figgin’ heck.
• There’s nothing new to report from me in regards to Morrowind or Oblivion. I haven’t played poor Morrowind for almost 2 years. And I haven’t played much of Oblivion lately either.
• Tomorrow, if I don’t forget, I’ll be changing the monthly software review back to Cog, MacAmp Lite X & XMPlay.

Sunday, 18th of June, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (0:23) I’ve got a new game coming out soon, once I’ve done 1 last check for bugs. I had a couple of issues with the compiler which weren’t my fault, and had to work around them. Anyway, it’s called Teddy Maze, and like Teddy & Bunny, you can make your own stages once again. This time though, they’re a lot bigger.
• I’ve got some new Japanese songs to put on my page for 2023 soon too. But I should be going to bed now. I’ve had a lot of late nights recently.

Monday, 19th of June, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (20:21) I was watching season 2 of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, with Mumma Cheri’s joint, and there was a funny bit in the kitchen. He said something about buffalo wings! What the fig are they supposed to be? When has anybody ever seen a flying buffalo? That must be a like a comic name or reference to something, for whatever the food was. It was like one of Gordon’s menus with a loin of tuna. Well tuna fish don’t have legs for starters, to even have loins. So I dunno what he’s on about sometimes.
• I looked up some new Australian flags today. There are some REALLY good designs out there. I was sold straight away on some of them. It’d be exciting to kick out all that foreign British stuff and finally have something that’s purely our own. On the money too. For those of you from overseas, who don’t know, we only had Queen Elizabeth on our coins and $5 note. The other notes have Australian people. The government should’ve made the cut off point at the death of Queen Elizabeth 2. None of that old stuff is relevant any more. I personally think the coins should take inspiration from the Chinese money, and have scenes that are specifically Australian. Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef, maybe pictures of our capital cities, etc. If we had those changes, I would be totally for them. That said, us Aussies SHOULD still be friends with the British, and welcome them if they want to visit, but I think it’s time for these changes.

Thursday, 29th of June, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (17:14) I was contemplating getting some fibre optic “cable” / a strand reel to make up my lotus… thing, that I originally planned to possibly make with L.E.D.s. You can get 50 m for about $14.35 off eBay, from a place in Sydney in 1 mm thickness, which is probably what I would use. I asked the seller if you can melt the ends, because you need them thicker than the rest of the strand, so they don’t pull out of the surface. I haven’t bought any of this stuff since probably 1990 or so. It might be different plastic now. I’m probably going to stuff the other ends into a piece of heat-shrink tubing, over the L.E.D.s themselves, and that should keep them lined up. I have some black stuff, and it’s a bit shiny on the inside, so any extra reflection is welcome to get more light up the cable ends.
This would’ve taken about 225 L.E.D.s, I think it was… Yeah, see the 11th of January, last year, if it’s still there, above what you’re reading now. So that would’ve been quite insane, and it would’ve lit the room up. Plus soldering that many would’ve taken me a week maybe. Plus, it would’ve used a lot of current, I think. So, if I use fibre optic strands, I can have maybe 16 per L.E.D., or something. I’d have to test that. There are 86 green dots for the leaves on this thing, so that would be 6 L.E.D.s, rounded up. (There are 54 white dots, 59 in magenta and 26 in yellow.) The other alternative would be to have a light “box” for each colour with all the fibre optic strands coming out of them, and going to their appropriate locations in the image. But, as this is going on my wall, it needs to be pretty compact. Even if I use 20 L.E.D.s, that’s less than ¹/₁₀ of the original direct L.E.D. count.
Another thing that interests me, is side lit plastic. This would have to be done at a professional etching place though. You have little etched spots on it, which catch the light from below. If you had more than one colour though, you’d have to have a different layer of plastic for each. Although I don’t know how well that would work.

Saturday, 1st of July, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (16:43) I tried engraving / etching my lotus design onto an old CD box cover as an experiment this afternoon. As you can see, it works, but it’s messy. I’m not a master engraver. So perhaps it might be better to do the lines as a bunch of little dots. That way the thing isn’t sliding around. The tip did want to spin off course on several occasions. The other thing is the persective. When you’re looking through to a printed piece of paper that you have to trace, the thickness of the plastic throws you off a bit. So before I go anywhere near my perspex sheets that I bought last year, I’m going to come up with a more consistent way of doing this on bits of scrap plastic.
I just used 4 green L.E.D.s to light this up, but if I do get something good finished, I’ll use the 4 colours you see above, and have them run vertically, rather than etching 4 separate pieces of plastic and trying to align them.

Tuesday, 4th of July, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (12:53) I got my lotus engraved onto a piece of perspex, but after a lot of woe. I had issues cutting it, and it kept cracking and being a pain. I think you need better tools, like LASERs to cut the stuff. Or a band saw. Anyway, in the end I got the thing done with 3 colours of L.E.D.s, but it doesn’t show up quite so much in the picture. I added a bit more of a tint to it on my computer. If I do any more, I’ll get pre-cut perspex at the size I want, and only do one colour, and have the L.E.D.s at the bottom. Putting them to the side was quite tricky, to get a small enough holder. Mmm. So, it’s not perfect looking, but it’s fairly pretty. As you can see, I did it with dots, which was neater than the the image from the 1st.
I need to make a triple or quadruple adaptor for my transformer now, so I can plug more stuff into it. I’m low on wire though.

Thursday, 6th of July, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (12:37) Oh no! No no no! CoCo Lee has died! This is terrible news. It never would’ve crossed my mind that she would be dying any time soon. IMDb says it was suicide. I’m really shocked and sad about that.

Friday, 7th of July, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (14:38) Why is it that so many cars of the recent 5 years or so, are such ugly piles of $#!‡? Not only that, but they all seem look the same, with these strip-like lights on their fronts too. I think this is another example of how my fellow humans are really brain dead sheep who can’t think differently from one another. And customers with no taste obviously keep buying them. Not only that, there seem to be an enormous amount of vehicles of late with malfunctioning head lights, like it was some kind of mass design flaw. I dunno what’s up with that. Is it just in my area? People may be half bothered to fix them, but it’s still illegal to have non-working car lights.
• I passed 15 000 000 Septims in Oblivion the other night! I think I could buy up all of Cyrodiil with that. When you really need the money @ the start of the game, it’s hard to build up, then when you don’t need so much later on, you have too much.
• I actually got a handful of new decent songs over the last few days, which has been surprising. I added 3 or so of them to the MVs page for this year as well. The countries I’m focussing on at the moment are Japan, of course, China, if I’m lucky, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia and Vietnam. If you ask me, the British music has gone right down the sewer since 20 or so years ago. All I seem to see listed these days is $#!‡-head gangsters and other depressing cr@p, so I just avoid anything from there now. It used to be so much better around the turn of the century, and just before, like in 1998.
• (15:30) Oh yeah! That was another thing I was going to rant about — what is it with all these offensive, arrogant jerks in some music videos sticking up their rude fingers? Are they just so cocky that they think customers will buy their B.S. regardless? I made a list of all these little pr*cks so I don’t accidentally get any of their cr*p in the future. There was even one from Australia, sadly. We’re not all like them.

Tuesday, 8th of August, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (22:52) I tried making a 4 transistor based chaser circuit, based on the 3 transistor one I showed on my Electronics Circuits Page, but all I got was the effect of 2 flip flop circuits. I wasn’t happy with that circuit with the 3 transistors either, so I removed it. This then threw a spanner in the works for a chaser circuit I wanted to make later in the year. I really wanted to do a 4 “channel” one with 3 L.E.D.s on @ a time from each channel. Perhaps output is a better word than channel. I dunno. Anyway, I regard this as a moving gap chaser, or inverted chaser circuit. There are circuit diagrams to do this directly off a 4017 I.C. This is okay for a couple of L.E.D.s, but from that forum discussion I read 3 years ago, I don’t want to risk stressing the I.C. with the likes of 18 super bright L.E.D.s running off it directly at any one time. So I’m still inclined to include one of those ULN2803APG darlington transistor arrays. Or maybe 4 BC639 transistors. Anyway the solution to inverting the L.E.D.s from on to off may be a 4001 NOR gate I.C. This only has 4 outputs, so it would still fit in with what I want to do. This would then connect between the counter and the ULN2803APG I.C. I haven’t seen any examples of people doing this, but I think it will work, based on how I’ve seen it in other circuits. I will include a circuit diagram here when I get one drawn up, and you can comment. If anybody actually sees this.
• After saying about ugly and unoriginal cars the other day, I found out about Tang Hua electric cars from China 2 days ago, and they look quite unique. There’s a strange 4 seat one, which looks like a van, and its front is quite cute.
• (23:59) Okay, the diagram is to the left. I can’t test it though, because I don’t currently have any 4001 I.C.s.

Sunday, 13th of August, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (14:21) Ooh my goodness. I had to do a simple, but very awkward fix of my main PC today. I’ve pretty much only just turned it on. Well, about 20 minutes ago. Yesterday, I noticed that the power button was acting iffy, and I had to press it in a strange way to get it to turn on. Then today: Nothing! No matter how I pressed the button, it wouldn’t work. The button is part of the case, and screwed in, in a way which would require you to remove a lot of stuff to get to it. So instead, I snipped the wires to it with some scissors, and went about connecting a push button from my box of electronic components left overs. The wires they used to connect to the motherboard though, are those awful silvery looking things that you can barely solder to. I hate that wire. It’s plain copper or nothing for me. So I eventually got my extension wires to stick, after doing most of it left handed, shrunk on some heat shrink tubing, tied my new wire to an unused SATA drive cable with bread ties, and ran a little red push button out of the unused ~14.8 cm drive bay on the top. Very professional I’m sure. So now I can press that, and it will turn on. I’m going to put a plastic cover over it though, I think. I’ve got a tube thing for ear plugs which might be suitable. Mmm, so if I didn’t have a soldering iron, and left over buttons, and all the other handy things, I’d be stuffed, probably. And I’d go to the computer shop, and they’d probably take an age, or say you need a new PC. Maybe.
• (15:33) Yeah, I don’t want to jinx myself, but there are so many things I need to be aware of with my main computer. If I ever did take it to some shop, I’d have to warn them. So there’s the new power button dangling out the front as of today, the blue L.E.D. for the original button doesn’t work most of the time, the USB’s power is iffy, you can only have 1 hard drive internally now (for some reason I don’t understand), you have to enter the BIOS set up section every time you turn it on, and the clock sometimes freezes when it’s running off the button battery. When I say the USB power’s iffy, it means it may drop out unexpectedly. So when I used to have my mouse plugged into it, it would sometimes be seen by Windows XP as being unplugged. So I have to use the PS 2 port, and my hard drive caddy has its own power supply. I do have a USB hub in my monitor, but it’s dead as well!

Monday, 14th of August, 2023
Dad’s 76th birthday
Today’s current mood:
• (14:01) Holey moley! I had trouble with my main PC again today! It seems the power button may not have been at fault after all! When I pressed my new button today, nothing happened! Then one of the wires fell off that mother f***ing silvery wire, so I had to resolder that, and still nothing! One I thing I noticed, which seemed a bit odd, was that the motherboard L.E.D. & mouse L.E.D. were flashing. Now normally I wouldn’t see either, but it did seem odd. When I looked up about that on the web for this motherboard — the ASUS A8V-MX, it was suggested that it could be an error with the RAM, but it said after power was applied. Does that mean when the PSU is turned on, or the actual motherboard from the power button? Because there was no power beyond the PSU coming partially on. So I dunno. I got out a load of dust, and eventually it was working again. Maybe something became a bit conductive in there. So much for my case’s power button, but all symptoms pointed to that yesterday. And the fact that it worked with the new button I put on, proved it in my mind. If the RAM has been at fault, there has been no suggestion of it. Nothing has crashed or frozen in Windows XP. There have been no instances of stuttering audio or anything acting weird. Unless something else is to blame. Let’s see what happens tomorrow, or today.

Tuesday, 15th of August, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (15:16) More computer woes today. No start up again. The L.E.D.s flashing again. They should actually be “stable” with no flashing, when the PSU is turned on. And by that, I mean the power from the house. Not when you press the power button. Anyway, it’s obviously working at the moment, since I’m typing this. I took out my video capture card though, in case I kill it. I don’t use it much anyway. I took the RAM out, and cleaned it, and put it in the other socket, and that made no difference really, but it was quite dusty, and a bit grubby. I also took the video card out, and tried the built-in video… thing. And that didn’t work. I think it might actually be the big power plug to the motherboard which needs attention. That’s another possibility. I did sort of jiggle it a bit. Then it was working again. The 1st time the motherboard L.E.D. was stably lit, the computer was starting, but not beeping, and there was no image to the monitor. Plus the number lock L.E.D. on the keyboard was flickering a bit. So perhaps power hasn’t been getting through somewhere. I’m not really too sure what I’m going to do if this thing packs it in completely. If Windows didn’t suck so much now, I’d aim for something new perhaps, but since it does, I’d probably have to go for Linux of some description. Or at least something that can run Windows 7. I could probably deal with that. Or move everything to my 2018 PC, so long as it keeps running. My Dad’s computer is even older than mine, and it’s in better condition.

Sunday, 27th of August, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (15:35) My goodness. The last 12 days! My main PC just refused to turn on in the end, no matter what I tried. All I got was the flashing L.E.D. on the motherboard. So I dunno what that means. Maybe something was up with the power supply. I dunno. Or something else most likely failed. I was in the middle of typing, and the picture just went on the monitor. Although other stuff was still working, like my music playing. So I decided it was probably best to get a replacement computer off eBay. There were a lot of used PCs on there for real cheap, but I thought something new would be the more wise decision for the long term. I found somebody selling a bunch with a small tower case and Windows 7 for $550, brand new. So I thought I would take that route. This one also has one of those static storage drives, to avoid any ambiguity, rather than a motorised hard drive. Although, again, they’re both hard.
The CPU is a 3.7 GHz Intel Core i3 6100, which I think is a quad core type. It shows up in Windows 7 as having 4 cores, but the hardware monitor program I have only shows it as 2 cores, but 4 CPUs. So I’m not sure. Anyway, it’s still faster than my 2.4 GHz single core AMD Athlon 64.
• (15:46) After a quick check on the web, it’s dual core. It’s just hyper threaded like my Core i7 one. So it probably performs like a quad core CPU. Anyway it’s fast enough for my uses. No Sound Blaster card this time. Just the built-in Realtek I.C., and I’ve just got the built-in Intel GPU as well. Although there is a PCI express slot for a better video card. But I’ll save my 2018 P.C. for games.
One thing I wasn’t giving up was Windows XP, despite its quirks. So I installed it in a virtual machine — in this case, Virtual Box. I made up a 30 GB virtual drive, and got it installed. That should be enough, because I’m using shared directories for dealing with my regular files. So I really only need room for programs to be installed. Plus, since some programs don’t get along with Windows 7, this is my other option. Plus for 16 bit programs too.
Now it’s time for the rant about how Microsoft really p!$$€d me off. After I got Windows XP installed, as we nearly all know, you need to activate it. I tried the method over the Internet, and like 2018, when I did my last re-install, it failed. So I thought: “It’s late at night. I’ll ring tomorrow.” So the next day, I went to the ’phone, equipped with that massive number you need to enter. I got onto the activation service, with some simulated woman yapping at high speed. For some weird reason, they wanted me to enter a number on the telephone that was told to me. In this case it was 432. So I entered it in. The simulated voice is like: “That’s not a match!” & it gets me to try again. The same thing happens. I’m like: “What the f**k?!” So I ring back, do a different number, and still nothing. “F**king Microsoft!” I’m thinking. “Their ’phone service is just as cr@p as their operating systems.” So I’m already p!$$€d off at this stage, since I have a short fuse. But it gets worse, of course! So I go back to my new PC, and check the other telephone number, because the 1st one is toll free. So I get that, and head back to the ’phone. (The telephone’s near the kitchen, not in my room with the computers.) Then all I get is a message along the lines of: “This number has been discontinued. Please ring blah blah blah blah instead.”
“F**king hell!” I’m thinking. And she rattles the number off at some insane speed, which you can’t possibly remember, or write down. The stupid, brain dead, mother f**kers! I had to ring this number about 5 times, and have somebody else write it down. I finally get it, and ring the 3rd ’phone number. Then what do I get: “Oh, we’ve discontinued this so that you don’t have to wait in a queue. Just go to help.microsoft.com” And I’m in a RAGE by this stage. I almost smashed the ’phone, and I was swearing about the absolute c*nts at MS for giving me such a run around, and I didn’t even get to speak with anyone! So I said: F**k you! And I found a little 18 KB program that came out early last year, which basically simulates that ’phone activation business. And it worked! So yay to that at least. But what a way to screw over your legitimate customers who PAID for their copy of Windows XP. I’m never buying any more Microsoft $#!+ again. Not even hardware.
Oh yeah — and that web site — it didn’t even load anything. I used Firefox 93 in Tiny Core Linux, since it’s my newest browser from like only 2 years ago, and all I got was a white page of nothing. So yeah. What a crock of utter $#!+ Microsoft truly are. I wanted somebody to execute Bill Gates. BillGates.exe. Run it and execute him!
• Woo! That riled me up again, just thinking about it. Anyway, Windows XP is pretty snappy on this thing, even in the simulated computer. Prior to the new computer arriving though, I had to use my 2018 P.C. to do stuff, and it was amazing that even after 10 years, I still wasn’t aware of how annoying Windows 7 is with Explorer. I had to install Q-Dir to survive, and make more registry tweaks to get consistency in file information. I also used Corel Photo-Paint 11 for some stuff, and it’s a touch buggy too, which I didn’t know. I got memory errors coming up. Although maybe it doesn’t like Windows 7 much. Plus the over scroll is mega slow! Normally when you’re drawing a line in Photo-Paint 8, and go off the edge of the picture, it scrolls along rapidly so you can keep going, but in version 11, it was painfully slow. Anyway, I have version 8 re-installed under Windows XP now, so I’m back to normal. Hopefully.
DivX does not work too well either in that virtual computer environment, nor Power DVD 6. (You see no image, and in DivX compressed video, you get distorted lines.) But it does work fairly well on Windows 7, although the OS says it isn’t really compatible. (PowerDVD 6 that is.) Another thing I didn’t realise, is how VLC seems to have so much tearing in videos. This was pointed out by other people too, and if you’re running it on Windows, it’s an idea to try it with Direct Draw for the output module. I guess when I used it in Windows XP, it wasn’t too bad. I’ll try to mention that on my Computer Page for more tips. Plus about my Pegasus MJPEG codec.
So yeah, it’s taken so long to get things back up and running again. I even had to re-write my text file searcher program, due to some file missing from Visual BASIC. I’m going to update that on the Downloads Page soon.

Sunday, 3rd of September, 2023
(Father’s Day)
Today’s current mood:
• (12:41) I had some partially good AA size Energiser batteries near my TV, and the beeping things leaked, didn’t they? They were supposed to be used by November 2028! 5 & a bit years from now!!! What a crock. I should buy those Chinese EastPower batteries. The ones in my TV’s remote control not only haven’t leaked in 18 years, but they still work! They don’t get a lot of use though. In terms of the 2 most popular brands of batteries, I used to prefer Duracell. I didn’t buy the Energiser ones anyway. They were given to me. So now some of the paint’s come off my TV and game console stand thing from the acid. Damn. Oh… here’s an Ever Ready one by the keyboard. That can fig off into the bin too. (Bang, clonk… Damn! I missed.) Actually, I should change to rechargeable batteries in AA size, because I already have a charger for those nickel metal hyrdride type ones.
• Things are feeling a bit more “homely” with my new PC now. Sort of. I’ve had more issues on this one when it comes to playing audio and video files. Maybe some of my software could use updating here and there. This built in Realtek sound processor thing is a bit of a wuss compared with my Sound Blaster Audigy. It’s so quiet. You really have to crank it with my headphones on. With the SB Audigy, you didn’t need the volume levels anywhere near as high. I could probably use a mini amplifier that will fit under my monitor, with an equaliser on it too. But I can use my Sharp audio system I guess.
My Windows XP installation is up to 3.18 GB now. So that’s not too bad.
• I had to get a new CD ripper (program), because Nero 5 is a special version, which only works with the Lite On drive it came with. It installed fine in Windows 7, and worked, but you can’t choose the new drive to copy stuff from. What a bummer. And that Lite On drive is still in top condition, even after 20 years. But because it’s got a parallel connection, I doubt I could plug it in to this motherboard. Maybe I could find a caddy or something to connect it via the USB.
• Be sure to check out my new review of those media player programs too!

Friday, 8th of September, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (20:56) I thought there was a new-ish TV company called Kogan. I just looked it up. It actually means testicles in Japanese! Yep, 睾丸. They had some big bollocks coming up with such a company.

Saturday, 9th of September, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (13:22) Brrr! Winter may have ended, but this morning you could freeze the balls off a brass monkey! It’s been colder than the last days of Winter. The monthly changing software review’s been updated, and it’s Winamp again this month.
• (19:52) I was doing one of those word finder puzzles after dinner. One called “In Court.” There were some very funny extra words in there: Bob Hawke Hide Maid Coffin Loft Warm USA. Hmmm! A hidden message about the old prime minister! Then in one called “Full Of Promise,” there was USSR hidden in there too!

Sunday, 17th of September, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (22:12) Happy birthday to Yuji Naka today. He’s 58 now. Boy, he must’ve only been 26 when he did Sonic The Hedgehog.

Friday, 29th of September, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (0:10) I was watching series 3 of Some Mothers Do ’ave ’em again. When Frank goes to see about getting a telephone, there’s a poster on the wall for a service called Dial-A-Disc, which you rang on 160. I’d seen it in the past, but I decided to look up what it was tonight. It turns out it was introduced in the 1960s in Britain to let you hear music on your telephone. The quality was understandably bad though. At 1st I thought it might have been like a record hire service, and they’d bring one ’round to your house, but apparently not. I dunno how much of an enjoyable experience it would’ve been. Maybe you could put your ’phone handset near a microphone for an amplifier, and listen to it better in your house. I read in a forum that there was even a service for bed time stories.

Friday, 30th of September, 2023
Today’s current mood:
• (0:03) I was reading up again to see if Britain’s ridiculous TV licence fee had gone by the board, but it still seems that they’re at it, hiding behind a corrupt portion of their law, and even trying to extend the licence to electronic devices that aren’t even TVs, like computers. According to one video, they recently forked out £20 000 000 to send more thugs ’round to people’s houses for their racketeering, which is to last until 2027. It’s insane that they still expect people to pay for something that they make no effort to prevent. You don’t see Microsoft sending people ’round to various houses looking for valid operating system licences, and then expecting them to pay for them if they had a Mac! It’s exactly the same thing. By their manner of actions, this is self-evident. But it’s not just the British — even the Japanese still have the curse of the NHK demanding money. Apparently people there hide when the TV folks come knocking. You’d think the Japanese with all their experience in electronics could come up with a way to encrypt TV shows to everyone, apart from those who pay. It’s the simplest solution. If you don’t want a service, you don’t pay for it, and you’re prevented from having it. That makes sense, and it’s fair. How can supposedly civilised nations still have this irrelevant bull$#!+ now? It makes no sense, and it reflects badly on them in the eyes of those of us from outside their countries. I think even Germany still has something like this too. At least they did a few years ago. And also Ethiopia — there you could even got to gaol for 5 years! What a crock of $#!+! It’s for a TV! The TV company dictators should be in prison. Not the other way ’round. If this didn’t actually affect people’s lives so much, it’d be laughable. Thank goodness us Aussies ditched this cr*p decades ago. Some people argued that it’s our tax that pays for the likes of the ABC, but we don’t get a bill for it. I don’t pay several hundred dollars a year for anything I don’t use. I haven’t watched the fizzing brainwashing box in 12 years. So I’m with you, the folks being screwed over, from whatever country you’re from. You do have foreign sympathy.

John’s Top 5: Most Recently Played Games:
(Last updated who knows when. I have played Oblivion recently though.)

Game:	System:
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion	“2018 PC”
Teddy Utopia	Main PC
Tetris (For Windows)	Main PC
JezzBall	Main PC
SkiFree	Main PC

John’s List Of Interesting Articles & Scams:

“Beach’s Bizarre Broadway Subway” — An article about Alfred Beach’s pneumatic transit system in New York, which you may have seen a reproduction of in Ghostbusters 2.
City Of Darkness - Revisited — A fascinating look at what was the Kowloon Walled City.
Livermore’s Centennial Light Live Cam — Get an up to date view of the world’s longest running light bulb! This thing puts modern bulbs to utter shame!
Making Ice In Mississippi
A Keeper’s Account - A Quiet Night In — This is Charlie Riding’s tale of working at the Bell Rock Lighthouse in Scotland, on the 2:00 to 6:00 A.M. shift.
Read about Geoffrey D. Bennett who had a heck of a job trying to get a refund for Windows ’95, which he didn’t want with his laptop PC in the 1st place.
Letters from BBC Television Licensing — The BBC’s TV Licence over in Britain is one of the biggest jokes of our time, not because the BBC shouldn’t be getting paid, but because you still have to pay whether you watch them or not. It makes as much sense as me asking everyone on the planet for $5, because they may happen to stumble upon my web site. The BBC have always wanted to charge TV owners to receive their broadcasts, but made no effort to block them to viewers of other channels, and demanded payment whether you watched what they broadcast or not.
Ever wondered how to completely remove iTunes? Here’s an interesting article on the procedure. (This site now requires a pretty new web browser.)
London Underground History. (This has gone for now.)
Game Copy Wizard — This is a big fat SCAM! Check out the website, but do not fall into the trap of buying! One affiliated site even claimed it could duplicate cartridge based games! It is also a pyramid scheme to draw in affiliates to put up positive reviews about it in order to get paid when they can sell a copy. Lots of people have been burned, and there are dozens of sites out there claiming it DOES work, when it clearly does not. As easy as it is to see through this fake product, I put this here to make it more well known to those who aren’t familiar with copying console games. Click here for a list of sites that seem to be pushing this. (This site has finally gone, and just re-directs to some other thing.)
Ever heard of the Better Business Bureau from America? It would seem they’re not as straight as you may have thought.
Transparent Audio — Another company bordering on scam status. Anyone who makes $777 USB cables, and somehow magically thinks they’re better, has no credibility at all in my book. Not to mention their $84 900 speaker wires. The problem is, I think they actually believe what they’re selling makes a difference.
AudioHarma’s Cable Cooker — more snake oil.