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Established : July 1996 Please bookmark this location only : http://move.to/moose |
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It is not everyday (or even every year) that I get excited about computer / video monitor developments,
but some incredible developments are under way and some amazing products have been released lately.
In particular, Sharp Triple Directional Viewing LCD and the
Radius 320 Seamless LCD are interesting.
While, the Radius 320 is a big, sexy monitor that would be great for desktop use - especially for those of us with dozens of applications running and many windows open all day. I know what I want for Christmas Santa !! Mom ?? Anyone ?? LOL. ;)
Happy 10th birthday Moose's Software Valley !!!It is almost unheard of on the internet for a web site to last for 5 years, let alone 10 years. However, that is just what Moose's Software Valley has done, which is pretty amazing in our world of constant change. When I started this site, there was no such thing as $5 or $10 shareware - this was completely unheard of. The minimum price for Shareware in 1996 was something like $25 US - not $5 AUD !!! (which is only about $3 US) So, I tested the water with a bunch of little programs - just to see what the potential market was like - with the philosophy "Stack in high, sell it CHEAP !!!". I wanted to turn the shareware market on its head, by selling great software at rediculously low prices - prices so low that people would not bother to steal the software or download hacks or cracks for it, but would instead be happy to hand over the paltry registration fee.
Looking back, many of my early programs (in particular) should never have been released as shareware, but I figured "What the hell, I'll put them out there and see if they sell". And to my suprise, they started selling like hotcakes within 24-48 hours of Moose's Software Valley going live, and, for a while, I thought I was onto a *real* winner. So, I got stuck into developing more and more shareware and today I have a catalog of 85 programs (comprised of 53 Shareware + 29 Freeware + 3 Apple ][ freeware programs). But, alas, soon the whole fabric of the internet changed. Pretty soon I realised that even at rediculously low "give away" prices, most people will still go right out of their way to avoid paying for something, and that they will quite happily put their PCs and their own personal data at risk and use illegal cracks and hacks (that often contain viruses, trojans, spyware, etc) to break software so they can use full versions of it for free.
In the past 10 years, Moose's Software Valley has had well over 500,000 visitors (since going live in late July - very early August, 1996).
The total number of visitors to all of my pages is well over 1 Million. Which is not too bad in 10 years I guess ... Anyway, I wouldn't say Moose's Software Valley has been a success, and it certainly hasn't been a financial success, but it has always been interesting, it has mostly been fun, and I have met some terrific people and, sadly, also a few extreme arsewipes !! ;) (or asswipes as Americans would say). Will Moose's Software Valley last another 10 years ?? Probably not, but only time will tell ...
Anyway, this site, and my web pages, no longer use Java and there are no more HTML Frames. Hopefully, visitors will notice a nice speed-up !! :)
In addition, I have also started using an Upper Engine Lubricant (UEL) - it costed $68 for 5 litres, and you add a small amount to your petrol tank before filling up. For my small car, which has a 50 litre petrol tank, I add 25 ml of UEL - which costs about 25 * $68 / (5 * 1000) = $0.34 which is less than $0.01 per litre of fuel ! This UEL increased my car's miles / gallon by an additional 12.8%:
So, instead of getting 700 Km on a tank of fuel, I now get 790 - which saves me around $6.97 in fuel per tank of fuel, while costing just $0.34 for the Upper Engine Lubricant (UEL) per tank of fuel (for my car). That is a NET saving of $6.63 per tank of fuel for my car. So, it is well worth doing !! UELs also reduce engine wear and tear, improving the life of your engine, reducing maintenance, etc. If UELs provide similar efficiency improvements in all petrol and diesel cars, trucks, etc (and the manufacturer assures me that it does) and everyone started using them, then we could all spend 10-12% less on fuel overnight and entire countries could reduce their fuel consumption by 10-12%, which could reduce the global demand for oil, help conserve precious oil and fuel reserves, and also help the environment (less fuel used for the same journey = less pollution / greenhouse gas !). Talk about a Win, Win, Win situation !! In fact, I believe that such fuel additives should be made MANDATORY, or better yet, premixed into the fuel at the petrol bowser (for an additional charge of a cent a litre).
Last night there was a very well done special on Peak Oil on Australian ABC's Four Corners program. As well as providing the Program Transcript, ABC have been kind enough to also provide extended video coverage (viewable from your browser), a reply forum, and links to loads of relevant documentation and reports. I believe that this is essential reading / viewing for every human on the planet. I kid you not !! For more information, visit ABC's Four Corners web site.
As a result of this weight loss: It has been hard work so far - it feels like I've walked and jogged half way round the planet and I've eaten my way through acres of celery, cabbage, and broccoli - but it will all be worth it in the end. ;) At my current rates, I should get to my target weight within the next month. As always, I'm pushing hard to make this happen ... ;) Here's a summary of my progress after exercising and dieting for the past 163 days:
There's now only 1 part of my life which isn't a complete success, and this has always been the most difficult part of life. If all goes well, then I will be turning my attention to that next. Which part you ask ? Well, I'll give you a hint: how many dates do you think an overweight computer programmer gets ? ;)
Student Results Merger is a program to help you handle / merge / process student and other results that are allocated some sort of unique ID. The changes for this release include:
While the program was developed for the purpose of processing student results, it could also be used to process cycling race, horse race, swimming race, or keeping track of workers or volunteers, and/or various other results / details. This program comes with full on-line help and a step-by-step user guide with screen shots.
Student Results Merger is a program to help you handle / merge / process student and other results that are allocated some sort of unique ID. The changes for this release include:
While the program was developed for the purpose of processing student results, it could also be used to process cycling race, horse race, swimming race, or keeping track of workers or volunteers, and/or various other results / details. This program comes with full on-line help and a step-by-step user guide with screen shots.
For as long as I can remember, one of my life's goals has been to sail the world in my own yacht. Recently, I purchased a small yacht, and have been enjoying sailing around the pristine and spectacularly beautiful islands and bays around the Capricorn Coast, Queensland, Australia where I live. Anyway, here are some very recent pictures of sailing with Boogle (click on them for enlargements):
More photos to come soon ... ;)
I've had a desk job for the last ~20 years (mostly as a computer programmer, a renowned job for "fatties"). Even though I've never been a junk food-aholic, I do love my food, and I'm ashamed to say that the weight has slowly been packing on over the years, and I haven't exercised properly. Last year, for a part-time job, I started ghost-writing lots of health related articles and ebooks, and I soon realised just how serious excess weight was to your health and what complications it could cause. This work got me to take a long hard look at myself. I used to describe my physical appearance as a "full framed Aussie male", that is, someone who is tall, broad shouldered, a little stocky, and strong. But, earlier this year I suddenly realised that I had developed quite a gut and was very unfit. I was 120 KG and had suddenly crossed the boundary from looking "strong but stocky" to looking "pretty chubby / fat", I decided to do something serious about it. So, back in February - instead of going away on holidays to Europe or wherever for a month as I usually do - I turned my house into a mini health farm and spent the entire month changing my life style and eating habits for good: A couple of weeks later, the Aussie version of "The Biggest Loser" was just starting on TV, so I got into the habbit of working out while watching this and other TV programs (Simpsons, News, etc). Another huge help was finding out about Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and calories burned during different types of exercises and monitoring everything I eat (thanks to Calorie King's book) - it all goes into a spreadsheet with my current weight, etc so I can see how I'm going, and a summary is displayed on a graph. For me this effort has paid off and worked well. In the end, it all came down to watching what I eat, counting calroies, regular exercise, and making sure that my calorie input is a LOT LESS than what I am using / need. i.e. Calorie Intake < Calories Expended. Here's my progress after 96 days:
At my current rates, I should get to my target weight sometime in July, 2006. I'm pushing hard to make this happen ...
Anyway, while catching up on Red Vs Blue, I decided to take a look over at Machinima.com as it had been a while since my last visit and I also checked out a few recent newsgroup postings there and found this interesting post:
In addition, boxcutter was also talking about the new Fresh Baked Video Games TV show on Spike TV. More info and 3 sample videos here: Judging from the sample videos, the show looks pretty stupid - but very, very funny - and right up my alley. Shame I don't have cable or satellite .... If you have cable or satellite, make sure you check it out ... and send me DVD's if you can record them !! LOL !! Just kidding !! ;) UPDATE - 23-Jan-2006: Check out Noah's WEB Site for further information and Medievil Weapon videos and other clips from Fresh Baked Video Games.
Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly. It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century. We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren. We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us. Two days from now, I will present my energy proposals to the Congress. Its members will be my partners and they have already given me a great deal of valuable advice. Many of these proposals will be unpopular. Some will cause you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices. The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation. Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war" -- except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy. I know that some of you may doubt that we face real energy shortages. The 1973 gasoline lines are gone, and our homes are warm again. But our energy problem is worse tonight than it was in 1973 or a few weeks ago in the dead of winter. It is worse because more waste has occurred, and more time has passed by without our planning for the future. And it will get worse every day until we act. The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about six percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last five years. Our nation's independence of economic and political action is becoming increasingly constrained. Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce. The world now uses about 60 million barrels of oil a day and demand increases each year about 5 percent. This means that just to stay even we need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every nine months, or a new Saudi Arabia every three years. Obviously, this cannot continue. We must look back in history to understand our energy problem. Twice in the last several hundred years there has been a transition in the way people use energy. The first was about 200 years ago, away from wood -- which had provided about 90 percent of all fuel -- to coal, which was more efficient. This change became the basis of the Industrial Revolution. The second change took place in this century, with the growing use of oil and natural gas. They were more convenient and cheaper than coal, and the supply seemed to be almost without limit. They made possible the age of automobile and airplane travel. Nearly everyone who is alive today grew up during this age and we have never known anything different. Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power. The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950s, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940s. During the 1960s, we used twice as much as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind's previous history. World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970s and 1980s by 5 percent a year as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade. I know that many of you have suspected that some supplies of oil and gas are being withheld. You may be right, but suspicions about oil companies cannot change the fact that we are running out of petroleum. All of us have heard about the large oil fields on Alaska's North Slope. In a few years when the North Slope is producing fully, its total output will be just about equal to two years' increase in our nation's energy demand. Each new inventory of world oil reserves has been more disturbing than the last. World oil production can probably keep going up for another six or eight years. But some time in the 1980s it can't go up much more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that. But we do have a choice about how we will spend the next few years. Each American uses the energy equivalent of 60 barrels of oil per person each year. Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan and Sweden. One choice is to continue doing what we have been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years. Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would continue to carry only one person -- the driver -- while our public transportation system continues to decline. We can delay insulating our houses, and they will continue to lose about 50 percent of their heat in waste. We can continue using scarce oil and natural to generate electricity, and continue wasting two-thirds of their fuel value in the process. If we do not act, then by 1985 we will be using 33 percent more energy than we do today. We can't substantially increase our domestic production, so we would need to import twice as much oil as we do now. Supplies will be uncertain. The cost will keep going up. Six years ago, we paid $3.7 billion for imported oil. Last year we spent $37 billion -- nearly ten times as much -- and this year we may spend over $45 billion. Unless we act, we will spend more than $550 billion for imported oil by 1985 -- more than $2,500 a year for every man, woman, and child in America. Along with that money we will continue losing American jobs and becoming increasingly vulnerable to supply interruptions. Now we have a choice. But if we wait, we will live in fear of embargoes. We could endanger our freedom as a sovereign nation to act in foreign affairs. Within ten years we would not be able to import enough oil -- from any country, at any acceptable price. If we wait, and do not act, then our factories will not be able to keep our people on the job with reduced supplies of fuel. Too few of our utilities will have switched to coal, our most abundant energy source. We will not be ready to keep our transportation system running with smaller, more efficient cars and a better network of buses, trains and public transportation. We will feel mounting pressure to plunder the environment. We will have a crash program to build more nuclear plants, strip-mine and burn more coal, and drill more offshore wells than we will need if we begin to conserve now. Inflation will soar, production will go down, people will lose their jobs. Intense competition will build up among nations and among the different regions within our own country. If we fail to act soon, we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions. But we still have another choice. We can begin to prepare right now. We can decide to act while there is time. That is the concept of the energy policy we will present on Wednesday. Our national energy plan is based on ten fundamental principles. The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices. The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems -- wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once. The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve. The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve, just as the consumers will. The energy producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer. The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it. The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement costs of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford. The eighth principle is that government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason I am working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy, to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy. The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can't continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy. The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century. These ten principles have guided the development of the policy I would describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday. Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals, to measure our progress toward a stable energy system. These are the goals we set for 1985: --Reduce the annual growth rate in our energy demand to less than two percent. --Reduce gasoline consumption by ten percent below its current level. --Cut in half the portion of United States oil which is imported, from a potential level of 16 million barrels to six million barrels a day. --Establish a strategic petroleum reserve of one billion barrels, more than six months' supply. --Increase our coal production by about two thirds to more than 1 billion tons a year. --Insulate 90 percent of American homes and all new buildings. --Use solar energy in more than two and one-half million houses. We will monitor our progress toward these goals year by year. Our plan will call for stricter conservation measures if we fall behind. I cant tell you that these measures will be easy, nor will they be popular. But I think most of you realize that a policy which does not ask for changes or sacrifices would not be an effective policy. This plan is essential to protect our jobs, our environment, our standard of living, and our future. Whether this plan truly makes a difference will be decided not here in Washington, but in every town and every factory, in every home an don every highway and every farm. I believe this can be a positive challenge. There is something especially American in the kinds of changes we have to make. We have been proud, through our history of being efficient people. We have been proud of our leadership in the world. Now we have a chance again to give the world a positive example. And we have been proud of our vision of the future. We have always wanted to give our children and grandchildren a world richer in possibilities than we've had. They are the ones we must provide for now. They are the ones who will suffer most if we don't act. I've given you some of the principles of the plan. I am sure each of you will find something you don't like about the specifics of our proposal. It will demand that we make sacrifices and changes in our lives. To some degree, the sacrifices will be painful -- but so is any meaningful sacrifice. It will lead to some higher costs, and to some greater inconveniences for everyone. But the sacrifices will be gradual, realistic and necessary. Above all, they will be fair. No one will gain an unfair advantage through this plan. No one will be asked to bear an unfair burden. We will monitor the accuracy of data from the oil and natural gas companies, so that we will know their true production, supplies, reserves, and profits. The citizens who insist on driving large, unnecessarily powerful cars must expect to pay more for that luxury. We can be sure that all the special interest groups in the country will attack the part of this plan that affects them directly. They will say that sacrifice is fine, as long as other people do it, but that their sacrifice is unreasonable, or unfair, or harmful to the country. If they succeed, then the burden on the ordinary citizen, who is not organized into an interest group, would be crushing. There should be only one test for this program: whether it will help our country. Other generation of Americans have faced and mastered great challenges. I have faith that meeting this challenge will make our own lives even richer. If you will join me so that we can work together with patriotism and courage, we will again prove that our great nation can lead the world into an age of peace, independence and freedom. Jimmy Carter, "The President's Proposed Energy Policy." 18 April 1977. Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. XXXXIII, No. 14, May 1, 1977, pp. 418-420.
A transcript is available here : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html
There are a lot of people in Australia bleating about the "harsh penalties" metered out to drug users, drug addicts, drug dealers and drug mules, and some people are even demanding that the Australian Government should do more to help these people. But hang on a sec, I don't want my tax dollars being used to defend or support drug users, drug addicts, drug dealers or drug mules. EVER ! In fact, I DEMAND that my tax dollars are NOT used for these purposes. I work hard for my money, I pay a lot of tax, and I don't want this squandered on supporting or helping parasites and criminals. These are ILLEGAL drugs. They are ILLEGAL for good reason, they are EXTREMELY dangerous. There are huge signs all over Singapore and Indonesian airports warning of the penalties of drugs possession or drug trafficking. These are NOT "party drugs". They are NOT "recreational drugs". I find these terms extremely offensive, it makes them seem like the drugs are OK, or even beneficial. But, these are downright dangerous illegal drugs. Anyone who takes these drugs is breaking the law, but all evidence suggests that drug addicts and drug users believe that they are somehow better than everyone else and that they are somehow above the law and that they have some sort of right to take illegal drugs. HOW DARE YOU !! At best, these people will be a future burden on the health care system, the legal system, and so on. In fact, my tax dollars will probably end up supporting them for their entire lives on the pension or DOLE, because they wont be employable and it is also likely that they will never be useful or productive members of society. In fact, by buying illegal drugs to support their nasty habbits, they are supporting criminals and criminal drug dealers in Australia, making Australia a worse place to live and undermining the fabric of our society, causing an increase in violence, crime, and multitude of other serious issues. Imagine how much better the world would be without drug users, drug addicts, drug dealers and drug mules ? I support Indonesia and Singapore's so-called "tough" laws. I would like to personally and publicly thank these countries for standing tough against the parasites and criminals. It is a shame that the Australian Government and Australian Legal System don't start doing the same. Death to all drug users, drug addicts, drug dealers and drug mules !!! Or, at the very least, lets lock all of them away until they learn to obey the law and make full ammends for their parasitic, criminal behaviour. OK, OK, "death" *might* be a little too harsh, but let's at the very least bring back good old "hard labour" to make these parasites and criminals understand that what they are doing is wrong and totally unacceptable.
From: Mike O'Malley Sent: Tuesday, 7 December 2004 12:19 PM To: 'catalyst@your.abc.net.au' Subject: Peak Oil on Catalyst A terrific topic for Catalyst would be Peak Oil. We depend on oil for many things : If oil production is peaking or is about to peak - as many claim around the globe right now - and there is not enough supply to satiate the increasing demand - then there could be far reaching consequences. Increasing prices of oil (an just about everything else) will be just the start. If we cannot afford to grow or transport our food, what will happen ? If we cannot afford to mine coal / uranium to generate electricity, what will happen ? Some people predict a very dire future for humans. I'm taking a more hardline approach - I hope that any shortage in oil will finally force us into : and that we may be able to engineer our way out of this mess at the 11th hour. WEB Links : If you would like a hand to research this topic, then I would sure like to help. I've been trying to discover the real truth for several months now - and I would like to have an opportunity to interview Shell, BP, OPEC, etc people to see what they say.
Michael
In the subsequent replies I got from the Catalyst team, it was obvious that they didn't know about Peak Oil and had not considered it as a potential Catalyst topic before. So, it was probably my email that "inspired" their coverage. It is a shame that they didn't say thanks or mention my name in the credits ... ;) A transcript is available here : ABC Catalyst - 24-Nov-2005 - Peak Oil Transcript. You can read some of my previous coverage of Peak Oil here.
Just updating the "progress" of my previous comments about a
Stunt Cycle Simulator on 29-Apr-2005 ....
Forgot to mention it here, but I received a DVD of digital camera pictures, digital camera video, and sound recordings of a real Stunt Cycle machine back in July, 2005. I'd like to thank Mike again (and publicly this time ! ;), for his efforts and for the expenses he incurred to record, prepare, and post this DVD to me. Thanks Mike !! :) Things have been so busy lately, that I haven't had much of a chance to look at it - but it fell out of my "Inbox" a couple of days ago (when I picked up a wodge of paper work), so it is still there and I will get to it "one of these days" ... Promise !! ;) As I have said all along, I cannot guarantee that this will result in a simulator or an emulator, but it is certainly good to have this material safely archived for the time when someone wants to work on a Stunt Cycle simulator or emulator.
In related news (to Stunt Cycle above), the public response to my
Computer Space Simulator v1.0
which was released on
11 May, 2005,
has been "underwhelming" and "disappointing". Of the very few people who commented on it,
about all anyone seemed to have to say about my months of work was
"where are the scoring bugs and hyperspace" (that the original machine had) ....
So, this took the wind out of my sails, and I haven't had the time, energy or inclination to do any work on it since. However, recently I have been in touch with Kevin at Computer Space Fan and I should begin work on v1.1 sometime in the near-ish future. The new version will support ALL of the quirks of the original machine : scoring bugs and hyperspace - so it will be 99.9% accurate. I'm still preparing myself for the usual "underwhelming" and "disappointing" feedback however ... Why can't people be happy and grateful for what they receive for FREE ?? Bah !
I just had an enjoyable trip down memory lane, reading the
Microsoft Windows 1983 pre-Version 1.0 demo
article from the December 1983 issue of BYTE Magazine.
The article is a review of Windows just prior to the release of v1.0 way back in 1983, and it received a lot of praise from BYTE magazine's reviewers and they clearly saw the future potential of the product. As an old Apple ][ user, I particularly liked the picture of the Apple II with a PC emulator card running Microsoft Windows !! What a mighty machine the ][ was !!
Yiikes, found some more pictures of the poor ugly little dog reported below.
I have also read some articles about him - he might be ugly, but his owners love him to bits - and rightly so as well. God bless you little hell dog. God bless you. ;)
Yiikes, the poor ugly dog I reported yesterday is all over the internet.
After a bit of searching, I managed to find another picture of the ugliest dog.
N.B. Click on the image to see a bigger picture of this pooch. I wonder if he looks like his owners .. Anyway, you can read more about this here :
In Electronics World, Sep 2004, as I have just found out, there was an amazing article
on a new Tongue Display Unit (TDU).
This new tongue mounted electronic device is enabling blind people to see simple images. These people may never have seen anything in their life, and all of a sudden they can see simple images. Incredible !! And what's even more amazing is that the images and information are processed by Visual Cortex area of the blind person's brain. So, the Visual Cortex in blind people is still alive and fully active, even though it had never been used for visual processing before, AND the tongue can be used as a gatweay to that area of the brain. Absolutely and utterly amazing !!! And, imagine "watching" pornos with this thing ??? ;) ;) Special thanks to Francis O for emailing me about this !! :) Anyway, you can read more about this here :
Is this a face that even a mother couldn't love ???
N.B. Click on the image to see a bigger picture of this pooch.
As an avid dog lover, I never thought I would say that any dog was utterly and truly ugly, but after receiving an email early today, I can now admit that there is at least one hideously ugly dog on the planet !! ;) ;) According to the email:
The tiny dog has no hair, if you don't count the yellowish-white tuft erupting from his head. His wrinkled brown skin is covered with splotches, a line of warts marches down his snout, his blind eyes are an alien, milky white and a fleshy flap of skin hangs from his withered neck. And then there's the Austin Powers teeth that jut at odd angles from his mouth. He's so ugly even the judges recoiled when he was placed on the judging table, said his proud owner, Susie Lockheed, of Santa Barbara."People are always horrified when I kiss him. He may turn into a prince yet. He's definitely a toad," she said. "I always thought he'd be great on greeting cards or on a commercial for Rogaine." Sam, who's pushing 15, has something of a cult following after winning the contest - and fans' hearts - for three years running. Last year, huge crowds gathered around Sam and Lockheed at a local parade and Lockheed said she received letters and calls about her pup for weeks. "So many people have told me they've got his picture on their refrigerator. He certainly has a little cult following," she said. "I did years of professional musical theater and never achieved the fame Sam has." Sam will appear in this weekend's Fourth of July parade in Santa Barbara, but the recent events may be the cap on a long, ugly career. Lockheed says Sam's now suffering from congestive heart failure, lung and kidney problems and has definitely slowed down in his twilight years. Still, he enjoys regular gourmet meals of sirloin steak, cheese balls, roasted chicken and flan (so he'll swallow his multiple pills). He also passes occasional weekends at the Gaviota ranch of Lockheed's boyfriend, where the World's Ugliest Dog rides in the back of an ATV with his few remaining hairs wafting in the wind. Yiiikes, that's an ugly dog !!! ;) Special thanks to Elaine A for emailing me about this !! :)
For two decades MAC users have beat their chests and derided the PC, blindly spouting half-baked, biased, mis-information from Apple's marketting machine at every opportunity. However, despite this, the MAC has slowly and surely become a carbon-copy of the PC. In recent years, MACs have taken on / copied all of the significant internal hardware / features of PCs - MACs now have the same IDE harddrives as the PC, the same AGP / PCI / PCI-X buses and graphics cards as the PC, the same memory chips as the PC, and so on. And, MACs have adopted a Unix based OS - which is basically a custom version of Unix / Linux - something that has been running happily on PCs for decades. MAC users now have a command line - which they claimed was another of "their" innovations - but PC's have had a command line since day 1. About the only remaining thing differentiating recent MACs from PCs are the MAC's IBM PowerPC CPU. Oh yes, that, and the fact that Apple only has 2.3% market-share, versus the PC's 97.7%. LOL !! ;) However, I found out a few minutes ago that the MAC looks set to take the final step and become a fully fledged PC by switching to an Intel CPU :
So, perhaps soon, all you will be able to buy is a PC with an Intel CPU running some flavour of either Windows or Unix (e.g. Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS/X / Tiger, or whatever). Frankly, I don't particularly care which OS I use - Windows or some Unix variant - as long as it is extremely stable, user friendly, allows me to turn off all of the graphical bells and whistles crap, and does what I want how I want. The PC has finally killed the MAC as a "different" hardware platform. However, this is hardly suprising. Like all previous "battles", the outcome was inevitable from the start and the PC won in the long run - just like it did with the :
All were swept aside by the unstoppable and unbeatable PC. Long live the PC - the undisputed king of all prior computers and consoles. The sad thing is that I'm not sure how I feel about all this. I'm certainly not "joyous". For a start, it was kinda nice having the PC Vs MAC rivalry - and I've got quite accustomed to it over the past 20 years. It was also nice knowing that those unwashed, angry, religious war, fanatical, hysterical, over-emotional MAC users were "over there" and away from me and my beloved PCs. And I'm already feelin' kinda dirty - all of those unwashed MAC users will soon be "over here" and using and supporting the PC and beating their little hairless chests in religious battles against who knows what ... Actually, that's a good point. What will they find to fight against now ?? What will they hysterically attack now ?? What FUD from Apple's marketting machine will these ex-MACers blindly swallow and fight against now ?? Hmmm, maybe it's time I found another machine. Anyone have a spare NeXT ? ;) ;) As J. Eric Smith of Geek.Com said earlier today :
Why not indeed Eric - I couldn't have said it better myself. ;) Anyway, you can read more about this here :
Central Queensland University
are holding the 3rd annual
CQ Junior Robotics Competition
on 7-Aug-2005.
Students from high schools in the surrounding region - usually within a radius of about 400 Km -
will enter robots that compete in the three main events : Robot Soccer, Dance, and
Rescue (aka "Follow the Trail"). It's a great event, and the young people who enter
really get a lot out of it and have a lot of fun.
As usual, I will be helping out at the competition, refereeing the Robot Soccer, etc.
Don't just take my word for it, my Robot Simulator is also recommended by CQ Junior Robotics - see the Robot Simulator link on the competition's main page.
Rob Hubbard's name should be recognized by almost everyone who played computer games on the
Commodore 64, Atari ST, Amstrad, Amiga or (to a lesser extent) the PC.
Rob composed and created the music for 100's of games during the period from 1985 to 1997. One of my favourite pieces of computer music of all time is the music from ZOIDs - an old Commodore 64 game. (Click here to download / play ZOIDs.MID). However, after almost a decade of silence, Rob is returning to composing and creating computer game music and (of all things) mobile phone ring-tones. You can read more about this here : You can read more about Rob Hubbard's here :
At the
Classic Gaming Expo UK
on 13-Aug-2005 you will be able to play :
and, I have just read that you will also be able to play all 68 of the Retro Remakes One Switch Competition entries, which includes the one switch version of my Computer Space Simulator. So, our One-Switch games will be featured at a prestigious, international gaming event. Pretty amazing news !! ;) Update: Fixed the date fo CGE-UK - it is on the 13-Aug-2005.
I've only just received an email about this, but apparently some sort of International Pun Contest late last year had these winning entries : I have searched quite a bit with Google , but have not been able to find the original source of the contest or verify the contest or check out any other entries yet. If anyone can shed more light on any of this, please Email me.
I received a copy of this software when it was released and I enjoyed exploring and racing solar cars. The software was truly innovative for its time, and you could race solar cars, design and build your own solar cars (from a limited set of options), and test them out on test tracks, etc. No other software since has allowed you to do anything like this with solar cars. However, I always wondered why they released it for the Apple ][ (a fiesty little machine that was way past it's use by date by then, but still refused to die despite Apple Inc's best efforts to kill it off). At that time, they could have made an infinitely better / sexier / more user-friendly version for the PC or MAC. Somewhere in the intervening years, I lost or loaned my Sunraycer disks to somebody.
In Feb, 2005, I stopped off in Hawaii on a round the world trip to visit Mike Ching (from Kula Software - http://www.angelfire.com/hi/kulasoft/ ) specially to pick up the only copy of the working disks that I had been able to find after years of posting messages on the comp.emulators.apple2 and comp.sys.apple2 newsgroups. I also spent a few hours trying to help Mike get his Apple <-> PC transfers setup and working, but something fishy was going on, and ADT wasn't playing ball at all with his setup. When I got back home to Australia following this trip, I went to backup and trasnfer the disks and found that my Apple ][c no longer worked. After several months of trying to fix it - reseating all of the socketable chips, replacing the Monitor BIOS with the self-test version (thanks to David Wilson of Wollongong, Australia), etc, etc - I still did not have a working Apple ][, so I could not investigate or transfer the working SunRaycer disks.
Mike tried various methods to transfer the SunRaycer disks but the resulting disk images would NOT work under emulation on the PC. As an experiment, he transferred working Sunraycer disks over to the PC as DSK (not NIB via SST !!) and then back again to the Apple ][ as DSK, and they booted fine on the Apple ][, but still would NOT work under any of the Apple ][ emulators out there (AppleWin, Apple PC, Apple OASIS, MESS, etc, etc) on the PC. So, the disks must be using some sneaky or undocumented feature at boot. There were 2 ways to fix this - fix the disk images or ammend the emulators to support whatever is happening. Seeing it is only 2 disks in this boat so far, I reckoned that fixing the disks may be the easiest / fastest way forward. The emulators could wait until later. The first step was to find what was going on. So, I posted a request for help on comp.emulators.apple2 , and Thomas Lai stepped forward to check out the disks and see if he could fix them. I emailed them to him that night.
So, now we know what is wrong. If the emulator authors want to think about adding support for this, then that would be terrific as well. The current - unmodified - Sunraycer disk images on Asimov might then work / be OK. These fixed / working images of all 3 Sunraycer disks have now been uploaded to the central repository for all Apple ][ software ftp.apple.asimov.net.
Special thanks to :for their help with this !! Thanks guys - it has been a pleasure working with you and you have helped save more ancient software from oblivion.
Downloads :
Here's quite a funny article about Evolution Vs Creationism by the Canadian Cynic. Well worth the read !! ;) LOL !! ;)
Within a few days of Microsoft releasing the X-Box 360 Specs, Sony has released the Playstation 3 Specs. Both are very impressive - featuring powerful processors, massive RAM, powerful graphics and sound processors. The age of super consoles is dawning ... And, it's going to be a vicious battle between Microsoft and Sony - and that should be great for the consumer - especially at X-Mas ... For the first time in years, I am seriously tempted to buy one of these babies when they are released later this year - or next year, because we will probably have to wait again in Australia. :( It will sure be interesting to see the games line-up for each console. You can read more about these here :
Holy mackrel - yet another new program !!! That's 5 brand new programs released so far in May, 2005. Birthday and Event Reminder allows you to easily keep track of birthdays, anniversaries, school reunions, and other important annual events. A range of functionality is provided with the program to help you add, update, change, or delete events, and then report on the events occuring within a specified number of days. You can copy and paste this report into emails or print it. This program should be very useful for helping you keep forwarned of all important dates, so that you give yourself plenty of time to organise and prepare for birthdays, anniversaries, and so on. Import functionality is also provided so that you can import / load data from other date / event reminder programs directly into Birthday and Event Reminder without having to re-type anything. Now, there is NO EXCUSE for forgetting or leaving things until the last minute !!! ;) Special thanks to Egil L for suggesting / requesting this program. Egil has received a free registration to this program and will receive a share of the profits if the program sells like hot cakes. This is my 85th program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (53 Shareware + 29 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
Student Results Merger is a program to help you handle / merge / process student results. While the program was developed for the purpose of processing student results, it could also be used to process cycling race, horse race, swimming race, or keeping track of workers or volunteers, and/or various other results / details. This program comes with full on-line help and a step-by-step user guide with screen shots. This is my 84th program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (53 Shareware + 28 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
A few days ago, I was told by someone - let's call her Miss Pleasant - which is really quite funny, because she was anything but pleasant and, as it turned out, she did in fact live in Pleasant Street. Anyway, Miss Pleasant told me that it was perfectly OK for her or anyone else to use cracked / pirated versions of my software because some of it hasn't been updated since November 2002, and it should therefore be declared "unsupported" and "abandonware". Well, little Miss Pleasant, let's step into the real world for a second and review the facts :
And, I've emailed Fever at Discreet Logistics, Kevin at Retro Blast and, of course, Kevin at Computer Space Fan (Kevin's advice was invaluable during the development of the simulator). And, I've also entered the simulator in the Retro Remakes / One Switch game programming competition : So, that should hopefully spread the word about the simulator. :)
Like the vast majority of my software, Computer Space Simulator is for Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, or later. The game play in Computer Space consists of you controlling a Rocket and attacking and avoiding the computer controlled enemy Saucers that are trying to shoot you or collide with you. You have an infinite number of lives, but each game has a set time limit. The object of the game is to have a higher score than the enemy at the end of the time limit. This simulator supports the following modes of operation : A multitude of game settings and options are provided, so you can create your own variations of the game and customise things to any required level of difficulty. You can also share your game variations with friends via the Load / Save settings buttons and functionality provided with the simulator. At any time you can restore the correct / factory default settings via the "Restore" button. See the On-Line help for further details. I've entered a special One Button / One Switch version in the Retro-Remakes One Click programming competition - mentioned on 10-May-2005 below. You can download the One Click version here. I'll let you know how the competition goes !! Wish me luck ! ;) Special thanks to Kevin at Computer Space Fan for all of his advice, testing, feedback, checking, support, and encouragement during the development of this simulator. Oh, one more thing, make sure you visit Kevin's Computer Space Fan web site for a wealth of information, pictures, videos, sights, sounds, history, trivia, and more about Computer Space. This is my 83nd program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (52 Shareware + 28 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
Sorry, errrmm, did I say yacht ?? Well, it's more like a cruise liner : Pretty awesome, I must say !! Anyway, you can read more about it here :
Here's an interesting idea ... With games becomming ever so complex and requiring even more buttons, keys, etc, it is quite nice and refreshing to see that there is a push to make games as simple to control / play as possible - requiring just a single key to start and play a game. Not only that, but Retro-Remakes are holding a competition for programmers around the world to enter their own home-brew one-switch games.
I'm going to enter a one switch version of a very famous game - more about this very soon !! ;)
The competition closing date is: 11:59pm on the 11th May, 2005 (UK Time, GTM+0). So, if you want to get an entry in, get coding !! Anyway, you can read more about it here :
Robot Simulator
and another program of mine,
Solar System Simulator
, were
This is my 82nd program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (52 Shareware + 27 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
Font Reviewer allows you to view all fonts installed on your computer and see any text you like written in any or all of the fonts that you select. Font Reviewer was developed to make selecting the best font for the job as simple, fast, easy, and painless as possible. This is my 81st program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (51 Shareware + 27 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
However, I thought I would display them here as well, as they provide another demonstration of what you can do with Mosaic Maker Extractor.
These mosaics were created with my Mosaic Maker Extractor program.
Mosaic Maker Extractor enables you to create mosaics or pull them apart again into their component images (tiles). A mosaic is a big picture made out of lots of little pictures. So, with Mosaic Maker Extractor, you can create your own mosaics or extract the tiles from existing mosaics for further use in other mosaics. This is my 80th program to be hosted on Moose's Software Valley (50 Shareware + 27 Freeware + 3 Apple 2 programs) ! :) Hope you find it useful !
Rest assured though that I have been busy coding as well, and that I do have some exciting new and updated software to release in the coming month or so - including :
One thing that has really gripped my attention recently are Mosaics. i.e. big pictures made out of lots of little pictures. Unfortunately, I don't have an artistic bone in my body - I can't sing, dance, paint, draw, or sculpt so I could never draw / make a mosaic by hand - but the one thing I am really good at (and love doing) is writing software. So, I have been working on some mosaic creation software recently. Below is an early picture based on my pampered pooch, Boogle.
If all goes well, then I will also release this program in the near future. Update: After searching today on the internet, the only existing Mosaic programs I could find were shareware programs costing $29.95 US or more - YIIIKKKESSS !!! ;) ;) However, don't panic, as with all of my shareware, the selling price for my program will be as low as possible - much lower than this competition, and it will contain more features, and have much better user support. Stay tuned ... ;) If anyone wants further information about any of this software, would like to take part in BETA testing, or would like to be notified when I release it, then please Email me and let me know. Oh, yes, one last point, I've also taken down my Christmas decorations ... ;)
"Playing my cards very close to my chest" has certainly been my motto since setting up Moose's Valley in mid-1996. And, as such, extremely few of my real life projects or activities are mentioned on my web pages. However, because of increasingly dire reports from scientists and environmental groups about our environment, I feel that it is time for me to come "out of the closet" over the environment and conservation. Whether or not you personally believe in the Greenhouse Effect or Global Warming or Climate Change - and, yes, there are many people out there who don't - it is impossible to ignore the signs that our planet's environment is under increasing stress.
It is difficult to comprehend the scale of the problems that these things might cause in the future. What we are doing clearly isn't substainable. The way people are clearing trees, the way people are fishing, the way people are living, the way we are using energy and resources, and the rate some people are breeding simply isn't sustainable. We must strive for a sustainable future, otherwise we could have a painful future. As you might expect from someone called "Moose" and whose website is "Moose's Valley", I am seriously and deeply concerned about our environment and conservation, and have been for as long as I can remember. Since mid-1994, my family and I have had a net positive impact on the environment. i.e. I purchased enough tree filled land so that any pollution caused by our activities (e.g. driving the car, using electricity, etc) were more than offset by the photosynthesis and environmental benefits of the trees on this land. However, as the years went by, I have become increasingly worried about our environment, and decided 5+ years ago that I must do more. Today, I own more than 140 acres of land, and some of this is prime land that would have been cleared by developers long ago if I hadn't purchased it. I am also seriously into energy conservation - my house primarily uses low energy light globes, energy efficient appliances, off peak / solar hot water, and I turn appliances off rather than leave them in standby mode. In addition, I car pool to work each day, drive one of the smallest, most economical and most "environmentally friendly" cars available (at the time of purchase - mid-1999), and walk rather than drive whenever possible. And, I recycle what I can - including plastic, metal, aluminium cans, etc. One of my long standing dreams has been to set-up an electricity grid connected clean energy farm. Finally, after more than 3 years of searching for a suitable clean energy farm site, I finally found and purchased a near-perfect 100 acre site in May, 2004 with the sole aim of setting up my own grid connected clean energy farm. This property satisfied all 19 of my criteria for a clean energy farm site. In early June 2004, I organised and conducted a community meeting of the 30 closest neighbouring properties to try and get people interested in helping the environment and taking part in projects for the generation of renewable energy. I was hoping to turn the local area into the Clean Energy Capital of Central Queensland, Australia. At this meeting, I discussed the pros and cons and details of more than a dozen forms of clean, renewable electricity generation, and emphasised that I was mostly interested in those that had the lowest possible risks to bats, birds and animals, and presented the lowest possible noise and visual impacts. Sadly, the community response from this meeting was very disappointing. Property owners / residents from only 4 out of the 30 properties invited turned up, and all of these were (at best) very negative about the whole "clean energy farm" idea. They claimed that they were all for saving the environment, but they didn't want anything in or near their back yards. Good old NIMBY syndrome (Not in My Back Yard) had raised it's ugly head. One guy, who was particularly ignorant, nasty and spoiling for a fight at this meeting, said that if I even put one solar panel on my barn's roof, then he would go to the council and put in complaints about me "industrialising the countryside". Such is life - sadly, people like this do exist on our planet ... Since December 2003, I have been heavily researching all known types of clean, renewable energy, and I've been keeping my eye on recent developments in dozens of areas and countries. The biggest problem with current clean, renewable energy technologies are that they aren't cheap to implement or install. If they were, then every man and his dog would have solar cells and mini-wind turbines or whatever on their roofs. Also, so few of |
Or, at least, that was the theory. The reality turned out to be very different ...
Anyway, 85 programs is pretty impressive.
This volume of shareware and freeware software by a single author is (as far as I can tell)
completely unheard of on the internet, and there is a chance that
I might just be the world's most prolific (and also least successful !) shareware / freeware author.
Actually the exact number of visitors as of today is 534,735 visitors, which
consists of 489,951 visitors up until December 10, 2002
and another 44,784 since December 11, 2002 = 534,735 visitors -
and that is just on my main Index page,
which many visitors bypass as a result of clicking on links in search engines.
to my 
Apart from discussing the topic, this topic also provided links to two truly inspired and hilarious new
machinima videos (produced using the
Ever Quest 2 game engine I believe):
SunRaycer is an ancient program for
For the past few years I have been trying to play SunRaycer again under
emulation on my PC. However, NONE of the disk images on
In the meantime, back in Hawaii, Mike Ching was having problems setting up
ADT on his Apple ][, so I sent him over my Apple ][ floppy disk containing
ADT, SST, Copy ][+, DDD, etc. i.e. everything needed to transfer disk
images between the Apple ][ and the PC. The disk image for this disk has
been available on
The next morning, Thomas forwarded me working Sunraycer disks. According
to Thomas :
to my 
Robot Simulator allows you to simulate and control
your own virtual robot(s) on screen - aka Leggo
Mind Storms robots, but without the flat batteries
or the other hassles.
By using a simple command language (called RoboSlang),
you can control your virtual robots on screen, to make
them move around, dance, follow lines, and explore
their virtual world.
This program has been in "on again / off again" development for over
12 months now, and I have put an enormous amount of effort into this program.
demonstrated and show cased on a big projection screen
before current and prospective students, staff, and the general public all day
during
Included with the program (after installation) are sample scripts, a
sample robot, a selection of background images, a full on-line help, and
a RoboSlang script reference manual with loads of examples.
The TRIAL version of the program is fully functional with the exception that you cannot change robots.
