July 3rd, 2010: Week One ends in jubilation...
...and Week Two will surely begin with a hangover. I got up at 6am, fed the cats, and made sure I was wide awake for the Germany - Argentina match live at 8am. The Germans didn't disappoint, beating the Argies handily by a score of 4 - 0!
All the while a thunderstorm was raging over my city... looked as though the power was going to go out, but thankfully it didn't. The storm had passed by the time the match was over, so I used the opportunity to nip out to buy beer for the match between Spain and Paraguay. An interesting match to be sure, I was rooting for Spain but was rather impressed by the Paraguay side... if it weren't for a spot of bad luck they could have been through instead of Spain. Alas, it was not to be, and Spain move on to face Germany on Wednesday.
Tonight I'll be attending a celebratory barbecue with my buddies at a friend's place. We'll probably watch the rebroadcast of the Germany - Argentina match and drink heavily... perfect timing, as tomorrow I'll be pulling apart a certain old computer to see if I can fix it!
July 2nd, 2010: Hot but not-so-bothered!
Man, it's brutally hot and humid here in The 'Peg. Right now, at 8:45pm CST, it is 29°C, with a humidex of 40°C... stifling, to be sure. It's the kind of heat that sucks the life right out of you... and to top it off, I'm out of beer! But, I'm too drained to make the ten minute bike ride to The LC, so I'll make do with Iced Tea.
Suffice it to say, my motivation is rather lacking. That's why I kept a number of "smaller" retro-projects on hand! Today, I installed Kickstart 3.1 ROMs into my Amiga 1200 (aka "Natsumi"), upgraded the OS from Amiga OS 3.0 to Amiga OS 3.1, and reinstalled my TCP/IP stack (Miami). Not having suitable internet software, I downloaded a telnet and FTP client on my PC and put 'em on a 720K floppy in order to transfer them onto Natsumi. Once transferred and installed, I remembered to dig out the disk for my network card drivers and installed those, too. Pretty pointless having the latest and greatest network apps when you haven't installed your network card, eh?
It took a bit of research to get my network card going. I did much of the legwork a couple of weeks ago... when I was unable to locate Natsumi's old PCMCIA network card (probably traded or sold it, knowing me), I decided to try my hand at getting WIFI going. It was easier than I figured... simply download "prism2.device" from the web, and tell Miami to use that as the network card's device driver. It worked on the first try! But that was then, and this is now...
Today, the first thing I did was download a web browser (iBrowse) and WHDLoad, so I could install all my old floppy games to Natsumi's HD.
Neat, eh? OK, I'm limited by Natsumi's 640 x 400 screen, but I can still do what I need to do! Such as, erm, browse the web and download games! (Sharp-eyed viewers will notice the "Urusei Yatsura" logo in the third pic... this capability comes courtesy of the GUI standard for the Amiga: MUI!)
Here's one I'd been meaning to try for a while now:
Yes indeedy, it's an action-arcade game based on long-running Australian soap opera Neighbours. The same soap opera responsible for the rise of Kylie Minogue.
It's a fun little game... sort of the bastard offspring of the arcade hit Paperboy and RC Grand Prix for the Sega Master System. You choose a character and race around Ramsey St, trying to avoid obstacles such as remote control toy cars, open manholes, real cars, old ladies carrying paintings, etc, all while trying to beat the other characters to the finish line.
Naturally, I chose Charlene (played by Kylie Minogue) and had a blast purposely running her into cars and watching her plummet down manholes. It was love... at first sight!
Maaaan, what fun! I'm of the opinion they should make more games based on soap operas, but only, only if they're action games... or first person shooters. General Hospital would never be the same again!
Aaaaaaand, in the spirit of the World Cup, I also downloaded Lothar Matthaüs: Die Interaktive Fußball Simulation... Germany plays Diego Maradona's Argentina side tomorrow, and as I always pull for the Germans (despite being of English and Northern Irish descent) , found it rather fitting.
A decent footy game, but it wasn't nearly as much fun as Neighbours. Something tells me I'll be spending the rest of the evening steering Kylie Minogue into obstacles while laughing maniacally.
So, Natsumi is up and running. Is there anything cooler than a WIFI-enabled Amiga 1200?
Why yes, there is... and you'll see what in a couple of days!
@Tachyon: You're a man after my own heart! I remember espousing such sentiments myself a few years ago, which is how I ended up with a TRS-80 Model 100 as one of my main computers!
July 1st, 2010: Happy Birthday,
Canada!
Not planning to do much today, apart from taking in the Canada Day celebrations here in Winnipeg (with trusty digital camera in tow).
This year's RC should prove to be interesting. My main focus is on creating art, however I have a few hardware projects in mind, as well as a couple of experiments I'd like to try.
Here's a brief rundown of what I'll be up to:
So, erm, not much. Enough to keep me from getting bored, anyway :)
It's back to work tomorrow, then I'm on holidays all next week. So, plenty of time to work on my projects!