Author: Tony

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Watch out for the DeLorean

This has got to be one of the most interesting stories I’ve read in a long time…

A man started trading stocks two weeks ago with $800. His portfolio is now worth $350 million. Of course, he was promptly arrested for insider trading. When the authorities questioned him, he gave a four-hour confession.

He claims that he is a time traveler from the year 2256 who came back to get rich off the stock market. All he wants is to return to his own time. He will not give the location of his time machine or discuss how it works, but he has offered to provide “historical facts” such as the location of Osama bin Laden and a cure for AIDS if they will let him go.

The really interesting part is there is no record of this guy anywhere before December 2002.

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New (Old) Screenshots

I’ve updated my projects page with some screenshots from two of the first games I ever tried to write. I never got around to finding an old computer with DOS, so I used DOSemu on Linux to run these programs. Keep in mind these were written in 1993 while Tony Foster and I were still in high school.

 

I’m sure somebody will get a kick out of these…

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April Fools

April Fools day is always interesting for someone like me. Since I get most of my news online, I spent a lot of yesterday wondering if what I was reading was true or not.

Some of the funniest things I saw all day were at ThinkGeek.com. I’ll bet they got lots of orders on the Shrinter (combination shredder / printer) and the Executive Atom Collection (one atom of each elemenent).

For more funny April Fools stuff, check out the Museum of Hoaxes Top 100 list.

This last story isn’t a hoax, but it is a little funny – . According to a study, three-fourths of the security experts at major companies do not believe Microsoft’s products are secure.

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Wow

RedHat 9 installed perfectly. This is very nice. Also, the nVidia drivers are now easier to install on Linux than they are on Windows. I didn’t even have to reboot. If you’re into Linux, you should check out the new RedHat.

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Linux News

Today’s a great day for Linux users. RedHat 9 is available for download, and nVidia has just released updated video drivers.

I downloaded everything today at work, so now it’s time to back-up and install. I’ll post again when I’m done.

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It’s almost over

We worked on another group project today in my Systems Analysis class. We spent about 30 minutes in groups working on a database schema, then in the last part of class he puts each group’s work up on the overhead and we all critique it.

Upon seeing part of my schema, the professor said: “If you do this on the test you will get a zero.” That’s his way of saying “Don’t do this.”

I am so glad this semester is almost over….

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Artist Needed

I’ve added a new game to my projects page, For now I’m calling it Tony’s Blocks. It’s a falling block game similar to tetris. Here’s a shot of it in action:

There are lots of websites selling independent games these days. Most are small puzzle-type games, not much more complicated than this one. Here are some of those sites:

GameHouse
Garage Games
Pyrogon
RealOne Arcade

The point of all this is, I have the programming skills to make a game that would sell on sites like these, but I need art to make a great looking game. I would love to find someone looking to spend a few evenings a week drawing simple 2D graphics. So, if you’re an artist looking to get involved with something like this, e-mail me or comment below.

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Home Screenshot

Here’s the screenshot of my home computer. This shot is RedHat Linux with GNOME 2.0. I’m playing Final Fantasy 3 using ZSNES, while watching the second short film from the Animatrix. If you’re into anime and you haven’t watched any of the Animatrix yet, you should really check it out.

Naysayers often claim that there aren’t any games or multimedia applications for Linux, so I thought I’d dispel that myth.

Now I’m off to write a paper – spring break is over so I’m back in class next week.

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Goodbye Windows?

It finally happened. The Beta version of NeverWinter Nights has finally been released for Linux.

I’ve been using Linux off-and-on for a long time now – since the days of RedHat 5.2. Recently there have been huge improvements in Linux on the desktop. I really like the GNOME desktop environment. OpenOffice.org does everything I need as far as word processing and spreadsheets. Everyone knows Mozilla is the best web browser ever. Not to mention that I’m much more productive on Linux as a programmer.

So the question is why wasn’t I using LInux all the time. There were two things stopping me – Microsoft Money and games. I’ve recently started playing around with GNUCash, and it really has the potential to replace Microsoft Money for my needs. Now that NeverWinter Nights is available for Linux, I really don’t have any more excuses.

I’m writing this post from Linux (RedHat 8.0 that has been heavily customized), and I plan on continuing to run Linux until I find a compelling reason to go back to Windows. I’ll post some screenshots of Linux once I finish downloading NeverWinter Nights, so people who aren’t familiar with it can see what free software is capable of…