I have been looking for a dot matrix printer for many years and have not been able to find one. I would even like to have an old one with a parallel interface and at least the ability to print generic text. But none were available, and when they were, they were incredibly expensive, or the seller was unable to ship them.
And then my friend Tom texted me that he had an opportunity to get one for me. It was extremely cheap and relatively modern. Olivetti PR2 PLUS. He also warned me that there were some problems with the drivers, so I took up the challenge and today it arrived.
It was well packed, as usual when I get something for Tom, but even so, the hardware came a bit disassembled. I just made a few small fixings, put the tape holder back in place, clicked some covers back on and was ready to go.
So I went down to the basement to get some cables. I found both power and USB-B cables in white to match the printer and took them home. Plugged everything in and switched the printer on. And, ...
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I received 10 boxes of EPROMS, each containing 11 of them. They were supposed to be thrown away, but I thought it was a shame to lose them. So I took them and I have to store them somewhere and wait for some enthusiast who needs them to give them to him.
I have absolutely no use for them as I got rid of all my old PMD85 and SAPI computers due to lack of spare EPROMs. As usual, you can have the machine with the missing parts, or the missing parts... never both.
So if you need some 128kB EPROMS, feel free to contact me. I do not know what to do with them, but I do not want to throw them away.
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Yesterday I received a large box full of old CDs. Some operating systems, devkits, drivers etc. It came from some company's warehouse. And it is full of interesting stuff. I just had a quick look and discovered some interesting ones.
Perhaps the most interesting I have found so far is Compaq TRU64 UNIX. It is a pack of 5 CDs, and after some quick research I found that similar boxes of this system are selling on eBay for between $450 - $600. So I would definitely have to do some more searching if it is really that rare.
I was also told that there was a developer preview version of some Windows server (maybe 2008?) and other stuff in the box, so I will have to go through it later and find out what I have.
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According to my git history, it was a few months ago that I added the April Fool's page to my website hryprodva.cz. It was a day when I discovered some "interesting" filters in CSS, which are able to invert colours in whole document, just in one line of code. So I created a CSS class for HTML document, which applies this CSS rule, and set my program to assign this class to all main pages. I tested it with the current date, it worked, so I set the 1st of April as the day when the class would be applied to the page, committed to master and after some time I forgot about it.
So today it was a bit of a surprise for me too, when I saw the inverted colours on the main page. However, nobody complained about the "broken" design. So I wonder if everyone counts it as the first of April, or if all my players are colour blind and do not care. We shall see, there is still time until midnight when the filter disappears.
However... I am still thinking about what can be usefull on this CSS property, instead of april fool. Still cannot find a ...
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Buggy mouse wheels are really weird. I think all we know is when you scroll down and the document jumps one step down, two steps up. It can get really annoying.
But the weird thing is that sometimes it is just a matter of cleaning. You remove a couple of screws, open the mouse, blow on the wheel a couple of times and put it back together again. But sometimes this procedure really does not change anything. And then I have absolutely no idea what is happening. And it happens with the optical sensor for the wheel, just like with the mechanical rotating 'counter', and I really am not able to find a way to fix it. So I would appreciate any opinion on what causes this behaviour, because especially with the optical sensor I cannot imagine any material fatigue.
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I have recently found an interesting game - Prince of Prussia.
It is a small project, themed like 8bit Prince of Persia, but with a story like Wolfenstein. Wonderful combination.
Anyway, it is really nice to play and I enjoyed it. The feel of the game is a bit like a turn-based platformer, due to the specific movement of the hero.
The game should have 15 levels, and during the time I played it I went through 4 of them. They consist of level design like the original Prince of Persia, with the jumping, climbing and crawling through spikes, only the enemies are static and you have to sneak up to them and then let your knife do the work.
It is almost a standard platformer, with a little bit of logic, but it is absolutely addictive, and I am going to try to beat the whole game. And you should try it too :)
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My latest idea for a little app that lets you record your important events and then reminds you of special anniversaries. But not just boring annual reminders. It has many different settings as it can handle hundreds of day anniversaries, binary day anniversaries and many more.
It is still in alpha, and I am having some problems with Android security policies, but I am able to store events, even with pictures, and then be notified when an interesting anniversary is coming up. The user can also set which types of anniversaries they want to be notified about.
The design is still a work in progress, but is now quite usable.
If I had a stable version without significant problems and bugs, I would put it on GooglePlay for a symbolic price. Also, there are a couple of testers who are already testing the feel of the app and I am waiting for the feedback for the alpha version.
The working name for the app is Dailies, but I'm not sure it's the best I can come up with, so I'll see.
P.S - yes, I know I have a typo in ...
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I really hate the process of publishing and managing apps on Google Play.
If you are able to fill in dozens of forms and agreements when starting a new app, go through many rounds of updating the forms to meet the guidelines and updating stupid little things in the app to meet the criteria, and feel really good when you finally push the app into production, it does not mean you have won.
Funny is also the "support" and the process of solving the problems with terms and forms. Especially the "appeal process" is a lot of fun.
If you fill in something wrong in one of hundreds of entries on dozens of forms, you get a notice, usually within a week, with some paragraph number and letter that you missed. It does not tell you what is wrong, just that you have not met the requirements. If you have absolutely no idea what is wrong, because it is a generic notice, you try to appeal, asking kindly for help and advice on what should be changed. You will usually hear back within a week or two. It looks like someone "alive" has replied to you, but in fact you get almost ...
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As the project is growing more and more, it is more and more necessary to have semi-public testing environment. Especially with the multiplayer games it is not possible to test them in local environment.
I have a free VPS with enough hardware to do something like this, but it is currently unused.
It is hosted in the ORACLE data centre in Frankfurt. I remember the difficulties, because I have set up my personal website on this kind of VPS. There are a lot of firewall layers and I am not really into networking.
However, I had some time so I decided to do some research and try to run the test environment to be able to offer better, tested services.
I spent five hours getting the web server, mariadb and PHP up and running, setting up symlinked deployment so that I could later create an automated deployment system, and getting the web up and running. After those 5 hours I had a working website with working database connections.
However, the next step is still in progress. It is getting the game server up and running, which is also the most difficult part.
I have managed to set up all the certificates to set up the secure ...
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I tried to turn on my little gem - the N900 - and I was a bit scared. It did not turn on.
So I immediately put the charger in. The indicator light flashed yellow a couple of times and then nothing. So I left the charger plugged in and waited a while. As I look after the batteries in my collection of phones, I was confused as to how this could have happened. I did not find a reason, but the phone was charged in the end, but the battery is weak. Luckily it still works. It does not last as long, but the phone works and is fine.
The phone is still really good, and i am still waiting for some modern phone following this concept, but still nothing came. It is running modified debian, and it is called maemo. Lot of debian packages has been added to repositories for this phone also. So i am able to run htop, aircack-ng (which i have been using really much) or wireshark. The repositories are of course dead, so i am not able to install anything new, but fortunately i have lot of installed apps, games and tools. ...
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