I've owned my beautiful PSP now for one month, one week, and five days. I absolutely love it. My game library consists presently of DarkStalkers Chronicles: The Tower of Chaos, Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee, Lumines, Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade, and Wipeout Pure.
Check out the new PSP page for detailed reviews.
The Screensavers is a California, USA based computing/tech magazine news television program.
The day I discovered The Screensavers was one of the best days of my life. Suddenly there were these two people on my television screen talking about the pro's and con's of the newest hardware and software and protocols; guiding users with well educated opinions about software tools, hardware, and operating systems; revealing overlooked functionality of so many common applications; and answering chat/email/phone questions with relentlessly objective response.
I felt like I was watching The Week in Computing all over again, but made for the present day. When I was tuning in, the hosts of the show were Patrick Norton and Leo LaPorte. After watching the program several times, I decided to think of them as two poles: Patrick seemed the hardware afficianado while Leo seemed to be the software guy. And if there were a greater issue under discussion--a la IPv4 vs IPv6--they both were able to contribute thought provoking insights.
With the advent of the G4 TechTv merger(? did someone buy someone else? not sure,) The Screensavers seems to have taken a turn for sensationalism vs informatism. It seems even young anchor Kevin Rose--who I was not readily accepting of when he replace Leo--has even lost his voice. Kevin proved himself to me in the pre-G4 days (perhaps because he was allowed a forum in which to do so) and as much as I felt that perhaps the producers of the show cast him soley to appeal to a younger audience, his merit became apparent. At first I wanted him to stop interrupting Patrick--who had dispensed such useful knowledge. But when I gave myself up to really listening to him I realised how stubborn I'd been. As young as he was, it became more and more apparent--with my willingness to listen--that this Kevin Rose was really invested.
Having to lose Leo and watch him conduct televised workshops for absolute newbie was a bit of a blow. I would sometimes watch him host Call for Help (after his screensavers departure) and wonder if he wasn't just the least bit unsatisfied with it all.
Soon afrer resigning myself to all that was lost from Leo's departure, Techtv became G4Techtv. The Screensavers were immediately on the move to a new broadcasting location, aquired a larger studio audience, and seemed to focus their content more on the sensational. In my humble opinion, The Screensavers seems now to have shifted its content to suit the far less computer savy; a deep contrast to what I'd found so appealing in its prior format.
The Screensavers, in my opinion, was once a show rich with information beyond the newest DVD releases, beyond video games, and beyond a few cosmetic windows apps. I'm sorry to see such a wonderful and unique source of daily information fall short of itself.
The fact that this page has been dormant for so long exemplifies three things (don't they always come in threes?):
One: I'm no longer unemployed.
Two: I've been spending my time delving into different programming languages such as assembly (whose surreptitious beauty rivals that of the Lady in the Lake), Sun's Java, and pushing on ahead with C++. I've also given a good amount of time to continuing my Japanese language studies. (If you'd like something translated--not full web pages please: try using www.rikai.com for that--please contact me via the sidepanel's option. I can't promise anything, but I enjoy experience; I'll be sure to get back to you in a couple of weeks--max--about it.)
Three: My clock speed is out of date. I need an upgrade!!!
I'm writing this primarily because when I did a web search on this topic I didn't find anything that answered my questions. Hopefully this will prove useful to someone in a similar predicament.
My thought was to create an array of pointers to a structure type without predefining the size of the array; thereby reducing memory overhead. Therefore, I couldn't reconcile myself to something like:
Or even:
It turns out that the answer was right in front of me. (Let me assert at this time that I've never had formal schooling for c programming; I've done things on a learn-as-you-need-it basis.) So it turns out that what I needed to do was as follows:
Good luck.
I finally got my slackware box to play MIDI files! For those of you who've been doing this since the dawn of time, I suppose this is hardly newsworthy; but I had a considerable amount of trouble of it and I found--on various boards, in various forums--that this seemed to be a common problem. But alas, problem solved; and I didn't even have to recompile my kernel to do it.
I'd been trying to figure this out (off and on) for months. My old RedHat 7.2 played MIDIs just fine so I knew it wasn't a hardware issue. So I grabbed a spare drive and did an install of the old RH to check out its config files, do an lsmod, and peek at some of the information on the /proc fs. What was funny was that it seemed to be no different from my current setup under slack: it used the emu10k1.o and soundcore.o modules, no other sound modules were loaded while it was playing a midi file, and the info in /proc was identical.
Well, after recompiling my kernel eight or nine times on behalf of getting MIDI files to play, I'd failed to notice the thing that was right in front of me all along. I played MIDIs with TiMidity++ under RedHat all along. It wasn't a hardware issue: it was just software.
I actually had tried installing TiMidity++ from source before this, but somehow I missed the all important timidity-instruments* package. I soon found out that necessary config files--among other things--were missing. After installing the instruments package all is well.
Here's the wrap up: the last time I looked at the opensource emu10k1 site I noticed that MIDI synth was not on the list of supported features for the SBLive. It turned out that simply by using TiMidity++ I can play MIDIs because it is a standalone MIDI to WAV converter and player (and incedentally with a considerable amout of options.) All I did to get my slackware box to play MIDI music files was to install TiMidity++-x.x.x and TiMidity++-instruments-x.x.x and that was it!
I hope this may be some help to someone who's going through a similar experience someday.
I really have to say thanks to all the people who have contributed to the opensource community. Finally, using my computer is the satisfying experience it should be. I had tried to make the jump to Linux a few years ago and while I was drawn by some features, the learning curve seemed to steep. I wound up crawling back to familiar, albeit decidedly inferior devices. After getting a taste of things like the enlightenment window manager, gcc and other development tools, and a robust command line, my disappointment grew. The second return to Linux--and thus the third time--was the charm.
A few of my friends got my interest when they pointed out to me that I didn't have to limit my programs to a 640k memory size. Further, they told me how nice it is to have a system, that if properly set up and maintained, almost never crashes. And wouldn't it be great to still have some control if your gui session bites the dust? All these things and more opened my eyes to this smart way of doing things that I had little idea existed for so long.
I was initiated into Linux with slackware 3.2.2 (I could be wrong on the version--I'm a little hazy on that.) My friends showed me the ropes: mounting filesystems, getting system information, the man pages, and the like. I don't think I ever made it to running X--I spent most of my time browsing the filesystem and reading. I ended up using a dual boot strategy that let me use my other OS for productivity while I explored this new, strange, enigma my friends had bestowed upon me. Unfortunately, my interest dwindled with the other system being my primary platform for productivity and I soon left slackware behind. Little did I know then that it would be coming back for me.
These same god friends, upon noticing I'd aborted Linux, decided then to shwo me Mandrake Linux. This worked out pretty well as I was able to have the productivity and a stable environment which was easily customizeable. It took much longer this time, but I eventually gave in again when it became time to install new software. I was in a hurry. I read things too quickly. I undermined my own best interests. I returned to the lesser OS.
About half of a year later I Purchased RedHat 7.2 bundled with a Weekend Crash Course. I found this very helpful and a great confidence booster. I ran that system for quite a long time. It was only after finding it slow and polluted with things I didn't seem to know that I finally remembered slackware. I have been running slackware ever since then. I have learned a lot about the value of reading reading reading reading and yet more reading--and not necessarily doing.
I originally set out to thank the opensource community, but I got a little reminiscent. However, let me wrap this up by sending a big thank you to all the people who make this possible: all the people out there writing software that's free and doesn't expire in thirty days, all the people who responded to my posts, and all the people who still appreciate having a robust CLI. Thank you all for giving me the opportunity to make my computing experience more satisfying than point and click.