X-COM: Terror from the Deep and Family

X-COM: TFTD

I remember this game fondly and with fear at the same time.

I originally bought Terror from the Deep, somewhere around 2000, and by that time and due to my age it was one of the most terrifying games I had played, even after trying my hand at Diablo and coming out alive of that one.

It was always pitch dark, and forget about grues because there were deadlier things underwater like a giant jellyfish, some sort of squid or even a T-Rex!

If you couldn't see you couldn't fire at your enemy and your enemy had night vision so in other words it didn't matter how accurate your soldiers were, if you couldn't see it there was a high chance you were going to die.

Sonic weaponry turned you into a puddle of jelly, yes you heard me right. Screw your lasers and other crap, we got weaponry that'll turn your bones into nothing in a second.

Then the screams... sweet mercyful Lord the screams... even though this was a computer game the screaming was so surreal it made me jump once or twice from my chair as I sometimes had the tendency to use headsets so I wouldn't disturb my parents with the infernal blasting, at least that is how they called it.

How was the game though?

Hard, it was damn hard and I loved it for that. I spent hours playing the game and it took me some time to get used to it and actually get somewhere with it, specially since I wanted to understand how the damn thing actually worked and why some of the research trees died at some point which would be later explained to me as a horrible bug that Microprose would never correct.

A lot of people have complaints about this game because it turned out to be a copy cat of X-COM UFO Defenses but since back then I hadn't had the chance to play it, only seen it once and it was in a floppy, a floppy by the gods a floppy, that would be my first and last contact with the original until somewhere around 2002 or 2003 when I would find the X-COM Collection and play the crap out of it... and Apocalypse.

Being fair to the game it was decent, not the best, but you'd have a good time playing it, unless aliens were hiding in one by one spaces in which case you were screwed trying to find the bastard, and the music added a really nice bit to the game which really immersed you into it.

To close out I have only one more memory to deliver here people, one more painful and aggravating memory that has been hiding deep in my cerebral cortex and just a few days back came to me...

T'LETH.

A fair warning for those who haven't played or never finished any of the X-COM games, there will be spoilers delivered on the next few lines.

If you ever, EVER, made it this far in the game you were either super-gifted or a genious. I am not joking, ask anybody who played TFTD and they will tell you about it, getting past "half" the game was already hard enough with the damn multi-level missions like the ships, the relays, the bases, but T'Leth has this piece of my heart and all of my hatred.

Cydonnia, the last mission of X-COM UFO Defenses, was hard if you weren't properly prepared. It had, if I recall correctly, two levels and in the last one you couldn't save. That wasn't so hard as you had good chances of making it at least with more than half your squad, which was approximately twenty something men, into the second part in which it was balls to the wall to find your target and end the menace.

T'Leth on the other hand was a massacre. Not only would you not make it through the first level with your full squad, that was a fact, but you had to go through three levels to get to Cthu-- I mean the Great Sleeping One and destroy the orbs or whatever the hell they were that kept him alive. Mind you, in the last level you couldn't save, mind you the aliens pounded you worst than if it was 1984, mind you the aliens deliver their best of the best on this one, mind you, YOU ARE GOING TO FAIL AND DIE IN THE END. Don't take the last line personal, your soldiers actually fail to return back alive as the explosion from T'Leth is far too powerful and if you ever played Apocalypse you'll know that the Aliens did somehow manage to win the war as the explosion from the giant underwater city contaminated the surface and destroyed a good part of the ozone layer which provokes the construction of Mega-Cities, as known in Apocalypse, in which you'll play in due time.

And there you have it, a little bit of everything rolled in and delivered to you in a pancake.

If you can buy it then do so, or if not you can try your hand at downloading it from the underdogs site.

Enjoy!

One job done

Indeed, cable disconnected, CMOS battery dead, misconfiguration on the BIOS, bunch of little awkward things going on there.

To prevent any future issues I installed Dropbox, yes I know I posted an article about it saying it's not safe but I had a really short span of time to get it done, and then installed it on a Laptop then synchronized files and like magic it's all there on the "cloud"!

At least it turned out to be easier but still there are pending issues with that PC and I see it returning at least one more time this year...

And I take it back!

Aha!

So I knew that hard drive that was just laying around the case wasn't some kind of adornment. Turns out the PC had Windows 7 installed and not XP, which is what was trying to boot up, so somehow, somewhere along the lines that HDD got disconnected before it reached me.

Point and case here, patient goes back into the table for another operation, a quick and painless one this time around.

That was odd...

Well the patient shows strange behaviours that I thought were related to Windows, in some way it is, but here is what happened.

Windows XP on a SATA HDD won't boot up... Windows Vista on SATA won't boot up... I couldn't install Windows XP on an IDE drive... Debian 6 booted up just fine...

Conclusion?

There's either some incompatibility issue going on or the motherboard has a problem with SATA, period.

The desktop was sadly returned to its owner with no true solution aside from going for Linux or Windows 7, yet again no guarantees on the functionality of Windows 7 though, or backing the information up and sending it over into another PC.

Sad but true, some PC's don't like windows at all!

We got one in the table

And today they brought a computer in showing a fascinating amount of errors.

First off they told me the PC was turning off by itself and this was happening because apparently the power switch cables were broken from the front panel and were short-circuiting, turning the PC off.

That would be the first issue at hand which can be easily solved by soldering the thing back into the front plate although unfortunately I don't have the tools for that but nonetheless I'll find a way.

Next stop is the BIOS. For unknown reasons, at times, the POST won't finish which brings me to believe there could be a bigger issue going on that I'm unaware off and it scares me to think about it because it could mean that the processor could have an issue, like that Coppermine processor that was giving me a headache because it would stop working and the computer would die on me while doing an important operation.

Next visible issue. Error 0x000000B7 on Windows, either this is an issue with a damaged block or there is something that swam into Windows, nested and now it's bugging it. I did run a HDD repair tool that comes with the latest version of Hirens Boot CD, praise be to you oh mighty Hirens that thou hath saveth me a thousandfold times, did finish and said it had repaired the "bad" block and I thought it was all done...

Not the case, it continues to reboot when trying to boot up.

Unfortunately I couldn't do much else to it since I had to go to work but once I'm back in action I'll keep going at it to see what exactly is going on...

Linux Tip: Oracle Virtual Machine

If you're trying out a VM, Virtual Machine, go for Oracle Virtual Machine.

So far the only issue I've ever really had was trying to install Puppy Linux, which is a known issue, and some resolution issues but well that has something to do with the VM Guest Additions, if you don't install it you can get good resolution but the integration won't be available which makes it a little harder to be working around with it.

I take it back on Dropbox!

So it seems my original assumtions were right after all!

Dropbox apparently has been misleading their client base with false advertisement about how Dropbox actually works.

Theoretically what they're saying now is that even though the info is somewhat encrypted, under AES-256, it can still be read by some employees at Dropbox because the keys are stored somewhere in their servers.

If this gets hacked it's all schnapparoni!

More on the links below:
Full Note - Link
FTC Complaint - PDF

Addendum: 3 things we think our PC can do, but it can't

I'll add my part on what Brian said on the previous post.

First off, he's right about computers not been able to think for you, they're handle mathematical operations and are waiting for an input which in turn will transform into an operation the computer can handle to give you the result that, most of the time, you're expecting.

He's also right about cleaning up, most people will never clean their computer and it turns them into a nasty infection hold that could not only affect your computer but also your health. Clean it once in a while and also remember the clean software that you don't use in your computer, defrag it every once in a while and if you feel that ain't cutting it then back everything up and go for a format, which I've always said has to be done approximately every year but I'll speak more about it on another post.

Here's the most important part to me and I'll quote Brian on it "an average user won't need more than 720GB and 4GB RAM on their PC."

This is exactly what I've always told people and that's why I went for Linux. Let us go hyphotetical here for a minute or two.

You got this old junker stored, let us say we're talking about that old PC I've talking about recently, and you suddenly get this crazy idea to get a new computer because this one won't cut it anymore with XP, Vista or 7. Question here is, do you really need a new computer?

What are you doing with it?

The average PC user will only go into his computer to check his e-mail, read the news, check pictures of cats or maybe their grandchildren as cats, make some documents, check Wikipedia or Google for some info you'll need for a work, etc.

These are pretty basic functions and you don't really need the latest and greatest for this task, you don't need a Lenovo W500 for this or the latest Apple product, your old one, if it's not broken, will just work fine people so do yourself a favor and save the planet, save some money on your pocket, because on this time and age we all need it, and you won't need to pay additional money for licenses and whatnot, OK I know most of the planet pirates their stuff but come on people give it a chance.

So in brief, save the planet and save some money to your pocket. Key words. Get that old PC or laptop out of the closet and get it working again, it won't be the latest or greatest, probably won't be pretty, but yet again you're doing a favor to the planet in which you live. It's not that hard to get Linux to work on a computer nowadays and Ubuntu is really friendly on it but I'd recommend going for Xubuntu if you know your PC has been in a cave for the last 10 to 15 years.

3 things we think our PC can do, but it can't

Hello, world! My name is Brian and I'm the new co-writer of this blog, and as my presentation post I'll tell you the 3 most common things we think our PC can do, but really, it can't.

1.- Your PC can't read minds: I know it sounds funny, but it's true, and it's a shame (just wait for it... in 2012). In my few months as a computer science student, I've come across a lot of people that think their computer is going to know exactly what they want, be it by searching something on the internet, or by trying to install some new software. I'm afraid it ain't so. Starting by the fact that it isn't going to start up if you don't "tell it" to do so, your PC becomes completely useless if you don't make it do what you want it to do. So, remember the next time you're googling FUNNY CAT IMAGE, or trying to install the latest anti-virus of your choice, and your PC seems to ask a lot of questions: Don't get mad, it's just trying to make your life easier, and of course, trying to make it easier and more precise for itself.

2.- Your PC can't solve everything: This is where most young people fail (and I include myself by saying so), and because of this, we've gained fame as "technology-whores". We think our PC can do anything in the world: Make our homework, keep our friendships alive, keeping us "in-touch" with the world, make us better persons... oh! And make us lose a few pounds in the process. As awesome as it would be, we're still far from that point, and due to that, every day we're searching for the newest technology, craving for more and more power, more storage, more everything, while in real life, and talking about PC specs', an average user won't need more than 720GB and 4 RAM on their PC. But we seem to forget that most of us are average users, and we strive on the fact of being part of that elite culture we see on adds or on every computer 'zine, we lose a sense of reality and start living off those ridiculous expectations.

3.- Your PC can't clean itself: This is by far the most common mistake we, as users, tend to make, even if it's just for lack of knowledge, or plain laziness, we like to think that our PC is going to grow some magical hands and start scrubbing itself, and in a couple of minutes it'll be good as new. Well, bad news for you Jimbo (sorry, I don't know anybody named Jimbo, don't take it personal), your PC isn't going to do that, and you'll have to clean it by yourself, or by somebody that knows how to do so. It's really simple actually, you'll just have to take a look at a couple of tutorials running around the internet, and with basic cleaning-knowledge, you'll be good to go. And remember, prevention is the best medicine, so if you can do anything, and I mean ANYTHING (starting by moving your case out of that rat-hole where is hidden), then by all means do so.

I hope these 3 points I mention here make you think a little more about your PC, about yourself and about your life around a computer. Don't make your computer your life, make your computer part of your life, and as the most needed tool on today's workspace, it needs to be understood as that: A tool to make our life's easier, but not to the point where we're not going to do anything. Remember, take care of your PC, and your PC will take care of you. Cheers!

The promised picture

Meet oldsnake

This monstrosity above is known as oldsnake. Unintentional pun, I love to play with it... you figure it out.

Regardless, just today when I arrived I decided to put the old motherboard to rest, the one holding the Coppermine processor, and decided to remove it. Once done I remembered that somewhere around my old stuff I had another processor lying around and lo' and behold I found it, tried it out and now we're back in operations with a 500MHz processor and the old motherboard. Believe it or not I can notice a LOT of difference from the AMD K6-2.

Sad as it may be it's a frankie computer and if I can get more juice out of it then so be it.

Fan stops working? No problem just adapt another one!

As ghetto as it gets...

So... Mr. Da Kid has some issues with his video card and noticed the video card was kind of overheating and the PC was going offline. Well turns out the fan on the video card died and he only had a huge fan, but hey it works just fine so a round of applause's for actually getting it to work again!

Me and Bluetooth

Some will actually bash me for saying this but I despise Bluetooth.

I've never liked it, never actually have owned that many things with Bluetooth anyway aside from a headset and a couple of phones here and there.

Last experience I had was back when I was using Windows 7 and it occurred to me to get a Bluetooth dongle for my ear-piece so I could chat while I was playing or writing. Back then it sounded like a cool ideas, which it was actually up until the installation.

Apparently the program that I got back then with the dongle had some sort of data license which only allowed me to do so much with it and I had to pay some such amount of money to use it.

I was not paying a single cent, why?

Because I already bought the damn thing, most phones have it integrated for the love of god, or whatever entity or thing you believe in, why do I need to pay an additional amount of money?

I forgot about it, completely, and it just occurred to me the other day to try it out with Debian thinking, what's the worst that could happen. Worst thing that happened was that it took a bit to sync with my phone and ear-piece but aside from that I had no problem at all and most importantly I didn't pay a single cent for it. Now isn't that great?

I'll personally have to thank the volunteers at Debian for this one and for actually peeking my interest again into Bluetooth technology.

Cheers!

Recommendation of the Week: Dropbox

From way back in the day someone, a real enthusiast of Open-Source software, had recommended that I should try Dropbox for cloud storage and I recall telling him that he was mad as hell if I ever thought of trusting someone with my information.

That was when Dropbox had just recently popped into the market.

Just recently, approximately 4 months ago, I decided to give Dropbox a try and I was surprised to see a 2 GB free option that could literally synchronize with every major OS and Smart Phone on this side of the planet.

The reason I mention this is because back then I was working as an IT Manager at a College and my computer was so resource limited I had to go for Linux, Debian with XFCE as a matter of fact so you can get an idea of how limited I was but putting it in Windows terms let us say that running Windows 2000 was my closest option to a stable and fast OS.

Back then I had this need to have files available on my computer back home, running Windows, and my computer at work, running Linux, and doing so with a USB was becoming a drag since I didn't want to lose important information, which has happened to all of us at some point, so I needed an alternative to this.

And I asked this friend of mine who reminded me Dropbox was an option and I can honestly say that so far it has been the best backup/cloud sharing software I've tried and believe me I've done several like Norton Ghost or Acronis up to Tape Backup, Zip Drive and USB and none had come in as easy as Dropbox.

Literally, just drop it on the folder and it synchronizes and you're done. It will appear on other computers you add to synchronization.

Best of this is that you get an additional 250MB when you finish doing the introduction steps and an additional 250MB for every person you invite that finishes doing their introduction to Dropbox.

So there I had it, Windows PC, Linux PC and my Blackberry, I had the files even on the go!

Only issue I ever had was trying to compile from source on Debian 5 but as soon as Debian 6 came to play, a month later after I began to use Linux as matter of fact, I just needed to install two more packages and I was ready to run the thing or even better, if you're running a console only box then you can use the script that they provide you, add it to the startup and as soon as you confirm you want to synchronize the PC it will do so. Neat!

Give it a try, you won't be dissapointed!

The Browser Wars

It is interesting to know that even though it's been publicized and claimed that Firefox/Chrome are gaining, or have gained for that matter, a lot of market over Internet Explorer, is that actually true or just some myth made up by the competition?

Let us see what the visitors stats of a sister blog say about this.

I'll post some info from the stats:

Last Month Operating System views:

2,255 from Windows OS, any kind of Windows OS, which represented 83% of the viewers

328 from Macintosh which represented 12%

5% was just a bunch of random OS ranging from Linux/Unix to iPhones, Blackberries and Symbian based phones.

There is no surprise there as we all know that Microsoft is the owner of the market and that ain't changing anytime soon from what we can see, unless cloud computing takes on sooner than expected if ever.

Now, here comes the important part.

Pageview by browser:

930 views came from IE which represent a 34%

898 from Firefox which represent a 33%

490 from Chrome which represent 18%

304 from Safari which represent 11%

54 from Opera which represented 2%

And the rest are the rest.

From this we can see that even though IE is still reigning it is no longer doing so supreme in the field. Firefox is still the better choice for Windows users, from what we can understand from the stats, and Chrome is a little way too behind the competition in third place but I'll put my money over the latter since I trust Google more than Microsoft.

Funny that is...

So I'm playing around with oldsnake, went with that name because the thing somehow reminded of the character, and a couple of things have happened since last time I posted.

Turns out some programs won't run on the AMD Processors and this is due to the fact that there's some support issues here and there for the older versions. To me that is totally reasonable as a matter of fact and yet again it adds more flavor to the battle ahead.

So far I've tested out the little thing and I'm surprised to see that it has managed to stand a bit of heavy work in a reasonable amount of time. Installing packages wasn't a bliss but it went way better than expected.

Also I found, by mistake, my internal ZIP-drive and have been playing around with it for old sakes times... feels funny to be using it since I never had a chance to own one back when the whole thing was considered to be the end of floppies and the beginning of faster and better portable media. As we now know that never happened and ZIP drives died with the 90's.

As a final note Apache with PHP and MySQL are now installed and running just fine, pending is the NoIP software and off we go with a test environment!

We got a live one!

I like to play with old hardware and I'm talking dirty here, I'm talking old school.

For some time I had this Coppermine that was giving me issues due to the fact that the thing fried at some point, incredibly the bastard kept on working.

Then Mr. Da Kid was ever so kind to provide me with the old brain and heart of Lavos, now Neo Lavos, which was a tiny Celeron Mendocino. Unfortunately I like to play around with things way too much and in between fighting to release the tiny thing from the socket and trying to put in a new one, which wasn't compatible by the way, I broke the socket bed... again don't ask me how it broke in two but it happened.

This left me without a computer to do my evil deeds, and I do like to make evil deeds with old hardware because it feels like you're making an effort to make the thing work and it becomes a challenge which ultimately leads to satisfaction, but let us forget about masturbatory geek fantasies and let us go back to square one.

I'm without a test computer... until today.

Back on friday I got around to do some stuff and one of them was getting a Socket 775 MOBO for a desktop I'm building for myself and I was also looking for a test environment which could be anything from Pentium 3 to Pentium-Not, AKA 386/486 land, but I hadn't had much luck, with either, until someone pointed out an old swap meet that handles that kind of stuff.

In I go and five minutes later and some bargaining I got this tiny, tiny for the 90's, ATX Motherboard with what I was told was a Pentium II processor of unidentified source since the BIOS lacks any useful information.

Not only did I have to rebuild the desktop from scratch, since I had to take everything off including the power supply unit, I had to reset the CMOS to get video working since it simply wouldn't bulge. Once finished it was the turn of Debian 6 to do its magic which took some noble two hours to fully install, fully means installing Base and SSH.

My biggest surprise was getting to know what kind of processor I was running on this little beast. Turns out the thing is running with an AMD K6-2 3D Now! processor which is fine with me as I had the chance to work with a K6 and many members of the AMD family many, many, years ago and I honestly can't complain.

This is how the thing ended up looking like (I'll take a screenshot later of how that looks inside):
1 x 128MB PC 133 RAM stick.
10 GB Seagate HDD (Won't boot the 40GB which leads me to believe this motherboard has issues going in for the big guys)
CD-RW/DVD-ROM (Which I had given up for dead but apparently works just fine!)
Floppy and Zip Drives (Floppy is going straight into MOBO and Zip Drive is through USB since I lost my internal 100-Zip Drive)
AMD K6-2 3D Now! Processor @ 350 Mhz
PSU @ 300 watts

Great projects are coming for this little one but that is for another time.
-Vico