Underwhelmed

 It was supposed to be great. It was supposed to be awesome. But reality isn't even close. 

SSDD, I'll just keep doing what I do and being super awesome at it. 

Ancient Backup Files Part 3

If you look back, you'll see I've mentioned some backup files that I've had laying around for a long time.  I had taken some backups of my Dos / Windows hard drives circa 1995 to tape, then DD'd the tapes to a Linux box circa 2002 and just grabbed the files.  I can't remember what software I used to create the backups, but I always assumed it was Norton Desktop.

Yesterday while I was wandering the internet I came across a mention of Central Point Backup.  I seem to recall having that at one point too so maybe that is what I used.

I did find a github project that talks about that format here https://github.com/RetroReversing/retroReversing/blob/master/tools/CentralPointBackupVisualizer.html#L31 and at some point I'll compare my notes with what that project says.  I just wanted to record it here so I wouldn't lose it :)

Someday I hope to create a program to read the files and extract the files in them to see if there is anything of importance in there (BBS System files I hope!).

Berkeley System's After Dark

Years ago, in the Windows 3.1 & 95 era there was a company called Berkeley Systems that had a screen saver.  Their most famous one was the Flying Toasters.  I personally liked the Looney Tune ones.  I had a few of their separate packages, Star Trek TNG, Simpsons, Games and others that I can't remember.

I did create a couple of AD modules but nothing super exciting.

One thing I'd really like to be able to do is strip the graphics out of the modules, however, I still haven't been able to find a way to do it.  The resource pullers that I've tried just don't seem to be able to identify them... one of these days I will try to dig though the programs again.

Every once in a while I'd poke at the install zip files but always found they were protected with a password.  I was never able to find one on the internet and I didn't have a zip password cracker so I just ignored it for a while.  I had a copy of my old "install" folder so I always just used that to poke around when I felt like it

Yesterday, I decided to poke some more and as I was browsing one the of install files (install.ins) I noticed text near the list of zip files that said "striketeam" and I thought, that's an odd phrase to be in there.  So I tried that as the password on one of the zip files and it worked.  Cool!

I am having an issue finding my other install disks, however, I did find the Simpsons install disks and it used the same password.

Now if I could just figure out how to pull the graphics... and sound would be nice too.  When poking through the module files, I see "CSTM" in multiple places like various resource files.  I would swear that was some kind of music / sound format but I can't find anything online that really talks about it much and I just can't remember that far back (almost 30 years!).

Ah well... at least I figured out the zip password, give me hope that I'll figure out the other stuff too.  

Time keeps on ticking...

I think of blogs as "journals" or "diaries".  I've never been much of a write down my thoughts kind of guy.  I prefer to write code.  Which should explain why I don't update things here very often.

So, here is a quick update on what has happened over the past year or so.

Boss retired, that sucked.  One of my coworkers from the team got promoted to be my boss, that did not suck.  He is good to me and lets me do the things I like to do, I guess I trained him well ;)

SP guy retired, that REALLY sucked because that meant I had to step up and BE the SP guy.  Not something that I love to do.  Hoping we get a new SP guy soon so I can get back to focusing on the things I like to do (coding!)

"Permanent" work from home.  That's pretty good.  Save on gas, clothes, food.

Replaced a lot of the flooring, both toilets, all cabinets, kitchen / dining / front hall lights, stove, all sinks, and switched tub to just a shower. (did all that instead of buying me a new car)

Well tank "died".  Had to limp along for 6 months waiting for the well guys to get parts so they could replace the whole system.  Got a continuous pressure system.  Way better than the normal tank crap we had before.  Now we can shower and run laundry or dishes at the same time.  Replaced the whole house filters while I was at it.

Did some more landscaping.

Got a new mirrored back glass for my DW... looks pretty cool.

Got 400mb internet.

Wrote several simple JavaScript games just because I could.  Nothing that I'd publish for others to see, just for myself and a hobby coder friend of mine.

Still miss my friends.

Travel Entertainment Revisited

 A few years ago I built a travel entertainment box.  It included a HooToo Elite Tripmate (wireless router with built in battery and streaming), 500gb SSD drive and 12000 mha portable usb battery.

Awhile ago I decided to add a RaspberryPi Zero running PiHole.  I then routed all the DNS queries for it to the PiHole and presto no more ads.

It all fits very nicely into a plastic pencil box and works great.

It Lives!

If you look back, you will notice that I found instructions on how to build an LED cube 9 full years ago (May 4th, 2011!).  I ordered the parts in early September of that year and started building soon after.  I finished the boards sometime around April of 2012 but wasn't confident enough in my work to try and turn it on.  For the last 8 years it has been sitting on & under my desk.

This past week I decided it was time to actually try to make it work.  I reviewed the boards and found a couple of broken wires to fix, found 2 solder traces that were wrong but over all everything looked good.

I hooked it up to the USBTiny programmer which was hooked to a Raspberry Pi (wanted Linux), sent the 'test' program to it and PRESTO it worked.  I was floored.  I did find a couple of columns didn't light appropriately which turned up a couple broken solder joints that I didn't notice.  Got those fixed and it works perfect.

Next up is to get the main program working correctly... I suspect I have a solder trace wrong somewhere but not sure yet, haven't dug into it that much yet.

Here is a short video of the test program running.

https://vimeo.com/419409567

A new update

Another year and a half has gone by since I last posted.  Lets do a quick catch up...

Work is good, boss is good, doing a lot of coding (both web & winform based) and generally just being awesome at what I do :)

Most recently, I built a replacement for my 300 CD changer using a Raspberry PI 3, a 23" touch screen monitor and software called SilverJuke.  Makes playing ripped CDs really easy.  I did have to make an enhanced interface so the buttons were bigger for the monitor.

Got a bunch of landscaping done (paid for it) that we have wanted done for 2+ years.

Replaced the dishwasher.

Freezer died, lost a bunch of food, bought a new one, moved on.

Really hate the COVID restrictions but working from home has turned out to be better than expected.

Miss my friends

Got a LOTR

Playing pinball randomly.