Archives for July 2007
Playing Langrisser I on Ubuntu
31 July 2007 | Random | 1 Response
Langrisser I was the most notoriously difficult game to run that I ever bothered translating. Even now, four years later, there are still support requests posted at the Clouds of El Sallia BBS.
Given the myriad of DirectX errors associated with the game, getting it operating on Linux seemed like an impossible task. It broke versions 4, 5 and 6 of VMWare, and Wine … forget about it. You would need to burn the CD or hack your kernel to compile in the cdemu patch, and even still, the font rendering would just be disastrous — assuming it even ran.
That’s when I stumbled on VirtualBox, a great x86 machine emulator that, in many ways, beats the pants of VMWare — as long as you only want to run Windows. Forget about getting it to boot QNX and other odd operating systems, though the free VMWare Player won’t boot those either.
KingMike, please stop re-posting …
31 July 2007 | Random | No Responses
Dude, you are cool. I don’t want to say anything bad about you, so stop acting like my anthropomorphic RSS feed.
I post here for a many reasons. First off, most of the people who read here care what I have to say. Second, people who don’t care what I have to say won’t come here. Lastly, it’s low traffic, so it has no reach for creating drama.
Any time my name is barfed out at ROMHacking.net, people come back from the dead to go apeshit and do the drama locomotion without me. Nightcrawler and forum kids would appreciate not knowing I exist anymore, so don’t supply them my RSS feed via posts.
There are less flame-bait ways to bump your post count 
Thank you for your submission
30 July 2007 | Echoes | No Responses
Digging through my endless archives, I turned up this fun e-mail from early 2004.
For those who have followed the translation scene for some time, you might remember The Whirlpool, a translation news site that byuu and I had a longstanding feud with. Well, more with its two creators and maintainers: Spinner 8 and (wraith).
In 2004, the site was lagging on updates, and they started taking applications for new writers; on a dare, I sent one in.
Unpublished: the real Jamie Bunker
19 July 2007 | Random | 1 Response
Some of you may remember T2D - The Second Dimension, a game news Web site I ran from 2003 - 2005. After the site closed its doors, I still got some very interesting e-mails. Ones I wished I could post.
The most interesting by far was one from Jamie Bunker, the professional gamer.
Visitors may remember one section of the Web site called “Scandamonium,” one of our most original columns where we riffed on terrible game ads from 1980s magazines. One page of Scandamonium riffed on “mullet man” Jamie Bunker, the “professional gamer” hired to pose for a series of Gaiares ads.
Urgent update to WineLocale
2 July 2007 | Ubuntu | No Responses
For fresh Feisty installers, I’ve found a problem in my WineLocale script. Apparantly, some of the locale names have been deprecated in Feisty, and they worked for me beforce because I upgraded from Edgy. On a clean Feisty install, the fail.
This update fixes Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese support. Check the WineLocale sub-page for the download link.
Pogo’s world
1 July 2007 | Random | 1 Response
Pogo is a baby house sparrow who was discovered on a farm in southwest Beijing. Based on his plumage and eating habits, he is likely about three weeks old. Given a sparrow’s development time, his egg was likely laid in early June.
This bird is an example of survival against all odds.
His nest included at least two other birds. When my girlfriend and her mom found them, one was already dead. Pogo and his (or her) brother (or sister — he or she is still far too young to sex) were the only survivors. The brother was extremely healthy, but Pogo was not.