Just noticed a search hit landing on my website for 'crossroads BBS'. Wow. I'm impressed. That was about 25 years ago. Somebody obviously remembered and came looking and passed by all the links for a Crossroads BBS from Melbourne in the '90s so they must've known what they were looking for.
Howdy.
We did have a fun little online community back then, although it was just ASCII text at 300/1200 baud. Joe remembers...
Hey computer! Who called today?
Read my mail, from Joe, since yesterday.
Oh, and make me some coffee, wouldja' please?
Sometimes I wonder if we've moved forward at all...
Digg
Delicious
Netscape
TechnoratiTomorrow is Daylight Savings. Remember 'Spring forward, fall back'? That's right - tomorrow we move it forward, no matter how odd that may seem. It's October, but it's spring.
At least the Australian government hasn't been mucking with and tweaking DST as it did before the 2000 Olympics. The software engineers need time to code in the changes - I think that a lot of the world now has Sydney time right.
Well that would be anybody using the Olsen timezone databases. I know personally about thirty web services which just give you a choice of 'GMT+10' - and these are all going to be wrong tomorrow. On the bright side, I really don't care if they get it wrong. I'm not using any of them for anything globally time sensitive. It always makes my head hurt trying to figure out how many hours I'm going to be away from GMT with all the conversions and tweaks in effect. I suppose it'll probably be GMT+11. One hour forward. But wait, we'll then be one hour closer to Greenwhich, England as the earth spins. Not further from it. So maybe it's GMT+9. Silicon Valley will be... Uh, I give up. It's in negative GMT and the time is going back. So is it forward or backward? I'll have to figure it out on paper to work out the difference between LA (where this server is) and Sydney (close enough to where I am).
But this will also give a good test of my own daylight savings and timezone functions (which use Olsen tables). The U.S. is going one hour back and we're going one hour forward. I might be poring over the code tomorrow if something gets askew.
![[*TOP MEMBER*] mike](image/thumb/056b4627-ed0b-ee71-1b54-06d064125de6 "[*TOP MEMBER*] mike")
In fact the time changed here - I was just a bit premature on when it changes there. They used to try and change the whole world on the same day, but you're right. Last year's energy act messed up that part of it.
No worries. Everything seems to be working. It just means I'll have to go through all of this again when you folks change over. I won't bother calculating the delta right now, since it's in a temporary state. It's nice to know the delta before I make a phone call overseas. Nothing worse than 'Hello? Who is this? It's 3 in the morning!'
Mike
Now that I am properly awake, I see that your comment: "that the time had changed here" was written on Sunday morning - sorry if I implied you were a day ahead.
That's the other problem with Daylight Saving changeover. Body awake, but brain not yet awake.
Denis
I spend a non-trivial amount of time keeping up with the latest and greatest in web development. In particular, I often find myself on websites where somebody is discussing Web2.0, social networking, etc. - and I often make comments. Many of these folks are downright hostile about me adding my viewpoint to the discussion, especially if it doesn't match their own viewpoint. (And don't dare write anything negative about Google.)
Which made me look a bit closer. And most of these so-called web-2.0 'experts' are writing about the latest web technologies on a blogger or wordpress single-user weblog; otherwise known as a soapbox. Their formidable experience in social technology is limited to obtaining a facebook or myspace account. Few if any of them have ever actually written code.
So as always, when evaluating the opinions of experts, consider the source and determine the level of real expertise. There are a lot of so-called experts out there these days. Installing a WP blog and obtaining a MySpace account are not in themselves qualifications about anything more than an ability to install a software package and register for free accounts.
[As for my own qualifications, I don't claim to be an expert at anything.]
If you're looking for a decent mid-range sound card and don't want to spend a fortune, the ESI Juli@ is pretty respectable. I really like the fact that it's about the cheapest card that'll provide balanced line. You do this by flipping the card around. Unbalanced connectors on one side, balanced on the other. It's a pretty neat concept.
Anyway, if you're trying to install one of these suckers on Vista, forget the installation CD. You can just throw it in the trash if you want. Even though the latest driver is for XP/2005, just go to the website and grab the latest. The driver on the install disk is a piece of crap and you'll be wondering why you bought such a sucky card. Can't even get the basic speaker test sounds to come out without about 300% signal distortion, dropouts, odd harmonics, etc. In short, the sound you get is almost totally unrecognizable.
The website driver makes it actually work.
Oh, and to use with Sonar, don't use the WDM channel. Just go with ASIO.
-- Yogi Berra
Atom feed
One of the BBS commands was 'game'.
Play the game.
I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10. Can you guess what it is?
3?
Sorry, that wasn't it. Click. [Disconnects the online session.]
Don't think I ever told anybody, but there wasn't a correct answer...