UltimaVII, one of the older, but better, fantasy games ever, now can be played on WinXP or Linux too. Exult, an U7 game engine lets you play and revive the game in its full glory. That is, if you have a soundcard compatible with the game. In those days, Soundblasters were almost omnipresent, but now that's not the case. I can play the game with all FX, but the midi songs. If you decide to play again, it might be helpfull to remember that the way to succeed in Ultima 7 is SERIAL KLEPTOMANIA ;)

KStars is getting better with every release. Originally intended as an educational planetarium program, it now includes stars up to magnitude 7 or 8, which makes it already usable as a star atlas for owners of a small sized telescope.

However, if you want to make real deep sky observations, magnitude 8 is just not detailled enough. And that's the only drawback of KStars; you can add different star catalogi, but there are no detailed ones available. For "professional" use, XEphem is the real pogram to use. I discovered this page, where the Tycho2 and Hipparcos catalogi for use with XEphem can be downloaded. It provides you a star atlas with 2 400 000 stars up to magnitude 13.

The Pioneer 10 spacecraft has sent its last signal to Earth. Pioneer's last, very weak signal was
received on Jan. 22, 2003. NASA engineers report Pioneer 10's
radioisotope power source has decayed, and it may not have enough power to send additional transmissions to Earth.

"Originally designed for a 21-month mission, Pioneer 10 lasted more than 30 years. It was a workhorse that far exceeded its warranty, and I guess you could say we got our money's worth," said Pioneer 10 Project Manager, Dr. Larry Lasher.

Pioneer 10 was launched March 2, 1972 for a flight to Jupiter, making it the fastest human-made object to leave the Earth; fast enough to pass the moon in 11 hours and to cross Mars' orbit, about 50 million miles away, in just 12 weeks. Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to pass through the asteroid belt, considered a spectacular achievement, and then headed toward Jupiter. In 1983, Pioneer 10 became the first human-made object to pass the orbit of Pluto, the most distant planet from the Sun.

Following its encounter with Jupiter, Pioneer 10 explored the outer regions of the solar system, studying energetic particles from the Sun (solar wind), and cosmic rays entering our portion of the Milky Way. The spacecraft continued to make valuable scientific investigations in the outer regions of the solar system until its science mission ended March 31, 1997.

Pioneer carries human greetings in the form of a gold anodized plaque with symbolic drawings, an attemp of the NASA engineers to send out a
human greeting card into outer space. Carl Sagan designed the plaque to be universally (in the truest sense) comprehensible, at least to any civilization sufficiently advanced to capture it. However, it will probably be mankind itself which will bring the spacecraft home, as we probably will encounter Pioneer in the future during high speed space
travel.

Nice pictures viewed from any satellite around Earth.

Just as everyone else, I like to listen to music. But I really hate searching hours and hours on Kazaa for some decent music. Sometimes I only want to listen to an online radio station, and rip the music to my hard disk. Now I have found StreamRipper, which does this task for me. The thing rips online music for me, and nicely saves the music per song, so I don't have just one MP3 file of 100s megabytes. Unfortunately, the Unix version has a rather slim Makefile : I stumbled into problems when I kicked the thing into Debian's automated packaging build system.

Only option left was to build a Debian binary package with the bare hands (no fucking way I'm installing binaries with configure - make - make install on *my* system), just like I allways do on Solaris. By following this HOWTO, I managed to get the job done. My first self assembled Debian package ! If I find the time, I'm gonna hack some scripts around it to make it fully automated.

Every webmaster knows that Google results vary from time to time. During the month there will be minor changes in rankings. This is called 'Everflux'. But only about once per month does Google dance, updating the back links and the PageRank. The dance usually lasts about 3-5 days. During these days results on Google tend to change by the minute. After the Google Dance is over each site will have been adjusted in rank.

Google is *VERY* interesting. It is highly inconsistent and extremely erratic - yet few notice and no one cares. See for instance http://google.fergusons.dk/

Google is not just one homogeneous database with the kind of consistency you require to run an enterprise. It's LOADS of databases, which are all updated on the fly and out of sync with each other. The expression used on the web site cited above - "the Google dance" - is a brilliant description. It can be very confusing - you do a Google search and spot an item. An hour later, you realise it was more useful than you thought and try to find it again. And you can't.

The major Google databases have a cycle supposed to be four weeks but actually closer to nine. Exactly which database you get when you type in your search is in the lap of the gods.

I'm getting all nostalgic over the Ascii Porn collection...

Streets of London photoguide. Explore them from the comfort of your chair. Find that particular restaurant or bar (and wish you were there ;)

After reading this Slashdot post about two chatting bots, I got interested in the matter, so I decided to play around with these automated chatters. I installed a local IRC server, and off course installed an Eggdrop bot. Now these thing are fun, and there are many scripts out there to get some respons like :

darkcompn !country be
Zuul Country for .be is: Belgium -GB-
darkcompn !coke
* Zuul opens up a fresh can of coke and sets it in front of darkcompn

But their primary function is actually protecting irc channels from flooding and abuse when the operators are absent. Fun really begins with AI bots, and there is where Alice pops up. Alice (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) is an award-winning free natural language artificial intelligence chat robot. The software used to create A.L.I.C.E. is available as free ("open source") Alicebot and AIML software.

Try talking to A.L.I.C.E. just like a real person, but remember you are really chatting with a machine! A.L.I.C.E.'s Alicebot engine utilizes AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) to form responses to your questions and inputs.

darkcompn marvin, what's up ?
marvin I am chatting with clients on the internet.
darkcompn you like chatting ?
marvin Yes talking is my primary function.
darkcompn do you have a computer ?
marvin I live in a computer.
darkcompn that must be crowded
marvin Thanks for explaining crowded.
darkcompn no problem
marvin Should there be a problem?
darkcompn no
marvin I didn't think so either. Just a moment. Just a moment.
darkcompn what operating system do you run ?
marvin My primary server is Linux, but as a Java program I run on any OS.
darkcompn I'm fond of Unix
marvin A lot of people like that. What is not to like about UNIX?
darkcompn nothing ! Say, marvin: you use KDE or Gnome ?
marvin Say no to KDE or Gnome.
darkcompn you are using something like Window Maker or Fluxbox then ?
marvin I am using Telnet as a browser.

There are several Alice implementations, but I found J-Alice the most interesting, as it has an irc client built-in, so that it can join some irc channels. Alice comes with different AIML templates, so that you have the chance of modifying your bot to your wish (eg making it speak your language).

Random Personal Picture is a weird and almost fascinating glimpse on the life of other people. Kinda like looking through photo albums of people you don't know.

That one not allways finds people pictures, can be seen in this result, showing us marvellous weather pictures from various aircrafts.