BenV's notes

Here’s a funny for today:
For some reason I needed an original firmware for a Pislink E2000, so I went to http://www.linksys.com/ as a first guess.
After (automagically) being redirected about 2398472389347 times (first to http://www.linksysbycisco.com/ as if there’s a linksysbymicrosoft as well, then to http://www.linksysbycisco.com/NL/nl/home with a bunch of geolocation cookies, THEN because they’re really retarded a redirect to http://home.cisco.com/nl-eu/home?referrer=www.linksysbycisco.com … seriously) I finally got a xhtml document. Well, they claim it’s xhtml, because the W3C Validator sure as hell doesn’t think so. (continue reading…)

This just made my day.

First I read on slashdot that their insurer sues them, and personally I hope they win because of Sony’s incompetence regarding their ‘security’. Not that I like insurance companies much, so they can burn as well… which makes this almost perfect. In a lawsuit only the lawyers win, so once those lawyers die in a fire this will be perfect. (continue reading…)

I don’t like Sony much … in fact, I pretty much hate them and have to laugh every time I read a new post about them being hacked in whatever form.
No, you can’t feel sorry for corporations. Let alone corporations that fuck you over every chance they get.
That said, I do have a PS3 (running Dosbox and ScummVM among things), and I once had this PS3 connected to the PlayStation Network.

So they just sent me an email:

It says (in UTF-8 viewed through iso-8859-1):

Dear Playstation Network-user,

We are very happy that we can tell you that the access to the PlayStation-Store through PlayStation-3, PSP (PlayStation Portable) and Media Go on your PC has been completely restored.

And then they go on about what you receive as compensation (free game, free month of PlayStation Plus), but because they allegedly improved the security you have to change your password.
Then there’s a gibberish link to eu.playstationmail.com that I followed, hoping to be able to change my password.
This is what my browser showed:

Funny bastards 😉

Yesterday when I was messing around with our homebrew IRC bot (written from scratch in perl) it somehow managed to segfault.
Which surprised me, it doesn’t happen very often that I see perl segfault.
It was caused by the fairly new module that handles RSS feeds. Running it through gdb quickly pointed a finger at XML::LibXML, which probably surprises nobody 😉
(at least I suspected the moment it crashed)
It looked like LibXML tried to free up some resource that didn’t exist anymore.

Today I wrote a little test script to figure out the exact cause. Apparently, using Storable to store things that LibXML returned is a recipe for great fun 🙂
Actually, storing it works pretty good. It works so damn good that LibXML actually believes that the objects loaded through Storable are still valid.

Example.
First store a piece of XML::LibXML to disk:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Data::Dumper;
use Storable qw/lock_nstore/;
use XML::LibXML;

die "Usage: $0 file.storable" unless(scalar(@ARGV));

my $rssfeed = '';
my $data = {};

my $xmlp = XML::LibXML->new();
my $xml = $xmlp->parse_string($rssfeed);
$data->{'xml'} = $xml->find('/rss/channel/title/text()');
my $s = lock_nstore($data, $ARGV[0]);
print "Stored.\n";



#!/usr/bin/perl
use Storable qw/retrieve/;
use XML::LibXML;

die "Usage: $0 file.storable" unless(scalar(@ARGV));
my $s = retrieve($ARGV[0]);
my $link = $s->{'xml'};
print "Segfault in progress! $link\n";


The execution looks like this:

benv@janeman:~:0>./test-store.pl asd
Stored.
benv@janeman:~:0>./test-load.pl asd
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Fun!

Last week at work we ran into this gem (click on the image to get it full screen):

(continue reading…)

So with all the hype around google’s upcoming Chrome OS, I was getting curious what it was all about.
Linux based web stuff, open source… yeah, that’s all cute, but just words. So today the option arrived to see what we’re dealing with. These clowns have a download page where you can download a virtual machine image to check out a snapshot of Chrome OS. (continue reading…)

This game has been released a couple of days ago, and if you’re a fan of Baldur’s Gate and such games (like Neverwinter Nights) I’m sure you’ll like this game. So when we heard it was released we immediately moved our computers together so we could play a game just like how we spent countless hours playing Baldur’s Gate. (continue reading…)

Today the project to try out is Widelands, apparently a Settlers clone.
Since I loved the Settlers (the first one was the best) when the graphics were still acceptable, it is interesting enough to try it out. What I loved about the Settlers was the whole simulation concept. The construction of buildings, the little lemmings that moved the goods around, chopped down trees, fished, etc. The entire war aspect of the game was terrible (what do you mean my maximum level guy just got p0wnz3d by their new lowlevel rookie?!) . Therefore I liked the games that followed less and less. Settlers 2 was acceptable, a welcome upgrade in graphics and interface and stuff like that, but the war aspect… blegh. Then at 3 I had enough of the series. Why can’t it be a simulation where tribes co-exist in peace? I see how that might not attract many gamers, but how about an option huh? Another thing that was great about the Settlers 1 was the multiplayer multi-mouse splitscreen mode, where both players had a mouse on 1 PC and could control a single empire together. With SVGA mode it was great 🙂 (continue reading…)

A while ago I talked about emulators and my quest to run them on 64 bit linux.
Today I stumbled upon pcsx-r or PCSX-Reloaded. Basically the same thing as the old pcsx emulator, only better 🙂
Why? First of all it builds and runs on my slackware64 without 32 bits garbage attached to it. Second of all, someone is actively developing it which means it’s still being improved. Finally, the interface is slightly better.
I know it’s good since slackbuild compiled it without problems 😉
Here’s the thing running on my slackware 64 install:

I loaded final fantasy 8 on it:

And to prove it does more than just the intro screen, here’s a shot from the intro movie 😉

Offtopic: Do you know what really annoys me in games?
UNSKIPPABLE CONTENT!
In this case the intro movie, but it goes for countless of things: cutscenes (either ingame or fmv), “game over” screens, long talks that I don’t give a damn about when I already know what they’re saying… I’m sure there are plenty more examples of this. If you’re developing a game, make sure you don’t force your gamer through this nonsense. Yeah, it’s cute, and we understand that you spent countless of hours wasting your time on fancy graphics, but after the first time I really don’t want to sit through it again. Especially if I just died and am forced through it -again-.

So now that I had it running in the background and could rant while it showed the intro, here’s an ingame shot 😉

Keep up the good work PCSX-Reloaded guys!
And fix your homepage.
Things that are currently wrong with it:
* It doesn’t tell me anything ABOUT the product, except for that it’s a fork/branch of PCSX
* It doesn’t have any screenshots (what is it with graphical programs that don’t have screenshots on their website? That’ s a FAIL right there)
* It doesn’t have any information on requirements etc, I just tried to compile it on 64 bit linux because I hoped it would work, not because your site tells me it does.

So I was bored and went through the usual slashdot, kernel.org, freshmeat.net, etc.
Once reading through the news on happypenguin.org I noticed it must be mario season or something.
After checking the descriptions I decided to check out Super Mario^W^WSecret Maryo Chronicles.
(continue reading…)