sengork's out of here...

43°20′N, 17°48′E

Sengork's General Tool Set

Finally an update to the list. A number of additions and modifications since the last update. No links or particular explanations to them this time, just google 'em.

These are the tools I use on daily basis & have installed on pretty much all PCs I encounter. And they're also responsible for my, at times excessive, Windows usage.

(In no particular order or category)

• Total Commander Ultima Prime distribution - my recent favourite, very handy. Not a tool but a set of very handy and integrated tools, no bloat - only functionality
• PuTTY - I think I've opened this app more times than any other
• gVIM - essential
• Cygwin - Because I often need to find/grep/awk/sed/bash on Windows
• NetTransport - Old habits die hard
• uTorrent - This is how software should be...
• WinRipper - I like extracting music out of apps
• GkrellM - Not just because it looks fancy
• CPU-z
• Opera - Best web browser out there
• AVG Free
• BartPE - Who said only Linux had boot CDs?
• nLite - Automate, slipstream & customise - because Windows will need to be reinstalled lots of times
• WinAMP - Thanks to Lycos' foolishness I'm not using Sonique anymore
• VLC - Because there's too many codecs to keep track of and it doesn't matter how classy the app looks when you use it for watching videos in 'full screen'!
• Power Toys for XP
• PeerGuardian
• The GIMP
• WinRAR
• OneWorld Time
• PowerOff
• Xming
• VMware Server - Best and most useful application concept that's come out in absolute ages
• GameArena - The Arena - Used less and less thanks to Steam
• WordWeb
• Unlocker
• SuperScan
• Nmap - Not just because it's been spotted in The Matrix
• Y'z dock
• TCPview
• Process Explorer
• Resource Hacker
• WinSCP
• VNC - I was always surprised how such an excellent idea for software's so little known of
• FreeNX - Faster than VNC/X11 for interactive usage, not mature yet though
• Knoppix Live DVDs
• Slackware (my favourite Linux distribution)
• Daemon Tools - Because mounting a simple ISO should not be a 'big hassle'
• DVD Shrink - There's a reason why it's author now works for Nero
• QuickPar
• Network Stumbler
• ffdshow
• WinHTTrack
• ZoneAlarm - Granted I've not bothered to check out Comodo yet
• PortableApps
• PDFCreator
• Toucan

Version: 1.5

Solar Driftwood / Beyond Mirrors

Best intro & ending to an album ever (from Yello's Pocket Universe album). Not an official video clip, but the sounds the essential part.

CS:S Stats

Slackware user friendliness

$ man wtf

Max Payne was here

This will be a spoiler to reboot

$ uptime

6:38pm up 2587 day(s), 10:22, 5 users, load average: 0.05, 0.02, 0.02

Time flies..

It's been ages since I've hopped onto HL:DM Source which I used to play for long enough to climb up to 13th place (Alias /MegA/). One thing I didn't realise is how long ago this has now been, almost 2 years! Initially it seemed like just a few months ago I'd been on it.  But wrong assumptions often lead to wrong conclusions... Nevertheless QuickSilver's spookface is a rather memorable map. Quite glad to see some local folk still playing the game. It helps to have opponents with similar ping (~200ms).  ;)

For now playing CSS, DoD. I've not even touched RTCW:ET for a while now, which probably had it's impact on our clan's GameArena results (currently on 17th spot).

Steam Stats

This is what excessive and intermittent work hours & consequential stress end up causing:

*nix

My long held comparison views on the commercial non-Intel Midrange UNIX OSes out there based on my own experiences & expectations, being as generalistic as possible:

AIX >> ( Linux/*BSD > Solaris > HP-UX )

Now the amount of each I've seen out there which has been or is being deployed:

Solaris >> ( Linux/*BSD > AIX > HP-UX )

(Where > is greater than and >> is much greater than).

Naturally combine Veritas software with any one of the above greatly puts the OS it self out of the bigger picture within Midrange. HP-UX seems to be going out of the door for a while now.

On the other hand SANs and Virtualisation seem to be in the spotlight these days more so that any OS out there. OS has largey become something that simply makes all the hardware work together to run the App/DB. 

Now if I could only run AIX on something that's not a pSeries... Can run Solaris within VMware quite well, but AIX, no such luck even with AIX 6 Open Beta & PearPC...

2008 - great success!

Vista on SPARC

Microsoft's Vista has finally been ported to SPARC architecture!

Now I can finally run a modern OS on SparcStation 10 since Sun dropped Solaris 10's support for it.

The Orange Box

Time: Thu Oct 11 19:48:13 AUSEST 2007

Status: Completed

Just finished Episode 2 with a positive feel. This episode has improved upon the original Half-Life2 game-play considerably. Semi-linear action packed story's the biggest plus in this episode installment, and more Gman was always desirable. There's plenty of original Half-Life references within the cut scenes, while Gman manages to keep the player puzzled about the "behind the scenes" happenings (actually he managed to make me look into WordWeb on more than one occasion to figure out what he was saying). ;)

Variety of gameplay terrains ranges from caves, forests, mountains, bridges, to underground bases. Ambientish music & sound within the game were worth putting up loud on HD555. And finally this episode seemed to be quite longer than HL2:EP1. Personally I'll be glad to see Episode 3 be the last 'episode' installment. Valve's initial reasoning behind the episodes concept has been largely due to faster ability to pump out new releases. Turns out at the end of the day each episode release took much longer than expected with Valve's almost usual promise-and-delay saga.

Team-Fortress 2's looking quite promising. Gameplay's quite different compared to Counter Strike Source in terms of nearly everything looking "bulky" and cartoonish giving it a feel of non-precision oriented gaming. I'm yet to properly play it though. Glad to see Internode's got plenty of TF2 servers around. I wonder how long before half of them are shut down...

And lastly Portal's quite an interesting game concept, contrary to my initial expectations. For those who like in-game physics, don't miss out!

CS:S Setup

Very Niiice...

So long ago

So clear

Thx Vj

Touch Screen

Self timed touch screen rebooting Windows box.

Ubuntu on main PC

I've finally rolled up my sleeves and put Linux on main desktop PC, which has been for long a Windows XP box. Looked around a few Linux & BSD distributions and finalised the choice to Ubuntu. Finally a Linux distribution which is 'usable'. This OS is quite a joy to use with XGL and Beryl in action. Ubuntu is not only well integrated and automated, it's also based upon Debian's proven and mature packaging system. All the packages are specifically made for and 'supported' under Ubuntu, making software installations & dependency handling a breeze. Simply install and use.

By saying 'supported' I'm referring to the software begin specifically packaged for Ubuntu, this implies any software you install will work and be 'integrated' with it's surrounding environment. This practically eliminates post installation configurations & maintenance. (An example for the sceptics: install Enlightenment, and you'll have no need to go back handle dependencies and reconfigure your login manager to include it as a login session window manager option). In addition you will be notified about any software updates as new supported versions roll out.

Main struggle with Linux on main desktop PC has been non-integration, non-automation and things simply "breaking"/not working for whatever valid or invalid reason. This is quite history with Ubuntu (even Dell realises it).

Ubuntu Desk by ~eking on deviantART

Random notes:

• NTFS write support works well via NTFS-3G (although still chews up CPU).
• USB storage's detected, mounted and recognised automatically (iPod is different to USB Key).
• Plenty of Gkrellm plugins pre-packages (# apt-cache search gkrellm)
• RTCW:ET @ 1680x1050 32Bpp works just fine (if not better than in XP, # xmodmap -e "clear control", ~-Alt-Enter to "minimise" ingame)
• Internode usage meter for GNOME's neat, so is wmium
• Radio an TV Tuner card working by default

Slackware still remains steady on the server end for me.