I'm up to my ears in paid work right now (Holiday rush coming soon!), and haven't time to blog, so here's an HTML chess table. The chess table source is here - right now you're just viewing an iframe. View source and copy-paste if you're setting up a chess game for the web.

It's Unicode art, but I have to post it in "ANSI art" because I was too short-sighted to name the category to cover all forms of character-based graphics. Wasn't that thick of me?

NOTE: I get these characters from this Unicode page. If you see question marks, boxes, or anything but chess pieces, go to that link. If you can't see the chess pieces there, either, there's something wrong with either your web browser settings or your font. If you can't see my chess pieces but you can see the pieces at the linked page, *I* have messed up, and I'd appreciate your dropping me a note in the comments to tell me about it.

The reactions - both here and all over the web - to my last post about installing FreeBSD have shown that some people seem to be unclear on my motives and methods. Perhaps it's time for a refresher course on my mission with this site.

First off: thank all of you who recommend PC-BSD. Yes, I've heard about it, and there is no doubt in my mind that it both would have been easier to install and a slicker environment. But that wasn't what I was looking for - this time.

Second off: Don't mistake this for a review. I'm not ready to write a review yet. When I get a desktop setup and installed packages and take screenshots, and have some time to use the system, I'll write the review then. What this was, was one person's story - so far.

Third off: For those of you who (and boy, is the irony thick here!) are barking "RTFM" at me: I'll cite you chapter and verse from several manuals, but none of the manuals addressed the problems I was experiencing. To summarize:

1. The section on Creating Partitions Using Disklabel advises to hit "A" in DiskLabel to get a default partition scheme. True, it also says you might have to edit it, but for a first-timer I figured the FreeBSD disklabel setup knows best. Also, may I point out that the docs say that /var should only be 256MB, and /usr should be "the rest of the drive". Yet disklabel did this exactly backwards, and I guessed that disklabel would still have to be right. Even this section didn't make sense, because obviously /home/my_user_name/ is going to go on the / partition, so what if I collect more than 128MB of files?
2. The section on Choose Distributions shows in figure Figure 2-25 that the dialog does not mention how much disk space within each partition would be needed for that install option. Remember, here, too, that I was going for a test-trial install, and figured the "canned" sets would do fine. F1 doesn't help, here.
3. Upon setting forth, the system then partitions the drive and begins to install packages, ending with - usually - an error dialog saying "write failure on transfer (wrote -1 of XXXX bytes)". Note that this is worded so the problem could be almost anything. Had it been "this partition is full", I would have had more of a clue what the problem was.
4. Try Googling for "FreeBSD write failure on transfer (wrote -1", without quotes. What do you get?
5. My eventual solution of making just two partitions of swap and "everything else" (a) went contrary to all conventional wisdom in both the documentation and online, and (b) may yet prove to be a bad idea. But this is a test install on a box I don't care about, done just to get familiar with the system.

In fact, the concept of limiting system folders to so many MB in their own partition is kind of an impossible feat to get correct. We have /, which has /home and is a prime candidate for expansion, /var which will grow over time, and /usr which will expand depending on what you install in the next step. It might even make more sense to pick packages first, then partition, since both of these steps are held in memory before committing to the changes, and at least you could figure a number for what /usr is going to need after you've seen a list of what's going in it.

Now that I've shown all of you my stumbling points, let's clarify one more thing:

What is my purpose here? Is it to criticize FreeBSD? No, I even stated, "Note that I'm not complaining here. I wanted a challenge, and I got one." Is it to scream in frustration and give up? No, I persevered, and am now getting some time to quite like the system. Is it to tell people "This is too hard for you, you're better off getting PC-BSD?"

There is a very specific reason why I am careful to report my own mistakes. This is to show:

• Even an Uber-Geek who can run Plan Nine From Bell Labs and wrangle with dc can have difficulties installing FreeBSD.
• This tells people who are also having problems, "I am not alone".
• But I can overcome obstacles and persevere, and I detail the steps I took to win.
• This tells people, "A breakthrough is possible".

Also, I write this from the point of view of someone with years of Linux experience. I do this to show, "If you came from Linux, here's the things that will be different." I'll be doing a lot more of that. I also try to phrase things from the point-of-view of the average home user. So, never mind if an experienced sysadmin who's been using BSD since he graduated from Berkeley in the 80's would think FreeBSD is a piece of cake. I've been using Slackware for several versions now, I love it to the point of passion, but I still make no bones about how it is a more challenging Linux distro than, say, Ubuntu.

Several people have remarked their agreement with me - they found the FreeBSD install difficult as well. Now, they know that they aren't crazy or technical idiots, but that they have met a very challenging system. So when they make up their minds to try it again, they will be prepared to take it in little steps, backtrack, and experiment to get it right.

Lots of things are challenging in life; the things that are the most worth having are often the most work. My point is to show average home users how they, too, can improve their position, by using the example of my own faltering, fumbling path - hopefully avoiding the mistakes I made and picking up a helpful hint from the things I managed to do.

If everybody is done getting defensive for feeling that I'm attacking their distro, depressed because technology is so hard to do, defeated for not doing better, and demoralized by their flame-back reactions to the other flamers: can we now move forward, seeing these things in a positive light for a change, for the constructive opportunities for growth which they are?

The clueless newbs are human. The programmers who wrote the systems are human. The people who tell me to RTFM are human. The people who think I'm crazy for tackling such a difficult distro are human. And we all have these human reactions. That's what I do - technology from the human point of view. Doggone it, sometimes this stuff makes the straw stuffing in my head hurt, but I reck-skin we'se all gonna get it figgered out eventually, huh?

...yours, in our continued shared quest for enlightenment,

Now that the controversy has ebbed, I'm going to try to see if they and the rest of the Universe can co-exist in peace.

Note that the controversy from Tux500 spilled over onto them. The posts were pounced upon by minions who thought they were getting half a million dollars and 27 virgins each, or something, and who thought I alone was stopping their entry into Zion or wherever they thought they were going. So the posts were spammed to the international Internet with comments quoting out of context, intentional mistranslations, and headlines to the effect that I was the enemy of freedom, hated Linux and apple pie and cute baby kittens, probably sodomized choir boys, etc. etc. yada yada. In the course of that flame war, Godwin had to repeal his law just so he could get some peace.

So, now that they can live in Post-Tux500-War peace... (the trolls fled their cave long ago)... I'll give them a second chance.

Ubuntu is not Linux - pass it on!
No, really! Ubuntu is not Linux! Try it on for size!

If you read them (not that they're that mind-blowing), particularly the second one, try to see the pragmatic approach. Ogg see problem. Try solution, no work. Ogg propose new solution.

Try also, to take a good hard look at the current state of Linux. We can pay lip service to spreading Linux, but what are we really doing about it? Can you spread literacy by handing out books everywhere? Or do you have to stay behind with each illiterate person and teach them to read, one person at a time?

The culture shock between Linux and Windows is immense. It takes time to recover from Windows. Stop calling them wrong or right - they're human beings who have been kept in an informational prison and fed nothing but brainwashing for 20 years! They are economic abuse victims. They have been taught to fear mean computers that bite them. They don't know that the computer can be their friend.

Why do so many Linux users accept the fact that Linux is a different world than the alternative and yet live in denial of the huge transition between those two worlds? And what is so terrible about complimenting Ubuntu as an excellent transitional distro? By designating one distro as the "go to" point, we can gently move the people into the free world.

Not with a blitzkrieg war that pushes Linux the way George Bush pushes democracy on the Middle East, not with an advertising scam that tries to sell Linux like a used car, not by forking all of Linux into Windows2 and driving the natives away to BSD with screams of "Elitist Nazi!!!" chasing their backs.

But by working with people.

Closely.

Patiently.

Understandingly.

Any beginner's-level distro will do, but I say Ubuntu because that's where the traffic just naturally flows.

That's really all that's going on, here!

Better to say what you believe to be right and get taxed for it, than be phony just to tell everybody what they want to hear.

Where in blue, sunny Gehenom has Penguin Pete been???

Answer: Working my stubby little butt off, and in between for recreation time taking a nostalgic trip back to the era of 15 years ago, when sysops were sysops and warez doodz were warez doodz and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were... well, you know.

This time I've been snarfing the archives of The BBS Archive, and if you thought Textfiles.com had ANSI art, you've seen nothing 'til you've seen this archive. Along with the usual browsing of ANSI art I've been doing, I have also been playing a few demos in DOSBox. I tried one on a hunch and it *worked*! In fact, almost every one from several groups I've tried has worked!

Demos from ACID and BAD

Demos from BAD and ACID

Demos from ACID and Apocalyptic Visions

If you don't know what the demoscene was, the PC Demoscene FAQ is the place to go.

Here's how I do it: I have the latest DOSBox, and I create a directory called /DOS/ under my home. Best to keep all DOS files in one place on a Linux system. So, download the zip file, and unzip it into wherever under your /DOS/ folder you want it. Then start DOSBox and type:

mount c ~/DOS/

then:

c:

then:

cd .\FOLDER\

To get to whatever folder you put the unzipped files in...

Remember, DOS makes the slashes backwards, and 'ls' doesn't work, you have to say 'dir'! You can simply play any executable by typing '.\' then hitting 'tab' a few times so it cycles through all the possible '.EXE', '.COM' and whatnot.

Keep the following in mind:

You're playing demos coded by warez doodz living in the 80s (actually, the 90s, but they still worshiped heavy metal, so...), who never dreamed that their work would be running on DOSBox on Linux. Wherever possible, keep files together and preserve the naming scheme (yes, even the STUPID.ANS UPPERC~1.DOS FILE-N~1.EXE!) so that programs don't get lost looking for support files. Macho 14-year-old Amiga fans whacking out a demo in a four-hour deadline using only Assembly laugh at the idea of exception handling.

Even for all of that, the demos run astoundingly well! Methinks that DOSBox is becoming a better DOS than the original DOS!

I keep getting stronger with Flash the longer I play with it. In fact, it's surprising how fast I'm making progress in it. Actionscript is starting to feel just as comfortable as Javascript or C. Except that with SWFTools, adding in graphics elements is a snap, whereas I was playing with C for *years* before I got a graphical application going in GTK or SDL.

Today: a dice roller. Just click the "roll" button and get a random dice total every time!

Well, let's see the code:

.flash bbox=300x300

# BUILD objects

  .font myfont "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/verdana.ttf"
  .box bg width=300 height=300 color=white fill=white
  .png die_one "../icon_image/die_one.png"
  .png die_two "../icon_image/die_two.png"
  .png die_three "../icon_image/die_three.png"
  .png die_four "../icon_image/die_four.png"
  .png die_five "../icon_image/die_five.png"
  .png die_six "../icon_image/die_six.png"

  .box button_idle width=100 height=40 color=blue fill=blue line=4
  .box button_hover width=100 height=40 color=cyan fill=blue line=4
  .box button_pressed width=100 height=40 color=cyan fill=cyan line=4
  .text button_text font=myfont text="roll" color=white

  .text message font=myfont text="You rolled: " color=black size=30%
  .edittext show_total font=myfont text="#" color=black
    width=35 height=35 readonly variable=die_total size=30%

  .sprite ROLL_A
    .frame 1
      .put die_one
    .frame 2
      .put die_two
    .frame 3
      .put die_three
    .frame 4
      .put die_four
    .frame 5
      .put die_five
    .frame 6
      .put die_six
  .end

  .sprite ROLL_B
    .frame 1
      .put die_one
    .frame 2
      .put die_two
    .frame 3
      .put die_three
    .frame 4
      .put die_four
    .frame 5
      .put die_five
    .frame 6
      .put die_six
  .end

  .button roll_em
    .show button_idle as=idle
    .show button_hover as=hover
    .show button_pressed as=pressed
    .on_press:
      roll_dice();
    .end
  .end

# PUT objects

  .put bg x=0 y=0
  .put ROLL_A x=10 y=10
  .put ROLL_B x=140 y=10
  .put roll_em x=100 y=250
  .put button_text x=100 y=290
  .put message x=10 y=150
  .put show_total x=60 y=150

# ACTION

  .action:
    _root.createEmptyMovieClip("Dice_A",6);
    _root.attachMovie("ROLL_A","Dice_A");
    ROLL_A.stop();
    _root.createEmptyMovieClip("Dice_B",6);
    _root.attachMovie("ROLL_B","Dice_B");
    ROLL_B.stop();

    function roll_dice()
      {
        die_a_value=random(6)+1;
        die_b_value=random(6)+1;
        ROLL_A.gotoAndstop(die_a_value);
        ROLL_B.gotoAndstop(die_b_value);
        die_total=die_a_value+die_b_value;
      }
  .end

.end

As you can see, building objects is the biggest part. I drew the dice in POVray, by the way. The dice are designated as 'A' and 'B'. They work by simply declaring the sprites as six frames each, one for each image. To get a specific dice total, tell actionscript to "dice_movie.gotoAndstop($NUMBER);" Now, we just pick random numbers for each die and tell actionscript to display that frame, then total the numbers together.

That total goes to a variable called "die_total", but where does it display? Way back at the third-from-top build section, I gave swfc an edittext object, made it read-only, and gave it a variable=die_total. That's how you make actionscript write data/strings to the screen.

I'm this close to adding a game section to my site. I haven't had this much fun since I was drawing ANSI art!

After I'd closed the lid on the "Ubuntu is not Linux" , uh, mess, Eric over at Binary World has taken up the idea and tried to grapple with it. I don't know, maybe I should dig it up and check for a pulse. But I'm thinking again... (that's always a dangerous sign!)

Here's the nut of the matter: moving from Windows to Linux is easy for some people and hard for others. WHY?

For instance, why, when I first loaded Red Hat (version 5 or 6... memory blurs) did it feel like coming home? I dove right in and loved it. It just... made perfect sense.

For one thing, I'd had experience with a lot of other computer systems before Windows happened. Commodores, TRS-80s, IBM DOS with XTree Pro and Gold, Apple MacIntosh, and OS/2. I'd even spent some time hanging around mainframes! This was all mostly through job experience - I'd already had several jobs before Windows desktops started appearing everywhere.

*My* first reaction to seeing a Windows desktop was "ick! What did you do to this MacIntosh?" Probably Windows 3.1... with the Hot Dog Stand theme.

Gradually, I did begin to use Windows. More often, I only used DOS. I actually spent most of my Windows 3.1 time in DOS 6.22, coding a lot in QBasic (way more than was good for me!) and the full feature set of DOS. Months went by when I didn't even *start* Windows! All the games ran fine from the EGA/VGA console, and I could draw my own windowing system in QBasic, and I also had an alternative desktop shell called "QuickMenu" (a vile piece of nagware, but it was still another option.) Finally, I reluctantly got a new machine with Windows 98 on it.

Windows 98 never felt comfortable to me! Sure, I had the desktop, and I bought and played a lot of games, but this was a time when I wasn't feeding my "geek jones" - I was too busy at work. But even at this point, I was grabbing and using free software. Emacs, the DJGPP compiler, and after a while even Gimp and Mozilla. There was much more besides - I had a console version of Angband and some faux-Unix shell programs. So really, count about a year of exposure to pure Windows 98 - by 1999 it was mostly a GNU user-land built on top of a Windows desktop.

So, in addition to all of that background, by the time I'd installed my first Linux, I had never had less than two computers at any time, and had worked with scads of them in every form. I installed Linux on my own box and left Windows on the family machine for another year, then I added a second hard drive to the family Windows computer and installed a later version of Red Hat as a dual-boot option. So the rest of my family was able to simply stick in a floppy and reboot, Ta-Da! Linux, and then pull out the floppy and reboot again back to Windows.

My kids took to Linux like ants to a donut. My wife had (a) NOT had much exposure to computers prior to Windows, (b) NOT worked at technical jobs like I had, and (c) NOT learned programming. And sure enough, she clung to Windows the longest. The kids were showing her stuff in Linux after the first year. I checked back on the family machine every few months.

When I typed "uptime" on the family box and Linux reported that it had been running continuously for six months, I polled the household and by unanimous decision we wiped the last trace of Microsoft from the last computer. Really, my wife uses a computer mostly for web browsing, text editing, and simple web graphics, so there's little difference to her between Mozilla, Google, Yahoo and Gimp on a Windows box and Mozilla Firefox, Google, Yahoo, and Gimp on a Linux box. It just doesn't crash on her anymore, and she can now smugly inform her online friends that that virus they're all getting in their email doesn't apply to her.

So, that's where we are. Granted, I'm a geek; of course Linux felt like coming home. It's where my heart had always been, even when I didn't know it. recently, I've been picking around at BSD and Solaris as well, and they, too, feel more comfortable than Windows. To me, the idea that Microsoft, not I, owned my computer was alien from the start - Windows was the only system I'd ever had to *fight* with.

But what of other people? There are legions of users out there who have had no choice - it was Windows or nothing. To them, the idea of a computer without Windows is like a house without walls. They've been raised in an information vacuum. What else is there?

How are these people going to be free?

So how about it folks? I'd like to hear from those of you who, like me, found Linux to be EASY to pick up - did you have similar background as I?

Most any geek who was a kid in the 80's played with BASIC at some point. And the BASIC language with one of the biggest followings is Microsoft QBasic - Microsoft's sole nod to the hobbyist programmer community. Dozens of online sites exist today that are devoted to QBasic, Quick Basic, and Basica, existing in much the same spheres as the surviving BBS/ ANSI art culture. If you still have some old floppies with archives of BASIC programs from your juvenile years which you'd like to revisit, here's how to do it on a Linux box:

Step 1: Get a copy of DOSbox. DOSbox is a no-brainer to install and set up, with its main dependency being the SDL library. Once you have that in, I recommend creating a directory named /DOS/ under your home directory - note that this is a plain old ext2 (or whatever you have set up) file system directory, you don't need to create a special FAT or DOS partition. Thereafter, starting your simulated DOS environment will involve starting DOSbox, typing "mount c ~/DOS/", then typing "c:", and you can then type "dir" to see that you're in your simulated "C:\" drive. Wasn't that easy?

Step 2: Find a QBasic version to download! Here's one. This is tricky - these sites come and go, and Microsoft, which hasn't supported QBasic for centuries, plays peek-a-boo with these DOS legacy program downloads all the time - it's a 50/50 break whether you can get the Microsoft site or an MS Windows system to admit that QBasic ever existed. Rumors abound of hidden folders on install disks. The last version goes by the string "QB45.ZIP" and when you've hunted it down, unzip it to a folder in your /DOS/ directory.

Next you have to format two floppies as DOS and write the disk packages to each. After that, mount the disks in the usual way in Linux, then 'mount' them in DOSbox with "mount a" and your floppy directory, then mount your "C:\" drive, cd to the A:\ directory and run "SETUP.EXE". Follow directions from there. NOTE: As Max Atkin points out in the comments, you can also have the disk images in your directory path and mount them that way without physical floppies.

Step 3: I didn't even bother with installing the second disk, since I'm not interested in making any more binary .EXE files, and the second disk is mainly support for the compiler. QB.EXE runs just fine with the install from disk one, and will be able to read your .BAS files. You can try out the demo BASIC programs included in the "EXAMPLES" directory. Everything works just like you remember, with your embarrassing old graphics demos and munchkin hax running in glorious 640x480 16 mode.

A Mandelbrot demo from the example programs.

One of my graphic demos.

A hilarious drawing program I did, because I missed the old Apple MacDraw drawing mirrors feature so much.

The splash screen to an old tank shooter game I did. You aren't missing a thing by not playing it, believe me!

Who didn't do a hangman game in their learning days?

A draw poker demo game I did. Yes, I drew each card in my own invented bitmap format, saved as plain data files, because QBasic back then didn't have a way to display bitmaps that I was aware of.

Step 4: Thank your lucky stars that you've come a long way since these days!

Today is this blog's first birthday, and by extension, the whole site's birthday, though the domain is a week older. That's going by the date of the first blog post, which is as good a marker as any other.

Looking back, I've pretty much lived up to my initial mission statement. The exception is that I've been more cross-platform friendly than I initially said I would be, and especially have gone for jpg over png for quicker load times for images.

My most popular posts of the past 365 days:

The whole BBS ANSI art tour, the first of which is here. Links to the rest of the tour are at the bottom of each section - it's easier if you load them one post at a time. These were just images of the rendered ANSI art from textfiles.com. I did finally get the character set correct. Amongst other things, it got into Boing-Boing.

How to totally fake being a geek.
One for the ladies - How to date a geek guy. These two spawned huge comment discussions. The geek community really seems to like being treated as their own culture, particularly if you peg them dead on.

Top ten signs you're been using Firefox too long. This was stupid. In an idle moment over coffee, I thumbed this out and posted it without more than ten second's thought, yet all of a sudden it got Dugg so fast that it made my server melt - the only time that's happened! It still gets links. Half the comments from other sites are things like "why is this so popular?" I have no idea. That'll teach me to put up something frivolous, won't it?

The most frequent searches have come in looking for info about Nethack or ASCII art. There's Nethack guides all over the Internet, but evidently my site is the highest-ranking one that mentions it???

Some posts that have sparked some really deep discussions:
Does Microsoft impose a prisoner mentality?
Linux and newbies: Some cold, hard reality.
Why Linux has zealots.

Some lost episodes:
Finally, here is a list of posts from the past year which, whether because they were posted when nobody knew this site existed yet or they just slipped by unnoticed, never got the love they deserved (in my Highly Arrogant Opinion). Y'all sure you caught these?
A Hacker's Movie List
Digital Religions - the Religions of the Geek Culture
What if Microsoft released Windows as Open Source?

Ah well, here's to another busy year!

Libcaca is one of those surprises you didn't know you had installed until you stumble on it. In my case, I found it was installed on both my Slackware 11.0 and grml 0.9.

Libcaca is the color text graphics library - viewing its demos will take you right back to the days of ANSI and VGA graphics. Except that it's got a modern edge to it - libcaca acknowledges its roots in aalib, the ASCII graphics library. Pictured here are the demos for plasma, metaballs, and fire. They have some active development still going on, including a couple of games and an image viewer. It also has a server and an animation player.

Yet another character graphics toy. But this is one of the more impressive out there. And be sure to visit the 'TOIlet' on the libcaca site - a while ago, Digg.com discovered Unicode block letters and went temporarily nuts. They'd lose their heads for good if somebody posted a libcaca sig in there.