There's a new official Amiga OS website! You can find it here: Enjoy!

Amiga reborn...

So the main disk failed in my Amiga. By failed I mean completely stopped spinning, does not even get warm when I plug it in. While I work to save any data I can, hopefully more on this later, I decided to "start from scratch". The value in starting over is I can take a fresh look at Amiga OS and what it's like to use the various websites for software. I was able to install the OS and all the updates in a matter of minutes with little hassle. Thinking back to the early days of OS 4 it's really progressed well. For those who don't know the Amiga and the latest official OS (yes there are less official ones out there...) started in 2002 by a small team of under paid coders around the world. Now they are still under paid but there are more of them and working every day to add features and improve the system. It's really a tremendous see how their efforts can come together in to the system as it is today. Don't get me wrong, we still have a long way to go before I think it would be ready for a casual user, but the progress this far has been encouraging! So here is another screen shot, this is on my new drive

Viva la Amiga!

With Amiwest 2011 coming around the corner I thought I would do a little more to share about my favorite computer, the Amiga. Born 1985, the Amiga 1000 was an amazing achievement for a small band of software and hardware hackers. It featured color screens and 16 bit sound back when MAC's where grey scale and PC's green screens. In addition to having great looks the Amiga also had a classy personality with full multitasking and DMA between a custom chipset. DMA means Direct Memory Access and that one of the BIG secrets of how it worked. The idea was the CPU tells the Sound processor (Paula) to play a sound, then Paula reads the memory to play it. Super cool stuff I'll kick this off with my current home Amiga's desktop:

Charle sheen

I'm winning too Charle.

Learning all about Linux schedulers...

I've recently been looking in to the process scheduler linux uses. I found a good write up here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_scheduler which includes a list by kernel version. The process scheduler is different from the IO scheduler and much harder the change.

Here is the linux scheduler history from the wikipedia:

Linux pre-2.6 Multilevel feedback queue
Linux 2.6-2.6.23 O(1) scheduler
Linux post-2.6.23 Completely Fair Scheduler

I've also read that RedHat 6 has seen the Completely Fair Scheduler re-written from the version used in RedHat 5. So even though it's the same name, it's different.

Love it!

Great source for Amiga news

AmigaWorld.net is a great place to learn about the Amiga.

Enjoy

The devil is in the details

I often use that phase.  I use it cause it is a good phase, simple but powerful.  In gaming life I recently found my character dropped to 0 hit points.  It was looking like a TPK (Total Party Kill) as I was the healer and being down makes it really hard to heal folks.  So I was looking at my character sheet looking for a way out and noticed that my armor gave me resist 5 psychic.  Turned out I took 3 points of psychic before the blow that took me to 0.  Our DM was extremely kind and allowed me to negate the damage from the psychic attack, which in turn allowed me to stay in the combat and heal folks.  Found the devlish detail that time!

Productive day

Finally built the clock I picked up at Makers Fair last year!

Also butchered a pineapple.

Good day so far.

Edge of the World - a D&D 4e campaign

Far more years ago then I care to remember I started playing D&D again with some friends.  It started as a game once a month, then we started a regular Thursday night game and that Thursday night game is now on it's second campaign.

The Edge of the World is a custom setting by our DM.  The story begins with an opening in a magical barrer, the barrer was far out to sea so two worlds formed, the "old world" is a developed world with strong guilds and nations.  To the "old world" the opening in the barrer is like the gold rush of the 1840's.  The new land represents new opportunity, for some a chance to start over, others come seeking riches and power.  But all will find this new land is filled with surprises.

Our band set out from the main settlement, "Newton", on a journey will a local trades man to a norther colony of Freeport*.  The Western coast is desolate with 1000 ft cliffs and little safety for travelers.  Newton has the best port by far and Freeport is rumored to be more of a cavern on the coast then a place to live.  The band still has a few days journey to each it's destination and it has been an eventful trip so far.

More to come!

*It's not Freeport, as Paul points out it's "FreeWater".  Freeport is a place in EverQuest which my EQ character spent a little time in so it's stuck in my brain as Freeport.

PS Rich mentioned some spelling errors.  Yes, I don't proof read well so there will be some mistakes.  These serve two uses, first, it sets the right expectation for the quality of the information, and two it allows me to write stuff and not worry about the judgement.

When interviewing for a job...

Remember you are are selling your self.  When the interview asks a question, think about the important information you need to get across.  It is an oppurtunity to expand on an area of knowledge in your background.  Saying you don't know something is always an option, never hurts to add how you might get the information too.  Just don't spend time dancing around a topic, avoid answering in general terms, saying "you know" is never good.  How is the interviewer suppose to know?  In most cases you just met, there is no shared history, no common referance, the whole point of the exercise is the interview!

Why "Court of the Universe" and why this blog?

I chose to call my blog "Court of the Universe" after one of the locations of the 1915 PanAmerican worlds fair.  I always liked the names people gave things in the past, they instilled a sense of grandeur simply by what they called it.  In reality it was a temporary structure build of chicken wire and stucco but for the year it was around it raised the hopes and dreams of those who came to pay it homage.  Built in a time when America was a raising force in the world, tucked on the wrong side to two oceans and the land of hopes and opportunities.  It's the perfect place for a "Court of the Universe" to exist.  Now we call things "FedEX field" or "AT&T Park", reminders of power of the name in a difference sense.

As to why this blog, I'll starting by saying I SUCK at writing, some of the most creatively wrong things I have personally read come from my IM sessions.  Amazing what a misspelled word in the right place can do.  Second, I've got a bunch of hobbies and I find information then forget it.  By having a place to track what I've done I'm hoping I can use it as a personal reminder.  Who knows, maybe I can add to the value of the world at the same time.  I hope to have technology posts, information about my car (the interesting one), my D&D activity, my Amiga computers and what ever else I want to record.

Enjoy!