Fuck Off Day 2 - 25 April 2008 (Vaffanculo Day 2)

Here we are again, as time before in a not so far 8 September 2007, to send our governing board to the appropriate place.
Governing board.
Isolating these words increase the disgustive feelings inside. If it wasn't for the sacrifice (and the money) of so many italians the governing board shouldn't be able to administrate even a Roost; where to put the fodder, when clear the crap... or sell it to the near farmer that could use it as plant food....

Not even a Roost they should be able to manage, and this is UNCONFORTABLE.

I wasn't agree to write this post, this is my Blog and I want to speak about videogames and technology down here.
The pressure about economical condition, social , ambiental, cultural, territorial and everything finishing in "AL" that make sense , well, this bad conditions, disgregate itself thanks to our Governing board.

There are 3 powers inside a democracy, and a fourth more ; I list them to you:
Legislative Power: create laws that move the Country
Jiudiciary Power: judging the citizens with the established laws in a Country
Executive Power: the Police, that make to respect the laws of the Country
and, what about the Fourth?
Informative Power: TV, Radio, are tools for Mass Information.

What about the situation in Italy?
The Legislative Power put its hands upon the Jiudiciary Power ( law to suspend magistrates, when uncomfortables), put its hands also upon the Executive Power ( indulge law 2007 = insufficient police and high crime), and , could be miss, put its hands also upon the Informative Power.

If , today, Berlusconi has been elected again is because people live without true information (and he holds 6 on 7 televisions and many magazines).

I recall to you the sentence of the MEROVINGIO inside The Matrix: Cause and Effect.
Nothing can be decided, because decisions has been already got from who that hold the Power, and all the rest is a chain effect, an obvious consequence, a flood, a progressive and UNAVOIDABLE reaction .

Whith the V2-Day we, poor martyrs of the net, we who have choosen the RED PILL to know the TRUTH, we who tire ourself beyond our jobs time, well, we start from the hole of the situation: INFORMATION!

I think that if a programmer, a whitewasher, a butcher or a gate-keeper must worry in the evening about POLITIC is because those who should worry about POLITIC don't do it, and so there must be someone else to think about.

I'm Tired.

So , let we see Friday 25 April 2008, in every Italian town, but this time, behind the finger, they will find us!



Lord Hol Napult

GRID - Distributed Computing against the AIDS, the Cancer and other sickness

There are sickness that the human race hasn't well understood yet and for that thousands people, every year, die relentlessly.
There are politics interests, economic interests and sometimes social interests that block the researches intent to take their jobs over there, where it's necessary.

Then, there is the informatics, that is the power to make today in 1 second what I've done yesterday in 10 years.

The distributed calculation is base essentially upon this paradigm where some specific needings can be directed upon computers to reach a great results. Times ago there was big complex computers , where the big computation jobs where solved, but today, ladies and gentlemen, there is a small softwarine of about 10 Mb!

It's name is GRID, or BOINC, and it's capable to distribute computation, that should employ thousands of "clock years" to be executed, to many machines displaced all around the world.

Thanks to that, the World Community Grid Project , try to utilize all this possibilities to allow the American Universities (and more..) to formulate hypothesis about the evolution of a Cancer Cell or a virus like AIDS(HIV) if submitted to some treatments.

In easy words the reseraches studies configure the GRID, and the rest of the "world" execute all the computing operations to return an aproximately fast result....
Here it is a statistic of the actual numer of registered users "engaged" in the fight for survival:

But there are some Technical matters that must be cleared:
Before everything, GRID runs upon every known system (from Win 98 to Vista to Linux), but the main characteristic is that it doesn't slow down in any way your computer.
In fact it downloads from the net small chunks of calculation to compute, and during te "IDLE" clocks of the system, it solves them.

But, what's an IDLE Clocks?
Essentially they are moments during the time that the processors doesn't anything; because there isn't inside a machine the function "don't do anything", the processor execute void operations waiting to return operative.
If , for example, I execute 4 or 5 programs but this programs don't continuosly elaborate operations, the processor execute also many IDLE operations; think about when you use a Word processor and you wait some time to think what you have to write... inside this seconds your computer process automatically fake operations, but...
...thanks to GRID this operations can be used for the followings tasks:

1. Cancer Research
2. AIDS Research
3. World Overheating
4. other..

Registration waste only 4 minuts, installation included. Once you have registered you can decide what's your preferred research for your Idle clocks (but also all togheter...).
You will gain points and partecipate to a classification of the bests.

What to say , if you have a PC, internet, and many Idle clocks, why don't you help the future children and anyone of us ?

I wait for you...

Software Link: - World Community GRID -

Lord Hol Napult

Good Easter-Day to everyone...

...who is reading this BLOG.
Let's try to find a good healthy mental sanity at least in these days of Peace.

PIG:Good Easter-Day
LAMB: Fuck Off!!

Ciao.

Lord Hol Napult

Commodore 64 - The Infinite Legend (C64 Rulex)

Sometimes the Informatic eons runs faster than the light, quicker than a bullet... but you cannot exclude that they leave a permanent mark inside of us.

I'm also an old school videogamer (if the term is enough) and my first computer was the one you can see above: the Commodore 64.
Just think that 64 wasn't a casual number, it really was the amount of Kilobytes of RAM hold...
Let's make this clear:
- 1 byte is composed of 8 bits, i.e. 8 cells that can be ON or OFF (Ex: 10010011).
- 1 Kilobytes are 1.000 bytes.
- 64 Kilobytes are 64.000 bytes.
- 1 Megabyte are 1.000.000 bytes, that also are 15,6 times more!
If you get an old Floppy Disk of 1,44 Mbytes, well, that floppy contains 22 times the RAM of our beloved C64.

I esteem still now the love that some people put into coding a similar machine with 8 bits.
It's a very hard Task, I should say absurd, it's like to realize a super "checkmate" between all the pawns of a chess!

The main screen that I remember with love it's just this, simple and a bit poor, but difficult to forget...
I remember full days that started from here and ended only where the fantasy laid us, taken by videogames that was for a piece to play, for another to wait (loading time lasted hours), and another again to imagine.
In that times in fact, the graphics was so beat-upped that you was forced to interpret it by reason, or better, by your imagination.



Ok, time passed by and the process of crystalization of my records paints them inside like stupend moment of my life... probably they really was like said, but not everything has been lost. And Who should lose a piece of himself so precious ?!?

I will then put to your attention this magic site, searched and found casually, but surprisingly nice!

www.lemon64.com

Here you will find for first the mythic coders that made this history.
And take care about that, because someone of them, today in 2008, are still around coding actual games!
Anyway the very important pass of this site are the original Commodore 64 musics that you can download for free!
I dare to do that ( for sure you need lot of courage!), and I'm not repent about.
I will notify to you my bests musics and you MUST DOWNLOAD THEM, so you will be free to appreciate all of this:

1. Last Ninja 2
2. Creatures
3. Creatures 2
4. Myth
5. Golden Axe
6. Turrican 2
7. Armalyte
8. Catalypse
9. Barbarian
10. International Ninja Rabbit
11. Rolling Ronny

Of course to hear them you need also a small software opensource, easily downloadable. It's name is SIDPlay, and the music you will download are, casually, ".sid":

SID Play Download

I wish to you a Good listening, and maybe a deeply remembering...
Press Play on Tape!

Lord Hol Napult

Dark Path (Oscura Via)

Those who walked the Dark Path,
condemning the rejectful existence,
may they listen the awful screams from their ancestors,
cause they fall to the Lie.

Those who ploughed the Dark Path,
condemned to a rejectful existence,
may they hear chorus and horns of the Successors,
cause the Glory will celebrate them all.

Those that, for Science or Pain, look for the Dark Path,
and during their frisk, no Path they found,
may they tend the ears to Me,
cause my Existence seems without Veins,
such as a ploughed field without stream,
but Blood and Water big Lament do.

Those, at end, that occurs just Now to the Dark Path,
may they choose to turn the ear frontward or backward,
because the First Step of the Free Will,
will be Infamous or Blessed for Eternity.


Lord Hol Napult

bidibibodi... BADOO.COM (dot COM ?!?)

Why .COM ? Wasn't this a sort of spell or something ?
Not now! This time we are speaking about a very interesting site.. there are many about, but this one, in my opinion, is the best: Badoo.com

What about this site ? Simple, this is a place where you can meet and dialog with the others people...
At this point someone would say: But, this is the common chat with 2/3 persons at max!
No, no, no, my gentlemen and ladies... this site show the total number of registered users right inside the Homepage... and they currently are: TWELVE MILLIONS OF USERS!!!

If you are lonesome tonight, and you are looking for someone to know and , why not, goes out for dinner, this is for sure a very good starting place. I'm sincerely just a spectator :) and I enjoy to discover some old friends or neighbours registered in my "area".
Using the very useful research tool you can reach to specify even the town where you are looking for someone...

Just look at the following image and try by yourself... Just click upon SEARCH PERSONS and set the charcteristics of the compatible people , setting the age and the sex... than click upon OTHER PLACES and magically a box will appear showing the earth, then the nations, then the regions of a nations and so on..


What are you waiting for, that someone will register you? Registration is for free and the result of all of this is a funny cocktail! Some good friend of mine could confirm this!

User's Note:Warning! This tools are also afflicted by bad persons use, so it's suggested to well analize the people on which you will go outside.
Note 2: Publish your best photo, because this is a way to be better appreciated. ;P


Lord Hol Napult

Merry Christmas to Everyonwe!

Have a Nice 2008
and Merry Christmas to Everyone!


Lord Hol Napult

A BitTorrent Story

Some times ago I decided to throw myself inside the big P2P (Peer-to-Peer) sea that represents one of the many ways to download from the big net the programs, movies, music and videogames.
I've choosen , for curiosity of fame, BitTorrent.
The place from witch I've downloaded the software was obviously the homepage: http://www.bittorrent.com/

During installation you obtain 2 programs upon your computer, the P2P Client called bittorrent.exe, and another called dna.exe; the firs question I asked to myself was: why should I obtain 2 software if I require just one ?

Inside the homepage DNA offers more efficency, more streaming performances, blablablabla-I-m-not-interested!
So I quickly removed DNA from the Windows start register (this was not an options! Use, for example, CCleaner and search the DNA.exe Runkey between "StartWindowsRun/Registry", inside the tools...) and destroyed the installation forlder. :)

Let's return to BitTorrent.

I was remembering to have found , around the net, the famous "torrents", that are files apparently unuseful, but that became foundamental when you have installed the software in object. Those files said: download the movies, download the game, download download but there wasn't a notice that let me know that I was downloading a torrent, not the movie itself.

Bittorrent uses this files as follow:

1. Look for a site that hosts the torrents (look at the small list at the bottom)
2. Run Bittorrent.exe
3. DoubleClick upon the downloaded Torrent
   
4. Bittorrent assume the files and, if there are some peer, starts the download.
5. The logic behind the condivision process is the following (peer connect also one another):

And so I started my download. I haven't a poweful PC.. it's definitely old, and pherhaps this influenced the Drama that happened: after half hour of download my computer crashed, so I had to reset. At the boot I saw some bad lines appearing on the monitor.
My computer didn't started regularly. Nothing happened upon the main screen.

Hacker attack ? Backdoors ? Or a system crash of high and formal priority? Pherhaps mu firewall went to do shopping ?

I don't know, I only know that I reinstalled the Windows upon the Crashed Windows, and everything, for my biiiiig lucky, returned to works.
Anyway many programs had to be reinstalled again, because the DLL's was corrupted/damaged/lost.


"Faith Mysteries" ? Maybe.
A week after all of this I decided to run again BitTorrent (ok, I know, I'm an Unconscious one), but now everything works perfectly. The Test of the Fire has been passed!

When the next one... ?
Whoops &%%%ç£"$=(" £$error££Whoops&%%%ç£"$=(" £$error££Whoops &%%%ç£"$=(" £$error££Whoops&%%%ç£"$=(" £$error££Whoops &%%%ç£"$=(" £$error££Whoops&%%%ç£"$=(" £$error££Whoops &%%%ç£"$=(" £$error££Whoops&%%%ç£"$$=(" £$error££$&(=$çç
amp;(=$çç
amp;(=$çç
amp;(=$çç

Here some good site for Elemental Aphrodisiac Torrenting :

• Il Corsaro Nero (Italians Torrent)
• The Pirate Bay (Internationals Torrent)
  

Lord Hol Napult

The Fall of the Italian Magazines

"Ciao, buy this, that, and the other... You need just a click above!!"

There was a time, many years ago, where the italian videogame magazines was very amusing, home-bred, true! I remember that time with a sort of homesickness, and , maybe, with some remorse.

Today everything changed.


Advertising exists from the beginning, this is not a news. Unfortunately there wasn't the high-speed internet connections in that time, and it's there the main rule of a magazine, foundamental for the society.
This could be applied also to different areas from the videogames one, but the main sadness I feel is caused by the way that magazines followed : Marketing.

A respectable informatic magazine have 3 essential things:
- The paper magazine
- A CD/DVD full of prorams , games and demo .
- An advanced Homepage.

1. Times ago, till 2000 a.d. , the paper version of the magazine was bought relatively for the reviews, interviews, and depending on the number and the quality of the interesting contents...
2. Times ago, the CDs were full of trakers for digital music passionates, thousands of images, some videos, many demos and , the more advances magazines, some direct interviews of the developers. Thes special areas were cured inside HTML pages, very pleasant to read...
3. Times ago, an homepage where the internet surfers found the possibility to regroup themselves (i.e. Forum, amatorial mods links, chat) and of course there were a lot of interesting functions that the paper versione cannot assolve.
   

But now, how the world changed now in 2007 ?

1. The Paper version isn't readed such as before: there is Internet. A review today, is bought only if the ENCLOSED VIDEOGAME is good, otherwise there is no hope for a paper magazine. This forced a progressive destruction of the magazine areas, and a general razionalization of the pages. Anyway the paper content is secondary to the GAME of the review... and the price defend this theory (about 7 euro for every magazine).
2. CD have now an ".exe" interface that introduce you to the content. I've never appreciated the abort of interfaces that the magazines gives : they are really bad coded (probably because they change every 2 months and they generally are in flash format). The contents are DEMO, trailers, some utilities, and see ya! The game, instead, is very accurated in the presentation and you can also recreate the shop box of the game rotating the 2-side printed paper... but if you don't like the game, there isn't a cheap version with magazine plus demo.
3. The Magazines Homepages are apparently very good... but: advertising everywhere. You read 2 lines and you load 3. If you open a news you are interrupted by advertising middle pages. If you think to clik a line and Tac!, a pop-up cames from behind and get the click, so you lose your 2-minutes-to-load page of the magazine for a uninteresting page... and so on. It's like to be inside a mined field.
   

To conclude , the world change but it's not sure that this is a good representation of the progress.
There could be also a REGRESSION !!

Amen,
now I don't buy any magazines, but enclosed videogames.

Ah, if you need and italian link that montly suggest the magazine and the relative game, take a look down here:
VIDEOGAMES ALLEGATI ALLE RIVISTE
At least this link is useful... and ironic to me.

Lord Hol Napult

Winter (Inverno)

Silente e vegliardo scruto la notte d'inverno,
Silent and vigilant I watch the winter night,
e nel luccichio delle stelle, e nel pallore della luna,
and in the bright of the stars, in the whiteness of the moon,
scopro che essa mi conosce
I discover that she knows to me
molto meglio di quanto non mi conosca io.
much better than I know myself.


Lord Hol Napult