January 2001

December 2000 -- 2001 -- February 2001

January 1, 2001


HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Woo, almost wrote January 1, 2000 up there. Gotta get used to this 1 thing.

Anywho, here's the rundown of my weekend....
Saturday went to Universal and rode Twister and Men in Black: Alien Attack. They were both pretty good. Also of course played some DDR. I got about 5 hours of sleep, and got up at 5:30 AM to head off to Disney. My dad went last year and said it was total chaos, so we left extra early.

Disney was freaken unbelievable! Got to Disney by 7:30 and into Epcot. So while the "official" opening time of Epcot was 9 AM, they were letting in people probaly by 7 AM. We bounced around probally for most of the day, and went to an ESPN sport bar at 4 PM to try and see the Bucs game. Only stayed for half the game though, cause all the smoke and beer was making me nauseous. Disney handed out hats and noise makers at 6, then the music started up at 7. And lemme tell you, Disney knows how to put on music! They had about 4 different areas all around Epcot playing dance music continously. I mainly stayed around the big ball with Scooter. They had a bunch of fireworks at Midnight, and the park was open till 1 AM. I'll definitly be coming back next year. Oh, and it wasn't too cold either, except in the morning. And dancing keeps you pretty warm too :)

Iron Chief marathon is on today on the Food Channel, check it out.

Remember the Y2K hoopla? Well here's an article on the guy who originally brought the major media attention to the Y2K problem, Peter de Jager. The poor guy first tells the world about the Y2K problem, gets the major companies to fix it, and then when nothing happens (because it was fixed) he gets called a scam artist and that the Y2K bug was just a hoax. Of course, if nothing was done then we would have had all kinds of problems. The poor guy just can't win.


January 2, 2001


My TI Graph-Link that I had ordered on Christmas Day finally came in today. So I've been downloading some nifty games for it, like this Dance Dance Revolution game for the TI-86.

Dotcom Guy has finalyl left his house after one year of living on the internet. Shoot, I pretty much do that already if not for school :)

Look for the Quadrantid meteor showers happening on Wednesday night between midnight and 7 AM.

January 4, 2001


School started again today. It stinks getting up so early once again. But on the bright side, I only have one more semester left of high school. Then it's off to college.

NASA is going to crash a satellite into an asteroid in order to study it. They say there is a small chance it could actually land on the asteroid, but that the odds are not too good.

CNN also has neat article on the person who created the Darwin Awards. It never ceases to amaze me how stupid some people can be.

January 5, 2001


The Linux 2.4.0 kernel was released last night! It was originally supposed to be released back in the Fall of 1999, but it's been delayed again and again. However it's finally out! This article will give you an idea about what is new in 2.4, although it is sorta old so I'm not sure how correct it is.

On a more personal side of the OS story, I finally got around to totally formatting and repartitioning my hard drives, and reinstalling Windows. So I know have Windows Me installed on my computer. And since I also have this computer all to myself, I've finally been able to tweak Windows however I like. Right now I'm just installing programs, but eventually I want to get Lightstep and the like up and running.

It looks like those big adult peoples in Washington might learn to play nice with one another. I can only hope they can learn to get along, or else nothing will get done for the next four years.

January 7, 2001


ZDNet has interviewed Linus Torvald about the 2.4.0 release. Linus is a pretty funny guy :)

The price to mail a letter went up a penny to 34 cents today. I can't even remember the last time I've ever sent a letter.

Sleep is a wonderful thing.

January 9, 2001


Yesterday was a hectic day with lots of homework. But today I have hardly no homework. It's weird how it works out sometimes.

Mp3 list is updated.

Microsoft's entry into the console market, the X-Box, was officially unveiled over the weekend. It looks sorta cool, though it heavily copied the Dreamcasts controllers. I still wonder how well MS can do in the super heated console battle.

January 10, 2001


Microsoft is now calling Linux it's biggest threat. Yea... Anyways, expect the FUD (Fear Uncertainly Doubt) factory at MS to be working overtime in order to spread as many mistruths/half-lies/lies about Linux as possible; aka doing normal MS operations like they've done to many competitors before.

Mozilla .7 was released yesterday, so download it and check it out. For the people who don't know what Mozilla is, it's basically the open source base of Netscape 6.

Two new planetary systems were discovered, including one that has a "planet" that is over 17 times the size of Jupiter. And to think we are only hitting the tip of the iceberg in space exploration. There are still billions upon billions of stars and systems to explorer.

I had a dentist appointment today. I hate getting my teeth cleaned.

January 11, 2001


Today's date is binary! 011101 == 29 in decimal. Yea Binary Day!

I set a new record on downloading from Napster today: 316 KB/sec. It only took me about 10 seconds to download a 3.5 MB song. Cable Rocks!

The Dreamcast broadband adapter was released yesterday. It's sorta stinks though, since right now you can only buy it online and it won't work with all the Dreamcast's games due to driver problems. So at the moment only like 3 games work for it. But most of the newer games coming out will include support thank goodness.

In a sad sad day for consumer choice and a wonderful day for megacorps everywhere, the AOL/TW merger was approved by the FTC. Some good is going to come out of it, AIM will have to be opened up to at least 3 competitors. However I wonder if AOL will just decide that only those 3 companies can use AIM, and keep all the open source stuff out like they are now. AOL will also have to allow competing companies to use Time Warners cable systems, without going through AOL startup crap. But all in all, I really wish thing thing could have been banned since now people will have even less choices in where they get their news and information. Plus you just know AOL/TW will use their new power to mess with the little people.

January 12, 2001


Today at school a kid in my economics class tried to drink a whole gallon of milk during lunch (30 minutes). And amazingly enough he did it, though he did throw up once in a nearby trash can. However the Nazi prison guar....er uh Assistant Principals patrolling the lunchroom decided that he was causing too much non-conformity, so he got called down to the office during Economics after lunch. So he probably has like a week of in school suspension.

For the first time ever, there is direct evidence of black holes thanks to the Hubble telescope. Too bad we can't send something out closer to find out more information on this mystery of space.

I rented Bust-A-Groove today from Blockbuster, so I'll be trying out that game over the long 3-day weekend. It seems like it's a fun game, but I've hardly played it so far. Gonna put in some serious play time tonight.

January 14, 2001


3 day weekends rule!

I went to SeaWorld yesterday for the whole day, and I must say it's quite a park. They have a lot of really good shows, and SeaWorld and Journey To Atlantis are some awesome rides. It was pretty cool (temp wise) so I didn't try to get wet at the Shamu show. However several brave souls got totally soaked.

The MIR space station will be deorbited on March 6, 2001. At least the ISS is up and running now, so that we still have a space station up in space.

I'm off to Islands of Adventure tomorrow, partly because of DDR and partly because I think it won't be too crowded. We'll see though. And on the subject of DDR, Teamgwailo.com has posted two awesome videos of some Japanese players at a competition. (Update: Unfortunatly they are no longer on their server)

January 17, 2001


IOA/Universal was fun. I'm finally starting to pass Trick/Difficult songs on the USA Mix.

And now I'd like to take a moment to say this: Chris is . Now on with your regularly scheduled text....

In a defeat of common sense everywhere, Altavista is going to pursue it's patents on search engines. Sometimes I wonder about the kinds of drugs they smoke down at the patent office when they award these kinds of stupid patents. Patents are supposed to help innovation, not destroy it.

January 18, 2001


I just discovered I've been putting 2000 on each date instead of 2001. And no one emailed me about it! Instead you probally just laughed at me, hurting my feelings, and causing my self-esteem to go down. I hope you're happy with yourself at the immense psychological pain you've caused me!

In a surprising move, Microsoft decided to release the source code to their Windows operating system. Sorta confirms what we figured all along huh?

I've been getting several hits from the SETI@Home project since I just passed 500 work units, so I figure I'll talk about Seti@home for anyone who isn't familiar with what it is. SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestial Intelligence)@home is a program you run as a screensaver that analyzes radio signals received from telescopes. It is hoped that civilizations on other planets would send out radio signals to try to communicate with other intelligent life, so SETI looks for these signals. Instead of having one super computer analyze all the data, the researches split up the data into chunks and let computer users all over the world analyze the data for them. And it gets done a whole lot faster this way too. You can find out more info from the Seti@home website and they have clients for almost every hardware and software platform imaginable.

January 19, 2001


Banana Nut Bread is very very good. MMMMMMMM

George W. Bush is going to be inaugurated as the 43rd president of the United States tomorrow. I plan on watching it on TV at noon. And if you missed Clinton's speech last night, CNN has the transcript. It also sorta makes me glad to be an American in that we don't have wars and fighting over this type of thing like they are right now in the Congo and Philippines . Instead all we have are some protesters. It's nice to have a calm transfer of power.

Thinkgeek has released some new products recently, including a very cool tshirt and some awesome modification equipment for your computer case. I think I'll have to pick me up the reverse engineer shirt, along with some of those caffinated penguin mints.

January 20, 2001


WOO HOO! Clinton is gone and George W. Bush is officially the US President. Oh Happy Day! Bush's acceptance speech can be read here

I'm finally got around to installing Litestep last night. I still don't have it working the way I want however. I almost screwed it up trying to install a new theme, but I'll figure it out eventually though.

Brand new Dance Dance Revolution news for the PSX was announced yesterday. It will be only $30 for the game, or $60 for a game and one pad, which is a GREAT deal. It'll also include 27 songs, but no Butterfly :(. It was also pushed back to March, so it'll be another 2 months or so before you can pick it up in the store. The song list could have been a little better, but it's livable. I just can't wait to start playing it at home.

January 21, 2001


I finally figured out how to configure Litestep, so know I have a very cool Windows desktop (98 KB). That shot also includes Windowblinds.

The Superbowl is coming to Tampa, so the newspapers, radio stations, and TV newscasts are full of stories and information about it. There are also a TON of famous people coming for the game, and a bunch of concerts. The hype is in full swing starting today, and won't end till late Sunday night. And no, I don't have tickets to the big game, I plan on watching it on TV for the commmercials.

Just when you though corporations couldn't get any dumber, Pillsbury pulls this on several Universties and companies. I think I'll go have a Coke now while I blow my nose with some Kleenex and take some Asprin for the cut covered up by my Band-Aid....

January 22, 2001


I saw Antitrust last night, and it was awesome! The technical accuracy in the movie is incredible. They use Gnome desktops in all the comptuer screenshots, the commands he uses in one part of the movie are real commands and they output real responses. The code is quasi-real, as there are some problems with it, but at least it looks like real code. I was trying to read the HTML in the title sequence in my head :). There is also a cameo by Miquel, the guy who heads up Gnome. And best of all, it pushes the open source philosophy and makes "Microsoft" look bad. Antitrust is definitly the newest geek cult movie.

I ordered my Reverse Engineer shirt and Penquin mints today. They should come in sometime around Friday.

Just when you though Orlando couldn't get any more tacky tourist traps, along comes a Christian themepark. Will wonders never cease?

January 23, 2001


Here's some wacky links for the terminally bored. I have what happens when Microsoft combines it's OS products. And a gun that lets you Do The Dew (tm).

Radio turns 100 today. Guglielmo Marconi sent the first long-distance radio message on this date in 1901. Now if only we got some decent trance stations here in Tampa.

Check out this video of a building that just wouldn't collapse. That has got to be embarrising for the crew who put up the explosives.

January 24, 2001


Clinton played one last joke in George Bush before he left office, taking out the W's on the keyboards.

Microsoft did not have a good day, with their DNS service being down. DNS turns the letters you type in (like yahoo.com) into the IP number that computers know (216.115.108.243). Without it working for Microsoft, typign in microsoft.com does nothing for you. Perhaps Bill is getting his just rewards?

I found a nifty Six Flags Magic Mountain site today. SFMM is the best Six Flags park for roller coasters, and I got to go there two summers ago for 3 glorious days. Now Ceder Point is next on my list.

January 25, 2001


Mp3 list is updated.

The Dreamcast is in a bit of a limbo right now. There are tons of rumors about how Sega is getting out of the console business, which really stinks cause then it scares people into not buying Dreamcasts, which means less support from development houses, which means less games for me. But as according to that link up above, Sega is still making a ton of DC games, and there are over a 100 expected titles for this year. But it doesn't really comment on if Sega will continue making DC hardware. I can only hope they will. But that press release also contains some good news in that they are trying to make games for the Gameboy Advance. I can't wait to play Sonic on that thing.

I'm not sure about other places, but the local Papa Johns is running a great anniversary sale; 2 large one toppings for $12. Just figured I'd let ya know.

January 26, 2001


WOO HOO! The Tampa Gameworks now has the USA Mix of Dance Dance Revolution instead of the old 1.5 mix. Of course, that makes it somewhat more crowded since now all the newbies can start to pass songs, but overall I'll take the US mix over the old mix any day. I also got to see the >Wazzup guys at Gameworks too, as there are a TON of celebrity's in town for the Super Bowl.

Check out this satire piece on Despair Inc making the :-) emoticon trademarked. I especially liked the quote "Jeff Bezos...congratulated him on his willingness to 'take a innovative stand against innovation'". At least the Despair story is false.

It takes 2. 3 million dollars to have a 30 second ad during the Super Bowl. Just some food for thought.

January 27, 2001


I was back in Ybor last night, not only to play some more DDR but to check out what was happening down there. It's not everyday that a Super bowl comes to your town you know. Anyways, it's amazing what people will do for some 50 cent beads, or fight and claw there way for a dollar dropped from a the balcony of a building. It was definitely an interesting experience, that would have been better if I was over 18 so I could get into some of the clubs (and they won't kick me out of Gameworks at 10). Just 4 more months, just 4 more months.

Some are calling Pluto just a lump of ice and not a planet. However most astronomers are still considering Pluto to be one of the 9 planet in our Solar System. It's also interesting to note that Pluto is smaller than our moon at only 1,413 miles wide.

I wish I was this guy. He's going to have the opportunity to be the first tourist in space. Of course, he is paying $20 million dollars for that privilege, but if I was that rich I'd think it'd be worth it. I've always wanted to go up into space, and maybe before I die there might be regular flights up there. Well, there probably won't be, but I can dream can't I?

January 28, 2001


It's Super Bowl Sunday, and Tampa is going crazy. Remember, it starts at 6 PM Eastern and you can view all the commercials in the game at Adcritic.com after the game.

It's amazing what you can send through the US mail system, as these guys found out. They sent bricks, roses, teeth, and a ski among other things, and surprisingly most of them got delivered.

And there was some rioting in Washington last night by Linux users. The police said that they "...know about their leader....This 'Colonel' guy will be tracked down, and he WILL be brought to justice..." Sounds pretty serious to me :) Don't mess with the geeks!

January 29, 2001


In an effort to comply with good web site practices, I have created a Binaryfusion.net Privacy Policy. And because I'm unoriginal, I just took Amazon.com's privacy policy and changed a few of the words to what Amazon really means. I hope you enjoy it.

My favorite commercials this past Super Bowl were the "What Are You Doing" Budweiser one, and E-Trade's Monkey one. The pets.com sock monkey sold me on the E-Trade one. Pepsi gets the 3rd spot with Bob Dole.
Worst commercials go to Accenture who should change their slogan to "Accenture: Even we don't know what we're selling!" Volkswagon suffers the same fate, as I have no clue what the heck they were trying to get across in those commercials. I liked last year's commercials better overall.

In what comes as no surprise, Napster has announced plans to start charging for access to Napster starting in June or July. I have no qualms about paying $5 a month for all the music I can download, but I fear that once Napster starts charging, the number of songs available will go way down, and then it won't be worth that $5. At least there is always Opennap.

January 30, 2001


The 2.4.1 kernel was released today. I'm compiling it as I'm writing this, so hopefully it'll work for me. Get it while it's hot.

Freshmeat unveiled their new design and features today with "Freshmeat II". I always love showing Freshmeat to people who say that there isn't any software for Linux, and see there eyes grow wide as they view the thousands of programs available. It's like I always say, the only things I really miss from Windows is Windows Media Player, Quicktime, and Shockwave, and that's only because those 3 propriatary programs do not have a Linux version.

January 31, 2001


Today is a sad, sad day. The Dreamcast has officially died. Sega will no longer be making any more Dreamcasts, and they are lowering the price of them to $100 in an effort to get rid of inventory. Sega was losing too much money to continue making the hardware, so they are going to have to call it quits on that front. However, on the bright side, the Dreamcast will still be well supported for the rest of the year with some awesome software titles from Sega. And Sega will also continue to make games, so expect a Sonic game on the Gameboy Advance and Space Channel 5 on the PS2. Sega is also in talks with Nintendo and Microsoft about bringing software to the Gamecube and X-Box respectively. It's unfortunate that the Dreamcast has not done too well, it really is a great little machine with a ton of good original games on it.

We're doing poetry in English now, and boy do I hate it. Some poetry is decent at least, but most of it, including almost everything we have to read in school, is terrible. It makes no sense to me for some reason. And then since I'm in AP English, I have to analyze these poems to death, so that's no fun either since how am I supposed to analyze what I don't understand? Thank goodness this is the last year I'll ever have to take an English course.

I found a cool video of this guy playing Para Para Paradise (Update: Which is no longer on the server). PPP (for short) is a music game where you break sensors located to the left, right, front-right, front-left, and front of you with your hands or feet (or anything else for that matter). Unfortunatly this game is even harder than DDR to find, so needless to say I won't be playing it anytime soon. But it's popular over in Asia. Why oh why do Americans have to not like beat-mania games?

December 2000 -- 2001 -- February 2001