christopher’s lives (v5.3)

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 at 11.15 pm

wow, the end of Ch@b

karl sent me the news…

99% of the readers of this post have no idea what i’m talking about, but, to those of you that do, this is truly the end of an era, even if that era ended for us long ago…
no more Ch@bTalk, URL Chat, and, if i read it right, no more MyRooms… all those things we spent so many late frustrating hours for months trying to figure out… i remember clearly Curtis announcing he had finally figured out how to get it to work, even making a long-distance phone call to japan (jeez, that was almost five years ago)… then, months later, after everyone had given up on it, Vegitto figured out the way to open Ch@bTalk to the masses… the controversy over the selling of ISAO ID’s, people stumbling through the programs to create them for everyone… and, speaking of frustrating, trying to teach people how to use it… they were certainly our most used guides… then came DreamPassport Premier Ch@bTalk and all the amazing features and having to feel around in the dark all over again to work out all the buttons (the definitive exhaustive guide created by the guy at this keyboard)… JavaCh@b and then DPPC and no one believing Danny that he got it to work until he finally posted a screenshot of it running on his machine… hours spent on the URL Chat at ISAO, trying to get someone who could translate for our guides… months of trying to carry on conversations with people who spoke little to no english, but, needing their knowledge so continuing to try… and several times that it was declared that it was now impossible to create new ID’s, yet, someone always found a way… and, of course, several Ch@b directories, just so you could actually find people to chat with…
Drobb was the first person to Ch@b us… minutes after posting our number in the original DCBG Ch@b listing…
when i installed ICQ on my psion, i even switched out all the sound files with Ch@b sounds… and, here a few months ago, i dusted off my old generation 0 dreamcast and logged into Ch@b to check my messages and just see who might be on…
man, i can hear that god-awful music that played on DP3 when the client would open and close when you went in and out of the email client… sometimes blaringly loud because you turned the volume way up to hear the quiet VoiceCh@b someone sent you…
and who can forget “HALLO! HALLO!”, no matter how bad we want to…

those glory days were great while they lasted… and now, one more piece of those days is about to expire…
glad i was there for it… we really did make a bit of history, even if no one knows but us…

Friday, September 10th, 2004 at 2.50 pm

links - web-based tools and the world’s biggest cyndrical aquarium

these tools/resources will mostly be of interest to Dreamcast/WebTV browser users, though, a few might be worth a look for anyone who works with with web pages…

AnyBrowser.com - Your Source for Browser Compatibility Verification
WDG Copy/Paste HTML Validator
Cynthia Says - Accessibility Validator
Doctor HTML Quality Assessment Validator

Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker
HTMlite tutorials
extended ASCII - Webopedia.com

TL/2 - “a FileManager specially designed for thin-client browsers and a sturdy [webspace tool kit]“.
Draac.com - Web Page Tools
MAiP Developer Tools
Domania Directory Mover
net2ftp

Email Address Encoder
Adobe Acrobat - Adobe PDF Conversion by Simple Form

JSMFeed is a Perl script that converts RSS XML feeds into standard browser side Javascript in JSMsg convention.” - “Display RSS Feeds on your site- Convert your RSS feeds to JSMsg feeds for easy web-page display”
phpMyChat is an easy-to-install, easy-to-use multi-room chat based on PHP and a database, supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, and ODBC.”

and, behold The World’s Largest Cylidrical Aquarium…

AquaDom Aquarium [via BoingBoing.net]

Wednesday, September 8th, 2004 at 10.10 pm

links - Dreamcast

the 9th marks the fifth anniversary (9/9/99) of the north american release of the SEGA Dreamcast game/internet console, so, i figured i would drag out the assorted Dreamcast-related links that have been in my way…

   ”Dreamcast will set a new standard for entertainment and will achieve huge success in this industry.”
   Bill Gates - May 22, 1998

Howstuffworks - How Dreamcast Works
CyberiaPC.com Video Game Gallery - Sega Dreamcast
DreamcastHistory.com
DCArchive

DCKnowledgeBase Wiki

DreamCast Online Gaming Community
Re-volt Dreamcast Fan Page where u can upload and download custom tracks

Paulokhm’s DreamEye MoBlog

DC Zip extractor [i hope this is only gone temporarily]
[LCD Maker]
DCToolsWeb
Webtools 4 Dreamcast
Index of /fayewong/bank/
Kagura’s Performance Products uploader

DCEmulation :: View Forum - Bleem!cast
[permanently archived for historical purposes (FAQ)]

Sega Slayer’s Anti-Sega Website - Awful Sega Sites

DCSLINKS.com


UPDATE Sept 11, 2004

i got this email…

Original Message:
—————–
From: ze3@*** ze3@***
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 16:29:39 -0400
To: him@ip.com
Subject: Some of your dc links and tools.

I read your page about couple day ago and i saw some dead links.
I try to write a comment on that blogger page of your but need create first
so i email instead.

You know the Dc zip extractor, i dont think that tool of mine ever coming
back again :(
But you can still use the japanese tool instead, that just a form, why dont
transload this page and host it.?
http://angelfire.com/ult/dc/zipex.txt
I even have this big bookmarklet just for it.
There also a zip file to test it on that page.
It some kind of dc disc swap trick tutorial.

Also that link domania directory mover link on your page.
It will not work if someone click on that link because
your page doesnt have domania cookie, domania.net wont allow people use it
You need to put this javasript below on your page first. Or else you’ll see
alert window saying you cant use this tool.

<script language=javascript>
<!–
document.cookie=”Freeloader=Supporter;path=/;domain=domania.net”;
document.cookie=”ACCESS=ALLOWED;path=/;domain=domania.net”;
//–>

Also check out this random midi player. I dont have midis so i test at your
site and it work perfectly
http://angelfire.com/ult/dc/index1.txt (hit reload to change random)
I have a bookmarklet for this tool. It will scan for midi and create that
page.
and try index2.txt is another midi page.
It you interest that bookmarket, let me know. i will try to write a little
bit instruction how to use it.

Later
dcbrowzer

i think this is the site he has in mind for japanese tools

Wednesday, June 16th, 2004 at 5.12 pm

search terms that bring people here

see, we have now added several thousand words to our site with these blogs, so, we show up more in search results, so, we are getting many many more hits…
and, following the tradition of posting interesting keywords, here are some that i thought were odd or cool or whatever…

let me get our regular keyword stuff out of the way first…

for as long as we have had our collection online, we get lots of hits from people looking for dreamcast stuff, since our dreamcast page has a lot of stuff, a few rare items people would be looking for, full titles, and even catalog numbers… dreamcast-related searches are our biggest bringers of traffic…

next, or maybe tied, would be all the searches for porn using google image search… you see, the directory of pics from when we saw a band called “Bozo Porno Circus”, every pic has “porno” in the filename…

we also get a surpring number of hits for people looking for the “sounds from hell” wav file that is in our wav directory

recently, we have also been getting some hits from people searcing for movie titles, and a few for bands we have mentioned here and there on the site…

and, with my recent posts on the subject, we are pulling in some mp3 blog-related searches…

ok, now for the singularities…

whisper dish
mentioned in the post from when we went to alamogordo…

jesse diaz pastor las vegas
mentioned in my recent post about our wedding…

virtual drugs
yeah, made a post about that…

clive barker signing pics forbidden planet
whoa… huh?
i assume those terms match to the “horror night” post, but, i have no clue what this guy was looking for…

what is the k-pax alternate ending plot spoiler
so, lemme’ think… probably the “list of movies we have seen” post and the “horror night” post appear on the same archive page and have all those terms between them…

talking cat video
whoa, now that is a weird one… i would have to poke around a bit to figure out where they landed…

intitleindex.of mp3 chab
this may be the oddest one… who would be looking for mp3’s and chabs simultaneously?
though, both are in our media directory, i don’t know anyone else besides us who keeps voice chabs online…
or is there a band called chab?
(btw, for non-dc’ers, “Ch@b”, sometimes spelled “Chab” in casual use, is a japanese instant messager service, and is built in to japanese Dreamcast browsers… it is the only real IM choice for dreamcast browser users…)

limpbizkit.mid
i thought the midi craze was over… we have not added any to our collection in a long time, and only have this one for something like historical value, in that it is the first midi we ever in heard…

amarillo yard signs
argh! does this mean someone knows the story behind these??? or are they also searching for the answer?

archived yahoo webcam feeds
i don’t get this one, either… feeds are live, not archived, and what is a ‘yahoo webcam’?
nor can i think off the top of my head where they might have landed on our site using these terms… though, now that i think about it, i bet most or all of those terms appear in the sidebar of every page of my blog here…

dreameye homebrew
well, THAT would be nice… but, i don’t think anyone is working on it…

angelfire briefcase links page
don’t get this one… what is an angelfire briefcase? i know yahoo briefcases, but, not angelfire… and are they searching for a page of links TO angelfire briefcases? i just don’t get it…
anyway, the terms all probably appear on our sitemap

penn jillette pc computing
good to know someone else reads them… (you can read tem, too, if you follow the “Penniphile” link on my sidebar…)

so, nothing TOO terribly exciting, but, we are just gettin started here and many more words will be added as months roll by, which means man more interesting search terms…
so, i will post about this again in the future…

Tuesday, June 1st, 2004 at 1.06 pm

my gd-rom drive… went… grievous…

well, another one down…

let’s see, i think that is either five or six in three years… sheesh…

it had been making some odd noises for a couple months and refusing to boot once in a while, but, last night, the screensaver kicked on, which meant reading the disc, and i hear a bit of a grinding noise…
and then i heard nothing but the cooling fan…

poor little thing puts in 12-hour days, every day, and the disc it runs 99% of the time is a burned dreampassport premier cd… not the best-made burn, either… and all the loading of japanese fonts, etc., takes its toll, little by little, until it finally screams “you can’t fire me, i quit!” and gives up the ghost…

i borrowed miss mary’s drive for the moment… (we stopped putting the screws back in long ago, so, it is a quick operation…)

among all our spare parts we don’t have a single healthy gd-rom drive (though, we have a few dead/sick ones), so, we are going to have to go track one down… should be simple enough and it keeps getting cheaper every time this comes up…

i know i used to post at dcbg every time i blew a gd-rom drive, i wonder if i could go find those posts… would be interesting to see a timeline…

Saturday, February 14th, 2004 at 6.30 pm

we have been online three years today

[moved from my LiveJournal]

here is the latest version of the same post i have made the last two years on this day…

on this day, three years ago, we went online with our dreamcast and little junky planetweb 2.6 browser on the feb ‘01 ODCM demo disk for the first time…

of course now it is 2 online dc’s and japanese browsers and our Psions are also online, of course…

unlike probably most people, we actually have a videotape of our first time logging onto the web… we just let the tape roll… really fascinating to see yourself klutz around the web for the very first time…

for the record, first site we went to… google

we have our first irc chat on tape, our first time in an online game (PSO) and several other firsts, like when we signed up for hotmail and could not use a space in “insidious plots”, which led to the handle being the way it is to this day: insidious underscore plots

heh, weird little collection… but, interesting to look back on from 3 years later

sort of like our own little wayback machine

(when i fast scan forward on the tape it makes me think “so… this is what broadband would look like…” :D !)

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