BEAST.COM

Here's one of those posts where I show my age by talking about obscure things which nobody but me really misses.

Remember BEAST.COM? No, not the website, the program. Back in the days before Michael Jackson got scary, ".com" meant "executable command file." There was no web.

If you do remember it, great! You're an old fart, too. If not, allow me to refresh your memory (or introduce you to one of those things old farts think about when their minds wander).



Remember now? Oh. Okay, what about this?



You're the blue diamond thingie, the Hs and funny double-Hs are beasts that chase you, and the green bits are walls which you can push around to trap or squish the beasts, sort of like Pengo (sorry, another old-timer reference). The beasts lay eggs, there are exploding walls... an amazing amount of fun for a mere 7.5kb package. I haven't played it since the 80s, but I'm hard pressed to remember any game that took up as much time as it did, then or since. Not DOOM, not Quake, not Myst. Maybe the Kroz games...maybe.

I finally got around to searching for a copy on the net. Here's one place you can find it. Their description is better than mine.

I installed the DOSBox emulator for Linux just so I could play it again, and it works flawlessly. (There are versions of DOSBox for OS/X and Windows, too.) I just finished a two-hour marathon session. Woo hoo!

There exists an updated Linux version of BEAST called Monster Masher. It's okay, and prettier, but it's not really the same. Still good though, if you want to try out something with actual graphics.



Anyway, if you want a taste of what kept geeks entertained in the 80s, you could do worse than installing BEAST.COM on your computer.





Hmmm. I wonder if I should try to track down the BASIC source code for HURKLE while I'm at it...

Computer Geek / Nerd Quiz

Yeah, another dumb quiz. Imagine!

Breezy Badger

Breezy is about to ship. Somebody tell Johnny!

I'm just sayin'!

Uptime

23 days and 16 hours since my last reboot. Linux rules! Of course, I came from Win98. Maybe XP is better in that regard.

Ubuntu's default file explorer (like Windows Explorer) is called Nautilus. It's a small thing, but it's really cool that you can highlight a file that's in the middle of downloading and watch the file-size increase on the status bar. Maybe XP does that too and I don't know about it, but it's new to me. I don't have to hit refresh to see changes in a folder or file as they occur. Neat!

...

I don't know if you spotted the deskcam over there in the menu, or if you even care. I was looking for a way to do for Linux what SCWebCam does for Windows, and I discovered this pair of scripts that neatly handle the job. Adding the timestamp on the bottom is fairly simple, too.

It doesn't automatically refresh (yet), but if you hit F5 often enough you might catch me staring at the asses of Worth.

...

My job is starting to wind down for the summer, and I'll probably be looking for something new by October. Hopefully I won't have to relive my old Wal-Mart days. Yeeugh.