Christmas Greetz! by Methylchloroisothiazolinone
20 December 1993
Hello!
This is just a quick little note in lieu of a Christmas card (I hate
Christmas cards...)
Since I've been as bad at writing as you have (joke!) I decided to
quickly jot this note. I hacked the following demo in about two
weekends. No, I didn't write the zooming code...a friend did.
Hopefully it won't crash your computer...
(It's been pretty thoroughly (I hope!) debugged by moi. However,
Toren's zoom algorithm is self modifying code...)
No joke. We were messing around and he started coding it to be
"really fast". Go, go Gadget-brain!
I've been really busy, what with my job, my girlfriend, and my job.
And my job.
I'm working as a Software Engineer for Nirvana Systems, Inc. Heard
of them? Pick up an Investor's Business Daily (stock market trading
magazine). We have a half-page ad usually every Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday.
Full time job -- I'm taking a break from school. Well, okay. I
burned out big-time.
So now I'm stuck having to learn Visual Basic and Visual C (thank you,
thank you, thank you for teaching me C!!!)
Just went to HoHo Con last weekend -- it was the big hacker's con.
You know the difference between a real hacker and the media's idea,
right? (Real hacker being a programmer, media's idea being a virus
writer...) Well, this con was for the media's idea. The scum --
the underworld -- of cyberspace. Neat experience, though. I'll
try to give it a miss next time...
Night 1: The police came and busted up a warez board (Mike Velotta
would have lots in common with the hackers there...) Two nodes.
It seems they had a phone line coming out of one room, and trailing
into another. The hotel got pissed because the incoming calls overloaded
their switchboard...
Meanwhile, the people down the hall were setting up a LAN.
The next day, the floor above them had Internet access. Somehow, they
hacked a slip connection, and created their own site (hoho.con.com)!
I was casually talking to someone about irc, and the person next to
me became bored and pulled out his cellular scanner -- just to see what
conversations he could pick up.
For some reason, they aren't being invited back next year...
What I liked (and wished I could have gotten) were one of the caps
or the shirts. The shirts had "NARC" on the front of them, and
"I attended HoHo Con '93" on the back. The caps...
(embroidered)
/^\/^\
I \ / COPS
\/
It was a trip...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Anyway, I'll be in Virginia with my girlfriend (Heidi) from the
January 3 - 8. I'll try to stop by PVI to see you (and maybe
Mrs. Brewer, if she's around).
The following demo requires:
VGA/MCGA (Anything that displays mode 13h - 320x200x256)
-- reason being, I needed the speed, and this is the fastest mode,
plus the pixels are easily addressable (1 byte -- no paging!)
286 or higher (Toren's code uses one or more stosb's -- we were lazy)
----------------------------------------------------------------
It would be nice to run this on a 386-40 or higher, with color VGA.
I wrote it on one, so I know the speed is acceptable. However,
my card is a Diamond Speedstar -- i.e. I have VRAM, making my
graphics fly. I tested this at work on a 486-33 with a Cirrus
Logic card, and it ran at about the same speed (maybe a little
slower).
Press any key to continue, or Ctrl-C to abort...
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