A small report from my visit to Poros can be found here.

I have added pictures from the Greek island of Poros to my photo album (and just a few from Athens).

Do you have an older MacBook Pro where your iSight camera (the built-in camera) does not work out-of-the-box? I cannot say anything about modern Mac`s, but this is the way to get it to work (and work permanently) for older ones like mine (6-7+ years):

1. Get the firmware for the camera. You can it get from your Mac partition or a backup of it (if you still have any of those around), but if you are too lazy (like me) just download it from here. Unzip it and put it in any directory you like.

2. Install the firmware extraction tool:

sudo apt-get install isight-firmware-tools

3. When asked, point the tool to the directory where you put the firmware in pt. 1.

4. (Optional) When your firmware is successfully extracted to /lib/firmware/isight.fw you may totally remove the extraction tool:

sudo apt-get –purge remove isight-firmware-tools

5. The firmware needs to be loaded into memory EVERY TIME YOU BOOT, as the camera will not retain it. The small trick to accomplish this is by creating a small startup script that sets the modification date for it, to make sure it will be ready again for your NEXT boot:

#!/bin/sh

touch /lib/firmware/isight.fw

Save this script anywhere you like, just make sure it is executable.

6. Add your script with “Startup Applications”.

7. Shut completely down, then reboot.

A veteran website with 25 years worth of pictures from the Greek islands is still going strong and has recently been modernized. A must see for any island fan.

Choices, choices, I hate choices… 😉 Choices and consequences…

Oh my has this been a long time coming…

Best video game ever? I dunno, I am not such a regular game player. I can only say I am thoroughly impressed that someone has been able to pack such an emotional story into something as “trivial” as a video game. I believe this soundtrack gives you a good indication. I am also very happy (and a bit surprised perhaps) about the continued survival of the “adventure” game.

Well, is this a game or is it an interactive movie? In sum it does make one hell of a movie. And to call it “emotional” is a bit like calling the sun warm… I would think even the most seasoned game players have to take a break after discovering the final truth about “Faith”. Absolutely heartbreaking as well a kick in the guts. Listen to track 22 here, “Faith”. If you do not listen to anything else of this soundtrack, do listen to that little piano piece.

Are you a fan of old Sierra games? Do you particularly enjoy blip-blops? Did you know that the soundtrack for many of the games were actually written specifically for the Roland MT-32 synthesizer? These are games like King’s Quest 4, 5 and 6, Space Quest 3, Leisure Suit Larry 2, 3 and 5, Police Quest 2 and 3.

If you are lucky enough to have one of these Roland babies the games sound really awesome. But is there a poor man’s solution? There sure is. The Munt synthesizer emulator does a fine job at emulating an MT-32.

So what are the steps for settings this up? It turns out it is easy. As a prerequisite you will need a copy of the MT-32 ROMs, but these are easily available at TheOldComputer.

1. Start up the Munt MT-32 Sound Module Emulator with the proper ROMs installed.
2. Among the actual game files are a RESOURCE.CFG file, change its “soundDrv” setting to say:
   soundDrv = MT32.DRV
3. The last thing you need to do is to set the MIDI device to be the MT-32. I recommend running the games in DosBox using D-Fend Reloaded. Assuming you have the game added there, it is as simple as going to the Hardware/Sound/MIDI setting, click the “Select MIDI device from device manager” button and select “MT-32 Synth Emulator”, which should be visible to DosBox when the emulator is actually running.

You *could* use the default Windows MIDI device also, leaving all DosDox settings in peace, but lots of the sound effects will then come out wrong, so taking the trouble to download and install the MT-32 emulator is definitely worth it. You can also experiment with other sound drivers if you want, but for the soundtracks that are actually written for the MT-32 that makes little sense.

To be able to “solve” the MO:ULa pod ages in a convenient manner it helps having a pod age calendar (or clock). Try e.g the Pod Clock application, available for most platforms. There is also information about the Pod Age Calendar available on the web, but its actual calculations does not seem to work in any modern web browser. Your best bet would be something like Opera 12.

Update: I can also confirm that the Pod Age Calendar page works in IE7 and IE8.

Update 2: A very quick reaction from the maintainers of that site! We already have a fix!