(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5) 
Loading ...I’ve not had time to write any posts for a few days, as my Wife has recently given birth to a baby girl! Both are healthy and well, and will be back home soon!
Time to go back to the hospital 
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So, I have a state of the art Notebook (well, almost state of the art), with a Duel Core 64 Bit AMD Processor, 2Gb RAM, and a 64 Bit Operating System (Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon) - but, whatever… because I’ve found a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k Emulator! What better use for such a system than to play classic 8 Bit games from my childhood?! Yes, I could drag the old 48k machine along with the Dixons tape deck from my parents’ attic, and hook it up to the TV - but that would involve a trip half way around the world. I can’t afford that, so instead, I ran
sudo apt-get install spectemu-common spectemu-x11 spectrum-roms
which installed the Spectemu (xspect) command line Speccy Emulator, along with a few Speccy ROMs. Searching for some of my old favourite games (Skool Daze, Back to Skool, Lords of Chaos, Spy Hunter, Saboteur, Elite - also see the Oolite post), led me to World of Spectrum, where I downloaded a bunch of TAP tape image files, and dumped them in ~/Speccy
Spectemu is CLI, so from a terminal window, I ran
cd ~/Speccy
and extracted the games I’d just downloaded
tar -zxvf SkoolDaze.tap.zip
then ran the Emulator itself
xspect
which brought up the age old “© 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd” Speccy interface in a new window. In this window, I had to press Enter, and run
Load ""
by pressing the Speccy shortcut “j” followed by two double quotes “” which outputs Load “”, followed by Enter. Pressing Ctrl+p outputs a prompt back in the Terminal window to enter the tape file path, which was simply
SKOOLDAZ.TAP
followed by return. Back in the Speccy window, Skool Daze began loading. And loading… and loading… It’s as if I was back in the ’80s - a few minutes later, the game had loaded to memory (without crashing, or needing to adjust the volume of the tape player etc.!), and I could enjoy a blast from the past…
Quick loading of tapes is also possible. Before typing Load “” simply press Ctrl+y in the Speccy window, and the Terminal window reports “Quick Load on” (it can also be switched off with Ctrl+y). After entering Load “” follow the same procedure of entering the .TAP file name, and the game loads into memory much faster, bypassing the Speccy ROM’s load routine. Nice!
To quit - just press “Ctrl+c” in the Speccy window. More on the Speccy commands can be found at http://www.inf.bme.hu/~mszeredi/spectemu/README
(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5) Loading ...A post with no absolutely substance, no information, no point, and here simply because it’ll be another 4 years until I can do this again 
Actually, I’ve already posted twice today. Bollocks.
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5) Loading ...Living in the Jungle, I’m concerned about environmental issues, and try to live my life as Green as possible. Unfortunately, I witness deforestation, slash and burn, littering, and all sorts of non-green activities on an all too regular basis. So, I was incredibly impressed when a friend pointed out ThinkHost to me. Yes, they’re another web hosting company along with the other thousands out there, but by far the best thing about these guys, is that they run on 100% Renewable Energy - Wind and Solar powered Linux Web Servers… How unbelievably cool is that?!? Very, I think anyway. They also plant a new tree with every customer sign up, which makes the Hippy in me very happy (I like to please the Hippy and the Geek). In fact, I think the only thing that would make them even cooler, is if their servers were Ubuntu web servers! They currently have a great $7.95/month hosting plan, offering:
along with PHP5 support, unlimited POP3 email accounts, Linux/Apache setup, software packages and so on and so forth.
I’ve no intention of putting distracting banners regularly in my posts - in fact, not at all after this one - but I’m pretty damn impressed with these guys, so they deserve a big ass, one-off, in-post banner:
They also have a pretty impressive affiliate program, which is a cool way to spread the Green word!
(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5) Loading ...I recently got married, and my Wife is from the Lisu Hill Tribe (originally from Tibet, and have migrated - walked - to Northern Thailand in recent years). We had the ceremony in her village, the Shaman informed the Ancestral and Nature Spirits that we are married, and we’re happy, our families are happy, the village is happy - in fact, everyone is happy. Except for the government.
If we want to be recognised (yes, that’s correct - no “z”) as “legally” married, we have to obtain an anonymous signature, from somebody neither of us have ever met - and what’s more, we have to pay for it! To be fair to the Thai government, there are no costs involved in obtaining the marriage certificate from the Amphur (city council), but there’s a horrible chain of, not surprisingly since the British Government are pretty tight-arsed, non-free bureaucracy from the British side. First, I have to download a document from the British Embassy’s website, which I then have re-type in the exact same format (since they can’t even be bothered to supply an editable document) declaring that I am not currently married, and can legally marry. I then have to take this document in person to the British Embassy in Bangkok (bear in mind that I live in the Jungle of Northern Thailand, and that I absolutely despise Bangkok), and pay someone 3500 baht to sign it. That’s about £50 or $100! For an anonymous signature, that probably takes approximately 2 - 3 seconds. Now, that’s a wage bracket I’d love to be in! Not only that, but I have to wait 24 hours for the dude to sign it! More expense require to stay a night in Bangkok.
When the consul has finally decided that it’s worth his time to sign it (and it should be for 3500 Baht), I have to take the document and get it translated (another 4000 - 5000 baht), and signed again… for another fee.
So, once I’ve paid someone I’ve never met to tell me I can get married, we can finally go to the Amphur and be registered as married. Yay!
My Wife is also pregnant, and due to give birth in a month and I would like to register my Child’s birth with the UK registry office. If He/She is born in the UK, then this would be free. However, He/She will be born here in Thailand, so once again, I have to pay for someone to tap a few keys and click “Add to Database”, followed by “File -> Print” for the UK Birth Certificate. I honestly wouldn’t mind paying reasonable administration fees, but I have to pay 15,000 baht! 15,000!!! That’s £242.52 at today’s rate. Where the hell did they come up with that figure? That’s more than my Wife’s family earn in 6 months - and they work bloody hard every day! Certainly harder than the Consul, with his benefits and Bentleys…
Ironic, since I moved to the Jungle to get away from the expense of living in the UK…
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Why 64 Bit Jungle? Well, I live in the Mountainous Jungle of Northern Thailand, near the Burmese Border, and I’ve always been interested in Computer Technology. I’m currently using an AMD 64 Bit Acer Aspire 5052 Laptop to work, and play. I’ve been meaning to set up a blog for some time now, and the name “64bitjungle” came to me during a brief period of meditation… It seemed as though my mind was trying to tell me something, even though I was trying to meditate! So I set up this blog…
Unfortunately, the blog name isn’t really future proof, so when 64 bits become 128 bits…
64 Bit Jungle
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