Saterdayevening, da 19th of December in da year of 1998 dear friends, dis morning I mailed 3 sendings, one for Mark Breton, one for Almighty God, and one for Iceman. Da one for Graffito will follow on Monday so he'll get it bfor X-mas like da others. Meanwhile I've visited da Free Record Shop again and came home with sum new stuff, again. Dis time da new maxi-cd from da Marshall Masters, da new 5-cd-box called 'Power Bass top 100', and da not really so new cd 'Some girls wander by mistake' by Sisters Of Mercy from 1983. Actually I thought today that Effy14 would become my last cd with mpeg2 only bcoz it takes too much of my time. Effy14 has at least taken 12 days to create. That's a long time if ya wanna do other things as well. But now with all those new cd's I think that I know what will come on Effy15, mpeg2 songs ofcoz. Don't take me wrong, I didn't buy those cd's to mpeg at home. It's just bcoz I liked those cd's and it would be a shame not to mpeg it as fast as possible. Maybe I need to get my A500 back home to help my A1200 a bit ?! Or should I wait for another processor ?! Maybe waiting is da best thing to do, not to rush too much. Besides getting my A500 back would mean a lot of moving da hardware in order to get sum free space. Sundayafternoon. It's a wonder that my processor doesn't burn itself. It's mpegging a lot of songs, copying mpegged songs to my internal harddisc, and meanwhile copying new audio directly to my Ram Disk to have it mpegged there too !! No offense, but my beloved computer really starts to slow down. Oh, and it's also busy with dis texteditor in DirOpus ... I have to call Graffito to ask more about how he feels about his 68040 card ... Evening. Outside da temperatures are falling to zero again. Nevertheless it seems that there will be absolutely no white X-mas dis year. No snow. No ice. No heavy caraccidents. No people frozen to death. Man, dis will be boring again ... Anyway, I tried to call Graffito dis afternoon and dis evening, but when I finally got him on da line he just wanted to watch sumthing interesting on national tv. No problem, I'm gonna call him back in a few minutes when da interesting thing on tv is over. Meanwhile da mpegging is still busy on da background and dis will remain so for da next coming days. Mpegging 5 full cd's with a 68030 is not exactly sumthing that needs only a few hours ... and if my A500 should get back here then I also would need my Parnet cable again which I gave away a year ago, together with da software. And I don't even know how to use that software. Maybe I should follow a crash course at Graffito's place. Why Graffito ?? Bcoz for da easy-to-understand-reason that Almighty God and Iceman live a little bit too far away for a visit of only a few hours. No offense to you guys. It's just that Graffito lives only about a 100 kilometers further away from me, in da second largest city of Belgium, namely Antwerp. Later in da same evening. Just had a (long) conversation with Graffito about turbocards, towers, and other interesting stuff. Hopefully we can find a date when he can come to my humble place to help me with da towerproblem, but I can not wait too long bcoz he has received an offer to go to da Party in Denmark on da next coming Saterday. But I try not to hurry too much, bcoz I try to accept da idea of slow mpegging on my computer. Besides, it's not bcoz my A1200 would be build into a tower that it suddenly goes faster !! For extra speed I still need a turbocard, and da one who might find one for me is probably spending his holidays outside of da country for at least a week or two ... Tomorrow I've gotta mail da sending for Graffito, Effy14, bcoz da others were already mailed on Saterdaymorning and I got up too late to prepare all sendings ... hey, it was week-end for me too ! Tuesday, a half hour bfor midnight. Today has been a bad day : sick. Difficult breathing, pain in my throat, but certainly no fever. In other words, no flu. It could have been much worse. So to avoid worse I drank all day very hot mint tea, hot milk with honey, hot gluwine but not with Strorum. I keep da Strorum (80 degrees) in my fridge for emergencies ... it will hopefully be better tomorrow... Meanwhile da amiga is still fully busy mpegging da first two cd's from that 5 cd-box. Think it will be finished tomorrow morning. Then will da other cd's follow too ... dis is gonna take a long time .. Today I discovered that my bankaccount is not as loaded as I thought it was. I was also planning to buy us a new television bcoz da one from my girlfriend is a bit too small, only 51 cm. That's why I wanted to get a 70 cm tv with da option to zoom out when 16:9 format is shown. That would mean full screen in 16:9 but left and right side of da picture would be less, it would be cut away by da tv-processor. Why dis and not a wide screen tv ? Easy anwer, money !! And that brings me to my problem that there won't be much money left over to buy a brandnew turbocard for my beautiful amiga. A second hand 68040 will still be possible, but that's all. Or maybe making my 68030 work on 66 Mhz. That's an option too, but has a higher risc or getting in trouble. In my life I always try to upgrade in everything I have, to make things bcome better, more efficient. But on da other hand I also have learned da very important lesson that I need to be happy with da things I already have, and not have desires for too much !! In other words, maybe I need to be happy enuff with my 68030 with co-processor after all, bcoz it's not so bad, in fact it's fast enuff for normal use. If a 68040 would be connected to da amiga then it would probably be used a 100% too, believe me ... Wednesdayafternoon. Da 3rd and 4th audio cd are already loaded on my harddrive and da mpegging has also started. 40 songs need to be processed. Probably at least two days and a half ... but I try not to mind. Today I also feel better than yesterday. Still a bit of pain but it'll be okay tomorrow. I just need to remind that no cold drinks are allowed, bcoz I think I got sick by drinking too cold water !! No beer or heavy alcohol, just plain ordinary water !! That's da reason why I also can get a cold in da middle of a hot summer, by drinking too cold stuff !! Not always very funny ... Iceman, in yar 4 discs-sending last week ya asked me if I am interested in demo-cd's like 'Euroscene' or 'Amiga:demo's are forever' or 'Golden Demo's'. I was interested in them more than a year ago, so I got them already. But I still haven't checked them all out bcoz of not enuff time, and also bcoz a lot of stuff works with track-and-sector-loader and my A1200 from Amiga Technologies has got that famous design bug in da motherboard that doesn't allow track-and-sector. Totally uncool !!!!!!! But thanx for offering anyway !! I appreciate it, really !! But da things I like most in these days are utilities that are useful, new drivers for new stuff, things that make my system work better and faster. For example da mpegroutine for Delitracker2 was very great and still is !! I also like, and that's completely different, Gloom-stuff that I don't have yet, extras that make da game even better. I already have got at least 5 versions of Gloom and Gloom3 !! Think about it !! And while we're talking about Gloom, I wanna thank Almighty God for Alien Breed 3D II, a great cool game. In a way it's better than Doom or Quake bcoz it has a typical kind of amiga-feeling, can't explain it, but it's cool, man !!!! Thursdaymorning ten o'clock. Dis morning at seven o'clock, when I was sleeping upstairs close to my computer and my girlfriend sleeping downstairs close to da phone, sumbody sumwhere in da world decided to call our number. First of all I need to tell that she doesn't like being called in da middle of her sleep unless it's a real emergemcy that sumbody had an accident or sumbody died or so. So she picked up da phone and da dude on da other side of da line started to talk in sumthing that sounded a bit like english. He asked if she could speak english, she replied 'no', and then he continued to talk in his own language that was filled with foreign words. After a short while she told dis dude that she wanted to sleep and when dis guy didn't stop she just hang up da phone and disconnected da line. A few hours later, when I came downstairs, she told me da story. I asked if dis unknown person asked for 'Effy' but she was sure he didn't. First I thought it might be Almighty God in a happy mood, bcoz Lady Sunshine told me that da accent was south-european, maybe spanish, but she doesn't know da accents like I sumtimes can do. It couldn't be Mark Breton from Norway bcoz he speaks perfect english, those norwegian guys have english as second language at school. It also couldn't be Iceman bcoz he has got a typical german accent and german is to us, flamish belgians, quite easy to understand bcoz a lot of our language is based on german, especially my own dialect. Even Almighty God would ask for my name, at least for my handle, and according to my beloved girlfriend dis stranger caller didn't ask for me. So da conclusion is that it must have been an unknown maybe human being with probably far too much alcohol in his blood and with da wrong phonenumber in his hand ... Evening. A half hour bfor X-mas. I'm upstairs again bcoz my girlfriend wanted to sleep and I didn't. In a few minutes Canal+ will broadcast 'Star Trek Next Generation : First Contact'. It's easy to understand that watching it is out of da question now, but lucky for me my videorecorder is programmed !! I've seen da film a couple of days ago, but da videotape got mixed up inside da recorder ... bad luck ... so da videotape disappeared into da trashcan !! When I think of it, I've send a tape or two to my contacts, to Mark Breton and to Iceman, but has Almighty God received already one from me ?? Let me know Domingo, okay ?! My brain doesn't always work as powerful as da 96 Mb of my amiga, so sumtimes it's hard to remember everything. Maybe I can make a copy of da videotape about da Wired'98 party ?! I got a second videorecorder a week and a half ago, so copy a tape should be technically possible !! Yeah, that can be done, when there's enuff time ofcoz ... In da sending of Iceman last week he told me that he was very busy coding a demo on 64 !! What will it be dis time ?? Having his Wired-demo in mind it must be cool and funny !! Hey does any of you guys has a utility to convert a 64-disc from a 64-discdrive to a D64 amiga-file ????????????? Then I have sumthing to do, to convert those hundreds of 64-discs to amiga, and then convert those thousands of Commander's 64-discs too ... that won't leave me much time to mpeg ... but I'm very positive that it would be cool !! I still have loads of older stuff, demo's and games from 64 !!!! Hey Mark Breton, do you also have a good 64 emulator on pc ?? Does it also use .d64 formats ?????? Let me know sumthing !! I'm looking forward to it !! To da left of me, next to my flatbed scanner, almost under my printer, I see sum photo's of Almighty God, photo's that he sent me sum time ago but still need to be scanned and put on cd. I already have put a photo of him on cd several months ago, but these are other ones. Don't worry, you'll get it !!! Iceman sent me also a cool mpeg animation, sumthing that almost could have been a part of a Robocop sequel !! Dunno if it'll be on dis cd or da next one, but check it out if ya see it !! It's called 'No Entry' ... talking about animations, Mark Breton, do you happen to have any convert-programs that can make from '.dat' files sumthing like '.mpg' files or so ?! I've got a video cd that works perfect on pc, but not on my amiga. Da main four files contain video and audio at da same time, and are about 170 Mb each. I don't have any drivers or players for dis. Maybe it's bcoz it would take too much processor time to play crunched video and crunched audio at da same time. I know that my computer has already difficulties playing mpeg2 audio. When it would be expanded with a soundcard, like pc does, then I'm 100% sure that it'll all be very easy to play every mpeg format, and when I install a superb grafixcard, like every pc needs to have, then I'm also very sure that I can play every video movie !! But now I'm only using da internal soundchip and da internal grafixchip that an A1200 has standard on its motherboard, unlike pc that only has got a main processor and sum extra chips that are needed to have da system totally crashed. I just wanna play da video cd on my amiga without having to buy a stupid pc or cdi or DVDplayer, and therefor I'm asking yar advice. Hey da worst thing I can get as an answer is that you don't have any convertstuff, so why should I be afraid to ask ?! Me tired and wants to get to sleep. Ten minutes past midnight. X-mas day has entered, but I shall spend da first coming 8 or 9 hours in bed, with da cat sleeping next to me and my girlfriend downstairs !! Hey, dis way I shall have da whole bed for myself, just like my girlfriend has !! Dis bed here at my room is a two-person bed and da cat doesn't need so much space, so there's enuff space left to hunt da bad pc-guys in my dreams !! Long live Amiga !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! X-masday, 25th of December, a Friday. Late in da evening. My girlfriend wanted to sleep, and da movie on tv was 'Sound of music' ... is anyone surprised that I didn't mind going upstairs ?! Besides, I've seen da Von Trapp story already three times many years ago, so sumhow da story seems a bit familiar. Today I've taken my two-wheels horse again for a ride. Da temperature was about seven degrees and it felt almost warm with my full leather outfit. Hey, after that crash last year at X-mas time I really think of safety first, and a full black leather outfit is sumthing that can save my life !! And it's also very warm too !! Okay, and it also looks cool !! I'll try to scan a picture of it ... Da reason for that ride was a visit to a friend, Starfighter of ROLE. He is da happy owner of a A500, a C=128 D, and a Pentium pc, although none of them is connected to an other. His A500 is equipped with a SCSI harddisc of 105 Mb, just like my A500, but his uses da 'Evolution.device' instead of da more usual 'scsi.device' or what my A1200 with da Blizzard calls '1230scsi.device'. Sumhow his scsi-port on da back of his harddrive does not give connection to another scsi-device like my cdrom. I have tried it already. Probably bcoz internally da port is not connected. I would like to help him, but don't know where to start. Da A500 uses OS 2.1, not exactly bad, but it would be much better if it would upgrade to OS 3.1 like my A500 had. And then da speed !! Man, that system is slooooooooow !! Compared to that my A500 seems like da Enterprise at warp 5 !!!!! Maybe he also need a turboboard with at least a 68020 at 14 Mhz. When I look into a list of amigastuff I see a Blizzard board with that processor and speed, but nothing more, and it costs about 125 DM which is not so much. I remember that my Mtec 68020i costed about 350 DM several years ago. His amiga also uses OCS, da old grafic chipset of da early amiga's. Looking into da same list tells me that you can upgrade such an amiga to ECS, enhanced grafic chipset, like my A500 (plus) has. It's much better than OCS, and to me in normal use there's not much difference with AGA, unless I start to play heavy games. Anyway, such an upgrade costs about 30 DM. Most games that come out these days are made for AGA but also ECS bcoz both can use copper and blitter routines and OCS can't. That's da explanation I got when asked to da one who sent me da listing of amigawarez. Then da connection to da outside world. CDrom doesn't work so there must be found another way. Da easiest way to me looks a connection to his pc. Dis way he can use all his pc drives, including da cdrom !! And it is very cheap, compared to buying a Viper520 which allows connection to a IDE harddisc a second IDE harddisc/cdrom and that with a 68020 clocked at 33 Mhz, but with a price of almost 300 DM. Dis pc to amiga thing is cheap, but on the other hand it is very slow too bcoz I think it goes through da serial port and that's not really da fastest piece on dis machine, but hey, an A500 is not so fast itself so will dis connection really look slow on a A500 ?? Good question !! Isn't da maximum baudrate of a A500 31500 baud or sumthing ?! One o'clock at night. Bcoz my girlfriend suddenly woke up and decided to watch sum tv again she called me to come downstairs to keep her company. I was out of inspiration at that moment, so I went. Da 'Sound of music' is over now, finally. During da past half hour we've been watching an old show called 'Van Oekels Discoshow' recorded on X-mas 1974 with sum actors that have died meanwhile ... Damn, still 13 songs to be mpegged and my head hurts again. I'm drinking hot tea to clean da inside of my body, hoping da headache may disappear. I wish there was a way to clean my brain for a change, coz sumtimes it's just too full !! I know maybe what to do, to play with da Lotto tomorrow, or do I have to say today, coz it's already Saterday now. Yeah, winning da Lotto would be cool, wouldn't it ?! I've asked my parents to join us dis evening, Saterdayevening, to da Sombrero, a mexican restaurant where you can eat as much as you want, as long as you leave da place after three hours. You don't pay for da food, but for da time !! It's not so cheap, 45 DM per person for three hours, but it's more like a X-mas gift for my parents. Hope I shall be hungry enuff !!!!!! And on Wednesday da 30th there will be a party at Commander's place bcoz Icegirl is having her birthday !! Partytime !!!!! And da next day again partytime coz it's da end of da year !!! Time seems to fly fast, but it makes me feel better considering da fact that real friendship can stand da test of time ... just like da 64 does .. Saterdaynight, or should I say Sundaymorning. Anyway, it's one o'clock at night and my girlfriend and me and my parents have had a great evening in da Sombrero restaurant with loads of food and almost too much to drink. Happy to have been there. Not exactly cheap, but nevertheless happy. And when we got home Commander and Icegirl dropped in for a visit !! That maked da evening even better !! But unfortunately one thing had to kill my good mood in da end : headache !! Once again da same thing that really can destroy my mood !! I've often asked myself what could be da cause of dis painful situation, and da only thing that may be da reason are my eyes. Maybe my eyes are too sensitive for light and that causes pain after a while, often after having watched tv or movie too much. Da doctor told me ten years ago that my vision is too sharp, so sharp that it may hurt. What I see is so sharp, just like a television with a too high contrast so your eyes hurt when ya look at da screen. My eyes have that too-much-contrast as a standard mode, and I can tell ya that it's a bad setting !! Most of da times it doesn't do any harm, but on times like dis evening it really can kill me ... One good thing is that hopefully next morning da fourth audio cd will be done mpegging and then I can start da last audio cd from that 5 cd-box. Maybe on Mondayevening it will all be done ... maybe ... Sundayevening, pretty late as usual when I continue dis note. My girlfriend complains that da rhythm of my life is not normal, bcoz I wake up close to noon and go to bed late in da night. She is da opposite. She wakes up early in da morning, like eight o'clock, and goes to bed at ten in da evening. At that time I'm not even thinking of getting sleepy !! Dis is a part of da day when I really feel good !!! I prefer not to go to sleep bfor half past midnight or one o'clock. Maybe to you that seems far to soon to go to bed, but to me it isn't. But enuff of that. Yesterday in da middle of da night I woke up to put my computer to work again, to mpeg da fifth cd. When it'll be done ?! Probably when I said it will be, about eight lines higher is da answer ... Dis morning I felt like calling sumbody, and Iceman was my first choice. But nobody picked up da phone. Is he on da Party in Denmark ?? Hopefully, bcoz that would mean that he's gonna release his new demo on 64 !!! Cool !!! Anyway, I had to call sumbody else. So my next victim was dear Mark Breton in Norway. Sumhow he must follow almost da same rhythm of life, bcoz at half past eleven in da morning his brother had to drag him out of his bed, bcoz Mark's voice sounded like he had been away in da deepest depths of that messed up brain that he usually carries in his head ... we didn't say anything special, it was just a phonecall for fun, to hear his voice on da other side of da line, even if it's sumthing like 1500 km further away in da direction north ... damn, wish I was rich, then I could take my Vmax for a short ride to Norway, to spend a day at his place or so, and then just oome back home, nothing more and nothing less. Wouldn't that be cool ?! Okay, it would be totally bananas and insane and out of reality and several other things, but definitely fun !!! Guess I've gotta continue playing with da Lotto hoping to win a million german marks or so ... sumday ... Mondayevening eight o'clock. In four or five hours da mpegging will be over, finally. But, as always there is a 'but', again Lady Sunshine and me have entered da old city of Tongeren, about five kilometers away, to do sum shopping. Guess what we found ?! Club System volume 10 !! Fantastic dance cd with 31 tracks, only one cd dis time. Cool !! But ofcoz it's logical that those songs need to be mpegged too, you must understand that point of view. Dis is a fresh hot new cd on da market, and it would be a shame if it wouldn't be spread in da form of mpeg-files, don't ya think so ?? Anyway, as soon as my cute girlfriend has finished listening to it first, I can copy it to my harddrive and da rest is already known by you all ... Half past midnight. In s half hour it'll be over. Meanwhile I've given all da tracks of Club System10 a name using AsimTunes, so when I put da cd later in my cdrom then da program knows immediately which cd it is and which songs ! Cool eh ?! At dis very moment da audio cd is playing, very softly ofcoz !! I don't wanna wake sumbody up !! Nevertheless it's great dance music, in fact it's one big mix without any spaces left between da songs. It's sumthing like da Carre Summermix and da Fiocco's Mixmania volume 3. That reminds me that I need to give names to da tracks on da Carre Summermix !!! Damn, gotta do that tomorrow or so, bcoz I don't feel like doing that dis late ... ah, just discovered that mpegging da 'Pioneers Of Powerbass top 100' resulted in a directory 350 Mb big. Not bad for a 68030, don't ya think so ?! Don't worry, there will be more than just that on my next cd .. Wednesdaymorning half past ten. My girlfriend has gone to Bilzen, a very local town that most of you will probably consider it to be just a bigger village. Anyway, there's a weekly market going on. So I'm home alone once again !! I've put 'Club System 10' in my cdrom and da volume of my little booster pretty wide open !! Cool man !!! Nobody complaining about da loud volume, bcoz there's no house directly build to mine !!! Megacool !! A few weeks ago, when that amiga-hardware-documentation arrived, I had a long chat with that dude, about turbocards for an A500. He told me that da only way to get 2 Mb chip RAM on a A500 is by using da so called 'mini-mega chip' that can only be used on a Viper 520 and Viper 530. Maybe also a few other cards too, but dunno about that for sure. Next time when I call that dude I gotta tell him sumthing new, sumthing that he didn't know yet. Yesterday I started up my old A500+ again, ya know da one with da Mtec68020i turboboard and a typical A500 100 Mb scsi harddisc. With da memory expansion inserted into da trapdoor I discovered that, according to my OS 3.1, my amiga has got also 2 Mb chip memory, and 6 Mb fast memory !! So what's da real story about that 'mini-mega chip' ????? Is it perhaps bcoz I use OS 3.1 ?? Is da memory expansion that da amiga uses perhaps 1 Mb chip ram instead of da more usual fast ram ??? Maybe that could be da reason, but therefor I gotta see da box where da expansion was in, and that's at my parent's place ... maybe another day ... My cat seems to like house !!! Da booster is pumping beats all over da bedroom pretty loud, and da cat seems to sleep very softly on da bed !! Funny picture !! I expected that da cat would walk away when da music would be turned on, but hell no !! Oh well, then at least I'm not so alone now ... Outside da sun is shining for a change. Maybe I should catch a little bit of that beautiful sunshine and send it up to Norway, to Mark Breton. He will probably need it more than any of us, up there in da magnificent beautiful but very rough norwegian country. His city being located at da Atlantic coast means, according to him, 360 days per year rain, rain, and sumtimes also rain !! Da few days there are left sumtimes fill da country with sunshine, but that doesn't mean hot temperatures. I've been there years ago on da Megastyle party in Bergen, and at that single day da sun was burning from da moment when we, The Blue Guard and me, left our homes here until da moment of our arrival at about nine o'clock in da evening. Most of da trip da temperatures stayed at 27 degrees celcius, even in Norway, but sumwhere we had to take a tunnel upwards for a very long time !! I remember it very good. I was driving 160 km/hour for at least 5 long minutes and all da time da tunnel was going higher and higher and higher, until we came to da exit, and there we saw a totally different country filled with only white snow !!! No need to tell ya that it felt a little bit colder up there. But nevertheless da sun was still burning, but not so hot, and that made da feeling a lot better than it looked like. And then came next day of return, and guess what weather it was ?! Rain, rain and sumtimes also rain, 400 km long to da border of Norway, then take da carferry to Denmark and then about a 1100 km long way home. Man, that was da trip of a lifetime !! It made me realize how boring my country often is, and how flat Denmark and Germany can be, at least da upper part of Germany. Hey Almighty God, how is your country, how are da Canary Islands, how is Tenerife where ya live on ?? I've heard wonderful stories about many people spending their favourite holidays there and telling me how beautiful nature can be there, and then ofcoz also da tropic temperatures and da almost everlasting burning sun !! Totally da opposite of Norway !! Hey Iceman, I think that da nature in Dresden must look very simular to da one where I live in, or isn't it so ?? I've never been in Dresden, only in Berlin and it looked familiar at that time bfor da fall of da berlin wall. Nature looked like da one in flamish part of Belgium, coz da french speaking part of Belgium is mostly filled with hills and small mountains .... At dis very moment my note is already 27 K big. Not so bad eh ?? I know Mark Breton likes long notes. But how can he read them ?? Damn, dunno how a pc can read amiga files ... gotta ask ... calling ... yes, connection to Norway ... bla bla /bla ... end of connection ... sorry, but it's too hard typing text when I' holding da phone in one hand. Da answer is that he can read my note perfectly on pc just like we do on amiga, which sounds very cool to me. He also tells me that all da filenames are written in capital letters, but that has got sumthing to do with da ISO9660 format that pc uses, and amiga uses da Rockridge format in which da filenames look normal. He also told me that da only really sunny day in da decade was da day when I came to Norway and that I probably think it is always like that, but that reality appears to be totally different. Yeah Mark, tell me what ya want, but even in da rain on da way back home it was great !! Okay, in sunshine it's even better ... Noon. I've prepared lunch for my girlfriend when she comes back home in a few minutes. Two days ago, on Monday, we got ourselves two new pieces or home-hardware : a brandnew television and a portable phone that can be reached at least 100 m from it's homestation. That way she can pick up da phone when she's working in da garden, and when she's away I can use da phone when I'm behind my amiga, like a few minutes ago with Mark Breton. Da television is da one that I was looking forward to, da one which can zoom two times when looking wide-screen programs. Da television itself is not a wide-screen tv bcoz that is far too expensive for me. By now my bankaccount has already dropped below zero, but I don't care, not now, now with dis great music playing on my cdrom, not with dis great computer under my fingers, and certainly not with my girlfriend that I luv so much, no I don't want to care about anything at dis moment !! I feel too good !! That reminds me that I've gotta put more cheese on my pizza that is supposed to be hot by now . .. Last day of '98, noon. Just finished cleaning up a bunch of cdroms that had no labels on. I found a cdrom, created by me, that probably had a major crash while burning. I noticed that it wasn't fixed yet, so I tried to put sumthing new on it, da Club System 10 mpegfiles and Power Bass top 100. Sumhow only da Club System 10 stuff is visible. At da moment I'm listening to da music using Songplayer with da mpegquality set to Medium and on 5525 Hz, but with only 1 seccond buffer and certainly not 10 secconds bcoz then da processor gets overloaded for sure !! Da sound that now comes out of my speakers is not cd-quality but it's okay for an 68030. Don't use Delitracker2 when ya play a lot of files that are supposed to be a megamix. Delitracker2 does not load da next song when da present one is finished, but Songplayer does. You only hear a pause of less than half a seccond between two songs when it's loaded from cdrom. Dunno how it works when ya load all from da Ram Disk. I think I shall send dis ex-bugged cdrom to Alf, a good old friend from da 64-days. Don't worry, ya'll get Power Bass top 100 and Club System 10 anyway, but I just don't wanna throw that cdrom away. In fact there's only about 60 Mb music on it, but to me that seems enuff to make sumbody happy for a few minutes, or not ?? So I shall try to mail it today, if da postoffice is open. Ah, Mark Breton also told me that he didn't receive my last sending yet, Effy14 that is. Perhaps that will be to blaim at da x-mas mail-problems, so hopefully it will arrive soon ... Midnight now !! New year has arrived !! Happy '99 to all of you guys !! It's one o'clock now and da small fireworks in our village are over. I'm sitting here in my bedroom with an almost empty bottle of red wine 'Cotes du Rhone' bcoz da beer is too cold !! I wanna thank you all for being a contact of mine, bcoz life would be far too boring for me without you dudes. Da day when I stop computing will probably be da same day when my heart will stop beating, although I can not assure you that I'll still have my good old 64 at that time ... I've got a little problem. It seems that all my copies of Effy14 have been send away, including da one that was meant for me. Damn, now I've gotta ask Commander's cd back and copy it ... oh well .. Newyearsday in da early afternoon. Just taken a hot shower and a smooth but not so pleasant shave. My girlfriend is ironing da laundry and meanwhile she's listening to an early techno cd in da room next to dis bedroom. In fact it's her playroom where she can spend lotsa hours listening to music, painting or drawing pictures and other stuff. She doesn't have a bed in her room, I have. That means that my playroom is at least half da size of hers bcoz da bed takes a lot of space that I can't use for my systems. But hey, I got a nice big old fashionned wood table with all my stuff on it so I'm happy enuff. At dis moment my cdrom is copying da second cd of 'Techno Computer'97' to my harddrive. On da first cd there was a read error and bcoz it's a megamix I had to stop copying that cd and continue with da next one. It seems that there's not enuff stuff to put on my next cd ... In a few hours we've gotta go on family visit, as usual with New Year. Is that also a tradition at your places ?? Just curious ... Saterday. Again family visits, but dis time da family of my girlfriend that lives about 100 km away. In da evening we shall stop at Alf's place to bring him that ex-bugged cd, so that'll be his very little New Years surprise. He has got a pc now with everything on it, but used to be a 64 programmer. In fact he was da first programmer of da Rock'nROLE discmag. Later he switched over to Amiga4000 and when sum important amigashops started to close he switched over to pc. In a way I can't blaim him for that bcoz pc is not so bad bcoz of da lotsa software. Everybody knows that da pc hardware sucks but then not everybody is clever enuff to realize that ... no offense to Alf !! He also needs his pc to do work at home, for which an amiga would not be possible. Sunday da third of January 1999. Alf has received his cd and seemed happy about it. He gave me two pc discs with sum Aminetstuff and also a pc-mpeg-player. Starfighter of ROLE will be very glad for that player bcoz sumhow his pc doesn't recognize audio-mpeg, and another friend of mine told me that installing such a player requires a lot of time. Alf told me that dis one-file player doesn't need any install at all. So I put it on dis cd, so a pc freak without player can also use da mpeg results of my powerful amiga !! Cool eh ?! At da moment there's 490 Mb of music ready to be put on cd. Should I do more ??? Yes, I'm gonna scan sum pictures that Almighty God has send me, so you can all see how cool dis guy looks !!! Check it out in 'Pix:Almighty God' !! Also wanna put real CD-audio on da same cd, so you can also put dis cd in a normal audio cd-player. Da problem is ofcoz that I can only put one or two songs on it ... or maybe I can take songs from Club System 10 that are mixed together and often several songs are much shorter than da orinigal versions, so there can come more songs on da cd perhaps ... and now sum testing with a brandnew empty cd ... Bummer. Doesn't work. Da cdwriter refuses to write audio on cd bcoz of a so called calibration power failure or so. Don't know what it means. Da writer has its own external scsi-case with own power supply, so a power failure is out of da question. Da writer has written maximum 50 cd's in its lifetime, and it's a Philips CD2000 so that is supposed to be quality. I don't know. Think I shall just write only da mpegs on cd, like I always do ... So dudes, dis is my final line. Hope ya all have fun with dis !!! See ya !!! Effy / Guardian Angels. PS : Great, already one cd fucked up !! Surprising enuff I always get fucked up cd's when I use a so called 100% registration code for MakeCD !! So in my eyes that code sucks !!! That's why I only wanna use da demo-version that always names its cd's 'UNREGISTERED' but at least it works !!!!! PS2 : Almost forgot to scan da pix from Almighty God and his best friend and ex-Desert Nomads member Fefa, da one that's laughing on da picture !! But is seems that DirOpus has got problems with displaying IFF pictures in 12 bit that are saved with full colors. It gives da error message 'error in IFF structure' and when da picture is scanned in 24 bit then DirOpus doesn't give any reaction at all, no error and no picture. But don't worry, ViewTek can do it better !!! PS3 : Also are included in 'Misc' directory sum interesting things that have got sumthing to do with mpeg3 on amiga. Alf got it from Aminet, but unfortunately most stuff can not be used on my system. Check it out, maybe you can use it better !! PS4 : dis is da last PS. I have enjoyed myself trying to create a disk-icon with da advice that Graffito once has given me. At that time it seemed to difficult for me, but now it turned out to be easy. Oh well, no problem. I've made a disk-icon for da cd and a drawer-icon in da pix directory with da picture of Almighty God in it !! Hey Domingo, hope ya like it !!!!!!!!!!!!! Mondaymorning da 4th of January at eight o'clock. Those PS's get boring so I better continue dis letter like dis. Next to me is a nice cup of hot expresso waiting for me. Why I'm awake so soon ?? Coz mister unknown called again, just like last week when I told ya about him, sumwhere in dis big note. Dis time it was me who picked up da phone, although it took a while bfor I discovered that it was da video remote control that I was holding, and when I got da phone it took another while bfor I discovered that da bad receiving quality had its reason in me holding da phone upside down. Hey that kind of stuff can happen when ya're woken up so early. Anyway, it turned out to be an arabic voice with an arabic accent calling from da USA asking for his brother with a name that was impossible to remember. Appearantly he had received a phonenumber that was actually my number, so he didn't call da wrong number bcoz it was his brother that gave him a wrong number. Lucky for me dis dude spoke english very well, so I could explain him that according to my knowledge there is no other male human being living in dis house. Ofcoz he sounded disappointed, but that's his brother's mistake. Anyway, my girlfriend hopes that dis guy won't call again coz she doesn't like phonecalls so early. And I am also happy that I can say to her that it's 100% for sure not one of my contacts that tried to call me. Enf of story. My cup of expresso is also empty and da cat tries to explain me that his body screams for food, but on da other hand it always screams for food all day long ... MakeCD doesn't work bcoz of that bad registration code, and BurnIt also fucks up bcoz of a missing library. I can't burn any cd now so why not start to mpeg more songs ?! So I did. Mpeggin da cd 'Some Girls Wander By Mistake' from da Sisters Of Mercy will be finished in a day or two hopefully. It's a compilation cd that was recorded in 1992. Wish I had another cd of them, like 'Floodland' that an old friend used to have. Another subject. What shall we eat today ?? Let's see. Today it's Monday, so normally that means MacDonalds-day bcoz on Monday in da MacDonalds restaurant in Hasselt da hamburbers cost only a half DM, only on Monday. Hasselt is a city about 25 Km from here. To us in Belgium that is far away. To Mark Breton in Norway that is probably on da other side of da street, and to Iceman in Dresden that just might be on da other side of town. Can you imagine that when my girlfriend came to live here in da beginning that she complained to me that da nearest city is too far away, almost 4 or 5 kilometers ?! According to her I lived in a lost place on da map, in a too quiet piece of nature, surrounded by farmers and other agriculture professions. Hey, that happens to be da biggest reason for me living here. I don't want too much noise around my head. At least I can hear da birds singing in da morning when I open my door. Don't see anybody doing that in a city ... Experimenting time. I have set da playquality of Songplayer to Medium and a Hz to 11050. It seems to work. Da processor works then at an average of 90%, although da first five secconds it works at 100% bcoz da program tries to load a buffer of one second and play da song at da same time. Not so bad for an 68030. I wonder what result it would give when I try dis on my A500 with his 68020 ... Also have deleted 117 players from Delitracker2, so da only ones that remain are mpeg players. So da Delitracker will be loaded a bit faster next time. It doesn't work better coz I've tried to improve da quality, but it seems to be not as easy to change as Songplayer ... And while I was busy messing around, I tried to play mpeg3 files with Songplayer, but with da quality set to 'low' and on 5525 hz, which is da lowest I can get. Still da processor runned at 100% and da sound was bugging. So in other words, no mpeg3 on a 68030, at least not in real time. There are sum programs that allow playing mpeg3 even on a 68000, an A500, but those things decrunch an mpeg3 file first to harddrive and then play da decrunched file. Okay, ofcoz an A500 can play it that way ... Tuesday early evening. Today has been a rough day full of heavy duty work outside, building a wall, helping to load stones, cleaning da garage and getting rid of da big garbage ... and now I'm tired .. Yesterday has not been da expected MacDonalds day. As far as I can remember we've had only sum slices of bread, a bit of wine, a local spiced sausage, and that's about it. Today Commander came to help me, and in da afternoon we have gone to eat french fries and a lot of other snacks too, so I don't mind that I haven't been to MacDonalds yesterday. Meanwhile mpegging da cd of da Sisters Of Mercy has almost ended, just three songs are left ... Thursdayevening. Bcoz MakeCD still won't work I have asked my computer to mpeg da Best Of Blancmange too, a compilation cd from da early eighties. It started yesterday and will be finished dis night. Meanwhile Commander's Effy14 is turning arond in my cdrom loading music from da MacKenzie featuring Jessy, sumthing that my girlfriend and me are crazy about. I've tried to switch on da bass&treble adjust option in Songplayer, but that seems to be too much asked for da processor, even when da quality is set to 'low'. Maybe more luck with a 68040 ... Yesterday I had 577 Mb ready on my harddisc, for da new Effy15, but with da Blancmange music it will definitely be more than 577 Mb. Should I mpeg even more ?? Maybe ... why not ?? What else do I have got to do ?? Exploring new illegal stuff ?? Which stuff ?? I'm waiting for three cd's, but don't know when those things will arrive at Commander's place. I'm afraid that when internet would be in reach of my amiga that I would be calling out like hell, just like in my 64 days when pbx's and AT&T's were still widely avaliable at fair prices !! But at that time I didn't have any girlfriend ... Da photo's of Almighty were already scanned but yesterday I also enjoyed myself scanning cd-covers from da cd's that are mpegged !! Very cool !! Now ya can see how da cover looks like in 12bit and 200dpi. Sumhow da amiga doesn't allow higher quality unless a gfx card is added. Hey, about dis subject, Graffito is gonna sell his Picasso IV card bcoz he has got major compatibility problems. Actually his system crashes every five minutes. After destroying his whole room, eating 29 burgers, drinking 16 bottles of beer in 8 minutes, telling his boss to **** ***, he discovered that da problem is caused by da Zorro II board, da bus-board where da cards are put on (to explain it to PC-freaks), bcoz his board is one of da first Micronik versions and they seem to have sum bugs. An amiga-list tells me that a new Zorro II costs about 420 DM ... and da Picasso IV costed him already 740 DM ... Now I remember that an Ateo bus board with Pixel64 gfx card together (promotion package) costs also 740 DM, but how reliable is it ?? Sumtimes life sucks, don't ya think so ?! Hey can anybody give me da file 'DOpus_print' that belongs to DirOpus V4.12, da one that I'm using ?? Sumhow I've never had that file, but didn't care bcoz there was not printer. Now there is one, and I need warez to use da printer ... know what I mean ?? Also wanna print pictures to be ironned on empty t-shirts. I've got enuff of those empty ones, but they do have a small 'Ford' label ... hehehe ... Have you already read that I've set SongPlayer to 16000 Hz and still use Medium quality without any buggs ?? Okay, most of da song requires 90% cpu and in da beginning even 100% for a two seccond, but da effect is cool. Try it !! It's still no cd-quality but it's getting close !!! Another detail. Looking in da directories of Effy14 made me realize that my amiga has mpegged da new maxi-cd of Scooter again. Sorry for that. But dis time ya'll get to see da cover too in JPEG format. There's also da song 'Rebel Yell' in that directory, an older song that I found on a cool sending from Graffito, so da credit for that one goes to him. Fair is fair. Did ya know that dis song originally comes from Billy Idol ?! I like his version too !!! Nice and heavy !!! Da advantage of writing what I'm thinking is that I can't say that I'm forgetting a lot. Nevertheless it can be very useful to read my own note again. Just did that and read in my own note that I still have to copy da mpeg-animation that Iceman has send me last year. That's what my system is doing at da moment. It also seems that my note is more than 450 lines ... wow, didn't know that I could write so much !! Although I was very good in writing short stories at school ... a long time ago ... A few hours ago my dad called. He had sum news about his car that has been in repair since November I think, or was it longer ago ?! Anyway, da problem was that da watercooling system created a kind of overpressure but nobody knew why. His car is a Citroen XM 3.0 V6 24V, 8 years old, 200 PS, loaded with da full spoiler-kit, and flies like a spaceshuttlem but not like a rocket. Anyway, after months of waiting and experimenting they found da cause : a crack in one of da cilinders, da heart of da engine. But then also da expensive kind of problem. A few days after x-mas, two weeks ago, da repair dude was making da first testride after da repaired engine was put back into da car and all da cables were connected again. It seemed to work very well, no more overpressure !! Perfect !! He drove back to his garage, didn't stop da engine, went inside bcoz da phone was ringing, and when he returned to da car his saw smoke coming out under da engine hood !! When he opened da hood already all da calble were melted bcoz of da heat !! Perfect !!! Sum idiot must have made a wrong connection !! But that's not all !! Going back inside and checking his administration he discovered that he hadn't paid his insurance company yet !! In other words, he wasn't insured for dis kind of problems at that moment. So that's why he waited 2 weeks to tell my dad about it, so he could pay his yearly insurance money and after that telling da insurance company that he had a fire in one of da cars in his garage .... My dad will get paid ofcoz. There's no discussion about that. But still it's an amazing story ... Friday. I have a little feeling that da mpegging for Effy15 is over. Just checked out how much Mb I've got ready to burn and it seemed to be 652 Mb, which is a little bit too much. So I've deleted sum pictures that were written in IFF. Don't worry Almighty God, there's still enuff quality in those JPEG pictures. It's just that a JPEG picture is close to 100K and da same picture in IFF almost 2Mb. So now da size is lowered to 648 Mb. Now I only need to burn da stuff ... but when ?! And just to make everything safe, I've scanned for viruses with VirusZ V1.43. In da 34 drawers with 365 files there's not a single virus found, so it's all supposed to be virus free !! And in my search for perfection I discovered that when I'm using SongPlayer with mpegs that da sound quality gets better when I use da AHI option and define it 'Paula:14bit stereo++ calibrated'. But therefor da AHI settings in da Prefs directory must have a processor limit of at least 90%, in my case it is set to 95%. Ofcoz you need to have installed AHI in yar system and that's more than a single file. I used to have an AHI installer sumwhere, but dunno where that is gone to ... Saterdayafternoon. When looking on sum of my cd's I found CU#27 as da last one of that series. Funny enuff da stuff on it didn't look familiar, so I checked it all out, just for fun. Lucky for me I found another version of MakeCD and copied it to my harddrive. And it seemed to work. In other words, I'm out of here and start burning cd's !! So dis is it, da end of dis long note. Hope yar head doesn't hurt too much. Next time better, perhaps longer .... see ya dudes !!! Effy in 1999. Litle PS : When MakeCD just wanted to start writing I saw that da program says that da stuff to be written is only 618 Mb and according to DirOpus it's 648 Mb. So to check it all out I've added two mixes by the Unity Mixers, music from '94 and '95. Check out da covers for more. Another PS : MakeCD refuses to burn any cd bcoz of a so called power calibration failure. It can be caused by da laser or sumthing else. In other words, maybe da writer is fucked up ... Maybe last PS : Tuesday, January da 12 1999. Yesterdayevening on da way home from work I got an idea. Maybe da reason for failure is that there's too much Mb to be written. MakeCD said 648 Mb but DirOpus said it is 673 Mb. So I shall reduce it to 640 Mb according to da DirOpus way of counting ...