Like all other Linux geeks, I am a big fan of Slashdot. I normally don't post news that was on Slashdot but how else will my wife know what I want for Christmas if I don't post a cool toy I found. Let me introduce you to the Claw. It is a controller that is OS independent that allows for better playing of Quake and other first person shooter games. They aren't available in the US but are available online for purchase. What a great stocking stuffer!

For the past few weeks I have been trying to get my VooDoo 3 working again in Linux. I hate having anything (especially hardware) that doesn't work. 3DFX has released an XFree 4.0 server along with new modules and Glide. After converting the RPM's listed on their site over to deb packages I was able to get X4.0 up and running and even start Quake III. QIII is running really slow, which means that something to do with the libraries isn't loaded correctly. Why won't it just all work!

If you are somewhat of a sports fan (not necassary) then I would suggest checking out "Remember the Titans". This is the best movie I have seen so far this year. It is based on a true story starting in 1971 when a small town in Virginia was ordered to integrate racially. A new head coach of the football team was appointed (Denzel Washington, who is black) and the rest of the movie is based on his battles with his team, town, and fellow co-workers while building a state championship team. Whether you wait, or go to the theater be...

Nuge sent this little tid bit of information in for all of you PHP/MySQL users out there. He is trying to set the world straight and he decided to use ZorKa.Com to do it, so read, listen, and learn. Just thought you should know. This is right off the MySQL website:   Thanks for clearing that up Nuge, our next question is who is going to win the election and the world series? The official way to pronounce MySQL is ``My Ess Que Ell'' (not MY-SEQUEL). But we try to avoid correcting people who say MY-SEQUEL.  

I normally don't post work related stuff on here but I couldn't resist this one. A gentleman came into our store a few days ago and ordered a peice of memory for a Gateway Notebook. One of the sales guys ordered the memory and it came in today and we called him to come and pick it up. About 5:30, I answered the phone and a person asked to speak with one of our associates (who sold him the memory). He wasn't available so he asked if I could help, I said sure. The man went on to tell me that...

I was cleaning out my closet and thought I would get rid of some things. I put the following items up on auction over at Yahoo (yeah I know about Ebay, but I use Yahoo all the time). (2.5GB Western Digital HDD) (1.6GB Fuji HDD) (1.6 Maxtor HDD) (6.4GB Western Digital HDD) If you are in the market for some hard drives maybe I can help.

An article over at Linux Today has the story on the first advertisement Microsoft has released where they acknowledge the Linux Operating System. Although it was released in Germany, it is still a big break through for the Linux Community. World domination is right on schedule!

I've been compiling my kernel for a week and a half now and still have yet to get my Voodoo working since installing a new motherboard. I know I know, I'm suppose to be a hardware genius. However, I don't know if it is a matter of the kernel or something else that I am over looking. When I start Quake, I get the following error: **************************************** ...no hardware acceleration found... If this is in error, add "+set r_allowSoftwareGL 1" to the command line. **************************************** At this point I am totally open to suggestions.

November 4th starting at 4:00 there is going to be a lan party at ACI to play Quake III. There is limited space so please just do not show up. Email me if you would like to attend and are in the area. See you there!

In UNIX environment, the following combination of perl and find will serch for a particular file and replace the occurence of a particular string with another string in that file. This will also work for multiple files and directories. The find command finds the file and the perl script replaces old string with the new one. perl -pi -e 's/old string/new string' `find . -name "file name"`

The Scoop Tired of all the windows users having all the fun? Well, Speak Freely is your answer. Let's Get Going Speak Freely is very simple to install if you are using Debian Linux. apt-get install speak-freely If you are using one of the other distributions then head over to their site and download the rpm and install it. Be sure to grab the latest version since it comes with the TK front end. Getting through the firewall If you happen to have a Linux firewall, then you will need to issue the following command. The following command only works if you are using...

For awhile now, I have been wanting to find a really nice chat program that does voice. A lot of people now have static high speed connections to the Internet so it wouldn't be that hard really for us to save a little on our phone bills. The problem is that there are some nice chat programs but mostly for Windows. I bumped into this program today and found that it runs on both Windows and Linux platforms, Speak Freely. There is a TCL front end for the program so be sure to download that as well. One of the...

Well, the Wolverines play Indiana on Saturday in "The Big House". Good luck Michigan. All though the Wolverines are picked to win, I don't think it will be by much. Maybe they'll put John Navarre back in and things will start to happen (doubt it!).

If you are like me, sometimes you need to actually print a man page for a certain command. Linux has a lot of built in documentation but sometimes it can be a little hard to get at. Use the following command to print out an online man page. cd /usr/share/man/ and run zcat man.1.gz | groff -mandoc - > man.ps lpr man.ps Be sure that you have the package named "groff" installed. The location of your actuall man pages may be different as well. The above path is normally used in Debian Linux. Updated 10/11/00 The following update was sent in by Steve Limkemann "......a...

It is a great day for my alma mater, USM. For the first time I can remember USM now out ranks Michigan in the College Football AP poll. Not only one Mississippi team but two, to be exact (Mississippi State the other) have pulled over the top of the Wolverines. This probably wouldn't be a big deal to most people but living in Michigan long enough will make you really loath all of this Big Ten talk. For all of you Michigan fans - nah nah nah nah nah.

If you are like me, you have started your MP3 collection and have converted just about every CD you own into your very own MP3 file. If not, then you are reading this for one of two reasons. 1. you want to know how the other side lives since you are coming from a Windows environment. 2. You asked someone and they sent you here. 3. You just installed Linux and are ready to build your own MP3's. Whatever the reason, we are not going to get into debates about Napster just very simply turning your audio CD's into an...