I have to confess, I never played any of the Monkey Island games. I was aware of them but point and click adventures really aren’t my thing. Many years ago I bought the first Simon the Sorcerer game because I thought it had something to do with Discworld. The graphics and speech in the game were outstanding but after only a short time I got stuck and gave up.
So, what’s this Monkey Island thing about then? How do I play the original “The Secret of Monkey Island”? We live in exciting times and the Internet Archive comes to the rescue!
On this page you’ll find a fully playable copy of the game you can play in your browser. If that’s not enough, there’s also the Ultimate Talkie Version of the game with full speech instead of text.
Playing in the browser is OK for a preview of what it’s like, but the best way to play it is through ScummVM. On both archive.org pages above you’ll find zip files containing “The Secret of Monkey Island”. The talkie version is much bigger, but by today’s standards, quite small still.
Download the game, unzip and point ScummVM at the extracted files and you can play the game on your home computer! As you’re unlikely to finish the game in one sitting, here’s how to save and load the game in ScummVM. Enjoy!
I presume I’m not spoiling anything when I post the screenshot above from The Matrix Resurrections. Close to the middle of the frame is the distinctive, rounded casing of a Commodore 1530 (C2N) Datasette. It’s the cassette player the Commodore 64/Vic 20/Pet used for storage way back in the 80s and early 90s. This Wikipedia page has more if you’re interested.
I’ve searched online, but so far only found one person who thinks the same as I do. If it’s not a C2N cassette player, then what is it?
We flew into Cork Airport early this morning after circling around County Cork for what seemed like half an hour. Our Ryanair flight went from Carrigaline to Fermoy, passing Blarney a few times, I think. My son was watching Google Maps on his phone, and we all noticed the banking of the plane as it traversed the skies around the greatest city in Ireland.
When we eventually did come down to land, my son wondered why there was still cloud outside when suddenly the runway was there outside, and we experienced a not too rough landing. Deep fog lay over the runway and airport. We couldn’t see any buildings as we roared down the runway but, brakes and reverse engines were applied harder than I remember in a long time, making me imagine the pilot had landed too far down the runway! A cheerful, “Welcome to Cork!” was announced shortly after, and the plane taxied off the runway to a stop. Phew.
We were last off the plane. The rush to get off, only to stand around for luggage and passport control, doesn’t make sense does it?
Liza Minnelli’s performance at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992 is an iconic moment that will be remembered by fans of both Queen and Minnelli for generations to come. Her rendition of “We Are The Champions” was a poignant tribute to the late Freddie Mercury, and her powerful performance was the perfect way to honour his legacy.
Minnelli’s unique style and voice are well-known to fans of musical theatre and film, but her interpretation of “We Are The Champions” added a new dimension to the song’s emotional impact. She brought her own brand of theatricality to the performance, infusing the song with a sense of drama and intensity that perfectly captured the spirit of the tribute concert.
The emotional impact of the song was not lost on the audience, either. As Minnelli belted out the lyrics, the crowd responded with cheers and applause, clearly moved by her passionate performance. This emotional connection was undoubtedly strengthened by the fact that Freddie Mercury adored Liza Minnelli – their close friendship was well-known, and he had expressed his admiration for her movies and songs many times.
One of the most memorable moments of Minnelli’s performance was when all the other performers came on stage to sing behind her, arm in arm, celebrating Freddie Mercury with a song he wrote. This spontaneous moment of unity and camaraderie was a fitting tribute to the man who had brought so much joy and energy to the music industry. George Michael, who was also performing at the tribute concert, hugged Minnelli and joined in the group sing-along with the other performers, creating a powerful and emotional moment that brought the entire audience together.
Personal anecdotes about Minnelli’s performance abound, adding depth and interest to the story. One notable example is the fact that she was not initially scheduled to perform at the tribute concert – she was asked to step in at the last minute after another performer dropped out. Despite the short notice, Minnelli rose to the occasion, delivering a performance that was both passionate and heartfelt.
In the broader context of the tribute concert, Minnelli’s performance played an important role in honoring Freddie Mercury’s legacy. “We Are The Champions” is one of Queen’s most popular songs, played at many sporting events, and its enduring popularity is a testament to the impact that Mercury had on popular culture. By choosing to perform this particular song, Minnelli not only paid tribute to Mercury’s musical talent but also acknowledged his impact on the wider world.
In conclusion, Liza Minnelli’s performance at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was a memorable and emotionally charged moment that will live on in the annals of music history. Her interpretation of “We Are The Champions” was a powerful tribute to Freddie Mercury and his enduring legacy. Tthe spontaneous sing-along that followed was a fitting tribute to the man who had brought so much joy and energy to the music industry. With her unique style and voice, Minnelli brought a new dimension to the song’s emotional impact, creating a performance that will continue to inspire and move audiences for generations to come.
The Irish EPA have an interactive map where you can see the radon area in your area. Enter your Eircode to zoom in. If you’re in Cork, it’s probably bad. Keep the windows open? Get a radon detector.
I’ll keep this short. You should download your Twitter data, Facebook data, and as you probably have that too, your Google data. You never know when you might be banned from using them, even accidentally.
After you’ve saved that data, go to Instagram and Reddit and do the same!
Download your Facebook data from Settings->Privacy->Your Facebook Information->Download your information. I like that they offer HTML and JSON options.
Google Takeout
Google Takeout is where you download your Google data. There is a lot there. At the time of writing, it shows 53 products, which includes YouTube, Gmail and Google Photos.
And finally, Reddit. You can download your data from their data-request page.
Keep that data safe. Don’t leave it in your download directory. It potentially has lots of private information you won’t want to be shared with anyone who uses your computer.
Google lets you schedule up to 6 data downloads per year, but it might be worth setting a calendar reminder to do this at least once a year. Store your downloads in dated directories to make it easy to keep track of when they were downloaded.
There’s an old derelict hotel in the village of Killeens near where I live and this evening it went up in flames, spewing a huge mass of ugly smoke into the air. Tonight’s bonfire night in Cork so it’s obviously done maliciously.
Paul Reidy posted photos from the scene on his Facebook account. I’m surprised there’s anything left to burn there as it’s been set alight multiple times in the past. The place should be demolished and something productive done with the site.
Here’s a video from someone who was going to film it for a Cork history video.
Apart from hoarding driver CDs and diskettes in 1999 I also printed out a huge number of pro-Linux news articles. One of those was this page on building an MP3 player for a car called The MP3mobile.
Over the years I had grappled with the idea of adding an MP3 player to whatever my current car was but never really got anywhere but the MP3mobile was the initial source of inspiration for this idea.
The furthest I ever got with the idea was using a portable MP3 CD player but that didn’t work too well:
Bumps in the road caused skips.
Irish roads are bumpy.
More skips.
It’s funny now to see what the MP3mobile can do, but back then this was highly impressive.
The final result is immensely wonderful, and impresses the hell out of most hackerish people (like me). Non-computer people just wonder why you havn’t got a CD player. But, with my setup (based on RedHat Linux 5.0) I can do these things:
* NFS mount my car from my laptop (there’s a loose 10-base-T cable behind the drivers seat) and squirt new tunes into it.
* Hook up my GSM-modem to the car (so you can telnet into it and run emacs at 60mph 🙂 ).
* Hook up a GPS unit, so you could finger the car and find out exactly where a car full of computer equipment suitable for stealing is located.
* Compile as I go round bends.
* Coredump as I change gear 🙂
None of these things can be done with an autochanger. Sorry, but you lose 🙂
Future plans include:
* 418Mhz low-power radio link to allow me to upgrade the software when the car is in the garage 30m or so from the flat. * Link into the car’s engine management to monitor boost pressure, etc * Voice-command of the music functions.
The machine ran off a Pentium 166MMX CPU, and had a 2.5″ laptop drive with a massive 2.1GB of storage space.
It all seems so quaint and obsolete now doesn’t it? That may well be how your current state of the art tech appears in another twenty years!
In the time since then the rise of smart phones led to miniaturisation, better screens and power efficient computers. A few years later a Raspberry Pi or Android phone would have been a suitable replacement for the device. And later still Android Auto or Car Play would make the job of playing your own media even easier.
If you use an Android phone, then your car stereo could run Linux, at least through Android Auto as your phone has a Linux kernel!
It’s about time I dumped some of this stuff. Two of my machines have a CDROM drive but I don’t use either of them. I haven’t had a 1.44MB floppy drive in well over a decade, or more likely fifteen years!
I recently found the binder with these items, the motherboard manual and other things. They were stored away in a dark corner of a cupboard for more than 20 years. Safe in their dark spot but ever so slowly decomposing. The machine they belonged to has been long disposed of.
When was the last time you installed software from a CDROM or a floppy disk? I ripped the DVD box set of “All Creatures Great and Small (1978)” last December. It was on my ageing Macbook, but I do not remember the last time I used a PC floppy disk at all.
February 2012 was the last time I used a C64 disk. I archived as many of my C64 disks as I could then. Those disks are still in the attic. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to throw them out. I guess they’ll be disposed when I’m gone and they’re an ancient artefact of a bygone era.
The timer in Google Clock didn’t go off when the timer ran out. There was no alarm or notification buzz when I needed it. I’m posting this here in case this happens to anyone else because this was happening to me for a long time. I use the timer on my phone a lot, especially when doing a little cooking:
Put Y on at 200C in the oven.
Everything done at 50 minutes.
Put X in the oven at 40 minute mark.
Bring water to the boil at 15 minute mark.
Boil some veg..
You get the idea. It’s nothing revolutionary and it worked for years. In the last year or so I found that the timer would not make a sound unless I unlocked the phone and the screen was on.
I searched in vain for a solution. Most search results suggested clearing app data or resetting the phone. Clearing app data did nothing and I did not fancy setting up my phone again.
Until finally, I found a fix on Reddit. Optimize Battery Usage was the culprit. The operating system was turning off the alarm as it put the clock app to sleep when the phone screen turned off. Here’s how to fix it (pre-Android 12):
Go to settings -> Apps.
Tap the 3 dots, then “Special access”.
Optimize battery usage.
Change the filter to all, find Google Clock, and uncheck it.
In One UI 4, Android 12 things changed a bit:
Go to Settings -> Apps.
Look for Google Clock and open the settings for it.
Tap on Battery.
Change that setting from Optimized to Unrestricted.
The Samsung Clock app worked all this time but setting a timer is horrendous. You have to flick hour/minute/second rollers up and down instead of tapping the numbers I wanted.
I may have “optimized” the Clock app myself by accident but I don’t remember doing that. Other people have had this problem too so it’s not an isolated issue.
I bet this will help someone else. I did a little dance when the timer started working again.
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Consider installing a browser extension that blocks ads and other malicious scripts in your browser to protect your privacy and security. Here are a few options.
uBlock Origin is a free, open source, ad blocker for your browser.
Use pi-hole if you have a spare Raspberry Pi on your network.
Set the private DNS settings on your phone to dns.adguard.com to block adverts and trackers.
