Tuesday, September 12, 2023

I met myself on the internet today...

My "Val-U-Mart"

If you are as much of a geek as I am, sometimes you run into "yourself" on old, forgotten parts of the internet that still exist.

I wrote some programming for a text game nearly quite some time ago. Turns out the game is still working, and you can still connect to it.

My job was to make a run down "lot property" in this game. So I decided to write this about the "Val-U-Mart" I programmed in 1993.

So this is the description I wrote for the outside of the mart:

A large old Kmart with yellowed walls, a food court in the back, and a frosty machine. There are still blue light specials running throughout the store even though this hasn't been a Kmart in decades. Overly anxious clerks, most of which are pimply faced teenagers run to and fro throughout the store. Every once and a while you hear a crackly outdated P.A. system tell you where the next sale will be.

And here's the bathroom:

A dingy aged bath room that has not been cleaned enough for your liking. Rude comments litter the walls.

And the food court:

A strange little food court sits in the back of this now re-purposed K-Mart. Luncheon personnel are ready to take your order, all of them wearing name tags and years of disgust at having to work here. Most of the denizens of the food court are older ladies in shoes and clothing completely lacking fashion, but replete with sensibility. This little room is very, very heavily "70's wooden paneling" looking. The menus all have water or coffee marks on them.

As you can see, I once fancied myself a bit of an author. :D

I know this won't be interesting to most people, so if this just serves as the fun dark web chunk I stubbed my toe on today, so be it. :)


Friday, April 21, 2023

CrunchBang ++ bringing back all those old school vibes of original Crunch.

 


First off, I have to admit that I am looking at CrunchBang ++ with a bit of nostalgia.

I used to think that CrunchBang back in the day was the jam, and I ran CB specifically for years.


But I will admit now, that nostalgia aside, the new reiteration of CB is just as awesome and simple as it ever was.


If you visited the website, you will find that all the screenshots of this "no frills" Linux based OpenBox distribution are grey and lifeless.


While this is how CB "ships", it takes very little to liven it up.


Here's my desktop with CB ++, and mild changes to make it not so "dish water grey":

(Click to enlarge)

Why would you get CB ++, besides nostalgia? It's very light on it's feet.


Fully booted, it was only using 464 mb of ram, shown here...


(Click to enlarge)

I'm enjoying my trip into nostalgia, for sure, but I am also impressed with how snappy this thing is.

If you want to try it out yourself, here's the website for you: https://crunchbangplusplus.org/

-Denny