2002 News Archive

Current news

December 17, 2002

Reminder: The hostname for the Pin Eight web site is www.pineight.com. The hostname pineight.evilpigeon.net is deprecated and may disappear soon.

December 13, 2002

In the novel The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, the human race gradually splits into two species between A.D. 1900 or so and A.D. 802701. There are Morlocks who live below the ground and Eloi who live above the ground. The Eloi are vegetarians who resemble Precious Moments figurines to an extent. The Morlocks are albino, light-hating, lemur-like ranchers who manipulate the environment of the Eloi, trap them, and then eat them.

But then I happened up on the Indiana State Trappers Association. Who's the president of the ISTA? None other than Tom Morelock. Coincidence?

December 13, 2002

Friday the 13th. I've released a new version of TED 8TED, bundled with four other NES programming tools for PC. Find them in the PC section.

November 23, 2002

The National Review has slammed the Bono Act. I've added works from 1925 to the Civil Disobedience section.

November 12, 2002

Thank you for loving Dust Puppy.

November 8, 2002

Thank you for loving Bob the Angry Flower.

November 7, 2002

Thank you for loving Pupkin.

November 4, 2002

The domain "evilpigeon.net" is deprecated. Please use "jk0.org" instead of "evilpigeon.net" and "pineight.com" instead of "pineight.evilpigeon.net".

You've seen Yahoo!, and you've seen your Yahoo!. But have you seen Pinocchio's Yahoo!?

Whatever you do, don't fall asleep.

October 24, 2002

New section: Civil Disobedience of the Bono Act. It's an unjust law, and according to Henry David Thoreau, it's my civic duty to publicly disobey this law.

I've also moved old news to an archive page.

October 21, 2002

Apparently, VirtualCobalts staff reads this site, as I got an e-mail from a VirtualCobalts staff member telling me that SSI has been turned on. However, I'm keeping PHP because it will take this site even further once I start to learn PHP this Thanksgiving.

October 15, 2002

New host: VirtualCobalts. Strangely enough, they provide PHP but not SSI in the default package.

September 4, 2002

For the past several months, Pin Eight had been hosted through BinaryBlocks. But today, Wednesday, September 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the tragic destruction of the World Trade Center towers, we discovered that BinaryBlocks management had neglected to pay its Internet bill, causing its hosted sites (including Evil Pigeon.net and Pin Eight) to disappear from the Internet. This page serves as a placeholder until we get things straightened out.

August 11, 2002

Sorry for no updates recently, but my A+ class got in the way. Anyway...

June 21, 2002

Does American money predict the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon September 11, 2001?

CompTIA administers a program designed to certify people's technical knowledge of the modern Intel-based personal computer. (Aunt? Whose aunt?) A company called Super Software sells electronic courseware designed to prepare students to take the exam, but many students have reported being unable to reach the site due to the "sex" in the domain name (aplusexam.com). Just another example of the stupidity of censorware.

June 20, 2002

After three days of computer classes, I am now D- certified! I'll keep you posted on updates.

June 12, 2002

Somebody managed to squeeze half of Tetanus On Drugs into four measly kilobytes. Go here and check out the winning contest entry, called Rotris. It makes TOD look like Microsoft bloatware. I feel sick.

I've been playing Progress Quest (which I found on whatsbetter?com). It's a new MMORPG without the tedious micromanagement that EverCrack players endure.

Do NOT see Disney's Lilo & Stitch. Instead, experience the other Lilo and the other Stitch. Multipass!

May 3, 2002

I've successfully upgraded my development machine from Windows Millennium Edition to Windows 2000. (Shut up *BSD advocates; I need some sort of Windows to run software for school.) I've already migrated 80% of my work to the Win2k partition.

April 4, 2002

If you've been having trouble using GBFS in non-multiboot programs, it may have been due to a bug in the termination condition for find_first_gbfs_file() that made it search only EWRAM (where multiboot programs live) and not ROM. I've fixed it in the latest release; as always, find it in the GBA section.

April 3, 2002

New privacy policy takes effect immediately. We won't sell your personal info.

April 2, 2002

GBFS, a file system for game ROMs, has arrived. It replaces all those messy incbin hacks with a clean archive file containing your game's graphics and sound data. Grab it in the GBA section. (I waited until April Fool's Day was over because I didn't want anybody to confuse this with a joke.)

March 24, 2002

I am not just a hacker; I am also a cunning linguist. Read my review of the Toki Pona planned language. Simplify.

March 19, 2002

The Game Boy Advance has only 32 KB of texture RAM for sprite cels, but I'm not worried. I've written a couple pages of info on how 32 KB ought to be enough for about everyone. Read "Managing Sprite Cel VRAM on the Game Boy Advance" in the GBA section.

March 11, 2002

The PC software section has opened!

February 25, 2002

Some script kiddie loser claims to have cracked our systems and found some "tetris" game in development. Wrong. For one thing, Pin Eight Software has never released, and will never release, a game called "Tetris" in violation of The Tetris Company's trademark. For another, the screenshot looks like a poorly Photoshopped version of an existing PC falling block game.

February 13, 2002

In addition to an MBV2 cable, I now have a Visoly Flash Advance Linker and 256 megabit cartridge. Now I can take my demos with me, as my Game Boy Advance is no longer tethered to my computer. I've also added a new demo, Static Images, to the GBA section. It supersedes the old "6 pixel tiles" and "gamma test" demos.

January 21, 2002

A new Game Boy Advance demo is up: freemirror. It lets you use your Game Boy Advance's display as a makeshift mirror. I also made some changes that should make the site usable again on 4.x browsers.

January 13, 2002

I just packaged the first version of Clearize, which processes images to look better on LCD screens. Find it in the PC section.

January 2, 2002

If you've met me in person, you've probably heard me claim that "DMCA" is a four-letter word. If you don't know what the DMCA is, I've written an article titled DMCA in Plain English.