(date: 2024-10-06 11:09:19)
date: 2024-10-06, from: RiscOS Story
Issues with the venue at which it has been hold since its inception meant that the RISC OS London Show hasn’t been held for a couple of years, and that following one brief reappearance after the hiatus caused by COVID. However, this year it’s back in a new location, and it’s time to get your travel plans sorted if you wish to attend – and why wouldn’t you? Getting the most important information out of the way first, the show is set to take place on Saturday, 26th October –…
https://www.riscository.com/2024/london-looms-just-three-weeks/
date: 2024-10-06, from: RiscOS Story
An updated version of the Hexen port to RISC OS is now available from R-Comp. Version 1.08 of the port has been released to resolve a number of issues reported by players, and also brings the code into line with that of the updated Heretic. Players with very high resolution screens will enjoy the support for up to 8K screens, but there are also a number of fixes – such as improvements to the enhanced widescreen support that appeared in versions 1.07, which extends the view horizontally, filling in detail…
https://www.riscository.com/2024/hexen-port-1-08/
date: 2024-10-06, from: RiscOS Story
Kevin Wells has released a new version of TimeZones, his application that can be used to establish whether, if you called someone elsewhere in the world, it’ll be stupid o’clock in their time. Version 2.00 of the software marks a rewrite, which Kevin undertook due to changes to the application programmer interface (API) that the application uses (by way of Wget to communicate with a remote site – in this case WorldTimeAPI to relay the information requested by the user. In addition to supporting the revised API, when launched the…
https://www.riscository.com/2024/timezones-hits-2-00/
date: 2024-10-05, from: Richard Murray’s blog
A week in the making, Nine, Tidying up my mobile browser, Marte still working, Art becomes reality, Concrete, Car running costs, More bramble whacking, The joy of Pasta.
https://heyrick.eu/blog/index.php?diary=20241005
date: 2024-10-05, from: Old Ventage Computing Research
If you’ve been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story.All collectors tend to be a bit obsessive by nature, and us classic computer nerds probably pick up more hardware than we can (or should) store in our residence — especially if the loves of our lives aren’t as enthusiastic about the hobby than we are — and thus have storage units for the overflow. I have two small “cold” climate control units, kept small so that I can be out of one or both relatively quickly, as well as a larger “hot” conventional unit at ambient temperature. The hot unit is indoors and not exposed directly to the sun, so it’s not particularly hot for sunny southern California, but I keep working spare electronics, hard disks, tapes, etc. in the cold units as a precaution and use the hot unit for non-working parts units, books, magazines and other household items.
Of course, climate control units cost more, sometimes substantially, and thieves use this as a signal that more valuable stuff is likely to be kept there:
The first time was not quite two decades ago at a now defunct national chain. I was obviously rather younger then and didn’t recognize that these units were incredibly poorly secured: they had simple plywood doors that opened out as opposed to metal roll-ups, the “latch” (such as it was) was just a regular safety hasp your padlock went on, and the door hinges were completely exposed. The exterior door to the climate control units (because there must be one to keep the climate controlled air in) was a regular unlocked door without any security cameras. According to the police, a couple of tweekers decided to use the climate units as free air conditioned apartments and intermittently took up residence in many of them, including mine. I had the good sense to use a disc lock instead of a regular padlock, but while they may have been drug-addled they turned out to be smarter than I was. Instead of attacking the lock they just pulled the hinge pins (only two) and got in without even touching the door, the lock or the hasp, and then were able to pull the door closed and escape discovery on walkthrus. By moving around they apparently weren’t noticed for days.
When a storage unit is hit, the police report that the facility files and any insurance claim they make are completely separate from yours. They may or may not use information from you, but you still have to file your own. During their vacation in my two units they stole and likely hocked my family’s Panasonic VHS video camera, which didn’t have any tapes we cared about but would have been fun to keep, as well as my first digital camera, an Olympus Camedia something or other that used SmartMedia and still had some photos on it I realized later I never downloaded, a Fisher-Price PXL2000 (the famous pixelicious video camera that uses regular audio cassettes instead of videotape) I had in its original box that I got to use exactly once, and my spare boxed Mattel Intellivision. They also stole a few items from my highway signs collection and even spray-painted a couple I suppose for lulz, and generously left some rather grotty drug paraphernalia and dirty blankets in trade which the police took as evidence.
Only one of those items was recovered, the Intellivision (the one item I cared about least since that was a totally spare unit). It turned up at a pawn shop on the other side of the freeway. California law, at least at that time, said that the pawn shop had to be reimbursed what they paid: they couldn’t sell it to you at retail, but they also were to be made whole. I went over with someone from the police department and I think it cost me $60 to recover it; I still have it. The cop also quietly pointed out all the things that were wrong with the storage units and told me to get out the rest of my stuff and leave at my earliest opportunity since they would almost certainly be hit again.
But what about making me whole? I was required to have insurance on the units, but I just had an apartment at the time and didn’t carry renter’s insurance, so I paid a premium as part of my rental fees to the chain’s “insurance partner.” If this smells like a kickback deal, you’re right, and virtually every self-storage company engages in it. The idea is to offer you something cheap so that the insurance company will then protect the storage company by deflecting claims. The insurance is cheap because it sucks. I had a police report, obviously, but when I tried to submit the claims for each unit — on paper, as we did in the Dark Ages at the beginning of the 21st century — they were rejected for insufficient documentation (because who keeps a receipt for the Intellivision you bought five years ago from a thrift store?) and I was hardly in a position to sue them over it.
As the cop instructed, I bailed out of there a couple months later. The doors had not been upgraded, there was still no lock on the exterior entrance, and the manager said installing cameras would be too expensive. I made sure to note on my “exit survey” that I was leaving because their security was worse than a Russian garrison after a vodka waffle party. The chain subsequently folded and got sold to some other megastorage company and I imagine they’re still too cheap to do anything about it.
The current break-in was a bit more professional because the facility I moved to was obviously more serious about security (they could hardly have been less). When I first moved in, the climate control section had proper roll-up doors and sliding security latches, and there were cameras scattered around the premises, but the exterior door was also just a regular door and usually left unlocked. One of the local unhoused encampments noticed this and moved in, leaving a mess and requiring forcible eviction by the police, though they didn’t manage to get into any occupied units. After that the management installed a cipher lock-type door handle and issued unique codes to each tenant.
We own a house now, but my particular homeowner’s insurance policy doesn’t cover rental units (I read every page, believe me). Even though the “partner” insurance was useless the first time around, I still went with the company this facility was getting kickbacks from since it was the cheapest alternative. After all, I figured if I got hit again they wouldn’t pay off this time either, so I might as well spend as little money as possible on it.
The door handle only controlled the latch; there was no deadbolt. So what do you do to attack a door like that? You crowbar it and pry the latch open (see also the well-known xkcd). The picture at the beginning was what it looked like when I came to survey the damage. The manager had effected some emergency repairs and installed a temporary keyed deadbolt, requiring me to go to the office to get inside.
And what do you do to attack disc locks? Well, if you’re not handy with a pick, you drill them.
For some reason they didn’t drill the lock on the second unit and instead took several whacks at it with some sort of sharp instrument, but this only made the lock completely inoperable. They then pried the latch off, but the shelves in that unit interfere with the roll-up door unless you know the trick and they apparently weren’t able to get inside. (The manager had also replaced the latch before I arrived.) In the process, however, they did succeed in knocking some items around including a couple of hard disks off the shelf from my Outbound laptop systems. They were fortunately backed up before storage and should be replaceable with some other 2.5” IDE equivalent device because they won’t spin up now.
Having learned my lesson from the first burglary, I had nothing irreplaceable in the units, though I did have some items from my Tomy Pyuuta collection in the second one temporarily. They also didn’t go through any boxes, likely because they didn’t have any time: the next scheduled security patrol arrived about ten or fifteen minutes after they gained access and discovered the theft, so no doubt they hauldassed when they saw the guard coming back on rounds. I also wasn’t the only person burglarized, though the manager wouldn’t tell me exactly how many other units were hit. For the units that were hit, he provided us with covers that slide onto the latch:
This time, same city, the police never showed for my units and I don’t know if they came to the premises at all. (Before you ask, I have absolutely no idea if Proposition 47 has anything to do with it.) I submitted the police reports online and got my case numbers, one for each unit as usual, and then did an online submission with the insurance company including the photos that I had.
The insurance company took about a week to assign an adjuster. Despite having itemized the missing items twice on the police report and in the initial submission, I was asked to complete and notarize another inventory sheet for each unit on paper. The adjuster also wanted any proof of purchase or ownership, such as “a receipt, invoice, order or shipping confirmation, or debit/credit statement.” Naturally, these items are so old and have been in there so long that none of this exists. The situation sounded suspiciously like I was going to get stiffed again and I complained to the adjuster that if I had to pay a notary to notarize two documents that may never result in a payout, I’d be out even more money as well as time. (A fairly cynical way of discouraging claims by people for whom that amount of money is more significant.)
To my surprise, although it took several E-mails and another ten days, the adjuster agreed to waive the notarization requirement. (I’m not even sure what the notarization step was accomplishing: the inventory sheets aren’t affidavits.) The documents wanted purchase price and location, which I could only do from memory, and a replacement cost, which I did by eBay searches for comparable items. My insurance limit is $2,000 each unit with a $100 deductible, waived if you have a disc lock installed, which I did. I made sure the destroyed disc locks were listed as part of the claim and I determined a total replacement cost of $512.23 in the first unit and $57.23 in the second one.
I didn’t hear anything for a month and E-mailed the adjuster again. The next day they paid off on the claim: $269.40 and $48.96. “The policy you have is based on the Actual Cash Value (ACV) of your items, which means depreciation needs to be applied to the item(s) based on their age. I’ve adjusted the loss presented and added in the applicable sales tax.” Since I figured the alternative was $0 and extra vitriol for this blog post, I agreed. The checks arrived this week and we deposited them. They do not make me whole, though of course none of these items are critical.
Here’s the lessons learned for those of us with classic computers in storage:
Since the break-in occurred, the temporary deadbolt was replaced with a new cipher lock, but this one controls a full deadbolt, not just a door latch. The facility is also gradually converting the roll-up doors to pick-resistant cylinder locks and dispensing with padlocks altogether. I’m hopeful I won’t be writing a third blog post on this topic in a few years.
https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2024/10/so-thieves-broke-into-your-storage-unit.html
date: 2024-10-05, from: Icon Bar, RISC OS News
R-Comp have announced that they have a new version of their Hexen game port now available
http://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2110.html
date: 2024-10-04, from: Digital Antiquarian
If traditional film is a river, the viewer of that film sits on the bank and watches the water flow by. We wanted to take that viewer and turn them into a fish and put them down into that river. — Greg Roach, Director of The X-Files Game Given the demographics of X-Files fandom, we […]
https://www.filfre.net/2024/10/the-truth-is-out-there-part-3-the-game-of-belief/
date: 2024-10-03, from: Linux Magazine
As more Linux systems are targeted by ransomware, Halcyon is stepping up its protection.
http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Halcyon-Creates-Anti-Ransomware-Protection-for-Linux
date: 2024-10-03, from: Icon Bar, RISC OS News
Wakefield’s October speaker was Andy Marks from RISCOSbits telling us about his RISC OS history and talking about his current/future plans.
http://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2107.html
date: 2024-10-02, from: Computer ads from the Past
Utilizing the latest technology, we have condensed all of our functionality into an A4 size document.
https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/plus-post-epson-hc-88-px-8
date: 2024-10-01, from: Richard Murray’s blog
The joy of working with others: Four Tales of Woe.
https://heyrick.eu/blog/index.php?diary=20241001
date: 2024-09-30, from: Richard Murray’s blog
My 8 hour days started well, HP’s dodgy cartridges?, Satellite channels.
https://heyrick.eu/blog/index.php?diary=20240930
date: 2024-09-30, from: Linux Magazine
Valve and Arch have come together for two projects that will have a serious impact on the Linux distribution.
http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Valve-and-Arch-Linux-Announce-Collaboration
date: 2024-09-30, from: Icon Bar, RISC OS News
The October 2024 WROCC talk features Andy Marks. As usual it takes place on Zoom and kicks off at 7.45pm.
http://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2106.html
date: 2024-09-29, from: Computer ads from the Past
The Premier Workplace Shell Calendar, Phone Book, To Do List, and Program Runner, too
https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/sundial-systems-relish
date: 2024-09-29, from: RiscOS Story
It doesn’t seem to be very long ago that we first saw Andy Marks appear at the Wakefield Show with his ‘Acorn and RISC OS Spares and Extras’ stand, referred to with an acronym that had people with a childish sense of humour laughing (er… guilty, your honour! Very, very guilty!), and those without asking “do you realise what that says?” Not long after, ‘ARSE’ (snort) became RISCOSbits, supplying a variety of cases and computers to the RISC OS market – with more than a few having playful designations that…
https://www.riscository.com/2024/wrocc-riscosbits-history-2nd-october/
date: 2024-09-29, from: RiscOS Story
With apologies to Kevin Wells for a bit of a delay mentioning the first of these updates (the bunker has been unattended for a couple of weeks), there are two updates to report on MACadd, his application that can be used to look up information about MAC (Media Access Control) addresses. MAC addresses are twelve digit base 16 (hexadecimal) codes assigned to network interfaces that are on board devices of all sorts, and intended to be unique. Their purpose is to ensure all such devices can be identified and treated…