I built a Windows 98 machine out of our old nameserver, door; it was a P166 from 1996 and NO YES REALLY IT WAS STILL ON THE NET UNTIL TWO WEEKS AGO because we were just seeing how long it would hold on.

Anyway, it abruptly retired itself from service, and I had a new machine already built because I also had plans to restructure the network here at the Lair and it required new hardware, but that left me with a reasonably functional P166, and I like the ability to read archaic media and it had a drive controller that could talk to 5.25″ floppies. So.

(It’ll also run DOS games. But I digress, as I do.)

The power supply is a weird short-lived format between AT and ATX called ATB, and these are thin on the ground, so as I was swapping out fans because these old machines sounded like goddamn jet engines how did anyone put up with this ever oh right because we didn’t know any better, I noticed a couple of caps on the power supply had failed, and that I could improve the whole venting situation with a much more open power supply case. So I made one, out of bronze fabric and aluminium, and it is, as the title says, the single most original Star Trek thing I have ever built. To wit:

canna take much more of thi SHUT UP SCOTTY AND MAKE THE ENGINES GO

And now I’m leaving for Montréal and Festival Mémoire et Racines, and if I see you there – yay!

Paul has a Vive VR rig and he’s starting to make environments for it! He posted a really good classic Doctor Who TARDIS room environment this weekend. It’s Version 1 and the controls are all static, but despite that it’s lots of fun because it’s a full environment otherwise and the display panels work and there’s even a sonic screwdriver, and a Dalek, and some other things.

I, of course, filled it with beach balls because that’s the kind of thing I do.

Also the Dalek needed a Gene wig and a monocle because it is CLEARLY a Special Monocle Dalek.

Anyway, it’s good, and you can subscribe to it and he’ll post updates. He’s working on a more kinetic version now where you can do things like operate console controls and have them do things. That’s apparently a lot more work, But he made a lot of progress yesterday on getting levers to move and such, so I expect he’ll have a version two out in a few weeks.

Me, I mostly found out that something which shouldn’t affect network behaviour at all affected it a lot and now I’ve broken through the 1800 level in Overwatch competitive, with 2000 finally in distant sight.

(I don’t know if I posted about that here, but when I went through rank evaluations, people on my team dropped halfway through in four out of five games, which meant I started in the depths of bronze, and while that’s kind of terrible, it also means I get to be THE WOLF IN THE FOLD and rain death from above. Raining death from above is always fun, but then the network started acting up on me so I had to fix that, then door – network infrastructure here in the Lair – exploded and I had to fix that, and and and and and. Then every so often everything is fixed and I climb 100 levels in a day. Which is what I just did again.)

But, yeah. Working my way up the ranks via the slow road. But I’ll show them. I’ll show them all.

So what’d you do this weekend?