Then I started working and earning some real money.So I bought several PCs. Some Game Boy Colors. Some Game Boy Advances. A Playstation. A Playstation 2. A Playstation 3. An XBox. Some more PCs. A couple of laptops. An iPod Touch.

I started collecting old computers and game consoles, so I bought several C64s. Amiga 500s, 600s, 1200s, CD32s. Ataris, Spectrums, Amstrads. Some more Playstations. Plus Segas and whatever else I could get my hands on.

All of this and some digital cameras, wacom boards, an original arcade cabinet with Bomb Jack, Shinobi, Time Pilot and a few other games. Plus loads of books and DVDs – and now some BDs as well.

Now I can’t for the life of me think of what to buy next.

Apart from the Natami, there seems to be nothing more I want… Oh, wait… Maybe a big house that has room for all my old crap valued toys.

Natami page
Specifications
Questions and answers
Forum

You see, I have been instant messaging for years and years, starting out with ICQ and later on I reluctantly moved to Messenger because all my nongeek friends started using that.
I tried out Trillian and some other multi-IM clients so I could be on ICQ and MSN at the same time, but as more and more people moved over to MSN I got tired of having double contacts of almost everyone, plus I got annoyed with Trillian’s constant breaking down on me and not being able to show the right emoticons etc, so I ended up just using MSN.

Ofcourse it helps with the tools you can find on the net that removes ads and stuff like that, so I actually started to like MSN.

One thing I especially like is the ‘personal message’. I am addicted to PM-ing. I love reading what other people decides to put there.
Sometimes it’s a little poem, a pun or a joke – other times it’s a fair warning of what you’re in for if you start chatting, like: “WHY DID SHE LEAVE ME?????” or “My parents just died ;..(” or a classic like “Why does my life suck?”.

At the moment I’m doing a campaign on TV-commercials; L’Oréal is the current victim:
“L’Oréal – Because you’re worthless” and “Oral – Because you’re worth it”.

At other times it’s stuff like “Stop the World spinning – I want off” or “Take a chance – Dream out loud!”.

Now, this is all great and fine, but now I’ve just started on a new job and here’s where my problem with Pidgin starts.
On my new job there’s a very strict policy on what we’re allowed to do with the computers there. For instance, the automatic update cannot be turned on for XP. And since the computer is installed with a VERY old version of MSN, it does not have the ability to show profile pictures which annoys the crap out of me so I won’t use it. And because the updates are a no-go, I cannot install the newest version of MSN. So now I only have the multi-IM clients as an alternative… and after about 3 seconds with Trillian I decided to use Pidgin instead.

Now I suddenly feel like the 3 monkeys that don’t see, hear or say anything. Because now I can’t see what people are writing in their PM, and I cannot write anything myself… I suddenly feel cut off from a part of the world where once I reigned as king… ok, that’s overdoing it, but you get my point.

Ofcourse I’ve been looking for a PM-plugin for Pidgin, but none exist – at least for the windows version – and the Pidgin community seems to be split in two: those who badly wants a PM plugin, but can’t make one – and those who can make one, but simply don’t get it; “‘Away’, ‘BRB’ and ‘Busy’ is already there, why would you need more?” -sigh!

So to help those who can do it, but can’t see the point; here’s some of the PM’s from my collection:

“To alcohol: The cause of – and solution to – all of life’s problems.”
- Homer J. Simpson

1984 – 3 seconds, 1992 – 6 seconds, 2007 – 3 minuttes and 47 seconds!
(I got a lot of attention with this one because people wanted to know what it was all about: It’s the startup time for my Commodore 64, my Amiga 1200 and my Packard Bell Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM and Windows XP Media Edition.)

In the land of the cyclops, the blind man is frowned upon.
\Ignore

Wink if yerrrrr’ a pirate!
And people did! – Aaaaarh!

If yerrrrr’ a pirate and ye ken it – clap yer hook!
Aaaaarh, ’tis right matie!

Dreams never fail me – it’s reality that lets me down.

“Romance is dead. It was acquired in a hostile takeover by Hallmark and Disney, homogenized, and sold off piece by piece.”
- Lisa Simpson

Always say always… Always!
Well, if you’re supposed to never say never, this should be the logical next step.

O, the possibilities are endless… I hope this may inspire a few plugin makers… if for no other reason then just to remind them that their friends might be mocking them in their private message – AND THE PLUGIN MAKERS ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN’T SEE IT! ;) – now THAT’S a motivator if I ever saw one!

Action Scripting
First of all, I’m going to wrap my brain around some action scripting… I’ve tried to learn it before, but I’ve generally been too worn out from a busy day at work to really dig into it. So monday, tuesday and wednesday from 9am to 2pm I’m going to look at tutorials and whatnot. (I might continue after 2pm if I’m in the mood).

Bomb Jack
It has come to my attention that the world record in the Arcade Classic “Bomb Jack” is ridiculously low. I have never beaten it, but I have been ‘close’ if you count 16 million points close to 20 million points. And since I own an original arcade-version of Bomb Jack, I don’t see why I shouldn’t try something as stupid as setting a new world record. Though, for starters I will see if I can’t beat the M.A.M.E. version of the game first… the record there is ‘only’ 11 million points. And I will finally get some use out of my X-Arcade joystick, which I bought years ago and has only used for one day so far.
So to sum it up: Bomb Jack from 3pm to 5pm monday-wednesday.

Poker
I play a good deal of poker (excuse the pun) and I’m going to continue doing this… but a pitfall of having too much time on your hands is that you might just end up playing poker all the time, so I’ve decided to only play poker from 6pm to 8pm. (Or a max of 2 hours on any given day).

Goofing
Thursday and friday are days to just goof around, play with whatever new software I find on the internet that let’s me do really nerdy stuff, or browsing through Ebay, bidding on semi-useless old computers and the like.

The Weekend
No plans for the weekend… what good would a weekend be if I always had to do something specific?

Now we can continue on to what I would like to discuss:
Is Donnie Darko Superman’s scapegoat?

My reason for asking is this:
Donnie Darko is essentially a movie about a superhero*, Donnie (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) who ends up saving the world through time travel. In the process Donnie succeeds, but he pays with his life as he is crushed by an engine from a commercial airliner.

Superman – the movie – is essentially a movie about a hero, Superman (played by the late Christopher Reeve) who ends up saving Lois Lane through time travel. In the process superman succeeds and pays no price whatsoever! This is extraordinary for any movie that involves time travel… it is one of the unwritten rules about time travel in fiction: You Cannot Change History Without Paying a Price.

* if you watch the DVD with commentaries, almost everything will be explained. The rest is explained in “The Philosophy of Time Travel” written by Roberta Sparrow which is also included on the special edition DVD.

So this is how we come to the point I would really like to discuss:
Is Donnie paying the price for Superman’s sin?

When Superman travels back in time at the end of the movie, he does so, not because it’s the smartest thing to do, or because he is allowed to do it – in fact he is strictly forbidden by his Kryptonian parents’ to change the history of planet Earth – but because he has just lost Lois Lane who has died in an earthquake.
When it comes to the unwritten rules about time travel, another one is as follows: You Can Try, But You Will Never Succeed, In Bringing the Dead Back to Life. -Not unless you start your journey back in time before they actually die… in other words, you can save them while they are dying, not when they are dead. You can only save someone who has already died if they died as a consequence of your time travelling, and your last action brings everything back to the way it was… in other words, you delete the part of history where you suddenly become able to travel in time, and by doing so you prevent yourself from ever being the (indirect) reason for someone else’s death, thus saving them.

A third rule could go like this: Anything You Do That is Strictly Selfish Will Not Succeed. You can only gain from time travel, if you do something completely unselfish and as a sideeffect (and karma) you end up on easy street.

Superman breaks all the rules.

Let’s look at the rules one more time, but for argument’s sake, lets take them in the opposite order:

1. Anything You Do That is Strictly Selfish Will Not Succeed.
1. Superman’s reason to go back in time and put everything right doesn’t come from the goodness of his heart; he does it because he has just lost the love of his life: Lois Lane, who has died. He doesn’t really do it because he wants to save her, he does it because he doesn’t want to lose her. His action is selfish to the core.

2. You Can Try, But You Will Never Succeed, In Bringing the Dead Back to Life.
2. Apart from CPR and shouting “CLEAR!” a lot, most (or all?) stories about bringing dead people back to life never end well. That is… apart from Superman. He just does it no sweat.

3. You Cannot Change History Without Paying a Price.
3. Superman succeeds in changing the history of planet Earth that day and goes on with business as usual.
(And by being able to travel back in time, any story about Superman in the future could easily be over before it started, because everytime something bad happens, he could just travel back in time and save the day before it even knows it needs saving.)

In other words: Superman has a huge bill to pay karma-wise, but karma never collects.

This is where Donnie comes in. Someone has to pay the karma-bill and Donnie fits it like a glove.
Donnie is a superhero. He wasn’t born that way, but when the space-time continuum rips open, thus endangering the existence of the entire universe, he is chosen by whatever higher power there is (let’s say Fate) to be the saviour, simply because he is closest to the centre of the disaster.
Donnie and everyone around him are cast into an alternate reality/dimension/whatever, where he and everyone else are mere puppets in the hands of Fate, being manipulated to work towards the common goal: to save all existence.
In fact, the only one who has any choice at all is Donnie -and only at the very brink of destruction, where he and he alone has to decide whether he will sacrifice himself for everyone else’s sake.
What’s even worse: unlike Superman, Donnie’s action will never be remembered. When he sends a metal object through the rift, he himself is killed by that object in the past (in the real world, not the one created to ready him for his task) and people will only remember him as the poor kid who got squished by an airliner’s engine.

Let’s take the rules one more time, for Donnie’s sake:

1. Anything You Do That is Strictly Selfish Will Not Succeed.
Donnies action is not selfish. He has been pushed by his surroundings all through the movie to do what he has to do to save everyone else but him. But in the end, it’s his choice.

2. You Can Try, But You Will Never Succeed, In Bringing the Dead Back to Life.
Donnie’s girlfriend, Gretchen dies at the end of the movie. This is one of the last pieces of the puzzle that has to happen to make sure that Donnie will be at the right place, at the right time to make his choice. But two things are in effect here: first thing is that Gretchen dies in an alternate reality, or said in another way: she dies as an effect of time travel. Secondly Donnie closes the rift and kills himself in the past, thus saving the entire universe and preventing himself from any more time travelling.

3. You Cannot Change History Without Paying a Price.
Donnie actually saves history from being changed, but he still pays the ultimate price… but why?

The question here is:

What causes the rift in the space/time continuum?
My answer is Superman. Superman’s selfish action has caused a rift in the space/time continuum – and why do I come to that conclusion? Well, I haven’t just pulled it out of a hat, though it might seem like it. Apart from the fact that both movies are about superheroes and time travelling, there is one more thing that connects both movies: the engine!
In Superman the Movie, Superman saves the President, when Air Force One is suddenly hit by lightning. The pilot exclaims something like “We just lost the whole engine!” (I don’t have the movie near me, so I can’t find the exact quote). Superman comes to the rescue and takes the place of the, now missing, engine.
So when karma comes to collect, what is more fitting than squishing someone else with an engine from an airliner?

After this particular concert I decided to get my childhood memories back for good; I was going to get myself a brand new (used) Commodore 64, so that I could play all the old games again.
I started off on Ebay, buying a used C64 from the States. But I soon found out that the shipping was going to take forever, so I bought one more of a different type (the slimline model) from somewhere in Germany.
This might have been the end of it for some people, but not for me. I decided to get all the different kinds of C64s out there… as well as all other Commodore computers, like the Commodore Plus 4, C16, Vic-20, C128 etc. (I still want the PET series as well, but not until I have room for it, which I won’t have for years to come).

This is all very nice, but why stop here? I decided to buy all the Amiga models I could get my hands on. Then followed Amstrad and Sinclair computers. And now I’ve decided to just go all the way and get everything that was ever invented.
At the moment I have something like 8 or 9 C64s, 2 C128s, 4 or 5 Amiga 500s, 2 A600s , 2 A1200s… I have an unknown amount of Amstrads, Sinclair Spectrums, Sords, Commodore Plus 4s and ofcourse, now I’ve started getting Playstations, X-Boxs, CDTVs and everything else I can get my hands on.
The only thing that has put a temporary stop to this madness is that I’ve run out of space. My little apartment is simply too small for my little hobby.

So before you decide to go to a Press Play on Tape concert, please be aware that you will be needing a mansion in 2 year’s time.

I am in the fortunate situation of having my parents’ old car on loan indefinitely.
Now it takes me less than 15 minutes to get to work, and I can easily and swiftly go to visit a friend, or in the spur of the moment I can go catch a flick in less time than it takes to recite Hamlet’s “To be or not to be”-monologue… which really only takes a minute or two, but you get my point.
This is all very nice and I wouldn’t want to do without it, now that I’ve gotten used to having it readily available. But with a car you also get some problems. And I’m not talking about gas prices or the odd trip to the shop to get something or other fixed. Nor am I talking about the difficulties in finding a place to park, which indeed is a daily challenge.

I am talking about books!

I have always been quite the bookish type, so in the past I actually quite enjoyed the two hours of commute every day to and from school, and later on the commute to and from work. This was a perfect time to read books, and plenty of them.
I would read Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Orson Scott Card, Douglas (Noel) Adams, Dennis Jürgensen (danish author), Peter Straub etc.
But now that I have a car I don’t get to read anything anymore. This is mainly because I can’t concentrate on reading if I’m not in a bus or in a train. It is also because I am of the firm belief that if there’s a TV around, there’s probably something worth watching, which is not always the case, but I watch it anyway.

So having a car has effectively removed my reading time and replaced it with more time for watching TV.