Playing Zork on Linux (Frotz)
Zork is one of those computer games you’ve probably seen referenced a lot - maybe even played at some point or another. Not that it’s a video game, but rather its a text based game - a work of interactive fiction. And indeed, playing Zork is rather like one of those “choose your own adventure” style books, only with far more humor, more choices for the reader, and the terrifying grue. Playing Zork on Linux does not require installing DOSBox or some other DOS emulator, but instead requires the installation of a Z-Machine interperter (Z-Machine being a basic virtual machine...
Speed Up Audio Files
In the recent article about extracting the audio from videos I detailed a method to get the audio track from a video. One use for this is extracting the audio of recorded lectures that universities or professors have placed online and are made freely available. Many of these lectures can actually be listened to at a faster speed, reducing the amount of time needed to learn the same material, and while many media players for computers can play audio at a faster speed, this ability is far less common amongst portable media players. This forces you to create a version...
Spaments (Spam Comments)
Because the number of comments that my site gets are low, I like to check each one individually. As a result, the majority of the comments are deleted, being simple spam. However, recently somebody came across my site and decided to promote a site which sells (or claims to sell) laptop bags. Frankly I found both rather entertaining. Both these comments were posted to a recent post regarding my hiatus. The first one, the one on the bottom, appears to be pulled from some other book or website, and has absolutely nothing to do with the article it was posted...
Return from my Hiatus
The past few weeks, I’ve not been particularly good about keeping up the regular posts on this site. Between Christmas, a lingering cold, studying for my next few classes, and then preparations for the upcoming semester’s classes, I simply haven’t gotten any articles written. However, you don’t have to worry about me going offline, I made sure to renew my registration when the date rolled around on the January Fourth. However, with classes starting back this Monday, I will soon be back into my usual patterns, and so within a week or so will resume my postings.
Extracting Audio from Videos
During the break before my next semester, I’ve been trying to study a bit, both in preparation for classes I am taking next semester, and to prepare for a CLEP exam I plan to take soon, in order to reduce the total number of classes I need to take. One resource for some of my studies are the videos available from many universities, where they have recorded classes, such as those on Academic Earth. Since many of these are easily downloadable, and often consist mostly of lectures, it makes sense to strip the audio from them, and copy this audio...