's nothing else I can do up there. It's the best thing that's happened to me in years; I've averaged more than 1000 words a day since I started th
at regime.
There are logistical problems. Old Cow isn't on my network, and putting him there would defeat the whole purpose, but I do need a way to bring down the results of my work. That means not only Word files -- text, work record, dictionaries -- but my Info Select notes, and my journals, which I keep in Franklin Quest Ascend. All that is too large to fit on a floppy disk, so a parallel Zip drive was the obvious answer.
The problem was Ascend. That subdirectory has a lot of files in it. Most of them don't change from day to day, but they can: Ascend keeps separate files for calendars, appointments, special tasks, Red Tab tasks, the phone list, journal, daybook, and some others. Zip drives are fast enough that I could just copy and overwrite all the files, but when I was using floppy disks to transfer this stuff, it was painfully slow, so I fell into the habit of copying only the files I had modified.
Alas, Microsoft Windows 95 Explorer doesn't have a way to copy only later fi
les. My first way around that was to use Norton Commander in a DOS window. Over the years, I've gotten into the habit of using Commander for nearly everything, and my fingers know the keystrokes down to a cellular memory level. I'd simply order the files by date (F9-L-M in Commander's sequence), use the right mouse button to select all files recently modified, and press F5 to copy them.
Unfortunately, Commander is a bad habit I ought to break. It doesn't understand long filenames, and worse, if it does transfer a long filename, it truncates it into one of those eight-plus-three-with-a-squiggle filenames; and once it has done that, you'll never get the long filename back without renaming it. I keep hearing about a Win 95 version that fixes this, but I sure don't know how to get it.
A better choice would be the shareware program Windows Commander, but, alas, it is published by a chap in Switzerland who makes it exceedingly hard to send him the registration fee unless you're on CompuServe, which I'm not;
and the program makes increasingly ominous threats to those who haven't registered. It's also not all that easy to install.
The best solution is one I've recommended before: Canyon Software's Drag And File Gold Desktop (DAFGD). This understands long filenames, and while the interface isn't the old, familiar Norton Commander display -- it looks a lot like Explorer -- it will do all Commander can do and more.
Some of the features aren't obvious, and I really miss Commander's F3 to view and F4 to edit a selected file, but an hour's spelunking in DAFGD will reward you with a utility that does almost everything you would want a file utility to do. You'll particularly want to look in both the Options and Actions menus. You'll also want to examine the iconic buttons on the toolbar, and if you don't understand what some of those commands do, find out: most are useful.
Alas, I hadn't done that spelunking. Worse, I began to have what I thought were problems with DAFGD not copying things. I would drag the
Ascend directory to the Zip drive, select the "copy newer files only" button, watch what looked like file transfers -- and then discover that the files hadn't been transferred.
This was infuriating, and I called Canyon Software in high dudgeon. They were extremely interested, because although I had an older version of DAFGD, there doesn't seem to be any mechanism to cause that particular failure. I went through the problem while I was on the phone: open Ascend on the C drive, look at the task list to be sure it hadn't been updated, close Ascend, and then use DAFGD to drag the Ascend directory with its updated files from the Zip drive to the C drive with the "copy newer files only" option set.
The result was no result: the Ascend files were not updated. This time, though, I went back to look at the actual dates of the files -- you can sort by date in DAFGD exactly as you do in Windows 95 Details view, by clicking on the category name in the toolbar, Modified in this case -- and discovered to my horror
that all the Ascend files on the C drive were now later than those on the Zip drive. Indeed, they were not merely later, they were about 1 minute old.
Ascend rewrites all its files when you close the program. It does this whether or not you have modified that file. DAFGD was doing precisely what it was supposed to be doing.
All's well that ends well. The result of all this is I've discovered just how useful DAFGD can be. Just about every feature I liked in Norton Commander is hidden in there somewhere; and unlike Windows Commander, it's easy to get and pay for DAFGD.
You can install it on a server -- we have ours on Spirit, a Windows NT server off in the back room -- and run locally. The only penalty for that is when it first comes up, DAFGD sorts and examines the directory it sits on, and that's the big 4-GB hard drive in Spirit, so it does take a few seconds. It isn't all that long a delay, and if what you wanted to do was send stuff to the server -- that's often the reason I invoke DAFGD -- you
'd have to let it do that anyway. There's also a nifty toolbar addition utility that lists all your drives, local and networked, so you can choose any one of them instantly.
All told, Drag And File Gold Desktop is about the most useful file utility I have at Chaos Manor. Highly recommended.
In the past year or so, there's been what amounts to a revolution
in computer graphics. Capabilities previously available only on Silicon Graphics systems costing six figures are now available at modest costs. Moreover, every week my local papers have articles about start-up graphics workshop companies. It's a growing and lucrative field for those with talent and understanding of computer graphics.
We get to look at a lot of graphics equipment. Testing it is a problem, because I don't do much graphics work, and certainly nothing that pushes a system to its limits. Fortunately, David Em does. David is a fine artist who many years ago discovered computers as an art medium.
The Art of David Em
was once my book of the month. He has had exhibits in institutuions including the Museums of Modern Art in both Paris and Madrid.
The following is more his report than mine and is based on his impressions from using a great deal of high-end equipment. Naturally we can't possibly look at everything; on the other hand, we did look for stuff we thought might be competitive. I asked David to recommend three graphics systems: beginner, serious user willing to spend a little money, and high-end professional. Here's the result.
First, surprise! At the high end, PCs may be better than Macs for 3-D graphics; certainly they're competitive. That wouldn't have been true six months ago. For 2-D work, it's a dead heat. Adobe Photoshop is the vital program for image processing, and the performance is indistinguishable in top-end NT and Apple machines. Also, Photoshop 4.0 can take advantage of multiple processors, and PCs have a head start in that area; on the other hand, multiprocessing is finally becoming a r
eality for Macs (for details, see the Core Tech article "The Mac Goes Multiprocessor" [available on-line end of April]).
As reported in a previous column, Intergraph's dual-processor TDZ-400 NT system is about as high end as you can get. It's not cheap, but you'll get your money's worth, everything is integrated, and their technical support and service are legendarily good. They've also just announced a new series of more midrange NT workstations. We haven't seen those yet.
If you build your own high-end system, there are three major video boards that we can recommend from experience: Matrox, Diamond, and Intergraph. Since their performance under NT 4.0 depends on drivers, some of them just coming out, we don't have a full report, but clearly they all are good enough. Be warned: if you plan to use Kinetix/Autodesk's 3D Studio Max, you need a board with "HEIDI" drivers, Kinetix's own driver standard, on top of the OS drivers.
On the low end, there are some rock-bottom limits. First, no graphics boa
rd with less than 4 MB of some kind of RAM and a GLINT chip is worth considering. Even 8 MB of RAM isn't too much, if you're planning to use 1280 by 1024 pixels or higher resolution. In this product segment, Diamond and Matrox are the main contenders; either is good enough. Second, you shouldn't consider anything less than a good Pentium or Pentium Pro. Be sure there is 512 KB of level 2 cache memory. Serious graphics work starts at 32 MB of RAM; you'll be miserable with less. At 64 MB your life gets better, and 512 MB is not too much for a high-end system; in a word, if you're buying a machine for graphics, be sure it will hold a lot of memory even if you can't afford all that memory at first.
Dual-processor systems are enough better than single that you'll be happier with, say, twin 150 Pentiums than with a single 200. (We lent David our DFI Doubleshot 133 dual-Pentium system after he had problems with his own machine. He loves it.) Whatever the central processor, you will want Fast and Wide SCSI (or Ul
tra SCSI) and the biggest hard drive you can afford. Graphics files are big, they have to be backed up frequently, and there are large database files to merge in.
Beginners wanting something to play with can get away with less than twin 150 Pentiums and Fast and Wide or Ultra SCSI, but if you start doing professional work, you'll upgrade fast. All this system speed affects not only productivity but creativity: if you have to wait forever for the output, you won't experiment, and if you don't experiment, you won't be doing your best work.
Third, whether beginner or pro, you'll want the best monitor you can afford, with excellent, accurate color reproduction. (I could do an entire column on monitors. Don't choose yours by specifications. Look before you buy.)
In monitors, bigger is better, but color fidelity is more important than size. I'm sure there are other excellent monitors, but the brands we're familiar with are Nanao and the higher-end ViewSonics. The ViewSonic P815 MegaMonitor is at present
the best value for the money in a 21-inch monitor. Its nearest competitor is the 21-inch Nanao, and the ViewSonic P815 MegaMonitor is two-thirds the Nanao's price and has capabilities the Nanao doesn't have. In particular, you can run the P815 MegaMonitor in an astounding 1800- by 1440-pixel resolution, although you'll have trouble finding a board and drivers to do it justice. (We used an Artist Graphics board that was supplied by ViewSonic.)
You want a big monitor so you can see more of your work at once, of course, but there's another reason: once you get working hard, you'll have a whole bunch of little windows, palettes, textures, brushes, etc., open on the desktop, and it gets crowded. One remedy is to get a graphics board that supports two monitors (Macs do this automatically). That way, you can use an inexpensive monitor for the administrative details and the expensive one exclusively for your work. Alas, in PCs the two monitors must have the same resolution and scan rate.
Adobe Photoshop is t
he standard for image processing; for creating moving graphics, there are three top contenders. First, there's Softimage 3D, recently acquired by Microsoft and adaptable to a number of plug-ins. Softimage 3D costs from $8000 to $13,000. It performs about as well in NT as on a Silicon Graphics machine, and it's in use in a number of professional studios. You need a computer on their approved list to buy it.
The second contender is Kinetix/Autodesk's 3D Studio Max at $3495, successor to the DOS-based 3D Studio, which David thought had one of the world's worst user interfaces; 3D Studio Max's is incredibly improved. Finally, there's NewTek's LightWave at $1495. All three programs are very powerful compared to anything you could have bought a few years ago, and each is used to turn out computer graphics for TV and movies on a daily basis. There are plug-ins for both of the less expensive programs that will significantly help their performance.
The more expensive programs are faster and have better animati
on capabilities, and there are more top-end people using them; but you'll be pretty far up the ladder before you notice the limits on any of these.
If you have or get a Mac, get Strata StudioPro. It's not as fast as some other graphics creation programs, but David promises that you'll love it. If you're going to get a Mac, get one with a PCI bus so you have some choices in video boards and add-ins, not one of the less expandable "all-in-one" machines.
It's unlikely that you'll have a printer good enough to do this quality of work; they're too expensive, and you don't need them that often. If you want your work printed, you go to a print service house. (You'll want a Zip drive to carry your data there; even Kinko's has Zip drives on their machines now.) Syquest's EZ135 removable drives are still quite serviceable, but they just don't have the market share they once did. One big advantage to the Mac is that most print houses find it easier to handle Mac files. NT is catching up in printability, largely
by reverse-engineering the way the Mac does it, but for probably another year, you'll have less trouble getting printed copy with Mac files.
David also recommends Fractal Design's Ray Dream Studio for beginners. It has a little of everything, lights, shadowing, textures, and is a great way to learn.
Finally, you'll want the Wacom ArtZ II 6- by 8-inch Graphics Tablet. They make larger ones, but David finds he prefers the small one that he can put in his lap. You just can't use a mouse, or a trackball, to do serious drawing, and the Wacom ArtZ II will coexist with a mouse, so you can use whichever is more appropriate.
It's a sign of the times that STB Systems has a wonderful 2-D board, the LightSpeed 128, for under $200, that blows away the competition. For games and casual use, you can't get more bang for the buck. The lack of 3-D capability makes it doubtful you'll keep the LightSpeed 128 as part of a serious graphics system, but it's good enough to get started, and it's certainly more than good e
nough for anything but professional graphics work.
I can recall when something this good cost more than a whole system would now.
I got started in this business in 1976, when I borrowed $12,000 to buy a Z80 system and a Diablo daisy-wheel printer. For that or less today, you can get a system good enough to get into the booming graphics business. You also have the same dilemma I did: bang for the buck rises steeply every quarter, but if you wait, you're that much longer getting into the game. I didn't wait, and I don't regret it.
Maybe you don't want to become a professional artist;
maybe you just want to dress up a presentation now and then.
RT Computer publishes Native American and Western clip art. At the moment, their collections come on 3-1/2-inch disks (four or five in each package), but I expect them to be moved to CD-ROM by the end of the first quarter. Meanwhile, there's The Wild West Collection with cowboys, mariachi bands, bucking broncos, and the like; The Petrogly
ph Collection of southwestern petroglyphs, both authentic and modern (at least I am assuming that the petroglyph of a primitive stone computer is modernized, but it could come from an early issue of BYTE); The Plains Collection; and The Sante Fe Collection of Hopi, Navajo, and other Southwestern and Native American artworks. It's all royalty- free. If you want to dress up a presentation with something unusual, look into these.
RT Computer also makes PROZip, a wonderful drag-and-drop zip control utility. Unfortunately, I don't have room for a full report here, but check the "Web Exclusive" accompanying this article for details.
Interplay Production's Conquest of the New World can drive you nuts.
This game could easily have been the game of the year. It may yet, but the shipping version is nearly unplayable.
There is an official strategy book; indeed, the strategy book is what got me interested in the game, which is a sort of sixteenth-century Sim City with conquest and slaughter. The game is di
fficult enough that I advise you to get the strategy book, although I generally resent being required to buy what ought to have been included in the manual.
The game is complex, and it doesn't forgive mistakes in either management or battles. Battles are stylized but demand good strategy and tactics. There's a battle practice feature in the opening game menu. You'll need it.
Then come the bugs. First, the naval actions: Ships are very expensive, particularly the higher grades, and in the early stages of the game, you don't have a lot of money; but if you go to the great expense of building a high-quality ship and stocking it with good troops, you may get the miserable experience of having it captured by native canoes or inferior vessels costing a tenth what your expensive galleon cost. Your ship can even be lost despite being in a dock protected by a fortress.
There's worse. I hate fighting a table of random numbers, but at least you can play a turn over if you don't want to waste the time of rebu
ilding the ship -- except you can't. Conquest records automatically: you can't lose a battle, quit, and play over. The programmers have decided they don't want you to do that and have gone to great lengths to prevent it.
They also encrypted the save files, which suggests this game was designed by programmers who hate gamers. They did not want you hacking the save files with Norton Diskedit; you'll play the game their way or not at all. I find this repulsive enough to begin with, but it's inexcusable when the game has serious bugs. Sometimes units won't move. Sometimes this is linked with naval battles. Other times, land units that once were aboard a ship will be stuck in place, unable to go anywhere. If you attack an enemy ship with two of yours, you may win both the battles but find one of your ships has vanished: not sunk, not captured, just vanished. Troops that have just won a battle but have taken casualties are unable to march back into the fortress they came out of, and stand exposed and wounded tu
rn after turn while you gnash your teeth in frustration. There are also conceptual problems: naval units in harbor under the protection of forts ought to be a lot less subject to attack than they are.
If they'd put the effort into fixing problems instead of making sure gamers don't cheat, they'd have had a decent game. There's a patch you can download from Interplay's Web page; it helps a lot, but it doesn't entirely cure the problems of stuck units.
Having said all that, I remain addicted to the darned thing long after I should have used the CD as a coaster -- in the microwave. When it's working well, Conquest of the New World is up there with Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and Strategic Simulations' Fantasy General. Alas, as you get ahead and are about to win (which should be the fun part of the game), the bugs get worse, the frustration goes up, enjoyment goes down.
If you get Conquest of the New World, be sure to get the strategy book, download the patches, and keep wa
tching Interplay's BBS for bug fixes. If they ever get the bugs out, it will be a wonderful game despite the encrypted data files.
The
book of the month
is G. Harry Stine's
Halfway to Anywhere
. This is part of the story of some of the most important events in the history of space travel told by one of the participants. Fair warning: I'm rather prominently in the book. If you want to know something about single-stage-to-orbit ships like the DC/X and the upcoming X-33, this is the place to start.
The
computer book of the month
is Jonathan Rosenberg's
How Debuggers Work
. This is a good general introduction to what happens when you tear into a program with a debugger. I suppose there was a time when no BYTE reader would need this book, since everyone knew about DDT and SID (early CP/M debuggers) and the program called DEBUG, which came with every copy of DOS. Those days are long gone, and I suppose it's just as well, but you really ought to know somethin
g about debugging and debuggers, and this book is a readable way to find out.
Last month, I spent a week in Spain gathering material for a novel. My wife rejoiced: I'd be away from modems and disconnected from the computer world for nine days. Then I mentioned Konexx. With Mobile Connector you can connect to virtually any phone, including digital and through a PBX; merely connect the Konexx Mobile Connector box where the handset goes, and plug the handset and your computer's modem or fax/modem into the Mobile Connector. Look up the level switch setting (1-4) for that phone and set the switch; or try all four settings until you find one that works. Now you can send and receive faxes, get on the Internet, collect your e-mail, etc.
Konexx also makes an Acoustic Coupler you can connect to the handset itself. It has its own Velcro straps to hold it securely in place, and it's adjustable to fit nearly any handset. This works even in the rare cases when the Mobile Connector fails.
It took Roberta about 5
seconds to react. I won't tell you what she said, but I didn't take the Konexx Mobile Connector with me. Thus, I can't report on how well it works with phones in Spanish hotels. However, the Mobile Connector works in U.S. hotels, including those that use a digital phone system. If you absolutely, positively have to get connected, get the Konexx Mobile Connector and Acoustic Coupler. Recommended.
After I file this, I'm headed for Comdex. I haven't heard of anything really astounding to be shown there, but I'm sure there'll be interesting surprises. Stay tuned.
Where to Find
Acoustic Coupler...............................$149.00
Mobile Connector...............................$149.00
Konexx Unlimited Systems Corp.
San Diego, CA
Phone: (800) 275-6354
Phone: (619) 622-1400
Fax: (619) 550-7330
Internet:
http://www.konexx.com
Circle 1084 on Inquiry Card.
Of Bug-Hunting and a New Frontier
