And here we are! These temps and this weather! Treadmill to collect dust now.

Slight update... Replaced:

"Don't Stand So Close to Me '86" (funkier than original, but not funky enough for running) and "Mr. Roboto" (meh after a while).

...with...

"Metal Health (Bang Your Head)" and "Once in a Lifetime".

My Top 100 playlist (divided into 4 separate playlists ~2 hrs. each: 1 all Rush, others no Rush) has been fantastic! IMO, a good motivational playlist is perfect at ~25 songs (~2 hrs.) because there's nothing I could do requiring physical exertion that would ever last over 2 hours (even in my early-20's).

And somewhere I'll *have* to include this one, now tagging along at #101...

Helter Skelter [Mötley Crüe] *** REPLACED ***


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v__1UigsCU


Props to the Beatles for this freaking awesome tune.

EDIT: Replacing Rush's "Cut to the Chase" (prefer all of my running Rush to be live).

I had no clue Motley Crue covered Helter Skelter until a few weeks ago when I was checking out their discography. Of all the Beatles tracks, "Helter Skelter" is generally considered to be the one of the very few times they went "hard rock".

I also have a Pat Benatar version that I like (I have her first 3 albums plus Hits CD), but I had to go with the Crüe version. It's burned into memory the night of Footloose (albums: Shout at the Devil, Pyromania and Metal Health, while cruising Baton Rouge) and will stay there until it's burned out...when I'm converted to ashes.

I still like the Beatles' original though, and as you said, one of their hardest hitters.

We're down to our last pair (each pair lasts about 3 years or so of heavy usage)...




New stash came in today from Amazon (Costco bulk mentality, really can't beat them for $10.00)...



Sony ZX Series Wired On-Ear Headphones, White MDR-ZX110

<Made a slight update to listing on first post.>

++++++++++

Wife and I both hit a treadmill milestone recently: 5k (3.1 miles) in just under 40 minutes (incline at 1.0).

Now, that's not going to impress even a casual runner, and some of you seasoned runners can probably cover this distance in half that time, or at least under 30 min. But for a middle-aged couple in the Deep South with a relatively healthy lifestyle, but not so hardcore about it, we're practically athletes.

I still dislike moving faster than a quick-paced walk, but you must elevate your heart rate to know of any potential problems, like unusual fatigue or shortness of breath. At least that's what my wife's Cardiologist told us on her last annual preventative maintenance checkup.

But the right music compels you to move and any repetitive exercising becomes much easier over time.

Back to add one more thought...

Inspired by my Rush selections which are all live (mostly from "A Show of Hands" concert CD), I'm starting to collect more live versions of my running songs which I find adds boost to my step...

Aerosmith - Walk This Way (from You Gotta Move - Official Video)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL4uESRCnv8


The Police - Synchronicity II (Synchronicity Concert)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZAPm1NKgKE


Queen Keep Yourself Alive (Live Rock Montreal HD)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfILg4mJAG0

Just returned from our first outdoor track jaunt in a long time. We couldn't jog on the slick pavement (big showers yesterday) so we covered only 2.5 miles (4.2km), but that's good enough. It felt great to be outside again, and to give the treadmill a break.

Treadmill is no more.
TV's are no more, including a 50" Sony Bravia that cost ~$2,400 in 2007 (fortunately big screen replacements are waaay cheaper these days).
Bluray players and DirecTV box/satellites, all gone.
HughesNet modem, gone (already replaced, and with new dish for upcoming satellite going online in Nov.).
Desktop PC is no more.
Same with parent's stuff (attached apartment).

Lightning is a real #%&*$#!

Hit 6/26 in 3 locations including a direct hit on my transformer just outside my house (blew the covers off a couple of boxes attached to my brick wall). Crap is replaceable and I'm in no hurry (nice early-mornings and late-evenings to exercise outside). This is why I keep a stash of old Win2k/XP PCs around (Win10 laptop wasn't plugged in so it's ok).

Yikes!!
I really hope your sim project files are OK.

Oh yeah. The further along I get, the more anal I get with regular back-ups (daily and in triplicate).

Only thing is that I've had to go from XP back to 2000 and I'm fine with that (2000 being the last Windows with no online activation). In fact, it's forced me to figure some things out with features I lost in XP, and now I don't see ever leaving 2000 as my main OS.

My project requirements include:

- all tools free and [EDIT: preferably] open source (oops...the IDE I use is free but not open source).
- tools that work equally well in Win2k as they do in Win10 (and soon Win11 with new laptop, although current one fully supports 10).

++++++++++

Wife (who sits behind me, we share a bedroom office)...
"I haven't heard that sound in a long time."
Ahh...the sweet sounds of inserting and then booting from a 3.5 floppy.
I LIKE IT!

<-- NOT TRUE!

One more thing...

I think DirectX7 is going to surprise you (scroll some)...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blitz3d&sp=EgQIBRAB

And that's not counting what the Russians are doing with this 20+-year-old tiny originally-Amiga-based game engine!

Distribution of the engine itself is required in the game's executable and requires a little more than half a floppy (~800 kb), but the community is actively working on reducing that with a modular approach.

Cool!

blitzbasic.com is not working for me, but the wikipedia page says it should work on Windows, Linux and Mac.
Since I need to use all 3 machines, I've found the only way to use a common code base is to use DOS.

First off, the key to an enjoyable Blitz3D experience once a project grows in size can be found here...
https://en.freedownloadmanager.org/Windows-PC/IDEal-FREE.html

It's a sweet third-party IDE specifically designed for Blitz (although even Notepad++ supports the Blitz language, this is what you want). The IDE included with the program is too simplistic and has no real Undo, but still good enough for testing and small projects.

Blitz3D can be found here, but I'm not so sure it works on more than Windows (other than some community projects)...
https://blitzresearch.itch.io/blitz3d

Blitz3D source is here...
https://github.com/blitz-research/blitz3d_msvc2017

There might be better links. When I finally publish a website, I'll include proper links and instructions, with of course, my source code.

The B3D source above is still in VS6 C++ I think, but it's continually upgraded to the latest VS, just not sure where to find new links at the moment.

I found this:
https://github.com/blitz3d-ng/blitz3d-ng

It'll likely be a while before I get a chance to try it out though.

One more thing...

The whole links thing to me is just a mess right now, same with some of the Blitz3D Help system (which is otherwise fantastic) which I've cleaned up some and continually try to add in missing command examples (mainly the few 3D math/vector/matrices commands). I've also created some improved documentation, I think.

And the samples that come with the B3D download are great, but the best one IMO is missing and can only be found with the Demo version...

Cubed Water - Blitz3D...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP6IPCZcEUI

I'm going to try to straighten this all out as much as I'm allowed to, like providing a complete zipped collection of samples.

++++++++++

EDIT: The good news is that, unlike...say Unity, this engine is never going to change. It gets updated on occasion for better newer Windows support, but that's all internal and doesn't bloat the size. Nothing changes for the user experience.

You'll also want Open Watcom if you don't have it already.

Blitz3D's compiler is the real magic, creating small fast stable machine code. I have yet to need a DLL (although my project is still relatively small). It's kinda complicated anyway as you have to reserve a Bank (allocate memory space) in Blitz to send an argument to, or to receive a Return from a C++ DLL function. This works fine though in MSVC++6, just haven't tried in Watcom yet (no reason to think it won't work as almost all my code has been interchangeable).

Great thing to me about C++ is that is so simplifies any assembly (_ASM) you want to use without needing an assemblier (just compile it in C++), if you ever even need ASM. And again, everything I've written in VC++6 works fine in Watcom and vice versa, including ASM (other than quirky Main return type: one allows Void, the other wants Int, forget which now). So I can use C++ and even ASM within C++ if I HAVE to for speed, but so far it's been more of translating C++ examples into Blitz Basic (a C/BASIC hybrid syntax with no OOP). And I'm fine with no OOP since Blitz has a VERY cool version of C's Structs to help with code organization. Also, Blitz has its owned enhanced pointers which makes working with linked lists an absolute pleasure. No constructors/destructors or garbage collection though, so you have to manage your own cleanup when deleting stuff (not that big a deal).

TL:DR: I'm scrapping MSVS including VB6 (using BlitzPlus, a 2D app-making version of Blitz3D...also free and open source), using Watcom instead of VC++6. My entire dev studio suite with OS now fits on a single CD (Norton Ghost image).

Heh, I've been using Open Watcom (1.9) recently to compile DOS executables, mainly the 3dfx samples from 1997 so nothing in your league, but it's cool to get '0 warnings 0 errors' when compiling.
That never seems to happen with modern compilers.

Dude, I freaking LOVE DOS Watcom!!!

Note my automated compile batch files...

Wonderful! Seems like I've compiling 32 bit exes as I always use wcl386. I get the 4GW by default if I just use 'wcl386 X.c'.
You learn something new every day.

EDIT: Maybe I should post a link to a video suitable for jogging....