Leo L. Schwab's Home Page
The Results of an Engineer with Too Much Free Time On His
Hands.
Last updated 2009.03.06
News 1998.09.16
New! Improved! Tastes great! Less filling! Now with
colorsafe bleach! Won't harm porcelain! ISO-9002 certified! Save up to
50%, or more! No MSG! Fresh pine scent! Machine-washable! Year-2000
Compliant! Official sponsor of the Justice Department's probe into
Microsoft!
It has been nearly a year (!) since I last updated this site.
I've gone through and cleaned up a lot of stuff. Old cruft has been removed
and replaced with new cruft. All kinds of stuff has been moved around.
If you thought you knew the layout of this site, you probably don't anymore,
so dig in! Thanks for visiting!
New links will appear at the top of the respective lists, with
the date they were added (in the format YYYY.MM.DD). No animals were harmed
in the making of this Web site. This site was prepared entirely using
(brace yourself) vi.
Stuff by Me
- 1998.07.14: The Addiction that is Quake
- BOOM! PowPowPowPowPowPowPow!
Fzzzzztt! BLAM! Vrrrkkkk!! Chooff!
bong... bong... BOOM...!
You get the idea...
Last updated 1999.04.08.
- 1998.07.11: Things That Suck
- We all have little things that annoy us. However, I've never been one
to think small. As evidence of my surfeit of free time, I offer this
closely-reasoned list which I hope you will agree are Things That Suck.
Last updated 1999.06.16.
- 1997.01.05: AmigaWare by ewhac
- In 1985, a machine of inexpressible coolness emerged from a small
company in Los Gatos, CA, called the Amiga. I bought one, and ended up
doing a fair amount of work on it, which earned me a measure of notoriety.
These pages contain much of the stuff I created for the system, along with
some historical background. Even if you never touched an Amiga, you might
find some of this interesting.
Last updated 1997.01.05.
- 1996.01.03: News from The Alternate Universe
- Can't imagine anything weirder than the real world? Check
this out...
Latest entry 2000.08.08.
- 1995.12.29: The Semi-Agnostic Pedestrian
Theatre of the Aggressively Confused Somnambulist
- "Say what?" Some random opinion pieces and essays on no
particular subject.
Latest
entry 1999.02.24.
- 1995.10.28: My Turn on The Lord of The
Rings.
- After reading the first book and most of the second, this
idea for how the story might end flashed into my mind...
- 1995.10.15: Star Trek: The Next
(de)Generation.
- A Star Trek parody wherein the Enterprise-D encounters the
Robinson family from Lost in Space.
Miscellaneous and Sundry
- 1999.02.23: The Anti-Spam Manifesto
- I wrote this in a fit of rage back in April 1998, after receiving one
spam too many that day. I recently rediscovered it while cleaning out my
laptop, and thought it was pretty darn good as a piece of writing (despite
the fact that I was cheesed off when I wrote it). So I decided to place it
here. The work is, alas, completely fictional. But don't tell the spammers
that...
- 1998.07.29: The Origin of "ewhac"
- It's pronounced, "EH-wack." Now you can find out where my weird
username comes from.
- 1998.07.15: Old 3DO Stuff
- Years ago, I had tremendous enthusiasm for The 3DO Company. This page
contains a few things born of that enthusiasm.
- 1996.10.20: My Doer's Profile
- Executive summary of Leo Schwab...
Last updated 1999.02.01.
- 1995.12.14: The Genesis of
alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb.
- Believe it or not, I'm the guy who newgrouped it, back in April of 1993.
This is the actual newgroup message I sent out (I save everything).
- 1995.12.09: Mug shots of me and some friends.
- Actual recent photos of me that don't suck.
Last updated 1998.04.28.
Stuff by Other People
- 1999.06.10: Uncle Jimbo's Story
Hour
- Uncle Jimbo (a/k/a James Putnam) currently works for
NVIDIA Corporation as their
"Alternative OS" (i.e. things that aren't Windoze) support guy, and I met
him in the course of writing a BeOS graphics driver for their RIVA chips. I
later discovered that he enjoys writing, too, and his work is fairly
entertaining. It reminds me a bit of Jon Carroll's work; short,
lighthearted stories and essays that occasionally ramble about and never
fail to amuse.
- 1997.01.25: Jon
Carroll at The Gate
- Jon Carroll is a daily columnist for the
San Francisco Chronicle. Sometimes he
writes thoughtful stuff. Sometimes he writes important stuff. Usually he
writes funny stuff. Being a recrational and occasionally professional
writer myself, I admire Jon's writing because he's able to comprehensively
express ideas and create very rich imagery with an amazing economy of
words, a skill I'd like to learn.
- 1997.01.13: The Internet
Oracle
- Like the Dysfunctional Family Circus (q.v.), the concept is
simple: Email a question to the Oracle, who will provide you with an
answer. As payment for the sage advice, you must answer a question
submitted by someone else. You don't know whose question you're answering,
and you don't know who's answering your question. The result is a unique,
and sometimes hilarious, form of collective humor. I'm a priest to the
Oracle, which means I get to sift through all the completed transactions and
pick the ones I think should go into the digests, published on
rec.humor.oracle. It's a dirty
job, but someone's gotta do it...
- 1997.01.12: Talin's
Home Page
- I met Talin (a/k/a David Joiner) back in the fabled Amiga Days, and I'm
privileged to be able to call him a friend. I can only sit on the sidelines
and wistfully wish I was as skilled and prolific as this guy. A true
rennaisance man, he writes computer software, composes music, writes
articles and essays, paints, designs and builds costumes, and he's a nice
guy, too! Do yourself a favor and turn image loading on; it's a gorgeous
page.
- 1996.03.04: The
Dysfunctional Family Circus
- Heartwarming cartoons by Bil Keane gone horribly awry. The concept is
distressingly simple: Take Family Circus cartoons and allow
the denizens of the Net to supply captions. What isn't disturbingly
dark is hysterically funny. Every bit as funny is
It's a Dysfunctional Life,
which is the same premise, except it's done with real-life photos. I've
been known to occasionally contribute to the insanity. (Be sure to check
out the rest of the parent site,
SpinnWebe, while you're at it.)
- 1996.02.12: Declaration of the Independence of
Cyberspace, by John Perry Barlow.
- If you're sick to the teeth of "experts" telling you how bad
the Internet is for the nation's moral fiber, have a gawk at this and bask,
albeit briefly, in smug superiority. C'mon, you know you want to...
- 1995.10.20: Real
Astrology, by Rob Brezsny.
- Forget everything you ever thought a
horoscope was...
- 1995.07.12: BIG.MONEY.NOW, by Mike
Jittlov.
- A parody of multi-level marketing/MAKE.MONEY.FAST scams. This is a hoot...
Stuff that's Important
Stuff that's Cool
- Dilbert,
by Scott Adams
- 'Nuff said.
- This
Modern World, by Tom Tomorrow
- An often incisive weekly political cartoon, starring Sparky the
penguin.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000
- Still, after ten years, one of the best shows on television (though some
of my friends would disagree). If you've got a lot of time to kill, check
out the
plot
summaries I've written for several MST'ed movies on the
Internet Movie Database.
- Linux!
- One of the few things that stands between Microsoft and their total
domination of everything. The link above is just one of thousands
of resources available on the Net to help you learn about and get started
with Linux.
- Slashdot:
"News For Nerds. Stuff That
Matters."
- Are you a Linux/Free Software weenie? Are you a nerd? Are you in the
computing industry? Do you own a computer? Have you ever heard the word
'computer'? Then you must visit Slashdot, now. Known as a
Web Journal, Slashdot relays many of the most important news developments in
the digital sphere, along with moderated feedback fora. I load it up at
least three times a day.
People and Companies I Have Worked For
- NVIDIA Corporation
- Makers of the finest consumer graphics accelerators in the industry, period.
I'm working in the Mac OS X OpenGL driver group.
- Motorola
- Makers of a surprising variety of stuff. Worked on a prototype media center that sadly got cancelled.
- Tapwave, Inc.
- Makers of the Zodiac handheld MEGA (Media, Entertainment and Gaming
Accessory (an ungainly buzzword I made up)). I did firmware development, and
it was the most fun I had in quite a while.
- Openwave Systems, Inc.
- Software and services for cell phones. Among a ton of other things,
they develop Web browsers and application frameworks.
- Be, Inc.
- Died and swallowed by
PalmSource, Inc. A damn shame, too.
- Prolific Publishing
- Makers of Return Fire and Return Fire II.
- The 3DO Company
- What's left of it. The number of dreams this inept organization crushed
is too large to be counted. See the abysmal performance of their stock by
checking StockMaster's
chart (keep in mind when viewing it that NASDAQ:THDO IPOed at $15.00).
Also see my page of Old 3DO Stuff.
- Carl Sassenrath
- Back when I worked for him, his company was called Pantaray, and he was
working on multi-media technology for CD-ROM-based entertainment consoles.
Now he's working on a new programming language "for the rest of us," called
REBOL.
Future Plans for This Site
Leo L. Schwab / Digital Spellweaver /
ewhac@best.com