I just updated my version of WinAmp at work this morning. (WinAmp is a program that plays music files.) As usual, the first thing I had to try out was the visualization module. For some reason, I am endlessly fascinated by the swirling colors that pulse in time to the music. Well, strictly speaking, I am not endlessly fascinated, because then I wouldn't be writing this, but you get the point.
I've been doing a little of what I think of as "hacking" lately, although my definition of that activity does not coincide with the media's. To me, hacking is just the act of messing around with computer stuff at a different level than ordinary. For instance, looking for hints to a game by dumping the contents of the program into a binary editor fits my definition.
I wish I had the time to do some serious hacking. The last really neat thing I did was to reverse engineer the serial output from ChessMaster 2000, so that I could make it battle GnuChess on my (long gone) SparcStation without human intervention. That was cool, but not particularly useful, although I did learn a little about accessing the serial ports on Unix. Unfortunately, that knowledge would be worth its weight in gold (i.e., nada) nowadays, even if I hadn't forgotten it.
My current hacking involves trying to set up a local website. I've tried Microsoft's web server, which, in my humble opinion, blows chunks. I am going to wipe that test machine and put Linux on it instead, and see if that is more satisfying. Of course, the whole exercise is essentially pointless unless I can get a static address from the cable company - otherwise, the location of my page will change every couple of days, and that is not very useful.
I called my friendly cable comapany to inquire about fixed addresses and increased bandwidth, but they are too busy signing up new cable modem customers to deal with obscure requests from existing customers. Oh well. Eventually there will be competition for high speed access, and then I'll be in better shape. Although with the recent demise of some of the larger DSL providers, that could be awhile.
You can respond to my ranting here.
The customer is always rant.