Posts Tagged ‘spaceship’

35 years passed since first Bulgarian Аstronaut visited open space (cosmos)

Thursday, April 10th, 2014


soyuz-33_spaceship_pad
On 10th of April 1976 in 20:34 mins Moscow time from Boikonur Cosmodrome was launched s spaceship "Souyz-33 / Union-33" . On spacecraft flies 3 cosmonauts part of the space program Inter-cosmos, one of which is the Bulgarian cosmonaut and explorer Georgi Ivanov. Georgi Ivanov became the first Bulgarian who the leave planet earth, becoming the first space visitor with Bulgarian nationality.

Georgi_Ivanov_first-Bulgarian-cosmonaut

Ivanov spend in space 1 day 23 hours and 1 minute, after that the capsule landed in 320 km south-easy from Jezkazgan (Khazakhstan).
For his short stay in space in Earth's orbit Ivanov made 31 full turns around Planet Earth. With his flight to space Bulgaria joined the elite club of  "austranaut nations", making Bulgaria the sixth nation in world who sent representative in space.

syiuz-33-mission-logo-stamp

Flight mission's goal was linkage of their spaceship with orbital station "Salute-6" but because of technical malfunction "Syiuz 33"s moving with higher than forecasted and speed autoamtic correction system turns on which damages part of fuel camera, making necessary to cancel the flight.

Georgi-Ivanov-cosmonaut-with-russian-colleague-soyuz

Returning home on Earth he was awarded with medals "Hero of the USSR" and "Hero of Republic Bulgaria"
Nevertheless the mission was unsuccesful and dangerous Ivanov's pulse during all flight kept normal.

Georgi Ivanov is born in Lovech on 2-nd of July 1940 in family of Anastasia Kakalova and Ivan Ivanov Kakalov.During his school years he excercised parachutism, graduating in high-school "Todor Kirkov" Lovech in 1958.

Ivanov entered Bulgarian army in 1958 graduated Military school in Dolna Mitropolia (1964) with specialty of flight engineer and a pilot of class 1.
He served in Bulgarian National Army as a pilot, senior pilot, commander  and a squadron commander. In 1984 he defended his thesis and received a science degree "candidate of physics sciences". Georgi Ivanov is currently 73 years old. Nowadays Ivanov's birthouse in qr. "Varosha" is of historical importance and is preserved as a museum.

The fact that we Bulgarians have a cosmonaut is a great pride for me and all of us Bulgarians. Let us not forget our heroes and patriots and know our history.

Torus Trooper – Cool 3D Tunnel Speed Up Spaceship game for Linux

Wednesday, December 18th, 2013

Torus Trooper linux tunnel 3d fast pace speed up game screenshot

Whether you're looking for a game to kill some time and enjoy the old "spaceship shoot and run games" check out Torus Trooper.
Originally game was developed for MS Windows and is remake of an old Atari Arcade Game Tempest.

Those who played Tempest know well that this game was revolution for its time and probably remember also a similar world famous Space Duel game.

Arcade atari old scool tunnel game tempest one of atari pre 3d game classics

Atari's Tempest Arcade game

The objective of Torus Trooper is mega simple as in most arcade games. You're speeding up through a tunnel all time with a spaceship with the only goal to kill as many enemies  as you can and survive as longer as possible. Playing the game you can get some memories of demoscene tracked music, future crew Second Reality / Unreal demos. Game was created by ABA GAMES company, authors Tumiki Fighters and GunRoar another 2 nice 2D Linux arcade games.

TUMIKI Fighters the boss level 1, 2d linux arcade game classic

Tumiki Fighters

Gunroar another cool linux arcade 2d game

GunRoar

Probably best thing of Torus Trooper is its nice graphics and superb demoscene like soundtrack.
I truely love the pace of the game, raising up the player adrenaline in minutes.
To install in a bundle Torus-Trooper Tumiki Fighters and Gunroar on Debian / Ubuntu Linux run the usual:

debian:~# apt-get install --yes torus-trooper tumiki-fighters gunroar
...

There is also a variation of torus-trooper called Torus Trooper, install and give it a try as well;

debian:~# apt-get install -yes torus-trooper-pure
...

In my humble opinion Torus-trooper is among golden games every Linux gamer should have installed on his Desktop.
Enjoy 🙂
 

Human Modern Progression a move forward to Degression

Saturday, June 16th, 2012

I've been thinking about our modern day progression and what our "progressed" society looks like in reality.
We think we have progressed, we have built machines that serves us well (computers). We plan for a bright painless easy future day by day. This bright "perfect" society future is nothing more than the dream of communism in its complete form.

But in what sense we have actually progressed ?? Everyone who really sees what happens around us notice the big changes we experience. On the surface it looks like our life has become much easier with all this technology surrounding us. The number of computers which is said to help us to leap towards this bright future increases day by day. With this however increases the need to support technology. Suddenly it happens that the old believe that computers are just a tool to make our life earier becomes a modern day slavery. Most of the developed or under development countries people are nowdays almost full time spending in front of the computer screen on the internet. We put our lifes in the mercy of man-created computers and it has become impossible that we live or exist independetly without them.

Computers are everywhere around us starting from the work Desk, at hand with a notebook, ipad, mobile phones, cars, airplanes. There is rarely to see any technology we use which works with not some kind of primitive or advanced computer embedded ,,,
In the rise of computers as we know it computer was just a tool to help us along with the other overall thought and inventions development. Now from just being a tool to help us progress Computers become the common ground on which almost everything in life works.

I'm sure many people who started learning computer technology 15-20 years ago (like me) never imagined computers will integrate so heavily in our daily activities as they eventually did.

We use computers for the sake of planning which in "spiritual language" is predicting the future or prophecise what is about to come in the short future. In reality what we do mostly even not realizingly is to try to predict and modify the future through technology.
This concept is also existing in most sci-fi movies, made in last 60 years. Mobile phones revolution give the humanity a tool through which telepathy we've seen in so many SCI-FI is reality. The mobile phone is just a platform through which (phone calls) or better said voice telepathy has become possible. In that manner of thoughts it is obvious that Video phone calls is a voice + visual telepathy. The Skype revolution and Video and voice conferences is brought was just until recently seen on the sci-fi movies where spaceship crews communicated with other spaceship crews by using a Visual conferences like skype.

It is really hard to believe that for just few years now everyone can speak with ease with everyone else on the planet in the same way just like we've seen in the movies as some foreign abstract concept!

Now suddenly most people on earth are equipped with technology with gives them the power to do everything but it is my firm believe people are not ready to wisely use this power. Therefore instead of using this higher technology wisely technology is used mostly senseless and the more technological advancement grows and becomes more accessible to the masses the more the tendency to use the technology for shit grows.

I'm sure people who have a good knowledge on programming and how computer works are already seriously aware of this enormous problem.
Another severe problem with the raise of technology is the language slang it introduces. This tech-slang is adopted quickly all around the society and suddenly as a result the human language as we know it is seriously substituted by a vague tech words mambo-jambo words. Actually the adoption of tech buzz words in modern day society language makes a great harm for the reason communication between people becomes less descriptive and therefore harder.
In short the result of this tech slang language inside our national languages is inability for people to communicate properly. This tendency is well seen if you for example try to make a comparison between old and newer movies. The newer the movie the less meaningful it is. It is true newer ones has much more as a visual adds than the predecessor but when talking about consistency the newer films are missing this point seriously.

As newer generations are born and raised up with this newer movies and "advanced" TV and computers this people doesn't even have most of the time the opportunity to see older human taped knowledge.
Even for youngesters who have somehow a wise parents enough to teach them in a religious way or just have the "luck" to have parents with old world mindset it will be extremely hard if not impossible for this kids to understand the old knowledge, as most of their same age school / university fellows will only talk about the newer things.

Besides all this, computers as they grow needs more and more support "nurturing" so day by day more and more people has to be busy with managing and supporting tech stuff. Suddenly it is no longer clear if computers serve us or we serve them, this tendency is already somehow evident but not so clearly as it will be in the short 5 to 10 years.
Therefore we slowly but surely are moving to a society which might become "enslaved by technology". Why I say here enslaved, because if we spend our time on fixing computers and technology and working with one virtual reality (which is non-reality) in essence this means we no longer have a physical freedom in the sense it was God given.

There is no doubt computers at present appears to do us a big good, but if you think a bit strategically it is obvious this good has it's price. By adopting all this technology without questioning ourselves on how this will impact our human freedom, we build a computerized jail around us. At first this jail appears to be so wide that it seems it does not interfere with our freedom, but with the introduction of newer and newer computer technology this jail becomes narrower as to the point where it could threat our physical existence freedom.

For those who could argue my thoughs I will ask two simple questions to show you how dependent we've become on technology;;;

What was the last time you switched off your mobile for a week ?

What was the last time you didn't used computers and the internet for a week time ?

Obviously rarely we can find someone that will answer positively to this question or even the thought of switching off from this so globalized society by dropping off tech stuff for a week seems scary.

This constant connectiodness that we're day-by-day heavily exposed to is scary, because it steals little-by-little our natural freedom for seclusion / pravicy / solitude.

This freedoms, were essential and especially for Christian saints and many of the people in the Holy Bible if we read closely we will find out they have used this freedom in parts of their lives especially the seclusion to hear and understand God's will for their life.
Since technology is stealing us the freedom to seclude ourselves this means it steals our basic natural freedom to communicate with God and our natural self ,,,

The consequence of this separation from God and unification with "the world" surely will lead to spiritual blindness and lack of good foundation or higher life purpose, in other words lost path in life.

This is happening all along right in front our eyes now.
Maybe the worst thing of globalization is it doesn't unite people on a soul level but rather separates them. The unification that tech boom gives to people is in the "virtual reality" but this is not a real unification as it is unification in a media which is not real.

Yes Virtual Reality is not real, that's why it is called Virtual isn't it?
I've been thinking over all this problems more and more and I'm starting to come to conclusion that people who wish to keep their essential physical freedom need to GET OUT from this tech lie, we have lived in.
For this however more people need to first realize that;;;

1. TECHNOLOGY LEADS US NOWHERE!

2. People who want to live without technology need to organize in groups (and get used to a natural living growing food, being near to a natural springing water, taking care for each other, living in a Christian commune like – like in the old days)

Actually if we read the old testament's story of Moses escaping the upcoming flood, I believe what is about to come to us as a consequence of this out of boundaries technologization is pretty much like the old testamental flood (this should happen sooner or later).

Moses was wise enough to make himself an Ark and prepare himself for the storm. Today most people are so busy that they don't see the storm coming. I'll be glad to hear from people who has the same thinking as me and want to organize in a groups and live an old humble way of life without technology.
I'm convinced people who have realized all this tech short future bad consequences on humanity, need to have a common communication media and share their knowledge on how we can find a way to live tech free in this age. I'm curious am I the only one with such thoughts or other get into this insight too. If you have come to conclusions I did please contact me in comments. Thank you.

Kill everything that Moves (KETM) an arcade spaceship Tyrian GNU / Linux game

Saturday, January 7th, 2012

I always love so much to go back to the times, when games were games and people had still valued words like moral and respect.
In that great days of old school computing, we used to play the awesome old schools Tyrian and the Nintendo 1941 game (hopefully some still remember).

KETM Tyrian like Old School 2d Spaceship shooter awesome

For all who don't Tyrian is one of the best Spaceship Arcades of all times!, and especially for DOS operating system the best I've personally seen.

Recently I was checking the arcade games available for install on my Debian GNU / Linux and happily come across a game called KETM.

KETM acronym stands for the memorizable KILL EVERYTHING THAT MOVES and is free software distributed game under GPL.
The original creation idea was probably to resemble the so famous in the '90s spaceshooter games.

KETM is pretty addictive just like tyrian and has santimental meaning for me since it brings me memories for my arcade gaming years 😉

The game is easy to play and has a feeling of "diversity" especially in type of weapons your ship can obtain and use against enemies.

The powerups you get is quite plenty compared to the enemy ship types you should destroy 😉 In overall the game is quite easy to play, this however is also a good thing, as you can play more smoothly without dying every few secs like it is in so many arcade games…

The game has only 4 game levels and on each level end there is a big spaceship "the boss" which is the last in line to destroy in the tradition of the 2d arcade games.

KETM Tyrian like Linux Debian arcade game

Kill Everything That Moves is available for Debian and Ubuntu as a deb installable with apt. To install the game on Debian and Ubuntu

debian:~# apt-get install ketm
...

ketm's official latest available source and binary of time of writting this article is at version 0.6 and as far as I checked it unfortunately seems like the game development is stucked and the code seems a unmaintained.
I'm sure ketm has a lot of potential en hope somebody will adopt the code and will push further its development.
The game runs by default in the annoying windowed mode, I don't like this so I always run it fullscreen:

Kill Everything that Moves Tyrian like arcade game for Debian Ubuntu Linux

debian:~# ketm -f

KETM also reminds a bit on GEKI 2 / 3, which I have previously blogged about but I found KETM to be more enjoyable than gekis.
I've seen KETM has RPM ports as well so installing the game on fedora will be probably as easy as downloading the respective RPMs fulfilling the RPM package requirements and installing with rpm -i. I would be glad to hear from people who had succesfully run the game on Fedora and other RPM based Linux distributions?

The only thing that prevents the game to feel a bit more awesome (in my view) is the missing sound & music … Even though in the game settings inside the main menu there is an option for Sound On / Off the game runs by default without any sound or music (at least on my Debian).
I hope you will have some fun with KETM just I like I did! 😉
Also if you haven't played Tyrian yet, then I strongly advice you download Tyrian from here and try it out with dosbox (a dos gnu linux / bsd game emulator)

Absolute Game Classics Tyrian native game play with dosbox Linux screenshot

Interesting fact to mention here,  while looking for the native tyrian game info , I found tyrian has an open source version under development called OpenTyrian . I'll check the game and write on it when I have time.

Geki2 and Geki3 a Xenon 2 Megablast like games for GNU / Linux and FreeBSD

Thursday, December 22nd, 2011

Do you remember the old arcade spaceship shooter Xenon 2 Megablast? I do 😉 For all those who are too young to remember, here are two screenshots:

Xenon2 Main game Screen PC DOS ver

Xenon 2 megablast PC DOS level screenshot

Even though Xenon 2 Megablast original can now be played using dosbox DOS emulator. Its interesting to mention I've found two Linux games that more or less can be qualitified to resemble Xenon 2.
The games are Native Free Software games and existing in package repositories of most Linux distributions and *BSD port trees.

Geki 2 and Geki 3 are of a less quality to Xenon but still, the game experience is nice and is among the Arcade shooter games to bring you fun in the boring days if you're on GNU / Linux or FreeBSD Free OS platforms.

Installing Geki2 and Geki3 on Debian and Ubuntu Linux is standard with apt:

debian:~# apt-get install geki2 geki3
...

On Debian GNU / Linux , after installed the games would not create GNOME Applications -> Games -> game startup shortcuts, however the game startups will get added in GNOME Applications Menu under:

Applications -> Debian -> Games -> Action -> Geki 2
and
Applications -> Debian -> Games -> Action -> Geki 3

The games can be launched also manually with commands:

geki2

Geki 2 Linux Xenon 2 like game Main Menu

or

geki3
Geki3 gameplay screenshot Debian Linux

Geki 2 is a way closer to Xenon 2 as it has similar look and feel and the same vertical direction the spaceship is navigated.
In Geki 3 still the shoot 'em' up spaceship like arcade is present, however instead of penguin you have to fly a flying penguin, as well as the spaceship move direction is horizontal.

 Both the games have the same sound and music effects. The game music and effects are not of top quality but are not bad. In general  the games surely gives some of the arcade atmosphere.

Geki 2 GNU Linux Xenon 2 like vertical shooter arcade
Geki 2 Xenon 2 Megablast like on Debian Linux

In the tradition of the arcade games at the end of each level in both games you face the Level Boss Enemy, you should destroy.

Geki3 Level boss Debian Linux Screenshot
As you can see in below's screenshot the overall graphics of GEKI 3 is poorer while compared to GEKI 2

still GEKI 2 gampley is fun and addictive and I would say not less enjoyable than GEKI 2.
 At times I even think that Geki 3 is more fun because it is more dynamic.

 Maybe other reason, why I enjoyed more Geki 3 is also the fact that Geki 2 is a way harder to play. Dying only 3 times in the game you get  GAME OVER  and the next game you're started from the beginning of the same level you died in …

Geki2 Linux different shooting Screenshot

 Something really annoying that affects both the games; there is no option to play them in Fullscreen mode! ARGH!

Game controls for Geki2 and Geki3 are identical as follows:

Up - Arrow up key
Down - Down arrow key
Right - Right arrow key
left - Left arrow key
Shoot - z or Space
Pause - s

Geki2 and Geki3 are fun and can kill some time, but definitely aren't that (professional) as other spaceship shoot'em'up arcades for Linux and BSD. Games like Starfighter , Critical Mass or  powermanga .
 Lest that they are two worthy to install and play on your Free Software OS.