[Raion]

Greetings everyone!

It's been a while since I've been able to really do much. For those unaware I joined a locksmithing business in July and prior to that I was struggling financially to keep my head above water so I was really not in a position to do much SGI stuff. 

I have since gotten certified as of November and I am a full-fledged member of the firm. I State this because it should explain a lot of the "disrepair" of services, references etc. truth be told I've been quite inattentive and Kaigan and others haven't been able to occupy themselves to keep the slack from hitting. That all said, I'm a lot more used to my new job now. This is far from the first trade I've worked in but it is probably the most serious I've been about it, I've been a mechanic, an alarm installer and an Ethernet installer all of which kind of intersect at locksmith work. Yes I can pick locks and yes I can unlock your car or house in a scary amount of time. 

I don't feel the need to apologize or anything, the Advent of the pandemic required me to do a lot of self-reflection primarily because I was 26 in late 2019 and I am now 30. The world is very different and the amount of spare time that I had unfortunately basically vanished. That being said, I am much much more capable of spending money on projects. 

What's in the cards for this year? Our image host for replacing the aging gallery, definitely, and the FAT32 driver for IRIX should all be delivered by the middle of this year (not promising but I am confident that will happen) and IRIX-32 will get under way. Other projects include finally getting a wiki worthy of IRIXNet under way, and a plan to create our own techpubs sort of area that will act as a hub for people who want to get help of any kind. 

This is the last time I'm going to address this: I do have a copy of the IRIX 6.5 kernel in storage. However, with as much of a hassle as it is becoming I am going to likely destroy it sometime this year. It probably won't be a public thing when I announce it but frankly the source code is freaking useless. I had an expert in the community look at it when I acquired it nearly a decade ago and he kinda just said "there's nothing here that hasn't already been seen" sorta thing. So I will be destroying it likely. I kept holding on to it because of legal counsel blah blah blah but at this point with my funding partners, money situation etc. I should have more than enough funds that within the next 5 to 10 years that we will have a significant portion of IRIX RE'd clean room. If a source release happens in the meantime good for it but an obsolete kernel release from 20000 isn't worth holding onto. So stop asking about it. It's become a liability and I don't need it clouding our future, so it's gonna be trashed. No backups, no copies, I'm just getting rid of it. There are source releases out there that you can go off of but it's illegal to us them in any FOSS project. They are 6.5.5 and 6.5.7 (.7 is mislabeled .17)

This may seem like I'm being spiteful but it's not intended that way. If I give it away, it can be traced back to me. If I destroy it, it frees me of any legal liability. 

As far as the site goes I plan to continue incrementally improving things and maintaining the status quo here. Once my vehicle projects are off my back and my personal garage renovation are done I plan to dive headfirst back into my development obligations and deliver IRIXCE updates, Xenoware etc. judging from everyone else out there it doesn't look like a lot has happened in the last calendar year either, so I don't feel bad. 

I know it kind of sucks for some people though that we are lacking basic creature comforts that some other vintage computer communities have had for a long time. So I'm going to put the call out there again:

Over the next several months there will be more and more paid opportunities. I can't pay quite what a software firm can, but I can probably give someone a nice wad of cash here and there. If someone wants to step up and maintain a piece of important software or has a personal proposal to submit to me with the estimated cost, feel free. I won't be offended even if it's too much, but I may be willing to do some stuff if it's realistic. Just keep in mind that while I'm not anti anything software wise at this point, I have shifted my focus from high-end machines to lower end machines. I don't frankly care if someone gets Doom 3 running on IRiX if you need a maxed out Tezro or someone gets a Rust powered Firefox on IRIX if it runs at the speed of a sloth with AIDS. No I'm focused on much more widespread efforts. Infrastructure is a big thing right now, give me a proposal for say a GCC that doesn't have hundreds of failed test suites, or a GTK2 that doesn't suck donkey balls, or a Motif version of Ladybird or a GIMP 2 that's a Motif version and I'll be more interested.