Categories: Top :: Arts :: Day By Day :: Entertainment :: Living :: Personal :: Technology

PSP: Why 'mod' (reflash with customer/hacked firmware) your PSP?
Tue, 15 Jul 2008

This comes up on occasion, so I thought I might put a reply here rather than in private; doubly so since I've always pushed for folks to consider ethical and legal implications of their actions and have probably ranted on it before. (ie: As software developers, I believe we must be careful to do the Right Thing, since the implications of our work could cause much aggravation or annoyance. This is why it should always default to 'No' to the question 'Do you wish to format your hard drive?' More, it comes up with increasing frequency in todays busy business world and sometimes we have to stand up for the user and consumer, right?)

Anyway, for purposes of this discussion, 'modding' refers to simply reflashing your PSP game consoles firmware.. something Sony will ask you to do all the time, as they publish updates. The trick is, you can reflash it with Sony's official firmwares, or the more questionable firmware 'mods' you can download online.

First.. why would you do it, knowing there is some risk you might do it wrong and 'brick' (kill) your device?

(Note that nowadays there is little risk; even if 'bricked', you can usually unbrick your device trivially.)

There are more things as well, but that should cover why most people do it. I'm not going to go into how, as it can be easy or a right pain depending on your skill set, if you know someone who has done it, and so on. Ask me if you want some instruction and maybe I can sort it out for you but in general I worked out some methods for myself and do that. I don't really follow 'the scene' as it takes a lot of time, and 3/4 of the sceners are idiot kiddies :) (This is one thing I've commented on before.. when you get into some of these things for all the right reasons, you still have to be mindful that others are less kocher than yourself, like going to a seedier hotel.)

Anyway, all the above is just sillyness.. I really only wanted to pass a few notes to a friend, which would be:

So all this verbiage above serves merely to confuse anyone reading. But there you go.

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / psp ] [link] [Comments]

Retro: EAMON, one of the earliest CRPGs
Fri, 11 Jul 2008

The term CRPG refers to Computer-based Role Playing Games, such as the current Oblivion, but tracing back through Eye of the Beholder and back to Temple of Apshai and so on. The earliest examples were more text based due to their mainframe origins, and later the slow transmission rates of modems. Enter EAMON .. I've not done any history lookups here but its going back to the Apple 2 days, and I experienced it on the almighty Atari ST .. so back around 1987 or so I'd guess I fiddled with the system.

As fans of "Choose Your Own Adventure" style books (Steve Jackson ftw!), my brother was an aspiring adventure author at the time, putting together little adventure novellas on pads of paper. (You number each page, and at the end of a given page you have options that give you page numbers to turn to should you take that action. The pages are randomized to make it hard to guess where a given series of actoins may lead. Ultimately there are numerous plot endings, but usually more than a few times your character gets killed along the way, forcing you to re-start. Fun stuff.) I remember going through the Public Domain archives of local groups, and through BBS file listings all over the province (racking up huge bills all the time through long distnace charges), trying to find (well, to be honest, pirated games) some adventure authoring tools for him. There were a few systems, including EAMON, but they were just too complicated for us. Still, I remember playing a few EAMON games.

Well, t'other day I stumbled across EAMON Deluxe, a port of the EAMON system to DOS a decade back. The beauty of this is that you can still run it today on your modern PC (and hopefully someday he'll release the source so that it can be brought to Mac, Linux and so forth.) You could always fire up an emulator (Atari ST, Apple 2, C64 and so on) and play the games there but this makes things pretty easy.

Further, the lad has pulled all the many EAMON adventures together into a big archive, including user supplied reviews of the adventures. Now, I should note that EAMON was not a game.. it was a system, supplied with a few simple text adventure games. But the author supplied tools to make your own adventures and many did.. so there are literally hundreds of additional goofy little text adventures. (These are of different style than the pure "IF" Interactive Fiction games I've gone on about before; those are pure adventure games with no dice rolling, no skills per se and include such classics as Zork or Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. EAMON is one of the first CRPGs, in that you play a character who increases in powers and gold and gear and so on over playtime, and also is a less lofty academic pursuit; the EAMON gamelets are not novellas in adventure form, but early examples of kill-and-loot games.) Fun for short bursts, which hits a certain spot in my heart.

One facet of the system I admire is this .. you have a character and you pick an adventure to play through; the character persists between adventure gamelets.. so while you might be in a fantasy gamelet (the majority) one time, the next could be sci-fi. The EAMON system defines the system, and suggests certain damage levels.. so while a new player might have 20 hit points before dieing, a slight damage hit is 1 damage, while a heavier stroke is 2 or 3 points, say. So you take your character including gear game to game and grow him over the lifespan, regardless of the actual adventure the character is in.

That is pretty ahead of its time.

Anyway, if you want to try a quck text hack and slash game, that plays and feels like a light text adventure, and definately hardcore retro.. EAMON could be just the thing.

I may just have to look around for some source.. porting this to a handheld could rock my socks :)

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / retro ] [link] [Comments]

Day by Day: Weeds, I has them.
Thu, 10 Jul 2008

Remember back to those halceon days of youth, running through the lush spring grasses of the park - your shoes off and long forgotten, the wind in your hair and a smile on your face. Sometimes you spy a dry patch in the grass and go around, and other times you stumble over an ouchy, a little flat weed that is prickly and annoying.

The yard in the new house was those prickly weeds Trifid style.. a few feat high, dense, and occupying a hundred square feet. My nemesis. Like Detroit.

Most of it is gone now, but it took me a mean weekend of digging, toiling, pulling, and making arcane gestures. Oh, for sure those prickley bastards took their vengeance on my hands, through the armor of my workgloves, but they're baking now.

Kill you filthy!


Midpoint Void. A MUD.


>

An old man leaves east.

> n
The Prancing Pony Inn
The room is dimly lit, the only light coming from the blazing fireplace, and a
few lamps hanging from the rafters. The bar is just to the right of the
entrance, and a sign has been posted on a pillar beside it. On a good day, this
room is filled with all sorts of travellers and residents of Bree, and many
races can be picked out of the crowds. At times, it can be hard to see in this
room through all the smoke and poor lighting conditions.
A barman watches you calmly, while skilfully mixing a drink.
The storyteller is sitting here, drinking beer and telling tales.
Exits: south, west, up.

> rent
Sorry, but you cannot do that here!

> up
The Inn's Rooms
You have entered a medium-sized room with solid wooden floors. You see a
large cheerful fireplace on your right, and a large desk at the far end of
the room. Behind the desk stands a man who cautiously acknowledges you.
Behind him lies a corridor of rooms for people who can afford them, and
whom the Innkeeper should trust.
A heavy iron key with a large handle has been left here.
A large bulletin board, entitled "News of Arda", is mounted here.
Barliman Butterbur, the innkeeper, offers you a room in his inn.
A brown donkey watches the surroundings, perhaps looking for a chance to graze.
Exits: down.

> rent
Barliman tells you 'It will cost you 5 copper pennies per day.'
You have enough money for three days.
Barliman stores your stuff in the safe, and helps you into your chamber.

Connection closed by foreign host.

[ Category: / day_by_day / home ] [link] [Comments]

Books: _The Bank Shot_ by Donald Westlake
Thu, 03 Jul 2008

No doubt I've gone on about Mr. Westlake in the past (or should have) -- truly his works form an astounding body of fiction that really everyone should have a taste of. I can only say that, fortunately for the humble reader, he has written and continues to write so many works that you will never truly run out - and for the completionists among us, much of his work is now out of print and can be great fun to track down. How many times in the past have you caught up to an authors latest work and waited half a decade for the sequal, and then found another one in the wait? With Mr. Westlake and his sydonyms you could start with books done many decades ago, only to find out he pops out a book a year .. go forward or back, you'll never keep up to the man.

Of the several dozen books I've read from the man, they are generally even.. highly consistent pacing (always a fast read since of course you can barely stand to put them down), always crackling and witty dialog, always very human characters -- likable heroes, bad guys you cannot wait to get their upcomings and always some absolutely perfect caper scenes.. be they amusing or action packed.) Choose Donald Westlake for his capers-gone-wrong or other works, or the Richard Stark alias for more serious crime noir fiction.. capers going right.

Just go read some. I'll wait. Go.

Anyway, I just wrapped up Bank Shot, a caper in the Dortmunder series (which is under Westlake, not Stark) from awhile back. Another great caper with familiar characters doing their jobs and hanging about at the O.J. Bar .. and some truly amazing scenes. Few 'comedy' books have ever evoked an actual real world laugh from me before, but this one had it.. action, dialog and a couple so well crafted scenes I had to tell my wife about them. I'm going to tell non-reader folks around my office about them. I'm going to look in a mirror and tell yself about them for Crom's sake.

Oh, I suppose I should summarize a little.. in Bank Shot, the gang comes across a bank that is being rebuilt, so for a short time the bank operation is being run from a heavy mobile home across the road while the main building is under construction. Suffice to say the mobile bank is locked down.. security guards, no wheels under the home, cement walls to hold up the unit and so on. But the gang is going to steal it. The whole bank.

As readers, we are in a lucky position.

[ Category: / arts / literature ] [link] [Comments]

Writing: Some advice for writers
Thu, 03 Jul 2008

A friend of mine was describing a trap that some-or-many authors get in.. the middling author trap: Whereby you are moderately successful in the past, but not likely to produce the next Harry Potter and sell-through millions of books. As such, the publishers are more interested in new blood (rolling the dice to possibly find the next Harry Potter emitter) or known blockbuster blood.. thosre souls in the middle, cannot get published. Fascinating little shaft from an industry I know little about. Anyway during the discussion he noted a message board where some writers were discussing.... authory things.

I'm sure there are many very good threads but in particular I have this one - a very good short read with some thoughts on the writing processw, how to get published and so on. Clicky!

Absolute Write

[ Category: / arts / writing ] [link] [Comments]