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Pandora: Unboxing the dev kit!
Thu, 27 Nov 2008

Everyone (me included) is already bubbling over with excitement and drama and cannot wait for the true Christmas day when the devices start shipping. With the devs being so utterly busy, I thought I might take a few pics of the just-arrived dev kit; maybe a few people will enjoy the pics; a few more will be relieved that things are in motion; finally still even more will be happy that there is another conduit for some information without bugging the poor guys. Mike agrees its okay for some leaks :) Theres not a lot of free time for me, and I'd rather be hacking anyway...

But if you do have any specific requests for pics, let me know :)

YES, I realize these are very nearly the worst pics ever; I'm no camera snob. I do need a tripod for steady shots, and some way to get diffuse lighting in. Daytime shots with a steadier hand.. I'll do that next week when I've got more than 30 seconds and don't need to work on installing bootstrap code :)

THIS IS NOT THE FINAL PRODUCTION BOARD. This is a mark 2 dev kit board and break out board .. which is to say it is relatively likely the final pcb, but the devs are surely able to change things as they see fit.

This is part hardware p0rn; part the excitement of being this close to starting some hacking on the bare metal of such a powerful and teeny little beasty. And equal parts fear and annoyance for bloody UPS leaving the package upon the steps in front of my house for a full 10 hours before I could get there to ensure it was safely cuddled in my loving arms.

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

Day by Day: Life Goals
Wed, 26 Nov 2008

I'm sure sometime in the past I started on a list of things I'd like to accomplish in life, and probably discarded it for foolishness. I know for sure I started a list of things I had done, major milestones, since I'm pretty forgetful and thought it might be nice. Then discarded that too, for foolishness :) But it occurred to me I could make a simple proposed life goals list now, akin to an Achievement in so many online game services ..

1. Work on bettering myself as a husband and father. (I don't say "be a good father" since that implies you can stop working at it once you 'get there.')
2. Work on bettering myself; my health (to live longer to be a better father, and to live better), to learn more, and to somehow someday .. learn how to relax and enjoy life, rather than forever trying to strive somewhere.
3. Listen to all the RUSH
4. Catch up on all the years of Dr. Who
5. Try not to laugh at Robert Jordan fans.
6 through 739. Complete a game of Sid Meier's Civilization.

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

Gametech: The Fusebox
Wed, 26 Nov 2008

No my friends, these are not the days when we typed in machine code from the back of Compute's Gazette magazine into our Vic-20 and prayed to Crom we got it right (and prayed the magazine didn't botch the typesetting.) No my brothers, these are the days when the big guys.. the banks and the auto-sector.. get their tax-payer funded bailouts while you stand in bankruptcy line knowing sure as hell there is going to be no bailout or mercy for your sorry butt.

The Fusebox is not the cheapest gadget but it is certainly not the most expensive, and where else can you order a brand spanking new 8-bit game console kit that you get to solder together to keep yourself warm in that bankruptcy line. While basking in the hotness that is coding your own little games. Remembering that back in the day when this was the norm they were lucky to have a framebuffer .. ah, our beloved Atari 2600s, rust in peace.

Yes, my brothers and sisters.. the Fusebox is niftyawesome. I only wish I had the time for such projects .. (instead I'll be hacking along on my Pandora and my GP2X Wiz machines while listening to Rob Zombie.)

(Hmm, where did the tone of this post come from? Nomatter, check out the Fusebox do-it-yourself console here)

Oh the humanity!

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

Gamepsych: The Philosophical Revelations of Sinistar
Fri, 21 Nov 2008

One of the great, unrecognized, philosophical geniuses of this century or any other is a figure known by some as Sinistar. Sinistar left behind a legacy of seven phrases that encompass his minimalist philosophy. We are fortunate enough to have with us audio records of what he said, so that we may greater comprehend his intent.

Sinistar will always be an enigma, as nothing is known of his life. It seems as if he lived a life filled with motivation and direction, as if desperately yearning to accomplish all that he could, before he could be brought low by those who would destroy him. Sinistar's revelations follow, with an interpretation of their intent.

1. I am Sinistar. Here, Sinistar clearly makes two ideas known. First, that he exists; he is aware and he thinks. The second is that he has a singular identity. He is unique, and, in a sense, alone. Some have argued that this may imply a sense of self-determination, but Sinistar's perspective on the free will debate is unknown. I believe that, with what little is known about his life, Sinistar would be a determinist. People are destined to act out their lives guided by the hand of another force. The rest of us are mere automatons, carrying out algorithms.

More follows --

Tis a simple thing; see here

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

Silly: Explanation
Thu, 20 Nov 2008

My dear friend Aphyd sent me this as a response to a futile question and I thought it was too good to let go.

Additionally .. someone drugged a spider to see what the webs looked like. Cool pics, see here

[ Category: / silly ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Sony PSP and TV-out; I mean, glorious uber-nerding near the TV like an 8-year-old.
Thu, 06 Nov 2008

I've always been a fan of 'tactile retro gaming' .. ie: using authentic controls if you can't have the actual device around. ie: As an emulation author you'd think I'd be all for the technology (and I am!), but I also collect arcade machines - the full cabinets - and home consoles. It is always "better" (in terms of game feal) on the real thing (and brutal on your space and room aesthetics), and then on emulation if you don't have access to the real beasties. The reason of course is more genuine controls and also some of the magic -- there is something to be said (and also said against) having to insert and flip over floppy disks on a C64 or Atari 800, and type on a nasty old keyboard that was actually made up from calculator keys (no joke there btw, check your Commodore history friends ;)

Consider also the 'knock' noise Q-bert makes when he falls off the maze; thats actually a physical knock made in the arcade cabinet, and it cannot be replicated in emulation _period._ Nor can you replicate the aging monitor and the cigarette burns on the cabinet. But I digress.

What I'm talking about today is plugging consoles, even modern ones like the Sony PSP, smack into your big screen high def fancy pants TV. Its not a genuine display, but it is certainly in the spirit of that -- how many of us sat on the floor far too close to our big 1970's CRT TVs playing with crummy old joysticks that hurt our little paws. Atari 2600, Colecovision, etc. Those are sitting-in-front-of-TV systems -- thats how they were designed. Its also a nerdy social thing, playing games in the family room on the TV, not up on your laptop in an office or bedroom.

And in these modern times, it means firing up Commodore Vic-20 BASIC on 47" of fracking television. YEAH

In my household we're woefully behind times in the entertainment arena, but finally just acquired a new TV. I mean one that is more than 20 inches, and less than that in years old. So I naturally plugged in a SuperGUN (a Super Nova in fact) to bring up Rolling Thunder (the actual arcade game board) on the TV.. AWESOME.

But for normal people, whats the easiest device to plug into a big fat TV? Sure, your XBox or the like, running old games. Nice. You do that, we don't have any modern consoles :)

I picked up the Sony PSP "component cables" (not the composite ones) and jacked my little handheld PSP into the TV. Being on cables and without remote controls means I'm sitting up there, near the TV, wired to it. Like the good old days. Big TV and me, face to face.

First up -- running my ST emu and Xenon 2 Megablast. OH YEAH. Then Dungeon Master and the mummy that scares your pants off in the dark. OH YEAH.

Next up -- VICE emulator in Vic-20 mode, and Cosmic Cruncher. Spiders of Mars. Omega Race.

And then something from this decade.. Wipeout Pure. Sweet racing action.

The only problem here is the PSP letterboxes games, so you don't get the full fullscreen action (for shame!) like the SuperGUN does. Next up I'll have to try the GP2x and see about getting my ST emu going full screen there. Sexy. Or get yourself an X-Arcade stick for your laptop, or use a STELLA-adapter to plug your 20 year old Atari joystick into your computer. Whatever it takes, man.

An hour of true transcendant geeking. Modern TV runs pretty hot and winter is coming -- plug that old small TV gear into your big hot TV and get your game on!

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

Retro: Atari Jaguar console
Wed, 05 Nov 2008

Aside: My baby girl recently started speaking in 2-3 word sentences; last night when I tucked her into bed, she said "love you daddy." Another life achievement down, and well.. it just doesn't get much better than that one :)

Atari was a great company in so many ways, but I'll not go into that here. Their last real console release was the Atari Jaguar around the same time as the Sony Playstation (original), and we all know who won that race. Truly it was no competition.. the Jag was a cool platform, but it really could not compete with these more 3D oriented machines. And a lot of its software was _terrible_ (and that is being kind.) Still, it maintained Atari's playful feal with some games being very original, and always feeling like the designer was not so much a corporation but a drinking buddy. To me as a retro collector, an Atar fan, retrogamer and coder .. the Jag was always a like-hate relationship.

I mean, it had Dragon's Lair on CD. *heart*

But it also had Kasumi Ninja, which is not even as good as Custer's Revenge if you catch my drift.

Anyway, through my various moves I've dragged my poor Jaguar around, but today I've sold it off. A fine seeming lad picked it up and sounds like he'll have some fun with it, for which I'm glad. I mean -- we retro guys go through a phase of wanting to collect it all but in practice we just rarely have the space and eventually have to specialize. But more .. I like to get things into a good home, and if I'm not going to fire up this classy little beast, ever, might as well move it on along to someone who will. A museum piece kept in the dark is worthless.. a museum piece on display is worthy. So I'll miss this little machine, this indestructable black box (none of this red-ring BS in old hardware!) .. but on the other hand, my home will be forever clean of Kasumi Ninja.

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

Gaming: Spectating Nethack
Mon, 03 Nov 2008

I'm a closet Nethack nerd.

Nethack is a very complex and interesting dungeon-romp game, generally played out entirely in text (though various ports and lookalikes exist with simple or even very fancy graphical frontends exist.) This isn't a text adventure in the Infocom sense, but a top-down "Diabloesque" game (for more modern people, or a Temple of Apshai but actually fun game for old schoolers like me ;) Anyway suffice to say that it has such depth that very modern games barely scratch its surface (though they of course excel in other aspects, don't get me wrong.) So nethack (and many other Hack descendants such as Dwarf Fortress, Angband and so on) are worth playing even today.

This comes up because the 10th annual Nethack tournament is underway right now. One of those few times I can point at someone else and cry "Nerd!"

Anyway, I stumbled across this frightening and yet mega-awesome tidbit:

telnet nethack.alt.org

By which I mean in a Unix-like environemnt, just do that; in Windows, you can run a DOS-like shell and do that or use some shmancy telnet client. Anyway, telnet lets you essentially visit text displays on some other machine, usually for working on a server.. but in this case, it lets you play, or like some sick ASCII voyeur, watch someone else play Nethack.

You can of course download and play Nethack locally, but this lets you goof off without bothering to download it. But the main attraction to me.. is to watch someone, usually a far better player than me, play nethack. That is just downright nifty. I want spectator modes in newer games too, but this is really darned neat. Just can't wait for someone to scratch Elbereth into the floor with a cockatrice head and see what happens.

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