GPH (in Korea) makes a little thing they call the "Wiz", based on its predecessor, the GP2X handheld gaming device.
It's just a little ARM linux box, with an SDRAM card, a touch-screen OLED, and a 7-hour battery. I picked it up to play with the touchscreen OLED and ARM linux environment (in a software sense), I just have a few itches to scratch and ideas to try here...but most people pick it up for the wealth of emulators and old games you can carry around in your pocket with it.
I had two major obstacles to starting out writing code for the thing. The first was that the only build environments for it are produced by the community of users - and bless them they aren't trying hard enough. To use these toolchains you have to bundle modern libraries along with your code, which completely annihilates any manifest benefit of having shared libraries already on the Wiz...a system that is already strapped for resources.
Continue reading "Playing with the GP2X Wiz"
We have our Alaskan photos up on something resembling a website now. Rather than send you all to the full set of photos - about like staring into the sun - I'm going to run through day by day and pick out some highlights photos. Contact me directly if you really want the "staring into the sun" variety.
On the 13th of June, after work, we left San Jose for the great north. The FJ Cruiser was packed up with care. The little MaoMao bird was carefully deposited in her own home cage, which we moved to "Bird Camp" (Yifun's parents' house). Our plan was to make Redding or thereabouts by nightfall. The plan worked out.
Continue reading "2008-06-14: The Departure"
For some reason, it seems like my weight seems to follow more of a sinusoidal curve than a direct line. So I wind up 'hovering near' some benchmark weight for several weeks before a large plummet. I suppose this is probably healthy and unwise to attempt to accelerate, so it suits me fine.
But it's cool when you see your weight drop below the lowest recent point; in my case hitting 199.5 a few days ago. Wii fit isn't to blame, but I suppose it probably doesn't hurt either.
I'm wondering, with our upcoming Alaska trip looming, if I'm going to be losing weight...we don't want to "eat out" the entire way as much as we can avoid it, as this quickly gets expensive, so we've developed a complex system of preparations that hopefully makes simple but satisfying dinners on the road and in the campsite. With rich stews, hearty stroganoff, thick potatoes au gratin, and the "dutch oven" factor (an extra portion of oils and shortening), one really wonders just how lean we're going to be eating.
Speaking of Dutch Ovens, I've noticed that in googling for dutch oven recipes, they all say at the bottom, "Feeds 18-20." This kind of takes the dutch out of the oven, when you look at it from a couple's point of view. So I'm thinking of starting a wiki of my modified-downward recipes for 8" dutch oven cooking, all serves: 2. I've found it's not as obvious as people might think; you can't simply divide one egg into thirds (at least not and still make it something you can easily prepare while camping). You have to make tradeoffs, strike out some things, and make substitutions for others. We've distilled recipes down to a set of at-home preparations (putting mixtures into ziplock bags), on-the-road happen-to-finds (meats and other perishables you may not be able to 'pack in', but instead find at the grocery the day before), and at-the-campsite cooking instructions boiled down to 2-3 simple steps (involving throwing the previous packets of stuff into something that cooks them).
I wonder if others would find documenting that useful; more like a how-to for camp cooking. If so we could do a wiki. If not, we would just make our own recipe book and laminate it.
I started playing EVE Online again, which for the two of you that don't know is very much like a Freelancer MMO (but without space-flight-sim controls), or as I prefer to think of it, like Cowboy Bebop - the game. For those that don't even get those references; it's a space game. You fly ships around, blow stuff up, trade, research, mine, build, upgrade, all that.
They've got a promotion I guess where they hand out 14-day free trials to friends; if you convert to a paying customer then I also get 14 free days. So let me know if you want to give it a shot.
It's cool because I can log in for just 30 minutes and get something done and get out without a lot of fuss. It's good to hang with people, but not people you don't know/trust, so the game is very lenient on 'solo' play...no wasting hours trying to find a 'party' just to get something done. Most missions really assume you're playing alone. There are, as with many games, some frustrating points, but nothing overly tiresome for me. The learning curve is rather steep, and there are a great deal of 'kids' hanging around to be ignored.
But for example one day I might be running missions, cleaning up the galaxy one bad guy at a time, and another day I might be psuedo-afk-mining an asteroid field while watching TV or whatnot. The other day, I was poking around the market, and found a guy buying some stuff called "Kernite" for 500 ISK (the game currency) per, and usually (these days) sells for more like 260-300 ISK...so I made the trip and cleaned up 4 mil. ISK...quite a good haul for just a few short jumps.
PVP is permissible in the entire game world, but you can avoid it effectively by just sticking to the "high security" solar systems.
The biggest advantage to the game, and the best design decision, is that there is no XP, and no classes. The analogue are skill points, which accrue even when you are not in the game towards some skill you've selected to improve (or train anew). You sort of make your own class by training the skills you want/use. The wonderful side effect of this is that "playing the game more" does not "speed up progression." So the usual disease I have with MMO's - where I find that I want to stay online for multiple hours to get "the next level" - is vapor. I can stay logged in, I can log out, and either way I get the next level on the same schedule. So I have less trouble logging out. Playing the game more does get you more cash, but cash becomes markedly less useful without skills to use the stuff you might buy.
One more subtle design decision is that everything in the game is made out of some number of minerals. So unlike other MMO's where better stuff comes out in patches and drives prices of old gear down to nothing, you retain a lot of the value of your purchase (but there is still a supply/demand curve). You're always guaranteed that your equipment will be worth as much as you can recycle it back into minerals, and as everything, even new gear in new patches, are made from these minerals, there's always a good demand for them (in fact, it's what makes mining profitable).
Back when I was in High School, I took this class where the final grade was decided by whether or not our 1 Hp motor would turn over, and run for 90 seconds.
We'd be given a 1-piston engine from the school, and we had to take it all apart and put it back together again - every piece.
It was actually quite a rush when mine worked - that was cool.
I've always wanted to take a wrench to my Jeep. I think of things to do with it, but I never actually take anything apart...for the fear of not being able to put it back together again in time to go to work on Monday.
So I'm thinking of getting an old beater, take it apart just to see what makes it tick, and the worst case is I have to get a tow truck to come pick it up and take it off to the dump. All for entertainment.
A few weeks ago, we drove down south on the coastal highway, and spent some time on the "old" coastal highway, a series of dirt roads further inland.
It takes you up on top of some of the hills, so it's a pretty good view of the ocean. This is springtime, so all the grass is green (it's a very brief part of the year that California is habitable).
We had cloud cover for most of the morning until the road took us above it.
It rides us straight into Big Sur National Forest, so we headed over to a campsite that is literally on the face of cliffs at the end of a mountain ridge overlooking the Pacific ocean.
We stayed for the sunset, then drove home up highway 1.
I'm in Philadelphia for a DHCPv6 protocol bakeoff before IETF 71, so I'm here from now until the 14th (but pretty much chained to meeting rooms). I seem to recall that this is a couple hour drive or train ride from the DC area, so if any of you ex-coworkers and friends down in that area want to take advantage, drop me a line.
There's this 4x game, and I'm sort of a 4x genre guy, but I find instead of really wanting to go and buy what looks like an excellent game that I'm showing remarkable restraint against their pretty graphics, their promises of galactic conquest in real time.
The reason is: Stardock is its publisher. I don't want to give them my money if I can help it.
That's a strange opinion to have, so let me see if I can explain it. Once upon a time, Stardock were the champions of the PC gaming culture. They shook off the reigns of their oppressors and deigned to sell their products without the assorted viral hangers-on which promised to safeguard video game profits. I'm talking about copy protection. Stardock never had any, or when they did, it had a builtin expiration date. They said into the microphone, "We seek customers whom we will not affront.", and it rang around the world.
There was applause. There were lots of game purchases. There were more than a few parties.
And life was good, and the games were great.
Until I got a piece of unsolicited commercial email...spam, I'm talking about spam here...sourced from their headquarters, but not referring to any one of their products. I can't even remember if the advertised product was computer related. Evidently by buying one of their products, at a time when they did not have a checkbox that said "sign me up for spam", I had been automatically entered to win periodic spam emails from them on behalf of other companies that were paying them for the service. This is in 2005! There is no excuse of unawareness anymore. Nor did they think so either. There were apologies, there were excuses ("it was the new guy"), and there were promises it would never be done again. There were assurances ("we've sent someone over with weapons to 'sort them out'").
And then when they created a new 'free newsletter' category for "3rd party games promotions", they elected to sign me up to some opt-out mailing list without asking. Again. This time without apologies, nor excuses, nor promises. This is now de rigeur, it seems. But opt-out is just as spammy as the regular kind. Worse on many levels.
I cannot justify lubricating these engines of war by patronizing its architects, no matter how aromatic the bait.
We got a new fully automatic espresso machine...just push the button and it grinds the beans, steams them, and outputs a selected quantity of coffinated water. It's got this 'steam wand' attachment which is just kind of..cool. At some point I'm going to make a steam engine that attaches to it, I am certain of this.
But I was fascinated with the idea that it could be used to make our own Mocha, and so an experiment was in order...my first attempt was fairly poor, I didn't realize that the milk had to be heated by the steam, I just thought I was done when the milk had doubled in volume. So, cold mocha. My second attempt was much better, but, my companion tells me, not coffinated enough. A double shot of espresso next time perhaps. Either way, beans in hand and free to select my own quantity of sugary poison, I see no reason to return to Starbuck's.
In other news, this is fascinating;
The first man who makes an LCD-paneled room in which every display works like this will finally have realized the dreams of every child who ever watched Star Trek: TNG.
I just stumbled across a fascinating story. The Axolotl was believed to be a completely aquatic salamander - breathing through its gills throughout its entire life. When a French zoologist received a shipment of them however, he found they had metamorphosed into a previously unknown form of terrestrial salamander...breathing air.
So it turns out the Axolotl is neotenous, which means it will happily stay in its larval state and even develop to sexual maturity without reaching adulthood. Only given the right conditions (like being put in a damp box and shipped from Mexico to France, exposing their gills to the air) will they undergo their final adult metamorphosis.
Sound like anyone you know yet?
I wonder if the reason mankind uses so little of its brain...according to our ability to measure how much of our brain we use, anyway...is only because we're all just as neotenous. There are some in our society who are put under certain stresses; one example I can think of is from some Discovery channel show I watched years ago...folks having underdeveloped brains (large portions undeveloped, like a vacuum filled with fluid). They've been found to have the ability to use a lot more of their brains than we "normal" people use ours. Is this a kind of stimulus? A reaction? The metaphorical gills were exposed to the air and, just struggling to breathe and keep up with the rest of us, they transformed?
It doesn't make good evolutionary sense to an Axolotl to metamorphose. The lake they dwell in can feed them throughout their life, and it's safer from predators underwater. If one or two even were to reach adulthood, they'd have pretty lousy chances at procreation...larval Axolotls are unlikely to identify or be attracted to a mature Axolotl, and if they were, it would be pretty awkward meeting in the middle. The adult holding its breath, the larvae struggling to breath air.
I guess breathing air is pretty over-rated. But it's the only way to move beyond the lake.
I really wanted to like Torchwood. But it's just not doing it for me. A Doctor Who spinoff should be all about the scifi. But this series is all about who is sleeping with whome and what emotional problems the various Torchwooders are having.
The last two eppisodes were just flat out boring. I'm done hoping for better I guess.
I've finally found and understood the spam reducing config bits in Serendipity. Hidden off in a 'plugin' rather than on the main configuration panel.
I've checked the 'hide commenter email addresses' box, but this appears to just put an [at] in the email address. Bleah. I'll keep looking for the right thing there someday.
Mostly it means a lot of comments will be flat out rejected now rather than moderated, which will save me the trouble of having to delete ~50 spam comments a day, but it might also be too severe. So if you have any trouble commenting, shoot me an email.
It must have been a month and a half ago, but I've been thinking about this recently. We were at the local Chinese Supermarket, waiting in the check out line. The shelf next to me had a collection of plastic bottles, they had stickers over the front of them so I couldn't see the contents...just the branding label.
I nearly thought this game was one to buy...I played it two days ago on the Wii and was most impressed. I liked the way the prince was stealthy, and light on his feet, it was entertaining to put him through his paces...
I was convinced this was a game I had to own, but as usual wanted to check the value poposition; 12-15 hours the reviewers say, to complete this game. That's under my 'rental' threshold, so I held the game a few days to play it through.
Continue reading "Prince of Persia: the Rival Swords"
GPH (in Korea) makes a little thing they call the "Wiz", based on its predecessor, the GP2X handheld gaming device.
A few weeks ago, we drove down south on the coastal highway, and spent some time on the "old" coastal highway, a series of dirt roads further inland.
It takes you up on top of some of the hills, so it's a pretty good view of the ocean. This is springtime, so all the grass is green (it's a very brief part of the year that California is habitable).
We had cloud cover for most of the morning until the road took us above it.
It rides us straight into Big Sur National Forest, so we headed over to a campsite that is literally on the face of cliffs at the end of a mountain ridge overlooking the Pacific ocean.
