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A blog by Nathan Strum in General

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About this blog

Mostly Atari-related projects, and other ramblings. Home of the Artie the Atari comic strip.

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iBlog

So I've finally joined the rest of the world, and got myself an iPhone. Of course the first appropriately nerdy thing to do with it (after using its GPS to plan an alternate route around the traffic to get home from Northridge), was to type an entire blog entry with it. I must say I'm rather surprised at how well the virtual keyboard works - especially in landscape mode and in no small part thanks to its on-the-fly auto-correct feature*. Of course I could type way faster than this on a real keyb

July 3, 2009

167

Send in the Clones

The Clone Wars started its run on Cartoon Network tonight. I never did go see the movie theatrical compilation this summer, since the previews just didn't merit spending $20 on a ticket and snacks to sit through it. I actually got about as far as the parking lot of the theater though, but common sense prevailed, and I went out for fish 'n' chips instead. But now that it's running on TV which I'm already paying for, and therefore doesn't cost me any additional money, I decided to check it out

October 4, 2008

62

Going slightly Mads

So, remember this? No? Well, I didn't expect you to. Anyway, so here's the entry. And sorry Dave... it's not about "Top Gear". However, it is about cars driving really fast. Just without the wacky British humor. It's about rallying. Oops... okay, before you leave - those of you in the United States - stick with me a minute. Yes, rallying is pretty-much a non-entity in the U.S., but unlike say... soccer... rallying is actually interesting. (And before soccer footba

March 15, 2010

60

More Tron, more fun

"Recognize" this? Remember wanting to play it? Well... go ahead! Space Paranoids is now online! And it even works on a Mac! Well... not my G5 iMac. It runs like a dog on that. But it runs great on newer Macs. (Not iPhones though. Maybe someday.) 42 Entertainment made the game last year for the Comic Con Flynn's Arcade event that kicked off Tron Legacy's viral marketing campaign, which is starting to get rather extensive. There have been clues left on various vir

May 15, 2010

50

Twenty-three Skid-to-doo

Well, I figured before the last list hit three years old, I'd better replace it with a new one - clean out the completed projects, update existing ones, and add a few more. Latest updates are in red. Homebrews in development: Rip Off (was "Zombie Project (does not contain any actual zombies)")* Game graphics: In-progress. Development status: Early proof-of-concept build. 1-10-24: First pass at new graphics complete. 1-14-24: Added to to-do list. 2-1

Nathan Strum in To-Do Lists

January 20, 2021

48

Another Pleasant Valley To-do List

So... it's been another two years since the last list. Stuff has been happening, I just haven't posted updates in awhile. So I thought this would be a good time to reboot the list again. Clean out the old stuff. Donate unused items to Goodwill. That sort of thing. Latest updates are in red. Homebrews in development: Zeviouz (was "Starts with a 'Z'")* Game graphics: In progress. Development status: Active development. 5-9-20: New homebrew project. 5-23-20: First

July 2, 2018

48

VWRC

And so, the 2013 World Rally Championship (WRC) season is underway. Actually, it started last month, but since it was basically a repeat of everything that happened last year, I didn't bother writing it up. Sebastien Loeb won, Jarri-Matti Latvala crashed out, Mikko Hirvonen couldn't find a good pace, and Mads Ostberg was fast, but not fast enough for a podium. And VW came in second. Wait... what? Oh right... that. Other than the results largely appearing the same, everything

February 10, 2013

47

100,000!

Well, for whatever reason, my blog is the first one here at AtariAge to hit the 100,000 views mark. (Although I'm a little disappointed that the score didn't roll over.) The rather astonishing thing about this, is that only about 97,532 of those are me either clicking "reload", or going back into my old posts and correcting spelling and grammar mistakes (although regular viewers know full well those almost never happen ). I figure another couple of thousand views are due to various web-bots

August 3, 2009

43

Tales from... THE FUTURE! (revisited)

So, it's January. Funny, it seems like it was January just a few weeks ago. The MacWorld Expo (Apple's big annual show-and-tell) is coming up in a couple of days. They almost always announce some new product at it. The question is - what will they release this year? (That would be 2008, by the way. I don't know about you, but I find that rather hard to believe.) With that, I'll once again display my incredible wealth of ignorance, by making Technology Predictions for 2008. But first, it'

January 14, 2008

42

To-do or die!

Another year, another To-Do List. I actually started this list in February, but it didn't get done because I didn't add finishing it to my old To-Do list. (Is that a Moebius Loop or a Vicious Circle? ) Besides, formatting is still woefully broken in the blogs, and even though it looks good in the editor, once I post it, it becomes a mess. But since I'm not going to wait around forever for that to get fixed, I might as well post it now. As always, here's a link to last year's. Been there,

March 28, 2013

38

Predictions for 2010

So here we are... the year Jupiter explodes and turns into a miniature sun, causing the Soviet Union and United States to finally declare the Cold War over, and millions of innocent black monoliths to die horribly in the resulting conflagration. Which brings up the inevitable question, what else is going to happen this year, and how were my predictions for last year? Let's find out! First... 2009: Nothing spectacular from Apple, but steady progress and upgrades. - Right. But that

January 2, 2010

36

WRC - MIA?

The 2011 World Rally Championship season has kicked off, and yet there's zero TV coverage of it so far. So where I'd normally use this as an opportunity to recap the highlights, instead I'm going to use it as an opportunity to just talk about car stuff in general. Until HD Theater gets off their thumbs, that is. Currently, the rumor I've been eagerly following is the joint Toyota/Subaru TC-86 concept sports car. Toyota design, Subaru power train. Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

February 24, 2011

36

Somebody at Disney likes video games...

First Tron: Legacy, now Wreck-It Ralph: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPSQOomMWro I'd first heard of this years ago (it's been in development for ages under different titles) and was skeptical of it, but it looks pretty good. I've heard some good reports coming out of the studio about it as well (in fact - they have a number of arcade classics set up there for "research"). (Edit: replaced trailer with higher-quality version, without annoying introduction)

June 6, 2012

35

Feelin' Blu

Well, the myriad editions of Tron: Legacy are now up for pre-order on Amazon (due to ship April 5th - ). The question is... what to get? The Tron: Legacy Limited Edition Five-Disc Combo Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy + Tron: The Original Classic Special Edition Blu-ray in super-special "Identity Disc" collectible packaging? The Tron: Legacy Five-Disc Combo Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy + Tron: The Original Classic Special Edition Blu-ray? The Tron: Legacy Four-Disc

February 5, 2011

33

Roll over! Sit! Speak!

So here's the dillyo (word up)... Since several of you regular readers (yes, you) just so happen to be 2600 programmers (who, I might add, are some of the most talented, creative, and staggeringly intelligent people on the face of the planet), I thought I'd ask for some programming help. And I figured it would be more appropriate to do it here, than clutter up the homebrew forums. Now, by "help" I actually mean "do (most of) the programming for me". But I figured you already saw that com

August 2, 2007

33

To-doing

Sounds like a Don Martin sound effect*, doesn't it? To-doing!! But actually, this is yet another To-Do List. However, since some of it is already in progress, that makes it a "To-doing" list. If the blog tags weren't still broken, you would be able to click on a handy link, and look at my previous To-Do List entries. But it's just as well you can't, since even I don't particularly like looking back on lists of things that I never got finished. That said, I'll continue with the tradi

February 21, 2012

32

More Tron fun

The viral marketing campaign for Tron Legacy rolls on! Someone at Disney is having a lot of fun with this. In case you missed the new trailer... you can check it out at Apple's Trailer site or or the viral site. It hits a lot of the right notes. Seeing Bruce Boxleitner back as Alan Bradley, a visit to the dilapidated Flynn's Arcade (which I've been to - it's in Culver City, although I think it was an Italian restaurant at the time), the touch-surface computer console (how far ahead of

March 25, 2010

32

Will the WRC return to competitiveness?

Admittedly, I've hardly been paying any attention to the World Rally Championship (WRC) for the past two years. For starters, there hasn't been any U.S. TV coverage. No surprise there - we don't even get Rally America Championship races. All we get are GRC highlights, which is hardly rallying. Velocity does carry ERC highlights - at 5:00 AM Sunday mornings - but they don't start running them until the season is almost over. But at least it's something, and it's a lot more competitive than the W

November 1, 2016

32

To-Do Redo

Well, it's time to consolidate my To-Do list, so I can actually update the thing without getting hopelessly confused. Homebrew stuff: Manual and label for another 2600 homebrew - In progress Sprites for Moon Cresta homebrew - In progress Sprites for still-yet-another-arcade-port - In progress Sprites for yet-another-arcade-port - In progress Atari logo on a Mac folder icon - Starting soon Sprites for Wizard of Wor Arcade - In progress Revised sprite for Thomas - In progress T

April 17, 2007

32

WRC - MIA... again.

Last year, after the World Rally Championship season started in February, it took until April for highlights to start showing up on TV. This year, they may not show up at all. Assuming the season actually happens in the first place. The problem is that the WRC's main sponsor - North One Sport - was sold last year to Convers Sports Initiatives - a Russian-owned company that in the end, turned into a $1.6 billion case of fraud. Ouch. North One Sport provided the WRC's website, smartpho

January 17, 2012

31

Still not completely fixed, apparently

Previously, I mentioned at the very end of this post: That's not the only problem anymore. You see, I've been testing the Trak-Ball™ hacks on it. Why have I been testing them? Well I wouldn't have wanted to go to the trouble of designing labels for hacks that didn't work now, would I? The problem is... some of them just won't work on my six-switch 2600. What's weird is - some of them do work. On my four-switch, all of the hacks work fine. Both of my CX-22 Trak-Balls™ work with all h

April 2, 2018

30

Another mouth to feed...

So, I finally bought a PlayStation 3. I had planned to do so a year ago on Black Friday, but just didn't want to deal with the insanity of fighting people at stores for one, and all of the online deals sold out before I could get to them. This year though... I had a plan! I was going to camp out on Amazon, and snag one in a Lightning Deal™. I knew when their PS3 bundle was going on sale - all I had to do was just log on a little early, refresh the page until the deal showed up, and b

November 25, 2012

29

Avengers: Age of Ultron - Spoiler-free-spoiled-movie review

So, I went to see Avengers: Age of Ultron last night. Okay, to be fair - I actually went this morning. Midnight is "technically" morning. I usually don't go in for first-day screenings, but thought it would be fun. It wasn't. I wish I hadn't bothered. Why? Well, it wasn't the audience. There was a good audience there, including some students from the college I work at. So the comic book nerd factor was pretty high. That was good. It wasn't the seating. Even though the

May 1, 2015

29

A big, flickery mess?

So... back to one of the things on my "To-do" list - namely, "Stupid Game Ideas". (Pretend that was said in a loud, booming voice with lots of echo.) ...ideas... ...ideas... ...ideas... These are the games I would make for the Atari 2600, if I had any clue about programming. And trust me... I don't. I've read through a bunch of the 2600 "how-to" stuff, and even though I kind-of get some of the limitations of the 2600, and have a vague sense of what the hardware is doing, I have no

March 28, 2006

28

So... it's a big iPhone

Well, Apple's non-big announcement today was of their jumbo-sized iPhone. I mean... the iPad. (Although several times during the keynote, Steve called it the iPod. I'm surprised they didn't go back in and fix that. ) Now, this would have been a technological marvel a few years ago... before the iPhone. But now, it's just a bigger iPhone. Not all that impressive - despite Steve continually mentioning during his keynote how impressive it was. It's like making a DVD the size of a laserdisc

January 28, 2010

28

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