EricBall

Wikipedia entry for Nintendo DSi The DSi will play DS games (legal ones anyway, I'm not sure about homebrews & "backups") unless they use the GBA slot (which it lacks, thus no GBA games obviously). So far, DSi games are all downloads. Assuming you have a working DS, there doesn't seem to be a huge reason to upgrade. Spend to $$ on games.

I've stuck on a license based on the XFree86 License which seems fairly similar to a lot of non-copyleft free software licenses. Drop the 3rd clause, and you have the current BSD license. Drop clauses 3 & 4 and you have the FreeBSD license. Keep only the first clause and you have the X11 license (which is a common license for Prop code). Yeah, I can see credits starting to accumulate. But it's not like the full GNU GPL is small either. My reason for not going with copyleft is I have written a driver, not a full application. So although I'd like to encourage modifiers to make their changes freely available, I don't want to force users to release their whole application if they want to use my driver. But this doesn't mesh with GNU's philosophy. It looks like the GNU Lesser GPL (which GNU only uses begrudgingly) might provide what I want, but that's a whole chunk of legalese versus what I'm using.

Yeah, I've stuck CC-BY-SA-3.0 on my alpha code, but the GNU folks say it's incompatible with the GPL. I think there are some philosophical differences because I haven't found anything which says "CC-BY-SA" is bad because of X. (I think the issue is GNU likes to encourage source delivery and discourage "advertising" clauses like CC-BY.)

On the Prop front, I now have 2 to 5 COGs happily working together, alternating lines to produce a stable static screen. This is very, very cool (for me). Next steps: 1. (Easy) fold the blank line code into the active line code. Every bit is sacred! 2. Put back in the sprite -> lineRAM code. 3. Create a demo to show it all off. And... that'll be about it, just ready for release. Which brings me to my topic question - Software licenses. What I want to do is release the code in such a way that others may use it or modify it, but give me credit. Is there a well known license which accomplishes this?

Found the typo/bug. Again, I was using MOV instead of MOVS and setting the PixelClocks to 0 (which means 256 clocks per pixel) when it should have been 1. So now I have beautiful color bars. Next steps: Put back in my rainbow display & check the colors are right (i.e. phase order correct) Variablize parameters Multiple cog action!

http://www.vormedia.com/images/games/78_tt_02.gif http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W9iDia4DhU

Actually, 7800 Tower Toppler uses hi-res artifact color. I don't know if any emulator handles it properly, otherwise it looks like alternating bright/dark vertical lines.

Interesting, that looks identical to the 7800 game Tower Toppler. I wonder what the relationship is.

I found a couple of bugs in my code (using MOV instead of MOVS and wiping out the pixel counter), and I've determined my 240 pixels will probably stretch into the overscan. But even with those bugs fixed I still didn't get anything more than a B&W picture. Hrmm... But, curiously, my video capture card picks up colors although it's not stable. Found a typo / miscalculation in the number of pixel clocks for the blanking. Getting closer, but still not 100% stable.

Another of my unfinished projects. Yes, it's on the list, but no telling when I will get to it. The challenge with Leprechaun is the re-learning process, which makes it less appealing.

After a long hiatus, I'm tackling my Propeller video driver. I think I figured out why my previous attempts didn't work. First, there were some technical issues with synchronization of the cogs which I now think I understand. (Plus Chip, the head honcho, has given the step-by-step instructions on what needs to be done.) But the bigger problem is I tried to do everything at once. I was trying to achieve too many new ideas at the same time. So when it didn't work, I didn't have So this time I'm starting with producing video using a single cog. I've stripped down my old driver, removing as much complexity as possible, i.e. static data in the lineRAM, static startup, etc. Just the minimum required to feed the video driver. And it works . . . sorta. The screen is stable on my TV, but there's no color - just a wierd dot pattern. Hrmm.... maybe my frequency calculations are off - that would explain it. Nope, or at least it doesn't seem wrong. So I changed the static data to just product vertical lines. And it produces vertical lines, but the wrong number. Either my TV has some wicked overscan, or I've messed up some calculations somewhere.

I haven't seen the movie, though I might rent the Blu-Ray. I first read a friend's copy of the graphic novel version in university. I guess it was good enough that I recently picked up my own copy. I find it suffers from the same problem as LoTR - too much to keep track of on the first read through. I also was puzzled when I first heard they were making a Watchmen movie - too dense to adapt to the big screen. Sure, there are great scenes, but there's just too much backstory to include. What I'd love to know is how the comic was created. Where all the ideas came from and how they were fitted together.

Hey! That's my game that Artie's playing! Woo-hoo!

Of course, anything downloaded from DSiWare is DSi only. Companies might release DS+DSi dual format WiFi Connect games so they can use WPA on a DSi and WEP on a DS.

Since the DSi has a faster processor & more RAM, DSi games won't be playable on the DS. However, the DS is a huge market, so I suspect developers will continue to release DS games (which will be playable on the DSi) for some time. In fact, I bet developers (other than Nintendo, who want those upgrade sales) won't create DSi games unless they are using the camera or the SD slot or are forced to by Nintendo. It may even be possible to make dual format games which will provide more advanced features on the DSi, although I doubt many developers outside of Nintendo themselves will bother.

I love that I can download demos for my (new) PS3. Yeah, I can pay for and download Virtual Console games for my Wii, but nothing beats free. Last night I added Lucasart's Force Unleashed demo to the list of PS3 games & demos I've downloaded. In this demo, you're Vader's secret apprentice out on his first misson to eliminate one of the remaining Jedi, along with whoever & whatever gets in your way. Yes, you have a lightsaber, but in a lot of cases you'll be throwing stuff around with the power of the force (think Darth vs Luke in Cloud City), including rebel & Imperial troops. There's also a combo system, so slash, slash, lightning charges up your 'sabre for a major attack. The demo is just the right length - long enough to figure out whether it's worth buying, but short enough to finish in a sitting. (Actually, I think it took longer to download & install than to play.) I have one major and one minor criticisim. The big one is the 3rd person 3-D camera - it has a habit of looking at me rather than whomever is shooting at me. Yes, it can be manually adjusted, but I'd rather not have to move my thumb off the action buttons to adjust the camera. My minor quibble is the demo doesn't tell you what the status buttons in the corner mean/do and how "force points" (which upgrade your force powers) work. But it's a fun demo, and I'd probably be thinking about buying the full game except I don't think the content is appropriate for my 8 year old son. So I guess I'll play the demo a couple more times after he goes to bed before I delete it.

This fall my son and I drove out to a scout camp a couple of hours drive away. I used Google maps to kick out directions which went via a bunch of rural roads. The scary thing was how accurate it was. If it said drive 8.6km and turn left, I'd just have to reset the trip odometer and start paying attention when it got to 8.5km for that left turn onto the next unmarked road.

My wife has made some noises about wanting a Mac, but I think she's more enamoured with the idea of a Mac than anything in particular.

I also prefer analog TV, although I get it via cable rather than antenna. The main reason is with analog TVs I can use my PC tuner card, my DualTuner TiVo, the TV's built-in tuner, and the VCR's built in tuner. But my cableco did make me an offer I couldn't refuse (a near free STB), so one of my TVs has joined the DTV dark side. (Though I hate the compression artifacts.)

My home PC is old (Athlon XP) and yet I'm not craving an upgrade. It wasn't that long ago (ie when I bought my home PC) when I would spend time reading about the latest hardware and coming up with a wishlist. But now I look at the PC market and wonder when (or maybe if) I'll bother upgrading. Sure, if I was to buy a new PC some tasks (video encoding) would take less time - but I can live without (let it run overnight). And I'd be able to play the latest and greatest games - but I don't have copious amounts of free time to spend playing games, and if I want to play games it would be cheaper to buy a console. New apps? Nope, the ones I have work just fine. Vista? Don't make me cry. Umm.... and why do I need a new PC? On the other hand, I could see spending money getting a 40" LCD HDTV and Blu-Ray player.

Just be careful with the black coloring - it tends to stain (badly).

You might want to dig around http://asma.atari.org/ It turns out there's a Pokey music format (SAP) similar to SID.

Check the drugstore section for isopropyl alcohol (as rubbing alcohol).

Winter makes me glad to have a garage to park in. No scraping ice & snow in the morning. And I've learned to back in so I don't have to change direction if the laneway hasn't been plowed. And there's the rub. In my old car, a Plymouth Acclaim, I could see the rear corners but I'm having a devil of a time with my new Corolla. Although I can use the side mirrors to make sure I don't scrape the sides, it takes me several tries to get squared up. So I was wondering if I could rig some kind of laser guidance system. There are some on the market, but they all seem to be downward pointing, putting a spot on your hood or dash so you know when you've pulled in far enough (but not too far). I'm thinking more of something which shoots straight down the middle of the garage so I can line up the car along the centerline. Maybe wave the beam up and down so it's not just a single line, but kinda draws a line of light through the vehicle. Maybe something like what they use for power saws.

The head honcho of my department has decided he no longer wants to fund the public area meeting room he inheritted. In the room are a pair of 15 year old ceiling mounted Electrohome ECP-4101 front projection CRTs. There's a high probability that I could take them myself if I asked nicely. (Otherwise they will probably be scrapped.) Now, in spite of their age, they probably have been used very little. So I doubt the 7" tubes have been used up. They were also high-end data projectors for their day with 1280x1024 resolution, which translates into (almost) full HDTV capabilites. So why haven't I jumped at the chance? 1. The dang things are big, heavy & ceiling mounted. So I'd need to somehow rope in 2-3 other people to unbolt them from their ceiling mounts and get them out to the car. 2. They only have RGB BNC inputs which will make it more difficult to interface with source equipment. (Although it should be possible to connect a PC via a VGA to BNC cable.) 3. Although I've found the service manual online, and having two means I might be able to swap out failed parts, I'm not sure I have the time or ability to do my own repairs. 4. Did I mention they are big & heavy? And it's not like I have the space to put them in the house. But dang, free HDTV displays!