EricBall

After much procrastination, I now have potatohead's Propeller Demo Board working. Of course my super-duper display driver doesn't work yet, but now I can do my own debugging. I am now the proud owner of a Dell 1320c color laser printer. I got tired of the ink drying out in my inkjet ('cause I don't do that much printing at home) and the Dell had the lowest consumable cost. So although I could have gotten the HP 1600 for $100 less, I save that much on the first set of toner cartridges. It also appears SchedulesDirect is now down to $20/year and the code gurus have figured out how to get a TiVo gateway working with it. So now I'm trying to figure out how to get a serial connection from my family room to the basement so I can hook up my old TiVo. (My new S2DT is about to get very busy with the fall season. I think both tuners will be going full blast between 8 & 10 PM most weeknights.) The idea solution would be some kind of wireless RS-232 transceiver, but I haven't found anything really cheap. (Then again, $50 versus drilling holes or pulling cables, hmm...) I also need to figure out how to relay the IR remote to the TiVo which is above & behind the TV. (So you have to put your arm up when sitting on the couch.) Maybe I can jury-rig something with some fibre optic cable. I found a website where I guy used it to turn an IR camera remote into a cable release.

I know what you mean about kids and carny games. They see the big prizes and figure they have a good chance of winning. There's really three types of games: 1. big prizes - near impossible to win 2. competitive with one winner but size prize of prize depends on the number of players (i.e. the value of the prize is significantly less than the total $$ taken in) 3. easy win but small prize (so the value of the prize is less than the fee) So the only way to win is to not play - which isn't appealing to kids. I was a carny at the Calgary Stampede one summer. The game was a to knock the bottles over with a ball. The prize was ridiculously small, but you could trade up to bigger prizes if you won multiple times. I remember one guy who must have spent $50 trading up to our biggest prize.

Time is the ultimate finite resource. One good thing is you can "fire and forget" on the time consuming parts to a certain extent; although it does tie up the computer in any case. When I'm creating DVDs my compression step is much longer. I'm using TMPGEnc and 2 pass compression and IVTC via AVISynth depending on the source material. TiVo to DVD: 1. wait while file downloads from TiVo 2. wait to decode file to MPEG 3. manually clip commercials 4. wait to re-encode file to DVD spec 5. manually author DVD (main menu) 6. wait to create image 7. wait to burn image to DVD

Hmm... interesting point. Linux or Vista... Two big strikes against Linux are software & hardware support. (Although hardware support for Vista isn't guaranteed.) Uh-oh. I just bought a Dell 1320c color laser which doesn't have Linux drivers....

I bought Starflight at great personal expense because I wanted / needed the included star chart. It also had a codewheel for copy protection, although the disks were standard format. This was because the game rewrote the disks during the game, so you were well advised to play from backups. (And make backups of those!)

If you can't find a VHS to DVD recorder, separate VHS player and DVD recorder will probably be the second easiest to use option. There may be an "almost everything included" PC solution (capture+encode HW, author & burn SW) which would be easy to use, although you'd still need a VCR to play back the tapes and a DVD burner (if not included). My experience falls the other way. My methods are complex 'cause I'm going for maximum quality and using a lot of "free" software.

It's hard to beat hand optimized assembly code for size. But there comes a point where the code gets too complex (and tedious) to create, debug and maintain in ASM. Then the lower efficiency of compiled code becomes acceptable. Interpretted code can be smaller than ASM if the size of the interpretter isn't counted.

Not me, but check out http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/mopidta.html

I have a love / hate relationship with some games. I love playing them, but I hate how much time I spend on them. Time which I could be spending working on other projects or, in some cases, sleeping. This summer I played HalfLife into the wee hours of the morning the night before I needed to leave for the airport at 4 AM. This past Friday I played Civ3 past midnight even though I started the day at 4:30 AM and had a 9 AM meeting the next day. Last night it was only through a great force of will that I stopped playing Civ3 last night at 9:30. Tonight I can't wait to get home to complete my conquest of the Roman empire.

What's the appeal of collecting demos? Rarity I can understand, but do they play any differently than the retail versions?

The misuse was the growing number of commercial offerings (HW & SW) which leveraged the Zap2It data contrary to the license agreement. So money was changing hands and none of it was going back to TMS - the "owner" of the data. Since you're prepared to do without, I'd recommend a little watching & waiting. See whether the cost of SchedulesDirect drops and whether GB-PVR comes up with an alternative. Does GB-PVR allow manual recordings?

Last week a hornet got in the house. Rather than swat it, I sucked it up with the central vacuum. I'll have to try out the rubber bands the next time a fly gets in the house. Normally I just grab the flyswatter and wait for the bug to land somewhere.

Many CD players (not just slot loaders) have problems with mini-CDs. The lower rotational momentum throws the linear velocity correction circuit off. Putting an expansion ring on the mini-CD helps, but I've had them pop off and jam the player.

I am 99% certain that non-RAM (outside $1800-$27FF) Maria reads occur at 1.79MHz. There could be some low memory address ranges which are fullspeed, but you'd have to test it out. Thinking of a 7800 DPC? Even if you could find a address range I'm not sure how much value there would be because I don't think MARIA would run at full speed for the graphics data even if it was in RAM.

Almost everything done by Nintendo or Rare for the N64 is worth playing.

I used SpamBayes (also free) with good success for a long while. It helped that, at the time, I had a large spam folder which I was able to feed it to start with. It generally trained well. However, I recently started to funnel everything through a Gmail account to take advantage of their spam filters for the following reasons. 1. Since SpamBayes is local I still end up downloading everything only to have to load up my Deleted folder. (Which could then potentially still be found by my son, although that's a future concern.) 2. When I'm on vacation, the spam clogs up the server side email storage. Gmail also means I can read that email on vacation. 3. My spam to ham ratio was so out of whack I was worried the random phrases in spam would poison the filter, leading to false positives.

Ahh. Unfortunately, the Skeleton+ kernel (and datastore) isn't capable of open areas. See my Skeleton page for what's going on under the covers.

I love it! Old style demoreel done on a VCS. There's some neat effects there. Probably some impressive kernel coding. And all in 4K.

I played Wolf3D when it first came out. I played DOOM and DOOM II when they first came out. But when Quake came out my home PC no longer had the necessary horsepower. Thus I was pushed off the FPS bandwagon (except for Goldeneye). I also no longer had the time and desire to dedicate to playing games. And online has little appeal to me. But then I saw Half Life athology in the bargain bin at the grocery store. I resisted for a long while, but I finally couldn't say no to $10. At one time I played a Half Life demo (although it wasn't part of the full game) and I remember my surprise and panic as I saw a couple OpFor grenades arcing towards me. That simply wasn't something I'd seen before in an FPS. A lot of Half Life is like that - surprise and panic. You hardly ever feel safe, danger is always lurking around the corner. Sound plays a big part - you hear those enemies plotting as they lie in wait. (You can even identify what enemy and where as the sounds are in stereo.)Those pesky grenades are another source of panic. You think you're sneaking up under cover when you hear “Fire in the hole!”Finally there are the scripted encounters which can drop a monster on your head or the floor from beneath your feet. It also means enemies can appear in areas you previously completed. So you're seldom safe. The enemy AI is also reasonably smart - running away and taking cover instead of just blindly charging into your line of fire. They do occasionally misthrow their grenades. Of course the great thing about Half Life is the storyline. This isn't just a simple run & gun. You have a destiny and your enemies are there for a reason. There are also friends along the way to assist you and for you to protect. And unlike previous FPSs, there are no distinct levels (although your path is generally linear), instead the game gives the illusion of one giant level with very short auto-load points. You can also save your game at any time. (Save early, save often.)Your arsenal grows over the game, although there seldom is enough ammo. (Or power for your armor.). About the only stinker is the OpFor rifle which is inaccurate and doesn't do much damage per hit. The pistol is more accurate and the shotgun does more damage.One other item about ammo. Not only do you have to watch you ammo, but also how many shots you have left in the clip. Reloading also takes time. And if you change weapons with a partial clip, that's the way it comes back. In addition to various enemies, there are various puzzles which must be solved along the way. Most are easy to figure out. Otherwise there's gamefaqs. There are also a few jumping puzzles - thank goodness for quicksave. Well worth the $10 and the hours.

Thanks for the positive review of Skeleton+. Not being able to back up was a concious design decision. That's not to say you're not the first person who's made that comment. . . . I'm glad you got drawn into the game. I wanted to create a level of suspense and fear in the game. I have to say I didn't consider having different enemies or weapons, although I don't know whether it would be possible to really add any distinctiveness between them. Skeleton+ was also written before bankswitched homebrews were common (and economical). Thus I was restricted to 4K. And although it may not seem that way, each maze (there are eight) is somewhat different. Some have lots of intersections, others have long corridors, and others have lots of dead-ends. And even without stereo, you can still use the audio clues. You just need to turn around so you can hear the volume changes. (Ahead being loudest, behind being quietest.)

Would the arcade games Primal Rage / Primal Rage 2 fit? They're monster (dino mostly) themed MK style games.

There are true 4-way joysticks (I have a couple NOS 4-way leaf joysticks sitting in a box waiting for me to win the lottery so I have the time to work on my MAME cab). There are also "switchable" joysticks which have selectable restrictors. However, it sounds like you want something akin to the joystick used in TRON, which had very small diagonals. I know there are various models of arcade joysticks, and some may be less diagonal heavy than the one you have. Search the arcadecontrols.com forum.

If I'm not careful, my wife is going to kill me. My original idea was to create some favorite eBay searches for the top-rated kid-friendly N64 & GCN games which I didn't already have. My price point is C$10, including shipping (which typically doesn't leave much for the game). I've picked up: Blast Corps, Rayman 2, Rocket: Robot on Wheels, and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (not kid friendly, but one I've wanted since I rented it a long, long time ago). Unfortunately, it looks like I was outbid on Castlevania: Legacy. Oh, well... I guess I'll just have to wait a while longer. That's one thing I've learned about eBay - if you're cheap, you also need patience.

Monday my wife declared my son's piggybank to be finally full and started sorting and rolling. In all, it was over 40lbs and C$800 (those $1 & $2 coins add up quick) which will be added to his university account. But there was also over C$200 in paper money, which he has earmarked for buying a Wii. Unfortunately, the cost of the system plus one game (and tax) will cost C$400. So I guess he still has some saving to do. (Which he will probably accomplish in a year or so as he rarely spends his allowance.)

Yes, they do. Although the "original" High Score Cartridge is probably too rare to be a truely viable alternative, the AtariVox/SaveKey/MemCard is. (Plus, it doesn't need a battery and is usable on multiple platforms.)