Twilight in Efeion

DIY Daft Punk Helmet

2011-11-05T14:24:00.003-04:00

For Halloween 2011 I was just about to give up on making something new and just go with an existing costume when I saw a gadget blog post for Volpin Studios Daft Punk Helmet, both the helmets Volpin has built are impressive but the Thomas one looked amazing to me when it was finished. While I am not the biggest Daft Punk fan, I knew instantly this would not only be impressive to complete, but also be a lot of fun with the required electronic engineering. With a final costume idea in mind and about 6 weeks of time before halloween I set off on another crazy DIY project. In the end, while the helmet was not as perfect as others, the electronics made up for it and everyone who saw it give me the thumbs up. (See the build video at the bottom for more pictures)

Fist off I did a lot of research into how other people have made helmets. Besides Volpin, tekparasite also had interesting build ideas and a lot of documentation. Between them, many youtube videos and forums, I had more then enough information to plan out what I wanted to do. Basically it boils down to three options for the helmet itself. There are high end solutions involving casting and molds, which have amazing results, but take too much time and would cost a lot. Then there is the option to buy an existing mold, saving a lot of time, but still costing a lot. Finally there is the cheap way of using cardboard and/or other helmets as a base. I decided that my goal was to go with the cheap option and make the best helmet I could for around 50-60$, the end cost was closer to 75$ but I now have a lot of extra parts for future projects from buying things in bulk, so it was acceptable.

To get started I needed to get a helmet shape, to do this I searched for existing paper craft models I could use. Luckily it was not hard to find one. After getting the required programs to view and print the models, I had a pdf containing several pages of shapes to cut out. I knew right away that the base size would not be large enough, so after creating a scale helmet and trying it on, I estimated that 110% scaling would cover the size I needed while not being too huge.

Next, I printed and cut out the pieces that I had rearranged and scaled in PhotoShop. Then painstaking glued and re-cut them out of cardboard. This gave me a sturdy base that I could build on without having to rely on fiber glass like most paper craft builders do. I grabbed my glue gun and assembled the pieces and ended up with a base helmet that fit nicely but had room of the parts and pieces that would come later. Because I skipped the ear pieces I cut two large round circles of cardboard and placed them inside the helmet to fill the empty spots. Then using two soda cans I crafted the ears by bending cardboard in a ring. Later soda can ends and plexiglass would cove the ends.

After crafting the helmet skeleton I took Bondo and smoothed out the cracks and blockly-ness of the paper craft base. After letting it dry, I sanded for several hours with a rasp and various levels of sandpaper. Once that was round and smooth I repeatedly used a thick layer of white acrylic paint to further fill in spots, and then re-sanded. Finally two coats of glossy black paint gave me the base helmet I needed to move on to the fun electrical parts. (Time: two weeks of nights and weekends)

In between waiting for things to dry I created a set of gloves from black work groves and milk carton plastic. This was covered by metal duct work tape and hot glued to the gloves. I based the shapes off of Volpin's glove template and then adjusted it to fit a scanned trace of my hands.

Next came the part I was looking forward to. I had already ordered 500 3mm red leds, 10 MAX7219CNG chips and other assorted leds and parts off of ebay before starting work on the helmet as I knew it would take 2-3 weeks to get them from China. By the time I had the helmet ready everything had arrived. I used my heat gun to bend a strip of plexiglass into shape and then carefully drilled 256 pairs (that is 512 individual holes!) using a 1/32 inch bit. A rotery tool or drill press would have been nice, but a hand held drill got the job done without any accidents. I used a paper template to mark each hole before drilling. Then I trimmed and soldered each red led into vertical column, then after completing each column I would bend the annode and connect it to the previous led in the row. This created groups of 64 leds, the cathode wires holding in the leds vertically and the annode wires holding the group together in rows. After finishing each group of 64 I used some spare ribbon wire to build the connectors.

Each of the four groups had two connectors and which went to a separate MAX7219CNG soldered to a protoboard. Each board and headers where custom designed and hand soldered. I could have ordered a custom PCBs, which would have shaved several days of work off, but that would have cost a lot more, so in an effort to keep the build costs down I did everything by hand. There is a lot in information on using the 7219 chips with arduinos and the Led Matrix library does most of the hard work for you. On the hardware end, basically they are chained together and require a resistor and two capacitors, beyond that it is just a matter of connecting the right pins to the right led row. Once that was finished, I connected everything tested out a few patters and attached the array to the inside of the helmet. Using some night shade car tint spray and another bent piece of plexiglass, I had the helmet all covered and almost finished.

The final parts where the ear and side lights. Using a separate fifth MAX7219CNG, I created 4 led protoboards (two for each side/ear), the side lights where directly connected back to the 7219 board and the ear lights had separate headers as they needed to be threaded through a slit in the cardboard. I mounted the side lights and build a little reflective holder that would defuse the bright leds of the colored rows. Next, I had to cut out and round some plexiglass by hand to match the ear shapes. The ends of soda cans covered the plexiglass and ear leds. Then I masked off each exposed plexiglass piece on the helmet with masking tape and gave the entire thing a final coat of rustoleum metallic spray paint. Once again I could have worked out some form of chroming as others have done, but chroming along would add $100+ to the build price. The metallic paint actually looks quite good despite laking the complete mirror reflection, the only issue is that it needs light spray passes, takes several days to dry, and can still be dulled by touching even after dry. I just used the ears to put on the helmet, which kept the dulling in one place and avoided touching the main body as much as possible. The lights tend to distract people anyway so it is not much of a problem unless you plan to wear this all the time. (Time two weeks of nights and weekends)

The final touches where the power supply and the programing. I used a pololu power regulator as it covers the amperage requirements and could be reused as a breadboard power supply. For the power supply, 8 AA batteries supplied 12v to the regulator and where still ok power wise after all the Halloween festivities where over. Then I wired up an arduino to all of the MAX7219CNGs and also to a separate row of three buttons that I could use to switch patterns. The arduino sketch can be found here. It was interesting as I figured out a nifty way to use a array of vertical 8 bit char and then bit shift them into rows based on an offset, this let me create a quick java program to visually create the patterns and then enter the numbers into the array. A few patterns needed special handling code but most where covered. I have to give tekparasite extra credit, as while I had a few animations in mind I was looking for extra example from the actual Daft Punk helmets, he had actual videos of many very creative choices, some of which I included in my build. (See video below!)

The end result was everything I expected. The helmet had a few cosmetic inperfections here and there, but looked fine over all and the light effects made sure no one noticed right away as everyone was too busy watching in surprise. I also believe I get some partial bragging rights as unless someone has not posted their project, this is the first DIY helmet to include all four working light sections (front, both side parts and ears) and be on youtube/blog for others to use as a reference. Both Volpin and tekparasite who have have impressive helmets (with actual crome finish) where missing one of the four in the end result videos that where posted. Hopefully this will inspire others to not give up due to cost and make budget restricted but still functional helmets in the future.

DIY ADC to DVI converter

2011-08-15T13:06:00.002-04:00

A while back I was able to grab a 17 inch LCD Cinema Display from electronic surplus for 5$, while this sounds like an amazing deal, there was one extra issue that made this more fun than just being able to use it without some effort on my part. Older Apple Cinema Displays use an ADC connector which while similar to the popular DVI, is only supported on a few older G4 towers and video cards. Luckily I already have a working G4 mirror door with a graphics card that has the connector. My original mod to fix the broken power supply prevents me from using the ADC connector due to lack of the extra 24v line, so with the help of my trusty heat gun, off went the connector for external use in this project to build an ADC to DVI adaptor.

First off I started looking for other people that had done this before. While there is not a lot of information beyond a few others that have succeeded, there is a retail converter from Apple, so it is possible.

The pinouts are quite simple to folow as ADC shares a lot in common with DVI as they are both digital. ADC Pinout and DVI Pinout. Basically you just need to strip the dvi cable to leave just enough wire to be usable and connect the data link 1 pins, plug and play pins and digital clock pins. The for the most part com in pairs of three (+,-,gnd) The link 2, analog and shielding is not needed. I also found that grounding the hot plug was required for the display port to dvi adaptor I am using to detect the monitor. Other video cards I tested with did not need this. The DVI spec has more information on the correct use of the hot plug pin, however I just left it grounded as the ADC spec does not include this.

The final parts needed that are not included in the DVI spec are the power and usb connections. The monitor itself has no power supply or plug, the ADC connector needs to supply this. I had a spare dc plug connector, so I purchased a 24v power supply off of Amazon that could supply enough amps to meet the ADC spec. Finally there is the USB connection. The monitor has an internal usb hub built in, also it use the USB connection to pass information about the monitor. Unless you have the power turned on, the monitor connected and it plugged into a usb port it will not display anything! This freaked me out at first when I started testing my solder connections and though the monitor was dead when nothing appeared with just power and the DVI connecter plugged in.

If you see weird color pixels that get better by pinching the wires together than you will need shorter leads. It took a few tries to get the wires short enough to prevent interference. Eventually I got it right and low and behold after connecting everything I had a clear image on the monitor.

Oddly enough right after completing this project I received a tv that can function as an external monitor so this is not as needed anymore, but I always enjoy having a few classic apple products on display.

XBox 360 Dual Firmware Mod

2011-03-13T21:54:00.002-04:00

After months of having a 360 that works except the Samsung dvd drive, I finally bought a spare dvd drive off of ebay and decided to try and transplant the firmware from my broken driver to the new one. While I am at it, I might as well make it dual boot between the good firmware and another hacked firmware for other obvious reasons. Now you might be asking why go through all the trouble when you can just flash the new drive. Well my old 360 dvd drive was quite dead, to the point that I literally ripped the plcc chip off of the board with full intention of doing a complete brain transplant! Otherwise there was no easy or cheap way to get the drive firmware key.

The above picture was all the remained of the old board, the traces where ripped up by the epoxy that was placed quite evilly on, around and under the plcc chip. I had removed this a few months ago and has it in a safe place, waiting to have the time to use it. Now, if you are reading this planing to do the same, I give you a big warning, if you see blank epoxy on your board, give up now. My replacement drive had clear epoxy that was nice and soft after heating with a heat run. However the black on the original board only got brittle making it impossible to not break parts.

Next I went online looking up everything I could find on the firmware. On the Samung drives, It is stored on a plcc chip next to the large hole in the board. Each chip has a unique key, so you need to have this before you can use any other drives. With my drive not talking to anything, transplanting the entire chip was my last resort. Next I found http://dwl.xbox-scene.com/tutorial/tightmod360installation.pdf it contained the steps to dual boot my old chip with the new drives one. This way I did not need to try and remove the current plcc chip, which may destroy the board in the process. However, it is quite a bit more work and on a whole different difficulty level. Another warning, do not try to attempt a dual firmware setup unless you have a good soldering iron with temperature control and a very steady hand. It is easy to get solder everywhere!

I started out with thin ethernet wire to connect the two chips. I connected all of the top lead first but quickly found it was too thick and needed to use the tiny individual strands from twisted christmas tree light wire. Then it was easy to use long strands and connect the bottom lead first and then stretch and line it up with the top lead. After each pair of pins where all attached correctly on a side I would trim the extra wire.

This was very delicate work, and preparing the leads was not easy, more then once I needed to carefully clean up a bridged solder connection between leads or wires. Also it was important to completely tin each strand before trying to connect it, otherwise it would not stick. The above picture shows how small each wire needed to be, with a penny for reference. These pictures where shown with a magnifying glass.

After that following the rest of the guide was easy, I found some spare 10K resistors and attached them to pin 4 and 15 as the guide shows. This may differ from what others need to do, as I later needed to switch it to pin 5, as 4 caused the driver to make the 360 show a E65 error. Luckily I was persistent and kept poking otherwise I would have just assumed the drive was dead due to some error on my part. So you may need to play with pins to get it to work on different drives.

After that I closed up the drive and connected it to the 360. The drive boots up and reads disks, the old firmware reading games, and the new firmware without the correct key only shows everything as a dvd. Next I need to get the drive key, but that is for another day.

X-TRONIC 4000 Digital Hot Air Rework & Soldering Station

2010-12-19T18:13:00.000-05:00

A little while ago I purchased an X-TRONIC 4000 off ebay to upgrade from my simple craft soldering iron. Now that I have use it a few times I can properly review it. First off, after doing my initial research there are far better soldering stations you can purchase, however they will be far more expensive. I was not willing to pay $250+, so I was limited to the this and the Aoyue 906 which did not include as much and was a little more expensive. So with that in mind, for a hobbyist who is looking for something better than your cheap plug in iron, the X-TRONIC 4000 is not a bad choice. It also includes a very good warranty, and while still being manufactured in China at least it is held up to some level of ISO standards and is sold by a US based company. I was able to grab one for a little over a hundred dollars, so it is not so cheap that you would expect it will break in a few uses. Plus the included backup heating elements prolong that even further.

The hot air gun works as expected, and was pleasantly quiet. At worst I was expecting a fish tank pump. At high air flow, which was way too much for circuit work, you could hear the light hum. Yet at a normal air flow settings it was rather quiet, at the lowest it was whisper quiet. I had no problem removing a surface mount chip off an old test board with some careful blowing and medium heat. I expect any future part removal will now be done with hot air, as it make it very simple, or possible in the case of surface mounted chips which cannot be easily removed with an iron. I also used it to heat some epoxy for removal and that worked as well. With the three different air tips that are included, you will be set for basic use, though it does not beat a specialty nozzle for even heating.

The hot air gun is nice, but the main feature is the iron. After using a craft iron for even delicate work getting a serious one is amazing to use. The soldering iron heats up in about 30 seconds, which is so much faster than the three to five minutes my craft iron would take. Also using the lcd read out and the control dial, the temp is more or less kept constant. It is important to note that the temp displayed vs what is always applied still depended on the surface area in use . The ten included tips range from tiny to very thick. For small leads, the small tips worked well, however for a lot of normal use you will need to use a thicker tip which keeps the temp far more even. I understand this is not so much a flaw, as it is something normal with any iron of this level and power draw. The included stand is nothing to brag about but it does keep the iron handy and away from burnable objects. The cleaning sponge is thin and pointless, I will be replacing it with a brass sponge eventually, until then I will stick with a damp paper towel. In short, this will be the start of many "why did I not do this earlier" life moments.

Overall if you are looking at getting a hot air gun and nice soldering iron this should work for you. If you do not need the hot air then there are more actuate irons you can get for the same price.

Converting an PIR outdoor light circuit for 12v

2010-12-14T19:44:00.000-05:00

Being lazy I did not want to turn on and off my circuit tree on my desk at work, so I was just leaving it off. However, with the Christmas season upon us, people started to bug me about not leaving it on, so I decided to get creative and convert a PIR circuit from an old outdoor motion activated spotlight to run on a safer 12v and control the tree on my desk.

First off, after eagerly prying the circuit from the lamp I quickly realizes that it did not use a transformer like I was expecting. Most newer lights I looked at did. So I went out looking for a datasheet on the PIR controller ic, but the one used here is either too old, or is just unlisted. This was not going to be as easy as I was expecting it to be.

This was trouble some as every PIR ic has different pinouts, and some use a first/second amp other do not. So I went back to the basics and traced out the circuit with my multimeter and carefully sketched out the paths so I could better see what was going on. The first thing that stood out was the four large diodes which are clearly a rectifier, to convert ac to dc. After this, it passes through the biggest resister (blue tube) I have ever seen, which drops the voltage down to around 13v for the relay which is switched by a transistor. From there it is dropped further to 8v and smoothed out by a capacitor for the rest of the circuit. Which is odd as an ic usually takes 5v max, but as it was unlisted I only have the trace readings to go on, so I will assume it was built to handle a larger voltage.

After figuring out this much, it was not hard to see where I would need to apply 12v to have the circuit work exactly the same but at a far safer voltage. So after removing a small resister to break the original +120v (black) path, I now had an isolated PIR circuit and a separate circuit switched by the relay. Right now the relay will only deal with 9v, but this leaves it open to once again control higher voltages, for potential use at Halloween.

You can see the final result below.

I am quite happy that my digital/analog circuit skills have not gotten too rusty with all the programing I tend to focus on.

Google Voice app on iPod Touch

2010-11-16T18:30:00.005-05:00

Today I was pleased to see that Google had released an official Google Voice app, as the GVMobile+ ones from Cydia where somewhat broken. What I was not happy with was the device not supported message that I got when trying to sync. Apparently this is only for the iPhone... Well that would not last long. Below are the steps you need to take to get the app working on a jail broken iPod Touch.

Download the ipa from the iTunes store.
Change the .ipa to .zip and extract the Google Voice folder.
Open and find the payload folder and grab the GoogleDialer.app
Drop the GoogleDialer.app into the /Applications folder on the ipod via sftp.
Respring

Interestingly enough the application works great on an iPod Touch, it just will not install via itunes. I was looking through the ipa plist, but have not quite figured out what setting causes the restriction. Ideally removing the restriction and repacking the ipa would be best, but as I have it working, I will leave that up to someone with a bit more interest.

EDIT: Now that the official iPod version is out, this is no longer needed, unless you want the iPhone version.

Apple LaserWriter 12/640 setup with OS X

2010-10-16T14:49:00.001-04:00

Owning an old networked Apple LaserWriter LS 12/640 is cool, especially as found I can use the waste toner I clean from another printer to fuel this one. While the result is not amazing print quality, it works well for the occasional print job at home. The big problem is that setting up the printer is no longer supported in OS X, yet there is some unix and window hackery that will do the trick, the problem was getting them all to work from my Macbook Pro and not having to drag a PC into the mix.

First off you need to setup an IP for the printer, which by default has an IP of 0.0.0.0 and a subnet of 0.0.0.0. Normally back in the OS 8/9 days you would use the printer utility over appletalk. Sadly(?) apple talk has been removed as of 10.6. So time to delve into some unix to fix the issue.

Chapter 4 in the manual for the 12/640 covers setting of the printer for unix. Basically this breaks down into adding an entry to the host file (/etc/hosts) for the printer name and ip address of your choice for the printer. Then get the mac address for the printer, which is listed on the configuration page it will print out each time it is turned on when in config mode, e.g. little switch on back out, not in. Then use the following arp command in the terminal "arp -s printer_IP_name printer_Ethernet_address" followed by "ping printer_IP_name". This will create a link to the printer despite an IP address not being configured. Use this temporary link to telnet into the printer using the IP address you chose and finish up setting final network settings using the text menu system.

Next you will need to finish setting the other printer configuration items. However they are missing from the telnet menu. To gain access to these additional setting, such as turning off config page printing on powerup, you need to grab a copy of the Windows Laserwriter Utility. This can be run on a pc, through a virtual machine or by using Crossover Mac to simply run it in OS X. I used Crossover, installed the utility and it connected automatically the first time I ran it. You can tell the setting have been changed as the printer will be sent a job for each command and then print a wasteful page that confirms each change. After that the printer will be all set up and ready to be added to your printer list. The 12/640 driver is pre installed in 10.6, but must be chosen manually.

Once again I am recycling old tech for current use. Plus it is a pice of Apple history, is your made by Apple, for most that would be a no.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane Review

2010-08-12T20:24:00.000-04:00

For a couple of months now, I was eagerly awaiting the release of Hydro Thunder Hurricane(HTH), a ten years in the making redesign of the 1999 hit arcade racer Hydro Thunder(HT). While there are already numerous reviews out about the game I figure I would throw in a little depth with my 2 cents.

First off, the game carries the HT name quite well, however to fully enjoy it, you have to remember that this is not the same game we know and love. The boats are back and the race courses are exotic with twists and turns, however gone are the crazy announcer (different less impressive announcer now), mighty hull and a few other small parts, which have been replaced by different and in some case better improvements. The quick answer to "should I buy it" is YES, the long answer is... well read more to find out.

Controls:
The boat controls are similar to the original HT gas, boost and steer (but oddly no reverse). However the new wave physics of the water in each course makes the actual overall feel of each race far different from the original game and takes some getting used to. Hydro jumping makes a return, but is (over) simplified down to just a button press removing what was a tricky skill related move and replacing it with something anyone can achieve by pressing x. Might hull, the move that would smash opponents out of the way has been removed, which is a shame in single player, but makes sense in multiplayer, as it would turn into a complete mess of whoever runs out of boost first gets smashed, and there is already plenty of boat smashing going on.

Boats:
The Boats are back, minus Midway (now named Vector). Each has two or three unlockable skins to help show off your progress and make you stand out more in races. The boats are ranked novice, pro and expert (complete with the "your crazy"). However the feel of the boats have been altered considerably. The novice boats are not worth using after unlocking the pro boats, which may put off new players due to initial races being far more difficult to maneuver, however I urge you to keep playing because the pro/expert boat make the game far more enjoyable. On the other hand, further in the game the expert boats that can be unlocked are way more responsive than their original counter parts, rad hazard being a good example, it is far less prone to spin out on turns, which makes it quite fun to drive now. The down side to this is that in online competition almost every player uses a expert boat, sort of making the rest of the boats pointless (design flaw). Yet, while experienced players will probably stick with expert boats, I had no problems winning a few online multiplayer races with a Thresher(pro boat), it was just far more challenging than with the faster expert boats. In conclusion, other than the novice boats the rest are well relatively balanced and fun to race with once you master their quirks.

Tracks:
The tracks in HTH are all new, however they carry over the feel of the classic tracks. Below are a quick guide to the mix of each track based loosely on the classic ones.

Lake Powell (Lake Powell)
The first track, also making a triumphant return, a lot of different paths to take and a few classic shortcuts to leverage. All in all a fun track which won't take too long to master.

Storming Asgard (Arctic Circle + Ship Graveyard)
The second track, less light and lots of ice. A fun track with some cool surprises, though I am a little sad that the ice shortcuts require you to boost unlike the original which was crazy fast before even boosting.

Monster Island = (Jungle Adventure + Catacombs)
Third track, a circuit track with three laps that change what path is available to take due to the water level dropping. A few too many sharp turns for my tastes, but after getting used to it it is not too bad.

Hydro Dome (Hydro Speedway)
Fourth track, a circuit track with three laps which is very fun and built for speed. Close quarters so online play will knock you around a lot, however once you figure out the layout and shortcuts it is full throttle all the way to the finish. I destroy with Rad Hazard on this track!

Lost Babylon (Nile Adventure)
Fifth track, this one takes a lot of play to get used to, but is probably my favorite. Impressive visuals, lots of tricky shortcuts and quick turns make it very changeling but worth it.

Paris Sewers (New York Disaster)
Sixth track, a circuit track with three laps, built for speed and turns, not too much else going on, but still a solid track.

Seoul Stream (The Far East)
Seventh track, night track with lots of fancy lighted waterfalls and fountains. After the initial oohs and awes, not much going for this track beyond a few interesting but hard to activate/use water powered shortcuts.

Area 51 (Greek Isles + Ship Graveyard)
The eight and last track, a lot of people love this track, I like it but it is not my favorite. Includes a lot of interesting events going on in the background to keep you entertained. Otherwise a balanced track with emphasis on speed in the later half. Listen closely to what is said in the background during the race to get a few laughs.

Unlike the original HT, the track design in HTH are about the same in difficulty. Yep, sadly no Venice Canals successor to challenge our reflexes. Instead the difficulty of each track is controlled by what class of boat you use. Racing with a novice vs pro vs expert causes the other boats to adjust speed, use boost and take shortcuts. The expert racing is, as expected, the hardest as other boats are always at top speed. I prefer the pro races over all.

Secrets:
Secrets on each track are back, this time in abundance, with most tracks offering several routes to choose from, ranching from normal to secrets that have to be landed in from a high drop. This is fine, however I have a minor complaint with how a lot of the secrets are set up. A few have the classic feel, and if not taken only slow you down, however a lot of the extra paths are pointless to take. While even worse some important ones do not provide enough of a boost aid even after being extremely hard to access. Namely, that in the original HT taking shortcuts would normal fill your boost quit well, most in HTH do not, or even waste boost to access. This is not ruin the overall play experience, but you will occasional find your self thinking, "why did I even take this shortcut?"

Online Play:
Of all the features in HTH the one that I was looking forward to most is the online play. Races pit you against 1-7 other players with the host of each game choosing what map is played. I must say that the developers could have taken a cue from the Halo series and added a count down to each lobby, as I am always kicking out people who sit in a not ready state for over 20 seconds while every other player is ready to go. Beyond that the races are as expected, far different and more challenging than with humans vs the game AI. You tend to get knocked around far more as experienced players try to prevent others from getting boosts and accessing shortcuts. To make things more even in races, boost is adjusted based on position, so first gets normal while 8th place gets 8X as much ofter filling the gauge, this is both annoying if you are in first and very helpful when your boat explodes from a small mistake, so I am listing it as a moot point, though in the end it does not do much to help new players win, and would have been nice to be able to disable. In the end a ranking system would have been more fair for new players; I hit the game running, but new younger players must be feeling some frustration being constantly pitted against veteran players with no chance of winning till they get used to the track and unlock better boats. I have had a few races where I am against only one person in a novice boat, I had a good 60sec lead by the end, which is just not fair for them, but an easy win for me. Beyond the online races the leader board keeps track of your overall rank on each track, but due to some glitch problems on tracks allowing players to achieve impossible times, the leader boards are somewhat pointless, nothing like seeing 1:20 at the top where I can only get close to 2:00 on a race with an expert boat.

Down loadable content:
While rumors are flying, it is mostly confirmed that two more tracks should be available at some point.

That about covers the game, so if you like what you have seen go buy the game, if anything go grab the demo and check it out, however be ready for the novice boats to be very lame to drive.

Install Microsoft SDK in Visual C++ 6

2010-07-30T10:13:00.001-04:00

A recent project required me to work with the JobObject feature of the Microsoft API, this worked fine with VC++9 however when it came time to re-try it in VC++6, I quickly became aware of the fact that the base SDK that comes with VC++6 did not have a definition for the JOBOBJECT_EXTENDED_LIMIT_INFORMATION struct or the enum needed to attach it to a precess in order use it. Sadly I needed this for a "kill at end of job command", where as other more basic JobObject features did work with the base SDK. So while I could re implement the struct I was stuck beyond that. Lucky a SDK update fixed the issue. But like so many other things getting the update working was not quite that easy.

VC++6 will only work with Windows Server 2003 SP1 SDK as the latest update, be careful not to grab anything newer than that. Get it Here (bottom of page) Next let it install, which will take a good ten minutes. After it has installed then launch VC++6 and go to Tools > Options and click the Directory tab. Now in each of the correct lists (drop down option) add an entry for either the include, bin or lib folders that are located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\. Finally, the last important step is to move the new SDK items up to the top of each of these lists, if you do not the order will cause issues and the SDK files will not be used or will have errors.

Now JobObjects work as expected.

Adding an AUX to a Clarion PF-2597A-B

2010-06-27T00:42:00.004-04:00

Originally I had planned to just buy a new after market head unit for my car, do to its lack of an AXU input for my iPod, however after seeing nothing within my price range that was decent looking, I realized that I may have been on the wrong track. While doing some research, I stumbled upon this forum posting about adding an AUX input to an old car tape deck. After digging some more on this topic I found that people have been successful with hijacking both the AM/FM and CD input on stereo circuits. The CD methods seemed like a bad idea due to needing a silent cd to play constantly, which is just asking to wear out the stereo cd drive. So I went with hijacking the FM audio out pins of the stereo. The interesting part about using the AM/FM method is that due to the Auto Gain Control built in, when a MP3 player is connected, its stronger signal seems to overrides the AM/FM on the board and effectively shuts it off without any extra effort on your part. From what I have read, this seems to be the case with most car stereos, however your results may vary.

Here is a good place for the standard warning: I did this project knowing it could potentially destroy the stereo and/or the mp3 player, if you attempt the same thing or something similar you face the same risks. Do not blame me if you break anything by following my information or pictures, I express no warrantee on this information's correctness or usability.

I started off my taking the stereo apart and looking up the chips on the reverse side of the board shown here. There is a lot of mixed opinion on where the best place to connect to is, and it seems to vary from different stereos, so it is best to see what you are working with first. While this gave me some good extra info, I quickly realized that this was not necessary, due to the pinout being printed on the back of the board. I did some voltage checks while the stereo was plugged in and running, the FM outs gave a normal voltage variation between 0v and 3.6v, which means that I would not overload anything with a mp3 player's small voltage output. After figuring out on paper what I wanted to do and finishing my voltage checks, I did a quick test run with a temporary 1/8 inch plug connected and an older expendable mp3 player. While I was expecting this to work out, it was exciting to hear it function, when the player was plugged in, the FM cut out and the mp3 was clearly playing unplug it and the FM comes back as normal. While the signal is stronger, the max voltage from the mp3 player is lower than the FM, so the mp3 player needs to be set to at least half volume to be heard well, not bad, but definitely not perfect. There may be a better connect point that uses a lesser voltage, however I am sticking to the ones on the edge due to it being easy to access and solder.

After testing and finding out that this did indeed work, I drilled a hole in the back of the stereo and added a 1/8 inch plug and then ran a short shielded audio cable to the pins I used in my test. The board picture above has the final wiring, which pokes out of the side and is soldered to the correct pins coming from the separate AM/FM board and ground which is a larger solder point connecting to the metal housing. By using a shielded cable inside the radio, it will prevent any extra interference due to the wire stretching across the board from the back panel. After doing one final check, I reassembled the stereo, now with its new AUX plug. Finally, I put together a separate cable to plug into this AUX port and run it to a more convent location in the center console.

The wire runs down from the back of the stereo and connects to another 1/8 inch plug from which I can easily plug in an mp3 player or another other audio device. After making sure everything was in order I snapped all the console panels back into place leaving just the new 1/8 inch port left in view. This is nice, because it means that there is no obvious indication that the stereo is no longer stock, making it a far less likely target for theft, not that the radio is easy to get out to begin with.

After doing some actual road testing and letting it run for a while using my expendable mp3 player, I am quite satisfied as well as confident that there is no chance it will harm my iPod, so now I am ready for the commute on monday morning. I must say that the only down side to this setup is that the mp3 volume needs to be over 50% and the stereo volume ends up being about 12 higher than cd or radio (25-30 vs 10-15 out of 40). Not that this is a problem, it is just the only flaw to the design and may be fixed by using a closer point to the volume control chip. Either way, I am happy and my car now has a handy AUX port, all at the cost of $3 for 1/8 inch plugs.

Other possible options instead of this and costs...

DIY AUX ($0-$50 depending on your extra parts supply)

Clarion CeNET adaptor EA1251B ($99 and cannot have CD Changer option installed)

New separate head unit with AUX ($60-$500)

Reading plist files

2010-05-15T13:21:00.024-04:00

When developing for the mac platform, app preferences are supposed to be stored in ~/Library/Preferences/. While finding and reading a preference file is easy enough, reading usable information from it is another matter. This is because in the last couple of system updates (10.5+) the xml based plist files used for preferences are now saved in a binary format, not the UTF-8 format you would suspect. The tricky part of this is that if you are using the NSDictonary class in Objective-C you will not encounter any problems, but when using any other programing language you suddenly get a mess of garbage text. Luckily OSX had a built in command to help remedy the issue. The plutil command converts plists between the text based XML and binary based.

As an example in Java you can use the Runtime class to invoke the command on the fly.

Runtime.getRuntime().exec(new String[]{plutil", "-convert", "xml1", filepath});

To convert a file back once you have read or edited it use this.

Runtime.getRuntime().exec(new String[]{plutil", "-convert", "binary1", filepath});

It is also good check for the lastIndexOf("bplist") as it will alert you if the file is currently in binary form.

Powering an Xbox 360 dvd drive

2010-04-23T17:19:00.000-04:00

While I was waiting to be able to power my experimental/half working xbox 360 I decided to see if I could easily get the firmware keys off the drive (Note: this not for piracy, the dvd drive is not working and I would like to replace it at some point.) First off, the dvd drive is a sata drive, however it does not run off of a sata power connector, instead it has a 12 pin connector where 10 of the pins are used. Pins 1-2 are not used on the connector, pins 3-4 & 6 are +3.3v, pins 5,7,9,11 are ground, pin 8 is +5v and finally pins 10 & 12 are +12v. I was able to figure out this pinout using the post here.

Sadly, I was not able to get the key off the drive this time, however I was able to create a simple xbox 360 dvd power adaptor which was powered by a standard computer power supply, or in my case a power adaptor for powering a single computer drive. In the picture you can see my simple power supply on a breadboard, most of this is straight forward, the only tricky part is you need a 3.3v regulator to drop the +5v line down to the 3.3v the drive needs. You can see the regulator at the top of the board with two capacitors keeping the output clean at a stable +3.3v. I did not use a switch to eject the drive, because from what I can tell, the drive motor controller is damaged and will only make a minor movement before freezing and not responding again.

While an interesting side project, it was somewhat pointless as now I can just use the 360 to power it. However it was convent to move this smaller adaptor vs a whole opened 360. Eventually I will take another stab at getting the key off, but not till I have had my fill of xbl arcade.

XBox 360 Cooling Experiments

2010-04-20T21:51:00.002-04:00

I have an older xbox 360 that a friend had given me a while ago, it had no power brick, controller or av, and I was told that the DVD drive was not working. As I have limited expendable money right now, it sat in storage for a few months waiting for a time where I had extra money or a reason to get it up and running again. However, with the upcoming summer release of Hydro Thunder Hurricane I decided it would be worth finally getting the 360 ready.

I was able to snag a used power brick off bay for around $10 with shipping, so all that was left was to check out the guts while I was waiting for snail mail to arrive. First off I quickly released why the GPU overheats in 360's, the DVD drive sits on top of it, and the front has no air vents what so ever to let in fresh air. Second the fans in the back have a single shroud instead of separate channels for the CPS and GPU, so most of the air is just pulled from just the larger CPU heat sink. I remedied this by building a wall to separate the shroud into two separate paths, forcing the right side fan to pull as much air as possible from the GPS heat sink. Next, I add a third fan as an air intake, this was placed over the open area inside the case in front of the CPU heat sink. I also added a plastic wall the cuts the fan air intake into two parts, half is blown into the CPU heat sink, while the other half is blown under the DVD drive so fresh cool air is available to the GPU intake. It was easy to mount a fan that fits the space, as the thin metal shield cover for the 360 has holes already drilled in an attempt to allow a pitiful amount of air to be drawn in, the holes will fit two normal sized fan screws and holds it nicely against the top of the side wall. I removed the extra metal around the fan intake and then drilled a same sized hole into the white plastic cover above this. Screen mesh was added to cover the fan intake and protect it. Finally, I used metal heating duct foil tape to cover the fan sides as well as do some plugging of gaps in the heat sink shroud connections.

I have never owned a 360 before, so I will have to do some heat comparisons, but it does not feel like an excessive amount of heat is being blown out the back, so I am assuming this does work to cool the insides better, or at least that is the standard thinking as I have seen that many other people have added an intake fan in this location.

DIY Fog Chiller

2010-03-29T17:30:00.006-04:00

I have owned a fog machine for many years now, but I had always wanted to make a fog chiller to get a crawling fog effect. However, due to the wind around my house in the fall, it makes it usually pointless for halloween, so until now I had held off on spending any money on it. But when low lying fog was needed for a youth play I was helping setup and run lighting for, I finally had the excuse I needed.

So before any details, a bit of physics… A simple fog machine works by vaporizing a fluid (usually made of mineral oil, glycol, or glycol and water mixture) into a heat exchanger, where the fluid is quickly vaporized. This means that fog is usually somewhat warm, as it does cool down quickly as it expands, similar to compressed air. However it is still warm enough that it always rises as it is released. To remedy this, a fog chiller is used to cool down the fog faster so it lays low and clings to the ground. Some simple examples can be found on youtube that use a metal pipe or plate and ice to cool down the fog, which to my surprise does not need a lot of ice to achieve the task. Though watching expensive professional fog machines run is rather impressive. [Check it out]

Still I wanted to do something more than a simple metal tube, so after purchasing the cheapest plastic bin I could find ($5) I gathered up some PVC tube, mesh window screen, a 120mm computer fan and a plastic sandwich bag.

As you can see from my pictures the mesh is bent and woven into a wave shape for a clear path the smoke can move through, this ensures maximum exposure to the ice is possible and allows the fog to fill the container. Next the mesh smoke path is placed between the PVC inlet and the outlet fan using the lip in the container to to hold it up. Ice is filled all around the mesh as well as in between the gaps between the smoke path. A variable voltage transformer and a remote controlled outlet is used to control power and the speed of the fan. It is pointless to leave the fan running all the time as it will melt the ice faster. Finally a plastic bag with a stiff edge is used as a simple laminar to help smooth and direct the fog to the ground for a gentle rolling effect. While I did not get a chance to take a video of it in action I have included a video of another person's fog chiller which produced the same effect. (AKA, It is not my home, and I do not own such a sketchy rug...)

I was quite happy with the results, the ice lasted and with plenty to spare, while sitting in-between uses for a good hour. And produced a good layer of fog for the two scenes that needed it. Interestingly enough a chiller seems to works better in cold air than warm, due to it keeping the fog cool longer, which is the opposite of what I assumed, as I thought it would be better to have warm ambient air to keep the fog as the cooler sinking air. Also the slower the fog is, the lower it will stay, so if you have a container to pump it into first before cooling it will help slow it, but I will save that for the v2. As you can see from my results, if you own or want a standard fog machine (quite cheap now a-days) you need to make a fog chiller, also don't buy a combined model as they only produce a slow steady output of fog, which is only is useful for an small indoor room.

Poking with ajax

2010-03-24T17:39:00.002-04:00

I have played with Ajax before and even used it in a few projects, but never in a way that it was obvious. With the next round of CADY site updates I have finally had a chance to put ajax to some real use. For the upcoming parent network, which is more or less a very simplified forum I am coding from scratch, I needed a simple and easy to use registration page for parents. Setting up a page is easy, making it point out peoples mistakes in a dynamic non refresh ways is not.

It is good HCI practice to limit any screen refreshes to just when locations are actually changing, it is what people expect. Where as if a user submit a form only to have it return and to say you missed something is not as intuitive, because the user has already moved on in their thought process. This is where javascript and ajax usually come in. By allowing the page to call remote content you can check form fields on changes and then update the user to missed fields or issues before they submit. You could extend the process and prevent even the submit if things are not correct, however this falls outside my current beliefs on how applications should handle user control. If the user wants to submit the page with missing items even after being notified, let them, however have it fail the submit on the server side and then bring them back to the restored page with a notice of what they missed. This forces the user to learn that finishing a form properly the first time is worth not having to remember what they where filling out.

You can check out the CADY Parent Network Registration Page to see my progress and fancy ajax trimmings, however please do not sign up unless you are actually a parent who is interested.

Growth Issues,SN Java BufferedImage Transition

2010-03-09T10:57:00.008-05:00

With my SN Project slowly coming closer to completion, I decided that I would try out making a simple game to see what needs work, however like always, my plans where derailed quite quickly. I had a small library of images that was working quite well at the time, however after increasing the library to a couple thousand images, I quickly noticed that things where not working quite right, well… actually not at all, it was throwing a java.lang.OutOfMemoryError and crashing. The memory error that as an easy fix, adding a VMOptions tag to the info.plist with -Xmx1024m allowed for me to set the max memory to a much greater amount, however this was nothing more than a temporary fix, I knew there was a much greater issue behind this problem.

The size of the image library was around 150Mb, which when loaded to memory would be larger due to it being uncompressed, however it should not have been much larger than 2X the base size or 300Mb as an upper limit. I was shocked when memory needed skyrocketed to well over 700 Mb, whereas the standard max for the Java VM is around 100Mb. So I went looking for a memory leak. Java handles most memory issues, but it still can have problems with large collections of data gathered in a short period of time, due to the built in garbage collection running only occasionally as needed. After doing some research via Google, I stumbled upon a complaint about the MediaTracker keeping references to the images it tracks, which while in small numbers is not an issue, but can quickly build up as more images are tracked. This was exactly what I was doing wrong.

The standard Image class in java does not load the image into memory right away, instead it acts as a reference until it is needed. This behavior could be seen when removing the method calls to add images to a MediaTracker, the memory used would only increase to around 50Mb and slowly grow as images where loaded when needed. The problem with this is that it causes an issues with flickering in animations. When each frame is used for the first time, it actually draws it on the second call after the first call forces it to be loaded into memory. The standard practice at the time of Java 1.3 to 1.4 was to use a MediaTracker to force the images to load and for my initial use worked quite well. However my project has finally grown beyond the simple use of a MediaTracker. The next step I took was to try some suggestions on limiting the memory retention by removing images from the tracker when they are loaded, or by using separate trackers for each image as well as forcing garbage collection with System.gc(). A mix of these solutions did lower my memory use, however as usual the trade off for space was time and this setup slowed my image loading algorithm to a crawl.

It was quite apparent that I needed something better, and after a bit more research I decided to transition my SN Project from using the base Image class to the improved BufferedImage class available in Java 1.5+. I had actually been using the BufferedImage class for a few things already, but a total transition was not a simple matter. For the most part you can use BufferedImage anywhere you are already using Image, due to the BufferedImage extending the Image class. One huge benefit was that the ImageIO class, instead of the awt Toolkit, loaded the whole image to memory so a MediaTracker is not needed and this sped things up greatly and removed my memory leak. Compared to before, now it only was using around 230Mb, which was well inside my expected limits.

The big problem that I ran into while changing over my code was that the sneaky way I was loading my animation class into my image array on the engine side would no longer be feasible. Originally, I had found a nifty solution to my space problem, with a bit of tweaking my animation class could extend the Image class and then be inserted into my image array for quickly accessing both the game animations and images through one simple method call. It also only needed minimal conditional checks which I already had in place. While this worked well with Image, there is no such luck with BufferedImage. You can serialize a class that extends BufferedImage, but you cannot deserialize it, because as it lacks the "no argument" constructor needed to reconstruct the base class. This left me frustrated and quite annoyed, by this point the editor was ready and working, but the engine would not accept the image data.

A few hours later, I had separated the animations from the image array and while I was sad that I had to abandon my unique solution, it was probably for the best as it is easier to figure out what the code is doing now. This is where big problem two popped up. I was using a PixelGrabber to export my images to an int array and then reconstructing them with MemoryImageSource and the awt Toolkit to load them back into an Image and then forcing them into memory with a MediaTracker. This was not going to work as I was now avoiding the Toolkit and MediaTracker classes. With some more research I finally pieced together that I could do a similar process but this time to a byte array. A simple example of what I am doing is listed below.

Exporting is the same as saving the image, but to a byte stream instead of a file.

ByteArrayOutputStream bstream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
ImageIO.write(img, "png", bstream);
byte bytearray[] = bstream.toByteArray();

To convert the image back you can read the byte array using a ByteArrayInputStream.

BufferedImage image = ImageIO.read(new ByteArrayInputStream(bytearray));

At this point, around ten hours after I started, I now had a working engine and editor again, however it was rendering slower than before. I commented out a most of the drawing and logic method calls and found that the engine would run around 50 FPS with minimal drawing, on the other hand, with all calls back on it ran around 8 FPS. Interestingly enough, the logic was the issue, instead drawing a single large transparent image of the GUI was causing a 40 FPS reduction. I was aware that transparency always causes a speed reduction due to increased processes needed to render it, but not by that much!

It took some more searching to figure out what was wrong. In Java images come in a few different types running in different modes, examples of these would be Image, VolatileImage and BufferedImage. I found VolatileImage quite fascinating as it is the fastest since it is always stored in the graphics hardware memory, but the trade off is that it always may or may not be available due to the possibility of it being overwritten by something else in the limited space of video memory. You must repeatedly check to see if it is still there, the descriptions of this made me think of trying to arrange a large group of very hyper children into a pattern, but at any point they may scatter. Luckily, with new changes in the BufferedImage class it too tries to run in video memory if possible, but only if it is setup to be compatible with the current video configuration. Apparently, using the ImageIO read method does not always create the fastest images, it was suggested that you create a more compatible image using the current graphics configuration and draw the image onto that. This also seems to only cause a minimal increase in processing that is easily outweighed by the huge increase of rendering speed. After converting all the SNEngine's BufferedImage objects with the GraphicsConfiguration createCompatibleImage() method a huge increase could be seen, going from 8FPS to around 35FPS, my target being 30FPS.

I still have some more work to do on increasing efficiency, but this tedious transition was an eye opening experience. As usual I have learned more than I expected, but this new information on Java graphics will probably come in handy later. (NOTE: This was found to be true on OSX 10.6 compiling for Java 1.5+, while most things would be similar on other platforms, the low level hardware acceleration for graphics does slightly differ on each operation system and JDK.)

Java JNI Custom About Box

2010-03-01T14:37:00.002-05:00

It is silly just how long it took me to figure out this one line of code... A few months ago, I had finished porting over my SN Project from standard Java to then new JNI Library in Xcode 3.2. However, no matter how much I poked and prodded and searched, I could not figure out how to override the simple About Box I am assuming is provided by the JavaApplicationStub.

Luckily, today I finally stumbled on the answer in an obscure thread on the Apple Mailing List. The short answer is that I was not telling the event that it was already handled before letting the method end, the default box was called as a result of this.

You can see below that you need to add setHandled(true); to the handleAbout ApplicationEvent that is in the OSXAppAdaptor class provided with the JNI Template, or where ever you are handling the EAWT action calls.

public void handleAbout(final ApplicationEvent e)
{
   e.setHandled(true);

I actually feel a bit stupid for not noticing this sooner as a few of the other action call methods already are setting handleAbout but it was not that clear what it was doing so I completely over looked it. Well, with this fixed I now have all the kinks worked out, now on to finishing up the features and finally hitting a stable 1.0 release, though it may take another year.

You should have seen it coming! EpicGame on iPhone!

2010-02-13T19:12:00.001-05:00

Well, after a few days of learning the ins and outs of UIView and the CGContext classes in Objective C, I went to work porting the classes from the original VB EpicGame to iPhone friendly Objective C classes. This was rather straight forward and other than changing the method formatting almost all the logic was still sound. The big difference that did require some tweaking was that Quartz or CoreImage uses a diffrent orgin point, it is the bottom left, not top left as almost everything else. Oddly enough all the images just needed to be flipped in PhotoShop and all was fine, with little to no code change.

What is different is that there are no keys, you move left and right by holding the left or right edges of the screen. A tap will shoot, and a swipe up makes epic box jump. Pritty niffty I must say.

I quickly found out that the drawing class CGContext was annoying near the end, as you are forced to rely of the Touch OS to draw when it is ready, vs forcing a redraw when needed as I am used to. This takes a huge hit on speed, but I am lazy and do not want to spend an entire extra week of studying just to use OpenGL ES instead. It is large complex and annoying, plus way too much for a simple game like this. Oh, and thanks Apple for not making the iPhone simulator actually match the real speed of an iPhone, for others as a warning, the simulator runs graphic calls around 100 times faster than a real iPod 1G, don't be fooled!

You can grab a copy here, sorry non JailBreakers no portable EpicGame for you, as I am not paying $99 to Apple to distribute a free app, plus the music would most likely prevent it from being approved anyway, as it is used without permission, but without it, it just would not be the same.

Other then the code and the can monster art, I claim no ownership of the rest of the art and music, and as such I am posting the App as free for use as is, enjoy.

Coinco 9300-CL Reverse Engineering Part 1

2010-01-25T09:32:00.001-05:00

A while back I was able to get several parts to a vending system off of school surplus. Which I was quite excited about, because it was something I had always wanted to be able to play with. However I quickly ran into problems in trying to use it as there was nothing online to help. But, finally with the arduino that I now have, I believe I can make it all work. So I started out by seeing if I can get just the coin changer to interface with my computer via the arduino.

The coin changer is a coinco 9300-CL which from what I can tell is the same as the 9300-L model, but with it requiring 117 instead of a lower voltage. Both seem to have the option of a 15 pin or 12 pin plus, the CL has a 12 pin plug. Using the service manual found here. It explains the pinout and basic operation of the coin changer. However the image for any details of the communication is rather blurry and almost impossible to understand, so I had to do some poking to figure out what was what. To start out the 12 pin plug has 6 vertical pins and then 6 more pins that alternate vertical and horizontal. Pin 1 is the first vertical pin of the all vertical group, starting on the left and then 2 in the middle and finally pin 3 on the right. The rest of the pins follow suit in numbering from left to right on each row. Luckily I had a connector that came from the vending device, so I simple had to use my multimeter to find the connected point on the female connector for the main board. Which was nice as it had the two 117 volt pins removed so I could not accidentally destroy anything!

Using the service manual I have compiled a much easier to read version for the pinout as it was on the female header end of the plug. You will notice pin 10 and 12 are missing as there is no need for them because another pair of separate wires run to my power supply for those pins. For basic use it looks like you simple need pin 1 and 2 hooked up to +5 and ground on the arduino and then 3 to a digital output pin and 4 and 5 to digital input pins. Pin 3 is your TX pin for the serial communication where pin 5 is the RX. However pin 4 is used as an interrupt that signals when data is going to be sent. Sadly the service manual only covers a single example of when a coin is used. This states that when a coin is entered it will send an interrupt to the controller via pin 4 and then wait for a signal on pin 3, which after receiving it will finally send a message with information on the coin and other states. This is nice, but what I needed is how to connect to it at startup as well. It looks like when the coin changer is first turned on it sends a status request to the controller and will not fully activate until the request is answered. This is preventing me from actually using it in any way.

So to get around this I hooked everything up to the controller board I already have, that came with the parts, and started intercepting the communication between the coin changer and the controller, using my simple oscilloscope and the arduino to read the serial communication. For the most part the serial communication is simple enough, however I have yet to figure out the actual protocol used. From what I have seen online I believe the 9300-CL uses some form of the MDB protocol however I have not been able to quite narrow it down to the 9 bits it should be using if that is the case. I have tried many different timing setups in order to catch the correct bits, 2400 and 3300 microsecond delays between bits seem to get the best results so far, which I would happily use, if not for the fact that I also need to talk to the coin changer, not just read what it spits out. So I am now waiting for a reply from coinco tech support to see if they can shed some light on the matter, otherwise it will be a slow process of trial and error till I get the right timing and figure out the correct protocol.

SSH Messenger

2010-01-18T19:43:00.004-05:00

As a request, I have finished my second full Objective C project. If someone is on a computer wearing headphones and is not in convenient shouting range this app makes it simple to still get their attention. It would also make a good admin tool, or a awesome way to prank/annoy someone. It is a simple application that will connect to a remote computer via SSH and then use the built in osascript libraries to cause a dialog prompt to appear. However instead of requiring some terminal skills, instead just enter the IP, username and password of the remote computer and then type your message. A handy shell script takes care of all the rest. Click here to check it out. (Universal Binary, Mac OS X 10.5+)

This was an interesting project, not so much on the Objective C side, which I am getting quite good at, instead the shell scripting was a challenge this time. In order to have the SSH command work without setting up key pairs, I needed to delve into the world of Expect. Expect is a handy command set that allows you to set up automation of terminal entry. In short you can have it "expect" some input and then after finding it, send some output to the terminal, which in my case was the password entry for ssh. The ssh command does not have a password argument, so it needed expect to look for the password prompt and then enter a password for the user. It also led to a nice way to do some general result checking in the case of a prompt with two or more button options.

Expect while a little strange at first was not that hard to figure out and only took about an hour and a half to have down pat and working the way I wanted it to. Sadly as it is based out of /usr/bin/expect you cannot use echo command, which made it slightly harder to learn when something was not working.

Check out the base script I came up with below...

#!/usr/bin/expect -f
#log_user 0
set addr [lindex $argv 0]
set usr [lindex $argv 1]
set pas [lindex $argv 2]
set message [lindex $argv 3]
set from [lindex $argv 4]
# now connect to remote UNIX box (addr) with given script to execute
spawn ssh $usr@$addr -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no
match_max 100000
# Look for any ssh issue that needs exit
set timeout 4
expect "ssh:" {exit 2}
# Look for password prompt(s)
expect "*?assword:*" {send "$pas\r"}
# Look for password rejection and exit
expect "*?assword:*" {exit 1}
set timeout 10
# send osascript commands for popup
send "osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to activate'\r"
#send "osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to display dialog \"$message\"'\r"
send "osascript -e 'tell app \"Finder\" to display dialog \"$message\" buttons \"Ok\" default button 1 with title \"Message From $from\" with icon caution'\r"
# Look for reply
expect "button returned:Ok" {
 send "logout\r"
 exit 0
}
send "logout\r"
exit;

Another important thing to note is that I was rather annoyed to find out it required the curly braces to be placed how they are, due to it being based on Tcl. However it was only a minor inconvenience until I realized that is why if kept having errors. The script above takes 5 arguments Address, User, Password, Message and From, and is the general Alert script used in the SSH Messenger.

This makes the first Objective C and Shell combo app that I have done, which is a nice change from the Java Shell combo I am more used to working with. That and it was a good refresher in shell scripting.

A look back before a step forward...

2010-01-01T16:24:00.001-05:00

With the passing of Dec 31, it is now 2010 and I have been think back on the past year. All and all it was not too bad a year, although not exactly perfect either. Looking back...

GOOD...
Graduated from College (with, in my opinion, flying colors)
Caught up on some good reading
Spent time with family
Had fun with friends
Could actually enjoy the full Christmas Season
Finished some very cool projects

BAD...
Still no full time job, (but part time is better than nothing)
No personal car (not huge, but annoying at times)
Paying back school loans (easy to do, but I hate seeing the money leave)

As you can see, the good easily outweighed the bad, which hopefully in this next year will be finish off completely. Because, all and all, other than the lack of full time job, life is not too bad. Thus, I do not think I have much of a right to complain.

After looking at the past year, I got to thinking back on the fact that ten years have passed from the year 2000, and all the changes that have happened in the last ten years. Some of the things I realized where quite amusing.

10 Years ago...
I was happy using dial up (3.5 Kb/s!)
Had never formally programed (but was used to html!)
Used a black & white powerbook duo (system 6.5)
Listened to all my music on cd/cassette player
Never put up a halloween display
Had only hiked one mountain
Lived in a different house
Had a small messy room
Watched way more tv
Could not drive

However a few things have not changed even after ten years...
Still put up a Christmas tree in my room each year
Still chase and poke crabs each summer
Still working with circuits (but much better at it)
Still get along well with my parents
Still fixing things
Still use a Mac

Looking at just these changes over a decade of my life, I have to wonder what will the next ten years bring!

Colour My - Game Series

2009-12-28T19:53:00.001-05:00

A while back I found great enjoyment in playing a simple flash game called Colour My Heart. It was a release for valentines of 2009 on Newgrounds, and ranks right up there with several of the other artistic games I have posted about in the past. Instead of being a challenging game, it is more of a piece of interactive art with a simple story. As SilverStitch, the author puts it, "This is not a 'hardcore gaming experience'...its just simple and more artistic". I was blown away by how well the simple pencil like graphics and backgrounds could come together to be as immersive as it ends up being. See Example Below...

I was very happy to recently find out see that the author has continued the Colour My - Series with several other titles all with a similar poetic twist on a deeper love and relationship theme. However, what is truly nice about the series is that you do not need to be a hardcore gamer, instead some basic platforming ability and the ability to figure a few puzzles is all that is necessary to enjoy it. I strongly recommend taking a look at the series by visiting the links below.

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T06:16:00.000-05:00

Hopefully everyone has a Merry Christmas today.

Old vs. New generations using technology.

2009-12-12T01:02:00.007-05:00

I had a fascinating conversation this week while working, which got me thinking about the differences between the old and new generations using technology. This is something I experienced first hand while working at the school help desk a few years ago. Usually by thinking about the past generation and technology, you always get the standard not compatible, has trouble keeping up stigmas. To put it bluntly technology illiterate as people like to put it. However, I hate when anyone uses (or overuses) the "I am technology illiterate" excuse. Hey, I am not amazing at spelling, yet could I go to a english class and get away with simply saying "I am writing illiterate? The answer is no! Nor do I believe that anyone of an older generation is completely devoid of the ability to keep up with new technology, I have seen older people do just fine in some cases.

So if it is not simply a random generation gap, what is it that makes it easier for the new generation to work with technology? I thought about this for a while and came to an interesting realization, it is not so much a generation issue as it is a technology change issue. Think about how technology is today, constantly updating changing and hopefully improving. I know I expect this, even look for it, to the point that I am disappointed when something does not make small changes fast enough. The words, "small changes" are the critical piece that has caused this gap. The technology of the previous generation did not change the way it does today, changes where slow and costly, where new version only came infrequently with large updates, and sticking with a version was not uncommon (aka legacy systems). This is no longer the case, as things are almost out of date as they reach our hands. To put this in perspective, I am now seeing people of the older generation sitting down and learning Windows 7 after using XP or 2000 for many years. However, other then the general annoyance of the task, this seem almost normal to them. It is nothing more then large delayed shift to the next big thing that they will again use for an extended length of time before finally making a large shift to the next thing. As is normal for this past generation.

The really interesting thing is that other than the fact that I am not a Windows fan, I greatly abhor the switch to vista or win7 from xp, almost in a way that is ingrained. Yet after thinking about these generation differences it is almost expected. The Graphical User Interface(gui) and other parts are a huge shift from the norm I am used to working with; this is not a bunch of constant quick small updates! Annoyingly, this tends to be the Microsoft model of doing OS updates, and in some cases software (the new office suite for example). Which works, but psychologically, only for the past generation...

Further expanding this leads me to think this is also another reason why I keep sticking to the Mac side. The People always complain that OS X updates are always many small changes on the standard OS, which seem pointless to pay for as it is not a big change, however it fits what this generation is looking for, yearly (constant) updates that add many new (small) feature, and does not make any huge changes to the way you use it that may require relearning. I believe that the slowly increasing market share, mostly with young high school and college students may indicate just this.

The topic of relearning is another interesting point. In general it is a known fact that it is much easier to learn something new than it is to retrain your self, which is why habits are so hard to break. This is why the many small changes model seems to work so well. The changes slowly pile up till they finally replace something old, this way you are not relearning something, instead you have slowly replaced it with better new features that you have already learned the steps for. The past generation, however, is a little different. I know from helping older people that simply pointing out a new easier feature, which makes perfect sense to me, does not seem to work. Instead the set memorized way that they go about using a system needs to be thrown out before the idea that a new way needs to be relearned is mentally accepted. Something that as expected is not easy to do, and causes younger generation help desk employes to quickly get frustrated.

Sadly, this does not shed any direct light on fixing this generation gap, however it does illuminate the main disconnect. Which may in some way allow for a common ground between quick and constant vs. big and slow changes to be found in technology use of a different generation.

Simple HTML Parser in Objective C

2009-11-30T15:14:00.003-05:00

For my current project I needed a way to fetch remote html and then parse it into a more accessible data form. So I took my Java XML Parser work and ported it over to Objective C and extended it to work with HTML, which tends to be far more messy and broken... grr. To combat this, unlike a full html parser, this converts it to a psudo xml form, where all character data between > and < and > or /> is appended to the tag string. The down side to this is that you need to parse out any needed tag attributes separately, but that is a price I am willing to pay in this case.

Check out the files below for the code...
HTMLNode.h
NTMLNode.m

Using the HTMLNode class should be simple enough, just import the HTMLNode.h file and then use the example below to get started. It is good to note that this parser expects clean and valid HTML/XHTML, however most sites have some issue or mistake. This may cause you a few headaches, it did for me. Still the parser should get most if not all the tags, so in this case use the search function "-(HTMLNode*) search:(HTMLNode*) root: (NSString*) term" to find a containing div tag and then use getChildN for traversing the rest.

// Setup and build html node tree in root...
NSString *url = @"http://www.google.com";
HTMLNode *root = [[HTMLNode alloc] init];
[root buildFromURL: url: root];

// Get the head tag which should be root child 0...
HTMLNode *headnode = [root getChildN:0];

// The tag of the head node should be "head"...
NSLog([headnode getTag]);

As usual the code is free to use, but please give me some credit if it is used in a large project, or at least leave a comment about what it was used in.

Creating an Array of NSDictonary Objects

2009-11-27T10:53:00.000-05:00

I had created an interface for the NSTableView class in InterfaceBuilder and needed a way to update the table with items. The easiest way seemed to be with an array of NSDictionary objects. But as I was not quite fimilar with the NSDictionary class I first had to look up how to create and fill one. Below is a base example I came up with.

// Aloc and Init Array
NSMutableArray *array = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithCapacity:1];

// Setup keys
NSArray *keys = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"Name", @"Job", nil];

// Setup values
NSArray *values = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"Epic Box", @"running", nil];

// Add new NSDictionary with keys and values
[array addObject:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjects: values forKeys: keys]];

To get a value from a NSDictionary object you can do as follows...

//Using the array from the example above
NSInteger index = 0;
NSString *key = @"Name";

// Get value
NSString *result [[array objectAtIndex: index] objectForKey: key];

Remote File Request to NSString in Objective C

2009-11-27T10:23:00.002-05:00

A current side project in Obj C that I m working on required a way to fetch a remote HTML file and parse through it to get the url of links and images. The first step required a way to get a remote file and store it as a NSString. The code below is an example of how to so.

NSString *url = @"http://www.google.com";
NSURLRequest *urlrequest = [ [NSURLRequest alloc] initWithURL: [NSURL URLWithString:url] ];
NSData *returnData = [ NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:urlrequest returningResponse: nil error: nil ];
NSString *returnstring = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:returnData encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];

Tested on OS X 10.5+ with GCC 4.2

Simple Java XML Parser

2009-11-14T10:47:00.002-05:00

To continue my SN Project work I started to convert the simple object to data save format I had been using to save time during the semester into a xml based file system. This way when I update code it will not break saved game file due to class def not found exceptions. However I quickly ran into an issue that Java did not have a "simple" built in class to handle XML parsing and other free libraries where a little more complex then I was looking for, so although I usually try not to reinvent the wheel while programing, this time I wanted to try my hand at writing a simple Java XML parser.

What this basic XML parser does: It looks for the starting tag < and then starts appending the tag characters to the node tag. Then it hits > telling that the tag had ended and the data starts finally it looks for < for the next node. There is also the case that another < is found in the data which indicates that a nested tag was found. The older node is pushed on a stack and the parser moves up one child node and begins the tag and data read once more. This is repeated until no nodes are left on the stack indicating the root closing tag has been reached.

As a note: I have removed most of the advanced checking and my custom xml build methods for security reasons, so you are on your own to add try/catch as needed. Also, as I am not using any attributes in tags, so this parser does not read them.

Overall the code works well for the xml documents I am reading in, though for one class I may still look into a faster c based solution in the future, since I am working with a JNI library anyway.

You can check out the code HERE
As usual the code is free to use, but please give me some credit if it is used in a large project, or leave a comment about what it was used in.

Epic Box Pumpkin

2009-10-31T05:59:00.000-04:00

Continuing the pattern of holiday themed epic boxes, I introduce the Epic Box Pumpkin.

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Haibane Renmei Communicator Costume

2009-10-30T19:05:00.006-04:00

For this years halloween costume I decided to go with the Haibane Renmei Communicator, at the suggestion of one (or two I forget exactly) of my friends after watching the series at school last year. I had mentioned that it would be a cool costume, so with that push, this year I actually spent the time to bring it to life.

Below is some basic steps I followed, if you are interested in making a similar costume, as there was very little to no information beyond a few cosplay pictures online. So I hope this helps others out looking for a design.

The mask was made out of two halves of a styrofoam craft ball, then routed into shape and then finished off with a good sanding and eight layers of white acrylic latex paint to smooth it down. The black color is permanent marker as I was so sick of painting and sanding at that point. The pendant is also made from styrofoam and a similar process but a brown marker.

The costume is made from my own designs and a combination of tunic 1 from Simplicity pattern 4795 and the hood from cloak A in Simplicity pattern 5840 which is modified for the longer back strip and a rounded flop at the top. The the striped front was of my own pattern , which could have been longer, but still looks fine non the less.

The belt is a standard leather belt. I was too cheap/lazy to buy some red cord.

The wings where made of foam poster board which I used a wood rasp to round the edges. Then covered with thick acrylic brown paint to get a wood like pattern. I added tassels to the six holes drilled into it. The wings where attached to the striped front via two longer strips at the top. I drilled two extra one inch holes at the top of the wings and used two extra straps that looped through and connected to the longer strips that go over the shoulders.

The stick is also foam, a rounded ball and two wings that I cut out of the leftover foam poster board and then painted. he halo is copper wire. The stick is a old handle from a rake or some other garden tool that broke, which the top part is wrapped in leftover fabric.

- Time Required -
Sewing = ~16 hours
Painting/drying = 1 week

Total cost: $42 (Stupid expensive styrofoam!!!)

I like how I get better and better at sewing each Halloween season. I expect next year will be even better!

Halloween costume confusion

2009-10-26T18:29:00.003-04:00

With this years halloween costume finished, I was thinking back on the other costumes I have had over the years. However it did not take long for me to realize the trend of people having no clue to what I am going as. Now for a few of the costumes I have to admit that it was expected that my idea was obscure, but some times it was just annoying. For a bit for fun let me give some examples with the reactions I received. Oh and if you do not notice, I have never had a store bought costume.

Green Power Ranger (Back when it was just starting!)
- Had no clue, I was too early as next year there where other kids with commercial ranger costumes.

Red Coat Costume (I liked the hat)
- Thought I was a pirate... sigh learn more history people!

Chinese dragon (of one)
- Had no clue, I thought it was cool, and it even ate the candy.

Kosh-tume V1 (Babylon 5)
- Had no clue, sort of understood when I said an alien.

Custom Dn'i Cloak (Myst)
- Had no clue.

Kosh-tume V2 (Babylon 5)
- Most had no clue, a few B5 fans caught on.

So for this years costume, which I will post in a day or two, I expect the same as usual. It is funny, as I am so used to it if someone I do not expect knows what I am I was be flabbergasted. Still, I am always far happier with a unknown custom costume, it just fits me better.

Installing Quicktime 7 in Snow Leopard 10.6

2009-10-23T12:02:00.002-04:00

On small annoyance with 10.6 and Quicktime X is the some important older components do not work yet. So in order to use these older components you will need to install an older version of quicktime 7.

1. First off download quicktime 7 from Apples website here.

2. Right click and select view contents of the Installer and view the Contents folder.

3. Expand the Archive.pax.gz and open the resulting Archive folder.

4. In the Archive/Applications folder drag the Quicktime application to your Utilities folder

5. In the Archive/System/Library/PreferencePanes double click the QuickTime.prefPane and have it install for all users.

6. Register Quicktime pro if you have a license key.

There you have it a easy way to use Quicktime 7 in 10.6 with out having to reinstall your OS.

Mac OGM to iPOD conversion

2009-10-20T11:45:00.001-04:00

This is more of a post for my self because I always forget what the name of software tools, so here is my simple guide to converting OGM files on a Mac.

1. Download D-Vision from http://www.objectifmac.com/

2. Download and install the Xiph quicktime component. from http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/

3. Click tools and use the OGM Demuxer function to split the OGM file into separate parts.

4. Open the AVi video only file in quicktime 7. (Snow Leopard aka 10.6 will need an older version of Quicktime as vr X does not work with the Xiph component yet)

5. Copy the audio track and use the "add to movie" option to insert it over the video track.

6. Finally use the export option in quicktime to export it as iPhone or iPod format.

This works fine under 10.5 and below, however as noted in 10.6 you need to use the older ver of quicktime, see my guide on installing Quicktime 7 on Snow Leopard here.

Online IE Testing

2009-10-05T13:19:00.002-04:00

I had stumbled across IE Netrenderer a few weeks ago, it is a site that lets you put a url into the form on the page and will return a picture of how that site looks rendered in different versions of Internet Explorer. For me as a mac owner this is awesome as it allows quick page testing in IE. I have been using Crossover to run both IE6 and IE7 and for the most part works quite well, however Crossover has some issues with occasional things like transparency in IE7 and can not run IE8. So for final tests IE Netrenderer is perfect for the job. As an added bonus it also allows you to do an overlay of IE6 vs IE7 for ironing out these few small differences in site layouts. Check it out for you self, if you are a Mac or Linux user I guarantee this is something you will want to bookmark.

Tomcat install on OS X 10.4

2009-09-30T14:45:00.011-04:00

I had seen Tomcat on job applications before, however this was the first time I had actually played with it. What is it? "Apache Tomcat is an open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies. The Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages specifications are developed under the Java Community Process." So it allows you to run Servlets and JSP on a server. Now I needed to find out how to install it on my Lazurus server running OS X 10.4.11 with the latest Java update.

1. First download tomcat from HERE (I used 5.5, so not sure about 6)

2. Then rename the unarchived tomcat folder to "Tomcat"

3. Drop the folder into /Library/

4. Fix the UNIX permissions recursively to 777 (BatchMod is a simple way if you do not know chmod, just check all of the boxes)

5. Edit the /Library/Tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml file, see below for example.


 <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
 <tomcat-users>
  <role rolename="tomcat"/>
  <role rolename="role1"/>
  <role rolename="manager"/>
  <role rolename="admin"/>
  <user username="tomcat" password="tomcat" roles="tomcat,admin,manager"/>
  <user username="both" password="tomcat" roles="tomcat,role1"/>
  <user username="role1" password="tomcat" roles="role1"/>
 </tomcat-users>

6. Start tomcat by using the terminal to run "cd /Library/Tomcat/bin" and then "./startup.sh"

7. In a web browser head to http://127.0.0.1:8080/ and you should see the Tomcat start up page.

If you want to read on further I figured out most of my instructions from the Tomcat Wiki, so head there for more info or if you get stuck.

Just in case you where wondering, as I was, put your jsp and servlet files in the /Library/Tomcat/webaps/ folder. The webaps/ROOT folder being the one displayed at the base url address. So for now I am just using that folder for testing.

JSP is quite simple to pickup at a basic level if you already know Java. However there are a few differences do to it being web based, but so far I like not having to compile manually. I had no problem writing a few simple classes with outputs and will later play with post and get. HAHA, tri-fecto of web programing achieved (PHP, ASP, JSP), hm still need to sit down with Perl one of these days.

Objective C for the iPhone or iPod

2009-09-14T09:49:00.005-04:00

I finally decided to sit down and start working with Objective C, namely to expand my development areas into the iPhone and iPod areas. Not that I have any current grand ideas, however I had been meaning to create my own version of lights out and though it might be a good time to get to work. However, who know it may be worth paying the $99 developer fee in the future, but right now I am looking at jail broken device deployment only.

Objective C is similar and at the same time quite different from regular c/c++. One of the biggest differences is that you can use the dot operator, but also have the option of sending messages instead or a mix of the two. For example you could have class.method(input); or you could do [class method:input]; At first this was a little strange, however after a few hours I started to like it a little as it clearly defines what is processing code and what is message code.

Another change for me was using the Interface Builder in xcode. I had played with it briefly before, however I have never actually sat down and used it. It took me a while and some google searching however once I realized that I needed to add a method reference in the .h file as well as the .m file I could then see the links in interface builder. After that I was golden and quickly linked the button in my first game to UIBUttons that could be referenced in the code as well as a single buttonPressed method. HINT: Copy and paste is much faster then doing it individually. This reminded me a little of working in VBStudio as you could design the interface and then do the code second, however unlike VB, C is a little more demanding and requires hand coding instead of a double click on the UI element adding the code for you. Still, minus the some what steeper learning curve it was actually not too bad, and as a bonus I know now how to use Interface Builder in regular OS X development as well.

After ten hours or so of teaching my self objective c, I can now present BlackOut and simple lights out game. You need to have a jail broken device to install this, as I am not paying Apple $99 to give out a free application. Enjoy.

iBook Photo frame Controls

2009-09-11T14:32:00.003-04:00

I already had the frame and iBook screen setup and running from my iBook Photo frame project, however it required a keyboard and mouse to really do anything, this is a problem. So I had been planing on trying to add controls at some point, however as usual this was not as easy as I had hoped. The ibook keyboard is connected via a flexible printed circuit, which means that soldering is out of the question and conductive epoxy would cost me money. My next idea was to attach wires under the connectors and use some kind of clamp to keep it connected. So I carefully removed all the keys and extracted the plastic switch membrane but that idea went out the window when upon trying to part the two membrane sides it also ripped a few of the printed circuits... sigh.

So left with a non functioning circuit I finally opted to cut off just the connector ribbon after getting the correct pinout; tracing it reminded me of my ddr pad controller project. Once I had the pinouts I had to think of some way to connect wires to the conductive paint. After a few failed ideas I finally settled on crimping small coper connectors onto the exposed paint. With a magnifying glass and a fine point xacto knife I carefully scrapped off the top layer of thin plastic glued to the thicker back which the circuit wires are printed on. After that I cut a small strip of copper and bent it into a U shape and crimped it on with pliers. I tested the connection with my multimeter after each one. I had to be careful that each connector was only a small strip, as too big and it would not crimp on properly.

Finally I used some extra cat-5 to get the six wires I needed, for the up, down, enter and esc keys to control xbmc, which I had loaded on it after enjoying the xbox version so much. Then I attached the lead wires to slightly larger clips to crimp the smaller ones in. I did not dare solder to the smaller clips because they might melt the plastic, so I figured this would work best. Finally I put it all back together and tested it. Sadly I did not have any buttons to finish up the project with, so I will leave that up for part three in the future. At least now I have a workable way to connect printed circuits to wires, which I bet will come in handy in the future.

DADGAME

2009-09-05T22:19:00.005-04:00

I had posted the dad at home and work flash movies before as must see items, however to add even more to the series is DADGAME the next episode following dad at work, however this time it is a full game. Yes, you get to play as dad as he goes on a rampage in town while stopping his boss' evil plot! With swords, lazors, nunchucks, guitar and briefcase as playable weapons against guards, football players, robots and a monkey. This is a must play, even if just on easy. I laughed very hard through the whole thing, especially with the crazy animations in rampage mode. sakupen went all out this time.

Play DADGAME Now!

Destruction of Wood Playgrounds

2009-08-30T11:37:00.006-04:00

I remember the joy I had running climbing and of course falling all over the large wood playground at the first house that my family lived in as a child. It was a huge structure, covering easily a hundred square feet and must have reached thirty feet high at the tops of some of the spires. I loved the ability to explore and climb anywhere I could, and a game of tag was filled with intense ducking and running through holes or quickly climbing to the next platform to escape. Even the smaller simpler wood playground at the second house had plenty of potential with climbing and swinging. However if you look around, these places are vanishing at an alarming rate! Where are the colossal playgrounds of old, I can't even find a picture of the one I played on as a kid!

Now everywhere you look you have cheap tiny plastic structures! While kids will find way to play on anything, these lame (safe?) replacements lack the creativity and imagination of true wood playgrounds that pushed the imaginations of past generations. Look below vs. above and just try to argue otherwise!

I can understand the desire to protect kids now a days, however there is no reason to protect them to the point that there is almost nothing left. Kids need to play and fall and hurt them selves, it is called growing and learning. My parents did it, I did it and if I have kids some day I want them to have the same chance to grow and play. (Hm, could this a source of the obvious lack of common sense in this upcoming generation...) Still ignoring the danger of gravity you still get the whole arsenic levels in wood debate, though it is a naturally occurring substance. (Via Wikipedia)"In addition to the inorganic forms mentioned above, arsenic also occurs in various organic forms in the environment. [15]" However, what I can not understand is why completely destroy what could be considered national treasures, when they could easily plan to slowly replace the "supposedly dangerous" pressure treated wood materials with newer recycled alternatives. Lets face it, plastic is not all that healthy either, but that is a debate that is going to rage on for some time. So school and town administrators, instead lets agree to compromise, if you are planing on removing a playground for what ever reason, you better at least replace it with an equal or better structure! Otherwise you have officially neglected each and every kid that will play on it.

Jyetech oscilloscope DIY KIT

2009-08-14T19:10:00.006-04:00

A while back on gizmodo they had this oscilloscope kit for $33 from SeedStudio, which I had planed to purchase and try my hand at putting together for a while now. If it worked, although simple, it would work well for the basic circuit projects I occasionally work on. Also it may allow me to finally use the coin and dollar bill collector I have laying around. Oh, and if your are not sure what an oscilloscope is or why you would want one, click here

So after two weeks of shipping from Hong Kong it arrived and I got to work. First off I had to break down and buy some thin solder (0.32), as the thick kind (if you know me you have probably seen it) I am used to using for everything just would not cut it this time. Looking back I probably should have gone with an even thinner diameter and also grabbed some liquid flux as well, as there where a few places that the solder just refused to stick to easily. However the hardest part of the whole project was the tiny components. It was almost frightning how small most of the resistors and capacitors where when I opened the kit, and there are a lot of them to solder in very small places very close together. Going slow it took over nine hours to get everything connected and working, but was worth it in the end. Check out the picture below to see what I am talking about!

When everything was in place on the back of the board I plugged it in and checked the voltage and everything looked okay, but it was slightly unnerving as there was no way to completely tell if it would work when the panel was connected. Luckily after finishing the front side and adding the covers, I powered it up and low and behold the boot loader showed up and started graphing. Then after playing with it for a while I was satisfied that I had connected everything correctly and it was functional.

The image below is what the finished back may look like, however my kit was slightly different in that it had a few changed parts. I must confess that my connections where less nice and more painful spiky, but for my first big SMD soldering job I think I did quite well.

You can grab your own kit from SeedStudio in do it all yourself ($33), do only a little of it ($36), or already done ($49) flavors. Also I highly recommend looking at this site for more detailed pictures. I know I would have been in worse shape with out them. My final advice, you should to go with the SMD exempt kit for 3 dollar more unless you really want bragging rights. ^_^ as it quickly gets very annoying for several hours.

HTML 5 Canvas

2009-08-10T10:08:00.004-04:00

I was almost giddy when I discovered the canvas tag to be included in HTML 5. With this javascript joins the ranks of C, JAVA and VB in the fact that I can quickly and easily draw straight to the window with a few basic APIs. So to have a little fun and to keep my javascript knowledge fresh, I sat down over the last few days and read up on the canvas APIs and played around a little.

(NOTE: IE does not work with canvas by default, use another newer browser!)

First off I started with the basic balls bouncing around program that I did in every other language that can draw. You can check it out here and see the code here.

I had to do a little research on classes in javascript, and while not exactly perfect, they do work as expected. After getting the bouncing shape test working I moved on to make a simple platform game. The hard thing with javascript is that it is slower and far more processor hungry then even java, so I had to be somewhat careful of sloppy waste, however I did not put too much effort into it as this was nothing more then a way to try out the canvas with javascript. You can see the result here and the code here.

All in all I am excited to see javascript starting to show signs of maturing into a really powerful and useful scripting language.

If interested, you can also read more on the canvas tag here.

JamBot

2009-08-04T09:34:00.003-04:00

A while ago I was introduced to the online web game Jam Legend, so I checked out the site. The premiss is the same as any of the music games, you hit the notes as the move on the screen. I played for a while, then got bored and forgot about it till this week. However, after playing it again, and getting bored again, I decided to create my own challenge and finally check out the Robot class in java to see if I could create a program that could play it for me.

The Robot class is a java package that is designed to aid in computer automation. You can have it look at the current screen object and then move the mouse or hit keys. The big challenge for me was getting the bot to be able to recognize what was happening on screen. Like any robotics programing it is easy to say that it will look here and do something, but actually making it happen is quite a bit more challenging. To start off JamBot requires you to drag the transparent window over the game, this sets up a view port for the bot to look at a few different locations, namely in and just above the five note zones. The challenge with this is that when playing not only do the note locations change when you need to hit a key, it also changes the background colors as your multiplier increases. In order to adjust for this, the easiest way is to check the color percent of the note color for that spot, vs just seeing if the color has changed. If you look at the included code, the values have been adjusted to what I though worked best, but you may have better luck with some further adjustments. The next step was to also have the bot look just above the note zone to see if there is a hold note active. Then if a color match is found, instead of unlocking the key, it waits for the hold to finish. After figuring out all this, and a few hours later, I had a working bot, just for the insane tap difficulty which would get around a 90% on most songs. Is it perfect, NO, however it looks and act like a normal person playing with normal skill would.

Now if I was interested in further development I would look into adding separate Robot objects for the different notes, I think this will improve accuracy and timing, by using different threads for each zone. Right now the bot is missing notes due to the main loop not being fast enough to either see the note coming or hit it before it is out of range. I am reasonably sure that a more streamed lined threaded setup will fix this. Also it is missing the ability to select different difficulty setting, and needs an included feature for strum. All which would not be too hard to add, but I will leave that up to some one else, as I have other projects to start.

Quick Instructions for Use
[Only works for Insane Tap]
1. Open JamLegend and get to the point that you can hit play to start the song.
2. Start JamBot and drag window till the lines and circles line up on screen.
3. Click the Setup Button and then drag the window to the side.
4. Once out of the browser window click start.
5. Start your song and watch as it plays its self.

As usual I have uploaded the compiled class (MAC) and the java source code for anyone to develop further, however please credit me if you do. Download Here and enjoy.

Sysadmin day!

2009-07-31T08:37:00.000-04:00

Once again it is time to thank our sysadmins that keep the internets running smoothly! Not that you should only thank them once a year.

Here is a blurb from sasadminday.com
"A sysadmin makes sure your network connection is safe, secure, open, and working. A sysadmin makes sure your computer is working in a healthy way on a healthy network. A sysadmin takes backups to guard against disaster both human and otherwise, holds the gates against security threats and crackers, and keeps the printers going no matter how many copies of the tax code someone from Accounting prints out."

So take some time to day to stop by and say thanks! Happy 10th annual sysadmin day!

Check out more here

Xbox USB Controller Mod

2009-07-30T16:06:00.003-04:00

The xbox I got off of ebay had three controllers with it, however I recently noticed that one of them did not have the breakaway connector I needed to actually use it. So I looked online and found I could get one for $5, however, my cousin was only here for a few days and I wanted to play three person halo 2 matches. So like any resourceful modder I decided to change it to usb.

The basic design of the xbox uses a modified usb port to plug controllers in, with an extra yellow line that seems to be used for the light gun from what I have read. So there is nothing stopping you from changing a controller port to a standard usb port. This will not only let you use an xbox controller with a usb port, but also a keyboard if your dash will recognize it. You can see from the pictures I have drilled out the plug in the fourth port and glued a standard USB port inside. This looks quite nice from the exterior. Next I cut the breakaway end off the controller and connected a usb plug instead. No real brain work was necessary as you simply ignore the yellow wires and match the red black blue and green wires on the inside of the xbox and in the controller wire. After everything is connected, the controller can be plugged in and used like normal. You can get more information and pictures here on how to connect the usb wires.

As an added bonus you can now use the usb xbox controller with your computer as well. Check the links below for the drivers.
Mac Driver
Windows Driver

Halo 2 Killtrocity V2

2009-07-29T18:52:00.002-04:00

One of the perks of having a modded xbox is that you can mod and play modded games. Halo 2 Killtrocity is a collection of modded halo 2 maps, however the interesting part is that this does not mean only the included maps have been changed, now you can also play on a few included campaign maps as well. Any one up for capture the flag on the large bridge level with tanks! Also to make matters even better, the weapons and vehicles have been altered as well. This ranges from simple skin changes to a gun the fires plasma grenades. (As a side note. I will never play with Norm on that map, I HATE STICKYS). But that is not all, ever want to use the hunter beam cannon, well now you can! There are a ton of vehicles changes as well, but you can find them out on your own. I must say I had a lot of fun playing with my cousin on these maps, however a large group would be even more fun, I guess I will have to start looking into XLink Kai.

Check out the video below to see what some of the changes look like. PLEASE NOTE that the music may not be to your taste (it is not mine) and you may want to mute it as there are no other sounds.

Read more here.

Hamburger Bed

2009-07-20T19:17:00.003-04:00

I am greatly amused by this! I love it when people create something cool or weird out of common items.

Check out the website here.

XBOX Soft Mod

2009-07-19T12:20:00.003-04:00

My friend Matt had soft modded an xbox he got during my last year at school, at first I though it was cool, but did not see any use, however I quickly started to love the ability to stream any media to the big CRT tv we had in the living room. After I graduated I started to miss that ability, as well as having something to play Halo 2 on from time to time. So I went on ebay and found a good deal for an first gen xbox with three controllers, the advanced av pack(s video + optical sound) and the DVD remote kit. All for $33, which is not a bad deal at all. Then after waiting a week for it to arive, stupid ups ground, I finaly got a chance to have some fun with new hardware.

Fist off I read up on the steps to soft mod an xbox, check it out the tutorial here. I had no problem getting my kernel version and using ndure to build a installer, then packing it up and for burning a disk with xboxhdm. However that was when my problems started to happen, first off I could not get the drive unlocked by hot swapping the drive, it ended up not being a swap issue, instead it was a bios problem with the dell model I was using. After a few hours of poking I finally realized I had to plug the drive in first for the bios to know that there was a drive attached then do a double hot swap to the xbox for unlocking then back to the computer. I only figured it out because the drive would only show up if I plugged it in before starting the computer.

After getting the drive hot swapped, I ran into my second problem, the install failed due to lack of space. I am still not sure what was up with this, however after using the restore option twice, I finally decided to try letting it fail and see what happens. This turned out to be fine as it still soft modded the drive, which started up fine, however it was lacking any applications other then the basic dashboard. This was fine as I was able to grab a copy of ConfigMagic and ftp it to the apps folder and then use it to get the EEPROM off the board. This was my main focus as after I got the EEPROM I could always unlock/lock a new hard drive at any time. After I had it backed up I was able to breath easy.

My next step with to change the drive to a 200Gb so I would have plenty of room for movies and other files. This also gave me a challenge as well, as I did not have a DVD drive in the PC I was using, which meant I could not use xboxhdm to format the drive. I was stuck for a bit till I could out that there is a much easier way to clone the drive by using Chimp (Read more Here). I did a test on a 10Gb drive first and it cloned it perfectly. Then I tried the 200Gb, sadly it took three tries, but after stalling and eventually returning to the main menu a few times, it finally moved on to the next menu and I was able to clone it. The nice feature of Chimp is that automatically formats the F partition with the extra space difference between the drives.

Now that I had my drive all set and the xbox soft modded all I needed to do was install XBMC as the dash, which was simple, and then move all my files over to the hard drive, which took the longest till of all. After that I was playing with the built in skins. Matt had the xTV skin that I liked, but I eventually decided on MediaStream as my favorite skin, and I think it is a little easier to use for my family as well.

All in all, a successful and useful mod, now I just need to mod the stock fan, as it is loud and annoying at times.

Job Interviews

2009-06-27T19:02:00.000-04:00

Hm.. not much to say. Just busy with interviews and applying for jobs. You meet very interesting people on interviews ^_^.

Crunchyland bot

2009-06-22T13:29:00.003-04:00

Quite a while back I was having fun working on a javascript exploit bot for an online game called crunchyland, the game itself was rather simple you create a character give it weapons and fight silly monsters that you encounter. The entire game engine was based on flash files that where embedded in html and where linked through javascript. The problem was that I quickly got bored with the game, you click, that is it, not very entertaining past a level or two. However before I moved on, I decided to try to write a bot for it so I could at least get on the leader board. Because there was no way I was going to sit for weeks of clicking, like some of the obsessive kids on the site apparently do. (Get a job!)

It was not too hard a task and gave me a good refresher in javascript dom manipulation. The bot uses an open window and url testing to change and click elements in the window triggered by timers. I also went a step further and had it watch the size of the health bar to heal the player after a certain point. After a week of testing I quickly had my character self level up on my testing server while I did other more productive things, and after a few more days I was on the leader board, with little effort, past the coding, on my part.

I have been waiting a while before releasing it, one to not get kicked of while I was still on the leader board, and to to prevent hoards of script kiddies from also quickly leveling up with no work. Now it looks like the game it not being worked on, and my script does not work completely anymore, so here it is CL Bot (For Safari 3 maybe 4 only). Anyone with some javascript experience could take it further and fix the parts that do not work with the game updates, however I have better things to be doing. Enjoy...

Nostalgia while cleaning

2009-06-07T13:43:00.000-04:00

As much as I hate having to spend the time digging through and tossing out old stuff, each summer I try to remove more and more of the random stuff I seem to accumulate over the years. Most of it is paper from school, life and other random things I did as a child but do not remember doing. As well as a ton of pennies and other random shiny things that I hoarded and thought would be good to keep, only to never use them again. However I do end up finding cool things. Like my first backpack, old toys, lost lego pieces and electronic/mechanical do-dads, which bring back memories or are fun to play with again.

The best things though would be my pumpkin and ghost pin, which is awesome for around the halloween season and my pocket watch. Both I was very happy to re-discover.

Braid for Mac

2009-05-31T12:22:00.005-04:00

Although I am more of a casual gamer, I have always been a fan of indie game over large studio productions. Mostly because generally they are short, to the point and can take risks to try things professional games do not. I have written here about a few in the past, as well as a few of my own, so I am always happy to find another new title that perks my interest.

Braid is a strange game that focuses on change through time and forgiveness, and accomplishes this in that fact that you can not die, if you are killed, the game will sit and wait for you to rewind. This removes the dangers that other platformer games use to add challenge, so you may be left asking what is left to challenge the player? Instead they game uses a (some what cliche) search for puzzle pieces that come together to form the story. However to get to the pieces you will need to use your time warping powers, think 2D platformer now thrust into a 4D world, even though the lack of a Z plane makes it more of a different kind of 3D then ever seen before. Using the different abilities each world allows you will have to deal with time forgiveness, exclusion, branches and placement. Braid wonderfully pulls off using these separately and in a mix to give the player a rather unique challenge, which if you like solving puzzles that requires thought from different angles you will really enjoy this.

The story of the game itself is unique, you have Tim who is on a quest to save the princess from a horrible monster. This may sound familiar to Super Mario Bros and it is hard to not see that a lot of the game takes concepts from classic platformers. However it goes far deeper then the base story if you only look at the surface. What is reality? If you could warp the time that drives the reality that we see, could you truly say what we are seeing is real? The ending of Braid pulls this off with fighting perfection, which may leave some players rather confused. Combine this with wonderfully music and lush water color artwork and you have an amazing game.

I have always been annoyed with games in how you want to try things, but it would take too long when failures result in restarting, Braid removes this and pretty much can be described as one of the few games that always runs in sandbox mode. Of course some of the puzzles, and especially the hidden stars would be impossible with out this. Still I had fun playing through this a few times, one due to me poking at the game files and breaking it. Braid is available on xbox, PC and Mac, so there are a few ways to get it, but if you have a mac, support mac games and grab the mac copy!

For those who have played the game and want more depth on the story check out this article.

Epic Presentation

2009-05-14T09:18:00.002-04:00

I was going through my files stored on the school server and found my Epic Game presentation. So I uploaded it to slide share so others can see it. Slide share messed up some text in my images, but other then that it is the same. Check it out...

Epic Presentation

View more presentations from efeion.

Tech Support

2009-05-12T18:08:00.002-04:00

I hate to call tech support, especially for anything electronic as I more then likely already know what is wrong, as well as far more about fixing it then the person answering the phone. The worst being the recent fairpoint (aka failpoint) issues we have had at home, which after returning from school will finally be fixed, by switch to RoadRunner instead. I had spent over a half hour trying to explain that there was an issue with their service on their end which I could prove, yet still had to be walked through their flow chart for fixing problems, only to have the representative on the phone finally say "oh it must be on our end"...

To be fair I have been on both sides of the call, so I try to be nice to phone operators, as it is never their fault and they are tying to help, however when I did phone support for my school their was no flow sheet, we actually knew what to do to fix things, or would google it on the fly. ITS Help Desk FTW! Below are two Dilbert videos I stumbled upon that fit both side perfectly.

Dealing with tech support...

Doing tech support...

Senior Projects

2009-05-12T08:14:00.002-04:00

One of the final highlight to my final semester was the Computer Science Departments Senior Project Presentations. I have been working on my SN Project like a madman, and was very proud to present my work thus far to my friends, family, colleagues and professors that came to watch myself and five others fellow CS students show off their work. So on top of my SN Project BETA 4 that is available to try out, you can also check out the slides below. I may upload a version with audio in the future.

Error text.

If the movie does not let you click to go to the next slide, give it a bit more time to load. Otherwise it will only loop the first two slides till it loads enough.

Finally bought AwardSpace hosting

2009-05-09T10:44:00.001-04:00

With my time at college dwindling fast, I though it was about time that I broke down and bought a domain and hosting. I have been using the schools hosting for almost 4 years and have gotten very use to being able to easily have web project or files online, so with that ability ending I needed to get my own.

I had been using the free hosting on awardspace for a while, which is fantastic for a free service. No adds and access to php and MySQL! But there is limitations on bandwidth and you only get a subdomain, so after I graduate, I will require a bit more then that. Yet, the basic hosting is more then enough for me and only costs 47$ for a year with a free domain. The bandwidth is 1000GiB a month which is around 32GiB a day, way more then I will need right now.

So I am now the proud owner of www.efeion.com!

H2Overdrive = HydroThunder 2

2009-04-23T17:30:00.005-04:00

Sadly I have been too busy to work on side project, hence the lack of update. So I am very happy to be able to report that finally a developer is making HydroThunder 2! Raw thrills has released H2Overdrive which has everything that hydro thunder had, from the boosts to the drops to even the 3..2..1..go go go. But also makes improvements such as 8 racer at once and mid air tricks! Though I must say that that I do not favor the futuristic boats, but I can live with one minor complaint. From what I can tell it is only in arcades right now, but we all know it is only so long till it is ported. I only hope it looks as good as the arcade this time, because the ports of hydro thunder sadly never looked as good as the arcade. So while I wait for the console version, I need to find the nearest arcade with H2Overdrive.

Check out the Kotaku post here which is oh so accurately titled "H2Overdrive in videoh my god."

Also check out the videos below for a drool worthy few minutes of awesome.

H2Overdrive 'Hong Kong Buoy' gameplay

H2Overdrive 'Wild America' gameplay

Snow Architecture

2009-03-18T16:09:00.004-04:00

After building my latest snow fort, I came to the realization that there was a method to my madness. When building I use a snow scale method I have grown fond of, this involves packing the wet snow within an arms radius into a scale like brick. Snow scale describes the way the snow brick has a hard external top layer with a soft inside layer, this also causes it to have a convex form as well. This is important as the convex shape allows for a strong dome shape. The full design uses two layers of scales for walls with a simple arch for a door. After these are built you use a keystone (handful of snow) to prop two scales leaning inwards together and go from there until the next dome layer is finished, then you finish with a final curved in layer held up by a few scales as a final keystone.

The interesting thing about this building method is how it very closely resembles to the structure of Geodesic domes because of the way scales are interlocked with a series of keystones. This distributes the force of the snow down the walls of the structure. This is why I have been able to create forts with a radius well over five feet, with walls that are only seven or eight inches thick.

Applet ProgressBar Flickering Issue

2009-02-28T08:21:00.004-05:00

I had recently taken the the time to convert my EpicGame Code from VB to java, so I could make an applet that could be played online. (I was lazy and did not want to make it flash based) However after finishing it and testing on the mac side I though I was finished. Yet, later I started hearing complaints of the game flickering, I was confused as it worked fine for me and as usual I had double buffering setup, which in theory would prevent any flickering. Still, for some reason Window's version Java would flicker uncontrollably. I spent several hours trying different graphics buffering setups and also drawing to separate panels, but with no success.

Luckily I randomly stumbled onto the problem, it was the JProgressBars that I was using. When you update a value in the progress bar it calls the update method that then calls paint, which would happen concurrently mid screen refresh and draw a blank white screen, which was the rouge flickering.

So on Windows do not use JProgressBars with animation as it messes it up, or you need to extend the class and override the setValue method so it does not update the UI. Oh, and of course on the Mac side it all works flawlessly from the start.

Samsung CLP 500 Network Driver

2009-02-11T15:41:00.006-05:00

One really annoying issue I have run into while working at CADY is that older Samsung printers do not have much... or any support, namely the CLP 500 series that is in the office. As it was my first job to get it up and running it took me a while to even find a driver for it.

For my own convince and others I now have it saved here -> CLP-500Series_1.84.exe.
Please click my ads if you find this useful, as it was a huge pain to find!!!

The next issue is that it does not have any network support, well not documented at least. The printer does have a network card in it, so it must work on a network. I have just been spoiled by HP as their network printers do the network settings at setup. So,to get the CLP 500 printer working on a network you have to do a few extra steps.

1. Install the driver, this will put a generic printer in your list, however it is set up on the wrong port.

2. Open the printers/faxes window then right click on the printer and select properties.

3. Click on the ports tab and hit "Add Port", then select Standard TCP/IP port and hit "New Port".

4. Follow the wizard and enter your printers IP, found by printing the printer config page in the printer information menu, and a name if you desire. Hit next...

5. On the next page leave it as Standard and Generic Network Card, then hit next and hit finish.

6. Check to see the printer is now selected to use your new port, which it should be. Apply and/or close the window. You should now be all set.

I highly recommend setting a static IP for your printer, otherwise you will need to update the port every time the printer gets a new IP. (CADY Printer is 192.168.1.47)

UPDATE:
Win 7 steps...

1. Use the add a printer option.

2. Select Samsung instead of TCP/IP

3. Update Printer Drivers from Microsoft

4. Use the CLP 510 Driver

KavaTunes

2009-02-10T09:20:00.004-05:00

Matt clued me into an interesting piece of software called KavaTunes last night. He found it on the Mac Heist website as one of their free software titles when you solve puzzles in one of their yearly heists. I was not interested at first, however after watching him for a bit, I quickly wanted a copy as well. What KavaTunes is, is a piece of software that builds a php page of your iTunes library, but to take it a step further, it even looks like your iTunes library! This may be the simplest way to get access to your music on a local network, and on the campus network it is a perfect solution.

Oh course my g4 server is my test bed for playing with things and has a custom apache and php setups, so unlike Matt I had quite a bit of extra trouble with the setup. (With Matt laughing at the issues I was having the whole time ^_^) First off was that KavaTunes always builds in ~/Library/Webserver/Documents/ however I have a custom webserv folder instead, so it took a while to figure out why it was not building in the right place, but a symbolic link fixed that. Then do not call your iTunes music folder iTunes as KavaTunes adds a another separate folder under this name with its required php files. And lastly do not mess up your symbolic links, as it just causes a general mess. After about 30 minutes of bug fixing, which would have been nice if it gave you some warning about these things, I was up and running. It even streams my movies and tv shows I have on iTunes.

If you are interested grab a copy from Mac Heist

Smallest CRT ever!

2009-02-07T14:48:00.005-05:00

I was taking apart a Hi8 camera to start my next project of better night vision goggles. However after taking apart I was very amused to find that the small viewer was not an LCD, instead it was a tiny CRT! See picture above, with a quarter for size comparison. Yes that does mean that this has a flyback transformer that runs on 5v.

Behavioral engineering

2009-02-01T20:18:00.005-05:00

It is always fascination to see how people will react to certain changes. In my case, it was people walking through the covered doorway to the apartment. Normally I would not be bothered, however there is a window there as well, so it is a huge loss of privacy. So my first attempt was to forge a side path, sadly it was nowhere near as convenient as the straight shot that was already there, so almost no one used it. Quite frankly I would not have either, so it was no surprise.

Thus, next was to cover the path to force them away. However I had to plan it carefully as if not done correctly it would simply be removed, or even worse get a large number of student angry. So step one was to change with out anyone noticing. This would leave the least impact and the confusion with the change would drive people away instead of taking action. Next was to make the pile just big enough that it would not be easy destroyed, but not large enough to show it was put there on purpose, physical plant was shoveling off roofs, and this would nicely blend in with that reality. So an early saturday morning shoveling some of the snow off the roof accomplished this nicely. Plus I made the side path the most visible choice to limit remembering that the other path was there.

All that was working against my carefully set changes was force of habit, which would be a big factor, people do not like change and depending on how I set this up, could get annoyed enough to remove the change, luckily I have laziness on my side, and with the side path available, I suspected that it would win out in the majority of people.

So my experiment was let to these possible and expected results...
1. People go the long way instead to avoid
2. People go the shot but not as convent side path I made.
3. People destroy the wall and go through anyways.

I expected 2 most of the time and eventually 3 to happen, however the worst that happened was simply a person climbing over it. I was quite surprised my wall survived, however it makes sense, as people are prone to laziness, so instead of taking time to destroy a large pile of snow and putting the effort in making the path again, resulting in the cost of wet and cold, people simple gave up and walked around. I was happy with the results and no one wrecked my wall, plus I rarely get a chance to test out social behavioral theories on so may people so I was excited either way.

It funny how with a little observing, planing and research you can easy change the way people will make decisions and shape how people interact around you.

UPDATE
Scratch that... two drunk girls destroyed my predictions, but lost a shoe! Argh.. outliers, that was not expected, I figured it would be guys.

Easy Symbolic Links in OSX

2009-01-28T10:55:00.002-05:00

From time to time you have to rely on symbolic links when Alias is not enough, such as re-mapping folders like your itunes library. You can always open terminal and use "ln -s target destination", however this can be annoying if you do not do it often or need one fast. So there is SymbolicLinker to help out, it is a handy context menu add on that give you a "create link" option when you right click an icon. It is handy to have for that random time you quickly and easily need a symbolic link.

SN Project Update

2009-01-24T18:03:00.003-05:00

Well after a long hiatus, I am back to working on my SN Project. Now that I have a deadline to finish for the senior projects I will be working quite a bit on it. So to get caught up I have been programing like a mad man some where around 60+ hours all in one week, and from all that work I am about where I wanted to be going into the semester. So I am happy to have my 100th post be alpha version 2 of SomniumNexus. Grab the download here.

This version has quite a few improvements, the Item and NPC editors are almost complete and do save correctly. These can now be used in the Area editor. Also the graphics storage and buffer classes have been almost completely rewritten, which give a much better and easier to use fetching system. I also tweaked the FileBrowser, which now looks much better. All in all quite a few improvements, now the focus will be the game building function and finishing the Area editor, which will allow for the Engine to be worked on. It is a little hard to work on the engine before these when you do not know the final form of your data, nor do you have anything to test it on, so being this close is exciting!

Simple Rectifier

2009-01-14T16:38:00.007-05:00

In one of my my side projects to do some research on alternative energy I had a bit of fun playing with a spare AC motor that was lying around. I have wanted to construct a wind generator for a while now, however still do not have the parts, sadly motors do not work well as then require high speeds and torque to get any decent current. Still I wanted to see just how bad it was.

I had hooked it up to my multimeter and spun it. However I was confused for a second as the meter was reading all over the place, somewhere from -47 to 38. Suddenly I realized that of course it would do this, it is AC. So off I went and grabbed one of the old dead circuit boards from one of my parts drawers and pulled a few diodes off. If I was going to be able to poke around further I would need a Rectifier to convert it to DC. So a little while later I had my rectifier build and hooked up. Now I was able to get a decent reading around 0.05V, which is rather small. Later I hooked up a capacitor so I could charge it up as well, not that you can really do much with 0.05V anyways. Still it was a fun little experiment and gave me an excuse to build a simple rectifier.

A million thanks

2009-01-01T01:00:00.002-05:00

To start off the new years right, here is a million thanks to everyone out there!

Apparently it is a hallmark flash card. How long can you stand it, I got to around 7500 then needed it to stop.

Update: remove link as it want to a page with offensive advertising, now it is embedded.

Custom Projector Mount

2008-12-31T11:18:00.003-05:00

Continuing with my attempts to improve on our family home entrainment system, after getting a very nice and almost too big projector screen, I had to figure out a way to ceiling mount the projector. However it needed to be not permanent and easy to remove. So off to the drawing boards I went, and after brain storming and coming up with a few concept sketches I had my design all worked out. Luckily the living room has pseudo support beams, not my family's decision they where here when we bought the house. I could use the one that was near center with the screen as an anchor point, and then build a brace around it that would hold the projector up. Later I went back and added extra sheet metal for preventive safety measures. It works quite well, and even better, this means no more coffee table alignment every time we watch a movie!

RCA to S-Video Converter

2008-12-28T11:35:00.006-05:00

A small side project that I had worked on over the break was a S-Video to RCA adaptor. I had wanted something that would not only send all the video outputs from the receiver to the tv as it is set up to do, but to the projector as well. I do not do a lot of projector gaming as it is a bulb life waster, but still it is still nice to have the ability, and it lookd like a interesting project. So I started searching for instructions online, and while there was little information out there, one place I did find is here. The only problem was that the instructions are a bit fuzzy and the pictures do not help, so it took quite a bit of time to get the right pin out.

See the above pin out, which is how I have it wired, and for what I need it seems to work quite well. Also the ceramic capacitor I used was not the exact one specified in the instructions, instead it was a 221B, however it was mentioned "values form around 400 pF to around 10 nF should work somehow acceptably." so I was not concerned as it falls in that range. Plus it was the best I could rip off of an old circuit board laying around.

Now I must say that as was warned, the video quality is not amazing, but it works and was completely free, made from spare parts laying around, so beggars cant be picky. Also I think it would look better if it was S-Video converted to RCA, not the other way around like I am using it for.

Epic Ornament

2008-12-26T11:08:00.000-05:00

My little sister, who definitely got the most artistic genes in the family, was kind enough to surprise me an Epic Box ornament for christmas. She had seen the original animation when I found it, and then she had seen my Epic Game I made in VB last semester, so it was only appropriate to have it on the Christmas Tree as well. I must say that this ornament is a keeper, as it is way too cute.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T01:00:00.000-05:00

Well Christmas is once again here, the trees are up, stockings are hung and school is over for a while. It is nice taking a break for a while after school was way busier this semester then expected. So until I post the results of a few projects I am working on...

Below is a great Christmas flash loop to celebrate with. (Santa... Santa... Santa...) Oh, and if you think it is missing the real point, just wait it is coming. ^_^

CLICK ME!!! (<= Flash with sound...)

Koathangersmargen

2008-12-08T13:03:00.005-05:00

What do you get when two science students get in a mood to decorate, but do not have all the required materials? You get Monster Tree, made out of coat hangers and wrapped with lights. It actually looks good at night, not so much in the day though.

On a whim I made up some mythology of the coat hanger tree, it started in a village in Sweden, and became know as koathangersmargen, forgotten till now...

Super Sumo

2008-12-04T21:47:00.003-05:00

Ever wonder what would happen if Sumo, or any wrestling for that matter was like an arcade fighter, well wonder no more!

I needed a good laugh after this week, and this worked quite well.

It would seem that these super sumo videos come from http://check-it.org/14/flash/

Alice in wonderland remixes

2008-12-01T22:24:00.005-05:00

I stumbled upon Alice a song by the artist Pogo. To quote him, 'Alice' is an electronic piece of which 90% is composed using sounds recorded from the Disney film 'Alice In Wonderland'. It is rather interesting to listen to, and although at first I did not love it, it has grown on me. Check out and download for free Alice and three other songs like it (Lost is also quite good) at Pogo's Last Fm page

Epic Box the Game

2008-11-26T08:47:00.009-05:00

When I was told that I had to do a simple game for my Visual Basic class I had originally wanted to do a simple tank game with a progress bar that charged. However a friend of mine had the amazing idea of doing Epic Box the game, so when he decided to go with another idea instead, I quickly decided that Epic Box was a way better project. So after a few weeks of work and many laughs later I present Epic Box the Game (aka EpicGame).

Download it here!
(Requires the .NET libraries, Windows only...)

It is a very simple game. You move epic box with the arrow keys to go forwards, backwards and jump. You can also shoot, however this drains energy, jumping does as well. This will become a problem later as the hoards of Thirst Quenchers start to pile up. Luckily after killing enough of them, your Epic Meter will become full and you will receive new powers to help defeat them. After all the Thirst Quenchers are defeated, the Boss Fight begins...

Fun and short about 3 minutes of play, enjoy!

Efeion's Homework Uncertainty Principle

2008-11-17T21:05:00.004-05:00

I have always hated the fact that answers to homework are never obviously correct especially in homework for math and physics, so the student can only assume that the answers which seem correct are indeed correct. This does not only apply to homework, but when viewed in a more generalized way is applied to almost anything. Such as in science, theories are always used, but not proven, until another better theory comes along. So, after having a somewhat witty and strange banter with Matt over homework answers in general, I have come up with My Homework Uncertainty Principle.

All answers to homework that are assumed correct are correct until proven false.

This is based on the Schrodinger Cat idea, as until the homework has been graded it is neither correct nor false in the eyes of a an indifferent and unaware party. However this changes because of the fact that a student has already assumed that the default state of the homework answers are correct, as it is taken as truth that no student should leave incorrect answers on a homework. The professor also must be assuming that the answers are correct and looking for false ones, based on the same reasoning. Because of this we get the first part of the principle, which is all involved parties have assumed the answer should be correct.

Going on from there, as we have established that the homework is originally assumed correct, then it would take another outside source of greater significance to prove the answers given are other then what has been established, which is currently by default true. If a more trusted source stating something outside what has already been established as true can be found, then it must be assumed that this new result is now the truth and if the answers that have been given do not agree then they must be the opposite of true and thus false.

This leaves us with an interesting problem, if no outside source can be shown to give an actual answer, then the default must be assumed and as such the homework must be correct. As in the case of some of the architecture homework. More interesting is the concept that if all other sources of another different answer are removed from the system then it must be assumed that the only answer that exists is the truth.

Integer Splitting in C

2008-11-16T20:11:00.006-05:00

For our make project we are using a single int of 9 digits to send communication to the different units. However first we needed a simple way to split the integer into separate parts. Sadly there is no split or charAt functions for integers, so I had to do some math to split it apart. This resulted in the functions below.

Just drop theses functions in...


int* protoConvertFrom(int num)
{
 int *data;
 data[3] = num % 100000;
 data[2] = ( (num % 10000000) - data[3]) / 100000;
 data[1] = ( (num % 100000000) - (data[3] + data[2]) ) / 10000000;
 data[0] = ( (num % 1000000000) - (data[3] + data[2] + data[1]) ) / 100000000;
 return data;
}

int protoConvertTo(int *part)
{
 return (part[0] * 100000000) + (part[1] * 10000000) + (part[2] * 100000) + part[3];
}

API information...

int* protoConvertFrom(int num)

Splits an integer of 9 places (our protocol) into an array of four parts .

Parameters:

num: The integer received from the network.

Returns:

An array pointer of four integers... [0] = from, [1] = to, [2] = ID, [3] = value

Example:

int num = 131100001;
int *data = protoConvertFrom(num);
int ID = data[2];

int protoConvertTo(int *part)

Take a array pointer of 4 parts and combines then into a 9 digit integer (our protocol).

Parameters:

part: A pointer to an array.

Returns:

An a nine digit integer that is ready to send over the network

Example:

int *data = new int[4];
data[0] = 1; // from
data[1] = 3; // to
data[2] = 11; // ID
data[3] = 1; // value
int num = protoConvertTo(data); 
// returns 131100001

Make Controller network communication

2008-11-09T08:18:00.015-05:00

For our project in Computer Architecture, we are programing several Make controllers to work together as a home control system. As the programing manager, apposed to the general manager, and part of the system controller group, I have been trying to compile function and a basic API together for the other teams to drop in and use. Here is the easiest way to get networking working on the make controller, using Datagram Sockets. I must say, I hate how small the code is compare to the 7+ hours of my own time and another 2+ hours working with others it took to get working...

Drop these functions into the code...



int sendMessage(int num, int address, int port)
{
 struct netconn* udpSocket = DatagramSocket( port );
 int val = DatagramSocketSend( udpSocket, address, port, &num, 4 );
 DatagramSocketClose( udpSocket );
 return val;
}

int recieveMessage(int address, int port)
{
 struct netconn* udpSocket = DatagramSocket( port );
 int num = 0;
 DatagramSocketReceive( udpSocket, port, &address, &port, &num, 4 );
 DatagramSocketClose( udpSocket );
 return num;
}

API information...

int sendMessage(int num, int address, int port)

Sends out an integer over a specified socket on the network to a network device based on its IP.

Parameters:

num: The integer to send.
address: The IP address of the network device that will be receiving the packets.
port: The port that the network device will be listening on.

Returns:

This function returns an int returned by DatagramSocketSend, which gives the number of bytes sent.

Example:

int address = IP_ADDRESS( 192, 168, 0, 210 );
int num = 1;
int port = 12345;
sendMessage(num, address, port);

int recieveMessage(int address, int port)

Receives data from the network buffer and stores it for use. Please Note: This function sits and waits for data to be written to the socket buffer before continuing, so it best used in a separate task.

Parameters:

address: The IP address of the network device that will be sending the packets.
port: The port that the network device will sending packets on.

Returns:

This function returns an integer that was written using the sendMessage function.

Example:


int address = IP_ADDRESS( 192, 168, 0, 200 );
int port = 12345;
int num = recieveMessage(address,port);

Yume Nikki

2008-11-06T13:40:00.013-05:00

While mindlessly surfing the internet I stumbled across a rather strange video (watch here), which left me at first amused and slightly confused, then after that I was left wondering what this was based off of. So like may of my other great discoveries, I looked up the game Yume Nikki which the video was based on.

Yume Nikki is a rather strange game, where you are a girl who lives in a small apartment, which you can not leave, at least not while you are awake. You go to sleep and then are able to wonder through the very strange dream world that exist, assumed to be in the characters mind.. You pick up various effects as you explore the areas, which range from a getting a bicycle to turing into a stop light. These effects can help you do things, though so far only the bike and lantern have been helpful.

The imagery of the game itself is what makes it unique, as you travel in dreams of a girl that obviously has some mental issues, it is hinted that she will not leave the room in the real world due to some physiological reason, so what ever caused that, has also twisted her mind, or at least the dreams that she has. Most of the areas are bizarre, in the fact that they mirror a twisted reality or just have creepy backgrounds and NPCs running around, such as a world with grasping hands jutting from the floor. However what I find far creeper is that you will enter a door in one strange area and all of a sudden be in a forest or someplace more normal, which in turn leaves you waiting for something to appear that will make the normal far less normal, which on occasion does indeed happen. It is these "normal" places that seem the most out of place and odd, which I give credit to the creator for pulling off so well.

I must say that this, like other games I have posted are a great example of how 3D does not always make for games better. Yume Nikki is what I would consider a work of art, as it lets the player judge for them selves what purpose the events and reasons behind the game hold, as there is little to no back story or help in the game. If you have time, check out Yume Nikki, there is an english version (Get it Here), which is for windows, but runs well under Crossover Games on the Mac.

Check out this video if you want to see more without actually playing. (Contains spoilers!)

UPDATE: After getting very annoyed about the game crashing in the eyeball area, I did some forum searching. It seems that the 0.10 version of the game cannot play mp3s, so to fix the problem find the music folder for the game and rename the eight or so mp3 files and everything will work correctly.

Crossover for games

2008-11-01T20:22:00.003-04:00

A short while ago, CodeWeavers was giving away copies of CrossOver Games for a promotion they where running, it dealt with politics so I am not going any further then that. Anyway... Everyone could grab a free copy of of any of their Crossover products. I grabbed games and mac, and so far I am very happy with it, it does not work for everything, but it does work for a lot. For those who do not know, Crossover uses the open source project Wine which "implements the Windows API entirely in user-space, rather than as a kernel module at the time of writing. Services normally provided by the kernel in Windows are provided by a daemon known as wineserver. Wineserver implements basic Windows functionality, as well as providing extra functions such as X Window integration and translation of signals into native Windows exceptions." Crossover is a commercial version of wine, so it provides a little more support then the open source project. If you have windows software and do not want to use BootCamp or Virtualization options, this is a very nice options. Plus I got to bust out my copy of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, which was just plain awesome. Also it will play the Windows version of Hydro Thunder with full 3D support, unlike playing it under regular wine.

10 Most Disappointing Treats

2008-10-31T20:50:00.001-04:00

I stumbled upon this yahoo food post on the 10 most disappointing Halloween treats, check out the original post here. Most of them I agree on, some however like Tootsie rools and Hard candy I never minded getting, especially the strawberry ones in the picture. (Yum!)

This has always been my list of lame Halloween treats.
1. Fruit (Why?... Just why?)
2. Money (Unless it is > $5, and pennies are just cruel!)
3. Popcorn (NO! Unless covered with candy!)

Hydro Thunder on Mac

2008-10-26T13:08:00.007-04:00

Hydro Thunder has to be my favorite racing game ever! Fast boats, amazing tracks, all and all an amazing game. If you have never played, you may want to read this, it will explaine why Hydro Thunder is awesome.

I have had the PSX disk for a while now, but it is annoying to dig out the Playstation just to play it. So I tracked down the PC version (Yes it does exist!) and got it running on my mac through Wine. This was rather simple, just download the latest free build of Darwine here and install it. You may need the unstable 1.1.7 build, because I had issues with it working on the 1.0.1. Install it and then run the wine helper once, after that the Hydro.exe sould auto open with darwine when you double click. Just as a warning, it may crash once due to no 3D card support, if it does, just reopen it and choose the play in window mode at the recovery screen that will come up. Enjoy

UPDATE: There was a question asked about how you can get the game screen to be larger. The problem is that because WINE does not have good 3D support, it will only play in a small window. There are two thing you can do to fix this, you can use the screen zoom feature under Universal Access in the System Preferences to enlarge the window, or you can grab a copy of Crossover Games, which does have 3D support, see my post on it here

Quicktime VR Movie Of My Room

2008-10-14T08:50:00.004-04:00

Check it out, a while a go I made a Quicktime VR movie of my room at home. Room VR. Making the movie was easy, apple released for free a simple application called MakeCubic, which takes a panoramic photo and twists it into a VR movie. The hardest part was getting a panaramic photo to use, luckly I am decent at photoshop and could blend the photos together, though the difference in lighting is quite apparent at some points. The settings also took a bit of work, but was not all that hard to figure out.

Sorry internet viewers not spreading this movie around, so on campus viewers only.

Fantastic Contraption

2008-10-13T21:43:00.004-04:00

Well this is a dangerous find when I have a project I am researching and home to do! Check out Fantastic Contraption for an amazing way to kill time, or loose time that you should be doing other things with. I have been obsessed all weekend with this game. Basically you get an infinite number of motors, rollers and two types of sticks to connect it all together with, all with a mission to get a red piece into a predefined goal area. However getting to the goal is not so easy, especially when it is below you or up a wall, and to make maters worse you only have so much space to build in, although after you run it it can go anywhere! You can only experience it by playing, and after finishing a level check out the thousands of other ways people have found to solve the same problem. If you liked building small gizmos as a child you will love this!

Oh and you can save and share creations! Check out some of mine...
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2972825
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2973894
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2974040
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2975559
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2977810
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2993872
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2994200

Religious Images

2008-10-12T09:00:00.009-04:00

While doing research on icons for project that I have to present rather soon I stumbled upon this flicker album of
images for use in liturgy programs, which must be close to a hundred mostly black and white medieval religious images. I was rather impressed as you rarely find so many in one place ready to be used. It would be a good resource for any one teaching religious education or doing a project of the medieval church.

You have to burn the rope!

2008-10-08T18:08:00.005-04:00

A very cute example of how even a very short flash game can be awesome. It is little flash games like this, that are going to take game creation from simple entrainment to form of art. It is not about how hard the game is, or how complex it is, it is how the game effects the users and after playing this you have to tell friends about it. Check it out You have to burn the rope.

A amazing in-depth look at the art of the game is here at 1UP.

UPDATE: Found the ending song! Can be download here.

Power Thirst

2008-10-07T14:17:00.004-04:00

Another very funny video that was going around at work is the Power Thirst series that makes fun of all the random energy drinks out there. It is some what worrying that today energy drinks seem to be advertised as the solution to all your problems, which is what this parody plays off of, making some ridiculous claims such as giving you the ability to have 400 babies that will run as fast a kenyans! Check out the video below, warning there is one part that uses a bit of strong language but it is short..

There is a sequel to this that is also very funny, but it also contains some strong language as well as a few inappropriate jokes, but is still worth viewing at least once.

MIPS on Mac

2008-09-30T14:30:00.001-04:00

A tip of the hat to my friend KDostie for finding a very decent mac MIPS simulator which you can get Here. I have only used it a few times so far, but it does everything I need it to do, and it is written in Java so there is a version for every platform. I will need it for the Computer Architecture course I am taking which is arguably the hardest CS class I have taken so far. I am a engineer, I like to use and build upon the basic theories that are already in place, not a scientist, who discovers new theories.

Uninstall and Reinstall Cydia

2008-09-15T20:21:00.007-04:00

In an attempt to fix the Cydia POSIX errors, I stupidly removed the cydia.list sources files, then in an attempt to fix that I uninstalled cydia, only to realize that I could not reinstall because I had removed the apt-get sources for it, so I had to figure out how to reinstall cydia. After an hour of looking I finaly found a way!

1. ssh into the ipod touch...
2. grab the package from apt.saurik.com
3. rename to cydia.deb, for easy typing
4. place in the / directory "aka root directory" on the ipod
5. type and run "dpkg -i /cydia.deb"
6. respring
7. [click the advertising on the bottom of the page if this was helpful!]

Then it is back, but still POSIX errors... Still working on that.

Update: Fixed the broken link...

BZ Flag

2008-09-05T14:49:00.005-04:00

While I was lazing today after work, I decided to check out the latest progress of BZFLAG, which is a rather well designed 3D MMO Tank game. Basically you drive a tank that can jump, due to rockets on the bottom, while shooting and avoiding getting shot by other players. However things get more interesting as players pick up flags that augment/de-augment their tanks. This can be something as simple as increasing their tanks speed, or far better, such as giving the player guided rockets. Their are also bad flags that work the other way.

I have been playing here and there for over six years, so the game has been around for a while. It is good as a time killer, and can be quite fun if you like shooter type games. It is also convent that you can leap in and out of games with no restrictions, so there is nothing stopping you from getting in a quick match, then stopping when something comes up. You can also make your own maps and host your own servers, if customization is you thing.

Check it out it is free and ported for just about any OS out there...

POSIX Cydia Error Fix

2008-09-02T10:50:00.002-04:00

For a few days now, Cydia on my 2.0 FW iPod Touch has been having problems downloading things from the apt.sauric.com repository, aka the source for all unix system items. It just keeps giving POSIX errors, however it does download a little bit each attempt. So for now I just keep retrying, 30 or 40 times till I download all of each update. This is rather annoying, hopefully this will be fixed, or I will be going back to installer when it comes out.

Epic Box

2008-08-26T08:33:00.021-04:00

I found this rather cute.
UPDATE: See comments for original author and source.

Hm... The youtube video now has no sound due to copyright claim. Watch the flash version below instead...

You can now watch the flash file Here or download it Here...

Also check out my VB project Epic Box the Game

Below is a paper craft version I whipped up on a whim, now everyone can have their own epic box!

Run Riven on OS X

2008-08-24T15:45:00.003-04:00

I have always been a big fan of the Myst series, I even still have the original Mac only Myst cd from 1993. Sadly that is still not playable on OS X, though there is a port for iPhone comming soon, which makes me happy, that might just be the first non free App that I will get from the iTunes store. Still there is progress being made to get all of the Myst games running on the latest systems, which is where /dev/klog · Riven X comes into play. Riven X is a program that runs the Riven (MYST II) card based engine on os x.

I had heard of this around two years ago, however at that time it would not play anything, it would just let users view any of the cards in riven. However it is has great progress, and now with the latest version 6 or beta 7 you can actually play the game. Of course it is still far from complete, lacking save in the latest stable release, and the beta crashes easily, the fact still remains that you are now able to play Riven on the latest Mac system, which is just plain awesome.

Remember you can still play Myst III Exile (My personal favorite), Myst IV Revelation and Myst V End of Ages(My least Favorite) in OS X with out extra work. Now we just need a update of the Original Myst, not realMYST, and I will be a happy fan.

The Internet Archive

2008-08-22T11:54:00.003-04:00

I am sure, just like me, others have found a site with the information they needed, however only to have it disappear at a later date. Lack of funds or just lack of interest, it does not mater, it still is one of the most aggravating things about the web, sites can close with out a moments notice, why else would I constantly end up with a list of bookmarks that go nowhere. However just like anything on the net, once it is there it stays there, in some shape or form.

To help with this, there is the Internet Archive "The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public."(Taken from the front page of the Internet Archive). This is a very handy tool to know of, as it can help you get to any page at almost any time that the site was available, even if it does not exist anymore.

I think it was TUAW that first brought this site to my attention about a year ago, they where showing what the Apple site used to look like over the years. I have recently needed to use the site, so I figure it is worth mentioning.

New Get a Mac Ads

2008-08-21T12:09:00.004-04:00

Normally I might laugh a little when I see the "Get a Mac ads" from Apple, however I have never been too fond of them. We all know that they tend to over hype Apple and shoot down Microsoft for things that, in all honesty, no power user really cares about. Even most of us that do have a intel based Mac put Windows on it through boot camp for those time that you just need to use Windows.

Still I found my self laughing rather hard when I saw the new Pizza Box skit. PC is hiding in a pizza box waiting for college students to be attracted so he can "get them!" The ad is rather cute, still I wish they would drop the Apple hype part. We all know that Window's PR is at an all time low right now, so instead of kicking a dead horse, Apple should focus on displaying their innovation in other ways.

AppleCare Repairs

2008-08-18T12:38:00.004-04:00

I am very happy because I just got my Macbook Pro back from Apple, after undergoing some repairs/updates before I had back to school. I have been VERY impressed with the Applecare shipping, box in one day, ship to factory in one day, fix in one day, back to me the day after. My computer was gone for only three days, not just this time but every time Apple has fixed problems for me.

First off new hard drive, the old one had some bad disk sectors, and apple was happy to replace that. Fixed the DVD drive, that would not burn DVDs and as a bonus the new drive is noticeably quieter. Plus I have a new screen, the old one had some uneven backlighting, nothing horrible, but still for a $2000 computer I expect perfection! I think the new screen might even be LED lit, but I will have to compare with my friends MBP that is, to be sure. Also for some strange reason my computer came back loaded (but sans Install DVD) with 10.5, I only have 10.4 still, so apparently they want me to try out 10.5, not that I am complaining.

Sadly, Apple would not replace my 2 year old starting to die battery, no matter how much I reasoned/complained/pleaded, which I understand why, as batteries only last around two years on average, but I am still a little bitter about, hey if I am going to pay $300+ for apple care, it should cover everything, unless I personally break it.

Also I could not get ware the top (keyboard side) of my MBP fixed, Apple considers that user damage, which I expected, however still annoyed for the same reasons stated above. Still Apple is not a charity, they are a business, which had sold me a computer that so far I have been nothing but happy with.

Javascript Injection

2008-08-17T12:15:00.003-04:00

Did you know you can edit the contents of sites with javascript? Yes you can, however browser security will limit what you can do, so a little ingenuity is needed. Also the Safari web browser seems to be most lenient about javascript injection, where as FireFox is the most preventive. So you might want to use Safari for this type of hacking, no Idea on IE yet.

Try typing in the address bar...


javascript: alert('Hello World');

This not just doing a javascript call, it is actually using the page to call the alert function.

As a more advanced example...


javascript: alert(document.body.childNodes[0].innerHtml);

This will actually display what text is in the first element on the page, hopefully a div, as if there is no text in it it will be blank.

I have been working on a small project which uses javascript injection to play a simple html game for you. Yep, it is a very simple bot. Although it is rather stupid in point, it was fun to get working, as I needed a good refresher in Javascript before I go back to school. Expect to see the finished version posted in a week or two after I finish tweaking it, and leveling up my character.

CVS Nightvision Camera

2008-08-13T15:22:00.008-04:00

For my birthday I had some trouble thinking a something I wanted, however after a little thought I remembered about how people where able to modify and hack the CVS One Time Use Camcorders. So a trip to the local CVS store got me a model M230 camera to play with.

To take it apart, you remove the back sticker around the lcd. Then remove the four screws, the back cover pops off with a little prying, which leaves just two black screws on the board. When removed the whole circut board lifts up.

I wanted to try the nightvision camara hack, however to do so you must remove the IR filter on the lense assembly, I also wanted to keep the regular camera ability as well, so I had to find another lens that would work. The CS majors that I know will remember the old dead webcams that we could grab from the CS old stuff raffle, and guess what the lens fits! Still this lens also had an IR filter (blue tint not red) as well, so you have to cut it in half to remove it. After removing it and gluing it back together I had the first part of my nightvision camera done. The last part is to track down some IR emitters from a few dead remotes. I wired them up in series to the batteries with a small push switch (white dot right below the lense cover). LEDs require about 1.5V each so 1.5V * 2 = 3V, which is the two 1.5 batteries make by default. This is a rough estimate, normaly they would require a resister to even out the voltage, but this works for all intent and purposes. Make sure to check with a mulimeter when doing this to keep the polarity correct, as LEDs are still diodes. You can see in the second picture the IR emmiters working. Also I can easily switch back to regular camera mode by removing the IR lens and inserting the original back in. I kept the silver lens cover because it looks good, and keeps stuff from falling into the camera body

All that is left it to unlock the camera so I can download movies, to do this you need a custom USB cable that fits the connector at the top. For form information check out camerahacking :: Index for all the details on correct wiring of the usb cable as well as modifications to the camera. My cousin did not think I could do it but I made a tempary one out of tagboard from a paper plate (last picture), and it worked just fine. Sadly my camera has a newer chalenge/response then any current method can unlock, so I am stuck with just a nightvision scope. However, I do plan on waiting for the 17 type response to be broken so I can fully use this camera to its fullest, and play with the firmware.

If you have $30 laying around you might want to pick up one of these camcorders, they are very fun to play with.

Good Review Results

2008-08-01T11:11:00.003-04:00

I love seeing my blog traval around the internet. So far in the 6 months I have been posting...
1. I have had a person use my successful findings about putting ATX power-supplies in MDD G4s.
2. Getting over 20 people viewing my blog a day from all over the world.
3. Made 5 moneys from adsense. (Click ads to give me more ^_^)

Now I have had a editor review from the blogged site, which has listed my blog as 7.7 out of 10, which is very good.

OpenWrt on Linksys WRT56GL

2008-07-30T13:17:00.007-04:00

There was an extra wireless router hanging around not doing anything, so today I want and took the time to play with OpenWRT, and get it installed and setup. OpenWrt is linux firmware for quite a few different routers, but it s best know on the Linksys WRT54(G/GL/GS) series. My friend Matt had gotten another verson of linux firmware running at school on one of the WRT56G routers, so I knew it was posible, I had just never had time/router to play with.

WARNING, As with any firmware update, it could brick your router if something goes wrong, proceed with caution!

Setup was quite easy, go to the site download the Kamikaze firmware bin file and upload using the built in website firmware upload page. By default it is pulling DHCP from the wan side, and is already set up on the lan side. Telnet from terminal into 192.168.1.1 and do a passwd root to chang the root password, afte that you just need to setup wireless and a web interface.

Check out X-Wrt, it is a seprate web interface project working with OpenWRT. To install, SSH into the router and type...


ipkg install http://downloads.x-wrt.org/xwrt/kamikaze/7.09/brcm-2.4/packages/haserl_0.8.0-2_mipsel.ipk

then type


ipkg install http://downloads.x-wrt.org/xwrt/kamikaze/7.09/brcm-2.4/webif_latest.ipk

thsi will install it and run the setup. Afterwards just go to 192.168.1.1 in a webbrowser and finish setting up the router.

I had a wierd error happen after settng up wireless, which stopped the router from working, however I was able to fix this, by putting the router into failsafe mode (unplug, replug, hold down reset button after the DMZ light turns on, stop after it starts blinking). Then set a static address of 192.168.1.2 and set the router address to 192.168.1.1. Then went to the terminal and used telnet to access 192.168.1.1, which took a while to connect, and used vi to change /etc/config/wireless. I removed the "#Remove this comment to annable wireless". After restarting the router this fixed the problem and internet was back again. This could just have been a random error, not sure. You can use the Config Settings page as a guide if you have problems setting up the network and wireless config files.

After that little hickup the webinterface is working fine, and I am surfing on the wirless signal as I type this. Also I have a deep feeling of satisfaction from the fact that I just SSHed into a router, there have been few networking moments more awesome then that.

Logictech Quickcam on Vista

2008-07-29T20:25:00.003-04:00

I have never been a fan of the software team from logitech, which is too bad, because their hardware is generaly pretty good. One problem I reciently ran into was that the Quick Cam Zoom that my grandparents have does not work on vister <(not a mistake). Luckly some resourceful people have found out how to get it runnin on vista.

1 Download the latest quickcam drivers from any of the new quick cams, it was ver 11.5 at the time.

2 Install, but skip the set up camera part at the end.

3 Download the old 32 bit window xp drivers for the quick cam, ver 8.3.8 or something like that.

4 Install, but at the end it will say it can not update, this is fine.

5 Go to device manager and manualy chose the driver, it is in C:/Program Files/Logitech/Logitec WebCam Drivers/WinNew/PRO

6 Install and enjoy.

Apparently SP1 breaks the audio driver, but when I update I will post that fix too.