Archive for January, 2009

First off, I would like to give a big middle finger to Yahoo! for not making an official messenger for Linux.  Yeah, we have Pidgin, Kopete and the others, but things like webcams, voice, even that dumb little Buzz feature are unavailable.

You would think that a company like Yahoo! would at least make some half-assed client for Linux that would support some of those features… we are a pretty decent sized community now…  Plus, Yahoo Messenger wont work under Wine.  I’ve tried it, others have tried it, it just wont happen.  If you were to install it under Wine, it would look like it installs perfectly, but when you try to login you wont make it past the “Connecting” screen.  Total Bullshit.

Also another bonus finger goes to Nullsoft for not making a WinAmp for Linux.

Someone posted a question in their offical forums asking if they make a version for Linux, one of the moderators replied arrogantly something along the lines of “Use XMMS” (a clone program made by a bunch of some guys).  Nullsoft, with their edgy-looking graphics, splash screens, and their “whips the llama’s ass” sound clips, always tries to come across as some kind of rebelleous, Gen-X type company and they don’t even port their flagship software to the most right-wing operating system?

Posers.

Secondly, I have deleted my post on how to install ndiswrapper and my example of how I installed my PCMCIA card because I found out that my card (Encore Electronics model:ENPWI-G) was slightly incompatible with Linux.

It was the strangest thing, it would connect to my home wifi sometimes. I can’t figure out a more intellegent/ knowledgeable way of describing it: It would just connect some of the time.   If I removed my security from my router (wpa) and made it a completely open network, it would connect every time.  Whenever I enabled wpa, it would… sometimes..  connect, sometimes the first try, sometimes the twentieth try. The issue wasn’t isolated to my home router, I had the same problem whenever I tried to connect to routers at my friends’ houses.   So in short, if you’re looking for a solution to get your Encore Electronics PCMCIA wireless card ENPWI-G to work with wpa, you’re screwed (yes I tried everything, I tried wpa_supplicant, I tried kwlan even though I use gnome and it unsurprisingly doesn’t work right in gnome, I opened nm-applet through console and searched the web with the error message it returned and found out nobody else had my problem, it just isn’t compatible.. at least without being some fucking programmer with a week’s worth of free time).  I saw on Encore’s website that they make another model called ENPWI-G2 that they’ve actually made a driver for linux…  So my advice would probably be to step up the extra dollar or whatever and buy that one.   I ended up trading my Encore card with some of my friends for a Linksys WPC54G ver 1.2 card that actually works with Linux.

Now I’m living the dream, using Linux with Wifi….  Ain’t life grand?

Special thanks Anthony and Karrah for trading WiFi cards with me.  (“Dude, give me a shoutout or something…”)

I was goofing around taking pictures and came up with the idea for official Flyninja wallpapers.  Me and Circuitbomb are going to start working on them sometime, but for now all you get is this.

The next ones will be better, I promise

Give us some feedback on ideas too.

Yea, exactly what the title reads is exactly how it’s meant to be interpreted.  I recently found  a new appreciation for pixel based art and if you take a look at Goon City, yea whacky as hell, but fucking awesome along with it.  Pixel art is a lot harder than a lot of people think so I decided to take a go at it with a building, its not complete, but here is what I have so far:

Some great places to view pixel art, some amazing creations and tutorials etc… can be found by following these links, but Goon City is a must see…

http://www.pixeljoint.com/

http://www.pixeljoint.com/projects/thejoint/ – fucking cool idea here

http://ryanallen.com/gooncity/city.htm

Recently while perusing around the net looking at stuff to try to find a solution to a roadblock for a game I’m designing Ive found some interesting stuff I thought I would share with you.  The first one I would like to introduce to you is Stackless Python.

Stackless Python is what you want to use if you program in Python and you want to take advantage of multi-threading technology.  Take a look a the game Eve-Online for example, that game was built on Stackless Python and eventually they did some modifications and enhancements to a network layer with it(pretty sure it was network layer) and dubbed it StacklessIO,   this boosted the games performance to sweet ass levels…to date I have found no code examples of StacklessIO. Please share if you know any resources.  If you want to know more about Stackless Python check out the official website at www.stackless.com

here are some simple examples of Stackless (HTTPServer, RPC, MUD Server, Chat Server)

http://code.google.com/p/stacklessexamples/wiki/StacklessNetworking

The next thing I want to share with you is a small series of articles from IBM on Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) server architecture.  This series is a great resource on the foundations of MMO with easy to follow examples check em out:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ar-powerup1/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ar-powerup2/

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnLB8wysMbY[/youtube]

In the early 2000′s, there was a beverage renaissance.

It seemed as if every beverage company was breaking new ground and testing the waters for new flavors to broaden their product lines.  The soft drink industry had apparently shed the stigma from “New Coke” that it had held for almost two decades and everyone jumped on the new flavor bandwagon with both feet.  Indeed, it seemed the days of laughing at the Coca-Cola company were over.

Dr. Pepper seemed to try to market drinks reminiscent of the old soda shop days, to where they had several versions of their drink mixed with fruit flavors.  Pepsi and Coke followed suit with both brands marketing vanilla flavored versions of their main brands, as well as short lived Pepsi/Coke with Lemon and Pepsi/Coke with Lime versions.  Mountain Dew came out with ‘Pitch Black’, ‘Livewire’, and their ‘Code Red’ flavor, the last of which is still popular to this day.  The Mr. Pibb company released a sweeter, cherrier  and more cinnamon-y version called Pibb Xtra, which seems to have replaced the original.  Even 7up released “dnL”(which was the 7up logo upside-down, it was green colored, kind of tasted like Mountain Dew and also featured caffeine, which was the first I’ve ever heard of for 7up products).  All of these new pops were great, not only because they tasted good, but they were something different and new, but one drink stood out to me more than the others.

Pepsi Blue had mixed reviews among people, most people hated it while others loved it.  Initially I didn’t like Pepsi Blue, I thought it was too sweet and the flavor was strange and hard to figure out.  It’s hard to describe.  The flavor tasted like cotton candy/blueberries/Pepsi, it actually took me few of them to figure it out.  Like I said, it’s hard to describe.

Yes, even though I initially didn’t like the drink, I tried it again.  I always liked blue soft drinks so I figured I’d give it another shot.  Nowadays I wish I hadn’t, since it’s unavailable in the U.S. with no plans of returning (I had heard that other parts of the world still sold the stuff, but I’m sure that after all this time the other countries followed suit).  I signed an online petition years ago in hopes of bringing Pepsi Blue back, but must have been completely futile since there has been really no mention of the substance aside from this article in over five years.

As an amateur conspiracy theorist, I think that an extremely addictive additive was an ingredient in Pepsi Blue, which not only explains why I still yearn for the baby-blue liquid, but also for the other fanatics out there who fight the yieldless fight for it’s return.  There are people out there that wish for Crystal Pepsi to return as well, but everyone I know that talk about Crystal Pepsi were small children when it was sold. The desire for a drink that was marketed to just look differently than the original product while tasting exactly the same is probably just based upon sentimentality, considering their consumption was probably limited as well as their memories fading through time.

Even Britney Spears misses Pepsi Blue

I believe the Pepsi Blue additive theory to be true since just the notion of having a sense of change and going against the mainstream isn’t enough to make one mention something endlessly over long periods of time…  Oh wait, I suppose it can be… (In my defense, the 60′s were filled with addictive substances as well)

So there you have it folks, a brief history lesson of soft drinks in the early twenty-first century.  When you or your children get asked during Jeopardy about Pepsi Blue or even Pibb Xtra, just thank Refund Policy after you win

If you’re like me, you like to sometimes leave the house.  Sometimes you leave the house and want to bring your gear with you, which can prove cumbersome.  I used to have a couple of external hard drive USB 2.0 enclosures that looked like this:

These hard drive enclosures you can buy are pretty neat at first, but having to lug around the cables to go with them is annoying.  I had two of them, so it was really a pain in the rear to take places.  So in the name of portability, I made this:

I made this out of a photography case: It houses the interfaces for the two USB enclosures, two hard drives (250GB & 500GB), a USB hub, and a powerstrip (I didn’t take any pictures of the inside because in contrast, it doesn’t look very nice.. more like a rats nest of wires).  Outside, I mounted jacks for connecting the devices with just a USB cable and an AC cable without opening the box, plus a handy illuminated switch for easily powering everything up or down.  I bought cabinet fan mounting kits from coolerguys.com and two 80mm blue led fans to blow air straight through to keep everything cool.   I made a separate switch on the side to turn the fans on and off as needed (it doesn’t run very hot, but I’d imagine if I ran it hard on a hot day without those fans, they’d have a meltdown).  There is also enough room left inside to carry the USB and AC cables, so unlike the off-the-shelf USB enclosures, this can be completely self-contained when traveling.

This enclosure features two security elements:  The first is just it’s size, it’s the perfect balance between being easy to carry but hard to conceal.  The second is how I can lock the lid and turn off the powerstrip inside, making it unusable unless you break the lock, which would not only let me know that somebody broke into it but it would look less desirable.

There are those passport devices out now that are as big as an iPod that hold 500+GB, but if you already have most of this stuff, this is a project for you.  PLUS in my opinion, the passport storage devices do not in any way compete with this monster in looks.  This sucker is pretty cool looking and was fairly easy (and fun) to make, all you’d need is what I mentioned above and some skill at wiring/soldering/hotglueing and you too can have a multiple device USB storage unit.

I found this recently and checked it out, it’s really nice, great color, works like a charm. The theme is an official MS theme I suppose, signed by them. Heres a screeny.

Go ahead and download the zip archive official_embedded_theme_for_windows_xp_and_2003 and simply run the file inside, then change your theme to the new one, voila!! Excellent new theme for Windows XP