Old School Games

Decided last night to go dig out a copy of the original Fallout and Fallout 2 just to take a trip down memory lane. Now I just need to figure out how to get it working on Ubuntu Linux without the severe mouse lag I had when attempting to play it last night. Ah well, label it work in progress.

On another note, Mednafen has become my all-time favorite NES emulator for the simple reason it was piss easy to get my usb game pad configured for it. Nothing like playing some classics to relax. Will have to find my ROM collection I have stored on disc somewhere now that I have Mednafen fully functional. The collection spans about two hundred or so games. Small in comparison to other rom sets, but they are all games I have personally played or own the cartridge and actually enjoy.

Activision's Voice Mail

Activision has been in and out of the news. It seems the publisher wants gamer feedback on the ordeal with Infinity Ward and has opened up a voice mail. Activision appears to want to extend an olive branch to the community. Fair enough, and it is a good gesture. Now they just need to actually listen.

Here's the number: (402)-500-0119. Go call in and leave a message, whether that be a hate filled scream-fest, an intellectual inquiry, or just simply asking them what the hell they were thinking. They opened the door, and they better damn well listen to what gamers have to say about the situation or this was a moot gesture after all.

RDR Co-op Pack Launched

So the Red Dead Redemption multiplayer mission pack launched today. Just finished playing the sixth mission and had my ass handed to me by a lucky stick of dynamite. Over all it is fun, and could provide a new way for two to four people to grind through some levels to break up the monontany that Gang Hideouts end up being after awhile. Oh, and there are new achievements added in for all those 'cheevo hunters out there (guilty as charged).

Managed to bump myself from a just starting 40 to nearly 41 in a fairly short period of time since my buddy and me were kicking ass at the missions. Gotta say I like the first mission where you steal the gold from the Walton gang and the Mexicans then ride like hell out of there. Probably grind on that mission later so I can finally hit a legendary level.

red dead redemption, dlc, xbox 360

Get The Price Down

Microsoft's MajorNelson has stated on his twitter feed that we should all relax about the pricing of Kinect and that is possibly isn't the $149 listed on Game Stop's web page. Well...curious if they have gone ahead and decided they are shipping the device at that price since MS' own website is using that same price tag. Here take a look yourself. Joystiq and several other news outlets have snapped screenshots showing the price listed on the site.

Question is, will you fork over a note and a half for the addon? I plan to wait for a bundle pack of the Slim and Kinect before even considering buying the device.

E3, Three Days of Vodka Jell-O Shots

Well, not necessarily unless you stayed at the Toy Story 3 premier all three days. Seriously, go search on Kotaku for proof they served up Jell-O shots. Lucky bastard, if you ask me. I'd love to get handed the task of reporting on a kid movie if the premiers all served alcoholic beverages.

Testing GoogleCL

Just a quick little deal to see how well the command line client for Google works.

Time Passes

Once again, it's been awhile and I've completely forgotten about this little blog. Ah well, that's life. I've spent my days tweaking various electronic components and frying my brain with movies and TV.

Have my Google Voice account fully set up and functioning to give me a reason to keep my Nokia N810 out of storage, Skype is fully functional on it as well. Jacked a headset from my phone to use on it and it works well enough, just need a clip to hold the microphone near my throat.

Currently, I spend time working on video game reviews for A Match Made In Halo. It's fun, and once in awhile I get some interesting opportunities. Playing Halo with one of the developers is fairly interesting. Hilarious when you get to play Modern Warfare 2 with that same dev. At least I saw the irony in that.

Getting DLC codes from a friend is a nice perk as well, can't beat free stuff. For now though, time to sign off again and hopefully it wont be a several month absence this time.

Meanwhile..

Months have passed and things have been settled. I now have a handy little N810 to use as I please and it will be very useful for when I put together my headless server and stick it in my closet. Already tested out some VNC and SSH stuff on it so it will be all ready to go when I get the server built.

In other news, I now write a weekly little article over on A Match Made In Halo called Tech Tuesday. It is exactly what it sounds like, me typing up some stuff about tech I've discovered while flipping through a news feed. I try to go for some of the most obscure things I can and end the note on something funny, so far that is with a video about some ad for a product or DIY project a techie soldered together.

I will be looking for others to join in and help write Tech Tuesday in the future. As of right now TT is just a quick little update on some happenings in the tech world, but if I can get things together enough I hope to cobble together something similar to a podcast or may even pull away from Tech Tuesday and work with some of the other writers to do a podcast section over another topic. PsychoVandal mentioned something about trying to do some sort of audio based update. Should be interesting, and at the moment we are very open to suggestions...or at least I am for certain.

On a techie note, I purchased an Alfa AWUS036H just to toy around with. How could I not buy a 500mW USB wifi card? Should be fun to see just how many of my neighbor's networks I can pick up from my bedroom and front porch with the stock antenna. Having this second card will let me finally get around to testing out and customizing some Airbase-NG scripts I have been wanting to try, but my WUSB54GC crapped out on me awhile back. Need to check if the card is bad or if it is just a driver issue.

I gotta say, I caved and picked up an iPod Touch just so I could jailbreak the thing. Updated to 3.0 firmware and used the jailbreak on it, have been enjoying Cydia and the apps it offers ever since. Installous has been handy too, along with being able to SSH into the device using my Ubuntu laptop.

Quest Taken, Google Issues

Short post today, I think. First off, I have picked out a gadget I am going to steadily pool money towards. I want to buy a Nokia N810 because that would significantly assist me in my future goal of integrating a server into my car. At least it would provide a device capable of easily controlling it from a wireless connection. They aren't cheap, but I should be able to grab one in a few months or so since most of my funds get spent on bills that I can't push back in the slightest. Yay economy right?

I noticed earlier I was having issues reaching Google, at first I thought it was something to do with my internet. I was wrong in that assumption. Turns out it was an OpenDNS issue. Not sure exactly what was going wrong, but Google was unreachable for several hours for some people it seems. I switched to my ISP default DNS servers and Google loaded right up with not issues. As of now, the OpenDNS problems seem to be fixed so OpenDNS users no longer need to pull hair out in frustration.

~Update~
Seems OpenDNS had issues with their Chicago server in the form of a bug, they've reported it has been fixed now and are currently looking into a few other things. Here is a link to the update sent directly to me: OpenDNS' Response

To The Lands Of Bash Scripting And Back To The Shores Of Lordaeron

For those who don't know, Warcraft reference.

I've had an eventful last week or so. Stumbled across some bash scripting tutorials and that spurred me to rewrite my old installer script that I use to recover my software and any minor tweaks after a re-install of Ubuntu. I test some experimental stuff so occasionally I end up nuking the install. Or I just feel like redoing it and seing if I can figure out a better process of going about a set of optimizations that work better or even more seamlessly.

Two days after my bump into the tutorials on the Net, I had what could be considered an alpha release of Shade_Install. That is the name my script will go by for future reference. The original design was focused (and hard coded) for various things specific to my computer so I never needed any user interaction beyond the type in root password deal. The alpha branches away from that, it implements a menu system and has a few different options. The one I have been using on it at least once or twice a week is the option to install the latest Aircrack-ng suite from the svn source code. Granted the script has to download the full svn source each time thanks to the use of a temporary directory, but that is a very small price to pay to avoid unnecessary clutter. Besides, I have a second script that is just the Aircrack-ng updating portion if I really only feel like doing that.

Now to explain why I mention Lordaeron. I just finished playing the Human campaign on Warcraft III about thirty minutes before this post. Thanks to my manager, I now have three legit cd key sets for Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne to use on my laptop and any other computer on my network. I smell a LAN party if a friend drops by anytime soon. I had forgotten the game could be that much fun, although I am the equivilient of a noob on it due to my long absence. Ah well, there will be time to relearn all the strategies but for now I will just make my way through the Undead campaign before any serious poking about in VS human matches.

As an after thought, no I never received that old desktop PC so it looks like my old one is going to get repurposed. Possibly today if I can find a working hard drive to slap a Linux server install onto.