Sunday, February 07, 2010

Ants!

I got an antquarium for Christmas, but haven't been able to set it up due to lack of ants outside to catch! Now it's starting to warm up a bit, I should be able to find some to start off my little colony!

I'm thinking of buying a webcam, so I can make a time lapse video or possibly even having the latest image available here on the site! Either way, should be quite interesting!

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Posted by James at 9:48
Categories:

The Origin of SimCity

Will Wright's first game was a shoot em up, where you controlled a helicopter called 'Raid on Bungeling Bay'. The design of the levels inspired Wright to develop a city simulation, which he thought it closely resembled.

Eventually this resulted in the SimCity we all know and love! Which reminds me, I should really reinstall Simcity 4, while we wait for a proper SimCity 5!

Via Reddit

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Posted by James at 9:29
Edited on: Sunday, February 07, 2010 9:34
Categories: games

Friday, February 05, 2010

Vodafone UK Settings for MiFi

Just got Novatel MiFi box, and had to find the settings for contract Vodafone UK. The settings you'll need are as follows:

APN internet
Username web
Password web

Vodafone currently have a plan for £18 / month with a fair use policy of 5GB. You won't pay more than that, if you go over but if you do consistantly they will ask you to move onto a bigger plan.

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Posted by James at 18:45
Categories: how-to

Retro Gaming...

I've always played old Nintendo games on the PSP, and DS and never really gotten into it much. I've even tried using Virtual Console on the Wii but still I can't seem to find the sparkle.

This week, I've been playing Pokemon Blue on a Gameboy Colour (green, if you're interested; which you're probably not!) and I'm really (really, really) getting into it. I really can't work out the difference, from playing on Lameboy on the DS to actually using the proper hardware.

The difference is amazing, and as I mentioned on the previous post I can see absolutely why I loved these old games. Now this is okay for easy to obtain games like Pokemon and Mario but some of the Zelda games such as Oracle of Ages and Seasons are unfortunately rather expensive on eBay! What about games for the SNES that I missed? Earthbound, Secret of Evermore? Suppose I might have to actually buy a console at some point in time!

The Dragon Quest games are being remade for the DS, along with Chrono Trigger (Just about to start playing the DS version!) which is awesome. Except that Hand of the Heavenly Bride is out of print already and hard to find at a resonable price. I really don't want to have to download them, but if they are impossible to buy, what are the other options?

What old games do you play, that you just don't feel the same about when you emulate them? Let me know by leaving a comment!

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Posted by James at 9:30
Categories: games

One Button Civilization

Want to play Civ, but don't have the time? Try War and Peace, instead. Looks kinda fun. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but according to one of my friends it's quite challenging! :)

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Posted by James at 9:09
Categories: games

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Hydrogen is...

 

Source

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Posted by James at 19:08
Categories: science

What I'm playing this week (001)

So this week I bought Pokemon Blue from eBay, and got a real copy! How cool! I've made it to the first gym so far, and am really remembering why I loved these games ten years ago. Now I really cannot wait for Soul Silver and Heart Gold to be released!

On the PC side of things, I bought Tropico 3 from Steam when it went for sale. It's simply amazing. Kind of like a cross between Sim City, Caesar 3 and Civilization.

The game is set on a tropical island called Tropico, and it is your job as El Presidente to run the island as you see fit. It's more challenging than you may think and you'll be dealing with rebel factions, Russia and the US (either helping or being a hindrance by invading you!) and attempts on your life. Help your island to flourish by exporting cigars and rum. Or perhaps you'd rather intimidate your people and employ martial law? Up to you!

There is about 15 campaigns to complete (each rather hard!) and a sandbox mode to keep you interested for quite a while!

Be sure to check out the screenshots and videos!

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Posted by James at 9:28
Edited on: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 16:52
Categories: games

Nintendo DSi XL

Yay, I've preordered my 'Wine Red' to replace my aging DS Lite! :) Only another month until release.

Until then, here's a review.

 

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Posted by James at 0:05
Edited on: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 0:07
Categories: games

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Media Streaming and the Samsung UE40B7000 LED TV

We got a shiny new Samsung LED TV the other week; and the first thing I wanted to try out was DLNA media streaming capabilities (soon after I finished getting excited about how thin it was!) since Samsung boasts that it supports a wide variety of formats up to and including the MKV container, and the H264 codec. This is sounding good!

The PS3 is set up already to stream content via PS3 Media Server over the local (gigabit) network. It works amazingly well; I've yet to find a file it can't handle (except the malformed Bluray rips I attempted to create... But that's another story...) So.. I pressed the Media P button on the TV remote control; and it found Ps3 Media Server immediately sitting on the network. Cool! This is amazing....

The default settings in PS3 Media server seem to work fine, but the first thing I noticed was that to quality is not quite up to that of the PlayStation. The difference on the blacks is definitely noticable! Oh, and it randomly cuts out back to the menu every so often.. Quite annoying ten minutes into a movie! Perhaps I should try using the Samsung software; but I shouldn't have to use that since the TV supports DLNA. Perhaps someone has had a positive experience? Please let me know! :)

Overall the PS3 provides a better overall experience (giving that we can actually watch a whole movie using it!) but the TV is simpler for everyone to get their heads around. It's one button press, compared to setting the TV input and turning the PS3 on.

Perhaps I do really need to try the Samsung software but currently PS3 Media Server does the job fine. If you've had any experiences streaming to these new Samsung TVs please leave a comment with your thoughts!

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Posted by James at 0:00
Categories: multimedia

Thursday, April 23, 2009

U3 Drive Hacking

Right, I've been meaning to write about this for ages! One of my U3 drives has a custom partition full of various Sysinternals and other handy Windows based utilities. This is good, because most AV programs flip out when they see Nirsoft's Password revealer software and since it's on a read-only partition; they can't do anything about it! :)

If you have a U3 capable drive (most of the recent Sandisk drives have it these days) then head over to Hak5 and get your hack on! This guide will also rid you of the pesky U3 autostart crap that appears everytime you plug the drive in.

Following on, I attempted to try something a little bit different: Copy a bootable iso directly over to a (normal, non U3) USB key using DD. The results were interesting!

I used DD to copy an XP Pro OEM ISO image file to a memory stick. The resulting flash drive was recognized in Ubuntu and I could browse the discs file system

Windows Server 2008 refused to read the drive at all. Allegedly, it was not formatted. I contend that Windows just wasn't trying hard enough!

Obviously, Windows doesn't like reading ISO 9660 file systems on USB media. Perhaps there is a way around it. It'd be kinda cool if there was? I'll have to keep looking!

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Posted by James at 0:32
Categories: hardware, how-to