Sketchpad

24th Feb 2010

This is a cool drawing app made using the new HTML5 canvas element.

You can't zoom in (I think) so it's not really useful for MR sprites, but it is fun.

When you save it send a base 64 number to your browser, which then interprets it as your picture. You can then drag the picture onto your desktop to save it (although that didn't work for me) or just to right click > save as.

Fun. Have it!

http://mugtug.com/sketchpad/

Happy Halloween

31st Oct 2009

A Happy Halloween to anyone who celebrates it...

And a horror music video to go along with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhHNT66yQHw&feature=related

User's discretion advised. There is Gore, and perhaps a bit of nudity given the clips used to make it. Although the gore is a larger factor.

Trick or Treat~
Lokey57

Lonely News Page is Lonely...

15th Jul 2009

Well, as the news page is looking a bit sad seeing as it's empty... Here's a small post to say that I'm back for a while. Might make a small drabble here about the Touhou Project which has captured all of my attention as of late.

Signed,
Lokey57

My Experiences with Windows 7

1st Jul 2009

"Best windows ever, great on netbooks." - Microsoft
"I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone." - Paul Thurott

Well, I own two netbooks, and I count myself in the category "anyone". So let's go!

Eee701 4G Surf 2GB RAM
Wouldn't install.
Click for explanation. Wrong file system - needs NTFS.
Click advanced drive options, click delete, click new, click format.
Still won't install.
Click for explanation. Hard drive too small (4GB)
Can't see 16GB SD card.
Click add drivers.
It asks for a disk.
Give up.

VirtualBox running on main Desktop
Requires 512mb to run. My PC only has 768mb so that only leaves 256mb for Linux.
No aero.
Both run slowly.
This was the best experience I had with Win7.
WinXP runs happily in 384mb leaving the same for Ubuntu, which it is also
happy with.

AMD PC I was given. 512MB RAM 4GB HD.
Obviously this HD was going to be too small, so I didn't even bother.

James' old P3 500, 512MB RAM 20GB HD.
Disc wouldn't even run.
Nicked the hard drive out of here and went back to...

AMD PC I was given. 512MB RAM 20GB HD.
Win7 installed successfully, quite usable.
No Aero.
Plugged in USB wireless card to get on internet.
Not recognised.
Win7 advised me to get on internet to find drivers.
Doh!
Couldn't look for drivers on another computer because I have no clue what chip is in the card. When I plug it into Ubuntu it just works.

Ok. I had to bite the bullet.
EeePC 1000 8GB fast SSD, 30GB slow SSD, 8GB fast SD card. 1GB ram
This is my main laptop. It usually runs Ubuntu and absolutely screams.
Win7 recognised both SSDs but said the 8GB one was 7.8GB and was below the recommended 8.4GB free space. I went for it anyway, because I wanted it to run fast.
It installed, recognised the internal wireless card and switched on aero.
Alright! Now we're getting somewhere!
I felt like I was getting the full Windows 7 experience at last.
As soon as it booted, it did some automatic updates.
The screen went black.
After 20 mins with no screen, I powered off the computer.
When I powered it back on again, the screen went black again, where you would usually see the boot splash screen.
Just I feared the worst, a mouse pointer appeared, followed by the login screen. Hooray!
I downloaded and installed Avast antivirus, firefox and tried to install Wesnoth.
It felt quite snappy, I liked the search box but I missed gnome-do and apt-get.
Wesnoth failed as the 8GB SSD had run out of space.

The next day...
EeePC 1000 8GB fast SSD, 30GB slow SSD, 8GB fast SD card. 1GB ram. Attempt 2
This time I selected the slow 30GB SSD.
The boot time was not noticably slower. Boded well.
It did the same thing with the black screen as before.
Downloaded and installed Avast, firefox and Wesnoth again. This time they all succeeded.
Tried loading Wesnoth.
It wouldn't fit into the Eee window.
On Ubuntu I would just type wesnoth --small-gui on the command line to get around this.
On Windows, that resulted in "Unknown command or batch process"
I hacked the config file to make it go full screen, which worked.
Wesnoth ran very slowly and jerkily.
One good thing about Windows is it's easy to try new software.
I treated myself to Firefox 3.5.
The computer was starting to feel sluggish.
I looked on the internet for advice on how to speed it up.
They advised me to use ready boost.
I couldn't find a way to dedicate the fast SSD for ready boost so I dedicated my 8GB SDCard instead.
It used up 4GB.

The next morning...
Wouldn't boot with SD card in slot.
Took 10 mins after dekstop appearing before Firefox was usuable.
Had to keep pausing whilst writing a comment on slashdot.
HD light on all the time.
Was planning to write this on Windows 7, but I'm using my main Ubuntu desktop instead.
I'm delevoping a phobia about switching the Eee1000 on - I feel like I'm torturing the poor little guy.

All of the hardware listed above works perfectly with Ubuntu.
Furthermore, where you have a situation where you have a small fast HD and a bigger, slower one, all linuxes let you choose what to put where, so that you can decide how best to use your resources.

My plan was to keep Windows 7 on that computer until the licence ran out in June 2010 so I could learn about it and familiarise myself with it. After three days I'm about ready to give up.
If someone knows of a good guide for getting Win7 to run nicely on an Eee1000 please let me know. So far my impression is that despite the hype, Windows 7 is not suitable for netbooks.

How to finish a game

18th Oct 2008

I've been meaning to post this for a couple of days now. I found it a little bit inspirational.

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2570.asp

I know, I know, it's a lot of effort to click the link and, you know, read the article so here's the important bit:

"Each day during the last weeks of development went more or less like this:

1. Got up early
2. Drank half a litre of water
3. Went for a 2km run
4. Came home, took a shower and meditated. With meditation I mean I sat still for a while and listened to my breathing
5. Ate a healthy breakfast
6. Worked on Asterope, had lunch sometime in between work sessions and also went out for walks if I felt unproductive
7. In the evenings I did my best to not work on the game. I exercised and kept social to rejuvenate"

~steve

Paintroll'd!

11th Sep 2008

This is so my new ringtone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uZr3JWYdy8

Rickrolling you since 08,
Lokey57

Vista Speed Tweaks

4th Sep 2008

Just wanted to share some speed tweaks for anyone using a Vista. I've recently applied them and found my computer performing MUCH better now.

http://mostlysavingmoney.com/top-10-windows-vista-speed-tweaks/

Check them out if you have time.

Back to work...
Lokey57

Shockwave on other platforms?

8th Jul 2008

Hello chaps,

I heard recently that Shockwave doesn't work on the latest Macs. That's rather irritating considering that cross-platform goodness was one of the things that initially attracted me to it.

So, if there's any Mac fans out there (Feory?) can you confirm/deny this? Thanks!

You can get shockwave working on Ubuntu by going to a command line and typing this:

sudo apt-get install wine

And then installing the Windows version of Firefox the same way you would on Windows.

Cheery-bye!

Steve

PS thanks to Red Runner for pointing out this story:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/project-epoc-lets-you-control-video-games-with-your-noggin-240760.php

I'll definitely get one if they come out but let's hope I don't get RBI (Repetitive Brain Injury) Ho ho!

Urban Dead

15th Jun 2008

Well now, to celebrate the start of summer, lets revive the bits and pieces section!.

I'm sure most of us have played a browser game before. You know with the limited turns per day, slow game pace, loss of interest after a few days. Urban Dead started off as one of those games, with the typical system and layout (which it still has) involving a city invaded by zombies. (Anyone who's watched a zombie movie or played a zombie game will know what I'm talking about.) However over the past two years it has become so much more.

Now the thing about this game is, I actually knew one of the developers ("YR" or Yuriruler90, a big shout out to him if he ever visits TMB.) from C-GEN back in my RA2 phase. Back then I remember him advertising it a bit and everyone signing up and taking a look for the heck of it. Then I remember dropping the game due to boredom after a few weeks due to the "small" community back then and the fact that it was a browser game. Two years later (today at the time or writing), I was bored and decided to visit to see how things were doing. It turns out that although it was still a browser game, it had become a very excitable and enjoyable experience thanks to the efforts of the community. Now when I played it, I felt that I was actually "in" a zombie/survivor environment, where the survivors would actually "band together" to create "safe" zones, zombies actually grouped together to try and gain more hunting ground, and so much more. Another thing worthy of mentioning is the creation of "zombie language" (aka Zombese). The community has actually developed an entire "language"/"code" just for the purposes of communicating as zombies in the game. Needless to say I'm more than impressed at how a simple game was not only featured in PCgamer (a year or two ago during a June issue before C&C3), but managed to become such a popular hit and create such a strong fanbase for it. If you have time guys, go check it out.

www.urbandead.com

Some things that rock

10th May 2008

While I'm on I thought I'd tell you about a few things that I've noticed recently that rock.

1 - Python
Use it to make games. It's free. It's Open Source. It runs on everything! Windows, Mac, Linux, GP2X, Amiga, ZX Spectrum (well, maybe not the last one).
check out:
http://www.python.org/
http://www.pygame.org/
http://rene.f0o.com/mywiki/PythonGameProgramming


2 - The ASUS eeepc - Rocks!
http://www.eeeuser.com/
It's a tiny (but cheap) Ultra Mobile PC. I got mine a few months ago. It comes with Xandros Linux, which I wiped and replaced with Ubuntu 8.04 using this guide:
http://wiki.eeeuser.com/getting_ubuntu_8.04_to_work_perfectly
You can also get 'em with windows XP on now but why would anyone want to do that? ;)


3 - One man and his mic - Rocks!
This is a free podcast showing how we rock it old style. It's mostly about the C64 so unless you're over 30 or interested in the ghost-of-computers-past it probably won't mean much to you. But check it out anyway!
http://www.binaryzone.org/podcast/


Alright, better go. It's been fun dropping in!
~Steve