rexVM – A virtualBox Appliance for Developing for The REX 6000
As most of you readers probably know, I have been terribly remiss in my postings of late. That isn't to say that I haven't been hacking. Oh no. Bootstrapping a startup requires hacking all over the place. During the past week alone I've
- Gotten to know my franchise tax agent on a first name basis
- Authored contracts, which in my opinion should be written in python
- Authored a research paper on novel methods for efficient bulk virtual machine storage and retrieval (stay tuned for that one!)
- Reminded myself daily why I use git, while writing features integrating svn, cvs, etc
- Created what, I am fairly sure, is the world's largest openWRT/BCM5354 firmware image/executable set
- Created at least 10 new project virtual machines
Which actually brings me out of my /startup header and back into :/publish . One of the terrific things about founding a startup (ducks!) is the flexibility you get while setting up your workflow. Long a proponent of integrating virtual machines into business processes, I have been enjoying the real freedom a robust virtualized system can provide. I'll get into the detailed workflow later in the post. For those 'first page only' readers I'll get to the golden ticket, I recently picked up a REX 6000 credit card PDA for 6$ at the local thrift.
Read on for (much) more and download links!
IM-ME Linux Drivers Beta Release and Sourceforge Page
To follow up on my earlier articles, the IM-ME has been gaining some traction in the hacking community. There's been a couple of driver releases in various forms, as well as a lot of information and protocol specs. Scott Albertine sent me a great gpl implementation in C, so we've made a sourceforge page for everyone to download the driver.
The SF page is at http://im-megpldrivers.sourceforge.net . There's the initial C driver, some protocol information from Scott, as well as a SVN repository to push any code changes to. If any of the other IM-ME driver implementations also want to host their drivers/source code there, it would make for a good launch pad for IM-ME hackers. Let me know if you need file or SVN access and I can help set it up. Hope to see you there, happy hacking! 
Great New Z2 Userland from RootNexus
Although I've been spending my time on other hacking projects besides the Z2 lately, that does not mean there's nothing exciting happening in the Z2 community. Our friend SoundGuy has finished putting together his Z2 root image, and it is slick! After working out some of the kinks with help from our comments (they are practically forums now...) threads, SoundGuy posted up a link to his newest "For the Average User" userland image. Terrific work! He's really got a good eye for usability. More info after the break.
17$ Mobile Java Gaming Console – Plus Sample Code and Application To Get You Started!
I finally had a few minutes to start working through the new list of 'to hack' items this weekend, so I started with the Nickelodean NPower fusion gaming console. Buy.com had these for 17$, and I've seen them at various secondhand retailers here in southern California for about the same. It supports j2me, cldc1.1, and midp2. For 17$ this would be a fantastic target for a beginning java games developer. The absolute rock bottom price would allow for some fun opportunities like beta test groups, without the terrible expense usually incurred purchasing mobile devices. 
Hacking the Girltech IM-ME USB Wireless device
The Girltech IM-ME is a basic usb radio transmiter paired with a small console like device. It was suggested to me on the TP hacking thread I posted up a while ago. Hacking the IM-ME turned out to be an easy reverse-engineer, as there is no crypto to worry about and everything is sent in cleartext hex (everything). For 12$, this makes quite a nice little wireless console device. Read on for the protocol and info on implementing your own driver
100$ 64-bit 3ghz ppc cross compiler for the Z2 (Installing PS3 Linux and Cross Compiling Env from Thumbdrive)
I've been seeing a lot of PS3s come up on craigslist with broken optical drives, usually around 100$. Figuring this was a great way to free up my quadcore from mundane cross-compiling duty, I set about purchasing one and setting up the Z2 cross compiling environment. It took a bit of doing, but it works. Here's a step by step guide for setting yours up.
ScummVM and Monkey Island working on Zipit Z2
New Zipit Update! I've gotten ScummVM working with the new kernel. Xserver-kdrive too, so our memory usage is down again.
Wallclock 2.0
After a power out blanked my wallclock's memory, I was not eager to go searching through ten year old websites looking for a new terminal emulator. Luckily I found a ten year old NES emulator that loads fine! Behold wallclock 2.0, NES edition! Also be sure to peep the ancient medical tablet that is pulling duty as my new serial terminal. Fun!
Save Game Saver – Backup and Retrieve your Save Games from Gmail
A couple of months ago, Mark and I were playing some wormux on the PC. I had all my characters and teams set up, and all my macros just the way I liked them. The next day my computer crashed and lost everything. To prevent this from happening again, we sat down and wrote this python program, "Save Game Saver". Basically you set up a profile for a game (location of save game), then it allows you to upload those saves to gmail. Each upload is versioned in gmail, so you can store and retrieve multiple saves you uploaded on any day for any game. Considering Steam and Xbox are both moving towards this internally, this would be kind of a stepping stone till game developers get off their asses and figure it out. Mark and I both found it really useful though, so go ahead and download it or alter the source. As usual, it's GPLv2.0.
Calorie Counter for Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS
Ok,
So having lost 30lbs since I wrote the python calorie counter, I'm a big proponent of counting calories. It WORKS. Not only that it's easy, and it appeals to the chewy mathematics center of my brain. All is well and good, and I've got a nice phone that supports python scripts so I'm set. There are some instances though, where a phone is just too much bulk to carry around and I really just need something smaller.
As luck would have it, I came across a game boy micro.
This little devil is TINY, and fits right in a shirt pocket no troubles. Plus you can get one for 30$ used at gamestop, bonus! However there was one tiny snag, there's no python interpreter for GBA!
So I wrote a version of the calorie counter application for the game boy advance. It uses the savegame sram to store your current calories and calorie goal. It'll work in any gba emulator, flash cart, or the nintendo ds gba slot. Even better, most flash carts allow you to use it for your startup game so the time to start is around 2-4 seconds. Very reasonable! Anyway, it's pretty simple stuff and gplv3 so feel free to give it a try or even modify it. Note, you'll need the excellent HAM gba library to recompile.
You can download it here: GBA Calorie Counter
