When I go to start working on a new hack, the issue of how to enclose it is always a tricky one. Building an enclosure from scratch can be extremely time consuming (if done well). Retrofitting an old enclosure can shave hours off of a build, and allow for more rapid prototyping. As I’ve been on a console hacking kick lately, I decided to open up the closet and see what grand old systems I could pull out and improve upon. This time it was the Sega Dreamcast which caught my eye and set my mind wandering about in a myriad of directions.
As many of you know, I’m something of a gamer. My (sometimes many-years old now) articles on minor gaming hacks remain popular today, and I still respond to comments and questions from other hackers following along. After years of waiting, the English port of La-Mulana was finally released on WiiWare. I rushed out to purchase it, and realized that I hadn’t turned on my Wii in a long, LONG time. Upon testing, it turns out my Wii’s DVD drive finally died (after 5+ years of duty), and I was beginning to notice how much time it took to cart the Wii around to various rooms of the house. Besides all that it just seemed a waste to leave the Wii motherboard in that ugly white shell, strapped to a broken DVD drive for the remainder of its life.
I’d been given an iCade as a gift for Christmas, but never really got around to using it. Mostly because I sold my iPad in frustration and traded it in for another Android tablet. Being a bluetooth controller, it’ll work great with my android tablet (currently a first gen Asus Transformer [TF101]). Unfortunately, it comes with a built-in plastic mounting bracket, and it’s not landscape orientation friendly. I decided to spend a few minutes with my toolbox, and see what quick changes I could make to the device.
I’ve been off tramping through the back alleys of the city, recording audio for my article series about my Android Audio Library. On one such trip, I realized that I had long ago discarded any traditional watch in my possession. Having to pull my cell out of my pocket while in a crowded bus is a pain. As I usually have a pair of Bluetooth headphones on (I do work at Rhapsody, after all), I realized it would be great if I could have the time read out to me at the press of a button.
Easy Bluetooth Time is a fast and free way to find out what time it is without pulling your phone out of your pocket. Simply select which Bluetooth headset button you wish to use, and whenever that button is clicked a voice will read out the current time in your current language.
About a year ago, I wrote many, many Android apps. Some of them were games. All of them were written under a “one app in one day” constraint and as such the games never had any sound. No sound effects, no background music, no waveform generation, nothing. Fast forward a year and they’ve all become open source on GitHub. I’d wanted to update them all while re-using as much code as possible. How then was I to maximize the effect (all the games get all the features) while minimizing the effort of adding sound to all of those previous games simultaneously? And how best to share the effort with other Android programmers? In this, the first of a three part article series, you’ll find out. For part 1, I create the project, setup the environment, make a plan, and update the waveform generation code on my currently in-market apps. You can follow-along with this article series in real-time by watching the commit log to the Android Simple Game Audio project on GitHub. And stay-tuned for the upcoming part 2, wherein I become a Foley artist and make use of some interesting and (not quite) antiquated technology.
If you grew up in the 80s or early nineties, there’s a good chance you remember the AD&D goldbox series from SSI. These were top-down strategic RPG games based on the advanced dungeons and dragons pen and paper RPG series. While the first (Pools of Radiance) was my favorite, there were at least 10 or 11 others to play. Then there’s the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, X-Com, Master of Magic, Wizardry, Bards Tale, Albion, Superhero League of Hoboken, and about 1000 others. These games were great fun back in the day, but with some of the new improvements to DosBox you can actually improve the original experience on your Android handset or tablet.
Here’s a quick pro-tip for a lazy Sunday. Want to run an obscure Linux app on your rooted android tablet? Maybe you want to do some Wireshark Snooping, run a Linux game with sound, or download a set of Linux images at maximum speed? With the convergence of a few awesome technologies, we can now install and run pretty much any Linux application or environment on your Android device. Follow the steps below or check out some of the example photos of apps running on my Dell Streak 7.
While I sit here in bed, my body fighting the last remnants of a flu virus that had me knocked out for days, I am reminded of the past times I’ve been bedridden. Post-surgery, post-motorcycle accidents, post-European travel, etc. I’ve been knocked down plenty, but I always manage to make the best of it. This time I figured I would post up a preview of my (still in-progress) fourth book. It’s in the very early stages, but not too early for constructive criticism and a great deal of improvement across the board.
I’ve been slowing rolling out some structural and organizational changes to the site. Visitors will be seeing the changes within the next day or two. Apologies for any downtime that may occur.
