Quickie - Online Console Games

If you know anything about games, go here, and be amazed. TONS of older home video games to play in your browser, with nothing to install, or know anything about... Stop reading this, go play it, NOW!




This is all that's left of you when you discover the games on that website

PSP Review - Midway Arcade Treasures Extended Play

Being old and crumbly, I like games from the days when you used to have to pay for EVERY SINGLE time you played it. Sort of like the way the RIAA would like you to listen to music, but that's beside the point.

Midway Arcade Treasures Extended Play for the PSP, is a rather groovy collection of arcade games, but more importantly brings some hand held fighting action to the PSP, which up to now has been scarce (what I really mean is that my big head didn't know about it). The games are;

720?™ - 1 player
Arch Rivals™ - 1 or 2 player wireless
Championship Sprint™ - 1 or 2 player wireless
Cyberball 2072™ - 1 or 2 player wireless
Defender® - 1 player
Gauntlet™ - up to 4 player wireless
Joust™ - 1 or 2 player wireless
Klax™ - 1 or 2 player wireless
Marble Madness™ - 1 or 2 player wireless
Mortal Kombat® - 1 or 2 player wireless
Mortal Kombat® II - 1 or 2 player wireless
Mortal Kombat® 3 - 1 or 2 player wireless
Paperboy™ - 1 player
Rampage™ - up to 3 player wireless
Rampart™ - up to 3 player wireless
Sinistar™ - 1 player
Spy Hunter™ - 1 player
Toobin'™ - 1 or 2 player wireless
Wizard of Wor™ - 1 or 2 player wireless
Xenophobe® - up to 3 player wireless
Xybots™ - 1 or 2 player wireless

Anybody that used to play arcade games might spot something they remember in this line up. Now it says wireless, but in my experience it is nigh on impossible to find a local area network of gaming for your PSP. You have to be near other people for this to happen, and so far, nothing. The few people I DO know are all much to grown up to care about such things but it would be nice to be able to take someone on in one of the Mortal Kombat games.

So is it any good? Yes. The games work from a quick select menu, load in and off you go. As for loading times, most of the games load in one go, with no waiting after that. Mortal Kombat was a little different, but the time spent waiting was minimal. Load times were small, and only between the character select screen, and the start or end of completed matches.

Once within a game, you obviously cannot insert a coin so pressing START er..starts. When you want out and back to the game select screen, you can press start again. It's not a very fussy title, but the good thing is that it works REALLY WELL, for what it is. Game selection is silent, except for a blip to indicate you have scrolled to the next choice in the list of games. This was something that bugged me with the NAMCO MUSEUM BATTLE collection, as each time you quit out of a game and returned to the main menu, it was blasting out seemingly much louder than the game you were just playing. It was a mash-up of old arcade themes all lovingly crafted into a screeching dirge of paint peelingly squeaky notes.

The PSP controls work very well on each title in the Midway Arcade Treasures collection, with no odd placments or lack of response. Some people might argue in fact this is TOO good because arcades NEVER had such sprightly hardware, and therefore detracting from the experience. The PS2, GameCube, and Xbox versions of this title (now in their third incarnation) didn't have the combination of games I wanted to spend real money on. The PSP version has Defender, and Mortal Kombat, so anything more was a bonus as far as I was concerned.

It's difficult to say much more about the overall package as it all works so solidly. The only part I have yet to experience is the wireless, so if that happens I can post more here, but I am not holding out much hope for that.



Old? Get this next time you are shopping for denture ointment

Quickie Illusionist on Japanese TV proves that Solid can indeed pass through Solid

Quickie - Watch this and be amazed! Probably good for keeping children agog for a few minutes too.

read more | digg story

Quickie - Cooling cooling cooling

Quickie.

I was checking Digg.com as I do every five seconds, and this gem came out.

If you ever wanted to know WHY cooling your PC properly was important, watch this video for unbelievable heat related consequences!

Linux within Windows

Was looking around the other day, through the mysterious Linux sites. Came to Damn Small Linux again, after being lured there by the promise of booting it from a USB drive. This is by no means new, and you're supposed to be able to stick it in any computer, boot it up, and it runs from the USB drive, rather than the installed hard drive. Knoppix and other Live CD's will do this, but of course, not retain any work done because they are CD's. Yes I KNOW you can save the config onto floppy disks. Been there, done that, and for some reason I just can't be bothered with it. As for booting from USB, most of the times I would NEED USB booting it would NOT be possible because of old hardware, and no USB ports. That's where my Live CD's would be ok.

So instead of coming out with a bootable USB drive, which would retain all the changes during each session, just like your normal computer does, I sort of cheated. If you get this version of DSL, you can put it in a folder on your computer, and just run it from there. It works, thats it! Changes are retained, nothing to mess with, fiddle with, or experiment with, at all.

I thought, ok, how can I make this useful. I just copied the folder I had been running DSL on, from my PC to a 128MB USB drive. It worked! All the changes I had made were there, it was easy. So in theory, I could just work on it on the PC (as it's much quicker accessing it from the hard drive, than the USB drive) and when I wanted to take that same thing out on the road, copy the folder to the USB drive. All current, nothing to update. Upon return, copy it back again.

To use it, just stick your USB drive into the computer (or go to the folder you downloaded it to), and access it as you would normally. Then within the folder, double click the dsl-windows.bat file and it boots up. You got yourself some Linux man! It runs in a window on your desktop... how spooky is that? Probably makes a great way for someone who really wants to see what this Linux malarky is all about, but doesn't have the inclination or equipment to burn CD's or mess with dual booting their computer. The folder is self contained, so if you don't want it, just delete it, simple. There is nothing to uninstall, or fiddly process to go through, to rid yourself of it.

This does of course require you are running Windows in the first place, but then hey, I am only going to be mending Windows computers anyway. Anyone even close to experiencing Linux would be quite capable of keeping their own Windows computers running well, I'm sure. I like it because I can quickly try something out without having to go to another machine, or boot up a Live CD. Most times it's just a command or program I want to see if I can use somehow, and the only reason I seem to get stuck in any Linux is because these days I find myself keeping all the things I need to work with, online. Except for files, or major applications, I can get by with a Live CD, or USB drive.



Linux, really handy if you just want the job done

Dissapointment :(

I was initially excited about a full arcade style cabinet, with classic games, being sold at Target. However, once I saw it, I realised it was not up to the job at all. Buttons and joysticks were flimsy, and it was even questionable if the games themselves were actual arcade emulations. The screen was so bad it was difficult to make out even the colors.

I think I have to bite the bullet and get serious with MAME and some home built equipment. Or for now, just a dual arcade stick.



You tease!

The biggest holiday season approaches

Quickly, lets get a song stuck in your head for the holidays. Tracks 3 and 5 for full ear-wormability.

I am sure you have not heard THESE songs before, or have you.... listen and it will have you scratching your head, not the darned vinyl.

Woah, and make sure you don't spell vinyl wrong online!

All this tech, is good right?

I was doing my daily rounds of the technology websites, via Googles customizable homepage, and found an old chestnutty piece at Wired.
It was asking if all this technology merely kept people trapped in things they never had before, and now believe they cannot live without. Is being able to do so much work (as technology facilitates) a good thing (even with more money coming your way) while ignoring social interactions, and even personal well being?

Maybe one reason for the huge acceptance of technology such as computers and all the internet malarky, is that maybe a lot of people never were really any good at the social thing? Getting a computer or some other device to do your bidding, is a hell of a lot easier than getting someone else to cooperate. Look at it this way, would you rather ask your teenage kids to clean the kitchen, or ask Robby the robot to do it? Exactly!

I don't think it's any great secret that people will always do what is easier for them, even if it means ignoring obvious future consequences. I quite like the illusion that if it wasn't for those pesky computerized gadgets, we would all be living an amazingly rich and rewarding social existance. Nice fantasy. Anyway, I reckon all those people that are capable of it, are living it.

The other piece I saw at Wired, was about a new service which tagged all your photos so you didn't have to. I am really not into the whole photo thing, and I think it's a way of companies pulling people into technology, but with all the non-technological principles. You don't need 'photo' printers, hell, you don't even need to print the things. Someone let me know what the idea is behind that. Anyway, the company says that it can use it's software to identify people in photos, as well as supply appropriate tags to each one. Tags are keywords you can use to search for more specific items (pictures, files, anything) in a whole heap of similar things. Search your tags for BIRTHDAY, and you will see all the images from birthdays, but none from vacations. The problem they are supposed to be solving is that tagging EVERY SINGLE IMAGE you take, is a pain and a drudge. So if you didn't tag your vacation photos with a word you can remember (er... like vaction), you would not see them in a search for VACATION. You can have a whole mess of images, in one huge pile, and at your command, only the ones you want will shuffle to the surface for your viewing enjoyment.

WARNING: If you have not bothered to take the time to tag, or name the image files you've taken because it wasn't important enough that you make time to sort through the oh so precious memories you just HAD to keep, then I don't want to see them. Why not just send your camera on vacation somewhere, and let it take pictures every 30 seconds, no matter where it is. Then let it automatically upload those images to an auto tagging service, which stores it all online for you. Then that service will automatically email selected chums (based on their email keywords, and surfing habits) to show them pictures that the online service has worked out they would be interested in. To which THEIR email would automatically reply that they would/wouldn't have enjoyed them, based on it's own assessment of their email keywords, and surfing habits. Then noting in their automatic journal how much they enjoyed those pictures and would make a note of which images in the future their automated camera should take, so YOUR automated system would rate it highly also. And to did I mention, all of this could take place automatically?

Because that's what you want right? To do everything at hyper speed. To save time, so you can do even MORE things with the spare time you got from all the other sped up things you did quicker before? By now we should have been able to do so much in such a short space of time our heads should have sploded!

Why are you reading this (both of you)? Why not sign up for a blog reading service which scans through posts, extracting keywords you are interested in and telling you how relevant it is? Hang on, why sign up? Get something to only sign you up if based on your preferences, you would have wanted to sign up for it. Then you can save time by not having to subscribe to things that were of no interest to you at all. Why not just save a LOT of time, by telling a service your basic personal details such as age, location, etc. Then it can sign up, subscribe, purchase, rate, surf, email everything you so desperately need, without you having to take the time to do it. That would save a lot of time yes? Maybe even give you time to take the dog for a walk, chat with your chums in the street, see a movie, sit in the park feeding the ducks. While your tamagotchi style internet pet, does it's online thing all by itself.

Of all the people you know, how many of them REALLY know what they really want? I am sure people would love such automation, if it meant saving time... for er... what again? Legend has it that in the beginning there was darkness, and in that darkness a single piece of content was created. Then Google meta-tagged it, and the internet was born. Perhaps nobody will ever know who the mysterious 'Content Creator' was, or maybe not even care. I know I don't, as I have so much information flowing to me now that I could not possibly sort through it or even use it in any meaningful way. My purpose in life is to manage streams of data so they can flow freely, and continue the cycle of er... something.



Hey look, it's the internet of the future!
Remember just to feed it demographic details every couple of days.

Ever needed to express yourself?

If you don't have the luxury to work in a place that bans miserableness, then check out the Cuss Container. It may just change your life.



This image is nothing to do with the Cuss Container.

Company makes whining against the rules

Krysss.com towers has it's fingers crossed that this will sweep the globe, and put all those whiney moaning bastards where they belong. Out of everyone else's way!

Nutzwerk made it compulsory that employees do the big happy smiley every morning. If not they are to remain away from the office until they cheer up. Or more accurately, they can figure out that nobody is interested in their attention hoaring antics, and grow up.

Well done chaps. Need to hint at someone you work with? Show this to them and say what a wonderful world it would be if everywhere subscribed to this way of looking at things.

Full story can be found here at The Register.



No picture, but click here to cheer up.