02.04.05
Posted in General
at 11 pm
So I wrote up, what I think might be the only page explaining how to get a PlayStation 2 online via a wireless connection thru an iBook. It really seems odd that more people haven’t tried this. It was a bit difficult to get going, mostly because you can’t tell when the PS2 is going to activate the Ethernet port.
PlayStation 2-WiFi-Mac OS X
From the article: “The biggest problem I’ve run into is getting that little red dot to change to green. Unless the green dot shows up, your connection to the online servers will not get through the Dynamic Network Authentication System (DNAS) screen. A couple of solutions that I’ve found so far are: A) flailing around, setting and unsetting all sorts of settings until finally something happens or B) getting everything ready to go, telling the Playstation to go ahead and login, and then while the DNAS screen is up, switching the iBook from the “Playstation2” location (In the Network system preference) to some other location and then back to the “Playstation2″ location.”
That’s the only real tricky part. The rest of it pretty straight forward network configuration.
The online play for Ratchet and Clank has been really quite fun. It’s interesting to see the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that the players can communicate with each other, even without the microphone.
For instance, there’s a particular screen where you signal your readiness to play a match. The interesting thing is that while some of the people are waiting, if they are getting impatient, they will flash the green ready light. Ending the flashing with the light being on means you want to get the game going and are frustrated about the lack of game play or inattentive players. Ending the flashing with the light off seems to signify the desire to have the teams change, usually to be more balanced, such as having a better spread of mic’ed players or higher ranking players vs. lower ranked players.
I’ve got a built-in limit of time that I can play the game. After about an hour of play I get a bit queazy in the stomach. Otherwise I might find myself playing for hours on end…
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01.18.05
Posted in General
at 10 am
Google News makes such funny juxtapositions sometimes, like this announcement of Intel’s announcement of it’s reorganization. It seems that they maybe taking a big chunk out of the middle of the pastry division.
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01.16.05
Posted in General
at 1 am
From the NAVA – American City Flags Survey:
“The following table shows the results of the survey in numerical order, with #1 representing the flag with the highest overall score, and #150 representing the flag with the lowest overall score.”
Take that Indianapolis! Actually, if they had taken this survey just two years earlier, we would have been way below #7, since the Portland flag used to have the city’s seal in the upper left field (canton). Thank you to Douglas Lynch and local NAVA’ers for getting us there!
Just what caused all this to take place?
Read the rest of this entry »
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01.14.05
Posted in General
at 7 pm
This post brought to you on the 365th anniversary* of the “ratification” of the Fundamental Orders.
Excerpted from The Avalon Project : Fundamental Orders of 1639:
“… And the rest of the Magistrates or public officers to be chosen in this manner: the Secretary for the time being shall first read the names of all that are to be put to choice and then shall severally nominate them distinctly, and every one that would have the person nominated to be chosen shall bring in one single paper written upon, and he that would not have him chosen shall bring in a blank; and every one that hath more written papers than blanks shall be a Magistrate for that year; …”
I find it fascinating that in 1639 they had the concept of voting _against_ someone. In this case, the “they” are the three towns in “Connectecotte” that participated in this early Constitution.
*Just how long ago was this? At this time, as an English colony (Not “British” as England and Scotland had not joined up) the authors of the Orders were using the Julian calendar, (which was off by 11 days at the time from the now widely used Gregorian Calendar) __and__ at the time, they considered the first day of the year to be March 25, so they signed the document as 1638!
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01.12.05
Posted in General
at 11 pm
From the document entitled: INCH-POUND MIL-C-44072C 30 April 1990 SUPERSEDING MIL-C-44072B 9 December 1987 W/CHANGE 12 February 2003
3.2.2 Oatmeal. Oatmeal shall be the commercial product known as quick cooking oatmeal. It shall have natural rolled oat flavor and odor and shall be clean and free from burned particles, rancid, musty, sour, or other undesirable flavors and odors.
Got that? Natural rolled oat flavor or we’ll bust you down to private!
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01.10.05
Posted in General
at 12 am
It was at least this long ago that I mentioned that I wanted a LaserDisc player, but I’ve actually had 4 Depeche Mode LaserDiscs for 6 or 7 years or more. Devotional, Strange Too, and older items have been awaiting their moment in the sun. This weekend, thanks to SurplusGizmos I now have my own player for just $20. It’s a Pioneer deck and pretty straightforward. So far it’s worked pretty well and I’m thinking I’ll be able to digitize some frames from the discs in the nearish future.
Now I’ve just got to find that Japanese release of Strange…
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01.08.05
Posted in General
at 10 am
N.C. councilmen accused of using PDAs to violate open-meeting law
HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — Two town council members have been accused of violating open-meetings laws by using electronic devices to communicate during board meetings.
Mike Gering and Eric Hallman used personal digital assistants, or PDAs, to send messages during meetings, according to Paul Newton, chairman of the Hillsborough Planning Board.
Their “communication of text messages over their PDAs during official town meetings represents a certain level of disrespect to their peers on the town board and the citizens of Hillsborough,” Newton said. “Their actions may be considered unethical and, at the very worst, be considered illegal or fraudulent.”
Hallman and Gering said they tried to use the devices, but they didn’t work.
“It crashes all the time,” Hallman said. “It was just more playing with the technology. Mine crashes every time I try to use it.”
“Eric and I have the same PDA and we attempted once, maybe twice, to see if they could communicate, but we couldn’t make it work so, no, we don’t communicate during board meetings with the PDAs,” Gering said.
Funny. Saved by the fact that their PDAs suck.
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01.07.05
Posted in General
at 11 pm
Okay, I’m looking for the perfect ‘headphone’ and hoping that maybe if I suggest it enough you guys will make it.
Anyone with an iPod who wants to use it all day long has to have headphones. That’s a given. But I don’t want to block out the rest of the world; when I’m on my bike, or walking, or driving, or at work, I don’t want to have headphones in both of my ears. I just want one.
That’s the key for me. I want to get a single ‘headphone’ that will allow me to listen to my iPod, though i’d like to still listen to both the left and right channels, with having them cancel out.
Right now, I’ve taken a cellphone ear piece, attached a 3.5 mm to 2.5 mm adapter to it and have ended up find out that “Sgt. Pepper’s” has a very distinct use of the stereo channels, since the right channel ends up playing out of the little microphone.
I want a headphone that will have the following:
1) A single headphone that can play both stereo channels mixed together.
2) An inline cord management device, like those Zip-Linq cords or something that will keep the wires cleaned up when I take the the iPod out of my jacket when I get to work.
3) Some sort of small pass-thru jack so that I don’t have to plug and unplug cables into my iPod to get to play through speakers at work. Those headphone jacks always get loose and flaky, rendering the music portion of the iPod worthless. Or make it wireless. That would work too.
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01.06.05
Posted in General
at 4 pm
Writing good driving directions is an under-appreciated art.
The directions of “[Place] is located in Hillsboro on Cornelius Pass about 2 blocks North of Baseline.” are not ‘directions’ as any reasonable human being would define them.
And they’re all but completely worthless for someone outside of the local area. Or someone who is driving.
(This moment of frustration brought to you by your vendor who’s trying to give you a web site worth using.)
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