With the recent launch of the SNES Mini. Now seems a good time to post some details of the SNES themed Retropie box I recently built. People had seen my retropie setup and enjoyed playing the old games again. With a friends birthday coming up, I thought it would be
nice to build them their own setup to play at home.
Continue reading “A SNES Themed Retropie Build”
Building an Animatronic Tail
My friend Rah and I were chatting and she happened to mention how cool it would be to have a tail. I joked that I bet someone had built one using an Arduino. A quick search showed that indeed a few people had and even a tentacle. Rah’s next question was would I built one, fast forward a couple of years and I’ve finally got around to starting. Taking a 3D printable design as my starting point.
Mysterium
A friend asked me if I’d heard about Mysterium Network, decentralised VPN. I hadn’t, so took a look
TL:DR
I don’t see what this gives you over paying for a ‘normal’ VPN with bitcoin.
Continue reading “Mysterium”
A to Z
Prompted by Jukesie’s own A to Z and a little push from Thayer to actually post this, my A to Z of influences and interests:
Continue reading “A to Z”
GTA V
Just a few screenshots from my first few hours in GTA V
So that was 2014
2014 didn’t have the best start for me. Another visit by the black dog over the winter but that did result in me finally getting a SAD light which has helped since and a little better at self care.
Continue reading “So that was 2014”
PC Build
This is my first build from a complete blank slate for ten years. Most of my current system is six years old ( I thought it was more like four but I checked, no wonder it feels slow).
Continue reading “PC Build”
Running a Minecraft Server
I used to run a small Minecraft server with some friends, these are my notes on how I setup the machine.
Continue reading “Running a Minecraft Server”
LinkedIn Endorsements
As I noted the other day Mum303 has endorsed me on LinkedIn for OpenGL. I was really not sure if my mother had any idea what OpenGL was, so I asked, this is the transcript of the txt conversion:
Me: Do You know what OpenGL is? 🙂
Mum303: Not a Clue
Mum303: Industry standard?
Me: Kind of. A Standard way of writing to 3D graphics chips 🙂
Me: I think I’m going to save these messages to show people at work next week
Mum303: Well did know was to do with graphics
Me: 1/2 a point
This got me thinking, should I ask her for definitions of other technical terms?
Ada Lovelace Day – Anita Sarkeesian
As I said last year, I’m a big gamer, videogames have been part of my life since the early 1980’s. Met lots of good friends via gaming. Even spent five years programming them as my day job. Walking into a games shop and seeing an about even gender split (Leaving any discussion about gender binaries for another day) makes me happy. In short, I like gaming and think it something positive.
Some parts of the gaming culture aren’t so nice or worth celebrating. The casual use homophobic and sexist language, especially in FPS’ just makes me avoid play sometimes, plus the narrow choice of player characters in most games (with some notable exceptions via mefi) just don’t represent me. Add to that recent events at Eurogamer Expo. In some ways as games have become more mainstream the culture has moved backwards. I don’t remember it being so nasty back in the early 80’s but then I was only young, so maybe I just didn’t pick up on it.
Anita Sarkeesian has been video blogging about pop culture at Feminist Frequency for a few years. The Lego video really stood out for me. Back in May she started a Kickstarter to help fund a new series of videos covering videogames: Tropes vs. Women in Video Games. Then it happened, the part of gaming culture I don’t really like descented in full force, threatening comments on Twitter, Facebook, Kickstarter and YouTube, a defaced Wikipedia entry, rape and death threats, which are really indefensible. I was take aback by the sheer hate being posted.
She didn’t back down, which I can’t imagine being the easiest route to take but as a small positive note the Kickstarter raised $158,922 much more than the $6000 goal. As Rock Paper Shotgun noted (via mefi) this year seems to have marked a turning point in the discussions about gender representation in games. Fingers crossed in 2013 things keep improving.
Also the much missed Kathy Sierra and her wonderful blog Creating Passionate Users deserves a mention.