LOST: A Long Winter's Nap

LOST Periodic Table Images

View My Latest:
LOST Periodic Table of Elements (HTML)

or Grab some GIF Images:






(Suggestions? I have 159 short LOST codes now. Can't wait for Wednesday 10pm!)

Fixing Vista Columns

Dude - I know how to fix the Vista Columns Issue.

It's dirty, it's wrong, but in LIEU of anybody at Microsoft Caring at all and adressing this, here goes:

AutoHotKey =
A Windows version of Automator (Event Recorder)
+ AppleScript (Access to system dialogs)
+ Visual Basic (It has a GUI toolkit)

Take on the 257+ types of Explorer Detail Columns
AT WARP SPEED!

Use on the fly, script-directed tweaking of the Explorer Detail Columns Dialog alphabetic column selection and spacebar toggle to make a custom column set.
These complex re-columning instructions can be made into a "macro.ahk"

You're gonna wanna crank up your ShellBags to like a million!

YEAH, SO I HAVE NOT PURSED THIS YET
Make all Windows like this Window
in Explorer-> Tools-> Options helps the columns die. They'll be back.

Vintage MacBook "Air"

Two years ago, a friend of mine dropped his MacBookPro Laptop (PowerPC Edition) SHATTERING HIS MONITOR. This was before the nifty magnetic Mac power connector existed. The monitor lit up, but only the top left corner was usable, the rest simply displaying a glowing, horrific chaotic fracture pattern.



Not having owned a Mac for many years (I used plenty at work, but went PC all the way at home), I asked him for it. He had no intention of having it repaired, as it was more than a few years old. With a DVI<->VGA adapter and an Viewsonic LCD Monitor, it was good to go! It had Built in Wireless Ethernet and USB (a good thing because the CD Drive was toast; bent and inoperable).

My father wanted a new Mac to use (His old Quadra 660 AV Pizza-Box finally refused to display a video signal) but the problem was the external monitor sitting next to the laptop was an ergonomic nightmare. The real screen WOULD HAVE TO GO. So... I replaced the broken MacBook Pro screen with the LCD VGA monitor:


The bent case put up a fight, but ultimately lost.
I tore in to the Poor MacBook using:
Gloves (to not get cut, or get monitor juice all over me)
A Small Fan (to blow away the mercury vapor that would be released)
Mini Screwdrivers (Using them at an angle on a bent case = not easy)
A Putty Knife (To pop the shell, not an easy task since the case had bent enough to count)

Maybe the Mac Mini should be re- released as an All-In-One Keyboard PC. It would be very Amiga 500 of them!

"Meeblings" (Indie Game)

If you enjoy physics and logic games, like World of Goo, JellyCar, Lemmings, or even Chip's Challenge, you will enjoy Meeblings. Play it at Ninja Kiwi (it's a flash game). I blazed through all 50 levels (got kinda stuck a few times, but my OCD powered through!

The soundrack had me thinking "I'm Tom Bodett for Motel 6" due to it's banjo-picking airy elevator music.

Here is the Completion Screen in all it's marvel:



Sweet. Good Night Everybody!

#mediamath Twitter Game

#mediamath Twitter Game
(Day 1 Awards)

Best Three-Show Additions (3-way tie)

1. Dollhouse = The Stepford Wives + Charlie's Angels + The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (@ethernautrix)
1. Millennium = The X-Files + Medium + The Mentalist (@kidmanproject)
1. FRINGE = Numb3rs + John Doe + The 4400 (@brunoprado)

4. Rome = Debbie Does Dallas + C-SPAN + I, Claudius (@benjamin_oc)
5. Family Guy = Simpsons + Married w/ Children + Alf (talking animal) (@garyb311)
6. How I Met Your Mother = Seinfeld + Friends + Frasier (@piriri92)
7. The Big Bang Theory = Star Trek + The Wonder Years + Melrose Place (@cyclopticupcake)

Best Two-Show Additions

1. The Office = Mary Tyler Moore + Arrested Development (@cyclopticupcake)
2. Supernatural = The X-files + Buffy the Vampire Slayer (@flatlandcometh)
3. Lipstick Jungle = Golden Girls + Sex And The City (@cyclopticupcake)

Reality Shows

1. The Biggest Loser = Survivor + Real World + Big Brother + Extreme Makeover + Denise Austin Workout (@garyb311)
2. Kitchen Nightmares = The Swan + Dr. Phil + the Food Network (@ethernautrix)

Perhaps, But Not Quite

1. Ellen = Oprah + the L Word (@flatlandcometh)
2. LOST = Twin Peaks + Northern Exposure + Guiding Light - Rocky (@jmpickel)
3. Xena: Warrior Princess = Hercules + The L Word (@heimp)
4. Power Rangers = Real Life (Transformers + Voltron + G-Force + Thundercats) (@garyb311)

Thanks to Everyone for Playing!

New Pop Culture Game!

"TV/Movie Formulas"
Describe a TV Show or Movie based on other TV Shows or Movies (as a formula)

HASHTAG: #mediamath (add this to a tweet to play along)

examples:
Dollhouse = ALIAS + Brainstorm + The 4400
Now And Again = The Six Million Dollar Man + The Prisoner + Once And Again
Bones = The X-Files + Crossing Jordan + Moonlighting
Life On Mars = Law & Order + Quantum Leap

Justice = Boston Legal + Jackie Brown
Reaper = The LOOP + Buffy + My Name Is Earl
House = ER + CSI + Grey's Anatomy + Monk
Tru Calling = Buffy + Six Feet Under + DayBreak

Harsh Realm = Altered States + eXistenZ
The UNIT = The A-Team + Desperate Housewives + MacGyver
LOST = Survivor + Big Brother + Swiss Family Robinson + The Prisoner + Rashomon
ALIAS = Felicity + 24 + The Unit (+ MacGyver + The DaVinci Code)
The Wire = The Sopranos + New York Undercover + Law & Order

Wonderfalls = Northern Exposure + Twin Peaks + The L-Word + Eli Stone
Twin Peaks = Six Feet Under + Deadwood
30 Rock = Studio 60 + Sports Night + The Office
Buffy The Vampire Slayer = Kolchak + Xena: Warrior Princess + The X-Files
Battlestar Galactica = Space: Above & Beyond + Star Wars + Earth2 + Solaris + The 4400

Fun, huh?


BENEFITS:
With this game, shows people have not seen or forgotten about bubble up next to similar shows, generating an implicit recommendation. Of course there's no one right answer, but describing things in terms of other things is a great mental exercise

Older shows like Now and Again can resurface - leading fans of derivative shows back to (some of) their original inspiration. Sharing these little allusions helps people find new shows to watch (based on shows they like) and the simple concept is well suited for Twitter (and us obsessive pop culture fanatics)

-SuperFan David from New York (@batchout)

Browser Toolbar Icons

I love the Firefox Browser Toolbar, especially afterI added the MiniFox Extension last year. It tightly packs the icons together. These Icons have no title to save space, and are "highlights" of the category menus, which are not shown when the browser window is small. They do however pop off of the right triange of the browser window in a vertical system menu.

hen my browser is maximized (or simply full width), the rest of the Browser Toolbar is shown (with Menus)

These Menus are in the same order as the icon groups. To the far right there are dedicated bookmark menus for Google, Wikipedia and YouTube (to classify new bookmarks.

Finally, the Sub-Menus at top level are as follows:

And that's a peak at my browser's quick list of favorite sites.

Twisty Passages, All Different

I never saw the manual for this game, it was installed in a Apple Compuer Lab long ago.
So I googled it. (It's also known as Alpha Waves)

I saw A Wikipedia Page about Alpha Waves
I saw The Programmer's Blog About The Game

I noticed there was next to nothing about the PLAYING game around on the web. No mention of any game level strategies, maps, or playthroughs to be found.

I decided to make a Continuum Map!

I played the game for 5+ hours with Excel at my side.

After much tweaking and exploring, I made the above GIF. It's a screen grab of the 75% Excel view on a 1280 x 1024 resolution desktop. An amazing huge image in 77K or so. Excel is great for mapping games when you prepare well (text, borders, grid, and go!)

A fun side effect was not knowing exactly where I spawned in the maze. The walls eventually told me. This game taps into your brain, I'd swear it. It's very colorful and varied.

This ran on a 386, people! Full screen! 15+ FPS!

MORE ABOUT THE GAME

Admittedly this is an obscure, yet groundbreaking game.

Continuum is a game where you bounce around rooms to go through doors. It's very cerebral, yet strangely ineffable. You can thrust forward, turn left and right, and raise and lower the camera angle. That's it for the controls. There are keys and crystals to collect, and different types of bouncy platforms. No shooting, save for one platform type that fires missles where your craft is facing.

You interact entirely in 3d with various objects

(Now I keep in mind... this was 1991, This ran on a 386, people! Full screen! 15+ FPS!)

3d Facet rendering had never been done before on this scale, Full Screen, Spriteless, pure genius code. The filled shapes algorhythm and precomputed trigonometric 3d perspective programming techniques made this possible.

The game has two modes:

Action- A Timed Mode. All areas connected with a save game feature, but when time runs out, GAME OVER. This is not a mode favored for detailed analysis, but for kicking Arcade ass once you know the ropes.

Emotion- Free play in discrete areas. I was always more of an explorer than a points whore, so this was my mode. Emotion mode made it possible to make the map without being killed constantly by the time limit, which came in handy as I was flying without a manual. It gives you one "saved game state" to undo back to. Try, try again.

ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC

The DOS version was the last conversion, and it's Soundtrack that permeates every game level was the most ambitious best to be featured in a physics game like this. The Soundblaster/Ad-Lib FM Synthesis jams this game kicks out are unbelievable, is the best use of PC speaker taken to it musical conclusion.

If the soundtrack exists anywhere, I'd feel stupid for using Audacity to make a Soundtrack album: 35.8MB zipped. Not going to link to it, unless someone is interested, but here's the theoretical CD Cover:

I love this game's style, the simple object of ecploring the game and learning its complexity. It's a very universal, abstract, non-violent thing of beauty.

Who knew that simple was best? Just tons of 3d mazelike rooms, each with a simple Name and a new twist. A simple, unique great game engine with tons of depth thrown in. Timeless & Classy.

Over the years, I learned some rules: Little cubes remove big cubes. If it looks different (platform variations) than it does something different (lightning, creatures, spaceships, teleportation) Some balloons make you lighter than others. There are little Dark-Crystal type shards that you collect for points.

iPhone version? I can dream,,,

That's all for now, folks! Namaste

PERL/PHP Programmer

I resumed programming when I discovered Perl and how it was used to make websites.

Putting PERL into action, it was deployed on Qru Studios Incorporated for several newsletters, including "Tech Tips" (browse it HERE)

Learned PERL from a Quick Refrence Card, Learned PHP from the Online Help
Read O'Reilly Books cover to cover while working at an ad agency and isp which fired up a dev toolbox I was all too eager to explore

Eschewing plugins, I crafted a text-file database system from scratch, using it's abstraction to remove incompatability with proprietary plugins when hopping platforms.

Late I created Intranet Applications for Business Recordkeeping, Payroll, Legal Documents and Web Site Generation, including calendars & forums, much like the features Yahoo and Google have developed to this day.

Game System Icon Roundup

The Foundation of Personal Computing, represented here. MESS is like MAME except for old system architectures. (someone's out ROM hunting) The Apple ][c is my favorite, Apple ][ logo is so classic



Windows just gets the ONE Icon because little has changed since Win98 except massive software bloat. (WinSXS, ProgramData and Users folders should not be mullti-gig as on Vista) I have used all the Other Platforms except for the iPhone. Still have a Treo 700p (not w) I should make a G5 Ipod Classic Icon to round out the set.



Game Systems my brother and me owned over the years. Old is good because the roms are super small but all the Gameplay is intact.



Didn't own any of these systems, I was a PC Gamer by then. The ROMS start to get really Big from here on out. I am a firm believer that a game doesn't need to fill a CD/DVD to be good. Cutscenes end up sucking anyway.

Trailing _s, by the way, are emulators I have not found and configured, Preferring PC games and any IndieGames that use physics like 2d Boy's World of Goo (under 80MB for the entire game!)

That's all for now

Thoughts On The Amiga

I always envied Amiga owners...
for their Sound and Graphics, their huge Library of Games, and
and their awesome Demo Scene [programmer/artist multimedia]

The company with the best graphic designers back then was:


Apple ][gs and Amiga were truly baby steps in computing, due to their overall poor system software, and lack of hard drives, but the Media Tech that they started has grown into the truly amazing MPCs we see today.

The closest I got to a Hard drive back then was a large RAM disk, which was screaming fast compared to a floppy. Back when RAM was respected and Virtual Memory(ugh) was non existent.

As a tribute to my Amiga HAM Mode 4096 color envy I purchased an Atari LYNX, which was fun and had integrated special chips for graphics and sound. It blew Gameboy out of the water (technically)

Related:
WinUAE Amiga Emulator
HANDY Lynx Emulator