Tag Archive for JPP

Pandora Follow Up

chrisandthetopher / March 1, 2011 / No comments

After two and a half years of waiting, it has finally arrived….I am now one of only fifteen hundred or so people on the planet with a Pandora console

After the initial problem of the unit being sent to the wrong address twice, the unit arrived and to my delight had 40% battery, meaning I could use it straight away….at first the joystick didn’t work properly and the stylus was stuck inside the unit, but a software upgrade later and some repeated jiggling of the stylus and these problems were fixed….the unit is very small, about the size of a Nintendo DS, but a bit thicker and can be used in a laptop like position of open all the way. The battery lasts 8-10 hours depending on it’s use and the mouse can either be controlled using the touch screen or the two joysticks.

In the way of external hardware, it has 2 SD card slots, a volume slider, a headphone jack and the power/lock switch on the front, a pop-out stylus on the right hand side, and on the back it has a USB host port, an OTG mini port, TV-out port, power connector and the two gamepad shoulder buttons. When you open the device, you find a full QWERTY keyboard as well as a full gamepad…both the gamepad and keyboard are very nice to use.

The device comes pre-loaded with Linux Kernel 2.6.x and has a custom OS based on Angstrom, it also comes with some basic software such Midori (a web browser), XFCE (a window manager) and office software such as Abiword, Gnumeric and Clawsmail. The best thing about the unit though is as it is open source, software can be developed for it by anyone who knows how to code in the correct language….there are already hundreds of programs out for it, including: opensonic (a fan made sonic game), Pandora panic (a reflex game similar to
Warioware), openbor (a port of Beats of rage, which is a fan made version of Streets of Rage for the Sega Megadrive) and an emulator for virtually every console ever made up until the PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast.

I pre-ordered the Pandora in September 2008, and I think most people would agree that is a long time to wait for anything, and although technology has changed a little since then, the Pandora is still a very powerful and capable little machine and I will definitely be using it as my main portable games machine for the foreseeable future (at least until Sony’s NGP is released).

Below is a picture of the Pandora next to my 10-inch netbook.

Pandora vs. Netbook

Chris Thursfield

Category: Consoles, JPP Articles, Technology / Tags: ,

John Titor

chrisandthetopher / February 1, 2011 / No comments

Ever since the internet was created it has been the place of hoax and rumor and the idea of time travel is no exception. From buying a time machine on eBay and Craigslist (here, here & here ) to pictures of time travelers appearing in old photos and films (pictures at bottom of article)

Perhaps no time travel theory has been as widely publicized as John Titor, who appeared in November 2000 and posted on a public forum that he was a time traveller from the year 2036….at first this was just
shrugged off as a hoax, but as time went on and John started to post pictures of his time machine and answer questions posed by fellow forum members, people began to take notice.

Apparently in John’s timeline, World War III had occurred in the year 2015 killing nearly 3 billion people leaving the ones who survived to work together and rebuild, helping them become a more peaceful civilization. John’s mission was to go back to 1975 to retrieve an IBM 5100 personal computer, which was needed to debug some vintage computer code in his time that could not be read by his modern computers. He then
stopped in the year 2000 where he was living with his family and his 2 year old self.

On March 21st 2001, John said he would be returning to 2036 and after that he was never heard from again.

While John was here he made some strange and scary predictions, most of which have not happened, but some say he left secret messages with other predictions that have in fact come true, including being the reason Y2k never occurred. There are many websites online with supposed proof for and against John and both make compelling arguments.

Whether or not it was a hoax, John Titor remains on of the internet’s greatest mysteries.

More info can be found at the official website
here and you can see some of the scanned images and pictures of the ‘time machine’ John himself posted here.

Top: Time travelling hipster in 1940′s photo.

Bottom: Woman appearing to talk into a mobile phone in the 1928 Charlie Chaplin film ‘The Circus’

(Click either image for a closer look)

*Images fromforgetomori.com, popherald.com & dailymail.co.uk

Chris Thursfield

Category: JPP Articles, Web / Tags: ,

Minecraft

chrisandthetopher / December 1, 2010 / No comments

Minecraft is a game I and many other gamers have been obsessed with recently, because although the graphics and gameplay are quite simple, there is something very deep and fun about a game with no real objective.

Minecraft was created in May 2009 by Markus Persson and is sold through his website Minecraft.net for about $15 Australian dollars….according to his site 708009 people have purchased the game so far (as of Dec 07 2010), so he has obviously come up with something pretty special.

Minecraft is essentially a survival game. When you start the game you are dropped in the middle of a map (which is up to 8 times the size of the surface of the earth) and are given no instructions, you have about 20 minutes (before night falls) to work out that you must build a shelter and create some torches so enemies can’t spawn near you (as they only spawn in darkness)….so the first thing you do is go and chop down a tree, with the wood from the tree you can create tools, sticks and a workbench…then you must find some coal, so you need to look for a cave and mine until you find some, you can then create torches, and begin to construct a house out of mined materials….if you are quick enough and survive the first night, you pretty much spend the rest of the game mining the world for minerals and creating forts and castles to protect yourself from enemies. The great thing about Minecraft is that you can create pretty much anything you wish…I have even seen a rollercoaster and a working CPU created out of switches.

The game is set in the first person which can make for some fairly creepy moments where you are mining and turn around just in time to see a zombie attack from behind, and a recent update has allowed you to make a portal to what is called the nether (essentially hell) which is full offire and monsters.

*Images from

everyview.com, 2k3.org, arstechnica.com and mediamolecule.com

Chris Thursfield

Category: JPP Articles, Video Games / Tags: ,

MAME

chrisandthetopher / November 1, 2010 / No comments

MAME (or Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a piece of emulation software designed to allow the running of arcade games/hardware in software on the PC, this has become more popular recently with arcades worldwide closing down as home consoles become more favorable….it is an easy way to preserve gaming history.

MAME was originally released in 1997 by Italian software designer Nicola Salmoria and supported 5 games – Pac Man, Mrs. Pac Man, Crush Roller, Pengo and Lady Bug…since then it has grown to support 4510 unique games (9012 if you count multiple versions of games) and there are still 1391 games that aren’t supported

Arcade machines differ from consoles as most store data on a built in memory chip (hence the term ROM (read only memory)) and these are quite easy to copy to a PC, so most games can be found on the internet, but the law is a bit of a grey area when it comes to downloading ROMS. Owning and distributing the MAME software itself is legal in most countries, but most ROM’s are still under copyright although some free ones may be downloaded from the official MAME website.

Most people (as I am) will build their own MAME system as all you need is an empty arcade cabinet and a PC with some software to set it up, but you can also buy pre-made units that have up to 1066 games burned directly to a JAMMA board or a PC version with many more from places like eBay or Bumper Action….I prefer the PC as it is much easier to change and add to, plus it can be upgraded quite easily.

MAME can be found at Mamedev.org and legal ROMS can be found in the ROMS section

Chris Thursfield

Category: JPP Articles, Technology, Video Games / Tags: ,

Polybius

chrisandthetopher / October 1, 2010 / No comments

Polybius is probably the most mysterious game ever to have been released (if it was ever really released at all). It is an arcade game that supposedly appeared in the town of Portland, Oregon in the United States in 1981. The legend goes that the game proved to be an instant hit with the locals, to the point where many became completely addicted to it and started suffering unusual side-effects including amnesia, insomnia, night terrors, suicide and in one case a person became an anti-game activist. The game was said to contain flashing lights, hypnotic patterns and subliminal messages such as ‘submit’, ‘consume’ and ‘obey authority’ There were also reports of ‘men in black’ visiting the machines and instead of collecting the usual marketing data, they collected unknown data, which was allegedly responses to the psychoactive machines.

The game itself was rumored to be a cross between a puzzle game and a spaceship shooter…here is the description from the manual:
‘Use left/right/up/down to maneuver ship clockwise/counter and towards or away from the base. Use fire to destroy enemies. Occasionally, glowingshapes will launch from the base with a red number circling them. If the number matches either digit on the base number (on each arm of the base) or is evenly divisible within, shooting it will reduce the base number bythe polygon number. Getting the base number to zero advances to the next level. Intercepting the polygon will increase shields. Colliding with enemy pawns, missiles, or mines reduces shields. Scoring is based on enemies killed, reducing base number, and level change. The largest score increases are with divisible numbers, especially square roots. At higher levels, the base shoots a paralysis beam which may briefly immobilize the player. This occurs when all arms of the base align.’…Did you get all that?

Many people have claimed to have a copy of the game or an original arcade cabinet but no proof has ever been offered. In 2007 a website called Sinnesloschen (*WARNING* – Read to the end of the article before downloading) went online
offering a ‘remake’ of the game based on interviews and stories of the original. The cabinet has also made an appearance on the Simpsons episode “Please Homer, Don’t Hammer ‘Em…”. Below is a picture of the Simpsons episode next to a screen shot of the game.

PLEASE READ: This is the warning from the manual:
“WARNING This game uses strobe, auditory, and visual effects that could potentially cause seizures, nausea, motion sickness. DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME IF YOU HAVE SEIZURES, HEART PROBLEMS OR RHYTHM DISTURBANCES, PREGNANCY, OR ARE ON ANY PSYCHO-ACTIVE MEDICINES. If you have any of these or other prohibitive medical conditions, you should not play video-games in general, including this one.

DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME FOR EXTENDED PERIODS OF TIME (may cause some motion sickness).

*Images from Sinnesloschen

Chris Thursfield

Category: JPP Articles, Technology, Video Games / Tags: ,
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