Everything that doesn’t fit into any other category.
http://www.livejournal.co…games/8935.html
Thanks to Michael for this link. It’s a brief guide to making and selling a “casual game” from John Passfield of Krome Studios fame. My favorite bit is when he writes:
The game was now available for people to buy. And buy they have!
Inspirational stuff! Probably because it includes the nitty-gritty which makes it feel possible.
http://www.brother.com.au…SubCategoryID=3
I was looking for a cheap laser printer that “just works” under Linux (Ubuntu). I happened to be at Officeworks and saw the Brother HL-2040 on sale for $AU149. A flyer for it mentioned Linux support (via driver download) so I figured I could return it if it didn’t work at all. The only shortcoming was that the Linux driver only supports up to 600dpi (also clearly mentioned on the flyer).
Setup was very straight-forward and the instruction manual was surprisingly useful. Unpack, shake drum to distribute toner, insert drum, insert paper, plugin, press the “GO” button, watch Brother test page get printed.
Now to see if it works from Ubuntu. “System > Administration > Printing”, “New Printer”, “Use another printer by specifying a port:”, “USB printer #1”, “Brother”, (now the tricky bit) “HL-5140”, just use the recommended driver, HL-5140 shows up in the Printers window, double-click, “Printer > Print test page”, watch Ubuntu test page get printed.
The tricky bit was finding the correct driver. The HL-2040 wasn’t listed in the printer selection dialogue, so I did a quick google to find a compatible printer driver. Got all the info I needed in a reply to a post on Rachel’s Knowledge Base
Conclusion: Cheap, easy to set up, works, quiet. Limited to 600dpi, but what do I care? Recommended.
Update: Downgraded to Recommended (from Highly Recommended). Printing is normal volume (not super-quiet) and the the “economy” modes don’t seem to work under Linux. Excellent value at $149 though.
This inkjet printer is irritating me. It probably hasn’t been used for a year and the print heads are all clogged up. I’ll be doing a lot of printing over the next few weeks, so I would get something new provided it didn’t require too much time/effort.
Anyone have recommendations for a cheap (< $AU400) B&W laser printer that works well under Linux? Shopbot was a good starting point, but doesn’t give much user experience. I was thinking of a Samsung.
Update: I think that I’ll get the Samsung ML-2250.
Update: I just picked up a Brother HL-2040 from Officeworks for $AU149. I was there to get some folders and it was cheap. They mentioned Linux support on the data sheet; I’ll find out I guess.
Well, not really; I’m officially on leave. However, today was my last day at ViSLAB and it feels a little odd to be heading back to Perth after just one year.
Read all about it on my work blog.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
I’m up to chapter 6 of “Manna”, an online book by Marshal Brian, the founder of How Stuff Works. It’s quite an interesting view of a future dominated by robots and shaped by a human greed and (conversely) ideology.
Recommended reading, thus far.
I needed something to backup my thesis and collected reference papers (just in case something happens to them during the move back to Perth). I considered getting a DVD writer, a flash-based MP3 player, or a portable HDD.
I wanted something that I could use to move stuff from place to play, so a DVD writer wasn’t really convenient. I didn’t think that I would use (any of) the extra features of the flash-based MP3 player and storage was fairly limited. So it was down to the Seagate 5GB Pocket Drive and a 20GB Pocket Drive from Dick Smith. Since the 20GB was only AU$20 more (at AU$197) I decided that it was much better “bang for buck”.
Here are some photos of the unit with size comparison to standard (issue if you were in the US Airforce in the 80s) items:
Anyhow, after I got the 20GB portable HDD I connected it to my machine (running Ubuntu) and expected it to “just work”… nothing happened. It wasn’t formatted, so I found the where plugdev connected the device:
ls -la /dev/* | grep plugdev
I created a few partitions (one for Linux-only and one for Windows-also) using fdisk. The partition table now looks like this:
Disk /dev/sdb: 20.0 GB, 20000268288 bytes 64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 19073 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 4769 4883440 83 Linux /dev/sdb2 4770 19073 14647296 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
Finally I formatted the partitions to make them usable:
sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1 sudo mkdosfs -F32 /dev/sdb2
Updated: fixed mkdosfs command (thanks Steve!)
I’m beginning to think creating DS redesigns is my only real form of relaxation.
I’ve been thinking of different ways to hide the controls. The flip-out and slider ideas were pretty obvious, but I wanted to try a rotation-based design. Based on the small amount of other consumer goods that use rotation (I can only think of a Motorola mobile phone) I figure that it’s fairly difficult to come up with something that would work.
Aside from the rotation, the rest of the design is clearly iPod inspired. I like how the screens on the new iPods are pretty much invisible when not illuminated and thought that something similar could make be used to “hide” one of the DS screens when not in use.
A few more notes. The stylus, power, volume, headphone jack, and DS game card (/SD card) slot are at the top of the unit. Recharge port is at the bottom (so that a charging cradle could be used). Since DS has wifi, this could be used as a streaming media viewer.
http://www.e-capcom.com/shop/?goods=9999707
It looks like it’s only available as part of the Japanese “BIO HAZARD Deadly Silence Limited Pack”.
Image (obviously) from www.e-capcom.com.
http://www.abc.net.au/new…12/s1528544.htm
I’m ashamed to be called Australian sometimes.
Blurb:
“New South Wales Police say several people of Middle Eastern appearance were attacked by a mob at Sydney’s Cronulla Beach today.”
Another blurb. This one’s a little weird; it almost reads as though attacking these people (who aren’t really Middle Eastern) is worse:
“In terms of crowd swells against some people of Arabic extraction … some of those people that have been targeted have been Australian-born people that attend this beach in a quiet and relaxing manner,” he said.
Another followup story here.
http://www.whiteknightgames.com
I found this in a round-about way while reading about AGDC. White Knight Games is a Perth-based games developer. From their website:
“At WKG, our goal is to create high quality Christian computer games that enrich and engage players by incorporating Christian virtues and actions into fun gameplay, great graphics and by reinforcing Bible scripture.”
Personally, I would’ve avoided a company name that could be interpreted as racially supremist or reminiscient of The Crusades… but that’s just me! 😛