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TI-boy SE - A Game Boy emulator for TI calculators
June 28th, 2009
About 7 years ago people discussed whether the then new Game Boy Advance could emulate SNES games. The general reponse was that the GBA would be able to emulate SNES when hell froze over. So came SNES Advance by Loopy and Flubba, and hell froze over. Sure it was slow and didn’t have sound, but it was proof of concept that it could be done.
People said the same thing about Game Boy emulation on the TI-8x series of calculators. Yet, calc84/calc84maniac recently released the first public beta version of his TI-boy SE emulator. And it even has sound. 
The emulator works on some TI-8x calculators (TI-83+SE, TI-84+, and TI-84+SE) and has support for a small number of games, for example Tetris, Zelda - Link’s Awakening and Kirby. Even if it’s slow, and sometimes glitchy it’s an amazing feat. I would definitely dub this the coolest TI calculator project of this year. (Or perhaps ever…)
The emulator works by using the similarity between the Z80 and the Game Boy CPU (which is a reduced and slightly modified Z80) in a clever way. I’ll write more about the details in a future post.
Links:
Download from ticalc.org
Download from gbdev.gg8.se (Mirror, v0.0.2 alpha)
Discussion on the Omnimaga forums
Youtube video (With sound)
Youtube video (Grayscale)
This post on gbdev.gg8.se
Michael Jackson + Sonic 3
June 27th, 2009So, MJ died last night, which you should know by now. If I broke the news to you, you must be living under a rock.
Anyway, my tribute to the man is a video I mentioned about a year ago that discusses the similarities between the Sonic 3 soundtrack and some of Jackson’s tunes. They’ve disabled embedding, so you’ll have to click this link to watch the video.
If dinosaurs could speak with George Michael Brower
June 17th, 2009If dinosaurs could speak with George Michael Brower, would they say hey?
Veqtor - Retrospective EP (IDM)
June 9th, 2009
Retrospective EP is the latest release from my friend, and the founder of the OXO Unlimited label, Veqtor. It’s an album filled with drills and ambiences. The overall setting is pretty dark, despite the first action packed jazzy track, Tanuki Jingle. 3-Aulien Caexf-9 is the sound of nitrous oxide. You’re tumbling back and forth and you’re going nowhere in the same time as you’re going everywhere. (If you’ve tried it you know what I’m talking about) Pecking F-key is a breakcore track which I actually tracked small parts of and which is using my Ubertone synth. (Which is a Reaktor synt that I made, that lets you set the ratio of the overtones of the synthesized sound)
For ambient tracks I use this as a litmus test: If they can make me confused about whether a certain sound that I’m hearing is part of the music or from the outside world, it’s probably ambient enough. Snowflakes passed this test when someone down on the street whistled and I wasn’t sure if the sound was part of the song. This track, too, has that slightly sweet smell of nitrous.
What I appreciate the most about this EP is the attention to detail, both in composition and sound design. (The two are really indistinguishable at some point, with this kind of music)
Seb, you ought to check this out. Gamma, you might want to, too.
Rösta pirat 7/6! (Idag!)
June 7th, 20091) Plocka en röstsedel, t ex för Piratpartiet.
Notera för övrigt flumpartiet “666 för en EU:s Super-state med frihet jämlikhet, rättvisa, fred, kärlek och lyckan”. Om du inte är rädd att din webbläsare ska krascha av alla gif’ar och annat så kan du besöka “the must sophisticated, advanced and well designed website in the World !” http://www.the666.com/. Antingen är det ett skämt eller så drivs den rörelsen av någon som har rökt lite för mycket tjack.
2) Kryssa för din kandidat, t ex en påläst tjej som brinner för sin sak.
3) Identifiera dig och lämna över kuvertet till valförrättaren.
Gå hem, följ vallvakan och känn vind i seglen.
New Tetris Google logo
June 6th, 2009
Must be a new record set in bad readability for those logos. I wonder if they actually played (super wide) Tetris to achieve that logo. If so, they deserve some creds for ending p with something that at least looks a bit like a Google logo. But if it was designed this way… Someone needs to be dropped down a well.
Rubaquabiggi (Electroacoustic music) + 6-edf (Tuning demo)
June 4th, 2009Electroacoustic music recorded at Studio 4, EMS Stockholm using the Serge and Buchla modular synthesizers and the spring reverbs. 8:26 of strange noises.
This is a demonstration of a (possibly useless) tuning that I played around with for a bit, which I call 6-EDF (Six equal divisions of a fifth) or or 6-TET-3/2 (6 tone equal intonation, ratio 3/2) The main feature of the scale is perfectly tuned fifths. (3/2) (And consequently, no true octave interval exists) It could also be seen as 10-EDO scale with a compressed pseudo-octave with a ratio of about 1.966:1, which is the closest octave approximation that this tuning can offer. The semitone ratio is 1.5^(1/6) = 1.069913…
The sample consists of three parts.
1) Chords consisting of a base note and 4 consecutive fifths. The chord moves 1 semitone per step.
2) Arpeggio moving a semitone per step.
3) Chords consisting of a base note, its pseudo octave (10 semitones from the base note) and the pseudo octave’s perfect fifth (16 semitones from the base note)
Left channel plays a sawtooth wave, right channel plays a square wave. Everything generated with Reaktor.
nitro2k01 - Hypertension (Gamma Goblin remix/re-edit/continuation)
June 4th, 2009Gamma Goblin:
So it’s not really a remix, but it’s basically just what jumped into my head when I listened to youre tune the first time. It kept seeming to building and build but without resolve.
So here’s the deal. Hypertension was my first track in the 30 songs in 30 days challenge on 8bitcollective. (Which I btw failed to complete)
On day 1 I felt utterly uninspired and the track I managed to jot down felt uninspired and tense, thus the name Hypertension. I then gave up on finishing the song and saw it as a hopeless case.
So when Gamma Goblin comes in finishes the track for me it’s a moment of relief and closure. The track that I didn’t think would get a proper end did get one.
Shitwave+Ableton Live (Brian Green)
June 3rd, 2009Shitwave running in KiGB, fed into Live. At times like these I feel ashamed that I haven’t added support for any kind of MIDI control yet. It would make Shitwave much more useful for actual composition. But at the point it was more of a proof of concept.
Video by Brian Green.
