![You suck at protoshop. No, you [i]really[/i] oo.](http://blog.gg8.se/images/you-suck-at-photoshop-you-really-do-your-awful.png)
Amazing spray painter
November 6th, 2008Amazing technique. I saw a painter using similar techniques in Greece once, but sadly I didn’t buy a piece from him. 
Mystery Gameboy MIDI videos…
November 1st, 2008Rumours say that these videos may have something to do with an upcoming Gameboy MIDI project of mine. Rumours also say that these rumours might in fact be true! Until more news arrives, check out Arduinoboy.
(The videos are silent)
Glitching a Gameboy from Gameboy Genius on Vimeo.
Gameboy hex numbers (Read the description!) from Gameboy Genius on Vimeo.
DS Brut - Nintendo DS hardware interface
October 28th, 2008
DS Brut is a slot 1 DS card with a number of interface pins (UART TX/RX pins, plus 5 general purpose pins) It can be used for things like hardware sensors (Light, temperature or maybe accelerometers) or communicating with external devices. But more interesting is the possibility to send and receive MIDI or perhaps even synchronize DS music software with LSDj or Nanoloop by emulating the original Gameboy serial protocol. Neither is possible yet, but the DS Brut is completely open source, including the firmware for the onboard Atmega 168 microcontroller, which means that it can be implemented with a little effort.
So, what are the pros and cons with this device? The big pro is the price tag - 26 euros for a DS hardware interface that can do virtually anything is really great. (There’s also a UART only version for 19 euros.)
The only real con I can see with this device is that it has no onboard memory. This means that unless you have a custom firmware and a slot 2 backup device, you’ll have to do cartridge swapping to use DS Brut. I imagine that in the long run, the cartridge swapping will wear out the interface pins and cause loose contacts. I’m not asking for the DS Brut to be a replacement for my M3 card, but for the next revision I’d like to see a few kilobytes of memory that can hold a small bootstrap to start code from a GBA cart or elsewhere. A couple of unused pins on the microcontroller could easily have been connected to the relevant pins on the Slot 1 bus to keep the door open for adding a bootstrap in a future revision of the firmware.
Apart from this minor remark, DS Brut is a promising piece of hardware that opens up many interesting possibilities, including sending and receiving true MIDI.
Link: DS Brut
Download NES, SNES, Gameboy, C64 and Atari ROMs
October 24th, 2008This site looks pretty darned good. No popups or spyware, and all the ROMs you’ll ever need. (Except for Bahamut Lagoon >_< )
Trying to learn Japanese…
October 18th, 2008I’ve been trying for many years (Since the middle of my teens) to learn Japanese, but always failed to learn it properly. I’ve lacked motivation, probably. But since I started indulge in animé a couple of years ago, my interest was sparked again. I’ve picked up a couple of words. Nowhere near a full understanding, but enough that sometimes when I watch animé, I go “Hey, I actually got what they said!”.
I figured one important thing to do is to learn the kanas and perhaps some kanji at some point. So, now I’m giving it a try again. I got a tip about the Kana Workobook which seems to be a pretty good page for kana training. (Thanks Disassembler for the tip)
There’s also the Let’s Learn Japanese video course (Link to torrent) which is pretty good, but a bit slow, and a bit cheesy. (You’ll know what I mean if you download it.) I got bored after a few episodes, but I still think it’s a good course and I may try it again.
The imporant thing is to keep practicing on a daily basis if you want to keep learning, and keep the knowledge you have fresh. If you’re trying to learn Japanese too, you might find those links helpful. If you have other useful links, please tell me.
Imma chargin mah lazer! Imma firin mah lazer!
October 6th, 2008
Inspired by om nom nom on Faces in Places. Original source: chrismear’s flickr.
The best anti-spam plugin for Wordpress!
October 5th, 2008
xkcd strip illustrating the concept of doing something wrong.
Most anti-spam scripts today are based on IP blacklists, word blacklists or a combination of the two. When this blog was still young, I had a spam problem, like most people. First I made my own spam filter based on a series of common spam words like, viagra, cialis and so on. it worked badly, and soon I started to get more spam using non-blacklisted words. So I tried to think about a more general way of distinguishing a spambot from a human.
The answer was pretty simple. A real human will probably use a real web browser with Javascript enabled. So I wrote a small piece of obfuscated Javascript which a spambot will have absolutely no chance of emulating. The result was a completely spam free blog!
The other day I actually found Wordpress plugin based on the same idea. That plugin is called Hashcash and looks promising. My own script is very crude. It’s not a proper WP plugin, it doesn’t log any acitivity, and it just removes the spam rather than saving it for analysis at a later point. Hashcash has all these features though. The disadvantages with this kind of spam protection is
1) that the user needs to have Javascript enabled and working
2) that it won’t filter manual spam. (Ie people in poor countries hired to post spam) But I have a treat for them!
But if you want the best possible spam protection, choose Hashcash!
For this blog I’ll stick with my own script, since it does its job. However, the next time I start a blog, I’ll go for Hascash. This will actually happen pretty soon, since I’m planning to revive Packets of Knowledge, a blog where I post random computer related tips and tricks for noobs and experts alike.
A little competition… WTF is going on here??
October 3rd, 2008
Time to test your association skillz. Look at the picture above. What does it depict? It’s a view that’s no doubt familiar to you Mac users out there, but still somewhat different. So, tell me the story of this picture. Make something up if you need to. If I made it myself, what did I do/how did it happen? If someone else made it, where did it come from? I’ve been trying to install OSx86 on my PC, which might or might not be related to the picture. (That’s right, it could be a tarp!)
If someone guesses somethin that’s spot-on, you’ll win… A cookie? Perhaps I can make a personal chiptune for you? I don’t know. But get guessing!
V Comment field below V
Edit: The answer is here: http://gameboygenius.8bitcollective.com/wordpress/2008/10/18/the-failed-competition/
FiSH
September 28th, 200804:53 -!- FiSH: Received DH1080 public key from omniuwo, sending mine… 04:53 -!- FiSH: Key for omniuwo successfully set!
TJ, if you’ve found your way here, (presumably through video statistics) here’s the reason I wanted you to change to a lower-case i: FiSH is the name of an encryption plugin for IRC conversations in the software irssi, using a variant of the Blowfish encryption algorhithm. And then I have this OCD kind of thing, and I noticed how they looked alike. Go figure.
If you actually found your way here, congratulations, have a fish stick cookie.
If you are not TJ, this post will not make sense.
An actual circuit bent Gameboy this time :o
September 28th, 2008The last time I thought someone had bent a Gameboy, I was wrong. It was a fake.
This time, coming from SeanBroccoli, it’s for real, but the bend is simply a freeze button, which is not very interesting. This is not Sean’s fault of course - it’s the Gameboy’s. The GB is a microcomputer, and almost anything will make it crash rather than produce interesting circuit bent effects. If the CPU comes across any invalid CPU instructions, it will simply lock up. The NES can handle a little more action, but that’s because in most cases you’re targetting the graphics chip rather than the CPU when bending it. (I think)
Even my old laptop, a Thinkpad 600E did a better job bending itself. <– Click that link for some tasty glitches.
A better way to do it is to use some GB music making software like LSDj, Nanoloop or perhaps PocketNoise which is an art project by Christoph Kummerer which has a glitchy almost circuit bent look to it. If Chistoph could just reply to my mails… :/
So yeah, if I were to “bend” a Gameboy myself, I’d write custom software for it, or use existing Gameboy music software.
A couple of side notes: The first drone sound is actually an example of the Gameboy’s flexible PRNG (Pseudo Random Noise Generator) Without going too much into technical details, it’s a digital noise generator that can do sort of melodic noise.
As for clocking the Gameboy and other stuff, super-bender Gijs has a few tips: one two. There’s even a way to clock it freely to any frequency using a component called LTC1799. Check derWarst’s video for some info on that.
So I hope you learned something new today!
