Ill-Advised Video Game: How & Why

Following up on the Ill Advised Video Game post, I wanted to describe some of the technical details and address some of the issues that came up on Hack a Day.

Ill-Advised Arcade Game

Disclaimer: I know this project is a little insensitive. However, once I had the idea I couldn't get it out of my head. All pre-emptive apologies willingly tendered here.

Let's start this project off as though I was going to build a MAME cabinet, OK? I don't want a MAME cabinet and I don't play arcade games, but I'll explain that later.

After a short search, I got my hands on an old cocktail arcade cabinet courtesy of long-time friends of Free Geek Vancouver, The Hackery. (They're just up the street from Free Geek; if you haven't been in, check them out sometime.) Here's how it looked:

This is Space Zap, circa 1980 or so, from Midway. If you're curious about this game, there's a pretty thorough video on Youtube featuring a working example.

Free Geek Vancouver 2012 AGM

Hi all,

I'm working on another project that I'm eager to describe -- but in the meantime, I've fallen behind in more or less everything else. To wit: the Free Geek Vancouver 2012 AGM is coming up on Thursday July 19th. Full details here.

Hiatus

Hiatus! I'm in Paraguay for a couple of months, enjoying the methadone of Internet connections thanks to an abysmal ADSL line from the government telecom ex-monopoly.

Posting will resume when I return to Vancouver, unless something nerdy catches my eye here.

Computer Math Jokes

Yeah, I'm not going to get a lot of new readers with a title like that. But anyway.

I was thinking about an old joke:

There are 10 kinds of people: those who understand binary and those who don't.

...and a number of examples of number-formatting trivia came to mind.

Powerbook Slaughter

A couple of Powerbooks were kicking around so without further ado I slaughtered them. I suppose that means this is snuff photography:

Don't say you weren't warned...