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On request, I tossed together Google Notes for my brother, who maintains it and gets all of the hate mail whenever my server happens to go down. It was a simple app to do, all in Ruby on Rails, but once upon a time the site broken for no reason at all. As it turns out, google changed something in the request string, adding a useless "&&" on... This absolutely killed something in Rails, as splitting on "&" means you can't split one of those into a key/value. I've not yet seen if Rails fixed this yet, but honestly.... This is just a silly story about an ig experience.

Blah.

It won't work for me, as I doubt they'll make Nekketsu Street Basket: Ganbare! Dunk Heroes available stateside on the Wii anytime soon. :)

And what, pray tell, has OSDL done to deserve my trust or respect?

Better yet, can you tell me that their "Desktop Linux Working Group" doesn't invision a better, brighter future... A future where a single linux desktop named KDE reigns?

I'm sorry, but I've probably done more for GNOME and free software in my free time than half of the members on OSDL company roster.

I trust that neither OSDL or Linus have an objective opinion on the desktop... They just want their working group to succeed, leading to more money and less desktop competition in the future.

I've got plenty of experience with vector graphics released for gnome-games, and quite a bit of professional graphics work under my belt. I currently use Illustrator for most of my vector-based art, and it's a joy to the point that even with modern Inkscape, I just find so many features either lacking or missing... In relative terms, it even feels like a fight just drawing and manipulating simple paths. There's still no decent support for layers, right? A lot of the things I didn't like about Sodipodi that seem to still be around, like their SVG generation... Then again, I'm one of those fools who reads SVG files and tweaks them for maximum impact.

I've used konsole, and can't say if I remember it being faster than gnome-terminal, but I do think a lot of the complaints about the latter may be overblown. Sadly, CD burning is something I do a lot of with my professional work, and my software needs include a burning software that controls a robotic arm and 50-cd trays. :)

Assuming there is or will be a 86400x43200 TIF of JPEG file, you can use a TFW of JFW file that reads like this in your favorite GIS app:

0.00416666666666
0.00000000000000
0.00000000000000
-0.00416666666666
-180.00000000000000
90.00000000000000

I've got a bundle of these from the last Blue Marble at this page.

I do work for Mud Springs Geographers, which have an app called AWhere that support loading this sort of image as a map layer. I'm not into crass commercialism, but unfortunately, Slashdot won't let me post just that TFW because of the lameness filter. You'd think they would make excpetions for anciend user ids or excellent karma, but no..... :)

(Okay, I've removed the whitespace from the snippet above, but keep in mind that most TFW files have the decimal point positioned 20 spaces from the left edge.)

I can understand and appreciate what the author is trying to do here, but to be completely honest, I don't see that much development and maturity, or at least nothing noteworthy. Sure, the consoles of today are more mathematically powerful than they were, but it's not that big of a deal... Tekken loads up 3d models and texture maps which then get pushed down a pipe and into a drawable, playable characters. The NES wasn't exactly a tin can and string by comparison: Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu did animation of fighting moves for up to four completely different characters at once by switching several different pages of ROM directly off the cart, into and out of the video address space.

The sad part about the article is that it doesn't quite realize how bad and stale the game industry is these days. Dominated by publishers that are so addicted to the big money that comes from a market of $50-a-pop games that they believe games are all about finding the right market and developing a genre game geared to it, preferably with a promotional movie tie-in.

If that's industry maturity, you can have it back.

Will Microsoft release their own version of it and crush everyone?

Of course, the answer is "Yes". And "No".

Yes, they've got something called XAML.... I've personally not used it, but I hear that writing a script to convert an SVG file to XAML is trivial.

No, because... well, let's just say that Windows Vista beta seems to be shipping a version of solitaire that seems identical to the one they've been shipping since the early 90's, rather than taking advantage of vector graphics. Meanwhile, other desktops have been adapting (shameless plug).

I actually don't like Inkscape. Full disclosure, I'm familiar with vector graphics.

I've never, ever been a fan of the wretched SVG files that Sodipodi and Inkcape produces, and as I professionally use Illustrator CS, I just can't get the sort of smooth workflow going in Inkscape. It's been a few months, but modifying nodes was just about unbearable last time I tried.

Adobe Illustrator is just about flawless with SVG output... but only after you screen out the massive ammount of metadata junk it forces on output.

"I wonder who is "irrational" here?" ....
"Do as I say! Not as I do!". Just how hypocritical can people be?

Hypocrite? Geez... of all the words to pick.

Either you are stupid or forgetful. I don't care which. :)

You mentioned the games on GNOME, something I know a little about... ;)

My problem with the Qt toolkit is about TrollTech and their dual license. The GNOME platform is far more free as beer and freedom goes. KDE is restricted to either GPL applications or TrollTech licensed applications, and quite honestly, I see no reason to give TrollTech that type of control over the platform I would chose to work on...

Fortunately, I don't even like the KDE desktop and platform in the first place, so this is a win-win in my case. :)

I spend some of my free time working on GNOME (obligatory link). I don't like KDE at all. Thus, I don't work on KDE. Even if I _did_ like KDE, I would refuse to work on a desktop environment based on a GPL/dual license toolkit. I like my freedom as in free and freedom as in beer. If I wanted to make proprietary software on GNOME without getting nailed by Trolltech, I can. There's no such freedom on KDE.

I'm not bugged by it, and I don't see a problem.

Ingenious... too bad that...

1) There's no such thing as the "Linux OS"... There's the Linux kernel, where many developers arte full-time employees of large corporations.

2) Outside of the Linux kernel, there's a ton of people who work in software but spend their hobby time working on software that is important or popular but NOT something that a large corporation would hire employees to build. Ok?

Take your opinion and shove it, Mr. Journalist. :)

For the past few weeks, I've probably spent between 4 to 12 hours per week contributing graphics and code to another, slightly less visible open source project.
I personally don't do Firefox, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the point of your question.

Mozilla's Firefox can probably claim to have thousands of eyeballs looking at the much of the code, as the multi-platform nature of it means a larger installed base and more interested developers.

I'm sure that one day, GNOME will even ship with SVG-powered solitaire, minesweeper, and even klotski.

Yes, I'm bragging. Click here.

(For what it's worth, I don't care about using SVG for icons just yet. Perhaps one day, we will se people running at least 133 dpi regularly, then I'll consider it. That day is not today.)

Google's image search, however, sucks.

First of all, for GNOME 2.10, gnome-game's Klotski has been updated and now supports SVG and comes with 37 puzzles, several classic wood puzzles from Minrobu Abe (this one may be solvable in 227 moves, not sure...)

I've also started a hint function that thells the user the precalculated minimum number of moves for each puzzle. The only problem is that Microsoft's Sunshine puzzle is huge, and I've not seen any solutions for it online yet, never mind a calculated minimum. Any klotski addicts out there want to help me out?

First of all, for GNOME 2.10, gnome-game's Klotski has been updated and now supports SVG and comes with 37 puzzles, several classic wood puzzles from Minrobu Abe (this one may be solvable in 227 moves, not sure...)

I've also started a hint function that thells the user the precalculated minimum number of moves for each puzzle. The only problem is that Microsoft's Sunshine puzzle is huge, and I've not seen any solutions for it online yet, never mind a calculated minimum. Any klotski addicts out there want to help me out?

Well, that's after you pay $50 for the game + box + first month free trail subscription.

Hrm, "free"... Gee, Blizzard marketing department, thanks for offering us a free month of game play in exchange for buying a $50 game that is useless without that subscription.

Ugh. Between creepy marketing like that and everyone else jumping over to a Half-Life 2, both publiched by a company that still sells Counter-Strike for $30 when they've disabled the ability to play it at all (without installing a DRM platform under a different license, of course).... I'm really just getting ticked off. I'm probably alone in saving my money and avoiding both of those games, though.

For now, I think I'll stick to working on games that are free for everyone and occasionally play UT2004 and a few budget titles without these restrictive licenses.

I wondering home much money Comcast spent to buy what amounts to... well... Morgan Webb.

I've just put together a page on this topic. It explains how a picture of Morgan Webb that was removed from a server over 7 months ago can still drive traffic to a website from Google Images.

Trust me, GNOME Aisleriot has completely overtaken MS Solitaire. Have you seen the latest 1600x1200 screenshot?

On the desktop, GNOME Games has a very nice, scalable minesweeper. I haven't seen any other minesweepers, online or not, that come close.

(Note: I am hideously biased.)

SVG does what you want, and XML makes it managable...

Full disclosure, I did a SVG tileset for GNOME Mahjongg... To make a rectangle that fits your description, just add <rect x="0" y="0" width="50" height="50" fill="#0000FF" stroke-width="5"> ... Too bloated? Try a path: I think <path fill="#0000FF" strike-width="5" d="M0 0H50V50H0Z"> would work...

As far as XML goes, I can't even begin to tell you how wonderful xmllint is in what I do with SVG, how nice it is to be able to automate the creation of certain SVGs with perl scripts, and the aid provided by typical tools such as sed. Most of us have not yet even started to exploit CSS. Anyway, doing the same in a non-xml format, to me, would be a nightmare.

I just wish the SVG themers could come up with even a single aesthetically pleasing and extensive collection of file icons. The button themes are good already. It looks like SVG filters will likely be in GNOME 2.8 through librsvg, starting with blurs, which are needed to do decent shadow effects on the icons. Also, I hear that someone's has been working on non-icon SVGs for GNOME.

- It breaks the right mouse button menu that users have come to expect.... Even in Firebird, the gestures are not noted in the status bar.

- It wastes bandwidth, every page using it would need a copy of this Javascript snippet (or linked to a .js file).

There are good uses for javascript (example), where bandwidth can be saved and the user experience gains a net improvement. This, however, is just another bad use.

I've got a website.

Last year, I closed my hotmail account and two spammed-to-heck e-mail accounts. To keep old friends and family from getting shafted, I had an autoreply attatched to those addresses, announcing that those addressess were closed and that I could be reached through the contact form on my website, prior to sending those e-mails to /dev/null .

To date, through this manual entry, effort-draining contact form, I have had at least 20 offers to increase my manly-ness, 10 offers to find the love of my life, and 5 death threats from annoyed spammers. Only one charitable organization had a problem with my auto-reply, because a spammer was using their e-mail address to send junk to me over and over again.

I've got a website.

Last year, I closed my hotmail account and two spammed-to-heck e-mail accounts. To keep old friends and family from getting shafted, I had an autoreply attatched to those addresses, announcing that those addressess were closed and that I could be reached through the contact form on my website, prior to sending those e-mails to /dev/null .

To date, through this manual entry, effort-draining contact form, I have had at least 20 offers to increase my manly-ness, 10 offers to find the love of my life, and 5 death threats from annoyed spammers. Only one charitable organization had a problem with my auto-reply, because a spammer was using their e-mail address to send junk to me over and over again.

Here's the instructions written with the help of a really bad webcam and MS Paint. I really need to get a digital camera one day.

Why would someone do such a thing? This way, you don't have to import a Famicom to play your favorit famicom carts, which is a good thing if you decide to spend a ton of money on importing the best darn Famicom game ever.... (Sure, some people would call me insane, but I consider it to be more valuable and far more rare than several of today's newest top games, such as Tron 2, Jedi Academy, and HomeWorld 2.)

Anyways, if you don't own a cart of Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu or Nekketsu Street Basket, try a game genie code that will let you play a 4 player game of Four Player Super Dodge Ball, or if you want to hack it, you could get a 3 player game of Stinger going.

Pure fun. Honest.

Here's the instructions written with the help of a really bad webcam and MS Paint. I really need to get a digital camera one day.

Why would someone do such a thing? This way, you don't have to import a Famicom to play your favorit famicom carts, which is a good thing if you decide to spend a ton of money on importing the best darn Famicom game ever.... (Sure, some people would call me insane, but I consider it to be more valuable and far more rare than several of today's newest top games, such as Tron 2, Jedi Academy, and HomeWorld 2.)

Anyways, if you don't own a cart of Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu or Nekketsu Street Basket, try a game genie code that will let you play a 4 player game of Four Player Super Dodge Ball, or if you want to hack it, you could get a 3 player game of Stinger going.

Pure fun. Honest.

Here's the instructions written with the help of a really bad webcam and MS Paint. I really need to get a digital camera one day.

Why would someone do such a thing? This way, you don't have to import a Famicom to play your favorit famicom carts, which is a good thing if you decide to spend a ton of money on importing the best darn Famicom game ever.... (Sure, some people would call me insane, but I consider it to be more valuable and far more rare than several of today's newest top games, such as Tron 2, Jedi Academy, and HomeWorld 2.)

Anyways, if you don't own a cart of Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu or Nekketsu Street Basket, try a game genie code that will let you play a 4 player game of Four Player Super Dodge Ball, or if you want to hack it, you could get a 3 player game of Stinger going.

Pure fun. Honest.

Here's the instructions written with the help of a really bad webcam and MS Paint. I really need to get a digital camera one day.

Why would someone do such a thing? This way, you don't have to import a Famicom to play your favorit famicom carts, which is a good thing if you decide to spend a ton of money on importing the best darn Famicom game ever.... (Sure, some people would call me insane, but I consider it to be more valuable and far more rare than several of today's newest top games, such as Tron 2, Jedi Academy, and HomeWorld 2.)

Anyways, if you don't own a cart of Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu or Nekketsu Street Basket, try a game genie code that will let you play a 4 player game of Four Player Super Dodge Ball, or if you want to hack it, you could get a 3 player game of Stinger going.

Pure fun. Honest.

Here's the instructions written with the help of a really bad webcam and MS Paint. I really need to get a digital camera one day.

Why would someone do such a thing? This way, you don't have to import a Famicom to play your favorit famicom carts, which is a good thing if you decide to spend a ton of money on importing the best darn Famicom game ever.... (Sure, some people would call me insane, but I consider it to be more valuable and far more rare than several of today's newest top games, such as Tron 2, Jedi Academy, and HomeWorld 2.)

Anyways, if you don't own a cart of Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu or Nekketsu Street Basket, try a game genie code that will let you play a 4 player game of Four Player Super Dodge Ball, or if you want to hack it, you could get a 3 player game of Stinger going.

Pure fun. Honest.

I have a page that wants to disagree with you, my Nekketsu Street Basket page, with the Javascript-based password generator at the bottom of the page. In this particular case, using static Javascript to create dynamic content on the fly is far superior to using any type of webserver-based technologies, especially when you consider the processing and bandwidth overhead. The only problem comes with browsers that do not support Javascript... Opera, IE, and Mozilla can supports it with no problems, that leaves nothing more than lynx and a few others. Even then, there's a nice message displayed that says the password generator won't work on those browsers, so it's covered.

I'd rather pay $40 an hour to a decent programmer who deploys the proper solutions in various situations than $20 to the black-belt programmer that does nothing but "Java servlets and JSP".

You may want to check out the other games in the series released in Japan.... Of them, I own Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu, Nekketsu Street Basket, Nekketsu Ice Hockey, and the SNES (SF) version of Super Dodge Ball.... I was hooked enough to figure out how to rewire my NES to support Japanese 4 player games ;) ....

You may want to check out the other games in the series released in Japan.... Of them, I own Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu, Nekketsu Street Basket, Nekketsu Ice Hockey, and the SNES (SF) version of Super Dodge Ball.... I was hooked enough to figure out how to rewire my NES to support Japanese 4 player games ;) ....

I'm still doing this, sorta.... More like, I'm disassembling the ROMs, finding the bits of code I want to alter, turning them into Game Genie codes (limiting me to only three bytes of changes, bah), and coming up with some decent results at this unfinished page: http://www.rahga.com/nesgg/

Take, for example, this Famicom Four Player tech doc, and an unfinished report on how to re-wire your Four Score, which leads to the ability to play Four Player Famicom Games or a four player game of Game-Genie Enhanced Super Dodge Ball

As far as this article, any monkey with a stick can figure out how to slap a PC together in any type of chassis they want, be it NES, fishbowl, beerkeg, whatever..... I'm not impressed.

Take, for example, this Famicom Four Player tech doc, and an unfinished report on how to re-wire your Four Score, which leads to the ability to play Four Player Famicom Games or a four player game of Game-Genie Enhanced Super Dodge Ball

As far as this article, any monkey with a stick can figure out how to slap a PC together in any type of chassis they want, be it NES, fishbowl, beerkeg, whatever..... I'm not impressed.

Take, for example, this Famicom Four Player tech doc, and an unfinished report on how to re-wire your Four Score, which leads to the ability to play Four Player Famicom Games or a four player game of Game-Genie Enhanced Super Dodge Ball

As far as this article, any monkey with a stick can figure out how to slap a PC together in any type of chassis they want, be it NES, fishbowl, beerkeg, whatever..... I'm not impressed.

Take, for example, this Famicom Four Player tech doc, and an unfinished report on how to re-wire your Four Score, which leads to the ability to play Four Player Famicom Games or a four player game of Game-Genie Enhanced Super Dodge Ball

As far as this article, any monkey with a stick can figure out how to slap a PC together in any type of chassis they want, be it NES, fishbowl, beerkeg, whatever..... I'm not impressed.

And there's the auction I won it in. I'm not sure where it ranks with some of those, but this is "rarest" games in the article, not "most valuable"... This one is a mix... one of the most valuable famicom games, one of the rarest official famicom games, and definitely one of the best. It had a production run that was cut short by the death of the 8 bit systems and possibly money trouble at technos. Cost me a bit over $100 (cart only) to get it in, and even more to ship, but it was definitely worth it.

As far as value goes, in the Famicom department, it is beat out by the gold Punch-Out cart, a few RPGs, Metal Slader Glory, handful of others.

As far as some of those "rare" non-Nintendo-authorized games... my opinion is that all of them sucked, and I don't care how rare they are, I wouldn't want to play or own them.

BTW, the Nekketsu games are the same line that "River City Ransom" and "Super Dodge Ball" came from. This was the last NES Nekketsu game.

Here's a javascript thingy I made for the passwords in the game. Also, check my site for Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu info, and stuff you can use to rewire your Four Score to make it Famicom compatible ;) ...

And there's the auction I won it in. I'm not sure where it ranks with some of those, but this is "rarest" games in the article, not "most valuable"... This one is a mix... one of the most valuable famicom games, one of the rarest official famicom games, and definitely one of the best. It had a production run that was cut short by the death of the 8 bit systems and possibly money trouble at technos. Cost me a bit over $100 (cart only) to get it in, and even more to ship, but it was definitely worth it.

As far as value goes, in the Famicom department, it is beat out by the gold Punch-Out cart, a few RPGs, Metal Slader Glory, handful of others.

As far as some of those "rare" non-Nintendo-authorized games... my opinion is that all of them sucked, and I don't care how rare they are, I wouldn't want to play or own them.

BTW, the Nekketsu games are the same line that "River City Ransom" and "Super Dodge Ball" came from. This was the last NES Nekketsu game.

Here's a javascript thingy I made for the passwords in the game. Also, check my site for Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu info, and stuff you can use to rewire your Four Score to make it Famicom compatible ;) ...

It's usually at http://sardius.fefea.org/, but since the site is down, click my mirror of it here: http://www.rahga.com/fun/konamix/

For what it's worth, Michael Jackson is involved.... and trust me, it blows every other DDR review out of the water. :)

I know this. It's not the same game as "Hogan's Ally", whatever that is ;).... I own Hogan's Alley myself, as well as a ton of NES and a few Famicom games.

A small sample...

On rahga.com, I use a custom perl script with a html-based form that is programmed only to send messages to me. Here it is.

On stuff like my FAQs, I use igPay Latin Encoded Email: ahgaray atyay ahgaray otday omcay

There's still plenty of gamers like me who still like playing classic NES games even today... I'm one of those fascinated at the Americanization of many of the games first released on the Famicom. For instance, in Japan, Contra had (in comparison to the US version) double the size of both of its ROMs and a non-Nintendo memory mapper that allowed the game to include extra cut scenese and special effect like trees rustling in the wind on the background of level one.....

A while back, I discovered the joy of making Game Genie codes when decided to make my four-score famicom compatible (e-mail me for info)... I lost (and still need to replace (if you are from Japan and can help me out, email me!)) my copy of Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu, and needed something to test my converted adapter on. Knowing that the Famicom version of Super Dodge Ball had 4 player mode, but that it was removed from the NES version because of incompatibility, I simply spent some time to make a game genie code that would allow a four player beanball game on the NES.... "GEUOLZZA"
Click here for a screenshot of it.

I kept going too....

How about coed Super Spike V'Ball? (it uses unfinished/prototype characters that were not completely removed before production.)

That's "AEXGXYGE", or "AAKGNTGE" if on the same cart as NES World Cup....

I've even made a code that unlocks 3 player games in Stinger.

Any, I find this stuff loads of fun. All of it will be up on my site some day, when I get a little more time and a digital camera to show off the construction of my modified four score.....

So, to all those trolls whining about cheating and gamesharks being no fun, nyaaaaah to you. There's no way I'd ever play as Wolverine on THPS3 if I didn't make my PSX memory card reader ;)

-rah
(ahgaray atyay ahgaray otday omcay)

There's still plenty of gamers like me who still like playing classic NES games even today... I'm one of those fascinated at the Americanization of many of the games first released on the Famicom. For instance, in Japan, Contra had (in comparison to the US version) double the size of both of its ROMs and a non-Nintendo memory mapper that allowed the game to include extra cut scenese and special effect like trees rustling in the wind on the background of level one.....

A while back, I discovered the joy of making Game Genie codes when decided to make my four-score famicom compatible (e-mail me for info)... I lost (and still need to replace (if you are from Japan and can help me out, email me!)) my copy of Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu, and needed something to test my converted adapter on. Knowing that the Famicom version of Super Dodge Ball had 4 player mode, but that it was removed from the NES version because of incompatibility, I simply spent some time to make a game genie code that would allow a four player beanball game on the NES.... "GEUOLZZA"
Click here for a screenshot of it.

I kept going too....

How about coed Super Spike V'Ball? (it uses unfinished/prototype characters that were not completely removed before production.)

That's "AEXGXYGE", or "AAKGNTGE" if on the same cart as NES World Cup....

I've even made a code that unlocks 3 player games in Stinger.

Any, I find this stuff loads of fun. All of it will be up on my site some day, when I get a little more time and a digital camera to show off the construction of my modified four score.....

So, to all those trolls whining about cheating and gamesharks being no fun, nyaaaaah to you. There's no way I'd ever play as Wolverine on THPS3 if I didn't make my PSX memory card reader ;)

-rah
(ahgaray atyay ahgaray otday omcay)

There's still plenty of gamers like me who still like playing classic NES games even today... I'm one of those fascinated at the Americanization of many of the games first released on the Famicom. For instance, in Japan, Contra had (in comparison to the US version) double the size of both of its ROMs and a non-Nintendo memory mapper that allowed the game to include extra cut scenese and special effect like trees rustling in the wind on the background of level one.....

A while back, I discovered the joy of making Game Genie codes when decided to make my four-score famicom compatible (e-mail me for info)... I lost (and still need to replace (if you are from Japan and can help me out, email me!)) my copy of Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu, and needed something to test my converted adapter on. Knowing that the Famicom version of Super Dodge Ball had 4 player mode, but that it was removed from the NES version because of incompatibility, I simply spent some time to make a game genie code that would allow a four player beanball game on the NES.... "GEUOLZZA"
Click here for a screenshot of it.

I kept going too....

How about coed Super Spike V'Ball? (it uses unfinished/prototype characters that were not completely removed before production.)

That's "AEXGXYGE", or "AAKGNTGE" if on the same cart as NES World Cup....

I've even made a code that unlocks 3 player games in Stinger.

Any, I find this stuff loads of fun. All of it will be up on my site some day, when I get a little more time and a digital camera to show off the construction of my modified four score.....

So, to all those trolls whining about cheating and gamesharks being no fun, nyaaaaah to you. There's no way I'd ever play as Wolverine on THPS3 if I didn't make my PSX memory card reader ;)

-rah
(ahgaray atyay ahgaray otday omcay)

Go here
See, I toldya so :)