Scott's Blog

The Great Zucchini is a entertainer for kids parties, which is what I used to do when I was a teenager. I used to be called "The Wizard of Ahhhs" and did magic tricks for 4-8 year olds, so I really connected with this article . I still have a few magic tricks stored away and sometimes long for the days when I practiced my act in the basement and all that. The article is very long but it hooks you and doesn't let go, I teared up at the end! Plus the guy is raking in $100 grand a year, working 2 days a week.

I bought two top-of-the line Ultimarc Mag-Stick Plus , joysticks and a slew of buttons plus the I-Pac 2 interface which takes in all the buttons and joystics and turns it into USB keyboard commands. I even went and bought the wiring kit even though I could get that kind of stuff here (and I have two crimping tools already). Purists might say that the joysticks are a little different than what you get at the arcade, the throw (how much they move) is a little shorter and it uses a magnet instead of springs. They are, in fact, better than what you would get in the arcade and should make for better playability. I remember walking away with sore arms and shoulders after playing Robotron for hours. The bad news is that I'm not going to build an actual Arcade Cabinet, instead I'll just build a arcade console (similar to this ). There are several reasons for this: There are only two places that I would be allowed to put an arcade cabinet, either at the cottage or in the home off...

I'm still hot on building a MAME cabinet and I'm learning a lot. I've learned that there are 8 position joysticks and 4 position joysticks (and joysticks that do both). The Ultramarc has a nice one that does both and you can switch between the two by moving the joystick a certain way. The reason you need both is that many older games use 4 position joystics and the 8 position doesn't work as smoothly for those games (i.e. if you do a diagonal it doesn't know if you want to go up or right, say). The Ultramarc Mag-Stick Plus also uses a magnet to center the joystick instead of a spring which should mean it'll last forever. These joysticks are also built very sturdy, they really should last a lifetime (or at least your lifetime). I though about getting a spinner, but some some strange reason, they are rather expensive, one spinner can be more expensive than two joysticks. On the other hand you can try to make your own, by canabolizing a mouse - but it won't w...

In a previous post I mentioned that I'm probably going to change web hosting providers. My site is old and decrepid and I want to rejuvinate it. I also want to keep the old URLS (like to my CV ) which should be easy to do with TurboGears and/or Apache URL rewrite . I need to ask myself why I want a site to begin with (my other option is to leave my computer on and have people use my machine directly). Offsite storage - i.e. backup - I used to pay US$90.00 a year for only 100 MB of space, now I can store up to 1 GB. I'm going to have to use bacula or Unison to do this on a regular basis. Increased chance of doing something that might make me some money (i.e. a site made for someone else). Backup of my backup. Those sites do daily backups for me. Subversion storage. I have subversion on my home machine that I use, but having it somewhere else is even nicer (especially since someone is backup it up for me). Automatic updates of patches. My Mandrake home server is so out of dat...

I'm still thinking about making a MAME cabinet. I'm trying to piece together which games I would really like to be able to play to figure out which controls I would need. Here's my list so far: Two 8-way Joystick Games for one person: Robotron 2048 , this is my all-time favorite game two 8 position joysticks Black Widow I used to play this, similar a little to Robotron 4-way joystick games for one or two players: Joust , this is a fun but hard game Top Gunner (know as Jackal in MAME) I played this game a lot. Elevator Action , I liked this game. Burger Time, fun older game Ms. Pac Man , a classic Donkey Kong Jr., another classic I was never that good at. Galaga Defender 8-way joystick games for one or more players: Gauntlet (et. al) great game but was more expensive. Ghost 'n Goblins, I like this game but found it quite hard too Golden Axe - popular various fighting games, I never liked them that much but Victor does. Laserdisk Games (needs Daphne instead of MAME):...

I seem to be particularly good at these types of puzzles (ex. "24 H in a D" - "24 hours in a day"). Staring at them seems to help some. Here's a teaser: "12 S of the Z"? It says that 19+ is genius level, I got up to 24. (I guessed "9 P in SA" and this one "7 B in the N T" helped be also get "66 B of the B" and "39 B of the O T" - hint). link

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