Amidakuji

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Leg
I was thinking about this mini-game in a Sega Genesis game, where there are 5 vertical, straight, parallel, narrow islands and you pick 1. You walk up the island, and there are bridges randomly connecting adjacent islands. If you come to a bridge, you must cross it. It's a random chance way of picking a bonus prize, like drawing lots. Read the Wikipedia article, it's got a better description.

Anyway the Genesis game is very old and I thought it was pretty small and unknown, but I still found it. It's called Magical Hat no Buttobi Tabo! Daiboken. Aah, this brings back memories.
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/victokai/victokai2.htm

Kodak EasyShare Printer Dock Plus

Long ago, I bought a dye-sublimation photo printer. These printers are good at printing photos, but only photos. Since it's a Kodak, and Kodak is, err..., not doing so well lately, I don't think I'll be able to find any more paper for it. Recently, I used the last piece of paper and took some final photos.

It has a built-in USB port and SD card reader, in addition to being a dock for Kodak cameras. Here I used it with a USB card reader and a 8 MB Memory Stick. I was surprised the card reader worked, because in Windows it shows up as 3 or 4 drives. The USB port is useful because if you don't want to connect it to a computer, you can plug in a drive with only 1 picture and press Print.

The back looks like a face *_*

And here's a video of it in action. It's quite interesting because it prints colour by colour - yellow, magenta, cyan, then a clear protective coat.

end

SanDisk Cruzer Titanium

I bought this flash drive many years ago (2006 at the earliest), at about $70 for 2 GB. I think this is at least the second generation of Cruzer Titanium, the first was really made of titanium metal.

This is made of Liquidmetal. It's quite an interesting material, a metal with properties of glass (hard, strong but brittle). The material was a main reason I bought this drive. SanDisk used to have a Sansa mp3 player also made of Liquidmetal. Other than SanDisk products, the only other Liquidmetal products I know of are golf clubs, tennis racquets, a Mont Blanc cufflink and a special edition of the Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean. So, this is the only one I can afford. Liquidmetal might see an increase in popularity soon - Apple has bought the license to use it in their products.

A bit about this product, it's supposed to be SanDisk's high end flash drive, so it's faster and came with U3 software - a virtual CD drive that allowed you to run your own programs, including Firefox. Unfortunately U3 must not have been very popular since they no longer use it. SanDisk also doesn't seem to make any more Cruzer Titanium or Liquidmetal products, which is a pity, like their Ultra II USB SD card.

Reminiscing

WHAT is it with all the sentimental articles in the air lately? What's odd is, they're all relevant to me. However, I don't enjoy them because:

1. They make you feel old
2. Harping on these make me feel like people are refusing to acknowledge this
3. Some of them are just to make you feel better than other generations (see below)

Even Yahoo is doing it - it's not just me

This is quite popular on Facebook. The beginning basically says, "haha, we've done all this awesome stuff you 90s kids will never get to see!" And the last line might as well read, "we didn't have all the things kids today have, yet we managed to have fun! Kids today are so needy."

Really? "Best" and "ever"? Some of these scream "I'm still alive! And young! And relevant!!!" so loud I'm ashamed to be associated with them.

That's right, revel in your archaic knowledge.

Every generation
I'm starting to think that in every generation, there comes a time when:

• they think they've seen it all, everything in the past is golden and everything in the future will never compare
• they somehow, like every generation before them, grew up in the Golden Age of music, movies, TV, games, literature and technology
• when you point out today's phones have better graphics than all their games, they'll inevitably go on about plot and style and how the games of their childhood are still superior
• they're living in the end times
• the world is declining in every possible way - health, lawlessness, morals, environmental disasters

And I'm starting to think that time comes when they're 20-30 years old. To think this generation made fun of previous generations when they said things like, "in my day, I had to walk to school. Barefoot. Uphill both ways. And it snowed the whole year round!"

Engadget Primed: SSDs and you

http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/31/engadget-primed-ssds-and-you/

Nice article, also mentions history of HDDs

Old computers

I'm condensing my posts about my previous computers, to tidy things up.

1. Compaq Presario 944

• Medium tower case
• 90 MHz 486
• 8192 kB RAM
• 500 MB HDD
• 4x CD-ROM (fastest at that time)
• 1.44 MB disk drive
• 9600 kbps modem
• 14" SVGA monitor
• Windows 3.1 and DOS 6.2
• Bought in 1995 with a Canon BJC-4000 for $3600

It came with a lot of software. My favorite game was Lode Runner: The Legend Returns and it also had others like King's Quest 6, Skifree and Pipe Dream. Creative Writer was great too. I played a lot of shareware games on it like Hocus Pocus, Raptor: Call Of The Shadows, In Search Of Dr Riptide, Whacky Wheels and Duke Nukem 1 and 2. I also played Mechwarrior 2 and Worms on it. One of the last games I played on it was Red Alert, which I continued on my next computer. In the end, it was given away.

2. Compaq
Came with Windows 95. First computer to have Internet access!

3. Gateway Solo 9300 XL

• Intel Pentium III with SpeedStep 500/600 MHz
• 224 MB RAM
• 12 GB HDD
• DVD-ROM
• LS120 (Superdisk) drive
• ATI Rage Mobility 8MB video card
• 15" screen
• First computer with USB ports!
• Bought in 2000 for $5500

The things I liked about it were that it had a battery meter built into the battery, so you could check the power left without turning on the computer. Strangely, this feature has vanished from new computers (it's on the MacBook Pro, but on the computer, not the battery). Battery indication was built into the BIOS, so you could use the function key to check battery percentage left in any program.

I found that the RAM cover was the hottest part, so I stuck a heat sink onto it. The difficult part is finding an adhesive that conducts heat, is removable, and does not damage the laptop. I used double sided tape (some people call it tissue tape?). You can see the battery indicator. It had pop-up legs to elevate itself too.

In the end, it wouldn't boot up. I sold it for $50 to a recycler.

4. Dell

5. Fujitsu Lifebook N3510

• Intel Pentium M 740 (1.73GHz, 533MHz FSB, 2MB L2 cache)
• 15.4" LCD
• 1 GB RAM
• ATI Mobility X300 64MB RAM
• 60 GB HDD
• DVD burner
• 802.11 b/g
• 4 USB 2.0, IEEE 1394 (FireWire) port, Memory Stick/SD slot, PC Card Slot, Express Card Slot

First widescreen (I remember some games didn't support it then), DVD burning, wireless and the video card had some function I can't remember (pixel rendering? shading?)

6. Pluto

I bought this computer in December 2006. The GeForce 8 had just come out.

• Intel D975XBX2KR motherboard
• Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13 GHz 2MB L2 cache
•  2GB DDR2 800MHz RAM
• 320 GB SATAII HDD with 16 MB cache and NCQ
• GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB (there were only 2 models, the GTS and GTX)
• 17" (5:4) DVI monitor
• $3000
• Bought in Dec 2006

The non-advertised parts were cheap: fan, PSU and case. The fans didn't even fit the fan slots on the case and were screwed into the grille instead. The case was hard to take apart and upgrade. No tool-less drive bays or anything of that sort. The worst part is that a few days after getting it, the PSU blew! I got it repaired and so far it's ok.

7. Dell Inspiron 530s desktop

• Core 2 Duo E6750
• 22" E228WFP (VGA and DVI, 1680x1050)
• 3 GB (2x1GB+2x512MB) dual channel DDR2 667MHz RAM
• 500 GB 3.0Gb/s HDD with NCQ
• 16x dual layer DVD+-RW
• ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT 256MB
• Belkin Superior Series 6 way surge protector with 45,000 max spike amperage
• MS Office 2007 Home & Student

Bought 23 April 2008 for AUD$1408. I liked it because it was a slim design, not a full sized CPU. As with my other Dell computers, the inside was neat and well designed. Sold it because I was leaving Australia.

8. MacBook Pro mid 2009 15"

• MB986X/A 15" Unibody model (2009)
• 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo, 6MB shared L2 cache, 1066MHz bus
• 4GB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
• 500GB 5400RPM HDD
• GeForce 9400M and GeForce 9600M GT (512MB)
• Bluetooth
• 802.11n
• Backlit keyboard
• Gigabit ethernet
• Firewire 800
• Height: 2.41 cm (0.95")
• Width: 36.4 cm
• Depth: 24.9 cm
• Weight: 2.49 kg (5.5 pounds)  
• AUD$3399 (with student discount)

Wii is no more

Regarding video game consoles, I've had a Sega Megadrive, which I won, a Super Nintendo, which I mostly played Street Fighter on, a PS One (or PS slim), which I mostly played DDR on, and a Wii. For portables, I've had a Game Gear, Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket and GBA SP.

My Wii recently died, after 2.5 years. I was just about to play a game. It was showing the white screen telling you to wear your wrist strap, I looked down to adjust my chair, and when I looked up the screen was blue and the light on the Wii was red. I took it to a shop and they said the motherboard was dead. That's troublesome, it's the most expensive part and all my save games are on there. If you plug it in the red light turns on, and starts blinking after a while.

I always thought Nintendo products were well built. This is unusual since I haven't played with my Wii much, mistreated it or modified it in any way. It's definitely not worth repairing, and I don't think I'll buy a new one. I really wish I could finish playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 though. If I buy a new one I'll have to start all over again. I always ending up using my consoles much less than I should, so I'll try not to buy any more. Maybe I can spend my money on my computer instead.

Tribute to Sony DSC-T2

Goodbye, T2. You took some good pictures, although I probably wore you out taking pictures of maths lectures. Hopefully you still manage to take some special pictures, wherever you go.

• The vibration problem got worse and worse, so it was too unreliable to take pictures.
• I sold it on eBay (of course I told the buyer it was defective).

Tribute to Sony DSC-U10

Bought in 2003 for $250 second-hand, it has performed so much better than its price. It took more than 6,000 photos, was very fast and had reasonable quality. It could easily take 100 shots on 1 battery charge. I owe many of my memories and photos to it. Even today, people would say "it's so small!" when they saw it. How much more in a time before camera phones!