Noobero Uno

After getting my first Wii replaced, I turned it on for a few minutes to see that it was working properly and it was. I hadn’t turned it on until today when I decided to start Super Paper Mario. After about 30 minutes of playing, the Wii shut down. There was no power getting to the Wii at all. After unplugging it and plugging it back in, I turned it on and it seemed to work again. After five seconds of investigation, I narrowed the problem down to overheating due to the fan not working. Time to send it back to Nintendo.

From what I gather this does not seem to be a common problem.

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Electronic Arts is offering the original Command & Conquer as a free download. If you are interested, you will need to download and burn the cd images.

“In order to give back to the fans for over 12 years of devotion we are putting together a 12th Anniversary celebration during the month of September. However, as any Command & Conquer fan knows, the true party starts today, August 31st, which marks 12 years since the original Command & Conquer launched way back in 1995.”

Download Here

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How awesome is that? Unfortunately the project costs approx. $600 and there are no real instructions. Check out the original source for more info.

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The newest version of Google Earth now has a built in flight simulator. This was kind of a no-brainer for them to throw this in since the hard part (creating a 3D version of earth) was already done. I have always enjoyed flight sims but since there is no point to them, I never purchased them.  Now I can enjoy flying over my girlfriend’s house and crashing into pyramids for the low price of nothing. The controls are pretty basic so it is not a flight “simulation” in the true sense, but who wants to learn how to fly a real plane anyway? Okay, many people would. That’s not the point. The point is, it’s free and it’s pretty fun. If only they would add multiplayer dog fighting, you could shoot down your neighbors and watch them crash into their own house. Awesome!

Anyway, try it out. I suggest using a gamepad; I hated the mouse and keyboard controls. I have a feeling this will turn into a full-fledged flight sim over time and will probably be the best one available. Hopefully it stays free…

Here are the full instructions

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I recently bought a broken Guitar Hero X-Plorer guitar on Ebay for $23 hoping to be able to fix it. After plugging it in, the Xbox wouldn’t turn on. This scared me a great deal to say the least. I looked at the power supply and the light was red instead of the usual orange. It had detected a fault and was protecting the console.

Knowing it was a problem with the power, I narrowed the problem down to two things. Either the USB cable was broken internally or the previous owner spilled liquid on the controller. Lucky for me it was the USB cable, an extremely simple fix. The +5 (red) wire was broken right were it starts to come out of the guitar, most likely due to the previous owner wrapping the cable around the controller.

If your X-Plorer controller isn’t working there is a good chance this is the problem. If you want to be sure, test each end of the USB cable with a multimeter. If this is the problem, all you have to do is cut the bad part of the USB cable out and reconnect the two good parts. The bad part will most likely be the thick rubber part coming out of the guitar.

To connect the two good pieces of the cable back together, twist the wires together, solder them, then use heat shrink tubing to cover the exposed part of the wire (you can also use electrical tape, but heat shrink tubing would be best). You also need to twist the outer part of the two good pieces together and solder them. Use electrical tape to cover anything that is exposed (should only be the outer part of the cable at this point).  When finished, use zip-ties to make sure the electrical tape stays put and to keep the wire from moving around.

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Here is the first CamShots update. For those who don’t know CamShots is an application that allows you to capture screenshots from a video capturing device in intervals from 1-60 seconds. It is based on the InterVideo Home Theater software. For more information, see Home Security System For Under $50 - Part 2

New Features:

• Creates 3 folders in the CamShots directory to store picures from the last 48 hours.
• Every 24 hours the oldest folder gets deleted.
• Enabled fast capture (captures every .15 seconds). Can be used to make animated .gifs for signatures and icons. (can slow your computer down a great deal depending on the processor and hard drive speed)
• Shows how many pictures per folder based on the screen capturing interval.

Keep in mind you need the InterVideo Home Theater software (came free with my video capturing device) as well as the .NET framework for this to work.

Download CamShots - (freeware)

I hope to use something other than InterVideo for future updates.

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I wrote a simple program called CamShots to capture images with a video capturing device. The application is very simple. As of now it just creates a folder on the desktop and starts adding snapshots. You can change the snapshot interval from 1-50 seconds and pause it. Pretty basic stuff. I’ll be updating this in the near future and will post any updates.

 

CamShots will work with most video capture devices. You will need the InterVideo Home Theater software as well as the .NET framework version 1.1 or higher for it to work.

See ‘CamShots Update’ for new link.

On a side note, you can use this software to capture multiple screenshots of movies, console games, tv, etc. I captured some video game screenshots to test it and made some animated .gif files with them. Here are some examples…

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Being sick of people trying to steal my car, I decided to take more drastic measures. I purchased a nanny cam on Ebay for $33 and set it up in a room over the garage to look down at my car. This thing produces a picture that is much better quality than I expected. It is in color and also has audio (which I don’t need). The only bad thing about it is that it needs a lot of light to get an image but that was to be expected.

You can connect the receiver directly to your TV, VCR, DVDR, DVR, or PC if you have a video capturing device. I will be hooking it up to the PC and writing a program for the Game Bridge, a USB video capturing device for Windows. I picked this up for $10 a few months ago, I have seen them as low as $3. I bought one just to play PS2 games on my laptop but the video stutters to much to use for gaming (maybe why they are so cheap?). It is great for snapshots though. More details coming in my next post…

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This years Comic-Con was an amazing site. I haven’t been to the convention in over ten years and things have changed quite a bit. The last time I went there were about 15,000 people, this year there were 125,000 people! That is an insane amount of people for a comic convention. I actually planned on buying a few things but the amount of people was so overwhelming, I ended up wandering around for hours never even seeing anything I planned on buying. I ended up spending $12 total.

Since I wasn’t spending much, I decided to try to get as many free promotional things as I could. I’m usually pretty laid back, but apparently when people are handing out free junk I turn into an excited little kid. Every time I saw a booth giving away something decent, I plowed my way over to claim my item having no regard for kids, moms, or other nerds.

As if going to a comic convention isn’t nerdy enough, I spent the majority of the time at the video game booths. I tried a lot of games,  many of which aren’t out yet. I was going to buy most of these anyway, but getting to see them in person sealed the deal.

Puzzle Fighter HD - plays as expected; I didn’t spend a lot of time with it.

Contra DS - I thought the gap in between the dual screens would be annoying but it didn’t cause any problems with the game.

Castle Crashers (360) – I didn’t play it much. It plays smoother than Alien Hominid. Support The Behemoth.

The Eye of Judgment (PS3) – Never even played it but I must have it.

Anyway, enough of my rambling, here are a few pictures of the event.

  

  

  

 

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Scratch is a visual programming language meant to help kids learn the basics of programming. If I had had this as a kid, I wouldn’t have left the house. I remember having to copy pages of BASIC code just to get a circle on the screen, let alone a picture I drew.

After about 20 minutes of messing around, I made a pretty bad… thing, called Zombie Kill. I wouldn’t call it a game since you can’t lose. If you don’t shoot the zombie, he just goes right past you. It has horrible graphics, no sound, and no point. It is, however, infinitely better than anything I made as a young kid.

What you can do with Scratch is limited, but it has way more functionality than I expected. I’m sure that with each new release, it will have a lot more to offer. Don’t expect this to replace real programming languages. Scratch is great for kids, those new to programming, and anyone who likes to waste time. It is free and is availble for Windows and Mac operating systems.

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