RandomStasis

Recently I bought a sheevaplug, its a nice computer made by Marvell that features a 1.2 ghz processor, 512 RAM, 512 NAND, USB 2.0 and gigabit ethernet, everything into a small package (around the size of a power adapter, hence the name ‘plug’). After installing a shiny gentoo, I was faced with the problem of remote administration, while on the house it’s no problem everything is accessible via LAN, however, thanks to my ISP not providing public IPs (not even dynamic) I was forced to try some more desperate methods.

The first ideas were to use a service such as DropBox or an HTTP server (maybe even twitter, even with all I hate it), but all of those were discarded as impractical (dropbox), too much work (http) or plain silly (twitter), what I needed was a way to completely access my plug from the outside, this called for VPN.

Options like hamachi and other zeroconf VPNs are a big no-go, since most of them are not available for linux or have outdated and buggy versions. So my only choice were: PPTP or OpenVPN. Both needed a server with public IP and that could be a problem.

First, one of my friends managed to get a big network of routers (running dd-wrt) connected using PPTP, but to reach my plug you had to ssh into 3 routers, and that is not a practical solution.

I decided to use OpenVPN, but I needed a free service (paying for the little bw I’ll need is not a pleasant idea), and after a very short google search I arrived here: http://alonweb.com/ Free OpenVPN, 1000 mb limit, just perfect for what I needed.

However there were 2 problems:

1) The openVPN setup is configured to redirect all traffic, something I don’t need.

2) The IP address is not fixed.

As a side note: this is for UNIX only (linux, mac, bsd, etc). Windows users have to take their virus boxes somewhere else.
Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to correct a couple of things about what I have posted earlier, mainly because I should have waited more before stating my opinion.

I played the retail version of Killzone 2, and I have to say its pretty damn awesome. I don’t know if the demo is bad, or if I was not playing it with the correct mood, but after playing the final game I have to correct what I said earlier:

Level design still has its quirks, however there is a guiding system (which somehow I missed in the demo) that fixes most of them. As for the gameplay, I said it was a bit weird: bad control scheme, etc. Turns out I was playing it the wrong way, I was expecting something a bit like the first killzone: fast action, lots of rapid thinking, etc. KZ2 on the other hand its about the opposite: slow movement, tactical thinking, and most of all: lots of aggressiveness.

This is not a review, so I won’t go into detail, however, I have to admit that killzone 2 is a very good game and something that may make buying a PS3 a good idea.

And that takes me to my second point: PS3, for some time I said it was gonna rule the world, then Gears of Wars was released and kicked it’s ass. Then a lot of good games were released for 360, leaving PS3 alone with its big price tag.

So I had to admit my error and buy a 360 (2 to be exact, stupid RROD) and I’ve enjoyed every bit of it. And as for PS3, I made sure to have some laugh at it. Now, some time has passed and I still have a good laugh at PS3 owners, however I can’t say anymore that there are no games for it.

Not that there are a LOT of games for it, btw I am only considering exclusive titles, games that are multi platform won’t count, because if you were to buy either console, those games won’t help you make a decision at all.

So, let me be clear on a point: as far as I am concerned there are only 3 must-play games for PS3 (and a couple nice exclusives), these are: Metal Gear Solid 4, Little Big Planet and Killzone 2. The nice games are Drake’s Journey and Resistance (1 and 2, whatever, haven’t played any).

As for myself none of those 3 are enough reasons to buy a PS3, I have already played the 3 (thanks to friends) but I don’t think that buying a PS3 for 3 games is worth it. However for some people any of those games are good reasons, I respect them, even if later they are stuck with late ports of 360 games.

Anyway, thats about it. See you next time.

Today I was thinking about game level design, for most people, level design its nothing but grunt work (especially for engine developers) and for some others its just another part of the game. For myself I think it is pretty much 80% of why you enjoy videogames, after all: even if you had triple jump abilities you wouldn’t enjoy (or use) them inside a level that has a low ceiling.

I’ve played lots of games, from excellent levels to frustrating ones, and I’ve found that there are 4 things that make a good level design. Read the rest of this entry »

I have an Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse, I have to say that it is quite nice, despite what everybody says about it, overall it is a nice product. A bit pricey I know, but being able to use it without taking any USB port certainly deserves it (at least for me).

The only problem I have with it its that the scroll ball gets stuck really easy, especially for me that I sweat a lot I ended up learning to not use the ball, and that’s plain silly. Heck, I paid for the scroll wheel.

Now, you can look around the net for “clean mighty mouse” or “mighty mouse not scrolling” and you’ll find lots of tips and tricks, here is a rundown:

-Official Apple way: turn it over and wun it up and down a few times on a cloth, carefully.

-Use a qtip and some alcohol/WD-40/whatever and clean it

-Rub it on your pants

I tried all of those, and most of them allowed me to keep it using for about a month before it got stuck again, I was starting to get pissed off (and considering buying a new mouse), so I decided to crack it open.

Note that the above methods DO work, however there are a few catches: first of all, you have to do them as soon as you have some problems, the longer you keep the ball stuck the more difficult it will be to clean; second, always make it SLOWLY and CAREFULLY, I failed to do both and ended up with an screwed up mouse (more on that later…) and third: while these methods free the ball, they fail to clean it properly.

So my recommendation is: try the above mentioned, if it fails, go to Apple. Now, if this advice is not good for you, then keep reading.

My mouse had 2 big problems: it didn’t vertically scroll and the middle button didn’t work (this is why you should rub carefully!). Time to get some tools and open it.

I have to remind everybody that cracking open your mouse invalidates your warranty, and that you have to BREAK it in order to open it, so if you don’t want your cute white friend to look bad you should NOT do this.

To open it, just google, there are lots of tutorials, basically you have to take a knife (I used a paper knife, we call them “cutters”) and ran it around the sides from the hole at the squeeze buttons. This is hard, real hard, so be careful, you may break the outer ring.

Once you have removed the ring, inside there are 2 plastic pins, use a screwdriver to take them out, then there are the pivots (where the body rotates for the click) just take one out and the other is easy. Before you remove the top part you have to unplug two flat cables, be careful!. To remove a flat cable just look at the jack, you’ll see it has a small black piece the slides in, all you have to do is slide it out and the cable will be free. Don’t pull the cable before it is completely free, otherwise you can damage the board or the cable.

Once that is done, put the body aside and keep the top part, you’ll see the scroll ball mechanism, take it out (it has 3 screws) and then you can use a small flat head screwdriver to take it apart.

Now take a look at it, you’ll see lots and lots of dirt in there, using a screwdriver and a small brush remove all of it. Inside the mechanism there is the ball (clean it with water, careful that you don’t drop it into the drain!) and 4 small magnetized rolls. Clean each of these rolls carefully (I used a brush, maybe yo could use WD-40 or something, but I am not sure if it can damage something).

Once you have cleaned everything, you’ll see that there is a small membrane (gray maybe) that is below the metal spring, this membrane is used to press the circuit below to detect a middle click. Mine had a big hole in it :S. While cleaning the mouse I probably damaged it (another reason to be careful).

Looking around the net I found a solution: aluminum foil. These kind of buttons work by having a membrane coated with a conductive ink, once you press it, the coat bridges a circuit below. In my case this coating was gone, so I put a small piece of foil over the circuit, below the broken membrane and it worked.

I don’t know if it’ll work for long, but its better than nothing.

Once you have cleaned and repaired your mouse, its time to put it together. The easiest way is to first connect the green cable (the one from the face buttons) and then the scroll’s cable. You have to insert the cable all the way in the connector, then push the slider inside, its a bit tricky, but not difficult.

Once you have it assembled you’ll have to glue the ring, before you do it use your mouse for a while and see if it is fixed, once you are confident enough put a few drops of glue and let it dry.

I “glued” mine using some tape, because I wanted to try the foil fix a bit longer, but its up to you.

So, that’s it, a (not so) simple way to fix your mouse, I would love to post pics but I am still having trouble with the server (and I haven’t bothered to find out why) and besides, there are plenty of pics/videos around the net.

That’s it for today, hope it helps somebody.

Take care

Update: Looks like the foil fix is not too good, so here’s the improved one: take a small foil pice (about 1×1 mm) and then glue it to the bottom of the membrane (if there is still some left, mine had), let it dry a couple of minutes and try it.

An update won’t be complete without a site update!

I’ve decided to fall back into the default wordpress theme, this is for 2 reasons:

- The other theme was a bit awkward for several things, so I decided to stick with a proven theme while the custom one is being finished.

- I am having trouble with the server.

We had to move the site to another server and it broke a couple of things (file uploads for example), so I will try to fix it ASAP.

Today I feel like writing a short story, nothing fancy, deep or anything, just a simple ‘what if’ with a bit of a twist, I hope you like it. I must note its a geeky story, with lots of geeky references, so it may not be the taste of everybody.

The last day in earth.

Meet Alan: he is your regular run-of-the-mill white collar worker, he probably works at a big building in some big noisy city, he probably drinks a cup of coffee every morning while checking news in his computer; whatever he does, it’s not important: it won’t change the world, it may not even change anything farther than 5 meters around him.

Today Alan is doing the same thing he does every day: cup of coffee, news site and a comfy chair. However, today things are a bit different, not for him, he’s the same as every day; not for his computer, same old Mac that has been since the day it was brought there. Today there is something new on the internet, not that it may come as a surprise: the internet has something new pretty much all the time, but today’s surprise is far more surprising that anything else before.

Alan has one of those new mobile phones, the kind that can get into the net, grab email, news, etc. and put it into a neat package, everything while you are still trying to remove the protective cover. This particular morning Alan flips it open and begins one of his rituals: checking any new application released for his little gadget. There is one and it picks Alan’s interest (something not difficult to do), he downloads it and runs it.

Whatever the application is about doesn’t matter, for all we care it can be a fancy pants daily planner or a dumb useless toy, what is important is that every computer in a 10 mts radius (the wifi range installed in the phone) is completely fried.

Alan won’t notice it for the next 2 hours, however, below him they have already noticed it. Staring at blank screens the workers downstairs act like headless chickens trying to get the systems back online.

Destiny has a weird sense of humor: one of the fried computers downstairs happened to be controlling a remote operated vehicle; without the help of its guide, the car stops for a brief period of time, until it finds the next controller to guide it.

This brief stop is not devoid of any interest, a middle age woman has just enough time to hit the brakes before she crashes into the remote controlled vehicle, behind her the next car is not lucky and gets its front completely stuck in the lady’s car.

A common occurrence in the city, so common that people are already used to it, so its not a surprise when one of the bored drivers (waiting until the street is cleared) brings out his cellphone, with free net access all over the city it would be foolish to sit there doing nothing.

Meet our old friend the application, this time used aboard a car stopped in the middle of a highly loaded street, what gets fried are not personal computers (maybe just a couple that were near), this time are car’s computers that get completely out of comission.

When your computer’s car breaks, the car won’t move. That’s a simple rule that works every time, now picture 20 cars having their computers break at the same time: we have 20 cars that won’t move. Now if 1 person inside of 1 of those 20 cars gets bored and decides to fiddle with his cellphone, we may as well count another 20 cars.

And that’s what happened, if you have ever seen a trail of gunpowder ignite you’ll have a very close image of what happened, in 3 hours there was not a single car working in the entire city.

Not a big deal when your car breaks, you may not get to work, or you may miss your flight, it may cost you a bit of money, but nothing more. The problem is that just above one of the busiest streets lies a hospital. One of the oldest, most well known hospitals of the area. And as a highly demanded hospital it has a highly demanded waiting room too, which to what we have seen so far can be compared to a big time bomb.

Whatever began the reaction at the hospital is of little importance right now, the important points are that it was an hospital and that every system went off at the same time. Whatever happened next is too sad to even bother putting into words.

Leaving the hospital aside we may go flying around the city: there is boredom everywhere, and we know what happens on this particular day when a person gets bored and has a cellphone nearby.

One by one every computer in the city dies.

3 hours have passed since Alan turned on his cell phone and got bored, if you remember correctly by this time he has already noticed what is going on, but he won’t know what caused it (even if he caused it or any other Alan of the city), but again that’s of little importance, all that matters now is that this is the last day of the earth.

But there is hope, there are still a handful of computers still working: mobile phones running a silly application.

END.

Not particularly inspiring, and probably badly written, but I just wanted to write something.

Now take care and don’t trust silly little applications.

The other day I was reading that people were suing companies because they don’t pay the time that the user waits for his/her computer to boot. For me it struck as silly, after all, how much time can you spend booting your computer?. Let’s find out:

• Time to plug it and turn it on (in case of laptops, for desktops just switch all the stuff on): 1 minute.
• Time to wait for EFI to boot the OS (BIOS for those PC users out there): 5 seconds.
• Time for the OS to boot: 1 minute.
• Time for startup software to begin: 1-2 minutes.

Total time: 4 minutes and 5 seconds.

Not much, let’s get a daily average: Normally the system is booted at least 2 times (one in the morning, one after lunch), however lots of people prefer to leave it on (everybody is eating so its a perfect time to use P2P, no joke, I’ve heard of companies that their network stops working during lunch hours), also, people may boot many times if they have to move from office to office, but that doesn’t count.

That gives us an average of 10 minutes per day, consider that this is a rough number, so it may not reflect every case.

Consider the 10 minutes a day, that means 60 minutes a week, 240 minutes a month, convert to hours: 4 hours a month. I don’t know how much a person earns a month by hour, but we can estimate it by comparing to a typical bussiness hour schedule:

8 hours a day times 5 days a week times 4 weeks per month = 160 hours. Add 4 hours  for saturdays times 4 days a month, the grand total is 176 hours. 4 hours out of that number is about 2.27%, which means that if you get paid $1 per hour you’ll be losing $2.27. Of course, we suppose that the company actually pays you by the time your computer is working.

That’s not a big number (at least not one for which I would go suing people), but here is the catch: Windows!. Lets review the boot times:

• Time to plug in: 1 minute.
• Time for BIOS to boot OS (No EFI for you :P): 5 seconds assuming there is no hardware issue.
• Time for OS to boot: 1 minute.
• Time for software to start: 2-3 minutes. (antivirus are heavy programs, especially network ones)
• Time for viruses, spyware to start: 1 minutes (counting a 1-3 virus/spyware count).

Total: 6 minutes with 5 seconds, not much change, if we put this to the cost it would be around 4.8 hours a month, representing about $1 usd more (for the $1 usd/hour example), no big deal. And up to now my windows bashing is not working :/.

There is just one little overlooked detail: we are talking about COMPANY COMPUTERS, that means:

1. They are loaded with OEM/Company crap.
2. They have distributed antivirus.
3. VPNs and Network Shares.
4. Probably old and with little maintenance.

This can easily add 1 or 2 minutes to the boot time, giving a new result:

8 minutes per boot -> 16 per day -> 96 per week -> 384 per month -> 6.4 hours per month -> 3.7%.

Is 8 minutes per boot a normal time? I think it is, I’ve seen computers ran by employees and they can take that long, add to the formula that some companies come with an OS that is not designed to run on the hardware you can add some time.

Now, don’t forget that machines crash, that means a couple more boots!, this number can easily go to 6 or 7 percent :/.

So, its 7% out of your monthly pay, again, assuming you get paid the whole amount. And since I am already tired of doing calculations lets simply suppose a pay of $30 per hour times 176 hours a month = $5280, 7% of that is $369.60.

I’ll let you do the rest of the thinking…

Anyway, calculate how much would it cost you to use Windows over an UNIX system (linux, BSD, Mac, you name it) and see if its worth it.

Now take care and have fun.

This is just a quick update, about something I saw on the web. I was browsing enciclopedia dramatica (a spoof on wikipedia) and a somehow familiar message appeared on the lower right part of the screen: it was a messenger notification (the kind that appears when a contact sends you a message). Of course I don’t use MSN Messenger or Windows, so it didn’t get my attention until it appeared about 4 times, that’s when I saw how silly and probably effective it is.

I like IM, its useful and fun, allows to waste a bunch of time and allows me to talk to different people, however it can be a serious addiction, I know people that HAVE to IM all day, otherwise they won’t be happy. And that’s were this ad freaks me out, if they are creating such an elaborate ad its because it pays. Creating an sliding panel that works cross browser is not an easy task (I am on Safari and it worked quite nice), chances are that there are quite a bunch of thousand of dollars behind it.

Now that I am ranting about ads and IM there is something I still can’t understand, and its related to the MSN Official client: How can people use such aberration?, its bloated, ugly and filled with ads, not counting all the useless extras that it jams into our poor internet connections: custom icons, winks, sounds, games, etc. It’s just plain wrong, I hate when I chat with people that 3/4 of their words/letters is a custom icon and I have to decode their conversations, it’s simply stupid. (I actually force them to write in caps).

Guess there is nothing that can be done, when I was using Windows (a lot time ago), I used Miranda IM, it looked like IRC (or as some of my friends liked to put it: Notepad) but it was good, it removed the custom icons, sounds, animations and all the bloat, and left a simple, elegant interface that does what it has to and nothing more.

Oh well…

Gotta go now, cya

I was really looking forward to the Max Payne Movie, even since it was announced (at the manual of the PS2 version), every time I saw some generic action movie I hoped I would see the familiar MAX PAYNE red letters, so I was pretty excited when I learned it was coming out soon.

I actually went to the first day of airing, expecting to see what you usually see at a video game based movie: game references, action and poor reviews except by the few who played the game.

How was it?

Short Answer: completely disappointing.

Long Answer: As a movie it was ok, nothing new, nothing revolutionary, just a rather fun mindless action, however it is NOT a Max Payne movie, I think I better consider that the real Max Payne movie was never released and that the one released was called “Revenge 2: Lots of Bullets”.

Here are some of the reasons that the Max Payne movie is not Max Payne at all:

Almost no bullet time: WTF, Max Payne IS Bullet Time, and they decided to put like 4 scenes, most of them short and rather bad (the backflip-shotgun-shooting-bad-guy-with-rifle was nice, but not particularly interesting), also one of Max Payne’s trademark movements is Dodging while shooting, and while he did doge and shoot, it was in normal time and at a door :/. There was this scene were he shoots a bunch of guys at a parking lot that kind of mimicked what a normal person would see when Max is ‘in the zone’, but the fun part is watching him in slow mo, not simply watching everybody die (ok, just part the fun).

Where is Vlad?: No Mafia?, What the heck happened to the crazy Lupino? the mafia was cut for time reason, forcing them to invent silly excuses for the characters (and some characters that are simply out of context), but in the process they transformed Lupino into some zombie-like creature, not funny :/.

WTF Ending: What is like the game: It ends at an heliport, What is different: Everything else. I won’t really bother into detailing what went wrong here, everything you have to know is that it went wrong, maybe it started when they decided to remove Vlad.

References: The most obvious reference would have been lots of nice eye catching bullet time, but even with that they failed to put some of the classic moments: “BANG! You are dead Max Payne”, “Dearest of all my Friends”, “I am in a Videogame”, Drug induced dreams (the valkyries don’t count), Lots of noir phrases, etc. There is only one reference (other than the crappy bullet time) and it’s when the police helicopter flies to the Aesir building that resembles the opening from the game, and I think that was more of an accident than a deliberate reference.

Finally the WTFs:

Max Payne shoots a lot: to walls, doors and other stuff (there is even one scene where he enters a room shooting and everything with no people inside, maybe a reference to all the Bullet time entries in the game, except you don’t waste half clip in furniture).

Valkyr is green not blue.

Horne looks like a saint (instead they decide to put the blame on some random new character)

Max Payne uses shotguns: He does too in the game, but the trademark is a dual handed berettas.

With all of the above, I hope they kind of forget that it even happened and move along.

I ___HOPE___ Max Payne 3 turns to be a good game.

Cya

Lately I’ve been playing a lot of S4 League, its an online third person shooter, fast  and fun. So far I’ve enjoyed playing it, except for the laggers (more on it  a bit below).

The S4 stands for Style eSper Shooting Sports a bit misleading title: Style is supposed to be because you can customize your character with clothes, the problem is that there isn’t much to choose from and you’ll start seeing clones of your character quite often.

The eSper is because you can have certain skills, so far there are like 6 and most of them are not so useful (2 passive, 2 shields and some fun ninja moves) but its not that you use them a lot, most of the time you’ll simply forget you have them.

The Shooting part is mostly true, you shoot, a lot. But there are also swords! and having sword only matches is fun.

The sports, well, I don’t think you could consider playing 3+ hours a day of a computer game can be called a sport, but at least you will be doing something interesting.

The game is quite fast, most matches last 15 to 20 minutes (to 100 kills), but there are faster ones (8 or 10 minutes) you will be jumping and rolling all over the place and trying to kill anybody in sight, the biggest problem I’ve seen so far is that it is a beta game, sometimes WAY TOO beta.

The weapon selection is short, and it has a weird system for getting weapons: first you pass a license test (aka tutorial) and that’ll give you the weapon/skill for 5 hours (of actual gameplay), after that you can buy a rental weapon (another 5 hours) or a permanent (that you have to repair every now and then).

About the beta status: its way too easy to ruin your account, since there is no basic weapon if you run out of time for all your weapons and you don’t have money then your account becomes unplayable!. I hope they fix that on the final release.

But the biggest problem of all are laggers: for some reason when you start lagging your character becomes untouchable (it can only be killed after a lot of shots or with some pretty heavy weapons), a lot of people exploit this to win easy points, others simply act as decoys so while everybody is shooting at the lagger his team members attack from behind. I really hope they fix this soon, cause it has already ruined my game today.

Besides that, the game is quite good, you should give it a try, I forgot to mention that is free (they’ll probably open micro transactions when it hits release time).

You can get it here: http://s4.en.alaplaya.eu/

And if you play, look for me! my screen name is MRK-III.

Have fun