Super Crate Box on the C64 is called Super Bread Box and looks impressively like the original game! The author of the remake, Paul Koller, was also responsible for a C64 version of VVVVVV I played a few years ago. In fact, after playing that version I went and bought the PC one! Read more about it here. (via Gnome)
tv
Mel Blanc: What’s up Doc?
Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and many more characters, is the subject of this great Radiolab podcast. Well worth a listen. Also see his Wikipedia page. You’ll smile when you hear the story of how he came out of his coma.
Linux
Do more with your old MacBook
Have you got an old MacBook that Apple doesn’t support any more? Can’t install the latest and greatest version of Mac OS X on it because the CPU is too old? You’re probably seeing a warning from Chrome that Google has discontinued support for Mac OS X 10.5.3 or whatever is on that ancient beast? It’s the same with Firefox. Flash isn’t updated either and when you go to Youtube to watch a video Chrome shows you an ugly warning that it’s outdated. Frustrating isn’t it? What’s more, you’re probably leaving yourself open to exploits by nasties on the Internet. […]
Android
Android: auto brightness and mute your phone
I have two great (and free) Android apps for you today: Yet Another Auto Brightness is a useful app that will reduce the brightness of your phone display. Here’s the XDA thead about it. Easy Mute will pause or mute music and podcasts on your phone just by placing your hand over the device. It uses the proximity sensor and you can tell it to only activate if the phone is lying flat. It works great and it remembers it’s state when the phone is moved. This confused me at first but to replicate, cover the front of the camera […]
Linux
Bash: compare two directories
In Unix based systems like Linux and Mac OS X there are a number of ways of comparing two directories. The simplest way is to use diff: diff –brief -rb directory_1 directory_2 This command compares each file and reports if they differ. You can find the meanings of the options in man diff. Diff is fine if you’re on a fast drive, if there aren’t many files or the files aren’t big. The command compares the contents of each file so it can take quite some time on a slow external drive. If you just want to know which files […]
Android
My Favourite Android timer app: Chef’s Kitchen Timer
Timing things is something you might not think much about but when you have to make the dinner and various dishes take different times to cook then juggling the time in your head can be a pain. That’s where a smartphone timer app comes in handy. For the longest time my wife and I used Kitchen Timer and it works great but it has one drawback. The screen has to be unlocked to reset the alarm. There’s nothing more annoying than a loud beeping noise and you’re waiting for the screen to unlock and hit the off button. I’ve looked […]
C64
C64: Wanted Dead or Alive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyVdgnPF7zA&feature=player_embedded Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” as played on a real Commodore 64. The song was digitized on an Amiga, downsampled to 4 bit audio and copied onto a 3.5″ inch disk that the Commodore 1581 drive could read from. The song data was streamed in realtime from the drive to the tiny 64Kb of memory in the computer and fed to the SID chip for our aural delight. I presume the screen has been blanked to save processing power, or the data for the sample gets dumped into screen memory. This did require an Amiga with the Perfect […]
tv
Do you remember the show where …
Years ago, I would guess almost 20 years ago, there was a late night show on TV that has stuck in my brain ever since. This show had a Twilight Zone vibe about it. It was set in a diner/restaurant where time stood still. I’m pretty sure there were multiple episodes but I only remember one. In the opening scene a waitress is wiping down a table when a shot rings out outside. A man staggers in clutching his chest. He’s been shot and has only moments to live. Time has stopped in the diner so he tells his story […]
Music
Ogre Battle
Spotify opened it’s doors to the Irish public today (well, to those who hadn’t used a proxy or some other means to pay for the UK service that is) so I gave it a go and of course looked for Queen music. The usual suspects are there and some material I hadn’t heard before like B-sides and “work in progress” versions of some songs. Great! Then I found Deep Cuts, the first in a series of album compilations of more “obscure” stuff. I saw some favourites on there so I tried Ogre Battle first. What the hell? Almost 30 seconds […]
Animals
Anyone in Blarney missing a dog?
Anyone in Blarney recognise this dog? My wife found him wandering around the park a few minutes ago. A woman she met said the dog had been around since last night. He’s a very friendly dog but we’d prefer to hand him back to his original owners!