Month: February 2007

Good news for Castlevania fans – Dracula X coming to the PSP

castlevania-dracula-x-chron.jpg

If you aren’t into the history of the Castlevania series, you won’t recognize the importance of this, but longtime series fans will. In 1993, Konami released Dracula X: Rondo of Blood in Japan for the PC-Engine console (known as TurboGraphx and later TurboDuo in America). Because the console sold so poorly in the US, the game never made it here legally (it’s a hot post in the TurboDuo usenet group and has been a highly sought after disc on Ebay). Now, nearly 15 years later, Castlevania: Dracula X will be available on the Sony PSP in the dual-game release Caslevania: Dracula X Chronicles (obligatory shorter link), which will include both Dracula X: Rondo of Blood and the associated title Symphony of the Night, originally available on the PlayStation 1.

For a bit more information on this, check out the video interview at TechEBlog (and the shorter link) that covers some of the changes and additions from the classic to the port.

[tags]Castlevania Dracula X for PSP, Update of classic Drac X for the PSP[/tags]

Eric and the Dread Gazebo

For every gamer who has had an overly serious teammate, here is The Tale of Eric and the Dread Gazebo.

…In the early seventies, Ed Whitchurch ran “his game,” and one of the participants was Eric Sorenson. Eric plays something like a computer. When he games he methodically considers each possibility before choosing his preferred option. If given time, he will invariably pick the optimal solution. It has been known to take weeks. He is otherwise, in all respects, a superior gamer.

Eric was playing a Neutral Paladin in Ed’s game. He was on some lord’s lands when the following exchange occurred:

Continue reading “Eric and the Dread Gazebo”

IP over SMTP

Way back in the early days of the Intarw3b, not everyone with a computer was surfing around. My first exposure to real use of the ‘net revolved around getting actual work done. At that time, I was a neophyte networking and security goob (today, I’ve advanced to just being an all-around good) and I spent a lot of my work time reading networking and security mailing lists and tracking down tools and documents squirrelled away in the corners of the ‘net.

One of the coolest things I remember reading from those lists was about one of the security gurus who needed some binary files while working at a site without general Internet connectivity but that did have e-mail services. He wrote some scripts to actually implement NFS file transfers over SMTP. I don’t remember the exact details, but I remember that he sent scripts to a co-worker back at his office who installed them as the mail processing scripts for a particular account and then did the same with some other scripts at the worksite. Using these he was able to make the worksite system and his office servers talk as if they had an NFS connection, but using packets 7-bit safe encoded and transferred via SMTP. If that makes no sense to you, it’s OK. I probably have some of the details wrong (it’s been over 10 years since I even read about this), and non-networking folks have no need to understand this. But to really geeky people (especially, if you can imagine it, people more geeky than I), this is really cool use of technology, and worthy of hacking recognition.

So, with all that information, here’s the reason I posted about this. While reading some older web articles I long ago tucked away for later review, I found a link to a Dutch site on which the author has posted a script for doing IP over SMTP. I can’t recall ever being in a situation where I’ve needed this functionality, but it’s really cool that it even exists and someone remembers well enough a time when it was useful that they would post it.

[tags]Script for running IP over SMTP, IP traffic via SMTP encapsulation – useless? But cool[/tags]

Kodak looks to churn up the inkjet printer market with substantially reduced ink prices

Assuming the printers perform as well as Kodak says, this new printer product line from Kodak should drop prices significantly from what current consumer printers offer.

Eastman Kodak Company (NYSE: EK) today entered the consumer inkjet industry with a revolutionary new product line for the home.

KODAK EASYSHARE All-in-One Printers will enable consumers to affordably print crisp, sharp documents and KODAK lab-quality photos at home using premium, pigment-based inks that will save consumers up to 50 percent on everything they print. The three new printers provide ultimate levels of print quality and ease-of-use, while offering low total cost of ownership compared to other leading consumer inkjet printers on the market.

. . .

The KODAK EASYSHARE AiO Printers use Kodak’s premium, pigment-based ink, priced at $9.99 for a cartridge of black ink and $14.99 for a five-ink color cartridge (US MSRP). For every $15 spent on color ink and $10 spent on black ink, consumers can print the same number of pages at half the cost of other consumer inkjet printers.When the KODAK Photo Value Pack is purchased, a 4 x 6-inch photo costs as little as 10 cents per print.

So all that remains is real world testing and reviews to see if the print quality stands up as well as consumables testing to verify similar printable pages/photos per cartridge as compared with competitors. If this is as good as Kodak says, I’m sure HP, Epson, and others will not be happy about legitimate price competition. Fuck ’em, I say. Competition is good for us, and I’m tired of paying $35 for a single color ink cartridge.

[tags]Kodak looking to shake up consumer inkjet market, New printer line from Kodak with low-price ($10) cartridges[/tags]

Rock on with the action games – they make your vision better

I don’t play the action games like I used to. The original Quake (I so pwned with the off-hand grappling hook mod) and Unreal Tournament (still the best of the bunch, although UT2004 is awesome) were my favorites. By my slowing reaction time (as a 36 year old gamer, I’m ancient by twitch-game standards) and frequent hand tremors leave me unable to compete against most of the folks that play shooters. However, if I could/did still play them, I would apparently benefit from improved visual acuity after playing (bonus shortened URL available as well).

Video games that contain high levels of action, such as Unreal Tournament, can actually improve your vision.

Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved by about 20 percent in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter–a visual acuity test similar to ones used in regular ophthalmology clinics.

In essence, playing video game improves your bottom line on a standard eye chart.

Continue reading “Rock on with the action games – they make your vision better”