Tag, I’m it.

Gee, thanks Tim. You know, with all the big names who’ve been part of this meme, I never reckoned that I’d get tagged. I suck at tag. In fact, that’s the first of five things you never knew about me:

  1. I sucked at tag. Primary school was pretty hellish for me — I was unfit, I had no friends, and I could never catch anyone. It’s a part of my life that I like to forget. Because I had no-one who liked me or understood me (my parents admit to not really understanding me and my interests when I was young) I turned to reading books and learning. If I had to pick someone who I think understood me when I was young, I’d probably have to say my grandmother on my mother’s side, Lois, who unfortunately passed away while I was at Intermediate, or just starting, I can’t remember. She would buy books for me all the time, and it was her who I credit for getting me into computers and specifically programming. An Osbourne book on Basic for various computers like the Commodore 64 and the TRS-80, and the really simple game listings within it. I would spend hours staring at that code, trying to figure out what the game would do. I wouldn’t get any kind of computer until after she passed away, and then it was a 286 and no-one told me where GW-Basic was.

    Gosh, there’s a bit there. Does that count as only one?

  2. I love computer games, but in reality, I’m not a hardcore gamer. I like the games that I can pick up, play for 15 minutes, and then put to one side. To this end, I rarely finish a game. A mild case of ADD? It’s certainly not AD&D 😉 I can count on one hand the games I’ve clocked without cheats:
    • Half-Life (PC)
    • Half-Life 2 (PC)
    • Half-Life 2: Episode 1 (PC) (but that barely counts)
    • Phoenix Wright (Nintendo DS) (but it’s mostly trial-and-error. Heh, trial, law game)
    • Doukutsu Monogatari (aka Cave Story) (PC)

    Yet recently I’ve bought so many DS and GBA games for my Nintendo DS Lite, and haven’t clocked any others

  3. I’m not allergic to anything, but I have had cancer. I have a giant scar on my back from where they removed a melanoma (skin cancer). Luckily it came back from the labs that it hadn’t spread, but I can’t give blood anymore. If they’d let me, I’d go every six months. So if you’re reading this, and you are able to give blood, you should go do it — it helps so many people out there, and only inconveniences you for a few hours; heck, most workplaces will let you go give blood on work time!
  4. When I want to chill out, the forest is my chill out space. I love to just go somewhere and listen, relax. Rivers are also very awesome. I was baby sitting a couple of my mum’s friend’s kids for the weekend one time in the middle of summer, and they had some really large inner tubes, so we took them out on the river out the back of their house, and had a ball and we all got so tired, we walked back, packed stuff away, and we all fell asleep in the lounge where we were sitting, totally unexpectedly. It was probably the quietest they ever were!
  5. I like chiptunes. Music made on old retro hardware that sounds like it could have come out of an old GameBoy or C64. I especially like the stuff that comes out of 8bitpeoples
  6. Bonus Fact: I don’t like peas. But that said, they are tolerable when mixed with other vegetables. But by themselves, blargh.

Bob Brown (Confessions of a Guru), Hamish MacEwan (self titled), Hillary (Kiwirose in Canada), Dan Milward (Mind of Mufasa) (fix your feeds, they’re broken), and Unbounded (self-titled), even though Unbounded is the kind of guy who would abhor this kinda meme; TAG – You’re it!

Tetris got 0wn3d!

Quinn is an implementation of a popular falling-blocks game which, according to the Tetris Company, must not be named here.

ROFL. You got served, Tetris Co.

Seriously, Quinn is a really good implementation of that unnameable game for Mac OSX.

Linux on my handheld

So I bought a GP2X from trademe (thanks Binh from mediaplayers.co.nz).

I had a short problem upgrading the firmware to 2.0; it ‘bricked’ the device. After a bit of wiki reading and obtaining advice from djwillis on efnet#gp2xdev my SD card wasn’t playing well with the firmware upgrade software. I’m now the happy owner of a Linux-powered entertainment device! HUZZAH!

I’ve installed Quake 1, a Sega Master System emulator, a Mega Drive (Genesis) emulator, and can’t wait to see what else I can get running on this thing!

Natcoll and the land of PSP

After an incredibly short interview process I’m now employed as a tutor at Natcoll Wellington until the end of the year. They have me taking practical labs in Macromedia Director 4 days a week and a theory class once a week. The work is pretty fun, and the class I’m taking are neat. My fellow tutors are good value, and seem to be really switched on with their specialties, and enjoy a lot of the random internet entertainment I do.

Everyone in my department (apart from the course co-ordinator) owns a PSP. So I figured I should make the most of it and bite the bullet myself. Mind you, it wasn’t cheap :/ Anyway, I got the PSP value pack, a USB cable, a 1GB Memory Stick Duo and the game Mercury, and I have GTA Liberty City Stories preordered.

I also bought a UMD Movie of Steamboy, which is a great anime film — you should see it if you get the chance. But I don’t think that the PSP is a great delivery platform for a two-hour movie, unless you’re stuck on a plane and are sick of playing video games.

Also, hooray for Homebrew! After upgrading from 1.52 to 2.0 and then downgrading to 1.50, I got a Genesis/Megadrive emulator running on there!

And OMG PHEAR LUMINES. That game, once you get into it, is intense. You go into it all relaxed and you come out of it all tense and powered up. I love that game.