Retro-future

Plus Deck
OK, now this is nutty, the PlusDeck, a cassette tape deck for your computer. I guess tragic people who can’t let go of cassette tapes (or think that perhaps its retro-cool or something) will get off on this.

It do such kerrayzee things such as, “records all the sounds from PC onto tape, records MP3 files, and all the internet streaming from PC onto tape, use general cassette audio, play tape on PC/Converting sound from PC into MP3 files”. NO WAY!!!

Acieeed!!!

Chicago 1987 T-Shirt print

Rozie bought me this great t-shirt for Christmas. It has the names of a bunch of classic Chicago House tracks, many of which are my favourite Chicago/Acid House tracks, if not favourite tracks of all time. 😀

Rendering in different browsers – redux

After a bit of checking up with your friendly neighbourhood CSS validator, I figured out that the Safari rendering issue was due to my chubby figures creating some typos. IE 5.2 on Mac OS X still has the search form on the left hand side of the screen instead of the right though. Maybe I’ll just disable that or something.

Favourite Movies of the Year

Lost In Translation poster
My absolute favourite movie this year would have to be Sofie Coppola’s Lost In Translation. Other movies which I thoroughly enjoyed were:

And for being overhyped pieces of crap there were:

And for making me want to yell out like a hoon “YEAH!!! Kick that ass!!!” goes to:

Rendering in different browsers

daveg :: weblog - safari screenshotUsing iCapture, I found out that perhaps some of the recent changes that I made caused some problems in Safari. Previously I had checked, and it did look OK, but now it seems that it ignores quite a bit of the layout. The titlebar at the top doesn’t have the blue background, the search form is on the left hand side, not the right, the menubar on the left is just a bunch of list times, with no background colour at all, the styles for the navlist at the top are completely ignored and they are just outputted as a vertical list. Way to go Safari!

I checked it out with Konquerer (which is supposed to use the same rendering engine as Safari, KHTML) and it renders a lot more of the page than Safari could dream of. The only problem in Konquerer is that the navlist isn’t quite right, and an image which I had inserted as floating to the left, sits on top of the text, which doesn’t bother me too much.

I thought Apple chose the KHTML rendering engine over the Mozilla rendering engine because it was supposed to be more “compatible” over a greater range of websites. Over the time that I’ve used it (since the first public beta releases), I’ve not seen any evidence of this. One of my pet hates is that it still can’t handle SSL connections through a proxy server.

Next I’ll have to check IE (I checked out IE 5.x on Mac OS X last night and it wasn’t pretty) next on some Windows platforms. I had a quick look on Monday night on IE 6.0 on Windows XP, and it appeared to be OK, but you never know I guess. 🙁

Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing

Digital Play coverAn interesting book called Digital Play that I noticed in Berkelouw Books on the weekend.

Digital Play is a major study of the video and computer game industry, from its origins as a minor spin-off of the military-industrial complex to its contemporary position as a major global media business as big as Hollywood. It discusses how interactive games affect theoretical debates about the information society, gives an historical account of the rise and fall of companies such as Atari, Nintendo, and Sega and of today’s savage competition between Microsoft and Sony, and offers critical analysis of gender and violence in games, the marketing strategies of game companies, intellectual property and work in the game industry, and the problems and possibilities of on-line games. Digital Play is a book for anyone interested in the cutting edge of virtual culture, or in a digital business that is transforming everyday life.

I must remember to go back and pick it up.

Lost in Translation

Something I got in an email:

Subway sign

These are signs in japanese metro trains, “Priority seats for…” from left to right:

  1. person with injured arm
  2. person holding a child
  3. pregnant woman
  4. person with injured leg

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Since I’m back at work with a nice fast connection again and no desire to do any work, I thought I’d jazz some stuff up around here. Made some changes to the stylesheet to change some colours, added in a horizontal menu bar (thank goodness for Accessify for making things easier), moved the search function to the top right-hand corner, and added in a “listening/reading/playing” section in the left-hand sidebar. Might have to work on that though, since its not looking particularly sexy at the moment.

Some new photos online

Duran Duran at the EnmoreDJ Sleepy at Jupiter JazzKris Kringle pressiesDuran Duran at the Enmore

Its been a while since I put any photos into my gallery, but after much hassling from Patrick and also the fact that I’m back at work away from a dialup connection, I’ve managed to put up some photos. Some photos from the Duran Duran concerts at the Enmore Theatre and Aussie Stadium recently, the Jupiter Jazz party down at Bar Europa (not as good a Tom’s photos though) and some happy snaps of friends down at Bronte for a little Christmas picnic get together.

Update: Just to keep my reputation in check, I didn’t actually attended the Duran Duran concerts. Rozie did. I swear, really, I wasn’t there. 😀

MAME 0.78 released

Yesterday, just in time for Christmas, MAME 0.78 was released. Changes to the games are as follows:

New Games supported or promoted from GAME_NOT_WORKING status:

  • 7jigen no Youseitachi
  • Aquarush
  • Ashita no Joe
  • Biofreaks (Prototype)
  • Bonanza Bros
  • Borderline (bootleg)
  • California Speed
  • Cross Pang
  • Crypt Killer
  • Dynamic Country Club
  • Ehrgeiz
  • Fighting Layer
  • Funny Bubble
  • Mahjong Angels
  • Mahjong Campus Hunting
  • Mahjong Yarunara
  • Mr Driller
  • Quiz Rouka Ni Tattenasai
  • Quiz TV Gassyuukoku
  • Super Tank
  • Tekken 3

New Clones supported or promoted from GAME_NOT_WORKING status:

  • Chinese Hero (older)
  • Delta Race (omega Race bootleg)
  • Fighting Hawk (World)
  • Lode Runner III – The Golden Labyrinth
  • Pairs V1.2
  • Premier Soccer (EAB)
  • Vs. Atari R.B.I. Baseball (set 2) [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]

New Non-Working games / clones supported:

  • Ace Driver
  • Battle Arena Toshinden 2 (USA)
  • Beastorizer
  • Brave Blade
  • Champion Baseball Japan set 2
  • Crackdown
  • Gain Ground
  • Gallop Racer 2 (USA)
  • Judge Dredd (Rev C)
  • Judge Dredd (Rev B)
  • Mr Driller 2
  • NBA Jam Extreme
  • Primal Rage 2
  • Quiz Syukudai wo Wasuremashita
  • Scramble Spirits
  • Star Gladiator
  • Strider 2 (ASIA)
  • Strider 2 (USA)
  • Super Masters Golf
  • Target Balls