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What’s even cooler than mac/pc emulation on your cellphone? Playstation emulation on your cellphone!

In past articles I’ve looked at PC and Mac emulation on Android phones - both can be a little tricky to accomplish. I’m happy to say getting PSX up and running is a cinch! The app is already in the app store for $5.99. If you’re the shady type you can *ahem* probably find it elsewhere. (I’ll leave it at that.)

Once the PSX 4 droid (Playstation for android) app is installed you need to obtain a copy of the Playstation bios file and any games you intend to play.

As far as the bios file goes, there are plenty of resources for it out there if you google. Just search for “Download Playstation Bios” Try here for starters.

Games are pretty easily to get as well. They are of course online on websites like emuparadise.org or you can pop your existing PS games into your computer and create disk images (ISO files) For example, on a Mac you can use “Disk Utility” and click the “New Image” icon in the toolbar. (the format you’d use is CD/DVD master, just name it .ISO)

There are a couple tricky points I’ve noticed so far:

• There were several files to choose from when you select the bios file for the emulator. It recommended a particular one but when loading a game I received an error message. I switched to SCPH101.bin and it worked. Possibly different games require different bios file settings, might be a regional thing.
• Some games might be in .bin.ecm format, I guess this is an optimized format but I don’t think the android psx emulator can read them. There are utilities out there to convert from and to ecm files. The mac version worked fine from the command line, but not the gui. Here’s the utility: http://www.neillcorlett.com/ecm/
• Since I have a keyboard I used that instead of the annoying on-screen display. It also recommended a particular frame rate but i didn’t notice any difference between that and auto. On my 1st generation Droid it plays at full speed with only occasional choppy sound.

Happy gaming!

This article is a quick look back into the NES/SNES days when RPGs where hard to come by in the US. There where many stellar games released in Japan that were deemed uninteresting or too complicated to release. After FF7, things sort of changed… and we get many more releases now. (Well, to be fair, it’s not just a result of FF7’s popularity - but many other factors like easier localization) Also, some of these games finally did make it to the US later on as part of anthology collections and whatnot. But these would have been great games “back in the day” had they seen a US release. (IMHO, of course)

Final Fantasy V

A perfect example of the dumb decisions back then is leaving behind this game with its ingenious character customization system and instead releasing Mystic Quest which though required grinding was a good idea. Nothing says fun like 10 consecutive redundant battles. Not that the game was entirely terrible, but it was nothing compared to this would-be classic. FFV is probably the last “traditional” Final Fantasy game, complete with elemental fields, black mages, and whatnot. (Well, ok FF9 is really the last game like that, but it was more of a “greatest hits” than anything else)

Seiken Densetsu III

Here was an game that almost was released. It was even featured in Nintendo Power, and arguably created some interest and anticipation. Why it was scrapped… who knows. Instead we got a piece of crap called “Secret of Evermore” I have to say, playing through Seiken Densetsu III was a real pleasure. It pushed the limits of the SNES and was surprisingly unique and non-linear. Would have made an excellent ”Secret of Mana II”

Mother (Earthbound Zero)

Earthbound fans are funny creatures, I guess I fall in that category too! The game itself was just as fun, innovative, and unique as the SNES release. The music is great, the story is great, the characters are well done. It’s just overall a good game. Because of it’s modern day setting it’s possible it could have been a big hit. It would also expand the RPG world of the late 80s beyond Square and Enix. What’s really killer about this game is the fact the localization was completed! It was just not green lighted for release because Nintendo of America wanted to focus on the new SNES. A ROM exists today with the official translation. There are even images of the box art. It came so close, but never happened.

Final Fantasy III (NES)

Like FFV, or FFII for that matter - this would have been a great game to have released in the US back then. Although FFII had an offical translation project underway, I think FFIII was a far better game. FFIII set the tone for Final Fantasy for many games after and introduced many conventions that are still part of the game today. It was also a great game, had great music and graphics, and was pretty accessible which also would have made it a great release in the US. With 4 Dragon Warrior games, it would have been nice to see at least one other Final Fantasy release for the NES. Fortunately this game is now getting the love it deserves, with the 3d DS remake that was released a few years back.

Dragon Quest V

Back when the SNES was out I was dying for a Dragon Warrior release on the new console. Nintendo Power teased US readers with Dragon Warrior V, but nothing ever came of it. In fact, nothing came out until DW7 was released on the PlayStation in the 2000s. So why is DQV such a big deal? Well, many people feel this is one of the best entries in the entire series - a series that was so big in Japan that it had to be released on holidays. The game itself would have helped keep interest in the series alive. Back in the NES days Dragon Warrior was the big RPG name, Final Fantasy was great, but arguably it was Dragon Warrior that held the RPG crown. Of course that changed, and Final Fantasy became the giant it is. But in my opinion it was a classic game with great music and story that would have been exciting so see released on the SNES. Like some of the other entries on this list, it also saw a remake - a 3d remake on the DS. But I still can’t help but wonder how great it would have been to see the game back then.

There’s a lot to love about old Nintendo games, one of the geeky aspects that’s really fascinating is how developers back then made use of the small amount of memory they had to work with. Here are some interesting tricks they did to pack more into their games. Like the 8-bit music of these masterpieces that limitation only lead to more creativity!

The bushes and clouds are the same spites in the original SMB.

You’ve probably heard this one, but it’s true. take a look here: http://elrincondeleo.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/super-mario-bros.jpg Oh the mushrooms and goombas are pretty close too. You might also find it interesting that though the levels are relatively large, they are stored in very little space - because instead of thinking of every square and pixle of the map, the only thing that’s saved is a list of level objects, their coordinates, and their length. That’s why rows of coins and bricks are common.

RPGs often lumped floors, dungeons, towns, and buildings together in one map.

RPGs often stored their maps in a more traditional sense. (Like a list of sprites and locations: tree, tree, water, water, tree, etc) So they had to do other things to make the most of the low amount of storage. In games that had dungeons a lot of times these were put together in one overworld-sized map but spread apart far enough that you wouldn’t (normally) see the tips of other parts of the dungeon. A really awesome example of packing dungeons together can be seen in the original Legend of Zelda: http://www.theginblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/zeldaquilt.jpg and here’s the second quest: http://www.theginblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/zeldadungeonspelling.jpg

Sometimes, it was worth being inefficient.

Sometimes to get the WOW factor, games would throw in an really “expensive” bit of multimedia to wow players. For example, the musical “SE-GA” in the original Sonic (see here: http://tinyurl.com/2duey26) And in Sonic 3 there was even a quick FMV! Graphics alone take up some space, check out this neat visualization of SMB3’s actual bits… http://i.imgur.com/PG1fq.gif

But wait! There’s more!

There are many, many creative examples of how developers squeezed the most content into games. Everything from the creative re-use of sprites, to pallet swapping, to primitive compression… it’s pretty amazing really!

A while back, there was a technobabble article discussing the pros and cons of flash and silverlight. Times-they-are-a-changin’ and the battle ground between these technologies has completely changed. So here’s where we’re at today…

Let’s start of will a quick recap of these technologies. Basically all of this stems from the limitations html has previously suffered from. In order for webpages to have this level of interactivity and presentation, you’d need a plugin to get your browser to do it. So this is where flash is coming from. It’s meant to address the limitations of html.

Microsoft, as per usual, identifies a money-making technology and makes their own version. That’s silverlight. Like flash, it’s a plugin that lets your browser do video, animation, and higher interaction experience.

Now, HTML is a standard and the folks on W3C and other standards committees have identified that most web sites want this functionality standard and available. And I agree, you shouldn’t need to install plugins just to watch videos, see animations, etc.

To summarize the pros and cons in the previous technobabble article, flash is the big fish in the pond. It has full support in windows, mac, and linux - along with several other platforms - even the Wii. However, it’s proprietary and uses its own language (ActionScript) Silverlight, although less-supported, offers a more open solution. It’s XML-based and uses regular languages that most .NET web developers are familiar with. Also, you don’t have to build content in an expensive Flash studio environment.

What’s interesting about the current climate is that flash and silverlight are actually becoming obsolete. As more browsers support HTML5 (which, by the way, is robust enough to play Quake) Flash, in particular is not useless as it is being used in development outside of strictly webpage multimedia, one example was its ability to build mobile apps. Which brings us to…

Apple! There’s a strange history between Apple and Adobe (who purchased Flash from Macromedia a few years back) When Apple was in dire straits in the late 90s Adobe bailed on them and made Windows their primary development platform, as opposed to Macintosh which was known for it’s desktop publishing and graphics strong points. So rumor goes, Steve Jobs got pissed about this and now has this vendetta against Adobe. Apple has definitely grown big, especially in the cell phone space. For Apple to not support Flash and even go so far as to restrict development of apps via flash is a real low blow, if you think about it. But the official stance is simply that Flash is too closed, slugish, and proprietary - and the shift is towards HTML5.

In my humble opinion I do see HTML5 as an attractive future for a lot of web interactivity and presentation. Having said that Flash is far from dead, and is constantly evolving. With leaps forward like Adobe Air, it’s hard to just dismiss Flash as obsolete and irrelevant. There are still things HTML can’t do - all this geo-spacial stuff on mobile devices and ipads, as one example. If Flash is smart they will stay ahead of the curve.

So what’s next? Who knows! I’m sure HTML5 will be embraced, ESPECIALLY since IE9 will support it! Flash will probably still be used because quite honestly it’s easy, and so pervasive. Apple won’t support it in the iPhone OS, and hopefully Adobe doesn’t strike back with Photoshop and Creative Suite not being ported to the Mac. (Probably not because that’d hurt everyone) But it’s a real interesting game being played right now, so stay tuned because it’s far from over!

With all bias aside, a question many netbook enthusiasts debate is which OS to install on a netbook. Today there are a lot of powerful netbooks on the market with large hard drives capable of running any distro of Linux or Windows 7. My focus is on a low end or older netbook. I still love my Eee PC which is now a few years old. But even upgraded it has 2gigs of ram and 4gigs of storage (plus another 8 on sd) — the model shipped with 512mb ram, and just the 4gig ssd. This really brings us to two realistic contenders in my opinion:

Windows XP or Xubuntu.

Before anybody complains about me forgetting about their favorite, obsucure, runs-on-an-atari lightweight distro, keep in mind me choices are based around actually doing modern or real work using real applications and modern websites.

Here are the pros and cons…

Windows XP
PROS
* Customizable install with nLite
* High compatability
* XP is small enough you will still have room for apps like older versions of office, photoshop, etc
CONS
* Security. Realistically you should consider running antivirus as well which is a big setback on a netbook.
* Becomes slow and bloated over time
* Difficult to install without use of external cd drive.

Xubuntu
PROS
* Being free, it’s a lot easier to obtain, customize, and install (even via a USB drive)
* High UI customization to optimize screen real-estate
* Customization - only install what you need
* Fast, runs chrome perfectly.
* Decent apps, still have the ability to install Gimp, maybe open office with room to spare
CONS
* The learning curve associated with Linux (maybe not to the people who are installing OS’s on netbooks, but still!)
* Some maintenance issues, such as preserving disk space after package management.
* Less compatible

OVERALL
* Any OS install on these will require setting up a usb drive to boot and install from. This is somewhat easier with linux, but not impossible with windows. An external CD drive is even easier.
* Both OS - linux or windows - require customization to run well regardless. In windows, you’ll need to avoid swap files, tweak your registry, reduce disk writes and caches, and similarly in linux you’ll want to avoid swap as well and customize some scripts to reduce disk writes. Both will also require some tweaking to run well in the low memory environemtn.
* It’s tempting to spring for ubuntu, vista, 7, or something newer but honestly xp and xubuntu are slim and have a very small footprint and are essentially as capable as today’s OS’s.
* Using an SD card is tempting as a home directory or even a home and program directory - not only will this reduce writes to your more-expensive SSD, but you can reinstall and retain some of your stuff.
* Both XP and xubuntu waste space after it updates, see the old technobabble article on this!

Check out this gallery of old, vintage, classic, and weird gadgets. All stuff I don’t have room for but can’t bring myself to get rid of. (Apple ][, Mac Pluses, Tandys, Commodore 64s and more)

http://tinyurl.com/y9h8yen

Hello! I’ll be doing the updates to metalbabble.com this week, in the meantime the site is redirecting here - to the technobabble. I’m hoping to be done mid this week. Note that the games and software areas are still accessible using the links at the top of the page. Thanks!

Years ago I had a job as a “Virtual Tour” photographer. I went all around Massachusetts and photographed virtual tours for homes for sale. I have to say it was an interesting experience - so much so that I have the equipment still and experiment once and a while with it. (Unfortunately I don’t have the really high-end equipment I had from the job!)

Here’s what I do have.

The equipment

In this photo is an old 2 megapixel (I said it was old) Sony CD Mavica. I use this because of the large lens size and ability to adapt to the 360 lense. The actual lense sits on top with the camera aimed up.

The photo it takes looks like a donut (see second picture)

On the computer, the 360 software interpenetrates this donut-shaped image and unwraps it giving you the illusion of image all around you, but in reallity you’re just looking at transformed sections of the donut. It’s actually a very easy process.

You do need a precision camera though, my Mavica doesn’t really cut the mustard. The 10 megapixel that I used to take a picture OF the mavica has much more horsepower but I don’t have an adapter… yet.

In any case, you get the idea - here’s the final product (again remember my camera is old and crappy: http://www.metalbabble.com/360/metalbabble%20360/)

Donut Image

When it comes to web browsing in Linux, it’s usually FireFox that tops users’ lists. But as great as FireFox is, I’ve found it sort of clunky - especially on NetBooks like the Asus Eee PC. As you might know, Google has brought chrome over to the Linux platform as a developer preview. And in my experience, Chrome really hauls it under Linux!

So is it time to set aside FireFox and make Chrome the default Linux browser? (Can you imagine Ubuntu or Fedora with Chrome, and NOT FireFox?) Well, maybe. Chrome and Google are going down their own route with their NetBook-minded OS, but that’s another story entirely. My point right now is, Chrome makes an excellent browser for Linux boxes, and is especially suitable for netbooks.

Today, we have a developer preview of Linux Chrome to play around with. It’s a bit of a tease, since it runs great but is stripped down. This entry will go through a few little hacks to get Chrome to do what you want in linux.

The Annoying Nag Page

No matter what you set as your home page in Chrome, it’ll always load to a screen that explains it’s a developer preview only. It’s worth reading and all, but once is probably enough to look at this thing. The page is actually “about:linux-chrome” - and even if you change it to something else in Settings, you’ll start back here again when you reload the application. My first attempt was to go through the configuration files and manually change it there. That didn’t work either.

So how do we resolve this? Kind of simple actually! Just pass the name of a page as a parameter. So if you use “google.com/ig” as your start page, you can use the command “google-chrome google.com/ig” to always start at your homepage. Actually, maybe you should use the command “google-chrome metalbabble.com”

In any case, I had an application launcher for chrome on a toolbar, I just set the command to what I have above, and presto. Works perfect, like it should! No TRACE of the nag screen.

No Flash / No Plugins

Here’s another must-have as far as I’m concerned. This one can be solved in a similar fashion - passing extra parameters to chrome. So, to enable plugins you use “google-chrome -enable-plugins” Pretty obvious, huh?

So to use these two command line switches together you’d have something like “google-chrome -enable-plugins google.com/ig” Just go into any shortcuts you have on your menus or toolbars and use these switches. Heck, get really fancy and write yourself a shell script.

Final Thoughts

Chrome is neat. It’s neat, but I never had a good reason to drop FireFox or Safari to start using it. However, in Linux, and especially on my NetBook, the performance and clean interface is well worth it. And if you can’t wait for the real deal then at least you can now get by with a couple of the essentials!

Have fun & let me know what you think!

In some previous technobabble articles we talked about some of the bloated files that Windows Update leaves behind. Many times drives fill up on users and there’s no obvious reason to where all the space is going. That’s where visualization comes in - at a glance you can identify the biggest parts of your file system.

First you need a tool to accomplish it. I’ve first seen a visualizer in Ubuntu as part of the disk cleanup process, if you have a recent linux install - chances are you have something already. As for Mac/PC people…

http://windirstat.info/ (Windows: WinStatDir)

http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ (Mac: Grand Perspectiv)

Both programs will scan what ever part of the file system you decide - one drive, two drives, one folder (like your home folder, for instance) when completed, you’ll see a psychedelic representation of what objects in your fiesystem are taking up the most space, relatively. Large blocks are larger files.

Once you identify a particular file or folder that takes up space, you can research what it is to determine if you can safely delete it. Running on a typical Windows machine you’ll typically find a gig or so of update backup files which can be removed safely, but when in doubt - just google something to determine if it’s needed by the system or not.

Good luck & happy spring cleaning!

Drive visualization in Windows

The large chunks to the left are big virtual machines