Category Archives: Friday

Jan 04

Friday Post: First post of 2013!

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Hey all,

Happy New Year!  Welcome to 2013 🙂

On Monday Element14 will have more Raspberry Pi’s in stock.  Get your credit cards ready.  I will also be taking my first graduate course that same day.  I am very happy and looking forward to working on my masters degree.

I now have a USB gamepad and I’m going to work on getting that setup.  I’m currently working on PiMAME 0.4 and hope to have it released this weekend.  I am incorporating as many fixes and improvements as I can.  I really appreciate your feedback.

In other Pi news, teh_orph has posted new information about his XWindows accelerated drivers for the Pi.  I am looking forward to trying them out.  They are FAR from finished, but this is a great step forward.

Have a great weekend!

-Shea

Dec 29

Friday Post: Relaxing Week

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Hey All,

Very short Friday Post.  I’ve been on vacation since Christmas.  My promotion goes into effect next week, and I start my graduate program the following week.  I am enjoying this vacation because it is probably going to be the last free time I get until the next semester.

Now to sleep until Sunday 🙂

Happy New Year everyone.  Here is to a happy and a healthy 2013!

-Shea

Dec 14

Friday Post: PiMAME Image and other neat things

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Hey All,

Hope you all like this:

PiMAME

Download Here

This is a fully configured Raspberry Pi image that auto boots into AdvanceMENU and runs your MAME games for you.  It includes a copy of a Free MAME ROM so you can see it working right from the start.  SSH is already enabled, memory split is setup, and everything is updated.

Once you have it flashed to your SD Card, I recommend running “sudo raspi-config” and expanding the file system, otherwise you will only have a few megs of space left to use.

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions!

Raspberry Pi Radio

http://www.icrobotics.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Turning_the_Raspberry_Pi_Into_an_FM_Transmitter

With one wire and a simple program, you can turn your Raspberry Pi into an FM Transmitter that plays on FM 100.0MHz.

 

Dec 07

Friday Post: Sadness

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Hey all,

This past week has been very hard.  My cousins lost their Step-Father last weekend, and my best friend lost her Dad on Tuesday.

I am at a loss for words for this weeks post.

To anyone else in this kind of situation, just remember that it’s OK to feel how you feel.

-Shea

Nov 30

Friday Post: Push It!

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Hey all,

This has been a LONG week.  Wednesday we pushed to production our new code base that we had been working on all semester.  This is an internal productivity app that is used by everyone in our department, so it’s kind of a big deal.  It was exhausting.  Did some long shifts back to back to make sure it was pushed after hours, and that I was available during all working hours in case of any large issues.

We only had a couple major bugs show up that we missed in testing, and as usual, search is hard.  I am thinking about migrating our search system to Whoosh or Solr next week as a proof of concept.

Now that this has been taken care of, I have a lot more time on my hands to work on my own projects.  That means more compiling and more debs to come.  I had an epiphany about getting something to work, so I’m going to try it this weekend.

On an AWESOME note, My Fix It Felix Jr. DeskCade arrived at Disney Studios.  I was sent these pictures of Rich Moore, Director of Wreck It Ralph, playing with it!

Nov 23

Friday Post: Happy beginning of the holidays!

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Hello All,

Happy beginning of the holidays.  Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday… To all my friends here in the US, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I spent some great time with my family.  To all my friends in other countries, I hope you are having a wonderful week 🙂

Raspberry Pi Camera

The Raspberry Pi Foundation today released the first video of the Raspberry Pi Camera.  It looks like it’s going to be an awesome piece of kit.  $25, 1080p video, 5MP pictures.  I cannot wait to order one!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8N7kgtL0-Ts#!

Wii U

So I was able to purchase a Wii U Deluxe set during Black Friday.  I was not expecting to come home with one.  I was really just driving around looking at the lines.  Toys ‘R Us had opened at 8, it was 8:20, and the line was short, so I decided to go in.  I went to the back of the store, where the electronics section was, and asked if they had any Wii U’s in stock.  I was completely shocked to be given a ticket for a deluxe model.  My fiancee didn’t believe it either.  2 hours later (yay, waiting in line to pay) and I’ve got this thing hooked up.

The first thing it needed to do was download a huge update.  It took about 2 hours to download and install. After that, it was smooth sailing.  The system is awesome.  The gamepad is not just a gimmick, it works amazingly well.  It acts as a universal remote for my TV and my Cable box.  It’s much faster to browse the  cable guide using the Dpad than using the remote itself.  Netflix is better on the Wii U than on the Xbox 360.  To be able to select from the queue on the gamepad, watch it on the TV, or press a button and switch the stream straight to the game pad is so cool.  It’s seamless.

Nintendoland is this consoles version of Wii Sports and Wii Play combined.  You can use the Gamepad to play the games in single player mode, but to use 2 player you need to use Wiimotes.  It’s nice they kept backwards compatibility.  The ninja minigame is a lot of fun.

I also purchased New Super Mario Bros. U.  The game is gorgeous in hi-def.  The multiplayer mode can be a relationship killer though.  Just warning you!  The game plays like all the other NSMB games, but that’s a good thing.  It’s great fun 🙂

Spark Fun Free Shipping

For Cybermonday,  Spark Fun will be doing free shipping!  Happy Hacking!

Megacynics DeskCade

To anyone who hasn’t read the webcomic Megacynics, you should start.  It’s a great comic, Ash and Steve are cool people.  I recently made a DeskCade for them.  This time I tried it out of Acrylic.  It took less time, but cost a bit more in raw material.  I’m really happy with the look of it though.  I have to find a better materials supplier.

Ornaments

I’ve also started making some ornaments on the laser cutter.  I’m thinking of starting an Etsy store for them.  I’m taking requests, so leave a comment!

 

Take care all!

Nov 16

Friday Post Part 2: Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph DeskCade

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Hey All,

So here is why I need to do a two part post today…I was asked to make a Wreck-It Ralph DeskCade for Disney!!!!

This is so cool and I’m really excited with how it turned out.  I’m really looking forward to this project and I hope my readers are as well.

-Shea

 Sign up to get notified of DeskCade information at my new site: DeskCade.com

Nov 16

Friday Post: IAAPA 2012

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Hey All,

This is going to be one of two posts since they both deserve their own highlight!

Today I went to the IAAPA Expo (International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions).  It’s a huge event filled with food, video games, attractions, rides, and more.  I got to see the latest developments in gaming and got some good contacts for DeskCade parts.  It’s funny to see how big 3D was last year in games, and now very few games are offering it.  Only the big mega attractions are still being offered in 3D versions.

Enjoy!

-Shea

Nov 09

Friday Post: Exciting News to come soon!

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Hey All,

It’s been an exciting week.  Pushed new code to our QA servers which has taken up most of my time.  Been doing late shifts and weekend shifts to make sure everything works.  I’ve also been tapped to be a Technical Reviewer of a book, so that has taken up some time.  And I also have an exciting project that I can’t talk about just yet, but it’s really cool.

I have so much on my backlog, I promise I will get to it.  After tonight, my plate should be a lot cleaner and I will actually have time to do more than just eat, work, and sleep.

Have a great weekend.  Go see Wreck It Ralph.  I’m going to enjoy my first Saturday off in a month by sleeping till Sunday 😉

-Shea

Nov 02

Friday Post: Wreck It Ralph!

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Happy Friday everyone!

I just got back from seeing Wreck-It Ralph and here’s my verdict:  Go see it right now. Not only was it a great story, it was a great homage to the entire gaming industry.

Today I also got an iPad Mini. I have an iPhone 4S and love it. At work I use an iPad 3 and have found it to be too big and bulky. This iPad Mini is amazing. It’s light, has a great screen, and fits my hand(s) perfectly. I’m even typing this whole post on the mini right now.   So far it’s totally worth it.

I got AdvanceMESS compiled with sound but I have yet to test it. I have an issue where check install doesn’t like installing both mame and mess because they have some of the same executables (advcfg, etc.). If anyone knows much about Debian package creation I would love some help and advice.

Have a great weekend!