Hey All,
This has been a fun week. K and I have finished painting the house, we’ve been slowly bringing things in. All the fun joys of moving to a new place 🙂
This week I’ve been making progress with Joystick support in PiMAME. I’m hoping for 0.8 to have full joystick support implemented and an easy to use system to configure it.
Remember Cyber Monday deals this coming monday! SparkFun and Adafruit are having some great sales.
-Shea
Hey All!
Happy Friday! K and I are officially homeowners!!! WOOOO!!! This long stressful process took way too much time, and too much energy. I don’t believe how wiped I am just from signing paperwork for a couple hours. This is a huge weight off my shoulders, and a big time sink now gone.
IAAPA 2013
For the past few years I have been attending IAAPA, which is the big amusement part and arcade entertainment expo in Orlando. It’s really a remarkable event, and this years was no different. Some of the highlights was a Korean pavilion showing off a ton of new Korean companies and the games / motion simulators coming out of there. Stern Pinball was showing off the new Star Trek pinball game. It was a lot of fun. The best part of the day was the Namco Bandai booth. They had a bunch of new games, but the exciting ones were a new Mario Kart arcade racing game, and MachStorm, an AceCombat / Afterburner inspired game with an immersive cockpit. I will be posting pictures in another post. One of the more apparent things this year was much less piracy, stolen cabinet designs, and game clones. Previous shows there were blatant ripoffs and large displays that almost seemed to encourage it. This year, not so much.
Holidays
The holidays are approaching, and I hope everyone who reads this has a good one. I am going to have time off work, which will be spent working on PiMAME. I’m hoping to have a January release of the new 0.8 version, and I welcome everyone to contribute to the github repos.
Kano.me
Kano computing is raising a kickstarter for a very innovative Raspberry Pi kit, and they have already reached the 500k mark. These guys are really nice and I have high hopes for them.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexklein/kano-a-computer-anyone-can-make
HWHardSoft Pi Cabinet
HWHardSoft has been working on a cool Pi case, and his preorder is now available. http://www.hwhardsoft.de/english/projects/raspberry-pi-mini-cab/
Have a great weekend!
-Shea
Hey all,
Happy Friday!
I am beyond stressed. I think I’m buying a house next friday. If all goes according to plan. Knock on wood, everything will go right.
Anyways, I have put up some new github repos for PiMAME. It’s regarding PiMAME 0.8, and it’s for the new web frontend and the pimame menu / launcher. They are no where near ready for use, but if you would like to help with the programming, feel free to fork the repo and send a pull request.
https://github.com/ssilverm/pimame-menu
https://github.com/ssilverm/pimame-web-frontend
Have a good weekend everyone!
-Shea
Hey All,
Happy Friday!
I just got back from our second tech time conference that I coordinated. It was awesome. Exhausting, but so darn worth it.
Anyways, a coworker and I are working on a new PiMAME menu system, and I thought you all should see a sneak peek of the design work!
I’m really excited!
Stay tuned!
-Shea
Hey All,
The awesome site rasplay.org has posted a guide on how to recompile your Raspberry Pi’s kernel with your own custom image.
http://www.rasplay.org/?p=6371
I am going to try this out with the PiMAME logo this weekend.
Have a good weekend everyone!
Hey all,
It’s been a rough week. K and I have been looking at houses and we’ve had nothing but bad luck. We just lost the second house we had under contract because of appraisal issues. Housing is such an industry that could benefit from technology. I don’t understand how in 2013 I still need to FAX documents, “secure email” is a “works best in IE” website, and personal information is expected to be blurted out anywhere and everywhere.
I work for a university, I’m used to red tape and bureaucracy! I didn’t think buying a house would rival that!
Anyways! PiMAME 0.7.10 is being uploaded this weekend.
The updater version will include Alpha N64 emulation.
The SD card image will include that, a boot up screen, and the new kernel for xin-mo joysticks.
I will update the post when it’s finished uploading.
Have a great weekend all!
-Shea
Hey All,
Mupen64plus has been updated and now plays some N64 games at almost full speed!
Welshy from the Raspberry Pi forums has written up a great guide on how to compile it and run it, as well as how the settings work. You can download the compiled binaries here:
http://sheasilverman.com/rpi/raspbian/mupen64plus-rpi.zip
To install and run:
This is a total alpha build, and is very rough around the edges, but the progress is awesome, and I am going to put this into PiMAME as a test.
Enjoy everyone!
-Shea
Hey All,
Happy Friday!
This week just flew by. It feels like it’s still Wednesday. Maker Faire Orlando has come and gone, and I have to say, it was incredible. I was manning my booth the entire time which always had a crowd but I was able to catch a 10 minute break to eat something and look around. There were so many cool displays, and so many interested people who were interested. By the end of the day my throat was sore and I had lost my voice. It was totally worth it.
I will say this, the X-Arcade Tank Stick is built like a tank. It got hit by hundreds of kids during the Maker Faire and it stood up to the challenge. I’m going to take it apart because I think the right joystick got a little banged up but it was still working.
Python in 24 Hours
Someone who I am very honored to call a friend has just released her new book! Katie Cunningham has just had her book, “Sam’s Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours“, published. I got mine in the mail today so I haven’t gotten a chance to go through it yet, but I have a feeling it will be great. Congratulations Katie!
Pokemon X and Y
Pokemon X and Y come out tomorrow. I love Pokemon, but I haven’t played one of the core series since Red and Blue (I know!). Most of my office is picking the new one up, so I figured it’s time to once again catch ’em all! Between work, grad school, and PiMAME, where I am going to find the time to play…
PiMAME
I upgrade PiMAME to use the newest version of Raspbian, and recompiled the kernel to have the Xin-Mo module fixes in place. I wanted to hold off on the release until I had more to add, but I think i’m going to do an image only release for this, since you can’t really just do a kernel upgrade with an install script. It will also include the PiMAME intro video.
Once that is released I am going to be working on totally revamping the main menu system and web interface. I have some cool things coming down the pipeline!
Have a great weekend!
-Shea
Hey All,
Here are some of the photos from the Orlando Mini Maker Faire. I didn’t get a chance to walk around much as I was manning my booth but it was a really fun experience! Enjoy!
-Shea
Hey All,
Couple really cool things going on right now. First of all, I got the physical copy of my book in hand. I’m so proud! Also Adafruit linked to my blog. I was so surprised when I got the email, thanks for the link!
This past week I’ve been having tons of meeting about software our team has been working on. It’s really validating to have our projects get the attention of the higher ups and other vendors. We work on cool things that help our 50,000 students learn in new ways. I love working for a place that allows us and encourages us to make a difference!
Orlando Mini Maker Faire
Tomorrow is the Orlando Mini Maker Faire at the Orlando Science Center. There will be 4 floors of makers showing off their creations, and that includes myself and FamiLAB. I will have a ton of pictures tomorrow, but if anyone is in Orlando, I encourage you to go.
-Shea
