Phone Camera - Blog Posts
Workin on my tf drawing skillzXD!I'll scan this eventually-_-
My new Kia Forte5
This is my new ride, a 2016 Kia Forte5 SX. I wanted a new five door hatchback with a backup camera, Bluetooth audio, and a nice interior for road trips. When I walked up to the car with the key and the mirrors folded out, I knew this was the one. When I went to Shumatsucon this weekend, I parked in the craziest parking spot I know and took some pictures.
With this, the hardware upgrades are complete. This car is so good, I feel like I need to improve myself to be worthy of it. More on that later.
It's about time I took my own wide angle picture like this. I had to wait a week for a nice day, and I happened to be at an event near this parking garage. I even got a helicopter in the shot!
I probably won't drive up there again. It's really tight climbing to the 8th floor of Fifth Third Center with a car. It's only good for pictures. I haven't tried panorama before. The car looks kinda warped, but I got all of Columbus Commons. It's too cool not to include.
Source: my phone camera on the 8th floor of Fifth Third Center
My New Gaming PC
UPDATE: This PC now has a name: Red Cyclone.
I built a new $900 gaming PC, so I’m showing it off. It’s a Core i5-6500 with a Radeon R9 380 in an Enermax Ostrog GT case. My friends convinced me to get a Samsung 850 Evo which makes Windows 10 super fast. I haven’t found anything that can push this to its limits, but it runs all my games great. I wrote a lot more about this rig over on PCPartPicker.
Here's what my desk looks like. There's a Dualshock 4, a Das Keyboard Ultimate S (with unlabeled keys!), and an old Logitech G5 mouse I should replace soon. The side panel window is tinted, so you can't see inside the computer very well until I remove the side panel. I kept the red/black color scheme inside the machine where I could. The Enermax case made it very easy to fit everything in with tidy wiring.
There's a TV on my dresser, but it's only ever used as a second monitor. You can also see my stack of consoles connected to my video capture rig. The monitors seem far apart, but from where I sit at my desk, it makes sense. Gamepad games work well on the TV, and I run keyboard-and-mouse games on the main desktop monitor.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor: $199.98 @ OutletPC MSI H170A Gaming Pro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard: $129.99 @ SuperBiiz Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory: $84.99 @ Amazon Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive: $84.34 @ Amazon Western Digital BLACK SERIES 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive: $74.00 @ B&H MSI Radeon R9 380 4GB Video Card: $213.98 @ Newegg Enermax ECA3280A-BR ATX Mid Tower Case: $76.35 @ Amazon SeaSonic X Series 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply: $129.99 @ Newegg LG GH24NSC0B DVD/CD Writer: $12.99 @ Newegg Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts Total (before mail-in rebates): $1,016.61 Mail-in rebates: ($10.00) Total: $1,006.61
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-26 05:10 EST-0500
Source: PCPartPicker and my phone camera
Retro Gaming in Columbus
Columbus Underground interviewed Chris Bidwell about what’s cool about retro gaming, his invite-only tournament, the Hexadecathlon, and its expansion into a public tournament series, the Columbus Retro League. Retro games bring out a completely different crowd from the modern fighting game events, and it’s been great to get to know them. They know how to get hype, too! Come on out to Video Hockey Day in Columbus on Sunday!
This room is full of beastly players. In this picture, I'm playing Marble Madness on the NES and having the run of my life, 95610 points. It only got me third place in that game. The only high score contest I actually won was Star Fox Super Weekend. It's Star Fox with a Star Soldier-style five minute score attack mode with huge bonuses for shooting down all the enemies in a stage.
Source: http://www.columbusunderground.com/retro-gamers-celebrate-bygone-era-of-video-game-classics via JD Lowe and Columbus Underground’s RSS feed, photos via Chris Bidwell and my phone camera
Rockman 4 Minus Infinity
Rockman 4 Minus Infinity isn’t just the best romhack ever made. It’s superior to the NES Mega Man games in every way. Puresabe just released v1.00 a few days ago, and what it does to Mega Man 4 is ridiculous. This features redesigned stages, bosses, and weapons, tons of new music, autosaves, 8-way scrolling, difficulty options, a time attack, and multiple boss rush modes, and that’s just the start. JDetan and I call this the real Mega Man 4, and the other one just a beta.
It's a romhack, but I actually own a Famicom cartridge of this. It's only version v0.02, same as the video I linked above, but it has that delightful Engrish language setting. "This amplifies cruelty." "Ouch! Stop beating!" "Drills pierces everything." Sadly, this doesn't work on a Retron 5 or any other Famiclone; only a real Famicom can play it.
Source: https://sites.google.com/site/rockman4mi/ via JDetan; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pEt_A_13es via browsing YouTube for a R4MI video that fights two secret bosses, even though it’s an old version; also my photo of the R4MI repro cart that I bought from Warp Zone
Challenger with Commentary
I like Instagib, but it’s a lot more difficult to get good stream highlights onto YouTube from there. This run of the 1985 Japanese-only Famicom game Challenger was so watchable and the chat was so random that I jumped through the technological hoops to get this posted for all.
Challenger is famous for its control scheme which is backwards compared to modern games. On the NES controller, you would press A to shoot and B to jump. I actually played this on a Power Joy by Trump Grand that I bought for $5 at CORGS-Con, but it has the A and B buttons reversed. It makes the Power Joy terrible for most games but perfect for Challenger.
The video features Skype chat from myself, Jdetan, and Kinkaido, so of course it’s NSFW.
Wow, it's been a long time since I've had an actual image on this blog, right? Anyway, the top of the N64-ish controller actually has a pointy bit that functions as the Zapper. The trigger is where the N64's Z button would be. It doesn't work well.
Source: Challenger with Commentary – YouTube, which is edited from an .flv archive of my Instagib stream (Instagib.tv deletes archives after 24 hours), uploaded to YouTube, downloaded from YouTube as an .mp4, and finally edited in Pinnacle Studio 14 like my other videos. I really need to find a better way to do this. Also, the camera on my phone.
Yumi’s Odd Odyssey/Sayonara Umihara Kawase Stage Time Attacks
Two months ago, I told you I was hooked on this game. Since then, I’ve played for 47 hours, reached every door, collected every backpack, and got every survival mode ending. I’ve also brought the heat to the North American version’s leaderboards with dozens of stage times in the top three. Since this game helpfully lets you save replays, I get to show you how I got there. Enjoy!
0:03 F1 → F2 11″83 0:21 F11 → F12 11″63 0:38 F20 → F21 21″83 1:04 F20 → F37 28″86 1:38 F39 → F40 13″90 1:57 F28 → F29 13″26 2:15 F29 → F18 29″83 2:50 F29 → F30 15″73 3:11 F30 → F31 13″53 3:30 F31 → F32 16″83 3:51 F32 → F33 13″80 4:10 F32 → F42 24″73 4:41 F42 → F43 38″86 5:25 F43 → F49 16″56 5:47 F22 → F23 8″16 6:00 F23 → F24 9″43 6:14 F24 → F39 2″13 6:25 F24 → F35 9″03 6:37 F35 → F36 14″86 6:57 F36 → F37 19″20 7:22 F37 → F38 20″40 7:47 F38 → F41 7″16 7:59 F38 → F47 15″63 8:19 F44 → F45 6″73 8:30 F45 → F46 18″46 8:54 F46 → END 35″46
Source: Yumi’s Odd Odyssey (Sayonara Umihara Kawase) Stage Time Attacks – YouTube recorded with my phone’s camera
Artist Alley Arcade Stick
I’ve always wanted to put some one-of-a-kind hand-drawn art in my Qanba Q4RAF, so at last weekend’s Ohayocon, I brought a blank template and and asked a couple of the artists there to draw their original characters. The team of Iota Soul knocked it out of the park with Killer Bee on the left side. Kuroitenshi added her D&D fighter on the right side and gave me some crucial advice on how to complete the design from there. I drew some Vewlix lines at the top, put it in the stick, and changed all the buttons out to black and white to complete the hand-drawn sketch look.
This replaces my previous art on that stick, which is all about Kohaku from Melty Blood, a series of really nice doujin fighting games that never made it out of Japan.
(What follows is the mouseover text for all seven images, edited slightly because they’re plain text on Tumblr now.)
So many photos on this blog lately. Maybe I should have made a Tumblr instead. Problem is, hitstun.tumblr.com is already taken. Some jerk registered my name, posted once, and abandoned it. (Four years later, I checked and hitstun.tumblr.com was available again, so I snatched it up and moved this post there.)
For this post, I'm actually doing the Facebook cross-post as a photo upload instead of a link post. Since it's a photo, I get to tag Killer Bee and Fighter to include links to their creators. (Closest I can do on Tumblr is a link to Kuroitenshi’s fighter.)
Here's a scan of the finished design that is now in the arcade stick. Click the image for the full 300dpi version.
I retired the Melty Blood stick art last night at Fight Night at Donatos on OSU campus. I played Melty Blood for the first time in months.
For some reason, Wordpress is having trouble with my full size designs. Click the photo for the 300dpi version.
Also, here’s the template I printed out for Ohayocon. Click the template below for the 300dpi version, and it will print at just the right size for the Qanba Q4RAF.
You'll want to actually click this for the 300dpi version that fits the Qanba Q4RAF. If you’ve got an Eightarc Fusion, just remove the Start button. (Not sure if Tumblr corrupts the DPI settings on these images, but just make sure it’s 300dpi before you start working with it.)
Sources: A white and red Qanba Q4RAF, buttons, and bubble top from Video Games New York, replacement plexiglass from Focus Attack (out of production), Iota Soul, Kuroitenshi, Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code PC version, Zerochan, and the Qanba thread at Shoryuken
Wallpaper Watchface
For Android Pebble users, Canvas for Pebble makes plenty of information available to your watchfaces. It’s hard to display much information on such a small screen and still look nice. For Wallpaper Watchface, the time is still large and in charge, and the other two lines are stuffed with so much small text and icons that the screen takes about 20 seconds to load. Missed calls and unread messages make new notifications appear on top of the large wallpaper image. Replace that Pebble Beach wallpaper with any graphic you want from your phone.
Wallpaper Watchface was built on Canvas for Pebble v2.0.6 beta which requires Pebble firmware 2.0 beta 5. If you have that stuff installed, click the links below on your phone to install the appropriate screen on your Pebble.
Wallpaper Watchface Imperial Wallpaper Watchface Metric
It's tricky to photograph e-ink displays indoors, let alone time the shot to the second... Ick, this preview looks ugly. This is why I took a photo of the watch itself.
Source: My wrist again, Canvas for Pebble v2.0.6 beta, and Greg V Music – Lone Cypress Tree, Pebble Beach CA
Canvas for Pebble
UPDATE: I made another Canvas screen called Wallpaper Watchface. Go get that one instead. It’s better.
Wearable devices are the next big thing in tech. I’ve jumped on the bandwagon with a Pebble, and I want to develop for it. On Android, Canvas for Pebble lets you quickly make watchfaces that nicely display the time, date, weather, and your phone’s unread message and missed call counts. I took a few hours and made a watchface I like that displays seconds, and you can have it too.
If you want to try on the Dr. Mo Day 1 watchface, you’ll need a Pebble running firmware 2.0 beta and Canvas for Pebble 2.0 beta. These should still work when Pebble 2.0 and Canvas for Pebble 2.0 are released. Once that’s installed, visit this post on your phone and click the version you want below.
Dr. Mo Day 1 Imperial Dr. Mo Day 1 Metric
Ever notice how almost every watch ad has the time set to 10:10? Analog watches look better that way, but I'm not so sure about digital watches. It's a lot harder to fake the time on a cell phone.
Source: My blog’s first ever selfie, Numberphile, and Canvas for Pebble
Cookies n' Creme Oreos
Thanks to some creative food scientists, you can now go to Walgreens and buy Oreo ice cream flavored Oreos. Sure enough, they taste like cookies and cream ice cream.
TVTropes calls this Recursive Adaptation. Another one I'd like to track down: the Words with Friends board game.
By the way, this post is a test of writing and publishing a post entirely from my phone. This picture might be huge.
Source: My phone camera and SPOTTED ON SHELVES – 9/16/2013 | The Impulsive Buy via Consumerist
16-Bit Bar+Arcade
I visited 16-Bit Bar+Arcade tonight, and I've never seen that many people in an arcade in Columbus. Most games are in excellent shape, and there are some unique cabinets like Baby Pac-Man and Slick Shot. Here are the new high scores on Gorf, Space Invaders, and Rally-X. I'll be coming for the others later. I hope they get a good 90s shmup in there soon.
Source: good ol' cell phone camera and NerdKO