nerd.of.steel

With the recent news of the Dolphin Emulator going open source and adding support for some Wii games, I just had to try it out. Not wanting to download some illegal Wii ISO’s off the Internet, I have ordered a special DVD-ROM for my workstation to rip some of my Wii games to test them out.

In the meantime I have connected my old GameCube up and using the ISO Loader/GameCube Ripping Server was able to rip a copy of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Luigi’s Mansion and Animal Crossing. Below are some screenshots of them. Enjoy!

As for the computer these were tested on, I am running an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU at 2.4GHz a core, 4GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 3600 XT graphic card. On The Legend of Zelda, during the opening credits I was able to achieve speeds of about 15-74 FPS. It jumped around a fair bit. On Luigi’s Mansion the opening screen came in at a ridiculous 385FPS and then dropped down to 15-30FPS during the opening screens. Animal Crossing started up and on the bottom of the screen I could see a tiny 1 pixel sliver of game play but the rest of the screen was overlaid with a giant black box so you couldn’t see what was going on at all.

Unfortunately game play on both titles that did boot was non-existent and there was no sound on any of the games. In game FPS on Zelda never got above 15FPS so while you could play it was way too slow. For Luigi’s mansion only showed the onscreen text but rendered none of the game play elements so you couldn’t play it even if you wanted too.

Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Luigi’s Mansion

Now that the Dolphin Emulator is open source hopefully GameCube games will actually become playable on it. As for Wii games, from what everyone is reporting if you’re lucky you can boot into a loading screen and the opening credits but at the moment that is all you can do since there is no way to emulate the Wii’s controller at the moment. Hopefully if all goes well some clever programmer out there will figure out a way to connect the Wii’s Bluetooth ‘wiimote’ to Dolphin.

Be on the lookout for more screenshots as I test more games!

Source: EmuTalk.net
Download: TehSkeen (x86 and x64)
SVN: Google Code

After spending all morning eagerly refreshing my browser instead of working, it is official, Firefox 3 has gone live! All morning long when you browsed to the Get Firefox you were presented with the most recent version 2 build.

I have been using the release candidate for a few weeks now and I have to say, I love it! Mix that with the Glasser extension to give you that native Vista look and feel and you have one incredibly pleasant browsing experience.

Also don’t forget that today is Download Day and by downloading Firefox 3 you can help Mozilla get a place in history by setting Guinness World Record. Good times.

“Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.”

This site is awesome and I have spent a good many-o-minutes laughing at how insane poor ol’ John Arbuckle appears. After years upon years of unfunny Garfield comics, they finally managed to bring a smile to my face.

If Jim Davis was smart, he would retcon the whole series in this fashion… Now if only they could do this to the Garfield cartoon…

Visit Garfield Minus Garfield

"We’re all used to using CSS to make our designs live and breathe, but there’s another way to use CSS: to find out where our markup might be choking on missing accessibility features, targetless links, and just plain missing content."

Browsing around the web out of boredom today I ran across an interesting article by Eric Meyer. Pretty much, in a nutshell, Eric walks us through using certain CSS techniques to help you find out what problems are coming from where in your CSS.

Example Code:

1. font, center {
2. outline: 5px solid red;
3. }

Example Output:

Example on the left uses the “border” property instead of the “outline” property

This is a technique that I personally have been using for a while, though I’ve been partial to the color pink for my borders/outlines. For those that are unfamiliar, the CSS2 property “outline” is very similar to the the “border” property, except it doesn’t effect your layout. If you’re like me though, sometimes you just have to forgo the use of the “outline” property and use the “border” property instead just to see things break a little, which can be beneficial in some instances when you can’t figure out whats going wrong.

I ran across a rather odd Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 bug that I felt was worth sharing so no one went through the roller coaster ride of angry emotions that troubleshooting ridiculous bugs always seems to cause. So check this out — Dreamweaver CS3 has a really nasty bug that will crash the application if there is a CSS file in your defined site that is exactly 8KB (8.192 Bytes). Took me a few hours to figure it out but after a little digging through the Interweb and confirming it on Adobe’s support line, if you have a file that is exactly 8.192 Bytes or a multiple of that, it will crash the app and you will be doomed to not getting any work done. What would be the workaround you ask? Add some comments to your CSS files if you are coming close the 8KB mark to pad your files.

You know I use to love Dreamweaver for coding XHTML/CSS but lately I haven’t been too impressed with where the product was going since Adobe took the helm. Lately I have been using Aptana Studio and haven’t looked back. Unfortunately I can only use Aptana at home as the marketing agency I work for requires the use of Dreamweaver for all of their web development projects. If you haven’t checked out Aptana Studios, I highly suggest giving it a whirl, you might fall in love with it as I have.

For those of you that have been wondering where I have been hiding lately, I have been locked behind closed doors as the marketing agency I work for has frantically worked our rears off for one of our newest clients, Jenny Craig.

For the recent announcement of Queen Latifah being Jenny Craig’s newest spokewoman, we launched a new micro-site on Jenny Craig’s server. This consists of some pretty nifty Flash development provided by two of my favorite Flash developers (and friends) Robb Milne (of The Freemartins fame) and Leslie Lothamer. All of the XHTML/CSS stuff was done by yours truly of course.

All in all, this was a pretty fun piece to work on. Enjoy the screencap below!

Product Category: UMPC / Internet Tablet
Manufacturer: Nokia
Where to Buy: Pricegrabber Low Price Search
Price: $134.99 to $199 USD
System Requirements: None, it is it's own system!
Specifications: Linux Operating System with built in WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. 4.3-inch 800x480 pixel screen, 128MB Flash memory, expandable RS-MMC memory slot, USB 2.0, 3.5mm headphone adapter and built in microphone for VoIP

Pros:

• Light-weight, all-in-one, portable computer
• Plays music and video
• Desktop-like Internet browsing experience (2 years before the iPhone!)

Cons:

• Can be unstable at times
• Cannot upgrade to newest operating system
• Doesn't run Windows Mobile ;)

Summary:

The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is a non-phone device designed for those who would like to check emails, surf the web and perhaps listen to some music or watch a movie without the need for a laptop. Does it fill a needed void or does it miss its intended mark? Read on to find out.

read more

This weekend I went to see “I Am Legend” (which was totally awesome… just nowhere near as good as the book). After the movie was done I decided to take a quick tour around the mall here in downtown Portland (Pioneer Courthouse Square) and ran into an old co-worker or mine named John. Since we were both looking for gifts for our significant others, I suggested we team up and tackle the holiday traffic together as a unit. John still had no idea what to buy his wife and after a little back and fourth, we both decided that his girlfriend would enjoy an Apple iPhone and since John is a huge Apple fan we thought it wouldn’t hurt to pick him up an iPhone either.

While I have been a little hard on the iPhone in the past, deep down inside I am still a cell phone salesman and enjoy helping others find a phone that they will be happy with for the next few years and both John and his girlfriend are hardcore Apple fanboys/girls so it only made sense to talk him into buying not one iPhone, but two!

While we were talking to a sales person at the Apple store, like all salesman, he decided that he would try to get me to purchase one as well. I was more than nice with my refusals to wanting to purchase an iPhone or iPod and told the sales rep, I kid you not, seven times that I was not interested in either device. John and I both saw that the rep was getting visibly upset, as if it was pure blasphemes to not want to own an iPhone. Eventually he asked what type a phone I was using and when I pulled out my Motorola Q9h and I was pretty much verbally spanked for owning anything that would was made by such an evil corporation. What made matters worse was after the rep found out I owned a Microsoft Zune as well. After I showed it to him since he kept trying to engage me in a sale, he flat out told me that I was not welcome in the store and he did not want “my kind” disturbing his customers.

This is the first time in my life that I was thrown out of a store for owning products made by Microsoft! I mean, really?! Is this what the world has come down to when you cannot even help a friend get a Christmas gift because you prefer a different product? Am I going to have to start drinking from a segregated water fountain as well?!

Needless to say, once this was said to me John told the sales rep that he didn’t want to turn into one of “those people” and politely cancelled his order and we left.

I know I can’t really blame Apple for the actions of one employee, but you know what they say, “When in Rome”. This is why I will never recommend another Apple product to anyone I know ever again. Between this and those ridiculous smear campaign commercials, I have no idea why anyone would want to own an Apple product.

“Intel has just announced and released source code for their Open-FCoE project, which creates a transport allowing native Fibre Channel frames to travel over ordinary ethernet cables to any Linux system. This extremely interesting development will mean that data centers can lower costs and maintenance by reducing the amount of Fibre Channel equipment and cabling while still enjoying its benefits and performance. The new standard is backed by Cisco, Sun, IBM, EMC, Emulex, and a variety of others working in the storage field. The timing of this announcement comes as no surprise given the uptake of 10-Gb Ethernet in the data center.”

I totally made this site. Fin.

Source: Slashdot

Thanksgiving has come and gone and in my household there is a small tradition we have to help ease the pain of waiting with baited breath for almost a full month until we get our grubby little hands on our presents. What we like to do is give everyone in our house a small gift, what we like to call our “After Turkey Present”. We usually try to make it something under $30USD and it has to be something that is not only totally awesome, but amusing and fun as well. This year the little lady gave me one of the most awesome presents I have ever received. In fact, it is hands down the coolest thing ever! It is more amazing than the Nintendo Wii or even, shall I dare say, more awesome than Installing Linux on a Dead Badger! I know exactly what you’re thinking, “Rocco, what in the world could be more awesome than VüDü Linux?!“ and guess what, it’s a toaster! This isn’t just any toaster though; it makes eggs for you too!

This kitchen appliance from heaven functions as a toaster, egg cooker, and meat warmer. It makes a breakfast sandwich in 4 minutes and has wide toaster slots that are perfect for bagels. It also has an automatic shut-off switch for individual toasting and poaching functions and runs on pure magic! Well… I just made up the magic part, but this toaster has definitely revolutionized the way I eat breakfast!