belated

I know I'm about a month late with this, but I've been busy. I've had this picture sitting out on Flickr since Halloween.


Tonari no Totoro!

Panamera

Work has been sucking all my time of late, and so while I've got a fair amount to post about, I haven't had the time to put any of it up here.

A friend of mine attended a Porsche event at Summit Point recently. Not only did he get to flog THEIR Cayman on the circuit, but he also got to prod around the Panamera. Now, while I think I'd still buy a Quattroporte, this thing looks pretty ridiculous with the active wing and huge brakes.

Hopefully there will be some more pics from this event to come.

Tiny but perfect

Just like an NA6.

I picked up this Raon Everun Note awhile back. Dual-core AMD Turion in a 7" netbook form factor. It runs HL2!

I've mainly been using it to watch Top Gear on the train, however. Nothing like a little James May to get that Monday started off right.

Keyboard is a little small though, so I might have to go for a 10" netbook after all, even though it'll be slower.

More things I don't need

I've had an itch to fill in the holes in my Game Boy collection lately, primarily hardware. I picked up this Japanese Game Boy Pocket for like $25 on eBay a couple weeks ago, and it finally arrived via EMS.

It's in much better shape than I was expecting, it looks new. Fresh out of 1996.

Why didn't I think of this?

Courtesy of STRAPYA

The video brings the lulz, but I'm thinking about actually ordering one. Seems like it would be therapeutic.

Twisting

The wife and I ducked down to the Shenandoah Valley awhile back to relax and hit up Skyline Drive. If you've never been, it's highly recommended.

Of course, there's plenty of tourist traffic and it's very well policed, so don't expect to really tear it up, but I was still able to hit some sections pretty hard.

We took the CL9, which did a very good job on these roads given what it is. It's very fun to drive while being supremely livable on the boring highway portion of the trip. Next time I'll still probably bring the Roadster though, but it was DOA this particular weekend.


The trees were too full to get a shot downhill of multiple linked turns. Views were great though.

expensive

I know I've had a lot of gaming posts lately, and I'm sure there will be a few more before I shift back to something else. Bear with me.

Anyway, a prototype "SNES CD" controller is apparently up for sale on DigitPress.

The Sony Playstation originally started out as a joint venture between Nintendo and Sony as a CD add-on (i.e. like Sega CD) for the SNES/Super Famicom. Hiroshi Yamauchi freaked at some point about who would own the rights to the new CD games and killed the whole project. Sony, at least partially out of vengeance, then went ahead and turned the technology into the Playstation.

Some of the original SNES CD stuff still exists, mainly development kits and whatnot. A complete SNCD devkit is probably a priceless item, but this is the second time I've seen a controller go up for sale.

This guy is asking $3,000 for his. Expensive, but it's definitely a unique thing and of some historical importance (to nerds).

It's for sale on DigitPress in the "buy/sell" section of their forums right now.

cutting edge technology

I've spent the last week or so playing through Final Fantasy VII again, only this time I'm doing it on the NES. Yep.

Yay China. Yay pirate software.

The enormous market penetration of "Famiclone" systems over there has lead Chinese programmers to adapt newer franchises to the quarter-century old NES/Famicom hardware. The results can be pretty entertaining, actually.

Granted, it needs an English patch and some game mechanics changes to really be playable (get the "97% patch"), but it might well be the best NES RPG I've ever played. It's certainly more engaging than FF1, FF2, or FF3 in their Famicom incarnations.

The WHOLE story is intact, including every last shred of dialogue. Obviously no FMV, and the battle mechanics are very different (materia system still persists), but it's a *really* good game for a Famicom RPG.

There's a Famicom-adapted version of "Link to the Past" circulating also, but it REALLY looks like the SNES game. No ROM dump yet, I might buy a hardcopy and dump it myself. No crime in dumping pirate software!

Playing between the lines

It's always fun to go someplace you're not supposed to be, be it physically or electronically.

The Zelda: Ocarina of Time debug ROM isn't new, it's been available on the internet for quite some time, but I just now got around to playing with it. Anyone can find it if they look in the right places.

This game was mythic to me when it came out, so it was neat to see test areas of the game that had previously been off-limits.

Ruckus Festival Pt. 2

Here is the second group of pictures from the event. I shot something like 200 pics, so it took me awhile to sort through them all and decide what was worth posting.

Note the amp under the seat and speakers towards the back of the rear frame. Check out the 110V socket on the battery box.




I don't see these very often, everyone just gets the ubiquitous TRC.




One of our riders was peeing on this building slightly to the right of where this shot cuts off. I'm still not sure why we pulled over here, I think one of the 2-stroke bikes was having technical difficulties.




This thing was outrageous. Front brake cables need shortening though, they look a little comical. I love the sidemarkers on the box.




I wish the lighting in this had turned out better, but it's still a neat shot. Gravelly Point, near Reagan National Airport.

Turntablism

I stumbled across this a couple days ago. Someone is taking nonfunctional old turntables and making them into wall clocks. I wish I'd thought of this.

Buy here:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=29656397

Someone needs to do this with a Micro Seiki RX-1500FVG.....although I suppose that would be a $15,000 wall clock and it'd be a shame to ruin a working one.

Zoomer Festival 09 Pt. 1

We had a great turnout for the first-ever DC Ruckus/Zoomer event. There were some FAST bikes there, including a couple of Zuma-swapped 2-smokers. I was.....slow. I definitely need a variator, some new weights, an exhaust, and a CDI.

I'm breaking this into two posts since there are quite a few pictures.

We started out at a local car meet spot, Rockville Starbucks. The blue monster is one of the Zuma swaps.






We had quite a few bikes show up at Ben's Chili Bowl. This shot is from a little too far away, but I didn't want to be standing in the middle of U Street on a busy Saturday for obvious reasons.




We are equal opportunity, and so we had a few other bikes present, including this 250cc Kymco that generally blew everyone else away.





Check out the BOWLS carbon cover where the OEM tail-light stalk usually goes. This is brilliant and I'm absolutely going to order one. I don't want to repaint my whole rear frame just for a stupid light.