Archives for 06 / 2004
View my past ramblings
3D Action baby!
Sunday, 27th June 2004 at 12:00PM (1516 days ago)
Gotta say a big thanks to Russell for pointing me in the direction of SketchUp, the damn best CAD software for OSX i've ever seen.
I imported my illustrator plans into SketchUp, and so far the results are quality!
The full size version is here.
There's another view here.
And one more view here.
I'm now even more hyped about all this, especially as last night in my travels I found a place that can laser cut our logo as a stencil, but even cooler they can laser cut MDF from CAD plans or EPS files..... VERY interesting stuff.
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Arcade action
Saturday, 26th June 2004 at 9:01AM (1517 days ago)
I'm still chugging along on the design for the cabinet, i'm in the midst of getting all the dimensions for the different pieces of hardware i'm using so I can work out the right size it needs to be.
I'm still very much excited about this project, and can't wait till it finally sees the light of day. I'm still trying to hunt down someone to be able to laser cut our logo into plastic or something similar so I can make a nice stencil which can be reused. If you know of anyone, i'd appreciate it. I've been having a look around at what other people are doing with MAME cabinets, it's quite cool to see their results. I'm definitely going to route the edges of the cabinet instead of using t-molding, it gives a nicer finish and doesn't look as tacky.
I'm thinking once i'm done i'll set aside a separate area of the site dedicated to the cabinet and even put the plans up for other people who might want to build their own. Might even see if I can get the cabinet to post the latest scores as well as top played games!
Have a great weekend!
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We have SIP!
Thursday, 24th June 2004 at 8:28AM (1519 days ago)
After having to get our order escalated by Cisco our licenses for the phones finally arrived yesterday afternoon! After converting the phone to use the SIP image, I then had to upgrade the image to the latest version. I managed to get it up to v6.3, but v7 and v7.1 don't wanna work. I'll figure that one out :)
I'm still chugging away on the arcade machine in between everything else I've got on my plate at the moment.
My current plan of action is to finish the initial plans, get Renae's brother to draw them up in AutoCAD and print them full size. I'll then go up to Nelson Bay and Renae's dad and I will cut out and paint the thing as he has a 3 car garage and slightly more room to do work on it :)
That's a pic of waferbaby.com :) We've started mucking around with XML based services, very cool stuff!
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iBurst
Tuesday, 22nd June 2004 at 3:56PM (1521 days ago)
Got my hands on an iBurst card today! It's very cool technology, 1MB wireless connection in most areas on Sydney (and other states I think).
Will be interesting to test it out to see just how fast it is. Might even see if I can get the VoIP working over the iBurst! :) I've been playing around with the design for the cabinet, and making really good progress. I've got the measurements for the different bits and pieces i'm wanting to use. It's all coming together nicely. I'm trying to see if I can get a stencil made up of our logo so I can simply spray paint it onto the sides instead of printing and sticking.
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Let there be light!
Monday, 21st June 2004 at 3:36PM (1522 days ago)
I've been playing around with the actual design of the cabinet and i'm pretty happy with the results so far.
You can't tell much from this pic, but my plan is to match our yellow colour at a dulux colour centre and paint the cabinet and then get a huge version of our logo printed and die cut to the shape of the cabinet so I can stick it on either side :)
Update:
I've uploaded a full sized version of the above pic, it's the right hand side of the cabinet. View it here.
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What's going left?
Friday, 18th June 2004 at 5:19PM (1525 days ago)
Busy busy weeek. Still waiting on our SIP licenses from Cisco, apparently we'll get them next week by the 23rd. I'm an impatient bugger! :) I thought i'd give AdvanceMAME a try on the iMac since I have it running on my G5, the performance seems to be alot better than MacMAME.
I setup distccd on my G5 because the iMac is painfully slow at compiling. It ripped through the compiling like nobody's business! I should be getting my hands on an iBurst card on Monday or Tuesday, 1MB wireless!
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Fun!
Wednesday, 16th June 2004 at 4:47PM (1527 days ago)
Power arrived this afternoon, whoo! After powering up the phones and fiddling with the settings I definitely need to get a SIP image for the phones. Pain in the ass things is that they aren't cheap, but I think there's a way around it through a Cisco maintenance contract.
The screen is very cool, and quite high res. Can't wait to actually get it all going! Just a little bit frustrating :)
That's all my ramblings for the day! :)
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New Toys!
Tuesday, 15th June 2004 at 3:31PM (1528 days ago)
Our Cisco 7940G phones arrived today! Damn nice looking phones. Really annoying thing is you have to get the power adaptors separately, ah well i've ordered them and I should get hold of them tomorrow afternoon.
I'll post some more pics once I actually have the phones up and running.
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Doubletime!
Tuesday, 15th June 2004 at 9:20AM (1528 days ago)
I totally forgot the iMac has a hidden VGA port at the back. So I took the 17" LG screen I originally bought for the table and hooked it up. It's definitely a bigger picture. I'm currently debating whether or not to use it, my only issues are the heat with the two screens inside the cabinet.
I must admit though, having it going on both screens looks damn cool! I'm wondering if there's a way to disable the main screen and use only the external VGA. Only thing i've noticed though is that the colour is way better on the iMac's screen compared to the LG.
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It's alive!
Monday, 14th June 2004 at 3:20PM (1529 days ago)
As promised i've put together a very short video of the iMame in action. You'll need Quicktime 6 to be able to view it properly as it's MPEG4 video. I've almost finished the actual design for the cabinet and am just in the midst of measuring up and working out the internals.
Finally it's all coming together :) I've found some nifty USB powered lights that I can use inside to light up the marquee at the top and also possibly the control panel.
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Winners Don't Use Drugs
Saturday, 12th June 2004 at 11:32AM (1531 days ago)
I always laugh when I see that in video games. It reminds me of an episode of the simpsons. Anyways, I've been playing with the iMame and have the video working really well. I've got it playing at 800 x 600 and use OpenGL scaling to stretch the video to the full screen and apply a few filters over the top to give it a really nice look.
I need to now find a really nice small sound system that I can use. I'm going to basically build a mini arcade unit. If you can imagine an arcade machine with the bottom cut off so all you see is a the monitor and the controllers. It'll mean I can take it anywhere and put it wherever I want. I'm happy it's finally happening!
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Okay Okay
Friday, 11th June 2004 at 9:48AM (1532 days ago)
So I know I keep saying yeah i'm gonna settle on this, etc, etc. But this time i'm 100% definitely sure of this. I started setting up the iMac this morning, just finished installing a fresh copy of Panther.
I'm going to salvage my Airport card from the iBook and stick it in the iMac so I can remotely manage it and install new games, software, etc from wherever. So there ya go :)
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iMame
Thursday, 10th June 2004 at 9:13PM (1533 days ago)
After stuffing around on my MAME project for god knows how long, I've finally settled on something. I've been playing around with AdvanceMAME, xmame, official mame, you name it i've played with it. Not to mention the various operating systems, DOS, FreeDOS, Linux, FreeBSD. I have an oldish DV iMac lying around. After playing MacMAME on my G5 again today I realised, why the hell not use it?? It seems silly not to. So there you have it, i'm finally moving somewhere with this project!
It's currently pissing down raining and quite cold. The one cool thing about MacMAME is it's OpenGL scaling. It works and it works well! This post seems kinda ranty and not really making much sense. Now I need to figure out what use I can get out of the VIA board I have. Perhaps I could.....
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We have feeds!
Tuesday, 8th June 2004 at 8:20PM (1535 days ago)
I setup an RSS 2.0 feed, so feel free to syndicate with your favourite news reader app and point it to http://rss.creativebastard.com/
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Moving Along
Saturday, 5th June 2004 at 4:57PM (1538 days ago)
Ok so i've made some changes to the site since I put the CMS live, fixed up a few little bugs and whatnot, but all in all i'm happy :)
I've started my MAME project again and aim to actually finish it this time. I moved the hardware around and setup a dedicated area for it.
Last night the moon was out in full swing and I grabbed my camera and took some shots. I put my camera on a long exposure and moved it around a bit. The results were fantastic!
Have a great weekend!
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Surprise!
Friday, 4th June 2004 at 5:56PM (1539 days ago)
So wow I worked straight on the site for the last 3 days and built myself a nice little CMS. You'll notice that comments are now back! :)
I'm still slowly migrating the rest of the content. I've moved the archives across, but some of them are missing comments and images and links, i'll get to that soon enough. Let me know what you thinks. You can actually comment! :)
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Busy
Wednesday, 2nd June 2004 at 3:43PM (1541 days ago)
These last few weeks have been extremely busy for me. I've been doing some work for a government client of ours and it's been eating up a lot of my time. I've been eyeing off the Cisco 7960G IP phones, they're really nice and integrate with LDAP and can feed from XML based services. I'm trying to get my hands on a couple of them.
Our ad in Gizmo magazine also came out which is nice, i've put a PDF version of the ad online, you can grab it here.
I'm really really meaning to get this site in order, I just really haven't had time as you can tell. I've started work on my arcade project again and have yet again changed my mind. Had a client over today and we were playing Street Fighter, 2 player, that was fun. Enough of my ramblings. Until next time :)