@ToniWestbrook
http://www.twitter.com/ToniWestbrook

It means a lot that people are still very interested in this work, so I’ve started by making the following updates:

1. Updated the PSX64 firmware to fix a bug in macro recording, tighten up the analog joystick response, and increase sensitivity for precision game play when a non-Guitar controller is plugged in.
2. Updated the Shredz64 webpage with a downloadable bonus track, the Stairway to Heaven Intro, by Nantco Bakker. This track appeared on very early versions of Shredz64, but was replaced with Edwin’s Dream. Now both tracks can be enjoyed.
3. Since shipping varies wildly, and I tend to make boards as the need arises, I replaced the Paypal button on the order page with a link to the contact page. If you’re interested in ordering a PSX64, simply contact me with your shipping address, and I’ll quote you out the total price.

Thanks for your support everyone!

Also, speaking of the new game – its coming along pretty nicely! More on that later.

I’ve also installed a better code viewer on the blog, and have converted (I believe) all the code segments over to use this. It’s a little easier to read, shows line numbers, and also has buttons for viewing the code in a popup window (plain text, easy for reading/copying), and printing. I think it will work out a lot better than the old one – I wasn’t a fan.

Additionally, I’ve created a “Blackberry” category, since there are multiple articles related to programming the Blackberry now available on the site.

Lastly, I hope to see all you North East gamers at this year’s Digital Overload LAN party. If you haven’t signed up, registration is still open for 12 more days. I’ve been going for a few years, and it’s always a ton of fun!

In the meantime, for you text adventure fans like myself, check out this absolutely awesome video featuring MC Frontalot , nerdcore rapper extraordinaire (And guest appearance by Steve Meretsky!). I figured it was most appropriate with all the Gruepal work going on.

By the end of the week I should have two things ready to go -

1. Gruepal is up and running on another (faster) server. It’s shared webspace but the processor is a hell of a lot faster. If you are interested in helping test out some interactive fiction, shoot me a comment/message and I’ll send you back a username and password for when the site is ready.

2. I’m going to be adding some Paypal cart functionality to purchase a PSX64 on the Synthetic Dreams site. After sales at the TPUG convention, I have about 15 in stock. Once those 15 go I’ll make another batch.

Plus some other random goodness. Hope everyone had a good holiday!

Visuals

I made the margins slightly larger and made the text a big larger as well – it’s not a huge difference, but it does make reading articles a little easier. Alongside getting rid of the large left-hand ad last week, I think this has helped a lot.

Recent Posts

I also redid the recent posts list a bit. It used to list 3 over in the side bar – now it lists 5 on the main page, with an easy link that gives an abbreviated view of all posts, paginated. This also allowed me to move categories up in the side bar and organize them a bit better.

Feel free to shoot me a note if there’s anything else you’d like to see on the site. Thanks!

I made a few updates to the site to hopefully make things a little more informative/usable. I’ve added the following:

1. A comment subscription plugin, so when you leave a comment, you can sign up to be notified via email if anyone else comments (either a response from me or other users commenting). These comment subscriptions can be managed and removed if desired. I did this as there is no real way right now of knowing if someone replied to your comment without constantly checking back at the site.
2. A project page for my Drupal z-machine project, Gruepal. It describes the project so far, goals, and has links to the devlog.
3. A link on the main page that shows all posts, newest first. This is a shortcut from going to each month’s archive.

As always, thanks for reading, I hope I’ve provided some helpful information/entertainment through my posts over the past year.

1. Personal Entries – not so much in a “today I had an excellent ham sandwich” way, but there are often times when I want to write about things going in my life that are technology or computer science related, and I don’t have a good forum to do that. I would love to have a place where I can post thoughts and quick ideas, and I figured this blog would be a good choice.

2. Technology (non-CS) tutorials – especially in the area of retrocomputing, there are a lot of times when I’m looking to do something, can’t find a great solution that’s already been done online, so I have to experiment and find my own path. I would like to post my experiences to hopefully help someone else avoid some headaches. This happens quite a lot with working with older machines, due to the fact that there is a lot of information that simply didn’t make it to the Internet. If a computer was only semi-popular in the early 80s and not used since, it’s often hard to find information.

3. Who knows what else?

I basically want to use this blog for more things, as well as be a little more active documenting things going on with Shredz64 and the PSX64. So I hope you’ll read along and perhaps find some useful information!