Monthly Archives: July 2010

linux

Penguin Post: How to Install Starcraft 2 on Linux/Wine If You Get Weird Permissions Issues

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I’d had Starcraft 2 on pre-order from GameStop since who-knows-when (I remember pre-ordering it at the same time as I did Wrath of the Lich King, so that should tell you something.) Anyways, this morning I ran out to GameStop, nabbed it, and prepared to install on Linux/Wine. The Beta worked flawlessly, so I was expecting this to be smooth sailing.

Not so! First half of the files on the CD appeared to be hidden, and then trying to get the Installer to run would tell me “Access Denied”, blahblahblah, and I couldn’t do anything even as root.

Apparently this is an Ubuntu issue and not a Wine issue, so if you are also afflicted with this problem, read on. This is a bit of a kludgy workaround, but it’s a workaround nonetheless.

Step 1: Make the CD Show the Files

Fire up a terminal and enter the following to remount the CD:

sudo mount -o remount,unhide /dev/cdrom

Step 2: Make a folder on your desktop called SC2 or something.

Step 3: Copy over the files on the CD to the folder on your desktop.

(Note: you may have to tweak the code a bit to get it working on your specific setup.)

sudo cp -r /media/cdrom0/* ~/Desktop/SC2

This will take a little bit as it does its thing, so give it ten minutes or so. Then fix the permissions:

sudo chown -R username:username ~/Desktop/SC2

You should now be ready to go. Navigate to the file on your desktop and install it that way. (Or do it via the terminal, since you’re already there:)

cd ~/Desktop/SC2

wine Installer.exe

And that should do it! I’ve got it installing as we speak, though I’ve got to run off to work now so a test run of the thing will have to wait until later. If I botched up some code or something let me know and I’ll fix it tonight when I come home.

classic video game monday, video games

Classic Video Game Monday: Tetris Attack

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Once upon a time Japan had a quirky but addictive little puzzle game named Panel de Pon. Nintendo took it, rebranded it so it was about Yoshi and pals, and released it as Tetris Attack, and life was suddenly a lot more awesome.

Tetris Attack operates on the simple idea of lining up similarly colored blocks either vertically or horizontally to make them disappear. Three in a row works, but you can do four or five for extra points. This sounds simple enough, and even a tad underwhelming, but where things really start to get exciting is with the chain reactions you can cause to build combos and score obscene amounts of points, and completely screw over your opponent if you’re playing multiplayer. Like such:

This simple little idea was stupidly addictive and the number of hours I spent playing this game is probably close to the hundreds. In fact, I even owned a Game Boy version of this game– not nearly as good, but you know, puzzle games are ultimately meant for long road trips, and this game was no exception.

The cute characters were a bonus and the catchy music was an even bigger one. All you need to do is hear all of Blargg’s Theme to become a believer in this case. I actually wrote lyrics to this song when I was 14 or 15 years old, because I am a dork. No, you don’t get to see them. Also, the credits theme is possibly the most relaxing thing you will ever hear in an SNES game.

Nintendo later replaced Yoshi with Pikachu and re-released this game for Nintendo 64 as Pokemon Puzzle League– the name change, perhaps, was because they realized that this game had absolutely nothing to do with the original Tetris. (And, you know, to get people to buy it, because this was at the height of the Pokemon Craze.) I prefer the Yoshi version, myself, although Pokemon Puzzle League did include a pretty ingenious “3D mode” where you spun your puzzle around a cylinder.

Anyways, regardless of how you play the core game, you should. I’d do pretty much anything to have this game on my cell phone. Seriously, Nintendo. Tetris Attack. Cell phone. Kay?

See, I’m not kidding about the credits theme. Don’t listen to this if you don’t want to fall into a blissful sleep. Just a warning.

life of pike, rambles

Pike vs. The Carnival Rides – aka Pike is a Wuss

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I went to the fair yesterday and went on a few rides. Here is my objective analysis:

Exhibit A: Tilt-a-Whirl

Concept: You spin around in a circle basically at random (seriously, read the bit on chaos theory) while spinning around in an even bigger circle. Meanwhile gravity plasters you to the wall. It’s loads more fun than it sounds.
Verdict: This is my all time favorite ride. I go on it every year and it never gets old. So obviously it was my first stop this time around, before it was on to bigger and better things!
Grade: A+ !

Exhibit B: Star Trooper

Concept: You fly around in the air, first forward, and then backward. Or the other way around, depending on which side of the seat you’re sitting on. You also go up and down and stuff.
Verdict: Going forward is tons more fun than going backward. The Going Backward experience on this ride basically just consists of not being able to move, breathe, or talk, because you’re stuck to the seat. It was an okay ride I guess.
Grade: B

Exhibit C: Pharaoh’s Fury

Concept: Giant swinging ship that sticks you at a 90 degree angle at its zenith.
Verdict: I had a bad feeling about this one and initially I refused to try it, but then I was talked into it with various arguments like “It doesn’t look that bad”.

Big mistake.

Now, before I start on this one, I need to clarify that I am not afraid of heights. I’m that person in most other rides who twists around in the seat to stare at the ground, usually much to the chagrin of my ride partner when this causes us to bounce all over the place. But this is different. This ride is gravity hating you. Do you know what it feels like when gravity hates you? It’s an interesting feeling that can best be described as feeling like you are about two seconds away from floating out of your chair and over the safety bar and plummeting to your death below, but the boat thing swings the other way riiiiight before you do. If you want to experience this feeling for yourself, my advice to you is: DON’T. I spent the bulk of this ride with my eyes shut, praying to every potential deity I could think of for the whole thing to end.

I should note, though, that the guy behind me was completely smashed and sounded like he was having the best minute and a half of his entire life, so Beer Goggles may make this ride slightly more bearable. Your mileage may vary.

Grade: F for FREAKING TERRIFYING AND I AM NEVER RIDING THIS THING AGAIN.

Exhibit D: Spider

Concept: Tilt-a-Whirl, except in the air, basically.
Verdict: This ride works by lulling you into a false sense of security and then pouncing upon the unsuspecting victim that you become. It starts out tame enough, it’s a nice spinning ride and you think “Oh this is actually kind of relaxing”… and then you hear It. “It” is a comforting noise that sounds something like creeeeeeeeeak CACHUNK CACHUNK CACHUNK creeeeeeeek, and by comforting I mean terrifying. This noise is accompanied by whiplash inducing spins and both of these things combined quickly send you into WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE territory. Then, just as quick as it arrived, it’s over, and you’re back to thinking this is a nice relaxing ride.

Just beware the CACHUNK CACHUNK CACHUNK.

Grade: Pretty good overall, even if the ride itself is in dire need of some WD-40. B+

I also went on the Ferris Wheel and the Carousel. The Ferris Wheel involves standing in line for 45 minutes to get to a ride that lasts about 5 (4 of which are spent loading and unloading the cars), and the Carousel involves me complaining that the stirrups are set to a rather inconvenient length, because I’m a nerd like that.

Sadly that was all I had time to experience. People were trying to talk me into the Zipper, but, um, no.

I would not ride this for any less than $10,000. Just so we’re all clear.

thoughts

Balance!

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“Balance” is an attribute that I find really important to my life.

Not that kind. Although BRB, dying of cute.

In wandering through life I have often found that most things do not work best in absolutes, but rather, in a gradient between said absolutes. I think it’s just sort of how I operate: I look for the middle ground. At worst, this makes me a wishywashy fence sitter who can see both sides of nearly every argument, but at best it gives me an interesting and possibly unique view of the world.

I am, in fact, going somewhere with this, and it mostly has to do with my thoughts on technology. I’m a bit of a techno-fiend. I think progress and new inventions are great. I love tech, all tech– old tech and new tech. It speaks volumes to me about optimism, ingenuity, and creativity.

And robot suits.

I love when we use technology to figure out how to make something better. (Or how to make a robot suit.)

Anyways.

Sometimes this gives me a bit of a dilemma. Since I love old tech as well as new tech, it’s occasionally hard for me to say farewell to something old in order to embrace something new. We live in an interesting time. There is so much that I’ve seen fall by the wayside over the course of my own short lifespan that thinking back to my childhood is like thinking back to an alien world that somehow managed to get by with landline phones, fax machines, snail mail, and these newfangled things called VCRs.

So I’ve seen a lot of things change in just two and a half decades. As I see things change I pause to kind of contemplate what it means (I was that middle-school kid who actually stopped to think about the impending repercussions of DVD), but then I move on, because that’s life, right? Change and improvements! Awesome!

But occasionally something changes that I’m close to. Like film.

Between my love affair with the darkroom in college (a place to which I’d happily sneak away to after hours, to print my own non-assignment-based pictures) and a year-long stint of working in a One-Hour Photo Lab, I know a lot about film processing. I think it’s a fascinating and amazing process that combines my love of chemistry with my love of art and my love of, well, a lot of things. But who uses film anymore? When I worked in the One-Hour Photo it was a big deal when the percentage of digital orders we processed surpassed that magical 50% mark and usurped traditional film. And that was in… 2006, I think? I sort of don’t want to know how the number looks now.

That’s not to say I’m anti-digital-photography. Au contraire, the digital camera is an awesome technological achievements in and of itself, offering unsurpassed convenience in a variety of ways.

But there is something in that magical darkroom that I don’t want to lose. Just as there is something in my mechanical watch that I don’t want to lose, either.

Or maybe I’m just being a nostalgia geek. That’s possible, too. In the meantime I’ll continue to balance the best of the Old with the best of the New, because I don’t want to limit my love to just the New and Shiny.

classic video game monday, video games

Classic Video Game Monday: Stunt Race FX

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The SNES was great for racing games. You had Super Mario Kart, F-Zero, the Top Gear games, and this quirky, super-polygon-filled title called Stunt Race FX.

All the cars in this game have eyeballs. So it’s kind of like The Brave Little Toaster or something. Which, by the way, is a movie that I hold solely responsible for how absolutely terrible I felt when my first car fell by the wayside and had to be towed away. Rest in pieces, dear 1990 Chrysler LeBaron!

(The guy in the TV cracks me up though.)

Now Stunt Race FX is one of those games that never got as much attention as it probably deserved. Sure, it didn’t do anything particularly groundbreaking, but when it retread old ground, it did so very solidly. The controls were tight and the tracks were fun. And the 3D was a big deal back then. I mean, I could be wrong, but I remember just this game and Starfox as being the only games of this kind on SNES.

The music was pretty good too. I found a Stunt Race FX remix on OCRemix this one time and I was like “OH EM GEE” because I had almost forgotten about this game. It sort of made my day.

You gotta admit, this 3D is pretty good for being on a freaking SNES.

Anyways, the point is that Stunt Race FX is a pretty unknown game, and that’s really too bad. Sure, it’s not gonna be on any “SNES Top Ten” lists anytime soon, but that’s more of a side effect of the SNES being the best gaming platform EVER than anything else.

And c’mon. Cars with eyeballs. Never gets old. (Just ask Pixar!)

free/open source software, linux, supergeekery

Geek Wars II: The Revenge of Geek Wars

27 Comments

I got some more questions in the comments for last time. Rather than just answer in the comments, I figured I’d make a new post.

Ahem!

Coke vs Pepsi: I actually don’t drink either, I’m a Dr Pepper/Mountain Dew kinda person.

iPhone vs Android phone: No real interest in either. My current phone is the cheapest one I could get at the phone store. I use it to make calls, check my e-mail when I’m bored at work, and, since I lack a digital camera for some reason, take crappy pictures. I don’t really need or want anything else. (Except possibly a twitter client.)

If I had to get one I’d probably go with Android if only because I am not a big Apple person. The one product of theirs I had was an (old) iPod, and my experiences with it were pretty iffy.

Edit: I have been informed that Android runs Linux; that’s another reason I’d go with that one. /fangirl

MS Office vs OpenOffice: Seeing as I am a Linux and F/OSS junkie I’m pretty sure this one is a given. Open Office for life!

Laptop vs Desktop: I have both. I use the desktop the most– better screen resolution and I can play more games on it. I used to use the laptop a lot more than I do now, but these days it’s mostly been relegated to the role of backup computer if something happens to my desktop and I need to Google the problem.

I have to give my laptop credit, though; it was the first thing I ever installed Linux on! It has run Kubuntu and only Kubuntu for three and a half years.

Yahoo Messenger vs. MSN Messenger: I use Pidgin. Back in the day I used to have AIM, MSN, and YIM all hooked up to it but I dropped YIM a couple years back when the last holdout on my buddy list who still used it switched to MSN.

Back when I was on Windows I actually liked the MSN interface. But yeah, haven’t seen it in years; I just use Pidgin now, so all the messengers look the same to me…

Gmail vs. Yahoo Mail vs. Hotmail: Gmail, obviously. I do have fond memories of Hotmail and my first e-mail address (this was back before they were owned by Microsoft), but I have since moved on. Yahoo Mail I never used.

Picasa vs Flickr: I don’t use either. =X

WordPress vs Blogspot: I actually have a pretty strong opinion on this. It goes WordPress Self Hosted > Blogspot > WordPress.com.

I honestly, truly, do not understand this trend where people switch from blogger.com to wordpress.com. WordPress.com has less customization, in my experience, and doesn’t let you use javascript (so you can forget your fancy WoWHead links or whatever.)

The only reason I can think of to pick wordpress.com over Blogspot is if you plan on switching to self-hosted later.

Anyways I know I’m going to get all the “But I love WordPress!” comments, and you know, I love WordPress too. Self-hosted WordPress. But yeah >.>

Facebook vs Twitter: I signed up for Facebook five years ago or so. I lurked around for about a month, then got bored and quit using it.

I logged in again about two or three years later, looked around, still had no interest, and logged out again.

A couple of days ago I logged in for the first time in two-ish years, primarily because I’d had some 50 friends’ requests in that period of time and I felt bad about ignoring them. I logged in, added (most) everybody, left some sort of “I never log in” notice and tossed up a couple of pictures, and then disappeared again.

I guess I just figure: I’ve got LiveJournal (since 2004), DeviantArt, two blogs, and a Twitter… I don’t really see anything that Facebook has that I don’t already have elsewhere!

So yeah, my vote here goes to Twitter.

Star Wars: What order to watch the movies? IV – V – VI – I – II – III. Honestly when I have kids they’re not gonna see the prequels until they have the first three good and memorized. *cough*

Asimov vs. Heinlein vs. Clarke: I’m an Asimov junkie. “The Last Question” is the greatest short story that has ever been written. Ever.

Hmm, think I got everything there…

free/open source software, linux, supergeekery

Geek Wars

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I was thinking the other day about my positions on various Geek Holy Wars. Then I figured I’d might as well blog about them, since, well, I’ve been a bad blogger lately. It’ll be fun, right?

Star Wars vs. Star Trek: I HATE THIS QUESTION. When people ask me this, I usually tell them not to make me choose between my children. I grew up with both series and I love both series dearly. That said, if I was forced to pick, I’d have to go with Trek, just because it has more sentimental value to me. I’ve often said that Star Trek was a second set of parents to me– and I mean it.

Kirk vs. Picard: This one is interesting, because when I say “I grew up with Star Trek”, what you have to understand is that from, well… from as-early-as-I-can-remember up until I was about 13 or 14 years old or so, what that meant was “I grew up with The Original Series and the movies”. I didn’t really get into TNG until my teenage years. Kirk was my original captain, and the crew of the NCC-1701 was my original crew. I actually have a picture of myself with George Takei somewhere.

…BUT I’ve gotta give this one to Picard. Kirk is who we want to be but never will be, but Picard is who we want to be and can still aspire to. Plus he’s classy.

And drinks Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

DC vs. Marvel: I’m a Marvel fan, sorry all you Batman lovers. Spidey + XMen + Iron Man = No contest.

Now let’s move on to some Linux goodness:

KDE vs. Gnome: We all know by now that I’m a KDE fan, but what most people don’t realize is that this is largely by circumstance. Way back in the day when I was first discovering Linux, it was KDE-based distros that just happened to work with my wireless internet where Gnome-based distros did not. So it was KDE that I started with and became comfortable with.

As time went on I would attempt to use Gnome every so often but I inevitably found it to be very buggy and far from the stable desktop environment that everyone kept telling me it was. It wasn’t until earlier this year when Gnome finally became stable enough for me to use. I used it for about two months because KDE4 was being stupid, and enjoyed it, but switched back to KDE once they had their own bugs worked out.

Currently I use KDE for two big reasons: 1.) it’s familiar, and 2.) I like to customize my desktop to look like a Gnome/KDE hybrid, and it’s much easier to do that with KDE, which is designed to be endlessly customizable.

Ultimately I have no problems with Gnome anymore, as I said my experiences with it used to be pretty universally negative but they seem to have fixed all their problems so I’m okay with them now.

(As an aside I would love to like XFCE but it’s still buggy for me.)

Emacs vs. Vi: I don’t use either very often but when I do I use vi.

“Open Source” vs. “Free Software”: A quick backstory behind this for those who are not aware: “Open source” and “free software” are pretty much interchangeable terms when it comes to a technical definition– i.e., software with the code freely available to view and modify. Where they differ is the political ideologies behind the two: use of the term “free software” implies the belief that “software should be free” and that this is a moral issue, whereas “open source” implies that it is strictly a matter of business and getting good results.

What I have found in day-to-day geek life is that most geeks fall somewhere in the middle of this “belief” spectrum and choosing which term to use largely comes down to just how crazy you think Richard Stallman really is. (Spoiler: he’s pretty crazy.)

As for me, I see both sides of the issue. Yes, I’m a Freetard. Yes, I’d love to see all software be free to tinker with, as an extension of my deep-seated inkling that anything restricting creativity is Bad. But I’m also a realist and, let’s face it, a world based completely off of “Free Culture” is not gonna happen anytime soon. Plus, it’s easier to get this stuff into the hands of people if you can pass it off as a business decision.

Ultimately I use the two terms interchangeably or just call it “F/OSS”.

***

Okay, what’d I miss? I know I missed some epic Geek Holy Wars. Ask me stuff and I’ll toss it up here!

classic video game monday

Classic Video Game Monday: Jumpman

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In a bit of a twist today I am going to tell you about a game that scared me half to death when I was a kid, and still scares me today:

This is Jumpman for the Commdore 64 (and Atari, I believe). It looks innocuous enough, doesn’t it? You get to take control of a blocky pixel guy who gets to jump around and collect diamonds.

Then you start to play the game and there are bullets. Just, randomly. Bullets. Heat-seeking bullets. That will make 90 degree turns if they get near you so they can destroy you. They make gun noises. That noise will strike fear into your heart.

Scary thing #2 about this game: When you die, the game makes this TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE NOISE. It sounds like somebody doing very evil things to a synthesizer while you watch your lifeless ragdoll body plummet to the ground, bouncing helplessly off of every obstacle in the way. The guy in the video I posted dies a couple of times if you really want to see and hear it. (You don’t.) It’s horrific. NO PIXELS SHOULD HAVE TO GO THROUGH THAT.

Did I mention it was stupidly easy to die in this game? One misstep and you’re toast.

Scary thing #3 about this game: When you ran out of lives the game would start flashing red, (cue seizures here), as this fanfare played. Except it was like a reverse fanfare because most fanfares sound like they’re leading up to something good. This fanfare sounded incredibly foreboding, as though it was leading up to something impossibly terrible. And all this while the screen is flashing red. I can’t express to you how terrifying this was to me as a three year old kid. (I tried to find a video of this on YouTube but sadly I had no luck.)

Now let me tell you about one of the earliest nightmares I can remember having. I must have been about three or four years old, and in my dream my dad and my uncle were playing Jumpman (cause they used to do that when I was a kid), and somehow I just knew that if they got a Game Over the world was going to explode. I tried to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen to me. They got a Game Over, that terrible fanfare and the flashing screen came up, and the world exploded. Then I woke up.

AND YOU WONDER WHY I AM SCARED OF THIS GAME.

As for the game itself– I guess it was amusing enough if you could get past the whole thing about being maddeningly scary. The premise was pretty silly… apparently the Jumpman is actually an alien or space ranger who saved the planet or something? I don’t know, that’s what I worked out from watching my uncle beat the game (I figured he must have been some sort of god among men for actually playing through the whole thing), but then again, this is Commodore 64 we’re talking about here.

All I know is that no scarier game has ever been made. Eat your heart out, Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

At least the cover is hilarious.

'Well on MY planet, 80s fashions are still cool.' *whips out Walkman*