Yay! Today I won some bluetooth headphones 😀
It was a giveaway by Pandawill.com on their facebook page.
So far I didn’t get a reply from them tho… I hope I’ll get one tomorrow.
I’ll review the headphones as soon as they arrive!
Lately I’ve been showing a friend of mine great retro games which he never played or even heard of (he started gaming at a later point in time).
Currently we are playing the Gameboy Colour Zelda games, which are some of my most beloved games of all time!
Now here’s the thing: My friend has a very cool gaming setup: His Huge Flat TV is in his living room, with his computer hooked up to it via HDMI in the other room (the cable is VERY long and even goes through the wall). Also he’s got himself 4 ps3 controllers and a nice sofa. perfect setup, right? Well not for 8 bit games. What I’m still missing is better fitting controllers. Don’t get me wrong, the PS3 controllers are great, but for retro games they aren’t perfect. Playing with the analog stick feels weird to me, and playing with the Dpad hurts my thumb after a while. So what do we do?
Let’s get some good old NES controllers!
Originally I wanted to get cheap NES USB controllers from aliexpress, like these:
click the picture to get to a shop on aliexpress
But then I thought… Look at those buttons. This is never going to be as good as an original controller, so what’s the point in getting them? Could as well use the PS3 controllers then.
So what I’ll do is get two original NES controllers, gut them and put inside bluetooth controllers.
So which bluetooth controllers will I use? Original PS3 controllers are too expensive to be gutted (I’m too cheap to do that) and also they have way more buttons than necessary.
Since a while those small keychain bluetooth controllers are being sold everywhere (online at least, do I look like I go outside?):
They are sold in china and in german online stores for under $5 and have enough buttons for old games. NICE!
So what I’ll do is order two of these, get two used NES controllers and fuse them together. Maybe I will add shoulder buttons for GBA games (the bluetooth gamepad should have enough buttons for that).
Heyo guys!
Just wanted to tell you that I feel ready to make this blogging a regular activity of mine. So for now I set my goal to one post per week, currently friday.
Don’t expect the next Harry Potter Volume every time, sometimes I may just give a small update about my life or anything vaguely interesting.
Enjoy reading folks!
I love hardware keyboards. Period. I have switched to pure touch smartphones simply because there is no good alternative running android and still rocking a hardware keyboard and decent specs.
Today on aliexpress I saw the phone of my dreams:
A small Android phone, running recent enough android, with a keyboard!
The downside: It’s barely got any RAM, ROM, a weak processor and a camera not worth mentioning. GOD DARN CHINA MAKE ONE OF THESE BUT IN GOOD!
Actually it seems to have the same hardware specs as a Chinaphone I recently got (which I will review in the future)… But for mine I paid about $25 while this one costs a whopping $85! For that price you could really expect some better specs.
Though I must admit that if I had that money I’d probably buy it just out of curiosity xD
Here’s the link to the phone:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2015-Unlocked-capacitive-Touch-Screen-Dual-sim-MTK6572-android-4-2-2-QWERTY-Keyboard-2G-Horizontal/32387114023.html?spm=2114.01020208.3.2.yion7L&ws_ab_test=201407_4,201444_6,201409_3
PS: Yes, I know there’s a few Blackberry phones with good specs. Those are my last straws since I really prefer android (and by that I mean native android, not art which lets you run a lot of android apps on Blackberry OS)
PPS: If you ever see such a phone with nice specs, be sure to let me know!
Lately I’ve been thinking about splitting this blog into several ones, each one focussing on one thing, for example chinaware, webcomics and daily life.
To the few of you that are reading this: what do you think? :p
Yesterday I finally got my first bootleg Lego Figure! It’s a pretty nifty one too:
It’s an ultrabuild/constraction version of General Grievous from Star Wars! (please excuse my mess of a desk haha)
Now here’s a little twist: This isn’t a copy of a Lego product. There is no original Lego set to compare this to. Let me tell you a little background info about this:
Back in March, 2012, a fan posted a Lego Set on the Lego ideas website. On this site, fans can post sets they would like to see produced, and if it gets enough “likes” Lego looks into it and possibly produces the set. The set I’m speaking of is an ultrabuild/constraction series of Star Wars characters:
the site is still up and running
You remember those action-figure-like Lego figures? One series covered a few Marvel heroes for example (Iron Man, the Hulk, Batman etc.) This set was based on that idea, but Star Wars themed. The set gained a huge amount of followers. No wonder, these things look awesome. But eventually Lego had to bear the bad news: They couldn’t produce the set due to copyright reasons (they claimed they had no licenses for Star Wars action figures, and this was too close to that).
[…]
Unfortunately due to our license, the LEGO Group is unable to produce Star Wars action figures, so we will not consider this project further. We’re sorry to be the bearers of this disappointing news.The challenge with allowing IP-related projects on LEGO CUUSOO is that there is the potential of a license conflict, either with an existing license or with a competitive licensor. Still, it’s our view that it is better to be open and allow for possibilities, knowing there will be “no” answers along the way, than shut out the potential of IP-based products altogether.
[…]
Let’s skip forward in time to the present. Did you hear? New Star Wars movie! Yay! Awesome! And there will be new Star Wars themed Lego. Among other sets these:
Lego Star Wars constraction/ultrabuild figures! Now where did I see those before?
All currently known figures on eurobricks forum
So far there is no mention of the Lego ideas Project… but who knows, maybe Lego will give some credit or kudos to the original idea when they officially release the set.
Speaking of the original idea:
Lately on Aliexpress, china Lego Star Wars constraction/ultrabuild figures were sold! Yes they are based on the original design.
Let’s have a comparison:
The pre-rendered Grievous from the Lego ideas set
The pre-rendered china Grievous (link to the one I bought)
The official Lego Grievous
You’ll notice how alike the china and original Grievous look (although the china one lacks Detail), while the Lego one got an overhaul and is much bigger and more badass BUT no cape which makes it less cool again.
The china Grievous was about $9, while the Lego one will supposedly cost about $45! (No final price afaik so likely to even rise)
Okay, enough pre-talk; let’s finally move on the the figure itself.
Since tariff offices in Germany don’t like bootlegs and copies of products (and a lot of other silly things… sigh) I ordered the figure without original packaging so it would be less likely to be picked for inspection (since its smaller in size that way). It arrived in this box:
But when I opened up the box, I noticed there was printing inside. “Yay”, I thought, “they actually sent it in the original box!”. Well they sent it in a china lego box. So I turned it inside out and had this in my hands:
I mean, why not? lol
Now let’s see the figure in all its glory again:
It does lack some detail the original one had, but for a few bucks it’s pretty good. All the parts fit together nicely. If you buy it for you or your child to play with though, you should change some parts for original Lego technic.
The ball joints on my Grievous’ feet are a little loose. He doesn’t fall over, but the feet are too easily movable for playing with it like this.
The red cross-axle 2M parts are missing the little grooves that make them easier to pull out, so be careful when using them. I squashed some of them a little with pliers so they werent as loose as they originally were.
When I started building him without manual (yes there is one), I first thought this was his chestpiece. Turns out it belongs on his arms to make for a super bulky grievous 😛 Since he’s so bulky he can’t move all that much, but I will probably put him on a shelf so that doesn’t bother me.
This is the actual chestpiece, with an additional bulky extra chest piece on top. Did I mention he looks bulky? Also it’s a little hard to see in the photo, but the bottom painted part has the wrong colour (too much yellowish). The upper part also is slightly different from the other beige parts, but not as much.
In my opinion the paintwork on the head is really nice for chinaware. It’s not 100% accurate and he looks a little dull instead of angry, but not as dull as in the pre-render image (first time in history that a product looks better in real life than on the “photo” lol).
The cape on the neck is held in place by two ball joints. Actually the cape could technically fit a regular lego figure… Captain badass-cape incoming.
The cape is a little wrinkled-up, but I guess that will get better in time or with some careful ironing. It’s softer on one side, I made that one the outside as you are more likely to feel that one when holding him.
And finally, the manual and the extra parts:
Nothing special here
The manual has no logo at all. The quality is surprisingly good and the manual itself has no errors and also looks very nice. It even has a full parts list.
I will definitely get the other figures of this series and give them a special place on my shelf.
Wow, this has been my longest post by far. Hope you enjoyed reading it! 🙂
Hum. I’m currently trying to sort out a lot of the mess in my room because I really want to move out asap. Don’t get me wrong, living with my mother is nothing bad per se, but I want to stand on my own two legs, have time for myself and spend money on my own household.
Most likely I’ll get a small 1 or 2 room flat, just because it’s cheap and I don’t necessarily need a lot of space.
Studying…. huh. Lately I’ve been mostly neglecting that… I’ll probably have to opt out of a few exams. I mean it’s great that I even have that option, but that also means I’ll have to fully pay my later extra semesters. So I better save up for that.
Also, as I always order chinaware, I’ll start a review section the time the next thing arrives.
I’ve been stressed lately. Not because I’m doing a shitload of work, but rather because I don’t. I’m spending a lot of time looking at youtube videos, browsing the web for random stuff but I’m barely studying. And the exams are coming closer. I know i have to catch up on the contents and it stresses me out that I can’t get myself to really do anything. I’m always tired, even if I do get some sleep. One of the first things I think I should do is reduce my Youtube time. I may not always be actively watching (I have 3 screens, one pretty much for background Youtube), but I feel it keeps me from being productive.
Oh and I’m thinking of creating webcomic-like content for this blog. What do you think about that?
So after another all-nighter to finish a damn uni paper I really think I should start planning stuff. You know, calendars, to-do lists and the like?
I’m thinking of using some sort of GTD and Chain Calendars. More on that later.
Oh and also I’ll post stuff more often now! Also planning to make a blogging schedule.
so apparently there is no nice way of commenting .ini files for game maker studio.
# and ; do work and give no errors when readign or writing from the .ini file, but after the .ini is changed by the game all comments are gone.
yay.
so that means instead of commenting ill have to use unused tags that have no function other than to make it a little clearer what which section represents.
eg name=walking would mean this is a walking frame, but the tag itsself is never used.
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