Fun & Games
The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
Tons of free and amazing homebrew games! Load’em up on your emulators and flash carts! ...here are the eagerly awaited GBAX2005 entries, and yet again it has been a massive success – around 60 games/demos/utils entered for GBA, GP32, PSP, DS and Zodiac! [
Wireless NES Controller for PC
Here’s how to turn a Nintendo controller (USB Retropad) in to a wireless version using a targus wireless keypad. The NES controller uses 8 inputs and one ground for it’s switch state input. The keypad uses a 4×5 matrix decoder. So I split the ground trace on the control pad into 2 parts (you can see this cut in the second image below) and gave each ground to a column on the keypad. Then I jumpered pairs of buttons on the control pad and connected each pair to one of four rows on the keypad, effectively giving me / 8 2 0 for A B Sel Start and * 9 3 . for Up Rt Lf Dn. Link.
DIY Xbox Media Center
Oldie, but goodie- XboxMediaCenter is a free open source (GPL) multimedia player for the Xbox™ from Microsoft. Currently XboxMediaCenter can be used to play/view most popular video/audio/picture formats such as MPEG-1/2/4, DivX, XviD, MP3, AAC, JPG, GIF plus many more less known formats directly from a CD/DVD in Xbox DVD-ROM drive or of the Xbox harddrive, XBMC can also play files from a PC over a local network and even stream media streams directly from the internet. Link.
Bicycle frame building
Great resource. Bicycle frame building has a reputation as being an arcane art; something that’s practiced by wizened old Jedi masters, or else carried out by huge, complicated robots in Taiwan, attended by a small army of engineers, technicians, and metallurgists. This isn’t so. Frame building is a craft like any other, with simple, consistent rules that mere mortals can master fairly easily, given sufficient attention to detail and care. [via] Link.
DIY MMORPG
phpMMORPG is a Web interface that can be used to create an MMORPG with a back-end which permits users of the interface to create their own games. It features real-time chat, a map editor, a template system, a quest box, PVP, PVE, a loot system, and other functions. Except for the use of “marquee”, it uses 100% XHTML 1.0. [via via] Link.
TaxProf Blog: Virtual Games, Real Taxes
If you have to pay taxes on virtual property, can you insure your virtual property? Sunday’s New York Times picked up the theme in The Game is Virtual. The Profit is Real (5/29), which discussed the growing market for virtual property used in on-line games like Second Life, The Sims, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft. Players buy and sell virtual property on sites like eBay, Ige, and Gamingopenmarket, with the Times noting annual profits of 25k, 100k or more taxable to the gamers. Some of the sites even allow on-line charitable contributions. Link.
Video Game Controller Family Tree
History of the video game controller- How did the current home-console controllers come to be? How have they evolved? You may have noticed some similarities between the current generation controllers, or between them and the previous generations of controllers. So, how do they all tie together? [via] Link.
