DVD Player Repaired

My Panasonic CV-52 DVD player broke down for the third time in about as many years last night.  Same problem as twice before: H07 Error.  This is a well known problem with Panasonic DVD players, and is considered to be the result of Panasonic putting cheaper motors in their players.

The problem itself occurs when the spindle motor — the motor that actually spins the disc — fails to spin up when you try to play a DVD.  The fix is terribly simple: a little bit of oil on the spindle arm itself usually does the trick (though this time it didn’t work right away; I left it overnight and the player started working again the next morning).

Think of how much waste we produce as a society when companies decide to use the cheapest components possible for their products.  How many DVD players have ended up in landfills, poisoning the environment because of this problem?  For the cost a dollar or two per unit, Panasonic could’ve used a superior component, and this waste could have been avoided.  Ugh.

Hack City – An RPG Podcast

A friend of mine is starting up a new RPG-related podcast called Hack City:

Hack City is a podcast about modifying RPG rules, including new techniques and generally hacking a game to make it play how you want.  It includes using existing rules for settings/genres they weren’t originally designed for, taking specific mechanics and jamming into other games, general techniques, and the like.

Games talked about will include traditional RPGs, improv theatre techniques, story games and indy games.  The podcast will come from a non-judgemental approach where games are only evaluated in terms of whether or not they do what the participants want them to do.

At this point only an introductory episode is up, but plans are in motion to make this a regular thing.

For the longest time I wanted to be involved in some sort of podcast, so I may eventually be taking part in the discussions.  We’ll see how it goes!

Emptiness

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Ghostbusters 3

Woo!  A second sequel to the movie Ghostbusters looks closer than ever now.  Here’s an excerpt from a recent interview with Dan Aykroyd:

“[W]e’re at a point that there’s a story that [Bill Murray] can accept and that’s going to work, and I think we’re going to be in production fairly soon. We could be in production by winter.”

So, long-time hold-out Bill Murray finally decided to do a third Ghostbusters movie.  I’m guessing the work on the upcoming Ghostbusters game — in which the entire cast lent their voice acting talents — reignited some old sparks.

With so much time having passed since the second Ghostbusters movie, it comes as no surprise that the new script will focus more on a new team of Ghostbusters.  Aykroyd further commented thusly:

“I’d like it to be a passing-of-the-torch movie. Let’s revisit the old characters briefly and happily and have them there as family but let’s pass it on to a new generation.”

I seriously hope the movie pans out this time.

Stupid Marketing Tricks

I’ve seen some stupid marketing tricks in my time, but this one — for a fibre-optic cable — takes the cake:

(click to zoom)

Stupid Salesmen

I was in the market for a new LCD TV yesterday, but, it looks like no one wanted my business.  I did some research, found a decent model, then  I hit three stores along the same street in my end of town which carried that model.

I started at Best Buy.  The salesman there reluctantly agreed to do the price matching after giving me the whole “they may not have it in stock” spiel.  However, when I suggested he also throw in a free HDMI cable, he laughed at me.  He though it was a big joke.  He refused to do it!  So, I left and talked with a manager, who ended up saying the same thing “no free cable”.  He called over the salesguy (not knowing he was the one I had just dealt with) and the salesguy laughed about it again, right in front of the manager.  I know one store whose head office is getting a nasty letter.

Then I went to Future Shop.  The salesman there was more than happy to give me a free cable, but he absolutely would not budge on the price.  No counter-offers, just flat out refusal.  This guy became increasingly flustered as I tried to reach a deal, but he simply did not want to negotiate.  So I left.

My last stop was at Visions.  They didn’t have the model in stock, but they did have “one” left at their other store.  He offered to take my payment today and give me the TV tomorrow as they would have it transferred between stores.  Not a big deal, but definitely not a good thing to say to a customer.  What was worse, the guy would not even accept a slightly lower price nor would he even throw in free HDMI cable for my inconvenience!  When I could just drive down the street and pick the same thing up at two other stores!!  He even had the gall to lie to me, giving me some story that his profit margin on the TV was only $40.  Unbelievable!  The best he said he could do was give me a “deal” on an HDMI cable, offering to sell me one for $20 (I can easily get them cheaper at a local computer store, or even online).   I gave the guy a few minutes to reconsider, then I just left.

Is it just me, or are these salesman crazy, losing a sale over $10 or $20?  Are these TVs in such high demand?  In this economy?

Astromech Droids!

Behold my collection of modern (i.e. year 2000+) Star Wars astromech droid action figures:

(click for super-sized image)

I believe I have them all except for R5-F7 (still trying to track him down at a reasonable price) and some versions of R2-D2.  I’m not really interested in getting all the incarnations of R2-D2, since they all look pretty much the same.  The back row in the image above consists of duplicates, but all the other figures are unique (yes, even the two black, cone-head droids on the left side of the second-last row).  The front row and the three left-most droids of the second row are all versions of R2-D2; the rest are other droids from various sources (movies, comic books, Star Tours, etc.).

Thanks to Don Solo and his checklist of astromech droid figures for helping me find some droids I was missing.

I’ve updated my reference sheet for all the monsters, units, and buildings in the collectible miniatures game Monsterpocalypse to include the new figures from Series 2: I Chomp NY:

Download the Monsterpocalypse Reference Sheet v2.01

(2.1 MB – HTML format)

All promo figures from the Series 1: Rise have also been added.  If you notice any omissions or errors, please let me know by posting a comment.

To reiterate from my previous post:  This reference sheet is optimized for printing — the images may look a little choppy on the screen, but they will print out very nicely.

I’ve included every statistic and ability for each miniature so that you can substitute your own representative tokens for miniatures that you are missing. This way you can try out the different factions without having to buy a whole mess of minis first.

The reference sheet download contains an html file and css file along with a subfolder containing images for all the icons (there are over 1,400). Feel free to use these icons to print out your own custom references, unit cards, and whatnot for Monsterpocalypse.

I’ve removed the link to view the document online because the sheer number of separate images creates to much of a load on the server hosting the files, resulting in a lot of broken image links even though the images are actually available.

Updates:

v2.0.1

• Fixed Mega Gorghadra blast range (changed from short to long)

Joseph Christopher Bryden Dueck

Here are some photos of my new nephew who was born yesterday:

Watching Old Arcade Laserdisc Video

About a quarter of a century ago, a handful of arcade games incorporating laserdisc technology appeared in arcades.  The most well known one was Dragon’s Lair, a game made up entirely of traditionally drawn cartoon clips, with different clips being played depending on the player’s actions.  Other games, like Cube Quest used laserdisc video to draw high-quality backgrounds behind relatively lower quality video game graphics.

Last year, the incredible Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator project (or MAME) — an open source project dedicated to the preservation of arcade game history by emulating old arcade hardware on modern PCs — finally developed the ability to emulate its first laserdisc game (other projects, like DAPHNE, have been emulating laserdisc games for longer, but these projects were dedicated to laserdisc games whereas MAME’s focus encompasses all types of arcade games).  So far, only a handful of laserdisc games are playable with MAME.

It’s pretty neat visiting these once state-of-the-art games.  The grainy, lower-fidelity video and sound of laserdisc really takes one back to the mid-80s.

If you are familiar with emulation and just want to watch the video content stored in laserdisc CHD files (rather than playing through the entire game), follow these instructions on how to use MAME’s ldplayer. The instructions there didn’t exist when I first went about figuring out how to get the laserdisc player program itself working; the page has since been updated after some communication with one of the MAME developers, so hopefully others won’t have as frustrating a time as I had in trying to get it all to work.

Here’s a screenshot of me VNCing into my home computer and running the laserdisc player emulator with the Cube Quest CHD:

When I was a kid, I never imagined I’d be using one computer at work to connect to another computer at home via a global computer network in order to run a program designed to emulate the hardware of a twenty-five year-old laserdisc player.