This blog shown on the new iPhone, as downgraded by crappy droid camera. Looking at the new iPhone display is like looking at God’s dreams.
Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category
Retina Display Robot Claw
Saturday, June 26th, 2010
Competition Pro
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
That is a picture of the ‘Competition Pro’ joystick – the first (and I believe only) item I ever bought on lay-by.
Known as ‘layaway’ in the US, lay-by is the process of buying an item in installments. It is virtually unknown these days due to credit cards, but used to be very popular.
One day in 1984 (or early 1985), after endlessly reading about how great the Competition Pro joystick was in the imported UK game magazines of the day, I discovered they were sold at K-Mart, Charlestown Square. I remember seeing one in a glass case in the electronics section and wanting it so badly. In those days game systems did not come with controllers, so there was a vibrant market of third party devices. For me, the competition pro was at the top of the pile. The pinnacle of control! It even had microswitches!
This was the box:
I forget the price, but A$40 comes to mind. Whatever the cost, it was much more than I had available, and I was so worried about the joystick disappearing from the shop I hastily put it on lay-by. I remember being very excited as I collected the various documents (including payment slips) with all sorts of dates on them (“Pay this much by XX” etc.). I planned out my repayment schedule, based on what meagre income (pocket money?) I had in those days. I can even remember having dad drive me to the shop one day just so I could put $2 onto my lay-by! Only when the full price was paid would the joystick be mine.
Oh the unfettered enthusiasm of youth 🙂
Eventually I got my competition pro, and it was awesome. I still recall how much I loved the thing, and how much I loved the little clicks from the microswitches every time you moved the stick or pushed the button. It was the ticket to even higher love for my Commodore 64. I even carried it to friends houses when I went over to play games with them. I was so proud of it, and that I had lay-bought it.
Remembering this, and writing about it now, makes me wonder what ever happened to that beloved competition pro of mine. Is it in a box in an attic, dusty and forgotten? Or was it long-since buried in a mountain of landfill, or crushed in some reprocessing plant?
Or could it be – impossibly – that some retro enthusiast is loving it still, and using it to this day?
Recipe Time!
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010I’m not the greatest chef on earth, but I would consider myself in the top few percent. If you try my recipes, you can judge for yourself.
Spaghetti Bolognaise
Ingredients:
– Ground beef
– 1/4 of an onion
– one beef stock cube
– 1 tablespoon of tomato paste
– Spaghetti
Method:
Chop onion into small pieces, and cook in a pan with the meat until done. Add the beef stock and cook for a few minutes. Add the tomato paste and cook for a bit more. Place on top of the cooked spaghetti as shown above and enjoy!
Chip Sandwich
Ingredients:
– white bread
– potato chips (plain or salt and vinegar)
Method:
Put chips on bread. Load massive amounts on, as many as possible. The idea is to put several inches of chip between the bread, way more than you’d think was reasonable. Then push the bread together, with the goal being flattening them so much that the chips compress into a superdense thin chip film. Then eat dry. (Note the image is not representative of my version, which is eaten plain with no lettuce, cheese or sauce.)
If you try either of these, please let me know what you think.
Man Droid
Saturday, June 19th, 2010First of all, the blog was down due to equipment failure at the host (ie. my brother’s computer). Now it’s back I can get to business!
Last Saturday I bought myself one of these:
Yep thats a (Motorola) Droid smartphone running the Android OS. My old phone was being weird and had battery issues so it was due for an upgrade. I was holding out for Apple to announce a CDMA iPhone which didn’t happen the other week so I caved and went to the competition.
After having the phone for a week my review is “thumbs up”. Aside from the fact it is stylish and fast and nifty, I now have a data plan and full access to the web from anywhere, which means I can make use of services beyond simple text messages. This includes email, a web browser, twitter (more on this in a bit) and of course the app store.
I’m no stranger to a device like this (a portable OS with an app store) since I’ve had an iPad for months now and an iPod Touch for years, but I can’t deny the convenience of carrying it around with me everywhere. The phone also has a GPS chip in it, which means Google Maps runs staggeringly well – even to the point of showing your orientation on the map. I pulled up my location in the living room and it was accurate to 1 meter. I then rotated on the spot and watched my arrow rotate on the screen in real time. Impressive.
There are a few trifling negatives with the phone I have noticed so far: no way to turn the unlock vibration off, the phone can slide open in my pocket and sometimes turn on, people tell me I sometimes sound muffled talking. But some of these are just getting used to a new device. For instance 5 days ago I may have commented on the keyboard being a bit dinky but I’m now very used to it. Similarly what I first thought may have been battery life on the low side got much better when I tweaked settings and installed a task killer app.
The day I got the phone I also (“finally”, some may say) joined Twitter.
Twitter is a social networking mini-blog site that lets user post up to 140 character ‘tweets’ about anything they like. You can follow me at: twitter.com/richardjesper (or click the link on the right)
Twitter will not replace this blog so don’t worry about that. Rather I will use it exclusively from my phone, so it will likely replace the phone blogs I occasionally did (but not the ones with photos – they’ll still go to Robot Claw). If any of you use twitter please post your twitter ID as a comment (or email it to me) so I can follow you (if I am not already).
So overall, I’m digging this Droid phone mostly because of what it now lets me do. I would recommend it wholeheartedly to everyone I know with one reservation – they already have them!
Yep, as is the case with most of my life the world took notice, and once I got a Droid it became the cool thing to do and everyone ran out and got one. This includes KLS, JAF and JBF, and it soon to include (I strongly suspect) SFL. Only BFS is the holdout!
Moe
Sunday, June 13th, 2010Blogging from the new phone has a steep learning curve…
