Check out these hilarious small ads at horsman.co.nz.
1-bit Music in a 128-bit World
Armed with nothing more than his rusty but trusty Timex Sinclair 2048 (A Sinclair ZX Spectrum clone) and it’s 1-bit, single channel buzzer, Mister Beep makes some astounding chiptune music.
Actually the TS2048’s might 3.5Mhz Z80 processor lets you do some pretty funky tricks to simulate up to 8 (count ‘em!) channels of sound. It’s still in mono though, and it still sounds like a speed-driven maniac on a kazoo.
My favourites have to be Evil Laugh (with a 1-bit sample at the start and some great drums), CPU’s Explosion (with 8 channel sound, something I didn’t expect to see on a speccy clone!), Play Beeper Play (and Part II) and the cover of the Hang On theme (at least I think it is, it was a long time ago..)
Check out how this guy does it and get some more tunes here
– May 9, 2006
Parkour/Free Running Video
Parkour, or Free Running is a form of movement that looks like it should be done with wires, in fact it looks like it is done with wires, but isn’t. This stuff is amazing to watch. Check out these Russian free runners (or traceurs) going at it with some gusto (Thanks Ollie).
There’s also some great Parkour videos at Urban Freeflow that are definately worth checking out (warning: NSFW).
– May 9, 2006
SGI Files for Chapter 11 Protection
SGI have filed for Chapter 11. It’s a sad day for anyone whoever used an Indy, an Nvidia card (much of the earlier Nvidia technology was built by ex-SGI employees) or the fortunate few who’ve used one of SGI’s NUMA systems. The people who brought us XFS, OpenGL and the luscious 1600SW widescreen LCD monitor are no more. You will be sorely missed. There’s a great writeup on the history of SGI at wikipedia. As an ex-Indy (and IRIX 5.3) user today is a sad day for me but it’s definitely been a long time coming.
Posted in Business, Events, Links, News.
– May 8, 2006
Top 7 non-slutty female video game characters (plus 3)
I’ve written about A random Gnome’s random lair a few times now, and if you haven’t seen it already, here’s another shining example of why you should check it out. As always, the Gnome is right on the button with his choices, although I think I could bump it up to ten with my own 3 that I felt should’ve made it in there. Continued…
Posted in Gaming, Links, Retro.
– May 8, 2006
