Monday, November 10, 2014

Riding to the Arctic Circle on a sporstbike

Nuttynu chronicled his ride from Anchorage, AK up to the Arctic Circle in this thread on the 600rr.net forum. It's from 2012, but it's great read. (more photos here)

Dat tire. :)

Friday, October 24, 2014

Saturday, August 9, 2014

PS3 and PS4 controllers on Windows and Linux

I've been looking for a way to use my PS3 gamepad on Windows (I'd like to use it while being plugged in via USB-wire, not interested in bluetooth-mode), since I find this pad to be the best for me. For years now there's been this tool called MotionInJoy, but it's a terrible, advertising-and-who-knows-what-else-ridden piece of shit and so I'd rather not install that, if I can avoid it. I know there's another tool called "Better DS3", which can be installed in addition to MotionInJoy, but still, that's not a perfect solution.

Turns out there is something better: A user on the PCSX2 forums wrote the tool "XInput wrapper for DS3" and it works great. Here's the thread, it contains a step-by-step guide.
(note that you have to install the "latest version" first and then install the "latest update". Just installing the latter won't work.

For the PS4 pad, there are several tools out there, but this one here seems to be good and the developer is good at responding to requests/problems (see forum here).

On to the Linux side (using Ubuntu 14.04, kernel 3.13.0-32-generic):

The PS4 controller worked out of the box (again, only interested in wired operation, not wireless), just plugged it in and I was able to use it in Steam and Snes9x.

The PS3 controller should work out of the box, but it currently doesn't due to this bug in the 3.13 Ubuntu kernel. Once it's fixed, it should work again (without the need for any tools, such as this one). Also, found some good troubleshooting tips here.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Deadpool test footage - better quality

Some "test footage" from an upcoming Deadpool movie has leaked. There was a video of good quality online for a while, but it was taken down again. Luckily, I grabbed it before that happened. :) [FLV version] [MP4 version] (Right-click and "Save link as").

Friday, July 4, 2014

Super Metroid emulation and inspiration



I felt a sudden urge to play Super Metroid two nights ago. All the pre-requisites were there: I was in a hotel room (on a business trip), had my personal laptop with me (running Ubuntu 12.04), internet access and I even had a Xbox 360 pad in my bag.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

USB-Ethernet adapter on Linux

Looking for a USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet adapter, I bought this one. It uses the AX88179 chipset and this thing runs well under Windows, Linux and OSX.
The manufacturer, Asix, is nice enough to provide Linux drivers on their website. The drivers are, apparently, built-in if one runs Kernel 3.8 or higher. If you're running Ubuntu 12.04, like me, then you currently have Kernel 3.5.
In case you prefer to add a PPA and load the driver from there, here you go.

To summarize: If you run Kernel 3.8 or higher, it's plug and play. If you run something lower, then use the driver from the Asix website or type this into the terminal:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:qji/ax88179
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ax88179

Saturday, May 24, 2014

How to run / design a website on Blogger

I needed to set up a new website (shameless plug: netrunner.ch) and wanted to try something new. I wanted to use a CMS this time and so I was looking at WordPress and Joomla. The idea was to take a blogging-platform, but strip it down to look and behave more like a "traditional" website with static pages. Then I thought of Blogger/Blogspot, because I've been using this platform for a while and I like it. My search was successful, I found this tutorial which outlines all the steps to "de-blog-ify" a Blogger-site and make it look like a "regular" site.
I followed the tutorial and it worked great. (I also found this one, which is not as complete, but still contains some nice tips, like how to create a contact-form for example)

As it turns out, there are some great websites out there making use of nothing but Blogger. Here are a few examples.