Mechanical Penguin:First model complete, first scene written out. Week 1

So as the title says, Moe finished the first model (picture below) in Maya and I have written a rough draft of the opening scene. I really wish I could do some more programming but I have to wait until I get home to do that.

I have a new work schedule that starts Monday which should allow us more time to work on the game which is so exciting! I'm also keeping a close lookout for the Mac SDK to come out. It'd be fun to port it to OS X when we're done.

Anyway, enjoy the picture!

This picture is Copyright of Morgan Pinkston and does not fall under the CC license of this blog. Please contact him at iki_mono (at) hot mail dot com for usage rights.

Mechanical Penguin: Cost analysis

Luckily, we already had the software needed for this project (or in my case, I was able to download Visual Studio 2010 from Dreamspark since I'm in college), but I was beginning to think of what it would have cost if we didn't.

Visual Studio 2010 Professional - $549
Auto Desk Maya-$3495 

Those two together already cost more than my car did. Thank God for being a student.



Previous Total: $25
Add food ~$25
Totally cost so far. ~$50


Hypothetical Cost: $4100 + ~30 combined man hours.

Mechanical Penguin: Day 1 is done

So, we're finally done with Day 1. I'm pretty impressed with our progress. Not much to show from coding since I'm sure you don't want to see the lines and lines of code changes, but I'm creating my first logical entity and the robot model is all but done. Now apparently Moe needs to do something he calls "weighting"... I have no idea what that is. Anyway, here's the picture of the practically finished model (the missing parts are easily mirrored with like 2 clicks of the mouse).

This picture is Copyright of Morgan Pinkston and does not fall under the CC license of this blog. Please contact him at iki_mono (at) hot mail dot com for usage rights.

Mechanical Penguin: It compiles! Day 1

After struggling with the "Source" source code. I finally convinced Half Life 2 to compile (I don't think the L4D2 Source is available so we're going to have to mod HL2)

Also, the first model is coming under way quite nicely.

Anyway... CHECK IT OUT!

This picture is Copyright of Morgan Pinkston and does not fall under the CC license of this blog. Please contact him at iki_mono (at) hot mail dot com for usage rights.

Mechanical Penguin: The Drawing Board Day 1

So today we started on the setting of our game and the character designs. We eventually settled on a futurist setting that will take place some where in desolate space. The basic plot starts out on a colony frigate that gets intercepted by a foreign something. This leads the frigate to crash on an uninhabited planet where our adventure begins. Here are some pictures of our work.

This picture is Copyright of Morgan Pinkston and does not fall under the CC license of this blog. Please contact him at iki_mono (at) hot mail dot com for usage rights.

Mechanical Penguin: A beginning

Titled: Steampunk Penguin
This picture is Copyright of Morgan Pinkston and does not fall under the CC license of this blog. Please contact him at iki_mono (at) hot mail dot com for usage rights.

Since playing my first video game, which I seemed to remember being Boogerman, I've always wanted to create my own game. It's what drove me to get into programming and computers. I've never really had an opportunity seeing as I'm not that good of a programmer and I never had anyone willing to do it with me.

Well, I decided that I've been waiting to long and I need to just grab this by the horns and fight. I'm getting together with one of my art buddies, he recently graduated from Full Sail, and we plan on hitting this head on.

First on our list to to do a mod. I think we've decided to do a mod with the source engine and hopefully utilize Left 4 Dead 2 as the base. I'm not so sure this is possible but we're going to try. I'm going to keep our ideas under wrap for the time being, but we should begin work on Wednesday.

Oh, we calling ourselves "Mechanical Penguin" maybe. The picture up top is an old design I asked him for a mousepad I was ordering. I'm also going to keep track of our expenses just for fun. Neither one of us plan on getting "paid" as we're going to use this mod as a platform for us, but I think it might be fun to see what the actual cost of making an indie mod is.

Total cost of the project so far: $25
This purchase included a Big Dry-Erase Board
, markers, and a binder.

For the Emperor... Penguin.

-Ryan

HTML5 server

So just for fun I decided to try my hand at HTML5 video streaming. I set up an apache server on my computer, found some sweet code, and done! It was really simple too. Go check out the link to see (streaming 720p Big Buck Bunny using ogg. You'll need firefox to view it)

OCNix Alpha Released

Check out http://www.overclock.net/software-news/746107-ocn-ocnix-alpha-now-available.html#post9547131 for the full story.

Semi-recently, I released the alpha build of OCNix. You should check it out! :D

Here's the news story I wrote up.

OCNix: The Alpha is now available for download!

What is OCNix (OverClock.Net + lInuX) you ask? Let's get the rundown.

Born from the ashes of a dead project (we'd like to stop and thank Biatchi and version2 for being our forefathers) OCNix has been given a complete over haul.

OCNix is a Linux distribution (heavily) based on Arch Linux.It is designed to be a liveCD that you can benchmark/stress-test your machine with. Designed with the impatient overclocker in mind, OCNix's goal is to be easy to use, full of useful tools, fast, use little resources (for power for your benchmarks!) and to promote the use of Linux to computer enthusiasts.

--So what's included in this release?
I'll try not to get to technical.

You'll get:
Openbox (a light weight Window Manager)
Firefox (ArchLinux's optimized version)
Phoronix's Test Suite
Yaourt (a pacman wrapper to include AUR)
For a full list of software, please visit our forum at www.overclock.net/ocnix

--So what can I expect out of this Alpha?
More or less, a functioning product. With this release we are asking that you test our software, and give us a report on:
What works
What does not
Things that could be improved
Software suggestions
Bugs

We ask that you submit bugs to https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ocnix/newticket

However, all other requests and opinions should be directed to www.overclock.net/ocnix where you may make a new thread or add to one already created!

--Wow! What can't this OCNix do?!
Well, let's not get to ahead of ourselves. We haven't included video or wireless drivers so benching video cards and wireless network tests aren't possible. They should be included in the beta release however.

--Is there anything else I should know about?
You will see some half included features. For instances, conky (the thing at the top of the screen) isn't very well designed and will not work on most systems. While we are aware of some of these, please create a bug ticket for anything you deem half-finished.

--So how can I get it?
For the Alpha, we're going to start out doing torrent releases only. You can download the torrent files from sourceforge here.
Alternatively, if you're running ArchLinux already, and want to build from the SVN you can follow our wiki page which will walk you through it.

--Is there anyway I can help?
Of course! We're always looking for help! Everything from Artists, Musicians, Testers, Developers, Programmers, and Public Relation positions are open and waiting to be filled! All you need to do is make a post over at www.overclock.net/ocnix or PM on of the leaders (xtascox, GodofGrunts) or our sectary (FoC400). We'd prefer if you made a post though.

Not sure if you can do any of those? One of the best ways you can help is simply by seeding our torrents! Well, that's all for now! Get to it!

Kiva

I'm a part of the kiva lending community. From now on, I'll be posting the people I'm currently supporting over on the left. Please lend them money if you feel the same way I do. These people are hard working and just need a little help.

OCNix

I currently am working on a new project with some friends over at overclock.net

We're are creating a Linux Distro (based off of Arch Linux) designed for overclockers and benchmarkers. Our progress can be on our progress thread and you're more than welcome to jump into our IRC. We're on freenode under #ocnix.

Here is my description of OCNix:

OCNix is a Linux [distribution] aimed at computer enthusiasts who want to be able to stress test and benchmark their hardware without taking the time to install a full operating system.

What that means is that it will be a live CD with an option to install. Right now we're working on getting a kernel figured out (we'd like to have the zen kernel patches with BFS instead of CFS)

We got it mostly work, but we're still having issues with it. After the kernel gets fixed we'll have what I would call our pre-alpha. You're more than welcome to try it out yourself.

svn co https://ocnix.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ocnix ocnix

This should be considered a testing release, and we are not responsible for any mishaps they may happen. It's a live CD so you should be fine, but no guarantees.

rTorrent: Recieve text messages when torrents are done! (With Gmail)

Maybe you have heard of rTorrent, maybe you haven't. But here's a little trick you should use that will make rTorrent your favorite torrent client!

*NOTE: These instructions are for Arch Linux. Your mileage may vary.

First, let's get/update rTorrent

# pacman -Sy rtorrent

(If you installing rtorrent for the first time, please follow these instructions to get everything else setup)

And we'll need Heriloom's mailx program.

# pacman -S mailx-heirloom

Alrighty. Now, we're going to delete the /etc/nail.rc and then remake it.

# rm /etc/nail.rc
# touch /etc/nail.rc

Now edit with your favorite editor (I chose nano, but anything should work)

# nano /etc/nail.rc

And add this. (Where USERNAME is your username for gmail and PASSWORD is your password for gmail)

set smtp=smtp.gmail.com:587
set smtp-use-starttls
set ssl-verify=ignore
set ssl-auth=login
set smtp-auth-user=USERNAME@gmail.com
set smtp-auth-password=PASSWORD

Okay, now let's create our script.

$ touch ~/.mail.sh

Okay so here's where you need to find out what your email-to-text is.

Verizon: 10digitphonenumber@vtext.com
AT&T: 10digitphonenumber@txt.att.net
Former AT&T customers: 10digitphonenumber@mmode.com
Sprint: 10digitphonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
T-Mobile: 10digitphonenumber@tmomail.net
Nextel: 10digitphonenumber@messaging.nextel.com
Cingular: 10digitphonenumber@cingularme.com
Virgin Mobile: 10digitphonenumber@vmobl.com
Alltel: 10digitphonenumber@alltelmessage.com OR
10digitphonenumber@message.alltel.com
CellularOne: 10digitphonenumber@mobile.celloneusa.com
Omnipoint: 10digitphonenumber@omnipointpcs.com
Qwest: 10digitphonenumber@qwestmp.com

I have sprint, but change the script to fit your needs.

So let's edit out script.

$ nano ~/.mail.sh

And add

echo "$@: Done" | mailx 5555555555@messaging.sprintpcs.com

Now we need to make it executable.

$ chmod +x ~/.mail.sh

Okay that's done. Basically, what that's going to do is take whatever is passed to it ($@): Done and pipe it through mailx which goes back to /etc/nail.rc to login into your gmail account and send you an SMS.

Now, we need to add a line to the bottom our ~/.rtorrent file (you should have one, if not go back to the top)

$ nano ~/.rtorrent

and add:

system.method.set_key = event.download.finished,notify_me,"execute=~/.mail.sh,$d.get_name="

So say you were downloading "Completely-Legal-Files.rar". When it gets done, you'll get a text message that says "Completely-Legal-Files.rar: Done"

Oh happy day! Now you can rush home and un-rar it!

Worst software ever made.

This title goes to the trouble ticket software Connect Wise.

I don't know for sure, but I think this sorry excuse for software was programmed in VB.NET (from the way it looks and the awful sluggishness) and terribly at that (stupid thing crashes all the time when you try to set preferences). It doesn't save databases locally either, which is really dumb. It takes like 5-10 seconds to pull up the search "feature" because it has to load the database EVERY SINGLE TIME.

And from what our networking guys tell me, it requires an incredibly beefy server (We're taking dual quad-core Xeons with 32GBs of RAM) and it still is slow as crap.

Next, it uses IE to render all it's pages. Awesome, so now not only is it slow, riddled with bugs, ugly, and a resource hog, but now it works on the most insecure browser ever made! I just love sending customer data over semi-secure connections in IE! Usernames, passwords, SSN numbers, phone numbers, works places. It just makes me all warm and tingly inside!

/sarcasm

If any business owners come across this, please don't subject your employees to this junk. It makes my life miserable.

Note:
We're using Core2Duo computers running XP SP3 with 2 Gigs of RAM which is pretty beefy for work computers.

Here's a better open-source ticketing system that is used in at least one government agency here in America.

OpenGL vs Direct3D

It has recently come to my attention that some people (Windows users) think that OpenGL is dead. I was goaded into nerd rage after reading this post; however, for the sake of this being a blog post, I will reorganize my thoughts and repost my answer in a more blog post friendly manner.

"But wait Ryan!", you're thinking. "Won't your obvious fealty to all things Open and Standard make this post bias?"

Maybe a little bit, but the proof is in the final product. First, let us have some history. (The following a direct copy-paste from blog.wolfire.com

What is OpenGL?
In 1982, Silicon Graphics started selling high-performance graphics terminals using a proprietary API called Iris GL (GL is short for "graphics library"). Over the years, Iris GL grew bloated and hard to maintain, until Silicon Graphics took a radical new step: they completely refactored Iris GL and made it an open standard. Their competitors could use the new Open Graphics Library (OpenGL), but in return, they had to help maintain it and keep it up to date.

Today, OpenGL is managed by the Khronos Group -- a non-profit organization with representatives from many companies that are interested in maintaining high-quality media APIs. At a lower level, it's managed by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB). OpenGL is supported on every gaming platform, including Mac, Windows, Linux, PS3 (as a GCM wrapper), Wii, iPhone, PSP, and DS. Well, every gaming platform except for the XBox -- which brings us to our next topic:

What is DirectX?
Ever since MS-DOS, Microsoft has understood that games play an important role in users' choice of operating systems. For this reason, in 1995, they created a proprietary set of libraries in order to encourage exclusive games for their new Windows 95 operating system. These libraries included Direct3D, DirectInput and DirectSound, and the entire collection came to be known as DirectX. When Microsoft entered the gaming market in 2001, it introduced the DirectX Box, or XBox for short. The XBox was a loss leader (losing over 4 billion dollars), intended to set the stage to dominate the games market in the next generation.

Looking at the games scene now, it's clear that this strategy is succeeding. Most major PC games now use DirectX, and run on both Windows and XBox 360. With few exceptions, they don't work on competing platforms, such as Playstation, Mac OS, and Wii.

This rest of the article can be read here. I would definitely recommend you go read it.

"Well that's nice and all Ryan, but what's the point?"

The point is, that even though OpenGL is a superior API, Direct3D is used more.
Currently, I'm trying to get a certain company to provide me with real time renders using both OpenGL 3.X and DirectX 11 as it seems impossible to find any comparisons. Unfortunately, I'll be forced to use OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 11 examples, but I think my point will be made clear enough.


As you probably can tell, the OpenGL images look a whole lot more realistic.

"Then why are most commercial games built on DirectX?"
You can read about it over at blog.wolfire.com but I'll list the points.

1.Network effects and vicious cycles

2.FUD about OpenGL and Vista

3.Misleading marketing campaigns

Hopefully, there will be a part 2 of this, if I can get this certain company to return my email. That way, I can show you the latest and greatest of both instead of showing you ancient technology.

Here is a youtube video of the new Ungine engine benchmark. I'm not sure what version of OpenGL it is using though...

Your ISP could be Google!

Finally, my favorite company is going to step up the internet game.

Everyone seems to always complain about their ISP and for good reason. I've had three in my life:

AOL (Now part of Time Warner Cable)
Comcast
Time Warner Cable

The last two are who I want to talk about. Comcast's service was pretty good actually. I can't remember having downtime that last very long (except due to winter storms) and their customer support was... meh.

However, recently they started a 250 GB limit per household and that has a lot of people pissed off and for good reason. Prices go up, speed goes down, and now a download limit...

Now Time Warner Cable... Where to begin? They're service is very flaky, customer support personal are rude and unintelligent. They're sales people are commissioned based and therefore are really pushy. I'm also supposed to get about 12 Mb/s down but the reality is closer to 7. That's almost half! But, even though they're a terrible company, what can you do?

At this moment nothing. DSL is the only other option and the speeds are even slower... But there is some light at the end of the tunnel! Google is promising 1Gb/s connections. Yeah, you didn't read that wrong. ONE GIGABIT PER SECOND. That's freaking awesome. Even if they only get a fourth of that to my house, my current network couldn't handle it. I'd finally have to switch to a N router and a gigabit switch.

Oh man! One can only dream that they'd bring to my area. :3 I've already signed up Hamilton, Ohio but I encourage you to sign your community up here

An open letter to cbtnuggets.com

While I do realize that Silverlight
/Moonlight is supported under Linux I beg that cbtnuggets understand the issues with this method.

While cbtnuggets.com may not care about how the Open Source community feels about Microsoft and Novell, you should care about the very important terms in the “covenant” Microsoft extended for Moonlight.

Quoted from http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/newmoonlight.mspx

““Term” means the period commencing on the Effective Date and continuing through December 31, 2012, unless terminated earlier pursuant to the Agreement.”

This mean that after that date, or maybe even before, it is possible that Microsoft will not extend the rights to Moonlight to be used on Linux.

Not only that, but he Media Packs are only covered if you get Novell-Provided Copies of Moonlight. If you know how Linux distributions work, 95% of software is downloaded through package managers. The binaries would not be offered through Novell.

I know that there was probably a lot of time and money spent on this project of porting it over to Silverlight/Moonlight player and I wish I could have caught you earlier, but I can almost guarantee you that it will save you time, money, future headaches, and your users potentially getting sued if you switch away from it.

Finally, I would think you would be worried about the security risks involved with Silverlight/Moonlight. I got my Security+ certification by using your videos so I know that someone there understands.

There are so many ways of doing this that do not involve all the risks you are taking and I beg of you to at least consider it.

This is an email I recently sent to cbtnuggets.com

They responded to my first email pretty quickly and I'm hoping they do the same for this one as well. I doubt my concerns will be taken seriously, but I truly hope it does.

Convert Outlook Express .dbx to .mbx for Evolution or Thunderbird in Linux

Preface (as in, you may skip this part if you're just looking for the instructions).

Lately, I've been noticing that my internet would slow to a crawl at around 2-3 o'clock in the morning. On a hunch I checked my router logs.

Wow. Turns out, somebody in Russia and China were hammering my IP with something trying to get into the only Windows box in the house (parents bought a crap Emachine and I left it alone at their request)

Well, my parents use this computer to pay all their bills...

See where I'm going?

So after warning my parents I got the go ahead to install Linux on their box as long as I did the following:

Make it look like Windows XP

Setup their email (they were using outlook express)

And make sure they had an Office Suite.

Okay, none of these are that big of a deal.

XpGnome takes care of it looking like XP.

Evolution will suffice for the email.

Openoffice.org will handle their Office needs.

The difficult part came when I was trying to import their mail over from Outlook Express.

I searched and searched and searched and the only solution I could find was to:

A) Do it in Windows with one of the many tools
B) Use Kmail to do it

Well, I no longer have Windows and KDE is so horrible (in my opinion) that I'd rather go through the trouble of installing XP in a VM before infecting my system with it.

Well, I, being the masochist that I am, decided I was going to try to use a Windows only tool in Wine to fix this.

I found a neat little open source tool called DbxConv so I decided to give it a try.

Not wanting to put forth too much effort, I decided to use the Wine in the Ubuntu repositories (Wine 1.0.1) with

sudo apt-get install wine

I downloaded the tool and and extracted it to ~/Downloads/Dbxconv.

I had the .dbx files that I needed on a flash drive so I copied them over to the same directory (the instructions on the website recommend this).

Next I opened up a command window via wine with

wineconsole cmd

Which opens a DOS box.

Then I navigated to my my folder with:

cd Downloads\DbxConv

Finally I ran

dbxconv.exe *.dbx

And it worked!

Then of course I imported into Evolution and confirmed it working!

Success!

The key here is to open up "cmd" from "wineconsole". Nothing else will work. I've added an entry to the WineApp database and I'm waiting for approval. it is available here.

Overclock.net

If you haven't heard of this wonderful site you should definitely check it out. Since joining two years ago, I've learned so much. I quite literally didn't even know what AGP was and now I have A+, Linux+, and Security+ certifications thanks, in large part, to this website.

Most of the forum is full of friendly people who are willing to help. Just remember to click on the REP+ button if someone helps you out! ;)

Linux runs my life! And a review of the Kindle 2.

I'm happy to announce, that as of December 25th 2009, Linux, quite literally, does everything in my life.

My laptop runs Arch Linux.
My phone (Samsung Moment) runs Android.
And my new Kindle 2 runs off 2.6.22 Kernel (after update).
The only exception to this is that I work on an XP machine at work...

Oh, did I mention that I got a Kindle for Christmas?

It's pretty amazing I must say. I've already downloaded the KJV Bible (by mistake. I meant to get the NKJV) and Dune. I'm so happy I'll finally be able to read Dune. I've been meaning to for a long time, but even just reading the first chapter takes time. I had to re-read certain parts to understand what was going on. Frank Herbert Jr.'s vocabulary is extremely rich which brings me to my favorite part of the Kindle.

Built in Oxford dictionary with real time search.

Or at least that is what I'm calling it. I come across words like "fief" and instead of wiping out my laptop to search Google, or finding the one dictionary that my family owns, I simply use the little nub to point the cursor next to the word, and at the bottom I get a definition!



Anyway on to the rest of the review.

Taking the Kindle out of the box reveals a rather childish looking device. It looks like something you'd buy for your three year old to learn their colors or something.

Next, you'll notice the weight. It weighs next to nothing but has a good solid feel to it.

Let me preface this next part, my best friend got the Kindle DX for Christmas and he did the exact same thing. When you first look at the screen, it has a nice little welcome page that, honest to God, looks like a sticker. You know those stickers they put on LED clocks so it can show you what it is supposed to look like? Yeah, it looks exactly like that. I spent about a minute trying to figure out how to take it off...

But now I realize how amazing it is. The soft matte screen allows you to read it regardless of sun glare and it is really easy on the eyes. It's really fantastic.

Of course, as soon as I figured out that it wasn't a sticker... I went ahead and started playing with it. It has some features that I find interesting. For instance, the web browser. According to thismachine.info the browser is NetFront which seems to be based off of Mozilla 4.0 (Although IE will tell you it's based of Mozilla 4.0 as well).

It also has support (so I'm told) for audio books and text-to-speech (although recent controversy has been an issue with this). Dune doesn't have this feature, but youtube shows that it's a very unnatural voice anyway.

EDIT: My bible supports this feature. It sounds like a slightly better Microsoft Sam and it turns the page and keeps on going. Not a terrible feature, but I think I'll stick to reading.

There are some graphical "glitchiness" while moving the cursor quickly, but it really isn't bothersome.

The battery last for freaking ever. I partly charged in Christmas morning. And this morning it still has over half it's life left.

Anyway, if you have a Kindle or another product of the like, tell me how you feel about it. What features do you like or dislike?

Samsung Moment

Finally, if you remember my previous post about Sprint you'll remember that I was supposed to get my phone today!

Well, yes and no. I was lied to again. I was unable to purchase my phone from the Sprint store... But, after calling up Sprint and complaining yet again, they finally said that I could buy my phone over the phone (ironic I think) and get the discounts.

Whatever, I'm just happy that I'm finally getting the phone I want! Now I got to wait 2-5 business days to get it, and the lady told me it would be here no later then December 22nd. So I'm hoping to get it before January 1st.

As soon as I get it, I'll be documenting my experience with it and I'll let you know how it goes!

Giddy as a school girl,
-Ryan Whited.

Beagle Board Carputer

In case you haven't heard, Texas Instruments and Digi-Key have come together to create an amazing product called the Beagle Board.

What's so amazing you ask?

For a mere 150 dollars, you can get an entire computer. Albeit you have to do a lot of work to get it up and running.

Carputer systems are not a very popular mod for obvious reasons. You have to rig up a power supply, have a touch screen or voice activated interface, run the sound to your speakers, etc etc.

However, I am going to take on this challenge. Well, I'm going to wait until spring, but then I'm talking on this challenge.

Probably the most important thing I need to decide is what operating system I'm going to run on it. It can't be a conventional operating system because of the ARM architecture. That does leave me with a few things though. I could go with Windows CE (yeah right) or Android (a good possibility) or I could build it my self from Gentoo or Debian (Gentoo has a much better chance).

What I'm really hoping for is an Arch Linux port to ARM by the time I start my project. Some progress has been made over at Arch Mobile but it looks like the project may have died.

Oh well, I guess I can live with Gentoo or Android if I have to.

So let's over the two most likely options, here are some Pros and Cons:

Gentoo

Pros
I'll be able to build it how I want.
It'll be highly optimized and incredibly fast and compact.
Incredible documentation.

Cons
I've done a Gentoo install in a VirtualBox. It takes forever... I can't imagine how long it'll take on an ARM processor

Android

Pros
Already set up.
Probably easy to install.

Cons
Can't use Google apps (you have to have a license) this includes the app store.
Not sure how I'd compile programs on to it.
I don't think the interface would be that great as a carputer.

Ah well, I got plenty of time to come up with a solution.