A few weeks ago, I picked up 20 NFC tags. But what to do with them? I know, let's make something impractical! I had this gorgeous Barret Biggers - Link Blot poster which had lain in a drawer for far too long. So I turned it into an Amiibo. Nestled in the corner, sandwiched between the print and the glass, is an NTAG215 chip. Using the open source TagMo app for Android, I've written the data of one of my Nintendo amiibo to the chip. Now, in the middle of an epic battle on Breath of the…
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I'm playing through the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. You can follow along with all my game reviews. I like puzzle games, and Minit has a unique twist. You only have 60 seconds to complete each action. But, before we get onto the review, here's how to get it running on Linux. Linux Download the minit_linux.zip file to your Downloads directory. Download libssl_1.0.0_32-bit.tar.gz and put it in the same directory as the game archive. Install play.it Once you've installed…
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DO NOT PUT WIFI DEVICES UP YOUR BUM! OR ANYONE ELSE'S BUM! Right, with that disclaimer out of the way, here's my review of the DDENDOCAM Snake Camera - a 2 metre long, endoscope style camera. People send me the weirdest stuff to review! Video Here's me investigating my sink drain. Aren't you glad you read my blog, eh? https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ssstwitter.com_1719569819642.mp4 Full Twitter thread with bonus videos Here's a less disturbing video showing beneath…
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I'm playing through the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. You can follow along with all my game reviews. The thing about EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER is that it is EXTREME. And it is so EXTREME that it feels a little like a tweenager shouting about how bad-ass they are. The story aesthetic is gorgeous. Brilliant mix of cartoon and ASCII art. I'm not good with controls. I found moving the mouse in one direction while navigating my MEATPUNK MECH in another to be a bit confusing.…
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I'm playing through the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. You can follow along with all my game reviews. How many people have you killed in a video game? Thousands? At least. But how many funerals have you performed in game? Hardly any. It's hard to describe A Mortician's Tale as a game. It is a lovely experience where you play a new employee of a funeral home. The game is, literally, preparing the corpses and dealing with the families of the deceased. Parts of the gameplay…
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I was working in the mobile phone industry just as smartphones were taking off. I saw the Palm Pilot rise and fall. I witnessed NEC and Sagem and a host of companies launch smartphones and then disappear. But the greatest tragedy of them all was Nokia and their Symbian Operating System. (Actually, Symbian's ownership and relationship with Nokia is complex. But let's gloss over that for now.) Symbian was, for its time, a brilliant OS. It ran 3D games smoothly, had terrific hardware support, a…
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I'm playing through the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. You can follow along with all my game reviews. Night in the Woods is a cute looking indie game, with one fatal flaw. Nothing happens in it. I gave the game an hour or so, and all I did was walk left and right and click next in the dialogue. There are a few dialogue options, but that doesn't alter the course of the game. I think I must be missing something. The game gets rave reviews... but for what? There are no c…
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A few months ago, UK supermarket Tesco released some flesh-toned sticking plasters. Whose flesh though? In this case, Tesco had them in a range of colours and shades. Because people come in all sorts of flavours. Naturally, some people (mostly old white dudes) were angry about this. Because they're angry about everything. Here's my "favourite" response: "normal coloured plaster". What is normal? In a statistical sense, we might say that it is the most common. But I don't think that's…
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I'm playing through the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. You can follow along with all my game reviews. This is the delightful indie game A Short Hike. I don't play many video games, because I find them arbitrary and confusing. They also go on far too long. But "Hike" is the perfect length. I completed it within 2 hours (I think - more on that later). Which, considering I paid $10 for a hundred games as part of the bundle, feels like good value for money! It's an open-world…
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We're in the age of endless conference calls. So I decided to spruce up my audio hardware. Sadly, I don't have the budget for a professional podcaster's microphone. Luckily, I was sent this cheapo model to review. And, I'm pleased to say, it's pretty good! Comes with a reasonably long USB cord, and a pop-shield. The mic is suspended in a little elastic harness so it doesn't pick up vibrations. It's fully adjustable - which is nice. And a has a removable spoffle. There's no LED to show if …
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Today is the longest daylight of the year. We had our new solar panels installed just after the vernal equinox - so now seems to be a good time to check in on how they're doing. (Who am I kidding - I look at their output several times per day!) Edent's Solar Panels@Edent_Solar AutomatedToday I generated 24.35kWh of solar electricity. pic.x.com/mrm4qn8uty❤️ 0💬 0♻️ 020:21 - Sat 20 June 2020 As of right now, they've generated 1.79 MegaWatt hours in total! You can view the live graph and you can…
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Some days, I want everyone on the Internet to wear this t-shirt: Designed using Guillaume Chabot's tool after the original 2K by Gingham - which has been parodied many times. Explaining the joke The Dunning–Kruger effect is - simply put - when people of low ability are over-confident in their ability. The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is less easy to put simply. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no u…
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