After hours of trying to figure out what to make with my peggy and over a dozen design concepts with the peggy planner,  I finally settled. The LEDs came in today and I put together my Peggy. My bill of materials was the following:

• Red LEDs used: 73
• Green LEDs used: 79
• White LEDs used: 18
• Yellow LEDs used: 35

And without further ado, my peggy:

 

Yep, I went the whole game sprite route and made me a metroid!  I have a few more peggy planner designs I’ll probably end up posting pics and the source for sooner or later. Drop me a line if you like it and check out the rest of the pics in my flickr pool. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dethfactor

I was playing Lost Odyssey and stumbled upon the recipe in a book in a the house of Sanuman, in the city of Namura. The recipe/description is as follows:Great Snacks for Kids! Sweet, fluffy steamed cakes are a hit among children everywhere. Add in some fruit for a novel delight. Ingredients:

• Eggs
• Milk
• Sugar
• Flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• Fruits (as many as you like)

First, sift the flour and baking powder. Mix the eggs, milk, sugar and salt in a bowl and beat well, then blend in sifted flour and baking powder.Cut the fruit into small pieces and work into the mix, leaving a small amount to decorate the finished cake later. Put the mix into molds and place into the steamer.Put in a toothpick and check if it comes out clean. If it does, the steam cake is done. Dress it up with various colorful fruits to dazzle your children. Best served hot with tea.Not sure what the ratios for ingredients but if I have a spare moment I’ll look up and possibly make steam cakes for shits and giggles and post the results. 

I had a few hours to kill tonight so I updated the “Peggy” Planner to a proper version 1.0! Thanks that got changed/added:

•  New Layout and Design
• Added Instant Color Swatches (more to come!)
• Added a LED counter (to show how many you have left)
• Allowing to use in-between spaces to place LEDs (per-recommendation)
• Added Instructions

Thanks to Windell from evilmadscience.com for the advice on the upgrades and making a kickass product!Also, I updated the ATHF peggy dump in the last post to coincide with the updated system. Enjoy 

So I was stumbling across the intertubes when I came across an awesome DIY site called Evil Mad Science. Who happen to have a bunch of kits including a really amazing motion controlled coffee table kit. I also came across a 12″ x 15″ LED light board called Peggy. I fell instantly in love and was drooling with anticipation as to what crazy LED light board I can come up with. So I went ahead and bought one and I suggest you do too! Link to Peggy Anyway, right after I bought it I realized I had no idea what I was going to make with it and how I was going to plan for it. So I spent my Sunday putting together a quick little web app specifically for planning out my Peggy. So I figured I’d share: Link to Peggy Planner Here are some pics and for those ATHF fans out there here’s the dump code of our favorite Boston scaring friend:  Read more »

It’s been a while and with the new year I planned on writing game reviews. I intended on reviewing Assassins Creed and Resistance:Fall of Man but fate hadn’t allowed me to write reviews for each game after I completed them, so here’s the quick and dirty versions:   

Assassins Creed
 I actually really liked Assassins Creed… for like the first hour or so. Then after realizing that the developers applied more time detailing the game with pigeon crap (an award should be given to this game for the amount of bird feces in it) than actually expanding the gameplay beyond a simple flow chart (fig. right) I was thoroughly annoyed. This happened till the last level, in which the gameplay changed to a large battle royale which albeit was strange considering most of the game forced you to be inconspicuous, but regardless the ending was such a departure from the soul ruining game itself that the reprieve made me actually like the ending. It’s sort of like being on a date with a really annoying girl who ends up pleasantly surprising at the end of the night with concert tickets to your favorite band. You now have a second date and there’s something you might be able to get behind, but you’re still not quite so sure.  On a final note, I hate it when the story of a game is dictated by marketing executives. In AC, they begin to develop the story that the main character was just a lowly bartender whose ancestry just happened to be a renowned assassin, but I guess that wasn’t badass enough so that had to make him an assassin himself which doesn’t effect the damn game at all. I think I might’ve stood behind the main character if he wasn’t an instant badass and I got a chance to watch him develop to one. 

 Resistance: Fall of Man
Before I owned a PS3, I played Resistance a few times in retail stores to get a little taste as to what the big black beast has to offer. Needless to say I’ve tasted better things in my time and I’m glad I rented this game. Not so much that its horrible or anything of that sort, it’s just so unremarkable. Resistance controls and has the esthetics of something like a call of duty game, well the WWII call of duty games. It has interesting art and things going on at times, but the level design gets repetitive and a lot of “cool” moments end way to quickly to properly enjoy.  The game does have some merit though, but it doesn’t ring home anything revolutionary. The enemies lack any type of substance as they all are cookie-cutter and have the same weapons, the only variation is later in the game when one enemy type who you’ve killed thousands of times before gets different colored plasma bullets that do extra damage. You of course get the upgrade which just makes the gunfights a little more duck and shoot. All in all I’m interested to see whats going on in the sequel but if it doesn’t show a significant change in enemy types and weapons I think I’ll rent it just as the first. Lastly, I ended up testing the multiplayer a few times after I beat it and it seemed like it had some potential but everyone online playing was having an internet bitch war calling each other “fags” and the like and was too annoying to really get through a match. Better luck next time.  

Just got through the holiday crunch and came out unscathed.  The pedal project is on hold as I’m waiting for the pedal itself to be modified hopefully by the end of the week. So I decided to start planning out an upgrade for a very old project of mine: http://www.videogamewallofshame.com   The wall of shame pays homage to an actual wall of shame that my co-retailer cohorts and I scribed on a bathroom wall when working for a major video game retailer. I’ll have some updates soon.

So I got the wise idea to put together my own RockBand bass drum pedal due a group of my friends breaking there’s. I found a few posts in message boards explaining how to build one using a Radio Shack push button switch and a real drum pedal and I decided to take that idea and a page from the actual RB pedal and use a magnetic reed switch. This is a prototype using quick components and lots of tape. 

 The prototype uses:

• 1/8″ mono audio jack connector from RS -  Link to Part on Radio Shack
• 1A SPST magnetic reed switch, NO (default open) - Link to Part at Jameco 
•  Wire - Link to Part on Radio Shack
• Rare Earth Magnets - Link to Part on Radio Shack
• Bass Drum Pedal - Link to Search on eBay

 Now I need to build an enclosure for the reed switch/wiring assembly, clean up the wiring, solder everything together add a mounting bracket so I can attach it to the drums and get a better/bigger magnet. I’ll post another video and better instructions when I get a more finalized version put together. 

The other evening I was visiting a friend of mine and while surfing through the on demand movie trailers, we had stumbled upon the most fascinating film title I have ever laid my eyes upon. The reason I say fascinating is that this title fascinates me as to how the hell people in Hollywood let this slide and get released under this handle. That’s right, in an age with such tactless movie titles such as “Snakes on a Plane”, great mother Hollywood brings you Midnight Meat Train. Yes, you read correct, Midnight Meat Train. I have to give it to them, I don’t think I’ve ever blacked out from laughing at a film title before but seriously, what the fuck were they thinking? I realize that the films story is derived from a Clive Barker short story of the same name but Midnight Meat Train? Why didn’t they change it to the main characters name or something like Photo Meat Slasher or Subway Death Car. After watching the trailer and nearly pissing myself when the announcer mouthed the title I have very little interest in seeing this film other than for the title itself. The plot (or lack there of) seems to be lifted from an Eli Roth film and grafted to a subway train where a half assed photographer takes photos of women being butchered by the g-man from half-life. The only recognizable face in the film was Brooke Shields where she gives a half deflated performance of telling the main character they’ve failed at photographing the city. [pic]

Upon further research it seems they’ve gotten a Japanese action/horror director Ryuhei Kitamura to lead this crap pile along the track. Which mildly interests me in the film more as he’s directed two films I have a mild fondness for; Versus and Azumi. I guess I’ll find out when the Midnight Meat Train stops at my closest station in 2008.  Fuck that sounds like dialog from a gay porn.

Last week my friend’s RockBand bass drum pedal split down the center from usage. Another friend of mine who works with steel quite a bit came up with this rather interesting and diesel solution. I was so impressed I had it done to my pedal as well.

Before Mod:

After Mod:

Thats right! He bolted a custom cut metal plate to the fucking thing! Not only did it fix my friend’s split pedal and reinforce mine but the weight of the plate actually makes it a bit easier to play! If anyone reading this is interested in this mod contact me here [menarchist(at)destituteagenda(dot)com] and we’ll figure something out.

Hmm… Makes sense to me.