This event was housed in a townhouse-sized building which spanned two storeys. In it, there were many games, usually with the developers alongside to answer any questions and to sell you their merchandise.
I tried out a [...]]]>
Queer games. Both in the "LGBTQ" and "weird" sense.
The Bit Bazaar Winter Market hosts a small exhibition of indie games, comic books and art in Toronto.
This event was housed in a townhouse-sized building which spanned two storeys. In it, there were many games, usually with the developers alongside to answer any questions and to sell you their merchandise.
The first floor
I tried out a few games there, and they ranged from awesome to weird.
Oculus Rift: what a toaster looks like on your face.
The most interesting thing was the Oculus Rift. This is a headset that has two monitors in it, each for an eye. With head tracking that allows you to physically control your point of view. If you look right, your game looks right. This allows you to be completely immersed in the game, as if you were in the game.
The Canadian interpretation of Papers, Please.
There were many other games on display at the Bit Bazaar. Featured on the left is a game called I Get This Call Every Day by David S. Gallant. In it, you work in a call centre and assist your customers to get what they want done. The customer, unfortunately, is erratic and uncooperative. Gallant said that this reflected his experience as a call center serviceman.
GoldenGearGames's latest project, "Fate Tectonics".
Golden Gear’s booth had a new game to show called Fate Tectonics. One of its developers, Alex Bethke, explained to me how it was supposed to be played, but I forgot all of it. Maybe if I can get my hands on the game…
Alex Bethke, one major part of Golden Gear.
"Pipe Trouble" by GoldenGearGames is Pipeline with a Canadian twist. After playing this game, you become more sympathetic to Enbridge
But Golden Gear had another game there. This game is called Pipe Trouble and it played a lot like the good ol’ 90′s Pipeline, except it has a storyline and you have to balance out the interests of your boss and of the community’s. Typical middle-rank job problems of trying to please everyone but failing every time.
In the process of building the pipelines from start to end, you must try to avoid building over wildlife, farms or trees. Or protesters will come out in droves to hinder you. You must not go over a pre-set allocated budget when laying your pipe tiles, or your boss will fume.
Pictures!
More queer game-art. Arielle Grimes's game about tits hurting. The goal of this game is to amuse yourself by pushing your cursor over the nipple and clicking. A random joke message appears.
Arielle Grimes in front of her booth.
Cool wall of cutesy stuff
wow.
Jazz Punk is a humorous adventure game where you must solve puzzles in a hilariously coloured world with funny guns, funny NPCs and many other subtle jokes.
Beat Patrol, a game involving dodging bullets, and shooting bullets to a musical rhythm.
Just wanted to ask my loyal readers whether netbookist.com is too wide for their netbooks, so much so that you get a horizontal scrollbar.
On my netbook, I don’t have such a problem, but a kind reader has mentioned that he has such a problem on his netbook. I currently use a 1024×600 resolution [...]]]>
Is it too... wide? (That's not what she said)
HI!
Just wanted to ask my loyal readers whether netbookist.com is too wide for their netbooks, so much so that you get a horizontal scrollbar.
On my netbook, I don’t have such a problem, but a kind reader has mentioned that he has such a problem on his netbook. I currently use a 1024×600 resolution netbook.
So… is it just me or is Netbookist too wide that you have a horizontal scrollbar?
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Ooo, I received an email.
Today I received in the mail a question from a reader, and like most email that I receive it’s about questions on how to run netbook games. Unfortunately, the latest email has an issue with No One Lives Forever 2. I, unfortunately, am unable to fix this, so I’m opening it to the readers we receive.
Hi Corporal,
I’m writing to you in the hope of getting some information regarding a rather strange issue with NOLF2, which i am trying to run on the following rig:
Atom n550
Gma 31502G DDR3250G HDD11,6 LCD (1366×768, so netbook resolutions are not relevant concerns for me)
When i attempt to start the game, it crashes back to desktop with an error message whining about the lack of hardware T&L support. The reason of it being strange is that i’m able to run Tron 2.0 out of the box (which not only requires hardware transform & lighting support, but it also uses the very SAME Litech engine as NOLF2, not to mention that tron2 has an enhanced version of the engine with higher sys.req’s and still it plays smoothly).
I have encountered this problem back on my Fujitsu U9200 subnote. Back then, i found a GMA gaming forum on which i was recommended an unofficial version of the GMA driver, that worked fine, but the mentioned U9200 had a GMA 3000 GPU and with this 3150 unit, this unofficial driver generates other issues.
This T&l problem was encountered under both XP and Win7 starter.
Please, if you know anything about this issue or have a hint on resolving it, let me know. Thanks in advance and congratulations for your netbook gaming blog!
Tamás Csóti
He mentions that, “this is the site where i found the unofficial driver which worked with the GMA 3000 chip: http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/860946/all”
If you have help to offer, post it on comments or email us at [email protected] .
]]>“Facebook has gotten out of control,” said Zuckerberg in a press conference outside his Palo Alto office, “and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put [...]]]>
No Facebook by next year? If you believe the world will end in December 2012, maybe.
PALO ALTO, CA –Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be shut down in March of 2012. Managing the site has become too stressful.
“Facebook has gotten out of control,” said Zuckerberg in a press conference outside his Palo Alto office, “and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all the madness.”
Zuckerberg went on to explain that starting March 15th of next year, users will no longer be able to access their Facebook accounts. That gives users (and Facebook addicts) a year to adjust to life without Facebook.
“After March 15th, 2012 the whole website shuts down,” said Avrat Humarthi, Vice President of Technical Affairs at Facebook. “So if you ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the internet. You won’t be able to get them back after Facebook goes out of business.”
Zuckerberg said the decision to shut down Facebook was difficult, but that he does not think people will be upset.
“I personally don’t think it’s a big deal,” he said in a private phone interview. “And to be honest, I think it’s for the better. Without Facebook, people will have to go outside and make real friends. That’s always a good thing.”
Source: weeklyworldnews.com
There has been rumors of Facebook shutting down and it’s something that at one immediate glance, seems like complete bull excrement. Why?
- Facebook has said nothing at all since March.
- Why isn’t the BBC, NYT and other more credible newspaper all over it already if it were true?
- The first place you probably got to know of it was on Facebook itself, just not from Zuckerberg himself.
Netbook games... still thrilling as ever
It has been less than a month since Netbookist was started and I realised one fact – netbooks are not merely little playthings that you use to get online and then chuck it aside for a more powerful computer. No doubt, a netbook has its limitations which can rear its ugly head when you play post-2004 games, but then again, if you play games that are pre-2004, you will find that the netbook is a great portable device for entertainment on-the-go.
From the perspective of a hardcore gamer, the likes of Crysis, Far Cry 2 and Mafia II might have put you in a spot where you have very high expectations for graphics, and playing a decade-old game can be a bit daunting and intolerable. And reality is, with a netbook, you cannot expect too much – the average Intel integrated graphics chip only has the power of a 1999 GeForce 256, and the processing power is more or less around that of a 2003 Intel chip.
Perhaps the best representation of this reality is a girlfriend or wife.. At 21, your wife looked great, but give it a decade and often a times, she’ll be like what Deus Ex or Diablo looks like vis-a-vis contemporary game. But as much as it might not be a eye-popping experience anymore, what actually keeps the game fresh is what’s deeper than on the skin of it. Deus Ex, Diablo, Starcraft and many other examples have shown that the game might have dated graphics but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t enjoyable. I don’t think anyone would laud how good Starcraft looks like today, but even with the release of Starcraft II, many people still are on the original Starcraft. Why? Because it is still fun to play. Because there’s still a hardcore community with which you can enjoy the game. Because of the fact that Blizzard built a game that on fundamentally sound principles – some principles include having a good storyline (Deus Ex, Mafia), open-endedness (The Sims), or a great online community (Warcraft 3, because of DOTA).
The best part of playing netbook games is that you know exactly what you want to play, and usually these games come really cheap. Think Terraria, Deus Ex, Diablo 2, or Half Life. Generally, these games can be had for less than $10, and they still can suck you in for hours on hours just like they did when they were new. A good game never dies because of age, and the best part of classics is that you can easily run them on a netbook, and have fun on-the-go – on the plane, in the hotel and while commuting. Netbooks are not merely net-books.
For a full list of games and how to run them, head over to L.O.G.G.O.N.
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Though netbooks have waned a bit in favor of tablet devices, there’s still a lot of demand for netbooks and netbook-friendly Linux distros in certain circles. Whether you’re looking for a brand-new netbook or to keep an older device current, there’s plenty of options for the Linux crowd. Let’s take a look at the top five netbook Linux distros.
A lot has happened in the last year for netbook distributions, and there have been quite a few changes in our selection for 2011 compared to the 2010 line-up of best Linux netbooks.
What happened? Well, a couple of releases that weren’t quite ready for release yet finally hit the shelves. On top of that, a few releases sort of disappeared. The gOS release went offline and is now considered discontinued. Puppy Linux is still going strong, but with the current crop of netbook releases, it didn’t look quite as attractive this year as one of the suggestions.
In this article, Ubuntu, MeeGo, Chrome OS, Fedora 15 and OpenSUSE are compared with a summary by Joe Brockmeier. And no, you can’t download Chrome OS but you can get a Chrome OS lookalike called Hexxeh Flow.
I personally recommend you try out the Ping-EEE OS, a derivative of the Pingguy OS, made especially for netbooks.
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The key point in attain good posture is to elevate the monitor such that it is at the same level as your eyes. Photo: Aaron Tang
The netbook is a miracle and increasingly, I find that it is really a great thing to have around, ever since embarking on my quest to find out whether a netbook can be used as a main computer. So far, it has been great, except for a few annoyances, such as having a small screen, or occasional slowdowns when trying to do too much. As Sisoft Sandra exclaimed, I’m using 75% of my physical RAM and 80% of my paging file! And that’s without running too many things out of the ordinary. Perhaps it’s because of the increasing bulk of software these days – Firefox is fat, your antivirus program is fat and even Explorer is obese. But besides this, I have little qualms, especially since I can take the computer around to wherever I want without having to worry about battery power.
However, long hours using a netbook on the desk is a bit taxing on the body. For one, most laptops are integrated machines, whereby every peripheral is placed into a single unit. That includes the monitor, keyboard, mouse and the other innards. And if you’ve noticed, using a netbook requires you to tilt the screen quite significantly backwards, as opposed to a desktop monitor or a laptop with a fat base and larger monitor. The corollary lies in the fact that with the screen tilted far backwards, your head would be positioned in a way whereby it is ‘staring down’ on the netbook. Or you would be hunched downwards to lessen the ‘staring down’ syndrome. Either way, one part of your body has to ‘give’ and tilt forwards to look at the laptop in a diagonal line.
For all that small-sized marketing, they don't tell you that the smaller your computer, the poorer your posture. Photo: Ianus
From a physiological point of view, you’ll want the screen to be further away and level with your eyes. In this case, you won’t be straining your spine and neck with the weight of your head, because when the centre of gravity of the head is in front of your shoulders, you start putting strain on these two structures. But the problem lies in the fact that a netbook (or any other notebook) has its keyboard attached to the display, therefore, you are stuck having to adapt your posture to it, rather than the other way round, and it is also because of this that almost always, your posture will not be ideal.
You can’t merely put a pile of books on the netbook and raise the display up to eye level. That won’t work because you’ll have problems typing without having to support the weight of your hands. And particularly with a netbook, you can’t slope the netbook’s base diagonally to raise the height of the display, because you’ll have to slope it very steeply, given the size of a netbook.
The best way to make the netbook a main computer that doesn’t harm you day-by-day is to adopt the use of an external keyboard and mouse, or an external monitor. Either one of this will separate the keyboard, mouse and monitor, giving you greater flexibility towards getting the right posture.
Since most external monitors are perched on a stand a few inches off the surface, that immediately allows you to view the monitor at eye-level. And at the same time you will gain other benefits such as greater resolution so you don’t have to deal with a tiny screen. In fact, I’d recommend this route because of the greater productivity benefits and with a dual-monitor setup, you can do a lot more than you can with a single screen.
Of course, if you choose the alternative route, which is the one whereby you use an external keyboard and mouse, you will not gain the same benefits as having a separate monitor, but you can easily stack the netbook on a pile of books or build your own netbook stand to elevate the display to eye-level. Given the limited USB slots, however, what I’d recommend is a keyboard + mouse combo receiver, that way you can work wirelessly and keep clutter out of your desk, while only needing to take up one USB slot. A side note is that with a wireless keyboard/mouse, you can use your netbook in more places. I periodically use my netbook in bed to surf, and it works when you have a wireless mouse.
Watch this little video for a quick explanation:
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Joichi Ito. Source: Joi
The newly named director of the prestigious Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Joichi Ito, 44, summarises his thoughts on Apple in three words – “Apple will die”. The Japanese entrepreneur, investor and activist of the web is also a ferocious apologist of open source, freeware and web neutrality.
Speaking at a conference in Madrid, Ito considers that Apple has established a reign based on a closed network and noted that, on the other hand, the open source Android built by Google, is gaining its foothold. Ito believes that the reason why Apple has gain its privileged position in recent years is due to Jobs attacking Microsoft at its weakest in recent years.
The chairman of the board of directors of Creative Commons and member of the Mozilla Foundation is a leading thinker and analyst of the role of the Internet as an engine of transformation of society.
Ito believes in the possibilities that can be garnered from collaborative use of information, and insisted in the dangers of large internet businesses, like Google and Facebook, when they grow a lot in size, “Monopoly is the vehicle of the lack of innovation”.
The Japanese entrepreneur has discussed some of the research being developed at MIT and told of how research in emotion recognition systems designed for use with autistic children recently found applications in worlds like advertising.
Lauding the possibilities that technology contribute to participatory democracy, Ito declared that “We are still at a very early stage of the digital revolution.”
“[Open source] will always end up winning.”
Source: elpais.com Translated with human and computerised translation. May not be absolutely accurate.]]>
The APPP-founder is the [...]]]>
The APPP website
The latest development in Swiss politics is the most bizarre of them all. A new political party, going by the name of Anti PowerPoint Party (APPP) is now spreading news on its political agenda: promote the demotion of the use of PowerPoint presentations, and to promote the use of the flip-chart.
The APPP-founder is the Swiss public speaking trainer Matthias Poehm who says: “I have an operating principle that always helps me: I don’t want to be right, I only want the best result. Over 14 years of public speaking training I have noticed that the use of the flip-chart beats PowerPoint in 95 of 100 cases. This is not wishful thinking on my part but proven experience.”
The APPP is part international movement and part political party. Officially, it is a political party in Switzerland, where any citizen of the world can be a party member by signing up.
The APPP wants to participate in the Swiss national elections in October and win at least one seat. Here again, the goal is to attract media attention to the topic. It aims to be the fourth largest Swiss political party with a membership of 33,000. Currently, the APPP has 512 members.
Videos
Introduction to APPP
Poehm on why the flip-chart is more effective than PowerPoint
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Back in the day this cost $60. Ouch
These days, all netbooks come with an internal memory card reader, specifically, most come with an SD card reader, and the best thing about this is that you probably have an SD card already because it’s used by devices such as cameras, MP3 players, smartphones (microSD can be converted) and other devices with expandable storage.
Often a times, we won’t be using that slot. And ever since Windows Vista came out, the ReadyBoost feature has been a key component is increasing the performance of Windows without major upgrading. All you need is a solid-state memory device, such as a USB thumb drive, or a SD card. Microsoft suggests that the minimum requirements for a suitable ReadyBoost device is…
- Capacity of at least 256 MB, with at least 64 kilobytes (KB) of free space.The 4-GB limit of Windows Vista has been removed.
- At least a 2.5 MB/sec throughput for 4-KB random reads
- At least a 1.75 MB/sec throughput for 1-MB random writes
ReadyBoost works by complementing a standard hard drive. By combining the advantages of a SSD – minimal lag when reading fragmented data, and the advantage of a hard drive – faster when reading sequential data, ReadyBoost promises gains in performance, especially on load times.
ReadyBoost might not be the most useful thing for powerful desktops or notebooks, but because netbooks usually come with pathetic RAM (1gb) and Windows Starter would only accept 2gb, ReadyBoost comes in really handy when your RAM is full and Windows is loading increasingly more stuff to the paging file, which will significantly slow down your system. By using the flash drive as an intermediary between RAM and the paging file, you get better performance all without opening the innards of your netbook.
Enabling ReadyBoost
ReadyBoost: putting good use to 5-year old 1gb cards
Go to Computer in the start menu and right-click on the SD card’s volume and click Properties. Then, find the tab ReadyBoost, click either Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost or Use this deviceif you intend to store other stuff on it.
Do note that on FAT32 file systems, the maximum amount of ReadyBoost cache is 4gb while on NTFS, it is 32GB.
Done! Windows will create the cache file and use your SD card as a ReadyBoost cache.
Tips
- ReadyBoost will operate best if your netbook has a slow hard drive (rating 4.0 or below on the Windows Experience Index, or is a 5400-rpm drive)
- A flash drive on a fast bus will greatly benefit caching speeds. Ideally, this is a hard-wired SD Card reader rather than a USB thumb drive.
- The corollary from the previous point is that the faster your card stores data, the faster your caching.
- Everyone will benefit from ReadyBoost, it’s a matter of how much.
- RAM will still beat ReadyBoost.
Slot it in for a ReadyBoost
And Finally…
The reason why I recommend using a SD card instead of a USB thumb drive is because of the fact that the latter sticks out like a sore thumb, and can be damaged when moving or disconnected, or lost. A SD card stuck right in the chassis of the netbook has a lot lesser chance. And then again, the slot’s never used most of the time.
The reason why I recommend using a SD card instead of a USB thumb drive is because of the fact that the latter sticks out like a sore thumb, and can be damaged when moving or disconnected, or lost. A SD card stuck right in the chassis of the netbook has a lot lesser chance. And then again, the slot’s never used most of the time.
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