Source: http://xkcd.com/835/

Take a look at his blog

Very funny game indeed, even if played at the lamest difficulty.

I had forgotten the weird aliens in the final mission

The CD is mildly scratched, and the cover label is missing, but…

<lazyness>I’m going to print it one of these days…</lazyness>

Here’s a flash reincarnation of the game: very crappy, though, looks like a draft…

I also made a couple of videos
(very low video volume, and poor quality sorry about that
it was the best I could get from my 5800XM…)

The whole bargain was made of:

• Gran Turismo (Platinum);
• Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Battle 22 (French);
• Metal Slug X;
• a PlayStation Multitap

I already had backup copies of both GT and DBZ, but they were so cheap ^_^ the lot cost me 3.92€! LOL

GameStop looks much cheaper than ebay when it comes to not-so-recent-neither-so-old games.

Right now there’s only the first part of my first creation: the “PC-in-a-box”.

So… take a look here!

Curious about Rube Goldberg?

He was a multifaceted American artist, Pulitzer winner, mostly famous for his drawings of incredible machines projected for futile purposes.

A funny example of real Rube Goldberg machines is “ピタゴラ装置” (Pitagora Sōchi, which means “Pythagorean Devices”), part of the educational tv show “ピタゴラスイッチ”(Pitagora Suichi, “Pythagora Switch”), which is aired in Japan by NTT.

Changelog (partial):

• Kinetic scrolling in the menu – no more penis envy for us non-iPhone or Android users
• Version updates for browser, Ovi Store, Ovi Contacts, Ovi Maps, Ovi Sync, Ovi Music, Ovi Here and Ova There
• New music player – IMHO a lot better than before, now it shows the covers in the playlist and also seems slightly faster
• Integration to Quick Office v4.2 – only for some models (depending on product code, I assume), mine was not included
• Camera quality improvement – nothing noticeable for me

Here’s also a video of the “tube” after the upgrade…

I agree with the author of this video, which comments almost every feature (in a very funny engrish accent) with “It’s quite awesome”!

DISCLAIMER:

I know this stuff is old (Ubuntu 10.04 is coming soon) and probably you can find better guides online.

I just wanted to upload here some content from my old site .

FYI, I am not currently using the VAIO, but I’d like to suggest you some resources if you want to successfully install linux on your classy laptop:

• https://launchpad.net/~sony-vaio-z-series
• http://0xc0dedbad.com/blog/2010/01/30/dual-boot-linux-and-windows-7-on-sony-vaio-z/
• http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=325616

Requirements:

• A VAIO Z (mine is model Z11MN/B) with Windows XP installed (if you have Vista or 7, you have to downgrade it before);
• An empty CD rom;
• A bunch of spare hours… And some good music

Instructions:

• Get and ISO image of Ubuntu 9.04 (you can choose between 32 and 64 bit versions – I personally recommend the 64 bit edition if you have 4 GB of RAM);
• Burn it onto a cd and put it in the drive;
• Reboot and follow the installation instructions;
• After having completed the full installation of Ubuntu, put the graphics switch on “SPEED” position, then reboot XP;
• Reboot again into Ubuntu and see if the small green led is on “SPEED” (otherwise, reboot again XP and retry);
• Open a terminal and type:
  sudo su

  (this will let you log in as superuser, as the following command lines are to be executed as superuser)

  • cp /proc/acpi/dsdt DSDT
  • apt-get install iasl
  • iasl -d DSDT
  • gedit DSDT.dsl
• Now look for a line containing:
  Store (0x03E8, OSYS)
• Replace it with:
  Store (0x07D6, OSYS)
• iasl -tc DSDT
• cp DSDT.aml /etc/initramfs-tools/DSDT.aml
• dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-$(uname -r)
• Now, after a reboot with XP, you’ll have just the Intel card enabled, without needing to reboot XP anymore to switch it.

After this procedure, the backlight won’t be adjustable unless you add this:

• gedit /etc/init.d/mybacklight.sh
• Write on it:
  #!/bin/sh
  xrandr –output LVDS –set BACKLIGHT_CONTROL legacy
• Save and exit from gedit;
• chmod a+x /etc/init.d/mybacklight.sh
• update-rc.d mybacklight.sh defaults

Still to fixup:

• F5, F6 keys won’t work for backlight adjusting, nor will the S1, S2 and DVD eject buttons;
• Other minor features are not yet supported.

References / credits:

• Shift/Reduce blog (thank you rfer!);
• NotebookReview Forum;
• How to create a startup script on Ubuntu (in Italian).

Here you will find something about me and my projects.

Enjoy!

Luca