Websites:
KevinBecker.net: This website is still just this blog. I found a new, clean theme for the blog that I’m now using. It works well enough for now. I also cleaned up the sidebar widgets so it’s only things I actually use on there now.
The Zork Library: I don’t think I’ve mentioned it much here, but about 2.5 years ago I took over ownership of the Zork Library website from its previous owner, DAT. It’s a pretty quiet website, but there’s some discussions going on periodically and it’s the only actively maintained website about Zork left, so I feel it’s important to keep it alive. I post anything new related to Zork that I find.
Zork Install Guides: I continue to maintain guides for installing and running Zork games on modern operating systems, including smartphones. Nothing new to mention, but I continue adding support as new operating systems come along. I’m currently looking to hear how things run in Windows 8 since I don’t have access to it and I don’t see myself getting access anytime soon.
St. Benedict’s: I’m part of a team that maintains the website for St. Benedict’s Roman Catholic Church. I mainly do the technical stuff and others handle content. We’re using Joomla 2.5.x currently and it’s been a learning experience. Content Management Systems have come a long way since I last tried using them about 5 years ago.

Software Development:
Calspan: I’m not going to go into all the stuff that I’m doing at work, but I continue to learn a lot and have a good time working with cool tech. I’ve been using more Arch Linux at work and started working with Qt and OpenGL over the last year. We’ve also been investigating smaller form factor devices like the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone and Gumstix.
Douay-Rheims Bible: St. Benedict’s was looking for a way to reference scriptures without depending on a third-party that can (and often will) change their URLs causing link breakage. So I came up with a PHP-based bible viewer using some public domain HTML data of the Douay-Rheims translation that I found. It’s basic, but it handles URLs of the format http://saintbenedicts.com/bible/book/chapter:verse , http://saintbenedicts.com/bible/book/chapter or http://saintbenedicts.com/bible/book so that’s pretty neat. The fixed URL structure was the most important part to get correct right away. It’s not the prettiest interface, but that’ll be something I can clean up at a later time. We’ll probably do something similar for the Catechism of the Catholic Church sooner or later.
The Journey Down & Super Hexagon: I’ve been getting into beta testing indie games recently, starting with the Steam release for Windows and Linux of The Journey Down and now the Android release of Super Hexagon. Both are great games that I highly recommend. It’s not really software development, but software testing is close enough to that.
#onegameamonth: This is a game development initiative I’m interested in trying that encourages you to make one complete game each month in 2013. I’ll talk more about this in another post soon once I get my feet wet with my first project.

Cordy – Cordy is an excellent platform game with great controls, graphics, level design and puzzles. Reminds me of Sonic, but a little slower and with more puzzle solving. Note: This app requires Android 2.1 or higher.

DAAP Media Player – This app lets you stream music from DAAP servers like mt-daapd.

Google Reader – Google Reader is a great RSS reader on the web and this app syncs with it perfectly. It has an excellent interface for keeping track of the news.

Kongregate Arcade – Let’s you play lots of the great games from Kongregate on your phone. Note: This app requires Android 2.1 or higher, and Adobe Flash.

Launcher Pro – Like ADW, this is a home screen alternative. At the moment, I like it better than ADW, but they’re very similar. Give it a try!

ROM Manager – This app makes switching between ROMs quick and easy. Setup ROM installs, data wipes and data backups from this app, then it reboots to recovery and does it all for you automatically. You never have to bother with the recovery mode menus again! Note: This app requires root.

Current ROM: Cyanogenmod 7.0-RC4 (Vision)

Chrome to Phone – Send data from your web browser to your phone. Also requires Chrome to Phone extension for Chrome or Send to Phone extension for Firefox. WARNING: This app requires Android 2.2.

Droid Comic Viewer – Read comic books in cbz, cbr and other formats.

Dropbox – Full and fast dropbox access on your phone. It has a very simple interface and works exactly as I expect it should.

Mario LWP – Best Live Wallpaper Ever. WARNING: This app requires Android 2.1 or newer.

Mint.com – A simplified view of your finances from Mint.

SystemPanel Lite – A really slick task manager with pretty graphs. WARNING: This app’s task killing features are only supported on rooted phones.

Titanium Backup – If you use a rooted phone, Titanium Backup will make your life easier. Lots of functions related to backing up and restoring your apps and settings. If you buy a license for $3.99, you get automated batch processing, market cleanup and update.zip builder functions. WARNING: This app is only supported on rooted phones.

TweetDeck – This app is still in beta, but it’s a great app that supports Twitter, Facebook status messages, Google Buzz and Foursquare. It is very quick, slick and easy to use. Sign up for free access at the link provided. WARNING: This app requires Android 2.1 or newer (for now, future versions will support 1.5/1.6)

Where – This app has all the info you’ll need while you’re out places. Restaurants, Gas, Stores, Weather, and tons more. A very handy app to have.

Current ROM: CyanogenMod 6.0-RC3 D/S

AdFree – Block (almost) all advertisements from your phone. WARNING: This app only supports rooted phones.

ADW.Launcher – A replacement home screen. Allows for changing number of homescreens, number of apps in launcher drawer, live wallpapers, and few different launcher/animation styles. WARNING: This app only supports rooted phones with Android 2.1 or newer.

APNdroid – Completely turn off/on cellular data to better control your battery usage. WARNING: This app only supports rooted phones.

ASTRO – A very fast and simple file manager. Also has a task killer and an SD card usage analyzer built in.

aTrackDog – Track the latest updates of your apps, so you don’t have to rely on the android market to tell you. It’s also very useful if you use a lot of apps that aren’t in the android market.

CardioTrainer – Track your exercise (running, biking, etc.) with GPS. Includes a built in music player and voice notification of exercise statistics (pace, distance, etc.).

Facebook – It’s facebook on your phone. It’s most feature-complete, reliable and fast facebook app I’ve tried. Some people like Bloo better because its interface is a little simpler, but Bloo has been unreliable and slow for me.

Google Listen – There’s a lot of podcast players/downloaders out there, but I like listen because it syncs with Google Reader and has a simple interface. It crashes occasionally and hogs memory, but I haven’t found any other podcast app that doesn’t have those problems while being nearly as good as Listen.

Google Voice – It’s Google Voice. It has completely replaced my voicemail, very much so for the better. nuff said.

Last.fm – Last.fm on your phone. Again, nuff said.

MapDroyd – Maps without a data connection! Plus they’re rotatable and performance is much better.

MortPlayer – A great music player that doesn’t depend on building media libraries. I organize my music into folders myself and MortPlayer respects that choice. It is faster because it doesn’t need to scan my entire SD card to build a music library and uses my folder structure to navigate my music.

NewsRob – A simple and quick RSS reader.

Opera Mini – Similar to the built-in browser but faster, especially when having multiple pages open at once.

ScummVM – Play a lot of classic adventure games on your phone!

SetCPU – Change the processor speed of your phone for better speed or better battery life. WARNING: This app only supports rooted phones. It is $1.99 on the android market, but free from the developer’s website or XDA.

Shazam – Detects what song is playing around you. Hold it up to the radio to find out what you’re listening to.

Simon Tatham’s Puzzles – A large collection of fun puzzle games.

Tasker – Performs actions automatically based on contexts. I mainly use it to control ringer/media volume, vibration, screen brightness and wifi on/off based on place and time. Warning: This is a paid app. It has a 14 day free trial, but costs 3.49GBP (~$5) direct from the developer or (soon) 3.99GBP (~$6) on the android market. This is CHEAP for the awesome functionality you get.

Text Edit – This is a simple, but very functional text editor. I use it for quick notes and grocery lists. There’s not much to it, but that’s why I like it. It lets me get in, type some text and quickly save it.

Twidroid – The best twitter client on android.

Current ROM:  CyanogenMod 5.0.8 D/S

AdThwart – AdThwart is an ad blocker that ports parts of Adblock Plus from Firefox to Chrome. It’s still early in its development so it still doesn’t compare to Adblock Plus, but so far this seems to be the ad-blocking system with the most potential on Chrome.

Bit.ly Shorten Url – If you use Twitter much, you’re probably familiar with URL shorteners like bit.ly. This extension puts a button in your address bar that shortens the current page’s URL with bit.ly. Simple and effective.

Chromed Bird – A simple Twitter client that sits in the toolbar. It updates you with new tweets and allows you to tweet without going to the Twitter website.

ChromeMilk – A great client for Remember the Milk, the online to-do list software, that sits in the toolbar.

One Number – Addicted to Google? This extension keeps you up to date on GMail, Google Wave, Google Reader and Google Voice.

XMarks for Chrome – Chrome does incorporate Google Bookmarks, but I find XMarks gives much more control on what is synced and where, plus it works on more browsers. Just like XMarks’ extension on other browsers, this one syncs your bookmarks online for free and lets you choose which bookmarks are which computers.

youTagger and YouTube HTML5-ifier – Don’t like Flash, but like YouTube? No problem! These extensions replace the YouTube Flash Player with YouTube’s new HTML5-based player. The HTML5 player improves performance of YouTube videos and makes them less likely to crash the browser. I’m currently listing both extensions because each has an issue that could bug you. youTagger works everywhere but loads the low quality version of the video. YouTube HTML5-ifier loads the highest quality version of the video, but only works when directly on a YouTube video page, not on embedded YouTube videos or on YouTube User Channels.

Hopefully, proper high-granularity content blocking will be implemented soon so that real equivalents to Adblock Plus and NoScript on Firefox become possible.

A few of the things coming in the next week or so:

• Google Chrome Extensions Recommendations
• Real updates to my eBay page and new auctions
• Zork Guides website update and discussion on that topic
• Discussion on some of the recent computing-related topics I’ve been tweeting about

More topics to be featured here long-term:

• Android discussion (and maybe even an app I develop!)
• Google discussion (Chrome browser, Chome OS, Google Wave, etc)
• Operating Systems (recent releases, current trends)
• My 2010 Projects: Cleaning/Fixing my Xbox 360, Building a kitchen pc, a new desktop pc, other cool household projects, MAME cabinet (maybe)

It’s exciting to be working on the website again. I’ve had the web design itch for a while now and though this isn’t real web design (it’s manipulating WordPress and it’s themes/plugins to do my bidding), I may do some real web design again at some point in 2010. It’s a new decade after all!

Edit (12/11/09): Also, FYI: I’m cleaning up some of the old posts including the ones that are merely links to outdated eBay auctions, or posts that are no longer or any relevance.

One promising lead is that ScummVM has a work-in-progress port of the MADE engine, so Return to Zork can be played. It’s currently only available in their daily SVN builds, but once the engine is more stable, I’ll write up a guide for it. Because of the consistency of ScummVM cross-platform and the ease of use of the software, this guide will be appropriate for Windows XP/Vista, Linux and OS X without much difference between each version. A second development is the continued growth of Wine. Recently a patch was created that addresses one of the big bugs that get in the way of playing Zork Nemesis and Zork Grand Inquisitor on Linux and OS X. That patch isn’t in the main wine codebase yet, but once it is, I’ll revisit writing a guide for Zork Nemesis and Zork Grand Inquisitor on Linux. Mac OS X continues to be a problem because I can’t test on that system, but I have researched a few options that may allow for the games to be played on OS X and placed those links in the table of configurations on the website.

Lastly, I want to bring up a real piece of news in the Zork universe, probably the first real piece of news in a decade. Activision announced Wednesday that they’re working on a new Zork game called Legends of Zork. It will be a multiplayer adventure played through a web browser and will target iPhone so it will likely be JavaScript-based. More info can be found at Gamasutra and Forumopolis.

And happy new year to everyone!

I also upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, upgraded some old plugins, and installed some new ones. The main new thing you will notice are social links below each post. If you like what you’ve read, you can submit the article to one of the social media websites listed. I currently have buttons for Digg, Del.icio.us, Facebook, Google, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Pownce and Reddit. If you would like another website added, let me know. The plugin I use has a ton more options, but I only added the most common social media sites.

The guides are currently at http://www.kevinbecker.net/zorkguides and will soon be hosted on http://www.thezorklibrary.com as well. The project is a work in progress and needs help on the configurations I can’t test myself, mainly Mac OS X and Vista. Help with writing the guides and testing them, as well as comments and questions would be greatly appreciated!

When I first heard about the Wii, I thought that it would be a flop. Honestly, I thought that it was possible that Nintendo would go the way of Sega after Nintendo’s poor Gamecube sales if the next console was a financial failure. I certainly didn’t want to see Mario and Link in games of the poor quality of recent Sonic games, but then a funny thing happened. As we all know, the Wii is a hit, but it is a hit despite that it has all the things that gamers typically don’t want and doesn’t have all the things that gamers typically do want from the newest consoles. First, it has a gimmicky controller and multiple games that have their own attachments for the controller, plus the nunchuck and the classic controller. Historically, add-ons and special controllers don’t sell well. (See: Sega 32X, Nintendo Power Glove, Steel Battalion). Second, it has a completely new user interface. Nintendo tried new interfaces before with the Virtual Boy and it was one of the biggest disasters in Nintendo’s history. Third, the Wii isn’t capable of high definition picture resolutions, which was one of the big things gamers were excited about with this generation of consoles. Fourth, it has extremely poor online service for multiplayer with the abysmal friend code system that is so far behind Xbox Live or even the Playstation Network. All of these things made the Wii seem like a terrible idea to the typical hardcore gamer. The only things going for it are its lower price and the typical Nintendo franchises. These things held the GameCube afloat, but just barely. Even with all that, the Wii sold and isn’t stopping anytime soon. Beyond that, the Wii isn’t selling to hardcore gamers, at least not as much as previous consoles.

The Wii sets itself apart by selling to the people historically least likely to play video games… people over 40, women, and every other non-gamer demographic out there, including my parents. Not that it sold really poorly with gamers, it being a Nintendo console after all, but the percentage of hardcore gamers buying the Wii is probably less than any console ever. Let’s look at why this has happened. There are a few obvious reasons: the low price, the familiar Nintendo franchises and the hype of the console that no one can seem to find in stores. Beyond that, I think there’s two broad reasons in addition to those: the controler and the games, and both these reasons show interesting trends in gaming.

The Wii remote is the first motion sensitive video game controller to go mainstream. It’s the console controller with the fewest buttons since the original Nintendo Entertainment System’s controller from 1985 (counting the buttons on only the Wii remote, not any add-ons). One of the problems many people who are traditionally “non-gamers” have with games are the controls. The controllers and their buttons are not intuitive to them. They probably weren’t for me either, but I don’t remember back that far. Video game controllers have been second nature to my hands for more than 15 years, so I grew up with simpler controllers, simpler games and grew into today’s gaming control complexities. In addition to difficulties with the physical controller, navigating a 3D world is difficult for the uninitiated. The Wii gets around both these issues with its unique motion controls. Not only are there fewer buttons to learn, the act of controlling on screen movement is as simple as moving your hand. Rather than forcing your brain to translate your wishes to the control scheme of the buttons, your brain simply uses your already well developed muscle functions to control events on screen naturally, so the games are much easier to get into in terms of interaction.

More intuitive control is an important step in getting more people playing games, but makes little difference if you’re pushing games like Ikaruga (a scrolling space shooter that is masochistically difficult to master), .Hack (a single player, offline, japanese-style role playing game [JRPG] episodic series where you play as a video gamer who plays a virtual reality massively multiplayer online roleplaying game [MMORPG] where some players are unable to log out to get back to the real world; you play in that online roleplaying game’s interface as if you are in the virtual reality world with others, despite it being a single player game… yes it’s that abstract and convoluted, really!), or Deus Ex (a cyber-punk hybrid of first person shooter and role playing games with a deep, complex story with an equally deep and complex system of character customization). I could go on and on listing games that are either very difficult to play and master, very difficult wrap your head around or just plain weird. Those aren’t the type of games that bring in casual gamers. Games like Wii Sports, Wii Play, Rayman Raving Rabids, Warioware and now Wii Fit give non-gamers accessible experiences that can be played for small amounts of time without the mental and physical investment of a more hardcore game. The Wii succeeds because it primarily provides these types of games.

The combination of these two factors results in the fact that the Wii gives experiences that are genuinely fun. More importantly, it is fun in a way that is obvious to most people, by being physical and being social. It’s great at a party. That said, it’s not fun in the way a speed run in a mario game, a low level challenge in an roleplaying game, or a gold star, full combo performace in Rock Band recorded for YouTube are to a hardcore gamer, but that’s Nintendo’s point. They’re catering to those who pay the bills now, and that’s not necessarily the hardcore gamer anymore.

The real question is what effect this is having on the gaming industry. Obviously, hardcore games are becoming more of a niche than ever, especially on the Wii and there’s lots of evidence of it. A game like the previously mentioned Ikaruga will never see retail release again, as Ikaruga and many like it are relegated to being downloadable games because those hardcore enough to play it will be hardcore enough to buy games on services like Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare and the Playstation Network Store. Another example would be Rayman, which was previously a platformer series that was transformed (or some may say perverted) into a casual assortment of mini-games like Warioware. Games which were once extremely difficult like the Ninja Gaiden series now have newer sequels released with a significantly easier level of difficulty as the default. There are exceptions to this trend, like No More Heroes for the Wii, and games that stradle line between both hardcore and casual gaming, like Rock Band, but it’s obvious that casual games are taking a bigger and bigger piece of the gaming pie.

A full critical discussion of the intricacies of the new balance between hardcore and casual games being forged today is a topic for another article though. That said, I’m not the only one thinking about the issue. IGN recently tauted 2008 as year of the “Death of Hardcore Games”. I’m not so convinced about them being dead, or if the proliferation of casual gaming is such a bad thing, but that’s a topic I’ll discuss more in the future. This is certainly an interesting time for games!

Like a pivotal event in computing history, the demo of the first GUI by Doug Engelbart in 1968 …



…and a retrospective of the origins of the little operating system that could by Linus Torvalds in 2001.

I find this very interesting. Learning different programming paradigms (like procedural, object-oriented, functional, structured, logic and so on) is a good thing for programmers to do. I see this as a good thing that Microsoft is encouraging functional programming. My favorite lesser-known programming language is Scheme, another functional programming language.

One of the problems with less popular programming lanaguages (the popular ones are usually only procedural, structural or object-oriented languages) is that there are few libraries to support them so its hard to actually do something useful. Microsoft linking F# to .Net will be benefitial to the Windows world by bringing the power of .Net (and Mono, in a way) to functional programming. I have a feeling that Microsoft Live Labs has something to do with this and did it so they can do cool projects that take advantage of functional programming paradigms.

This news just shows yet again how unpredictable Microsoft is because of its size. Some parts of it are making blunder after blunder while others keep doing tons of amazing things like this.

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