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About this blog

Mostly Atari-related projects, and other ramblings. Home of the Artie the Atari comic strip.

Entries in this blog

Comic Strips

Stripping

I was digging through some old files on my computer, and ran across a few comic strips I did while participating in Pitfall Harry's Contest of Doom. This was in May, 2003, about six months after I signed on at AtariAge.   These were done as parodies of Pitfall Harry's strip Crane's World. I named mine Carl Wonders, since it's an anagram of Crane's World, and the contest (a series of puzzles) included anagrams in it (among other things - it was a very tough contest).   Anyway,
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum in Comic Strips

6

Fun with epoxy!

I recently bought several Sony video presentation stands off eBay for work.   As with any eBay purchases, the results were a bit hit-and-miss, especially when it came to packing and shipping. One of the stands was so poorly packed that the camera had broken off, and an entire corner of the base had broken off.     Fortunately, all of the electronics still worked, so with a judicious application of J-B Weld PlasticWeld epoxy, I was able to repair the damage and getting a working stand out
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3

Homebreviews - part 8

Here we go with the last batch of reviews (for now).   I'd like to point out, that these are completely unbiased reviews.   (Actually, that's impossible, since by their very nature all reviews have some sort of bias. But anyway...)   I should mention that I contributed something to each of these games. But I didn't program any of them, nor do I get kickbacks on any sales from the AtariAge store.   Although I should really talk to Albert about that.   Anyway, in the interest of full-d
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

12

Homebreviews - part 14

I started writing a parody of the "Theme from Gilligan's Island" to introduce these, but that was too much work. Well, that... and it wasn't turning out to be very funny.   So here, with no additional fanfare, are "the rest..."   Go Fish! 4/5   In Go Fish!, it's eat or be eaten. You play a tiny yet hungry little fish, and must eat other fish to survive. But you can only eat fish your size or smaller. Try to eat something bigger than you, and you'll end up as its dinner. If the bigger fish
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

13

The inevitable death of TV

I pick up MLB.com At Bat for my iPhone pretty much every year. For those unaware, it lets you access standings, scores, stats, and news about your favorite baseball team, lets you listen to every game live, watch video highlights, and follow along with a neat little graphical app. You even get to pick your home radio station to listen to. For those of us living in an entirely different state than our home team, this is a very cool thing. The cost works out to less than a dime per game.   This
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3

Incoming! parts 3 and 4

I'd only planned on doing two contest entries (and therefore two blog entries) for Incoming!, but things happen. So with that, I present parts 3 and 4 of the 2 part series on the making of my Incoming! label contest entries.   Part 3   After the first round of entries were posted for the contest I was thinking, "what else could I do that would be different?" I came up with some vague idea about using the gun sights of a tank, but didn't have a clear design for it. So I started Googling for t
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

7

Homebreviews - part 11

Despite the fact that it's almost April, any time of the year is gaming season! Holiday Qb (The 2004 AtariAge Holiday Cart) 4/5 Holiday Qb is an action/puzzle game based on the original 2600 homebrew Qb. The goal is to move sliding pieces around a playfield to match displayed patterns, while collecting bonus items and avoiding enemies. The Holiday aspect of it comes into play with modified graphics reflecting a Holiday theme. Santa Claus, elves, wreaths and other items replace the original Qb
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

12

Space Cadets (pt. 1)

I've been spending about the last week and a half going through my stuff.   You know the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Everybody has some of it.   Cardboard boxes, with stuff in them, jammed into the back of a closet or attic somewhere.   Stuff that you haven't looked at in years. Years and years. In some cases... decades.   (An aside: the fact that I'm measuring what I consider to be relatively recent events as having passed in "decades" bothers me.)   I didn't think I'd really acc
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

6

More music

Some months back, I wrote an entry about some upcoming albums that were coming up that I was planning to buy. I already reviewed one of the albums in the comments (Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream & Other Delights - Re-Whipped), but hadn't gotten to the other ones yet.   One of them, "Weird Al's" new album, isn't finished yet. It's mostly finished, but apparently he has to go back into the studio for some reason (he mentioned something about silly record company politics on his site). Whenever
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0

Homebreviews - part 34

No games (as such) this time around. I'm getting near to the end of what the AtariAge store currently has to offer... Testcart 3/5 Testcart is a utility cartridge that allows you to check an Atari 2600's various components and controllers to see if they're working properly. When you plug in the cart, it displays a few colors onscreen so you can make sure your 2600 video circuitry is working, and plays music so you can check the audio. After a few seconds, the screen will change to a display s
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0

Homebreviews - part 35

So what's left over when you've tested and reviewed everything else in the AtariAge store? Is this the end of Homebreviews!? * Labyrinth 1/5 Labyrinth is an unreleased prototype of the game Escape From The Mindmaster, which requires the Supercharger peripheral to play. The game comes on a CD, so you'll need to plug the Supercharger cable into the headphone jack of a CD player, then play the CD for about a minute for the game to load. Once loaded, you maneuver through a maze in first-person p
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0

Homebreviews - part 40: Mini-Game Madness

Because reviewing five games last time wasn't enough... I really like mini-game collections. Sure, not all of the games in a given collection will appeal to everyone, but usually you can find one or two real gems on a given multi-cart, and they're typically good value for money. Plus the idea of a quick, simple game is part of the 2600's DNA, stretching back to the original nine games the system was designed to play. There are plenty of unissued, fun mini-games still out there in the forums, ju
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

19

Star Wars Episode VII: (Insert subtitle here)

So... it's been confirmed that J.J. Abrams will be directing the next Star Wars film.   The director of the new Star Trek films, will be directing the new Star Wars films.   Two nerd-worlds collide. I wonder if the internet will survive?   "It was as if millions of nerds suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."   Now, I didn't think Star Trek was all that bad when I saw it the first time. Preposterous, yes. Ridiculous, yes. Utterl
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

1

Homebreviews - part 33

So it's time to go back to the arcade! Or perhaps "hack to the arcade", since these reviews are all about AtariAge's "Arcade" hacks. As with previous hacks the question is: Is a hack worth paying for if you already own the original game? This entry also contains my 100th Homebreview! It's hard to believe, but I've gotten almost as many games from AtariAge as commercial releases that I'd bought back-in-the-day. And there are even more new games on the way. But first... Pac-Man Arcade 4/5 Pac-M
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0

Homebreviews - part 28

Today marks the fourth anniversary of my blog! And to celebrate the event... the review that nobody thought would ever happen! (And no, I don't mean N.E.R.D.S 2 ) Yes, it's Actionauts. So, you're probably wondering, "How and or why the sweaty heck did you get Actionauts?!?" After all, I wasn't exactly enamored with the marketing fiasco associated with it. Simply put, I got a comp copy for having done some work on the manual and label. Ain't no way I'd plunk down $79.95 for an unfinished/p
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

7

Making Labels - Part 6

Well, since there's now a label contest for Strat-O-Gems underway, I suppose I should wrap up this tutorial, just in case people can make some use of it.   Part 6 - Highlighting   Highlighting is part of the shading process. You're defining a light source, and then using that to apply light and dark values to an object. I make highlighting a separate step, just because it's a more flexible way to work. By putting highlights on a separate layer in Photoshop, it allows me to go back and adju
Guest

Guest

0

Maybe...

So... with the recent announcement of the PS3 "slim" (which I choose to refer to as the more confusing "PS3-2"), I'm wondering if maybe I should get one?   I've been thinking about getting a Blu-Ray player anyway, the likeliest candidate of which would be the Sony BDP-560 (it does the Bravia-sync thing with my TV, and has built-in WiFi for firmware upgrades and whatnot) which sells for $269... only $30 less than the PS3. However... even though the PS3 is "only" $299, it doesn't come with the $
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

13

Return of the bling!

A year ago I finally fixed my original Sears 2600. It had kicked the bucket in 2011, and after making do with a donor board for a couple of years, I finally got my original board working again by swapping out the 6507 and RIOT, plus installing Mojoatomic's re-cap kit. So I had my original 2600 (plus a CyberTech S-Video mod) all up and running again! But not quite... One of the first repairs I had to make back when I dusted it off in 2002 for the first time in over a decade, was the Select and
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

14

Spider-Man (The Amazing) - Mostly-spoiler-free review

So, here we go again. I'm killing time in a movie theater, waiting for a movie to start. However, there are only a couple of minutes to go, so I'm not going to get much typing done. I wasn't sure whether to go see The Amazing Spider-Man or not, since I can't say I was all that intrigued by the trailers. But I had a couple of hours to kill, and a free movie pass burning a hole in my pocket, so here I am. Well... time for the show.   (One movie and a late dinner at Chick-Fil-A later...)   (BT
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0

200,000!

Well, it's been just about 100,000 views since this blog entry.   Time flies.   No, really it does. Einstein proved it. Or maybe he only speculated about it and never actually succeeded in formulating a viable theory about it, and then Stephen Hawking actually proved it decades later but then changed his mind about it and decided that time actually goes backwards, and we're only perceiving it as going forwards. Or something. I think they're all making all that stuff up anyway, just because t
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4
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