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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

The Return of Cheep!

So, what I'd planned to post about yesterday, was that I've built my first CheepTech project in awhile...     What is it? Well, it's an Asteroids controller for the 2600/7800 of course! Doesn't it live up to all of your wildest expectations?   No?   Not even the duct tape?   Man... there's just no pleasing some people.   If it looks familiar, then you've probably been bored enough to snoop around my CheepTech site and found this page. What I did, was gut out the old home-made switch
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3

You get what you pay for

Update: The domain info is now fixed! To be fair, the IT people where I work are desperately over-worked and under-staffed. Sure, it's annoying when something gets messed up, but they've been pretty good to me about fixing things when that happens. I didn't expect anything until next week, since they're off Fridays during the Summer months. So you can ignore most of the snarky comments in this entry... ____________   As part of where I work, I have free webspace for my CheepTech site. That's
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

2

Is it Wiirth it?

First of all... it's 110° outside today. For the second day in a row. Tomorrow will be the same. Fortunately, on Sunday, it will finally drop "down" into the high 90's. This is one of those days where you're only outside long enough to run from one air-conditioned space to another.   Last wiikend, however, I got to go down to my friends' place in Redondo Beach, where it was nice and cool. It wouldn't take a whole lot of convincing for me to move down there, except I'd absolutely have to get a
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

7

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 5 - The Incredible Hulk

Okay... so I originally said that I wasn't going to see The Incredible Hulk. But I did anyway. A friend of mine wanted to go, so I figured - "why not?" At the very least, we could make fun of how bad it was afterwards.   However, it wasn't that bad of a film. Actually, it was pretty decent. Nowhere near the level of Iron Man, but probably somewhere between Fantastic Four and X-Men.   Edward Norton made a good Bruce Banner, and most of the rest of the cast was fine, although Liv Tyler spent m
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 4 - Kung Fu Panda

Well, I hadn't originally planned to go see Kung Fu Panda, because most Dreamworks animated films are dreck. Seems to me they even have a few films named Dreck or Wreck or Shlock or some such thing. Whatever.   But when positive reviews started showing up on Cartoon Brew, I thought I'd go see it anyway. The readers on Cartoon Brew tend to be pretty merciless when reviewing animated films that don't live up to their (generally over-inflated but often accurate) standards.   So, as part of work
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0

Review To-do

And the latest batch of goodies from AtariAge has arrived.   Looks like I've got some reviewin' to do...     ...and I still haven't gotten to the previous batch of reviews yet.   I think in order to catch up, I'm going to have to go back to writing shorter reviews. I don't think anything quite as epic as the Last Ninja/N.E.R.D.S rant is really necessary anyway.   The AtariAge store is starting to run out of stuff I don't have yet. I'm starting to dip into the hacks now. What do I do
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0

New old music - part 2

I actually got this DVD months ago, but never got around to reviewing it:     The World of Maynard Ferguson was a TV special produced in 1970, featuring Maynard and his big band, plus some special guests. Just prior to this period, Maynard had hung out with Timothy Leary for awhile and had a brief fling with under-the-counter medicine, went to India where he was influenced by the culture and music and got bit by a snake, and then moved to England where he formed a completely new band. "The
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 3 - Indiana Jones

Some of us skipped out of work today... I mean... took an extended lunch... to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.   For an opening day, the theater was surprisingly not-that-full. Of course, being in the middle of a Thursday afternoon probably had something to do with it (also, they were showing it on three screens at the same time). And even though large opening-day crowds can be fun, it was still nice not to have to get to the theater two hours early and wait in long li
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 2 - Iron Man

On with the next movie - Iron Man.   I think about half the reason I enjoyed Speed Racer, was because visually it was so interesting.   With Iron Man though - it was just a good, fun movie.   Robert Downey Jr. made a perfect Tony Stark. Even though I don't remember a lot of the comic book personality (I haven't read Iron Man in nearly 20 years), he made a great character out of him. He was both a self-centered jerk, and yet completely likable. He had a self-effacing manner about him, and a
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 1 - Speed Racer

It's Summertime! And for the first time in years, there are a good number of movies I'm planning to go see this Summer. Usually I may see only one, perhaps two movies a year.   So, let's run 'em down, shall we?   Iron Man - Review coming soon... I haven't seen this one yet. Speed Racer - Review coming real soon... the rest of this entry, in fact. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - Rumor has it Sean Connery will make a cameo as Harrison Ford's son. King Fu Panda - Ick. N
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8

Number 2 with a bullet (a space bullet...)

Just got a PM from John Champeau - Lady Bug is now the #2 best-selling 2600 homebrew in the AtariAge store, recently passing Star Fire and Thrust+ Platinum. (Sorry Manuel and Thomas. )   To date, Lady Bug has 15 perfect reviews. All well-deserved. Congratulations, John!   And thanks for letting me be a part of working on it (label and manual design, and game graphics).
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

6

From the lobby of the WTC

Remember the movie Escape from New York?   Near the end of the film, there's a scene where Kurt Russell and everyone is running through the lobby of the World Trade Center.   That was actually shot where I work - at CalArts, in the Main Gallery. The only thing I'm not sure of, is if they made it messier for the movie, or cleaned it up for the movie. (That's a CalArts joke... )   Anyway, it's 3:50 AM Sunday as I'm starting this blog entry. I just got home from the Character Animation Open S
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

7
Comic Strips

No offense intended

This is the strip I hadn't planned on posting originally, since it seemed a little more mean-spirited than others, plus the whole thing had died off in the forums anyway.   But I decided to post it anyway since: I like the parallels between this and the old Intellivison/Atari rivalry, and this fits in very well with the where George Plimpton tried to make the Intellivision come off as being superior in every way. A new thread on this has started up,
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum in Comic Strips

2

Slightly more fun than coughing up phlegm

It's been awhile since I've reviewed any animated film. Mainly because it's been awhile since I've seen any animated film. However, since I'm home with the flu, I figured while snot was draining out of my head, it was as good a time as any to watch Meet The Robinsons. Mainly because nothing else is on, and a friend of mine loaned me the DVD, so it didn't cost me anything.   Here's my review, in a nutshell:       Seriously... if you're a filmmaker... never ever put scenes like these in
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0

Leop of faith

Maybe it's just the fever I've had for a few days, but I've decided to take the leap and upgrade my Mac to OS X 10.5 "Leopard".   Of course, I've heard about all of the bad things that can happen, especially considering how many third-party extensions I'm running, but I've updated everything, disabled what can't be updated, and hopefully it will all go well.   If not, I've taken out some insurance, by using NetRestore to completely clone my hard drive. So if everything does go ka-flooey, I c
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

15

Spit into the Wind! - revisited

I've been playing Incoming! lately, and it's brought back to mind one of my Stupid Game Ideas!™, namely Spit into the Wind! - which is basically Artillery, with Cheetos.   One of the things I didn't have in the original mock-ups, was a feature I mentioned that I really liked from Artillery, which is that it would leave a trail behind when it fired a shot, so you could see the trajectory.   I figured it probably couldn't be done on the 2600, but then as I was thinking about the game again rec
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

2

The iPhone's Killer App

I don't own an iPhone. I don't even own a cell phone. But I do recognize the iPhone as being a pretty cool device.   Still, I didn't see any need for me to buy one, since I don't have much use for a cell phone. Nor do I need it as an iPod, since I already have one. And I don't need a mobile internet device, since I'm not usually very far from a computer anyway. And I own a PSP and GameBoy Advance, so why get an iPhone for a handful of games?   Coming from that perspective, I was rather ho-hu
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

1
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