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X-Rotor series Gyrotor

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal

Nov 28 2007

Well… What about that? A post? No way!

Well, this is the deal for today: I got myself a Gyrotor. The full name of the contraption is X-Rotor series Gyrotor and was made by Silverlit Electronics. As you can see in the image below, the Gyrotor is a helicopter. A radio controlled helicopter to be exact, which is really fun to play around with.

Gyrotor

As you can see it looks pretty cool, this is the exact model that I had (yes… had). I haven’t taken any pictures of it myself, but this gives you quite an impression of what it looks like. Besides looking cool it flies pretty well. The controls are responsive and it’s not too hard to keep it floating around, but that’s all it does, fload around. Because you don’t really have an option to make it fly forward or backward, you don’t have very precise control of it’s actions. The only options you have are up/down (throttle) and left/right (turning), but you don’t have a forward/backward control. This means that you can only make it fly forward or backward by increasing or decreasing the throttle while turning, which makes it pretty tough to fly it in tight spaces allthough the Gyrotor is primarily designed to fly indoors.

There is however still one cool little feature left: the nose light. It has a blue and a red led in it’s nose which both blink while the Gyrotor is being operated, but all in all that’s about the best feature this helicopter has…

The box said that the flying time of one charge was about 5 minutes, but in fact it was about 10 minutes, which is good. But the charging time was also considerably longer than stated on the box which was about 40 to 45 minutes instead of 25.

But the worst of it all was that after 2 days and a little flying the thing broke. The rotor someone got detached from the engine. So I returned it and got a new one, but also this one broke after very little time as well… This time the rotor got severely unalligned causing the helicopter to dramatically fly to left and crash badly and then it wouldn’t fly properly anymore.

All in all, this product is pretty crappy and you shouldn’t buy one. It’s pretty fragile for it’s price and claim to be very durable, this product sucks. Only the remote seems quite durable and functions really well and it has cool leds on it, but that’s it, stay away from these things (and probably any other mini helicopters like it) and spend a little more on a better quality helicopter with better control options and have fun with one of those. The Gyrotor was a funny gadget for the little time that it lasted, but I think I’m going to save up some money to get a helicopter that won’t just fall apart.

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Über Zombie

Other, PC gaming, Videogames | Posted by Zhooibaal

Aug 24 2007

Well, this has actually nothing to do with my previous post in which I announced an upcoming update about some stuff, but this is interesting as well.

This post is about a computer game that I made together with two friends in 48 hours and 10 minutes including sleeping hours. It is called Über Zombie and it’s all about killing as many zombies als possible without getting killed yourself. You can play the game with up to three people on one pc using the keyboard and two gamepads/joysticks. There is no story whatsoever, but who needs a story for a pointless zombie slaughtering fest anyway?

The graphics are created by me with the exception of the blood particle texture, which was made by Michiel “NecroDOME” Gijbels. All sounds were created by me and cost nothing but a few plastic bags. The programming credits go to Michiel and Frank “Mad Woody” van Gent. Here are a few screenshots as well as some video’s that were recorded using FRAPS.

It all started with the idea of creating a complete computer game in two days. It turned out that it took about 10 minutes longer than that, but that doesn’t matter, the point is that we have proven that it is very well possible to create a very fun and challenging game in just two days. Here is the first screenshot that was taken. It’s a very early graphical test:

Now I have a video for you. This video shows an early test as well, but not as early as the first screenshot. In this version it was allready possible to shoot zombies, but not much more than that:

Now come a few less early shots, but still not the final version. In this version all players look the same, and the zombies aren’t spawned properly in the map, but the basic gameplay in the same as in the final version:

The next video is an almost final version video. The players have different colors so it’s less confusing with which one you’re playing, but the zombies aren’t spawning yet how they should be spawning:

And last, but not least: 3 final version screenshots and a final version gameplay video:

And now some linky linky:
Download Über Zombie from Necrodome.homeftp.net
Visit the Über Zombie page on GGE

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It’s time for an update

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal

Aug 06 2007

I haven’t posted in something like a month now and a lot has happened. I passed the first year of my Network Infrastructure Design study, I bought new stuff, I have a temporary holiday job at one of the worlds biggest companies, if not the biggest and I’ve been on a vacation on which I have taken some interesting pictures.

Amoung the stuff I have bought are a new game for my Nintendo DS, a DVD movie and a board game, that’s right, a board game. I will tell you all about all this stuff and my vacation in a seperate post for each one soon, so expect some medium sized to big updates soon.

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23 years old

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal

Jun 29 2007

It’s the end of june and my birthday has passed once more making me officially 23 years old. My birthday isn’t today and honestly, I’m pretty glad it isn’t… Yesterday I was just riding to school on my bike when suddenly something felt really awkward in my lower back and a moment later I was almost dying of the pain that came with that. Then I ran into my girlfriend who really panicked, possibly even more than I did and with the pain still there I had to go to an evaluation of our interview project with the teacher. I got about half of all the things that he said and afterwards my girlfriend phoned home, I also phoned home and a half our later my girlfriend’s parents were there to take me to the clinic at the local hospital.

Luckily it’s nothing serious and thus I can move to the topic I wanted to discuss in the first place; my birthday.

So, on june 22nd this year I celebrated my 23d birthday and with that came some presents and a little party. The party wasn’t very extraordinary. I just invited a few friends, drank some beer and unpacked the presents. One of the presents was a CD with a self recorded song specially created for my birthday, so I got my old cd player, but unfortunatly it didn’t play it very well. The old thing has had it’s best days I guess. The rest of the presents included some special beers, a cuddly toy frog hand puppet with a sound module in it which plays one note of a child song every time it’s mouth is closed, some large bags of popcorn and some DVD movies.

I called the frog Bernard and he’s going to be featured in a new song of my band Knepper. I got Bernard from my girlfriend and I loved him immediatly and I was driving people crazy with him within a few minutes. Bernard is going to be the replacement for Otto the cuddly toy dog puppet with the same sound feature as Bernard, but unfortunatly Otto is missing. Otto was Dennis’s puppet and for the people who don’t already know it, Dennis is the guitarist of Knepper.

As for the DVD’s, I got 4 of them including one that contains two movies, so 5 movies total:

Shrek 2
Undead
Two Thousand Maniacs
Hong Kong 2 pack:
- Hot War
- another one I forgot the title of

I assume you all know Shrek 2 and if not, go sit in a corner and be ashamed of yourself. All of the others are relatively unkown. Undead is your everyday zombie flick and I haven’t watched it yet, but the cover looks interesting. Two Thousand Maniacs is a cult classic about century celebration in the town of Pleasant Ville which isn’t exactly as it seems. The people of Pleasant Ville are sadistic to say the least. Anyway, it’s a horror flick. As for the two Hong Kong movies, I have already watched Hot War which was quite amusing, but the English dubbed audio track is pretty lame. Unfortunatly the DVD doesn’t contain the original sound track. It’s about a revolutionary new computer technology that can influence people without that knowledge by transmitting subtle messages directly into the people subconsiousness. This way it could be used to drive people to do things against their will and to the advantage of the one who transmits the messages. One way it’s used is to train a martial arts master within one week to full capacity. And ofcourse this is what happens after a secret agent gets captured by a guy named Alien and the others want to rescue her. The events in this movie aren’t very logical, but it’s still quite fun to watch. The other one I really don’t remember the title of. I don’t have it here at home, it’s still in my appartment in Heerlen (and home is still my parent’s house), so I can’t look it up. I also haven’t yet taken any pictures of all the stuff, but I can assure you that you will see at least some pictures of Bernard in the near future.

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Welcome to the next incarnation!

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal

Jun 14 2007

In case that you’re not satisfied with a certain host, you go look for another one. That is exactly what I have done.

Unfortunatly, the new host wouldn’t take over my old domain name www.pingwing.us, but to hell with that. Who cares anyway what domain name you have? At the time of writing this, the old one is still online with all of it’s content, but that will change soon. I’m going to remove all data from the old host and just put a bit UPDATE YOUR BOOKMARKS text on there and a link to this site.

As you can all see, I already transferred all of the posts from the old blog to this one, so there is no need to actually link back to that old one.

Some new stuff coming soon.

PingWing.eu

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Upendo Children’s Centre

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal

Mar 18 2007

The lovely lady (to the left) who supplies us with food every day at the TEFAF fair isn’t who she seems to be. She’s not just the food supplier, she’s actually a charity. Well, it’s not just her, but she’s the general director of the Upendo Children’s Centre in Nyeri, Kenya.

The Upendo Children’s Centre is an orphanage for abandoned and orphaned children and also mentally challenged children ages 7 months through 12 years old in Nyeri, Kenya.

More information about the Upendo Centre can be found on their own website. So you are now going to bookmark that website and maybe you are also going to volunteer for them or make a donation, but for that you’ll have to contact one of the board members (Tessa for example), because I couldn’t find a donation link anywhere on the site, just some bank account information.

And last but not least, Tessa also has a website of her own with a blog, a photoalbum and a link to the Upendo Children’s Centre ofcourse. Unfortunatly for my non-Dutch speaker/reading readers, Tessa’s blog is in Dutch only, so you won’t be able to read it, but you can go and take a look anyway.

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MSN, Yahoo! and AIM messaging on the Nintendo DS

Nintendo, Other | Posted by Zhooibaal

Mar 16 2007

Yes, exactly, what the title says and all that without a hack. All you need for this is the Nintendo DS Browser I mentoined in my previous post. The people over at ebuddy understood that there was a need for a web based messenger solution for some of the most popular instant messengers that would work on handheld devices like cell phones, PDAs, Blackberry devices and ofcourse the NDS.

When you enter the url http://www.ebuddy.com on your NDS it will automatically bring you to the mobile page where you can choose from the 3 before mentioned IM systems. When you have picked one it’ll bring you to a login page where you enter your user name and password and off you go.
I only tried the MSN one, because I’m not on the others, but I expect them to work pretty much the same way.
The mobile messenger doesn’t work as convenient as it’s desktop counterpart, but it works quite nicely, here’s a list of the major differences it has for MSN and this probably also goes for Yahoo! and AIM;

only one ‘window’: you must do everything within one ‘window’ so switching from one conversation to another isn’t as quick as on the big version.
No custom smileys
No buzzers, winks, soundclips and all that jazz
No voice/video chat
Even the contact list and configuration options are in the same ONE ‘window’
No contact groups, only online and offline are seperated
Typing isn’t as convenient as on the big version

That’s about it, well, there are a lot more differences ofcourse, but these are the most noticable ones and probably the most important.

The best thing is that it works great on SSR mode, so you only have vertical scrolling instead of both horizontal and vertical.

Sometime soon I’ll post a couple of pics of this web based messenger, but I’ll need my camera for that and I can’t post those from my NDS from which I’m posting this.

I’m pretty sure that this ebuddy stuff works on other handheld devices, like a PDA or a Blackberry, as well.

Written on the NDS

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@ Tefaf 2007

Nintendo, Other | Posted by Zhooibaal

Mar 11 2007

I don’t know whether any of my readers are art lovers, but I thought I’d inform you of the fact that I’m at the world’s largest art fair as a crew member. Together with two classmates and a student from another group I’m doing the IT support at the Tefaf fair in Maastricht (the Netherlands). Rich people from all over the world come to Maastricht for this event and most of the exibitors, who also come all this way from all over the world, want to have a wireles connection to the internet. And that’s where we come in.

For some more info on the Tefaf fair you can click here.

It’s been pretty busy, but I was able to squeeze this post between all the calls we get.

So, what else is new? Well, I got a little accesory for my Nintendo DS. I purchased the Nintendo DS Browser by Opera Software and I must say that it’s really nice.
The NDS Browser is based on Opera 8.5, which is reflected in some minor webpage incompatibility, but even then most pages are displayed correctly in the overview mode. The SSR mode (Small Screen Rendering) only very few pages are displayed correctly. SSR mode is especially useful for webpages that were specially designed for mobile devices like cell phones.

The only drabacks I have encountered are it’s disability to save password and to the same thing to store cookies.This forces you to reenter your user name and password for sites you visit regularly over and over again.

But even writing e-mails and posting blog entries can be done really well with this program, I’m even writing this post using my NDS with the Browser.

Written on the NDS

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A long time ago…

Other, PDA | Posted by Zhooibaal

Feb 06 2007

…on a blog far far away, there was someone who would post on a regular basis, but eventually he didn’t keep the promise… Guess who?

Anyway, I’ve been pretty damn busy for the past few weeks and due to all the stuff that had been going on I didn’t feel like posting. Besides that I didn’t have any inspiration, but now it’s all over and I’m back amoungst the living and there are quite a few subjects I can post about, so I’ll be posting them as I find the inspiration in the next few days, maybe even weeks.

First off, I’m going to tell you that I moved into my own single room apartment in the first week of Januari (seems like a long time already). The college I’m attending to was simply too far away to travel back and forth every day and also the delays in the public transport system were almost annoying me to death, so I decided to move to get rid of that inconvenience.
Now I live on the 8th floor of an old appartment building and during the night I have quite a nice view, here’s a picture.

Soon I’ll take more pictures of how it looks over there inside my apartment… Well, I allready have some pics, but they’re allready outdated… I moved stuff around, added new stuff and some new stuff has yet even to arrive. For instance my DJ mixer panel isn’t yet in any picture as are my two old 3Com 10base-T hubs that I use to raise my screen a little higher. And soon I will have a Compaq KVM switch and an Igel Thin Client that will need a good spot to stand/lie around.

But I do have another picture for you, but that’s not related to my new apartment, but to my good old Palm Tungsten E. Well, it’s old, not so sure if it’s still that good. I crashed on me while playing Minefield, which is a freeware minesweeper clone.

More soon.

…Next line.

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Youtube movies!

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal

Dec 09 2006

Yahey! W000t! Youtube movies! But not just youtube movies, youtube movies that I put on there and which I made myself. So, what are they about then? Well, one is a Flatout crashing movie which I made quite a long time ago and the other two are Flatout 2 movies. One is only some footage from a few stunt events in the game and the other one contains some baseball stunt footage and some driving and flying around on the Crash Alley track, enjoy.