Creative Procrastinators

New design for AcrylicStyle.com

2012-01-20T01:20:00.000-08:00

We recently made a new site design for AcrylicStyle.com, consisting of a lot of CSS3 and HTML5 code from me and some graphic design work from Kevin.

Check it out!

Who or What the Hell is Acrylic style?

2012-01-15T01:15:00.000-08:00

Check it out here.

R.I.P. GamePark Holdings

2011-10-29T00:31:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I ever posted about the GP32, GP2X or subsequent handheld devices from the Korean game companies GamePark and GamePark Holdings on here (haven't blogged much in a while).

But anyways if you don't know, these guys were the coolest video game hardware manufacturers of their time.

The GP32 their first handheld came out around the time the GameBoy Advance did (2001) and was literally an open source handheld game console. It was more powerful than the GBA, had a memory card slot (SmartMedia card) a USB port and pretty much was a hackers dream.

I remember people online showing off that they could perfectly emulate GBA, SNES, NES, Genesis, etc games on it, play movies and MP3s and such and I wanted to get one so badly.

And proprietary games had to either be bought online and stored on an SmartMedia Card or bought in retail (on a read only SMC).

After that GamePark started talking about making their next handheld and it began to sound very much like they wanted to compete with the PSP, they even planned to abandon the open source community behind the GP32 and go proprietary all the way.

Then many of their employees left (I remember people stating that only two guys were left in the company after that), and they started GamePark Holdings (apparently Korean copyright isn't as strong as it should be) and they came out with the GP2X.

Now the GP2X was cool, it was more powerful than the DS and slightly more powerful than the PSP, ran Linux as it's firmware, had an SD Card slot, TV output, but the standout feature it was missing for me was Wi-Fi.

And many potential buyers pointed that issue out too, only to hear from GamePark that an adapter will come out to enable Wi-Fi on the device.

Then we got many slight iterations of the GP2X, "Normal Edition", "MK2" and "F200" which brought SDHC support, removed the joystick and added a touch screen. Still no Wi-Fi.

Then we got the GP2X Wiz which brought on more power, a smaller form factor, a lefty friendly design, OpenGL support a built in mic and an OLED screen. Still no Wi-Fi.

Then last year August they released the GP2X Caanoo which aside from a bad name and an ugly design came with an accelerometer, vibration motor, a USB host port, and still no built in Wi-Fi.

Now the thing they did differently was the Linux Kernel they had as the firmware in this one supported USB Wi-Fi adapters with the USB host port they [unnecessarily] put on the thing and they even sold their own Wi-Fi adapter to guarantee compatibility.

But seriously, WTF?! 6 Years after the DS comes out, you finally put Wi-Fi on your flagship handheld game console and it's only via adapter?
(Congrats you've just caught up to the GameBoy Advance)

Well, long story short. GamePark Holdings has shut down operations citing that the Caanoo is too expensive and Apple/Android smartphones took over the market.

Sad part here is they failed to cite the huge hacker community behind the popular game consoles (DS, PSP) that took all of their potential developers away. I mean c'mon, I considered buying their product and instead went for a PSP just because people hacked the crap out of it to the point where it's a better choice for homebrew than a handheld game console running Linux out of the box.

Especially because it has Wi-Fi which allowed for things like multiplayer games and internet connectivity.
A lot of what made PSP hacking great wasn't even games, it was things like online chat clients, internet radio access and web browsers.

The GP2X failed to offer any of that. It could've stood great as a handheld game console/PDA (especially being that it came out before the smartphone craze).

And the Caanoo release was definitely a failed opportunity entirely.

[a] They could've just used the design from the first GP2X.

[b] Instead of working hard on making their own Linux distro for the device, they could've just tossed Android on it.

I mean the Caanoo was incapable of running apps and games from the older GP2X devices so it required an emulator anyways, and Android would've attracted a larger developer community plus Android 2.3 supports game controls so the Caanoo would've been right at home.

[c] Wi-Fi alone would've opened the doors to a great development community, another Linux powered handheld game console, the Pandora got ports of Firefox, Chrome, Spotify, XBMC, and more just because of that alone (not to mention it just has a thriving development community in general, people have ported Gimp to it and even made a GP2X emulator for the thing).

[d] With the fact that they aimed to run an online store to purchase games, you'd think they'd be smart enough to release an emulator for their own console to buy and run these games on PC to increase their overall reach.

They had the potential to be a great outlet for indie developers early on. Now indie gaming has taken to Steam, the Android Market, the iOS and Mac App Store, Windows Phone 7, and so on (the Xperia Play fuels the fire even further).

I don't know, let me stop ranting.

BrandUnDeShay.com

2011-10-23T20:13:00.001-07:00

www.brandundeshay.com

Google profile cards

2011-08-30T13:31:00.000-07:00

I feel I need to blog here more (I feel bad seeing this blog so empty), so to start I'm going to reveal something that I've been thinking about for a while.

Google profile cards!

These things are actually official, Google uses them in many of their products like Google Books, Google Reader, and even when you hover over names on the new Google Groups. It automatically displays some information from your Google Profile and even says if you're verified or not (though I'm not sure if that's the verified feature from Google+, Google Knol or both), and if the user viewing the card happens to be your friend on Google Talk, your GTalk status shows up there too.

So this trick doesn't require some ridiculous hack or use of any API, just an iframe.

The code looks like this:



<iframe frameborder="no" align="center" src="http://www.google.com/s2/u/0/widgets/ProfileCard?uid=[[LALALA]]" style="width: 325px; height: 122px; border: none;" width="325px" height="122px"></iframe>

and all you have to do is replace where it says "[[LALALA]]" with your Google profile UID (in your URL it's the number or screenname after "plus.google.com/" or "profiles.google.com/").

also, if you want to remove that border around your card (maybe to replace it with one of your own), just add "&bc=0" after your UID in the URL.

And there you have it. I'm sure someone will want to embed this on their blog somewhere or on their profile on some forum.
I'm surprised that Google hasn't officially pushed this out to be used by 3rd parties, it seems pretty complete for such a use case (somebody annoy someone at Google to make this official).

A You And Me Thing Tumblr

2011-06-08T19:54:00.000-07:00

ayouandmething.tumblr.com

Small site from us, not really a full design, plan to do more later.

EDIT (1/15/12): Never mind, it's been changed to something else.

DeShayliens

2011-01-19T06:32:00.000-08:00

www.deshayliens.com

Artwork by KevB

2010-12-10T10:00:00.000-08:00

Click on the images to enlarge them.

A close friend of mine, Kevin Brown (he's guest posted on here before) had started a blog earlier this year to promote his artwork and skill, so just because I feel this dude deserves more attention for his art I've made this post (I was supposed to post this way earlier, but I'm a procrastinator).

(His blog)
(This was cross posted from bastard central)

TAT

2010-12-09T21:58:00.000-08:00

_{(This has been sitting in here since December 30, 2009)}

Posting, I'll forever procrastinate on such a task...

A You & Me Thing - The Breakup

2010-09-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

Since I've been neglecting this blog and I'm bored, I think it's time for some new music (well, new as long as you haven't been on the Acrylic Style site).

A rapper friend of mine teamed up with a singer I met not too long ago to make a group called A You & Me Thing, here's the first song from this project.

Like them on Facebook:

More fun with iFrames

2010-09-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

Some thing that I've known for a while is that Google Buzz, Google Reader and any good RSS reader supports iframes, it's how I figured out how to embed a Google Wave within a Buzz post.

I've always thought it'd make a cool unofficial application platform in Google Buzz if the trick was mixed with Google Gadgets and Open Social but I never knew if it would work or not, mainly because I haven't tried, so here's my first attempt.

Regular Gadget

Social Gadget

(To see the social gadget test in action you must have people in your friends list in your Google contacts)

Of course this is all useless as Buzz users are Gmail users and if they wanted to run Apps/Games they could just use the feature in Gmail Labs, especially since it supports social gadgets and a canvas mode.

Maybe Google will integrate Buzz with the Gadgets feature in the future with these "GoogleMe" rumors going around.

Japanese Cartoon - Gasp [Fan Music Video]

2010-08-18T14:02:00.000-07:00

Jovon threw this black and white music video for Japanese Cartoons "Gasp" together using scenes from the 1949 public domain film, The Crooked Way.

Turns out the video was so chilly that it got posted on the LupEND blog.

(Cross posted on Acrylic Style)
(Source: LupEND Blog via Jovons Twitter)

BUMP

2010-06-23T12:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, to explain the recent posts, I only posted stuff to knock the insanely large Wave I (accidentally) created, off of the front page.

I'll try and post more relevant stuff here in the future.

Google TV

2010-06-23T12:13:00.001-07:00

(Source: Engadget)

(Cross posted from Acrylic Style)

Goldeneye 007 Wii

2010-06-14T14:46:00.000-07:00

Activision is bringing back the N64 classic, except with Daniel Craig instead of Pierce Brosnan (and I'm guessing more changes like that).

(Source: Tiny Cartridge)

(Cross posted from Acrylic Style)

Metal Gear Solid: Rising

2010-06-14T14:44:00.000-07:00

(Source: Destructoid)

(Cross posted from Acrylic Style)

BrandUn DeShay - Wish Me Luck feat. Dom Kennedy and TiRon [Unofficial Music Video]

2010-06-14T13:41:00.000-07:00

Something my friend Jovon put together for a track off of BrandUn DeShays Volume: Three! To Get Ready mixtape.

(Source: Shape Shifting Giant)

(Cross posted from Acrylic Style)

Wave embed test

2010-06-06T23:39:00.001-07:00

Just testing to see if iframes work in Blogger RSS feeds to embed a Wave within Buzz.

Success!

To embed a Wave in Buzz use this.



<iframe frameborder="no" align="center" src="https://wave.google.com/wave/?client.type=embedded&wave_id=googlewave.com[[LALALA]]&bgcolor=white&color=black&font=Verdana&fontsize=10px&embed_header=false&embed_footer=false&embed_toolbar=false" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: none;" height="600px"></iframe>

Replace where it says "[[LALALA]]" with your Wave ID, and put this code into a blog post, then share it to Buzz with Google Reader or the Connected Sites feature and you're done.

Opera makes fun of the Chrome speed tests

2010-06-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

I know... late. I just needed something to post (this blog felt neglected).

(Source: Mashable)

Chrome Web Store

2010-05-20T08:14:00.000-07:00

Well this just fixed a lot of problems with Chrome OS, I wonder if there'll be an in-app payment platform as well, and how this will handle stuff like piracy and support for other browsers.

Call of Duty: Black Ops [Trailer]

2010-05-18T22:54:00.001-07:00

I'm not much of a Call of Duty fan, but this looks cool I must say.

(Source: Destructoid)
(Cross posted from Acrylic Style)

Google Chrome 5 speed tests

2010-05-06T18:45:00.000-07:00

(Source: Google Chrome Blog)

BrandUn DeShay - Volume: Three! To Get Ready Promo Video by Ben Styles

2010-05-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

This is going to be crazy!

(Source: 2DopeBoyz)
(Cross posted from the Acrylic Style blog)

May the 4th be with you

2010-05-04T19:58:00.000-07:00

RT @galacticbinder: #HappyStarWarsDay. May the Fourth Be With You!!!!less than a minute ago via webStar Wars
starwars

This speaks for itself.

Android on iPhone

2010-04-22T00:26:00.000-07:00

I've been waiting for someone to do this ever since they ported Linux to the iPhone.

(Source: Engadget)