Robots, Joysticks and Simulators!

Latest additcion = games with BIG controllers and Robots:

Ace Combat 6 - XBOX360



Steel Battalion XBOX x2 (using system link)



There is something about the added complexity that makes the game more real! I was addicted to Activisions Mechwarrior 2 in the middle 90's and Steel Battalion brings me back, not to mention that it is the next best thing to the Arcade Battletech simulators. Having been an Avionics Technician (AT) back in my Navy days, being attracted to games like this comes as no suprise.

Thanks to e-bay, I have 2 Steel Batallion controlers and two old XBOX systems networked together running in system link mode running the add-on called "Line of Contact".

I'm also excited about my latest toy: RoboQuad



My last robot toy i-Cybie was cool but it was blind as a bat. (purchased several but all are now in a box along with all of the custom power adapters and charging stations - I even have some software where they can use coded personality cartriges.) These were nice for their time but had a short rechargable battery life from 15 to 35 minutes.

RoboQuad is more advanced. It scans the room and can see objects and determine the best place to go. My kids and I have run it for at least 4 or 5 hours and the batteries are still going strong! It reminds me of something from Star Wars and even sounds like R2D2. I highly recommend this "Toy" for any geek who grew up hoping that robots would be as common as cars. We are almost there!

Why I switched to consoles from PC’s

I am a video game-aholic. I’ve been addicted since the early 70’s (the first time I played pong on a friends TV). Growing up with this addiction has exposed me to most video games platforms ever marketed. From the first home pong systems and countless hours lost in smoky video arcades to home consoles like the Atari 2600, Maxnavox Odyssey2, Intellivision and the 1st Nentindo NES on and on up through the current cluster of GameCube, Playstation2, Xbox, Xavix Port and the even newer Xbox360 and Wii systems. Throw into this mix Gameboy Advance SP, building my own Arcade cabinets and purchasing a ton of those TV plug and play $20 joystick thingy’s.

In 1985 I purchased my fist computer Commodore 64 computer system and decided then and there that computer gaming was where it was at. I moved to the PC platform (386) after some time working as a computer repairman in 1992. I’ve been a strong PC gamer throughout the birth of games with more than 4 colors, 5.25” to 3.5” floppies, Hard drives, CD Rom Drives, the birth and explosion of shareware companies (ID, Apogee, Epic, 3D realms), FMV, 3D graphics, FPS, RTS, network multiplayer, the internet and MMO’s. I loved my computer games, but throughout this experience I had many challenges, operating systems changing, hardware requirements changing, driver updates, game patching, firmware upgrades etc… with each new iteration of my PC, older games were being lost because the newer hardware/software platforms no longer supported them. My shelves were growing heavy with games I never had the time to finish before a newer game forced an upgrade making the older game obsolete. If I got nostalgic I would feverishly search for a patch or even go as far as building an older system just to play it on. Needless to say this was becoming very expensive.

Going through all of this, I finally realized that I was spending more time (and money) tweaking my PC to actually run and install these games than I was spending playing them… This made me a pretty good PC support guy but I was missing out on all of the fun inside these games. Over time and after having kids, my free time became very limited and if I got two hours once a week to play a game, I didn’t want to spend 1.5 hours of that just installing/upgrading and tweaking my system. I also noticed that many of the newer games also game out on console platforms at the exact time as the PC release.

Once I put two and two together, I decided that consoles gave me the same fun experience without 99% of the aggravation. I am now actually finishing games. They boot up in moments, play just and smooth (if not better) than their PC counterparts since all consoles are the same hardware, the programmers squeeze every ounce of performance out of them completely optimizing them for the console hardware. Newer consoles have hard drives so you can now save your game anywhere just like on the PC. In reality, today’s consoles are simply PC’s repackaged and optimized for pure gaming, They come with a 3 to 5 year life span in which you can play all of the latest games without upgrading. They eliminate all of the hardware, driver headaches and maximize on all of the game play and fun. Oh, and one more thing… I can get an entire console system including all of the bells and whistles for less than the cost of the latest and greatest PC video card upgrade!

Sure PC games are bleeding edge. This bleeding edge (which is much narrower now more than ever) comes at a great cost in both money and in time lost. I would rather give up this small edge, for more time to enjoy and play the games rather than getting lost in the system hardware, software installation, drivers and configuration.

Zacarias Moussaoui deserves to suffer…

It makes me angry that he didn’t get the death penalty! It seems that we live in a time where a group of Americans that despise America are finding creative ways to bring the rest of us down (can you say liberals?). All it takes is to have one of these idiots on your jury and you can avoid just punishment for your crimes. They are willing to spare the life of creatures like Moussaoui and are just as happy to stand by and gloat over the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans. I had no idea that things were getting this bad.

Life in prison today is like a lifetime membership to a country club. You get to watch TV, eat full meals, sleep on a soft bed, read, study, get a GED and go to college, learn a trade, work a job, have access to a gym, go outside, send and receive mail, use the internet, make friends, listen to music, smoke and play video games.

Okay, its time for the rest of us to be creative. If we must accept that liberals are going to screw us out of a just penalty like death, then I say we work on changing the way prisons for those who do the worst of crimes are operated. I say we work on creating a special prison for evil people that is like a ‘Hell on earth’. I say we call this prison complex HELL! We need to construct a place that makes your life so unbearable that you’ll consider it a fate worse than death! I think we can all be happy sending losers like Moussaoui to HELL.

Some creative ideas for a HELL Prison complex:

* Rough dark walls made of jagged rock.

* No windows. Extremely dim lighting.

* Alternating temperatures that never go below 110F for one week and never above 46F for the other.

* Rooms not much bigger than graves (6x6x6 sounds good) , when you are in your cell you get coffin to sleep in.

* Loud screams and the sounds of babies crying are always playing 24 hours a day at the highest possible volume that ensures that you will not go deaf so you can enjoy these sounds for the rest of your life.

* An extremely loud siren or buzzer goes off at random with no intermission longer than 7 minutes to startle you out of any sleep or rest you are attempting to get.

* Food will consist of insects only. Liquid consists of animal blood (pig blood sounds like a good choice.)

* You never leave your grave sized cell; meals are slid under the door once every 3 days.

* You get nothing, no belongings, no human contact, no cloths, no showers, and one hole for a toilet.

* You are gassed to sleep if the prison guards need to move you or treat you, you’ll never know when or how often this happens since you won’t remember anything.

I think we can all agree that if prison was this bad, it would truly be a deterrent and that it would bring true justice to those who deserve to be there. A long life here in HELL is worse than death!

Pinball Dreams!

For the last few years somewhere just before spring, I get inspired to build something. This year is no different. This year, I chose to build a pinball machine. Inspired by Visual Pinball, and the growing hobby to build arcade machines based on M.A.M.E. (multiple arcade machine emulator) I decided that Visual Pinball needed to have a machine built around it. Playing pinball on a PC is fun but it was missing that real arcade feeling. Having already built two arcade cabinets for my home I decided that no arcade was complete without a full-blown pinball machine.


I wanted the machine to look like a pinball machine so I searched ebay for a set of pinball machine legs. I found a set for $8! I found some pinball shipping diagrams on the web and was able to determine the exact dimensions of a typical pinball table. I quickly diagramed it out to determine the materials I’d need from the hardware store on a budget of about $150.00 (not counting the computer and monitor).


Once I had the materials and a borrowed circular saw I started to put it all together. It took less than 3 hours to completely assemble and a few more hours to paint (3 coats).


You can read more about it here (www.tacticalneuronics.com)

My place in History

It's now official. My early games from the 90's are being memorialized on a web site dedicated to CLassic DOS Games! Out of the 5 DOS games I wrote and released as Shareware in the 90's, the one I'm most proud of is a game called 'The Dungeons of Grimlor II'. This game was inspired by games I was downloading (and playing) off the the local BBS's (pre-internet) that were written by Apogee, ID and Epic Megagames. I am very honored to have my works placed on a web site dedicated to works of these great game making giants! I tip my hat to the webmaster of this web site for the work he is doing to keep the memory of all of these old games alive.

They have a complete list of every DOS game I made including their full registered versions online and available for download.

Republicans vs. Democrats

This is yet another classic world according to John moment. I am a Republican. There I’ve said it. Not many people who write their opinions in today’s media actually admit their alignment. Statistics show that 80% of those who work for today’s press are *not* republican. I’m always amused at the lengths they go to in order to *hide* their affiliation with the left. They want you to think that they are thoughtfully impartial why they spew out the latest Democratic Party talking points.

To enlighten those who wonder what makes me (a Republican) tick, I’d like to make it simple:

I believe that Republicans (conservatives) tend to gravitate toward issues that take a stand against evil and toward issues that stand up for the innocent. Democrats (liberals) tend to gravitate to the other end of the spectrum. They seem to gravitate toward issues that take no stand for the innocent and they tend to stand up for evil.

Here are some simple examples:

Republicans: for the death penalty (if you commit terrible evil crimes, you need to die)
Democrats: for saving the lives of evil criminals on death row.

Republicans: against abortion. (Abortion kills innocent lives, makes babies the victim without a voice).
Democrats: for abortion on demand. They care nothing for the millions of babies murdered in the process.

Republicans: for the war on terror. They want to stand up against evil. Even if it isn’t the most popular thing to do.
Democrats: against the war on terror. More interested in being popular or at least not singled out. They’re like the quiet kid on the playground who will not stand up to a bully picking on the new kid. They would prefer to stand quietly in the background, hoping to be invisible so the bully will not choose them as their next target.

Some liberals may see my thinking as too black and white. They like to hide in the grey areas of every argument. They like to use this cloud to hide their movements as they slip from one side to the other (whichever side is most popular – or safest). The grey makes it easy to make excuses and feel sorry for those who do evil. I believe it comes from a deep rooted guilt that they have for doing things that they aren’t proud of, and leaves them room to hope that they can be accepted. I believe that they secretly hope someone will make excuses for them when the time comes. It is a way to escape responsibility for their own actions.

Republicans believe in responsibility. If you do wrong, you pay a price. If you do nothing in the face of evil, you pay a price (can you say WWII France…) If you do not try, you fail. If you surround yourself with bad people, your likely to become a their victim. If you work, you get paid. If you try really hard, you are respected. If you have an opinion, you express it. If you have a belief, you stand by it. If you see someone in need, you help them. If you quit, you loose. It is that simple.

Is there a God? Creation vs. Evolution

This is a classic World According to John moment. I am growing tired of all of the people falling all over themselves in their attempts to justify either side of this argument. Consider this, perhaps the truth may lie somewhere in between!

To me it’s so obvious. I am a programmer; we have the power to create worlds. Inside of a computer we can define rules and parameters that our worlds follow. We create intelligent objects that exist within these worlds. We can give these objects freedoms to pursue their own paths within the limits of the universe that we create. If we can do this, why not God?

Our universe follows some basic laws. We call them physics. gravity, time and the elements. Out of these basic building blocks everything else exists. In a computer program we also have some basic building blocks, electrons, cycles, pixels… but as we all know, computer programs do not write themselves. Random electrons, cycles and pixels do not create working worlds. For a computer program (or our universe) to work we need order. Order that is created through and with much thought and design.

I’m pretty sure that a complex universe like ours, built on these seemingly simple building blocks must have been designed by a creator with a very high and complex intelligence. For this design to lead to intelligent adaptive life, it needed to be perfectly conceived.

A nerd as old as me can remember a movie named Tron. In Tron a programmer gets sucked into a computer system and gets to be an eye witness to the worlds within. In these worlds the programs go about their daily work. Some silly programs actually believe in a religion that believes in entities called ‘Users’. Most of the other programs think that this is a silly religion and there is no proof of these so-called ‘Users’.

Back to my point... I believe that the stories about God creating the universe are true. I believe that he did. I also believe that evolution is true. I think that this is how God went about doing it. God is the creator of the things we call science. I believe that what we are observing when we study the sciences are all Gods engineering. We learn more and more about how he has designed the universe and the technologies that he uses.

Now for another leap… I believe that our universe may be just one in an infinite number of universes that God has created. Our single universe has trillions of galaxies; each galaxy has billions of suns. Each sun seems to have many worlds. And the numbers seem to support that the probability of life on other worlds is excellent.

For those hard-core fundamentalists: news flash: The earth is not Flat! Give God some credit. His creation is awesome, perfect and very complex. You can see the physical evidence that supports the science just as clearly as the evidence that you exist. Many of you trust your doctor to treat you when you are very sick. Why? His works are based on science…

For those scientists who are skeptical about the existence of God, I submit these questions: Why did the big bang happen? Where did all of this matter come from? How can all of our universe come from Nothing? Perhaps it was God simply booting up his computer!