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NESpad

[An NES gamepad library for Arduino.][link]

>One use of this is to allow your Arduino access to the status of 8 buttons (up, down, left, right, A, B, START, SELECT) using only 3 digital pins (for STROBE/LATCH, CLOCK, DATA).

3 pins is a tall order on my Arduino Uno, but for the new Due it’s a drop in the bucket. It supposedly works with the [Freedom Stick][freedom], too. Wireless Arduino NES Remote here I come.

[link]: http://code.google.com/p/nespad/ “nespad – NESpad Nintendo game pad library for Arduino – Google Project Hosting”
[freedom]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Stick “Freedom Stick by Camerica”

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Expect Me

Regular posting to resume shortly. Go about your business.

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Arduino-serial: C code to talk to Arduino

[Relevant to my recent interests.][link] I bought an Arduino Uno this weekend and the amount of ideas I have right now are scary.

The primary benefit of this C library is that it will not trigger a reset on the board. This means you can stream data at intervals and not get a reset.

[link]: http://todbot.com/blog/2006/12/06/arduino-serial-c-code-to-talk-to-arduino/ “Arduino-serial: C code to talk to Arduino « todbot blog”

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‘Financial Martial Law’ In Michigan

[I hope you liked that whole democracy thing while it lasted, Michigan, because it’s gone now.][link] Zero-oversight financial managers appointed by the governor will be able to shut down your entire city, get paid whatever they want, and you can’t do a thing about it.

[link]: http://gawker.com/#!5781065/michigans-shockingly-undemocratic-financial-martial-law-bill “Michigan’s Shockingly Undemocratic ‘Financial Martial Law’ Bill”

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Universal Pictures Kills “Mountains of Madness” Over R Rating

[How can you do true existential terror in PG-13][link]? I can imagine the notes from the studio: “can the giant monster from beyond time be more friendly?,” etc.

Luckily for us, they weren’t in charge of the original, and you can read [H.P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness for free on Wikisource][free].

[link]: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/03/guillermo-del-toro-madness-has-gone-dark.html#ixzz1G2RUV3Lt “News Desk: Guillermo del Toro: “Madness Has Gone Dark” : The New Yorker”
[free]: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/At_the_Mountains_of_Madness “At The Mountains of Madness”

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Comments Are Enabled

For the first time in a long time, the comments are turned on here at Extra Future HQ. You can comment on any post, I imagine I’ll turn comments off on older posts, but we shall see.

Don’t make me regret this.

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Closing Tabs 5/27/09

* [Super Mario 64 longplay, grabbing all 120 stars][sm]. If you were under the age of 30 when this came out, goodbye afternoon. It’s such an astoundingly well put together game. At every stage, care was taken to make sure it “felt” right. [Jason Scott][textfiles]’s [talk about Platform Studies][scott] has me rekindling my love affair with it.

[sm]: http://longplays.ath.cx/site/modules/movie_categoryb/index.php?id=4 “Super Mario 64 Longplay”
[scott]: http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/04/jason_scott_on_platform_studie.php “Jason Scott’s Talk”
[textfiles]: http://textfiles.org “Jason Scott’s Textfiles.org”

* [The Metroid Prime entry on Wikitroid][prime]. ’nuff said. Exploring the 3D transition of one of Nintendo’s other major franchises, which skipped the N64 and went straight to the GameCube. With Mario 64, everyone expected it to be mind-blowing. With Prime, everyone expected it to be shit. Sometimes everyone is wrong. *Disclosure: I have stock options in Wikia.*

[prime]: http://metroid.wikia.com/wiki/Metroid_Prime “Wikitroid: Metroid Prime”

* [ANTHEM Platform][anthem]. A platform for piping Social Networks, IM, email, OEMs, etc, to cell phone applications. Recently acquired by Good Technology.

[anthem]: http://www.intercastingcorp.com/anthem/overview.php “Anthem platform”

* [Imified][imified]. A service which runs IM bots for you, and acts as a go-between for you and the IM network. You can code up applications that the bot queries with what is said to it, by whom. They provide examples in PHP, which makes me happy.

[imified]: http://www.imified.com/ “Imified”

* [Google is “betting big on HTML5”][goog]. Speed of web development accelerating, `canvas`, `video`, client-side databases, web workers, etc. See also: [YouTube using the HTML5 `video` tag][youtube].

[goog]: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/05/google-bets-big-on-html-5.html “O’Reilly: Google Bets Big on HTML 5”
[youtube]: http://www.youtube.com/html5 “Youtube HTML5 demo”

* [Sleeping with the NME: how the British music press picked up a dose of the crap][brit], which is about the sorry state of the British music press. From [Velvet Coalmine][coal], which has become a favorite blog of mine.

[brit]: http://velvetcoalmine.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/sleeping-with-the-nme-how-the-british-music-press-picked-up-a-dose-of-the-crap/ “Sleeping with the NME: how the British music press picked up a dose of the crap”
[coal]: http://velvetcoalmine.wordpress.com/ “Velvet Coalmine”

* [Remote-controlled sperm][kurz], or more precisely: remote-controller sperm-like nanodevices.

[kurz]: http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=news_single.html?id%3D10648 “Sperm-like nanopropeller is smallest swimmer ever”

* [CSS-only gradients][grad] using CSS3 and no images. Whatsoever. Uses the `-webkit-gradient` property. Hot shit.

[grad]: http://tools.westciv.com/gradients/ “CSS3 Gradients”