I’ve just launched a new website for the Lego Computer project. I’ve been thinking about creating a new Lego Computer for quite some time now, but I’ve finally gotten around to the planning stages. To keep track of this (and list the process of the first lego computer) I’ve set up legocomputer.net. Alternatively, the site can be found at jeremyduenas.com/legocomputer.
I recently got Ubuntu 8 to dual boot with Vista and soon realized it was a pain to have two places to store my music, documents, images, etc. I thought about using an extra harddrive as a shared harddrive where I could keep files for both. But I’m highly organized on the computer (which is funny, since I’m not all that organized off the computer) and didn’t want to deal with creating sixty billion folders and I also liked keeping files in Vista’s Documents, Music, etc. folders. In addition to that (yes, I’m trying to prove to you that I’m not just lazy), I didn’t want to fill up the harddrive with all my files. I’d rather keep them all spanned out across three or four harddrives. The only way to do that was with syncing software. So I tried Vista’s syncing software, but apparently that only works with media devices. You’ve failed me again Microsoft!
For the writing of this article I used Windows XP Professional SP2.
I recently got sick of using an FTP program every time I wanted to upload files to my site. So I searched around for solutions (thinking I could ftp via some hidden Windows program) until I found out that you can FTP via Windows Explorer. Not Internet Explorer, but Windows Explorer.
Connecting
To start your connection, open up My Documents (or any folder on Windows you want). In the address bar, type in the ftp address to your site (Example- ftp.sitename.net). After a few seconds, a box will pop up telling you that you cannot connect. Close the box and right click inside of the folder you were just trying to connect through. Select “Login As” and type in your log in information. Click connect and -poof- you’re connected to your site via ftp via windows explorer.
Make Future Connecting Easy
Close out that window (or keep it open if you’d like) and open up your start menu. On the right side of the menu, under My Computer should be My Network Places; click that. On the left, click “Add a Network Place” . Go through the wizard until you can choose between MSN Communities and Choose Another Network Connection. Select the latter and click next. Now type in your ftp address and hit next one more time (make sure to type ftp:// before your ftp address). Unclick Login Anonymously and type in your login name. Name the connection and hit finish. You will now be able to instantly connect to your site via My Network Places. For extra ease, place a shortcut to the connection on your desktop or quick launch bar.
Before you get too excited, I don’t mean portable like the portable versions of Firefox, Pidgin, etc. I mean for a portable harddrive (at least 7.5GB). Portable harddrives come in different sizes and types. I personally use an old laptop harddrive placed inside of an external drive enclosure and my iPod. You could also, if you’ve got one large enough, use a usb flash drive (thumb drive, pen drive, etc.). Obviously, in addition to a drive, you’ll need a copy of World of Warcraft and a subscription to it (so you can play it).
Use With Portable Harddrive
This is very simple. Either install directly onto the harddrive or go onto your C Drive and copy and paste your World of Warcraft folder onto the drive. It’s that simple. You can now use world of warcraft on any computer you want (assuming it has the required specs).
Use With an iPod
If you’ve already set up your iPod to be used a harddrive, go back to Use With Portable Harddrive and follow those instructions. If you haven’t, keep reading. Please note that this is done with iTunes 7 on Windows XP, so if you’re running OS X, it might be slightly different.
Plug your iPod into your computer and open up iTunes (if it doesn’t automatically open). iTunes should display information on your iPod. If it doesn’t, select your iPod under “Devices” on the left side of the program. Under Options, you should see a small list of options. Check Enable Disk Use. Now go back up to Use With Portable Harddrive and follow those instructions (or click here).
Playing the Game
To play the game, all you have to do is open up your harddrive and open up Wow.exe (or whatever the OS X or linux equivelant is). It’s that simple.
When you’re a geek like me and you’re forced to survive in the wild (outside of your room), you might not know what to do. Conversations can be awkward, and often lead to you striking up conversations about that shock video you saw last week online. But I find when I’m at school, surviving in the wild is much easier, because I’m surrounded by computers. The only problem is that its not MY computer. With this article, I aim to help you make any computer YOUR computer.
All you need is a USB flashdrive. I use a 1gig LG flash drive, but something as small as 128mb will do. First of all, go to Portable Apps and download the Portable App installer. Install the program onto your flashdrive (it’ll take a while to do this, so go watch 2girls1cup or something :D). Once that’s done, you’ll want to start up the portable version of Firefox. This is where a majority of your survival kit will be going.
If you don’t already have one, head over to google and sign up for an account. With this account you’ll have access to Google mail (gmail), Calendar, docs, and many others. With this account, you get 6GB of online storage. And the best way to use that storage is a little Firefox plugin called GSpace. With GSpace, you can upload/download any file you want via Firefox. That means that if you’re finishing up a class and you’ve got some homework you need to finish up, you can upload the word doc, the images, the audio files, or whatever you need to Google and head home, download/complete the assignment and reupload for download at school. Now you might be saying that you can easily do this with a flash drive. This is true. But if you’re a graphic or web design major (I’m web major), you’ll have MASSIVE files that will very quickly fill up your flashdrive. But with Google + GSpace, you can fill up your 6GB with endless amounts of stuff.
This next one is setting your homepage to http://igoogle.com. Here you can find little widgets and dock them on the page. Personally, I’ve got Calendar, Gmail, and a few others docked so I can easily view my schedule, email, etc. Also remember to trick out your Firefox. Even though its portable, this version of Firefox can use plugins and themes just like the full version. The only difference is that Firefox auto-clears the browsing history when you remove the flashdrive (this reduces the amount of space needed to store Firefox).
Lastly, make use of the programs on Portable Apps. There are a ton of smaller versions of popular programs that you can use. There’s graphics editors, text editors, IM clients, and more. Also, you can easily add your own programs that will show up on the Portable Apps menu on the computer. I’ve got some GBA/SNES emulators on mine, alone with a few smaller games (Conquest, Crayon Physics, etc.).
One of the greatest things about Mozilla Firefox is the addons. And since a lot of Firefox developers are web designers, there’s a ton of tools made just for web designers. So I present to you my 5 favorite. Which means they’re the best, I guess.
Do you know how frustrating it is to go a month without playing xbox (by choice) and then when you get that urge to play a game or two you can’t? Its VERY frustrating! I went a month or so without playing the xbox because it was beginning to bore me. I’d spent endless hours killing people in Call of Duty 3 and all my other games just bored me. But then my hunger to game came back to me. I fell victim to the hunger pains and started up the ‘ol 360 to play some Gears of War with my friend Justin. The loading screen comes up. “oh boy!” I thought, “I’m going to kick some ass.”. That’s about the same time that the xbox froze. “WTF?!?!?!” I yelled loudly. “JEREMY! Don’t say that!” my mom yelled back. So I frantically restarted my box only to find that it froze every time I started it up. So I called xbox tech support.
Now I’d heard nightmarish stories about how MS tech support is horrible. And how you’re always on the phone for like an hour. To my surprise, it wasn’t painful. I called the number and was introduced to the automated voice system. After chatting it up with that guy for a while, I was taken to real live, breathing human! I explained the situation to the guy and he pulled up my xbox’s info and informed me that I was till under warranty (Even though I hadn’t red ringed yet). But he told me to do something that red ringed it. Great! So he gave me some information and MS sent me an empty box and packaging material. I was kind of lazy and waited two weeks before I took it…but eventually I sent it off to Texas (that’s where MS fixes/replaces xbox’s). A week later I was freaking out and wanted my xbox. But I silenced that xbox hunger with a healthy portion of World of Warcraft. Swords, dwarfs, giant spiders, and the Defias Brotherhood.. MmmMmmmMmmm. Just like mom used to make.
The following week I had grown impatient, because I’m an impatient person. So I called up tech support and was like “BITCHES! WHERE DA FUCK MUH XBOX AT?!”. or something along the lines of that. :) The guy informed me that the xbox was scheduled to arrive today. OH SWEET JESUS HOORAY YES! No sooner had I gotten off the phone that the doorbell rang. I seriously made this face- O_O
So I got my xbox back and started it up. It scared me though, because I thought the audio was broken. Turns out one of the p.o.s. gaming cable “router” I bought from gamestop a year ago had a bad audio plug. So here it is two weeks later and I’ve had absolutely no issues with my xbox. It runs quieter, actually. Which means its probably one of the newer xboxes.
In conclusion, despite the rumors, despite the jokes, despite the despitefulness, getting a red ring of death isn’t as painful as it sounds. And getting your xbox replaced is very easy. http://xbox.com/support/
Update (May 30, 2008): I’ve since lost all of the blog post images for this entire site (up until 2008). So I don’t have any of my pictures for this anymore. I managed to find one website that re-posted this story with one of the pictures. Check it out after you read the story here.
I was bored and I had an oldish Dell Dimension 2400 lying around that was collecting dust as a nice foot rest under my desk. So I decided I stripped it of all its parts and make a Lego computer! Before I began construction with the Legos, I figured I should make sure I could put everything back together properly. After a few minutes of reassembly and trying to remember where exactly that one plug went, I got it to boot to the BIOS. Unfortunately like an idiot I had wiped that harddrive clean earlier in the day. So I had to make a choice: Kubuntu Linux or Windows XP Pro. I figured the last thing this computer would need is something that heavily worked the processor (melting plastic isn’t a good smell). So I went with Kubuntu Linux (I completely pulled the idea that Linux would put less stress on the processor out of my ass. I have no idea if that’s true or not). So I installed Linux onto the computer and made sure everything perfectly worked after my little reconstruction. And amazingly it did! So the first thing I did was mark where every piece of the computer would go using a permanent marker on one of those large Lego pieces (1.5 foot by 1.5 foot ones). But like an idiot I forgot to make sure all of the cables from the power supply could reach the motherboard, and all of the motherboard’s cables could reach the CD player, Harddrive, fan, etc. So after a bit of repositioning, I screwed the mother board into a few 2×4 Lego blocks (to keep the motherboard about 1/3 an inch off the bottom of the Lego board.) and attached it to the board.
After that I just placed the harddrive, power supply, and cd player on the board and built legos up around it. The Lego case isn’t complete yet, but the computer’s parts are installed permanently and its just a matter of building up.
All you have to do is take a composite video cable and plug it into my iPod and TV. Pretty simple. I’m not exactly sure what kind of video cable it is (other than that its composite), so I can’t really help you out on finding one. I can, however, offer you a picture of it.
Note: Updated June 22, 2008
There’s a lot of hype about this game. It has won a ton of awards from a ton of different video game magazines, sites, companies, etc. and all for a VERY good reason. The reason is that this game is amazing. From the time I picked up the controller to the time I put it down (which I admit was only like 10-15 hours later), I was amazed. This was my first XBOX360 game, and I went the extra mile and bought the collector’s edition (or was is special edition…I can’t remember). And boy am I glad I did, because if I hadn’t I would have no idea why the hell I was fighting ugly orc-like things that crawl out of the ground.
Now you may be wondering what I mean by that. What I mean is that unless you read it on wikipedia or buy the $70 version that comes w/ a little book, you’ll have no idea what’s going on. The game does little to unveil the shroud that covers the main character’s past, the planet’s past, the locusts’ past, etc. That being said, you don’t really need a background to know that these locust guys are a pain in the butt and its your job to blow ‘em up. And that’s definitely something you’ll be doing a lot with this game. The main argument against this game is length. With enough dedication/food/caffeine, you can beat this game in one sitting….on easy. But that’s what the other difficulty settings are for.
The game comes with three different difficulty levels, each one much more difficult than the previous. When you first play the game, you can choose between the easiest mode and the middle-difficulty mode. Beating one of those two modes will unlock the third and most difficult mode. That, added to collecting COG tags, getting achievements, etc. makes for an okay-length game. Another argument against the game is online play. To me online play sucks. It pretty much consists of either jerks that are REALLY good at the game pwning you left and right, or 12 year olds who found the shotgun or found a sniper rifle/good snipers nest that call you a noob. Between the two you’re not left with much fun to have. That being said, online has a good half- Co-Op.
Co-Op is a LOT of fun. Especially during big battles against a lot of enemies or against more difficult enemies that require strategy. All in all, Gears is an excellent game. the graphics are breathtaking and if they’re any indication of what’s to come later on in this generation, we’re all in for some awesome gaming.
I gave it an 8.8/10 at gamespot.
