Awesome Free Game

March 22, 2009

For those of you that like real-time strategy games and like your games free and open source, take a look at TA Spring. The video shows some of the game action.

TA Spring is a staple on game nights. Along with Starcraft and RockBand, it provides hours of action packed fun.

There are tons of units, neat structures, great graphics, and the gameplay is solid. Every once in a while you do hit a bug, especially if your playing against the AI.

There are a number of mods available that alter the look and feel of the game.

My game group likes to kick back on Friday nights with some cheesey-poofs and pop and nuke the hell out of our enemies.

Erik Builds a Digital Drum Set

January 21, 2009

After months of playing RockBand, I've developed a new found respect for drummers. I've played the guitar for decades, so I wasn't too keen on pretending to play songs on a tiny fake guitar. But as it turns out, I love to play the drums. Being able to control each of your limbs independantly is very difficult. The only thing that helps is (big surprise) a lot of practice. I don't own RockBand or a PS3, and I don't think my better-half would appreciate me pounding on drums all night. So I've decided to build myself a digital drum set.

This brings me to perhaps the most interesting part of my story. In order to accomplish this project, I've started tinkering with the PIC18F microprocessors.

I will chronicle my efforts building my drum set and working with PICs. I am a complete newbie at PICs. So at the end of my odyssey, I will either be a broken man with a lot of electronic crap strewn all over my office, or I will be a little more geeky and a have a whole lot of rhythm.

See the articles here.