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I saw this excelent article and it reminded me of my young life as a budding computer nerd. When I was in middle school we had a new IBM lab full of PS2's, which freed up room in our tiny old Apple // lab. My science teacher took us down to the Apple lab every Wednesday and let us spend the whole period playing text adventures for extra credit. It was so awesome. He was a really cool guy, and an odd duck as science teachers went. He'd light the lab in colored bulbs and play t

A while back I wrote about 3/4 of a text adventure engine. It still needed some work on event handling but most of the basics where done. Navigation, inventory, and text parsing. I'm currently working on adapting some of that code for a proper game, It's a bit of a console hacking simulator, so it has the advantage of a symplified vocabulary. No one expects a command prompt to understand "Get Lamp from case". Should be fun, if that is, I can figure out how to make it fun.

I gave the site a face-lift this week. The hexagons had to go, they just wouldn't render correctly on mobile devices. I asked WIX if they could fix it and they just sort of shrugged. I also gave the galleries a new look. I think they're a lot nicer.

I've been pretty busy on projects, and wanted to share my recently updated VR goggles. A few people have asked about how to build them so I figured I'd write a bit about that too. It has the same stats as the last version. Reads as an Oculus DK1, has 1080p resolution. I scratch built the whole case from styrene sheet plastic, it's a bit heavier now but it's a lot more sturdy and easy to handle. The cardboard version was lighter, but every time I handled it I was afraid of sna

I'm rebuilding my VR goggles today so they look a little more refined. This is my first styrene modeling project and it's a really great material to work with.

I did a little optimization on the VR set this morning. The micro-controller on the side sits a little more flush and the cables are all routed now. Biggest improvement is a strap plate for the back of the head made of foam-core and velcro. I modeled it off the back plate Oculus is using on their newer designs and it really helps distribute the weight of the rig over your whole head so it's not all sitting on your nose.

I've been very bad about updating this blog, so let's get it restarted with a bang. Last night I finished Ver1 of my homemade Oculus Rift. It's not going to win any beauty contests but it works and it's mine. It's a bit heavier than my buddie's DK1, and the wires are a bit cumbersome. My next move is to wrangle the wires into a manageable group and make strap junction plate for the back of my head like the one Crescent Bay has to help distribute the load. I'll probably make t