Marque For My MAME Cabinet

My New MAME Cabinet Project

Isn’t She Beautiful!

This is the beginning of my future MAME cabinet. I have a friend in my town who owns a large billiard hall, and he had this old Neo-Geo game that the screen has gone out on, so I was able to pick this baby up for less than 100 bucks and have it brought to my house. The inside part works perfectly, so I’m sure I can sell that on E-bay.

I am thinking that I will repaint the entire thing, put a regular TV inside and mount it, and I have not decided if I will buy the controller set from x-arcade or if I will build my own.

I also plan to make a custom marque, stickers, and lighting. I will be mounting speaker inside also. I am not sure what I will use as the system, as I have a few to choose from.

I have a working old p4 setup that I can use, and I also have an older laptop with S-Video out that I could use. I will update further when I make some decisions in that area. Shane is supposed to be checking on a Knoppix bootable linux iso with MAME and a gui interface already installed, but if that doesn’t work out, I can always boot windows and use MAME and build my own front end or use one that I can find out there already.

If anyone else needs one of these sweet cabinets, I think I have access to two or three more. I will update this post later, when I have more time to re-write everything, and update with some more info.

User Interface (UI) Design Is Difficult

If you are designing a new web app, blog template, VB/C# .NET application, MFC Windows Form, or any other application that a user will interact with, you will  have to deal with UI design.

I believe that many of us that come from a traditional university computer science background find designing UI difficult.  I learned all my college programming via command line, and the only “windows” I designed were for my own personal projects, or toward the end of my university stay when we were given more freedom on projects.

What many of us fail to realize is that to the user, the UI is the program.  That is a very simple but important thing for a developer to understand.  I feel that because of this, it is important to not wait until the end to design the UI.

Some people will tell you that you should design the UI first, and some will say not to.  I think both ways can be appropriate given specific conditions.  The important key as I see it is not to wait until the end.  I like to design a basic UI, and let it grow with the program development, and then at the end I like to clean it up, and beautify it.

Anyway, there are resources a plenty on UI design, from far more brilliant minds than mine, but I just want to share the point that I made earlier, to the end user, the UI is the program.  I think that as developers, if we all keep that in mind, we will make better programs.

Protecting PDF files From Being Indexed In Search Engines

I have noticed a growing trend in companies who sell PDF files online. I went to get a copy of the ZEND PHP 5 Certification Study Guide, and I noticed that by doing a google search for pdf files with php 5 study guide that the pdf that they sell is actually being indexed by google.

The reason that this type of thing happens is that the actual pdf file itself resides within web space for that site, and someone out there has a link pointing to it.  Google follows the link to the file and indexes the file.

To prevent this from happening, you should store the files you want to restrict outside of web space (IE a folder ABOVE your web root) and allow PHP (or ASP or whatever) to serve the file.

FilePath could be something like “C:\Web\PDF\FileName.pdf” Where your webroot is “C:\Web\wwwroot” for example. The important thing is that the file resides outside of the web space.

In PHP you can do something like this:

<?php
if logged_in() {
header(’Content-type: application/pdf’);
print file_get_contents(”FilePath”);
} else {
# forward to login code here
}
?>

As always, If anyone has a better solution or a different one, please post a comment.

Difficulty With Naming A Website

One of my favorite dev sites is trying to come up with a new site for a project they are working on.  You can find the article here on codinghorror.com. This does bring up an important issue: It can be really difficult to name a website.  I chose this site because it was suggested to be as an alternate name by godaddy.

I wonder how many people agonize for days over what domain to choose? There are so many brands out there, I think you have to be careful not to infringe on something someone else has already done, and more importantly you don’t want a URL that is too closely associated to something that you don’t want to be associated with.  I believe that codinghorror.com is doing a good thing in asking their readers to help pick the domain.

I think some important things to consider are:

1. Keywords in the domain

2. Branding Potential (think t-shirts, business cards, etc, depending on the type of site)

3. The professionalism of the Domain (if this is an ecommerce site, or a personal blog, it should make a difference on what domains are appropriate)

4.  Past uses, existing links, etc. (if the site was recently expired, it could have links pointing to it, problems with G, or other things you need to investigate).

5.  Is the domain easy to remember?

5 Shopping Lists That Will Freak People Out!

Shopping Lists That Will Freak People Out!

Ever wonder what might happen if you bought some crazy things that all fit together in disturbing ways? How would people react?

I have come up with a few shopping lists that I am sure would get the people your standing in line with to notice you. I would really like to see the reactions if anyone bought any of the lists below.

List 1.

1. Duct Tape
2. Ski Mask
3. Duffel Bag
4. Shotgun Shells
5. Gloves

List 2.

1. Caramel
2. Apples
3. Razors
4. Pumpkin

List 3.

1. Bible
2. Flask
3. Candles
4. Book On Learning Latin
5. Camcorder

List 4.

1. Rope
2. Car Battery
3. Jumper Cables
4. K-Y Jelly
5. Condoms

List 5.

1. Hack Saw
2. Trash Bags
3. Bleach
4. Rubber Gloves
5. Mop & Bucket

T-Mobile Owns Magenta Color? What’s Next

First A Brief Excerpt From The Wired Article:

Ryan Block of Engadget assures us that this is not an early April Fool gag. Deutsche Telekom, owners of T-Mobile in Germany, has sent a letter to the gadget blog demanding that it stop using the color magenta.

You have got to be joking T-Mobile.  Are you that big of a moron? Next thing you know I won’t be able to use a smiley face, drawn an arch, or use “Micro” in any way.  This is just insane.  T-Mobile, stop being an rtard, you may not have the color Magenta.  While I’m at it, Walmart, you also may not own the smiley face.  Why don’t we just go find a company who used Magenta before T-Mobile, and prove that they own it.  And then we can go back further, maybe to the first paining to ever use it, and claim they own it.  Maybe it will even go back to some archaic cave painting.  Since I am the direct decedent of the cave man who drew that, I think that I now own T-Mobile as well as the color magenta.

You can’t own a color, bottom line, end of story, Good Bye.