I have been taking a little break for about a week or so and should be wrapping it up after my trip to Tulsa, OK next week. I’ll be slowly getting back in to the geeky swing of things.

Here are some updates on a few of my projects:

ARKon & A2F

ARKon has been postponed until 2011. A new day has not yet been chosen. We feel by postponing the event, we can make a better convention experience for next year.

Since ARKon has been postponed, several of us are going to Arkansas Anime Festival in Fayetteville, AR on Nov 19-21. Usually the Fall event is bigger than the Spring con. We’re going to start planning this weekend for it.

Arkansas Geek Central (AGC)

Arkansas Geek Central will be making a comeback. I will be reworking it to make it flow a bit better. It will still be using WordPress, but, the Forums will not be coming back. There are plans for a better set of calendars. One for Arkansas based events, and another for surrounding states.

Kwadkades

The Kwadkades will be staying at Conway Gaming Center. The 3 standard cabinets (Mark I, II & IV) will be running regular arcade machines. Street Fighter II, Neo-Geo & Robocop will be the games/systems in those cabinets. Possibly this week Street Fighter II will be pay-to-play with some days set to free-play. The other 2 will be following when the coin-mechs get ordered and come in. I haven’t decided on what to do with the Mark III. This is mostly due to the monitor needing to be larger. Depending on my budget after my trip to Tulsa, I may see about getting a ~23″ LCD monitor for it.

I plan on building a small portable arcade machine running on Linux on a Beagleboard. I have not yet narrowed the game list yet. The games will either have to be Open Source or pre-compiled for the ARM processor.

The Stepmania and Vanguard Princess will be eventually making a comeback along with possibly another fighting game. I’m hoping to build some custom cabinets for these or using the Mark III.

id Software has released the source code to Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory under the GPL yesterday (Aug 12, 2010).

Links to the source code:

• Enemy Territory – ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/source/ET-GPL.zip
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein (Multiplayer) – ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/source/RTCW-MP-GPL.zip
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein (Single Player) – ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/source/RTCW-SP-GPL.zip

Now, if they’ll release the Doom 3 engine under the GPL like they’ve been promising for years.

I’ll be bringing 3 of the Kwadkades home this week. To make room for these, I’m getting rid of a bunch of computer parts, books, and misc other things that are in my way. I will also be getting rid of the Mark III Kwadkade cabinet as it’s too big & heavy for where I live now.

Here’s a few things I’m getting rid of if some one in interested:

Free:

• Guitar, Guitar stand and small amp (Free)
• Casio Keyboard Synth (Free)
• Misc computer parts: NICs, Motherboards & CPUs, Memory, Sound Cards, etc (Free)
• Misc older computer books (Free)
• more to come

If there’s no one interested in the Free Stuff, I’ll be putting them up on CraigsList and/or FreeCycle.

For Sale:

• Small Midi Keyboard (price not yet determined)
• Mics, Cables & Audio Mixing boards (price not yet determined)

If these aren’t sold before too long, they’re going up on Ebay.

I’ve shutdown several of my websites, mostly due to inactivity and lack of interest from other people.

• Arkansas Geek Central
• Central Arkansas Anime Group
• LazerTagChat.com
• Kwadrix.com
• LAN Party Admins of Arkansas
• ARLUG.org
• Ubuntu Team Arkansas
• Kwadnet
• Q3TCRP
• FlashMobLAN

Pretty much just have this website (Kwadroke.com/AEBates.com) and Kwadkade.com still running. I’m also stepping down from HSALUG & CARLUG. I am not leaving these groups due to a person or a group of people. I just feel I need a break and to remove some of the pressure I have placed on myself. There were some groups that did not have any outside input or involvement.
I have been contemplating this for a while and I doubt anyone will miss these groups or my involvement. In fact, I have a feeling most groups of the continuing groups will prosper from me stepping away.
It is possible I may return to some of these groups in the future. I very seriously doubt I will be taking a direct role in any of these.
I am also stepping away from working at Conway Gaming Center. I may be there occasionally as a gamer, but, not as anything official. Again, this is not due to anyone who owns CGC or works or is a customer there. I just need a break, and, I do not feel like I can contribute anything to help improve the store at this time.

This is why I build the KwadKades:

Seeing the cabinets being full reminds me why I do this.

I’m also working on a website for another blog. Yes another one. Still using WordPress. WordPress makes it so easy to set up a blog. I can have one setup in a few minutes. Tweaking a theme takes the longest time. Anyway, this is another Arcade themed blog. I’ll have more details in the near future.

On June 26, 2002 I registered aebates.com. It’s been 8 years since I setup this site. It’s gone several changes and upgrades, but it’s been my home in the Far Reaches of Cyberspace. I typically refer people to it via kwadroke.com, but it has always been aebates.com.

Apple & Androids

For those living in a cave, Apple has released the new iPhone 4 as well as a new update to the iPhone OS. I have an iPhone 3gs, most of the features I’ve seen so far for iOS4, I have on my jailbroken OS 3. I really have no desire to upgrade the OS or get the new iPhone. Now getting a new Android on the other hand, sounds much better to me. Only problem is AT&T’s Android selection sucks compared to Verizon’s Droids. The Droid X looks pretty sweet. HDMI out, 720P video recording, and of course runs Android. It could use a front facing camera though.

Why do I like Android so much? It’s running on top of Linux and doesn’t lock you down like the iPhone OS.
Maybe some time soon, I’ll be able to put Android OS on my iPhone.

Apparently there’s a problem the reception with iPhone 4. If you hold with your left hand, the signal plummets. Why wasn’t this tested?

Anime

I’m starting up the Central Arkansas Anime Group meetings again. This time we’re meeting the 2nd Thursday, 6PM of the month at Conway Gaming Center. We watch anime every Thursday at 8PM at CGC, so, I figured it would be a good time to start up the meetings.

ARLUG

I’ve created a ARLUG Identi.ca Group to help spread the word about Linux in Arkansas. Post your Arkansas based Linux dents to the group using !arlug.

For those who don’t have a clue what Identi.ca is, it is a Open Source implementation of Twitter. I prefer Identi.ca over Twitter due to it’s based off of Status.net, and can be run of your own server. I run Status.net server over on GameSqueak.com.

Just got done with a week of RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 Certified Engineer classes & exam today. This was alot tougher than I remember the RHEL4 RHCE class & Exam. Should hopefully know the results sometime tonight. I’ll update this post with the results. Hope I get at-least my RHCT, preferably my RHCE.

Edit: I PASSED. I’m now a RHCE for RHEL5.

I’ve upgraded the website to WordPress 3.0. It was amazingly easy. Just click the link to upgrade and it was done. I’m liking this software more & more.

Yesterday, I downloaded linux-gamers.net live Linux LiveDVD. It’s pretty slick. It has UrbanTerror, Nexuiz, Warsow, Tremulous and a bunch of other games on it.I tried it out on the PCs at Conway Gaming Center. It worked out-of-the-box. I plan on getting a 8GB USB drive today to install it on to speed it up a little. This makes me want to get the Linux LANs going again as well as getting the Flash LANs meeting up.

This year’s A-Kon seemed to be a bit slower than normal. I’m not sure if it was because we got in a day early or what. The panels we went to seemed to be a bit lacking due to some of them being pure Q&A sessions. To me, it seems that these can bring a panel to a grinding halt unless there’s a lot of questions being asked.

I did have a good time. I am sad to see that A-Kon is over with, but, now I can concentrate on my other projects. Q3TCRP, Life at North High, & ARKon can now have more attention put to them. I got some inspiration from the Con for my projects, so those should be materializing soon.

I apparently forgot to move over one of my subdomains over to the new server. The website hasn’t been updated in ages, so I loaded my new favorite website software, WordPress on it.

The website is for a project that I’ve been trying to get off the ground called the Quake 3 Total Conversion Revitalization Project, or Q3TCRP for short. You can visit it at http://q3tcrp.kwadrix.com. It’s for bringing back some of the Total Conversions for Quake III Arena. I’ve got QBall (a FPS paintball TC) mostly working. Hopefully after A-Kon I can get back to working on it. I’ve played with compiling it for Linux and got it running, but, there’s a font texture missing. I think it has been missing for a while.

Maybe after getting a release ready I’ll buy a domain name for it.

Thursday night’s MC Frontalot & The OneUps show at Maxine’s Pub in Hot Springs, Arkansas was probably the best show I’ve seen. Granted I haven’t been to many, but even the ones I’ve seen on TV pale to this one. The venue was small and the turn out was less than I hoped for, but, I had a great time. I got to hang out with my friend, TheCrow and got to chat with Frontalot and Mustin from The OneUps.

I spent probably too much on merchandise there. About $140 was spent on CD’s, T-Shirts stickers, Glasses etc. But, it was all to support Frontalot and The OneUps.

lO”$ … found the other day out what it means after a Google Search. After all these years, I never knew this shortcut existed.