I’ve been wanting a gamepad I can use on my Mac and my Linux box. I almost picked up a Xbox 360 wired controller since its has a standard USB interface and there is driver support on both platforms however, thanks partly to EB games being out I decided instead on plan B – reuse something I already owned.

I had a couple of Xbox S controllers lying around that I haven’t been using. I like the S controllers, they fit my hands nicely and have a good feel to them. I also have a ton of extra USB cables laying around. While browsing around the net I found some instructions on how to splice a USB cable together with the controller cable. In concept, its quite easy since the original Xbox cable is basically a USB cable with a funky connector. Its just a matter of stripping each cable and matching up like color to like color. I practice, the wires in my USB cable that I spliced in were so thin that it was a bit difficult (for me) to cleanly strip them at first without slicing into the wire itself.

A little solder and electrical table later I had a working cable. I had to download drivers for OS X to get it to work on my Mac but Dapper Drake recognized it without me having to do anything.

Stumbled across an very fun japanese freeware game for both the Mac and PC called Doukutsu Monogatari (aka Cave Story). It reminds me of some old NES game, but done super super good for being freeware. Make sure and apply the english language pack unless you read Japanese. Oh, and here are the keyboard controls since they aren’t listed
<- -> move left, right
up arrow point gun up
down arrow point gun down, perform action (talk, open, etc)
z jump
x fire weapon
a,s switch weapon
q inventory
w map

Its been over a year, but I’m working on Cerebral Imprint again.
My first goal – make it so it doesn’t look like, well, ass (pardon my french). When I first started working on Cerebral Imprint I was a fresh switcher from a windows world and the only user interface work I had done in a while was swing based. Now that I’ve been a Mac convert for quite some time I find the user interface to be somewhat of an embarrassment. So, what do you think about this layout?

Its going to be a little bit before I have a new test version ready but stay tuned. My goal is to actually stabilize the code base, release a 2.0 release, then actually start to add new features again.

Hey, looking for a nice list of some of the more popular open source apps out there for the mac? Why not check this site out…
PS – Saturday rocked. I just had to tell someone, but shhh, don’t tell anyone. Its between just you and me, promise?

When I heard that Google Earth had been released for OS X the other day I had to give a spin. At first glance it looks sorta like a standalone client for their online maps service, albeit with many more layers you can overlay over the map and more UI special effects.
Dig around a bit more and you find there is a whole user community around finding and labeling places on the map. You enable these optional layers and you find a treasure trove of little details people have spent time entering in. For instance in my area I find free WI-FI access points labeled, traffic cam information, Bruce Lee’s Grave, Bill’s house, or where Kurt shot himself.
I was let down a little bit that it wouldn’t handle the address for my friend in Japan, but then again none of the map sites seem to do so…