Now the good news, all the emulators tested work with the cartridges without issue! There is no setup required, you just plug in the cartridge and it shows up in your filesystem as ‘usbdisk’. That’s that. You can pick up SNES/Genesis/MS/GBA/GBC/GB/N64 cartridges confident in the knowledge that you can play them on your Ouya + Retrode.

Invite Link:
https://joindiaspora.com/i/e0aaab8c06ee

My Profile:
https://joindiaspora.com/u/huntergdavis

Honestly, this is huge.

Here you have a game console which supports retro gaming adapters out of the box. You can take this thing into a place of business and retro game without breaking any laws. Play some MarioKart 64 with your coworkers without having to dig around thrift stores for a N64 system, then switch it up and play SNES/Genesis/GB/GBC/GBA/SMS cartridges too, all without downloading any ROMS! Review old games with the full TV experience without having to install a modchip, root anything, boot up a PC, or even purchase the original consoles. Perhaps best of all you can dust off your old cartridges and share your favorite classic gaming experiences with your kids, confident in the knowledge that you’re not teaching them to pirate games. You might even help to instill a love of old games in a whole new generation of gamers.

Here’s how I set the whole thing up in just a couple minutes:

1. Went to the ‘retro’ section on the Ouya store
2. Downloaded the Mupen64 app
3. Mapped the buttons (using the controller settings menu in Mupen64) to the real N64 controller buttons
4. Told Mupen64 to load the cartridge from /mnt/usbdrive/ (the Retrode shows up as a USB drive on the Ouya)

That’s that! I’ll be posting up more Retrode + Ouya videos soon but in the meantime, feel confident that you can get your retro game on with your Ouya without breaking any laws or downloading any ROMS.

And here’s a quick photo of the hardware:

Read more to see photos of my hands after my short trip to the bank today. The moral of the story? Always wear your gear, even for the shortest of trips.

Meta #1: It’s hard to type naturally without my palms feeling.. “sticky” with blood. Gross
Meta #2: Remember when I said that I’ve given up posting to social media directly, you’re likely to see shorter, more frequent updates here on the site? This post would definitely fall under that category.

While I’ve owned many, many pairs of headphones over the years, these are my favorite. While perusing the local Goodwill outlet (the ones where you rummage through dumpster bins), I stumbled upon an old pair of Nixon studio headphones that had literally melted. I took it upon myself to patch them up.

First, I sanded down to the metal on the headphones themselves, removing all of the old bits of melted ear pad. I then used my dremel to re-bore the air-holes.

The only place I could find a nice set of fully round 85mm headphone pads was a Chinese distributor on eBay. Three weeks and 2$ later, a pair of 90mm+ pads show up and I decide that it’s time to get creative.

I cut the centers out of the original pads, then cut them down the center. If you’re doing this at home: avoid the temptation to cut a mobius strip. You might need that material.

Once I had these foam fittings cut, I fastened the new ear pads over the foam fittings, and voila!

These are just about the best sounding headphones I’ve ever owned, handily beating out the multi-hundred dollar plastic phones I see on the bus daily. Total cost was about 4$.

In my life, Facebook is the sum total of five sets of “social” functions.

1. Birthdays
2. Photos
3. Personal Advertising
4. Sharing with “Those Who Only Use Facebook”
5. Keeping in Touch

I want to move away from Facebook, but I don’t want to lose out on the above perks of having a “social” network. I put social in quotes because Facebook has ceased to be a means to socialize. The signal to noise ratio is too high. People use their cell phones to txt or email any immediate information, and the sharing of photos has started to migrate to other sites (sites with less draconian business practices). “Moving Away From Facebook” has become a popular topic, and this trend will only continue. After 8 years of daily usage there’s no easy way to do this, so I figure it’s better to rip it off like a bandage and remove it completely.

Here’s how I’m moving away from Facebook: replace each of the above items. I believe that it can be done, without much difficulty. The first step is getting your data out of Facebook. Luckily, nowadays they make this rather easy for you. You can move away from Facebook, and your life will be better for it.

You can move away from Facebook, and your life will be better for it.

Birthdays

For birthdays, Facebook allows you export all of your birthday data as a calendar you can import on your iCal or Google Calendar (or open source calendar). So now you won’t need to log into Facebook to check whose birthday is coming up.

Photos

Photos are a difficult problem. On the one hand, it’s very easy to post your photo up to Facebook from your phone. On the other hand, who knows how that photo will be used, and who will eventually end up looking at it. Yeah, maybe a second cousin once removed is considered a family member, but do you really want anyone who uses their computer to be able to browse photos of your 8 year old’s recital? Where does it end? We are just now realizing as a society that the ubiquitous surveillance that comes from social media may be depriving our youth of their ability to be young and reckless. It’s certainly depriving us of a shared sense of privacy, and often dignity. Remember when the pain of looking at boring vacation photos was a trope brought up in movies and television? When did that change? When our cell phones became our cameras, did our vacations become inherently more interesting? Maybe we’re all just paying less attention, with our second and third screens ever vying for our wandering eyes?

When our cell phones became our cameras, did our vacations become inherently more interesting?

At any rate, there are many competing services for photo hosting. I personally recommend allowing multiple competing services (Box, DropBox, Google) to back up all your photos for you. They all have facilities for sharing or emailing photos, and you’ll sleep better at night knowing the creepy big data teams at Facebook aren’t using your photos to learn something about your purchasing behavior.

Here’s the quick-start guide to getting photo data out of Facebook,

1. Back up all your Facebook photos that you’ve previously updated. You can do this in one fell swoop directly from Facebook.
2. Download all the photos that you’ve been tagged in. PhotoGrabber is a great piece of software to accomplish this.
3. Set up a replacement photo backup service on your phone. DropBox and Box both have fine products to accomplish this, both of which have apps that set up the process for you and don’t mine your data for facial heuristics.

Personal Advertising

One of the main reasons I keep my Facebook account is as an avenue to promote my apps/games/products/blog posts. This is always just a short link to one of my blog posts along with a blurb, and is something that you can set up to happen automatically. As this blog is backed by WordPress, from this point forward I’ll be using the excellent ‘Add Link to Facebook‘ plugin which auto-posts my blog posts to my Facebook wall. Really, you don’t even have to get rid of Facebook to be rid of Facebook. Much like a search engine, Facebook becomes just another channel via which your data travels without your intervention.

… you don’t even have to get rid of Facebook to be rid of Facebook. …Facebook becomes just another channel via which your data travels without your intervention.

Sharing with “Those Who Only Use Facebook”

… there are those who only use the internet a single purpose: to Facebook. How do you cut Facebook out of your own life without cutting yourself out of theirs?

Strange as it may sound, there are those who only use the internet a single purpose: to Facebook. How do you cut Facebook out of your own life without cutting yourself out of theirs? For me, the answer came in two forms. Direct email, and a WordPress plugin. Any personal communication that needs to happen can happen via email, even if it’s directly into the Facebook email system via that users @facebook.com email account. Certainly encourage them to move to a dedicated email client, but don’t be too surprised if that doesn’t occur. Any public communication (i.e. blog posts, public photos, work announcements) will be automatically posted to my Facebook through ‘Add Link to Facebook‘ as described above. These contacts likely won’t even notice a change, other than an increase in actual personal communication between you.

These contacts likely won’t even notice a change, other than an increase in actual personal communication between you.

Keeping in Touch

Here’s something that Facebook has been less and less successful at: allowing you to truly communicate with people past the surface level. A week ago I declared on my Facebook wall that I would be answering any posts and comments via direct email. In the immediate days following this announcement I had a number of in-depth, often emotional email conversations with friends that I hadn’t really talked to in years. We had certainly posted little blurbs on each others wall, but it held no emotional weight. By encouraging everyone to engage in everyone else’s conversations, Facebook has removed the collective emotional weight of our discourse. How then, to regain our intimacy? Email. As strange as it may sound, Email is both ubiquitous and capable of carrying as much emotional depth as you can muster. While video calls give an immediate connection, how do you keep in touch with 200+ friends and relatives via video chat? There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

So export your Facebook contacts right away. If you have a Gmail account, I recommend using Google Contacts Sync to bring in all your Facebook friends into your Google contacts list. From there, you can export them as a CSV to your email client of choice. Now that you’ve got all your Facebook contacts in Gmail the truly hard part begins: Admitting to yourself that most of these people would not naturally be in your worldview, and do not in any meaningful way affect your existence.

Now that you’ve got all your Facebook contacts in Gmail the truly hard part begins: Admitting to yourself that most of these people would not naturally be in your worldview, and do not in any meaningful way affect your existence.

That’s a hard pill to swallow, to be sure. It may feel like you’re going from having “hundreds” of friends to having “a few” friends. Are you? In this day and age, it’s incredibly easy to look someone up. If you dropped Facebook today, how many of your connections would ever type your name into their email client? Are these people contributing to your life?

After a great deal of time wrestling with this issue, I believe the answer is no. I’ve easily spent over an hour a day for the past ten years checking Facebook (and Myspace before it). Many days two or three. Is that healthy? What did I gain? In ten years I made one actual new friend because of social media, and it was back on Myspace when you could meet strangers geographically. Social media is a false affirmation that I gave myself daily for ten years. I should have been playing the guitar instead.

Seriously, think about every ‘deep’ conversation you ever had on Facebook. It shouldn’t take you long. Add in every photo that changed your life, every news item that you would have never seen on any other media outlet, and every social outing you went on solely because you found out through Facebook. It likely still won’t take more than a few minutes…, and I almost guarantee you that you can count those times on your hands and toes. Consider then how many posts you made in total, how many posts your friends and coworkers have made in total. Millions of hours, millions of posts, an avalanche of trivialities. What have we been doing all this time? I say now, for me, that every single one of those important photos, conversations, and events could have and in the future will have been made over email and real interpersonal exchange.

Social media is a false affirmation that I gave myself daily for ten years. I should have been playing the guitar instead.

Bottom line:

• If you want to make new friends: find a local Reddit or meetup group. Facebook has little return on investment.
• If you want to strengthen the friendships you have: email your friends.
• If you need to make immediate plans: txt your friends directly. If you don’t have their phone numbers you should think to yourself “Why am I trying to make immediate plans with someone who has never shared their phone number with me?”
• If you need a place to back-up your photos then use a dedicated back-up service. Many give you tens of gigabytes of storage for free.
• If you want to share photos with a group of people, email them directly. Facebook provides no guarantee the viewer won’t download the images (and is in that respect no better than email), and the Facebook corporation uses your image data for their own nefarious purposes. Honestly, you should first ask yourself if these people really need to see some photos of something that you did, and if you’re fine with all of their friends/coworkers/relatives seeing those photos too?
• If you want to share photos publicly, consider getting a blog where you host your images (perhaps in galleries). Only then can you control the data.
• If you have contacts who solely communicate through Facebook, email them directly at their @facebook.com email addresses, encourage them to move to a dedicated email provider, and link your personal blog to your Facebook account.

I know it sounds tough, but with a little perseverance you too can remove Facebook from your life, increase your free time, and improve your interpersonal relationships through real communication. Trust me, it’s worth it!

“What’s Hunter Davis been up to these past few months?”.

While certainly I make thousands of commits professionally to private Github repositories and professional organizations, the truth is in my personal life I have many interests and a healthy family life, and my interests ebb and flow with the seasons. So while at work I may spend the majority of my time coding up awesome android and embedded apps, I may not get to talk about them for many months after I’ve finished development. What then, has been filling up my free time (besides family) this season? I’ve been catching up on some of the games on my “gaming bucket list”. I realized that it’s been over a dozen years since my last game review, so it seemed the right time for an update.

I’ve been catching up on some of the games on my “gaming bucket list”.

Read on for my short reviews of: Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Metroid Fusion, Darksiders 2, God of War: Ascension, Luigi’s Mansion, Super Mario 3D Land, Sly Cooper, PlayStation All Stars: Battle Royale, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (10th anniversary Android Edition), Brutal Legend, and Super Amazing Wagon Adventure.

Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider: Now that it’s under 20$, there’s no reason not to buy this game. It’s very similar to Uncharted, but with an RPG leveling system bolted on top. The weapons level up as well. It’s an experience game, as in ‘you should experience this game’. The production quality is top notch and the sheer amount of effort that must have gone into making it is evident throughout. The story-line was pretty gripping, and many times I was brought back to those days of my youth spent playing tomb raider on PS1.

Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock Infinite: Sad as it is to say, I picked up this game and spent about 2 hours playing before I moved on to other games and kind of forgot about it. The scenery is gorgeous, but the initial pacing is pretty slow, even for a Bioshock game. The story is interesting but not particularly in-depth. I’ve already seen about 10 racist things happen in the game, so it’s definitely not one you should play anywhere near young children. For that reason alone it’ll probably take me a while to beat this one. Bottom line: It is good enough to keep me coming back to finish it, but not good enough to keep me from playing more interesting games as they come along. Definitely pick it up if it drops to the 15-20$ range.

Injustice: Gods Among Us

Injustice: Gods Among Us: I could not stop playing this game. The most enjoyable fighting game I’ve played in years. If you were a fan of the Justice League or Teen Titans animate series you will love this game. All the old voice cast is there (both Justice League and Teen Titans). I became completely engrossed in the single player story mode, and spent about 8 hours straight playing through it. It’s very much like playing through an extended DC animated movie. I simply could not stop playing (and I was playing on hard mode, which is quite challenging). If you’ve got folks to play multi-player with (or a low-latency connection to play online) I’d recommend picking this up, otherwise rent it. If it drops below 20$, pick it up. I could definitely see myself replaying through this one a few times.

Metroid Fusion

Metroid Fusion: OK, people criticize this game because it’s ‘too linear’. You know what else is linear? A movie. This game felt (to me) like Metroid Prime 3. Sure, it’s linear, but it’s also paced. The backtracking is minimal. The storyline and interaction with your AI commanding officer keeps the dialog feeling fresh and interesting, even to veterans of the Metroid series. I picked this up for 15$ at my local classic games store. It’s a great way to break in your Retrode GBA adapter, and the controls feel great with a SNES controller.

Darksiders 2

Darksiders 2: You can often find this game for 5-10$. Pick it up while you still can. They won’t be making more. It’s like the God of War series, but with more enemies on screen ala the Dynasty Warriors series. The plot is (to me), much more enjoyable as well, featuring a mix of christian and pagan mythology, rather than another re-hashed Greek myth like the GOW series. It’s pretty dark, and definitely not something you can play around kids. Still, for the price that it’s at now it’s a definite buy.

God of War: Ascension

God of War: Ascension. Gross, yawn, woah, gross, yawn, done. That’s my experience playing the first 4 hours of GOW:Ascension. While there’s nothing wrong with a little gross-out, and it’s certainly not out of character for the GOW series, that’s the problem. Nothing in this game is out of character for the GOW series. You start off with so many powers and weapons you already feel like you’ve been leveling up through a game’s worth of GOW, and it all feels done before. Worse still, it’s a prequel for a game that we all played almost 10 years ago, then re-played again 2 years ago. So story-line wise it doesn’t answer any questions or raise any new ideas. For the cost, it just doesn’t seem worth it. Maybe pick it up if it ever hits bargain basement status (which it surely will if review scores are any indication). For now, rent it if you are curious.

Luigi’s Mansion

Luigi’s Mansion: I played through the Gamecube version again in preparation for this game. There are some marked differences, but in many ways they are improvements. The ghosts are no longer styled like real people, but rather in a cartoon-like style. I imagine it was done to decrease the overall creepiness level of the Gamecube version, which at times could be a dark, potentially child-terrifying, game. This feels like something you could play with your 8 year old. The controls have been simplified slightly, and it’s all the better for it. I played through on my 3DS XL and it looked great. I can’t speak for those on the smaller 3DS, but the visuals appeared crisp and detailed. The addition of extra mansions helped prevent the feeling of backtracking that plagued the previous game. If you’re a fan of the original, pick this up now. I purchased this during the ‘get Super Mario 3D Land free!’ promotion, and am certainly happy with the deal. Casual fans will probably enjoy it as well, but you can probably find it for 30$ if you wait a couple months.

Super Mario 3D Land

Super Mario 3D Land: For the 40$ they are asking for this game, you’d be better served finding a used copy of New Super Mario Brothers for 15$. If you’re getting this game for free or in a BOGO deal (like ToysRUs are always running), then it’s quite an enjoyable game. The return of the flying leaf/raccoon suit is fun but doesn’t feel like anything new. It still doesn’t recreate the fun of flying you first had when you played Super Mario World (though Super Mario Galaxy comes very close). After you play through all of the levels, you find out there are a second set of levels to be played through with Luigi. Lots of copy-paste levels though. For ~20$ this is a great game with a lot of content. It’s all about the price point on this one.

Sly Cooper

Sly Cooper: Fans of the original should pick this up right away. Those with children who like to watch them play or help play along in less difficult parts should pick this up right away. Those who have never played, imagine a cross between Mario and Assassin’s Creed. You’re a sneaky raccoon thief with a fun assortment of animal pals helping you steal back artifacts in gorgeous cartoon levels. I’ve seen this at 30$ for the PS3 and it’s well worth it. I recently picked it up for 20$ on the Vita and I’m very impressed with how well the visuals stand up to the PS3 version. Very fun, very well produced, and very well worth the bargain price.

PlayStation All Stars: Battle Royale

PlayStation All Stars: Battle Royale: Dear Sony,

Want to know why this game is selling horribly? It’s not for lack of characters (though that’s what you certainly seem to think it is), it’s for lack of innovation. Everything about this game screams ‘RIP OFF’. You even aped smash brothers’ shitty camera. Really? Ugh. Even getting a free vita version when you buy the PS3 version isn’t enough to make this a ‘buy’. Two shitty games for one full price is still paying half price for the same shitty game, two times. The worst part is, I don’t think it’d take much to fix this game. Give us some new gameplay modes (have you even played Battlestation DON?) and a lot more interaction with the background elements. Throw in some more varied match types, and tack on some RPG elements to keep us invested. I couldn’t even make it through a single play-through in single player mode and I was stuck on a plane. It just all feels like it’s been done before, about 10 years ago, about 10 times better.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (10th anniversary Android Edition)

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (10th anniversary Android Edition): It’s not San Andreas, but it’ll do for now. It looks and plays gorgeously on my Nook HD+ tablet, and the radio stations take me back to another time. A great buy for a 5$ and certainly worth it for those long plane rides. I spent a 6 hour flight from DC to Seattle just cruising around Vice City in a series of motorcycles, doing stunts and missions, feeling like it was old times.

Brutal Legend

Brutal Legend: I pre-ordered this on Steam at full price, having already purchased it for the 360 what seems like an eternity ago (4 years). I never played it, but always meant to (and was way into Psychonauts, purchasing it every time it came out on a new platform). Prediction: psychonauts will come out for android within a year. At any rate, I enjoyed playing through Brutal Legend quite a bit. The soundtrack is AWESOME. It’s full of metal greats and really adds to the experience. Crank up the volume when playing this one. Seeing as how it’s now available for 10$ or so, it’s a definite purchase. I spent about 25 or so hours before completing it, and certainly felt like I could have spent about twice that going through all the optional missions. A must own for metal-heads and Tim Schafer fans alike.

Prediction: psychonauts will come out for android within a year.

Super Amazing Wagon Adventure

Super Amazing Wagon Adventure: ARRGGGGHHH WHY CAN’T I BEAT THIS GAME?? I’ve literally played through over 100 times and I have never made it to the ‘real’ ending. I’ve go so many different wagons and have had so many time traveling, space-faring, scuba diving adventures but I’ve never made it. 1$. 1 freaking dollar I spent on this seemingly cute little game. It’s a trap. Run. You’ll never escape it.

WHY CAN’T I BEAT THIS GAME???!!

“Why spend 50$ on a cup of coffee?”

has crossed my mind more than once. At the end of the day, a high enough price tag will deter me from making purchases. That in itself is fairly interesting.

The first ‘buy’ of the week is ‘Wendy’s Company’. They’ve skyrocketed to be the number 2 burger chain in the world, and I’m a sucker for a good Frosty. After a recent ‘midnight munchies’ episode that left me wanting a “real” Wendys burger, I headed off to my broker to purchase some Wendy’s stock. At 6$ it’s not a large buy, and I ended up picking up a few stocks to offset the trade cost.

• Wendy’s Co – NASDAQ: WEN – 6.07

The second ‘buy’ of the week is the MSCI South Korea Capped Index Fund. This fund encompasses the entirety of the South Korean electronics manufacturers, and covers all the components of my (Samsung) cell phone. As I use my cell phone constantly, this buy positions me well to have all my daily activities covered by an OPY strategy, and gives me great device coverage in terms of electronics manufacturers.

• MSCI South Korea Capped Index Fund – AMEX: EWY – 58.45

Current month to date purchase log:

• Ebay: 15 years of asshole buyers
• Paypal: Your game is up and it’s about damn time
• I’ll never get screwed by Paypal again!
• I’ll never get screwed by Ebay again!

In the end, I went with the above. If you’ve read Live For Free you know how badly eBay and Paypal can (and often do) screw people over, myself included. So when I saw this announcement today by Google, I knew what it meant to me personally. I’m done with Paypal, forever. Consequently, I’m done with eBay, forever. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the economics of the secondhand electronics market have changed drastically since I wrote LFF. Quitting eBay 5, or 10, or even 15 years ago would mean a loss of income. That’s no longer the case. So much time and effort (and fees, so many fees) are wasted on eBay due to fake buyers, buyers who don’t pay, foreign buyers who are allowed to bid on US only auctions, etc. Paypal only exacerbates the problem with its terrible customer support and awful service. eBay doesn’t even allow you to directly email anyone without going through a ‘guided help wizard’. Ridiculous.

I mean seriously, there’s a website purely to help people fight Paypal screwings. Gotta love their campaign though:

OPY: I dumped all my eBay stock.