Kind: Articles

At long last, my DS-Xtreme arrived today: I originally ordered it quite some time ago after it looked like it was likely to be released before the equally cool-sounding NinjaCard, but the releases of both have been delayed for an extended period.

The DS-Xtreme is a combined media loader, music player, and passcard for the Nintendo DS and DS Lite. Put simply, this means that it can load applications (for example, homebrew – programs developed by geeky Nintendo fans – and game backups – because nobody likes carrying around a dozen cartridges with them wherever they go), play music (converting your DS into an MP3 player) and, as a big selling point, integrates a PassMe solution for getting around the copy-protection problems that can otherwise trouble people trying to do these things with their new toy.

Most impressively, the DS-Xtreme is the first media loader for the Nintendo DS to fit into the regular “Nintendo DS” slot at the top of the device, rather than sitting rather clumsily in the “Game Boy Advance” port at the bottom. This removes the need to trick the device into running, for example, DS code from the GBA slot, which is usually accomplished by “patching” software backups.

The packaging itself confused me, first. I opened it and my heart sank as it looked, at first glance, like there was only a USB cable in the box. Where was my cartridge? It later turned out that the cartridge is inset into it’s own little protective cardboard bubble at the bottom, and it’s a great demonstration of quite how small this device is that I couldn’t see it at first glance! This thing is really small – exactly the size of a normal DS game, so it fits into your DS or DS Lite without protuding out of the top at all: just beautiful. It only comes in white, which is a pity, because it’d look even more beautiful against a black “Euro” DS Lite if it were set in black plastic, but that’d be purely icing on the cake.

The port in the top of the cartridge, which can even be used when the device is plugged-in to your DS, is a standard “mini-USB” port. You don’t have to use the device while it’s connected to your console, of course, andyou could just use it as a 512Mb pendrive if you really wanted. But what really makes this thing special isn’t it’s storage capacity. I drag-dropped a few game backups, software toys and music files over to it (it mounted itself just like any other pendrive, no drivers or software to install) – the two tiny tricolour LEDs on the back of it flickered to let me know it was working – and popped it into my DS. Contrary to my fears, the integrated mini-USB port is sturdy and well-attached.
My DS’s firmware is already flashed using FlashMe, but this isn’t even slightly necessary. I turned on my DS and it booted to the usual screen: the top slot registered as containing a “DS-X”. Running this, I was soon presented with the beautiful DS-X menu system. It’s entirely touch-screen operated and very slick looking, with animations between screens and full-colour prettiness. The touch screen interface is a little sluggish, and it seems to take a few milliseconds longer than it should to do anything, but it certainly gets the job done. Plus, the entire UI is defined in XML files, and apparently it’s really customisable, so I might have a go at that.

The music player plays MP3s and even Ogg Vorbis, although I’ve been advised that the latter are only supported up to a certain bitrate after which the tiny DS processor panics and starts stuttering. Nonetheless, it has all the features you’d expect in a touch-screen MP3 player, and if you don’t like it, you can always install Moonshell or something. Oh, and the little LEDs? They pulsate through different colours in time with the beat. For real.
The applications list rocks. It really does – the cartridge even goes so far as to load the icons for the games from the ROM, so if you’ve got game backups on there you can quickly identify them from their piccies. I tried some of the coolest DS homebrew on it (DSOrganise, DSDoom, and a couple of others) and everything worked fine: I was particularly impressed that I didn’t even have to switch DSOrganise version to accomodate for a different filesystem or anything. I also had a go at a few backup ROMs: Mario Hoops 3-on-3, Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2, and Star Fox Command. Everything ran smoothly, the savegame EEPROM write time was very acceptable (and the savegames are stored seperately on the card so you can backup/copy/trade/hack/whatever them easily), and I didn’t have to do any creepy ROM patching. Wonderful.

Highly recommended if you want a really easy-to-use (just works!) media launcher for the DS without any invasive surgery or sneaky hacks. The only downsides are the slightly sluggish interface (but hey, it actually uses the touchscreen) and the fact that because it uses the DS port, you’ll probably need extra hardware if you actually want to perform game backups from genuine ROMs.

So Claire, Ele, Matt and I were at the Scholars pub quiz tonight, where our team, the aptly-named Bringing Up The Rear, came in joint last place. Perhaps the most shameful part was the following question: “This week The Sun mentioned a country in a headline: ‘How Do You Solve A Problem Like…’ what?”

So we started thinking: we hadn’t seen the article in question, not being – thankfully – Sun readers, but it shouldn’t be so hard one you’d spotted the pattern. Obviously, we were looking for a country who’s name was like “Maria”, and which had been in the news recently. This is where the problem started.

You see, we all started thinking of words that looked like “Maria”, rather than ones that sounded like “Maria”. We came up with Syria and put it down as our answer, not realising until later, “Hey, Korea actually rhymes with Maria… and it’s a little bit topical these days.”

Yes, we are officially too dumb for the easy questions in our local pub quiz.

Troma Night‘s at The Cottage this week. Odds are, we’ll be watching the brilliant Thank You For Smoking, something particularly dire (there are calls again for The Deadly Bees: if people are serious then maybe, just maybe), and maybe a third film. Usual time, somewhat-usual place.

I notice that blog entries have become few and far between for the Abnib crowd for the last few weeks, since about the start of term. Did everybody suddenly get really busy? Or do people not feel the need to fill each other in on their lives when they spend more time in the same part of the world? Or perhaps we’re just in a “blogger’s lull”, with nothing to say. Strange, nonetheless. Maybe it’s time I launched another meme like my popular personality test…

Ick. It’s been years since I was last unwell enough to justify two successive days off work: I’m usually a hardy bugger against infections and whatnot. I blame the snotty group of freshers I was talking to at the weekend: I was feeling a little slow-of-thought and sniffly on Monday, but went into work anyway, which was probably my mistake (if I’ve infected any of you at SmartData, I’m really sorry!).

Yesterday I had a really nasty sore throat, headaches, and shivers, so I took the day off work and tried to be productive in other ways, such as tidying up the living room, with very limited success. Today I’m feeling a little better – road to recovery – but I’m still shivery and snotty and I’ve lost my voice too. Bugger.
Shit; now I’ve missed the bin lorry ‘cos I couldn’t find the energy to pick up the bin bags in time. Or any trousers. Urgh.

A little while ago I posted a brainteaser: the three demons puzzle. For those who didn’t get it, who nearly got it, or who just wanted to compare answers, or who just couldn’t be bothered to try, here’s the solution.

Solution – Short Version

1. “Amos, is it true that either (a) ‘da’ means ‘yes’ and Baeti lies more frequently than Corpi or (b) ‘ja’ means ‘yes’ and Corpi lies more frequently than Baeti?”
2. If:
   • Answer is “ja”: “Corpi, is exactly one of the following two statements true: (a) ‘da’ means ‘yes’; (b) this is my second question?”
   • Answer is “da”: “Baeti, is exactly one of the following two statements true: (a) ‘da’ means ‘yes’; (b) this is my second question?”
3. To the same demon again: “Is it true that either (a) ‘da’ means ‘yes’ and Amos answers randomly, or (b) ‘da’ means ‘no’ and Amos does not answer randomly?”

• If the answer to both question 2 and question 3 is “ja”, then Amos is the liar, the demon spoken to in questions 2 and 3 is the honest one, and the remaining demon is the random one.
• If the answer to question 2 is “ja” and the answer to question 3 is “da”, then Amos is the random demon, the demon spoken to in questions 2 and 3 is the honest one, and the remaining demon is the liar.
• If the answer to question 2 is “da” and the answer to question 3 is “ja”, then Amos is the random demon, the demon spoken to in questions 2 and 3 is the liar, and the remaining demon tells the truth.
• If the answer to both question 2 and question 3 is “da”, then Amos tells the truth, the demon spoken to in questions 2 and 3 is the liar, and the remaining demon answers randomly.

Solution – Long Version

If your brain wasn’t fully pickled by the short version and you’re brave enough to take on the long version, here it is:

First Question

Our first goal is to find one of the demons who is not the demon who always answers randomly, because such a demon would just be bad news. My initial attempt at solving the puzzle started with about seven questions which got cut down to four when I realised the importance of this first step, and then later to three.

There are, essentially, 12 different states of play that we have to consider and find a way of differentiating between:

	Demon state (T = truthful, L = liar, R = random)
State	Amos	Baeti	Corpi	meaning of “da”
1	T	L	R	yes
2	T	R	L	yes
3	L	T	R	yes
4	R	T	L	yes
5	L	R	T	yes
6	R	L	T	yes
7	T	L	R	no
8	T	R	L	no
9	L	T	R	no
10	R	T	L	no
11	L	R	T	no
12	R	L	T	no

For no particular reason, we ask our first question to Amos: at this point, all possibilities are equal. We ask “Amos, is it true that either (a) ‘da’ means ‘yes’ and Baeti lies more frequently than Corpi or (b) ‘ja’ means ‘yes’ and Corpi lies more frequently than Baeti?” This cleverly-worded question helps us to separate the possibilities in the following ways:

The “lies more frequently” clause is a quick way to obtain information quickly about the relationship between the other two demons (assuming that Amos is not answering randomly), rather than asking a more simple question which, in turn, could only have a true or false answer. Liars (L) will lie more frequently than random demons (R), because random demons will sometimes tell the truth, and random demons will lie more frequently than truthful demons (T), because truthful demons always tell the truth. On my paper diagrams, I drew arrows between the columns of Baeti and Corpi, one for each row, indicating who lied most frequently of the two in each state.

The combination of the “test for meaning of da/ja” and “demon X lies more frequently than demon Y” gives us a wonderful split in the results, laterally, through the da-meanings. This occurs because the pattern of possibilities is now identical for each meaning of “da”, as shown:

State	Amos	meaning of “da”	Answer	Amos says…
1	T	yes	yes	da
2	T	yes	no	ja
3	L	yes	no	da
4	R	yes	no	da/ja
5	L	yes	yes	ja
6	R	yes	yes	da/ja
7	T	no	no	da
8	T	no	yes	ja
9	L	no	yes	da
10	R	no	yes	da/ja
11	L	no	no	ja
12	R	no	no	da/ja

As you can see, the lateral split ensures that we get the same answer from Amos regardless of the meaning of “da” (notice how the pattern of “Amos says…” repeats itself in the second half of the table).

In states 4, 6, 10 and 12, Amos may say “da” or “ja”, because Amos is the random demon. This is not a problem, because the entire point of this question is to determine which of the other two demons is not a random demon (no matter what the configuration, this must be the case for at least one of them): whichever way he happens to answer is irrelevant, because whomever of Baeti and Corpi we choose as our “definitely not random” demon, we’ll be right.

In states 1, 3, 7, and 9, and, potentially, in the four ambiguous states – the states in which Amos will answer this first question with “da” – we can see from the original table that Baeti can only ever be truthful or a liar; never random. In states 2, 5, 8 and 11 (and, again, potentially, the random responses Amos would give in states 4, 6, 7 and 9) the response “ja” shows us (check the original table again) that Corpi is never random.

Therefore, this single question tells us that one of Baeti at Corpi is not random, and which one. This is valuable information, because we can trust the information given by non-random demons in order to trick them into revealing whether or not they are random.

Second Question

From here on, we’ll be dealing with whichever demon we decided, through question one, is definitely not a random demon: either Baeti or Corpi. The one we have chosen shall be known as x1, and the other shall be known as x2.

Next, we can use a slightly more complicated version of the question one must ask gaolers (when one lies and one tells the truth – you know the puzzle I mean) in order to determine if the demon we’re dealing with, x1, is truthful or a liar (we have already ensured through question one that Amos or x2 are random, so x1 cannot be). We ask, “[x1], is exactly one of the following statements true: is exactly one of the following two statements true: (a) ‘da’ means ‘yes’; (b) this is my second question?”

Again, this is a lateral split technique: by demanding that exactly one of the criteria must be met in order for the response to be true (and knowing that the liar demon will say that respond negatively if it is and that the honest demon will respond positively), we ensure that half of the possible states are treated differently, like so:

x1 state	meaning of “da”	actual answer	demon’s answer	demon says…
T	yes	no	no	ja
L	yes	no	yes	da
T	no	yes	yes	ja
L	no	yes	no	da

See what we did there? By setting up a question involving both the meaning of the word “da” and an indisputable fact (that this is our second question – although we could equally use any other indisputable fact and these demons, knowing everything, would understand) we set up the answers in the heads of the “da = yes” theoretical demons than in the heads of the “ja = yes” ones. Because we know that lying demons will invert the answer we can identify them. Now, we know whether or not x1 is an honest demon or a liar.

Unfortunately, we still don’t actually know the meaning of the word “da” (or “ja”) so we can’t just ask our new-found honest demon (or easily-manipulated known liar) about his friends, and to ask about the meaning of the words would use up our last question and still leave us in the dark about the nature of the other two demons.

Third Question

We need one more fact – the identity of one of the remaining two demons – but we don’t understand the language well enough to just ask, so we’ll have to do our language-inversion trick again to “flip” the results of the second half of the table and thereby be able to understand the results (even if we don’t know the language).
We ask “Is it true that either (a) ‘da’ means ‘yes’ and Amos answers randomly, or (b) ‘da’ means ‘no’ and Amos does not answer randomly?” Spot the inversion again – “da means yes”/”da means no”!

We already know whether or not x1 is honest, so we can dramatically simplify our tables:

If x1 is known to be honest:

Amos state	meaning of “da”	actual answer	demon’s answer	demon says…
L	yes	no	no	ja
R	yes	yes	yes	da
L	no	yes	yes	ja
R	no	no	no	da

Amos state	meaning of “da”	actual answer	demon’s answer	demon says…
T	yes	no	no	da
R	yes	yes	yes	ja
T	no	yes	yes	da
R	no	no	no	ja

It’s probably possible to rewrite the question to get more beautiful truth tables, but I honestly couldn’t be bothered. If x1 is honest and says “ja” then we know that Amos is a liar, and if he says “da” then we know that Amos is random. If x1 is a known liar than “da” means that Amos is the honest one and “ja” means that Amos is the random one.

We’ve now ascertained the identities of two of the demons, and the third is therefore obvious.

Now wasn’t that a mind-blowingly cool puzzle?

Claire and I are out of town for about 31 hours, off to Norfolk but back on Sunday evening to make plans for Fresher’s Fair. My apologies to everybody I’ve been trying to get things done for this last week: it’s been somewhat insane over here.

For those of you travelling this way this weekend (Lawrence, Kit, etc.): JTA is here and can let you into the The Cottage, and there’s a “welcome” leaflet on the living room door. Unless there’s some kind of disaster we’ll be back in town before Kit is, but you never can tell. That’s the thing about disasters.

I’ve got a lot of things I mean to write about: my latest (very successful) homebrew, happenings in Aber, progress with camping for the upcoming Real Ale Ramble, and more. Just… don’t ask until like Monday, and that way I won’t have to kill you.

Following the success of last year’s Abnib Real Ale Ramble, we’re going to do it all again! All the walking! All the freezing temperatures! All the fried breakfasts! All the broken feet! And all the tasty tasty ale. And all on the weekend of 25th/26th November 2006.
I’m sure you want to come along, and you’re probably more than welcome. I’m currently working on sorting out self-catering accomodation, which should be at least partially arranged by the end of the week, but what I’m sure you’re all actually wondering is… where is the wiki?

Well, rest assured, there is one. And a mailing list too, no less. I’ve already added to the mailing list the names of pretty much everybody who’s ever expressed an interest in the Real Ale Ramble, so it’s pretty heavy right now, but I’m sure some folks will wimp out and unsubscribe soon. If you’re on the list, you’ve probably already received an e-mail from me. Good for you.

Either way, go read the wiki now: http://ramble.abnib.co.uk/

You’ll remember that some time ago I explored some of the creative possibilities of eBay‘s context-sensitive ads and their quirks. Well, I think I’ve been bested by an observation by The Register:

Seth Godin thinks that job interviews are pointless, and he makes a convincing argument. Give his blog a read.

Most of you who read this spend far more of your time on the receiving end of job interviews, and so his thoughts perhaps aren’t so much use to you, unless you feel bold enough to tell a potential employer what they’re doing wrong at the interview (“you know, this isn’t a very good way to hire people…”) – that said, I might just try that next time I’m in any kind of interview situation – but if you find yourself on the other side of the desk come recruitment time, give it a read.

We’ve just received a postcard from Heather…

…which immediately got us out of The Game. For those that aren’t sure how that could have happened from an innocuous postcard, the blame goes to Jimmy, who took great pains to get us to associate the word cheese with The Game. Heather writes:

Hello Troma Geeks!

Thought you’d all appreciate this lovely cheesy postcard. Weather here remarkably like Aber, but seaside not so good. Difficult to have BBQ on sinking sand. Is also very good alcohol country – every pub is a CAMRA member & has a cask marque. All kinds of bizarre wines. Tell Jimmy I’ve found his ideal part of the world!

Heather

Thought I’d share that with you all this morning. Right: off to work…

Scott Adams has written a fabulous blog entry about strippers at Chinese funerals, but it’s not quite as funny as the latest xkcd comic. For those who aren’t sufficiently geeky (if you’re a geek: read the comic first then come back here), sudo is a command found on some computer systems that allows you to act as if you had greater (typically) priviledges than you wouild normally have. In the comic, the speaker attempts to do something, fails (because he’s not permitted to perform that operation), and tries again, this time using sudo.

Well; I thought it was funny.

If you’re still not laughing, watch How Lord Of The Rings Should Have Ended.

Strange. First Faye’s comment on Andy‘s controversial blog post diappears. Now her entire LiveJournal is empty of posts (not just friends-only but gone, as far as I can see), but the account still exists.

Faye? What’s going on? Has the internet eaten you whole?

EDIT: The plot thickens. I’ve just remembered that I noticed this weekend that Faye changed her RockMonkey page recently: it’s now a lot tamer than it used to be, doesn’t link to ARSEnalScumDepreciationSociety, and one of Andy’s infamous spelling mistakes has been fixed. Perhaps the internet really is eating Faye up…