Neon strings and Rocksmith!

I just bought a set of neon strings for my electric guitar. Today I'm gonna put them on, and see how awesome it's gonna be :P They vary in color, just check the pictures :D

Neon strings! :D

They're from the brand DR Handmade Strings, that actually make handmade strings. The strings should glow in UV lighting, but unfortunately I don't have an UV light source.
I took a picture of my guitar before and after, and I think the change is to the better :D at least for a while.

 

Before and after changing to the neon strings!

Furthermore, the strings' colors matches the in-game strings' colors in the game Rocksmith. I've played the game for a while, and think it's pretty nice. It's like the Guitar Hero series, just with a real guitar. You plug in a real electric guitar or bass through a special cable to the PC via USB, and then the game processes the sounds, an amplifier normally would have done. The game regulates the difficulty itself, just by watching how many notes you hit and miss, which could be a great tool for new guitarists, especially with strings like these, now that the strings are often referred to in the game as "the red string", "the yellow string" and so on. :P

Screenshot of Rocksmith while playing a song

Close up of the strings ;D

Again. :P

Turning small lens into a super macro lens

I've got a small lens laying around for a while. One with a telescopic holder for smartphones, but since my phone is ~2.8 inches wide, it's too big for the holder :/ That's why i decided to try out something different with the lens, and cut it into pieces with a pliers to get to the glass inside. When I got the glass out, I quickly discovered that they were shaped and looked a lot like magnifying glasses, and then I just had to try and put it in front of my camera to see what happened. The result was very cool, it really allows the camera to focus on very tiny objects! :D

Close up of a screw without magnifying glass

Close up with the small magnifying glass. HUGE difference!

The lens didn't only contain one magnifying glass, but 3, and they differed in diameter and thickness. The one with the greatest diameter and the thick one wasn't really that useful, only the smallest glass was worth attaching to the camera. Then I thought about combining some of these glasses, just like they were combined into one lens to begin with, and that resulted in an even more magnifying macro effect! I combined the two glasses with smallest diameter.

The three pieces of glass and the ring of plastic

The macro lens taped together

Okay guys, now you're probably wondering where that little ring of plastic came from, right? :P It was inside the lens too! And I used it to combine the two glasses with a little spacing in between. :D
I took some photos with my camera to demonstrate this, using a pretty small torx screw as test object :P
I also learned, that the more lenses combined close to each other, the more effect, but the focus point also gets smaller, resulting in a very blurry thread, when focusing on the head on the screw, which isn't a good thing in most cases in my opinion. But for this example, it's definitely pretty cool :P

The screw compared to a standard sized pen. It's really tiny!

Close up of the screw with the macro lens with the head in focus.

Close up of the screw with the macro lens with the thread in focus.

That's it for now :P A pretty cool gadget to take pictures of very small things like insects. That would be interesting!

But go ahead, and take some cool macro photos, and leave a link in the comments, I'd love to see your macro photos :D

PCSX2 and game pads

Before i bought my Asus Transformer Book, my computer had a hard time emulating PlayStation2, and the emulator lagged when rendering simple things like in-game movies, even with a couple of aggressive tweaks installed. Now with my new PC, this is not a problem, which is really nice! :D

My PC emulating DragonBallZ Budokai 3 using PCSX2

My smartphone emulating Spyro and the Ipega PG-9025

Not to confuse, this post is about emulating, while my previous post was to connect an actual console to a battery powered screen :)
I'm emulating PlayStation2 with a piece of software called PCSX2. Programs like this does the same things as a real console, in this case PlayStation2. With this emulator, it's possible to run games from a local disk, and it's even possible to run games from a DVD-drive. I don't like DVDs and discs in general, so I'm using a local copy :D
The local copy is stored on the disk as an ISO file, which is the complete game disc, all saved into one file, making it easier to manage. When the game is selected and loaded, it just boots up the game, and there you go!
I don't feel like using a keyboard when playing emulators like this, because it's uncomfortable to control analogs with buttons, and on top of that, it's just not the same as using a game pad.

My 3 favorite game pads are:
Ipega PG-9025
Sony PlayStation2/3 controller
Ipega PG-9017

The first named Ipega controller is a very nice alternative for a real PlayStation controller, because it has both L1, L2 and L3 (and the R buttons as well :P), real analogs unlike the Ipega PG-9017; it's wireless (bluetooth), and its weight and size is much more like a PlayStation controller than the other very lightweight Ipega controller. Further more, it's very easy to connect to both PC and android devices, and it has a telescopic holder for smartphones!
Next comes the Sony PlayStation2 controller, because it's the original intended controller. However, it requires an adapter to work, it's not wireless, and it only supports vibration by an external power source. PlayStation3 controllers is available wireless, but even though this is bluetooth, I haven't been able to find any drivers out there working properly. Every driver I've tried out have occupied my active bluetooth adapter completely, so nothing else was able to run on the adapter :( But it works fine wired (at least sometimes :P), and it supports vibration by internal battery!
Last; the Ipega PG-9017. It's a very small game pad, and it lacks the L2 and L3 buttons (and R buttons). But it's easy to connect to both PCs and smartphones, and I think that it's a nice option to be able to play games wireless. Maybe that's the only reason this controller is on my top 3. :P

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Things used:
Software:
PCSX2 PlayStation2 Emulator
Hardware:
Sony PlayStation2 controller
Sony PlayStation2 USB adapter
Sony PlayStation3 controller
Ipega PG-9017
Ipega PG-9025

The Sony PlayStation3 controller, Ipega PG-9017 and Ipega PG-9025

PlayStation2 controller with USB adapter :P

PlayStation2 USB adapter

In-game screenshot from my PC :P

Battery powered game laptop/HDMI monitor

PlayStation2 as played through the lapdock

About a year ago, I stumbled across the Motorola Atrix 4G. I didn't find the phone very interesting itself, the thing that drew my attention was the so called lapdock.

The lapdock is a device that looks pretty much like an ordinary laptop, but it doesn't work on its own, and its intended purpose is to connect the Motorola Atrix 4G which turns the phone into a laptop.

Even though that's kinda cool, that's not what I'm using it for. The Atrix phone is connected via Micro HDMI for video and sound (it actually has build in speakers!), and USB for the touch pad and keyboard, which makes it easy to use it for other purposes with a couple of adapters!

I don't own the phone myself, I just bought the lapdock on eBay.

So far I've managed to play PlayStation 2 and Wii, and display my phone and video recording devices on the device, and best of all; it's battery powered.

PlayStation2 and Nintendo Wii are transmitting their audio and video signals through AV, which is common seen as a scart plug or RCA (Radio Corporation of America), that uses three plugs; one for video, and two for sound (stereo; left and right). This is a completely different type of signal, and this can not be converted through an adapter, it has to be converted through a converter. The important difference is that an adapter simply changes the places of the pins inside the plugs, and a converter actually has build in hardware, that receives data from the input port, processes it, and outputs it as a new type of signal. That's why the converters are a bit more expensive than the adapters.

Here's what I used to demonstrate this project:

Motorola Atrix 4G Lapdock

PlayStation2, and accessories

Micro HDMI Female -> Micro HDMI Female adapter

Micro HDMI Male -> HDMI Female adapter

HDMI Male -> HDMI Male adapter

AV -> HDMI converter

Micro USB cable

That's what's needed to connect a PlayStation2 to the lapdock. By the way, I could have used a Micro HDMI Female -> HDMI Male cable instead of the first three adapters, which definitely would have been nicer :) But i don't have such a cable :P

After all, the lapdock is a nice device, and with a few adapters, it can be a very useful ingredient in a portable console! :D

The lapdock, with lid open

Lapdock, with adapters and the converter

Sony PlayStation2, with bundled cables and controller

Sony PlayStation2 and the lapdock

The lapdock's connectors: Micro USB Male and Micro HDMI Male

The PlayStation2 connected through the converter. Time to turn it on!

Ratchet and Clank 3!

Difficult to control while taking a photo :P

And that's it!