With only a week to go until the actual movie’s release I thought it’d be fun to have the soundtrack downloadable. This is the custom score for the movie done by Shaun Buswell, John Bonk and myself. The track names shouldn’t spoil too much, so fear not.
Check it out! Port Washington Musical Score Download
I have begun working on finishing the Port Washington musical score myself, and besides some portable-related things I’m already committed to, nothing else gets higher priority. Not even food or watching Law & Order reruns.
After getting some musical equipment last week and being able to work on the score all weekend, I am quite sure, nay, POSITIVE I can have it all done and finish Port Washington in March. Probably around the middle of the month.
Once I have the music a little further along I’ll announce a release date. Stay tuned!
OK I know this may seem completely from left field but I’ve been wanting to do a ghost-related project for several years now. Yes, we’re still working on getting Port Washington done, this project will be filmed shortly thereafter. (Late March)
While the exact location won’t be revealed until we’re actually filming it (to avoid interference) here’s what I can tell you thus far:
1) Project is code-named “PC” It’s documentary style and structured in 3 parts. Getting the idea and going to the location, doing research on the location in nearby towns, and finally, spending a night at the location to record any data or anomalies we can get on tape.
2) Length of the show will be 1-2 hours, depending on how much footage we get. It is a one-shot thing, that is, not a weekly series. The idea is to sell it as a one-shot to any interested media outlet.
3) My principal role is as the cameraman and technical guy. I also came up with some of the ideas for the show’s structure.
4) It is being done by my friends from One Man Down Productions. We’re doing weekly podcasts regarding the status of the project, and will continue this right up until the shoot itself, including a podcast during the shoot. Click here for past and current podcasts regarding “PC”
In the coming weeks I’ll put up a page about this project on my site here as well. In it I will describe some of the custom equipment I’ll be building to assist with the shoot, the cameras we’ll be using, and other technical stuff.
Instead of just copying what other people [who do this sort of thing] have done, our approach is to think about why a ghost might appear on film, or why might a device record strange sounds, and try to use our estimates of that to modify our equipment and increase our chances. Granted, this requires us to make some assumptions about supernatural activity, but we’re basing those off the common occurrences and similarity between reported events.
And don’t worry, I’m still working on videogame related projects as well! However, this too is a project that interests me, and I hope to help make it interesting for others as well.
I re-obtained my old Colecovision today and set about to restoring it. (Was stored in a less-than-optimal place, so it was kind of messed up) Since I was going to put in composite video out (as I did with the Coleco portable) I decided to snap some pics and share the process with the world! Thus:
Ben’s Colecovision Composite Video Mod!
It’s pretty simple, in fact this penguin could probably even do it.
 Enjoy!
Hey anybody see on that new “King Kong” DVD, Peter Jackson recreates the long missing “Spider Pit” sequence from the original film? Since the original footage could never be found they used the old script and storyboards and emulated the “next best thing”
Now in videogame land one of the most sought-after “lost prototypes” is surely Color Dreams’ “Hellraiser” for the NES. The big gimmick was it would have used a coprocessor (likely a Z80) and extra RAM (about 64k) to do effects a normal NES couldn’t dream of. This including having bitmap graphics as opposed to the NES’s tile-based system. It also had some sort of color switching scheme to increase the palette, although that part sounds a little flakey.
Every so often I get an urge and go looking around the internet for info on this thing, like Indiana Jones trying to dig up lost artifacts, but without the cool hat. Anyways, last night I came across an article where the Color Dreams guy states “the hardware was done, but no code was ever written” He then elaborates on the hardware a bit.
From this I think I can guess how it might of worked. So, like Peter Jackson and old giant monkey movies, maybe us videogame fans can fill in a missing part of history! If you’re familiar with the Z80 and might consider taking a whack at it, please see my “Hellraiser Proposal” page. The old-school Nintendo community would really get a kick out of something like this, maybe a homebrew could even be made. Call it “Hellraiser” even if it has nothing to do with the movie. I know cost was a factor in killing the game back in 1991, but now a person can get a Z80 and some RAM fairly cheap. Or perhaps this “Super Cartridge” could take memory cards (like the Cuttlecart 2) and allow a variety of homebrews to be programmed and run. Whadda think?
No, not a Super Nintendo, but a regular Nintendo that’s super. Sort of.
I’ve been reading a lot lately about the NES since I’m trying to design a mass-producible version of my NES Micro. There’s a TON of great info at http://nesdev.parodius.com/, it’s been very informative for me. A great read for tech junkies.
Along the way I’ve found and come up with a few ways to “improve” an old 8-bit NES – including getting a stereo separation in the audio! For information on how I souped up my old NES a bit, please visit Ben’s “Super” Nintendo page. I’ve also drawn up a cartridge pinout and Famicom converter that I believe to be a bit more accurate than most floating around the ‘Net – enjoy!
I’m still looking for a good source of OEM NES on a chips (NOAC) I’ve had several leads but nothing has completely panned out yet. What I’d really love is one or two evaluation units (that I’d pay for of course) so I could design a PCB before buying a large number of the things.
I have enough different datasheets now to narrow down which is the most common model… seems to be a SMT QFP – 0.65mm pitch – 100 pin 20x30mm. Called either a NT6578, SH6578 or UM6578, depending on manufacturer.
If I could find NOAC’s like these for $10 a piece (or less), I believe I could make portable NES clones the same as my NES Micro (with 2.5″ screen) for $200 a unit. I think these would sell fine, my goal would be to make 100 units. So if anyone can help, let me know!
Note: I don’t want links to IC wholesalers or anything like that – I could find those myself. I’m looking for people who may have access to them directly, and could possibly help with samples. Thanks…