Triften's New Writeups

Huia bird (thing)

2003-02-27T01:33:14Z

Heteralocha acutirostris

The Huia bird, unique to New Zealand, was a wattle bird (family Callaeidae) with bright orange fleshy protrusions on either side of its beak and it averaged 19 inches long. The males had short blunt beaks about 2 1/2 inches in length and the females had long curved beaks over 3 1/2 inches long. This distinction led scientists to initially classify the males and females as two different species. Both male and female birds had slightly iridescent black feathers with white tips and ivory colored beaks.

The Huia fed primarily upon insects, especially those living in wood or under bark such as the Huhu beetle grub, Prionoplus reticularis. It is believed that the males and females worked in tandem to gather food, with the males breaking the surface of the wood while the female probed with her longer beak to retrieve insects. However, many scientists disagree with this theory since no other species has such a…

Jelling Stones (thing)

2003-02-15T04:34:03Z

The Jelling Stones are located outside a church in the village of Jelling, Denmark (north of Vejle City in Central Jutland) at approximately 55° 45' 22.8" N, 9° 25' 12.2" E. They serve as tombstones but are often referred to as the "birth certificates of Denmark" since they act as a record of one of Denmark's earliest kings and feature the oldest known inscription of the word "Denmark."

The older of the two honors Queen Thyre (or Thyri or Thyra), the wife of King Grom the Old, last pagan king of Denmark. It is roughly rectangular, stands about 1.5 meters high, and has runic inscriptions on front and back. It was erected sometime between 940 and 958 and may have been one of many stones made to honor her passing.

The front inscription reads:

kurmr kunukr
karthi kubl thusi
aft thurui kunu sina
tanmarkar but

In English:

"Gorm the king
made these runes
after his wife Thyre,
…

VS Knight Lamune & 40 Fire (thing)

2003-02-12T16:34:23Z

AKA: VS 騎士ラムネ & 40 炎 "VS Kishi Ramune & 40 Hono'o", VS Knight Lumune & 40 Fire

In this story, we follow the adventures of young Lamunade as he goes from yet-another-video-game-playing geek to defender of the free world (or Doki-doki space at least.) A sequel to the popular (at least in Japan) NG Knight Lamune & 40, this manga/anime is sure to provide your fill of giant robots and other assorted silliness.

A lust for video games is hard-coded into Lamunade's DNA and distracts him from everything, especially studying for school. A trip to the arcade turns odd when he is accosted by two young women selling video games... in the street... at 10pm. The incredible price of 100 yen is too good to pass up and after his purchase, our hero is momentarily blinded by the glare from the CD case to find that the ladies have vanished. At home, Lamunade makes short work of the game using his mad skills and the ending sequence is…

Touch My Heart Theodore (thing)

2003-02-11T21:17:25Z

by Smartech - Ages 3 and up

Well you touched my heart,
and you can talk to me!
All your secrets and daydreams,
Come on and see how fun it could be!

Overview

"I like having fun!" proclaims the box adorned with hearts and balloons. Touch My Heart Theodore is a teddy bear that stands about 14" tall (built into a sitting position) and contains an impressive little electronics package. Pressing his ear or hand brings him to life. He is capable of holding pseudo-conversations using a set of questions and generic replies and comes packed with his own little theme song (see above.) The responses are somewhat limited so his capabilities rank him above Teddy Ruxpin and a couple notches below Eliza.

Conversations:

Sample Questions:

"Would it surprise you that I'm afraid of spiders? Tell me something no one else knows."
"I'm in a good mood. What makes you happy?"

…

Sonic Championship (thing)

2003-02-07T16:04:25Z

Platform: Arcade (Model 2B-CRX)
Genre: 3D Fighter
Alternate versions: Sonic the Fighters (Japan)
Release Date: June 1996 (Japan), July 1996 (US); After Knuckles Chaotix and before Sonic 3D Blast.
Acquiring the Game: OOP, ebay may be the only way.

Robotnik has built the Death Egg II in orbit high above the world and Tails' rocket, the Lunar Fox, needs all eight Chaos Emeralds to reach it. It can only carry one person! How can our heroes choose who should go? They hold the Sonic Championships in which the best fighter will collect all 8 emeralds and face off against Dr. Robotnik himself.

You choose from one of the eight heroes and progress through a series of stages on your way to the Death Egg II. You always follow the same path and always meet the same characters. Unfortunately, given the standard fighter difficulty progression, Knuckles is always the first fighter you face and he is…

ROM (thing)

2003-02-06T22:27:35Z

In emulation, ROM refers to a ROM image taking by dumping the data from a game's ROM chips. On arcade boards this is done by removing each chip (they are usually socketed) and reading the information from them one at a time. For cartridge-based systems, hardware is usually available to read the data from the cartridge into a standardized data format. If no such hardware is available, the ROM chips can be read individually in the same fashion as an arcade game. The process is not limited to just game information. System software (such as a BIOS) can be dumped into a ROM or data from floppies used on an old computer system can be read in its raw format and then saved, to be later read by an emulator.

Dumping the data can be made difficult by encryption or compression of data. Some cartridge games included specialized chips that handled data compression and often there is little to no information available about how these chips operate. Later NeoGeo carts had the…