To further the nostalgia I grabbed a copy of the EGA original and fired it up using Boxer. Boxer is a DOS emulator for the Mac that lets you play all your favorite old games. Leaving the Arcana

"Butston Freem" - Still funny.

I knew I had my original Space Quest floppy disks hanging out in a case in the closet. These disks have traveled with me for the past 26 years through 4 states, countless apartments and a couple of homes. I figured it was time to give them a proper display. So, I did the obvious and headed to Google to see how other folks display old floppies. Ummm, that was a bust. Apparently what I thought was a great idea isn't all that popular of a thing to do. In fact, I could find only a couple of examples, including a sweet photo on Flickr of some vintage Mac goodness.

It seemed I was in nearly uncharted territory, but I was not to be deterred. I gathered up the items to be included in my display. These consisted of the two original 5.25" floppies with sleeves and the user manual. I don't believe I have the original box anymore (though it could be in one of a couple storage locations so I decided that I'd reprint that on some high quality photo paper. I know that I do have the 2 original "valuable coupons" that came with the game, but I couldn't find them in my hasty search. I decided to reprint those, too (Thankfully, Google could help with that). I'm sure the original coupons will turn up someday and when they do I'll swap them out with the blatant forgeries.

Laying out the piecesI laid out the pieces to get a feel for just how large of a display I would need. From a cost standpoint, I didn't want to do any custom framing. And, after playing with the arrangement it seemed like I was probably heading into the 24" x 30" range. I felt that was too big and had too much dead space so I decided on 16" x 20".

Adjustable Depth Shadow BoxOff to Michael's to get some supplies. I debated between a standard frame and a shadow box for a while. Because the disks and manual are fairly thin, I didn't want to have a shadow box that felt super flat. However, I wasn't sure that the disks would fit nicely in a standard frame with matting and backing behind them without looking sandwiched. I was happy to find a perfect 16" x 20" shadow box that is adjustable for 4 depth settings.

I'm not really the "crafty" type so I didn't have any of the other supplies I would need. This meant I also needed to buy matting, an X-Acto knife, and various adhesives to stick everything together. The most expensive component was the shadow box itself at only $17.99.

Marked and ready to cutI started by cutting the matting down to 16" x 20" to fit the shadow box. Once I had this backing I played around with several more layouts to get a feel for what I wanted. After consulting the wife (always a good idea) I settled on the final design and went to work.

Another layout candidate Still toying with layouts

I drew horizontal and vertical dividing lines on the back of the matting to separate it into four quadrants. In the upper right (left looking from the back) corner, I cut a window for the cover art to show through. I measured the cover art, allowed for about 1/8" of overlap and then measured in from the edges to create my cut lines.  Using the X-Acto knife, I tried my best to cut smooth and steady along the guides. It worked OK and I had just a little bit of cleanup once I had the window cutout. I used the edge of the knife to smooth away the rough bits.

Marking the "window"I centered the cover art on the window on the back of the matting and mounted it with archival tape.

Next I used photo adhesive squares to mount the coupons and disk sleeves to the matting.  I used glue dots to secure the floppy disks to the backing. Finally, I used photo corners to hold the original user manual in place. I didn't really measure everything (or anything for that matter) exactly, I just kind of eyeballed it stuck things down. Perfect symmetry was not my ultimate goal.

I set the shadow box to its shallowest setting, dropped in the matting with my mounted items, and then reinstalled the backing.

Photo Corners

And there you have it. A Space Quest I - The Sarien Encounter shadow box.

Photo corners on the manual

Stuck down with photo adhesive

The Finished product

When I heard Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe had a project on Kickstarter for a new "SpaceVenture", I couldn't wait to throw my buckazoids at it!  I'm excited about the prospect of a cleverly written (hopefully) saga that values substance over pushing the envelope of graphics capabilities and seeing just how much gore and violence can be squeezed into a game.  Don't get me wrong, I love flashy graphics and I have no problem with violent games, but sometimes I want a game that makes me think and get lost in a story.  Mark and Scott always had the ability before and I'm putting up my own money ($150) to bet that they still do.

However, I could still use the drop-down menus to browse products and I was once again able to locate the shirt.  I added it to my cart and proceeded to checkout.  In order to checkout, I needed a separate account for the eStore... annoying but not unusual.  The instructions for setting up the account made it clear that my shipping address MUST match my billing address exactly so as to prevent credit card fraud.  "No problem", I thought since I planned on having it shipped to my home anyway.

After filling in the requisite fields, I received another error:

"Jurisdiction code 1007123901 does not correspond to address entered"

Now, that's an odd one.  So, I fired off an email to customer support with the details of my problem.  They responded the next day and suggested that I clear my browser's cache and cookies and restart my browser.  By the time I tried again, the front-end region select error was gone.  But, the same problem persisted when I tried to complete a purchase and create an account.

So, again, I sent a message to customer service to advise them of the problem and how unhelpful the error message was that I received.... "Oh 1007123901, You say?".

This time the response was even better.  After 5 days I received a reply suggesting that I enter a different city in the "City" field of the account registration page.  Not only is it a variation of my city that I do not live in, I've never even heard of it.  The US Postal Service, FedEx, and UPS (as well as every bill collector imageinable) can deliver to my real and correct address.  Apparently, Microsoft's e-Store backend cannot allow me to create an account with it, though.  Customer Support were kind enough to offer to go in after I create an account with this bogus city and send them another email to go to the back end database and "correct" my city.

Or.... alternatively I could just not create an account.  Yeah, that'll work, too.

This is what I've been waiting for... I hope.  There was already a Beta version of Plex available, but the controls just didn't feel right and it was a hassle to scroll through every movie to get to the one I wanted to watch.  This release version looks to be more polished.  In fact, it looks a lot like the Plex app for iOS.  The presentation of your library has a similar feel to NetFlix on Roku.  There are separate sections for your Plex Channels and for your home libraries (Movies, TV, etc.).  Within the library there are the expected sections like "Newly Released", "Recently Watched", "By Genre", "By Actor", etc.  Actually, these are the same headings that were available in the Beta app, but you could only choose them one at a time along the top of the screen.  The new interface definitely looks and feels better.  This is what I've been waiting for.

Add the Plex Channel to your Roku.

We've come along way from the simple smily :) to a full suite of useful characters.  Starting with iOS5 your iPhone, iPad, or iPod is now capable of sending and receiving emoji characters.  To enable them, follow these steps:

1. On your phone tap Settings
2. Select General
3. Select Keyboard
4. Tap International Keyboards
5. Tap Add New Keyboard... 
6. Scroll down and select Emoji

Now that emoji is enabled, you can access it from your on-screen keyboard by clicking the International Keyboard icon (Globe) at the bottom of the screen.

 Read more from Apple HERE

There are basically three conditions where you may need to reset an application or phone to resume from an error or lockup.

I.  App Not Responding - Home Button Works

In this case, the app you're using may have stopped responding or locked up.  Or, it may simply be stalled on the "Updating..." screen endlessly without ever continuing or even failing.  If pressing the home button returns you to the home screen from where you can see the icons for your apps try this:

1. Double-tap the Home button.
   
   
2. From the app switching ribbon at the bottom of the screen, hold your finger on the icon for the offending application until it wiggles.
3. Click the red circle in the upper-left corner of the app's icon to force it to close.
   
   
4. Press the Home button to return to the home screen.
5. Re-launch the app.

II.  App Not Responding - Home Button Not Working

In this case, not only has the app stopped working, but pressing the home button has no effect.  In this case:

1. Hold the Lock (Top) button on your phone until the "slide to power off" option appears.
2. Release the Lock button.
3. Hold the Home button until the application closes.
4. Re-launch the app.

III.  Phone Not Responding

If nothing else works and the entire phone is unresponsive:

1. Hold the Home and Lock buttons at the same time until the Apple logo appears.
2. Wait for the phone to reboot.

Matt Yoder's "Death Envelope" presentation from Defcon 16 presents a simple option.  You give a tamper-evident physical envelope (or USB key) containing your passwords to someone you trust with instructions to open it only after you pass.  Ideally, this could contain only your master password to whatever scheme you use for organizing your passwords.  I use LastPass, but there are other good alternatives like 1Password, KeePass and others.

An idea i like is to use Shamir's Secret Sharing.  If you recognize the name, it's because he's the "S" in "RSA".  In this scheme you distribute pieces of the key among friends, family, attorney etc.  Then, a pre-defined number of key pieces (but not all) are required to re-construct the master key/password.  The upside here is that a number of your trusted key holders would have to conspire to access your info pre-dirt-nap.  The downside, there's some math involved in reconstructing the key from just a few pieces.  But, that's a one time exercise that surely they could get through.

A third option is the Dead Man's Switch.  You periodically receive an email from a service.  When you stop responding (presumably because you've gone to the great crypto farm in the sky) the service can send instructions and passwords via email to your designee(s).  There are paid services that can set this up for you or you could configure something on your own.

In life, it's important to remember to use different passwords for everything.  That way if one of your passwords is compromised, the damage is limited to just the site it was stolen from.  Make sure your passwords are complex enough to not be easily guessed and follow standard password best practices.  Of course, making your passwords hard to guess can also make them hard to remember.  That's why I use LastPass.  But, a system like this means that your master key is the "key to the kingdom".  Breaking this one key then gives an adversary access to ALL your other passwords.  Accordingly, this master password (better yet a pass phrase) should be complex and secure to the point of paranoia.  Pretty much every password management program comes with generator that can generate unique, strong passwords.

She's perfectly happy to watch on the LCD television in the guest room, but the problem is that the only device in there is the AppleTV and it won't stream from the Mac Mini / Plex Server that's located in the family room.  The initial attempt at a solution was to get another Mini DisplayPort to HDMI cable so she could access Plex from her laptop and display it on the LCD television.  While this works, it's a bit clumsy and requires taking over her MacBook Pro while she's watching anything.

Roku to the Rescue

In my quest for finding a device that would stream from the main Plex media center, it looked like a Roku was the way to go.  For $80 at Best Buy I picked up the XD model that streams 1080p.  It was dead simple to hookup; AC and HDMI.  Create a free Roku account.  Install the Plex "Private Channel" and voila!  Access to the Plex library with a simple remote control and fairly intuitive user interface.

The only issue (and it's not a Roku issue) is that Movies that we ripped from our DVDs as Video_TS folders will not stream.  This is the same issue we get when using the Plex app on iOS for the iPad or iPhone.  Apparently it has to do with licensing MPEG2.  It looks like the "solution" is to convert those Video_TS rips to MKV files.  We've got about 500 movies on the Drobo, so that's no simple undertaking.  I found a script online but it's not working for me... looks like from the comments that MacTheRipper may be the reason.

I'm still working out whether I'll convert them onesy-twosy with the MakeMKV GUI or try to write my own script.