Launching Into 2015

Man, it seems like I was just starting this blog a year ago when 2014 began.  While things have slowed down in recent weeks, I can assure everyone that it's not for a lack of what to write about.  In fact, as of now, I have almost too much to write about!  Thus, to save some time and make a quick post about what to expect from me in 2015, read on!

Setup for 3DS Homebrew

Well, it's finally here!  The 3DS homebrew scene is live and ready to start.  With everything out in the open, I thought I'd do a quick tutorial on how to install everything to your 3DS, and what you can and can't do with it.

Setting up your 3DS

The first thing you will need is a 3DS (duh), an SD Card, internet access on your 3DS, and the game "Cubic Ninja".  This can either be a physical cartridge, or the version off of the Nintendo eShop (Japan only) [This has been taken down as of now].  Once you have this, go to the main menu of Cubic Ninja, select "Create", then select "QR code", and finally select "Scan QR Code".  This should open up a view from your 3DS' camera, and allow you to scan a QR code with it.

Once there, go to http://www.smealum.net/ninjhax/ and select your 3DS version, click submit, and it should present you with a nice QR code you can scan.  Scan this with your 3DS and you should see a screen like this pop up:

Don't forget to make sure that your 3DS has an internet connection as well to download part of the exploit.  Now you can choose to either run a homebrew application, or install it to the save file of the game.  This allows you to not have to worry about using the QR code in the future or needing an internet connection, so I highly recommend doing this, as it can be uninstalled later if you so choose.  Once this is done, you are all set and can begin using homebrew applications!

Running Homebrew

To run homebrew applications, you simply need to put the a boot.3dsx file on the root directory of your SD card, and then when you launch NinjHax, it will run your application.  My recommendation is to download a homebrew launcher and just leave that as the file, so that you can launch other homebrew applications with it.  It's a pretty simple process, but if you have questions, feel free to post them below.

To add other homebrew applications to the homebrew launcher, simply create a folder called "3ds", and place folders contain the boot.3dsx files of homebrew applications within there.  If you wish to make icons for your games, simply place them in an application's directory as "icon.bin" files.  You can use the SMDH tool included with devkitPro to make them, or look into my application over at https://github.com/gemisis/SMDH-Creator (Windows only).

When it comes to what you can run, please be aware that this does NOT run pirated games.  It ONLY runs homebrew applications.  We do NOT support piracy and will NOT be adding support in.

Deleting Homebrew

Should you ever wish to delete the homebrew save file on Cubic Ninja, all you have to do is hold L+R+X+Y on the main menu, and it will prompt you to delete the game's save data.  Click yes, and poof!  All of the homebrew stuff will be gone.  This can also be used to update the launcher in the future, as you can just delete it, and then reinstall it.

Creating Homebrew

Creating homebrew is a bit trickier, and requires knowledge of C.  As of right now, most of the tools are available from https://www.github.com/smealum/ctrulib.  There is also a quick install tutorial there, though I may add one on here in the future if a need arrives.  Using the libraries is a topic for another post, so I'll try to go over making a simple application at another time.

I hope this all seems pretty straight forward!  If you have can questions or comments, post them below!  Happy homebrewing!

Photos of the Month - August 2014

A bit more delayed then I would have liked, but here are my favorite photos from the month of August!

A nice dinner one night!  I await the inevitable criticism of my cooking though XD

An icy cold warehouse, with ice forming in the warm 85 degree weather.

The mountains of Virginia!

Sadly no traveling for this picture, just a trip to Busch Gardens!

This upcoming month will prove to be challenging since my phone's camera is now destroyed.  Guess I'm gonna have to look into upgrade to an actual camera!

Photos of the Month - July 2014

The month of July was a rather crazy month.  For those who don't know, I got the chance to go to Mountain View California and interview with Google at their headquarters.  It was an insane experience, and while I still don't know if I got the job, I had a great time and got a ton of pictures!  So for this month's photos, here are a ton of neat pictures from California (With one or two from Virginia too)!

Cooking up Hash Tables

Originally I was thinking I should rename this post, but I've decided to go ahead and keep the name since I find it kind of funny. That said, hash tables are super cool, and a really important data structure that I believe you should absolutely know.  Even Googlers says they are one of the most important data structures around.  So how exactly do you implement a simple hash table?  Let's go ahead and explore this!

A Shady Browser

Before I begin, this is yet another post inspired by Michael C. Johnson, so I just want to give another shout-out to him!  Most of the code from this is just re-purposed code from http://www.learningwebgl.com/ as well due to laziness, so shout out to them too!

With all of this talk about shaders, I started thinking about the best way to demonstrate shaders through my blog.  I think they're pretty neat to mess with, and are very important to understand how to use due to the fact that they play such a huge role in 3D graphics today.

Fading with Shaders

This is a fun little post I thought I could do really quick.  While I'm still getting the hang of using shaders and such, recently I thought of something that I thought was kind of clever to do with shaders.  This is a quick post about what the problem was and how I solved it.  Shout out to Michael C. Johnson for suggesting to blog about this!

Photos of the Month - June 2014

With June finally over, it's time for some new photos of the month!  While not as high of quality as last months, I still found these to be quite good!

Game Systems - 8th Generation Current Status

Game systems are a very tricky business to read into.  While your favorite system may have all the games that you like, that doesn't mean that it is selling well.  At the same time, high sales for one console at the start might not mean that it will be the best selling in the end.  There are quite a few ups and downs specifically to the current 8th generation of game systems, each complete with coming challenges as well.

Please note that this was written prior to E3 2014, and so this is just my personal opinions and thoughts on the current generation of consoles before then.  I will be writing up a post E3 version soon.

Photos of the Month - March 2014

Kicking off April, here are some of my favorite photos that I managed to take during the month of March!  Sadly I did not take as many as last month, but there are still a few good ones in here I think :)

A Rocky Beach Day - Taken on a trip to the beach one day.

Let the Games Begin - Taken at a Washington Capitols Hockey Game

An Afternoon Sunset - Taken on a trip to the James River for a friend's birthday.

My goal for this month is to take a ton more photos now :D

Kinecting Back to Blogging

It's been about two weeks since my last blog post, and so I figure I should make this particular post about what exactly is going on.  Back in December, I applied for the Microsot Kinect for Windows Version 2 alpha.  In February, I found out that I was accepted, and went ahead and got the sensor as a birthday present to myself.  Finally, when my spring break started two weeks ago, I got the chance to sit down and fiddle with the hardware, and I've got to say, I am impressed so far.

So for today's post, I'll be going over how to use the Microsoft Kinect for Windows V2 APIs in C#, and the process of making a simple application.  The code for this will be presented at the end of the article, so if you're just interested in getting the code, just scroll down to the bottom.  There's a bit to this project since we'll be using multiple data streams, but hopefully not too bad.  Before I continue on, I do want to stress that this is preliminary software and/or hardware and APIs are preliminary and subject to change.

Photos of the Month - February 2014

Many people might not know this about me, but I have developed a very strong interest in photography over the past few years.  Since coming to college, I've realized how much I want to have memories of everything I do, and so I take a lot of pictures.  Actually, that's become an understatement, because it's more than a lot.  It's something I've had a few people get upset about, partially due to some bad photos, partially due to the bulk.  In fact, I routinely have to go through them, or risk not posting the photos due to the sheer numbers.

This past year there were tons of photos that I never uploaded simply because of the time it usually took me to go through them.  I didn't (and still don't) have a nice camera, so I ended up using my phone, which means I had to manually go through each one.  With my recent Android phone, I can now do so much faster since they are automatically synchronized everywhere (privately of course, with the option to share).