Alex RasmussenI make things that do stuff with computers

I have an XBox 360 with a couple of wireless controllers that have rechargeable battery packs and this thing called a “Play ‘n Charge” cable that allows the controllers to charge over USB while still being usable. I picked up one of my controllers after a long (read: months) period of not using it to find that it had completely discharged. Not only that, but it wouldn’t even charge over the cable; the charge indicator light turned from red (charging) to green (charged) almost immediately. For a long time, I thought I just had a faulty battery and ran off of AAs. Then I found this thread.

Disclaimer: I am not an electrical engineer. Well, technically I am, but seriously … I’m not an electrical engineer. I may have gotten the details of this wrong.

All rechargeable batteries will lose their charge if not charged in a long enough period of time. Apparently, if a battery gets sufficiently discharged, it will have trouble accepting a charge at all. The XBox will then become confused, interpreting the inability to pass current through the battery to charge it as the battery being fully charged (hence the “a few seconds of red light, followed by a green light” phenomenon).

Here’s the two step solution:

1. Plug the controller (with rechargeable battery attached) into the XBox with the Play ‘n Charge cable. The light on the end of the cable should turn on and be red.
2. If the light stays red for a couple minutes without turning green, keep the controller plugged in. Otherwise, unplug the controller from the Play ‘n Charge cable, count slowly to five, and go back to step 1.

After some number of tries (nominally less than 50), the XBox and battery should finally figure it out and charging should begin.

Apparently there’s a fan-made project that aims to redo all of Sonic 2′s sprites in HD while keeping the gameplay physics intact. Apparently Capcom’s doing this with Street Fighter 2 for some reason (don’t get me wrong, it looks amazing).

It’s a shame that, since Sega is incapable of making a good business move where Sonic is concerned these days, this will never be allowed to happen. Still, a guy can dream.

I just bought The Orange Box off of Steam. It turns out that, since I already bought Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 1, I can give the extra license I purchased as a gift. If anyone wants that extra license, let me know and I’ll hook you up – first come first serve.

Remove Garfield’s speech bubbles and you turn arguably one of the most unfunny cartoons of all time into a strangely moving, surrealist cartoon about a lonely single man talking to his overweight cat.

Here are some of my favorites:

More of these can be found at Tweebiscuit.  Happy holidays everybody.

I finally decided this week that the time has come to stop playing games that don’t end. I spend too much time in front of a computer screen professionally, and I’d at least like my personal computer time to come with some sense of accomplishment. I’m too casual of a gamer for these kind of games.

It is the end of an era. Radoria, my tauren warrior, has been put out to pasture.

Sorry if I’m sounding a little sentimental for what’s really just a couple rows in one of Blizzard’s databases, but this is 26 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes and 22 seconds of my life we’re talking about here!

(Cue “To Everything There is a Season” – The Byrds)

I decided that it would be appropriate that the game should end where (for me, at least) it began almost two years ago, in the tauren starting zone. This is what two years of casual gaming looks like:

You’ve got to love the awesome glowing axe action – took me a bit of time to get that one.

15 minutes later, all of the gear was gone and it was time to call it quits. I donated all my gear, all my money, and all my other resources to my guild.

I don’t regret quitting. Still, I’m gonna miss the (not so) little guy.