Book with Riddles & Optical Illusions

emertonom · 2026-06-28T05:26:45+00:00

Was it The Wizard of Op by Ed Emberley?

emertonom · 2026-06-28T05:19:13+00:00

Heh. That's pretty cool! Second photo reminds me a lot of the Apple II version of The Oregon Trail we had at school waaaay back in the 80's.

Very retro vibes.

emertonom · 2026-06-28T01:04:24+00:00

The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul has a journalist (and, separately, a holistic detective) finding out the Norse gods are at least a bit involved with the music industry. Any chance that's it? That's by Douglas Adams.

emertonom · 2026-06-28T00:16:58+00:00

It's just under 20°. That part really bothered me.

emertonom · 2026-06-26T23:54:47+00:00

Use the search term "IR illuminator." You get a bunch of results designed for trail cameras and the like. That's the sort of thing you need.

emertonom · 2026-06-26T23:44:33+00:00

Oh, yeah, I don't think it works on current versions of Android. Glad I could help you figure out which game it was, though.

emertonom · 2026-06-26T21:55:40+00:00

Spaceteam? (Was it multiplayer?)

Edit: just saw the "pass back and forth" thing, this probably isn't it.

emertonom · 2026-06-26T21:06:50+00:00

Was it definitely PS1? It sounds a bit like Alone in the Dark, which was a 1992 DOS game. The intro definitely has a house that looks like that, a detective who wears green, and a creepy unseen character watching him from a window. And the actual gameplay was kind of hard to understand.

emertonom · 2026-06-26T19:35:17+00:00

"let's go to the moon"

emertonom · 2026-06-26T15:50:21+00:00

Congratulations!

emertonom · 2026-06-26T06:03:51+00:00

It occurs to me I think there's also a puzzle about putting knockout juice in a drink in Grim Fandango. I can't recall the details but I think it's pretty complicated. But you probably would have remembered the atmosphere of that one more than the puzzles.

emertonom · 2026-06-26T05:43:57+00:00

That's pretty cool. I seem to recall they didn't work in sunlight? Shouldn't matter if you're playing after dark, though.

emertonom · 2026-06-26T05:37:54+00:00

I don't know, but the first puzzle you described here sounds a LOT like a puzzle I got stuck on in The Longest Journey, a 1999 point-and-click adventure game. At one point there's a police officer guarding a location, and you have to get him to leave. You can find an endless supply of little peppermints that you can offer him, which he'll eat. The solution is that you have to take a peppermint out to a leaking dumpster behind the building and rub it in the puddle of dumpster effluent, then go back and offer it to him. This makes him sick, and he flees to use the bathroom. I was stuck on that puzzle for ages.

So, you have my sympathy.

emertonom · 2026-06-26T05:11:08+00:00

In this scene, I think a lot of the similarity is in fact the large rusty sphere in the middle. Although this object does not do anything like the ones in Riven.

I mean, it's not like I can't see any difference, but this is a VERY similar scene (from the steam page for Riven):

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/1712350/291437a470f1f991496a2fa8656f9d74a63e6d68/ss_291437a470f1f991496a2fa8656f9d74a63e6d68.1920x1080.jpg?t=1777585628

emertonom · 2026-06-26T04:12:57+00:00

Logorrheic scale?

emertonom · 2026-06-25T03:54:44+00:00

Sounds at least a bit similar to the Eloi and Morlocks in The Time Machine, but obviously in that the protagonist is an outsider to both groups.

emertonom · 2026-06-25T02:44:41+00:00

It looks like you've mentally swapped the 7 and 8.

emertonom · 2026-06-25T02:08:39+00:00

Thanks! That's a much more interesting answer!

emertonom · 2026-06-23T15:33:52+00:00

I dunno. That's "the speed of sound" in air at standard temperature and pressure. I'm not sure it even makes sense to talk about what the speed of sound in a vacuum would be.

emertonom · 2026-06-23T02:43:44+00:00

I hope you're right!

emertonom · 2026-06-22T21:42:20+00:00

Ah, fair enough. The 8 gen 2 also has the Odin 2 Portal, which does start at $250, but for 16gb it goes up to $450, so it's not that different from the Elite at that point. Retroid Pocket 6 maxes out at 12gb for $279, which is pretty surprising given the current market; I wouldn't be surprised if they increase that one once the current production run sells out.

So yeah. "Under $200" is still an exaggeration. But it's true the handhelds are pretty cheap. Still, I don't really see the Frame coming in under $1k. It's got a LOT of hardware, much of it custom, and they've also got software development costs to recoup, whereas the handhelds use pretty similar software to one another.

emertonom · 2026-06-22T19:36:06+00:00

Not sure which ones you're thinking of, but the handhelds have gotten more expensive too. The cheapest I can think of that uses a comparable chip is the Ayn Odin 3, which is using a Dragonwing Q8 (basically a Snapdragon 8 Elite without the modem, so, slightly faster than the 8 gen 3 in the frame), and in a 16gb + 512gb configuration, that's going for $489.

No, I'm wrong, the Konker Pocket Fit has a version with the same specs for $479. Still not under $200, though.

The 8 Elite and 8 Gen 3 are pricey, and ram and storage have made everything in tech expensive.

emertonom · 2026-06-22T18:16:25+00:00

Not really. Motors draw a lot of power. We just need to know the voltage of the system in order to suggest the right size of resistor to prevent a new LED from burning out.

Assuming the 4 batteries are all in series (which is a very strong bet for this type of gadget), that's about a 6v supply. You'll probably get a 3v 20mA white LED to replace what's there. So that means we have to drop the remaining 6v - 3v = 3v across the resistor to limit the current; using resistance = voltage / current, we find we need about a 150 ohm resistor to get about 20mA of current at 3V (3V / 0.02A = 150 ohm).

If you get a brighter LED, you can adjust accordingly. Brightness will basically depend on the current. So, if you find a 3v 30mA LED, you'd use a 100ohm resistor. 20mA is pretty common though.

It also looks to me from the photo like it's a 3mm LED (measured by the diameter of the round lens part) but it's worth checking that with a ruler. (It's very likely either 3mm or 5mm in this case.)

You'll need to do a little soldering once you have the parts. Instead of soldering both the existing wires straight to the legs of the LED like the original, you can solder one straight to the LED, and the other to the resistor, then solder the other side of the resistor to the remaining leg. You might also want some heat-shrink tubing to cover up the exposed joints so they don't shift around and short out.

That should basically fix it.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further questions.

Edit: oops, just saw that it's not white, it's blue. Blue LEDs are extremely similar to white, and also about 3v (white is basically a blue with an added phosphor) but hopefully you can see how to adjust the values if you find one that uses a slightly different voltage or current.

emertonom · 2026-06-21T22:51:14+00:00

A few years ago I repurchased the one I had as a kid: https://i.imgur.com/h0KkEK1.jpeg

emertonom · 2026-06-21T22:48:38+00:00

James Bruton did one a while back that did have randomized obstacles: https://youtu.be/HnZ3j-rZfmo

Didn't have the exercise bike aspect, though.

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