Retro games for sports cards.

For the past year, I haven't made any posts due to us moving into a different house in a different and better neighborhood.  And during that move, it made me realize that I've got too much video games.  Exactly three large moving boxes worth.  It might not be much considering how much others have (some have a whole room's worth) but it makes moving more of a challenge.  At this point, I've rarely got any chance to play any games for a particular long time, I'm starting to sell off some of the games.  During the move, I also found some of my old sports cards that I used to collect.  It's not worth much but it got me trying to get back into that hobby.  It's a hobby that doesn't require much time except for researching, takes up less space and its a hobby that I don't want to make investments on but only to get cards of players that I like or watched playing when I was a kid.  The sports card hobby did change quite a lot since I remembered it back in the 90's.  Cards are more rare and cost a lot more today.  I'll talk more on this on another blog post.

So the first step I made was to sell one of my higher end game in terms of cost and that was the SNES Pocky & Rocky 2.  Sold it for $500.  I did take about a $40 hit on selling it from Ebay fees but I was happy to have sold it (I think I only played it once!) and got a Joe Montana rookie card in return.  Now I'm looking to sell off my Sega Saturn Derby Stallion and hopefully get more cards in return.  I'm not abandoning all my retro games by any means.  I'll still keep all my NES, SNES, PSP and PC Engine stuff.  All other will have a possibility to getting auctioned off on Ebay to get the monetary funds to put into sports cards.  We'll see how that goes.  I'll be making more posts here on my sports cards journey soon.

Securely wipe a disk and all its data.

We all come across a time where we need to get rid of a computer that has a hard drive or just a hard drive itself with your data on it.  So what do you do with the data in it?  If you delete from the OS, there's still possible ways to recover the data from the next person that the hard disk goes to especially if you just do a quick format of the disk.  Doing a quick format essentially removes the pointers to the data.   You might not be able to see it from the OS, but the data is still on the disk.  And with the proper recovery software, the data can be recovered.  To be safe, its best to write the disk with random data.  When doing so, it's nearly impossible to recover data that was written over.  Killdisk, which I've used before is simple and effective.  The free version however, is limited to how many disk/partitions you can wipe at once.  If you've got a Linux machine, you can use the 'dd' command and fill the disk with data from /dev/urandom.  Wiping a disk with random data can take a long time but its the safest way to protect your data from being recovered by someone else.

    https://www.killdisk.com/eraser.html

    dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX (X is the letter of the drive)

Sega Saturn Derby Stallion Edition

   The Sega Saturn came out without much attention during its time.  I was a big Sega fan while I was growing up.  I had the Master System and Genesis consoles while others have the NES and SNES.  I remember being at Kay-Bee Toys around Christmas time one year and saw the Sega Saturn box on the shelf.  I was surprised Sega had another console out as I haven't heard that it was coming out.  I was still on the Genesis and the Sega CD at that point.  Back then, its usually TV commercials, magazines or word of mouth from friends that you get your information from.  I don't remember hearing anything from any of those sources.  Although the Saturn didn't do well in the US, it did better in Japan.  It does have a cult following and is growing now that retro gaming is popular and we start to appreciate the console more and more.  For the import version of the console, there were around 7 or 8 different versions of the console.  One of the rare ones was the Derby Stallion Edition.  This thing looks awesome with the translucent green design.  There's one other translucent design for the Saturn and that's the "This is Cool" console.  That one is a translucent gray.  I love these see through designs on consoles and hand helds.  I got this one off Ebay a couple years ago.  It's in pristine condition with the box, manual and stickers.  I don't remember exactly but I think I sold off my Neo Geo AES to get this.

Vinyl Pickup: U2 - Achtung Baby (1991)

Today I picked up my favorite U2 album.  Achtung Baby came out in 1992 back when I was in high school.  I remember first time playing it on a cassette in my Sony Walkman.  It was the first pre-recorded cassette tape I got that didn't use normal bias tapes.  It was recorded on metal bias tape.  When I first listened to it, the opening track Zoo Station had some weird synthentic drum beats to it.  I thought there was something wrong with the tape and come to realize its normal.  It was a sound that I've never heard before from U2 up to that point.   I had to sell off a bunch of vintage computer magazine to get this original pressing copy of the vinyl.  So many good songs on this album and by far my favorite U2 album and the most different.

Record Store Day 2021 pickup.

 

  

The only thing I wanted from this Record Store Day.  I was actually surprised that there wasn't a line going into the record store.  Printed on 180gram vinyl with the stick figure etching on one side and 4 tracks on the other side.

1. Alive (Promo Single Version)
2. Wash (Original Version
3. I've Got A Feeling
4. Dirty Frank (Original Version)

Encrypt and Decrypt your password in your Powershell script.

Powershell is not a precompiled type of language.  So therefore, anyone can read the contents of the script.  What if you need to use a password to have the script access certain resources?  You can always encrypt your password as a secured string and then decrypt it at runtime.  First you will need to encrypt your password using the code below.

$password = Read-Host -Prompt 'Enter your password to encrypt' -AsSecureString

Then, you will need to dump the output of the secure string into an xml file where you powershell script will call at runtime and decrypt.

$password | Export-Clixml -Path 'C:\securepassword.xml'

You can see that the contents of the file it create, securepassword.xml, has your password in encrypted format.

Next, have you powershell call that file and decrypt it.

$password = Import-CliXml -Path 'c:\securepassword.xml'

$plain_password = [Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto([Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($password))

write-host $plain_password

One caveat is that you must run the Import-CliXml command as the same user you use to encrypt the password.

Hippos from the past.

One of my favorite and most memorable toy I played while I was growing up was Hungry Hungry Hippo.  It's a simple game to play in which the objective is to chomp as much marbles as you can by pressing down on a lever which extends the hippo head and opens its mouth.  Upon releasing the lever, the hippo closes its mouth and its head retracts back to its original position taking in any marble in its mouth.  There are many iterations of this toy and this version I got was made in 2012.  It's not as well made as the one I played as a kid back in the 80's.  The marbles are now made of hard plastic instead of the heavier glass marbles in the previous versions.  The overall construction of the toy is less sturdy as earlier models which is disappointing.  Nevertheless, its a great game to play with kids with its simple objective.

 

Test if a port is opened using netcat

Here's a simple command to test for open port. 

From the destination side, run the following.  This will enable the destination side to listen on that port.

netcat -l -u -p <port number>

Then, from the source side, run the following.

          telnet <destination side ip> <port number>

All Pearl Jam's Studio Albums Ranked

Full disclosure - This is going to be a long post as I did not write this up in one sitting.   In fact this post took quite some time to write.  There was a lot of thinking and rationalizing involved.  I had to make a few ordering changes and this is the final list I came up with.  Let me start by saying Pearl Jam has not made a bad album.  They're my favorite band.  They have made some albums that are worst or better than others as it would be impossible to make the same album over and over.  It would be boring if they did.  As a Pearl Jam fan, I love all their albums.  Them and Bruce Springsteen are the two artists that I listen to on a consistent basis since I was in high school till now for some 30 years.  To date, Pearl Jam has 11 studio albums.  I ranked these albums by its replay ability, number of good songs, album art and packaging.  This was not an easy task but a fun one to dive into. I'm happy with the final order of my list.  So here goes!

**Try not to get ahead and scroll to #1 but read the rankings through in order.  

#11:  Riot Act (2002)

Well, if you're doing a ranking, something has to be last.  So happens to be Riot Act on this list.  There are a few songs I liked from this album like Save You, I Am Mine, 1/2 Full, Love Boat Captain, Thumbing My Way. These songs are good but doesn't stand out in the Pearl Jam collection.  Besides their tour to support this album, I don't believe they played much of these songs in subsequent tours.  If you want to get into Pearl Jam, then I don't recommend you start with this album. Nothing blows you away that you have to listen to it over and over again but it's nice to put on your record player once in a while.  I like the artwork on this album.  The liner note booklet that it comes with has the band's pictures and lyrics that resembles what was included in the Binaural record.

#10:  Lightning Bolt (2013)

Not a bad album but definitely not their best.  The artwork is definitely my least favorite out of all the albums but they won a Grammy for it.  Show's how much I know about art.  This album has got some good songs on it.  The songs are still rather new and it'd be interesting to see if they play some of these songs on their next tour.  Some of the songs I like are Getaway, Lightning Bolt, Infallible and Future Days.  The rest of them are ok songs.  It won't be their signature songs that they play live.

#9:  Gigaton (2020)

Most recent album that was released a few months ago.  This album starts out roaring with a rocking first four songs.  The first single Dance of the Clairvoyance has a electronic sounding feel to it.  I think many people are put off on this album due to this song being released as a first single.  My favorite song on the album is Quick Escape.  Lyrics are awesome as well as the blaring guitar solos.  After the first four songs, the album goes for a more mellow tone with Alright and Seven O'Clock.  At first I didn't like either song but after I listened to it a few more times, I understood the lyrics and came to the liking of it.  I would have to say the only song that I'm not really into in this album is Buckle Up.  Good solid album.

#8:  Backspacer (2009)

	Their ninth studio album.  My favorite song on this album is definitely Force of Nature.  Other songs like The Fixer, Unthought Known, Supersonic and Amongst the Waves are great songs that gives the album a pop album feel.  To me, Backspacer is Pearl Jam's most mainstream album.

#7:  Pearl Jam (2006)

I had some difficulty picking #7 and #6.  I know these two albums fit in these two spots but it was hard to determine which goes into what.  I finally decided that their self titled album (a.k.a Avocado) goes to #7.  What led me to put this at #7 over #6 is that the lyrics are not as strong as the next album on the list.  Life Wasted, World Wide Suicide and Come Back are the exceptions.  The cover art is probably the worst out of all the Pearl Jam albums.  An avocado on a shiny cover?  I've always preferred the matte finish on a vinyl cover.  Any if anyone know the significance of an avocado, please leave a comment.

#6:  Binaural (2000)

I believe that this was the first album was produced by someone else other than Brendan O'Brien at that point in time, excluding Ten.  The first time I listened to it, it sounded a bit muffled.  But after a few times listening to it, I've grown accustomed to it.  Maybe its the way its recorded which points to the name of the album but the opening track Breakerfall is a good rocking opener.  The first single Nothing As It Seems is a good mellow song with some great guitar effects.  I can listen to this album from beginning to end.

#5:  Yield (1998)

Ok.  Now we're down to the nitty gritty.  I put Yield at #5. This one was an easy pick for me as I think it fits right in.  This is another album I can listened to from beginning to end.  Only song I'm not too fond of is the Untitled track.  However, its only about a minute long so I can deal with it.  Maybe someday I'll come to like it.  Do the Evolution, Wishlist, Faithfull are all staples in their song catalog.  A lot of people say that this was their turning point away from the grunge label and I agree. This is a very solid album.

#4:  Vitalogy (1994)

This was the follow up album to Vs, which sold over 900k copies the first week with the vinyl version being released a week before the CD or cassette version.  This is one of their darker mood albums.  It's a 14 song album with a few odd songs like Hey Foxymophandlemama, Pry To and Bugs.  I think the album would have stronger if they left those songs out.  14 songs is on the high side in terms of the number of songs for a album.  You have the popular songs that they play at most of the shows like Better Man, Corduroy and Immortality.  The packaging and artwork is superb.  The Vitalogy concept was taken from a encyclopedia book of the same name.

#3:  Ten (1991)

Yup #3.  So this is the legendary album everyone knows Pearl Jam for.  For non Pearl Jam fans, this is the album they know.  Anyone surprised this isn't in the top 2 or even at #1?  Every song on this album is quality.  Alive, Even Flow and Jeremy were the singles that came out of that with MTV broadcasting the video for each of these singles.  If you heard this album but not the next two on the list, then I would advise you to listen to it.  When I think about Pearl Jam, I don't think of Ten.  I think about all the other albums on the list mainly because I think their other albums represent who they really are a lot better.  The only thing I wish they did was better the production of it.  The songs sounded soft.  One noticeable song was Evenflow.  Years down the line, they did do a remaster version of it in the Ten box set.  I think that version on there sounds a lot better throughout the entire album.   Not taking anything away, this is definitely one of the most iconic albums of all time and will be talked about for eternity.

#2:  No Code (1996)

No Code comes in at #2.  First time I heard No Code was the single Who You Are being played on the local radio station.  The sound and tone of the song is a departure from their last album Vitalogy and I think it turned a lot of Pearl Jam fans off.   I definitely had mix feelings at the time it was released and I ranked it as their worst album in their four album history.  But over time, I began to realize how good the songs are on it.  Present Tense is a slow mood song with very deep lyrics.  Hail Hail was the second single from the album and its a rocking song.  In My Tree has some great drumming behind it.  The album closes with Around The Bend which to me, sounds like a song you listen to at your getaway island.  The packaging of this album is just awesome and very thought out.  No other album that I know of is like this one.  It came with different polaroids with the lyrics printed on the other side.  There are different sets (5 in total) of polaroids you can get that varies from album to album.  It's my favorite album packaging out of all the Pearl Jam records.  I encourage everyone to listen to this album if you never listened to it before of just don't like the album to give it another chance.

#1:  Vs (1993)

This is what I wished Ten sounded like in terms of the production.  Vs doesn't seem to be overly produced and just straight up guitar to amp to recording device.  Although the songs were not as big of hits than the ones from Ten, they are just as good.  Much to the lack of well known hits was because there wasn't any video to be play on MTV at the time so getting the word out on the songs were difficult back in 1993.  Ten had 3 videos on heavy rotation going for it.  For every good song on Ten, there's was a matching song from Vs.  This is my favorite Pearl Jam album.  I have this album in cassette tape, CD and vinyl format.  I remember listening to Go and Rearviewmirror for the first time and was blown away by the drums, guitars and vocals.  This is Pearl Jam's hardest rocking album, period.  I can listen to this album all day on a loop.

Please leave me a comment on your thoughts on this list!

Review: Buture 300W Portable Power Station

Got my hands on this portable power station. 

It's the Buture PG100.  From the looks of the owners manual, it's a Japanese brand but I haven't been able to find much information about the company online.  I got this one from Amazon for $200.

It's very sturdy unit as its filled with batteries.  The outer shell is made of hard plastic so it'll crack if you drop it.  The entire device is about 7" x 3" x 6".  It's small for what it does so its good to take it on long road trips.   This is my first portable power station and it does as advertised.  It supplies AC and USB power to your devices.  It has a 300W capacity.   Having a portable power station that has AC output is good for road trips and camping.   There's a fan in the unit that turns on when it needs to.  This is to prevent overheating.  I was able to charge two laptops with 65w chargers and run my Dyson fan at full blast at the same time without issue.  I like the briefcase style format as it makes it easy to carry around and store away.  I didn't calculate how many times it can charge my laptop but at 72000mAh, it would probably able to charge it full 5 or 6 times.   To charge to PG100, you can either plug it into the wall or plug it into the cigarette light port in your car.  All the charging cables are included.  There's also a solar panel (sold seperately) that you can use to charge the PG100.  The solar panel is about another $150.

Specifications:

• 300W Power
• 72000mAh Battery (more than others with equal watt capacity)
• 2 AC output
• 3 USB output
• 1 DC output
• Wall charging time: 8 hrs
• Weight:  ~6.3lbs
• Life Cycle: >500 charges
• Emergency LED