Howard Wen

email * G+ * LinkedIn

Publications I have written for. (Click logos to read my articles.)

Other publications I wrote for. (Articles not available online.)

Sample portfolio of past published work

Make: Volume 02
R2-DIY
5/12/05 (on newstands beginning 5/17/05)
Just in time for the premiere of Star Wars: Episode III, my article on Star Wars fans who build their own droids makes the cover of Make magazine. (Is it a coincidence or a craftily planned ploy timed with the release of Episode III to sell more copies? Hmmm....) The publication is available at various bookstore chains including Borders.
[Make website] [Cover] [Photo 1] [Photo 2]

Salon
Atari Lives!
The Atari 2600 ceased production in 1989. But practically speaking it never really went away. The abandoned system has been adopted by online fans, who nurture it with loving care. And they're doing more than just keeping it on life support; the Atari 2600 is actually growing -- new games are being written, and new hardware is being manufactured.
[Read the article]

Salon
Do-It-Yourself "Star Wars"
Have you seen "The Dark Redemption," the "Star Wars" prequel film set days before the events of the original "Star Wars"? What about "Bounty Trail," which features the further adventures of "Star Wars" intergalactic bounty hunter Boba Fett? If the above sound like fanciful ideas dreamed up by fans, that's because they are. These are products of the "fan film" scene -- an offshoot culture of independent digital filmmaking.
[Read the article]

Linux Magazine
Playing for Keeps
Over the years, NetHack fans with programming talent have dreamed up and realized all kinds of clever ways to enhance the basic game, including adding player character races, monsters, and spells. Two notable projects that enhance gameplay and graphics are Slash'EM and Falcon's Eye.
[Read the article]

Salon
Battle.net Goes To War
Is an open-source version of Blizzard Entertainment's online gaming service an illegal copyright violation? Ross Combs and Rob Crittenden, two of the lead developers on bnetd, say all they ever wanted to do was create a place to play best-selling Blizzard games like Starcraft and Diablo in a friendly online atmosphere free of the technical bugs that plague Battle.net. Blizzard sent a cease-and-desist to the ISP that hosts the Web site for bnetd.
[Read the article]

O'Reilly LinuxDevCenter.com
Building Freeciv: An Open Source Strategy Game
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Freeciv is clearly a labor of love among its many volunteers. Since the code for this open source version of Civilization was released in 1995, hundreds of volunteers have added to it and improved it, even though the original developers haven't been heavily involved in years.
[Read the article]

Wired
Blade Runner Run-On
Why will Blade Runner aficionados want to "retire" Jeter's book? Largely because Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human reads like a treatment for a "typical" Hollywood sequel - short on new ideas, heavy on brainless action. Quiet moments like those that made the original film a classic are not only few but irrelevant. Instead, whenever there's a lull, Jeter piles on the action: explosions, gunfire, characters getting busted up real bad.
[Read the article]

O'Reilly LinuxDevCenter.com
The Hacker Behind "Hacking the XBox"
Hacking the Xbox, as the title of Huang's tome sums up, details how-tos for modifying your Xbox, and provides various insights into the security and other inner-working code of Microsoft's game console. John Wiley & Sons was originally set to publish the book, but the company became concerned over the legality of hacking and reverse engineering -- practices that have since been muddled by the DMCA -- and dropped it.
[Read the article]

Salon
New Life for Old Games
Video-game emulators intriguingly blur the lines between hardware and software, PCs and game machines. Do they also promote piracy? Straddling the legal line between reverse-engineering and software piracy, scores of programmers are coding freeware programs that emulate the hardware of video-game consoles, arcade machines and even other personal-computer formats.
[Read the article]

O'Reilly LinuxDevCenter.com
AbiWord: Open Source's Answer to Microsoft Word
Tired of putting up with Microsoft Word's bloated file size and price, but still need to deal with documents in Word format? Then you should take a serious look at AbiWord. This open source word processor is able to read and write most documents in Word's *.doc file format.
[Read the article]