First, watch this: Animator vs Animation
When you've regained the ability to breathe, watch this: Animator vs Animation II
Darned brilliant. Brilliant!
These are horribly brilliant! BRILLIANT I say! Animated Spamland Transcripts. Oh well done brothers!
This is very cool. Some years ago an architect had this flash of insight and developed a new theory for the constructions of the great pyramids at Giza. To test his theories, he turns to a realtime 3D model and AI systems... which is precisely what I began to investigate in my own Thesis for my architecture degree (at about the same time he came up with his theory, actually, interestingly enough). Rock on -- I may not have been able to persue the fruits of my thesis, but it is very cool to see the very concepts and hopes I had being put into practice.
Here's the paper you can download: http://khufu.3ds.com/introduction/datas/intro/downloads/Kheops_Story.pdf
Sadly, my own thesis (Maya Visions) is not on the web right now. Hmm. And I'm leaving it that way... because? I might well just rectify that!
(Ok, that's odd -- if you misspell my last name (the missing n) and put my name into google, the first article that comes up is the article about me in the Mountain View Voice... how about that.)
Current Possibility: Being Infectious
I am finding it most amusing that a good number of my spam over the past couple of days have been about "Fantastic christmas gifts!" or "Special deals to start the holiday season!" Kinda missed the boat there, guys.
Today's LotD: Worst of the Worst video game ads from the late 80's and the second installment about the early 90's. Funny enough on their own, but doubly so with the rather sharp commentary.
I've gotten an upsurge in spam lately, and it's most interesting -- there seems to be a trend lately for clusters of nearly identical spam messages coming in droves of droves. I'm guessing it's banks of spambots spewing it out in chunks, but it's amusing and weird. Every few days a new batch... most recently it's been of the same word, but with the name of the person in the From: header. As a technique I have to question it, really -- even if you were fairly green, you'd think 10 messages like that would tip someone off, no?
At any rate, I broke down and further set up my procmail rules to sort out my known friends, a whitelist of sorts, to reduce the chance of accidentally deleting messages in a quick scan of 'yes, no, yes yes yes yes, no yes' of my emails.
This post comes post-xmas, and I trust that everyone created for themselves a fantastic holiday. I didn't get a chance to go home this year due to late time-off-requestness and my parents came down to visit instead. We had a fantastic time, and got to hit a couple of very nice restaurants. Food bloggage ahead...
First up of the two places I'll describe is the Slanted Door in San Francisco, recently moved to the Ferry Building. The décor is decidedly modernesque, funky and fresh but not overpowering. Clean lines throughout, with rough touches (such as our table) that cohabited and enhanced each other nicely. Trying to make reservations early in the afternoon was not possible, so we tried our luck in line at opening time. Turns out that was the best thing to do; we not only got a table but got one end of the table in the private room, making for a great view of the bay and a quieter evening (the table was nicely separated by three large candles so they could seat another group).
The fare at The Slanted Door is modern Asian/Vietnamese, and is served 'centre style', ie, sharing style. We started with a beef carpaccio (fine, delicate, but lighter in flavour than I would have expected), and live scallop in a sauce and accompaniment I can't remember but that really made it sing. For main courses we had: wok roasted duck, a whole fish (tail, head, everything, fillet right at the table -- shame I don't remember the exact type), and roasted lobster. Nicely, each dish was served in turn, creating not only a series of courses but giving one time to fully enjoy each dish, on its own, while warm, before the next course came out. Each dish was excellent. The duck is some of the best duck I've had at a restaurant outside China, one of the few places where the duck flavour actually came through. The fish was cooked to perfect doneness and was subtle and delicate, and the lobster was a nice change on the 'usual' of garlic butter et al. Deserts were had, and they were fabulous.
One amazing note is the tea I had -- a combination of a light black tea with a flower. Alas I don't remember the flower type, but it came in a wine glass, all in a large bud. Waiting a few minutes the flower literally bloomed, the tea within along with the flower, slowly steeping and colouring the water. Delicate, remarkable, and many more words of tasteful joy.
After dinner we had the best surprise of the night. The waitress came by and informed us the room was needed for a private function soon -- would we like to go to the bar and she would buy us a drink? That impressed us to no end. She didn't just ask us to leave or shoo us out, she invited us out with an opportunity, which we took. A fine mojito was thereby sampled by myself. Less minty than I would like, but fine nonetheless.
Saturday evening, for our 'xmas dinner', I took my parents out to Chez TJ here in Mountain View. Recently having been rated one star by Michelin, I already had fond memories from my previous (and only) visit. French cuisine of excellence, we each settled on the regular Prix Fixe Menu Gastronomique, fine water and wine at the ready, and the courses commenced.
To say this meal was superb would be an understatement. The textures created, the delicacy, the expert cooking, the presentation, the flavours, both complimentary and contrasting, the route through which the courses took you, each dish described to you as it was brought, it was all there. That I'm writing this so many days later is frustrating because I cannot remember the exactness of everything I had, but I do remember two things in particular:
The foie gras was very interesting; two portions, the first being an ordinary but expertly done fried foie gras, the second being a pate but with a pomegranate glaze atop. They paired excellently, not in any way I can put into words, something about their individual uniquenesses that were just meant for each other.
The "Pheasant, Deconstructed" dish was out of this world: one leg/thigh and one breast, each cooked differently, set apart, contrasting in their colour and texture. The thigh was earthy, robust, with some density (not in a bad way). The breast, however, was unbelievably light, subtle, melt-away, almost sweet. Insanely well prepared and invented.
For xmas day proper, I held a fondue bourguignonne at my house, always fun and a favourite.
And thus ends the tasty foodage recap!
Wow, it's been a while, but the cssZengarden just updated with a few new designs, some of which broke into the "interesting" category...
Interesting look in a distressed way
Funny, amusing
Design-wise, this one is the niftiest
What is sick? This is -- no, that image is not cropped. That is what gaming looks like at 3840x1024 (accross 3 screens).
Crazytalk!
I'm getting to stretch my 3D fingers at work these days...
Over the last year or two, I found, modified and developed a 'fakeosity' solution that I've coupled with some simple textures to create some pretty sexy images. I call it the 'grey cardboard' method, for that is what it looks like. A single direct light fills the role of the sun, casting sharp anti-aliased ray-traced shadows. What makes it sing is the ring of spotlights at the ground level and the dome (of about 50ish) of spotlights that surround the model, each at .03 intensity and each casting ray-traced shadows. Put it together and you get some very nice and subtle light effects that, coupled with the simple materiality, really looks sharp and sometimes photograph-like. I've even managed to use it for indoor shots, cutting away extraneous walls to let the shading in.
It's a great method for the early design process to show volumetrics and form (much like a traditional cardboard model). Without textures it's easy to make it sing - once you try to make it look 'photoreal' (vs model-like) the amount necessary to make it really work (your mind is good at going 'that doesn't quite look right') really shoots up the roof. Plus, clients tend to think of things as more 'done' when looking at a realistic image.
With our current massive project we upgraded to 3DS Viz 2007, bringing along with it the MentalRay renderer. Eager, I popped it open and watched in amusement at the bucket rendering, watching the strange patterns it traced each square it rendered in turn, and thinking of how it would speed things up with a render farm (now that it isn't done on a frame-by-frame basis, but rather can distribute buckets). Then I turned on the Global Illumination and tried a few tests. And was rewarded with flat, boring models. Nothing looked smooth. I could continue to use my fakeosity, but what fun was that?
A conversation with madcoyote had him point me to some articles and a new material shader type for Ambient/Occlusion mapping that would 'fake' edge darkening. Thing was, it was nowhere to be found within Viz, and when I tried to bring in a Max drawing with the shader, Viz would crash. Nothing I could find on the web seemed to indicate that Viz's MentalRay was somehow crippled.
In the end, I found it by counter-intuitively checking the 'invalid' box in the shader selection dialogue. Don't ask me why - the shader even ended up being greyed out but I was still able to select it and include it. Woo! A bit of playing showed that even without a any light you could get a good fakeosity solution without the rendering time of 80 lights...
Thing was, we needed to animate this model, so a two-pass compositing solution via Photoshop wouldn't work. And the A/O material didn't handle transparency at all. Thus began a 3h hacking session, trying all sorts of different material and shader combinations that resulted in victory! The ability to have a material definition with transparency if desired, but still have the edge darkening of the A/O shader.
Since then I've been deep into the modeling so I haven't had a chance to do any production prints with the new shader, but every machine in our office is ready to be set up as a render node (Render Farm, woo!) and I'll get a chance to give it all a shot soon. Really soon - deadline is in two weeks. (this is why I've been so busy of late!)
More post later, but wow... ever seen windows kicked back down to 320x240x16c? Now you will have...
Wow, weiiird... LvLing service offered in a page add of the SJ Metro Paper. Amazing but true: check out the story here.
Woo! I loved this little power toy tool under w95, and MS never released it for XP -- turns out it's available all along with a little bit of registry addage:
Quoting:
Open either Registry Editor and select the branch HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers. Add a subkey named Copy To. Select the newly created key and double-click the Default value for the key. Edit the value to {C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}, including the curly braces. Next, add another subkey under ContextMenuHandlers named Move To. Open the key and double-click the Default value and set it to {C2FBB631-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}, again remembering to include the curly braces.
This works in Win2000, XP and I would think in Win98 also. Why use a separate program? I just copy and paste the string values to avoid errors.
This gives you a right-click option to Copy To or Move To...
(this is a repost, original got eaten)
Everyone's probably seen and done one of those CAPTCHA tests when registering with website/services these days (those are those graphics of distored and obfuscated text boxes that you then need to type in a field below). Better and better OCR programs are making these vulnerable to bots being able to discover what those are, and so are defeating this level of spam protection.
Enter a briliant solution, the KittyAuth. Click the link to the left to see it in 'action', and a writeup is both here and here.
Adorable, and more secure. Who could ask for anything more?
a (social) command line for the web
Thus is described yubnub.org, a search tool/portal with a difference. I discovered it a few weeks ago, and totally love it. Outwardly it looks like just about any other search page, but what's nifty is that it's actually a command interpreter, so that you can create a command string to have it basically perform searches or tasks using other websites.
For example, typing "g blah" will do a Google search for blah, while doing "gi blah" will search the same string using Google images, and "imdb blah" will search IMDB for it. Define (dictionary.com), gm (Google Maps), Allak (Allakhazam's WoW database), wiki (Wikipedia) are just a few more. You can even mash (run different commands and have it open them up in different frames) commands. Lipsum will generate a number of Lorem Ipsum text. It's fun!
Perhaps the most coolness comes from putting it into the search line embedded in Firefox, whereupon it becomes a true command line to a vast array of sites without having to go to that site first.
At any rate, to a geek like myself, this is a grand fun tool.
LotD: The Secret Cause of Flame Wars. Good and informative read.
I lied a bit -- another LotD before a Real(tm) thing comes along.
Goal to create the longest graphic worm on the internet: http://worm.bluesfear.com/?r=ma
Great story up right now on http://www.escapistmagazine.com about Origin and EA, the purchase by the latter of the former, and the subsequent eviscerating of Origin's soul.
Also, no surprise here, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wing_commander. A shame of a movie, taking a successful franchise/idea/story, and somehow managing to make it a complete load of pap. It's even done by the same guy who did the game, who's story, in full 320x240 graphics, would've been a better film.
Even funnier, though, is this: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/highlander_2_the_quickening/
It really WAS that bad. It really does deserve to be the 'benchmark' that we all use it to be.
QotD: "Scientific fact: the universe is a big vacuum. Scientific corollary: Wing Commander sucks."
Autodesk to acquire Alias software. This is truly a sad day. Are they planning on gutting it? Are they planning on messing with it? What does this mean given they also own Discreet and 3DS Max? Will they try to merge them? -shudder- Blargh! I have quite high trepidation about this...
(If you can't tell, I'm not an overly big fan of Autodesk)
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/lostcoast.ars
I'm amazed and impressed. It's not full-on HDR, but for a game environment, it does what it needs to do and looks pretty darn impressive. If only they had videos!
Well, looking through the archive/design library for a project I'm working on, I came upon the category of nifty and experimental cssZengarden designs that I've been looking for.
Night Vision, Ocean, More Water, Crazyweird think I linked it before, Cute Roadway, AnnoyingFlower in a way, Heh!
EDIT: Most of these don't work in IE, as it renders not CSS properly.
Every now and again, only at work, Mozilla stops working. Crashes upon load. A reboot sometimes solves it. Now, as a preference, I use Mozilla as my browser, along with the multizilla add-on. Works just the way I want it.
I installed Firefox. Can't get the tabs and the window management to behave as I would like it too, and no plugin as well featured as multizilla exists for Firefox. So I went back to Mozilla.
Today I installed Opera. Again, I can't get the tabs to work the way I want them to, even something as simple as what tab to go to when you close a tab. Already a nit that has me return to Mozilla.
But the question is... why does Mozilla stop working, only periodically, and only at work? At home, it has never had any problems.
A mystery.
It's been somewhat dry times for the cssZenGarden, not because of nothing new, but nothing truly stand-outish. The latest batch, however, does have some nifty-s, if not mind-blowings:
Different and stylistic, a flute and zen.
Groofy, and maple leafy!
An interesting twist, if utterly busy, but that's illumination for you.
Cities that are sliding and clouds that stay put!
(Of course, the garden has tonnes of nice, clean, simple designs that would be most appropriate for many a site, especially commercial ones.)
Yesterday night marked the retun to KF afer the 4-week illness 'break', and as totally expected, soreness is my name today. Which actually makes me a bit relieved -- I felt really good post-workout last night, which usually spells total uber-pain the next day. Add to that the usual 'not sore the next day but the day after' routine, and feeling a bit sore today gives me confidence that I shan't be a wreck tommorow, and may not need to marinate myself in balm yet again.
Its rather amazing how quickly the body forgets. Just a few weeks off (or heck, even a single week off) and workouts seem monstrously ouch. And I could certainly feel the rustiness in the flow and accuracy of my sets, so a good whack of practice I will need to partake to get things back to where they were.
The problem with my server at home, if I may switch focus, is that it is too stable. Running FreeBSD, I've twice had uptimes approaching a year (both times kaiboshed only by a power failure, something hopefully rectified with the purchase of a UPS). Which means that when something does go wrong (almost always hardware related) I have to dig back a year into my memory for the how... and given that I only needed that knowledge for one or two days at that time, and the time prior was a year as well, it isn't easily recalled knowledge. So then did it take me a couple of hours and a phone call to a friend to remember how to edit the fstab in a non-fully booting system (non-fully-booting because a drive sliced listed in fstab was no longer there, as I unplugged the failing HDD until I could get another in there to backup as much as I could).
And no matter how many details I draw at work, I always feel like I'm learning them for the first time.
Makali found this one first (so I'm stealing his blog entry for today!), but this is definitively the, uh, best CSS Zengarden ever.
To quote Makali: "It's like a grand-mal seizure... through time! God, I remember when most home-pages were like this. Nowadays only about half are ;)"
Old school pain meets up with modern day technology.
White House Announces Server Name Punishment
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - Speaking before attending the APEC summit, United States President George W Bush announced his administration's new policies directing the Department of Homeland Security to impose restrictions on the availability of great-named World of Warcraft servers for those living on the Pacific Coast. "Look," said the President, "those guys along the pacific rim all were voted in a direction that was not right with the rest of the goals of the United States. So I am taking steps today to ensure that they do not get their hands on any materials that they should not have." As leaders from other nations bordering the Pacific looked on, the President displayed a chart showing available server names, emphasizing the name benefits of those in eastern half of the country. "I won a lot of capital in the last election from my supporters in those stats, and I intend to spend that capital. And the first step is to secure our playing experience with the best sounding server names. Khadgar, Zul'jin, Durotan , Argent Dawn. What a great name. We should use that for an upcoming action somewhere. Good reminders of Vietnam." The President's aids later clarified he was referring perhaps to Agent Orange, the powerful defoliant.
Reactions from other leaders were mixed. Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin stated, "well, at least those living in our neighbor to the south have their own servers."
Well, it's up. My very own (growing) page of spam poetry!
Some are humourous, some are poignant, some just nonsensical. Enjoy!
We had a power failure yesterday. Good news: I now have my server on a UPS! Bad news: the outage lasted longer than the UPS.
Ah well, no biggie. UPS is there for the hiccups we sometimes get and for added protection. If the power is down, then my server isn't getting anything from the internet anyway.
Remember my questions about multitasking back when I was looking at my new system? Looks like I made the right choice. Quote from HardOCP:
Every time I write about how Intel Pentium 4 CPUs with HyperThreading dominate in multitasking, I get mad email from AMD fans telling me otherwise. I have had a Pentium 4 CPU in my main work system, which is used for everything I do including gaming, for a couple of years till back in July. I put in an Athlon 64 FX-53 to compare real-world experiences. The difference in how multitasking is handled is much like night and day. Intel’s HyperThreading makes easy work of multitasking where the Athlon 64 simply flounders. I was used to encoding movies and music while I went about my normal work tasks and the Athlon FX system was having none of that. I found many places where the system would “chug” due to the CPU handling one task while I had another one I wanted to focus on. Sure, you can go in and change the way the CPU handles the particular tasks you have open, but that is simply a pain to get done every time you want to use certain combinations of software.
Now with all that said, I have gotten very used to the way the Athlon 64 FX handles my daily computing needs and to some extent I have formed my needs around its performance. Do I still want my Pentium 4 with HyperThreading back? Absolutely. I think the Pentium 4 with HyperThreading is the best solution for those people that work with many different applications open at once that can be CPU intensive even when working in the background.
Laptop sale = 750 off system 1500+. I certainly can't afford a regular 750 laptop, but the temptation to get a 1500 laptop for 750 is excruciating. Think of how much you save!
As the quote goes, "RAM is not an installation proceedure." I almost wonder if I should make an exception.
RAM was what caused my system to blow up, or more specifically, one stick of RAM going very very bad. The whole story can be found here (sorry to make you go offsite, but it's easier this way as I'd already typed it out) but the short of it is that in the middle of my fighting I switched the sticks of RAM around and it booted, and later I would discover that it was the one stick of RAM (that had been in the first slot) that is totally bad.
Grr, I say, GRR. I've RMA'ed it, so I'll get a new stick, but frustrating, costs me money to fedex it to the RMA point, and did I mention frustrating?
So, I took the weekend and rebuilt the OS/drives/etc. I suppose I was a bit fortunate in that I still have my pre-upgrade machine fully intact, so I was able to transfer anew the data contained on its disks to my new machine. Which means a loss of about 4 months of some data, mostly downloaded stuff (being able to grab my RPG and other recently-worked-on directories before the partition table got screwed up was the most fortunate). I'm pretty much all rebuilt now, with most programs in place and data copied over.
All in all, it could have been worse: like this (or this). Nothing like a tornado to put your data centre out of whack.
Before those servers went down, I was able to try out WoW, and holy cow, what a difference not having the two sticks of RAM. I don't know if it was the dual-channel goodness or the extra 512mb goodness, but now I can't run it at 1600x1200 without watching it stutter. Fortunetaly I didn't have to 'suffer' much, as whether I get my memory back or the servers come back online first is kind of up in the air now (ouch, bad pun).
Still, some things did turn out right. I got my pword on catsden finally reset, so I went ahead and changed over the hardware on my server. No problems there, and I now have an internal case temp of 26~C vs the old 40+~C -- and probably consuming 1/3 the power. So that's nice. Also bought two UPSs and backed up everything again -- I'm on a bit of a security kick, kind of understandably, I think.
Aren't computers fun?
Wrist, still borked. Computer, still borked.
Saturday night, I went to Vicki's with a boxfull of organic vegetables given to me by Mike and Bernadette before they took off for their 2 week vacation to Rome and Greece. We managed to use all the vegetables in one giant Salade Nicoise, which was uber-tasty, very colourful, and had plenty of leftovers.
Game past sunday: Was kind of slow, proceeded somewhat aimlessly, and saw the surprising death of two of the partymembers from what should have been a reasonable encounter (EL 12ish for 6 15th levels). That sank the game for more time as they were raised and adjusted their characters. However, it did provide one of the players with some good character-specific action(s), so at least it was positive on that side.
In the major geek link department, nonetheless fun: Deutsche Welle's site in a new language. Here and Here. Click English to discover what is being said.
An amusing statement of reality: When a guy's parents found out about him working in a porn store, they were OK with it. Quote he: "They're Republicans. As long as I'm making money, they don't care."
On the new Smithsonian Native American Museum: "It was Cardinal, a Blackfoot, who won the original commision ... only to be dismissed from the project five years later... A number of other firms and consultants were eventually brought in to revise and complete Cardinal's scheme, but in its essential outlines the museum still bears his stamp, which is why, for all the turmoil of the design process, it's a superior addition to a mall that has more than its share of Beurocratic Modern."
Missed this past weekend: Jousting. Next year, must remember to go see this.
This area ignored hard summer this year, but we're definitively been getting our hard-fall-summer. Nothing like 30 deg in the apartment!
I had an amazing RP experience this past weekend. Interestingly it wasn't in my regular games. It was in WoW.
Computer RPG games are, by their very nature, different animals than the around-the-table in-person type. I can easily recognize this and my mind adjusts as necessary; I don't expect the usual interaction and my RPgination (RP imagination) can fill in many details, nay, flesh out many details into a more full experience.
World of Warcraft is my first MMORPG - a CRPG where you are in a virtual world with thousands of others all running about and ostensibly working on similar tasks. This presents some interesting hindrances to furthering the RP-nature of a CRPG, of which two are prominent. First, a lack of world persistence, or rather, the fact the world IS persistent to itself no matter what you do. If you wipe out a major foe, wait a few minutes, he will return. If you complete a quest to eliminate the trogg invasion, no matter how many you kill, if you go back later they will be there again, diminishing the sense of accomplishment. I guess I could tag onto this category then the nature of some of the quests: if you must go out and kill X of Y, you are broken from your immersion by having to camp the spawning grounds, waiting for the creatures to return.
Interestingly, though, the second major problem is actually the whole raison-d'etre of an MM, and something you'd think could be a boon: the other people. On the base level, people naming their characters SweetMamaCakes or UbErMaXX or JebusWaffle doesn't exactly create an environment of fantasy. On another level, dialogue like "GP plz u kp 4 trogg k?" may seem like an ancient language, but...
Now, this is beta, so it is a more hardcore MM crowd who are mainly involved, and most of those see and play the Game part of the equation, while the RP is not something they have been exposed to nor understand or want to be involved with. Most of whom I have grouped with in the game fall into the range of total Meta-gamer (run here, do this, run there, do that, get XP, get drops, grind to level, etc) to the lightly-immersed. It is harder, but still possible for my mind to take that kind of input and create a suitable fantasy experience out of it. Only on one occasion have I been jolted continually out by total out of character meta constantness of TXT-messaging speak, calls of "Don't you know how to play your class?", meta thinking, and the like.
But back to yesterday, the day that proves that a like-mind can create an amazing environment.
Khyborr was on a quest to investigate a band of assassins that had taken residence at a farm... investigate and eliminate a number of them. This kind of quest is not uncommon. Once there, I came across a fellow dwarf, and asked if he too was investigating the area (not uncommon) and if he would like to team up (definitively not uncommon). Up to this point, it was fairly typical.
What emerged, though, was that the person on the other end was a fellow-RPer, and what followed was an amazing near-two hours as we completed that quest and proceeded onto another. Nearly everything that was exchanged between us was in character. Meta-game events (lag on the server, needing to do a quick phone call, drinking to restore mana) was translated on the way to the keyboard into in-game explanations, lore and speak. Speaking was not limited to "let's go here, there's one, etc," but was full of musings, sayings and dialogue that evoked the world and our characters and race - flavour text if you want to call it that. But it was more than background fluff, it became part of the story, the experience, the characters.
OOC: In short, it rocked.
Before this, I wondered if an MMORPG could ever contain such an experience. Some filtering still needs to be done with regards to the way the 'world' works, but with an RP-specific server (finding someone with similar intent) the experience can come through. Even something as simple as instituting a naming policy and calling it an RP server with a Writ of Suggested Behaviour may be enough to make RPers congregate there (and others not); tweaking XP in favour of quests and away from mob-killing would probably set it well in stone. The world itself need not change much (nor can't in too many ways, for such is the nature of catering to 1000s rather than the 5 at your gaming group), it is just finding like-minded people to keep the illusion propelled.
And that remains true in all RPG environments, even traditional (ie, non computer) RP gaming. Both 'mediums' provide challenges and oddities and OOC interruptions. Both attract different people (Heck, even some of my current gaming groups experience as much if not more meta-gaming and OOC comments as the usual MMORPG day). I don't think there are necessarily more or less obstacles in either type of game.
It is the shared desire and participation of everyone to create the immersive environment. Everything else fades into the background.
Ok, for a while I've been making spam poetry, and plan to publish here the choice ones. But this site rocks in an altogether different format!
While much of what the author does on their site is irreverent, Monkey Sphere is an interesting essay. Fear not, for it is still quite written in a humourous style, and still contains satire, irony and reverse psychology, but the basic premise and the points argued I think hold some weight. Mike pointed us to it on the weekend, now I point it to you (and probably back to him, if he reads this page).
Tiff pointed out two other good sites: The Fool's World Map, and the Terra Nova Blog. The former is an excellent harnessing of the collective internet 'intelligence', the latter contains links to various essays and thoughts on MMORPGs in all directions, including their development, style, impact, etc.
More on the environment, our place in the universe, Art Renewal Centre, The Dwell Home, and a very tasty recepie for a type of pesto:
1 cup dry roasted cashews
1 cup fresh basil
2-4 cloves of garlic
Olive oil
Two heaping spoons of fresh grated parmisan
Food processor, chop nuts. Add garlic. Add basil -- as the material starts to bind, add olive oil as necessary. Add salt/pepper if desired, add cheese as last step, adding more olive oil if necessary.
In celebration of the resumption of gaming tonight, I thought I'd post a gaming observation (plus, it'll be a nice switch from negativity and it has been a while for a gaming post). For those of you who have not gamed out there this may not make much sense.
Ever notice how different groups view, handle and react to unusual in-game events? It's something I've become aware of recently. This is most prevalent in fantasy RPGs, but applies accross the board. Something weird happens, something obviously abnormal, or even some really bad stuff goes down. Group 1 will look at it and go "Holy, that is some serious magic at work! Woah..." Group 2 looks at it and goes "Wait, what spell in the book does that? The guy must be really high level. Or else I think the GM is trying to screw with us! That worked out to well." IE, one group approaches it from the character, one approaches it from the player.
I guess if one dissected it, one could say Group 2 is therefore more akin to looking at the whole thing from a 'game' aspect, whereas Group 1 is more immersed and thus, well, doesn't really look at it. They, through their characters, react to it, play off it, and just play. Group 2's characters will probably react, but it comes as a secondary/later thing. It's a different style of playing the game.
What's interesting is that when I'm playing with a Group 2 type, my usually very RP-oriented outlook (I even RP to computer strategy games like Master of Orion) gets dampened somewhat and I too begin to analyze the mechanics of what occured, not the event itself. Bad lynx. But even with that, if I try to understand how the dissection approach arises, I can't grasp it. It feels much more natural and more fun to stay with the character and understand the occurance through the eyes of the character. I don't realize it right off if I think in a meta-way, but it becomes jarring right after the fact and I try to get back into char, and in fact, all those meta-thoughts prevent to a large extent my best RPing.
I'm sure there are plenty of groups out there that have both types of players in the same group, but the main groups I play with right now seem dominated more by one or the other (and that seems to somehow influence my immediate thoughts).
And just to make this post a crazy cross-category one: I don't know excactly why, but something about this csszengarden design intrigues me.
I am downloading FlightSim addons at an insane level. I think I'm fixating. High-resolution terrain maps! Airports! The YF-23! The Avro Arrow! (now that should be fun, natch!) Better Aurora Borealis for cryin' out loud.... thank the gods I'm careful with my credit card because I'd probably have an entire partition on my HDD full of the entire world by now.
And I can't even blow anything up! They really need to combine FS with CFS...
Caught the MSFS2004 bug? http://www.surclaro.com/ and http://www.simviation.com/ are good places to start.
Oh, and for all you computer geeks out there: all about the Mac.
FOOD! All about knives. All about crap.
That latter one also is a segue for me to post quick thoughts on Supersize Me: Despite having read Fast Food Nation, there was still some new information and some unexpected results. It was entertaining and a good slice-of-view. However, as a documentary or an investigative film, it could have done some things differently to bolster the argument more, provide more of a backdrop and to erase some doubts and provide more veracity. A fun film worth seeing, moreso if this is an introduction to the petrochemagrobusiness.
CSS! Weird. Banal, but archi.
Harpers. Last week's had a good opening paragraph especially.
I am happy to report that my new computer is finaly go. Actually, it's been here and running for many weeks now, but I had to RMA my sound card due to, you guessed it, crackles (I seriously have no luck when it comes to sound). Well, it returned today, its installed (crackle free so far), and the computer is now done.
In the end I got: P4 3.2C, Asus P4P800E Deluxe Mobo, ATI 9800 Pro, 1GB Kingston 2.5-3-3 PC3200, and the Audigy 2 ZS. It has been sweet. While I haven't cranked up a game to really try it out yet (waiting for sound issues to be resolved) the system has blown me away with its speed, memory bandwidth, smoothness in multitasking and disk access. Coupled with the slightly modified layout for my systems & speakers, I'm very happy sitting here working away.
Of course, not quite everything is perfect. Heh, nor was it during setup -- did you know the P4 requires an additional 12v connector on the Mobo, requiring a new PSU? Anyway, the problem now is that, no surprise, really, Creative expects you to use their speakers. So in hooking up the analog to my receiver (I can't use digital as SPDIF won't carry more than 2 channel unless it's truly Dolby/DTS encoded, and this card doesn't have the Optical out (nor do I know if that would work anyway)) I'm having to futz around with the various speaker level outputs on the soundcard so that enough goes through the sub chanel to actually kick on my sub. Le sigh.
But otherwise this is a great rig. Now all I need to do is buy a centre speaker.
Anyone out there have any experience getting Samba and WinXP talking to each other? Seems my config that I had under W2k doesn't work right with XP (or XP doesn't work right with it, one of the two). Any ideas?
Well, I'll say one thing: this campaign is going to be an interesting ride, if nothing else. Quite the quirkish party indeed. Should be fun to watch it butt with the first edition modules...
CSS Zen Garden this week has again nothing that'll blow one's virtual socks off, but there are the amusing real-world takeoffs (A and B), this one has architecture and is somewhat slick, this one is a simple but effective, and this one tries to do something interesting but it bothers me.
What a difference a week makes. Interestingly, the pendulum is swinging back towards the P4. I read a few hardware sites I trust to get my info (arstechnica, anandtech, hardocp, and on a moment of, er, brilliance I realized that if I trust those sites to be informed, maybe I can trust the readers too. So I hit the forums and found essentially this:
A64 = great for games, in a year when Windows64 is released could get a free bost
P4 = great for rendering and encoding, bit more responsive in multitasking situations, hotter
It's not that the chips are bad in the other areas, they're still rockin fast, just not ROCKIN rockin fast. Since most of my time will be spent multitasking between the 20 programs I invariably always have open, the faster mem and hyperthreading may tip the scales a bit in that direction. And while I appreciate the elegance of the Athlon64 (slower clock speed with more muscle per clock, cooler) the chipsets to support it aren't quite as mature yet.
So, I'm thinking P4. Besides, I know no matter what I pick (or when) something'll come out that'll make me go d'OH!
Comments open...
So, the time has come for me to upgrade to near-modernity. All is pretty much decided, save whether to grab a Intel P4c or an Athlon 64. From what I've read they're quite neck-to-neck in most things. The A64 seems faster in most gaming, but the P4 is faster in encoding (sometimes, some benchmarks put the A64 ahead). The P4 has more memory bandwidth (will this make a difference if you have 12 programs open at once as I tend to?), the A64 will jump beautifully with 64-bit OS and apps as they come available. The P4 seems to do better when it comes to rendering times, and while I don't do as much 3D as I'd like to, this remains important to me.
I realize 90% of the time I probably won't notice any diff between them; the price is also about the same, so that isn't much of a concern.
I open to comment this question thus: what processor would you reccomend right now?
As part of their exhibitor status, Dave's company got a few passes to the expo, providing me the opportunity to check things out at the GDC last Friday. It'd been two years since I last saw the expo and four years since I first attended. Biggest changes I noticed this year were three. For start, the rise of professional training programs, be they four-year degree programs or one-year-super-intense-training models. Next was the 'come work here' contingent, for Maryland, for Singapore, for Korea... Lastly was the loss of the big black box of doom, aka Microsoft's rather imposing edifice that anchored one corner of the GDC floor in years past. In fact, ATI was the only booth with two stories this year. Having AMD and Intel's pavilions be literally right next to each other was another interesting touch. Otherwise, nothing too knock-your-socks-off-ish. Next year the GDC is being held at the Moscone centre, which either means they are expecting huge growth or... um. Not sure what else it could mean; it'll certainly cost them more for the space.
Saturday offered us a chance to head out for some climbing, my first time out climbing since I climbed with Dave and co when I visited Ottawa over the holidays. We trucked out to the Belmont Planet Granite gym as he'd never been. Overall the walls there are not quite as bulbous as the ones at the Santa Clara gym, but there is some very good geometry and the walls are on the whole much higher.
To list off the restaurants he is now acquainted with: E&O (Fusion, San Jose), Midori (Japanese, Sunnyvale), Dishdash (Mediterranean, Sunnyvale), Elba's (German, Palo Alto), Hobbies (Breakfast, Mountain View) and Le Petit Bistro (French, Mountain View). I think we covered a good number of the bases...
Back to the regular routine for both of us this week. My shoulder is giving me some problems so I took the week off from class last week; it is still not feeling that great, but we will see how well it does this week. I'm also working on getting ready to start the campaign I plan on GMing this weekend.
Unfortunately, a friend and Kung Fu brother is looking like he may be moving out of the area in the very near future. I haven't seen him much lately due to conflicting schedules and the lack of gaming, but with both of those changing soon that should have rectified itself. It does mean that some netmeeting-type setup may have to be worked out to keep him in the campaign...
As quickly as the 'colder' weather started last fall, the warmer weather has returned with temps in the low 20s for the past few days and even nights (despite clear skies), which has made both the Push Hands class and the Shaolin class rather perspiration-inducing. Speaking of the latter, good practice on saturday and a good class last night, albeit one that was co-opted by Jason about half-way through for his own brand of kicking drills.
Quote of the day: "Since a paper recount is impossible with the majority of these machines, one has to wonder if touch-screen voting might eventually inspire nostalgia for the hanging chads, political wrangling and mass confusion (...) The old system may have been a nasty business, but at least we know what went wrong with it."
People with sensitve info on 'netserver'puters, beware! (quite interesting read)
Had a LEED seminar today at lunch, which was very interesting. Its not something that is done enough, but it may be something that is gaining some momentum... at least I hope so.
Out for now...
Why the smeg do companies want you to register at their site to download a frikken manual? Provide me the link to the file already, dammit! Is there a reason you desperately need my email address? Do you really think I'm going to believe that it's going to remain private et al?
Something interesting strikes me every now and again: A lot of the utilities/programs I use on a daily basis have one thing in common: they're non-commercial. And they all rock (else why would I be using them?). Why?
It isn't that I don't use commercial software, nor that I'm any rabid free-the-code person. Just that when it comes to getting the tasks done, it seems many out there can write stuff that works better and less obtrusive than the 'true' vendors. Just a nifty.
So, yah. Another week of crazy legs, with tightness and soreness and knots and weakness moving from place to place to place, and continuing to baffle and annoy me. Ah well. Teaching conditioning tomorrow night, and I've got some nifty stuff planned.
cssZenGarden wise, there hasn't been anything uber-exciting recently, though this is kinda cute I guess, and Makali's page pointed out this interesting concept piece.
Also trying to organize a ski/board trip for March when Dave comes to visit, hopefully a) it'll work out and b) the conditions will still be good. I've skiied Quebec, and it's great, but the western hills are a wee bit larger. I also stopped my membership at Planet Granite (it had been on hold), for while I really want to get back into climbing regularly it isn't looking like I'll be going often enough to make a membership worthwhile, with KF et al taking up plenty o' time on their own...
Work continues to be busy busy busy!
And that's the haphazard update.
Unknown to most, the Buddhism known as 'Zen' in Japan and now around the world is a transplant from China. Ch'an Buddhism, as it is known, was developed by the eminent monk Bodhidharma (perhaps refined is a better verb, as parts of it existed in China prior to his arrival). Ch'an merges Buddhist teachings with Taoist theory, with meditation at the heart of Ch'an practise.
The borders in Bonsai Sky are a very interesting touch, as are the 'inscriptions' into the rock.
CS(S) Monk doesn't have any 'whizzbang!', befitting a monk, but is a nice overall clean composition.
On the opposite side of the scale, Focus & Shoot is image heavy and heavily stylized, but ends up still being pretty clear and visually interesting.
Indeed groovy, New Groove demonstrates the 'arrow next to the link' trick nicely under its Select a Design section. Ballade also has a similar feature, but is nifty primarily for the path/connections between sections.
Last, there is A Silent Strength, which features nothing funky, nifty, unusual or anything... but the colour scheme and the sort of acetone-transfer-onto-leaves look of the image and borders appeals to me.
When doing troubleshooting, one is supposed to change only one thing at a time. That way, if the problem is fixed, you know what fixed the problem and can thus use that information later on if need be. Plus, you don't risk mucking something up that was working.
Tonight, I broke that rule. I installed another replacement soundcard (the same as what is in my other machine, which works fine) and moved the card to the last slot (the recommended place to solve many Sound Blaster issues).
Turns out, I could've made a hundred changes, for the sound still crackles like a witch en route to a dastardly deed. This mobo doesn't like sound cards. As much as I like this machine (dual processor goodness!), I think its time to think about an upgrade...
Just a quick entry, relating the results of the GodBox test last night (the GodBox is my formerly-uber-powerful other computer). It too has an SB Live, it too is running win2k (though it also has 98 to test with if need be), so I pulled over the mp3 giving me problems, and fired it up. Narry a crunch, crackle or a pop. Tried both sets of speakers, and no problems. Looks like I either a) have a very dead SB Live or b) I have a MoBo that doesn't like SB cards. Since this latter seems rather, well, unusual and odd to me, I'm going to have to assume it is a). Which still pretty much means I need to go out and buy a new soundcard. At least it means I don't need to get new speakers...
On a blog-related note, categories are working now, and soon the stuff on the side will be re-designed (for all those people actually reading this site :P)
So, IE 6 still screws some things up. -sigh- Grab Mozilla and give it a whirl. Of course, many sites are coded for IE's deficiencies, so you'll need to keep it around too. Grab Avant to wrap your IE in tabbed pop-up blocking goodness!
So I've come to the conclusion that my SB Live is totally fuxxored. I don't know if it's the Live in my machine specifically, or all SB Lives (I will have to try the Live in my other machine to be sure), or if its even these speakers though I'm kind of doubtful of the latter. The situation is this: whenever I play music with high frequencies it gets distorted to hell. VERY distorted. It's not the MP3 file, that has been tested elsewhere (on an Audigy) and it is beautiful there. It's not the drivers, I have updated those with several versions. So I fear it's the card. I haven't been completely able to test a CD (which I think would bypass the card) vs an MP3 (using the same song) to be sure, first I need to find a song that distorts on the card and that I have the CD handy to do a comparison. Oh well. The new Audigy 2 isn't horribly expensive (though some are still advocating the Turtle Beach as kicking everything's butt?) though I cringe at spending money still. But music is something that I crave and dig and dive into, so, this distortion has GOT TO GO.