So, yeah. I'm using an OS powered by a microkernel now. The only downside is that it's a virtual machine. A virtual PowerPC machine, which is always going to be slow. The virtual machine in question here is PearPC.
Yeah, Stephen; I'm emulating a Mac.
Specifically, Mac OS X 10.4, but I'm soon going to upgrade to 10.4.11. I refuse to upgrade to 10.5, because that's when Steve went crazy. -er.
So... yeah. I'm blogging from it. It was hellishly difficult to set it up, but I did it with my ultra-super powers. And yes - it is as awesome as they say it is.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
The Storm Rages from The Heart
Part three of three.
I started writing this after I got two bills. One was for the ambulance ride, which took me to the hospital immediately after the police got finished assessing the situation. The other was for a collection of drug tests, which I never agreed to taking.
When I arrived at the hospital, I was going through a strange sense of euphoria. Everything looked so funny, so I could only sing a happy song and whistle. I wasn't quite sure of what was happening, but it didn't matter anymore. It seemed like nothing was real, anyways.
But the sense of euphoria eventually dissipated, and I was left with a somewhat surrealistic reality. Every waking moment seemed like an eternity. I was stuck there for three days. You have not seen how long eternity is until you've waited in a hospital without any form of entertainment, idle task, visitors, or anything.
The doctor was an asshole. I only saw him for about three minutes, and he decided that I was suicidal and needed to go to the psychiatric hospital.
Why did the doctor say I was suicidal? Because my father told the police I was. The police gave their paperwork (with a wildly different summary of the event then I [or I could even imagine my father] could have ever imagined), and so he said I was suicidal, although he wasn't qualified to say so. The psychiatric hospital trusted the quack and said I was suicidal, too.
I arrived at the Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital sometime in the middle of the night. The people were nice enough; I thought it wouldn't be too bad. I'd seen crazy people before; they're not as terrible as people think they are. I was placed in an observational unit, where they would decide what to do with me. I stayed there for three or four days.
All in all, it wasn't too bad. Or maybe it was terrible. I can't really tell. It got better when I left the observational unit, anyways.
The unit was essentially a triangular room with lots of rather uncomfortable and unusually-stained upholstered chairs facing a television. Along the legs of the triangle were rooms, two occupants each and with a shelf and desk with built-in chair in each room, beside the beds of vynal with extremely hard pillows of the same substance. The hypotenous had a little annex where the doctors talked to the patients, a hallway accessable to staff alone, a telephone for everyone's use, and two constantly locked bathrooms. God forbid we pee without others' attention.
They didn't let me keep any of my things (they were 'unsafe'), not even my belt or mismatched shoes. I walked around barefoot until someone brought me a pair of socks. They took away my cell phone, but at least they let me copy my numbers out from them.
So, yeah. I stayed there for a few days. I called everyone I could (my cell phone didn't have the numbers of everyone I knew, unfortunately) during that time. I called Yaken and told him what happened - which, in retrospect, seems like an extremely bad idea. I called him a few times while I was in the ICU (the term the staff used for the observational unit). I even made plans to go out with him again after I figured I'd get out. I called Julie (a friend to the family), too, and she ended up getting loud and upset after I told her my story, simply because nobody is supposed to be capable of such bigeoted, block-headed, inflexable idiocy. I also called Lauren, who was somewhat sombre about the whole thing. At least, I think she was. I'm not sure.
So those few days passed relatively quickly. I was prescribed Addiman and Ambien (the combination is the quintessential cure-all of psychologists), as-needed. I couldn't sleep on that vynal mattress without the Ambien, so I took that every night. Then, I recieved my 'legal 2000 papers', which were esentially a court summons. They were trying to declare me insane.
This, of course, gave me waves of paroxysms of an unnummerable number of emotions. I cried, and I would have yelled out if I were able to breathe.
So I was brought into unit H4B. It was identical to the ICU, but with more unusual stains on the seats, and people peed on the toilet seats. 'People', as in more then one.
My roommate was douglas, a somewhat slow OCD-suffering nymphomaniac. I'm not kidding when I say that he constantly masturbated. Often when I was in there.
That's not the worst of it. Before I even got there, the janitor threw all the papers I had away. This included the paper that had my phone numbers.
Yaken was now unreachable.
I was depressed and distraught nearly constantly. I cried most nights. Simply because I couldn't call him and tell him I couldn't come for the date. Which was terrible, because I still felt like I owed him something special for that cab fare he paid for me.
At the advice of the most sane-looking of people in the unit (one who had been admitted because of simelar circumstances to my own), I signed a paper which essentially said that I was there volentarily, so I didn't have to go to court, which would, he said, have made me stay longer even if I weren't stripped of my rights.
Ironically, he ended up having another crisis, overreacting, breaking a window with a chair, and being taken away.
I won't go into any more details, mostly for the purpose of brevity. The summary is that my uncle saw me (I finally told him I was gay, which was suprising even for me), he brought me some things from home (mainly another change of clothes, but also a 1138 page book that I finished the second day of reading), and after a long time of consideration, I accepted my grandparents' offer to live with them, in California.
I was already in Chino Hills by the time I got to tell Yaken that I was leaving. I was already there.
So now we don't even know eachother anymore.
I can't even express how terrible an experiance this was, so I won't even try. I will say, though, that the most terrible thing to lose is an opritunity for happiness. It will cause you to have the most pure sense of unhappiness that you can ever experiance.
Well, I'm at a lack of words, so I'll just wrap this up.
Is the storm of events that started from my father's hate over? I can't say for sure, but the bills I recieved tend to suggest not. The good news, however, is that storms are supposed to be the sign of ecological change. Perhaps it means happiness in my future?
... That's bullshit. I don't believe it. Nothing has changed. only the pretences. It's like being throwm back into the past. I'm still unemployed, I'm still dependant on others, and I'm still not going anywhere. And now I'm lonely again.
I started writing this after I got two bills. One was for the ambulance ride, which took me to the hospital immediately after the police got finished assessing the situation. The other was for a collection of drug tests, which I never agreed to taking.
When I arrived at the hospital, I was going through a strange sense of euphoria. Everything looked so funny, so I could only sing a happy song and whistle. I wasn't quite sure of what was happening, but it didn't matter anymore. It seemed like nothing was real, anyways.
But the sense of euphoria eventually dissipated, and I was left with a somewhat surrealistic reality. Every waking moment seemed like an eternity. I was stuck there for three days. You have not seen how long eternity is until you've waited in a hospital without any form of entertainment, idle task, visitors, or anything.
The doctor was an asshole. I only saw him for about three minutes, and he decided that I was suicidal and needed to go to the psychiatric hospital.
Why did the doctor say I was suicidal? Because my father told the police I was. The police gave their paperwork (with a wildly different summary of the event then I [or I could even imagine my father] could have ever imagined), and so he said I was suicidal, although he wasn't qualified to say so. The psychiatric hospital trusted the quack and said I was suicidal, too.
I arrived at the Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital sometime in the middle of the night. The people were nice enough; I thought it wouldn't be too bad. I'd seen crazy people before; they're not as terrible as people think they are. I was placed in an observational unit, where they would decide what to do with me. I stayed there for three or four days.
All in all, it wasn't too bad. Or maybe it was terrible. I can't really tell. It got better when I left the observational unit, anyways.
The unit was essentially a triangular room with lots of rather uncomfortable and unusually-stained upholstered chairs facing a television. Along the legs of the triangle were rooms, two occupants each and with a shelf and desk with built-in chair in each room, beside the beds of vynal with extremely hard pillows of the same substance. The hypotenous had a little annex where the doctors talked to the patients, a hallway accessable to staff alone, a telephone for everyone's use, and two constantly locked bathrooms. God forbid we pee without others' attention.
They didn't let me keep any of my things (they were 'unsafe'), not even my belt or mismatched shoes. I walked around barefoot until someone brought me a pair of socks. They took away my cell phone, but at least they let me copy my numbers out from them.
So, yeah. I stayed there for a few days. I called everyone I could (my cell phone didn't have the numbers of everyone I knew, unfortunately) during that time. I called Yaken and told him what happened - which, in retrospect, seems like an extremely bad idea. I called him a few times while I was in the ICU (the term the staff used for the observational unit). I even made plans to go out with him again after I figured I'd get out. I called Julie (a friend to the family), too, and she ended up getting loud and upset after I told her my story, simply because nobody is supposed to be capable of such bigeoted, block-headed, inflexable idiocy. I also called Lauren, who was somewhat sombre about the whole thing. At least, I think she was. I'm not sure.
So those few days passed relatively quickly. I was prescribed Addiman and Ambien (the combination is the quintessential cure-all of psychologists), as-needed. I couldn't sleep on that vynal mattress without the Ambien, so I took that every night. Then, I recieved my 'legal 2000 papers', which were esentially a court summons. They were trying to declare me insane.
This, of course, gave me waves of paroxysms of an unnummerable number of emotions. I cried, and I would have yelled out if I were able to breathe.
So I was brought into unit H4B. It was identical to the ICU, but with more unusual stains on the seats, and people peed on the toilet seats. 'People', as in more then one.
My roommate was douglas, a somewhat slow OCD-suffering nymphomaniac. I'm not kidding when I say that he constantly masturbated. Often when I was in there.
That's not the worst of it. Before I even got there, the janitor threw all the papers I had away. This included the paper that had my phone numbers.
Yaken was now unreachable.
I was depressed and distraught nearly constantly. I cried most nights. Simply because I couldn't call him and tell him I couldn't come for the date. Which was terrible, because I still felt like I owed him something special for that cab fare he paid for me.
At the advice of the most sane-looking of people in the unit (one who had been admitted because of simelar circumstances to my own), I signed a paper which essentially said that I was there volentarily, so I didn't have to go to court, which would, he said, have made me stay longer even if I weren't stripped of my rights.
Ironically, he ended up having another crisis, overreacting, breaking a window with a chair, and being taken away.
I won't go into any more details, mostly for the purpose of brevity. The summary is that my uncle saw me (I finally told him I was gay, which was suprising even for me), he brought me some things from home (mainly another change of clothes, but also a 1138 page book that I finished the second day of reading), and after a long time of consideration, I accepted my grandparents' offer to live with them, in California.
I was already in Chino Hills by the time I got to tell Yaken that I was leaving. I was already there.
So now we don't even know eachother anymore.
I can't even express how terrible an experiance this was, so I won't even try. I will say, though, that the most terrible thing to lose is an opritunity for happiness. It will cause you to have the most pure sense of unhappiness that you can ever experiance.
Well, I'm at a lack of words, so I'll just wrap this up.
Is the storm of events that started from my father's hate over? I can't say for sure, but the bills I recieved tend to suggest not. The good news, however, is that storms are supposed to be the sign of ecological change. Perhaps it means happiness in my future?
... That's bullshit. I don't believe it. Nothing has changed. only the pretences. It's like being throwm back into the past. I'm still unemployed, I'm still dependant on others, and I'm still not going anywhere. And now I'm lonely again.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Welcome to Storm
Part two in a series of three.
I'm not entirely sure that I want to write this right now. It's a very sensitive topic for me, and I'm unsure of how I should feel about it. It's a long story, and one I hate; I'll never tell it again, that's for sure.
...
OK, here we go, I guess....
The conflict with my father has been raging along for quite a while before The Event happened. I guess it started when my step-mother had to be hospitalized, but really, this fight was going on silently for years. My father had become incredibly upset about Debbi. He became obsessed with her, and couldn't do anything else. No matter how many people, how many doctors, told him that she'd be all right, he'd go on thinking she was going to die. He was acting in obvious unhealthy manners, including behaviour so desperate as moving into the hospital's parking lot.
I made many accomodations for him. I kept excusing his self-destructive behaviour. My memory of this specific time is vague, but I remember one night where my father had come into the dining room. I was making a sandwich in the kitchen, seperated from the dining room only by an archway. He had asked me to do something for him, I think, and I told him I couldn't do it; it was late already and I was tired. He started crying desperately and threatening me about how he might die at any moment. I believe this is the time when I stopped forgiving him; when I lost respect for him; when he ceased to be considered a human being.
I think I kept doing things for him, but once more, I'm not entirely sure about it. I do know, however, that it quickly stopped. I had gotten tired of him asking me to do things I didn't know how to do or to find things I wouldn't know the location of. The longer I kept living with him, the more hateful he became. Sometime a while back, Lauren (Marylin's daughter) had mooved in, and, unfortunately, she had recieved the brunt of his random attacks. His behaviours made me hate him.
Then I met Yaken; sweet, indearing Yaken, who has previously been described. Of course, the experiance was too positive, and so the universe corrected itself by giving me an avalanche of negativity. The very next day (I think), I had lost my temper with him. I went up to him. I yelled and I sworn moderately, which was enough to make him show me the door. I made sure to take Buddy with me.
Let me describe more fully what had been happening at that point. My father had been making everyone in the house miserable, you know, doing what he usually does. By this time, he had gone to the point of turning off the internet for Marylin and Lauren, and disconnecting my power which he does from an illegal modefication to the electrical system. So, essentially, he had taken away anything I had to keep my attention away from my rage, and also my only gateway to see what little friends I had at the time, who, at the very least, would listen to my rantings. I would always plug the power back in again after he left; I simply didn't have any respect for him. So, he asked me to do something, threatened me some more, and started threatening Marylin and Lauren again. I simply couldn't take it anymore; I lost my temper, gave him a piece of my mind.
I thought this was as bad as It was going to get; me being homeless. This, I thought, is a crisis. After walking a few blocks, I called Yaken, who had told me earlier that he had experiance with homelessness. He instructed me to go back to the house, since he wasn't there, and hope he had cooled down. He had, I suppose. But only on the outside. Inside, he was the same pot of hatrid boiling over onto other people.
Not even a week after that happened, he yeilded to his blind rage. He had disconnected Marylin and Lauren's connection to the internet, then proceded to switch off the circuit breaker that provided power to my room and locked it up so I couldn't get to it. Ironically, I was thinking of doing the exact thing to the shop because of my hatrid of him (I couldn't; my only lock was too big for the box). I took a saw and broke the tab on which the lock was added, then threw the still closed lock into the trash can.
Naturally, that didn't go well. I was homeless yet again, and I was too drained to even take Buddy with me. I just walked down to Washington, down to the bus stop near Torry Pines. I was so tired and emotionally drained, I just laid down on the sidewalk.
A few people stopped and asked if I was alright. I couldn't really answer them too well; I was too drained to talk above a mumble. Someone called 911, and the police came over to see if I was alright. They sent me back home, armed with a little booklet of public servaces (especially homeless shelters) and the knowledge that I couldn't be kicked out without an official notice of eviction, which takes at least 90 days to get.
I went back home, which turned out to not be a good idea after all. He was angrier and more hateful then ever. Then, apperantly, someone told Debbi about how he had been treating me, and she became incredibly worked up about it; she told him to back off and turn the electricity back on. But when he came back, he was even more upset. He was no longer a human being, but a living breathing demon. I was asleep at the time, and he kept ranting, something about the trash. I figured the best way to deal with him was to ignore him.
The next thing I remember is him bursting through the door and being showered with assorted organic wastes, discarded paper, cockroaches, and used syringes.
I screamed. I freaked out. I chased him out and threw trash back at him. I closed the door. He kept opening it again. He yelled at me. He screamed at me. He tried to tear me apart with his words. He singlehandedly destroyed my door. No matter how much I screamed for him to get away from me and to leave me alone, he would keep coming back at me with his harassing attacks, unyealding.
I was having a panic attack. I called 911, and told them I was having an emergency. I though my heart was going to explode. I vomited. I called 911 again when I realized that I had knives in my room, terrified that I would use them.
After what seemed like an eternity, the police finally arrived. The crisis control officer tried his best to help the situation, but he could unfortunately do nothing. An ambulance had to come pick me up and take me to the emergency room.
I'm not entirely sure that I want to write this right now. It's a very sensitive topic for me, and I'm unsure of how I should feel about it. It's a long story, and one I hate; I'll never tell it again, that's for sure.
...
OK, here we go, I guess....
The conflict with my father has been raging along for quite a while before The Event happened. I guess it started when my step-mother had to be hospitalized, but really, this fight was going on silently for years. My father had become incredibly upset about Debbi. He became obsessed with her, and couldn't do anything else. No matter how many people, how many doctors, told him that she'd be all right, he'd go on thinking she was going to die. He was acting in obvious unhealthy manners, including behaviour so desperate as moving into the hospital's parking lot.
I made many accomodations for him. I kept excusing his self-destructive behaviour. My memory of this specific time is vague, but I remember one night where my father had come into the dining room. I was making a sandwich in the kitchen, seperated from the dining room only by an archway. He had asked me to do something for him, I think, and I told him I couldn't do it; it was late already and I was tired. He started crying desperately and threatening me about how he might die at any moment. I believe this is the time when I stopped forgiving him; when I lost respect for him; when he ceased to be considered a human being.
I think I kept doing things for him, but once more, I'm not entirely sure about it. I do know, however, that it quickly stopped. I had gotten tired of him asking me to do things I didn't know how to do or to find things I wouldn't know the location of. The longer I kept living with him, the more hateful he became. Sometime a while back, Lauren (Marylin's daughter) had mooved in, and, unfortunately, she had recieved the brunt of his random attacks. His behaviours made me hate him.
Then I met Yaken; sweet, indearing Yaken, who has previously been described. Of course, the experiance was too positive, and so the universe corrected itself by giving me an avalanche of negativity. The very next day (I think), I had lost my temper with him. I went up to him. I yelled and I sworn moderately, which was enough to make him show me the door. I made sure to take Buddy with me.
Let me describe more fully what had been happening at that point. My father had been making everyone in the house miserable, you know, doing what he usually does. By this time, he had gone to the point of turning off the internet for Marylin and Lauren, and disconnecting my power which he does from an illegal modefication to the electrical system. So, essentially, he had taken away anything I had to keep my attention away from my rage, and also my only gateway to see what little friends I had at the time, who, at the very least, would listen to my rantings. I would always plug the power back in again after he left; I simply didn't have any respect for him. So, he asked me to do something, threatened me some more, and started threatening Marylin and Lauren again. I simply couldn't take it anymore; I lost my temper, gave him a piece of my mind.
I thought this was as bad as It was going to get; me being homeless. This, I thought, is a crisis. After walking a few blocks, I called Yaken, who had told me earlier that he had experiance with homelessness. He instructed me to go back to the house, since he wasn't there, and hope he had cooled down. He had, I suppose. But only on the outside. Inside, he was the same pot of hatrid boiling over onto other people.
Not even a week after that happened, he yeilded to his blind rage. He had disconnected Marylin and Lauren's connection to the internet, then proceded to switch off the circuit breaker that provided power to my room and locked it up so I couldn't get to it. Ironically, I was thinking of doing the exact thing to the shop because of my hatrid of him (I couldn't; my only lock was too big for the box). I took a saw and broke the tab on which the lock was added, then threw the still closed lock into the trash can.
Naturally, that didn't go well. I was homeless yet again, and I was too drained to even take Buddy with me. I just walked down to Washington, down to the bus stop near Torry Pines. I was so tired and emotionally drained, I just laid down on the sidewalk.
A few people stopped and asked if I was alright. I couldn't really answer them too well; I was too drained to talk above a mumble. Someone called 911, and the police came over to see if I was alright. They sent me back home, armed with a little booklet of public servaces (especially homeless shelters) and the knowledge that I couldn't be kicked out without an official notice of eviction, which takes at least 90 days to get.
I went back home, which turned out to not be a good idea after all. He was angrier and more hateful then ever. Then, apperantly, someone told Debbi about how he had been treating me, and she became incredibly worked up about it; she told him to back off and turn the electricity back on. But when he came back, he was even more upset. He was no longer a human being, but a living breathing demon. I was asleep at the time, and he kept ranting, something about the trash. I figured the best way to deal with him was to ignore him.
The next thing I remember is him bursting through the door and being showered with assorted organic wastes, discarded paper, cockroaches, and used syringes.
I screamed. I freaked out. I chased him out and threw trash back at him. I closed the door. He kept opening it again. He yelled at me. He screamed at me. He tried to tear me apart with his words. He singlehandedly destroyed my door. No matter how much I screamed for him to get away from me and to leave me alone, he would keep coming back at me with his harassing attacks, unyealding.
I was having a panic attack. I called 911, and told them I was having an emergency. I though my heart was going to explode. I vomited. I called 911 again when I realized that I had knives in my room, terrified that I would use them.
After what seemed like an eternity, the police finally arrived. The crisis control officer tried his best to help the situation, but he could unfortunately do nothing. An ambulance had to come pick me up and take me to the emergency room.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Calm Before the Storm
Many things have happened within the last month. Mine is a story of grief, sorrow, and loss. Quite a long sequence of very unfortunate events have unraveled themselves. I believe that this depressing time has finally ceased; however, I have this looming feeling climbing over me that something terrible is going to happen. I prey it never does.
But just as there is a calm before the storm, so was there a calm in the paroxysmal crisis. Please allow me to paint you a portrait of my life from before.
Imagine Las Vegas; not a glittering metropolis, but a collection of cockroach-infested homes and business, both hurting from the economic recession.
I was very idle in my house, I'll admit it. Living with me was my ex-step-mother, another failed relationship of my father's. She was a soft creature, nice to a fault, who did the cooking and cleaning in the house. With her was her daughter, a strong and proud lesbian girl, who was incredibly reliable, although you probably wouldn't notice unless you had entered a situation which required her.
Also in the house was a demon of a man, an unpredictable maniacal man, a man of low quality, a man confused by his own greif. He was my father, but no longer. He was a very hateful person; he wouldn't hesitate to inflect his own brand of torture on you. In fact, he had been torturing me for quite a while in this timeframe. He had been cutting off my electricity, cutting me off simultaniously from contact with the outside world. He had done this many times before; but this time, I acted differently. I knew how he was commiting the act. Any respect I could have had for him had disappeared weeks, maybe months, ago. I wouldn't put up with him anymore. I took matters in my own hands, restoring power to my room whenever there was a chance.
But this is not about my father. Not yet, at least. This is about a man I met, who, given more time, I am certain would have changed my life. He goes by the name of Yaken.
We met after I responded to his ad on (of all places!) Pounced.org. We went to Texas station. He had the hardest time trying to find me there. We started at the buffet, then we went to the theatre. We saw Quarrentine. I held on to him during the scary parts. We went to the arcade. We blew a lot of money. Then we went to the bowling alley and played for a while.
I don't believe I've ever had so much fun with another person before. When we were tired, and had to go home, I realized that I wanted to spend so much more time with him. We spent probibly another half-hour bent over the bus map, trying to find a route which would allow me to spend more time with him on his long journey home. Walking to the bus stop, we realized how cold it had gotten. I was wearing a short-sleaved shirt that day. I didn't even have to think twice when I stuck my arm around his back. We got to the bus stop, which gave us both the opritunity to take in more of eachother. The bus came, dropping us off at Jones.
The events after that are my most preacous memories. The bus never came; it was too late. Yaken, being chivalrous, had insisted that we call a cab and he'd take me home. I don't know how long we were waiting for it; probibly four or five hours (We ended up calling three different cab companies; the second one was the first to send us a driver). In the meanwhile we kept holding on to eachother. According to Yaken, there are six or seven people gunning to be his mate; in no time at all, I had become the most favored of them all; in no time at all, I had fallen in love with him.
This love was a substantial thing for me. I had been in love what feels so many times with people whom I would never even meet. For the first time, I had someone to hold on to, to love physically as well as emotionally and spiritually.
And this is one aspect of what I have lost.
But just as there is a calm before the storm, so was there a calm in the paroxysmal crisis. Please allow me to paint you a portrait of my life from before.
Imagine Las Vegas; not a glittering metropolis, but a collection of cockroach-infested homes and business, both hurting from the economic recession.
I was very idle in my house, I'll admit it. Living with me was my ex-step-mother, another failed relationship of my father's. She was a soft creature, nice to a fault, who did the cooking and cleaning in the house. With her was her daughter, a strong and proud lesbian girl, who was incredibly reliable, although you probably wouldn't notice unless you had entered a situation which required her.
Also in the house was a demon of a man, an unpredictable maniacal man, a man of low quality, a man confused by his own greif. He was my father, but no longer. He was a very hateful person; he wouldn't hesitate to inflect his own brand of torture on you. In fact, he had been torturing me for quite a while in this timeframe. He had been cutting off my electricity, cutting me off simultaniously from contact with the outside world. He had done this many times before; but this time, I acted differently. I knew how he was commiting the act. Any respect I could have had for him had disappeared weeks, maybe months, ago. I wouldn't put up with him anymore. I took matters in my own hands, restoring power to my room whenever there was a chance.
But this is not about my father. Not yet, at least. This is about a man I met, who, given more time, I am certain would have changed my life. He goes by the name of Yaken.
We met after I responded to his ad on (of all places!) Pounced.org. We went to Texas station. He had the hardest time trying to find me there. We started at the buffet, then we went to the theatre. We saw Quarrentine. I held on to him during the scary parts. We went to the arcade. We blew a lot of money. Then we went to the bowling alley and played for a while.
I don't believe I've ever had so much fun with another person before. When we were tired, and had to go home, I realized that I wanted to spend so much more time with him. We spent probibly another half-hour bent over the bus map, trying to find a route which would allow me to spend more time with him on his long journey home. Walking to the bus stop, we realized how cold it had gotten. I was wearing a short-sleaved shirt that day. I didn't even have to think twice when I stuck my arm around his back. We got to the bus stop, which gave us both the opritunity to take in more of eachother. The bus came, dropping us off at Jones.
The events after that are my most preacous memories. The bus never came; it was too late. Yaken, being chivalrous, had insisted that we call a cab and he'd take me home. I don't know how long we were waiting for it; probibly four or five hours (We ended up calling three different cab companies; the second one was the first to send us a driver). In the meanwhile we kept holding on to eachother. According to Yaken, there are six or seven people gunning to be his mate; in no time at all, I had become the most favored of them all; in no time at all, I had fallen in love with him.
This love was a substantial thing for me. I had been in love what feels so many times with people whom I would never even meet. For the first time, I had someone to hold on to, to love physically as well as emotionally and spiritually.
And this is one aspect of what I have lost.
Monday, October 06, 2008
A couple of fun tests
What Your Dreams Mean... |
 Your dreams seem to show that you're a bit disturbed... but nothing serious. You may have a problem you're trying to work out in your sleep. Overall, you are very content in your life. Your dreams indicate that you have very conflicted feelings. You have a very vivid imagination and a rich creative mind. |
You Belong in Amsterdam |
 A little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam. Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city). |
Your Heart Is Red |
 You're a passionate lover - you always have a huge fire in your heart. Too bad it's hard for you to be passionate about just one person! Your flirting style: Outgoing and sexy Your lucky first date: Drinks and dancing Your dream lover: Is both stable and intense What you bring to relationships: Honesty |
You Should Call Your Boobs |
 Peaches & Cream |
Monday, September 29, 2008
ASSHOLES!
I just recently visited Cocobiz's store, where I found a very upsetting album up for sale.
Umihara Kawase Soundtrack.
The bastards! They ripped me off! Look at the publication date on their website. If you look at my blog post, which I published the same day as I published the album, and then compare it to the date their album was published, you'll find them identical! Now seriously, what is the chance that two different people would release such similar albums on the exact same date!
I would threaten them if I had the money to sue them....
Umihara Kawase Soundtrack.
The bastards! They ripped me off! Look at the publication date on their website. If you look at my blog post, which I published the same day as I published the album, and then compare it to the date their album was published, you'll find them identical! Now seriously, what is the chance that two different people would release such similar albums on the exact same date!
I would threaten them if I had the money to sue them....
Sunday, September 21, 2008
And Now... Sexy Ladies!
I randomly got sent a picture of scantily-clad ladies in what appears to be some sort of local modeling competition held outside the Thomas & Mack Center. Since I don't know who sent me the picture, and he didn't claim copyright on it, It's here in all it's glory for you to see.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Overdue Updates
Well, It's been a while since I've been able to update my blog here. Most of it has something to do with a brush with insanity. But that's another story.
Wait, there is no story. I'm still in the same position I have been at what feels like the beginning of time.
Jobless.
Hopeless.
Without a boyfriend, still.
Well, perhaps not without a boyfriend soon. I just learned that this guy I like just got dumped (or something like that). Plus there's another guy I know whom I have promised to hit on.
But realistically, neither will work out. Sigh....
Oh yeah. I just finished Echo Night Beyond. It was marvelous. I think I'm going to make a clone of it. :P
I highly recommend you play it, though. The story and presentation were marvelous. It broke new ground for horror games. Resident Evil, next to this, is like watching pudding settle. The only problem it has is that it expects you to find these small objects in obscure places. But it's still very, very good. The ending made me cry.
Go play it. Like fucking right now.
Wait, there is no story. I'm still in the same position I have been at what feels like the beginning of time.
Jobless.
Hopeless.
Without a boyfriend, still.
Well, perhaps not without a boyfriend soon. I just learned that this guy I like just got dumped (or something like that). Plus there's another guy I know whom I have promised to hit on.
But realistically, neither will work out. Sigh....
Oh yeah. I just finished Echo Night Beyond. It was marvelous. I think I'm going to make a clone of it. :P
I highly recommend you play it, though. The story and presentation were marvelous. It broke new ground for horror games. Resident Evil, next to this, is like watching pudding settle. The only problem it has is that it expects you to find these small objects in obscure places. But it's still very, very good. The ending made me cry.
Go play it. Like fucking right now.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Crap Crap and an Unborn Gem
First is Top's theme.
Then is Wait for Acid, which is Wait for Truth with really bad hand-set group of synthesizers.
Fighting the Shadowy Gods is actually good, but it's not finished.
Then is Wait for Acid, which is Wait for Truth with really bad hand-set group of synthesizers.
Fighting the Shadowy Gods is actually good, but it's not finished.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
The Out Crowd
Ah, yet another post written because I can't sleep. This time, I tried reading some articles at the Temple of the Screaming Electron. Specifically, I was looking at the texts on drugs.
(Buddy looks up at me. His eyes speak volumes. "Could you just go to sleep and turn off the lights?")
Of course, I looked at more texts then just those on drugs. Right before I turned to that section, I read an article on... well, a person's general schetzomania ("We're all being controlled by the corporations, man, and we're being led to our doom!"). Since TOTSE's purpose is to collect information, regardless of its content, there are many articles dedicated to counterculture.
Though there has been various incarnations of countercultures throughout multiple spheres of society. One of the first large countercultures to gain notoriety were the Beats of the 1950s and earlier.
Having not lived in that era, I could not say from experiance what motivated a person to become part of the beat movement. However, I can hypothesize that because of the rise of mass media and news broadcasts focusing on the economy and business sectors, individuals began to lose their individuality. They began to realize that they were just one of several billions of people who were in the same class as they were; they had no more power then billions of others. In that mindset, they could easily believe that they had no way to reach the same level of pull that large companies did. So the motto of the beat generation was "I have no power to change anything, and so my life is meaningless."
This motto changed throughout the years as the people who comprised this culture changed, and eventually a new counterculture came up as an evolution of the Beat movement. In walks the Hippies. Members of this culture had lives with purpose, although radically different from mainstream culture. Their motto, being a direct evolution of the Beat motto, was essentially "I do not have the power to change how the world is. However, I still have a life, and I am not going to waste it."
So unlike the 'terminally depressed' Beats before them, the Hippies based their life on creating experiances. Hippies formed their own communistic 'villages', where they would give their talents to everyone else (ironic, because of the massive red scare at the time). Concepts like Free Love opened up new worlds in terms of experiance, as did drug usage. Suddenly, drugs that have been used for thousands of years such as canibis and opium opened up new doorways into realms of thought and philosophy, which brought new forms of expression along with them.
Time passed, and as the Hippie movement started dwindling down, another counterculture began becoming more prevalent. Drug Junkies were essentially Hippies turned Beat, but with more drugs. Their motto: "There's nothing I can do to change things and no point in greater knowledge. But I have a pipe, so I'll smoke it." This viewpoint is gained from the combination of observations both philosophical and sociological. They are, "It doesn't matter if I have a superior philosophy because it is not the popular philosophy," which is also a political observation (most countries are democratic, so your oppinion only counts for an extremely small persentage), and, "I cannot change the viewpoints of others."
The interesting thing about the Drug Junkies is that it's still the prevalent counterculture in the US, after nearly four decades. Even though artificial countercultures were introduced in the 1980s (and more of them continue to be produced in this decade), the Junkies prevailed. It's suprising because of the sheer number of artifical countercultures there have been. What teenaged girl didn't want to dress up in the trashy style of Pat Benetar? There have been several 'fad' countercultures like that one which had become so popular that they seemed at the time to be greater then the culture it was 'against'. But of course, they never lasted long because they were artificial and the ideas behind them were not fully adopted by the people who moved on and made it uncool.
And now I have no idea where I was going with this. Good night.
(Buddy looks up at me. His eyes speak volumes. "Could you just go to sleep and turn off the lights?")
Of course, I looked at more texts then just those on drugs. Right before I turned to that section, I read an article on... well, a person's general schetzomania ("We're all being controlled by the corporations, man, and we're being led to our doom!"). Since TOTSE's purpose is to collect information, regardless of its content, there are many articles dedicated to counterculture.
Though there has been various incarnations of countercultures throughout multiple spheres of society. One of the first large countercultures to gain notoriety were the Beats of the 1950s and earlier.
Having not lived in that era, I could not say from experiance what motivated a person to become part of the beat movement. However, I can hypothesize that because of the rise of mass media and news broadcasts focusing on the economy and business sectors, individuals began to lose their individuality. They began to realize that they were just one of several billions of people who were in the same class as they were; they had no more power then billions of others. In that mindset, they could easily believe that they had no way to reach the same level of pull that large companies did. So the motto of the beat generation was "I have no power to change anything, and so my life is meaningless."
This motto changed throughout the years as the people who comprised this culture changed, and eventually a new counterculture came up as an evolution of the Beat movement. In walks the Hippies. Members of this culture had lives with purpose, although radically different from mainstream culture. Their motto, being a direct evolution of the Beat motto, was essentially "I do not have the power to change how the world is. However, I still have a life, and I am not going to waste it."
So unlike the 'terminally depressed' Beats before them, the Hippies based their life on creating experiances. Hippies formed their own communistic 'villages', where they would give their talents to everyone else (ironic, because of the massive red scare at the time). Concepts like Free Love opened up new worlds in terms of experiance, as did drug usage. Suddenly, drugs that have been used for thousands of years such as canibis and opium opened up new doorways into realms of thought and philosophy, which brought new forms of expression along with them.
Time passed, and as the Hippie movement started dwindling down, another counterculture began becoming more prevalent. Drug Junkies were essentially Hippies turned Beat, but with more drugs. Their motto: "There's nothing I can do to change things and no point in greater knowledge. But I have a pipe, so I'll smoke it." This viewpoint is gained from the combination of observations both philosophical and sociological. They are, "It doesn't matter if I have a superior philosophy because it is not the popular philosophy," which is also a political observation (most countries are democratic, so your oppinion only counts for an extremely small persentage), and, "I cannot change the viewpoints of others."
The interesting thing about the Drug Junkies is that it's still the prevalent counterculture in the US, after nearly four decades. Even though artificial countercultures were introduced in the 1980s (and more of them continue to be produced in this decade), the Junkies prevailed. It's suprising because of the sheer number of artifical countercultures there have been. What teenaged girl didn't want to dress up in the trashy style of Pat Benetar? There have been several 'fad' countercultures like that one which had become so popular that they seemed at the time to be greater then the culture it was 'against'. But of course, they never lasted long because they were artificial and the ideas behind them were not fully adopted by the people who moved on and made it uncool.
And now I have no idea where I was going with this. Good night.
Monday, August 04, 2008
m68k
After reading this article and learning that there is (more or less) an m68k port to haiku in the works by Francois Rinowhatshisname, I just had to write about it.
First off, why is he working on a 68k port in the first place? There are many more important things his efforts could be focused on, such as filesystem tuning and catching kernel crashes on the x86 and PPC platforms. And why 68k when it makes so much more sense to use an archetecture that is still being maintained (By SIMD instructions and whatnot) like ARM or Cell or even MIPS? Every single computer you can find with an m68k core will be older then ten years old (Unless you count some niche computers, such as the minimig).
After that, why target the Falcon? Atari didn't have nearly the same quality of documentation as Amiga and Comodore had, especially since the Falcon only had a single production year.
Of course, the writer of the article told us why he chose the Falcon, and even though it's an incredibly stupid reason in my oppinion, it's a valid reason. However, the Amiga should not have been crossed off the list so easily. UAE does support MMU and FPU emulation, and most of the better Amiga models had both units. To back up my claim, I submit my system specs as returned by the command
CHIPS: CPU 68030/68882fpu/68030mmu, ECS NTSC Agnus, ECS Denise
VERS: Kickstart version 37.175, Exec version 37.132, Disk version 37.71
RAM: Node type $a, attribute $105 (FAST), from $7f00000 to $7ffffff
Node type $a, attribute $303 (CHIP), from $400 to $fffff
BOARDS:
None
I bought this at a frickin' thrift store for less then two sawbucks. Go get laid, Francois.
First off, why is he working on a 68k port in the first place? There are many more important things his efforts could be focused on, such as filesystem tuning and catching kernel crashes on the x86 and PPC platforms. And why 68k when it makes so much more sense to use an archetecture that is still being maintained (By SIMD instructions and whatnot) like ARM or Cell or even MIPS? Every single computer you can find with an m68k core will be older then ten years old (Unless you count some niche computers, such as the minimig).
After that, why target the Falcon? Atari didn't have nearly the same quality of documentation as Amiga and Comodore had, especially since the Falcon only had a single production year.
Of course, the writer of the article told us why he chose the Falcon, and even though it's an incredibly stupid reason in my oppinion, it's a valid reason. However, the Amiga should not have been crossed off the list so easily. UAE does support MMU and FPU emulation, and most of the better Amiga models had both units. To back up my claim, I submit my system specs as returned by the command
System_Information > textfileCHIPS: CPU 68030/68882fpu/68030mmu, ECS NTSC Agnus, ECS Denise
VERS: Kickstart version 37.175, Exec version 37.132, Disk version 37.71
RAM: Node type $a, attribute $105 (FAST), from $7f00000 to $7ffffff
Node type $a, attribute $303 (CHIP), from $400 to $fffff
BOARDS:
None
I bought this at a frickin' thrift store for less then two sawbucks. Go get laid, Francois.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Dhrystones for Everybody!
I just benchmarked my CPU using the somewhat well-accepted synthetic integer CPU benchmarking method called Dhrystone. A Dhrystone is essentially just a single loop, a counter, and a time-counting routine. It's simple enough that a novice could program it in a language he's never used before.
Theoretically, the faster your CPU can perform a dhrystone, the faster your overall speed. However, this isn't necessarily so. Dhrystones measure the speed of integer operations, which means if you're going to do more advanced things with your processor, like 3D graphics (unless you're a fan of voxels) and physical modeling/simulation. For vector calculations, you need to do two different versions of the Whetstone test; one for single-precision, and one for double-precision vector calculations.
In my case, the average (mean) result of three iterations of the Dhrystone test gave me 4357780.67 dhrystones/s, which is about 0.2us per dhrystone. One run gave me as much as five and a half million dhrystones per second. For asinine comparison, I get 5004 BogoMIPS.
I used this shell program which was linked from Wikipedia to benchmark my system. To run it, you'll need to run 'sh dry.c' (without the quotes, obviously) in any POSIX-like environment. I used cygwin, since SiS hardware is too evil for my computer to run a real POSIX environment and I'm stuck in Windowsland. Just make sure you install gcc under the devel category when you install it. Go ahead, run it and send your results to me via comment to this post.
Theoretically, the faster your CPU can perform a dhrystone, the faster your overall speed. However, this isn't necessarily so. Dhrystones measure the speed of integer operations, which means if you're going to do more advanced things with your processor, like 3D graphics (unless you're a fan of voxels) and physical modeling/simulation. For vector calculations, you need to do two different versions of the Whetstone test; one for single-precision, and one for double-precision vector calculations.
In my case, the average (mean) result of three iterations of the Dhrystone test gave me 4357780.67 dhrystones/s, which is about 0.2us per dhrystone. One run gave me as much as five and a half million dhrystones per second. For asinine comparison, I get 5004 BogoMIPS.
I used this shell program which was linked from Wikipedia to benchmark my system. To run it, you'll need to run 'sh dry.c' (without the quotes, obviously) in any POSIX-like environment. I used cygwin, since SiS hardware is too evil for my computer to run a real POSIX environment and I'm stuck in Windowsland. Just make sure you install gcc under the devel category when you install it. Go ahead, run it and send your results to me via comment to this post.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Wha...?
I'm about to release another album.
This time, it's going to be the soundtrack to Umihara Kawase, that little-known platformer game. I think this time I'm going to use Colors to make a nice watercolor-looking cover for this album.
The mixing and mastering is already done, having mostly been done within a single night. For this one, I drew a line and made the instruments sound sound more like they did on the Super Famicom, mostly by using the same techniques as the original artist. If I get everything done quickly, the album will be available within a day's time. In the meanwhile, I'll be firing up my DS to make the artwork.
This time, it's going to be the soundtrack to Umihara Kawase, that little-known platformer game. I think this time I'm going to use Colors to make a nice watercolor-looking cover for this album.
The mixing and mastering is already done, having mostly been done within a single night. For this one, I drew a line and made the instruments sound sound more like they did on the Super Famicom, mostly by using the same techniques as the original artist. If I get everything done quickly, the album will be available within a day's time. In the meanwhile, I'll be firing up my DS to make the artwork.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Earn Your Stripes
So you want to know what it takes for me to write something on my blog?
Extreme insomnia.
Also, I keep meaning to talk to Stephen sometime....
What ever happened to the concept of 'having time'?
Extreme insomnia.
Also, I keep meaning to talk to Stephen sometime....
What ever happened to the concept of 'having time'?
Friday, July 18, 2008
You Are Your Own Chef
I was going to go and finally make a full review of D2, Kenji Eno's Magnum Opus, but then I got my paws on something newer and more interesting. It's called Cooking Guide, a Nintendo-created (with assistance from the Tsuji Cooking Academy, which I assume is 'huge in Japan'.) cookbook with features crammed in every single bit of it's unnaturally large ROM.
For some reason or another, I got the UK version of the game. Er, DS Application.
It shouldn't make too much of a difference, but it uses all these strange English terms like 'hob' and the equally weird English spellings for words like 'fibres'. It's to my preference anyway, as I tend to use English-styled grammar myself.
When you first turn on your DS, you will be amazed at what you're hearing. Well, maybe not, but I was pretty impressed. Cooking Guide offers a little animated chef figure who actually talks to you. This is the first game on the DS to have feature a TTS (text to speach) engine (either that, or this dude just sounds really artificial). The next time you run Cooking Guide, the chef will greet you with the unusually appetizing phrase, "Can't decide what to eat? Let's make something tastey." The voice is as one of those steriotypical congested gourmet chef types, but it sounds very good. It is a bit quiet, though, so you'd might not want to run this on a DS Lite, because they tend to have quieter sound.
Before we explore the titular 'Cooking Guide' section, let's explore the lesser features of the software. The settings screen contains the expected things, like sound controll, mic tests, and voice options (for both you and the chef). However, it also contains one unexpected feature. It's 'Excluded Ingrediants', which will warn you with a red box with an 'x' over the pictures of foods which contain those ingrediants. Excelent for crossing out allergies. I used it to warn me of recipeis which contain fish, simply because I can't stand any of it. Also included in this section, although I don't think it really belongs there, is a kitchen timer, for obvious purposes.
Also on the main menu is 'Cooking A-Z'. If you're a terrible cook, you should go about reading all of it. If you're experianced, like myself, just read 'Important points', which contains various information that you must keep in mind as you read and cook the recipes, such as to use 'dark' soy sauce, and all recipies with sugar use somewhat obscure johakuto sugar, and you can substatute dark sugar. As some of the recipies available on Cooking guide are fairly obscure, you may want to skim through 'Substitute Ingrediants'. Some things need bases which you may not be able to find pre-made, so there's a selection of simple base recipies available through 'homemade ingrediants', but those are also linked to the recipies that use them, so you'll be able to make it as you're preparing to make the dish that needs to use it. And on the bottom of the cooking A-Z page is a list of movies which show some basic techniques. Do not look at how to prepair squid. You will vomit.
The final feature, the one that's perhaps most useful to the end-user, is the Shopping list. It's somewhat automatically populated; when you look through the ingrediant lists of recipies, you can put a check next to what you need to buy, and it'll appear on the shopping list. Each ingrediant is listed alphebetically, with checkboxes so you can keep track of what you have already. A downfall of this list is that if you have multiple ingrediants in different recipies, it won't combine them. Luckally though, there's a handy calculator that you can pull up at any time while viewing the list. A benefit of the uncombined ingredients, however, is that you can see what it is that you need each quantity of it for, and go straight to the recipie from there.
Now, to the bulk of Cooking Guide: the Cooking Guide.
The Cooking Guide contains 214 recipies, which doesn't really seem like much. I still don't know if that's the big complex recipies or all the recipes, including basic ones like Stock. Cooking Guide has a multitude of ways with which you can find them. You can find them by what ingredients they contain, by keywords, by which recipies you have ingrediants selected from, by country, by ones you marked favorates, or by 'requirements', which is a search that returns results based on user set dependencies, such as if you wrote notes on it, if you've cooked it, how easy it is to make, how many calories it contains, or how it's cooked. You'd think it'd be overkill, but it's not; sometimes you want something different, and sometimes you want something you really like. The favorates system can mold from being foods that you want to try to being something you really love to make, and sometimes you do have requirements like a ten-minute cooking time.
My personal favorate is searching by country, which displays a broken-down scrolalble map where you can search by ethnicity (even though all the recipies are technically Japanese). There's a large selection of delicious-looking French food, including crepes and soufles. I'm personally waiting until we go shopping so I can make a good Indian meal of Keema Curry with rice and a side of Lassi.
When you select a recipe, you can add notes through Cooking Guide's interesting charicter recognition technique, where you write letters one at a time in two boxes, which makes writing much easier and faster. I don't think this is new; I think it was used in Level5's Professor Layton. You can also add it to your favorates at a single touch. The button to get into the main feature's cooking mode, 'Start Cooking', is actually three buttons. If this is new to you, tap 'View Ingrediants' to do it's titular tast. Or if you already have the ingrediants layed out, tap 'Cook'. For those of you who just need to reference a recipie, you can touch 'View Steps' and start cooking from a later step.
The ingrediants screen is nice; it shows ingrediants, utensils (which include pans and wraps), and servings (which you can alter to an extent, with all of the ingrediants following suite and changing quantity). The only real problem I have with this is that it's all in metric. Just ask your grocer for 550 grams of lamb mince.
Cooking mode is great, especially because it's so minimalist without actually being so. The speach recognition isn't as great as it could be, especially, as I'd imagine, in a loud noisy kitchen. Particularly, "More Details!" didn't work. Then again, this may just be because I'm not English. The Cooking Guide chef sounds really nice, and he really shouldn't be turned off. He gives extra tips when he talks, and he doesn't just read what's on the screen. And he sounds all nice, like he would be fun to hug. The steps are simple; even an idiot would be able to follow it.
And now, as it's late at at night, I stop before I get to my feelings about the software. I just said that someone would be fun to hug, what do you expect?
For some reason or another, I got the UK version of the game. Er, DS Application.
It shouldn't make too much of a difference, but it uses all these strange English terms like 'hob' and the equally weird English spellings for words like 'fibres'. It's to my preference anyway, as I tend to use English-styled grammar myself.
When you first turn on your DS, you will be amazed at what you're hearing. Well, maybe not, but I was pretty impressed. Cooking Guide offers a little animated chef figure who actually talks to you. This is the first game on the DS to have feature a TTS (text to speach) engine (either that, or this dude just sounds really artificial). The next time you run Cooking Guide, the chef will greet you with the unusually appetizing phrase, "Can't decide what to eat? Let's make something tastey." The voice is as one of those steriotypical congested gourmet chef types, but it sounds very good. It is a bit quiet, though, so you'd might not want to run this on a DS Lite, because they tend to have quieter sound.
Before we explore the titular 'Cooking Guide' section, let's explore the lesser features of the software. The settings screen contains the expected things, like sound controll, mic tests, and voice options (for both you and the chef). However, it also contains one unexpected feature. It's 'Excluded Ingrediants', which will warn you with a red box with an 'x' over the pictures of foods which contain those ingrediants. Excelent for crossing out allergies. I used it to warn me of recipeis which contain fish, simply because I can't stand any of it. Also included in this section, although I don't think it really belongs there, is a kitchen timer, for obvious purposes.
Also on the main menu is 'Cooking A-Z'. If you're a terrible cook, you should go about reading all of it. If you're experianced, like myself, just read 'Important points', which contains various information that you must keep in mind as you read and cook the recipes, such as to use 'dark' soy sauce, and all recipies with sugar use somewhat obscure johakuto sugar, and you can substatute dark sugar. As some of the recipies available on Cooking guide are fairly obscure, you may want to skim through 'Substitute Ingrediants'. Some things need bases which you may not be able to find pre-made, so there's a selection of simple base recipies available through 'homemade ingrediants', but those are also linked to the recipies that use them, so you'll be able to make it as you're preparing to make the dish that needs to use it. And on the bottom of the cooking A-Z page is a list of movies which show some basic techniques. Do not look at how to prepair squid. You will vomit.
The final feature, the one that's perhaps most useful to the end-user, is the Shopping list. It's somewhat automatically populated; when you look through the ingrediant lists of recipies, you can put a check next to what you need to buy, and it'll appear on the shopping list. Each ingrediant is listed alphebetically, with checkboxes so you can keep track of what you have already. A downfall of this list is that if you have multiple ingrediants in different recipies, it won't combine them. Luckally though, there's a handy calculator that you can pull up at any time while viewing the list. A benefit of the uncombined ingredients, however, is that you can see what it is that you need each quantity of it for, and go straight to the recipie from there.
Now, to the bulk of Cooking Guide: the Cooking Guide.
The Cooking Guide contains 214 recipies, which doesn't really seem like much. I still don't know if that's the big complex recipies or all the recipes, including basic ones like Stock. Cooking Guide has a multitude of ways with which you can find them. You can find them by what ingredients they contain, by keywords, by which recipies you have ingrediants selected from, by country, by ones you marked favorates, or by 'requirements', which is a search that returns results based on user set dependencies, such as if you wrote notes on it, if you've cooked it, how easy it is to make, how many calories it contains, or how it's cooked. You'd think it'd be overkill, but it's not; sometimes you want something different, and sometimes you want something you really like. The favorates system can mold from being foods that you want to try to being something you really love to make, and sometimes you do have requirements like a ten-minute cooking time.
My personal favorate is searching by country, which displays a broken-down scrolalble map where you can search by ethnicity (even though all the recipies are technically Japanese). There's a large selection of delicious-looking French food, including crepes and soufles. I'm personally waiting until we go shopping so I can make a good Indian meal of Keema Curry with rice and a side of Lassi.
When you select a recipe, you can add notes through Cooking Guide's interesting charicter recognition technique, where you write letters one at a time in two boxes, which makes writing much easier and faster. I don't think this is new; I think it was used in Level5's Professor Layton. You can also add it to your favorates at a single touch. The button to get into the main feature's cooking mode, 'Start Cooking', is actually three buttons. If this is new to you, tap 'View Ingrediants' to do it's titular tast. Or if you already have the ingrediants layed out, tap 'Cook'. For those of you who just need to reference a recipie, you can touch 'View Steps' and start cooking from a later step.
The ingrediants screen is nice; it shows ingrediants, utensils (which include pans and wraps), and servings (which you can alter to an extent, with all of the ingrediants following suite and changing quantity). The only real problem I have with this is that it's all in metric. Just ask your grocer for 550 grams of lamb mince.
Cooking mode is great, especially because it's so minimalist without actually being so. The speach recognition isn't as great as it could be, especially, as I'd imagine, in a loud noisy kitchen. Particularly, "More Details!" didn't work. Then again, this may just be because I'm not English. The Cooking Guide chef sounds really nice, and he really shouldn't be turned off. He gives extra tips when he talks, and he doesn't just read what's on the screen. And he sounds all nice, like he would be fun to hug. The steps are simple; even an idiot would be able to follow it.
And now, as it's late at at night, I stop before I get to my feelings about the software. I just said that someone would be fun to hug, what do you expect?
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
Victory Over Google
It was such a victory that I was able to upload Ending from Beyond the Beyond, I thought it deserved a second post. I did it by compressing it with ogg vorbis with a 128KB/s bitrate. So all of you suckers who can't play Vorbis, get a real media player.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
More songs
Greasy Rhythms isn't selling too well. It's infuriating. So here's two Motoi Sakuraba songs. One is crap. The other one should have made it to the album.
I was supprised that there was a Motoi Sakuraba song I could do anything with. He's much like Yasunori Mitsuda in the respect that his albums are too good to make anything out of. But since Sakuraba only released an album of remixes from Beyond the Beyond, I finally had the oppritunity to tackle some of his works.
The first song is Flying.
It's a pretty good melodic piece. This is the one that I wouldn't release professionally. The problems are few, though, and easily fixed. I'm just too lazy to do it. The biggest problem is a small pause before the song repeats. There was also a problem with the mixing of instruments; the harmonic pieces tended to be too loud to hear the melody, which is never a good thing.
The second song is Ending.
This is a damn good song. I love it to death. There's only one problem with this, and it's just that I'm not happy with the string harmony. That part of the harmony is important to the song, and the samples I'm using hold up, but it's not up to my higher standards of quality. I made a change to one of the instruments did not seem to have the power needed to maintain the emotion of the song. Seeing as it was an aspect of the melody and the harmony, I fealt that I had to change it in order for the song to have its proper effect. Originally, it was a music box, but that was just way too weak. If I recall correctly, I changed it to a chorus of a special organ and a simple waveform (probibly square). The waveform enhanced the organ and made it sound simply fantastic, and made the song more victoriously ecstatic then it was in Sakuraba's original rendition.
(note: I'm having problems uploading this song. It's rather long at 16MB)
(Edit: Google Pages doesn't allow uploads bigger then 10MB, so it won't get uploaded.
As a side note, Ending did not make it into Sakuraba's Beyond the Beyond Album.
I was supprised that there was a Motoi Sakuraba song I could do anything with. He's much like Yasunori Mitsuda in the respect that his albums are too good to make anything out of. But since Sakuraba only released an album of remixes from Beyond the Beyond, I finally had the oppritunity to tackle some of his works.
The first song is Flying.
It's a pretty good melodic piece. This is the one that I wouldn't release professionally. The problems are few, though, and easily fixed. I'm just too lazy to do it. The biggest problem is a small pause before the song repeats. There was also a problem with the mixing of instruments; the harmonic pieces tended to be too loud to hear the melody, which is never a good thing.
The second song is Ending.
This is a damn good song. I love it to death. There's only one problem with this, and it's just that I'm not happy with the string harmony. That part of the harmony is important to the song, and the samples I'm using hold up, but it's not up to my higher standards of quality. I made a change to one of the instruments did not seem to have the power needed to maintain the emotion of the song. Seeing as it was an aspect of the melody and the harmony, I fealt that I had to change it in order for the song to have its proper effect. Originally, it was a music box, but that was just way too weak. If I recall correctly, I changed it to a chorus of a special organ and a simple waveform (probibly square). The waveform enhanced the organ and made it sound simply fantastic, and made the song more victoriously ecstatic then it was in Sakuraba's original rendition.
(note: I'm having problems uploading this song. It's rather long at 16MB)
(Edit: Google Pages doesn't allow uploads bigger then 10MB, so it won't get uploaded.
As a side note, Ending did not make it into Sakuraba's Beyond the Beyond Album.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Learn to compress!
Every time I download large files from the internet, they're compressed in RAR files. Worse, they're in multi-part RAR files, which means that there's a chance that the archiving programs I have will be able to extract the data from them. For this reason, I have WinRAR installed on my computer. I don't want WinRAR. It puts all of those stupid little extras on context menus.
What's worse is the fact that people are not using the best possible compression techniques for large files. For those of you using RAR, I highly implore you to explore 7zip. 7zip is free and open source, as is it's compression and encryption algorithms. As such, it has higher ubiquity with 'bundle' multi-format archival software.
Further in my 7zip arguement is its higher efficiency. In my experiance, using 7zip has always been able to give lower compression ratios then any other method I've seen, which leads into smaller file sizes and, therefore, less bandwidth usage for digital distrobution. I'll admit, using 7zip's 'ultra' setting is memory-intensive, but this is hardly a problem today, as it's hard to find any computer with less then 2GiB of RAM.
Also, most every official distrobution of 7zip (the program, not the algorithm) can compete directly with high-end commercial archival programs such as WinRAR, often with better results. 7zip can create split archives; it can split and combine parts of archives even after it is compressed, even. And it's password-based encryption is unbeatable, unlike some encryption methods I've seen.
With all of these benefits, the only downside to 7zip is that it's not as well known to the internet idiots (read: everyone on The Pirate Bay). But with an application as portable as 7zip, there is no excuse to continue to use outdated compressors such as WinRAR.
What's worse is the fact that people are not using the best possible compression techniques for large files. For those of you using RAR, I highly implore you to explore 7zip. 7zip is free and open source, as is it's compression and encryption algorithms. As such, it has higher ubiquity with 'bundle' multi-format archival software.
Further in my 7zip arguement is its higher efficiency. In my experiance, using 7zip has always been able to give lower compression ratios then any other method I've seen, which leads into smaller file sizes and, therefore, less bandwidth usage for digital distrobution. I'll admit, using 7zip's 'ultra' setting is memory-intensive, but this is hardly a problem today, as it's hard to find any computer with less then 2GiB of RAM.
Also, most every official distrobution of 7zip (the program, not the algorithm) can compete directly with high-end commercial archival programs such as WinRAR, often with better results. 7zip can create split archives; it can split and combine parts of archives even after it is compressed, even. And it's password-based encryption is unbeatable, unlike some encryption methods I've seen.
With all of these benefits, the only downside to 7zip is that it's not as well known to the internet idiots (read: everyone on The Pirate Bay). But with an application as portable as 7zip, there is no excuse to continue to use outdated compressors such as WinRAR.
Monday, June 30, 2008
June Summary
Because I suck at life, I've been too busy trying to fix it to update this blog in a while, so in place of simple updates, I'll just summarize the month of June.
Earlier this month, I released Greasy Rhythms, my first album, which people passed over because I suck at marketing, too. It proved to me that people are bloody bastards and must be killed.
My stepmother is in the hospital, and as it's the 30th, it doesn't look like she's going to get better anytime this month. She was hospitalized initially for Bilateral Pneumonia, but it was later discovered that she had Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder. If she doesn't die in the hospital, she will still die soon....
Father has been driven into insanity, and has been pushing me around much like a boss with control issues would whip around hisslave workers. He doesn't have any idea how the business works, so we may become bankrupt soon. His self-control is slipping away like soap in the hands of a gay man in a public shower.
(Yes, that was the worst simile ever.)
Speaking of gay men, during Debbi's hospitalization, I snagged myself a new boyfriend. His name is Travis, he's 23, works in fast food, is too tall (but I'll deal with that, I swear), is a furry, plays Dungeons and Dragons (and hates the fourth edition), is a bottom, and loves being touched (yes, It's OK and actually correct to think dirty thoughts about that). I don't know if I love him yet, but I really do like him.
Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to see him lately because how sick I've been. There's a chance it's a sinus infection, but I'm hoping desperately that it's just a bad cold. I've been swallowing acetaminophen like candy trying to get better, fatherman ordering me around and causing major hatred.
Finally, I uploaded a version of Solomon's Temple, of Ys and Yuzo Koshiro fame. I'm not going to release it professionally, like Koshiro's work seems to be doing, because of that nasty ending. I may clean it up to release it, but heck, I'm tired, and making music is unprofitable in my position.
Earlier this month, I released Greasy Rhythms, my first album, which people passed over because I suck at marketing, too. It proved to me that people are bloody bastards and must be killed.
My stepmother is in the hospital, and as it's the 30th, it doesn't look like she's going to get better anytime this month. She was hospitalized initially for Bilateral Pneumonia, but it was later discovered that she had Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder. If she doesn't die in the hospital, she will still die soon....
Father has been driven into insanity, and has been pushing me around much like a boss with control issues would whip around his
(Yes, that was the worst simile ever.)
Speaking of gay men, during Debbi's hospitalization, I snagged myself a new boyfriend. His name is Travis, he's 23, works in fast food, is too tall (but I'll deal with that, I swear), is a furry, plays Dungeons and Dragons (and hates the fourth edition), is a bottom, and loves being touched (yes, It's OK and actually correct to think dirty thoughts about that). I don't know if I love him yet, but I really do like him.
Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to see him lately because how sick I've been. There's a chance it's a sinus infection, but I'm hoping desperately that it's just a bad cold. I've been swallowing acetaminophen like candy trying to get better, fatherman ordering me around and causing major hatred.
Finally, I uploaded a version of Solomon's Temple, of Ys and Yuzo Koshiro fame. I'm not going to release it professionally, like Koshiro's work seems to be doing, because of that nasty ending. I may clean it up to release it, but heck, I'm tired, and making music is unprofitable in my position.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Fundraising
Luckally for me, I have the ability to raise the money I need for my microcontroller. Where will I get the money? From YOU!
I've got new methods of reciving money in the past year (Mainly, PayPal), and using it, I've set up a Lulu account and become a publisher. My first Project: Greasy Rhythms. It's a ten-track CD of new game soundtrack mixes. It's a collection of the best songs I've ever mixed, most of which have never been released to the public before. The CD costs about $11, so it's not too incredibly expensive, but since Lulu does POD (Publication on Demand), Prices for making each unit is a bit higher then they could be under more traditional methods, and I only make about $5 per sale.
If you're interested, you can click here to get more details.
I've got new methods of reciving money in the past year (Mainly, PayPal), and using it, I've set up a Lulu account and become a publisher. My first Project: Greasy Rhythms. It's a ten-track CD of new game soundtrack mixes. It's a collection of the best songs I've ever mixed, most of which have never been released to the public before. The CD costs about $11, so it's not too incredibly expensive, but since Lulu does POD (Publication on Demand), Prices for making each unit is a bit higher then they could be under more traditional methods, and I only make about $5 per sale.
If you're interested, you can click here to get more details.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Progress
Today, I have officially graduated, so I should be happy. The only reason I don't feel happy is that I feel a tad sick.
But progress has been made. I wanted to underwrite the Valedictorian's speech, since he was one of my friends, but he wouldn't let me. But in some ways, I'm grateful that he didn't. His speech was unusually good. He quoted Victor Hugo, surprisingly, verbatim. With a good accent, too!
But this post isn't about graduation; it's progress on my SNES APU project. Gathering the materials has become an easier task; my grandmother gave me $20 as a graduation present, we later went to Fry's, and I bought a breadboard, a wiring kit, and two DIP40 sockets. Now I just need to place my order at Parallax, but there's one simple problem: I lack another $20 (+shipping costs). I'm going to need to get the prop clip instead of the prop plug, which sold out, but that doesn't really matter.
If you see a PayPal link sometime in the (hopefully near) future, you can donate though that. How nice!
But progress has been made. I wanted to underwrite the Valedictorian's speech, since he was one of my friends, but he wouldn't let me. But in some ways, I'm grateful that he didn't. His speech was unusually good. He quoted Victor Hugo, surprisingly, verbatim. With a good accent, too!
But this post isn't about graduation; it's progress on my SNES APU project. Gathering the materials has become an easier task; my grandmother gave me $20 as a graduation present, we later went to Fry's, and I bought a breadboard, a wiring kit, and two DIP40 sockets. Now I just need to place my order at Parallax, but there's one simple problem: I lack another $20 (+shipping costs). I'm going to need to get the prop clip instead of the prop plug, which sold out, but that doesn't really matter.
If you see a PayPal link sometime in the (hopefully near) future, you can donate though that. How nice!
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Nice Dream
I really liked my idea. It was a serious possibility, and it was, for the most part, doable.
But then I drew up a Bill of Materials, and I discovered a serious problem: it's too damn expensive.
Nobody said that building embedded systems would be expensive. I certainly didn't think so, especially because of Parallax's low (-ish) price for their extremely high-end Propeller microcontroller. But then I reallized that my computer wouldn't have a TTL serial interface on it, so I added the USB Prop Plug to interface to the Propeller. Then, I realized that it dosn't have built-in storage, so I need to get a tiny annoying little 24LC256 EEPROM chip, which is probibly more extravagant than it needs to be (who needs I2C for 32KBs? The chip accepts TTL serial for programming, why can't it use it for EEPROM access?)
A breadboard, a wiring kit, and several miscellanious parts later (Thanks, Mouser!), I'm at $126.39, and that's just an estimate.
I think I'm gonna get Google ads now....
But then I drew up a Bill of Materials, and I discovered a serious problem: it's too damn expensive.
Nobody said that building embedded systems would be expensive. I certainly didn't think so, especially because of Parallax's low (-ish) price for their extremely high-end Propeller microcontroller. But then I reallized that my computer wouldn't have a TTL serial interface on it, so I added the USB Prop Plug to interface to the Propeller. Then, I realized that it dosn't have built-in storage, so I need to get a tiny annoying little 24LC256 EEPROM chip, which is probibly more extravagant than it needs to be (who needs I2C for 32KBs? The chip accepts TTL serial for programming, why can't it use it for EEPROM access?)
A breadboard, a wiring kit, and several miscellanious parts later (Thanks, Mouser!), I'm at $126.39, and that's just an estimate.
I think I'm gonna get Google ads now....
Monday, June 02, 2008
Get Out of my Head!
This time, I've really done it. I've got a song permenately engraved directly on my brain. I was searching around VGMusic.com and found some MIDI files from Pilotwings. I'd never played Pilotwings before, but I heard a song that I liked.
That song is Instructions/Password.
So I imported it to FL Studio and used my better soundfont softsynth. Since FL Studio loops the beginning of a pattern by default, and MIDI is imported as a single patern, I quickly discovered that the song loops infanitely. So it's been playing. Over and over and over again.
So now I pass on the value to you! Make sure you loop the file!
That song is Instructions/Password.
So I imported it to FL Studio and used my better soundfont softsynth. Since FL Studio loops the beginning of a pattern by default, and MIDI is imported as a single patern, I quickly discovered that the song loops infanitely. So it's been playing. Over and over and over again.
So now I pass on the value to you! Make sure you loop the file!
Thursday, May 29, 2008
My Stylus
My stylus, currently, is a shard from a SNES, harvested by a combination of hammering, levering, and just pulling really hard.
One day, you'll get pissed off that you don't have an inline head bit, too, and you'll resort to this for opening up your Nintendo consoles.
On this occasion, I had smashed open the yellowing grey box to extract it's Audio Processing Unit, a small metal box manufactured by Nintendo's favorate hardware partner, Mitsumi, which features the SPC700 processor (S-SPU), a special purpose DSP (S-DSP), two 32K SRAM chips by Sharp and Hitachi, and a NEC Digital/Analogue converter. It's rather hard to believe how unusually sophisticated and advanced the SHVC-SOUND module is.
The SPC700, specifically, is an interesting piece of hardware. It's a somewhat simple microprocessor with six registers and 250 opcodes, with addressing for at least 64K, and running at 1024Hz. It's part in the APU team is to load instructions into it's internal RAM and execute it. Since the SNES' APU is just a glorified wavetable MIDI device, it's one megahertz speed is on par (most MIDI data transmission rates are set to 1MHz by default).
Most people will hear "the SPC700 was designed by Ken Kutaragi" and instantly turn into a Sony fanboy. For those of you who walk this path, I kick you. The SPC700 is, in essence, a really fancy sequencer. It takes note data and delivers it to the S-DSP when it needs to be played. The real genious is the DSP itself.
The S-DSP was, apperently, not designed by Ken Kutaragi, but by some poor peon who got backstabed by Kenny when he decided to hide the poor man's name from the public (and maybe kill him. I wouldn't doubt it if he did, too; he's just that freaky). The S-DSP is capable of storing its samples in a compressed form, making the minimal amount of SRAM three or four times more useful; it produces eight seperate channels of independant pitch, pan, and gain, all being controlled by individual ADSR envelopes, echo, and various digital filtering effects. The S-DSP is, in a single word, "Bomb."
So, I smashed apart my SNES (don't worry, it was broken anyway) for this litttle box. My plans for it? A PC interface for hardware sound synthesis (or is it sequencing? the line is somewhat vague there) Now, I can use those SPC music packs that have traversed the web to play awesome music, like the soundtracks to Chrono Trigger and Actraiser. If I can learn anything about hardware design, I may even be able to make a standalone music box out of it. The box only needs 5V, and (supposedly) Basic Stamps are easy to program. Now all I need is money and time.
SUMMER VACATION!
One day, you'll get pissed off that you don't have an inline head bit, too, and you'll resort to this for opening up your Nintendo consoles.
On this occasion, I had smashed open the yellowing grey box to extract it's Audio Processing Unit, a small metal box manufactured by Nintendo's favorate hardware partner, Mitsumi, which features the SPC700 processor (S-SPU), a special purpose DSP (S-DSP), two 32K SRAM chips by Sharp and Hitachi, and a NEC Digital/Analogue converter. It's rather hard to believe how unusually sophisticated and advanced the SHVC-SOUND module is.
The SPC700, specifically, is an interesting piece of hardware. It's a somewhat simple microprocessor with six registers and 250 opcodes, with addressing for at least 64K, and running at 1024Hz. It's part in the APU team is to load instructions into it's internal RAM and execute it. Since the SNES' APU is just a glorified wavetable MIDI device, it's one megahertz speed is on par (most MIDI data transmission rates are set to 1MHz by default).
Most people will hear "the SPC700 was designed by Ken Kutaragi" and instantly turn into a Sony fanboy. For those of you who walk this path, I kick you. The SPC700 is, in essence, a really fancy sequencer. It takes note data and delivers it to the S-DSP when it needs to be played. The real genious is the DSP itself.
The S-DSP was, apperently, not designed by Ken Kutaragi, but by some poor peon who got backstabed by Kenny when he decided to hide the poor man's name from the public (and maybe kill him. I wouldn't doubt it if he did, too; he's just that freaky). The S-DSP is capable of storing its samples in a compressed form, making the minimal amount of SRAM three or four times more useful; it produces eight seperate channels of independant pitch, pan, and gain, all being controlled by individual ADSR envelopes, echo, and various digital filtering effects. The S-DSP is, in a single word, "Bomb."
So, I smashed apart my SNES (don't worry, it was broken anyway) for this litttle box. My plans for it? A PC interface for hardware sound synthesis (or is it sequencing? the line is somewhat vague there) Now, I can use those SPC music packs that have traversed the web to play awesome music, like the soundtracks to Chrono Trigger and Actraiser. If I can learn anything about hardware design, I may even be able to make a standalone music box out of it. The box only needs 5V, and (supposedly) Basic Stamps are easy to program. Now all I need is money and time.
SUMMER VACATION!
Saturday, May 17, 2008
High performance on a budget
I wanted to write a good article on how this new graphics card has made my computer awesome again, my oppinions on Assassin's Creed (which I finished) and Bioshock (Which I havn't finished, and probibly won't because I'm afraid that the story will be ruined by its ending), or perhaps throw you all off by reviewing Windam XP instead. But it turns out that I'm too absorbed in playing these games to review them. I'm going to finish my installation.
Here's a screenshot of Windam XP in the meanwhile:
Anyways, since I actually have a video card that wasn't made in the mid-sixteenth century now, I'm going to install GRUB so I can use linux with the ever-sexy KDE4 with all of it's prettyness.
Here's a screenshot of Windam XP in the meanwhile:
Anyways, since I actually have a video card that wasn't made in the mid-sixteenth century now, I'm going to install GRUB so I can use linux with the ever-sexy KDE4 with all of it's prettyness.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
It's International Akir-Music Appreciation Day!
Yes, it's time once more to listen to music butchered by DJ AkirIkasu.
First, the two most memorable songs from Actraiser.
Intermezzo
and
Filmore. Or at least it was Filmore untill I totally botched that one.
Props go to Yuzo Koshiro. He's just that awesome.
I got
a copy of FL Studio today, so the next song was made in it in a very different way. I still don't understand how to work it, but I discovered a wonderful feature; a soundfont player. Since I'm a big fan of the Mother/EarthBound series, I found a MIDI arrangement of Monkey Love Song on VGMusic.com, changed the default MIDI to the GeneralUser MIDI soundfont, then let FL Studio do the rest. Then I rendered the song in 32-bit float with 512-point sampling and used Audacity to convert it to crappy MP3. Flac may come soon for this song, but most likely not.
So, go listen to Monkey Love Song
And the crappy version of Filmore.
First, the two most memorable songs from Actraiser.
Intermezzo
and
Filmore. Or at least it was Filmore untill I totally botched that one.
Props go to Yuzo Koshiro. He's just that awesome.
I got
a copy of FL Studio today, so the next song was made in it in a very different way. I still don't understand how to work it, but I discovered a wonderful feature; a soundfont player. Since I'm a big fan of the Mother/EarthBound series, I found a MIDI arrangement of Monkey Love Song on VGMusic.com, changed the default MIDI to the GeneralUser MIDI soundfont, then let FL Studio do the rest. Then I rendered the song in 32-bit float with 512-point sampling and used Audacity to convert it to crappy MP3. Flac may come soon for this song, but most likely not.
So, go listen to Monkey Love Song
And the crappy version of Filmore.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
The Game is Spyware!
I was going to review another PS2 game, probibly Odin Sphere for it's most awesome animation, or Silent Hill: Origins, for it's utter stupidity overall. But then I got wrapped up in Gay Pride, which was insanely awesome in every way imaginable - and I only got to go to the parade, none of the other events of pride week.
- And I was about to write about it, but then I turned on the Disney Channel, and was surprised to see that something halfway interesting was on. That was Spy Kids 3: Game Over, better known as Spy Kids 3D.
Since I've been thinking about video games more then usual, the movie had appeal to me. It's a parody of video games in general, with a bit of satire on gamer culture mixed in (which is probably going to become hopelessly outdated if Nintendo's Wii has anything to say about that).
The whole purpose of writing this stupid little mini-article was to point out probibly the greatest irony in the history of filmmaking.
Anyone who's played practically any early DOS CD-ROM game would know about the Full-Motion-Video craze. The incredible amount of storage space (compared to the then-standard 1.44Mb Floppy disk) suddenly available to the majority of consumers prompted game developers to create games with what was previously unavailable: videos. Then they went to extremes and made games based on videos only. Thus we begin Digital Pictures' entire lifespan. Digital Pictures made games like this; nothing more, nothing less. They had the coding abilities of chimpanzees. Unfortunately, they had the acting and directing abilities of chimps as well. Just like every other FMV game developer.
... I just wanted to point out the irony that Spy Kids 3 was a parody of FMV games. Damn, I'm long-winded.
- And I was about to write about it, but then I turned on the Disney Channel, and was surprised to see that something halfway interesting was on. That was Spy Kids 3: Game Over, better known as Spy Kids 3D.
Since I've been thinking about video games more then usual, the movie had appeal to me. It's a parody of video games in general, with a bit of satire on gamer culture mixed in (which is probably going to become hopelessly outdated if Nintendo's Wii has anything to say about that).
The whole purpose of writing this stupid little mini-article was to point out probibly the greatest irony in the history of filmmaking.
Anyone who's played practically any early DOS CD-ROM game would know about the Full-Motion-Video craze. The incredible amount of storage space (compared to the then-standard 1.44Mb Floppy disk) suddenly available to the majority of consumers prompted game developers to create games with what was previously unavailable: videos. Then they went to extremes and made games based on videos only. Thus we begin Digital Pictures' entire lifespan. Digital Pictures made games like this; nothing more, nothing less. They had the coding abilities of chimpanzees. Unfortunately, they had the acting and directing abilities of chimps as well. Just like every other FMV game developer.
... I just wanted to point out the irony that Spy Kids 3 was a parody of FMV games. Damn, I'm long-winded.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Gaming in the Baroque Era
Warning: really long post.
Sting somewhat recently gave Atlus the rights to an interesting game; Baroque. What is Baroque?
I have no Idea. I just got a copy of the game, and it's incredibly strange. There is some sort of storyline, but it is definitely nonlinear. There is two pervasive clues to what Baroque is: it's a world of 'twisted pearls' and your goal is to 'absolve your sins'.
OK, let's pop in the disc!
That's actually a misunderstanding, as I actually transferred it to my new HDD and played it from there. More on that later. Maybe.
Instantly, one is assaulted with a pretty damn amazing hand-drawn animation of epilepsy-inducing random scenes distorted in various ways. Seriously, it is impressive. But still, it gives no hint of what the story is, goddamnit.
OK then, let's start a new game.
Opening cutscene. It's short, and makes no sense.
Without any form of notifying you, you are thrown into gameplay. Kinda - you're on the surface. you can talk to people and stuff, goddamnit. And there's this goddamn character who keeps cursing.
I don't know exactly why, but I really like the pervasive dissolved fading effect. It looks like you're playing a demented film from hell. I'm not kidding, it's awesome. Some people say it makes the game look terrible because they think that their TV is going bad. They are idiots. It's obviously good graphical design.
Back to the gameplay, as you try to get to the oddly-named Neuro Tower, a strange (yet sexy) angel stops you, comments on your defects (so you know that you're not getting a date, unfortunately), gives you a gigantic gun that 'has meaning in you using it', and sends you on your way.
Now you're in the neuro tower. There are more angels there. They're kinda fun. You start at level 1, of course, and weaponless. Happily, you can get weaponry and armory around the tower, if you would just look. Of course, nobody explained what you're supposed to do. Supposedly, doing this dungeon run is supposed to be what tells you what you're supposed to do. They don't even tell you the simple things, like attacking from the sides and back gives more damage, or that you can throw things for damage, and bones have special effects. There is a tutorial dungeon where they'll tell you some of these things, but there are several things that nobody will ever tell you EVER.
It doesn't really matter if you actually finish the first run or die from it. The same result happens either way.
The things that they do or do not tell you can really piss you off. I know it does for me. It really is extremely confusing. They tell you confusing things that you won't understand nearly always, or they'll tell you how to get those odd idea sephirahs [sic] and baroques that litter your understanding of the world. But you won't know when they're doing that because they sound EXACTLY like the nonsense they spew out all the time. Now here's the weird part: you find out later on that they were actually making scene, and they were giving either foreshadowing or storyline elements that you don't understand.
And this brings us to the idea of time. You know that it isn't exactly straightforward because you die and go back to the beginning, and yet things change based on what you did. At best guess, it's awash, or maybe concurrent. Or does time exist at all?
Since dungeons are the bulk of the game, we should really focus on that. It's hack and slash - and throw. Throwing is the major twist in gameplay. Throwing usually gives out a great deal more damage then straight out slashing, plus they have special effects, especially the bones. There's bones that explode, bones that make the effected sweat, bones that makes you sleepy, and bones that make the effected invincible. Notice that instead of saying 'you' or 'them'. This is because items can effect either yourself or enemies (meta-beings, which you kill by purification... Yeah, it's weird.) Then there are weirder items, like the summon torturer which summons every monster on the floor to the room that you're in. That sounds like a terrible item to have, but then you find that there's a half torturer, which kills every monster in the room. Use the experience bone, and you'll get major experience for it. Awesomesauce. And you get to do it to this excellent atmospheric music while doing it.
But then you get your AT. I don't quite remember what exactly it is. It's your vitality, but it's also been described as your soul. It constantly goes down, so you have to fight meta-beings in hopes that they'll drop a crystal which will give you an incredibly small number of AT points. The good thing about AT, however, is that while you have it, your HP will gradually increase. But when you don't have any, your HP will drop. This effectively forces you to move into the next floor quickly and keeps the action flowing.
Another weird thing is death. Death is not the end. In fact, you kinda need to die. It's the only way to get out of a dungeon if you can't finish it. This is just weird. But it doesn't matter anyway. Either way, you start off at the same spot again, and at level one.
OK, this game is weird (duh). But after playing it long enough, the WTF layer goes away and it starts to make scene. Oh god. Saying that makes me feel sick / partly insane. Like baroques: they're for the people to tolerate their world (or something like that). And then the game becomes reviewable, which is where I am right now.
Since this only happened recently, I can't say what's going to happen, especially because the game is so fucked up in so many ways. I think that the overabundance of christian symbolism could possibly add up to a very good story, if it works out. But I have no idea where it's going because of the extremely nonstandard storytelling techniques.
But working through the game through the first 'real' run through the neuro tower really explains a lot and makes the story make scene. Having an amnesiac persona is cliched, but Baroque pulls if off in a good way. Its out-of-order storytelling techniques makes amnesia a requirement. Oddly enough, the storytelling method concretes the overall theme of a broken, twisted world, while keeping it interesting. In fact, if it was presented from the beginning in order, it would be extremely boring. To think that someone said that Baroque would be better as a book or manga. The fool, I had to create a gamespot account just to chide him.
Baroque completely destroys JRPG stereotypes. Since the story actually glides past you as you're playing instead of interrupting it, it plays much more smoothly then probably any other game. Like Evolution (another STING dungeon crawl), it innovates and modernizes the rogue-like dungeon crawler genre while creating a great involving game.
In a scale with ten being the highest score, I give Baroque a rating of 9. Surprised? I know, it seems weird, but this is a distorted world, isn't it? The only real problem about this game is its cliff-like learning curve. People have said that the graphics suck, but that is so far out of the park that the team got three points. This is one of the few games where the actual gameplay models look exactly like the final character designs. It's like the drawings have come alive, it's so good.
It's been a long time since a random dungeon crawl has been so creatively and originally executed. For this alone, this game is worth a buy. But be wary; I've heard that the Wii version of the game suffers from bad controls. But luckally, the PS2 version of the game is sexelent.
Sting somewhat recently gave Atlus the rights to an interesting game; Baroque. What is Baroque?
I have no Idea. I just got a copy of the game, and it's incredibly strange. There is some sort of storyline, but it is definitely nonlinear. There is two pervasive clues to what Baroque is: it's a world of 'twisted pearls' and your goal is to 'absolve your sins'.
OK, let's pop in the disc!
That's actually a misunderstanding, as I actually transferred it to my new HDD and played it from there. More on that later. Maybe.
Instantly, one is assaulted with a pretty damn amazing hand-drawn animation of epilepsy-inducing random scenes distorted in various ways. Seriously, it is impressive. But still, it gives no hint of what the story is, goddamnit.
OK then, let's start a new game.
Opening cutscene. It's short, and makes no sense.
Without any form of notifying you, you are thrown into gameplay. Kinda - you're on the surface. you can talk to people and stuff, goddamnit. And there's this goddamn character who keeps cursing.
I don't know exactly why, but I really like the pervasive dissolved fading effect. It looks like you're playing a demented film from hell. I'm not kidding, it's awesome. Some people say it makes the game look terrible because they think that their TV is going bad. They are idiots. It's obviously good graphical design.
Back to the gameplay, as you try to get to the oddly-named Neuro Tower, a strange (yet sexy) angel stops you, comments on your defects (so you know that you're not getting a date, unfortunately), gives you a gigantic gun that 'has meaning in you using it', and sends you on your way.
Now you're in the neuro tower. There are more angels there. They're kinda fun. You start at level 1, of course, and weaponless. Happily, you can get weaponry and armory around the tower, if you would just look. Of course, nobody explained what you're supposed to do. Supposedly, doing this dungeon run is supposed to be what tells you what you're supposed to do. They don't even tell you the simple things, like attacking from the sides and back gives more damage, or that you can throw things for damage, and bones have special effects. There is a tutorial dungeon where they'll tell you some of these things, but there are several things that nobody will ever tell you EVER.
It doesn't really matter if you actually finish the first run or die from it. The same result happens either way.
The things that they do or do not tell you can really piss you off. I know it does for me. It really is extremely confusing. They tell you confusing things that you won't understand nearly always, or they'll tell you how to get those odd idea sephirahs [sic] and baroques that litter your understanding of the world. But you won't know when they're doing that because they sound EXACTLY like the nonsense they spew out all the time. Now here's the weird part: you find out later on that they were actually making scene, and they were giving either foreshadowing or storyline elements that you don't understand.
And this brings us to the idea of time. You know that it isn't exactly straightforward because you die and go back to the beginning, and yet things change based on what you did. At best guess, it's awash, or maybe concurrent. Or does time exist at all?
Since dungeons are the bulk of the game, we should really focus on that. It's hack and slash - and throw. Throwing is the major twist in gameplay. Throwing usually gives out a great deal more damage then straight out slashing, plus they have special effects, especially the bones. There's bones that explode, bones that make the effected sweat, bones that makes you sleepy, and bones that make the effected invincible. Notice that instead of saying 'you' or 'them'. This is because items can effect either yourself or enemies (meta-beings, which you kill by purification... Yeah, it's weird.) Then there are weirder items, like the summon torturer which summons every monster on the floor to the room that you're in. That sounds like a terrible item to have, but then you find that there's a half torturer, which kills every monster in the room. Use the experience bone, and you'll get major experience for it. Awesomesauce. And you get to do it to this excellent atmospheric music while doing it.
But then you get your AT. I don't quite remember what exactly it is. It's your vitality, but it's also been described as your soul. It constantly goes down, so you have to fight meta-beings in hopes that they'll drop a crystal which will give you an incredibly small number of AT points. The good thing about AT, however, is that while you have it, your HP will gradually increase. But when you don't have any, your HP will drop. This effectively forces you to move into the next floor quickly and keeps the action flowing.
Another weird thing is death. Death is not the end. In fact, you kinda need to die. It's the only way to get out of a dungeon if you can't finish it. This is just weird. But it doesn't matter anyway. Either way, you start off at the same spot again, and at level one.
OK, this game is weird (duh). But after playing it long enough, the WTF layer goes away and it starts to make scene. Oh god. Saying that makes me feel sick / partly insane. Like baroques: they're for the people to tolerate their world (or something like that). And then the game becomes reviewable, which is where I am right now.
Since this only happened recently, I can't say what's going to happen, especially because the game is so fucked up in so many ways. I think that the overabundance of christian symbolism could possibly add up to a very good story, if it works out. But I have no idea where it's going because of the extremely nonstandard storytelling techniques.
But working through the game through the first 'real' run through the neuro tower really explains a lot and makes the story make scene. Having an amnesiac persona is cliched, but Baroque pulls if off in a good way. Its out-of-order storytelling techniques makes amnesia a requirement. Oddly enough, the storytelling method concretes the overall theme of a broken, twisted world, while keeping it interesting. In fact, if it was presented from the beginning in order, it would be extremely boring. To think that someone said that Baroque would be better as a book or manga. The fool, I had to create a gamespot account just to chide him.
Baroque completely destroys JRPG stereotypes. Since the story actually glides past you as you're playing instead of interrupting it, it plays much more smoothly then probably any other game. Like Evolution (another STING dungeon crawl), it innovates and modernizes the rogue-like dungeon crawler genre while creating a great involving game.
In a scale with ten being the highest score, I give Baroque a rating of 9. Surprised? I know, it seems weird, but this is a distorted world, isn't it? The only real problem about this game is its cliff-like learning curve. People have said that the graphics suck, but that is so far out of the park that the team got three points. This is one of the few games where the actual gameplay models look exactly like the final character designs. It's like the drawings have come alive, it's so good.
It's been a long time since a random dungeon crawl has been so creatively and originally executed. For this alone, this game is worth a buy. But be wary; I've heard that the Wii version of the game suffers from bad controls. But luckally, the PS2 version of the game is sexelent.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The Best Things
Lately, I've been thinking about an idiom. “The best things in life are free.” It got me thinking, what are the best things which are free? Since it is an idiom, I immediately began thinking about the things that the people who say the phrase would say they are. Like the sweetness of an apple, the refreshing flow of water, the beauty of a sunrise or sunset, and spending time with a special friend.
But then I've noticed that most of these things have been spoiled, at least here in Vegas.
Why was Las Vegas even founded? It was a mining town. There was silver in these great dusty mountains surrounding us. But then the silver dried up; no more reason for prospectors to stay. What was it that motivated people to stay here? There were no rivers to drink from, no food for livestock; there was only miles and miles of dust and dirt. The only thing they had going for them was that Nevada had legalized prostitution. The state still does, but ironically, now that Las Vegas is so large, it's illegal in this county.
So here we are, stuck in a land where the best things in life are imported for a heavy price, our water is barely drinkable, and our beautiful skys are ruined by our own ambitious land development projects (let's not even mention that sword of light pollution, that pointless waste of our planet's limited energy, that symbol of monetary power that steals away our once marveled night sky).
But then I've noticed that most of these things have been spoiled, at least here in Vegas.
Why was Las Vegas even founded? It was a mining town. There was silver in these great dusty mountains surrounding us. But then the silver dried up; no more reason for prospectors to stay. What was it that motivated people to stay here? There were no rivers to drink from, no food for livestock; there was only miles and miles of dust and dirt. The only thing they had going for them was that Nevada had legalized prostitution. The state still does, but ironically, now that Las Vegas is so large, it's illegal in this county.
So here we are, stuck in a land where the best things in life are imported for a heavy price, our water is barely drinkable, and our beautiful skys are ruined by our own ambitious land development projects (let's not even mention that sword of light pollution, that pointless waste of our planet's limited energy, that symbol of monetary power that steals away our once marveled night sky).
Monday, April 21, 2008
Network Statistics
I've probibly violated the AUP, but who cares!
I captured some packets from the school's network, with some suprising results. Here they are; as I first noted them.
I captured some packets from the school's network, with some suprising results. Here they are; as I first noted them.
20813 packets captured in total
5782 ARP packets captured
7788 DCE/RPC packets captured (all malformed)
2467 NBNS packets captured
802 ZIP packets captured
381 BROWSER packets captured
59 IGMP packets captured
5 computers used in local room alone
421 seconds of capture
6943818 bytes captured total, out of a 65535 byte packet size limit. So there is an average of 334 bytes/packet.
All these protocals are used to automate network structure and IP addresses. Only 3534 of these 20813 packets are used for actual 'work' packets. If the network were properly configured, 41 packets/second, or 13679 bytes/second could be saved.
Split in Twine
Good news, those of you tired of me complaining about my abysmal romantic life!
I'm not going to bitch about it anymore!
At least not here. I've decided to bitch about it on my dating profile. No. I'm not telling you where it is. So if you are my stalker, ready to pronounce your love for me, go ahead and do it already. My Email address is all across the internet (and some bathroom stalls).
See? A joke. It means that I'm ok.
God, I need to get laid.
I'm not going to bitch about it anymore!
At least not here. I've decided to bitch about it on my dating profile. No. I'm not telling you where it is. So if you are my stalker, ready to pronounce your love for me, go ahead and do it already. My Email address is all across the internet (and some bathroom stalls).
See? A joke. It means that I'm ok.
God, I need to get laid.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
That Which Has Been Learned
The title of this post has a link to an interesting Wikipedia entry. It's on Learned Helplessness.
The idea interests me. Having this new knowlege of a cause of depression opens up the boundry of self-exploration. The only problem is that I'm not completely aware of what it is that caused this learned helplessness, if I have it.
Wow, that was short. Why did I even start writing this?
The idea interests me. Having this new knowlege of a cause of depression opens up the boundry of self-exploration. The only problem is that I'm not completely aware of what it is that caused this learned helplessness, if I have it.
Wow, that was short. Why did I even start writing this?
Sunday, March 16, 2008
In the news: Akir still bitches about lonliness.
Yeah, yeah, I don't have a boyfriend still, And I'm still complaining. But this time, I've actually tried harder then the other times, so perhaps my frustration is justified somewhat.
Let's see... I met Cameron, a guy who goes to Clark, online, and was trying to get a date out of him, but it turns out that he was waiting until after he decided where he was going to college before he had a serious relationship. Then I found out about a black gay guy, but I was too utterly spaced out with trying to program the genesis (a terrible thing to try to do) to realize that I had a wide-open chance to ask him out on a date.
And then, there is another guy. I know him from a youth group that I go to. I don't think I'll mention his name here yet, out of embarrassment; the slightest chance that he reads this. I was thinking about asking him out on a date or something, but he left early, so I didn't get the chance. I really wish that I had more bravery on this kind of thing. Heck, it's much easier asking some random person to go have sex. I can't tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing, really. But I'm concerned about how far my loneliness can go....
not to mention my self-pity....
Let's see... I met Cameron, a guy who goes to Clark, online, and was trying to get a date out of him, but it turns out that he was waiting until after he decided where he was going to college before he had a serious relationship. Then I found out about a black gay guy, but I was too utterly spaced out with trying to program the genesis (a terrible thing to try to do) to realize that I had a wide-open chance to ask him out on a date.
And then, there is another guy. I know him from a youth group that I go to. I don't think I'll mention his name here yet, out of embarrassment; the slightest chance that he reads this. I was thinking about asking him out on a date or something, but he left early, so I didn't get the chance. I really wish that I had more bravery on this kind of thing. Heck, it's much easier asking some random person to go have sex. I can't tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing, really. But I'm concerned about how far my loneliness can go....
not to mention my self-pity....
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Behold, The Ending World
I don't know much about this bitch, but, certainly, I don't appreciate being compared to a terrorist. How could a person like this even get elected?
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Continuation
Here I go again. Since Square Unix of America decided to release The World Ends With You in the NA region, they put up an american site. What did I learn from it? One thing: They're changing the music. That just plain sucks. The music is the best part of Subarashii Kono Sekai.
But with my odd obsession, I took advantage of the non-accented version of the song looping on it's site and wrote down what I think its lyrics are.
Goodbye, Mr. Twister.
But with my odd obsession, I took advantage of the non-accented version of the song looping on it's site and wrote down what I think its lyrics are.
Brainwave means when saku gotta hide key collect the select to show you got the best sir crystal blister it's all over now sakocain usokane need some more candycanes kokei ko the freek had got a high mister twister the moster with the woster stick it up take it up step outside a zoo effects the defect take a bow to the moon brainwaves made from psycho gotta high kick collect and select to show you got the best sir crystal blister its all over now psychocane you so cain need some more candycanes kokei ko you freak you gotta hike mister twister moister with the wodister stick it up take it up step aside to see the world effects to defects take a bow to the moon effects to defects take a bow to the moon.
Morning rays hairspring queens get on their way to the nest to the west honest they once had a dream belles of society shells of the unity cornets and spinnettes and sound flows followed to their homes dragged by the powers of their dreams the power is yet unknown.
Goodbye, Mr. Twister.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Evidence
Evidence of my insanity, that is. Hearing the English version of Twister from The World Ends With You, after hearing the better original Twister from Subarashii Kono Sekai, I decided to try to figure out the lyrics. Here we go....
Yeah, if you sing along, it actually fits. Next up: my interpretation of the meaning of the lyrics.
wain way name is like a girl high kikuwak sulayak show me your best sir crystal blister it's so everynore sukercane is okey need more candycanes Kokai ko the treeks gotta high take a mister twister moist with the woister stick it up take it up step is atta sudawola facts with the facks take a bow to the moon ray way man the saik it gotta high kikuwak sulayak show me your best sir twister blister it's so everynow sukkercane userkane need more candycane kokai ko the freaks gotta high take a mister twister boy with the woister stick it up check it up step is atta sudawoola facts with the facks take a bow to the moon facts to the facks take a bow to the moon
morning rays hairspring clues get on to the way to the mast to the west to be honest be one set of dreams belle of society themselves to the unity cornet and speenet and sound flows flows through the home drugged by the power of the dream The power is yet unknown
morning rays hairspring clues get on to the way to the mast to the west to be honest be one set of dreams belle of society themselves to the unity cornet and speenet and sound flows flows through the home Drugged by the power of the dream The power is yet unknown
Yeah, if you sing along, it actually fits. Next up: my interpretation of the meaning of the lyrics.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Vista - All it Was Cracked Up to Be.
I never thought I'd be doing this, but I'm reviewing Windows Vista. This one's for you, Stephen.
Well, to tell you the truth, this isn't so much a review of Vista as it is a review of my experiences with Vista, but then you're going into highly unimportant semantics.
The Beginning, or Where Did Dell go Wrong?
The copy of Vista I have is an OEM from Dell. It came with a bunch of Core 2 machines that the school bought for their new buildings. Now this is the part where I tell you all how incredibly stupid the people at Dell are. I know you all want to hear this. Nobody else is capable of seeing all of their stupidities, it seems.
First, the copy of Vista that came with those Core 2 machines was Vista Business 32-bit. Stupid, because Core 2s are all 64-bit processors. Running a 32-bit OS forces the processor to run in compatibility mode at all times (The BIOS on your motherboard may use 64-bit code, but it's most likely 8- or 16-bit code). The second stupid thing that Dell did was to include graphics cards that only have a DVI connector for it - even though all of our monitors use VGA. This cost the district thousands of dollars in DVIm\HD-15f adapters. Third, we have no dell computers newer then ~5 years with PS/2 ports for keyboards and mice, forcing us to adopt technically more expensive USB peripherals. Fourth, we put our own HD images on the computers anyway, so we're paying for copies of Windows that we don't use. Fifth, they gave us laptops with expansion ports open to the environment. Open to being shorted accidentally just by puting them on our electricity-conducting desks. Open to permanent damage to it's internals.
The Middle, or Microsoft is Your Friend (Sometimes)
This part isn't too bad. It's what happens before you install any operating system - you make sure that it'll work.
In this case, Microsoft provides a Vista compatibility tool, dubbed the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. Let me now bash this tool.
Problem one: It needs to be installed. Why would one install a tool that will immediately be erased as soon as the upgrade happens? That's just plain stupid. Don't they beta test these things?
Problem two: It relies on the .Net foundation. The developers at Microsoft are truely demented. Most users won't have .Net because they don't need it. After all, most users don't develop. So, in order to install a tool that will be erased, one needs to install a programming framework that will also be erased once they install Vista. Whoopee!
I downloaded it, installed it, ran it, then uninstalled it. The only thing it told me that I didn't know was that Vista actually supported my graphics card. That was a real surprise. It did, however, recommended that I replace it with a better one. Makes sense, since it's only compatible with DirectX6.
I popped in the Vista disc after that, just to browse through the DVD. There wasn't really anything extra, like previous versions of Windows had (What's Windows without stupid sample videos?). It had a directory named EFI. Great if it supports that (finally)! There was another one cryptically labled SOURCES. There were no source code files within. Some of the executables were able to run on XP, though, so it looks that Microsoft doesn't care to update it's tools, as usual.
Since I've done all that I could, I ^F4, R ed out of there, rebooting.
The End, in Which Vista Proves its Value
Unfortunately, however nice the BIOS was on my PC, it would freeze whenever I'd power on my external USB HDD, which I'd planned to install Vista on. I figured that I had an extra partition anyway, so I just left it off so I could install on the internal SATA drive.
When it had 'booted' the CD, it only gave a simple text prompt saying to press any key to boot this CD or DVD. Badly worded, but well understood. I pressed the spacebar. A short while later, I was presented with a simple black and white display. There was a large progress in the lower section, with a lable that read "Please wait while Windows loads files" or something like that. I liked that screen. A wonderful minimalistic motif plus an even more minimalistic font created art together.
It didn't take too long for that bar to become completely white (A sign that Microsoft's employees are mostly white supremacists). When that happened, the screen went blank for a while, then I got the default Vista background, which wasn't as artistic, and surely not as minimalistic, as it's previous screen. It took less then a second for the mouse cursor to pop up after that.
Then the DVD drive did something amazing! It did this, to the word: absolutely nothing. It stopped reading the disc. My attempt to run Vista, a failure. Maybe it was my fault? Then I guess that the spacebar doesn't count as a 'key' to Microsoft, since pushing that down was all I did. In that case, I'm joining the whitespace revolution to allow the spacebar official recognition from Microsoft. For your information, reader, I do acknowledge the spacebar - it's a wonderful key, and I've used it several times in this article, e v e n w h e r e i t ' s n o t n e e d e d . Untill Microsoft complies with our demands, I will not install Vista.
The Denoument, or Where Akir Says Irrevalent Things
Since this article was nothing but an organized rant, I can't summarize anything but the fact that those who design for computers are out of touch with the world. I can, however, make a conclusion. That conclusion is this: This has been the best experience with Vista I've ever had. Seriously.
Well, to tell you the truth, this isn't so much a review of Vista as it is a review of my experiences with Vista, but then you're going into highly unimportant semantics.
The Beginning, or Where Did Dell go Wrong?
The copy of Vista I have is an OEM from Dell. It came with a bunch of Core 2 machines that the school bought for their new buildings. Now this is the part where I tell you all how incredibly stupid the people at Dell are. I know you all want to hear this. Nobody else is capable of seeing all of their stupidities, it seems.
First, the copy of Vista that came with those Core 2 machines was Vista Business 32-bit. Stupid, because Core 2s are all 64-bit processors. Running a 32-bit OS forces the processor to run in compatibility mode at all times (The BIOS on your motherboard may use 64-bit code, but it's most likely 8- or 16-bit code). The second stupid thing that Dell did was to include graphics cards that only have a DVI connector for it - even though all of our monitors use VGA. This cost the district thousands of dollars in DVIm\HD-15f adapters. Third, we have no dell computers newer then ~5 years with PS/2 ports for keyboards and mice, forcing us to adopt technically more expensive USB peripherals. Fourth, we put our own HD images on the computers anyway, so we're paying for copies of Windows that we don't use. Fifth, they gave us laptops with expansion ports open to the environment. Open to being shorted accidentally just by puting them on our electricity-conducting desks. Open to permanent damage to it's internals.
The Middle, or Microsoft is Your Friend (Sometimes)
This part isn't too bad. It's what happens before you install any operating system - you make sure that it'll work.
In this case, Microsoft provides a Vista compatibility tool, dubbed the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. Let me now bash this tool.
Problem one: It needs to be installed. Why would one install a tool that will immediately be erased as soon as the upgrade happens? That's just plain stupid. Don't they beta test these things?
Problem two: It relies on the .Net foundation. The developers at Microsoft are truely demented. Most users won't have .Net because they don't need it. After all, most users don't develop. So, in order to install a tool that will be erased, one needs to install a programming framework that will also be erased once they install Vista. Whoopee!
I downloaded it, installed it, ran it, then uninstalled it. The only thing it told me that I didn't know was that Vista actually supported my graphics card. That was a real surprise. It did, however, recommended that I replace it with a better one. Makes sense, since it's only compatible with DirectX6.
I popped in the Vista disc after that, just to browse through the DVD. There wasn't really anything extra, like previous versions of Windows had (What's Windows without stupid sample videos?). It had a directory named EFI. Great if it supports that (finally)! There was another one cryptically labled SOURCES. There were no source code files within. Some of the executables were able to run on XP, though, so it looks that Microsoft doesn't care to update it's tools, as usual.
Since I've done all that I could, I ^F4, R ed out of there, rebooting.
The End, in Which Vista Proves its Value
Unfortunately, however nice the BIOS was on my PC, it would freeze whenever I'd power on my external USB HDD, which I'd planned to install Vista on. I figured that I had an extra partition anyway, so I just left it off so I could install on the internal SATA drive.
When it had 'booted' the CD, it only gave a simple text prompt saying to press any key to boot this CD or DVD. Badly worded, but well understood. I pressed the spacebar. A short while later, I was presented with a simple black and white display. There was a large progress in the lower section, with a lable that read "Please wait while Windows loads files" or something like that. I liked that screen. A wonderful minimalistic motif plus an even more minimalistic font created art together.
It didn't take too long for that bar to become completely white (A sign that Microsoft's employees are mostly white supremacists). When that happened, the screen went blank for a while, then I got the default Vista background, which wasn't as artistic, and surely not as minimalistic, as it's previous screen. It took less then a second for the mouse cursor to pop up after that.
Then the DVD drive did something amazing! It did this, to the word: absolutely nothing. It stopped reading the disc. My attempt to run Vista, a failure. Maybe it was my fault? Then I guess that the spacebar doesn't count as a 'key' to Microsoft, since pushing that down was all I did. In that case, I'm joining the whitespace revolution to allow the spacebar official recognition from Microsoft. For your information, reader, I do acknowledge the spacebar - it's a wonderful key, and I've used it several times in this article, e v e n w h e r e i t ' s n o t n e e d e d . Untill Microsoft complies with our demands, I will not install Vista.
The Denoument, or Where Akir Says Irrevalent Things
Since this article was nothing but an organized rant, I can't summarize anything but the fact that those who design for computers are out of touch with the world. I can, however, make a conclusion. That conclusion is this: This has been the best experience with Vista I've ever had. Seriously.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Blatent Advertizing
Today in the news: Akir translates Yaoi. Most of my friends already know anyway. I've joined in with Liquid Passion and Biblo Eros. My first project: Mousou Catalogue.
Well, I'm only remastering the visual aspect, but it's still a lot of work. I'm essentially in charge of everything you see. And yes, It's sexy.
Well, I'm only remastering the visual aspect, but it's still a lot of work. I'm essentially in charge of everything you see. And yes, It's sexy.
Friday, January 25, 2008
The Death of an Era
Someone has looked at my website at helloworldcreative.com at one time or another. Unfortunately, I can't pay for it (which is sad, since it only costs me about $40 for the entire year). So it, along with everything on it, is going offline.
As a result, I'm going to make my google pages account useful again. If there's any media that I need to publish, then it's probibly going to be at FirstAkir.googlepages.com. Gee, I guess an update is in order.
As a result, I'm going to make my google pages account useful again. If there's any media that I need to publish, then it's probibly going to be at FirstAkir.googlepages.com. Gee, I guess an update is in order.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Frequency of Lemming Suicide Increasing.
It's not so much that I'll be playing Lemmings anymore then I already am (which is never). It's just that I've realized that I haven't made enough of an obnoxious announcement of my new computer. It's especially unusual because It's been over a week now.
So, here's the specs.
If you scrutinize these features, you'll find that this computer's not that good. But that's all washed away by it's tiny price: ~$250.
Do you feel PWND yet?
P.S. If you didn't understand how the article related to it's title, it's because Lemmings depended on the CPU clock for timing, so my increase in clock speed is relational to the frequency of Lemming suicide.
So, here's the specs.
- NanoBTX form factor
- tiny, yet managable
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
- Brisbane series 65 nm SOI
- 64 + 64 KiB (Data + instructions) L1 cache per core
- 512 KiB fullspeed L2 cache per core
- 2500 MHz external clock
- BIOS option for overclocking
- two decoding core units
- out-of order processing
- MMX, Extended 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, AMD64, Cool'n'Quiet, NX Bit, AMD Virtualization
- miniscule 65 W power consumption
- SiS 761GX chipset + 966L Southbridge Motherboard
- 1000 MHz front side bus
- Hypertransport bus
- PCI and PCIexpress onboard
- USB2.0 onboard
- on-die Realtek AC`97 High-definition audio and SiS Mirage graphics (located on southbridge)
- pATA and SATA
- fully ACPI complient
- hardware support for RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD.
- black aluminum case
- three individually controlled fans
- front audio and USB ports
- kewl blue power LED
- 4 GB DDR2 SDRAM
- it's just ... too awesome. :P
- 360 GB SATA HDD
- offers more storage space then all of my previous HDDs combined.
- 2 optical drives
- dual-layer DVD writer
- DVD -+ R/W, DVD RAM writing
- buffer underrun protection
- Lightscribe
- DVD/CD-R combo
- reads CD+G, too, so I can do karaoke. :P
- I seriously only have this because it can write CDs at 8x speed. The other one doesn't support 8x, and I need that to write Dreamcast discs.
- Floppy!
- Holds a MASSIVE 1.44 MEGAbytes! W00T!
- Take that, Magneto-optical drives!
- holds up to Shugart Association standards!
- Uses Double-Sided Double-Density 2.5" diskettes
- PWNs 10" drives.
- Windows!
- The door that covers the floppy drive opens and closes like a hinged window!
- There's another for the front USB and audio ports.
- Software
- Windows XP.
- 32-bit version, not utilizing full computing potential
- supports partitions only if they're under 137 GB
- fails to install proper RAID drivers
- fails to install proper SATA drivers
- fails to install proper USB drivers
- works somewhat, at USB1.1 speeds.
- has SOME redeeming properties
- Adobe CS3 Master suit
- ... it's working (for now)?
- Linux!
- Not even started to be installed!
- There's a partition for it!
- I'm building this one from source!
- It's gonna take advantage of ALL features of the system, unlike SOME operating systems we know....
- KVM!
- Makes girls think you're sexy.
If you scrutinize these features, you'll find that this computer's not that good. But that's all washed away by it's tiny price: ~$250.
Do you feel PWND yet?
P.S. If you didn't understand how the article related to it's title, it's because Lemmings depended on the CPU clock for timing, so my increase in clock speed is relational to the frequency of Lemming suicide.
Friday, January 18, 2008
The Glory of Good Samples
The arrival of some good sound samples has opened up my door somewhat. I've decided to make some good music. But then again, I only changed some MIDI files some people from the internet (exactly who, I cannot tell) transposed from games. The only problem with them is that they have the tendency to be unbelievably terrible once you get them away from the FM synth.
They're all in Ogg Vorbis. Get used to it.
The first song I worked on happens to be the worst of the bunch. It's an infamous tune from Shining in the Darkness. Take a listen.
Then I did a tune from Chrono Cross. Yasunori Mitsuda is a genous. I made this one with the "CP-80 FM" instrument, from the sheer lack of ram that the standard MIDI-use piano instrument needs - which is sad because I've maxed out the ram in this computer. It's pretty good.
The last one I did uses a variety of intsruments. Although the author of the original MIDI didn't stop some of the instruments from playing, he only set them to play at one volume at a time, and so in some places, it doesn't sound very well mixed. But it's impossible to get compiled into a single Ogg file for some reason, so I won't upload it it.
They're all in Ogg Vorbis. Get used to it.
The first song I worked on happens to be the worst of the bunch. It's an infamous tune from Shining in the Darkness. Take a listen.
Then I did a tune from Chrono Cross. Yasunori Mitsuda is a genous. I made this one with the "CP-80 FM" instrument, from the sheer lack of ram that the standard MIDI-use piano instrument needs - which is sad because I've maxed out the ram in this computer. It's pretty good.
The last one I did uses a variety of intsruments. Although the author of the original MIDI didn't stop some of the instruments from playing, he only set them to play at one volume at a time, and so in some places, it doesn't sound very well mixed. But it's impossible to get compiled into a single Ogg file for some reason, so I won't upload it it.
Monday, January 07, 2008
We Remain Undermedicated.
Yes, yes. Undermedicated. It's been somewhere between two and three months since I've had my Prozac proscription filled. Much too long. I've fallen into deep depression, then I rose above myself by the sheer force of my will. A badly trained psychologist would call me bipolar.
Now is one of the times that I'm low. It's been dragging along like this for a while. You know that it's getting bad when you listen to Evanescence's songs and agree with them.
Well, I'm going to get lucky soon, I guess. My doctor's finally coming in from his SIX-MONTH VACATION, so I can finally get my prescription refilled.
Now is one of the times that I'm low. It's been dragging along like this for a while. You know that it's getting bad when you listen to Evanescence's songs and agree with them.
Well, I'm going to get lucky soon, I guess. My doctor's finally coming in from his SIX-MONTH VACATION, so I can finally get my prescription refilled.
Happy Birthday Stephen!
He emailed me about it, and I realized that I don't know when his birthday anymore. That's OK, I don't know most of anyone's birthdays anymore.
So now I'm going to congratulate everyone on their birthdays.
"Happy Birthday parents, relatives, distant relatives, friends, acquaintances, potential lovers, and sister! たんじょびおめでと！"
So now I'm going to congratulate everyone on their birthdays.
"Happy Birthday parents, relatives, distant relatives, friends, acquaintances, potential lovers, and sister! たんじょびおめでと！"
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