HalfALoafOfTofu

Vita la Evolución (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:49:47 -0500

Vita la Evolución (Taken with instagram)

Good morning front yard… (Taken with instagram)

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:29:51 -0500

Good morning front yard… (Taken with instagram)

Elegant cutting tools… (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:19:20 -0500

Elegant cutting tools… (Taken with instagram)

I’m not sure if my car is smiling or wincing… (Taken...

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:42:41 -0500

I’m not sure if my car is smiling or wincing… (Taken with instagram)

Good morning to you too! (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:55:32 -0500

Good morning to you too! (Taken with instagram)

The wallpaper in question… (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:07:21 -0500

The wallpaper in question… (Taken with instagram)

True words… (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:57:39 -0500

True words… (Taken with instagram)

Back...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:31:01 -0500

Hello again.

Every year for the past few years I keep telling myself I need to start writing (or really more like blurbing) again. Alas, I’ve finally got off my lazy ass and will start posting more again (as I bounce from blogging engine to blogging engine).

The Flying Pigeon

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Somebody messaged me on Facebook today about my opinion of my Flying Pigeon and whether or not he should buy one. Not having posted in ages, and feeling like sharing a bit I decided to post my reply here, enjoy!

I pretty much love my Pigeon. As for the build quality, that depends on what you’re used to, but I’d say it’s fair. It’s different from most bikes you see in your typical store these says because they’re all modern bikes and the Pigeon is still essentially a 1949 design still being built exactly the way it was 50+ years ago.

It’s all steel and weighs a ton. It still uses push rod brakes that are rubbish (but stupidly easy to maintain) and it has a pretty primitive steel wheel (strong as hell though). The tires it comes with were garbage (got 3 flats within a couple of weeks, but downtown LA is pretty rough on tires), so I replaced those with some really nice puncture resistant ones from Schwalbe. Speaking of tires, it’ll be hard to find replacement ones for it since it uses a rare size that’s really old and only really used in China and the Netherlands (but like I said, Schwalbe makes several tires in the correct size).

Mine had some pretty shoddy assembly (crooked decals and handlebars). But the bike is soooo easy to work with since it’s so primitive and the frame is ridiculously solid. Makes a bit of clatter when riding since you’ve got a full rear kickstand and fenders and a full chain case.

I’ve commuted to work on it before (12.5mi. each way) but Downtown and South and West LA are pretty flat, so it being single speed is OK… Other areas (like Echo Park, Silver Lake, etc..) are really hilly so unless you’re a strong rider you’re gonna be walking the bike uphill. But then it’s meant to cruise at a leasurely pace on a relatively flat topography (Beijing for example is really flat). It rides quite a bit different than most modern bikes though too. It has REALLY relaxed frame angles (since it’s pretty much a copy of old English and Dutch roadsters) so you ride very upright. It gets a little tricky if you’re trying to ride really aggressive leaning over the handlebars and peddling furiously because the front fork is swept really far forward and the handlebars are swept so far back that the bike gets a little unstable. Also, with the big tires and steering setup it’s a little difficult to ride at really slow speeds (like walking pace). However because of it’s relaxed geometry and REALLY long wheelbase, it makes for a VERY comfortable cruiser. Once you get used to it you’ll have no problem and you’ll probably develop better riding balance.

I can’t speak on the issue of snow since I do live in LA and have never ridden a bicycle in snow. I think the bike is geared a little too tall for snow riding (in my uneducated opinion), although if you’re a strong rider it may be fine. My main concern with snow is wet rims. Bicycle brakes generally degrade in performance as the rim gets colder, and obviously lose friction when getting wet, and the Pigeon’s brakes are absolutely rubbish in the wet. On the other hand, the fenders keep you clean and dry and the full chain case keeps your drivetrain nice and clean running (although makes rear wheel removal a pain).

With regards to gearing and snow, one option I’ve been contemplating has been trying to retrofit my Pigeon with a Sturmey Archer 3-speed geared hub. They still make the AW (A 60+ year old design) which many English roadsters of similar ilk as the Pigeon had. Plus supposedly they make them with support for 40 spoke holes (the Pigeon has the old 32/40 spoke setup, and most modern hubs are either 32 or 36 spoke), which is important since there’s be less work in integrating the geared hub with the factory rim. Shimano, SRAM, Sturmey Archer, and Rholoff all make newer, more modern hubs with more gears, but they’d require significantly more work and the modern look of them IMO may clash a bit too much with the older look of the bike.

Now this may sound like a lot of negatives about the bike, but in spite of all that I still really love this bike. When all I see all around me are generic road bikes and mountain bikes, my Pigeon sticks out as glaringly stylish and retro (which is probably why they command a ridiculously high price in New York). I get people stopping me and asking me about it all the time and get some pretty amusing looks from lots of Chinese folks when I go riding around in Chinatown. I tend to have some rather particular tastes as I’m really into 40’s to 60’s English and Dutch style roadsters and late 70’s to late 80’s Japanese steel track bikes (Keirin). Electra and Schwinn make some really pretty bikes in a somewhat similar vein but to get one in the configuration I wanted, I would be looking at around $600 USD. A real nice Dutch roadster generally costs around $1200 to $2000 USD to import which was more than I was really willing to spend at the time. Especially since my Pigeon cost me a little over $200 making the Pigeon somewhat of a bargain. Plus it simply has way more character than the Electras and the Schwinns. It’s a beautiful bike, and there’s a reason why the design has been copied so much.

I hope that helps..!

Boobalicious!

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:48:00 -0400

Ok, this is just absurd! Aside from all the penis creatures, one also has wonder about the whole notion of a “nudity violation” for game in which creatures have no clothes (at least until they figure out how to make them).

Windows Trash

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:43:00 -0400

Yeah, more Windows sillyness. This time with an empty Recycle Bin. The icon says it’s got stuff in it, and apparently so does Windows…

Exchange

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:41:00 -0400

Indeed. So sad to say, but my work machine still uses Office XP. Thus you can still encounter amusing behaviors in Exchange 2002 like deleted meetings that occasionally still have an orphaned reminder. The fun part is that the snooze drop down is editable. 15min of lost productivity there.

No Not Mine...

Fri, 09 May 2008 13:38:00 -0400

Apparently the pics (taken by a co-worker) taken many months ago of an XML birthday cake for one of my other co-workers got “Dugg” today…

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:09:00 -0500

So perusing through my feeds in NNW this morning reading Kotaku, I came across this article about the North American and European versions of Metal Gear Solid 4 not featuring the Japanese voice track. This also applies to the Japanese version not having an English voice track as well. …FAIL!

Even worse? No English subtitles in the Japanese version either! That sucks even more than “The Suck“. As to the claims there’s not enough space on the Blu-Ray disc, I’m wondering whether or not they’re using a BD25 or a BD50 disc. There were early rumors that MGS4 might ship on a BD50 disc due to comments by Hideo Kojima saying he’d like to make use of one, which makes me wonder if they actually are or not. I haven’t listened to the latest KPR yet, so I’ll have to give it a good listen on the way to work the grill Ryan later…

R-Type!!!

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 01:05:00 -0500

Reading Gamasutra this morning, and this put a nice big smile on my face! I wanted to get this awhile back in it’s original form (known as R-Type Tactics), alas nobody seemed to have in stock at the time. Since then I’d forgotten about it, but this was a total wake up call. Talk about a happy reminder!

Musical game commentary

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:56:00 -0500

Sure wish I could’ve been at DICE last week considering who’s speaking at it. For those who don’t know (which probably means all of you), I’m a huge fan of both Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Masaya Matsuura (my other two favs being Fumito Ueda and Suda51).

But Matsuura, who used his own original compositions for PaRappa, expressed concern about the Guitar Hero model, in which music gamemakers license hit songs, then build their games around them.

I think this is already much better than it currently is with most non-music games where the music is largely tacked on at the end. Also I think this model, while perhaps not ideal for innovation in the musical game genre; provides like well needed stimulus to the music industry in general (although the health of the “music industry” is a topic for another discussion entirely)…

This comment however:

Matsuura suggested that Harmonix allow players to “make their own game course with their own track, and share it with each other, or sell it to each other.”

I found a wee bit on the odd side since Harmonix’ earlier titles like Frequency and Amplitude did a far better job of that. Granted both used licensed music, they both still offered modes where you could still generate your own music from gameplay as well. I also found Mizuguchi’s take on this intersting as well:

Mizuguchi, creator of acclaimed music games Rez and Lumines, said that there are pros and cons to using licensed music. By writing original music for a game, he said, “we can make the sound and music fit the game design. But nobody knows this original music.”

With Lumines 2, Mizuguchi licensed tracks from groups like the Black Eyed Peas and Fatboy Slim, which helped draw in gamers who wanted to play his game with familiar musical tracks.

Personally while Lumines II I think was the better game in terms of mechanics and gameplay options, I found the music of the original far more interesting, unique and memorable. In fact with some of the levels basically being like a live music video in the backround, I found it rather distracting compared to the more subtle graphics of the original.

Headtracking...

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:54:00 -0500

Ok, this head tracking shit is getting out of hand. Now I’m not specifically talking about guys playing around with the idea and hacking existing hardware into an implementation. I’m more referring to fanboi’s who have been circle jerking all over themselves ever since Johnny Chung Lee’s experimental projects with the Wiimote exploded all over the web (in particular the head tracking demo posted on Youtube last month).

I’ve even commented on a few sites that this really isn’t that new or innovative since folks over at Natural Point who make the TrackIR products have essentially been selling products (that are already supported in games) for a few years now that allow this sort of functionality. The thing is, the principle is really quite simple, and I even pointed out that it could probably be done with the PS Eye or any other webcam (the PS Eye would probably be most suited due to it’s higher spec sensor and the fact that it relies on the host for image processing instead of internal image processing prevalent on most webcams).

Lo’ and behold, some PS3 developer goes ahead and does just that!

The really neat aspect of this and Johnny’s work isn’t so much the tracking aspect as the explorative use of existing devices for tasks other than their explicitly designed purpose (granted the PS Eye and Eye Toy were designed just for this sort of thing, the only real difference is using the visible light spectrum vs. infrared spectrum). He even credits Johnny for inspiring him to do this demo as a response to Johnny’s. The only sad part is that again the TrackIR folks don’t seem to get any credit for their years of hard work trying to make it this space. However, leave it to silly people to spout nonsense like this:

This is why I love Nintendo. Had Nintendo not innovated this generation, developers and competitors would not be looking at this technology as anything more than a passing fad. But now it’s serious – it’s real. If Nintendo would have given us a straight Gamecube successor, there is no way we’d be watching clips like this today – there would just be no precedent for technology like this to be useful in gaming. But now the landscape of gaming has changed completely – I can’t wait for the next wave of games to start implementing this sort of thing. Thanks for innovating, Nintendo. As usual, another company is doing it better – until you innovate once again.

Sorry fella, but Nintendo didn’t innovate this. This sort of thing has been going on long before Nintendo started showing off the Wii (or even talking about the “Revolution”). Hell, anybody who ever used to go hang in Kentia Hall during E3 would see a flood of devices by companies trying to break into the industry. Granted many of them were silly gimmicks, but it illustrates that the landscape was hardly barren before Nintendo stepped foot into it.

If you wanted to talk about an innovative videogame company, then you should be bowing to Sega not Nintendo. Even then, there are so many companies and individuals that have contributed innovation in videogames that there really is no one company that one should bow to. What you could give credit to Nintendo for though, is bringing such projects to a wider audience and making it more acceptable. Still, I’d like to see the folks behind TrackIR get a little more recognition rather than this being something more of a fruit of Nintendo’s labors.

For nAo

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:19:00 -0500

Nutella…

Poor interpretation...

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 01:09:00 -0500

So there’s this article on Game Daily about an analyst speculating that the 80GB PS3 SKU is being retired because of poor sales, Game Daily and NPD seem to claim “NO YUO!” Where do I start? First of all the analystis indeed probably wrong. Sales performance of the 80GB SKU, good or bad aren’t going to be the factor in it’s retirement (although yes a potential factor).

To step back a bit further, one has to ask why is this even a big deal at all? What it boils down to is that the 80GB SKU (the initial 60GB PAL model for EU folks) is the only current model with some form of PS2 backwards compatibility. It seems to still be quite a big deal to some people due to the 40GB SKU’s lack of PS2 backwards compatibility. I could go one about that one for a while, but I’ll save that for another time perhaps.

Back to Game Daily and the Mr. Hickey of Janco Partners (the aforementioned analyst). Earlier I mentioned that regardless of sales the 80GB SKU would be retired soon anyways. That’s pretty obvious actually. It’s an older, more expensive design, therefor it’s in Sony’s best interest to retire it as soon as possible and push the 40GB SKU in it’s place. The 40GB SKU is simply a more cost effective design to manufacture;

65nm vs. 90nm components
No GS (PS2 hardware)
Simpler motherboard (lower part count)
Fewer external ports (flash and USB)
And a smaller HDD to boot

I’d imagine there’s a few others such as a simpler optical drive (perhaps explaining the lack of SACD support (don’t quote me on that though)). The point still remains, the 80GB SKU was simply one phase of many that will consist of cost reduction redesigns with the 40GB SKU being the next (or current if you prefer) phase. I could go on about the lack of PS2 backwards compatibility and such, but that’s a topic that don’t feel like discussing right now and I’ve already digressed way off topic.

So essentially Mr. Hickey claimed that the 80GB SKU was being retired (all starting from the Best Buy rumors BTW) because of poor sales vs. Sony’s internal projections, and that in what seems like a potential recession environment likely not to perform well vs. it’s 40GB brethren (and that the 40GB seems to be enjoying a faster uptake than the 80GB did). Apparently Game Daily (the original source article) heard from NPD that the 80GB SKU outsold the 40GB model in the 4th quarter. So some are taking this as a “NO YUO!” silly analyst boy! sorta response from NPD.

First of all, the 40GB SKU hit retail on November 2nd (in the US). So it doesn’t have a full quarter of sales vs. the 80GB SKU so NPD’s response is sorta odd in that regard. Unless they normalized both SKU’s out, but that data doesn’t seemed to be disclosed. The other aspect that leaves me scratching my head is that NPD mainly tracks North American sales. Last time I checked, Sony sells PS3s in more regions than just North America. The 40GB launched in the EU on October 10th, and in Japan on November 11th so it also be interesting to factor in those regions as well. Ultimately though, Mr. Hickey never even claimed that the 40GB SKU outsold the 80GB SKU, just that the 80GB one didn’t meet Sony’s expectations and that based on the 40GB holiday sales that the 80GB model wouldn’t likely hold up in the future.

Awwww Yeeeeeaaaaaaah!

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:49:00 -0500

That’s all I have to say for now…