Monthly Archives: May 2006

May 30 2006
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Life in general

What Mac?

Well, graduation is coming up (June 20th), and I have to pick what computer I should get for a present. I want a Mac for various reasons (I don’t have a Mac, less viruses, better bundled apps, etc.), and my limit is around $2500. Here are my choices:


The Mac Mini

A Pumped Mac Mini With a Monitor. I can afford a very good Mac Mini and the 23″ cinema display.

Pros

  • Very small.
  • I get a bigger screen (I have a 21″ CRT)
  • It’s Intel (can run Boot Camp).

Cons

  • Not very fast (1.66ghz).
  • No video card (can’t play Uru).


The MacBook Pro

A 15.4″ 2.16ghz MacBook Pro. I can afford this model, and a laptop would be great. The screen size doesn’t really bother me, I can live with a 15″ screen.

Pros

  • It’s a laptop! Portable!
  • Powerful. 2.16ghz is one of the most powerful Macs.
  • Intel!
  • Great graphics card. Radeon X1600 with 256mb memory.

Cons

  • Overheats quickly (like, really hot).


The iMac

The iMac 20″ Top-Notch. For less money than a MacBook Pro, I could get a top-of-the-line iMac. Wireless peripherals, 20″ screen, Intel dual core 2ghz, 500gb hard drive, Radeon x1600 with 256mb memory, 2gb ram…All good.

Pros

  • It has basically top-notch everything.

Cons

  • I really don’t like the design of the new iMac. The whole all-in-one screen thing just bugs me.

Oddly, while writing this post I pretty much decided on the iMac. Still, any opinions/advice on which one to get would be appreciated.(I am getting a Mac, any Mac-bashing comments will be deleted)

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May 29 2006
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Messing With Focal Points

I made this shot in 3Ds 6 using a default camera but with focus depth on. It came out pretty well, I think.

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May 28 2006
Life in general

I BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE NINJA TOO!

Ask A Ninja is probably the funniest thing I’ve seen this week. It’s this guy who dresses up like a ninja and does a podcast where he answers questions e-mailed to him. Most of the questions are ninja-oriented, but some have been about other things as well. My favorite quote so far:

A tapeworm is a bad gift. You could lay out about a yard of duct tape, and just put a bunch of worms, on it and give that to somebody? That’s not a gift. I will tell you this, though. Find a good, strong piece of tape and put some snakes on it? That’s a pretty good gift.
~Ask A Ninja Question 14 “Ninja Gifts”

and

(To the tune of the NG jingle) Look at that monkey! What has that monkey got-in-his-hand? (bum bum)
~AAN Question 19 “Physics”

It really is a great podcast. Watch them all on this page here.

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May 27 2006
Life in general

Anime Boston

I went to Anime Boston with my friend Darth Imperios (no, not his real name :P) today, to check out what was there. He waited through the (then) 20-minute line to get a pass (you “need” a pass to get in, read on to find out why it’s “really”), then payed the $30 for an all-day one. Then after a bit of mishap finding eachother, we met up and went to check out the line for me to buy a pass…

…Which I would have done, had the line not been snaking through a ballroom then going out the hallway and snaking through two mid-sized ballrooms. We didn’t even get to the end of the line before deciding it wasn’t worth it. So we went back to the exhibition hall.

At the hall, we found a few things. One, about 75% of the people there were cosplaying, and about 90% were either a character from Naruto or Final Fantasy. Second, we found out that we were actually in the “Artists’ Alley,” not the exhibition hall. Finally, we found out that there were no guards checking passes to get into the Artists’ Alley, so we both got in and started looking around for AppleGeeks, who said they were there.

We spent about 10 minutes just looking around for them, because they didn’t have a big sign or anything. Finally DI pulls out his map that he got with the pass (he also got a free 14 day trial of WoW) and we look for them on that. We finally realize that we’re standing right next to their table, so we turn around and buy some merch. We had a short conversation (“Hey, can we get some shirts?” “Yeah, $20 each.” “Cool.”) and left nervously. I also got an awesome Hawk Bandana. 😀

We stopped at the next table over for me to buy a Kindom Hearts Sora necklace (the crown on a chain) and for DI to buy a Naruto high criminal headband. We looked around some other areas of the place, but most of them had guards out front checking passes, so DI went in to scope them out then reported back to me. Eventually my mom (who was with us) went to get us autographs from Hawk and Ananth (I was too shy to go myself…they’re my idols), and came back with two signed drawings for us!

She then convinced us to go talk to them, which we did…but hardly at all. (them: “Hey guys!” us: “Hey” (mom: “They wanted to thank you in person”) us: “Thanks so much!” them: “No problem,” then we shuffled away nervously.) I almost died. 😛

The rest was relatively uneventful, other than DI going into the merch store next to the Alley (the Alley was a broom closet compared to this place…), and emerged 30 minutes later plus one Naruto sleeping cap. It’s kinda geeky, but the same could be said for my shwag (which by this point also included a Heartless logo tee shirt), I guess.


Yeah, my name is Max…shhh…

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May 26 2006
Life in general

Holy Crap He’s A Fake!

Wow. Reading all these posts about the infamous PSP Fanboy/DS hater got me…frankly not that excited at all. I figured “hey, first amendment, right? He’s entitled to his own opinion.”

Well, then I found this movie. The dude completely contradicts himself. In other words, the PSP Fanboy is a fake. He fabricated both 12 minute long rants which are complete opposites.

Pretty smart, in my opinion. It provides a good look at the response of the community. The DS fans (read: fans, not fanboys…) are much more protective of their system than the PSP fans. Granted, the anti-PSP video was released 5 days after the DS, and only 3 days ago, but there has been no fanfare about it. Odd.

I’m not trying to make a point, merely conjecture. Pointless, I guess. This, of course, explains his lack of solid proof and the constant use of “look it up” in both rants. Now we can just guess what his real preference is. As for me, I’ll stick with the –This word removed to protect Zib– (tee hee)

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May 25 2006
Life in general

Happy Star Wars/Towel Day!

Today is Star Wars day, celebrating the 29th anniversary of the original Star Wars movie. Hooray! Happy Star Wars day.

Also, today is Towel Day, the day where you bring your towel with you everywhere to commemorate the death of Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Technically he died on the 11th, but it is celebrated (for some reason) on the 25th.

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May 25 2006
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GodMod – The Game

Ok this is the “second draft” of the post I lost…

While I was sitting in school getting bored (what else is new these days?) yesterday, a great idea struck me for a video game. It would be called GodMod – The Game. It’s a flash-based two person online game, mostly text based but with a few animations.

I made this mockup image to help explain:


(yes, those avatars are temporary placeholders, not final 😉 )

The idea is this. You have 1 minute to type the most godmodding (see excerpt) description of your opponent’s death you can think of. This can involve anything you want, from Seppeku to dinosaurs to landmines to just plain fire to rabid hamsters. So you type it in Area 1, then after one minute has passed the entries are submitted (regardless of whether you’re done or not).

This is where the code kicks in. The program scans the entries for keywords (such as Hari Kiri, Dinosaurs, Flames, etc.) and key phrases, and scores each entry according to how many keywords were used and how descriptive they are. The winning entry is displayed in Area 2.

As a bonus, the winning entry is then animated in Area 3. The losing character acts out the description (approximately), according to what keywords/phrases it found in the winning entry. For example, if the word ‘fire’ was found, it would burst into flames. I think that the game would be hard to make, but very rewarding.

Godmodding refers to when a player describes the outcome of their own actions against another character. For example, player A stating, “A strikes B and B takes damage” would be considered godmodding on the part of player A in most situations. In the game, you wouldn’t include yourself in the description, just the outcome.

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May 24 2006
Life in general

My Dream License Plate

Yes, that is a real license plate, not photoshopped. It belongs to a Cyanist (someone who works at Cyan Worlds). It’s the plate I want when I get a car, for a few reasons. First (obviously), it shows my obsession to the greatest game of all time. Second, it rhymes (I’d rather be/exploring D’ni), which is cool. Third, it’s a Washington license plate, which means that I would live in Washington state which means I would have a shot at working at Cyan Worlds, which is my dream…

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May 24 2006
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iTunes “Just For You”

I use the iTunes Music Store a lot, and to increase the variety of songs I hear I use the “Just For You” feature. No, I don’t listen to radio, because I can’t find any radio stations that play the kind of stuff I like. I use Pandora a lot, but after a while that starts to repeat as well.

So like I was saying, iTunes Just For You. It looks at what you’ve bought and listened to, and recommends songs to you. This post isn’t really about the feature, just a little tidbit I found out about the JFY feature.

That title piece that says “Just For You” up in the corner (in a very un-Apple font, I could add)? The one that looks like this:

This is what it used to look like:



In fact that was just recently replaced with the fixed logo. It is kind of funny, becuase we’re so used to seeing finished products that look great we don’t even notice when something’s off unless we’re actually studying the image.

For those of you who don’t yet see what I mean, here’s another image:


Observe the reflection.

Yeah, in the old one the reflection starts out fine (under the U), but then it turns out it’s actually signifigantly shorter than the words it is reflecting at the end (under the rest of the title). Tee hee.

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May 24 2006
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Uru Live ‘Blue Sky’

On the Uru Live Website, under the in developement section, there’s that “Blue Skies” section. I like most of what I see, the vehicles, the guild system, etc. The guild system is a great idea, very much like the ancient D’ni society.

Then there’s the one I don’t understand. “Player mounts”? What are player mounts? I know the answer is lurking somewhere on the Uru Live forums, but I’m afraid to wade through the posts there looking for the answer, because of the fact that there are already over 4000.

Lastly, there’s the pets. Yes, I said pets. In Uru. That’s just over the top and completely uncalled for. If you want pets in a video game, play this, this, or this. Don’t pollute our great game with your furry poop machines, please.

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