| After living in Santa Barbara for 5 years I finally gave in and bought a pair of sandals. Not much else to say about that. They're comfortable.
I've been doing kendo for just over a month now. It's really enjoyable, and it's interesting how much depth there is to something that seems fairly straightforward on the surface. There are people who have been doing it for more than 50 years (45 minute National Geographic documentary behind link), and even then they say that they're still learning more. I'm still sore for a couple of days after each practice, but that's been diminsihing each time, as I get more used to the exercise and as I learn to cut more with my whole body instead of just with my arms.
The Sci-Fi channel has been showing a marathon of the original Twilight Zone series. As I haven't seen most of them, I've been quite entertained. Despite its age, the majority of the episodes don't seem dated. In fact, much of the series's style seems more akin to modern shows.
A preview just showed for a movie about a group of spelunkers who get stuck in a cave. And then... monsters? Sounds like Blair Witch in a cave, though I imagine it would be hard to make another horror movie as boring as that was. Touching the Void was good and they didn't need to jazz it up with yeti attacks. But I'm just not really one for monster movies. I think I like horror movies better when they only involve people.
I watched Click last week. It wasn't excellent, but I enjoyed it. I think if you go into it expecting a comedy you're more likely to be disappointed; it's really more of a drama with some jokes thrown in. Sandler isn't as good here as he was in Punch-Drunk Love, but the style is closer to that than it was in, say, Billy Madison. The ending is rather hackneyed; I'd have preferred that the movie ended with the poignant, bittersweet ending that preceded the final two scenes, but tacked-on happy endings are standard for mainstream fare these days.
I've been reading a fair amount of sci-fi recently. I read Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide while in New York, both sequels to Ender's Game for those who don't know. He does an excellent job of characterization. I've also been reading various Heinlein and Gibson works, and now I'm starting on Dune.
I guess I haven't written anything since I went to the Ashland Shakespeare festival. I was impressed, to say the least. I saw The Diary of Anne Frank, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Winter's Tale, and the Two Gentlemen from Verona. The acting in all four plays was superb, some of the best I've ever seen.
It was a bit weird watching Anne Frank, knowing how it was going to end when the characters thought they were safe. Cyrano was excellent, and my only previous exposure to the story having been through Steve Martin's movie Roxanne, I found the ending to the play much more satisfying, and Cyrano's character much better developed.
The Winter's Tale is definitely not one of Shakespeare's best plays. The story just seemed a bit lacking and more than a bit contrived (though Shakespeare was aware of that: the script of the play comments on how ridiculous the events are). But the acting was great, which more than made up for what the story lacked.
The Two Gentlemen from Verona was done in an interesting style. It took place in semi-modern times, with Verona being like an Amish community, and Milan being a country club, complete with tennis and croquet matches. The bandits outside Milan were styled after a mix of punk and goth. Overall, a very amusing and enjoyable take on the play.
If you ever get a chance to go, don't pass it up. Just make sure to buy your tickets well in advance. | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment   |
| | It's ok to say "ass" on television. But if you say "asshole," the "hole" part is bleeped out. This doesn't really make any sense. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| Some thoughts on E3 announcements...
$600 for the PS3? Ouch. Think I'll hold off on that for a while. And I assume that MS is going to drop the price on the Xbox 360 even more once the PS3 is released, so Sony may have a tough time selling to the non-fanboy segment. On the other hand, I may get a PS2 soon. I'm curious to see how well the motion sensing is used, and how it ends up comparing to the Wiimote. But no rumble support in the controller? They say it interferes with the motion sensing, although it seems like a low-pass filter on the accelerometers would be good enough to get around that; anyway, Nintendo has rumble on the Wiimote so it must be possible.
The Wii looks cool despite the mediocre name. The guys at Joystiq had a lot of trouble with the responsiveness of the Wiimote, so I hope that can be improved; other sites didn't mention this so much. Supposedly it's going to cost less than $200 though. For 1/3 of the price of the good version of the PS3, they may have a winner on their hands. I'm also curious about how the Wii and Gamecube versions of Zelda will compare; the controls for the Wii version sound pretty cool. And putting a speaker into the controller is an interesting choice that perhaps could have some good uses. The virtual console is going to have games from the Sega Genesis and the Turbografx 16 (Bonk!). Nice.
Ouendan is coming to America, with American songs and maybe new levels. There weren't a lot of details, but I'm looking forward to it. The official English translation of Phoenix Wright 2 is coming out in October too.
Assassin's Creed holds a lot of promise and looks like it'll be great. The preview's mention of the sci-fi teaser in an otherwise medieval setting is rather odd.
Spore sounds neat too and will allow you to evolve your own race of creatures and take your place in the universe or something like that.
Mass Effect, one of Bioware's new RPGs, is looking good, although saying a Bioware game is going to be good is practically stating the obvious.
Elebits could be a lot of fun, in the same way as Katamari, though I doubt that it will be as wacky.
Gears of War is only going to show the targetting reticle when you move slowly or not at all. Sounds like a nice design decision.
Nothing yet about STALKER, which last I heard was being delayed because the publisher wasn't happy with the game. The concept is very promising, but that news worries me. I'm not sure if the game is being shown at E3, but I assume we'll hear something about it if it's there. | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Wow, that was a long movie. Not that 3 hours is always too long for a movie. Return of the King was 200 minutes long and kept things moving. But they could have easily trimmed at least a half hour from King Kong. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | I finally got around to finishing Splinter Cell 3. Looks really nice with the new graphics card, and the level was nicely designed. But is it just me, or does the endgame cutscene get shorter with each game? | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Ok, so it's been... just over two months since I last posted, and that was just about my lack of posting. Four and a half months since my last post that was actually about something. So here goes.
Work remains fun. We're finishing up support for TI's DaVinci chip, which combines an ARM CPU, a TI DSP, and video processing circuitry in one chip to make a nice platform for almost anything that needs to do image or video processing. Pretty cool stuff, since you can use the ARM side for things that normal CPUs are good at like the user interface, and the DSP side for things that DSPs are good at like image processing.
I'll be going out to New York for a week to get early access to a certain processor that we have a big contract to support. The area I'm going to is the carousel capital of the world or something like that, with six of them there. So I'll bring back some pictures should I have some free time to drive around and see them. This trip has been pushed back a lot, since they've been having issues with the boards, but it may be next week that I go. Should be an interesting experience; my first business trip.
I haven't played Animal Crossing DS for a few months now, pretty much ever since I got my laptop. I imagine the town must be getting pretty messy with all the weeds sprouting up everywhere and me being the only one who ever deigns to pluck them out. I'll probably go back to it sometime, but I have many other things to keep me busy in the meantime. Metroid Prime: Hunters is quite fun and I'm impressed with the detail they're able to push through the DS, though it takes some time to get used to the control scheme. Tetris DS is also fun, and has a number of new modes to spice up the classic formula.
Elder Scrolls Oblivion has been a lot of fun, although counting my graphics card upgrade the game cost me $400. I've put about 80 hours into it so far and still have a lot left to do. After playing the game that long, various flaws have become apparent, but I find that none of them are that major. Between the built-in content and all the mods that are coming out, it's definitely a good value. But, for no raisin (sic), I only give really thorough reviews to things I didn't enjoy, (hurrah for citing one's own work!) so you'll have to look elsewhere to learn more. Just don't read the forums too much. The whining isn't as bad now as it was when the game was first released, but still there are far too many [Xbox|PC|ATI|Nvidia|Bethesda|Gothic 3] fanboys and anti-fanboys on the prowl for there to be many meaningful discussions most of the time. I usually only read the mods forum now, as the discourse there is usually constructive and informative.
Thesaurus.com: No entry found for fanboy. Did you mean fan boy?
No entry found for fan boy. Did you mean fly-boy?
No, no, I didn't. Why bother suggesting terms that aren't on the site? Oh well, "anti-fanboy" it is then.
The Longest Journey 2 just came out too. The first game was excellent, and I recommend it to everyone; you can find it in the bargain bins for about $10. The sequel isn't as good, so I hear, but I plan to pick it up sometime anyway.
The second season of the BBC's new Doctor Who has started. I've downloaded the season premiere but haven't got around to watching it yet. I think the Sci-Fi channel has been showing the first season. Definitely worth checking out for any sci-fi fans.
Trader Joe's had a really good Vanilla Bean cream soda, but they've stopped carrying it. Too bad, since I liked it better than most other cream sodas. Virgil's is also good, but the closest place that has it is the Bev'Mo' in the Valley and I can't just drive down there every time I run out of cream soda. Oh well. At least I can get Virgil's root beer up here. The real sugar is what makes it good; no corn syrup. Same thing that makes Mexican Coca-Cola superior to American Coke.
I find that I've fallen into somewhat of a rut in my life. But it's a comfortable rut, so I suppose things could be worse.
But there is one thing I need: furniture. Remember that scene from the Fry gets tapeworms episode of Futurama, where we see Leela's living room and there's just a chair and a TV? Ok, you probably don't, but my living room isn't much more adorned than that. I'll probably get a second couch of some sort and maybe a recliner or one of these or one of these. And of course, a nice wide coffee table, perfect for tabletop RPGs. If anyone has other suggestions, feel free to chime in.
Well, I should really go to bed, so that's all for now.
Edit: Why does searching Google maps for "Couch" bring up so many diaper services? Try clicking it. It's really weird. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
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