bytex64.net

Andrea: But remember the rule of thumb.
Andrea: COSPLAYERS ARE SCARY

I have crossed over. What was once mere flesh and bone is now a poor imitation of an anime and/or manga character. I have become... a COSPLAYER.

OK, so it's not really as dramatic as all that. I dressed up as Sohma Kyou/pix/sohma_kyou.jpg
for Halloween. It's not really a costume. Just some khaki cargo pants, a blue zippered hoodie, the black/white bead bracelet, and bright orange hair. Ok, the last part is a bit radical, but those who know me should know I'm no stranger to a different hue on my head. I even got Andrea to give me a new haircut, one which I rather like, oddly enough.

Some of you may have noticed I haven't posted in a while (holy crap, it's been almost a week), and it's because I've been working hardcore on my beatmania sim. The engine is actually pretty solid right now, and I'm moving on to other things, like visual effects. One of the hallmarks of a beatmania game (especially IIDX) is the completely superfluous eye-catching visual effects. If I want it to "feel right" to people who are used to IIDX and such, this eye-candy is vital. :) Pygame sort of limits me in this regard, but I'm confident I can make something that looks better than pydance. (Oh, SNAP, Brendan!) I mean, there was plenty of awesome stuff on the SNES, right?

Erickson pointed me towards a lovely little bit of science fiction that I enjoyed a lot. It's called I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. Great stuff, I recommend it.

*YAWN*. This cat's going to sleep.

So there's this "20 facts about me" thing that's going around. Yan says "consider yourself tagged," but I'm going to do this my way. Instead of just posting 20 facts, I'm going to mix in 5 lies with those facts to keep you guessing. People who figure it out get a cookie. Or something. Shit, I don't know... Here goes.

Twenty Facts About Me, and Five Falsifications, In Random Order

1. I am red/green colorblind.
2. My first car was a 1986 Nissan Sentra Hatchback with a 5-speed transmission and no muffler.
3. I destroyed this car by submersion.
4. If I had to choose one toy to play with for the rest of my life, it would be a box of Lego.
5. I will eat anything with Tobasco sauce on it.
6. The thing I am least afraid of is death.
7. I have a DB-25 serial port surgically attached to my spine.
8. I am a hopeless romantic (emphasis on hopeless).
9. The best movie ever is Real Genius.
10. The second best movie ever is The Princess Bride.
11. I once had sex with Mai Kuraki and Jessica Alba... at the same time.
12. When I was young, my whole family went dumpster diving together. People throw away such interesting things.
13. My mom knows what the word grok means, and she didn't learn it from me.
14. It's all about the CUDDLECORE.
15. I have two brothers and two sisters, all of them younger than me.
16. Morgan Webb is my ideal woman.
17. After writing that last one, I just spent 15 minutes looking at Morgan Webb pictures.
18. I wear boxers and briefs... at the same time.
19. I don't make serious plans. They never work out like you planned. :)
20. The thing I'm most afraid of is being raped by Teletubbies.
21. My ideal job would be racing in the WRC.
22. On my 22nd birthday I puked in my mom's leather-trimmed car.
23. The most useful thing I've ever learned was how to cook.
24. I've never kissed a girl.
25. I never went to Kindergarten. I can never remember the months in order.

I'm not tagging anyone, but feel free to do your own if you like. Oh, and good luck. }:->

Work is going well on the IIDX simulator. I've got almost all of the sound kinks worked out (after a reinstall of pygame), and it's actually starting to look like IIDX/pix/km_screenshot2.jpg
. That's from a song I just downloaded called "A Beautiful Wings" (not a typo). I got it from this site full of great BMSes (It's in Japanese, but I think you can figure it out). All I have to say is "Hooray for Happy Hardcore."

One of the things that always puzzled me was a certain line in the movie "The Fast and the Furious." Vin Diesel's character is dressing down what's-his-face for blowing up his car, and one of the points is that he wasn't double-clutching like he should be. The thing is, I'd always associated double-clutching with downshifting, and since drag racing involves no downshifting, this remark seemed weird. At the time I wrote it off as bad writing. Not a precedent for this movie, but I digress.

Well, I figured it out. Unless you're driving a Formula 1 car, where shifting gears takes tenths of a second, you're going to be waiting for a bit for the revs to drop between gears. If you keep the clutch in the entire time, that small amount of drivetrain between the clutch and the transmission (which is now in neutral) won't be spinning anywhere near the speed you want it to be when you want to shift into your next gear. This happens when downshifting *and* upshifting, so double-clutching not only helps you perform a perfectly synchronized downshift, it helps a little bit on the upshift as well.

The reason this hadn't occurred to me before was that I'm clutching faster now. You see, the two weeks with that rickety Accord's stiff clutch pedal allow me to perform lightning-fast maneuvers on the relatively light clutch on my car. Last night I bounced the clutch against the floor, doing an accidental double-clutch from first to second. When second gear slotted in without any force, everything clicked. "AHA!" That's what Vin Diesel was talking about.

Another thing that I noticed is that my brakes are spongier than they used to be. They've always been a little loose, but it was never a problem since it put my right foot in a great position for heel-and-toe. After gaining an understanding of the problem of spongy brakes, I checked the brake fluid reservoir. Alarmingly low... So I've probably got a metric assload of air in my brake lines, and that's why I have to push the pedal all the way to the floor to get the thing to stop. I got a liter of "exceeds DOT 4" brake fluid (weighs less than a kilogram) and topped off the reservoir. That won't fix it, but at least it won't get any worse.

So after installing the new alternator, fashioning a new spacer, re-adjusting the coolant pipes, and replacing a burnt-out 80A fuse (with a piece of strap steel), my car is back in working order. Sort of. You see, in my absence, the exhaust has rusted off. Everything behind the catalytic converter is gone. I'm thinking about it logically:

Pluses

• Increased power due to free-flowing exhaust
• Decreased weight

Minuses

• Loss of hearing

No joke, either. Without the mufflers, the playful purr of the engine at speed is now a raucous growl. Surprisingly, it sounds less like a Weed Eater than all those rice rockets sporting "cans."

Frustrated by the lack of choices for Linux in the area of Beatmania IIDX simulators, I've taken it upon myself to write one in pygame. Thankfully, I was able to find a reference on the BMS format, so progress has been smooth and steady. Right now it's only a player (i.e., it shows the notes, plays the sounds, and shows the animations); there is no user input except quit and screenshot. Sound is crap at the moment, due to my installation of pygame segfaulting when I ask the mixer to use more than 8 channels. The animations, however, work fine. Here's an obligatory screenshot/pix/km_screenshot.jpg
with which to satiate your curiosity.

Also, World's Worst Euphemism for a Penis: Liquid Plumr Foaming Pipe Snake

Guess what came today?

Guess when it came? AFTER I FREAKING LEFT FOR HOME TO GO TO A FUNERAL.

*seethes* *fumes*

Oh, yeah, the funeral. My great uncle Dick died. Apparently he had a heart attack while driving, and flipped his car. I didn't really know him that well, but from what I gather from the rest of the family, he was just a nice guy who kept to himself. Never hurt anybody, and never took more than his share.

The funeral was standard. Say a few words, throw 'im in the ground. It was a typical October day, and I guess that's about as good as you can hope for for a funeral. Afterwards, we stopped by my uncle's house, where they had emptied all of the things he had in his car. And he had a lot in his car. Imagine, if you will, a '98 Buick Lesabre filled to the brim with trinkets and oddities. And coins. So much money in coins. It reminded me of a quote from The Princess Bride:

Miracle Max: It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.
Inigo Montoya: What's that?
Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.

Ah, well. I wasn't doing anything tomorrow, anyway.

So my previous comparison with Love Hina may have been premature... It turns out that Suzuka is considerably more serious. It also turns out that the 13 episode batch I got was not the entire series. The interesting thing about Suzuka so far is that it's a more realistic story than I'd expected. By realistic, I mean, the guy confesses himself to the girl, then she shoots him down, and his attempts to fix the situation result in her despising him. Finally, something I can relate to. :) But, of course, the series is only half over, so I'm sure things will turn around by the end. *bleh*. Oh, that unnamed shinto priestess? Yeah, turns out she's one of the characters. *shrug*.

Also, it turns out that the Tulin that came along with us to see the Wallace and Grommit movie was in fact Tulin the sk8r grrl that Yan had mentioned to me earlier. If I'd have known that I would have... Ok, I wouldn't have done anything. It's just funny how your social net sometimes loops back on itself like that.

For those who haven't seen it, ebaumsworld has this stupid little teaser bot to annoy your friends with. Yan got hit with it, so we tested it later. Here's a few choice snippets from its "AI":

iluvim251: so have you done anything exciting today?
me: No. My life is a meaningless void from which all worldly depression springs.
iluvim251: that's a long time, right?

iluvim251: uh hello? why aren't you talking?
bytex64: If you'd allow me some time to respond...
iluvim251: do u wish that if youd allow me some time to respond?

Turing test: FAILED. (Though James commented that AIM makes it a lot easier to pass a Turing test these days...)

I don't normally comment about stuff like this, but I'd like to direct your attention to a well-written article about Jack Thompson's latest antics. I'd like to get angry about the guy, but he does such a wonderful job of making a fool out of himself that it's really hard to get up in arms about it. :)

And why do my eyeballs hurt!?

I'm watching the first episode of Suzuka right now. Honestly, I downloaded it because it had the same name as a famous race track. It's sort of like a cheap foreign-made version of Love Hina (man, I need to get a new descriptive phrase). The premise is similar (man lives in all girl bath house), there's ecchi, and a similar set of characters. The animation is sub-par, and has some cheezy 3D CG animation that does absolutely nothing for it. Guy meets girl, girl hates guy, guy makes up for it, guy sees boobs, guy gets knocked into the stratosphere, you know the story. I downloaded all 13 episodes in one batch, and it's not bad enough to delete (yet), so it'll probably be on my rotation for the next week.

Another thing that has captivated me lately is Scary Go Round. It's a british webcomic, and its comedy has, how shall I put it, a distinctive flavour that I quite enjoy. It's a little more subtle, a little less coherent, but it makes me laugh and think. Always a good combination.

I'm still waiting for the alternator for my car. Each day I come home from work, expectant as a child on Christmas Day, eager to unwrap the mass of aluminum, steel, and copper that will bring my car back to life, and each day I am dissapointed. Stupid USPS First Class. If they do not deliver it soon, I shall flay the flesh from their bones with my razor-sharp teeth!

*ahem*.

Also, this girl?

Just some random long-haired shinto priestess who had no bearing to the plot whatsoever and never showed up again in the episode. A cameo by Rei Hino/pix/mars27.jpg
? Strange.

Oh, I almost forgot. "I'm not strong, but my wind is high!" Yes, those are the actual lyrics, sung in english, in the intro for GPX Cyber Formula Zero, the followup to GPX Cyber Formula Double-One. As I have said before, this shit cannot be made up.

*yawn*. Man, I can't seem to get my head on straight today. I'm stuck in that fog just after you wake up. What? No, I'm not sleep deprived. I got plenty of ... oh, right, maybe I didn't. *yawn*.

I hit a terrible snag in my revolutionary comic viewing system. Turns out there's no way to tell what URL another frame is showing, unless other page gives it to you. My current solution rewrites the page to capture these URLs. This is obviously less than optimal, so I've sort of given up on the idea for now. *grumble*.

So it seems that my hat is gone for good. I went back to the theater today, and they haven't seen it. *sigh*. It wasn't a very warm hat, anyway. Now how am I going to show the world my megatokyo otakuness!? I guess I'll just have to rely on the T=shirts and my collection of their books, including the original first issue printed by Iron Cat...

I just got the next four episodes of Densha Otoko. The drama part is standard fare, the net otaku are still scary, but the slapstick humor has been turned up a notch. The "villain," if you can call him such a thing, is just silly. At one point he was having a moral dilemma, and the standard angel/devil routine starts. Both sides had good arguments, but then the devil half sucker punched the angel half. Pure comedy. That, and he's this older, respectable looking guy who drives something like an Evo II with a hideous bolt-on wing. He also has this R/C 1/16th scale Evo with a camera on it. He's not really a dislikeable guy, either, which is why I put the word villain in quotes. He actually does the right thing (some of the time).

Ok, they just showed "Dragostea din tei" by O-Zone playing in a restaurant in Densha Otoko. Later, the villain was whistling it while driving. A subtle reference? I'm betting it is. }:->

Patsy: so how is the dating life for you
Me: Haha. Nonexistent.

This is the part where I get depressed. If you're not into that sort of thing, feel free to skip this post in its entirety.

Lately I feel like I've been drifting. I feel as though I used to have some sort of drive to get up in the morning, and now I feel like staying in bed. The thing is, I can't tell whether I actually had some drive and lost it, or if there never was anything there to begin with. I don't feel like anything's missing. I still like my job, I still talk to my friends, I still do the things I like. It's just, y'know, what for? I don't know, and that's bothering me.

It could be the fact that I've been without my car for over a week. My car is a part of how I release my pent-up tensions (that, and a healty regimen of furry porn and alcohol), and I just haven't been able to get the same satisfaction with the Accord, what with it's chugga-chugga and all. The alternator should be here soon, and I can hopefully get that working again just in time for the Autocross season to end. :-/

It might also have something to do with the fact that lately there hasn't been a girl I've been fixating on. It's a sad state of affairs if I can't get up in the morning without some romantic crutch, but that's certainly what it feels like. I guess I just can't get motivated by the idea of living for me. That's obviously an issue of self-worth, fueled by all the Fruits Basket I've been watching. (Finished it, by the way. The Halloween Hair Color Watch is now on Orange Alert.) If the reason I'm living isn't for that one person I care about more than anything, then any other reason seems pretty worthless by comparison.

Maybe I haven't been eating well enough. No, that's definetly not true. Between me and Lauren, I've had some of the best food ever made by human hands... in between frozen chimichangas and PBJ sandwiches. :)

I've worked a bit on a small story. If this depression holds out, it should be done sometime soon. I can't say that I understand it, but this thing about depression being the catalyst for artistic greatness is definetly true. I was just looking over my old overclocked site, and I remembered neobaka. It was one of the first webcomics I started reading, and sort of an inspiration for mine. Neobaka is sort of like a low-cost foreign-made version of megatokyo. Y'know, fully functional, but not as polished. Ah, man. That site shut down before webcomics were profitable. Those were the days...

What the hell am I saying? Unless you're Fred Gallagher, Scott Kurtz, or the guys over at Penny Arcade, webcomics still aren't profitable. There were just so few unprofitable ones back then I could keep track of them all. :)

I saw the new Wallace and Grommit movie, "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" tonight. I liked it. It was better than the Corpse Bride, even if the ending was completely hackneyed. I went with James and some of his friends from Newman Hall. Yes, the Catholic certified housing place. I dunno why, but the entire drive back had to fight the urge to say, "Y'know what I love? SATAN!" Perhaps I've been reading too much Sam and Fuzzy...

I've been working on a little something that will REVOLUTIONIZE the way you view webcomics. Ok, maybe not, but it will revolutioninze the way I view webcomics, and that's good enough. :)

Oh, I lost my hat again. I'll have to call the theater tomorrow. *sigh*.