bytex64.net

(Apologies in advance for the horrible puns present below. Once I get them out of my system, I promise you'll never see them again)

As a going away present to Kan Kan, a bunch of us pitched in and got her a Wii. On Friday night, we gathered together at Kan's place and surprised her. Her reaction was one of complete and utter disbelief — she was completely floored that we got it for her. "This is what happens when your friends get jobs," I explained. Jen brought extra controllers and games from work, and we played Wii into the wee hours of the morning. :)

Nintendo, I would like to make it publicly known that I forgive you for calling it the Wii. You could call the system "Happy-Time Funshine Box" or "SPAMDANCE 5000," it doesn't matter. What matters is that it packs more fun per cubic centimeter than anything else you'll find in retail stores. Yes, the graphics are simple. Yes, the Wiimote is sometimes hard to use. And no, it doesn't play DVDs, HD-DVDs, or Blu-Ray. But the thing is, while you're playing it, you just don't care. The machine could randomly spew rancid cottage cheese from its disc slot and you'd still be screaming "I got next!" It's that awesome.

I haven't had this much fun playing videogames since... well, since I was playing Sven Coop with my brother the other day, but that's not the point. It's Fun with a capital 'Fuck Yeah!'. It used to be that the Nintendo faithful were forced to hide in the shadows, clinging to their beloved first-party titles, ridiculed by the Playstation and Xbox tribes. I am proud to say that those days are no more. But enough gushing, on with the puns!

Alan: Have a nice Wiikend.

Me: Kan Kan... are you playing with your Wii?
Kan Kan: Yeah, I'm playing with my Wii.

Tyler: perhaps youre a wii bit fanatic

OMG PEANUT BRITTLE *SNARF* *SNARF* *SNARF*.

James: Did you like FF3?
Me: Are we talking about the Japanese version or the American version, which was actually FF6?
James: Uh, lemme consult Wikipedia on this one...

Yes, I'll admit it, I'm occasionally that disgusting RPG geek you all know and love (and wish would bathe more often). I have played almost every Final Fantasy for at least a few minutes, and for a long time I've considered myself a fan of the series. But today I realized: I don't even like Final Fantasy.

For the uninitiated, I suppose I should put things into perspective. First and foremost, Final Fantasy is a game designed around a single idea: absolute tedium. RPGs in general are an obsessive-compulsive's best friend, but FF takes your standard dungeon crawling, experience point allocating, constant weapon/armor/accessory upgrading for maximum damage adventure and carries the idea further with things like job systems, magical artifact leveling (espers, materia, guardian forces, etc.), and limit breaks. If you had to remember to maintain that much stuff, you'd forget basic hygiene, too.

Balancing this grind are exceptionally designed characters, story, and music. Few names are more famous in videogames than Hironobu Sakaguchi, Nobuo Uematsu, and Tetsuya Nomura. The sheer creative power that Squaresoft has brought to the series is best evidenced by the fact that, with only a few exceptions, each game is a standalone piece of work. Each game features a completely new storyline in an original world, fleshed out with unique characters. Paradoxically, it seems that the series has lasted because of its refusal to make predictable sequels. More cynically, you could say that Final Fantasy isn't really a series at all — it's an exercise in using brand recognition to trick geeks into buying something that may or may not be a platefull of steamed horse anus. I'm looking at you, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.

So here's an irreverent, bitter, and completely biased retrospective on the Final Fantasy series as I've experienced it.

• Final Fantasy (1987) - Boring.
• Rad Racer (1987) - Ok, this isn't a Final Fantasy game, but I'm including it anyway because it's awesome.
• Final Fantasy III (1990, Japan) - Played the DS version for about 10 minutes. Boring.
• Final Fantasy IV (1991) - This is actually a decent game, using an active time battle system for the first time. Probably my second favorite in the series.
• Final Fantasy VI (1994) - Best one in the series. Interesting characters, colorful locations, and a great story. I mean, who doesn't love Ultros? Or the Opera?
• Final Fantasy VII (1997) - I don't understand why people think this is the best one. Perhaps it's because they haven't played VI. "Hi, my name is Cloud, and I'm a brooding emo kid who doesn't know who he is, and these are my friends, Barret, and Tifa. Barret's right arm is a freaking chaingun, and Tifa has boobs bigger than my ridiculous hairdo. That girl over there is Aeris, my almost-love interest except that she dies (WHOOPS SPOILERS LOL). We're chasing down a psycopathic genetic freak with an unnatural fixation on his mother, but not before we breed some Chocobos and play a dozen minigames." This game is crap.
• Final Fantasy VIII (1999) - Final Fantasy VII with two brooding emo kids. With swords. That are also guns. In fairness, though, Hironobu Sakaguchi was busy working on The Spirits Within (and we all know how well that turned out).
• Final Fantasy IX (2000) - Motherfucker's got a tail. (But otherwise an interesting game)
• Final Fantasy X (2001) - Technically amazing, the story was... wait, was there even a story? A whiny kid who's mad at his father accidentally gets thrown into the distant future and tries to get back, but not before he plays some blitzball. And he looks like Meg Ryan.
• Final Fantasy X-2 (2003) - HEY GIRLS, LET'S PLAY DRESS-UP.

I've left out Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Legend, and Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, since I don't think these even count as Final Fantasy games. The first is a ripoff of Tactics Ogre, the second is actually in the SaGa series, and the third... well, calling it crap would be a disgrace to fecal matter of all kinds. Moral of the story: Square[soft] [Enix] has been downhill since FFVI (or if I've been drinking, since Rad Racer), and that's all there is to it.

For those of you actually visiting the site, you'll almost certainly notice something different. Firstly, I've reworked the visual style of the site. It's not only leaner and cleaner, it looks a lot better in text-based browsers. It also fouls up horribly in IE < 7, but who the hell cares!? It probably works in Opera and Safari, but I can't really check that right now. If anyone wants to send me screenshots of the site working (or failing) in various and obscure browsers, I'd be much obliged.

Gone are the console, for which I never found a purpose, the style switcher, which may return once I find a place to put it, and the scrambler, which will return shortly in a new form. The date is now in a shortened Y-M-D H:M:S format. The title and navigation now floats above the single column content, a trick made possible by my newfound friend: "position: fixed". Some of you will notice that part of the title is actually transparent. (I think that's pretty neat)

What is most awesome, though, is what I've done behind the HTML. The blog is now "statified." What does that mean? Well, here to explain it with me are my good friends, <ul> and <li>. The old way is like this:

• The entry id (eid) is taken from the URL and queried in the MySQL database.
• This data is stuffed into an OO data structure specially designed for manipulating blog entries.
• A method is called on this object to generate HTML from the data, which is output to the HTTP response.

Repeat for every "post object" (original post or reply) on the page. Now, this is an entirely valid and logical way of doing things, until you start getting lots of page hits. All of those steps above take significant CPU time, and if I got an unexpected traffic increase, I'd basically be fucked. The visitors would be like "WTF?", Dreamhost would be like "WTF?", and I'd be like "OH SHI-" as the machine serving my page got HTTP-raped into oblivion. Here's how the new system works:

• The entry id (eid) is taken from the URL and the corresponding cache file is dumped into the HTTP response.

Those cache files are basically generated from the missing two steps, when the original post is created or edited. Now there's faster page loads, greater flexibility (comments are now threaded!), and less server-rape. And I think we can all agree that when there's less rape, everybody wins.

Like a young robin taking flight on a dewy spring morning, VFS 4.5 has been released. You may recall that this is part 2 of the Iron Chef saga, showcasing the judging and results. The completion of another episode was truly unexpected, even for me, but I found myself without internet for three days, and it's amazing what you can do when pressed with that kind of boredom.

A couple of changes have been made to the way I do things with VFS. All episodes are now ISO MPEG4 using (what should be) Simple Profile level 0 and AAC audio. This means a couple of things: 1) No more proprietary gunk, and 2) You should be able to play these files directly on your iPod or PSP (or any other device that supports MPEG4 SP/AAC). "But why?" you ask? Simply put: Democracy Player doesn't like AVIs. Eventually, I'll probably convert all the episodes to this format and dump the AVIs.

The second change is predictable. In keeping with the last episode, there will be no more "Good VHS quality." The increase in quality was negligible over bad VHS quality, and the file sizes were ginormous. There is now simply "crap quality," and "VHS quality". Whether or not this now leaves something that can be distributed on physical media for a profit is left as an exercise for the reader.

In experimenting with the new format, I did some poking around with ffmpeg. I'm sure most of you are familiar with XviD, the free MPEG4 codec, but what you may not know is that ffmpeg has its own MPEG4 codec. XviD focuses on picture quality, and ffmpeg focuses on being fast. Indeed, that was what I found. XviD produces a cleaner picture (especially at low bitrates), but ffmpeg is about 30-40% faster. Now, obviously, I'm going to stick with XviD, since my needs aren't time sensitive, but if I need to record directly from the camera, ffmpeg would allow me to record the originals at a higher bitrate. (That's right, folks, my digital masters are MPEG4)

In any case, enjoy the show, I think this is one of our better ones, and it's definetly worth the wait.

There is an idea stuck in the recesses of my mind, just sitting there toeing the line between the ether and my consciousness. It's standing there, eyeing the transition timidly, like an adolescent boy at a school dance working up the courage to ask a girl to dance. The idea is made of pure awesome, this much I can tell, but the rest of the details remain fuzzy. IT IS BUGGING THE EVER LOVING CRAP OUT OF ME.

NNNNNNNGGGGGGHGHHHHHH#*!!&%&*@&^#$!!!!

Otherwise, things are good. I've acclimated myself to the frigid temperatures of home. Thanksgiving was a feast, as usual. For a nuclear family, fixing a thanksgiving meal is usually an ordeal for the wife. If she's lucky, she'll have the help of some children. We bring the entire extended family on my mom's side together (She has 11 siblings, most of whom show up for the holidays), so assembling a feast is a simple matter of telling who to bring what. Nobody leaves hungry.

My mom scrounged up a 20GB hard drive for my most recently not-bought laptop. (Fun Fact: my mom has more computer parts lying around the house now than I did before I moved out) It actually feels like a computer, now! So much so, in fact, that I've opted to put Windows 2000 on it next to Slackware 11. Strange, yes, I know. I haven't installed a version of Windows on one of my machines in about 8 years. Right now it's my Wintendo, used for playing Half-Life mods with my brothers and stuff like Warning Forever, a game that is a 50/50 blend of Win and Awesome.

Yan has discovered Metacafe, where apparently you can make money off of your popular original videos to the tune of $5 per 1,000 views (but you don't get jack until you get 20,000 views). "We have to make something! And it has to be good!" What Yan seems to have forgotten is that our ability to make quality content is a bit... nonexistent.

Now that I've emptied most of the stuff out of my car, it feels rather sprightly. I'll have to clean it out and take it out for a serious drive soon. I'll be heading into C-U tomorrow to stop by the bank and pick up my computer from Erickson's, and I'll probably hang out a bit. Just another day in the frozen wastelands of central Illinois.

This is an open letter to everyone out there who says DDR SuperNova's timing is off.

You're wrong.

The timing is different, certainly, but has it really been that long since you had to adjust your timing from DDR the first time you played ITG? They're different games, people, they will work a little differently. Allow me to tell you a story.

Back in 2002, DDR Extreme was brand new, and IIDX was on its 8th style. Then something happened in 2003: IIDX 9th style. It was not just a new mix of songs, the entire architecture of the game was changed. The old arcade parts DVD video was swapped out for a shiny new PC-based system. Along with this change was a slew of timing issues. DDR... well, DDR never had a next version in 2003, but those same problems everyone had with 9th Style are showing up now in 2006 with the release of DDR SuperNova on a (guess what?) PC-based system.

From someone who has to tolerate timing variations between varying TVs and arcade systems on IIDX, a game known for its tiny timing windows, believe me when I say: It is not broken, it is just different, you will get used to it.

It is possible that Konami will come out with a patch "correcting" the timing, but personally, I don't think the timing is off. I played Quickening (a fav of mine from 9th Style) for the first time on DDR SuperNova, and my score was 260-some perfects, 60-some greats. An A. If it's really screwed up, then why am I still doing as well as I've ever done on a 8-footer I've never played before, after not playing for a month and a half?

People keep telling me, "I'm not playing it until the timing is fixed." It is fixed. The only thing that's askew is your attitude.

I call Yan on Saturday in response to a message he left me on AIM. It turns out his dad messed up his fingers and he needs a ride to Missouri. Not just the 5 hour drive to La Plata like before, this is a full 7 hour trip to the Chens' new house in Higginsville, which is just outside Kansas City. We left on Monday, and made good time despite missing a turn.

Higginsville is a small town, some with some 4600 people. It has a Wal-Mart (regular variety), a number of places to eat, and a unified grade school/high school. We ate at the El Toro in town, it was your standard Mexican eatery, with exceptionally good refried beans.

On Tuesday, Yan and I went to Kansas City to check out the arcade at the Ameristar Casino. The casino was really nice, it had a ceiling that was painted and lit to give the feeling of walking outdoors in the evening. The arcade was decent, with both ITG 2 R21 and DDR SuperNova for $1.00, as well as the standard slew of racing and shooting games. I played a game of SuperNova, a few games of Initial D 3, Maximum Tune 2, Mario Kart, and House of the Dead 4, and quickly became bored with the arcade's excruciating lack of IIDX.

I drove back today, making it back to Gifford in 6 hours 30 minutes or so, a good time for only making three stops on a trip that was estimated to take 6:15.

I've got a long day of eating tomorrow, so I'd better get some rest. :)

I understand why you tried to shield me from the truth, but I want you to realize that your attempts are misguided. You could no more hide this from me as you could stem the flow of time. You are merely delaying the inevitable.

There is in me a disease, you see, a slow, consuming madness that feeds upon the ever-seething darker natures of humanity. Eventually, this madness will consume me and force me to destroy everything I love. And when that day comes, I hope to God that you are beyond my reach.

---

Before people start speculating, the above is in response to nothing. I've just got an overactive imagination and couldn't sleep.

I'm back at my parents' house, and thus, at the end of my epic road trip. I'd like to say that the trip has changed me, that I feel different now, but the fact is, I don't. I feel like exactly the same person I was when I left. This may be because of my inability to remember things clearly that far back, or maybe I just haven't changed. If anything has changed, I've just become more like me. Same colors, greater intensity.

Just so that everyone knows, I am planning on moving permanently to the Seattle area. Despite the rain, the depressing atmosphere, and the persistent yuppieness, I like it there. The fact that there's a IIDX machine in the area may have influenced my decision as well. :)

I've been experimenting with the passme my brother has on his DS. It's basically a modchip for the DS, allowing it to play archived games, homebrew programs, and DSLinux. DSLinux has made significant progress; the wireless and sound work wonderfully, and you have full read/write access to the SuperCard (which adapts your run-of-the-mill SD flash cards to a the GBA slot). It actually runs uCLinux, which means 4MB of ram and no swap, but with the minimal system they have set up, it doesn't feel crowded at all. With a working copy of kismet and working suspend, it could be the killer app for the DS I've been waiting for.

I was hanging out with Erickson and Ward, who were working on the robot, and we decided to go to IHOP for some late-night food. The conversation went something like this:

Erickson: Alright, Chip, is it alright if we take your car?
Me: Hahahahaha.... Oh, wait, you guys are serious.
Erickson: Well, you have a car, and we don't.
Me: Yeah, I should probably mention that my car seats two, and the passenger seat is full of crap.

Heh. I'm going to bed.

I'm sure most of you have used MapQuest at one point, as well as the newer and shinier Google Maps. Fans of Google Maps probably haven't realized, though, that MapQuest now has the tiled draggable maps that Google Maps pioneered, along with significant graphical enhancements bringing those maps up to par with the visual standards Google set. Mapquest even shows numbered interstate and freeway exits, which I find useful. Of course, MapQuest cannot compete with Google Maps in the area of hackability. No other mapping system has spawned so many varied and useful (and useless) map applications.

For simply browsing a map, there's very little difference between the two (Indeed, it seems they both get their data from NAVTEQ). But when using them for trip planning, there is a huge difference: MapQuest actually knows what the hell they're doing. Here's part of an itinerary I was working on when traveling from Seattle to Baker City, OR:

MapQuest:

1. Merge onto I-90 E via the exit on the LEFT toward BELLEVUE / SPOKANE.
2. Merge onto I-82 E via EXIT 110 toward YAKIMA (Crossing into OREGON).
3. Merge onto I-84 E via the exit on the LEFT toward PENDLETON.

Google Maps:

1. Take the I-90 E ramp to Bellevue/Spokane
2. Take exit 137 to Wanapum Dam/Richland
3. Bear right at WA-26
4. Bear right and head toward WA-243
5. Continue on WA-243
6. Bear right at WA-24
7. Continue on WA-240
8. Turn right at WA-240 E
9. Take the I-182 W ramp to Yakima (I-82)/Pendleton
10. Take the I-82 E ramp to Umatilla/Pendleton
11. Take the I-84 E ramp to Pendleton

Now, I have no idea which one of these routes is faster, but even assuming that Google's way is the quicker of the two, that advantage goes completely out the window if I get lost. I don't even have to write down MapQuest's directions, I can remember those in my head. Since the point of giving directions is arguably to get me to my destination, Mapquest wins hands down.

This isn't the first time Google Maps has steered me wrong, either. (Hah, steered me wrong... get it? Hah... Ok, I'll quit) In Peoria, it tried to direct me down a road that no longer existed. In Seattle, it told me to exit on a later exit to get downtown, disagreeing with Kan Kan's directions. (MapQuest gave me Kan's version)

So my advice to the serious trip planner is to stick with MapQuest. You should, of course, take this with a grain of salt. Erickson has told me MapQuest has tried to steer him the wrong way down a one-way street before, so it's apparently not infallible.