bytex64.net/blog

"Robots play IIDX?" Nancy asks. No, actually, they don't. My weekend was filled with robots of a JSDC nature, and IIDX of a GOLD nature. Those two events are completely separate, but linked by their presence in one awesome weekend.

First, robots. The second weekend of March is always host to UIUC's Engineering Open House. One of the major attractions at this event is the Jerry Sanders Design Competition, where teams create robots that must navigate a course (by remote control) and perform certain tasks. This year's task involved gathering hula hoops and frisbees (oops, I'm sorry, rings and discs) and placing them in/around color-changing bases. Alexei's Avengers did well this year, scoring 6th in a field of over 20, even though they had to forefit two rounds. They also won "Most Creative Design," an award worth $150. You've made me proud, guys.

Saturday evening, Yan and I traveled up to Chicagoland to visit friends and play IIDX. Well, I went to play IIDX. Konami is actually weighing the possibility of releasing a US English version of their IIDX arcade machines. A prototype of this machine made its way to Naperville for an informal location test, so I had to show up to show my support for this idea. But first, a movie.

We had wanted to go see "300" in Imax, but we didn't get there nearly soon enough, and saw The Host at a regular theater instead. We missed the first half hour of the movie, so I can't pass judgement on it right now. Hopefully, I'll be able to find it and give a proper review. (but what I saw was terrible)

After wasting $21 at the Brunswick Zone, we drove back to Chicago for some authentic Korean BBQ. For $15, you get a plate of raw meat and a fire to cook it on. But that's not all. Jen said that you'll get twenty small plates of stuff to eat. She was neither joking, nor using the literary device of hyperbole. We did get over twenty small plates of stuff to eat, including the standard kimchee, bean sprouts, and seaweed, but also spicy mussels, spicy tofu, strange jelly stuff... I wish I'd have been less hungry at the time and taken a picture. Also: you get rice and miso soup. It was a feast, even if some assembly was required. Oh, the name of the place was "San Soo Gap San," IIRC.

I've made it safely back home, and I'm going to sleep.

I just got a new pair of shoes, and have probably spent over half an hour re-lacing them. What originally began as an effort to even out the laces ended up as an exploratory journey into the nature of tying shoes. I realized, as I unlaced each rung, that there were numerous ways of doing it. Do you put the lace through the outside or the inside? Do you start left over right, or right over left? As a flat lace goes through a hole, it folds. Which way should this fold go? Do I make it look good, or concentrate on even application of force onto the tongue?

My mind then started to wonder about alternate permutations. 12 holes, each of which can have the lace go through it once. That's 12! (479,001,600) possibilities just for order alone! Assuming a 12 hole shoe, each person in the United States could be uniquely identified by a particular lacing pattern. If you factor in over and under for each hole (2^12), you now have 1,961,990,553,600, nearly two trillion shoe lacing combinations, enough to uniquely identify every person who has ever lived 17 times over. Such things boggle my mind.

How do I lace my shoes? Lace-under, left-over-right on the left shoe, mirrored on the right, tied with Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot. :)

I would like to talk to all of you about a subject very near and dear to my heart.

I just got done watching 50 First Dates, which was a much better movie than I thought it would be. Without spoiling the movie, I would like to applaud it for not being altogether predictable, and not settling for a clichéd fairytale ending. I'll readily admit to enjoying the crass humor of Adam Sandler, but I'm not sure if I've ever publicly admitted to having a huge crush on Drew Barrymore. She's like, oh my god, so awesome. I submit to you, gentle reader, that Drew Barrymore is the model of the perfect woman.

I don't think I've seen a Drew Barrymore performance I haven't enjoyed. She's probably best known for the bubbly, smiling, sometimes clumsy blonde seen in movies like The Wedding Singer or Never Been Kissed, but she has shown her versatility in movies like Riding in Cars with Boys or her voice acting in Titan AE. My favorite performance of hers, though, is by far her role in Ever After. She plays the abused but not broken Cinderella in a way that I could not imagine any other actress duplicating.

True, she doesn't have the sex appeal of Jessica Alba or Salma Hayek, and she doesn't have constantly erect nipples like Jennifer Aniston (seriously, what is her appeal?), but Drew is the pretty girl you'd want to settle down with.

*swoon*

Many of the games from the dawn of videogaming are still playable today. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Burgertime, Dig Dug, Galaga, and many others still see play in arcades and even in homes in the form of "classics" compilations. How is it that these games have stood the test of time? (And don't tell me it's nostalgia. There was plenty of awful crap from that era, too.) It's a very simple idea that goes back to the root of what videogaming is: Those games are still playable because they're fun.

At some point, games became popular enough that they took the leap from arcades to the home. For a long time, many home videogames were "ports" of popular arcade games. People had the opportunity to play a game for a quarter, and after determining that they liked it, they could go buy the (admittedly sub-par) home version for $40. The games sold themselves on fun.

Later, the home market became big enough that new, original games came out for home systems. This presented a bit of a marketing problem. How do you sell a $40 game if the buyer doesn't have the opportunity to play it? You market the hell out of it. And the most important marketing tool game companies have is the box.

Games are sold in boxes. You cannot look at a disc or a cartridge and divine anything about the game itself, so the box is left to speak for the game. It will have screenshots, it will have text, and most likely, it will give a better-than-real presentation of the game. That's marketing, right? As a result, gamers have become preoccupied with the look of a videogame since they are unable to consider its gameplay. Of course, games are promoted on the internet, too, but the internet is really just a very large box that can also play video and sound.

And so, the march of videogame progress changed. Before, where largely intangible fun was the end result, now more tangible shininess and graphical beauty reigns supreme. Ever more powerful systems come out twice a decade, and developers struggle to make the most out of those systems to produce the most beautiful games. This is not to say that games can't have both graphical beauty and excellent game play, but I can name all of those games on one hand. (Hint: Two of them are Metal Gear Solid games)

So are we stuck with this sparkling sea of shite? No. There is a way out, and it is not a new idea. We need to bring back the demo.

The demo is something that was popular back in the 80's and 90's for PC videogames, and greatly helped the promotion of a number of legendary titles, like Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem. It stems largely from the "try before you buy" mentality fostered by early arcades as well as many other facets of modern consumerism. There is no better way to prove the worth of a product than with an honest demo. Would you buy a pair of pants without trying them on? Would you buy a TV that you had never seen switched on? Would you buy a car without a test-drive? Neither should you buy a game without playing it. Videogames need demos. Period.

As much as I hate Microsoft, I must applaud them for creating Xbox Live. While limited in scope, it makes demos available on what has long been a demo-free zone. I expect the PS3 and Wii to soon follow suit. But perhaps the best proof of the demo's efficacy is the Nintendo DS. Using the WiFi connection, most DS games allow you to either transfer demos or engage in limited multiplayer games with your friends. The effect is viral — you simply have to get in on the fun. I base this only on the fact that it has happened to about five of my friends (including me). Nintendo has always known that fun sells games, <fanboy type="Nintendo" class="rabid">and that is why they're going to kick Sony and Microsoft's ass with the Wii</fanboy>.

It's now up to you, the gamers, to push this idea forward. Be adamant about trying games before you buy them. Make it known that you will not tolerate faked screenshots, viral marketing ploys, and videogame magazine shills. Insist on games that are fun to play. We are on the brink of returning videogames to their original purpose: fun. Let's do this.

Buying a Wii/DS couldn't hurt, either. :-P

On my way back from the great wide west, I stopped by Mike's apartment to stay the night. As I drank one of his Hacker Pschorrs (which were given to him; he hadn't touched one), I related to him my tour through the Red Hook brewery. I explained how the tour guide ranted about how some popular microbrews were brewed up to 15% ABV and then diluted with carbonated water. Mike took all this in, paused for effect, then said,

"You're a beer snob!"

It's an accusation I can't really deny. The fact is, America's favorite beers, the ones that come in 30-packs of 12oz aluminum cans for $16, taste like piss. I'll drink cheap vodka. I'll eat day-old donuts. I'll even eat Maruchan instant ramen if I'm really hungry, but I will not drink cheap beer. I am a beer snob.

I was at Karaoke last week, and a friend of mine offered me some of his Unnamed Cheap Brew. You know the stuff. You can get a plastic pitcher of it for $4 some nights in various campus bars. In retrospect, I probably misheard Erickson say that it was worth drinking, so I poured myself a cup.

Some people will tell you that the stuff in that cup was beer. Other people will tell you that white bread is just as good as wheat bread, and that Diet Dr. Pepper tastes just like regular Dr. Pepper. All of these people are full of shit. What was in that cup was a stomach-turning combination of two things: 1) an alcoholic brew that before processing might have been a drinkable beer, and 2) what tasted like a mixture of seltzer water and Clorox bleach. I'm not sure what it was, but it definetly was not a beer.

"But Chip," you ask, "if it's got brewed grain in it, isn't it a beer?" Maybe. A bit of medival law called the Reinheitsgebot, or "German purity law," states that beer may only be made from three (four) ingredients: water, barley, and hops (and yeast, which wasn't discovered until after the law was made). The law was made partly to regulate the quality of beer (so that beer made from inferior ingredients could not be sold), but also to protect wheat and rye sources for use in bread. This is actually a little restrictive as a beer definition, but I believe in the spirit of the law: If it uses inferior ingredients, it's not beer.

So what's wrong with American beers? Well, let's start off with the favorite, Budweiser. Ingredients: barley malt, hops, rice, yeast and pure water ^{[source PDF]}. The addition of rice is an interesting deviation, used to give it its "crisp finish." It's certainly a matter of personal taste, but I'd call that something more like a "beer-like alcoholic beverage" than a true beer. How about the ingredients in Miller Light? Propylene glycol alginate, water, barley malt, corn syrup, chemically modified hop extracts, yeast, amyloglucosidase, carbon dioxide, papain enzyme, liquid sugar, potassium metabisulfite, and Emka-malt ^[source]. That's not a beer, that's a cocktail.

My sister, who otherwise has decent tastes, is a big fan of light beer. She explains that she doesn't like the heavy taste of regular beer. It's a viewpoint I can't really understand. I mean, if I want something lighter than beer, I drink a root beer or a Sprite. If I want to get drunk on something lighter, I put a shot of vodka in the Sprite. But here's probably the best laugh I got on the whole light beer subject: The other day, my family ate at Smokey Bones. My sister got a Bud Light and a Corona, and I had a pint of Killian's Irish Red. At the end of the meal, this is what we read on the receipt:

Bud Light	$3.25
Corona	$4.00
Killian's	$3.00

<nelson>HA HA</nelson>

It's been a few days since the funeral now, and I think we're all slowly but surely moving on. Cleaners are still working on the house, and we found that in our haste, some of the pipes had frozen after we left. Dad will be working on that tomorrow, and then hopefully we can return to the house. It's going to be hard, but I think we'll be OK.

I did a little work on the website last night. I've taken the mess of links in the main page navigation bar and put them in the content area, creating a condensed index. My goal is to quickly and concisely show everything I have online, separating you by at most one click to everything important. I had always been annoyed at the main page for being largely useless, but I feel a lot better about it, now (even if it does look like a domain parking site). I'll probably do something similar to the code section; it's also a mess.

I complain quite a bit about Myspace and social sites in general, but I'm not really opposed to the social aspect of those sites. I don't do myspace because this website is my space. However, myspace does connect people, even if all they have to say is "OMG LOL," which you can't even read because their text is black on top of an animated picture of pink sparkles on a black background. My website obviously has a different intent, but I realized that it was lacking in this vital communication element.

To this end, I've created a "connect" section. It currently contains my email address (which you probably could have figured out, anyway), a "meebo me" widget, and The Bridge of Death. The latter is a compromise between giving away all my information and keeping it secret. Beyond the Bridge of Death is my immediate contact information: AIM screen name, Jabber ID, cell phone number. But in order to see that information, you must answer a question about me, a question that you will not know unless you know me (or perhaps do a great deal of research). Fans of Monty Python will know the routine. }:->

I don't even know if anyone will use these things, but I feel like I should try. Most of my friends are scattered across the country now, and it's becoming harder and harder to keep in touch. I'll always have a place here where you can reach me.

There is absolutely nothing that can prepare you for things like this. Nothing.

I was working on my computer late at night, as I usually do. The house was silent. Brian had woken up, as he usually did, and was wandering around. Tim was asleep on the couch, and my parents were in bed. My stomach was rumbling, so I went to the kitchen to find something to eat.

I warmed a biscuit, a home-made leftover from tonight's dinner, and poured a glass of milk. As I nibbled on the biscuit and pondered the work I still had to do, I heard a loud BANG from above, followed by a small chorus of smaller thuds.

I did not at that point connect the noise with anything more unfortunate than a heavy fallen object. I quickly set down my glass and biscuit, whispering "What the fuck?" as I left the kitchen and vaulted up the stairs.

Reaching the top of the stairs and opening the door to Tim's room, I was at first not able to comprehend the scene that lay before me. In the following seconds, I recognized what it was, then who it was, and finally, the only thing that could have birthed such an unfathomable horror.

To see such a thing is to stare deep into the avatar of pure madness. It was all I could do to turn around and stop my mom from facing the same unimaginable terror. I did my best to comfort her as she wailed into the cold February night.

I do get asked on occasion what kind of music I like, and I never come up with an answer that I'm fully satisfied with. This is partly due to my inability to produce deep thought on the fly, but is also the result of a rather abberant history of musical tastes.

So, as a way of explanation, and a blatant excuse to abuse my beloved <li> tag, I offer you these ten cool songs you've (probably) never heard.

• psilodump - winds (snabber mix)
  This track off starts off the set with a dark, heavy, and mysterious mood. This is the music that should have been in The Matrix, a hyperactive industrial techno anthem that will make you paranoid that your toaster is out to kill you.
• Babyshaker - lightbulb muscles
  Found in the "Calibre" pack of the incredibly talented depthcore, this symphony of machine-gun drum breaks and haunting winds is epic and disturbing at the same time. Depthcore is a group of artists who became too damned talented for deviantart and set up their own site. They produce a multi-sensory experience, creating not only sounds, but impressive visuals as well. A trip through their site will not go unrewarded.
• Skumdum - A Big Disgrace
  A punk rock song that insults drunken sluts, what's not to love? This jaunty tune was originally found on the Europunk.net Online Sampler vol. 2, but it seems that the site has disappeared.
• Pain - Antidote
  Another rolicking punk melody from Pain, this one about the perils and similarities of girlfriends and parasites. They're not popular, but you may have heard of them before — they did the music for that Jabberjaw music video that was shown on Cartoon Network in the late 90's.
• The Parkdale Hookers - Song About A Girl
  A trio of accountants from Toronto is probably the last people you'd expect to play such a fun tune, but there it is, making you smile as you tap your toes to the rhythm. Their simple style echoes back to classic rock greats like the Beach Boys and Buddy Holly. Best of all, they have real jobs, so you can download all their music for free on their website.
• The Amazing Kill-o-Watts - Grand Theft Audio
  The Amazing Kill-o-Watts area a group of nerds with couple of guitars, some drums, a Moog, and enough chords to rock the fuck out. I had the privilege of seeing them live, and they've been a favorite ever since. P.S. Marsha, I love you.
• Lemon Demon - Word Disassociation
  Picking up on the same vibe that made Weird Al so popular, Lemon Demon makes songs that are half catchy pop tunes and half off-the-wall craziness. The lyrics to this particular song are simply a list of words that just don't go together. Some may know him as a regular on Albino Blacksheep, where he contributed the music to what is possibly the most amazing thing ever, The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.
• Bit Shifter - The Information Chase
  This high-energy bleep anthem will make you ask, "What game was this from?" It's not. :) If you like this, you can find it along with five other excellent tracks on Bit Shifter's Information Chase.
• wayfinder - garbage collection (Sanxion7 Remix)
  Sanxion7 is one of those artists that deserves a lot more attention than he gets. This particular song sounds like it could have been a part of In The Groove 3. If you like his style, check out his entire list of songs, it's absolutely immense and growing all the time.
• Shiki - Air
  Streaming at you from the intertubes of Japan, this song bills itself as "Trance Core". You might imagine that as a sloppily mixed trance anthem sped up to 180BPM and given a pounding bass beat, and you'd be dead wrong. This song is pure energy, but not in the hard, jarring style of happy hardcore or the flowing synths of trance. And as an added bonus, you can actually play the song in your favorite IIDX simulator.
• Professor S - Conference on Disarmament 20XX
  Professor S is a part of the incredibly talented yet largely unknown Diverse System, a collaborative group of electronic artists in Japan. They do a lot of videogame remixes, but also do a lot of original work. This track is off of db, a number of original songs released in BMS format for use on beatmania simulators. The song is pure hardcore rave. It's not delicately executed, well-engineered, or aesthetically pleasing. It is raw, pounding, eardrum rape for musical masochists. You probably won't like this song, but I love it. :)
• Cranky - party 4u "holy nite mix"
  You might have heard this song by Cranky before — It's the music for 1000!, a flash animation related to 2ch.net culture that circulated around the interwebs a few years ago. Cranky's forte is the rave anthem, but his repertoire extends across the electronic music spectrum.
• Sakura
  And now for something completely different. This rendition of the classic Japanese folk song "Sakura" is done with koto, a horizontal thirteen-stringed instrument, and shakuhachi, a bamboo flute. Despite only having two kinds of instruments, this piece exploits the multi-faceted tonality of the shakuhachi to create an interesting listening experience.

That should give you a rough idea of what I like to listen to. (If you missed it, all those songs are downloadable by clicking on the title) Have fun!

It's recently come to my attention that my cell phone contract is up. I'm pretty satisfied with my little Nokia brick, but I figured I'd check Cingular's site to see if I could get a better phone for a deeply discounted price (like, say, free).

Unfortunately, I'm incredibly picky. When I want a phone, I want a phone. First and foremost, it should accurately convey sound between me and the person I'm talking to. That's what it's for, right? I don't need a camera (already have one, thanks!), I don't need it to play music (Got things that do that, too...), and I certainly don't need it to organize my daily activities (If I need that, I'll get a wife). I do want a web browser, but you can browse the web on a toaster these days; I'd be hard pressed to find one without rudimentary web browsing abilities. I would like it to be rugged, as I've been known to drop my phone a number of times. This basically rules out anything with a slide or a hinge. Oh, and since I'm a Nokia fanboy, let's automatically discard anything made by another company.

What does this leave from Cingular's offerings? One measly phone, the Nokia 6030. In its defense, it is a basic, standard phone. It is, unfortunately, almost identical to the one I have. OK, it does have a FM radio, but no points for guessing how often I'd use that. The most absurd part, though, is that Cingular isn't giving this phone away. No, this phone, which is one of the most basic phones Cingular offers, will cost you $20 with a one-year contract. Maybe I'm being too restrictive, here. Let's remove the Nokia requirement and see what we've got in the freebie bin, now.

Oh, joy. Three phones. The Motorola L6, L2, and a dinky little thing called a Firefly. I think that Motorola makes good phones — they certainly have a lot of radio experience under their belt. However, I had the chance to look over Chrissy's RAZR, and Moto's interface is absolutely terrible when compared to Nokia's Finnish refinement. The Firefly is a phone for kids that looks like a first-generation iMac mated with an anal suppository.

At this point I'm thinking that maybe I should just bite the bullet and buy a phone elsewhere. Here's the thing, though: If my phone is being subsidized by my carrier, I'm fine with it being a dinky little simple thing as long as it works. I mean, if it didn't cost me anything, I've got no right to complain. But if I'm buying a phone out of my own pocket, I want it to be my phone, and if it's my phone, I want to be able to hack the thing straight to hell. I won't be happy until I've got a web server and a bash prompt on the thing. Which means it's going to be a Linux smartphone.

Getting much hype lately is the Qtopia Greenphone. It looks good on paper, but the thing costs $700. For that much, I could get an iPhone and even afford to use it for about a month. Or I could get a PS3 and one game. Or I could get two Wiis, a Nintendo DS Lite, and $70 worth of Japanese snack food. The list goes on. Fact is, this phone is for rich hackers, and I am not yet a rich hacker.

Also in the press is the OpenMoko-enabled FIC Neo1973, which looks nice, and is a reasonable $350, but isn't actually on the market yet. It seems that Motorola is going to be coming out with more Linux phones in the future, like the inexpensive SCPL, but I don't know if that's any improvement on their current lineup.

In the end, I think I'm just going to keep my plain, disgustingly-styled little Nokia, and hope that I find something in the future that will fit my finely-specified tastes.

I had a dream this morning that I had for some reason gone back to high school. Of course, with the intervening years of wisdom, I was a completely different person. I was on the basketball team, and I was popular with the ladies. After I woke up, I thought, "Huh, that might make a fun romantic comedy," until I realized that I'd basically recreated the entire plot to "Never Been Kissed." Oh, well. I liked it better when Drew Barrymore did it, anyway.

I'm watching Dogfights on the History channel right now, and they had these two commercials back to back: The first, enticing you to subscribe to a hardcore porn channel, and the second, offering children's life insurance. Perhaps the History channel is a little unsure of exactly who their audience is.

I've downloaded Google Earth and I'm really trying it out for the first time. I used it once back when it was still Keyhole, and I'm glad to say it's improved. I've got it on yomiko, a.k.a. the Hexbox 450, and it's pretty breathtaking to see it on a big screen. Breathtaking... and occasionally nauseating. One of the first things I did was zoom into Fort Collins and sunk down to ground level to get a look at the mountains. It's not nearly as magestic as being there, but it's still pretty cool.

I've decided to make a virtual tour of my road trip. I think it'll be cool to see it zoom around the country, so you can get a feel for the vast distances involved. These things are hard to get a feel for when you're standing on the ground.

Oh, crap, it's 5am... time flies when you're having fun. :)