Maybe the whole thing was a joke... (Posted by Sunny Kalsi Thu, 28 Dec 2006 16:40:00 GMT)
I don’t know why I didn’t realise this earlier, but Duke Nukem Forever has initials DNF. Maybe in 10 years they’ll come out saying “Dude, there was no game. We didn’t spend a cent on it. It was all just a vicious April Fool’s joke that got out of hand…”
If you're thinking of buying one, read this review first (Posted by Sunny Kalsi Thu, 28 Dec 2006 04:22:00 GMT)
If you’re an educated buyer, you’ll read the reviews before you buy a product. If you’re slightly less educated, you’ll buy the product but read the reviews just before you open it, just in case it’s a dud. If you’re me, you’ll be swayed by the pretty girls in the store who want to open up your mouse to play with it and “promise not to return it”. Hmm…
If a girl wants to play with anything of mine, I’m not going to want to return it, but let’s assume for a second that this “mouse” isn’t going to make girls more attracted to you. Let’s assume you’re an educated buyer and you buy this thing. Will you be satisfied?
The short answer: If you paid $180 for it, no. You see, you may look at the reviews giving the mouse 8 out of 10 (which is pretty good), or look at the design awards it’s gotten and say “well, it may not be the best mouse in the world, or even very good, but it’s probably still worth $180, and that still makes it a freaking great mouse. The truth is that it’s not a mouse at all.
It looks like a mouse at first glance, and even when you pull it out of it’s packaging, plug it in, and start using it, you’ll go ””yep… it’s pretty mousey”. But it’s only when you really start using it that you’ll realise the terrible truth.
But first, let’s go through it’s main selling point: The mad scroll wheel. The scroll wheel is sweet. It goes from a clicky scroll wheel to a “free-spin” mode, which means that not only can you spin the wheel when you’ve got nothing better to do, it also means that you can quickly browse huge documents. The best thing about it is that it’s software controlled, so you can choose different modes for different applications and what-not. If the only application you use is Microsoft Word (or some equivalent) then this “mouse” is great, except for the fact that it’s not a mouse at all.
The biggest issue with this “mouse”, bar none, is that the people who made it seem to hate the middle mouse button. In fact, there’s a pretty solid resentment of the middle mouse button for no reason that I can understand. I’m a Linux user, so the middle mouse button is an ordinary mouse button. Further, pretty much every implementation of middle mouse button has been acceptable to me (except for the Logitech trackman, which has been pretty shithouse.
Every mouse, from a $5 one to a $500 one (with the exception of the mac monstrosities) can do the middle mouse button fine. The Revolution does not. By default, the middle mouse button is used to switch between free spin and clicky spin. It can be re-mapped to the middle mouse button, but it just doesn’t work properly. You can’t do a click and drag with the middle button, you can’t just press it, you have to press it hard, and even then the contact is pretty shitty. It bounces, and the mouse button basically doesn’t work reliably at all.
Worse, in Linux you need software to make this work. You see, the default for the mouse is to use the middle mouse button to do the free-spin / clicky shift. The mouse, despite having 12 odd buttons, doesn’t have a middle mouse button, one of the primary buttons on a mouse, by default. Even when it does it’s shit.
The second biggest issue with this mouse is it’s tracking. Dear god is it shit. I heard that:
The second point has been consistent with my experience, and even the first is sort of true (cordless mice are laggy, but it’s not unacceptable now). However, this mouse is one of the worst in terms of tracking (although not lag). I have a simple Microsoft Intellimouse at work, and it’s great. I can draw things using it, sign my name, and basically get the pointer from point A to point B pretty proficiently. Not so with the Revolution. It takes a great amount of work to move your mouse just so. You don’t notice it when you first use it, but when you’ve got to do a lot of precise movements it feels like a drunken mouse.
So it hasn’t got a middle mouse button and can’t track properly, which is something even a mouse one tenth of it’s price can do. Ergo, it is not a mouse at all. I wish I’d spent my money on a G5 laser, which is at least corded, or maybe an MX1000 laser, which seems old fashioned enough that I can trust.
It’s just such a pity that all mice have become wireless now. I’m thinking that even if I got myself a G5 laser, in 10 years it would need replacing, and the way mice are going, in 10 years mice will be completely unusable.
I propose that a collection of Googles be called a "desktop" (Posted by Sunny Kalsi Wed, 27 Dec 2006 14:11:00 GMT)
Recently, I’ve started to require a more distributed way to store my “live” data. By “live” I generally mean “the shit I use day-to-day”—emails, calendar items, general notes, music, pictures, daily reading, and bookmarks. Most of this live data lives on the internet now, seeing as I have multiple computers to ship it between. Other than flickr, delicious, and upcoming (all owned by Yahoo) as well as last.fm, the rest of these services are fulfilled by Google: Calendars, email, notes, and the “homepage”. The only other thing is IM, and I have to live with a plethora of online identities to cope with all the retards not using Google Talk.
Email is not surprising, since Google’s mail is the best around, and Calendaring is OK, despite it’s flaws (no DAV). Google Notes is my most recent thingy that I’m trying out, and it’s pretty great. They’re not “tasks” or “todos”, they’re just thingies that stick in your mind. They kind of act like sticky notes or notes for your palm. The only downside is that there’s no convenient way to transfer this information to your palm (for notes anyway, there is for calendars, but it’s still hairy due to lack of DAV / no synchronization).
However, the point is that most of the “live” shit I do is now on Google or Yahoo. What a world. I’m vaguely considering getting an rss reader thingy account so I can read newsfeeds from someplace other than my main machine.
Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius, is probably the common theme for a lot of the movies I've liked, visually (Posted by Sunny Kalsi Sun, 17 Dec 2006 07:35:00 GMT)
Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius, is a comic book writer, and has done the artwork / storyboarding for a lot of films. You can read the wikipedia article, I will wait…
Done? OK Good. The interesting thing is that I’ve really liked the visual aspects of all the films he’s made, that I’ve seen. This includes films such as “The fifth Element”, “Tron”, and “Bladerunner”. The interesting thing about Tron is that the way the art looked was far more magnificent than the movie itself. Despite the fact that the movie looked very unique, and there hasn’t been a movie that looked so different before it, or since, when I was watching the special features I realised that Moebius had a far more dramatic vision of the Tron universe.
Tron 2.0, the game, should really have borrowed far more heavily from Moebius’ work than from the movie, and I think if a new movie were to be made today, they should really use the original Moebius drawings instead of the original movie as inspiration.
Incidentally, keep an eye out for “The Airtight Garage”, which is supposed to be made into a movie.
[EDIT] Err whoops. On second thoughts forget about the airtight garage. It turns out the article I was reading about was written long ago.
First it was Australian Idol, then the Biggest Loser, Dancing on Ice, and now it's So you think you can Dance... (Posted by Sunny Kalsi Sat, 16 Dec 2006 13:30:00 GMT)
So you think you can dance has1 a reasonable website, although what I’d really like to see is a timeline of when the contestants got eliminated, as well as not showing a big spoiler of who wins as soon as you enter the freaking site. I mean, I know Australia’s not such a big audience but please pay us some credence…
I’m assuming you know the show I’m talking about. It’s another reality television show, only this time from America regarding people who can (and cannot) dance. It’s set up the same way as Australian Idol, only the pace is a lot quicker because, since it’s American, they’re not spending stupid amounts of time whoring out the phone numbers in this country. It’s on 7:30 Sundays on Ten.
I’ve never really liked most reality television. The initial set of reality television shows weren’t that appealing. The first (I think it was the first in this country, I’m not really sure what the order was) show I really liked was The Biggest Loser, mainly because despite the fact that it was the same-old reality bred television program, at least this thing focused on the positive aspects of human behaviour, rewarding people who didn’t give in to temptation. The people in the Australian version were arseholes, but it was still an interesting show nonetheless. Go that geologist dude! Having said that, the format got old quick, and one American series and one Australian series was about as much as I could stand (hell, I think I stopped watching the Aussie one half way through because the guys were all such arseholes).
I couldn’t stand American Idol, mainly because I think musically, we’re a very different country, and they weren’t exactly likeable or memorable characters, they were just that American. Australian Idol, however, immediately caught my eye. The real reason for this was that the contestants in the first series weren’t that good. The kinds of people you had on the show were singers with absolutely no background in singing. Mothers or pig farmers who just decided to have a go. They also had a lot of interesting musicians you just wouldn’t see on American Idol, like Chanel, or Hayley. Interestingly, I wouldn’t buy their albums, but it was interesting television to see if they’d pull through.
The newer Australian Idols seem like launchpads for people who already have a significant musical history, and the pacing of the show being as painfully slow as it is, I don’t watch it any more. My parents and little brother are still watching, though, so I still manage to see the talent, and I know that I don’t really care whether they win or lose.
Dancing on Ice was a crazy good show, considering the quality of reality television as a whole. The number of people injured made it an experience I always recall with much warmth in my heart. I think about three people left that show due to injury, and a couple actually kept on dancing, even with their injuries (one with back issues, one with an actual cast over one arm as he danced). While I fully expected what happened at the end, with the couples I most hated left over, winning or otherwise doing very well, it was still something sour to end upon. By the time Michael Slater left, the show was practically over for me, except for the delicious possibility that someone would get really hurt during the show. Oh how I wanted Jake Wall’s pretty face smashed against the ice. HARD!
You could say “whoah Jake, you just made a CLM!”. Heh… CLM…
Anyway, I like So you think you can dance for entirely different reasons to all these shows. As it turns out, even average looking women turn exceptionally hot when they dance (assuming they do it well), and a lot of more modern dancing styles have a lot of moves that look like people are having sex. And the dancers don’t really wear that much. In that sense it’s like porn, but PC.
In another sense, it’s a whole lot more. Firstly, it’s skill based, but all the contestants are skilled (like Australian Idol, but unlike, say, dancing on ice, where only the partners of the celebrities have any ice dancing skills). However, they’re paired up, usually with dancers with completely different skill sets, one boy, one girl. This has really interesting implications from a couple dynamic POV. Sometimes, you’re so bad at a particular style you’re pretty much relying on your partner to pull you through, and vice versa. That kind of interdependence builds… sexual tension, which makes it a lot like porn, but with more realism.
Next, the way the thing is structured is awesome. People vote down the bottom three couples, of which all six must dance their “solos”. Then the judges decide which two will leave. If those two aren’t a couple, then the remaining couple-less pairs will have to pair up. This is nice because it stops the problem of the best pair being voted out because the voting public just assumed that the couple was safe due to their brilliant performance. It also allows the judges to have a pretty strong say in who stays and who goes, so pleasing them is actually important, as opposed to, say, Australian Idol. Finally, it’s interesting from a relationship perspective because often, only the person letting the couple down will leave, which means that new couples will always form, and the new couple may be completely different to the old. This makes the show a lot like porn, but for mathematicians.
Finally, the way they move is fundamentally interesting, from the perspective of someone who, long ago, did some martial arts. These guys are very flexible, quick, and have strong moves, a good sense of balance, etc. It’s marvelous to watch. In a way, they’re like ninjas.
I guess what I’m saying here is… watching the show is like watching Ninjas having sex.
1 If you’re reading this a few months after I’ve written it, the website’s probably useless for any information in the context of this article.
Now you too can give me facial hair (Posted by Sunny Kalsi Wed, 13 Dec 2006 10:46:00 GMT)
I’ve uploaded a picture of myself:
It has me clean shaven in it. The idea is that you download it, add facial hair, then upload it somewhere (say, flickr), then link to it (with a small version of it) in the comments. I’ve done an example version:
For those of you who are lazy, I’ve uploaded a psd file so that you can download it, select the chunks of hair you think I should have, then convert that to a JPEG and upload it somewhere and add a comment as above. It’s hours of entertainment for everyone!
Incidentally, if you don’t have Photoshop, you can edit .psd files in The Gimp.
The best thing on the intarweb is the ability to ZOMG ZERGRUSH!!! (Posted by Sunny Kalsi Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:55:00 GMT)
One of the greatest things about having a website is being able to find the nutcases fine viewers and the search terms they use to get to this site. This iteration of the site’s been up long enough that we’re finally getting some decent search terms coming up, like:
And my perennial favourite:
Our old site still gets a couple of visitors. Here’s what they search for:
ASIANS
I attempt to change the world, one show at a time (Posted by Sunny Kalsi Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:49:00 GMT)
I think whenever a re-run is on, we shouldn’t watch it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a crap show or a good show, or even if it’s your favourite fucking episode, just change the channel and buy the DVDs. If networks find out that they can’t get away with showing continual re-runs, they’ll bite the bullet and buy more shows. Hopefully at least some of them will be Australian, because (in theory) they’re cheap. Hopefully one of them will be TCLOL!
TCLOL FTW.
Incidentally, did anyone else see this? Hi-larious
Doods you guys should totally post. It looks lame if I’m the only one posting, it’s like I’m talking to myself.
How mad is the weather? It’s like 35 degrees in the morning and then 20 degrees at night, only to be 22 the next day. Heh.. yeah it sure is funny…
Is a bigger organisation better? Discuss... (Posted by Sunny Kalsi Thu, 07 Dec 2006 14:51:00 GMT)
I was reading this article, and it got me thinking….
Microsoft have a lab. I work at a lab. I have friends of friends who work for Microsoft. Ergo, stuff that comes out of Microsoft is innovative, right? Well, wrong, as is clearly evidenced by the software we use everyday. When you install Windows XP, or Office XP 2009 Ballmer edition you get told about how awesome it’s going to be, only to be seriously underwhelmed when you actually go to use the actual software. Contrast with something like Ubuntu, which doesn’t claim anything, but is awesome from the get-go (despite previously mentioned minor issues with all the new fancy Mono software.
One of the things I’m talking about is the big strip that’s supposed to replace the menu / toolbar in Word 2007. If you’ve used it, it looks like a bunch of tabs with little bubbles of options inside them. In fact, I can show you what it looks like. It looks like the interface to Blender! There’s slight differences, but the tabs, and the little squares of configuration, and the menu items being tabs are all there in blender, albeit not as pretty.
It’s actually pretty obvious when you think about it. Blender’s a complicated piece of 3D modelling software. It needs a metric kiloton of options, and so is going to have developed the most efficient way of representing them. When office has to cope with ridiculous numbers of options, it too will end up with a system that’s similar, even if it was independently developed.
However, what I’m saying is almost contrary to this. Let’s say that this “idea” was all done by Microsoft, and it was a real innovation created by the folks at their illustrious labs, and it did actually save people time, isn’t this the exception rather than the rule for Microsoft?
I mean, MS code actually working, actually being competently designed, being actually easy to use, and holding up to it’s promises? Doesn’t sound like Microsoft, does it? I’m not saying that MS is brilliant already, but they’re a lot better than they used to be, and a huge part of that has to do with a giant influx of non-idiotic minds being employed by MS.
However, I’d say a large proportion of those minds are against whatever MS was “all about” before. They’re in the organisation working actively against all the shitty code and shitty ideas and shitty philosophies. I mean, they don’t get paid a shitload of money because they’re “with the program”. They’re supposed to shake things up, they’re supposed to transform the organisation from one that has a very bad image among the computing community to one that’s somewhat respectable. Some of these tactics smell like ye olde MS, but some of them come from actually writing good software sometimes, and otherwise encouraging decent software development.
It’s no Google winter1 of code, but it’s still something.
My point here is this: Once an organisation gets to be as gigantic as MS, it can pretty much transform itself to being a force of good in the world, despite the fact that what got the organisation there in the first place was a fair bit of bullshit. It’s like a conman becoming an illustrious president, or a hooker becoming a nun. In a way, it’s commendable, but in another, maybe the only reason they’ve reached their final conclusions is because of the freedoms the lack of ethics has afforded them.
If Microsoft was evil, but is trying hard not to be, should we forgive them?
1 It’s winter here during their summer of code.
I consider an idea so powerful it will make your face explode (Posted by Sunny Kalsi Wed, 06 Dec 2006 11:19:00 GMT)
A co-worker’s PC recently stopped working. It was a Windows box, and we were thinking of all sorts of solutions to prevent all the effort of re-installing everything. I was thinking about how if it was a Debian or Ubuntu box all you’d have to do is copy your home directory. You’d also need a list of all your packages, but that should be simple enough. However, your settings are per-user, but your packages are per-machine, which I’m beginning to think is a bad thing.
See, I reckon you should have, say, your home directory on something like a USB key or a portable hard drive or something (hell, maybe it’s on the network but all the settings and authentication is on the USB key). That way, you can walk around and plug your key into any old computer, and it should be able to log in and you should be able to use it as if it were your own machine. This is all good and well, except for one thing: software!
If a machine doesn’t have a software package you need, you have to install it (with admin approval) or live without, or move to a machine with the software package installed. This is shit for many reasons, not least of which is that it’s a cumbersome and labour intensive process.
Now imagine that an organisation uses all debian everywhere (or ubuntu, if you like). Now, you keep your usb key and it contains the list of packages you want installed as well as your home directory. When you log into a machine you’ve never logged into before, it’ll go to your package listing, installing all the packages you like (and all their dependencies) from the local apt repository. You log in, and not only are your settings there, but your software is as well. It’s as if you’re using your own machine, only the hardware is different. The added advantage to this is that the system can use the packages as a “cache”, so if installing a new package would fill up the hard drive, it can automatically remove packages that you don’t use to make room.
This effectively delineates software packages from installation and uninstallation. The nice thing is that it works with proprietary software as well, since any keys you need are kept on your usb key, and your software can confirm over the Internet that the key is kocher (or just use the magic serial key algorithm to figure it out). The nicest thing about it is, it’s conceivable that someone could script this in a week or so on an existing apt-get system.
The only downside is that all the users would go insane from the sheer power!
I got home from work with this idea in my head, and realised that all my machines didn’t have all my audio. Considering that I had recently connected to last.fm, I really didn’t want to travel anywhere without my music, considering that last.fm had all my metadata, as well as a fair bit of sample music to listen to. I wanted access to all my CDs and I wanted it now!
The idea, of course, is a simple extension of the software idea. You get “keys” which give you rights to your music (or if it could work out OK, you’d pay a subscription for all the music you wanted). You can then download this music anytime, anywhere, using intelligent protocols like bittorrent or edonkey or even something like daap. You set up your trusted machines on these networks (your main box, your laptop, etc.) and music gets flipped around magically and dynamically. Woohoo!
Simple events can give you a lot of confidence. Only people can take it away. (Posted by Sunny Kalsi Wed, 06 Dec 2006 10:37:00 GMT)
I was writing an email today and I must’ve written something (like 101, and meant LOL), which made me feel entirely apt for the web-2.0-sphere. I started thinking about how “normal people” would either have no idea what I was on about, or would otherwise be unable to write what I was with the same flair that I had.
That’s right. I was writing with flair,
in a computer-ey way,
and no one else was able,
to say what I could say.
It was just a feeling, mind you. Sometimes you feel you need to follow some steps, or notes, or a recipe, but sometimes you think “ah fuck it, I’ll just wing it”. If you feel the need to follow the steps, then you’re not with it. You don’t understand what it is you’re doing. If you’re an OK cook, then you might need a recipe, but if you’re a kick-ass Chef, then someone just needs to tell you what it tasted like, and you might just make something one better. If you’re an OK musician, then you might need the score, but if you’re great, you’ll just improv and it’ll be awesome.
Indeed, it was just a feeling,
“Ah fuck it, I’ll wing it”,
I felt like a musician,
I felt I was with it,
I realised then that while talking to others in person I may come off as retarded, or shy, or whatever. Maybe too quiet, maybe too whatever. It’s something I need instructions in, something where if I were to perform aptly I’d need a recipe or a score, but on the webweb, I have a grace that I’m comfortable with.
Maybe I’m not a writer,
or a rapper, or a musician,
or a chef, or a poet,
Maybe I’m lame in real life
I’m cooler online
I went to G3 last night. It was quite good, though I think my brother had a better time than I did. He was in heaven, while I was merely in a good place. John Petrucci was so ridiculously good, it’s hard to believe he’s human. He only played about 5 songs, though, alongside Mike Portnoy and Dave La Rue. Then Vai started playing.
Vai is nuts. He is really insane. I also think he’s got a rule or something where his hair must always be flowing in the wind. He had fans sitting in front of him. He was also constantly humping his guitar. In short, he was everything I expected from him. Something I didn’t expect was Billy Sheehan on the Bass, and the awesome bass solos that entailed.
Joe Satriani was Joe Satriani. He had the classic songs, but after the other two he was slightly underwhelming, but still cool. In the end he played an extended version of “Always with me always with you”, which was amazing, and then Vai and Petrucci joined in for some extended solos. If there was a piece of the night that made it worth it, it was that moment.
Then the three of them played together for a bit, which sounded more like a mishmash than something really good. They played voodoo child among other songs in this arrangement, which was cool. I saw Johnny and Novac there, who I tend to see more during these events than any other time (Novac at least, I haven’t seen Johnny for a long time). I think Johnny said it best when he said he’d heard enough solos for a while…
