HalfALoafOfTofu

The Flying Pigeon

2008-12-10T19:04:00.000-08:00

Somebody messaged me on Facebook today about my opinion of my Flying Pigeon and whether or not he should buy one. Not having posted in ages, and feeling like sharing a bit I decided to post my reply here, enjoy!

I pretty much love my Pigeon. As for the build quality, that depends on what you’re used to, but I’d say it’s fair. It’s different from most bikes you see in your typical store these says because they’re all modern bikes and the Pigeon is still essentially a 1949 design still being built exactly the way it was 50+ years ago.

It’s all steel and weighs a ton. It still uses push rod brakes that are rubbish (but stupidly easy to maintain) and it has a pretty primitive steel wheel (strong as hell though). The tires it comes with were garbage (got 3 flats within a couple of weeks, but downtown LA is pretty rough on tires), so I replaced those with some really nice puncture resistant ones from Schwalbe. Speaking of tires, it’ll be hard to find replacement ones for it since it uses a rare size that’s really old and only really used in China and the Netherlands (but like I said, Schwalbe makes several tires in the correct size).

Mine had some pretty shoddy assembly (crooked decals and handlebars). But the bike is soooo easy to work with since it’s so primitive and the frame is ridiculously solid. Makes a bit of clatter when riding since you’ve got a full rear kickstand and fenders and a full chain case.

I’ve commuted to work on it before (12.5mi. each way) but Downtown and South and West LA are pretty flat, so it being single speed is OK… Other areas (like Echo Park, Silver Lake, etc..) are really hilly so unless you’re a strong rider you’re gonna be walking the bike uphill. But then it’s meant to cruise at a leasurely pace on a relatively flat topography (Beijing for example is really flat). It rides quite a bit different than most modern bikes though too. It has REALLY relaxed frame angles (since it’s pretty much a copy of old English and Dutch roadsters) so you ride very upright. It gets a little tricky if you’re trying to ride really aggressive leaning over the handlebars and peddling furiously because the front fork is swept really far forward and the handlebars are swept so far back that the bike gets a little unstable. Also, with the big tires and steering setup it’s a little difficult to ride at really slow speeds (like walking pace). However because of it’s relaxed geometry and REALLY long wheelbase, it makes for a VERY comfortable cruiser. Once you get used to it you’ll have no problem and you’ll probably develop better riding balance.

I can’t speak on the issue of snow since I do live in LA and have never ridden a bicycle in snow. I think the bike is geared a little too tall for snow riding (in my uneducated opinion), although if you’re a strong rider it may be fine. My main concern with snow is wet rims. Bicycle brakes generally degrade in performance as the rim gets colder, and obviously lose friction when getting wet, and the Pigeon’s brakes are absolutely rubbish in the wet. On the other hand, the fenders keep you clean and dry and the full chain case keeps your drivetrain nice and clean running (although makes rear wheel removal a pain).

With regards to gearing and snow, one option I’ve been contemplating has been trying to retrofit my Pigeon with a Sturmey Archer 3-speed geared hub. They still make the AW (A 60+ year old design) which many English roadsters of similar ilk as the Pigeon had. Plus supposedly they make them with support for 40 spoke holes (the Pigeon has the old 32/40 spoke setup, and most modern hubs are either 32 or 36 spoke), which is important since there’s be less work in integrating the geared hub with the factory rim. Shimano, SRAM, Sturmey Archer, and Rholoff all make newer, more modern hubs with more gears, but they’d require significantly more work and the modern look of them IMO may clash a bit too much with the older look of the bike.

Now this may sound like a lot of negatives about the bike, but in spite of all that I still really love this bike. When all I see all around me are generic road bikes and mountain bikes, my Pigeon sticks out as glaringly stylish and retro (which is probably why they command a ridiculously high price in New York). I get people stopping me and asking me about it all the time and get some pretty amusing looks from lots of Chinese folks when I go riding around in Chinatown. I tend to have some rather particular tastes as I’m really into 40’s to 60’s English and Dutch style roadsters and late 70’s to late 80’s Japanese steel track bikes (Keirin). Electra and Schwinn make some really pretty bikes in a somewhat similar vein but to get one in the configuration I wanted, I would be looking at around $600 USD. A real nice Dutch roadster generally costs around $1200 to $2000 USD to import which was more than I was really willing to spend at the time. Especially since my Pigeon cost me a little over $200 making the Pigeon somewhat of a bargain. Plus it simply has way more character than the Electras and the Schwinns. It’s a beautiful bike, and there’s a reason why the design has been copied so much.

I hope that helps..!

Boobalicious!

2008-06-19T11:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is just absurd! Aside from all the penis creatures, one also has wonder about the whole notion of a “nudity violation” for game in which creatures have no clothes (at least until they figure out how to make them).

Windows Trash

2008-06-12T15:43:00.000-07:00

Yeah, more Windows sillyness. This time with an empty Recycle Bin. The icon says it’s got stuff in it, and apparently so does Windows…

Exchange

2008-06-11T13:41:00.000-07:00

Indeed. So sad to say, but my work machine still uses Office XP. Thus you can still encounter amusing behaviors in Exchange 2002 like deleted meetings that occasionally still have an orphaned reminder. The fun part is that the snooze drop down is editable. 15min of lost productivity there.

2008-05-09T13:38:00.000-07:00

No not mine… Apparently the pics (taken by a co-worker) taken many months ago of an XML birthday cake for one of my other co-workers got “Dugg” today…

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

2008-02-29T08:09:00.000-08:00

So perusing through my feeds in NNW this morning reading Kotaku, I came across this article about the North American and European versions of Metal Gear Solid 4 not featuring the Japanese voice track. This also applies to the Japanese version not having an English voice track as well. …FAIL!

Even worse? No English subtitles in the Japanese version either! That sucks even more than “The Suck“. As to the claims there’s not enough space on the Blu-Ray disc, I’m wondering whether or not they’re using a BD25 or a BD50 disc. There were early rumors that MGS4 might ship on a BD50 disc due to comments by Hideo Kojima saying he’d like to make use of one, which makes me wonder if they actually are or not. I haven’t listened to the latest KPR yet, so I’ll have to give it a good listen on the way to work the grill Ryan later…

R-Type!!!

2008-02-14T01:05:00.000-08:00

Reading Gamasutra this morning, and this put a nice big smile on my face! I wanted to get this awhile back in it’s original form (known as R-Type Tactics), alas nobody seemed to have in stock at the time. Since then I’d forgotten about it, but this was a total wake up call. Talk about a happy reminder!

Musical game commentary

2008-02-14T00:56:00.000-08:00

Sure wish I could’ve been at DICE last week considering who’s speaking at it. For those who don’t know (which probably means all of you), I’m a huge fan of both Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Masaya Matsuura (my other two favs being Fumito Ueda and Suda51).

But Matsuura, who used his own original compositions for PaRappa, expressed concern about the Guitar Hero model, in which music gamemakers license hit songs, then build their games around them.

I think this is already much better than it currently is with most non-music games where the music is largely tacked on at the end. Also I think this model, while perhaps not ideal for innovation in the musical game genre; provides like well needed stimulus to the music industry in general (although the health of the “music industry” is a topic for another discussion entirely)…

This comment however:

Matsuura suggested that Harmonix allow players to “make their own game course with their own track, and share it with each other, or sell it to each other.”

I found a wee bit on the odd side since Harmonix’ earlier titles like Frequency and Amplitude did a far better job of that. Granted both used licensed music, they both still offered modes where you could still generate your own music from gameplay as well. I also found Mizuguchi’s take on this intersting as well:

Mizuguchi, creator of acclaimed music games Rez and Lumines, said that there are pros and cons to using licensed music. By writing original music for a game, he said, “we can make the sound and music fit the game design. But nobody knows this original music.”
With Lumines 2, Mizuguchi licensed tracks from groups like the Black Eyed Peas and Fatboy Slim, which helped draw in gamers who wanted to play his game with familiar musical tracks.

Personally while Lumines II I think was the better game in terms of mechanics and gameplay options, I found the music of the original far more interesting, unique and memorable. In fact with some of the levels basically being like a live music video in the backround, I found it rather distracting compared to the more subtle graphics of the original.

2008-02-01T14:54:00.000-08:00

Ok, this head tracking shit is getting out of hand. Now I’m not specifically talking about guys playing around with the idea and hacking existing hardware into an implementation. I’m more referring to fanboi’s who have been circle jerking all over themselves ever since Johnny Chung Lee’s experimental projects with the Wiimote exploded all over the web (in particular the head tracking demo posted on Youtube last month).

I’ve even commented on a few sites that this really isn’t that new or innovative since folks over at Natural Point who make the TrackIR products have essentially been selling products (that are already supported in games) for a few years now that allow this sort of functionality. The thing is, the principle is really quite simple, and I even pointed out that it could probably be done with the PS Eye or any other webcam (the PS Eye would probably be most suited due to it’s higher spec sensor and the fact that it relies on the host for image processing instead of internal image processing prevalent on most webcams).

Lo’ and behold, some PS3 developer goes ahead and does just that!

The really neat aspect of this and Johnny’s work isn’t so much the tracking aspect as the explorative use of existing devices for tasks other than their explicitly designed purpose (granted the PS Eye and Eye Toy were designed just for this sort of thing, the only real difference is using the visible light spectrum vs. infrared spectrum). He even credits Johnny for inspiring him to do this demo as a response to Johnny’s. The only sad part is that again the TrackIR folks don’t seem to get any credit for their years of hard work trying to make it this space. However, leave it to silly people to spout nonsense like this:

This is why I love Nintendo. Had Nintendo not innovated this generation, developers and competitors would not be looking at this technology as anything more than a passing fad. But now it’s serious – it’s real.
If Nintendo would have given us a straight Gamecube successor, there is no way we’d be watching clips like this today – there would just be no precedent for technology like this to be useful in gaming. But now the landscape of gaming has changed completely – I can’t wait for the next wave of games to start implementing this sort of thing.
Thanks for innovating, Nintendo. As usual, another company is doing it better – until you innovate once again.

Sorry fella, but Nintendo didn’t innovate this. This sort of thing has been going on long before Nintendo started showing off the Wii (or even talking about the “Revolution”). Hell, anybody who ever used to go hang in Kentia Hall during E3 would see a flood of devices by companies trying to break into the industry. Granted many of them were silly gimmicks, but it illustrates that the landscape was hardly barren before Nintendo stepped foot into it.

If you wanted to talk about an innovative videogame company, then you should be bowing to Sega not Nintendo. Even then, there are so many companies and individuals that have contributed innovation in videogames that there really is no one company that one should bow to. What you could give credit to Nintendo for though, is bringing such projects to a wider audience and making it more acceptable. Still, I’d like to see the folks behind TrackIR get a little more recognition rather than this being something more of a fruit of Nintendo’s labors.

For nAo

2008-01-30T13:19:00.000-08:00

Nutella…

Poor interpretation...

2008-01-26T01:09:00.000-08:00

So there’s this article on Game Daily about an analyst speculating that the 80GB PS3 SKU is being retired because of poor sales, Game Daily and NPD seem to claim “NO YUO!” Where do I start? First of all the analystis indeed probably wrong. Sales performance of the 80GB SKU, good or bad aren’t going to be the factor in it’s retirement (although yes a potential factor).

To step back a bit further, one has to ask why is this even a big deal at all? What it boils down to is that the 80GB SKU (the initial 60GB PAL model for EU folks) is the only current model with some form of PS2 backwards compatibility. It seems to still be quite a big deal to some people due to the 40GB SKU’s lack of PS2 backwards compatibility. I could go one about that one for a while, but I’ll save that for another time perhaps.

Back to Game Daily and the Mr. Hickey of Janco Partners (the aforementioned analyst). Earlier I mentioned that regardless of sales the 80GB SKU would be retired soon anyways. That’s pretty obvious actually. It’s an older, more expensive design, therefor it’s in Sony’s best interest to retire it as soon as possible and push the 40GB SKU in it’s place. The 40GB SKU is simply a more cost effective design to manufacture;

65nm vs. 90nm components
No GS (PS2 hardware)
Simpler motherboard (lower part count)
Fewer external ports (flash and USB)
And a smaller HDD to boot

I’d imagine there’s a few others such as a simpler optical drive (perhaps explaining the lack of SACD support (don’t quote me on that though)). The point still remains, the 80GB SKU was simply one phase of many that will consist of cost reduction redesigns with the 40GB SKU being the next (or current if you prefer) phase. I could go on about the lack of PS2 backwards compatibility and such, but that’s a topic that don’t feel like discussing right now and I’ve already digressed way off topic.

So essentially Mr. Hickey claimed that the 80GB SKU was being retired (all starting from the Best Buy rumors BTW) because of poor sales vs. Sony’s internal projections, and that in what seems like a potential recession environment likely not to perform well vs. it’s 40GB brethren (and that the 40GB seems to be enjoying a faster uptake than the 80GB did). Apparently Game Daily (the original source article) heard from NPD that the 80GB SKU outsold the 40GB model in the 4th quarter. So some are taking this as a “NO YUO!” silly analyst boy! sorta response from NPD.

First of all, the 40GB SKU hit retail on November 2nd (in the US). So it doesn’t have a full quarter of sales vs. the 80GB SKU so NPD’s response is sorta odd in that regard. Unless they normalized both SKU’s out, but that data doesn’t seemed to be disclosed. The other aspect that leaves me scratching my head is that NPD mainly tracks North American sales. Last time I checked, Sony sells PS3s in more regions than just North America. The 40GB launched in the EU on October 10th, and in Japan on November 11th so it also be interesting to factor in those regions as well. Ultimately though, Mr. Hickey never even claimed that the 40GB SKU outsold the 80GB SKU, just that the 80GB one didn’t meet Sony’s expectations and that based on the 40GB holiday sales that the 80GB model wouldn’t likely hold up in the future.

Awwww Yeeeeeaaaaaaah!

2008-01-24T14:49:00.000-08:00

That’s all I have to say for now…

Long time no post....

2008-01-04T00:02:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I've been a bit of a lazy ass when it comes to this site... I've had a bunch of posts, some were toasted while dicking around with an alpha of Ecto. Hopefully I should do a better job of updating from now on...

Sony CSL gets some love...

2007-06-08T16:59:00.000-07:00

Or at least some attention…

Cool Stuff!

2007-04-16T16:36:00.000-07:00

This is cool! I love art that explores the use of simple objects in “interesting” ways.

Slow news day for Opposable Thumbs...

2007-04-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

Yeah, looks like a slow news day at Ars if you’re bitching about game names and minigames. As for game names, I could care less, and yes I’ll admit that I sometimes even find them amusing. The only gripe as far as the names go is the silly “®” or “©” symbols in the name (e.g. PLAYSTATION®3). Minigames to me only become a problem if they become critical for completing the game, and even then when their well done I find them more of a benefit than detriment to the game.

Masaya Matsuura, my hero...

2007-04-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

Yes, my hero… Well not quite, but I have been an immense fan of NanaOn-Sha’s work; so when I heardMasaya Matsuura was going to be speaking at GO3 I was excited about it, yet at the same time bummed ’cause I wasn’t going to be there to see it (I’d seem him speaking at GDC several years back). LuckilyGamasutra posted a nice synopsis.

Muzak once more...

2007-03-31T09:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, even more muzak… Pretty worn out these days with all these little concerts. Another night at the 2nd Street Jazz and this time not only was the sound rubbish, but there were technical delays that caused us to wait an hour or so before being on let in. Again, we were there mainly to catch Thee Out Mods. Instead of waiting in a queue outside, we decided to meander (one of my GF’s pals walked by, and suggested we have some drinks elsewhere) on over to another bar on the other side of the village. It turned out to be quite amusing as I’ve walked by it many times over the past few years but never bothered to walk in. Turns out it as a rather good choice as I’ve forgotten how pleasant it is to suck down a couple of beers while munching on Japanese snacks as watching baseball with a bunch of old, drunk Japanese people…

So after all of that, we went back to the Jazz, only to find that we still had to wait in line for a while longer. After a while we got in and got settled, and the first band started up. While significantly better than the other band that’s been opening up, Hokma Gandhi still wasn’t quite up there with the other bands (and what the hell is it with asian chicks playing bass?). Anyways the singer (big, tall, white dude) though was actually quite good, although I think the band would have looked (and sounded) more appropriate singing covers of anime opening themes. Next up was Mongoose, and they were much cooler. I’ve seen the drummer around quite a bit, so it was kinda nice to actually see him play rather than just move equipment around.

Afterwards came Dig Jelly (don’t really care for the name). Reminds me a lot of Korn/Limp Bizkit hip-hop rock blend. Not really being my flavor of music, I still enjoyed their performance and I was impressed that they made the most off the Jazz’ poor sound (personally acoustics wise, they sounded the best of any of the bands there). For the first half though, I also could only hear Rayko rather than see her as her small stature prevented me from seeing her over the crowd (granted I’d seen her walking around the club earlier). Still, it allowed me to focus on her voice, which was wonderfully good when she actually sang. The whole, guttural, death metal wail in to the mic thing though didn’t really do anything for me (although I was impressed to see such a sound emanate from such a compact, cute little package). Later on she moved to sitting and strutting around on what looked like a piano (yes she’s that tiny) and thus I got a better look at her performance. A couple of observations.

She needs to perform more with her hair down. Looks much better than the girly little pig tails.
Part of me wants to say “cover up the mid section and cool it with the sports bras”. I mean don’t get me wrong, her mid section is pretty awesome and she sports a lovely set of well done tits (and who wouldn’t wanna see that!?!). Still, I found myself paying more attention to her figure than her singing, and personally I think she could do better style wise (the cute, athletic school girlish look, while nice to look at, doesn’t really jive all the well image wise to me).
Like I mentioned above, lose the guttural wailing thing. It’s just not cool, hot or anything when chicks do it, and is more of a novelty coming from a cute, small package. I think she should focus more on the singing quality of her voice (which is quite good IMO).

One final thing that I liked that she did though was instead of drinking bottled water or a beer, she drank milk instead… Coolio…

At last came Thee Out Mods. All done up with white pressed shirts and black ties, you’d think Oreskabandhad gone punk! Anyhow, they rocked as usual, although Sana had to suffer through technical failures as her mic kept going out during their performance. Still, even when the mics are working, the Jazz never quite seems to do them justice… At least we got to have fun ’cause Yoshiki passed out party poppers. Also, he didn’t moon the crowd this time… Dunno if that’s a good thing or bad thing though (after all there are lots of fan girls there)… Well I guess that’s enough for now, hopefully this will be the last of these muzak posts for a while.

More Muzak...

2007-03-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

Only a few days later and even more music. Although unlike Sunday it was more along the lines of smaller (in some cases, local) bands playing at Zen Sushi. Mainly we were there for Thee Out Mods, but my GF had a friend showing up who knows Justin, the drummer for Lemon Drop Kick. The place was so-so, but I liked the layout with the stage upstairs and all. Unfortunately that rather blah band who’s name I don’t even remember was opening things up again. The singer is weak-sauce (seriously the guitar player sings better), and they don’t have a drummer (yet?), instead relying on drum machine. Plus they looked all disconjointed in terms of image. The bass player was the only one who seemed to fit the image behind name of the band (who’s name I can’t remember). Actually the vocalist tried too, but failed miserably in my opinion.

There was some other band that came on later, but I can’t for the life of me remember their name either, it’s like on the tip of my mind. There weren’t bad, but I didn’t listen to them much. I was downstairs at the bar chatting it up with their tour guide/promoter and Justin (Lemon Drop Kick) along w/the GF and her friend (who’s name I can’t remember now (bear with me, I’ve only met him 3 times!). Actually I did hear one song I really liked, but honestly the conversation downstairs was more interesting.

Eventually we got around to Lemon Drop Kick and they were alright. Honestly the songs didn’t do much for me. The singer was pretty good though, really strong voice, especially considering how tiny she was! Still live music is live music, and it’s the experience (good or bad) that make it, and in general I give ‘em a good rating. Plus it’s always cool when you can chat up members of the band readily, and jabber about videogames.

Anyways, the other band that the guy was with was The Psycrons. They turned out to be a quite a pleasant surprise! At least after a few technical difficulties were resolved. They definitely had that 60’s British Invasion look and sound going on that’s for sure, although perhaps with a bit of Japanese flavour. Being from Kyoto, they immediately reminded me of all the random little bands we saw playing in Kyoto (usually along the Kamo river). I was particularly fond of this one couple that was playing along the banks with a guitar hooked up to a little battery powered amp, and a mic hooked up to a boom box. They (a girl and a guy) sang and played their hearts out. Karaoke basically means empty orchestra. In this case it was more like empty audience as there was nobody really sitting and watching except for me and my GF and a couple of old guys. Still, they prattled on as if they were standing in the middle of a packed Tokyo Dome. It’s things like that that make me feel genki.

But enough of that digression. Finally we got to Thee Out Mods, who we came to see. They rocked as usual, although they had somebody else (who I’ve seen at their other concerts, but for the life of me I can’t remember his name) playing guitar (which allowed Sana jump around the stage a lot more (girl REALLY knows how to shake the head and waggle the tongue)). Yoshiki managed to lose his shirt promptly and by the end of their performance mooned the crowd (I have a good idea for a poster using that shot!). Thankfully the Zen has better acoustics than the Jazz (which usually has malfunctions and other issues), so you could actually hear her singing.

And last but not least Inazuma. I saw them earlier at the 2nd. St. Jazz, but we left early ’cause me and the GF were wiped out. So it was cool to see Thunder (Vo/Gt) jamming. Plus he was nicer than you’d imagine after watching him help out The Psycrons with their technical difficulty earlier on in the evening. However, I think Thunder over powers the rest of the band. Still pretty impressive to watch. Unfortunately, for the last song one of the fans got to go up and sing with them. Cool in principle to let a fan up on stage and sing one of the band’s song with them. Bad execution though. I mean seriously, YOU DON’T NEED TO SCREAM INTO THE MIC at the top of your lungs! It’s amplified so you don’t have to! While listening to that my brain decided to deactivate the ear drums for the rest of the evening.

Lots of Muzak

2007-03-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

Pretty tired. The whole SXSW Asia going on this month, and yesterday we went down to the Knitting Factory to catch their performances in Hollywood, and it was definitely a wonderful treat. For one, the doors actually opened on time (and by on time I mean only 10 minutes late instead of what seems to be the obligatory 45 minutes). At first I was also bummed out that it was just the front stage being used mainly because it gave me flashbacks to The Pillows concert at the sadly waaaay overcrowded Whisky. However it turned out to be just fine as there was a decent sized crowd, but it was still easy to move about. Plus you could get fairly close to the acts if you felt like braving the mosh pit…

Asakusa Jinta was the first band we saw get on stage. Quite a hoot too. While I’m not particularly into what they’d call “hard marching band” music, they’re definitely a blast to watch like, especially with Mika as lively as she is. Next up came the 50 Kaitenz; much more my style. Plus Danny is completely off the wall hilarious on stage with his facial expressions (seriously, has to be seen). After came one of the two bands I was actually there to see; Oreskaband. No need to comment on their performance, as they were totally awesome (and I’m not a big ska person either). Plus i was rather impressed how they interacted with the crowd (e.g. not shy, or quiet on stage), then again, they are from Osaka.

Then finally came GO!GO!7188; THE band I was there to see. Pretty much worth it too, as I was blown away getting to hear “Ukifune“ live. The amusing part for me though was that Akko and Yuu were so plainly dressed (jeans and t-shirt). All the other bands had very distinct appearances, but Akko and Yuu just looked so casual, as if they had just been loafing around at home (and it’s not like they’ve never dressed up at their concerts either). Granted it really didn’t bother me, as they were quite cool even in such casual persona.

Then along came Pistol Valve. Very different. Very cool looking. Very annoying delays in getting set up. Granted you’ve got 10 girls to hooked up and dialed in properly. Unfortunately the neat little parking garage where the car was was closing around 11:30pm so we pretty much had to bail. So we only got a brief chance to see a bit of Pistol Valve. Personally I think they need some stronger vocals, but they do look and sound pretty cool otherwise (C’mon 10 cute girls and a ton of brass? What’s not to like!?!)… Also HY was there as well, but as we left during Pistol Valve’s performance we missed out on that. Bummer too..

"Special Edition"

2007-03-16T20:01:00.000-07:00

This is amusing… It appears as though North American studios are really starting to pick up some Japanese habits when it comes to “Special Edition” versions of titles. I’m surprised they haven’t done this more in the past, especially with rising game costs; It makes for a nice additional source of revenue while giving the fans more stuff to chew on.

New Toy...

2007-03-13T08:28:00.000-07:00

Got a new toy from the girlfriend as a late birthday present. So far not too bad. I certainly found the packaging to be rather nice (not something I’d expected). Anyways, it wasn’t something I wanted so much for running emulators or stuff like that (which is what seems to be the most popular use for the system (along with it’s predecessor (the GP32) and the homebrew hacking on the PSP). Nor was it as a collector’s item to play the paltry amount of native games on it, nor use it as a poor man’s portable media player.

No I mainly bought it to do a little handheld tinkering and development. PSP homebrew is nice, but without official endorsement you always feel like you’re climbing through mud, uphill. I’m not really interested in emulators (I prefer the original hardware (MAME is the only real exception for me), nor do I feel like having to reverse engineer everything and then figure out why things break. Nor do I feel like bricking my PSP.

This really isn’t a slight against PSP homebrew (although it may seem as though it is). No, it’s really about having an environment you can play in. Having nice devtools (or just decent ones). Sure you don’t have a fancy CPU or GPU to mess with. But it’s no slouch. Besides, it’s mostly for prototyping little ideas for handhelds that I have that I can legitimately show off (Nintendo & Sony ususally aren’t too thrilled when you show up with an idea that’s running on their hacked systems (even if it is cool)).

On to the hardware. While it looks quite nice in pictures (and it’s not bad hardware either), when you hold it, it does feel a little cheap (it’s pretty light until you put the batteries in it). I think it’s mostly down to the type of plastics though and the controller nub. The screen is pretty nice though, although the menu/UI feels a bit on the â€œroughâ€Â side (sorta reminds me of my Modix HD-3510). Boot time is a little long and the UI navigation is a bit clunky to boot (no pun intended).

The video playback is a bit spotty. Depends on the video, but even within the supposed parameters, it still seems to drop frames. That’s usually a gripe I’ve had with DivX, XviD and the lot with hardware decoders. On a nice note, it does use AA batteries and comes with some rather nice 2500mAh AA batteries. Good thing too ’cause it’ll tear though alkalines as quickly as 10min depending on what you’re doing (e.g. having the CPUs clocked up to 240MHz+). Well that’s all for now… I’ll see what comes about after I start playing with the SDK.

Much ado about nothing

2007-03-12T15:23:00.000-07:00

I’d been meaning to comment on this lately, but have been a bit too busy at work to get around to it. In case you haven’t been following, Ars has been a bit bearish on the PS3 as of late. Actually you could say anybody with an online presence in general has been fairly harsh (at least until GDC!). Of all the recent articles however, this one takes the cake.

To start off with, there’s this gem:

I suggested that Sony should have abandoned Blu-ray or, at most, should have made it an add-on, such as the HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360. The reason is simple: by pushing the console’s price into sky-high territory, Sony was stretching themselves dangerously thin.
Almost a year later, it’s completely obvious that Sony has stretched itself too thin.

Sony, stretched thin? Seriously, we’re talking about corporation that’s been consistently generating over $60-$70 billion dollars of revenue each year, and yet still remain profitable (albeit tight at times). SCE? Yeah you could say they’ve bitten off a sizeable chunck that may be hard to swallow; but Sony as a whole? C’mon… Is this fundamentally any different than the original Playstation or the PS2?

To the typical armchair analyst/CEO/blogger, you might think hell yes! In reality it’s not. From a technical standpoint there are some differences, however as far as impact and/or scale of what they were trying to accomplish? Not really.

Yeah, Blu-Ray is the neat new format, but is it really that big of a deal with regard to the PS3. Personally I don’t think so. The PSP debuted with a new optical disc format (UMD), yet we didn’t see as much fuss over that (other that the typical grumbling over another format (strangely nobody grumbles when it comes to proprietary carts though…)). But really, how about building semiconductor fabs (PS2)? How about creating a whole new division and entering new, competitive market (Playstation)? With a bit of perspective, this whole ruckuss over Blu-Ray seems like a pile of nonsense.

However, this part seems the part where I take issue:

As we learned this morning, Sony is now bifurcating their product line even further, delivering a lesser product to the European market in order to save a few bucks. Dumping some of the dedicated hardware for backwards compatibility should save Sony a few greenbacks (or yen, as the case may be), but it screws gamers. And for what? How much cost is Sony saving by scratching this hardware?

Ken seems really upset! Don’t know why though. It’s not like you couldn’t see it coming! And even before this there was speculation and debate on how backwards compatiblity was going to be achieved. So why all the fuss? Iteratively trimming complexity in the system has been going on since the original Playstation. Japan got one with a nice little S-Video port on the back while the US didn’t (although I guess it was of minor consolation that S-Video/AV cable was made avaialble 4 months later). Later on, the composite jacks got tossed, then the parallel port, and finally by the PSOne, the serial port.

The along came the PS2… And when it came to the US, away went the PCMCIA port (although only used for an external HDD in which the US and EU models relied on an internal bay for). Then away went the firewire port (but along came IR!). The came the slim 7xxxx series with no HDD support whatsoever (ah but it did have an ethernet port in the back). However Sony had a little surprise for everybody in 75xxx. Out went the original IOP, to be replaced with a different one, and can you guess what that affected?

Another thing. I think Ken is underplaying the significance of shaving components off of a system. Removing the EE+GS saves you not only the cost of the chip itself, but also ancilliary costs such as the DRDRAM modules for the EE, board real estate and routing. It reduces part count which decreases complexity, which in turn reduces assembly costs. You might say it’s a bit of a trickle down effect.

With the PS3, Sony has let its video entertainment aspirations dictate the design of a gaming console, and the results are now plain for us to see: when the going gets rough, the gaming functionality gets going (going, gone!) out of the box. Buh-bye. Sure, now Sony will use software to provide some backwards compatibility, but not full compatibility. They’ve got a stop-gap measure in place, and we’re hoping that it works really well because who wants to keep an old PS2 sitting around once you have a PS3?

Really now… We need to lay off the Kool-Aid. Yes Blu-Ray is a critical component of the PS3. Dictate the design of the console? Please… Does the 360’s DVD-ROM drive dictate it’s design? In the end, it’s just a denser optical disc. As for the full compatibility? Here’s a news flash, the PS2 never attained â€œfull compatibilityâ€ with the Playstation (in fact it PS2 games started breaking on later PS2 models!), and when it comes to the current PS3 with regards to PS2 compatiblity? Guess what? It isn’t â€œfully compatibleâ€ either. I hate to break it to you, but leveraging an emulator for backwards compatiblity has always been the target goal. Utilizing hardware has generally been a plan B that so far has worked out OK.

Really, the article is just plain poor… I don’t know what else to say…

Funny, but not...

2007-03-10T21:15:00.000-08:00

This is funny until you realize that Live and the Wii online experience is pretty much the same thing. At least it uses real cash values instead of insipid points. But in all honesty, all the online services need to spend time using Amazon for a while or the iTMS…

More Cubicle Life...

2007-03-08T22:08:00.000-08:00

More cubicle pics for today! The lightbox macro is sorta pissing me off right now with layout and image sequences (and I don’t feel like messing with it right now). Anyways, these new ones are from my current building in the first spot I was shoved into. Granted the building is a wee bit nicer (although not much IMO) but since we lease it, it kinda sucks because it doesn’t feel like it’s “yours”. The old building felt cozier and in retrospect I preferred the old style cubicles with high walls and little windows. These new ones have no wall space for white boards, posters and other knickknacks. OTOH, I did like the view from the new location. No need to check traffic online, just lean back and see how the 405 is doing. However the other inconvenience of this particular cubicle spot is that it’s right along the walkway to a couple of meeting rooms, so you got a fair bit of foot traffic walking by. Plus it was always a bit drafty too.