Hello all. I have been living in this house for roughly one year now. Back in Idaho we had dish network with a DVR. I loved it! All this time here without one was starting to get to me. Hulu and downloading episodes did hold me over, but it wasn't how i wanted it to be. I get the most basic of basic cable service through comcast. 10$ a month. a steal of a deal. In order to get a comcast DVR i would have to upgrade to at least a higher plan, plus the cost the rent the unit, and 15$ more for HD unit.
Being me, i hate to pay for things that i can get for free. So i dropped 120$ for the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250. It has dual HD tuners so I could watch something and record something at the same time, HD or SD.
Initially my budget was spent the instant i bought that capture card. So i took some old computer parts i had and built a machine. AMD 3800+, 2gb ddr400 ram, 7800gt video, and a whopping 80gb IDE hard drive.
This was my concept machine, it worked for all intents and purposes. I was originally going to run MythTV on ubuntu. This was shot down rather quickly because my TV card did not support analog in linux :( sad face. I then put windows 7 on the machine and tried out SageTV. I was quite happy with SageTV. It did HD tv, timers, recordings, etc. My favorite part was the mpg format it recorded! Unfortuantly, it had some issues with some or my channels. It would either not see them right or fail to get a guide listing.
My next trial was with the new windows media center. Those who know me, know this hurt me. I HATE windows media center. WMC scanned for channels without me telling me anything but my zip code. The TV interface was easier than SageTV, so the wife liked it better. Its been quite nice really. THERE! I SAID IT! Now to the complaint. It records in a stupid format. .wtv, wtf? Who uses wtv? No one! *sigh*
I used this setup for a couple months. It was working rather well actually. Then the issues started. 1. Random blue screens. something between a windows update and the divers were not getting along. (64-bit). Sometimes it would happen a few times a night, other times nothing. 2. Freezing. It would randomly freeze up. 3. It would overheat due to the POS case it was in. 4. it was LOUD.
This year i have been saving up for something nice, nothing in particular. SO i asked for computer parts to build a new htpc.
-AMD Phenom X3 8750
-ASUS M3N78-VM
-2 GB DDR2 1066 ram
-Western Digital WD10000LSRTL Caviar Black 1TB
-Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250
-hec SECC 7K09 Micro ATX Media Center
I chose a small case the fit inside my tv cabinet. I plan to use an HDMI cable to run the video and audio to my TV then from my TV to my receiver through an optical cable.
Here are some of the parts. Processor, Mobo, and Ram.
Here is the case, its sleek and black.
This is the case with the ram, mobo, and processor.
Here is the cpu :)
Here is the nice evenly spread thermal paste :)
Here is the computer about 90% put together. Everything is is installed except the capture card. I was starting to get worried that the card would not fit in the pci slot.
As you can see they have a nice little heatsink sitting where a card should sit. At this point i have not tested it to see if it will fit.
This is the back end of the machine with the capture card and its input extender.
last image
I've been using the new machine for about 24 hours now. I spent a good 12 hours copying media over to the new hard drive. 500 gigs of movie rips to happily watch without mucking with DVD's. yay! The HDMI output works great, and no reboots or blue screens :) yay! I did move to 32 bit windows to attempt to rid the BSOD.
My next venture is to get the remote working with media player classic or VLC.
I use coreAVC for my HD media. Media player classic uses this nicely, but it has to be set up. To set it up right click, options, external filters, add. Add CoreAVC, then click the Prefer button. This will let CUDA do the video rendering if you have a 8 series or higher NVIDIA card. You know its working if you see a green dot in the tray. This uses MUCH less cpu than without it. Very nice.
Oh, and hulu now works in full screen without stuttering, yay!
Original post by Extreme
Can we add a violator to that? Can we add a disclaimer to that? What if we moved the logo to the right? To the left? What about adding a star burst in the background? Can we switch the font to Arial?
After a long phone conversation with the above-mentioned questions, I looked down at my doodle:
Apparently I’m not alone.
Original post by melktart
Ξ February 26th, 2010 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Rants |
Dear Infinity Ward and Activision, whichever is to blame.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is at the core of the game, a good game. It has all the good parts of a COD based games. It has good, solid gameplay.
That being said. I HATE it! What on earth were you thinking when the retards you call execs made the decision to do what was done. I will get to the list shortly. I am a PC gamer, and as such i expect to have my PC games live up to a standard. Without sounding snooty i would dare say that PC gamers are a more adept and tech savvy than console gamers. No one would argue with me if i said it was easier to start a console game than to chew gum. That is their design, to be dummy proof. Fine, let the dummies play their consoles. I have to ask… WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY ARE YOU DUMBING DOWN MY PC GAMES?!?!! WHY!!!!? I do NOT want a lobby system. I want a server, with people, people that can come and go without dicking the game up. If i wanted to be treated like a damn retard, i would buy an xbox. (no offense xbox'ers)
the controversial decisions made around the PC version of the game were made in order to benefit the consumer experience as much as possible.
Those decisions include removing all dedicated servers and user-generated content, as well as halving the maximum number of players supported in the game.
W T F!!! Ya, its much better now. Thanks for no custom… ANYTHING. Thanks for letting the cheaters go rampant. Its great, i love it!
Did anyone mention that there is a petition with over 250,000 signature to get dedicated servers in place? Their response..
…
Mouse control!? Really?! no way! So what your saying is "Yes, its the same"
Moriarte: Ignoring IW.net, is the PC version a direct port of the console version?
Mackey-IW: No, PC has custom stuff like mouse control, text chat in game, and graphics settings.
Pros:
-Good gameplay
-Nice graphics
Cons:
-"Dumbed down"
-no dedicated servers
-no moderation
-rampant cheating
-Lobby system
-no customization
-"Cheap" PC version
-Lack of caring from Mike Griffith
-User hosted matches
-host migration
-
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I found these amusing:
http://static.arstechnica.com/drawing2.png
http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/cfs-fil … Blog01.jpg
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* confirmation that there will be no dedicated servers whatsoever How outstandingly fucking retarded of them.
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Q. Is it true that IW has removed keyboard support? do I have to use a console controller? A. yes, we felt that because so many people who can't read play games, that we would simplify the control scheme to exclude any complicated characters besides Y B A and X, or X, square, triangle and circle in the case of the PS3.
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sources:
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/200 … w2-on-pc/1
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009 … hought.ars
http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showth … amp;page=4
http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showpo … stcount=83
http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showpo … stcount=77
http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showpo … stcount=23
Original post by Extreme
Okay, so… I’ll admit it. I like pseudoarchaeology. Crazy theories, no alignment with accepted standards, dudes just going out there and making shit up because, for whatever reason – political, reputation-wise, religious, whatever – they want something to be true1. It’s great. I realize that, for someone with even just a purely academic background in anthropology, this is tantamount to admitting that I have a stash of Danielle Steele novels hidden inside hallowed out copies of real books2 but really… I like pseudoarchaeology.
Now that said, I like pseudoarchaeology for the same reason I like science fiction. It’s a good story. It tells us things about ourselves. If you want to tell me that aliens abducted ancient Egyptians, learned all about pyramid making from a series of detailed colonoscopies3, and then came back to Earth centuries later to act as head architects at Teotihuacan or Chichen Itza, okay, sure. Tell me that story. If you want to tell me that the ancient Greeks must have managed to make Polynesian contact because their helmets4 looked like the crested helmets of Hawaiian chieftains, okay. I can dig it. Tell me that story too. I think you’re taking the easy road with your hyperdiffusionism, absolutely, but I’ve read and watched science fiction for years that “techs the tech” whenever they need a context for the story they’re going to tell. I can handle that. I like a good story.
But – and this is a big ‘but’ that I don’t think the people making boatloads of money off these yarns are responsibly adding to their wares – pseudoarchaeology cannot be assumed to tell us anything more reliable about the past than science fiction tells us about the future. I think this is kind of where things start to derail. It’s a problem we don’t see that much with science fiction; most people generally don’t have a hard time separating reality from fiction when the latter is filled with metaverses, flying boy battle schools, and paranoid androids. But as soon as you start throwing around an idea about the past with just enough “tech the tech” to sound reasonable, people somehow lose their ability to tell reality from fiction… or, in the case of archaeology, reasonable-and-dynamic-hypotheses-which-are-consistent-with-the-information-to-date and really-cool-ideas-that-are-at-best-unsubstantiated-and-at-worst-completed-debunked.
Archaeology is a science – we can debate about how hard or soft a science it is at another time, if you would like – and for all the creativity that may go into the exploration, explanation, and re-evaluation of the data we find, it is disciplined. It adheres to known tenets. This “Garrett Fagan” person has a background in classics and ancient Mediterranean studies so he wouldn’t be on my speed-dial for “Phone a Friend” when an archaeology question comes up, but this article I think quite nicely hits the high level principles of the archaeological discipline:
- The most basic principle in archaeology, therefore, is that the discipline requires evidence to function. … A sub-principle of the basic requirement of evidence is that no amount of excuse-making for the complete absence of supporting evidence for a theory compensates for that absence. …
- The second principle is the nature of archaeological evidence itself. After 150 years of practice, what constitutes archaeological evidence is clear. People are messy. Communities of people are very messy. … So, when archaeologists encounter a “theory” for which not one verifiable object, never mind a site or a town or a burial, is adduced, they are rightly suspicious.
- So, while interpretative uncertainty and debate certainly prevail among archaeologists, there is one respect in which they are all united. Their hypotheses, to be convincing, must take all pertinent data into account. This is the third principle of archaeology: Hypotheses must respect the evidence. Any hypothesis that runs demonstrably against the evidence will be instantly rejected. Any hypothesis that is based on a selective presentation of the evidence will also be rejected, and for a very obvious reason.
I mean, it’s pretty straightforward. The archaeological record is spotty at best; everyone knows this. There are creativity elements which go into trying to fill these gaps in, to try and link disparate pieces together. There is room for creativity and there’s certainly room for interpretation. But only within those bounds. If you’re going to propose a serious, archaeological theory, there’d better be 1) evidence that supports it, 2) no evidence that disproves it, and 3) for the love of god, the proof you have better not be the fact that there’s nothing else in that particular archaeological hole. If you don’t have those things, then all you have is a story.
And there’s nothing wrong with a good story… so long as people know it’s a story. We can learn from stories. We can think about stories. We can look at something, fit the pieces together, and figure out something about ourselves from what we end up with. Ain’t nothing wrong with a good story. And that’s why I like it. It’s science fiction… just with less pew-pew-lasers and more chaTHUNK-chaTHUNK-ClovisPoints.
Story time: It’s been suggested that Roman mariners reached the New World between BC 49 and AD 79… or even earlier, depending on who you ask. (If you want to know, yes, it’s also been suggested that aliens visited the New World during the same time period. What of it?) The primary basic for this particular assertion are two shipwrecks, one off the coast of Brazil (1982) and the other off the coast of Venezuela (1987), identified as Roman-style vessels by the construction, the materials, and the fact that they contained identifiable amphorae. Of course, the finds have been suppressed by local governments because of political and racial upheavals so very little information is available5.
Let’s assume that all this is true: they are, in fact, Roman ships. (This is, after all, a story. And just like I can assume that the crew of the Enterprise can speak perfectly fluently with myriad species they’ve never met before because the Universal Translator just is, we can assume that these are Roman ships.) We mentioned above that the archaeological record is spotty at best. Why? Because it’s really f*cking hard to get in there. For something to enter the archaeological record, it has to be in the right place at the right time; preservation conditions have to be just right; it has to be in a place someone will later be able to find it. It’s really not easy. If there is even one Roman shipwreck in the New World, we can be reasonably sure there were a bunch of other ships there that either didn’t preserve or didn’t wreck. And if they didn’t wreck…
Now let’s stop there. We could continue any of a number of stories – well, if the Romans shipwrecked there, and it was a sheltered bay, then they probably stopped there on purpose; they probably lived!; if they lived, then they probably interacted with the natives!; if they interacted with the natives, they may have gotten alien colonoscopies too! – but this is really as far as I want to go with this. Why end the fun?
Because we already have the best piece to think about. At this period of time, the Romans had incredible technology, technology that most of humanity wouldn’t see again for a thousand years, technology that some of humanity still hasn’t seen. They were powerful, they were 6.5 million km of territory strong and growing. They were giants. And, if they had in fact reached the New World – regardless of whether they meant to or whether they just got swept away – and been able to return with the stories, the world was about to get a whole lot smaller. For them, for everyone else, for us.
But they didn’t. If those are actually Roman shipwrecks, if there were successful voyages that not only didn’t wreck but managed to find their way back home6… the Roman Empire didn’t follow up. The biggest and baddest player in the game… and they chose to look the other way.
Why? Didn’t need the land? Didn’t recognize the natural resources available? Didn’t have the resources to spare from other initiatives? Couldn’t see or didn’t want to risk a glimpse at the long-term?
I don’t know.
Why haven’t we gone back to the moon?
- Kind of like writing a book to say that this really wants this… except not nearly as sad.
- And now that I think about, how many bodice rippers could you actually fit in between the covers of all six volumes of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? And how would you organize them? Take Chapter 16: “…it must still be acknowledged that the Christians, in the course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels”. What would you store there? The one about a young, innocent, but astonishingly beautiful young woman sent by her blue-blooded but impoverished father (his drinking ruined him but she loves him dutifully anyway; if only there were a strapping young man at the court who could show her what it truly means to be a man!) to the court of Henry VIII in 1534?
- Everyone knows that this is how aliens, the good ones anyway, get all of their information. Handshakes are for aggressive, warlike baby races. Butt-sniffing is for the academic elite of Sirius and the highly trained, four-legged xenoanthropologists they’ve sent to investigate Earth. Anal probes, though. That’s the money, people.
- Go ahead and Google that, by the way. Archaeological finds? Well, no, not really. But there’s enough LARPing there to get you through your day!
- This is a red flag to any well-schooled skeptic in and of itself, by the way. It’s like all those great historical fallacies: “Well, of course we didn’t find any evidence that Portugal discovered America first. THEY WANTED TO KEEP IT SECRET.” And by the way, it’s not that I don’t believe in government conspiracies or cover-ups. It’s just a numbers game. Given the limited number of governments and the seemingly endless supply of self-important people wanting to tell big stories they can’t substantiate, the numbers favor the latter.
- Charles Pellegrino has a book out called Ghosts Of Vesuvius. He had a pretty interesting take on what currents might have looked during this period of time and how that might have impacted travel to the New World. It’s actually a very interesting book. Just remember: storytelling.
Original post by blah
I write for a Star Trek sim.
Before you get all excited by the use of the word “sim”, let me first qualify that this is not, in fact, a computer program which simulates Star Trek adventures for which I write dialogue trees. (Though – holy shit! – that would that be cool. Is anyone hiring for that?!) It is not, in fact, a giant flight simulator to help you brush up on your docking procedures for the next time you find yourself in a starship approaching spacedock.
Simming is, in fact, a bunch of people who create unique1 characters in the Star Trek universe, throw them together on a ship, and let hijinks ensue. Each player has a character and contributes to the central story via that character’s perspective. You have your various methods (and various universes, I might add; I’m told the writing is typically very good on the Firefly sims, though I’ve never tried one personally) with IRC, forums, and email being the three big ones. IRC is a little too dorky for me (it sounds impossible, I know), forums are a little too informal for my tastes and generally don’t handle time disjuncts very gracefully, and email… well, email is just right.
For those of you who are horrified/vastly amused/vaguely nauseated by this very idea, let me introduce myself: Hi, I’m blah. I’m a dork. I refer you to all previous and, I suspect, all subsequent posts.
So yeah. I write for a Star Trek sim.
Now, contrary to…
Ahem. Are you done laughing?
All right then. Now. Contrary to what you might…
Okay, you just… you just finish. I’ll wait.
Thank you.
As I was saying… contrary to what you might think, it’s not all holodeck shenanigans, sweaty turbolift sex, mirror universe bondage escapades followed by awkward looks across the bridge, or viruses that somehow always manage to target the impulse control centers of the brain2. One of the greatest things about Star Trek – and about all sci-fi and fantasy in general, I think – is its ability to act as a proxy for human exploration, to function as an allegory we can use to explore fundamental human conditions, to provide a framework we can use to test our assumptions about those fundamental conditions. Star Trek, for all the heat it takes for its idyllic, antiseptic approach to science fiction, provides an easy mechanism for these explorations, one that is unencumbered by more realistic though endlessly complex elements like drug trades and social and economic stratification so crippling that non-government ship owners can’t even buy new port compression coils. These are dirty things, hard things and I think we need to consider them. If we need to cloak them in a fantastical allegory to make it go down more easily, sure. The power of Star Trek, I think, is that it gives us a clean slate we can use to look at each of even the dirtiest, hardest things in turn and in isolation.
This isn’t to say that Star Trek is particularly subtle about the issues it explores. It can be downright hamfisted at times. Did anyone else watch Let That Be Your Last Battlefield and immediately think of the Star-Bellied Sneeches3?
Now, aliens from Cheron had white and black faces.
The colors were reversed in half of the cases.
The difference wasn’t big. It really was small.
You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.
But because they were ‘right’ all the dudes halved like Bele
Would brag to themselves, “We’re the best sort of fellows!”
With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort,
“We’ll have nothing to do with the wrong-colored sort!”
And whenever they met some, when they were out walking,
They’d hike right on past them without even talking.
When the White On Left kids went out to play ball,
Could the White On Right play? No, not at all.
You could only play ball if your black was on right,
So the others sat by, lamenting the white.
When the White On Left grown-ups had frankfurter roasts
Or picnics or parties or marshmallow toasts,
They never invited the White On Right crowd
They were left out cold. All that white’s not allowed!
They kept them away. Never let them come near.
And that’s how they treated them year after year.
ANYWAY, while Star Trek is at times about as subtle as Kirk round-housing a Nazi, it really does provide a nice, clean baseline from which we can construct the very issues we need to explore. Note that I’m not saying that this is the right way to use science fiction as an allegory or that this is the only way to use it. Rather, I’m pointing out that the very sterile, tidy environment that the Federation and Starfleet together create gives us a chance to set a clean baseline we can work from, delving into issues in targeted doses… in short, that the supposed weakness of Star Trek as an exploratory device is actually its greatest strength.
And this is why I love writing for a Star Trek sim. Not the only reason, mind you. I like writing. I like having an outlet. I like Star Trek in general. I think the uniforms are hot. But beyond all that, it gives me a platform to think about things and moreover, I often have a chance to explore interesting ideas and concepts with other writers. Challenging cultural and sociological issues are cropping up all the time as part of our gameplay (unsurprising, I suppose, since it wouldn’t be Star Trek without a convenient Weird Forehead Of The Week). Take, for example, this recent exploration of the process of enculturation as an analog to Borg assimilation:
“Spunau bolayalar t’Wehku bolayalar t’Zamu il t’Veh,” Nerali said, her attention still on her console. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or one. It is not so dissimilar an approach. The Collective simply enslaves its practitioners where Vulcans enculturate theirs. It could be argued that the Borg approach is morally superior in that it does not inherently and by design prevent the development of individuality; it merely removes it at a later time.” She peered over her shoulder in his direction. “Will the modifications to the deflector array impact any other onboard systems?”
Enculturated? Qeynan’s brow furrowed as he focused first on her latter question. “The modification to the deflector array will not interfere with any functional control of the ship. The only problem I see is the need to lower the Cross’ shields around the shuttle bay in order for us to disembark and return. With these shuttles adjusted to match the Curie they’ll never be able to get back through the Cross’ shields until they’re remodified to their original settings.” He shifted in his seat to look back at her. “As for enculturated ideals I could argue by the rogues in the annals of history that such still allow for the freedom of choice. It’s part of sentient nature to pass on such core values to the next generation in order to establish safe boundaries of conduct; and the responsibility of the next generation to examine those values and decide whether or not to perpetuate them in the generation beyond.” He paused for a moment, considering the differences between boundaries and cages. Shaking his head, he went on. “The Borg approach is not morally superior by any means, Nerali. They do not allow individual development in the noble manner in which you suggest. Rather they allow each species own kind to enculturate their beliefs and ideals only to rip such from them and replace it with their own directive – assimilate or die. How is that morally superior?”
Nerali raised an eyebrow, saying merely, “I am speaking precisely of freedom of choice, Ensign Sehvi, and the development of the individual. Very few of us are offered the chance to choose our society, its morals, its bounds, its structures; I was able to choose, but so many others do not realize such a choice even exists or are afraid to take it if they do. Most often, we are simply born into it, trained via pervasive enculturation processes to accept it, to conform to it, to pass it on, all before we are capable of sentient, individual, self-aware thought. Cultural assimilation, Ensign Sehvi. It is a socio-evolutionary necessity for the continuance of cultures. But just because we associate the term ‘culture’ with family traditions, language, music, and works of art rather than assimilation tubules and regeneration alcoves does not mean that cultural assimilation is benign or that it is in any way less invasive than the atrocity you suffered. You were assimilated, made to fit into the whole, constrained, separated from self, unable to protest what was being done to you as it happened, and unable to fight against it once it did. And when you grew up, the Borg did the same.” She turned back to her console. “I don’t wish to justify the works of the Collective, Ensign, and even if I did not find you as pleasing as I do, I would never seek to dismiss the great cruelty you suffered at its hands. But as one of the very few who was able to choose her own cultural collective, I find it difficult to imagine a more heinous crime than denying a child self-determination.”
Seriously, now. Where else do you get to have a Vulcan with daddy issues and a liberated Borg drone debate sociological issues?
Answer: The same place you can go to explore the Prime Directive as an absolute extreme view of cultural relativism. I know, I know. You couldn’t watch an episode of Voyager without tripping over a Prime Directive violation and I’m pretty sure you could power a Type-9 shuttle with all the Earl Grey Picard went through as he wrestled with those issues in his ready room. But I don’t think I believe in the Prime Directive; I want to take a closer look at it. Oh, I believe in it as a plot-hole filler and I believe in its ability to generate character-building moments. I even believe in what I think it was originally intended to be. (It’s all supposition, of course, but I’d be a pretty easy sell if you were to tell me that a premise introduced in the 1960s could have been related to two technologically advanced groups of people taking advantage of lesser advanced peoples to further their struggle against each other.) But… Whew. Cultural relativism is one thing. Cultural determinism is one thing. The Prime Directive is way beyond both.
Thanks to the sim, I have the perfect place to explore this. And thanks to Star Trek, I have just the right foundation to do it on. I have a security chief on one ship. She just broke the Prime Directive4. We’ll see where this goes.
- I use the term “unique” loosely. (Yes, I know it’s a binary. Shut up!) Everyone creates their own characters, rather than usurping an existing one from Star Trek canon, but I don’t think I’ve ever been on a ship where at least 50% of the characters weren’t either telepaths or shapeshifters.
- In terms of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I find nothing remotely wrong with any of those things and should one of my ships end up having a mission like that, I will jump on the bandwagon with reckless, bodice-ripping abandon.
- By the way, did anyone else find it actually quite ironic that the Enterprise crew, upon first meeting Lokai, assumes that his coloration is a mutation? The entire episode is about racial segregation, social stratification… and the crew’s first impulse is to assume that the dude’s color must be a mutation, must be a flaw because it isn’t like theirs. Niiiiiice.
- Er… I think she broke the Prime Directive. There could be some extenuating circumstances – i.e. prior contamination of the culture in question though I think that argument is only valid if the actions then taken are taken only to correct that previous contamination – that would make her representation at the court martial breathe a sigh of relief, but close enough. She broke it enough for a good look. I blame my lawyer husband for this footnote.
Original post by blah
…with pony rides and dancing bears…
…and yes, there will be snacks.
I was able to pick up the Andrew Bird iTunes Session EP last week and it has renewed the love I have for this man. Some of the notable tracks on the album are “Skin is, My”, and “Opposite Day”. All of the tracks were recorded live and more than live up to the expectations I have for the Bird man: they are not at all like his other recordings or previous performances. That’s what I’ve always loved about him. That’s what music is; the true craft. It’s a living, breathing, changing thing. To me, Andrew Bird keeps the spirit of performance alive.
I forgot which composer believed that music should never be recorded…that’s up for some googling later. Regardless of who it was, I understand where he’s coming from. The true form of music lies in the performance, where things can change and mistakes can be made. With a (studio) recording, you’re getting the same canned performance of the piece. Listen to 5 different orchestras of the same ability play the same symphony. You’ll find none of them play it quite like the other. I don’t mean that you can just take a symphony and butcher it into some unrecognizable piece, but you can take it and make it your own within what the composer has set out for you. Andrew Bird definitely captures this feeling in his performances. He doesn’t strictly follow the map, he only uses it as a guide.
Don’t get me wrong, recordings definitely have their place (and ho ho, this post is about a recording). I have tons of recordings of symphonies which I use for reference when performing orchestral repertoire, and I enjoy listening to recordings of my favorite artists on a daily basis. But they aren’t the be-all, end-all way a piece should sound. That’s what’s great about this album. I don’t ever expect to hear Bird play these songs like this ever again, and he probably wont.
If you haven’t checked out Andrew Bird’s iTunes Sessions EP, or you’ve never listened to him at all, I definitely recommend listening to this album. It is purchasable here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/itunes-session/id336832184.
So don’t you,
don’t you worry
about the atmosphere.
Original post by Sufjan
Artificial Intelligence has always fascinated me. I think it’s probably fascinated everyone… even people who didn’t grow up wanting to play poker with Soong-type androids or reading about paranoid androids and robopsychologists,… or, you know, growing up a little and wondering exactly how the Enterprise’s main computer does its natural language processing and if the Universal Translator actually assists with or simply serves to complicate the syntactic ambiguity problem.
That said, I’m not a linguist (I wish I were, by the way, but that’s a story for another time) and I certainly don’t have the intellectual chops to be an actual AI researcher. Case in point: I know enough about basic probability theory to understand the underlying principles of Bayesian learning and to think to myself, “Hey, that’s pretty neat. I could use this here and here and here.” But that thought is quickly replaced with something along the lines of “OH DEAR GOD, MY EYES ARE BLEEDING”, augmented with a lot of teeth-gnashing and garment-rending, as soon as the equations start popping up.
So long story short, am I going to be the one who solves the natural language problem? No. I’m much more likely to just spend my time bitching about comma-splicing in Facebook statuses. Am I going to be the one who develops a self-learning defense grid? No. I’m much more likely to join Cyberdyne for their awesome dental. Am I going to be the one who builds a protocol droid that can speak the binary language of moisture vaporators and can grumble humorously about how some nerf-herding smuggler’s hair-brained scheme is going to make him violate all three Asimovian laws? No. I’m much more likely to write a short story about said droid learning said binary language after being stranded in the unforgiving deserts of Tatooine and finding himself nursed back to health by a beautiful moisture vaporator with dreams of getting off her backwards world and seeing the galaxy beyond. (She dies at the end.)
There are much, much smarter people out there who are going to do these things. They’re working on it now. And even if I can never solve the problems they’re solving, I want to start understanding the challenges they’re facing. And I don’t meant that I want to understand it in a mathematical sense. (Well, that’s a lie. I do want to understand it in the mathematical sense. I just think I should understand the actual manifestations of it first. That will also give me time to get over the whole eye-hemorrhaging issue.) I mean that I should understand what it means to try to get an artificial system to make decisions, to do something human, and be able to see firsthand what is stopping us.
So can a robot write music? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. There are even efforts to generate music that is capable of provoking an emotional response in a human listener by capturing the principles of music psychology in knowledge bases that can be used as decision weights by the system’s inference mechanisms.1
How cool is that? Seriously. Next thing you know, we’ll have androids shredding.
So anyway. I’m building a rule-based system that’ll generate music. I call him BachBot. He probably gets beat up at the Young Robots Finishing School for that name but we hang out sometimes. We’re starting with species counterpoint. One of his first epics: Ode to Beefy the Musical Wondercow2.
1. Hmm. Who owns the rights to music generated entirely by a rule-based system?
2. Title mine. BachBot doesn’t create his own titles yet, unless you count auto-incrementing his test outputs. He does that just fine. We’ll tackle the whole natural language thing, you know. Later. Right now, I’m more interested in him not shredding my gorram ears apart by insisting that a minor second is perfectly okay in first species counterpoint.
Original post by blah
If you’re a fan of Dragon Quest (aka Dragon Warrior), my net-friend Tom-Servo has been translating Dragon Quest V (PS2) to English. You can find the patch over at his website http://www.dqtranslations.com/. You’ll also find a patch for Dragon Quest III (SNES), as well as a few translations of other games.
Original post by ojuice
The Dork
Believe it or not, it has occurred to me that I’m pretty dorky. I know. Between the hours a week I spend writing for a Star Trek RPG (yes, it’s measured in hours), my habit of muttering “failed reflex save” whenever I trip into or out of the conference room (because simply tripping in front of the executives isn’t quite the right kind of embarrassing), and the fact that I have my WoW raid schedule in my work calendar so no one schedules a server maintenance window they expect me to attend over the dragon-slaying, it took me a long time to come to the same shocking conclusion… but here we are. Pretty dorky.
Or rather, there we were.
I have realized today that I may have stepped away from the realm of “pretty dorky” and, if not entirely doused myself in, at least tested the waters of “Good god, what is wrong with you?” levels of dorky. Perhaps I’m even ascending ever closer to the tantalizing heights of the transdork threshold1.
What could possibly be dorkier than spending one’s free time writing for a Star Trek RPG and playing WoW?
It might just be worse than you can even imagine2.
The Meta-Dork
Have you ever wondered about the population variations between PvP and PvE realms? What the most popular gems are by class and spec? If the character gender distribution skews toward female for more attractive models? I have. So has zardoz, of recent WoW Insider fame. He has managed to collect a great deal of raw data and, between a little SQL and a dash of xsl, has started giving us some neat insights into population characteristics.
But beyond simple data collection and reporting…
Have you ever wondered about causality? Suspected anecdotally that there has been some sort of change to the population, proven or disproven by actual comparison to a baseline that such a change has actually occurred, and then wanted to dig deeper to identify possible causal relationships? A content patch? A major class modification? A critical change to PvP mechanics? Changes to gear scaling or stat mechanics?
Have you ever wondered what makes a world-class guild precisely that? Beyond the simple explanations – They’re better players. They raid more often. It’s a hardcore guild. – are there other behavioral traits that contribute to their success, traits we can actually tease out from the data about their players? How do members of a world-class guild spend their time in game? What is the temporal relationship between a dungeon/raid launch, the accumulation and dissemination of gear, and the receipt of achievements? How quickly do members change specs, gems, or gear following a significant mechanics change? Do gear, gem, stat, and build preferences vary greatly between functionally-analogous individuals within a class or are the same trends occurring between all? If it’s the latter, does it occur all at once, suggesting a much more structured, top-down guild management structure, or is there a waterfall effect between members, a more bottoms-up kind of view, with the changes occurring at the individual level before spreading over time to the rest of the group? If it’s the latter, are there individuals who consistently drive the changes, power-players we can identify simply through these relationships?
Given a spectrum of characteristics, some relevant and some not… have you wondered where your guild lies compared to the world-class ones? Have you wondered where you lie on that spectrum, compared to same-spec toons in those world-class guilds or sitting pretty on top of the PvP rankings? Which of those characteristics are relevant? Which are suggestive? Which are evocative?
Oh yes. I wonder about these things all the time.
And more than that, I wonder how I can answer these questions using nothing more than raw, clinical data. This is the good stuff, the holy grail hand grenade.
I’ve been mining both the Armory and Wowhead for quite some time3. We’ll see where this goes.
1. Or maybe I just need a new kind of
dilithium.
2. Please just take my word on this and don’t even try. The Borg are still
working on it.
3. I’ve actually been mining my Star Trek RPG for years too and there’s some great stuff there. (And maybe some not so great stuff. Do I really want to know why the writers on one ship in the fleet write proportionally more posts – we’re talking a statistically significant number of posts here – with their characters on the holodeck versus any other location? I’m not so sure I do…) But really, we’ll have to save that discussion for another day. There’s only so much dorkiness a single post can hold.
Original post by blah
Source: http://www.wow.com/2010/01/25/patch-3-3-2-patch-notes-on-official-korean-wow-site/
The Good News:
Shield Slam: Damage modifier from block value decreased, and scales worse at low block value levels. Players in high-end gear shouldn’t notice the change. In addition, threat generated by Shield Slam has been increased by 30%.
The Bad News:
The only PUG warriors out there are the ones who are tired of waiting in the dungeon finder queue and spend the first ten seconds of the instance respeccing to Prot and changing into their 2.5k GS tank set.
The Good News:
FoS: Trash mob Spell Reflect abilities have been changed. It now has a casting time, and will proc only twice at a rate of 75% instead of 100%.
The Bad News:
Now we have to wait for the PUG mage to fail at assisting, somehow pull aggro despite his terrible dps, and die after running out of healing range instead of just Arcane Missile-ing himself in the face.
The Good News:
Dead players are now able to re-enter the instance when the Ick/Krick and Forgemaster Garfrost encounters are active.
The Bad News:
They don’t get automatically booted from the group and replaced with a toon not being played by a monkey. They celebrate this small victory by pulling all the packs you diligently and efficiently avoided the first time through.
The Good News:
YES! They have finally heard our prayers and are removing all the repetitive fight mechanics that make all the vastly overgeared players who are running the instance only for frost badges heave much-put-upon sighs and afk.
HoS: Brann Bronzebeard has been working out, so he’ll run faster during the escort event.
Nexus: Anomalus will create rifts only once.
OK: Elder Nadox’s Ahn’kahar Guardian will only spawn once.
OK: Jedoga Shadowseeker will initiate her volunteer phase only once.
UP: Players can bring down Skadi’s drake using only three harpoons, down from five.
UP: Svala Sorrowgrave only casts Ritual of the Sword once, down from thrice.
VH: Portals will open faster after Portal Guardians are killed.
The Bad News:
PUGs will still
- Diligently stand in Searing Gaze. They will avoid Searing Gaze only when there is Dark Matter to go stand under. Once afflicted with this debuff, they will then resume standing in Searing Gaze.
- DPS Anomalus even though he’s invulnerable. After not noticing that they are doing no damage at all during this phase and allowing the tank and healer to carry their dps, they will celebrate the boss kill by jumping off the first platform and falling off the ledge.
- DPS Elder Nadox even though he’s invulnerable. After not noticing that they are doing no damage at all during this phase and allowing the tank and healer to carry their dps, they will celebrate the boss kill by running out of the healer’s dispel range with Brood Plague on and pulling the geist pack.
- Diligently stand in the lightning AoE and Cyclone Strike. They will avoid these only when there is an add for them to fail to dps.
- Diligently stand in Grauf’s frostfire breath. They will avoid this only when they are busy asking what the harpoons on the ground are for.
- Diligently stand directly underneath the Ritual of the Sword while looting Svala’s corpse.
- Mention between 5 and 20 times that they only need one more boss for Lockdown! as they skin the mobs from two earlier portal spawns.
Original post by blah
I’m taking a beginning web development class for my degree. I already expected to be extremely bored in this class, especially since it focuses on Dreamweaver and not having any knowledge of code. Dreamweaver can be handy, mostly the code view since it’s color coded and lets me see syntax much easier. So this class should be easy, right? Just ignore the stuff about using the design view and build the assignments by hand in the code view (because to me that’s easier). Then I looked through the course schedule and found something interesting. It was almost offensive, yet comical at the same time.
It reads, “Assignment #9 – Abstract = Design: Nesting Tables.”
My first reaction was “LOL”. Really? Did we time warp back to 2004 when people were using tables for layout purposes? I actually asked someone what year it was and checked to see if Bush was in office. Honestly, teaching this seems like a huge disservice to the students considering it’s an extremely outdated technique.
Let me go over the reasons why this is terrible:
- It’s semantically incorrect markup.
- It’s terrible for screen readers. We’re supposed to be learning about accessibility, and this contradicts that.
- Tables are more bytes per markup than other options.
- We have CSS. Using a table locks you in the table for good. If you use Divs and CSS, then you have much more flexibility with your layout. Should you ever choose to change some part of it, it’s much easier, not to mention that building the page in the first place would be easier without using tables.
- Last but not least… TABLES ARE FOR TABULAR DATA ONLY!
To be fair, using tons of divs, ids, and classes just for styling is also semantically incorrect markup. But that’s the best we’ve got for design until HTML5. I’d rather use the better of the two options.
Fortunately, the professor teaching the first half of the class doesn’t seem to be teaching this, which is awesome, because I like her a lot. But come on, why is that junk part of the curriculum anyway? I still haven’t decided if I should quietly do the assignment or challenge the teacher on the terrible way she’s teaching us how to make a layout. At least she’s not teaching us to use framesets.
Original post by Sufjan
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