convergence

And now I realize that my painstakingly-coordinated new colour scheme is remarkably similar to the "Minima Ocher" pre-set template.

Darn.

metamorphosis

This blog now has 75% less teenage angst and 0g Trans fat!

4:11 - 7.31.07

I'm munching on a late-afternoon snack of madeleines and milk.

jello metroid

I thought I needed some more pictures on here, so behold!

i can hardly hear the echo of my own voice

There are be billions of people, all whispering to the people next to them, or shouting st the tops of thier lungs. Blogging isn't something that you do for other people: it's a way of expressing yourself. For instance, take photography: taking and selecting and viewing photos is an intensely personal matter. Why would you even think of putting them up onto something like Flickr? Why would you allow the whole world to see through your eyes, look at a snapshot of your feelings, view a matte print of your soul? For me, it's because there are so many people that my voice is lost, and only the people close to me can hear my voice. There's very little chance that some wayward wanderer of the internet will stumble across this blog and become a regular reader. And just like that, my voice is no longer lost in the din: only the people that need or want to hear me actually do.

But again, I am not blogging for anyone other than myself: like drawing, photography, biking, speaking, living... writing is just another way of articulating myself and understanding my own personal self.

Another reason for this futile endeavor, this meager collection of thoughts, these late-night ravings of a mad, mad, mind is that they are another way of exploring the world around me, another way of noticing the little details that make up our life. Just like photography strips away everything but what the photographer sees and highlights a single thought or emotion, just like drawing adds a stylized and personal interpretation of some idea or scene, so does writing. It just so happens that I (and many others) put this visual information into black-and-white squiggles.

If you look closely, a drawing is nothing but black-and-white squiggles. A photograph is nothing but little black-and-white dots. Just like I am nothing but a single voice in the crowd.

But that doesn't mean that if you step back, you won't be able to appreciate the single penstroke my voice adds to the masterpiece that is being created around us.

4:11 - 7.30.07

I'm reading a webcomic. It's not very funny.

4:11 - 7.29.07

single quotes are text, double quotes are speech, parentheses are thoughts

'In short, Blu-ray is not necessary for gaming in HD, if by necessary you mean anything approaching the dictionary's definition of the word.'

4:11 - 7.28.07

One minute of my life - 4:11 pm.

I'm kneeling in front of my TV, fiddling with the sound settings as I try to get the right balance between treble and bass. My knees hurt, so I stand up.

this is what death tastes like

I have just tasted the nastiest soda EVER. Chinotto. Moxie? Hah! That is like corn flakes compared to chinotto! God... I can still taste it.

enigma

Finally, some real written work on here. I've got a couple other reviews of games, restaurants, and movies in the works, so just you wait. You'll get some more soon enough.

----- Enigma -----

Past

Ahh... remember the golden days of gaming? When classic gameplay elements were devised and refined to their purest form, unhindered by flashy visuals and over-the-top special effects. During this time (around 1992, to be exact) a small german known as Dongleware released an innovative little shareware game called Oxyd on the Atari ST. Reminiscent of Marble Madness, you controlled a little black marble that rolls around, facing some of the most devious puzzles in any game of the time. Oxyd was quite successful, and spawned at least five sequels on the Amiga, Mac, PC and Atari. Alas, this success was not to last. In 2002, Dongleware stopped making games and pulled support for its flagship product. Then, in 2003, the world saw the first release of Enigma: A free, open-source, updated, unofficial version of Oxyd.

Present

At first glance, Enigma seems to be some sort of memory or dexterity game, but a few levels in and you can see just how wrong you really were. Enigma is a puzzle game. A really, really big puzzle game. As in over-one-thousand-levels-and-growing big. The sheer size, difficulty, and amount of some of the levels (or "landscapes" as they are called) can be intimidating. All of the landscapes were designed by users or developers of the game, and with that community still in active development, there are more landscapes being thought up and created every day.

...

I'm sick of writing this, so just go download it.

sonority

Here are a few sound-related bits of interestingness to tickle your ears today. Make sure you have some headphones!

Blind Pong: A simple twist spices up this tired game nicely: play Pong, but without any visuals. Let your ears guide you! The ball beeps regularly, and its noise gets louder as it travels (vertically) towards your side of the playing field, and the noise moves from left to right as the ball travels horizontally across. Very challenging, especially if you tried playing it with only one speaker.

Holophonic Sound: "Okay, people have two ears - makes it easy to figure out if a sound is to the left or to the right. But amazingly we can also determine if a sound is above, below, behind, or in front of us. How does that work? Top Men have figured out that it has to do with the folds and shape of the ear itelf, subtle delays and distortions of the sound that our brain subconsciously interprets to accurately pinpoint a sound location in 3D space."

Samples (Headphones required! You won't get the effect without 'em.):
Box of Matches (best sample)
Sweet Whispered Nothings
(this one's from Wohba!. They've got some more samples on their site.)

Youth Repellent: This GOD-AWFUL noise supposedly can only be heard by people under the age of 30. It is used by grown-ups in the UK to keep kids from hanging around certain places, or by certain (crazy, I might add) youths as a ringtone only they can hear. There was a BBC news article about it, and I'll post it when I find it.

The Lyrebird: Amazing. Just watch. That's all I can say.

Aural Mapping: This American Life (which is a great program, I might add), created this episode that explores different ways to map the world around you: visually, aurally, olfactorily, somatically, and gustatorily.

The reactable: Their site puts it most concisely: "The reactable is a collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface."
You twist, pull, push, tap, and rotate little blocks on top of a backlight table, which in turn creates a work of art for both the eyes and the ears (if you like electronic music, that is).


Enjoy!

observation

If you just look hard enough, you can find some really valuable stuff that people just leave lying around. For instance, I found a spanish doubloon lying right in the middle of the road! I don't understand what kind of person would carry something worth that much money. Just leave it in a bank or something. Anyway, so I picked it up and brought it home.

Then my little brother says that it's just a squashed bottle cap. I was crushed! All my dreams of fame and fortune were blasted out of the water.
And in that instant that he told me that it was nothing more than trash, I saw (I saw!) the old coin lose its golden luster, shed its ancient metallic weight, and turn into a plain old bottle cap that had been thrown out of a car and left to die in the middle of the hunting path of those giant, rumbling, artificial creatures known as cars.

I wish I hadn't found out.

i got to play with an iphone

And I gotta say, it's really cool. The whole multi-touch interface works like a charm: so simple and intuitive and natural, that it feels like you're not controlling it, but that it just so happens to be doing exactly what you want at any particular moment. It's perfectly weighted, and feels sturdy. The only thing I don't get about it is why Apple did not have an option to use the on-screen keyboard in a horizontal position. Right now you have to be holding it vertically, which makes it feel top-heavy and a bit unstable. Other than that, it's a dream.

I want one.
Now!

space invaders ++

This is how crazy people with too much time on their hands play video games. Enjoy.

product manual of the future: the death ray

"Congratulations on your purchase of a genuine ZapCo D-99 Death Ray. Please read these instructions thoroughly and carefully before handling, operating, or servicing your death ray. Careless or incorrect use of a death ray could result in serious injury."

Just in case you lost the manual to your own death ray.

cash rules everything around me dolla dolla bill

There's plenty of money out there. They print more of it every day. But that ticket? There are only five of them in the world, and that's all there's ever going to be. Only a dummy would give this up for something as common as money. Are you a dummy?
~ Grandpa George, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

soup forks

Patience is like eating soup with a fork: you may not get satisfied quickly, but you can savour the meal better.