End of San Jose

Sorry for not posting stuff. I just kinda stopped because I thought no one was reading the blog, but I guess I was wrong. So I'm gonna be leaving San Jose, for good. Got a job at a video game company back in Illinois. It's going to be pretty cool, me thinks.

I'm going to start a new blog now at Arun Art. I'll be posting there from now on, and I will be just blogging in in general. Most likely it'll be a place for me to link to sketches, which I've done, but just haven't posted.

Next month, I'll be in India, so the focus of the new blog will eventually deal with the India trip. After I get back, it'll be more routine stuff. Hopefully I can get some of my friend's art on there too. I will try to post as often as I can, if internet connections are available.

Ta,

widescreen baby!

I went to a movie today, and got my tickets early. Lama, Pete and I decided to hit the Microcenter near by. Then I saw it... a sweet 22" widescreen monitor (Gateway FPD2275W), for only $399. It was an impulse buy, but oh so worth it. Just the number of features in it was beyond belief. In case you're wondering here's the highlights:

• 1680 x 1050 Resolution (anything higher and it works but shows you a 1680x1050 view that slides around)
  
• 5ms pixel response time (from white to black)
  
• 700:1 contrast ratio (blacks look pretty good)
  
• Variety of inputs (DVI-D with HDCP support being the big one, plus Component, S-Video and Composite input)
  
• It can do 1080i sorta (just scales as necessary to fit in 1050)
  
• Picture-in-Picture (need I say more?)
  
• touch-sensor based buttons inside the bezel (tre cool)
  
• De-interlacing algorithm in hardware (to make 480i and 1080i images a little nicer looking)
  
• USB 2.0 hubs
  

Merry Christmas to me, Booyah!

Mii Lebowski

For those that loved "The Big Lebowski", this is for you.

Thanksgiving Roadtrip

A few interns and I decided to go on a roadtrip last Thanksgiving weekend. Our legs were San Jose to Death Valley to Vegas to Grand Canyon, and back the same way. All in 3 days!!! It was awesome. Sure we got on each other's nerves a bit, and we got lost, *cough Vegas cough*. But all in all it was a great trip.

Death Valley was super cool, especially when we saw some dunes right in the middle of the valley. Plus, on the way there we had a couple places with some windy, narrow roads. The first was Sequoia National Park, which has a road going through the southern tip of it, and then the mountains between Panamint Valley and the actual Death Valley. The Death Valley National Park itself contains Panamint.

Vegas was alright, but I mostly slept and ate there. Didn't care to gamble. Saw some things while we were doing some last minute hotel room searching, by foot. Otherwise, I only slept two hours the night before and couldn't stay up. Lama went and won $35 using the double the bet strategy. Fortunately it worked, and he didn't hit the table limit on roulette.

We stopped by Hoover Dam on the way to Grand Canyon. Really it was the only way to Grand Canyon from Vegas. Wow, it was big, vertically. What's equally as impressive, is the bypass high-way (literally HIGH) they're building for all those people who don't want to get stuck at the Dam's traffic. It's ridiculous. You can probably catch a glimpse of it in some of the pictures that Lama has posted.

We took a lot more pictures, and video. Including lots of video with our arms and camcorder outside the car going 90 mph! Ridiculous!

Zelda History

WiiNintendo.net posted links to GameTrailer's 6-part Zelda Retrospective. And the last episode is some kind of guess at the Zelda Timeline(s). Pretty cool to watch.

Wii Sensorbar!

So, the Wii sensorbar has been demystified. Now, all I need to do, is make my own, using some IR LEDS, resistors, wires, a transformer, and wall plug. Hmm, I should ask a friend about this before I electrocute myself.

Zelda TP

I have a friend, former roommate of mine, who hailed from Sweden. He's working now, and I thought I would share some pictures he sent me. Appareantly they were working on some solar cell thingy. Karl, you're welcome to tell me what it is, if it's cool.. or not, either way :)

So, yeah I played a few hours of Zelda yesterday, and I felt compelled to make a video of it. My laptop was acting funny with the AVI's that my digital camera made. It didn't help that the Motion JPEG codec component was PowerPC based and I have an Intel based Mac. It was weird, because the work around was to move the AVIImporter component file, and stuff. Ok, I've lost your interest already. The point is, I could work with the movies that came from my camera.

The video I made doesn't do the game justice, but is meant to give you an idea of the controls for the game. At this point in the game, I'm not even at the first dungeon yet, and I feel like I've gotten used to the controls of the game. Once I get the video up and ready I'll edit this post and add the link below.

Hey Roger, I've added you as a Wii Friend, but you have to register me too. Otherwise, we can't send messages to each other. I wanna see what you made your Mii look like, and I'll send you mine too.

UPDATE: Here is the video! Google Video title "Zelda_TP.mov".

Wii Tennis

So people have obviously been asking me to post up a video of actually playing the Wii. Here's a video of me and R.S. playing tennis. Sorry for the bright t.v. screen. Next time I'll take a better video. I think I'll do Zelda tonight. I played two hours of it so far, and I'm amazed that it's still just a Gamecube game ported to the Wii (prior to launching on the Gamecube, but that's fine by me!).