Random Thoughts

Stolen from rory, stolen from nikari

Thu, 01 Apr 2004 04:19:20 GMT

Type your first name into Google
Click on the images tab
Post images you find interesting.

Here comes Kayla.
Handicapped Kayla
Busty Kayla
How to Write Kayla
Baby Kayla

Woah

Sun, 21 Mar 2004 18:45:04 GMT

Penny-Arcade linked to this on Friday but it's so good I totally need to link it again.
Casshern

Anyone up for a field trip?

Hair Cut

Sun, 14 Mar 2004 17:04:52 GMT

On Thursday I had an hour to kill before a get together with friends so I decided to get my hair trimmed since the length was bugging me. The hairdresser decide she didn't like my style and informed me she was going to do her own thing. I said sure since I had nothing better to do.

I was so pleased with the result I'm going to see her again.

Wed, 10 Mar 2004 23:31:02 GMT

Saw Jason Priestley downtown at lunch today on the set for Tru Calling. He's short. Eliza Deshku was also there and looking cutetastic.

Tech Blog

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 17:19:34 GMT

I've started a new Tech blog where I'll be posting my thoughts on the Gaming Industry, Hardware, Corporate Politics and my whole Apple experience. Every Friday before noon I'll be posting a Week at a Glance post on my thoughts around a few news blurs in the gaming industry for that week. Other articles will trickle out as I complete them.

Anyway check it out. You can RSS it to make your lives easier too.
http://www.refrag.com/blog/

PCI-Express: nVidia Ponies up Their Offerings

Mon, 23 Feb 2004 17:09:18 GMT

And in a move that went completely unnoticed, nVidia was the first to announce their line of PCI-Express graphics cards. This should be a defining moment in the industry as PCI-Express marks the end of the AGP era and the beginning of a new, but in reality this announcement means very little. Why? Try to find a motherboard with PCI-Express support and you'll get the picture.

Before we dig into nVidia's announcement, let's talk a bit about PCI-Express and why anyone should give a rat's ass. First off we all know what PCI is right? It?s those white slots in your PC that usually house your soundcard, modem, scsi card, network card or whatever. This bus replaced the old ISA bus of the olden times with something faster. Video cards used to use this bus heavily until AGP came to town and flexed its bandwidth muscles. Well Mr. PCI didn?t take this sitting down and with the help of the PCI-SIG, designed a new set of specifications that would throttle PCI into the new millennium and cause mass confusion among PC users everyone.

PCI Old-School: Basically what you've been using all along, not much change here. Usually running at 33 MHZ and throwing about 133MB/sec around your system, this port is getting pretty old but manages to push through enough data to make it worthwhile for such devices as 100mbit Ethernet, modems, USB cards, etc. This has been around since the 486 era and is getting a slight update to double the bandwidth with a 66 MHz bus (being named officially as PCI Conventional).

PCI-X: So now we are getting into an era of 64bit CPUs and as such shit needs to move around your motherboard a little quicker. Welcome PCI-X with its base 133Mhz bus and second-gen 233Mhz and 533Mhz busses. That's a lot of busses and a lot of room to push that data around. PCI-X is great, its fast, but it?s also crazy expensive to implement which will all but destroy its chances on the desktop market. Instead, you'll likely only find this slot type on servers or high-end professional equipment (ahem, Apple G5).

PCI-Express: Don't ask me why they chose such a similar name, it's dumb I know but that's the computer industry for you. PCI-Express is a serial (previous PCI types have all been parallel) 2-way connection that works much like AMD's HyperTransport technology in that it carries data in packets similar to Ethernet. Slot types come in 1x, 4x, 8x and 16x all with different sized slots.

So lets count; two main variations of PCI Old School, three variations of PCI-X, and four different PCI-Express slot types. PCI-Express is serial, the others are parallel. Is everyone confused yet or is it just me?

It'll be interesting to see how the individual manufacturers build their products around these various specifications and it certainly is an exciting time to watch the PC market. PCI-Express 16x on paper delivers twice the performance of today?s AGP 8X boards which could be just what nVidia and ATI need to give their next gen chips (NV40 and R380 respectively) just the room they need to breath.

As for nVidia's announcement it seems all they are doing is releasing their current product offering on the new slot type and I doubt highly there?d be much in the way of a performance increase. And again, try to find a motherboard that is supporting PCI-Express these days.

For further information on PCI-Express read this excellent article. It'll be sure to answer many of your questions.

Fri, 20 Feb 2004 19:33:46 GMT

Playstation Portable
Seems like everyone is talking about the Playstation Portable this week and with unconfirmed reports of the prototype being finished and being shown in Japan, who wouldn't be? Connectivity with the PS2 is a hot topic. We all know how well Nintendo pulled this off but we need to look at the price differences here. A GameCube will run you $100 USD as will each of the GBA SP's. Thats a pretty good deal considering what you are getting out of it. Sony on the otherhand has a console that costs you $179.99 which isn't bad and if the rumours of a price drop later this year are true, that could come down to $129.99. Unfortunatly you then have the cost of the PSP which is completely up in the air. Some sites are predicting $199-$249 while EB Games is showing something closer to $299 in their systems. Sure what Sony is planning is a lot different than Nintendo's strategy. Sony wants you to buy the same game for both the PS2 and PSP so you can play the game at home or on the road then sync up your save data. That's a heck of a lot of dough and I personally would have to think hard about spending $299USD plus the cost of an additional game for the ability to play my PS2 game while on my way to work.

All of this from a console that no developer has even gotten a working dev unit of and is supposedly going to launch in Nov.

Infinium Labs
Speaking of non-existant hardware, it's been a very busy couple of weeks from the creators of the much dissed Phantom console. First they hire the ex-Microsoft employee and key figure in the creation of the XBox, Kevin Bachus. Then a bunch of other top gaming professionals whose names I don't recognize get hired and now they are threatening to sue HardOCP. Sounds like Kevin brought some Microsoft tactics in. If they're against you, sue. For better or worse Mr. Bachus brings a lot of experience to the Infinium team and if half the things he says comes true this might actually be a system to look out for. Or not.

Cell Chips
Two years before the PS3 launch, Sony and Toshiba are already hard at work on the next-generation of Cell-Chips using a new 45nm process instead of the 65nm technology to be used in the PS3. The PS2 by comparison uses 180 and 90nm(kinda... see this) technology. And for those craving more detailed information on the Cell Architecture, here's an interesting read. I might get around to reading it but it seems a little too technical for me.

N-Gage
According to a post on Gamasutra the N-Gage has just been discounted by 25% at the Game retailer in the UK. This follows the news about GameStop removing the device from 450 of their stores in the US. But you have to give Nokia credit, they are really trying. Just look at this Promotional Tour they are doing in Europe.

Retail Mac

Tue, 17 Feb 2004 04:28:42 GMT

Having decided to purchase a dual G5 and having a nice fat loan waiting to be used, I decided to browse through the many Mac stores Vancouver has to offer – both of them. During my (extended) lunch hour on Friday I walked to Mac Station located directly in the heart of Yaletown.

If you have any experience with Vancouver you know Yaletown. It’s the trendy area of downtown hugging the False Creek Seawall and used to be home to the vast majority of dot-commers. The high rent could only be afforded by the highest paying geeks so when their jobs went dot-gone, many left. One of Canada’s largest web development firms, Blast Radius, still stands strong in this area and coincidently directly in-front of Mac Station – The Only Apple Dealer Downtown™.

I walked into the retail space and immediately felt out of place. Perhaps if I had a double tall, no foam, extra hot, non-fat yuppie-fuck latte (with a dash of nutmeg) in my left hand things would have been better. The sales people all looked at me in the way people look at you in that dream where you are giving a speech wearing only your underwear. I actually think one of them said “What do you want?” but I’m not sure, I was too busy running towards the nearest G5 I could find, and coincidently the only one in the store.

I played with the unit for a few minutes after a sales guy installed Macromedia Studio for me. It was unfortunately a 1.6 GHz single proc machine with shit for ram and I felt sorry for the 23” display tethered to it. I had a good experience though. Everything worked how I wanted it to except for the mouse as it was single button and set with acceleration enabled. Not an issue though as I have a Logitech MX Duo at home I’ll be using and I’ll just disable acceleration.

Although the sales people at the retail store were completely useless I was at least able to play with what I was about to go $4000 more in debt for.

What the retail store lacked, 1-800-MY-APPLE made up for in spades. I was on hold for about five minutes before I got a hold of Regina, a customer sales rep in California. I asked a few questions about my loan and my eligibility for the student discount. She was quick to answer and before I knew it I was telling her exactly what kind of Mac I wanted. She questioned my every decision making sure I knew why I wanted each element of the system (I went on for half-an-hour after she asked why I chose the Radeon 9600). She asked me what I used my computer for ensuring that I’d be happy with my purchase. There was zero pressure, we simply built my ideal system and she saved it to my account. She gave me her name and direct line and said to just give her a call when I wanted to buy it. I was incredibly impressed with her low pressure, highly informative sales technique. It reminded me of exactly the same thing I did back when I was selling computers.

After a weekend of thinking and playing with random machines, I was ready to take the plunge. I called Regina back and placed my order. It should be here in 3-4 weeks.

Of Macs and Men (and women)

Sun, 15 Feb 2004 06:48:53 GMT

Several major things have hit me recently causing me to feel uncomfortable in my current PC environment – nicoletbn being a major cause of this. She linked me to the website

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Several major things have hit me recently causing me to feel uncomfortable in my current PC environment – <lj user="nicoletbn"> being a major cause of this. She linked me to the website <a href="http://www.randsinrepose.com"">Rands in Repose</a> where I read <a href="http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/cat_apple.html">a blog</a> about switching from PC to Mac. Typically the whole switching thing seemed pretty fake to me, simply more propaganda shoveled out by the <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-07-12&res=l">Mac Elitists</a> throughout the web sphere. But something about this guy seemed very genuine and close to the heart; he reeked of being a hardcore PC guy.

I myself have been a PC chick since the dawn of time, programming BASIC on my old 9 MHz wonder machine with 640k ram and an EGA display. That progressed to the Pentium age, then Pentium II, then Athlon, and finally to P4 Mobile. I work for a multi-billion dollar game developer and publisher. My primary role involves disassembling PC’s, putting them together, and seeing if our games run on them. If you’ve bought a PCCD version of one of the products I’ve worked on and it doesn’t run, it can probably be blamed on me. Frankly, I know PC hardware inside and out. If it relates to gaming I probably know more than you and that guy next door.

Why then would I even consider a Mac?

Back in college was the only point in time when I could honestly say I had been “using” a Mac. By “using” I mean getting frustrated with and kicking repeatedly. These machines were pre-G3 PowerPC shitboxs running OS-I don’t care. Needless to say, this was the worse computer experience in my entire life.

Why the hell would I even consider a Mac?

I started becoming loosely interested in Macs again about the time the iBook clamshell units came out and quickly became the trendy new geek commodity. Sadly though I was a student living at home holding three jobs to pay tuition – so the Apple toys were a little out of my league. Macs were too much money and too much risk when a comparable PC counterpart could be had for far less and I’d at least know what the hell I was doing with it.

The fascination continued as different models released and I continually did the back and forth thing most PC enthusiasts do. I bashed Apple in-front of all my PC friends while downloading QuickTimes in private drooling over the latest stylish ad Apple released.

Then <lj user="nicoletbn"> came into my life... and she got Panther.

<lj user="nicoletbn"> is the only person I know closely that is either at my level of geekdom or higher. Her opinions matter to me and, since she grew up on Macs, her opinions usually come from a far different background than mine. When she all of a sudden takes her G4 out of the closet and spends more time on it than her PC, I start to take notice.

Then there’s that <a href="http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/cat_apple.html">Rands blog</a>. One major quote really hit me...

I approached the senior architect as he was merrily typing away on his iBook. I sat next to him and nodded towards the translucent white box. He grinned; knowing exactly what I was asking, have reciting an answer I'm certain he constructed months ago.
"FreeBSD and the best windowing manager around."
I nodded, getting half of what he was saying. He continued, "FreeBSD, that's what the Darwin kernel is based on, is Unix and it's generally viewed as one of the more stable Unix implementations. Add the Macintosh window manager on top of that and you've got the power of Unix and the pleasure of the Macintosh."

FreeBSD... I like FreeBSD. I like how stable it is. I like how all these really hardcore geeks use it. I don't like how hard it is to setup and use - Hence where the whole Apple thing comes in.

I've always had a certain admiration for Apple. I really respect companies that polish their products so well. Their products have always felt, more cohesive to me. To me that final polish is a very important step and it’s a sign of care in a product. It’s saying “yes this button is worth spending another day to work on just to get the shadow looking right” instead of scraping the idea and releasing something that doesn’t flow as well. Atmosphere, flow and style; three very important design elements to me.

In the PC world I always have this underlying feeling of a million different things from different people all held together with masking tape and post-it notes, somehow working, usually. Things are supposed to work together but they don’t have to. Some people polish their stuff but it’s usually ruined by others that don’t. It’s very hard to get a sense of unity on the PC platform and still manage to do the things you want. Note: Windows XP helped a lot to fix this up and I’m hoping Longhorn will improve the situation even more.

So here you have the polish of Apple, a candy shell if you will, and at the core one of the world’s most stable UNIX systems. I’m tempted.

So what the hell am I getting at here?

On Thursday I was approved for an Apple Loan. On Friday I called Apple, spec’d out a dual 1.8Ghz G5 and attached it to my account. All I need to do now is call back and say I want it. I gave myself the weekend to think it over but unless something drastic happens my mind is made up. On Monday I will place my order for my PowerMac and once it arrives, I will use it as my main computer at home.

It’s time for a change of pace. I’m sick of using a PC day in and day out. When I come home from work I want to play, have fun and enjoy my computing experience.

Wed, 11 Feb 2004 19:45:58 GMT

Just click and watch

Nintendo

Wed, 11 Feb 2004 18:19:37 GMT

Before we begin let me explain something. Growing up I was always a Nintendo Fan Child. I never owned a Genesis and I balked at the limited colour palette in Sonic. I adored Square titles thus the Nintendo platform was my only choice.

Something happened along the way. Games became less interesting. Systems failed to impress me. Once I played Zelda 64 I was so bored with games that I sold my N64.

Last night was one of those nights where all the joys of being 16 and ripping into a new game you bought from your dish washing money came flooding back to me. Last night I picked up Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and Metroid: Zero Mission.

FF:CC
The plan was simple. Get the game and meet up with a friend. I had 2 SP's so we were set with the necessary equipment to geek out. I had high hopes for this game and let me say, all my expectations were met, ten fold, with the sheer brilliance of how well this game works. No it isn't a classic Final Fantasy but neither was Tactics and it was awesome. Instead its like Gauntlet meets the Final Fantasy universe. The idea of each player using a GBA is amazing. The menu systems are handled beautifully and are truly unique. UNIQUE... gawd that's I word I haven't used in reference to a game in a while. So many new elements are put forth in this game and I can honestly say this is the first time I have ever felt like I truly had to work as a team. It's amazing. It's unique. And it's so very well executed.

Metroid: Zero Mission
I've been seriously pissed off at Nicole since Friday when she told me she had gotten this game early. I'm a huge Metroid fan and have been eagerly awaiting this "remake" of the original. When I got home last night I settled into bed and started playing.

It took literally 10 seconds from the moment I turned the GBA on till I was hooked. The intro sequence was fast paced and very well executed to pull me right into the action. The game delivers rewards in a very swift fashion thus pushing the player forward more and more. I remember thinking to myself several times, I'll put this down at the next save, only finding I keep going. Save locations are positioned very close together which makes this game work very well on a handheld. The graphics are beautiful and the sound is very rich. I hope to sit down and finish this game tonight when I can commit a few hours to it.

Comments about Nintendo
Congrats Nintendo. I'm back. Your competitive price-point, connectivity features between your systems, and high quality games have pleased this jaded girl.

Now we wait for E3 to see what's next.
Prime 2, N5, and DS.

Wed, 11 Feb 2004 17:23:47 GMT

VIVENDI UNIVERSAL GAMES AND RADICAL ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCE EXCLUSIVE WORLDWIDE DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT

Vancouver based Radical Entertainment and Vivendi have signed an exclusive deal in which Radical will develop 6 titles for Vivendi. Once this contract runs it's course, Vivendi will be in a good position to purchase Radical.

Sounds like a good deal for Radical. For Vivendi on the other hand... I have no idea what's in this for them. Try and think of a good game that Radical made. Ya, I thought so.

Oh well. I'll just keep looking up at the Radical building on my way to work and see if they are throwing money out the window. Woooo!

Tue, 10 Feb 2004 17:28:54 GMT

Nintendo BS

Mon, 09 Feb 2004 16:04:52 GMT

Phoenix = Firebird = ... Firefox?
Mozilla.org

Release 0.8 of the flaming bird turned fox is now available.

Fri, 06 Feb 2004 01:00:24 GMT

This looks cool Appleseed

Java, Metroid and netJuke

Sun, 01 Feb 2004 06:18:22 GMT

Had Java this morning. Wrote the quiz and I'm pretty sure I did great on it. Came home, did my lab, played Metroid Prime and got to... Metroid Prime. Luckily Meta Ridley wasn't as difficult as I was expecting. After the Omega Pirate I needed a break from annoying bosses.

Spent the last 8hrs or so cleaning out nicoletbn and I's netJuke, adding random new songs and going through Nicole's dump folder trying to make some sense of it. I've cleaned up a few thousand entries and moved crap to deal with later. Also, I'm building playlists that you may or may not be interested in. If you log into my netJuke be sure to try out "Rare Finds: Tracks I Love/Loved" and "EA Trax: The Best Licensed Music".

nicoletbn should be pleased - her music collection has never looked this clean. Still lots more to do, but at least I'm somewhere.

I've ripped just over half of my CD's (yes, 192CBR Nicole!).

My wrists are about to fall off from typing... time for bed.

Tue, 27 Jan 2004 21:07:31 GMT

Just bought seasons 1-5 of Sex and the City.

Well that just helped clean out my Amazon wish list. ^^;

I also bought Fila Brazillia B2 and the new AIR album. You can bet these will be on my netJuke by tonight.

This spending spree was initiated by my ex-boss that gave me some Virgin gift certificates for putting together a site for her team. Sure it only saved me $50 off the millions I spent, but hey... it helped right?

Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:54:21 GMT

http://www.vixenlove.com/Vixen/LogsByScore.php

Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:55:51 GMT

I'm really liking the latest offering by The Crystal Method. Legion of Boom is a nice set of tracks that have a nice mix of Vegasesque tunes and some new stuff. I'm particularly partial to Born Too Slow after being bombarded with this song repeatily during NFS:UG testing.

The last two albums by TCM took a while to digest. When I bought Tweekend and Community Service I really wasn't impressed but the tracks grew on me after a while. Legion of Boom like Vegas is one of those albums I like right off the bat.

In other news www.wiltonwoo.com launched recently. It's a Photoshoped Image site dedicated to a very unliked individual at EA Canada. After doing a whois on the domain it seems the resident web developer at EAC is responsible for the site. Sure hope he doesn't get fired for this. If you've ever met Wilton - this site is amazing.

Worlds largest lemon

Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:56:42 GMT

Immigration Paperwork

Fri, 23 Jan 2004 19:02:36 GMT

Been spending a lot of time working on the immigration paperwork to bring Nicole up here. Its an interesting process that certainly brings up a few emotions.

One of the major things they will be looking at is how genuine our relationship is. Since we are a same-sex conjugal couple this can be tricky to prove. I've been looking through old pictures, diary entries, emails, etc.. trying to put everything together in a logical group of documents.

I've gone through the dates we've visited each other - I count 100 almost exactly. That's almost a third of a year spent together. nicoletbn posted a timeline document I wrote today so I wont double post.

My mom wrote a very nice letter which will go a long way to proving our case to the immigration officers.

Getting this stuff together is certainly a process. Still not sure when we'll submit everything but when we do, wish us luck.

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 01:15:06 GMT

www.bbsmates.com = Amazing

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 21:44:07 GMT

This shit makes every machine I've ever used look slow
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/content_provider/film/ContentShowcase.aspx

Is something wrong with me?

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 00:52:04 GMT

I clicked the link at Apple Quicktime Trailers to see the new Resident Evil trailer thinking to myself "oh god... they made a sequel?" So I watched it... and I actually thought it was a clever ad and well that plus Milla Jovovich generally sells me on any movie.

So wtf.. I never saw the first and just assumed it was crap. Was it? Cause I want to watch the second...

Mundane Testing Practices

Tue, 20 Jan 2004 17:46:31 GMT

As you know I work in Quality Assurance. It may not be glamorous but it's what I do and what I currently enjoy. The only issue I have with being a part of QA is being surrounded by people with the mentality that proper testing involves producing every possible outcome and testing it. I call this dumb monkey testing. You get a building full of monkeys doing random things and you see what the results are. This is exactly how QA generally works at most gaming companies and it's sad.

Bring that into context of my job, Hardware Compatibility. Using the above mentality I should be testing every possible combination of hardware that an end-user could have. Well in the wonderful world of the PC, that's a little too much to test - but we actually seem to try.

My current task is testing CD-Rom's for an upcoming game. I have a chart with about 20 drives (some IDE, some Firewire, some SCSI, some DVD's, some CDR's, etc..). My job is to install the drive in a machine and install the game. I record the time it takes to do a default install and how long it takes to do a minimal install. This means that with a standard drive, testing a game of 2 cd's, installing twice, I'm looking at about 30-40min of work per drive. The entire test takes one technician approximately 2 incredibly boring days to complete (factoring in distractions, etc..) The amazing thing about this test is that even though all this time is spent running it, we've never seen a compatibility issue - ever.

So why continue? What benefit does this test serve? And the classic line here is "Well we need to be sure don't we."

I'm starting to stir a change, this shit wont continue for long. But until then, here I sit, installing a game I could care less about over and over again for no reason other than "cause we should"