"All Work and No Play" Doesn't Exist in My Vocabulary

First a bit about school, then a few other things.

Visual Basic is an... interesting programming language, to say the least. It was obviously designed to be, um, basic, and visual. When someone says it'll take them 5 minutes to throw together a program in Visual Basic, they're not kidding. This shit is easy.

Of course, having programmed before, a lot of it is just learning VB's way of doing things. There's no need to re-learn what arrays are, or how classes work. Just VB's way of implementing them, which is mostly easy but at times really weird. Complex code should probably be reserved for other languages

In the non-programming part of school there's two Cisco courses without books that happen to have a 90% overlap, a course for leaning Windows Server 2003, and a cabling course taught by an anti-consumerist Indian man. Lovely.

Shifting over to games, now.

The olympics were fun. Or at least the men's gold medal hockey game I managed to tune in for over the web. It was the first time I used a good online video streaming service, and it did not disappoint. Watching the game in HD was pretty damned cool. I only wish they would do the same thing for the rest of online shows. Especially the Comedy Network, which is especially disappointing since it broadcasts at 400x300 and only buffers 1 minute of footage.

Speaking of HD video I've decided that, whenever possible, I'll be keeping a full HD (1080p) copy of whatever shows and movies I download. Most TV shows are only uploaded in 720p format, but a lot of movies are put up in 1080p, like Up, so I'll be keeping those in their full 1080p glory. Not just because I have a 1080p TV sitting beside my computer but also because any 1080p video I open up on my main display (2560x1440) is small enough to hover in a window. 720p doesn't fare much better, since I can have four 720p videos open simultaneously without any overlap, but at least when it scales to fill up the whole screen each video pixel gets 4 screen pixels. Anything smaller than 720p just looks like shit. But how, pray tell, am I going to be downloading 1080p video? That's the next exciting bit.

We finally upgraded our internet. Well, technically we still have the shitty DSL since it saves us more money than it costs us on our bill, but we also got cable internet alongside the shitty DSL, and it's fantastic. 12 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up (could be better), no traffic shaping, no bandwidth cap, 40$ a month. Cheap, fast, somewhat reliable (it drops packets), unfiltered internet. It's awesome.

To test it out, I downloaded the updated iPhone SDK, which stands at a little over 3 GB. It took about 1 hour to finish. 1 hour, for a 3 GB file. The same thing would've taken me about a week on the shitty DSL since they throttle the connection as soon as they sense there's any activity. Instead I got it in about an hour, at a constant speed of almost 1 MB/s. (Remember your bits and Bytes)

So what have I been doing with all my spare bandwidth? Well, for half the day most of it goes to my sister when she's playing WoW, but for the other half of the day I've got some downloads going at a throttled 500 kB/s. Plus all my iTunes podcasts are in HD now, and all the YouTube videos I watch are also in HTML5 HD, as is Vimeo.

On the topic of HTML5 video, the WebKit nightlies are really good at playing HTML5 video. The Chrome beta, on the other hand, is absolutely horrible at it. Not only is the video all blocky, it also doesn't play back smoothly. Whatever Google's doing with the Chrome beta, they're doing it wrong. The WebKit team had their own way of handling HTML5 video for a reason, and whatever Google's doing to mess with it needs to be undone.

Speaking of apps, there's two new things to talk about on that front.

One is that I've done some spring cleaning on my iPhone and gone from about 6 full pages of non-Apple apps to only 3 mostly-full pages of non-Apple apps. Not too bad. Of course, the apps I use almost all the time, Apple or non-Apple, could fit onto half a home screen: Safari, Mail, iPod, Phone, Messages, Strategery. Facebook and Tweetie might be able to squeeze into the bottom half with Calendar, Maps, and WeatherEye.

The other is that I've gotten the latest MacHeist bundle, which includes MacJournal (which I probably won't use), RipIt (for ripping DVDs when I can't get the HD version), Clips (to greatly expand my clipboard, maybe), CoverScout (and SongGenie, which I'll be using to populate my iTunes library with the information and album art I'm missing on a few songs), Flow (an FTP app), Tales Of Monkey Island (which I'll never, ever play), RapidWeaver (like DreamWeaver, except for the Mac, and rapid!), Airburst Extreme (another game I'll never play), Tracks (for even more control over iTunes), Solitaire (also won't ever play), and probably Tweetie as a bonus app later in the MacHeist sale (which I already own).

While I was downloading the apps I'll use, I also noticed I had access to the other MacHeist bundle I bought. I also noticed I completely forgot about one of the apps, AppShelf, which is apparently an app to help keep track of all your serial numbers. So I downloaded it and immediately went to town on it, putting in all the serial codes, app icons, homepages, etc, of each app into this little database. It's nice to know that everything's all in one place, so long as it's not easily accessible to the outside world but can still be backed up and retrieved when needed.

On the topic of apps and such, Steam is coming to the Mac! What an exciting time for Mac users. Not only is Steam coming to the Mac, but the entire Source engine is being ported over to OpenGL (none of that Cider bullshit), and your Windows Steam game serials will also work on OS X Steam. It doesn't get much more awesome than that.

Unless of course they were to store your game saves online, so when you go from a PC to a Mac you can resume your game exactly where you left off. Oh wait, they are! Even more awesome!

That's about it for now. I look forward to giving Valve more money when the Mac version of Steam comes out. Cheers.

"I used to be into nostalgia... *sigh*"

I've been playing more video games lately. Not only do I mean I've been renting and buying more, I also mean I've been playing some of my old games again. Not at some sort of crazy-addicted pace or anything, but more than any other time in recent memory.

First up is Crysis. As optimistic as the game's "automatically choose what's best for my computer" settings were, unfortunately even the highest-end iMac can't handle Crysis on "high" settings with AA turned on at a 2560x1440 resolution. To be fair, no computer as of this writing can handle the game on max settings with full AA at that resolution. None. 3 years after the game came out, it still can't be played at its highest settings. Mostly because the game is absolutely stunning, graphics-wise. I mean it doesn't do anything fancy like ray-tracing but I suppose it's not too shabby. The story could be better, and they could offer colours other than brown and grey (which can be fixed with the Natural Mod, Crysis' most popular mod), but otherwise it's a good game.

I also happened to get Crysis Warhead and Crysis Wars, but haven't gotten around to playing those yet. Mostly because playing them requires me to boot into Windows.

Now that Mass Effect 2 is out, I also feel slightly obligated to finally play Mass Effect 1 so I can know what the hell is going on and possibly find out why everyone likes it so much. From what I've heard it's like a very enjoyable sci-fi film or series, except that you can play it. I'll have to check it out, and also keep my eyes peeled for Steam sales of the game.

I've also had a chance to play some Darksiders. I'd give it a 6/10 at best. It's a button-mashing game with a terrible storyline and decent graphics, so it won't exactly be winning any Game Of The Year awards. The thing I hate the most, which is what I hate about every game that does this, is that you have a weapon that doesn't do the type of damage the real-world equivalent would do. What I mean by that is that you have a sword that rival's Cloud-of-FF7's sword in size but still takes 8-50 slashes to actually kill an enemy. Maybe the developer team didn't realize they were using swords instead of sticks or maybe they've never actually seen a sword in real life but I'm pretty sure that swords cut through most things the first time around, especially if they're cutting through soft, squishy flesh. If you try to cut someone's head off with a sword I'm 99.99% certain that you'll decapitate them. The only thing convincing me that they might not is video games. Otherwise: sharp blade = cutting things. I'm also pretty sure a giant scythe is even better at cutting things.

I've also been playing quite a bit of Burnout: Paradise lately. Part of the reason is that I've discovered how to create online games without traffic. Another part of the reason is that I've discovered you can mute people, and if you're the game's host you can also kick them. The biggest part of the reason, though, is that there's a reward for beating all the events and completing all the online challenges (all 500 of them). Sure, the reward is just the ability to put custom paint jobs on every car, but that's still pretty sweet. I've got all 2-player, 3-player, 4-player, 7-player, and 8-player challenges complete, I've beat all the Island challenges, and I've got a few bike challenges left. It should be pretty fun to get 303% completion. To clarify: that's beating all the original events (100%) and online challenges (101%), all the bike events (another 100%) and online challenges (101%), and all the Island events (yet another 100%) and online challenges (101%), for a grand total of 303%. There's probably going to be more expansion packs that follow similar completion schemes.

Best of all, though, is that I've started playing Sim City 4 again! Oh, what a fun game it is. The micro-management aspect of it might be tedious as all hell but nothing beats the feeling of playing god. It helps that it's now gotten to the point where I've started analyzing how the game itself works so I can better "game the system", so to speak. For example, traffic always takes the shortest route, not the fastest, so even if you build a 6-lane highway a few clicks north of your residential area they're still going to take that tiny little 2-lane road a few clicks to the south because it offers a shorter route. Knowing that, it's easy to build a grid-like network of roads, busses, subways, and monorails that evenly spread the load of traffic like butter on toast. I've also learned that if the grid is split at regular intervals you can put a bus stop, subway station, and monorail station in a place that minimizes the amount of area you have to sacrifice to mass transit while maximizing the amount of access the buildings have to it. Sim Cities would never work in the real world, but as a game they're terribly amusing to play with.

Spore's taken a bit of a backseat, but at least with the new video card I can play it on max settings on the Mac side without any lag. The main reason I prefer games like Sim City over Spore is that Spore doesn't really do anything on its own. Cities don't grow, your colonies don't expand, they don't try to adjust their own Terrascore, hell they don't even try to do anything about alien invasions or extinction events. At least in Sim City the cities expand and grow a little on their own.

Classes started again. Most days I finish around lunch, which is nice, but that also means I have to wake up at 7. It's a bit of a trade-off. What's on the schedule this semester? Security, Visual Basic, Windows Server 2003, WANs, and Cabling. Not bad, but it could totally be better. Maybe I'll watch some of those Stanford iPhone courses as the semester goes on so I can finally get around to doing iPhone programming.

On the ISP front, apparently my end of town is too old and shitty to even be capable of decent internet so I may have to go with Plan B, which is to try to get the city to start its own fiber ISP. Not such a bad idea.

The "project" I've been working on for a while has kind of hit a dead end. Combined with not turning out the way I thought it would, I think that's enough reason to call it a day and start putting my resources toward something else (although, to be honest, I haven't really done much with it lately).

That's about it for now. Make sure to check out reddit once in a while, it's where I spend a good chunk of my time. 'Till next time.

Time for a change... in time

If you've been living under a rock you may not have noticed, but it's now 2010. I don't really see what the big deal is considering the Earth can make it annual orbit of the sun just fine without us, but whatever. Happy New Year.

Let's try to recap what's happened since my last post: Christmas was mostly uneventful, my sister's taken over my other sister's old room below mine, I spent more money that I don't have, and I managed to get intoxicated a few times.

Christmas was pretty lacklustre this year.

I got some USB-rechargeable AA batteries, but they're 1300 mAh NiMH batteries, so they don't hold much of a charge and they suffer from the 'memory effect'. Sure, there isn't as much room to store the energy since they have to leave room for the USB plug and whatever tiny adapter they have inside, but they could've at least tried to use lithium polymer batteries or something if they're going to be charging almost 20$ a pair. Oh well, still cheaper than buying 20$ worth of batteries every few weeks.

I got the new Super Mario Bros Wii, which is pretty fun. Even if it's mostly a do-over of the original Super Mario Bros, they'd changed and added enough that the game is still a lot of fun. I also got Wii Sports Resort, which has a few cool games, and a few not-so-cool games. Not really worth the money, if you ask me. Maybe if they dropped the price closer to 20$

Still no SATA-to-USB adapter to retrieve the files from my failed enclosure's hard drive, but it's been ordered. It should be here soon. I also got the Griffin AirCurve, which is an acoustic amplifier/dock for the iPhone. It works as advertised, but I find it to be best for when you have an alarm set and want it to be louder than the default volume levels allow. Even the stocking stuffers were kind of lacking this year. Chocolate orange, tooth brush bristle replacements, gum, and some Lindor chocolate.

Just a side note: Lindor chocolates are amazing when you're high. Then again, what delicious food isn't amazing when you're high?

Once Christmas was over, though, Valve decided to throw an end-of-the-year sale. Guess what that means? Cheap games, that's what that means! Crysis and Mass Effect, to be exact. Crysis (the whole pack) for 15$ and Mass Effect for 5$. If I ever get my keyboard and mouse working in Boot Camp, and if the games ever manage to finish downloading (a whole week and I'm at 35%) I'll be sure to have some fun with that.

My sister moved back in. Her computer croaked during the move, so daddy got her a new one. It's got an i5 (I think), a 4650, 6 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB drive. Not bad for 800$. Actually, closer to 600$ since my step-dad gets a discount thanks to his work. All connected to her old less-than-1080p monitor, USB speakers, macro-enabled keyboard and non-Magic mouse, which she apparently didn't like using while she borrowed my computer to keep her WoW guild informed about her moving misfortunes. But that's okay, because she stays up later than I do, so I don't have to turn down my volume or wear headphones when it gets late. That's always a bonus.

On a different note: I absolutely hate phones. Mostly because of the people on the other end. Especially when it's some kind of support line.

Apple support isn't so bad. They seem to get more training (and a bigger paycheck) than anyone else, which usually makes a call to them about as pleasant as a tech support call can be.

Northern Tel (a division of Bell Aliant™), on the other hand, doesn't really seem to know what they're doing. I finally decided to call so they could do something about our horribly-slow connection speed ("up to 5 Mbps" but getting less than 1 Mbps, with a 100+ ms ping). They took note of my complaints and said they'd see what they could do, and if they had any follow-up questions they'd call back. About a week later we got a new IP. Our ping went from over 100 ms to about 30 ms. The speed still sucked, but at least our ping was better. Now to see if they can fix the speed, which is what I was actually complaining about.

UPS support seems to be... very isolated, in that nobody in any one place seems to know what's going on anywhere else. They might as well be sending all their messages alongside their packages, which seem to take forever to get anywhere and have a tracking feature that is less than useless.

On an equally depressing note: Classes started again! Oh boy! Most days I have 4-5 solid hours of class with no breaks. They changed the curriculum again, too, so now I have to re-take Voice and Data Cabling. You know, the class that's supposed to be for electrical students that they just happen to stick on the computer science students because "we deal with cables". It's complete bullshit, but whatever. Oh, and I'll probably have to stay an extra semester to take 2 more classes. That should be fun. But then hopefully I can take a few months off before going off somewhere else, spending more money, and taking more classes I don't want to take so I can learn things that won't apply to my future career.

Can you tell I have issues with the way the current education system works?

Oh, and I finally got my bracelet fixed. Well... 'fixed'. Apparently the jeweler's definition of 'fix' is 'use pliers'. I complained that the locking mechanism was too loose and that it kept unlocking from things as simple as moving my arm. So what did they do? They took some pliers, scratched the hell out of the locking mechanism, dented it slightly, and bent it so that it would be 'tighter'. Unfortunately it's too tight now, to the point where you can't even open or close the lock without pliers (yeah, ha ha). So now I've got a scratched-up bracelet that I can't even wear (or if I do wear it, that I can't take off). I'll be taking it back so they can replace the locking mechanism at their own cost, and hopefully without damaging the rest of the bracelet.

That's about it for now. Congratulations on another successful trip around the sun, everyone!