Mile Zero
no matter where you go, there you are
Mile Zero is the personal website of Thomas Wilburn. All statements and opinions here are my own, and do not represent the views or policies of my employers at Congressional Quarterly, Ars Technica, or other publications.
Last night I ended up in a Metro car with the new voice warnings. Late last year, the Metro system sponsored a contest for a new voice to say things like "Please stand back, doors closing." The Washington Blade (or, as one of my friends and its contributors calls it, "The Gayly Planet") has a very good article about the winner here. It's a pleasant enough voice, and I don't think it will grow annoying over time, which is very important. But what I'm honestly more excited to hear is a new set of chimes, replacing the too-sharp sitcom doorbells that they had been using. They used to hurt my ears.
Apparently the tapes are going out gradually, since my train this morning was back to normal. And sadly, they're not releasing digital copies out onto the web, which would be cool. But if you're riding the Metro now, keep your ears open, and you might get to hear the new recordings.
00:00 x Thomas x /dc/metro x link x 0 comments
Once upon a time, I played in a college rock band. We played a lot of covers and a few originals--I wrote the words, and the occassional riff. You may remember that I rescued one of my songs a while back in one of these sketches, here. You might also remember that the band was actually named "Mile Zero," and I turned its website into this humble journal when things went pear-shaped. But I kept copies of everything, and when I was reloading Windows the other day I found the original copy of that song. If you wanted to compare the two, you could listen to the original version here.
There's a lot to learn here, if I'm seriously interested in this as a solo project song. Clearly, it's a different aesthetic with a full band. My guitarist was a lot more spastic and we multitracked him, so the sound is very full, if sometimes wanky (I actually think my solo is more effective for its simplicity). By contrast, my looped songs tend to be more spare, usually maxing out at three loop layers plus vocals and live bass. They are very different sounds, but I think they both have potential to work.
No, where I can learn the most is probably from the drum part on the Mile Zero version, provided by Brian "Dr. Dex" Dexter. Brian is one of the better drummers that I know, and he lends the song a nice disconnected shuffle during the verses. I really like the way that it works to give the bass line a little extra slinkiness. My percussion abilities need a lot of work to reach the kind of energy that a real drummer lends to a song. I've started breaking drum lines into slap patterns when I listen to music, in the hopes that I can reproduce them later.
The other learning opportunity here is the levels of energy present in the old version. A lot of it is due again to the drums, but you can really hear it jump in intensity during the second half of the verse. I think it's interesting that the chorus actually drops back a little from that level, before fully relaxing as the verse shuffle resumes. It's a neat dynamic that I've tried to replicate by reserving the distorted chords, but Brian's tom work is also a big part of it, and that's harder for me to fake. A better basic percussion loop (instead of whatever I tossed off when I recorded this) seems to me to be the patch this song needs.
Well, that and new lyrics. And I have no idea when I'll have time to sit down and work those out right now.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/recording/sketchpad x link x 0 comments
Someone once asked me who the bass equivalent of Yngwie Malmsteen or Eddie Van Halen was. We could get into a long debate about this, but for sheer chops and groove combined I think it's hard to top Vic. I am not a fan of highly technical playing--I'm more Jack White than Dream Theater--but players like Wooten or Michael Manring have their place, far above the rest of us.
08:57 x Thomas x /music/artists/wooten x link x 1 comment
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And in a flashback to the GMU dorm life:
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So there's this Spring Tournament of Bloggers thing, where a bunch of people (read: 6) will compete over the Internets in Metroid Prime: Hunters. And I'm signed up.
Granted, I can only see statistics for Brin and Seth, but it looks like I've easily got the most online experience of the group. I hope to parlay this into THE CRUSHING DEFEAT OF MY OPPONENTS. With that said, I'm not above jotting down a few observations that might help even the playing field.
It may make newcomers feel better to know that Nintendo's ranking system is pretty easily manipulated. The overall ranking at Nintendowifi.com is basically a measure of your time spent online, and doesn't decrease with losses (although it may with disconnects). So while I'm ranked in the top 3000, that just means that I've played online more than most. Playing against friends and rivals still counts for points--so being better than your friends list is a good way to rank high on the consecutive kills or win percentages. Basically, as with just about everything in this hobby, it's biased towards spoiled 12-year-olds. We should probably be used to that by now.
19:22 x Thomas x /gaming/software/metroid_hunters x link x 1 comment
Whether you are a musician or not, all creative and technically-inclined people should be excited about the Monome interface:
CDM links to a early adopter's impressions, which are highly favorable.
Now, I know what you might be thinking: it's a box with buttons and lights. Is that supposed to be cool? YES. It is very cool, because the Monome doesn't impose any restraints whatsoever on what you do with those buttons and lights. They're completely software-controlled, so the display is independent from the input functions. And unlike the Lemur touch control, which fits much the same niche, the Monome has the tactility of physical buttons.
You can build a Tenori with this. You can make a drum machine, complete with display. You can use it as a sample trigger. You can assign synth tones to the keys and play it like a very funky keyboard. It could be used to control and display an EQ. And these are just the musical uses. It's also a very small Game of Life board. With simple software to interface between midi and keystrokes, it can be a macro keyboard. It could be an image password. There is so much cool stuff you could do with one of these.
00:00 x Thomas x /random/tech/i_slash_o x link x 0 comments
For my own future reference: US English founder and virulent anti-immigrant crusader James Tanton profiled in In These Times.
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13:11 x Thomas x /random/personal x link x 1 comment
Belle says, "Do you have no dignity at all?" The answer to which is apparently no:
I don't know what the hell that second thing is. It came in the package as a bonus from Play-Asia. From my past experience with Asian snacks, I'm in no hurry to open it.
16:18 x Thomas x /gaming/hardware/shameless_commerce x link x 1 comment
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It took a while, but it's a cover story--if by cover story we mean one of those little blurbs at the top of the cover, and I DO.
Actually, there are two of my pieces inside:
00:00 x Thomas x /journalism/articles x link x 1 comment
Round Table: There's Nothing but Strangers Out There
Video games are not my friends. Characters from video games are not my friends. This is not dismissive--well, maybe a little--because it's not like I have friends in other media. I don't have relationships with characters in books or movies. The very idea that I would be friends with even well-realized characters like Jade from Beyond Good and Evil is as alien as befriending Hiro Protagonist or Indiana Jones.
I don't want to get into a long definition of friendship. Let's go with the pithy phrase "someone who hates the same things you do," which I think is workable enough. To establish a relationship, my interpersonal communication classes would tell me that it requires establishing levels of trust and shared communication. It requires interaction. Theoretically, that's something a game should be able to provide.
But when I interact with characters in games, mostly it's to shoot them.
Don't look at me like that. You do it too. The history of intimacy in gaming is littered with the corpses of Black Mesa security guards, cartoon chickens, and crazy-taxi'd pedestrians.
Why the violence? I don't think it's out of any anger. I just think that it's asking a lot for me to care about a digital persona after I've had some kind of transaction with them, because the latter usually exposes their inhumanity. I can care what happens to the Prince in Prince of Persia because he's a funny, naive guy. I feel a little sorry for him. I hope he does well. But if you asked me to actually hang out with him in the game, talk to him and act like a "friend," you're going to run into a digital divide pretty quickly. And that breeds a kind of callousness.
Even attempts at creating a ghost in the machine as the primary goal have usually failed. Remember Seaman, the Dreamcast game about a drugged-out fish-person, narrated by Leonard Nimoy? Of course you don't. Me and three other people played it. And we only enjoyed it because the fish was so incredibly abusive and needy that we wanted to see how long we could go without cranking the heat in his tank to 200 degrees. Roast the little punk alive. And Seaman was one of the better attempts: he would read your memory card to see what games you played, remembered your birthday, had long conversations about your childhood, and even managed this through voice interaction. It was a valiant effort, one that nonetheless inadvertently reminded you--constantly--that what you were doing was talking to your television, and hoping that it would understand you.
Creepy.
Who else wants to talk?
19:35 x Thomas x /gaming/roundtable x link x 1 comment
This is why I love Music Thing: A collection of links, including a Dutch rockumentary and a terrible festival performance, all centering on synth anthem The Final Countdown.
I have no words. It goes to eleven.
10:38 x Thomas x /music/artists/europe x link x 1 comment
I speak a little Mandarin after three years of classes--enough to impress Westerners and embarass myself in front of native speakers. But it's difficult to maintain even that minimum of fluency in a language that I speak so badly, because interaction becomes very intimidating. So I'm trying to get my listening skills up on my own, in the hopes that I can recover a bit and begin actually talking to people again.
Slate has an overview of language podcasts today, including ChinesePod. It's worth checking out, considering it's free. I've listened to a couple, and they seem well-structured, with amusing hosts, although they may be most helpful for people who have already grasped a little of the language. With that said, Mandarin is a good language to learn this way, since it is (I think) much easier to speak than it is to read or write. The emphasis on tones means that it's important to learn from an audio lesson rather than a book.
00:00 x Thomas x /culture/asia/china/mandarin x link x 0 comments
Great Moments at the Used Bookstore
From the back cover of "Watch Me" by A.J. Holt:
But Jay's Washington bosses have told her to stop. She can't use her program. It violates the Constitution. It violates these sick killers' civil rights.
Now Jay's been transferred to a tiny office in Santa Fe. She's instructed to stay out of multiple murder cases. As far as Washington knows, she is.
LIKE HELL SHE IS.
Jay is going on-line. She's going to track down the killers. What will she do when she finds them? She says...
WATCH ME.
Somewhere in or around DC, Alberto Gonzales lights up a cigarette, glances at the torn paperback next to him, and mutters, "Was it good for you too?"
00:00 x Thomas x /fiction/industry x link x 0 comments
Awesome! The voice of reason has returned!
11:12 x Thomas x /gaming/media/online/linky x link x 1 comment
On Easter Sunday, the homeless people in DC's cruelly-named Golden Triangle are resigned. On weekdays, or even some weekends, they stand or sit on the sidewalk with a cup or a sign, asking for change. But today it's basically just me, the Bank's security, and a few puzzled tourists roaming around 19th and Penn. Most of the homeless that I see are on park benches or by buildings, just staring into space. Maybe they're taking a break today, like everyone else. One guy asks me for a nickel, but he's one of the articulate ones. Fairly healthy, fairly clean, seems sane. I give him my loose change and hope he'll do okay.
It's hard for me to say exactly how DC ranks when it comes to dealing with the homeless. Last year, there was a rumor that Mayor Williams had shut down a shelter around here, forcing people onto the streets. Searching Lexis doesn't really clear it up, one way or the other--a shelter was closed and reopened, one of them was apparently converted into a hotel but the shelter's residents were allowed to stay until a new place was found. It feels like there are more people out there on weekday mornings, though. Some of them, I've seen for a year and a half now. Who knows how long they were out, in that same place, before I even showed up?
The Lexis search did pick up a report stating that DC isn't really mean to its homeless the way some other cities are. And that's true, I think: we don't have drip pipes and it's not really criminalized. The cops have been known to move the homeless out of an area, or hassle them for ID, but it could be worse. Of course, whether or not a shelter was closed and he kicked people out, Mayor Williams is not popular with the homeless of this city. He has his own entourage of them, following him wherever he goes with signs and sometimes vocal protests. When I used to work the DC political beat off and on for the Asia Press, I used to look forward to it. My favorite was the Christmas toy drive he sponsored, located in a grungy office complex way up in Northeast*, when the Mayor got caroled to the tune of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas." It was well done--although I don't have a lot of love for Williams myself, so maybe that's just me.
Since the Bank doesn't pay taxes, it holds a number of charity drives for the homeless in the city, to try and make up for the money it's not giving to DC itself. Some of the organizers, particularly I think the Scandinavians, were a little stunned by the extent of poverty in this country and this city in particulary. Others were less impressed, looking at the worldwide big picture. I see both sides, but it hurts more to have to tell the former group, "that's just America for you." I'm not religious, but that's a pretty weak Easter benediction.
*Note for tourists and non-residents: DC is basically cut into four quadrants according to the compass. The dividing lines run along Constitution Avenue and Capitol Street. The city basically centers around the Capitol building. The West side, however, is generally considered to be in better shape than the East, and the North is in better shape than the South (I think this is how it goes). Southeast is the "bad part of town." I work in Northwest.
00:00 x Thomas x /dc/gov/social_services x link x 0 comments
What's for dinner (and breakfast, and lunch)
One of the best reasons to travel is to eat new foods, including the foods that you thought you knew but turn out to be radically different (hint: there is no General Tso's Chicken in China. It's also really hard to find a root beer there). This Argentinian travelogue (via Making Light) is a brilliant description of the meat-loving country and makes my mouth water--although it does imply that any visit I make there will be sans my lovely and brilliant--but vegetarian--girlfriend.
They speak Spanish there, don't they? And I've got some vacation time coming up...
19:08 x Thomas x /culture/america/south x link x 1 comment
That's it! Thank you, you've been a wonderful audience! Good night!
Roars of applause, whistles, chanting, and much stomping of feet. Some time passes.
UPDATE: Thank you! Gosh, okay! Thank you! A few more paragraphs...
This is a post about encores.
I was watching my Clatter DVD last night, because I like to steal techniques from Amy, and something caught my attention. At the end of the show, Amy and Joe waved goodnight and walked off stage, with one song unplayed on their album. Sure enough, when the audience went nuts, they came back out and played "Left Out" for everyone. This was a pre-arranged show expressly for the purpose of taping the DVD--fans came from all over to support them. If you've bought the Clatter DVD at this point, you're probably already a fan, if you don't know them personally since they're such friendly people. Why the charade?
I don't know how long it's been the convention to have a mandatory encore song or three after the show ends, but I wish it would go away. For one thing, I don't want to put up with 10 minutes of loud clapping, yelling, and whistling from every moron in the audience just so the music can continue. It's also a little insulting, frankly: we all know that the band's going to come out and play some more. Why wrap it up into a ritual of hero-worship and hormonal over-enthusiasm? Why do we have to beg for it?
I mean, we're all at least trying to be adults, right? Is it too much to ask that someone plays some music, finishes a satisfying show, and then we all go home without the obligatory pretend walkoff?
It'll be a dark day for us all if I ever reach the level of musical fame required, but I promise now: should that time come, when I leave the stage, I'm not coming back.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/performance x link x 0 comments
This month's book for Belle's book club is William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, by my suggestion. A few thoughts:
It is safe to say, at this point, that a major focus point of Gibson's writing has been information and information flows. He's fascinated by it. In part, this is a product of his time--while at many points in history we have only vaguely been able to recognize that information is a technology in the artifacts it creates, it has now literally become the technology itself. That's a powerful change in how we commonly view the world. It almost requires a kind of Cartesian dualism, only instead of a spiritual world beyond, you have to think in terms of networks and metadata.
And if you're going to explore that kind of duality, you need a character that can bridge it for the reader, and this is in fact a common feature of Gibson's work. His first novel, Neuromancer, starred a hacker (or "console cowboy") named Henry Case, giving the readers a closer viewpoint on how Gibson's virtual space could affect the physical world--or vice-versa, as Case also met some characters who were either people downloaded into a ROM construct, or even completely artificial AI. Idoru introduced Colin Laney, who could instinctively read and understand the data trail produced by consumption due to childhood medical experimentation. Laney wasn't just a exposition device--by this point, we were all familiar with the dangers of living in a digitally documented world--but a way of personalizing the techniques we now know as data mining. He gave the reader a person through which we could think about our relationship to our data shadow.
In Pattern Recognition, our Virgil figure is Cayce Pollard. She is allergic to brands. More specifically (although Gibson never really comes right out to say this), she's allergic to brands that carry a lot of extra semantic baggage. This is really interesting in conjunction with the fact that it's Gibson's first present-day novel. Through this allergy, he can highlight the level of branding that surrounds us nowadays, as well as making some interesting observations about the information carried through advertising (perhaps our most studied symbolic industry).
For example, Cayce has to grind off all of the rivets on her jeans. She tears off tags from her clothing and her accessories. Tommy Hilfigger just about triggers a breakdown (Gibson, again, isn't clear why, but perhaps the brand's reinvention as an "urban" label has something to do with it). Hello Kitty, on the other hand, doesn't trip her condition at all: Sanrio exists only as a set of empty logos and designs, nothing other than "cute." The specifics are really fairly irrelevant. What's important is that Cayce is alert to the same messages that we either suppress or can't consciously see. She is a window to the careful manipulation of marketers in an ad-supported world. She's also, in a visceral way, affected and controlled by it. Are we really that far off, just because we don't all have a panic attack at the Gap? How much control do we have over our impulses?
The logo allergy also gives Cayce a job as cool-hunter, and that opens up a whole other dimension to Gibson's exploration. I think what he may be trying to show us is a blurring between content and commercial. The product has become the pitch, and the pitch is everywhere. In reaction to the increasing guile and cynicism of the audience, Cayce's employers are trying to reach out and subvert her hobby--a slowly-released piece of movie footage being released slowly through unknown sources. The footage may represent the only artifact left that's not created to sell something. It's pure creativity, and as such people like Cayce are drawn to it. Of course, corporations also hunger for something with that genuine appeal. And the paradox is that anything that they can co-opt will lose its credibility in becoming just another marketing scheme. Again, it's a conflict of control and freedom under capitalism.
Which is not far from how the system works now. Gibson is more subtle than this, and leaves quite a bit open for interpretation. Moreover, as usual, all this is suspended in the middle of many other plots and threads, including an unsettlingly well-crafted portrayal of the modern e-life (much of the book is deftly woven through online forums and e-mail exchanges). Yet for the implications noted above, it's Cayce's peculiar ability that may stick with the reader the longest, and should prove most disturbing. At the most basic level, the question raised by Pattern Recognition will be whether or not human creativity can survive the interference of capitalism, or if it will become just another part of a machine, feeding on itself. Looking at the celebration of Remix Culture on the Internet some days, I'm not so sure how I could answer that.
09:22 x Thomas x /fiction/litcrit x link x 1 comment
So, you'd like to publish your Metroid Hunter's License on your website? After spending some time picking through Nintendo's javascripts, I've figured out how to do it, with the magic of an iframe:
Voila! (note: I have no idea what I'm doing with HTML most of the time. There may be a better way to do this.) Of course, since this just fetches the popup from the Nintendowifi.com servers, they have to be operating--something that isn't exactly guaranteed right now.
To do the same, you need to open up your leaderboard and look at the page source. On the line where your handle is mentioned, there will be code reading "onClick="showUserPopup(event, 'XXXXXXX')" where the XXXXXXX is an ID number for your license. Insert the following code into your HTML, replacing the XXXXXXX with that ID number:
<iframe src="http://www.nintendowifi.com/gaminghub/MetroidHuntersLicenseFrame.jsp?gspid=XXXXXXXX" width=200 height=320 scrolling=no frameborder=0></iframe>
Assuming the NintendoWifi site is up, that should do the trick. I'm sure someone more sophisticated (or dedicated) than I can work out how to do error handling for when the servers don't have their act together.
09:18 x Thomas x /gaming/hardware/networking x link x 1 comment
To non-NoVA residents, I apologize, because this image won't mean much. I hope that it's large enough for the few of you living near me to make it out. This is the Vienna/Fairfax metro station yesterday, around 4pm. As you probably know, immigration rallies took place around the country, and DC's was especially large, if the news counts are correct. What you're seeing in the picture is a line that stretches almost out to the parking garage from inside the station, I'd say at least a quarter mile long, and 3 to 4 people wide. It was pretty unbelievable in person.
00:00 x Thomas x /politics/issues/immigration x link x 1 comment
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Musical Sketchpad, Session Four
This is the cover of Portions for Foxes that I recorded last week. Here are some of the reasons it's not very good:
00:00 x Thomas x /music/recording/sketchpad x link x 0 comments
Pardon me, I'm just being self-congratulatory. A CDM forum reader and blogger likes the Innsmouth Blues:
The phrase "nerd cred in bags" may have to go on my theoretical business cards. Also, note the amusing Photoshop work he crafted for it.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/management x link x 0 comments
Tomorrow night, Belle will be abandoning me to go dogsit--she likes the puppies more than she likes me, I say. But always look on the sunny side of life, and so after a day of catching up on the Bank's Spring B-SPAN backlog, I'm planning on coming home to kick back with my bass and maybe a movie or two.
But while I'm at it, I'd like to remedy another sad fact, which is that I've never really used the online component of Animal Crossing. So I'll be opening my town up, starting at about 8pm, and inviting anyone who's interested to drop by. You can see the orchard I'm planting, listen to K.K. Slider, or just socialize. It's a house party. We can even make arrangements for me to frag all comers in Metroid. I'm flexible.
My friend codes, as always, are here. Hope to see you there.
09:01 x Thomas x /gaming/hardware/networking x link x 1 comment
If I played online RPGs, this might honestly be my approach. More at this month's Carnival of the Gamers.
11:50 x Thomas x /gaming/carnival x link x 1 comment
Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear
In case the Taiwanese music pirates who download my songs (hello there! Bet you're surprised!) were wondering, here's the deal with the original I said I was going to record last week. I pulled up my old lyrics, remembered how the structure actually went, and realized that it's pretty unfriendly to looping. So it's back to the drawing board on that one. Instead, I just spent a well-needed couple of hours recording covers of Closer and Portions for Foxes, which you don't get to hear, because they're pretty terrible or something I don't really want my mom hearing (hello there!).
I may have new stuff up this weekend instead.
22:03 x Thomas x /music/recording/sketchpad x link x 1 comment
Metroid Prime is not, as far as I'm concerned, the same thing as Metroid. There are similarities, but the former is a polished first-person shooter--I don't care if it has lock-on, it's a shooter--and the latter will always be a sprite-based side-scroller, which carries certain other expectations. Fighting game fans know what I'm talking about: there's an immediacy, almost an urgency, to the stylized sprite-based fighters that is lost when they move to 3D. It's not to say that the Prime spinoffs aren't fun to play, or far more immersive, but they don't feel like Metroid no matter how many secret hunts and ice beams you throw in. Just my subjective take.
So while Prime and its sequel are (to me) one step removed from the original source, Metroid Prime: Hunters (or just "Hunters" from now on) is a step removed from them. It's also a good game, but it's no Metroid Prime, much less Metroid itself. More than anything, it feels like a Metroid mod for Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament. There's the same hyperactive trigger-happiness of the weapons, a similar look to the environments, and a similar dynamic of counter-counter tactics for certain weapons. What's been added are the different hunters and their alternate forms, which does freshen up some of the FPS tactics.
I'm not complaining, personally. If you have to dress Quake up in Metroid skins in order to give me a fully functional FPS on the go, with Internet multiplayer, that's fine. I can think of worse ways to use the franchise. My only problem with the game right now is that I haven't figured out a counter for Kanden's homing bombs--but I'm confident that like Dr. Doom or Iceman in Marvel vs. Capcom, there is a way around it with practice.
What I do think is interesting is that the Prime games have started to focus more on Samus behind the helmet. As far as I can remember, from the first game on through the cameos in Super Smash Brothers, it was rare to see Samus as someone inside the powersuit. The visor on the helmet was always opaque, and Samus was only shown completely in or out of the suit (although sometimes the helmet was removed for a few moments). It made her armored persona a bit impersonal. Beginning with Prime, the developers reminded us more regularly that there really was someone inside the metal. The visor was made transparent, and at some points a reflection of Samus would show up in the virtual visor. It wasn't a split personality between "armored death machine" and "Samus Aran" any more.
Hunters is not graphically sophisticated enough to give us those kinds of glimpses in-game, sadly, but the FMV movies make a big deal out of Samus's facial reactions. Using the dual screen format in creative ways, the movie will often play a wide angle on one display, while focusing in on Samus's helmet on the other. Is it a definitive glance into her character? Not really: she still doesn't speak, and all we can see is basically a strip across her eyes and down just below her nose. So we know that she's surprised, or determined, or maybe a little angry. Her emotions, to quote Parker, run the gamut from A to B.
And that's okay. I just like knowing that there's someone there. If kids today grow up thinking that real Metroid means a first person perspective and a morph ball that becomes more disturbing the more realistic it becomes (How does that work, exactly? Where does she fit? Doesn't she get dizzy?), I'm happy with the gain of a little humanity. Frankly, unless it's done well, I hope they don't feel the need to pump personality into Samus's portrayal, because we all know how bad that can be. But a few little touches here and there go a long way to get me emotionally involved.
12:59 x Thomas x /gaming/impressions/ds x link x 1 comment
I just wrote a check to the IRS for $2,222.
00:00 x Thomas x /bank/experience/hr x link x 0 comments
One of the problems with reloading my computer periodically is that I use Outlook. Which is not a problem in and of itself--I like Outlook, personally, once you turn off various "features"--but it defaults (like most mail clients) to deleting messages that it has downloaded. And since my webmail accesses that same POP3 account, it makes it hard to catch mail at work unless I'm refreshing the page all day. I've got better things to do.
So until I remember to go uncheck that box, maybe for a couple of days, don't expect an instant e-mail response.
00:00 x Thomas x /random/tech x link x 0 comments
Does it make me strange that I like the way the current DS looks? That I'm not really at all tempted by the DS Lite? I'll admit that I wasn't impressed with the first set of products--who has ever liked that cheap-looking silver paint? But the Electric Blue is, I think, very striking, and I like its size and design. I also like its concave buttons and shallow, precise d-pad. The weight has never been a particular problem, luckily. My only issues have been a sticky right trigger I had to clean, and considering that my DS spends a lot of time being jammed into a tote bag with all of my other random gear and grime, that's a pretty good build record.
Much the same way, now that I think about it, that I like my cheap Nokia cell phone. The phone has no features, practically. No camera, basic color screen, no clever buttons, no .mp3 ringtones. But it feels good in the hand. It's just the right size and weight to be substantial when gripped in one hand. Maybe the DS Lite will win me over once I can physically try it out. But I have to say, I'm a little saddened by the idea that the old model will fade away in a few months.
11:52 x Thomas x /gaming/hardware x link x 1 comment
Just for Belle: the new Mates of State video, although I don't care for it very much. They should have just done a recording of their live show, which we caught a while back: the two band members, who are married, pretty much just sing to each other the whole time. It's pretty cute.
Then again, I guess this is better than their older videos.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/artists/mates_of_state x link x 0 comments
Onboard sound goes bad.
Then Windows refuses to recognize the new soundcard because of something the old one destroyed.
Try a multitude of solutions. The mighty VIA chipset thwarts them all. Resort to a Win2K reinstall, forget not to wipe out old installation. Have to rebuild drivers for everything, starting with network card. Hunt frantically for the application disks for programs that don't like my rebuilding efforts.
Every time that I do something like this, I realize two things. First, it's kind of nice to have a reinstall anyway, so it's probably worth a couple hours every year. Second, I really need to stop buying cheap components.
00:00 x Thomas x /random/note_to_self x link x 0 comments
