Jay McGavren’s Journal

Has anyone else noticed that despite the huge environments and detailed models in DOA2 Ultimate, there isn’t a single “Now Loading” screen? I haven’t looked into this, but I’m betting it’s due to caching on the hard drive. I think a hard drive is among my requirements for my next console; no way I’m going bad to optical-only media.

Oh, and here’s a few more:
HDTV output standard on all games.
Ethernet out of the box.
Support for wireless.
A cheap/free online play service like Live.

Nice-to-haves:
Play MP3s, view movies and photos over the network.
Online tracking of game stats a la Halo 2.
Ability to trade/download save games online.

Wish list:
No in-game configuration of online options/friends list/banned people. I want one standard interface handled by the console, because I don’t trust game makers to do it right.

I’ll pay whatever I have to in order to get these things, but if I don’t, I don’t think we’ll upgrade (at least not until two price drops into the product cycle). I’m quite satisfied with the XBox, thanks.

Back when I got my first Macintosh, it had no hard drive, so I had to buy a 40 MB external drive for over $100. It was bigger than a phone book. I now carry a flash drive around in my pocket with six times the capacity, and it only cost me a third of the price. Ain’t technology great?

The hot and sour soup at Flo’s Chinese is very, very good.

The dog came in from the back yard limping for no apparent reason. I of course promptly freaked out, thinking he might have a broken leg, and I was horrified the Diana and her mom were telling me to wait and see if it got better. They finally agreed to my taking him to the vet, though.

Three x-rays, 150 dollars, and two hours later, and they didn’t find anything. They sent him home with an anti-inflammatory and said to restrict his exercise. (I.e. no barelling around the house at 90 miles an hour.)

The next day he’s prancing around as if nothing ever happened. That was a waste of money. Guess the ladies were right.

Lenny is to the point where he demands one of everything in the grocery if you take him. I now hate - absolutely hate - any snack food company that makes a promotional deal with children’s television shows (Barney-shaped fruit snacks and so on).

I’m working on an idea for a media server app, and was trying to think of unique (potentially trademarkable) names for it. I thought of the server as a kind of glue which lets you access all your content via a single interface.

Hmm… “glue” is a common word - how about a unique spelling like “Gloo”? I Googled for the word to see if it was already taken:

Gloo

Aaaghh! The first hit was for a media sharing app! How scary is that?

I’m having another of those days when I’m extremely picky about what I listen to. I went through my Winamp library here at work and made a playlist of all the songs that didn’t repulse me…

µ-Ziq - Bluff Limbo (disc 1) - 03 Gob bots
Amon Tobin - Bricolage - 01 Stoney Street
Amon Tobin - Bricolage - 02 Easy Muffin
Amon Tobin - Out From Out Where - 06 Rosies
Aphex Twin - _..I Care Because You Do - 10 Alberto Balsam
Aphex Twin - 26 Mixes for Cash - 01 Seefeel - Time To Find Me (AFX Fa
Aphex Twin - 26 Mixes for Cash - 02 Gavin Bryars - Raising The Titani
Aphex Twin - 26 Mixes for Cash (Disc 2) - 01 Die Fantastischen Vier - Krieger
Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy - 08 IZ-US
Aphex Twin - Unknown Album - 01 Donkey Rhubarb
Arovane - Atol Scrap - 04 Ambelio
Arovane - Atol Scrap - 09 Amine
Arovane - Icol Diston - 09 Acval
Arovane - Lilies - 04 Cry Osaka Cry
Arovane - Lilies - 08 Instant Gods Out of the Box
Arovane - Tides - 01 Theme
Arovane - Tides - 02 Tides
Arovane - Tides - 03 Eleventh!
Arovane - Tides - 07 The Storm
Arovane - Tides - 08 Deauville
Arovane - Tides - 09 Epilogue
Boards of Canada - Geogaddi - 02 Music Is Math
Boards of Canada - Geogaddi - 08 Julie and Candy
Boards of Canada - Geogaddi - 10 1969
Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children - 02 An Eagle In Your Mind
Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children - 04 Telephasic Workshop
Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children - 07 Turquoise Hexagon Sun
Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children - 12 Aquarius
Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 01 Wooden Toe
Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 02 Swipe Width
Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 03 Wiffle
Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 04 Two Hum
Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 06 Agony
Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 07 Paz Suite 1
Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 08 Paz Suite 2
Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 09 Paz Suite 3
Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 10 Paz Suite 4
Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 11 Elodie 1
Delarosa & Asora - Agony Part 1 - 12 Elodie 2
Delarosa & Asora - Crush The Sight-Seers (pear001 - OSSABAW
Delarosa & Asora - Lily of the Valley - 03 Saigon
Delarosa & Asora - Lily of the Valley - 07 Lily’s Theme
Delarosa & Asora - slicker.remixes - 01 delarosa+devine
Delarosa & Asora - The Remixes - 02 L’usine
Delarosa & Asora - The Remixes - 03 Casino vs. Japan
Delarosa & Asora - The Remixes - 07 Lackluster
Delarosa & Asora - Unknown Album - a02. delarosa + asora_filth
Delarosa & Asora - Unknown Album - Delarosa & Asora - And A Needle Mayb
Delarosa & Asora - Unknown Album - Delarosa & Asora - Draped Departure
Delarosa & Asora - Unknown Album - Delarosa & Asora - Smaze Words
Delarosa & Asora - Unknown Album - Delarosa & Asora - Uptown Ad One
Enigma - The Screen Behind the Mirror - 06 Traces (Light and Weight)
Enigma - Voyageur - 04 Page of Cups
LFO - Sheath - 05 Moistly
LFO - Sheath - 07 Sleepy Chicken
Massive Attack - 100th Window - 02 What Your Soul Sings
Massive Attack - 100th Window - 06 A Prayer for England
Massive Attack - Mezzanine - 03 Teardrop
Mike & Rich - Expert Knob Twiddlers - 05 Vodka
Plaid - Double Figure - 07 Light Rain
Plaid - Rest Proof Clockwork - 05 Buddy
Plaid - Unknown Album - Lilith (feat Björk)
Portishead - Dummy - 11 Glory Box
Prefuse 73 - One Word Extinguisher - 13 Female Demands
Prefuse 73 - One Word Extinguisher - 18 Choking You
Savath + Savalas - Folk Songs for Trains, Trees and Honey - 02 Transportation Theme
Savath + Savalas - Immediate Action (Disc 2) - 05 John Hughes - Street Song (Savath
Savath + Savalas - Immediate Action (Disc 2) - 08 Yesterday’s Throwaway and Reprise
Savath + Savalas - The Rolls and Waves EP - 03 Folk Song for Cello
Savath + Savalas - The Rolls and Waves EP - 04 Decatur Queen
Shantel - Auto Jumps and Remixes - 03 O ze’
Shantel - Auto Jumps and Remixes - 09 Circle(blue)
Single Cell Orchestra - Single Cell Orchestra - 04 Knockout Drops (200 proof mix)
Single Cell Orchestra - Single Cell Orchestra - 10 Freefall
Single Cell Orchestra - Unknown Album - Blessin’ Beats
Skylab - The Trip Hop Test (Part One) - 04 Seashell
Squarepusher - Big Loada - 08 Port Rhombus
Tipper - The Critical Path - 08 Cable to Continue
Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place - 01 Gone Forever
Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place - 04 Monday - Paracetamol
Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place - 05 Clear Day
Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place - 06 Blumenthal
Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place - 08 A Strangely Isolated Place
Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By - 01 Knuddelmaus
Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By - 02 Between Us and Them
Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By - 03 … Passing By
Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By - 05 Nobody’s Home
Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By - 06 Molfsee
Underworld - Pearl’s Girl - 07 Pearl’s Girl

Guess you could call it a list of songs that stand up very well to repeat listening.

Tried out Picasa 2 (the photo organizer software) last night… Damn this thing is nice, like an iTunes for photos. (I’m sure Mac users would say it’s like iPhoto, but us Windows folks have to take what we can get, ya know?)

It auto-scans your hard drive for images, takes note of their dates, file names, and other info, and plops thumbnails of everything in a huge list. How is this organization? Well, they’re separated by years, folders, tags, and other information, but the boundaries are much easier to cross (and therefore less tedious) that simply organizing everything by files and folders. Want to get to the wedding photos from the nature photos? Just scroll. Want to get to the 2005 photos from the 1987 photos? Just scroll. Or if that’s too tedious, just jump to the tag - it’s your pick.

It also has all the photo-editing tools one might actually need, just button-clicks away. It’s no Photoshop, but I only ever used a tiny subset of PS’s capabilities anyway. I prefer having all the important stuff (rotate, auto-contrast, saturation, red-eye removal) in one place.

Want to share? Select the photos you want, and Picasa can export to an HTML page with thumbnails, resize them and attach them to an e-mail, burn them to a CD, post them to (certain types of) blogs, and more.

Oh, and did I mention the whole thing’s lightning-fast? It can scroll through huge thumbnail lists, do smooth scaling while resizing an image, put up transparent windows, and fade images in and out during a slideshow, all with no lag whatsoever. (Pretty impressive considering the PC I ran it on wasn’t exactly top-of-the-line.)

Not bad for free software. There’s more, but I think that’s plenty. It’s exactly what my gigabytes of unpublished, unsorted, unedited, un-weeded-out photos need. Halleluja! In the not-too-distant future, you can expect some posts of photos that were thought lost.

Currently fumbling through Advanced Perl Programming to correct an obscure network sockets problem in a program I’ve had running in production for 3 years now. This bug potentially affects all communications the program makes. Needless to say, I’m a bit nervous.

Lenny has a toy called “My First LeapPad”. You place an ordinary paper book on the pad, and use a stylus to point at words and pictures on the page to have them read aloud or even play simple games. A cartridge in the side dictates how the pad will respond to the location you point to. You have to touch a “Go” circle at a unique location each time you flip a page, so that it knows which page you’re on.

Lenny has figured out that if the LeapPad starts responding inappropriately, it must have lost track of which page it’s on. He knows to touch the “Go” circle whenever this happens, to remind the Pad what page it’s on.

He figured this out on his own, and he’s two-and-a-half years old. This kid is SO going to be a computer whiz when he grows up.

Every blog on Earth is probably saying this right now, but I want one of the new $500 mini Macs SO bad. Fortunately, I’ve just come into some money, so I think I can actually do it.

I’m sitting here in my cube at work, and I just pulled a pacifier out of my pocket. (I had to tuck it in there earlier this morning to hide it from Lenny, since we’re trying to wean him off them again.)