Monthly Archive for January, 2002

So it goes.

One year ago, the death of the Dreamcast was announced. I was very fond of that little white box, and that was a very sad day. At the time, I said that there were still a number of upcoming Dreamcast games that I was looking forward to playing. I was looking forward to Crazy Taxi 2, and Sonic Adventure 2, and Shenmue 2, and Phantasy Star Online.

But I never bought Crazy Taxi 2, because they removed the two player mode. (Though admittedly, my roommate picked up Crazy Taxi 2 on clearance from Toys R Us last week, but more on that some other time.)

I never bought Sonic Adventure 2, because it was announced as Gamecube bound.

I never bought Shenmue 2, because sadly it became an Xbox exclusive in North America, and I didn't get a chance.

And I never bought Phantasy Star Online, because I kind of lost interest in it.

In fact, I didn't buy a single Dreamcast game once its death was announced. I actually feel kind of guilty about abandoning the poor little fellow. It's not that I ever stopped liking it, it's just that the circumstances changed. Though I didn't buy any new Dreamcast games, my little white box got at least as much play as my even-deader N64.

So it goes.

Silly Photons

On Friday in my (Visual) Perception lecture, I was playing with my glob of yellow Office: mac silly putty that I'd gotten at MacWorld SF. Stretching it and rolling it and making balls and breaking it and making sheets and so on.

Also on Friday in my (Visual) Perception lecture, Professor Palmer was talking about photons, and how they're emitted by light sources and bounce around and about and sometimes into our eye... And then he made eye contact with me, and said "so you can think of a photon bouncing around the room kind of like a bouncing ball of silly putty."

So I quietly put away my silly putty and managed to pay attention for about 5 minutes before getting distracted by a particularly uninteresting light fixture.

I spied with my little eye My Evil Twin

On Wednesday, I walked into my (Visual) Perception class and sat down by my friend Alert. And right at the end of the lecture, I realized that I was sitting right behind My Evil Twin. I clutched my fist, and shook it at the back of his head, and pointed him out to Alert.

And Alert said "I know. I sat down here for a reason."

So that makes 8 for 8, and the cycle is now complete. I also think that means that if I talk to him now, we'll implode. Or maybe the world will just end.

Sonic and Mario, sitting in a tree… (On a Game Boy Advance screen, naturally)

In fact, if you're a fan of classic platform-game action, the GBA price drop comes at a perfect time with the impending releases of Sonic Advance on February 4th and Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World on February 14th. There's some sort of sick irony about a sonic game and a mario game both coming out for the Game Boy Advance within about a week of each other, but instead of worrying about it, I think I'll just pick up both games and enjoy replaying Mario World and exploring Sonic Advance.

And the icing on the cake is that Sonic Adventure 2 Battle is also coming out for the Gamecube on the 14th. Once I heard that Sonic Adventure 2 would be coming out for the Gamecube, I put off on buying the Dreamcast version. Even better is that Sonic Adventure 2 on the Gamecube can interface with Sonic Advance on the Game Boy Advance to exchange data to (presumably) open up extra gaming options in each game.

Ah, platforming goodness! How can you possibly go wrong?

And now it’s cheaper still.

Hey, sweet, now you can get a Game Boy Advance for a mere $79!

I can't advocate this system nearly enough -- A good hunk of my video game enjoyment in 2001 came just from the Game Boy Advance.

Benjyism: Prossibly

Prossibly very actually means halfway between probably and possibly. I suspect that when most people see me use this term, they just assume it was a brain fart on my part, and proceed to read into it whatever amount of certainty and commitment they like.

But when I say prossibly, I really do mean halfway between probably and possibly. Sometimes probably expresses more certainty than I actually feel, while possibly seems to express less commitment than I'm actually giving.

By the way, by commitment, I mean how much I want to be there, and by certainty, I mean how likely I am to be there.

In my mind, probably, prossibly, and possibly express two axes: Level of commitment and level of certainty. For me, probably is strong certainty and commitment, possibly is weak certainty and commitment, and prossibly is used for either strong commitment and weak certainty. I guess for completeness I should have a fourth term for weak commitment and strong certainty, but in practice I don't want to admit to weak commitment, so I just use either probably or possibly to express that, depending on my level of certainty.

Word Commitment Certainty
Probably strong strong
Prossibly strong weak
Probably weak medium-strong
Possibly weak medium-weak
Possibly weak weak

Goals of Spring 2002 Future

This list is based partially on what I didn't finish last semester, and partially on things that have come up in the mean time.

  • I'm taking four classes, and I'd like to get As in at least two of them, and at least Bs in the rest of them.
  • Apply for, and hopefully get accepted as a summer 61a TA.
  • Plan for next year, and hopefully decide whether or I'll take just one extra semester of classes or two.
  • Do more grad school research.
  • Organize my life, using some combination of the office tools (Corporate Time and "The Project Tool") and my Palm Pilot and whatever else it takes. I can't have a repeat of last semester on this front.
  • Read House of Leaves, Snow Crash, Neverwhere, Ender's Game, the fourth Harry Potter book (if it comes out in paper back, or I find someone to borrow it from), and anything else that crosses my path. I've got a hunch that I'll be doing a lot more reading this semester...
  • Games to play: ICO, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2, Devil May Cry, Pikmin, and finish Zelda Oracle of Seasons, Zelda Oracle of Ages, and Golden Sun. Haha, yeah right, like all of that will ever happen. I still need to at least play ICO, since I'm borrowing that. On the bright side, there aren't many games coming out this semester that I'm particularly looking forward to. I also suspect I'll be playing fewer games this semester than last, so thankfully there are no 50 hour RPGs on my list.
  • Overhaul the third site, and play with my new ideas in The Stew.
  • Finish building my brother's computer.

Change for the worse in OS X’s Finder modification keys

Good News: Holding down command when dragging files around the OS X finder causes them to snap to a grid. Admittedly, this was the case in OS 9, too, but:

Bad News: In the OS X, they made the command key a selection modifier (command-clicking on a selected item will unselect it; In OS 9, command clicking on a selected item didn't do anything), so if you don't like the grid position a particular file snapped to, you'll have to let go of command, grab the file in question again, then hit command again and let go of the file, and rinse and repeat.

Gah, irritating and hard to use. See, the thing is, in OS 9, shift was the only key which functioned as a selection modifier. But while shift behaves the same as it ever did in OS X's Icon view, in Column or List view, shift is a range selector, selecting everything between what was selected and what you just shift-clicked, much like Windows (Of course, if you already have multiple items selected what will actually happen just gets murky...). So they needed to move the toggle selection to another key, and command won that dubious honor. Thankfully, they didn't try to make shift-clicking behave like Windows in the Icon view, but this just results in a shift-click and command-click in OS X's Icon view behave identically.

And since it's possible to select a range of items in at least two other ways (1. click on the first item, hold shift and hit the up or down arrow (Of course, command-up/down doesn't work for this, because though command behaves as a selection modifier when clicking, command-up and command-down do something else entirely... Damn, still more inconsistencies.). 2. In list view drag a selection box over the range you want. In column view, click in white space between the name and the arrow and drag up or down.), this change in behavior was not necessary, confuses existing mac users, doesn't behave intuitively in the first place (What should happen if, in list view, you hit command-a (select all), command drag a box across every item but the first and last so only two items are selected, and then shift click an item in the middle? Apparently it selects everything between the first item in the list (which was still selected) and the item you just shift-clicked, and unselects anything that was after the item you just shift-clicked.), and makes other file manipulations more difficult to complete.

Psst, the OS X Feedback page is over here. Go tell Apple to change the behavior of command and shift back to the way things worked in OS 9. As nearly as I can tell, this was an unnecessary change for the worse that was implemented just because "Windows does it that way".

Too slow for practical applications.

Good idea: Downloading the Palm Desktop 4.0 beta for OS X to start synchronizing my Palm to help organize my life.

Bad idea: Attempting to synchronize my 8 MB Palm Vx via iRDA to my PowerBook, an operation which took more than an hour to complete.

Uh, anyway, hopefully now that that initial synch is out of the way, it will be quicker in practice... If not, my Palm will continue to be not overly useful in my quest to get organized. =\

I’ll add a witty title ex post facto.

While browsing OS X Version Tracker just now, I noticed XPostFacto, "a utility to help install OS X on unsupported systems." Anyway, not only is that a handy tool to know about, but I adore the name. Just thought I'd share.

I notice that it was originally called "Unsupported UtilityX", so that they changed the name ex post facto just amuses me all the more.

Goals of Fall 2001 Past

So here's the list I made before last semester started. Let's see how I did.

  • I didn't read House of Leaves (because the person I was borrowing it from asked for it back before I got to it), but I did read The Last Hero, Ready, Okay!, Big Trouble, the first three Harry Potter books, and a few other books which are slipping my mind at the moment.
  • Getting Bs in all of my classes counts as "stumbling through without failing" by my standards
  • Gah, I still haven't played Metal Gear Solid, let alone Metal Gear Solid 2... Though I think MGS and MGS2 are the very next items on my list. Didn't get to Xenogears either, but Xenosaga is still a distance off.
  • Games I did play included Final Fantasy X, Super Mario Advance, Mario Kart Advance, Advance Wars, Luigi's Mansion, Rogue Leader, lots of Smash Brothers Melee, a fair amount of Wave Race Blue Storm, and a moderate amount of Super Monkey Ball.
  • The release of the Gamecube didn't disrupt things too much, though I could have been better prepared.
  • Still no overhaul of that other site... sigh
  • My desktop computer is a little more sensibly assembled now, though I still need to organize the remaining parts into that computer for my brother.
  • I am now set to stay at Berkeley for at least one more semester, if not a whole extra year.
  • My progress with finding a life outside of work ebbed and flowed, but in the end I'd say I've made progress.
  • My room shelves are now much cleaner, thank you. And I even reorganized the placement of my bed and desk.
  • I've got several new ideas for The Stew, but I've been busy and haven't had a chance to implement anything.

Well, when I write out the list like that, last semester doesn't look so bad. And yet, at the time, I felt like last semester was one of my worst ever. I suppose that's just the past being colored by my present perspective...

Phonetic password substitutions

You know, I just realized yet another way that I'm a freak.

When I base a new password off of some dictionary word or phrase, instead of using 1337 sp34k s^b57i7u7i0n$, I use phonetic substitutions, based on the International Phonetic Alphabet where alphanumerically possible. I can't honestly account for when I started doing this, but I guess it had to have been some time after I took Ling 100.