August 10th, 2009
I’m late! I missed it by a day! On August 9th, 2008, I began a course of events which would ultimately lead me to get a Nintendo Wii, which finally happened last week, almost a year later. It seemed pretty innocuous at first, as do all such turning points. In fact, I began by doing nothing different from what I had done several times before last summer, which was cruising YouTube in the early morning hours in a bid to ameliorate my chronic late-summer boredom. What follows is a story about everything that happened during and after the two-day period in which I was inculcated into the world of Mario.
YouTube is a truly wondrous place. They’ve got everything there. From having created an account in autumn 2006 I had come quite a ways, and YouTube had become an almost daily fixture for me. So it’s no surprise that, on several occasions last summer, YT was my method of choice to escape boredom. I had discovered the Flea Market Montgomery phenomenon several weeks before the day this story begins, and that proved quite entertaining. So it was with the hopes of finding something similarly iconic that I began combing the ‘Tube with the spontaneous query “stupid commercials.” I found some, all right, and from there I followed the Related Videos column through stupid video game commercials, to something that caught my eye: a Mario Kart 64 video.
This reminded me of something I had witnessed the previous summer: while I was helping a friend’s relatives move out of their house, their kids decided to set up an old Nintendo 64 console, and the game they chose was MK64. I remember laughing inwardly at the pitiful graphics—even with my limited (nonexistent) video game experience I could tell the graphics were horrible, and both the music and the character sounds struck me as not much better. It was one of those things I didn’t think much about at the time, but when I saw that YT video I was curious. I clicked on it. The poster had hacked the game to remove the collision detection from all the walls, as well as jacking up the speed. The result was an uncontrollable mess, which he made out to be the stuff of Mario Kart nightmares. I know what he’s talking about now, having had a few of those MK nightmares just recently.
Anyway, from there I kept consulting the Related Videos column, and I watched several cheat and hack videos, as well as a glitch from Mario Kart DS wherein none of the textures were drawn. One of the comments admonished, “You ran over Peach, jerk!” Knowing nothing about the Mario universe at the time (having never played a console game in my entire life up to this point), I had no idea whom this comment concerned. So I consulted Wikipedia, whereat I learned everything I ever wanted to know about Princess Peach.
Intrigued, I went back to YT and discovered something that called itself Mario Kart 64 Bloopers. I would eventually return to its poster’s channel (the infamous MarioMario54321) in the new year, but at the time the two videos of his I watched were a spring board to those of another account, whose lack of notoriety means I will not explicitly name it. It was this other series of videos through which I began my journey. He had an entire series of MK bloopers. I watched them and was surprised to find myself greatly entertained.
Checking out the rest of this fellow’s channel I saw he had even more of a different sort of blooper, using the game Super Mario 64. I began with his earliest videos and worked my way forward. The more I watched, the more entranced I became. This was something I had never seen before, and what I suppose really struck me was the creativity. This guy was using gameplay scenes from these two titles to tell original stories, with dialogue printed as subtitles. He also used isolated character voice samples and video game music, along with two of John “Scatman” Larkin’s most famous hits. I later discovered this was a meme: N64 games set to Scatman’s music.
I soaked it all up like a sponge, as though I had been waiting for over twenty years for something this engrossing. After a few less complex story arcs, he had posted several sweeping epics, which followed the more traditional Mario storyline: Princess Peach had been captured by Bowser, and Mario of course had to go save her. But he changed it up with different characters (achieved through palette shifts) and transportation scenes from MK64, as well as changes to the worlds themselves achieved through hacks. I became very excited when he went through most of the game worlds during one of these epics; it was like watching a very interesting adventure program, and I was fascinated with the different levels and wanted to see more.
There was one other interesting development: somewhere along the line I developed a crush on Princess Peach. It was the biggest thrill when I got to finally see her pixelated, low-polygon rendering at the end of SM64. This may have been the strangest facet of the whole thing, but the general picture was I was hooked on this stuff. To this day I can’t put my finger on what made the whole thing so interesting, but as time went on I learned more about the Mario universe and the games themselves. Interestingly, the idea of actually owning and playing them never crossed my mind for a long time; I was content to just watch other people play them and tell stories through gameplay scenes. There are thousands of such bloopers videos on YouTube, which became important when, about four months later, the fellow whose videos had started it all for me deleted his account.
I shopped around for a while for a replacement and, on a whim, tried to find those original bloopers videos I had watched before moving on to the ones that had gotten axed. That’s how I rediscovered MarioMario54321. He’s quite well known for his video selection, which is quite extensive. Through his videos I was able to find almost all the music the other fellow had used, which was a big help. Not to mention that the videos themselves, while quite different than the very first examples I had seen, were enormously entertaining.
Around this time I also got the bug to get a console of my own, if only to try and make up for lost time. I originally looked at a Nintendo DS, but ultimately decided on a Wii. The Virtual Console was what sold it for me—with this, I would actually be able to purchase those games I had watched countless others play yet had never played myself. My birthday is at the end of July, so in order to keep from actually having to buy this myself I had to wait until then to receive it as a gift. I wrote an entry about this in January, and I mentioned the idea multiple times since then, culminating in the prospect of a Wii Party (which never happened).
In the mean time, I had my friend bring over his real N64 (which I had never known he had), along with both MK64 and SM64. It may well rank as one of the most profound disappointments in all my life when I actually tried playing those games. True, it was the first time I had ever played, but I still expected it to be slightly more fun than that. As time went on, I got better at Mario Kart (and all but gave up on SM64). The problem was that, without persistent access to the console and games, there was no time I could practice except each Saturday when my friend visited. I also became somewhat bored with the whole phenomenon, which is what usually happens with over-saturation. I turned my attention to Mario Kart Wii, one of the games I hoped to one day own. I discovered one fellow who frequently posts Mario Kart videos and who had dozens devoted to the Wii version. I was particularly happy when he raced as Peach (though I resented the dumb blonde voice that was given her in the later Mario games), though the other blonde princess, Rosalina, was pretty cool to watch as well.
By this point, I was intimately acquainted with the Mario universe, thanks to YouTube and Wikipedia. I had also been following several gaming websites for any interesting news, and I had read a lot of game reviews over at Metacritic. I was essentially planning out my approach, so that when I finally made the plunge into the world of console gaming, I would know everything I could learn that didn’t require actually playing the games. And it paid off. I got my Wii a week ago, and the two games I got were Mario Kart Wii and Super Mario Galaxy. I’m quite good at the former already, though I’m still pitiful at platforming in the latter. Having Galaxy helped me unlock Rosalina in MK Wii, though, on account of a little interactivity Nintendo coded between the two games: if you have a Galaxy save file, all you need to do is race 50 times in MK Wii and you are given Rosalina as a “gift.” None of this was any surprise to me, and my “research” ahead of time was what determined which games I would get first. Rosalina is awesome! She’s my favorite racing character, though nobody will ever eclipse my fondness for Princess Peach.
And so now we come to today. As I said, I’m a day late. I started all this on August 9th last year, though I did watch more of the videos the second night as well. Fittingly, while spending the night at my friend’s house we played Mario Kart Wii on what was the true one-year anniversary of my first involvement in the Mario universe. Several days ago I purchased MK64 and SM64 from the Virtual Console, and earlier today—in honor of my year of Mario—I played both these games, which were together the genesis of what was a completely unexpected change of direction in my life. I went from being indifferent and even disdainful toward console gaming to owning a game console, all because of a random search of YouTube, the love of a fictional princess, and a desire to relive the childhood I never had, as it were. I toast Mario and Peach and the whole Mushroom Kingdom for bringing such joy to my life, and may they bring much more joy to it in the years to come.
Just leave the blue shells out of it.
June 13th, 2009
Well, sort of. In the summer of 2006 my trusty desktop computer of the time seemingly died. Several months later I put it back together again (having cannibalized it somewhat) only to find that it booted Windows without a hitch. I can only speculate that since it was so hot in the room, and since the inside had never been cleaned in the over three years I had owned the machine, that the processor was throttling itself back in order to avoid overheating.
Sadly, around this time last summer, Leviathan (so named because of its huge, heavy case) mysteriously died. I heard the beast shut down, its hard drive whine down for the last time. I got up and tried to restart it, but it refused to even start. I would hear a single click, then silence. I tried on several occasions but still nothing. I assumed either a dead power supply or motherboard, the latter of which would be senseless to replace.
And so Leviathan sat, silent and sad, for the better part of a year. Near the beginning of March I got the cleaning bug, mostly because I had bought a new bookshelf for my room and decided I would love for the place to look nice for once. And so I cleared out everything that was just taking up space, including sad, sorry Leviathan. I dragged the heavy case up into the storage room above the garage (the one where I’m spending most of the summer), basically in pieces, its door duct taped shut in a display of pure indignity. And here it sat, unloved and unconsidered, for months.
I need to explain the background here. Around Christmas in 2002, when the desktop I was using at the time had finally driven me near insane (it ran Windows ME *shudder*), I decided I needed a new machine. I had my sights set on a Sony VAIO with some pretty decent specs for the time. However, one day when I got picked up from school (ninth grade) my mother told me that, since the model I had picked out was out of stock and would be so until well after Christmas, my father had been swayed to purchase something else. At first I was furious—knowing my parents’ collective technical knowledge approaches that of the average snail, I was quite sure I would end up with a dog. When we got to Best Buy, though, my apprehension turned to delight when I was shown the machine.
It was a vpr Matrix box. This one, in fact. This was one of Best Buy’s house brands, and unlike most such enterprises which tend to be budget affairs, vpr Matrix aimed at the upper midrange to high end. The specs on my new machine were equal to or better than the Sony, with the exception of the DVD burner (then a new technology), which the vpr Matrix did not possess. And, because the Sony was out of stock, Best Buy gave me a 120 GB second hard drive for free, including installation. Let me tell you: in 2002, this was one bad-ass computer. About the only place it wasn’t stellar was graphics—everything else was solid to higher end.
I couldn’t have been happier. Not only was it an incredible improvement over my existing desktop (whose instability increased to the point of uselessness just after I set up Leviathan), but it was absolutely gorgeous—the design is by F.A. Porsche, and it fit with my minimalist design sense when it comes to electronics. And the case is bloody heavy. I’ve never weighed it, but excepting the faceplate the thing is solid metal. It has cool blue LED status lights, just before that sort of thing became popular and then cliche. And it was fast. Audio files that had taken minutes to render on an Athlon 1.0 GHz took seconds on Leviathan, which sported a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4.
Well, as I said, sadly it seemed beyond repair this last time. However, recently my current desktop (unnamed) decided to kick up some Dickens (a failed nForce update rendered the motherboard driverless in XP). I didn’t lose any data, but I had to basically re-image every drive on the machine. Nothing was salvageable. I decided to install a third hard drive (one of Leviathan’s, incidentally) in order to make the crisis worthwhile. After a lot of painstaking steps I got it all working again. However, my new desktop came in a mid-tower and was packed with all kinds of stuff, half of it no longer useful to me after upgrades/removal of components. I was worried about heat buildup, particularly because the computer is located in my boiling hot room. Just today I was gazing sadly at Leviathan’s silent hull when a thought occurred to me: could I possibly transfer the guts from my current desktop to Leviathan’s case?
After removing everything from the case, I examined both the mobo and the power supply. Neither seemed to have any obvious problems (e.g. no blown fuses or black spots), though a few capacitors in the power supply appeared to be leaking through the top (they had that crusty stuff on them). The empty case was still heavy, and though I did leave one optical drive (the CD burner) and the floppy drive in their bays, I’m sure they didn’t add too much to the weight. Around midnight I moved Leviathan’s empty shell into my room, powered down my computer, and proceeded to switch out the insides. It took me about half an hour, but when I put it all back together (I gained an extra optical drive in the process) and powered it up, there wasn’t a single issue. Everything worked perfectly. The inside is nice and roomy, which makes it easier to service and should result in cooler temperatures. The third hard drive is sitting in an open optical drive bay, held in place properly now by a single screw. I did lose my Personal Media Drive bay (meaning I’ll have to hook up my external hard drive with an external power source and USB cable instead of just sticking it inside the computer’s case), as well as a 15-in-1 media card reader, but honestly, I never used the latter at all, and the former isn’t too big a price to pay—I’m pretty reasonably assured my computer won’t go up in smoke now. As an added bonus, the all-metal case of Leviathan seems to muffle the sound of three hard drives and multiple fans—the new configuration is actually quieter than the original case.
The best part of all, though, is that I’ve got Leviathan back again. Granted, it’s just the case, but that was certainly my favorite part. Leviathan was the only electronic device with which I ever made an emotional connection, possibly because it served me so faithfully for so long. I’ve never felt anything for my current HP computer, other than the obvious thrill of using a much more powerful machine than the original Leviathan could ever have hoped to be. It’s like I’ve got my old friend back again. Maybe this sounds really crazy, but Leviathan was there through all the emotional turmoil I went through in high school. It wasn’t just a tool; it was something that was constant in a confusing time, purring away day after day without fail. Possibly because of its unique design, it had personality and character. Now, I get all the benefits of using a modern (by 2006 standards) computer, yet I get to keep Leviathan, too.
Sometimes things just work out.
May 25th, 2009
In my previous post I said I was pretty sure nothing really surprising was going to happen this week. Well, I’m glad to say something unexpected did happen: I fixed my upright acoustic piano.
The piano had been “broken” for almost four years, after it had fallen into disuse when I stopped taking formal lessons and pretty much abandoned it for my keyboard. That didn’t stop me from banging away on it from time to time, until I managed to “break” one of the keys during a really spirited impromptu session.
This had happened once before when I was dusting the inside of the instrument: normally the hammers stay rigidly in their courses (i.e. they don’t move very far back and forth, so as not to miss the strings). The G3 hammer, however, ended up loose when I glided the cloth too harshly across the fronts of the hammers. The result was that the hammer would go too far to the left and would only partially strike the G3 strings; further, it would also nick the adjacent F#3 strings. Since when you play a note on a piano the damper lifts only from the strings that correspond to the key you’re holding down, the damper still held fast on the F#3 strings, meaning that in addition to every G3 I played, I also got a tuned thump from the still-dampened F#3.
The last time I had the piano tuned the tuner said he “fixed” this problem by “setting the pin.” I had no idea what the hell that was supposed to mean, but it took a while for it to evidently “unset” itself. I had taken the front panel off the instrument on numerous occasions since this happened, but I couldn’t figure out why that particular hammer was loose while the others were tight. About an hour ago I decided to give it another go, figuring the instrument was basically unplayable and that, therefore, I had little to lose. I held a flashlight over the rogue hammer mechanism for almost half an hour at first but noticed nothing. Glancing around inside the rest of the case I made a fascinating discovery: on a small ledge on the left side of the instrument—covered in a thick layer of dust—was what appeared to be a coin!
I dredged it up, blew the dust off it, and read the date: 1932. I noticed that the coin was Canadian, which makes sense as the instrument would have been in Canada right around that time. It’s certainly old enough for the coin to have been dropped there around that time (the piano was made in 1917). I set it aside, feeling that perhaps it was good luck. And, sure enough, ten minutes later I noticed something: each hammer appeared to be held in a sort of hinge by a thin, shiny metal rod—a pin, I realized! The pins were situated horizontally and parallel to the front of the instrument. While on all the other hammers barely the tip of the pin was showing, on the G3 it was sticking out so far it touched the adjacent F#3′s mechanism.
I realized this had to be the problem! I quickly fetched several long, thin objects, including several knives and a file. Working carefully, I managed to leverage the pin just enough to where I could fit these objects between it and the adjacent wooden piece. The more I worked, the tighter the hammer became. Unfortunately, everything I had kept bending. I rifled through a drawer and produced a Popsicle stick, which I used to drive the pin home.
Success! Now I understood what the tuner had meant by “setting the pin.” I knew, however, that this fix would require some testing. So I commenced pounding away on that one key, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t watch the pin unseat itself right before my eyes. G-G-G-G-G-clunk! Ugh! Back to square one. After setting the pin several more times, it occurred to me that if I wedged the Popsicle stick in the gap, not only would it keep the pin in place, but if I taped it to the damper bar just above it, everything around the stick would still clear it. A minute and some masking tape later, it was done.
I’ve been playing the piano off and on now for twenty minutes solid, and so far everything has held up perfectly. Checking on the jury rig, I find it hasn’t moved at all, and the neighboring keys still don’t come anywhere near it. I am under no delusions that this is a permanent fix (suppose the pin drills its way into the soft wood of the stick), but it’s an easily repeatable process and it seems reasonably solid. It’s really great to be able to play the acoustic piano again—I love my keyboard and all, but nothing is quite the same as playing the real thing. Now if I could just get it tuned again, then it would be perfect.
May 24th, 2009
I know this feeling. It’s very annoying. It’s Sunday evening, I’m alone in my house, and I have absolutely nothing interesting to do. It’s not so much the lack of things to do as it is the waste of the opportunity to do them. I know that in time I’ll think back on days like this one and wish I had spent them doing [fill-in-the-blank].
For the past few days I’ve been watching the house, which usually involves doing a few hours worth of work each day and then trying to keep myself occupied for the remainder. I’ve still got some stuff to do today and the house left to clean. Evidently the business trip went well, as we made over $4,000 in two days. Further, ours was the only business that did well, as the turnout was lousy. Lately we’ve been making over $5,000 per trip, so this was a bit of a step back, but it’s still better than most people in the business, so I can’t complain.
There’s not really much more to report, other than the latest in the ongoing war against the paper wasp queens, which has produced another casualty. That makes it five queens so far that have bit the dust, and this was the first one I actually tried to kill on my own (not counting the one trapped between the pop cans). They refuse to die! I must have swatted her a dozen times before she finally fell, buzzing, to the windowsill. I still don’t know if the strike actually killed her, but as she didn’t fly back up again I know she can’t have survived long. What’s astounding is that I haven’t seen a single non-queen wasp in the house; I would have thought that the entire nest would have been buzzing around by now. I still have no idea where they’re coming from, though the gutter just above the patio is a likely candidate. I saw several wasps going in and out, so I know there’s at least one nest in there. From there, I think they’re getting in through the chimney, which is only about ten feet away from that nest.
This coming week is kind of a mystery to me. I’ve reached the lazy days of summer doldrums, which is another annoying state. I always end up regretting not doing more with the time, but when actually presented with an entire summer ahead of me, I can’t fathom in the slightest what I’m going to do with it. I suppose taking it one week at a time will help, so I’m honing in on this coming one to begin. I might visit my friend across the street and see what’s up with him. It’s been a while since I last talked to him, and if he’s got another trip up north planned, I’m definitely game. Last year was so much fun! Hopefully I’ll be able to pay back anybody I owe money, and they won’t be too upset that I’m about a year late in that regard.
I might also take a walk around the neighborhood. I remember when I was very young the subdivision at the end of our house didn’t exist. In fact, the complex consists of two separate communities, the boundary between which is sort of nebulous. The first started up over a decade ago, on land that was previously wilderness and scrub. The first thing to be constructed was the roads, which were laid down in asphalt that had lost its color long before even a quarter of the houses were built. It was like a ghost town, and where it abruptly ended the scrub land began. Over the years the neighborhood filled in, and now it’s sometimes difficult to imagine that there was once a time when those houses weren’t there at all.
The second part was built on the plot of a horse farm that shuttered its doors about a decade ago. It’s the ritzier of the two subdivisions, and in honor of the former occupants of the plot, it’s called Sugarbush Farms (the other half is called Brycewood). During the summer both halves are a paradise of perfectly-manicured lawns, vibrant flowers, and well-chosen greenery. Overall it’s a gorgeous community, and with sidewalks everywhere, it’s a wonderful place to walk and listen to music. The people are very friendly, usually tipping a hat or nodding a head in your direction when you’re walking.
That’s about all I can think of at the moment. Maybe something amazing will happen in the coming week, though I doubt it. At any rate, I’ve got work to do, so I’ll have to leave it here. Until next time.
May 22nd, 2009
…which is an affectionate name for the room in which I’m going to be spending most of the summer. My own room is uninhabitable during the summer months, as it is poorly vented and the heat rises up and seems to collect there. This is strange because the room has no insulation to speak of. None. It’s a converted attic and is the legacy of the corner-cutting former owners, the Carlys, who at one time owned most of the block. This explains the lack of insulation, for why would we trifle in something like that?
But why the Robin’s Egg? Well, the color of the walls and ceiling is a disgusting robin’s egg blue, which I did not pick out. I sometimes joke that now I know what it’s like to live inside a robin’s egg, hence the nickname. This room, too, is converted storage space. However, it has R-30 insulation, which is ridiculous overkill—we had some left over from insulating our climate-controlled business, so we used it up here. Overall, it’s a much more pleasant place to be during the summer, and until I get a new window air conditioner to replace the one which conked out three years ago, this room will do nicely.
In other around-the-house news, I discovered that I had been mislabeling the local variety of nasty wasp. We don’t have bald-faced hornets, but paper wasps—an invasive species from Europe. Bald-faced hornets are white and black, whereas paper wasps are brilliant gold and black. The main difference is in behavior, though—baldies are not particularly aggressive unless you physically disturb the nest. Paper wasps are highly aggressive, as evidenced by the half a dozen times in my life in which I’ve been stung by the bastards. At no time was I aware there was a nest anywhere near. Every time, however, I’m proud to say I managed to “disturb” the nest with poison in repayment.
A queen found her way into the Robin’s Egg earlier this week, and it took me several days to finally corner her. She would escape back into the wall whenever I finally got a book with which to swat her. I finally caught her on the rim of a pop can, over which I placed another can in order to trap her. She’s been there several days, so I know she’s dead. Three more queens wandered into the rest of the house, so evidently there’s a thriving brood of paper wasps somewhere, launching its queens.
I also built a swing several days ago. It was at this point that I got bit by the first mosquitoes of the season, which quashed any hopes I had of it being a light year for the obnoxious little biting insects. The obvious solution would be for the county to spray the ditches with insecticide, but there’s probably some endangered moth larva or something they’re protecting, so we can’t do that.
The swing is actually very nice and is much sturdier than the one it replaces. The mosquitoes make it quite useless, however, so most evenings I’m still holed up in the Egg. One of these days I’m going to paint it. Unfortunately, there’s so much stuff up here now that it would be difficult. Speaking of eggs, there are five active robin nests around the yard. One of these is above the patio in the back, right on top of a halogen light just beneath a gable. The robin seemed rather irritated while I was building the swing, flying frequently to and from the nest and peeping at me the whole time.
There is also a cardinal nest, which is a little better hidden than the robin ones. The chicks are not really well developed yet, so there’s no color. Mostly they just look dark and fuzzy. The neighbor’s cat Buddy has been coming around quite frequently, and sometimes I wonder if it’s only a matter of time before he ransacks one of the nests. Honestly, I wish he would do the one that happens to be inside the ceiling of my room—every year grackles get in and put a nest up there. They squawk bloody murder all day and all night, which is yet another reason I can’t sleep in my own room. They usually clear out by the official start of summer, but it’s still annoying. Both my cats (Lorelei and Maizy) have been spending most of their day in my room, and I wonder if the sound of the birds might not be drawing them. On the other hand, they’re Ragdolls, which are some of the least cat-like felines around—they’re terrible at hunting, and they’re incredibly oblivious to prey. To be sure, they could just be going up there for the heat, which is something they both inexplicably love.
So here I am in the Egg, getting pelted by these obnoxious mosquito-like bugs that are mesmerized by the light just above my head. They beat away at it until they perish, falling into my lap or onto my keyboard. They’re not mosquitoes—none has tried to bite me so far—and they’re pale and translucent. I have no clue what they are, but they’re usually everywhere this time of year. They irritate me by their sheer presence, but it’s impossible to stop up all the gaps in this room in order to keep them out. Something tells me I’ll be hosting a few more royal paper wasps before the spring ends, too—I’ve got a nice tall stack of solid gardening paperbacks all set for the occasion.
Continue reading
May 9th, 2009
Summer officially begins on the solstice, which is June 21st. However, for us college students, our break begins much sooner. I finished classes this past Monday, and I’ve been pretty much glued to my computer ever since then. The draw? Web development. I’ve been getting back into HTML/CSS again, having pretty much quit after making the first iteration of the Words Of Wisdom page. Since then I have taken a web design course, which taught everybody how to make a web page from 1997. Seriously, the project we had to do was one of the most amateurish and ugly things I’ve ever seen. The evening before the final exam I decided to practice by making a new homepage, which I think kicks the hell out of the previous one. It works on the same concept (and uses a lot of the same CSS, just copied over), but pretty much everything else about it is better-executed. The beveled glass edge, which took a little thought to accomplish, sets it apart from the previous design—it’s a gorgeous effect I have not seen anywhere else.
Speaking of uniqueness, the next evening I created the ultimate example thereof: the Stained Glass Mosaic Page. This thing is ridiculous. It contains 24 individual JPEGs cropped from a picture of stained glass, each of which I hue-shifted into vibrant Lisa Frank shades. I then constructed a complex table structure to hold them—they form a square with 4px black borders around each piece. I then applied transparency to all the glass pieces, so when you scroll the page you can see the background (fixed) behind the “glass.” The area inside the border is also a formatted table which, for the example, consists of a single cell. Two- and three-column layouts are possible, of course (just add cells to the row) but are probably impractical with a small and fixed-width layout like Stained Glass.
The original version was extremely complicated—I totally rewrote the code a few days later and ended up with about 75% less markup. I also employed some hacks and got it working well in all major browsers (Internet Explorer being the black sheep, of course). On Wednesday I upgraded its status from alpha to beta and invited visitors to view and download the source code and to use it as a template if they wish. I may still change some stuff, but overall it works great. It might not be very practical (it loads slowly and, being fixed-height, is kind of limiting), but damnit it’s unique—of all the layouts I’ve come across, nobody had done anything even remotely like Stained Glass.
My other web development for the week consisted of retooling Words Of Wisdom (I rewrote the page but kept it largely the same), adding some items to the list on that page, and coding a nifty JavaScript containing the site links and placing it on both the Wisdom and Home pages. The idea is that, as I add pages, I won’t need to update the navigation lists on each one; updating the single JS file updates them all.
I also made a start on revamping the company website. I did eventually migrate it over to a WordPress blog (I mentioned this a while ago), but nobody ever made even the merest mention of the site, so a dynamic, updatable format was pretty much wasted. Now that I’m loads better at web design, I’ve decided to go back to the traditional HTML format, except that I will be coding everything from scratch. I used to use FrontPage, which was a godawful and frustrating program. Plus, my layouts weren’t really that great, and the code output was riddled with standards-breaking errors. As a result, pages looked all right in IE but not very good in other browsers. I can run rings around anything made with FrontPage (or any other WYSIWYG editor, for that matter) with Notepad++ and a few HTML/CSS reference guides.
Anyway, here it is if you’d like to see it. It’s not complete, of course—the style is a little bland still, and the two most intensive pages are blank. It’s not really “live” yet because everything is stuck in a subdomain; I’ll promote it to the main domain once all the kinks are ironed out. So far it’s all valid HTML 4.01—XHTML has some weird effect on the margins, though I think it’s just the Doctype telling Firefox not to add default padding values. I need to have a new stocklist made for me, and I likewise need to get some consensus on which pictures to include in the gallery. These two pages are going to be a nightmare. But, in the end I actually enjoy doing this stuff. Problems come up, and it’s always a challenge to work through them. But I do it—I have never once failed to eventually get a page to look how and do exactly what I intended.
March 25th, 2009
In the past few weeks I’ve been exploring the idea of remote hosted media storage (i.e. cloud storage). Basically, I’m rather tired of manually synchronizing my media collection across multiple computers. Furthermore, I don’t even want to have any of the media stored locally—I want to be able to stream my music and other media to any Internet-connected computer. After trying to set up an FTP link with my web host didn’t work out (I could access the folder fine, but media players don’t seem to be able to rectify it as a folder location), I remembered my Windows Live account has SkyDrive, which offers 25 GB of free online storage. The problem is that it cannot be added as a Network Place in Windows Explorer.
But there exists a solution. A program called Gladinet Cloud Desktop (currently in beta) creates a virtual drive in Explorer from a variety of online storage spaces, including Gmail and SkyDrive. This means that native programs can access files and folders in this cloud storage just as they would normal, locally based directories and files. The result is a miniature file server that one can access anywhere with a working Internet connection.
There are some limitations, though. Though generous by free standards, 25 GB is not really a lot of space. For my purposes, I’ll have to create and maintain a compressed version of my music library (I normally encode my files in Apple Lossless). However, that’s probably a better course of action, anyway, because I’m going to be streaming this stuff. The Gladinet program is still in beta, so there are some bugs and glitches. It doesn’t handle network switching well at all, and for networks that constantly require sign-in at Windows logon, you have to stop and restart the service before Gladinet works properly. It will appear to work, but the files are inaccessible. It’s difficult to evaluate further because Wayne State’s wireless connectivity is so shoddy that I can’t say if it’s WSU’s or Gladinet’s fault for some random service drop-outs I’ve noticed with the program.
Also, for music files time lengths seem to be inaccurately reported and displayed by my media player of choice (Foobar2000), but that could be the files themselves, as they seemed to do this even when stored locally. Since I’m not at home right now, my test files are limited to the Mellotron examples I’ve posted in my other blog, The Musical Box—I FTP’ed them onto my computer then cut and pasted them onto my virtual SkyDrive. Issues like whether Foobar2000 is able to play files gaplessly and the inaccurate timecodes will have to wait until I’ve compressed at least some of my library and uploaded it. My reference album will probably be The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (Genesis, of course), as it contains gapless transitions.
Hopefully with time Gladinet will become more stable and better able to handle various network configurations. It’s times like these that make me wish I hadn’t lost my Samsung netbook; this would have been a real boon to me to have instant access to my music library anywhere. As it is, the utility of this is tempered by my almost seven pound leviathan notebook, with it’s 12 minute battery life. But the main benefit still exists: one copy of my media I can access from any location, without the hassle of having to keep multiple local versions current. When they come up with A) a 3G service plan that doesn’t cost $2,000 a year, and B) netbooks with built-in 3G functionality, this will be a really compelling prospect. I used to think that cloud computing was just another stupid, over-hyped trend. Now, I’m not so sure. It might actually become something. I wonder if Microsoft is considering tying storage allotments to individual product licenses–say, up to one terabyte of storage per Product Key (exorbitant now, I know, but in three years that will undoubtedly change). That would seriously rock. Then, all you would need was high-speed broadband access and you would never have to store anything locally ever again. Plus, you could tie it to a Live account in such a way that a user’s other computers could access and modify files as well.
Now I’m just musing. Plus, who knows, this could all break tomorrow. Certainly it’ll be a non-starter if gapless doesn’t work, or else the service is spotty. Hopefully Microsoft itself will come up with a way of integrating SkyDrive into the Explorer shell—pretty much what Gladinet does right now. As it is, this won’t radically change the way I do things (yet), but it will allow me to access all my files platform or machine irrespective. I’m about tired of having to use an arbiter partition between my Windows and Linux partitions on my laptop—Ubuntu can see all the Windows files, but Windows can’t see the Ubuntu partition. Ugh! What a mess. The drawback to all this, of course, is that without Internet access, it’s pointless. And, with Internet access, all it does is synthesize the effect of having all this stuff stored locally, except that now you don’t have to keep things current across all your boxes. The missing link, of course, is a realistic 3G service provider. And that will come soon enough, as it occurs to providers that they have a real market now among the non-elite who can’t just pitch two grand out the window every year.
Enough! I’m off to play Mario Kart 64, or something.
January 24th, 2009
Not simply another tired Genesis reference (“The Fountain Of Salmacis” from Nursery Cryme), this about describes what I spent over an hour-and-a-half attempting to accomplish with two identical pairs of headphones. Basically, the design is rather flawed in that the plastic shells of these cans have a tendency to crack after about a year. My first pair became utterly unusable, hence the presence of a second. This second pair, I’m sad to say, has demonstrated the same problem, though I somewhat helped things along by dropping the pair several times. In fact, for the past few months the joint that connects the left ear cup to the headband has been open, its spring mechanism completely vacated. This resulted in a slack fit and possible further damage.
So I had to do something. Having the original pair that had broken in a different place, I realized I could theoretically transplant parts from it onto the newer pair and fix the problem. Little did I know that this would be an entry straight into Hell.
Suffice to say that this operation was the most frustrating hour-and-a-half of my entire life. There were several points where I thought I would never get the things back together again, and I had to do the whole thing about three times before everything fit properly. Even now, it’s not perfect. Apparently, Sony decided to change the design ever so slightly between the two production runs, resulting in a left cup that doesn’t quite hang the same way as the right one—as a consequence, the headband ends up crooked on my head. Also, the new screws are too long somehow for the old coupling, meaning that one of them sticks out a ways. I have no idea how this can be, but I’m not taking it all apart again to find out.
The restored fit is quite a revelation, and the resultant improvement in sound quality (in mid- and high ranges, strangely) is quite noticeable. Sadly, my ears had gotten so used to an off-center stereo image that they had compensated, so now everything sounds as though it’s biased toward the left. That’s right; I’ve got a pair of liberal headphones. If they start warbling suddenly about change, I’m going to finally decide they’re beyond repair and chuck them in the bin once and for all.
In other news, I’m writing a requiem. Not an entire requiem at the moment, just the last part, “In Paradisum.” The problem is, I’m not sure if the melody I’ve selected is entirely original. I may or may not have heard part of it elsewhere, but it’s almost impossible to tell without having any idea where to check. The best I can do is forge ahead, make a test recording (with my own voice, which is rather questionable in the higher registers), play it past a few music aficionados, and see if any of them recognize anything blatantly plagiarized. If I had to guess where I picked it up, I’d say Mozart. I’ll have to check his own Requiem to see (or hear, as it were). Regardless, what was so surprising to me was how well the text fits. I still haven’t gotten to the bit about Lazarus yet, but that will come with time.
The question next is how to arrange the work, harmonize it, and what voice registers I should use. I’m leaning toward the traditional SATB, but I might split it even further if I need more polyphony for some odd reason. The way I hear it in my head, though, it’s more toward the homophonic end of the spectrum, with harmonized voices moving in unison to form chord progressions. But, knowing my own particular style, it’s full of suspensions—I just absolutely love suspensions, to the point of excess and overuse.
Unfortunately, even if my idea is totally original and I figure out the whole arrangement, it’s somewhat dismaying going into something like this knowing nothing I write will ever live up to the premier example of the art form. In this case, of course there can be no other than Gabriel Faure’s “In Paradisum,” certainly one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, and the benchmark against which all Requiems should be measured. As I mentioned in a previous post, Faure’s setting of this portion of the Requiem is the piece I want played on the occasion of my own death, whenever that may be.
A bunch of rambling, certainly, but it’s rather late (or early) and my mind is clearly not working right. I’ll leave it here.
January 15th, 2009
You know, some things in this world are sacred and, as such, should not be changed. The MythBusters like blowing stuff up. Peach gets kidnapped by Bowser. Peter Gabriel is an insane musical genius. And, ladies and gentlemen, the cinnamon rolls at Wayne State University are the best bloody cinnamon rolls on the planet.
Scratch that. They were the best cinnamon rolls on the planet. That is, until they changed them. They changed the whole breakfast, in fact. And, in the traditional WSU spirit of making sure you get less for your dining dollar each and every semester (it’s too good for you), the change was for the worst.
The first thing I noticed was that the sausages had migrated into view in a stainless steel pan behind the wrong counter. I also noticed that there were about 4,209 individual links piled up there. Hallelujah! In my little mind (still hopeful after so much heartbreak—I’m looking at you, Elizabeth), of course my first thought was “Gee, if they pile out this much of their crappy sausage, then how much bacon is lurking just out of sight?” How much? None! Apparently, in a concession to the unreasonable but unanimous request of diners (as the cook lady exasperatedly told us), they can only stock one meat per day now that meat is a self-serve item.
Fair enough. The sausage might be crappy, but goddamnit, drown it in fake maple syrup and it makes a decent side. Plus, the ability to stock up on as much as I can carry almost mitigates its altogether crappiness. Next stop, the omlette station which, thankfully, hadn’t changed with the new semester. I got my stuff and went, hitting the drink station on the way to a table. I picked up a glass of Wild Cherry Pepsi and some OJ and went on my way. At the buffet station I spied some cherry turnovers (strawberry? raspberry? watermelon?) and…lord yes!…the Peach among Daisies, cinnamon rolls! In my excitement I failed to initially notice that they appeared a little different today. Bah! Who would notice?
Having lugged my treasure trove to a secluded table, I tucked in. The sausages were surprisingly good whilst swimming in fake maple syrup (and sprinkled with a few tablespoons of brown sugar that was lying around for no good reason), and the omlette was good except for the onions (I forget every time they never cook these things enough). In fact, I started to feel slightly nauseous after a while, which is never a good sign. Never fear, I didn’t cascade. All was well and, at last, it was time to take the first cautious nibble of my prized cinnamon bun. I lifed it to my mouth, tongue watering in anticipation, and took a bite.
Hmm. That’s strange. It’s not quite…wait a minute! This ain’t right! This ain’t right at all! Where’s the flavor? That succulent zing that can only mean one thing…what atrocities have been done here today?! They’ve stollen it, precious! It’s lost! Lost forever!
Excuse me, but a malodramatic bug crawled in my ear just now and turned me momentarily into a horrible actor. The same thing happened sometime around 1886, and the unfortunate result was musical theatre.
But even Andrew Lloyd Webber (especially Andrew Lloyd Webber) couldn’t capture the emotion, the horror, the sadness I experienced this morning. I mean, I dragged myself out of bed (which doesn’t necessarily mean I was asleep, which I wasn’t) at 7:00 AM for this breakfast, which in the past had always offered the promise of a decent, solid meal. Now the rolls weren’t always there in the past, which I’ll admit did bring me grief. But merely knowing that perhaps it wasn’t the day for the rolls to shine (get!), and that instead of putting out some insipid consolation prize for the hapless diners WSU merely left them off the menu entirely, I was always consoled until I could get those rolls once again.
Perhaps here would be a good time to diverge just a little (lest the Really Useless Group start cast auditions) and describe the turnover. It, too, was lousy. It was all flake and no filling, and what little filling there was could have been any of the possible red fruits I listed several paragraphs ago. But at least it was better than the roll, which was merely a regular roll with a little cinnamon drizzled on top. Oh, and a tiny drizzle of cream cheese garnish, nothing to the torrents that covered the real rolls.
I’m hurt. I’m hurt, and I don’t hurt easy (unless a girl is involved). I thought I could deal with Wayne State. Every day they pile on new stuff, but I thought I could take it. I even thought I could accept them snooping in my dorm room and threatening to charge me up the ying yang if I don’t clean it up by next Monday. But this? But this! There can be no forgiveness. None. We are at war, WSU and I. And I will win. And I don’t care how many crappy breakfasts I have to eat, I’ll stick around until I’ve made my stand. They can stare all they want. They can even play the soundtrack to Evita over and over. I will not rest until my cinnamon rolls are returned! Or until I fall asleep from fatigue and the utter uselessness of my actions.
In other news, today I have my last class of the week. I also have to clean my room, which is a bit of a problem because many of the 7,209 pop cans still have a risidual amount of liquid in them. So I’ll be spilling out quite a bit of stuff. I’ll need a few hours for this one. But I’ll get it done.
January 13th, 2009
Well, actually though the magic of Windows Live Writer, a nifty little program that allows me to update my WordPress blogs from the comfort of my own desktop. Actually, it interfaces with the online presence of the blog, but it also allows me to create entire entries without having to log into the administrative console of WordPress, which is a decent time saver (even with the many enhancements offered by WordPress 2.7).
But what’s actually going on on this end? Well, I am still waiting with bated breath for some news as to when Nintendo will be releasing the DSi in North America. Due to the still booming sales on the current DS Lite offering, Nintendo has decided that releasing the DSi in North America is not a very high priority. Also not clear is the price, though most sources seem to indicate that this incarnation of the DS will be more expensive than past releases, at around $180. That’s a bummer, but what can you do? At least you get the ability to purchase games directly over an Internet connection, and you get 1000 DSi Points ($10) just for purchasing the unit. You can get up to two games with that amount, which isn’t bad. Something tells me Super Mario 64 isn’t going to be one of the choice, though.
My next semester at WSU begins in about 10 hours. With all late afternoon/evening classes this semester, I might actually get some sleep. Even if I’m kept up until the wee hours of the morning, I can sleep in until my classes begin, the earliest of which begins at 5:30 PM. I also get Fridays off, so that’s another bonus. I did pretty well last semester, and I’m definitely going to be on the Dean’s List. Historically, I always screw up the second semester, so we’ll see if I can’t break the trend. I only have three days this week, so it’s a nice slow beginning to what might be a rather difficult semester. I’ve got two English courses, a web design course, and the final semester of German.
I can’t really think of that much more. Just a quick update to test out the Windows Live Writer program.