NEStopia has a display filter they call 'NTSC' that can emulate television video of varying quality and standards. Complete with color bleed and a little bit of ghosting. This sounds like it's maybe a more sophisticated version of that idea.:D
Personally, I haven't had cable in years. I watch all my television shows either streamed live, or after downloading high-def copies of them from the internet...granted, that's by necessity because I pretty much only watch Japanese television.
Speaking of DVR users and skipping commercials though... Let me tell you, back when I -did- have cable, 80% of American TV commercials were just completely OBNOXIOUS and STUPID. Seriously. And nearly 100% of the time, they are louder than what you were watching, which makes them all the more annoying.
On occasion, I watch UK-based broadcasts of Formula 1 and rally car racing, their commercials, even the ones that are sort of obnoxious, are much more entertaining than American commercials.
Japanese TV commercials... What can I say? They're just flat-out fucking BIZARRE. But at the same time totally HILARIOUS. (Example: The recent commercials with Tommy Lee Jones for Suntory's 'Boss' canned coffee. One of those had my father laughing for like five minutes.)
This is neither here nor there, but if they started making commercials that weren't seemingly designed to annoy the shit out of us, it just might work to their advantage. JUST A THOUGHT.
By the time they get there, they'll find a Chinese flag, an Indian flag, a Canadian flag, some monument to commercially-sponsored space travel, and a McDonald's.
BUT, should someone with that much technical ability, creativity, and imagination, really be allowed to idle so much as to DO that? He should be curing cancer, or making space travel reasonable, or building giant robots to help me take over the planet! Don't you think?
I'll admit, it's nicer than plain sans-serif fonts when it comes to comics, but I prefer the fonts that came with Celsys' ComicStudio software. (Of course, I think only one of them actually has non-Japanese characters.) Strangely, the English-language version, MangaStudio, doesn't come with any fonts as far as I know... I guess you're supposed to use Comic Sa-- Oh god. It's us! We're the problem!
I actually bought some LEDs recently from the eBay seller he mentions. Some 250,000MCD 10mm white LEDs, some little DIP-package white LEDs, and some DIP-package RGB LEDs. I saw these LED arrays and I knew I wanted one of the 50watt 3500 lumen ones for a DIY 1080p projector build. (Also possibly to jury-rig an LED replacement for the $400 2000 lumen bulb in my BenQ projector)
The 7000 lumen one like he's playing around with would be nice if you want to build a projector that doesn't require a light-controlled environment, or is projecting a super-large image. (Or if you want to just burn shit down, lol) I imagine with that sort of output though, it starts to become a real heat problem for the LCD in the projector, just like a conventional bulb.
These days it's getting so that anyone with a little know-how and some cash can build nearly anything they want. Especially if you just built your own CNC milling machine.;3
Why would you NOT clean-install Windows 7? You can't even upgrade XP from SP1 to SP2 without a clean install if you want your computer to WORK! Are us windows users REALLY so absolutely opposed to doing things CORRECTLY?! (Obviously, right? If we wanted to do things correctly, we'd be running LINUX!)
btw, one of my three XP boxes reached 4 months of uptime last night. Not that I'm trying, I just don't have need to reboot it. Seems rather impressive, for a non-server version of windows.
Given that my personal website is 'giantpachinkomachineofdoom.com' and the website for my upcoming project is 'tangibleimagination.com', I think it would be a terrible conflict of interest for me to comment on this issue.
I actually have about a dozen varied Model M keyboards from the PS/2 and Microchannel era. I love the removable keycaps and stuff. You could easily reconfigure the keyboard for dvorak if you wanted to. I have all sorts of different revisions, some with removable cords, some without, a couple different types of IBM logos, but all basically the same. They're HUGE though.
I later bought an IBM 'Model M' Japanese keyboard...it was smaller, but no click. Which is a shame because I love clicky keyboards. Nowadays, I'm basically crippled by an endless stream of ergonomic keyboards, to the point that I can no longer use regular keyboards with any decent speed or accuracy.:(
I want a Black, Ergonomic, Clicky, Japanese keyboard. Shit, I'm probably going to have to make my own, aren't I?:<
Damn you. I thought -I- was going to be the first to point out the necessity of Transmetropolitan being at LEAST R-Rated.
Magical Truthsaying Bastard, indeed.
I actually just read the series for the first time recently and thought it was probably the best comic series I'd ever read. The problem is, there's no WAY you're going to do it justice with a couple hours on the screen. Transmetropolitan is the kind of thing that needs to have each major story arc turned into its own movie. I mean, Watchmen was tough to squeeze into whatever-the-hell the uncut version is (Four hours or something?) and it's only 12 issues. Transmetropolitan is like 60.
Someone should animate it.:D Transmetropolitan would actually be the perfect subject matter for the format of an anime. Each story arc a 13 episode season. If you look at the comic issue-by-issue, it breaks down perfectly. Each issue has a beginning, build-up, and an end. It would transition to 22 minute episodes nicely. And cost something less than the 'metric fuckton of assloads of money' a decent live action version would, without having to cut really anything content-wise.
Too bad we still think of animation as 'cartoons' instead of just being a different medium. (Unless it's CG, then we think 'Aww, isn't that cute? The cartoon is pretending it's real!')
Seriously. They are. They're at LEAST as important as what's in them. Because if you have a cheap crappy bag, it doesn't matter HOW good your laptop or camera is...eventually it's going to kiss the sidewalk.
When I needed a new messenger bag and a more compact camera bag (A big semi-rigid foam and nylon THING riding against my hip is a maneuverability issue.), I found the Tenba large messenger bag. It's REALLY nice. It looks good, it has more than enough places to put stuff, it has a pull-out semi-rigid liner with repositionable dividers, for camera equipment, and a padded section for laptops up to 17". The bottom is rubberized and waterproof, so you can set the bag down without worrying too much. It has an exceedingly comfortable shoulder strap. And it has a huge 'slash pocket' zipper on the flap that lets you extract lenses and stuff from the main compartment without actually opening the bag. The backside of the bag is a huge pad covered in a breathable mesh. No matter how much crap I stuff in there (I actually tested filling the bag to capacity with large magazines) the pad makes it rest comfortably against my hip or back, like it isn't even there. (And it stays put!) It also has some webbing loops on the ends of the bag, which I commonly use for carabiners to attach various things. It even has a laser-engraveable metal tag that screws to the flap where the Tenba logo would go. The build is excellent, too. Great materials, perfect stitching, rugged as hell, great zippers, even the custom rubber-booted zipper pulls really add to the feeling of quality. The price put me off a little, because I'm exceedingly cheap, but for $100 it was more than worth every penny.
When blueprints and stuff for Marine 1 show up in Iran because some contractor wanted to download Britney Spears mp3s, yeah. I'd throw my hands up and walk away too. Things are only handled as intelligently as the dumbest person involved, and the leading cause of aneurism these days is having to deal with dumb people.
I'm all for protecting people from terrorist attacks...but I've never been one to advocate treating the symptom over the problem.;0
So howabout instead of defining our existence by the threat of terrorist attack, we just stop pissing off most of the planet? Maybe we should change our primary exports from ignorance, unstoppable firepower, bad TV, and fast food, to something everybody loves....like chocolate...or kittens! I mean, really. 'cause otherwise the only viable option is to just kill everyone else.
People think stupid stuff. All it takes is that x% of people too stupid to grasp the concept, to then pass the 'information' on to their friends. Give it another iteration or two, and it starts to become a problem. Human beings readily accept the easiest to digest and most palatable information available to them. Canon is just trying to head that shit off.
Think about it this way; you have someone like Jack Thompson, devoting his every waking hour to convincing people that videogames are solely responsible for the breakdown of society. Bullshit, of course. But a percentage of people take it seriously enough to tell someone else, whether or not these people have any idea what in the hell they're talking about is irrelevant, with only a little help, such ideas can silently seep into common knowledge until a majority of people believe-- or at the very least, take seriously --such things.
To put it another way, if you're subjected to someone yelling about something loud enough, long enough, sooner or later it's going to have an effect.
I'm not saying Canon took the right tact, I mean the blog looks fairly harmless, I'm just saying I can think of a few reasons they'd want to do something about someone taking pokes at them in such a way.
For the record, I'm fairly brand-agnostic. Though I haven't used a Nikon SLR since the days of film.
What the hell ever happened to the Doom novels? Someone should use some of THAT story. What? Just because the Columbine shooters liked them, everyone pretends the books never existed? At any rate, this does sound pretty cool.
As much as I think MS charges too much for its operating systems, and a lot of its hardware costs more than it's worth... The fact is Apple hasn't been doing much to innovate on ANYTHING except maybe the friggin iPod in a very long time so there isn't as much money being put into R&D, unlike MS who try to release a new OS like every 2-3 years now and have a game console, besides hundreds of computer peripherals. Put that together with the OVERWHELMINGLY UNREASONABLE PRICETAGS Apple puts on EVERYTHING, and you can see where the difference comes from.
Seriously. The price of an Apple computer makes an Alienware gaming rig with Windows Vista Ultimate Mega Double-Shot BBQ Raptorclaw w/Cheese 128-bit Limited Super Special Edition seem reasonable.
For the record, I hate Vista. All my machines run XP x64, and yes I paid for the licenses. Also, my first computer was an Apple II, my second was a Macintosh, and I like Mac OS. Plus I am a graphic designer. So I would say this is a fairly reality-based opinion of someone who could go either way on the matter.
This isn't a stupid idea. They've been doing it for YEARS in Japan to try and curb all manner of lecherous covert snapshottery. I think if you're going to have a cow just because your cellphone beeps when it takes a picture, you're probably taking pictures of things you shouldn't be. I mean, the goddamn things beep for everything ELSE! Can we get some civilization up in here please? Thanks.
I have often found myself having to hit up ISOhunt or other BT search engines to find an obscure or high-end application simply because I wanted to check it out and— best case scenario —getting a demo requires jumping through all sorts of hoops only to hear something like "We'd be happy to schedule a demonstration for you, where are your corporate offices located?" (Answer: A one-bedroom apartment in rural New England. Still interested?)
Between that, and demos that are so crippled as to be completely useless for evaluating the software, it's rather frustrating.
Oh well. Free semiconductor and specialty material samples more than make up for the deficiencies of the software industry in adapting to reality.:D
I don't think that will ever cease to amaze me...maybe I'm too used to not being taken seriously.
I simply vow constantly and loudly to one day rule this planet and wipe out a not-insignificant chunk of the population. (Namely, the stupid people.) Hey, a chaotic-neutral genius has to have goals.
I personally think the names of the people who made the complaint that got them booted off the plane to BEGIN WITH should have THEIR names made public, so they can be properly ridiculed for abject stupidity.
...'OH NOES! PRINTERS IN IRAN!' when they read the summary? Seriously, what the fuck? I mean, a law's a law and all... But do we really care that HP is selling Iran printers? Fuck 'em. Let HP bleed the country dry over ink and toner!:D
Just a little disappointing...
on
Penny Arcade On NPR
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· Score: 2, Informative
Just a tad under three minutes, and it's some random guy talking about P-A. I was hoping they might be interviewing the duo themselves.:( Their interviews are always quite hilarious. Then again, I guess the point was to convey what P-A is to 'normal' people, which I don't think those two can do, lol.
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NEStopia has a display filter they call 'NTSC' that can emulate television video of varying quality and standards. Complete with color bleed and a little bit of ghosting. This sounds like it's maybe a more sophisticated version of that idea. :D
Personally, I haven't had cable in years. I watch all my television shows either streamed live, or after downloading high-def copies of them from the internet...granted, that's by necessity because I pretty much only watch Japanese television.
Speaking of DVR users and skipping commercials though... Let me tell you, back when I -did- have cable, 80% of American TV commercials were just completely OBNOXIOUS and STUPID. Seriously. And nearly 100% of the time, they are louder than what you were watching, which makes them all the more annoying.
On occasion, I watch UK-based broadcasts of Formula 1 and rally car racing, their commercials, even the ones that are sort of obnoxious, are much more entertaining than American commercials.
Japanese TV commercials... What can I say? They're just flat-out fucking BIZARRE. But at the same time totally HILARIOUS. (Example: The recent commercials with Tommy Lee Jones for Suntory's 'Boss' canned coffee. One of those had my father laughing for like five minutes.)
This is neither here nor there, but if they started making commercials that weren't seemingly designed to annoy the shit out of us, it just might work to their advantage. JUST A THOUGHT.
By the time they get there, they'll find a Chinese flag, an Indian flag, a Canadian flag, some monument to commercially-sponsored space travel, and a McDonald's.
Do you want fries with that?
Sounds like a good candidate for testing the water cooling block designs I have in mind. Gotta love having your own CNC machine. :3
That was fantastic.
BUT, should someone with that much technical ability, creativity, and imagination, really be allowed to idle so much as to DO that? He should be curing cancer, or making space travel reasonable, or building giant robots to help me take over the planet! Don't you think?
Hmm, 'My lack of money' comes to mind. Any takers? No? ...please? ;__;
I'll admit, it's nicer than plain sans-serif fonts when it comes to comics, but I prefer the fonts that came with Celsys' ComicStudio software. (Of course, I think only one of them actually has non-Japanese characters.) Strangely, the English-language version, MangaStudio, doesn't come with any fonts as far as I know... I guess you're supposed to use Comic Sa-- Oh god. It's us! We're the problem!
I actually bought some LEDs recently from the eBay seller he mentions. Some 250,000MCD 10mm white LEDs, some little DIP-package white LEDs, and some DIP-package RGB LEDs. I saw these LED arrays and I knew I wanted one of the 50watt 3500 lumen ones for a DIY 1080p projector build. (Also possibly to jury-rig an LED replacement for the $400 2000 lumen bulb in my BenQ projector)
The 7000 lumen one like he's playing around with would be nice if you want to build a projector that doesn't require a light-controlled environment, or is projecting a super-large image. (Or if you want to just burn shit down, lol) I imagine with that sort of output though, it starts to become a real heat problem for the LCD in the projector, just like a conventional bulb.
These days it's getting so that anyone with a little know-how and some cash can build nearly anything they want. Especially if you just built your own CNC milling machine. ;3
Why would you NOT clean-install Windows 7? You can't even upgrade XP from SP1 to SP2 without a clean install if you want your computer to WORK! Are us windows users REALLY so absolutely opposed to doing things CORRECTLY?! (Obviously, right? If we wanted to do things correctly, we'd be running LINUX!)
btw, one of my three XP boxes reached 4 months of uptime last night. Not that I'm trying, I just don't have need to reboot it. Seems rather impressive, for a non-server version of windows.
Given that my personal website is 'giantpachinkomachineofdoom.com' and the website for my upcoming project is 'tangibleimagination.com', I think it would be a terrible conflict of interest for me to comment on this issue.
I actually have about a dozen varied Model M keyboards from the PS/2 and Microchannel era. I love the removable keycaps and stuff. You could easily reconfigure the keyboard for dvorak if you wanted to. I have all sorts of different revisions, some with removable cords, some without, a couple different types of IBM logos, but all basically the same. They're HUGE though.
I later bought an IBM 'Model M' Japanese keyboard...it was smaller, but no click. Which is a shame because I love clicky keyboards. Nowadays, I'm basically crippled by an endless stream of ergonomic keyboards, to the point that I can no longer use regular keyboards with any decent speed or accuracy. :(
I want a Black, Ergonomic, Clicky, Japanese keyboard. Shit, I'm probably going to have to make my own, aren't I? :<
Damn you. I thought -I- was going to be the first to point out the necessity of Transmetropolitan being at LEAST R-Rated.
Magical Truthsaying Bastard, indeed.
I actually just read the series for the first time recently and thought it was probably the best comic series I'd ever read. The problem is, there's no WAY you're going to do it justice with a couple hours on the screen. Transmetropolitan is the kind of thing that needs to have each major story arc turned into its own movie. I mean, Watchmen was tough to squeeze into whatever-the-hell the uncut version is (Four hours or something?) and it's only 12 issues. Transmetropolitan is like 60.
Someone should animate it. :D Transmetropolitan would actually be the perfect subject matter for the format of an anime. Each story arc a 13 episode season. If you look at the comic issue-by-issue, it breaks down perfectly. Each issue has a beginning, build-up, and an end. It would transition to 22 minute episodes nicely. And cost something less than the 'metric fuckton of assloads of money' a decent live action version would, without having to cut really anything content-wise.
Too bad we still think of animation as 'cartoons' instead of just being a different medium. (Unless it's CG, then we think 'Aww, isn't that cute? The cartoon is pretending it's real!')
Seriously. They are. They're at LEAST as important as what's in them. Because if you have a cheap crappy bag, it doesn't matter HOW good your laptop or camera is...eventually it's going to kiss the sidewalk.
When I needed a new messenger bag and a more compact camera bag (A big semi-rigid foam and nylon THING riding against my hip is a maneuverability issue.), I found the Tenba large messenger bag. It's REALLY nice. It looks good, it has more than enough places to put stuff, it has a pull-out semi-rigid liner with repositionable dividers, for camera equipment, and a padded section for laptops up to 17". The bottom is rubberized and waterproof, so you can set the bag down without worrying too much. It has an exceedingly comfortable shoulder strap. And it has a huge 'slash pocket' zipper on the flap that lets you extract lenses and stuff from the main compartment without actually opening the bag. The backside of the bag is a huge pad covered in a breathable mesh. No matter how much crap I stuff in there (I actually tested filling the bag to capacity with large magazines) the pad makes it rest comfortably against my hip or back, like it isn't even there. (And it stays put!) It also has some webbing loops on the ends of the bag, which I commonly use for carabiners to attach various things. It even has a laser-engraveable metal tag that screws to the flap where the Tenba logo would go. The build is excellent, too. Great materials, perfect stitching, rugged as hell, great zippers, even the custom rubber-booted zipper pulls really add to the feeling of quality. The price put me off a little, because I'm exceedingly cheap, but for $100 it was more than worth every penny.
When blueprints and stuff for Marine 1 show up in Iran because some contractor wanted to download Britney Spears mp3s, yeah. I'd throw my hands up and walk away too. Things are only handled as intelligently as the dumbest person involved, and the leading cause of aneurism these days is having to deal with dumb people.
I'm all for protecting people from terrorist attacks...but I've never been one to advocate treating the symptom over the problem. ;0
So howabout instead of defining our existence by the threat of terrorist attack, we just stop pissing off most of the planet? Maybe we should change our primary exports from ignorance, unstoppable firepower, bad TV, and fast food, to something everybody loves....like chocolate...or kittens! I mean, really. 'cause otherwise the only viable option is to just kill everyone else.
People think stupid stuff. All it takes is that x% of people too stupid to grasp the concept, to then pass the 'information' on to their friends. Give it another iteration or two, and it starts to become a problem. Human beings readily accept the easiest to digest and most palatable information available to them. Canon is just trying to head that shit off.
Think about it this way; you have someone like Jack Thompson, devoting his every waking hour to convincing people that videogames are solely responsible for the breakdown of society. Bullshit, of course. But a percentage of people take it seriously enough to tell someone else, whether or not these people have any idea what in the hell they're talking about is irrelevant, with only a little help, such ideas can silently seep into common knowledge until a majority of people believe-- or at the very least, take seriously --such things.
To put it another way, if you're subjected to someone yelling about something loud enough, long enough, sooner or later it's going to have an effect.
I'm not saying Canon took the right tact, I mean the blog looks fairly harmless, I'm just saying I can think of a few reasons they'd want to do something about someone taking pokes at them in such a way.
For the record, I'm fairly brand-agnostic. Though I haven't used a Nikon SLR since the days of film.
What the hell ever happened to the Doom novels? Someone should use some of THAT story. What? Just because the Columbine shooters liked them, everyone pretends the books never existed? At any rate, this does sound pretty cool.
As much as I think MS charges too much for its operating systems, and a lot of its hardware costs more than it's worth... The fact is Apple hasn't been doing much to innovate on ANYTHING except maybe the friggin iPod in a very long time so there isn't as much money being put into R&D, unlike MS who try to release a new OS like every 2-3 years now and have a game console, besides hundreds of computer peripherals. Put that together with the OVERWHELMINGLY UNREASONABLE PRICETAGS Apple puts on EVERYTHING, and you can see where the difference comes from.
Seriously. The price of an Apple computer makes an Alienware gaming rig with Windows Vista Ultimate Mega Double-Shot BBQ Raptorclaw w/Cheese 128-bit Limited Super Special Edition seem reasonable.
For the record, I hate Vista. All my machines run XP x64, and yes I paid for the licenses. Also, my first computer was an Apple II, my second was a Macintosh, and I like Mac OS. Plus I am a graphic designer. So I would say this is a fairly reality-based opinion of someone who could go either way on the matter.
This isn't a stupid idea. They've been doing it for YEARS in Japan to try and curb all manner of lecherous covert snapshottery. I think if you're going to have a cow just because your cellphone beeps when it takes a picture, you're probably taking pictures of things you shouldn't be. I mean, the goddamn things beep for everything ELSE! Can we get some civilization up in here please? Thanks.
I have often found myself having to hit up ISOhunt or other BT search engines to find an obscure or high-end application simply because I wanted to check it out and— best case scenario —getting a demo requires jumping through all sorts of hoops only to hear something like "We'd be happy to schedule a demonstration for you, where are your corporate offices located?" (Answer: A one-bedroom apartment in rural New England. Still interested?)
Between that, and demos that are so crippled as to be completely useless for evaluating the software, it's rather frustrating.
Oh well. Free semiconductor and specialty material samples more than make up for the deficiencies of the software industry in adapting to reality. :D
I don't think that will ever cease to amaze me...maybe I'm too used to not being taken seriously.
No, I don't know how I didn't catch that when I previewed my comment. Apparently I can't brain today, I have the dumb.
I simply vow constantly and loudly to one day rule this planet and wipe out a not-insignificant chunk of the population. (Namely, the stupid people.) Hey, a chaotic-neutral genius has to have goals.
I personally think the names of the people who made the complaint that got them booted off the plane to BEGIN WITH should have THEIR names made public, so they can be properly ridiculed for abject stupidity.
...'OH NOES! PRINTERS IN IRAN!' when they read the summary? Seriously, what the fuck? I mean, a law's a law and all... But do we really care that HP is selling Iran printers? Fuck 'em. Let HP bleed the country dry over ink and toner! :D
Just a tad under three minutes, and it's some random guy talking about P-A. I was hoping they might be interviewing the duo themselves. :( Their interviews are always quite hilarious. Then again, I guess the point was to convey what P-A is to 'normal' people, which I don't think those two can do, lol.