Duality

Progress on this weblog will come much slower than on my previous weblogs because it’s not just styling data, but also figuring out how to get WordPress to spit the data I want out. A lot of the issues that have come up in the context of this duo-weblog aren’t even an afterthought in traditional weblogs, so the standard WP install doesn’t have the necessary function calls to handle them.

I really want to write my own plug-ins—and I’ll probably start next weekend. I know a lot of the spacing isn’t right and some pages look messed up, but bear with me.

You got it backwards, Lloyd. I too worried that there would be an imbalance. But so far, my side has been the shorter side (he already has his first review too). I know he hasn’t been writing that much lately. It’s probably because he’s busy burning all of his CDs to DVDs (and watching a few, here and there). He also works weekends, handles sound design for the campus theatre, and has to do homework from time to time.

I never talked about Xero on SEASONS because none of my readers knew him (besides Bigi). Xero would’ve been a forgettable, faceless entity. Be honest, can you remember any of the other people I’ve mentioned on my weblog?

My rationale for Duality is that it was the optimal solution given the circumstances:

• Xero wanted to get into weblogging.
• I offered to host him.
• He is one of the few people I share many interests with.
• I needed something to get me excited about weblogging again.
• I’ve always wanted to tackle a team project outside of school.
• Xero has this dream of maintaining a game site with enough cred to get press passes to E3.

So the last one probably won’t ever happen, but Duality nicely handles the rest.

And to address the sluggishness, Atlas, sadly, is not the sprightly, young server it was when I signed up. From time to time, its CPU load gets up there, so it might take a couple tries to get Duality to load.

(reminder for myself: list of recent comments; add # of comments to previous entry links)

“Site Updates” category changed to “Duality.” Will now include posts about Duality that are not necessarily site updates.

I closed my old weblog today. Duality is officially public now. Since I never wrote an intro, today’s post will fill the void.

Welcome to Duality. You can think of this as a duo-weblog. My posts are on the left and Xero’s posts are on the right. For those of you who don’t know him, Xero is a longtime friend of mine (wave to the crowd, Xero). Together, we’ll be bringing you bits of our respective lives as well as reviews and impressions of games, movies, cartoons, anime, and music—or at least, that’s the plan.

I’m feeling quite brain-dead right now. But before I let you explore on your own, a little warning: the nav doesn’t work yet and a lot of stuff is still unfinished. As a general rule, if it doesn’t look right, I haven’t gotten to it yet.

Enjoy. =)

I’m navigating the last twists and turns that stand between me and Duality version-1.0.

Google for “quadoshock wordpress” or “quadoshock duality” and you won’t find anything. Isn’t it strange? If you checked last Saturday, you would’ve found this weblog. But now, nothing. Google has Xero’s old weblog (for the record, I hate the word “blog”)—even has his last post cached. But Duality is nowhere to be found.

I think that since Xero’s old place was the only page that linked to Duality, Google threw out Duality when the Square Root of Xero stopped being updated.

I’ve been watching Google closely because I haven’t officially closed my other weblog yet. I haven’t been posting there, but I haven’t linked to Duality yet. I don’t want any of them seeing Duality just yet. Think of this as a closed beta; and of yourselves as highly-appreciated beta testers. =)

High school makes you feel top-tier.

College makes you feel bottom-tier.

There’s this EE junior I know. He’s in EE 240 (Advanced Analog Circuits) and EE 130 (Device Physics) with me. He’s a better circuit designer than me; he’s better at DSP and communications. He had an internship with nVIDIA last summer and will be continuing with them this summer. He finishes his homework within a few days of its posting. And he’s a nice guy too.

He’s totally top-tier EE.

I’m just bottom-tier.

My parents do the strangest things. Like eat old, microwaved rice every other meal. We have a Zojirushi rice cooker that claims it “cooks perfect rice.” Yet we only cook a new pot of rice every other meal.

I remember asking my dad why we don’t cook a new pot every meal. “Because we don’t know how much rice to add,” he said. (?!) Every pot we cook is enough for two meals and change. If we just halve the amount of rice we put in, it’ll be about enough for one meal, right?

Edit: I asked my mom. She said it’s too much work. I can buy that.

Subcategory structure removed. Similar categories merged.

I made it prettier =)
hmm… will this do line breaks for me?

Edit:  yeah, it does. Just smile and nod.

Edit x2:  yeah, the archives look messed up. I haven’t gotten around to that yet.

Edit x3:  note to self… add touches of darker blue and red to the design.

Edit x4:  another note… add subtle line down the middle.

Edit x5:  add call-outs for game titles? (color, italics, something)

Edit x6:  simple rating system for game reviews?

… it’s because I’m messing around with stuff.

To be honest, this post is just for testing. =)

I’ve been playing Soul Calibur II again. See, Isaac challenged Joe (both HKN officers) to a match under the condition that Joe can’t practice. When I heard about it, all I could think about was playing SC2 again.

I love to compete. I think I love to compete to the point that it turns most people off. Most people play to have fun. To an extent, I do too, but I like to win as well. I end up practicing so much that the game becomes unfair. It’s not that I’m great at games; the beatdowns I’ve taken at the BEARcade are proof of that. It’s just that I practice more—perhaps too much.

Well anyway, I’m playing Nightmare the wrong way. I practiced against the “Extremely Hard” Nightmare AI and spent most of the time on the ground. It unsurprisingly parries most of my attacks, but when it doesn’t, it always uses the right attack to counter my attack. That’s the way I need to play Nightmare. His attacks are all pretty slow, so you can’t keep throwing out attacks hoping your opponent doesn’t block correctly.

Now that Qsk has officially closed Seasons all of his loyal readers are now flocking here. So, to them, I say welcome! From the comments you’ve left on Qsk’s posts, I feel like I’ve got big expectations that I need to live up to. Now, I know that I may not be as talented as Qsk, or as funny as him, and I’m definitely not as physically attractive as him (give us a turn around, will ya?), but hopefully in time you will learn to accept me for who I am. So welcome! Whoever you all are ;)

Yesterday I finally broke down and bought myself a DVD burner. I got an 8 speed burner and a 50 pack of 8 speed DVDs. My roommate recently got a new laptop and has a DVD burner as well. We’ve been using Netflix a lot and have started to amass quite a collection. However, now that I have a burner it’s time to start my ultimate project. Converting my 575+ CD collection into DVDs. Now while most of the files on these CDs are in fact video files, I will not be making actual Video DVDs. Data DVDs make a whole lot more sense. Why? Well simply because my only DVD player (outside of my computers) is my PS2 and that’s not going to be playing burnt DVDs anytime soon. Besides, if I wanted to watch these on my TV, I can simply hook my computer up to it. No biggie. Anyway, this conversion process is bound to take a while, but on the plus side, it’s giving me a chance to revisit what I actually have on these CDs. I’m discovering things I completely forgot I had. With these newfound files, I’m getting interested in watching a lot of these old files. What does this mean for you, the loyal reader? Why more reviews, that’s what! So stay tuned, this project may take some time, but the end result will be fabulous.

Last night Nickelodeon ran the hour long premier of Avatar: The Last Airbender and I thought I’d write a small preview for you guys. I first saw a commercial for this show and thought, wow, an anime on Nickelodeon? How weird is that going to be. I didn’t really have high expectations, but the preview looked interesting, so I figured what the heck, I’ll Tivo it. After watching it, however, I am hooked! Unlike most anime that we see on TV, Avatar was made by Nickelodeon Studies themselves and not imported from Japan. The voice acting is pretty good and the animation is fantastic.

The story is about a world at war. There are four different factions: Fire, Earth, Air, and Water, with the Fire nation waging a war against all the other tribes for the past 100 years. Each clan has people who can manipulate their particular element, called Benders. Legend tells of the Avatar, a warrior who can master all four elements. The show starts off with a young Waterbender and her brother discovering a child trapped in the ice. After freeing him, they learn that he is an Airbender, and the story takes off from there. I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who wants to actually see it.

With a perfect mix of action, humor, and childish delight, Avatar: The Last Airbender is shaping up to be an excellent series. You can catch the hour long premier again Wednesday at 6:00PM or Friday at 7:00PM, right before its weekly time-slot, every Friday at 8:00PM on Nickelodeon.

I added a new category today: Preview. For games, anime, cartoons, and music that we haven’t experienced enough of to make a full review, we’ll just put something in the Preview category.

QSK Edit:  Preview changed to Impressions.

Just watched the Series premiere of Robot Chicken and I thought I’d leave a little note for those of you who missed it. It’s good.

What? You want more? *sigh* fine. It’s really good. And by really good, I mean one of the funniest thing’s I’ve seen in a long time. Essentially, it’s a stop-motion animation show. Using action figures from the past and present and some of the most talented comical writers I’ve encountered, Robot Chicken is a feast for all. Some examples of skits and action figures include Pikachu and Squirtle in a scene together with Squirtle finally breaking character (”Kids! Just read a book!”). Not to mention, Optimus Prime having Prostate Cancer, and President Bush declaring that Tacos are great!

Anyway, for those of you who missed it, be sure to catch the premier again Thursday night at midnight, and a new episode every Sunday night at 11:30 PM.

No, that’s not a quote. This post’s subject is something that I feel is above a silly quote. I have one simple question for one specific person. Most likely they’ll never read this, and even if they do, I frankly don’t care. Are you an I.T. professional? What’s that? No? Interesting. Then I have a suggestion for you. Don’t try to be one! After exhausting myself at work today (not to mention being up at 5:00AM) I was welcomed home with a note saying that our network’s security protocol has changed. Sure, sounds simple enough, right? Yeah, well no, it wasn’t. For those of you out there who might actually understand this, our wireless network was set up with WEP, but apparently that’s not secure enough! Cause god forbid someone wants to look at the computers of three college students (well, okay, maybe a couple of those hidden folders, but besides that). So he changed our security to some other secure thing that slips my mind at the moment.

Anyway, so I come home and find my computer has been frozen for a good long time. Alright, sure, computers freeze, no big deal. So I restart and find that I can’t get on the network. Whys that? Huh, well it seems that I need to completely change my settings in order to access my network now. Fine, I say, if it makes us more secure I guess it can’t be bad. Only thing is, it’s not working. It took a good hour of installing and uninstalling drivers, changing settings, and removing/installing hardware to get these computers back on the network, and I was pissed.

As soon as I saw him, I told him to change it back, immediately. There is no point in us having to go through so much trouble because of him changing something on a whim. So did he? Yeah, he changed it back. Did that help? Not in the slightest. So now, instead of having computers that barely connect to the network, I have three computers that have fatal errors and restart themselves anytime they try to access a network setting. wonderful…

So now, tired, exhausted, (and hungry, but thats not really related), I have to spend my whole afternoon fixing our computers. So solve this dilemma: I need to change the settings on my network drivers. however, every time I access the network drivers the computer freezes up so horribly that it resets itself! *sigh* Anyway, so 5 hours later it’s all over. So I’ve one thing to say. If you don’t know what your doing, don’t fucking do it.

Just a note for those unaware, but in three months time Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith will be released! I know I’ll have my midnight screening ticket, will you? ;)

So I recently got WarioWare: Touched! and I just want to say that Wario will make you his bitch. Yeah yeah, it might sound simple enough, use the stylus, play a minigame, repeat. But after the 25th or 30th round, they get so incredibly fast, it’ll smoke your mind.

Touching is Good
So the big selling point of WW: Touched! is of course, the touching. Each character has minigames designed around a certain aspect of using the stylus, except for the karaoke robot. He just wants you to blow. For example, Wario likes you to tap, while Kat and Ana like you to slice. Other uses include scribbling, circling, and dragging. And then there are the weird ones, like 9-Volt and his old school Nintendo related minigames. One of my favorites is probably one of 9-Volt’s games in which there is a GBA on the screen with the original WarioWare’s nose picking game in which you have to then tap the A button on the screen to pick the nose.

Laugh till it Hurts
This game is funny. Hands down, plain and simple, no doubt about it, and whatever other clichéd phrase you can think of. There is such a twisted sense of the bizarre that you can’t play this game for more than a minute without seeing something so weird, so odd, so ‘what-the-fuck-were-they-smoking’ that you can’t help but break out laughing. Here is but an example of some of the game’s instructions: “Bubbles have only two purposes in life: confusing animals and irritating adults. Choose one and run with it!” or “Hey, Nerdy McGeekerson! You might be a little less of a dweeb if you joined a band! But you gotta learn how to play an instrument, first!”

Toys for Tots
Probably my favorite part of the game is the toy room. After completing different people’s minigames you start acquiring toys. These are essentially minigames that have no point. Also, they are some of the most random things I’ve ever seen in a game. Almost every one makes you say “why the hell did they put that in this game??” Because they could, my friend, because the could. Some of the toys you acquire include: a metronome, a calculator (that only adds or subtracts), a wind chime that blows when you blow in the microphone, a kitchen timer, a parrot (that randomly repeats things you say), and even a big piece of Jello which has absolutely no purpose other than to jiggle when you touch it. So far I’ve acquired about 30 of these things and each one is crazier than the last.

Bottom Line
WarioWare: Touched! may not have packed the same punch as the original WarioWare: Mini MicroGames did a couple years ago, but with 180 new minigames and a completely new way to play each one of them, this is one game that you’ll be keeping in your DS for months to come.