Duality

I’m posting this reply here because I hate having to log in just to comment.

Lloyd, that’s what happens when you stand with the two tallest Asians in the world. Man, did I get short-changed… oh, the pun’s so bad. Since when was Abraham taller than Aaron?

The weird thing about the UC Davis COE graduation was that it was so much nicer than the Berkeley graduation—indoors, plenty of space for guests, free parking, live band—yet it lacked the energy and enthusiasm. It was utterly devoid of hijinks. Only a couple of paper airplanes thrown around (as opposed to the beach balls and soft frisbees thrown around at my graduation), no fancy names (e.g. Jay “hey, let’s go paintballing” Lin), no on-stage theatrics. I really wanted to yell out “Bigi! Hunter pose!” but not when everyone else was stoic-ly walking across the stage.

But anyway, congratulations, Bigi! And onto the pictures:

• Waiting for it to start. You see the two largely, empty rows in front of me? One group reserved it all. Bastards.
• Walking in.
• Overview. Features: live band, screens.
• Bigi gets in line. And is still in line.
• Bigi on-stage. It’s a picture of two brothers (also shown above).
• Bigi’s cap design: bow and arrow.
• Let the celebration begin! Actually… let’s get out of here first. (Bigi: can I go yet? I’m thirsty =))
• Best cap design ever: super mushroom. Runner-up: airplane.

I have pictures from Bigi’s graduation, but I won’t post them yet because it’s already 1:30 in the morning due to a game of Magic that ran longer than intended. I’ll post them tomorrow—tomorrow being later today.

So, here’s basically what I did for the past four days: playing Magic, trading Magic, and reading about Magic.

Today, I opened Photoshop for the first time since I started Magic Online. Feels like forever.

I have arrived. And it feels good.

Well, the outrageous price of theme decks and boosters doesn’t feel good. (btw, Xero, took me a few tries to figure out how to use those trading bots. But in the end, I scored 32 useful commons for 1 event ticket)

“Did you see the headline of the San José Mercury News? Steven Jobs to change to Intel chips.”

“That’s old news, Dad.”

Apple dumps IBM for Intel.

The scary part about this decision is that it does make some business sense, given that Apple has laid the groundwork for transitioning current software to the new hardware. Let’s face it—the PowerPC 970 (aka G5) was slapped together. IBM didn’t devote the necessary resources then, why now? IBM is designing the CPUs for all three next-gen consoles. It has no need to deal with Apple anymore. Also, Apple could piggyback off of Intel’s motherboard designs. In this age where your GPU is as important as your CPU, wouldn’t it be nice to have PCI-Express?

Intel must have made the deal really sweet for Apple because it’s widely known that AMD CPUs are currently faster than Intel’s. I hope Apple doesn’t use the Pentium 4 or a CPU with a similar architecture. Among CS/EE academia, the Pentium 4 is the biggest joke.

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Edit: I’ve thought about it more. It makes a lot of business sense, actually. In the keynote, Jobs said that they have been maintaining an X86 port of Mac OS X for 5 years. 5 years ago, Motorola was struggling to improve the G4; now IBM is letting the G5 languish. These stalls in performance are definitely hurting Apple’s image.

The screennames have been hidden to protect the weak.

[Seigi]: Warning of ‘Quadoshock’ not allowed.
[Seigi]: haha

Quadoshock: owned

As some of you may know, I am a HUGE fan of superhero cartoons. In particular, the WB storylines including Batman TAS, Batman: Gotham Knights, Batman Beyond, Superman TAS, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited. Heck, even Static Shock counts. So while some of you join me in watching new JLU episodes every Saturday night, I don’t share your anticipation of what happens next. Why? Because I’ve seen them all!

Cartoon Network, as great a channel as it is, likes to prolong things as much as possible. They know that they are the only station in the US who is showing episodes of JLU and therefore decides to take their sweet time. However, they’re not the only station in the world who gets to show JLU. YTV, a station from Canada, has all the same episodes of JLU (and even Teen Titans. Yeah, I’ve seen all of those new ones too.) and they don’t like to make their viewers wait. So for those of us who know where to look, it’s a very simple process to download all the latest episodes months before CN decides to show them.

So what does this all mean? It means that I’ve just finished watching JLU 213, the final episode of Season 2. And while it’s taking every last bit of restraint not to tell you everything that happens, let me just say that for us Batman Beyond fans, this is the ending we’ve been waiting for since 2001. However, with Season 2 now finished, it eggs the question (pun intended), will there be a Season 3? Well, I’ve done extensive research and found several things that might possible imply a 3rd Season. So, if you’ll bare with me, I’d like to work it all out.

Back in February, Cartoon Network issued a press release stating its intentions for the coming year. Down the list is the following:
“Justice League Unlimited: This season, Black Canary, Shayera, Vigilante, Vixen and The Question step up to face such villains as Lex Luthor, Felix Faust and Tobias Whale. And Superman takes on Cadmus in a battle that will determine the future of the league. Twenty-three new episodes will air in 2005.”

23 new episodes? Let’s do some math…

JLU Season 1 had 13 episode. 2 of which aired in 2005.
1/22/05 – 112 – The Once and Future Thing: Weird Western Tales
1/29/05 – 113 – The Once and Future Thing: Time, Warped

That’s 2 down, 21 to go. The schedule of JLU Season 2 has so far been:
2/5/05 – 201 – The Cat and the Canary
2/12/05 – 202 – The Ties That Bind
2/19/05 – 203 – The Doomsday Sanction
5/21/05 – 204 – Task Force X
5/28/05 – 205 – The Balance
6/4/05 – 206 – Double Date
6/11/05 – 207 – Clash
6/18/05 – 208 – Hunter’s Moon
6/25/05 – 209 – Question Authority

That’s 11 down, 12 to go. The only announced and unaired episode left is:
7/2/05 – 210 – Flashpoint

That’s 12 down, 11 to go. However, we’ve still got three episodes left in Season 2:
211 – Panic in the Sky
212 – Divided We Fall
213 – Epilogue

Assuming that CN doesn’t screw over it’s loyal viewers and make them wait till next year to see the end of Season 2, that makes 15 new episodes in 2005. So where are the other 8? Even if they don’t actually air in 2005, thats still 8 JLU episodes unaccounted for. They’re not from Seasons 1 or 2, so they must be from a yet-to-be announced Season 3. And while my logic may not be foolproof, it’s more than enough for me to hope. Anyway, I know this is probably interesting to like three other people in the world, but thanks for humoring me through it. When JLU Season 2 finally does finish here in the US, I’ll try to post some kind of review/wrap-up.

But after all of this, even if there isn’t a 3rd Season, I could die happy. I can’t think of better way to have had the series end.

Two little bits of info that might interest you. Firstly, Gamestop has started taking preorders for a new Legend of Zelda game. The interesting part, it’s for the Revolution. Even more interesting is that it’s listed to be released on March 1st, 2006! Either Gamespot got some highly top secret information, or they’re all a bunch of wishful thinkers.

Secondly, a recent article in EGM claims that despite statements to the contrary, Square-Enix is in fact remaking Final Fantasy VII for the PS3. Unfortunately, EGM claims no source for this rumor so I have once again had my hopes raised and then immediately destroyed. Damn you Squenix!!! …I’m sorry Squenix…let’s never fight again.

Recently, this image surfaced on the Gamestop forums, and eventually lead to several other gaming news sites including Console Junky. Like everyone else, when I first saw pictures of the PS3 and it’s new controller, I thought ‘boomerang’, but no one had yet to see the size of the controller compared to anything else. Well now with this new picture, it looks like thing’s aren’t going to be as bad as we all thought. Sure it may still look like a boomerang, but it doesn’t really look much longer than the PS2 controller. In fact, some parts of the controller look even smaller (am I the only one who thinks those analog sticks look small?). Anyway, while we still have a long time to wait before we can ever get our hands on one of those, I’m sure glad someone else was able to.

Oh, and on a semi-related note, Japan’s Nikkei Electronics publication recently came out with the dimension specs of both the new PS3 and the X-BOX 360. You don’t need to understand Japanese to get the gist of it, but if you do speak Japanese and feel like translating any of it (I’m looking at you emmy or Wako since I’ve been told you not only speak Japanese, but live in Japan) then that would be great!

I know I’m probably the only person in the world who finds this to be awesomely amazing, but I’m gonna share anyway. For those of you who have seen the new Batman Begins movie, you might have missed a very short shot that had Barbara Gordon! Even I, Batmaniac that I am, didn’t catch that she was in it until the credits ran. So afterwards, I go to imdb.com and find out who played Barbara Gordon. Turns out it was an actress named Ilyssa Fradin. So, who is she? Well, you could go to her website and find out, but I’ll save you the suspense of the page loading. She’s a Voice Actress! AWESOME! …Well I told you I was probably the only one who would find it amazing. It’s not my fault you continued to read. ;)

For those of you who don’t look into gaming news much, you may have missed some of the biggest Nintendo news. However, whether or not this news is factual or not is still to be determined. Regardless, Gamespot has put together a great article describing the three most common Revolution rumors. One deals with what appears to be US Patents. Another is supposedly an ad for the controller. And lastly, and if true the coolest one of all, an ad that states the Revolution will be released in March 2006! That’s right folks. Just in time for my birthday. ;) And while most of these may turn out to be false, they’re still more than enough to get me excited.

I may be a sucker for that sappy “this is your life” stuff, but it usually chokes me up none the less. And for anyone out there who has been watching movies for any part of the last 30 years, you’ve all got someone to thank; George Lucas. But for those of you who haven’t thanked him yet, you can at least watch other people doing it for you. Recently, the American Film Institute bestowed George Lucas with the 2005 AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, and for our enjoyment, the entire ceremony was taped and this past Monday, televised. If you would like to see it, you can catch an Encore presentation this Saturday at 2:00AM and Sunday at 9:00AM. Otherwise, you can download it from various Torrent websites (none of which I’ll mention, but I know it’s out there). Anyway, it’s a great tribute and a moving event. If you can watch it, I’d recommend you do.

TV.com posted an article about the upcoming Family Guy movie. While it’s not going to be coming to theaters, Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story will be released on DVD on September 27, 2005. Apparently, the new movie will be about Stewie abandoning his plans for world domination in favor of a plan to find his true father. Interesting…

Earlier today, Gamespot posted a new article which discussed the upcoming release of “adult” content on the PSP. And while this may not be real news, I couldn’t not post my title line. That would have been a crime against comedy! Anyway, for the sensitive ones out there, the link contains some “adult content.” Or at least it discusses adult content. Don’t wanna get your hopes up there ;)

and I was watching TV at the same time. True multitasking ;)

Three way game.
Quad, Me, Emmy.
55 turns.
Three hours long.
I end up decking.
Quad had 6 life.
I had 21.
*sigh*

Yesterday I went to go see the new Batman movie, and as a huge Batman fan, I just have to say that this movie is awesome! It’s everything a Batman fan could want. They didn’t try to be exactly like the comic books, and that’s a good thing. They took the basics and created their own storyline and I’m here to say that it is good! They even ended it with the possibility of a sequel starring none other than my favorite “Mista Jay“. ;) Also, the fact that the cast was mostly unknowns worked out better than you could imagine. Anyway, if you’ve ever liked Batman, you owe it to yourself to go see this movie. You won’t regret it!