warpr

I moved to france!

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 01:17:00 +0100

Ok, I did not. But I did move most of my websites to gandi hosting in france.

As part of the move I cleaned up my old frob.nl page, threw away some stuff and moved the rest to 320x200.org. I also copied some posts from tumblr. I will probably post on 320x200.org from now on, so please update your rss feeds if you’re reading me at tumblr.

Achievement Unlocked

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:39:00 +0100

Achievement Unlocked:

Not long ago, I was very impressed with the achievement system of Xbox Live. In fact, I was so impressed by the concept, that I started working on similar system not limited to any specific platform or technology. However, now that I actually have an Xbox 360 and take a closer look, it turns out achievements are not what they seemed to be. My vision of the Xbox achievement system is much superior compared to the actual achievement system microsoft implemented :)

As a somewhat obsessive hardcore gamer, the statistics I am interested about when playing games are:

Have I finished the game? (preferably this has some more detail, like a list of all the levels is the game with a little checkmark next to the ones I’ve finished).
How long did it take me to finish the game?

And, well.. that’s about it. Microsoft has the technology to implement that, but instead uses it to add a whole bunch of arbitrary challenges to every game released on its platform.

Atleast I’m not the only one having that opinion, check Achievement Unlocked.

Piksel 2008

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 09:32:00 +0100

Piksel 2008 has ended. I went to see the live performances on thursday and sunday, some presentations on friday, and had a quick look at the real.code thing on saturday.

Despite having a lot of workshops, presentations and performances, the event did not really feel like it was intended for an outside audience. Most of the people there seemed to be involved in this scene of audiovisual software/hardware hackers, in that sense it seems similar to a demoscene event.

From the performers I’ve seen, a lot seem to indulge in some sort of noise-wankery. I like to have at least some sort of melody or recognizable beat when listening to music, but for some reason these people think they don’t need that. It’s as if live-coding in Pure Data already makes it Art, so why bother actually making it enjoyable for your audience?

I did enjoy the _rrr performance on sunday, though I wasn’t properly awake when seeing that because some drunken students had kept me awake most of the night before. And I really enjoyed the performances by IOhannes zmölnig and Gabor Papp & Agoston Nagy.

“Do sinusoids dream of electric sweeps?” by IOhannes is another live-coding performance with Pure Data. It is interesting conceptually because he added some interesting bits to his patches. He could make the patches move around on their own in his Pure Data work area, and not just move around, also automatically making connections to other patches (based on proximity in the work are?). The end result (the audio) wasn’t terribly interesting, but as a performance I enjoyed it.

“No Copy Paste” by Gabor Papp & Agoston Nagy was the best performance IMO. The first six minutes of the performance are silent, the performers start from scratch and it takes them a while to set up sound and visuals. Music is made in Pure Data by one of the performers, which was projected to one of the screens (sadly you do not see that in the video of the performance). In he mean time, the other performer is creating the visuals on the main screen using Fluxus, and he is able to interface with pure-data to use some aspects of the music as input to the visuals.

Videos of the event are here: http://giss.tv/dmmdb/piksel08 (you may need VLC to view the downloadable .oggs). The piksel homepage is at http://piksel.no.

Conclusion: I did enjoy visiting Piksel, also, Bergen is pretty (for pictures see http://www.flickr.com/photos/kuno/sets/72157610695427713/ :).

Silent Hill 2, Katamari Damashii

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:24:00 +0100

I just finished Silent Hill 2. I was playing on easy, because some creature kept killing me really early in the game on normal, and I was afraid it would only get harder. Looking back I should have persevered, playing on easy just removes too much of the tension the game is supposed to have. I think that’s also why the game seemed so short, it probably is on easy.

I’ll be sure to play Silent Hill 3 on normal, I will probably start on that soon.

In related news, I also finished Katamari Damashii recently, also quite short, but that was expected. It remains one of the most remarkable games when it comes to styling and user interaction, almost every little detail has been tweaked to stray just that little bit from the cliche approaches you find in other games. I’ve already started playing the sequel, and somehow it still doesn’t get boring.

electronic ink netbook?

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:45:52 +0100

electronic ink netbook?:

Please, everyone vote for this idea! I want my electronic ink netbook :)

The Stolen Scepter on violin

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 23:25:00 +0200

The Stolen Scepter on violin:

I’ve seen enough videos by now of people playing video game music on their pianos, but I enjoyed seeing this, someone playing falcom (sound team j.d.k) music on violin.

Fucking stolen scepter. I remember getting lost in that first level of sorcerian, over and over again. I never got very far in that game….

Alexander Marcus - Ciao Ciao Bella

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 23:41:14 +0200

Alexander Marcus - Ciao Ciao Bella:

creepy.

Gambits

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:24:00 +0200

I’m still undecided on the gambit system in Final Fantasy XII. In the field, grinding is less tedious, the decisions you would normally make over and over again for certain enemies can just be configured once with the gambit system. So, in that sense, the gambit system makes FF12 more fun (or atleast less annoying) compared to previous final fantasies.

But, with a decent gambit setup I don’t have to do anything during a boss battle either. So, my typical boss encounter in Final Fantasy XII will be something like this:

check if none of my characters is healing the boss with some elemental property on his/her weapon.
check if some damage is done to the boss regularly.
walk away and do something else for a while, until I hear the victory tune from across the room.

I can’t help but feel that something is seriously wrong with a game if I can go do something else while the game plays itself during those moments which should’ve been the most exciting bits of gameplay.

Binärpilot

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:21:00 +0200

Binärpilot:

(for no specific reason)

engine drone

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:29:00 +0200

I’m in the middle of the city, I have the living room window open. It’s about 23:00 in the evening, fairly quiet outside except for the occassional car speeding through the street below my 1st floor window. It’s the peace and quiet of the city, with sounds of cars and muffled conversations, but none of the daytime chaos.

I hear the sound of a ship approaching. I walk over to the window as a fully loaded ship is slowly gliding through the little canal. The slow engine drone reminds me of summer holidays in my youth, a soothing sound. It fits the mood of this evening.

I love my new flat.

Distractions

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:39:00 +0200

Not having internet at home has shown me that indeed I am more productive without that distraction (until my offline python documentation refers to documentation online for a certain feature >_<).

But how can I create such a situation at work where I’m working on websites for clients and need to be connected to an ever changing list of domains and ip adresses?

ps. Yes, writing this post has been another distraction.

I R BAK

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:40:58 +0200

Yay! I’m back online:

you can talk to me on irc (and aol/icq/msn if you must).
or send me mail.
and the few sites on my home machine are back too (http://320x200.org and http://frob.nl :).

more garr.

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:03:00 +0200

more garr.:

I enjoyed watching play:digital on channelflip/blip.tv ever since I discovered it. I subscribed to their rss feed and watched every episode as soon as it was available, yay rss bla bla. A few months ago, new episodes stopped appearing — it took me a while to notice, but there was no explanation everywhere.

Today I discovered they’ve been back since the beginning of june, with probably weekly episodes. garr! Do they really hate their audience that much that they won’t even take the trouble to tell them on the old rss feed that the show is now new and improved and has a new rss feed?

They’re not the first to do that to me either. If you’re going to change your feed address, fucking post about it using the old address to let ppl know about it, how hard is it?

more garr. GARR.

still more of the no internet.

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:26:08 +0200

My internet connection at home should be ready on august 1st. However, I have to return the keys to my previous flat on july 31st. Which means I have to move the server out of my old home before that.

320x200.org will be offline during those days, and I shan’t be able to receive email or visit irc either. Hopefully I’m back online before the weekend.

I finished Final Fantasy X-2 yesterday, which was slightly dissapointing. It seems the second half...

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:01:00 +0200

I finished Final Fantasy X-2 yesterday, which was slightly dissapointing. It seems the second half of the game is mostly side-quests with not much story to them, I skipped lots of these side-quests but still defeated the final boss with ease. I guess Rikku’s sphere thingy was a bit overpowered.

Oh well, atleast I can start a new game now, which is always fun :). Looking at the options:

I could start on Final Fantasy XII right away, but it’s probably better to have a break and play something else in the meantime. I had a quick go at Jet Set Radio on dreamcast, it doesn’t play nearly as smooth as Future, I guess I’ll skip it. I could continue with Transformers (atari, ps2), but it’s not very good — it just annoys me that my savegame got lost.

Other options are:

Silent Hill series (will have to start at 2).
Katamari Damashii
Odama
Pikmin 2 (hm, I actually started on this, but never finished it).

Neo Freerunner

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:40:00 +0200

Neo Freerunner:

Hm, if calls work reliably on this thing, it could be an interesting option too — anything else has no priority and can be hacked on.

UPDATE: oh meh, no UMTS.

Hackers & Painters

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:06:00 +0200

Hackers & Painters:

I’m not much of a reader, but I’m thoroughly enjoying Hackers & Painters. It’s oddly motivating too.

Moving

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:00:51 +0200

Yay! I moved. I have a much nicer place now, but have to wait two weeks for my inernet connection to be moved.

ik bin su eil

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 07:28:56 +0200

ik bin su eil

now playing...

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:15:00 +0200

Yay, I just finished Yoshi’s Island DS — which wasn’t very good so I’m not going to spend any more time trying to collect everything. In the meantime, I am trying to get all gold medals in Burnout 3, only three left or something.

The next games I will be playing on the commute:

Single player story of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (ds)
Metal Gear Solid Portable (psp)
Final Fantasy VI (gba)

At home I will probably start on Jet Set Radio (dreamcast) when I’ve finished Burnout 3 to my satisfaction, although in theory I’m also still playing Final Fantasy X-2.