No, I'm not returning to Livejournal.

It's just that I happened to notice that I had 999 posts, and I thought I'd make it an even 1000, lol

(Also I am an attention whore who wants more people to visit his new blog at http://www.sonictempest.net)

For anyone still on Livejournal who wants to keep track of my new Wordpress blog, neochaos has kindly created a syndicated LJ feed which you can add to your LJ friends list:

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/shadowsonicblog/

This should let you keep track of my blog from your LJ friends page.

Thanks a lot, neochaos!

Effective today, my blog will be located at

http://www.sonictempest.net

If you're thinking that keeping up with my blog posts will be a hassle, fret not! I shall show you the magic of RSS.

Click on the following link:
http://www.sonictempest.net/feed/

If you're using Firefox*, click the drop-down box at the top and select "Live Bookmarks," then click "Subscribe Now." It'll create a folder in your bookmarks that gets updated with new links every time I post a new blog entry. Convenient, isn't it?

Hope to see you guys there!

* If you aren't using Firefox and you don't know what an RSS feed is, you're either a figment of my imagination (surely an Opera or Safari user knows what RSS is) or not worth my time (you're an IE user and therefore the scum of the Earth).

http://www.sonictempest.net

This should be pretty interesting to set up.

I got my H-1B visa today.

Just thought you would like to know.

Our price on NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams dropped to $30 recently, and I decided to go ahead and get it. So far I've put in a couple of hours, and played the first two levels of Helen's story (and have yet to finish the first level of Will's story).

How is it, do you ask? Well, it's definitely not what I'd call "bad." It does have rough spots, though. For some reason, Sonic Team decided that the mission-based level approach from Sonic and the Secret Rings was awesome enough to be replicated (Hint: it wasn't). As a result of this, each "level" actually consists of five disparate missions, only two of which actually involve flying. The first mission is always a standard flying mission followed by a boss fight (much in the vein of classic NiGHTS), but the others can vary quite a bit. My favourite of the lot are the Octopaw missions, which are essentially a race to see how many links you can get in a given time limit. The standard flying missions as well as the boss fights are also really fun. The experience of collecting chips, flying through rings and trying to rack up ridiculous link chains remains as addictive as it was 12 years ago.

The other missions types are...not quite as fun. Some involve platforming with the two children (who control pretty sluggishly), and others have you flying around trying to paraloop Nightopians, or collecting water bubbles in a round arena, or something along those lines. The bottom line is, they're not really developed as well as the main game, and feel out of place. Much like in Secret Rings, it feels like a lot of the missions were put in for silly reasons (story, most of the time), and I think the game would be better off without them, even if the result is shorter length.

The classic flying levels have also seen a bit of a change since the original game. Instead of collecting enough blue chips to break open the Ideya capture, you now have to steal keys from giant birds flying around each level. I don't mind the change too much, although it does make it tempting to focus on the bird flying away from you with the key and forget about trying to get links. The new levels I've seen so far look pretty nice - an Alpine area with snow-capped peaks and balloons, an underwater area and a castle surrounded by large crystals. The graphics are serviceable, although framerate dips do occur from time to time. The music is also really nice, but that's really to be expected - if there's anything Sega has done right in the past few years, it's the sound production on their games.

Oh, and there's voice acting.

It's actually not THAT bad - better than the shitty voice acting typical of most Sonic games, but it's not going to win any awards. I have to say, though...something about NiGHTS talking seems so...off. It's not a dealbreaker by any means, but I thought NiGHTS' lack of a voice added to the mysterious, playful appeal of the character. Here, he/she/it has a weird British accent, which works alright, I suppose. Of course, now that all the characters can talk, Sonic Team has gone and thrown in a whole bunch of cutscenes to bookend the levels. The pre-rendered stuff is stunning as always, but the in-engine cutscenes make my eyes bleed. On top of that the game is very inconsistent about whether it'll let you skip cutscenes or not, which is kind of irritating when the designated helper character (an owl with a British accent, creatively named "Owl") keeps jabbering on and on about the storyline, oblivious of the fact that I just want to start playing already.

There are a bunch of control options - not being a masochist, I opted for the classic controller straight away. It's definitely the best of the options I've tried, but I have one gripe with it, and it may be a problem in the longer run. The Wii's analog stick is 8-way, much like the GameCube, and this restricts NiGHTS' flying motions to the 8 cardinal directions with no granularity in between. You can get used to it in time, but it still doesn't feel quite "right," in the same way that it didn't quite feel right to have to hold down the 2 button to jump properly in Sonic and the Secret Rings (I'm still not used to that, by the way). As a caveat, I never got to play the original NiGHTS into Dreams with the Saturn analog stick, so I have no idea if the game had a full 360 degree range of motion. Still, if there's any game out there that would benefit from something like that, it's this one.

At this point, I'm not regretting my purchase - I was hesitant to buy it for full price since I had heard about the issues, but at $30 it's a pretty good buy. I'd really like to compare it to the recently-released NiGHTS remake for PS2, especially since the PS2's controller may resolve the control oddities I mentioned above.

Remember that X-men manga I blogged about a while back? The one that was trying to do a weird shoujo version of X-men with the institute being an all-boys school?

Pictures have surfaced.

Many lulz were had.

From time to time, when faced with a question about industrial development in Singapore, someone will trot out the predictable line "What do you mean we don't have any successful private home-grown MNCs? Look at Creative!"

Never before in my life have I felt more like punching that hypothetical person in the face.

Creative is not what I would call a "successful" MNC by any means - while their sound cards were good once upon a time, and they were one of the pioneers in hardware-based positional audio, they completely missed the boat when it came to integrated audio (something they're belated trying to make up for), and have been utterly flattened by Apple in the digital audio player space in spite of having been one of the first companies to enter the market. Their practice of disabling card features in software so they can force people to "upgrade" for better features (and suing people who try to make up for their lacklustre drivers) is pretty reprehensible. And of course, their drivers have sucked for a long time, and often come packaged with useless bloatware. Their failure to perform is most evident, of course, in their quarterly results, where performance has been abysmal for years on end.

So where am I going with all of this? Well, I have a Creative sound card. An X-fi XtremeGamer, to be exact. And I'm not sure that it was a good buy.

The first warning signs that I had made a bad purchase were when I tried to play Sam & Max Episode 104: Abe Lincoln Must Die! (which is awesome, by the way, if you like point and click adventure games) on it. The audio would periodically hiss or play back way too fast, which was a major issue for a game that focuses a lot on funny dialogue. It turned out this was an as-yet unresolved issue with the X-fi. More recently, after installing the latest driver, any WAV or MP3 files I play have the same issue. Even when my MP3s manage to play correctly, they're interrupted by intermittent popping and hissing. I'm really glad I backed up all my favourite tracks to my new 8GB Sansa e280 (which I seem to have forgotten to mention on this blog) or I would be even more mad right now.

A few Google searches suggests this is an issue with X-Fi cards ONLY on nVidia chipsets (due to PCI bus behaviour), which is of course not at all what I wanted to hear.

I'm going to try a reinstall to see if it fixes anything, and failing that I'm getting rid of it and switching to my onboard sound chip.

EDIT: Looks like the reinstall fixed something...I saw a whole bunch of registry entries get deleted and re-added while I was running the setup program.

YOU WIN THIS ROUND, CREATIVE! D:

As you might have guessed from the title, this is another geekspeak-heavy post. I’ll try and make it digestible for the less technically inclined, as usual :p

This past week I took part in a course at work, meant to help Amazon employees understand Amazon Web Services (Click here if you don't know what those are). They’re basically a bunch of services that we vend to software developers to use in building applications. Examples of this are the Simple Storage Service (or S3) which is a simple data store which charges users based on how much space they use. There’s also the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) which is a service that lets developers purchase computing time to perform tasks that they can’t do with the resources that they already have (like, say, running complex operations on data sets). In any case, as part of the course, we had to build something using the services that we sell, without access to the internal tools that make our lives easier.

I teamed up with a friend from my team, and we set to work building a system that would allow people to search for MP3 downloads on the Amazon.com MP3 store (shameless plug!) using the lyrics from the song instead of the title or artist name. We did get it working successfully (about half an hour before the deadline), and presented it to the entire class. At the end an award was given out for the best project.

We didn’t win, but it didn’t bother me that much, mainly because of something else I found out from one of the facilitators of the course. Apparently, while testing our code over the weekend, we generated so much traffic to one of the services that the engineer who was on call for the service that week got paged, and had to figure out who or what was creating so many requests to the service.

So, we didn’t win, but we did cause some poor guy to get paged over the weekend.

Sometimes, it’s the little things in life that matter. :D

---

I’m looking at following szyl_kalimsshar and fatcatlim’s lead and ditching LiveJournal for my own webspace. Not so much because I disagree with their policies, but because I want a lot more control over what I can do with what has essentially become my little corner of the Internet. Does anyone know of any good hosting services? I’m looking at running either WordPress or a Ruby-based content management system called Typo (because Ruby is one of my favourite programming languages). The idea behind running the latter is that I can modify the code if I feel like I need to (I don’t know PHP).

So, any suggestions/recommendations?

It's been about 5 months since I got my Wii. I don't usually get consoles this close to the start of their lifetimes, but I made an exception in the Wii's case since I was intrigued by the possibility of new methods of interacting with game worlds. Well, that and the fact that there was a Sonic game on it that wasn't entirely bad. Five months on, I find myself satisfied on the whole, yet still disappointed at certain ways in which the experience has been lacking.

First off, let it be known that there IS good third-party software for the system. I've been largely happy with Capcom's efforts on the system, and Sega has also shown some rare (if rough) inspiration with titles like Sonic and the Secret Rings and NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams. I've heard largely good things about other titles like No More Heroes as well. Unfortunately, good third-party software is far from common. There's a LOT of shovelware on the system, and much of it is either in the form of completely uninspired minigame collections or lousy ports of PS2 games. The Wii has the largest install base of all three current-generation consoles thanks to its low price and emphasis on "casual-friendly" gaming, but so far long-time gamers appear to be expressing dissatisfaction at the third-party software available on the platform, and I would have to agree with their complaints. Nintendo's first-party efforts have been largely solid, if excessively familiar, but what really keeps gamers committed to a platform is a reliable stream of quality third-party software. It's why the DS continues to be a success in spite of its own casual gaming focus, and one of the reasons why the PSP and PS3 are finally seeing success.

The other thing that annoys me about the Wii is how underdeveloped certain aspects of the system are. This isn't a knock against the CPU/GPU performance of the system (it's not even as powerful as the first Xbox, seeing how it lacks programmable shaders, but that's not my focus here) - it's a gripe with the capabilities of the hardware. For one, the 512MB internal memory is incredibly limiting. The lack of significant internal storage has already gimped Guitar Hero III's feature set, and the much-anticipated Rock Band will similarly lack downloadable content. In addition, once the WiiWare service launches, Wii owners are going to find themselves strapped for storage space with downloadable titles vying for space with Virtual Console games. An easy fix would be to support USB hard drives (and Harmonix has already openly asked for such a feature) but it seems unlikely Nintendo will do anything of the sort.

In addition, the Nintendo Wi-fi Connection has proven to be a major hassle. A limited online service hampered by the need for "friend codes" made sense on a handheld with relatively simple firmware and no in-built storage, but on the more powerful Wii it makes absolutely no sense. Why doesn't the Wii have support for the same things that Xbox Live or even PSN does? I've been gaming online since before it was even possible on consoles (1997, with Starcraft, Diablo and Quake) and even those games had far more robust online features than anything on the Wii. No unified friends list, strange and hard-to-remember friend identifiers (which are game-specific for some reason), no support for voice chat peripherals of any kind...WFC is just lacking in so many respects that it's not funny. I do play Super Smash Brothers Brawl online, but it's enough of a hassle that such occasions are rare (compared to say, the times when I log on to Steam and play Team Fortress 2).

I've had fun with the Wii, and there are games, both upcoming and currently available, that I'd like to play on it, but I feel that Nintendo is in danger of squandering its lead if it doesn't address the shortcomings in its platform. Attracting casual gamers is all well and good (and lord knows there are still millions of people out there who shell out money for shovelware) but annoying the core gaming audience who have bought into their platform is far from a recipe for success.

( Say cheese )

EDIT 2008/04/12: Replaced the photo with a better-quality one from my cell phone.

Just when I thought Sonic Unleashed was looking pretty nice

/headdesks

17-month OPT extension for F-1 students with US science degrees

This means that I won't have to travel anywhere this year, although I may have to next year depending on how things work out with my H-1B application. Still, it's one less thing to worry about.

Please stop telling me that the PC is dead or is dying as a gaming platform. It simply isn't true, and it pisses me off.

Thanks.

I'm not sure when my tastes changed, but I seem to have become a great fan of the slice of life genre of anime.

The term is usually used to refer to a series with no real continuity or ongoing plot, where each episode is a series of vignettes from the characters' everyday lives, usually with some elements of humour sprinkled in. Many people I know can't stand this genre, and sometimes put this question to me: "How can you stand to watch a 24-episode show where nothing happens?" And truth be told, I don't have a good answer. The root of this fandom probably lies in the great Azumanga Daioh, which I watched way back in my first year at college. Since then, I've made it a point to check out new slice-of-life series as they've shown up on TV, and have thus managed to enjoy series like Sketchbook, Lucky Star, Honey and Clover...and most recently, Aria, of which the final episode aired this week.

Aria is an interesting thing. While most series tend to get worse as new seasons are announced (y halo thar You're Under Arrest), it has gotten better over its 65-episode run, and this final season in particular has proven to be absolutely wonderful. Its only real fault is somewhat inconsistent animation quality. And yet, it features no conflict, no action, no violence, nothing that would attract your average anime fan to watch it.

Perhaps it's just that I find myself able to appreciate the subtleties of the world of Aqua that Aria manages to express, both through its great atmosphere as well as its characters. It's a quiet, laid-back world, yet in spite of this its nuances are always enjoyable when they're revealed. The show is definitely character- rather than story-driven, and I can appreciate this too, since the characters are all very distinct and have their own loveable personality quirks (with a lot of hidden depth).

Anyhow, I guess my point is that if you're one of those people who doesn't mind watching a show without giant robots, epic battles or intense human drama, I heartily recommend Aria. There's a lot of it (65 episodes spread over three series) but if you're anything like me, you'll enjoy every moment of it.

...still can't believe it's over ;_;

Amazon's going to be filing for my H-1B visa on Tuesday.

Just for some perspective, there are 65,000 H-1B visas given out every year to foreigners who want to work in the United states. The actual number of applicants is something like ten times that number, so what USCIS ends up doing is running the applicants through a lottery and picking 65,000 names at random.

Yes, whether or not I get to stay in this country will depend on some programmer's implementation of int rand(). You can probably imagine what I think of this process, so I won't vocalise it.

If I fail to get it with this filing, I can only apply next April...and my existing visa expires on July 9th, meaning I'll have to leave the country. I'll have to do this even if I get the visa (since it only takes effect on October 1st) but in the event of a longer delay I'll have to look at the possibility of moving to another Amazon location. Truth be told, the prospect of having to uproot myself from a fairly comfortable existence isn't really doing much for my peace of mind at the moment. It was easy enough to push to the back of my mind when the date was months away, but now it's pretty much all I'm thinking about.

Maybe I'll try to drown it out with caffeine tomorrow morning.

It's almost April, and it SNOWED while I was at lunch today, for a good 2-3 hours or so.

WTF.

Pictures as soon as I can get them off my cell phone (Bluetooth refuses to work for some reason).

:3

I came across this interesting article at Slashdot a while ago (warning, link contains technobabble. I'll do my best to explain it below)

One thing that has become a big issue in the past year or so in the tech world is the problem of "net neutrality" - i.e. that all traffic on the Internet should be treated equally. This has become a particularly acute issue over the last few months, with Comcast's practice of filtering peer-to-peer traffic (like BitTorrent) becoming perhaps the best-known recent incident. The argument put forth by those who support ISPs' right to control what goes through their networks suggest that the explosion of services like BitTorrent, streaming video and HD content in recent years means that today's ISPs are unable to meet capacity demands, and thus should use whatever means necessary to prevent bandwidth needs from spiralling out of control. Some have even suggested that ISPs should shape traffic in order to prevent people from swapping files over P2P illegally.

There is some element of truth to this argument, if only because broadband infrastructure in the US is in a woeful state - The FCC's definition of "broadband" is data services above 200Kbps. As a point of reference, I had a 256Kbps ADSL line in Singapore...nine years ago. There are plans afoot to raise the bottom bound to 768kbps but this still doesn't resolve the major infrastructure and cost issues with getting quality broadband access in the US - people in Asia and Europe are much better off. So I say that if ISPs find themselves in a capacity constraint situation, they probably have themselves to blame for not investing in infrastructure while they had the chance.

Well, at least, until I read the article above. It claims that the capacity constraint brought upon by the advent of P2P services can be relieved not by legislation or political wrangling, but by good old network engineering.

The article should be a good enough summary for the techies who might be reading this, but let me attempt to explain it for the less technically-inclined.

At the bottom of the problem is the protocol used to handle the majority of the Internet's traffic, the Transmission Control Protocol or TCP (Just like how a real-life protocol dictates how two humans might interact, a networking protocol is a description of how two computers can communicate over a network). Just about all traffic that requires reliable delivery from one endpoint to another uses TCP, and this includes a lot of P2P services like BitTorrent. The article suggests that TCP's built-in congestion control mechanism - i.e. the safeguards put in place to ensure that the networks aren't flooded with TCP packets - is inherently biased in favour of traffic similar to that generated by P2P applications. This is for a couple of reasons:

1. P2P applications use multiple connections, and thus aren't constrained by TCP's congestion controls


2. P2P applications transmit data continuously over long periods of time, while other applications like HTTP (web pages) and e-mail tend to use "burst" or intermittent tranmission

The combination of these two factors means that P2P traffic tends to "crowd out" regular TCP traffic on most networks (probably not on your home PC, since TCP congestion management focuses on upstream transmissions rather than downstream, but this would certainly be an issue for an ISP).

The immediate solution proposed by the article (or rather by a researcher at BT) is to change the TCP protocol to weight applications that use fewer connections more heavily, so that they don't get drowned out by P2P traffic. P2P transmission speed will take a hit while other applications use burst tranmission, but will recover once they're done. There are a few other, longer-term solutions discussed as well, but the main thing the article reinforced for me was that this should be treated as an engineering problem, nothing more. It can't be legislated away.

It also casts a somewhat different light on ISPs, in that they really shouldn't be subject to the vitriol they are these days. This resonates with me to an extent, in that as owners of a network, they're obliged to do whatever they can to prevent traffic from exploding. However, I still think that filtering is really only a short-term solution at best. I'd say it's better to invest in better infrastructure and long-term technical fixes (like the one discussed in the article, whether or not it ends up being feasible) than trying to stop a leaking dam from bursting.

I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.



It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.

(Thanks to fatcatlim, who found it at Kotaku, who in turn got it from somewhere else)

GlaDOSたん大好き～