/blog/ddaydj

Restore Default Junctions

2011-12-03T09:04:00.001-10:00

I recently changed my user name on Windows. Using some registry trickery I was also able to change my actual user folder. With the exception of a few programs that were using static pointers to my user folder (Dropbox), everything went well. But later I started getting errors from Windows Backup like this though.

Backup encountered a problem while backing up file C:\Users\ddaydj\Documents. Error:(The system cannot find the path specified. (0x80070003))

I was ignoring it for a while, but got tired of my backups having errors. After looking around my computer and doing some research, I realized my junctions that were created with the user profile, were still pointing at my old user folder (I did an article about junctions a while back). So I went ahead and made a script to go through and delete all the default junctions in my user folder and recreate them.

Below is the script I wrote. You can copy and paste it into notepad and save it as a .cmd file. It requires that you run it as an administrator, so if your user account is not an admin change the 3rd line where it says %USERPROFILE% to the path to your user folder (Example: C:\Users\ddaydj).

Edit: Well, I just learned a lot more about doing batch files. Below is an updated version of the script that should be significantly nicer to look at and easier to understand (not to mention 71% smaller). Also, if you want your My Games folder to redirect to Saved Games, remove the REM from line 17.

@ECHO OFF
SETLOCAL
SET MYUSERPROFILE=%USERPROFILE%
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\Application Data" "\AppData\Roaming"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\Cookies" "\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\Local Settings" "\AppData\Local"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\My Documents" "\Documents"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\NetHood" "\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\PrintHood" "\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Printer Shortcuts"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\Recent" "\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\SendTo" "\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\Start Menu" "\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\Templates" "\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Templates"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\AppData\Local\Application Data" "\AppData\Local"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\AppData\Local\History" "\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\AppData\Local\Temporary Internet Files" "\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files"
REM CALL :MKJUNCTION "\Documents\My Games" "\Saved Games"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\Documents\My Music" "\Music"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\Documents\My Pictures" "\Pictures"
CALL :MKJUNCTION "\Documents\My Videos" "\Videos"
GOTO:EOF
:MKJUNCTION
RD "%MYUSERPROFILE%%~1"
MKLINK /J "%MYUSERPROFILE%%~1" "%MYUSERPROFILE%%~2"
ATTRIB +S +H +I "%MYUSERPROFILE%%~1" /L
ICACLS "%MYUSERPROFILE%%~1" /deny *S-1-1-0:(RD)

Edit #2: Turns out this wasn't what was causing my problems Windows Backup. My registry modifications to migrate my profile were incomplete and I also needed to change all the entries here to point to the new folder, HKU\SID\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders. The script is still helpful for cleaning up junctions though.

HTTPS is less secure?

2011-11-26T07:27:00.001-10:00

There's been a crazy trend with modern web browsers that I really think needs to be addressed.

Typically, when you're going to access a website it uses HTTP, which is not very secure. Everything going between you and the site can be easily seen by everyone. HTTPS encrypts your communcation with the site by using a certificate. Certificates on the sites that you visit are generated by a Certificate Authority (CA). Your computer comes built-in with a list of who all the CAs are and when you get a certificate for a website, it check that it was issued by someone your computer trusts.

In case you didn't guess, certificates from these places cost money. A common thing to do for connections that are only going to be used inside your network, or for smaller sites is to use a self-signed certificate. These certificates provide the same level of encryption that the ones from a CA do. The difference is your computer can't verify where it came from.

So my problem comes in with how modern browsers handle these self-signed certificates. When you go to a site with a self-signed certificate Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome all hit you with a page warning you that the site you are about to connect to may be insecure. Even worse, the latest version of Firefox actually gives you the warning, but won't let you click through it and automatically stops you from visiting the page.

I understand the need to warn users that a site might not be using a certificate issued from a CA, but to treat it like its somehow less secure than going to a site without encryption is just crazy.

Automatically open a KeePass database

2011-07-02T16:53:00.001-10:00

I'm not sure if this is a new feature or not, but I found a useful thing to do with KeePass. You can use command line switches to specify things like which database to open, and then give it the things it needs to open it, like your password and the location of the keyfile. Having KeePass launch automatically when I log on is very convenient for me. The issue with this is that the shortcut would end up having your database password in it for every who went poking around your computer to see. The latest version of KeePass has an option to encode a password using your Windows account so it will only work on that profile.

To set this up, make a new entry in KeePass for your master password. In the auto-type tab, change the default sequence to {PASSWORD_ENC}. Now, what I did was made a small batch file called keepass.cmd and placed it in my startup folder in the Start Menu. The contents of the file looked like this.

SET DATABASE="C:\path\to\Database.kdbx"
SET KEYFILE="C:\path\to\pwsafe.key"
SET PASSWORD_ENC="blah"
START "" "C:\Program Files\KeePass Password Safe 2\KeePass.exe" %DATABASE% -keyfile:%KEYFILE% -pw-enc:%PASSWORD_ENC%

Put the full path to your database and keyfile in the quotes on the first and second line. For the 3rd line, use auto-type on your master password to add the encoded version of your password, it will be something insane like 350 characters long. Save the Batch file and you can now run it to automatically open your KeePass database. Because of the way the password is encode, it will only work on your current windows account, if you use multiple computers, you'll need to get the unique encoded password for each one and modify the batch file. I'm pretty sure this will only work with version 2.15 or later. Any questions or feedback is always welcome.

Mad Catz Pro Guitar as a 4-String Bass

2011-05-07T21:38:00.001-10:00

I'm going to give the disclaimer up front that I really don't know much about instruments and I could be completely wrong about this. That being said, I figured out how to get the Mad Catz Pro Guitar to be used as a 4-string bass (using the top 4 strings) by changing sound font and tuning. After hooking up the guitar via MIDI and turning it on, press triangle 5 times to change the sound font to Accoustic Bass (you can press it a few more times other styles of bass) and then box once to tune it down. If my understanding of tuning is accurate, this should set the strings from top to bottom as E1, A1, D2, G2.

Output Monitor from MIDI-OX

Switching to a password manager

2011-04-12T08:46:00.002-10:00

Its amazing the number of people I know who still use the same basic password for everything in their life. There have been a number of high profile security breaches in the last few months. If you had an account with any of the companies that was attacked every single account you have online is at risk. So I'd like to go over a few ways I have that you can start using unique passwords for everything you do and don't have to remember any of them.

The program I'm going to recommend is KeePass. Another popular one is LastPass but I have some concerns about using that one. KeePass will generate and manage passwords for anything you need. I have mine keeping track of passwords for websites, computers on my network, and even cd-keys for software I've purchased. KeePass saves all of your information in a database file which you can bring along with you to be able to access from outside your home. I'm not going to get into detail about how to use KeePass since there's some excellent guides on their site. I will go over some of the features that I think are important that might be overlooked.

Before setting up KeePass you need to figure out how you're going to access your passwords when you're not at home. The two ways that I recommend are; carry around keepass with your database on a flash drive, or sync your database to all the computers you use with DropBox.

KeePass + Flash Drive
If you're going this way, I recommend using KeePass 1.xx. It is much lighter-weight than 2.xx and doesn't require .Net which every computer might not have. You'll want to download the ZIP package and uncompress that to your flash drive. From there KeePass will work like a normal program but save all the settings on the flash drive instead of the local computer. With your database saved on there as well you'll be able to pull up your passwords on any Windows computer.

KeePass + DropBox
This is what I use and is better if have a set of computers that you always use. I recommend KeePass 2.xx for this method. The computers you'll be working on you'll have more control of so install feature rich programs should not be an issue. 2.xx also has a wonderful synchronize option when saving that makes sure you don't overwrite changes done on another computer. Use the installer to put KeePass 2.xx on the computers you use. Create your database and save it inside your DropBox folder.

One thing I strongly recommend you do if going this route is create your database a key file. This will be a small 64byte file that will be required in addition to a password to unlock your database. We're doing this because your database with all your passwords is going to be floating around online. If anyone were ever to get access to it they would be able to brute force their way into your database. By using a key file its like adding a second password that is 64 characters long, adding a huge layer of security. On home computers you can save this locally. For computers outside the safety of your home, I recommend carrying a copy of your key file on a flash drive that you'll need to plugin when unlocking the database.

Other Access Methods
While both of the above methods are fairly versatile, you might find times where you are without access to your passwords. The best solution that I have is to access KeePass using a phone app available for iOS, Android, and most other phones through J2ME. If you are using the flash drive method, you'll have to make sure to copy the latest version of your database to your phone when you make changes. If you're using DropBox, both iOS and Android have DropBox clients so you'll be able to pull the latest version of your database as long as you have internet access. You'll also need a copy of the key file on your phone if you're using this method, so keep that in mind.

A very important thing no matter which method you use is to keep a backup of your database. If you're using DropBox it will keep old versions of the file on record, but you'll still want to have a local backup just in case.

After you get comfortable with using KeePass, I recommend setting your passwords to expire after a preset amount of time. I have mine set to every 90 days. If a password expires, I won't worry about it until I go to use it. Then I'll use it one last time to log into the site, and change my password to a new one generated by KeePass. This creates a stagger so that you're not overwhelmed one day with all of your passwords being out of date.

Auto-Type is a wonderful feature where KeePass looks at the name of the window you're currently using and sends your password to that window. It requires a little bit of setup for each password, but if you give good names to your password entries it will do most of the work on its own. One thing I would recommend is change the default auto-type string to exclude {enter}. This will prevent your username and password from accidentally being sent if you are not in a place expecting you to log in.

I hope this helps. Feel free to leave any feedback or questions in the comments.

Why I'm Sticking with Chrome

2011-03-29T11:57:00.000-10:00

This is in response to Why I’ve Switched From Chrome to Firefox 4 over at Lifehacker.

First off, all of the things they list I agree with and think a great features of Firefox 4, but here's why I'm not switching back.

Security
Chrome continues to be the most secure browser on the market. This year's Pwn2Own only had two teams go up against Chrome and neither was able to use any exploits to gain access to the system. Chrome also packages a light-weight PDF reader and Adobe Flash Player with the browser. Adobe Reader and Flash Player have for many years now been one of the biggest security holes in user's computers. Security flaws are frequently found in both and while Adobe has been much better in recent years about pushing out updates in an timely manner, their auto-update still leaves much to be desired putting responsibility on the user to keep both up to date.

Updates
Which brings us to the way Chrome updates, you will never have to update Chrome. That isn't to say Chrome doesn't update, but it doesn't require any interaction from the user to do so. This means that you'll always have the latest version of the browser without having to check for an update and go through the process of installing it. This update will also come with the latest release of Flash so you won't have to be worry about updating that on its own.

Isolation
I was amazed this feature wasn't in Firefox 4 but Chrome isolates all tabs, plugins, and add-ons in their own process. If Flash crashes for whatever reason (which still a thing), then the entire browser goes down with it. If this happens on Chrome, I just reload the tab and Flash is reloaded without affecting anything else.

Installing Add-ons
Firefox still requires you to restart the browser anytime you install an add-on or change the theme.

Overall, while Firefox is better by leaps and bounds compared to 3.5, when you compare it to Chrome and even Internet Explorer 9, I think it still feels like a dated browsing experience.

My Recent Gaming Endeavors

2011-01-21T16:49:00.000-10:00

After almost two years of being on a limited budget my finances finally became stable late last year. With Christmas over with, I was able to pick up a lot of the games I had been wanting to play over that time. So I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on them.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

I have very mixed feelings about this one. Finishing Assassin's Creed II, I was done with Ezio, and really didn't want to see anything else with him. This outlook didn't change much playing through the game. In general the events of the game interesting in the grand scheme of the Assassin's Creed storyline, but on its own I found it rather dull. The gameplay made up for this though with dozens of distractions around the city to do and some very fun new ways to kill people. While stabbing dudes in the face is one of my favorite passtimes, summoning assassin's who appear out of nowhere to stab dudes in the face for me turned out to be even more satisfying. Its like you have a private army, following you around, hidden from even your view, ready to kill at a moments notice. Overall it was a fun game and a required playthrough if you are invested in the series.

Dragon Age: Origins

I have mentioned this many times before, but probably not here; I love Bioware's games but find them nearly unplayable. Every time I've played a Bioware game, I am mesmerized by their characters and story. What holds me back from enjoying them is gameplay that seems to require a level of research, planning, and micromanaging that I am not willing to give. Mass Effect has been the exception up to this point since it is essentially a 3rd person shooter. Dragon Age also had these issues for me but I was able to overcome them with a mod to respec my characters at essentially anytime and another that improved the game's AI scripting for your party. With the gameplay to a point that I could enjoy it, playing through Dragon Age was a wonderful experience. In all I ended up putting 75 hours into the game and I still have the expansion to go through. Mass Effect always gave you a good assortment of dialogue options so that you could either play your character as a the good samaritan or the heartless badass, but Dragon Age gives you more morally grey areas and different ways to approach them. With few exceptions, I was always given an option that felt exactly how I would respond to the situation and because of this I got a very personal experience out of interacting with the game's characters and shaping the story.

Bayonetta

This game is crazy in all the ways I want a crazy Japanese game to be. I won't try to describe how insane the game gets because there's no way I'll do it justice. But one thing I can say is that game ends 5 times! It ends, then you play an epilogue, and it ends again, the credits roll, then you play some more, credits roll again! ... and then there's more! Great character action game, with a wonderful "easy" option that lets you mash on one button and the game will automatically choose a combo or move that is appropriate for the situation. I ended up using this for the later half of the game since I was more interested in seeing what insane thing would happen next than any challenges from gameplay. I will be going back to this one after I'm caught up with my backlog to finish it on normal and tackle the huge amount of unlocks this game has.

Red Dead Redemption

Finished this one last night. Its really interesting to see how Rockstar's game progress from one game to the next. In many ways this game is Grand Theft Auto IV with cowboys. Gameplay-wise, I think that is very true with the aiming and cover system feeling very much the same. The main missions seemed to tie together a lot better though and always seemed to be moving towards the main story in one way or another. While the story was good, the game's main character, John Marston was by far my favorite aspect of the game. He falls into the same situation as many of Rockstar's other protagonists of someone trying to escape their past. Unlike all the previous incarnations, he seems to fight it every step of the way and never accepts. Despite the things he's done in his past, he comes across as an honest and morally sound. I think the best example of this is when you run into a prostitute (a staple of Rockstar games) instead of being present with an option to hire them, the character simply says "Thank you ma'am, but I have a wife." Sadly, I found the last few hours of the game quite disappointing, but won't go into details.

Alan Wake

Started this last night and got done with the first episode (chapter). My initial impressions are quite bad. While I'm mainly playing it for story and atmosphere and those have been good so far, other parts of the game have not been enjoyable. I find the controls unintuitive, specifically with the rather vital button for run and dodge being the left bumper. Second, I don't think the game looks good at all. Motion blur is in full effect and enemies are covered in a dark haze, so its usually possible to just overlook. The game is also full of pre-rendered video which is noticeably compressed and seem to be there only because the textures on the game engine are high enough to show off the Verizon logo on Alan Wake's phone.

And that's it for notable games I've played the last few months. After Alan Wake I still have Infamous and Dragon Age: Awakening to take care of so maybe I'll check in with feedback on those. One thing I did notice when I was playing through these is I wasn't really interested in the challenge the games were trying to give and was more interested in the experience they gave from start to finish. Not sure if this has anything to do with me being older or my taste in games changing. I have put about a dozen hours into Super Meat Boy, so...

Put My Games Folder in its Place

2010-09-18T14:11:00.000-10:00

On XP and earlier Windows OSes, all your files went in My Documents. In there you had My Music, My Pictures, etc. In Vista and forward your user folder has been rearranged so that each of those has its own folder in the root of your user profile. One folder that still shows up in there though is My Games. Its a default save location for saved games that try to follow Microsoft's filing system, this folder's new home is Saved Games. While there are redirects in Windows already to point programs to UserName\My Music instead of UserName\My Documents\My Music, for some reason My Games was not given this treatment. Luckily, its pretty easy to add.

First off, rename your current My Games folder in My Documents, something like My Games.bak will be fine for now. Open up a Command Prompt and browse to your My Documents folder.

cd\
cd %userprofile%\Documents

From here, you're going to create a Junction which is like a Shortcut on the system level.

mklink /j "My Games" "%userprofile%\Saved Games"

And finally we'll remove it from sight with this command.

attrib +s +h +i "My Games" /l

Now move the contents of your My Games.bak into your Saved Games folder. From now on when a program goes to access My Games, it will use the more appropriate Saved Games folder. One note, if you will need admin privileges to do this, so if you are running cmd as another user you won't be able to use the alias %userprofile% and instead will have to type out the full path "C:\Users\".

How to Protect WoW from Devious HomeGroup Users

2010-08-04T19:17:00.001-10:00

HomeGroups in Windows 7 are awesome. Its an easy way to share content on your computer with other users on your network. There is a rather large issue with it though. Its not an issue with HomeGroups specifically but more with how modern games get around needing Administrative Privileges to run updates. Games like World of Warcraft install on Vista and 7 to C:\Users\Public\Games\. The problem is that by default when you join a HomeGroup this directory gets shared out with full read/write access to everyone in your HomeGroup. To prevent a malicious user from destroying your WoW install, you just need to change your NTFS permissions on that folder.

Start by opening Computer and browsing to C:\Users\Public. Right-click on the Games folder and go to Properties. In the Games Properties window click on the Security tab and then Advanced.

Our goal is going to be to remove the Everyone entry from the permissions list which currently has Full Control. Click on Change Permissions. Before you can remove Everyone from the list, you'll need to turn off inheritable permissions (currently Everyone can access C:\Users\Public\Games because they can also access C:\Users\Public) by unchecking the Include inheritable permissions box. It will ask you if you want to Add the current permissions to the new list you'll be making or remove them and start with a clean list, click Add.

Now scroll to the Everyone entry in the list and click Remove. To be safe, make sure that Administrators is in the list with Full control and/or your user account. If it isn't click add type in either Administrators or the user name you use to log into windows and in the window that follows click Full control and OK.

That's it! Go ahead and OK out of all the windows that are still left open. Now only administrators and people you added to the list will be able to access that folder. When someone accesses it from a HomeGroup they are using the HomeGroupUser$ account which is not an administrator and was being caught in the Everyone permissions before. With that gone your WoW install is now safe from being randomly deleted by bored network neighbors! If these directions weren't clear enough, or there's anyone questions, speak up in the comments.

My ISP Sucks

2010-08-01T15:36:00.002-10:00

Being on an island in the middle of nowhere doesn't give you many choices for internet providers. Here in Hawaii we have two choices for broadband access; the local cable company, Oceanic Cable (Time Warner/Road Runner) and the local telephone company, Hawaiian Telcom. I've been with Road Runner since I got here over 10 years ago. While I still think they provide the best service on the island, it still sucks.

Unreliable connection
Earlier this week there was a statewide outage from 12:00am til about 7:30am. The issue turned out to be caused by an undersea cable being severed. I don't blame them for this since its a rare occurrence and something they couldn't have easily prevented. What I do take issue with is me periodically losing connection to the mainland and essentially the rest of the internet in the process. I can run a ping on one of the routers on island and have no breaks in the connection, but if I run a ping on the first router outside Hawaii it goes in and out throughout the day. This means unless I'm just connecting to sites in Hawaii, I can't access anything. It usually happens every few hours and will last anywhere from 20 seconds to 10 minutes.

On the left is a local router (oahuhimili-rtr1.hawaii.rr.com) on the right is a router in california (tustca1-rtr1.socal.rr.com).

Unsecure Email
I did a post on this a while ago, but Road Runner has no authentication on their SMTP servers (the ones used to send email). They don't require a user name or password, and the connection between you and their servers is not encrypted. While their POP servers (where your email is stored online) do require a user name and password, there's still no encryption. All communication with these servers are sent in plain text, so anyone eavesdropping on the connection would now have the username and password for your email account.

Packet captured while checking email.

Poor User Privacy
I've had to call Road Runner a few times because I've gotten locked out of the account I use to pay my bill to them. This is usually because I have multiple passwords for different Oceanic sites, and I sometimes forget which one is to pay my bill. After a few incorrect attempts I get locked out. Calling up support they are helpful and are able to unlock my account without much work. The problem is that after they unlock my account, they read off my password to me. They don't reset my password to something new and give me that, they give me my current password which means its something they can pull up. I've also had the same issue with my email account where the help desk person was able to pull up my password. The amount of verification done before we get to this point is information you could get off of any copy of my monthly bill. Working at a support desk, or even an administrator, you should never be able to access a user's password. The only thing you should be able to do is reset it to a new random password and give that to them.

Stop Buying Discs

2010-07-07T14:26:00.000-10:00

I use to be a big supporter of buying physical copies of things. The idea of paying for something that I could see and hold was important to me. In the last few years I've switched sides. Last month, I found that two things I had purchased were no longer usable. My copy of Zone of the Enders 2 for Playstation 2 had mysteriously developed cracks stemming from the center of the disc, and my copy of Neon Genesis Evangelion Platinum Edition Vol.1 almost looks like its been melted. This made me very said, both of these I had bought new and paid 50$ and 40$ respectively. It just went to solidify my stance that physical media for games is a bad.

The alternative is to acquire everything digitally, and I'm gonna stick to purely legal methods here. Digital distribution still has some issues in many cases but I think Steam provides the best example of how you should do it. After I buy something on Steam, I can download and play it on any computer that I am logged in on. Steam allows me to download things as many times as I want without limitations, and at speeds that cap out my home connection I might add. All the limitations imposed how you can access your content would not cause any issues with any legal use of the products you bought.

I think a horrible example of digital distribution would be iTunes who I've bought one thing from an will never ever buy from again until they change their policy. iTunes started out by selling everything with DRM which made it so any music or videos you bought could only be played in iTunes or Apple devices. To my knowledge all their music is now free of DRM and I would hope the videos are the same way. Ignoring the DRM though, iTunes only lets you download things you purchased once (or again after like a week of purchase). So this means that when my iPod died a while ago and I wanted to re-download a game I had previously purchased iTunes told me to go and re-buy it and that I should have backed it up. Its a fucking 10mb game sitting on your servers that would cost you next to nothing to transfer to me and they refused. There are some other good ways to get music as well such as Amazon which is DRM-free as well, though I'm not sure what their policy is about re-downloading things. As far as movies, I haven't gotten the impression that there's a good source to buy movies digitally and most places seem more focused on either renting to you or streaming.

So that's my argument for digital distribution, let me give some examples of why I think you shouldn't buy physical copies of things anymore. As previously mentioned, there's my issue of your media dying for whatever reason. I take good care of my stuff. My copy of ZoE2 being broken is probably one of my old roommates abusing it. My copy of Evangelion though is beyond my understanding and you'd really have to see it. I think the last time I watched it was a few years ago and it was in the 360 so I'm wondering if the inherent fact that the 360 is a fire hazard had something to do with the damage to the disc.

In the case of games, they usually come with a box and manual. Manuals in 2010 are pointless, in fact Ubisoft isn't even printing them anymore. I believe that any modern game that you need to read the manual to know how to play has failed in game design. Collector/Limited/Special Editions have just become a way for publishers to get people to spend more than 60$ on a game. Throwing in things like, soundtracks, postcards, or in-game items cost next to nothing for them to package in and allow them to bump up the price. Most of the other stuff that comes with special editions of games I usually end up just throwing in a box never to be seen again. Probably the only exception for me personally has been things that come with figures or models that are of decent quality.

If you're not buying a game because of all that other stuff then you're buying it for the game itself. Its a disc, physically identical to a million other disc you could walk down to Best Buy and pickup. The reason you're paying 60$ for it is for the content on that disc which you could get digitally online. Right now I think that if you're playing games on PC you're hopefully already getting all your games digitally whether it be from Steam or D2D or some other service. Hopefully in the next few years consoles will have a better model for digital distribution making that finally practical as well as the way that we get the rest of our media.

Mission Control is Online

2010-04-09T19:02:00.000-10:00

Finally back to 3 monitors! <3

120hz is a Scam

2010-04-05T10:21:00.000-10:00

The popularity of 3D in movies has got people talking more about 120hz on TVs. This has been driving me crazy that people are putting so much importance on this without realizing what a sham it is.

So a quick rundown of what I'm talking about. Hertz (hz) on a TV is used to measure how many times the screen refreshes the picture in a second. For as long as we've had TVs they've been running at 60hz. This number is used because it matches the current coming from the wall and was easy to use that to keep the timing in sync. All the movies, tv shows, etc you've ever seen is either 24hz or 30hz just for reference.

So the selling point with 120hz and higher TVs is that they provide a smoother picture because the the screen refreshes more often. The problem is that the content you're watching is still only 24/30hz, so what it's doing is upconverting. I think a really good analogy is 1080p, another thing people will tell you about when you go buy a new TV. When you get your 1080p TV, the sales guy is going to tell you that you can watch your old DVDs which are 480p and get an upconverting DVD player to make them 1080p, or you can get a Blu-ray player and watch movies in native 1080p. There is no 120hz content that you can go out and buy now, nor is there any plans for it. Your computer is capable of outputing 120hz, but usually only at lower resolutions like 480p. Now we run into the even bigger lie. All these 120hz TVs won't accept a signal higher than 60hz. So even if you did have content that was 120hz, your TV would be downscaling it to 60hz, and then upscaling it back to 120hz.

Final Fantasy XIV UI

2010-04-01T17:45:00.003-10:00

While after putting 7 years of my life into Final Fantasy XI and have no intention of playing it ever again, I am interested in Final Fantasy XIV. With 8 years of working on MMOs and being in a better position to plan for hardware limitations, I think that Square would be able to solve a lot of the issues that still plague XI today. There was a video released a few days ago which showed some players running around in the game.

I'd like to pick apart some of the user interface elements I noticed. First off, its very clean and is either not actually what you'll see when you play, or there are elements that are hidden. I'm going to guess that many of the elements such as a chat box and hotkeys are hidden since that's how XI is by default. So on the screen we have 3 things; the players status which includes their name, hit points, and magic points, a minimap, and a network status. Obviously, the player status in a no-brainer and has the basic information you're going to want in any MMO. The minimap is a welcome addition that was absent in XI. It seems to not only show your location on the map but also the location of NPC characters. The one thing here that has utterly useless is the network status. If they're really going for a minimalist look that should be removed from the game all together.

As I mentioned there are a few things that are missing for the UI that are rather important such as the chat window and hotkeys. So we have no idea if the game will be limited to one incredibly clutter chat window like XI currently has. Hotkeys I won't say too much about since we don't know how the game is going to play. Issues that Final Fantasy XI has though is laggy macros, limited to 6 commands in a game that is built around swapping in and out up to 48 pieces of gear with each action. If the game moves away from this, they still would benefit from having some way of telling the cooldown time on a spells. Another thing not shown and which is a great flaw of XI is information on what you're targeting. Being able to see buffs and debuffs would be very helpful, and the distance from your current target is a vital value to show if this is going to play anything like other MMOs on the market.

I really don't know what to think about this game. On one hand, Square could simply refresh Final Fantasy XI with new graphics and a few slight changes to the progression system while ignoring all the annoyances and limitations that have plagues their first online game. Or they could actually learn from all their work on one of the most popular MMOs and not only fix issues in their existing game but avoid ending being held back by limitations from creating a cross-platform online game. I look forward to seeing which way they go and hopefully I get invited into the beta to get a better impression before its released.

Time Travel and the Ever-Moving Universe

2010-03-29T09:25:00.001-10:00

I've come across an issue with the concept of time travel that has been bugging me for a while now. I'm gonna use Back to the Future for my first example to get the idea across.

In Back to the Future, Marty McFly travels from October 25th, 1985 to November 5th, 1955. My issue is that not with the actual moving through time, but moving through space. In 1985, the location he starts at is a shopping mall, but when he arrives in 1955 he is outside the city because the mall hasn't been built yet. I think for it to be accurate he should have ended up in the middle of space with Earth nowhere insight. We used years to measure how long it takes for our planet to go around the sun, so we'll say for now that if he had come back to October 25th, 1955 that this might have been okay. But instead he came back 11 days later, with the planet having moved about 17 million miles away from where it was when he left.

The other issue is that not only is our planet constantly moving, but our solar system as well as everything else in the universe is constantly moving as well. I think the answer to maintaining your relative position to an object when time traveling requires the gravity being a component in your method. In that regard, I think Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home makes the most sense as far as keeping your relative position while traveling through time. In Star Trek, the former crew of the Enterprise slingshot around the Sun at warp speed to arrive 300 years in the past. Because the gravity of a massive object like the sun was a vital component in this method, it makes a lot more sense to me that they would arrive in the same relative position that they started in.

Anyways, this is not something that I think there's really an answer for since time travel isn't something that we know anything about. Atleast it will give me something to talk about next time I meet an astrophysicist.

Best Secret Question Ever!

2010-03-18T22:40:00.000-10:00

What is the true anomaly of my favorite celestial body on the day I was born?

Utada "In the Flesh" 2010

2010-01-17T22:35:00.004-10:00

I think this sums up the concert pretty well.

Favorite Music for 2009

2010-01-03T11:28:00.000-10:00

Here's some of my Last.fm statistics for the last year.

Top Artist

Yasunori Mitsuda (1,773 plays)
Motoi Sakuraba (1,190 plays
Akira Yamaoka (1,165 plays)
Yoko Kanno (1,071 plays)
Green Day (950 plays)
The Beatles (872 plays)
Bruno Coulais (867 plays)
Delerium (645 plays)
Chris Hülsbeck (616 plays)
Yuzo Koshiro (568 plays)

I started listening to Green Day again this year (I listened to them when I was in high school for a bit) and really really like American Idiot. The Beatles was largely inspired by The Beatles: Rock Band coming out this year and me wanting to learn lyrics and there's a bunch of other Beatles songs I like as well (obviously). Bruno Coulais did the soundtrack for the animated film Coraline which came out earlier this year. Easily one of the best films I saw all year and the music is part of what made it so great. Everyone else on the list is pretty much my regulars. I've been listening more to Mitsuda's stuff lately and maybe one day he'll catch up to Sakuraba on my list who got a huge number of plays a few years ago when I was on vacation and listened to nothing but Trusty Bell and Forest of Glass for two weeks.

Top Tracks

Bruno Coulais – Exploration (66 plays)
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – All Along the Watchtower (51 plays)
The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Swallowtail Live (47 plays)
Green Day – Know Your Enemy (37 plays)
The Beatles – Ticket to Ride (36 plays)
Bruno Coulais – Dreaming (35 plays)
Bruno Coulais – Mechanical Lullaby (35 plays)
Shaimus – Left to Dry (35 plays)
Bang Camaro – She's Gone (Critical) (34 plays)
Hiroko Kokubu – Eternity ~Memories of Light and Waves~ (33 plays)

I forget what exactly it was that triggered it, but I went a few weeks listening to a lot of Jimi Hendrix and at the top of that was his cover of All Along the Watchtower. Brian Jonestown Massacre is a new band I started listening to after watching a documentary about them called Dig!. A truly amazing band that I even got my step-dad hooked on. Shaimus is a band I picked up from Rock Band and the first track of their new album was amazing, sadly I didn't care for most of the rest of the album. I'm honestly surprised that the arrangement of Eternity by Hiroko Kokubu isn't higher on my list. While Final Fantasy X-2 might have had some issues as a game, I think the game had good music and the piano album has some beautiful songs.

New Computer!!!

2009-12-08T23:11:00.002-10:00

Finally! After having pretty much the same computer for 7 years I finally built a new computer. I've been wanting to build one for the last 4 years, and thanks to my severance from leaving CompUSA I've had the means for the last 2 years. I've been doing the responsible thing though and holding on to that money until I had stable income again. Well screw that, I've waited long enough and wanted a new computer.

So first to give you an idea of what I'm upgrading from. My old computer I built right before I left my job at Cinematic Computer. I remember cause I bought the parts from Cinematic Computer, but ended up building it at PC Pro, the place I ended up working shortly after. Here's what I started with

Motherboard: Intel D845GEBV2
Processor: Pentium 4 2.53Ghz
Memory: 512MB DDR333
GPU: ATI All-in-Wonder 8500
Hard Drive: Western Digital 30GB

Over time I got more memory up to 2GB, added a few hard drives finishing at 60GB, 320GB and 500GB, and someone was nice enough to give me a 2.8GHZ which was compatible with my board. I also upgraded the video card to an ATI Radeon 9800 and when that died a few months ago to an ATI Radeon HD 4650.

My main motivation to upgrade was an issue I had with my video card. I upgraded my computer to Windows 7 shortly after it went RTM and let me assure you that after you use 7, you will never want to use any previous version of Windows again. Well turns out that my video card doesn't like 7 for some reason. I was having my computer crash constantly anytime the video card was in use like playing games or watching movies. I went back and forth with the card manufacturer for 2 weeks and they weren't helpful at all. So I decided that this would be a great excuse to just build a new computer.

I did some research and got some feedback from friends online and was able to get a list of parts I was very happy with. Here's the complete order list.

Case: Antec Three Hundred
Powersupply: Antec EarthWatts 650W
Motherboard: Asus P6T Deluxe V2
Processor: Intel i7-920
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 5850
Memory: OCZ 6GB DDR3 2000
Hard Drive: Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB, Caviar Green 1TB
Optical: Plextor DVD-RW
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)
Misc: Antec 120mm Case Fan x3

Quite an upgrade from what I was running. Overall it cost me just under 2000$, but I'm expecting its going to last me for quite a few years, especially when you consider how long I stuck with my last one. One problem I ran into was that the video card I wanted just came out and wasn't in stock anywhere online, or if it was was severely marked up. I had everything sitting on a wishlist on Newegg and waited for the video card to be in-stock before I ordered everything else. They had an ETA for them to restock so I was checking the site all that morning from my phone while I was working with my mom and step-dad. When I refreshed the page and saw that the "Auto-Notify" had been replaced with a "Add to Cart" button I raced out of the apartment we were working in and rushed home to order it. It was a good thing I hurried cause they seemed to have sold out in just a few hours. The next day I ordered the rest of the parts with the exception of the case which I picked up locally since shipping would have been 100$ and it was only 3$ more to pick it up from Best Buy.

So I had my case, and my card showed up last Friday, and my parts arrived at dock on Friday around noon but weren't delivered until the following Tuesday evening which was driving me insane. But all is well cause I now have all the parts and got it all put together.

I went ahead and took some pictures while I was assembling stuff. Not my best cable managing job, but good enough for now, and I'll go through some point soon I'm sure and clean it up.

Update: Woke up this morning and did a much better job with the cabling. Where'd all the cables go!

Net Neutrality 101

2009-10-27T14:13:00.001-10:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

From Here to Neutrality

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

This was on The Daily Show last night. While its a basic explanation it does get the idea across. I think in general there has been little coverage given to this topic in any outlet so its good to see something more mainstream finally bringing it up.

"Soundtrack" is not a genre

2009-10-18T19:12:00.000-10:00

For starters, I think the idea of genres is stupid to begin with. If your music is so bland and predictable that you can throw a label on it and group it together with thousands of other artists why are you listening to it. I do like to use genres when I organize my music instead of making playlists. As an example, if I'm in the mood to listen to Pixies, I probably won't mind if you mix in some of The Clash as well. More mellow bands like Iona would more than likely not be welcome in this group.

So a huge problem I have is that a very large majority of the music I listen to is soundtracks from video games. Soundtrack is not a genre, its not a musical style. Its the medium that the music was presented in. Now if your only thinking of music you've heard in movies or some of the more epic games, then you probably think all of it sounds the same. I gonna bet that if you're reading my blog, you probably know that it doesn't all sound like that, not by a long shot.

The problem that I run into is that I want to assign genres to music I listen to for organizational purposes but with the exception of a few artists, they all vary their style so much that its difficult to look at an artist and put all their music in one genre. Not only that, but some of the albums have different genres inside the album itself making me wonder if I should go all out and hand pick the genre for each song. A perfect example is Granado Espada which goes between classical and electronic with a few pop and celtic songs in there just to really throw you off. With more normal music I can simply look up on wikipedia or last.fm what genres other people have associated with an artist and its usually in line with other things I have listed in that category. But thanks to "Soundtrack" being considered a legitimate genre, this doesn't work with 80% of my music.

Since we're on the topic of genres, I hate it so much when I ask someone what kind of music they listen to and they name one genre... and then stop. Typically this happens with people who listen to some form of electronic, but no matter what genre you say I think its pretty bad if your taste in music is that limited.

Passwords should be private

2009-10-05T09:14:00.002-10:00

I had this issue a while ago with Oceanic and I thought it was resolved, but then something happen the other day that showed that was clearly not the case. Back when I was first playing around with sending mail through Gmail using Road Runner's servers I was calling support and talking to them a lot. At one point they asked me to confirm my password which confused me. I asked them to repeat themselves and they were asking me to tell them my password. It wasn't so that they could try it themselves, but so that the random technician I was talking to could confirm that what I was typing was the same as what he was looking at on the screen. He was able to pull up my password on his account. At the time, this was a big deal for me as I was using 3 passwords and sharing them for various things. This password he had sitting in front of him was used for various other sites and even some things on my computer. Now this is a poor security practice on my end which I have fixed, but its also a horrible policy on their end as well.

I called back later and asked to talk to a supervisor to find out why some random tech is able to pull up my password. It took them a while to get back to me but someone quite nice eventually got back and explained the situation. The tech was able to read off what my password was last time they reset. This would be a random password they generated, and I would have changed it to my personal password after. The tech, she said, would not be able to pull up my current, personal password. So all was well. Or so I thought...

Oceanic's billing site changed a while ago from using a pin to login (4 digit password) to a normal password (alphanumeric). I had forgot I changed my password and failed to login too many times which resulted in my account being locked. So I called them up and asked for them to unlock my account. The asked for some random information to confirm I was me and then asked for my pin. I gave them the wrong pin first, and then she says 'no, that's not we have on file, we have ####'. She just gave me my own pin... but whatever, I had answered a few questions already so I was more than likely me. Then she says 'alright, I've unlocked your account and your password is ###..." I told her to stop. She was reading off what my old password was, she didn't reset, she just pulled it up and was reciting it to me. No at this point I'm using randomly generated passwords for all websites, so this is unique and can't be used for other sites. Still the point is you should not be able to see a users password.

To clarify what the ideal situation is, if a user gets locked out of their account, after you confirm that the users is who they say they are, you unlock their account and if need be reset the password to something randomly generated. This is standard policy on every network that I have ever had to deal with and it amazes me that for starters, any seems to be able to pull up my password in their system and that they don't have this type of reset policy in place. I really wonder what's going on over at Oceanic and am even more amazed that after sending them 3 resumes they never bothered to contact me for an interview.

Internet Pizza!

2009-08-30T20:52:00.005-10:00

I've always been pissed off that you can't order pizza online here. Any time I visit one of the websites they always say online ordering isn't available. They won't even give a menu since Hawaii has some insane prices. Well it turns out I've been wrong... you can order pizza online, they just have a different website. So I was very happy that I could see the prices of things I was ordering before I actually ordered it. Even better was that I could see all the deals they had and figure out which one I wanted. This resulted in the following conversation with a friend online.

me: i found how to order pizza online
friend: nice
[talking about Saw movies for a bit]
me: anyways, pizza, online, i must order it
friend: okie
me: you're in school, figure this out
friend: what? look it up?
me: what's the area of a 12" pizza, minus the area of a 14" pizza
friend: woah
me: how do you get the area of a circle?
friend: idk geometry man D:
im learning it now
me: :/
so you don't know about circles?
friend: not really...
me: lame
i'll ask google
area = pi * radius ^ 2
so the radius of a 12" pizza would be 6
friend: yep yep
ik radius :D
me: 113.09 = 12" pizza area
153.93 = 14" pizza area
friend: woah. mk
me: so in percentage, how much bigger is 14" pizza?
friend: why are you trying to figure this out?
oh
uhmmmmmmmmmmm
me: to see if large pizza is worth the increased price
we're doing math to order pizza
friend: wow, nice
idk how to figure this out tho D:
me: ok, so 14" pizza is 36% bigger than 12" pizza
its actually easy
friend: thats worth it then
me: 14"/12"
friend: sry, im looking at game trailers
me: well no, we gotta look at price now
friend: oh okay...
me: so 14" pizza is 21.99, and 12" pizza is 17.99
which means 14" pizza costs 22% more than 12" pizza, but provides 36% more pizza
so, large pizza is a better deal
yay math!
friend: hooray
me: this is why you need geometry and algebra
other maths, not so much
friend: haha
me: now to figure out how many to buy...
cause first pizza is regular price, but after that is 6$
this is not so much a math problem, but a how much do i want to spent vs how much my fridge can handle
... and how long do i wanna eat pizza
friend: lol
me: 2 is probably good
hmm... i found other sales
friend: haha
me: this is why i want to order pizza online
you do this over the phone and they hang up
friend: haha
me: i find the awesome sale! 20$ off!
friend: NICE!

So pizza shows up and I share my excitement with the delivery guy that I can order pizza online. He says 'Oh yeah? I've tried to do it before but it always says its not available', I then share with him the alternate website. Taking my pizza inside I discover the web address in nice big text on the front of the box... whatever, I have my pizza ^^

Why I won't be playing Aion

2009-08-30T14:54:00.002-10:00

For the last few months many people have been telling me how great and wonderful Aion is. Typical new MMO hype. I didn't know anything about the game until it had gone into closed beta and by that time I had no chance to get in anymore. So with the game being released in the US later this month, an open beta is scheduled. I was planning on trying out the game during that time to see if it was something I'd enjoy.

Using the NCsoft Launcher I was able to download and patch the game so I'd be ready when the servers went online to play. When I tried to launch it, it went and started installing GameGuard. My virus scanner starts freaking out, saying that an application is trying to install in a stealth manner and asking if it should be allowed. I go ahead and allow it and then get a few more warnings about suspicious drivers and services being installed. When all was done, Aion ended up not starting because of an error from GameGuard.

So I spent a few days trying to figure out what the problem was and traced it back to my security software probably causing problems (even though I was still letting GameGuard do whatever it wanted to my system). So I went to uninstall it and reinstall with my security software disabled, but the folder wouldn't delete. Taking a look at what files were in use, GameGuard had attached itself to every single process on my computer. It was impossible for me to just delete. I renamed the DLL it was using to hook to processes and then rebooted and was able to delete it. So I disabled my security software completely and trying launching Aion again which began reinstalling GameGuard. After all that I still got the same error and the game wouldn't launch. So I decided it wasn't worth it and took of Aion and GameGuard and re-enabled my system security.

I understand the need to prevent people from cheating in online games but I honestly think that GameGuard goes too far.

Poor Security

2009-08-15T10:16:00.005-10:00

Its amazing really. I have an insane amount of free time and yet my blog hasn't been updated in months. Well I finally found something to write about so lets see how this goes.

So I've using Gmail for quite a while now. I've got it configured to pick up mail from my Hotmail, Live, MSN, and two Road Runner email addresses. Its essentially a web-based email client at this point. I made one Road Runner address specifically to use when contacting potential employers since people doing searches for 'ddaydj' might not give a good first impression. The problem I've run into is when you send mail through Gmail using a 3rd party email address, it uses their servers and so its possible for the person on the other end to see my Gmail address.

Thankfully, Google recently fixed this by allowing you to specify an SMTP server for outgoing mail on each address allowing you to hide your Gmail address. I was able to configure my Microsoft accounts just fine since they all use the same server. I have been unable to get my Road Runner accounts to send mail though. When trying to configure Gmail to use their SMTP servers, I get an authentication error suggesting my user name or password is incorrect. After playing around with everything I could think of I came to the conclusion that there was something going on with Road Runner's servers. I gave them a call and ended up chatting with the national help desk who was of little help at all. Yesterday, I went ahead and tried to do a live chat and see how that went. Here's the log from that.

user ddaydj has entered room
analyst JimmyW has entered room
JimmyW> Hello! Thank you for choosing Road Runner Internet technical Chat. My name is Jimmy W. How may I help you today?
ddaydj> i wanted to know if its possible for me to access your smtp servers from outside your network?
JimmyW> Yes, it is possible.
JimmyW> Be assured, I am here to assist you.
JimmyW> I will definitely look into this. To get us started, I will need to verify some security information and then we can move on to understanding your setup. We will need to perform some troubleshooting steps together, and I'll be running some tests on my end. Feel free to ask questions along the way. Before we begin, please provide the following three pieces of information for security check and to verify your account: 1. The account holder's 10 digit telephone number. (xxx-xxx-xxxx) 2. The account holder's Full Name. (First and Last) 3. Please tell us your name.
ddaydj> [censored], [censored], <<> Thank you for the valuable information.
JimmyW> [censored], I understand that you want to know that if you can use Road Runner outgoing server when you are not at home. Am I correct?
ddaydj> well, actually i used a web-based email client, so the connection to use the smtp server would be from their servers, and not my home computer
JimmyW> Yes.
JimmyW> Which program/software are you using to access your e-mails? (Road Runner Web Mail, Outlook or Outlook Express).
ddaydj> i'm using a web-based email client, not road runner web mail
JimmyW> What is the name of that Web-based client?
ddaydj> gmail
JimmyW> I am sorry but in this case you will have to use the server settings provided by Gmail.
ddaydj> why is that?
JimmyW> Which e-mail address are you using with Gmail?
ddaydj>i have two @hawaii.rr.com addresses that i use
ddaydj> the first is ddaydj, the second is [censored]
JimmyW> Okay, is it Outlook that you are using?
ddaydj> no, i'm using gmail
JimmyW> Do you mean that you are using Road Runner e-mail address for login to Gmail?
ddaydj> no, i have configured gmail to send and receive mail to and from roadrunner. currently it is able to pull mail from your pop server, but i get an error when it tries to send mail using your smtp server. i do not have this issue with the 3 other accounts that i have configured in the same way.
JimmyW> Where you have setup the accounts in Outlook or Outlook Express?
ddaydj> gmail
JimmyW> How do you open Gmail to access your Road Runner e-mail?
ddaydj> just a second
JimmyW> I do not want to rush you but I am awaiting your response.
ddaydj> [censored] that is a picture of my accounts in gmail. as you can see i am able to receive mail without problems. i have also configured my other email accounts to use their respective smtp servers
ddaydj> are you able to view that image?
JimmyW> Yes, I can see that,.
JimmyW> I am sorry but you will have to contact Gmail and get this issue resolved as we do not have tools to get this issue resolved.
JimmyW> I can help you with the server settings of Road Runner.,
ddaydj> alright then, can you tell me what port i should access the smtp servers on? and do they support tls/ssl?
JimmyW> Incoming Mail Server (POP3): pop-server.hawaii.rr.com Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): smtp-server.hawaii.rr.com
JimmyW> Incoming Mail Server port (POP3): 110 Outgoing Mail Server port (SMTP): 25
ddaydj> and does the smtp support encryption with ssl or tls?
JimmyW> No.
JimmyW> You have to give authentication to outgoing server.
JimmyW> And you will have to use the complete e-mail address in the username field if you are using the authentication.
JimmyW> For more information about Road Runner products and services, please visit our website http://help.rr.com and check for online FAQs.
JimmyW> Is there anything else I can assist you with regarding Road Runner products and services?
ddaydj> no that was it. but can you confirm for me once more, that if i tried to check my email using say outlook express while connected to a comcast internet connection, i would not have any issues?
JimmyW> You will not have any issues if you will give authentication to the outgoing server.
ddaydj> ok, thank you.
JimmyW> And if you will use the above provided settings.
JimmyW> My pleasure!
JimmyW> Thank you for contacting Road Runner technical support, again my name is Jimmy W, we value you as a customer.
JimmyW> God bless you!

Obviously, this guy was not very helpful. Later on I tried to setup a Road Runner account on my phone which is connecting through T-Mobile's network. Accessing the POP server worked without issues but again I got an authentication error with the SMTP server. As I mentioned to the tech, I believe that Road Runner only lets people inside their network access their SMTP servers, meaning you'd have to be on one of their lines to send email.

But here's the fun part! I installed Thunderbird on my computer and setup it up to check on of my Road Runner accounts. I then tried to send a message. It went through no problem... but wait... I never gave it my password during setup. That is usually asked for when it first checks mail and I told it to skip that step. Thinking I had maybe typed my password and forgotten about it, I deleted my POP account and disabled authentication on SMTP. Sending an email failed. I turned SMTP authentication back on but gave it a false user name and again did not specify a password. My email went through and on the other end I got a message from FakeUser@hawaii.rr.com.

So from what I can tell, the only security Road Runner is using on their SMTP server is a user name, any user name! There's no real authentication going on, so anyone inside Road Runner's network could use any user name they like, even one typically used by someone else... like other users or even businesses.

Update: I gave Oceanic a call to see what they had to say about it. The customer service guy I spoke to was surprisingly knowledgeable. He confirmed that they do not use any authentication for outgoing mail, but they do check to make sure that your IP address is inside their scope. He stated that this was a common practice with email and was the way things are, citing Hotmail and Gmail doing the same thing.

Well, I went and checked Hotmail and Gmail to see how their services work. Both of them not only require a valid user name and password, but also use an encrypted connection for sending email. While an while encryption might not be as necessary for Road Runner's mail servers since they only allow mail sent from within their network, authentication is used by both those sites. I'm not sure how other ISPs handle their email, so I'm not sure if Gmail and Hotmail are more secure out of necessity or if they are following the trend. I'll see what else I can find out about all of this.

My desk is naked!

2009-02-09T15:51:00.003-10:00

After 5 months of having to deal with Assurant Group to get my monitors replaced, I finally got them to send me a check. So I went out shopping today and was able to pick up one of the 3 monitors I was looking for. The thing has so many connections on it I found I didn't have an immediate need for the 2nd and 3rd monitor (I've only had the middle one turned on the last few months to save power). So after I got everything hooked up and moved the old ones to my room, this is all that I was left with. So new monitor is a Samsung T240HD and has all the same inputs I had before plus a dedicated DVI port and a second HDMI. The left and right monitor is going to be a Samsung T240 which is the same monitor but with DVI, VGA, and HDMI connections only. We did a lot of shopping around today but it looks like nowhere on island sells them so I'll be ordering online.

In other tech news, I got a new phone, a G1. It is so awesome~ having internet while I'm out of the house is cool enough but then having seemless access to all of Google's apps is even better. Plus there are some amazing programs available for it. One of them I was using today I was able to search for a product and then it told me what places in the area where selling it or how much I could find it for online. Its actually what led me to the store that ended up having this monitor.

Also, I'm going to be selling my old monitors. I already have a post on craigslist, but if anyone is interested in buying one let me know and I'll have a discounted price.

New Desk Complete!

2009-01-15T13:03:00.005-10:00

After more than a year since we started, I've finally finished building my desk! We started out with the solid core door that we put on top of my old desk to make it wide enough. Eventually we did the side which has the computer in it and all the consoles and such went in that. This last Christmas we finished the left side and it all came together. Still have all the same stuff as before, so 360 and Wii are on the left monitor, and PS3 and PS2 are on the right monitor. Pictures aren't as good quality as I would like since all I have now is my phone and the lens isn't as good as it once was.

Passwords

2008-12-28T23:54:00.001-10:00

My account for Final Fantasy XI got hacked last week. My character was transferred to another server and all my stuff was looted. For more on that, check here. Anyways, on to topic.

So those events got me thinking I should do more for online security. I already used a randomly generated password for FFXI, which didn't do me much good but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. So I went around today changing the passwords for my various online accounts so that they are all different and randomly generated. At first I was making them as long as possible, usually around 64 characters. This gave the password a possible five septentrigintillion combinations. I quickly realized this wasn't wise. I'm not talking about the hassle of typing that in every time you visit a site. No, there's something much worse.

All but 2 websites I visit do not mention any limitations on what you can have for a password. Well all the ones I tried, if you gave it a password longer than it supported, then it would take it... but cut it off where ever its password length limit is. So for example, if you change your password to:

9uspeSufAdefrAthAyUwrataCrAdreY9KEwrAdafrususWestaxeZuhuDuzeyuwr

And the site only supports up to 16 characters for the password, then your password ends up being this:

9uspeSufAdefrAt

But there's no error message, no warning, and so you won't know anything is wrong until you go to log in next time. At this point you're not going to be able to log in and will have to guess at which point the site decided to cut off your password. It annoyed the hell out of me when I first started working on it, so I just made sites that didn't specify password length to 12 (which was too long for one of them). Oh, and just for laughs... the two sites that specified password length were Capital One and EVE Online. Capital One wanted my password to be between 8 and 15 characters, EVE wanted it between 6 and 64. NICE!

Games as Art

2008-11-09T01:52:00.004-10:00

A lot of places like to bring up the idea of games as an art form. I definitely agree that it is possible, but I was thinking about it and I think there's a serious flaw with the way they are categorized. When I hear something described as being a art I see that as something that is able to express and convey emotions.

Yahtzee over at The Escapist mentioned in a recent review that the point of a game is to have fun, to which I fully agree. Games also like to tell you a story and some try harder than others. I think the problem is that a lot of games handle these two separately. If I think of games that I have a strong emotional attachment to most of them have very little to do with gameplay and more to do with the story. In all honesty you could just sit me down in front all the cutscenes from Xenogears and I'd be perfectly happy to never touch the controller.Now I'm not saying I didn't like playing Xenogears, but that's not what left the lasting impression on me. Is it a game? Yes, but that has nothing to do with the emotional attachment I have to it.

I think a perfect example of art in games would be Ico. The story to the game is very subtle, there are only a handful of times throughout the game with cutscenes. Few of those have dialogue and most of the dialogue is intentionally in a language you can't understand. The emotion of this game comes from actually playing it and the story is simply there to tie it all together. If you were to just sit back and watch the story play out, it really nothing special. But while playing it and interacting with the characters there are moments that effect me just as much as Xenogears does.

I think it will be quite a while before more games are able to find the right balance that Ico did. The goal is and always will be to entertain us whether it be through gameplay or story. I just wanted to clarify what I think makes a game a work of art.

Sixaxis on Vista x64

2008-10-05T14:53:00.002-10:00

I was finally able to get my PS3 controller working on my laptop! A quick search on google and you'll see a lot of people have been trying to do it but failed cause there's no drivers out there for Windows 64-bit. Anyways, I'm gonna keep quiet on how I did it for now and see how much additional traffic I get.

Lesser of Two a Evils

2008-06-09T02:46:00.001-10:00

I do not like GameStop. Working there for 2 years has a lot to do with it. Granted I enjoyed my time there but that was because of the people I worked with. The management team I worked under for most of my employment also did a good job a shielding me and fellow co-workers from the company's evil ways.

My issue with them is that they, as a company, do not care about their employees. They are paid minimum wage, given no benefits, and have to put up with the horrors of retail. The company is also aware of how many young adults would kill to work in the place and because of this I don't see the entry level jobs as being a secure one. On top of abusing their employees I believe they are hurting the game industry. Their used game system is good for gamers by allowing them to trade-in unwanted games and purchase new ones. This same system steals money directly from the industry they are suppose to be supporting by removing them from the process. If you buy a used game, your money goes straight to GameStop and goes no further. In my opinion you might as well have pirated the game since you've done nothing to support it.

So over the last few years I've done my best to boycott GameStop and have been fairly successful. With my former employer, CompUSA, out of business I now do most of my game purchases from WalMart. The problem that has come to mind though is that WalMart shares some of the business practices that make me dislike GameStop so much. They might not sell used games but their size as the largest retail store in America has given them great influence on the products they sell. Things like that horrible indestructible packaging on all the accessories are WalMart's doing. A game's cover art has also been known to have been changed to appease WalMart.

I don't think either of them are good companies. As someone looking for a job I would never want to work for either one of them. As a consumer I currently choose to shop at WalMart because I view them to be the lesser of two evils. A bigger influence on this would be they are 3 blocks away from which makes it easy for me to reach. I really much rather give my business to BestBuy or one of the local retailers like Toys n' Joys, but both are far enough away to make them inconvenient. Online is always an option I could consider but because I'm in Hawaii there's no way I can get games that way nearly as fast as a local retailer.

I brought this up because of the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 4 release, which I plan on picking up from WalMart at midnight. I felt a bit conflicted about giving WalMart more business after realizing they aren't too far off from GameStop. In my opinion, though, they are the lesser of two evils when it comes to hurting the game industry. Anyone care the share their opinions on the morality of game retailers?

How to stack boxes

2008-02-05T13:43:00.001-10:00

"They didn't fire Myron."

2008-02-05T07:38:00.000-10:00

"They didn't fire Myron."

The End

2008-02-03T11:02:00.000-10:00

So this is my last week at CompUSA. Its really boring so I'm gonna blog from my phone about the last week of work.

Raspberry Comet [Update]

2007-12-04T18:58:00.000-10:00

We've been playing Rock Band a lot lately. I've been keeping an eye on our leaderboard position and was really excited to see that after playing tonight we've gotten into the top 100!!! Our usually roster is me on Vocals and Bass, Shai on Lead Guitar, and SixVi6 on Drums. Hopefully we can hold it and maybe move closer to the top!

Update: Sadly we weren't able to hold our #99 spot, but we aren't doing too bad at #111 right now. Here's some of our current rankings.

Band by Song #111 @ 14,747,489
Band by Fans #151 @ 612,000

Green Grass and High Tides #9 @ 938,632
Dani California #101 @ 632,759
Creep #30 @ 588,963
Celebrity Skin #3 @ 569,367
Seven #8 @ 538,788

bank security

2007-11-14T13:55:00.000-10:00

I'm going off on a rant so please forgive any lack of sense from here on out.

I'm pissed off over the security that my online banking requires. First it was just my bank, and now I'm having to do it for my credit card. My credit card company already requires the most complicated password I've ever had to use. My bank isn't that bad. I'm personally not concerned about people getting access to my account. They keep telling me I should change my password every month, FUCK THAT! I keep my information safe. The only way I see having a problem is if they have their own security issues...

So in addition to ridiculous passwords, they are now requiring you to do pop quizzes on your life. I usually just put bullshit answers in these cause I don't forget passwords. But they like to bring them up at random times even if you got the password right just to make sure you're you. I already got locked out of my bank account and had to call to get it reactivated. So these questions now that I've actually read them, SUCK!

They are suppose to be questions that only you would know, I don't know any of them. Lets go through an example:

What was the color of your first car? I don't drive...

What is your paternal grandmother's first name? I don't know anyone on my dad's side of the family...

What is the name of the hospital in which you were born? ... do people seriously know this kind of thing?

In what city was your first elementary school? once again, I don't know.

I have to refresh the screen multiple times until I just the right combination of questions that I can answer all 3 and actually remember the answers.

At the end of all this my credit card can be taken and used online without any limitations, and my debit card is protected by a pathetic 4 number pin number.

Final Fantasy Retrospect - FFXI

2007-09-07T20:15:00.000-10:00

This came out earlier this week, but considering how much I play the game I thought it good to make it easily accessible to those who might miss it.

Getting Desperate

2007-08-24T19:35:00.000-10:00

I've been having so many problem with Bioshock freezing on me. I'm getting towards the end of the game and was in the middle of an awesome conversation with the main enemy. I had been playing for about 3 hours without and problems, and right in the middle of it the fucking console locks up. I've had... I've done everything I could think of to prevent the damn thing from over heating and crashing... so I'm gonna try something a little more insane now...

Its like a hug!

2007-08-09T14:25:00.000-10:00

My long goal of having 3 monitors was achieved today! 3 LG 24" monitors. I got a ATI Radeon 9250 to run the third monitor. I haven't gotten around to hooking up the game systems yet though. I'll be switching out my current 360 for one of the Premiums with HDMI as soon as we get one in. After that hookups will be something like this;

Left: HDMI-360, VGA-Computer, Component-Wii
Center: HDMI-Computer
Right: HDMI-PS3, VGA-Computer, Component-PS2

Decided to keep the PS2 around a while back for DDR and Guitar Hero.
Anyways, it is very awesome~ now I should probably look into upgrading my computer since I've had the same one for about 5 years...

Minoru + Haruhi!

2007-07-14T19:33:00.000-10:00

Things like this are what secures Minoru as my second favorite character on Lucky Star.

Real Friends

2007-06-19T22:50:00.000-10:00

I'm weird. I know I'm weird, I accept it. In fact I love it.

My friends are also aware that I am weird. Some more aware than others. As you would expect, the longer someone knows me, the more they learn about me. Some of my family is still a little confused by me at times. My friend's I've known since I worked at Software Etc I think have a pretty good grasp on the type of person I am. The people I currently work with at CompUSA, however, have no fucking clue, which is suprising cause I've known some of them for going on 3 years.

Today, I was bored. I only had one project to work on and did a pretty good job stretching it out over 8 hours considering it could have been done in under one. So I spent a good deal of the day hiding in the warehouse talking with co-workers with a similar agenda. Everyone I talk to back there is focused on getting me a girlfriend. They start out joking about it. But then seriously won't relent in trying to convince me that I need to go out with them and get laid.

My real friends (the ones that are probably reading this) tried this and understood my feelings on this long ago and have accepted it and moved on. The guys at work now haven't though. I think we spent 30 minutes talking about it. I finally told them I would go out with them next week if they would pay for drinks, which they agreed to... and then continued for another 10 minutes. Not entirely sure I'll go but I currently don't see too many reasons not to.

Anyways, I would just like to thank my real friends for accepting me for who I am and not forcing me to fit into whatever image they see fit for me.

Lucky Star

2007-06-14T21:12:00.000-10:00

Its like the second coming of Azumanga.

Seriously, the show has the same type of humor to it but has been updated with more pop culture references and some style changes to make it unique. I originally downloaded it and brushed it off cause it has a cutsy intro and art design. But people on IRC insisted that I should watch it. The first 5 minutes is 3 of the characters talking about their favorite way to eat different kinds of food. That's it! 5 minutes! Its awesome.

(sightseeing)

2007-05-31T18:08:00.000-10:00

I participated in Dynamis-Windurst today. We combined forces with another Linkshell that was trying to do the run. Everything went pretty smoothly. We were able to finish the are and I got Summoner's Spats. After we killed the boss people stayed around and continued to farm for Relic gear. Well I had the misfortune of falling off the bridge during one of the fights. Gave me a chance to do some sightseeing and turned out to be for the better. About 10 minutes into my wandering around most of the alliance died. I was able to find a safe way back to where I was suppose to be and help with raising people.
Anyways, here are some pics I was able to get.

System Shock 2 Soundtrack

2007-05-17T20:12:00.000-10:00

Not sure who is going to be interested in this, but I wanted to share it anyways. I was browsing Through The Looking Glass' Forums and caught an update on their System Shock 2 page.

http://www.sshock2.com/shownews.asp?id=390

That game is one of my favorite pc games. There was never an offical soundtrack before this but i had a decent game rip. Anyways, I highly recommend it.

New FFXI Expansion

2007-05-12T16:26:00.000-10:00

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/altana/index.html

So new expansion was offically announced today. I know these things are always growing but they haven't finished unlocking all the content in the current expansion and they're already hyping the next? Eh, whatever.
My impression is that you'll get to time travel to before the great war and participate in events that lead up to it. I've been doing a lot of questing in the game lately so a lot of the back story is still fresh in my mind. I can say that I'm really looking forward to this. My only concern is I can see this expansion being a lot like the Promithia missions. A few new areas added and a bunch of difficult instances and battles. However they do it I'm really looking forward to the expansion's story.

PSO

2007-05-11T19:18:00.000-10:00

I got Oridinai back into Phantasy Star Online (he use to play on the Dreamcast) a few weeks ago. He's been playing quite a bit and has got a ranger up to lv50 now. He was bummed when I told him the online servers were dead though (game did come out 5 years ago...). Anyways, I was thinking of setting up a private server so that we could play online. I already found the software to be able to do this and should be able to have it setup without too much of a hassle. Would anyone else be interested in joining in on this?

New Monitors Review

2007-05-09T17:16:00.000-10:00

As I mentioned earlier, I picked up a new pair of monitors the other week. Yeah, I just got "new" monitors a few months ago, but these are better. I picked up two LG L246WP 24" monitor with 1920x1200 resolution and HDMI, VGA, and component/composite inputs.
One of the things I was looking forward to with these was being able to not have to use my TV anymore. Not that I don't like my TV, I just don't like having to move from my desk. All the inputs allow me to hook up all my game consoles to one of the two screens. Left monitor currently has my PC (HDMI/DVI) and Xbox 360 (VGA). Right monitor has PC (VGA), Playstation 3 (HDMI), and Wii (Component). I went ahead and retired my PS2 since I won't be using it much unless I get the urge to play DDR.
So one of the first things I noticed upon hooking these up to the computer was VGA and DVI were much easier to tell apart now. On the 22s I had before you could tell, but it was very subtle. With the screen being as sharp as it is you vga doesn't look nearly as clean next when compared. Brightness is also a noticeable difference with DVI being a little bit brighter but not over saturated. Overall for PC use I've been very happy with them.
After a few days of having them running I noticed it was a lot hotter around my desk. Even more-so when in the area above. They apparently generate a lot of heat. I'd say the general temperature is up about 3~5F around my desk now.
The PS3 was part of the reason I waiting to write about my new toys. I use to use a HDMI to DVI cable to get my PS3 to the old monitors. Well these monitors have HDMI instead, which isn't bad, but I don't have any HDMI cables lying around. I was able to pick one up last night though. One of the great thing about these monitors is the option to add black bars to the screen so that an HDTV signal isn't stretched out. In short PS3 looks awesome in 1080p.
The 360 was a little different. If it wasn't for Microsoft's spring update this morning I would have had a lot of bad things to say. But luckily the patch fixed the problems I was having with 1080p over VGA and its also working very nicely.
Poor little non-HD Wii is also kind of weird. I'm not given the option to add black bars to the screen with the Wii, which I'm guessing is because its only 480p. It really would have been nice if the system was able to do some form of HD, but it doesn't take to long to get use to it.
So I highly recommend this monitor if you're looking to upgrade. They retail for 800$ but with my discount and by trading in my old monitors I was able to get the pair for just over 600$. On a side note, if anyone is curious what happens to the old ones, due to flaws in our system they end up getting "field destroy".

RoadRunner Turbo

2007-04-28T13:55:00.000-10:00

If anyone is curious about RoadRunner's new higher speed service, I give it my approval.
Oh, and for those who don't know. I picked up a new pair of monitors the other day. I'll have pics and impression up sometime next week.

Music Migration

2007-03-30T18:17:00.000-10:00

So far moving my music into Winamp has been going pretty good. I've been cleaning up a bunch of my mp3s that had bad id3s or incorrect naming. One of the things that's really been getting to me is some of the #gamemp3s releases. Our old releases have some really bad tags. They're from back in the day so we were using id3v1 which means not enough room for proper album name and titles. so I end up with "FFX Soundtrack" instead of "Final Fantasy X Original Soundtrack (disc 1)". On that same note, some of the really old ones don't note different albums in the id3s so its really bad. we use to use the format %album - %artist - %filename in playlists for this reason since it allowed for longer names and a track name that implied disc number. So the sad thing about this is that since I'm a mirror for #gamemp3s I can't change any of this without invalidating the release.
Anyways, I'll deal with it. I should have it all setup the way I want in the next week. Only thing i'm concerned with is being able to setup a new plays per day list like I had in iTunes, I really liked that.

damn iTunes!

2007-03-29T11:32:00.000-10:00

I've been using iTunes for quite a while now. I used to use winamp but when I got my iPod about 3 years ago there was no good alternatives to iTunes. iTunes has been giving me problems lately though. Biggest one is that it updates its library file whenever its done playing a song. This causes my computer to stall for 2~3 seconds. This has almost gotten me killed many times in FFXI.
I spent most of last night trying to find a way to fix it and short of deleting my library there isn't anything I can do. So I've been considering moving to another media player. Windows Media Player is out... just on principal. While its sad for me to say, Foobar is too complicated for me. I've been playing around with winamp this morning and not much has changed since I last used it, though there are some things that weren't around before that are very welcome.
However, I have another dilemma. I have put a lot of work into my iTunes library. Not only going through and cleaning up my tags, which are perfect, but also getting album art for all of them. I also have a rating system that I use and have a few playlists that I really like that are based off of that system. While I could setup something similar in winamp there I haven't been able to find a way to bring over this information from iTunes, so I would have to start over. Hopefully I'll have something figured out in the next few days.

XBox 360 Elite... NO!

2007-03-26T08:19:00.000-10:00

Its been 2 weeks now of news sites reporting about this thing. Its so fucking stupid that I don't even know where to begin. Everything started with an article in Game Informer's (not a legitimate source of news) April (month know for pranks!) issue where they talk about a new XBox with HDMI and a 120gb hard drive. I wanna go over each of the things I've read regarding this so atleast some of you know better.
The addition of HDMI on the 360 is more than just adding a port, there's an additional chip that must be on the main board of the system. Not even a breakout box will work. If Microsoft releases a system with HDMI all of its current customer base will have no way of getting HDMI without buying the new system. While Microsoft has been know to be evil, I doubt they are going to betray their customers, and only a year after their original system's launch. Pictures of a system with HDMI have been floating around. These are old~! Back around Christmas these popped up and when Microsoft was asked about it they said that HDMI was available on some of the dev units.
Now the 120gb hard drive is a little different. If released current 360 owners would be able to upgrade without needing to buy a new system. While it may be on the way, its not because of any of the reasons I've read. People have been saying that a larger hard drive will be needed for the IPTV service which is suppose to launch later this year. When Microsoft was showing this off back at CES they said that they planned to do it all through software and that everything would be server side, so no need for a larger hard drive.
I think there was a few other bits of info that "confirm" a new system is on the way. If anyone has something to add please post a comment and if i missed something I'll go ahead and add it to the post.

GamerScore that matters

2007-03-25T11:47:00.000-10:00

I never really got Microsoft's GamerScore on the 360. I mean, I understand it, its just that I don't get why anyone would care. The system seems totally off-balance and pointless. Example, I've logged 5000 hours into FFXI and I have gotten about 30 points. However if i got around to beating PSU's single player (about 12~20 hours) I'd get a nice 1000 points.
Sony currently doesn't have anything like a gamerscore for PS3. Last Thursday they had a firmware update that came with Folding@Home. The project's goal is to use your computer (ps3) to simulate how proteins fold. I admit that I understand very little of how the project works, but the goal of the entire thing is to help cure various diseases. As you run the program it keeps track of your contribution by giving you a score. A nice and more meaningful alternative to the 360's gamerscore.
Anyways, I know a few of the people that read this have PS3s so I'd like to point out that tonight is the first Sunday Night Foldathon. I'll be running mine tonight on my PS3 and I have my pc set to run it constantly when idle. My progress is here (currently 43% through my first unit so probably will be blank til monday around noon), and I have the PS3 at work setup as well which you can track here.

Death Note going downhill

2007-03-02T19:15:00.000-10:00

Is anyone watching Death Note? I've been watching it since it started airing and have been enjoying it quite a bit. In fact its the only anime I'm watching right now. There has been a change in quality though since around episode 17. The mood of the show seems to have changed from dark and tense to more of a regular drama. Its even lightened up by having more jokes and humorous moments. While subtle, the animation also seems to have gone to a warmer feel. So I'm considering dropping the series from my weekly viewing. Anyone else watching and see it to? Also any suggestions on other stuff I should take a look at? Aside from Death Note all I have to look forward to is Heroes and Battlestar Galactica.

To FF or Not to FF

2007-02-06T09:59:00.000-10:00

So, I'm posting on ddaydj's site because I think I'm more likely to get responses here for this particular issue. While I was in the process of moving, I temporarily cancelled my FFXI account since I wasn't using it. I haven't missed it. So, I'm trying to decide if I should just let it stay dead. Should I reactivate it? If so, let me know WHY. And real reasons, not stupid ones. My income is limited, so I can't just spend it on whatever.

Yatta!

2007-01-11T00:39:00.000-10:00

I finally was able to figure out a way to get iTunes to make a playlist based off of how much I listen to a song in a day. I asked about it on the apple forums about a month ago and no one was able to help so I played around with it a bit tonight and got it.

Plays per day

I really really like the playlists that this makes. Its like a most played except the value of songs decay the longer they are in your library. It fixes the problem with Play Count which tends to favor songs that have been in your library longer. I recommend to filter out music that has been added in the last month since those songs seem to get an unfair advantage as well.

One thing I didn't mention on the forum post is that I did have issues with the comment field on some of my songs. They had returns on them and were throwing off values, so I went in and either removed the return or in most cases just removed the comment entirely. This was mostly on older #anime-ongaku releases.

Oh, and if you're curious what I've been listening to lately, here's the list I came up with.

Closed Captions != Subtitles

2006-12-28T22:02:00.000-10:00

I'm in the habit of downloading fansubbed anime. Its nice cause you get to see it months (sometimes years) before it comes out in the US. When I watch a series if I liked it I'll pick it up when it comes out in America.
I picked up Paradise Kiss vol.1 the other week and hadn't gotten around to watching it. I watched it when it aired in japan and loved it. I really had no desire to watch the US release since I had seen it more than once already. But a friend of mine is in town and I felt the need to show it to him. It was a horrible 30 minutes. Don't jump to conclusions, we were watching it in japanese. Anyone who knows me knows I hate english dubs as does most anyone I respect. However, my problem with it was the subtitles. They weren't subtitles they were close captions.
The dialog was bland and boring. I should have just watched it with the english voices on it was so painful. The whole experience made me question why I buy anime. I think its important to support good anime and that's my main reason for buying it. But if I don't feel I can watch it in its original glory then what's the point. I'm feeling guilty because I deleted the fansubs that I had watched last year. And its not like I'm looking for a reason to save money, on the contrary, I buy anime before I buy games.
Anyone else feeling the same?

FTP changes

2006-12-17T01:08:00.000-10:00

Just a heads up to those of you who have access to my FTP. The new address is ddaydj.homeftp.net (from ip to ftp) and its now running on port 990. Old logins should work fine but if you are having trouble connecting let me know.

the awesomeness!

2006-11-28T16:41:00.000-10:00

just picked up a new set of monitors. works with ps3 in 1080p <3
sadly the one on the left has a dead pixel at the top right. also, the one on the left is pushing blue while the one on the right is pushing red. its real subtle and i think i can fix it with the calibration software it comes with.

job description

2006-11-21T12:45:00.000-10:00

no one mentioned i'd have to do this ...

PS3 GUI pics

2006-11-17T11:07:00.000-10:00

PS3 Startup Music

PS3 pr0n

2006-11-17T10:49:00.000-10:00

People on IRC are bugging me for pics, so here you go.

who gives a fuck?

2006-11-17T07:04:00.000-10:00

Not retailers that's for sure. So below is my live blogging, but I'd like to give a full recap so that people can know how fucked up things got.
This last Sunday, me and hatsumi spent the day going to various retail stores around the island asking if they were gonna be carrying the PS3 and what type of rules they wanted customers to follow as far as lining up. Walmart, Circuit City and Best Buy were the only stores that were gonna have it on Friday and were allowing "walk-ins" (campers). Walmart said we could start camping whenever we wanted. Since I didn't want to take the week off, and the crowd that they draw is not really the type I prefer, that was bumped down the list. Circuit City was a ways away from us, but said that they would let be start camping out when they open on Thursday and that they'd let security know that there would be people waiting outside that night. Limited time frame worked best for us since we had only scheduled Friday off. Best Buy seemed to work the best for our schedule though, they were gonna let people start lining up when they closed on Thursday night at 10:00pm.
So, come Thursday I gather rations for the camp out and make a call to Best Buy to make sure that nothing has changed. I called at 1:53pm and talked to a girl at customer service. She told me that they were gonna start allowing people to line up at 10:00pm when they close (this we knew) and that there would also be atleast three police officers around to make sure that there aren't any problems forming the line (good precaution).
Me and hatsumi were planning on heading over between 8:30pm~9:00pm but I was anxious and meet up around 7:00pm to make sure we were all ready. Around 7:45pm a friend of ours who works with the local TV station calls to tell us that there are people camped outside Best Buy already (what!?) and that they have given out all the vouchers (O.o!?). We immediately gathered our stuff and went to Best Buy.
When we got there and confirmed that there were indeed people camped outside, we went right up to customer service and asked to speak to a manager. The guy showed up and we asked about the PS3 and if the plans had changed. He handed us a flyer (below) and said that he was just following orders and if we had any questions that we should call they customer care number. I dialed it immediately. I spoke with an operator fairly quickly and said I had a complaint. She said that the only departments open were repairs and sales and asked me to call back later. So no complaining.
The thing that confuses me is how did they hand out vouchers to people who weren't there? I called at 1:53pm, and the manager said this came down around 2pm. So in 5 minutes 40 people figured out what was going on and gathered at the store? There are obviously some lies going around.

With hope of getting a system a Best Buy gone we decided to take a shot at Circuit City. We would be showing up rather late in the game, but it was worth a shot. When we got there there was already a line formed. We did a head count and got 27 people in line. We were about to go in the store when we noticed a poster at the front of the store that had information about the PS3. I didn't get a pic of it, sorry, but it said that they had 26 60gb units available and that they wouldn't be giving rainchecks and the like.
With a count of 27 people in line we decided to go ahead and stick around with hopes that maybe someone in line was just hanging out. We got to the end of line putting hatsumi at #28 and me at #29. Shortly after a few more people came and the line capped off at about 34 people for the night.
Around 9:30pm one of the people from the front of the line comes back to us and says "just to let you guys know all the units they have are spoken for". I found this odd, but decided to ignore it. I personally was waiting for a manager to come out after the store closes and talk to the people waiting in line, laying down some rules and what we should expect in the morning. The last employees left around 11pm and none of them really paid the crowd much attention.
The night was pretty uneventful. We sat around played games and ate snacks. Some of our friends showed up to keep us company for a bit but by 1pm we were back to just the two of us.
One of the things that annoyed me throughout the night was that the people in the front of the line seemed to be having trouble staying in line. They kept getting up and wandering to their car or across the street. As the night went on this continued and I wasn't really sure who was in line or not. Around 5am things started looking suspicious. There seemed to be a lot more people in line than when we started and a lot of them I was sure had recently showed up.
6pm rolls around and 3 employees come out and explain the situation. Apparently, 26 people showed up at midnight on thursday morning. The group made a list of who was there and when the store opened informed the store of the list. The staff decided that this list would be what they'd go by for who gets a system. Now so far, I don't have a problem with this, however, its seems to me that people were not there from when the list was made til vouchers were handed out this morning. When they cut off the line, hatsumi ended up #30 in line. We were given a flyer and they took our name and number and said they would call us at 10am they had any extra systems.
My problem with what happen at Circuit City is that the store took no responsiblity for what was going on outside. Really why should they, as long as the systems sell they don't care who gets them. When we showed up there were people in lining not only holding their place, but atleast 2 spots. The whole point of camping out is sticking around through the entire thing. When Walmart handed out vouchers on Thursday morning that doesn't mean that you got a system and you can go home now. This is not a pre-order system. You still have to stick around until you actually buy the system. While I don't like the idea, its alright for you to take shifts with friends so that you don't spend 30+ hours sitting outside a store. But showing up right at the start with a couple of friends and then leaving one guy around to hold the groups spot is not fair to the rest of us.
Best Buy pissed me off for changing their rules on us. But I don't consider that nearly as bad as the total lack of responsiblity that Circuit City took.

2006-11-17T05:43:00.001-10:00

the front-liners are plotting against us! they keep leaving the line 2nd coming back. we have no clue if they are sneaking friends in line. we'll see what happens when store staff shows up, but when we got here there we're 27 people infront of us.

2006-11-17T04:55:00.000-10:00

one more hour til we see if all this waiting was worth it...

2006-11-17T01:14:00.001-10:00

so i was expecting one of the managers to tell us what was going on before they went home... but they didn't. so we're gonna quick around til 6:00 when they'll be giving out tickets. not much going on, just chatting with people in line about how they ended up here. funny thing is us towards the back of the line aren't really talking about getting a system. :(

2006-11-16T22:10:00.001-10:00

still at circuit city with no idea if we are gonna get a ps3. friends are starting to show up so its cool.

screwed

2006-11-16T20:38:00.001-10:00

this is probably gonna look horrible. best buy screwed us over. i'll post the letter later. now we are at circiut city, but with a good chance of not getting one.

Vista RTM Round 1

2006-11-14T20:24:00.000-10:00

I picked up a copy of Vista from a friend at work yesterday and finally had enough free time to install it tonight. If anyone read my old blog you're probably familar with my beta experience with vista, which was not good.
RTM is the final release and so far its looking a hell of a lot better. Installation went well though I did need to give it some time. It went through step 1, copying files, almost instantly. But then spent 20 minutes at 0% on extracting files. Eventually it starting moving and was done installing in about 40 minutes from when I started.
Final polish is very nice. It runs a hell of a lot faster than the betas did. First thing I did when I got in was change a bunch of settings I knew I didn't need. I disabled a few services, that annoying admin nag (which is now located in security center instead of local security policies, much better) and did a bit of customizing. Behold... I found a bug... Vista will let me put the taskbar anywhere you want... except where I want it, top of my second monitor. If placed here the Pearl (new start menu) disappears.

Another annoyance, its not possible to unclutter the start menu. On XP, I have a very minimal start menu with a few programs and such. In Vista you can still remove the things you don't want... but it just leaves the rest as dead space.

That's the only immediate things I've seen. My first priority is going to be to get a crack since this copy needs to be activated even though I was told otherwise. I must say that Vista is very polished. All the graphics and effects are running fine on my computer which is pretty suprising being that its a few years old. I'll update this later on as I find more to share.

[Update 06.11.15 21:27] Ok so I was able to fix the problem with the start menu by changing my primary monitor. For right now its fine but when I start playing games it might be an issue. I was also able to find a crack that my friend who hooked me up with the copy said worked. I've also started to remove some of the bulk in Vista. On initial boot there are 45 processes running. That's fucking crazy! I just spent 15 minutes reading through exactly what was running on my computer. Atleast 10 of those were related to sharing media over a network, tablet pcs, or PDAs. I do have a PDA but I don't need to have 2 services running so that I can charge it off my computer. I haven't had a chance to restart yet to see if I broke anything, but I am currently running at 28 services which is an improvement. Also got my ram usage from 63% down to 42%.

Another positive note, while WMP11 does seem to like my id3 tags, I do love that when it changes to the next song it has a subtle little popup come out from the taskbar that show what is playing. It goes away after a few seconds and I find it serves its purpose wonderfully. Sadly it doesn't work with my iPod so I won't be migrating soon, but I want to have some positive stuff to say about it.

[Update 06.11.15 22:25] I found a great post on neowin that goes over all the processes in Vista and gives recommendations on which ones you can get rid of. After all is said and done I got it down to 22 processes.

[Update 06.11.15 11:04] Ok, I'm done for the night. I'll be putting back my XP hard drive and then going off to sleep. I'll probably play around with Vista more but I'm kind of wondering why bother. The OS is much better than when I last used it, and I'm sure that it would be possible for me to run it full time on my computer. But the question is why bother? Screw the idea of having to reinstall all my programs and tweak them to my liking. I honestly don't see anything in Vista that is worth having right now. Sure its pretty, but if I really wanted to have cool effects everywhere on my computer I'd just use WindowBlinds. After tweaked I'd say it runs just about as fast as XP. I know its new and cool, but anyone care to remind me why it is we've all been looking forward to Vista so much?

On a final note, I found another cute bug with running dual screens. Desktop icons seem to get distorted if you have your monitors offset. Not to start anything, but some of these bugs kind of remind me of the quirks that I dealt with in ME. Anyways, back to XP for now.

Remodel done~

2006-11-04T09:00:00.000-10:00

Sorry, but daily pictures was just not happening. The remodel just finished this Friday and we have been working everyday since it started with an average of 12 hour days. Reason it took so long was the contractors that we had to work with. The painters took 3 days to paint the wall and didn't even finish. The electricians started running behind as the week went on and then didn't show for two days. Then the floorers we had came did two hours of work and then didn't show up for 2 more days.
As soon as all of them got their work done we were able to finish that day. Anyways, below are final pictures of the section.

HE day 2

2006-10-24T18:20:00.000-10:00

No day 1 since my phone doesn't take very good pictures. I brought my real camera today and took some pictures of the work we are doing.

Overtime!

2006-10-23T22:49:00.000-10:00

I'll be working a lot this week. I'm helping with the remodel of the store's H.E. section, which involves lots of moving and building. I'm going to sleep now, but I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow and upload them.
Oh, and I picked up a new phone. <3

Migrating?

2006-10-19T20:24:00.000-10:00

I'm considering moving my blog from OtakuVibe to here and getting rid of my website. We'll see what happens but I should be decided in the next week.