Computery things have to wait

I've been pretty busy with school. More posts soon.

Vector vs Raster

Raster images are built one pixel at a time and often look jagged. Sometimes they look great, but as soon as you increase the size of that image, it becomes very jagged.

A friend of mine was thinking of painting his son's room in a pirate theme. But none of the effeminate looking Johnny Depp pirates of recent. He's looking at the old click adventure/puzzle Monkey Island PC games. They have a digital projector that they would use to project an image on to the wall and then paint it. The problem with this is that since these games were made so long ago (the picture on the left was from the 3rd game) that they character graphics are very low quality (by today's standards) raster images.

So I have been vectorizing the image so that he could do this if he wanted to. A vector image is made of lines and fill colors. The lines are more commands to represent lines, so when the image is enlarged the lines scale to the size of the new image. The graphics retain their clarity.

The image here on the left is of the original character graphic on the left and the traced vector image on the right. This image is actually a high quality raster image, so if you try to enlarge it then even the better quality graphic on the right will get pixelly. This is a jpg image. A better file format for vector images would be pdf or png, depending on the planned use for the image. As far as I know, this is the only vector, or at least cleaned up, image of this character on the internet. I looked for a while and didn't find anything else that someone had made. I expect to find this file copied all over the net fairly soon. Maybe not. We'll see.

High Dynamic Range (HDR)

If you like to manipulate your photos to raise the content of awesome or are an avid photographer, you may have heard of High Dynamic Range or HDR photos. I understand the principal, but unfortunately don't have much experience with this method of photomanipulation. The basic principle, to my understanding, is that by taking several different exposures of the exact same image you can combine them in various programs to bring out the detail of shadows and highlights in the same picture.

This site shows 35 very nice HDR photos. [Link] I would love to make pictures like these. They really are beautiful. I'm going to look into software that can do this (or help you do it), I'd like to report which is easiest and which is the best for the money. These programs include Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Photomatix. If you are reading this and know how to do it, or want to check it out, please comment here with usefull information for a new HDR initiate.

Books Are Just As Bad As Videogames And Television

It turns out all those times that people told you that videogames and tv were horrible for you and that you should free yourself by reading a book, they were falling into a vague, downward spiraling delusion of false information.

"Tales from George Orwell's 1984 to the movies Network and Videodrome are all about how people are so controlled by television that they'll do anything. Usually, books are presented as an antidote to a TV-controlled populace. But now a new neuroscience study reveals that books control people's minds and emotions in exactly the same way television does."

[Link]

The secret life of Portal?

Apparently the game Portal is for girls that like girls... Some people will say anything about anything just to make a fuss, won't they?
[Link]

Video of the Week

I run across a lot of great web videos during my browsing. I'm going to try to post something awesome on a weekly basis. I may have to resist the urge to do it more often... no guarantees on that though.

This week: BATMAN

Is it time for Batman to tone it down?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvxoz5DSQp8

(apparently the video is so popular they won't let you embed it, so you'll have to tclick the link and go watch it for yourself.)

Other great Batman related finds:

Hi, I'm a Marvel. I'm Batman...


20 every day items if they were designed for Batman.

Baman sure could use some exercise:

BTW

So the choice of the name soft kore gamer came about due to other things I wanted to use weren't available and to emphasize that my gaming is not so hard core that I go out and spend tons of money on hd tvs and brand new game systems. I carefully plan for what I want, saving up slowly.

I also don't spend most of time gaming. I may have used to, but now I have more important things to do. I still enjoy gaming but my time has to be more concentrated, I have to be more picky about what I play/do. I'm also more of a social gamer now. I still like Warcraft 3 and the various great FPS games available (I don't just play DDR), but I enjoy them 200% more when I am playing with friends that I can communicate with while playing.

that's all I got to say bout that

Blog of Blogs

I added a list of friends blogs on the right. Didn't make the cut? Either we need to reevaluate our friendship, I didn't know about your blog, it wasn't relevant to the theme of this blog, or it was adequately linked from one of these blogs. Either way, check some of these people out. I think they're awesome. And their blogs aren't too bad either.

Customizing blogs

I decided to customize my blog page with a new template last night. The template I chose happened to have been written in portuguese... But I think I have finally converted it over entirely to english... Only time will tell. Other changes may occur randomly. You have been warned.

New template header

I'll figure out how to get everything in english sooner or later.. silly online template pages....

Where am I?

Just thought I would say where I am and what I'm doing for the time being. I am currently emplyed as a Hydrocarbon Well Logger with Geosearch Logging. Most companies call this work Mud Logging. While you are looking at rock chips and gas that is carried by mud, you aren't actually logging the mud. You look for any hint of gas or oil and report every thing you see in a program. (Example) That file gets saved and sent to the company you are contracted with when you are done. Every morning you have to fill out a drilling progress report for the company man, they like being up to date on productions.

For the time being I am working out of a town called Duncan, OK. That's where the hotel is anyway... Finding some of these places can be a challenge. The rigs are never in town or just outside of town or just of the highway. They are out in the middle of no where.

I have some pictures somewhere of previous rigs I worked on. I'll get around to posting those sometime soon here. I even have video of how the rig hands make connections and trip from one of the wells I was on. We'll see if I can't make some available.

A little about me

I am 26. I grew up in a town of around 45K people in Michigan.

My dad is a Ph.D. Chemist working for a big company for the last 28 years. He always liked chemistry. Even as a kid he had a chemistry set making smoke bombs in his LA suburb garage till his parents "accidentally" misplaced it one year. His brother that used to play cowboys and indians became an Orange County sheriff, and his other brother works on spy satellite technologies. (at least that's the story I remember)

He liked computers as a hobby. When companies were making computers that you bought in a kit and attached some wires to a circuit board to perform basic math functions and were selling it for thousands (or hundreds) and calling them home computers, he wanted one though he couldn't afford it. After graduating and finding a job (or during graduate school, I'm not sure) he found a TI-99 4a home computer. I grew up playing with it. It was like an atari with a built in keyboard and BASIC programming language. It had cool games and a speech synthesizer.

Bill Cosby endorsement:

It can speak for itself (a little long winded imo):


Before I was born in 1982, or before I can remember, he had an Amiga 1000 which could run circles around all the cool Apple computers of the day.

Old Amiga TV ad:

The Portal song "Still Alive" written in the Amiga music composer - fitting song:


I can vividly recall the day when he was showing my older sister some games he had on the Amiga while I was playing the TI. Those games looked much cooler. So I asked him to show me how to play them.

The Amiga had awesome games and could do some impressive 3d graphics and you could write music in a program that is scarily similar to current day's Finale software. He taught me how to run programs and play games well enough that I mastered the floppy swap by the age of 6 (There was no hard drive and only one 3.5 inch floppy drive. Any time a program needed information from the system, you had to swap the floppies back and forth about 3 times).

When I was 10 we moved from southern Indiana back to Michigan. (Ok, I skipped over moving to Indiana, but it really doesn't matter that much) Our old Amiga wasn't quite the power horse it used to be. 486s had come down in price enough and so we bought a brand new Gateway 2000 486 DX2 66 Mhz, with (8? 16?) Mb RAM and a 5 or 10Gb hard drive. We were on the Net before there was a world wide web. Dialup BBS sites to get jokes and ebooks. We tried AOL when it came out, decided it stank then (still does imho. Too much fluff. Give me a connection and the browser of my choice and I'm happy.)

(I still have this poster that game with my game. I laminated it.)

One of the first things we did with the computer was games. Shortly after getting the computer my dad came home with a Doom 1.666 demo cd. Not sure where he got it. It may have been floating around the office and he thought I would like it. Maybe he played it at work and thought he would like it, I don't know. Either way, it got me hooked. Doom may not be as P.C. as todays morning cartoons but it was fun. (I'll save the topic of video game violence for a later post) I learned how to use the computer quite well. I even made some of my own levels. They were never as cool, but I could make something! He brought home another demo, Descent. A 360 degree space flying combat game set in asteroid mining tunnels. Also a great game, made levels, and my friends and I ate the game up. Literally with milk and a spoon, ate the game (not literally). Often games required more system than Microsoft's default settings and a batch file had to be cooked up to redistribute the amount of system, extended, and magical gorschnack RAM needed for the game (I'm looking at you Jurassic Park). This prompted further learning of how computers work. Essentially, games brought recreational and societal happiness and they were good teachers. It was a good, positive cycle.

I forgot to mention that back before the 486 was NES. I was there, I went to the store with my dad. We had to drive late into the evening and miles into Kentucky to find a store that was selling them. I'll bet they had been out for months before my dad could talk my mom into letting him get one. I'm sure it was "for the kids." He played it a lot too, for a while. There was one very short point in time that we had in our house every major nintendo system from the NES to the N64. (NES, SNES, N64, Game Boy, GB pocket, GB color, Virtual Boy, SNES gameboy adapter)

Many good memories with Nintendo. Sega came and went, but I stuck with Mario. After Sony came out with the Playstation and favorites like Street Fighter and Mega Man moved to the PS I had to stick with Mario, he was about all that was left. Other good things came and left for Nintendo. Goldeneye 64 was awesome, as well as many other 64 games. But while the PS2 and the XBOX were making a scene, the gamecube kept chugging along doing cutesy stuff. I didn't notice it too much while I was off at college and on the mission. When I helped my family get a Wii for that first christmas, they sent me the olf gamecube. My wife and I were excited about the Wii because it promised to be a game system that we could both enjoy together. So we played some great GC titles and dreamed of the day when she would be interested in something I enjoyed so much that she would play with me (on the Wii. She played some GC titles too, but not that often.)
We got a Wii, and it's been really fun. We play, when I'm not busy with school and work. I'm currently working away from home for a few weeks and get to play more during my off time. There have been some great games for the wii that have been really fun. However, every time I go look at the game titles in the store very few of them catch my interest. Most upcoming games look like the same old stuff we've seen from Nintendo for the last year. As Nintendo grows closer to new fan bases, expands its market to non-gamers, it seems as though it is moving farther from the hard core/serious gamer. I used to consider myself as a serious gamer. I played super star wars (SNES) for hours at a time, forsaking food till the either the Death Star was destroyed or my confidence was by a rogue TIE fighter. I look at the new games for the 360 and PS3 and actually want to play them (Street Fighter 4, Soul Calibur 3). Sure they have the same old control style, but as long as they are fun and challenging and beautifully rendered, does it matter? Come on Nintendo, why not the cool games? Why the crippled internet abilities? Not to say the other guys aren't getting lousy either. How long can the same old style of games on the 360 and PS3 hold a person's interest?

Are games moving away from me? Or am I outgrowing them? I love a good game, always have. Is it a matter of time and money? After reading this article and comic I'm not exactly sure what to think. Nintendo has moved to the casual gamer side of the table. M$ and Sony are still making games for the 10-18 year old market (mainly). Who is making games for the busy 26 year old that wants a good story, great graphics, exciting game play, and some gaming respect on a budget?

I guess the trophy goes to who and whatever we make time for. It will take some research, time and maybe a little money, but I hope to keep this entertaining hobby of mine alive somehow.