This site is now obsolete and is kept for historical reasons (we are making history here, eh !)

Recent stuff is over at…

http://v4.kazzuya.com

Thank you,
Davide

Posted by Davide Pasca as Diary at 2:02 AM EDT

No Comments »

Recently at work I put a lot of effort in documenting things. I use my intranet MediaWiki page to keep note of all sort of useful info. Links, snippets of batch files, install processes. Things that one tends to forget and re-use again.
I also got access to a server and installed Wordpress where I keep a very simple blog in (very simple) Japanese.
Wiki’s are great to gather information, but they aren’t very good for diary-like reports and don’t make it easy to leave simple comments. Wordpress is much better, but still sucks because it doesn’t implement comments’ preview !

I also started learning about LaTeX to write simple research reports. I don’t want to sound geeky, but LaTeX seems to make a lot more sense than plainly using Microsoft Word or any other word processor. With LaTeX I can write down text and include images without worrying about layout. With a parameter I can tell it if I want a document to look like a IEEE paper or a Siggraph paper and just recompile it !
Things of course aren’t so smooth. For example today I drew a vector-based image with OpenOffice Draw. OO Draw makes you draw on canvases of printable document size, for example an A4. However one often needs just to save out a portion of the page. For example a graph that needs to go on a sub-figure in the LaTeX paper.
OO Draw allows to save out just a selection, but it does so by including the saved selection in a page sized as the whole document !
It took me a while to find out that this is a known issue that dates back to 2004 ! Luckily someone wrote a macro that can export the selection without the canvas size.. but in the process of discovering all this I felt a bit stupid. Lost in the process of writing something as I’m not even sure about the contents !!

Documenting seems like big waste of time. But this is mostly due to the fact that I have little experience on writing proper reports, however this is the only way I can demonstrate and communicate about my findings, and it’s also a good way to keep a reference of things that one tends to forget.

moomooo !

Posted by Davide Pasca as report writing, LaTeX, OpenOffice at 2:43 AM EST

3 Comments »

Today for some reason I tried again to go look at the trailer, or whatever has to offer the web site of Gears of War. A game that I’ve been criticizing recently just based on the fact that the title is lame.
Believe it or not, Firefox managed to crash as I was inputting my birth date, a check required to see if I’m adult enough to watch the Gears of War trailer. Well, I guess I’m not old enough ! Nice job !!

Onto more interesting things.. Tuesday I went back to work after two weeks of vacation ! The extra long winter holiday is due to the fact that the R&D section got new desks, furniture. It all smells new. Gone are the tall cubicles, in favor of a more open space environment. A change that some found annoying, as there is an obvious loss of privacy. There are still dividers, but they are not as tall and they don’t cover the back sides of the dutiful workers. The idea is that one can turn around and speak directly to the other 3 coworkers placed at the remaining 3 corners.
I like also the new open-space meeting room, with projector and white-board for potentially anyone to see. Cool ! Involvement !
I also like how some windows lost the curtains.. nice sunlight coming in ! There are also some simple red sofas on green carpet, short tables and white boards right by the windows, not too far form my desk. Cool, cool !

Posted by Davide Pasca as Diary, work at 2:29 AM EST

No Comments »

In my days in school I used to watch a lot of Japanese cartoons. I always envied how in those cartoons kids had their sports uniforms, how serious they were about volleyball, basketball, swimming.. what ? A school with a swimming pool ?!!
One of the most popoular anime was Attack No.1 . The story about Kozue Ayuhara (Mimi Ayuhara for the Italian version) and her feats with her school’s volleyball team.
In the anime, volleyball was quite a serious thing. Her coach was very demanding. She trained very seriously, every day. Training was excruciating, physically very painful and sometimes rather unorthodox (hitting the ball with chains around the wrists !!).
Everything was clearly distorted, especially physics had little meaning, as balls would disappear from sight, follow strange paths and deform like melting cheese.

I envied Japanese students because I could see that they actually had some system in place to practice sports at a competitive level. Sure, we all had good laughs at those exaggerations, but I could tell what was true and what was pure fantasy… or could I ?

Recently I learned more about sports in Japanese schools thanks some girl I know that used to be pretty involved in her basketball club.
Along with normal studies, everyone can join a sports club where more or less traditional sports can be practiced.
My source tells me that her coach was very strict indeed, demanding training 3 times per day, including one hour during lunch break. Training had to be done every day. No school on Saturday or Sunday, but clubs are open on weekends, so one basically ends up going on Saturdays and Sundays as well.
She would run and practice so much that her toe nails would go black and sometimes tear off. Sport shoes gave her flat feet and a bone deformation below the knee that apparent is typical of professional soccer players. Last but not least, her coach forbid any girl of the club from shortening the school uniform’s skirt (a common practice here in Japan 8)
I heard stories of strong competition, drama of physical injuries that prevented taking championships.

I think back at those anime and they don’t seem so off anymore !

Posted by Davide Pasca as Japan, Japanese girls at 10:21 AM EST

16 Comments »

30 minutes to 2007 !
Yesterday I went to Tokyo Disney Sea. It was very cold.. I got there in the afternoon and only had time for two rides, two small meals and some shopping.
Rides are fun I guess. But waiting in line for one hour to get 20 seconds of excitement doesn’t seem very fair !
It’s even more unfair to be sprayed with a coffee-milk drink: going back home, in the train I had the great idea to try a bottled drink I was offered. As I sipped in, cough kicked in and wht was in my mouth sprayed out on one guy and 2 girls sitting in front of me, standing in front of them.
Not much actual damage, but definitely one of the worst case scenarios ! I was ashamed but also laughing as I pretended to clean the poor victims. They were young and cool and didn’t say anything.. cool !!

zzzzzzzzzzzz

Posted by Davide Pasca as Diary at 11:38 PM EST

4 Comments »

Posting this from Google Docs & Spreadsheet .
Light years ahead of WordPresse’s pressing editor.

Enjoy and be gay !

Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 2:58 PM EST

2 Comments »

Gears of War is a hot game. One morning I read about it.. the title of the game and the screenshot, and I said to myself: What The Fuck ?!
Tough war-scared marines, killing monsters. That’s the latest video gaming experience ? Wow..
I suppose I would like the game if I played it, but it’s sort of stupid, do we really need to constantly simulate killings ?

Technically it supposed to be great. The graphics, it’s great alright, great ugly monster rendering !
In my career as a graphics programmer I often got my monitor to display ugly things. It doesn’t take much skills, a bug, lower resolution, and you’re set for for your ugly experience !

I’m definitely not a Wii person. But isn’t it a bit stupid that so many top selling titles are about simulating war ? Craving for war, when we could instead go join real ones.

Next time you go buy Gears of War, or Deference, Defance (what’s the name of the PS3 war title ? Ahh Resistance !), Rainbow Six, Spersmackfackkill.. I don’t really know the titles. What’s that, Counter Strike.
Next time you go about buying one of those games, try to feel a little bit stupid, because one it’s got to be a bit stupid craving so much for realistic killing experiences.
And if you don’t feel stupid, try enroll in the military and ask to get sent to Iraq. Don’t worry, there is still time left to get training and be shipped over. I’m sure there are a plenty of disillusioned marines over there willing to exchange with you.. you killing machine you !!

Fuck those games already !!!

P.S. I’m not linking the official Gears of War site because it’s a Flash, browser-facking kind experience.

Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, Videogames at 6:04 PM EST

13 Comments »

I’ve been fiddling with 3D with the goal of implementing Shadow Mapping for almost a month now.
I spent quite a bit of time around the engine, ironing things, getting it ready to quickly plug-in shaders.. and now I’ve been stuck on the facking Shadow Mapping for several days !
In theory it’s nothing special, in practice 3D graphics sometimes really sucks !
The problem is that there is a general concept, a lot of half-assed implementations, many ambiguous discussions on the net, a million papers and books that focus on different details. But no real complete reference. This is for Shadow Mapping but also for many other things.

The main issue with 3D graphics is that one works with transformation matrices and different 3D spaces. Matrix manipulation is not that difficult, but millions of ambiguities raise with coordinate systems, order of concatenation, inversion of matrices… plus the fact that shaders are hard to impossible to debug.
Doing an actual implementation is a royal pain in the ass, and it’s especially sad that I tend to try solve by trial and error. Flip matrices, swap orders, try to do something like some reference implementation does… but never actually really being sure what details am I missing.
For example I saw some code arbitrarily adding w to (x,y,z) to the light-view homogeneous space vertex after being transformed in a shader. Why ?! Why the fuck ?!  ..nobody knows, there is no telling. It’s something that needs to be done because of the specific situation.
I hate feeling stupid and fiddling for hours with parameters. Trying to grow a working implementation out of web-searches.
It doesn’t help that I still don’t have a credit card to buy English books via Internet, and the best library with English books I knew here in Tokyo seems to have given up on carrying the good coding books. Of course one can find a lot of shit on how to use Office and code in Perl and Ruby.. but who the fuck needs those ?! I need my 3D books !!!
…but I also know that to get something to work one needs about 10 books treating the same subject. That has always been the case, but more so now that there are tons of Game Programming Gems, GPU Gems, ShaderX. All written by hundreds of people.

If everyone is so good, why can’t I find a decent explanation on-line ?!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Posted by Davide Pasca as Programming, 3D Graphics at 1:54 AM EST

11 Comments »

I see more and more foreigners around Tokyo, in the clubs trying to pick up girls, but not necessarily all of them realize what are customs and expectations of Japanese girls.
I don’t pretend to know any ultimate solution to “score”, but with the years I learned a few things about Japanese girl’s taste.
First a division need to be made from those that are looking forward to meet a foreigner and those that don’t. There isn’t much help for the latter, but luckily there isn’t many of them. Of course not all foreign countries are equal, and some nationalities have more appeal than others..
All foreigners are expected to magically speak English. Girls want to practice English.. so, not knowing Japanese is not a problem. However, in a situation in which there is someone speaking Japanese fluently, the fluent speaker is likely to make the others feel dumb (it happens to me all the time 8).
Age matters in Japan more than in the west. It’s not so easy to guess the age of a Japanese girl, but it’s important to find out what are their expectations: Girls before 25 are in the playing & thinking about marriage phase. Twenty five and over are instead in the hunting & ready to marry phase. ..clearly, ultimately it’s all about marriage. Now you know that !
So, the great majority of Japanese girls is looking for a serious individual. Someone that is willing to embark in a long term relationship.
Then comes looks. Not looking like an otaku (a nerd) helps a lot. Talking about anime and video games straight away on a first encounter isn’t generally the best thing. If you introduce yourself as a game developer instead, things are quite different (^.^)y~~~.
Facial and body hair is generally not a good thing. The more travelled girls can tolerate it, but the younger ones generally hate it. Shaving everyday is definitely going to help !
With looks comes odor. Japanese men are definitely not odorless, but still, girls are absolutely terrified by bad smell ! American guys are generally pretty clean, but us European aren’t known for being overly zealous with hygiene. Sometimes foreign guys, even those that already live in Japan, walk in an apartment, take off their shoes and reveal 2-3 days old rotten socks !
That’s a big no-no, socks are to be changed every day. Also daily showers are required. In summer possibly twice per day.
Admittedly, I’m sometimes extreme about showers, but my opinion is that it’s always better to err on the safe side.
As clean as I am, I had my struggle with shampooing. At some point I had to change shampoos and I just realized that my daily shampoos weren’t enough. I tried a few things and I finally came one very simple conclusion: just wash better ! I used to have dandruff and I blamed it on shampoos for not being anti-dandruff or not being good enough. While in fact all I had to do was to put more vigour in the shampooing.. and I also use a conditioner after.
Some are afraid to take frequent shampoos because they think that soap is going to drive them bald. That’s actually a misconception, because greasy scalps turn into hell when not properly cleaned and hair follicles have nothing to gain and everything to lose from an irritated scalp.

So in the end it’s not so difficult:

• Be kind and honest.
• Don’t be a nerd: try to refrain a bit.
• Don’t smell bad: showers !
• Don’t be hairy: shave !

Having bad teeth instead isn’t such a crime as far as I realize. But of course a nice smile can only help 8)
Last thing about smell. I’m told that one can actually get sick in the armpits (!). Unusually strong smell comes out and surgery seems to be the only solution (really ?!). Apparently this sick armpits thing came up in a big way as some Japanese personality shared his ordeal with bad smell and his armpit surgery ! …ho ho ho ho !!
I personally think that showers and deodorant-stick are all that most people need.. but who knows ? 8)

As far as the main topic goes, there is a lot more to it, but I just wanted to share a few important points.
Ultimately it’s all about individuals and girls just want someone they can trust. So, if you are a foreigner looking for some fun in Japan, try to be nice and honest upfront. I see a lot of foreigners getting lucky with gullible girls that end up heart broken.

Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, Japan, Japanese girls at 9:17 PM EST

19 Comments »

My favorite place in Tokyo is the Shibuya area. It’s filled with sexy young girls wearing miniskirts with over-knees stockings over high heels and superpadded bras.
Most of them also carry $1000+ Luis Vuitton bags and one has to wonder how would a 18 years old girl afford to spend so much on a bag.  ..but women are in high demand and those girls really make their best to look their best.
Miniskirts can do wonders. A cute girl waiting for a friend has a good chance to get hit by a youngster offering to go for a tea at a cafe or for a meal depending on the time of the day. That’s called nanpa. A practice that is relatively well tolerated.. in the sense that one doesn’t get sent to Hell but rather ignored most of the time.. and could possibly actually manage to get a phone number !

There are then those that approach girls for business. The so called scouts. They look for girls hungry for money and willing to work at various levels of the “entertainment business”.
Hostess bars (or Kyabakura) offer quite a bit of money depending on the qualities of the girl and on the level of work. Working there, a girl gets to meet wealthy customers that may ask them to meet outside work for social events, but not necessarily for sex. Sex would be bad business because some customers could stop going once they got too intimate with their favorite girl.

Sex is still big business however. Recently a friend of mine got offered 100,000 yen (about $850 or 650 Euro) per session of some sort of photographic business.
In those cases the scout will come ask what’s your wish for material goods and will tell you something like: OK, you can have it if you come work a couple of days for this business.
100,000 yen is a lot of money for a day of work !! This works also because porn acresses in Japan are not necessarily professionals. You don’t need a boobs job. Acting shy and passive has its appeal and surely comes easier than the aggressive exaggerated acting that is seen in porn from western countries.

In all this, I sometimes try to think what it means to be a young girl.. to be in a situation where you have to decide what to do with life and be courted by countless guys offering you drinks, food, presents just for spending your time with them. And easy money for being promiscuous.

..it’s easy if you are easy 8)

Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, Japan, work at 2:47 AM EST

1 Comment »