The tendency is to go to bed instead of writing out what you have in mind. This is the tendency, what one normally does, but it’s contrary to the idea of keeping a diary !
So now.. we sblog it out as a form of discipline !
Today I felt the biggest quake ever (for me). I promptly went to the flexing furniture that was holding the projector. I did already bind it with some rope, but the whole furniture may have fell off (nothing too heavy, just something standing on some screwed in wooden poles).
The shaking had me worried, in my mind the running thought was “the big one, the big one” ..actually in English, because that’s really how I learnt the expression (in California, nonetheless).
At night I went for dinner to a friend’s house. He cooked some good pasta. We ate that and some prosciutto (Italian ham) that his mother sent thought his sister that recently visited Japan.
We then spilled onto the streets of Roppongi to proceed with the nightlife rituals. We met another Italian friend, moved from club to club.
We met several known people in the process. We were actually betting on whom we would have met. Some we guessed, some we couldn’t possibly have guessed.
The interesting part of all this, is of course the hints that one may or may have not gotten. Hints related to the world of socializing. What does one girl mean with her glance ? What catches her eye ? What makes her look away almost immediately ? How long is the fraction of a second that tells difference about her taste, as she looks away ? -> Does 1/10th of a second mean that she is interested, as opposed to 1/20th of a second ? How about all the time that she looks at you while you don’t know it ?
A lot of information is floating all around the environment and it isn’t formally rationalized. A girl tells me that I look nice in blue. That I should wear blue or white (?!). A guy spontaneously gathers friends (male and females) around the staff thanks to his looks (including behavior) which in a way makes him sympathetic towards others. I meet some old acquaintance and, as we both play cool, the background complexities that kept us away (common friends/ex-friends) are somewhat felt.
In the end, this is in a way my money’s worth, although I’d still be much happier if I could rationalize the whole experience and put it down into a formula & parameters. A mathematical representation wouldn’t be necessarily accurate as the perception would still be human.. however it would be much better than just experiencing and trying to keep all in mind for the future.
Basically it’s a lot like solving a problem mathematically or thought a neural network. The neural network, with enough valid experience samples, gives out good predictions.. however it doesn’t logically (mathematically) explain things. So, it’s really a solution good for the user but not much for the “developer”. I don’t want to be good at the game, I want to understand the complex details of it !
mumble
Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 6:27 AM EDT
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Two days ago an XBox 360 prototype (actually a beta devkit) died on me. I was definitely not pushing the limit. Certainly my office isn’t freezing cold.. however those things are to be expected with prototypes.
When I was working at Squaresoft, around the time when PS2 was announced, there was a rumor in the company that in the offices in Japan a PS2 prototype caught on fire 8) ..eheheh
Today I worked until about 9:30 PM.. there is definitely a lot of work to do and, most importantly, much of the work is of unknown nature. Basically new consoles always bring new things. This time around MS is really pushing the Live (online playing) feature. Every game has to have it. Although the documentation is all there, there is still quite a bit of work to do, to understand and implement everything. Making a game to run online is no joke. It’s surely very appealing to the player (and to MS, which can bill gamers 8), but the burden added to the developer is substantial.
So, while this generation of consoles is much easier to program on the graphics level (it’s either DirectX or OpenGL), these kind of added features are enough to keep the developer busy. It quite possibly may require an extra person to work on the whole network thing.. especially for the first kind of such titles.. where completely new code has to be written.
I’m also not quite sure how things work with the usual real-time game data communication. My experience is that lag and various Internet data transfer uncertainties can keep a developer pretty busy playing around with parameters and techniques to get the thing running reliably.
It’s not fun to have to deal with all these issues while on a schedule. It’s already too early to predict how much time it will all take. Once I’ll have a clearer idea.. is when I’ll have to start working until late in the evening..
Ummmmmmm !!!
Posted by Davide Pasca as work, Videogames at 1:09 AM EDT
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On Friday, with a long weekend coming, the premise was to be somewhat productive. However, things didn’t turn out as good.
Friday night I went out with some friends, Saturday night with some other friends, Sunday night went out again !
Saturday I went to a the swimming pool with a friend. We arrived there at 4PM or so. The weather was cloudy. Nothing much really came out of it 8)
My friend again went today (Monday). He went at around 12:30PM.. eager to get some tan.. with a newly purchased level-50 sun-screen ! Clearly a confused choice pushed by the clerk at the drug store.
He left at 3PM, called me, I went there at 4PM and then we both got into the pool again. This time he didn’t put any sun-screen, and actually tried to wash off every bit he had put before… he should have done like me: slept into the afternoon and got there at 4PM.. because in the end we got the same “tan”, even though I did put some level-20 screen.
Clubbing around turned out fun. I went to one of those clubs mostly for foreigners. I invited a friend and another friend of hers. However, because I tried doing that in Japanese, I told her “I’ll get in touch” while I really ment to say: “keep in touch/let me know”. That had me a bit worried: how many times have I made this mistake before ? Being a beginner at a language is surely a dangerous thing.
The fun and spooky part of these clubbing sessions was that I’d go and meet people that I knew. Mostly ex-partners of friends. It’s a situation that can complicate things, but at the same time, it’s nice to go to a place and find some sort of ally !
Chance also wanted that I met a Japanese girl that spoke Spanish ! Spanish is very close to Italian. I did practice a lot of listening (I sometimes watch Spanish language soap-operas), but I never tried to actually speak it.
It’s was a bit odd but definitely fun. I tried to speak Japanese and Spanish all the time with her… a doubly-learning experience.
..I guess I have been somewhat productive then.
Posted by Davide Pasca as Diary at 2:51 AM EDT
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I’ve been meaning to update the blog, but I clearly have not !
Last Friday I didn’t go out. I did go out on Saturday, but I came back home early (so to speak). On Sunday afternoon I almost went to the pool with my friend Marco. However I’ve underestimated the weather and aimed to go for the gym instead.
Once outside, we realized that the Sun was good, so we went for a walk. I’m usually pale white and my body sometimes gets a bit too cold. I definitely need to sleep more at night and also need to get more acquainted with the Sun !
I haven’t really been coding much at home. Ten minutes here and there, changing the video capture code to work directly with RGB instead of YUV.. now that I realized that YUV is more a legacy than anything.
I’ve also been spending quite a bit of time posting on Playfields.net, the Italian game developer’s message board.
Posting, following threads, it’s all very time consuming, but it’s something that I don’t do constantly, so I’m forgiving myself for now. It’s also somewhat useful to talk about certain things (including 3D) and when people flame, well that’s fun too 8)
At work I’ve been a bit frustrated with some new technology, which of course I’m glad to be working on, but at the same time I feel a bit powerless as I realize that I have to develop something, following a schedule, on a technology which is itself in a development phase, and therefore unreliable.
I’ve spent the last few days turning off and on consoles, restarting programs, rebooting Windows.. while keeping an eye on the project specs (written in Japanese) and trying to give a feedback on the technology itself.
I’d like to write how screwed up sleeping hours made me get late to work, but that would actually contribute to further screw up my sleeping hours, so I’ll leave it at that 8)
Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 1:35 AM EDT
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A rather un-inspiring weekend. Went out Friday and Saturday, but really not in the mood to get wild (not that I ever really do), nor to do “phone-number begging” (not that I ever really do).
I did however sleep quite a bit on Sunday. Also the weather was bad, so I stayed at home all day. It’s actually been raining for a few days already.
Today I went to the gym. Ran about 3 kilometers. I weighed at 70.40 Kg. That means that I’m keeping my weight, actually lowering it: 0.05 Kg less. Even though recently I keep going to the gym just once per week.
I’ve been on and off, trying to do some video editing. I have footage of a recent gathering at the home of a friend. I’m trying to get something out of it.
The biggest problem is the quality of the shots. It’s all jerky and the contents are far from scripted. Whomever takes the shot (me included), it hardly ever comes out something really useful. Especially if one would like to put things in a logical sequence.
Recently I’ve been trying to put music in background. That works well when there isn’t much yelling and screaming, basically on outdoor shots. That’s not the case for what I have here, so I need to make the best of what people say, edit it in a way that it’s not boring, but that isn’t unfair either.
This time I’m experimenting with chopping dialogues as to give the impression of a faster pace. Not sure what the technical term would be. I’ve seen it used on some recent serial TVs 8)
I’ve also been close to twist a sequence and make it seem like a friend is talking bad of the girlfriend of another friend.. A few cuts and what is a positive remark, can turn into a negative comment. I’m trying to avoid that, but at the same time it makes me think on how many times I see something in TV and I’m perhaps being fed the wrong message, thanks to malicious editing or by mistake.
In any case this editing is taking quite a chunk of time. Encoding will take a few more hours too. De-interlace is a must if one isn’t encoding a DVD. That takes time. Noise-reduction is also pretty important for indoor shots (especially with my aging camera), that takes quite a bit of time too. Color correction is also important, that probably doesn’t take much time.. ..ops, I’m supposed to work in the color space thing !
I better go to sleep. Poof !
Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 2:08 AM EDT
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