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

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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

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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

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On the web I can only read bad critics about PlayStation 3. Everyone seems to hate it. Hate the price, hate the fact that it doesn’t come out with many games. Everyone loves the Wii though.
Clearly preconceptions are just that. Wii is not out and very few people will have a PS3 for a while, so it’s not possible to have an objective opinion. Is this Wii really that much fun ?

As I mentioned before. As a programmer that likes 3D graphics, I hate the fact that Wii’s hardware is so underpowered. But this affects me also as someone that has passion for great visuals in games. I like realism, I like special effects. People love great graphics, otherwise they wouldn’t go watch so many CG movies or so many movies with special effects in them.

To me the price is not an issue, but perhaps I’m privileged. I suspect that most people that criticize the PS3 are just going with the flow. Echoing strong wise opinions about value of the money and playability over graphics. So much wisdom, but how many of those that hate this whole PS3 deal aren’t really secretly hoping to get one ?

I think that Americans basically culturally love Nintendo, dislike Sony as a corporate and are pretty happy with the XBox 360.

Personally I don’t have that much time to play. I also don’t like to stand in line just to get a toy.
If I get a Wii, it will be to used for social events.. for casual gaming when there are women around.
The PS3 would be for serious gaming. That is if I will be able to buy one easily and if there is a game for it that I must buy (most people actually decide based on the game).

The killer application for me is probably Armored Core 4 . Provided that the controls are improved since the last version I bought for PS2. Also, I’ll have to see how it compares graphically between the XBox 360 and the PS3. I’m definitely not buying two versions of the same game !

I guess I pretty much don’t give a shit about cute games. I like my giant robot and racing games. Variety is good, but giant robots are better 8)

Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, Diary, USA, Videogames at 5:10 AM EST

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As the month started, I started working too. My new employer is a popoular Japanese game developer and publisher.

On my first day, I got in the office at 10:30 in the morning. There I underwent the general introduction for new employees along with 10 other new recruits, although only one other programmer, which actually ended up in my team.

I can say that I’m pretty happy with how things  have gone so far. Working for a big company has it’s advantages. I got a superfast Dual Core Pentium 4 3GHz, 2GB of RAM an nVidia Quadro FX, a 24 inches Dell LCD monitor (Dell is selling some huge and cheap monitors here in Japan recently !) …and a crappy, supercheap ball mouse from Microsoft. I guess real programmers aren’t supposed to use mouses 8)

My coworkers are pretty cool. They all seem motivated, talkative. There is palpable excitement, it’s a great feeling, it makes me want to work ! The other day I had a private meeting with a guy in my team just to talk about graphics.
After many years I’m also being asked to go to GDC and Siggraph !! Yes !!

Admittedly, I’m in a sort of a special team, concerned more about research and less about immediate development. Other coworkers are working very long hours, and I fear the day when that will come for me.

The offices take several floors of a pretty large building. There are little or no directions around. So, one has to pretty much carry around printed maps of the floors !

It’s so different now that there are actual refreshment rooms. I can just step out and grab a coffee or a snack.
Work time is also flexible. One is expected to do at least 8 hours of work per day but can get in anytime before 11 AM and leave by 4 PM or so (provided that 8 hours have past).  ..well at least in theory.
The actual work time rules seem to be a bit more complicated but I honestly didn’t catch the details. It was all explained in Japanese.
Some of my coworkers speak good English, but otherwise a minimum level of Japanese is required.

cool cool

…and my new TeraStation 1.6TB gave me problems again. After downgrading the firmware and restructuring the array, disk 3 failed again. I then restructured again, made a disk check (takes several hours) which says that things are OK, but I doubt that !
I’m now trying to see if the support at Buffalo can give any hint, before sending the TeraStation back to them for eventual repair.

Sort of sucks.. and I’m sleepy !

zzzzzzzzzzz
poof

Edit: Fack ! I fixed the spelling error !

Posted by Davide Pasca as Diary, Japan, work at 3:59 AM EST

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I’ve kept the storage for my home server on a TeraStation Pro NAS 1.0 TB for quite a while now. Recently I felt the need for more space and decided to buy a 1.6TB model.
The TeraStation itself is quite more expensive than the 4 hard-disks it comes with, but I figured I can go on indefinitely with two of them. By the time that one is filled up, I can but new bigger HDs and transfer the contents of the previous 4 HDs into the new larger ones using the spare TeraStation.

The new model I bought is pretty much the same, bigger hard-disks and the 1.04 firmware.. ouchhh !!!
I managed to slowly (my network isn’t that performing) transfer all the files. Then suddenly today the network share for the new TeraStation stopped working. To turn it off I had to press the power button for a long while, definitely more than usual. It went off quickly and with a beep.
I turn it back on and boom.. there is an error in one of the HDs.
I went to the control panel and followed the procedure to restructure the RAID …but, nothing. I was presented with an odd error message:

I tried to look on the web for people talking about this error message but I found nothing. Because I have all the data still on the old TeraStation, I decided to give up and just delete the RAID.. but I get the same error message !!

I realize that a firmware upgrade could help solve the issue and I find this wiki talking about firmware. Apparently the latest firmware are better know for giving troubles, so I follow the link in the wiki page and download the supposedly stable 1.01.

I downgraded to the 1.01 and now I’m happily restructuring the RAID !!
I’m not sure how it will end up, but at least I can try !

woooo !!!


Update: It’s all fine now. Installing the 1.01 firmware allowed me to fix the mess.. which probably wouldn’t have happened if I did that from the begging.. sad !!

Posted by Davide Pasca as Diary at 3:48 AM EST

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Yesterday I watched Equilibrium again. I like science fiction, but mostly I like the idea of a simplified world. I have so many different t-shirts. To me a t-shirt is something wear under the shirt. I want them to be interchangeable.
Recently I’ve been buying packs of 3, v-neck t-shirts from Uniqlo (it’s a relatively cheap clothes brand in Japan, I don’t link the site because it’s full of Flash crap that uses 100% of CPU time !). Plain t-shirts that come in black, gray and dark-gray. With those I can pick any of them cause color doesn’t matter and they all have the same size and consistency.
I like the idea of being able to dress without worrying if I’m going to feel comfortable or not. But then there are the sensitive people: my mother gives me loads of t-shits, many of which end up being sleepwear because of their large sizes or very colorful design.
I suppose that if I wore nothing but plain t-shirts I wouldn’t think so much about other people ! ..ummm
However I like to have my mind free to think. My apartment is full of crap that has mostly no use. Recently I’ve been hunting for useless unmarked CDs. Many went right into the trash bin, some of them I reversed on my Terastation (I’ll soon need to upgrade to the 1.6TB model ..forget the 2TB one, it uses ultra-expensive 500GB hard-disks).

I often feel like the urge to trash things I see laying around the apartment.
I’d like to optimize things. For example I wish I could have all my books in digital form.. I can’t wait for all books to come out in digital format ! I’d probably be willing to pay more for that !

I have some DVDs.. I buy them very rarely. They take up space !!
I have a lot of electronic gadgets and they all come with one or more cables, power bricks.. arghhhhh !!!

I hate all this, I want to live in a very simplified environment, but I’m also attached to physical things, things that remind of people, things that if I trash I feel like I’m letting someone down.

Trashing things in Tokyo is not so easy. One needs to pay a special feel for large items. I think one needs to phone somewhere to describe size and weight and then be told to buy some sort of sticker at the convenience store.
A year ago there was a red sofa lingering by the trash area of my apt building for the longest time. The trash area is very small, so this sofa was basically there by the street with no one picking it up..  that’s facked up !

Trash trash trash.. for small things I have to overcome whatever mental block I have and for large things I have to overcome the pain in the ass of getting into some procedure.

Material things suck !!!

Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, Diary, Japan at 4:48 AM EDT

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I’ve been slowing down work on DSharingu. There is a bug by which it just doesn’t send the screen contents from my father’s PC, but it’s hard to debug it remotely.
There are so many things I could add: whiteboard, video stream (video-chat), file sharing, etc etc. But there is no point in adding something I don’t think it’s going to be that useful.
I suppose video chat would be nice, but the infrastructure is missing.
If I want to create some sort of videophone to my parents’ home in Rome, then I need to put in place actual hardware. Place an LCD monitor in the living room and a camera in a position and with a field of view and resolution that allow to perceive the remote environment.. not just the talking head.

What I really need is to sneak some sort of home server over there. Now that DSharingu works, I have a Trojan Horse (not in the bad/virus sense 8P) by which I can remotely fiddle with a PC at will.
I actually thought I did that on my mother’s PC at her pub, but something is not working.
The last version I upgraded to, had a bug by which the application didn’t start minimized at log-in. This probably prompts whoever logs to quickly close it.
It also doesn’t minimize to the systray, so people may see it in the taskbar and decide to remove it.
However that’s not such a big deal. For the time being I really need to have a small PC running in the living room in Rome. But I can’t delegate that job to any member of the family because they don’t really know how to buy and setup a PC.
Specifically, I’m thinking of a PC which is very small like I can buy here in Japan, but probably not in Italy.

Almost 2 months have past since I quit my job. I will start working again in November, I did quite a bit of coding and more errands, all mostly meant to install a virtual presence of mine in my home in Rome, but now I’m starting to worry about that last step, the physical one.

I may be getting a credit card soon, if that works overseas, I could be buying what I need from an Italian on-line shop and ship it home. But even then, I would still need to set things up.

For the time being I guess I could try buy what I need and set it up here in my home. I’m thinking:

• One of those very small PC’s only a bit larger than a CD Drive.
• A compact and wireless keyboard and mouse set, like this one I bought recently.
• An LCD monitor (that probably would be better bought in Italy).
• A powerful (thick walls in Rome !) wireless adapter, probably USB.

I would then need to set everything up and ship the parts somehow, hoping nothing gets broken and that it doesn’t get stuck at the customs.
I bet that then the wireless wouldn’t work.. ehhh !!

mumble

Posted by Davide Pasca as Diary at 3:16 AM EDT

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Here comes another slow update.
I have potentially a lot to write about but I generally let it go.. I could write so much more.. but it’s better this way, people should get busy doing their stuff rather than read other people’s stuff 8)
First of all, a suggestion (I got from Rasty !) to keep in touch with this blog or with any other blogs: Google Reader. It’s basically a page that groups RSS and Atom feeds. A feed is a streamlined version of a web page comprised of a series of articles. An RSS reader is a page/software that shows all those articles coming from different sites in a single view.
The useful thing in all this is that one doesn’t need to actually bother going to a site to see if something new is up.
This is potentially deleterious though, because one may want people to go to the actual site to see additional content.. but then again, people easily get bored of sites that are updated rarely and would probably end up forgetting a site after a few failed attempts to find fresh news.

Now, about work, I think I pretty much decided. I will go for the company that lets me do research. Research sounds good, but I doubt I will have total freedom.. still ! I like the idea. I honestly don’t feel too much the need to work on a shipping game…. I still get recognition for working with a famous company and so family and friends are set ! That saves also a lot of time for people I meet for the first time and to whom I need to explain where I work at.
Great.. but with all the papers I have to sign and things I have to do (including a medical check !), I don’t want to celebrate until I’m actually hired !

In the meantime I kept working on DSharingu. I finally managed to remotely control my mother’s PC.. and that was really all I was asking for !!
The application has matured quite a bit. It has a few key features that one would expect from a modern application: on-line update, tabbed views, good installer. But also has unique features that make this application so important to me. The most important feature for me is the ability to set the application to keep trying to connect to another PC.
I have a fixed address on the Internet and my mother’s PC can safely keep trying to call me at that address. The minute I need to access her PC, I run DSharingu on my side and accept the next incoming connection (currently tries to connect every 20 seconds). As I mentioned before, this is because she has her connection firewalled by the provider.
The remote desktop’s view is shown using only 4 gray levels. But, frankly, that’s all it’s needed to administer a computer. Still, color will come back at a later time.

DSharingu doesn’t do much more than VNC, in fact it’s probably quite slower and I still have to implement the keyboard interaction.. but it fits my needs as they grow and it’s also a launch pod.
With DSharingu I have an application in place that starts when the PC starts and that can easily be updated. I can now start adding features and  easily bring them to my mother’s PC.
Videochat would be nice, but honestly I think that a web-cam feature is more useful. By web-cam I mean a program that grabs images from a video source (usually a cheap camera attached by the USB port) and that sends it over FTP to a web server. The image is then associated to a page that can be watched with ease.
Because of the inherently inefficient method of transfer (sending whole JPEGs over FTP and forcing browsers to reload the image), updates come rarely.
Slow updates are not necessarily bad though. With no animation to speak of, people think of a web-cam as a detached view, something to leave on and mostly forget about…  I better be careful with that !!

I started with a hint on how to keep in touch with the blog and I end with a hint on how to update one: use Docs & Spreadsheet from Google !
To post updates I need some minimal HTML code.
I used to use Crimson Editor which is a text/code editor non-WYSIWYG. I tried Wordpress’s WYSIWYG editor but that seems to have a mind of its own and sometimes generates an HTML mess. GMail’s editor works nice but doesn’t show the underlying HTML code, so when I paste into Wordpress’s editor I get plain text.

This Docs seems to work nicely (though not quite perfectly.. I have to go remove a link manually after I’m done writing !), it has a real-time spell  checker.

cul cul.. zzzzzzzz !!!

Posted by Davide Pasca as Programming, Diary, work at 6:58 AM EDT

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There should be a legal limit to how much one can say “yes” without understanding what he’s saying “yes” about !
“Hai” in Japanese is mostly used as a reassurance, especially over the phone where one is constantly supposed to acknowledge things.
So, Friday I finally got the offer I was waiting for, but I wasn’t sure it was an offer.. I understood more or less, but I had to wait until I got something in the mail to be really sure 8)

The situation with work now is that the larger company has made a pretty good offer, the smaller one was caught a bit off-guard as I asked for a delay. They said it’s their fault for not trying to find out what I was up to (shopping around). But of course it’s also my fault for not trying to make things clear from the start. Although I think I may have hinted in one of the interviews that I was really looking around.
It’ wouldn’t have been too smart of me to resign from a company and go look for another position to just one company.
Having more than one offer also raised my perspective salary quite a bit, which is only fair I think 8)

I will have to go for two more interviews and really take a decision. By now I have a pretty clear idea of where I would like to go to, but I also need to make sure I value all offers and keep in good terms with everyone.
I will have to reject some offers and I’m not too comfortable with that. Refusing good working positions for good money has a rather strong consumeristic taste.
In one case I may have a chance to join a team that filled my programming I dreams ever since my arcade games addicted teenager years.
It feels so good to be so close to realize a dream, but also feels bad to think that I may have to give up on that.
One has to trade constantly.. it’s all matter of time, how do you spend your next N years ?

I’m generally happy however. I’ll need strength to make a final decision soon, but however it goes I feel like I’m achieving great things from my perspective.
As it’s often said, anyone can achieve his or her dreams, it’s only matter of being very dedicated, very very patient and daring at the right time.

And now back to DSharingu coding. The current version is buggy as hell and I’m working on some major changes (multiple connections with tabbed views).
I’ve somehow managed to get my mother to install the application and help me to debug it. I still can’t see her computer’s screen… being able to do that is my mission for the time being !!!

woooooo !!!!

Posted by Davide Pasca as Diary, Japan, work at 5:52 PM EDT

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