Recently, everyone and their mothers has been sending to everyone and everyone’s mother YouTube links.
Yeah, well I too can spend countless hours browsing for funny clips. But sending links to videos, especially with comments like “whatch this you’ll die laughing !” is unfair. It wets one’s appetite and making him/her to follow the link and waste time watching a video.
Unlike text, video requires more concentration and it’s also a very blatant distraction when one is in the office working.
I hope the YouTube craze will slow down, but I it probably wont. YouTube is much like the TV, just it’s easier to share and is also very addictive as one can endlessly zap to entirely different video clips.
Personally I’m not crazy about watching the funny clip of the day that anyone found wasting his or her time browsing around (as opposed to something that one filmed or edited personally).
However, if you really have to send some video clip, next time try to put a description, so that one isn’t forced to go watch it out of curiosity.
Let’s save everyone’s time by doing important stuff rather than spreading endless mindless video-browsing 8)
Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, Diary at 12:59 PM EDT
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I find myself badly wanting to change jobs.. but I’m not sure what I want to do anymore.
I know what I like, but I can’t afford the price. I would just like to take a break and study things, do experiments. I would really like to continue study math and Japanese language. However I don’t have much freedom. I’m a mature and self-sustained person. I have to work to live a decent life, especially here in Japan where I have no family to support me.
Programming games may seem pretty interesting, but my interests seem to always go against company needs. Companies need to make money. No need to make cool looking 3D graphics, the key is to do anything that is convenient.
I understand that economy is important and I think I’ve been pretty good at adapting with my employers past and current. However it seems that I’m always helping companies to keep their business up, while I get paid as a game programmer: not much really !
If I have to work on things that I don’t really like, shouldn’t I just go for an even more boring job that pays me a lot more ? I feel cheated because game companies think that their employees are inherently loyal idiots that will always stick to the game business. Employees tamed by their unwillingness to look outside the game business.
Fack that ! I’m willing to trash my game programmer experience (which is actually going to be useful anyway) ..I want to make more money ! I want to work less !! Work isn’t teaching me much.. program this, program that, no real challenges, I need challenges, I want to learn new things, I want to learn important things. If I have to do a job where I spend the whole day bored, I may as well go flip burgers. It wont challenge my brain much, but at least I can communicate with people.
I think I’m about to explode.. a big change is going to happen soon, somehow.
It’s sad that companies like people that “can stand the pressure”.. it sounds like they are looking for tough employees, but in truth they are just looking for people with little expectations. People that are either apathetic or willing to accept just about anything to keep their position.
I need change !
Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, Diary at 12:51 PM EDT
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Slow updates means lots of what I would like to write gets lost. No big deal, it would probably be a lot of bullshit anyway !
Sunday night (3 AM in Japan) I saw the game Italy vs France. The first half was quite good, Italy dominated and I was somewhat proud of the team.
From the send half and on, Italy didn’t appear to be doing much. The team went on and managed to win, quite frankly, out of sheer luck.
By now everyone in Italy is going crazy. Some of my friends that went to watch the game in Roppongi (the Tokyo area dedicated to foreigners) apparently had great fun celebrating the victory.
Personally I left the pub where I was watching the game once it came to penalties. Really too much struggle to see anyone lose at penalties, plus I already considered France stronger, and there was no need to see the actual result dictated by factors which don’t reflect the main body of the game.
So Italy won.. and I think it’s not such a good thing. National team has a wide appeal. Can make cheer people like me, those that don’t care to daily follow soccer news. However it gives a lot of power to those that are crazy about the sport. Gives power to the mass, people that would rater sit on a couch and zip from a useless soccer program to the next.
In the recent years Italian TV only got worse: more commercials, more soccer debates, every single day day: soccer, soccer, soccer.
Italians are easily satisfied by a simple life with a steady job and lots of soccer bullshit to keep them interested in useless stuff, rather than getting busy on developing a brain.
Sure, dumb people are everywhere. That’s why every country has a national sport.. to keep people happy while others get rich and powerful.
I’m sure the current Italian government is so glad to have a popoulation feeling like they are worth something, while in fact their are just puppets.
Congratulations on the World Cup !!! We won.. yeahhhh !!!
Posted by Davide Pasca as Society at 1:01 PM EDT
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First things first. It seems that I have a girlfriend now ! wowwww !!!
It’s weird, it’s rare. It took a good dose of luck but also something has to be related to the fact that I’ve been more selective on who I hang out with.
There once was a time when by the time I thought that a girl might have been interesting, she was already being banged by one or more of my friends !! It’s a wild wild world out there ..but it’s also filled with dumb girls !! Girls that fall in the arms of whomever grabs them first and cry about being mistreated. If you act like a piece of meat, don’t be too surprised if a butcher walks in !
What I really like in a girl is when she likes me for my personality. A person that can appreciate my sense of humor, not a boring stuck-up, but also not a plain airhead.
Still, it takes time to get used to a person. I’m very good at spotting defects and making a big deal of them in my head.. I suppose that that’s what keeps me fairly asocial: I don’t feel at ease with people I don’t know well enough and that gives them a negative signal.
Talking about relationships, I’ve built a pretty good idea on certain aspects of how Japanese girls view relationships.
Apparently, cheating isn’t a big of a deal ! I see people having fun with “optional” partners all the time here in Tokyo ! It’s mostly the men that get the fun, but I definitely can tell that women can have their good share of extra-curricular fun… I actually asked around, and it turns out that Japanese women (including young girls), accept the idea that men like to “have fun”. So, one can go out have fun, but ! must make sure that his girlfriend/wife doesn’t find out, and that she isn’t being neglected. A lover has to be strictly a lover, to be met on spare time.
I guess it makes sense. Sooner or later relationships have to mature. Morph from the instability of sexual tension into some sort of family. Family meaning a strong reliable bond designed to be there for the sake of everyone involved.
Still, it’s kind of sad that there is this sort of implicit compromise, I don’t like that. I’ll be a sad day when I screw around and have to make up a bunch of bullshit for my girlfriend. Then it’s not so much about hurting someone.. it’s about hurting your own pride, living with lies, I don’t want to do that !
Well, it’s 2AM fack ! Time to zzzz !!!!
poof
Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, Japan at 2:09 AM EDT
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This Friday I had some sort of milestone to meet. I worked until about 12:35, got the last train at 12:43 (was actually a few minutes late) and headed back home. Unfortunately the last train only took me to catch a coincidence for a line which had already stopped. I waited in line 5-10 minutes and eventually took a taxi home. Woo !
The milestone didn’t go as well as I wished. I planned to put a lot of eye-candy in this phase of the project, but there was a lot of stuff outside my sphere of knowledge. The shaders, the off-screen rendering, etc.. I had to figure out how it all works on the XBox 360, which uses the well known Direct3D, with some important variations which makes things a bit more complicated to achieve.
Particle systems are also a pain to build without a proper tool that makes one experiment with some standard parameters. One could code a physics accurate explosion with particles, but that would be way too heavy (and require a degree in particle physics 8). Many compromises have to be done for games, compromises imply tricks, tricks imply fine tuning alternative representations.. basically a lot of trial-and-error work, therefore the need for tools that allow one to play around with parameters.
I hope I’ll have the time to do things right. I hope that what I did so far is good enough to pass the milestone ! I certainly tried to add some interesting new effects. The 360’s pumped up hardware was quite helpful, as I could draft CPU heavy systems without worrying too much to optimize performance along the way.
Cool.. but lets switch to the hot topic ! “God makes them, then couples them”. That’s the rough English translation of the title of this post. It means that some people are meant to be together, generally intended with a negative meaning.
I once (about a year ago ?) had some sort of relationship with some girl. It was a complex story. I basically thought that she was interesting and I decided to see what would come out of it. To this day, it has been the most instinctive, spoiled and flirtatious girl that I’ve ever met. An explosive cocktail, a “floating mine” as a friend of mine used to describe her.
The story is very complicated and the girl was truly something… she used to tell me that she didn’t like me because I wasn’t tall enough, and because I wasn’t blonde (although she didn’t mind Africans at all..). She’d hang out with me and say “I wish I was with XYZ instead ! He was tall, blonde, intelligent, the best ! I would really want to meet him now !!”. Once she plainly told me “I don’t want your genes !”. hohoho that surely has a special place in the history of the most funny and stupid (and honest ? 8) things that I’ve ever heard from the mouth of a girl !
Talking about mouth, she was certainly very cute, but the smile was a bit problematic.. (my nickname for her was “Alien”… 8). I remember once she was bragging about trying to buy a present for her boyfriend (some fat guy that she took pictures of in his underwear and she would show around !!), instinctively I told her “Try brush your teeth !” …ehehe that was funny, for me and my Italian friend, as I actually said that in Italian. “what ?” …”nothing nothing 8)” (that was mean, but nothing compared to what she could say).
As it might appear, I do have some resentment towards her.. probably, but I blame myself. I got myself acquainted with someone I knew it was only bad news, because I wanted to learn about it ! I wanted to learn how can someone be like that, flirt with such ease, jumping from friend to friend, continuously talking about marriage, being so lovely one minute and so mean the next.
I learned a lot but it’s not easy to try to convey most of it.
Japanese culture surely has its part in generating troubled girls. Some are brainwashed into having to find some good man to marry. “Get your college degree and then get married”. Her problem is that, although pretty young, she could already speak English. That means that she had access to most foreigners to spoil her. Japanese men are generally not willing to take 1/10th of the bullshit that foreigners do. She surely knew that well, as her target were continuously somewhat needy guys. She needed leverage and that’s easy on a foreigner.
So ! Recently I learned that she got married, actually I learned that her marriage isn’t doing so good. Her husband is a some guy I used to cheer for as he tried to stay in Japan, at some point considered a friend, but that actually grabbed his “golden opportunity” and pursued her as he disappeared form my sight… perhaps thinking that I would hold a grudge on him for messing with some girl with whom I was somewhat involved. Well, certainly I would have appreciated a little more honesty. Considering that I practically was their cupid (I jokinly once told her about this guy that was coming to Japan and back then she said she would marry him ! ..talk about being selective.. geez !)
I remember describing her to him and he’d say “Davide ! You can change her !!”, wtf ?! Forget it, I’m not going to try brainwash someone like that. She’s beyond hope ! Plus, anyone that can make such a 180 degrees turn, isn’t a very stable person…
Apparently he didn’t trust me, he believed that he would be able to change her and live happily everafter. Now I hear that the marriage quickly went sour. She ran off, and her parents asked him out of the house (wtf #2 ?!).
I remember that girl talking about marriage and all those other things with me. One day I met her and she had in the purse the paperworks for getting married to her current boyfriend (not the fatty one, that was only later). It was all so nuts, and for a nut job like that, there had to be some university-educated, super-gullible, somewhat tall, blonde (more or less) guy that would actually go for it !
I was right, it was good to get involved with her, she showed me some amazing things !
Sorry for the guy. I hope he learned the lesson.. ! He certainly isn’t going to get much active support from this side though.
Welllll.. funny how I learned about all this the day after that I met a nice girl !! It’s like, somehow someone took care of padding the floor with a pillow just right before I’d fall off my chair !
Also I would like to specify that I had no intimacy with the girl in question. Fack the random sexual relatioships, that’s bullshit !
Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, 3D Graphics, Diary, Japan at 3:49 AM EDT
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Last weekend I went to do hanami (花見), literally “seeing flowers”, basically going on a pic-nic in some park to eat and drink under the blossoming cherry trees.
I went with some friends of mine, to join more friends. Initially I was supposed to get to the park by 10 am, then we settled for 10:30. However I woke up at 9:52 by chance ! (I have some reliability issues with my cellphone which I use as an alarm as well).
I quickly fixed some sandwiches and rushed to the park (well, I had to shower too 8).
That was actually a pretty nice day spent outside. I uploaded the pictures on flickr -> Hanami 2006 set. There are more, but those are not meant to be completely public, as they may stir trouble for some people (”can’t be seen together”, kind of thing).
Tuesday I went to a company’s welcome party for some new employees, and also an occasion to celebrate the hanami season (even if we didn’t have a chance to actually go hanami with other coworkers). Because of some events, we ended up having been offered the nomihoudai (飲み放題) option. Basically all-you-can-drink.
It’s normally the new arrivals those who are pushed to drink the most. But this time it seemed like I was on a mission to drink myself onto the floor.
In fact it ended pretty bad for me.. I utterly underestimated the strenght of some drinks and actually got myself sick.
I made a fool of myself, I was taken back to the office, where some went to sleep on the sofa. I was not feeling good enough even for sleep. I basically spent the night resting on the floor or on the chair while bothering a coworker that apparenty never stops working ! In the morning I eventually left the office in pretty sad conditions.
I regret having drank so much, but at the same time, it was good that I lowered my guard like that. It’s something important in the Japanese culture.. to unbutton yourself at least once in a year, and talk freely with coworkers.
I actually learned a few things, some good, some sad, and I hope that the things I said or did will help others to get the courage to take eventual important decisions !
ehhhhhhhhhh
It’s late… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, Diary, Japan at 2:39 AM EDT
11 Comments »
Last week I saw “8 mile”, the so called semi-autobiography of Eminem.
The movie was somewhat interesting, so I decided to follow up and try to listen some music by Eminem (just as he’s rumored to be retiring from singing !). It was funny when I discovered that the title of one of his songs is “fack” ! Fack fack !!
I think that Eminem is so popoular because he’s some sort of reality show. He sings about his continuous struggles in life. That strikes a chord for all those people that feel short-changed in life (most people I believe) and keeps them interested as he recounts what’s like to be rich and famous. Clearly everything also works because he’s some cute whiteboy in a world of meanies, etc etc.
The other day, coming back from work, I met a salesman (young guy) of the phone company by the entrance of my building. He was pitching the 100 megabit Internet line. He asked me if he could get in my apartment to see if I were interested. I’ve been planning to get the 100 Mb, so I let him in.
I got in first and greeted Aibo telling it to switch off from guard mode. The salesman was pretty impressed ! “Robotto ?!”, he asked 8)
Aibo has been around for years even in Japan, but still, most people have never actually played with one.
Before getting into business, we had a little chat. I told the guy a bit about my job. When I mentioned that I used to work for Squaresoft the guy wanted to shake my hand. ….geezz !! People get wet over that ! If I played it right, I’d probably be able to get laid for that ! (possibly even with a girl !)
This reminds me of some English guy I met once in Tokyo. He was working for one of those very popoular Japanese game companies. At the time he said that he was a translator and a programmer.. wowwww !! Can you imagine that ? He’s not an ex employee of a famous company, he’s actually currently working for a famous company and he’s translating and programming ! He surely must be getting a lot of pussy for that !
Well, actually, I think that he was a translator which happened to have written a couple very basic routines.. something that a kid does when he or she starts programming. But STILL !! ..he’s a translator and a programmer for that famous game company and chicks dig that ! That’s probably at the peak of popoularity in his life, and he’s probably happy with that.
Doesn’t work for me. Being indirectly great is bullshit. I don’t want people to think of me as “the man of XYZ company”. I want to be appreciated for my very own individuality.
Of course, it’s not easy to get laid with that. I mean, individuality can make an impression but that takes time !
Yesterday night in a bar, I met again some non-Japanese girl through another friend. I recognized her right away, while she needed some help. I assume that this has something to do with the fact that she has multiple piercings on her face and some large tatooes on her arm, while I dress normally and blend in with the Japanese popoulation. I even remember that when I first met her, I told to one of my friends that the piercings on her face were distracting my visual focus much like when a digital camera can’t autofocus 8)
So there you go, you need image to be immediately popoular !
A friend of mine combs some mean spiky hair when he goes out, chicks recognize him without any troubles ! Some people want to touch his hair, he quite simply stands out.
Image !
This remind me of some very funny/shady event. It was again with my friend, maybe 2 years ago. One night in a club he meets a girl, they get somewhat friendly, talk, dance, perhaps kiss. Great !
Next time we go to the same club. I see him going to some girl trying to talk to her. She’s not receptive at all, he insists, but nothing. He eventually gives up, walks towards me looking all pissed: “She doesn’t want to talk to me ! We talked the other day and now she ignores me ! I hate it when that happens !”… me: “ehh ?? She’s not the girl from last time !”, him: “are you sure ?!” …yes i’m sure.. you (spiky) fuckhead !!!
That was funny 8) but also a bit lame. Well that’s the nature of my friend, but man, try to put a little more heart into girls hunting. It shouldn’t be me the one that tells you who’s the girl that you liked last time !
In his defense I have to say that she was Japanese. Non-Asian-looking chaps tend to have problems at discerning individual traits on Asian faces. This also probably explains way Japanese girls, on the other hand, seem to recognize me with ease ! I think that this is where social and racial issues inevitably overlap.
Posted by Davide Pasca as Society, Diary, Japan at 5:51 PM EST
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Today I saw something that I must comment about. There were no special effects in it.. but it surely did stun me !
A guy I know dumped a girl on their first date. Even though I had a “few” drinks, I noticed the situation and went to the girl. He was obviously pushing for her to “get it on”. She seemed like a nice person and perhaps not quite ready for it.
He left her behind without telling her anything. I told her that he left. She went outside thinking that maybe he was waiting for her. I went outside and I saw her alone, so I helped her to get a taxi so that she could safely get home.
That was sad. A man going on a date and not making sure that his date got home safely. Dumping a woman like that. Whatever the reason, a real man should know better.
I don’t believe that men should act strong with women. It’s too easy to be strong with weaker people (women are usually more fragile). Of course, if you act strong, you are less likely to get hurt.. but who gives a crap ?! I don’t care to get hurt, what’s a heartache ? A fictional issue !
..bullshit ! Be a man !!
Posted by Davide Pasca as Society at 3:55 AM EST
6 Comments »
Yesterday I released DSharingu 0.4a. Not much has changed. Actually, I spent a lot of time deciding what to put for the icon application. I do have an esthetic sense and I realize that the new icon is between tacky and sad. But I really didn’t feel like spending 4-5 hours trying to get some half-decent icon drawn.
Software development is measured in years-man. If 10 people work on one software for one year, it’s 10 years-man. Imagine one person working on his spare time. By spare time I mean, after work, not considering: laundry, showers, food, entertainment, various errands, learning Japanese, etc etc.
Basically, I’m hopeless as I try to work, have some sort of social life, and program the stuff I like to do.
As much as I try to optimize and reuse things, I just can’t do much. I’m only human. I try to do a billion things but it’s hard. I can generally do a lot, but I often forget things. I fear tests as I could fail them depending on my recent focus on things. My memory is too often wandering around subjects.
But, I swear, I can do great stuff… potentially.
When I was hired to my current company, the idea was: “you are good, we can use your skills !”. Then it became: “I hired you because you were good ! Show us what can you do.. by yourself !” (?!) then “you good ! do this and this for us !”, finally “ok you didn’t automagically poop golden eggs, cook us some spaghetti code that will keep the business going”.
I believe I can do things, but I think that one needs the right space and resources to do anything. With no hints, excessive expectations and no power to direct anything, it’s impossible to meet any goal.
The potential is there, but the problem is that bosses all over the world are generally de-motivated. Once you are up there, once you have your nice car and chicks/family, once your life is pretty much comfortable, you don’t have to prove much to anyone. As long as things go good enough, it’s all fine.
Let the newly hired peeons work for a decent pay while you enjoy your quite nice rewards of being a boss.
That’s bullshit. I want to be in a place where people have constantly something to prove. I want to be with motivated people that will either motivate me, or give me the freedom to motivate others. I’ve got the will in me, and I don’t want it to die off. Mind you, being in the office till late doesn’t qualify to being motivated nor productive.. it’s often just pretending.
I wish I could be financed to do what I feel I can do good. But I’d be already happy if I could work in an environment where people aren’t turned off. People at work should be absorbed in what they do, motivated, excited or at least, very competent.
It’s depressing as I see my career going to the dump. I’m being given a dumb task after another. Moving around software companies in Japan without very good Japanese language skills is not easy. I make it hard on myself, but I still have to learn a lot from Japan and there is still a lot that I want to achieve as a programmer or anything.
I’m alive and kicking, I have the coder’s fire in my veins. I hope I will soon get an opportunity to prove myself.. but I can’t do that alone.
Posted by Davide Pasca as Programming, Society, Diary, Japan at 6:19 AM EST
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It’s 4PM and I just woke up…. another night spent… coding ! 8)
The plan for yesterday night was to go out partying, but people around me seem all to be getting towards the age of marriage. That and other things.. but mostly it’s all about women. It’s the women that really dictate men’s behavior !
It’s however, important to be able to take the best out of any situation, so I decided that perhaps the night was intended for coding, and so I proceeded until 8PM.
At this stage with DSharingu, I have several things to rewrite. Yesterday night I went about the Settings dialog. It was initially built using some sort of automated system to create a dialog and save settings data in a config file. I trashed most of that. I kept the file saving routines but, for the GUI, I reverted to the good old Windows Resource Editor and WM_COMMAND switch-case.
The idea of an automated dialog maker is nice, but there are just too many exceptions for the use I need to make. I don’t want to have too many dialogs. The few I have also have to be simple. Building and expanding a whole system to do all that is just overkill.
I’m pretty close to release the next version. Basic features are there and it’s probably time to go back to compression and iron down those special cases where bandwidth is an issue (the whole screen transmitted is a 280KB transfer !).
I really want to make a new release and let things go by themselves, so that I don’t have to keep answering to people that ask me “why are you doing it ? There must be already other products like this around !”. Recently I’ve been somewhat moody.. and one of these days I may come up with an answer along the lines “why are you living ? You are just another human among billions on this planet !”.
What I think pisses me off, is the fact that people have this tendency to want me to become a user. I want to be a developer at all costs. Life as a user is boring to me ! Make me write the software I want, the software I need as a user and as a learning developer. Sometimes it’s good to “reinvent the wheel”.
Now, back to the “not being able to go partying issue”: I think that what upsets me there is that I project myself in the shoes of the pussy whipped friends. I see them wasting a great deal of time doing stupid things (shopping, generally living as a couple) and then not being able to be themselves. Having to hide truths, even cheating on their girlfriends (at least until the woman gets a real grip on them). I see myself in there (cheating aside, fack lies), seduced by a girl to embark on a family life with things to do, jobs to hold onto, money to make, screaming kids, women telling you what to do and what to wear ! In this society, women are obsessed with their looks and they will project that on men. Here in Japan I see a lot of men turning faggy. Those so-called men, spend countless hours browsing fashion magazines, messing with their hair and putting shit on their faces. I worry about my looks too.. but women can turn your worries into paranoia. They spot a defect, make you notice, and then you spend a week or even a month in front of a facking mirror !!
It’s OK to be honest, but one should also try to be more supportive. If you think I have an ugly face, tell me I have nice hands.
So, when I talk to a friend, it’s OK to exchange some anecdotes about family life, but eventually I want to know what he has been coding, doing, realizing. I want to talk about productive topics, not chit-chat about mundane bullshit. I can do that with everyone.. my brain needs real stimulation !
I learned a couple of years ago to always bring either an MP3 player or a book (usually both) with me.. you never know when someone will start boring you to death. I hate people that make me waste my time. Time is the most precious thing.
Posted by Davide Pasca as Programming, Society, Diary at 5:27 PM EST
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