10/30/2008 - Stan Lee reads The Raven

Here's a really cool video just in time for Halloween... As I've mentioned before, I have the greatest respect in the world for Stan Lee, the renaissance comic book genius. Not only did he create the most famous superheroes, he did voice-over for many of the cartoons of those superheroes. He was the perfect narrator... and to me, if there is a God, he will have Stan Lee's voice. It's hard to describe, actually. I mean, it's not a radio talk show host type of voice, or even a sports announcers voice. It's unique to Stan and nobody does it better. So it's a real treat to hear him read his famous poem, "The Raven":

10/29/2008 - The Dark Knight Trailer Recut - Toy Story 2

Here's another video that has the audio of The Dark Knight trailer dubbed in. Instead of Legos, though, we have footage of Toy Story 2. Not only is it well-synced, it's surprisingly coherent as a trailer:

10/27/2008 - Mario Paint - Through the Fire and Flames

Here's another Mario Paint composition video, except it's not on the actual Mario Paint. A Mario Paint emulator has been programmed for the PC so that people don't have to use the actual Mario Paint to make music compositions. Even though the emulation of the SNES cartridge would probably be fine, this separate emulation does add new features that make it possible to save and share compositions to other people, which is something Nintendo should definitely consider if they ever made another Mario Paint (which they should have done instead of the atrocious Wii Music).

Normally, I'd prefer a song played through the real version of Mario Paint as I consider it to be more authentic with no possibility of enhancements or alteration. That is, if you can create a great composition using the original Mario Paint with all its limitations, then you are a great composer in my view. However, I will give a pass to this musician because it's a pretty good rendition of what has to be one of the most complex songs to translate to this medium:

10/26/2008 - The Definition of "Choke"

The term "hardcore gaming" can be applied to pretty much any game out there. For the challenging old school games like Mega Man, Castlevania, and Ninja Gaiden, people had to replay levels over and over again just to beat those games. Others would replay those levels ten times over just to memorize every part of them so they know where enemies spawn, where the traps are, and what the best way to avoid them. Why? So that they can do speedruns of the games and compete against others. Even games like Guitar Hero have a hardcore gamer element to them. You'd think that for songs that have hundreds of notes that missing a few or getting over 95% of them right would be enough for most. Well, it is for most people, but not for the hardcore. You'll see what happens when one of those hardcore gamers gets 654 out of 657 notes in one of the most demanding solos of the game:

10/23/2008 - Batman & Robin Cursing

In the realm of comics, I prefer Marvel over DC, but back in the early-80's, I did enjoy watching the Super-Friends. After all, how could you go wrong with all the superheroes in one show? Marvel did have Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, and although I really loved the show, I always felt that Firestar and Iceman were sort of thrown in just to form a superhero team. DC had all the heavyweights in the Super-Friends cartoons: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman were almost always present. They'd bring in the second tier as well: Flash, Green Lantern, Robin, and others.

Looking back at it now, the show really didn't have much depth... especially in the early years. Aside from their powers, you couldn't really tell the heroes apart. They all pretty much had the same personality. There was no conflict between the characters, and it was always clear that the bad guys were doing evil and the heroes had to stop them. Even though the comics at the time had more weight and appealed to an older audience, the Saturday morning cartoons were really geared toward kids. Contrast that to the recent Justice League commercials and you'll see a world of difference. Batman actually has a rock of Kryptonite to use against Superman in case he ever went rogue!

One can only enjoy the old Super-Friends cartoons with a nostalgic eye... or you could laugh at how simplistic and light it was. Especially if you dub in bleep sounds like in this video:

10/21/2008 - Little Big Computer

What better use of my 400th blog post than to feature a truly incredible video. Little Big Planet is a game coming out for the PlayStation 3 that will rely on user-created content to drive its replayability. Users can create their own side-scrolling levels for others to play, and as you can imagine, there will be plenty of mediocre levels out there, some vulgar levels, but there will be some very creative levels as well. It will actually be a lot like YouTube where only the best stuff will be promoted to the front page and favorited by the most people. I think Little Big Planet and YouTube will go hand-in-hand where we see videos like this that show off cool levels. I don't know how someone will be able to top this however:



Yes, that is a fully functioning calculator built with the level designer in Little Big Planet. As listed in the description, the creator used 610 magnetic switches, 500 wires, 430 pistons, and 70 emitters in creating the "level". Now that's pretty hardcore. If I were this kid's math or science teacher, I'd give him/her an A for the year.

10/19/2008 - The Dark Bailout

It's curious... the Dark Knight has yet to come out on DVD, and yet someone was still able to have a copy of the movie in order to do this mashup of the mob meeting scene:



I know I'm a bit naive when it comes to the underbelly of the video pirating aspects of the internet, but this doesn't look like somebody just taking their video camera to the movie theater to record the movie. I gotta say that they did a seamless job of putting in the President's speech into the scene... especially when it's downscaled for the Joker's entrance. And I think I prefer the Joker's bailout plan...

10/18/2008 - Mega Man 9 Death Gameplay

When I first heard that Capcom was making a Mega Man 9 game based in the old 8-bit style, I thought it was some kind of April Fool's joke. But when it turned out to be real, I couldn't contain my joy. My favorite 8-bit game happens to be Mega Man 2 for the NES... it was a simple platforming sidescroller whose greatest innovation was taken from the original Mega Man: your character would gain the weapon of the enemy boss you defeat. That weapon would help you in clearing other levels and defeating other bosses. As I've said before, Mega Man 2 perfected the design with its colorful and creative environments, refined control, and the best video game soundtrack of all time (in my opinion).

Mega Man would have 5 sequels on the NES that relied on the same basic design, and 2 sequels on other systems. There were a myriad of spin-offs, however, each straying away more and more from the original (I still don't know what Battle Network is all about). The original Mega Man would have a remake on the PSP with 3-D graphics, and while it was a nice nostalgic tribute, something didn't seem right about it. Capcom was definitely on the right track, however... and old school gamers like me really rejoiced when Mega Man 9 came out last month.

Mega Man really belongs in the 8-bit world. The graphics, the sound... nothing was enhanced in Mega Man 9 and it's just as well. Everything was made in the same way, even the difficulty. Now, a lot of current-generation gamers may say Mega Man 9 is a hard game, and some of them may get too frustrated with it and not finish the game. I say they are spoiled by the current games that have multiple difficulty settings and mid-level save points. Mega Man 9 is undoubtedly difficult and will require you to go through stages multiple times, dying a lot in the process. But that's what old-school gaming is all about. Because the control scheme is so simple (move, jump, shoot), the way to make it difficult is to test your reflexes, your memory, and your patience. Except for one part of the game which I think has the hardest jump in any Mega Man game (Jewel Man stage, you'll know it well), no death is ever cheap, and most of the time it's your fault. When you first start the game, however, you wll see this a lot:

10/15/2008 - T-Mobile G1 Android - Hands on vid

If you have any doubt as to how far ahead of the game Apple was in January 2007 when they first announced the iPhone to the world, then this video should convince you otherwise. It took almost two years after that announcement, but the most anticipated iPhone competitor will arrive next week in the form of an HTC phone with Google's Android operating system. There's no doubt that the folks at Google are code gurus, but it looks like not even their genius could reverse-engineer what Apple did with the iPhone so many moons ago. The best way to show this is with a side-by-side comparison:



Nice try, Google... but by the time you get something that matches the iPhone, Apple will just release an upgrade.

10/13/2008 - Biological Fail

Wow, if what this reporter claims is actually true, then Barack Obama really is a "once-in-a-lifetime" politician:

10/12/2008 - Video Game Typos, Misspellings, and Bad Grammar

A lot of the older video games in the 8-bit generation were originally developed in Japan, and inevitably when they were translated to American audiences, just like the Bill Murray movie, stuff got lost in translation. Either they did not pay the translators enough, or they didn't care. Well, even if they did care, they probably didn't know better, otherwise they wouldn't have hired translators in the first place. To be honest, most gamers probably didn't care about grammatical and spelling errors and worried more about bugs in the game. But for those interested, here is a compilation of some of the more egregious ones:

10/9/2008 - IT guy v.s dumb employees

At work, my computer is probably one of the oldest computers at the site, but it still runs like a champ and its faster than a lot of the computers that were bought years later. It's not because I've upgraded the processor or anything... it's because unlike most people, I don't load it with a bunch of unnecessary software that will bog it down. Having experience as a programmer, I know what kinds of things out there will slow down a computer and what kind of maintenance is necessary to keep things running smooth. It pains me to see computers at my workplace abused to the point where they act like computers with Pentium II processors and 128 MB of RAM. What's sad is that good computer practice is something that is easily learned, but is almost never put into use because there are so many "utilities" and programs out there that people want to experiment or play with. Non-computer people see little consequence in loading their computers up with these unnecessary programs, but people like me cringe. Oh well... the disparity of experience that keeps me employed. And it's why this video gives me such a good laugh:

10/7/2008 - Cute Puppy

Because of some early childhood "incidents", I don't really have an affection for dogs. But if every dog was like this one, I might reconsider:



And I'd find a way to put diapers on them.

10/5/2008 - Meet "Emily" - Image Metrics Tech Demo

I still haven't seen a movie where a "digital" actor gives a performance where I could not tell that it was computer-generated. The first Final Fantasy movie was supposed to be a breakthrough in photo-realistic CGI human characters, and while it was impressive, I could always tell they weren't real. Interestingly enough, the most "real" looking character was the old guy. It's the imperfections they put into the character model that made it seem less artificial.

Digital stand-ins are used in movies all the time now, but they're only doing stunts, not giving performances with dialogue. The best example of this is probably the opening action sequence in Spider-Man 3 with Peter Parker web-swinging out of costume. Aside from close-ups, Peter Parker was played by a digital Tobey McGuire. It was pretty seamless, though, and one of the best action sequences I've ever seen.

Another very cool demonstration of what CGI can do is in the beginning of X-Men 3: The Last Stand where they show a younger Magneto and Professor X. Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are still the actors, but they digitally airbrushed their faces to make them look years younger. It was so effective, that I can see them using it in the future to keep Tom Cruise looking like he's 35.

There is no doubt that the technology is improving, and this next video is an example of where we are headed. It is perhaps the first video where I was fooled into thinking that the actor is real:



Only after knowing that the face was computer generated that I could see some signs of artificiality, but they are only minute details. Watch the video in High Quality and you may see.

10/4/2008 - Adam & Jamie draw a MONA LISA in 80 milliseconds!

Two weeks from today, the Mythbusters will be in town for their campus tour show and I have my ticket. Everybody who watches their show will tell you that if they could have any other job in the world, it would be their job. Not only do they blow things up without remorse, but they get to play with and invent the coolest gadgets. I can only hope the show is as exciting as this demonstration at an NVIDIA conference:

10/1/2008 - Apple Lisa Demo

Yes, Xerox PARC may have invented the modern graphical user interface (GUI) with mouse-based input, but it was Steve Jobs' vision that brought it to the masses with the Macintosh computer. Before the Macintosh, though, there was Apple's first computer with the GUI called the Lisa. The Lisa was not really meant for the average consumer and, in fact, its $10,000 price tag was even too much for the business consumers that Apple was aiming for. Still, there's no doubt as to its impact in the world of computing. The concepts and innovations of the Lisa GUI are still being used to this day and it's hard to imagine anything replacing it any time soon. It's so ubiquitous that grade school children are more well-versed in using a mouse and keyboard than their parents and grandparents.

Using a mouse with a GUI may seem so commonplace and pedestrian now, but imagine back when computers were still using text-based input. It must have been like a toy or novelty to move a cursor around and clicking on icons. In some ways it's actually slower to use a mouse and GUI, but its ease-of-use comes from the fact that it's harder to make mistakes like you would with typos in a command-line-interface (CLI). Not having to memorize command keywords also helps immensely. Sure, people had to get used to it, and there were actually videos like this one that got people acclimated to this new concept: