tempest in a teacup

Amazon is going to be having PS3 deals all day today (August 27th), starting at 12am PST for the big daily deal and then lightning deals every four hours starting at 6am PST. Just a heads up in case there’s some PS3 game or accessory that you’ve been on the lookout for.

And no, I don’t know what the deals are going to be in advance, so don’t bother asking. You can usually make a pretty good guess from the clues on the Gold Box page anyway.

EDIT: The list of deals is up - the daily deal is Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. The lightning deals haven’t been revealed yet, but here are my educated guesses:

6AM: Resistance: Fall of Man
10AM: Ridge Racer 6
12PM: Ratchet & Clank Future
2PM: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
4PM: Devil May Cry 4
6PM: Warhawk

Looks like either games I have no interest in or that I already own. Urgh…

And now to pad out this post a little more, here’s what my desktop currently looks like (click to view full-sized version).

Why yes, I am rather obsessed with sandviches at the moment.

Somehow in the space of two hours I have managed to not only leave my cell phone at work, but fill my apartment with smoke. How did I manage the latter, do you ask?

Why, I cooked some instant noodles!

In the microwave.

Without adding water first.

Do you know what you get when you cook flavour powder, dried mushroom, dried rice noodles and oil in a microwave without water? You get a giant block of simmering carbon. And a crapload of smoke.

And my apartment STILL smells like smoke, 3 hours later.

Fun fact: this apartment I’m living is was refurbished after a fire accident prior to my renting it.

I really wish I could say that there was something important on my mind while I was engaging in this minor act of arson, but there really wasn’t…

Check out this neat piece of machinima that uses Team Fortress 2 character models (as well as a few other interesting ideas):

It’s not great, but there are a few funny bits.

Really good TF2 machinima has been in short supply for some reason. You’d think people would have had plenty of ideas by now…

For some reason I added a widget off to the right that lists stuff in my Amazon wishlist. I highly doubt anyone is going to buy me anything, but I can dream, can’t I? :p

EDIT 7/14/2008: I replaced the list widget with a normal button, because it didn’t really go well with the rest of my layout and the links to the full wishlist weren’t working for some reason. It might be a good idea to bug someone at work about that…

[14:57] <@SonicTempest> lol the fan I bought is a lot smaller than I thought it would be
[14:57] <@SonicTempest> it’s like a loli fan
[14:58] <@SonicTempest> it’s powerful enough though
[14:59] <@SonicTempest> so I guess it’s Shana-tan
[15:02] <@SonicTempest> kind of loud though
[15:06] <Hayate> <SonicTempest> kind of loud though  URUCHAI URUCHAI URUCHAI
[15:10] <@SonicTempest> lol

Not much in particular I want to talk about…just dealing with various things that have been happening recently.

I got a new video card recently - a GeForce 8800GTS 512MB from EVGA. It was a bit of a pain getting it into my case…it’s pretty much the same length as my motherboard, so it was a pretty snug fit (it’s nestled right up against my SATA connectors). Performance-wise, though, it’s a dream. I get anti-aliasing in Mass Effect now (as well as a much better frame rate), and games like Half-Life 2 Episode Two that would chug a bit on my old card now run smooth as butter.

Of course, as luck would have it, the same week I decide to upgrade, nVidia drops the 9800GTX to $200, and ATI comes out with brand new cards that keep up pretty well with nVidia’s current offerings. Such are the travails of the PC gamer :p

In the meantime, work has been…not really as interesting as it could be. After the problems we had on the site a few weeks ago, my team has dropped what we were working on before and has been working full steam on mitigation measures. This is kind of annoying for me since I was just getting my first taste of real software engineering(requirements gathering, writing technical specs, getting them reviewed, the whole lot) when this happened. I can’t complain too much though - the site is what keeps us running, and we’re beholden to the customers to make sure it stays up.

(And if you’re still waiting for me to tell you what actually happened…forget it. I like my job too much to risk it like that. If you must know something, get our official position from Jeff Bezos’ radio interview on KUOW this past week)

Speaking of work, in a couple of weeks, I’ll have spent a year at Amazon.com. I might have been in India by this point had it not been for the interim regulation that lets me stay here until my work visa starts on October 1st. Still, one year…what a year it’s been. There have been low points, but the good has outweighed the bad by a significant margin.

I really should do a proper retrospective before I forget.

In the shorter term, though, I was thinking of watching a movie this weekend since I don’t really have anything better to do, and the release of a Pixar movie is always reason to celebrate. Both Wall-E and Get Smart are looking like good candidates for my dollar…any recommendations?

A big news story I’ve been following recently is Bill Gates’ departure from Microsoft. I can’t help but wonder what will become of the company after his departure…Microsoft is hardly the powerhouse it used to be back in the 90s, and has ceded a lot of ground this decade. I found a vitriolic blog post from a (now former) stockholder, who has used the occasion of Gates’ departure to dump all his Microsoft stock. It makes for very interesting reading.

Given the occasion, I’m wondering if I should pick up Microsoft 2.0 by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley. I’m in the mood for some insight on where the world’s largest software company is going, and where it might be going wrong.

Speaking of Microsoft, I’m actually writing this blog post in Microsoft Windows Live Writer. Aside from the cumbersome name, it’s a really nice blog client that works with a wide variety of blog sites and services. Very cool, and easily the most impressive thing I’ve seen out of Windows Live so far.

On a final note, the Jun Senoue remix of Lee Brotherton’s Dreams of an Absolution is currently stuck in my head. Yes, I know it’s from the horrendous next-gen Sonic the Hedgehog - but this is one of the (very) few good things about that game. The others being the instrumental version of His World and this cutscene from Shadow’s story.

I sense my last.fm profile looks pretty messed up right now…

Scientists claim that red has a statistical advantage over blue in online games.

Apparently red causes people to get distracted while they’re playing, reducing their chances of winning. I would say the wins my team has scraped on Goldrush in Team Fortress 2 say otherwise (I usually pick Blue on that map), but Valve’s own statistics disagree: on every map but Gravel Pit, the red team has a higher statistical chance of coming out on top.

Perhaps I need to re-evaluate my loyalties…

A long time ago, in an IRC channel far, far away:

[19:27] <@SonicTempest> at this rate to balance the number of new female
characters in SFIV they need to add someone who's super manly
[19:27] <@SonicTempest> er SCIV
[19:27] <@SonicTempest> Guts plz
[19:28] <@xephyris> no guts
[19:28] <@xephyris> oh wait
[19:28] <@Hayate> welll theres Vader and Yoda :p
[19:28] <@xephyris> the berserk guy hasn't been put in yet huh
[19:28] <@xephyris> yeah ok guts plz
[19:28] <@xephyris> you know
[19:28] <@xephyris> get the fist of the north star guy in plz
[19:28] <@SonicTempest> ww
[19:28] <@SonicTempest> Kenshiro or Raoh w
[19:29] <@xephyris> how about both w
[19:29] <@xephyris> ps3 gets kenshiro
[19:29] <@xephyris> to balance out vader
[19:29] <@xephyris> and xbox gets raoh
[19:29] <@Hayate> no theyd be broken tier
[19:29] <@xephyris> while we're at it let's put Jojo in too
[19:29] <@xephyris> the only game where you can wrrrryyyy for real
[19:30] <@SonicTempest> www
[19:30] <@xephyris> wow man
[19:30] <@xephyris> if it had guts, jojo, and kenshiro
[19:31] <@xephyris> it'd be the manliest game on the planet

You heard it here first!

Well, AN answer, at any rate. Click through if you want to see it, but hold off if you want to try it out for yourself.

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