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October 31, 2007
libPNG and the Wii
I am happy to report that libPNG works just fine on the Wii. It requires no code modification at all and just a few wrappers to handle file IO. I have also successfully used libPNG to load textures and display them on screen. That was a bit more of a hassle. There a proprietary pixel formats, that I can not talk about, that image data needs to be converted into.
Posted by binhqx at 2:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 30, 2007
LaTour getting a little more ... domestic.
Nicole has moved into LaTour. As with getting any new member of the house there are changes. With Nicole, the changes are material. She brought a lot of stuff; furniture, appliances, etc. and all of it is nice. This has really changed how we treat the interior of the place.
Before, we could have wrecked the place and we would only be out $30 and a trip to the swap-shop. Now we have stuff to protect. Things like irreplaceable family heirlooms and fragile china. So there will not be any more wild parties here.
It is not a bad thing, LaTour is getting classer and we get a great room mate.
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October 29, 2007
I has a money.
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October 28, 2007
Finished Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and 2
I had some time today so I decided to finish off the rest of the Half-life 2 series. Although episode 1 had been released in 2006, I never got around to playing it. With the release of Orange box, I now had the entire available Half-Life 2 at my finger tips.
The story was more of the Half-Life 2 stuff. Running around with Alyx, trying to stop the Combine and survive the process. If you like Half-life 2, you will like the episodes. However I need to point out one particular place in Episode 2 where the developers at Valve really did well. Near the end of the game the player is put in to a mini-game of defend the base from striders. To accomplish this you are given a car and a unlimited supply of special explosives. To win you must stop the striders with all of the driving, throwing, and shooting skill you have leaned throughout the game. It works so well, it could have been a game al by itself.
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October 27, 2007
Halloween party 1 and 2
We had our first Halloween party of the year at Les's house then we went to Bill's for another one in the same night. The first party was great, It was just Cap and my self hanging out with Stephanie, Shanda, and Kayle. The girls got all dressed up and posed for some pictures:
Next we went to Bill's place. It is great to go to big party when you only know onen or two other people there. But everyone is friendly so we had a good time.
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October 26, 2007
Halloween Season is back again.
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. It is not because if the costumes or candy. I like Halloween because it is celebrated but not a real holiday. No one ever travels to the homes of family or relatives to celebrated Halloween. So it is always celebrated with nearby friends, the people you see everyday.
I am lucky enough to have nearby friends that will use any excuse to through a party. So I have all kinds if fun stuff planned for the weekend and no lack of friends to share it with.
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October 25, 2007
Running OS X Server can be a pain in the butt
Our main web server is running on a Mac with OS X Server. It works vary well, the BSD system is stable fast and secure. However, the system version is starting to get a little old and I am running into some problems. Many open source projects require the latest versions of libraries and development tools. Apple does not support installing the latest development tools on previous versions of their OS.
I am left with two options. I can go through each individual tool and library and upgrade them by hand. This will probably create incompatibilities in the process and break everything. Or I could spend a lot of money and upgrade to the latest server OS. I do not like either option.
Posted by binhqx at 3:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 24, 2007
Portal is a fantastic game.
Jesse picked up The Orange Box. By far the best game in the package is Portal.
Here is the description from the wikipedia artical:
The game consists primarily of a series of puzzles which must be solved by teleporting the player's character and other simple objects using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. The goal of each puzzle is to reach an exit point. The "portal gun" and the unusual physics it creates are the emphasis of this game.
This is just the type of out of the box (inside the box) game play mechanics that brings a new element to the FPS scene. The execution of this new mechanic is just perfect. The game flows smoothly and from start to end. Perhaps one of the reasons this game works so well is its simplicity. The only other character in the game is a computer AI called GLaDOS. GLaDOS provides hilarious commentary as you proceed through the various test chambers.
I can not get enough of this game.
Posted by binhqx at 3:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 23, 2007
New Subversion server and a secret web site
I finally worked around the Verizon port blocking issue. Now we have our own in-house Subversion server for source control.
As a side effect there is also now a secret Medaverse web site. Lets see if anyone finds it.
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October 22, 2007
NOM NOM NOM
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October 21, 2007
New Balance walking shoes fall apart
So I like the way my New Balance walking shoes looked. That is why I bought them. However, on my last trip to Maine, the soles of the shoes started to rip off. It started at the toe and over time the the sole kept pealing back. By the end of my vacation I had to glue my shoes back together just to ware them.
So today I went out and bought some now ones. I stuck with New Balance but this time I bought a pair of cross trainers. Hopefully these will stay together.
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October 20, 2007
Rough night
Last night did not go so well for me. I was out with some friends at Biddy Mulligan's when I caught up with Stephanie. She suggested that Chris and I come back to Les's place to jam on the instruments. I was not having much fun at Biddy's so we left with her.
It was a fantastic jam session was great, but I think I has too many beers while I was playing. When I finally did crash on the couch my head was spinning. In a few hours I was really sick.
But I survived. In the morning Chris I went out for breakfast at Harvey's. There is nothing better then a big breakfast to cure a hangover.
Posted by binhqx at 3:12 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 19, 2007
Neurotically Yours (sick and funny)
Here is what the internet needs more of: Neurotically Yours. Note that this in NOT safe for work.
There is nothing funnier then a squirrel ranting about how terrible people are.
Posted by binhqx at 4:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 18, 2007
Verizon blocks port 80
We had planned to setup a server at the office to host any files and resources that we would need to access remotely. The best solutions for this would be to use webDAV for files and subversion for source control. We got everything setup just the way is should be with the router forwarding the web ports to the linux server. However, it did not work. We could not access the web server from outside the network. We set up port forewords for other ports and those work just fine. I have come to the concussion the Verizon is blocking TCP port 80. This is a minor pain in the arse.
We will continue with the plan for web hosting just using a different port.
Posted by binhqx at 2:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 17, 2007
A link that always makes me feel better.
When ever I am feeling down all I have to do is hit this link.
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October 16, 2007
Lightwaves 3D model format
I have have been examining 3D mesh data formats recently. Initially I was leery of the Lightwave format because it is binary data. However, I I tracked down this page detailing exactly how the data is stored. It gives tons of examples in both binary and human readable forms. With this resource it will be easy to create a loader for Lightwave files.
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October 15, 2007
plz to stop poking now
Posted by binhqx at 1:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 14, 2007
Aren't I all grown up yet?
I thought that when I gets as old as I am that I would have a reasonable full understanding of my own emotions. However that never seems to be the case. Just when I thought I had myself all figured out, something new shows up that I am just not equipped to deal with.
Posted by binhqx at 4:37 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 13, 2007
Back home and a few more picts
I'm home again and I worked up a few more pictures.
These were taken from the top of Arcadia Mountain that looks over Somes Sound.
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October 12, 2007
Hudson Hawk IS a good movie
I was looking for something to watch while eating breakfast today. I spotted a copy of Hudson Hawk on the shelf. This movie was consider to be very bad. However, I love this movie. The big problem was that the Hudson Hawk was advertised as a action flick but it is in-fact a comedy.
When you need a lighthearted action comedy, I highly suggest it.
Posted by binhqx at 12:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 11, 2007
Returning to Dover.
I had a fantastic week of hiking, photography, and spending time with my sister. However, now I need to return to my old life now. I am packing my stuff and going home. I have a few more picts to post when I get the time.
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October 10, 2007
Tons of picts
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October 9, 2007
A day out and about taking pictures
The weather today was fantastic. I spent the entire afternoon running around MDI. My first stop of the day was the Precipice. This is a 1600 foot rock cliff with a climbing path on it. I had a lot of energy this morning so I shot up it. It consist mostly of rock climbing with intermittent ledge walk and iron ladders. The guide says it should take about 1 hour and 15 minutes to make the assent. I did it in just 40 minutes. The only thing that was slowing me down was climbing around slower climbers.
Next I took my camera to Great Head and bubble rock mountain. I took a ton of pictures that I am still composing. I will post all the ones I have finished tomorrow.
Until then here is a picture of me in-front of bubble rock. For some reason I look very unhappy in this photo. Perhaps it is because there is a 500 foot drop to my right.
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October 8, 2007
A few other photos
Here are a couple other pictures I took today.
There are the bubble rock mountains.
Here is me with my little sister.
Wow, with the last few blogs, it looks like all I have been doing is hiking and taking pictures all day. Well, that is what I have been doing.
Posted by binhqx at 11:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
A few high dynamic range photos
I spent the day hauling a tripod all over MDI so I could try out creating high dynamic range photos.
I love this technique. It lets me pull so much more color information out of a scene. These pictures are a bit more colorful then they actually looked in person. This is how the world would look if the human eye had controllable exposure rates.
Posted by binhqx at 8:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 7, 2007
Perpendicular view
Today I went out on two hikes with my sister. The first one was a trail called Perpendicular. It is a good name because it runs perpendicular to the mountain base. Meaning it goes strait up the side.
Here is a panorama view from the top:
I have some other pictures from that hike, but I am still working on those.
Here is my sister on the walk back:
The second hike of the day was near sandy beach. However, I found that the battery of the camera did not recharge entirely from the first hike. So I was only able to snap two pictures before the camera died.
I will be going out again tomorrow.
Posted by binhqx at 9:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 6, 2007
Photos of MDI
I am here in Maine, and I am wasting no time to get out into nature. Here are some photos of the places I visited today.
This images where made by compositing a set of bracketed exposures. Think of it as a poor mans HDR. There you may note some errors around the edges of objects. This is due to the fact I was not using a tripod and was just free handing the camera. Tomorrow I am going out with a tripod. I will see if I can perfect my techniques.
Also, I to my best picture of Trance yet:
Posted by binhqx at 11:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 5, 2007
Traveling to Maine
I am driving up to Maine today to stay with my sister while my parents are out. As usual, it is a long drive. However, I have the audio book of Ender's Game to listen too. I have heard that it is very good.
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October 4, 2007
Getting an entire weekend worth of partying into one night.
I am heading up to Maine for the weekend, so I needed to get an entire weekend worth of partying into one night. I think I did well. It stated at Biddy Mulligan's pub with Jack and Dan. They have some great music their on Thursday nights. Then around 11:30 I ran over to the Brick House to hear Sake of Reason play.
Then to top it all off, I nearly got into a fight with 12 guys too rescue a girl from thier drunken clutches. Over all I think it went well.
Posted by binhqx at 11:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 3, 2007
The end of Go Yuki
It was announced tonight that Go Yuki would be ending. There has not been a lot of info as to why, but I am sure that they have their reasons.
I want to thank them for all their great music over the last year. I would not be where I am today without them.
Posted by binhqx at 8:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 2, 2007
Putting the smack down on the Wii's memory management.
I can not say much about what we did, but Adam and I have finally got the Wii's memory system all figured out. It will now be much easier to bring over all the libraries that we need. It feels so good to know that there is one subsystem that is finally behaving its self.
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October 1, 2007
Mundayz
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