Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog

From Boing Boing: Just how easy is it to email a HD movie? – The FCC closed its reply comments period for the dreaded braodcast flag mandate last night. This is the proposal that argued that digital television would immediately “Napsterize” any movie broadcast over DTV, since everyone knows that digital files can be copied instanteously. In fact, the MPAA and its allies argued just that in the initial comments on the docket, and asked to therefore be put in charge of the designs of all DTV devices. So Raffi Krikorian, an MIT Media Lab student, undertook a series of empirical experiments to determine the plausibility of the MPAA’s claims about the ease with which 30GB files can be emailed to your pals. The results were filed with the FCC last night, and they’re high-larious. Don’t miss it.

It has been brought to my attention recently that there is new information which could bring people to the conclusion that I am a “nerd”. Disregarding the various inaccuracies surrounding many of the attempted insults I’ve been privy to (I’m married, so saying I’m “afraid of girls” is futile; I’m 22, not 23), I need to make something painfully clear to you, the reader: This is not news. I have, for at least the last 6 years of my life, fully realized that I am a geek/nerd/what-have-you. Let’s face facts. I play video games – including music games, which are notoriously “gay”. I own expensive equipment for playing said music games. I have disassembled my PS2 and modified it. I, on occasion, watch anime. I head to the local arcade about once a week. I spend a fair amount of time chatting online and/or posting on message boards – and I administrate on many of the places I frequent. I work for a gaming company. I spend time maintaining my web page – and I actually pay for web space. I propigate databases and write PHP for goofy endeavors, such as the IIDX page. I listen to MC Chris. I used to read Slashdot and K5. I find Mr. Show to be funny. I have a tediously maintained MP3 collection. To be fair to myself, I’m also married (although I proposed in a geeky way), go to parties/clubs/bars when invited (often with friends of mine who could be considered geeks), and frequently go to the movies (normally to independent films, which are quite geeky). Furthermore, anyone that shares any of these traits may, in fact, also be a nerd/geek/whatever. It doesn’t matter which arcade you go to, which games you play, what you drive, which boards you read, or who your friends may be – you are one of “us”. I’m not saying this as an insult – the things you do in life make you fall into one category or another. I’m very comfortable being a nerd/geek, and if you fall into the same pattern as I do (and there’s a large chance you do if you’re reading this), you probably better get used to it too. If anyone has been coming to this website and has somehow gotten under the impression that I am not a geek, please accept my deepest apologies – I had no intention of deceiving you.

Forget the White Stripes doing videos with Legos – the video for DJ Format’s “We Know Something…” is the single coolest thing I’ve seen in ages. We need more videos like this.

After 4 days of play, I’ve taken enough of a break to whip up a database for charting my progress with 6th Style. Thus, you can watch as I gradually turn the red blocks into yellow, and some of the yellows into greens – and maybe some greens into blues, who knows. I realize this make absolutely no sense to the majority of you, so I hope to write some generalized explanation of bemani in general in the near future.

So I got in some quality playing time today, and besides that sitting in one spot for too long is a bad idea, this is what I’ve learned:

• I’m not as bad starting out as I thought I would be.
• Making Aku cry is fun! :D
• I still have a long way to go.
• I absolutely hate Lisu and Agop, as they are everything I am not.
• Some of the videos are too damn cute. (Romeo & Juliet, Beautiful Days)
• Some of the videos are too damn weird. (R3)
• There’s nothing worse than having the phone ring in the middle of a expert course.

That’s all for now.

Yes, my cover mod came in. Yes, it’s white. My copy of 6th Style does work; I haven’t gotten any bootleg import to work yet, but I need to talk to a friend who has gotten it working on the same setup to see what I’m doing wrong. Pros:

• Comparably easy to install vs. a solder mod
• It’s only $30 – plus $20 for the boot discs, but STILL cheaper than most anything else.
• Lid opens easily and swapping is painless. No monkeying with the reset and eject buttons.
• It plays 6th Style flawlessly.
• The boot disc has a nice little star effect, far better than the PS-X Change 2.

Cons:

• It’s still tedious to install. Have a precision tool kit available, because the little screws are a bitch.
• The plastic disc in the lid (which gets transplanted from the PS2) will make noise if it doesn’t land perfectly centered on the disc, the disc is not seated exactly right, and the moon is not in the proper phase. Putting something heavy on top gets rid of the noise, but this is still goofy.
• I couldn’t get a black one (they were out), so my PS2 looks unbelievably ghetto now.
• Instructions are sketchy.

Overall thoughts? If you’re absolutely dying for a low cost way to play imports, and absolutely do not want to drop the $300 on a JPS2, this is a workable solution. Would I recommend it to others? Sure, if you’re a cheap bastard like myself. Now, back to drooling over 6th Style…

TSG has really been putting the screws to Fox, and that’s fine by me after the hour of my life wasted on Joe Recapaire this week. Sure, Joevan is an underwear model. Sure, Saraho is a softcore porn star. But now even poor Frenchie can’t escape the wrath of El Smoking Gun-o. After thinking I had updated my drupal install to 4.1.0 yesterday, I noticed that nearly all of my files were, in fact, NOT updated. So I just patched the everloving crap out of everything, and hopefully it’s all working better now. I love this stuff. On the LJ front, apparently they’re getting wise to my antics, so meh.

Okay, so, minor changes to website related things: -All LJ links on my blogroll have been updated to RSS feeds. Far more accurate. -Anyone with an LJ should add remydwd to their friends list if they are in the mood. I’m still going to be blogging here rather than there, but it’s nice to have it show up on people’s friends lists.

I apparently have an LJ and I was not informed of this fact. Talk about great security – the password on the syndicated account was blank. This is a test post to see if it’ll update the LJ page properly with the XML feed from here. (Thanks, Ben!)

Dell Dude In Pot Bust Hey, dude, you’re getting a cell! Benjamin Curtis, the 22-year old actor who portrays the Dell Guy in those bothersome computer commercials, was arrested late last night (2/9) on a marijuana possession charge, The Smoking Gun has learned. According to cops, Curtis was holding a “small bag of marijuana” when he was popped on Manhattan’s Lower East Side (at Ludlow and Rivington for you Gothamites). Curtis is currently being held in Central Booking and is scheduled to be arraigned later today in Manhattan Criminal Court. Curtis, who lives in lower Manhattan, was charged with criminal possession of marijuana, a misdemeanor. Bonnie Shumofsky, the actor’s agent, said she was unaware of her client’s bust when contacted this morning by TSG.