| usa #1 |
[Jul. 3rd, 2009|11:25 pm] |
What kind of an assfuck is insensitive enough to steal someone's saddle on the day before July 4th. I bet there isn't a single bike shop open anywhere tomorrow.
edit: sports basement is open. good old dependable SB. |
|
|
| upcoming events of midway 2009 |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|12:46 pm] |
As usual, a work in progress.
| Date | Type | Thing | Venue |
|---|
| 2009-06-26 | Concert | David Byrne, DeVotchKa | Greek Theater, Berkeley CA |
| 2009-06-27 | Century | Giro de Peninsula | San Mateo, CA |
| 2009-07-18 | Birthday | Grandma's 90th Birthday | San Diego, CA |
| 2009-07-23 | Concert | The Weakerthans | Great American Music Hall, SF CA |
| 2009-08-01 | Century | Marin Century | Marin, CA |
| 2009-08-10 | Concert | Casiokids, Slow Club | Bottom of the Hill, SF CA |
| 2009-08-11 | Birthday | Travis' Birthday | TBA |
2009-08-23
2009-08-24 | Concert | Ted Leo | Bottom of the Hill |
| 2009-08-28 | Concert | Outside Lands Day 1
(Los Campesinos!) | Golden Gate Park, SF CA |
| 2009-09-18 | Concert | Frightened Rabbit | The Independent, SF CA |
| 2009-09-29 | Occurance | One year jobbiversiary | AirWave Wireless, Sunnyvale, CA |
| 2009-10-03 | Century | Levi Leipheimer's King Ridge GranFondo | Santa Rosa, CA |
| 2009-10-16 | Occurance | Longest streak of holding a single job | AirWave Wireless, Sunnyvale, CA |
2009-10-17
2009-10-18 | Concert | Treasure Island Music Festival | Treasure Island, SF CA |
| October | Century | Foxy's Fall Century | Davis, CA |
| 2009-11-13 | Concert | Pinback | Bimbo's 365 Club, SF CA |
|
|
|
| bike to bike month |
[May. 31st, 2009|11:17 pm] |
It all started when I decided last year to take 2009's Bike To Work Day real serious. I was determined to keep up my tote bag streak (got to catch up to this guy) and to do that I figured I'd better go a little more hardcore than biking to Caltrain. At the time, we were working in San Mateo, but I wasn't up for letting the move to Sunnyvale discourage me.
It turns out there's a pack of Googlers and other peninsula workalots who have an amazing website about how to reach your South Bay Employment Destination: sf2g.com. The googley-types met at Ritual at 6am on BTWD, probably some 200-strong, drifting southwards from the 24th street BART around 6:45. In attendance: Ben from Atlanta, Will from my job. The ride down was fun, using the large clump of cyclists to bust our way through stoplights on the way out of city like some kind of critical-ride-to-work.
I got my tote bag on the way out of the city in Brisbane, meaning it was stuffed by some sort of peninsula bike coalition and didn't have a lot of the cool stickers one might've gotten in a SFBC bag. I didn't get to work until 10:30 or so, but that much was expected.
I liked it so much that two weeks later I decided to take a solo go at it to see if I could make it down without having ten spandex-clad buttocks in front of me as a guide. I also wanted to see if I could get to work "on-time" (8:50) by leaving at 5:00ish (I didn't make it out of the house till 5:40am).
I didn't do too amazing, as it turns out. I kept an average speed of 16mph according to my newly-finally-installed Bicycle Computer, but I took two accidental detours around the annoying off-road part of the Google route, one before and one after, turning this into this. One ironically notes from the air in hindsight that I could've just kept going from the first mishap and would've ended up where I was supposed to be.
After that business I be-acquaintanced a guy who was also going to Sunnyvale. Thirty minutes to an hour into following him I ran over an unfortunate road feature and popped my rear tube, a scrape which I had exactly zero of the appropriate kit to get myself out of. My temporary companion offered to fix me up, a gesture that not only saved me a dreadful walk to the Palo Alto Caltrain, but also pumped up my faith in humans or life in general. To the noble Dennis who works somewhere in in Sunnyvale designing circuits to decode television signals and wears a US Postal Service jersey for the purpose I imagine of to be more like Lance Armstrong, I salute you.
| SF to Sunnyvale, 2009-05-27 |
|---|
| Ride Time | 3:25 |
| Wall Clock Time | ~4:00 |
| Distance | 55.90 |
| Average Speed | 16.3mph |
I wasn't on time, arriving more like 9:30 (also sneaking off to the cafeteria before entering workspace-proper because my starving heart needed a waffle). Some combination of riding faster, detouring less, or not getting a flat might cut down the difference.
On Maker Faire Weekend there was a special ride-your-bike-to-maker-faire social bike ride scheduled on Saturday morning. Being Old Hat at this, I took Veronica and my regular street clothes and headed off boldly southwards from Dolores Park at 9:20am with Arlen and about a hundred other people. This ride was even more social than BTWD, which is a LOT more social than Critical Mass (which tends to just be a lot of yelling at cars or nothing in particular). Unfortunately, politeness or spread-outedness made people too cowardly to ignore red lights. The directions on the event's website said they were going to take some south-bay-bike-coalition route, but for better or worse the googley types stepped in and got everyone to take the standard bayway route. Problem being, once we got near the fairgrounds nobody knew where to divert from the Google route to actually get to the fair. Our crowd of forty cyclists asked a passerby for directions and somehow figured it out, getting us to the fair at eleven or something after a 22 mile ride.
I somehow conned myself into taking the route back northwards from San Mateo with Arlen, which compared to going south is a nightmare experience. The combination of an awkward headwind, cold cloudyness, and having just been standing up all day made it a troublesome excursion I don't look forward to repeating. But we did get to go down a sweet-assed slide intended for five year olds. |
|
|
| twee as all get out |
[May. 22nd, 2009|12:31 pm] |
2009-05-20 - The Decemberists, Other Lives - The Fox Theater
Other Lives were great. I pegged them as Pacific Northwesterners given their general bearded flannelesque nature, but it turns out they're from Oklahoma, which is kind of an O.G. Pacific Northwest in that way.
Between Other Lives and the Decemberists they played a whole CD worth of material from some otherworldly-assed celtic-sorta singer lady. I didn't enjoy it and it was very loud.
I think this is my fifth time seeing the Decemberists, and sad to say it was probably my least favorite. As they've gotten bigger and bigger, the experience has drifted further away from staring down at them from the balcony of GAMH or hugging Colin Meloy in front of Freeborn hall.
I didn't want to freak out about crowd position so I stayed quite far back in the pit, but as a result had poor visibility and still got pushed around a lot. The Hazards Of Love was great, but The gap between the opener and the band as well as the album-half of the set and the old-stuff half was far too long. Also, they recycled the "Cautionary Song" encore that I've seen at least once or twice already.
There was a late-thirty-or-forty-something looking lady who knew all the words to The Hazards Of Love, which is truly dedicated. I wonder how she lives her life.
My tactic as of recent has been to go solo to shows in hopes that the staggering, incredible loneliness that fills me up in the between-band periods spurs me to talk to a stranger and achieve social success. So far my success/failure ratio on this is something like two out of forty. I'm looking for a way to improve my odds.
2009-05-21 - Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, Still Flyin', Oh No Oh My, Pelle Calberg - Rickshaw Stop
After Monday and Wednesday's excursions into lonelytown I'd vowed to not go to a show again for a long time. But ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) arletterocks and musikitty both mentioned this show this week, and I'd managed to have a Suburban Kids song stuck in my head coming home from the Decemberists show despite only hearing the song once on their Myspace. I could taste destiny in the air.
Pelle Calberg had a bad habit of overexplaining his songs before playing them, and sounded like Belle and Sebastian if Belle and Sebastian only had a dude and a half in it. To his credit, his lyrics were comprehensible and often delightful.
The research I performed on Oh No Oh My, namely listening to their album three or four times between learning of their existence on Wednesday and seeing them on Thursday, paid off in spades. Despite their unfortunate name (we kept wanting to call them Oh Me Oh My), this band rocks the dance party with a toughness. They did make the classic rookie mistake of playing my favorite song of theirs first (I Love You All The Time). Per typical, the rest of the crowd did not share my level of engagement; I can only assume they were paralyzed with joy.
Still Flyin' was a mess, twelve people in a band that seemed to mix a vague reggae influence with poor musicianship. Laura had a negative opinion of them from a previous encounter, and I wonder how much of my bad reaction might have been tainted by that, but probably they're just quite bad.
I don't know much to say about Suburban Kids themselves other than to recognize their greatness. They didn't play the song I like most off their Myspace, a track written for a compilation called "God Save Roger Nichols".
I bought a popfest tote bag and some EPs that I couldn't find on the internet to steal. I don't plan on toting anything, but they didn't have a poster with the same design, so the bag will have to do.
THE WEAKERTHANS ARE GOING TO BE AT GAMH IN JULY, I AM FUCKING EXCITED. |
|
|
| the longest backlog |
[May. 18th, 2009|10:51 pm] |
I like to be in the habit of posting about a concert within the week that it happens. And never missing a post about a major event. Somehow I've managed to get three months behind.
2008-03-05 - TheSTART, The Action Design - Bottom of the Hill
I've seen The Action Design enough times now in my life. Good kids, but four+ times is plenty.
I don't know quite where I heard about TheSTART, but they're an indieish poppyish band with a lady singer and that's usually enough for me. I figured they'd built up a following with some crowd, somewhere, but the amount of people who came to this show tells me that must not be true.
The actual songsmanship was great, but the experience was sullied by some drunken/mentally unbalanced dipstick who kept jumping around and shouting gibberish along the lines of "I LOVE THE STAAAAAART" during any moment of silence. By the time they got to their last couple of songs there were only about twenty-five people around, and he was unfortunately one of them. He must've been a big fan, as he shouted out something like "I SAW YOU IN AUSTIN!!" to which the bandleader lady, situation-weary, replied, "we saw YOU in Austin... how could we forget."
2008-04-02 - The Get Up Kids - Great American Music Hall
The weirdest thing about this show was the opening band, a hip-hop act called Approach. The singer implied some affiliation with the Get Up Kids, mostly that they had played a gig somewhere in the distant past, but the crossover potential seemed low. I can describe the situation as a guy wanting an audience to get very excited about something, followed by an audience being not very excited at all. Personally I thought his raps weren't that great anyway, but what the hell do I know about such a thing.
I don't remember much about the actual headlining set other than that people were enthusiastic and I got to jump up and down. It's good, when bands get back together, because people get very excited. Nearly to the level that someone should actually be excited at a rock show. Reminded me a lot of when I saw Ozma on their reunion tour.
2008-04-09 - Headlights - Bottom of the Hill
The first opener, The Love X Nowhere, is a band that I now fully despise. I'd written about seeing them before, and my earlier point still stands: the smirk that the lead singer has on his face all the time just makes me want to punch him until he can't smug anymore.
The middle band was called The Love Language and they have a similar name but are actually quite good.
Headlights were actively adorable. I liked how for 'TV' they had like 15 people up on stage playing: the people doing the music looked a lot more psyched to be there than the people in the crowd, unfortunately. They played 'Owl Eyes', which is my faves, but not 'Put Us Back Together Right', my runner up, which I always thought was a Stars b-side when I'd heard it prior.
2008-04-13 - Blind Pilot - Cafe Du Nord
Of Loch Lomond I remember a diminutive singer singing things that were fairly pleasant.
Blind Pilot played '3 Rounds And A Sound' which is all I really wanted them to do. Kind of a religious experience.
There was a drunk couple next to me who kept talking about their dumb shit. After taking it for a half hour or so, I decided to speak up, causing the male half to give me the scariest "you're dead, fucker" look my non-confrontational ass has ever received, and I backed down. They did shut up a little, though.
2008-04-15 - Los Campesinos! - Slims
I'd raised expectations for this show a little high: since "We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed", Los Campesinos! has been basically my favorite band, and I was expecting more or less that if I went to their show they would adopt me as their foster child and take me along for adventures in their tour van. Instead they played some music to a not-even-sold-out (how??) crowd.
Sky Larkin was a great opener in that it was band with a lady singer playing catchy tunes. What can I say.
I wanted my damndest to keep a close-up spot at this show, so I didn't get any beers because I didn't want to be forced out due to bladder issues. When the band started playing I learned that the gentleman to my right knew all the words to every Los Campesinos song and wanted to sing them, loudly. Badly. I fled the crowd, ordered a Big Daddy and drank it so fast I got brain freeze. I spent the rest of the show on the edge of the crowd looking in.
For the final song of the encore, several bandmembers played from the middle of the audience, right about the spot at which I'dve been if I could've held my place. Myself and Gareth Campesino could have shared a special touch, but alas it was not to be.
2008-04-20 - Mates of State, Black Kids - The Independent
2008-04-21 - Black Kids, Mates of State - The Independent
Judgment Day is a string instrument metal band along the lines of Apocalyptica. Great stuff, actually. They must go through a lot of bows, though.
Mates of State gets props for playing 'Open Book', which was for a period in college-times my favorite song.
The crowd for Black Kids on both nights was a bit sparse; I guess I can understand more people showing up for Mates of State who are incredibly established in comparison to the single-album Black Kids. But I'd still liked to have seen more people out to jam all night.
2008-04-30 - Thao and the Get Down Stay Down - The Independent
Samantha Crane and Sister Suvi were both quite good. Thao was amazing as always: a shining beacon of how joyous and wonderful everyone should be if they knew what was good for them.
I couldn't keep focus at this show because I kept milling about looking for people to talk to. The most socializing I accomplished at this show was telling a talkative fellow in the bathroom that Mike Doughty was pretty cool.
2008-05-08 - Jukebox the Ghost - Bottom of the Hill
A target of oppurtunity: I went to this show because I was looking for something to do and musikitty's profile mentioned it. Jukebox The Ghost is like her most faves band.
I'd never tried ordering food at Bottom of the Hill before, but I was a little undereaten for this show so I decided to get a veggie burger. The lack of structure to the system unnerves me: you order something, and some ten or fifteen minutes later the guy just puts it out on a shelf, no identifying marks or any effort to track you down and tell you it's done. Worked out well enough though.
French Miami were a pretty servicable indie dance trio who said they were from the city. Maybe I'll see them around.
Jenny Owen Youngs most distinguishing characteristic is how dizzyingly, uncomfortably pretty she is. I imagine there's comparisons out there with Rilo Kiley. Imagine Rilo Kiley but prettier and probably less talented.
Jukebox the Ghost managed to skyrocket past my nonexistent expectations. Something about the material on their Myspace just didn't capture what I actually heard at the show. I was also pretty drunk, though, which never hurts.
2008-05-09 - Mike Doughty - The Independent
I wasn't filled with a desperate longing for this show so much as I didn't have much else to do that weekend so I jumped on it. Oddly, there was an 8:30 show and a 11pm show, which seems a little too close for comfort. And it was: I got there a little before 11 and ended up waiting in line till 11:45, as he apparently played late for the early show.
I don't find the singy part of the Mike Doughty experience very compelling because I've already heard the songs many, many times in several different ways. In particular, I don't think the cello really works here as an accompanying instrument. But the Question Jar antics were delightful - I like anything that promotes stage banter. Fuck all the stage banter haters.
There was a guy sitting next to me who I tried to engage in conversation but he just sort of nodded and shrugged. Ah well.
I bought a CD straight from Mike Doughty's hand. I'm famous!
2009-05-18 - Ben Folds - The Fox
The actual opener got stuck in can't-get-on-a-plane hell, so the only opener to the show were some college acapella kids singing "Selfless, Cold and Composed". It was pretty good, and a great song choice, but with kind of an obnoxious beatboxing thing going on.
I burst into tears during "Emaline", an unexpected yet cathartic moment brashly interrupted by a bunch of drunk fuckers talking about whatever-the-shit behind me. In my dreams I kill them all where they stand. In my
memories I am better able to make the world the place I want to live in.
I think despite how I feel about most of his recent work, Ben Folds will always have a place somewhere deep in my heart from whence he may spring when my MP3 playlist is on shuffle.
It would've been nice if he'd played "Time". |
|
|
| brief gibberish |
[Apr. 22nd, 2009|12:41 am] |
Attn: Black Kids:
I would actually very much like it if you taught my boyfriend how to dance with me. In this metaphor, my boyfriend is the city of San Francisco.
Readers of this internet emoblag may take this moment to evaluate my first (and we can hope, last) ever missed connection post.
edit: fuck, I didn't realize Craigslist expired missed connections. some help that link is for the people of the future. for posterity:
cute girl at mates of state/black kids - m4w
We stood near each other awkwardly for a brief period before I perked up and asked you how things were going. You claimed things were good, I said the same. Then Mates of State finally came on and you drifted back to your crew. Let me know if you'd like to continue this promising line of inquiry.
|
|
|
| picnic day '09 |
[Apr. 19th, 2009|06:01 pm] |
Some things Travis likes about Picnic Day:
- Seeing all sorts of fuckers walking around that I ain't hardly seen for years.
- Daytime drinking idiocy - I had no idea so many people were actually getting trashed immediately east of campus. I'd seen people 'drinking outside in years previous, but never to this level. These were drinking professionals.
- Battle of the Bands - I love to see all these ridiculous band nerds who can keep enthusiastic for such an absurd amount of time.
Some things Travis doesn't like about Picnic Day:
- Biking around Davis in a layer of sunscreen leaving me feeling sticky and uncomfortable for the whole day.
- Realizing I'm just as useless at College parties as I was when I was actually in College
- The drive back. Driving there was awful enough, but words fail at explaining the torture of plodding down 80 at 1am. Time slowed down uncomfortably: I kept thinking I was one city ahead of where I actually was. I'm pretty confident I drove through Fairfield for four days.
See also: grainy cellphone version. |
|
|
| and in your weekly "Travis' bike news"... |
[Apr. 17th, 2009|08:49 pm] |
Someone tried to take my front wheel. Or at least, to make it look like they did? They undid the quick-release, seemingly jiggled it around a bit to and realized it was locked to the fucking bike rack, then went on their merry way. Thing is, the back wheel wasn't locked up at all, so if they were really interested in professional wheel theft they could've probably managed to get it off and get a whole set of cogs in the bargain.
This was on the Fuji that I keep at the Mountain View Caltrain Bike Shelter. So now we know the so-called security of the Bike Shelter doesn't stop crazies. Either that, or someone was trying to prank me.
In other news, the Giants fans who ride the train up on Fridays are some of the most repulsive people I've seen in the Bay Area. The woman Giants fans in particular have this repulsive heavy-makeup super-straight-fake-looking-hair thing going on that I would expect in Hollywood or the Marina or where ever but why here? What ass-backwards peninsula town do these people come from? |
|
|
| holy whatsit |
[Apr. 16th, 2009|08:21 pm] |
I just got a letter from my landlord saying he's reducing the rent $100/mo. The reason given is 'this difficult economic time'. Has this ever happened? To anyone? Ever? Some sort of tactic to stop people from bailing on apartments?
I wonder how this works with rent control laws. If he ever changes his mind, can he pop it back up to the original rate and then add the extra annual increase? |
|
|
| weekend activities of note |
[Mar. 29th, 2009|11:42 pm] |
My boy BEN FROM ATLANTA had been making noise about going on some sort of bike adventure, so I decided we should try to bike to Santa Cruz. Unfortunately I realized that if you have a bicycle to bring with you, there's no good way to get it back from Santa Cruz without a personal vehicle waiting for you there. There's a couple ways this could be solved: possibly by biking back the next day, or by having friends.
That idea being tabled for now, we did this Berkeley hills route instead.
We met numerous difficulties: notably Ben being too much of a sissy to make it up Claremont without stopping and wanting to puke, and that neither of us brought much foodstuff. I felt like I kind of overfooded it on the Mt. Tam adventure, carrying a large subset of the Arizmendi Bakery in my panniers, so this time I just brought water. As a result, by the time we had to scale Wildcat Canyon to get back to Berkeley like it said we should in the Bikely map I'd stolen the route from, we were basically dying. Luckily there was an escape valve for us in that it was a straight downhill to the Orinda BART station.
Today I played kickball in Berkeley, how come I'm always around the Ashby BART these days. |
|
|
| gdc 09 day 3 of 3 |
[Mar. 28th, 2009|02:11 am] |
9AM Drop In COOP for Open World Games (Mercenaries 2)
So: this was the most unusual session at the whole conference. The guy opens with a title card slide and says he's really nervous because this is the only slide in his talk, and we all laaaaugh because we think he's joking but he's not. So he tells us his life story about how he worked for this game company and he was depressed and ashamed and then he worked for this other company and he was depressed and ashamed and his girlfriend stopped sleeping with him for a year because he was a huge jerk and that made him ashamed. Meanwhile he walks us through this demo he wrote to show how drop-in COOP should work in games.
Basically it was a lot like this but with more of him talking about how ashamed he was about this or that.
10:30AM Burned by Friendly Fire: Game Critics Rant
In the hectic ad-hoc seat-of-one's-pants schedule refinement that always happens at GDC it's important to evaluate what one is and isn't getting out of the sessions and tailor future attendances to maximize learning or joy or whatever vector is going particularly well. To that end, I wanted to avoid falling asleep somewhere like I did for the Force Unleashed physics talk, so I picked another vibrant entertainment session.
I wasn't disappointed. There was a lot of comedy and yelling. The executive summary is that game critics like to complain about Metacritic I guess.
12PM Robotic Testing to the Rescue (Brutal Legend)
Double Fine guys explain how they have a system that uses idle Xbox 360s at their office to run automated tests. It's pretty cool and probably the closest thing I saw all week to what I might ever actually do at work.
This was the only session at GDC (to date, even!) where I asked a question. Go me!
2:30PM Real-Time Research: An Experiment in Understanding Games
A super high-concept session. Sometime on Tuesday some people met and agreed on certain 'research' topics they would do, the subjects being GDC attendees. The conclusions people drew probably weren't interesting but it was neat to see people who'd never worked together prior to the conference having done work with each other for the purpose of having a session.
4PM The Iterative Level Design Process of Bioware's Mass Effect 2
The most important thing to note about this session was that for the first fifteen minutes some fucker behind me kept eating ice out of his cup and doing it in a louder way than I would've believed possible. Fuck you, ice fucker.
The actual session was about Bioware's level design process, mainly lessons from designing Mass Effect 1 like "always have your levels actually be playable" and "don't save optimization for the end". They described a series of quality tiers for their levels and explained their methodology is to march all the levels through these tiers in order, which is to say bring everything in the game to Stage 1, then everything to Stage 2 etc. The actual shooty gameplay footage they showed looked pretty lame though.
Sometime during the day I actually shelled out a grazillion dollars for the privilege of getting the Game Design, Programming and Indie Games Summit sessions on DVD. So I'll be able to catch any of the sessions I missed due to scheduling tradeoffs. I guess I'll see if this financial investment was worthwhile if a torrent pops up before my disc arrives.
After the conference I showed some internet goons around San Francisco. Much to my great shame I inaccurately informed them they couldn't get to Fisherman's Wharf via the Powell st. cable car (which is EXACTLY what it's for) and forced them to take the F-Line. This is probably the most wrong that I have ever done to a person or group of persons. I am going to spend my whole life working off the karmic imbalance from this. |
|
|
| gdc 09 day 2 of 3 |
[Mar. 26th, 2009|11:38 pm] |
Thursday morning was a tough toss-up: there was a session on the Dawn of War II AI, one on the physics in LittleBigPlanet, but I ultimately decided on
9AM GDC Microtalks - One Hour, Ten Speakers, Unlimited Ideas
Which made it very unfortunate when I realized I'd misread the schedule and went to the room for How Sackboy Learned To Love Physics. I tried to give the speaker the benefit of the doubt, because it could've been very interesting, but he spent his first fifteen minutes stammering without giving any novel information, so I bailed and hauled it across the street to the microtalks session. Great decision. I always love the super-entertaining gimmicky talks at GDC and this one delivered. Nothing too substantive worth highlighting, just the standard yearly "everyone should make better videogames" talkin'.
10:30AM Kojima Keynote
After the extreme dissapointment from Wednesday I chose not to sit out this keynote - it didn't hurt that they didn't bother to schedule any sessions against it this year. I don't really like listening to just-in-time translated talks (hence why I didn't go to either the Nobi Nobi Boy or Professor Layton talks this year), but this one was okay. I'm no Metal Gear fan but there's worse ways you could spend an hour.
1:30PM Game Studies Download 4.0 (Ian Bogost)
I'd been aware of Ian Bogost from his blog for a couple years and thought he was a pretty smart dude - every year they run this session but it's always been up against something else more interesting. It was a decent time, nothing life-changing though.
3:00PM iPhone Development
Lots of folk at the conference were tittering about the iPhone this year, and this was the only session scheduled for it during the main session, so it was packed. Ultimately pretty light on information, though: the kind of stuff you could get from the iPhone Wikipedia article in a couple of minutes. Wish I would've gone somewhere else instead of falling for the hype.
4:30 Readability in Games (Far Cry 2)
I'm not sure if I'd seen this guy talk before, but boy is he way out in space with regard to the way he thinks about games. It's like he came into the industry from Planet Academia where they teach you about narriative the way one might explore metaphors in Kafka. Not a lot of concrete stuff to hold on to, but interesting to try to listen anyway. His thesis: games have grown much faster representationally (pretty graphics) than they've been able to keep pace with immersively (I forget his words). He did offer some examples where Far Cry 2 failed in this regard, which almost made it worthwhile that I spent like fifty bucks on that toil of a game.
Unfortunately this year they weren't giving out free booze to attendees at a Suite Night party, so I just went home and slept off my conference exhaustion.
|
|
|
| gdc 09 day 1 of 3 |
[Mar. 25th, 2009|09:49 pm] |
The night before GDC I got ridiculously drunk at the IGDA party and tried to talk to anyone who looked like they might give me valuable secret information about games. I quickly learned, however, that pretty much everyone who goes to the IGDA party instead of some exclusive Valve gala is actually just a student desperately looking for a job. There's only so much conversation you can wring out of that. I did get to meet the lead programer on Brutal Legend though which was awesome.
GDC '09 got off to a bad note when I decided to skip the keynote. It seemed like a good idea at the time: I'd been really pissed off attending Sony's worthless Playstation Home keynote and the Microsoft one last year where they announced Gears of War 2. The things are a lot more like ads than anything else. But this year after he was through bloviating about his company's success getting people to stand on a plastic board, Nintendo president Iwata gave every keynote attendee a copy of Rhythm Heaven, a DS game I've been waiting a year for (that isn't even out until April 5).
That being said.
10:30AM Lockless Programming in Games
Starting things off with a heavy tech bent - little would I know this would turn out to be the most complex session I attended this year that I didn't fall asleep in. Basically: there are certain methods you can use to synchronize two threads without having to acquire and release locks, but using them requires a certain level of thought because you can get screwed in mysterious and interesting ways by the CPU's L1 caches.
Not something I'd ever thought about before, but once the idea was explained to me I had no problem picking up on it later in the week when it was mentioned in someone else's talk. Fun stuff.
12PM Breathing LIFE into an Open World (Saints Row 2)
I really liked playing Saints Row 2 this year, so I was glad to attend at least one talk on it. They did a lot of the same work that GTA4 did to make a 'next-gen' open-world experience, but I thought theirs turned out a lot more fun. This talk, however, mostly came down to "we got our artists to place a bunch of specialized behavior nodes all over the world, and it took a long time, and we wish we had done some things differently but the game needed to get finished."
During the Q&A period, a britishy accented fellow who claimed to have worked on the Villager AI for Fable 2 tried to prod the guy about ways one might go about creating a vibrant world other than essentially 'painting' it with action nodes, but the Saints guy didn't have much to say.
2:30PM Real-Time Deformation and Fracture - Finite Element Simulation and its Use in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Ashamed to say I slept through a fair amount of this talk. Not sure if that's the first time I've done that at GDC. I was following them as far as "we tesselate our models into little tetrahedra" and then they started talking about strain and splinters and shearing and math and I couldn't scribble any notes down anymore. In my defense other people were sleeping too. Math is hard.
4:00PM Meaning, Aesthetics, and User-Created Content (Chris Hecker)
A big portion of what keeps me going to this conference might be Chris Hecker. I don't think his talks really have much of a point to them, but he talks them well. I want to be Chris Hecker when I grow up but I think I've missed the oppurtunity several times already. Will Wright came up during this talk to give a 10 minute "russian space minute".
At the end of the day I met up with some strangers from the internet at Thirstybear, which was an alright experience given that I spent a full year admiring their logo while biking down Howard without ever having gone there.
|
|
|
| this year in stolen metal |
[Mar. 22nd, 2009|05:40 pm] |
A month or two ago I got a new bike, a 2006 Fuji Finest 2.0, to shuttle me from the Mountain View Caltrain station to my office in Sunnyvale. Her name is Veronica, and she's been very kind to me thus far, except that half her gear combinations produce obnoxious squeaky noises that I don't have the bike-fu to diagnose. I need to take her into Pedal Rev while she's still under warranty to see if they can figure it out, but I don't have tremendous faith in their mechanics. Technically she's marketed as a lady's bike, but I hardly see any difference versus strong manly 2006 Fujis like the Newest 2.0.
I took Veronica up with Arlen to see the top of Mount Tam, leaving my hybrid (a 2007 Giant FCR3) alone on the steps of the 22nd street Caltrain for the weekend. Come Monday, the spot where once my bike had been was merely a fence once again, and I sank fast into despair. I loved that bike more than I love any of my family members and probably most of my friends. Me and that bike, we sure did go on some crazy adventures.
As a replacement, I quickly bought a glossy green 2009 Specialized Sirrus Sport, after a mind-breaking week of taking Veronica on the Caltrain each way (the constant horn in the bike car when going northbound still haunts me).
I was wary of parking the hybrid in the same area where my Giant was stolen, but after two days of parking it down on the platform I got lazy and parked it on the stairs. That very evening, I got off the train to see someone had tried to leverage my lock (in broad daylight! in front of a camera!) and left it in a completely unworkable state. I called Arlen, the only person you can ever really count on when you need to steal your own bike, and us being unable to saw through the adamantium lock without a power outlet we cut it off the fence it was locked to. I walked the still fully-locked machine to the Mission, carrying it on my shoulder for dramatic effect. Nobody had said a word while we were power-tooling at the fence (a couple people were milling about waiting for the bus), and nobody said anything to me as I marched a locked bike a mile and a half. After some sparks flew, my U-Lock now looks like this.
While I'm incredibly grateful to have not lost my investment so quickly, this leaves me pretty annoyed and frightened. I already feared after the original bike theft that someone had it out for me, and this just adds to my paranoia. I know realistically that the bike was just targeted because it is new and shiny, but now I don't know what to do; this was supposed to be my 'leave it locked outside the bar and who cares because it doesn't have road bars why would someone want to take that bike' bike. At the least, I feel I have to start going all the way to 4th and King station to get the valet bike parking, adding ten minutes to my commute each way.
The new hybrid needs a name so that it can avoid the fate of my Giant, fading off into stolen bike limbo having never been given an obnoxious moniker or gender. Something suitably gangster to evoke its theft resistance (so far).
This also leaves me 4/2 on bicycles owned/bicycles stolen. Someday I need to give a bike a viking funeral so that it doesn't chance becoming a statistic.
|
|
|
| noise pop 2009 |
[Mar. 2nd, 2009|12:07 am] |
2008-02-19 - Popscene
I guess we got there too late to see Oh Captain My Captain, or they didn't play, but Army Navy was alright, in the gushy saccharine indie pop way that I like things to be. I'dve bought their album if I had a way to get it home with me safely. The rest of the night was a typical Popscene situation, which is to say pretty all right.
2009-02-26 - Swedish American Music Hall
This was my first time at the Swedish American and I guess I should've suspected it was a sit-down show. I think if I was going to stage seated shows at my music venue I'd shell out for more comfortable seats.
Sitting at a show you've gone to by yourself is troublesome, too, because if in the course of events you find yourself with a single empty seat next to you the guilt can be overwhelming. What I mean here is that I was sitting next to an empty chair (the row was empty when I got there and I sat in the middle, it's not my fault!), the row ahead of me had an empty chair as well, and the room was full of people who didn't get to sit at all. All the while I was wished I could move into the other empty seat and give a couple a chance to sit down and increase the general seat-packing efficiency, but I didn't want to inconvenience the people in the row ahead.
I have this problem in movie theaters, too.
Colossal Yes was two dudes who played songs that went on a little too long and didn't have a lot going for them, quality of instrumentation wise. Keep trying, dudes.
A bearded Glen Hansard lookalike by the name Sean Smith played some instrumental stuff on his guitar that was quite alright, if very repetitive.
David Dondero had this sort of besuited cowboy blues thing going on which was fine. His friend played a saw and he sang a lot of songs about people dying and other unfortunate occurances.
I'm pretty sure Thao Nguyen rocked just about everyone's faces off. That lady is a firebrand and I would follow her anywhere.
2009-02-27 - The Independent
I don't remember a tremendous amount to distinguish The Hooks and Telekinesis, but I know I enjoyed both of them, the latter a bit more than the former.
The whole week prior I'd been listening to a Cut Off Your Hands EP on the mp3 machine, which I enjoyed, but live they were a fucking mess. The lead singer was drunk off his shit and stage dived into an unwilling crowd not-once-but-four times, getting some sort of freaky bruises on his face. It's a wonder this joker still has all his teeth. They didn't sound too great and the singer had this major persecution complex about how the crowd didn't like him, even though a fair amount of people were dancing about. Not planning on keeping up with these New Zealalnder assholes in the future.
Ra Ra Riot was everything I expected and more. The feeling of seeing them live could be compared to being wrapped up by a warm blanket that is composed of peace and love. Also their lighting was stellar and one of their guitarists looks like a super shaggy Ben Folds.
2009-02-28 - Bottom of the Hill
I'd originally intended to see Portugal. The Man at Cafe du Nord, but I didn't buy advance tickets and it had sold out by the time I got in line.
Jake Mann, Everest, and The Dead Trees delivered perfectly reasonable indie rock music sets that I don't remember too much about individually because I'm not familiar with any of their catalogs and none of them got up to any crazy drunken stage diving antics.
Sholi was kind of mellow in comparison, with all their proggish fancy kid rock songs. But they did alright. They were on the cover of the Noise Pop pamphlet catalog this year man, holy shit. UC Davis represent.
2009-03-01 - Mezzanine
The Mae Shi were a bit too yelling-noisy-kid for my taste, but I was able to accept their existence well enough. Not the kind of folks I'd invite to my birthday party.
Les Savy Fav brought the party that rocks the party party party as one would expect. I think I've seen them three times or so now and each visit is a wondrous revelation. I moved as far front as possible for the encore and got to jump around with a bunch of slippery sweaty disgusting hipster indie rock kids and it was basically amazing.
Another of my coworkers is fleeing The City to Sunnyvale to avoid the life-draining commute. Weeks like this prove to me I would never, ever do the same. I'd die first. |
|
|
| alright, lets get this shit straightened out for real |
[Feb. 15th, 2009|02:58 pm] |
the travis grathwell "WHEN IS WINTER EVER GOING TO END?!" spring concert series
| Time | Artist | Venue |
|---|
| 2009-02-19 | Army Navy, Oh Captain My Captain | Popscene |
| 2009-02-26 | Thao Nguyen | Swedish American Music Hall |
| 2009-02-27 | Ra Ra Riot | The Independent |
| 2009-02-28 | Sholi | Bottom of the Hill |
| 2009-03-01 | Les Savy Fav | Mezzanine |
| 2009-03-05 | TheSTART, The Action Design | Bottom of the Hill |
| 2009-03-19 | MSTRKRFT | The Independent |
| 2009-03-24 | Bishop Allen | Rickshaw Stop |
| 2009-03-25 | OK Go | Great American Music Hall |
| 2009-04-11 | White Lies | Slim's |
| 2009-04-13 | Blind Pilot | Cafe Du Nord |
| 2009-04-15 | Los Campesinos! | Slims |
| 2009-04-20 | Mates of State, Black Kids | The Independent |
| 2009-04-21 | Black Kids, Mates of State | The Independent |
| 2009-04-28 | Cold War Kids | The Fillmore |
| 2009-05-20 | The Decemberists | Fox Theater |
| 2009-05-21 | Kings of Leon | Bill Graham Civic Auditorium |
still a work in progress.
edit: thanks for no one telling me these all wrongly said '2008'. now I feel RIDICULOUS. |
|
|
| regarding certain recent events |
[Feb. 5th, 2009|12:36 am] |
My truck sprung a fuel leak last week and it cost me $450ish, plus the substantial annoyance and mental anguish costs. I spent some of the days while it was out of commission biking the Sunnyvale leg of my commute, and it's not bad. The worst part is getting to the 5:37pm train soaked in sweat. Maybe I'll bring a towel if I start doing it permanent.
My company had a January BEARD-OFF which I lost in most all respects, but I'm of the opinion that when you have a beard-off really the loser is everyone in humankind.
Work-related nightmares have largely ceased. Life-related anxieties come and go.
Sometimes I get a good amount of reading done on the train, usually not. I wish I could focus more. It's easy enough to keep awake jiggering with my Nintendo DS for 40 minutes each way, but I'm a little tired of looking like that variety of dork. At least as long as there aren't any cool new games out.
In the next month or two I want to take a weekend to wander around Seattle like a homeless person.
My homebro BEN FROM ATLANTA is coming back to the bay this weekendish. I hope to engage in numerous adventures with him forthcomingly.
Recent bands enjoyed: Pony Up, Mumm-Ra, Johnny Foreigner. I spent an entire evening hopped up on multiple cups of tea downloading anything Last.FM recommended, which turned out slightly okay. I think they've pigeonholed my tastes though, or just my ability to illegally download music isn't what it used to be.
I need to plot out the Spring concert schedule. I know at least I have to see Ra Ra Riot on 2/27. It's crucial to my survival.
I'm back down in San Diego this weekend. Briefly. |
|
|
| bad decision theatre - video game edition |
[Feb. 3rd, 2009|11:14 pm] |
I have no idea what compelled me to spend $50 on Far Cry 2. I've tried to put about two hours into it and so far the experience has been entirely joyless. I haven't felt this bad about a game purchase since the original Dungeon Siege.
I can see it turning around later but boy is it going to be a slow grower. |
|
|
| Saturday Bike 8: bike to work |
[Jan. 19th, 2009|11:32 pm] |
On Saturday I had to go see Tsunami Bomb's reunion/final show at the Phoenix Theater in quaint Petaluma, California. A fact that I completely forgot about when I left my car in Sunnyvale on Friday. Having several hours to kill, I decided to see how long it takes to bike down to my workplace.
About three and a half hours, it turns out. This was my route, basically - it's definitely not the shortest distance, but El Camino very dependable.
The biggest reason I biked down to rescue my car was as a feasibility study for Bike to Work Day. When our office was in San Mateo I'd pledged to bike down from SF, mostly because I want a 2009 bike to work day tote bag to complement my '07 and '08. I think it's still doable. I just need to find out what time they start handing out the tote bags.
The concert was fun - the Phoenix Theater is this ridiculous teen centre that totally feels like one: covered with orderly graffiti, filled with couches, and not a drop of alcohol to be seen. I was glad they played "A Lonely Chord", which some millions of years ago was my favorite song for a time. |
|
|
| a new office means new commute stories |
[Jan. 6th, 2009|07:27 pm] |
For the first time in my life, against all my hard-won principles, I think I may become at least partially a car commuter. Which isn't to say I'm going to drive to and from Sunnyvale every day (I would die), but my interim commuting plan involves a car. Right now:
1. Bike to 22nd street Caltrain (15 minutes)
2. Caltrain to Mountain View station (40 minutes)
3. Drive from Caltrain to work (10 minutes)
and the whole process goes in reverse on the way back.
I've got a couple other options for #3. One, as I tried Monday, is to take VTA: it takes 20 minutes, and is much worse on the work side because I have to leave enough time for it to arrive and get me to the Caltrain station within a specific window. The other is to bike the five or six mile trip, which probably takes somewhere between 25 and 40 minutes but at least will be predictable (and good exercise).
So right now my car lives in the Mountain View/Sunnyvale area. I have no idea what I'm going to do for the weekends, I sure don't want to have to drive it to the city and back all the time if I can avoid it. Hopefully this weekend I can get another bike, be it a new fancy one or just some beater hybrid, don't really care. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
