Bedtime! In 10 hours I'll be on a plane to California for FC. Let me know if you're going and haven't seen fit to tell me yet!

Birthday on Friday the 13th at the con. Lucky me o.o

Edit: Lazing about in the lobby, nobody wants to hang out D: It's like every other con in the history of ever.

 sepffuzzball could really use some new gear.

I mean, look how adorable he is when getting reamed. But you know what would make him even more adorable? Bigger dick :D

Let's talk numbers while he's at work >:3

Arrival and departure
Wednesday afternoon to Monday morning

Staying at
San Jose Hilton

Mode of transportation
Plane

Room share
 sepffuzzball  kipfox  darkshift

Major plans at the con
Celebrating my 25th birthday on Friday the 13th, otherwise I'm open for suggestions.

Who will I be with
The aforementioned roomies, plus anyone who likes me enough to hang out. You have to understand, the reason I stopped going to cons further than a half day's drive is because I generally wandered around alone, which was a royal waste of money and vacation time. FC is special because it's during a notable birthday and I've never been to Cali.

Fursuit(s)
Don't have any D:

Attending parties
No.

How best to find me
Text me (if you have my number) or else email (twiledragon[at]gmail.com) or tweet (@twile) me. All will be routed to my phone.

Drink
No.

Smoke
No.

Hugs
Only if I know you ._.

Talk
Yes.

Art
I can has?

Do you do trades?
If you trade for dollars, sure.

What is your gender?
♂

How old are you?
24 for the first half of the con, 25 for the second half of the con.

Can I touch you?
See above: Hugs

Can I buy you lots of drinks?
If they don't have any calories :3!

Can I give you lots of money?
I'm starting to think that  dj_mixer or somebody else just made these up >_>

Can I hug or snuggle with you?
Se above: Hugs

How tall are you?
5'7"

You look pissed off out of suit can I come up to you?
I never look pissed off.

Are you nice?
I am always nice, except for when people try to rub Apple products against me. I will attempt to break them--I reserve the right to defend myself against hostile invasions of my personal space >_>

Are you cliquey?
No, my friends do not know each other ;-;

Can I stalk you?
Only if you're a plant?

Do you like parties?
No.

If I see you, how should i get your attention?
You know the Nintendo 64 video? Do that, but substitute "Nintendo 64" with "Twile Fuzzydragon". Except not really. Be creative.

Are you fursuiting?
No.

Can I ask ya to dance with me during the dances?
No.

Can I buy you breakfast, lunch, or dinner sometime?
I like food.

Can I take a picture of ya?
No.

Can I steal ya away for *censored*?
You can TRY, but I hope you like rejection, sucka~

Would ya like to get a commission done of ya?
o3o Sure

Wanna cuddle at the con?
Not from strange men ._.

You like shinies?
I'm a fucking dragon, what kind of bullshit question is this D:

During the fursuit games what team ya gonna be on?
wat

Wanna play some Xbox games?
I'm not blowing 6 months vacation and a thousand bucks so I can play goddamn videogames at a con o_o;

=====

Short version
Attending from Wednesday to Monday, room has no vacancies, Friday is my birthday. I don't drink, smoke, fuck, dance, party or fursuit, though exposure to the last item will me me squee rather than scowl. I've never been to FC so I don't know the area, and any guidance from regulars would be cool. I'll be posting another journal before I go, building a final list of people I need to exchange contact info with in hopes of actually meeting some folks at the con, but feel free to express interest here first.

In my experience, huskies/wolves/similar have some hardcore derp action, but the suggestion box is open for derpiest species.

(And with that, I retreat to work for the next 10 hours)

 sepffuzzball <3 <3

Fuzz has decided. FC 2012 will happen, because it falls on my birthday and I've never been to California.

Who needs a room? I'll be getting two double beds with check-in on the 11th and check-out on the 16th.

I reserve the right to show preferential choice for people I know, because let's face it, rooming with someone involves a lot of trust and mutual compatibility.

They say opinions are like assholes: everyone has one. But hey, that doesn't stop me from sharing mine. Um, my opinion, that is c.c;

Anyway. Read it if you care to discuss, otherwise move along.

Soo, Wii U. The name is terrible, it's the sound that you make when you're imitating a police car siren. But we should expect this from Nintendo, who named a game system after a word which only really makes sense in one language. Or maybe we should expect this from console manufacturers in general--"Xbox 360" makes no sense (the system is no longer a box with an X on it, and 360 only makes sense in the degree sense--and there's nothing circular or all-encompassing about the system hardware or software), while "PS Vita" sounds like "pita" and supposedly is some loose, dead-language reference to augmented reality. But a rose by any other name, right? So let's pretend it has a cool name, like "Phantom" (not to be confused with the failed game system).

Let's take a 40,000 foot look at the system. What were some of the failings of the Wii?
* Graphics which couldn't even compare to the competition at SD resolution, much less HD resolutions which it didn't support.
* No DVD or Blu-ray playback support, nixing its ability to replace another box and set of cables (DVD or Blu-ray player).
* A control scheme which made promises it couldn't keep without controller add-ons

What were the implications of these respective failings?
* Third party developers made crappy ports of multi-platform games, if not outright ignored the system (what of popular games like Mass Effect, Bioshock and Oblivion?), because they would have to work and compromise too much to build down at the Wii's level.
* Admittedly not much happened because of the lack of DVD support, and realistically Blu-ray support could never be expected (it'd be worthless for an SD-only system), but I'd be negligent to point out that the PS3 enjoyed improved sales because it was a direct superset to a good Blu-ray player.
* Distinguishing the system with its control style caused lot of poor quality games which differentiated themselves only by having strange, often awkward controls.

How can Nintendo learn from these failings, and does it look like they're doing this?
* Wii U has improved graphics. While not impressive on a global scheme of things, they are HD and comparable to PS3 and 360 graphics. How long this will be a benefit for the Wii U remains to be seen. Best-case scenario, it hits shelves Spring 2012 and Microsoft/Sony aren't able to provide new systems until a year or two later. In that case, Nintendo might actually have a slight upper hand in terms of graphics and resolution for a year or two. Worst-case scenario, it isn't planned until late 2012 and Microsoft/Sony push things into overdrive to get PS4/Xbox 3 out at the same time (consider: the Xbox 360 was released just 6 months after it was announced), and the Wii U fails to best the PS3/Xbox 360 in terms of graphics or resolution, to say nothing of their successors. In the first case, Nintendo would have a year or two where it's on an even playing field for graphics, after which point the second case comes into play: it's inferior in terms of graphics to its competitors, but still provides reasonably solid graphics at HD resolutions, making it much more suitable for ports than the Wii was.
* Wii U is supposed to use a variant of a Blu-ray drive. Whether this will be compatible with actual Blu-ray discs is unknown to me at this point. If it is then it's a great benefit for people who don't have a Blu-ray drive yet, or even for those who do (freeing up your existing player to be given to family/friends or used for another TV, and beats the alternative of having ANOTHER box connected to your TV). Let's hope Nintendo is smart about this one.
* A lot of potential for cool stuff with controls, but the quality of the solution will have to be proven. Let's not forget the lesson of the Wii: "Hey guys look, you swing your sword, your character swings his sword!" "Whoa cool, so like, I can make my own attacks, just like a real sword fight! I can carve my mark into objects, like Zorro! *attempts* D: He only swings in two directions? WHY IS THIS NOT A 1:1 MAPPING?!" I'm worried about some of the same things with the Wii U. Cool, you can point it at the screen and get a sort of augmented reality thing going on. Will it be a really tight, perfect match between what you actually point it at and what you see, or will it suffer from Wiimote 1.0 syndrome? I'll have to see it to believe it, at this point.

With all that out of the way, here are some thoughts on, yanno, what they actually showed today.

My first reaction is that the Wii U controller looks a lot like if Apple tried to make the Game Gear. My second reaction is that just before the announcement, I was talking with  ruffy about how my vision for future computing involved "dumb" wireless touch screens as input/output devices for computers that could be on the other side of the room or the other side of the house, and it feels like the Wii U does this to some degree. You can control a game, with your input sent back to the machine for updating the game state and rendering the screen, which is sent back to your device. And that's cool. It's presumably better for batteries than trying to do that work on the local machine, though we have yet to hear what sort of battery life it will get. That brings me to a few questions which frankly feel like they could make or break the entire concept: How long can you play games with the Wii U controller before it needs to be recharged (and does it have integrated or removable batteries)? How much does the controller weigh, and how often do games require you to hold it up (I know from experience with Wii Remote shotgun mounts that even 15 minutes of playing can wear you out when you're holding something up constantly)? What sort of range can you use the controller from when you're using it as a remote screen instead of the TV (can I play this thing on the other side of the house, or will it freak out if I take it out of the room)? If game elements are designed to have you using the controller to interact with things on a larger screen, what happens when you're not using the larger screen (do those games just refuse to be played remotely, are those elements deliberately made optional and disabled when you're remote, etc)? What's the quality of the screen (what resolution can we expect, and will it be an IPS screen given how you'll be viewing it from all sorts of angles)? And no less important, what's the price of the device?

People might think I'm just being difficult with all these questions, that I'm missing the point. But for serious, are important questions. There's a lot of potential to slip up here. What about a nice, low-resolution TN panel which looks like garbage when you tilt it or set it between you and somebody else to do a board game like they showed? Put that in a nice heavy package which weighs a pound or more and needs to be recharged every 4 hours, freaks out if you move more than 20 feet from your TV, and doesn't let you play through parts of games which were designed with the TV + Wii U Controller mechanic in mind, and doesn't it sound like something you want to drop $150 on for up to 4 controllers on top of the purchase of the system? Who doesn't want to get their arms worn out with poor motion mechanics on a clunky controller, right when people were figuring out how to get 1:1 Wiimote motion controls into games? Like I said, that could be terrible. Or they might manage to do some devil magic and not have any of those problems. That's up to them to demonstrate and engineer.

Part of me is pissed off, however, that this is being billed as some big new fancy feature now. We've had things leading up to this for years--the Gameboy Advance could connect to the Gamecube, the DS can in theory interact with the Wii, the PSP can act as a display for the PS3, and even as far back as 1999 the Dreamcast had the idea of a personal display right in the middle of everyone's controller. The ideas have just never been used very much, and they haven't reacted to how you're orienting the device. All the same, I'm annoyed that everyone has had this idea before now, and shown that they had the idea, but never touched it. Seriously, I was expecting some interplay between my GBA and GCN, my Wii and DS, and it never happened in any serious way.

At the same time I'm also mildly annoyed at this weird parallel development of Nintendo's handheld and console systems. We're in a weird place where some things have some features and other things have other features--Nintendo, what's your official stance on what's important and why? I guess I'd just like to see better unity between the systems. I'd love it if Nintendo said "3D is excellent for gaming. The Wii U controller screen supports 3D just like the 3DS, but at a larger size and resolution. Because of this, all Wii U games will be required to support stereoscopic 3D, and that will be an option, both for the TV and controller screen's output. In the same way that a user can choose between 2D and 3D modes on a 3DS, they'll be able to choose between 2D and 3D modes on a Wii U controller, as well as on their TV if it supports 3D." I'd also love it if the 3DS and Wii U controller could somehow become the same thing--though this would require a little time altering, as the 3DS would need more buttons, to have wider, higher-resolution screens, possibly 3D for both screens, and additional hardware to facilitate the I/O to the Wii U. In short, I'd love it if one device could at least be a direct superset of the other--make the Wii U controller like a bigger, cheaper, one-screened must-be-used-with-Wii-U-to-play-games version of the 3DS. Don't want to stock up on 4 Wii U controllers, but two people around the house have 3DSes? Then buy two, and let those people use their portable systems as controllers for it.

One thing I'm particularly wary of is how a Wii U will work with a projector system. Nintendo, I realize that not a ton of people have them, but it's one place where the Wii could've shined (shooting at life-sized people with real aiming down your gun!) but just sucked. The narrow camera field of view on the Wiimote meant that you had to be a certain distance from the screen, a distance dependent on the size of the screen. With a projector in a room like I have, you can't easily sit that far back, and it requires some very good in-game calibration to be able to aim on such a large screen.

Overall, I'd say that I'm probably going to sit this one out until at least the end of 2012, if not later. I think there is a lot of potential for the Wii U to not live up to its potential, both in terms of hardware and software. I'm also generally not a fan of Nintendo's online stuff. Sorry, Nintendo--I love the idea behind Steam. It's dead easy to install a game, start a game, join a friend playing a game, chat with a friend over voice or through text while playing a game, pull up a web browser even. I have one friend list. Instead of asking my friends for friend codes or any such nonsense, and having to swap them again when I get a new system, I add people to a list once and the system TELLS me when people get new games. Fancy that, it's so great it will let me see what my friends are playing, possibly prompting me to buy a game and get in on that action.

Overall, the direction that console gaming is going just is not me right now. When I want a game, I want a proper game. Assassin's Creed 1/2, Black Ops, DiRT 2, Oblivion, Fallout 3/New Vegas, Mass Effect 1/2, Civ 4/5, Torchlight, Portal 1/2... these are games which typically look, feel, and play quite well. Many of them have engaging stories and polished gameplay mechanics and controls. Occasionally I may have a craving to do a music-based game where I play an instrument or dance to a beat. Now and then I want to do a light gun FPS instead of a mouse and keyboard FPS. But for the most part, I'm happy with current I/O systems. I don't need cameras taking pictures of me when I'm playing games, or checking my posture or interpreting hand motions. At best it gets the occasional smile when you feel bad-ass for doing something just like an in-game character did it, at worst you get pissed off because a button press would've made it obvious you were trying to duck or shoot while the system failed to properly pick up on some gesture you had to learn and perfect just for that one game. And while it might occasionally be fun and natural to use something like a touch screen, ala Wii U, to supplement a game, it's not always a great fit, and the feature can be silly and forced, or outright ignored (I'm not sure what's worse, a game which doesn't take advantage of the system it's on, or a game which works too hard to take full advantage of the system it's on).

I want my games to be beautiful and fun. I want them to have immersive visuals that that fill your field of vision with 3D graphics. I want to have precise controls over what I'm doing. I can get that right now with a PC. I don't need to fumble with thumb stick aiming or wear myself out with light gun aiming just so I can have another screen which is fun but ultimately doesn't contribute to the game in a meaningful way. There may be the occasional gameplay element where you say "Whoa, in Metroid Prime 8 you can scan for enemies at any time by using the Wii U controller to lock onto them!" or something, and the idea rocks your world every time you use it. But in my experience, those things are few and far between, questionable in usefulness, and prone to failure. In short, just not worth the investment.

That's why, even if Nintendo manages to pull magic out of their asses and avoid every possible pitfall, I can't imagine myself getting a Wii U any time next year, if ever.

Meet  chemicalwolf.

He does cool work with pencils: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5442981/

He does cool work with markers: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4372284/

He does cool work with digital art: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5355786/

And he blows my mind with... I don't even know what devil magic made this: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1164573/

Also, he's got a wonky-awesome sense of humor: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2078973/

You should watch him. You should watch him now. Look, I'll even make it easy for you. Click this --> http://www.furaffinity.net/watch/chemicalwolf/

You should also leave him shouts about how he needs to get a webcam and stream his art-making. Look how easy this is: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/che.....alwolf/#JSForm

Take-away/summary: the quality of his art should speak for itself. I leave the rest in your capable paws.

Start with what you know that has worked in the past.

Epic music from Star Trek 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ETD.....VGJY4&t=30

Gritty narrator from Terminator Salvation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2svoPs1qcOY

Modern ninja moves from Equilibrium: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pTG.....g6lY&t=195

Mix them together and what do you get? Deus Ex Human Revolution Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6JTvzrpBy0

Skip to 1:15 into the trailer and observe the Christian Bale-sounding voice, followed by the Michael Giacchino-sounding music, finally ending with Christian Bale-looking fight scenes. It's all there!

~_~ Even if you think I'm stretching stuff a bit, you can't deny that all three trailers are bad-ass (and the Equilibrium fight scene is pretty entertaining too, if borderline silly).

A little over a year ago, I got a slick rack mount case with space for 20 SATA drives. We were pushing the limits of what our previous chassis could hold, and we wanted more drive capacity in less volume.

A year later I'm back, but with different needs! This time, it's all about the OS, file system, and software.

Windows Home Server works pretty well, and it was great for our needs last year. But as our 11.5 TB has grown to 16.7 TB and we've moved out our smaller drives (presently we use 2x1 + 5x1.5 + 6x2 TB) in the name of performance, it's become evident that it wasn't the smaller drives that were slowing our system down. For whatever reason, WHS operates in a way that doesn't scale too well:
* It "balances" the drives every hour which is a lot of unwanted I/O that interferes with actual, user-initiated file transfers
* It copies files to the OS drive before offloading them to other drives, which means if you copy multiple files it's reading from the OS drive to move the first file while the second file is being written the OS drive
* File fragmentation can become an issue, I've seen movie files split into thousands of fragments
* For no reason I can explain, when the system isn't doing anything, writing or reading a single large file (10-30 GB) will sometimes (this past month, OFTEN) slow to a 2-4 MB/sec crawl which is sustained for the entire file
* The successor to Windows Home Server has ditched the Drive Extender functionality which makes a single convenient pool of storage out of any attached hard drives.

So in short, performance is ass with the main feature we want (drive extender) and that feature has been cut from the product line. Sepf and I don't want to wind up in an evolutionary dead end, so it's time for us to move on.

What we want, as before, is a system which lets you dump lots of files, ranging from tiny .txt files to 50 GB MKV files, into a storage pool. This pool should be expandable as more capacity is needed with minimal effort--ideally, little more than a reboot. We can't have automated tools which bring user transfers to a crawl, we can't have performance dropping much below the minimum sustained transfer rate of the slowest drive, and the system needs to be scalable to at least 60 TB / 20 drives. The storage pool should be accessible as a network share to Windows machines, with per-user permissions for read/write. If parts of the storage pool can't dynamically have redundancy, then the system needs to be able to accommodate multiple pools, one of which MUST support redundancy.

To summarize, we have a lot of files which we want in a centralized location spread across dozens of drives with some amount of redundancy, performance in the 50-150 MB/sec range, and different permission levels for different users. And what we don't want are to have to remember drive letters or rely on search to find where we put that one file.

Fuzzies, tell me, what are my options? At this point we're considering most anything. Including crazy shit like using an SSD as virtual memory to accelerate drive operations.

Don't say Drobo. At $1500 for their largest box it cost more and stores less than my current solution.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5529735

Shlorp shlorp shlorp |3~

FWA had its ups and downs, as every con does. Promises to hang out which didn't happen, but also some unexpected chillin' with people. Overall, not a bad use of 4 vacation days.

And now, the individual shout-outs.

 ChemicalWolf - As Sepf so succinctly put it, you seem too nice for the armed forces. You've got an adorable air of curiousity, silliness and enthusiasm around you which makes it too fun to hover around you (sorry if I did this too much). You also smiled a lot, and it was face-meltingly cute when you bought a furry hat with ears. Whether it's mentioning the bizarre quirks of a fetish or hearing the entertaining tales of your travels, conversation with you was fresh, entertaining, and funny. Talking to you was kinda surreal to begin with--I'm flattered that you take the time to catch up with me online despite my lack of anything tangible to share, and seeing that continue offline was very entertaining.

Art-wise I think you're fantastically skilled to the point that I feel guilty asking you to draw mere smut; as such I'll refrain from that until we find an idea that feels natural and fun. As I said on your journal, I'm hoping that this con helps bump you out of your rut and boost your creativity and productivity, both for the selfish desire to see more of what you make and because I want you to do more of what you enjoy. Don't short-change yourself when it comes to the value of your art, even if you feel guilty for charging too much. You're not even close to that point.

 Jazzwolf - Thanks a bunch for coming to my rescue a few times. Boredom is the #1 killer of cons for Twile (followed by poor timing and planning). You even came on our wild and wacky outings, which was sweet. I think Sepf said something nice about you, even.

 Darkshift - aka Derpshift when he does something silly. Your fursuit teeth are scary and you need to smell more like baked goods.

 Kipfox - A great host as always. What else is there to say about the illustrious Mr. Fox other than "why do you bite so much" and "sorry for giving you Derpies"?

 Sepffuzzball - <3

 Kravenlupei - Glad that things finally worked out for you, wish they could've gone smoother overall. Also, you are tall. Why are you so tall?

 mobianfox - Sorry for being a distraction on Saturday, and a shame that you couldn't swing by and stay with us on Sunday. Still, always great to hang out with you at a con, let's do it in March 2012 =D

 Jacent - See Kip's comment. I do not look like a carrot, why do you bite me ;.;

 Dragoneer - That FA:U gear was pretty sick. Yanno, in the good way. Shame I didn't see you outside of the Dealer's Den, but it was great to catch up with you. Oddly, it feels like the Internet makes it harder to do that with you.

 Sciggles - I think we made eye contact 4 times, and we didn't battle once, so that's a good sign. Right?

 MarcLeonhardt - I have no idea how you manage to always pop up in random places. Elevator, by the pool, your table in the Dealer's Den (wait, that's not random at all)... Marc is Marc, 'nuff said.

 Chase - Roll initiative.

 Reccasenli - You're lucky nobody's championing the rights of crayons, or your badge would have started a shitstorm of babyfur con proportions.

 Kurtsa - You are a fluffy faggot who is species-confused. Beware of cotton candy machines.

 SeverusCoil - Thanks a ton for the badge, I hope all that red isn't terribly missed. You seem to draw a lot of things of the green persuasion!

 Winddragon - It was so cool to finally get to meet you, and I'll definitely make a stronger effort to hang out with you offline now and then. You were pretty approachable and laid-back despite the delightful perversions you were drawing, which entertained me.

Or at least, some of its games! Crazy Taxi, Sonic DX, Space Channel 5 Part 2, and SEGA Bass Fishing. Available on Steam for 9 bucks each.

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/7522/

I dunno about you guys, but Crazy Taxi and Sonic were some of the games that really sold me on the Dreamcast. It's great to see them being re-launched more than ten years later =D

EDIT EDIT DEAR GOD EDIT

Do not under any circumstances buy Crazy Taxi. The controls are bizarre (if you're holding the button to go into drive, you can't turn?), the shadows are wonky, the game is stuck in standard def with the options for a "wallpaper" around the video or to stretch the image, and the music... what gives?! I have NEVER heard that crappy girl band song while playing Crazy Taxi. Which I did a lot. I did not hear the stuff I was supposed to, and frankly, at 230 MB versus the ~1 GB that a Dreamcast disc could hold, I can't imagine this has as much music, in as good quality, as the original did. Certainly different, far inferior music.

Twile's fur is cinnamon-flavored. Big Red gum. Fireballs. Cinnamon Altoids. Pick your cinnamon poison, that's all of Twile's red fuzz. Flavor and scent is more mild when dry, stronger when wet. And it never diminishes in intensity, so lick all you want ;3

While we're discussing flavors, his mane is orange-flavored. Think orange sherbert. That's just tasty.

And his spoo tastes like frosting. I'll show you some proper cinnamon buns ;D

FWA is coming up soon. In two months, it'll be over! However, at this point I don't have any concrete FWA plans. But maybe some of you do!

Mainly I'm looking for three things:
1) Who's going (especially those in Central Florida);
2) Who has hotel space (how much and from when to when);
3) Who wants to get their fuzz on >:3

I'll either have a good bit of vacation time saved up or almost none, based on whether my boss lets me roll my vacation time over from my first year of employment into my second, so dates aren't finalized. But if I DO get my proper amount of vacation time, I'd be all over something crazy like leaving Wednesday in the early AM, and coming back second half of Monday.

Speak, fuzzies!

And now I am 24. Another year, come and gone.

But it was a pretty big year:
* I went from bleeding my savings due to lack of employment to getting a decent job which my college degree actually trained me for. For recent college grads, that's a pretty big win;
* My nearly ~3 year old laptop, mediocre when it came out, got swapped out for new hotness that I'm enjoying at this very moment;
* Moved to a bigger apartment, roomed with some local furs for 7 months
* Found that one of my friends from back in '03 is actually living within a few miles
* Got a black dick (bitches don't even know about my knot)
* Purchased all Star Trek and Star Wars movies on Blu-ray, still 9 months until the Star Wars ones ship, though

Could've been worse, right?

More significantly, this officially marks half a decade with  sepffuzzball, my sweetie-folf. He puts up with me so well ~_~ <3

Sepf 'n I are gonna try out black dicks w/ knots. This is news to him as well as you all.

Enjoy. Some more than others ;D

But if it's the internet, you do <3

My friend  ishiga-san, is taking 100 sketches, clean or adult, at $8/character. It's raising funds for rent, so it's a good cause! At the very least, you should watch him. He's super sweet.

Check it out over here >>> http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1852323/

If you plan to get an iPod Touch as a poor man's iPhone 4, don't. Literally within seconds of turning it on, I knew it wasn't the same thing.

You know how Apple's all talking up the Retina display of the iPhone and saying it has super fine pixels, LED backlighting, and an IPS panel for accurate colors and great viewing angles? The iPod Touch's Retina display doesn't have an IPS panel. If you read the wording on the site very carefully, they set it up such that when talking about the Retina display of the iPhone 4, they talk about it using IPS technology without directly implying that a "Retina display" necessarily has this feature.

The colors are plainly distorted and inverted when viewed from as little as 5-10 degrees off. That's so little that if you had shaky hands, for example, the slight variation in viewing angle that it could cause would noticeably mess up the colors.

Sure, it doesn't say anywhere on Apple's site that the iPod Touch has an IPS panel. But the language is extremely suggestive that the Retina display is a complete display unit which encompasses the 326 DPI LED-backlit IPS panel. Seriously, how many of you are surprised (or if you knew already, were at one point surprised) that it's actually a completely different display?

This is after taking 30 minutes to actually buy the damn thing, because in Apple stores, apparently they don't have lines, or shelves of stuff to buy, or instructions of any form. You just look for the person wearing a blue shirt whose current customer looks to have the easiest purchase or problem, and hover around them until they finish their current task and notice you. And then they send you to the Genius Bar to actually do your order...? What the fuck.

The only consolation here is that I'll be selling it to work before too long for use as a testing system. I'm just holding onto it now to get familiar with it for development work.

Fucking bullshit, I swear.

I got my Vaio Z almost 2 weeks ago and have wanted to give my thoughts on it. I originally had a very extensive review written for the Vaio Z. Then I realized that 80% of potentially interested people would not read it. Thus I am going to spend the next 5 minutes writing a short, sweet version.

What it is
A very high-end laptop which takes unreasonably strong laptop performance and packs it into 3 pounds.

Who it's for
People with money to burn who log a lot of time on a laptop and want it to be a delight to use for a few years. People who don't like to make compromises and want something to excell in all ways. People who crave an ultraportable with a 1080p screen.

Why you'll love it
The lightest 1080p laptop with the smallest (13.1") 1080p laptop screen. A display so crisp and bright with colors so vivid, every picture, letter and icon on your screen is gorgeous and stunning. Performance in line with a midrange desktop in the form factor of a netbook while still remaining usable for 1, 2 and 5 hours for games, 1080p movies and web browsing respectively. Carbon fiber and aluminum construction. Backlit keyboard. Solid state drives ranging from 260 MB/sec to 500+ MB/sec read in every model.

Why you'll hate it
A pre-tax entry-level configuration price of $1950 and a nicely-configured, warranty'd, post-tax price of over $3000. It has a VGA port on it.

Final note
The Z is the most impressive laptop I have ever seen. Given its low running temperature and weight, it's also the fastest thing I'll rule as having actual possible use as a "laptop". The screen alone is worth the price of the device, having an amazing laptop to drive and power it for 5 hours is really just icing on the cake. If you can afford it and your laptop needs replacing, try it at a store and then buy without hesitation. You'll understand what I mean when I say it is without equal.

And yes, it plays Crysis :|

y/n?

Discuss.

Addendum: It'd have really good contrast with Kip's taint :3

I need a comprehensive list of all Arcanine characters that you all know of.

They're for  sepffuzzball. Or more accurately, his butt.

P.S. I'll give you a dollar if you make sweet Arcaniney love to him <3

There's something here for everyone, so dig on in! Per the complaints of  Orcinus24x5, I will be doing much less complaining than usual.

Nintendo 3DS
People who know me and/or read my journals a lot know that I enjoy stereoscopic 3D. You know, the stuff with the colored glasses that makes things pop out of the movie screen. Except that the glasses these days aren't colored, good stereo 3D rarely pops out of the screen and instead lives "behind" the screen, and I prefer gaming to movies when it comes to 3D. The Nintendo 3DS, the DS successor, will use a glasses-less display and overall revamped hardware to try and bring the 3D gaming experience to the masses in some small way. And that's pretty cool. My biggest concerns are that people will say "I don't understand why I have to buy expensive glasses to watch 3D movies on my TV, it works on the 3DS just fine without any!" and that Nintendo will be short-sighted and limit 3D to the handheld market and say that nobody wants 3D with glasses (flying in the face of what Sony is trying to do). Potential risk: people are more opposed to big-screen 3D. Potential gain: game developers think more seriously about how 3D can enhance the gaming experience and what that means for visual effects that don't look odd in 3D.

iPhone 4
First off, congrats to Apple for making a device with native multitasking support, a front-facing camera, a high-DPI screen and a high-rez primary camera. These are things that people have been expecting in smartphones for a while now. But in all honesty, the hardware is nothing to scoff at. Sure, if you touch the bottom of the left edge, your calls can drop. But other than that, and the fact that it's made by Apple and runs on AT&T, it's not a piece of hardware I would be averse to owning. Hey, I wish my screen was 330 DPI, it'd be 720p then.

With that out of the way, let me take a more critical look at it: yes, the 330 DPI screen is nice, but the previous iPhones had been using 165 DPI when the standard for smartphones was 267 DPI. So while we can certainly applaud Apple for using a nice display (which I'm sure somebody else can be credited for designing), the idea of a high-DPI display on a smartphone is not something Apple came up with--far from it, they were considerably behind the curve. Just sayin'. And while the phone is pretty small and thin, it begs the question of how much you want to sacrifice screen size to achieve overall smallness. I mention this because, as a point of reference, I am now regularly using an...

Evo 4G
A pretty cool phone, all things considered. Sepf picked up one for himself and one for me. While it may not be as small as an iPhone, it's still comfortable to hold, and that increased size means it can have a 4.3" screen. 8/10ths of an inch doesn't sound like a lot, but if you put the two devices side by side, the Evo screen just feels massive. Overall the display quality isn't as great, but that's true of every other phone, and the added size is just sexy. I really think that the future is in the 4.3" market, with iPhone-like pixel densities (720p at that size!), as people look to use their phones for even more applications, web browsing, and movie-viewing. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have problems with my 4G--my battery life ranges from great to poor, the UI is capped at 30 fps, I want Android 2.2 with official support, etc... but it's not a bad phone. Much better than what I had been using.

Vaio Z series
I promised I wouldn't talk more about it until I had one, so I'll limit my discussion. Full details are available for those who haven't read them or want a refresher.

For... about a month now, I think, the Vaio Z series has been available in the US with the 1080p screen as an option. Previously it was only available outside the US. Not only that, for the first few weeks after launch in the US, it was a free upgrade. It's $100 to go from a 13.1" 1600x900 screen to a 1920x1080 one, but I consider that money well spent--or I will when I save up money for it!

FYI, 1080p @ 13.1" comes out to 168 DPI. That might sound like not a lot compared to, say, the iPhone 4's 330 DPI... but keep in mind, you hold a phone about a foot away, and a laptop around two feet away, so the pixels should look like they're about the same size: generally difficult, if not impossible, to see.

--

Looking back at this journal after writing it, it's rather amusing--four very different mobile products, and the thing that ultimately makes them more than just faster versions of predecessors are the displays. They're all awesome for different reasons. 3DS is 3D. iPhone 4 is sheer DPI and an IPS panel on a phone. Evo 4G is larger than the smartphone norm. Vaio Z is smaller than the laptop norm with a resolution most desktops don't even hit.

When depicted at the right size and angle, I have a fairly expansive taint. It's anywhere from muzzle-sized to a square foot at my standard sizes.

Worship it >:]

PS: For tips, ask DarkShift. He's going in the right direction.