윤

Nvidia’s answer to that unresolved graphics issue with ATI cards will get me to try turning off threaded optimization next, but I’m really afraid it’s the Windows Update that I let through, the one checking whether my copy is legit. ATI + Nvidia = PS3.

Now that the going rate on eBay for four-year-old graphics finally reflects the real world’s turn towards a Thunderdome-like post-apocalypse, I replaced the ati2vag‘d Radeon and got the 20-lb. beast back to 1680 x 1050. Thawing’s never without its deleterious effects or discoveries: sound card went undetected, as did the camera, and FF won’t uninstall (unless it’s re-installed first, it seems), much less run. Registry has so many iterations of “PlayOnline” after both versions came and went that I’m wondering if it’ll take a complete reformat to get it working again. All I want is one last go at the game with windower, take some nice hi-rez movies and compile them in a video to the last track of hitomi’s huma-rhythm.

From: Homer J.
To: spinn42@aol.com
Cc: hjerng@leland.Stanford.EDU,jae_yoon@hotmail.com,rajg@erols.com,rchenx@bigfoot.com,spacecobra@aol.com,cronnie@bigfoot.com
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 20:59:43 -0700
Subject: Tenchu Shinobi Hyakusen
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On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 15:56:51 -0700 Henry Hungtao Jerng writes:
>Maybe after reading this, Raj, you’ll want us to go back to talking about videogames?

And for my part, excerpts from my daytime preoccupations (videogame excluded), not always work-related, but passionate nonetheless:

….So the angle of my right hand must be kept as sharp as possible just before impact, for therein lies its strength and, ultimately, travel distance. (I have noticed that performance and accuracy, too, is increased when the left also assists by following through the swing motion in tandem.) And my stance, remember, should place the tee at my left foot. The titanium-faced club head definitely accounts for some of the drives which belie my standing as a mere beginner; perhaps this year’s tungsten models might make the expense worth it? No, another 1-wood would hardly round out my sparse bag–indeed, I remain equppied to play only holes less than a hundred and more than two–and must accustom myself to shorter shaft lengths with a set of irons….

….Just who was she, anyway, walking a small white poodle down busy Torrance Blvd. under the noon sun this balmy late October day? 5’2″, long, straight hair, 36C chest, per eyeball (a measurement proudly 85% accurate)–if not for my cursed luck in finally making that light at Sportmart I might have been sure. Or is this visual hallucination the start of complete psychological collapse due to failure to tide my obsession with big-breasted Asian women? Perhaps I can repeat the route on Monday; dogs require habitual maintenance, I should know. At least if I frequent the Subway nearby I can stock up on free sandwich stamps….

….Makes enough sense, that if the Purchase Order won’t post because expected receipt was set later than scheduled shipment for items reserved on it, then the solution is to change the date on the Sales Order. Integrated systems, bah….

….A machine that displays dreams has been my own dream since the cult classic “Five Million Years to Earth” (“Quatermass and the Pit” to die-hard fans), but whereas a Martian invasion of the Earth may never happen (not again, especially after that deplorable job by Tim Burton), I don’t think the idea’s that way off. Computers can do such wonders today–provide incontrovertible evidence that reshapes history, chart the course of galaxies, ruin the Star Wars trilogy–why not use their amazing processing power to interpret the visual signals that cross the brain during REM sleep? Sight, after all, is the product of neurochemical sensory stimulation, and identification of the resulting cues; if these could be catalogued in digital form, the more the better obviously, then compared to the same dream-time data, the cross-referenced images could be viewed. The principle would work like voice recognition or OCR software (or Homer’s brother Herb’s baby talk translator). Who knows? Someday it might be just as popular. Millions of web channels, and so little original content for them (Internet jokes today are recycled to the point where I’m receiving the same ones from the same people a year later), the subconscious imagination, however wildly psychotic, might be the last refuge for creativity. I could certainly dream up a better Star Wars prequel….

….Or was it D?

Okay, ignoring all the other chaff for a moment, this dream machine is a lot like my idea above. And oddly enough, I just got Quatermass and The Pit for John, since he’s the only other person I know who remembers it.

The most I could ever manage was two accounts at a time, so I’m blown away by setups like this. What I could never get right was movement on separate maps in opposite directions, so I’m guessing WoW’s raids can be accomplished with minimum ambidextrous coordination. Still many an occasion comes up (usually when unloading the car and fumbling with keys) I could do with a gripping hand.

The other day I read about the amazing gradient between the squid’s “Ginsu knife”-like beak and the gelatin skin that somehow holds it on. (One thing that’s not mentioned in the article is just how small that beak is, about the size of a baseball, making the transition in density all the more impressive.) During this hokey consulting seminar I’m attending today—which explains the longer, rambling posts—the instructor mentioned the Johnny Mnemonic idea that someday we’ll have USB-type jacks in the back of our necks to dump learning materials directly, which I always thought would really need the same kind of attachment. Maybe those people stricken with mysterious wire growths represent nature’s samples of adapting our bodies to some cybernetic evolution.