Who to my eyes looks better, because she hasn’t repelled as far down into the uncanny valley. Aki’s the best one in the movie because they spent the most time on her, but even her skin looks like deli ham.

Gas stations are drive thru though.

soon

Mother distraught at 9 year old son buys $432,000 on Playstation Store with credit card taken from purse.

Does she though?

What was the line from XKCD? “When you read a study finds something is x effective at killing cancer cells in a petri dish, remember: so does a hand gun.”

I’m either a 1 or a 5. “Eh, what are you going to do?”

Is GET YOUR FREE TVS still funny?

Likely for ToU rates, I could imagine looking out for weather updates, if there’s a likely power outage I could see it heating the water another 5 or 10 degrees so it’ll last longer/provide “more” hot water?

le sigh. I’d like to have a home with systems that do things like…synchronize to a clock more accurate and reliable than one I can feasibly own myself, that others such as the utility companies are using. I’d like to be able to get weather alerts and have the refrigerator automatically get a degree colder the water heater get five or ten degrees hotter, run the HVAC a bit, charge batteries, etc.

What I don’t want are a thousand little ARM computers each one a member of three different botnets trying to scrape my home network, sending audio, video, FLIR and radar telemetry straight to Kim Jong Fuck’s third testicle from the left, while also DDOSing Amnesty International and waiting for the cpu.detonate() command to come down so it’s time to buy another fucking desk lamp.

On the left, we have Aki Ross, main character of Final Fantasy, The Spirits Within, developed over 4 years in the late 90’s and released into theaters in 2001. Square’s render farm consisted of 960 Pentium III 933MHz workstation PCs, which took 90 minutes to render each frame of the film.

On the right, we have Alyx Vance, companion character of Half Life 2 and Episode 1 and 2, developed over a period of 4 years and released in 2004. The published minimum specs for this game are a Windows XP computer with a 1.7GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, a graphics card compatible with DirectX 8.1, and 6.5GB of storage, on which the game runs at a framerate of 60Hz rendered in real time.

“Years before” They both came out while I was in high school. Their development cycles overlapped.

Remember when they tried that shit with Aki Ross from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within? The CGI model, who looks less realistic than Alyx Vance?

In my desk drawer is a small, plastic black box. Emerging from its surface is a toggle switch, some lights and wires that end in alligator clips. There is no writing at all, inside or out, It starts blinking lights and making an ominous buzzing sound if you let the wires touch each other while it’s turned on. I built it myself, and you’ve got no hope of figuring out what it’s for if you don’t know already.

Blue skies and safe landings.

The upcoming food shortages should take care of it.

Phoebe.

This isn’t a shitpost, it’s valid satire.

I took a lot of the design elements from Vermont Wood Studios’ 50" Shaker China Cabinet. They price theirs, in Walnut, at $14,927. I’d build you one for, say, $12,000.

Here’s the popular story as I’ve heard it:

The North American video game industry crash of 1983 was Nintendo’s chance to enter the North American market in earnest. A tidal wave of low quality, sometimes non-functional third party shovelware for consoles like the Atari 2600 had basically killed public faith in the industry, and folks were ready to write off video games as a passing fad. Inserting yourself into a dying industry like that takes some care, so Nintendo did some market research and found that Americans:

• wanted to hear nothing about video games, but were excited for AV equipment and high tech toys. CD players and VCRs were increasingly popular, and electronic toys like the Speak 'N Spell and Teddy Ruxpin were rapidly gaining popularity.

• Didn’t really play games as a family, games were kind of considered toys for the youth, with very few Americans over the age of 45 claiming to enjoy playing video games.

• liked large things. American homes are fairly large by global standards, and especially in the still mostly analog world of the 1980s bigger usually meant better. A VHS cassette held more tape, and thus played longer, than the smaller Betamax cassette.

• Expressed frustration in finding good quality games through all the nonsense. Some games wouldn’t even run, and in the 1980s, how could you tell?

Responding to this input, they changed the name of the console. Gone was “Family Computer” or “Famicom”, in with Nintendo Entertainment System. The form factor was drastically changed, removing the conventional top loading edge connector slot in favor of that front loading then push down mechanism designed to emulate a VHS deck. The cartridge shell was made at least 4 times larger than a Famicom cartridge, though the circuit board inside was often identical in size and shape to a Famicom cart; most NES cartridges were mostly empty in size, but that size was required by the loading mechanism. Mostly as a marketing stunt, they offered a bundle early on with a robot toy called ROB that could interact with a few specially designed games. It was a gimmick, but a successful one.

And finally, DRM. To address the shovelware problem, Hiroshi Yamauchi, President of Nintendo, would personally approve every game published for the system. The console had a hardware lockout chip that would look for a corresponding key chip in the console; if none was found, it would reset the console, meaning unapproved software couldn’t run. That, along with enforcing IP laws on the cartridge’s physical design, was designed to make Nintendo the only publisher for the system; any third party developers would have to contract with Nintendo to manufacture the cartridges. Nintendo communicated this to customers via the Nintendo Seal Of Quality, a (trademarked) badge on the packaging to reassure customers that the game had gone through a vetting process. They stopped short of guaranteeing the game was fun to play, but that it functioned correctly, wouldn’t crash or damage the console, and contained relatively wholesome content. Custer’s Revenge would never wear a Nintendo Seal Of Quality.

Greetings fellow craftsman! Thank you very much. It was a big but worthy project.

That weird relationship with physical media started off as a key element of their business model, back in the NES era. They just…never let go.

Finishing is an entire discipline unto itself. The finish on the cabinet above: I took the surfaces to 180 grit with a random orbit sander, then sanded along the grain at 220 by hand, vacuuming and tack clothing between each grit. Popped the grain with water, sanded at 220 again, and a final tack clothing. No stain, and a polyurethane finish, first coat was 2 parts urethane to 1 part thinner, the remaining 3 coats are 50/50. Wiped on with a cotton rag, cut from an old T-shirt, rubbed out with a piece of paper grocery bag between each coat followed by a light tack clothing to remove the whisper of dust. Do that between each, but not after the last coat. The result is a durable shell coat that still has the texture of wood, you get the depth from wetting the surface but not a visibly thick layer of plastic.

Granted, I did start with $9/board foot black walnut that I hand selected from the lumber yard, not some random night stand. But, I’ll assert there’s no such thing as “stain grade” or “paint grade” wood. People take wormy maple and make stuff like this out of it:

I will grant you that some species of wood have open and uneven grain that will absorb stain at different rates across the surface, creating a hideous blotchy appearance, and wouldn’t you know it most of those species are cheaper, easily available species that have bland and boring grain like pine and birch. Most “stains” look terrible on wood like that. My choice is to go with little to no stain, let the wood speak for itself, maybe subtly tint it with the top coat, or use shellac, either as a top coat or as an intermediate layer. If the wood you’re working with is very prone to blotching, start with a coat or two of blonde shellac to fill up the pores, then switch to your darker garnet or whatever. Shellac is compatible with basically all finishes and is sometimes used as a compatibility layer between water and oil based finishes so you can top coat over it if you want something more durable than beetle poo.