blueZhift Blog

I can hardly believe it, but I actually finished my Easy Action AMV and entered it into the Boom Boom Satellites AMVJ Contest before the deadline! It’s not what I would call my greatest work, but it did help me get more comfortable with my new movie editor. I still enjoy the challenge that a contest brings to do something new and different. The Easy Action AMV is the first one I’ve done with computer generated 3D animation. I didn’t use much in the way of effects, but I did get a lot of ideas for the future. And I was also inspired to enter some earlier work into the Anime Boston AMV Contest.

I’m sure it probably means nothing, but the juxtapositioning of a gamesindustry.biz article concerning the next Xbox Live and a now hiring ad for Second Life gave me pause for thought. As a fan of the concept of virtual worlds, such as Second Life, or the upcoming Home for Playstation 3, I’d really like it if the next Xbox Live incorportated some virtual world elements. There’s no reason to believe it can’t be done, though I think the larger 120GB Xbox 360 hard drive upgrade would almost be a necessity for it to reach full potential.

But quite honestly, I think the best thing Microsoft could do to counter encroachment on Xbox Live by Home might be to secure World of Warcraft for Xbox 360. WoW is itself a well established virtual world that I’m sure would find a lot of takers if a console option became available. Second Life for Xbox 360 would be interesting too, but I think WoW would be a heck of a lot more fun!

Now that HD DVD is dead and Blu-ray lifts its fists in triumph, my first thoughts were about how long it would take HDTVs to come down to a price I could afford, but now I’m not so sure. In my house old tech usually ends up serving in the bedroom until it dies or is replaced by less old tech. Last weekend saw an ancient Sony CD player and a no-name VCR replaced by my original Xbox and a fancy, but still obsolete, Philips VCR. Both of these are now connected to a 17 year old, 13 inch Sharp TV. This TV doesn’t usually get much love, but I was excited to have a way to play DVDs in the bedroom without using my computer. So I put in some Outlaw Star and discovered that the small screen didn’t bother me one bit.

Indeed, upon further thought, the small screen has become not only ubiquitous, but the primary way a lot of people consume video information and entertainment. Playstation Portables, iPods, cell phones, and YouTube all deliver video via the small screen. So why are living room televisions big in the first place? I can guess that originally a larger screen was intended to recreate the movie experience at home. The widescreen format that’s becoming the standard is a further testament to that goal. But it seems that the game has changed and now portability is trumping screen size.

Ten years ago, I would whip out a book to read while waiting for a movie to start, or riding a bus. But now I’m just as likely to pull out my iPod to watch a podcast, and all is well with the world.

Ryan Newman just won the Daytona 500! It’s been a long time since the Rocket Man has seen victory lane, so it’s a sweet win I’m sure. More importantly, the new car worked great! The last lap wrecking of last year’s race was dramatic, but there was plenty of drama this year without all of the carnage. I’ve never seen a Daytona 500 where the cars were able to move around each other so much without wrecking. I saw wiggles that last year would have surely ignited “the big one”, but I guess those fins on the tail wing are helping them keep things straight. So I’m looking forward to some more interesting racing this season!

Edison Chen just went up a notch, his now infamous laptop is in fact a customised pink Macbook! Hey! It’s alright for a guy to like pink. My DS lite is coral pink, and some of my favorite shirts are pink. Pink looks good against my skin, so it’s nice to wear. So kudos to Edison Chen, at least on his taste in laptops!

I ran across this Yuri Ebihara ad for Sega while doing some research for my Ebihara Shinji-kun AMV. I thought about putting it on my PSPStuffnJunk site, but I think I’ll just put it here for now. Kawaii des! Why don’t we ever get cute game ads like this in the US?

I’m watching the pre-race show for the Daytona 500 and just saw not one but two ads for some law firm by none other than William Shatner! Why Bill, oh whhhhyyyyyy?!!!!

Sadly, campus violence is becoming so common now that when I initially heard about the shootings at NIU yesterday, I figured that the shooter would fit the usual profile. He’d be some quiet, withdrawn person who was probably off his meds…blah blah blah… Now it appears that Steven Kazmierczak was anything but that. While the story is that he had stopped taking his meds, he was otherwise a pretty normal and engaging guy according to those who knew him. [more from NYT]

Many of the medications prescribed to treat mental disorders come with suicide warnings. I’m told that the critical times tend to be either going on the medication initially or coming off of it. For now, I’ll assume that the vast majority of people taking these drugs are better off with them than without. But what if a “normal” person were taking this stuff? Generally in the US any drug must go through a battery of clinical trials before being approved for a particular use by the FDA. But these trials don’t always include testing the drug’s effects on normal controls, sometimes for ethical reasons. And it is no secret that billions of dollars hang in the balance depending on whether or not the drug is approved. This is a strong disincentive to doing any more testing than necessary to win FDA approval.

Without more information, this is pure speculation. But I just wonder if Kazmierczak, and obviously his victims, would have been better off without the meds in the first place.

The last few weeks have certainly been dramatic in the high definition format battle between Sony Blu-ray and Toshiba HD DVD. But after some high profile defections, HD DVD has made the Engadget Deathwatch. This is all interesting, but honestly I don’t really care. DVD’s work just fine for now and I don’t have an HDTV and no plans to get one in the coming months unless the price drops a lot more, or my current TV bites the dust.

I’m a lot more interested in getting a larger hard drive for my Xbox 360 which I’ve been using alongside the TiVo and in conjunction with my PC to watch shows and music videos from the internet. The disc doesn’t really matter anymore, except writable ones for archival purposes. So while I’m not too wild about all of the shenanigans that surely brought about the demise of HD DVD, it really isn’t very relevant to the way I see my entertainment needs developing in the future. I’ll still get a PS3 at some point, but it will be to play the games, not Blu-ray movies.

I guess it was inevitable, but Polaroid film and instant cameras are going away! I haven’t used mine in many years, but I still fondly remember the fun of taking those photos that maybe you didn’t want the pimply faced photo guy to see before you picked them up! Perhaps Edison Chen wouldn’t be in so much trouble now if he had just used Polaroid!