Haibane.info

Author: fledgling otaku

  • Video: oxygen bottle in an MRI machine

  • Thinkpad a wannabe Wii

    Since IBM Thinkpads come with a built-in accelerometer, which serves to protect thehard drive if sudden movement is detected, some enterprising folks figured out a way to use the entire laptop as a motion controller similar to the Nintendo Wii. They have a simple file to download that works with a few games like Tux Racer and Blazetris (a Tetris clone) – you just move the laptop physically around to control the game action. This isn’t some third-party hack but an actual research project at IBM. I am tempted to try this out, though the idea of shaking my precious laptop in the air has me abit leery…

  • Microsoft Vista is its own grandfather

    Vista is so advanced, that it serves as its own upgrade. Take that, Mac OS X!

    UPDATE: Do you only have Vista Basic installed, but want to try a feature of Ultimate out for a while? Here’s a nifty trick for extending the activation grace period from 30 days to 120 days. Fully legitimate, using a documented Windows command.

  • Dreamworks and Aardman split

    This is unfortunate news, but the long-term impact will impact Dreamworks more than it does Aardman:

    After a critically lauded but commercially troubled six-year partnership with DreamWorks Animation, Aardman is back on its own.

    The British claymation giant, best known for its signature Wallace and Gromit characters and 2000 hit “Chicken Run,” officially terminated its five-picture deal with DreamWorks on Tuesday.

    The main reason is that neither the Wallace and Gromit film nor Flushed Away did well enough at the box-office. To be honest, the latter film actually bored my daughter, who is probably Aardman’s prime demographic. If Aardman can return to its roots in claymation and build up a decent CG capability in house, or even better if they can find a way to merge the two, then they will do fine on their own. Or maybe they will just get picked up by Pixar 🙂

    This puts Dreamworks at a major content/talent disadvantage relative to Disney, though. Other than Shrek, what does Dreamworks really have?

    AICN also has the story and will be talking to people inside Dreamworks for more details.

  • cell phone television the easy way

    This article at Ars about the economics and technical challenges of watching TV on your cel phone leaves me confused. For one thing, Sprint already offers TV, and they seem to meet the affordability problem by simply charging up the wazoo. My cell phone can support streaming TV but I’d have to pay an extra $15/month at minimum for the service; a more realistic unlimited usage plan is a $40 addon.

    But what’s even more puzzling is why cell phones don’t just allow you to watch standard TV. Rather than muck about with bandwidth concerns over the cell network, just receive the TV signal from actual TV towers. Am I missing something here? Doesn’t that seem the easiest route? The resolution on my cell phone LCD is probably higher than my analog TV anyway; with HDTV that won’t be the case but the signal can always be downsampled in realtime (easier than upsampling since there’s no interpolation involved).

    Sure, the cell phone companies don’t get any revenue by this, but the cell phone makers could certainly sell it as a value-added feature on upscale phones. People would pay; I know I’d watch TV on my cell phone while commuting on the bus, for example – much easier than dealing with digital downloads and portable DVD players and whatnot.

    UPDATE: The Japanese have had analog TV on their cell phones since 2003, and now have digital TV too.

  • Reference Scan

    I’ve been a bit preoccupied with a few things – the coolest of which is this: Reference Scan, the re-incarnation of my old MRI blog. Not much to look at yet but eventually I intend to really push the envelope on how you can use a blog medium for academic information and discussion. If anyone has any interest in magnetic resonance imaging, do stop by.

    I won’t be abandoning Haibane.info, rest assured. I even intend to talk about anime here! seriously! I want to try to upgrade to WP 2.1 first though… I see that Shamus pulled it off without a hitch, but his code-fu is stronger than mine.

  • take a scenic Vista drive, virtually

    You can actually test-drive Windows Vista online, by running the full OS in a virtual machine via Microsoft’s website. The demo is powered by Microsoft Virtual Server. VMs are a great way to let a totally unknown user muck about as they please with no risk of damage whatsoever – it’s like Etch a Sketch – a sandbox that wipes clean after each use.

  • no Wii

    Sunday was supposed to be a big Wii day. Dean got one. I went to two best buys, a target, two walmarts, and two game stops. No wii for mee… sigh.

    Ars has a couple of reports from the field. One is your standard “I just showed up on a lark and they shoved it into my hands” blah blah blah. The other I think reflects reality a bit better. I can’t even express the frustration, verging on sour grapes. I’m not going to make any effort anymore.

    Incidentally, Circuit City has acted dishonorably indeed. I won’t be buying a Wii from them, or anything else, ever again.

  • Lain: Knights

    Nothing has really gelled for me yet. Its like a collection of random vignettes. In some ways it’s more fragmented than Kino’s Journey. The only thing I think I understand is what happened to Mika, Lain’s sister. Spoilers below the fold.

    (more…)

  • virtual prayer

    A gamer visits the masjid (mosque) for friday prayers. Online. Second Life, indeed!