January 25, 2010

You all fail your driver's test

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-carkeys24-2010jan24,0,6923741.story

"Dave Proefke, a vehicle security engineer at General Motors Co... [said that] keyless ignition benefits older people who have difficulty removing keys from their pockets or turning a key in a lock."

These people should not be driving a car if their physical abilities are that low, Mr. Security Engineer!

"...she isn't sure how to shut off the engine in an emergency. 'I don't know if I ever read it in the owners manual or not,'" said Marsh"

Then Read The Friendly Manual!

"'This car isn't stopping," [Brithinee] told a passenger as he felt panic swelling in his chest. "I really didn't know what to do at that point.'"

Shift to neutral! I also wonder why the California highway patrol guy who died didn't shift...

Posted by blaine at 08:15 (-06:00) | Comments (0)

January 18, 2010

poor porting

I had almost abandoned Dead Space to my "so frustrated I will never play it again, let alone finish it" bin, which due to it being a digital download from Steam, simply meant it would drop off my Favorites list...

Then I fired it back up yesterday for one quick go. I was amazed at how utterly terrible the interface felt, not believing I'd endured several hours of it previously. It was worse than I remembered. "There's no way this is proper." I said to myself. Perhaps it needed to be played with a gamepad (due to poor control scheme porting), like a GTA game (driving a car with the mouse? Ha!) or Ghostbusters.

Nope, it just needed vSync turned off. Load times went from 30+ seconds to near instantaneous. All moving and aiming sluggishness and acceleration problems disappeared. Suddenly, the game was fun.

How could such a critical flag be:

  • Implemented poorly
  • and Exposed to the user for configuration
  • and Defaulted to "on"

    ??

    Granted, vSync is a standard graphical flag, but never have I seen it impose such a drastic penalty on all aspects of a game by being on. 2000% longer load times? How does it even factor in to that???

    Posted by blaine at 20:59 (-06:00) | Comments (1)

    • September 10, 2009

    PAX2009

    PAX2009 was a blast. Besides hitting the show, we hit several local pubs (as always, and probably too many...), restaurants, and took a day trip to Victoria, BC and Butchart gardens. Photo link next:

    Blaine's PAX2009 trip photos. (high-res versions of specific photos available by request, 3072x2304 max on most)

    We also brought back three different illnesses! Mike with bronchitis, me with some flu-ish bug, and Bryce with the H1N1 (a H1Nerd1 winner!).

    Posted by blaine at 15:25 (-06:00) | Comments (0)

    September 09, 2009

    crimemapping

    CrimeMapping.com continues to be a source of daily amusement for me. Take this entry:

    RPTS WIFE BROKE PHONE & PULLED HIM OUT OF HOUSE BY HIS EAR

    Owned :)

    Posted by blaine at 13:26 (-06:00) | Comments (0)

    twitterpated

    I've finally broken down and joined twitter. All active notifications off, of course :)

    http://twitter.com/HerrChin

    Posted by blaine at 13:24 (-06:00) | Comments (1)