March | 2009 | Jason's Blog

Wii in 720p

Monday, March 30th, 2009 @ 4:10pm

I’m pretty impressed at what people can do with technology, and this is especially the case with things like homebrew and emulation. It’s amazing that there is already a Wii emulator out and it can do some pretty impressive stuff with existing games.

Take Wind Waker for example. The game already looks pretty great at its standard resolution, but boost it up to 720p and it looks fantastic! I would post the video, but you need to visit Youtube and click on “HD” for the full effect. There’s also videos of the Metroid Prime series, Mario Sunshine, and Smash Bros. Brawl, all available in 720p if you browse through the related videos.

I really hate that the whole Wind Waker style has shifted to the hand held Zeldas, as I would really enjoy to see them employ that style again. Amazingly, Wind Waker today looks less dated when compared to Twilight Princess which was released 5 years later.

games, mario

2 Comments

Fun With Blender

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 @ 12:06am

I’ve always wanted to do 3D modeling for fun, and have worked with 3D Studio Max in the past at a non-complete attempt to model the City Federal building here in Birmingham. Sadly I never finished it.

Country House But I’ve recently picked up modeling again when I stumbled across Blender, a free open-source 3D content creation suite. As seen to the left is a model of my latest work. It’s still a work in progress, but I hope to eventually complete it by the end of the week. I decided to go with a house, because it seemed like a simple enough model to attempt, and so far I’m fairly pleased with how the model has turned out.

Some additional work is needed to the ground, more details and surrounding scenery, and of course textures; which of course I’m trying to figure out as I’ll stumble along. I’ll try and post the finished product once I’m actually done with it!

blender, random

4 Comments

The Problem with Social Networks

Monday, March 23rd, 2009 @ 11:18am

Ever since the dawn of social networks, I have always been hesitant to join the fray. When Facebook first came about, I resisted for as long as possible to join in. Eventually I saw some value in Facebook, and finally created an account. A similar situation occurred with Twitter, but I was able to some value in using Twitter and hesitantly tagged along.

Social networking does have some value and purpose, but one of the things that concerns me greatly is how easily information is released, and the questionable privacy loss that occurs when information is placed in the social network’s hand. It begs the question, “How safe is my information?” One of the key reasons why I host my own blog is because I feel it is very important that I hold the key to my information and decide how and when information is released. When I allow my information to be handled by someone else, I lose that privilege and stand a great risk to my privacy. Even still while I control the information on this blog, I am still very cautious in what personal information I post since the information is available freely to anyone.

This is why I try to limit the amount of information that is available on social networking, and I highly recommend others to do the same. I feel some sense of humanity is lost since so much information is available so freely and released with no regards of the consequences. I must admit, I do not have anything to hide but rather feel that certain freedoms of an individual are being violated or forgotten in this age of freely available information.

I don’t have anything against social networks outside of that, and I find both Facebook and Twitter to be great tools for communication and keeping in contact with people. My word of caution is just be careful in the information is released, because they’re no guarantee that the information will remain safe.

blog, long post, thoughts

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Nightmares

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 @ 12:06am

I know I still have this happen on occasion… and I’ve only been out of school for two years! I have a feeling this is the exact dream I will experience tonight.

comic, school, xkcd

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Corruption

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 @ 11:05am

The politics of Alabama are a messy business, especially in Birmingham. Over the past couple of years we’ve had to deal with antics of Larry Langford and the corruption of the two-year college system. And of course that’s not even really considering beyond that including Siegelman and Scrushy. It’s a really scary thought to think what could have happened had these people not been caught and unsupervised.

It’s additionally frustrating as often times the costs of these scandals and corruption are passed on to the taxpayers. For example, when we first moved in to our Townhome here in Birmingham four years ago, our water bill was often in the $20 range. Now four years later, it’s spiked up to nearly $80 a month due to the increased sewer bond rate with no real end in sight.

It’s a frightening world we live in today with this economy and the ongoing scandals, but I think it also goes to show where your foundations are in by how you react in these times. Luke 6:43-49 is the perfect parable describing the above situation, and is almost laughable in how well it matches the outcome of everything. 43-45 talks about how you will know a man by his fruit, and a bad tree will not produce good fruit, and neither will a good tree produce bad fruit.

46-49 goes on to talk about having a firm foundation, and how going through times of trouble really begins to tear at you and show what kind of foundation you are really standing on. Just something to think about and ponder on as the rest of the world attempts to instill fear and panic.

I know I’m not a perfect person, and I do worry from time to time. But I also know that having that firm foundation will allow me to weather the storms of life and it’s encouraging to know that there is something for me to stand on, even if everything else around me collapses.

birmingham, comic, long post, politics, rant

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Can You Hear This?

Saturday, March 7th, 2009 @ 1:11pm

I got the idea from Noise Addicts, but I was curious about my range of hearing. I’ve had my fair share of ear infections and surgeries, so it’s likely that my hearing has been affected by such. The typical range for humans is between 20Hz and 20,000Hz. Thankfully, my range is still up there pretty well, as I can faintly detect the 19,000Hz range.

How much can you still hear?

interesting, mp3

3 Comments

Captchas

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 @ 1:30pm

Unfortunately with the way technology is advancing these days, captchas are a necessary evil when anonymous user input on a site is implemented. On my old blog, I used captchas for anonymous comments to reduce the spam I was getting, but I figure when moving to a new location I could get away with no captchas. Unfortunately, this utopia only lasted for 4 weeks before I started to get spam comments on my blog, so I am now forced to implement captchas for anonymous comments again. If you don’t like captchas you can register a username so you never have to worry about it, otherwise you will need to enter a captcha for every anonymous comment you make. Sorry!

blog

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Snow Day!

Sunday, March 1st, 2009 @ 10:47pm

The streak has finally been broken. After nearly 9 years without any measurable snow amount in Birmingham, we finally got a significant snow event – in March no less! Here are some of my favorite photos, and of course the ones that aren’t listed can always be found on my flickr account.

My car was covered early in the morning. Not that I could drive it anyway…