Li Zhang: Coolest asian in the universe

I usually do not blog about my life, my activities, or my interests, but I feel that I must make an exception to tell of a crazy dream I experienced this morning. Normally, a dream wouldn’t be so interesting to me, but I must reveal that I am not a dreamer – this was my first dream which I could still remember in the morning in several years. Because of that, I feel there is some importance in the message.

Psychologists are welcome to analyze this crazy dream.

(1200+ words, read at your own peril)

Read more »

Physics and planar motion are related? Get out.

In all seriousness, getting home after work or school would be so much easier if all drivers were required to take (and pass) a high school physics course.

My rant concerns the ridiculous traffic between my school and my house – the displacement between AP Government and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. In the following problems, we will neglect the force of gravity between my compact car and the behemoth truck behind me which is slowing me down.

Over my past 9 months of legally having permission to drive a vehicle, I have noticed several trends among people with cars. I’ll talk about the others at a later time, but one particular problem has been bothering me for quite a while: cars are turning into the wrong lane.

When a driver wants to turn onto a road, he must make an important decision: go now and risk death, or go later and risk having to wait 5 minutes. Most choose the former.

I have no problem with drivers recklessly turning into my lane and zooming off ahead of me, but the ones that dilly dally in my lane traveling at a leisurely 15 mph on a 50 mph road instead of going to the empty lane right next to mine demonstrate apathy towards others as well as carelessness for their own lives (If I happened to be on my phone like some of these jerks, I definitely would not be able to react in time, putting both of our lives in danger).

I am not just saying all of this because I am selfish (Maybe I am.), but for the sake of other drivers too. When a slow driver turns into a lane, it forces not only the person directly behind him to slow down, but everyone behind the driver must slow down accordingly. This could send a ripple for several miles in a congested road. This, my friends, is the reason for the random slowdowns in traffic.

So hear my plea, and learn how to turn right (pun intended).

If you are still having difficulties, observe the diagram below.

I actually wrote this article last summer, but I decided to move it here so more people could see it and try some of the games. Along with revising each entry, I have added a few new releases to the list.

Nowadays, the entire gaming community revolves around a few big names, such as Ubisoft and EA. This leaves most of the smaller games developed by a team of independent programmers virtually unnoticed, even if their products are very inspiring and innovational.

Here are my favorite free games in no particular order. Go ahead and try them. If you have any other suggestions that people may enjoy, just plug it into the comments somewhere!

1. Dokutsu Monogatari (”Cave Story”)

How could anyone make an indy game list without including cave story? With an elegant storyline and many different areas to explore, Dokutsu is a very lengthy adventure game which is definitely worth playing. The learning curve is unnoticeable, and soon you will be on your way blasting the monsters with a variety of weapons. The side-scrolling action and simple graphics are almost nostalgic from your old super-nintendo days.
Genre: Action/Adventure
Download game from Japanese site
English patch available from Romhack.net

2. Guardian of Paradise

Guardian of Paradise allows you to jump into a bird’s-eye view of the hero attempting to save the world. Instead of the usual “switch weapons to perform X task” approach, this game forces you to collect gems to change your combat and exploration style. Overall, this game is very easy, but several puzzles in this game are so well thought out that they require a few minutes of wandering around before you arrive at a solution.
Genre: Puzzle/Adventure/Action
Download game (English)

3. Meritous

Sure, the screenshot doesn’t look so impressive, but the game itself is actually very amazing. With three thousand (3,000) different rooms to explore, you definitely won’t finish this game in one sitting. As you progress in the game, the monsters take harder hits to kill and reduce your shield to nothing in a matter of seconds. There is no real story to this game, recommended for action game enthusiasts.
Genre: Action
Meritous home page with download

4. Mono

Similar to Geometry wars, but at the same time worlds apart. Your objective is to blast the incoming balls in an attempt to recolor the background (Black to white, white to black). There are a variety of weapons in your arsenal to defeat the three types of enemies. What makes this game very unique is that you only have a progress meter. With no life meter, you must depend on the distortion of your screen to tell you when you are close to death. A very dizzy game, but great for killing a few hours. If you enjoy mono, be sure to check out the rest of Binary Zoo’s similar games.
Genre: Action
Binary Zoo’s mono

5. Crayon Physics

Don’t jump to conclusions based on the screenshot alone, this game is awesome. Rather than being bound by the number of sprites the designer created for you, the player is allowed to draw his own pieces. Not only that, but it forces you into thinking about the velocity and momentum of objects in order to solve the puzzles. The developer did make things a bit easier for you: all objects are made from the same material; that is, the bigger an object is, the heavier it is. Sure, you can easily win the game by drawing random boxes here and there until you catch the star, but what fun is that?
Genre: Puzzle
Download Crayon Physics from the official website

Mac users are elitist bigots. Just kidding, I think Macintosh computers (and most of its users) are amazing.

Before I begin, I’d like to mention that when I say “Mac,” I’m referring to the Macbook. Not the Macbook Air, not the Macbook Pro, but the $1099 Macbook. I don’t know why anyone besides 14-year-old girls would want the Macbook Air. I’d rather have functionality than that sleek shell.

For about a week, I was compelled to go out and purchase one for college. This was probably due to the fact that two of my classmates started bringing their Macbooks to class and are taking notes on their sexy white laptops while I am furiously scribbling in illegible handwriting in my composition book. In physics, my friends are drawing perfect diagrams of heat flow and thermal expansion; in government, organized diagrams of the judicial appointment process.

I imagined myself as one of these students, conveniently copying the notes from the overhead computer at 127 words per minute. In fact, I could just switch on the microphone and begin recording the professor’s lecture for future studying (maybe listen to it while I sleep). Once the audio is recording, I can kick back and play a few minutes of Warcraft before the furious clicking (not to mention the array of eyes glued to my monitor instead of the overhead) is noticed by the professor.

I even went as far as to visit the Apple website and look at the specs on their Macbook. I’m on a relatively tight budget, so I think $1000 is the most I can invest in a college laptop. What I saw was very nice: a 2 GHz dual core processor with an 80GB hard drive and 1 GB of memory all wrapped up inside a sleek black or white shell for a cool $1100. This was much better than many of its competitors.

However, a few minutes before writing this post, I decided against it.

First of all, I realized that the lineup of games for the Mac is limited. Yes, I know. It’s retarded to base a decision on a school laptop on how well it plays games, but let’s face it. A majority of my time in college on the laptop will be for playing games. I know the Mac can run WoW, but I need more than just a few adventures in Azeroth. In fact, I doubt I’ll even subscribe to WoW in college.

I then began looking at the software. I found Office 2008, but from the screenshots, it looks extremely unfamiliar. The countless videos on their website didn’t really help, since it just showed a bunch of finished products (they claim these are done by individuals with no experience in design, but let’s face it: when you have a Mac with no games, what else are you going to be doing?). I think I saw the actual Office 2008 window more than once in their demo videos.

Then I thought about a huge purchasing factor: the mouse. How am I going to get anything done with only one mouse button? In fact, it’s not just the mouse, it’s the entire input system for macs. Instead of an Alt key, I’m given a squiggly box-like icon. I then googled for the Mac hotkeys that previous PC users had a hard time getting used to, and found out that I will have an extremely hard time converting from PC to Mac.

Finally, I looked at the operating system. OSX is not windows. No matter how hard it tries, most developers make programs with the PC user in mind. For this reason, most types of software are made for PC only. I can’t live without that.

I realize that after converting, I will probably get used to all of the different functions (and maybe even love them), but I think I’d rather give up the security of a Mac to stay as a PC user. Plus, I realized that everyone in college will probably be running a Mac, so maybe I can be unique by owning a PC.

Now it’s time to go hunting for a decent sub-$1000 PC laptop. Any suggestions?

Juliet was not always right. Everything is in a name.

Ubisoft decided to release a DS version of their occult-forming Assassin’s Creed. The Nintendo fans gobbled up the news and pumped out thousands of forum posts, blog entries, and stumbleupon submissions hyping the stealth-based, wall jumping, assassination game.

Then came the release date.

This game is probably the second worst game I’ve played on the Nintendo DS (The first being James Pond). Maybe it just wasn’t living up to its hype, but I found this DS version of the amazing PC/Xbox game lacking in many aspects.

Maybe the developers were too rushed in the production of this game to make any worthwhile additions, but my theory is that if you are rushed, just extend the release date. Extend it as many times as you need to make a game worth of a Famitsu top score.

Let’s check out the game’s weaknesses:

Movement - Altair’s movement takes some getting used to, and even after that, you will still die thousands of times because the movement engine is just that bad.

Object collision - When you run into a person, Altair will make that ever-so-familiar Xbox “pushing motion” where he attempts to part a crowd. However, due to the terrible object collision system, most of the time the person you are attempting to move will simply stand there, and you will stop dead in your tracks.

Furthermore, the game features many points where you can interact with object by pressing A. However, you need to be perfectly in line with that item, which results in precious seconds wasted when you need to kick down a post to stop an incoming mob.

Environment - The game attempts to create an interactive 3D game, but only gives you one camera angle. What does this mean? When you move closer to the camera, objects which may impede your view are faded out. Sounds good on paper, but trust me, the fading is not enough. You will have a hard time finding Altair even with the faded buildings.

Physics - I’ve never seen a person who is able to run up the wall of a one story building when he is initially standing one foot from the base.

Loading -  After every level, story, cutscene, there is a loading screen for about five seconds. Personally, I have never seen such tedious loading screens in a DS game. Ubisoft should have known that the implementation of the loading screens would be the kiss-of-death for the Nintendo DS game.

What the game did right:

Cinematics - Breathtaking visuals, but that’s about the only thing the game has going for me.

I thought this game would be a disaster because it would just be a clone of the Wii version, but Mario and Sonic and the Beijing 2008 Olympics has proved to be an excellent game.

In the game, you compete in various events as characters from the SEGA or Nintendo series. Each character has unique stats, but from about three hours of playing, I have noticed no difference when playing with any character.

So if you have $35 lying around (or a CycloDS Evolution), pick this game up. It’s well worth your time.

It’s official: Microsoft tries (again) to get a 1-up on Google. This time, by sending an offer to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion.

View the letter after the jump.

Read more »

I came across this shirt design on a forum, and thought I’d share it with the rest of you.

.

.

.

How it works:Each design is printed on a shirt. When the couple stands together, it makes a cute picture. Neat, huh?