So I made my own RJ-45 cable.

Kind of a big deal to me, anyway...

http://forums.shoryuken.com/discussion/comment/10392471/#Comment_10392471

Long story short, get yourself the more expensive Ideal brand (YouTube demo) because it is absolutely goddammed impossible to get the wires in the proper slots otherwise. They're about $18 for 25, which is really all anyone needs. I got 100 of the regular kind for $10 and I can't use any of them.

Some more tips:

• Try to keep the exposed wires 1 inch, no more, no less. With some cables (particularly Nintendo), the first and last slots can be extremely difficult to thread the wire through, so if you  want to "give up" with one wire at one end, you can just push the sled into the main piece and it'll still look and crimp OK. 
• If you can't thread the wire through the liner hole, strip the wire and thread the copper, then pull. I used to be afraid it would pull the copper from the connector end and it wouldn't work anymore, but that hasn't been a problem.
• If the wires go through easily (like when I was using the USB cable that came with my Mad Catz FightStick), the wires can actually shift holes in the liner if you're not careful. Best to start with shorter wires (1 inch, or maybe 3 centimeters tops) and thread carefully.
• To ensure the crimping really does keep the thicker insulated cable in place, consider wrapping that part of the cable in electrical tape before inserting and crimping. 

People laughing at what they say

...when it's not even funny?

Totally annoying.

Actually, I think I mean people who laugh too damn much. Especially from what they themselves say.

To all YouTube commenter "comedians"...

To anyone who needs to reference plot lines to make your "jokes:"

Can you please just fuck off at least a little bit?

You're just spoiling it for the rest of us who don't want to illegally download the TV show or manga.

You're also not funny. Had Bleach and now Naruto spoiled. Assholes.

Round 1

Went there again today (technically, yesterday) thanks to Kane.


Highlights:

• Tekken 7. Surprisingly long load times (longer than Street Fighter Alpha on PlayStation long), but good game. Rage Arts and Power Crush moves are good additions, and that slow motion thing is just icing on the cake.
• Ramen burger at L&L Hawaiian Barbecue. These things are never life-altering experiences, and they're not even my favorite kind of burger, but you've got to try them when they're there.
• Hatsune Miku. The arcade game had its own special controls and a new "slide" feature to replace the star notes. Dual notes were weird. I didn't get the $8 card yet. In the future I'll have to bring my headphones because you can plug them in. A lot of guys were doing that. The difficulty seemed pretty reasonable until Extreme when it just shoots up super high. Extreme, you definitely want to try the "one song, unlimited health" option rather than the "two songs and you're done, unless you outright fail the first song" mode.
• Ice cream claw game. I can pretty much get the ice cream cup on demand. One time I even got two ice creams with one claw! The game is four credits a pop, but since $10 = 40 credits = 25 cents per credit, that means I'm paying a dollar for those 4 FL oz cups (which is a generous two to three scoops if you ask me), so maybe I shouldn't get too excited.
• Wheel of Fortune. Quick and easy to play and I solved the puzzles two out of the three times I played. The answers were "BATTING AVERAGE" and "BATTERED FISH FILET." Got a good 102 tickets out of it. Would've gotten more if they didn't run out of tickets momentarily. They certainly could've made that "out of tickets" warning bigger.
• Water fountain. Free and cold just like the water fountain directly across from the principal's office.

Lowlights:

• The A/C was broken around the fighting game area. That made that area especially hot. We had two extra fans, which were pretty powerful (strong enough to catch passers-by off guard), but usually only one person gets any relief at all from those fans. There are emergency doors in that area, and they were open for about five minutes before the higher-ups decided being hot and miserable was good for business, so they closed those doors again.
• Lots of walking around. I didn't want to keep spending money to play games, and playing games meant sitting. And, well, anything to get away from the heat, right? To be fair, I found some relief near the always-empty Virtua Fighter cabinets. There's a nice fan, but only if you stand up. So you could either keep standing and be cool or sit down and be hot.
• The other ice cream treats outside of the ice cream cups were hard/impossible to win with the claw. The shape really matters here. I wanted to win a plush toy but they were hard to get too.
• Can't get anything good for 102 tickets. That Izanami-no-Okami figure was sweet, but it was 7,500. 

WTF:

• Some really pretty girl (like, Heather Graham pretty) who seemed to be alone asked me a couple questions on two non-consecutive occasions. Those questions were not about getting me to buy something or to join some cult, either. Had I realized the situation, I would've asked some questions on my own (like, "Are you here by yourself?") and pried, pried, pried. God-freaking-dammit. Oh well. Maybe I'll be more aware of these things when it's not past 1:00 a.m.

Weird-ass dream (2015-07-04)

Anti-drug PSA. A young boy and his younger brother find a skeleton in their house and excitedly yell, "Treasure!" So they and their mom end up searching the house. But instead they find drugs in the attic. And when they do, we see eyes peeping in from the windows.

Happy 4th...

Weird-ass dream (2015-06-22)

PE with the old Holy Angels crew! We were all kids again, except for Abby who I was going to congratulate on her recent wedding (and who I, IRL, was not "friends with" on Facebook and only learned about that fact secondhand from someone who was my friend).. huh.

After a warning about the weather from Coach Rios, we were split up into teams and we did various things. Chris O. was at bat and mostly kept hitting homers. Then it was me playing some shmup, except after skipping through the tutorial screens my time was up and I switched to Justin B.

Next thing I remember, I was all set to go home but naturally certain tech issues -- things that only I knew how to solve -- kept me from doing so. Some guy (not from HA) wanted his picture which was impossible but I remembered there was a video of him and I could take a screenshot from that video.

I guess I was so frustrated I woke up several hours earlier than I usually do...

Goodbye Saturn controller; hello (again) to Mad Catz TE with Kitty

I thought I'd have my brother fix my long-broken Saturn controller by soldering something, and the d-pad worked again... until I dropped the controller four inches onto the hardwood floor. I was starting to think the rubber pads weren't making contact (when I dropped it the first time the little support piece that keeps the rubber pads in place broke off), so I took the controller apart again. And another wire came apart, and I have no idea where that one went. Mind you, these are super-tiny contacts on the Saturn pad, and I wouldn't want to bother my brother again so soon. So now, down and right on the d-pad don't work, the Y button still doesn't work, and now the B button doesn't work either. I figured I'll pay someone $60-80 to fix and rewire when I have some money to burn. Until then, the best controller ever made will have to be shelved.

On the plus side, that same day I figured out how to use my Mad Catz TE (with Toodles TE Kitty) on my PlayStation TV! A bit of history; neither my Hori Real Arcade Pro 3 (stock PCB) nor my Mad Catz TE with Kitty would work. In fact, the Kitty seemed to be broken after I plugged it into the PSTV until I reflashed it. But because of this thread and this YouTube video, I realized I already had the tools.

Kitty > Neutrik > RJ45 to PS2 cable > iNPiN adapter

A bit of copying and pasting from this thread:

I was using my Hori Command Stick just fine with the iNPiN on the PSTV (even programmed some moves right on it), and now I'm using my main stick (Mad Catz TE with Kitty). I tried the TE once before straight into the PSTV and it actually broke the Kitty until I reflashed the firmware. But using the Neutrik > PS2 cable > iNPiN, I'm having absolutely no trouble, and I'm making full use of the features of the Kitty, namely: 

• Button remapping (especially important for Street Fighter because you'd otherwise have to open up your stick and rewire to turn your R2 into L)

• Turbos (because I'm a cheater)

This is a game changer! All those PSP arcade collections and anthologies are finally (what I consider, anyway) legit ports now that I can use an arcade stick. And I don't think I have to tell you I'm displaying the image at 480p via the DVDO Edge and adding scanlines via the HDfury3 and T-SLG, right? So awesome.

Still, the PSTV doesn't play all PSP games, even if you could get them onto your Vita memory card (Genesis Collection, Gradius Collection, Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles), so to use the TE on those games I'll have to put them on the PSPgo and pick up an AXISDapter from Toodles. I already have a UD-USB Decoder. (I think pairing them will work, anyway...)

Man I wish Breaking Bad was on when I was in high school

No doubt it would've reversed my fortunes today. I could've gone into chemistry. Or law... hmm.

No spoilers, now...

Weird-ass dream (2015-05-29)

People started to inadvertently make heads explode with direct eye contact, and the one who started it would also go blind. Turns out it was aliens messing with us all along...

Missed April 2015's PlayStation Plus free games

Could've sworn I got them and it's already mid-May! FML?

I'd better pick these up on sale out of principle:

[PS4] Tower of Guns
[PS4] Never Alone
[PS3] Dishonored
[PS3] Aaru's Awakening
[PSV] Killzone Mercenary
[PSV] Monsterbag

Gaming & video capture ideas before I forget

Some PS1 and PS2 games tend to switch back and forth between 240p and 480i, and that can be pretty annoying when trying to capture. Looks like I'll have to get some cheap capture card (Ezcap) that treats everything as 480i. But if I want to play in the best quality (component) while recording in S-video, apparently the GunCon multi-out adapter cable thingy allows exactly that.

Also, I've always had trouble playing Tobal 2 on my Lik-Sang modded, 1st generation Japanese PS2. It just wouldn't get past the PS logo screen. Could it be the loading or smoothing settings on the PS2? Something to consider. (Update: No dice, it still won't work. But after a while of tinkering manual forced swaps with different discs at different times, Tobal 2 would start playing music. Interesting since it's not a redbook audio game!)

New power supply

Last night I was taking a break from work when my computer decided to turn off, and it wouldn't turn on again. Unlike the last time that happened, it wasn't because I was lazy in dusting my computer, so I knew it had to be the power supply.

Old one: 630W
New one: 1000W (and quieter)

Bought on Amazon and shipped with same-day shipping from Kentucky to California for... $6. Not bad.

Now I know this new setup makes my computer a real gas guzzler, so I'm going to try to get most of my work done on the laptop + Dell Monitor. I think I'll turn on my desktop after dinner.

I hope it wasn't all that capturing and encoding I was doing that killed my power supply, even though I really wasn't doing anything with my capture hard drives. Pretty sure they were asleep, too. I still have about 100 episodes of Good Eats to record...

Words I hate (2015-03-09)

• intriguing

Why is that so freaking hard to spell? Go on, you try it. 

Aspect Ratios

Whipped this up quick just for my own reference:

gray = 16:9, full HD = 1920x1080 = 1280x720

black= 4:3 (inside gray), pillarboxing = 1440x1080 = 960x720

red = 16:9 (inside black), windowboxing = 1440x810 = 960x540

blue = 4:3 (inside red), pillarboxed windowboxing = 1080x810 = 720x540

See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht2320

And I actually have seen pillarboxed windowboxing on certain "decimal channels" on TV. What the hell kind of messed up TV would ever need that?

Thoughts on PlayStation TV

PlayStation TV was a good buy for me, but I think I had very specific reasons and conditions:

I wanted to see how PSP games looked and played. WipEout Pulse was as good as ever; just as on the Vita, it ran better than it ever did on the PSP (without dabbling in the dark arts, anyway). Doubled frame rate and practically no loading times.

I wanted to compare the picture quality of PSP games on the PSTV to my actual PSP hooked up to my video scaler (DVDO Edge) with a component cable. PSTV picture quality is still better of course, but now that I know what the "proper" picture looks like, I was able to match the stretching and zooming of the PSP picture to the PSTV picture for a more accurate picture.

I also had a spare 32 GB memory card with more than enough games from my backlog to try, but I didn't want to have to keep swapping memory cards on the Vita, especially with that stupid "rebuilding database" thing that always takes a minute. Putting that spare memory card in the PSTV and putting the compatible games on it was the obvious choice. Now I can easily return to Persona 4 Golden, and I'm playing it in the best possible way. Though I don't think I'll be helping anyone in the dungeons anymore. (Touch screen, remember?)

Finally, there were still plenty of games that I had yet to even download. The PSTV allowed me to download the games, and back them up, without making my actual Vita unusable and making a big deal about it.

Sucks about the even more limited PSP and PS1 compatibility, but since Vita memory cards are still at a premium, you don't want any non-Vita games on your Vita memory card taking up valuable real estate, unless you know you'll be using dual analogs, or you just know the PSP game runs better on the Vita. I know Canabalt is better on the Vita because of the quicker saving after each attempt, and any lag in the Grand Theft Auto games is supposed to be gone, or so I've heard. For everything else, it's best to just use your PSP for PSP games because memory is cheap. I just got my PhotoFast adapter this week, and now that I put in two 64 GB micro SD cards, I realize I should've done the whole PhotoFast setup a long time ago!

Just for reference: NES, cropping, and CRTs

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5208513&cid=47105133

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1ra0pg/a_video_showing_the_stunning_difference_scan/

Up next: Thoughts on the PSP! PhotoFast, DVDO Edge scaling, and scanlines.

Thoughts on a Toodles TE Kitty

Long story short: to have the best PS3 stick available, you'll need to get a Mad Catz TE FightStick for the Xbox 360 first.

http://forums.shoryuken.com/discussion/comment/10137013/#Comment_10137013

http://godlikecontrols.com/

Mysteries of the MP4 solved

Let's start with what we already know:


XviD4PSP 5.xx is the best encoder for everything. I only really use two formats:

• MP4 PS3 or XBOX360
• MP4 PSP AVC

Go to settings and disable auto volume, auto crop, and analyse interlace. Check the global settings and change the temp folder to the same drive you're encoding your video so you're not waking up any sleeping drives when batch encoding.

For most videos (basically any non-PSP video), I like to stick with:

• AVC profile: High
• AVC level: 4.1

I've already written about specific file sizes here, but now that I'm capturing and encoding every episode of Good Eats again at a mere 233 MB, let me just state unequivocally that 3-Pass encoding (versus 2-pass) does make a difference! In fact, the lower the file size and bit rate, the more it matters! I realized that a bit late (already halfway through all the episodes), but what're ya gonna do.



To add chapters to a video, take your newly encoded video and load it into YAMB 1.6 (you probably need to locate MP4Box under Options too). Load a text file that looks like this:

CHAPTER01=00:00:00.000
CHAPTER01NAME=1
CHAPTER02=00:03:16.363
CHAPTER02NAME=2
CHAPTER03=00:07:12.282
CHAPTER03NAME=3
CHAPTER04=00:10:27.010
CHAPTER04NAME=4

You could do this in YAMB 2.1 as well but there's no convenient "clear" button when you're adding chapters to multiple videos, though in the future I might cook up an AutoHotkey script to clear it instantly myself.



To encode the best quality videos for PSP, which is to use XviD4PSP's "MP4 PSP AVC" format at 720x480, follow these settings:

• under video encoding
• Encoding mode: 2-Pass Bitrate
• Bitrate: (kbps) 2000
• AVC profile: Auto (main)
• AVC level: 3.0
• under video > Resolution/Aspect
• Output Resolution: 720x480
• Resize filter: Lanczos4Resize

Then load that newly encoded video in YAMB 2.1 (Warning about uninstalling the 2.1 beta here). Highlight the AVC, go to Properties, then Pixels Aspect Ratio and choose. Without this step, the 720x480 video will not quite be 4:3 or 16:9, and you'll have to stretch within the PSP itself. 

That last one took me about a decade to figure out! I knew Media Go converted videos and kept the original aspect ratio at 720x480, but that program wasn't any good compared to XviD4PSP. With my PhotoFast adapter coming sometime in the future, I'll likely have enough room for every PSP game I've ever bought, all my music, and every Simpsons/Seinfeld/South Park episode!