I love calling things "dumb."

I think reading is good. I think books are great. But novels are just dumb.

If a novel is dumb, you'll have wasted weeks or months. If you stick to the end, it's a sure bet you had to struggle with dumb, boring sections that lasted a while.

But if a movie is dumb, you'll have only wasted a couple hours of your life, and chances are there was at least someone on screen to ogle.

So I think if someone asks me what my three favorite books are, or what the three latest books that I read were, the answer would probably be the same, and one of the books would probably be a textbook from school.

My review of the cheap, generic, ubiquitous SCART-to-HDMI scaler

As posted on phonedork's channel:

General Phonedork sir! I know it's been over two years, but I finally got that shitty generic HDMI scaler today. And you were right; it was just what I needed for capturing games that do the 240p/480i switching.

For $20 shipped, I'm pretty happy; I just set my Intensity Pro to capture at 720p60 (instead of 720p59.94 like most everything else) and it sees the shit scaler just fine. I was capturing things I thought I'd never be able to see outside of a CRT or my old s-video capture card... and even then, s-video capture cards are limited to 30 FPS. The Blackmagic Intensity capture cards are notoriously picky, but it didn't even blink with this scaler. It just works, quick & dirty.

Yes, the picture is just so, so shit, especially since I own an OSSC and have seen how good my captures look through that. Yes, the picture is stretched to 16:9, but that can easily be edited back to 4:3. But with superg's gscartsw_lite offering two SCART outputs, that means I can have one output dedicated to capturing with that shit scaler and have the other output going to my OSSC or fusionz916's Retrotek component converter to my CRT. In other words, I never actually have to look at what that shit scaler outputs while playing.

And, well, since the video quality is just so fucking shit (I mean... goddamn it is really shit), I won't feel bad not getting a 1080p60 capture card for anything I'd want to capture with the shit scaler.

I'll also add that the scaler's settings remain even after power down. I at first had to hook it up to my PC monitor just to get some picture. The scaler will provide an OSD so you know exactly what you're getting.

And really, is the video quality that bad? It's about s-video quality, but with extremely oversaturated colors. I've also measured the audio lag and it's 0.117 seconds behind, or 7 frames... which may or may not be related to input lag. That's harder to test.

How about new singer rules for America's Got Talent?

Last night's AGT was an embarrassment with most of the acts being singing acts, and more than half of the acts advancing to the next round were singers. Taking the variety out real quick. Bello Nock and Just Jerk should've stayed -- hell, I voted for them.

It just seems that if you're a singer, you could either perform decently or do really well (by which I mean show "heart" or "emotion"), and depending on the judge's mood you might even get a golden buzzer. Whereas if you do any other kind of act, you either do your trick or you blow it. They're the acts most fun to see, but they're not closing their eyes or making funny faces because they're not singing some dumb song.

Here are some rules I'm proposing that, while they won't ban singers outright, would give the other acts a chance:

1. Require that singers write and sing their own songs. They don't have to play an instrument. This should keep the acts from being a step away from karaoke night.
2. Only two singing acts can earn a golden buzzer that advances them to the live shows. Once in the initial auditions and once during Judge Cuts.
3. For the Judge Cuts, the next round should have all the singers battle it out in their own round. Call it "Battle of the Voices" or something. Considering there are three weeks of quarterfinals with 12 contestants each, and five advancing to the semifinals, I could definitely tolerate up to two singing acts per week in the quarterfinals. That means 20 singers in one Judge Cuts show, with up to six singers advancing. Seven with the golden buzzer.

Custom soundtracks for (almost) any game on (almost) any system!

EDIT: Probably should just get a Makerhart 5- channel loop mixer instead. Better and more fun!

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Sort of a happy accident I discovered with a cheap audio splitter. I was able to get it to take two inputs and output both of those sources through my speakers at the same time! What you'll need:

1. Any HDfury product that lets you output analog audio from its 3.5mm port. (I'm using an older HDfury3)
2. Cable Matters White 5-Way Headphone Splitter with 5-Pack Audio Cables 
3. Koss VC20 Volume Control (you might want two or three of these)
4. 3 Pack 3.5mm Stereo Jack to 3.5mm Stereo Jack Adaptor Connectors, Female to Female
5. Any two 3.5mm headphone cables, preferably including one M to F cable
6. Any standard M to M VGA cable

With your HDMI consoles, just run it through your HDfury and have it output VGA to your TV or PC monitor. (I suppose at this point you could also use one of those VGA-to-HDMI converters for greater compatibility.) Use your 3.5mm cable to connect the audio output on the HDfury to your headphone splitter, connecting to the only male connector on the headphone splitter. Plug your speakers or headphones into any of the other ports in the splitter. Then connect your audio source (laptop, PSP, iPhone, whatever) to another port in the splitter.

Chances are the audio will probably be unbalanced, and you will probably want one source louder than the other anyway. This is where the Koss Volume Control products come in. Stick them in between the splitter and the cables.

When I say "almost" any game, obviously you'll want one where you can set the music volume all the way down to zero but still keep the sound effects. Like the Tekken games for example.

And when I say "almost" any system, that depends on your setup. For your pre-HD consoles, you should already have them outputting RGB or component and outputting them into an OSSC, then connecting the OSSC to something like a DVDO Edge. Then you connect that to your HDfury.

WipEout HD

(Will probably edit this post, but before I forget...)

WipEout HD

• Buying the WipEout 2048 DLC from the JP store does not also give you the PS3 versions of WipEout HD and the Fury DLC for free, unlike the US and EU versions. Perhaps the offer was only PS3-to-Vita and not bidirectional.
• Installing the Japanese WipEout HD does not ask you to overwrite your US download of the game, unlike the EU (well, UK) version. The JP version of the game will also not have Japanese text by default; your PS3's language settings must be set to it.
• If you're on your JP account and you've played through some of the US version of the game, when you play on the JP version of the game, your save data is not cross-compatible. However, you do share the trophy list, so you can't get two platinum trophies from playing through the US and JP versions of the game.

Weird-ass dream (2017-05-21)

In Japan with family, then I got lost. But then I met up with a friend from high school who seems to go there every year.

There was an arcade (or game centers, as they're known), but the games weren't any good.

And big-ol' anime-sized boobs on real people, so... yeah.

Words I hate (2017-04-01)

• can't

No, I'm not trying to be inspirational here, and this isn't an April Fools thing. I hate the fact that "can" and "can't" sound exactly the same when spoken aloud, and especially in recordings.