The small world of progressive house podcasts

Jaytech Music Podcast 40 and Cycles Radio 20 (released within one month of each ohter) both contain the following excellent tracks:

• Arty & Mat Zo - Rebound [Anjunabeats]
• Above & Beyond feat. Richard Bedford - Sun & Moon (Club Mix) [Anjunabeats]

Things that make me angry

(besides the usual "isms")

• salad
• the word "hath"
• fast talkers
• leaf blowers
• people who talk and let their voice get weaker and weaker, so the volume's not only lower, but it's more and more monotone and their voice just sounds like a broken lawnmower or something... seriously FARK YOU (edit: I've since found this is called "vocal fry")

New AviSynth Revelations; better colors, louder audio

Capturing South Park episodes across the two half-seasons, I wondered why my older caps had "true blacks" and deeper colors, while my newer caps had slightly washed-out colors. I forgot what I did before (I used to think it was because I used DirectShowSource instead of AviSource), but after a lot of searching, all I needed to do was add this:

ColorYUV(levels="TV->PC")

Also, I noticed the low volume of my PSP captures (and pretty much everything else running from the DVDO Edge to the HDfury3 to the Intensity Pro via stereo), and after looking for an easy, consistent way to boost the volume across the videos I already made, it came back to good ol' AviSynth:

AmplifydB(7)

I'm still on the fence about amplifying the volume for TV caps; in my experience, the same PC vids played on a TV are louder, so it's safer for the volume to be "too soft" rather than "too loud." However, video games and even VHS transfers could probably use a boost. I'll still use Audacity and/or Xvid4PSP to come up with a reasonable Amplify volume boost first, then just edit the line in directly in AviSynth.

It's also worth noting that for another one of my video game projects, the intro to a game was much louder than the actual gameplay, so I had to highlight and amplify those parts separately. And of course, the sequels had their own volume differences so I had to do the same thing there. That video also turned out great.

So to summarize, my basic AviSynth script (using PSP gameplay caps, resized & cropped) looks like this:

#Echoshift - A7 Cast

#PSP-DVDOEdge-HDfury3

DirectShowSource("H:\Untitled 7.avi")

ColorYUV(levels="TV->PC")

AmplifydB(7)

ChangeFPS(59.940)

Crop(6,6,-14,-8)

Lanczos4Resize(848,480)

Trim(2683,4643)++Trim(4905,7579)

Tetris World Championship, Part 2: Why This All Matters

Okay, so I'll get around to writing this blog shortly. The heat is frying my brain, though.

topics:

• classic VS new (SRS) = passive VS aggressive = moving faster VS thinking faster
• what does "being good at Tetris" mean? (flat playing field? recognizing twists? clearing garbage fast? dealing with clunky controls?)
• why noobs are noobs (e.g. "what do I need two rotate buttons for?")
• openings
• twist recognition
• damage dealt (efficiency)
• risks
• speed (also, soft dropping)
• combos
• nomenclature
• why there's no better game to get serious at (e.g. no one plays older fighting games)
• in the end, you have to respect the classics

Tetris World Championship, Part 1: The Experience

The Classic Tetris World Championship was held last Sunday (2010.08.08). Talk about luck; if someone didn't ask at GameFAQs how good the PSP version of Tetris was, I wouldn't have been reminded about Tetris Party Deluxe, I wouldn't have checked out the Tetris Concept forums for opinions, and I wouldn't have seen the World Championship announced in another topic.

Right away I knew I wouldn't stand a chance (for more, see "Part 2: Why This All Matters" coming shortly), so I fired up the NES emulator and practiced the game at the higher levels. I marveled at Harry Hong's achievements (maxed-out score starting at Level 19) and continued practicing, but this kind of practice really wears a guy down, both physically and mentally. My right arm was sore for days.

The day before the tournament, I practiced a different way, relaxing my arms and playing as safely as I could while still aiming for a perfect (i.e. 7-Tetris) B-Type game. I did the math and at Level 9, a perfect game gives you about 93383 points (still difficult due to the completely random piece generation and lack of any hold function). The highest I could do this was at Level 15, where a perfect game gives you about 139660 points, but that only happened to me once every 30 minutes or so. I still didn't know what my plan was; play safely at Level 9 and hope to get a lot of Tetrises, or go all out at Level 13-15 and hope to get more than a few Tetrises. Preliminaries were about pure points, not survival at the highest speeds.

I stayed up a little later than I wanted to that night, making absolutely sure I knew how to get to the event at Downtown Independent. I got bus & walking directions from Google Maps, took pictures of the route at each intersection, and put them on my PSP. I had been to Downtown LA before, both for fun when going to Kinokuniya and for jury duty, but this was the first time I've been to Downtown Independent. When I left my house, I immediately realized I forgot my headphones, and much later on I realized I should have brought some sort of bag to carry my belongings (PSPgo, PSP 3000, PSP camera, DS Lite, glasses, hat). I considered going back for the headphones, but I didn't want to risk barely missing the bus. It turns out I did anyway and the slower bus service on the weekends meant I waited the whole hour.

I took pretty much the same buses I used to get to Cal State LA: I took the 268 to El Monte Station, then one of the many buses that went to Downtown LA. There was another fare hike since I've been in school ($6 for a day pass!), but at least I didn't have to pay the extra zone fee to go to take the freeway buses. I was also surprised to see the pull cords on the side of the bus replaced with buttons on the bars near the center of the bus; I was looking for those cords for several minutes but decided to wait and let others request stops so I wouldn't look like an idiot.

When I arrived, it was still before noon, and I ordered a small popcorn and a medium Mr. Pibb for lunch. I immediately regretted my decision; the popcorn didn't offer any sustenance at all and it was too big for one person on the go. The drink was nice, but it was also too big and cold to carry, and too awkward to continue walking around with. I ended up throwing them away only half empty.

I bought an extra qualifying attempt for $3, then turned around to see a Blue Planet Software representative setting up a Wii for Tetris Party Deluxe. He let me play (I was pretty much first in line) and after getting used to the Wii controls again, I was cleaning up, handily disposing of any and all (well, most) newcomers. I was thrilled to see that the almighty T-Spin Triple was returned to its former glory, having previously been watered down to being worth only a standard Triple in the downloadable Tetris Party from the Wii online store and Tetris Friends on Facebook.

During this time DJ Sysop was playing some sick tunes - both original and remixed tunes from games of all generations. Some of them drove me nuts because I couldn't quite remember where they were from, but I could really hear and feel the bass. Anyone dedicated enough to come to a Tetris tournament would have recognized many of the tunes and would appreciate them more than most. In any case with such pumping music in the background, I was really in my zone in Tetris Party Deluxe.

When I realized noon passed some time ago, I went upstairs for the actual preliminaries. There was already a long line, but standing in line with good company wasn't such a bad experience. Playing the classic NES Tetris after warming up on Tetris Party Deluxe, however, was. I essentially blew my two attempts in under a minute in what I still consider to be a flawed system; each attempt should really have been 3 minutes for unlimited tries instead of one try. But it's not like I had a chance at all; when I was in line, I heard someone cracked 160,000 - likely a perfect game on Level 16 or higher.

I went back down to the first floor to play some more Tetris Party Deluxe and I immediately felt better, going on long win streaks and having at least one person recognize my stolen TKI opening strategy with an extremely loud "WOAH!!!" that the entire floor probably heard. There were cameras recording so I'm pretty sure I'll either be in the Ecstasy of Order documentary or People Magazine who were said to be covering the event. I'll be honest - I was wearing my Atari "roots" t-shirt (with a picture of a joystick and the word "ROOTS" underneath) just so I would have a better chance of appearing.

An hour or so into playing, the Blue Planet Software representative, fresh from seeing me perform a TKI-style I-spin, half-heartedly announced that the winner of the next match would win a copy of either the DS or Wii version of Tetris Party Deluxe (no wonder he was asking me if I had a Wii). I won, of course, and Tetris Party Deluxe was mine.

I decided there was no more point in me staying any longer (it would have been rude of me to compete for the Wii version as well), so I went to the roof of the building and I saw some vendors of classic games and accessories. VideoGameMuseum was raffling off a top-loading NES2 and all I needed to enter was spend $10 or more, so I got Darius Twin for the SNES and a 3.8mm gamebit (although now that I think of it I should have gotten the 4.5 gamebit while I had the chance). I didn't win the NES2, but I was extremely lucky to meet Quan Chi (the guy who won it) before he won it; he does console mods so my SNES2 finally can have s-video and RGB! I took advantage of the bag the vendor gave me and I unloaded quite a bit of stuff out of my pockets. During this madness I put my PSP on my lap and stood up, where it went tumbling down to the concrete roof. It's now a bit worse for wear with chipped paint and some pretty deep scratches, but otherwise it's fine.

The main tournament started at around 4pm, and I decided to record the tournament with my poor-quality PSP camera at a bad angle. I knew other people would probably have better-quality videos posted later up (certainly GirlGamer), but I wasn't sure if they would be up after streaming so I decided to hold my right arm steady and record anyway. I know I would have enjoyed the tournament more had I not needed to be perfectly still, but at least I have my own (poor-quality) recording. Around this time Blue Planet Software people were raffling off some more items; I felt I had earned enough, but looking back I probably should have entered anyway.

The tournament itself was nuts, and I have to give credit to the crowd, who knew what was worth cheering for. Tetrises early on generated some noise, but not nearly as much noise as a top out. While I liked the 2x2 multi-screen aspect, I didn't like the wasted space. Instead of switching back-and-forth between two separate 2x2 screens, they could have fit all 8 at the same time if they showed only the playing field and scores, leaving out the left side (piece statistics).

In the end, Jonas Neubauer defeated Harry Hong, which was the second-best possible outcome. I wanted to stay for the aftermath and rooftop party, but I was extremely hungry and I had a bus to catch. Unfortunately the unrelated production crew that was in front of City Hall when I got off the bus was still in front of City Hall, so I had to walk an extra 15 minutes or so for the next bus stop. I waited a long time for that bus back to El Monte, and I was waiting a while for the 268. When I did go home, I ate and drank like never before. The end.

My love-hate relationship with 240p

A few months ago YouTube updated their look, arguably for the worse. In addition to making the seek bar a mouseover that covers the bottom part of the video, they added an option for 240p - apparently for smartphones.

I didn't think much of it until I started noticing more and more how I just couldn't capture games on my Intensity Pro. I first noticed how the Intensity Pro wouldn't display PS1 GameShark or "It Might Be NES". Later on I noticed how I couldn't even play my SNES games through my Intensity Pro (these guys at AV Science Forum had the same problem). I started really scratching my head when I played Tekken 5's Arcade History; whether playing through my Gefen Home Theater Scaler and component cables in 720p or directly to the Intensity Pro through s-video in 480i, the Intensity Pro would just display a black screen whenever I played the first Tekken. Tekken 2 and Tekken 3 would display fine, however.

I looked into it and I noticed some games just ran at resolutions below even 480i. This includes some PS1 games and pretty much every system earlier.

These resolutions are 240p and 288p. These are low-res and people who play arcade games (myself included) love those scanlines. Unfortunately, my scaler doesn't support those resolutions and when the Intensity Pro says "NTSC", they really mean "480i". Worse, only the most expensive scalers support them.

A comment from Fudoh's site:

Eirik A.

January 30th, 2009 at 2:23 pm

Seems like finally the VP50Pro got the 240p and 288p formats. “Added support for 240p and 288p Formats”. New firmware available. Wonder why the VP50 didn’t get it though (got a VP50 and an EDGE myself).

So... either I buy a $2,500 scaler, or the more affordable but still expensive DVDO Edge at $500 (official site) just to record every game in 720p60 while using the Intensity Pro's built-in passthrough so I can play them lag-free on my Asus VH236H, or I just suck it up and record in 480i on the somewhat laggy display of my Leadtek WinFast which has no problems displaying anything.

...

Okay, so it looks like I'm getting a DVDO Edge anyway. I don't know the difference between that, the iScan, and the VP50 (UPDATE: here's a comparison chart), but it's cheaper, and anyway...

Fudoh on AVS reports that the Edge does do 240p correctly.

So there.

YouTube, Google, annoyances and workarounds

(or, How to log into two Gmail accounts at same time on same browser)

A bit of history...

March 2006: "TripleLei" takes the YouTube world by storm with his self-made hardcore gaming vids and other rare gaming vids.

May 2008: My hard drive crashes. Every video and document I've ever made and didn't back up is lost forever.

June 2008: Can't Stop Productions takes down my Elite Beat Agents video from YouTube for no other reason than the stage plays a cover of Y.M.C.A. (low-bitrate and with sound effects, to boot). The only reason they find out about it at all is because I was foolish enough that I wanted people to find out about it by searching "ymca" so I included that in the tags. The account goes down with the video.

July 2008: "MrCopyrightViolator" YouTube account is created.

July 2010 (today): Either YouTube/Google changed their policies or the recent blackouts & random PC resets really messed up my browser's cookies... but I can't stay signed into Gmail (and other Google services) and YouTube at the same time. Since the "TripleLei" YouTube account was banned, my main Gmail account can't ever have a YouTube account since they forced you to link accounts (and signing in with that Gmail account simply tells you "this account is suspended" - you don't even get to access an account control panel). My new YouTube account is linked to some other Gmail account, so I have to choose between staying signed in for Gmail or staying signed in for YouTube.

The workarounds, found by following these links in this order:

1. How to log into two Gmail accounts at same time on same browser
2. A 'shortcut icon' for Google Chrome Incognito
3. Launch Google Chrome in 'Incognito' mode from a shortcut

So now I'm going to need a separate button on my Vista toolbar just for YouTube, and I'm still going to need to click a few times to go to YouTube and sign in. It would've been easier if I Google Chrome allowed Incognito mode to be in its own separate tab and not require a separate browser instance... But it would've been a whole lot easier if Can't Stop Productions left well-meaning people alone and followed fair use laws. I'd tell them to eat a bag of dicks, but something tells me they'd like that anyway.

...

Then again, I think I'll just keep my YouTube account signed in on Firefox. I keep the browser around for YouTube downloading purposes anyway!