The SCUMM Diary: Stories behind one of the greatest game engines ever made

This is pretty awesome!  It's about the good old days of game designing, when people were figuring things out for the first time :)

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/196009/the_scumm_diary_stories_behind_.php

Favorite Topics of Late

Chatting on the phone with friends sometimes results in many diverse links.

These are some of my favorites lately that we've shown each other while on the phone:

• Pix of my experiment rapid prototyping synthesizer knobs array

• Disputed waters near Taiwan.

• Deadly gun battle on the high seas 

• My favorite topic, the STM32F4 processor

• The Taiwan-Phillipines story in English 

• Electronic Dub Music synthesized on an Atari 2600 

• Taiwanese Tourism info prepared by the Tourism Bureau of the RoC

• Only one of these guitar pedal kits left in stock

• Smashing motorcycles with a hammer!  Taiwanese Performance Art ?

• Tornado moves through Oklahoma

I Have Been Concentrating on DIYDSP.com

The last few weeks, I have been spending a lot of time concentrating info on how to build electronic music instruments in one place: DIYDSP.com.

Since DIYDSP is becoming its own entity, it actually has its own blog where I select specific electronic items and talk about how and why they're useful when building your own electronic instruments. 

The purpose of spending all of this energy is to get more musicians building electronic instruments.  I would like to, in my lifetime, hear music played on electronic instruments which people have really designed to reflect their musical vision.  This may involve several more generations of instrument self-selection. 

To catalyze the whole operation, I'm teaching people how to build their own instruments through links to tutorials, my own material, and through an online store which makes it easy to find the most valuable electronic parts to electronic music instrument builders.

Shopping Via Bike

I pulled my bicycle out of the basement.  The tires were a bit low, but full enough to reach a nearby gas station.  So I did.  There, I paid 75 cents and filled the two tires to 60 psi, the low extent of the recommendation, b/c I wanted the ride to be a little bit softer than it used to be.

Surprisingly, the air pressure had dwindled to 26 psi over the winter!

Once they were full, I high-tailed it about 2.5 miles to Stop and Shop.  I bought a smaller load of groceries than I usually do, since I only had the space in my backpack for transportation.  I'm proud of myself for transporting six eggs.  I think I'll go see if they're unharmed during the trip.

A simple recipe, but to the point:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Baby-Spinach-Omelet/

Gotta go now (doing some stuff for Monkeylectric )

It's all about the SEPIC!

• What is this?  Efficient energy design stuff.  Inspired by that guy's walk across the cradle of civilization with a laptop.  Many people have suggested switching to a DC to DC converter.  This is one technology used for doing that:
  
  
  
  • Designing DC/DC converters based onSEPIC topology

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-ended_primary-inductor_converter

• wwwd.national.com/national/PowerMB.nsf/.../AN-1484.pdf

• Analyzing the Sepic Converter - Switching Power Magazine

And it's at 101.7FM in the Boston area...

Boston 101.7FM - "the first real EDM station in the country."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEDX

I was shocked when I heard this because at first I thought it was a pirate station.  it was a mixture of chiptune and seemed to performed nearly live.  Their rhythms were actually kind of energizing like some of the techno used to be in the old days!  I eventually had to look them up and here you go. 

I'm not saying I expect them to play drill and bass on a bent mattel drumset anytime soon, but some of the mixes are pretty glitchy!  Enjoy.

New Research on Muscle and Fat

Fantastic article about exercise, fat and muscle.  Spoiler: exercise is good for you.  I find it fascinating that we are still learning how to categorize our bodies' systems.  For example, this article describes fat as an endocrinal organ.

Car is to be replaced.

OK yup, transmission (and clutch!) meltdown confirmed.  I'm going out at lunch today to clean it out....   I'm not broken up about it.  I got my money's worth heh.  and it had a lot of tiny things wrong with it, from the blown-out stereo speakers and stereo that turned off randomly in warm weather to the broken air conditioner, the fresh air vent that sent fumes into the car unless it was on recirculate, to the worn-out shocks, the driver's side window that didn't completely close and the deeply pitted windshield that was honestly getting a bit difficult to see out of!  They also told me it needed a new radiator... so, after twenty years and 174K miles, it has reached he end of the line.

I'm now doing a huge survey of used car reviews.  the dodge dart also looks like it has potential (yes, an american car!).

The Incredible Rise and Fall of a Hacker Who Found the Secrets of the Next Xbox and PlayStation—And Maybe More

This is a fun story about a person who hacked his way into video game development systems.  I used to be part of some of these same development programs, so I recognize a lot of what is going on here.  I'm not surprised that someone was, with persistence and through multiple vectors, able to gain early access to development hardware.  I am just agog that someone had the guys and moxie to go through it!!

Desperate U.S. Students Seek Sex-For-Money Arrangements

Perceiving Beauty vs. Fertility

What many people perceive as beauty is merely fertility.   Fertility is important, but beauty much more so.

Recently, I was introduced to the metric standard unit of misogyny.  By which I refer to Arthur Schopenhauer's quote about women, saying "a few years with a richness of beauty and a, fulness of charm at the expense of the rest of their lives." 

As I was driving this morning, I realized he had profoundly conflated women's beauty with women's fertility.  That poor, confused schmuck.  My instincts were to blame the commercialization of sexuality, the Disney channel, the Top 40, etc.  These easy answers naturally faded when I recalled Schopenhauer lived a long time ago (1788 -1860).

Women's fertility is in fact fleeting.  There is profound biological evidence there.  It comprises a small proportion of their live's timelines.  It is,to a large extent, under no control of theirs and exists only within the confines of their own skin. 

Beauty, however, is a choice women, just like men, have at every moment of their lives.  It requires effort, study and practice.  It spans far beyond their insides to the world around them, just like a farmer's fields stretch for acres and acres.

So which do you think deserves more celebration?  I choose beauty.