MSN Soapbox Is No More

Well, MSN has decided to shut down their user-generated video service, Soapbox. Not that I care too much, but it does affect my work on a MySoju plugin for Plex, since many of MySoju's videos were hosted there. So, that means one less plugin I have to maintain. I kinda saw this coming when they announced earlier that it would be placed "on the back burner," and sure enough here it is.

"No Romaja" Userscript for KoreanClass101

I'm a paying member at KoreanClass101.com. It's a pretty good site for learning Korean, save for the unfortunate amount of romanization they use. One of the worst instances is in vocabulary lists, where a romanization sits directly next to the proper Hangul text for a word. A native-english brain prefers the romanization, which discourages learning vocabulary in actual Korean.

If you'd like that Romanization column to disappear, you can try out my userscript. Simply install Greasekit/Greasemonkey (instructions are here for Safari and here for Firefox) then head over to the page for my script and install it!

After that, your vocab lists should change from this:


To this!

MySoju Plex Plugin Update

Not a lot going on with the MySoju plugin for Plex, but I have added the ability to detect broken episodes, and to see what video site a certain episode is hosted at. Screenshots incoming!

Something Wrong With This Picture

Come on, Apple, shouldn't there be SOMETHING about Cocoa in your Apple-specific dictionary?

A MySoju Plugin for Plex Media Server

It would be awesome if Plex, the Mac media centre software, had support for the CJK drama website MySoju. Fortunately, Plex has a relatively easy plugin architecture, so I've started working on such a feature!

So far, the plugin can browse all dramas, movies, staff picks and rankings. As for actually viewing the videos, if they are hosted on MSN Soapbox, they will work. Over the next week I will be adding support for as many of MySoju's sources as I can. I'm a bit worried about how hard supporting Dailymotion will be, since they're breaking the MySoju site right now. Time will tell.

Anyway, the plugin is progressing nicely, so if you want to see some screenshots, just click the thumbnails below!

Coming Soon: BT's Video Game Theme Song

Electronic musician extraordinaire BT has really been forging ahead with this newfangled Internet thing. From being quite involved on his Twitter account to releasing 12-second preview clips of his upcoming album, dude knows how to keep his fans pumped up. He also made some cool announcements at a Ustream interview he conducted this evening.

Coming soon, the Beatport music store (which has BT's new single available DRM-free) will be offering up a version of said single hacked up and ready for remixing in a contest. The winner will see their remix available for sale on Beatport. Pretty cool.

Of particular interest to me was BT's response to questions about his work with video games. BT has had his music appear in games, the most noteworthy of which (to me) is the playable version of Kimosabe on Harmonix's PS2 title Amplitude. He let slip that he has composed the theme song to an upcoming (but unnamed!) video game, describing it as "big, orchestral" and "dubstep" and more. He followed up by saying:

...being a gamer myself, I've found that a lot of people that support my music and what I do are gamers too, and so I'd like to write a lot more music for video games.

Good to hear, Mr. BT! Please bring-it-up bring-it-up bring-it-up, and thanks for engaging your fans like this!

That Which Apple Stands to Democratize

Normally, iPhone rumors get a :rolleyes: and a "Bah!" from yours truly, but TUAW has a couple of pretty interesting ones posted that, together, shape an interesting vision of what Apple could do to make the third-gen iPhone stick out from its newly-emboldened competitors.

First off, TUAW has gleaned from possible pre-release AT&T support docs that the new iPhone may be called the iPhone video. Also, some supposed pics of the new iPhone show a front-facing green LED, the Apple standard for an integrated iSight camera.

iPhone possesses a mass-market appeal and mindshare that is rare among its competitors. When the next iPhone launches, customers will be in huge, snaking lines to buy it, the kind of lines that Palm, RIM et cetera only see in dreams. With such an appealing brand, Apple is in a rare position to embrace an as-yet-unpopular technology and make it indispensable.

Imagine if Apple were to market a video-call-capable phone, that mythical telecom product that companies like AT&T, Motorola and Intel have failed to make popular. The hype-machine and HCI prowess that Apple possesses could turn it from a quirky technology that only early-adopting geeks would use into the must-have killer app for the next two or three years.

Enter the Kotaku-posted rumor that the third-gen iPhone will possess a significantly more powerful graphics processor than its predecessors. In the App Store context, this would have the undesirable side-effect of splintering the iPhone platform. But, with greater graphical chops come greater UI possibilities, and a 3- or 4-way video-conference over a cell network would definitely be a new, leading-edge innovation in the American mobile industry.

I have no clue as to the likelihood of such a technology being announced at the Philnote next week...but I have my fingers crossed. We need a novel use of this bandwidth we keep adding to our cell networks, and video calls/conferences would be an amazing step forward for all involved parties.

I Like The Way Gizmodo Thinks

Too bad it ain't gonna happen, but a geek can dream.

"Flowchart"

The other night, I was playing Street Fighter 4 and got creamed by some guy who was playing as (shock!) Ken Masters. Later, I got a message from him, consisting of one simple assertion:

haha flowchart

What did he mean? Clearly he was insulting me. Am I so bad that he could beat me with simple flowchart-style Ken? Or was I playing too simplistic of a game?

Whatever it was, there's only one flowchart you'll ever need for SF4.

$60 Games and The Mid-Range

It's amazing how well Twitter keeps my thoughts flowing. Enough to keep me from needing to post here! SO ANYWAY--

I just got done reading Kotaku's review of THQ's new 50 Cent game. The review is relatively positive, commending it for being accessible and (somewhat) replayable. Then comes the recommendation on whether to buy or rent/borrow it:

While it may be hard to recommend Blood On The Sand to gamers who are itching for a more tepid Gears Of War-The Club hybrid—especially since both can be had for less than the price (combined) of the game under review—it's difficult to recommend against playing the game. It's bizarre and capable enough to make the ride fun.

I've always been a critic of the price-of-entry into the world of video games, and this generation's the worst yet. There are many recent releases I'm anxious to try out, but at $60 a pop I'm in no rush to own them. A generation ago, I was making less money than I am now, and still I had no problem shelling out $50 for a new release, and $35-40 recent releases with good reviews were insta-buys.

So, you're a 50 Cent fan with no console. You'll have to buy:

• A game console (cheapest is 360 Arcade, $200).


• The game itself ($60).


• Another game controller for the co-op (360 Wireless costs $50).

Got that? $310 for the latest 50 Cent production. If he made a movie, you'd pay ~$15 to see it with your girlfriend/buddies. (Or you'd pay upwards of around $250 for a Blu-ray player and the movie disc.) If all 40 tracks from the game's OST were released as a 3-disc set, you would reasonably expect to pay at most $40-45 for such a compilation.

Food for thought, IMHO.

AU Box Shows What Apple Could Do (And Probably Won't)

Check out the simply-named box from AU by KDDI. Connect it to your mobile or fiber-optic Internet connections, and it accesses a slew of AU/KDDI/Internet services, making them available on both your mobile phone and your home entertainment system.

While I was watching the introductory video, I could only think about one thing: How cool would it be if there was an iPhone dock on the Apple TV? Use a 3G or wired connection, download your shows to both components, and never have to connect to iTunes itself.

Unfortunately I have a feeling we're not going to see anything like that anytime soon. If the history of the iPod has told us one thing about Apple's technical design aesthetic, it's that the Mac/PC is the hub from which one manages one's content. Pushing/downloading content to a computer from a more special-purpose device is a special case, one that Apple's products are designed to reduce in occurrence.

After the rescinded approval of the iPhone data-tethering app, the release (finally!) of a phone running Android, and novel mobile applications like AU box, an optimistic geek might be led to believe that there's simply too much pressure on Apple to maintain the iPhone's "closed platform" nature.

It's certainly not impossible, but I wouldn't hold my breath on a sea change in Apple's broad platform strategy. The fact that Apple TV and iPhone both run OS X is a matter of convenience, not a sign that either platform is destined for Mac-level openness. If you want free reign over your Apple device, to make it do precisely what you want, and run the applications you want, Apple's design intentions be damned, you're better off getting a Mac than an iPhone or Apple TV.

The State of the Industry, in Three Images

Dunno if I like Kotaku's new look yet, but they certainly haven't lost their gift for perfect imagery alongside their news:

Have a look.

YouTube Vids of Older Stuff

Took me long enough, but I've finally gotten around to uploading some video of Melody's Musette and Rabbit-Proof Fencing, two projects that comprised the majority of my work back at ETC-Adelaide.

Melody's Musette is a game whose core concept is synchronicity, tying the music and gameplay events together. Rabbit-Proof Fencing is a humorous look at introduced species in Australia. Puns abound.

Both of these games were made with Panda3D.

I've embedded them below, or you can simply head to my YouTube channel to check them out.

Melody's Musette Stage Two Gameplay


Melody's Musette Stage Three Gameplay


Rabbit-Proof Fencing, Full Game

Panda3D Macintosh Install Script

Nutshell: Click here to download a Python script to install Panda3D from scratch. Read on for more deets.

Panda3D is a great game engine, especially for rapid-prototyping, but for Mac users it can be a bit frustrating being a second-class citizen. While independent developers are creating very useful distributions (like Hypnos's awesome p3dapp) there are no official builds, and installing from source is no easy task.

Edalytical's very helpful guide, Building Panda3D in OS X Leopard, has fallen out of date. Using it as a base, I've created a Python script that will install Panda3D from source, and can even download and install Panda3D's two major dependencies, MacPorts and the Cg Toolkit. Its only dependency is Leopard Developer Tools (you know, Xcode and the like).

Simply download the script from the Game Sketching project's downloads page. By default, it will download/compile/install Panda3D. You can add the options +macports and +cg to download/install those dependencies. See the source or read below for the usage info:

pandaAutoInstall.py [noex] [(+|-)option]
option is one of 'uninstall', 'download', 'compile', 'remove', 'test', 'macports', 'cg', 'announce'
To install everything: pandaAutoInstall.py +all
To just install Panda3D: pandaAutoInstall.py
To uninstall: pandaAutoInstall.py +uninstall


Bug reports, positive/negative feedback and success/failure stories are welcome!

Yahoo Nukes Everyone's Profile

Oh now this is cool, Yahoo! has seen fit to reformat everyone's profiles, but in the transition has reset every last one of them to totally, unabashedly blank.

What really impresses me is that Yahoo's statement about the botched transition acknowledges that they could retrieve your data, but politely decline to do so unless you force it by going through their general tech support gauntlet.

Not much else to say here. Basically, if you want an example of how not to transition your user base to a new version of your platform, check out the new Yahoo.

The Order of the Day

Spinaci e Formaggio Cheddar in Carrozza

• 3 Eggs
• Four large slices of bread
• Four slices of horseradish cheddar
• Baby spinach, washed
• Spicy, dry sausage (sopressata works well)
• Extras: butter, salt, turbinado, garlic powder

Beat three eggs, combining with a dash of salt and teaspoon of both turbinado and garlic powder. Pour into a wide, shallow dish. Heat a large skillet to medium heat, and add butter.

Soak both sides of the bread slices in the egg wash, then place in the skillet. Flip the bread only once the underside is golden brown; don't regularly flip them.

As the other side cooks, lay horseradish cheddar onto the cooked bread. Once the other side of the bread is cooked, remove from skillet, and add sopressata and spinach to taste. Place one slice of bread onto the other, in what is commonly known as a "sandwich" formation.

Makes two sandwiches.

iPhone SDK 2.1 Doesn't Include iPod touch 2.1 Firmware

If you, like me, have gotten an iPod touch and anxiously installed the new iPhone SDK to scratch your iPhone development itch, you may be disappointed when you start up Xcode and get the unhelpful message:

Unable to locate a suitable developer disk image. Reinstall the iPhone SDK.

And, maybe you do reinstall it, but the message persists. Aaand, when you compile your software, you get a CodeSign error:

No certificate found in keychain for code signing identity 'iPhone Developer'

The problem is that the huuuuuge iPhone SDK 2.1 installer doesn't come with the iPod touch 2.1 firmware image. Suck. Fear not, though: All you have to do is force iTunes to do a firmware restore, which will download the appropriate image. On next launch, Xcode will find it and everything will work great.

Swype's Cool Touchscreen Typing System

Check out this video of startup Swype demoing their new touchscreen typing system. Point at the first letter, and "connect the dots" to each subsequent letter.

The glorious moment in this video is when the guy effortlessly spells "Mississippi" in the space of one second.

Apparently this guy is the/a developer of T9 input as well. The guy knows his stuff, I'd say. The sooner this is present on touchscreen devices, the better.

In Memory of Randy Pausch

Not having met the man, there's not a lot I can say. But Carnegie Mellon ETC co-founder Randy Pausch passed away today. He's had a long, spirited fight with pancreatic cancer, and gave a rather rousing "last lecture" at CMU last year.

You'll find nary a soul that didn't view Randy as a charismatic, intelligent, cheerful guy. Rest in peace, Randy. As Brian Transeau says, see you on the other side.

Here are some good related links.
Randy's Wikipedia page
The Last Lecture

Using Flip Ultra Video Without Bundled Software

Macworld has a review of what seems to be a pretty cool little digital camcorder, the Flip Ultra. Small, point-and-shoot, USB. Very easy to grok. One caveat is that it encodes its videos with the 3ivx encoder, so you "need" to install the software that comes with it.

If you'd rather just use your QuickTime-enabled software (like, say, iMovie) to edit your Flip Ultra software without ever installing some OEM piece of software, check out Perian. As you can see here at their supported formats page, it rolls an open-source 3ivx encoder into Quicktime. No fuss at all.

Of course, Macworld didn't seem to have any problems with the built-in software, but why install yet another transient video program when you can just keep Perian up-to-date and support all of those formats at once?