TASVideos

Posted: 7/8/2008 12:18 AM

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Bisqwit

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Xkeeper wrote:

At least it seems that the trip is going somewhat well, which is always a good thing.

Somewhat, yeah. Except for two blemishes: I broke my sister's camera, and I forgot to increase the VISA monthly limit (or rather, misestimated the amount needed) before leaving; I just calculated that the purchases I did before leaving, and ones still mandatorily remaining, will together exceed that limit. Oh well. Time to talk to the bank.

Posted: 7/7/2008 11:24 PM
(Edited: 7/8/2008 2:10 AM)

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Bisqwit

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Today I spent most of the day wandering the streets of Harlem looking for interesting shops (such as Radioshack :P), and a bank to change some euros to dollars (alas, I forgot to bring my passport with me to the bank and they didn't accept the driving license as an ID) and then exploring the Central Park for a bit, sitting on various benches, and walking the 5th Avenue downtown for the whole length of the Central Park, photographing anything interesting. Again, some scattered impressions. -- Do most people speak Spanish here? Looks that way to me. -- Are most people here black or nearly black? Looks that way to me. (Edit: For clarity, this impression started from the airport; not just Harlem.) -- *Everywhere* you look, there's always something happening. New York is truly a busy city. -- The demographics (esp. in the subway) looks like straight from any american movie. It's awesome how familiar it feels. -- I'm having trouble figuring out when people know each others and when they don't. It seems like people go spontaneously talking with random people they don't know, without any smalltalk or anything. ---- Overall, the social atmosphere seems very friendly. The private spheres around people are certainly much smaller than in Finland, where people go to great lengths basically avoiding confrontation. -- It never stops unsettling me when little kids speak English. Little miracles. -- It has been a cloudy day today: there were about 10 minutes of sunshine in total during the 6 hours or so; yet, it has been as hot as the hottest sunny day in Finland (and 70% more humid). EDIT: -- Oh, and I noticed that workers rarely seem to wear hearing protection here. I first noticed it at the airport, but I also noticed it today at some construction site. Someone operating a chainsaw had no hearing protection.

Posted: 7/7/2008 4:51 AM

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Bisqwit

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JFK, mentioned above. Re: homeless people: At least it's warm in the subway system.

Posted: 7/7/2008 4:36 AM
(Edited: 7/23/2008 7:52 AM)

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Bisqwit

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A few miscellaneous notes: -- The security check at Helsinki-Vantaa airport for the flight to Amsterdam was about 400% faster than the one from when I visited Vienna. -- The security check for flight for New York at Amsterdam was about 3 seconds slower than the one at Helsinki-Vantaa. -- To my chagrin, there was no free WLAN at the Amsterdam airport. No IRC, then. -- The "immigration" form checking queue at JFK was very long. The interview was short and uneventful. As was the customs. ---- It was not documented which baggage fetch line would be there for collecting our baggage. I spent about 15 minutes waiting at the wrong one. -- I got confused at the Airtrain announcements. I missed the first train because I was uncertain, and then I boarded a wrong one, but I left it at the next stop and a helpful attendant directed me to the right one without me asking. -- The route to my hotel included several subway exchanges. ---- The first one went allright. ------ Except for the fact that my trolley got stuck in the subway gate, and I had to back off. I got billed, but I could not enter. I spent some time explaining the situation to the guards making myself look stupid*, until they let me pass through the gate without paying the second time. ---- At the second one, I missed the train because I was uncertain if it's the one I should board. So I had to wait 15 minutes or so for the next one. ---- I was supposed to leave on a station that is a local-only stop for that train. It was documented that between 10.30 pm and 6.00 am, that particular train would drive as a local one, not an express one that it is normally. Well, that documentation did not correspond to the reality, and I ended up missing my stop. ---- I left at the next station, and waited around 15 minutes for a local train to the opposite direction to let me drop on the right station. ---- After I exited the subway system, I realized that I had failed to take with me two vital items: ------ A map from the subway exit to the hotel ------ The hotel's full address (I only knew the street name) ---- So I spent around an hour wandering the streets in a spiralling method around the subway exit point, because I knew that the hotel is within about 200 meters from it. Lugging a 11 kg trolley with me. (Well, not a perfect spiral. I excluded obviously wrong directions, because I knew approximately how the area should look like, and it wouldn't be Broadway.) ---- So sweat-soaked and somewhat dehydrated, I finally found the hotel about 4 hours after landing and I took a shower and connected to Internet and posted this post :) Oh, and my phone is useless here. It cannot find a single operator. Apparently the GSM standard here is somehow different. It could still work for Internet use with WLAN networks, if there were any, though. *) Making this an appropriate time to sing: I'm an idiot, I'm the biggest idiot, I'm a Finnishman in New York...

Posted: 7/7/2008 4:16 AM

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Bisqwit

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PUUH. Ok, I'm in New York now.

Posted: 7/4/2008 8:58 PM

Post subject: Re: A small lecture on English grammar

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Bisqwit

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nfq wrote:

Warp wrote:
A more or less accurate translation to English would be: "I wonder if I should be running around"
it's shorter to write: "should i run?"

That has a different meaning. Warp didn't type those extra words just for dramatics. More examples: -- "siksi" = "into that (which was mentioned)" (a more common homonym means "because" though) -- "epäilemättä" = "without a doubt" (you could say "doubtlessly" in English, but that's not normal language, and not an expression you can use as a reply) -- "keskusteltuaan" = "after (they) had discussed / having discussed (it)" -- "kirja" = "book", "kirjasto" = "library", "kirjailija" = "author", "kirjoittaa" = "to write", "kirje" = "letter", "kirjasin" = "font" -- "kirjoitettava" = "to be written" (e.g. "kirje on kirjoitettava huomiseen mennessä" = "the letter must be written before tomorrow") -- "kirjoitettavaksi" = "(left) to be written" (e.g. "jätin kirjeen allekirjoitettavaksi johtajalle" = "I left the letter to be signed (lit. underwritten) by the boss") (ObContext: This is about Finnish... The thread is about English though.)

Posted: 7/4/2008 5:19 AM

Post subject: Re: These sound ungrammatical but are in fact correct.

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Bisqwit

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lewisje wrote:

could of Most pre-teens cannot drive, but Emily alone could of the students in her middle school.

Are you not supposed to put a comma in the "x could, of the y group"? In the same way as you need when the sentences are reversed: "Of middle-aged men, very few find no signs of becoming bald". Also, you could edit and put an introductory text in your post explaining that those are usually incorrect but in those particular examples, they are correct. To prevent someone carelessly looking it up and seeing "oh, 'could of' is right" without checking the context. (As the context is not immediately apparently.)

Posted: 7/4/2008 5:06 AM
(Edited: 7/4/2008 5:26 AM)

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Bisqwit

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lewisje wrote:

One potential scheme might go like this: a [æ] (cat) ä [a] (car) e [ε] (pen) ë [e] (they) i [ι] (it) ï (liter) o [ɔ] (solitude) ö [o] (home) u [ʊ] (put) ü (rude) û [ʌ] (up) ô [ə] (of) ê [ɹ] (her)

Further problem is that in "they" and "home" there's a dipthong (i.e. a flow from one vowel to another) instead of just one vowel… About dipthongs. In past I used to think that they are just two vowels in a succession, but I have come to realize that it's actually different from how dipthongs work in Finnish. If you pronounce the word "take" veeeery slowly in English, you will produce a very smooth, gradual shift from the /e/ phoneme into the /ɪ/ phoneme. It's so natural to natively English-speaking people that they don't actually realize that it's a dipthong. However, a Finnish person would consider first pronouncing a long /e/ phoneme (without change of the vowel's type), and then change it into the /ɪ/ phoneme and pronouncing that as a long one (without change of the vowel's type) as well. Similarly for word "find", there's a shift from the /a/ phoneme to the /ɪ/ phoneme. A Finnish person would spell those out as two different vowels, i.e. "faind". "Fate" would not be "fet" or "fete", but "feit". Just some things that make Finns very bad at pronouncing English :) (But as for grammar, more on-topic, it's a piece of cake. Mostly. We do get confusion on when an "a" or "the" is required, and where "on", "in" or "at" is applicable. Such as are you on town, in town, or at town, when the emphasis is on being out on the streets as opposed to being in a house?)

Posted: 7/4/2008 4:55 AM

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Bisqwit

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Raiscan wrote:

AltGr+e. or Ctrl+Alt+e. Result? é.

~~Result = ę. Umm, no. That's my custom keyboard layout. Sorry.~~ Result = €. To type é, hit the dead key containing ` and ´ symbols (next to the backspace), and then hit e. This produces é. This on Finnish (and Swedish) keyboards. Also, off-topic.

Posted: 7/2/2008 7:45 AM

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Bisqwit

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Except for SGB. SGB should have a 4/3 aspect ratio. For GBA, it is 3/2. For GB*, I suppose it is 160/144, i.e. 10/9. Assuming the pixels are square. I don't actually know. Maybe someone who has an actual GB could measure? [With apologies to Nach.]

Posted: 7/2/2008 7:22 AM

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Bisqwit

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Just a reminder that I will be going in four days. If anyone wants to organize a meeting at NYC between July 7th..20th, I would be interested. As a non-local, I'm not exactly the right person to organize any meetings there…

Posted: 7/1/2008 1:58 PM

Post subject: Re: TASVideos Subscription

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Bisqwit

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I've also considered something similar. That is, mailing DVDs to people for a nominal fee. Especially for those who have limited bandwidth. As for making money -- I don't know what to expect. My network connection is currently sponsored by my employer, but if it were not, the profits I get from Google's AdSense would hardly cover even 20% of it. And I cannot reasonably expect such mailing service would yield much better.

Posted: 7/1/2008 9:06 AM

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Bisqwit

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Some people may have noticed I sometimes use more avatars than technically allowed by the 1―13 choices available on the posting form. So to be fair, I extended that selection now, available for anyone who has the mood selection feature available in general (users with ≥350 posts & mood_avatar URL pattern set in their profile). Sorry for making the posting form more confusing than it was :)

Posted: 7/1/2008 8:32 AM

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Bisqwit

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Perhaps, we just make it obsolete whatever categories it currently obsoletes (in the same way Princess-only run of SMB2 once obsoleted any-fastest run). Later, if a low% movie is made that is longer than this run but has lower %, it could be branched again. So, this movie would obsolete http://tasvideos.org/1073M.html , http://tasvideos.org/260M.html and http://tasvideos.org/1075M.html , but not http://tasvideos.org/817M.html . 1073M: any%, real. Also this movie's goals. 260M: low%, real. Not this movie's goal, but this movie beats it in this category nevertheless (lower collection percent, and faster than any other attempt on that percent). 1075M: any%, ingame. Not this movie's goal, but this movie beats it in this category nevertheless (smaller ingame time). 817M: 100%, real. This movie does not accomplish 100%, so cannot obsolete. Arguments against: 1073M: Final boss is skipped, lower entertainment density. 260M: Not this movie's goal. 1075M: Not this movie's goal. The final boss is still seen in the 100% movie. For those looking that experience. If the 100% movie is eventually changed to skip the final boss, then the issue becomes different. At that point, it might make sense to make some kind of sightseeing movie. As for the "not this movie's goal" question, that is resolved by paying attention to the fact that this movie will not be called "any%, ingame" or "low%". It is still a "any%, real" movie. It just happens to obsolete the movies for those other branches by accomplishing their goals better than they do, despite not specifically aiming for that particular goal.

Posted: 7/1/2008 2:50 AM

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Bisqwit

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Yeah, you can always exercise blackbox design; i.e. duplicate its external behavior as well as you can; nevermind the internal implementation details.

Posted: 6/29/2008 7:59 PM

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Bisqwit

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mmbossman wrote:

I thought I had changed it from "No predefined saves" to "N/A", however after refreshing my browser, it didn't show the change. Now it does, however. So if I somehow tried and failed, my apologies for taking credit.

So did the publication erroneously have a category implying use of predefined saves or the lack thereof? Because you know, it should have a category "no predefined saves". It starts a new game with "no data". No saves have been predefined, prior to the movie, and used during the movie. (Saves created during the movie are not relevant.) And since this is one of the games where that is an actual possibility, that category should be shown. Contrary to, say, Super Mario Bros 1, where it's not even possible to have a predefined save from which to start the game.

Posted: 6/29/2008 7:54 PM

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Bisqwit

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mmbossman wrote:

MattyXB wrote:
A small error in the discribtion text. - No predefined saves He has Saved.
Fixed

What precisely did you "fix"?

Posted: 6/29/2008 6:22 PM

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Bisqwit

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Cpadolf wrote:

EDIT: Question, will this run be linked to my movie statistics or does this not work because of multiple authors?

It will be. Fixed. I forgot to do the thing I always chastise other publishers for forgetting to do.

Posted: 6/29/2008 6:06 PM

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Bisqwit

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Note: This movie did not YET obsolete any movie. Discussion should be carried out on whether it SHOULD obsolete some movie(s). I will later change the movies' status as needed.

Posted: 6/29/2008 5:55 PM

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Bisqwit

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Tristal wrote:

I swear, you guys just keep switching ROMs for every run here.

It worked just fine with the same ROM I encoded the previous movie with.

Posted: 6/28/2008 9:48 PM

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Bisqwit

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Wow... This is fast.

Posted: 6/28/2008 7:11 PM

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Bisqwit

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That's what I can call sequence breaking, with good conscience.

Posted: 6/26/2008 1:26 PM

Post subject: Re: Encoding AVIs

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Bisqwit

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What you should do depends on your requirements. ― Portable (i.e. runs on not just Windows)? Then you cannot use VFW (video for Windows) routines. ― Want codec selection support? If you do, then in Windows you will probably use VFW (see above), and on other systems, delegate work to MEncoder. ― Want support for files over 2 gigabytes? I think VFW doesn't support that. ― Is depending on an external program (such as MEncoder) an option? ― Do you want compressed video output or raw? If raw is okay, then you can even create the AVI encoder yourself for most portable code and least dependencies. The AVI format is rather simple really. ― If limiting the video output to say, x264, is okay, you could still create the AVI writer yourself but link to the x264 library. This would still make it portable while achieving a high quality compression. ― Similarly for audio: MP3? Ogg? Or anything installed in the system? Or just raw? And finally, do you know how to capture single display frames? :) I.e. taking screenshots. Without invoking a library routine called "TakeScreenshot" that you don't know how it really works.

Posted: 6/26/2008 9:10 AM

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Bisqwit

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kchrules wrote:

I TASed It through 4-1: http://youtube.com/watch?v=JiILy_sY-TY

Ah. I watched a part of 1–1, and I noticed some mistakes. You got stuck for a moment at 0:47 (should have jumped from the red pole to the upper platform and from there to the log). More subtle mistakes, such as walking on enemies going to the opposite direction, were also abundant.

Posted: 6/23/2008 10:16 AM

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Bisqwit

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As always, just start downloading it, and don't disconnect immediately. Within a few minutes, some of the autoseeders should notice that there's this torrent having more downloaders than seeds, and pick up it for seeding. It also helps if you're not NAT-barricated and encumbered and/or throttled into oblivion by your ISP.

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