anybody see the latest volswagen commercial where there's a lead guitarist riffing away, and his electric guitar's connected to 6 vw's as an "amp?"
that guitarist is Slash, the guitarist for Guns and Roses. very good guitarist i think.
good stuff; i love "You Could Be Mine," and there's a ton of other songs i love that they have.
if i could list 5 rock bands i really liked that are from "back then:"
metallica(they've been going on a long time, but yes, their sound used to be slightly more shredding back then; Master of Puppets is a good example)
guns and roses
joe satriani
ac/dc
van halen
there's probably more; i always forget how many classic rock bands i used to listen to. these are just 5 i really liked. i don't think i ever heard steve vai.
oh yeah:
my bro loved Rush. come to think about it, i really like their song, "Tom Sawyer."
Aerosmith and KISS were good too.
good ol teen days where i would just sit around in my room listening to 92.3 FM.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Thursday, October 05, 2006
I find this picture on wiki's page describing how to use chopsticks humorous. Step 3 looks a tad absurd.
it'll be interesting to see how the new nba ball does; i just recently read more info on it on espn.com and spalding.com, and it looks kinda cool, but at the same time i heard a lotta negative reviews on it.
speaking of which, i intend to get a new spalding basketball anyways; one specifically for just outdoor playing, not indoor-outdoor. the one i've used for such a long time is just so worn down that it's impossible to grip it.
i need to wash my flippable jersey and headband.
---
not sure where spalding.com gets their info, but:
"basketball is the most played team sport in the U.S. with more than 32 million people playing in 2005."
"in 2004, almost 8 million people said that basketball was their favorite sports activity, far exceeding the number of people who said any other team sport."
speaking of which, i intend to get a new spalding basketball anyways; one specifically for just outdoor playing, not indoor-outdoor. the one i've used for such a long time is just so worn down that it's impossible to grip it.
i need to wash my flippable jersey and headband.
---
not sure where spalding.com gets their info, but:
"basketball is the most played team sport in the U.S. with more than 32 million people playing in 2005."
"in 2004, almost 8 million people said that basketball was their favorite sports activity, far exceeding the number of people who said any other team sport."
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Stanford professor receives Nobel Prize
crazy... and his contribution was something related to genetics... RNA interference...
i'm gonna read some of his articles on pubmed later...
crazy... and his contribution was something related to genetics... RNA interference...
i'm gonna read some of his articles on pubmed later...
mcnabb's clearly on a mission; you can say what you want, but i think he feels that he needs to show that this team got where it's gotten because of him, not T.O. that's why the eagles are doing so well.
ravens are also the hotness. with mcnair, now it's not just ray lewis anymore.
some people like to compare t.o. to artest. i think t.o. is actually better compared to dennis rodman. the similarities are a lot more poignant there. they both went downhill once they had no more idols to look up to.
---
i don't like/get myspace because of the way the page design is; it looks very cluttered. maybe that's why i don't have an account. for me, i don't necessarily post here because i want the whole world to know about me; just want to throw stuff off my chest. don't really like xanga either cause it seems mainly teenage asians are the ones using that, and always coming on with stuff like you'd want to listen to their day and stuff.
what i would really like though, is if there was a blogging site that let you upload .mp3's easily or .wavs, or stuff like that. i'm not always near a computer when i'm thinking, y'kno. but i usually have my mp3 player with me. then again, if i want to go through the trouble of recording, walking back to my computer, going to another website, uploading, then logging into blogger, linking back to the mp3, i'd be wasting a crapload of time too.
---
thank God for third chances...
---
i'd try cs: source this weekend, but my cpu doesn't have a lot of memory; maybe i'll just reinstall cs 1.6 until my cpu has less stuff on it. cs:s is 3+ gb.
---
i have 1 video uploaded to my youtube account(same name), plan to upload maybe 2 more.
---
i think it's only fair i cut myself off from youtube.com, shoyuken.com, and combovideos.com for a week or two. i think it's taking up too much of my time.
ravens are also the hotness. with mcnair, now it's not just ray lewis anymore.
some people like to compare t.o. to artest. i think t.o. is actually better compared to dennis rodman. the similarities are a lot more poignant there. they both went downhill once they had no more idols to look up to.
---
i don't like/get myspace because of the way the page design is; it looks very cluttered. maybe that's why i don't have an account. for me, i don't necessarily post here because i want the whole world to know about me; just want to throw stuff off my chest. don't really like xanga either cause it seems mainly teenage asians are the ones using that, and always coming on with stuff like you'd want to listen to their day and stuff.
what i would really like though, is if there was a blogging site that let you upload .mp3's easily or .wavs, or stuff like that. i'm not always near a computer when i'm thinking, y'kno. but i usually have my mp3 player with me. then again, if i want to go through the trouble of recording, walking back to my computer, going to another website, uploading, then logging into blogger, linking back to the mp3, i'd be wasting a crapload of time too.
---
thank God for third chances...
---
i'd try cs: source this weekend, but my cpu doesn't have a lot of memory; maybe i'll just reinstall cs 1.6 until my cpu has less stuff on it. cs:s is 3+ gb.
---
i have 1 video uploaded to my youtube account(same name), plan to upload maybe 2 more.
---
i think it's only fair i cut myself off from youtube.com, shoyuken.com, and combovideos.com for a week or two. i think it's taking up too much of my time.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
YouTube - Ataru381 - MUST SEE!!
that video just made me realize my chances of getting a girlfriend are not THAT low...
that video just made me realize my chances of getting a girlfriend are not THAT low...
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Crazy Pen Spinning Done By Japanese
i like the jrock guitar tracks they lay down in the background. maybe it might be on napster...
(rival by mintjam)
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skool has started... i is a college stoodent.
---
(edit: mintjam offers a couple of their tracks, including rival, for free in .mp3 format on their website; no need to visit napster)
i like the jrock guitar tracks they lay down in the background. maybe it might be on napster...
(rival by mintjam)
---
skool has started... i is a college stoodent.
---
(edit: mintjam offers a couple of their tracks, including rival, for free in .mp3 format on their website; no need to visit napster)
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Reason why Japanese arcades thrive so much more than American arcades, and hence why their competition skills are so much better than ours
the general consensus is that american ppl in the world play on consoles so much more because the difference in quality is really marginal now, that you don't need to go to the arcades to get high-quality arcade play.
but this is probably the best post i've seen on srk.com regarding this topic:
Originally Posted by fubarduck
Everyone sort of nailed a little bit of it, but not the whole reason. Sorry for the long post, but you guys need a culture lesson.
Yes, it is a culture difference. Population density is one factor.
The main reason that the Japanese culture revolves around riding trains to get places and thus meeting in public to do hang out. Yes, there is driving too, but typically most Japanese people live far away from the main downtown/city area where everything happens (which is always right next to a train station). So, when you leave your house in Japan, you are out for a while. You don't just drive/go somewhere and come back home (most esablishments don't even have parking, and if they do, it is pay parking)--when you're out, you're out and when you come home you're not going anywhere far for the rest of the day. You walk or take a bus to your nearest train station, which takes anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes depending on your closest train station, then wait for a train to take you to the nearest downtown area.
As a result, people don't just go hang out at other people's houses. First of all, they're smaller, and second of all many younger people live at home with their families until a much older age than in the US (since apartments are so expensive, especially in Tokyo area). It's a very big deal for a Japanese family to have visitors, and you definitely don't go just to hang out and play video games for a while. As a guest in a Japanese home you're expected to give your full attention and speak to everyone in the family. Also, people's houses are extremely inconvenient to get to, since they're typically far away from their closest train stations.
So, Japanese society is built around giving people places to hang out in the main area of each city near the central train station. This is why there are tons of coffee shops, karaoke bars, and drinking restaurants (which there is really no equivalent to in the US) all over town. Game centers (arcades) are just another one of those establishments--it's just a place where you can play video games with friends or with strangers. When people play video games at home, it's typically RPGs or adventure games which can be enjoyed by themselves. This is why it's never a big deal when the big fighting games do not come to console, or get arcade-perfect console ports. There is no need to own a joystick, PS2, or any fighting game to play fighting games competitively in Japan. You can get all the practice you need just by playing at the arcade, and arcades with fighting games here typically carry Arcadia magazines which have more detailed move lists and strategies which are free for anybody to browse.
This is why game centers (arcades) will never die in Japan. You do not play fighting games at your house, because people do not come over to your house to hang out, you meet them in public where there will always be coffee shops, karaoke, drinking restaurants, and game centers to meet at and hang out. Additionally, even for online games, Japanese gamers typically play at Internet Cafe's, not at their own house or apartment!
America, on the other hand, is a culture that revolves around driving and cars. In most areas you typically have to drive to get anywhere, and meeting friends at their place to hang out is pretty common practice. So, there is no point in going to an arcade to play video games, you can just do it at your friend's house. If you haven't noticed, the only places in America that still have typical "arcades" are places with lots of foot traffic--malls, university areas, and downtown areas. These esablishments would not be making money any other way, because the typical American would not have any reason to go to an arcade unless there is one around where he is travelling/hanging out by foot.
When the arcade scene was huge in the US, there was a distinction--the video games you could play at home were no where near as great as what you could play at an arcade. But now, games available on consoles are either arcade-perfect (to the average gamer's eyes) or even better than that. This is why the arcade scene died in America but is still going strongly in Japan.
So, now there are very few arcades, and the truly hardcore fighting game players still in the US all meet right here on SRK.com. If you want a true, hardcore arcade scene that will never ever disappear, move to Japan. The future of gaming in the US is at home, which means for competitive gaming, online is the future. For fighting games, this is bad news right now because of the limitations of current technology, but hopefully when Internet 2 rolls around latency will become much less of an issue and the hardcore fighting game scene may see a revival.
the general consensus is that american ppl in the world play on consoles so much more because the difference in quality is really marginal now, that you don't need to go to the arcades to get high-quality arcade play.
but this is probably the best post i've seen on srk.com regarding this topic:
Originally Posted by fubarduck
Everyone sort of nailed a little bit of it, but not the whole reason. Sorry for the long post, but you guys need a culture lesson.
Yes, it is a culture difference. Population density is one factor.
The main reason that the Japanese culture revolves around riding trains to get places and thus meeting in public to do hang out. Yes, there is driving too, but typically most Japanese people live far away from the main downtown/city area where everything happens (which is always right next to a train station). So, when you leave your house in Japan, you are out for a while. You don't just drive/go somewhere and come back home (most esablishments don't even have parking, and if they do, it is pay parking)--when you're out, you're out and when you come home you're not going anywhere far for the rest of the day. You walk or take a bus to your nearest train station, which takes anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes depending on your closest train station, then wait for a train to take you to the nearest downtown area.
As a result, people don't just go hang out at other people's houses. First of all, they're smaller, and second of all many younger people live at home with their families until a much older age than in the US (since apartments are so expensive, especially in Tokyo area). It's a very big deal for a Japanese family to have visitors, and you definitely don't go just to hang out and play video games for a while. As a guest in a Japanese home you're expected to give your full attention and speak to everyone in the family. Also, people's houses are extremely inconvenient to get to, since they're typically far away from their closest train stations.
So, Japanese society is built around giving people places to hang out in the main area of each city near the central train station. This is why there are tons of coffee shops, karaoke bars, and drinking restaurants (which there is really no equivalent to in the US) all over town. Game centers (arcades) are just another one of those establishments--it's just a place where you can play video games with friends or with strangers. When people play video games at home, it's typically RPGs or adventure games which can be enjoyed by themselves. This is why it's never a big deal when the big fighting games do not come to console, or get arcade-perfect console ports. There is no need to own a joystick, PS2, or any fighting game to play fighting games competitively in Japan. You can get all the practice you need just by playing at the arcade, and arcades with fighting games here typically carry Arcadia magazines which have more detailed move lists and strategies which are free for anybody to browse.
This is why game centers (arcades) will never die in Japan. You do not play fighting games at your house, because people do not come over to your house to hang out, you meet them in public where there will always be coffee shops, karaoke, drinking restaurants, and game centers to meet at and hang out. Additionally, even for online games, Japanese gamers typically play at Internet Cafe's, not at their own house or apartment!
America, on the other hand, is a culture that revolves around driving and cars. In most areas you typically have to drive to get anywhere, and meeting friends at their place to hang out is pretty common practice. So, there is no point in going to an arcade to play video games, you can just do it at your friend's house. If you haven't noticed, the only places in America that still have typical "arcades" are places with lots of foot traffic--malls, university areas, and downtown areas. These esablishments would not be making money any other way, because the typical American would not have any reason to go to an arcade unless there is one around where he is travelling/hanging out by foot.
When the arcade scene was huge in the US, there was a distinction--the video games you could play at home were no where near as great as what you could play at an arcade. But now, games available on consoles are either arcade-perfect (to the average gamer's eyes) or even better than that. This is why the arcade scene died in America but is still going strongly in Japan.
So, now there are very few arcades, and the truly hardcore fighting game players still in the US all meet right here on SRK.com. If you want a true, hardcore arcade scene that will never ever disappear, move to Japan. The future of gaming in the US is at home, which means for competitive gaming, online is the future. For fighting games, this is bad news right now because of the limitations of current technology, but hopefully when Internet 2 rolls around latency will become much less of an issue and the hardcore fighting game scene may see a revival.
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