I finally finished playing through Painkiller (and it's first expansion), which I bought awhile ago and has been sitting on my shelf for a while. The game is a fun Serious Sam kinda game, with very solid weapons that are fun to use. I wonder how the multiplayer scene was, probably back when the game was more played. Maybe it's still played today, I don't know. I do know that it at least used to be pretty big, with tournaments and stuff.

Anyway the last level of the main game is well worth playing the game for. The presentation of it is very, very amazing. Do it! Or just watch the video here, which I found today by searching for any other Lets Play's by Psychedelic Eyeball, who is one of my favorite Lets Players. The subtitles are very well written, well describe what's awesome about the level, and even make it better. I went and gave Painkiller an extra star of rating on Backloggery after watching that video.

So this Sunday, on the 4th of July, I went to Daphny's place and met Tim Rogers and Bob! It was very awesome, as I have much respect for the two. I implored the question of perhaps joining them on their quest to develop games, since I myself am interested in making games, and going to Japan to do so would be awesome. He basically said to email him something. My portfolio is pretty good as it is so far, but it distinctly lacks an actual game, which I'm sure is something he'd be looking for. So I need to make a game.

I've decided to retool AIDemo2 into a game, something with at least one level and some interesting progression. I have some things planned out that should make it interesting, and thought of a name for it - (in)Decisive Action. So I'll be working on that in due time.

Before then, I need to finish up the new website for Anime Club. I've been putting a good amount of work into it, so hopefully it's well received. I still would like to make a Riichi Mahjong game for Android/iPhone, but... well I'm not starting any new projects until this site is done, that's for sure. I'm learning a few new Rails tricks from putting this guy together, and it's certainly the most complex website I've done thus far.

Also since I've gotten this Masters I'll need to revise my site and resume again. I also need to put those new publications on the projects page on my site, although I don't think I can link directly to the SBIM paper until after a year. Some copyright thing.

So last week I went to France for the SBIM-NPAR conference in Annecy where I was presenting my skeletal figure recognition system. I haven't had the time to really relay the trip here on Charhut much. I've been back home here for a short break this week, although the break has been going very very quickly. I have a few games and a bunch of anime I want to play and watch, as well as programs I want to finish and other things I'd like to take care of. But now I guess I have some time to write some stuff here.

I wouldn't know how to talk about everything I saw in France, but I can relay a bunch of stuff. I biked to the Santa Barbara airport and went to Salt Lake City, then Philadelphia, and then Paris. In Philly I got a philly cheesesteak. Amazing! A fine, fine cheesesteak (for 9 bux...). I took the plane to the CDG airport in Paris, and quickly got on the RER train to take me into the city. Everything was in French, and people were talking in French! I was definitely in a different place. The plan was to goto the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and spot Notre Dame real quick like. But first I needed to drop off my bags somewhere to do that.

The weather report said it would be raining, but I lucked out and it was just really cloudy out. I trainned up to Gare de Lyon (after gesturing to someone to point me to the second train to take to get there, and a good amount of smiling and nodding at all the french accompanying the directions) and tried to find the lockers. To no avail! The original plan was just to find them as soon as I got there, but it really didn't work out. I searched high and low and could only find an information desk in a much different place in the station. The lady spoke a bit of english and gave me some tricky directions. I eventually did find it, but I was confused as to how much time I had left, thinking I had like 1 1/2 hours until the train from Gare de Lyon left for Annecy, but I guess I actually had 2 1/2 hours. They needed to repair the machines to scan your luggage in to check it which would take 15 minutes, and it was going to be like 8 Euros, so I decided to just lug all my junk to Notre Dame (my rolly suitcase and laptop bag) which was within walking distance. So I got there and checked it out and came back.

I got a bread sandwich thing which was easy because I could just sort of point at it and then give them money. They had a lot of bread/pastry shops in the train station. I saw people carrying baguettes outside. One guy was playing accordion near Notre Dame! Lots of cafes, lots of tables outside, lots of people smoking. There is a self-service bicycle rental system in Paris which I was aiming to use, but I couldn't find those stupid lockers in time. I wasn't able to make the most of my time in Paris, unfortunately.

I tried to sleep on the train from Paris to Annecy, as I had already been awake for 24+ hours at that point, travelling. I left my room at school at like 4 AM, and when I touched down in Paris, it was 8 AM again. IIRC the train left at like 1:30 PM.

I got to Annecy at like 6 PM, and went to the Kyriad hotel (a chain like Motel 6, apparently) that was near the train station, as I thought that was the one I had a room in. Nope, it was the other Kyriad hotel, which was apparently too far to walk. They called a cab for me, who took the long way there, which cost like 20 euros in the end. I got into my room which was very, very small. There was maybe 2 feet of walking space on all three sides of the bed, and a little hallway going to a door on the other side of the room, leading to the parking lot. The door only locked/unlocked from the inside, so it was useless to me. Also it had a window with a see-through curtain, which wasn't that great. The bathroom was a little more roomy, but not much, and had a weird bathtub/shower. All the TV stations were in French except they got the BBC, so I was able to keep up with the news while I was there.

I went down a little hill and found a bus stop. All the bus stops there had maps, even the little ones, which was nice. The bus would only cost 1.10 euros, and after looking at the map for awhile, I found a nearby station which could take me directly to the university. I made a test walk there, and found that it was a 15 minute walk, pretty much on the nose. There was a cool looking pizza place there, and it was the only thing I could tell that was open besides another bakery. I managed to order a pizza after trying to put together a french sentence from the sheet of french stuff Kristen gave me. They just sort of stared at me and gave me a menu to point at. The pizza was weird because you needed to cut it into slices yourself with a knife and it had, like, big slices of meat they put on that would cover like a third of the whole pizza each, as opposed to the small toppings.

Also all drinks are measured in centiliters. The pizza was also measured in centimeters.

The next day I went to the conference! Stuff happened there, good lunches, etc. Listened to a lot of interesting talks. I then went downtown and explored Annecy a bit. Before I knew it it was like 8 PM. No problem, right? Except pretty much no more buses run that late. So I walked back to my hotel because taxis (anywhere, really) were so expensive. It wasn't quite as far as the guy originally said, as it was pretty much only a 45 minute walk, again almost right on the nose.

And oh yes - I didn't have a power adapter. So I couldn't plug in my laptop or anything at the hotel. At the conference a guy I met from UC Irvine had a power strip so I could plug stuff in and get a full charge. Also.. my presentation wasn't really ready yet for Wednesday, since the previous week or two was so ridiculously busy (in the end, everything got finished, which was good). So I had to rely on those full battery charges I could get during the day for working on stuff in the hotel at night.

I was asked to chair a session for the conference on Tuesday. Super! So I did that and kept a tight ship, ending right on time and with everyone having the right amount of time, etc. There was a film festival going on downtown, the annual Annecy international animation film festival. I didn't get a chance to actually watch any of the showings but I browsed some of the shops in the area of the film festival, which had quite a bit of comics and graphic novels and manga and animated stuff, all in French. A bookstore, but specializing in that sort of thing. I imagined it was highly affiliated with the festival. I got a french manga for Kristen :D

The festival is a fairly high profile animation festival. They were showing three anime movies that I knew of - one of the One Piece movies, the new Evangelion movie, and Summer Wars. I would have been willing to watch Summer Wars again, I guess, but I didn't end up doing so.

I finished putting together my presentation, putting together the last handful of slides and practicing it a couple times and figuring out how to turn a 50 minute presentation (from my masters project defense) into a 20 minute talk with a few extra minutes for a demo. I figured out what to cut and determined how to talk quickly. Giving the presentation the next day went really well, although my recognizer glitched out a little bit and I needed to restart it once. But it recognized everything I wanted it to recognize!

They had a reception on a boat that would go around the lake that Annecy is on. It was a nice boat and nice dinner, for sure. There were other groups reserved for the boat, one of which was a good sized Japanese group. I figured they were there for the film festival, and perhaps were there because their film was being showed? There were a couple of younger women with them. Maybe one of them was a seiyuu I'd know. Not that I could recognize them by their faces or anything.

I finished up the trip and headed home. Trained back to the Paris airport, and got a bottle of wine there. Flew to Boston, which is when a ton of problems arose. I needed to check my rolley bag which now had a bottle of wine in it, and I guess the plane needed to be repaired and was delayed a few hours, such that they put people into hotels in Salt Lake City that night and rebooked them for a flight the next morning. So I ended up getting to Santa Barbara 12 hours later than I expected.

So yeah! I got back, got my graduation clothes, and uh, did that the next day! So now I successfull have a Masters degree in Computer Science! For the summer I'll be doing more research at UCSB, though, doing some network security visualization stuff in the Allosphere. Should be pretty darn sweet, and I intend on making the visualization look awesome. There won't be many people who can put such an awesome 3D application for such an awesome platform into their portfolio. It should be sweet.

There are other things I'm wanting to do now as well. I want to finish playing Assassin's Creed 2, and finish the Anime Club's new website that I've been working on but haven't had the chance to touch in quite a while. Hopefully I'll be able to, although this week break is going very fast. I would like to work more again on From Dusk into Twilight, although I'm thinking that if I'm going to make a game I should start small, like making an online Riichi Mahjong game for mobile phones. I've been throwing around some ideas on how to make a better interface for it than the other Mahjong iPhone games I've seen screenshots for. I have some ideas that could pan out well.

Alright!

I got my passport in the mail on Monday! I guess when they say 2-3 weeks for the government to get it back to you with express processing, they do mean it. Got to me pretty much 2 weeks on the nose. All conditions are cleared for France!

This weekend is finally Fanime! Woo! I have a couple hours here at work to debug some of my program, and maybe I can get a little debugging in on the ride back home. I got a ride with a friend so I don't have to take the bus, which is nice. The Greyhound is okay, I don't mind taking the bus, but it's gotten a bit more expensive. It used to be only like 60bux to go back home and back, and now it's like 90.

Some of the highlights: I get to show off my 3 costumes! Louise, Mako, and Mihoko! It seems like there's going to be 2v2 Starcraft, 4v4 UT3, and 4v4 L4D2 tournaments! Hopefully I'll be able to meet some people and get a game of Mahjong going! I'm going to meet up with an internet friend, and I get to see a bunch of other friends! Plus we'll see what else that ends up emerging in terms of happenings~

I need to update Charhut more so I'm not worried about having like 3 facebook updates in a row on Charhut's front page. Or maybe I can redo the layout so facebook updates don't take up so much vertical real estate.

I've been reading this article for how to add some DirectX stuff to WPF. Not only is it going to be very useful for doing what I want to do with my Person Paster project (an application using my stick figure recognizer for extracting people from photos and placing/posing them in other photos using stick figures) but it might have helped a bit with LX Engine! I had no idea and didn't really look into why on Vista/7, LX Engine always had grainy transparency and no anti-aliasing. Apparently it is because I'm using DirectX 9 and not DirectX 9Ex. Like, I had a feeling that might be an issue way back in the day when I heard about it, long before Vista came out, but I never really followed up on that hunch. The whole "lets stop dicking around with game tools and start making games" deal.

I would like to work on From Dusk into Twilight again. I have a lot of projects on my plate right now, though. But maybe I can just kind of like... finish them. I'm feeling a bit more motivated. It doesn't take too much - there was a thread on SA I only briefly skimmed the beginning of, saying that to get a game development job, you need to make cool things. That's not news to me. But I haven't been in the business of making 'cool things' for a while, I fear. The stick figure recognizer is plenty cool, but... yeah. I also was reading Tim Rogers' new Kotaku column here, which also made me feel like actually making something. Even if it's a more simple game... although I think From Dusk into Twilight is a fine goal.

Also upon further consideration, I cannot continue to feel that Deadly Premonition is "so-bad-it's-good". That certainly is the case when you first pick it up, and is certainly the case when you experience some of the sillier scenes, like the oft-pointed-to scene with breakfast with Polly at the hotel. It's cheesy and strangely acted, bizzare and hilarious, and sort of goes on for too long. The driving is hard to get a hold of, and 'driving' York can be jarring at first. I can understand why a person might turn off the game at that point, but at the same time I want to tie them down to the chair and force the controller back in their hand. Press on! You will be amazed, because "so-bad-it's-good", with a little suspension of disbelief, turns into simply "good".

One of the top youtube searches for Deadly Premontion is this YouTube review by some video game reviewing group. They gave it a 2/10. I wanted to leave a critical comment but I decided against it because it would be very difficult to get across what I wanted to say. The review is shallow. It focuses squarely on the controls and graphics and driving and shooting and, essentially, all the wrong things when it comes to looking at this game. It's like trying to give GOD HAND a bad score because the graphics are bad. It's not the point!

The point is the experience, and the story. It's bizarre and quirky and flawed, but produces so much soul it's unreal. You can tell that the developers loved making this game. The last few hours of the game are amazing. There are moments of the game that make you feel that shit is going down. During the final bosses and cutscenes, as well as one of the 'big reveals', I felt like the game was saying something about, I dunno. Perception. Self. What it means to 'control' a character in a game. I can't tell you why though, because something artistic will invoke in people something that just wont in someone else.

So yeah. I would recommend Deadly Premonition to anyone. Not because it's "so-bad-it's-good", but because it's amazing.

The paper for my skeletal figure recognizer was accepted to SBIM! I found out this last weekend, and I've been using this week for putting the finishing touches on the final version. Although I submitted a final version already, I got some other suggestions for revision. I'll hopefully finish those this weekend, and submit another version. I also need to prepare a presentation for Monday on this paper I finished reading a short time ago, on texture reconstruction on a scanned 3D object using computer vision stuff.

But I need to also see about getting myself to SBIM, which takes place in Annecy, France! I'll be able to send off the application for the passport on Monday ( $160 bux, geez ), which should hopefully get here on time. The expedited process takes two weeks or so. I already transferred a bunch of money from my savings and purchased the conference registration, plane tickets, rail tickets, and hotel reservations, all-and-all about $3000. Luckily I'm getting reimbursed. I was considering renting a car, but I guess the train will do. I don't know how to drive stick anyway ( although I get the idea behind it ).

Also I've been recently playing through Deadly Premonition, an amazing 360 game. The more I play it, the harder it is to describe. It's amazing. Super amazing. Each bit of it is incredibly B-quality, but the experience as a whole is fantastic. I don't feel like describing it in detail right now, but it's the epitome of "so-bad-it's-good".

I also finally got a call back from Microsoft the other day. Although the interviews went quite well, they said that all the internal restructuring they were doing that resulted in it taking so long for them to get back to me also results in the position not being available. They said to try again in August, and that they usually ask people to try again the next year. Saying that conditions would be more favorable then. I'll hold them to that, as it sounds reasonable.

In the interim, my professor offered for me to work in his lab over the summer. He said he would probably have a set project in mind, but that's fine. Unless something else comes my way, I'll probably go ahead and do that! I have this room leased through the summer anyway, so it's a pretty easy thing to do. There are some other advantages as well, which shall remain unnamed.