A word for social media influencers?
Parvenu – par·ve·nu /ˈpärvəˌno͞o/ noun
“A person of obscure origin who has gained wealth, influence, or celebrity.”
The only institution to last 2000 years wasn’t because of us
“The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine – but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight” – Hilaire Belloc
Japanese Arcade Rhythm Games – Social/internet connected arcade machines
While US arcades haven’t seen a lot of growth or interesting development, Japan has kept their arcade experiences fresh and expanding in all kinds of creative ways.
Wacca is a Japanese rhythm arcade system developed by Marvelous along with hardcore techno label HARDCORE TANO*C. What makes it interesting is it’s focus on techno music and features a unique 360 multicolored touchscreen interface. The game’s circular display screen is enveloped by a circular touch panel on the outside. The player taps on the corresponding section of the touch panel as music notes approach the border of the circular screen. In addition to touch notes, the game also features hold notes, notes that slide left and right, and notes that involve flicking forwards and backwards on the touch pad.
Circular interfaces aren’t new. When I was in Japan before Covid, Sega’s game maimai was just becoming popular and really proved the interface had some serious possibilities. While first joking about the fact it looked like a front-loanding washing machine, it became a real hit.
An interesting part of Japanese arcade games is the increasing social and internet connectivity component. Unlike old stand-alone arcades, players can use players cards or a computer or smartphone to connect with maimai DX NET to access their scores and achievements, customize game settings, register with and compare friends’/rivals’ accomplishments/scores as well as compete in national rankings. Before maimai DX was released, it was possible to link a niconico account to upload a recording of the play from the camera built into the arcade machine. As time has gone on, there are now collaborations between different rhythm games and accounts.
This online and connected social aspect of the game along with the fun gameplay has really helped it become popular. As time went on, over 20 updates to the game and songs were released as well as a second generation of cabinets that were also constantly updated.
The regular updates (almost like seasons) keeps the play fresh and fun. As updates come out, players rank up and unlock new songs and new play mechanics. As players become advanced, they discover interesting hidden techniques and methods. Certain artists use particular touch motifs/techniques to add their own signature to their songs (swipes, taps, etc). It’s a real rabbit hole you can get into.
Wacca continued this trend of social connected play with regular updates when it was introduced in 2018. It looks like they have shut down Wacca and the online servers are now gone, but there is still a very active social community and now a fan project to bring it to VR.
It even made an appearance at GDQ 2024
Other articles:
- Stern’s new Marvel’s Venom pinball game may include some of the social features in Japanese arcades: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sterns-venom-pinball-machine-is-the-next-evolution-of-pinball/1100-6516940/
Using Greaseweazle to make bootable DOS disks
Have written previously about my experiments with the very excellent Greaseweazle; but that was reading things like my old Kings Quest 5.25″ floppy disks from my modern 12th Gen Intel PC running Windows 10.
Recently I acquired some old pc hardware and put together a retro 486-DX pc. To that end, I needed to create a DOS boot disk for this old system. That meant I needed to write a 1.2mb DOS boot disk.
Previously I used some boot disk images to create an old DOS virtual machine running Windows 1.0. For that, I used a bunch of archived boot disks images from WinWorld archive.
But how do I write these little beasts?
I floundered around with greaseweezle’s command line but this guide from Tech Tangents really helped out. There’s clearly a lot more I need to learn, but this got me a bootable 5.25″ 1.2mb floppy disk. I was able to test it on 2 different drives, and both worked. So, that’s pretty sweet!
Greaseweezle command line samples
How to write DOS 6.22 image to a 5.25″ 1.2m floppy drive attached to the ribbon cable right before the cable twist:
gw write --drive b --format ibm.1200 Dos6.22-5.25.img
To write a DOS 3.30 image to a 5.25″ 360k floppy drive attached to the ribbon cable right before the twist:
gw write --drive b --format ibm.360 DOS330-360k.img
3D from 2D photographs
Emm used her iPhone 12 Pro + @Scenario3d iphone app to generate this 3D image of her daughter.
Scenario makes a number of products. Read more about Scenario3d here.
LumiLabs also has some of their own offerings to capture scenes.
Articles:
Dean’s Scene Home Brewery
I recently found out about an old-Portland speakeasy. Dean opened up his basement in NE Freemont for people to come hang out and drink. He made some beers, ‘gave’ them away for a $20 door donation, and never bothered to get a liquor license or card people. People would come hang out in his basement and have some beers.
He got shut down in 2014 by the OLCC and it appears he died just a few years later, but not before he had tons of people swing by. He didn’t bother to card and it was apparently quite the little hangout.
It appears it was purchased and re-opened in 2018 after being under uncertain ownership.
Read about more legitimate undeground bars here.
Articles:
Amazing Photos and events during the 2024 Eclipse
Amazing Photos from the 2024 eclipse
PetaPixel collected some amazing photos of the eclipse.
Purdue/Indy 500 eclipse watching party
Purdue co-sponsored an eclipse watching party at the Indianapolis 500 motor speedway. There were science events, NASA gave several presentations, an Indy car racer did some demo laps, and astronauts were on hand to sign autographs. There’s some good pictures on the recap website.
Shatner comes to Indiana
William Shatner went to Indiana University for an eclipse event. He was joined by performers from IU’s musical theatre and dance programs, as well as an appearance by retired NASA astronaut Mae Jemison and a concert by Janelle Monáe. He’ll be performing a spoken word piece as part of the celebration’s program, with his last words ending just as totality is beginning.
NASA chases the eclipse
NASA sent two of their NASA Martin/General Dynamics WB-57F planes N926NA and N927NA to chase the eclipse at 50,000ft. You could track them on adsbexchange.
Links:
YouTube Ad blockers
Old School Gamer outlines a long list of ways to get around YouTube’s recent fight against ad blockers. If you’re frustrated with unskippable ads or getting stuck in a stream of multiple ads, or ads that pop up every 30 seconds in your videos, this article might be helpful.
Two of my favorites:
- Set your VPN to a country that doesn’t have ads ( great for mobile devices )
- Albania, Moldova, or Myanmar
- Use a Adblock for Youtube: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-for-youtube/cmedhionkhpnakcndndgjdbohmhepckk
He outlines a great number of other methods as well – definitely worth checking out.
Portland had the largest loss of employment in the country over the last year
The unemployment rate in the metro area stood at 4.2% in March 2024 – which isn’t that bad. The problem is that from a year ago, total employment fell 1.5% from the same time last year. Portland fared worse than all other US cities.
Local companies are tightening their belts. There have been big layoffs at Nike, Columbia sportswear, Wieden+Kennedy, Axios, and VACASA. The commercial vacancy rate in Portland is now the highest in the country – and is not predicted to recover for about a decade.
So how can you still have a decent unemployment rate while actual job hiring is shrinking? People are leaving the metro area. The last 3 years Portland metro has seen a net SHRINKING population – for a variety of very predictable reasons.
This isn’t something people can wave off as just a fluke. It’s been a 3 year trend, and it’s one that’s got demographers sounding alarm bells. Especially when many other parts of the country are seeing very nice population, employment, and civic growth.
Articles:
2015 Crosstrek CVT servicing
Should you service your Subaru Crosstrek CVT with a fluid change? There’s lots of conflicting information, but MrSubaru1387 gives us a great skinny. Long story short:
- CVT fluid does not perform the same purpose as fluid in a regular transmission – so many arguments on the internet are not correct.
- Subaru of America says the fluid is lifetime and you do not need to service it with a fluid change unless you’re doing towing or severe driving off-road
- Some groups say every 30k or 60k. His shop recommends every 125k, my local shop in Oregon says 105k
- He recommends not touching it until 100k miles and then changing it every 100k (unless you’re doing severe driving – which he would recommend every 50k-ish)
Here’s a video of him doing a CVT service on a Forester with 189591 miles that was having some hesitation off the line. Afterwards it