Sunday, May 31, 2009

Here's a tip for Nintendo: Give the Wii Motion Plus away for each controller

Wii Motion Plus is simply amazing technology, while the original Wii controller (after all the hype has died down) really has been trying to do more than it was techinically possible and people have realized that they just were fooled into a gimmick that promised more than it delivered.

Wii Motion Plus finally makes possible and catches every movement and position with shocking accuracy. Unfortunately, the peripheral is worthless without having games for it. And I'm going to guess that people won't be buying these up like hot cakes. And developers will be making the Wii Motion Plus an optional accessory. And that is the problem.

I think if Nintendo gave it away, they'd have everyone adopting the new technology and all the games of the future could really shine. Until then it'll be a shame if developers don't develop their games with every single advantage they can gain with making thier game work magically with Wii Motion Plus because they have to dumb down things to make sure it still work with both types of controllers without putting too much work on them selves.

What's inside really? Probably a few dollars worth of parts. It is better that everyone adopted this fully rather than optionally. They'll be able to sell more games this way in my opinion. Say a great game comes out. What they want is everyone praising it and don't want someone else buying the game complaining that they are not experiencing anything new although they probably "think" that it would probably be better with Wii Motion Plus. Nintendo should make this investment, or do something like offer rebate programs if they buy Wii Motion Plus and buy a Wii Motion Plus supported game within 30 days.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Play Pinky Off, Keyboard Cat

We've reached the limits with flash video

Flash video was great around 2002 (give or take a year) when it exploded through YouTube. Unfortunately, sites (like YouTube and Hulu) are now using it for what it probably was intended for. I run my monitor resolution at 1920 x 1200. And my computer is no slouch. But when I watch high definition or 720p flash video at full screen, I get about maybe 8 frames per second. On some sites I can say turn the Quality to Low, and get to around 20fps. And if my computer's cpu doesn't catch fire, I'm able to enjoy the program.

Unfortunately, some of these sites thought it would be cute to disable the changing of quality so the users wouldn't get confused and watch a video in low quality.

h.264 doesn't seem like its the way to go because it is usually associated to quicktime. And everyone knows that Apple intentionally retards Quicktime on the PC (no overlay, no fullscreen(gotta pay for this feature), horrible performance (it is 10 times slower than flash video for high res videos), just like Microsoft retards business applications on Microsoft Office for the Mac. No PC user in their right mind is going to pay for intentionally crippled version of Quicktime when there are things like VLC Player.

There is much better technology available to us. And I'm sure everyone has heard abuot Divx. DivX has an amazing streaming video plugin that unfortunately only one site on the internet uses (vreel.net which is plauged by ads) Isn't that terrible? We can have amazing streaming video, but we're stuck with this flash crap. It would be nice if adobe bought DivX and incorporated into their flash player. Sure it has nothing to do with flash, but at least adobe can make themselves look like geniuses by making it happen. And it'll be great. They can deliver streaming bluray quality. It has been available for at least 2 years.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

The latest sourdough lesson

There are limits to how much the dough rises. If you leave it alone for too long, it actually starts deflating. And the key to the sourdough bread I've concluded so far is to bake it before it makes this transition. In the 1-2-3 recipe I found on youtube (1 cup starter, 1 cup water, 2 teaspoons of salt, and 3 cups of flour), 8 hours of letting it rise in a warm environment (above 90 degrees F) is absolutely the max. I think you should inspect the loaf around 4.5-6.5 hours to see if almost there.

What happened with the latest loaf I baked was that after the dough had risen, the dough wasn't thick enuogh (I could have paid attention to the thickness after I mixed in the flour, water, and salt to avoid this in the future). So what I did was I added more flour, let it rise again, then baked it. Unfortunately, this made the whole loaf go extra sour. The sourness was over the top. It was so sour that I could only eat the crust. The the soft part made me cringe with one eye shut as I furrowed my brow trying to keep the other eye open. It was definitely something else.

My frist 2 attempts were loafs with very little hint of sourness. But now I know how to make sourdough as sour as I want to make it. And there is definitely something as too sour sourdough. I just need to find the balance.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

My sourdough escapade continues

So that youtube video about the sourdough starter isn't perfect. There are 3 key things left out.

1. Do not use bleached flour. I believe all purpose flour is usually bleached, and this is what people normally have. Its true that you can grow your starter with unbleached flour, but it almost certainly won't be sour. After my first experience, although it was good bread, I was disappointed that it hardly tasted sour. And I was left wondering why. The starter itself should have smelled sour. But it definitely didn't. And it certainly isn't going to develop when the actual dough is rising.

2. Don't use water with chlorine in it. All tap water contains chlorine, even if you cannot taste it. My tap water comes out of a pur water filter, which should remove the chlorine taste but I'm sure there is some chlorine in there. As you can imagine, chlorine kills yeast, among other things. So what I do is I boil water for 5 minutes (lid off). This heavily accelerates the chlorine from evaporating. I've also heard you can leave tap water out for a day, and it should also do its job. But to be sure, I boil it, then leave it overnight for maximum dechlorination (i probably made that word up.)

3. Don't use metal anything. Supposedly metal contact will make the sourness go away. Stainless steel is the only metal that should be okay to handle the goods with. But aluminum, copper, brass, anything else can kill the sourness. You shouldn't let your starter grow in it. Don't let the dough rise in it. Although you can probably stir the starter with metal utensils, maybe mix your dough in a metal container, it seems as though almost all videos I've seen, people just avoid touching any metal when dealing with sourdough period. If you really want to make it sour, just don't take any risks of taking away any bit of the sourness. Just like when you're cooking anything, if you want the best product, you gotta handle it the best way possible without any shortcusts. In other words, don't be lazy especially when it doesn't take any extra effort.

I'm also having a bit of fun mixing in things to add flavor. I added a roasted red bell pepper & eggplant spread (trader joes) into the mix, and that produced some amazing smelling bread. It didn't rise as much as I wanted. I'm not sure if it was the natural perservatives in the bread, but I'll definitely have to explore than further.