And another thing!

I was going to maybe blog about the couple of episodes of Project Runway that I've watched, and what I think about the show from what I've gleaned from watching that much of it, but I think the last entry I made says just about all I need to say on the nature of the show.

Well, that and they seem to tend to pick the right 2-3 worst designers, but they always send the wrong one home.

A Rant About Visual Design

Between the two of us, my girlfriend is the one who does the visual design. I'm not much of a visual artist (as one can tell from the couple of times I've posted my own images), which may be the reason that I prefer my visual information to be generally simple and clear.

While browsing through the archives of The Daily WTF, I found a link to a gallery that's clearly tailored for StumbleUpon. It shows a series of "creative resumes" for people in the graphic design field. It's a rather old link -- from 2009 -- but it's new to me, so I figured I'd comment on it

I was surprised that as many people had been defending the designs in the comments as I found. Although they capture visual interest quickly, they almost all feel completely over-designed. The information in them is nearly impossible to glean, and most aren't particularly friendly to black-and-white laserjet printers.

The effect is similar to a person standing on the street with a bullhorn yelling to try to get people to pay attention. Sure, it's loud enough to get attention, but hell if I can ever tell what people using them are saying. It always sounds like a garbled mess.

I would actively reject any such resume if it was put in front of me, if I were in charge of hiring at a decently-sized graphic design firm. That is, I would be turned off by these designs more than a completely plain resume made in 30 minutes in Word. There are a few reasons for this!

1. It demonstrates that the person making it doesn't understand what the purpose of the resume is for -- to convey specific (written) information about the individual's education and experience. Design that actually obscures the text is counter-productive to that end.
2. It suggests that the designer's ego cannot be kept in check. "Pffft, I'm not going to tone down my work for the plebes in suits who will be looking over it. If they can't appreciate my genius then maybe they don't deserve it!" Then again, maybe everyone wins if the applicant holds that attitude. Unless, you know, he or she is in need of a job.
3. The designer probably has a portfolio that can be used to demonstrate situations where more intricate visual designs were appropriately used. The resume does not need to need to speak for itself.
4. Similar to the first point, what if the applicant, once hired, comes across a design job that requires a relatively minimalistic approach? Can he or she be trusted to do that if the resume implies a lack of restraint?

To put it more succinctly, it's the equivalent of going to a job interview wearing a shirt like this. (I took the courtesy of not embedding it because some people might be concerned about the foul language displayed prominently on it, even if I have no fucking clue how the people who'd give a shit could have found this damn blog.)

Okay, I admit, that was a bit forced and cliche.

In any case, if I had to go through a couple hundred resumes, I would most certainly not try to spend more than a few minutes going through each one. If I had to, in order to get any information out of it, it would go in the pile.

I would not hire most of these applicants to design a website for me, since these resumes suggest that usability principles would go out the window FAST; the site would be cluttered and probably inefficient. ("What do you mean people still use dial-up?")

I might accept this sort of work for a print ad for a growing organization, though, where the main goals are to get visual interest and some level of name recognition. But that's far out of my realm of expertise anyway so I don't feel comfortable making a sweeping statement regarding that.

One comment on that page linked to another one with more modest resume ideas. These are all excellent! They are visually interesting, accessible, and printer-friendly, while also being uncluttered. The focus of the design goes more in choosing the typography and developing a focused layout. I would sooner go with a resume that looked like one of these but only had "lorem ipsum" text over it than the first set of resumes I saw.

I suppose ultimately it's a question of sizzle over steak. Or spending an extra 10 seconds looking at something that takes a full minute more to comprehend.

If there's any good news, it's that most of the entries in the first link seem to be done as non-serious assignments for classes rather than used to seek out actual work. *Phew*

Comments on my recent 8BitCollective uploads

This might be interesting to people who have been working in TFM or are curious about how the heck I make my music. Here's a relatively detailed explanation of the songs that I uploaded, with a bit more emphasis on how they were done in TFM.

Aqueuct of Dragons (from Harmony of Dissonance)

When I first heard the song, I was almost immediately reminded of the boss music from Shadow Dancer for the Genesis. Thus my angle for the song would be to arrange it pretty tightly to the original, but use (steal) the voices from that song. Of course, the main problem in doing so is that Shadow Dancer had sampled drums while TFM does not. I worked with a couple premade drum samples and tried to make them a bit deeper and louder to compensate; both Shadow Dancer and Harmony of Dissonance have rather low-rate sampled drums and as a result sound a bit muffled. Though the low-pass filter on the Genny does a lot to make FM drums less tinny, the drums still have much more treble than Shadow Dancer's rums. It's surprising how much using drums like that and livening up the tempo slightly improve on each song.

It's also slightly inspired by the Bravoo Man boss music from Gunstar Heroes, near the end there. I tried to add echo; doubling up the arpeggios with a delay helps that a lot, while having a second bass voice come in that has slower release and sustain rates helps too.

Iron Blue Intention (from CV: Bloodlines)

Although I did once do a fuller TFM remake of The Sinking Old Sanctuary for this game, the other songs from the game I've remade have all been done using PSGmod2 (which is an emulated tracker for the SN76489 chip that the Genny and Master System, among others, used). I went back to this after a couple experiments with Famitracker, partly as a comparison base. I'm always disappointed that the SN chip doesn't have configurable duty cycles or any sort of PCM playback channel, though, since the bass on the chip is always disappointing; in the bits where it feels like the bass suddenly "cuts out" it's because the chip can't play notes lower than a certain value.

Another thing that always bothers me about the tracker is that it doesn't seem to have a real "release" command; the command that's equivalent always leaves a little bit of noise. For once, though, I was going to try to cut that down by making that command completely silent. It's still a bit frustrating to change the volume for each note release, but can be done.

The tracker (and, of course, the chip itself) have a configurable frequency divider (basically tunes the entire song down an octave) which can be useful for getting those bass notes, but I don't know any easy-to-use replayers for the Genesis that support it! I dunno if that's simply because they got rid of that feature when they cloned the chip for their consoles (doubtful?) or if it's because nobody ever used it so they didn't think to support it. Would love to know if someone knows of a replayer that does support it; it would make my life a lot easier.

You Goddamned Bathead (from Castlevania Chronicles / CV X68000)

An interesting exercise. This is one of those sorts of songs I do that can't easily be converted from TFM into another tracker due to the use of some of the features involved in getting the sound right.

In making this song I decided I wanted to get it to sound at least a little like the version from Chronicles (though I feel that the music from that game tends to sound a bit over-produced at times). Like a lot of -- actually pretty much every -- electronic song out there, the song adjusts the main line's timbre to be higher as the song increases. With a little poking around I found I could get the same effect modifying the frequency multiple and total volume level of the first operator of one of the voices. Since TFM supports changing this every single line, what I ended up doing was modifying the total level every time the note hit and changing frequency basically every measure.

Unfortunately, the tracker doesn't support automatic incrementing and decrementing of these values! I had to input them all by hand (and convert between hexadecimal and decimal numbers). It's not hard so much as a bit laborious, which is why I don't use it much. Incidentally, the maximum volume level is 0 but the maximum frequency is at 15 (starting at 0 for the lowest). This makes it a bit more confusing.

Incidentally the only thing that I did to get a transcription of this one was watch the player output from Hoot in order to get most of the melody lines and then built the song from there. However, what I guess would be considered the "verse" of the song was sped up significantly and added in a reference to Psycho Warrior from one of the GB Castlevanias.

It's not an incredibly complex song. :P

Successor of Fate (Harmony of Dissonance)

I love the volume changes in the original that make the chorus stand out so much. I tried to capture the same feeling of the original in that regard (and the bassy sound that the game had -- hard to do when the percussion's not sampled, as it tends to be more treble than GBA or Genny sampled drums, as I suggeste above!). The main inspiration for the direction of this piece was the overworld music from Shining Force II as it had similar aspects of the original, such as being a bit booming (like in the intro) and having a feeling of more reverb than a lot of Genny songs. It had the advantage of some deep drum samples to getting that sound (which, again also had a lot to do with the GBA game's bassy tone as well). Once again the lack of sample playback in TFM would come to haunt me.

Thus this song actually took a while to get "right" because I kept having to worry about keeping the percussion in balance (I didn't want it to get drowned out, since it needs to be forceful) and to try to get the sort of resonating tone (hey, the Castle is gigantic and the entryway in particular is open; why not have the music for that section be so echoey). Thus I kept a lot of the voices really quiet -- as much as I could, while leaving the percussion super loud.

Some might notice that a lot of the voices sound like they came from Shining Force II. Though I took some stylistic cues from there, I did not actually rip instruments from the game. All were pre-made for TFM and had small modifications done (mainly to increase attack rate and eliminate sharp decays so they don't seem to either "fade in" or "click").

What exactly was taken from that game, then? Most importantly, when notes were released in the song I linked from it above, they didn't use a clean release. Instead the volume was cut significantly (so the note played, though quietly) behind everything else --except the main melody line, which was doubled (much like in Aqueduct above). For the most part the effect is subtle here, but would probably be more noticeable if I'd created a version that didn't have it in it. Separating the individual lines also makes the effect more obvious -- just as it does in the song I patterned it on.

One thing you'll notice is that on the repeat of the chorus the melody comes in a little later; on the transcription I used I'd pushed everything off by a quarter note on one of the lines. I liked the effect here as it was haunting to hear the strings playing on their own with the slightly dissonant note from the melody still resonating; the rhythm of line that then comes in still fits with everything else (it's not like everything's been shifted from downbeats to upbeats or anything), so I think it works.

Incidentally, the slightly distorted "static" tone the organ has at the start of the song comes from the fact that the console produces noise, which is more noticeable when the music playing is quieter. Most of the songs I make are loud enough that this noise isn't really audible, but you can hear it a few places where I cut the volume down on a few other hardware recordings.

Hey have a link to another blog

One of my friends from an old network has her own blog now, and you can catch it at the following address:

http://certainlysomethingelse.blogspot.com/

You all should read it because she was kind enough to read all of my blog, and as a result I think she deserves something nice for her punishment. From the looks of it I'd expect a lot of the post to be about women's issues and sexuality in particular, with sporadic internet cultural commentary to mix it up a bit.

Aitch too oh what the hell did I just read

I'm not sure if the people who read this blog are aware of Dr. Rolando Arafiles. The short story is that this guy promoted a bunch of nonsensical and ineffective treatments for serious medical conditions and was selling expensive therapies of his own from the hospital, basically all of which were of highly dubious efficacy.

When a pair of nurses brought him up on this matter, they had charges brought against themselves as a matter of intimidation. Dr. Arafiles had connections in the legal system that let him do that, specifically the Winkler County Sheriff Robert Roberts, Jr. This is also part of the current investigation against him.

Another thing, just to mention, that has been brought against him was the claim that he "performed and billed for unnecessary genitourinary exams" which sounds similar to claims brought against other quack physicians. Of course, in those links you've got actual OB/GYN doctors, for whom such acts could more easily be hired -- what the hell was Arafiles doing? Checking the urine (or "urinary tract" *wink-wink*) for toxic heavy metals as quacks are so wont to do?

Now, as noted above, Arafiles was in some sense advertising his secondary source of income from the hospital. Specifically that meant doing some things such as selling a water alkalinizer for $1,475 or so. Now, just so we're on the same page, the name suggests that the device is meant to reduce the acidity of drinking of water, because apparently drinking water shouldn't be too acidic. On his web site selling these things, he claims it can reduce hypertension, diabetes, morning sickness, hangovers, kidney stones, obesity; that it can heal wounds faster, reduce acne, and mosturize skin; and that it has a smooth taste and can dissolve matter. Actually, I've got a big issue with that last point -- and that's that if it can do that, doesn't that mean it ends up absorbing some of the omnipresent environmental toxins that the sorts of doctors warning about the dangers of acidic water always are talking about?

Even then, there are some obvious issues to take with the claim that slightly acidic water is as bad for you, or at least not as good as the alkaline water. First of all, it's all going to go right into the stomach, which is basically a small tub of acid. Secondly, plenty of foods we eat are high in acid content. Although it would be disingenuous (i.e., the sort of strawman question such a doctor would make) to ask "Where are the lemons with severe acne and morning sickness then?" certainly nobody seems to have an issue with them, and I've heard plenty of claims that the only thing that will cure a cold is large amounts of Vitamin C (also known as ascorbic acid).

I have to say I love it when quacks can't agree on what's good for a person.

Anyway, on Arafiles's site selling the alkalinizer, there's a really funny picture. Click on it to get a bigger picture.

...

Yeah, folks. That's right. Water is a mysterious liquid. HOW DOES IT WORK?

Someone get ICP on the phone, we're probably about to have a breakthrough.

If you'd like to read more, see here:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/07/the_texas_medical_board_finally_gets_off.php

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2009/09/who-will-speak-out-for-you.html

You know what? I've been reading a lot of Square Root of Minus Garfield lately, which is like Garfield Minus Garfield with even more inside-jokes and a fair amount of specific nerd humor.

I was inspired to create my own variant. It's based on a classic Garfield Minus Garfield, but with an extra panel to make it even more dumb. Honestly very little time was spent thinking it up (as if it weren't completely obvious). Most of the effort was in trying to get the third panel to be mostly consistent with the other two in terms of coloring, as well as editing out Garfield and Odie.

Here's the result:

Considering that no other characters have shown up, the implications are staggering.

blah blah POKEMON blah blah: Gen V predictions

Here are some predictions I have for the new generation of Pokemon (Black and White):

- The games will have backward-compatibility with the current generation games (HeartGold/SoulSilver/Diamond/Pearl/Platinum); I imagine this to be in much the same way that G/S/C did with the very first games -- you won't be able to take any new pokemon with you when you do, but you'll be able to trade between the games, and this will be necessary in order to get certain pokemon; some pokemon from Generation IV (and I and II as found in HG/SS) will *NOT* be in this game. Wi-fi plaza compatibility will probably be the same; there will probably be two Wi-fi clubs; one that works with Gen IV and one that is Gen V exclusive (again, like the G/S/C Time Capsule); you won't be able to take Gen V pokemon into the older one.

- I don't know what sort of GTS compatibility will be found, but there will still be some. It'll probably be easy enough to work around the fact that people can put up Gen IV or older pokemon and request Gen V ones (which would possibly glitch the older games if they saw those requests, not that they could fulfill them) with a GTS server-side check to prevent a Gen IV game from accessing Gen V requests; keeping in mind the GTS only displays a few results in-game out of the many offerings they have at any time (only 3-7 out of 20+), this seems fairly easy to take into account. Incidentally, given that you can't request pokemon you haven't seen, you won't be able to import Gen V pokemon into the older games, since there will be no way to see them. I think I better understand the reasoning behind this decision now.

- Naturally, the games will have some sort of DSi enhancement. A few articles have noted that the games' ID numbers imply DSi special compatibility. Exactly what this is isn't clear. It would be interesting to see SD card compatibility for saves and pokemon storage, similar to what a number of the "Pokemon Box" console titles do, and could allow for transfer of items/pokemon like in the Stadium titles. There might be additional downloadable content for the system only availiable for DSi. Graphics or framerate might improve (the generation IV titles hold a constant 30 fps due to the 3D engine, while the older games managed 60), but I'm not sure how the two systems vary graphically. I could imagine small DLC games and such for fiddling around with individual Pokemon much like how the Pokewalker works or the Sonic Advance Tiny Chao Gardens were done. Probably nothing earth-shattering (shoot, G&S were playable on the original Game Boy too). Pokemon Sunday apparently recently showed some slightly visually enhanced battle segements. Also looks like it's taking place from less of a top-down perspective, which is interesting; the 3D space wasn't really taken advantage of the way it could have been in the Gen IV titles, I'd say. Will this be the special feature for the DSi? I'm doubtful, since Super Mario 64 DS can do that sort of thing pretty well too, and that's a normal DS title.

Note the confirmation in that link on the ability to trade between the generations. Much like Arceus and Rotom can unlock areas in HG/SS, apparently some of the legendaries in the Gen IV titles will cause things to happen in these games as well.

- We'll see a Generation III remake. Almost an inevitability, really, given that DSi users have no GBA slot to use when playing the Gen. IV titles; the dual slot mode used in, say, Pal Park, is completely worthless. Besides, we've seen remakes of Gen I and II (which have been pretty successful) already, so why not? A number of people have traded in the DS for the DSi and so don't have any way to get the Gen III pokemon on their console, and besides, Pal Park is a bit rough since it deletes the pokemon off the old games in the process. This will probably put a LOT more Generation III Pokemon into play and on the GTS. I imagine the titles will be called "Radiant Ruby" and "Shimmering Sapphire" but I'm crazy so meh.

- What will we see instead of contests/Pokeathlon? This I'm less certain about, but I'm sure there's going to be something similar. If I had to venture a guess I'd think they'll probably just add more Pokeathlon events, much like how contests returned in D/P/Pt. Most of the people who have an opinion on the minigames seem to enjoy them, so it's quite believable they'd keep using them.

One thing I did hear was confirmed was additional ability to have random battles via wi-fi. Though the Battle Frontier does have a similar feature, it's crippled down to more like the gameplay in the Stadium titles since it's only 3-on-3. I'd love to be able to battle random trainers all the time and not just a few really good ones. I'm hoping they'll keep the restrictions on legendaries, too, since seriously competing with legendaries is dumb.

IGN has two other things I completely agree with. First, quit giving us all these damn TMs and instead make them dependent on items; I hate having to have a couple HM slaves for that purpose, especially given the fact that 3 of the 8 are water moves. Surf and fly, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe cut, but shoot, why not a machete or pruning shear items? Secondly, I would love to see the early common wild pokemon not be geodude and caterpie and the bird-pokemon-of-the-day. I'd like all of them to be a bit more unique, especially if it won't be until halfway through the game that we get the Time Capsule (which, honestly, who knows, at this point :P). The game, after all, is going to be set a fair ways away from the mainland, apparently!