Pirate Arrested by Mounted Police

Wahoo! The mounties recently arrested and charged a man for selling illegal, burnt video games in a shopping mall in Richmond, BC. This article has more details. The police warns consumers to beware that their purchased game may not be legitimate, because of course most people assume a video game selling for just $10 is the real deal right.

I don't really see this as news since just about every mall in Metro Vancouver, especially the ones in Richmond, since the 1990s will likely have shady stores that will sell pirated media. I've passed by at least 5 or 6 electronic stores that sell pirated games in multiple shopping centers around the Vancouver area; and I wasn't even looking for one, so they are not hard to find at all. But Vancouver is not alone, most outlets in Pacific Mall near Toronto, ON is said to also sell counterfeit items.



The director of investigations "estimates the Lower Mainland market for pirated video games could run into the millions of dollars." What are they waiting for then? Get more police out there and reclaim the lost sales before it gets worse! And here's an idea, instead of arresting the pirates, and spending lots of money to hire lawyers and book court appearances, etc. I suggest pirates should have their wares confiscated and be fined a penalty, similar to how the liquor board or tobacco control act fines small businesses for selling alcohol or cigarettes to minors. Pirates sell legitimate games as well. They have a license to run their shop, and operate just like any other business, the only difference being they have illegal games in the back of the store.

But then again, IANAL and know nothing about international copyright infringement laws so I'm not sure if other regulations could be implemented in Canada. But I would still like to see the RCMP crack down on more cases like this for sure.

Hanging by a Thread

Claire Morgan has a very unique art gallery. The ideas are simple and high level but the executions have to be very delicate and precise. I'm not sure how she does them exactly, or how long it takes to create each piece. They're like looking inside a weightless world or like a world where the relationships between time and motion is irrelevant. But that's just my interpretation.

My favorites are

and this one.

I also like how the surrounding props help to tell a story in some of these pieces. I'd be interested to try this some time, but with something simpler, like maybe a fist shattering through a punching bag or something. But right now I don't have the time, nor space.

Keeping Up with the Cost of Living

[EDIT] Blog has been moved to http://freedom-thirtyfive.blogspot.com/

Over the course of our work life the obvious assumption is that we make more money as we become more experienced in our careers. But with everything from food to housing becoming so expensive these days I'm led to believe that we will always be losing real purchasing power because our pay raises will never grow as fast as that of the cost of living.

A combo meal at McDonald's was only $4 twenty years ago, but today it's $8. That means if we were making $40,000 back then, we would have to be making more than $80,000 today (factoring in a higher tax bracket) in order to buy the same amount of meals. Here's a graphic that shows how other things have changed in Vancouver, in the last 20 years.





Are we slowly becoming poorer without even realizing it? I especially empathize with the younger work force. We pay astronomical amounts for school, graduate with insurmountable debt, and often can't even find jobs in our field of study.

My friend who also works in computer graphics said his starting salary when he entered the field in 1998 was $40,000, which is a bit higher than what my starting salary was. And I started working in 2008. So on top of fighting price inflation on the spending side, I was also met with salary deflation, how fair is that. I admit I was at least lucky enough to find work right out of school, but I still feel like my post secondary education isn't worth as much as it used to. I just hope the young adults of today will somehow find a way to still live a modest to prosperous life despite these challenging times.

Fun with HDR

Our eyes are very sensitive to light and color, many times more so than digital cameras. Most consumer TVs, and LCD monitors are limited to just 256 incremental brightness levels, from black to white. So most pictures taken by cameras will have a range of 256 levels of brightness so they can look proper on computer screens. That's why if we are indoors on a sunny day, we can read a book on the couch or look out the window and see that the sky is blue. But if we want to take a picture of something outside, everything in our room becomes dark, and if we focus the camera on our book, then the outside sky blooms out to white. The camera is not robust enough to view the entire range of light going on in the scene. This is where HDR, or high dynamic range, comes in. HDR in photography means we have to take multiple shots of the same subject at different brightness levels (exposure settings) and then combine them into a single image after. The separate photos by themselves should look nothing special, maybe even plain and boring but when we combine the pictures together we get an HDR image. We don't need expensive equipment either, just about any point-and-shoot camera is capable of taking differently exposed images. Camera: Panasonic DMC-FX520 Software: Photoshop CS3 None of the 4 individual photos we took have a dynamic enough range to capture all the details we want in the scene, but by combining them together we now have 1024 levels of brightness and colors to look at instead of just the standard 256 mentioned earlier, hence the details once lost in the blacks and whites in the separate photos are now visible in the single HDR image. HDR photography can be used to add details to an otherwise too dark or blown out scene, and to capture the surrounding like how our eyes would see it. Applying too much range however, past our eye's range limit, can lead to some very surreal images that are almost painterly.

 There are tons of other applications for HDR images. Other than photography they are also used in movies, games, studio art, optics, digital rendering, computer graphics in general, and many other fields. Definitely fun stuff.

Save Money the Lazy Way

[EDIT] Blog has been moved to http://freedom-thirtyfive.blogspot.com/


We all know that we can buy music, games, e-books, movies and even cartoons from online sites and services like iTunes, and Netflix (coming soon to Canada.) But I think sometimes people only see online distribution as a convenient alternative to buying things the old fashioned way, but they don't really understand its full financial benefits.

An online album is often half the price of its physical version. Most games can be bought online sometimes for just a fraction of their MSRP. Steam for example often has unbeatable deals. Being lazy is good. Console games are selling online as well since all consoles have wireless capabilities. Movies and TV shows can be rented or bought at a cheaper price than going to the traditional video rental store. Even TVs themselves have built in software for us to buy, download, and enjoy our entertainment right out of the box.

A digitally downloaded piece of media is always cheaper to make and sell than its hard copy counterpart because it doesn't need to be manufactured, or packaged and shipped, or take a loss from unsold inventory. If saving money is our primary concern then we can save quite a lot by being lazy and buying as much of our home entertainment as we can from home instead of going outside. There are reports stating that typical families spend between $879 and $5105 on entertainment every year, and Americans spend more than 25 billion dollars a year on video games alone. So there are huge savings potential to be had here.

My Personal Slaves

I have slaves working for me. They do exactly what I tell them to do, they never complain, never tire of work, never try to escape, their only goal is to make my life easier, their productivity increases every year exponentially, they make me money everyday, and they don't cost anything to maintain. I only started out with a few of them but their numbers have multiplied over time. And now I have a pretty decent sized army of devoted slaves making me more and more prosperous everyday.


Of course I'm talking about money. Every slave that I save and invest today will work hard to produce offspring, and those offspring will produce their own offspring, and so on. And since all my slaves are immortal, their collective growth will only accelerate over time, until one day I will have a vast army of slaves so powerful that they alone will be able to support my everyday financial needs. On the other hand, every slave that I spend today will be lost forever and will work hard to make someone else's life easier.

Choosing how many slaves to keep for ourselves and how many to trade away will be a difference decision for each person. But these slaves are highly coveted everywhere. And in this competitive and uncertain world where it's getting harder and harder just to make a normal living, I for one, welcome any additional support my slaves can give me and the more the merrier.

Laptop Buying Guide

Here are some traps to avoid when choosing a new laptop.

1) MacBook or Standard OEM Laptop
Let's be honest, if you're using your laptop for the internet and research then all you really need are a web browser and an office suite. If you don't want to use the default programs in Windows or OS X, you can just use Firefox or Chrome and OpenOffice, which are all compatible with both operating systems so Macs and PCs aren't all that different. It mainly comes down to which interface you prefer. MacBooks are usually more expensive than PCs, but they are well worth the premium because you get a sexy design, unique apple software, quality customer service, the option to set up dual-boot so you can use Windows on it anyway, and the fun factor of learning a new OS. For PC notebooks, read on.

2) The Screen
I recommend an LED backlit screen because they use less power, are generally thinner, and have a better contrast ratio than the traditional florescent tubes based screens. I also like 14.1-15.6 inch sized screens. At the smallest size of 14.1" you still get the same resolution as a 15.6" laptop; the pixels are just smaller, so you get a more lightweight and battery efficient notebook without losing screen real-estate. On the other hand a larger 15.6" laptop will get you a full 101 keys keyboard, meaning you get the num-pad, which you won't likely find on something smaller. It's basically a trade off between convenience vs portability but I wouldn't get anything larger than 15.6". Lastly, I wouldn't get glossy screen laptops because of the glare but good matte screens are hard to find these days.

3) The Keyboard
As mentioned earlier, having a num-pad is a great feature especially for spreadsheets or programming related work. Alternatively you can separately buy one of those USB numeric keypads. Below is a Toshiba L-series laptop and an example of a bad keyboard layout (middle mouse click the image to enlarge)

There's an extra key between "left shift" and "Z" making the shift key smaller than normal. Similarly, there are 3 keys between "L" and "Enter" making the Enter key very narrow and weird to reach. Plus, being a 15.6" laptop, they should have fitted a number pad to the right of the keys making it a full 101 keys keyboard instead of wasting all that space on the sides. And there are French symbols all over the keys which are distracting if you don't know French. I'd stay away from laptops like this.


4) The Speed
My processor of choice is the Intel Core i5 series. It has turbo boost which allows your laptop to automagically overclock itself. For instance, if you're running a single threaded compiler, then the Core i5 (quad core) will know to temporarily increase the speed of the first 2 cores and slow down the other 2 idle cores. Hence, the power consumption and heat dissipation stays constant but your compiler will finish faster than on the stock frequency so you get all the benefits of overclocking without the risks. My 2nd and 3rd CPU picks are the Intel Core i3 and AMD Turion II X2 respectively. Below is a list of Intel mobile processors.
The standard 5400RPM laptop drives are what I prefer but if you want better performance there's an increasing number of laptops with 7200RPM drives, although they will use more power. But if you're plugged into the wall 90% of the time then that shouldn't matter too much. RAM speed is almost irrelevant for laptops in today's market but it should be at least DDR2 667. In fact most Core i5 laptops come with DDR3 1066 memory (the 1066 is the speed in MHz.)


5) Other Considerations
It's a good idea to play with the laptop before buying it so you can see if the screen contrast is too sharp for your eyes, or if the keys are too small for your fingers, or if the USB ports are too awkward to reach. If you're camera uses an SD card then you should get a laptop with an SD card reader, which luckily most do. Reading peer reviews online is also very important as you can learn about flaws that you may have missed or the elusive issues that only appear after extended periods of usage. Laptops are also quite expensive in Canada, I would buy them in other countries if possible. Another benefit to that is you don't have to deal with the annoying bilingual keyboard that most Canadian laptops have. Some names I would consider are, HP Pavilion dv4/5, Toshiba Satellite A-series, Asus G or N-series, and Acer Aspire AS5-series.

A Classic Toy Story

Went to see Toy Story 3 recently. It's an amazing movie and I can't think of a better ending for the 15 year old trilogy. I wouldn't be surprised if it makes over a billion dollars at the box office.

Plot & Direction: 10/10
Screenwriter Mr. Arndt really knows how to pull on people's heart strings. Combined with Mr. Unkrich's directing it can only be a recipe for excellence. Like the other two Toy Story movies it's about the toys' dangerous journey to get back home, and the pacing is perfect. Adding in pop culture references like Apple's Safari was a nice touch.



Characters: 10/10
Brilliant likable characters, even the "bad" toys make me want to play with them. Voice acting is spot on for all the toys and many popular Pixar, and even a Ghibli character makes appearances in the movie.






Use of Technology: 10/10
It's mind boggling how much 3D animation has evolved since 1995 when the first Toy Story was released. This time around Pixar used a new color bleeding pipeline to soften the lighting in all the scenes. It bounces digital photons around in a level and accentuates their satuation, which probably means lighting would have to be trickier to implement and control. Here's an example of the digital phenomenon in action. Making an animated film in 3D means each frame has to be rendered twice which significantly increases production time and costs, but I'm glad they put in those extra resources because it does add to the experience instead of just being a gimmick. Since most shots are taken in enclosed or low to the ground areas the glasses actually work with the narrow focal length to differentiate what's in the foreground and what's further away. Character and environment animations of course are second to none; the fur on the plushies look so real you could almost reach out and grab them.

Final Verdict: 30/30
Everyone should watch this ASAP!


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Meanwhile, in Japan

Blog Introduction

Welcome.

This blog once talked about technology, art and money, but now it has been moved to
http://freedom-thirtyfive.blogspot.com/ and deals mostly with financial planning.