I wish I could say that I've had a productive day, but I haven't really. You see, I've been watching the woot-off on woot. I'm alright on the general concept of woot! -- I look at what special item they're selling at 10 pst, and then figure out if it's something I need/want, and then I move on with my life. Woot-offs, however, appeal to my obsessive-compulsive nature -- as soon as one item sells out, the next one is brought forth like the next gladiator in the Coliseum, until the woot-off is finished. Woot is, for the most part, an easy way for me to get new/refurbished parts for whatever make-it-yourself project I'm working on, but today's woot-off has been sorely lacking in useful materials (unless I was building some kind of telephony/audio/headphone project).They've had two Zune items which took forever to sell out of (I guess wooters aren't zuners), but not a whole lot of useful bits to take apart and disassemble. I suppose I should be thankful that the woot-off has stalled; otherwise, when would I get around to writing entries like these?

A recent poll found that 43% of parents don't play video games with their kids who do, and the media is going crazy about these numbers. Not because 57% of parents DO play videogames with their kids, but because these 43% of parents don't know what their children are playing, don't know what they're being exposed to, and don't know what they might be learning from them, and this scares people. If you're a parent, you basically have two options:

• Option 1: Start playing videogames with your kid.
  
• Option 2: Take away your kid's videogame console.
  

Of these two choices, I feel that option 1 is the better of the two, and not just because the media loves stories about violent acts that happen when videogames are taken away, but because I feel that option 2 ostracizes the child from their friends who probably play. When 81 percent of children age 4 to 17 play videogames at least occasionally, parents need to realize that videogames are a piece of childhood just like owning a pet, birthday parties and sleepovers. That's not to say that videogames should be "unlimited play" -- there will be times when your child will want to play, and it's up to the parent to say "no" or to place restrictions on the child. That is, quite simply, part of the job of being a parent.

Furthermore, I believe that option 1 has bonding possibilities, while option 2 just opens possibilities for conflict and confrontation. In my own childhood memories, I will always remember the day my father brought home an Atari 400 computer and a couple of landmark games: QIX and Pac-Man. My father and I turned QIX into a competition -- who could get the largest percentage covered before dying, and swapping turns with my father to try and get Pac-Man to the next board. I was bonding with my father over Pac-Man and QIX when I was just five years old -- these were games without any real story to them, today games are much more complex and detailed, resembling a movie or a soap opera.

My own childhood was filled with games of all type, not just videogames, but card games and board games too. While some games had very little purpose attached to them (as far as I can figure, all Pac-Man ever trained me to do was to learn how to move the rock hard joystick horizontally and vertically).

When we got our first PC, my father also had a floppy disk full of games. It had all the games you get as programming exercises these days, games like Towers of Hanoi (recursion) and Blackjack (moving things off stacks), although all I ever saw my father play those days was Blackjack and Chinese Chess.

My father had taught me how to play Blackjack as soon as I could do simple arithmetic, and we always had playing cards around the house (plus we used to get them every time our relatives would fly over to visit us -- in those days airlines would give you a deck of cards if you requested them -- I don't think they do that anymore. This computer version had things I didn't understand, like betting, doubling down and insurance -- I had no understanding of casinos then, but it was basically casino blackjack, and just like casino blackjack, you eventually lost all your money to the house. My father was okay at this game -- he could take the $100 that he started with, and sometimes make it up to $150 before he lost it all. Sometimes I could make it to $300 before losing it all, and my father would come by, look at my score, and say to me "When you 18, we go La Vayga and you win money for Daddy". "Okay," I said with as much enthusiasm as a 10 year old could muster up. I had no idea where Las Vegas was, or even what the relationship between being 18, having a high score and winning money was.

A year later, we went to Vegas with my grandfather and uncle. Being only 11, I couldn't play, and couldn't even really watch other people play, so instead, my father and I headed to Circus Circus (which supposedly had the best video arcade), and we played some head-to-head driving games for bit while my uncle and grandfather lost their money downstairs. I understood a little bit more after that trip, and it likely shaped my attitude towards the silliness of casinos -- they had lost collectively a total of $100 in the same amount of time that my father and I had spent less than $5 at the arcade, we we could have stayed there for 20 hours rather than just one, and if I really wanted to optimize my money-time, I could figure out which games I could last the longest on, and just play those.

My mother was the one who bought the NES for us. She spent just as much time playing Duck Hunt, Gyromite and Excitebike as the rest of us, and actually ended up being the most animated when something bad befell our characters. While my sisters and I might mutter a "darn" or just accept defeat, my mother would be screaming "Oh no!" when the scientist in Gyromite got squished or "run run run" when the motorcyclist fell off in Excitebike. Even my grandfather had a NES and played Tetris. While he could beat some of my younger cousins, Tetris was my specialty and having just won a local Tetris championship, I was eager to show off my skills. My grandfather was surprised at the speed at which I smacked him down, and said to my parents, "Mike's really good at this game." My father laughed and said "He plays that game all the time, and he's young, so he'll be faster. Soon the cousins will grow up and you won't be able to beat them anymore." My mother piped in with a "I don't even know how to play, so you know more about this game than I do. The kids are the experts."

It's memories like this that I remember from my childhood and my interactions with adults, and it was encouraging to know that as much as I didn't really understand their world, they were trying to learn about my interests and my world. I think games help break down that barrier a little, and I feel that overall, the experience of playing videogames is a positive rather than a negative.

I think it's only by understanding videogames and interacting with your child with them that the third and final option is unlocked: the ability to trust your child with making their own decisions .

When I was going to school, I lived right next to the stadium for two years, and had season tickets to the football games. After the game was over, the marching band would stop over by the hall and play our drinking song (in exchange for a keg to be delivered to the band later that day). My room freshman year faced straight out into the courtyard, so we always had a front row seat to this performance -- they played the music, our hall bellowed the lyrics. While I remember them playing for us (on occasion) themes from classic movies such as Star Wars, Raiders of the Last Ark and Rocky, I think the whole hall would have totally geeked out at a performance like this:

parakkum noted that if the Cal band was more like this when we were going to school, he might have showed up to games more often. I would have shown up more too, but the team sucked while I was going to school, and they only started winning after I left.

List of videogames/songs in the extended.

Every year at my elementary school, they would have a Halloween Parade, where you'd either bring your costume or wear your costume to school. While my parents rarely dressed up, they'd often buy us a costume, and send us to school with a Ben Cooper costume in a box. When I say costume in a box, I mean quite literally a costume in a box -- the $10 box contained everything you needed to transform yourself from ages 5 and up to whatever you wanted to be that Halloween. The box contained a plastic mask of the likeness' face, and a vinyl overall which would be open in the back. You kept the weird overall thing from falling down by tying a series of fasteners in the back, and because these things had sleeves, the armholes would presumably keep the whole thing from slipping down. The overalls being made of vinyl were clearly labeled "Inflammable" with a big fire symbol on the box. Had I and my parents realized at this age "Inflammable" and "Flammable" mean exactly the same thing -- that the object can quickly catch fire or ignite, I doubt that my parents would have let me wear it, even if it was only for the few hours we spent trick or treating or in the elementary school parade.

The plastic mask which came with the costume were terrible, but as kids we loved them for their ability to quickly transform us into someone we were not. The plastic that sometimes cut into our faces as we pulled the mask up or down, and the constant reattaching of the elastic that held the mask to our faces were little inconveniences, but by Thanksgiving, usually the mask was destroyed by that point, and it'd be another year before we got more masks.

As children, we were suckered in by the masks -- they did really look like the character we wanted to be for Halloween, but the overalls were terrible -- most times they'd just have the logo of the licensed property emblazoned across the chest along with a picture of the person you were supposed to be -- to make it easier for adults to say "Oh my, what a cute (fill in the blank) you are!" when they open the door to hand out candy. Sometimes this led to rather embarrassing situations, such as when some old lady would open the door see the "Star Wars" logo across your chest and say "What a nice Star Wars you are!" instead of identifying you as Luke Skywalker.

Which leads me to the present day -- I don't really buy my own costumes anymore -- I make my own costumes, usually with things that I can get year round, or with items of clothing that already exist in my closet. I may pick up a few items here or there to help accentuate the costume, but on the whole, the goal is to keep it cheap (but still look good). I've had some rather elaborate costumes in the past -- an Incredible, Anakin Skywalker and Batman, but this year, I opted for something simpler. In fact, the only thing this costume cost me was eyeliner and a pencil sharpener, as I had the jeans and shirt.

A year ago, kwc and I wandered around Omotesando Hills looking for Tadao Ando's Collezione. It's far past the glamour and lights of the area, and were it not for kwc's insistence that the Collezione was in the area, we might have turned back without finding it.

We walked past Omotesando Hills, passing by the more glitzy architecture such as Comme de Garcons (Future Systems) and the Prada Aoyama Epicenter (Herzog & de Meuron) before finding the Collezione on the same street. Upon arriving at the Collezione, I recognized Ando's use of concrete and curves to create a somewhat solitary experience. Though it was often that kwc was just a few feet away from me, the circular corridors could obscure him from my view completely.

Built in 1989, Collezione uses one of Ando's favorite primary materials: concrete. There is none of the natural elements that is typically associated with Ando's work in this building. Having Collezione and Omotesando Hills so close to each other also gave me insight on how 15 years of change had influence on Ando and the area. Omotesando Hills was built in 2005, replacing an apartment complex, and uses water, light and stone to create a much more naturally accented area. In the Collezione, the lighting is recessed, and while some areas are open, some corridors give the feel of a modern man-made concrete tunnel. Where Omotesando Hills feels very open, Collezione feels very confined and closed.

We shot at night, which only seemed to add to the isolation of the building; retail shops while lit, were closed, and the employees of the offices of the upper floors had long left the building.

Flickr Photoset: Collezione

Many months ago, I purchased a Titanium PowerBook off of eBay in desperate need of repair. It had a few busted components, but nothing a little elbow grease couldn't fix. Ever since it arrived, it's been sitting in my closet. Today I cleaned it, and took it apart. I could put it together again, but it was in pretty poor shape to start with, so rather than cram it back into the titanium case, I decided that I should probably build something else out of it.

But first, I needed to get the display working. I knew there was a problem with the backlight on this machine when I bought it, so in advance, I had gone ahead and purchased a functioning backlight. Because it's such a pain in the butt to strip the backlight from the LCD screen, they sent me the whole LCD screen, which was nice of them, but meant that I would have to strip and swap the LCD screen from one unit and put the backlight from the other onto the system.
While the LCD with the working backlight was mostly usable, it had several vertical stripes running across the screen. I opted to make the transplant.

It sounds easy, but it took me the better half of the day, and I have the bent bezels and the sore hands to show for it. Sadly, when I closed up the LCD, I must have clamped something too tightly, as there's a small dead pixel area in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. I'm thinking that the gutted machine might make a good wi-fi picture frame.

Last night, I drove down to Morgan Hill's Henry Coe State Park to view the Perseid Meteor Shower. Leaving Mountain View at 12:30, meant that I was at the parking lot by 1:30 (after a harrowing twisty 10 mile climb up the mountain). Getting there so late meant that I didn't quite feel safe wandering into the darkness of the mountainside alone, so instead I just parked my car and set up my camera in the mostly deserted parking lot. While not the perfect location, it was good enough, and it seemed on the drive over that the meteor shower was already underway, so I got comfortable and spent the next couple of hours staring up at the sky.

There was light pollution from the cities, and you'll notice the orange glow of the cities in a great many of the shots.

Despite this, I was able to see many (and photograph a couple) Perseid meteors as they streaked across the sky. They are remarkably fast, blink and they are gone, but that's okay, as there's another coming around soon. With almost a meteor a minute, time goes quickly, and I quickly lose count of the numbers.

.

My small set of stars and meteors: Flickr: Perseids Meteor Shower 2007

In 2002, I bought my first Mac, a shiny new Titanium Powerbook with 800mhz G4 processor. I've toted it around the world in these past five years, and even after my purchase of the MacBook Pro, I still used it quite heavily as a web browser. The past couple of weeks have had me ready to declare it a loss; I could no longer reliably use it, as it would lock up and freeze intermittently. In suspend mode, the TiBook would occasionally wake up, but more often than not just stay in suspension, or lock up very quickly afterward. Sometimes when I powered it up, the TiBook would beep at me 3 times, which meant that it wasn't detecting any memory.

I've had this happen before, and because it was still under AppleCare, I sent it in, and they sent it back, replacing several fans and the main logic board. Since my AppleCare contract has long since expired, I removed the keyboard and poked around for a bit. I took out the memory and ran it for a bit, seeing if perhaps one of the DIMMs was bad. I was still getting freezes.

I was getting ready to write the obituary on my Powerbook, when I came upon a webpage with a similar problem while I was searching for alternative uses for dead laptops, and taking a closer look actually yielded a solution for me. There's a orange ribbon cable that runs the memory module socket to the board. There's a metal plate that covers part of the casing for the memory modules, and in my case part of the orange ribbon was under the metal plate. Wondering if making contact with the metal might result in a short/grounding interaction, I carefully nudged the orange ribbon to the right of the metal plate, and tested the TiBook out. Everything seems to be working now, with no more freezes.

I find it phenomenal that I've managed to keep this TiBook going on after all these years -- my laptop previous to the TiBook was a Sony VAIO, which managed to die after about two years or so, having a burnt-out motherboard that refused to power up. The Apple has lasted twice as long (and still looks relatively good, if not the chipped paint).

For a long time, I had one rule when it came to supermarkets: they were off-limits on Sunday evenings. The reason for this had more to do with the line at the checkout stand than anything else; before I established this rule, the Sunday evening shopping experience was terrible, with what seemed like every soccer mom on the peninsula in line with their cart piled to the top with groceries. Even Express lines, with the 10 or 15 item limit were crammed with people. A wait for 10 to 15 minutes was not uncommon. But the skill of picking the right line was something I never learned; was it better to pick the line with less people with bigger carts or pick the line with more people and less items? If there's only one person with a shopping cart full of items, and 3 people in the express line with 10 items each, which does one choose? Is it better to be behind the person with the shopping cart full of packaged goods or the one who just has produce and a dozen cans of cat food? Which customer is going to be the one who drops a purse full of coupons into the cashier's lap? Which one will pay by check, and which one will need to try 3 or 4 credit cards before they get one that isn't denied? Which cashier is going to be the one who makes a mistake and needs to call the manager to unlock their terminal? When should one take the long line in the hopes that another register will open? Over the years I've tried to create a couple of simple rules to follow when making line choices. I've been right as often as I've been wrong, which in short has created the rule of simply avoiding the need to make that decision by not going to the supermarket on Sunday evenings.

The supermarket is one of those places that's a living testament to the The Paradox of Choice; while one needs to decide between all the different products littering the shelves, even down to the choice of checkout lines, we are assaulted by choices from the moment we enter to the moment we exit the store.

A few retail chains have embraced the single queue system, and in a recent New York Times article, Whole Foods in New York City has become a single queue as well. No longer are customers faced with the choice of needing to pick the "faster line".

I've always wanted my Powerbook laser etched, but I never knew what I wanted on it. Someone suggested that I get some temporary thing to slap on there to see if I liked it, but I never found any interesting designs that would be worthy of covering up my computer. But a few weeks ago, I came upon Gelaskins, whose designs are better, but not really my style, and at $32.95 a pop, a little too costly for my taste. So I made my own:

This is Link from the upcoming Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. The sticker attaches without a sticky adhesive, through the use of a static cling sticker, the same as the oil change sticker on your windshield. All told, making the static cling sticker cost me about $2 in materials. The quality isn't as good as it would be to be professionally done, and given enough use, the sticker will wear away.

You can get the stickers for laser or for inkjet printers, and after the harrowing experience of printing this out on a laser printer, I must say that this process is not for the faint of heart. Here's the danger -- if the laser printer isn't at the right temperature, the toner and heat combine with the paper to wrap around the fuser, and the fuser is a very expensive part to replace on the printer. I know. I spent 45 minutes digging attempt number one out of the fuser.