Observations on skiing

Posted on 2009/02/15 by richardykuo

I'm writing this from Squaw Valley in Tahoe, where there's a bit of a snowstorm going.

I can basically count the number of times that I've gone skiing on one hand.  The first was a week long ski trip in high school.  The second was a single day my junior year of college where I visited a friend in Vermont.  The third was last year here in Tahoe for a weekend (ski'd one day).  And the fourth was earlier this week via a company/employee funded offsite (another one day).

In general, I'm not too bad at skiing, having done sufficient amounts of rollerblading in the past to have some sense of balance on my feet.  I did a black on my last day of skiing in high school without falling (apparently a banner day for me since I remember that).  On these single day trips, since then, I've hovered between blue and black difficulties ever since.

As with any new physical activity, I find myself barely able to move after the first round of exertion. All the straining with my legs to keep my balance adds up after the first day.  For this reason, I opted not to go for a second day earlier this week.  However, yesterday I ski'd for about 2/3'rds of the day and I was tired at the end, but not completely wrecked like before.  Today I actually feel pretty good, so presumably I'm adapting quickly.  I don't have any plans to go again this season, however, so that physical improvement may be for naught.

A list of random thoughts over the past week or so.

  1. What's the difference between these 50 dollar goggles and these 100 dollar goggles?
  2. This thermal underwear is really comfy!
  3. God, I wish I had a face mask.
  4. God, I wish I had a face mask.  Wait, why didn't I buy one last week when I thought the same thing?
  5. I'm going to wish I had a face mask next year, aren't I?
  6. These ski house rentals are totally low tech (no internet). Thank god for 3G phone tethering.
  7. Here's the fairly steep and very powdery place where I lost my ski in the snow for half an hour last week.  I deem the potential pain of that experience to be more than the potential pain of just zooming straight down the slope. GOOOOO!
  8. Is that melted snow from my glasses or snot coming out of my nose?
  9. My single layer of ski gloves are clearly not keeping my hands warm.
  10. Riding up and down on this cable car is like Groundhog Day.  Everyone says the same things every time.  "OOO, look how far down it is!"  "If this cable breaks, we are so dead." General yelps as the cable car passes a support tower and swings for a bit.
  11. Skiing in tons of powder presents its own set of problems.  Namely, how to get out of it if you fall.  Snowboarders are particularly screwed.
  12. I clearly strapped my boots in too tightly in previous runs of skiing.  My shins aren't nearly as bruised these past two runs and they were much more comfortable.
  13. My arms aren't tired at all.  Does this have anything to do with Rock Band? (seriously, it probably does)

My approach to skiing, not taking it too seriously, is to just do it as much as possible without causing myself annoying pain.  I don't see much point in killing myself just because I'm here.  My ideal approach would be to go for half a day every couple of days or so when I feel like it.  Unfortunately, the sport itself doesn't really lend itself to that model, given that I have a job and don't live in the area.  So I do what I can.

One nice thing this weekend is that I can see some improvement aside from the physical aspects.  After talking with some friends, I decided to think of skiing as more of my body carrying my momentum and my feet keeping me afloat (like shock absorbers on a car).  This was a conclusion I had reached on my own, but apparently it's just basic knowledge, and I just needed verification.  Anyway, after trying it out, this is clearly a superior approach.  Relying too much on my feet to balance myself makes me far more vulnerable to the random bumps and terrain that I encounter as I make my way down the slopes.  Keeping my feet light lets me ride over those bumps with much less impact to my overall direction and momentum.

In general, skiing seems like a tremendous amount of overhead to me …
involving expensive equipment, lodging, travel time, not to mention the
cold and trudging through snow and limited windows of availability and good conditions.  It certainly isn't what I would call a poor man's sport.  Frankly, there are cheaper and more convenient ways to exert yourself.  I see nothing particularly appealing about skiing except for the unique merits of the experience, which has to compete against all of the downsides I mention above.  Still, if you like the experience of plowing down the slopes that much, there really isn't anything comparable.

With all the overhead involved with skiing, I find myself wondering how the sport evolved.  Lifts certainly haven't been around forever, so the sport seems like it must have been completely inaccessible until the latter half of the 20th century.  I know this must be easily discovered information via the Internet, but I haven't bothered looking yet.

As it is, I find this to be a sport that I either do a lot or a little, and a little bit seems to be the right amount.  A "Variety is the spice of life" approach, if you will.  I certainly wouldn't mind seeing myself graduate to consistent black runs in a few more visits or so, if my skill level can survive the long gap between visits.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

New Year’s resolutions so far

Posted on 2009/02/01 by richardykuo

I don't generally believe in New Year's resolutions, but starting off the year did remind me that there were quite a few todos on my list that I haven't done anything with recently.  So I went ahead and decided to kick myself in the ass on a few of them.  See below.

1. Drink less soda and juices, drink lighter stuff (like water and tea)

Doing pretty good.  I'd say I've cut back on soda by about 60% or so…substituting for water and tea.  Damn, soda really does taste pretty good when you haven't had it for a while.  After a while, I get a craving for the fizzy kick that only soda can give you.

2. Exercise regularly

Aside from all the fake drumming I do (which, while not completely intense, is not an insignificant amount of exercise either), I need to do more "regular" exercise.  I'm only about 30% on this right now.  I've scheduled time from 11-12PM to do push-ups and sit-ups while watching TV, but I always seem to get caught in the middle of doing something else.  I think what I need to do here is block out time next to other things I do … mainly so that I'm not tempted to be in the middle of something when it comes time to exercise.

3.  Blog more.

I've been shooting for weekly.  Missed a week so far, but otherwise on track.  I actually find I have a plethora of things to write about, and it's hard to restrict myself to just Sundays because sometimes when you're thinking about something, you just want to get it out there.  But, on the other hand, I don't want it to take too much time either.  I need to find a balance.

4.   Change my hair style.

I've had a rather short buzzcut since the middle of college, solely because it was easier for me to maintain rather than any other number of reasons.  I've finally decided to change this up.  I'm letting it grow out right now.  In general, it will still be a short cut, but may require gel/hair drying/combing in the morning.  We'll see how this goes.  I'm due for a trim and a check up next week.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Take advantage of your 401K, people

Posted on 2009/01/25 by richardykuo

I recently surveyed several friends to see whether they were maxing out their 401K's.  To my surprise, many of them weren't.  In fact, from general experience a lot of people ignore this seemingly no brainer piece of money management.

In short, the 401K is an investment vehicle designed to encourage savings by the government.  You can contribute a maximum set amount it each year … in 2009, you can contribute up to $16,500.

The way the government "encourages" your participation involves taxation.  You only pay taxes once on the money going into and coming out of your 401K.  Normally, you would have to pay taxes on money when you earn it and on any gains thereafter.  Essentially, if you use a 401K to invest, the government takes a lot less in taxes from you than it would otherwise.  However, because the goal is to get you to save, you must wait until 59 1/2 years of age to begin tapping the savings account without penalties.

OK, not having to pay taxes is great on its own.  But, on top of that, your employer often has match programs.  For example, if you look at the benefits page for Google, Google matches up to 100% up to $2500 or 50% up to the contribution limit, whichever is greater.  Let me sum that one up for you.  If you contribute $16,500 this year at Google, you get $8,250 in free money from the company on top of that initial contribution. Granted, Google has great benefits, but other companies have quite generous match plans as well.  If you had $8,250 sitting in front of you right now, would you just throw it away?  Because if you aren't contributing to your 401K, you're doing something pretty close.

Now, due to the penalties, some people are worried about not having that money around to make a big purchase because there are penalties on taking that money out ahead of retirement.  Generally, you can borrow against the 401K to do things like pay for college tuition or buy a home, so if you're worried about liquidity, you probably shouldn't be.  Also, there are hardship clauses where you can take money out without penalty to deal with unexpected medical expenses, etc.  In general, your 401K is liquid for you if you really need it to be, but it's not there to be abused.

The standard 401K is not taxed when income goes in.  Taxation only happens when you pull money out at retirement.  There is a second form of the 401K known as the Roth 401K.  This plan allows you to contribute your after tax earnings now, and not get taxed when you start pulling the money out near retirement.

Why pick one over the other?  Well, if you believe your tax rates will be higher near retirement, then taking the tax hit now is a pretty smart thing to do.  In short, having climbed the corporate ladder (or whatever ladder you're climbing) and observing the spending patterns of the country in general, quite a few people are betting on their taxes being higher in retirement.  In this case, the Roth 401K is a good idea.

If you're having trouble maxing out your contribution to leverage your company match, then you probably want to just do the standard 401K so that you get the maximum benefit from matching.

If you're already maxing out your contribution, then the Roth 401K can be pretty smart.  In particular, independent of the whole taxation issue, using the Roth 401K lets you leverage significantly more money into the 401K.  For example, if you think now is a good time to invest in general, then getting money into your 401K right now via the Roth is a great way to dump more money with the 401K tax advantage into investments than you could otherwise do with a regular 401K.

The bottom line is this.  If you aren't maxing your 401K plan out, you're giving up a lot of free money.  If you aren't sure whether you should be or not, then odds are you should be.  Feel free to do your own research, but hopefully this gives some people a kick in the pants to check their contributions and start saving some money.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Problems with the Palm Pre

Posted on 2009/01/11 by richardykuo

The new Palm Pre just debuted.  Here's the coverage at Engadget.

This announcement, for your reference, comes after multiple years of false starts on products like the Foleo, a slightly harebrained idea to tether a shell of a keyboard and screen to the phone (it's not completely insane actually, just not a timely idea) and the completely decrepit Palm OS, which should have been overhauled years ago.  Palm practically invented the smartphone, but it entered some sort of dark period for years where it couldn't get beyond its original technological roots.  People have been waiting for something big out of Palm for a LONG time … and they got it last week.

For your reference, I've used Palm products for a long time.  I really liked my Palm Treo 650,  before the technological limitations of the thing caused me to switch to a new phone.  However, in terms of productivity … being able to access my key applications quickly, synchronize with Outlook, and fill in the gaps with third party software that actually did the job correctly … nothing did it better.  My current phone, a Sprint Touch, is somehow less usable and slower … even though it has vastly more hardware power and is native Windows Mobile.

The Pre is in a tough spot tho.  What niche does it occupy?  The iPhone already has a first mover advantage with two generations of the "usable and cool smartphone" product under its belt … so when it comes to the Pre, it's hard to see how the product is going to dislodge the iPhone from its particular niche.  I don't see Palm taking over the image and style motivator from Apple.  To Palm's credit, the phone at least does not seem to drop the ball on that front.

The Pre will have some refinements to usability here and there that surpass the iPhone.  However, it's too early to tell at this point what those would be.  It's also not easy to imagine a lot of headroom is available on this front to sway potential buyers.

The key differentiator we do have from the iPhone is that an open platform allows application developers to go hog wild.  This sounds promising.  However, with a healthy development ecosystem already up and running on the iPhone, some of that impact is blunted.  On top of that … Android OS phones, starting with the T-Mobile G1, are also looking to occupy this space.  So Palm will be splitting the whole "open platform" market with another major player.

Last, the Pre is rolling out on Sprint.  God bless em, I love my 30/month Sprint plan, but you aren't exactly blowing out to a ton of users by rolling out on them.  This seems to be an issue of AT&T got the iPhone, T-Mobile got the G1, so Sprint had to get the Pre.

So really, we're left with the same question … what niche does the Palm Pre occupy?  Anyone concerned about style or going with simple brand momentum picks the iPhone.  A large portion of those thinking slightly geekier and liking lots of options on their phones are going to go Android.  The carrier being Sprint cuts down the pie even further.

I have a hard time seeing anyone buy the Pre except for former Palm users who really appreciated the phones (a group which I do happen to be a part of).  The rest will have to happen by word of mouth.  Is that a big enough market to sustain them?  Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the smartphone market to answer that question, but I'm certainly wondering about it.

At some point, I need to blog about what makes a perfect phone.  I will say that the Pre, from a hardware perspective, looks pretty great to me, so there is that!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

How far can your car go after the gas light comes on?

Posted on 2009/01/11 by richardykuo

I'm back from vacation as of earlier this week, but the blogging continues with a weekly Sunday schedule. =)

Do you know the answer to the title of this blog post?  Do you want to know?  If so, then keep reading, dear friends.

I was driving back from the airport, coming back from vacation, and I had a little over 1/8th of the tank in the rental car.  Time was a little short and I didn't particularly feel like taking a big detour to hit a different gas station from the one next to the airport.  The gas light came on about 20 miles away from the airport.  Was I going to make it?

Turns out that tankonempty.com is a great resource to figure out exactly that without having to run down the tank yourself.  The average distance is listed for all car models so you can figure out the answer yourself … but, in general, you have about 30-40 miles to go from that point.  The Toyota Corolla I was driving averages 46 miles before running out of steam.  One less thing to stress about on the way back to the Bay. 🙂

Note that running down to the gas light is not really a good idea, because the fuel pumps in many cars are designed to run submerged.  So regularly burning thru that reserve actually can cause damage to the fuel pump in your car over time.  Try to refill at around 1/8th to 1/4th of the meter.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Training your brain

Posted on 2009/01/01 by richardykuo

It's 2009, and what better way to kick a new year off than with a blog post?  I can think of a few better things, actually, but, since I've been lazy with the blogging, let's knock something out today.

I imagine a lot of you were busy killing some brain cells yesterday, but during the rest of your waking hours, a lot of you get paid to think for a living.  Which begs the question … maybe you get paid to write software or trade stocks … but isn't that all just exercising the brain muscle at some abstract level?  Wouldn't it be nice if you could divorce your brain from the subject matter at hand and just train yourself to think faster about everything?

In fact, a burgeoning little industry has popped up around the idea, starting with games like Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!  This relatively simple game sold millions of copies internationally in under a year.  We can surmise one of the reasons is because the premise of the game has such universal appeal … to men, women, and children alike.  You count syllables, match items, and do little math problems … all under the guise of training your brain.  Isn't it odd that the torturous homework of second grade suddenly becomes entertainment when repackaged into a game?

At any rate, the huge success of this game spawned a predictable sequel … and lately, all kinds of clones on social networks have been popping up, because the game concept is so simple to replicate.  "Who Has The Biggest Brain?" is the Facebook equivalent … and it's made even more addictive by that fact that it's accessible to your friends, which adds a bit of a competitive element to the whole shebang. 

That's all well and good … but we come back to the original question.  Does this stuff really help?  So I did a little checking.  Turns out that these brain training games have very little correlation with general brain improvements … although getting better at these games will make anyone feel better about themselves.

The idea of doing something fundamental with our brains, like abstract shape matching or math exercises, and seeing those improvements appear in other areas of our life, such as our jobs, is referred to as the transfer effects of the exercise.  For the most part, people don't actually see a lot of transfer effects from these activities.  What we see are very specific improvements to whatever we're being tasked with.  For example, improving your ability to memorize numbers off a screen won't translate to your ability to remember the items on your grocery list.  That's one less box of Fruit Roll-Ups coming off the shelf.

Keep hope alive, tho.  Most activities don't necessarily produce transfer effects, but that's not to say that all activities don't.  New studies suggest that there are certain types of exercises that produce benefits … it just so happens that the vast majority have not.  The promising activities mentioned in the article seem to revolve around multitasking types of exercises which ask the user to process multiples streams of activities at once.  As studies start to hone in on the types of activities that do work, we'll be sure to see some exciting improvements in this space.  Just don't expect results from the random smorgasbord of activities in any particular brain training game.

I also came across an interesting series of five articles from Psychology Today (Brain Exercises: Do They Work) which details one person's journey through brain training programs.  It's worth a read.  From the same blog, the article Brain Exercises: Better Than Googling? suggests that only one program has gone through extensive clinical trials and been peer reviewed.  That program comes from Posit Science.  The programs from Posit Science are based on the fairly widely accepted notion that memory function loss as we progress through life is not necessarily based on pure deterioration … it's based on a decrease in our ability to pay attention to things.  I suppose, in layman's terms, if you give a shiitake, you'll remember as much as you ever did.  But in the mean time, what these programs do is train your auditory system to help you pay more attention.

Sounds interesting, doesn't it?  It's also expensive … at a few hundred a pop.  Admit it, though … you're curious, aren't you? =)  Shoot me a mail if any of you try it out.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Alternative solutions for connecting electronic drum kits to Rock Band

Posted on 2008/10/26 by richardykuo

To summarize, the GHWT drums are the easist solution, but lack of standalone availability makes the option somewhat painful.  Buying and building the MSA-P is highly flexible, but requires a lot of hacking and is time consuming.  The adapter from sethmeisterg works very well, but not working with the XBox 360 is going to cut out many of the potential userbase.  Finally, the J5 Kickbox takes a different approach from the other adapters by accepting individual pad inputs, but the lack of drum brain controls is cumbersome and potentially game affecting in some cases.

The MSA-P from Highly Liquid

The first practical, somewhat affordable, solution for connecting a drum kit to Rock Band, and the basis of a large portion of this FAQ.  Up to now, building this box has been the only option for connecting a drum kit to the XBox 360.  Because of the encrpytion used on the XBox, an existing Rock Band drum kit must be used as an intermediary part of the solution.  It is fairly complicated and time consuming to build this adapter, although obviously this FAQ simplifies the process as much as it can.

This adapter is not capable of velocity sensitive output…although, to be fair, the velocity sensitive features of both Guitar Hero and Rock Band drumming have been rather widely panned.

If you have a choice between the MSA-P and the GHWT controller, keep in mind that the MSA-P is soldered directly to the wired kit and consequently has about 5-10 ms less lag than any wireless solution.  If you are an extremely serious player, this sort of difference is noticeable and can affect your scores.  I always switch to my MSA-P when playing Rock Band, even though I have a hacked up GHWT box for Guitar Hero as well.

MIDI adapter from sethmeisterg

This home brewed adapter produced by a forum member on rockband.com serves as an equivalent to the MSA-P converter, except it acts a direct converter.  While somewhat clunky looking in appearance and suffering from an occasional bug or two with updates to the Rock Band platform, many PS2 and PS3 owners with this box seem to be quite pleased with it and have even gained new functionality over time such as velocity sensitivity and cymbal detection.

There is no version of this adapter for the XBox 360 due to the controller encryption on the platform.

J5 Kickbox

This is actually an adapter that accepts the 1/4" TRS jacks of electronic drum pads and triggers.

While slightly easier to deal with than the MSA-P, this approach eliminates some of the advantages of involving the drum brain in the solution, such as managing crosstalk and triggering between pads.  It also makes switching between the drum brain and playing Rock Band very cumbersome.  Personally, I would skip this.

Guitar Hero: World Tour drums

The drum kit for Guitar Hero: World Tour is likely to be the best option for a converter for any platform now that it is available.  The GHWT drums have a MIDI input .. what else is there to say?  You just need to make sure you map your MIDI output notes to what the GHWT drums expect … this is listed below.  Also, the controller section is fairly easily separable from the rest of the kit with some hacking, making it a nice and modular piece that can be mounted to your own electronic kit.

The biggest current disadvantage is that you can't find these drums to purchase standalone yet as of 1/1/2009.  Obviously, this will change at some point, but we don't know when.

In summary, as a mass produced solution that is easily connected to any electronic kit, modular, and capable of being used on all platforms, most of the home brewed solutions from the community are likely to be obsolete moving forward.

From http://www.scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=80389

Red=38
Yellow=46
Blue=48
Orange=49 (unused in Rock Band)
Green=45
Purple=36 (orange in Rock Band)

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

TV’s in a (large) nutshell

Posted on 2008/09/07 by richardykuo

I recently rearranged my living room to be a bit more spacious…and the 24" monitor I was using for a TV wasn't cutting it any more.  I thought for a long time I could get away without a TV, but the monitor was looking awfully tiny in the corner … and with friends coming over for Rock Band and other reasons, it was time to take the plunge.

I realize this is a stereotypically male topic, but hey, as I learned recently, the male brain is more interested in visual engagement.  So you'll have to excuse me, but I can't help it … I'm genetically predisposed. =)

The short of what I did was I bought a Sharp LC46D64U 46" LCD TV.  Didn't like it so much, so sold it to a Googler for a fair price and ended up picking up a Panasonic TH-42PZ85U 42" plasma TV.  Very happy with this one.

Read the following and learn what I learned.

Looking at TV's in a store

You should do it, but you need to be aware that stores set the TV's to blow out the color and brightness…basically settings that look OK in a harsh store lighting environment but will look like crap in your home.  Whatever you see on the TV's in a store isn't what it's going to look like in your house or apartment and should be taken with a heavy grain of salt.  If you can, go look at TV's in a darkened or specialized home theater dealer … you'll be better able to judge what you like there.

Black levels

This refers to how "black" your TV really is when displaying a black image.  For an example of ideal blackness, if you were in a completely isolated and unlit room, you would not be able to see a TV displaying a black image.

Of course, in reality, this isn't the case.  You can definitely see TV's in a dark room displaying black.

The reason is that LCD's don't perfectly block the backlight, so light gets through.  Plasma TV's have residual/constant charge in the cells, so they still emit a small amount of light even when displaying a black image (or something close to it).  In general, however, the plasma approach results in better black levels, and the LCD approach is rather fundamentally flawed here.

Contrast

How much of a range of brightness can this TV show?  AKA, what is the difference between the darkest level of brightness the TV can display vs the brightest level?  The more, the better.

Manufacturers like to fudge these numbers, as they do with lots of numbers, by quoting contrast levels obtained by dynamically adjusting the image and backlight based on the content of the image or the ambient lighting.  Usually this is the "dynamic contrast ratio".  This is basically bullshit, but seems to be standard operating procedure these days.

LCD's are beginning to approach plasma constrast ratios, but plasma still takes the win on this one too.

Read this article from Gizmodo for a nice primer, and note the pictures.

Power consumption

Plasma TV's generally consume more power, but not as much as you might think.   Here's why.  The transmissive nature of LCD's mean that the backlight is on all the time.  Plasma TV's, on the other hand, only use power when charging a cell.  The maximum power consumption of a plasma TV, therefore, occurs when the screen is completely white.

Obviously this almost never happens.  So while plasma TV's are rated to consume more peak power, on average, they consume nearly the same amount as an equivalent size LCD.  In reality, the variation between individual manufacturers in power consumption is far more important.  In general, expect around 50-150 dollars in energy cost per year to run your TV. 

Here's a good CNet article about HDTV power consumption that goes into more detail. I did not consider this to be a factor when making my purchase.

http://reviews.cnet.com/tv-power-consumption/?tag=rb_content;rb_mtx  

Weight/Size

LCD TV's are generally slightly slimmer and lighter than their plasma counterparts.  We're talking about a 10-15% difference.  For example, my 46" LCD was around 70 pounds…and my 42" plasma was about the same weight. Interesting, but essentially a non-issue.

Motion Blur

This one is interesting.

On a TV, good motion resolution characteristics are important for tracking small objects and continuing to see fine detail as an image quickly pans or changes.  So while a static image may look great on any particular TV, how moving video looks on a TV is an entirely different story.  Typically, the type of consumers looking for good performance in this area are game players and sports aficionados.

Put another way, under motion, the effective perceived resolution of a display may drop.  Your 1080p display may only look like a 900p display when things are moving.

So let's talk about what causes this.

Poor response times 

LCD's have a reputation for poor motion blur characteristics.  This is largely due to the face that early LCD technology did not have good response time characteristics…that is, the pixels couldn't change to the next color as quickly as the images on the screen were changing. As a result, you would see trailing images or blur.

However, this is largely in the past for LCD's.  At a standard framerate of 60 frames per second,  a new frame is displayed every 16 ms.  LCD's have response times around 5-8ms…some going low as 2ms.

Plasma cells have always switched very quickly, so this has generally not been an issue for plasma TV's.

Sample and hold

I found this one really fascinating.

Let's assume your TV is showing you 60 frames of video per second.   Would it be better for the TV to show you

A. Each image for a full 1/60th of a second

B. Each image strobed instantaneously and precisely 1/60th of a second.

As it turns out, according to the way the human eye works, the answer is B.  Think about it this way.  Any particular image being shown to you is only valid for that instant in time. The longer that image is shown to you for the rest of that 1/60th of a second until the next frame is shown, the more "wrong" it is.  This "wrongness" is perceived as motion blur by the human eye.

This effect is called the sample and hold effect.  The "sample", or image, is displayed and then "held" for the entire 1/60th frame time.  The longer it is held, the more blur your eyes perceive. 

So the answer, obviously, is to strobe the image instantaneously every 1/60th of a second.  Of course, nothing is truly instantaneous, so now we've got issues.  The percentage of time spent displaying the image within the frame time is called the "duty cycle".

Regular LCD's have a duty cycle of around 100%…that is, they show the image for pretty much the entire duration of the frame.  CRT's have a duty cycle of 10%…that's really good!  And p
lasma TV's have a duty cycle of around 25%…which is quite good, but not perfect.

New LCD TV's compensate for this by performing either black frame insertion or frame interpolation.  These features get all kinds of weird trademarked names from each manufacturer, so you'll have to dig and interpret the sales literature to determine what features different TV's are actually offering.

I'm not going to get too deep into this, but black frame insertion basically takes the 1/60th of a second and shows the real image for 1/120th of a second and a black frame for the other 1/120th of a second.  This "clears" the image to the human eye and reduces the duty cycle to 50%.  I like this feature in LCD TV's and the effect is clearly visible to a trained eye.

Frame interpolation essentially makes up intermediate frames for the source material.  Since the TV is actually displaying different images 120 times a second, this also reduces perceived motion blur.  The problem of course, is that those intermediate images aren't real.  As a result, weird artifacts, double images, or haze can be displayed accidentally.  Anyway, some people like this feature, some people don't.  Personally, I am not interested in the potential artifacting that can result from this feature, but it's the hot new thing for 2008.

Poor source characteristics

A lot of content you watch already has motion blur built into the image.  You can verify this by freeze framing or pausing something you're watching.  So detecting motion blur in these cases can be really tricky.

Off angle viewing

LCD's used to be absolutely terrible about this…even going so far as to see the colors invert past a certain viewing angle.  Nowadays, things are much better, but not perfect.  You're likely to seeing dropoffs in brightness and contrast as you move more than 20-30 degrees off angle.

Plasma TV's emit light in an unfocused fashion from the cells in the screen, so there's no off angle viewing issues to speak of.

Depending on where you are planning to put your new TV, viewing angles may or may not be important.  In a big living room or common area, you'll notice the viewing angle issues more.

Latency

This refers to the time between when the TV receives an image vs when it displays it.  This is often referred to as input lag.  Today's TV's perform a lot of image processing to enhance or otherwise tweak the incoming image.   Unfortunately, the processing results in a delay before the image gets to the screen.  Typically, this range anywhere from 0 to 100 ms, although on average you'll probably see latency in the 30-60 ms range.

Letancy is important for competitive/serious gaming because every millisecond between when an event is displayed vs when you react to it counts.  Latency is a non-issue for everyone else since as long as the audio and video are in sync it doesn't really matter when the audio and video get to you when you watch TV or DVD's.

For gamers, the problem is, it's really hard to find reviews that measure this specification scientifically.  As a result, you generally have a lot of well-intentioned but misguided people claiming their sets have no latency, when in fact they are simply completely unqualified to make such a claim.

Fortunately, many new TV's are starting to pay attention to this and are including game modes which significantly cut latency.  Having such a mode is no guarantee that your TV can reduce or eliminate latency, however.  If you a serious gamer, you will need to do a lot of research or do hands on testing.

Burn-in

TV's that display the same image for long periods of time are prone to suffering "burn-in".  Basically, the overuse of the same pixels for a long period of time wears down those pixels unevenly and causes them to look visibly different…usually darker.  This leaves a perceptible afterimage on the screen.

LCD TV's suffer very little from this due to the nature of LCD technology.  Since the backlight is generating all the light and the screen is essentially deciding what to let through, burn-in isn't really an issues on LCD's.

Plasma TV's, on the other hand, excite phosphors to generate light and these phosphors do wear down over time.

Even if an image is displayed on a plasma TV for 48 hours straight, it can generally be cleared by displaying a moving white bar over the screen. (this feature is built into most plasma TV's).

Watching 4:3 content on a 16:9 screen can cause noticable burn-in if done often.  There are features to move the image slowly around the screen to prevent burn-in from occurring.

In summary, burn-in is a possibility with plasma TV's, but a multitude of features exist to compensate for this.

Characteristics under different lighting conditions

LCD TV's tend to have better viewing characteristics than plasma TV's under very bright lighting conditions, such as very well lit or sunlit rooms.

However, you can't really expect any sort of good image under harsh lighting conditions.  If this is your goal, buy some cheap LCD TV's and be done with it.

In controlled lighting conditions, plasma TV's have a distinct advantage due to all the characteristics I've mentioned already.

Resolution

Ah yes…what would an HDTV be without the HD?

Most TV's today come in a 720p or 1080p variety.  The number 720p means that there are 720 rows of pixels on the TV.  The "p" means "progressive", which is just a fancy way of saying that each image is displayed all at once as opposed to displaying every other line, which was the default back in the day.

Putting it another way, the resolution of most HDTV's today is either 1280×720, or 1920×1080.

This excellent article from Carlton Bale has charts showing you at what viewing distance you need to be to benefit from different resolutions.

My opinion? Buying a 720p can get you a big discount on the price, and honestly, most people aren't sitting close enough to their TV's to justify 1080p.  Nevertheless, I feel like 1080p is still the way to go … it's such a fundamental characteristic of the television that I think it's worth going for now, and in the future.

Value

Finally, price.  As it turns out, plasma TV's are very competitive with LCD's strictly in terms of size to cost ratio.  However, plasma TV's are generally not manufactured in smaller sizes because no one has managed to squeeze that many cells into a small display yet.  So you generally won't see plasma TV's at sizes less than 42".

Conclusion

OK … believe it or not, I could go on, but I won't.

As you can see, the chips stack up pretty favorably for plasma TV's.  The image is significantly better in nearly all viewing conditions and pricing is competitive.  Having done some homework, my personal suggestion would be the budget plasma lines from Panasonic, like PZ80U or PZ85U series.  You can pick these up from 1100-1500 bucks in the
42-50 inch range.  They seem to win on multiple fronts at competitive prices, especially if you get a discount deal.  LCD TV's are catching up, but as far as I'm concerned, are clearly not there yet.  Don't get caught up in store or marketing hype … avsforum.com has a thread on practically every TV in existence and is an excellent resource.

I hope this helps someone out there looking to buy a TV.  I really don't consider myself that picky, but you still have to do your background when buying the centerpiece of your living room. 😉

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

How to use an electronic drum kit with Rock Band

Posted on 2008/06/03 by richardykuo

So, I've been playing a lot of the drums in Rock Band lately.  I don't have any experience playing real drums, but anyone with half a brain can tell that drums in Rock Band are way closer to the real thing than the plastic guitar is.

The first time I tried them, I was at a friend's house.  I did pretty well for someone who had never played the drums before…although I have some musical background, so I'm not a total loss at these things.  And then we got to "Here It Goes Again" … you know, the one with the YouTube video where the band is dancing around on treadmills.  The alternating hand hits + kicks (syncopation) totally destroyed me.  My hands and feet would simply NOT do what the notes on the screen were telling me to do.

Occasionally, I'll make myself good at something just because I know I'm bad at it, and I want to see if I can do better.  This was one of those times.

I picked up a copy of Rock Band a few weeks later and screwed around on some of the songs on expert difficulty.  I probably got through around 20 out of 45 songs or so…and mind you, this is passing the song according to the game, not actually playing the song well by hitting most of the notes.  And then I ran across a thread and video where someone had hooked up his top of the line Roland TD-20 V-Drums to Rock Band.

Well, we just HAD to try this.

Long story short, it's two months later, my hand foot independence is not 100%, but it's off the charts compared to where I was before, and the whole experience has been fun every step of the way.  It's also been interesting observing my own progress starting from basic timing to syncopation to faster and faster BPM songs and kick heavy songs, etc.  My leg used to feel like it was going to fall off in the middle of certain songs…now, it's just not a problem.  Don't get me wrong … leg/foot endurance is still an issue, but rather than just falling apart completely, it just affects my consistency near the middle/end of songs.  Still, I've been seeing improvement every step of the way, so I'm sure this will continue to improve.  And frankly, I'm starting to nail a bunch of the songs that aren't so kick heavy.

Anyway, I enjoyed the whole process so much that I wrote an uber FAQ a few weekends ago collecting all of the information anyone new might need to do the modification themselves and posted it to the relevent community forums.  Probably the equivalent of 10-20 blog posts…so yeah, that's why I haven't been posting.  And surprisingly, quite a few people have gone ahead and used the FAQ to get themselves set up as well.  Nice to know. =)

Anyway, I have zero personal illusions about "real drumming", so to speak.  In between work and other learning/social pursuits, taking things to that level isn't high on my list of priorities.  But the whole process has been an interesting personal challenge, and I thought it was worth mentioning.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Roland FD-8 Hi-Hat Controller.jpg

Posted on 2008/05/11 by richardykuo
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment