Riley came over and we tried out the Oculus on Steph’s computer. We first tried it on my PC laptop, but it wouldn’t work there. Each time we tried to start it there would be a blue screen of death. So on steph’s desktop we got it working, tried a few of the example situations, and then we got it to work with Halflife 2. This didn’t go as well as expected, as many of the aspects of the game caused a sick feeling. We couldn’t really go more than 5 minutes at a stretch without getting a little sick, and after a total of maybe 15 minutes we couldn’t take any more of it. I really liked the experience, but I just couldn’t handle it. The parts where you sit in one place and look around were really nice, and didn’t cause a sick feeling, but so many parts of the expected game experience didn’t work. These include turning, jumping, crouching, falling, sitting, strafing, stairs, and just moving in general. It will take a lot to get something like this to be mass market feasible.
Steph and I drove over to the farmers market on Sunday and got some tasty food. We got lots of berries, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries. We also got some Bolani, even though they were out of the pumpkin kind. We didn’t bike, but here is a pic of my new bike! (the old one was stolen while I was at PAX)
Of course we also got some samosas, which were delicious as always.
The kitties are pretty amazing. Steph has been helping me walk the kitties. They have also started getting under the porch area, but haven’t been too hard to get out yet. I’m a little concerned that they will soon like it enough to try to stay under there when I want to bring them back in. They have also been pretty cuddly lately, and I got some fun pics of archer kitty.
We went out to eat with Andrew, Lindsay, and Jeremy at Zeni. It was delicious, but not the best idea for a dinner before the dancing games. We then went back to Jeremy’s place to play the game Just Dance, which was the knock off version of Dance Central. We had a great time, and it was much more tiring than expected. Steph and I called it a night early, since we had an early morning from the diving. Many of the dances were hilarious to watch people do.
Steph and I went to Breakwater to dive the metridium fields. Metridiums are pretty 2-3 foot white anemones. We took the pipe out to the end and then went due north. I was able to spot a Sea lion along the pipe when looking back at Steph, and I saw one again when we were out at the fields. We also say a sea hare, which is a 1.5 foot long slug. It was the size of a rabbit and looked like a purple land slug. Steph got a headache after the first drive so we headed back. We went into Palo Alto for lunch at Umami burger. We then headed back to our places to clean our gear.
I had a great time playing trucker with Iliya, Adam, Tina, and Eva. I did really well on the first two rounds, with a gunboat on the first round, a rolling cargo sphere for the second, and another gunboat for the third. The gunboats worked pretty well, but the lasers got be a good bit. I ended up giving up the last round, but did better than the others since I mainly gave up instead of getting shot down. I won out of the people doing the same level of difficulty, Eva had more, but did an easier route.
This was an interesting overview of Buddhist practices and their spread to the West, specifically the US. The way things changed were to open more to everyone and less focused on the teaching and efforts. This was great to look at how some Buddhist practices were getting really cult like, and some had died from these practices. The teachers teaching that there don’t need to be teachers kind of got me. I thought that part was pretty funny.
I did very poorly at Caverna last night, even though I got third. I went super military, but didn’t get the military point buildings. There were also too many people going military that game, and since I was so specialized it took a toll. I managed to get 3 level 14 weapons pretty early on, but that wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t able to place the 14 level weapon people since all the adventure spaces had been taken. It was a very low scoring game, and nobody took the office. Adam and Tina were decently far ahead, and I had Erik and Cynthia at about my score level.
This was a very strange book, although I knew that going in. The ideas in it are ones that I’d like to think could never happen, and some of them won’t due to the internet. At the same time, things like wikipedia being changeable make it possible for untrue things to become commonly accepted. There are many examples of this, and the way it can become the readily accepted facts makes it very interesting. The full acceptance without thinking is something that I don’t think could happen. The double think is also something I don’t believe could happen. There is too much going on for it to happen now, and the internet is too untamed, and untamable. The base story itself is just depressing.
It's an Exciting World 