Chinese pirate DVDs: Star Wars

Over in mainland China, DVD piracy is rife to the point where the pirates actually have their own shops. Far from offering shoddy service and poor quality as those childish anti-piracy adverts allege, the Chinese pirate DVD stores offer money-back guarantees and excellent service. However, the English on the packaging can leave a lot to be desired.

These are the first three Star Wars movies as obtained from a Beijing pirate DVD store (thank you, Ally!). Click the images to read the text properly. It seems like someone has cut and pasted them in there with little regard for what the English actually says.

The Moscow Metro is really beautiful

The London Underground isn't so pretty - genuine sign I found at Bank station

You may have heard about how pretty the Moscow Metro system is, you may have seen a couple of photographs, but I finally managed to find a decent set that really shows what it's like.

The incredible educational world of Vi Hart

Despite my great love of knowledge, I despise pretty much anything labelled as "educational". I reserve a special hatred for everything termed "edutainment". And any time something is promoted as "making learning fun", I have an urge to punch people.

Usually when something is made to be educational and enjoyable, it fails on both fronts. Creativity and imagination are sacrificed for education and the learning is normally pitched so low and badly that you wonder at the level of mental retardation supposed of the consumer. When fun and education are combined, fun takes the back seat.

So I was very pleasantly surprised to encounter the work of Vi Hart. She actually explains mathematical concepts in a fun way. With Vi, the fun comes first, but rather cleverly the learning is intrinsic. Have a look at the following video which is a simple story for kids that deals with the concept of Möbius strips.





Wasn't that cool? I especially like the way she left the viewer to discover the end of the story for themselves and thus illustrating a further surprising quality of Möbius strips.

Now this might seem a little advanced for your moronic offspring, but what I think is surprisingly clever about Hart's videos are that they don't require children to understand the concepts at a technical level. The kids don't have to be told that a  Möbius strip is a chiral object with handedness and zero Gaussian curvature - they can gain an understanding of this stuff just by playing with it. As they grow up, when they encounter these concepts again from a mathematical standpoint, it'll be a lot easier for them as they have a practical and intrinsic knowledge of how this shit works.

You know what a Möbius strip is and you know that you can make one by sticking a half-twist in a strip of paper. But I'll bet you have no idea how to represent one mathematically like you do a triangle or a hexagon.  But then you never encountered Möbius strips until after you'd learned most of your mathematical knowledge and they were difficult to understand through the window of geometry. This kind of stuff is a lot easier to deal with if you first encounter it through the lens of play.





Well, I went a bit ranty there, didn't I? So ignore me and have a look at the video above which is all about mucking around with those snake toys that we've all used. I'm almost ashamed that I didn't figure out half the stuff that Vi manages to discover just by mucking around with them.

Do yourself a favour. Get that sprog of yours away from Peppa sodding Pig and try some of Vi's activities with them instead. You'll both get smarter and have a lot of fun in the process. Oh and Vi can explain exactly why Spongebob Squarepants is a twat... with mathematical proof.

Vi has a blog with lots of videos here:
http://vihart.com/


You can find out more about Vi herself in an article in the Noo Yoik Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/science/18prof.html

Comics: Oglaf

I'm always interested in a good online comic strip, but there really aren't that many that really grab my attention. My chum Matt pointed me at cracker though: Oglaf. It's set in a sort of medieval fantasy universe with other bits and pieces (like that Ponce de León strip above). There isn't an over-riding story as such, more a collection of small storylines, although there are times when there is a longer story arc.

It's frequently dodgy (in a not safe for work manner) but it's damn funny. And when I say it's a bit iffy... well, you probably wouldn't want your kids to be reading it. I've avoided posting any of the more explicit ones here - you'll just have to pop over to the website to see those.

What's quite surprising is that it's drawn by an Australian. Even more surprising is that the author is female. Trudy Cooper is a cartoonist, illustrator and animator and Oglaf is just one of her strips. She also publishes Platinum Grit, which has a different art style and is nothing like Oglaf.

If you're wondering about the title... it's actually the name of one of the characters in the strip. Oglaf is a young farm boy and also happens to be The Chosen One although it's never exactly clear for what he's been chosen.

There are a whole pile of recurring characters and sometimes the strip will follow one for several weeks, but just as often it'll skip back and forward without settling on a particular one. A new strip is published every Sunday and, if you read it via the RSS feed, it'll even tell you if it's 'clean' or not.

Some stories are just one page, but most have two or three. Be sure to click "next page" until you can't any more. Then you can click "next story" to move on.

When you reach the end of a story, the bottom right hand panel corner is cut off just so you're sure you haven't missed anything.

That's got to be my favourite one. The joke is just spot on and so underplayed that I find it brilliant.

Head on over to oglaf.com to catch up. There's about 250 strips for you to read (at the time of writing).
http://oglaf.com/

You might also want to check out Cooper's other comic here:
http://www.platinumgrit.com/

There's an interview with Trudy Cooper about Oglaf and other stuff here:
http://www.yuhmm.com/post/434279932/trudy-cooper

Free Game Friday: Stunt Rally and Tricky Truck

I don't deliberately theme these game articles, but it seems to happen anyway.

Stunt Rally might not have the most original name, concept, execution or gameplay, but that isn't a bad thing. You drive a car jolly fast through a landscape and try not to screw up too much. It comes with an impressive 79 tracks spread over 11 different regions and it's even possible to play multiplayer.

Although the tracks are very much made for rallying, there's quite a variety and some of the loops and bridges and things are simply excellent fun. There's even a track editor if you feel a bit creative and the game is updated quite often.

Go here to get it (it's about 200MB):
http://code.google.com/p/vdrift-ogre/




Our other game today isn't quite as free. Tricky Truck does have a free version, but you need to cough up approximately eight quid for the full thing. You're actually best off playing the free version initially to see if it's your kind of thing. It's a challenging physics-based truck driving simulation.

The game is satisfyingly hard. The first couple of levels will seem a bit finicky and unnecessary, but you'll soon be trying some very challenging mountain tracks. Completing a level is... well, tricky and you'll feel a real sense of accomplishment in doing so. Failing may be frustrating, but it's one of those games where messing up is definitely your fault; you haven't been cheated, the game has not tricked you, you just turned that corner way too fast.





There's also a lot of enjoyment in taking a stupid risk and pulling it off or smashing and caroming your way around a track in a manner that you know you're not supposed to be able to. The first time I managed a track in a top fifty time, I was ridiculously pleased with myself. Playing on hard mode restricts you to views from within the cab which just adds to the fun sometimes. The best time I've scored on the first shorcuts track (24th place) was on hard. Hah!

Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea

The free version limits you to one truck and only about ten tracks, but surprisingly does include features like the level editor. The full version gives you a lot more vehicle choice, many new tracks and a heck of a lot of other little fun bits and pieces that you can see some of in the video.

Grab it here (about 20MB):
http://www.gravitysensation.com/trickytruck/

1 incredibly skilful tiny knife

There seems to be a bit of a fashion in Russia for making tiny models or replicas. I wrote before about tiny weapons (hence the clumsy title this time round) and this time we're going to look at the process of making a miniature version of a kitchen knife. I'm really impressed by the level of finishing and accuracy.

It's not just knives. Dno, or whatever his name is (I don't read Russian) has a whole host of tiny models.
http://dno.livejournal.com/

Free Game Friday: Unusual game control systems

This week is a little different in that I've not been playing free games, but I've been controlling them with unusual methods (which are all free). None of this keyboard and mouse stuff for me.


FaceTrackNoIR is a face detection uh... thing. It detects your face in order to follow your head movements and it transmits this data to the game. You can lay out £150 for a TrackIR device or you can use a webcam and FaceTrackNoIR.

Who is that handsome devil?

It actually works surprisingly well for something that's a bit cobbled-together. It uses the free non-commercial faceAPI from Seeing Machines to monitor the position of your face and it does a good job even if you have a beard and a busy background.

Although I initially used it for a flight sim, it worked equally well in driving games and, in the video above, you can see it being used for a first person shooter. Quite impressive.

There are obvious limitations like not being able to look directly behind you or too far off to the side, but seeing as you don't have a monitor over there, it's not going to be a problem. I haven't tried it with a game that supports multiple monitors yet, but I think that could be quite interesting.

Try it for yourself here:

http://facetracknoir.sourceforge.net/home/default.htm

There's a list of games that support it here:

http://facetracknoir.sourceforge.net/compatibility/games.htm

GlovePIE has been around for a while and basically allows you to control anything with anything. Originally designed to allow the use of those awful 'virtual reality' gloves, it's gone a bit further than that.

I decided to see if I could use my Nintendo Wii controllers with a flight sim and it was a breeze. The only other thing I needed was a Bluetooth adapter for my PC, but they can be picked up for pennies from ebay or Amazon (I had some spare Amazon credit). Here's a guy controlling Google Earth with a Wiimote:

In my case, it wasn't a total success. The Wiimote worked perfectly, but it wasn't actually any better than just using a joystick. I did try it with a driving game and that was a lot better although my arms did get a bit tired of holding it in the air all the time. But then I cam across this video and realised that I could do more with it.

Voice commands, eh? Well I've got several driving games where it's jolly difficult for me to perform certain functions because my hands are busy. He's playing rFactor 2 and I play the similar Race 07. I have difficulty arranging my pitstops because I've got two hands working the keyboard already, so when do I have time to navigate the menu to arrange my pitstop?

Voice command worked brilliantly. I play with headphones on, so there was no problem isolating the voice commands from the game noise. It uses the speech recognition engine built into Windows 7

I know there's a lot more that can be done with GlovePIE and writing scripts for it isn't terribly hard.

Get it here:

http://glovepie.org/glovepie.php

What worked especially well was combining the two. I played Race 07 using FaceTrackNoIR to track my head and GlovePIE to handle voice commands and that just let me get on with the driving. Entering a corner, I can look to the apex as I turn the car towards it, whilst telling my pit crew that I want different tyres on my next stop. Neither were particularly hard to set up (although I was using games with which I knew they already worked). Have a go yourselves and if there's any other unusual control method out there, let me know.

Programmable microchips weren't cute enough for Japan

asdasd

Check it out, it's an FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array)! What do you mean, "what's that?" - are you retarded? FPGAs are a programmable alternative to using ASICs. Still not with me? Oh my.

Non-ignorant readers can skip these bits:
In certain hardware there is a need for ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit). For instance in an MP3 player it might be better to have an ASIC chip dedicated to decoding MP3 files rather than leaving it to the CPU. CPUs operate in a very general way and aren't the best solution for any one task. An ASIC designed purely to decode MP3 data will be much more efficient than using the CPU and leaves the CPU free to deal with other tasks and increases battery life through reduced power consumption.


The main drawback with ASICs is that they're custom designed for each task. This can lead to long delays as the chips have to be designed and tested and the set-up costs before manufacturing the ASIC can be very high.


FPGAs are a step back from ASICs. They're designed to be configured and programmed after manufacturing. Thus a company can buy FPGAs off the shelf and start manufacturing whilst still working on the setup for the FPGA. They can even be programmed once the product has been deployed or sold to a customer. They're very flexible and their low pre-production costs can make them a good alternative to ASICs, especially in items that aren't going to have very high production runs.


Or, for complete idiots:
An ASIC is a chip designed and created to do a task. An FPGA can be programmed to do anything.

The picture above shows the logical layout of a particular FPGA made by a Japanese company. You can see how it's laid out and how it works. The only problem is that this is Japan and that's way too dry and non-kawaii, so it need improved.

This is the circuit-board itself. You can see the yellow power connector on the left, the two simple LED displays, the USB connector at the top in the middle and the two black interface connector on the right - allowing you to use this board to control just about anything. And here's the back of that board:

Way to go, Japan! I've seen various circuit board and chip companies hide small logos and graphics on their stuff before, but never an entire board given over to an image. And just in case you think this is arbitrary, the layout is perfectly functional and logical and has barely been altered to accommodate the design. There's a video that explain everything... in Japanese... with extremely cheerful j-pop music.





I really want one of these. Really, really want one of these. I still want a Raspberry Pi, which is an entire computer on a single little board, but bloody hell, Japan, you've really managed to made a relatively interested bit of electronics into an object of desire.

Even the documentation is manga-ed up to the max

China wins the snooker

Jimmy White really did play the bad guy in a Hong Kong snooker movie versus Stephen Chow (Shaolin Soccer)

It's the World Snooker Championship at the moment. This annual contest is in the first round and will continue for three weeks. I'll be watching a lot of it regardless of whether I want to or not, because China is playing.

My wife's Chinese, from Taiwan. The political situation out there is complicated, but no matter what, she'll always regard herself as Chinese and cheer on the Chinese participants in... well, pretty much anything. And snooker's pretty popular in China these days thanks to Ding Junhui. Ever since DingDing (as he's known in my household) appeared, snooker has been changing.

Being female and attractive are important
qualities in a snooker referee

In 2001, professional snooker was in decline. The banning of tobacco sponsorship had hit snooker especially hard and there were problems with trying to attract new sponsors. One thing the WPBSA (World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association) tried was to bring in a female referee to uh, spice things up (they imagined). Although Michaela Tabb has proved popular with both fans and players and her refereeing has been solid, her rapid elevation caused a lot of ill-feeling with other snooker officials. Not for her the five year apprenticeship required of all other referees and, when the WPBSA needed to sack two of its ten referees to cut costs, she was oddly exempt from the last-in-first-out rule that had always applied. Oh and she attracted neither new fans nor sponsors.

In 2003, Ding Junhui turned professional after winning many under-21 competitions and becoming China's number one player. When DingDing appeared on our televisions, it wasn't obvious just how much snooker was about to change. There had been other Chinese-ish players before - Marco Fu of Hong Kong had been playing professionally for a few years for example - but Ding was the first player from mainland China to break into the professional game. Ding was living in England in order to better practice his game and he was already famous among the other Chinese living in the north of England. As soon as Ding appeared on television, yellow faces appeared in the crowd at his matches. Chinese TV channels began to cover the sport and there was a sudden influx of Chinese sponsorship. The mere arrival of Ding had rescued the game of snooker pretty much overnight.

It's a few years since then and there's isn't a player's waistcoat that doesn't have Chinese characters on it. Many tournaments are sponsored by Chinese companies you've never heard of. The China Open was revived and suddenly the Shanghai Masters competition was created. Every player benefited from new sponsorship, new prize money, new tournaments and a whole new audience. And still the commentators couldn't pronounce Ding's name (丁俊晖 - Dīng Jùnhuī - ding june-whey). But they really had better start practising their Chinese names as Ding's success didn't just create new fans, but a whole new generation of players and even a referee.

Zhu Ying - professional snooker's newest referee

Michaela Tabb might be officiating the finals of the World Championship this year, but Zhu Ying will be refereeing several matches and is younger, prettier and, being Chinese-ier, appeals to a much bigger audience. Oh and no one cheated or bent the rules to get her a job.

There's a whole bunch of Chinese players suddenly appearing in the competitions too. Appearing alongside Ding Junhui in the 2012 World Championship are Cao Yupeng, Liang Wenbo and Liu Chuang. Marco Fu's in it too, but as my wife puts it "No Chinese wants to see his ugly Cantonese face. He's a Hong Kong bastard - he's not real Chinese!"

Liang Wenbo and Ding Junhui - one lives in Romford, the other in Sheffield

And the new crop of Chinese players aren't slouches. On Saturday, Liang Wenbo took number one seed John Higgins down to the last frame before missing a crucial shot. Sunday saw Cao Yupeng beat world number seven, Mark Allen. (Note to commentators: it's pronounced ts-ow you-pung whereas you're calling him "cow" or "sow" which both mean "fuck" in Mandarin). Although Liu Chuang is unlikely to beat Mark Williams on Wednesday, Ding will likely beat Ryan Day leading to a match between him and Cao Yupeng.

As well as those in the World Championship, there are a whole lot of other Chinese players zipping up the rankings. You can expect to see Jin Long, Li Hang, Li Yan, Liu Song, Lu Ning, Mei Xiwen, Tian Pengfei, Xiao Guodong, Yu Delu, Zhang Anda on your TV shortly and it'll be hilarious listening to the commentators stumble over their names.

One of the main differences with the Chinese players is the approach they take to their snooker careers. As well as being a professional snooker player taking part in all the main contests, Ding also has to take part in every major Asian event as he's got to be China's number one guy in as public a manner as possible over there. A further demand on Ding's time is that he's a student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University studying Business Administration and Management. Oh and he now has a chain of snooker clubs across China (although this tends to be the kind of thing you let your family run if you're Chinese, heck it was probably their idea). He's easily the busiest of the pro players and it's interesting to see just how much Ding is concentrating on securing his future after snooker; something that many other players would do well to emulate.

It turns out that many Chinese actually are inscrutable

Ding Junhui is a quiet and gentle man with the extraordinary burden of being a national hero from a country where that means much more than the chance to appear on ballroom dancing shows. Reading his (Chinese language) blog shows Ding going out to play in the English snow with his friends and it's quite touching to see how he shares details of his student life, encouraging his Chinese fans to study as much as they can (Ding will post pictures of things like his enrolment certificates and class schedules so his followers can see exactly what university is like). It's quite astonishing how quietly dignified Ding is. I'd be freaking out if I had the kind of pressures that he does and I definitely wouldn't be able to bear them with such serenity.

My wife fucking loves Ronnie O'Sullivan for the respect he shows to Ding

Ding rarely shows any emotion in any of his matches and, although he is very polite, you don't get much hint of friendship between him and other players. Other non-yellow players that is. Amongst the Chinese players, Ding is god-like. He opened the door to international snooker for China and it's doubtful that any of the new generation of players would be there without him. Liang Wenbo was the next guy to make it up to the top ranks of world snooker and it's clear that he and Ding, both living in England for a few years now, are genuinely friends. But emotion is clearly something to keep private. Occasionally a small smile might be visible when he wins, but there's really only one time that Ding's been seen to emit an actual feeling and that was when a match with Ronnie O'Sullivan went badly wrong and Ding walked off thinking it had finished when it hadn't. I was very impressed that O'Sullivan was the first to go after him and spent time calming him down and cheering him up enough to return to the table. They're clearly stayed fairly close friends since then.

There are snooker soap operas in China now, there's even a cartoon series specifically about Ding (no kidding)

Ding's status as a legend is assured, but what's less certain is the future of snooker. It's already slightly weird that the majority of the money and TV audience comes from China and yet most of the competitions are in England. Luckily most of the players are still English, but with waves of eager young Chinese players on the way, how long is it before they're in the majority? And when that day comes is snooker going to be a game where all the audience, money and players come from China and yet the games continue to be played in England? Well, goodness knows what's going to happen, but I'm going to be watching it (I don't have any choice in the matter).

Proper writers like to do a little trick to round off articles where they make reference back to the opening sentence or the title, even if it means fudging in a semi-pun, telling a lie, saying something slightly pretentious or even merely repeating a word or two. My wife glanced over at the television earlier today after a non-yellow match and asked me "Who won the snooker?" China did, oh wife of mine, China won the snooker...

People think that Confucius is the great philosopher sage of China, but actually it's Jimmy White

"Legend of the Dragon" 1991 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100047/

Tottori Sand Sculpture Contest

In Tottori, Japan, there is a Sand Museum. I don't know too much about the museum's exhibits, but I do know that every year they have a sad sculpture competition. Each contest has a theme and this year's is 'Great Britain' which has proved interesting. As well as the Japanese teams, there are fourteen foreign sculptors taking part.

My favourite is the last image showing a rainy day in London. What do you think?