(Funny, I seem to be fixated on five year spans. In my life, everything changes in five years.)
Thursday, November 22, 2007
SanDisk II, The Vampire Strikes Back
Another in my faintly embarrassing series of notes on how fast technology moves: I did not dream five years (such a short span of time) that in 2007 you could buy a 4-gigabyte memory card, and a card reader, for around 30 bucks/18 pounds. It's just ridiculous.
(Funny, I seem to be fixated on five year spans. In my life, everything changes in five years.)
(Funny, I seem to be fixated on five year spans. In my life, everything changes in five years.)
Ridiculous or not, at such a great price, I want one!
ReplyDelete"Mom? I think it's time to e-mail Santa for this year. I've been good, honestly." :-)
About a year back I was on the bus with a bunch of SanDisk employees, they were talking about the micro and nano SD cards they were working on. It's hard to believe silicon densities are where they are at. We though 90nm was the big whoop, they were two processes beyond us! Sure memories are not processors, but still.
ReplyDeleteThe smaller the geometry, the more dice per wafer, and yield increase reduces the price.
Ah, those were they days.
Pixar, when they made Luxo, were using a mini computer with 1/100th the compute power of the average cellphone! (you have to get the DVD of Pixar shorts- good documentaries, and fun films.)
4-gigabyte memory cards make me go a big rubbery one.
ReplyDeleteInfo straight from my brother: "Yeah, well, in Lebanon, the importers have made an agreement together not to lower the prices. A 1-giga card alone costs $15."
ReplyDeleteAin't jungle capitalism great? ):-P
And then, our effing politicians will whine that for some mysterious reason, the country's stagnating.
Joe, with that level of miniaturization, I'm not sure how big that rubbery one will be. You only need so much, the rest is mere extra anyway. :-)
Oh doc, I've just noticed that your eyes are blinking! Wow, rub-a-dub-dub!! (Copyright: The Eagles, back in the sixties or so)
ReplyDeleteWhat, that? Oh, it's probably just eye fatigue, I've been spending time oogling some Danish artistic site. (Said in a knowing tone of voice, blink-blink, nudge-nudge. ;-)
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on being the first one to spot what was hidden in plain sight, you get a no-prize (Copyright: Marvel Comics). Expect it in the no-mail, any no-day.
It's my own idea and execution, did it a few days ago(you'll notice the difference with older pages). All it took was a few minutes and MS Gif Animator, to add one frame of animation over the original image. Ridiculously simple. (It looks best at full size.)
Imagine, if such a small touch was added to all webcomics, in our very convenient digital age. It would make the characters feel much more alive, wouldn't it?
By self-teaching myself HTML, now I am even able to animate JPG or PNG photos without losing image quality by converting them into GIF format. But it has to be on a specially written web page, doesn't work with a Blogger avatar.
Why "The Vampire Strikes Back", Captain? I didn't get that one.
I mean, I get the Star Wars allusion, but why "vampire"? Because it's got a buffy memory?
ReplyDeleteI bet mine is buffer than yours.
It's the second SanDisk post, so I gave it a sequel title. I like sequel titles.
ReplyDeleteyou get a no-prize (Copyright: Marvel Comics).
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember the odd genius writing in to ask what a no-prize was. ;)
It's true. And the editor would keep kool and say "the name says it".
ReplyDeleteNewsflash: I happen to have seen one of those, actually. Well... almost!
ReplyDeleteIn the first PlayStation1 Spider-Man videogame, there's a secret code to replay the adventure in "What If?" mode. You meet the Watcher introducing the alternate reality adventure, and all sorts of weird things happen in it, like racing the Yellow Submarine, fighting the Ride of the Valkyries helicopter, Spidey dancing the Disco, Doc Octopus going into a mini "flower power" hippie trip, even a Matrix-like confrontation with Mysterio... (I dare not tell you what Black Cat does in the Banana in a Tailpipe challenge when she gets in a weird mood! No fib!)
And, in the Daily Bugle warehouse level, in that mode, I spotted several crates labeled with a big flashy "Marvel No-Prize".
For some puzzling reason, I couldn't open any of the crates to see what a no-prize looks like. Go figure. :-D
Ah, I've just remembered: there WAS a good reason why I couldn't get Spidey to open those crates.
ReplyDeleteBecause they were awaiting shipment to the fan readers who had won them, of course. D'uh!
Too rare and valuable to let any storeroom worker just snatch one.
"(I dare not tell you what Black Cat does in the Banana in a Tailpipe challenge when she gets in a weird mood! No fib!)"
ReplyDeleteHow can you fib when you haven't told us anything?
What'd she do?
Can't be what I hope, or the game would be banned in the US along with the console.
I meant: "No fib, Black Cat does something you wouldn't expect in the Banana in a Tailpipe challenge when she gets in a weird mood!"
ReplyDeleteLet's just say she discovers what swinging really means. :-)
Okay, more seriously: in the original game, she's imprisoned in a reinforced glass cell, and when Spidey jams the toxic smoke generators by clogging them (hence the name of the level), Cat is realeased. In the silly "What if?" game, there's some hypnotic music playing inside her cell, and she can't stop dancing Austin Powers style.
Why, Eolake, what were you hoping for, you dirty old man? :-D
In the same game, I read and verified another amusing secret: if, at the password cheats screen, you try to input a swear word, Spidey leaps onscreen, and punches it with a loud crunching sound, leaving it replaced by a random harmless word.
They must have done it after the GTA Hot Coffee uproar, so nobody would say: "In Spider-Man, you can actually input nasty vocabulary as passwords, even though they don't do anything." It might have killed the game and console, as you say. :-P
"what were you hoping for, you dirty old man?"
ReplyDeleteA banana in a tail pipe.
There is. Just not in the one you'd wish. In the alternate game, the toxic smoke generators actually get jammed with giant bananas. :-D
ReplyDelete