Entries from July 2008 ↓

I’ve just moved to Vancouver from Australia.  Before coming here I read guidebooks but there is always a bunch of stuff that you notice when you first move to a place that you would never read in books.  I’m not sure if these things are particular to Vancouver, Canada or North America, either way they are just weird.

• Car Rear indicator lights are red as opposed to amber in the all the countries I’ve been to
• The front brake lever on a bike is on the left and the rear break is on the right.
• Some traffic lights flash when green, I still don’t know why this is.
• There are no drivers on the skytrains. They must be operated by computer or remotely.
• You have to pay for incoming calls on mobile phones.
• Canadians dont know how to use round-abouts, most people stop in the middle of them.
• Light switches go down for off and up for on.
• The big liquor stores don’t sell cold beer.

Whoosh!, originally uploaded by phil.

Apparently gears on bike just ain’t cool any more. Not wanting to be left out the funky bike gang, I picked up an old Raleigh 7-speed last weekend. I took it down to Our community bikes in East Vancouver, the bike mechanics down there are awesome. For about $10 a hour they showed me how to strip out the old components and convert the hub to a single speed. The bike flys now. Here is a summary of the work done.

• Overhauled and trued wheels.
• New chain ring.
• New single speed cog and spacer on hub.
• Broke and shortened the chain.
• New tires.
• Removed rear brake.
• Removed stand.
• New red grip.
• New seat.

Check out the before and after shots on flickr.

I have released an OS X widget to search then play the music video to the song you are listening to in iTunes. Check the itube page for details.

EA Skate rocks! Its by far the best skateboarding game since Tony Hawk 2. The feeling of control you get from the flick it system and the satisfaction of landing a hard trick mimic the feeling you get when landing your best trick whilst your really skating. I suck at real skating, so rather than put all my efforts into that I’m redirecting my skills towards making Skate 2 better.

• more skate styles eg Daewon song style and Stefan Jokanski 360 flips.
• would be cool if each trick had 3 different variances which you could purchase for your character. eg Daewon 360flips, Reynolds frontside sides, Kenny Reid 5-0s, Kosten backside noseblunts.
• tweaking out flip tricks, maybe the higher you ollie or tweak button.
• better co-ordinations between ollie and rotation, you should’nt be able to rotate once airborne. Would make frontside flip animations more effective, you’d have to time the rotation and ollie flip together. Not sure how this could work with steering. Ideally there should be different speeds of rotation so 360s have a different animation from 180s.
• switch style, a slider variable in your character profile, the higher the variable the more the tricks and stance should look reversed.
• more camera angles on replays and editing, fisheye and long lens views.
• Real animations for jumping off the board to walk. Running and jumping onto the board animation.
• Make your own skate video part. Collect footage and edit it.
• Fisheye view.
• Bails and kick out of tricks.