I’ve been thinking a lot over the last couple of months about generations. A few years back, thanks to the now-former MIT admissions director Marilee Jones, I learned that my generation had finally gotten a semi-official label - the “Millenials”. I never really identified myself as one, nor did I feel the need to. Being surrounded by Millenials in college probably contributed to my apathy on the subject quite a bit.

Now that I’ve graduated and have joined the working class I’m starting to realize that being a Millenial classifies me a bit more than I would have thought. At work, my Millenial sensibilities clash with my Baby Boomer colleagues time and time again. It took me months to think about things in this context, but once I started to a lot of the daily little confusions that would happen at the office were easily explained by some sort of clash in generational values.

I think a lot of it has to do with how closely we all have to work with technology. All of the “confusions” I’m talking about usually revolve around computing preferences or the way we think about or model some piece of technology. It’s probably also got a lot to do with my almost OCD-like attentional to detail that comes and goes.

At any rate, this generational thing has been burning up my brain for a while now, so I’m thinking this might be a theme for the new year. Look for a few posts in the coming days with more of my musings. Here’s a link to the Wikipedia article on Millenials. It’s a little rough, but it does somehow magically hit on some salient features of our supposed “hero” generation.

I’ve had bad days and weeks before, but this month has been pretty awful. Even in college when I would have a bad semester, there were always bright spots to help me push through. For some reason this November has been a non-stop set of “kick you when you’re down” moments from pretty much the first day.

Events at work have been to blame for the majority of the crap I’ve had to deal with this month. The late hours continued to pile on starting around Halloween and things didn’t let up. I was soon sent off to Japan/Korea on 4-days notice to attempt to mop-up problems that were way more complicated than anyone knew. After returning from that firestorm, things continued to get difficult at work.

On top of that, I’ve had a few insect problems here at the house that took forever to solve thanks to my work commitments. I even got a flat tire the day after I got back from my trip out east as well. Today, on the final day of the month, after being chewed out this morning I am now starting to get sick.

At least I made it out alive. December will hopefully have better times in store. In the meantime, I’m going to get some rest and see if I can’t shake this new cold.

A few weeks ago I finished watching yet another great show produced by studio BONES; famous for other great movies and series such as the Cowboy Bebop Movie, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Wolf’s Rain. The series is called Darker Than BLACK and is set in a world where certain people have special powers (a lot like every other anime series out there).

The cool part about this show—the twist that keeps things interesting—is that the people with special powers (called “contractors”, or 契約者 in Japanese) have to pay a price for being able to do what they do. That price is called a “remuneration”, basically the “fine print” on their special powers contract that sort of screws them over. Each character has a different price, from having to smoke a cigarette to eating flowers or breaking their fingers (or even worse, but I won’t ruin some of the better stories).

Amidst all this is a pretty decent mystery, a damn cool main character, and a pretty good supporting cast to back him up. The show was a blast, and just so happened to be the replacement for Code Geass in the schedule this past season. That time slot seems to be kind of golden right now (at least in my perspective).

If you’re interested, the two opening animations are here and here. The show should be hitting the states this upcoming spring from Funimation. I’ll definitely be picking it up!

All right kids, it seems like my old post about having an RSS feed has been lost down in the archives for a while. This is just a friendly reminder that, yes, I do have an RSS feed. Moreover, I finally got off my digital butt and added a link to the sidebar.

Click and be happy faithful readers!

For those of you who don’t know, I’m in charge of applications in the Japan region at work. Given my interest in Japanese culture, I love this aspect of my job. I get to learn how the Japanese do business and what their engineers are like and I get to visit from time to time.

Last week (Sept. 1st through the 8th) I got the chance to head to Japan and meet the staff over there as well as go on several customer visits to promote our products. Business wise, it was incredibly interesting and I learned a heck of a lot. There were a few frustrating times as well, but I won’t bore you with the latest set of things that raise my ire.

Culture wise, I picked up a few tidbits here and there and got to visit a few cities I had never been to before. Specifically, I went back to Tokyo (went there on my last trip), and got to see Abiko, Osaka, Fukuoka, and Nagoya for the first time. My time spent in Nagoya (although brief) was interesting as I would never have been there if it weren’t for a typhoon keeping our group from making it back to Tokyo from Fukuoka.

All in all, I think the trip was more rewarding than not and I definitely look forward to heading back there soon (maybe next year, if things go well)!

Have you bought a CD or listened to a Clear Channel sponsored radio station in the last 15 years or so? If you have, you are probably a victim of the ongoing loudness war in the music industry. Don’t think this is only a pop music phenomenon either, it’s all over the place including many indy labels.

What is the loudness war, you ask? It’s the practice of making songs sound louder by compressing their dynamic range. Louder-sounding songs grab your attention more than songs that sound softer. That much is obvious, but wasn’t obvious is that making a song louder often makes the quality go down. It’s been an open secret through the music industry for a long time.

I’ve been talking up the loudness war recently thanks to some mind-melding with my friend Dylan. He pointed out a recent article about the subject in the IEEE Spectrum, check it out here. The obligatory Wikipedia article (also good by the way) is here.

I just finished watching the first season of Code Geass Lelouch of the Rebellion last night. This series was not at all what I expected. I was anticipating a typical run-of-the-mill mecha show with the usual teenagers piloting the robots. While there is a mecha component, it is way more deep in terms of plot and characterization. The protagonist, Lelouch Lamperouge is perhaps the most morally-ambiguous character to appear in anime in quite some time. The plot twists and ramifications wrought from some of the characters actions were at-times quite visceral.

Code Geass was recently licensed for distribution in the US, and I will definitely be picking it up. Give this show a shot if you get the chance. Here’s my favorite opening sequence (of the 3 songs, and about 5 animations used throughout the show).

A funny thing about working with SLICs for a living, you never know if that sound you’re hearing down the hall is the phone in your office ringing or just someone testing their equipment.

Also, you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a decent document online describing what a SLIC is. Here’s an article about VoIP with at least an overview.

If you read this blog, you probably know me and therefore probably have been to several of these sites (by virtue of us having at least something in common). All the same, I figured I’d put a few of these out there just in case you missed them, or don’t visit them as often as maybe you should. If you’ve never been to some of these, you might find them interesting/useful:

• Top Left Pixel (I just discovered this one recently)
• Post Secret (Just like that book everyone reads at places like Urban Outfitters, but updated with new content about once a week)
• Google Sightseeing (Don’t wait for digg or slashdot to point you to a cool location on Google maps, browse through a ton of them yourself)
• Anime News Network (Ever been curious about that one anime title everyone is talking about? ANN’s encyclopedia is second to none when it comes to series, movies, and OVAs. Even Wikipedia would be jealous)
• Newsarama (All the comic book news you could want, ‘nuff said)
• Kotaku (The self-titled “gamers guide”. This site tends to have some of the most hilarious bits strewn in there with up-to-the-picosecond news about gaming)

Enjoy!

The new incarnation of the E3 has now come and gone and I honestly don’t know how I feel about it. For the past two years I’ve really enjoyed all the fanfare, rumor-mongering, and extensive coverage (a fair amount of which was in HD, at least last year). It brought me closer to an industry which I have always been connected to (since I picked up an Atari 2600 when I was like 3 or 4 years old) but never really felt a particular interest in the business side of things.

Watching those E3 conferences with my buddies (Jim, Gautham, Julian, and Bigtime mostly) was a blast. We laughed at all of the marketing mumbo-jumbo and all of the ridiculous comments made by executives (mostly on the part of Sony last year). We also marveled at what the future would hold for the latest generation of consoles and speculated into the wee hours of the morning. Being MIT computer geeks it was natural. At the point in time, we didn’t have the Playstation 3 or the Wii to gawk at. We had the Xbox 360 setting precedent and that was about it.

This year, things were for the most part vastly different. E3 is no longer a giant media frenzy with something like 70,000 in attendance. It is now the more modest, business-oriented “E3 Media and Business Summit”. Long gone are the elaborate booths with “booth babes” patrolling every corner beckoning you near. It’s much more straight forward, smaller in terms of venue, and I think a bit more focused on the numbers rather than on the spectacle of it all.

As a result of the new format, and my not living at MIT anymore, this years E3 didn’t really deliver for me. It was interesting to see some of the new game offerings from the three major companies, but there was nothing so outrageous as to fuel months of speculation as there was before. In some sense, I’m glad for it, since some of the things said in past E3s were oh-so-unprofessional. However, those halcyon days of old are something I will probably always think back upon quite fondly. I guess E3 became a little more adult, much like the rest of my life is becoming lately.

There have been a couple of interesting blog entries out there lately on the stratification of social networking sites. In particular, Myspace and Facebook have been pitted against each other. Over at ZDNet, Steve O’Hear had an interesting piece on how the two sites are targeted at different demographics. Steve makes some pretty interesting points, mostly about the differing business models between the two sites. Myspace is very much the vehicle of the traditional media conglomerate, namely Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp. In my opinion, you can see it in the sites design, it’s incredibly ugly. It looks like the kind of sites people used to make circa 1994.

Facebook is the poster-child of Web 2.0 thinking. It’s still a start-up, owned by the original creators. The Facebook folks recently released an API to allow anyone to develop “applications” for their site. Between it’s comparatively more open development model and slick Web 2.0 looks, Facebook seems to be attracting a different crowd.

Interestingly, I read another blog entry today from Danah Boyd who did some research on the class differences amongst Myspace and Facebook users. Both of these entries, but Danah’s moreso, have caused quite a lot of discussion on sites like Digg and Slashdot.

Despite being a strictly Facebook guy myself, I can definitely see the division amongst different groups between the two sites. I wonder where this trend will take us over the next few years.

I’ve been incredibly busy lately. It seems that the work week is completely consumed by goings-on in the office, leaving me with only the weekend to get anything done on the house. Between my goals for the house and hanging out with all the cool people surrounding me, there’s little time left. That being said, the list of things to do is slowly being whittled down so I’m praying I can take a deep breath soon (it’s already sort of starting to happen).

In other news, my family (mom, dad, brother, and sister) just finished visiting Austin. We all had a blast hanging out and I received some incredible help “accessorizing” the house as well. More visitors, May and Hippo, are due in town next weekend too!

It’s hard to believe some times how much has happened since moving to Austin at the end of January. My life has changed quite a bit!

During my usual browsing of Slashdot, I found what is perhaps the best comment on the site ever. In a discussion about metaphors for the Internet, the point was brought up that calling it a highway is a bit inappropriate. Read the comment to see why. It’s absolutely hilarious.

Things I’ve done since moving to Austin, TX:

• Picked up my car and drove (for the first time in nearly 7 years) to my apartment (which was paid for by the company)
• Started my career as a professional engineer
• Met lots of cool people (some affiliated with SiLabs, some not)
• Was introduced to the super-awesome Austin Books
• Bought a house(!)
• Moved into my new house
• Started having late-night dinners at Magnolia Cafe with the crew from the Manhouse
• Started furnishing my house (with help from my parents)
• Received my MEng degree from MIT in the mail
• Started up my Kung Fu/Wushu training here
• Learned how to repair my picket fence (quite trivial really)
• Saw Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters at midnight, opening night
• Went with my Dad to see my first movie at the Alamo Draft House; Hot Fuzz was great by the way
• Slowly but surely started to play video games again after an almost 3 month hiatus due to the bigger things in life

The site is back! I’ve finally gotten things up and running here in Austin. The first order of business has been getting things updated to reflect the new domain. Those are all pretty much in place now. I’ve got a couple or re-design ideas floating around, but things are pretty much going to stay the same for a while.

I was hoping to get some feedback about one of these possible changes from you all on the web. I was thinking about moving the blog over to Wordpress from the current Blosxom implementation. What do you all think (especially those of you out there that actually use Wordpress)?

Hey folks, sorry for the long time between blogging. Since my last update I’ve finished my thesis, bought a house in Austin, and am in the process of saying goodbye to everyone in the Boston area before I head out for good on Saturday morning. In that vein, I’m going to have to say goodbye to blogging for a little while as well, but fear not. Once I’ve got things figured out in my new home, you bet I’ll be back and blogging more regularly than ever.

I’ve had my own domain name for a while now, but I haven’t really mentioned it on the blog. However, now that wildifire.mit.edu is going to be no more, I figured now was the perfect time. Check back to the site in a few months at the new URL (http://www.ardz.net) to see what’s new.

Until then, my best wishes to everyone who continues to visit the site. Hopefully you all will get to see this entry before things shut down tomorrow morning. ではまたね！