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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: May 18th, 2024

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  • The monitor had two obvious problems at first: yellow tint and rainbow patterning. Quick pass with a degaussing coil took care of the latter. Hooked up a composite lead and threw on my low-quality DVD-R copy of my VHS copy of my NTSC Reference Laserdisc and made some quick adjustments to the monitor; results below:

    sharpness

    monoscope

    color bars

    SMPTE bars

    To make this post somewhat more relevant to the community:

    Street Fighter II (PC Engine) Blanka Stage

    Street Fighter II (PC Engine) Blanka Stage

    Street Fighter II (PC Engine) Guile Stage

    Street Fighter II (PC Engine) Guile Stage

    Street Fighter II (PC Engine) Ryu Stage

    Street Fighter II (PC Engine) Ryu Stage

    Street Fighter II (PC Engine) Zangief Stage

    Street Fighter II (PC Engine) Zangief Stage

    The colors in the game look different in these pictures; hard to make them accurate. But it looks good in person. (edit: better camera settings, more colorful game)

    Was reaching for my blue filter to set Color/Tint when I remembered this monitor has a “Blue Only” feature; pretty neat! Surprisingly, adjusting the Screen control on the flyback transformer seems to have more effect on the white balance than on the contrast. Still, had to maximize the Blue Gain control on the PCB and on the front panel to get the white balance close as possible for the time being. Heck, I might not actually bother with it much further; it looks pretty good. Will have to try the RGB inputs.





  • In this study, were the terms “conservative” and “liberal” self-applied by the subjects? People do adopt those labels for themselves, but I would urge careful consideration before doing so. Where they can be useful in describing one’s position on a specific issue, when applied directly to the person they are needlessly reductive. Exactly the sort of thing that facilitates the mental assignment of oneself or others into an imaginary camp on one side of a false dichotomy.

    The essence of what you are saying makes sense to me, and I do understand those terms are routinely applied to people both by themselves and by others. But your post, though well-meaning also serves to perpetuate the “conservatives vs. liberals” view of political discourse. I realize I may be Sisyphus under the boulder here, but it’s my challenge to the United States political duopoly.


  • Do you consider yourself a partisan? The pervasive notion that there are “two sides” and you must be on one of them, it results in ordinary citizens viewing one another with suspicion and fear. It’s a useful lie that serves the interests of those who would foster division in order to maintain the cultural status quo.

    Not calling you out in particular. Just that I think about this every time something is posted that perpetuates this false “our team, their team” narrative because it’s a powerful, insipid tool of oppression against the common person. True, people differ on contentious issues, sometimes irreconcilably. But if we are made to view one another as dyed-in-the-wool adversaries over that, we will fail to discover our common interests much less promote them through solidarity.

    Not denying that the two major political parties in the United States do hold seemingly unassailable dominance in major elections like the one we’re entering, largely due to determining winner by first-past-the-post. And yes, sadly it’s very often the case that a meaningful vote will support one of those parties. But it doesn’t have to be this way forever. In fact, I will be able to vote for city office candidates by ranked choice starting this year!

    Sorry for the rant. Not an expert. Just a dude who wants to love his neighbor.








  • Thought it was odd to call this a sequel to an “NES classic” considering Shadowgate originated on the Macintosh, but judging by the screenshots in the article it seems the authors indeed decided to implement an interface very similar to the one Kemco developed for their NES port. Interesting choice! Having played the Mac-like Amiga port and the NES port I do prefer the controls of the latter as they better suit the use of a keyboard or gamepad.

    The music in the NES port is very memorable to me as well. If Beyond Shadowgate will feature sound, I would hope that cues are taken from the sound of the NES and the prior composer’s work.




  • Most of Creative’s AWE32 cards do use a real Yamaha OPL3 chip for FM synthesis, which can produce two-or-four operator voices. The latter of those can approach the quality of the voices in their DX7-family line of musical instruments. Even the older OPL2 chip that is limited to two-operator voices can sound great when programmed well (not that I’d call it realistic-sounding).

    The other synth chip on the AWE32 is the Ensoniq EMU8000. That one does sample-based synthesis as you describe above.

    Just wanted to note that Creative misappropriated the term wavetable synthesis when they marketed this and other sample-based synthesis cards of theirs, and the misnomer spread widely to the products of other companies and persists to this day.