steve kwan user experience designer

Idiot roommate

(October 30th, 2005 - 12:30AM)

I've had it with my new roommate.

In addition to being a moron, he messes up the house to the point where it's almost a biohazard. On Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, I cleaned the house and then took off until Tuesday. When I got back, the house was a mess again.

Today one of my other roommates and I had to clean the house again because of the messy moron. He also litters cigarette butts all over the lawn.

I'm afraid I might be winding up like Osama bin Roommate, but while I was there I made an attempt to be clean. My current problem roommate leaves food all over the house.

I'm debating evicting him, but it's nice having a full house so I don't have to worry about paying more rent. I'll probably give him another shot. It's reassuring to know that it's not just me and it's bothering my other roommates too. Did I mention he's a moron? Moron.

Sarah came by today to pick up her couches. It was rough to see her again, but at least now I don't have to worry about when she's going to come over.

format c:

(October 28th, 2005 - 6:40PM)

I wiped my C: drive clean and reinstalled Windows.

My Line In stopped responding, which meant that I couldn't watch TV on my tuner. Line In was mysteriously replaced by something called Phone, which emitted static hissing. Because I couldn't tolerate not listening to Jon Stewart, I decided to buy a new sound card. My old one was onboard, so I really didn't have a hard time convincing myself I needed a new one.

My new sound card didn't seem to work at all. I couldn't get any sound after I installed it. I couldn't even get media players to play songs; they would start and stop as soon as I pressed play. I decided it must be a software problem, so I formatted my C: drive. Afterward, I still couldn't get it to work - it turned out I'd plugged the new sound card into a dead PCI slot. So I formatted unnecessarily.

I also attempted to use the Windows recovery feature that appears when you boot off a Windows XP installation CD. I highly recommend you never use this. It actually made problems worse. Everything on my computer ran a lot slower after the repair process "fixed" things.

My updates might be sparse for a while, because I have to get my computer set up again. And I'm lazy.

I still don't care

(October 24th, 2005 - 3:04PM)

I don't think my last post really conveyed how much I don't care about my management course. Suffice it to say that I don't care. My caring index is a negative number.

Importing and indexing

(October 24th, 2005 - 12:51PM)

I'm at work importing data and rebuilding indexes. I'm posting because I'm waiting for those processes to finish. Could I be doing something more productive in that time? Probably. Am I? No.

I have an assignment due for my management course on Wednesday. I haven't started it. I really have trouble mustering up the energy to care about this course.

A wasted weekend

(October 24th, 2005 - 10:46AM)

As you can probably tell from the abundance of game and movie reviews below, I had a nice, relaxing, do-nothing weekend. This was the first fully relaxing weekend I've had in a long time; my psychology course had been consuming a lot of my free time up until now. I was quite glad to blow off my obligations for two days.

As Peter Gibbons said in Office Space, "I did nothing. And it was everything I thought it would be."

Review: F.E.A.R.

(October 23rd, 2005 - 3:12PM)

I shamelessly stole this graphic from the F.E.A.R. website. Monolith shamelessly stole the concept of a creepy little girl from The Ring.

(3.5 / 5 stars)

F.E.A.R. is the latest first-person shooter from Monolith Studios. I'm immediately docking it half a star for its title. I hate acronyms that spell out to something meaningful (like PATRIOT Act). If you can't be bothered to come up with a real name for your game, don't expect me to take it seriously either.

In the game you play a new recruit of a paranormal investigation team called First Encounter Assault Recon, or F.E.A.R. for short - ack, I feel dirty just saying that. Your first mission is to track down a crazy lunatic who has telepathic control over an army of soldiers. Think X-Files, but with bigger guns. Long story short: things get complicated and you uncover a conspiracy. I started and finished F.E.A.R. over a weekend, which means it's pretty short. That's not unusual in a first-person shooter, but I always appreciate games like Doom 3 which have a bit more bulk to them.

F.E.A.R. has been getting excellent reviews, and they are mostly well-deserved. F.E.A.R. is a great game by all accounts; however, I feel that it was somewhat disappointing. There are a lot of great elements to F.E.A.R., but they have all been done better elsewhere.

The major comparison I've heard regarding F.E.A.R. is its resemblance to Max Payne. That's very true. F.E.A.R. has grungy urban environments, creepy flashbacks and a slow-motion ability just like Max Payne. In F.E.A.R., these elements are all well executed; however, Max Payne already broke that ground years ago, so there's nothing new to see here. I'm quite impressed that the slow-motion ability in F.E.A.R. is referred to as "Slo-Mo." Most other games with this feature feel the need to assign it flashy names like "bullet time" or "focus." Monolith tells it like it is. Unfortunately, the Slo-Mo feature should never have been included in the game. Being able to slow your enemies to a near standstill removes almost any requirement for strategy in firefights. This is a shame, because the enemy AI in F.E.A.R. is excellent. In one firefight, I actually saw a soldier kick over a table and use it for cover. The AI is really being squandered if you can slow opponents down and peg them off while they're practically unable to move.

F.E.A.R.'s graphics are excellent. However, the game is a resource hog. I had to run it at less than 1600*1200 resolution, which made it look less than impressive. Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 both run perfectly at 1600*1200 resolution, and thus look a lot better. I'm sure F.E.A.R. uses some funky new technology I've never heard of which requires me to have a computer that's twice as powerful. That's nice, but given my hardware (which is pretty good) I shouldn't need to tone down my graphical settings. Maybe I'm just being picky, and maybe it's unfair to hold this game to the standard set by Half-Life 2, but that game seemed to make better use of my hardware than F.E.A.R.

For a game as short as F.E.A.R., I would have expected more variety amongst the levels. Doom 3 was also very redundant in its level design- all the levels had the same dark, futuristic look - but the game was also very long, so it can be forgiven for re-using environments. F.E.A.R., on the other hand, is a very short game. I would have expected the developers to spend a little more time making the environment diverse, considering how few levels there are. The enemies are also extremely boring - almost all of your opponents are soldiers. For a game about paranormal activity, I would have expected more interesting enemies. The Suffering got this perfect.

My last complaint about F.E.A.R. is that it's just not that scary. With a name like F.E.A.R. you'd expect it to be frightening, but Doom 3 takes this game to school.

All complaints aside, there are a lot of things about F.E.A.R. which are really good. The weapons in this game are great. My favorites are the Penetrator (which is sort of like a giant stapler) and the Particle Weapon (which is like a railgun that turns people into skeletons). The story is interesting, and rarely feels over the top.

In summary, F.E.A.R. is a great game with several major disappointments. It's really short and lacks variety. Considering I saw this game priced at Electronics Boutique for almost $80 CAN, I can't really recommend it to anyone but a hardcore first-person shooter fan. It feels like Monolith spent a lot of time developing the mechanics of the game, such as gunfighting and AI, but didn't spend a lot of thought on developing a world around them. Games like Half-Life 2 just felt so much more rewarding.

Review: DOOM

(October 22nd, 2005 - 12:29AM)

(2.5 / 5 stars)

I just got back from DOOM. I went in expecting the worst, and was surprised to find something better. It wasn't a masterpiece, and even as a fan of the game I wasn't particularly impressed, but it certainly didn't have me in any rush to leave the theatre.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, by no means a brilliant actor, does an okay job playing the head of the Marines assigned to investigate a disturbance on a Mars facility. There's some other plot stuff, but it's really not even worth noting. Lots of Imps and Hellknights, and a Pinky demon. At first, I was disappointed that there was such a sparse selection from the Doom bestiary, but I suppose that adding more monsters would have put it over the top. As it is, the DOOM movie is not as unbelievable as I would have thought.

That's not to imply that the script is good, or even passable. Most of the problems with DOOM involve extremely poor writing. Luckily, the writing in this movie is a non-issue and takes a back seat to gunfire. The DOOM game - obviously the inspiration for the movie - wasn't about story. It was about atmosphere and killing uglies. Although it's not great, the movie is at least average on both counts.

One thing that has gotten a bit of buzz is a short segment near the end in which Reaper, also known as "The DOOM guy," picks up a gun and blows away monsters from a first-person perspective. While this is an admirable attempt to honour the game and break new ground in film, it really doesn't work well. In fact, watching someone play DOOM for a few minutes would be far more exciting.

So the question remains: which would have been better: this movie, or an hour and a half long recording of someone playing DOOM 3? I personally think the latter would have been more entertaining, but that speaks more of the quality of the game than of the crappiness of this movie. Overall, DOOM was less of a disappointment than I imagined it would be. If you're a fan of the game, check it out. If not, you might want to see something else.

Shaw rotated my IP

(October 19th, 2005 - 9:39AM)

Apologies for yesterday's downtime. Shaw, my ISP, decided to change my IP address, which broke stevekwan.com domain resolution. My IP is "semi-static;" in other words, Shaw changes it once every few months. It looks like I was due for a change. Grr.

Steve on wheels

(October 17th, 2005 - 11:40PM)

After years and years of resisting, I am finally getting my driver's license.

Don't get me wrong: I don't want it and I don't need it. I'm seven years past the legal driving age in BC, and I've been getting by just fine without a car. I've taken a lot of pride in the fact that I've survived without experiencing one of North American life's major milestones. Were it up to me, I'd never get my license. But apparently, it's not up to me.

My mother took me out to lunch and told me that she wanted to see me in a cream-coloured Mini convertable with the top down and Bosley's head blowing in the wind. I'm used to my mother nagging me about getting a license, but this time she just seemed disappointed in me. I figured I had to get a license or else she'd start crying.

As soon as I told all my friends I'm getting a license, they freaked out. It's amazing how everyone else is so much more excited about this than I am.

My mom says getting a car will help me get a girlfriend. Again, it doesn't seem to matter that I don't want a girlfriend. My mom says that after getting a car, I'll be amazed I was able to get by without one. That's what people said about girlfriends too, and so far the girlfriend thing hasn't worked out well. Maybe I'll wind up being one of those crazy old people who treat their pet cats like people.

My Psychology course is FINISHED!

(October 16th, 2005 - 11:24AM)

That's right, it's all done! All of it!

Seven courses down, seven to go! Plus my practicum projects, but let's not talk about those.

Uh oh. Looks like my mom has discovered emoticons in MSN.

Currently listening to: Coldplay - The Hardest Part

Why am I listening to Gwen Stefani?

(October 15th, 2005 - 2:09PM)

Because she's awesome.

Back to my Psychology homework now.

Currently listening to: Gwen Stefani - What You Waiting For?

Plugging your band

(October 15th, 2005 - 1:19AM)

Richard was asking me why I'm plugging Damsel Fly so heavily but not his band, The Asbestos Concern. I explained that in order to plug a band, I generally require said band to have one of the following:

1. An album
2. A website
3. A logo.

If you don't have one of those three, there's not much I can do for you. But since Richard has been such a good friend, I'll put a plug here. Without an album cover, without a URL, and without a logo. But with blinking text!

TEH ASBESTOS CONCERN ROCKS

Now shut up.

Currently listening to: KoRn - Twisted Transistor
Currently NOT listening to: The Asbestos Concern - ISO 9002 Certified

A much overdue update

(October 11th, 2005 - 9:04PM)

It's been a long time since I've posted a comprehensive update. I assure you it's not because things have been uneventful. I've been very busy and very active, and I'm going to try to catch up for lost time.

First and foremost: the break-up. I don't really want to talk about the details on my public website, so either use or imagination or ask me one on one. It's been a few weeks and I feel a bit better now. One thing I've learned is: breaking up a three-year relationship is an effective way to find out who your friends really are. Some of my friends have been very supportive during this time; others, however, have completely turned on me. It's interesting to see who genuinely cares about you and who is paying you lip service to satisfy your girlfriend.

I've been stressed about my roommate situation. One of my roommates (the EA dude) is desperately looking for a job. If he doesn't find one soon, he'll have to move back in with his parents on Saltspring. That means the end of a career for him and the end of a great roommate for me. I hope he finds work. If anybody's got availabilities for a 3D modeler or tester, please let me know right away.

Another guy moved into my house recently. He's really great, but a bit odd. A few days ago, he phoned me on my cell phone at midnight to ask for a synonym for "kudos." This was especially odd, because he was in the house at the time. He just got this cell phone, so maybe he was just playing with it. He also uses the shower that me and the EA guy share, which is odd because there's another shower downstairs where his room is.

Work has been very uninteresting lately. We contracted a Web project out to a third party, and they totally dropped the ball. I have been spending a lot of time working on this project and cleaning up the results, which I think the third party was paid to do. Needless to say, when you work for a small company and funds are limited, it's hard to see so much money being wasted due to third-party failures.

I spent most of the Thanksgiving weekend at my parents' house. I hadn't been over there in a while, so it was good to spend time with the family. I'm reminded of what I've been missing, as well as what I'm thankful for. Bosley kept chewing on his foot until his fur started to come off.

Homosuccessual

(October 8th, 2005 - 6:05PM)

Remember that Psychology assignment where I had to describe and analyze a dream, and I chose a homosexual pro-wrestling dream? (See one of my September 2nd postings) Well, I got my mark back. 94%.

My feet are cold. I should buy a pair of fuzzy slippers.

What Lies Beneath

(October 6th, 2005 - 7:28PM)

BUY IT.

While the rest of you are watching the first Canucks game in forever, I'll be quietly attending a three and a half hour lecture on software management.

(October 4th, 2005 - 10:54PM)

I think that more or less makes the point.