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Wii Fit Plus Review

Published on November 13, 2009 in Review, Software and Video Games. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

wii-fit-plus

I’ve sort of been slacking with my Wii Fit schedule, but I just got Wii Fit Plus to see if I could inject some freshness into the routine. Wii Fit Plus is the pseudo sequel to Wii Fit, which includes a few extra activities and some new features as well.

One of the first things I noticed was that the female trainer (which I usually use) is showing a bit more skin! Take a look at some comparison shots:

Before:
Before

After:
wiifittrainer

I also like her new hairsyle. I wonder. If Wii Fit Plus means that the female trainer shows some more skin, will Wii Fit Plus Plus have the female trainer go topless? I guess we have to wait to find out.

One new feature that I was excited about was the ability to set up your own routines. So instead of picking each activity one by one, you can save a bunch and just go through them quickly without interruption. This should have been a cool feature, but it was ruined because picking an activity automatically selects the lowest number of reps, and I do the higher number of reps for almost every strength training activity. For example, I do 10 push-up side plank reps. But selecting it in the routine menu automatically picks 6. You could theoretically pick the exercise twice, but that would give you 12 reps. Plus you have to stop and start again (I thought initially the program would be smart enough to just combine them into one exercise).

Nintendo lost a lot of my respect for how badly they handled this feature. There are a lot of different ways they could have designed this, all better than the way they did design it. They could have just combined reps as I figured they should. They could also just ask you how many reps you wanted when you picked an exercise. The added complexity would be justified by the fact that you’d only have to do it once. They could have asked for default rep values somewhere else.

But instead the interaction designers (I’m assuming they have them, but now I wonder if they really do) at Nintendo decided to pull this shit. Maybe you can tell that I’m pretty unhappy about this feature. In the end, I think Nintendo err’ed on the side of simplicity, which ends up pleasing nobody. I usually like the way Nintendo products are designed, and for the most part I think Wii Fit Plus is designed well, but this feature was just not fully baked. I think I am going to email Nintendo and try and get an actual response on why this feature was done so badly.

Overall, Wii Fit Plus is better than Wii Fit because it just adds new features. I’d question whether they are really worth the extra $20 that the upgrade costs.

How To Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide For Asian Men

Published on November 8, 2009 in Book. 7 Comments Tags: .

How to date a white woman

Every once in a while a book comes along that seems like it was written specifically for me. Actually, that never happens. But then I heard about How to Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide For Asian Men. And that, my friends, is a book with “Hung Truong” written all over it! I first heard about it from my internet pals JP Meyer and Maria via their Google Reader shared feeds. After seeing the cover and reading the title, I knew I had to get this book. I promptly ordered the thing from a third party Amazon seller for whatever crazy high price it was. It was completely worth it.

I didn’t get the book to improve my white woman dating skills, but rather to try and get into the mind of an Asian guy who would write such a book (I am already dating a white woman, fairly successfully). The book is written by Adam Quan, who is apparently “an International Business Consultant” who has “successfully dated women of many nationalities.” The book has a little bit of everything, from a theory on why white guys have more luck with Asian girls versus Asian guys and white girls, to detailed statistics on divorce rates and even score sheets for keeping track of your white woman dating progress. I am not making any of this up!

One of the best parts of the book is the inclusion of Asian grammars. There are countless grammar and spelling mistakes sprinkled here and there. It helps to read the book in the voice of a grumpy old Asian male. Here’s an example:

The image you projected to the white woman is the very core of your dating strategy. To date successfully, often you must become knowledgeable about the white woman in question. Find out what ticks her.

Unfortunately (for anyone reading the book seriously), the advice doesn’t really seem all that helpful. The author suggests that to compensate for being tiny, Asian men should work out to increase their physical size. Another section heading is titled “Avoid Losers.” Yet the book sorta forgets to include some common knowledge about dating, like calling the girl the day after a date, etc. The process that the book suggests seems a bit too structured and analytical. I guess it could help to keep a journal, but should Asian men really be keeping track of their current “points,” gain/loss velocity and possible competition after each date!? It’s pretty apparent that a businessman wrote this.

Another distressing thing about the book is its fairly misogynistic tone. For one thing, it treats women as objects, often referring to them as “targets” and the reader as a “hunter.” It portrays the submissive Asian woman stereotype and flips that around to conclude that white women are focused on being headstrong individuals. This is not to say that I didn’t find the book to be extremely entertaining. But there were quite a few parts that had me scratching my head and wondering about those who would take it seriously. I kind of feel bad for the Asian guys who need this book and end up taking its advice.

Overall, the book is quite useless for its intended purpose. For unintentional humor, this book rates very high. If I weren’t already dating a white woman and wanted to bag one, I think it’d also be great as a prop. Just take this to the nearest Starbucks (or wherever white women gather in your area) and pretend to be studying it closely. It’ll definitely be more useful as a conversation starter than a reference book.

My advice: be yourself. Be genuine. Really listen. Oh, and really do work out to compensate for your wimpy Asian physique. Wii Fit seems to work well for me.

Blade Runner – Blu Ray Edition Review

Published on June 23, 2009 in Movie. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Blade Runner

I haven’t ever watched Blade Runner, and since I saw it on Blu-Ray at the library I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to catch up and earn some geek cred. The movie seems to have all the ingredients necessary for sci-fi cult success: Harrison Ford, matte painting backgrounds, robots, Harrison Ford. But something kinda went wrong. Spoiler alert from here on out!

Blade Runner takes place in a future where androids are kind of indistinguishable from normal humans. But they rebelled against us and now we want to kill them all. This makes them want to kill us. Man, things get complicated quickly. People who hunt down androids are called “Blade Runners.” Harrison Ford is a blade runner. There are some androids (actually they’re called replicants) that Harrison Ford needs to kill. This movie has a really simple plot.

Blade Runner is apparently supposed to be really good. The Blu-Ray version has like, five versions of the movie. Either this means that the movie was so good that it was worthy of having five versions, or it sucked so bad that they needed to fix it multiple times! I am thinking the latter.

The issue is that Harrison Ford’s character is supposed to be a badass blade runner who retired to get out of the game. But really, he’s just lousy cop with incredible luck. Blade Runner is like an exercise in how to perform Deus Ex Machina bailouts, one after another.

Example 1: Harrison Ford (his movie name is “Decker” but let’s just call him HF) is trying to trick one of the replicants in her dressing room. She figures out he’s a cop and starts choking him. She obviously has the upper hand. But then some girls walk into the dressing room so she splits and then somehow Harrison catches up to her and guns her down. Very sporting.

Example 2: One of the replicants sees Harrison killing replicant 1. He obviously has an advantage. He sneaks up on Harrison and starts kicking his ass. He’s also about to deliver a final blow and the other “good” replicant saves his life by shooting the bad guy in the head.

Example 3: Harrison lets the replicant catch him by surprise and she jumps on his head, twists it 180 degrees backwards. For some reason she lets him go so she can do some kind of backflip finishing move. She really should’ve just snapped his neck or something. Harrison has a chance to get up and shoots her in mid backflip. This also seems unsportsmanlike.

Example 4: The replicant boss guy kind of plays around with Harrison, breaking his fingers and chasing him around. But eventually gives up since he’s (the replicant) gonna die anyway. Harrison lives to see another day.

So really, Decker just lucked out every single time. It makes sense; how is a human supposed to beat a super-strong replicant? Decker’s only real skill is that he’s incredibly lucky. This sort of puts him in the same league as other HF characters like Han Solo (remember when he chases that stormtrooper into a room with a billion stormtroopers?) or Indiana Jones. But the movie portrays him as some kind of a Dirty Harry or Rambo-esque killing machine. He’s more like Mister Magoo or Maxwell Smart. But somehow I don’t think that connection was intended by the filmmaker.

Besides the whole plot thing, some critics apparently had problems with the pacing. I thought it was okay, except there are long stretches of Decker stuff, then long stretches of replicant team stuff. As if there were two separate plots and movies going on. I mean, it seemed like they showed two days’ worth of Decker action then two days’ worth of the other guys, but they happened around the same time span. So there’s some weirdness in continuity.

The plot also seems to only lightly address the heavy plot points. For example, the moral implications of giving life to these replicants and then limiting their lifespan. That’s in addition to basically making them illegal and then killing them. Instead the movie tends to antagonize them even though they’re really the victims in this story. It turns into a simple cat and mouse hunt rather than anything particularly meaningful.

One thing the filmmaker got right: The future sure has a lot of Asians in it! Japanese, Chinese, etc. I sure am glad we’re represented (though also sort of tokenized) in the future!

I really have no idea why this movie is considered a classic. Maybe I’m being too hard on it. It was, after all, released in ’82, before I was born. But plenty of sci-fi movies made before then stand the test of time. I feel as though Blade Runner is just a bit overrated. Just to give Philip K. Dick a chance, I grabbed “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” from the library. I think it may end up being a more thoughtful exercise.

blink – Malcolm Gladwell: Book Report!

Published on June 18, 2009 in Book. 2 Comments Tags: , .

blink

I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction books lately. A lot has been written about Malcolm Gladwell’s books so I figured I’d grab a bunch from the library. I just finished reading “blink.” I haven’t read The Tipping Point or Outliers just yet. Anyway, I thought I’d write a quick review.

Blink tells the story of our subconscious (Gladwell uses “unconscious” which kinda bugs me) brain’s ability to make split-second decisions. Basically, he argues that we’ve evolved to “thin-slice” certain experiences (recognizing when a fake statue just doesn’t look right or hearing a singer who turns out to be a natural). That ability can be used in other contexts if we could just determine the important variables and block out everything else.

Gladwell is a really good writer; his stories are interesting and they flow well. Unfortunately, the actual substance feels like it lacks the scientific rigor that I’m used to. For example, he has a chapter on the aforementioned thin-slicing – only taking in the important elements of a situation and deciding based on those. Later, he discounts thin-slicing because it leads to us stereotyping entire ethnicities and cultures. He gives an example where music executives hear a singer who they know is a natural hit (and cites Fred Durst as an expert, which makes me throw up in my mouth a little). Unfortunately the executives fail when it turns out that actual listeners don’t like the artist. Another story is about a wargame that the army set up where the advanced system succumbed to paralysis by analysis. It was a really weak example of thin-slicing and had very little to do with the theory he described earlier. I think he just wrote that chapter to fill up the book.

The book is full of inconsistencies and it seems like Gladwell is trying to tie everything into a cohesive theory. The thing is he fails at it pretty horribly. What we end up with is a bunch of nice stories and no overarching theory of anything. They’re just stories. Are they interesting? Yeah, but they contradict each other and end up making the book weaker in its narrative.

As a counter-example, Duncan Watts has a way of writing interesting stories and linking them all together in Six Degress (how appropriate). Also fun to note is that I believe there’s some kind of nerd feud going on between Watts and Gladwell. I tend to believe Duncan Watts because he’s a super badass and has numbers to back up his theories.

I dunno if I’ll read any additional Gladwell books at this point. I’ll probably try some other authors first and go back if I run out of other stuff to read.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Published on May 23, 2009 in Book. 0 Comments Tags: .

mindset-the-new-psychology-of-success

A while back I wrote a post about rejection and how I dealt with it. I also mentioned a book that I had on hold at the library that seemed kinda related. I got the book and read about half of it. Then I got really busy and had to return the book. After putting it on hold again and getting it back I finished it. So here’s my thoughts (I’m totally a completist so I really have to read the ENTIRE book before I count it as finished).

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, has a really simple message behind it. Depending on your perspective, or “mindset” on life, you can really affect your own learning and personal growth. Basically, people with a “fixed” mindset believe that a person’s qualities are predetermined and set in stone. So people who are good at math won’t fail and those who are bad at math will never be good at it. Conversely, people with a “growth” mindset will understand that with practice and reflection, people can improve in just about any measurable quality. They see failure as a challenge and thrive on improving themselves rather than proving their superiority. (quick anime example: Rock Lee is totally growth and Sasuke is totally fixed)

I suppose I’ve been trying hard to adapt to the growth mindset, even before reading this book (see this post for more on that). Previously I think I probably did have a sort of fixed mindset in that I felt I was pretty smart and got through all of high school fairly easily. In college I stumbled a little bit because Computer Science forced me to think in ways I wasn’t used to thinking. I came into an intro course that had hundreds of students of which, by the end, only a fraction remained. I made friends with a guy who had programmed all his life. Another one of my friends had never programmed before. The experienced guy did well on talent, my other friend dropped saying it was too hard and I had to work really hard to keep up. Though at the time I felt a bit inferior to everyone else because I actually had to study hard and struggle, looking back I’m really proud of what I accomplished. Computer Science courses basically taught me that with hard work, I could understand really complicated problems and work out solutions.

As for the book itself, It’s very easy to read. In fact, I think it might be a little too easy to read. I think I spent too much time in the past two years reading nothing but academic papers. While I appreciate the colloquial language of the book, it feels sometimes like I’m being written down to. Also, some of the examples and suggestions seem really cheesy, for lack of a better word. Example: If your child displays a fixed mindset, turn dinner into a conversation on how each family member learned something. Soon the kid will be policing you and making sure you show a growth mindset! Sounds like a scene from Family Circus (not the Nietzsche version).

I’d also have to say that the first few chapters really contain the meat of the book. They explain the two mindsets, give examples of each in action and spell out how each one affects a person’s outlook on learning and growth. After the third chapter or so, the book just goes into examples of the mindsets in different contexts: sports, business, relationships, parenting. A good deal of these chapters feels really redundant and a little boring, honestly. I guess they’re useful in reinforcing the ideas, but not completely necessary if you actually read the first three chapters. The last chapter is a workshop of sorts for changing your own mindset. I’d say it’s worth a read as well.

Overall, I think the book is an interesting read and the concepts it introduces have a lot of potential. I wouldn’t label the book as self-help; it’s more of a psychology book that you can actually apply in your own life (sort of like Stumbling on Happiness). At the very least, it’s made me more perceptive of how I react to situations as well as how others around me react.

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