My Hometown

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When I was getting my airline ticket a few weeks back to visit my folks, I looked at my old hometown Downingtown from a google maps, eagle-eye view and realized that a small bit of me felt homesick and that maybe I should visit. All my buddies used to live in D-town. As kids, we used to ride bikes recklessly and pop wheelies on the curb in that neighborhood, but after 2002 we moved away.

The whole time I was down there I had the Boss’ song “My Hometown” running through my head.

I took a walk from my old house all the way across town to my high school. Here’s the photo trail of my journey. Starting off, here’s my house as I remembered it from 1999:

511house 579x395 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field

511 Thomas Road

Being the nerd I am, I made this house in Minecraft back when I ran a server. We had an hour long speed build and I decided to make this from memory. To keep the house from being infested with spiders and creepers I put torches up everywhere.

511house minecraft.png 579x325 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field

511 House Minecraft Style

Once you leave my old street, the Elementary School isn’t too far away. I remember being a kid and walking that path everyday. It’s nice when school’s not so far away.

Downingtown 38 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field

Road to East Ward Elementary

The school itself. That’s the field we used to have field days and halloween parades. We’d all do tug-of-war and then eat ice cream. Later, when we went to junior and senior high we always cut through it.

eastward 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field

East Ward Elementary

East Ward had a fundraiser called Pennies From Heaven to build a new playground for us. As kids, we were supposed to find every loose cent under the family’s sofa and gather them together and give them to the school. We also got to design parts of the playground. As kids, we wanted everything that was ridiculous and dangerous and the contractors provided. There are alcoves to hide in, tons of slides, things to climb over and on top of, towers, monkey bars, and the list goes on. It was built before I graduated from sixth grade so I definitely got to enjoy my lion’s share of it. I remember our recess teacher/gym teacher Mrs. Herzog was usually pissed when we climbed over all the parts that we shouldn’t have in our primitive form of grade school parkour. You can see more images of the playground in the gallery below.

Downingtown 33 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field Downingtown 29 579x864 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field Downingtown 27 579x864 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field Downingtown 30 579x864 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field My elementary school from the recess area. The red brick building on the left used to be a stone building back when I was in school. That would have been the old East Ward. It was a cold and drafty building and when I was in sixth grade we had class there. My sixth grade teacher, Mr. Jenkins, was cool. I remember the first day of class. I got in line and looked at the dude. He seemed like a mean old guy, a tough teacher to please, but he was one of the best and nicest teachers I ever had. Also, his first name is ‘Glenn’ too. How about that?

Downingtown 28 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field Once you finish playing you can cut through to Business Route 30 and try to cross that street without getting run down by a car. If you do, the next easiest way is to cut through the parking lot of St. James Church to get to Kardon Park. One time, in high school, we stood outside of St. James Church on a drizzly November election day morning doing our duty as Young Republicans to get people to come in and vote. Before you go off and think, “Oh no, you were a Young Republican??” I did it cause my buddy was in the club. Also, I don’t think it meant too much. We’d have our “Young Republican” club meeting and then we’d jaunt off next door to the Sailor Moon Fan Club and watch subtitled episodes on grainy VHS tapes. That’s how republican we were.

Downingtown 07 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field

St. James Place

Kardon Park leads to a bike/walk trail and winds all the way around Downingtown. It’s a nice nature trail if you want to get lost in the trees, which I did.

kardonpark2012 579x217 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field

Kardon Park Panorama

One thing I remember about Kardon Park was that when we were kids, my mom would take us there to feed the ducks. I guess we can’t do that anymore, although I didn’t notice any ducks, just some hissing geese. Probably a good idea not to feed them, since they’d just repackage it into sausage form all over the sidewalk and then walk around like they owned the place.

Downingtown 09 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field

Don't feed the ducks

This is new in Kardon Park. We definitely didn’t have it there 14 years ago. At first glance it looked like a nice little monument, but when I stepped closer, I noticed that parts of the monument looked like grave markers, and sure enough the entire thing — I don’t think it’s a graveyard — is a Victim’s memorial.

Downingtown 11 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field Don’t blink. Whatever you do, don’t blink.

Downingtown 12 579x864 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field Kardon Park follows along Pennsylvania Ave. Along the path are some other of the town’s parks and historic monuments. Kerr Park (below) is usually where we would go for fireworks during July 4th. There would be a town fair there that included various carnival rides, funnel cake, and booths set up that were selling crafts from local folks.

Downingtown 13 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field Near Kerr Park is this new monument to war veterans of Downingtown — at least new to me.

Downingtown 14 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field A gazebo in the park. I always liked taking pictures of it, but oddly, I never liked standing or sitting in it. Also, I never see anybody else enjoying it either. Still, nice gazebo.

Downingtown 15 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field My house:

Downingtown 16 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field Just kidding, it’s the historic Downingtown log cabin. 14 years later, it’s still there.

Downingtown 17 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field We’re in the heart of Downingtown here. The municipal building:

Downingtown 18 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field We finally get to Manor Avenue. Walking up that road gets us to my junior and senior high schools. Well, first a panorama of the little league field where I used to play baseball. I hated it. I much prefer playing ball in the street. If you can’t get hit by a car while running to second base (i.e. the manhole cover in the road), I don’t see what the point is.

Downingtown 371 579x225 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field My old junior high school:

Downingtown 20 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field Hmm, but what’s this? S.T.E.M. Academy? You know, I didn’t know what S.T.E.M. meant a few days back, but I got to hear Adam Savage talk at Maker Faire and he happened to mention it. Science. Technology. Engineering. Math. Academy. They turned my old junior high into a tech academy. I’m…cool with that. Adam also proposed we add a fifth letter to make S.T.E.A.M. The A is for ‘Art.’ I agree. It’s just as important and sometimes art transforms the essence of the other four letters into something more than what they are. A nerdy story from 9th grade bio class. I was studying C++ on my own back then, and I wrote a program that would do a Punnett Square given some inputs. BTW, I had to look that up on Wikipedia, because I have no idea what a Punnet Square is anymore. But luckily we live in an age where Wikipedia is our external brain.

Downingtown 19 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field Downingtown High School is right behind the junior high. This sign is new. There was no West or East high school for us back in 1995 when I started there. Everyone went to Downingtown High School. That was when I got to see people I hadn’t seen since elementary school again, but by then we had already all forgotten one another, so not that it mattered too much.

HighSchool 2 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field This is usually how I would see my high school as I walked towards it with my friends in the morning.

HighSchool 1 579x387 My Hometown young republicans club Thomas Road The Ponds St. James Place sony dslr alpha 200 Song slice of life sailor moon fan club Route 30 Pennslyvania pennies from heaven panoramas nostalgia my hometown Minecraft Mark Lane Manor Avenue Little League Kerr Park Karen Driven Kardon Park Glenn east ward elementary school east ward duck feeding Downingtown High School Downingtown community playground bruce springsteen Baseball Field

Downingtown High School

Even in high school we didn’t have to drive or take a bus. When we’re old we get to do the whole “back in my day, we had to walk to school in -30 degree weather in 12 feet of snow up a (slight) hill” schtick while waving a cane at a bunch of youngun’s. I can actually lament something along those lines, but looking back, I preferred that to taking a bus, which is what my brother had to do when he started middle school. After I graduated in 1998 the school system expanded and the lines changed and broke into an east and west. My brother had to take a bus to Lionville for junior high and high school. I feel lucky that things were simpler for me.

Gallery of photos below. Enjoy.

Code and Ink


With a Parasol by ~AlbinoGrimby on deviantART

In my mind, I was thinking that this summer was “the summer of code” for me. I would hunker down and do a lot of coding on my own to make up for my deficiencies and get hands on again with things that I haven’t touched in ages — graphics, linear algebra, some systems coding, etc. You learn on the job, but the contents of that education is for the expressed purpose of the job. Sometimes the job gives you a chance to break out and when it does you snatch it up like a hungry beast because an opportunity like that doesn’t come along often. I like to think of Miyazaki’s words when he talks about working at Toei Animation. To paraphrase: you do well at the job you’re given and when the chance comes along to prove yourself, you take it. (This is from his Starting Point book of interviews.)

Currently at work, I get a chance to prove myself and do other work. So I’m content and it’s probably for that very reason why my interest in coding in my spare time has diminished. I was monkeying with building my own gameobject system and somehow that tangentially lead to a few weeks of studying and copying template code from Modern C++ Design. I get some of the basic template metaprogramming bits, but damn that stuff is hard to read. If something goes haywire you’re SOL unless you really know what you’re doing. Still, I figured it doesn’t hurt to play with the idioms presented there and I was trying to incorporate them into my gameobject system to make it as generic as possible. It’s an experiment I need to finish up at some point so I can prove out the idea to myself, but I’m finding my interests pulled and pushed in other directions.

Every year, without fail, I get the urge to start drawing again. It’s an indelible part of who I am. At some point all these different avenues of creation that I meander from have to come together. I wrote for two and a half years every morning and concocted two story ideas; I’ve drawn a great deal in the past; and I code. One day all of these individual paths need to coalesce into some ultimate creation. Until that point I’ll have to be content with the nuggets that I can pan out of the flotsam in my scatterbrained thoughts. Hence this new bit of artwork:

Kamiko Umbrella Halfsize 237x300 Code and Ink At the top of the post you got to see the final version. I originally drew this in my sketchbook and scanned her into my computer. She’s an original character of mine from a short comic I did a while back. She is a girl who becomes a god. Her name is Kamiko (god-child). I’m still in the process of figuring out the story, but I’ve taken a back seat from it for a while to let it simmer in my subconscious while I focus on more pressing matters.

To take a break from all of life’s little things, I decided to play with Inkscape and began to vectorize my drawing. The motif I had done for the comic was to draw everything in one color, which makes two colors: black and white. Well color and non-color and that’s how I wanted all of the images formed. I thought it would be like a yin-yang thing since this is a story about a newly minted god. I spent a lot of time in Inkscape producing her. It wasn’t the whole two weeks, just an hour here or there to twiddle with the spline curves and to wrangle Inkscape into giving up the goods when it came to manipulating vectors.

Inkscape’s pros: unlike Illustrator you can actually select the handles and nodes of the vector shapes and it was easy to figure out. It’s cons: I find the GUI slow, but it lets me do what I want to do without getting in my way. I’d like to try my hand at a cel-shaded image using Inkscape.

As for the high-contrast look. I do love the final product from this drawing. She feels light and free-floating through the air. I like her heels and her expression; sexy and cute just like I’d expect from Kamiko. So it all worked out in the end and it’s very nice when it does. I want to do more with the high-contrast style and Kamiko so I’ll probably continue to focus on that primarily and really try and create some interesting artwork. I’ll admit though, it’s a lot of time to create something like this, and in my mind, to do a comic with this style, would take ages, but each time I approach the style and come out with some art from it, I believe it’s the right way for it to go.

So, it started as a summer of code. Then it became art. Eventually the writing bug will hit me again, it’s just a matter of time. It’s lingering in the back of my mind, especially now that I’ve read Story by Robert McKee I feel like I can begin dissecting stories and TV/anime series I like and figure out what makes them tick and add that to arsenal of fiction writing and creation in general.

 

 

 

Ramen Story

I like ramen. Ramen is a reminder of the good moments I had at home with my family.

When I was young my grandmother used to take care of me and she would cook ramen. It was Top Ramen, but the noodles were soaked in the salty broth. They were thick, soft, and tasty. When she left for Taiwan, and eventually died, that was the only thing I remembered about her. My dad showed me how to make ramen with ground beef after I went to college. Just dump a pound of ground beef in a pan and use a spatula to dice it up into small pieces. Put some green onions in with it and take a couple of spoonfuls and put it in with the ramen and the stow the rest for later. When we would have hot pot at our house the leftover hodge-podge broth would be dumped into a pot and made into ramen broth the next day. If we had duck for dinner the heart, liver, neck, and left over meat would be used in the ramen pot for lunch. Good times and good eats.

In college, ramen was el cheapo. Sometimes if I was lucky Market 32 would have ramen on sale — ten for a buck. I stocked up. I bought ground beef to be diced up and yeah, sometimes, I would have ramen every night of the week. When you’re in college that’s what you gotta do. I got the ramen to the point where it reminded me of how my grandmother cooked it up. But afte a year of eating the same thing, I found msyelf staring into a bowl of gloppy noodles and thinking to myself, “this tastes like shit.” I overdosed on it and started eating out or finding other things to try and cook with little to moderate success — I would consider myself a terrible cook, even to this day, and yet I cook well enough for myself that I haven’t died from starvation yet.

NorCal has a few good ramen restaurants. There’s Himawari on 2nd Street in San Mateo. Santa Ramen. There’s a place down in Mountain View which I forget the name of. It’s all good.

It really wasn’t until I was watching Galaxy Express 999 that I realized I really miss eating ramen. Hoshino Tetsuro eats it in bowlfuls. Old men that run ramen shops on distant worlds give him as much as he wants because he’s the poster child for youth and ambition and he’s fueled by noodles. Watching that anime made me crave eating the stuff again but I decided if I was going to have ramen, i was going to “age it up” and make it a little more of a fulfilling meal. I tried with modern success — it was still the same old college meal.

Japan is where the real deal is. I’ve had the good stuff there. I dare say even the airport’s ramen was good. I watched the lady at the food stand make it. They don’t get their broth from some little brown powder packet. She had a clear plastic bag of broth. She had a small basket of noodles and dunked it into boiling water. Microwaved the broth packet and put the whole thing together in a bowl. What a brilliant idea. No wonder even that’s better than the shit they pass off as ramen over here. When I got home a friend got me some Sapporo Ichiban ramen. I love the stuff. It’s a step up from Top Ramen, but seriously, when I say step up it’s like paying a dollar compared to a dime. For a poor college student this is as close as you would get to gourmet. I tried to eat the Ichiban ramen but it tasted like a nasty mouthful of salt and that was sad because I loved it so much before I went to Japan. That’s when I started researching how to make my own ramen broth. I wanted to go beyond Top Ramen and Ichiban. Making broth would take anywhere from 20 minutes to 60 hours for Tonkatsu. I’m not ready to invest 60 hours into simmering pork bones. I have yet to try the 20 minute broth, and I would, but then I found this:

ramen1 300x225 Ramen Story ramen

It comes from the Marina asian supermarket in Foster City. In one of those packages you get this:

ramen2 300x225 Ramen Story ramen

You get a bag of uncooked noodles and a small liquid package (in this case soy sauce). This might be a decent compromise and I’ve had the Miso flavor and soy flavor. It’s a step up from the brick ramen. I bought some naruto when I was there as something else to put in the bowl. I boiled up some eggs and dumped some veggies in to cook up and put the noodles in and this is what came out:

ramen3 300x225 Ramen Story ramen

That’s not bad looking if I do say so myself. It wasn’t bad tasting either. It’s not Japan. It’s not Top Ramen. I didn’t have to cook broth for 20 minutes or 60 hours. I’d say, for me, for right now, I’m content with this compromise.

Windows 7 First Impressions

I tried the Windows 7 beta a couple months ago. It didn’t work very well on my Sony Viao, but that’s because Sony requires you to use a lot of proprietary software to run their laptop, which is retarded.

I’m living on the bleeding edge here with Windows 7. It was easy to download off Microsoft’s website and install. Faster than the old windows XP install. I never upgraded to Vista since that was a joke. Win7 loads fast and shuts down even faster. The interface is nice and clean and nothing about it seems slow or painful. I tend to plow my way through user interfaces. That’s how I learned OS X. I clicked on everything and got a good lay of the land. I played with the settings and figured them out. So I did the same with Windows 7 and it passes that first test. I know where everything is. I can do some minimal customization with the desktop widgets and aero themes. I picked the 64-bit version of the OS since I run an AMD 64 processor and things run a lot faster than they did under WinXP 32-bit. A lot of the freeware software I use come in 64-bit flavors too.

There are some drivers that don’t work such as my Evoluent Vertical Mouse, but I think this is an issue where I’m running a 64-bit version of Windows. The drivers are janky to begin with. Under Windows XP those drivers installed but the certificate remained unsigned digitally and caused Windows to throw a warning.

Another issue I’m having is with my Cintiq tablet. I’m not sure if Wacom’s latest drivers are janky or if its Windows 7, so I need to go back and try the older Cintiq drives I have.

Things are, amazingly, going smooth, and it’s making my 3 year old desktop PC feel like a new machine again. I want to try some gaming under this new OS, but I just don’t do much PC gaming anymore.

Living on the edge again!

You’d think I’d learn after Ubuntu and Windows 7 beta. But no. Here I am again trying Windows 7 RC 1 64-bit edition. Is it better? Faster? I’m going to find out!

The reason I switched to RC 1 was because I decided to re-install Windows XP. It was getting a nasty case of the slowdowns, but my WinXP CD’s corrupt or falling apart thanks to the inexorable march of time causing the degregation of CD discs.