Sony scaling issue and games without sound

And the leatest in Sony’s contuing efforts to make the PS3 the butt of everyone’s jokes… I’ve taken a break from watching their comedic attempts to market the PS3 just because their screwups were starting to come on an almost daily basis.

May as well throw out another one though….

We’ve known for the pastweek or so that Sony conveinetly forgot to actually do much testing on HDTV’s and the PS3 has some pretty severe issues when it comes to scaling movies and games. For those that aren’t already well aware basically if you don’t have a television that can do both 720p AND 1080p, you’re going to lose picture quality in either games or Blu-ray movies. So the problem pretty much effects…. everyone, well unless your one of the dozen or so people that have a 1080P capable television.

Apparently Sony exists in a mythical land wherein 1080P content actually exists, and more then .00000000001% of HDTV owners own a set capable of more then 720P and/or 1080i. Iniitially Sony claimed it would be a simple firmware fix for owners but they’ve now backed off on that. The official line is now that they are “looking into the issue and haven’t stated any actions that will be taken regarding it.”

In plain english I’ll take it that means nobody will be seeing any solutions anytime in the near future and current PS3 owners are likely to remain screwed. The whole “we’re beta testing Sony’s hardware” crowd is about to get even more to complain about. Of course since Sony is falling well short of their already miniscule and continually decreasing number of PS3’s they plan to ship this year that may not matter all that much.

Who knew upscaling video was such an exotic technology?  🙂

On the plus side… one of Sony’s other recent issues is at least partially resolved. Consumers were understandably perturbed when they found out Sony’s vaunted backwards compatibility with PS1/2 didn’t include actually having sound on those games. The latest frimware update for the PS3 apparently remedies that for most games though there are still a 100 or so games that will remain silent when played on the PS3.

How one writes

I don’t know… but I think I write differently than others. I’m not sure I ever really realized this before, or if I did I gave it no conscious thought or consideration but today I was reading poetry online from would-be amateur poets much like myself. Their comments made me realize…
When I write a poem, I never just decide “hey I’m going to write a poem” and do so, I don’t think about what I’m writing. I don’t choose a topic, and write a line… then sit and think about what to put next. I never go back and change or alter anything.
Reading what others have said it seems like they consciously decided to start writing poetry and when they do it’s something they actively desire and want to do.
They’ll sit down to write a poem, decide the topic and then decide what to say. Working slowly and carefully coming up with each line or word one by one to craft the best poem they can.

I honestly can think of only a handful of occasions since high school in which I did that. (High School was an exception-there you were told when to write, and often the topic to write on. You had no choice.) Every time I’ve done that the results have been… dismal, frankly only one of those poems was even passable. None of them I was particularly fond of, none evoked any real emotion. They’re not memorable in any way to me, and I’ve never felt any desire to go back and look at them.
Essentially they were little more than words on a page, that I feel nothing for. Little more interesting than a random note of no import at all.

Does that make me a bad poet? Maybe… it’s hard to say, I’m not sure. It’s certainly a defensible theory however.

I don’t think I ever decided one day to write poetry. I just did it. I think as far as I can remember even before I started writing poetry I’d always write down random little snippets of thought.
Today.. when I write a poem, I don’t decide to write a poem.
How it works for me is… well, a poem just comes to mind fully formed and I write it down. I make no conscious decision to write a poem, I’m not actively thinking about poetry.
I could be doing anything… often completely unrelated in any way to poetry or literature or art in general. A poem will just pop into my head. And I write it down.
That’s all. Then I go back to doing what I was before. In some ways I’m not actually a poet, just the instrument through poetry comes out.

My best poems are when I’m feeling any intense emotion. Be it a positive or negative one. Love, sadness, depression, loss, anticipation…
Intense feelings evoke poetic thought. Conscious decisions to write do not.
I learned long ago to simply write what comes to mind. Trying to alter that/change it/improve upon it, or taking my time to perfect it… invariably yields results that are worse then what I started from.
Maybe I’m simply naturally gifted to write thoughts in poetic form, and so I’ve no need to put conscious thought to it.
Or maybe it’s due to a lack of talent? Maybe I just lack the experience necessary. Perhaps my mind is just not suited to such flights of fancy as poetry requires.
All of that makes logical sense.

Truth be told, it doesn’t matter how I do it. One way is probably not any better than another just different. I don’t understand the difference, and I’m curious how many others write in a similar fashion as I do. I’ve no idea how to go about finding out however, I don’t exactly know many people (anyone at all?) that writes poetry. Only handful that even care about it at all.
It’s quite plausible someone I know writes poetry and I’m simply not aware of it however, after all the vast majority of people I know probably haven’t a clue that I do.

It brings other questions to mind… how frequently and consistently do other people write?
Do they study various forms of poetry?
Do they pattern themselves after any notable poet?
Do they even read poetry beyond their own?

The answers to those questions probably vary from person to person.

To answer my own queries on the off chance anyone cares:
Myself, I write very inconsistently. There have been several times over the years that I’ve written 7-8 poems in a few hours time. That’s a rarity however, and a very distinct anomaly. Still it has happened perhaps 5-6 times that I can recall.
Other times I’ve written nothing at all for several months.
About a yr ago I wrote maybe 40 poems in two months time. An extremely rapid pace for me.
In all the time since then I’ve written perhaps 5. Now I’ve written 5 in the last week.
It’s possible albeit very unlikely I’ll write nothing for the next year. It’s also possible although a tad less likely still that I’ll write 400 poems in that year.

I’ve studied a number of forms of poetry, mostly when I was ~17. Perhaps 18mnths ago I spent a few weeks reading on various forms of poetry and studying some lessons on how one writes poetry. I haven’t really done anything since, and I’m dubious I gained anything from it beyond a better working knowledge of various forms.
I tend to write almost exclusively freeform, usually thought not always there will be a consistent stanza pattern but that’s it.
Rarely I’ve written a haiku, a little more often a sonnet/cinquain/tanka. Nothing special, and no real art to most of my poems.

I don’t think I ever patterned myself after any poets. It’s hard to say, if I have it wasn’t an active choice. I’ve likely been influenced by many writers… and even more likely been strongly influenced by modern society outside of literature in my usage of language and general style of writing, along with the topics I’ve written on. My own style has changed somewhat over the years, and even now there is some deviation outside of my norm. As an example a handful of times I’ve written using early modern English (ala shakespearian English) a few other times I’ve written epic poetry… neither is something I’ve done more than a few times however.

I read other poets… but I wouldn’t consider myself well read. I have my comfort zone of knows poets and generally stick to them. Occasionally I’ll go looking for poetry on a specific topic if I’m in a mood of any intense emotion… if I see something a I really love I’ll look for more by that writer. Most of them time I’ll just read what other amateur poets have written.
I don’t think there’s any consistency in what I like.

“You wonder”

“You wonder”
A poem of how doubts consume your thoughts… How trust can be abused.

You wonder if she’s telling you the truth
You wonder if the plan is real
You wonder if it could work out in the end
You wonder if this is how you should feel
You wonder if what they said was true
You wonder if you were simply played
You wonder if she ever really loved you
You wonder if she just wanted to get laid
You wonder what she’s thinking
You wonder if it will even happen
You wonder why you can’t let go
You wonder why you’re already plannin’
You wonder why this is everything you want
You wonder why you can’t just move on
You wonder if it will be the same this time
You wonder if this love is gone
You wonder why you trust everything she says.
You wonder how you could feel any fonder,
You wonder why you don’t always trust her,
You wonder why you will always wonder.

Horrible?
Almost certainly…*shugs*