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April 28, 2005

Viva Zapata! Review

Viva Zapata!My wife and I have cooked Mexican food at home for many years, and have often lamented the lack of a Mexican restaurant in Dunedin. I grew up in Los Angeles, and understandably get the occasional craving for a good enchilada.

Fortunately my family have all become very fond of Mexican food, and the kids don't even complain much about grinding up rice in the morter and pestle for horchata. My wife, being the excellent cook that she is, makes the best damned flan I've had anywhere (sorry Mom, yours is a very close second, and you've got a bit of an edge with your pecan pie).

Naturally, we were very excited to discover that a new Mexican restaurant, Viva Zapata, had recently opened and we rushed there for lunch today.

Viva Zapata's location, while close to the University, is just outside the busy part of town and I sincerely hope this doesn't hurt their business. Maybe tequila swilling students (they have an impressive selection of agave beverages) will make up for the loss of foot traffic.

The decor was bright, cheerful, and appropriately Mexican with Diego Rivera prints and arts & crafts nicknacks on the walls. We were the only customers for lunch, which suits me fine, but our waitress did mention that it gets livelier in the evenings.

The menu was a little disappointing, with fairly predictable offerings and a lot of what I would consider snack foods (quesadillas, tacos) available as mains. I ordered the chicken mole which appeared to be the only plato fuerta, and my wife had the chicken enchiladas.

We started the meal with a bowl of tortilla chips, guacamole, bean dip, and red salsa. The chips were excellent - I haven't had real tortilla chips since moving to New Zealand and it was a treat. The dips were all fine, but a little uninspired. The salsa was fresh, but very mild and lacking character. In fact, mildness seemed to characterise the whole meal unfortunately. I would like to have been able to specify the amount of chilli in my meal. I'll post my favourite salsa recipe later - orange, tomatillio, and habanero salsa.. it's a blinder.

Our meals arrived shortly after, accompanied by kidney beans and red rice. A typical mole is stew like, and tends to have a somewhat viscous soupy quality, but mine was a bit dry and pasty. It was tasty despite this, and my wife's enchilada in adobo sauce was good too. We were both a bit disappointed that the enchiladas were made with flour tortillas; they really are better with corn.

All in all, we had a great time at Viva Zapata. The staff were friendly, and the meals were large and reasonably priced. We'll certainly return, and it would be a good place to take children for lunch. There's a lot of room for improvement however, and I'd like to see a bit more variation and creativity in their menu. Well done Viva Zapata for bringing my favourite cuisine to wee Dun'edin.

Posted by kitsune at 07:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 26, 2005

PSP vs. Consoles

If you played and enjoyed Final Fantasy VI, chances are that you will find this animation very amusing.

The site is in Japanese, but there's an English version of the animation available. Thanks to Tim Nixon at Straylight Studios for pointing me towards this.

Posted by kitsune at 05:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 18, 2005

Maya Bevel workaround

My last Maya related post, It's Official: Maya's Bevel Tool Still Sucks, focused on the bevel tool's problems. Here's an attempt at providing a cludgy workaround.

We are all familiar with the bevel tools uncanny ability to mangle anything but the most simple geometry. Instead of hitting your head against a wall trying to get this tool to behave, download the excellent Open Maya Toolbox, and try the following.

Beveling this edge to create a chamfer with the Maya bevel tool would mangle this geometry.

Instead, we'll use the Omtoolbox Split Around Edge tool.

Unfortunately this technique requires a bit of cleanup, and you'll need to select your old internal edges.

Make sure you select those bottom edges too.
Now delete the edges using Edit Polygons | Delete Edge (hitting delete will leave verticies behind).

Yay! A nice clean beveled edgeloop :)

To adjust the offset, tweak the Slide parameter in the SplitAroundEdges node attribute editor.

If anyone has any suggestions for streamlining this rather nasty process (other than using a sensible program like Silo or Wings), please leave a comment! :)

Posted by kitsune at 01:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 17, 2005

If the Stone Age had run out of rocks...

An opinion piece by Owen McShane has recently been featured in the New Zealand Herald suggesting that Peak Oil is not an issue we should be concerned about. How I wish that were true.

McShane's argument is essentially that the market will provide, and technological solutions will avert any difficulty dwindling supplies may create. There are a number of flaws in his argument that I would like to address.

"Much of the oil in known reserves needs a higher price to make it worth extracting. Some is "taxed" by environmental restraints. Now that prices are high, the oil companies are exploring again. Governments are providing the appropriate incentives."

Oil companies have never stopped investing in exploration which has been in steady decline since 1962 (see chart). We are very good at finding oil now using 3d seismic imaging techniques. No amount of technological improvement or further investment of funds is going to create more oil.

Oil Discovery: (3 Year Average, Past and Projected)

"World population collapse is just around the corner - let’s say 2050. This coupling of population decline with increased efficiency will compensate for increases in energy use."

The IEA predicts that global peak production will occur around 2030. It should be noted that this is an optimistic forecast, and a number of well respected geologists suggest that the peak will come between 2005 and 2012. Given both the best and worse case scenario, a theoretical population decline around 2050 seems irrelevant.

Once we have reached peak oil, production will drop by 3-6% per year, every year. Mr. McShane should be reminded that it only took a 5% drop in supply to cause the 1970s oil crisis. The situation in the 70s was the result of an artificial shortage. The permanent price increases and inevitable shortages to come unfortunately are out of our hands and are the result of resource constraints, not politics.

"Oil is only one source of energy. If it gets truly expensive, the future will still be awash with energy because so many new sources are waiting in the wings for oil to get more expensive. New energy sources are all around us."

I would be very interested to know what those alternative sources of energy are, because as it stands at the moment, nothing has the EROEI of oil. We have no alternative technology capable of replacing oil. Hydrogen, bio-diesel, ethanol are all net-losers, requiring a greater initial input of energy than they return.

It should also be considered that none of these technologies are truly independent of oil. It takes large amounts of oil and other scarce resources to locate, mine and transport the raw materials necessary to build solar panels, windmills, and nuclear power plants. Furthermore, if peak oil is imminent, we do not have the infrastructure to support an alternative fuel, and it could take decades to establish one.

"The Alberta oil sands contain the equivalent of 1.6 trillion barrels of oil, more than all of the world oil reserves combined. A higher price will turn this resource into a reserve."

The EROEI for oil is 30 to 1, whereas oil sands are around 1.5 to 1.

Furthermore, oil sands are projected to only produce 2.2 million barrels per day by 2015. We currently need 83.5 million barrels per day, and are projected to need 120 million barrels per day by 2020.

Your utopian vision of the future sounds lovely Mr. McShane, and I would so like to visit. The reality of the situation is considerably bleaker, and we and doing practically nothing to address it.

Posted by kitsune at 02:37 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

April 13, 2005

Bank says Saudi's top field in decline

Another voice has surfaced, supporting Matt Simmons view that Gharwar has hit peak and is in decline. If this is the case, we should expect to see the market respond pretty dramatically soon.

The Saudis are of course denying this.

Posted by kitsune at 02:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 11, 2005

New Zealand Government Recognises Need for Transition

On Saturday evening, I emailed Pete Hodgson, Minister for Climate Change, and Trevor Mallard, Minister of Energy, after reading the announcement from the IMF that we are experiencing a permanent oil shock.

Below you'll find my email, and Mr. Hodgson's reply.

Dear Mr. Hodgson and Mr. Mallard,

These appear to be very significant events:

“The shock we see is a permanent shock that is going to continue... and countries need to adjust to that,” said David Robinson, deputy IMF chief economist.

coupled with this

Surely, some radical changes to our transportation and energy policy are in need.

kind regards,

Bayard Randel
Dunedin

and Mr. Hodgson's reply:

Dear Bayard,
I Agree. The transition needs to begin soon, and policy settings will change progressively,starting soon.

Regards
Pete Hodgson MP
Dunedin North

This is a very encouraging response, and I feel hopeful that our government will give the issue the attention that it so desperately needs.

Posted by kitsune at 05:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saudi Oil

The Oil Drum, which is a rather swell blog if you've not yet stumbled across it, has posted an item about declining production in Saudi. The general consensus around Saudi reserves is that they are in decline, most fields having hit peak production some time ago. Yet despite this, the Saudi minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Ali Al-Naimi, had the following to say recently:

"There is a possibility that the Kingdom will increase its reserves by around 200 billion barrels, either through new finds or by increasing what it produces from existing fields."

"These huge reserves enable the Kingdom to remain a major oil producer for between 70 and 100 years, even if it raises its production capacity to 15 million barrels per day, which may well happen during the next 15 years," he said.

This seems to fly in the face of our knowledge of the logarithmic decline of production. Is Saudi Arabia an anomaly, or is this just bullshit?

Keep an eye on OPEC - we'll know soon enough.

Posted by kitsune at 12:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 09, 2005

ChevronTexaco's CEO banking on peak oil situation

This to my mind is a very significant event.

An excerpt from David Lazarus' article at the SF Chronicle:

There's been a lot of ink spilled this week about the risk ChevronTexaco's chief exec, David O'Reilly, has taken in paying about $16.4 billion for rival Unocal and its oil resources.

Because Unocal's stock has soared 75 percent over the past year, the thinking goes, ChevronTexaco could find itself with a white elephant on its hands if currently sky-high oil prices end up coming back to earth.

Well, I'm prepared to say this much: O'Reilly isn't stupid. He knows more than most people about world oil markets.

So if the head of San Ramon's ChevronTexaco is prepared to gamble more than 16 billion bucks on oil prices staying at stratospheric levels, I'm ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.

And reading between the lines, that means only one thing.

Peak oil.

We're basically there.

Posted by kitsune at 03:00 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

It's Official: Maya's Bevel Tool Still Sucks

I have a bit of a love hate relationship with Maya. 3DS Max was the first 3D software I learned, and at the time I wasn't aware of just how spoiled I was with good polygon modeling tools. Maya is a superior package in almost every respect, yet its broken poly modeling tools continue to let it down. Hi-end CG software should be able to bevel an edge without mangling geometry!

I was excited to discover while reading the list of changed features in Maya 6.5, that the poly bevel tool had been improved.

Have a look at the sequence below, and judge for yourself if there's been an improvement. I'm simply amazed that Alias can't fix this.. it's really very embarrassing.

Created a cube.

Extrude with offset.

Select an edgeloop.

Bevel with default settings.

Extra edge removed with angle tolerance. Nice geometry Alias!

And a top view in all it's munted glory!

Please fix this Alias. I really do want to like Maya, but this fundamental flaw in the program really lets it down.

Posted by kitsune at 01:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 07, 2005

IEA report: Saving Oil in a Hurry

There appears to have been some hoorah surrounding the release of the IEA draft document entitled "Saving Oil in a Hurry". A number of sources have suggested that the existence of this document is tantamount to an admission of an impending Peak Oil scenario by the IEA.

Having tracked down the document, and read it, this is clearly not the case. Given that the evidence for an imminent peak is growing, this is an unfortunate realisation in some respects. The document deals with mitigating short term drops in supply, and certainly is not recommending adoption of these strategies now. Given the volatile price of crude at the moment, it is not surprising that the IEA have prepared this report.

Pete Hodgson's office was correct in stating:

"The article relates to a conference being held on contingency planning, and the report from that conference. The IEA is not recommending that these measures be implemented now. New Zealand officials attended the conference."

"The purpose of the conference is to help countries with their contingency planning for future emergencies, such as a major supply disruption or war in the Middle East. Under IEA rules, all countries are required to have plans in place for what they would do in the event of an oil supply disruption."

I've made the document available from nocturne, as it appears that the IEA have removed the document from their site.

Posted by kitsune at 01:57 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

This Site is XHTML Compliant - Yeah Right

Ok, it was bound to happen eventually. My first rant.

Has anyone else noticed the slew of sites that display links to the W3C html validator, and claim to be XHTML 1.0 valid, but simply aren't? My guess is that the majority of sites, bearing a Valid XHTML logo, aren't in fact valid.

In order to test this hypothesis, I've visited the first 10 blogs listed on Technorati tagged with XHTML, that claimed to be valid. I validated the pages, and then recorded the results. You would think that if any sites were going to validate, it would be those discussing standards compliant markup.

The sites visited were:

• http://www.jedisthlm.com/ - invalid.
• http://www.elmenda.com/ - valid!
• http://uniquelyalike.com/ - valid!
• http://technewsetc.blogsome.com/ invalid.
• http://blog.waag.org/henk/ - invalid.
• http://neme.org/main/ - valid!
• http://www.plasticshore.com/ - valid!
• http://www.sens.buffalo.edu/test/wordpress/ - invalid.
• http://www.sestaluna.com/maurobiani/ - invalid.
• http://www.feaverish.com/ - valid!

results: 5/10 validate.
This is actually more than I had anticipated. Well done to those of you that have taken care to author your documents correctly.

This is probably a pretty crap way to sample sites that are claiming standards compliance. What would be really great would be a way to return a random page, from google's dataset when queried for a keyword - i.e., an I'm feeling random button. Anyone written a google API hack for this? I'm sure it would have some interesting applications (more interesting than my little experiment in pedantry). It would also be nice to see blogging applications offer a validation feature when posting.

Posted by kitsune at 11:31 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 06, 2005

My Top 10 Games

Robotron 2084 c. 1982
Williams Games

I often get asked by fellow geeks what my favourite games are, and I find I have difficulty answering.. but here's an attempt at a top 10 in no particular order :)

Final Fantasy VI (super nintendo)
I was fortunate enough to discover Japanese RPGs early on, and cut my teeth on Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest in Japan), and Final Fantasy I & II on the 8-bit NES. Unfortunately, Square and Enix decided that RPGs wouldn't work in the US market, and promptly stopped releasing them thereafter. For one reason or another, Square had another go at it in 1994, and released Final Fantasy VI to US gamers as Final Fantasy III. Now of course, Square's RPGs are very popular outside of Japan, and as far as I'm aware, everything they produce these days gets a translation. With the exception of FFXI (FF online), I've played all of the Final Fantasy games, and VI remains my favourite. There's undoubtedly an element of nostalgia in my choice there, as FFVII is probably the better game :)

Ico (playstation 2)
This gem of a game was mostly ignored by the general public, despite rave reviews from critics. Ico is difficult to describe. If I were to tell you that Ico has very basic gameplay mechanics, virtually no combat system, almost no dialogue, and a minimalistic plot, you'd probably assume it wasn't a particularly good or interesting game. You would be wrong however, as Ico's strength is in its simplicity. Ico takes all of the elements of a great adventure game - character interaction, puzzles, and a goal, and widdles them down to their most refined essence. Ico is a subtle, archetypal, moving experience, that genuinely affected me emotionally. It's not often, if ever, that I can say that about a video game.

April from The Longest Journey

The Longest Journey (pc)
My favourite adventure game... and an overlooked masterpiece. There's more depth and intelligence here than in most novels.

Katamari Damashii (playstation 2)
In an industry predominated by generic, predictable, uninspired crap, Katamari Damashii is a breath of fresh air. Katamari Damashii involves rolling a katamari, which is japanese for clump, around the world to collect items, from buttons and flowerpots, to office buildings and giant squid. The larger the katamari the better.
Perfectly simple, and perfectly joyful.

Robotron: 2084 (arcade)
Pure, unadulterated, frenetic, joystick wangling madness. 20 years old, and still one of the most intense gaming experiences around. Tempest, is a close second.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (gamecube)
Loosely based on the works of fantacist H.P. Lovecraft, Eternal Darkness is a sophisticated action adventure game spanning the bredth of history. An engaging plot, novel gameplay elements, quality voice acting, stunning graphics, and a genuinely creepy atmosphere makes this one of the best games of the current console generation.

The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past (super nintendo)
It's hard to fault any of the Zelda games (and we won't be mentioning Zelda II, because frankly it doesn't exist, and never did... it was just a bad, bad dream). Ocarina of Time, and The Windwaker were both masterpieces, but once again the old nostalgia engine kicks in and I feel compelled to choose this one. Whacking chickens has never been so satisfying.

Grim Fandango (pc)
I can't think of a single Lucas Arts adventure game that I didn't like. Monkey Island, Sam & Max, Indiana Jones, Day of the Tentacle.. all were marvellous. Grim Fandango was really the pinnacle, and the end of the traditional adventure game. Occasionally something new like Siberia comes along, but sadly the genre is pretty much dead. Grim Fandango is set in the underworld, and is a weird blend of beatnik culture, Mexican mythology, and American hard-boiled fiction/film noir. It's a joy to play, with memorable characters, a solid plot, and witty dialogue.

Manny from Grim Fandango

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (arcade)
Pretty much any spare money I had in my adolescence was sunk into this machine. Street Fighter 2 was simply a phenomenon. Large groups of potential 'world warriors', quarters in a line, would gather around the cabinets of this game, nervously waiting for their turn in the ring. SF2 spawned hordes of imitators, most of which are better than the original, but once again nostalgia prevents me from listing something like Tekken 5 or Soul Calibur 2 here.

Deus Ex (pc)
While I enjoyed the visceral goodness of Quake when it was shiny and new, the FPS genre has lost a lot of its lustre over the years. The now defunct Looking Glass Studios, brilliantly injected new life, and more importantly intelligence, in to the shooter. Thief, System Shock, and Deus Ex were all brilliant games, crossing genre boundaries, and challenging us with a completely new take on the FPS. Deus Ex was an adventure game, an RPG, and an FPS simultaneously. You could advance through the game using stealth and guile alone, or you could run through guns blazing. The choice was yours. It was that element of choice that made Deus Ex a special, ground breaking game.

Posted by kitsune at 12:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 05, 2005

Minna Daisuki Katamari Damashii Rolls Out

madness. utter madness.

Namco have announced that Minna Daisuki Katamari Damashii will be released in Japan on July 6th. Hopefully this will get a PAL release, unlike its predecessor.

Posted by kitsune at 02:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 01, 2005

NZ Government position on Peak Oil

Pete Hodgson
Labour MP, Dunedin North

I recently mailed the former minister of energy, Pete Hodgson (I chose to mail him, rather than the current minister Trevor Mallard, as Mallard has not held the portfolio terribly long, and is likely to be less informed), about what I consider the most important issue facing modern man - the impending decline of global oil production.

I've included his response, and my subsequent response below. The statement “The Government is however not accepting these views [in reference to the IEA's prediction of peak ~2030 - Ed.] as gospel.” is encouraging, but I am still concerned that we are not acting swiftly enough.

At least the issue is out in the open, and government is discussing it.. that's more than can be said for most countries, most notably the U.S., who have the most to lose.

Dear Bayard Randel

Thank you for your email of 16 March 2005 regarding global oil supplies.

The possibility of global oil supply peaking in the near future is a contentious issue. Certainly nobody would disagree that oil is a non-renewable resource that will run out one day, but there is considerable debate about when that one day will be. You mention sources of information that forecast an oil crisis as early as 2007 and 2010. Having sourced this information, you are no doubt aware of the arguments for that point of view. It should be noted that these are amongst the most pessimistic views of world oil supplies and there are opposing arguments based on revised estimates of existing economic reserves, the expectation of new discoveries still to be made, advances in production technology and the addition of other sources such as Canadian oil sands.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is considered to be one of the leading authorities on world energy projections and energy supply issues. In their 2002 World Energy Outlook, the IEA foresee enough oil to comfortably meet demand to 2030. As another example, the US Department of Energy using data from the US Geological Survey, estimates that oil production is likely to peak sometime between 2021 and 2067, with probability highest around 2037.

The Government is however not accepting these views as gospel. The Ministry of Economic Development carefully considers a wide range of evidence and information but it should be recognised that mainstream opinion is that oil is not likely to peak this decade. Keep in mind that after the 1970's oil shocks, predictions were for oil to run out by the year 2000. Further information on the IEA and the World Energy Outlook can be found at www.iea.org.

Because of the highly technical nature of estimating global oil reserves, it is not an appropriate task for the Ministry of Economic Development to forecast global oil supply. Instead, the Ministry aims to generally follow the views expressed by the IEA, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and OPEC. At the same time, the Ministry constructs alternative yet plausible scenarios for investigation.

The Ministry of Economic Development's New Zealand Energy Outlook to 2025 uses supply and demand modelling to produce scenarios of future energy supply, demand, prices and emissions. Further information on the New Zealand Energy Outlook can be found at www.med.govt.nz/ers/en_stats/outlook/index.html.

Thank you for your interest in this subject. I have also attached a copy of a speech I gave to the 2004 Hopkins Lecture in Christchurch, which provides a brief overview of the government's energy planning for New Zealand, including some thoughts on oil supplies.

Yours sincerely
HON PETE HODGSON MP for Dunedin North

and my reply,

Dear Mr. Hodgson,

Thank you kindly for your detailed and considered reply. I am aware that the peak scenarios proposed by Campbell and Defeyes (2005-2012), although plausible, are pessimistic. I am pleased to hear that you are not accepting the IEA predition as gospel. Many analysts are starting to recognise that Proven Reserves, are rarely proven - consider Royal Dutch Shell's writedown, cutting reserve life from 13.4 to 10.6 years.

I would hope that we would have the prudence to consider the precautionary principle, especially as the oil required for a 2030 peak has yet to be recovered, and remains an unknown.

kind regards,
Bayard Randel
Dunedin

Posted by kitsune at 04:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mr Vidal lays it out

“There is not one human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”
- Gore Vidal

I've long been a fan of Gore Vidal's writing, having been fortunate enough to be thoroughly confused by his marvellous Myra Breckinridge at a tender age. City Pages have posted a great interview with Vidal, focusing on the corporatisation of America and the absence of any real politics in the American political system. Vidal seems to be one the few sane voices of dissent today, in an increasingly bewildering world.

Many thanks to Steven Lagavulin over at deconsumption for the link.

Posted by kitsune at 12:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack