the adventures of teapot the cat

We Love Katamari

We Love Katamari is the sequel to Katamari Damacy (which is a super fun and cute PS2 game where you roll around a ’sticky ball’ that grows and grows as you pick stuff up). As soon as I get a new PS2, I think this sequel will be on my top ten list. I hope it’s as good as the first! Also, it’s going to be released in Europe so I’ll have to share the joy with my Euro PALs.

Add comment November 6th, 2005

Falk You Beeeyotch!

Can Peter Falk take out his glass eye? Does he just, like, squint and *pop* out it comes? Or does he need some kind of suction cup to yank it out? Does it get gross and need cleaning? And is it anchored somehow - I mean, it doesn’t get totally crooked… I wonder how he lost his eye… His depth perception must suck.

Add comment November 6th, 2005

In Search of Silence

I recently moved into a nice loft space - concrete floors, large open rooms. I love it. The only problem I had was that too much noise leaked into and out of the apartment (I don’t want to have to worry about disturbing my neighbors when I watch a movie at a decent volume, or when I have a couple friends over) After some research [part 2] I found out that the major culprits of sound leakage are doors, windows, and walls.

Very generally, the easiest path for sound to take is through air. Also, the less dense or thick an object, the more sound transmission is possible. Single pane windows offer little acoustic protection from the ‘beautiful’ street sounds of San Francisco. Double-glazing would help a little, but I’m not that lucky. So short of boarding them up with wood, I realized I couldn’t do much about my wonderful huge windows. My roomy uncarpeted loft did offer good structural buffering - concrete does a nice job of stopping sound. But it does make for a sometimes unpleasant echo chamber; carpeting is good for absorbing sound within a space. And last but not least, the doors. Oh, the doors. After installing some closed cell foam weatherstripping and a door sweep (transom), things were sounding mighty hushed. It’s surprising how well these two cheap and easy mods helped, and I recommend working on at least a minimal amount of soundproofing if your apartment has acoustic leakage problems. Spending a bit of quality time with your appliances could also help you sleep at night.

Add comment November 6th, 2005