Under Construction
Steps are under way for serious renovation and possibly relocation of this site.
I have some exciting changes in the works, so check in and see what’s new!
Facebook, PR and Blogging
Guess which day I published my blog post?
I’ve found Ping.fm to be quite useful in updating any relevant social media outlets at once, as well as via SMS. This allows me to spend less and less time on intellectual ice cream like Facebook and more time doing things that actually matter. However, the relations between Facebook and my own website still remain frustrating.
Many ‘professional’ blogs or sites post information in updates on Facebook. The reason for this is easy: it increases unique visitor count, it increases visibility, and it’s cheap and easy. Doing this seemed poetic, since I would be both manipulating Facebook for my own gain as well as contributing to the overall content degradation of its site.
I was shocked.
On days that I posted my blog updates to Facebook, my unique visitor count nearly increased by an order of magnitude – and quite reliably, too. However, this raised even larger problems. Publicly blasting my blog updates feels cheap and crass, something a salesman might do. On the other hand, public visibility is a well-confirmed field of study – and it says “broadcast away.”
In the blogosphere, things feel different. The act of starting and maintaining one’s own website is leagues away from starting a Facebook profile. Although the influx of turnkey web hosting solutions has made blogging more accessible, it remains intellectually nutritious and contains a degree of class that Facebook never hoped to gain. Maybe I’m just sentimental, but there’s nothing the social media world can offer me that’s half as rewarding as having a real website.
I’m unsure what direction I want to take things, but dealing with Facebook – a company the Better Business Bureau rated a “D” – is something I will avoid as much as possible.
Glass, Meet Shovel
No friendly little cubes here - glass shards. The sharp ones.
After beating in a few house windows, he left a few Parthian shots in the form of shovel blows to any windshield he found on the way.
I was actually pretty impressed at the speed with which the Auto Glass guys replaced the window. They were out within 3 business days, they got the window installed quickly and professionally.
The only catch to the whole thing? My window broke into zillions of tiny shards, which are remarkably adept at clinging to carpeting after repeated vacuuming attempts. They are also very good at worming their little invisible way into palms and fingers.
Balisong Blues
Borken!
After careful research and consideration, I chose BladeOps’ Predator Butterfly Knife – it has a nice big blade with a delicious clip point, and the handles have excellent shape. My impression from the website was favorable, and I was truly excited to get the package.
Imagine my disappointment when I open the knife and discover a flaw in the blade about the size of a dime! Around the hinge of one handle there’s a section of metal missing that’s just small enough to hold the handle yet just large enough to take a nice big bite out of the side of my thumb. Joy of joys.
Better yet, my attempts to return the blade have been met with dead silence. Calling BladeOps during business hours, I met nothing – not even a voicemail. I emailed their support line, and got no reply. I mailed the blade back to their address with a letter – still no response. For something as simple as an $18.50 blade, it seems ridiculous to make a big stink about it, but I’ve worked in retail. This kind of failure is nothing short of monumental.
Brains
Yummy.
In an hour, what had previously been a simple keyword plug-and-chug assignment transformed itself into a safari of statistical, psychological and historical odds and ends. I wanted to include a bit about Wilhelm Wundt (who deserves more credit than Stroop for the test, and I’ve always liked structuralists anyway) but I barely managed to cram this monster into a page, so I had to end it there.
The Stroop effect is a dramatic example of the automatic and interconnected processes which our brain uses to identify goals and common tasks in life; in this case, reading and identifying colors.
In the simulation, the hypothesis I chose was that color patches are easier to name than incongruously-colored words.
Upon completion of the simulation, the Psyk-Trek software compiled a list of times between slides, revealing that their operational definition of “easier” was the length of time the user took. This is a fine working definition, although in a more controlled environment factors like the number of errors might also be considered.
The simulation’s compilation of my test results showed that the mean time between color patch slides (the control) was 5.26 seconds, while the mean time between improperly-colored words (the experiment) was 7.26 seconds. At ten slides each, the standard deviation became 0.65 and 1.17, respectively. Psyk-Trek also confirmed that the results had a lower p-value than 0.65, which seems unusually high for an experiment until one considers this is a single test subject.
In conclusion, this test is a highly consistent and easily demonstrable example of cognitive processes. Stroop’s inferences were that, in viewing a word, our brains immediately recognize the word and think of the color it means. When this color is not the color the subject is attempting to determine, it produces dissonance as well as a higher incidence of false positives.
Interestingly, performance in the Stroop test can be affected by areas in the frontal cortex (as may be expected) as well as several Brodmann areas (9-12 and 45-47) and even key parts of the hippocampus. These Brodmann areas are strongly connected to the thalamus as well as the basal ganglia, areas which are strongly associated with both action selection and sensation.
Autonomous Mini-Copters (Manhacks)
Bringing us one more step closer to a robot takeover, this video from the GRASP labs at the University of Pennsylvania demonstrates the insane control and precision which computers can show as they control a little quad-copter.
Because of the superior speed and visualization abilities of our future robot masters flight program routines, they are able to fly with unnerving ease. There is a flippant attitude in the robo-pilot’s movements, almost arrogant. Flying sideways through a tight window and recovering instantly is as easy as grabbing a beer from the fridge for him – a trick that an experienced RC pilot might bat a .500 on.
But more than the shocking ease with which computers can fly planes, this video shows the shocking speed at which computers can take over jobs which used to be “human only.” I don’t know about you guys, but I’m building a safe house to defend against the oncoming robot attack – and I’m using my new, fully programmable Caterpillar D10N.
Police Attention
Recently I moved a few computers around at the Garage, placing my own rig in the front room beside Erik and the Red Dragon. My new desk location gives me prime window territory, and I now notice just how often the police check up on us. Squad cars have cruised by our house around 1 AM at least twice a week. In the past, we have had a “Don’t poke the sleeping bear” attitude toward police, hoping that if we keep our activities toned down and don’t provoke our neighbors, the police won’t pursue us further. Clearly, this is not the case.
However, just a few days ago I was driving through Rockford when I saw a plume of white smoke – somebody had overheated, and quite badly. There were police flashers through the smoke, so I assumed they were on the scene already. Upon getting closer, I could barely keep the smile off my face: they [i]were[/i] the scene!
The two poor officers had overheated their cruiser so badly that it was no longer driveable, and it was now halfway parked into some gas station. They were standing around looking foolish when I stopped by and snapped a few pictures. Schadenfreude like this just makes my whole day worthwhile.
PS: Police don’t like it when you take pictures of them. This photo was taken immediately before a “are you taking pictures of us? You can’t do that” reprimand. I didn’t have the heart to tell him, but yes – yes we can.
Computer Diagnostics
Recently I had to restart my computer, an action which it does not do often. I was appalled to discover that my boot time had spiked to something slightly larger than 3:45!
It turns out that I have an issue with the boot sector in my tired old hard drive. When a computer boots, it’s rather like an onion – low level processes like the BIOS take stock of their surroundings, then initiate higher level processes, like GRUB and Xorg. This is kind of like an onion building itself layer by layer. A problem in the boot sector means that GRUB asks the hard drive for information on how to build the next layer, and waits for the information. GRUB gives up waiting before the drive actually produces the required data!
Ironically enough, GRUB then loads to a shell (a backup layer) and continues waiting. In order to reach Xorg I actually need to exit the shell and get GRUB to re-query the drive. Needless to say, this has caused me quite a bit of grief in the last few days – especially since I’ve finally rolled up my sleeves and upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 edition, requiring more than a few restarts before I got everything set properly.
Ubuntu (and BSD/Unix in general) has a nasty habit of badgering the user with “New Updates” every few days, something which has proven remarkably difficult to circumvent. The kernel does a good job of installing updates with the required restarts of Windows, but killing processes and the mental hassle of a repetitive, incessant task has a cumulative effect.
If anything, this does give me an opportunity to re-format my hard drive into ext3, something which I have been wanting to do for months. Somehow that’s little consolation when I know how much data I need to shovel around.
Zen Tower Defense
There are near-infinite strategic possibilities
The field of casual flash-based games is strongly marked by vapid, shiny games with rapid, casino-style gameplay and no real satisfying aftertaste. Occasionally, this rule of thumb is proven wonderfully wrong.
Enter Gem Tower Defense – a deceptively simple tower defense game based closely upon the classic “Tower Defense” game developed in WarCraft custom maps. The enemies are simple chunks of HP, which run along a preset path. You must build towers to shoot and kill them before they reach their destination.
The game is relatively straightforward in the original setting. Build towers and walls to kill and slow creeps, then reach an arbitrary level without losing and you win! But the real fun begins after that. The Extreme and Survival modes contain even more challenging enemies, and the levels continue infinitely. Survival becomes the only rule, and the game changes dramatically.
With nothing to compete against but the ever-stronger waves of abstract sprites, the game reminds me of Go; there is no way to win, the only true objective is to become better. Very interesting is the interplay between tower placement and tower choosing. The user lays down five “areas” which he would like to prospect. Five randomly chosen towers are revealed on those locations. The user then chooses one tower to keep, and the other four turn into walls of rubble.
This forces an appraisal every level.
In order to build walls, the user must prospect areas which are not ideal for towers. Conversely, to re-prospect in the best tower areas the user must remove existing walls, using up a space he might have used to extend his structure. This balance between expansion and fortification is as old as Go and just as Zen.
Another delightful element of GTD is the minimal user interaction – the user does not need to make snap judgments, because the only interaction they get is between waves, where there is no time limit. This gives the game a laid-back design and attitude that makes up in class and depth what it lacks in excitement and nerves.
Perhaps best of all is GTD’s simple graphics. There are no transparencies, no slick art team designing cool heroes. There are simply rocks and little guys with hatchets, both so small and pixelated that they play to the imagination and the intellect more than the eye.
In short, GTD is a game for architects, Buddhist monks, and intelligentsia. It delights with simplicity and surprising depth. This game deserves praise, appreciation, and time. (I am not ashamed to admit that I’ve used a calculator and graphing paper for GTD, and probably will again)
Happy gaming!
Dear Flash Developers:
Please, please, in the name of all that is unholy, STOP.
Knock it off, guys.
Limiting the options in the right-click menu is not professional. It does not make your game look sleek and polished. It just makes you a douchebag for taking away some of the most basic tools the user needs.
This is only the latest in several disturbing trends that show the future health of flash-based games is not good.
The massive amount of interest that flash-based games has generated online is a driving force for online advertisements, and it stands to reason that corporate bigwigs would get their greasy fingers into the mix.
Flash games today are a critically important area to watch, for one reason: advertising. Let me say that again: advertising.
Games are fueled by advertising, and if you need any further proof for this then try playing anything off ArmorGames‘ atrocious site without ad blockers, popups, and firewalls enabled. Sadly, AG is one of the cleaner examples of a game site.
Flash is also an extremely powerful language, with many of its capabilities left untapped by the advertising arena – at least, thus far. Things like interactive advertising offers the horrific possibility that interactivity be provided not just to engage a user, but to REQUIRE the user pay attention to the advertisements!
Currently, flash advertisers have discovered (and are making the most of) how to embed dynamic advertisements into an otherwise static game. This allows them to pipe in any advertisement they may like, essentially creating advertisements in-game. These are currently used with restraint, usually to cover up loading screens and always with a “Click to Skip” button.
The disturbing trend I begin to see, however, is the widespread use of flash capabilities for less positive purposes. Bubble Tanks 2 will limit the user’s possible upgrades if it cannot detect that it’s being hosted from ArmorGames, and in the place of the upgrades it places an advertisement and link to the “preferred” site.
This is quite frightening. Mainstream games are now using rewards to funnel their users toward chosen sites (read: advertisements) and punishing the user if they don’t comply. Unless users begin to take issue with this practice, I fear that we will soon find ourselves in a much more aggressive marketing environment.
