Potpourri

My supervisor has a somewhat lax time policy. Because of it I work an extra 30 to 40 minutes on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Thus gets me out an extra 2 to 2.5 hours early on Friday. It's really nice.

I played the demo for Eufloria on the PSN. It was pretty fun. It's a stylistically distinct RTS-esque game not unlike Mushroom Wars. I'll probably be buying it. I'm also thinking of getting a Playstation+ subscription. I buy enough off of there for it to pay for itself.

I've started reading Reamde. I'm only about 50 pages in at this point but it's really grabbed me. It starts at a family reunion in present time. The main character is of the baby boomer generation. It really captures that weird feeling I always had at large family gatherings when I was growing up because of the large generational differences. The grandparents are very traditional and low tech. The baby boomers grew up in that traditional way but have embraced the technology of today. The children didn't grow up on the farm and know nothing of the traditional ways but have greatly embraced technology which causes this disconnect, lack of understanding and resentment between the generations. It really resonated with me.

I've started bringing headphones to work. If I'm doing something thought intensive I listen to music. If it's not thought intensive I listen to podcasts. I currently listen to the Nitpixels podcast for gaming, the Weekly Weinersmith for science/geekdom, and the Savage Lovecast for all that provides. I always find the Savage Lovecast to be interesting.

Also, The Magicians is going to be made into a television show. So, I might talk about that if/when details come out. ANYWHO. Bye.

Time-Traveling Gnomes

I had what may be an awesome idea. It takes place in an alternate history earth where several key points in history went differently and have severely impacted the future. Why did these events happen differently? Because a gnome (like a garden gnome) invented a time machine and accidentally screwed it all up. Now, it's up to your band on gnomes to use the time machine to go back in time and set events straight. Armed with a history book and your diminutive stature, you have to set history right, for better or worse.

The idea first came to me as an gnome-based RPG. I was trying to come up with a good hook for a gnome RPG and was having trouble. The trouble with such small gnomes is that they aren't disposed to grand, heroic acts because of their size.

Speaking into Joan of Arc's ear to guide her to action.

Ensuring Hitler meets his end.

Being the second gunman.

Acting as Einstein's inspiration.

The gnomes can debate and examine these points in history. If they aren't sure that what they've been sent to do is the right thing, they can look for evidence that maybe it is. They can choose not to do it and see what they outcome is. They get to remold the world from these critical points in time, setting new and different events into motion. Changing history.

Games as Data Collection

You can thank Metal Gear Solid 3 for introducing me to Starsailor.

As I was tutoring students for the ACT today and they were working some problems, I had an idea. The idea would be to design games explicitly to collect data on people. You can see how they react in certain situations instead of asking how they would react in certain situations. In addition to testing their reactions to situations, you could also use the games to test things such as persistence.

The question now becomes, "What issues arise with this form of data collection as opposed to a survey?" For starters, it's far more complicated to put together. Secondly, you need to make sure that the game is easily understood and controlled by the players. Point-and-click adventures and text-based RPGs may be the most approachable forms. Third, you need to make sure that the players aren't necessarily concerned about the ending. You don't want people trying to game for the best outcome, you want them to play the game for their natural reaction to the events at hand.

I think it's a very interesting potential field of study and type of research tool to study people. I wouldn't mind pioneering the format, personally. Shame I already have a job and other things to do. Speaking of which, I'm tired, and I'm going to go to sleep. I've had a headache all day and have a full day ahead of me.

Sexuality & Gender Surveys

Some great music from PixelJunk Monsters

I want to do a survey (or series of surveys) that covers a wide array of questions for people of different sexual orientations and genders. I have always found sexuality to be a very interesting subject and would love to collect some hard data on how people of varying sexualities and genders differ in other ways.

There's a problem, though. I'm straight, myself, and I don't travel very deeply in the communities of those who are. I'm not sure that I could fully and best design these surveys and find interesting ways to look at or analyze the data that comes out of them. I may not ask all the questions I should ask to get interesting information. I may ask questions that aren't interesting. Lastly, I would probably definitely need help to make sure that all the wording and phrasing was both accurate and respectful.

I can't see being able to design one form that would cover all possible combinations, so it would seem that multiple surveys would be necessary.

Essentially, what I'm trying to say is that I go through with this, I would need some help. You could even say that I need a committee to help me. I need people who are closer to this than I am. I need people who can help me design and spread these surveys. Contact me in whatever way you can and I can get this process rolling. If you want it, I'll credit you in any materials having to do with these surveys.

Thanks in advance to anybody who helps.

The Congressional Elections

You can buy this soundtrack for as low as $1. I highly recommend it.

There are lot of things that I would like to do to congress, but unfortunately I don't think they'd pass any legislation that would endanger their job security. Therefore, anything that would reduce the number of seats in the houses would be off the table. The Senate and the House would have to stay separate also.

My suggestion for changing the way officials are elected into congress combines the Single Transferable Vote system that I discussed in my presidential election article with another change to further promote alternate parties. Instead of voting for particular candidates, people would vote for parties. Then the number of votes that a party receives in their state determines how many of that state's seats go to that party.

The legislation would stipulate that the seats must be apportioned fairly. Rather than letting each state decide what a fair distribution of seats mean, the law would contain an explicit description of what a fair distribution is. Consider that every party has some value called a 'seat rate', which is the number of votes they received divided by the number of seats they received. A lower seat rate gives more seat, so it's better for you. It'd be unfair if another party has a seat rate, which, if your party had that rate, would have given your party more seats than it received.

"The democrats had a seat rate of 25,000! If we'd had that seat rate, we'd have received 4 seats in the house instead of 3. That's unfair!"

 I'll provide a mathematical statement of that seat rate, as well as an algorithm for determining a fair distribution of seats in another post. It will also describe how the single transferable vote system would play into this new way of electing congresspersons.

Yesterday, I Just Wanted to Kill Hitler

Yesterday sure was full of ups and downs. Work was alright. I brought headphones so that I could listen to music and podcasts from my phone. It was also casual Friday, which is weird for me. When I was young, when I heard about casual Friday that some workplaces have I thought, "That seems nice. I can see how that would be welcome." Then, when I became older, casual Friday became a symbol of the absolute horribleness of and soul-crushing despair that come with working in a big office. Now that I'm in that work, I'm just like, "Fuck Yeah CASUAL FRIDAY! I can wear JEANS and TENNIS SHOES!" I also got to leave an hour and a half early because I stayed late earlier this week, which was really nice.

After work I used AT&T's online chat help to try and address our TV problems and despite me doing all I could and them doing all they could within 30 minutes it froze/crashed again. I tried to explain to the online rep that just because I could watch TV now and could record and play back something now doesn't mean it was fixed. Since they were either a robot or a person with a limited grasp of English but a proficient use of macros they didn't understand that. I used their phone help, which ran me through the same shit and still, within minutes of disconnecting from the phone it froze again.

Then I tried to use my online banking to pay my rent for the first time and it was all sorts of screwy, saying my account was associated with another login. So I get to go to the bank this morning to straighten that out.

Then Sarah and I had dinner and went to watch 50/50. It was a really good movie. Very funny, very emotional.  We loved it.

Then we came home and hoped to watch some Doctor Who on our TV. There was a marathon that started last night and it was all the episodes we haven't been able to watch because our cable box is shit. We started it up and worked for a very long time. Then, 46 minutes in, it froze just as the big reveal for the episode was about to go down. Literally. "The X are not a Y, they are a Z...(presumably trails off to explain but we don't know that because it FROZE)" All I wanted to do was kill Hitler.

Then sleep. And today I get to try and fix everything from yesterday. It's not like I had other things I wanted to do.

Tutoring

Tutoring has been one of the most personally frustrating things I've ever done. Especially tutoring where I have been tutoring. There have been so many times where the student just doesn't care (especially with older students). I just want to tell these kids to stop wasting their parent's money and get to work. I want to get mad at them, set them straight. I want to tell their parents that they just aren't trying and they would be better off withdrawing their child.

Imagine that you're teaching an ACT mathematics course and one of the (or several) students don't even bring a calculator. They can afford the tutoring, so you know they have one. They just don't care. They bring the minimum, their book, don't do the homework you assign them and don't ask questions when you know they don't understand. If they just cared, they'd do so much better.

Then there are the little kids, who are so nice and happy, but because they're so happy they're energetic, talkative and can't focus. You ask them to calm down and do their work, but they can't. They're so cute and you don't want to make them sad. You just want to find some way to teach them about when it's appropriate to be talkative and energetic and when it's time to calm down and follow instructions.

Then there are the kids who you can tell have a bad home life. I had this one child who I could tell had an unhappy time at home. He told me as such. His tutoring was paid for by his grandmother. He expressed much anger about his father. From what I could tell of what he told me, it seemed like his grandmother cared more about him than his parents did.

You get children who you just wonder how things would be different if one of their parents just spent a half hour a day working with them on math, or reading, or spelling. You wonder how much better it would be if their parents just spent some time working with them. Sometimes I wonder if some of these kids parents ever read to them. Education isn't just the school's problem. No school can do everything that's needed to ensure that your child grows up intelligent. You have to take some responsibility yourself. You have to put more effort into your child's education than just dropping them off, picking them up, and going to parent/teacher conferences. I don't get how some of these parents can drive over an hour to get there and to get back, spend a great deal of money, and yet can't just save their time and money by helping their own child.

When it comes to the programs, you're hamstrung. I sit there for hours with the kids and I know exactly what we should be doing and what these kids need the most to get better, but I have to follow the lessons that have been laid out for me because that has been what's prescribed. Because that's their proven method. Because that's my job.

I love these kids, even the assholes. I want nothing more for them than to get over their educational problems and succeed as students and eventually as adults and I get so frustrated. I get frustrated because some of them don't care. I get frustrated because I can't do enough to help them. I get frustrated because some of them are so nice and I just want the best for them.

It's exhausting.

Initiative Revision: Turns Out There Were Problems, Adventures in Amateur Game Design, Part 14

It turns out there was a significant problem with the initiative system that I had devised. I know, I'm disappointed too. The original system had every player with a speed attribute. Every turn their speed would be added to their initiative and the player (or NPC) with the highest initiative takes their turn and their initiative is set to zero.

When I coded up an implementation to work this system, things didn't work out the way I wanted them to. I'll illustrate the problem with an example. Say you have to players with speeds 5 and 9. You would think the player with 9 speed to go almost twice as often as the player with 5, right? Nope.

Player 1: 5. Player 2: 9. Player 2 goes, and is set to zero.
Player 1: 10. Player 2: 9. Player 1 goes, and is set to zero.
Player 1: 5. Player 2: 18. Player 2 goes, and is set to zero.
Player 1: 10. Player 2: 9. Player 1 goes, and is set to zero.
Player 1: 5. Player 2: 18. Player 2 goes, and is set to zero.
Player 1: 10. Player 2: 9. Player 1 goes, and is set to zero.
Player 1: 5. Player 2: 18. Player 2 goes, and is set to zero.
Player 1: 10. Player 2: 9. Player 1 goes, and is set to zero.

So they actually get the same number of turns. In a multiple player situation, the system better approximates the expected number of turns, but there are still some very serious inconsistencies. So I had to revise the system. It is now an old-type Final Fantasy system. Everyone's speed still adds to their initiative, but now a player gets a turn whenever their initiative reaches 100. After they take their turn, 100 is subtracted from their initiative. Naturally, if nobody had an initiative over 100, their speeds are added again.

I modified my code to use this system and the actual results produced were consistent with my expectations and desires for how it should work.

Pretentious Ass Art Installation

Last week, while on my break at work, I tweeted "Is there public domain pornography? #NaggingQuestions". After that, I realized that the word 'pornography' just flew through all of my coworkers. This gave me the thought, "Is digitized pornography in non-video form still pornography?"

The installation would have a speaker, a screen and a wireless transmitter of some sort. Each source would be projecting a pornography file in different ways. The screen would flood a series of '1's and '0's across the screen. The speaker would interpret the file as audio static and play it. The transmitter would broadcast the file's contents out into the open air.

Then, towards the exit would be a small booth, something like one of those curtained off voting booths. Inside would be a monitor with a cover over it and a trash can next to it. You could then see what was being shown to you, just not in the proper format. The trash can is if you can't handle it. I have a particular video in mind.

You see, all the mediums are reflecting the same information. The difference between the others and the video is that when viewed as a video, our brain recognizes certain patterns that it can piece together as being pornographic. It's all the same information, but only one is pornography.

While discussing this idea with Sarah I realized that art installations are basically culturally accepted trolling. I think I may have found my calling. What will be my masterpiece, my Mona Lisa? How will the world remember me?

NatOctoBlogMo

This October I'm starting a yearly blogging initiative NatOctoBlogMo, for National October Blogging Month. The name is a variant on NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month), and the idea is similar. The goal of NatOctoBlogMo is to promote small blogs and get more people to write them. The requirements of NatOctoBlogMo are simple.

1. Participants should post at least 1 blog post per day.
2. Participants should post a constructive, conversation-contributing comment on at least 1 blog post per day.

The first requirement is all about setting a goal for yourself and meeting it. The second requirement is about encouraging and participating in the blogging community. Receiving comments on your blog is one of the greatest motivations to write more. The goal isn't to get people to just write for a month and then fall off the map. The goal of NatOctoBlogMo is to start them on something they can enjoy for a long time. It's for them to make new friends and build the blogging community. Commenting on other people's blogs will do exactly that.

Do you have a blog that you haven't updated in ages? Do you have a great blog idea that you always wanted to get started? Get started again. What constitutes a blog post doesn't have any requirement. If you like to draw, you can post a drawing a day. If you like to write fiction, work on short stories. If you write music, post a small clip each day. You can do whatever you want.

If you don't already have a blog there are tons of places where you could make one:

• http://www.blogger.com
• http://www.wordpress.com
• http://www.tumblr.com
• http://www.youtube.com (you could do a video blog!)
• ...and many more.

If you have a twitter, then use the #NatOctoBlogMo hashtag whenever you make a post and use it to keep track of what other people are doing. Let's make this a great Blogtober!

I'll be blogging about gaming, math, my life, and amateur game design.