Despite the fact that I'm primarily a programmer, in doing independent game development I need to be able to do design as well, and having a good design sense is always helpful in all areas of game development. As such, I figured I would write down some of my most important or interesting game design thoughts, and get feedback on them.

( Long involved discussion of game designCollapse )

My grandfather Duane McNeilly passed away today around 3 PM, peacefully, in his house, surrounded by loving family. It was exactly when, where and how he had chosen. The aftermath of his death had the expected high emotions and crying, but it was punctuated with laughter and gallows humor, which is exactly as he would have wanted. It's just a pity he wasn't there to join in. It's hard for me to imagine him passing in any better way.

He had lived a remarkably full life. He enlisted in the military immediately out of High School, fought in the pacific theater during WWII, and was stationed in Germany afterward, with his wife Gwen and his two daughters, Kathy and Leanna, during the clean-up immediately after the war. After that, they were stationed in Turkey for years, where Kathy and Leanna grew up. The stories they have from their time in Turkey are endless and fascinating, and the objects that my grandmother Gwen still has from that time are stunning and beautiful.

When he left the military, they settled in Virginia City, Nevada, and lived there still until about 10 years ago, when they moved down to Ventura, to be closer to family and civilization in their later years.

I'm sad I didn't take the time to learn more about him. I can say, however, that he was wonderful man, with an amazing (if crude) sense of humor. He lived a full life, and left the world a better place than he found it.

So at Baycon, about a month ago, I sold one woman a pink stretchy bracelet. She wanted it lengthened by a few links to transform it into a cat collar. Much to my surprise and pleasure, I just received an e-mail from her with a few pictures of her cat wearing it.

I couldn't help captioning one of those images.

It's officially my last day at my old job. My boss got me a card, signed by the whole office, and a neat little certificate, and his wife made cupcakes for the office. His wife really seems to enjoy baking yummy stuff for him to bring in, because it seems he has something cool about once a month.

Only a couple of my office mates have stopped by to say goodbye. Not terribly surprising, since I never was all that close with most of my coworkers here. They're all nice people, but I don't really have anything in common with most of them, besides working in the same office.

Of course, I'm still facing three more days of crazy hectic wedding prep before I can actually, finally relax. But then I get to REALLY relax, for a whole week. That makes me happy.

I'm getting some odd dizzy spells today, though. I hope I'm not coming down with something. That would REALLY bad timing.

So I was listening to the radio on the way to work this morning, and my favorite morning show (Lamont and Tineli on 107.7 The Bone) was getting all pissed off at the gas prices again. They do this on a pretty regular basis, and honestly, in a pretty ignorant way. They've got the usual "it sucks for us, so obviously somebody is actively screwing us over, and we need to righteously fight back." This is such an easy trap to fall in to, to assume that any problems you have with society are the result of malice, and you need to actively fight the evil perpetrators.

There are only two things that will reduce gas prices: Lower demand, or higher supply. Either, we need to buy less gas, or the gas companies need to pump more gas (or find an alternate source of gas, of which a few are being researched).

So what were the Lamont and Tineli proposing? Why, the same boycott that happened a few months ago, where they choose one gas company, and everybody buys ALL of their gas from that company, boycotting all the others. The THEORY is that those other gas companies will have massive stores of gas they aren't selling, and will be forced to lower their prices in order to sell any of it.

This theory is deeply flawed. If this boycott went off as planned, and nearly everybody focused all their buying power on just one gas company, the non-boycotted gas company would be facing ridiculous demand, more then they could supply. They'd start buying gas from all of the other companies, which aren't selling anything. They wouldn't have any motivation to lower their prices at the retail outlets, because they can still sell their gas, for full price, to the one company that IS selling, since that company now effectively has a monopoly and can charge whatever they want. If this goes on too long, the other companies would even start shutting down their own retail outlets, and pretty soon you have an ACTUAL monopoly in retail gasoline, and things are now MUCH worse.

Now, this result is HIGHLY unlikely, because it would rely on nearly everybody actually following the boycott. That's not going to happen. However, if the boycott happens to a lesser extent, you'll just get a lesser version of the same result. The boycotted companies will still likely sell some of their gas to the non-boycotted company, the non-boycotted company will still raise their prices a bit, and any gas stations owned by the boycotted companies which are already not doing so great might be pushed over the edge and get closed down, reducing somewhat the number of competing stations.

In the end, you haven't really accomplished anything. You've strengthened one company a little, while weakening the others, but the supply and demand curves remain in the same place, and the prices will quickly equalize back to the same level.

I actually called them up, and got on the air, too. I communicated the key points here, but of course they didn't really believe me. They had the "Well, we have to do SOMETHING!" attitude, and after I was done talking them they went on an angry rant about how they were being screwed over at the pumps and needed to screw back.

At least I can hope that some of their listeners heard the logic of my words.

Well, the results are in. Proposition 98 was voted down, 39/61, and Proposition 99 was voted in, 62.5/37.5.

I know some people on my friends list will not be happy about this, but I am. If you look at the county-by-county breakdown, there actually is not a SINGLE county where Proposition 99 didn't get a majority of the votes, which is not surprising, since 99 is a very "safe" bill. It doesn't do a lot, but the little bit it does do is definitely good (besides, of course, for the risk that people will think that the Kelo abuse is actually "fixed", when it isn't). However, Prop 98 tried to a lot of things all in one bill, some of which were very unpopular. It was long and complicated, and most people couldn't really understand all it's complex implications.

As a side note, does anybody know if the Kelo abuse has actually been used here in California yet?

Okay, who has a My Little Pony collection and wants to make this game a reality?

http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp05282008.shtml

So, yes, they made a movie out of Speed Racer. Everybody was incredibly skeptical, and for VERY GOOD REASON. Speed Racer is one of the cheesiest, lowest quality cartoons out there. It's the butt of almost as many jokes as Scooby Do, and most anime fans, proud to watch Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon, are embarrassed to admit that Speed Racer counts as anime.

Yet, I was just amused enough by the concept that I watched the preview. It looked oddly surreal and spectacular. I realized it was being directed by the Wachowski Brothers, and starred Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon and John Goodman. This all intrigued me enough to actually get me into the theater today.

And man, was it worth it. The movie was surreal, it was silly, and it was GORGEOUS. It's cinematography was in many ways downright ground breaking, full of clever transitions, interesting camera angles, and switching between surrealism, hyper-realism and mundane realism, from scene to scene, somehow without ever being particularly jarring. The effects were spectacular, and I never would have thought that car choreography could be that clever and interesting.

On top of that, it was well written, well acted and well directed.

If you don't like surreality, or hyper-reality, or wanton silliness, then this may not be the movie for you, because it has all of those things, in spades. However, if you can enjoy those aspects, and appreciate the sheer artistry which went into it, then believe it or not, Speed Racer is actually, remarkably, surprisingly, an excellent movie. I give it 2 thumbs and 5 stars.

Nepal just overthrew their monarchy and established a Republic. By most measures, this is a Very Good Thing, and I applaud them for taking a massive step in the direction of becoming a modern and productive member of the global community.

My major qualm is that their largest party right now, which currently holds a majority of the elected seats, is the Maoists. Until 2 years ago, this party was actually a violent rebellion. Thankfully, they've largely moved away from violence, for now, but I worry that, having so recently engaged in it, they may still see it as a valid means of solving governmental problems. The fact that they base their political philosophy on a famously oppressive dictator doesn't help.

For an alternate perspective, a friend of mine, squid314, has been traveling through south-east Asia of late, and just arrive in Nepal yesterday, coincidentally right as this resolution went through. He posted about it here: http://squid314.livejournal.com/224719.html

1) Job Update

As I posted on Friday, I got the job offer from Cryptic. That is full of awesome. I just put in my 2(ish) week notice today. I'll be leaving this job on June 11th, a couple days before the wedding, and starting my new one on June 23rd, when we return from the honeymoon. Unfortunately, my boss is on vacation until June 2nd. I e-mailed him my notice (and also notified Volt, the staffing agency which is technically my actual employer), in order to give him as much heads-up as possible, but he'll only have about a week and a half between getting back and me leaving. The dates just lined up poorly there, but I don't think he can blame me for that.

2) BayCon Update

This weekend, of course, was BayCon. Many of the people reading this were there, and already know all about it. We did pretty well, though not half so well as last year. As little_ribbit pointed out, we had a lot fewer interesting, extravagant items out, though we had a much more solid inventory of "stock" items. However, we DID sell the $300 chainmail flogger, the one which failed to sell at both Folsom and Kinky Flea. Go figure.

The new hotel/convention center is full of win. While there were a few minor complaints, it was better then the old Doubletree location by most measures, and WAY better the the Marriott last year by virtually EVERY measure. The dealer's room was decidedly bigger then the Doubletree one, and the game room was actually in a central location, and REALLY BIG, this year.

As an added bonus, having very little to do with the new location, the Klingon Slave Auction appears to have suddenly turned from a minor little side-note on the Klingon party, into a major event in it's own right. Where last year they had 5 slaves, this year they had over 20, and the room was standing room only. They raised over $1000 for the Make A Wish foundation, and it was great fun. I hope they can keep up the momentum next year.

I also had a mild cold this weekend. Nothing even close to incapacitating, just a little unpleasant. A sore throat near the start, and some coughing latter. Turned out this was a bad combination with drink. After I got rather wasted on Klingon beverages on Saturday night, I couldn't bring myself to do any real drinking on Sunday, cause I still felt off... And to be honest, I still feel a bit off, in a way remarkably similar to a hang-over, three days latter. I blame the cold, which is still manifesting in the form of mild stuffiness.

I've been hearing this song on the radio a lot recently, and somehow it really speaks to me. The way it transitions from a child-like wonder, into personal empowerment, into insane megalomania, is actually a very powerful statement about human nature, and about the fuzzy line between empowerment and corrupting power.

( No Handlebars, by FlobotsCollapse )

Actually, quite literally a little lost puppy.

On my way home from dropping little_ribbit off at the vet clinic where she works today, I encountered a small dog, looked like a miniature terrier of some sort, running in and out of traffic on the edge of Stevenson Blvd. For those of you who don't know Fremont, that's a big, busy street with fast traffic.

So, I parked near by, and chased the dog down. I managed to corner it on somebody's front porch. Of course, it occurred to me that maybe it had run to this porch because this was it's house, but a knock and a brief conversation through an unopened door revealed that this was not, indeed, it's owner.

So, I went back to the car, got out my jacket, and used it to wrap up the poor little dog (I had to use my jacket because it was scared and cornered, and therefore nipping at me). Once I had it in my arms, it was quite docile.

Then I went right back to where I had come from, being the vet clinic where little_ribbit works. The puppy has no tags, and no chips, so beyond the shot in the dark of putting up some posters, we have no way of tracking down the original owners. We're getting it's basic vaccines right now (since we have no idea if it's been vaccinated already), but it was also very visibly an un-fixed male.

Once no longer cornered by a giant mammal of unknown hostility, he was completely docile, leading us to conclude that he probably is, normally, a house dog. Unfortunately, we can't keep him, because we already have 2 cats that he probably wouldn't get along with, plus we're not really dog people. So, anybody looking for a cute little terrier-ish dog?

Edit: Well, we found a good home for it. My fiance's brother is very much a dog person, who had been lacking a dog, and the two took an instant liking to each other. Of course, if we find the original owner, they can still have their dog back, but in the mean time he's well cared for, and if his original owner never turns up, he'll still have a home.

I was a bit shocked, and saddened, when another state did this before California did. I always thought of us as one of the most progressive states in the Union. We're the home of San Francisco, probably the most famously gay city in the world! And yet, Massachusetts beat us to the punch, by legalizing same-sex marriage before we did. What the hell?

Well, today the California Supreme Court did their part to rectify this problem. They struck down the ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional. This isn't quite the same thing as legalizing it, but it's a VERY LARGE step in the right direction. I'm hopeful that this will soon be followed by outright legalization, and that California and Massachusetts, both, can serve as an example to other progressive states that this is a reasonable and rational course of action.

I would still very much LIKE to see the day when marriage is not the domain of the government at all, but merely a religious ceremony. Marriage has always been a religious matter, and therefore, by separation of Church and State, the government never should have been involved to begin with. Sure, plenty of non-religious people choose to marry, but plenty of non-religious people also celebrate Christmas and Easter, while still using all the symbolism used by Christians. That doesn't mean that Christmas and Easter aren't Christian holidays.

So, Bravo, California!

I took advantage of this meme on vlad_badger's LJ, so I suppose I'm obligated to spread it further. Enjoy. :-)

Comment to my journal and I will...
a) Tell you why I friended you.
b) Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a colour, a photo, etc.
c) Tell you something I like about you.
d) Tell you a memory I have of you.
e) Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
f) Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.

http://archive.gamespy.com/dailyvictim/index.asp?id=570

This is not an issue on which I have typically taken a hard stance, but some recent (long and involved) discussion with maniakes has gotten me thinking about it. I've gotten tired of scrolling halfway down my friends page to find his post (now a few days old) to continue our debates, which have suffered from thread collapse, and drifted so far to the right side of the screen as to be difficult to read.

So, it seems a common objection to public financing of national election campaigns is that it means your tax money will go towards funding the campaigns of candidates that you severely disagree with. This is an understandable objection. I can't say I'm terribly keen on the idea of funding Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul.

Another objection is on the basis that campaign donations are a form of free speech, and thus protected under the First Amendment. Once again, I can see where this objection is coming from, since the primary way that money given to a candidate is spent is for communicating their position to the public. Thus, your donation is a sort of expression-by-proxy through the campaign of a candidate you agree with.

However, I disagree on both of these points, and still hold that public financing is a very good idea. I would not even object to making it mandatory.

On the first point, while it seems distasteful to me that my money should go to partially funding the campaign for a candidate I disagree with, I see this in a similar light to my tax dollars paying for public defense attorneys for murders, rapists, and similarly heinous criminals. While I don't necessarily want to defend those people myself, for our adversarial legal system to function, finding the best semblance of justice we know of, it's necessary that they receive the best defense we can give them. Likewise, in order for our election system to function properly, it's maybe not necessary, but certainly best if all viewpoints get an equal airing. Those candidates which are excessively weird, extreme or stupid will fall down on the public stage. This is the core principle that makes freedom of speech actually work. However, it would make sure that a wider range of perfectly valid viewpoints actually got aired, and it might even start to break down the two party power bloc.

On the second point, I don't believe donations count as "speech", even when they go to an organization who's primary objective is spreading a message. This is a somewhat muddy issue, but I take some comfort from the fact that the Supreme Court has already ruled on this, and they agree with me. The pattern established by their rulings is that giving money to another party for their own use does not count as speech, regardless of the sort of activity the other party typically engages in, but spending money directly on a communication-related service does count as speech. That is to say, giving money to the ACLU is not protected, but hiring a print shop to make a bunch of fliers is protected. This makes a lot of sense to me, because the ACLU is under no contractual obligation to spend my money in a particular way. They may spend it to produce and air a series of ads about our threatened civil liberties, which clearly falls under "speech", or they may spend it to pay for a high-level attorney to defend somebody who's civil liberties they believe are threatened, which really doesn't fall under "speech" (though it is protected under a different clause of the First Amendment). The fact that my action (giving a donation) MIGHT aid another party (the ACLU) in a speech-based activity, does not automatically make my action protected by freedom of speech. There are too many levels of indirection involved, and too much uncertainty.

So, while there are some perfectly reasonable objections to public financing, I still hold that it's a very good idea.

So we had our big one-shot LARP on Saturday. And it was full of awesome.

For those who weren't involved, and haven't done this before, the idea behind this sort of one-shot LARP is very different from a normal role playing game, or even a normal Camarilla-style LARP. The primary difference is that all the characters are pre-written by the GMs to have back-stories and motivations which specifically tie into and drive the plot, making it possible, in fact inevitable, for nearly the entire game to be completely player-driven. This kind of LARP requires a great deal more planning then any other type of RPG, but the results are worth it.

Saturday's game was set in 1935, in a cabin in the woods, for the reading of the will of Dr. Abraham Hackensaw, a rich, eccentric old art collector who had recently died. In attendance were not just his family and his lawyer, but a professor of esoteric mysticism, a Dominican friar, a museum curator, a secret service agent, a couple of nazis, etc. We had also intended to have William Randolf Hearst show up, but the player who was going to be running him had to bail. Dr. Hackensaw was more well traveled then most of the players realized.

I think nearly everybody had a great time, and it resolved as a massive victory for Team Evil.

Also, many lessons were learned about how to run this sort of LARP, which will be applied to the one that we'll be running next year. That one will be in a fantasy setting, as the nobility have gathered for their annual meeting, and the Emperor is mysteriously murdered, with no heirs. Now they must find the murderer, and choose a new Emperor. Hilarity ensues.

This LARP is in the VERY early planning stages, and is probably about a year away, but if anybody who wasn't involved in the last one would be interested in attending this one, drop me a line, and I'll add you to the list of people we'll contact when we start casting. If you WERE involved in the last one, don't worry, you're already on the list. :-)

The rules: Every once in a while, I will post a random image here. You comment with humorous captions. Before I post the next image, I will declare a winner from the previous one. If you win, you gain a modicum of personal satisfaction and self respect. Yes, multiple submissions are allowed, though only the best entry from a given account will be considered.

P.S. If you like caption contests like this, I stole the idea from maniakes who also holds regular caption contests.

Winner singingnymph:

Too wimpy to actually walk a mile in her shoes, he hoped this would suffice.

(Warning: Contains brutal cartoon violence.)



This is one of the most brilliantly evil things I've seen in a while.

So last Tuesday, I placed an order for Descent: The Road to Legend and Descent: The Well of Darkness, a pair of expansions to my personal favorite tactical dungeon crawl game called, you guessed it, Descent. I've been itching to get my hands on the Road to Legend expansion, because it adds a really expansive campaign mode to the game.

So, each day, I've been checking the USPS tracking system. It's been frustratingly static. Unlike UPS, they apparently don't update the tracking on each step along the way. They just post when it gets scanned at the start, and when it's delivered.

So yesterday I checked, and much to my chagrin, I saw it was "Undeliverable as addressed" and was returning to sender. After waiting a week for this, with baited breath, I find out it's SHIPPING BACK TO MINNESOTA! And I'm gonna have to pay the shipping again, and it'll take two more weeks for it to get here! All because I forgot to include the apartment number!

You'd THINK they would drop it off at the front office of the apartment complex. The complex has my name, and my name was on the box. They could have figured out which apartment it went to. But no, they have to send it all the way back to buttfuck nowhere, so that they can add four measly little digits to the address, and ship it all the way back to California again.

*grumble grumble*

In the meantime, I'm gonna see if the group that I have queued up to play the campaign mode would be interested in doing some one-shot dungeon crawls instead, until the expansions arrive.

I have some rather unusual beliefs on these subjects, some of which I've detailed here before. A bit of an exchange that DouglasWolf on Dean's World, however, has led to a bit of a refinement of these beliefs, and I figured I'd post them here, in case anybody is interested. It's a long rant, so I've put it behind a cut.

( Pride and PrejudiceCollapse )

First of all, I thought this was a stunning speech. It struck me as incredibly courageous and honest. He didn't take the safe path. He laid it on the line and told the truth of it, with eloquence and composure, and he once again showed exactly the kind of integrity and courage that won me over in the first place.

And now, he's paying the price for his courage.

The safe thing to do, the "correct" maneuver in this situation, would have been to completely disown Rev. Wright and state that it had been a mistake to ever associate with the man in any way, shape or form. Maybe mentioning the poor judgment of his youth, since Obama was in his 20s when he joined Wright's church. This wouldn't have completely silenced his critics, but it would have blunted them a good deal.

What he did instead was to give his honest assessment of Rev. Wright, both the good and the bad, to explain why he thought highly, and still thinks highly, of the man, even while disagreeing on many key issues, and use this as a platform from which to lay out a very profound and powerful viewpoint on racial relations in general.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are using this as a basis to say he is embracing a racist, and therefore must BE a racist, or are twisting his speech, and putting words in his mouth, to claim he lied about his exposure to Wright's rhetoric. It seems like some people are so jaded about politics in general that they can't accept that a politician might actually be honest about something from time to time.

On the whole, I have no idea if the net effect of this speech will be positive or negative.

Transcript of the speech.
Extended debate I've been having on Dean's World on this topic.

So like a year ago, I won a board game down at OrcCon called Descent. It's a top-notch dungeon crawl game, like an old school RPG, but without the roleplay, just boiled down to a small unit tactics game in a dungeon, with an adversarial GM.

While I do have a few complaints about it, it's largely a very well designed game.

Now, they JUST released a third expansion for the game, which I was just reading about. This has the potential to turn a good game which has garnered me some enjoyment, into a really amazingly awesome game, on such a scale that I'd be tempted to set up a regular weekly game night to play it.

Essentially, this adds a really in-depth campaign mode to the game. They add a world map, with a pile of different towns and dungeons, random encounters, and all the wonderful adventuring goodness of a good oldschool D&D game, but setup as a strategy game instead of an actual roleplaying game.

So, it's a $50 set, which is not bad. It's not specifically mentioned anywhere whether the previous two expansions are required, which leads me to assume that they probably aren't.

See the details here at BoardGameGeek.com. Unfortunately, it's too new a release to have any actual reviews, but thus far it has a rating 9.59 out of 10.

Edit: In order to follow up on this a bit more, I decided to register for an account at Board Game Geek. It seems to be a really cool and generally well regarded website. Unfortunately, it seems I'm not allowed to have an account, because I'm not human. It uses one of those garbled word things to prove that you're human, and it refuses to accept my answers! I've tried probably a hundred times, and I'm quite positive that the vast majority of my attempts were correct, but every time, with absolute consistency, it tells me my answer is incorrect. Quite frustrating.

The rules: Every once in a while, I will post a random image here. You comment with humorous captions. Before I post the next image, I will declare a winner from the previous one. If you win, you gain a modicum of personal satisfaction and self respect. Yes, multiple submissions are allowed, though only the best entry from a given account will be considered.

P.S. If you like caption contests like this, I stole the idea from maniakes who also holds regular caption contests.

Winner maniakes:

The 82nd Carbon Neutral Brigade deploys to Iraq.

crowgargoyle

Security of the funds from girl scout cookie sales is taken extremely seriously.

bosan

Rumsfeld’s vision of small, fast and light Army of tomorrow.

makellan

Damn! Schwarzenegger bought our last Humvee!

Every time social programs are proposed in a serious way, there is a great deal of debate about how much it will end up costing, and whether or not it's worth it. Usually, everybody agrees that nobody should be starving, and that it would be good if we could get everybody up to a minimum standard of living, but the costs of doing so can seem prohibitive.

However, as our society marches forward, technology changes our cost of living and our standard of living. This raises the question, how does the advancement of technology effect the costs of socialism?

You have a couple contrary forces to consider. On one hand, as technology advances, basic resources become more plentiful. Thus, it's easier and cheaper to make sure that everybody has access to these basic resources. On the other hand, as our standard of living goes up, our idea of what the "minimum" standard of living should be also goes up, making it harder to bring everybody up to that level.

I don't have a strong conclusion here. It's just something I've been thinking about lately, and I was wondering if anybody else had thoughts on this matter.

So, I saw a Babylon 5 icon I really loved, and decided to create a new version of it which I liked a bit better, since the original was a bit dark and hard to read. The icon is used here, and I'll probably make it my general icon for humor posts from now on. Note that the book I used was a random result from Google for "old book" and the hand doing the thumping is my own, from a photo taken with my phone.

Making this icon got me looking at quotes from Babylon 5, especially from G'Kar, and I stumbled upon a scene I had almost forgotten, which is actually one of the deepest, most beautiful, and deeply frustrating things I've ever seen. Amazingly, it's from Season 5, the season that most people love to hate, and complain should never have existed, but to me, this one scene makes the entire season worth it.

Acolyte: What is truth, and what is God?
G'Kar: If I take a lamp and shine it toward the wall, a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for truth, for understanding. Too often we assume that the light on the wall is God. But the light is not the goal of the search; it is the result of the search. The more intense the search, the brighter the light on the wall. The brighter the light on the wall, the greater the sense of revelation upon seeing it! Similarly, someone who does not search, who does not bring a lantern with him, sees nothing. What we perceive as God, is the byproduct of our search for God. It may simply be an appreciation of the light, pure and unblemished, not understanding that it comes from us. Sometimes we stand in front of the light and assume that we are the center of the universe. God looks astonishingly like we do! Or we turn to look at our shadow, and assume that all is darkness. If we allow ourselves to get in the way, we defeat the purpose; which is to use the light of our search to illuminate the wall in all its beauty ... and in all its flaws. And in so doing better understand the world around us.
Acolyte: Ah, yes. But what is truth, and what is God?
G'Kar: [sigh] Truth is ... A river.
Acolyte: And God?
G'Kar: God is ... The mouth of the river.

little_ribbit

Okay, so the Wall Street Journal just released a new poll. Most of it is pretty much what I'd expect: People aren't satisfied with Bush, they have a strong interest in the upcoming election, etc.

There are two statistics which seriously confuse me, however.

On page 15, they ask the question, "Putting aside for a moment the question of who each party's nominee might be, what is your preference for the outcome of the 2008 presidential election––that a Democrat be elected president, or that a Republican be elected president?"

The result is that 44% would strongly prefer a Democrat, and 29% would strongly prefer a Republican. Also, 6% would somewhat prefer a Democrat, and 8% would somewhat prefer a Republican. Put those together and you get 50% vs. 37%, a 13 point lead for the Democrats.

Then, on page 18, they get down to the specific candidates, asking about McCain vs. Obama or MaCain vs. Clinton.

The result is that 44/47 in the McCain/Obama race, and 45/47 in the McCain/Clinton race. This is a statistical dead heat, in both cases.

So, clearly there are a number of people out there who would prefer a Democrat in office, and yet would rather vote for McCain over Obama or Clinton, as if Clinton and Obama were not both strong representations of precisely what the Democratic party stands for. Of course, it's worth noting that only 44% said they would STRONGLY prefer a Democrat, and both Obama and Clinton got over 44%. However, to get those numbers, McCain would have to claim most of those who are uncommitted to a party, PLUS a few of those who are weakly committed to the Democrats.

I suppose the Republican party has chosen well. Clearly McCain's image as not being a REAL Republican is serving him well. I wonder how well that will last out the general election?

An automated advertising slogan generator. Give it a word, and it gives a slogan. Thanks to unibear for the link. A few particularly geeky examples:

I got a full night's sleep last night. Today I can think clearly. It's amazing.

Daylight savings, and the resulting discrepancies with our various clocks, resulted me not getting much sleep the past two nights, so this is refreshing.

Gary Gygax, one of the two creators of Dungeons & Dragons, fails his saving roll vs. death.

While I'm not a big fan of D&D myself, I recognize that without D&D, we wouldn't have the many other RPGs of which I am a fan.

I just looked up a Bible verse to defend my interpretation of Christianity against somebody who had a much narrower interpretation of it.

And I'm not even Christian.

This was in the comment thread of this Sinfest, which I found to be a particularly charming and cute strip. I particularly like the second-to-last panel, with Jesus and Buddha romping about happily.

The debate in question is here. It's been a very difficult debate, because the other guy (kentox) knows his shit really well. He's clearly read a lot more on Christianity then I have, and he's quite intelligent and eloquent. I'm not certain, but I don't believe he's Christian either, which makes this debate particularly odd.

I think I've finally nailed down my point pretty conclusively, though. We'll see if it sticks.

Update: Nope. He didn't consider my points that conclusive. Figured it was time to end the debate, after he threw in a whole slew more Bible passages, more then I feel I have the time or energy to look up and research.

It does kind of bother me when I see people trying to present a very limited, close-minded form of Christianity as the only correct version. While I don't exactly have any spiritual investment in there being a "correct" version of Christianity which is nice, I know so many Christians that DON'T hold to the rigid, dogmatic interpretation, and I really do want to believe that they're better Christians then the nasty Jack Chick crowd.

I wonder, how common are accidents involving ambulances?

I ask because last night I nearly hit one on my way home. I was driving through a green light, a little fast but not unreasonably so, when an ambulance pulled out in front of me, against the red. He was running hot, so we he was allowed to run red lights, but still, I BARELY saw him in time. I'm not sure the audible part of his siren was even on before he started pulling into the intersection, cause I hadn't heard him coming.

Unfortunately, my current car doesn't have anti-lock brakes, so I ground a decent amount of rubber into the pavement of the intersection while stopping. Left behind that wonderful stench of burnt rubber. I'm sure it was wonderful for my tires.

This makes me wonder about the prevalence of emergency vehicles getting into accidents. Obviously, an ambulance is no good to you if it gets t-boned on the way to the emergency, though I imagine the speedy responses are worth more then the occasional non-response from a crashed vehicle.

It must be interesting when one ambulance has to be called to the service of another ambulance...

The rules: Every once in a while, I will post a random image here. You comment with humorous captions. Before I post the next image, I will declare a winner from the previous one. If you win, you gain a modicum of personal satisfaction and self respect. Yes, multiple submissions are allowed, though only the best entry from a given account will be considered.

P.S. If you like caption contests like this, I stole the idea from maniakes who also holds regular caption contests.

Winner crowgargoyle:

We're men!
We're men in tights!
We roam around Osaka looking for fights!

We're men!
We're men in tights!
We save the world and beat up the monsters
that's right!

We may have bad dubbing,
but watch what you say...or...else we'll...punch out your lights!

We're men!
We're men in tights!
Tight tights!
On the late show, protecting the people's lives!
If you see a monster, just call for the men in tights!
We're butch!

Warning: Programming Content

I should come up with an icon for programming posts, since I make so many of them these days. I will think on this. Something from XKCD perhaps. Anyway...

( Lichtenberg Figures and MountansCollapse )

Bigotry is a very complicated subject, and it strikes me as odd that those who most actively try to fight bigotry are often those most likely to over-simplify it.

First of all, there are a lot of basis on which people are judged, and not all of them are wrong. Judging based on race is wrong. Judging based on gender is wrong (with a few exceptions due to absolute biological differences). Judging based on culture and religion is something you need to be careful about, but as these are conscious choices with real effects on your beliefs and values, it is NOT always wrong to judge on this basis.

Unfortunately, cultures often have a strong correlation with race, making it sometimes rather difficult to separate the two judgments. I realized this problem when stopped and analyzed my own reactions to people of different races. I DO have bad reactions to some black or Hispanic peoples, but not to others. It took me a while to realize why. It's really that I react badly to the gangster-style subcultures, because gangsters have a well-deserved reputation for being dangerous. I react just as badly to whites who dress and act like gangsters, and I do not react to blacks or Hispanics that don't. The only reason that this looked, at first glance, like racist tendencies, is because a very high percentage of the blacks and Hispanics I encounter are part of the gangster culture, while only a tiny percentage of the whites I encounter are part of that culture.

This realization was comforting, because I'm not comfortable with being bigoted against blacks and Hispanics, but I'm perfectly comfortable being bigoted against gangsters. That's a rational bigotry. Sure, there may be members of that culture who are good people, but until I know otherwise, I'm going to assume that somebody who dresses and acts like a gangster is dangerous, considering the values of that culture are centered around violence, strength and dominance (of a non-consensual variety).

Of course, the high correlation between this profoundly negative culture, and certain races, is the source of a lot of modern bigotry. Yes, modern racism against blacks DOES have it's roots in slavery, but not as directly as some people would believe. It's not just a matter of "My pa hated blacks, so I hate blacks." Individuals are capable of making their own observations and decisions, and when nearly all the black people they're exposed to are gangsters, and nearly all the white people they're exposed to aren't, they make the logical assumption that there is a correlation between skin color and violence.

This problem is further complicated by a problem that exists with basically every oppressed demographic in America, which is the tendency to accuse others of bigotry at the drop of a hat. There are two specific black men that I've known who come to mind as clear examples of this. Both of them were total assholes, and tended to REALLY piss off the people around them, on a regular basis. Of course, this quite often resulted in people telling them to fuck off. This being back when I lived in Santa Barbara, which is like 95% white, the person telling them to fuck off was virtually always a white person. So, they would immediately respond by telling this poor person that they were racist, and the only reason they were being hostile was because they were black. Essentially, they were using their status as an oppressed minority as a source of power over the people around them, to allow them to act like assholes without being called on it, because everybody was too scared of being called a racist.

Now, I've had a number of black friends who never do this (sainton, who's probably reading this, and his sister, are among them, both being awesome people, and among the examples I look to should I ever be tempted to make the wrong association). I've also known a number of white assholes who WOULD do this if they could. That said, those few DO pull this crap (and that includes over-enthusiastic feminists, too) do immeasurable harm to their own cause, because they blunt the ability of others to call bigot for real. It's a "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" scenario: The more you yell "bigot" and it doesn't pan out, the less likely people are to take you seriously when it's actually true.

As a closing note, one of the worst examples of this sort of behavior happened when I was arguing with a woman (she was white), who was trying to convince me I was, in fact, a racist. One of the PRIMARY points she used was that "Virtually all whites are racist" (of course, with the assertion that she was one of the rare exceptions). Somehow, the ridiculous irony of this statement was lost on her. This is one of the more frustrating arguments I've ever had.

So, if you're part of an oppressed demographic, my suggestion is: just be nice. Interacting with people who aren't of your demographic in a reasonable and friendly manner will do more to fight prejudices against your demographic then anything else.

So, in order to clarify my understanding of the current crisis in Kosovo, I went and read up on the history of the region. Not the Balkans in general, but just Kosovo.

It's not a pretty history. That little patch of land between Serbia and Albania has been contested since the 14th century. It's been owned by the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Serbia, Fascist Albania and Yugoslavia (Edit: And Austria-Hungary. I knew I forgot somebody in that list.). Many of them captured it, lost it, and captured it again, multiple times. It seems every 50 years, it's demographics switches between Albanians and Serbs, due to one side "cleansing" the other and sending in their own colonists.

In all of it's 600+ years of being fought over, it's never once actually had independence, until a couple days ago, and it's mixed demographics have been repeatedly used by it's neighbors as an excuse for conquering it, again. Obviously, since it has so many Albanians, it should be part of Albania. Except that, obviously, since it has so many Serbs, it should be part of Serbia. As long as the region is owned by somebody else, this conquest can be seen as a "liberation".

We can hope that, with independence, that excuse will be removed, and these ridiculous ethnic tensions will finally have the chance to cool down. Then, some day, maybe all these Balkans countries will get their acts together enough to join the EU, and all get along. We can hope.

Right now, the population is vastly skewed in the direction of the Albanians, though this is primarily due to the genocide and colonization undertaken by Fascist Albania in their occupation during WWII (a big part of the reason that the Serbs felt justified in undertaking their own ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in the 90s).

Now, the Serbs who still live there, despite being only 5.2% of the population (only about 107,000 Serbs out of 2.1 million people), are objecting quite violently to the prospect of not being part of Serbia any more.

To be honest, I can't blame them. In the past, every time Kosovo has been under ethnic Albanian control, Serbs living there have suffered. On the flip side, every time it's been under Serbian control, ethnic Albanians have suffered. Neither group has ever had the strength of character to just let the other be once they've thrown off their oppression.

The terrible part is, I'm sure the vast majority of the people there are perfectly happy to just live with, work with and get along with the people around them, regardless of their ethnicity. There's just a constant minority in both groups who can't help but keep up the cycle of violence.

Which leads me to my final point: Humans suck, and it's depressing.

So soon after my last post about DundraCon, we noticed we didn't have the backpack which contained all the games we had purchased, plus a few of our older games that we'd brought with us to play. Putting it all together, there were probably like $200 worth of games in there.

So, on Monday evening, I gave the hotel a call. I was directed, not to the Lost and Found, but to Loss Prevention (I guess that sounds more professional). They were still in hectic post-convention cleanup, and hadn't found it yet, but promised that odds were good, as there was a ton of stuff they hadn't gone through yet. So, I left my name and number and a description of the backpack with the staff, and they promised to call me when they found it.

On Tuesday, I called them back. They sounded a bit less hectic, but I got much the same message. They hadn't found it yet, but there was still a lot of clean-up and cataloging of lost items to do. I didn't give them my name again, because they theoretically already had it.

On Wednesday, I called them back again. This time, the guy I spoke to told me that had basically finished the clean-up and cataloging, and they hadn't found a blue backpack yet. Chances were slim, but if I wanted to leave my name and number, they'd notify me if they found it. I told him my name and number should already be on file. He asked me for it, just to check, and told me that it was not, in fact, on file. Apparently, whomever I had spoken to on Monday had failed to actually add it. So this guy put it in the file.

At this point, I decided I better basically count it a loss, which was very frustrating. Those were nearly all the two player games we had set aside for our honeymoon.

However, today, while I was sitting on the toilet (horrible timing), my phone rang with the number of the hotel. I didn't answer it then, for obvious reasons, but the voicemail they left said they had found the backpack. I just called them back, and confirmed that yes, indeed, it is our backpack (I listed off the games that were in there, and had him check the contents).

I'm set to go pick it up after work tomorrow. This is quite a relief. I'm just happy that this happened at a LOCAL convention. I'd be pretty much out of luck if it happened at PolyCon, or worse, StrategiCon.

Warning: Programming Content

( A way to generalize combining terrain elementsCollapse )

David Brin (yes, the sci-fi author) suggests that political candidates should stipulate points of agreement at the start of a campaign.

As unlikely as this seems, I think it's more likely in this upcoming Presidential election then in most. McCain and Obama are both famous for being able to work amicably with people on the other side of the aisle (though Clinton not so much). If, at the start of the campaign, they can nail down a couple vital points of agreement about what this country needs, then it will really push home the importance of these points, and make it that much easier to actually accomplish them when the election is over and one of them is President.

What would McCain and the Democratic candidate likely agree upon? Well, balancing the budget is probably the biggest one. Campaign finance reform is quite likely, as Obama and McCain have worked together on that point in the past (and Clinton would at least be willing to give it lip service). I think we might also be surprised by a pile of things they'd bring up which we don't normally even think of as issues, because they aren't particularly contentious or controversial, or terribly obvious, so they don't make it into the public discourse much, despite being very important.

And there will still be plenty of points for them to fight over during the campaign.

So Sinfest just had one of the most awesome comics ever: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/sinfestfeed/375050.html

And of course, I needed to make an icon out of it. But no ordinary icon would do. No, you can't capture the awesomeness of this strip in a single frame. I needed to make an elaborate animated GIF. And it wasn't easy, let me tell you. It took like 2 hours to assemble the whole thing initially, and then I realized that it was over 200k. LJ has a 40k limit on icons. It took me another hour or so of painful trimming to get it back down to size. The result is much more compressed then I'd like (only 16 colors, with lossy GIF compression), and the animation isn't nearly as smooth as it was before, since I had to take out a lot of the intermediate frames, but the result is still pretty damn awesome:



(Note: The icon at the head of this post is from a couple strips earlier in the same storyline, and while it's pretty cool, it pales next to the MiB one.)

I love gaming cons. I really do. And it's been years since I've attended one without being stuck behind a vendor's table the whole time. I probably got in a good 30 hours of gaming this weekend, and we purchased a number of new games for our collection while we were there, as follows:

( List of GamesCollapse )

Edit: And Monday's are decidedly harder immediately following a big gaming convention. I have NO focus right now.

Warning: Programming Content

Yes, I'm sure most of you are tired of this, but at least I put these ramblings behind cuts so you don't have to read them. :-)

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Warning: Programming Content

( Thoughts on Making MountainsCollapse )

So recently Real Life Comics has been running an awesome story line. I don't remember the last time I was as eager to see the next installment of a web comic. It hasn't been going for very long, but it's stellar quality. Thus far, the relevant comics are:

The setup, back in 2002:
http://www.reallifecomics.com/comics/2002/20020604_705.png

The current storyline:
http://www.reallifecomics.com/comics/2008/20080206_1926.png
http://www.reallifecomics.com/comics/2008/20080207_1927.png
http://www.reallifecomics.com/comics/2008/20080208_1928.png
http://www.reallifecomics.com/comics/2008/20080211_1929.png
http://www.reallifecomics.com/comics/2008/20080212_1930.png
http://www.reallifecomics.com/comics/2008/20080213_1931.png

And the last frame on the last comic just NEEDED to be made into an icon, so I took a break from programming to assemble it. I have no doubt this icon will come in quite handy, on many occasions.

Warning: Programming Content

( Finding Faults with TerrainCollapse )

Update: The solution has been found and implemented. Thanks to maniakes and makellan for your input. A variation on Dijkstra's algorithm did indeed do the trick. It takes about 39 seconds to execute, in Python, for the same 256x256 fault map I show here, as compared to like 5-10 minutes before, and actually produces smoother results.

I rarely post things like this, but, hell, I feel like it. At least I'll put it behind a cut.

( Valentine PostboxCollapse )

Warning: Programming Content

( Why Ken Perlin is the manCollapse )