The Middle Distance

Vampires...

2009-11-11T17:27:00.004+02:00

The world was recently swept with Vampire Fever. It probably started with the TV series True Blood, but it really took off through the sudden fame of the movie Twilight and subsequently the mass consumption of the books it's based on. The entertainment media has suddenly flooded with variations on the theme. New series such as Vampire Diaries (also based on books) and a Twilight board game is the first that come to mind.
But the concept of vampirism has always been present in fiction. The first would probably be Dracula, but with the sudden surge of interest all the old dogs were reawakened. Moonlight, Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned, by extension Anne Rice books, the World of Darkness roleplaying system that I myself am so fond of, Vampire Knight... Suddenly vampires are no longer something to be feared, but something to be admired, adored, or even... worshipped... Why is this?

First I must state that this is written from a mostly male-vampire-to-female-human point of view. In many cases these points apply both ways, but my thinking is linear and heterosexual as I write this.

Now that it has entered the mass media, why does every other person find vampires so attractive? In many cases there's nothing special about them save for the fact that they drink blood. I think it is the element of mystery. People are afraid of what they don't understand, but they are excited and intrigued by the knowledge that there is something they don't understand. The same way you love rollercoasters even though they make you fear for your life. The risk is a rush.

Beside this stands the fact that these popularised vampires are elegant, sophisticated beings. They are the embodiment of suave. Usually they are financially secure to the point that it becomes difficult to judge their net worth. They have a strong lineage and family traditions. Their family and their loyalty towards it is of utmost importance. Essentially they appeal to everything our culture defines as a perfect partner. We find them attractive because they are, in all aspects of society, your key to a comfortable lifestyle.

But what about the fact that they can't go into the sunlight? First let me mention that for the sake of storytelling this detail is often skewed. Some can walk in sunlight for short periods but it makes them violently ill (Moonlight), others have certain artifacts that make them immune to the effects of sunlight (Vampire Diaries), others are quite comfortable under indirect sunlight, but suffer negative effects when exposed to direct sunlight (sparkling characteristic from Twilight). But the aversion to sunlight has a purpose: It shows a weakness. It is difficult to believe that a creature of such magnitude and strength can be brought down by something we find so commonplace that most of the time we barely notice it.

Not only do they attract us in their physical appearance, their strong personalities and financial or social fortunes, they also display a weakness, which our maternal and paternal instincts pick up on. We want to help the weak.

Last point I'm going to ponder on is the concept of immortality. Vampires live forever save for certain extreme conditions (fire, decapitation, sunlight etc). We find them attractive because we fear death and they provide something that can save us from this inevitable unknown.

So as a closing argument, when my friends swoon over a vampire character of some sort, I let them. There's nothing we committed companions can do to stop it. On a purely evolutionary level we are outclassed. Luckily these characters are simply that, fictional beings. All we can do is wait for the infatuation to end...

Words:
"There comes a time for every vampire when the idea of eternity becomes momentarily unbearable. Living in the shadows, feeding in the darkness with only your own company to keep, rots into a solitary, hollow existence. Immortality seems like a good idea, until you realize you're going to spend it alone."
- The Vampire Chronicles: The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice

Board Games

2009-08-19T18:57:00.001+02:00

When I say board game the first thing that popped into your head is probably Scrabble or Monopoly. Though these are both brilliant games, it's not nearly an accurate description of the phrase. Before computers, TV or even radio, board games were one of the most enjoyed indoor pastimes. Some board games have prevented all-out war between nations. Some games have remained unchanged for millennia. And still today board games are a popular pastime in the slightly-less-than-mainstream circles, global sales climbing 23.5% in 2008.

Broadly speaking you can split board games into a few categories, which I'll cover one at a time.

Abstract

These games tend to focus on strategy more than story. Almost everyone can play Chess to some degree, but it's not nearly the only game of its kind. A personal favourite of mine is Go, a Japanese game that evokes the same strategic thinking as Chess but with far simpler rules and a certain degree of elegance that few games can achieve. Another 2-player game I enjoy is Mancala, an old African/Asian game of moving marbles or stones around little pots. For its simplicity in rules there is some amazing strategic depth.

Party Games

It happens every so often that I would be hanging out with friends and a bottle or two of wine, and someone would say "Hey let's play 30 Seconds!" This is a typical party game. Easy to learn, fun to play, with little downtime between turns. Another good example is Clue (I still have a copy called Cluedo, when it was British). Party games tend to finish in under an hour, before it becomes repetitive.

Family Games

Games that are easy to learn and easy to play, and often don't require quite as much strategy. Good examples would be Boggle, Scrabble and Upwords (pictured above). Most family games also make good party games, such as Pictionary.

Eurogames

This is where I got into board games. Eurogames derive the title from the fact that the first games of this style came from Germany and became very popular very quickly. The games tend to have a basic back story to give context and theme, but what makes them most intriguing is that each game has a unique gameplay mechanic that is found in very few other games if any. The most famous eurogame is Settlers of Catan, but Carcassonne, Ticket To Ride (links to video review) and the newcomer Dominion are all worth a mention.

Fantasy Games
These games sacrifice simplistic rules for depth of story and intense scenarios. The games tend to play longer (2-6 hours) and have a very thematic style, usually fantasy but sometimes based on a TV series or game. I wouldn't recommend these games to the beginning board gamer, but if you've played Magic: The Gathering or some form of roleplaying such as D&D you'll fit right in here. Actually, the World of Warcraft game is quite popular... My friends and I have been playing Runebound (pictured above), which is an RPG in board game form. There's also a game for Battlestar Gallactica that many people are raving about.

Wargames

Warning: Only for the hardcore. These games typically take months of buying units, painting them and researching combat strategies. The rules are complex enough to emulate real-life warfare. If you enjoy RTS games you can try this, but it's not for the beginner or even intermediate player, and you'll need quite a bit of cash to get started. The most famous in this genre is Warhammer 40,000 (pictured above). There are also boardgames that give the same type of combat style without the hassle of amassing an army, though the games can still take a few hours to play. I would recommend HeroScape(very pretty) or Warriors of God.

So to conclude, I believe there's a board game out there for everyone. And once you're hooked you'll keep looking for something "the same but different", that will slowly introduce you to the wonderful world of board games. Places to go for more information would be BoardGameGeek, Board Games With Scott and The Dice Tower.

What board games do you enjoy? Comments welcome.

Musicality And Everyday Life

2009-07-28T11:51:00.004+02:00

I don't know a single person that doesn't listen to music in some form, whether it's the iPod in your pocket, on the radio or going to clubs. But music has benefits other than providing a backtrack to your daily life.

I'm a musician. I live for my music and I've noticed over the last few months that a sense of musicality helps you in an everyday capacity. You learn rhythm, timing, pitch... You even learn to listen.

Let's start with the basics. If you play an instrument you learn rhythm. This is an invaluable skill when you learn to dance, but is also handy in things like modelling, where you want even, smooth steps. You also learn to predict things more accurately. "1, 2, 3!" If counted at regular intervals, everyone knows when 3 is going to land because the gap between 1 and 2 is the same as 2 and 3.

Timing. The first example I can think of is knowing how long it'll take for a traffic light to change. It's an internal sense of how long things take to happen. It prevents you from jumping the gun, running a red light that changes moments later. It even helps comedians to pause for the exact length of time for comedic effect.

Pitch. If you can play an instrument you can tell when something changes pitch. Did you know that a flat tyre makes a lower sound than a properly inflated tyre? A glass or mug with a chip also produces a different sound.

And this brings me to my last point. You learn to listen. When you study music, they often let you listen to a song and pick out specific instruments or sounds. This skill is handy in all kinds of ways. I've been able to work out what's wrong with my car simply from the sounds it makes. Speaking of cars, I've saved myself from getting run over twice because I heard a car approaching behind me, even through the noise of other cars.

When I was younger, watching TV, I would often turn off the sound and listen for the sounds my mom were making in the house, then guess what she was doing. It was a fun game, but it taught me of the little sounds everyday objects make.

Computers also make sounds. When I sit in bed with my laptop, I sometimes position it in a way that cuts off the airflow into the machine, but withing a few seconds I would notice the hum kick in of the internal fan trying to keep the thing cool, and I know it's suffocating. You can hear the hard drive in a computer churning when it's copying things. When you think the machine has frozen you tend to panic and start pressing buttons. "But wait, the hard drive is still churning. Maybe it's just busy." And invariably it wakes back up when it's done with whatever it was doing.

Besides being a backtrack to your life, music is a skillset. I use my musicality on a daily basis and I'm very thankful to my parents for affording me every opportunity available to develop it.

Words:
"Seriously, we should give up on the idea of anything mainstream because pop culture has splintered into a thousand things and will never be put back together."
-Robert Ashley, guest on Gamers with Jobs Conference Call Ep 126

Encyclopedia?

2009-03-14T18:57:00.004+02:00

I don't even remember when I first heard of Wikipedia, but in the last year it's become a part of every net-user's daily life. When you wonder about something, you go to Wikipedia. I've even got a shortcut to it on my phone's home page.

Why? Because it's reliable. Contrary to a certain spoof video (funny even though I disagree with it) the facts are almost always straight. For every user posting random information there is a hundred users correcting it and providing citations to support it. Wikipedia is famous because it's accurate, and it's accurate because it's famous. I've seen pages updated within literally minutes of something happening. Where else would you get this kind of information?

That's exactly my point. Without Wikipedia, where would we get our information? From a hard-copy encyclopedia that's incorrect the moment the editors are done with it? With the coming of the "Data Age", as I like to call it, internet access (and by extension access to information) is available almost anywhere. Are we leaving behind the encyclopedia? Is the process of validating information for print too slow for our needs?

Many blogs operate on the First Post principle. As soon as they catch wind of a rumour, they publish it on their blog. It's the internet. You can always go back and update it when you have more information, but the prestige of being the first publication to announce something makes it a risk worth taking. In a way Wikipedia is the same. As soon as something happens, a user thinks "I probably need to put that on the page" and off they go. If it's incorrect, another user (or the same user) will go and correct it. Because of this, you can go check how many people watched the last episode Lost, literally hours after broadcast.

So is Wikipedia the ultimate and only? No. Why is it the sole source of information on the internet, even maybe the world (because even newspapers now cite it as reference)? Because it provided the right service at exactly the right time. The problem with the internet was, yes there's all the information you will ever need, but are you going to sift through pages of search results pointing to news articles and rumour blogs to find what you're looking for? Wikipedia gives a single point of contact for information, which is then presented with definitions and basic information first, filtering into detail as you read.

As with everything, there is competition, other companies doing the same thing. Google launched Knol. It's essentially Wikipedia, but articles are based on topics and theses rather than defining a concept, and are supposed to be written by an expert in the field. There are some good articles, but when I want to know what films Stanley Kubrick(yes it's linked to the Wikipedia page) made, I'm not going to find it on Knol.

About now I usually make my closing argument. This time it's easy. To write this article, I opened Wikipedia 12 times to check references. That's all you need to know.

Also, if you're the type of person that gets involved in high science arguments over a few drink(happens every weekend), Wikipedia and a cell phone that can access it is an essential part of winning an argument.

Words:

Picture this time...

Smell

2009-03-01T15:13:00.003+02:00

How often do you use your nose? Whatever your answer, it's not enough. The world is full of smells. Good and bad smells. Smell can tell you something about your environment that you could never see with your eyes. And my favourite part of using my nose is the memories.

I read once that smell is the sense that connects easiest with memories. For example:

The other day I passed a colleague in the hall and had a sudden flashback of my first job after college. The reason for this was her perfume, the same as that first boss' wife.

When I walk into the men's room at work I'm always reminded of being drunk. Not any specific instance (there aren't very many), just the overall feeling of having had too much to drink. I always go to the bathroom to drink water when I've had too much alcohol, so my brain made a link.

One of my best friends works for Aromatic Apothecary, among other things. Many evenings we all get together for coffee and the entire room would be filled with a complex mixture of incense and oils emanating from her clothes. It makes for quite an olfactory adventure.

Restaurants always carry the most amazing smells. You become hungry simply walking into the place.

And of course nature. Walking between the car and the shop sometime last week, I picked up on a most amazing scent. I mentioned it, and was shown a pine tree growing across the road in a field. That's it. A single tree. It was lovely.

Often I can smell the rain coming. There's a pressure in the atmosphere but my nose screams of fresh water. A storm is coming.

For the last two weeks everything smells of burning woo d. It's not a nice smell. It's a warning. Animals tend look around, work out the direction of the threat, and move to somewhere safe. Even my two rats stand up in their cage when there's a fire coming.

I've completely lost the plot that this article almost never had. It's more a musing than a train of thought. I hope it makes you use your nose a bit more...

TV and Plugs

2009-02-22T19:22:00.000+02:00

I first noticed it with Mythbusters. "We didn't only perform these tests. To see what else we got up to, go to your website on..."

It's a plug, like so many others. It's been there for ages. But ever since the internet can handle video, they've been hinting at further content. During season 4 of Battlestar Galactica the same thing happened, but they hinted that there are further scenes. Time Warp says that they performed more experiments than they can put in the disappointingly short show, which is quite believable.

However: At what point do they start depriving from the television episodes to bring traffic to their website? It's all fine if they put deleted scenes on the website, but did they purposefully cut those scenes from the episode to generate traffic to their website? Are they important? Are you still getting the full impact of the show if you don't go watch that part online?

It makes sense to drive people to your website. After all, when you have them there, you can sell stupid merchandise to them such as actual Cylon toasters.

What about webisodes? Battlestar Galactica had several seasons of between-television-season episodes. In my opinion the shows didn't greatly impact the way you interpret the next season, but are they a part of the story? Or simply fan fiction with publicity? All they really did was show a little more depth of the situation leading into the next season, to whet the apetite of a prospective audience.

I think it's fine to have extra footage on the website, as long as it sticks by one of two conditions: The footage is not an integral part of the show, or is included on the box set upon release. When you buy the set, you want everything. In five years' time when you feel nostalgic, you won't be able to find those webisodes again.

We must be wary of this trend. I fear the day I watch Survivor and at the end of the show they say "To see who gets voted off, go to our website". It would mean the end of television as we know it...

Words:
This will be my first post without a relevant quote at the bottom. However, I read this during the week and found it funny:
"Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died"
-Stephen Wright

Docs...

2009-02-08T15:45:00.005+02:00

When I say I'm heavy on my shoes, I mean it. I get up in the morning, shower, dress, put on my shoes, and that's where they stay till I get into bed at night. The shoes I wear must go where I go, do what I do. If I want to walk 20 km up Buitengracht street, they take me there. If I want to break into a sprint across a wet field my shoes have to get me to the other side. If I want to stand my ground in a mosh pit I need something to keep me rooted to the floor.

I buy one pair of shoes and wear them until they fall apart. I don't want to waste time deciding which shoes to wear today. Foot goes in, tug on laces, maybe a knot, and off I go into the urban jungle.

On average my shoes last two or three months before they give up. It needs to be strong, comfortable and especially affordable. They will break. I will need to replace them. I can't afford the most expensive shoes every time. I've also figured out that shoes with ankle support is a better idea for me, so that's a requirement aswell.

I tried Converse All Star Hi-tops for a while. Though they are comfortable shoes they don't last very long and get dirty unbelievably quickly. Caterpillar shoes are strong but just don't fit the shape of my feet (slim at the heal, wide at the toes. Fighter's feet, I'm told...) Then one day I decided to try a pair of Doc Martens.

I bought the 8-up laced design. It had the ankle support I needed without being too complicated to lace up every time. I was told to buy them tight. Because it's made of leather they will stretch to fit my feet. The first two days I wore them around the house in the evenings but couldn't bring myself to give up the biker boots I was practically living in at the time.

After two weeks the leather had settled. These were officially the most comfortable shoes I had ever owned. As my foot slipped in it felt like one hand grasping the other. It was like a hug from a loved one, it fit that good. These shoes did literally everything I needed them to. The soles were flexible without being soft. They were a soft walk but I could still feel the road under my feet. The shoes are narrow enough to fit between the car's peddles (manual gearbox thank you) but wide enough to keep my balance when sprinting through crowds on a busy street.

These shoes are cool when it's hot. They keep my feet warm when it's cold. There's no pair of shoes I would rather wear.

I sit typing this with, you guessed it, those same docs on my feet. I forget exactly when I bought them but I'm sure it's been over a year now. The leather looks a bit tarnished but nothing a coat of leather food won't fix. The soles are still solidly part of the shoe thanks to this bright yellow stitching. There's a few indications of the underside thinning but nothing to cause worry.

I understand why these shoes have become such a staple of durability. It's obvious why they've become so famous in 50 years. Very few products are so famous that they make the brand. Moleskine. Converse. Ford. Boeing. Dr Martens.

"The boots and shoes have been especially popular among skinheads, punks, grungers and members of a few other youth subcultures."

-Wikipedia

So why are these shoes so popular in the frowned-upon part of society? I have no idea. We were at a gig last night(pirate party, Strident played) and I can distinctly remember twenty (yes 20) people wearing classic black docs in varying heights. And if you ask any of them, they will never buy another pair of shoes. If those broke, they'd replace them with the same.

It's inexplicable. Docs have become a part of the culture. It's an item of recognition. "So where did you buy your docs?" is a perfectly valid pickup line.

I think the answer is relatively simple: It's a really good, inexpensive, easy to care for pair of shoes. They are so simple, there's nothing that can go wrong with them.

As with any niche-market product, it has become increasingly difficult to find docs in South Africa. I fear the day these finally give out on me. Maybe I should try going barefoot for a while...

Words:
"There is no shortage of guys picking up guitars and trying to get chicks."
-Gamers with Jobs Conference Call Ep 121

Puzzles

2009-01-11T17:36:00.004+02:00

When last did you build a jigsaw puzzle?

Can you even remember? It's something our parents did. Or not even. Maybe you remember visiting your grandmother's house and there was an uncompleted puzzle on the dining table. But why don't we see puzzles anymore?

Because kids play computer games and consoles, that's why. You even get jigsaw puzzle games! I've said many times that I am a gamer. I'm not ashamed of it. But I know you can't spend your entire life behind a monitor. Use your hands for once!

Puzzle building has some very important skills to teach, the most obvious ofwhich is pattern recognition and being able to notice a part of something even when presented seperate from the whole. It also improves hand-eye coordination, dexterity and visual memory.

Then there are secondary skills you learn, like planning:

If you're searching for a specific piece but can't find it, maybe you should try building around that piece and getting some more imformation on its shape, or leave it for the time being and try somewhere else. Sometimes you can gather all the pieces that "look like sky" to narrow down your search. That's problem-solving right there!

It also destresses because you can calmly sit and scan the pieces for the one you're looking for. And it's addictive. When you keep finding a piece every few minutes, whole afternoons can fly by. Every time you find a piece it feels like you're getting somewhere and you only need a few more.

Not to mention the amazing artwork. This picture is the puzzle we just finished. When you first look at it you think "but it's all the same colour!". It's not. The clouds in the sky are smooth, the sea is rough. The ghost ship is a very distinct white. Even the lace on her dress allows you to find similar pieces.

I bought my mom a world globe puzzle a year back. Yes, the puzzle is three-dimensional. I've also seen some interesting games made from puzzles. My aunt has a puzzle that doesn't have a picture on the box. It's a murder mystery. You read the little story of how the people came to be in the house, heard the gunshot and found the body. Then the puzzle is the crime scene and as you build you discover the killer's identity.

Jigsaw puzzles are extremely underrated as a pastime. I think everyone should have at least one puzzle in their house at all times, even if you never build it, your children or friends might. And as soon as they do you'll be hooked. Puzzles are cheap in comparison to other games, and will keep you entertained for much longer than a stupid DVD...

Words:
“There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.”

-Deepak Chopra

Boredom

2008-12-09T07:00:00.002+02:00

When I think back to my childhood (when I was about 13), the first thing I think of is the stupid stuff we got up to during summer holiday. Spending hours outside, walking from friend's house to friend's house, getting into trouble as often as humanly possible... Good times were had.

But why did we do this? Why did we mess around for days on end? Because we were bored. We had nothing to do.

A decade later, I have no time to do the things I want to. I realise that this is partly because I now have a job, but if I look purely at the list of things I want to get to, there's ten times more stuff on my list. When I was a kid, we entertained ourselves. We made stuff up. We pretended. These days, you don't have to imagine. If you want a fantasy story, you play a game with a fantasy story in it. If you want to pretend to race around, you go to the carts track and race.

In my day, we built soap box racers. I think I'm one of the last generations to actually do this. You didn't just get in and press the win button with your foot. You actually designed the thing, planned it out, built it, tested it. And when you ended up in a ditch you learnt from the experience and did it better next time.

Kids these days can buy their "soap box racer" at the store. It's plastic. It's made in a factory. And it comes with seatbelts and airbags, because heaven forbid you actually hit something and got hurt. And if somehow you did manage to get hurt, your parents sue the living daylights out of the manufacturor.

How sad is that? That you can't even get hurt anymore. It's an integral part of childhood!

Here's what scares me: Writers use their imagination to create worlds for their readers. Their imaginations are vivid because they played in the garden when they were a kid. They made stuff up. When the children of this generation grow up... where will their inspiration come from? Will they simply derive their stories from the stories they've read before? Will they base it on the inherintly crappy stories in games?

Are we the cause of imagination's extinction?

You don't have to imagine you're a jedi, running around with a broomstick going "woooooom! wooom!". You just play the Star Wars game. Don't get me wrong, the games are great. But at some point kids need to put down the game and actually use their brain.

Be creative. Try to solve problems. Get it wrong. Get hurt. This is how you learn. This is how you discover what it's like to lose. This is what shapes your future. Live it.

Words:
"1000 times I have accepted the drudge work and delivery jobs and assassination requests and diplomatic missions and more for every random person I've met in the game. And yet, I get resentful every time my wife asks me to take out the trash. Something is not right here. And while I'd love to ponder it more, I really do have to get back to the game now. Oh wait, no---I'm at work! Shit!"
-Jeff Green

With Vilest Worms To Dwell

2008-11-29T15:00:00.000+02:00

If you've played PC games, there are two games that you will know of. Even if you haven't played them yourself, you know of them. The first on is easy: The Sims. The second one I'm sure you won't guess, but you will recognise it.

My first experience of Worms was when I was 11. I got Worms Reinforcements for Christmas and my two cousins and I played staight through the night until the sun came up.

What intrigued me about the game was its learning curve. You scale to the game, instead of the game scaling to you. I know it sounds backwards, but allow me to explain: Generally when you play a game they start you out with simple challenges so you can learn the ropes. Then they slowly step up the difficulty so that you're always challenged. In Worms, the game mechanics stay exactly the same. But as you get to know the weapons and how they work, you start making more daring moves, often risking the life of your own worm in pursuit of the enemy. Of course you can scale the abilities of your opponents, and which weapons are allowed when, but how the weapons function and how you use them never changes.

And the most important fact of the game: No matter what weapons you have or how devestating their effect, your enemy can always take you down with a bazooka and a grenade. Because these weapons require time to master. To throw a grenade halfway across the map into a hole no wider than the grenade itself is a feat very few can achieve. And bazooka rounds are affected by the wind, allowing you to shoot around corners!

What's best of all, is that the game is turn-based. You only need a single computer, a single set of controls, and a single copy of the game to enjoy it with friends. This post came about when we had the idea of playing on the projector. 3 meter wide total wormage!

The version we're playing is Worms Armageddon (cover pictured below), and is my personal favourite of the series. Even though the game came out in 2001, it runs perfectly on Windows XP and Windows Vista. And the ability to set any resolution means you can play in HD. Later versions of the game became 3D, making it more modern in concept but harder to aim and shoot as effectively as the original 2D game. It also means having to use the mouse and keyboard much more. When we play on the projector, I map the keys to my Rumblepad so we can pass it around easier.

I would urge anyone to try this game, or its many derivative works, for themselves. Links listed on the wikipedia page. And don't worry about violence. It's cartoony graphics. I've seen Road Runner cartoons with more violence.

Words:
"So if reality gets in the way of fun, fun wins."
-Gamers With Jobs Conference Call, Episode 111

Piracy Makes Games Suck

2008-11-16T16:21:00.003+02:00

I'm a geek. I'm not shy about that fact. Being a geek means you have friends who are geeks. Having friends who are geeks means that when a new game or movie comes out, you're sometimes offered a copy before it's even been released. Piracy is big, especially in the PC gaming world. Less so for console games, but don't think it doesn't happen.

Games are expensive. It's a fact. If you take into account the level of quality people want in their games these days, and what it costs to make them, it's not surprising the unit price is so high. And don't tell me movies are cheap games should be. In movies they only have to worry about how it looks, not what'll happen if the player decides to do something ridiculous.

So when you're offered an opportunity to play the game, no strings attached, before you pay for it (if ever), people tend to go for it. But what are you missing?

Many times the process of cracking the game breaks some aspect of the game. Things like online play or achievements. In some cases the game may crash because of the workarounds involved. Some people may seize the opportunity to plant and distribute their virusses through these "cracked copies". Often, in an attempt to crack the game before the official release date, an unfinished or reviewer's copy of the game is used, which may include critical errors. Cracked games can also not be patched, leaving it open to vulnerabilities or flawed gameplay. For the online play that did work with the cracked version, the fact that you can't patch it means that now you can't play online because the servers require you to have the latest fixes installed.

And worst of all, your experience of the game is tainted.

As a programmer I know how it goes. You sit for days writing a small part of the game or program, but you can't get it perfect. You've been working so hard on the whole project that you think this little problem can be fixed later, or is really not so bad. So someone gets a pirated copy of your game. They didn't pay for it so they're willing to install it and try it for an hour or two. If they don't like it, they skip it. Or worse yet, they go onto public forums and discredit your game because of that small niggle in gameplay you decided can be left. They are in general more critical of the game.

If they had payed for the game, they would see the niggle, but think to themselves "It's really not that bad. The rest of the game makes up for it. It's a good experience in general." Because they payed for it, they want to get their money's worth so they give the game a proper chance.

Personally, I enjoy a game more if I have the physical package I can put on my shelf. Often the game comes with some special trinket, or there's a collector's edition. It makes it an experience instead of a pastime while you wait for your pizza to be delivered or whatever.

The last problem I have with piracy is DRM. I know it sounds backwards, but it's simple. When games are pirated, the producers don't get money for it. So they need to stop a game from being pirated. They end up licensing outside software to do it for them (Starforce or SecuROM). These methods are never perfect because no two computers are set up the same, so by doing so you introduce a margin of failure to your games: a number of buyers for whom the game will not work because something on their computer isn't how it should be. In some cases it also introduces an install limit. Someday I'm going to look at an old game and think "I want to try this again", but when I try to install it, the game will firstly require internet access to a service that may no longer be available. If that service is still there, it may tell me that I've installed the game too many times. How can this be? I'm sitting with the disc in my hands. I payed for it. The slip is still in the case, although the writing has faded a bit... If I pay these exorbitant amounts for my game, I expect it to work when I want it to.

Even games with DRM gets cracked. Sometimes the DRM is only there to stop it from being cracked on release day, but it will be cracked within a week. However, it ruins the game for years to come.

Unfortunately piracy is here to stay. Unless they can find a way to make sure you can't do anything without a legal copy (WoW did it) you can really only rely on people's good faith and support.

Words:
"In the case of pirates, say, I would like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows."
-Herman Melville

Isolation

2008-11-09T15:34:00.004+02:00

Five years ago when I had just gotten my driver's license, I used to get annoyed at my mom. She would pester me with reminders such as looking for emergency phones when driving far, and keeping track of petrol stations and truck stops even if I don't stop at them. I found it very irritating. But if something were to happen to me out on the road, that was the one thing that could save me. Because five years ago, I didn't have a cellphone.

I didn't have a phone because if I needed to speak with someone, I went there and found them. If I wanted to buy something, I went to a shop where I spoke to a person. If something happened to me out on the road, I walked to the nearest truck stop or emergency phone.

These days everything is virtual. If I read (on the internet) about a game that I think I'd enjoy, I go to Take2 (on the internet) and order it. It then gets delivered to my house a few days later. You can buy literally anything online these days, even groceries. I even rent DVDs online. When you're out on the road, you drive with all your windows shut tight so the aircon can do its thing. You look out at the world like it's a movie, or some display in an aquarium. You don't interact with the outside world or with other people. It's your little adventure.

You don't go to someone's house, you hook up online. As I say this, I consider running Google Talk and checking who's at home.

I work for a company that sells services. Internet connectivity, websites, bulk e-mail, etc. Beside the fact that we don't have physical stock to put on a shelf, we don't need a shop front because no-one would ever come. People order services on our website. They pay for it with a credit card. If something goes wrong they e-mail us. If it really goes wrong they phone our support people.

It's sad, really. We all go on about going green and being environmentally friendly, but we isolate ourselves from the outside world. Not just from nature (heaven forbid a single bug should make it past the windowsill) but also from each other.

I think we prefer it that way because we don't have to deal with uncertainties. Facial expressions, body language and tone of voice are gray areas, open to be misinterpreted. If it's there in writing in my inbox, how can I get it wrong? For a perfect example of doing things online instead of going out and living it up, read the quote below. (Sorry Jeff, I love your posts but you're a geek)

Do yourself a favour. Next time you want to buy something, instead of just going online and ordering it, go into a shop and buy it. Walk in, find yourself a nice friendly store clerk that knows what they're doing, and communicate.

Words:
"I don't actually know a whole lot about animals now. Except that I like them. So now I'm giving myself a crash course in all sorts of things--which is also giving me a side course in geography (hey--Africa is a continent!)--through extensive reading, Wiki-ing, and watching of channels like Animal Planet, when they're not doing one of their 35 shows on dogs."
-Jeff Green

Casual To The Core

2008-10-27T17:07:00.003+02:00

Casual games have taken over. I think it makes sense. People seldomly sit down behind a computer and say to themselves: "Right, now for a few hours of gaming." Only people that really enjoy games would do that. A casual game allows you to sit down for a quick game. Sometimes you end up spending hours there anyway, but the thought of dedicated a section of your day almost to the activity of inactivity is a daunting concept.

That's World of Goo. I've been playing on and off for a few weeks now and it's always engaging. Casual games can be described in 3 words: Simple, repetitive, challenging. These elements, when present in the right quantities, will deprive you of hours of your day. And the hours that you don't spend playing, you spend thinking about the challenge you stopped on and how to defeat it.

But as much as I enjoy simple, addictive games something happens to me after a while. If I spend too much time playing these simplistic games, I begin to crave the depth, detail and immersion offered by larger titles. I want that imaginary world with its folklore and cultures. I want to feel like I'm in control of someone's destiny, that my choices have purpose other than the completion of an arbitrary task. I want to play something that will suck me in and keep me interested like a good novel on a sunday afternoon. As much as the gamer world thinks casual games are taking over, there will always be a market for the core gamers. There will always be lonely teens that need something to keep them busy over a weekend.

Just look at console games. A console used to be simple, addictive games with the occasional racing title thrown in. These days all the big genre games are coming out on console, catering for the "pop it in and play" crowd.

Like they say, the devil is in the detail...

Words:
"Not even halfway, but in the beginning it's like 'Oh there's Rosco Street Station! Oh there's those jittery bums, you know on the bench. There's the valkeer stuff painted on the... exactly like it is in the game.' You're like 'Alright the got the tone down! We're set to go!' And so it happens. He like shoots the doors open and then... you know... raises his voice..."
- In-Game Chat 27 October 2008, comparison of Max Payne movie with original games.

Not Smart But Social

2008-10-19T13:56:00.004+02:00

My friend Paul linked me to this article. It explains being able to conduct yourself socially is more of an advantage than being smart or well-read. And through personal observation, I tend to agree.

As a programmer, I come into contact with some very smart people. People who don't always have the best manners or quite know how to express themselves, because they spend all their time behind a computer, learning. Now when it comes to a corporate environment, your work doesn't always speak of your skills. Many times you need to convince the higher-ups that your idea is worth their time before they even see the first line of code. It's because of this that some of the greatest programmers out there end up in the lower jobs of a company. Their work is epic, it almost never breaks and when it does it takes only a quick glance to find and correct the problem, but because they can't communicate with others they will never get that managerial job. They can never teach others to do what they do. And this is a serious problem. Being in the right field of work may guarantee you a job in the future, but will it really be the job that you're capable of performing?

I'm not the smartest kid on the block by far. I need something explained to me in quite ferocious detail before I understand it. But once I understand it, I have no problem in explaining it to others in a way that they can understand. And that's what I think will drive my career in the future. My work is sufficient, but often not perfect. I overlook things. My code needs a revisit or two before it can go live. But if someone asks me how I did it or why I did it that way, I can easily explain it to them. When I need someone from another department to do something for me, I know how to ask that they know what it is I need, and that gets the job done just that little bit faster.

The ability to explain also flows onto e-mails and written communications, where the lack of expression is a problem. Just because you know what you're saying doesn't mean the recipient will. Is all the information there that they need? Rather too much information than too little.

So here's my lesson to everyone: Talk to yourself. Not necessarily out loud, in your head. It'll not only help you wrap your head around what you're doing (explaining something forces you to simplify) it'll also make it easier to communicate with others what you're doing, what you need them to do, or what they did wrong.

I always used to complain to others that my head of development mumbled to himself the whole time. Now maybe I'll start doing it...

Words:
"I made a firm decision starting out that I wasn't going to have anything to do with any of those player-run corporations that game boasts. I've seen their recruitment threads on gaming forums and I'm frightened that interacting with such people to any great degree will infect me with some wierd desease that causes flowcharts."
-Zero Punctuation, EVE Online

The Internet Is Not Real

2008-10-13T16:54:00.004+02:00

When we negotiate our way around the internet, we come into contact with many pages and many people. They have no idea who it is that's viewing, and it doesn't really matter. So when you start interacting with others you don't really pay attention to what you're doing or saying, because it doesn't relate back to you in any way. When you comment on a blog like this one, the people on the other side see only your username and maybe a profile connected to it, with no information that comes back to you. Nothing stops you from simply never returning to that account.

You also communicate with the people you know in real life. Many of them you haven't seen in a while, or you may never see them. But you can make or break relationships through your actions. What you say on Facebook carries weight. If you're racist on the internet, it hurts people's feelings. It's fine if you air your opinions in a rational way and have an adult discussion about it, but lashing out at a specific demographic serves no purpose besides emotional injury and aggravation. Besides, I don't see how any mature, rational person can be racist. It's a counter-statement.

Your subconscious tells you the internet is something non-existent. It's just a cloud in the sky. So you don't think twice about speaking your mind. I've heard people say: "I didn't mean it that way! Come on! It's an e-mail for goodness sake. Don't take it so seriously."

That's the wrong approach, but sadly it's how people think.

We need to realise that the person on the other end is an actual human being, with feelings and opinions. Even if you've never met them, and never will, your words could impact their life. Just because it's the internet, doesn't mean it doesn't communicate.

Sorry for the depressing post. I'll be up to my usual ponderings next week.

Words:
"When the internet gets angry, it's an infinite source of amusement."
-Evil Avatar Radio, now In-Game Chat

Like Chess But Different

2008-10-05T15:34:00.004+02:00

Go is a strategic board game for two players. It differs from chess by only having one type of playing piece. What it shares with chess is an infinite complexity.

For me, and many others, it all started with an animé: Hikaru no Go. The series follows a young boy through the trials and tribulations of playing Go, making it through school, trying to start a Go club and playing in tournaments. Not only was it a really well-executed animé, it also managed to make a relatively mundane board game appear epic. According to Wikipedia:

The manga is largely responsible for popularizing Go among the youth of Japan since its debut, and in other areas such as mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea. More recently it has gained much popularity in the United States.

So after watching the animé, I did a little reading and shopped around for a goban, but couldn't find any at nearly a reasonable price. The only place I could find was online, and that was too expensive. So I made my own. A nice wide plank of pine, a ruler and a carver's V-tool took me half an hour to make it. Then a little inking to make the lines sharper and a coat of varnish. I then bought two bags of glass stones, a bag clear and a bag blue. And there you have it, the poor-man's goban.

I consulted my encyclopedia of games (one of the most important books on my bookcase) and off we went. The animé also had a 5-minute lesson at the end of each episode, which helped a lot with the basics. My friends and I now play regular games. The game is quick to pick up, but it can take years to even realise the depth of the game.

If you have a chance, I would encourage anyone and everyone to watch a few episodes of the animé, or read the manga (can be read online at onemanga.com). Then you can try your hand at the game, through the Internet Go Server (a.k.a. PandaNet).

Words:
"When did this square become a meeting place for go players? I don't know. After so many thousands of games, the chequerboards engraved on the granite tables have turned into faces, thoughts, prayers."
- The Girl Who Played Go, Shan Sa

Good Old Days

2008-09-28T19:15:00.003+02:00

It turns out that there are still many people that enjoy a good game of pen-and-paper roleplaying.

So I went in search of my old player's manual for Vampire: The Masquerade(pictured left). Upon finding my old character sheet the memories and nostalgia came flooding back, of late nights in a small theatre with a group of drama students pretending to be vampires. The epic adventures that played out there were the stuff of legend.

But what makes the games by White Wolf so amazing (and a little scary) is the fact that these future-changing revolutions could be taking place right under our noses, for real, and we would never know...

I called up a few friends and asked around and everyone seemed keen, so we all got together one evening with the player's manual and worked out our characters. We all then spent the next week thinking about our characters and developing them from mere pieces of paper to living (I use this term lightly) breathing members of society.

If you're familiar with Dungeons & Dragons you'll know how most roleplaying games work: The chronicler (a.k.a. narrator a.k.a. dungeon master) tells the story up to a point, then stops. It's the duty of each player to state what their character would do in that situation. A few minutes of stats-comparing and sometimes arguing commences, followed by a round or two of dice-rolling (with dice that have between 4 and 20 sides). Then the story can continue based on their successes or failures. What made The Masquerade unique in its day was focus on the theatrical more than the mathematical. Your character sheet was only there as a reminder. The real character, with full background story and entire family trees and political structures, was in your head. During play, when a challenge is presented a quick calculation and a single dice-roll is all that was needed to find out what happens. The story can then continue. It made for much faster paced gameplay and much more amazing stories. And indeed, the stories were told, because when you retell the tale of your adventure you portray it as if you are the person who experienced it, not the character sheet!

Over the last week I've been combing the internet for information on The Masquerade, but it was replaced by a game called The Requiem(pictured right). No longer are the vampires an entity on their own. They are part of a much greater and sinister system known as the World of Darkness in which anything can happen, from ghosts to werewolves, in the tradition of horror stories the world over. I'm doing my best to find the books required to start playing the newer game, but not before the adventure of our Masquerade has concluded, which can take up to 3 months of weekly meetings.

With PC and console games as sophisticated as they are these days, it's good to know that we can still enjoy a good old-fashioned game of pretend, even if it is with some help...

The games also encourage you to read, so I find it especially suited for players in their low teens who are still in touch with their imagination, but who get bored when reading a book like we old people (early twenties). Once you've played a few hours with friends, you start wondering about the story behind the story. And it's all there. Beside the player's manuals and a guide for storytellers, there's a whole selection of books that widen the fictitious universe. Some of them have nothing to do with how the game is played, but are simple storybooks that serve to enrich the mental image you have of this world beneath our everyday lives.

However, it's not for everybody. The whole theme of this genre is very dark and brooding. If you struggle to keep a straight face while telling a ghost story, you would be better off playing a science fiction or fantasy game. World of Darkness is for the goths among us. Serve with Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, Anathema and especially Katatonia.

To Close: If you've never played a pen and paper roleplaying game, there's a very big gap in your education. In my opinion it's something that everyone needs to do at least once in their life.

Words:
"The cleansing astringence of rejection" is the most ridiculous phrase I have ever used in a comic."
-Questionable Content

When a Coder Plays Games...

2008-09-22T21:46:00.006+02:00

I enjoy PC games. At the moment I'm playing Spore and awaiting delivery of Crysis Warhead. I buy between 1 and 3 games a month depending on releases. However, my day-to-day job differs very little from the work of the game developers. How does my knowledge of the internal workings of a game affect the way I experience a game?

We plan new features, build them in stages, spend much time messing with our own creations trying to break them, and when they break we figure out how to fix them. A rally driver can most probably tell you in quite boring detail how the internal structure of a car makes it drive the way it does, but it doesn't really affect the feeling of driving.

Also, like a rally driver, simply knowing how it works doesn't make you any good at it. I'll be first in line to admit that I'm not the best at any particular type of game. Actually I pretty much suck at RTS games. A quick glance at my bookcase tells me that the closest thing to RTS I own would be SimCity 3000 (in my opinion the best of the series) and Startopia, both more disaster management than RTS. Anyway, back to the point.

When I play a game, I approach it the same way I approach everything in life:
"What is my goal? How can I achieve it? Is there a better or simpler way of accomplishing this goal? Is this cheating?"
I don't go looking for every mistake in the game I can, and tell them how to fix it. All this does is deprive me of the pleasure of playing the game. I do notice the mistakes, the little glitch that nobody else noticed or was simply too small to devote time to this close to going gold. Some critics (reviewers?) will name and shame these little glitches like it's the end of the world, but in a world where games become increasingly complex and detailed, is it really possible to cover for every possibility? I think it's wrong to even expect developers to perform such feats. If anything, the fact that I understand the work that goes into a game makes me more lenient to the mistakes or oversights in games.

I heard a very nice analogy in a podcast today, either 1UP Yours or the last GFW Radio, not sure. Allow me to paraphrase it a bit. When a programmer plays a computer game it's like pulling the curtain away from a magic show to expose all the gears and pullies and tricks underneath. But the question is, now that you understand how the trick works, does it make the trick any less impressive?

I don't think so...

Words:
"We are united by a common element. Its not the color of our skin or our ideology or where we come from. No it's that we're a giant bunch of fucking nerds."
-Ken Levine, PAX 2008 Keynote(video)

Wants and Needs...

2008-08-31T20:10:00.000+02:00

When I posted about making good purchases 2 weeks ago, I touched on the point that you don't always need to buy what you're considering. Time to explain.

Let's begin with a question: How much stuff do you have lying around the house that you never used, but thought it essential for whatever you're planning? What made you buy it? A television advert? Probably. Maybe you deduced that all this stuff is needed because they always have all this stuff in the movies. You're falling into exactly the trap the marketers want.

Companies want to sell their gear. Gear that is functionally identical to the next company's product. And who will be the softest victim? A layman. "Trust me, you're going to need this." This is usually a lie. Most hobbies or sporting activities can be gotten into without expensive equipment. And if special equipment is needed, such as climbing gear, ice skates, ten pin bowling shoes and balls, there is most likely a company or venue that lets you rent it for a few hours. It makes business sense. They want more people involved so they make the expense of starting out as little as possible.

When it comes to confusing the general public into buying stuff geeks are the biggest offenders. When you walk into a computer store you're bombarded by reasons why your computer isn't good enough and what you can buy to make it better. The truth is most of it does nothing special and you would only notice the difference when you're a semi-professional. You don't need a laser gaming mouse with a specially designed mouse pad and a gazillion buttons if you're only going to play Bejewelled with it. You don't need the fastest graphics card on earth if you just want to play the occasional game. Granted, it won't run as fast or as prettily as the top-of-the-range machines, but with casual games you won't even see a difference.

I have a bad habit. When I discover a new hobby I get into it head-long. I buy everything I could possibly need thinking that this hobby will be my time-filler for the next few years. The remote control car(above) is a perfect example. Buying the car, its controller, batteries and charger, the paint and assembling it wasn't good enough. I had to buy all the modifications needed to make the car competitive on the track. I knew there was an amateur division but I didn't care. I wanted it all! A few weeks of going to the track to practice and subsequently being chased off by professionals, and the novelty had worn off. The car now does what most RC cars do: Race around small traffic cones in the driveway.

So what I do now is ask around. Find out if any of my friends have tried it and if they have the equipment for me to borrow, or know where I can rent it for a few days. Many times my friends say I don't even need all that stuff. Just get the cheapest {name item here} and you'll do fine. The rest can come later.

Most product ranges also have an amateur item in its range. For instance, in the digital photography (I still think that's an oxymoron) industry Canon has the Rebel XT, which costs less than some compact digital cameras and provides all the features needed by even professionals, the main disadvantage being the rate and number of photos that can be taken in succession in a single go. I think 8 megapixel is more than enough for a good photo.

So the moral of the story is as follows: If there's something you want to try but you think it will be expensive, ask around first. See if you can rent what you need, or buy second hand, or borrow from a friend. And most of all, do you even need it all?

Words:
"Do you suck at saying "u suck"? A gentleman is always three things:
1) Original
2) Grammatically correct and
3) A gentleman
Call foes something a bit unusual. They'll be thrown if they get it and revealed as an idiot in front of their peers if they don't."
-PC Gamer, April 2007 regarding DefCon

Guitar Hero III Through The Eyes of a Guitarist

2008-08-24T17:33:00.005+02:00

Being a guitarist of about 8 years experience, I always scoffed at the prospect of games such as Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I considered it gimmicky, air guitar with a high score even. But a few weeks ago when I was offered an opportunity to play my curiosity got the better of me, so I took hold of the plastic replica Les Paul and selected a difficulty. I chose medium but very quickly moved to hard, because I figured it can't be far enough removed from the basic mechanics of playing as to render me useless. What transpired was a nail-biting and elating few hours that ended in my purchase of the game. I now venture to compare the game with the real thing and how neither is like the other, but the one contributes towards the mastery of the other.

Firstly, I was right in my assumption that the game is like the real thing. You press a chord,and strum the note. You also have a tremolo arm(referred to by its fashionable name of whammy). It feels surprisingly like playing a guitar, although the lack of weight makes it a little tricky to keep stable. To play the songs a certain degree of timing is needed, especially on the more difficult songs where offbeat notes and different time signatures come into play, such as the intro of La Grange.

There are also elements that remove the game from the real thing. The fact that 6 strings and 22 or more frets with an infinite combination is reduced to 5 buttons with no open note(when no note is fretted). The strumming is also turned into more of a button being hammered than the actual motion of strumming. There is also no such things as palm-mutes, an integral part of most rock songs. But my main complaint is that the buttons give no feedback. You need to press them relatively firmly and the only thing telling you where your hand is on the 'fretboard' is a little mark on the middle button. On a real guitar, you can feel a definite edge where your fingertips move over the fret's edge. You know what the strings are doing under your fingers. But this is all a result of taking a fundamentally analogous action and turning it into computer inputs.

Now the bright side. I've come to the conclusion that Guitar Hero, besides being a very fun and addictive game, is also a very good stepping stone to learn to play the guitar.

When you endeavour to learn the art of guitar playing, there's a typical development curve: For the first few weeks you feel like you'll never get it right and it's a waste of time. Then when you get the hang of it, you progress very quickly and you can literally feel and hear yourself improve as you play. Guitar Hero helps to overcome the initial stupidity of learning the guitar. You're going through the motions of your first few guitar lessons, but you don't have to listen to the dull twank sound of your efforts. You're rewarded by a throbbing crowd of cartoon moshers. It's then relatively simple to shift over to a real guitar and 'fill in the gaps'.

I had to think twice about writing the next bit, because it could potentially insult many of my guitar playing friends: Guitar Hero can get you over The Wall. After a few years most guitarists hit a wall where just playing guitar isn't enough anymore and you need to start thinking about the technique and theory behind your playing to progress. Many guitarists are happy to stay by this wall, and turn into the sing-along players at the bonfire on the beach. The guitarists that commit to conquer the wall will end up the riffing superstar that you see in Guitar Hero. This is where techniques such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, sweeps, arpeggio and chord structures become important. The hard and expert levels in Guitar Hero do a very good job of helping you onto this path. The main benefit the game provides is the timing between your hands. I struggled for many a lonely evening to get my right hand to pick at the same speed as my fretting hand presses the notes. The game makes it all part of the progression. When you turn away from the game and pick up a real guitar, you can feel that your hand-to-hand coordination has improved.

The game has it's gimmicky elements, such as the battles where you can break a string on your opponent's guitar, or get their bridge stuck requiring them to furiously manoeuvre the whammy bar. There are also elements in the game that seasoned guitarists will appreciate, such as your star power indicated by a row of valves lighting up as you play and the not-so-subtle placing of name brands such as Line 6 and Mackie.

All in all it's a very fun game that can be enjoyed by anyone with a relative ear for music. I expected the game to hurt my guitar playing by getting me used to buttons instead of strings, but it turns out the game actually helps your playing. Now the only thing I need to get over is the dent on my ego when my friends see me standing with a small plastic Gibson X-plorer(pictured right) draped from my shoulders...

Words:
"We both know that the promise of simulated rock stardom will always bewitch the pasty nabbish fantasies that are gaming's core demographic."
-Zero Punctuation

Metal Is Not Evil

2008-08-18T15:19:00.004+02:00

A story surfaced this morning of a kid going to his school and stabbing people with a sword. Links:
Mail & Guardian
News24

There are 2 things I want to protest in this:

"The boy had painted his face black and wore a black balaclava, resembling the drummer of the band Slipknot, said Krugersdorp councillor Alex Raubenheimer"
Here's a picture of Joey Jordison wearing his signature mask. Now I don't want to be funny, but how does this resemble a black balaclava?
"He came here camouflaged as the guys from Slipknot. We know the wrong kind of music, and drugs have bad effects. Young people need to be informed of the effects of bad Satanic music," said Eksteen.

This is where my rant really starts...

How can people assume that because a guy listens to metal he's going to go around killing people? Slipknot isn't in any way connected to satanic material. There are bands that are, such as Black Symphony, but as far as I know Slipknot never made a point of being satanic.

Here's me, a 23-year-old guy. I've been listening to metal much heavier and scarier than Slipknot for essentially as long as I can remember. And I had trouble hitting people when I started doing kickboxing.

Dear Mr Eksteen, whoever you are, I can say that your school encourages satanism or somehow indoctrinates children to do drugs and kill other people. Why? Because I have no idea what's going on at your school, the same way you have no idea what goes on in metal because you simply don't care enough to get rid of your stupid idealistic prejudices and listen to a few songs. If you don't know what you're talking about please shut the fuck up.

I'm sick of people judging us for the music we enjoy. Metal makes you kill people exactly as much as RnB makes you fuck every living thing and Rap makes you pop a cap in a gangsta's ass. Get over yourself.

My question to you is: Isn't this simply another form of racial profiling?

PS, the only reason I'm posting this if because I couldn't find the talk-back feature on either of these stupid websites.

The Price of Quality

2008-08-17T15:45:00.003+02:00

My mom always says you shouldn't buy cheap because it'll break, and buying twenty cheap frying pans (or whatever) is more expensive than buying a single, expensive one. But how true is this?

I was watching an episode of The Gadget Show where they compared high-end speakers with incredibly expensive speakers. The end result was pretty even, even though the expensive speakers were more than 30 times the price of the reasonably priced ones. So the question is, exactly how much do you need to spend to get the quality you're looking for?

What I usually do is compare the price with the relative quality of what you're buying, so step one is to find something solid and statistical that you can compare. In the case of cars look at reliability, fuel consumption, get the opinion of other people who own the cars in question on the styling and maintenance. (Don't believe the brochures. They don't lie, but they spin the truth) For something like speakers, look at impudence, response range, volume and sound-to-noise levels. For computer parts such as 3D graphics cards, find a reputable website and get benchmarks. Next, find out what each item in your list will cost. Remember to include setup fees or maintenance plans.

Now set up a little spreadsheet or something and pull a graph. This is the trick part. You'll see that from low-end to mid-range the price will rise slowly but the quality increases dramatically. This is because manufacturers need to make the initial buy-in to produce the item. With cars you don't really have a car unless you've put wheels on it, welded the thing together, gotten it tested, etc. You will then notice at a certain point it levels out, where the price increases steadily as the quality goes up. Then suddenly you'll hit a wall where it becomes very expensive for relatively little gain. This is the cut between mid-range and high-end. When you're looking at cars (once again) the price difference between the normal model and the sport model is often quite a bit, but the performance gain isn't all that major especially if you'll only be commuting with it.

Once you've gotten this graph figured out, you'll have a mental idea of what you're paying for in each iteration. You can then make an educated decision as to what you can afford and if you're getting your money's worth.

I need to mention two things here. Firstly, people tend to decide on a budget and strictly stick to it. I think this is the wrong approach. Many times once I've made up my graph I see that I've either grossly under-budgeted (not realising what things cost) or there's an item just a little more expensive with a quite considerable improvement. Be willing to shift your budget, otherwise you end up buying inferior goods because you're stingy. If you can't afford it right now, but you can wait a month or two and save up, do so. You'll be much happier with your purchase once you make it. Secondly, consider what you're buying for. If you're buying small speakers so you can hear your computer go ding when something happens, you don't need surround sound or a subwoofer. If you're buying speakers for a home entertainment system it's a good idea to look at slightly more expensive speakers, but maybe a better idea to stick to smaller speakers that don't fill your living room.

I find that buying just below the mid-to-high-end cut-off delivers the best results, where products work well but aren't flashy or over the top. On my computer games run reasonably well and I didn't shovel out a fortune for it.

Oh, one last thing. If you're planning on buying something quite expensive like computer parts, something that's in a quickly evolving market, take a look at upcoming products. What you're planning to buy might soon be replaced by a newer model in the same price range with better features. In this case you can either buy the newer model, or you can wait for the shops to drop the price of the current model in order to get rid of it and stock the new. A win-win situation.

Having taken all this into account, I suggest you step back, take a breath, maybe have a cup of something soothing, then buy what feels right. Your subconscious often picks up on little things that you're not thinking of. One of the products might feel cheap in your hands but there's really nothing wrong with it. It's a good buy, but you'll always feel cheated.

One last thing to consider. This item that you're planning to buy... do you actually need it? Or do you just want it? But that's a topic for another day...

Words:
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
-Stephen Fry on QI (Quite Interesting)

Organic Computing

2008-08-11T15:59:00.002+02:00

Anyone who's seen sunlight in the last 20 years knows that computers work in binary. Ones and zero's. On or off. There's no inbetween. It's structured, organised and predictable. It allows people like me to control a user's experience, anticipate their behaviour, and provide them with what they need. But why is this? Humans have a natural urge to organise. To put concepts into categories. To decide what is relevant and what can be ignored. But why is this? Because when we were barbarians (no offence to barbarians, they did a lot for our species) knowing what to pay attention to meant the difference between life and death.

Personally I don't make decisions until I know something about all the options presented to me. When there are only 2 options, the decision is easy. You can then begin assigning theoretical meanings to each value. "When this link changes colour, it means I've been to this page." The information that is given to you is simple, but you're willing to be more loosely coupled about the concept when it's in your mind, because then you're in control. As long as it's in the computer, the values of on or off means that electricity is flowing or it is not flowing, like a complex network of electric extention leads all plugged into each other, back and forth. Depending which lights you want on, you walk around flipping different switches. After a while you get bored and you start doing strange things such as synchronising Christmas lights to music.

This is the core of all electronics: Flipping switches really fast to make it do what you want.

The truth is, nothing is coldly logical. A computer may present itself in ones and zero's, but when you drill all the way down, those digits are stored somewhere on a disc. On that disc there's some physical medium being forced into a positive or negative state. The medium may well be able to store more values, such as half-on or almost off. But if it did, it would be much more complicated to control.

But now we've become used to the basic functionality of computers. (I use the term "basic" loosely) Now we want a computer that can think and deduce like a person. We want a computer in our fridge that will order milk over the internet when you're running low. We want a door that unlocks when you ask it to. We want computer-controlled players in games that can play against us as if we're playing against a friend, making mistakes like a human player would. So we programmers end up trying to get ones and zero's to seem like they're thinking. To appear to have several options such as half-on or almost off. We end up taking the analogous medium, forcing it into a controllable digital medium, only to create a pretend analogous experience.

In my opinion, the only way we can create machines that can think, is to leave the electronic and robotic environment behind and work with something pure, something natural. Something that works like a brain. As long as we're stuck behind coldly logical situations, we have to think of every possible scenario and prepare for it. We can never just leave the thing to learn. A computer, no matter how advanced, can never truly be spontaneous. The problem is, creatures have spent millions or years making mistakes, only the lucky few surviving, to develop the natural ability to learn. Even a child of a few weeks old can learn from their own experience (with a little help).

As far as I know the closest we've ever come to a human-created thing teaching itself is Lucy the Android (pictured).

There isn't really a point to this. I'm just putting out there something that was mulling around in my head the last few days... It's all very interesting once you start reading up on it a bit. Comments welcome, especially if it's philosophical...

Words:
"Anyway what went wrong with A. I.? Well its all this guy’s fault and I presume most of you recognise Alan Turing. He was probably the one person qualified to expect that by now nobody would be making me stand up here and talk about how we were going to achieve human like intelligence because we would have done it. Because 52 years ago, he made this prediction 'By the end of the century one would be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted'. Well the end of the century came and went a couple of years ago and coincidentally the time ran out for Turing's prediction the exact second when computers were destined to tell us how stupid they were on account of the fact that they couldn't add up the date properly. So it all went horribly wrong and around the turn of the century I started thinking about why it went wrong. I considered it carefully and came up with the following considered opinion "its because we A. I. researchers are all narrow minded, domineering, chess playing computer nerds'."
-Transcript of Steve's keynote speech, "Machines Like Us," given at the Applied Knowledge Research Institute's 2002 Biennial Seminar

You're Overqualified

2008-08-02T12:43:00.005+02:00

Many of us have heard this phrase. It's the excuse they use to get rid of you when there's someone with lower qualifications but greater potential. And by potential I mean influence, or a family member in the company (good read).

But what it really means, and how it became an excuse in the first place, is what I'm discussing here.

When you finally get out of high school and start studying, it's the greatest thing since your driver's licence. You're finally studying for your passion, not just subjects that "will help you later in life". If you're going away from home to study it also brings independence. You can do what you want, when you want. To some degree you can even own what you want because many bursaries and student loans include living expenses. The problem arises a few years later, when you receive your bachelor's. Now you have a decision: Go work, or study further. There are a few arguments to table:

"What if I'm unqualified? Is a bachelor's degree enough?" Many companies and/or lines of work require further study. The more technical it becomes, usually the more specialised your studies need to become. Maybe an honour's degree? Or how about a doctorate?
"I don't have to pay my loan until I start working." Especially if you're from a less privileged household your parents are unwilling to or incapable of paying your loan for you. In many cases the massive debt hanging over your head is a good enough reason to avoid the real world of the middle-class low-income young adult.
"But there's so much more to learn!" Many students get stuck in the academic, working their way up from undergrad to grad to doctor to professor. They then make their living from writing papers on ridiculously focussed and specific subject matters that have no real-world implications other than to advance science in an obscure direction. Many students become apprentices to a professor at their university and later replace the professor.

These are all valid arguments, but are they feasible in a modern world?

I'm a programmer so my knowledge of the work environment is limited to the IT sector, but I think my logic extends to other fields. The most important thing in work isn't theory, it's experience. You can study for years and think you've seen everything, but I guarantee the first day on the job something will happen that you never saw coming. The only way to learn the tricks of the trade is to actually be part of the trade. If your dream job requires more study, I suggest finishing your first qualification and then getting a part-time job in the specific sector to start gaining experience. You can then continue your studies in whatever direction you need.

Often you study something thinking it's your dream career, but as soon as you start working you find out that it's not as glamorous as you thought. If you start working early enough, you won't waste so much time and money studying something you're not really into.

Then there's the counter argument: If experience is so much better than theory, why study at all? Because without any theory you're the temp secretary in the high-tech laboratory. You have no idea what's going on around you. Besides, no-one will take you seriously unless you have something behind your name. If no-one will take you, you will never get your golden "two years experience" that so many of the big players require.

So, to summarise: You need to study something relevant before you start working, but once you have a qualification that can get you a proper job, start working even if it's only part-time. Continue studies if you're interested, but keep tabs on what's needed in your sector and what the big companies are looking for. It doesn't help studying something that you love if it's only going to get you unemployed.

Words:
"I don't trust Apple, I just like them. Very much like dating a supermodel."
-ZA Tech Show: Episode 20

Survival of the Smartest

2008-07-24T14:43:00.003+02:00

If you spend a little time observing a pack of wolves, you quickly notice a hierarchy. There's an alpha male, considered the leader, and his followers. The followers all want to be the alpha, but unless they can challenge and defeat the alpha, they're forced to follow him. The females in the group would want to be with the alpha because he is the strongest or fastest of the males, and thus holds genes that would guarantee their offspring's future.

Humans were very much the same for a long time. The jock was the guy with the girls. He was the popular guy until someone appeared to be better than him, at which point he was replaced. Later this was shifted towards money. The richest guy was considered the popular one. He could make things happen. But recently, this balance of Survival of the fittest has shifted.

I read somewhere once that woman find Dilbert(pictured) attractive. Why is this? By all standards he's the lesser man. He's unhealthy and ugly. It's because he's a geek.

On a subconscious level, people realise that with the advent of the internet as a business and social tool, and a massive part of everyday life, the people who are involved in this sector are the ones with the reliable income in the foreseeable future. On the other side of the spectrum is the current sports star. Though they make millions in a very small time frame, their earning ability is directly linked to their health. And in this world of fast food and couch entertainment it becomes increasingly difficult to stay at the top of your game. It's no longer the survival of the fittest, it's survival of the smartest.

But don't think it's easy to stay at the top in the IT sector. The problem with a web-driven life is that it becomes susceptible to trend. Today people will love your product. Tomorrow they could be enthralled in someone else's product. Or worse, you could get sued for some repercussion that your product has in the real world, like what happened to Napster.

To stay on top in this environment, you need to stay up to date. And by date, I mean literally to the day. You need to know what's hot on the net, and what's the next big thing. This creates the problem that you might fall for a trend that lasts only a week. You could become a cloner...

Definition of word I just made up:

Cloner (noun)

A product or company that copies a successful idea almost to the letter, differing only enough to be distinct, but not enough to discredit the popularity.

On the other hand, cloners can often hit on an idea that makes their idea better than the original. You don't always get it right the first time. Take for instance MySpace. It allowed you to tell other people about you (and later about your band, company or whatever). You had a list of friends, but that's basically as far as you could take it. Then Facebook came along. In essence it was the same concept, but it was focussed on your real identity and your real friends. Not just that, but it shows you your mutual friends to help you figure out how you know someone. Later it also started showing you who you might know on Facebook that you didn't realise was on Facebook, by tracking who's friends are also your friends.

This simple link between the internet and everyday life made Facebook much more popular than MySpace. Not to mention more sophisticated. When you go to someone's MySpace page, you're bombarded by animations, video's, music, flashing banners, games... basically anything that you feel like putting on there. It's messy and noisy. Facebook has a rule: No active content on your profile unless the viewer activates it. It's much cleaner. They're also working on separating your profile into different areas, your critical information being the first thing you see. The rest of your content will be shifted to another page, so a viewer only has to see it if they're interested in it. (do I get my commission now?)

The internet and its relating technologies is where the sustainable income of the future will be. And if you're careful, you might be one of the lucky few to end up on top.

Words:
"First, I sit up. Writing is serious business for which your spine must be straight. I also lean my head slightly downward, looking up at my words as I write. Occasionally I mumble what I'm typing… no clue why."
-Rands in Repose