Category Archives: Misc

"The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks."

- Douglas Adams

So true, so true. There is just something about being able to say that something is "impossible" that is so much more satisfying than having to say that it is "almost impossible". This one also applies well to software development. When debugging code, a typical strategy involves elminating the bits of code that cannot have caused the problem, until you are left with only one bit that therefore must have caused the problem. The challenge always comes from the fact that with any moderately-complex software, you can never with 100% certainy say that it is "impossible" that a certain piece of code is causing problems. This becomes a very irritating fact. The debugging process eventually degenerates into one of two approaches - a "brute force" approach, where the developer systematically disables one bit of code at a time until the problem goes away, or the "inspired" approach, where the developer uses educated guesses and hunches to zero-in on the problem code right away. And of course, that almost never works, and the developer eventually reverts back to the "brute force" approach.

Not too long ago, Henry Jenkins - the director of comparative studies at MIT - wrote an article debunking eight of the major myths about video games. If you'd like to read the entire article, you can find it here. But there are a couple that I'd like to mention, mostly because certain politicians have been using video games as a way to pander to their constituents lately (*cough* Hilary Clinton *cough*), and have been playing on parents' fears without any real science or research to back up the claims they are making.

Claim #1 - Video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.
What the federal crime statistics actually show is we are in the middle of a 30-year low in the rate of violent juvenile crime. The overwhelming majority of kids play video games - 90% of boys and 40% of girls. Why aren't all of these kids comitting crimes? According to the Surgeon General (in a 2001 report), the strongest factors in violent juvenile crimes were mental stability and quality of home life. Which makes sense, when you think about it.

Claim #2 - Video games are not a meaningful form of expression.
Are they serious? Anyone who has ever actually played a video game (especially an RPG), will agree that video games can be an extremely powerful form of expression. Because the player participates directly in the story, sometimes a good video game can even be more powerful than a book or a movie, where the viewer (or reader) is just a passive bystander. Video games have made me personally feel every emotion in the sprectrum, at one point or another. Comments like this one are just plain ignorant. Will Wright, the creator of the incredibly popular game "The Sims" said in an interview that "games are perhaps the only medium that allows us to experience guilt over the actions of fictional characters. In a movie, one can always pull back and condemn the character or the artist when they cross certain social boundaries. But in playing a game, we choose what happens to the characters." At different points in our history, this same complaint (of something not being a "meaningful form of expression") has been leveled at jazz, rock and roll, and comic books - all three of which are now widely excepted as art forms in their own right.

Anybody else have any opinions or comments they'd like to add?

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."

- Douglas Adams

Today, is the first of a planned series of 42 Douglas Adams quotations I plan to post. For those who don't understand the significance of the number 42, read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" - I promise you won't regret it. Doug Adams was a fount of wit, and is sorely missed.

Today's quote especially applies to the realm of software. I can't even begin to count the number of times I thought I had designed a piece of software to be completely bulletproof, only to have someone unfamiliar with it do something completely unexpected and core dump it within seconds. Anticipating what a user will do is often more art than science, and it's a skill I seem to be developing as of late. Does that imply something about the folks I work with? Heh!

I came across something cool on flickr this past week. Richard Sweeney creates geometric sculptures out of paper, by scoring and folding. They are pretty amazing, and some of them have a bit of an M.C. Escher feel to them. Check them out.

There's a podcast I listen to called Coverville. The host of the show, Brian Ibbot, plays only cover songs - and usually some very interesting or obscure ones at that. Sometimes Brian does a theme show he calls "Originalville", where he plays the original versions of songs that were made much more famous by someone else as a cover. In those cases, most people don't even realize that the version they know is actually a cover of an earlier, less popular artist. The March 31st show was especially cool. Did you know that "Honky Tonk Woman" was not originally performed by the Rolling Stones? Or that "Oops, I Did it Again" was actually originally a 30's jazz song? Check out the March 31st episode of Coverville, and hear the originals!

For those who don't play video games - or have never played a game enough to find one - "easter eggs" are the little secrets hidden in a game for persistent users to find. Gamespot recently posted an article entitled "The Greatest Easter Eggs In Gaming", and it was fun to reminisce over some of them. The cow level in Diablo II has got to be one of my all time favorites. Diablo II was a action RPG about fighting demons will huge swords and the like. So having a hidden level that was full of evil cows that continually bleated "Moo" while they attacked you was just hilarious. Finding Reptile in Mortal Kombat was also another of those awesome easter egg moments. Does anybody else remember any great gaming easter eggs?

This picture was taken by the fisheye lens camera on the Huygens probe as in descended to the surface of Titan - Saturn's largest moon. Titan is wreathed by a thick layer of clouds, and its suface cannot be seen from the Earth. This probe was released from the Cassini orbiter on a close approach of Titan, and parachuted down through Titan's atmosphere to land on the surface. Even cooler, if you check on NASA's website you can find a time-lapse video of the descent to the surface, as seen by this fisheye lens. Very cool.

I've been listening to an interesting podcast recently - it's called "Seventh Son", and is acutally more of an ameteur audiobook. It's pretty entertaining so far - especially for something that was free. :)

Here's the premise, direct from the author's website:

7th Son, Book One: Descent is the story of seven strangers who have been brought together after the recent assassination of the U.S. president. These seven men quickly discover they have one disturbing thing in common: They all appear to be the same man, with the same name ... and the same childhood memories.

Unwitting participants in a human cloning experiment, these "John Michael Smiths" have been gathered by their creators for one reason -- to catch the man who murdered the president.

Their target? The man they were cloned from; the original John Michael Smith, code-named John Alpha.

The author has recorded and posted 13 episodes so far (of a planned 24), and if you've got the time and dig sci-fi, check it out!

Skylab was the first space station put into orbit by the United States. The station weighed 75 metric tons, and was in orbit from 1973 until 1979. Unfortunately, the station was only manned for 171 days out of its 2249 days in orbit. One interesting this about Skylab is that it was actually the refitted second stage of a Saturn IB booster rocket, leftover from the Apollo program.

I hit level 40 last weekend in World of Warcraft, and was finally able to purchase a mount. Sweet! Aside from just being able to get around faster, these things are the real status symbol of achieving level 40+. I remember being a low level character, checking out all of the high-level folks heading out of town on their mounts - and how I had to hoof it across the same terrain at half the speed.

I've also come across a couple of cool sights while exploring the world in this game, and you can see a few of screenshots below. The first image reminded me of the huge Christ statue on a mountaintop overlooking Rio de Janeiro. The second image is of a dam in the game world that holds back an enormous lake - I really dig the dwarven faces carved into the dam, with the water spilling out of their mouths. Cool visual.