Everything sucks, part 2

In my last post, I lamented how everything sucked. Or, phrased in a less exaggerating and sensationalist way, how the focus on individual features and the push to get things out in the wild quickly prevented us from having wonderfully well-integrated experiences.

A subsequent idea popped into my head that I want to explore. Complaining just generates a lot of noise without any action. But what if we could actually act on the things that's bugging us? What if we could develop and contribute changes to the products we loved, to benefit ourselves as well as other users of that product?

Open Source Software
Yup, that's pretty much what the ideal of open source software is. If you think something sucks bad enough, just fix it. Here's the program, here's the code, just fix it. If it's a product with ongoing development, then hopefully you can have some central repository to commit your changes to. And, hopefully, it's one such that future releases will contain your fix, eliminating the bad user experience for all of its users.

There are two problems with this approach. One, it turns out it doesn't actually succeed at making seamless user experiences (it can be argued that it makes it even worse). Two, everybody thinks they're special and they don't want to share.

No matter how well-intentioned the open source developer is, they can't build an experience. They can only build more features. Maybe it's a tiny bug fix, or maybe it's a full feature rewrite. But piecemeal additions to a larger codebase almost never have a unifying effect on the overall experience. In fact, they usually fracture the experience, forcing it into a mere collection of well-working features.

Invariably, to have a good overall experience, someone needs to have the oversight to see how each of the individual features contributes to the overall experience. This lends itself to some sort of leadership or management role of the project, rather than a fully distributed model of development.

Unfortunately, the projects that have this kind of guidance rarely favor releasing their hard work under an open source license. I can only speculate that the drive for such tight control over the entire product, which is the very feature that can breed a wonderful user experience, is the very same drive that makes them want to keep the innerworkings of their project under wraps. They don't want developers outside of their own to change things, because they could change things in a way that is poor to the overall experience.

Then there's the business and legal side. I think software development in general is crippled by legal decisions. If you release your code, others can copy it, sell it, and try to rob you of sales. I can't deny that this is a possibility, but it's unfortunate that the possible bad action of a few bad apples is preventing me from being able to contribute my skills to interesting projects.

Does everything suck?

I read this article last week about how gamers are spoiled; we keep getting better games, but we keep being disappointed because we find such small things to latch on and to say that it ruins the experience.

I also saw this comic about how to make the web design of your shopping cart suck less. The points made in this cartoon are great, and they really apply to all forms on the web, not just shopping carts.

At some point, I begin to question my own ability to be upset about the small things. On one hand, I feel like I've been trained to make mountains out of mole hills. If I don't latch on to the tiny things that collectively add to an overall more seamless user experience & complain loudly about them, then the odds of these things being noticed by people who have the power to change them is practically nil. But constantly complaining is tiring and thankless; even if I get to see all of what I want fixed, odds are there will still be more to do in the next version.

This is how I'll always have work as a software developer: there's always more work to do. But from the consumer side of things, it's just a lot of stuff that doesn't work that well.

Take Kinect, for example. I can essentially talk to my TV and have it start playing a football game from last week, while I'm standing in the kitchen & cooking. It's miraculous. This is the future.

Then I try and play music. Wait! You haven't downloaded the Zune app, do you want to download it? Suddenly my Xbox is deaf and no matter what obscenities I shout I can't get it to download the app to play me some damn music without washing my hands, finding the controller, and pushing a button. What is this, 2010?

Or I'll stand in front of Kinect and wave my hand so it knows I want to gesture at it. Then I launch a Kinect game, and it forgets that I was just talking to it. I'm standing right here. I have to wave frantically again for you to remember that I'm the only person in the room? You know what, eff it, I don't want to play this game anymore. It drops me out to the Kinect Hub and once again, forgets who I am, and makes me wave my arms frantically to control it yet again.

These experiences are terrible, the magic of modern technology aside. They're disruptive, they get in my way, and they give me something to complain about. But these aren't minor technical issues, these are serious breaks of customer flow that frustrate me.

It's my fault, really. They built a magic box. I wanted to have a magic box immediately. They got some stuff working really well, and then had to decide if building a seamless MagicBox experience was worth not giving me a magic box that worked well enough in some cases right now. They probably even asked me and I said "RIGHT NOW GIMMIE GIMMIE" but then somewhere along the line (probably with marketing) they neglected to tell me that everything wasn't diamonds & unicorns. They didn't pare down my exaggerated expectations and left me to discover for myself that what they had built wasn't actually a magic box but actually just a new kind of joy stick.

But some things really can't even be placed on marketing setting expectations too high. I expect that if I click on a label next to the checkbox, that the website will know that I mean to click the checkbox. I expect that if I press the 'tab' key, I can cycle through the important input fields in a page. These aren't lofty expectations, but since they're always secondary to the person building the website, they often get overlooked. Then I try things, find out my moderate expectations weren't met, get frustrated and have reason to complain.

One final example. It's review time at Amazon. The free-form field inputs are a wonderful expanse to let me express where I believe my peers have excelled, and where they have the opportunity to improve. But these expansive anecdotes must then be categorized into one of twelve Areas of Leadership. These are short titles with lofty explanations to show that you Save Money(tm) and Care About The Customer(tm).

They're also checkboxes without labels. But that's not my point.

The lofty leadership categories are in no way indicative of the qualities that I need to see in my coworkers. They're not the ones that they need to have in their core skill set. They're just a good-sounding collection of words that suit movie posters or book covers better than performance reviews.

And at the end of it, I have about 16 more qualities that I have to rate the person on, either "Agreeing" or "Disagreeing" (perhaps Strongly) that it is a quality they posses. Except these are all vague lofty technical qualities that we pretty much screen for in the interview process. "Writes Good Code"? "Seeks The Root Cause of Problems"? "Communicates Effectively"? If they didn't, why would they be here? This reduces all of my responses to a combination of "Agree" and "Strongly Agree", which they even obscure further by trying to compute a mathematical average of my judgements, pretending that has value.

And for the ones that I don't list Agree with, there's no room for feedback as to why. Because in reality, everyone has these traits, but some of them can use more improvement than others. Only having "Agree" and "Strongly Agree" is not enough variance for me to help them. So I have to lie and say I disagree with things, but I can't say why.


So when it comes down to it, this is what I see all day. Varied products and projects and tools that I have to interface with. Some design or implementation detail that hinders my intended task, and then a world of frustration and things to complain about. Does everything suck like this? Is there no product that really nails the full end-to-end experience and gets out of my way and lets me do my thing?

Short Update

I missed posting yesterday. I'll make up for it. Honest.

Yesterday was awesome. A double-header in the morning, followed by lunch with friends. Then, in the evening, I went to a formal party hosted at Kong's house. I won the award Classiest Man.

But that story is nothing without pictures, and I don't have pictures. And I know, according to the rules of the Internet, that until I have pictures then it didn't happen. But there were other people taking pictures, so as soon as they're up on Facebook I can cross-post them here and tell that story.

For now, I'm just a dude who had a busy day, didn't write a blog entry, and has no material proof of it. :)

Anything else

I'm trying so very hard to think of something to write about that isn't work. Shit is still going wrong, and we told them to account for the fact that shit could go wrong in the schedule, but they were convinced that this time, there would be absolutely no delays of any kind. Once again, the people building the product know more than the people deciding how the product should be built.

But that's work. That's exactly what I'm not thinking about, and that's exactly what I won't be writing about. Instead, I'll be writing about anything else.

Anything at all.

Hmm...

I've been really enjoying WNYC's Radiolab. They're really well produced pieces on a variety of subjects. I found the whole audio switching sort of chaotic and distracting until I got used to it, but it has its charm. I've just been putting them on while I work, and letting myself get wrapped up in the story while I push bits around. I think it's been lowering my stress.

And really that's just what I want. As many bad decisions are made, as many late breaking changes, as many scheduling and planning disruptions, I just need it not to have any effect on me personally.

But I was talking about something else.

Oh, also, I'm really liking my fancy new computer glasses. I look anyway from ridiculous to awesome, depending on who you ask, but I think they work. My eyes definitely feel more relaxed staring at a computer screen all day. I get fewer exhaustion headaches at the end of the day, and don't often feel like I'm going to crash when I get home from work. That could also be to to my other efforts to lower my stress, as well as me switching to tea instead of caffinated high-fructose-corn-syrup'd cola. And that I've been drinking so much water. But it could also be the glasses.

The color shift is really the worst part about them. I notice it less and less now, but the distinct yellow-tint to my world always takes a few minutes to get used to when I put them on. The computer screens look absolutely fine; no super-yellow screens for me. But the rest of the world that isn't beaming light directly into my eye-holes does look distinctly more yellow. And then blue, when I take my glasses off.

It is a bit odd that I'm trying to prevent eye fatigue, which could make me wear glasses, by wearing glasses which prevent eye fatigue.

Oh well.

I'm a lyricist, not a songwriter

Writing songs is hard.

I mean, I realize that the whole point of it is to try and do things that (a) I don't normally do and (b) That will be a bit more challenging for me than the safe, comfortable things I'm good at.

But man, writing songs is hard.

I've got one written. Like, done. It's not great, but it's catchy, and with any luck it could save your life. You'll see what I'm talking about when I post it. I just have a rough version recorded so far so I don't forget it; I didn't want to deal with producing the final audio and/or YouTube clip when I finished writing it.

That's the other thing; it hadn't occurred to me that when I said "I'll post it on YouTube" that I'd actually have to produce a video of me performing the song. I'm genuinely not the strongest guitar player, so playing a song I just wrote and singing the words I also just wrote is hard to do at the same time. Usually, technology saves me by only making me perform one of those at a time, then just laying one over the other. I bet I could just do that with the video too. Or maybe I could just practice the song well enough to do it for YouTube. We'll see. I'm thinking of calling this first song "Rooftop Plea".

I have been trying to write these songs in different ways, but again, it's hard. With the rap songs I've written before, it was always super easy to just come up with a concept, a cadence, some clever words, and then a bunch of other words to put between the clever bits of words to make a song of decent length. With the last melodic song I wrote, I tried coming up with a chord progression before writing lyrics. That worked well enough, and I got a pretty good song out of it.

With Rooftop Plea, I tried getting the song written before the words. I did a different sort of plucking cadence than usual, and didn't use chords. And, when I sat down to write it, it was going to be a completely different song. But then I was like "This sad sap song is boring me. Let's make it something awsome". To which I responded, "Yes, of course, awesome! That's just what this song was missing"

I've gotten a bit carried away with that now into my second song. I've got some great lyrics and a pretty catchy tune. Well I have some great lyrics, anyway. Unfortunately, the tune I'm hearing is only in my head, and I lack the auditory ability to figure out what chord progression for it is. It also is by far the most complex chord progression in any of my songs. Also, I think I'm hearing an ukulele instead of a guitar.

But still! I'll figure out something. It's gonna be a good second song. Well, it'll have good words, anyway.

Book Review: Machine of Death

This comic started it all, a little over 5 years ago. The seed idea. What would happen if a machine was invented that could tell you, with a mere sample of your blood, how you were going to die? It's never wrong, although its predictions can be uselessly vague. And that is your fate, regardless of your actions to reject it, embrace it, forget it or ignore it.

Well, it went from a joke in a comic, to folks deciding to make a book about it. They asked writers from all over to contribute stories with the same premise. Then they pulled them all into this book, Machine of Death.

The books authors are also really forward-thinking tech folks. The website for this book has news about it and an increasing number of its short stories available as podcasts. And, the best part, is that you can have the book for free if you want. Yup, completely no-cost and free of DRM. Just openly released under the Creative Commons license. That kind of openness genuinely does make me want to give them money so more publishers follow suit. But I digress.

Machine of Death an interesting read. Good, not great. Its flaws are in its format. Some of the short stories are pithy, uninteresting bits about more mediocre details of daily life living with the Machine of Death. But then there are some amazing tales that I'm really upset to find out they only get one chapter. Each chapter is titled with a prescribed death from one of the characters in its story. My favorites are, in no particular order, Almond, Hiv Infection From Machine Of Death Needle, Exhaustion From Having Sex With A Minor, and Loss of Blood.

Each of these stories don't precisely fit in the same universe, but it could easily be argued that they all in fact do coexist in the same universe, and the minor indiscrepancies are merely do to poor recollection on the part of a character in the story. But the diverse implications of such a device are mesmerizing. Would we establish a minimum national age to be tested by the Machine? Would we try it for a while, then ban it altogether? Would children be tested at birth? Would you become criminal if you refused testing? Could a court order you to get tested to help in a federal investigation?

All these different scenarios play out in the book. It's amazingly intriguing to see the same simple premise have such a diverse array of consequences. There are stories of love, betrayal, science, and politics.

Oddly enough, there aren't many death stories. That was probably the biggest misconception when I began reading it. I was sure that each of these chapter titles would be a death foretold by the Machine, and the story would be about a new character who got this death prescribed to him, and who tried desperately to escape, only to cause his own demise. I mean, I guess that would be a difficult story to re-tell 30 different ways. But I thought it would really be a mystery of just guessing and second-guessing what the interpretation of such a vague death could mean for the current protagonist.

But it's really not about that. Not all the stories end with someone dying. Just because some predictions can be vague, doesn't mean that all of them are. They do tend to make for interesting stories, though.

Everything is stupid

I'm in a bad mood.

Wait, back up.

I feel like 'efficiency' isn't so much a good recommendation as it is a life philosophy to engineers. Anyone with technical skill wants to do things in such a way so they take less time, less resources. In fact, it's a pretty easy follow-up question to any interview question. Just ask what you normally ask, and then "OK, can you do it faster? With less memory? With less resources?"

If they're good, they've already thinking of a faster way to do things. Or they can clearly explain why their way is unequivocally the fastest. If they're OK, then they begin thinking of it when you ask. They'll at least poke around a while and try things out to see if there is something they could do differently. A flat out "no" is the only wrong answer.

But that sentiment permeates from the interview question to everything else in life. Why should I take side streets if the freeway looks faster? If I cut through this parking lot, instead of walking around it, it could save me like 2 seconds on my walking commute. What other ways can I save my time, my money, my mental and physical exertion doing things that I do often?

I definitely type 9-0 when I want to microwave something for a minute & thirty seconds because it's one keypress faster than typing 1-then-3-then-0. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this.

The difficulty in all this comes in dealing with folks who don't think the same way. Or who don't realize that engineers think this way. Or maybe just from some group of people who are yet-to-be properly classified. These are the folks who ask you for things that you already told them. The ones who make you do the same thing you did for them over and over again, with each subsequent action having absolutely no additional consequence than the first time you did it.

I'm not expecting people to be computers. Mistakes can be made, things can be lost or forgotten. And sometimes you need to repeat yourself. But by the second or third time, the request should change from "Can you do this" to "I'm sorry to keep asking, but i need this again" and eventually to "we need to think of a better way to do this"

But no. I'm upset. Mostly because things haven't progressed past the first part. I've spent the better part of two weeks going in circles. I'm sick of it. I really am.

And it's really just a waste of my time, my resources.

It's just goddamn inefficient.

Missed a Day

Shit. Apparently, I missed a day? I thought I was doing good about keeping up on the daily posts, but apparently I spaced on Sunday. And then didn't notice it until today. I'm a sharp one.

I'll have to make an additional post to catch up. So, you know, be ready for that.


It's snowing outside right now. And not like the wimpy flurry we had a few days ago, it's really coming down. The streets are just covered in white, like someone covered the whole area with sand. A white, cold, sand. That looks like snow.

Ugh my analogies are terrible. Have the years of literal thinking really corroded my creative writing side into something that is not as good because it's so corroded? Can't I still evoke imagery with words that make you see what it is I'm seeing without telling you what it is I'm seeing. Well, I mean, by using words, but by using slightly different ones than a normal person would. Whereby 'normal' I mean non-writer types. Which, by the looks of it, currently includes me.

Maybe I should just start writing in analogies exclusively, like an artist gone mad after an attacker tried to kill him one night. Left traumatized, all his works of art are shadowy images of that fateful night, evil shapes lurking in the darkness, their intentions clear as day. And try as he might, he can't shake these images form his mind, can't shake them from his work, can't shake them from the prison he's made for himself. The images just keep coming, and coming, and coming.

Except for me it'll be analogies. But less dark. More funny.

Maybe only a little dark.

TTYL MFER

I don't have a whole lot to write about today. But here's an interesting chat I had with Craig a few months ago. Since then, my favorite way to say goodbye to someone is TTYL MFER. Unfortunately, it has not been widely adopted by the internet at large. Yet.

wooo hawaii

12:46 AM Craig: eggsellent

12:47 AM me: that was a terrible yolk

12:48 AM Craig: it's late, my mind is scrambled

12:49 AM me: hold up, omelette you finish, but i just wanted to say that beyonce had one of the best videos OF ALL TIME

12:53 AM Craig: aaahhh why did I start with the egg thing, I can't think of anything remotely clever anymore I give up!

  you cracked me, I guess

12:54 AM me: haha

12:55 AM you went over easy.

  BOOM

12:56 AM Craig: you could say that you were a "craig beater"

12:57 AM me: haha

  even when we stop we're still going. :)

12:59 AM ok, well i'm going to go to bed

  at least until I see the sunny side up

 Craig: STOP IT

  :-)

1:00 AM me: ok

  egg jokes over

 Craig: TTYL MFER

Playing Left Handed

Today was Hangover, a 1-day ultimate tournament in Seattle. We spent the whole day running around breathing in the cold Seattle air trying to chase down a disc before it hits the ground, only to gladly fling it in the air again once we caught it. And then doing it again and again.

I genuinely like Ultimate, but I've begun to get bored of it. In college ultimate, there was always change. Every year a new batch of recruits to teach the rules to and teach 'em how to throw a flick. Every year more folks moving on up to the A team and trying to compete for a shot at the national title. And every year, your opponents changed similarly; it might have been the same teams, but it was always new people. And some years, we'd get new coaching squads, so we'd be tasked with learning an entirely new offense to the sport. Or new defensive positions and plays. It was awesome.

Things have kind of slowed down since then. I play with a bunch of folks who live around here. They don't graduate and move away. There isn't an A team to move up to that still feels like my team. There aren't coaches to teach me anything I don't already know. There aren't 60 new recruits every year to get excited about. And there's no championship to work toward. There's just us, a crowd of friends who like the sport, against other crowds of friends who also like the sport. They don't change, and neither do we.

That's part of why it broke my heart when my college alum team decided to get competitive. There's one tournament a year up here where everyone from the US (and around the globe) joins up to play some ultimate, and that's really the best time to play with folks you haven't seen in forever, and whose bonds should be stronger than ever, on account of being teammates for 3-4 years. But that's a sore spot, and a whole different story.

I needed something to change. I don't want to quit playing; that's a bit too drastic of a change. I want to try something new and work hard and improve at it, or just try something new and fail miserably.

So I've decided to be left-handed for winter. We'll see how things turn out in the long run; right now it's mostly a "failing miserably" situation. I played one game last weekend left handed and actually made some pretty decent plays. Today I played mostly left handed and didn't fare much better.

I don't really notice it, but apparently my decision to have shitty throws for the next 2-3 months (or at least most of today) has really upset some of my teammates. I tried going right-handed for half of one game, and it upset me terribly. It kinda helped me see how my mind works when i'm playing the game.

When I play right-handed, I play with years of experience. I'm not so sure that I'm *actually* the best player on the team, but i definitely psyche myself up by telling myself that I am. I play hard and controlled, thinking in high-level concepts about the entire game, like judging the wind and tilt of the disc to throw something that will fly to a specific part of the field and slow down so my teammate can get to it. All these things just come naturally to me because I've done them for so long.

And then I notice when my teammates turn it over. It hits someone in the hands, and hits the turf. Wind catches a throw and it goes too far. Or they throw it right in the ground. And it upsets me. I've worked so hard on my game, and you're just going to take my disc and let it hit the ground. It's not right. I don't like it.

But when I play left-handed, none of that worries me. I'm thinking about myself. Where I'm standing, what grip the disc is in. What person closest to me can i get rid of the disc to so I can start running again? I genuinely don't want to turn it over, but it doesn't worry me when it happens. It's more "Oh well, nice try, we'll get it back."And sometimes we do.

And that's really the attitude I want to have on the field. This isn't elite-level here. This is C pool. If we're out here to have fun, let's have fun. Yeah, turning the disc over sucks, but complaining about it and getting personally offended by it (as I do when I've got my competitive switch turned on) doesn't really help the team.

But then again, neither does being (without exaggeration) the worst thrower on the team. But, like I've told hundreds of kids before, that should just come with practice. Hopefully, it will.

Autobiography

Most of my blog posts aren't autobiographical. When I used to regularly update my blog, they were, and those really were the entries that I enjoyed re-reading after a few years had past. I'd like to make more of those entries, but there are a few obstacles in my way.

First of all, I can't talk about my work. Once I can talk about my work, I may be a bit more open on the subject, but until then I'm erring on the side of saying nothing at all rather than saying something that, in retrospect, I shouldn't have. It's a bit unfortunate that my day is taken up by 8 hours of stuff I can't talk about.

Secondly, my free time is filled with entertainment. I'll be playing ultimate, playing video games, reading the internet, reading on my kindle, or doing one of the many side projects I want to get done this year. All that time spent doing those things leaves me wanting to talk about them, but it doesn't make for a very personal narrative.

Thirdly, I'm trying to keep these posts interesting. Ultimate is on my brain most of the time. Then there's highly technical web stuff. These things are interesting to me, but I have this ill-conceived notion that the internet at large doesn't need more posts on those subjects. I really should just get over it and write about that stuff anyway. Maybe on another post.


One interesting thing of note: last night was my first shot at making Thai Yellow Curry with Chicken. It was delicious. I thought about taking a picture, but it was tasty-looking and I was hungry. Not a good combination for the curry. Or for my blog, for that matter.

Scientific ESP

There's a recent article in the New York Times describing the latest controversy in the scientific community. It looks like someone has done research on ESP, and a paper about their research has been accepted into a respected scientific journal. Psychic scientists everywhere love it, rigorous physics-loving scientists say that it's a joke.

I especially liked this part of the article:

In his version, Dr. Bem gave 100 college students a memory test ... and found they were significantly more likely to remember words that they practiced later. “The results show that practicing a set of words after the recall test does, in fact, reach back in time to facilitate the recall of those words,” the paper concludes.

This feels like the very thing statisticians warn everyone against. Correlation vs causation. In other words, "I don't think those numbers mean what you think it means"

Suppose for a second that whatever scientific methods this guy used are legit. He gives you a memory test, and scoring higher on that test is highly correlated by the amount of studying you do after the test. Aside from giving a bunch of underprepared college students yet another reason to not study for finals, he also makes a big leap. Stating that this test implies a causal link would infer that there are statistical analysis methods that are independent of the flow of time.

This interests me more than the ESP. It's pretty easy to show things are correlated if they are. But to say that one causes another is another matter entirely. Usually you have to do some experiments with two nearly identical groups, one in which you inject what you believe to be the causal element, and one in which you do not. In some cases, the latter needs to be tricked into thinking they have been given something so that knowledge isn't another difference between the groups. Then you watch, and wait, and only after time has passed can you conclusively say if that one causal element that you used is wholly responsible for the differences between the two groups.

Time must have passed. You can't have a causal link that is independent of the flow of time. That's not how physics works, that's not how chemistry works, and that's certainly not something that current statistical methods allow.

But let's suppose that there are causal links that aren't dependent on time. That right now, the outcome of something is dependent on what I do in the future. How could we prove that in a statistical context?

I don't have any real answer, but it's interesting to think about.

Game Review: Halo Reach

Halo: Reach is the latest installment in the Halo universe. You probably already know all about it. You shoot stuff that moves. It dies. Woohoo.

I'm not a big fan of vanilla shoot-em-up games. I kinda feel like the "run around and shoot everything" gameplay has be done countless times over again. Unfortunately, I seem to be in the minority with this opinion, as the game studios just keep making games where you're someone who runs around and shoots everything. Even the hardware vendors are in on it; the controllers themselves have triggers for each hand that really best suit being in a game where you use some device with a trigger to interact with everything. And so, naturally, most games choose guns.

Despite my boredom with this gameplay mechanic, I still bought Halo: Reach and I'll still buy a handful of other shooters for the same reason: compelling story. As I've mentioned, a good story is really why I play most games. Bungie has a reputation for great story telling, and even though I found their last game to have a pretty short campaign, it was interesting and well-told.

But this time around, they've collapsed in on themselves like a dying star. It makes me wonder if the "last hurrah" of the development company wasn't really them just going "really, microsoft? Another one of these? Fine, here's something quick but that's the last time, we're done, you're on your own".

The concept isn't half as bad as its execution. You're not the lone hero defeating an alien armada, you're the noob to an elite fighting squad who have to play defense as the aliens kick our ass. Everything sounds heroic and looks shiny, but this has to be the worst writing since Too Human. Each of the characters belt out their particular goals or problems, with all-too-authentic military dialog. Which simply means that unless you're a Halo fanboy or actually in the military, most of what they say is complete gibberish.

And that's just the cutscenes. The in-game storytelling is substantially worse, because everyone who's talking to you is in a barely-moving armored suit. Admittedly, Red vs Blue built its whole web series out of that, but they had the benefits of better writing and being able to direct the camera to show which armored suit the voice was coming from. I shouldn't need full surround sound just to figure out who's talking to me. And that what they're saying is completely incomprehensible.

What it all amounts to is a series of cutscenes (and in-game dialog) where something happens, but I don't know what. Then we have a mission to go somewhere, but I'm not sure where until the HUD pops up and tells me "Over here, 400m away". Or, if the HUD doesn't help, just running towards whatever packs of enemies are still alive.


Needless to say I was incredibly frustrated, unsatisfied, and generally disappointed at the campaign's conclusion. The multiplayer made me feel a bit less bad about buying the game, but most of the fun had there was because I was playing with my brother, and we had some pretty epic battles (only me & him vs 4 other people winning handily 50-26? BOOYA!). But just because multiplayer was fun doesn't take away from the poor job of the single-player experience.

Despite all this, there were glowing points. Being in space was awesome, if a bit long. The new helicopter is cool, if a bit awkward to handle. The story reasons behind how I got into space and why I'm in a helicopter are preposterous, but the gameplay was new and fun. I can only hope Bungie's next adventure has more of this aspect to it than the run-of-the-mill tried-and-true shooter genre.

Video Game Story

I really like video games. I play all kinds, but my favorite games really center around a great story telling experience. I believe that video games are the absolute best medium for a story; moreso than books, TV or the movies. The reason for this can be justified in one word: immersion.

All story telling vehicles rely on getting you immersed in the world the author is trying to create. There needs to be a believable setting, a cast of identifiable or, at the very least, understandable characters. Bad stories are the ones that defy understanding; that leave you simply stating "that could never happen" as opposed to being swept away by the narrative.

Books try to do this by letting your mind fill in the gaps that mere words create. When you read, you hear a narrator's voice or a character's voice. Vivid descriptions conjure up sharp imagery in your mind. All of this to get you to connect with the story on some emotional level. A well written book can do a very effective job at making you care about people you've never met, who don't exist, in a place you've never been to. It can immerse you in its world.

Movies and TV work along the same lines, but whereas the world the book creates is more hidden and subtle, the world of TV and movies is a bit more overt. Good writing is still needed to give the characters volume and the air of believability, but more often then not the "immersive" qualities tend to be more technological ones; A high-def screen can give you an amazing level of visual detail. A surround-sound system can make you feel like what's happening before your eyes is actually happening all around you. These supplement the story and give your body the sense of being totally immersed in the fictitious world before you.

Story-driven video games take both of these one step further. Yes, they have to have the well-written world of books. Yes, they can have the same technological feel of amazing visuals and surround sound. But they introduce a whole other aspect that truly immerses the viewer: control.

In other mediums, the story is a sharp, straight line. The only control you have is whether to continue the story or not. In video games, it's not so simple. Even with games that have a strictly linear plot, it can't continue on unless you, playing as the main character, perform some action. The story may require you to go into a castle, but the door is closed. There isn't a button for "just go into the castle". Instead, you have to walk around the world, look through the eyes of the protagonist, open the door and walk through it to reach your destination. 

It's a little contrived example, but it illustrates the point. Actively requiring participation makes the person enjoying the story feel like it's happening to them; not just around them. They have to translate simply stated lofty goals ("Save the princess from the castle") into a series of normal, controlled actions (run, jump, break that block, avoid the fireball, run more). And, just like a good story, it doesn't really matter so much what happens as how it happens.

Some video games take advantage of this control to change the story around you; Mass Effect or Fallout 3 are prime examples of this. Not only are your actions just complicated means of achieving the goal you set out to complete, but the goals themselves change with how you try to reach them. You are given liberty to fully explore the worlds that these games have created without being bound to a specific story or narrative. 

This freedom is empowering. It really makes you feel like you are the protagonist. It lets the world of the story completely envelop you. It's absolutely the most immersive way to enjoy a story. Which simply makes it the best way to enjoy a story.

Book Review: World War Z

The first book I've read on my newfangled kindle is World War Z by Max Brooks. This is a great book that really emphasizes the "how" of great storytelling rather than the "what". The pithy subtitle aptly describes all the "what" you need to know.

"An Oral History of the Zombie War" aptly describes the setting for this book. There was a world war. It was humanity versus hoards of the undead. It has ended, and if we are not victors than at least we are survivors. And these are the stories of those who have managed to survive, telling us first hand of what actually happened. How did the infection start? How did it spread? And how poorly prepared were we to deal with such a threat?

Each of these perspectives gives a wider view of the world than a single narrative could. You get to see the horror from the perspective of doctors first running into the disease, leaders who have to figure out how to deal with such a mess, and average Joes who have to either nut up or shut up.

Sorry, that's a different Zombie story.

It's really interesting to see how this fictional post-apocalyptic world compares with that of Fallout 3, in which it wasn't zombies that decimated the world's government and infrastructure, but nuclear war. Some small details are different, but some common themes remain. Some folks band together and form small towns; the ones found in both stories are the ones most equipped to defend themselves against their attackers, undead or no. There are a few loners who survived somehow, but their experiences have left them at odds with the world, either catatonic or insane and eager to kill anything that moves.

One thing that kinda bugs me though is the difficulty in classifying the zombie threat. At first, the zombies are really classified as a medical condition; Patient Zero bites to transfer the infection and that infection causes death and reanimation. And all the initial perspectives on the matter view it as a disease outbreak, something entirely medical (albeit devastating).

But at some point, it's not just people getting sick, it's a massive undead army waging war. Military leaders discuss how best to defend against the hoard, or how to sweep through an area and rid it of zombies. Strategists give their opinions on how they can't be treated like a normal army. All of this is amazingly insightful and a brilliant read, but I can't help wonder why the world stopped looking at the medical side of the situation.

To the best scientific knowledge, these creatures defied life as we knew it. They're not alive, but they're animated somehow. Taking out an arm or a leg, or even decapitating them wouldn't be enough to kill them; you had to destroy the brain. This wasn't found through medical research, but by everyone trying to murder the zombies any way they could and finding out that most ways don't work. You gotta shoot 'em in the head.

But if the original plague that awoke the zombie hoard was an infection or parasite of something, wouldn't scientists be trying to find out? I would at least hope that while we have our best military men working to shoot all of the zombies in the head as they can, we have some courageous scientists somewhere working with live zombies or their remains or something to figure out a cure for the recently infected; maybe a vaccine to prevent infection or best yet, a chemical agent to neutralize the zombic germ in giant packs of zombies at once. Just have 'em all fall down, back to the lifeless state they should've been in long ago.

Alas, that personal anecdote never made it into this collection. There are some stories from folks in the pharmaceutical industry, but I've left those details out for the benefit of those who haven't read it yet.

All in all, it's a good read. I'm really more the type for quick chapters and short bursts of reading, but this book kept me turning pages for hours.

Kinect!

Today was my geek out day. I got a shiny new xbox with Kinect a few days ago, but hadn't yet had the time to properly set it up and play with it. So today I wired the new thing up and got all Kinectified.

Long story short, Kinect is fun. I definitely like the Dance Central control mechanism better than the one for the rest of Xbox and Kinect Adventures. It makes navigating the menu feel like I'm high fiving some friends standing in front of me but turned to their side. This is in contrast to waving my palm tentatively in front of me, like I'm trying to use the Force to command my will while simultaneously telling the xbox, "whoa, calm down. Please don't bite me."

The coolest moment was when Kathryn walked in front of the tv and it auto-signed her in. Very cool.

The worst is the amount of space it requires. Any Kinect game that plans to use depth information will be an absolute pain. Hopefully the game makers realize that depth is useless in games. At least until we have holograms. Or pervasive 3D TVs.

I'll have reviews of the games after I get a chance to play them more.

But for now, let's just say that my achievement hunting on Alan Wake and Mass Effect 2 is on hold for a bit. :)

Happy New Year

The new year is upon us. An entirely new future awaits us, one that will inevitably look like the many New Years past.

But this one is different, somehow. Everyone knows it, feels it. Somehow, this will be the year. The one where we accomplish what was too difficult before, the one where we attain that which just barely slipped past our grasp, the one where we finally get what we've always wanted.

Then again, that would make the following year somewhat pointless.

So, for me, this will be a year of challenges. New things that I didn't fail at last year because I didn't think to try them. Projects I've put on hold for mindless excuses or general fear of failing.

My project for January will be to write more songs. I will write at least two this month, hopefully 4. These will be song I can play on my guitar. I will post the results to YouTube.

Here's to a challenging 2011. :)

Project A Month

There are a lot of things I'd like to get done. Most of them get pushed off, mostly due to disorganization or time constraints. But I really don't think I'm as pressed for time as I think I am. So this year, my plan is to do a project every month. What constitutes a "project"? Well, anything that I've thought of doing that I haven't actually gotten around to doing yet. This includes:

• Writing daily
• Creating some original songs on my guitar.
• Self-publishing a kindle book
• Redesigning my website.
• Making a netflix-band wallet.
• Reading more books
• Writing an iPhone app
• Creating Boomerang (Twitter Score Reporter) v2.0
• Learning Node.js

The list goes on and on. And, in fact, the list has gotten quite long over time. So, I'm starting Project A Month to try and get myself to focus on one of these projects at a time, and follow it to some sort of conclusion. 

I'll probably start writing a couple of posts in advance so I'll have a buffer of blog entries for when I need a day away from my computer. But first I should figure out which of these projects I'm tackling in January. Hmm... What do you think I should do?

Barcamp Seattle Tomfoolery

A few weekends ago, I attended BarCamp Seattle. It's an unconference, which is basically a conference with a very ad-hoc plan. Last year I was mostly a lurker -- I didn't present anything and my only contribution was in a few of the group discussions. I had a blast and decided I really needed to do something this year. So I gave a talk.

Social Microgames
I like beer. And I like being social in unconventional ways. Originally, I wanted to talk about how this sparked the Friday Unwind social events, and a generally awesome peer atmosphere at my old team. The idea being I would tell people this kind of thing was a Good Idea^TM and they should do it too. But it felt like bragging. And was kinda boring. In the end, I cut a lot of stuff and decided just to focus on what made the Friday Unwind fun: the odd little games we played during it.

"Social Microgames" was the awkward phrase I coined for those games. Jinx and Rock/Paper/Scissors were my two common examples. Both have well understood rules, take about 5 seconds to play, and make interacting with other people a bit more fun. It went really well, and I was pleased to find out everyone else did something similar among their friends. I learned a handful of new games, and it was a good time all around. I also mentioned my success in playing the Dollar Game, where entertaining stuff happens for money. My slides are here and a video of it is here forthcoming as soon as Brian puts it up.

Jay's Webcock
@strutting did a great talk on things you should not do on Twitter, presented by facetiously recommending bad things to do. It was pretty funny. Unfortunately, the room we were in didn't have a projector, so all the work that Jay had put into his slides had been for his eyes only. Despite that, it was enjoyable talk that highlighted great ways to make a mess of twitter, including retweeting inane tweets.

We joked around for a bit afterward. Jay retweeted himself, making him a webcock. I retweeted his tweet about himself, making myself a webcock. It was good times.

Our ideas had a baby
I took it one step further by combining the webcockery of retweeting, the fun of my microgames, and the spirit of getting folks to talk with this tweet. Essentially, I challenged someone to re-talk the webcock talk.

Fortunately, there were some good folks in the crowd. @dyanw had missed the webcock session, but stepped up and decided to gave Jay's talk again. It was a train wreck from the start, with technical issues forcing Dylan to talk for a good 10 minutes about Webcocks without any guide whatsoever. To both their credits, Jay's slides were really nice and once they were up Dylan did a great job of presenting them as their own. I'm still not sure how many folks there got the whole in-joke, but Jay & I were laughing all the way through. Dylan clarified afterward to those who might've been confused..

The Epilogue
As a side note, it turns out that my Dollar Game has actually been made into a website. Well done, interwebs.

Multiple Identities

People with different responsibilities are said to put on different hats to illustrate which responsibility is currently governing their thought. I just put on a hat when I go run around outside and chase flying plastic.

But over time I do seem to have developed two distinct names, each associated with their own personality. In retrospect, it seems like a perfectly normal and sensible thing to do, but it also kind of makes me wonder which is the actual me.

Chris - Most of you know me as Chris. This is what I call myself in front of most people. A mild-mannered, polite individual. Chris wears collared shirts on occasion and has combed his hair the same way since the 4th grade. Chris is very risk-averse, and fairly antisocial. Chris would rather sit in silence to avoid saying something controversial than engage in conversation in an unfamiliar surrounding.

Downie - This is the Ultimate Player. Originally a simple disambiguation term between other Chris's on my team, I go by Downie even if there aren't other Chris's. Downie is aggressive, competitive, and horribly foul-mouthed. Off-color, racist, sexist, and otherwise offensive jokes are common from Downie. Downie's reaction to most things are to yell, swear, or both. This includes positive and negative reactions. Downie usually wears a hat.

There is certainly some cross-pollination between these personas. Mostly it's Chris drawing from Downie's better features. Karaoke is a prime example of this, especially when I get up in front of people I don't know and confidently belt out lyrics that may or may not be in my vocal range at the top of my lungs. Chris would not do that on his own.

Unfortunately, this cross-pollination is also occurring amongst the folks who interact with the different personas. Folks who know me as Chris at work see me playing ultimate and wonder why they call me Downie. Or folks I've met from the ultimate community see me in some business-like situation introducing myself to others as Chris while in conversation they still refer to me as "Downie" out of habit. It's confusing. For everyone but me, that is.

But to me, it's not a matter of confused identity or a rapid change of personal preference. I'm called by each of these names for a reason. Each represents a different person I bring to the surface to deal with the current situation, or put another way, each represents a different part of me that I share with the world when needed. While I've had way more names than just these 2, they're the ones that have stuck around long enough to develop distinct personality traits.

Also, for the record, Chris will respond if you call him "Downie", but Downie won't respond if you call him "Chris". Mostly because I still assume you must be talking to someone else, because I'm Downie right now, bitch.

How to Run Drills

A Short Aside

In the grand scheme of things, I plan to write a reference for all my Ultimate knowledge/opinions. The problem with "now" vs "the grand scheme" is just a matter of it's hard to know where to start. So I'm not actually starting it. I just had some clear ideas that I felt I needed to write down so here they are. Also: these may apply to other sports as well, but Ultimate is simply what I'm most familiar with.

Intro

Most people overlook the value of giving adequate time to organize and run a drill properly. Sometimes it's because time is limited, or your team has a short attention span, or it's cold and you really can't focus. But rambling through a description, and just letting the team try their best is no more effective at teaching skills then telling your players to run laps.

For a drill to be effective, the players must know what to do, when to do it, and most importantly, why they're doing it.

What They're Doing

Experienced teams skip this step, largely because they're familiar with the more common drills, and can simply call them out by name. However, even experienced teams would benefit from going over drill details from time to time because there are so many things that happen at once, it's easy to forget the smaller details.

Each drill has 2 phases, which for brevity I'll call an "active" phase and a "reset" phase. The active phase is when players are actively executing part of the drill; they're running or throwing or jumping or whathaveyou. The reset phase is what the player falls into after they've finished the active phase; It's whatever extra action needs to occur before the player can enter the active phase again. This may involve just running back to the same spot, rotating to a different position, or bringing a disc back to a thrower. This is the phase most commonly overlooked when trying to just describe a drill quickly.

While describing the motion during the active phase effectively is really a matter of style and personal preference, I've found a few types of descriptions tend to work well. A miniature representation of the drill -- either with a whiteboard or moving upturned discs on the ground -- gives the players an overview of what the whole drill should look like. Additionally, having a few veteran players who have done the drill before act it out at full speed is a nice transition from the slow, miniature model to the real world. However, jumping straight from verbal description to having players act it out is somewhat less effective, as players can't see everything that's happening at once.

When To Do It

Most drills rely on a kind of flow. A goes over there, catches a disc, turns, and expects to be able to throw to player B who is cutting towards A. If B is there early, A will have to make a different throw; too late and A is just stuck waiting. In this case, players A and B both have a clear understanding of what they should be doing, they just don't know when to do it in order to keep the flow of the drill constant.

This sort of detail is most commonly left out of the drill's description, and its value is usually overlooked. Giving players a good sense of *when* they should be where is just as crucial as where they should be going. That way, the motion of the drill is kept smooth, and players don't need to keep adjusting their throws to the timing of other cuts.

With enough well-timed cuts, the team should be able to develop spatial chemistry: knowing where someone is on the field without even having to look. This leads to more confident players, more reliable throws, and generally faster offensive play. All because nobody's stuck with the disc, waiting for their man to cut.

Why They're Doing It

The next big issue that coaches overlook when describing how to run a drill is to explain why this is a good drill to run. The reason needs to mean something to the players performing the drill, so not giving a reason means they're simply doing it because that's what the coach said. Such a reason gives the players little more value from the drill than if they had simply run in circles for that period of time.

Most drills have in-game analogues. They may represent ideal in-game situations that never actually happen, but just making that connection for the player will give them a better chance of doing the well-practiced option learned from the drill in game. This drill teaches you how to hit a timed in-cut on the open side. This teaches you how to break the mark. Even skills-focused drills should be justified; this drill will make you faster, help you throw while you're tired, improve your low-release throws, defend against someone taller than you, etc.

Giving the player a context in which they can see a drill in real game will not only improve the drill's effectiveness, it'll also make the player focus on the skill he's supposed to be learning from the drill at hand. Otherwise, a lot of the player's effort will be lost by simply running in circles.

Perfection's in the Details

The beauty of all this is that each drill has a wealth of details that tend to be overlooked. Taking the time to focus on the details like proper motion, timing, and motivation gives the players a very rigid, very high bar that they should try to meet. Additionally, this gives even seasoned players the ability to run these drills time and time again, always trying to improve to hit these key details every single time. Without the wealth of detail, a team could run the drill poorly or even adequately and not have it occur to them what (or even if) they're doing something wrong.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9

I ordered myself a netbook last week, and it finally came on Saturday. A couple of folks have been asking me about my experiences with it, so I figured I'd provide a short review for those looking at buying themselves a netbook.

Specs
I got a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 because I found it on sale -- $300 for Ubuntu with an 8Gb solid state hard drive, 1Gb RAM, Bluetooth, and 1.3Mp camera. This makes it by far the cheapest computer I've ever bought, but also the most I've ever paid for hard disk space. But I digress.

Before I go on...
Generally, I am of the opinion that Dells are crap machines. My roommate had a Dell in college and the only advantage his had over my ThinkPad T41 (and then over my MacBook Pro) was that he would get a higher score than me on flash-based games because the game would have to slow down for him to play it. Which is why he refused for the longest time to upgrade his laptop, even when the thing roared like a jet engine because after 5 minutes of usage it had to hit the fans into high gear to stop itself from melting.

So, in my mind, Dell is a synonym for a crap computer with poor heat & noise management and crappy plastic construction.

But, for $300, I wasn't expecting a MacBook Air, so I was willing to give it a shot.

First Impressions

Despite my predisposition against the brand, I was actually quite pleased with the machine. It feels pretty well built and is amazingly silent. It's quieter than my MacBook Pro, and it's the sort of difference that can only be heard when I put my ear right up to the fan. Very impressive.

In a few of my marathon sessions of using the device, the bottom did become a bit warm. However, it never got so hot as to be really uncomfortable to have in your lap, like any of the other laptops I've played with. So all and all, I felt good using it.

Battery Life
The battery lasted a good while, too. I got about 4 hours of usage out of the device when starting from a full charge. During that time, I had roughly 3 programs open: Firefox, Pidgin, and Adobe Reader. I also toyed with some of the built-in programs, like the cheap linux games & camera stuff. Speaking of which...

Built-in Software
A lot of the software that came on the device was generally what you'd find with any Linux distro -- some Gnome-based games, a Minesweeper clone, a typing tutor, OpenOffice, etc. A lot of the prepopulated web links were to Dell or Yahoo, so I'm sure they've got some deal going on there.

There's also a program called the Dell launcher, which feels like a less polished version of Apple's Stacks. If you're OK with not seeing the desktop, this is a surprisingly easy and intuitive way to launch your programs. As you can see, one of the first things I did was add Emacs to mine.

You'll also notice that the topbar is partially offscreen. This is because I told it to auto-hide so I could use as much of the 9-inch screen as possible. I also added a firefox plugin to remove the "File".

Keyboard Quirks
For the most part, the keyboard is fine. Yes, it's a bit smaller than a full keyboard, but I was expecting that for a tiny netbook. After typing on it for a bit, you don't really notice how much smaller the keyboard is.

With one tiny exception.

Apparently, the engineers at Dell decided that us touch-type folks didn't ever really use concatenations or quotations when we were trying to type on the go, so they took the single- and double-quote key and moved it below the "." key. At first this was a bit annoying but it's gotten the part where it's actually pissing me off quite a bit. There's no sense in me trying to fight years of muscle-memory just for this one keyboard, and the result is that any IM conversation where I try to use "don't" or "I've" results in me accidentally sending the message mid-word. And I've done this a lot.

I've given up trying to correct this error, so if you're chatting with me and you see this happening, you'll know what computer I'm on.

(Also, the "-" or "_" key is now moved to just right of "p", which is a problem I've run into a few times in IM conversations, but it's nowhere as bad as the damn apostrophe thing)

Performance
In lieu of doing official, statistics-like testing, here are a few tidbits I've gotten from just using it or maybe timing it with a stop watch:

• Startup takes just over 30s from a cold start.
• Startup takes about 5s when resuming from a suspended state. 
• Hulu videos play fine when windowed at standard resolution. Bumping them up to high resolution or expanding full screen results in dropped frames.
• Camera (with "Cheese", a Photo Booth knock-off) takes higher-resolution pictures than the camera on my MacBook Pro, but the center of the picture is a bit blurry. (see below)
• Built-in speakers are pretty loud-- as loud or louder than my MacBook Pro.

(Left: Photo Booth picture. Right: Cheese picture. Both images were taken at the same time.)

Minor Quirks

There were a few things that struck me as odd or annoying. 

• If you don't interact with the computer for a few minutes, it forgets that you set the brightness on the display, and decides to crank it up. Which results in me cranking the brightness down time and time again.
• "Cheese" can use the built-in camera to take video, but it records in .ogg format. This in itself isn't a problem, except that the Totem Media player doesn't play that file type. I imagine this will go away when I install VLC.
• Scrolling can be a bit laggy when you use the sides of the trackpad for vertical or horizontal scrolling. It's been hit or miss for me with being very responsive, and "Oh crap its still scrolling nooooo"

Final Verdict

In sort, I'd recommend the Inspiron Mini 9, but definitely as a secondary machine. It's got pretty decent power & battery life for a portable computer, and I've enjoyed toying with it for a weekend. 

It also makes my 15" screen feel insanely large for a laptop after getting accustomed to 9". :)

PS: My website renders perfectly on Firefox/Ubuntu despite no prior testing. This is why standards are awesome.

Blogger Block

I've tried 3 times to write a new blog post. There are a handful of ideas I feel like I've mulled over enough for there to be value in me sharing them. But then I begin writing them, and my rusty writing skill doesn't do what I want to convey justice. So I try writing for a bit, look at it, and decide that it's not going how I want to. I stop and start over.

Talking about it would be easier -- on my blogs my words must speak for themselves, for I don't have that convenient feedback loop of watching the reader and changing what is said based on how well they're getting what I'm saying. I also know who's listening. I only know a handful of folks who read this, but I'm sure there are more that I don't know. Which I realize is the thrill & risk of hosting a public personal blog.

I'm not even that satisfied with this entry, but I'm sick of trying so hard and having nothing to prove for it. So nuts to that.

7 Things You Probably Don't Know About Me

The rules:

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

I was tagged by Alix Han.
I've tried to choose things most folks won't know. So to those of you who knew some of this already and feel shortchanged: Bonus points for already being a good friend! 

1. My first childhood dream was to become a singer. I was in a choir. I even wrote 3 songs. All this and I still managed to never learn how to read sheet music. (I just memorized the tune when others sang it)
2. I had a secret first girlfriend in Junior High school. It was very benign -- we never did more than hold hands. I don't remember much of it because it ended badly and as such I told myself it didn't count and blocked it from my memory. Which was surprisingly effective, as I only remembered it a few years ago.
3. I wrote a rap song to help my Ultimate team get into Potlatch last year. The song was about a quirky Ultimate player who had attained legendary status at Cal. It took like 2 days to write and ended up with about 45s of audio. My appreciation of rap music grew a thousandfold. 
4. A (presumably unusual) high percentage of my ex-girlfriends give the thought of dating girls a whirl shortly after dating me. Some of them were just temporarily experimenting, while others truly were more into women after all, and I was simply their proof by contradiction. 
5. Before there was a YouTube, I was one of the kids who got a webcam and put video of me talking on the internet. Most of it was crap, but when I got video editing software I had a fun time editing it and got some good episodes out of it. When I went to college, I made a trailer for the "College Edition" of the Chris Show, but then had too little free time in college to actually keep making it.
6. I want to get a tattoo, but don't have a clue what it would be of or where I would put it. I also want to try giving myself a different hairstyle, but don't know what else would look good on me. I had long hair at one point in college, and put my hair up with a hair tie to keep it out of my eyes. The nickname "Samurai" lasted a few weeks. All the ladies said I looked better once I cut my hair short again, so short it's stayed.
7. On completely separate occasions, I've had someone threaten to kill me, a gun pointed at my head, and got in a fight that was started by my friend's mother at my friend's birthday party. 

I choose you: Mignon Chu, Edith Han, Julia Ferraioli, David Nickolson, Kutlay Topatan, Lisa Bernard, Talie Kurilovich.

Nerd Wallets!

I decided to make myself a new wallet. There were some problems with the old one, and the ones I could buy didn't have what I wanted. 

The Old Wallet

My old wallet was the first one I actually made myself. Doing my best to be a faithful nerd, I decided to make it entirely out of Duct tape, because what nerd doesn't want a Duct Tape wallet. In fact, the wallet it replaced was a Ducti-brand Duct Tape wallet that I got as a gift. But I wanted to make one for myself, and so I did. 

It only took a few hours, and there wasn't much forethought. Really all I had thought out was how long I'd have to make the pieces of tape so that the fold could hold money. And that's literally all I had thought about. So a few hours later all I had was a foldable pocket for cash, only to realize that I also wanted to carry around my ID and credit cards and the like. Whoops. 

Some ad-hoc planning later and I eventually figured out how to make pockets. I wrapped some tape sticky-side-out around a credit card, and then just stuck the card in the wallet where I wanted a pocket. Voila! Instant pocket. Problem solved.

But, it's not lasting. The Duct tape is wearing away -- there are some holes around the corners and the stickiness is beginning to rub off on my credit cards and whatever else is also in my pocket. And I had kinda jammed too many cards into my afterthought pockets. So I wanted to make a new wallet with the following goals:

• Not made of Duct Tape so that sticky thing doesn't happen.
• RFID-blocking so I don't need a special sleeve for my ID
• An external pocket so I don't have to open my wallet to show the bus driver my bus pass
• Enough pockets to fit all the cards I actually use in my wallet.
• A high degree of nerd factor where possible.

The New Wallet

I must say, this is a pretty freakin sweet wallet. I was poking around for tape in my closet and I stumbled upon one of my boxes of aging computer parts. Inside, there was a bag of connectors that had never been used and it hit me. 2 parallel ATA cables could be used to make the wallet. Hell yes.

The dimensions worked out almost perfectly. It turns out the length of a standard PATA cable from Asus is about twice the length of a wallet. So, I got crackin. I hacked away at the connectors so I just had the cable, cut the PATA cables in half, and ironed them flat. Yes, I ironed plastic & copper because THAT IS HOW I ROLL.

Once I was convinced the PATA wallet concept could work, I actually did a bit of designing. I played a bit with paper prototypes to see what kinda size I could make and where I could put pockets. I tried to mimic my old wallet as much as possible, because I do like it. But I also planned out where each of the cards in my current wallet would go before I made the pockets. Which I feel might be a bit obsessive. But I didn't want to end up with not enough pockets or some other glaringly obvious omission at the end. Not again, anyway.

Without going into the extreme detail of its construction (which may only be interesting to me) I managed to get everything I wanted. I did some fancy stitch work with needle & thread to hold everything together. The pockets are made of a different, lightweight material I cut out of a free blanket bag I stole from the Company Meeting. The horizontal pockets on the inside of the wallet are also lined with aluminum foil because early tests showed that the copper in the cables alone weren't enough to fully shield the RFID card. But, they're tastefully hidden inside the pocket, so it's functional and fashionable!

The result is one sturdy, fairly lightweight wallet. That is also UBER AWESOME.

I didn't think of everything, however. After the first day of use, a problem became apparent. The ends of the wallet still had exposed copper (which I thought was cool) but it was rough to the touch, and would bend and get caught in my pocket. I considered doing some fancy stitch work to put some material over the end, but instead, I decided to go with a bit of nostalgia. 

As a bit of a homage to my first wallet, I put some black Duct Tape over the ends. Problem solved.

A Proper Vacation, For Once.

Just got back from a great weekend in San Diego. Mid to high 70's, a cloudless Saturday at the beach getting a tan and a beautiful sunset after strolling around Balboa park on Sunday. It was a lot to do in a weekend, and in my usual "get there first - plan things later" method of vacationing, I owe a great debt of thanks to Mignon & Chi, who always knew the cool thing to do next, even if they had trouble figuring out how to get there.

Leaving was tough. This was the weather I missed. These were the people I missed. How could I go back to Seattle? I was beginning to think I had failed.

I had failed because the point of this vacation was to reinvigorate me. Seattle has had an absolutely shitty winter. The holidays ruined my drive at work -- either I was at work struggling without the aid of my coworkers who were on vacation, or I was on vacation having all my energy sapped out of my by family interaction. I was burnt out from being at work, and from being away from work. For my productivity, and for my sanity, that needed to be fixed.

I needed another vacation. A break from work that, for once, also included a break from being stressed. So, I booked a weekend trip to San Diego, to clear my head, regain my sanity, and be more ready to get shit done at work.

Also, Mignon was bugging me to visit.

As I was sitting on the plane back to Seattle, awaiting it to take off, it had appeared that I simply hadn't gotten that hat trick. Yes, it was an amazing time, I had cleared my head, regained my sanity, and truly enjoyed myself. But the last thing I wanted to do was go back to work -- to go back to Seattle. To go back to the cold, the rain -- away from the beaches, the sunsets, the stars, the close friends.

The fact that my return had become an unwanted one only further eroded the work ethic I had attempted to rebuild.

But, the flight was 2 and a half hours. That's plenty of time for a man to think. This particular brand of thinking involved a $5 rum & coke and a bunch of Texas Hold 'em on my iPhone. Two things hit me. One: Meg did a pretty damn good job of teaching me how to play poker. Two: This was just a vacation high. It will fade, and hopefully overall I'll still have been a bit rejuvenated from the experience.

When I got off the plane, the familiar & cold Seattle air hit my skin once again. Except, to my surprise, it felt oddly... refreshing. Pretty damn good, actually. It was like waking up after a full night's sleep. The impact of it intensified once I got out to my car. Instead of the oppressive, omnipresent cold that I had left, the cold was now reduced to a belligerent bully who nobody likes but no one has stood up to yet. And now that I was back, I was ready to kick its ass.

I drove home full speed, with the windows down. A passing sign reported the temperature to be 37 degrees. I laughed and drove faster.

Turns out I hadn't failed after all. I'm back, and the troubles I left here only a few days ago are all pissant douchebags in need of a solid ass kicking. And, instead of just ditching and going to another party, I'm ready to put up my dukes and defend this one.

So: work, weather, whatever -- bring it on. I'm ready to do what needs to be done.

Posted via Pixelpipe.