Details in a later blog entry, along with a discussion of the profound impact the last week (and especially this past weekend) has had.
One bright side (of many, it seems) is that I apparently had the foresight to pay $6/mo insurance on the phone that covered "lost or stolen" status. So the replacement $500 phone only cost me $50.
On a related note, does anyone have a recommended source for a few hundred 4.8mil top-fed letter-size-sheet protectors for use in three-ring binders?
Monday, June 29, 2009
Green avatars
Tinting an avatar is a lot like having a bumper sticker, ribbon around a car antenna, or putting a "blue ribbon campaign" image on your website:
ALT="Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign"
HEIGHT="76" WIDTH="112" BORDER="1" ALIGN="MIDDLE">
Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!
ALT="Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign"HEIGHT="76" WIDTH="112" BORDER="1" ALIGN="MIDDLE">
Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
What I did Wednesday afternoon...
...was record these. (These are raw video, no post-processing.) 12 embedded videos ahead...
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Four Seconds of Night
I created a magmount for my digital camera, and thus was able to shoot these, presented here as a slideshow.
For these photos, the camera was set to manual focus, with an exposure time of 4 seconds. (It was allowed to adjust the aperture as much as it needed, but I doubt it ever deviated from F3.5, wide open.) It was also mounted at the center of the car, just forward of the sunroof.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Taking a hiatus from RPGs
I'm going to take a hiatus from the weekend roleplay gatherings for at least a couple months, because one of them got canceled, and I haven't really been enjoying the other these last three or four months. (I should note that I was only out of availability for about a month and a half to two months.)
There are a few reasons I've been losing interest. (In no particular order of significance)
* As a DM, I enjoy story more than mechanics. As a player, I enjoy roleplaying more than combat and treasure hunting. The nature of the current group invariably tends towards combat and treasure hunting. If the group spends most of a session around roleplaying, most of the players get itchy and want to skip forward to the combat. (Heck, many of the character concepts revolve around pushing plot forward by applying force to a contact.)
I can't fault one player for looking for experience and increasing his characters power, and I can't fault another for being bored with mechanically mundane characters. That's their style, and that's what they enjoy. The one would say "That's *adventuring*", and the other would offer to play toned down characters (if I were DM), but he can't help but take even a tame character and find ways to tweak them. And, yes, adventurers and heroes aren't *normal* characters; They're adventuring and/or heroic. But character stat engineering has to be done in moderation, or it creates a character with too significantly more power and presence than the rest of the party, which leads to a monopolization of accomplishment and other players' sense of participation.
* I like to think and solve problems with at-hand tools in a rapid-fire fashion, and combat doesn't present any kind of problem that operates at sufficient speed. It doesn't seem to matter what the makeup of the group is, or what the skill levels of the players are, six rounds of combat always equals at least forty minutes of real world gameplay. As a player, that's a decision every six minutes and forty seconds at its most frequent, unless I get involved in the metacombat strategy discussion, which is usually dominated by one or two other players. I get *bored*.
As a DM, I don't get bored, but I don't have the time to invest in developing encounters in advance to be able to *challenge* you people without adding arbitrary numbers of bad guys or monsters 2 or more CR higher than the party is supposed to handle. Yes, I know I'm supposed to present five or so smaller combats per D&D "day", but that's like walking from point A to point B in a console RPG. Walk-walk-RANDOM ENCOUNTER-walk-walk-RANDOM ENCOUNTER-walk-walk...Where's the freakin' story? No, the party isn't necessarily going to be Big Enough Named for someone plot-oriented to supply the means for even half of those required encounters over a given period of time.
* Players don't want to be challenged.
Even sadder? Most players don't even *like* to be challenged on a regular basis. They get too invested in their characters, and if a character dies, they get pissed. If they see the death coming, and ultimately can't avoid it (can't heal in time, got hit by a lucky critical, etc.), they retroactively critique every action by the DM in a "My character wouldn't have died if you hadn't made *this* mistake, or if we'd remembered *that* rule, so he really shouldn't be dead." I don't care about this so much myself, because I see my job as to focus on the players, and not so much take advantage of the Guardian Of Dungeon acronym. But it pisses me off to watch those same tactics get used against DMs who are trying to take their equal share of play enjoyment.
So how is all that related to "Players don't want to be challenged"? In order for a player to be challenged, there has to be a risk of *character death*. If the players are going to fight tooth and nail after the dice have already been rolled, then they obviously didn't accept that risk to their character. I also wish players would stop sulking after rules lawyering arguments don't pan out to their character's benefit. Socially, sulking is even louder than the shouting that went on a few minutes earlier, and it *completely* kills the mood and enthusiasm of everyone in the room.
No "*I* wasn't doing X" comments are necessary or should even be made; I'm announcing hiatus and venting. If it wasn't you doing *X*, either I wasn't talking about you, or you're quibbling with my interpretation of events. And quibbling about such things won't solve anything right now; It's a emotional/social problem, not a linguistic or technical one.
There are a few reasons I've been losing interest. (In no particular order of significance)
* As a DM, I enjoy story more than mechanics. As a player, I enjoy roleplaying more than combat and treasure hunting. The nature of the current group invariably tends towards combat and treasure hunting. If the group spends most of a session around roleplaying, most of the players get itchy and want to skip forward to the combat. (Heck, many of the character concepts revolve around pushing plot forward by applying force to a contact.)
I can't fault one player for looking for experience and increasing his characters power, and I can't fault another for being bored with mechanically mundane characters. That's their style, and that's what they enjoy. The one would say "That's *adventuring*", and the other would offer to play toned down characters (if I were DM), but he can't help but take even a tame character and find ways to tweak them. And, yes, adventurers and heroes aren't *normal* characters; They're adventuring and/or heroic. But character stat engineering has to be done in moderation, or it creates a character with too significantly more power and presence than the rest of the party, which leads to a monopolization of accomplishment and other players' sense of participation.
* I like to think and solve problems with at-hand tools in a rapid-fire fashion, and combat doesn't present any kind of problem that operates at sufficient speed. It doesn't seem to matter what the makeup of the group is, or what the skill levels of the players are, six rounds of combat always equals at least forty minutes of real world gameplay. As a player, that's a decision every six minutes and forty seconds at its most frequent, unless I get involved in the metacombat strategy discussion, which is usually dominated by one or two other players. I get *bored*.
As a DM, I don't get bored, but I don't have the time to invest in developing encounters in advance to be able to *challenge* you people without adding arbitrary numbers of bad guys or monsters 2 or more CR higher than the party is supposed to handle. Yes, I know I'm supposed to present five or so smaller combats per D&D "day", but that's like walking from point A to point B in a console RPG. Walk-walk-RANDOM ENCOUNTER-walk-walk-RANDOM ENCOUNTER-walk-walk...Where's the freakin' story? No, the party isn't necessarily going to be Big Enough Named for someone plot-oriented to supply the means for even half of those required encounters over a given period of time.
* Players don't want to be challenged.
Even sadder? Most players don't even *like* to be challenged on a regular basis. They get too invested in their characters, and if a character dies, they get pissed. If they see the death coming, and ultimately can't avoid it (can't heal in time, got hit by a lucky critical, etc.), they retroactively critique every action by the DM in a "My character wouldn't have died if you hadn't made *this* mistake, or if we'd remembered *that* rule, so he really shouldn't be dead." I don't care about this so much myself, because I see my job as to focus on the players, and not so much take advantage of the Guardian Of Dungeon acronym. But it pisses me off to watch those same tactics get used against DMs who are trying to take their equal share of play enjoyment.
So how is all that related to "Players don't want to be challenged"? In order for a player to be challenged, there has to be a risk of *character death*. If the players are going to fight tooth and nail after the dice have already been rolled, then they obviously didn't accept that risk to their character. I also wish players would stop sulking after rules lawyering arguments don't pan out to their character's benefit. Socially, sulking is even louder than the shouting that went on a few minutes earlier, and it *completely* kills the mood and enthusiasm of everyone in the room.
No "*I* wasn't doing X" comments are necessary or should even be made; I'm announcing hiatus and venting. If it wasn't you doing *X*, either I wasn't talking about you, or you're quibbling with my interpretation of events. And quibbling about such things won't solve anything right now; It's a emotional/social problem, not a linguistic or technical one.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Ping.fm full blog test.
This will test a bunch of things. links.
A few blank lines without BR tags.
A few blank lines with BR tags.
A few blank lines without BR tags.
A few blank lines with BR tags.
A paragraph
A div, followed by an embedded flickr image:
(Another paragraph) Followed by an embedded Flickr slideshow:
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Getting Started
This book is the book that first got me interested in technology in general, an electronics specifically. My interest in computers and programming grew largely from an early recognition that they were large and sophisticated implementations of the concepts in that book.
And a tip of the hat to my grandfather who bought it for me all those years ago. And bought me a breadboard. And lots of battery holders, LEDs, resisters, little DC motors, etc.
Get your kid started on a hobby early on; It could grow into a passion that breaks down the boundaries of work and play.
Monday, June 15, 2009
802.11 b/g channel wavelengths
(Writing this so that I can refer back to it, rather than keep having to look it up. Channels are 1-14, with the first row being channel 1. Consider these rough numbers; I didn't pay much attention to sigfigs, aside from using nine digits of c and four of the channel frequency as documented here. I also didn't use a bignum library, so IEEE754 floating point errors might be an issue; Depends on Perl's default floating-point implementation.)
.png){kind=link}
full wave,half wave,quarter wave (centimeters)
12.429206384743,6.21460319237148,3.10730159618574
12.4034943318163,6.20174716590815,3.10087358295408
12.3778884393064,6.18894421965318,3.09447210982659
12.3523880510919,6.17619402554594,3.08809701277297
12.3269925164474,6.16349625822368,3.08174812911184
12.3017011899877,6.15085059499384,3.07542529749692
12.2765134316134,6.13825671580672,3.06912835790336
12.2514286064569,6.12571430322844,3.06285715161422
12.2264460848287,6.11322304241436,3.05661152120718
12.2015652421652,6.10078262108262,3.05039131054131
12.1767854589764,6.08839272948822,3.04419636474411
12.1521061207945,6.07605306039724,3.03802653019862
12.127526618123,6.06376330906149,3.03188165453074
12.0689395330113,6.03446976650564,3.01723488325282
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Playing with Flickr
You know, I think $25/yr is worth being able to host as many photos as I've uploaded to it: Currently 1,229 public photos.
Here are the URLs to some of my favorite sets and tags:
Fire Face: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/sets/72157619694642926/
Weird and Unique: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/sets/72157619693053338/
Train: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/sets/72157619599715758/
Fire: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/sets/72157618869379380/
Anime Weekend Atlanta 14: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/sets/72157607462118853/
Tags:
coals: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/coals/
cosplay: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/cosplay/
fire: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/fire/
firecave: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/firecave/
flamecrevice: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/flamecrevice/
horizon: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/horizon/
mountains: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/mountains/
night: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/night/
road: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/road/
sunset: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/sunset/
underexposed: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/underexposed/
water: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/water/
Here are the URLs to some of my favorite sets and tags:
Fire Face: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/sets/72157619694642926/
Weird and Unique: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/sets/72157619693053338/
Train: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/sets/72157619599715758/
Fire: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/sets/72157618869379380/
Anime Weekend Atlanta 14: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/sets/72157607462118853/
Tags:
coals: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/coals/
cosplay: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/cosplay/
fire: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/fire/
firecave: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/firecave/
flamecrevice: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/flamecrevice/
horizon: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/horizon/
mountains: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/mountains/
night: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/night/
road: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/road/
sunset: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/sunset/
underexposed: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/underexposed/
water: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28208534@N07/tags/water/
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
May You Know What the Gnoll Knows?
Gnoll's nose knows more than you know.
Who knows what Gnoll knows?
What Gnoll's nose knows,
Gnoll knows.
Would you know
What Gnoll knows?
Gnoll names a price!
Who knows what Gnoll knows?
What Gnoll's nose knows,
Gnoll knows.
Would you know
What Gnoll knows?
Gnoll names a price!
Monday, June 8, 2009
Spontaneity can hurt.
I just spent about $160 sending two of each of these books to instructors at my old high school:
The Manga Guide to Calculus
The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology
The Manga Guide to Physics
The Manga Guide to Statistics
I included a note that I hoped one book would go in the school library, while the instructor would loan the other to students who it might help. (Not necessarily in the academic sense, but in the motivational sense; An interested and self-motivated student is a better student.)
I suppose the observation that more women than men would be interested in the manga is also a bit of a benefit to the fields as well. (Also, I suppose, a benefit to the male geeks that come after me...)
The Manga Guide to Calculus
The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology
The Manga Guide to Physics
The Manga Guide to Statistics
I included a note that I hoped one book would go in the school library, while the instructor would loan the other to students who it might help. (Not necessarily in the academic sense, but in the motivational sense; An interested and self-motivated student is a better student.)
I suppose the observation that more women than men would be interested in the manga is also a bit of a benefit to the fields as well. (Also, I suppose, a benefit to the male geeks that come after me...)
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Polarikey
So chromakey(bluescreen/greenscreen) is nice and all, but has anyone considered using polarized light for the purpose?
Consider what one could do if rather than using a green wall and matched against green, one used a multicolor display emitting polarized light. The camera would use a filter polarized at 90 degrees from the display, and the postprocessing would simply overlay the camera image on top of the display image.
This would have the benefit of allowing the presenter to see what he was pointing at (or even read cues from the display surface), while at the same time allowing the data displayed to not lose image quality from being processed by the camera.
Consider what one could do if rather than using a green wall and matched against green, one used a multicolor display emitting polarized light. The camera would use a filter polarized at 90 degrees from the display, and the postprocessing would simply overlay the camera image on top of the display image.
This would have the benefit of allowing the presenter to see what he was pointing at (or even read cues from the display surface), while at the same time allowing the data displayed to not lose image quality from being processed by the camera.
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