Sometimes they represent some fact of life in a given subculture or endeavor. In the open source community they say “Release early, release often” because doing so is considered the best path to success. In the business and financial circles I’ve heard them say “Bulls win, pigs die” as a warning against excessive greed. “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”, shows us the essence of the creative process.

Others, I think, provide a window into the profound mechanics of an entire society; simple constructs that nonetheless have wide ranging effects on a culture’s more visible manifestations. Consider these proverbs in light of the histories that spawned them: the Japanese say, “The nail that sticks up get hammered down”, while the westerners say “Fortune favours the bold”.

And then there are those that speak to the essence of our humanity. Those that are true for all people, in all places, at all times. Shakespeare’s famous phrase, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts,” is a good example. In a mere 29 words he expresses what it is to live as a human.

One concept I take away from Shakespeare is that of our limited time on this mortal plane. I have often heard the truism, “Life’s to short to …” in order to justify one social infraction or another, but I think that phrase equally applies to endings such as “… live in regret”, or “… stay in the hospital for 6 months”.

It should encourage us therefore to live our lives in keeping with this maxim: “True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written; in writing what deserves to be read.” That one, in particular, stays with me as I struggle with the trials of our shared existence and, I hope, as I write this blog.

Shakespeare’s words, “all the men and women merely players”, makes me think on the illusion of greatness. Even the most powerful magnates, leaders and criminals of our time will fade into the dust of history until not even the bespectacled historians can remember anything of the truth. And while not factual per se, I think “And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains”, nicely captures the idea of our essential insignificance.

But scale is important. While on the scale of creation itself, all things are essentially worthless, people do not work that way. On a universal level, the fact that I may, for example, lose my arm is a matter of utter insignificance, but I’ll sure care. And the cosmos may not be unduly concerned if the Canuck’s win the playoffs, but it’ll make a lot of folks back home very happy. Thus, while it is important to see something’s objective level of importance, the subjective level is, perhaps, more practical.

One of the basic drivers of the human psyche is the need to feel important. What that means to a given individual in a given circumstance varies wildly, but the underlying pressure is universal. People often quench this need by being part of something larger and more important than themselves. And that “something larger and more important” speaks directly to the soul; that which truly drives us. Thus, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood.”, and, “A man does not have himself killed for a half-pence a day or for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him.”

In any study of our humanity, I am given pause to consider the fundamental conflict of our nature. That for all of our ability to walk as angels upon the earth, we are equally capable of the grossest atrocities of our kind. Most of our lives resolve into a kind of grey, born out of the unceasing conflict of our different halves. The Yin-Yang symbol, while not a proverb per se, does an excellent job of conveying the condition of our souls.

Yet it is possible for us to escape our baser and darker selves. While icons such as Mother Theresa and Florence Nightingale personify this, I think we can each count people in our lives, both famous and unknown, who have learned to reflect the light of our better natures. Consider: “I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.”

But in our darker selves, while it is often distasteful or disturbing, there can often arise a perverse kind of beauty. For as much as we hide our eyes from such things, they are part of our nature and in them there is truth. This next quotation left me a little unsettled at first, but after thinking on it carefully I discovered it’s essential meaning, and a kind of nobility in its genesis:

“It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair.”

It is, in actuality, that statement that led to the development of this blog entry. I turned it over a long while in my mind before I came to truly understand it in the context of our greater world. It is shocking at first, and horrible to envision, but ultimately the truth; naked and terrible in it’s way.

From my defeat at its hand, and paradoxically perhaps, my life has improved; for truly, I have nothing to complain about.

It’s been a while since I have had time to write (the eternal lament of the lazy blogger), but now that the recent turmoil in my life is beginning to abate, I feel it is time to once again put finger to keyboard.

I was reading a story in this week’s Economist about another famine looming over the beleaguered people of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is like many other countries in the world; where the news is perennially bad and the disasters line up for a shot at the downtrodden. Myanmar/Burma, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe spring instantly to mind, but there are many others.

While in many cases foreign aid and/or general recovery is hobbled by the incompetence or malfeasance of local governments, this is not a reason not to give. It is not the fault of the starving child or the helpless parents that they are trapped in an unwinnable situation.

Granted, without competent or caring government, there is no immediate road to self-sustainability and that any contribution is little more than a hand-out. There is truth in the old proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime”, but it only works so long as he does not die of starvation while building the rod.

In any case, I will not belabour the point. We all know that it is our moral duty to help the poor. What that means exactly is often the real question, but today I only want to address one aspect of that. I myself, like a great man others, have often thought of giving to a charitable organization, but I am afraid that I will choose the wrong one; that my good intention will be squandered in administrative fees or by wolves in the guise of sheep.

I recently stumbled across a website that helps people with this problem. It’s called Charity Navigator. It tracks the public filings of a great many American charities and some international ones. It helps you find a charity that focuses on the issues you care about (ideological in nature or a geographic locale) and then helps you evaluate your chosen charity to see if they are worthy or your giving.

As I perused the website, I certainly came across a certain share of crooks and a bit of the bizarre (”Improving the plight of the American donkey“), I was also heartened to find some which lived up to promise of a true charity. And of course many, many in the middle. Not even charities, it seems, are immune from the tyranny of the bell curve.

In my own mind, I have settled on Direct Relief International (DRI; website). I checked them out pretty thoroughly and looks as though the numbers at Charity Navigator are accurate. A full 98.8% of your funds go towards their intended purpose. I am not sure how this will play out in terms of my own giving, but I am glad I have a place to start.

DRI and perhaps Child’s Play. While Child’s Play targets people whose circumstances are perhaps, when taken in a global view, less desperate, I sincerely believe Gabe and Tycho’s hearts are in the right place and will work to keep the charity efficient.

I do not intend to badger, guilt or cajole with this blog entry. Simply to act as a reminder that we should give and present a worthy medium for doing so.

Example of the Rikaichan translator

I was at the game industry nomikai this week and a friend was looking for some good Japanese resources. Instead of hiding them away in an e-mail I thought I put them here so everyone could reference them.

• Rikaichan
  An indispensable Firefox plugin for browsing the web in Japanese. Once turned on, you need only hover your mouse over a Japanese word and the definition appears. Very fast and very handy, especially if you have some rudimentary skill in reading. It also works in Thunderbird which is arguably even more useful.
  http://www.polarcloud.com/japanese
• Slime Forest Adventure
  I literally went home one night completely illiterate, played SFA for 3 hours, went out for a break and could literally read one whole Japanese alphabet. For the record, the first Japanese I ever read was “カラオケ” (karaoke) just outside of Yoyogi station. I also learned the second phonetic Japanese alphabet in an additional 3 hours thanks to this great program. Download it now.
  http://lrnj.com/
• SpaceALC
  I was originally sceptical of this site. I figured Babelfish or one of the other ones would have me covered. In time I found this site to be far more useful, especially for getting accurate translations of individual words. Now I use it almost exclusively; the quality is just that high. Type your word into the search box at the top and you’re away.
  http://www.alc.co.jp/
• Excite.co.jp Translator
  I don’t use automated translators much any more, but a lot of people still like them. Most of my gaijin friends have abandoned babelfish in favour of Excite’s translator.
  http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/

This has made something of an impact on the gaming community recently, and I felt compelled to share it with you. This is a translation of a story written by someone in Korea. It reminds me very much of my own mother. Mom, I love you.

Animal Crossing Story

Happy New Year everyone. I’ve been a little tardy on my posts lately, but it’s been a bit hectic despite the holiday. Some things are coming up that will be the subject of a future post.

I did get to play a few games over the holidays, although not as many as usual. I’ll be posting about those games separately.

Yesterday I got something of a pleasant surprise. One of my Christmas gifts from playasia.com came in late. It was Picross DS for (shockingly) the Nintendo DS. I’m glad it came as I was just on the verge of buying it; I love this kind of game.

What is Picross? It’s short for Picture Crossword and is similar to Sudoku. You are presented with a grid wherein a series of numbers labels each row and column. Each number represents a run of filled in squares on the grid. You must cross reference the various number series and use logic to determine which grids are actually filled in. When you win, you are rewarded with a cute picture. (Oh boy!)

This game appeals to me on a lot of levels. I get my endorphins through thinking and this game gives me bursts of 30-40 minutes of intense concentration. It’s also based on pure logic. A square is filled in or it isn’t. There is no luck. There is no chance. There is no opponent bluffing. There is only certainty. I think that appeals to me because while life in general is uncertain, mine is particularly so and it’s nice to have something to be unequivocal about, even if it’s just a stupid box on the screen. I also enjoy it because I’m very good at this kind of game; I rarely make mistakes. Everyone likes to play challenging (or at least engaging) games that they’re good at. Lastly, I simply think that there is something about this game that reflects my own approach to things and I appreciate that.

On the down side, Picross DS’s music can get a little repetitive, although you can shut it off. Also, the zoom in feature is a bit cumbersome as you progress to later levels. That said, those issues aren’t terribly significant.

Picross DS also comes with WiFi support so you can play with your friends online and download new puzzles. There is also an editor so you can make and trade your own. It also has two other features of note which I haven’t really tried out yet: a daily challenge mode which lets you play a quick game once per day and it marks your progress over time as well as a download mode where you can play with a friend even if they don’t have the game.

If logic puzzles that encourage rigourous, compartmentalized analysis appeals to you, you’d do well to pick up Picross DS. If you’d rather have your teeth pulled than play something like this I encourage you to heed your own counsel.

Since I don’t really know the political situation out in the wilds of 0.0, I decided to base myself with Mordu’s Legion Command (MLC). Since MLC’s territory technically belongs to the game and not any player faction, it cannot be conquered. Thus it seems unlikely that I’d be stumbling into the middle of one of Eve’s many ongoing territorial wars. Basically, my hope is that Mordu’s region is a relatively peaceful area of space with enough people around to still have a functioning market.

This is not to say that it is safe. As I plotted my course from my offices near Jita, the galaxy’s predominant trading hub, to Mordu’s Legion’s Testing Facilities, I noticed something troubling on the map. The border system between Empire space and nullsec, Torrinos, had had 19 ships destroyed in the last hour and 12 pod kills (that is, the destruction of an escape pod). This was clearly a gate camp.

A gate camp is where a group of pirates sets up a no warp field around a gate and wait for an unsuspecting player to try and pass by. The no warp field prevents ships from easily getting away from the predators. It is, in essence, spiders and their web waiting for their flies. Once a “fly” stumbles into the net, the small ships will “tackle” their prey, slowing it’s escape further while the bigger, meaner ones blast it to the verge of destruction. At this point the pirates usually extort money from their victim by requiring a”toll”, or simply blow them away in order to steal cargo or because they are just jerks. With all the pod kills, I was betting on jerks.

As I approach the stargate in Torrinos, I prepare myself mentally for whatever lurks on the other side. Maybe nothing… Maybe a large group of pirates… I activate the gate and it asks me if I’m sure; the warning saying that 0.0 is lawless and the police can’t help me if I go forward. Pausing for just a moment, I hit the Accept button.

Sure enough, as I materialize on the other side of the jump, a group of pirates are waiting for me. It’s definitely not nothing, but it’s not some armada either; 4 spiders are resident in this web.

When you warp into a new system, the gate keeps you cloaked for a little while so you can get your bearings safely, but it doesn’t last long. I set my autopilot to take me off into a random asteroid belt where I can hide, but the computer tells me they have erected a no warp field. If I try to set a course out of the field, the gate’s cloak will come undone and the pirates (who already know I’m here) will be able to see me. If I didn’t have my own cloaking system, this would be a very dangerous situation. As it stands, as long as I can quickly turn my cloak on as the other comes off, I should be ok.

I set the navigation computer to take me out of the field and, after a 1/10th of a second pause, enable my onboard cloak. I’ve fitted this ship with overdrive injectors, meaning that it’s fast. Like jets in real life, I believe that in this game, speed is life. As I pass the field barrier, I set the computer to jump to a random asteroid belt so I collect my thoughts before moving on.

Feeling a little invulnerable with my fancy cloaking device, I decided to head back to the gate camp to get you, my valued readers, a few snapshots (click to enlarge):

A pirate battleship with the gate in behind. The halo is a sensor pulse from his enhanced sensor grid.

A Heavy Interdictor. He makes the no warp field. He is in the left of the picture in front of the gate and surrounded by a purple forcefield.

Having done my duty and got my screen shots, I decided to move on to safer locales. Thankfully, the rest of the journey was uneventful just as the map had promised and I soon arrived in 5ZXX-K, my new base of operations.

Immediately after arriving I started to look into the local market conditions as well as what companies were operating in the region. The market was more or less what I hoped for. Most of the basic essentials were available and at somewhat reasonable prices too. I was expecting to be gouged due to the dangerous shipping, but it wasn’t all that bad. Someone is probably producing goods locally. The selection is not as broad as any of the major trading hubs naturally, but was better than I was expecting. In retrospect, Mordu space is relatively populated compared to the rest of nullsec, so it makes sense that a market providing a reasonable set of products at decent prices should have sprung up.

The local companies are a bit of a mixed bag. Some, such as the “Caldari Independent Navy Reserve” and the “Caldari Neighbourhood Watch” militias, look pretty friendly. “Bad Attitude” whose motto is “Kill Everyone”, not so much.

There are a number of other companies here who may or may not be friendly. Only time will tell I suppose. There is also one regional mercenary corporation and a local arms manufacturer whose congeniality will ultimately depend on what business deals they have struck in the last few weeks.

Overall, it looks like a good first day and I’m keen to start scouting out the local systems to see where I can set up shop.

- Dractyl

P.S. Here is a snapshot of my ship in front of the space station, the docking pylon inside, and some market statistics:

My Covert Ops cruiser and Mordu’s Legion’s Testing Facilites several kilometers off in the background.

My very own docking pylon! Yay!

Some market statistics for heavy missiles. Maybe a good import…

Well, I’m super pleased tonight. As many of you know I’ve been playing an MMO for several years now called Eve Online. For the last several months I’ve been grinding to get faction (doing repetitive missions in order to curry favour with in-game governments/companies) with the Lai Dai Corporation to get access to their cloning facilities. Early this morning I finally made it and have a shiny new jump clone of my own.

A jump clone is basically a spare body that you can transfer your mind into when the need arises.

For some time I’ve wanted to set up a base in the wilds of nullsec space, a vast region where Concord, the in-game police, do not enforce the law. One of the basic problems in doing so is that the journey from the safety of Empire Space to nullsec’s Wild West is a long and treacherous one.

Herein lines the utility of the jump clone. The game allows me to station it permanently in nullsec and and jump to and from it whenever I want, keeping my regular clone (and it’s expensive implants) safe in Emire space. Thus I won’t be required to make the dangerous and time consuming trip between across lowsec very often (whew). I’ll still need to ferry goods out to my new base of course, but I’m hoping to find a reasonably priced courier company to do it for me as the logistics of nullsec transport (the freighter, the armed escort, the scouts) is pretty hard to do by myself.

Stay tuned for more information about my scary new life in nullsec.

P.S. I’m still on target to get my Carrier in early February. Can’t wait!

Meet the Demoman

Meet the Soldier

Meet the Engineer

Heavy Weapons Guy

Gotta say I love that “black Scottish cyclops” in the Demoman video. lol.

For those of you who don’t follow the gaming scene, one of the biggest games of the season is Team Fortress 2, which comes as part of The Orange Box by legendary developer Valve. The game is receiving a lot of well-deserved press over its art direction which brings a fresh, cartoony style to a genre which generally opts for a more drab, uninspired motif. The result delivers not only delicious eye candy, but enhances both gameplay and visual longevity as well.

In terms of gameplay, the distinct character forms allow players to rapidly categorize opponents and prioritize their targets (hint: shoot the doctor). All too often the figure designs for character classes, while different enough when standing next to each other, are harder to discern in poor lighting, at a distance, or any number of other battlefield conditions. Some may argue that character classes should be hard to discern as it’s more realistic, and that is a very fair argument if realism is the goal. But in the case of TF2, the emphasis is more on fun and balanced multi-player game mechanics, not to mention light-hearted fun/mayhem in general, and the visual stylings support that admirably.

Going with highly stylized graphics is always something of a win if you expect that your game will be played for may years, because their visuals age better and are cheaper to produce than say, photorealism. Take World of Warcraft vs. Everquest 2 for instance.

WoW looked great on day one and still does, despite the fact that it’s graphics engine is starting to show it’s age a little. EQ2, on the other hand, looked like a textbook example of the Uncanny Valley problem since day one. And now, with so many ‘next-gen’ photorealistic characters running around, EQ2 looks even more dated. Games such as WoW, Psychonauts or Rayman 2 continue to look good in part because they stand alone. That is, they aren’t constantly being compared against reality as the newer games which get us closer to the mark.

They are also cheaper to make because of the detail required. Cartoons have large areas of uniform colour, or at worst, gradient colour and highlights. This is much easier to produce than highly detailed textures necessary to bring photorealism to a character’s mesh. In photorealistic CGI, the Uncanny Valley is often the result of the character being “too perfect”. Artists must go though a lot of effort to add all of the imperfections that make the world what it is. In mimicing traditional cel animation, perfection of colour is exactly what you’re shooting for. It still takes a lot of effort to make it look right, but the overall work required is less for stylized/cartoony than for photorealistic.

Here is a video from Valve that talks about some of the above elements, plus a whole lot more. It’s quite technical, but very interesting:

After you’ve chosen a pose and a base, they’ll 3D print the figurine and ship it to you. The quality of the figure looks a bit dodgy, but it’s hard to tell without seeing one in real life. And really, does it matter?

With 9 million WoW fanatics players in the world today, even at $99/figure, these guys are going to make a ton of money. Heck, I hardly play WoW anymore and I want one of these.