Level Eleven

Wow, what a disappointment.

I went expecting to enjoy some awesome Lego sculptures and see what fun things they'd have for people to do. I'm an adult fan of Lego, which means something called Lego Kidsfest sounded like it might be a little young for my tastes, but hey, if it has Lego in the name, Lego must be promoting it (they're very careful with who they let use their name), so it must be good.

Svetlana and I went not expecting to spend too too long there, since we'd heard it was mobbed on Saturday, but I was still interested to see what the venue was like and what kind of things Lego would bring to the table (only having been to one Lego convention before - that one not sponsored by Lego at all).

So, there were a bunch of huge Lego sculptures, like 8' tall batman on a gargoyled ledge, and a giant sized Lego Minifig version of Indiana Jones. There were some great displays from my club and other clubs, and there were a few child themed booths (face painting, make-your-own art).... and then there were a TON of completely random booths for things that were clearly aimed at sucking money out of the parents - replacement windows, Comcast, heating stoves, and even a car dealership with cars parked out back! I was appalled. This was a Lego sponsored event. The booths cost $500 apiece. It was an obvious money-grab by the organizers (who were a company hired by Lego) to make money off the booth vendors, with no thought to the enjoyment of the people who came. It felt like a trade show with some Lego sculptures thrown in.

It was shameful. I felt embarrassed for Lego, and for the clubs who went there, expecting a good Lego-themed event, only to learn they'd been used as a lure just to bring in more guests. A little more about the clubs - NELUG, the club I'm a member of, had a fantastic display that was probably 20 feet long by 15' wide with a huge moonbase, train layout, towns and carnival rides. Next door were club members from Pennsylvannia with a gorgeous train layout, and sprinkled around were club members from as far away as Canada... all bringing their wonderful creations to show off to the kids.... and that part, at least was a success. I hear the crowd around the club tables never thinned to fewer than 3 deep each day.

Now, to be fair, there were Lego Master Builders onsite who the kids could ask questions of... though there were far too many kids and too few builders to possible be able to get everyone's questions in. There were also "free build" tables with tubs of Lego to let kids build their own lego creations, and finally, one wall had several copies of the current Lego video games (Rock Band, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars). The problem is, there were about twice as many vendors as actual Lego displays.

Finally, there was an in-show Lego store, but the selection was beyond pathetic. They only had like 10 different sets from a limited selection of themes. Why even bother?

I hope that if there is another KidsFest, that Lego will lay down much more stringent rules about what is and is not acceptable in a booth, and make the fest about the kids, and not about separating the parents from their wallets.

... blues harp that is (harmonica to you plebes ;) I really love the sound of the instrument when used in blues and rock, and it's super portable, so hopefully that'll encourage me to practice more. We'll see how it goes. So far, I'm enjoying it a lot, and learning so much about the blues, music in general, and harmonicas specifically. For example, the generic harmonica that you and I think of is called a diatonic harmonica, it has 10 holes, each 3 and 4 holes next to each other, blown or drawn (inhaled) together play a chord. Harmonicas are produced in all of the 12 keys, which means if you want to play along with a song in a specific key, you grab the harmonica of that key and it just works.

Fascinating stuff. Now if I can just get myself beyond "Home on the Range" :)

 

This is a song created using an Auto-Tuner, a machine many popular singers use to correct their pitch in recordings. When turned up to 11, you can make this device turn normal speech into song, with humorous results. Below is a great example... I especially love the way they have Bill Nye doing the classic rapper pose over the camera.

Buy chicken breasts on the bone, with the skin on.  No, you won't have to eat the skin if you don't like it, but it's essential!

Peel back the skin from the pointy end of the breasts, leaving it connected at the bigger, round ends.  

Cover the surface of the breasts with twice as much rosemary, thyme, oregano and basil as you think you'll need (a half teaspoon of each is probably good, but you don't really need to measure.  Add a good pinch of kosher salt to each breast.

Carefully pull the skin back over the herbs covering as much of the breasts as possible.

Insert a probe thermometer into the thickest part of one breast, set the alarm (if it has one) to 170 degrees.  (if you don't have one, get one, it's the best $20 you can spend on kitchen gadgets).

Bake on a cookie sheet (make sure it has short sides) at 400 degrees until the thermometer's alarm goes off (about 25 minutes).

Peel off skin, cut away from bone.  Enjoy delicious, juicy, perfectly-done chicken breasts and learn that "Tastes like chicken" shouldn't be an insult.

Just got done spending way too much time debugging a problem with a customer's machine.  After a lot of debugging, we figured out that the machine was failing to parse strings to ints correctly, such that this line would fail:

int x = int.Parse("0");

How can that ever fail, you ask?  Well, turns out that the Windows Registry under  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International\ has a bunch of settings for localization of numbers, among other things (so stuff like how you represent negative numbers, decimal points, etc).   If one of those keys is corrupt, it can make that line throw a FormatException with the message "Input string was not in a correct format".  

Luckily, we hit this once before a long time ago, so we looked it up, and last time it was the value sPositiveSign under the above key.... except that the value appears to be just fine (an empty string, since by convention there's no sign denoting positive in US English numbering systems).   However, this can be deceiving... it may look fine and not actually be so.  What you have to do is set the value to something *incorrect* and then back to the correct value.  And magically, it works.

The semi-official explanation is here: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=95188

Thanks a lot, Windows.  I guess I can at least count on your for job security.

It's still a work in progress, but it's really more about designing the system than having a perfect end-product (at least, that'll be my excuse until it's done ;)

I made a modular dungeon for our weekly D&D game.  The idea was to make it easily reconfigurable so you can use it for whatever dungeon layout you need.  The basic two parts are an 8x8 section of floor and a 1x8 wall.  Each 4x4 section of floor counts as one square in D&D.  The flooring I am using in the picture is just 1x4 tiles in a parkay floor type layout, which gives you nicely defined squares without that chessboard look.  I wanted to use gray, but it would have cost me like $100 just in tiles (what you see here is using 480 of them.... but they were in Pick A Brick, so only cost me $15).

The construction is quite simple.  Take a 6x8 technic brick with the open center, slap a 1x8 technic brick on each end, attached by two pins (make sure the pins are one hole in from the ends... this will matter later).  Slap either two 4x8 or one 8x8 plate on top, and then tiles on top of that.  What you end up with is an 8x8 brick with 7 holes on 2 sides and 3 holes on 2 sides.  This is your basic floor piece.  You can make a half size piece by using the 4x6 technic brick with open center and putting a 1x4 technic brick on each end.  Again, apply 4x8 plate on top and then tile.

The walls are just a single 1x8 technic brick with a 1x8 plate on top and then 4 1x8 bricks.  two pins on either side of the center hole allows them to connect easily into any side of any of the floor pieces.

I made a few 7 long wall pieces, for when you're turning the inside corner of a wall, and I should make some 9 long pieces as well, for those pesky outside corners.  

One of the great things about the system is that you can just pop off the 4x8 plates and replace them with new plates with premade floor panels, so it's very easy to switch from this brown to like a gray or even green.  And of course, you don't have to use tiles, 4x4 plates are a lot more economical most of the time, I just like tiles :)  

Of course, there's a lot more things you can do with this.  In this picture I have a few doors and a couple double-wide doorways with arches.  I'd like to make some specialty rooms, too, with pits and pools of water, plus a lot more decoration to make it seem more interesting.  but I think for 24 hours of work, it's not too bad :)  It does help that I could get most of the brick I wanted from my lovely wife's lego store, LittlePlasticBricks.com :)

So, I've had an iPhone for like 2 months now, and love it.  I got the Kindle app when it came out, but really, who wants to read a book on a small screen like that?  Turns out, I do.  It's great.  The small size is no hindrance at all.  You get plenty of text on a screen, so that you're not feeling like you're flipping the page every sentence, but even though it's not full paperback size, flipping pages is so easy that you barely even notice it.  I use my iPhone mostly on the way to and from work.  I have a 45-60 minute commute on the bus and the T (that's the subway, if you're from Away), and I love the form factor of the phone.  It's comfortable to hold one handed (unlike a book, even a paperback...ever tried flipping a page with one hand?)   Plus, when I have to stop reading for a bit, I can just throw it in my pocket, no worries about losing my place.

I used to think the Kindle was a pretty cool thing, but it was always overly expensive, and now i think the iPhone is just better.  Sure, the Kindle has a bigger screen and can theoretically go for tens of hours of reading between charges, but that's really all it does.  And when you have it with you... it's a big Kindle in your bag.  I carry my iPhone in my pocket all the time.  The Kindle may be like having 1000 books in your pocket, but the iPhone.... is like having Zero books in your pocket... until you want one

I'm currently reading For Love of Mother-Not, by Alan Dean Foster, which is a book I read in highschool and really liked.  Next on my list is Magic Kindom: For Sale Sold, another book I really enjoyed in high school.  Both of these are free, and very good.  Here's a tip for the Kindle store - it's easy to find free books, just go to a category or a search and sort by price ascending.

So, if you haven't tried out the Kindle on your iPhone, or if you have, and only tried out mediocre books, try to find something you really like and give it a read.  I think the iPhone will surprise you.

We have a Brother HL-2170W wireless laser printer.  The thing is awesome, it was like $100 with built in wifi connectivity.  It's fantastic for anyone who has more than one computer in their home and/or has a laptop.  We can print from anywherre, and leave the printer nicely out of the way in the office.

Initial setup was fairly easy - you have to hook it up to the router with ethernet, then run brother's software to configure its wireless. Not too bad.

Trouble came when we switched out our wireless router for a new one.  Obviously, it didn't just magically figure out the new wifi settings.  So what would you do?  Right connect it via ethernet to the router and run the program again.  Except.... that doesn't work.  It's like the printer isn't even trying to use the ethernet, even after rebooting it multiple times.

Turns out, when you set up the wifi, it disables the ethernet.  In order to re-enable ethernet, you have to push and hold the blue button (the only button on the machine) for 15 seconds.  Then it'll print out a little status sheet, and at the same time, toggle between ethernet and wireless modes.   Why oh why couldn't there be a physical switch for this?  Or, god forbid, enable both at the same time?  Obviously, everyone who has this printer must run into this at some point, and it was not at all clear what to do, even while perusing brother's website.  I had to infer what to do from unrelated FAQs on their website.  You'd think "how do I set it up to work against a different wifi network?" would be right up there, but no.

 I would never leave home again:

On the way to work:

So, a really nice guy named Andre at the community garden gave us a bunch of mint last night. I wasn't exactly sure what to do with it, but then had the idea to make mint syrup out of it for topping ice cream and whatever else. Turns out it's butt easy.

1 cup water
2 cups sugar
1 cup mint leaves

Bring water and sugar to barely a boil, making sure all sugar is disolved. Kill the heat and add mint leaves, crumpling them as you add them. Let sit for an hour, then strain out the leaves.

Dipping a finger into the syrup yields a taste like fresh mint gum. Sprinkle a bare half teaspoon over vanilla, chocolate, chocolate chip, or cookies and cream ice creams for an instant conversion into the mint varieties of those ice creams. We were totally amazed at how good and authentic the mint flavor was.

   So, when I got the iPhone, I said it was all about the Apps... and I think that's doubly true now.  There's just so many good ones out there.  Here's a quick list of the ones that I've gotten that I really like:

Svetlana got her iPhone today and we went to set up her email on it.  She is used to her sidekick's email, which works effectively like pop (so you can delete stuff off the phone and it won't affect the server copy, same with read/unread flags).... so she decided she wanted to access her Gmail using POP.  No big deal right?  WRONG.  I twiddled with the thing for literally about 2 hours to get it to work.  Followed Google's instructions to the letter, and still wouldn't work.  Everything was typed in, picked "other" account, clicked POP tab, made sure Pop was enabled in her google account.... 

Here's the key:  Turn off Push email BEFORE creating the POP account.  Push evidently screws up POP... even if you turn off Push *after* you make the POP account.   Nope... Push has to be off before you even make the account. No idea why.  I was half a step away from having to (gulp) bring the phone into an AT&T store.

Oh, but evidently if you have other accounts that do support push (like an ActiveSync account for exchange) then you don't have to worry.  I added her POP account to my phone (which has an exchange account) and it worked just fine.  That's why I knew the settings on her gmail etc had to be ok.  

What a huge pain in the ass.

Still love the iPhone, though.

This is svet testing out posting on lj via iPhone with a picture. Gigity.

It's all about the apps, man. From TiVo to livejournal to dice apps, there's just an app for everything I want to do (ok, mostly).

The hardware is decent and the os is really only mediocre (no background apps). But man, the apps. The SDK must be a hell of a thing. Really nice consistent ui across most apps.

Anyway, this is really just an excuse for me to post from the iPhone.

 http://web.net2phone.com/consumer/commcenter/helpgstart.asp#makingcalls

 

I wrote a significant portion of the frontend for this in 2001 after Net2Phone acquired the instant messaging startup I was working for (iKena).  They laid us off about a month after we'd merged our IM client with their VOIP client.

It's funny to see the crappy UI I helped make 1.5 years out of college still hanging around 8 years later.   Of course, I don't think anyone actually uses it anymore, and Net2Phone is pretty much defunct now, but it definitely brings back memories.

We were down on High St in the financial district, and since like 70% of the developers were Chinese with H1Bs, we'd get take out from Taiwan Cafe at least once a week.  This is real Chinese (Taiwanese) food, not that General Gao's crap you get at most places outside Chinatown.  I'm really happy to be working near Chinatown again for that reason alone, and it helps that my co-workers enjoy it as much as I do.

 It seems to me there are some common board game  end game conditions, which can be categorized by a few factors:

1.) Controlled/Uncontrolled - how much control do the players have in creating the situation?
2.) Winning/Losing/Ending - does fulfilling the condition simply end the game, or does it also make you a winner (or loser)? 
3.) Known/Unknown - Do you know at the beginning of the game when the game will end? 

So, lets look at how each of these factors changes gameplay:

An Uncontrolled, Ending, Known end of game mechanic is similar to most games that end in a set number of turns. Basically this turns the game into a production race with a fixed end point, where you must do the most X in that time. Optimization is very important, since your opponents have the same amount of time as you, and you all know how long that'll be.

An Uncontrolled, Ending, Unknown end of game mechanic is similar to when a random "end of game" card is put in a deck, and when it comes up, the game is over. This is similar to the above, in that it's still a race, but now you have to take into account that you don't know how long the game will be, so longer term strategies might not have time to pan out.

An Uncontrolled Winning or Losing game is kind of the degenerate case. You have no control over the end of the game, and the end of the game decides who wins or loses. The game basically is a slot machine. Pull the handle - did I win? No? Damn.

A Controlled, Losing, Known end of game mechanic is similar to most "eliminate your opponents" games. Note, I call it losing, because it's not really that you win the game, it's that everyone else loses. In this kind of a game, there are several strategies - go defensive and try to let the other people kill each other - go offensive, and make yourself so dangerous, no one else wants to attack you. Alliances against a strong opponent in this kind of game are common.

A Controlled, Winning, Known end of game mechanic is similar to Illuminati. do X, and you win. Similar to the first example, this makes the game into a race, except that now the endpoint isn't fixed - players determine when the game ends. This kind of game can end quite abruptly, but usually you can see it coming and can even work to prevent it from happening.

A Controlled, Ending, Known end of game mechanic is similar to any game where doing X things will end the game. This is a very interesting mechanic, because it means that even if you can end the game, you don't have to if you're not in a position to also win.

Controlled, Winning, Unknown ending mechanics games are common in games with "you win" cards. These games tend to end very abruptly, with very little chance for opponents to react. Fluxx is a good example, as are alternate win condition cards in Magic the Gathering. In these games, the end of the game is almost always abrupt, and can feel Uncontrolled by anyone other than the person who wins.

Controlled, Losing, Unknown ending mechanics games are fairly uncommon. There may be some examples in Magic the Gathering, but few others. This is a particularly poor choice, since it makes the end of the game very abrupt for one person, and if the game is multiplayer, that person is likely to feel picked upon and left out.

Controlled, Ending, Unknown - similar to the uncontrolled version, generally some token you draw gives you the ability to end the game. The fact that it's controlled is almost worse, because then it's one person's choice, but no one else knows they have that choice to make. Not very fun.

So there's my matrix and my take on the options. You can extrapolate this to fit just about any game.. and of course, many games will use more than one of these, and many fall between strict categories, especially about how much control players have.


Cross posted to my new game design blog: blog.levelelevenstudios.com.

 So, this is a pretty old thing online, but I just became aware of it, and thought it was awesome.  Pointed out to me by Evil Wayne, take a look at www.pocketmod.com - it has instructions on how to fold a single piece of paper printed on one side into an 8 page booklet to keep in your pocket.  It's really pretty ingenious, and useful for a lot of things - notes, cheat sheets, mini game instructions... Awesome.   The website also has a nifty fash program that'll build a PDF for you of all the text you want on your pocketmod, and has a bunch of nice premade templates you can put into it.