Bicycle Touring Around the World with Tim and Cindy
These guys were on the Bikescape podcast on the 29th. It is a husband and wife couple on a perpetual bike tour. Having saved up for a number of years they set off on a 7 yr bike tour which became endless due to a following on their website, which is updated through WiFi and phone coupled (can you believe they still make those) dialup modem, and self publishing two books. Including an audio version of the first book. This is extremely rare for a travel book. They have travel more miles than perhaps anyone I’ve listened to. That includes a few World tourists. The podcast interview is worth listening to too.
Changes to the Bike Log
Years ago when I was on the Atkins diet and exercising every day I had a little log book. This is a surprisingly simple and cheap motivation. It sucks to look back and see missing entries, I don’t feel guilty at the time, and I like recording big numbers. So, when I started training last summer I did the same thing on the blog. Later, this turned into an exercise log.
Keeping this on the blog is pretty kludgy. I have to copy and paste the last line then edit it. Changes to the table structure like adding new columns or colorization takes a massive amount of effort. It’s good for one thing, adding one line at a time.
I hoped to fix this with some WordPress plugins like WP_Tables, but these are almost as kludgy and are not easy to add one new row. If there’s one thing WordPress does exceptionally bad it’s table data. You can’t just paste in cells from an Excel spreadsheet or quickly mock up a 3 X 4 simple table. This is really too bad as spreadsheets are one of the little known foundations of the digital age.
The Recent Book list is nearly as bad. It’s not a table, but has many common elements and new books are added the same way as the Bike Log. A while ago I added book covers to the mouse hover event. This took a couple of hours.
For some reason, I got the idea on Sunday of writing a Windows app to manage the data and spit out a formatted HTML table that I could just paste into the blog. It took about 6 hours to put together a basic app that would read existing data, write it to a new file format, and spit out an HTML table for the blog. Editing, adding, and removing entries were still done by editing the text file, but that was about the same as the blog anyway. The table got an immediate improvement in appearance that was worth the trouble. Over the past few days I’ve added other basic features along with a few more columns.
I would like to add a bit of analyzation too; things like weekly, monthly, yearly mileage, comparison to past performance in events, and fancier HTML. And to address the other annoyance of the Book List. It would be nice if this were in WordPress as a plugin. My interest can wane overnight and it’s better to have a process that works at the end of each improvement session. PHP, MySQL, WordPress development on a remote box would take too long.
Merry Christmas
Off to Grandma’s.. Merry Christmas.
Semantic Philosophy Engine
So, I’m catching up on philosophy lately. This is a very large field that it would take years of diligent study just to gain an overview.
I know it’s not reasonable to study the cliff notes. You need to read the author and get a feel. And there are other issues; language drift, translations from the works original language which of course has drift, unique usage of words that doesn’t match the dictionary definition, poor writing ability, and more issues I’m sure. Then there are non-philosophical texts, fiction, that depend upon a certain idea. A kind of submarine philosophical proponent. Some streams of thought overlap or dovetail yet the authors never knew of each other. Or their language is just different enough to make them seem unique.
I imagine these arguments are structured or partially so having a family tree. My interest is in generating a road map, reducing the number of authors to read, highlighting tourist traps, and actual scenic vistas. I’m reluctant to trust this job to a person. Each has biases and it would take a considerable amount of time.
My favorite tool is the computer and I think that what I describe is a semantic engine. Most of the work these days on semantics focuses on web search, but I think this is a dramatic waste.
Semantics is the meaning of words. It’s relative is syntax, which is the spelling and grammar of words. Computers don’t understand semantics very well. English is a shitty language in a lot of ways. One word has multiple meanings and the other words, which also have multiple meanings, must be used to figure out what is intended. In a way, we are all computers that have been left on for 10+ years. So, it’s not much surprise that a device with inherent weaknesses that’s a few minutes or even weeks old can’t keep up.
What I want is a box to which I can input text and it will compare the sentence structure and word usage, compare to other related texts, and generate a detailed comparison. I want the computer to read the text and tell me what else is like it. If an argument is a rabbit hole I don’t care for I want to it to warn me before I spend all that time reading it. The computer can do in minutes or hours what would take me days or months. This is all pattern analysis on a huge scale.
Eventually, I want it to do more. It should “understand”. I don’t know what this means exactly. Perhaps, generate cliff notes of any text with links to other texts that seem related. To place a text in relation to other texts that are similar. A big one is finding similar texts that are unrelated in time and place.
Eh, I’m getting sloppy in the specs. I think this could be useful to people in general, as a research age, plagarism detector, redundant text detector,.. I don’t know.
Our society has an increasingly unreadable quantity of text available. We could use a tool to help navigate this vast sea of information. Teaching computers to understand language and navigate the memes seems the only way to do this.
My S**t
Once the basic needs are taken care of; food, bed, and security are taken care of, what is there to do? This is where I sit now. Not all of my needs are taken care of. Social attentions are desperately lacking, but they would be a major distraction too.
“Why?” That sums it up pretty well. “Why do this or why do that?” and “What are my available choices?”
Let’s see what I’ve thought of most often. By far the most common choice people make is family. Finding a mate, having kids, school, college, and retirement. Of course, there are numerous decisions points in this sequence; multiple marriages, children, schools, jobs,.. This is what I think I should do. Though except for the finding a mate I don’t know if I care about the rest. Children seems like a good idea. I think my body is pretty good and I would like to see it continue. Otherwise, the world is ruled by Catholics and people who don’t understand birth control.
This life seems a bit confining. Events are driven by calendar, kindergarten and anniversaries. There is much to explore that seems under the surface. A deep, long relationship with someone and watching kids grow up.
This life seems expected and that rankles. It also means giving up my wants to those of my as-yet dependents. That takes the decision away and gives me someone(s) to blame. Much easier than finding a solution.
Right now, I feel like this would be a poorly made decision. My relationships to this point have been nearly complete disasters. Friends never to be talked to again. Very few friends. Distant, shallow family interactions. The one constant seems to be a penchant for saying the exactly wrong thing at inappropriate times and alienating myself. Also, not reaching out to people. Really, I don’t even think to reach out, because I don’t know anyone would help.
My age is starting to freak me out. I think I’m missing the window on this choice. Most people have set to this path in their 20’s. My arbitrary and perhaps foolish cut off is 40. Any later makes me an 50 year old man running around in the soccer van. That doesn’t interest me.
I also wonder what’s so wrong with me that this hasn’t happened to me. My past relationships get a lot of examination and the mistakes, which might be minor or correctable or youth, only get highlighted by my anxiety.
Is this the path I want to take? I don’t know. Finding someone that I can talk to and care for is very important to me. I yearn for connection, understanding, companionship, company, friendship, and love. The lack of these experiences is felt very sharply at the moment.
With Bridget I had many of these aspects, but I lacked self confidence and self love. Instead, I hated myself for not speaking up, not being the person she wanted me to be, for consistently failing to be worthy of her, for allowing myself to get run over, and not establishing myself. As the relationship ended these aspects were withdrawn until friendship was all that remained. That wasn’t enough to keep a relationship. The self hate is well established and even I had seen it reflected back to me in my actions toward Bridget.
Interacting with Sara this summer repeated several patterns I had seen with Bridget. It is to my eternal shame that I didn’t bring this up with her and do something about it. I thought that time had passed and I had meditated on it enough. That I wouldn’t do the same things again. But I did.
This makes me terrifically gunshy. I’m very angry with myself. There’s no reason to think another relationship wouldn’t repeat the same issue. You don’t want to know me. No one should. I eventually become psychologically abusive in a passive aggressive way.
I don’t know what a remedy is. How do you restore or rather create self-respect and appreciation? I’m such a hard judge. Just being competent.. and good? That’s pretty far out there.
Besides, I can’t figure out what I am and want to do? For months, I prevaricated on filling in the rest of my online dating profile. It finally occurred to me that I can’t describe myself truthfully, because I don’t know who I am. What is it I’m advertising online; a blogger, programmer, introvert,..? Those are things I’ve done and may not be what I do tomorrow.
This takes me back to, “Why?” I’m basically stable, well fed, unhappy, and antisocial. What is the reason to do anything, including taking the next breath? Why are people here? Why would I choose to come here? What is it that is so interesting that I would go through the process of living?
At this point in my life I can go in any of a great number of different directions. The number of options seems too much. I’m afraid of abandoning my 10 yr old increasingly unsatisfying career. There aren’t any interpersonal ties or connections to hold me. My mind is pretty sharp and I have a lot of characteristics that make me a good programmer. Well, developer. This job wants a programmer, but I can still develop if I want to.
“Want to” is the problem. What do I want to do? I could do just about anything and be good at it. Starting over is probably the biggest fear which my analytical mind wants to risk manage away. I haven’t been really snake bit by any one thing.
Writing on the blog is tempting, but people don’t make a living at that without lots of connections, time, and luck. I could literally starve for years. Actually, this aspect of writing is the very reason for copyright law. It takes years to make a book and all the lead up time is an investment that needs an artificial legal protection to ensure authors are paid. Also, I have no idea whether I’m good at it or not. No one ever comments on anything. Writing seems a hobby now that will likely grow.
My other interests swing like a Geiger counter at Chernobyl. It’s gardening, then biking, carpentry, home remodeling, dating, programming, family history, computers, music, iPods, and on and on. Give each one 1-6 or 12 months and you have my interests. I can’t pick something when I won’t sit still long enough.
I’ve thought of more business ideas that you can imagine. Mostly, they fit around the attention absorbing hobby of the moment. That’s how long my enthusiasm lasts.
What about a programming job at a different place? I would be very surprised if it were in Amarillo.
Switching to this job brought up a little hereto unheard of voice that asks what my work will be used for. If I’m spending ~40 hours a week on something it should be beneficial, non-harming, useful, successful, and generally improve peoples lives.
These are the choices I’ve seen so far. UE manages power plant drawings. Innocuous, helpful, mismanaged, which is why I left. There are a surprising number of insurance companies here. Enough said about them. Cattle tracking software. Horse breeding software. Crop insurance software. Local websites. Schools and Colleges at a 50% pay cut and probably not programming. Banks tend to fall in the category of insurance companies for me. Finally, the nuclear bombs and military attack helicopters. Love the last two.
Perhaps, I’ve missed something. Local websites seem promising, though very rare. This is Amarillo. Tweet is what birds do.
This leads to an argument with myself. On one side, I’m being too strict and on the other I know the disappointment I felt when I took my current job. It was good in all the parameters except the intention of the company organization and the physical programming environment (cube/building).
Those thoughts I just brushed away. Over the years they have grown and made me wonder what it is that I work towards every day. Where does my energy go and to whom? When the new CEO took over he answered my question quite simply. The company has always been profitable. Those profits had slipped from 20-25% down to 10% and he intending to restore or exceed that profit margin. So, my work goes towards the bottom line of a massive, faceless entity.
I’m afraid if I make the same choice again I will consider it settling for something less than I could have had. What that is I am left mystified.
Why work here or there? Why this career?
My attention turned to philosophy. It would have been religion, but nearly every religious person I see has chosen at some point to turn their brain off. Thinking that someone must have faced this decision before. Someone has to have been here before me. Maybe they left a note.
This led to an exploration of measurement. How do you value one choice over another? First, you have to measure the goodness. What makes someone choose coke over water, even though water is better for them? How do you know a decision or in this case job/career is good or bad?
Some of this is very new ground for me. One aspect of Bridget that I valued at first was her speed at judging the goodness of something. I could never settle on the right one and took a very long time to pick. Usually, I savor this process and explore all the possibilities making spreadsheets to compare on cleanliness, distance from work, price, size, likability, etc. Judge Bridget is the persona I grew to hate the most for it’s quick and sometimes very wrong decisions.
I have learned a lot and judge a great many things that I previously ignored. My overwhelming opinion is that most things out there are utter crap and the good ones are usually just competent not actually good. This leads to a lot of dissatisfaction and wonder if anyone else has seen this.
It’s in the design of everyday things. Look at a Mac laptop compared to a Windows thigh burner. The Windows machine starts out wrong. It’s covered in useless, meaningless stickers proclaiming an advertising campaign from Intel, HP, Intel, and Microsoft. When you start it up there’s a ton of useless trialware or even worse manufacturer added software the is buggy, nosy, and poorly designed. I could go on endless detail about the operating system, case design, port layout, extra non-standard laptop keys, etc. All of this customization and flashiness to impress you with the quality of your purchasing decisions actually takes you aware from you intent, using a computer.
Let’s look at something that is not computers. Maybe, I have an advantage over the average person since this is my chosen field. I started renovating a small laundry room. The decisions on paint, woodworking, finishing, doors, knobs, windows, etc. came up and I explored many of them in depth. The first thing that modern processes disregard environmental clean, leaving this expense to the communities fool enough to use such chemicals. The local community is the one paying for clean up drastically cutting the initial cost of the chemicals. “Brass” hinges are steel spray painted with a not-very-real brass paint. I have brass hinges even polished they don’t look like the wanna be gold impostors. Knobs have shrunk in the past 20+ years compared to the ones on my doors. Windows have a long list of defects starting with the fact that they don’t try to cover up the seams from jamming to hot pieces of plastic together. Solid doors are made of high density cardboard with a very narrow edge to hold the locksets. Yet the same size “pretty” door made into a classic design and true solid wood is only $20 more.
I only listed on issue with each of these elements of the room. There are probably 3-4 really dumb things that stick out on each on. You can forgo any environmental concerns and still have quite a list. This seems like inattention, apathy, cheapness, maximizing one variable at the cost of all others,.. A lot of things. Maybe, I’m not the only one with career issues. Is this the world we want? The one that is the very cheapest on the day it’s built?
Philosophy hasn’t led anywhere yet, though it’s so large it could take a while to find a hit. Sometimes you learn more from people you disagree with. It takes time. I feel smarter and better at detecting deceptions and I’m left wondering why we aren’t given a smattering of this in high school or college.
That leads me to wondering about leaving Amarillo. Though the alternative is unknown. I’m not happy here. I grow increasingly disillusioned and I want to do something about it, but I feel powerless where I am. The house and inertia is what’s really holding me.
There’s got to be something better than this.
Nowhere
Has anyone else notice that nowhere can be split into two-word phrases with opposite meanings?
Nowhere:
No Where
Now Here
Penny Stove
In 2004 I first posted the original instructions for a design that I had been working on for many years. This site documents the response and continuing search for a homemade camping stove that is safer, lighter, heats faster, burns longer, uses less fuel, easier to make and use. Most alcohol stoves will heat two cups of water, but when I go hiking, I may want to melt snow or sterilize two quarts on 2 oz. of fuel. Or, bake some scones, or simmer a pot of real rice or grains on 2/3 oz., or make tea for two on 1/2 oz..
The penny pressure regulator and simmer ring combination let it function as two stoves. It can prime and boil a quart of water just 20 seconds slower than a gas cook-top, or simmer at max efficiently for almost an hour. Web reviews from around the World show that it “performed like a champ” with a wind chill of -9°, “excellent” even with 50 mph wind gusts, and “great” at the top of Mt. Whitney - 14,491 ft..
Independent tests document that it heats faster, uses less fuel, simmers longer, and packs lighter than any commercial alcohol stove. It combines the features and performance of three basic designs - the efficiency of a high pressure/Photon Stove, the ease to fill and light of a double wall/Pepsi Stove, and fast heat of a tub/Cat Stove. So simple that you can build a rough one on the trail with a leatherman or good pocket knife - no insulation, rulers, epoxy, needles, or tape. If you have played with homebuilt stoves before, this one should be a snap.
Four Clean Kitties
The kitties got several toys lately. There’s a three foot tower near the computer since they like to jump on the desk and then onto a nearby stool. It works pretty good to get them off my lap. The kittens have claimed, because mitten isn’t that flexible. These carpet covered circular holey monuments to our cat overloads make great scratching posts.
The first one was a carpet covered stick to give Mitten something to demonstrate here dominance on. At Mom’s house she nearly destroyed a sapling reaching up as high as she could go and clawing down. She was starting to do the same to my oversized mattress.
The latest is a two foot tall three cat sculpture in tribute to felix. This might not useful since the cats get in bed or don’t come in the room. Mitten pouts all around the room if I’m there with the kittens in the bed. So, maybe it’s for her.
I got a book on cat health and read about bathing. Today, I got a flea comb and shampoo. One by one they were combed, though Mitten was the only one that had anything come out. Then I cleared the kitchen sink. Hated to use it, but it has a sprayer, depth, and hot water. And each cat took a turn.
Tiger was by far the most docile. He didn’t believe the stream of water from the faucet was his destination until I set him in the sink. This bath took the longest as I learned how to hold him by the neck and scruff, pour water over him, and lather the soap.
Tiger’s friends, Goldie and Dora, were more challenging. They still have a wild streak and don’t assume I’m densely benign like Tiger. Goldie washed up quick and then I managed to scoop up Mitten.
Mitten is twice as big as everyone else and old enough to have had one bath. The running sink was not where she wanted to go. She assumed the pose Goldie had; standing as tall as possible with forepaws straight out and all claws out. Stiff straight back and clutching at any chance to grab onto my chest and heave out as if they could jet away unnoticed. BTW, nail clipping before the bath is a really good idea I overlooked.
Then it was Dora’s turn. She’s one quarter the size of Mitten and washes up very quickly. The most wild and independent cat in the house, her size and my recent experience put here at too much of a disadvantage to be painful.
The one thing I forgot to get to help with the baths was a hair dryer. So, all the cats are intensely busying licking and licking and licking, then licking each other, then licking and licking, etc. The fresh fluffy kitty fur will be worth it.
Surprisingly, Mitten didn’t resent me for giving her a bath or even the fighting she gave during the flea combing. She’s in my lap now, slightly damp and licking.
Route to Work
This is the route to take from my house to work. It’s 6.5 miles. That would be 13 miles/day for training. I haven’t ridden this. The biggest impediment, besides the current 10 degree mornings is sweat. My body sweats a lot. This would give me 65 miles per week w/o extra rides. So, I’ll try it, I think, eventually. My guess for the travel time would be 40-50 minutes each way. When I road to the park, about halfway, it was 20 minutes.
Out of the garage, down Adirondack
Left at Danvers to Access Road to stop light
Left across bridge over I-40 to Rails to Trails at Bell/Plains
Ride parallel to Plains way down to Georgia
Switch to riding on Plains/Line to S Lipscomb
Right 1 block to 9th or 7th
Turn onto the numbered street to ride through Downtown
To S Grant and until it meets 10th
Under the rail overpass on the narrow road and/or sidewalk
Immediately turn right onto S Garfield
Two blocks and right onto E 12th
Six blocks to work
2009 Bike Tours
I’ve been planning my coming year. Well, at least the vacations. Bridget was always good at planning ahead and I was awful. Maybe, I’m not. It occurred to me that I can’t plan my career like my vacations, because I can’t tell what’s going to happen during the year and most importantly, because I don’t know what I want to happen.
Anyway, there are two rides that I want to hit and that sets the training. The Seattle to Portland ride sounds good. It’s West coast with thousands of cyclists, which is a thing I’ve never seen. And I can visit everyone up there. I’m hoping Grandma and Patience will come with me. Not on the bike ride, but the trip. The distance of 200 mi/2 days looks challenging, but workable. It’s the third week of July. The next weekend is the WW150. Which is the second ride. It might be the edge of my recovery or my body will rebound strong from the 200 and be even stronger.
I’ve been looking around for longer rides that would let me practice and get me out of town. There is a great week long ride in the Colorado mountains in June, but that sounds like too much right now. The scenery would be spectacular. Bike Across Kansas is a bit long at 8 days and I don’t know how to get my car from the start to the end. Same with a similar Oklahoma tour. There is a very interesting April 4-10 tour around Austin. If this were just one month later. Sixty miles a day is a lot to train for in the Yoga room. New Mexico is harder to decipher. They offer a number of tours and rides. Most seem 1-2 days long. I haven’t found one page with all of them listed yet.
Transcontinental Dreams
Lately, I’ve been thinking that it might be nice to ride the bike across the country. Maybe it’s a desire to escape my preset surroundings, but still I wonder.
When my mom first suggested riding the 100 miles from Amarillo to Canadian that seemed like an impossibility. We did it though. Many times. Riding transcontinentally has the same feel.
We don’t see any of these people. I always thought this odd, because Amarillo is on a main East/West and North/South route. There is more interesting ground to ride through in the states north and the trees and hills south.
It’s not too feasible at the moment. The ride is three months and I have to fly to the start and from the finish. Bills still have to be paid for during those months. Finding a programming job in Amarillo can take 6 months all by itself.
Maybe later or maybe something will come up.
Harry Potter Witchcraft Bans
A few weeks ago I finished the Harry Potter books. We were talking about them at work and someone mentioned that they didn’t agree with them, because of the witchcraft and spells. So, I thought about it. There’s that old quotation about how we would appear magical to a stone age man. The ability to light fires with the flick of a thumb for example. This is achieved with a tool. Our abilities are not confined to trinkets. What about the mental tools of government, management, moral, propaganda, money, trade, etc.?
Would it make these anti-witchcraft people happy if we invented a tiny device to convert thought (Harry’s spells are thought and spoken) into action. Does that make it science fiction and not fantasy? But wait. Harry has a wand that does the magic. Though he can perform crude magic without it. Because, we don’t say the wand is full of electronics and not phoenix feathers this can make Harry Potter off limits, but not David Niven?
We are soon approaching the ability to most of the Harry Potter elements real. Genetic engineering can give ghouls, giants, talking spiders, centaurs, merpeople, etc. Technology can give similar abilities to spellwork. Even a crude ability to read thoughts is available today to people who do not have the use of most of their body.
Many well trained and inventive people have stated their affinity for Star Trek; producing flip phones, easier to use computer interface, speech to computer interfaces, and much more. Science fiction has been just as instrumental to creating the conveniences of modern life as math and physics. It would be disastrous and foolish to constrain the imagination of people like JK Rowlings.
On DOS Age Game Interfaces
Lately, I’ve been exploring the crusty old world of DOS gaming. This weekend I got enthralled by one of my favorites; Master of Orion (MOO) and Master of Orion 2 (MOO2). Especially, MOO2 is just as good then as today. There was a MOO3 in 2003, but somehow it wasn’t very good. Not nearly as interesting as MOO2.
MOO was released for DOS in 1993. You start with a planet whose control has been reduced down to how much $$ to spend on Production (Ships), Defense, Industry(Growth), Environment, and Technology. There is one planet or less per Sun and the goal is to colonize the galaxy. Technology improvements help population growth, ship speed, weapons, etc. Each race has unique qualities such as cyborg, silicon, high tech, militaristic, etc. There are a limited number of ship designs, but they are completely customizable and the combat portion is playable, as opposed to a roll of the dice. As with most games of the time, given the limited graphics and CPU power available, everything is turn based.
MOO2 was released for DOS and Windows 95 in 1996. It is drastically improved in all aspects. The engine is more complex. Graphics are twice as detailed. There is much more control over planets, ships, and races. The core of the original game is there. It just has more of everything. They added a limited number of hero characters, which was the style of the time as in Master of Magic (MOM). Suns have multiple planets of more types. More types of ships with more kinds of weapons. The combat engine, in some ways the heart of the game, is much improved. Also, a high tech enemy was added, the Antareans, which comes and wipes out the colonies of all those with inferior defense tech.
As I played, I began to notice certain oddnesses. Little things that I realized I had accepted as normal at the time. It comes down to the interface. Windows has won and we all use the mouse, no matter what program, basically like we are in Windows. Drag and Drop for various activities based off the programs and files, Right Click for a Context Menu, Single Click to select an item, plus Shift or Ctrl to select a list of items, Double Click to fire off the default action, Enter acts like a Double Click, Cancel with the Escape key, Print Screen takes a screenshot, etc.
In 1993, Windows was not quite a competitive Graphical User Interface (GUI). And later in 1996 as Windows 95 it was not the winner and most games still ran in DOS mode for performance reasons. DOS was a command line interface for running other programs. Many of these did use the mouse. DOS did not and there was no one standard program everyone used. WordPerfect and Word were still fighting it out. Windows existed, but not everyone could or did run it and it had competition from OS2 and Apple. In this Wild West of GUIs the mouse could be used anyway that seemed best for the particular program.
That’s exactly what these games show. This is how most things work. Single click performs an action, there is no double click, drag an drop works on certain icons, right click pops up a set of help messages for all the displays and buttons, and Enter is just a keyboard key. Scroll wheels hadn’t been invented so to zoom in on the map you click a button, which highlights a box the size of the new map window and you drag that box over the part of the map you want to see and right click again. Lists don’t respond to the scroll wheel, which feels really weird.
Except for the scroll wheel and lists I like this interface better than most. It’s simple, relatively flat, and most information is quickly available. Right clicking to get context menus and selecting an action is a horrible crutch. This is the kind of game that would work pretty well with the single button Mac mouse. It feels solid. Not like you could accidentally click the wrong things or drag a game piece over something to create a disaster.
Looking back one thing that has hurt games that try to replicate the success and feel of MOO2 is the use of 3D space. MOO and MOO2 are flat 2D games. It’s easy on a 2D monitor to move game pieces around the board. To jump to 3D you have to constantly fiddle with the map to shift around the Z angle. Since Real Time Strategy (RTS) has apparently one the style of combat in games you have two actions to perform; stop the clock and move the camera. This just gets in the way.
These games are fun and quite innovative without being the enormous and addictive time sinks that current games are. I’ve been playing MOO2 for a couple of months now and a I can walk up and play for a few hours without and then leave it for a week without thinking about it once. This is rare for me. So, this slids right into a sweet spot.
Notes on Ayn Rand
Written 11/18/2008 before Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand focuses on the hero and and glosses over the everyday worker. Though occasionally the everyday worker can be the hero and the hero should have done the same kinds of jobs that he orders other people to do. The fact is if all the workers acted like the hero it would be so complex as to make the story telling difficult. The stories are very clean for the lack of other characters in them.
Also the characters are so pure in their aims, intentions, and methods. Very few people are this focused. They oscillate around. Changing their mind, doubting themselves, undoing previous work, making numerous mistakes.. Her characters have distilled the message that she wants to convey and they seem to understand it or understand it at the point in time. This is highly dubious. For most people as rational, studious action is the exception and understanding why you have behaved a certain why or made a certain decision may not come. The characters are quite fake in understanding so much about themselves and deciding accordingly. Rational lies sound much like rational truths.
Rand seems like the other end of the Action/Reaction to Soviet Communism of the early 20th century. Where Communism sought to bring equality by killing the heroes, level down the quality of man, Rand elevates the hero. In doing so, she anonymizes the common man much like the Communism she objects to. Her hero is focused on self and driven internally. Actions for the good of all are denigrated by the hero and the omniscient story teller though he may perform actions that assist others it is for the goals of self. She never faces the situation of a hero who is self-driven to destroy his fellow man. Some villains attack the hero, but this is more an attack on his personal truth and denunciation of anyone how feels such truth than an attract on other men or mankind.
There is an attractiveness to the hero’s position that can not be denied. He carries a personal truth that survives all attacks and creates beautiful works. This certainly seems right. Again her common man has no such creative motivation. Only the hero. The villains are so evil, because they recognize the quantity or personal truth in other men and respond to obscure, destroy, repudiate, or condemn the hero and anyone else who might also act from the self. Rand’s love of the hero comes through slowly. Driven by the amount of exposition about and by him. Everything is dry, rational, well thought out, and cool.
Her stories are of the captains of industry and associated retinue with an anonymous background of everyone else fighting it out to make and be prevent from making their internal self truth on the world.
My issues with here work are in the anonymization and concept of common man as uncreative motive force to be marshalled by other smarter men. There is a command and control aspect to her vision that repells me. All men are creative in uncountable ways. The organization of labor according to 19th and 20th century standards is not a requirement for society. The internal self drive of the hero is extremely rare and I suspect, looking at other cultures, that such drive turns religious or mystical at some point of development. It’s easy for her to confuse material ego desires with spiritual truth, because she denies the existence of anything that is not rational.
The Creed of a Programmer
This is my debugger. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My debugger is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
My debugger, without me, is useless. Without my debugger, I am useless. I must fire my debugger true. I must shoot straighter than my defect who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I WILL…
My debugger and myself know that what counts in this war is not the defects we resolve, the noise of our bug bashes, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. WE WILL HIT…
My debugger is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its watches and its breakpoints. I will ever guard it against the ravages of patches and upgrades as I will ever guard my legs, my arms, my eyes and my heart against damage. I will keep my debugger clean and ready. We will become part of each other. WE WILL…
Before God, I swear this creed. My debugger and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. WE ARE THE SAVIORS OF MY LIFE.