PC vs console gaming

Will PC gaming ever be fully replaced by consoles? My guess is no, and it mostly boils down to one reason: input.

My two favorite types of games are still (a) strategy, and (b) shooters. And I find it very hard to see myself comfortably playing either one of them on a console.

Strategy games come in two flavors: real-time (Warcraft) and turn-based (Heroes of Might and Magic). For real-time strategy, the mouse is ESSENTIAL to move fast enough to manage everything on the screen. For both of them, precision clicking is required at least ten times a minute. Try doing that with a hand held controller. I have, when I rented Starcraft 64 for my Nintendo. It's very hard. In order to make up somewhat for this difficulty, Blizzard doubled the number of units you can select at once, and created a "highlight everything on the screen" button. This helps macro-management, but not micro. There is no good way to quickly select a caster and target a spell where you need it. With a turn-based game these issues are eased a bit -- and I know that Heroes designer Gus Smedstad has said himself that he doesn't like the twitch reflex aspect of Warcraft. But even with no time pressure, clicking an area of the screen with a joystick is extremely frustrating, and if you have to do it often enough, it can get old fast.

Then there's the keyboard -- hotkeys. Not everybody takes the trouble to learn them, but I think everyone who does would agree with me that they can't live without them anymore. So many interface issues just seem to go away when you can quickly type "H" to switch heroes, "E" to end the day, "BH" to build a town hall, "C" for a chain lightning spell. Having an entire board full of free keys, most of which have letters and numbers for quick mnemonic reference, is a huge help.

Many action type games rely on the same dynamic. Just imagine trying to play Diablo II with a joystick. I think I could handle moving my character that way, even though choosing a target from the crowd around you would be tricky. Especially with a spellcaster or bow user. But there's no way I can see handling the multitude of other tasks that make Diablo an interesting game - all the inventory managing, skill switching, character adjusting, potion guzzling, etc. We're not talking about some overly complicated game that people hate. We're talking about one of the best selling PC games of all time, and we're talking about a game that I've personally introduced to at least five non-gamers, with a very high success rate.

As for first person shooters, they're mostly unplayable on a console. I won't touch the stuff, myself. I played James Bond and Perfect Dark, two of the most highly praised shooters on the Nintendo 64. Hate them. Metroid Prime made it easy to aim, but I think it was a fluke. And in any case, auto-aiming just isn't the same as precision mouse aiming, and I don't think it will ever catch on in the multi-player arena the way Quake and Counter-Strike have.

The interface issues we're talking about are far from insignificant. Many consoles have tried to introduce keyboards and mice, but they haven't caught on. Not surprising, either. They just don't work in a comfy armchair. And one more issue I can think of that doesn't work on a console is the ability to save lots of games. You have a hard time playing Serious Sam without a dozen quicksaves in memory, even if you didn't have the aiming issues. And few console games I can recall give you the ability to just load up an old save file and begin play from any point in the game that you wish. You have to start over.

Don't get me wrong, I like kicking back and playing a relaxing game on the Cube. So far, Zelda is my favorite. But even Zelda hasn't really compelled me to keep playing it after winning. In the end, the games that have real staying power for me are the ones that are deep enough to require all the extra depth that you only get on a full featured computer.

For my dad on Father's Day

Memories of growing up with my father, Alan Glasser

It's father's day, and the beginning of my second year as an actual father. I would like my father to know how much I appreciate him.

In the last five years, dad lost both of his parents, Milton and Jean Glasser. I had not visited my grandparents for several years before they died, and I felt very guilty about this. In fact, I was afraid that Grandma Jean had never even seen pictures of me with my family, because I am a notorious procrastinator and I never sent any. I posted plenty of pictures on my web site, but Jean was a little too old to catch up with the online trend, so I would have had to send them by regular post. Luckily, dad told me that he had brought her pictures himself. I was extremely grateful.

A few weeks after she died, we all got together and had an informal memorial service for both Jean and Milton -- dad, mom, me, my sister Keryn, and dad's wife Marg-Anne. I had a lot of things on my mind to say about my grandparents, but when the time came I felt too emotional to be coherent. I could only say things in bits and pieces. Dad read a very moving tribute that he had written about them. I thought it was a shame that they didn't get to hear it in person.

Well, I'm sure that dad has many decades of life left, but I don't want to feel the same way when he's gone. That's why I needed to write this now.

---

Early years

The earliest memory I have of my dad is of him fighting a big blue hairy monster to rescue my yellow lollipop.

Of course the monster wasn't real, but the lollipops were. There was a mall in Princeton Junction which sold huge round yellow lollipops, and I always got them. I guess I was about three years old. My dad was a born story teller, and he made up a story for me to make sure I would never be scared of monsters.

In the story, a big blue monster (probably Harry Monster from Sesame Street) tried to steal my lollipop, but dad ran out to the parking lot and tackled him, and not only did the monster buy me a new lollipop, but he had to apologize to me personally. It was great. I don't know how many times I heard that story, but judging from how well I remember it, it must have been a lot.

Dad read a lot of stories to me, and he played a lot of physical games with me that I still remember. He would lie on his back on the bed and bounce me on his knees, saying: "To market, to market, to buy a fat PIG! Home again, home again, jiggity jiggity jig!" I can also remember him telling me about my name. I was named after Bertrand Russell, and he told me that Bertrand Russell was a mathematician. What's a mathematician? It's a person who "plays with numbers". I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded like fun.

As a scientist, dad has always valued knowledge, critical thinking, and creativity. Many times I have been discouraged by an academic subject, and he has encouraged me to stick with it and find the interesting parts. When I was first starting school, I wasn't very good at math, because it seemed to heavily rely on memorizing things on flash cards. Dad told me to be patient, because things would get better. When I got older, he bought me books with mathematical games in them. He took me and some classmates to a lecture by a logician named Raymond Smullyan when I was 11 or 12, and it had a profound effect on me. Once I understood that math could be fun and engage your mind, as opposed to the way I had learned it in elementary school, I really learned to appreciate it.

I can also remember a similar experience with biology. I had a terrible biology teacher in high school, Mr. Max. Everything about the class seemed like rote memorization. Dad kept telling me, "Don't worry, when you get to the part about evolution, it will all make sense. Biology is much more exciting when you understand how it works through evolution." I kept an eye on the evolution chapter, and kept waiting to get there... and we skipped it. No explanation given. It turned out that Mr. Max was either a creationist himself, or afraid to start controversy by teaching the subject. Dad was livid; he went to the principal of the school and raised a big stink. I don't know what happened in the end -- I still didn't learn evolution in that class -- but I appreciated the effort. Maybe future students benefitted from this. As for me, dad gave me and my best friend Gil our first lecture on evolution that day in the car. Gil was Catholic, and he always had the idea that it was bad to believe in evolution, but he was surprised that it was so simple and obvious. He was also surprised when dad told him that the pope had said evolution was okay. I made a point of taking a full course on evolution when I got to college, and I finally saw his point. Evolution DID make biology all make sense. After I graduated, I started reading more and more about the subject, and now I am even something of an expert on the creation/evolution controversy.

All through my high school years, we commuted to Los Alamos together. We lived in Santa Fe, and Los Alamos (where dad worked at the lab) was a 45 minute drive away. It would have been easier to go to school in Santa Fe, but my parents agreed that Los Alamos had a much better school system, and Santa Fe was reputed to have something of a problem with gangs. So, the result was that my dad spent an hour and a half together every week day in the car. Sometimes we made good use of the time, sometimes we didn't. For the first year we drove with my best friend Gilbert Quintana, who went to LAHS with me until his sophomore year, and then he decided to go back to Santa Fe. During that year, dad gave us a crash course education in classical music. He had us identify composers and types of music. Every time he played a fugue, he would give a dollar to the first one who yelled "Fugue!" In exchange, Gil gave us a crash course in his favorite rock music. That didn't stick with dad as long, but he was very patient about it.

Those were four years I spent as sort of a surly teenager, so I know that dad had to put up with a lot sometimes. Sometimes we would argue about homework or bad grades. Sometimes I would just sit there in sullen silence and not talk. Sometimes I would reach over aggressively and turn off the radio, which was usually playing NPR, so I could do some last minute homework before school. There were some personality clashes, but dad didn't let it hurt our relationship.

---

Philosophies

I learned to be a staunch, outspoken atheist from dad. Dad comes from a long line of atheists; his father and grandfather both were, which made me a fourth generation atheist. My parents were understandably worried that I would get into trouble with the other kids, especially since we moved to Alabama at about the same time that I was starting to come to grips with atheism. Dad took a job at a college in Alabama, and my parents told me a story of how they went to visit there before we moved. During their visit, they spotted a theater that was playing Monty Python's "The Life of Brian", a sacreligious farce that lampooned the life of Jesus. They said to each other, "Okay, this place can't be all that bad." The next day when they were leaving, they drove past the same theater and people were picketing it.

Well, dad's fears were well founded in a way. I started arguing with my neighborhood friends when I was six or seven. The first time I was stumped by a question was when one of them asked me, "If there's no God, then who made the world?" I went right back to dad and asked him, "What do we believe, that The Nothing made the world?" And he explained some arguments to me. When word got out around school that I was an atheist, I was treated as something of an oddity. Kids used to come up to me after school and show their friends: "Here, watch this. Do you believe in God?" "No," I said. And they would walk away, saying "Isn't that weird?" I don't think I ever got beaten up by anyone for that, though. From dad, I learned that atheism was a simple, logical position to take, and he never acted like it was a position to take because it was counter-cultural, so I didn't either.

As I grew up, I became more confident in my atheism. I got involved in several different venues where I learned how to argue. One was the high school debate club, which involved staying in Los Alamos late at night once a week. Another was the message boards on Prodigy, which we signed up for when I was 18. When I argued with people, I often had to come back to dad and asked him what he would say about this or that point. Even as I went through college, he was usual the first person I called when I had a question about most academic subjects, especially politics.

Dad also helped to launch my life long passion for computer gaming. I first saw "Pac-Man" when I was six years old, at the Godfather's Pizza place that we always went to. I made my mom play it, but I wouldn't play it myself. The game scared me, the way you always had to run from these monsters that were chasing you. Everybody dies in the end. For a long time I loved to watch those games but I wouldn't play them. Finally, one day he gave me a quarter in a supermarket, and said "Here, I order you to go play that game." I even remember that the game was "Jungle Hunt". Once I played it, I realized that it was actually fun, and "dying" really wasn't that bad.

We were early adopters of home computers. We had our first IBM PC around 1983, when they were first available. A lot of other kids had Ataris at home, but I don't think anyone else had a computer for many years. Some of dad's friends designed PC based clones of commercial arcade games, so we always got a lot of free games. Dad and I actually had a friendly rivalry in some games. He always had the high score at "PC-Man". One day I came very close to beating his score, and he was right behind me, watching and encouraging. I almost did it, but I died needing ten more points -- which I would have gotten by eating just ONE MORE DOT. I never made it that far again. However, I think I finally broke his record at Frogger.

It's funny remembering this, because later when I became a much bigger game enthusiast, I didn't really think that Dad liked games for some reason. But he used to play games with me a lot, and I can remember walking into our home office at 3 AM and finding him playing Solitaire. Later, he would take me on special trips to the arcade to watch people play Dragon's Lair, the first LaserDisc based game, which was hand drawn by the former Disney animator Don Bluth.

It didn't stop there, though; dad made it a point of getting me to learn how to program too. One of the first magazines for kids about computers was "Enter", and I wanted a subscription mostly because they had articles about games. But dad would only buy me a subscription if I promised to do some of the BASIC programming exercises in the magazines. I knew how to print my name and do simple "goto" logic, but that wasn't enough. I remember how he tried to teach me about arrays. It was frustrating at first, and I just didn't get it for a while, but eventually I did it. Later, he made me write a program that he used to illustrate some simple trignometry. I wouldn't get any trig in class for years to come, but he got me started.

In my sophomore year of high school, he convinced me to take an advanced programming class in Pascal. It was taught by my geometry teacher from Freshman year, Mr. Laeser. Dad recognized a truly inspiring teacher when he saw one, and knew I should spend more time with Laeser. I was the youngest student in that class, but I did very well in it. At the end of the year, Mr. Laeser made a competition to see whose program could output the most consecutive prime numbers in five minutes. Thanks to a lot of extra instruction from my dad, I won. Well, WE won. I was in fierce competition with another student named Yoseif right up until the day of the contest. Even Mr. Laeser's teaching aide had a much slower program in the end.

When I went to college, I started out as a physics major, just like him. But after almost two years of physics classes, I realized my heart wasn't really in it. I was not making bad grades in physics, but I realized that I wasn't nearly as interested in the subject as I was in programming. Dad always told me that you should plan to center your life around doing what you enjoy, and he never pushed me to go into the same career he had. In fact, he encouraged me to switch my major to computer science once it became clear that I wasn't as turned on by physics.

Another thing I remember is that dad was a guy who could take crazy ideas and make them become reality. When I was 11 years old, he took my sister and me to see a local production of "H.M.S. Pinafore". It was a wonderful performance, and it made me a devoted fan of Gilbert and Sullivan for the rest of my life. But the real surprise was when my dad suggested that we get the entire family to perform "The Mikado" for my Bar Mitzvah party. To show that he was serious, he actually went out and hired the director of Pinafore, Manos Clements.

---

Looking back

When I tell my wife about my experiences with my father, she often tells me she's amazed that we got along so well. I suppose it is a bit abnormal, in a way. In fact, dad commented on this once, when we were driving to Los Alamos. He said, "You know, kids your age aren't supposed to get along with their fathers." "Yeah, so I've heard," I replied. "We really ought to try harder to have a normal relationship," he said. "Go ahead," I said. In a completely flat voice, he said, "You rotten kid." "Get off my back, old man," I answered in the same voice. Then we laughed and he said "My heart's not really in it."

Well, it would be wrong to say that we had a perfect relationship. I think we had an unusually good one, but I also remember that dad had a temper which usually manifested itself when I was having academic problems. I nearly got kicked out of a private school when I was 12 for failing to do my work. I also got some very bad grades in both my first quarter at high school, and my first quarter at college. Those were some tough times for both of us, and dad would often vent his anger by shouting or using heavy sarcasm.

Nevertheless, when I look back on those times, they seem to pale into insignificance compared with the good memories. As an adult, my relationship with him is better than ever. We discuss politics by email, we recommend books and articles for each other to read, and we chat on the phone almost every week. He has consulted me several times about computer issues, making it clear that he values my opinions in the areas where I am an expert. That makes me feel valuable and proud of myself.

Some of the things I have learned from my dad are:

• That knowledge and intelligence are valuable.
• That you shouldn't believe or do things just because other people are doing them; nor should you only do the opposite of what everyone does.
• That life is meaningful because of the experiences we have, and the people we share them with.
• That you shouldn't assume people are stupid just because they disagree with you -- they may have fundamentally different ways of looking at life which make sense to them.
• That doing something you enjoy is one of the most important career choices you can make.
• That crazy ideas are worth chasing.
• That true creativity is one of the rarest commodities in the world.

Now that I have been a father for a little over a year, I realize more than ever how much I learned from my dad. I find myself searching on Amazon for the same books that he used to read to me. My most recent purchase was "The Great Blueness". It was out of print, but I took the time to find a reasonably priced used copy. I also do the "To market" chant with my son, and play Gilbert and Sullivan for him.

I hear a lot of stories from people who regret that they never got a chance to tell their loved ones how much they mean to them. I don't want to be one of those people. I love you, dad. Happy Father's Day.

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (PC, *****)

Bias warning: I'm a TREMENDOUS fan of Blizzard Entertainment. They are my favorite game company, and have been since shortly after I discovered Warcraft II in 1996 or so. I was tutoring a kid in programming, and I went to his house one day and he was playing online with his friend. All these colorful cartoon characters were running around the screen hitting each other, and the thing that most caught my attention was how when he clicked on something, everything had different lines of funny dialogue. I downloaded the demo, and bought the game the next day.

Since then, I have bought every Blizzard game I could within a week or so of its release -- Diablo, Starcraft, Diablo II, Warcraft III, and all the associated expansion packs. The release of a new Blizzard game is one thing I really look forward to and keep an eye out for its release.

So I chose to go to a special midnight sale at GameStop on the night it was released, July 3, 2002. GameStop was a madhouse. I expected five or ten die-hards milling around the store. Instead, there were about thirty or forty geeks waiting in an agonizingly slow line, clutching their pre-order receipts. I even ran into some friends there, a couple with whom I played Diablo in the past. Collector's Edition for him and regular for her.

The biggest thing new players will notice is, of course, that the game is in 3D. The models look good, especially considering that there are often dozens or hundreds on screen at once. The game loses very littlein translation from 2D sprites, they are still the same cartoon figures that we have come to know. Only now you can rotate and zoom the camera a bit to get a better look at them. When you click on them a bunch, they still make annoyed comments. Orc grunts say "Hey, are you poking me AGAIN?" And after that, "Actually, that's starting to feel good."

The other major change from previous games is the emphasis on heroes. You can have up to three of them, although new players will want to limit themselves to one until they are more comfortable with the micro-management aspects. Heroes gain levels and powers as the game goes on, so eventually they are far more powerful than any standard unit in the game. This totally changes the game dynamic from that of Starcraft, where the focus was "Make a million units and throw them at the enemy", instead forcing you to get experience for your own heroes and tactically decide how to fight the opponent's heroes.

The plot begins right in the tutorial, so first time players may want to play through the tutorial even if they feel like they know what they are doing. At first the game centers on Thrall, an orc hero who was supposed to be the main character in Blizzard's cancelled adventure game, "Lord of the Clans". Players also initially meet Grom Hellscream, who doesn't have quite the same funny screechy voice as in Warcraft II. After completing the tutorial, players switch to the new character of Prince Arthas, a human Paladin. I won't mention what happens to Arthas, as that would be a large spoiler for the game's pretty well written story, but I will say that Arthas will figure in as a character in more than one campaign.

By focusing on heroes, Blizzard made the game more personal. You can't relate to a group of 24 marines facing off against 48 zerglings; but you can feel a personal stake in the lives of your heroes in the game. The Starcraft campaigns had heroes like Jim Raynor and Fenix, but these "heroes" could not be brought back once dead, so they had to sit in the back of the base or fight on the flanks of your army all the time. By contrast, Arthas can be resurrected at the altar of kings; he is a valuable spellcaster; and he improves the more he fights. Arthas actually feels like he is your hero, who leads your army, not a wimp who needs a bunch of bodyguards to do the dirty work for him.

The cinematics are standard fare for Blizzard, which means "Better than anything appearing in other games, and on par with the CGI in many movies." When you first watch the movies, you should notice how detailed people look. King Terenas has beard stubble, jowls, and a very distinctive haggard expression. In close-up views, people who haven't seen Final Fantasy (the movie) will probably marvel and say they've never seen such life-like humans.

As far as gameplay goes, it's the little interface interface tweaks that push this one over the line from a good to outstanding game. Like the way you can order one unit to cast spells while still keeping a large army selected. The way you can cast spells on your own units using the portrait interface. The ability to hotkey multiple buildings and rally them all on your heroes, so troops run straight to the battle as soon as they finish training. Spells with autocasting that can be switched on and off. Small touches, but important.

The battle.net system is quite different from what Starcrafters are used to. You don't get a long list of game names to try your luck on. Instead, the game features automatic matching. You choose what kind of game you want to play -- map name and style (1v1, 2v2, etc). Then it searches for a game that meets your specifications.

With the addition of the "upkeep" concept, Blizzard changes the dynamic of multi-player gameplay as well. Keeping a large army on hand costs you an "income tax", so if you keep many troops around for a long time, you will wind up far behind on resources. The strategy of "turtling" in your base and building up to maximum army size is no longer viable. Because of this, the focus of the game is much more on strategic attacks, and the role of heroes is emphasized, because the heroes tend to be exceptionally powerful in the late game, while armies are proportionally less powerful. The rule of the game is, don't stay in high upkeep: "spend" those soldiers and go fight your opponent.

Single player levels are many and varied. About half the episodes are standard "build up a base and destroy your enemies" type levels. The rest are levels with small armies and no bases. Ordinarily I hate the latter, because I like to build. But having heroes with constantly improving abilities keeps it interesting, and they really feel like RPG quests. The quests themselves differ widely; there are stealth levels, levels where you simultaneously build a base and scout out adventures with a hero party, levels where you have to escort NPC's to a safe location; levels where you get computer-controlled allies, etc.

Overall, Warcraft 3 is a fine strategy game and will give many months of enjoyment.

Score: ***** out of 5.

The Hacker's Diet

This is absolutely required reading for overweight computer nerds.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/

Health and diet is something I've never been particularly interested in, but the Hacker's Diet has done a pretty good job of breaking through my wall of boredom and getting me recognize why I should care. Even though I had two years of college physics, I never really understood this relation between calories and weight. I exercise, but it's sporadic at best. What John Walker did is take the complicated stuff at make it really simple and quantifiable. I love the rubber bag analogy. And I get it now that total calories =~ total weight, so eating x-y calories instead of x calories will cause a loss of a measurable number of pounds over time.

All this must be trivially, stupidly obvious to anyone who's ever thought about it, but I never have. The idea that you can actually quantify it and put numbers on your eating habits that directly correlate to weight movement is interesting. It's an important principle for investors too -- the idea of measuring your progress and making yourself accountable to a bottom line.

I'll admit, I balked when I read that you have to plan your meals. But then I read about the feedback loop, and I relaxed. Why, if I have a good feedback loop, then I don't have to perfectly measure the number of calories I eat. I'll learn to eyeball the right amount of food, and then if I am consistently overestimating how much I can eat, the chart will tell me within a week. All I have to do is pay attention to the number of calories in the kinds of things I eat, until I can get an intuitive feeling for how much is the right amount.

16 days ago, I downloaded the Palm Pilot tools with the intention of measuring my weight. I had a wildly inaccurate scale that gave nearly random readings, so I went and bought a decent one. At first I didn't change my eating much, but as I saw the little calorie readings on my graph, I started treating it like a game (how many big negative numbers can you generate?) and action followed naturally.

I don't know for sure if it's working yet. When I bought my scale, it moved my average weight down by a few pounds, so my previous readings are all wrong. But I DO know that I'm eating less. Just paying attention to what goes in makes a huge difference. I mean, geez, did you know that a double cheeseburger, fries, and a drink is nearly 2/3 of what I should eat all DAY? Even though the book says you don't need to stop eating the kind of foods you're used to, I'm gaining an appreciation for eating healthier. After all, if I eat food with fewer calories, I can eat more of it and feel full while still knowing I won't increase my weight. Not only that, but it's cheaper. If I bring light lunches from home instead of buying fast food most days, I get to keep more of my weekly pocket money to buy gadgets. Who doesn't want that?

I also finally started the exercise ladder. I've been doing it reliably for four days. Moved up to level two yesterday. I plan to go up pretty quickly, since I'm not in such terrible shape right now.

This morning, my wife suggested that maybe I should read another book on health, which she's been trying to make me read for years. She said "I think that it's a great step you've taken by eating fewer calories, but maybe the idea that it doesn't matter what kind of food you eat is a little more simplisitic than it should be."

To my surprise, I said "Okay." See? All of a sudden, I'm interested.

Dreamcatcher (movie, **) and thoughts on Stephen King

Warning: this review contains small spoilers for "The Stand" and "The Tommyknockers."

There's a problem I've had with Stephen King for many years, ever since I read "The Stand." Very few of his books have ever really worked for me.

What bugs me about The Stand is that the initial story is brilliant. There is a creeping disease that gradually kills 99% of the world population, leaving the survivors terrified and adrift in a world full of corpses. It's brilliantly written, and it can keep you up at nights. My favorite part is a single chapter where the story jumps from person to person, watching the disease get passed along and using descriptive language like "For a tip, he gave the waitress a dollar that was crawling with death."

But after the disease finishes taking its toll, what happens next? You get a group of people having dreams about this sweet old lady, and they gather at her house... and then there's an evil guy who turns out to be a demon or something. Eventually it turns into a ridiculous battle of good vs. evil, and you have something that started out as a very good and disturbingly realistic story, which turns into a comic book.

I also read "The Tommyknockers." Again, scary beginning, with some odd change coming over the people of one town, at first giving them some sort of telepathic powers, and gradually brainwashing them and causing them to turn on outsiders and others who don't get involved in the groupthink. But what turns out to be the cause? Aliens. The hero has to fight on a spaceship. It's silly.

And now we have "Dreamcatcher," which I have not read, but it follows the same pattern. It starts with characters who have an interesting power, and we have a backstory that causes us to care about them. Then we get them trapped in a small town where people are dying and they can't leave, and there's some terrifying wormy things that we get brief glimpses of. Seriously creepy. The first half of the movie is a perverse pleasure to people who enjoy horror movies done right.

But this movie also becomes a comic book, when we get the cliche giant faceless alien and the insane military commander. Ginny and I discussed the movie afterwards and tried to pin down at what point the movie "jumped the shark." We decided it happened the first time the redheaded guy started talking like John Cleese. Sorry folks, somebody should have pointed out to the director that John Cleese is not scary. After that it was, once again, not a horror movie but a comic book.

I have a new theory.

Stephen King really knows how to write good horror. I mean, he is the best known horror writer in America; that has to count for something, right? And I've seen it. I've been wrapped up in his books before. I know the man can write.

I think that King's greatest talent is coming up with a scary scenario. He probably gets an idea in his head, and he thinks "Wow, now that would be seriously creepy." And then he writes a book around that.

But at some point, more often than not, he gets stuck. He has already accomplished the scene that he had in his head, and he doesn't know what to do next. So he starts writing a completely different story. He says "Aw hell, lets just throw some demons and aliens in there." Once he loses the original thread, it shows. But he can't just abandon the book, so he writes the new book, which didn't begin with a great idea. So the endgame of his original story is a mess.

There are a few exceptions to this rule. Misery remains my all-time favorite Stephen King book. King is 100% true to his original high concept from beginning to end. He starts with a guy being held captive by a scary insane lady who wants to keep him. As the book goes on, the insane lady is revealed to be even more insane than we thought. Most of the terror is psychological, seen through the eyes of the main character. No supernatural element is ever introduced. And his victory in the end is over the same scary lady that was imprisoning him through the entire book. It was a satisfying ending.

Ginny tells me that Cujo was similar, although I haven't read it.

One more book that I think represents King at his best is called "Eyes of the Dragon". This isn't even a horror novel. It's more like a fairy tale for young adults. It has scary parts in it, but it's really about telling a story. It has supernatural elements like magic in it, but the magical theme is established from the beginning, so King never violates the spirit of the story that he originally set out to tell.

At first I thought that King is good at writing psychology and bad at writing about magic, but I've come to realize that he's pretty good at both... as long as he sticks to one or the other.

Score: ** out of 5.

Thoughts on the Iraq war

I don't think there is any particular justification for it, but I don't care for Saddam either. I'm not pro-war or anti-war. But I am pro-evidence.

If we were declaring war for any number of other reasons, I might just be tempted to support it. But the fact of the matter is, Bush is telling us we are supporting the war for two reasons.

1. "Hussein is behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11" - which he CLEARLY is not
2. "He is going to nuke us" - which, even if he HAD the invisible, undetectable nukes that no one can find, I would find unlikely in the extreme. Why would he do something so blatantly suicidal?

Bush says there is evidence for the above but is unable to state what it is (unless, apparently, he gets to forge something). The UN's job is to decide whether there is a compelling reason to go to war. Yes, it's *the UN's* job, of which we are only a small part. We, the states, do not rule the entire world. Put the shoe on the other foot. I wouldn't want, say, Germany to unilaterally declare that Pakistan pisses them off and they are going to blast them into the stone age, regardless of what the rest of the world thinks is right. It would scare the crap out of me if I saw that in the news.

I got into a discussion the other night, of the "What if you're wrong?" sort. What if the US waltzes in and finds that Iraq has a full arsenal of nukes. Well, what if that does happen? In fact, let's be more generous to the pro-war crowd. Let's say that we find the nukes, and the UN throws up their hands and says "Wow, how wrong we were to ever doubt the US! You guys were right about everything, and we will never ask you to back up your claims with evidence again. Now, o great and all-knowing United States... WHO SHALL WE GO AFTER NEXT?"

This is the Republicans' wet dream, isn't it? It's their ideal outcome. And yet, I think this is the most troubling possible situation. Because now that sets a precedent for attacking some other country just on our say so, without evidence and without the right to a hearing. I don't like it when it happens to someone in our country, and I'm not all that keen to see it happen in the rest of the world either.

It's like pseudo-science. When you're hawking a miracle drug that cures every disease known to man, or claiming you can talk to dead relatives, what do you say? "Just give me a chance and let me convince you." Then, when you are given the chance, you count the hits and ignore the misses. You gain anecdotal evidence so you can convince more people in the future. But however much it may APPEAR that you've proved your claims, being right some of the time IS NOT EVIDENCE unless you prove that you can right MORE OFTEN THAN WOULD BE DICTATED BY CHANCE.

Finally, compare this "what if you're wrong" question to Pascal's Wager. Clearly the assumption made is: "Just trust what we say If we are wrong (no nukes in Iraq) then there is no harm done. But if we are right, your choice to believe us is the difference between salvation (we stop them) and infinite punishment (kaboom)!"

It sounds persuasive, except that running roughshod over standards of evidence and setting that precedent is ***not*** "no harm done." And like in Pascal's Wager, we would be right to ask "what about all the other possible gods?" Doesn't the same argument apply to Canada? England? The United States? Or, a little more plausibly given the mood over here -- France?

The Right to be Heard?

Commonly heard from creationists: "We don't want to harm science education! We just want our science given 'equal time' with evolution. Stop censoring us!"

From school prayerists: "You people just want to stifle our freedom of speech by telling our kids that they are not ALLOWED to pray."

Welcome to the information age, where "freedom of speech" has taken on whole new dimensions. It wasn't until recently that these people started angling for the free speech sympathy ploy.

The internet has created a whole new way to express ourselves. Anybody, ANYBODY can create a web site, contribute to a message board, or spam 20 million people at a piddling cost and with almost no effort at all.

But we're still getting used to this new power, and lots of people are still very unclear on the concept. They believe that since they have the ability and the right to say anything to anyone, that also translates into the right to make people listen.

So people will sign up for a special interest group and demand that you read and discuss their 200 page thesis. They'll send ads by the millions for viagra, mortgage rates, shady "business opportunities", and porn to people who have no interest in any of the above. And they'll scream "censorship!" at any hint of criticism.

Meanwhile, in the offline world, creationists have had to subtly switch their tactics from "Only the Christian creation myth may be taught" to "Don't you want to be open minded about what you teach?" The school prayer advocates have tried to reframe the debate into saying "Well, don't we have the RIGHT to pray wherever we want to?" Judge Roy Moore is fighting a campaign against imaginary oppression, acting like his right to free speech is being suppressed because he can't use his government position as a pulpit to inflict his biblical puritanism on everyone who walks through his court doors.

I think that spammers and religious "free speech" advocates share the same misconception. They both think that their right to free speech is the same as their right to strap you to a chair and make you listen.

No one has that right. What newcomers to the internet age still have to understand is that with their new freedom comes an obligation to be interesting, compelling and polite. Nobody has to listen to anybody unless they are interesting. That's nothing new; it's always been the case that people who are arrogant, obnoxious, and downright rude will get you disliked and ignored by most people. But people think those rules of etiquette have been, or should be, thrown away so they can use their power of expression as a weapon.

Gentle reader, Mister Manners here can see right through it.

The best adventure game puzzles

My favorite puzzles, the ones that have really stuck in my memory, mostly come from text adventures, and were neither obtuse nor "mechanical" puzzles. They were usually about figuring out a logical answer to a "real" situation, and a little bit of thinking outside the box to find the correct answer. Puzzles like that make me sit and bask in my victory for a moment, while acknowledging the author with a "Wow, that was so clever!"

I'll provide two examples from Legend Entertainment and one from Infocom. Warning: This will contain spoilers for Spellcasting 301, Deathgate, and Spellbreaker.

Example 1:

Spellcasting 301. You are Ernie Eaglebeak, hopeless nerd in charge of the task of finding some girls to attend to a party thrown by your fraternity. There is a group of girls standing around who are, shall we say, clearly better endowed with looks than brains.

In the game is a gizmo called a "studfinder". I had no idea what it was for, looked like a red herring, but handed it to the girls. They said "Wow, let's go find some studs!" but then I never saw them again. I had no idea what the gizmo was supposed to do, so I restored, turned it on, and wandered around the game with it. At some point, it started beeping. I did a thorough search of the room, and located... a wooden two by four.

Flash of insight! Bring the "stud" to the party, drop it off, and THEN go back and give the girls the studfinder. Minutes later, they locate the party, and comment: "Wow, these guys look like total geeks, but this thing is totally going wild, so they must be studs!" Hilarity ensues.

Example 2:

Deathgate. You are Haplo, a spellcaster with near godlike powers. The game has a tricky spellcasting system which involves tracing hexagonal runes in the air. You have a repertoire of spells that you can call up at any time, and the correct rune pattern will be displayed. Mostly, you don't have to mess with the runes; just click a spell and it will be cast.

Near the end of the game, you arrive at a magic mirror. No glass, just a duplicate of you standing in your path. You can't proceed because your mirror image is in the way. He moves when you do. You can't cast spells at the duplicate because the "mirror" stops all spells. Your mirror image casts spells when you do, or at least tries to: the game writes "You cast the spell. The mirror image traces the same runes in reverse, but it is not a spell so nothing happens." Some spells are symmetrical, so he can cast those.

There is one spell in the game that seems totally useless. It's sort of a "kill yourself" spell that doesn't work on anyone else. But -- Insight! -- if you carefully select the runes and lay them out BACKWARDS... what happens?

Example 3:

Spellbreaker. Near the end of the game, you come across a room that looks identical to a location that you have visited before, except that it looks much newer and less worn. You find you can't leave the room; you always die for some reason, though the description of your death is very cryptic.

You conclude that you have travelled back in time. The only way you can escape is to set up the room EXACTLY the way you found it the first time. This involves leaving an item in a locked cabinet (which becomes "a moldy book" when you found it in the future), breaking the door off its hinges, and leaving without a trace (by magic). You may not leave any other object behind, because that would change history, and that's how you get killed.


What do all these puzzles have in common? They are all examples of a surprising action that you (probably) couldn't come up with by accident. But you are not expected to read the game designer's mind; the clues are all there, you just need the insight to read them. Most importantly, they're not contrived, like a bunch of gears and switches in the middle of nowhere; they all MAKE SENSE in the context of the game's world.

Back to the Future DVD trilogy (Movie, *****)

I must confess that I love all three BttF movies and always have. I was a teenager in the eighties, so a lot of Marty's pre-time travelling existence resonates with me. My parents are both scientists, nothing like the wacky Doc Brown, but I still love the character that Christopher Lloyd created. At the base of his manic personality is a deep love and enthusiasm for science, an eagerness to explain his methods to anybody who will listen. He's really not like the usual "mad scientist" prototype who appears in movies. Many movies treat scientists like creepy, amoral figures who tinker with nature and don't care about the consequences. Knowledge bad! Ignorance good! I hate that stereotype. But Doc, by contrast, invents things because he has a love of humanity and wants to help people. When he recognizes the inherent danger of his own invention, he would rather destroy his own work than see it hurt anybody. He's a mentor and a father figure to Marty, the kid adores him. And that's a refreshing portrayal of science.

I have been known to describe a potentially bad situation by saying "Well that might cause a chain of events that would unravel the foundation of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!!!" I've got Doc's mannerism down pat. The movie has become a part of my vernacular.

I also love the whole time travel mythos. Everything about it. Just reading about the history of times long past is a little thrill, and the idea of visiting them has always been interesting to me. Thinking about time travel paradoxes is enough to give most people a headache, but it's not so hard to understand as long as the author sets up a particular set of rules and sticks to them.

The BttF series handles everything very well. It's a human drama, a nostalgic look at the past, a mind-bender about the way time travel works, and it has some great action sequences and special effects. Even without modern computer graphics, they made a lot of effects shots that still hold up well today. And of course, the second and third movies make very impressive use of split-screen shots, where two and sometimes even three copies of the same actor share screen time.

This is not to say that the movies don't have their problems. The direction is sometimes uneven, especially when characters jump onto the screen from nowhere. Some of the recurring gags are overdone and annoying ("Mom, is that you? I had an awful nightmare..."). And I recognize that the second and third movies are not as good as the first. The second movie is much too cartoony, the performances are overblown, and a lot of the sets and costumes are absurd. The third movie is a little too slow in the middle, and it drags through the old west romance plot, until it finally picks up again in the final sequence with the gunfight and the train heist.

Even so, I think they're all great, and they all form one big story arc, without which the first movie would be incomplete. Part II is all about exploring the fiendishly complicated implications of time travel, which the first movie only briefly went into. Part III backs off of the logic stuff and instead develops the characters and brings more of a sense of closure to them. Marty gets control of his temper and his future, Doc gets a soulmate. It's all good.

It's amazing how many special features they managed to scrape together for movies that are nearly 20 years old. Each disc has three pages of menus for the special features. There's two commentaries and two twenty minute documentaries on each disc, pop-up trivia, cut scenes, bloopers, and various and sundry goodies such as music videos, makeup tests, and pages from the original script describing scenes that never made the cut. Pretty much everyone who worked on the movies gives a retrospective on them, although Christopher Lloyd is conspicuously absent.

I know that not everyone is a big enough fan to shell out the $40 or $50 for the entire set, so don't get it. But I would have to say that this DVD ranks high among those in my collection that give a lot of bang for the buck. Right up there with Terminator 2 Special Edition and the Toy Story box set with an entire extra disc. Good stuff. This is something fans won't want to pass up.

Score: ***** out of 5.

September 11 Memorial speech

This speech was delievered for a secular September 11 memorial service hosted by the Atheist Community of Austin.

After September 11 a year ago, for a short period of time -- maybe a few days, maybe a couple of weeks -- the United States really seemed to be unified. We were a nation in mourning; we all had a grief that we shared, even though most of us didn't personally know anyone who died in the tragedy. Everyone seemed just a little more sympathetic towards each other. People went out of their way to call old acquaintances and make sure they were okay. My wife even said she noticed that drivers were a little less rude in traffic. They wouldn't cut each other off, they would slow down to let you change lanes, and they wouldn't honk and gesture so much.

Human nature being what it is, it's not really surprising that this camaraderie didn't last very long. The first crack I noticed came from an unsurprising source: Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Instead of offering moral support and positive suggestions, they began casting around for someone to blame. It was on September 13, just two days later, that Jerry and Pat appeared on "The 700 Club" to offer these words of support and comfort to our nation: "...what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."

Falwell then went on to explain why we deserved what we got. It would seem that it's all the fault of a laundry list of groups: the American Civil Liberties Union, pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, and lesbians. They all make his God angry.

At the same time, something else was happening in America. Reports of hate crimes against people of Arabic descent started coming in. We all heard the reports about assaults, death threats, and general harassment against people who looked middle-Eastern. They were directed against innocent people who weren't involved in the attacks, who would never dream of such an action. In many cases, the victims weren't even the RIGHT ethnicity -- they were Pakistani or Indian; they practiced Hinduism rather than Islam. Racial prejudice isn't known for its logic.

To Ann Coulter it's obvious what the solution is to Islamic terrorism. In a column on September 14, she wrote that "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." OBVIOUSLY the problem is that the assailants were Muslims; if they had been Christians, they would never have done such a thing, because there are no recorded instances of people killing each other in the name of Christianity, right?

The news about racial hate crimes has diminished in more recent times, but it has been replaced by a general undercurrent of anger against Muslims. As recently as last month, we've heard Billy Graham's son, Franklin, tell us that all Islamic people scare him, saying, "the silence of the (Islamic) clerics around the world is frightening to me." In reality, there are hundreds of Muslim leaders from around the world who have issued public statements denouncing the actions of the terrorists, and yet Graham ignores this fact and asks: "How come they haven't come to this country, how come they haven't apologized to the American people?"

Ashraf Sabrin, a medical technician who volunteered for the relief efforts at the twin towers and the Pentagon, said: "We've had so many different events -- open houses, candlelight vigils, national press releases. What's it going to take exactly?" Ironically, Franklin Graham's false sweeping generalization about Muslims came up shortly after the publication of a book he wrote which included the following claim: "Islam - unlike Christianity - has among its basic teachings a deep intolerance for those who follow other faiths."

Meanwhile, popular radio commentators and news editorialists can be heard daily making sarcastic mockeries of Arabs, saying "If they don't want to be frisked at every checkpoint and looked at with perpetual suspicion by all American citizens, then they shouldn't come here and blow up our buildings." That is, of course, absurd. Most of the people we are talking about are American citizens themselves, who watched in horror along with the rest of us as the twin towers collapsed; but unlike the rest of us, they received the additional insult of being harassed and targeted by angry people looking for revenge on someone, anyone. The reality is that the peaceful American citizens of Arab descent who walk among us in our cities are NOT the same ones who attacked us.

We atheists have also received a bit more than our fair share of the blame for an event that didn't involve us at all. Kathleen Parker wrote an editorial for USA Today on October 1 that begins by saying, "One can't help notice the silence of atheists these days." The general idea of this article was that it would be a very good thing if atheists would all shut up about that irritating "separation of church and state" and go away so we could get back to the business of giving our children proper values. It concluded by saying, "If we're to win this war -- sure to last into our children's futures -- we have to reweave the rituals of God and country into our institutions."

Well, obviously atheists haven't been keeping silent -- here we are, after all -- but they've been marginalized as much as possible ever since last year. We've become convenient bogeymen representing everything that's wrong with American values, which led God to decide that we're not worthy of being protected anymore.

So, whose fault was September 11? On the one hand, we hear that the reason we're being targeted by terrorist attacks is because we deserve it, thanks to all the atheists and evolutionists and ACLU members and gay people and so on. On the other hand, we hear that it's all the fault of every single person who has a certain ethnic background, especially if they are presumably too foolish to recognize that one religion is inherently evil and violent while another religion is noble and good.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. When we see something that interests or scares us, we look for a way that we can generalize the experience. Sometimes this is simply good survival instinct; after all, if you recognize the circumstances when you make a mistake, then hopefully you won't make the same mistake again. But as a method of dealing with other people, sometimes it's just bad policy.

A common thread that we see in all this is Americans attacking other Americans, looking for easy rules of thumb to tell them who the bad guys are. No such rules exist, of course, especially in a pluralistic society where many different ways of life are represented. We're letting generalizations get in the way of thinking.

Unfortunately, atheists are sometimes guilty of this habit too. How many of you were listening to what I said about Robertson, Falwell, and Graham, and thinking to yourselves "See? That just goes to show that you can't trust those religious people"? It's very easy for non-Christians to take the worst examples of Christianity and use that as a substitute for the religion as a whole. But in fact, it's not that being a member of a particular religion makes you a bad person, any more than being a member of no religion. There are some fine and wonderful Christians out there, just as there are fine and wonderful Muslims and atheists.

The danger that any religion poses occurs only when its members become entrenched in the idea that "Our metaphysical truth is right, and theirs is SO WRONG that there is no possibility that we can even communicate." Jerry Falwell said it about large numbers of Americans. Franklin Graham said it about all Muslims. And Osama bin Laden said it about us. In that sense, when fundamentalism is practiced to extremes in this country, it mirrors the sort practiced in Afghanistan.

We shouldn't do that. We're supposed to be the country that values diversity, and we're proud of our freedom to choose to believe whatever religion we want, including none at all.

But we are, each one of us, about more than just our religion. We are not our set of beliefs. We are not the groups we join or the people we associate with. Each one of us is an individual, someone who is worthy of respect and appreciation for our unique qualities.

Let's not join together in groups as a way of shutting out the rest of the world. If we do join groups, it should be because we want to feel close to each other and have friends. Study the examples of the Taliban and al Qaeda, and understand that they're bad not because they practice Islam, and not because of their dark skin, but because they've come to a place where they can't accept anyone having different beliefs than their own. And then let's try not to follow their example.

Siggraph

As the years go by and my experience gets more firmly entrenched in web development, it becomes more and more clear to me that I'll probably never be involved with doing some damn cool serious project with 3d graphics. That kind of depresses me, although hearing Gus and others talk about what a rough life it is to be a game developer, I don't feel quite as depressed as I could.

But all that aside, Siggraph is da bomb. Seriously. This is the fourth year total that I've gone to Siggraph, though it is the first year I've done it for one day with only an exhibits pass. In past years, I did all the classes and everything. But this year it was located near me, so I decided I could afford to be cheap and treat it as a one day road trip.

For those who don't know, Siggraph is the premiere convention for people who just dig computer graphics. Most of them are involved with producing graphics, selling tools, or buying content; some, like me, just want to be there to check out the way cool techno toys that are hopefully going to be widely used some day. I had no real practical reason for going; I'm not looking for work, I just treat it like a geek's day at Disneyland.

I've got a Palm Pilot full of notes, so rather than put everything together into a narrative, I'm just going to include all my notes that I downloaded and comment on them.

Interesting books
Steve Rabin - AI Game Programming Wisdom
Steve Caplin - How to Cheat in Photoshop

Neat bookstore, but every special interest thing in there costs over $50. I'm putting them on my Amazon wish list in case I can ever buy them cheaper.

exhibits!
Feeling the VW (and torso)

This was the first interesting exhibit I saw walking in the door, and it was very neat. They had a T-Bar that can move freely in all three dimensions. It slides up and down, rotates horizontally on a swivel, and moves forward and backward on a slider. Moving the bar around controls a small ball on a nearby computer screen. Now here's the cool part. On screen with the ball was a model of something -- at first it was a VW bug. The bar gives force feedback. You can run the ball over the surface of the model, and you can feel all the curves and contours of the object. I slid the ball over the curved roof, through a window, and then around the under side of the roof. I felt the runoff grooves on the hood.

Of course as soon as you invent something like this, someone will immediately think "How can I use this to improve my sex life, or get one if I don't have one?" Sure enough, they had a model of a woman's torso. No head or anything below the waist. I decided not to play with the torso, cause in a crowded room that would just be weird. But I would infer that it was just as rock solid as the car, so it didn't seem all that exciting anyway. I'm sure there are programming tricks that could improve on that, but ANYWAY, let's move on.

dome screen

At this exhibit, you can sit in front of a screen that's shaped like a hemisphere. You are surrounded by screens on both sides and above and below you. I presume this is sort of the ultimate in home theater systems, like a personal IMAX theater. On screen, I saw a roller coaster simulation and a jet fighter demo. They explained how they generate five different images, one for each side (front, left, right, up, down) and then stitch them together with an algorithm that also corrects for the dome warping effects. Seems like this would be a good way to play immersive games, although producing movies for them would be a challenge and probably involve some sort of special five way camera (which I also saw an example of elsewhere, but I'll get to that later).

coming from dw
2003 sinbad - brad pitt, cath zj
2004 shrek 2, sharkslayer, over the hedge (jc)
2005 madagascar ben st chris rock

I got a flyer from Dreamworks concerning the next several years of animated flicks. The posters look good, especially Madagascar. I'm a fan of both Ben Stiller and Chris Rock, and they'll be playing a lion and a zebra from the zoo who get shipwrecked in Africa. Sharkslayer will be cartoon still CG, starring Will Smith. It looks like a mafia movie underwater. Over the Hedge stars Jim Carrey.

3d spinning plates

It was a 3d graphics display. I mean, you could actually see a wireframe model displayed in 3d. The way it works is, there is a circular upright screen. It spins really fast, and displays different cross sections as it spins. There was a crude interactive 3d "game" you could play with a joystick, but there was no objective except to show off the capabilities. Image-wise, it didn't look any better than a Nintendo Virtual Boy (anybody remember those??) but it was cool anyway because it was really 3d and you don't have to wear special glasses or look in a viewfinder or anything.

ILM Showing off star wrs anim

A nice little demo from Episode II of a spaceship shooting up a tower. An animator walked the audience through all the steps of adding on explosions, laser beams, etc to the original modelled scene.

10:43

Just trying to keep track of the time occasionally.

t-shirt art

Off in another corner, there were free art lessons being given. Everybody gets a Siggraph t-shirt with a large blank square to draw on. A male model was sitting in front of the room, striking a typical male model pose. The instructor was explaining how to sketch him in lines. I didn't participate, art not being my thing.

rapid prototyping (bell)

I saw a rapid prototyping machine in action years ago at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, where I used to have some classes. It's a device that reads in a wireframe model and produces a physical version. An example of one appeared in Jurassic Park 3, although like most of the movie, you had to take the scientific explanation with a grain of salt.

The one at Siggraph used the technique of hardening liquid and lasers. There was some kind of goo, and you blast the goo to make a thin cross section of the model. Then you slap it on top of the rest of the model, and keep making cross sections. The result looks like plastic. The technology has clearly improved since the last time I saw these things; the resolution is very high. The curves look curvy and not angular. Sample models were a replica of the liberty bell, very nicely painted and glossy; an alien creature; and some weird work of art which was a sphere made up of stretched out half naked people. A sign said "Do not touch" on that one because the fingers in the model were very thin and fragile.

nvidia geforce 4 werewolf, metal chick with bubbles
blizzard north guys - i'm not worthy!!

I watched a demo of the geforce 4 at the NVidia booth. It's hard to describe what I saw more exactly, but trust me, it was cool. One was a hairy, slobbery werewolf running around through shadowed and lighted areas; the other was some funky dancing woman who leaves bubbles in a trail behind her. All very detailed and smooth, and being rendered in real time on ordinary 2 gig processors.

While watching the demo, I noticed that two guys were standing there, one wearing a black "World of Warcraft" shirt. I tentatively said, "You guys aren't FROM Blizzard, are you?" "Sure," said the guy with the shirt. "You think we faked these badges?" Sure enough, the badges said "Blizzard." "Dude!" I said, and made the universally recognized "I'm not worthy!" bowing and scraping gesture from Wayne's World. They laughed. Must have been used to it. I said "I'm the biggest fan of Warcraft!" They said "Actually, we're from Blizzard North." "Oh," I said. "Well... Diablo is really good too." How's that for a good first impression?

So I asked them what's up with them, and they told me that Blizzard South is working on WoW, so Blizzard North is working on... they can't say. A secret, don'tcha know. Oh well, I tried.

Emerging tech
semi-opaque screen
not that impressive

I saw a smaller room off the beaten path that said "Emerging Technology". I decided to check it out. This looked to be mostly experimental prototype stuff. Not all of it worked very well.

The first thing I saw was this semi-opaque screen demo. Basically it's a standard VR helmet that can let the real world through in some places but not in others. So you can superimpose, say, a building on a city block, and see the fake building in front of the real buildings. Or, the virtual building can be behind the real ones, by letting the space taken up by real buildings be clear, and only the sky part of the virtual building be opaque. And IN THEORY, you can hold your hand up in front of you, and the helmet senses that your hand is closer than the buildings (thanks to multiple camera inputs), and your hand will be visible in front of the virtual building.

Problem is, it didn't really work too reliably. As a demo, they had two players play a virtual "breakout" game with each other. Virtual balls fly around and you smack them with your real hand to break the bricks. It looked fun watching other people do it. In reality, your hand is fuzzy and semi-transparent, and the ball doesn't recognize your hand's position most of the time, so you'll be swatting around at the air and not really getting a reaction.

mask thing, ditto

This one was just strange. You hold a little hand held screen up in front of a bunch of blocks. You see what you're pointing at on the screen, and if you hold it in front of blocks with a certain pattern, a funky Japanese mask appears over the block. I didn't really get it, except that it was pattern recognition.

3d power point???
controlled by palm pilot

Something called "The Cave", which is a small closed off room with a computer screen that fills an entire wall. The guy was using a palm pilot like device to call up powerpoint slides. When he called up a slide, a mechanical arm (in the virtual screen world) would go and pull out a picture from somewhere and bring it close to the screen. For really pretentious businessmen who have too much money, I guess.

"organic robot" follows your hand

Cute. Looks like a giant primitive slug. It sits in a little environment that they built for it (a real set, not a virtual world) and wiggles around, drinking water. When someone waves a hand near it, the slug bends and stretches in that direction, as if it were trying to get a better look. The main thing they were emphasizing was that it's "organic" looking, not machine-like. It was a latex skin over many bending parts.

robot photographer - way cool! weddings etc

This was neat. A little robot on wheels wandered around the room, more or less at random, swivelling a little lens all over the place. It was programmed to recognize regularly sized patches of skin tone. When it sees what looks like a face, it moves to a position where it can get a good shot, and then takes a picture. On a screen, you can see pictures that have been taken recently, and the face is framed in blue to show what the robot identified.

I had my picture converted through an "old time photo" filter, and they emailed it to me. Or at least they said they would. I haven't received it yet.

big turning 9 way camera

Sort of reminded me of the dome screen, except that this one was filming live. There were nine cameras in a little 3x3 grid, with some arrangement of mirrors to make the images line up. Elsewhere, there are nine large screens in a similar arrangement, but they are mounted in such a way that you can turn the whole arrangement. That is, you stand in the middle, grab handles on either side, and swing the whole thing to either side. The camera turns with you. So you can follow someone around the room, stuff like that. Like I said, this might be a good way to film movies for the dome home theater. It also might be good for surveillance.

(out)

star wars bounty hunter, all in maya

I left the emerging technology area and went mainstream again. I watched a LucasArts programmer brag about what a great tool Maya is, and everything in the game is done in Maya. I forget why this seemed interesting enough to take a note on, but the game looked good.

veggie tales ,ICK
dancing crosses
"goal: to reintroduce biblical values into pop. media"

Need I say more? If you've seen Veggie Tales, I shouldn't. They were showing clips from the upcoming "Veggie Tales, the movie". A board off to one side proclaims their mission statement, as I noted above. There's much more sappy stuff where that came from. (Half-hearted apologies to anyone who likes veggie tales.)

chat w blizzard - prefers altar first

I found the Blizzard table. It was a modest affair, no big booth, just a table with flyers and a TV screen showing the movies from the Warcraft DVD. I decided to chat with the Blizzard guys and ask the burning question: "Altar first, or barracks?"

The guy I talked to said it's a hotly debated question, and there is no easy answer. But personally, he likes altar first because he likes to have a hero quickly. He asked "What race do you play?" I said "random, mostly." He said "It's tough to play random nowadays, with everyone playing the night elves." I said "Maybe, but I'm low level, and the players who I get automatically matched with don't know how to play night elves very well."

Eventually, I left the exhibit hall and went to:

anim theater
some kinda funny stuff, too much weird art crap

The animation theater was playing constantly. I stayed for about 20-30 minutes. Not impressed. Even the funny shorts weren't all that funny. Clearly the REALLY good stuff was not included there, because it was saved for the Electronic Theater shows that play twice a day and cost $40 to get into. I hadn't bought a ticket, so I don't know what was played there.

After that, I went to:

2:15 art gallery

The art gallery had some neat exhibits in it. Some things were attended by their creators, and some weren't. Some were art made with CG, and some were art that made a statement about what computers are doing in our lives. The first thing in the gallery was a display where visitors could clip off some of their hair, put it in a test tube, assign themselves a bar code, and type in some anonymous personal information. It's all about how computers are reducing us all to bits of data, understand? Or something like that.

text arc (see flyer)

That was really neat. It's a way of turning books into art. Take a text from Project Gutenberg (Alice in Wonderland was featured). Arrange ALL the words in a big giant circle. Then, every word that is repeated more than once moves toward the center, appearing in a position that is determined by the average location of all occurrences in the text. For instance, the word "Alice" appears tons of times, appearing near the center and connected by strands that radiate out to places all over the text. The word "duchess" is very local to one chapter, so it is positioned way off to one side.

Actually it's really hard to explain, but they've been featured in the New York Times. Go here:
http://www.textarc.org/

flythrough of "ideal city"

This was a VR flythrough, appearing on a big screen and controlled by a joystick. The model was a very large New York city block. According to the artist, who was sitting on hand, every surface was taken from an actual photo, but not from the same place. So it was kind of a mosaic of surfaces and billboards and people. You could fly up and see big neon ads, and fly down and look at cabs, people, delis, and vendors. The simulation was very slow when most of the city appeared on screen. But that's okay; it's not a game, it's art.

sound inflated suits

Two guys wearing inflatable bubbles danced around each other, shouting, grunting, humming, and singing. The suits automatically inflate and deflate depending on how noisy they are. They looked ridiculous, but it was funnier than anything I saw in the animation theater.

bubble game

A touch sensitive screen, where you can push bubbles around with your finger. There was actually a goal to the game, get rid of all the gray dots. But the rules were not written clearly, only represented abstractly in pictures. I suppose figuring out the rules was the whole point, somehow. I spent a while trying to master the game, and after I won a few times, I hung around and explained to other people how it worked. They asked if I designed it. :)

maze walker!

After I got my fill of art, I went back to do one more circuit of the exhibition, and popped into the "emerging technologies" room. I saw a new exhibit that wasn't set up earlier.

A projector shines down from the ceiling onto a raised platform. The projector is displaying a maze on the floor. You step on a small circular platform near one side. You march in place to walk through the maze. To turn, you turn your feet around. The platform spins you around so you are always facing forward, but the maze turns with you. Obviously it requires an excellent sense of balance, though that wasn't the main point.

It very fun, but it had some significant bugs. Several times, a clipping error caused me to jump outside the maze, and the operator had to hit the reset button. Sometimes the sensor misunderstands which way you're facing, and it spins you around so you're facing backwards. If you walk, then you walk backwards. If you try to turn around, the platform keeps spinning you so you're still backwards. The only solution is to step off and get back on again, or hit the reset button.

Well, that's the end of my notes. I did visit the SGI booth, but I guess I didn't take notes on what they were showing.

Final correspondence

In response to my previous correspondence (see the first and second letters below) I got this:

Hey Russ!
(and who ever else reads this)

Thanks again for your resposnse to my response to your response. I'm not going to parse e-mails but I think you and yours have come dangerously close to validating my original points. I'm still not convinced that you are all a bunch of happy campers and I stand by what I have already said..
Anyway, thanks for trying and glad your listening. Say hi to Chris for me (who I will admit is one of the funniest athiests I've met) . Later!

Yours,
Richie L.
KIXL 970 AM

I know I shouldn't, but I found this reply incredibly disheartening.

I mean, I really went out of my way to be friendly to the guy; I didn't think I was baiting him and I certainly tried to describe a "happy atheist" life in as accessible a manner as possible. But of course, he starts with the assumption that all atheists are unhappy; so rather than be bothered to think about what I wrote, the best he could come up with was more or less "well you don't sound happy to me."

I guess I should have known better.

I can't decide whether to waste the time on another reply. As I was listening to the same station this morning (I'm serious, there's very little else to listen to) I couldn't help but be struck by what a wall-to-wall bitchfest their regular programming is. America's on the decline. Satan is everywhere. The world is going to end within a few years, isn't that exciting? I was a drunken slob but then I stopped being a drunken slob and now my life isn't quite as miserable as it used to be. Homosexuals will kill you in your sleep if you don't take a stand now.

Is this the kind of "happiness" we're supposed to be living up to?

This email exchange got me thinking. The implicit message Richie was sending me was, "You're really not happy, and the reason why is because you don't have God in your life."

Now, this angle doesn't work on me, because I happen to be a person who considers myself happy. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that it doesn't really matter to him at all. He's dismissed me now as an irrelevant data point.

But not all atheists are happy. There are certainly unhappy people of all varieties out there. I'd guess a roughly equal proportion of atheists and theists are unhappy. And if he makes the same argument to a genuinely unhappy person, that person is probably going to get ticked off, but then secretly sit around and reflect to himself. "Hey, I'm really NOT happy. I wonder if there's something to this God thing after all?"

Say an evangelist makes a pronouncement to a room filled with a random sample of atheists. "None of you atheists are happy! You all need God!" Maybe six out of ten of them are really happy, and they brush him off. Of course I'm happy, schmuck. Go away. Two out of ten think, Well, my life could be better, but this God stuff is still nonsense. The other two people are really bothered by this pronouncement because they've just been thinking about how unhappy they are. Maybe I should try this out. Bingo, the congregation grows. And that happens even though the evangelist's confident pronouncement was wrong for 80% of the people in the room.

Like any sales pitch, it's a numbers game. You don't need anything like a 100% success rate, you just need to go out there and make more pitches. It doesn't even matter if it's TRUE or not that Christianity, in general will make an unhappy person happier. It doesn't matter if the jump from "I'm unhappy" to "I need to find God" is totally spurious. If you give your pitch to enough people, you randomly hit enough targets that your numbers grow, and that's all that matters, isn't it?

Worse than that, even a happy person has off days. Well, yes I'm happy... but I did have a bad day at work last week. I did have a fight with my wife. If you catch any person at a bad time, he can think of himself as unhappy.

And finally, telling someone that they're unhappy is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whether or not it's true, anyone can be influenced to start dwelling on all the things in their lives that aren't perfect. Gosh, I think I'm happy but that fight with my wife sure bothered me. I wonder if my marriage is on the rocks? Once you start thinking that way, a bad attitude can compound itself and cause real problems.

Does this approach intentionally thrive on causing misery? Do they actually try to depress people, in order to bring them into the club? It does make me wonder.

Top 5 lists for games

Top five all-time greatest PC games:

1. Star Control II - Accolade
2. Warcraft III - Blizzard
3. Doom - iD Software
4. Diablo II - Blizzard
5. A Mind Forever Voyaging - Infocom

StarCon2 is my hands-down pick for all time greatest game, combining many different gaming elements for a rich all around helping of action packed, mentally challenging, well written science-fictiony goodness.

I've given Doom a nod over all other 3d shooters, because I consider it pretty much the first major revolutionary step that defined a new standard that all 3d shooters were compared to from then on. It narrowly edges out Castle Wolfenstein in that category. As far as I know, Doom was the first FPS to include angled walls, multiple vertical levels, and good multi-player support.

Top five greatest adventure games:

1. A Mind Forever Voyaging - Infocom
2. Time Quest (one of the earliest text games by Legend, if you haven't seen it you can download it as abandonware)
3. Sorcerer - Infocom
4. Monkey Island 3 - LucasArts
5. Space Quest 5 - Sierra

In recommending an adventure game, I like plotting an character above all else, followed by cleverness and good logic in puzzles. Obviously humor is an influencing factor.

Thus, while the Zorks were definitely an important shaping influence on the genre, it doesn't beat any of the ones on my list since they haven't really got any story.

Follow-up email to Holy Henry call

Yesterday I mentioned that I had sent mail to the host at a Christian station. Here's what I got back:

Hey Russ!

Thanks for your e-mail to Ed that he forwarded to me. You know, you can always e-mail me directly or talk to me directly on the air anytime. Don't be afraid, I don't bite. And even if I do, I'm up on my shots!
I have met many atheists in my life and one of my best friends is a former atheist. Every atheist that I have ever spent any amount of time with was ultimately, deepdown an angry, unhappy, empty person. I had contact with the late Madeline O'hare and I also saw her vitriolic missives posted at ACTV back when I was a producer there. All I can go on is my direct experiences. I have had no proof presented to me to convice me
otherwise.
One of my dearest friends was an atheist. He has shared with me how
apathetic he was and how full his heart was of sadness and anger.
In 1973, he gave his life to Christ after he was challenged that he could not go one day without sinning. He has been a radical, longhaired, tattoo covered Christian for many years now.
I appreciate your phone call to the show but, it still doesn't offer me proof that you truly are happy ie. have true inner peace and serenity. I know you say that Ed and I will just have to take your word for that but I need and want to see the hard evidence. Simply because you say that you and your atheist friends are happy is not definitive. Prove it. The available evidence that I have encountered just doesn't support it.
For the record, I never said that atheists are rude and hate everybody. I said that many hate God, Christians, Jews, the Bible and I wish that they would just come out and publicly say so. Many Communist nations are atheistic and we've seen the evidence of human rights violations as well as religious persecutions. Again, I'd love to see the concrete evidence to prove to me otherwise.......does my arguement sound familiar?
I'm glad that your are listening to the show and hope that you continue in spite of all of us and our sometimes poor example of Christ's love. I suspect that there is still a God hunger deep down inside you somewhere though. Have a good one!

Your "smart-ass" Christian Friend.
Richie L.

Frankly, I'm utterly disappointed in this response. I was trying to open up friendly communications and not put him on the defensive. Instead of responding in kind, I get this standard "Oh, you're not TRULY happy" and "Joseph Stalin is all atheists' fault."

I forwarded it to some friends and a couple of them sent replies of their own. If my response seems a bit incomplete in any way, it's because I avoided repeating things that they already said.

> Hey Russ!
>
> Thanks for your e-mail to Ed that he forwarded to me. You know, you
> can always e-mail me directly or talk to me directly on the air anytime.
> Don't be afraid, I don't bite. And even if I do, I'm up on my shots!

Richie,

I would probably have written to you also, if I had known your email address. And as for talking to you directly on the air -- I did. Remember? :)

I have met many atheists in my life and one of my best friends is a former atheist. Every atheist that I have ever spent any amount of time with was ultimately, deepdown an angry, unhappy, empty person.

Now I could make a wisecrack about what a coincidence it is that all those people who spent a substantial amount of time with you turned out to be angry, unhappy and empty. But that wouldn't be very nice. All I can say is that you and I apparently spend time with very different sorts of people.

I had contact with the late Madeline O'hare and I also saw her vitriolic missives posted at ACTV back when I was a producer there. All I can go on is my direct experiences. I have had no proof presented to me to convice me otherwise.

I have no connection to Madeleine O'Hair. From what I know of her, I wouldn't have liked her much. I'd agree with you that she was a grouch. On the other hand, I've also heard that her life was nearly a nonstop barrage of death threats and hatred coming from the fine godly folks out there. I can understand why someone might develop a chip on their shoulder under the circumstances.

One of my dearest friends was an atheist. He has shared with me how apathetic he was and how full his heart was of sadness and anger. In 1973, he gave his life to Christ after he was challenged that he could not go one day without sinning. He has been a radical, longhaired, tattoo covered Christian for many years now.

If that makes him happy, then more power to him. Personally I have no desire to be radical, longhaired, tattoo-covered, or Christian, but thanks for sharing.

I appreciate your phone call to the show but, it still doesn't offer me proof that you truly are happy ie. have true inner peace and serenity. I know you say that Ed and I will just have to take your word for that but I need and want to see the hard evidence. Simply because you say that you and your atheist friends are happy is not definitive. Prove it. The available evidence that I have encountered just doesn't support it.

What an odd request. How would I go about answering such a question about my own mental state? I suppose I could send you pictures of me smiling. I could tell you that I enjoy a job that brings in a comfortable salary, I have a wonderful wife and stepdaughter whom I love with all my heart, a newborn son who is the cutest little baby I've ever seen, I enjoy the companionship of a lot of quality people, I have a very good relationship with my parents and extended family, and I live in the greatest country in the world (in my humble opinion). I could invite you to join me at my house for our game nights, come to dinner with my friends and listen to us joke around, or just watch me hold my baby for a few minutes. I could ask people who know me personally to provide support for my claim. (Actually, I think my rather enthusiastic friend Martin Wagner already wrote to you.) If I had that sort of detail for most people, I would personally see that as relatively persuasive evidence.

Of course, I expect you'd probably dismiss all this as the "outward physical trappings" of happiness or some such thing. But we're talking about my own state of mind, so again, eventually we get back to "you just have to take my word for it."

For the record, I never said that atheists are rude and hate everybody. I said that many hate God, Christians, Jews, the Bible and I wish that they would just come out and publicly say so.

Yes, I heard you say that on the show as well. We could say that, but it wouldn't be true. First off, we don't hate God because we don't believe in him. Second, we don't hate the Bible; we disagree with the ideas in it, and there's an important difference in those two things. And we don't hate Christians and Jews. We try not to hate people in general; life's too short for that. We disagree with some of their ideas, and sometimes we argue with them, but what you may not realize is that often we argue because arguing is fun.

You say you've watched The Atheist Experience on cable. If this is so then you may know that we close every show with a particular statement, intended in good fun: "We don't hate you: we just think you're wrong."

Many Communist nations are atheistic and we've seen the evidence of human rights violations as well as religious persecutions. Again, I'd love to see the concrete evidence to prove to me otherwise.......does my arguement sound familiar?

Since I am not a communist, that has little effect on me. Surely you realize that one doesn't have to be an atheist to persecute and destroy things. The folks who decided to attack us last September had a particular cause that they were trying to advance, and it certainly wasn't atheism, wouldn't you agree?

I'm glad that your are listening to the show and hope that you continue in spite of all of us and our sometimes poor example of Christ's love.

Well, it varies. I happen to think that yours is usually one of the kinder, gentler shows out there. When I listen to D. James Kennedy go off on a pet subject... ugh.

I suspect that there is still a God hunger deep down inside you somewhere though.

Usually I just have a cookie and the hunger goes away.
(Kidding!)
In all seriousness, I don't feel a hunger, but I also don't expect you to believe me, so that's the way it goes.

Have a good one!

Your "smart-ass" Christian Friend.
Richie L.

Likewise. Thanks for taking the time to write back, I do appreciate it. I guess you could tell from Martin's letter that I shared our correspondence a bit, although I didn't really intend to turn it into a free-for-all.

-- Your "Friendly Neighborhood Atheist" Friend,
Russell Glasser

Called my local Holy Henry station

Last week I was listening to "The Ed Sossen Show" on Christian station KIXL in Austin. The temporary host (Sossen was absent for the day) was speculating with his callers about the underhanded motives of Michael Newdow in the pledge of allegiance case. The host rather flippantly said, "Well, I've never met an atheist who is really happy. They're all so full of vitriol and hate that..." etc.

I really wanted to call, but I had to be somewhere at the time.

Luckily, I got a second chance today. The regular host was back and the co-host was repeating his earlier comments. In the last few minutes of the show I called. I told the call screener, "Hi, I'm a happy atheist!" and got on the air in less than a minute.

The conversation was short but it went pretty well. I was nervous as hell, and I hope it didn't come through in my voice too much. I said I am happy as an atheist, and I have a lot of happy atheist friends. He asked "Did you have a bad experience when you were young?" I said "No, I had a great childhood. My father was an atheist physicist. I'm a fourth generation atheist, in fact, and I have a newborn son who may be fifth generation."

I also said that I enjoy the show (which is mostly true; Ed Sossen is a rare Baptist with a sense of humor). And I invited him to watch our cable access show. He said "Well I'd say God Bless You but I don't want to offend you..." and I said "Don't worry about me, you have to have pretty thick skin to be an atheist in Texas."

After I hung up there was about five seconds of dead air. I think my call really took them by surprise. Ed finally said "Well, I hope God DOES bless him, and I'll pray for him."

Later, I sent this letter.

Hi Ed,

This is Russell, the "happy atheist" who called at the tail end of the show today. I got home from work right after I called, and I don't have a radio that receives AM in the house, so I didn't hear if you said anything else. But I thought you wouldn't mind if I send you a quick follow-up.

You may have a hard time believing that somebody could be an atheist and still be happy and satisfied about their life, but it is true not only of me but of a fairly large percentage of my family and friends. You'll just have to take my word for that. Christians tend to incorrectly assume that all atheists had some kind of horrible, traumatic experience that caused them to rebel against God. The reality tends to be much less dramatic. Many of us are former Christians; a few (such as myself) come from atheist families; but nearly all the atheists I know are very thoughtful people, who became solid in their atheism only after long periods of thought and inner reflection. Ultimately, we just decided that the available evidence just doesn't seem to point to the existence of any deity. We aren't "fighting God"; we just don't believe in him.

I'm not writing to argue about that with you. I'm sure you've already formed an opinion about all such arguments that you've heard in the past, and so have I. The reason I called you today is that it's the second time I heard Richie claiming that all atheists are hateful and unhappy, and I decided I couldn't let that go unchallenged a second time. I can't tell what Richie's experience has been, but he might want to consider the fact that atheists seem hostile to him because of his own approach. After all, it can be difficult for an atheist to be friendly to someone who has the preconception that all atheists are rude people who hate everybody, even before they've opened their mouth.

Ed, you seem like a reasonable guy to me. I meant it when I said that I enjoy your show regularly. As such, I believe that you wouldn't want to intentionally say untrue things about a group of people just because they don't usually call in to defend themselves. You probably don't know very many atheists and don't realize that they can be nice people who love their families, volunteer for worthy causes, and make good neighbors.

I'll even try to offer you a Christian perspective on why you shouldn't jump to the conclusion that atheists are bad people. According to Christianity, all humans are born into sin and continue to struggle with sin even after they get saved. Becoming a Christian doesn't magically make you perfect, right? It just means that your sins have been forgiven by the grace of God. You get to know enough non-Christians and you may realize that these are decent people who struggle with the same issues in their lives that you do. They happen not to share your belief system. There are some complete scoundrels who are Christians and equally many who are atheists, but there are plenty of good people in both camps who are willing to talk to each other.

The Atheist Community of Austin exists for two reasons: first, because it provides a social outlet for atheists. We're not in the habit of doing weekly organized activities like church, so it gives us an opportunity to meet each other. Second, we want to defend ourselves against the constant cry of religious leaders who insist on painting horns on atheists and trying to make an image of them as scary people who are trying to corrupt your children and shouldn't be allowed to exist in peace.

Feel free to respond or not, by email or on the air. You don't need to, but I'll be pleased to chat with you if you like. I'm not asking you to agree with my opinions or stop believing in Jesus. I'm not even asking you to become "politically correct" or champion the atheist cause. I'm just letting you know that most atheists aren't misanthropes, aren't chronically depressed, and aren't really all that interested in taking over the world.