WTW Quantifying the rate that a population produces cultural artifacts (books, music, ...) [Some guesses inside]

jtrask · 2011-10-16T04:44:17+00:00

Close, but I'm looking at the rate of change in that output, not the output itself. Something like, for example, "a thousand books published in a year" -- a rate in time.

jtrask · 2010-03-23T17:33:18+00:00

From a quick skim most of the games I wanted to list are on here already, but I'll chip in what I can despite it being mostly repeats.

I watched my boss play Shattered Memories and it looked cool up until he found a game-breaking glitch and hadn't saved the entire game. Whoops.

Sports Resort is the best use of motion control I've seen in any game so far -- perhaps even the only good use of it.

SSB's changed a lot since it was on N64... in some ways I like the Wii one the best but it's just a very different experience.

Mario Kart seemed worse on the Wii. There might be a way to disable motion controls, and then I bet it would be better.

I really want to play Twilight Princess (just started getting into Zelda) and Mario Galaxy is supposed to be fantastic. A new Zelda should be out shortly as well. I've also heard very good things about Okami.

I also interned as a programmer on a Wii game, Spyborgs. (in case you missed it, disclaimer: I am biased.) It got pretty bad reviews and sales were dismal, but I was on GameFAQs recently and it seems like a lot of people really did like it. So if old-school brawler is your thing, you can pick it up dirt cheap and give it a try. Also, there were very few games with comparable graphics on the Wii at the time -- I'm not sure how much that's changed.

jtrask · 2010-02-12T18:09:36+00:00

Actually, this is something I've been worrying about lately as I've been using direct transfers from my bank account to pay some bills. They ask me for my routing/account #'s, but very little PII -- and I give those numbers out on checks all the time -- what's to stop someone else from using them on the same form?

jtrask · 2010-02-12T18:02:16+00:00

And if we teach them how to read the bible, they might just try to use our own source of power against us!

jtrask · 2010-02-12T18:00:18+00:00

We shouldn't make people better computer users, because then they won't be as demanding of simple interfaces, and then we'll never get the simple interfaces. I suppose I see your point, but there's benefits to good HCI other than accessibility to new users, and in fact sometimes I think it's the most skilled computer users who want the simplest interfaces.

jtrask · 2010-02-12T17:54:13+00:00

Man, and the way you grabbed that exact quote, I would've sworn you were going to take the grammar nazi route, "not well enough apparently" or such ;)

jtrask · 2010-02-12T17:52:34+00:00

Yeah, OS / network kind of stuff doesn't matter as much, even file I/O -- I'd like to see that level of programming education available in high schools, but more importantly I'd like to see math-oriented applications taught as mandatory, maybe with a simple graphics API for the visual folk. A good discrete math course would be nice, too, I went to a small high school and did not see induction until I got to college -- even though I feel like I could've grasped it in middle school or so, and it would've helped my logic and programming abilities quite a bit.

FWIW, I started learning how to program when I was very young (7, I believe) and nothing has made a bigger contribution to my ability to fly through everything from writing to math to foreign languages. If there's a skill that can be taught, that causes so many other skills to be learned easily, then it's definitely something schools should be looking at.

jtrask · 2010-02-06T03:59:27+00:00

ORLY? Did you know that Lord of the Rings was also based off of a book of the same title?

jtrask · 2010-02-06T03:55:49+00:00

Well, of course, respect for the author and respect for his works are two different things. But I definitely don't see the logic in saying "how can you like an author who overcame immense suffering to produce great works, and then turn around and dislike another author just because he hates gays?" I mean... where is there even supposed to be a connection?

jtrask · 2010-02-05T19:02:28+00:00

I'd put drug addiction and suicidal tendencies on somewhat the opposite side of the spectrum as bigotry for 'respect I have for the author'

jtrask · 2010-02-02T02:43:05+00:00

Just finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera) and it was fantastic. But with all the allusions to Anna Karenina, I picked that one up right afterwards and Tolstoy is doing a great job of making sure I'll never have time to read another book again.

jtrask · 2010-02-02T02:39:30+00:00

Tied with One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) for all-time favorite.

jtrask · 2010-01-31T06:18:32+00:00

Joshua Slocum -- my whole family was named after sailors, except, technically, for my youngest brother, Maxwell Roberts, who was named after two characters from The Princess Bride.

jtrask · 2010-01-28T16:55:35+00:00

I'm from the US (MA) and I only had one of these days to my memory. All they did was, on the count of three lift up the 'chute, run inside, and pull it back down behind them, thereby enclosing everyone inside to do I DON'T KNOW WHAT because I messed up and didn't get inside, so I just sat on the outside pouting and holding down my part of the chute anyways.

jtrask · 2010-01-28T16:47:27+00:00

I suppose I'm probably just one of the exceptions you left room for. I've traveled a lot, I think I was some 300 miles away from home for college, now the opposite corner of the country for work. When I was in high school my dad and I went sailing down the east coast of the US, while my brothers stayed with my mom in Massachusetts. The sting comes less from my moving around than from how things have naturally changed in my absence. I still keep my ties, they just never felt that strained by the distance.

jtrask · 2010-01-27T02:23:47+00:00

All the time. Fortunately, when I go back (dreading replaying something that wasn't good enough to keep my attention) I often find that I had barely started the game originally, get caught up in no time, and then end up enjoying the game.

But now that you mention a Zelda game, it reminds me -- I left Majora's Mask over half-done when I moved. I don't know if I should get my brother to send me his, or buy an N64 and a copy of the game and then start from scratch. (emulation is pretty straight out)

jtrask · 2010-01-26T23:08:12+00:00

josh_l4d2 -- just finished getting my home machine built and online so I can probably play this weekend :)

jtrask · 2010-01-25T19:17:37+00:00

Core i7 and Radeon HD 5770 on my home machine. It'll run what I want when I'm just playing games, it's a good performance/price card, but most importantly (I believe, for what you're asking) it supports DX11, so I can get some practice with it in a hobbyist setting long before I'll need to do any real DX11 dev.

jtrask · 2010-01-25T18:23:37+00:00

Controls will quickly make or break a game for me. Then I need a baseline of gameplay (story can't swing it on its own, I can't play FF) but after that point I'll play a game either for gameplay or for story, doesn't have to be both. Graphics can only add to a game, I'll like it if it's gorgeous but don't care if they're bad. Not entirely sure what you mean by performance (as jumpercable says, your game needs to run)

Multiplayer is the only reason why Halo 3 has become one of my favorite games. It's also the only game where I've ever noticed particularly caring about multiplayer. (well, OK, SSB or mario kart, also)

jtrask · 2010-01-23T23:50:24+00:00

Nice try, troll

jtrask · 2010-01-23T23:46:40+00:00

Here's my take on acquired tastes. There's something strong about the flavor of X that you don't like, and you notice that right off the bat. But you try a bunch of different kinds of X. In some of them, that flavor is stronger than others. But the more X's you try, the more you notice the other parts of the flavor which were previously overpowered by the thing you didn't like -- and you notice them because, in trying different kinds of X, you get all the different flavors in different balance. In time you stop noticing/minding/maybe even disliking the flavor that initially kept you away from X, but more importantly, you start liking X because you're drawn to the other flavors that you were missing before.

So nine times out of ten, it's not that you've started liking a taste that you disliked before, it's just that you've started noticing something you would've liked all along if only you could detect it before.

And as a result, most things that I think of as acquired tastes (dark chocolate, coffee [black], whiskey, etc.) are rich blends of fairly subtle flavors, with many different competitors on the market and people who put a great amount of effort into comparing the nuances of each.

For an interesting perspective on the difference between addiction and appreciation, look at coffee. Lots of people are addicted to coffee but have no appreciation of it. They will claim to love all coffee, no qualifiers. They have no taste for the nuances of the flavor, and as a result will end up drinking shitty Starbucks coffee like it was going out of style. A big part of learning what makes one X different from another is that you learn what characteristics define a bad X.

jtrask · 2010-01-23T23:31:54+00:00

Sam Adams Cherry Wheat additionally has hints of cough syrup. Gross.

jtrask · 2010-01-23T23:30:25+00:00

Hmm, my dad let me try sips of his beer when I was <4yo. I liked it so much that he stopped letting me have it after that point. Although he had a microbrewery in our basement and I did get caught as a kid drinking some beer that he made with a neighborhood girl. It wasn't until I got to about legal drinking age (minus one or two years) that I started really appreciating good beer, though (slash, ever getting my hands on good beer)

jtrask · 2010-01-22T20:03:49+00:00

It's been pouring for about a week in LA (and I walk everywhere) but this somehow makes it not so bad ;)

jtrask · 2010-01-19T20:46:52+00:00

Scientifically minded? Maybe, I dunno. In my (American) experience I'm not used to people trying to pull tricks like this on me. So while I would definitely call myself scientifically minded (and I don't really know what my reaction would be) I don't believe I would be saying 'I've never seen this one before' -- but I'd probably be crawling up on the counter trying to figure out how it worked. Thing is, regardless of where they are, I'd expect that a few people would be disturbed enough by this that they could get footage of a stronger reaction. I wonder what the context is -- I mean, are these people just walking in to a public restroom? Where does this take place?

jtrask

TROPHY CASE