I don't recall if I've ever stated this here before, but I get deeply concerned whenever a politician gloms onto a hot-button topic and states "we have to do something now." It's even worse when "for the children" gets added to the mix... it implies, at best, a snap decision is being made, or, at worst, that circumstances are being used to justify attempting things they otherwise couldn't get away with.
Well, it's been a month or so since that Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, and plans are starting to come out of Washington D.C., which is pretty quick for that bunch. Surprisingly, nobody looks to be jumping on the "bash movies/video games/comic books" bandwagon, and there's some attention being paid to both mental health issues and actually letting gun violence studies happen, which is all to the good. However, there's also gun-control-related ideas being pushed on Congress, which is just a little bit silly.
First, there's the "assault weapons" ban some are looking for. Frankly, trying to ban cosmetic features on weapons is worse than useless... and trying to ban non-cosmetic features, like semi-automatic fire, strays dangerously close to Second Amendment territory.
Second, there's the suggested ban on "high-capacity" magazines. Now, this is a bit of an over-simplification, but a magazine is just a box with a spring-loaded panel... even years back, trying to stop someone from building a box with a spring in it, or sawing off and modifying an existing box, would be pretty foolish... and now, in the modern age of 3D printing, it's laughable.
No, if you want effective gun control, you're going to have to do something about that pesky Second Amendment, by passing another amendment to the Constitution. Of course, that would involve cooperation and compromise between the two parties, which simply isn't in the cards, especially on this issue... or, if you want to reach even further, we could try the Constitutional Convention route, but I don't see any of a number of vested interests letting that come to pass without some serious opposition. So, how about we give this a rest, and get back to pressing issues that are at least theoretically within our grasp, like the economy and a balanced budget?
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Fiscal silliness
In our continuing efforts to never pay our debts, America's in the throes of another round of sound-and-fury about the latest "fiscal cliff". The last one was avoided mere days ago, with a 13th-hour deal to limit how much everybody's taxes will go up this year. However, it was beyond our Congress' ability to tackle the spending end at the same time... end result, we're slated to run into our debt limit shortly, and positions are so firmly entrenched that some people are looking for increasingly-out-there ways to get "free money", so they don't have to worry about little things like spending limits. One such that's gotten more than its share of attention lately: the trillion dollar coin.
Pretty much everybody (with the exception of a few die hard supporters) seems to agree that, even if technically legal, it's an extraordinarily bad idea... yet, that's not stopping the idea from reaching ever higher up the media food chain. In fact, while listening to NPR this afternoon, they were actually talking about whose face should be on the coin, should it ever get printed. I've seen many ideas on this topic from various places, but I think they all fall short. There's only one visage suitable for such a coin, should it ever be printed: Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. Not only was he eccentric/deranged, he printed his own currency and convinced businesses in San Francisco to accept it at face value. It's that sort of thinking that's gotten us where we are today, so why not commemorate it properly?
Pretty much everybody (with the exception of a few die hard supporters) seems to agree that, even if technically legal, it's an extraordinarily bad idea... yet, that's not stopping the idea from reaching ever higher up the media food chain. In fact, while listening to NPR this afternoon, they were actually talking about whose face should be on the coin, should it ever get printed. I've seen many ideas on this topic from various places, but I think they all fall short. There's only one visage suitable for such a coin, should it ever be printed: Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. Not only was he eccentric/deranged, he printed his own currency and convinced businesses in San Francisco to accept it at face value. It's that sort of thinking that's gotten us where we are today, so why not commemorate it properly?
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Bring on the mobile - TripleTown and Paperland
So, for all I post here about games more often than anything else, I don't think I've posted anything to date about mobile games. Partly because, until very recently, I haven't done much with them, due to the limitations of my cheap phone... partly because, frankly, I haven't been impressed by what I've seen so far. That's changed a bit, now that I've run into a little slice of evil called TripleTown.
The reason it's called TripleTown is fairly straightforward... a major part of the game play is the sort of match-3 game that's been around for years now. However, the creators took that idea in an entirely different direction... instead of a filled field of symbols, swapping, and so on, you start with a mostly empty field, and, instead of swapping things around, you're placing semi-random things, which, when matched, combine into an upgraded thing instead of disappearing entirely. Using this mechanic, the goal is to build as large of a town as you can, building up from grassy fields to bushes, trees, houses, and beyond. That might be an interesting puzzle on its own, but they also added bears... which you place like any other item, but then moves about on its own, until it's trapped (at which point it dies, leaving behind little gravestone symbols, which combine into churches, which combine into cathedrals, etc.). This elevates the game from an exercise in how to most efficiently build your town to dealing with a roaming problem that you have limited control over at the same time... and don't even get me started about the ninja bears.
Of course, many fun ideas die a horrible death in the mobile realm, because of the interface. Here, the makers purposely used a "cute" theme to simplify the display, and hid little-used options away, while still giving access to them through the main screen... it's a well thought-out system that leaves you to play the game as long as you want, while minimizing the downtime involved in doing less-common but sometimes useful things.
Of course, the game's not perfect, but that's just the nature of the medium. It's a free download to start, and it gives you a limited amount of playtime for free (in my case, "limited" would have equated to about 3-4 full games). Beyond that, it's got the standard cash-milking systems involved, if you want to go that route... OR, you can pay the full-upgrade cost (about $3-4), and get additional map types to play on, and leave the micro-transactions alone (unless you really need some coins to make a critical purchase for your map... so, if you have no willpower, this might not be the game for you after all).
All in all, I've had enough fun with it so far that I was willing to pony-up the unusually high "full version" price. It's good for both short sessions or longer bouts, which is rare, and it makes you think ahead if you want to do well. To me, that's all to the good... and it's free to try, so you really should.
...oh, and I did see something else cute that I considered worth paying for. If you want something interesting but unobtrusive for a "live wallpaper", you can do far worse than Paperland. It's built to look like paper cutouts of things you might see in a landscape, all animated to produce a scrolling backdrop for your phone. Beyond that... well, it's hard to describe in words. Since it has a free version too, I'll just say it's worth a look, and leave it at that.
The reason it's called TripleTown is fairly straightforward... a major part of the game play is the sort of match-3 game that's been around for years now. However, the creators took that idea in an entirely different direction... instead of a filled field of symbols, swapping, and so on, you start with a mostly empty field, and, instead of swapping things around, you're placing semi-random things, which, when matched, combine into an upgraded thing instead of disappearing entirely. Using this mechanic, the goal is to build as large of a town as you can, building up from grassy fields to bushes, trees, houses, and beyond. That might be an interesting puzzle on its own, but they also added bears... which you place like any other item, but then moves about on its own, until it's trapped (at which point it dies, leaving behind little gravestone symbols, which combine into churches, which combine into cathedrals, etc.). This elevates the game from an exercise in how to most efficiently build your town to dealing with a roaming problem that you have limited control over at the same time... and don't even get me started about the ninja bears.
Of course, many fun ideas die a horrible death in the mobile realm, because of the interface. Here, the makers purposely used a "cute" theme to simplify the display, and hid little-used options away, while still giving access to them through the main screen... it's a well thought-out system that leaves you to play the game as long as you want, while minimizing the downtime involved in doing less-common but sometimes useful things.
Of course, the game's not perfect, but that's just the nature of the medium. It's a free download to start, and it gives you a limited amount of playtime for free (in my case, "limited" would have equated to about 3-4 full games). Beyond that, it's got the standard cash-milking systems involved, if you want to go that route... OR, you can pay the full-upgrade cost (about $3-4), and get additional map types to play on, and leave the micro-transactions alone (unless you really need some coins to make a critical purchase for your map... so, if you have no willpower, this might not be the game for you after all).
All in all, I've had enough fun with it so far that I was willing to pony-up the unusually high "full version" price. It's good for both short sessions or longer bouts, which is rare, and it makes you think ahead if you want to do well. To me, that's all to the good... and it's free to try, so you really should.
...oh, and I did see something else cute that I considered worth paying for. If you want something interesting but unobtrusive for a "live wallpaper", you can do far worse than Paperland. It's built to look like paper cutouts of things you might see in a landscape, all animated to produce a scrolling backdrop for your phone. Beyond that... well, it's hard to describe in words. Since it has a free version too, I'll just say it's worth a look, and leave it at that.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Wow, I guess I'm a visionary...
So, here's a post from a couple years back... note in particular the section about what might make for an ideal video game controller. Now, compare that to this, a patent Sony filed not quite a year later. Mind you, I didn't see the great glowing balls on top of each piece... but that's because that's nothing short of stupid. I'm not just saying that because it's Sony (for all I'd rather almost anybody else had filed that patent)... pieces potentially in the way of trigger fingers is not a good thing. Still, it'll be interesting to see if something like that controller actually gets made... it'd be fun to see how it behaves in the real world.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Blast from the Past: Extended Edition
Looks like this cycle of drama has likely run its course, so I can post something less cryptic than my previous post... and, since there's popular demand for such, why not.
First, some back story... back in high school, like most guys, I "fell in lust" with my share of ladies, but never really went any further than that until my senior year. That's when a fetching young lady, who I'll just call F for this story, transferred in. Not only was she pretty, she was smart (I believe I met her in my calculus-based Physics class), and she was a Trekkie. What more could a growing geek ask for, right? Still, it's not like she was perfect... F always struck me as being a bit "scattered", but that didn't bother me at all. We became friends and, in time, something like boyfriend and girlfriend... again, it wasn't perfect, but it was more than just lust.
Things went astray at our senior prom... I invited F, and drove a close friend of mine and his date (a junior whom I'd never met before) there. After a while, F and my friend went off on their own, leaving me with the stranger. Let's just say that I didn't handle that well, and I made quite certain that all involved knew that I was hurt by it. No, hurt would be an understatement... it strongly shaped my outlook on life, and it took the better part of fifteen years for me to get back to a point in my life where I could truly forgive F and move on with my life. It never occurred to me that any of the other participants in that incident could still be weighted down by it.
Fast forward to this past October, when I received a call from F from out of the blue. She needed a little liquid courage to make the call, so she may well have said more than she intended... while I make no claim to being a gentleman, there's still much she said that it wouldn't be right to repeat. The main highlights, then: F was truly and terribly sorry for the grief she had caused, she had been recovering for several years from a nervous breakdown brought on in part by the 9/11 attacks (she had been in the greater New York area at the time), she's working to get into grad school (a process complicated by how long she had been out of, well, everything), but she would also like a relationship with me... that and much more, she laid at my feet.
Like I posted before, she mostly talked and I mostly listened... the fact was, it was obvious that she had a decision to make, and had likely called me, consciously or not, hoping to get the proverbial door slammed in her face, so she could concentrate on the path she really wanted to follow. More's the pity for her, I had forgiven her some years back, so I didn't have that lash-out instinct at play... instead, I was intrigued. I could still see the bits that attracted me all those years ago, and got reminded of things I'd forgotten (like her voice... it still has the power to coil around my brain stem and give it a nice squeeze), and, layered on top of that, was a couple of decades of change, paths she took that I never went near. There's no way I could just "dive in" the way she wanted, but sniffing around the edges couldn't hurt much...
There was a problem, though... it became apparent, the more we talked, that she had a lingering image of me as a good/nice guy, perfect in too many ways. If we were going to pursue any sort of relationship outside of Facebook-friendship, that needed corrected. Since I also needed to get my thoughts and feelings straight, I tried to kill two birds with one stone... since she was extremely open and honest with me during her call, I composed an honest telling of my own experiences for the same general time-frame. It took me the better part of four nights to get everything down, and I ended up with about six pages of prose, which I promptly emailed off to her.
Writing has many good things to say about it, but it also has one major downside... if you're not careful to understand your audience, and write in a way that works for them, you can get results you never intended. F read my manuscript, and it was like I walked into her home, dropped trou, and crapped on her carpet. It necessarily included a section surrounding the events of that long-ago prom, and, for all I had told her on the phone, and written in the manuscript, that I had forgiven her long ago, she took it as an indictment of her behavior. A flurry of emails and text messages followed, as I tried to convince her that, truly, I wasn't trying to dredge up the past in a damning way... and she seemed to be somewhat mollified.
Thereafter... well, we texted a very little bit, but we never got on the phone again. F kept herself quite busy with studying for tests and the like, so my hopes for getting to re-know her dwindled and faded. Finally, I sent her an email last night (a mere four paragraphs, how's that for brevity? ;) ), putting the ball firmly in her court for initiating further contact, once she's not so busy... she didn't take well to that one, either. Still, I think it was the right thing to do... it lets me get back to my normal state of serenity and contentment, and there's no sense in both of us being miserable. Besides, if she does get back to me in a few weeks' time, it'll be a (possibly) pleasant surprise.
First, some back story... back in high school, like most guys, I "fell in lust" with my share of ladies, but never really went any further than that until my senior year. That's when a fetching young lady, who I'll just call F for this story, transferred in. Not only was she pretty, she was smart (I believe I met her in my calculus-based Physics class), and she was a Trekkie. What more could a growing geek ask for, right? Still, it's not like she was perfect... F always struck me as being a bit "scattered", but that didn't bother me at all. We became friends and, in time, something like boyfriend and girlfriend... again, it wasn't perfect, but it was more than just lust.
Things went astray at our senior prom... I invited F, and drove a close friend of mine and his date (a junior whom I'd never met before) there. After a while, F and my friend went off on their own, leaving me with the stranger. Let's just say that I didn't handle that well, and I made quite certain that all involved knew that I was hurt by it. No, hurt would be an understatement... it strongly shaped my outlook on life, and it took the better part of fifteen years for me to get back to a point in my life where I could truly forgive F and move on with my life. It never occurred to me that any of the other participants in that incident could still be weighted down by it.
Fast forward to this past October, when I received a call from F from out of the blue. She needed a little liquid courage to make the call, so she may well have said more than she intended... while I make no claim to being a gentleman, there's still much she said that it wouldn't be right to repeat. The main highlights, then: F was truly and terribly sorry for the grief she had caused, she had been recovering for several years from a nervous breakdown brought on in part by the 9/11 attacks (she had been in the greater New York area at the time), she's working to get into grad school (a process complicated by how long she had been out of, well, everything), but she would also like a relationship with me... that and much more, she laid at my feet.
Like I posted before, she mostly talked and I mostly listened... the fact was, it was obvious that she had a decision to make, and had likely called me, consciously or not, hoping to get the proverbial door slammed in her face, so she could concentrate on the path she really wanted to follow. More's the pity for her, I had forgiven her some years back, so I didn't have that lash-out instinct at play... instead, I was intrigued. I could still see the bits that attracted me all those years ago, and got reminded of things I'd forgotten (like her voice... it still has the power to coil around my brain stem and give it a nice squeeze), and, layered on top of that, was a couple of decades of change, paths she took that I never went near. There's no way I could just "dive in" the way she wanted, but sniffing around the edges couldn't hurt much...
There was a problem, though... it became apparent, the more we talked, that she had a lingering image of me as a good/nice guy, perfect in too many ways. If we were going to pursue any sort of relationship outside of Facebook-friendship, that needed corrected. Since I also needed to get my thoughts and feelings straight, I tried to kill two birds with one stone... since she was extremely open and honest with me during her call, I composed an honest telling of my own experiences for the same general time-frame. It took me the better part of four nights to get everything down, and I ended up with about six pages of prose, which I promptly emailed off to her.
Writing has many good things to say about it, but it also has one major downside... if you're not careful to understand your audience, and write in a way that works for them, you can get results you never intended. F read my manuscript, and it was like I walked into her home, dropped trou, and crapped on her carpet. It necessarily included a section surrounding the events of that long-ago prom, and, for all I had told her on the phone, and written in the manuscript, that I had forgiven her long ago, she took it as an indictment of her behavior. A flurry of emails and text messages followed, as I tried to convince her that, truly, I wasn't trying to dredge up the past in a damning way... and she seemed to be somewhat mollified.
Thereafter... well, we texted a very little bit, but we never got on the phone again. F kept herself quite busy with studying for tests and the like, so my hopes for getting to re-know her dwindled and faded. Finally, I sent her an email last night (a mere four paragraphs, how's that for brevity? ;) ), putting the ball firmly in her court for initiating further contact, once she's not so busy... she didn't take well to that one, either. Still, I think it was the right thing to do... it lets me get back to my normal state of serenity and contentment, and there's no sense in both of us being miserable. Besides, if she does get back to me in a few weeks' time, it'll be a (possibly) pleasant surprise.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Blast from the Past
So, my high-school girlfriend from a couple decades back called me over the weekend, and we talked for a couple of hours (or, really, she mostly talked and I mostly listened, but, in my case, that's more or less to be expected). Let's just say I'm "conflicted", and leave it at that for now.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
こんばんは
Ran across some cheap language-learning software on my last trip out of town, and I decided, given my addictions to manga and anime, that it might be fun to take a stab at learning Japanese. It's only a week, and I've already discovered that I'm in for way more than I bargained for, thanks to multiple writing systems, of which I would only classify two as "sane", from what I've seen so far. Still, I'm hopeful that I can pick up on it all, in time... after all, many people would classify me as only partially sane, so it should be a good fit... ;)
Oh, as far as the title of this post goes? That's the Hiragana representation of the word "konbanwa", which means "good evening", which I can never think without hearing it in Alfred Hitchcock's voice. It's one of the few words I know how to spell so far (as long as I'm using a keyboard... I don't know how long it will take me to attempt writing by hand), so I thought it might be a fun test of how this blog system handles non-English scripts.
Oh, as far as the title of this post goes? That's the Hiragana representation of the word "konbanwa", which means "good evening", which I can never think without hearing it in Alfred Hitchcock's voice. It's one of the few words I know how to spell so far (as long as I'm using a keyboard... I don't know how long it will take me to attempt writing by hand), so I thought it might be a fun test of how this blog system handles non-English scripts.
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