Padfoot240.com

My infamous TV-from-the-trash has had a good run for only a $300 repair cost.  I guess it is just a bit too old, or spent too much time in the trash, and the projections are starting to fail off and on.  It is getting really annoying to see the blues dip down from the top and form ghosts in the middle but not on the sides.  Distracting really.  It is the worst during video gaming, hurtful blue items look like helpful green items etc.  But that is what you get with projection TVs, when they get too old or jostled around a bit they go all wonky.  Man I hate old hardware.

So what do you guys have?  What do you look for?  Where do you look for it?

I’ve got my eyes on something around $700, 1080p, and maybe in the 40 inches.  Extra inputs are always nice but they aren’t a deal breaker for me.  I don’t need excessive things such ethernet inputs, ipod docks, dvd integration, etc.

So far I’ve found a couple to look at, but as usual I always learn more from our input.

• http://www.testfreaks.com/televisions/lg-42ld450/
• http://www.walmart.com/ip/Panasonic-TC-L42U22/14100710
• http://www.walmart.com/ip/Sony/13422987
• http://www.walmart.com/ip/LG-42LD450/13904850

Probably going to wait a bit before I go get it.  Build some cash up over the summer to pay for it.  So let me know if you hear anything about TVs later on as well.

So I want to keep busy over the summer.  And I’ve planned out a list of things that I would like to get accomplished on my website before Fall quarter starts up again.

• My Portfolio Page
  • I’d like some kind of page from my blog that details what I’ve done/worked on.  Kind of like how I put up my checker’s project but it would also include a way to download my code and instructions to run it.
• Resume
  • I guess this would go along with my Portfolio.  Is putting your resume online your own personal website a good idea?  Or would it better to link to your linkedin profile?  Tell me people in the work force!
• Project Wish List
  • A list detailing out projects that I’ve dreamed about creating some point in my career.

By the looks of things, it seems all three of these could go on the same page just under different tabs or headers.  I’m thinking it should be have a much different look than my blog if it’s going to be seen by possible job prospects.  So I don’t know if I’d want to just make another wordpress “page” and put it there.  Can I have links to non internal wordpress pages on my nav menu?

In other news, I’m broadening my programming languages with C++.  It’s a little different than Java, but it is a good kind of different.  More freedom, more power, more things can be done.  But as we all know, with great freedom comes great responsibility…  But C++ is the mainstream language for VIDEO GAMES!!  Waahoo!!

I’ve been frequenting a website called Reddit(caution: adult content in content marked with nsfw) lately.  I think it is kind of cool the way it is structured.  Users post some kind of content, pictures/text/links/video/etc. and everyone else in the community gets to ‘upvote’ or ‘downvote’ the content.  The more upvotes a piece of content gets, the more it is pushed towards the first page of content.  Downvotes work in the opposite manner.  Thus, the community actively is constantly receiving/giving new content and it shares the coolest bits of it with everyone else while avoiding the boring/trashy/duplicate content.  You can also include a comment on that content and the same vote policy also governs the comments on each piece of content.  I’m always a big fan of bottom-up structure instead of top-bottom; I think it provides the users with enough power to play within the system while disallowing the higher-ups from playing with the system.  However, it does have the same major problem that a solely-community-driven community encounters: the hive-mind.  The hive-mind refers “to the shared beliefs and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.”  This isn’t always a bad thing or even wrong for that matter.  I mean I guess humans, for the most part, have a hive-minded attitude towards murder, rape, abuse, etc.  That’s good.  People, by nature, tend to surround themselves with mostly people who think similarly to themselves to some degree.  The problem begins when a hive-mind starts to become hostile to others not subscribing to it.  Reddit has a notoriously hostile hive-mind mostly pertaining to a couple of specific issues:

• Christianity: Christians are seen as stupid, ignorant, mindless people.  The subreddit page about atheism is one of the more popular pages on reddit, but it contains more anti-Christianity content than pro-atheist content.  To a lesser extent, the same is also applied to Islam.  Atheists are seen as enlightened heroes.
• Republicans: Again, republicans are seen as stupid, ignorant, clueless people that apparently want nothing more than to destroy America and tax all of its citizens to death.
• American International Policy: Any time America pokes around in another country’s affairs, it is terrible and a breach of their sovereignty.  Most recently, Isreal’s actions have been close to murder and America’s support of Israel is a terrible thing.
• The Police: The police are huge jerks with too much power and are always tazing, shooting, beating, and killing random people for no reason.

Here is a particular example I thought was rather harsh.  The picture was posted and this comment had received the most upvotes-this is the comment most people thought that others should see first.

I think, that on some level, religious indoctrinators are PERFECTLY AWARE of how nonsensical and ridiculous the beliefs they seek to perpetuate are. That is WHY they so eagerly seek out the young. On some level in their minds, they know PERFECTLY DAMN WELL that if they wait until a young person has developed skills in critical thinking and skepticism, that the indoctrination won’t ‘take’.

I think that makes them the worst kind of cynical double thinking hypocrites.

This is the reddit hive-mind’s view of Christianity.  How sad.  How terrible.  We are scary close-minded(literaly) people who prey upon children in order to brainwash them into believing ‘nonsensical’ myths.  I’m torn whenever I see people on reddit post things like this.  Part of me is furious.  Really?  If you honestly believe that we think our own beliefs ridiculous, prey on kids, can’t stand up to critical thinking, or even that we are responsible for holding back science(that’s my favorite one) I honestly have to say that you are the indoctrinated one.  I’m sorry that as a parent, they try to raise their child to believe what they think is the right way to live.  Calling an indoctrination foul has its place, but not as a blanket statement!

Another part of me is sad for them.  Did most of these people experience some sort of childhood where Christianity was shoved down their throats all the time?  I feel for those people, I really do.  They see Christianity as this terrible force that comes to enslave and Jesus as this hardened school teacher punishing you for every sin.  I pray they realize that that wasn’t Christianity.  And this picture isn’t either.  I pray they encounter Jesus in his reality through some other means.  I pray they are actively searching and not just shouting out indoctrination fouls while they themselves are indoctrinated with another religion.  You can find all the examples of harsh, rule-founded people claiming to show Christ’s love to others, but that doesn’t make Christ’s love any less real.  You can take all the Bible verses you want out of context in an attempt to make the Bible say things it isn’t, but in the end you can’t escape Christ’s love found right there in the word.

Now, I am not hating on reddit.  I really enjoy it; I particularly really love the gaming and lolcat sections.  But it does suffer from this hive-mind which can make sharing differing thoughts on reddit sometimes just downright impossible.  Whether your differing content gets downvoted so far that it can’t see the light of day or everyone gets nasty in the comment section, it is just hard to survive once the hive-mind has targeted you.  If you want a pretty well written thought on reddit, I would suggest you read this comment by an actual user.  But this aspect to the community is probably why I, and many others, will always remain a reader and never a contributor.

I found this article today entitled “5 Reasons It’s Still Not Cool to Admit You’re a Gamer”.  The author identifies five things that are negative, or just plain sad, about being an avid video gamer and why we are ashamed of them.  I honestly think these thoughts are on to something.  Almost everything that I have to defend my love of video games from is apart of this list.  But I think the article should have been named, “5 Reasons Video Games aren’t Reaching their full Potential”.  Video Games, in my eyes, are becoming a form of art.  They are creative ways for involving people in narrative story.  There is no formula for a good video game, it is actually EXTREMELY hard to create a solid game that people really enjoy and even harder to create one that the majority of people enjoy.  Creating a good game involves placing interactive ways to sense things of a narrative.  It is a form of storytelling while adding a new dimension to it.

Whats that?  Video games as art is complete rubbish?  The same was said about Literature.  About Cinema.  About Music.  And just like those three, Video Games need some time to smooth out the bumps.  We have too much crap in the genre to be taken seriously yet.  Movies like The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, or The Shawshank Redemption are all viewed as some of the best movies of all time.  Aren’t they art?  Or at least major parts of them?  Movies like UHF, The Stupids, or Napoleon Dynamite are three of my favorite guilty pleasure movies of all time.  They are definitely not art.  I think that is where Video Games currently are; making thousands of Superbads that give everyone a good fun time, but doesn’t really move you or stir up any emotions.  Video Games need to focus on making their Casablanca, or whatever.  And there definitely have been some beautiful games that are high up there.  Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is my personal favorite game and is arguably the best video game of all time.  Maybe there has been some beautiful games made, but for every single amazing game, there are 100′s of ‘Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen: Listen to Drive’ kind of games out there…

So what is holding them back?  Well let me break this article down for you with my thoughts on each one along with a quick quote from the article that I think has its merits.  I would still encourage you to read the article first, only 2 pages long, since it will give you a better insight about the author’s, and my, thoughts.

• We Can’t Shake the ‘Lonely, Anti-Social Virgin’ Stereotype
  • For some reason this still gets pinned on us.  Nerdy, pasty, white males who have social problems or whatever you want to assume we are.  Why did we retain this stereotype?  It used to be for all computer users.  The geeks of highschool were the ones that typed up their essays with custom margins, put pictures in their slide shows to make it look professional, had a blog on this super nerdy thing called the internet and actually wrote out their thoughts online for other super nerdy loners to read.  Well guess what?  Now it is super cool to be the computer nerd.  Blog, personal website, facebook profiles, tweeting, they are all looked upon as the norm.  In fact, if you don’t use the internet then you are the weird one.  So how did gamers keep this and everyone else didn’t?  Easy.  Computers/The Internet moved away from this stereotype, games haven’t(as much).  Which is explained in the next point.
  • “Everybody plays video games now, right? My mom plays them. Yet, there is still a “if you have touched a video game controller, you have never touched a boob” stigma attached. It’s so universally believed that somebody put up a whole lot of capital to start a business cashing in on it(gamecrush.com)–where you can pay women to play video games with you, or just look at their boobs).  And damn, do us gamers ever play the part. Get us on chat or an Xbox Live headset with a female and suddenly we’re drunk on puberty juices.“
• The Industry Thinks We’re All 17-Year-Old Douchebags Like
  • I said, we grew out of it but games did not.  I think really the only needed thing to point out is all the ramped up sexuality in games.  It isn’t even called for.  It is almost like the video game is created as an excuse to model some busty 3D female.  Crude mini-games where you press buttons to watch two people bone?  Cheat codes to make all the women in the game bouncing around naked?  Video gamers were mainly teen males back in the day, so maybe you could argue that the industry was just appealing to their audience.  But we grew up.  We also were joined by females, almost half of active gamers are women.  We are adults now with spouses and jobs and would like to have something called dignity.  We want to deal with something other than angsty teenage hormones in our games.  We want to deal with actual themes plots.  We want to deal with things that matter.
  • “Again, “Mature” is the rating, and I’ve come to learn that “Mature” in video game land means “teenage male.” So here we are again with the stereotype, the games themselves selling the kind of sex fantasy that appeals to specifically to males who have never actually had a relationship with a female.“
• Video Game Storytelling is Still at the Level of B Movies
  • This point is were I wouldn’t agree totally with what the article has to say.  While most games do indeed not care much about a story or plot, many do and make an effort towards it.  I think it is a little unfair to throw Halo, Gears of War, and Mass Effect all into the same storyline of ‘some random dude kills a lot of aliens’.  You an do that with a lot of movies.  Look at this, The Thing, Predator, and Aliens all revolve around killing the alien(s) but all their stories are not only completely different but they are quite good as far as keeping me interested go.  Again, Casino Royale, Gladiator, and Lord of the Rings I, II, and III all are great action movies and have great storylines.  But if you really wanted to, you could just say they are just about killing.  And again, Definitely Maybe, Failure to Launch, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days can all be called generic chick flicks, but each has good story and I like them.  So sure, they can be abstracted down to common threads, but you’re throwing away the stories that make them good to do so.  Right now Video Games are mostly action based because it makes people excited if they can put themselves in the shoes of a warrior.  Other aspects of this art will come when they are implemented solidly.  Like I said before, many people will just make a quick crude game, but the artists are the developers who will push the way people play the game and the stories within them to change these standards.
  • “With very, very few exceptions, video game plots are stuck at this level. It’s storytelling at its most primitive: good guy with a gun, thousands of bad guys, the happy ending comes when you make enough of the bad guys dead. Characters are crude, cartoonish archetypes–grizzled soldier, grizzled gangster, femme fatale, cool hit man, bumbling fat guy, robot.“
• We’re Still Obsessed by Shiny Gadgets
  • I’m playing a game called Alan Wake right now.  It’s great.  It is genius.  It shakes the ‘Lonely, Anti-Social Virgin’ stereotype.  The makers do not think I am a 17-year-old douchebag.  The story is thrilling and I’m still not sure how it will end!  The graphics are so clean.  The game deals alot with light and darkness and I really haven’t seen shadows or rays of light rendered so beautifully anywhere else.  So why is a game like this getting rated down by quite a few people?  Somebody took a screenshot of the game, zoomed in 500 percent and started to count the pixels to make sure every frame was rendering at the maximum 720p resolution the Xbox 360 is capable of.  Some frames weren’t, people got mad, and said it sucks.  There are over 2,000 posts on the topic at the game’s website.  Really?  They cut down on some quality that is BARELY NOTICEABLE and all hell breaks loose?  Don’t get me wrong, I think if you’re cutting quality because you’re being sloppy and just want to finish then you better fix it.  But the game looks freaking beautiful.  The developers know what they are doing when they decide to cut the pixel count down in areas to make the game better.  If a painting is amazing but people find out later that the painter didn’t use the best kind of paint possible is that painting suddenly less?  Well I actually don’t know the answer to that question, so painters you tell me.  But I wouldn’t really care since the painting still looks good.
  • “Who’s that woman Alan is talking to? Where are they going? How does it play into the story? What emotions is this scene going to elicit? Tension? Dread? Humor? HOW CAN YOU WORRY ABOUT SUCH THINGS WHEN THE ROLL CAGE ON HIS PICKUP TRUCK ONLY HAS A 19:25 PIXEL RATIO.“
• We Have Some Serious Entitlement Issues
  • One word here guys, piracy.  And you know what, I stand convicted.  I could count on one hand the number of games I have pirated, but that doesn’t really excuse my theft does it?  I’ve been thinking over the whole issue of downloading things for free, music, software, games, and I have to say that I really kind of feel bad about it.  I should stop.  I need to stop.  It is the right thing to do.  I could make up excuses all day long about how I wouldn’t buy that game anyway, so they aren’t really losing any money.  I mean, logically, if I like a game and I want more games like it from the makers of the game, shouldn’t I support that game so the makers can make money to create more great games?  We need to take responsibility for this market of games that we love and want.  We can’t spoil it by only taking and not giving.  Now, this doesn’t mean I’m perfectly okay with how DRM is managed or how DLC is used.  But both of those were kind of in response to pirating in the first place.  Maybe if we don’t break the developer’s trust then we wouldn’t have to be governed by actual game content released as DLC.  Maybe if we just put out some money, our video games COULD render every object in our games in the maximum resolution.  Maybe the game writers could start to experiment a little with game plot lines and branch out into A+ plot lines that emotionally involve us all.  Maybe the developers won’t have to resort to sex-shock as a marketing scheme and start creating games with better content.  Maybe once we begin to release the limits we have put on video games, the others will begin to lift and we won’t look like 17-year-old-horny-douchebags to everyone.
  • “Gosh, I wonder why these publishers are putting all of their resources into the harder-to-pirate consoles instead? Forget about the debate over the morality of file sharing. It’s not that; it’s just simple cause-effect. We’re smashing out the windows because it’s fun, and then crying because the rain is coming in. It makes us all look like spoiled, entitled brats with no concept of how the adult world works. Don’t tell me this is because gamers are mostly kids, either–the average age of video game players is 35.“

Well, there you have it.  Agree.  Disagree.  Critique.

So today, May 25th, is what has come be known as Geek Pride Day.  Don’t ask me why or who started it, just embrace it!

Geek Love Poem

The Geek Manifesto:
Rights:

1. The right to be even geekier.
2. The right to not leave your house.
3. The right to not like football or any other sport.
4. The right to associate with other nerds.
5. The right to have few friends (or none at all).
6. The right to have as many geeky friends as you want.
7. The right to be out of style.
8. The right to be overweight and near-sighted.
9. The right to show off your geekiness.
10. The right to take over the world.

Responsibilities:

1. Be a geek, no matter what.
2. Try to be nerdier than anyone else.
3. If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.
4. To save and protect all geeky material.
5. Do everything you can to show off geeky stuff as a “museum of geekiness.”
6. Don’t be a generalized geek. You must specialize in something.
7. Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.
8. Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.
9. Never throw away anything related to geekdom.
10. Try to take over the world!

I gotta say I don’t agree with everything on the manifesto because geeks have evolved a lot since these last couple years.  And they are just rights, not musts.  Just because I have the right to those things doesn’t mean I will exercise them.  Take rights 2,3,5, and 8.  Now why would I want to exercise those?  However, Right 7 I fully embrace when I rock the mancapris.
Anyway, have a good Geek Pride day.  Celebrate as you will.  Continuing the spirit of Geekiness I will be posting a super geeky blog post in the coming days.  It is actually half-way written right now, but I felt that this one should be put up on Geek Pride Day.

I need to set up a portfolio page on here, but not as part of my actual blog.  I need to design a clean looking portfolio where I can post my work online.  Any tips from you guys?

I have another game I’ll be posting up this weekend called GridMatcher.  It’s pretty simple.  You just match a given shape to its twin in a grid.  The faster you match, the more points you can get.  Matching 10 in a row correctly multiplies your score.  Heck, since it’s going online, maybe I should implement a high-score feature…So I am going to be trying to fix that Checkers thing soon.  The same issue is probably going to affect this game as well so if you couldn’t play Checkers, then you probably won’t be able to play GridMatcher either.

Anyway.  For all you Android OS phone owners, check out PIXEL JAMZ!  Coming to your phone at the end of this quarter!!  Or at least that is the plan anyway.  It is my last project class and I’m kind of excited for it.  So if I am blowing off playing Starcraft II or Halo: Reach with you, this is what I am working on.

Okay, I promised you some kind of new content.  And new content you shall have!

Checkers AI

Last quarter I was in an AI class and for my project my team built this pretty effective Checkers AI.  I finally got around to putting it up on the web and I need your help!  Please take a look at it and tell me if it works/loads for you.  I’m getting mixed results on a few of my visits on various computers/OSs/browsers.  So If you could please leave a comment to tell me:

• what OS and browser you are using?
• does it load correctly?
• does all the text and buttons show up?
• does it work?
• did you win?
• was it easy enough to understand/intuitive or did you need the instructions?

Try it on your cell phones if you can too!  I’m curious to see where it does and doesn’t work.

Instructions:

You play as the black pieces by default.  All possible pieces you can move are outlined in blue.  After selecting what piece you want to move, possible move destinations are outlined in green.  If you can jump, you must.  ‘Make AI Move’ uses the current player color’s AI to decide what move to make.  You can switch colors by pressing ‘Make AI Move’ once and then start playing as the other color.  You can also click ‘Make AI Move’ repeatedly to watch two AIs play each other.  ‘Resign’ ends the current game, you forfeit.  ‘New Game’ resets the game board for a new game, only allowed after a game is over.  The depth for each player is essentially the AI’s difficulty.  The numbers correspond to how many moves the AI looks ahead when deciding what move to make.  The Evaluating Function is the method the that the AI thinks.  Basic is very deterministic and simply counts the number of pieces.  Piece Table adds to basic by assigning each square on the board a value to help the AI move to avoid possible attacks.  Random is…random moves.

Another gem I found while reading Animorphs:

So, Wus, tell me: What’s the deal with the captain? He’s dead.”

<She. Yes, of course she is dead.>

“And why do you want your captain to be dead?”

<How else can you be sure she will not make a mistake?>

That seemed to stymie Marco. But the patient male who even I was now thinking of as “Wuss” went on to explain.

<Those who make errors must be eliminated. It is inevitable that a captain, who would make many decisions if she were alive, would therefore also make many errors. What is the point of a captain who must be killed for error? In this way we have a captain who may be respected and revered by all.>

Marco looked at me helplessly. “What’s sad is that it makes a certain bizarre kind of sense.” He turned back to Wuss. “How about your other leaders? All dead?”

<Yes, a Helmacron female may not ascend to a position of importance in our society unless it is certain that she will not cause problems.  She must be a symbol that all can admirer.>

“Kind of like our society,” I muttered.

“Well, Wuss, aren’t you supposed to tell us how to behave?”

<Yes. You must obey all females. You must wash your food before eating it. As males, you must be quiet and calm at all times.>

“I’m not male,” I said. “I’m female.”

<No, you are a slave. Thus you are male and must do whatever a female tells you to do.>

“Kind of like our society,” Marco said, mimicking me.

Hahahaha!  Man I love these books!

So this was originally posted two years ago, http://padfoot240.com/blog/2008/03/23/easter/, but the same thoughts still go through my head.

I’ve been lazy regarding this blog.  Regarding this entire website actually.  But I have good news!  GOOD NEWS!  That is all about to change.  And you loyal people who actually read this straight from the proper source, www.padfoot240.com, will be getting some extra goodness.  That’s right, some of my work in class and maybe from work is coming online!  The first thing that you will be able to taste is a checkers AI I built last quarter.  By sheer dumb luck my team built it using some web framework, so it’ll be easy to put online.  It works pretty well, you can beat it if you try really hard but it can still hold its own.  I’ll tell you, it is a little scary when you create something that can destroy you beat you in checkers.

Now that I attempted to excuse myself for being lame and not blogging, here is an actual post.

Have you heard of Omegle?  If not, here is a brief explanation.  It is an in-browser instant messaging system that pairs you up with a random other person to talk with.  Omegle doesn’t have any information about you, so it can’t compromise your identity or anything.  In the chat window the two people are listed as ‘you’ and ‘stranger’.  It was an experiment to see how strangers would interact with each other over the web.

There is usually anywhere between 5000 to 10,000 people online at a given time, so you end up talking to some crazy interesting people.  Usually you end up talking to some horny dude trying to woo a woman electronically, but every once in a while you actually get a decent convo going.  I decided to have some fun the other day.

What people did when I started singing/typing ‘Be a Man’ from Mulan to them.

Convo 1

Convo 2

Convo 3

Convo 4

Convo 5

Convo 6

Convo 7

Convo 8

It took 8 different people to find one person to know what I was talking about!  And they thought it was pokemon at first.  What is wrong with our culture if the majority of people don’t know the words to ‘Be a Man’?  Sad day.

In short.  Omegle is an interesting toy.  It is definitely shady if you don’t know what to expect.  But after you get past all the horndogs, good conversations can be found with a person you can relate to.