http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html
Link to part 2
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com.ar/2013/05/depression-part-two.html
Monday, April 09, 2012
Sunday, April 08, 2012
Saturday, April 07, 2012
Friday, April 06, 2012
Thursday, April 05, 2012
Wednesday, April 04, 2012
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
Monday, April 02, 2012
Sunday, April 01, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
LET'S BE CLEAR, WE ARE LEGION, BUT IT WASN'T US. YOU ARE INCOMPETENT SONY
http://anonops.blogspot.com/2011/05/lets-be-clear-we-are-legion-but-it.html
Oddly, Anonymity which is often seen as a tool of secrecy, actually makes it easier to be transparent. Whistleblowers often don't want their identity known, for good reason. People often find it much easier to be honest, when no one knows who they are.
Oddly, Anonymity which is often seen as a tool of secrecy, actually makes it easier to be transparent. Whistleblowers often don't want their identity known, for good reason. People often find it much easier to be honest, when no one knows who they are.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Monday, March 12, 2012
Ahri (League of Legends)
Started playing League of Legends again, and had the luck to enjoy an Ahri free week. She's a lot of fun to play. Unfortunately, she seems unfocused and difficult to play. Her main strength is probably in the short term mobility granted by her ultimate (three short range dashes) and her Charm skill which is a weak pull and decent stun combined.
Ahri feels like she has a scattered and unfocused skill set, with a passive that provides sustain, an AoE that has true damage (true damage ignores defenses), an uncontrolled homing attack, a single target pull, and a mobility granting ult. Each of these abilities is pretty awesome on their own, but together, they seem somewhat awkward, as each specializes in something different. The AoE skillshot is good at harassment and whittling enemies down. The Fox-Fires seem like a hybrid of single target nuke, and team fight sustained damage. The charm is pretty awesome, but as the only CC in the skill set, it doesn't work well to design a build around it. The Ultimate, can hit three targets three times, and/or be used to move around quickly. It is extremely versatile which also makes it hard to figure out what the best way to use it is.
In my efforts to make use of Ahri, my greatest success has been in staying at the edges of fights, harassing without committing fully. Ultimately, it feels like anything she can do, another mage can do better. She doesn't seem to have enough damage to be a proper mage, and not enough CC to be a tank/support. I've had the most success when I focus on CDR, to make the most of her true damage and Charm, as well as keep her ult available whenever I need it. I just don't feel like it works any better than it could on other champions.
One thing to note: I've mostly been playing Dominion, so I don't know how well she does in Laning. She may have some strength in the laning phase of SR that makes her good. However, she appears to have a weak team fight presence and lacks the burst power of other mages.
Update(2012-07-22): Based on what I've seen of her in tournaments, Ahri's greatest strength may be her ability to punish an opponent's mistakes. Her ultimate's mobility, and her short charm help her to capitalize on any opening an enemy gives her.
Ahri feels like she has a scattered and unfocused skill set, with a passive that provides sustain, an AoE that has true damage (true damage ignores defenses), an uncontrolled homing attack, a single target pull, and a mobility granting ult. Each of these abilities is pretty awesome on their own, but together, they seem somewhat awkward, as each specializes in something different. The AoE skillshot is good at harassment and whittling enemies down. The Fox-Fires seem like a hybrid of single target nuke, and team fight sustained damage. The charm is pretty awesome, but as the only CC in the skill set, it doesn't work well to design a build around it. The Ultimate, can hit three targets three times, and/or be used to move around quickly. It is extremely versatile which also makes it hard to figure out what the best way to use it is.
In my efforts to make use of Ahri, my greatest success has been in staying at the edges of fights, harassing without committing fully. Ultimately, it feels like anything she can do, another mage can do better. She doesn't seem to have enough damage to be a proper mage, and not enough CC to be a tank/support. I've had the most success when I focus on CDR, to make the most of her true damage and Charm, as well as keep her ult available whenever I need it. I just don't feel like it works any better than it could on other champions.
One thing to note: I've mostly been playing Dominion, so I don't know how well she does in Laning. She may have some strength in the laning phase of SR that makes her good. However, she appears to have a weak team fight presence and lacks the burst power of other mages.
Update(2012-07-22): Based on what I've seen of her in tournaments, Ahri's greatest strength may be her ability to punish an opponent's mistakes. Her ultimate's mobility, and her short charm help her to capitalize on any opening an enemy gives her.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Loneliness...
The ache, the pain. A hole that will never be filled.
Believing that all things can be solved, if I just figure out how, I seek out knowledge.
Yet what I find, only makes the problem ever harder.
In my pursuit of perfection, I only end up ever further from my true goal.
I have lost a lot in my quest for knowledge.
Knowledge, and wisdom, isolate me. The hole was forged of loneliness. Yet my actions only make it bigger.
I am even more alone now, than I was at the start. Surrounded by people who cannot see the world that I see. A world that only continues to grow larger.
I seek ever greater knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, to bridge the gap. Yet doing so makes the gap even bigger.
The more I know, the more distant I become from everyone else.
Building a bridge, becomes ever harder.
All I can do is continue. Hoping that someday I will find a trick or secret that will let me share my world. A way of showing others, what my real life is.
Believing that all things can be solved, if I just figure out how, I seek out knowledge.
Yet what I find, only makes the problem ever harder.
In my pursuit of perfection, I only end up ever further from my true goal.
I have lost a lot in my quest for knowledge.
Knowledge, and wisdom, isolate me. The hole was forged of loneliness. Yet my actions only make it bigger.
I am even more alone now, than I was at the start. Surrounded by people who cannot see the world that I see. A world that only continues to grow larger.
I seek ever greater knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, to bridge the gap. Yet doing so makes the gap even bigger.
The more I know, the more distant I become from everyone else.
Building a bridge, becomes ever harder.
All I can do is continue. Hoping that someday I will find a trick or secret that will let me share my world. A way of showing others, what my real life is.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Friday, March 09, 2012
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
IP laws have gotten messed up.
Part four of Everything Is a Remix examines the history and incentives that shaped current intellectual property laws, and how they are blocking, rather than promoting, innovation.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Monday, March 05, 2012
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Friday, March 02, 2012
Cracked...
http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-awful-ways-internet-tainting-everything-else_p2/
Zack Ryder. He was a nobody who had hung around the WWE for five years being completely unspectacular in every way. Until he found YouTube. Donning a bright orange and purple headband, he spiked his hair, sprayed on a fake tan, and adopted the personality of a Jersey Shore-style "bro." He then posted videos of himself, declaring that he was the WWE "Internet Champion" (complete with a toy championship belt covered in kids' stickers). Little by little, "Zack Ryder" signs started to pop up in the WWE crowds. He became a meme, to the point that his T-shirts started selling out without him ever appearing on the show.That is an example of successfully using the internet.
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
TEDxDartmouth 2011- Thalia Wheatley: How the Brain Perceives Other Minds - March 6, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXRgbl4TtQ
At the end of the video, she discusses a discovery that seems very interesting, and potentially very important regarding how people of different races perceive each other.
At the end of the video, she discusses a discovery that seems very interesting, and potentially very important regarding how people of different races perceive each other.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Thursday, February 09, 2012
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Monday, February 06, 2012
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Governments are not content to mind their own buisness.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120124/11270917527/what-is-acta-why-is-it-problem.shtml
"Some European nations, for example, already have a history of seizing shipments of perfectly legal generic drugs in passage to somewhere else. For example, say that a pharmaceutical company in India is shipping drugs to Brazil that are legal in both countries. However, those drugs violate a patent in Europe. If, during transit, those drugs pass through Europe, customs agents may seize them."Wtf.
Friday, February 03, 2012
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Rarity
In MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) a problem that many developers have run into is something that got called mudflation. It's when items which were ment to be rare and valuable, end up becoming easy and cheap to obtain on the player market.
A common solution to mudflation is to make items that cannot be traded or sold to other players after they've been equipped. This causes any item that players actually use, to disappear from the player market preventing the market from getting flooded with hand-me-downs.
I've started wondering if perhaps a game seeking to maintain a strong player driven economy, might be better served by instead examining the issue of rarity. If an item's market value gets driven down by how numerous they are, then perhaps it simply isn't rare enough.
Many MMOGs balance their loot drops using the same methods used by single player games. However, in a multiplayer game, a player driven market will be filled with items acquired by the many, many hours of gameplay already enjoyed by previous players. A single player game does not have this, instead the number of hours worth of loot acquisition is restricted solely to the hours put in by the current player. This drastic difference pretty much guarantees that a system designed for one game type won't work well in the other game. The standard system is to just have a % chance of a given loot item dropping from specific monsters. As the total number of monsters slain steadily increases over the life of a MMOG, this results in an ever increasing number of items in existence that were ment to be rare.
Alternate methods of creating rarity and value:
Limited quantity: In EVE online, there were some ultra rare items of which only a specific number were ever given out. Some might even be described as priceless. These items can be traded and often go for crazy high prices when compared to the price of other items with similar functional ability. Having the total quantity of certain items be limited based upon the size of the player base might be an effective way to keep certain items rare.
Increasing utility: A very basic way to increase value is to provide a way for players to make use of old gear. The most common method I'm aware of is to let it be broken down for parts to use in crafting. If the price of the good goes too low, people will start buying it for scrap. If the devs think an item's market price is too low, they can increase the amount of scrap it gives to raise it's value. This can also be a form of item destruction.
Item destruction: EVE Online makes heavy use of item destruction to keep rare items rare. Death in that game results in most of the gear which was in use, being destroyed. Thus, items which are most useful also end up getting destroyed frequently, keeping them from ever being too abundant. Personally, I think it might work to have games with two modes: normal without gear destruction, and a hardcore mode with gear destruction. Then if the two modes share markets, the destruction by the hardcore players can help drain the entire market of valuables. Not everyone wants to deal with gear destruction, but some people do like it, and letting them get stuff destroyed could help the games economy. An alternate form would be to have some regions with gear destruction, though it would be important to make it clear to players that entering such areas is dangerous, as anyone who lost stuff by accident would be rather upset.
Ultimately, the experience some games are trying to create doesn't fit well with an MMO environment: the idea of an item simply needing X hours of effort to acquire item Z runs into problems when people who have done it can give the item away to someone else. It's like trying to fit a single player game into a multi-player environment instead of trying to focus on what creating a living world full of players really means.
A common solution to mudflation is to make items that cannot be traded or sold to other players after they've been equipped. This causes any item that players actually use, to disappear from the player market preventing the market from getting flooded with hand-me-downs.
I've started wondering if perhaps a game seeking to maintain a strong player driven economy, might be better served by instead examining the issue of rarity. If an item's market value gets driven down by how numerous they are, then perhaps it simply isn't rare enough.
Many MMOGs balance their loot drops using the same methods used by single player games. However, in a multiplayer game, a player driven market will be filled with items acquired by the many, many hours of gameplay already enjoyed by previous players. A single player game does not have this, instead the number of hours worth of loot acquisition is restricted solely to the hours put in by the current player. This drastic difference pretty much guarantees that a system designed for one game type won't work well in the other game. The standard system is to just have a % chance of a given loot item dropping from specific monsters. As the total number of monsters slain steadily increases over the life of a MMOG, this results in an ever increasing number of items in existence that were ment to be rare.
Alternate methods of creating rarity and value:
Limited quantity: In EVE online, there were some ultra rare items of which only a specific number were ever given out. Some might even be described as priceless. These items can be traded and often go for crazy high prices when compared to the price of other items with similar functional ability. Having the total quantity of certain items be limited based upon the size of the player base might be an effective way to keep certain items rare.
Increasing utility: A very basic way to increase value is to provide a way for players to make use of old gear. The most common method I'm aware of is to let it be broken down for parts to use in crafting. If the price of the good goes too low, people will start buying it for scrap. If the devs think an item's market price is too low, they can increase the amount of scrap it gives to raise it's value. This can also be a form of item destruction.
Item destruction: EVE Online makes heavy use of item destruction to keep rare items rare. Death in that game results in most of the gear which was in use, being destroyed. Thus, items which are most useful also end up getting destroyed frequently, keeping them from ever being too abundant. Personally, I think it might work to have games with two modes: normal without gear destruction, and a hardcore mode with gear destruction. Then if the two modes share markets, the destruction by the hardcore players can help drain the entire market of valuables. Not everyone wants to deal with gear destruction, but some people do like it, and letting them get stuff destroyed could help the games economy. An alternate form would be to have some regions with gear destruction, though it would be important to make it clear to players that entering such areas is dangerous, as anyone who lost stuff by accident would be rather upset.
Ultimately, the experience some games are trying to create doesn't fit well with an MMO environment: the idea of an item simply needing X hours of effort to acquire item Z runs into problems when people who have done it can give the item away to someone else. It's like trying to fit a single player game into a multi-player environment instead of trying to focus on what creating a living world full of players really means.
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Nano Paint Could Make Airplanes Invisible to Radar
http://www.technologyreview.com/article/39238/
Sounds like a really neat technology. It also sounds potentially dangerous. What scares me most is the possibility that someone might use it to develop a stealth ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) and then nuke someone thinking no one will be able to figure out who fired it. Hopefully enough resources will be put into better detection methods to thwart any efforts at creating a stealth ICBM.
Sounds like a really neat technology. It also sounds potentially dangerous. What scares me most is the possibility that someone might use it to develop a stealth ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) and then nuke someone thinking no one will be able to figure out who fired it. Hopefully enough resources will be put into better detection methods to thwart any efforts at creating a stealth ICBM.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
The hidden problem of SOPA
“It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.” - Lamar Smith, the chief sponsor of SOPA (http://mashable.com/2012/01/20/sopa-is-dead-smith-pulls-bill/)
That quote is where the real problem lies: Why does the American Government think it should have jurisdiction over what foreign companies do in other countries? If it has no presence within the US, it should lie outside our government's rule. America does not rule the world, and should not act like it does.
Many are acting like SOPA was a good idea done badly. It was a bad idea done badly.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120113/09184917400/us-to-extradite-uk-student-copyright-infringement-despite-site-being-legal-uk.shtml
Residents of other countries should not need to worry about US law when they aren't doing business with the US. The idea that America can impose it's laws upon other countries is absurd. Yet that is exactly what SOPA was intended to do: Force other countries to obey American laws.
Additional reading: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/if-the-feds-can-shut-down-megaupload-why-do-they-need-sopa.ars
That quote is where the real problem lies: Why does the American Government think it should have jurisdiction over what foreign companies do in other countries? If it has no presence within the US, it should lie outside our government's rule. America does not rule the world, and should not act like it does.
Many are acting like SOPA was a good idea done badly. It was a bad idea done badly.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120113/09184917400/us-to-extradite-uk-student-copyright-infringement-despite-site-being-legal-uk.shtml
Residents of other countries should not need to worry about US law when they aren't doing business with the US. The idea that America can impose it's laws upon other countries is absurd. Yet that is exactly what SOPA was intended to do: Force other countries to obey American laws.
Additional reading: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/if-the-feds-can-shut-down-megaupload-why-do-they-need-sopa.ars
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Monday, January 09, 2012
Sunday, January 08, 2012
The Cost of ‘Manning Up’
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-the-wild-things-are/201110/the-cost-manning
Saturday, January 07, 2012
Anonymous exposes 75,000 credit card numbers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/anonymous-exposes-860k-stratfor-users-and-75k-credit-card-numbers/2011/12/30/gIQA5oXqQP_story.html
Hopefully this public spectacle will help the people of the world realize that there is a serious security issue online which needs to be addressed. A great many companies need to dramatically improve their security.
Hopefully this public spectacle will help the people of the world realize that there is a serious security issue online which needs to be addressed. A great many companies need to dramatically improve their security.
Friday, January 06, 2012
Thursday, January 05, 2012
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
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