Posted by Jim at February 25th, 2007
The 2008 presidential campaign seems to have started much too early. If you’re already sick of Hillary, Obama, McCain, Giuliani and such, I’d like to point out another possible candidate:
I’m not saying he’d be a good ruler (unless you like brutal oppression), but at least you’d know what you were getting.
Posted by Jim at February 23rd, 2007
Well, via Slashdot and more specifically ITWire comes the knowledge that some people are supposedly replacing Microsoft Office with Google Apps.
As someone who works with several non-profits as they make their decisions about technology, I’ve noticed that Microsoft Office is often overkill for the actual needs of said non-profits. This is probably also true of small businesses as well. I’m not sure that we’ll see massive use of Google apps among non-profits in part because most non-profits can get XP and Office practically for free through Techsoup and similar programs.
With regards to small business, who knows? Open Office (though cool) isn’t as familiar to people as MS Office and is just as complex. Goople apps might work pretty well for small business in that sense.
It would be funny at any rate. With all the talk of Linux/Open Source replacing Microsoft products (and the fact that it’s not happening very quickly), it would be funny if it happened indirectly with Google as the mediator.
It certainly seems more likely to happen that way than it is that my parents will install Ubuntu.
Posted by Jim at February 19th, 2007
I actually played a game of what I call “Psi.” I’ve written about it before, but basically it’s a game of diplomacy and espionage set against a background of a massive, sprawling, psionic culture.
The players staff Earth’s embassy, playing soldiers, diplomats, and support staff. The story was pretty simple by my standards. While occupying the embassy, the players discovered that the building contained an organic, artificial intelligence. The climax came when they convinced it that they were not allied with the past owners (which it feared). The players also stopped an attempt at spying on the embassy (this will be more important later).
There were many things that were cool about the game that I’m just glossing over in that account of play, but I’ll just leave them for now. The most important thing for me at present is that I got a chance to try out the rules I put together for it.
It’s not a brilliant or new collection of ideas. Mostly I grabbed Dogs in the Vineyard and modified it to fit what I’m doing. Still, this did allow me to test whether the ideas I did add worked or not. What elements did I add?
1. Fate: Basically a player describes one of his character’s most significant future events as a “personal fate” and chooses a universal fate that his character’s actions unintentionally help bring into being. Players choose between Earth’s destruction, the Clades’ destruction (the civilization they are ambassadors to), the destruction of both civilizations, and the survival of both.
In Play: Players seemed to grasp the idea and came up with some really interesting fates that do add an interesting dimension to the characters. In some cases, they did a very cool thing and chose fates that acted in counterpoint to their character’s goals. For example, one character that is mostly interested in peaceful coexistence between Earth and the Clades will ironically be unintentionally working toward the destruction of both civilizations.
2. The Use of Fate in Conflict Resolution: Each character has fate dice that they can swap in for an attribute if they don’t like their roll. To this, they can add other dice. The number of other dice is determined by whether the universe is currently heading in the direction of their universal fate. The bad/good point of using fate is that each use makes the universe marginally more likely to be leaning that direction in the future. Also, any experience points gained through the use of Fate can only be used for improving the fate attribute itself. That being said, using Fate greatly improves your chance of winning so in some cases it’s a good deal.
In Play: Only one character used Fate in an effort to win a conflict, but it’s worth mentioning that it worked. He succeeded. I couldn’t help but notice that another player commented that he would never use Fate. I think that that’s a reasonable response on some level, but I hope that’s not true. If it is I’ll have to rethink things a little. Having characters constantly move the future unintentionally is big part of the game.
3. Escalation: Escalation is one of those things that I’ve been flip-flopping on. It was essential in Dogs in the Vineyard in that that game was very much about the question of how far you were willing to go to solve the problem you’re facing. In a conflict, you could move from talking to fistfighting to weapons (clubs, knives) to gunfights. Attached to each different level of lethality was a level of damage.
This game is less about how far people are willing to go for their beliefs than it is about individual and societal fates. What are you willing to do to avoid or achieve yours? Will you just let it happen? If you do, who does that hurt?
As a result, one might argue that escalation isn’t really needed in the game. Fate takes care of pretty much all of that. Trouble is, if I completely dump escalation, there’s only one level of fallout (damage) to all types of conflict ranging from verbal arguments to automatic weapons fire. And that’s obviously pretty crazy.
What I’ll probably end up doing is some form of escalation that’s a purely mechanical as opposed to thematic construct. I’m not sure of the details yet.
In Play: Honestly, it just didn’t come up. We never got to a point in a conflict where escalating made sense. For that matter, people in a conflict could mostly see the writing on the wall pretty quickly and generally gave rather than take fallout.
So anyway, it’s worth mentioning that playing the actual game was a great deal more fun than you’ll likely experience while reading this post. We didn’t think too much about the rules. We spent a lot more time with the characters and the situation. Better yet, the players added some very cool stuff to my ideas. I look forward to the next time.
Posted by Jim at February 12th, 2007
Recently I’ve been reading non-fiction books about the daily lives of people in various eras previous to our own. It’s research for my novel. It is interesting in and of itself, but as much as I’m interested in earlier periods, I’m only covering the Victorian era to the present for the simple reason that that’s as early as I have to go to get details related to the story right.
Currently I’m reading a book called Daily Life in the United States 1920-1940: How Americans Lived Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression by David E. Kyvig.
It covers some topics that I hadn’t expected to think about. For example, I had been aware that in the Victorian era, the standard of beauty was different. Heaviness was a sign of health. The actress Lillian Russell tipped the scales at 200 pounds and was generally regarded to be beautiful.
I’d wondered how American beliefs about weight happened to change.
From reading Kyvig’s book, it seems to be two major things. First off, it represents a change in the understanding of what good nutrition was. During the Victorian era and before, it was hard enough to get enough food much less to worry about what exactly it would be. Thus, when people had the money to get the food they wanted, the typical American meal was starches and meats.
In the Victorian Era in particular, French food became popular. Later on though, people became more aware of vitamins and the fact that what you ate was as important as the fact that you got full. Thus, they started eating more fruit (more citrus…) and vegetables (particularly green vegetables) while eating less starches (like potatoes) and less red meat. As a result, US citizens grew in height while eating 5% less calories.
In addition to the positive pull of a better understanding of food one also had the negative push of World War I. During the first World War, the government had to ration food. It took advantage of people’s growing understanding of nutrition to encourage people to eat less, actively promoting the idea of being thinner while simultaneously being more healthy.
The reason they did this, of course, was to be able to send more food overseas.
Where once men had been encouraged to be plump as a demonstration of how well off they were, the doughboy became the ideal for men while the flapper became the ideal for women.
An interesting wrinkle in this is that even the clothes of the 20’s and 30’s changed to reflect the new ideals. Where the Victorian era’s clothes were multi-layered, the clothes of the 20’s and 30’s had less layers, creating a slimmer figure. Interestingly, this was also the period where cosmetics began to be commonly used.
So anyway, I could ramble on a bit longer, but I won’t. I do find it an interesting topic though. Expect further commentary on past eras as the mood strikes me.
Posted by Jim at February 8th, 2007
One of the benefits from Kristen’s job is partial subsidy of a YMCA membership.
She signed up for it soon after starting work there and actually received it in early January. Grand Rapids’ downtown YMCA (the David D. Hunting YMCA) is only a couple years old. It’s features include a track, swimming pool (with slide), racquetball courts, endless exercise machines, a couple climbing walls, multiple basketball courts, childcare (!), and undoubtedly things I’ve forgotten. For example, one can also take guitar, piano, dancing, martial arts, swimming, and climbing wall lessons.
I’m interested the climbing wall, but haven’t gotten around to doing much about it yet. Mostly I’ve been running and taking our kids to the swimming pool.
Running inside is a vast improvement over running outside when the temperature is in the single digits. It’s a little boring in terms of scenary, but it could be worse. Windows run the length of the building and since the track is on the third floor, you can look out over the city–if you’re into that sort of thing. Personally, I’m too busy reflecting on how tired I am.
Other things I think about while running around the track:
1. Row after row of exercise equipment covers half the third floor. As a result, half the floor is covered with tired looking people lifting weights while sitting or standing in identical machines. Do you remember that bit in the Matrix? The bit where Morpheus tells Neo about the row after row of babies being created to power the machines? The bit where the babies are being fed the remains of the dead?
For some reason I keep on thinking about that when I look at the exercise machines.
2. Another thing I think of while running: Proper track etiquette.
According to the rules that they put up on the signs next to the track, walkers are supposed to use the inside lane. They are also supposed to check what direction the traffic is going on a particular day and go the same direction as everyone else. It is a given, therefore, that some people will completely ignore these directions.
One thing that particularly irritates me is when several people walk next to each other, blocking the entire track. This is bad in that it forces me to consider three bad choices.
–Pushing straight through. This is rude, but tempting.
–Running behind them. This just sucks.
–Passing them in the fourth lane. Problem is, there is no fourth lane. It’s actually the support beam lane. In a collision between a support beam and a person, the support beam wins.
3. Cool Ideas for my novel, role playing games and computer programming.
Too bad I can’t remember them when I get off the track.
The only really bad point about the YMCA is that if you go after work with kids, it takes a really long time. By the time we get home, it’s often 7:30 and we still haven’t eaten supper. Our kids are as you might expect them to be at that point–bouncing off the walls. In our case, this can specifically mean jumping off the top of the grand piano and trying to make it to the couch.
We try to stop this.
In any case, a family membership is overall a good thing. It’s just a bit better on the weekend than weekdays.
Posted by Jim at February 1st, 2007
I don’t often remember my dreams, but here are two that I’ve remembered lately that may amuse you.
Dream One: The Armadillo
I dreamed that I had given my brother an armadillo for a Christmas present. Everyone seemed okay with this, but I was nonetheless bothered.
I was worrying about the damage it would likely do to their house in terms of digging through carpets and such. Also, I’d be surprised if turned out that armadillos could be litter trained.
Dream Two: Vet Appointment
Like all responsible pet owners, we try to get our cats in for shots every so often. On the day before their appointment, I dreamed that Kristen, my sister, and I were outside trying to catch them as they’d gotten out for some reason. We were using a car that was my sister’s (but is not in reality actually her car).
After we chased them for a while, we were suddenly all together (including our cats) at a bar. I don’t remember details of this except that Manuel Noriega was there with one of his generals (I could tell by the hat).