fun – Page 3

Boys On Hills

Helen pointed out that this photo looked like an advertisement for a new boy band.

Now it does even more.

Plasma Pong

I promised Jimmy I’d try not to distract him with computer games that would appeal to him while he’s revising. It turns out I lied.

I’ve just discovered Plasma Pong. It’s like Pong – you know, two paddles, a ball, that whole lark – except it mixes the genre up with some of the fastest computer models of two-dimensional fluid dynamics to put a completely new twist on things. The paddles and the ball are in a tank of coloured fluids, in which ripples can be created (by, for example, the movements of the paddles and the ball). Better yet, by holding one or the other mouse button, the player can "inject" fluid into the arena, suck it out into a vacuum, or blast a shockwave out. It starts pretty tame, with players trying to "push" the ball past one another, but as ripples and currents begin to appear, players have to work fast to manipulate the ball to get it past their opponent.

Sorry Jimmy.

Best Conspiracy Theory Ever

This has to be the best conspiracy theory I’ve ever read: this guy believes that the Galileo space probe that NASA crashed into Jupiter in 2003 (to avoid it being left in an unstable orbit and potentially crashing into Europa, which could affect the scientific value of the moon) is starting a nuclear reaction that will eventually turn Jupiter into a second sun, and that the reason NASA are no longer doing much active research on the Shoemaker/Levy 9 “black spot” impact (widely understood to be a comet impact) on Jupiter is because they don’t want to attract attention to what is actually the end of the solar system (he believes it’s the beginnings of a nuclear explosion) as we know it, caused by them.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that humans are making a significant impact on climate change on Earth, but this guy thinks that a single plutonium-238 core (not even a reactor, and not even the same kind of plutonium as is used in atomic bombs) dropped into Jupiter could cause a chain reaction that would suddenly make this into a binary system.

Update: within two years of writing this post my position had shifted and I clearly accept the scientific consensus of human impact on climate change. At the time, I didn’t have a full comprehension of the research and it didn’t “smell right”, so I was skeptical (although I didn’t ever dismiss it as wrong, just state that I was unconvinced). I credit several causes in the change in my belief, including Statto (with whom I had a lively debate both in the comments to this post and elsewhere). This, in turn, I occasionally use as evidence against the oft-made assertion that “nobody ever changed anybody’s mind by arguing on the Internet”! It’s also worth noting that I never doubted the fact of climate change and that humans needed to do something in response to it, only that humans caused it; obviously I was still wrong – sorry! – but at least I wasn’t wrong-and-in-a-position-of-authority.

It’s entertaining reading, though. I’m looking forward to Jimmy passing comment on it, soon.

Oh, and it’s Crystal Maze night tonight (The Cottage, 7pm) for anybody still around. We’ve only got two episodes of Series 2 left, so if we run out we may have to fall back on some Wiigaming or something.

Sex Toy Recycling

Link of the day: SexToyRecycling.com. Yes, really.

An Experiment I Want To Try

Scott Adams has just written an article proposing an experiment that I’d like to try. Research has shown that people are significantly more likely to believe something that conflicted with their previous beliefs if they write about it: in the experiments that lead to this discovery, volunteers were asked to write about a viewpoint other than their own on a given issue, and it was observed that within a few months there was a reasonable likelyhood that they had changed their beliefs to those they justified in writing. It turns out that making people read about a point of view is not nearly so effective at persuading them to adopt it as making them write an argument for it does.

This experiment involves standing around somewhere with a clipboard and offering a token reward (a quid, or a chocolate bar, or something) in exchange for participating in a study into handwriting when writing lies (this isn’t actually what we’re doing, but hey…). Participants are asked to write a couple of sentences about how attractive the experimenter is, and, if they’re willing to be contacted about "further research," to leave their e-mail address or phone number (on an appropriately laid-out form).

Some time later, the experimenter will have a list of contact details for people, many of whom will find the experimenter more attractive than they did when they first met. It’s an instant "little black book."

Kid Radd

Have just read Kid Radd, a webcomic that ran for a few years awhile back. It’s a story told from the perspective of – and through the medium of – retro video game sprites. And it rocks. It’s moderately funny and sometimes clever, but it’s full of fantastic random geekery that tickled me quite a bit (jokes about lazy programming and the effects these have on anthropomorphic game characters when they’re transplanted into different environments, for example).

In any case, it pleased me, and if it might please you, give it a go too. Use of Firefox highly recommended.

Treehouse Breakfast; Q (Again); Troma Night

Claire, Jimmy, Paul and I just had breakfast at The Treehouse. They were doing an "all you can eat" Fair Tade buffet – basically; heaps of muesli, organic bananas, breads, and other hippy goodies. It was nice to do something different, but I’m not sure it was worth the fiver it cost.

Overheard a conversation from the table next to us, somebody saying something I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody say before: "That’s the trouble with Aberystwyth: there’s always so much to do!" There’s something you don’t hear every day.

In other news, amongst the many wonderful comments we’ve received in response to the blog post about Claire and I’s name change, there’s a particularly nasty one that’s appeared, too. Sadly the sender has chosen to remain anonymous (Why do people do that? I’ve never really understood…) but the most likely suspect’s pretty obvious anyhow. Anyway: just wanted to say thank you to everybody who’s commented on the name change, whether on the blog post, by IRC, over the phone, in person, by text message, or whatever else: it’s great to get some feedback. Also thanks to the various people who’ve been appropriately "fixing" our presences in various wikis!

Troma Night tonight is at The Cottage. Usual drill.

Q

A couple of deeds poll later, and Claire and I are half-way to having changed our surnames. Our new surname: Q. I hereby declare this blog post to be the official FAQ of the Dan/Claire name change. So there, Ms Q.

1. You’ve changed your names?

Yes, we’ve changed our names. I’m now “Dan Q”, and she’s “Claire Elizabeth Q”. We’ve signed deeds poll and it turns out that’s all you need to do.

2. How do you spell your new name?

Q. The letter Q. Just Q. That’s it.

3. Like Q from Star Trek or Q from James Bond?

No, like Q, the set of all rational numbers.

4. Why did you change your names?

For some time now we’d discussed changing our names so that we had the same surname. We’ve always liked the idea that when you become a family of your own, distinct from your parents, you should be entitled to choose a new surname for yourselves.

5. So this is like you “tying the knot”, then?

Not really. But if you were waiting for us to get married someday, this is the closest thing you’ll probably ever get to it (unless we have a party sometime to commemorate being together), so if it helps you to think of it like that, yes.

6. Why did you pick the letter “Q” as a surname?

It’s a cool letter. It’s uncommon, quirky, and is always followed by a U. Except now. Other letters considered and rejected for the role include A, B, C, P, T, X, Z, and Y.

7. Why did you pick a surname that neither of you already had?

Fair’s fair. Plus, we wanted something that’s pretty much unique. Apart from an 80s singer whose stage name is Stacey Q, we don’t know of anybody who has our surname.

8. WTF?

No. Q.

9. You know how much work this is going to take, right?

Tell me about it. It took me ages just to work out how to change my name in GMail. Now I’ve got to get certificates and sort out my bank, my other bank, my credit card, the DVLA, the passport agency, the electoral roll, the utility and service companies…

Yeah, we know it’ll be a lot of work.

10. Database administrators will hate you, you know.

We’ll hate them too, if their regexen don’t support single-character surnames. By the end of the year, I predict that we’ll be in at least three or four databases as Q-space-space-space. Not to mention a few places as Que or Queue. Fuck ’em.

11. How did your families take the name change?

Predictably to good. My mum laughed. My dad laughed, eventually. Her dad immediately assumed we were trying to commit some kind of bank fraud, and then laughed. The eldest of my two sisters sent me a text message reading simply “Disowned!” So, pretty well. And some of them actually had some useful practical advice about stuff.

12. Are you changing your signatures, too?

Yes, but we’re not putting them online, for obvious reasons.

13. Does this mean we’re allowed to say ‘DanQ’ in a silly voice instead of thank you now?

If you insist. You were allowed to say it before, of course, too. But it wasn’t funny then.

If there are any questions I’ve not covered, let me know!

The questions below were asked after this blog post was originally published.

14. Why not X?

It’s been done before. To death. Malcolm X and many of his supporters, for example. Plus it’s a little predictable. Q is a far cooler surname than X.

15. Did you, in your decision process, consider the effect this surname might have on your children?

Yes. In the event that we have children, they are likely to – being children – hate or be embarrassed their parents for one thing or another no matter what we do. This way, we’re giving the hypothetical sprogs either (a) something they can genuinely dislike us for or (b) something cool and unusual that they’ll be proud of. It all depends on their outlook, and I’m sure that there would be times in their lives that they would love, and times that they would loathe, their unusual surname.

If they are particularly bothered by it, they will be able to change it when they’re 16, whether or not we approve (although in all likelihood, we won’t care either way).

16. You do realise you’ve called yourselves after an abbreviation, don’t you? [“Q” = “question” in many FAQs]

I do now.

17. And if you adopt/have a child, please can you call it something like Francis Adam? / Have you thought of changing your first name to ‘Snooker’ or maybe ‘Fuh’ / etc.

Thankfully, we haven’t yet brainstormed all of the possible funny names that could precede “Q”. Keep them coming, but don’t expect them all to appear in the Q FAQ.

18. How is it pronounced? Is it “queue” or “qwuh” or what?

It’s pronounced like “queue” (and, I suppose, “cue”): the name of the letter Q.

19. Can you legally have a number or a punctuation mark as part of your name?

The short answer: No.

The longer answer: Within the UK, there are certain restrictions on naming (at least, if you’re a UK resident). Firstly, you must have at least two names. Secondly, your surname must consist only of letters and (sometimes) simple punctuation like apostrophes (O’Reilly) and hyphens (for multi-barrelled surnames). And it’s not allowed to be blasphemous. Your first name must not imply that you have a title (e.g. Sir, Duke, Lord, King, etc.). Pope might be allowed, but I’m not sure.

It’s a pity, or I’d have probably been Huntl3y long before now. The 3 is silent.

20. Try and be interesting without adopting pointless name changes.

It’s not phrased as a question, anonymous coward, but I’ll address this one anyway:

To state that our name change is pointless or is an attempt to draw attention is to misunderstand our reasons. The choice of name certainly is attention-seeking (let’s face it, it’s a damn cool name!), but the fact that we have changed it is not.

I’d love to hear why you think this, though, if only you’d care to tell us who you are.

Further Reading

Writing to all the companies I deal with, informing them of my name change.
An unusual letter from the Passport Service, accompanying my new passport.
The first of my feedback after QParty, the party we had to commemorate the name change.
The first of my QMoon Postcards, the honeymoon Claire and I went on after the party.
Why I chose to retain my surname even after Claire and I broke up and Claire took another one.
How my name got me banned from Facebook.
How my stupid name eventually paid for itself.
Fights I’ve had with Confused.com.
That time British Gas exposed how they store my name in (spite of) their database.
Some other Q-related stuff on my blog.

Away For The Weekend

Apparently I’m giving a presentation at 9am tomorrow morning in Keele about a bit of software I’ve been working on. Suppose I ought to pull my finger out and decide what I’m going to say.

In any case, this of course means that Troma Night this week will be hosted by Paul (if it’s on at all – apparently lots of folks are out of town or otherwise engaged).

In my absence, here’s some things to keep you amused:

Andy‘s put a fab lateral thinking puzzle on his blog. Shouldn’t tax an experienced puzzler too hard, but it’s good for keeping your brain warm for a few minutes, at least.
Think love is too complicated? I was tickled recently by the very charming Simple Guide to Relationships ("I said simple, not easy!"). Smart tips for all kinds of relationships.
There’s a new Japanese device that plans to revolutionise ear-picking: no more of the "fumbling around with an ear bud, trying not to puncture your eardrum." Only in Japan could somebody invent this and not get laughed at.
And finally, The Daily Mail have a fantastic interview and pictures from the skydiver who fell 15,000ft without a working parachute and landed on thorny bushes the other week. He recounts accepting his fate and "waving bye to the helmet-mounted camera" once he reached about 550ft. Cool and then some.

Have a great weekend, y’all.

Philosophical Health Check

Came across a survey that was floating around the blogosphere, which attempts to challenge you to think about the tensions in your own personal life philosophy. It’s pretty simplistic, and it doesn’t seem to have been designed to tell you your beliefs are wrong or hypocritical so much as to make you think about the questions that your particular outlook creates.

So, being amused by it for awhile – and being me – I wrote an online version of it [update: link dead]. There are only 30 questions, so it shouldn’t take you long, and I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments. Take the test!

Armadillo Run

Over the last few days, I’ve mostly been distracted by Armadillo Run, a fabulous little shareware game (Windows only… for now) somewhat reminiscent of The Incredible Machine. It’s great fun, and the download is under 2MB, which makes it a reasonable download even if you’re on a modem (who does that, these days?).

Each level challenges you to get a rolling “armadillo” to maintain a position somewhere in space, by hooking up ropes, poles, cloth, metal sheets, rubber panels, elasticated ropes, and rockets, and modifying them with greater or lesser tension or by setting them to self-destruct on a timer. When you “run” your proposed solution, these objects interact with one another and with the armadillo in order to try to solve the puzzle.

The thing that makes it notably different from The Incredible Machine, apart from the very powerful physics engine – mentioned above – is the huge degree of flexibility you have in implementing a working solution. In The Incredible Machine, you had in your toolbox a set number of varied “parts” – everything from candles to monkeys. While there are less different “parts” in Armadillo Run, each “part” has a cost, and you must spread your budget accordingly and try to get a high score by saving as much money as possible. It’s remarkably cool, because this means that there are a huge number of solutions to any given puzzle.

Give it a go. I’ve got the full version if you’ve played the demo and would like to try a few of the actual levels before committing your £10 to buying a copy.

Ski Time

Claire and I are off to Scotland for a spot of skiing while there might still be some snow left. We’re leaving tonight and we’re back at the weekend (probably on Sunday). In the meantime, we’re leaving The Cottage, Mario, and Luigi in the capable hands of Matt (Hat variety). We’ll be in Preston Wednesday and Saturday daytime, and I’ll generally have my mobile with me the rest of the time if anybody wants me. Oh, and Troma Night will be hosted by Paul this Saturday.

In other news, running Abnib through Pornalize is the funniest thing I’ve done all week.

Game Theory Applied

A friend of mine recently posted the the following conundrum to his blog:

I found the deck of cards from a board game called scrupples (it poses you a dilemma and your opponents guess how you would respond) and I thought up another one completely off the top of my head:

"You and two other people are temp workers in a large corporation hired for one month to do some simple, repetitive data entry. One of your co-workers over-hears the boss say that the temps are very good and that they are going through the work so quickly they’ll probably let one of them go. Your co-worker suggests to you that all three of you go slow from now on. What do you do?"

I found the application of game theory to this question more interesting than the ethical implications it posed, so I wrote a long comment in reply to it. Then, realising that the comment was so long that it probably deserved it’s own blog post, I wrote this.

I recommend that you come up with your own answer to Matt’s question before you read my post.

Ah yeah; I’ve played that game. It’s far more fun when you start making up your own.

Now, on to your question – it’s more complex that it immediately appears – at first it’s a simple question of ethics: go slower to keep your job or keep doing a good job for a one-in-three chance of losing it. Based on that, even, it’s not so simple a question, and my answer would depend on how much I wanted to keep the job, which depends on factors like how much I needed the money, etc.

But it’s not that simple; thanks to a little application of game theory, because it turns out that if you do make the decision to slow down, but your two co-workers, faced with the same decision, speed up, then it’s probably going to be you that they let go, on account of you being the least productive of the three. Assuming that all three temps are equally capable of thinking through this logic and do not communicate with each other any further, I would anticipate that all three would work even harder in an effort to impress. After all, if you’re the one who’s deliberately slow, you have a 1-in-3 chance of being fired, but if you’re deliberately fast, you have a 1-in-3 at worst (in the situation that everybody goes fast, assuming that all three are equally competent workers).

Of course, this is a somewhat sterile view of the world: in the end, there are other major factors that can’t be accounted for in simple probabilistic terms: it’s unlikely that all three temps are equally proficient, or that they all want the job badly enough to put in the same level of extra effort, or that they don’t trust each other enough to form a meaningful "slow conspiracy." There’s lots of factors that game theory doesn’t take into account here: but nonetheless, it seems to work: I’ll pick a related example.

There is a party game I’ve taken part in a few times in which a team of individuals is charged with the task of slowly lowering a long thin pole to the ground without any individual member losing contact with it. The players are stood in a staggered pair of lines, facing one another, with the stick held between them at about nipple-height. Each player supports the stick with exactly one finger. Then, as a team, they have to lower the stick to the ground, without anybody losing contact with the stick. This makes a conflict of rules:

each individual wants to be touching the stick (from underneath), but

the team wants the stick to go down.

What happens? The stick moves up. The effect is magical to watch, because if you’ve got over about six people none of them "feels" like they’re part of the "moving up" process, but it’s still happening. Everybody blames everybody else. In actual fact, each person is re-asserting their position against the stick (by moving their finger up in response to it moving away from them) so as to meet rule 1. And all it takes is a little involuntary vibration (easy done, when you’re supporting part of a long stick on one finger) to kick the process off. It’s a good team-building activity, and it’s great to spectate, too.

Transplanted to your hypothetical (?) situation, the height of the stick represents the speed of work of the fastest worked. Game theory predicts that you will all want the best for yourself, ultimately, and so the rules are as follows:

each individual wants to be touching the stick (i.e. wants to be the fastest worker), but

the team wants to the stick to go down (i.e. work speed in general becomes slower).

Therein lies the basis of my prediction. What do you think?

Black Sheep

We have to get this film for Troma Night: Black Sheep. It looks stupid enough to rival Isolation (angry mutant livestock!), which some of you saw last Halloween, but at least it doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously. See the trailer:

In other news: good luck to everybody who’s doing exams this week.

The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Well, that’s Twilight Princess for the Wii finished. And quite a spectacular game it was too. Highlights [warning: spoilers] include:

Predictably Zelda: many of the best elements of Zelda games gone by made it into Twilight Princess, so much so that the predictability of some of the plot elements will make accomplished players groan, such as the "you must collect 3 parts of this, scattered throughout the land," "you must restore power to the Master Sword," and the "if you’ve just got a new weapon, you’ll need it to escape the room you found it in and to beat the boss of the dungeon you’re in right now" cliches.
Replay value: having finished it, there are still several things I’d like to go back and do again, do better, or actually do. Disappointingly, by comparison to Wind Waker, there is no option to save progress having defeated the final boss and carry on playing: instead, I’ll have to use my just-pre-boss save game as a springboard to explore the things I didn’t get a chance to do earlier, which feels somehow incomplete, but nonetheless I’m looking forward to trying out a few extra things.
Music: yes, it’s a Zelda game. There’s not so much emphasis on musical puzzles as there was in, say, Ocarina, but there’s still some (mostly related to transforming into a wolf and howling at stones, which gets to be just about challenging enough to keep you amused, by the end of the game). As usual, the soundtrack is stunning.
Imaginatively-designed bosses: some of the monsters you’ll fight are particularly interesting. A whole selection of varied fight scenes litter the game: jousting against a monster on a boar’s back across a flaming bridge; tripping over a balrog-like beast by strategically grabbing the chains around it’s ankles so that you can reach it’s face; and swinging around – Spiderman-style – from towers in order to gain altitude on a dragon are three of my favourites, but there are plenty more great fight scenes.
Controls: the Wii release of the game makes great use of the unusual Wii controllers: typically, the nunchuck "stick", in the player’s left hand, is used to move around (or look around, in some modes), and the right-hand "Wiimote" is swung in order to move Link’s sword, or aimed at the screen either as a cursor (for choosing weapons and items from the inventory, options in the menu, etc.) or as a crosshair (for firing the bow and arrow, for instance). There’s a great variety of clever special moves to be learned, and while the swordfighting can be a little cumbersome at first, the learning curve is shallow enough. Later on, you’ll be flicking the Wiimote and the nunchuck in unison to perform advanced moves – rolling around your enemy to strike them from behind, knocking them off balance with your shield, and Link’s signature "spin attack," for example. The bait fishing puzzle is a little simplistic, but the lure fishing (which you’ll discover far later in the game), which makes use of both controllers – one as the rod, and one as the reel – is a satisfying example of the kinds of things that Wii developers will be giving us plenty of in the near future.

Stuff that wasn’t so great:

Fighting one particular boss involves swimming around in 3D space while avoiding the tentacles of a huge aquatic beast. Now that’s all fine and a great idea for a boss, but it feels somewhat clunky in implementation: it’s hard to see where the tentacles are and if you’re in range of them, as they seem to suddenly "jump" around without fluid animation.
Like all the recent Zelda games, Twilight Princess has an extended "tutorial" period, which gradually opens up into the full game, but Twilight’s feels longer than it needs to be, and it feels a little like it’s holding your hand for a bit too long. This could simply be because it’s been released on a new console which Nintendo are hoping will attract new players to videogaming, and they wanted to reduce the initial complexity of the game, of course, but nonetheless: by adding more small mini-quests in the early part of the game – things that experienced players could to in order to feel like they’re in control of their own destiny, and not just following instructions from the other characters – would have been nice. I remember playing a little Morrowind on the PC, and being pleased to find that on my way to the first destination of my quest, I was able to wander off course and help (or hurt) numerous other characters in the game world, getting back "on track" whenever it suited me. I know that’s not what Zelda’s aiming for, but even Wind Waker felt more like it was open-ended and free, even early on (although having a boat and an entire ocean of islands ahead of you will have been a major factor in that). Just a minor rant, of course.

Total playtime for me was about 43 hours, but I’ve left a few stones unturned. In any case, a highly satisfying game and very recommendable. If you own a Wii but don’t own Twilight Princess, get it. If you don’t own a Wii, consider getting one to play Twilight Princess.