I Catcha On To Why-A-Horse, Why-A-Chicken, Why-A-This, Why-A-That. I No Catch On To Why-A-Duck

It's time to clean out my bookmarks, so you know what that means…

• It's spring, and we need furniture for the balcony.  This couch looks interesting, if only it wasn't a) so much work and b) required me to actually be able to grow plants without them dieing.
• How about some bad comics?  First, there's Stalin vs. Hitler.  The English translation makes it clear that the comic is already bad enough, but the conspiracy theories that get thrown forth in the footnotes make me think that the translator needs to check his tinfoil hat for holes.
• Then, of course, there is the ever-classic Doom Comic.  The fact that this even got made says a lot about the popularity of the game, as well as the general state of comics in the mid 90s.
• Equally mind-boggling, we have the entire text of the ruling in United States v. Satan.  (Mind-boggling that someone actually filed it, not in the final decision.)
• Leninade dot Communist:  the revolutionary soda!  (Dmitrii informs me that the Russian text translates to:  Lenin Drank. Lenin Drinks.  Lenin Will Drink!)
• Joseph Wu Origami: mind-boggling in a completely different way.
• The Amazing Rusting Aluminum, or: why they don't let you bring mercury thermometers on an airplane.  (Be sure to watch the video.)
• On a random note, did you know that the old Real Ghostbusters cartoon took place in the Lovecraft universe?  Now you do. (PDF)  The script is interesting for the number of names drawn from other classic Weird Tales authors.
• And speaking of Cthulhu:  a while back I mentioned a Gaiman-penned mythos story.  Well, it's now online, thereby saving me lots of money, since I no longer have to buy the book to read the one story I want.
• Finally, while we're on the topic of free stories:  here're a pair of Pratchett stories that have since been put online (with the author's blessing):  Theatre of Cruelty, a City Watch tale, and Death and What Comes Next, which is, quite obviously, a Death story.

That's it.  Now to go back to wasting my evening watching Marx Brothers movies. "You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Clause. "

I'm Speechless…

Courteousy of Dmitrii:

And to think that I thought it was bad when they'd try to sell me a second-hand copy of a game for $2 less than the new one.

The Songless Country

(From Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany.  Originally published by Elkin Matthews, London, 1915.)

The poet came unto a great country in which there were no songs. And he lamented gently for the nation that had not any little foolish songs to sing to itself at evening.

And at last he said: "I will make for them myself some little foolish songs so that they may be merry in the lanes and happy by the fireside." And for some days he made for them aimless songs such as maidens sing on the hills in the older happier countries.

Then he went to some of that nation as they sat weary with the work of the day and said to them: "I have made you some aimless songs out of the small unreasonable legends, that are somewhat akin to the wind in the vales of my childhood; and you may care to sing them in your disconsolate evenings."

And they said to him:

"If you think we have time for that sort of nonsense nowadays you cannot know much of the progress of modern commerce."

And the poet wept for he said: "Alas! They are damned."

On Having Just Finished Jade Empire

To: Obsidian Entertainment

Take note, this is how you write a story with twists, betrayal, suspense, and, most importantly, a proper ending.

Posted by g026r at 18:28 | 3 comments | Most recent by g026r

The Worm And The Angel

(From Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany.  Originally published by Elkin Matthews, London, 1915.)

As he crawled from the tombs of the fallen a worm met with an angel.

And together they looked upon the kings and kingdoms, and youths and maidens and the cities of men. They saw the old men heavy in their chairs and heard the children singing in the fields. They saw far wars and warriors and walled towns, wisdom and wickedness, and the pomp of kings, and the people of all the lands that the sunlight knew.

And the worm spake to the angel saying: "Behold my food."

"βἣ δ'ἀκέων παρὰ θἳνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης,"^*

murmured the angel, for they walked by the sea, "and can you destroy that too?"

And the worm paled in his anger to a greyness ill to behold, for for three thousand years he had tried to destroy that line and still its melody was ringing in his head.

*  My Greek is probably messed to hell here.  The e-text says "Be dakeon para Thina poluphloisboio Thalassaes", but my copy (Newcastle, 1974) uses Greek letters, and Dunsany has used Greek letters in other books.  I've done my best to reproduce them, but I'm not sure on the accents.  Anyone who knows Greek and wants to help is more than welcome to.

It's Official

I hate this time of year.  (Link)

It's been snowing non-stop here since sometime yesterday morning and, when combined with the strong winds that we've had since Saturday, it all adds up to being not so nice outside.  On the plus side, however, it's not very cold (only about -1°, or so), so at least the snow isn't staying on the ground.

There Be PDFs Ahead!

Anyone who was reading technology sites back in spring of 1999 might remember an alternative to Palm, Inc.'s Graffiti that was making headlines.  Called Quikwriting, the system was designed so that a user never had to lift the stylus between entering characters, and it was suggested that it would provide faster input than the unistrokes-based system.  For those of you who weren't around, here's some links to articles: Wired, Slashdot, and the original short paper on it from the 1998 UIST symposium.

There was tons of anecdotal testimony kicking around, but no actual results that adressed the two main factors: was Quikwriting in fact faster, and just how much training was required for these speeds to be reached?  (The Wired article makes reference to formal tests being done, but I've never managed to find them, or seen them referenced in other papers.)  While, personally, I wouldn't dispute whether it was in fact faster—the training bit, and therefore its immediate usability, was always something I wondered about.  One of the nice things about Graffiti was that tests have shown that not only is it easy to learn, it's also easy to remember.  Quikwriting always struck me as being closer to a keyboard in that respect:  until the user has used it enough to become expert, they are possibly going to spend more time looking for the letters than they will actually entering them. (The author also makes claims of it being a heads-up tech, which I'd also like to see results on, but I don't expect to, for no other reason than that heads-up tests just don't seem to happen, regardless of technology.  See, for example, the original Xerox paper on Unistrokes for another example of a technology that never had tests performed to see if it did, as the authors claimed, allow for heads-up input.)

Anyways, 6 years pass, and during a cursory search for new papers on stylus-based input, I came across a paper from NordiCHI 2004 which measured Quikwriting speeds on two platforms over a series of 20 sessions per user (for a total of 10 hours worth of training with the interface).  The results were, personally, not very surprising.

In short, it took them that many training sessions (although only half the time, or 5 hours, was spent using the stylus-based version—although part of the paper's premise was that the skills transfer between versions of the interface) for the entry-rate of the system to reach 16wpm, or on par with other stroke-based systems.*  (For contrast: the average handwriting rate in the same study was 26wpm)  (And for those thinking "I spend that much time on my Palm in a day": that's not 5 hours of casual use, that's 5 hours of nothing but text-entry.)

Ok, so it doesn't address whether or not, given enough training, the system is actually faster than Graffiti, and I'm sure that some people are more than willing to try.  However, as is, I'm more concerned with how easy it is for a new user to enter the text quickly, and with a minimum amount of learning involved, since, after all, users don't like having to learn new systems, especially if it's going to take a lot of time to become proficient.

(Hey, I finally finished writing the chapter of my thesis where I defend the reasons for choosing a unistroke-based system for input.  It should be expected that I'll slag all the other ones. ;-) )

If you don't understand anything I wrote, let me know and I'll try to elaborate.  Jo's always commenting that I use words and phrases as if I assume that the meaning is self-evident, when it may not actually be so.

* I say stroke-based systems as, interestingly enough, soft-keyboards actually have a very high theoretical maximum entry speed.  It goes like this:  once a user has had enough experience with the layout, the length of time they spend looking for the next key to tap is negligible.  This, therefore, can be considered to be so close to 0 as to be ignored, and the length of time to press a key becomes the length of time to move from one key to another.  Of course, this sort of thing has been very well modeled, so the length of time can be estimated.  The end result is that the theoretical maximum for a QWERTY layout is ~30wpm, with other layouts going as high as ~43wpm.  (All numbers taken from here.)

Of course, the "given enough time with the layout" is the same thing we have here: just how much time is needed before the users start approaching (or, in some cases, exceeding) these theoretical maximums?

Fitts' Law also has some interesting things to say about button size on soft-keyboards, but that's not really relevant to this discussion.

Posted by g026r at 02:52 | 2 comments | Most recent by g026r

The Unpasturable Fields

(From Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany.  Originally published by Elkin Matthews, London, 1915.)

Thus spake the mountains: "Behold us, even us; the old ones, the grey ones, that wear the feet of Time. Time on our rocks shall break his staff and stumble: and still we shall sit majestic, even as now, hearing the sound of the sea, our old coeval sister, who nurses the bones of her children and weeps for the things she has done.

"Far, far, we stand above all things; befriending the little cities until they grow old and leave us to go among the myths.

"We are the most imperishable mountains."

And softly the clouds foregathered from far places, and crag on crag and mountain upon mountain in the likeness of Caucasus upon Himalaya came riding past the sunlight upon the backs of storms and looked down idly from their golden heights upon the crests of the mountains.

"Ye pass away," said the mountains.

And the clouds answered, as I dreamed or fancied,

"We pass away, indeed we pass away, but upon our unpasturable fields Pegasus prances. Here Pegasus gallops and browses upon song which the larks bring to him every morning from far terrestrial fields. His hoof-beats ring upon our slopes at sunrise as though our fields were of silver. And breathing the dawn-wind in dilated nostrils, with head tossed upwards and with quivering wings, he stands and stares from our tremendous heights, and snorts and sees far-future wonderful wars rage in the creases and the folds of the togas that cover the knees of the gods."

RAM Upgrade

Thanks to Greg, I've more than quadrupled the amount of memory in this machine.  Hopefully this will result in faster loading times.  That said, this RAM hasn't really had much stress-testing done on it, so let me know if you get any odd errors.

Posted by g026r at 23:06 | 4 comments | Most recent by g026r

Zee Stupidity! Eet Astounds Me!

Swiped from Fark: US lawmakers want daylight-saving time change

"A House committee voted on Wednesday to expand U.S. daylight-saving time by two months to help reduce energy consumption, but rejected a plan to shave total U.S. oil demand by 1 million barrels a day.

[…]

The panel agreed in a voice vote to move the start of daylight-saving time in the United States -- which occurs when clocks are turned forward by one hour -- one month earlier to the first Sunday in March. The end of daylight time would be moved back one month to the last Sunday in November.

Supporters of the amendment, sponsored by Michigan Republican Fred Upton, said it would save about 10,000 barrels of oil a day because offices and stores would be open while it was still light outside and therefore use less energy.

[…]

The committee voted down, 39 to 12, a separate amendment to require the federal government to find a way to cut U.S. oil demand by 1 million barrels a day by 2013. The amendment offered by Democrat Henry Waxman of California aimed to reduce imports of crude oil.

Lawmakers with automakers in their districts led the fight to defeat Waxman's proposal, arguing it was backdoor way to require U.S. mini-vans, sport utility vehicles and pick-up trucks to improve their fuel efficiency."

If you ever wanted proof that politicians aren't really interested in solving problems, this would be it.  Approve messing with the clocks in order to obtain theoretical savings of only marginal significance?  (Compared to total consumption, that is.  And I say theoretical, as most businesses and stores seem to leave the lights on if they're open, regardless of how much light there is outside.)  Sure!  But actually passing a bill that would require them to search for possible solutions that would have a major impact on oil consumption?  That might require increased fuel efficiency, and we don't want that!  (Seriously:  what's wrong with increasing fuel efficiency?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Hello?)

<!-- Insert dramatic sigh and eye-rolling here-->

Addendum: According to the AP story on this, US oil consumption is around 20 million barrels a day.  So, that's about 7.3 x 10⁹ barrels a year.  (Damn inconsistency on the meaning of billion.)  Supposing that the full 10 000 barrels a day was conserved for all 62 days, that would result in an annual savings of (drum roll, please) approximately 0.008 percent of total oil consumption.  If anyone needs me, I'll be outside beating my head against a brick wall.

Logic Quiz

Pop quiz time!

You are given the following hypothesis: "If a card has a vowel on one side, then it must have an even number on the other," plus the following 4 cards:
E, 4, 7, and K.

You're permitted to turn over two of them in order to test the hypothesis.  Which two do you chose?

Posted by g026r at 18:33 | 6 comments | Most recent by g026r

Penny For The Poor, Guv'ner?

I hate being broke.  For the past couple months I've been really wanting to give Betrayal at House on the Hill a try.  It's essentially a board game that's divided into two sections:  the first is pretty much a dungeon-crawler, where your characters explore a haunted house, collecting items, taking damage, and so on.

The second half comes about randomly, and is where the betrayal comes in.  One character/player betrays the others, chosen based on a number of factors, and is given the corresponding goal from a special rulebook (usually kill one, or more, of the other players), and the other players are given the appropriate goal from another special rulebook (kill the evil player, escape the house, find an item first, &c).  Game play ends when one side has accomplished their goals.

It's been getting favourable reviews, and is in the running for an Origins Award.  Unfortunately, what with the sheer number of pieces involved, it's not exactly cheap.  Any stores carrying it around here are wanting between 60 and 70 dollars for it, and that's a fair chunk of change at the moment. ($70 is about $10-$20 more than what Amazon.com is charging once you convert the price to Canadian dollars.  About par for a city in which shops routinely charge $10+ over the MSRP for games.)

On the more positive gaming side:  I finally got a chance to play Robo Rally the other weekend.  Quick summary:  you're a bored computer controlling a robot in a race against other computers with too much time on their hands.  Each turn you're given a number of random cards representing possible moves (1, 2, or 3 spaces forwards, 1 space backwards, turn left, turn right, and u-turn), and chose 5 of them to execute for that turn.  As your robot accrues damage (either from other robots, or from obstacles on the map), you start getting fewer and fewer cards.  Once you get too much damage, you start "locking registers" — meaning that commands get locked in, so you may always end a turn sequence with a u-turn, if that happened to be the last move entered in that register.  Victory is declared once someone finally manages to maneuver their robot to all the checkpoints.  It's not exactly the fastest moving game, but it seems like a good way to kill a rainy afternoon.  Unfortunately, Dmitrii always seems to shoot down any plans to play a round of it.

Finally, it must be getting near exam time, as I'm once again having that dream.  It's been two years since I had a class, and even longer since I had a final exam, but I still can't seem to shake the damn thing.

The Little City

(From Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany.  Originally published by Elkin Matthews, London, 1915.)

I was in the pre-destined 11.8 from Goraghwood to Drogheda, when I suddenly saw the city. It was a little city in a valley, and only seemed to have a little smoke, and the sun caught the smoke and turned it golden, so that it looked like an old Italian picture where angels walk in the foreground and the rest is a blaze of gold. And beyond, as one could tell by the lie of land although one could not see through the golden smoke, I knew that there lay the paths of the roving ships.

All round there lay a patchwork of small fields all over the slopes of the hills, and the snow had come upon them tentatively, but already the birds of the waste had moved to the sheltered places for every omen boded more to fall. Far away some little hills blazed like an aureate bulwark broken off by age and fallen from the earthward rampart of Paradise. And aloof and dark the mountains stared unconcernedly seawards.

And when I saw those grey and watchful mountains sitting where they sat while the cities of the civilization of Araby and Asia arose like crocuses, and like crocuses fell, I wondered for how long there would be smoke in the valley and little fields on the hills.