Obsidian Noise » Page 32

So the duck post is a little screwy, lately. I’ll do a new version over the weekend. It’s overdue.

First, please check this out and watch the video:

Second…

I rewarded myself for having cleared the Big Presentation by buying the latest version of a computer game I used to enjoy growing up. The game is called Civilization, and it’s now on it’s fifth major iteration.

The first version came out in 1991, which was about when my family got our first computer. I remember how long it took to load up, and I remember not being able to pronounce some of the terms used within the game, and especially the names of objects, such as the types of ships you could develop, or other kinds of units and structures you could build.

At the beginning of a game you could choose your civilization from a list, and I would always choose America.

You start in 4000BC and the steps are basically to found a city, grow the city, create settlers, found another city in a good place, grow it and expand it, create some caveman military units to stand guard, and then create more settlers and found more cities. You grow each of your cities by deciding what things they should develop. If the city is on a river, then build an irrigation system. If it’s on the coast, build a light house. The options available to you for building grow as you develop new technologies by investing in scientific discovery. You begin way down with inventing pottery and then then the wheel and from then on you make decisions based on what you think is most important. The technology “map” becomes a giant tree with many branches, and some of them only open to you once you make it far enough around others. Of course, ultimately you want to develop them all, but you don’t have the resources to investigate every branch at once, so you have to prioritize based on your needs, and also use your relationships with other civilizations to trade technologies.

So those basic aspects of the game have stayed the same over 20 years of refinement. In our current cycle of technology development, 20 years of refinement of a piece of software is pretty remarkable. The amount of things Sid Meier and his group of designers and developers did well on the very first shot is pretty astounding.

One of the most talked about aspects of the game over the years is its addictive “just one more turn” game play. After spending about 3 hours in Civilization V last night, I can tell you that aspect has not changed at all.

There are a couple significant additions. Firstly, the graphics of course are now fantastic. You can zoom all the way in to the village level and actually see your people at work, doing the things you’ve asked them to do. Some of them will be building farms, some will be building stables or trading posts or chopping trees. So that’s neat to watch happen. Sometimes it’s nice to pull back and just observe everything that’s under way in your civilization.

Also, the soundtrack and other sound effects are excellent. It’s light classical music with some tonal changes when things happen– if there’s extra tension between you and a neighboring civilization, you can hear it, which makes you feel it. It’s a great feature because it’s always on and just blends into and out of different “moods” without actually changing the “song”.

I’m also really impressed by some of the diplomacy features. If you mow over another civilization, you might be respected by others. But if you first make friends with a civilization and then mow it over, what happens is that other leaders who are aware of what happened will “denounce” you, and that gives you a reputation that can really hurt your success. Other civilizations will be less likely to trade with you if you’ve been denounced, and they might even be more likely to stab you in the back later, when they make a run at mowing over their part of the world.

Anyway, so far it’s excellent. It’s the kind of game that’s best played as an experience. For me, that’s a big pot of coffee on a weekend night with nothing to do the next morning, and that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow night.

Have a great weekend, and look for my updated site next week.

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39 minutes until the Big Presentation.

I have absolutely no idea how this is going to go. The first half will be straightforward and potentially a little boring. It’s data presentation and discussion. The second half is totally open and can go anywhere. I’m happy but nervous to be doing it this way. It’s the moments leading up to the start that are hardest. The truth in presenting, for me, is that some days you’re on, and some days you’re just not– you’re slower and the words don’t come as easily as you’d like. The nervousness is just about not knowing which way it’ll be.

Will debrief when it’s over.

UPDATE:
Destroyed it.

I had the complete attention of the entire room from start to finish and found myself in the zone very quickly. It was fluid and concise. The main criteria for victory was leaving them with new perspectives. I left the room while people stayed and continued to talk about what I had presented. That’s victory.

Time for coffee. And a celebratory donut.

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23 hours until the Big Presentation. I’m about halfway prepared, I think. I gave it a good effort yesterday evening and into the night. But then I received an email from our building VP asking for my vote on a cleaning-related dispute she’s having with the building president. If I vote on her side, relations will be good and the building president, an 80+ year old crazy woman, will be upset. That is bad because she’s the reason I can receive packages at home instead of at the post office.

After looking at the contents of the dispute, my vote is for the VP’s idea, so the issue became how to communicate it tactfully and clearly and in a way that won’t make the building president feel slighted. So in the middle of preparing for the big presentation, I got side tracked writing a letter. I spent about two hours on it, finishing and mailing at around 1am. It’s one of those things that’s hard to stop once once started.

Here’s how it ended up:

Thanks for this, <name of VP>.

I would add that the overall cleanliness of the building has changed noticeably over time. I don’t inspect with a white glove or anything, but I can tell–by sight and scent–that the main hallway and elevator are not being cleaned as well as they used to be.

In the elevator, for example, there are now handprints and scuffs and smears that seem to stick around for many days at a time. Sometimes it seems as though no one is wiping it down at all, despite how blatant and common such grime has become. It also often smells bad, possibly because it hasn’t been cleaned with soap regularly enough. But most importantly, there are now scratches that are starting to add up– and that’s the bigger picture: people tend to treat an environment in a way that’s consistent with how it appears to be treated by others. When little things go uncleaned or poorly cleaned, people grow to have less respect for it over time, and consciously or not, they start to care less and pay less attention to their personal impact on it. I think we’re starting to see some of that, especially in the elevator.

So, for the sake of the health of the building, and for the pride of the people who live here, I do think the cleaning and maintenance of 519 needs improvement. It seems more likely that this will happen with someone we can build a daily relationship and rapport with, and someone who can commit to developing expertise in what it takes to keep 519 in top shape indefinitely.

Therefore, unless there are other options I’m unaware of, it seems the solution is to hire a dedicated, part-time Super, so that’s my vote.

And I can’t believe THAT took me two hours. What a lame little letter, my great holy christ monger. Perhaps I just needed more distraction from preparing for tomorrow morning.

Which I need to get back to now so I can train like a motherfucker later.

Have a great hump day, little worker bees.

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I took the Fantom (my kickass cross bike) up riverside drive from office to the other and just arrived. There’s no one here and the AC is great. The sound of this office is perfect. Here, I’ll record while I type:

I am unsure if the mic can pick up all the sounds, the vents, the pluming, the humming. I have the mic volume up all the way. It’s a dark office space with dark hardwood floors. There are enough workspaces for about 15 people, including two closed-door offices. Lately, it’s usually empty. It’s a nice place to write. I have a meeting in the conference room here in 20 minutes.

I’m sweaty but glad to have found the new route. No more waiting for the shuttle that smells like a wet tent.

After today’s meeting, we should be well on our way. I will be relieved when we can start building, when all the programmers are on the same page as the clients, and when the open-ended brainstorming discussions can end.

Have to prepare for that now– may your Tuesday be of value.

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Sometimes I come home and I don’t recognize the smell of my apartment. It’s as if I’m entering someone else’s living space. I look around and recognize things, objects, but like the scent, they too seem to be without history. It’s as if they materialized from nothing.

The surprising thing, probably, is that I’ve always felt this way, no matter where I’ve been.

I left home at 16 and never went back. This stint in NYC is currently the longest amount of time I’ve spent in any one place for the last 15 years. It makes me uncomfortable, like I’m hiding in a place I don’t belong. The surprising thing is that I’ve always felt this way, everywhere I’ve lived. That was why I left home in the first place.

I’m nearly certain this is an uncommon feeling for people. I don’t know if it’s harmful.

Perhaps this sense and this feeling will be with me for the rest of my life. Never home.

What an unexpected turn out. Like so many things.

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The “corporatization of everything” model isn’t unique to the US and the UK any more. It’s been enormously successful, akin to an early religion spreading across an illiterate people, and leaving exploitation and ruin wherever it goes. Of course, it does produce a handful of wealthy “elites” along the way, usually a group defined primarily through happenstance– those who were already slotted to benefit disproportionately, either through accidental lineage or favor.

An example of non-American corporatization of everything: in China there are now province-level plans to make culturally important sites, such as ancient buddhist temples and shrines, commercial enterprises (though it seems many already have that status) through offering IPOs on them for “development”.

What this means is that each site will have an obligation, under law, to do what it can to “make money” off of the sites for shareholders. This means changing and outfitting these places with whatever will attract the most amount of people who will pay the most amount of money to visit. In China, this could mean anything– turning the actual temple into a mini golf course, installing hot tubs in all the ancient gardens, and especially KTV theaters, perhaps directly in the temple itself. Anyone who has been to China and had the misfortune of visiting tourist attractions is often left in disgusted dismay.

“You mean this entire part of the Great Wall, from here all the way to the horizon, is not real? It was built to look this way about 30 years ago, intentionally aged to look “authentic”?

“You mean all those cool looking rocks that make that garden look so beautiful are actually cement? Like Disney World?”

This kind of commercial development will ruin ancient places forever, rendering them impossible and useless to us. It’s equivalent to erasing them, and our shared histories. Relics of human achievement… the actual physical record of human development, and the only means by which we can study and understand our selves and our history as a species… now replaced with what the idiotic children of a spoiled-rotten world would “prefer” for their tour of “antiquity.”

Following in lockstep, humanity marches down the road to devolution. Those in charge are like addicted whores. The addiction is to the drug of distraction and the state of being switched off. “Play” is now akin to a diminished consciousness, and “fun” reduced to any time your brain goes on autopilot. Can anyone hold a thought for more than a couple minutes at a time any more? Does anyone think deeply about *anything* any more, and more importantly, are they even able to?

Humans are devolving into species like the fictional Ferengi from Star Trek: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi

One thing the US could do to lead the way again is reject that model, finally, and watch China and SE asia sell itself out to complete and nearly robotic hollowness. Unfortunately, the political and religious right in this country will do whatever they can keep us on the path of civilizational ruin. They create mindlessness in culture, mass, consumer culture, and create whole societies of people willing to switch off and do what they’re told– how to look, what to say, where to go, what to do and how to think. The ultimate goal behind this is to monetize and hoard everything on earth– which has largely already occurred through the commoditization of labor. So the effort is now to preserve everything the way it is… to “conserve” the status quo…

Which is perfectly cataclysmic for the majority, and comically simple for the accidental “elites” and their mentally retarded kin who are quickening the pace of the destruction of humanity.

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Chestnut eats 68 hotdogs and the nation breathes a sigh of relief. The heat index is up, with 300 record high temperatures set for the month of June and now we’re at July 5 and it’s in the mid-90s again. I have a very large presentation to deliver in exactly 7 days to an audience of about 35. I should aim for 45 minutes plus Q&A. It’ll be on evaluation of educationally-driven simulation technology, and I’ll use an in-progress project as the main example. I will train today. I need to eat more this morning. My calf is muddy from riding into work, peddling through the puddles left by open fire hydrants, a common summer pastime in my neighborhood.

That I have to deliver this presentation will be on my mind daily and perhaps hourly between now and next Thursday. That’s how it usually is.

I’d like to introduce some new angles to evaluating educational projects, but I haven’t solidly identified what those new angles would yet bet. One might be the idea of “having an experience” and what that might really mean. We are all experiencing life constantly. But there are moments in the larger experience of life that are distinguishable from the overall experience, and we call those moments “experiences” (despite that same term applying to the state of being alive and conscious). But we say things like “that was an experience” when we describe a trip we’ve had or perhaps a conversation that occurred. Why are some things “an experience” and others just “experience”?

Each of us can intuitively answer this question– it has something to do with memory, with impact, with emotion, with consciousness, etc. But it’s doubtful that anyone can explain it simply without first spending time figuring out what all the pieces might be, and how they might all fit together.

The reason it’s appealing for bringing up in my presentation is that, in technology development, and particularly in educational technology, I wonder if it’s important or useful to describe our position as being designers of experiences for people. If we can provide people with an experience within our environment, our tool or our courses, are we closer to accomplishing our teaching and learning goals?

I might try to frame that as a question to the room for comment, but it’d be risky. Some people might roll their eyes at its philosophical-bend. 9am staff meetings are not the best time to introduce too much depth to an audience– they’ve only just emerged from unconsciousness themselves (and usually look it).

I never want to give a boring lecture. I just don’t think I have it in me to do it. I’m too aware of the audience and how they seem to be reacting, sentence-by-sentence, pause-to-pause. I don’t know when that began, probably in high school. For me, few feelings are worse than that of wasting people’s time.

Maybe that’s why I’m quick to turn angry when I sense people are not only wasting my time, but also don’t seem to care about it.

Time is the most valuable thing any of us will ever have.

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Here are the pictures from Sunday night (below), as promised. I have good commentary but time is short for that today, unfortunately.

I will say that this city opens up to you layer by layer. It peels back its smoggy, elitist shell the more time you spend here. Depending on how you spend your time, and what things you choose to do, it embraces you, or uses you.

Some people are content to be used, and I always thought that was the most pitiful thing imaginable. There are many people in this city who feel like they’re a part of it, part what makes it “go”. But they don’t always recognize that what really makes the city “go”, what keeps Bowery alive and well, are the people doing interesting things, not the people who pose and buy “fun”. Those are actors and you know who they are within the first 5 minutes of the conversation. Actors on a big set that constitutes their only desired reality. I see them as the mechanical characters on the side of the tracks on an amusement ride in a theme park. You see them all around, moving, making sounds, responsive. But when you speak to them, you see them for what they really are. You’d be tempted to wake them up by unplugging them. But wouldn’t they then just die? Would they?

Sometimes it’s just more true than anything else. There are more fake people here than probably anywhere outside of Hollywood.

Happy holiday tomorrow.

I’ll be in Hollow Way Studio.

: Tracks at my stop. It’s always an interesting mix of stuff… and it’s tempting to label them all.

: woman on the train

: Tallest building in chinatown, located centrally. I go up to the 30th floor.

: the ground near a tree on the sidewalk in chinatown

: View North, through a window in the living room, so it’s a little hazy. The night shots (below) are openair.

: tofu and pork

: “we” cooked… i stirred some stuff, she did everything else.

: Same view as before, at night. Pretty sweet.

: Zoomed to about 120mm

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The weekend was eggs-on-car-hood-not-fried-but-burned-completely and this entire week is supposed to be don’t-touch-the-pavement-with-bare-feet-unless-you’re-a-shaman.

Perhaps the summer prognosis.

I did fine with it. I found sun screen that smells ok and the idea of liquid armor is nice. I played some soccer and drank about 2 liters of water during that process. I trained muay thai outside with a small group and an hour of that was enough for me.

Sunday I wrote for a few hours and got somewhere for once. It required about a liter of peach green tea and no-AC shirtless sweat-puddle typing. The best kind.

Oh, I have great AC. It’s that it’s not conducive to sumer writing. Sweat, sip, type, re-read, sip, sweat. It’s like that. And it’s good. Don’t get up until there’s an actual puddle underneath you and you’ll feel great about it all afterwards.

(But clean that up, especially if you have wood floors).

One of my friends just took an assistent professor position at the University of Hawaii. I guess her 7 year PhD paid off. Holy smokes. Includes faculty housing in Waikiki. She studied how children learn math and can now spend the rest of her life teaching that. IN HAWAII.

Come back later tonight or tomorrow morning for a full post with cool pictures I grabbed yesterday and last night in deep, dark, incredible and fantastic Chinatown, including some night shots from the roof of the Confucius building (I can’t reveal the means by which I was up there, nor who I was with, but it was awesome, and the people who run Chinatown *really* run Chinatown.)

So check it later.

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The piston day end ended nicely with good noodles, a good flop around in a semi-park, a short observation of hoards of people swing dancing at Lincoln Center, and some later evening hummus before heading home.

Firstly, the noodles:

This is the best ramen in the city, as far as I know. The broth is practically creamy and a meal in itself. The meats used are prepared very carefully– albeit with a blowtorch in the case of pork, which I think is cool but might seem a little crude to the uninitiated–and the quantity is just about perfect. You finish full, but not over full. You finish feeling like running a marathon. In the winter. During a blizzard.

Next stop was… no stop. Instead of marathoning, walking was in order. It wasn’t too hot, but in my work clothes still I wasn’t perfectly comfortable so the pace was slow, with occasional Starbucks stops for the AC. Eventually we ended up in the Lincoln Plaza area and walked in and behind to the weird grass sculpture and plunked down for a while. It was damp, but cool.

Under this grass is a cafe. It’s a nice idea. The grass seems to be watered from below, somehow, which makes it a little soggy if you sit for long enough. But it is nice. It would make a great roof for a future house. <Noted>

It has a fury corner. Notice it!

About an hour later, a huge swing festival began next door with thousands of people and live swingy music.

Did not enjoy.

But I have nothing against it.

Well the music sucked. Pretty sure I hate swing music.

20’s rag-time, I like. 40s-50s beebop, I like very much. Swing music…pretty sure I hate it.

Conjures no sensory response, and leaves me bored and wanting to see just about anything besides people dancing to it.

The final act was sitting outside at a greek place called Nanoosh as the air got cooler

If you’re walking around having a nice evening and you’re a little full but still want to sit down and have a beer and snack on something, then heed my words: don’t choose a greek place, and definitely don’t get hummus.

For however how delicious it normally is, unless you’re particularly hungry, it’ll kick your ass if you try to get through more than a couple bites. I ended up leaving more than half of it in it’s neat little bowl, while looking at it in semi-disgust, and disappointment at is victory.

It was an odd Thursday slew of activity for me. My aesthetics course is over so I no longer have that restraint twice a week. I had a nice time being out and about, I guess. Though the invitation for tonight I had to decline. I really want to stay home and work on something new– some music or some writing maybe. I want to have the redsox on the radio and a mug of coffee next to me. I want to be shirtless and sweating slightly at my desk until at least 1am, making something happen.

I doubt anyone would really understand that.

But that’s just how I am.

For most of my life.

For no reason.

Have a great weekend.

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