Aperti Gnosco

I just got back from the longest vacation I’ve ever had, and it was amazing. London, Paris, Reims/Epernay (part of Champagne), and Munich. Ashley has a pretty good writeup of what we did. I’m not feeling particularly well, so I figured I’d just do a quick “moments” writeup instead of a full post.

• Being in a HUGE pub in London and having a guy come up to me while I’m waiting to buy a drink and tell me that there’s a famous rapper outside signing autographs. Then walks in this white kid who can’t be older than 17 and the guy tells me it’s him. The kid proceeds to go up to one of Ashley’s friends and rap at her for a couple of minutes and then pick up on her until leaving dejectedly.
• Seeing Occupy London and how impressive looking it was. They had tons of fliers up and looked fairly organized.
• Juggling Balls
• Shitty Travelodge which didn’t initially have toilet paper, only had one towel, didn’t have a phone, and offered to give Ashley’s friend our room key (without us telling them to) so that she could get into the room.
• Seeing a government building and thinking it looked exactly like a Daft Punk Helmet
• Somehow managing to miss soccer matches in all 3 cities we went to because they were either not playing or out of town.
• Taking the train from London to Paris and falling in love with train travel. I love watching the scenery outside the window while listening to music.
• Realizing that everyone smokes in Paris.
• Having an awesome half Portuguese half French waiter at some random restaurant and trying to talk to him about a Portugal soccer game.
• Open spaces in Paris are amazing. I wish we had some in Seattle.
• Thumping bass in the middle of the night until 5am.
• I could easily see living in Paris. That place is awesome.
• Driving in France is not fun when your GPS navigates you onto roads you’re not legally allowed to drive on.
• Going to visit the Dom Perignon cellars was mind blowing. So very, very cool.
• Shackers are awesome even if they live outside the US.
• Going to the most crowded (Mohito) bar I’ve ever been to and having someone make me drop my drink on the ground and having it shatter but being unable to pick it up because there are too many people in the bar and I’m on my way out anyway.
• It was nice to be able to speak small amounts of French to get directions and not feel like a complete tourist.
• Everyone speaks English. It’s pretty impressive and makes me really sad for the state of affairs for US citizens and their ability to speak other languages. It makes me want to get better and to learn more languages.
• Night trains, while fun, don’t give you particularly good sleep.
• Watching the scenery go by in the dark with Ashley while listening to the Beatles.
• Eating our best meal at a German restaurant when we thought it would have been in Paris instead. Wiener Schnitzel is soooo good.
• I want a metro in Seattle after having seen London’s, Paris’s, and Munich’s. Munich’s had one of the nicest metros I’ve been in.
• The Hofbräuhaus is amazing. Liters of beer and delicious, but cheap food. Even Ashley liked the sausages, sauerkraut, and beer.
• The BMW Museum was fantastic. I highly recommend it. It reminds me of something Apple would design if it did a museum.
• The best museum we saw on the whole trip was the Deutches Technology Museum. We were there for 4 hours and I could have easily spent double that there. So much cool nerdy stuff, I just wish all of it were in English instead of only half of it.
• Walking around the Nymphenburg Palace grounds and wishing it were Summer because it must look amazing and not be so fucking cold.
• Going through security 3 times on our trip home

So much fun.

There is a god, and it is this man. He finishes Super Meat Boy in 19 minutes and 24 seconds in one run. Crazy.

I think that programming is 75% knowing the language and 25% knowing little tricks you can do with it to make your life easier. Here’s one that I thought I’d post about (although it’s super basic).

When you’re creating a vector, matrix, or some other well known storage unit class you often want to access the data in multiple ways. A simple way to do it without adding any accessors is to do this:

union
{
  struct
  {
    float x, y, z;
  };
  float m[3];
};


This allows you to both access it using x, y, and z like normal, but you can also index into the same memory using m[0], m[1], and m[2] without adding the extra overhead of another variable or accessor!

Yay little tricks :).

Another video from Macklemore. He’s easily becoming my favorite hip hop artist. His lyrics and message are just so utterly truthful and honest that it comes through crystal clear. He also puts on an amazing live show as well.

I don’t much talk about my religious beliefs to my friends much and especially not on this website, but I just finished a book which has made me think a lot about them and felt I should write a post about it. The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, written by none other than Carl Sagan, is a book that I can’t recommend highly enough. It has cemented my beliefs as an atheist and a staunch believer in the scientific method and process. If I had any doubts left before I read this book, they were pretty much eradicated by Sagan’s ability to list all of the reasons why he believes (and in concert why I believe) there is no proof there is a God and how science and religion have intertwined and fought over the years.

I grew up having been baptized in my Grandparents’ church and going regularly to a Methodist church fairly regularly until my parents’ divorce. I never much though about church much as anything other than something we did on Sundays until I was a teenager and hadn’t been going regularly. I briefly dated someone whose father was as close to a pastor as you can be without actually being one and it really showed me a different side of what church could be like. The older I got, and the more I researched things I’d been taught in church, the more and more I began to doubt what I had been told over the years. I think one of the funniest things I’ve been told about my young self was when I found out Santa Claus wasn’t real, I then asked “Does that mean that God isn’t real either?”.

I think one of the things that has really taught me a lot about religion and beliefs is the internet. I’ve been able to do research on topics and find articles and information and, most importantly, see videos of incredibly smart people talk about these topics. Neil deGrass Tyson, Carl Sagan, Richard Feyman, and many of the people I’ve watched in TED talks over the years have taught me so much about the world as it is, has been, and has been perceived to be over the years. That last part is a big one. Over the years we humans have learned an incredible amount; our knowledge pool is ever increasing and our ability to make accurate statements has grown tremendously. Unfortunately, there is still a large amount we don’t know, but that will slowly decrease over time.

So how does all of this relate to religion and god? One of the core tenets in science is the ability for anyone, anywhere to be able to reproduce results garnered by someone else. Studies are submitted to public journals, equations are able to be re-derived, and work is shown as how you get to a conclusion. Religions tend to rely on word of mouth, old books (that may or may not be historically accurate), and social structures to convince people of their beliefs. There is no way, many times, to prove or disprove statements made by religious people about their faith or beliefs. This is the basis of faith and why some people (like me) have a hard time having discourse with people who ardently believe things that are scientifically unprovable.

So back to the book. Carl Sagan gave a Gifford Lecture in which he talked about God (in all its possible forms), religion, alien civilizations, ufos, miracles, the origin of life, the universe, and our knowledge to date of most of those things. The book is a transcription of those lectures and is absolutely fascinating to read. I’m not sure I can adequately summarize everything he talked about, but if I were to try, it would come to this: belief without proof is wrong. Not wrong in the sense of murder is wrong, but in the sense that if you can’t prove anything, then having actions based off of those beliefs could have harmful consequences. For instance (and this is an extreme example), the Heaven’s Gate group ended up killing themselves because they believed something that wasn’t provable at all. There are many instances of groups of people believing the end of the world is coming. My point in all of this is that action based on unprovable belief may cause you to put wasted effort into activities that may completely hinder things that would help otherwise. In current day terms, embryonic stem cell use, gay marriage, and anti-global warming beliefs are just a few of the things that hurt peoples’ lives because of beliefs in things that aren’t accurate.

So then is all religion bad? No, of course not. Religions have grouped people together and spurred them to make changes to the world for the betterment many times. Slavery is one very well known case in which Quakers fought for the freeing of the slaves. On an individual level, many people like the community and the belief structure and believe it makes them a better person. These things don’t bother me in the slightest. Some of my best friends are ardently religious. I do believe, however, that if religion and unfounded beliefs weren’t prevalent, the world would be a better place and we’d be a happier populace.

I can’t recommend The Varieties of Scientific Experience enough. I wish everyone would read it as Carl Sagan has a way with words and how he describes things that is so much better than what I’m able to on this blog.

Really, really inspiring talk about a guy who wants September 21st to be a day of peace, and how, he actually manages to do it.

Two more videos from the same guys (on the same trip).

While I can’t imagine going on 18 flights in 44 days was fun, this video is still quite amazing. Travel is quickly becoming one of the main reasons I save a bunch of money and I absolutely can’t wait for my first trip to Europe in 3 months. Going to be a ton of fun!

I love seeing technology and how it can expand what people do in the arts. This is quite the amazing dance.

I’ve been listening to this constantly for the past couple of days. It really just makes me smile and want to dance.

I’m creeped out by this and fascinated at the same time.

I’ve started programming at home once again, after a nine month break. It’s kind of bizarre to think that I program at work for 8-10 hours a day, and then after that, sometimes I still want to program more at home. I’m starting from scratch, yet again, but kind of not at the same time. I’m taking pieces from my previous two personal projects and combining them together. One of them I haven’t changed since October 18, 2008, the other August 8, 2010. I’ve learned quite a lot in 3+ years from the last time I tried to do something like I’m attempting, and my style has changed since the last project as well.

It’s going to take a while to get up and running, but the interesting part is that I know what I’m working on and how it’s going to play out and help me toward the future. I’m compartmentalizing things much, much better than I had previously done, and once I get the setup going, it should be easy to add projects to the group to combine to a bigger whole.

If it sounds kind of vague and nebulous, that’s because it is. I’ll be writing technical posts in the future as I go on to help myself and others possibly learn some things that I’ve picked up over the years.

What’s up first? Config files. So simple, yet so incredibly powerful. Hopefully that post will come soon.

I’ve thought about doing one of these videos for a long time, but have never had the courage or dedication to doing it. This Chrome ad (over 6 months after the It Gets Better project started) made me cry. I’ve watched it several times, and it has subsequently made me cry each time. Kind of sad and awesome at the same time. I really do need to make one of these videos.

I found out on Sunday that Bin Laden had been killed by armed forces and I’ve been sad ever since then. Why would I be sad when he was a terrorist that is behind the 9/11 bombings, when he’s done incredibly bad things in the name of a faith that doesn’t necessarily believe those things, and when more than likely the world might be a better place without him? I’m sad because a man was killed. I’m sad because the United States celebrates a death. I’m sad because it seems like the only way our country knows how to respond to aggression is aggression in return. I’m sad because we seem to be very focused on the here and now, the four years we have a specific President, the current war we have, or whatever is in front of our faces without thinking about how our actions are going to cause waves 10, 20, 30, even 50 years down the line.

I’ve been reading many, many responses from the internet and people’s responses range from ecstatic and celebratory to somber to ambivalent. He was, after all, not that important in this day and age anymore; Osama Bin Laden was more a figurehead. He stood for an attack on the United States and the possibility of another attack, but not really much else.

The problem I have with how this was handled was that it doesn’t deflate the situation. Defeating Osama Bin Laden isn’t like defeating Hitler. The group doesn’t crumble. There will be another terrorist cell and another terrorist strike on the United States. In the almost 10 years since 9/11, we’ve surrendered our liberties, gotten into two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and become a much more scared nation of something that, statistically, has very little chance of harming or killing you.

One article that my friend linked on Facebook that I liked is called One Buddhist’s Response and is the catalyst for this post. It’s fairly close to how I feel as well, so I suggest you read it. I don’t have the answer to when it’s acceptable to kill a man, but as much as Bin Laden did to us, I don’t think this was one of those times.

There’s a quote going around the internet right now:

I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate
multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

It’s attributed to Martin Luther King Jr, although really only everything past the first sentence is something he said (from Strength to Love). I still like the quote and believe in it very much. I also think of:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. […] Is there no other way the world may live?

That’s from Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953. I wonder what we’d be able to accomplish if, instead of fighting our enemies, we tried to make the world a better place. Could you imagine what would happen if we took the military budget and 100% turned it into a budget for health, knowledge, and aid? I can’t even fathom that, but I imagine it’d be a much better world than the one that we have now. I liked this section from the Buddhist response I linked to earlier, so I think I’ll end on it:

Perhaps the way to kill your enemy as a way of putting a stop to violence rather than escalating is to shift our view of “enemy” altogether. Our enemy is not one person or country or belief system. It is our unwillingness to feel the sorrow of others—who are none other than us.

So take aim at this enemy completely and precisely. Feel your sadness for us and them so fully and completely that all boundaries are dissolved and we are left standing face to face, human to human, each feeling the other’s rage and despair as our own, one world to care for.

I haven’t really been blogging much lately, and that probably has to do with some changes in my life. First off, I got a new job. I now work at Pop Cap. I wasn’t really looking for a new job, but this one dropped in my lap and I couldn’t say no. Let me tell you, this place is the work that dreams are made of. I can’t talk about what I’m working on, since it’s not announced, but I can say that it’s a lot of fun to work on it again. The structure at Pop Cap is so very different from anything I’ve worked on professionally. It’s almost like going back to DigiPen a little, with the small teams. It was a little sad to leave Surreal after almost 4 years, but after they moved over to Kirkland, my commute turned into an hour on the bus each way. Now, it’s back down to a 15 minute walk through downtown. That’s pretty much perfect, if you ask me. The company itself is pretty fantastic as well. I really can’t describe it without gushing like a five year old on Christmas day, so suffice it to say that I enjoy it quite a bit.

In between the two jobs, I went to Costa Rica for 9 days. The trip was nothing short of awesome. I went to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca for two days, and then moved on to Manzanillo, where I found heaven for five days. That town, if you can even call a place with less than 100 residents a town, was gorgeous. The people were super friendly, and I had an incredibly relaxing time walking through the beaches and the jungle. I met an Italian couple and hung out with them a bit. Over all, I’m incredibly glad I went as it was very relaxing and exactly what I wanted. You can see the pictures of my trip here.

Lastly, but certainly not leastly, I started dating someone. I don’t tend to talk about my personal life here much, if at all. I will, however, say that she’s been a ton of fun to hang out with and be around. We go on adventures, one of which will be heading up to Vancouver this weekend for a half marathon race. We’re also heading to New York next month, which should be a blast.

So all in all, my life is going pretty awesome right now. Good times.

Every once in a while you find something awesome on the internet. This is one of those times. It just makes me smile.

This is an awesome short film about what a group of kids did when they wanted to play soccer but couldn’t because there was no space.

I’m not Jesus Christ, but I can turn water into Kool-Aid.

Also, he’s not a bad rapper:

Last year I made a post about what games I’d played and what I’d felt about them. I figured it’d be good to do that again this year. You can see all of the games I’ve beaten in 2010 here. I beat 16 games this year, more than any other year I’ve been recording.

Let’s get it out of the way. Game of the year for me was Super Meat Boy. If they fixed the slight bugs that existed, it’d be perfect. I have constant dreams of some day making a game that is as good as Super Meat Boy. The theme, humor, sound, levels, design is all fucking amazing. I think most of all, I love the difficulty of it. Some of those levels were absolutely brutal, and yet I loved them even more because of it. I was truly sad when I beat the entire game (and 100% it, no less). I want more, and yet the only reason that’s true is because of how well it was all done. I think if they did put more in the game, it would have diluted it and possibly made it gone on too long. If you like platformers that will make you swear when you die, you will LOVE this game. It’s made for you and you should get it right now.

If SMB wasn’t around and didn’t fulfill a place in my heart, I’d have easily picked Flower as the best game I played of the year. It’s not long, it’s not hard, but holy fuck is it an experience worth having. I still go back to it every once in a while because it’s peaceful and enjoyable. If you haven’t checked this game out, I’d highly, highly recommend it. I think people who don’t even like video games would enjoy it. It is a totally different experience from any other video game I’ve ever played. I’m incredibly thankful for that.

I played a bunch of really good games this year. Uncharted 1/2, Assassin’s Creed 2, Heavy Rain, Dead Space, Ratchet and Clank (both the PS3 full titles, the DLC is kind of dumb), Machinarium, and Darksiders are all worth checking out. They’re all top notch, AAA games that are a blast to play.

Now let’s talk about the let downs. A lot of people aren’t going to like this, but I didn’t think Limbo was that good of a game. It had atmosphere for days, gorgeous graphics and interesting gameplay, but it felt unfinished. The story doesn’t make sense unless you happened to see a text blurb which only comes up once in the beginning, and even then it’s just kind of piecemeal. You can beat it in 3-4 hours, and I’m pretty sure most people can do it in less. The game is just begging for more. Who are the guys that are in the world? Why are they attacking you? I think it could have been amazing if it was longer and better fleshed out. I even played it through twice just to make sure my initial impression wasn’t wrong. Graphics and ambiance to not make a game. If they did, Limbo would have been near the top this year, but unfortunately, it just falls short. I’d say play it if you were at a friend’s house, but it’s not really worth purchasing.

Lastly, I really got into Heroes of Newerth this year. It’s a DOTA clone, but done very, very well. I had a blast playing some games, and was utterly frustrated other times (mostly to do with the community and not the game itself), but overall I’d rate it as a huge plus. Couple the game with Honcast and I’m hooked. I’ve greatly increased my skill in the game and have figured out which heroes I’m good with, and which ones I just can’t play at all. If you have any interest in playing this type of game, I highly recommend Heroes of Newerth.

I’m excited to see what comes out in 2011. A lot of the games I played this past year didn’t come out in 2010, so maybe I’ll end up playing games like Beyond Good and Evil (since I hear it’s amazing), or maybe I’ll play some new games that I’m looking forward to. Either way, I’m sure it’ll be fun.