Aperti Gnosco

I’m a huge proponent of what the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) does. I really like how they’ve taken the web, given it some open standards, and moved the bar with CSS and HTML to where it needs to be not only now, but for the future as well. I don’t tend to actually write much CSS or HTML myself, but I can appreciate it for how it’s created.

Unfortunately, I really dislike their take on the <Audio> and <Video> tags that are being proposed for HTML 5. Here is a good writeup by the webmonkey guys (which always get linked by the Wired guys) talking about why it’s a bad idea. The Ian Hickson of the W3C says:

I considered requiring Ogg Theora support in the spec, since we do have three implementations that are willing to implement it, but it wouldn’t help get us true interoperability, since the people who are willing to implement it are willing to do so regardless of the spec, and the people who aren’t are not going to be swayed by what the spec says.

There is no browser right now that’s 100% compliant with HTML 4 and CSS 2. Why would you expect support to be there for 100% of the browsers before you put it into a new spec? There is a serious problem with the way that audio and video is played on the internet right now. There’s no unified way and so you get things like stupid flash, quicktime, real player, wmv and other types of players that are just annoying, broken, or poorly written. I trust browsers (or at least chrome, firefox, opera, and safari) to do it better than the web designers of the world. If you’ve updated to Firefox 3.5 (and you really should), then you can check out Ogg Theora built into the browser. Not only does it not steal your cursor/keyboard presses like flash does, but it’s a free, open codec. Anyone can compress or decompress it without having to buy software from Adobe, Apple, or anyone else. Open Formats are so much better. They may not be the best, but the portability and accessibility of them (for me) make them infinitely better.

I really hope the W3C changes its mind and includes official support for <Audio> and <Video> in the HTML 5 spec, but I’m not holding my breath.

Anyone feel like going to the Seattle Beer Festival on Friday? We should have off of work because of the 4th of July holiday. Sounds like a blast :).

Not sure how many people will find this awesome, but a guy has been collecting heatmaps based off of TF2 games on his server. On the heatmaps, they he recorded the data of where they were built and how many people they killed in order to get the best positions to put sentries. I’ve actually used this to get better positioning on my sentries. I’ve started playing engineer more and am really, really enjoying it. It’s certainly a needed class and sometimes no one wants to play it. It’s especially necessary on pl maps for defense to lock down those capture points.

I love what Valve has started here with collecting and organizing all of this data. They supply the hooks to the servers and collect much of the data themselves too. This has allowed them to design better maps that are more fun, more balanced, and less frustrating to both sides. I fully approve of this type of data collection for awesome purposes.

Here are three (One, Two, Three) articles about how the wireless carriers are taking your money, colluding with each other, and locking you in to their service so you can’t easily get out. It’s something I’ve been talking about for ages and not understanding how it’s beneficial for the consumer. I really, really wish that companies would think of the consumer more than they think of their bottom line, but I don’t think that’ll ever happen without some serious changes to how our society works.

Anyway, aside from that pie in the sky stuff, they really are interesting reads. The first is about how carriers have started saying that the internet is posing a threat to them because of how large videos are and how much it costs them to constantly stream them. That’s why they want to start putting caps on people so they can only download certain amounts instead of this fake “unlimited” that they have now (which is really bullshit because if you download a ton they’ll turn off your service and make you call them only to tell you to stop doing it even though it’s unlimited). What’s really stupid is that their profits have been growing, their costs have been getting cheaper, and their claims don’t match up. So a freshman legislator is looking to ban this stupid practice (go Eric Massa!).

The second is about how the FCC is going to examine phone lock in (you buy a phone from Cingular and can’t use it at Verizon). Honestly, I hate how we subsidize the phones through the service. It’s a retarded way to do it unless you A) Can’t afford a phone (or the phone you want) or B) Are a phone company. I remember reading a story about how way back in the day when phones in homes became more commonplace, you’d rent them or subsidize them through ma bell and one lady kept her phone for so long it actually ended up costing her something ridiculous like $10,000. Once you decouple the phone from the plan, both should get cheaper as market forces will bring them down. I’ve heard that Europe is that way and I really wish we were too.

The third is how AT&T and Verizon deny they price fix the text messages cost. This is probably the most ridiculous out of all of them. Text messages cost the company 160 bytes of traffic and yet most of them charge $0.20 for a single one off your plan. According to this article that amounts to $1,310 per MB of data. Fucking ridiculous. I don’t know how they could possibly claim with a straight face that they’re not price fixing for that.

Anyway, they’re all good articles and I hope that the companies all have to change their lying, thieving ways. I wish a telecom or utility company would come along that didn’t suck big, giant, huge donkey balls.

I found a used condom on the street walking to the bus stop today. That now means I’ve found used needles, condoms, and cigarette butts (oh god, so many). I’m sure there has to be other stuff that could be just as bad, but I can’t think of it. For some reason I’ve been noticing litter much more these days on the street. Perhaps I’ve become acutely aware of it because of what I’m reading (it’s made me think MUCH more about what I’m eating too).

Seriously though, next time you go walking in Seattle start counting how many cigarette butts you see on the ground. I thought about starting to clean them up, but if I did that, I’d never have time to do anything else. I wonder if cleaning up all of the trash would make a significant difference or if people wouldn’t even notice.

I really wish that people who smoked wouldn’t use the city as their trash can. The stupid part is half of the time I see a literal trash can a few feet away. People are just so ingrained that they can smoke and then toss it that they don’t even think twice about it anymore.

Really, really good talk on the Biosphere 2 (and 1). I love projects that really go out and do crazy stuff like this. I think it would be fascinating and a ton of fun to be in something like this. To take two years of my life to do it, well, that’s a bit crazy, but probably worth it. I love these talks from people who are obviously fully invested in their ideas and are passionate about them. This is certainly one of those talks.

I’ve been sick since around last Saturday or so and it really sucks. It’s not the “I’m going to die oh good god” sick, but it’s just a steady headache, runny nose, stuffy nose (how are those two even possible together?), and tiredness. What sucks even more is my year without really sucks when you’re sick and confined to your small ass apartment. There’s only so many video games I can play and books I can read before I get tired of doing active activities and I want to watch a tv show, movie, or browse the web.

Ah well, luckily I don’t tend to get sick more than once or twice a year (and oddly enough almost always on the weekends). I can’t even imagine how my life would be if I were to be hospitalized or something with my goals this year. That would truly be interesting.

I have been playing a bunch of Mirror Edge’s speed runs and time trials though. I think I like them better than the actual game itself. Kind of sad really. I’ve gotten pretty damn good, but I’m not nearly as good as the guys on top (they do some insane shit).

I happened to see this book while in a book store with Lauren a couple of years ago and picked it up for her. She has this weird fascination with cadavers and medical stuff like that in general; I, however, do not really care for medical stuff. I did have to say though, this book was quite intriguing. It talked about cadavers and how we use them to test things we couldn’t normally do with people still alive, but really, that was just the first half of it. The second half was experiments with the still living, head transplants, how we know if we’re dead, cannibalism, etc. All of the things surrounding death, but not actually dealing with cadavers (for the most part).

I’ve had this book review sitting in the hopper for a while now to the point where I don’t have the book fresh in my mind anymore unfortunately :(. Suffice it to say I did enjoy it. The book was written in a friendly manner so it was easy to digest, even when talking about somewhat complicated medical ideas. Some small things I remembered from the book:

• Robert White is crazy. Transplanting heads of monkeys and having it work crazy.
• If you fall out of an airplane and hit water, your clothes are likely to be ripped off of your body by the impact and you’ll be close to naked. You’ll also likely die because at that speed water is nearly as hard as the ground.
• People have serious issues with using whole cadavers for projects (especially things like bullet testing), but for some reason getting parts of cadavers like the torso makes it easier (for both the people testing and for the higher ups stomaching the tests the scientists do).
• A lot of people have problems with cadaver’s hands. For some reason it seems to personify the cadaver.
• There are places where people decompose bodies in different ways to see what happens. They’re called body farms and are crazy. I’d like to go see one sometime.
• The transitional point from being alive to being dead is incredibly hard to pinpoint down. Until 1968 it was thought that if your heart was still beating you were alive. After that date, Harvard scientists said that if you were brain dead, that was the point of death. It didn’t become part of the government’s way of thinking until 1981.
• They’ve used cadavers to see if the Shroud of Turin is actually possible to get by crucifying someone with a cloth over their head

As for me, this book solidified my beliefs on death even more. Once you’re gone, you’re gone. There’s no way to come back and so what you do with my body (which is mine no longer), really doesn’t matter to me. I’d prefer that it goes to save people’s lives (if possible) and then go to science of some sort. If people can better the human race because of my dead body, I’m all for it.

Mirror’s Edge was the third game I’ve beaten this year. It only took a short two days to play through the storyline (which was a bit welcome after the incredibly long Fallout 3 session I had). It reminded me of a second generation Oni. The controls were much better (although still not wonderful), and the world was better laid out.

Overall, I really like the parkour aspect of the game. The controls were quite hard to get used to at first (probably because of the retarded control layout scheme), but once I learned what did what, I was able to run and jump all around the world with ease. It was nice to be able to see where I wanted to go and get there with minimal effort and a bunch of bad-assery. There were certainly parts that had me frustrated though, especially earlier on. I wouldn’t know where to go or what to do next, I would fail at doing a jump or climb multiple, multiple times, or I would get shot not knowing where I should go.

Oh the shooting and AI. Let me complain about this for a while. I never actually used any of the weapons (went for the achievement to not shoot anyone and got it fairly easily), but god damn were the guns annoying. The AI in Mirror’s Edge is one of the worst AI’s I’ve played against since way back in the day when people didn’t know how to program AI. They all know exactly where you are 99% of the time even when you’re running away or dodging behind obstacles. Depending on what type of guy they are, they either miss you a lot or hit you damn near every time. The snipers are straight out of MOHAA annoying (by shooting you very far away with no recourse). Overall the AI seemed dumb. It was honestly the worst part of the game. I felt like I was playing against robots and not people trying to capture me. It threw me out of the experience of the game, which really sucked. What’s even worse is when they’re shooting at me I have no time to admire the level or try to do cool shit. I feel like I either have to take them down (which is annoying) or run away (which is what I end up doing).

The story was honestly a turd. It jumped all over the place and didn’t really explain much by the end of it. It’s obviously setting up for the sequel. It’s just a shame that it was pretty lame.

After you beat a section of the game, you’re able to try to time trial or speed run the section. I love speed runs, so this really seemed cool to me. I haven’t spent a lot of time on it so far, but what I have I’ve really enjoyed. They’ve allowed for a TON of different ways through the areas so that I’ll probably be spending a lot of time doing this. They also have a leaderboard which allows you to have a ghost running with you that has the best time. Those fuckers are fast. It’s kind of shitty because they do a lot of stuff that’s really, really hard and if they get ahead of you, it’s really hard to see what they do later on to speed up. It also seems like it’s faster to jump while running instead of just straight running (which is kind of lame).

All in all I enjoyed the game. I borrowed it from my work, but I think if I can pick it up for $15 or so like I’ve seen it at recently that it’ll probably be my perfect price point for it. Roushi has really ruined me with the pricing on games, so I don’t think I could ever purchase a full price game anymore (which is why I’m borrowing so many games from work these days), but I certainly think it’s worth $15. I’m hoping the sequel expands upon the parts I like (the parkour in really open areas without people shooting at me making me have to go fast) and less of the parts I disliked (having to take down tons of people or run through areas with 10 guards at once).

A couple of days ago I finally decided what my year of nothing is going to be. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to not do (this was my first attempt), but I figured it out.

I’m not going to use my computer at home for any entertainment purposes. Right now when I get home, I usually jump onto the computer right away after having been on the computer at work already for 8+ hours. It bothers me because I normally don’t even have anything to do. I browse the web, watch videos, etc. I feel like it’s a complete waste of my time and I’d really rather not do it. I’d rather read, play video games, go out, work out, go to sleep, or pretty much anything else. It’s a huge time sink that doesn’t really do anything for me.

I used to have the same problem with tv, but I stopped watching it and enjoy not watching it so much more than I actually liked sitting in front of the tv. It’s the large reason why I don’t even own a tv or cable.

So anyway, this means that I can’t just sit in front of my computer and dick around. I can still use it for tool like purposes: google maps. looking up directions, checking e-mail, writing posts (such as this), getting recipes, programming, etc. I just can’t dick around on it. I have a feeling it’ll be hard at first, but it’ll get me to do stuff I wouldn’t normally do because I’m lazy. Since I don’t have much else to do in my apartment that is lazy-like, I’m hoping that I’ll stop being lazy and do more :). Not sure if it’ll happen, but here’s hoping!

Here is a very cute flash game that should take about 10 minutes to beat or so. I love the style, the music, the interaction with the player, and most of the puzzles. I had to brute force one, but maybe I just didn’t understand it. Otherwise, loved it!

For once, the video is actually awesome.

Something I’ve missed from my childhood is the awesome slide. I almost never see metal slides anymore (just those stupid plastic ones that create so much static electricity it’s painful). I never see the bad-ass slides with double bumps that are two stories, I don’t see tire swings anymore, and I don’t see crazy multi-level jungle gyms. It makes me sad that we’ve sanitized our playgrounds so much that they’re practically boring.

That is why, when I see this video, it makes me smile. It brings back the child in me. I wish more places had stuff like this. It’s too bad it’s in Japan as I doubt something like this would exist in the US. Too lawyer prone.

Newsweek’s article on Oprah and how her show pushes medical “cures” that are probably more harmful than helpful is very interesting. It talks about how she has guests on her show that are more often than not celebrities that swear by a cure or quack science that helps them live their lives. However, it turns out that they don’t seem to actually know what they’re talking about most of the time.

These people include Suzanne Summers and Jenny McCarthy. The former talks about how she tries to stay youthful by doing all of these horrendous things to her body that scientists say probably hurt her more than help her. McCarthy talks about how her son’s autism was caused by injections, which is so patently false according to studies done that it’s ridiculous. Their reasoning in believing these things is because “It works for me” and “A mother’s intuition”. Seriously, please don’t take your advice from these people. They’re quack jobs and have no scientific background at all.

Please trust scientists and people who actually know what they’re talking about. It’s really sad when people trust famous people more than scientists for information just because they see them on a seemingly reputable show like Oprah’s, but thems the sticks I guess.

I got a call from Comcast yesterday while I was walking to the climbing gym and figured it was about a potentially bounced credit card transaction (my credit card number was stolen and had to be reissued). It turns out, that wasn’t the case. They were calling me on my cell phone to ask if I knew that I was paying more than I should be on my internet I have with them. Why no I didn’t know I was spending too much. They then went on to tell me how if I got a package deal with some cable tv that they would be happy to provide me, I’d get a reduced rate on my internet.

I then proceeded to tell the lady on the other side of the phone that I don’t even own a tv and that I have no use for cable television. She didn’t quite seem to understand what she was supposed to do next. She reiterated the fact that I’m still paying too much and it’d be cheaper if I got the bundle. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I really should have asked her what I was going to do with that bundle that would cost me more in the end if I don’t have anything to hook it up to. Instead I tried to politely get off the phone by saying no thank you.

What a pain in the ass. I’ve had to deal with this kind of crap from every utility company I’ve ever had. Phone, internet, cable, dsl, etc, etc, etc. They don’t want to do me a favor, if they did, they’d tell me when they had deals that would lower my already ridiculously priced internet. Bastards.

Google has announced their new method of collaboration called Wave. It looks like a cross between Google Reader, e-mail, instant messaging, Google Docs, and Picasa. Absolutely brilliant. What’s even better is that they’re open sourcing the protocol so that people can build off of it and not have to just have it hosted on Google’s website. I really, really think this might eventually replace e-mail. I absolutely can’t wait for that day to come.

Love the style of this, especially the noise as the car goes by. Too bad the walk animation isn’t synced up with the distance it goes! I’m sure that can be fixed later ;).

I have a long history with the team fortress franchise. Not nearly as long as some (I never played the original qwtf since I didn’t ever really play quake), but I’ve easily, easily played over 1000 hours of TFC and TF2 combined (114 or so in TF2). I didn’t care for a lot of the changes they made from TFC to TF2, but I’ve come to accept it as a new and different game and enjoy it nonetheless.

I’ve long espoused the benefits of mods that release somewhat regular updates. It’s why I’ve loved DOTA, counter strike, tfc, natural selection, science and industry, and all of the other mods I’ve played over the years. I get bored of games that don’t ever change and love that Valve is continually changing TF2. I don’t always agree with their decisions, but overall I’d say they’ve been pretty good. Up until now, that is.

This latest update they’ve done has been the biggest disappointment to me since finding out the only way to counter an uber is with another uber (that has since been rectified with the invention of the pyro’s bounce blast thank god). They’ve changed the unlocking of new weapons to something that I absolutely despise. The way it used to work was you had to do a certain number of achievements with a class to unlock weapons for that class. The more you play that particular class, the more you’re likely to unlock the new weapons. It’s not a perfect method as it spawned achievement servers for people who really wanted the weapons, but I enjoyed it for the most part. I at least understood what Valve was trying to do with it even if it frustrated me a bit that I couldn’t have the new weapons without getting achievements.

The new system gives weapons (and now hats too!) based completely on time in a server. It is utterly random and will even give you duplicates of items you already have. Whereas before, you at least knew how to get items and weapons, you now can’t get them without luck. I could understand that for things like the hats which don’t do anything except look cool, but for the weapons, it generates some serious weapon envy. It’s also incredibly frustrating when you find out you got something new only to realize that you already have three of it. Valve has stated that they wanted to make everyone get the weapons eventually, but their algorithm is absolutely terrible. It’s spawned idle servers where people just sit in servers doing nothing and getting items. It’s even more dumb than the old achievement servers where the people were just trying to get the achievements.

There’s no sense of accomplishment when you get one, there’s envy when someone else gets something you don’t have (especially when they say it’s their third), and there’s no way to change it. It feels like there’s a black box that randomly gives out gifts even if you don’t want them.

Please fix this Valve. An idea I had, which I still really like is that if someone has the new item/weapon and you kill them and pick it up, you now have it as well. Yes, people will abuse this, but they’ll try to abuse any system. Also, why is it that they have to be unlockable at all? What purpose does this serve? Coming from a background of being a serious competitor in TFC, I can tell you that if I were in leagues and someone had an unfair advantage over me by have unlocks that I literally couldn’t get, that would piss me off.

Another thing you can do is have the random drops only drop things you don’t have. Valve has said that they’re going to implement trading later on, but really, what’s the point? Is this some test bed for a game they’re working on and they want to get the system all worked out before implementing it there? It’s really fucking annoying and has zero place in TF2 land. It’s putting a system in place to solve a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Long and short, this new system is terrible. It’s frustrating for people who can’t get the weapons, it’s frustrating for the people who have multiple items, it’s stupid for having people idle in servers to get the weapons, and overall it doesn’t give any sense of achievement or purpose to the game. Even when people get the items and weapons, they didn’t do anything to deserve them, they were just playing the game. I guess maybe that’s what Valve wanted, but if that’s the case, they went a really backwards way of getting people to play.