After years of putting it off, I'm finally getting around to reading Flannery O'Connor. I'd heard a lot about the impact of her faith on her writing and about her sacramental understanding of creation. It can be a bit tricky to see in much of her writing, because so many of her stories are about people who ultimately lack these things. I finally did pick up on it, though, and about that time, as if to reinforce things, I hit the penultimate paragraph of "The Artificial [Black Person]", which reads as follows:
"Mr. Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again, but this time he knew that there were no words in the world that could name it. He understood that it grew out of agony, which is not denied to any man and which is given in strange ways to children. He understood it was all a man could carry into death to give his Maker and he suddenly burned with shame that he had so little of it to take with him. He stood appalled, judging himself with the thoroughness of God, while the action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it. He had never thought himself a great sinner before but he saw now that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair. He realized that he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson. He saw that no sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise."
This is Christianity, as I understand it, in a nutshell. This is the freeing power of surrendering to the truth of your guilt and brokenness and, in accordance, the inexplicable blessing that is God's mercy. This is coming to grips with the enormous power of God's grace and its ability to fill you to whatever extent you allow and the futility of trying to live without it. This, strange as it may seem, is joy.
Today is Christmas. It is a day for recalling the fullness of God's love, that He would come helpless among us to suffer and bear away our guilt. It is the initiation of a promise of which we are not worthy, but that's the point. If, in our unworthiness, God sees fit to come and serve us, why should we feel as though we ought to be anything better than servants ourselves?
Today, we bear witness to God's mercy taking root in the world, and we ask it to snuff out our pride. We open our eyes to our sinfulness and consecrate ourselves anew to servitude under the grace of God. In doing this, we make ourselves available to the promise of our own redemption and to the work that will redeem creation. Today, we are told that no matter how sad and undeserving we are, we are gifted boundless Love, and we struggle against ourselves to reflect that love so that we may better glory in its undeserved culmination on Easter.
Merry Christmas.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Skyrim
In the less than 3 weeks since it's launch, I've played far more of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim than is healthy or wise -- especially considering I'm technically still a graduate student with projects and research to work on. I'm level 40, deal 30x damage with daggers when I sneak attack, and can warp the mind of anybody I feel like. Obviously, this says something something about the overall quality of the game.
I like the improved design of the world, which feels sprawling and real and waiting to be explored in a way that Oblivion and even Morrowind didn't. This is especially true in the case of caves and dungeons, which feel much more intentionally designed instead of assembled piecemeal -- which, in turn, makes it a lot harder to resist heading towards every little landmark that pops up while wandering the countryside. I like the mechanical tweaks in terms of leveling, especially the perk tree borrowed and enhanced from Fallout 3. I like the new deathblow animations and heft they add to the otherwise traditionally floaty combat.
What I don't like is the strange way that this otherwise very open game suddenly foists an unreasonable amount of structure on you as soon as you begin a quest line.
By and large, Elder Scrolls games leave you free to pursue them however you like. You can join factions, become the champion of cities, or act as an unattached wanderer picking up odd jobs as you see fit. You can approach missions and jobs whatever way you like -- sneaking around, befuddling enemies, and stabbing them in the back; launching off explosions; and quaffing strength enhancing potions before crashing the gates with your broadsword are just a handful of options.
What you're not allowed to do, though, is make any sort of impact on the gameworld beyond activating the specific series of flags that the developers put in place.
For example (spoilers, obviously):
I joined the Thieves' Guild because, well, that's just something that I always do. I discovered pretty quickly that, in Skyrim, the Thieves' Guild regularly acted as pawns for Maven Blackbriar, a local noblewoman who had the connections to keep them out of trouble. I didn't like this. Not one bit. I actively messed up the first job I was sent on for her, burning down more beehives than I was supposed to, in the hopes of incurring her wrath and maybe starting to turn the guild against her. The result was me not getting paid and her husband sending some wussy assassins after me*
The next mission involved me poisoning the product of a competing mead maker. I tried to think of ways that I could subvert this task -- cleaning out the rodent infestation but keeping the poison to contaminate the Blackbriar brewing vats. No dice. No option to lie to my superiors or report the task as finished before I'd done the final step. I couldn't even kill Maven if I wanted to because, as a quest-giving NPC, she is rendered invincible by the plot.
(end spoilers)
This lack of options defines all of the long-running quest lines of the game. For single jobs and fetch quests, it doesn't seem like such a big deal. But when I'm interacting heavily with a smaller cast of characters for a prolonged period of time, it's strange that I don't really have many options for how my character can behave. Maybe I get a couple of dialog options, but they have no impact, and I'm given no macro-level control over my character's actions.
When a game is telling a story -- even with this game is telling a story, as with the main plot -- this isn't such a huge deal. I can get behind the fact that I'm just an agent driving along the actions that must happen, maybe with a couple of opportunities to change the outcome. When a game actively attempts to be open and leave you most of the control, it's more than a bit frustrating to have that control ripped from you on issues that feel important. Joining an organization, in my mind, shouldn't just be an opportunity to act out a subset of the plot and change the comments that guards make to me as I walk by. It should be a way to define who my character is and make the game world, and not just the game, my own.
I spent over 100 hours playing Oblivion without even really getting started on the main plot. Maybe I was just less sensitive to this phenomenon, but I felt like I was having a truly unique experience in that game. I'm well under that in Skyrim and I'm now to the point where I'm ready to just plow along and finish the story. This doesn't feel like my story in the same way that did, and as much as I've enjoyed playing, I'm ready for it to be over.
*The best part of this pathetic assassination attempt was that they found me when I was chilling at the Wizard's College, where I was already archmage, and my buddies there incinerated them before I knew what was going on.
I like the improved design of the world, which feels sprawling and real and waiting to be explored in a way that Oblivion and even Morrowind didn't. This is especially true in the case of caves and dungeons, which feel much more intentionally designed instead of assembled piecemeal -- which, in turn, makes it a lot harder to resist heading towards every little landmark that pops up while wandering the countryside. I like the mechanical tweaks in terms of leveling, especially the perk tree borrowed and enhanced from Fallout 3. I like the new deathblow animations and heft they add to the otherwise traditionally floaty combat.
What I don't like is the strange way that this otherwise very open game suddenly foists an unreasonable amount of structure on you as soon as you begin a quest line.
By and large, Elder Scrolls games leave you free to pursue them however you like. You can join factions, become the champion of cities, or act as an unattached wanderer picking up odd jobs as you see fit. You can approach missions and jobs whatever way you like -- sneaking around, befuddling enemies, and stabbing them in the back; launching off explosions; and quaffing strength enhancing potions before crashing the gates with your broadsword are just a handful of options.
What you're not allowed to do, though, is make any sort of impact on the gameworld beyond activating the specific series of flags that the developers put in place.
For example (spoilers, obviously):
I joined the Thieves' Guild because, well, that's just something that I always do. I discovered pretty quickly that, in Skyrim, the Thieves' Guild regularly acted as pawns for Maven Blackbriar, a local noblewoman who had the connections to keep them out of trouble. I didn't like this. Not one bit. I actively messed up the first job I was sent on for her, burning down more beehives than I was supposed to, in the hopes of incurring her wrath and maybe starting to turn the guild against her. The result was me not getting paid and her husband sending some wussy assassins after me*
The next mission involved me poisoning the product of a competing mead maker. I tried to think of ways that I could subvert this task -- cleaning out the rodent infestation but keeping the poison to contaminate the Blackbriar brewing vats. No dice. No option to lie to my superiors or report the task as finished before I'd done the final step. I couldn't even kill Maven if I wanted to because, as a quest-giving NPC, she is rendered invincible by the plot.
(end spoilers)
This lack of options defines all of the long-running quest lines of the game. For single jobs and fetch quests, it doesn't seem like such a big deal. But when I'm interacting heavily with a smaller cast of characters for a prolonged period of time, it's strange that I don't really have many options for how my character can behave. Maybe I get a couple of dialog options, but they have no impact, and I'm given no macro-level control over my character's actions.
When a game is telling a story -- even with this game is telling a story, as with the main plot -- this isn't such a huge deal. I can get behind the fact that I'm just an agent driving along the actions that must happen, maybe with a couple of opportunities to change the outcome. When a game actively attempts to be open and leave you most of the control, it's more than a bit frustrating to have that control ripped from you on issues that feel important. Joining an organization, in my mind, shouldn't just be an opportunity to act out a subset of the plot and change the comments that guards make to me as I walk by. It should be a way to define who my character is and make the game world, and not just the game, my own.
I spent over 100 hours playing Oblivion without even really getting started on the main plot. Maybe I was just less sensitive to this phenomenon, but I felt like I was having a truly unique experience in that game. I'm well under that in Skyrim and I'm now to the point where I'm ready to just plow along and finish the story. This doesn't feel like my story in the same way that did, and as much as I've enjoyed playing, I'm ready for it to be over.
*The best part of this pathetic assassination attempt was that they found me when I was chilling at the Wizard's College, where I was already archmage, and my buddies there incinerated them before I knew what was going on.
Friday, November 25, 2011
The Muppets
First thing's first: I left the theater last night after having seen The Muppets feeling almost exactly like this.
I grew up with the Muppets. The Muppet Movie and The Muppets Take Manhattan were family favorites when I was little. I absorbed Muppet Babies and reruns of The Muppet Show on TV when I was in elementary school. However, I recognize that this isn't the case for everybody in my generation. I had to orchestrate a mass viewing of The Muppet Movie my senior year of undergrad after realizing -- to my dismay -- that only a couple of my friends had ever seen it. All of them knew the Muppets. They'd seen Muppet Treasure Island / Christmas Carol / In Space growing up, but they didn't share my boundless love for these timeless pieces of felt. The reason, pretty simply, was because they'd never seen the Muppets under the direction of Jim Henson.
Henson's unexpected death in 1990 necessarily resulted in a shift in all Muppet related work. Without their chief visionary around, it was nearly impossible to recreate the whimsical sincerity that made the Muppets what they are. They could pull off the tongue-in-cheek goofy self-awareness, but there was something lacking in the joy department of everything that has come in the past two decades. The Muppets is a very strong step towards rectifying that.
The basic plot of the movie suggests that something has happened to fundamentally alter the relationship that the Muppets share, driving them apart. Into this world walk Gary, Mary, and, most importantly, Walter. These are agents external to the Muppet community who recognize the impact the Muppets have had on society, and who intervene to help the Muppets move beyond whatever happened and realize that they can still accomplish a lot of good together.
This could be seen as mirroring the making of this production. The event that drove the Muppets apart could, implicitly, be understood as the loss of Henson. There have been Muppet creations in the last 20 years, but plenty of people would be happy writing them off. Into this void walked Jason Segel and his partners (including plenty of writing and directing talent from Flight of the Concords), eager to show the world that it was still possible to capture the original spirit of the Muppets. Willing to show them the respect that they deserve both as performers and characters.
No matter what Rotten Tomatoes might say, The Muppets is not as good as The Muppet Movie. Henson's passing still weighs too heavily on this franchise for that to be the case. There's something obviously different about this movie than the Henson Muppet cannon. Chiefly, the Muppets themselves (or at least the original Muppets) aren't front and center they way they would have been years ago. They play a prominent role and take up much of the screen time, but by and large, this is a movie from the perspective of outsiders. But in a world without Jim Henson...it kind of has to be. We can't replicate his magic, his boundless idealism tempered by patient realism. We can only endeavor to describe how it made (and continues to make) us feel and provide our best recreation.
On that account, The Muppets succeeds as well as any effort could. Bolstered by incredibly eager contributions from the always sincere Jason Segel and Amy Adams, there is a hopeful, joyous quality to this movie that can only be described as Muppetacular. Having seen it once, I'm fully confident that I'll see it at least once more, and possibly twice before it leaves theaters.
I grew up with the Muppets. The Muppet Movie and The Muppets Take Manhattan were family favorites when I was little. I absorbed Muppet Babies and reruns of The Muppet Show on TV when I was in elementary school. However, I recognize that this isn't the case for everybody in my generation. I had to orchestrate a mass viewing of The Muppet Movie my senior year of undergrad after realizing -- to my dismay -- that only a couple of my friends had ever seen it. All of them knew the Muppets. They'd seen Muppet Treasure Island / Christmas Carol / In Space growing up, but they didn't share my boundless love for these timeless pieces of felt. The reason, pretty simply, was because they'd never seen the Muppets under the direction of Jim Henson.
Henson's unexpected death in 1990 necessarily resulted in a shift in all Muppet related work. Without their chief visionary around, it was nearly impossible to recreate the whimsical sincerity that made the Muppets what they are. They could pull off the tongue-in-cheek goofy self-awareness, but there was something lacking in the joy department of everything that has come in the past two decades. The Muppets is a very strong step towards rectifying that.
The basic plot of the movie suggests that something has happened to fundamentally alter the relationship that the Muppets share, driving them apart. Into this world walk Gary, Mary, and, most importantly, Walter. These are agents external to the Muppet community who recognize the impact the Muppets have had on society, and who intervene to help the Muppets move beyond whatever happened and realize that they can still accomplish a lot of good together.
This could be seen as mirroring the making of this production. The event that drove the Muppets apart could, implicitly, be understood as the loss of Henson. There have been Muppet creations in the last 20 years, but plenty of people would be happy writing them off. Into this void walked Jason Segel and his partners (including plenty of writing and directing talent from Flight of the Concords), eager to show the world that it was still possible to capture the original spirit of the Muppets. Willing to show them the respect that they deserve both as performers and characters.
No matter what Rotten Tomatoes might say, The Muppets is not as good as The Muppet Movie. Henson's passing still weighs too heavily on this franchise for that to be the case. There's something obviously different about this movie than the Henson Muppet cannon. Chiefly, the Muppets themselves (or at least the original Muppets) aren't front and center they way they would have been years ago. They play a prominent role and take up much of the screen time, but by and large, this is a movie from the perspective of outsiders. But in a world without Jim Henson...it kind of has to be. We can't replicate his magic, his boundless idealism tempered by patient realism. We can only endeavor to describe how it made (and continues to make) us feel and provide our best recreation.
On that account, The Muppets succeeds as well as any effort could. Bolstered by incredibly eager contributions from the always sincere Jason Segel and Amy Adams, there is a hopeful, joyous quality to this movie that can only be described as Muppetacular. Having seen it once, I'm fully confident that I'll see it at least once more, and possibly twice before it leaves theaters.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Brewpub: Seriously Considered
Recently, I informed all of you that I'm not planning to complete my PhD. In that same post, I noted that I had a number of wildly divergent plans running through my head as to what I might do with my life when I finish up at CU. One of those ideas, which has been milling about my head and refusing to leave ever since I first started questioning my commitment to academia last spring, is opening a brewpub.
This sounds like a flight of fancy. Future Ted Mosby was probably right in claiming that "We should open a bar" is a sentence that every American man will say at some point in his life, but this isn't something that I just randomly came upon. This is something that I've thought about pretty intently for awhile -- if only because the thought just won't leave me alone. So, I'm going to publicly run through some of the reasons I'm stuck on this and the overarching plans I would bring to the table to try and make it work.
First thing's first: part of my problem with sticking with computer science is that it's just something I don't enjoy doing much of the time. The part that I enjoy -- designing systems -- is too passive and I'm easily distracted from it. The active part, coding itself, is plagued by the ease of incidental errors that have nothing to do with executing my idea and which cripple my motivation.
There aren't a lot of things that I actually can do for hours on end without starting to hate myself a little bit. Historically, cooking is one of those things. Obviously, spending 8 hours in a day making food for people on a couple of isolated occasions is not the same as working in a kitchen for 10-12 hours a day 5-6 days a week. I would need to get real kitchen experience before I could commit to this sort of plan. But that's okay, because that leads me to another point.
This isn't something that I would just run out and do. This is something that's 5-10 years down the pipeline. I would need experience. I would need savings. I would need a business plan and a reasonable menu of recipes I can consistently recreate to within a small margin of variability. I would need people who know the brewing side of things, and I would need business expertise. These last two are things that rest completely outside my own experience and even my specific interest (though, being fundamentally fascinated by just about everything, I would certainly be invested in these sides of the undertaking).
Again, though, this isn't a huge problem. Why? Because I keep on running into other people who legitimately seem to share this dream, and maybe we just need a support group to rally ourselves to make a go of it. I know at least three people who would love to brew for a living and a couple more who would gladly help manage the kitchen. Business expertise isn't there yet, but we would have time to develop it or to find somebody to help us out. We just need to start taking the idea seriously instead of talking about it as some unrealistic ideal.
So, then, what would my plan be for this awesome-est place where everybody would know my name? Read on, if you dare.
It makes sense to start with what I'd be chiefly responsible for bringing to the table: the general idea of the menu. Stick to simple food. It should be possible to eat 75% of the menu with your hands, with the remainder being split between heavy comfort food and some lighter salad sorts of options. I've had the dubious honor of spending a fair amount of time in Ogden, UT recently, and I've been to two brewpubs there that attempt to make up for the watery 4.5% ABV beer with higher end food. It doesn't work. Even though the food wasn't bad, it just felt out of place and overpriced.
We mostly want foods that are comfortable. A well made burger and fries are a necessity, as are wings. Any brewpub worth its salt will also obviously serve fish and chips with a batter made from a house beer. In order to control costs and prep time, we're going to need to be able to create a diversity of recipes from a number of relatively stock ingredients. That's going to limit stylistic diversity, but that's okay. We can be playful and offer up new ways to eat old flavors. If I'm running things, this will probably mean a lot of southwestern foods, like the shawarma al pastor or huevos rancheros burger recipes I've been working on.
There will also be a heavily seasonal rotation of soups. We will always have a vegan as well as an omnivorous soup options and a chili. I would ideally feature a different chili every day with soups likely rotating less frequently. I say this because 90% of the chili recipes I've made share 90% of their ingredients. It would incur minimal overhead to rotate daily as most of the differing 10% of ingredients have long shelf lives. How often we could rotate soups would depend on which soups we have on the menu and how much overlap there is.
Second up is atmosphere. I'm calling this a pub. Not a bar, not a club. I like places that are chill. So for now, since this is my fantasy, this is going to be a chill place. No speaker system pumping music in at unnecessary volumes, interior organized for minimal noise bleed. Maybe this means segregation into many rooms, maybe this means having giant wooden booths that absorb a lot of sound. I don't know, but I want to be able to hear the people at my table, even when the place is busy. I want to have space for people to sit by themselves and not feel awkward. I want maybe a small library of books and boardgames that people can borrow. If we're in a cold climate, I want couches and fireplaces, dammit!
Speaking of climate, I have no clue where this is going to be. We need a place where people are going to be willing to pay the slightly higher price for what is effectively pico-scale brewing. This likely means someplace with a liberal/possibly academic bent, but at the same time, we don't want to go someplace where the market is nearing saturation or where the cost of business is going to be unreasonable. Personally, I adore the Midwest, and if I could make this happen in Minneapolis or Chicago, I couldn't be happier.
Hours are the next thing to look at. I imagine that the kitchen would offer a full menu from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for lunch and then from 4-10 p.m. for dinner. The bar and a limited menu of soups and certain appetizers would be open for full business hours while available. Obviously, long days. If a kitchen opens at 11 a.m., I would expect to be there by 8 at the latest to get mis en place ready and start prepping longer cooking items that will be used throughout the day (roasted meats, soups, etc.). If doors close at 2 a.m., then you couldn't expect to be gone until at least 3.
I want to have a family. I want to see my family. Running a bar/restaurant, as you can see, is a good way to keep that from happening. That's part of the benefit of having a number of people on board at the top level, though. We'd each get a smaller cut of profits, but it would be easier to rotate and provide one another time off (so long as we have well defined policies). People could take the shifts that best fit their own productivity and sleep habits, and, in time, we could hire competent youngsters to help manage the day-to-day. The first year or more would be killer, though.
That's why we need a Sabbath. Not open at all on Sundays. Pick another day of the week to not serve lunch and wait to open at 4 when the kitchen opens for dinner. Yeah, maybe people wouldn't love it, but we've got to take care of ourselves. I would also plan to make up for the lack of lunch by doing a simple brunch buffet once weekly. We could serve a selection of low maintenance egg dishes (quiches and frittatas), fresh fruit, and muffins/pastries from some local partner. Maybe do Waffle stations while we're at it. Saturday would be an obvious choice for this, but I somehow like the idea of a Thursday brunch. Keep it low key, make it a business friendly thing.
Speaking of Sabbath, I'm a Christian. Many of the people with whom I've talked about this are Christians. As such, we need to intentionally work to benefit our community. I say we tithe from our profits. Not to the church (save that for personal giving), but to local organizations. Support the arts in our schools, give to homeless outreach. Look at what else the people we're serving need and help meet it. Instead of a direct tithe, we could allow charitable organizations to select a dish to sponsor for a time. We would advertise that profits from that menu item (and some smaller percentage of general profits) go to the organization. Again, how often this would rotate is something to do research on, but it seems like a good potential way to actively give back.
I also say we build as many partnerships with other local companies as we can. Again, buy our bread (and brunch pastries) from local bakers. Stock our library from a local bookstore (if they even exist). Do cross promotions, offering savings to customers who patron our friends and have them do the same -- assuming this is legal. Sometimes the law is stupid. We could also bring in live music if we actually have a usable space for it (I've been to too many bars that try to cram musicians into awkward performing spaces just to say they have live music) or showcase local artists, though that starts to border on the pretentious end of things.
Perhaps the most important thing, since this is a brewpub, after all, is the beer. Unfortunately, I know little about brewing, so I'd leave that to others, but it's worth pointing out the obvious. We need a variety of regular taps covering broad styles (something dark, something hoppy, something smooth, maybe a sour beer and/or a regular cider) and several seasonal taps. I haven't even been drinking beer for a year, so, again, I'm not the best person to trust here for details, but that's why I'm not in this alone.
I'm saving nearly $1000 a month right now as a "poor, underpaid" grad student. I'm serious enough about this that I'm going to start carefully looking at what I have and see what I can put into medium term investments for the next 5-10 years with the intent of using it to get this going once I've had time to work out a legitimate plan. I know that some of you seem serious about this, too. If you are, let me know. Maybe we can start talking in more detail. Maybe you can start saving as well and we can reduce the debt we'll incur getting this thing off the ground. A lot could happen and change before we get a shot, but, hey, at least we'll focus on something that makes us happy and improve our finances!
This sounds like a flight of fancy. Future Ted Mosby was probably right in claiming that "We should open a bar" is a sentence that every American man will say at some point in his life, but this isn't something that I just randomly came upon. This is something that I've thought about pretty intently for awhile -- if only because the thought just won't leave me alone. So, I'm going to publicly run through some of the reasons I'm stuck on this and the overarching plans I would bring to the table to try and make it work.
First thing's first: part of my problem with sticking with computer science is that it's just something I don't enjoy doing much of the time. The part that I enjoy -- designing systems -- is too passive and I'm easily distracted from it. The active part, coding itself, is plagued by the ease of incidental errors that have nothing to do with executing my idea and which cripple my motivation.
There aren't a lot of things that I actually can do for hours on end without starting to hate myself a little bit. Historically, cooking is one of those things. Obviously, spending 8 hours in a day making food for people on a couple of isolated occasions is not the same as working in a kitchen for 10-12 hours a day 5-6 days a week. I would need to get real kitchen experience before I could commit to this sort of plan. But that's okay, because that leads me to another point.
This isn't something that I would just run out and do. This is something that's 5-10 years down the pipeline. I would need experience. I would need savings. I would need a business plan and a reasonable menu of recipes I can consistently recreate to within a small margin of variability. I would need people who know the brewing side of things, and I would need business expertise. These last two are things that rest completely outside my own experience and even my specific interest (though, being fundamentally fascinated by just about everything, I would certainly be invested in these sides of the undertaking).
Again, though, this isn't a huge problem. Why? Because I keep on running into other people who legitimately seem to share this dream, and maybe we just need a support group to rally ourselves to make a go of it. I know at least three people who would love to brew for a living and a couple more who would gladly help manage the kitchen. Business expertise isn't there yet, but we would have time to develop it or to find somebody to help us out. We just need to start taking the idea seriously instead of talking about it as some unrealistic ideal.
So, then, what would my plan be for this awesome-est place where everybody would know my name? Read on, if you dare.
It makes sense to start with what I'd be chiefly responsible for bringing to the table: the general idea of the menu. Stick to simple food. It should be possible to eat 75% of the menu with your hands, with the remainder being split between heavy comfort food and some lighter salad sorts of options. I've had the dubious honor of spending a fair amount of time in Ogden, UT recently, and I've been to two brewpubs there that attempt to make up for the watery 4.5% ABV beer with higher end food. It doesn't work. Even though the food wasn't bad, it just felt out of place and overpriced.
We mostly want foods that are comfortable. A well made burger and fries are a necessity, as are wings. Any brewpub worth its salt will also obviously serve fish and chips with a batter made from a house beer. In order to control costs and prep time, we're going to need to be able to create a diversity of recipes from a number of relatively stock ingredients. That's going to limit stylistic diversity, but that's okay. We can be playful and offer up new ways to eat old flavors. If I'm running things, this will probably mean a lot of southwestern foods, like the shawarma al pastor or huevos rancheros burger recipes I've been working on.
There will also be a heavily seasonal rotation of soups. We will always have a vegan as well as an omnivorous soup options and a chili. I would ideally feature a different chili every day with soups likely rotating less frequently. I say this because 90% of the chili recipes I've made share 90% of their ingredients. It would incur minimal overhead to rotate daily as most of the differing 10% of ingredients have long shelf lives. How often we could rotate soups would depend on which soups we have on the menu and how much overlap there is.
Second up is atmosphere. I'm calling this a pub. Not a bar, not a club. I like places that are chill. So for now, since this is my fantasy, this is going to be a chill place. No speaker system pumping music in at unnecessary volumes, interior organized for minimal noise bleed. Maybe this means segregation into many rooms, maybe this means having giant wooden booths that absorb a lot of sound. I don't know, but I want to be able to hear the people at my table, even when the place is busy. I want to have space for people to sit by themselves and not feel awkward. I want maybe a small library of books and boardgames that people can borrow. If we're in a cold climate, I want couches and fireplaces, dammit!
Speaking of climate, I have no clue where this is going to be. We need a place where people are going to be willing to pay the slightly higher price for what is effectively pico-scale brewing. This likely means someplace with a liberal/possibly academic bent, but at the same time, we don't want to go someplace where the market is nearing saturation or where the cost of business is going to be unreasonable. Personally, I adore the Midwest, and if I could make this happen in Minneapolis or Chicago, I couldn't be happier.
Hours are the next thing to look at. I imagine that the kitchen would offer a full menu from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for lunch and then from 4-10 p.m. for dinner. The bar and a limited menu of soups and certain appetizers would be open for full business hours while available. Obviously, long days. If a kitchen opens at 11 a.m., I would expect to be there by 8 at the latest to get mis en place ready and start prepping longer cooking items that will be used throughout the day (roasted meats, soups, etc.). If doors close at 2 a.m., then you couldn't expect to be gone until at least 3.
I want to have a family. I want to see my family. Running a bar/restaurant, as you can see, is a good way to keep that from happening. That's part of the benefit of having a number of people on board at the top level, though. We'd each get a smaller cut of profits, but it would be easier to rotate and provide one another time off (so long as we have well defined policies). People could take the shifts that best fit their own productivity and sleep habits, and, in time, we could hire competent youngsters to help manage the day-to-day. The first year or more would be killer, though.
That's why we need a Sabbath. Not open at all on Sundays. Pick another day of the week to not serve lunch and wait to open at 4 when the kitchen opens for dinner. Yeah, maybe people wouldn't love it, but we've got to take care of ourselves. I would also plan to make up for the lack of lunch by doing a simple brunch buffet once weekly. We could serve a selection of low maintenance egg dishes (quiches and frittatas), fresh fruit, and muffins/pastries from some local partner. Maybe do Waffle stations while we're at it. Saturday would be an obvious choice for this, but I somehow like the idea of a Thursday brunch. Keep it low key, make it a business friendly thing.
Speaking of Sabbath, I'm a Christian. Many of the people with whom I've talked about this are Christians. As such, we need to intentionally work to benefit our community. I say we tithe from our profits. Not to the church (save that for personal giving), but to local organizations. Support the arts in our schools, give to homeless outreach. Look at what else the people we're serving need and help meet it. Instead of a direct tithe, we could allow charitable organizations to select a dish to sponsor for a time. We would advertise that profits from that menu item (and some smaller percentage of general profits) go to the organization. Again, how often this would rotate is something to do research on, but it seems like a good potential way to actively give back.
I also say we build as many partnerships with other local companies as we can. Again, buy our bread (and brunch pastries) from local bakers. Stock our library from a local bookstore (if they even exist). Do cross promotions, offering savings to customers who patron our friends and have them do the same -- assuming this is legal. Sometimes the law is stupid. We could also bring in live music if we actually have a usable space for it (I've been to too many bars that try to cram musicians into awkward performing spaces just to say they have live music) or showcase local artists, though that starts to border on the pretentious end of things.
Perhaps the most important thing, since this is a brewpub, after all, is the beer. Unfortunately, I know little about brewing, so I'd leave that to others, but it's worth pointing out the obvious. We need a variety of regular taps covering broad styles (something dark, something hoppy, something smooth, maybe a sour beer and/or a regular cider) and several seasonal taps. I haven't even been drinking beer for a year, so, again, I'm not the best person to trust here for details, but that's why I'm not in this alone.
I'm saving nearly $1000 a month right now as a "poor, underpaid" grad student. I'm serious enough about this that I'm going to start carefully looking at what I have and see what I can put into medium term investments for the next 5-10 years with the intent of using it to get this going once I've had time to work out a legitimate plan. I know that some of you seem serious about this, too. If you are, let me know. Maybe we can start talking in more detail. Maybe you can start saving as well and we can reduce the debt we'll incur getting this thing off the ground. A lot could happen and change before we get a shot, but, hey, at least we'll focus on something that makes us happy and improve our finances!
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Fixing the Vikings
I'm still numb after last night's soul crushing 47-7 loss to the Green Bay Packers. I've never watched a game this bad. If not for a fumbled punt by Randall Cobb, this would have been a shutout and, officially, the worst loss in franchise history. Instead, this was just the second worse loss by the numbers, made all the worse by the opponent.
First thing's first, I want to see Aaron Rodgers' birth certificate. I don't care where he was born, just that he was. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the dude is actually a robot designed to be the perfect quarterback, and that's just not fair. For the sake of everybody else's self esteem, he should not be allowed to suit up and step on that field.
On a more serious note, though, this is simply proof positive that the Vikings have an incredibly amount of rebuilding to do after fielding a Super Bowl caliber team just two years ago. It's time to take a good solid look at just what needs to be done, unit by unit (ignoring the looming fact that we're franchise free agents come February and God knows what will happen with the stadium issues).
Quarterback
I still have hopes for Ponder, but yesterday is going to make people question the things they've been praising him most for. For the last two games, we've been celebrating his poise and his ability to make plays on third down and in the fourth quarter. Yesterday, he struggled all night against constant pressure and couldn't get much of anything going. I'm going to hopefully insist that he wasn't the big problem there, but we're going to need to see some more flashes of life from him in the rest of the schedule. For now, though, we hope to be set at the most important position.
Running Backs
We still have Adrian Peterson, and he's still a force to be reckoned with. He doesn't seem to get battered the way most RBs do, so there's a chance we may still have 4 more years of serious production from him -- enough time to make this team competitive again and take another run or two at things. On the backup side, I'm higher on Lorenzo Booker than Toby Gerhart. Gerhart is a hard, between the tackles runner, but Booker is shifty in space and strikes me as the superior 3rd down option. We're not going to give up on Gerhart after trading back into the second round to grab him two years ago, but his best position may be at Full Back if he can improve his blocking (where he's already better than most of our skill players). Again, we seem to be set here and shouldn't make any major moves unless something falls into our lap.
Tight End and Full Back
I predict Shiancoe and Kleinsasser leaving after the season. They're both still productive players, but Kleinsasser is lagging this season after being one of the best blocking TEs in the game for most of his career, and Shiancoe almost certainly wants to put his athleticism to use on a team that can compete in the couple of legitimate years he has left. We do have hope, however, in Kyle Rudolph, last year's second round pick. The kid has fantastic hands, a great work ethic, and a solid relationship with Ponder. We also have a kid named Allan Reisner on the practice squad who everybody loved coming out of camp and who could be a real option with a full off-season of development. We could stand to grab a solid blocking TE late for depth, but Rudolph and Reisner will hopefully be enough to fill the position from a receiving standpoint. I see us running a lot of detached TEs next year.
On the FB side, Ryan D'Imperio has been next to worthless since we promoted him off the practice squad. He let Matthews run by completely unblocked for his first sack last night and has struggled leading downfield in all but a handful of opportunities. As I said earlier, I'd like to see if Gerhart can make the transition more fully (he plays a fair number of F snaps as it is), but I'm a big fan of two tight sets and would be fine with leaving the position unfilled officially. We managed that way for the first chunk of the season, and we were actually competitive in those games.
Receivers
A well documented area of major need on the offense. Right now we've got Percy Harvin and...that's it. I think that Greg Camarillo could do more for us than he's been allowed to do, but we don't need him fighting with Harvin over the slot. Aromashodu and Jenkins have both been competent, but neither of them are a real answer as number one or even number two receivers. Both can walk once their one-year contracts expire. Stephen Burton has reportedly impressed after a rough training camp that was hindered by unreported injuries, but he's only played a handful of snaps after being activated from the practice squad a couple of weeks ago. It would be fantastic if he develops into a real option for next year.
We could also see a bit of help if we can work yet another miraculous conversion: backup QB Joe Webb. The kid claims he can catch fine and that he did plenty of receiver work at UAB, but word is that his hands are awful. He pulled down a 9-yard toss yesterday, though, and if he can play the position, his athleticism would be a real gift for us. He could still occasionally line up in the Wildcat with the option to pass, and we could get a veteran backup for Ponder who isn't a former star and makes sense in the role. This isn't a RB to FB or Center to Guard conversion, though. It's not likely, and I see us making a big move at this position in the offseason -- either with a second or third round pick or a significant move in free agency.
Offensive Line:
Wow, this is a mess. They proved yesterday that they're incompetent against pressure (Ponder had to deal with unblocked rushers all night long), and they've been inconsistent in the run blocking game all season. We don't have a true left tackle, and I'll bet you money right now that this is where our top draft pick will go. Charlie Johnson hasn't been as bad as people feared following the preseason, but "not awful" isn't going to cut it at such an important position, especially with some very strong prospects in the pipeline.
Phil Loadholt is turning into another Bryant McKinnie, a guy with all of the physical tools to succeed at his position but none of the motivation. Anthony Herrera is never going to come back 100% after all of his injuries, and Steve Hutchinson is no longer a dominant force at Left Guard. He can still play at a better than average level, but he and Herrera are both on the wrong side of 30. It's time to find their successors soon here. On the brighter side, John Sullivan has been acquitting himself fairly well at Center, but he's undersized and will always struggle against the bigger Nose Tackles in the game no matter how good his technique.
We have a couple of young guys in the wings who have shown well in limited opportunities and could still develop into viable starters, notably backup center Brandon Fusco and OT Demarcus Love -- who projects better at guard. If we can find a way to make Loadholt get himself into gear and shuffle the interior of the line a bit, we might be able to make this a passable unit with just one high draft pick and a lucky hit late. That would be a miracle.
Offense Overall
It's a mess, but there's mild hope. If we have the guts to show people the door and make a couple of major investments, this could be viable again as soon as next year. When you have AP and Harvin and players with the potential Ponder and Rudolph have shown, that's always going to be the case. Development is essential, though, and the position conversions that could seal the deal are unlikely. With a bit of luck along the line, we're a year away from competency, two years away from real success.
Defensive Line
Jared Allen leads the league in sacks this season and still has the match-ups left on the schedule to challenge for the single season record. I'd say he's still got a number of productive seasons left. Brian Robison has largely disappeared on the Left End after a very promising start, but showed enough early that I'm still hopeful. Everson Griffen has proven on special teams that he has a motor that doesn't stop and has managed to provide his share of pressure in a reasonable number of snaps at End.
It's the interior where we have a bit more concern. Kevin Williams is showing age, and Remi Ayodele has done nothing but take up space this season. Christian Ballard, a rookie out of Iowa, has shown some good things, especially against the pass, and actually played Nose for most of yesterday. Letroy Guion showed promise against the run in the preseason, but hasn't done a whole lot this year. Both could potentially be options for next season, but we're going to be a long way off from the Williams Wall at its prime. Still, our run game has been stout this season, so I'm not too worried about the line as a whole.
Linebackers
E.J. Henderson is showing plenty of wear from his reconstructed knee and the titanium rod in his leg. There are worse linebackers starting in the NFL, but his time may have come. His brother Erin, on the other hand, is making an alright case for himself. Chad Greenway has dipped some since last season, but he's still a rock solid OLB, leading the team in tackles, and just got a significant contract extension. In an ideal world, he'd be better than consistent and would turn into a real play maker, but this soft Cover 2 defense doesn't give him many opportunities for it.
The rest of these guys are career special teams sorts, so we really need a lift at the position. There was talk for awhile of moving Everson Griffen into a stand-up role at least part time, which could be exciting to see, but would leave us short staffed at DE. It's easier to get deals on linebackers than on DEs in free agency. Just look at the improvement the Lions have had in the position this year. I'm guessing we make mid level move at the position in the offseason and possibly try to find value with a 5th or 6th round pick.
Defensive Backs
We have two legitimate players in our secondary right now. One is 34 and just broke his clavicle. The other is currently undergoing investigation and trial for felony domestic assault. This is why we're so far away from truly contending on defense -- especially in a division where we play six games annually against Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford, and Jay Cutler.
Cedric Griffin has shown that he won't fully come back from a pair of knee reconstructions; Asher Allen is never going to be better than a dime guy; Husain Abdullah is spotty and does his best work against the run; and our Strong Safety rotation of Jamarca Sanford and Tyrell Johnson is going nowhere. We have two young players in Marcus Sherels, at CB, and Mistral Raymond, at FS, who have shown they might be able to play. But Sherels will likely never be better than a slot guy in the nickel, and Raymond hasn't been good enough this year for the coaching staff to be comfortable playing him regularly.
Our only hope at this position is that Cook turns out to be innocent of the awful things he's accused of and Cedric Griffin can resurrect his career at Safety, where he was projected to be best suited in the NFL, anyway. No matter the case, though, this is where our second round pick almost certainly needs to go. And maybe a third. And a fourth. We really just need to find as many kids with potential as we can and have a battle royale for the starting jobs in our secondary. Starting quality DBs generally don't hit the free market, and if they do, they go to teams that are championship contenders for a price tag we can't afford.
Defense Overall
Our line, while still strong, isn't what it used to be, and that means we won't be able to get away with the wishy washy secondary we've been fielding for years. Our linebackers are adequate but could use a boost. The secondary is a nightmare, though. Depending on how things pan out, we could be two years away from being merely competent in that department. It will take a minor miracle for us to be competitive again next year. Two to three years away.
Special Teams
Ryan Longwell is slumping after years of being rock solid. I won't blame last night's 52 yarder into the wind on him. It was right on target but simply died in the air. That doesn't change the fact that he's missed more field goals this season already than all of last season. It might be time to test new blood.
People who know me know that I love Chris Kluwe, so I may be a bit biased, but I'd still call him top 5 in the league. I've only seen one real botched punt all season, and the big returns have been the result of spotty coverage, not placement.
Spotty, by the way, is about the only way to describe our coverage. We're capable of making fantastic special teams stops, but the serious return guys in the league -- Hester, Cobb -- give us as much trouble as they do anybody else. Our return game, on the other hand, is strong. We've had 60+ yard kickoff returns from three different guys (Harvin, Booker, and Sherels), including Harvin's TD on the opening kick of the season. Sherels has made some poor decisions on both fair catches and returns in the punt game, but he's also made some big plays there.
Coaching
We've seen a handful of interesting things from Bill Musgrave on the offensive side. End-arounds, double reverses, even a poorly executed flea flicker last night. Especially with Ponder driving instead of McNabb, we're starting to get an idea of what this offense is supposed to look like, and it could be good. It's very West Coast, but seems to emphasize the intermediate slightly over the short. With better blocking and more talent at receiver (and more time for Ponder), it could be all right. The play calling in the first few weeks was iffy, but it's getting better. I'll wait to pass judgement until we see how things go next year.
On the defensive side, we're just too married to Cover 2. We're sitting in an era of amazing quarterback play, and that means constant zone coverage is just going to get carved up. We tried some more Cover 1 man last night, but we don't have the personnel for it in the secondary. Frazier needs to let Fred Pagac unleash things. If our secondary is going to get carved up no matter what we do, I see no reason to not get more creative and aggressive with the blitz. We don't have a whole lot left to play for this season, so let's see how much havoc we can cause if we let the dogs loose. We're already top 5 in sacks because of Allen's efforts. Let's give him some help.
Summary
We're a long way off, but things can turn around quickly in the NFL if you hit at the right spots. I don't have great hope for next year. Our holes in three separate units are just too big. We could still elevate ourselves back to a .500 team, though, instead of the 4-12 we'll be likely to get to this year. If we get incredibly lucky with development of this year's rookies -- who didn't get real training last year -- and some unlikely position changes, we could even be better than .500 next year. We play in the strongest division in football, though, and better than .500 won't be enough. In two years, maybe, we'll be able to win a game against the Packers again.
First thing's first, I want to see Aaron Rodgers' birth certificate. I don't care where he was born, just that he was. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the dude is actually a robot designed to be the perfect quarterback, and that's just not fair. For the sake of everybody else's self esteem, he should not be allowed to suit up and step on that field.
On a more serious note, though, this is simply proof positive that the Vikings have an incredibly amount of rebuilding to do after fielding a Super Bowl caliber team just two years ago. It's time to take a good solid look at just what needs to be done, unit by unit (ignoring the looming fact that we're franchise free agents come February and God knows what will happen with the stadium issues).
Quarterback
I still have hopes for Ponder, but yesterday is going to make people question the things they've been praising him most for. For the last two games, we've been celebrating his poise and his ability to make plays on third down and in the fourth quarter. Yesterday, he struggled all night against constant pressure and couldn't get much of anything going. I'm going to hopefully insist that he wasn't the big problem there, but we're going to need to see some more flashes of life from him in the rest of the schedule. For now, though, we hope to be set at the most important position.
Running Backs
We still have Adrian Peterson, and he's still a force to be reckoned with. He doesn't seem to get battered the way most RBs do, so there's a chance we may still have 4 more years of serious production from him -- enough time to make this team competitive again and take another run or two at things. On the backup side, I'm higher on Lorenzo Booker than Toby Gerhart. Gerhart is a hard, between the tackles runner, but Booker is shifty in space and strikes me as the superior 3rd down option. We're not going to give up on Gerhart after trading back into the second round to grab him two years ago, but his best position may be at Full Back if he can improve his blocking (where he's already better than most of our skill players). Again, we seem to be set here and shouldn't make any major moves unless something falls into our lap.
Tight End and Full Back
I predict Shiancoe and Kleinsasser leaving after the season. They're both still productive players, but Kleinsasser is lagging this season after being one of the best blocking TEs in the game for most of his career, and Shiancoe almost certainly wants to put his athleticism to use on a team that can compete in the couple of legitimate years he has left. We do have hope, however, in Kyle Rudolph, last year's second round pick. The kid has fantastic hands, a great work ethic, and a solid relationship with Ponder. We also have a kid named Allan Reisner on the practice squad who everybody loved coming out of camp and who could be a real option with a full off-season of development. We could stand to grab a solid blocking TE late for depth, but Rudolph and Reisner will hopefully be enough to fill the position from a receiving standpoint. I see us running a lot of detached TEs next year.
On the FB side, Ryan D'Imperio has been next to worthless since we promoted him off the practice squad. He let Matthews run by completely unblocked for his first sack last night and has struggled leading downfield in all but a handful of opportunities. As I said earlier, I'd like to see if Gerhart can make the transition more fully (he plays a fair number of F snaps as it is), but I'm a big fan of two tight sets and would be fine with leaving the position unfilled officially. We managed that way for the first chunk of the season, and we were actually competitive in those games.
Receivers
A well documented area of major need on the offense. Right now we've got Percy Harvin and...that's it. I think that Greg Camarillo could do more for us than he's been allowed to do, but we don't need him fighting with Harvin over the slot. Aromashodu and Jenkins have both been competent, but neither of them are a real answer as number one or even number two receivers. Both can walk once their one-year contracts expire. Stephen Burton has reportedly impressed after a rough training camp that was hindered by unreported injuries, but he's only played a handful of snaps after being activated from the practice squad a couple of weeks ago. It would be fantastic if he develops into a real option for next year.
We could also see a bit of help if we can work yet another miraculous conversion: backup QB Joe Webb. The kid claims he can catch fine and that he did plenty of receiver work at UAB, but word is that his hands are awful. He pulled down a 9-yard toss yesterday, though, and if he can play the position, his athleticism would be a real gift for us. He could still occasionally line up in the Wildcat with the option to pass, and we could get a veteran backup for Ponder who isn't a former star and makes sense in the role. This isn't a RB to FB or Center to Guard conversion, though. It's not likely, and I see us making a big move at this position in the offseason -- either with a second or third round pick or a significant move in free agency.
Offensive Line:
Wow, this is a mess. They proved yesterday that they're incompetent against pressure (Ponder had to deal with unblocked rushers all night long), and they've been inconsistent in the run blocking game all season. We don't have a true left tackle, and I'll bet you money right now that this is where our top draft pick will go. Charlie Johnson hasn't been as bad as people feared following the preseason, but "not awful" isn't going to cut it at such an important position, especially with some very strong prospects in the pipeline.
Phil Loadholt is turning into another Bryant McKinnie, a guy with all of the physical tools to succeed at his position but none of the motivation. Anthony Herrera is never going to come back 100% after all of his injuries, and Steve Hutchinson is no longer a dominant force at Left Guard. He can still play at a better than average level, but he and Herrera are both on the wrong side of 30. It's time to find their successors soon here. On the brighter side, John Sullivan has been acquitting himself fairly well at Center, but he's undersized and will always struggle against the bigger Nose Tackles in the game no matter how good his technique.
We have a couple of young guys in the wings who have shown well in limited opportunities and could still develop into viable starters, notably backup center Brandon Fusco and OT Demarcus Love -- who projects better at guard. If we can find a way to make Loadholt get himself into gear and shuffle the interior of the line a bit, we might be able to make this a passable unit with just one high draft pick and a lucky hit late. That would be a miracle.
Offense Overall
It's a mess, but there's mild hope. If we have the guts to show people the door and make a couple of major investments, this could be viable again as soon as next year. When you have AP and Harvin and players with the potential Ponder and Rudolph have shown, that's always going to be the case. Development is essential, though, and the position conversions that could seal the deal are unlikely. With a bit of luck along the line, we're a year away from competency, two years away from real success.
Defensive Line
Jared Allen leads the league in sacks this season and still has the match-ups left on the schedule to challenge for the single season record. I'd say he's still got a number of productive seasons left. Brian Robison has largely disappeared on the Left End after a very promising start, but showed enough early that I'm still hopeful. Everson Griffen has proven on special teams that he has a motor that doesn't stop and has managed to provide his share of pressure in a reasonable number of snaps at End.
It's the interior where we have a bit more concern. Kevin Williams is showing age, and Remi Ayodele has done nothing but take up space this season. Christian Ballard, a rookie out of Iowa, has shown some good things, especially against the pass, and actually played Nose for most of yesterday. Letroy Guion showed promise against the run in the preseason, but hasn't done a whole lot this year. Both could potentially be options for next season, but we're going to be a long way off from the Williams Wall at its prime. Still, our run game has been stout this season, so I'm not too worried about the line as a whole.
Linebackers
E.J. Henderson is showing plenty of wear from his reconstructed knee and the titanium rod in his leg. There are worse linebackers starting in the NFL, but his time may have come. His brother Erin, on the other hand, is making an alright case for himself. Chad Greenway has dipped some since last season, but he's still a rock solid OLB, leading the team in tackles, and just got a significant contract extension. In an ideal world, he'd be better than consistent and would turn into a real play maker, but this soft Cover 2 defense doesn't give him many opportunities for it.
The rest of these guys are career special teams sorts, so we really need a lift at the position. There was talk for awhile of moving Everson Griffen into a stand-up role at least part time, which could be exciting to see, but would leave us short staffed at DE. It's easier to get deals on linebackers than on DEs in free agency. Just look at the improvement the Lions have had in the position this year. I'm guessing we make mid level move at the position in the offseason and possibly try to find value with a 5th or 6th round pick.
Defensive Backs
We have two legitimate players in our secondary right now. One is 34 and just broke his clavicle. The other is currently undergoing investigation and trial for felony domestic assault. This is why we're so far away from truly contending on defense -- especially in a division where we play six games annually against Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford, and Jay Cutler.
Cedric Griffin has shown that he won't fully come back from a pair of knee reconstructions; Asher Allen is never going to be better than a dime guy; Husain Abdullah is spotty and does his best work against the run; and our Strong Safety rotation of Jamarca Sanford and Tyrell Johnson is going nowhere. We have two young players in Marcus Sherels, at CB, and Mistral Raymond, at FS, who have shown they might be able to play. But Sherels will likely never be better than a slot guy in the nickel, and Raymond hasn't been good enough this year for the coaching staff to be comfortable playing him regularly.
Our only hope at this position is that Cook turns out to be innocent of the awful things he's accused of and Cedric Griffin can resurrect his career at Safety, where he was projected to be best suited in the NFL, anyway. No matter the case, though, this is where our second round pick almost certainly needs to go. And maybe a third. And a fourth. We really just need to find as many kids with potential as we can and have a battle royale for the starting jobs in our secondary. Starting quality DBs generally don't hit the free market, and if they do, they go to teams that are championship contenders for a price tag we can't afford.
Defense Overall
Our line, while still strong, isn't what it used to be, and that means we won't be able to get away with the wishy washy secondary we've been fielding for years. Our linebackers are adequate but could use a boost. The secondary is a nightmare, though. Depending on how things pan out, we could be two years away from being merely competent in that department. It will take a minor miracle for us to be competitive again next year. Two to three years away.
Special Teams
Ryan Longwell is slumping after years of being rock solid. I won't blame last night's 52 yarder into the wind on him. It was right on target but simply died in the air. That doesn't change the fact that he's missed more field goals this season already than all of last season. It might be time to test new blood.
People who know me know that I love Chris Kluwe, so I may be a bit biased, but I'd still call him top 5 in the league. I've only seen one real botched punt all season, and the big returns have been the result of spotty coverage, not placement.
Spotty, by the way, is about the only way to describe our coverage. We're capable of making fantastic special teams stops, but the serious return guys in the league -- Hester, Cobb -- give us as much trouble as they do anybody else. Our return game, on the other hand, is strong. We've had 60+ yard kickoff returns from three different guys (Harvin, Booker, and Sherels), including Harvin's TD on the opening kick of the season. Sherels has made some poor decisions on both fair catches and returns in the punt game, but he's also made some big plays there.
Coaching
We've seen a handful of interesting things from Bill Musgrave on the offensive side. End-arounds, double reverses, even a poorly executed flea flicker last night. Especially with Ponder driving instead of McNabb, we're starting to get an idea of what this offense is supposed to look like, and it could be good. It's very West Coast, but seems to emphasize the intermediate slightly over the short. With better blocking and more talent at receiver (and more time for Ponder), it could be all right. The play calling in the first few weeks was iffy, but it's getting better. I'll wait to pass judgement until we see how things go next year.
On the defensive side, we're just too married to Cover 2. We're sitting in an era of amazing quarterback play, and that means constant zone coverage is just going to get carved up. We tried some more Cover 1 man last night, but we don't have the personnel for it in the secondary. Frazier needs to let Fred Pagac unleash things. If our secondary is going to get carved up no matter what we do, I see no reason to not get more creative and aggressive with the blitz. We don't have a whole lot left to play for this season, so let's see how much havoc we can cause if we let the dogs loose. We're already top 5 in sacks because of Allen's efforts. Let's give him some help.
Summary
We're a long way off, but things can turn around quickly in the NFL if you hit at the right spots. I don't have great hope for next year. Our holes in three separate units are just too big. We could still elevate ourselves back to a .500 team, though, instead of the 4-12 we'll be likely to get to this year. If we get incredibly lucky with development of this year's rookies -- who didn't get real training last year -- and some unlikely position changes, we could even be better than .500 next year. We play in the strongest division in football, though, and better than .500 won't be enough. In two years, maybe, we'll be able to win a game against the Packers again.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Bill Keane is Dead
It's no great secret that I'm not a fan of Family Circus. That doesn't change the fact that a great many people were. Neither does it change the fact that the motivation behind Keane's work was admirable. He dedicated his life to providing a daily snapshot of the world as he hoped it could be: where children are free to be naive and precocious and where families are endlessly patient. Hell, every now and then it made even me smile.
Thank you, Bill Keane, for all of the laughs, whether they were intended or not.
Thank you, Bill Keane, for all of the laughs, whether they were intended or not.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Creativity
Universally, Christians believe that we, human beings, are created in the image and likeness of God. In its simplest form, our highest calling to reflect that nature as truly and as fully as we are able. I would argue that, first and foremost, this means fulfilling the command to love, but it also has other implications. For one, we know that it is in God's nature, being a triune entity, to exist in community. For another, and most pertinent to what I say here, we know God to be a creative being and to delight in creation, whether that creation occurs by hand or by word. Moreover, our experience of both the physical universe and the inspired Scripture suggests that God creates not only for God's own enjoyment, but because God's creations provide us a window toward understanding who God is.
This, the act of creation, is perhaps the most instinctive manner in which we reflect our status as Image Bearers. It is our natural inclination to find ways to take the ideas that exist in the hazy ether of our minds' eyes and place them firmly in reality. We delight, from our earliest ages, in making things. We stack our blocks into towers and our LEGOs into spaceships. We form sounds and then words and then sentences and finally stories. In doing so, we marvel at our own authority while simultaneously sharing ourselves as directly as possible.
It's unfortunate, then, that as we age, we tend to give up on exercising our own creative talents. We satisfy ourselves with limited means of expression while seeking joy in the creative output of others. We listen to music instead of performing it. We buy our meals prefab or follow the same time-honored recipes instead of inventing our dinners. We consume culture instead of creating it, likely under the unfortunate notion that the value of creating exists more in the quality of the product and less in the act itself. I'm as guilty of this as anybody.
When we don't create, though, we abandon one of the most powerful tools we have for relating to God's creation. Making things exposes us to our own understanding of the world around us and proclaims that understanding to others. Creating gives us an outlet to share why our views are right while, at the same time, calling us to understand our limitations. It asks us to confront our values -- aesthetic, moral, or whatever else -- and to recognize that they are not perfect.
Certainly, there is a place for consuming and critiquing the output of others. Doing so broadens our appreciation for what is possible and helps us connect with other people. But living as so many of us do, simply grazing among the efforts of those bolder than ourselves, is a sad way to be. Go, tell a story, draw a picture, sing a song. Do something as only you can do it, even if that means doing it poorly, and grow from the act.
This, the act of creation, is perhaps the most instinctive manner in which we reflect our status as Image Bearers. It is our natural inclination to find ways to take the ideas that exist in the hazy ether of our minds' eyes and place them firmly in reality. We delight, from our earliest ages, in making things. We stack our blocks into towers and our LEGOs into spaceships. We form sounds and then words and then sentences and finally stories. In doing so, we marvel at our own authority while simultaneously sharing ourselves as directly as possible.
It's unfortunate, then, that as we age, we tend to give up on exercising our own creative talents. We satisfy ourselves with limited means of expression while seeking joy in the creative output of others. We listen to music instead of performing it. We buy our meals prefab or follow the same time-honored recipes instead of inventing our dinners. We consume culture instead of creating it, likely under the unfortunate notion that the value of creating exists more in the quality of the product and less in the act itself. I'm as guilty of this as anybody.
When we don't create, though, we abandon one of the most powerful tools we have for relating to God's creation. Making things exposes us to our own understanding of the world around us and proclaims that understanding to others. Creating gives us an outlet to share why our views are right while, at the same time, calling us to understand our limitations. It asks us to confront our values -- aesthetic, moral, or whatever else -- and to recognize that they are not perfect.
Certainly, there is a place for consuming and critiquing the output of others. Doing so broadens our appreciation for what is possible and helps us connect with other people. But living as so many of us do, simply grazing among the efforts of those bolder than ourselves, is a sad way to be. Go, tell a story, draw a picture, sing a song. Do something as only you can do it, even if that means doing it poorly, and grow from the act.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Not an Academic After All
It's time for that semi-annual post about my actual life. A lot of you know this already, but I figure it's good to share with the rest:
I'm not getting my PhD in computer science. I don't know if it's the program or the school or just me, but it's not working right now. I'm sick of having my work come home with me, I don't enjoy research, and the things I care about just aren't the things that computer scientists care about (which makes reading the garbage they call writing even harder). Beyond that, I think that Academia is broken beyond my ability to tolerate. The publication cycle discourages meaningful work and places emphasis on individual accomplishment over advancing societal goals. The amount of ego I've encountered here is astonishing, especially considering our inability to accomplish anything without collaboration.
I'm not entirely certain what comes next, but I've got a year to work it out, as I won't be done with my Masters coursework until next December. Most likely, I'll just enter industry for awhile and be a productive member of society, but there are other possibilities on the horizon. Whatever the case, I'm glad I came out to CO. It's been a fantastic 14 months so far in which I've made some wonderful friends, grown in ways I've long wanted to, and learned some surprising things about where my priorities lay. I'm glad that I've got more time to lean on this community as I figure out my next step.
I'm not getting my PhD in computer science. I don't know if it's the program or the school or just me, but it's not working right now. I'm sick of having my work come home with me, I don't enjoy research, and the things I care about just aren't the things that computer scientists care about (which makes reading the garbage they call writing even harder). Beyond that, I think that Academia is broken beyond my ability to tolerate. The publication cycle discourages meaningful work and places emphasis on individual accomplishment over advancing societal goals. The amount of ego I've encountered here is astonishing, especially considering our inability to accomplish anything without collaboration.
I'm not entirely certain what comes next, but I've got a year to work it out, as I won't be done with my Masters coursework until next December. Most likely, I'll just enter industry for awhile and be a productive member of society, but there are other possibilities on the horizon. Whatever the case, I'm glad I came out to CO. It's been a fantastic 14 months so far in which I've made some wonderful friends, grown in ways I've long wanted to, and learned some surprising things about where my priorities lay. I'm glad that I've got more time to lean on this community as I figure out my next step.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Inventing Recipes: Curried Squash and Carrot Soup
For as much as I love cooking, I'm surprised I've never posted anything on here about it. Partly, I suppose that's because I do so much less of it these days. Cooking for one is a pain in the butt if you don't much like (or have storage space for) leftovers. I also just don't get nearly as much joy from eating the food I make as I do from cooking it. It's kind of like with programming. The joy, for me, is in toying with something until I've come up with what I'm looking for. As such, I much prefer cooking for other people, and last Sunday provided a solid opportunity.
One of my former housemates and his wife have been coming over each week to watch the new season of Dexter. Last week, they offered to bring over some leftovers from their CSA share so that we could do dinner at the same time. They pledged a large winter squash along with several carrots and onions to the cause, and my mind immediately went to soup. Curry was the next thing that came to mind, and, once a quick Google search showed that this was not an unheard of combination, I ran to the store to pick up what I thought we might need. The result was, approximately, this (all measurements are guesses, sorry) :
Ingredients
1 Large-ish (3-4 lb) Winter Squash*
3-4 Large Carrots
2 Yellow Onions
1 1.5 inch Piece of Ginger
2-3 Cloves Garlic
1.5 Tbsp Garam Masala
1/2 Tsp Cinnamon
3 Tbsp Cider Vinegar (or Lemon Juice)
6 Cups Vegetable Stock
Salt and Black Pepper to Taste
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
Additional Heavy Cream for serving (~1.5 Tbsp per bowl)
Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 425. Split your squash in half, remove the seeds, and place it, cut side down, on a baking sheet with about a centimeter of water. Roast for half an our or until the meat readily separates.
2. Slice carrots and ginger relatively thin. Dice onion. Add to a large pot, warmed to medium heat along with the olive oil. Allow to sweat, stirring occasionally, until squash is finished.
3. Remove the squash from the oven and scoop out the flesh into the pot. Add remaining ingredients (minus the cream) and allow to cook for 10-15 minutes over medium high heat.
4. Puree the soup, either with an immersion blender or in batches in a traditional blender, and allow to cook covered over medium low heat for another 15 minutes or until desired consistency is reached.
5. Add additional seasoning to taste and serve, drizzling in cream as desired.
In all, it turned out well enough that there was a fight for what few leftovers remained. Definitely a recipe I'll revisit and tinker with the next time I've got people around to eat it.
*I'm not sure what sort of squash we used, it's not one I'm familiar with. A small-ish pumpkin or a couple of mid-sized acorn or butternut squashes would do the trick.
One of my former housemates and his wife have been coming over each week to watch the new season of Dexter. Last week, they offered to bring over some leftovers from their CSA share so that we could do dinner at the same time. They pledged a large winter squash along with several carrots and onions to the cause, and my mind immediately went to soup. Curry was the next thing that came to mind, and, once a quick Google search showed that this was not an unheard of combination, I ran to the store to pick up what I thought we might need. The result was, approximately, this (all measurements are guesses, sorry) :
Ingredients
1 Large-ish (3-4 lb) Winter Squash*
3-4 Large Carrots
2 Yellow Onions
1 1.5 inch Piece of Ginger
2-3 Cloves Garlic
1.5 Tbsp Garam Masala
1/2 Tsp Cinnamon
3 Tbsp Cider Vinegar (or Lemon Juice)
6 Cups Vegetable Stock
Salt and Black Pepper to Taste
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
Additional Heavy Cream for serving (~1.5 Tbsp per bowl)
Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 425. Split your squash in half, remove the seeds, and place it, cut side down, on a baking sheet with about a centimeter of water. Roast for half an our or until the meat readily separates.
2. Slice carrots and ginger relatively thin. Dice onion. Add to a large pot, warmed to medium heat along with the olive oil. Allow to sweat, stirring occasionally, until squash is finished.
3. Remove the squash from the oven and scoop out the flesh into the pot. Add remaining ingredients (minus the cream) and allow to cook for 10-15 minutes over medium high heat.
4. Puree the soup, either with an immersion blender or in batches in a traditional blender, and allow to cook covered over medium low heat for another 15 minutes or until desired consistency is reached.
5. Add additional seasoning to taste and serve, drizzling in cream as desired.
In all, it turned out well enough that there was a fight for what few leftovers remained. Definitely a recipe I'll revisit and tinker with the next time I've got people around to eat it.
*I'm not sure what sort of squash we used, it's not one I'm familiar with. A small-ish pumpkin or a couple of mid-sized acorn or butternut squashes would do the trick.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Community Season 3 Rebounds in a Big Way After a Slow Start
Season three of Community started immediately with a fairly ambitious goal. Right from the get go, it became clear that a major theme for the season was going to be the main ensemble -- especially Jeff -- coming to terms with who they (and one another) are. This has clouded the first handful of episodes as we have to witness the extremes of the bad behavior that these people are capable of and the tenuousness of the bond they have. Whether it's Jeff and Annie awkwardly hanging the lampshade on the defense mechanisms they've built up or it's the group treating outsiders with intense hostility as a way of reinforcing their attitude of togetherness, the proceedings have largely lacked the heart that defined the show for me (with the awesome ending to Geography of Political Conflict being a major exception).
The fourth episode, Remedial Chaos Theory, was a huge step in the right direction if the writers want to keep this difficult theme alive while letting the show be what it is at its best. The ridiculous, multiple timeline exploring structure provided a great way of showing the impact, good and bad, that each person has on this group by letting them highlight specific parings and show us what happens when individual people aren't present.
I'll freely admit that it took awhile for the episode to get going and not every joke was perfectly clear. Britta's pizza dance doesn't make sense if you don't immediately suspect that she was getting high. It also took me a second viewing to catch the crunch that tells you Troy was keeping candy in his cigarette case and not eating actual cigarettes instead of smoking them. The revisiting of the sexual tension between both Jeff and Annie also keeps feeling a little forced (the repetition didn't help this). None of that matters, though, in the face of the complete ridiculousness of the Troy-less timeline, especially when it's revisited in the bump. There was a lot to set up, from Annie's gun to Troy's fear of the Norwegian troll, but I nearly fell off my couch laughing as things kept going farther wrong.
A great episode that has me feeling good about what the show can do this season -- assuming they keep their ambition level high.
The fourth episode, Remedial Chaos Theory, was a huge step in the right direction if the writers want to keep this difficult theme alive while letting the show be what it is at its best. The ridiculous, multiple timeline exploring structure provided a great way of showing the impact, good and bad, that each person has on this group by letting them highlight specific parings and show us what happens when individual people aren't present.
I'll freely admit that it took awhile for the episode to get going and not every joke was perfectly clear. Britta's pizza dance doesn't make sense if you don't immediately suspect that she was getting high. It also took me a second viewing to catch the crunch that tells you Troy was keeping candy in his cigarette case and not eating actual cigarettes instead of smoking them. The revisiting of the sexual tension between both Jeff and Annie also keeps feeling a little forced (the repetition didn't help this). None of that matters, though, in the face of the complete ridiculousness of the Troy-less timeline, especially when it's revisited in the bump. There was a lot to set up, from Annie's gun to Troy's fear of the Norwegian troll, but I nearly fell off my couch laughing as things kept going farther wrong.
A great episode that has me feeling good about what the show can do this season -- assuming they keep their ambition level high.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Jobs and Ritchie
Steve Jobs died just over a week ago and, of course, there was hullabaloo galore. Just this past weekend, Dennis Ritchie passed and plenty of people are just learning of it now. For those who didn't follow that link, Dennis Ritchie was the co-creator of both the C programming language and the Unix operating system/kernel. For those of us who work with software for a living, the impact of his work cannot be understated. Still, I can't help wanting to slap my friends and colleagues who are expressing indignation about the comparative lack of outpouring.
Obviously, the entire technological landscape depends on Ritchie's work. C and its various extensions and offspring have dominated the programming landscape forever, and most of the web lives on servers running Unix-like operating systems (not to mention Mac OSX). But most people don't care about what makes the things they use work. If they did, we'd be a society of engineers and scientists. People care about how well things work, and Jobs was a master of providing technology that simply worked better -- or at least more intuitively -- than anything else out there.
More than that, Jobs was an incredibly public person managing an even more prominent company that virtually everybody has strong feelings about in one direction or the other. As near to the end as he could, he was keeping himself visible and relevant as he promoted the work and products of his company. What has Ritchie done in the last 40 years? I can't find anything other than winning awards for the contributions of C and Unix and sitting on a number of research boards.
So, while it's certainly sad that so few people even knew that Ritchie died, don't bring Steve Jobs into things. Their legacies have nothing in common, and we shouldn't expect remotely the same reaction.
Obviously, the entire technological landscape depends on Ritchie's work. C and its various extensions and offspring have dominated the programming landscape forever, and most of the web lives on servers running Unix-like operating systems (not to mention Mac OSX). But most people don't care about what makes the things they use work. If they did, we'd be a society of engineers and scientists. People care about how well things work, and Jobs was a master of providing technology that simply worked better -- or at least more intuitively -- than anything else out there.
More than that, Jobs was an incredibly public person managing an even more prominent company that virtually everybody has strong feelings about in one direction or the other. As near to the end as he could, he was keeping himself visible and relevant as he promoted the work and products of his company. What has Ritchie done in the last 40 years? I can't find anything other than winning awards for the contributions of C and Unix and sitting on a number of research boards.
So, while it's certainly sad that so few people even knew that Ritchie died, don't bring Steve Jobs into things. Their legacies have nothing in common, and we shouldn't expect remotely the same reaction.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Imagining An Ideal Multiplayer Experience for Mass Effect
The news is out, Mass Effect 3 will have multiplayer. At first blush, this seems like potentially troublesome water. Obviously, with squad AI being less than great, it could be a real boon to have a friend just pop into your game and control one of your teammates for you, but I don't think that's what this is going to be. For one thing, that would create all kinds of logistical troubles with the power wheel (can either teammate simply pause the action at any time to use a special ability a la Secret of Mana back in the day?), enemy AI (which tends to focus on Shep whenever possible, making it exploitable by a smart teammate), and victory conditions (I'd hate to be the second player who gets screwed and has to restart because Shepard acted the fool). For another, that seems like something that could have been announced back at E3 when they were already showing off new ways to control your squad with Kinect.
No, I'm guessing that this is going to be a distinct gameplay mode, either a side story a la the Splinter Cell coop missions or a set of traditional competitive gameplay types with a Mass Effect spin.
This, obviously, could suck.
That said, it doesn't have to. Imagine this:
Our basic template is Monday Night Combat, and if you haven't played MNC by now, shame on you. In short, it's a third person, class based, squad shooter where each class has three abilities they can level up as a round progresses. That's the foundation we need, but not with the standard, DOTA-esque gameplay mode, which just isn't something most people have an aptitude for (90% of the time, I've wound up on a team who think the objective is just to kill people and we get massacred).
Now, instead of those classes, we move ahead with the Mass Effect classes we all know and love: Soldier, Infiltrator, Engineer, Sentinel, Adept, Vanguard. These are differentiated by access to various Tech, Biotic, and Combat abilities.
Instead of shields or barriers, Soldiers have heavy armor that does not regenerate and health that does. They have access to all weapon types and can swap between three weapon ammo types: Incendiary (DOT), Cryo (slow/freeze unprotected enemies), Disruptor (increased damage to both shields and barriers).
Engineers have stronger than normal shields and can only use pistols and SMGs. However, they get access to Overload (heavy damage to enemy shields, temporary damage increase to unprotected enemies), Sabotage (prevent usage of the current weapon), and Combat Drone (moves around zapping nearby foes, knockdown burst on destruction).
Adepts have extra-powerful biotic barriers and also only get to use weaker weapons. They get warp (heavy damage to enemy barriers, temp. damage increase to unprotected enemies), Throw (knockdown, added damage to unprotected enemies), and Stasis (immobilization but increased defense).
Infiltrators have shields and can use rifles along with pistols and smgs. They can cloak temporarily as their unique ability and get to select at spawn time between one of Overload and Sabotage and one of Cryo ammo or Incendiary Ammo.
Vanguards have barriers and can use shotguns along with pistols and msgs. The can use Biotic Charge to move quickly between locations (effect of charging into a target TBD). They then get access to one of Warp and Throw and one of Cry and Incendiary Ammo at spawn.
Sentinels can spawn with either shields or barriers. Their special ability lets them swap between the two, quickly recharging to the opposite form of protection if their current form is depleted. They can only use pistols and SMGs and get to choose one of Overload and Sabotage and one of Throw and Warp.
A single round would consist of small-ish teams (6-8?) competing in traditional objective modes. Control point, attack/defend, CTF with Cerberus being pit against Citadel forces. Deathmatch is possible, but certainly plays less strongly to the class-based structure. As you kill people, get killed, and complete objectives, you unlock currency (at differing rates) used to boost your abilities for the remainder of the round.
Outside of matches, players can make a number of larger modifications to the way they want their classes to play. Superficially, they can control what race and appearance they want for each of their classes -- though obviously with less granularity than they get with Shep. They can also adjust the upgrade path for their abilities (different levels can increase AoE, reduce cooldown, up damage, or have other effects depending on the ability). I know that the main game is also going to have some fairly involved weapon customization, so maybe bring in some of that, too, in order to keep things from becoming too rote.
If they take this basic stripped down version of the traditional Mass Effect level tree along with the improved gunplay that they've already brought into the mix and provide adequate balance along with an effective way of aiming powers, I think they could come up with a pretty compelling experience. I'd certainly play it.
No, I'm guessing that this is going to be a distinct gameplay mode, either a side story a la the Splinter Cell coop missions or a set of traditional competitive gameplay types with a Mass Effect spin.
This, obviously, could suck.
That said, it doesn't have to. Imagine this:
Our basic template is Monday Night Combat, and if you haven't played MNC by now, shame on you. In short, it's a third person, class based, squad shooter where each class has three abilities they can level up as a round progresses. That's the foundation we need, but not with the standard, DOTA-esque gameplay mode, which just isn't something most people have an aptitude for (90% of the time, I've wound up on a team who think the objective is just to kill people and we get massacred).
Now, instead of those classes, we move ahead with the Mass Effect classes we all know and love: Soldier, Infiltrator, Engineer, Sentinel, Adept, Vanguard. These are differentiated by access to various Tech, Biotic, and Combat abilities.
Instead of shields or barriers, Soldiers have heavy armor that does not regenerate and health that does. They have access to all weapon types and can swap between three weapon ammo types: Incendiary (DOT), Cryo (slow/freeze unprotected enemies), Disruptor (increased damage to both shields and barriers).
Engineers have stronger than normal shields and can only use pistols and SMGs. However, they get access to Overload (heavy damage to enemy shields, temporary damage increase to unprotected enemies), Sabotage (prevent usage of the current weapon), and Combat Drone (moves around zapping nearby foes, knockdown burst on destruction).
Adepts have extra-powerful biotic barriers and also only get to use weaker weapons. They get warp (heavy damage to enemy barriers, temp. damage increase to unprotected enemies), Throw (knockdown, added damage to unprotected enemies), and Stasis (immobilization but increased defense).
Infiltrators have shields and can use rifles along with pistols and smgs. They can cloak temporarily as their unique ability and get to select at spawn time between one of Overload and Sabotage and one of Cryo ammo or Incendiary Ammo.
Vanguards have barriers and can use shotguns along with pistols and msgs. The can use Biotic Charge to move quickly between locations (effect of charging into a target TBD). They then get access to one of Warp and Throw and one of Cry and Incendiary Ammo at spawn.
Sentinels can spawn with either shields or barriers. Their special ability lets them swap between the two, quickly recharging to the opposite form of protection if their current form is depleted. They can only use pistols and SMGs and get to choose one of Overload and Sabotage and one of Throw and Warp.
A single round would consist of small-ish teams (6-8?) competing in traditional objective modes. Control point, attack/defend, CTF with Cerberus being pit against Citadel forces. Deathmatch is possible, but certainly plays less strongly to the class-based structure. As you kill people, get killed, and complete objectives, you unlock currency (at differing rates) used to boost your abilities for the remainder of the round.
Outside of matches, players can make a number of larger modifications to the way they want their classes to play. Superficially, they can control what race and appearance they want for each of their classes -- though obviously with less granularity than they get with Shep. They can also adjust the upgrade path for their abilities (different levels can increase AoE, reduce cooldown, up damage, or have other effects depending on the ability). I know that the main game is also going to have some fairly involved weapon customization, so maybe bring in some of that, too, in order to keep things from becoming too rote.
If they take this basic stripped down version of the traditional Mass Effect level tree along with the improved gunplay that they've already brought into the mix and provide adequate balance along with an effective way of aiming powers, I think they could come up with a pretty compelling experience. I'd certainly play it.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Fiction Practice
Somehow, I don't have any work to do for class right now. Wound up cranking this out fairly quickly as I killed time. I intend to keep working at it, since I'm starting to get an idea of where it might go, but I probably won't post more here. Thought feedback could be useful, though. Fair warning: I've never quite figured out how to handle prose dialogue within my default writing style. I feel like I swap over to writing a script the moment I have characters interacting verbally. Fixing this is my major goal for this project. Okay, story:
As usual, Darren woke up five minutes before his alarm was set to go off. He laid in bed staring at it, hoping desperately that it wouldn’t sound. If it didn’t, it might mean that it was secretly a weekend or a holiday or some other day where he wouldn’t be expected at work instead of just Thursday. Three hundred seconds later it turned out to be Thursday after all. Darren cursed history for not having provided anything worth celebrating on this particular date as he hauled himself out of bed and staggered into another day.
Coffee, of course, was the first order of business. Darren briefly considered the sack of fair-trade beans sitting prominently on the counter next to an overpriced French press as he tried to remember a time before the amount of effort you put into making your coffee was a direct reflection on your coolness. Surely, it wouldn’t be long before old-fashioned convenience was trendy again and he could stop pretending he actually used those ridiculous things. He pulled the actual coffee pot and the can of grounds out from the cupboard by the sink. He preferred the taste to that crap from Guatemala or wherever it came from, and it never asked him to feel guilty over his privileged existence.
Well, relatively privileged.
He hopped into the shower while the coffee brewed and tried to determine just how embarrassed he should be about the night before. The problem wasn’t that he’d had too much to drink. After all, Darren’s budget and conscience conspired to impose a fairly strict limit of four drinks per night under ordinary circumstances. No, the problem was that, in his nervousness, he’d consumed his allotment far too quickly. It had taken him weeks to convince Abbey that it was worth going on a date with a coworker, that they had enough in comon that the potential for paperwork wasn’t enough to merit not giving it a shot. He wasn’t sure if she’d slap him when he inevitably ran into her at the office or if she’d laugh at him. He did know that he’d prefer the slap.
The urge for coffee hit again as soon as he stepped out of the shower. He gulped down one cup before he finished getting dressed and poured the rest of the pot into a travel mug before sauntering down to the next corner. It was a chilly morning, which the weather forecast suggested would set the tone for the rest of the day. Darren fastened another button on his flannel shirt and largely ignored the cold while waiting for his bus to arrive. He saw Roger as he boarded, sat down across from him and took a swig from his mug, knowing full well what was coming next.
“So?” Roger asked.
“‘So,’ what?” Darren was not looking forward to this.
“Dinner. With Abbey. How did it go?”
“Less well than it could have.”
“That’s not saying much. How, particularly, did it stray from the ideal?”
“I may have propositioned her”
“May have?”
“It’s quite possible that the first words out of my mouth after dinner arrived were,” Darren glanced around and lowered both the pitch and volume of his voice, “‘So, we gonna fuck tonight?’” He must not have been quiet enough because an older lady turned around to frown at his choice of words.
“I take it she ordered the steak?” Roger smirked. Darren was not particularly amused.
“It was a joke! I said it in a funny voice and everything!”
“Well, maybe it wasn’t so bad.”
“She made an excuse to duck out as soon as she finished her chicken. Left half of her baked potato right there on the plate.”
Roger paused to choose a new cliche. “Hey, it’s not like she’s that great a catch.”
“Roger, this girl knows the full starting lineups for the Cardinals, both Arizona and St. Louis. Her favorite Coen Brothers movie is The Man Who Wasn’t There. She cried when Gandalf died, and she can play Chopin in her sleep.”
“...That sucks, man.”
“That it does.” Darren took another swig of coffee and questioned his decision not to add just a drop or four of whiskey to it.
As usual, Darren woke up five minutes before his alarm was set to go off. He laid in bed staring at it, hoping desperately that it wouldn’t sound. If it didn’t, it might mean that it was secretly a weekend or a holiday or some other day where he wouldn’t be expected at work instead of just Thursday. Three hundred seconds later it turned out to be Thursday after all. Darren cursed history for not having provided anything worth celebrating on this particular date as he hauled himself out of bed and staggered into another day.
Coffee, of course, was the first order of business. Darren briefly considered the sack of fair-trade beans sitting prominently on the counter next to an overpriced French press as he tried to remember a time before the amount of effort you put into making your coffee was a direct reflection on your coolness. Surely, it wouldn’t be long before old-fashioned convenience was trendy again and he could stop pretending he actually used those ridiculous things. He pulled the actual coffee pot and the can of grounds out from the cupboard by the sink. He preferred the taste to that crap from Guatemala or wherever it came from, and it never asked him to feel guilty over his privileged existence.
Well, relatively privileged.
He hopped into the shower while the coffee brewed and tried to determine just how embarrassed he should be about the night before. The problem wasn’t that he’d had too much to drink. After all, Darren’s budget and conscience conspired to impose a fairly strict limit of four drinks per night under ordinary circumstances. No, the problem was that, in his nervousness, he’d consumed his allotment far too quickly. It had taken him weeks to convince Abbey that it was worth going on a date with a coworker, that they had enough in comon that the potential for paperwork wasn’t enough to merit not giving it a shot. He wasn’t sure if she’d slap him when he inevitably ran into her at the office or if she’d laugh at him. He did know that he’d prefer the slap.
The urge for coffee hit again as soon as he stepped out of the shower. He gulped down one cup before he finished getting dressed and poured the rest of the pot into a travel mug before sauntering down to the next corner. It was a chilly morning, which the weather forecast suggested would set the tone for the rest of the day. Darren fastened another button on his flannel shirt and largely ignored the cold while waiting for his bus to arrive. He saw Roger as he boarded, sat down across from him and took a swig from his mug, knowing full well what was coming next.
“So?” Roger asked.
“‘So,’ what?” Darren was not looking forward to this.
“Dinner. With Abbey. How did it go?”
“Less well than it could have.”
“That’s not saying much. How, particularly, did it stray from the ideal?”
“I may have propositioned her”
“May have?”
“It’s quite possible that the first words out of my mouth after dinner arrived were,” Darren glanced around and lowered both the pitch and volume of his voice, “‘So, we gonna fuck tonight?’” He must not have been quiet enough because an older lady turned around to frown at his choice of words.
“I take it she ordered the steak?” Roger smirked. Darren was not particularly amused.
“It was a joke! I said it in a funny voice and everything!”
“Well, maybe it wasn’t so bad.”
“She made an excuse to duck out as soon as she finished her chicken. Left half of her baked potato right there on the plate.”
Roger paused to choose a new cliche. “Hey, it’s not like she’s that great a catch.”
“Roger, this girl knows the full starting lineups for the Cardinals, both Arizona and St. Louis. Her favorite Coen Brothers movie is The Man Who Wasn’t There. She cried when Gandalf died, and she can play Chopin in her sleep.”
“...That sucks, man.”
“That it does.” Darren took another swig of coffee and questioned his decision not to add just a drop or four of whiskey to it.
Monday, September 26, 2011
I Still Love HIMYM Despite Myself
I watched the first four seasons of How I Met Your Mother four times in a single year. It's a show for which I have inexplicable patience in large doses. It's fun, often clever, and features a core cast of characters with whom I immediately connected. Still, that didn't stop me from being less than optimistic about the show's future while I watched the fifth season as it aired. Post-jilting, the series hadn't seemed to deal a lot with the central premise of the show beyond offering a lot of teases. The season meandered a lot but didn't really commit to anything for more than an episode at a time beyond a couple of ill-fated pairings for Robin. The result was a collection of mildly amusing episodes that manage to be significantly less bad when you're watching them en masse without expectations.
Season six, on the other hand, managed to lose me about halfway through (shortly after a certain funeral). It spent an awful lot of time focusing on Ted's flirtatious relationship with a new addition who we absolutely knew wasn't The Mother -- mostly because of things we already knew about The Mother but also because she was already married. I missed a couple of episodes, which prevented me from catching up on CBS' website, and just gave up. I hear that Zooey ditched her husband or some such and that she and Ted dated for awhile and it was all as pointless as it seemed.
Season seven started last week, though, and I'm now caught up with the first three episodes, and I have to say, I'm feeling hopeful. It could just be the effect of watching 3 episodes at once and my lingering affection for these people, but I think it's making important steps to clear the way for the Event We've Been Waiting For. There have already been needless teases, including the cliffhanger ending of the second episode, but the season so far seems to have set an admirable goal: helping Ted move beyond his past and remembering how to believe in romance again.
I'm not sure if this will make it a show I look forward to watching week-by-week the way I do Community or Parks and Recreation, but at the very least, I suddenly find myself looking forward to binging on this season in a year's time when I can speed through the teasing and just watch these people grow and learn and enjoy one another. Hell, I'll probably go and pick up season 6 just so I can see what shenanigans I missed in the middle of all the time wasting.
Season six, on the other hand, managed to lose me about halfway through (shortly after a certain funeral). It spent an awful lot of time focusing on Ted's flirtatious relationship with a new addition who we absolutely knew wasn't The Mother -- mostly because of things we already knew about The Mother but also because she was already married. I missed a couple of episodes, which prevented me from catching up on CBS' website, and just gave up. I hear that Zooey ditched her husband or some such and that she and Ted dated for awhile and it was all as pointless as it seemed.
Season seven started last week, though, and I'm now caught up with the first three episodes, and I have to say, I'm feeling hopeful. It could just be the effect of watching 3 episodes at once and my lingering affection for these people, but I think it's making important steps to clear the way for the Event We've Been Waiting For. There have already been needless teases, including the cliffhanger ending of the second episode, but the season so far seems to have set an admirable goal: helping Ted move beyond his past and remembering how to believe in romance again.
I'm not sure if this will make it a show I look forward to watching week-by-week the way I do Community or Parks and Recreation, but at the very least, I suddenly find myself looking forward to binging on this season in a year's time when I can speed through the teasing and just watch these people grow and learn and enjoy one another. Hell, I'll probably go and pick up season 6 just so I can see what shenanigans I missed in the middle of all the time wasting.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
I Heart Math
I'm trying to organize some thoughts about computing, creativity, creation, and theology. This is the only thing that's come out so far that makes sense. Hopefully I'll be able to provide further context for it in the future, but I really enjoy it, so I thought I'd share it early:
So long as anything exists in this universe, just one infinitesimal speck of cosmic dust, some lonely, quivering little quark, then one exists. If one exists, then so do zero and two and negative one. In fact, one carries with it into being all of mathematics: addition and multiplication and algebra, calculus and general linear matrices and an uncountably infinite number of points called z in the complex plain that probably don't lie within the Mandlebrot Set. Mathematics isn't something we invented. It isn't something we observe or model. It is the simplest, purest fact of reality. It is the direct consequence of the universe being something other than the empty set.
So long as anything exists in this universe, just one infinitesimal speck of cosmic dust, some lonely, quivering little quark, then one exists. If one exists, then so do zero and two and negative one. In fact, one carries with it into being all of mathematics: addition and multiplication and algebra, calculus and general linear matrices and an uncountably infinite number of points called z in the complex plain that probably don't lie within the Mandlebrot Set. Mathematics isn't something we invented. It isn't something we observe or model. It is the simplest, purest fact of reality. It is the direct consequence of the universe being something other than the empty set.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Introducing Fairly Green
I'm in a pretty horrible class right now on Software Project Management. We're working in groups on a case study, and our group's involves a first-time PM named Fairly Green. We were supposed to present our project charters today, and the professor suggested that we should treat it as if we were actually presenting to corporate officers at our fake company. This irritated me, as 90% of the class was doing the same case study, so presenting on our charter instead of discussing the decision making process that we followed in developing it seemed like a waste of time (it was). As such, I was planning on giving our group's presentation alone in character as Fairly Green. I spent more time than was probably good for my sanity developing a character for him, but when our group decided at the last minute to all present together, I wound up not being able to utilize any of it. So, here's a brief profile of Fairly Green. Maybe we'll get some short vignettes about his daily life before too long.
Fairly is a professional software engineer. 30 years old, he was born and raised in rural Pennsylvania by parents who provided for him adequately but were always busy with their own active social lives. He has a good sense of humor about his ridiculous name but less of one about his family. Case-in-point: when people ask about his name, he has an unfortunate tendency of responding that he, "asks [his] mother about it every Thanksgiving, but she's never been sober enough to give a coherent answer." He's never recognized how uncomfortable this makes virtually everybody.
Fairly graduated in the top 20% of his class from Notre Dame. Smart, but not brilliant, he worked incredibly hard for that ranking and only managed to form a handful of meaningful relationships over his time in college. Still, Fairly is diligent, detail-focused, and knows the name and birthday of everybody he's ever worked with. Shortly after graduating, he followed his girlfriend, Janet, to Maryland. She was raised in an Annapolis suburb and wanted to move back near her parents. He found work as a QA tester at Innovative Security Solutions, Inc. after a three month job search, during which he lived with and grew close to Janet's parents. He has since become a senior developer at the small company.
Fairly and Janet happily married a year after the move to Maryland and now have two children: three-year-old daughter Kayla and 8-month-old son Garret. They live roughly 45 minutes from Janet's family, who are an active part of the life of the young family and are all too happy to the ensure that Fairly and Janet get time to themselves at regular intervals. Having a young family is always trying, but ISS pays Fairly a competitive salary with generous benefits. As such, Janet, who was a biology major and began nursing school before quitting during the first pregnancy, has been able to act as a stay-at-home mom.
Fairly was always very close to his maternal grandparents, who lived in upstate New York. His grandmother died 3 months ago after a long battle with ovarian cancer that metastasized to her pancreas. This was itself painful, obviously, but it was made significantly worse when his grandfather started exhibiting signs of dementia in the final months, robbing both of them of having meaningful interaction in her final days. Fairly moved his grandfather to assisted living near himself and Janet shortly after.
As a reaction to these unfortunate events, Fairly briefly sought the chance to take on an enhanced role in raising his children. He suggested that he could move to reduced hours and work partly from home and encouraged Janet to pursue some of her tabled dreams and finish her RN certification. She refused, saying she at least wanted to wait until both kids were in school, and he gave up on it after a couple of weeks. Instead, Fairly threw himself into his work as a distraction. His supervisors took notice of his sudden dedication and assigned him PM duties on a new project, designing the control system and interface for a new, high end surveillance system. He and Janet were initially excited by the promotion, but both are beginning to regret it as it increases his hours, especially on weekends, keeping him from having much meaningful time with the children. They're making it work, but he's nearly ready to tell his superiors where his priorities rest.
Fairly is a professional software engineer. 30 years old, he was born and raised in rural Pennsylvania by parents who provided for him adequately but were always busy with their own active social lives. He has a good sense of humor about his ridiculous name but less of one about his family. Case-in-point: when people ask about his name, he has an unfortunate tendency of responding that he, "asks [his] mother about it every Thanksgiving, but she's never been sober enough to give a coherent answer." He's never recognized how uncomfortable this makes virtually everybody.
Fairly graduated in the top 20% of his class from Notre Dame. Smart, but not brilliant, he worked incredibly hard for that ranking and only managed to form a handful of meaningful relationships over his time in college. Still, Fairly is diligent, detail-focused, and knows the name and birthday of everybody he's ever worked with. Shortly after graduating, he followed his girlfriend, Janet, to Maryland. She was raised in an Annapolis suburb and wanted to move back near her parents. He found work as a QA tester at Innovative Security Solutions, Inc. after a three month job search, during which he lived with and grew close to Janet's parents. He has since become a senior developer at the small company.
Fairly and Janet happily married a year after the move to Maryland and now have two children: three-year-old daughter Kayla and 8-month-old son Garret. They live roughly 45 minutes from Janet's family, who are an active part of the life of the young family and are all too happy to the ensure that Fairly and Janet get time to themselves at regular intervals. Having a young family is always trying, but ISS pays Fairly a competitive salary with generous benefits. As such, Janet, who was a biology major and began nursing school before quitting during the first pregnancy, has been able to act as a stay-at-home mom.
Fairly was always very close to his maternal grandparents, who lived in upstate New York. His grandmother died 3 months ago after a long battle with ovarian cancer that metastasized to her pancreas. This was itself painful, obviously, but it was made significantly worse when his grandfather started exhibiting signs of dementia in the final months, robbing both of them of having meaningful interaction in her final days. Fairly moved his grandfather to assisted living near himself and Janet shortly after.
As a reaction to these unfortunate events, Fairly briefly sought the chance to take on an enhanced role in raising his children. He suggested that he could move to reduced hours and work partly from home and encouraged Janet to pursue some of her tabled dreams and finish her RN certification. She refused, saying she at least wanted to wait until both kids were in school, and he gave up on it after a couple of weeks. Instead, Fairly threw himself into his work as a distraction. His supervisors took notice of his sudden dedication and assigned him PM duties on a new project, designing the control system and interface for a new, high end surveillance system. He and Janet were initially excited by the promotion, but both are beginning to regret it as it increases his hours, especially on weekends, keeping him from having much meaningful time with the children. They're making it work, but he's nearly ready to tell his superiors where his priorities rest.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
An Open Letter to the Board of Trustees of Calvin College from a Recent Alumnus
To the Board of Trustees of Calvin College:
I first visited Calvin College in the Summer of 2004. I was on a trip touring six prospective colleges around the Midwest, only two of which were Christian. In considering colleges, I suspected that I wouldn't have a particularly easy time trying to be both a Christian and a scientist, and I feared that attending a Christian institution could make my task even harder. Even if I would be free of the skepticism that secular scientists often to have towards people of faith, it would be practically impossible to grow as a scholar if I wound up under the watchful, censoring eye of the sorts of Christians who remain suspicious of science.
I was relieved to find in Calvin a place where it seemed this would not be a problem, a place that would warmly accept and encourage my growth in both areas. It was a place that recognized Scripture and Creation as twin pillars of revelation and promoted the natural harmony between the two. It was a school where evolution was embraced and where theology professors would challenge their students to move beyond the faith of their childhood. I didn’t even bother applying anywhere else.
Starting in the Fall of 2005, I spent a fantastic five years at Calvin studying Computer Science and taking electives ranging from Introduction to International Relations to Metaphysics to Abstract Algebra. I found Calvin to be a place that recognized that the best way to spread the Gospel was by engaging the world in a Christlike way. Distinctly Calvin concepts like discernment and renewal, though lovingly mocked by Calvin students, became core to the way I interact with the world.
While many Calvin students come from families that have attended the school for generations, Calvin never seemed like an institution content to simply pass on the same old truths that had served in years past. Instead, Calvin strove to be a legitimate actor in academia, giving students opportunities to do real, meaningful work with a chance to impact the wider world. This isn't always easy. It requires us to ask difficult questions and to discuss and even debate divisive issues both with our neighbors and with ourselves. There is no topic on which human knowledge is complete. Just as Science represents our current best understanding of how God has ordered the Universe, Theology represents only our current best understanding of how God relates to Creation. Neither understanding is fixed, and we need to look at these challenging issues that in order to advance.
Calvin offered, in my eyes at least, a place where we could approach these challenges secure in the knowledge that Scripture and Creation have the same author and cannot be at odds with one another. Under this worldview, we are free to investigate any apparent discrepancies from both ends, trusting that the beauty of God's handiwork will allow us to relieve these tensions in time. At Calvin, Christianity serves not as a barrier to research in controversial fields, but as the driving force behind all scholarship. Years spent surrounded by professors motivated in this way encouraged me to pursue a PhD of my own in order to join in this good work.
Unfortunately, it seems like something is starting to change at Calvin College. With the events leading to and surrounding the resignation of Professor Schneider, it seems that academic freedom is slowly being limited in areas where modernity and tradition collide. If I loved Calvin less I would not care, but Calvin stands for something important to me, and it is painful to see it turn away from the values that make it special.
I understand that evolution and polygenism raise difficult questions about the nature of The Fall and Original Sin, core tenets in any reasonable understanding of God's relationship with humanity. However, we must seriously consider the apparent contradictions between orthodox theology and modern genetics. Who better to grapple with this and other problems than those professors who have served faithfully and proven their commitment to Christianity and its ideals? These are the people we must trust to find a conclusion that stands up to scrutiny from both Special and General Revelation.
Certainly, it is up to Calvin College and its leadership to decide whether or not they are committed to giving their trusted, tenured professors the support necessary to seek out the undiscovered connections between Science and Scripture without fear of reprisal from those who doubt whether the lines will ever meet. If Calvin chooses not to support its professors in this way, they would seem to be betraying the mission I witnessed them champion during my time there, leaving me reluctant to continue supporting an alma mater for which I have such high expectations.
As such, I implore you to reaffirm your commitment to engaging God’s world as it is rather than as we wish it to be. We are all residents of a fallen world, and as Christians, we are called to participate in God’s ultimate plan of restoration. This becomes easier when institutions like Calvin support and celebrate the efforts of their professors, even when the ultimate outcome is unclear. Do not let recent events turn into a trend of attacks on the intellectual freedom of your most valuable resources: the faculty, students, and staff of Calvin College.
Thank you,
Jonathan Walz
Class of 2010
I first visited Calvin College in the Summer of 2004. I was on a trip touring six prospective colleges around the Midwest, only two of which were Christian. In considering colleges, I suspected that I wouldn't have a particularly easy time trying to be both a Christian and a scientist, and I feared that attending a Christian institution could make my task even harder. Even if I would be free of the skepticism that secular scientists often to have towards people of faith, it would be practically impossible to grow as a scholar if I wound up under the watchful, censoring eye of the sorts of Christians who remain suspicious of science.
I was relieved to find in Calvin a place where it seemed this would not be a problem, a place that would warmly accept and encourage my growth in both areas. It was a place that recognized Scripture and Creation as twin pillars of revelation and promoted the natural harmony between the two. It was a school where evolution was embraced and where theology professors would challenge their students to move beyond the faith of their childhood. I didn’t even bother applying anywhere else.
Starting in the Fall of 2005, I spent a fantastic five years at Calvin studying Computer Science and taking electives ranging from Introduction to International Relations to Metaphysics to Abstract Algebra. I found Calvin to be a place that recognized that the best way to spread the Gospel was by engaging the world in a Christlike way. Distinctly Calvin concepts like discernment and renewal, though lovingly mocked by Calvin students, became core to the way I interact with the world.
While many Calvin students come from families that have attended the school for generations, Calvin never seemed like an institution content to simply pass on the same old truths that had served in years past. Instead, Calvin strove to be a legitimate actor in academia, giving students opportunities to do real, meaningful work with a chance to impact the wider world. This isn't always easy. It requires us to ask difficult questions and to discuss and even debate divisive issues both with our neighbors and with ourselves. There is no topic on which human knowledge is complete. Just as Science represents our current best understanding of how God has ordered the Universe, Theology represents only our current best understanding of how God relates to Creation. Neither understanding is fixed, and we need to look at these challenging issues that in order to advance.
Calvin offered, in my eyes at least, a place where we could approach these challenges secure in the knowledge that Scripture and Creation have the same author and cannot be at odds with one another. Under this worldview, we are free to investigate any apparent discrepancies from both ends, trusting that the beauty of God's handiwork will allow us to relieve these tensions in time. At Calvin, Christianity serves not as a barrier to research in controversial fields, but as the driving force behind all scholarship. Years spent surrounded by professors motivated in this way encouraged me to pursue a PhD of my own in order to join in this good work.
Unfortunately, it seems like something is starting to change at Calvin College. With the events leading to and surrounding the resignation of Professor Schneider, it seems that academic freedom is slowly being limited in areas where modernity and tradition collide. If I loved Calvin less I would not care, but Calvin stands for something important to me, and it is painful to see it turn away from the values that make it special.
I understand that evolution and polygenism raise difficult questions about the nature of The Fall and Original Sin, core tenets in any reasonable understanding of God's relationship with humanity. However, we must seriously consider the apparent contradictions between orthodox theology and modern genetics. Who better to grapple with this and other problems than those professors who have served faithfully and proven their commitment to Christianity and its ideals? These are the people we must trust to find a conclusion that stands up to scrutiny from both Special and General Revelation.
Certainly, it is up to Calvin College and its leadership to decide whether or not they are committed to giving their trusted, tenured professors the support necessary to seek out the undiscovered connections between Science and Scripture without fear of reprisal from those who doubt whether the lines will ever meet. If Calvin chooses not to support its professors in this way, they would seem to be betraying the mission I witnessed them champion during my time there, leaving me reluctant to continue supporting an alma mater for which I have such high expectations.
As such, I implore you to reaffirm your commitment to engaging God’s world as it is rather than as we wish it to be. We are all residents of a fallen world, and as Christians, we are called to participate in God’s ultimate plan of restoration. This becomes easier when institutions like Calvin support and celebrate the efforts of their professors, even when the ultimate outcome is unclear. Do not let recent events turn into a trend of attacks on the intellectual freedom of your most valuable resources: the faculty, students, and staff of Calvin College.
Thank you,
Jonathan Walz
Class of 2010
Friday, July 15, 2011
Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Fresh back from the midnight showing of the final chapter in the Harry Potter film series, so, of course, I'm going to write about that instead of taking this opportunity to go to sleep at what would only be a mildly unreasonable hour. I'll try to minimize spoilers, but they're obviously going to be here.
First of all, a reminder that I'm not the hugest fan of the Deathly Hallows book. Long story short, my general sense about the movie is about the same as with Part 1, only generally more favorable because of the portion of the story captured. With a few small exceptions, the adaptation itself is about as strong as you could want. By and large, deviations from the source made perfect sense within the characterizations given in the movies and the nature of the medium. More important, the aspects of the book that I found most frustrating -- The Hallows, wand lore, Gringotts -- were minimized to the extent possible, while full attention was paid to the most important factors -- Snape's past, King's Cross, and others. In fact, I came into the theater thinking "If they handle Snape right, that will account for all other sins." And while I mostly feel they did this and more, I can't quite give it a completely free pass.
See, there were too many moments that just seemed...manufactured. Scenes that wanted to be emotional rarely were, and the execution just had a number of moments where it just didn't feel all there. It seemed, at times, like they were including sequences because they knew that the fans would be clamoring for them and just letting it ride on that fact. In general, I'd say that the more people who were on the screen, the less honest anything seemed. The core cast continues to be largely phenomenal, but the Wizarding World somehow felt less real than ever. Heck, early on, even the small moments seemed a little bit too rushed and matter-of-fact.
I want to end on a positive note, though. Even if it will never be the first Harry Potter film I reach for on a lazy day, Deathly Hallows Pt. 2 was an enjoyable time and a worthy ending to one of the most lucrative film franchises of all time. I'd really like to watch a cut of this and part 1 blended together to eliminate the handful of redundancies and see if I still have problems with some of the early pacing or if the momentum carries. I suspect that it would, elevating both movies considerably (thank God, DVD will also let us skip over Harry and Hermione dancing in Part 1).
First of all, a reminder that I'm not the hugest fan of the Deathly Hallows book. Long story short, my general sense about the movie is about the same as with Part 1, only generally more favorable because of the portion of the story captured. With a few small exceptions, the adaptation itself is about as strong as you could want. By and large, deviations from the source made perfect sense within the characterizations given in the movies and the nature of the medium. More important, the aspects of the book that I found most frustrating -- The Hallows, wand lore, Gringotts -- were minimized to the extent possible, while full attention was paid to the most important factors -- Snape's past, King's Cross, and others. In fact, I came into the theater thinking "If they handle Snape right, that will account for all other sins." And while I mostly feel they did this and more, I can't quite give it a completely free pass.
See, there were too many moments that just seemed...manufactured. Scenes that wanted to be emotional rarely were, and the execution just had a number of moments where it just didn't feel all there. It seemed, at times, like they were including sequences because they knew that the fans would be clamoring for them and just letting it ride on that fact. In general, I'd say that the more people who were on the screen, the less honest anything seemed. The core cast continues to be largely phenomenal, but the Wizarding World somehow felt less real than ever. Heck, early on, even the small moments seemed a little bit too rushed and matter-of-fact.
I want to end on a positive note, though. Even if it will never be the first Harry Potter film I reach for on a lazy day, Deathly Hallows Pt. 2 was an enjoyable time and a worthy ending to one of the most lucrative film franchises of all time. I'd really like to watch a cut of this and part 1 blended together to eliminate the handful of redundancies and see if I still have problems with some of the early pacing or if the momentum carries. I suspect that it would, elevating both movies considerably (thank God, DVD will also let us skip over Harry and Hermione dancing in Part 1).
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Brave New World
I've been meaning to read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World for ages. I picked up a cheap copy at a Borders' liquidation sale last March and just got around to reading it while I was traveling the past couple of weeks. All I can really say is: "meh". There are interesting things, but I described the book to a friend who had never read it as thus: The first two chapters, where we learn about the conditioning process that occurs from fertilization through adolescent development for all citizens is very fascinating. Chapters 17 and 18, where our would-be protagonists talk with the Controller about God, Science, Truth, and Beauty and their lack of place in a harmonious society are interesting. Everything else is whiny bitches.
Really, this is a problem with plenty of "dystopian" fiction. It's so concerned with portraying its authors personal take on why humanity is screwed that it feels it doesn't need to tell a compelling story or provide characters with realistic motivations. It's like reading a Platonic dialogue for the plot rather than the philosophy: you're just going to be irked by how much of a Mary Jane Socrates is. In Plato, though, this is tolerable because there really isn't any action beyond the discussion and the philosophy. In Brave New World and other books of its ilk, however, the plot is meant to be somehow meaningful, or at least illustrative, and it takes up a much more significant proportion of the proceedings.
So, the fact that our "savage" and Bernard and, to a lesser extent, Heimholtz are all complete idiots is consistently annoying. Beyond even that, Huxley shoots his entire thesis in the foot with the fate of Bernard and Heimholtz by telling us that failures in the conditioning process are more common than we've been led to believe and that there are effectively numerous colonies of "normal" humans continuing to advance the race on the fringes of Utopia in the form of the Islands. That we then finish the book with a long and completely pointless chapter following John's fate is pointless. We know damn well that, were he not a "savage" and a "social experiment" his grim end would be unneeded.
Furthermore, while Huxley does a good job in early chapters of seeming to take his society seriously and as the norm, the tone becomes increasingly tongue-in-cheek as he delves into the more ridiculous suppositions. The community sing culminating in the mass orgy, for instance, is just absurd. I get that real art is supposed to have disappeared, but that doesn't change the fact that the entire sequence is a chore to read through between the songs and the sudden, inexplicable sexual frenzy that sweeps through. Contrasted to the very well written early portions where Lenina is being scolded for her borderline monogamy (ridiculous, but believable), it's a sad failure. Further, the notion of "Ford" instead of god just became more and more painful as it entered into the character's vocabulary. As what I believed to be a tongue-in-cheek idea in the foreword, I could deal with it. As a foundational aspect of society, it just seemed utterly unbelievable -- though this has more to do with a problem I'll discuss at the end.
Finally, everything to do with the "reservation" is also just poorly executed. The notion that all world religions would have merged over hundreds of years just shows an unnecessary lack of respect for all of them. To be franks, an equally offensive (to a theist) and far more likely suggestion is that religious warfare would have wiped out the remaining "uncivilized" regions or left them with a handful of small factions fighting over scarce resources. Disease, poverty, and monogomy, not simple greed or other human instincts stamped out or tempered by the conditioning process, seem to be the reasons for the reservations to be in such disarray.
That said, Huxley has a lot of interesting ideas about what it would take in order for individuals to live as willing slaves of the government. Specifically, he focuses on the fairly obvious notion of control via the carrot. By keeping people content, you keep them from questioning you. The genetic selection, developmental behavioral training, and biological "surrogate" drugs provide the foundation for this contentment, which is then maintained throughout life by three societal pillars: Soma helps to manage those inevitable moments of disappointment and sadness. The elimination of the family in favor of government "hatcheries" and indoctrination centers reduces the odds of personal attachment and thus strong emotional reactions to overpower logic. Societally expected promiscuity works on both effects.
It's a fascinating approach, but one that time has shown to be absurd.
First of all, Huxley lived in a time where Freud was still taken somewhat seriously and where Psychology was synonymous with Behaviorism. This is no longer the case. We know so much more about the brain and how it operates now that it becomes trivial to question the basic premises upon which so much of the conditioning process is based. More important, though, is the fact that Huxley assumed a society that would continue in the wake of industrialization. He had no idea, even in his addenda and commentary, that the microcomputer, much less The Internet, was on the horizon. Mass, immediate access to information completely obliterates Huxley's future, and while a future where such technology is squashed away, the process to get there would be more violent -- and certainly more prolonged -- even than the war he suggests led to the founding of Utopia.
Of course, The Internet provides plenty of opportunity for a parallel road into a similar future. We have the sort of constant, superficial contact with people that Huxley predicted in the form of social networking. We can sit and anesthetize ourselves to our ills and those of the world by overloading on news to the point that we lose our capacity to care or by playing games or by watching cat videos. The important distinction, though, is that these problems are not government imposed or even sanctioned. They are self inflicted. Fortunately, we live in a society that has smart enough to recognize that Internet addiction and information overload are actual problems. Unfortunately, we also live in a society that continues to pursue ubiquitous computing and the social isolation it promotes before we've begun to solve the problems of the current generation of technology. I'm hopeful, but...we'll see.
Really, this is a problem with plenty of "dystopian" fiction. It's so concerned with portraying its authors personal take on why humanity is screwed that it feels it doesn't need to tell a compelling story or provide characters with realistic motivations. It's like reading a Platonic dialogue for the plot rather than the philosophy: you're just going to be irked by how much of a Mary Jane Socrates is. In Plato, though, this is tolerable because there really isn't any action beyond the discussion and the philosophy. In Brave New World and other books of its ilk, however, the plot is meant to be somehow meaningful, or at least illustrative, and it takes up a much more significant proportion of the proceedings.
So, the fact that our "savage" and Bernard and, to a lesser extent, Heimholtz are all complete idiots is consistently annoying. Beyond even that, Huxley shoots his entire thesis in the foot with the fate of Bernard and Heimholtz by telling us that failures in the conditioning process are more common than we've been led to believe and that there are effectively numerous colonies of "normal" humans continuing to advance the race on the fringes of Utopia in the form of the Islands. That we then finish the book with a long and completely pointless chapter following John's fate is pointless. We know damn well that, were he not a "savage" and a "social experiment" his grim end would be unneeded.
Furthermore, while Huxley does a good job in early chapters of seeming to take his society seriously and as the norm, the tone becomes increasingly tongue-in-cheek as he delves into the more ridiculous suppositions. The community sing culminating in the mass orgy, for instance, is just absurd. I get that real art is supposed to have disappeared, but that doesn't change the fact that the entire sequence is a chore to read through between the songs and the sudden, inexplicable sexual frenzy that sweeps through. Contrasted to the very well written early portions where Lenina is being scolded for her borderline monogamy (ridiculous, but believable), it's a sad failure. Further, the notion of "Ford" instead of god just became more and more painful as it entered into the character's vocabulary. As what I believed to be a tongue-in-cheek idea in the foreword, I could deal with it. As a foundational aspect of society, it just seemed utterly unbelievable -- though this has more to do with a problem I'll discuss at the end.
Finally, everything to do with the "reservation" is also just poorly executed. The notion that all world religions would have merged over hundreds of years just shows an unnecessary lack of respect for all of them. To be franks, an equally offensive (to a theist) and far more likely suggestion is that religious warfare would have wiped out the remaining "uncivilized" regions or left them with a handful of small factions fighting over scarce resources. Disease, poverty, and monogomy, not simple greed or other human instincts stamped out or tempered by the conditioning process, seem to be the reasons for the reservations to be in such disarray.
That said, Huxley has a lot of interesting ideas about what it would take in order for individuals to live as willing slaves of the government. Specifically, he focuses on the fairly obvious notion of control via the carrot. By keeping people content, you keep them from questioning you. The genetic selection, developmental behavioral training, and biological "surrogate" drugs provide the foundation for this contentment, which is then maintained throughout life by three societal pillars: Soma helps to manage those inevitable moments of disappointment and sadness. The elimination of the family in favor of government "hatcheries" and indoctrination centers reduces the odds of personal attachment and thus strong emotional reactions to overpower logic. Societally expected promiscuity works on both effects.
It's a fascinating approach, but one that time has shown to be absurd.
First of all, Huxley lived in a time where Freud was still taken somewhat seriously and where Psychology was synonymous with Behaviorism. This is no longer the case. We know so much more about the brain and how it operates now that it becomes trivial to question the basic premises upon which so much of the conditioning process is based. More important, though, is the fact that Huxley assumed a society that would continue in the wake of industrialization. He had no idea, even in his addenda and commentary, that the microcomputer, much less The Internet, was on the horizon. Mass, immediate access to information completely obliterates Huxley's future, and while a future where such technology is squashed away, the process to get there would be more violent -- and certainly more prolonged -- even than the war he suggests led to the founding of Utopia.
Of course, The Internet provides plenty of opportunity for a parallel road into a similar future. We have the sort of constant, superficial contact with people that Huxley predicted in the form of social networking. We can sit and anesthetize ourselves to our ills and those of the world by overloading on news to the point that we lose our capacity to care or by playing games or by watching cat videos. The important distinction, though, is that these problems are not government imposed or even sanctioned. They are self inflicted. Fortunately, we live in a society that has smart enough to recognize that Internet addiction and information overload are actual problems. Unfortunately, we also live in a society that continues to pursue ubiquitous computing and the social isolation it promotes before we've begun to solve the problems of the current generation of technology. I'm hopeful, but...we'll see.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Brief Thoughts on Kinect
Microsoft Research has finally released its free SDK for developing Windows applications that utilize Kinect -- the natural user interface device originally sold as an Xbox 360 peripheral.
I've never thought much of Kinect as a game controller. As much time as Microsoft has spent trying to sell it over the last couple of E3s, the only really great thing they managed to do was sell it as a means of interfacing with the main menu hub. The games have all been iffy, especially attempts to integrate it into the traditional genres with anything other than voice recognition. It's hard to make immersive game experiences without any sort of controller, even if only because of constraints on the camera and physical movement of your avatar around the game environment. The result is sports minigames, dance games, and an assortment of on rails experiences -- not bad intrinsically, but certainly more limited than Microsoft wants us to believe.
Still, the basic interface manipulation powers -- both based on physical, three dimensional gesturing and voice recognition -- is potentially revelatory. Looking through the hacks that have been popping up since the initial release of the device, you can see so many applications for recognition of three dimensional movement of the hands and arms alone -- and this sort of tracking makes full body identification essential so as to not get distracted by other noise. I'm greatly hopeful for the sorts of applications that will result from heavier use of Kinect and other NUI devices in traditional computing.
Still, Microsoft was brilliant in releasing this as a toy first. Even if that isn't ever going to be the best use of the technology, we needed a phase where people were excited about the sheer novelty of this thing in order to develop a proper vocabulary for developing with it. Had this originally shipped as some much vaunted peripheral (a la the Magic Mouse), it would have been laughed at for its lack of support and non-existent consistency of use between applications. Instead, we had a period where that was expected because its primary purpose was as a fun diversion -- a way to sucker people out of their money instead of as a meaningful productivity tool. Months later now, we have experience determining current best practices for recognizing and translating certain behaviors and a proper set of verbs for describing interaction with this thing and an API for productivity development that supports these verbs out of the box.
Kudos, Microsoft. Here's hoping that you can pioneer NUI support in Windows 8 as you continue your positive trend of starting to give a damn about your customers.
I've never thought much of Kinect as a game controller. As much time as Microsoft has spent trying to sell it over the last couple of E3s, the only really great thing they managed to do was sell it as a means of interfacing with the main menu hub. The games have all been iffy, especially attempts to integrate it into the traditional genres with anything other than voice recognition. It's hard to make immersive game experiences without any sort of controller, even if only because of constraints on the camera and physical movement of your avatar around the game environment. The result is sports minigames, dance games, and an assortment of on rails experiences -- not bad intrinsically, but certainly more limited than Microsoft wants us to believe.
Still, the basic interface manipulation powers -- both based on physical, three dimensional gesturing and voice recognition -- is potentially revelatory. Looking through the hacks that have been popping up since the initial release of the device, you can see so many applications for recognition of three dimensional movement of the hands and arms alone -- and this sort of tracking makes full body identification essential so as to not get distracted by other noise. I'm greatly hopeful for the sorts of applications that will result from heavier use of Kinect and other NUI devices in traditional computing.
Still, Microsoft was brilliant in releasing this as a toy first. Even if that isn't ever going to be the best use of the technology, we needed a phase where people were excited about the sheer novelty of this thing in order to develop a proper vocabulary for developing with it. Had this originally shipped as some much vaunted peripheral (a la the Magic Mouse), it would have been laughed at for its lack of support and non-existent consistency of use between applications. Instead, we had a period where that was expected because its primary purpose was as a fun diversion -- a way to sucker people out of their money instead of as a meaningful productivity tool. Months later now, we have experience determining current best practices for recognizing and translating certain behaviors and a proper set of verbs for describing interaction with this thing and an API for productivity development that supports these verbs out of the box.
Kudos, Microsoft. Here's hoping that you can pioneer NUI support in Windows 8 as you continue your positive trend of starting to give a damn about your customers.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
LA Noire Frequently Gets Lost in the Filler
Let me start by saying that the core mechanics of LA Noire, the crime scene investigation and the interviewing/interrogating of witnesses, are as great as advertised. The face mapping technology is fantastic, even if I occasionally think Cole Phelps looks less like Aaron Staton and more like Ryan Gosling. It's eerie in a good way, somehow managing to largely avoid uncanny valley territory. While big, obvious tells make deciding whether to trust or doubt people is fairly straight-forward in the early going (and knowing your evidence is enough to let you know when to make accusations of lying), it gets more nuanced later in the game as the crimes get more serious. Does your PoI look nervous because she's holding out on you or just because she's a 15-year-old girl being grilled for information on the death of her mother?
I adore the use of music in the crime scene investigation portions of the game. The music itself is moody and carries with it the seriousness of the actions behind your task. The chimes that indicate an examinable object are subtle but helpful, and short fanfare that cuts off the music once all clues are found is incredibly useful. I like that there are always things to pick up that aren't useful -- even if plenty of them would be in this day and age of DNA testing. I also like that plenty of clues are only useful in helping you conduct your investigation and won't actually be strong enough to serve any purpose in your interviews and accusations.
Similarly, as has become the norm with Rockstar games, the atmosphere is impeccable. It feels like a 1940's hardboiled crime serial, even if your role as a "real cop" rather than a private detective necessitates a less pulpy approach. The music, the style, the characters all work out great. Despite what one of my roommates seems to think, all of the actors so far have provided strong performances. Between the period nature and the abundance of familiar faces, LA Noire has actually done a fair bit to satisfy my Mad Men itch while I wait to catch up on Season 4 via Netflix.
That said, roughly half-way through the game, I can't condone the various 9.0 and higher ratings that everybody seems insistent on giving the game simply because this core gameplay mechanic doesn't account for the bulk of the game.
You see, you don't just move from scene to scene and talk with witnesses. You need to drive all around an expansive LA. The city has been compressed from real life, but it's still huge. The intro talks about LA as being a new sort of city, one built around the automobile and the ability to commute from your own home on the outskirts. The game takes this seriously, as you're regularly going to be spending 5-10 minutes driving, stuck in traffic trying to get where you're going. Sure, you can speed and navigate your way around somewhat more quickly, but the cars handle so poorly, and the AI governing other drivers is so flaky, that you're likely to cause a fair bit of damage, both taking you out of the experience of being one of the few "good cops" in the LAPD and reducing your post-case rating.
Then, when you're on your way to your next scene, you're virtually guaranteed to get a call on the police scanner about some crime occurring in a completely different part of the city. You can, of course, choose not to respond to these, but they increase your detective rating, and it's just hard not to do anything when you hear "officer under fire". These street crime cases nearly always result in shoot-outs, which just aren't fulfilling -- both because the gun play isn't terribly well developed and it just feels like bad police work. If these were just an occasional diversion, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but I once started a case only to spend 40 minutes driving around and responding to three such incidents before I ever reached the scene of the crime.
Finally, the basic character handling isn't a hole lot better than the cars. Wandering around a crime scene and getting stuck on corners because Cole moves more like a mannequin than a war hero turned star policeman is just strange. Chasing down perps isn't a whole lot smoother, especially since the camera just doesn't keep up with all of the turns you have to make. Complaints here are reminiscent of some I made about Assassin's Creed 2 last year, except more aggravating considering I'm just running through alleyways and climbing drain pipes, not attempting death-defying acrobatics high above the streets of medieval Venice.
So, as much as I'm loving LA Noire, I find that I can't play it for protracted periods of time. One case is about my limit, and I'm often ready to quit even before then if I'm moving frequently between sites. The new ideas it brings to the table are fantastic, but slapping it onto a modified version of an existing Rockstar engine and bloating things up with extra tasks just wasn't necessary. Moving to different sites around LA for crimes would give the same sense of scope without forcing you to drive it, and the street crime inserts its way into things far too insistently.
Still, I'm enjoying the cases themselves and the back-story about Cole's experiences in WWII (that this largely seems to tie into the Battle of Okinawa, an event to which I have strong personal ties, only makes it more fascinating to me), and the subplot that seems to be developing through the newspaper stories is also intriguing. I'd definitely check it out to see if you have the patience.
8/10
I adore the use of music in the crime scene investigation portions of the game. The music itself is moody and carries with it the seriousness of the actions behind your task. The chimes that indicate an examinable object are subtle but helpful, and short fanfare that cuts off the music once all clues are found is incredibly useful. I like that there are always things to pick up that aren't useful -- even if plenty of them would be in this day and age of DNA testing. I also like that plenty of clues are only useful in helping you conduct your investigation and won't actually be strong enough to serve any purpose in your interviews and accusations.
Similarly, as has become the norm with Rockstar games, the atmosphere is impeccable. It feels like a 1940's hardboiled crime serial, even if your role as a "real cop" rather than a private detective necessitates a less pulpy approach. The music, the style, the characters all work out great. Despite what one of my roommates seems to think, all of the actors so far have provided strong performances. Between the period nature and the abundance of familiar faces, LA Noire has actually done a fair bit to satisfy my Mad Men itch while I wait to catch up on Season 4 via Netflix.
That said, roughly half-way through the game, I can't condone the various 9.0 and higher ratings that everybody seems insistent on giving the game simply because this core gameplay mechanic doesn't account for the bulk of the game.
You see, you don't just move from scene to scene and talk with witnesses. You need to drive all around an expansive LA. The city has been compressed from real life, but it's still huge. The intro talks about LA as being a new sort of city, one built around the automobile and the ability to commute from your own home on the outskirts. The game takes this seriously, as you're regularly going to be spending 5-10 minutes driving, stuck in traffic trying to get where you're going. Sure, you can speed and navigate your way around somewhat more quickly, but the cars handle so poorly, and the AI governing other drivers is so flaky, that you're likely to cause a fair bit of damage, both taking you out of the experience of being one of the few "good cops" in the LAPD and reducing your post-case rating.
Then, when you're on your way to your next scene, you're virtually guaranteed to get a call on the police scanner about some crime occurring in a completely different part of the city. You can, of course, choose not to respond to these, but they increase your detective rating, and it's just hard not to do anything when you hear "officer under fire". These street crime cases nearly always result in shoot-outs, which just aren't fulfilling -- both because the gun play isn't terribly well developed and it just feels like bad police work. If these were just an occasional diversion, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but I once started a case only to spend 40 minutes driving around and responding to three such incidents before I ever reached the scene of the crime.
Finally, the basic character handling isn't a hole lot better than the cars. Wandering around a crime scene and getting stuck on corners because Cole moves more like a mannequin than a war hero turned star policeman is just strange. Chasing down perps isn't a whole lot smoother, especially since the camera just doesn't keep up with all of the turns you have to make. Complaints here are reminiscent of some I made about Assassin's Creed 2 last year, except more aggravating considering I'm just running through alleyways and climbing drain pipes, not attempting death-defying acrobatics high above the streets of medieval Venice.
So, as much as I'm loving LA Noire, I find that I can't play it for protracted periods of time. One case is about my limit, and I'm often ready to quit even before then if I'm moving frequently between sites. The new ideas it brings to the table are fantastic, but slapping it onto a modified version of an existing Rockstar engine and bloating things up with extra tasks just wasn't necessary. Moving to different sites around LA for crimes would give the same sense of scope without forcing you to drive it, and the street crime inserts its way into things far too insistently.
Still, I'm enjoying the cases themselves and the back-story about Cole's experiences in WWII (that this largely seems to tie into the Battle of Okinawa, an event to which I have strong personal ties, only makes it more fascinating to me), and the subplot that seems to be developing through the newspaper stories is also intriguing. I'd definitely check it out to see if you have the patience.
8/10
Monday, May 2, 2011
Finally, An Exciting Project!
Just shot this off to my advisors, and I figure it's accessible enough share here rather than at my (largely ignored) research blog. Hopefully this makes sense to non-CS people. If it doesn't the backtracking posts at said research blog might help.
Using Games to Teach Shared Memory Parallelism
It seems to me that there are two approaches one can take with designing educational games. If you’re simply looking to teach facts (arithmetic, spelling, geography), you can focus on rote skill building. Decades of Math Blaster and Where in the World is Carmen San Diego and who knows what else have made it plain that, if you create a compelling enough environment, you can simply drill basic ideas over and over again and players will eventually learn them. If you’re lucky, they might even begin to pick up on the underlying principles, but this is less essential at the point where such games are generally in play. It doesn’t matter as much if players pursue a trial and error approach so long as they eventually build up the right stimulus-response pairing so that, when presented with “7 + 6”, they spout out “13”.
When teaching concepts, however, things become more difficult. The goal in this instance is to help the player realize that they *already* understand what we’re asking of them by transporting the underlying principles into a familiar environment. This means we’re not just taking some ultimate response into account. The process, and learning how to relate that process to desired domain, becomes the focus. This makes it much harder to properly develop games to teach concepts, since the process and the eventual relationships that form are completely outside of our control. This means that we need to make sure that our games are designed with metaphors that accurately represent the original problem or system and that they main focus is on tasks we actually want to promote.
When we first began discussing ideas for a game to “teach” shared memory concurrency, it was suggested that I work with trains. The basic idea was that trains are exciting and that signals and switches are already built into the system. For a handful of basic ideas, this seemed like a great approach, but as soon as we expand to more complicated problems, it falls apart. Consider, for instance, the most basic problem with shared memory concurrency: race conditions.
For the simplest case, two threads running through the same piece of sensitive code, this makes sense. We can have trains running on parallel tracks that eventually become a single track. If both trains try to do this simultaneously, they will crash. Thus, we need policies to ensure that only one train makes the transition at a time.
Let’s look at a more complicated example, though. Let’s say we have two completely different sections of code, both of which touch the same global variable. Suddenly, our trains are no longer running on parallel tracks. They’re working in completely different regions of space. How, then, do we signify that our two trains need to somehow limit one another’s movement?
Sure, we could introduce new elements -- say, pressure guages rigged to bombs that will cause the track to explode if the weight of more than one train touches any segment to which the sensor is connected. But that starts to expand our metaphor beyond what is reasonable. It makes our metaphor instantly unrelatable, even if somewhat more exciting.
Let’s also consider the basic nature of computer programs as humans write them, which tend to be broken into numerous subroutines. A subroutine is called in one spot, control jumps to that subroutine, and then, when the subroutine is finished, control returns to the spot it which the subroutine was called. This also cannot be readily modeled with the train metaphor, as an actual train moves along a single continuous piece of track. It doesn’t teleport all over kingdom come before eventually reaching its destination.
The underlying problem here is one of metaphor. We have too few types of objects, and they’re related in the wrong way. Let’s take a moment, then, to look at the requirements for an effective metaphor for a shared memory system:
First of all, let’s consider the things that need to be modeled. Obviously, we need multiple actors that can represent our threads, and we need something to guide the behavior of these actors to represent our code. The train metaphor has both of these in the trains and the tracks. It is important to note here that the tracks in the train metaphor can only represent the program, since they fundamentally guide the behavior of the trains. We need more than this, though. We need to be able to see why shared memory, in particular, is difficult. This means that our metaphor needs to contain some way of representing memory and another way of representing the values in that memory so that we see why things are going wrong.
Moreover, since threads operating in a shared memory environment can see virtually any piece of the shared address space at virtually any time, we need this memory to be obviously accessible to our actors. Between this necessity and the obvious requirement that memory somehow contain values, it becomes obvious that memory must be a physical space and not a logical one in our metaphor. Our program, on the other hand, just needs to be some sort of set of instructions that the user can see and augment.
Note that I didn’t include any sort of signals or locks or control statements of any sort as necessities for our basic metaphor. That’s because these control statements are primarily what we want to teach. This means that they are more effective if we highlight them by making them additions to our otherwise familiar situation. Much of the problem with programming shared memory concurrency is that it isn’t ultimately intuitive why we need these sorts of constructs. Our primary experiences of concurrency are physical, and the physical world places obvious, unviolatable limitations on what can and cannot be done in parallel. Chiefly, two objects cannot occupy the same physical space (though I know a handful of metaphysicians who disagree under certain circumstances).
Our goal was always to make control of these constructs one of the chief mechanisms of “play”, and by injecting the constructs into the situation as somehow unintuitive and alien, we increase the strength of the relationship between our metaphor and our “real world” circumstances.
If all that we were trying to teach was concurrency, this would be sufficient, but we’re looking to teach parallelism, the use of concurrency to provide improved performance via domain decomposition. This means that we want to place one more restriction on our metaphor. We want our “instructions” to be something that the player can actively divvy up between our actors to see how different approaches work. This was, in my opinion, another failing of the train metaphor for this particular problem. Establishing conditions for different signals to be sent between trains doesn’t do anything to modify the way the routes themselves operate. There is no obvious domain to decompose.
With all of these considerations in place, I would like to suggest the basic framework for a new game to teach parallelism in a shared memory environment, one I like to call Too Many Cooks!
The basic idea is that you control a kitchen with several cooks, all working together to produce enough food of a minimum quality to satisfy a given number of customers within a certain time limit. You begin with a certain number of cooks and a list of recipes. Recipes are divided into steps, and each recipe has its own quality ranking and will feed a different number of people.
At each level, your goal is to select recipes that meet or exceed the level requirements and divide the work of preparing them up among your chefs (by assigning either whole recipes or tasks within recipes to individual chefs) so as to finish under the time limit. At the end of each level, you recieve a score based on the average quality of your food and how far under the time limit you came.
So, we have our two foundational ideas that make this a metaphor for a (parallel) computer program: our actors and our instructions. We also have the task of domain decomposition. What makes this a shared memory system, then, are the limitations of physical space.
The kitchen is divided up into regions for different tasks. Counters for chopping. Ovens for baking. Stove tops for simmering. Freezers for cooling. Chefs will retrieve ingredients (values) from some bottomless pantry or from other workstations and transfer them around from chef to chef and station to station as the recipe is completed. Every time you assign a chef an instruction, you tell him where (s)he will find the necessary ingredients and where (s)he will work at the task. However, our chefs, much like computers, are a little bit stupid and do not communicate directly.
This means that, if Chef A needs onions that Chef B is chopping, but Chef B is not finished chopping them, Chef A may suddenly find himself fingerless as he intrudes on Chef B’s activities and the level will be failed. Similarly, if Chef A is expecting tomatoes at a given workstation, but Chef C hasn’t yet gotten around to preparing them but the cucumbers that Chef D had just finished up for Chef E are still sitting there, Chef A will gladly take them, ruining his recipe and resulting in unhappy (vomitting) customers and another failure of the level. There can be all sorts of other situations like this where things go wrong because of a lack of communication and timing.
What this means is that players needs to do two more things. First of all, they must be intentional in their assignment of tasks between chefs in order to minimize such conflicts (especially of the second sort described). More important, though, it is their job, after assigning tasks and locations to the chefs, to annotate the recipe with a number of markers that result in indirect communication between chefs. In the first example, for instance, Chef B could put up a sign that would prevent other chefs from intruding on his space.
Again, it would seem somewhat non-intuitive to players why they would need these signs. In the real world, chefs wouldn’t be so stupid. But that’s the entire point. It makes the task memorable and thus, ideally, helps in its transfer to the actual domain of writing programs.
The game will begin in a small kitchen with only two chefs and requirements that allow them to work on individual recipes with no communication in order to simply pass. But, as time progresses, you will unlock a larger stable of chefs and more elaborate recipes and requirements will mandate complicated distribution of work and consistent use of signals in recipe preparation. This larger grouping of chefs and recipes will remain available for the player to go back and complete earlier challenges with more elaborate approaches for a higher score.
There are lots of specifics yet to be worked out, and I feel like I’m neglecting to mention things that I’d already thought of. Even once I figure out all of the foundational ideas, development of this game will not be a simple task. Tweaking and balancing everything in this system from level requirements to recipe complexity to interface in order to make it engaging and reasonable is going to be terribly difficult, but that’s a problem faced by any game devloper, particularly, I would imagine, those working on educational games. Still, it seems to me like a solid beginning point, and I would welcome any criticisms or suggestions for its improvment as I get things hashed out on paper and start to figure out a development platform.
Using Games to Teach Shared Memory Parallelism
It seems to me that there are two approaches one can take with designing educational games. If you’re simply looking to teach facts (arithmetic, spelling, geography), you can focus on rote skill building. Decades of Math Blaster and Where in the World is Carmen San Diego and who knows what else have made it plain that, if you create a compelling enough environment, you can simply drill basic ideas over and over again and players will eventually learn them. If you’re lucky, they might even begin to pick up on the underlying principles, but this is less essential at the point where such games are generally in play. It doesn’t matter as much if players pursue a trial and error approach so long as they eventually build up the right stimulus-response pairing so that, when presented with “7 + 6”, they spout out “13”.
When teaching concepts, however, things become more difficult. The goal in this instance is to help the player realize that they *already* understand what we’re asking of them by transporting the underlying principles into a familiar environment. This means we’re not just taking some ultimate response into account. The process, and learning how to relate that process to desired domain, becomes the focus. This makes it much harder to properly develop games to teach concepts, since the process and the eventual relationships that form are completely outside of our control. This means that we need to make sure that our games are designed with metaphors that accurately represent the original problem or system and that they main focus is on tasks we actually want to promote.
When we first began discussing ideas for a game to “teach” shared memory concurrency, it was suggested that I work with trains. The basic idea was that trains are exciting and that signals and switches are already built into the system. For a handful of basic ideas, this seemed like a great approach, but as soon as we expand to more complicated problems, it falls apart. Consider, for instance, the most basic problem with shared memory concurrency: race conditions.
For the simplest case, two threads running through the same piece of sensitive code, this makes sense. We can have trains running on parallel tracks that eventually become a single track. If both trains try to do this simultaneously, they will crash. Thus, we need policies to ensure that only one train makes the transition at a time.
Let’s look at a more complicated example, though. Let’s say we have two completely different sections of code, both of which touch the same global variable. Suddenly, our trains are no longer running on parallel tracks. They’re working in completely different regions of space. How, then, do we signify that our two trains need to somehow limit one another’s movement?
Sure, we could introduce new elements -- say, pressure guages rigged to bombs that will cause the track to explode if the weight of more than one train touches any segment to which the sensor is connected. But that starts to expand our metaphor beyond what is reasonable. It makes our metaphor instantly unrelatable, even if somewhat more exciting.
Let’s also consider the basic nature of computer programs as humans write them, which tend to be broken into numerous subroutines. A subroutine is called in one spot, control jumps to that subroutine, and then, when the subroutine is finished, control returns to the spot it which the subroutine was called. This also cannot be readily modeled with the train metaphor, as an actual train moves along a single continuous piece of track. It doesn’t teleport all over kingdom come before eventually reaching its destination.
The underlying problem here is one of metaphor. We have too few types of objects, and they’re related in the wrong way. Let’s take a moment, then, to look at the requirements for an effective metaphor for a shared memory system:
First of all, let’s consider the things that need to be modeled. Obviously, we need multiple actors that can represent our threads, and we need something to guide the behavior of these actors to represent our code. The train metaphor has both of these in the trains and the tracks. It is important to note here that the tracks in the train metaphor can only represent the program, since they fundamentally guide the behavior of the trains. We need more than this, though. We need to be able to see why shared memory, in particular, is difficult. This means that our metaphor needs to contain some way of representing memory and another way of representing the values in that memory so that we see why things are going wrong.
Moreover, since threads operating in a shared memory environment can see virtually any piece of the shared address space at virtually any time, we need this memory to be obviously accessible to our actors. Between this necessity and the obvious requirement that memory somehow contain values, it becomes obvious that memory must be a physical space and not a logical one in our metaphor. Our program, on the other hand, just needs to be some sort of set of instructions that the user can see and augment.
Note that I didn’t include any sort of signals or locks or control statements of any sort as necessities for our basic metaphor. That’s because these control statements are primarily what we want to teach. This means that they are more effective if we highlight them by making them additions to our otherwise familiar situation. Much of the problem with programming shared memory concurrency is that it isn’t ultimately intuitive why we need these sorts of constructs. Our primary experiences of concurrency are physical, and the physical world places obvious, unviolatable limitations on what can and cannot be done in parallel. Chiefly, two objects cannot occupy the same physical space (though I know a handful of metaphysicians who disagree under certain circumstances).
Our goal was always to make control of these constructs one of the chief mechanisms of “play”, and by injecting the constructs into the situation as somehow unintuitive and alien, we increase the strength of the relationship between our metaphor and our “real world” circumstances.
If all that we were trying to teach was concurrency, this would be sufficient, but we’re looking to teach parallelism, the use of concurrency to provide improved performance via domain decomposition. This means that we want to place one more restriction on our metaphor. We want our “instructions” to be something that the player can actively divvy up between our actors to see how different approaches work. This was, in my opinion, another failing of the train metaphor for this particular problem. Establishing conditions for different signals to be sent between trains doesn’t do anything to modify the way the routes themselves operate. There is no obvious domain to decompose.
With all of these considerations in place, I would like to suggest the basic framework for a new game to teach parallelism in a shared memory environment, one I like to call Too Many Cooks!
The basic idea is that you control a kitchen with several cooks, all working together to produce enough food of a minimum quality to satisfy a given number of customers within a certain time limit. You begin with a certain number of cooks and a list of recipes. Recipes are divided into steps, and each recipe has its own quality ranking and will feed a different number of people.
At each level, your goal is to select recipes that meet or exceed the level requirements and divide the work of preparing them up among your chefs (by assigning either whole recipes or tasks within recipes to individual chefs) so as to finish under the time limit. At the end of each level, you recieve a score based on the average quality of your food and how far under the time limit you came.
So, we have our two foundational ideas that make this a metaphor for a (parallel) computer program: our actors and our instructions. We also have the task of domain decomposition. What makes this a shared memory system, then, are the limitations of physical space.
The kitchen is divided up into regions for different tasks. Counters for chopping. Ovens for baking. Stove tops for simmering. Freezers for cooling. Chefs will retrieve ingredients (values) from some bottomless pantry or from other workstations and transfer them around from chef to chef and station to station as the recipe is completed. Every time you assign a chef an instruction, you tell him where (s)he will find the necessary ingredients and where (s)he will work at the task. However, our chefs, much like computers, are a little bit stupid and do not communicate directly.
This means that, if Chef A needs onions that Chef B is chopping, but Chef B is not finished chopping them, Chef A may suddenly find himself fingerless as he intrudes on Chef B’s activities and the level will be failed. Similarly, if Chef A is expecting tomatoes at a given workstation, but Chef C hasn’t yet gotten around to preparing them but the cucumbers that Chef D had just finished up for Chef E are still sitting there, Chef A will gladly take them, ruining his recipe and resulting in unhappy (vomitting) customers and another failure of the level. There can be all sorts of other situations like this where things go wrong because of a lack of communication and timing.
What this means is that players needs to do two more things. First of all, they must be intentional in their assignment of tasks between chefs in order to minimize such conflicts (especially of the second sort described). More important, though, it is their job, after assigning tasks and locations to the chefs, to annotate the recipe with a number of markers that result in indirect communication between chefs. In the first example, for instance, Chef B could put up a sign that would prevent other chefs from intruding on his space.
Again, it would seem somewhat non-intuitive to players why they would need these signs. In the real world, chefs wouldn’t be so stupid. But that’s the entire point. It makes the task memorable and thus, ideally, helps in its transfer to the actual domain of writing programs.
The game will begin in a small kitchen with only two chefs and requirements that allow them to work on individual recipes with no communication in order to simply pass. But, as time progresses, you will unlock a larger stable of chefs and more elaborate recipes and requirements will mandate complicated distribution of work and consistent use of signals in recipe preparation. This larger grouping of chefs and recipes will remain available for the player to go back and complete earlier challenges with more elaborate approaches for a higher score.
There are lots of specifics yet to be worked out, and I feel like I’m neglecting to mention things that I’d already thought of. Even once I figure out all of the foundational ideas, development of this game will not be a simple task. Tweaking and balancing everything in this system from level requirements to recipe complexity to interface in order to make it engaging and reasonable is going to be terribly difficult, but that’s a problem faced by any game devloper, particularly, I would imagine, those working on educational games. Still, it seems to me like a solid beginning point, and I would welcome any criticisms or suggestions for its improvment as I get things hashed out on paper and start to figure out a development platform.
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