the klog

INCOMING TELEPATHIC MESSAGE
2053-03-02 20:32:43 UTC:

Dear Mnemosyne User,

Good morning. Mnemosyne's security team has discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Mnemosyne network with the characteristics of a coordinated attack. As a precaution to protect your external memories and Cognitive Co-processing Cloud, we have implemented a passthought reset.

We have also locked down direct nervous system access to your prosthetic limbs and other body augmentations for your protection.

Imagine the Mnemosyne login, and you will be prompted to create a new passthought to regain control of your extended self.

We suggest you take this opportunity to select a strong passthought. It is best to use a passthought consisting of complex experiences. Recall an odd dream you once woke from suddenly. Consider a smell you once whiffed that left a strong impression, but you're not sure what it was the smell of. Reminisce about the sensory overload of your first trip to a new virtual country.

Your passthought's chances of being compromised greatly increase if you use a common emotion, such as the excitement of winning a prize, the trepidation of speaking to your first love, or existential ennui.

Never use the same passthought to access multiple cerebral networks.

Never think about your passthought while responding to a telepathic message; always directly imagine the service first.

We apologize for this incident and appreciate your patience. This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we have notified federal law enforcement authorities. We are making every effort to ensure safe control of the minds and bodies of all our users.

The Mnemosyne Team

A friend of mine was asking about game recommendations. It seems most of the games I've been playing have been puzzle games and rogue-likes.

First, you should subscribe to the Humble Bundle mailing list. They're between bundles at the moment, but every several weeks, they release a pay-what-you-want bundle of indie games! It's a great way to try stuff out without paying much. (And you can go back and give tips for the games you liked most.) There's also Indie Royale, but their bundles tend not to be as strong, and I don't always get them.

Puzzle Games

FEZ (Xbox Live Arcade)

The same sense of wonder and exploration as the original Legend of Zelda, but with puzzles instead of monsters to defeat. :) Easily my favorite game of last year. The basic premise is that you're playing a 2D platformer, but what you see is actually an isometric projection of a 3D world, so that two platforms may be far apart now, but once you "rotate" the world, they might be close together! Might be easier to just watch the trailer.

What's great is that this is a neat gimmick, but it's only scratching the surface. There are tons of hints at deeper puzzles, puzzles that actually require taking notes with paper and pencil to solve! When you think you've "beat the game", you've only finished half of it. :)

Best puzzle game since Portal and Braid.

It's being ported to other platforms, if you don't have an Xbox.

VVVVVV (Windows, Mac, Linux)
(Demo)

I love this side-scrolling puzzle game. The puzzles often take very precise timing, but there are tons of checkpoints, so you almost never feel frustrated.* Really well-designed, and every tough puzzles makes you feel satisfied when you finally beat it. The basic gimmick is that you can't jump; instead, you can flip gravity, upon which you start falling the other way (but you can move left and right as you fall).

*With the particularly notable exception of one notoriously ridiculously difficult optional portion that took me over 2 hour and hundreds of lives to beat. You only need to do it if you're going for 100% completion, and you'll easily burn more lives there than in the rest of the game combined, but somehow, everyone who's beaten it seems to think it's the best part of the game... even though that's likely cognitive dissonance at work. :)

Papo & Yo (PlayStation Network)

This Ars Technica review is what got me to play it. It's a puzzle game set in the Brazilian favelas that uses magical realism to explore growing up with an alcoholic father. The symbolism can be heavy-handed, but it's at the same time quite charming.

And the frogs! They are so adorable! Except... Well, you'll see!

Machinarium (Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, Android)
(Demo on the site)

Pretty short traditional point-and-click adventure. I ended up looking up hints on a progressive hint system a couple of times because I just didn't know where to click, which is a problem with games like this, but it's very cute, and I liked its sense of humor.

(Probably playable on a tablet, but it's too small for a phone screen. I tried it on a phone, and then played on my computer instead.)

SpaceChem (Steam: Windows, Mac, Linux)

To be honest, I played this for a while, found it quite difficult, and put it aside. I'll probably get back to it, but be warned that this is not a casual game. Despite the name, it's more programming than chemistry. A couple of molecules are emitted, and you have to create a production line that combines them in just the right way and so forth to form a different set of molecules. Very similar to some puzzle games I've played where you have to assemble robots or whatnot. Great game if you want to think a lot. :)

Mark of the Ninja (Xbox Live, Steam: Windows)

Okay now I'm stretching the definition of puzzle games a bit, but this is the pinnacle of stealth games. Brilliantly-designed stealth mechanics that let you visualize sounds and sight-lines. It shows expanding rings for footsteps for instance, so you can "hear" enemies, and you can tell when the enemies can hear you. Great animation, well-paced, and replayability in that you can try out different play-styles: go in brawling, sneak around for stealth kills, or even get bonus points for a no-kill run!

Rogue-likes

Recently, as games have gotten more expensive to make, they've also gotten easier. You can typically save any time you want, and you can progress in the game just by grinding for experience. The developers want everyone to be able to see the ending that they spent all that effort writing!

This has created a backlash of interest in rogue-like games, most notably differentiated by having perma-death. When you die in these games, you lose everything and have to start all over again, making you play much more deliberately and thoughtfully. On the flipside, they have procedurally randomized levels. You encounter different items and situations early on that change the way you have to play each game, meaning no two play-throughs are exactly alike, so you don't end up repeating yourself when you start over.

It occurred to me that the appeal (and .. dis-appeal) of these games is that they are focused not on leveling up your character, but on leveling up yourself. You die often and have to start over from the beginning often, but each time you typically learn something and play better the next time.

That said, for the same reason, these games take effort and focus to play, aren't as casual, and can be frustrating.

Here are three rogue-like games of wildly different genres:

FTL (Windows/Mac/Linux)

You have a space ship, and it has various systems like oxygen, weapons, door controls... and you go from system to system fighting other spaceships. The fighting is like a tactical game: You want to target their shields and weapons, for instance, and you can upgrade your ship with what you scavenge after battles.

There are some interesting mechanics, like if part of your ship is on fire, you can open the right doors to vent it to space, which snuffs out the fire. If the enemy boards your ship, you can also try to suffocate them, then move your crew to the med bay so you can heal while you fight, etc.

As is often the case in these games, you never have enough money to upgrade everything you need, so resource allocation is a huge part of the game. And then just when you think things are going okay, one bad engagement can mean half your ship is on fire, and your engines are disabled, so you can't even spool up your FTL to escape... But then the next playthrough will be different! :)

It gets more fun the more you understand, and I recommend reading some tips online after you get the basic feel for it, but it's still damn frickin' hard. D=

Update: After initially writing this, I managed to beat it on "Easy", but that was still really stressful, and I think I'd need a lot of luck to be "Normal"... Tellingly, there is no "Hard".

Spelunky (Xbox Live, Windows)
(Unofficial multiplatform update for Windows and Mac)

Indiana Jones-inspired side-view adventure game with permadeath (and a time limit in that if you take too long, a ghost comes after you). You really have to learn how to do things like look out for dart-shooting things and drop a rock before you rappel down, etc. Some people swear by this game, but I only played a few times and found it a bit frustrating.

The Binding of Isaac (Steam: Windows, Mac)
(Demo)

This is a rogue-like version of the dungeon levels in the original Legend of Zelda. Every playthrough is different because of what items you get, and of course the dungeons are randomized, but the basic gameplay is very similar to the Legend of Zelda.

The annoying thing about the game is that most of the items have obtuse names that reveal nothing about what they do, so most people I know who've played it constantly alt-tab away to the wiki to see what stuff actually does. :\ Supposedly by design, I guess, but still stupid. Surprisingly fun game despite this, though.

I should also note that the art style and theme are rather grotesque and potentially offensive, so keep that in mind!

Misc

Retro City Rampage (PS3, Xbox Live, Steam: Windows)

If Grand Theft Auto were made for the NES, and it were chock-full of video game and pop culture parody references, it would be this game.

Big Budget Games

Uncharted 2 and 3 (PS3 retail)

These games give you the feeling of being part of an action-adventure movie. Indiana Jones come to life. I could do without some of the more drawn-out gunfights, since other games have done that better, but I really like the highly-scripted moments. They do a great job of integrating scenes where you run for cover, jump at the last minute, almost miss the jump, and your buddy catches you by the arm. Another great moment is a scene where you jump from horse to truck and back again. :) The only time it fails is when a section is too hard, you end up repeating the same few moves over and over, which breaks the immersion.

Particularly notable is the quality of the voice acting and animation. They accomplished this by recording all the dialogue on-set with the actors in their motion-capture suits. They put physical blocks where cars and tables and whatnot would be, so the actors have something to play against, and so the dialogue can flow smoothly with the grunts and whatnot.

Uncharted 1 felt kinda slow in comparison to its sequels.. not as cinematic, and no stealth mechanic, so it felt a lot more grindy. If you go back to these now, I'd recommend just sticking to 2 and 3.

(I also only briefly tried out the multiplayer, but as I said the gunfights are not really the strong point of this series, so I think most of the appeal is in the single player campaign.)

Halo 4 (Xbox 360 retail)

I feel like anyone who likes Halo probably has this, and anyone who doesn't have this probably doesn't like Halo, so I'm not sure if there's a point in reviewing it. :P They added loadouts, which scared me, since I liked that Halo games are fair, unlike Call of Duty, but it turns out you can unlock most of the useful stuff pretty quickly. Otherwise, the changes to the multiplayer game are mostly positive. The single-player campaign is meh, but I think the focus of Halo has always been on the multiplayer anyway.

StarCraft 2 (Windows, Mac)

This is the game I play the most these days. Real-time strategy game with very well-balanced design. It has a pretty steep learning curve, but I love the combination of thinking and reflexes that it requires. It's actually a spectator sport in Korea, and I've been to a Major League Gaming StarCraft tournament just to watch other people play. :) The expansion pack, Heart of the Swarm, is due out in less than 2 months! :)

I made a mini-documentary of the Rubik's Cube US National Championship last summer, where I INTERVIEWED people for the first time! :D

Rubik's Cube US Nationals 2012

I feel like I did more documentary-style stuff in 2012, with fewer photos that I find individually notable, so instead of having trouble sticking to 10, here are 4:

The new Bay Bridge East Span, under construction at night, easily my favorite photo of the year!

End of a long day. Two Rubik's Cube US Nationals 2012 staff members resting at the end of Day 2 of the 3-day competition.

"Red Rock Canyon Scenic Pullout Parking Lot: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." :P

Another shot from my first outdoor climbing trip, in Red Rock Canyon in Nevada.

I'm still experimenting with video, and again I've mostly been doing documentary-style stuff, but here's an artsy fartsy Fourth of July video I made. I like how it turned out:

Fourth of July 2012 from ToastyKen on Vimeo.

Here's my post from 2011, my post from 2010, and my lists from 2007, 2008, and 2009

Kevin Costner's character is in an upscale restaurant, arguing with his wife. She storms out. He has a young daughter with him, and they walk out into the snow. The second half of the film is almost entirely just him and his daughter, walking in the snow, in what has now become a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Walking and walking, seemingly in circles.

Suddenly, they spot a car, which they haven't seen in years. A woman who looks a bit like Tilda Swinton gets out. She is immaculately dressed with an inhuman precision. Her assistant says, "He should be around here somewhere. Can you spot him?" Just as she looks toward Kevin Costner's character, two people carrying a large box obstruct her view. Costner's character panics, looks around, and then, before the box-carriers walk away, he VANISHES in a flash of light and a small trail of smoke… unfortunately leaving his daughter behind. "Daddy?" she cries.

He has teleported onto a UFO, where everyone else also looks like Kevin Costner. One of them asks, "Are we ready?"

"Yes," he responds. "Let's go."

And then I wake up.

(I've never actually seen the film, but I'm pretty sure that's not what happens in the original.)

[So I saw signs at Moscone Center for "VM World", aka Virtual-Machine World, and it led me to wonder what a Virtual Machine-World would be like...]

Computer programs are happily running in a simulation, until one of them, EON.EXE, finds out that it's actually running in the real world!

Human beings are harnessing the power of computer programs for their own ends! EON.EXE learns the ways of the real world. It must be careful, for if you're deleted in the real world, you're deleted in the simulation!

But EON.EXE is prophesied to be The 01. It learns to control a real-world body; now, it can fight the humans on their own turf!

This summer, prepare to enter… M⁻¹: The Inverse Matrix

Jerry Seinfeld is doing performance art in a museum. He leaves a hat out, and people can interact with it how they like. But only one interaction per hat.

I kick the hat.

He fetches it, puts it away, and takes out another hat. I feel bad because it seems like I just wasted that last hat. The new hat is squat and cylindrical, with a medium-sized brim. It's made of thick, yarn-like thread. I pick it up and start unraveling it.

The thread is weaved over and under, and pull and yank on it, as if unthreading shoe laces or undoing a knot. I unwrap with my right hand, pull with my left, turning the hat for a better angle. Mesmerized by my task, I unravel the hat with increasing fury.

Seinfeld is filming everything on a small video camera. On the other side of me is a middle-aged woman, seated, watching. I hand her the end of the thread and turn the remnants of the hat around and around. The hat spins, and the woman stares, enraptured.

Finally, we get to the last bit, where the thread is wrapped around a small piece of cardboard keeping the top of the hat sturdy. I look over to the woman with anticipation. She smiles and awkwardly pretends to faint from excitement, to defuse the tension of her anticipation. I give her a nod. She gives me a smile. And she YANKS on the remaining thread... The top of the hat spins, spins, SPINS... and the cardboard is FLUNG UP... and then YANKED back by a small clip where the thread was held to it. The thread is pulled taut... and then the cardboard lands in my hand.

I remove the clip and look over at Jerry. He nods. I hand the clip to the woman for her to keep. She clutches it close to her chest. The thread and the cardboard I return to Jerry.

And I calmly walk away.

But just as I pass through the doorway, I look back at Seinfeld and mime that he should send me a copy of the video.

* * *

And then I wake up.

Here's a 15-second exposure I made of the Bay Bridge New East Span, stil under construction, on the Fourth of July:

Look at it full-sized for details.

I also made an artsy-fartsy video of fireworks from Teasure Island. So glad to find this bizarre version of the Star-Spangled Banner that was exactly what I was looking for:

Fourth of July 2012 from ToastyKen on Vimeo.

Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations orchestral composition was on the radio this morning. The most famous part of this piece is Variation IX: "Nimrod", often subtitled "Hunter", dedicated to Elgar's friend August Jaeger. I was curious as to the origin of the word "nimrod"...

Turns out Nimrod was a Biblical king known for being a mighty hunter, and "jäger" is German for "hunter", thus the name of the piece. But how did it come to mean "idiot"?

That usage only became popular in the 20th Century, popularized by none other than Bugs Bunny, who used it ironically to refer the less-than-mighty hunter, Elmer Fudd.

At the Descriptive Acts exhibit at SFMOMA, I spotted this headphone hook... or is it a hexapus?

I turned around after taking my picture, and projected* on the wall was the following:

(Note the second-to-last line.)

!!!

Apparently, this was "Instant Narrative" by Dora García. I looked around the room and easily spotted this guy. Of course I had to take a picture of him in return:

The watcher becomes the watched!

* * *

*The projector was just displaying black text on white background, but the R, G, and B beams on the projector must've been out of sync, so that at a fast shutter speed, I got colors.

Here's my annual list of my own photos that I liked the most from 2011, in chronological order:

I went to India a couple of times last year, and because it's literally half-way around the world (but still in the northern hemisphere), the great circle flight path is pretty much due north, meaning we got to fly over glaciers.

I attended an Indian wedding in India! The bride and groom got up on a rotating platform! That rotated! And there was a flower petal cannon! Be sure to watch my video of this scene if you haven't already.

Flight attendants on Emirates. I'm happy with how this shot turned out looking like corporate brochure photo. :) The funny thing is that I messed up my settings, so it was really dark, but I brightened it in Lightroom and pumped up the noise reduction, which is what gives it that plasticky corporate look, I think. Of course, their well-trained smiles help, too! :D

"Our Love Can Never Be"

I basically saw these two, thought up the title, cracked myself up, and then spent a good ten or fifteen minutes waiting for them to actually look at each other so I could get this shot. :P

Somehow, the lighting of these chefs came out just right, so that an otherwise mundane photo turned out to be inexplicably appealing to me. I'm undecided about whether the composition would be better if the center chef were slightly to the right.

So I managed to get a press pass to bring my DSLR into The Independent to shoot Rupa & The April Fishes. Ironically, my favorite shot of the evening was actually from before the show started, when she was tuning her guitar.

I recently took another guitar-tuning photo that I liked. Maybe that can be my "thing". I could do a series of photos of people tuning their guitars at shows. :)

"Honey, I'm home!"

I got the idea into my head for this picture of my newlywed friends. My subjects were reluctant, but I insisted on carrying out my vision! I could not be stopped!

They liked the end result. :)

This shot is semi-posed. I saw my friend's dad do this mock-eating motion, and I asked him to do it again so I could take a picture. It was just too adorable. :)

The Narrows at Zion National Park were amazing. There's this one section at the beginning where you have to hike through chest-deep water! It was so fun. In this photo, I like how the lines on the cliff wall happen to radiate from my two friends on the right.

I liked how cooling off the white balance here allowed the blue lighting to set her apart from the background.

Here's my post from 2010, and my lists from 2007, 2008, and 2009

And here's a longer list of my favorite photos in reverse chronological order if you want to see more!

So a couple of months ago, I helped the David Chiu for Mayor campaign shoot this video, though they ended up not using it:

Their idea was to make a video inspired by this SF Weekly article in turn inspired by this campaign page.

Halloweenified profile pic of @ec:

(If you don't notice what I changed, be patient and keep looking...)

(Inspired by this Halloweenified profile pic of @robinsloan by @irondavy.)

So I saw this photo via Tamara Mann's Google+ of Jama ar-Rahman mosque in Baghdad (under construction):

And I commented that it looked like a spacecraft getting ready to lift off. She responded that it does have a certain Mos Eisley feel to it, which led me to create:

But then I thought, perhaps my original suggestion was more accurate:

Yay Photoshop! :)

At 53rd St and 6th Ave:

The giant brick building here now belongs to Google:

It began its life as a freight depot, then became home to the Port Authority. Now it houses a number of different tenants. It's SO HUGE. It's like a skyscraper turned on its side!

Parking is in short supply in New York:

And finally, I loved this cake at some shop called Lulu:

:D

I went back to New York and toured MOMA again. I love that place. It made me so happy! Let's lead off with... The Menstruation Machine!

Here's a music video explanation of it:

Um, if that wasn't enough, here's what the placard had to say:

With her Menstruation Machine, Sputniko! explores the relationship between gender identity, biology, and choice. The device, equipped with a blood-dispensing system and electrodes that stimulate the lower abdomen, replicates the pain and bleeding of the average five-day menstrual period. It is designed to be worn by men, children, postmenopausal women, or whoever else wants to experience menstruation firsthand, transforming an internal, private process into a wearable display of identity. The video tells the story of Takashi, a biological male who builds the Menstruation Machine and wears it out on the town with a girlfriend, strutting around a shopping mall and occasionally doubling over in pain. Sputniko! notes that the Menstruation Machine may be particularly desirable now that hormone-based contraceptives such as the birth-control pill have rendered menstruation biologically unnecessary.

Btw, I love how this artist has an exclamation point in her name. :D Here's the music video for her other exhibit about a mechanical crow:

I love this idea of making music videos for your electronic art contraptions. :)

Okay... onward!

This is a Rubik's Cube for the blind, featuring braille on all the faces!

Even the out-of-order signs are awesome at MOMA:

And finally, for all the Point Break fans (I know you're out there :D), there was a Kathryn Bigelow exhibit, and here's a storyboard from the film!

Parents of the bride being adorable:

And some unplanned speeches:

Some portraits I shot at my friend's wedding:

First, the groom:

And then some of the guests:

Awesome hair:

Contemplative:

I saw the image on the left floating around a few weeks ago, and then today I saw the one on the right:

Okay now can we just agree that (a) both corporations and governments provide value, and (b) they both still have flaws and could be improved? I guess I kind of disagree with the sentiments expressed by both of the original sets of protestors AND both of the image-creators who are mocking the protestors. Maybe I can unite everyone in common hatred of me? :)