Categories
Projects Review

Lets Get NASty

I want to talk a bit today about my storage setup, specifically my NAS or
Network Attached Storage. I have been running my system for a little over a
year now and have had no issues so it is a good time to give a brief half
review, half description of setup. I started considering a longer term storage
setup when the available space on my desktop began to dwindle. I am a bit of
“digital hoarder” if you will, constantly butting up against my limit. When
space is so cheap and ubiquitous why throw anything out? The problem with this
is you always need to be increasing your capacity. At the time I was getting my
NAS my several year old external drive had failed, another drive in my desktop
was faltering, and the rest of the case was already filled up with other
drives. I did not want to get rid of my existing drives and I also wanted a
better solution than continuing to lock data to my desktop. Enter the
ReadyNAS 104.

The first thing you need to know about NASs (NASes?) is that there are a ton
of models on the market featuring wildly different prices and sets of features.
You will need to determine what you want out of your NAS before you consider
purchasing one. For me I had just two requirements:

1. Four drive slots. This allows for a ton of storage and is very flexible
when it comes to determining your RAID setup. 2. Minimum computational
performance, I do not need my NAS to be a file server or another computer. I
need to put files on it and get files off, that is all.

With those requirements you can pretty much be satisfied with things at the
low end of the market, hence the ReadyNAS 104. Your real cost on the low end
here is going to be in drives. I went with four of these
drives for a total capacity of 16 terabytes. Total (including the NAS) this
ran me $1045.94. You could cheap out here and go for smaller drives or slower
drives. From what I read 5600RPM drives work just as well, albeit slower. I
went max size and max speed because I wanted a long term solution. There were
at the time some rebates, but I do not remember how much they were for. As far
as quality of drives this particular brand came recommended, but other brands
are just as well regarded.

For setup I configured the drives in RAID 5 (~10TBs of space). Take a moment
to read up on the different RAID options here. In my opinion
RAID 5 gives you the best space efficiency (you lose about 1/4 of the capacity
compared to 1/2 in some other configurations) and reasonable fault tolerance
(you can lose one drive and not lose any data). I do not want to lose data, but
then again it is not exactly mission critical. Actually formatting and
configuring the drives takes about a full day so sit tight. After that there is
not much other configuration to be done. Plug it into your router and it should
assign itself a local IP address automatically. It would be wise to configure a
static address in your router’s control panel so its not always changing on
you, but this is not required. You can access your system via its IP and (at
least on Windows) it will appear like one giant network drive.

Of course since your NAS is basically a low powered computer you can run any
number of programs on it. The ReadyNAS people helpfully have a site with some options. I myself jun run
qbittorent for my torrenting needs, but there are some useful apps to be found.
If you are handy with the command line you can SSH into your NAS and do
whatever you want since it runs Linux.

For daily use a NAS is pretty helpful. Transfer times can be slow since I
connect through mine wirelessly, but its not terribly slow. Think a few minutes
for a couple GBs. It is certainly quick enough to stream video from itself to
your computer which is what I primarily use it for. Although when initially
transferring all your files to it I suggest hooking up an external drive. There
are a few USB ports on the back so it can mount drives, but I could not figure
how to connect it physically to my desktop.

In regards to configuration you can mostly roll with stock settings. I
suggest disabling file snap shots, which
can be a bit of a pain, but will save you a lot of space. I also recommend
enabling SSH access (so you can fiddle with things yourself) and enabling “Disk
Spin Down” to both conserve power and the life of your drives.

Overall a NAS is a little pricey, but it is a convenient way to get a lot of
storage you can access from anywhere in the house. It also allows you to sleep
safe knowing your files are backed up. Granted its not off site, but if your
house burns down you probably have bigger things to concern yourself with.

Categories
Anime Projects

My First AMV

It is true here it is spoilers and everything: view here, download
here.

For a while now I have been thinking of doing one of these and I mentioned
it as a goal for this year.
I recently finished the main anime adaptation of Legend of the
Galactic Heroes and it was very disappointing to me the series has such
little visibility amongst English anime viewers. Granted its age and its MIA
English localization probably play the largest role in its lack of popularity.
That said I wanted to do a little something for a show more people should
watch, to that end my first AMV.

For those not familiar with the format, an AMV is a series of anime clips
set to music. Sometimes they tell a story, or showcase some
action,
or are just funny.
I wanted to make an AMV that covered roughly the events of the first half of
the series (episodes 1 – 53 to be exact). I did not want a flat retelling of
events though so I themed it or focused it around the relationship between
Reinhard (blonde hair) and Kircheis (red hair). To those not familiar to the
series, they are childhood friends who set out to conquer the galaxy.

For the music I wanted something that fit the feel of the series. The show
makes extensive use of famous classical music, mostly Beethoven. While not
classical I went with Time To Say Goodbye,
sung by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli. I like the mournful nature of the
song and the interspaced use of English. I did not want to go with a poppy
contemporary piece as it would be jarring with the visuals of the series.

Scene Breakdown

Now that I have given a brief summary I am going to provide some commentary
on parts of the AMV.

00:00-00:22, I wanted to start big to give a good scale the series works
with. A shot of the galaxy to begin with and with each strum I narrow the shot
until we focus on the ship of our two main characters and then the characters
themselves. The preceding shots show a vast battle taking place until we fade
out to the end result of the battle, lots of ship wreckage. Not a huge fan of
the fade, but it does its job. These scenes are mostly from early episodes so
we see a very young Admiral Reinhard.

00:25, Shot of the Odin, the capital of the Empire. Its not important that
you know that, but series fans probably recognize it.

00:25-00:31, I wanted to establish that Reinhard is important within the
Empire, but still not the leader. The scene shows him being honored for the
battle we saw in the beginning.

00:32, Start of the flashback. Need to establish the long relationship
between Reinhard and Kircheis that started when they were young.

00:38-00:46, This scene with the bully helps establish both Reinhard’s
aggressive nature and how Kircheis is always there to help Reinhard out. The
rock beating scene also nicely matches up with the music. At times I think it
is a bit humorous, but I resisted changing it.

00:47-00:58, These are some scenes set after the bully time frame, but still
when Reinhard and Kircheis were young. I wanted to convey Reinhard ambitious
nature and I like the imagery of the gun shooting into space that fades into
his ship in full action. As you can tell I like fades. There is an important
subplot to the series involving Reinhard’s sister that these scenes are
important to, but it is not important for the story I am telling.

00:58-01:12. Easy call here to tie Kircheis’s death to the first “Time to
Say Goodbye” lyric. It is perhaps a bit quick setup after the flashback, but it
is really important that death and lyric are timed up well. This is a pretty
big spoiler for people who have not seen the series and arguably the most
important event in the entire series.

01:22, I went back and forth on including this somewhat gratuitous death
clip. It is a bit jarring, but I think it works. Kind of quick flashback that
Reinhard is contemplating.

01:25-01:43, Second flashback showing a bit more of Kircheis interacting
with Reinhard and doing his own thing. As a side not we can really see the jump
in quality across some of the early episodes in these flashbacks. After the
series came out some episodes were remastered so the quality can be all over
the place.

01:45, Its debatable if we need this shot of just the gravestone as the
earlier scene basically covers what we need to do, but I like lingering here a
bit.

01:49, The locket is a very important item to the series so I had to get a
shot of it here. You can see it also includes his sister who is important to
the story, but I ignore here.

01:50. Kircheis in the stars may be too cliche, but its from the series and
bookends this section of the AMV nicely.

01:53-01:56, The music changes and I need to jump a bit chronologically and
show how Reinhard has increased in power in the Empire. The scenes with the
crowd accomplishes this.

01:57-2:01, This scene is a bit clunky. I want to convey again how in charge
Reinhard is and setup the rest of the AMV, but we linger, perhaps too long, on
planning screens.

02:05, I love this shot of Reinhard and all the ships engines. As a side
note that is Mariendorf next to him. She becomes pretty important around the
half way mark of the series.

02:06-02:13, This is the planet Fezzan, a planet not in the Empire nor the
Free Planets Alliance (FPA). The two major antagonists in the show. It is one
of the first planets Reinhard takes on his campaign. It is a relatively quick
battle which I used to convey the size of Reinhard’s fleet in action.

02:14-02:19, Some of the most well drawn scenes in the series. Bookends
Reinhard’s conquest of Fezzan.

02:20-02:25, Maybe the cheesiest part of the AMV. That is an actual scene
from the anime so I went with it. Also you can see the locket again which is
super important.

02:26-02:45, Lot of ships again. Start to show some large battles with the
FPA, but nothing decisive.

02:52-03:19, Again we return to Reinhard’s ship and then show his decisive
involvement in a battle. Lots of FPA ships blowing up climaxing in a nice large
explosion. I cheat a bit and take a lot of battle clips from across the series,
but we need a lot of different shots here and frankly a lot of these battle
shots look the same.

03:20-03:23, Good scene to show after Reinhard’s great success. You can see
how lonely he is on the empty bridge and it contrasts well with the first shot
of him and Kircheis from the beginning.

03:24, This is Heinessen, home planet of the FPA, after being captured by
Reinhard.

03:26-03:27, This is a shot of Yang Wen-li, Reinhard’s counterpart in the
FPA. He is super important, but not covered at all in this AMV. I wanted to at
least give him a quick showing and I think these two rapid beats help introduce
him as the adversary nicely.

03:28, Real cool shot of both of their massive fleets converging.

03:28-03:41, Start of the battle, lots of fireworks to show the scale, but
nothing to show who will win.

03:41, Maps again! Its hard to convey how the battle is going so I went with
maps (which the series likes using too) to show things going against Reinhard.
This shot also has Yang in the middle.

03:44-03:51, Might be asking too much of a person not familiar with the
series, but I need to convey the battle turning in Yang’s favor. Showing the
map of a fleet disintegrating, FPA ships firing, and a lot of Empire ships
exploding hopefully conveys this. It might be difficult to get if you cannot
distinguish the different sides ships at this point.

03:54, Great scene of the Empire ships moving to defend Reinhard’s ships.
Hopefully conveys how desperate the battle is going.

03:55, Another really excellent scene of Reinhard having the ships guarding
his front explode.

04:01, And here we are end of the AMV. This shot is the best in the series
and what motivated me to do this AMV. I love the giant imposing FPA ship
bearing down on Reinhard. Its awesome and in my opinion, a a great ending with
the sudden cut to black.

The thing about that ending scene is, its a massive cheat. The very next
second that ship gets blown out by the timely arrival (in true anime fashion)
of Admiral Muller’s fleet. I admit its deceitful, but I really just wanted a
nice cliffhanger to end on to motivate people to watch the series.

Tools Lets wrap up with a quick tool discussion.
All of my editing was done with Sony Vegas 13. I like it a lot since its
relatively simple to use. I am sure other editors like Final Cut are just as
good, but I have been fiddling with Vegas for a bit now and I know how to do
what I want. The only real issue I had was the video sources. I was using files
in MKV format and Vegas cannot handle those files. I had to convert each
episode I wanted to use from MKV to MP4. I did this using Handbrake which is dirt simple. It was a tedious
work around, but it got the job done. I will leave you with a shot of all the
clips in the editor. You can see I like to have a lot of clips lying around so
I can mix and match and see what works.

LOGH AMV Editor

Categories
Future

The Grand Unified Plan

I recently mentioned the grand plan I will be pursing these next few years
in my yearly Oracle post. I
want to provide a overview of that plan in a bit of detail. The main goal of
this plan is to retire AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. This is not because I hate work,
but because I want to have the time to pursue other projects. To provide some
context to that idea, I like to think of my life as split into three
portions:

1. Ages 0-23: Education, the time of my life when I was mostly focused on
learning. Learning how to be of value to people who know me, future employers,
and to the world.

2. Ages 23-40: Work, the time of my life when I get my living and finances
in order so I can retire early. The learning has not stopped, but my focus is
more on producing things of value. Either for a company or for people who know
me.

3. Ages 40-Death: Retirement, the time of my life when I can take my
accumulated knowledge and produce something. I hesitate to call this the
“Legacy Building” period, but I do want to use the time for some long spanning
works and projects.

Now how can we achieve that? The short answer is, predictably, lots of
money. Right now I have started a small investment with Betterment, an online investing service. I
give them money and the make more out of it. Investing (either through
Betterment or something more hands on) is the key here. Now, I am going to
start the math talk explaining how this is going to work. If that sort of stuff
bores you skip the summary section.

If you look at some of
Betterment’s returns you can see they averaged 11% a year. Lets round that
down to 10% to make calculations easier. That means if you had $100 invested in
2013, when 2014 starts you have $110. Now if we scale that out to say half a
million dollars, 10% of that yearly would be $50,000. Plenty of income to live
comfortably. So the goal is have half a million dollars invested as quickly as
possible.

Now that we have a number, how long will it take to reach it? First we have
to consider expenses. I have got two big ones in the future: a house and a new
car. The house will probably be around $260,000. This number represents the
remaining mortgage including interest and not the total cost. I arrived at this
be assuming a $100,000 down payment and a loan with a 3.75% interest rate which
I predict paying off in under 15 years. I predict the car will cost around
$15,000. Since
some sources estimate your car will last on average 10 years, it seems
prudent to budget for at least one. So now we pushed the goal back a bit as it
is $775,000 (rounded to $800,000). This represents the predicted expenses
($275,000) and the necessary investment ($500,000).

Based on my records from last year I spent $9230.94. I do not expect that to
change greatly, but let us round that up to $10,000 a year in personal
expenses. I will also be on the hook for around $4,000 in housing taxes and
$1,500 in
heating costs. So that puts us at around $16,500 in yearly expenses. Let us
round that up to $20,000 to make life easy and account for unforeseen expenses
somewhat.

Now what about income? If I take my current salary, add in a 6% raise each
year (the average so far), and then calculate my total income after 10 years
that puts me at $995,990 or almost a million. However, this is before taxes and
expenses. If I subtract my average tax burden (26% of income) and $200,000 (my
expenses over 10 years) I get $540,000 to put towards my $800,000 goal. Close,
but not there yet. If we do the same calculation out to 15 years we get
$1,761,362. Now if we subtract taxes and expenses for that period we get almost
exactly a million (total income: $1,761,362 minus taxes at 26%: $457,954.12 –
minus expenses for 15 years: $300,000 = $1,003,407.88). That puts me well in
the range of my goal with plenty of buffer. Now if you look at the above age
range and know I am 25 this year you can see how in 15 years I will be 40 and
just hitting the retirement age and retirement investment I want.

The best part of this is I suspect the numbers will get even better. If you
look at the goal, some of that is just lost/non-interest generating cash (the
house and car or $275,000), but the rest goes into my investment account (some
$500,000). And that amount will grow year to year, so if every other value were
to remain consistent I would get to my goal earlier than predicted since every
one of those dollars contributed to the $500,000 goal will be working for me
earning cash.

Now it is a bit dangerous to assume all these numbers will turn out as
expected. It does seem unlikely to see a 10% growth on investments each year or
that my income will rise each year, despite some anecdotal
evidence. It could very well fall. You will notice I took some cheats here,
like assuming my expenses, taxes, etc stay constant. You should not see this
plan or a prediction, but as a guideline with milestones. I have an objective
and I have a path to get there. I know the numbers I need to hit on that path,
and as I walk it, I can adjust as the path unfolds.

Summary

Through low spending and high savings I hope to have enough invested in 15
years to live of the interest and pursue fanciful goals. I cannot predict the
future, but hopefully being thrifty will get me to a retirement earlier than
the US
average of 62.

Categories
Musings

Two Years at Oracle

Today is the second year of my full time employment by Oracle. Studious
readers will remember a similar
article exactly one year ago on this day. There is nothing particularly
important or auspicious about this day, but it is a good milestone to reflect
upon the previous year.

What Did I Learn This Year?

1. Buying a house is hard when you are picky. At this point I have looked at
around 20 houses or so. I have come close to making offers on two of those, but
ultimately decided against it. The benefit to this is a growing down-payment
which will make the purchasing easier. The downside is a a kind of purgatory
where I wait for something to happen. I am going to give it a few more months
and then consider more seriously a place less optimal than I would have liked.
The thought of another winter, house less is decidedly unpleasant.

2. I do not have to do everything. For a few month I have been helping to
oversee a project at work. It has been tough, but I am growing more accustomed
to delegating things to be fixed instead of just doing myself. It is tempting
to try and be the guru who knows and does everything, but this leaves no room
for the team to grow and become empowered themselves. It also serves to
centralize knowledge which can make maintainability troublesome in the
future.

3. I have a better idea of my long term life plans. Expect an article on
this to come, but I have a much better sense of how I want my career to go and
how (hopefully through good planning) I can retire early and pursue a second
less profitable career.

4. Investing is a big large monolithic subject, but easy to do once you
clear that first hurdle. I started a small account with Betterment and I am up $10 last I checked.
With continual investments every month this service (or some other endeavor I
run myself) will greatly contribute to my long term goals.

5. As you remember from last year I wanted to find old friends who I had
been out of contact with for some time. The good news is, in this digital age,
finding old friends is easy. The hardest part is starting to talk to them. It
is a lot like pulling out the knife from deep in the peanut butter jar, slow
but once you finish you get a sweet reward. I have had some great success
rediscovering what made us friends before.

What Am I Looking To Explore This Year?

1. Interested in doing some more metal working projects. With the great success of my foundry I
want to try actually making something useful with it. Maybe a butter knife. The
real problem now is making a good mold so my research will focus on that
next.

2. More puzzle hunts. We have done two so far with a vast increase in
success with the second one compared to the first. Hopefully we can do some
more and maybe even finish one.

3. Film projects of the small variety. I really like AMVs so I want to try
making a few to see how difficult they are.

4. Improve my technical skills. I said I would do it last year, and I am
recommitting to that again. I learned a lot of web2.0 frameworks this year such
as knockout, angular, some of the new java 1.8 enhancements
(like lambdas), and a fair amount about our build tools like ant and rpm.

Things I Failed at This Year

1. Buying a house.

2. Doubling down on costuming. I did do a little work making a helmet, but I was nowhere close to making
the two costumes I thought I would. I am just less interested in this than I
used to be.

3. Historical reenactment. I did nothing in regards to this during the year.
It is on hold until the house thing is settled.

4. Contacting my old friends. I had some success, but there are still some
who elude me.

Overall, an enriching year. 6 more years to retirement? 16 seems more
realistic.

Categories
Cosplay Projects

Melting Metal:Attempt 2

When last I attempted this I was met with a decided lack of success. Whether it
was a faulty microwave or a generally bad plan I will not pass judgement.
Luckily, I was groomed to be stubborn and one failure was not going to dissuade
me from my dream of controlling intense heat.

Thus we arrive at attempt two (try one):

What are we looking at here? My very own homemade foundry with a hairdryer
for a bellows. Instructions courtesy of this
youtube video. The general idea here is, put a bunch of coals in the
foundry, turn on the blower, and hope it gets hot enough. The results were
again disappointing. After about half an hour the foundry was at about
“hamburger grilling” temperature and the zinc block still resolutely solid. I
needed to get to, “melt your hand” temperature and that did not happen. Another
failure, but an instructive one. This leads us to attempt two (try two):

For the first try with the foundry I had not filled it with coals, using
only a conservative six coals or so. This time I could really amp the number up
so I packed in as many as I could which was 21. I accomplished this by reducing
the size of the crucible from a stainless steel pet food bowl to a tall shot
glass. I also significantly increased the air flowing into the foundry by
replacing the hair dryer with a leaf blower. The results were impressive:

And this was on the low setting. It is hard to see clearly, but there is a
very hot glow from the foundry this time. The difference in heat and noise was
immediate when I turned the blower on. With the hair dryer, the heat was tepid
at best. With the leaf blower there was very much a fiery roar. Looking in from
the top, the coals were glowing with heat within a few minutes. A marked
difference from last time. The heat pouring out the top was, in the words of a
person who never looked at a thesaurus, very hot. Worryingly, I found a part of
glass blown out from the foundry. Regardless, I let the whole thing run for
about ten minutes. After I turned off the blower, the sound died down and I
took a look. Upon removing the lid I came to a few conclusions:

1. The coals looked like moon rocks.

2. I could not find the glass.

Digging around a bit I eventually found what was left of the glass:

Yes it seems I put too much faith in the $2.09 Walmart glass purchase I had
made. Looking online it says glass does not melt until 1000-1500 degrees, but
it could become malleable around 700-900 degrees. Since 787.2 degrees is the
melting point of zinc, the metal I was trying to melt, this was not good.
Lesson learned the hard way, do not use a glass crucible next time. What of the
zinc though? I too was perplexed until I dug to the bottom of the foundry and
saw it had pooled at the bottom as a liquid. Yes, sweet success never felt so
hot. Moving quickly we were able to pour it into a coffee can and then to the
mold. The liquid was so hot it burnt the label off the can, but thankfully the
can was stout enough to not melt itself.

You can see the bottom of the mold was not good enough as the metal pooled
out, but the general shape is there. I would call this a success.

What did we learn?

1. Glass is not a good crucible.

2. 21 coals and a leaf blower is enough to get 800 or so degrees of heat. I
honestly did not expect it to get so hot. I really must get a IR Temperature
Gun to see how hot I can get it. Also would be interesting to see if I can get
the same results with less coals.

3. I need a bigger foundry cover. A number of embers slipped out via the
edges and we had to constantly put out small fires and keep the ground around
it wet. This should not be too hard to do, I can just add on to the cover I
already have.

4. I need a better mold, with a better seal on the bottom. Perhaps
investigate these sand
molds on the same youtube channel.

Overall, it took three tries, but after some tweaks I got it. I look to make
some improvements and give it another shot. You can find a few more photos in
the album.

Categories
Uncategorized

Elsie Roth

Elsie Roth, my grandmother died April 2. You can read the summary of her
life here.

It is hard to know someone when they live far away. What with my Grandmother
living all her life in Pennsylvania and me in Massachusetts (Mass-a-choo-choo
to some), visits were infrequent. They were always an event with her though. A
consummate host, meals were lavish affairs. Difficult logistically given the
cramped townhouse she lived in, but still quite a production. It is a shame our
visits became more frequent only after she moved to a nursing home. It is hard
to pinpoint when she actually died. We know when her body died, but this
occurred long after her mind. I miss the bright cheer she showed when she saw
me. Always present when I was young, but less and less each visit. It is this
image I remember, not of a person robed of humanity by loss of memory.

She is gone now and we will not meet again. That is ok though, I need not a
physical presence to remember her.

Categories
GameDesign Video Games

Unnamed Space Strategy Game

Ideas are cheap, so here is mine.

Lately I have been enjoying Homeworld Remastered which got
me thinking about what would make a great new space strategy game.

There is a shamefully limited offering in this genre, see Homeworld, Sins of a Solar
Empire, Conquest Frontier
Wars, Nexus the Jupiter
Incident for some examples. Limited they may be, but on a whole most of
these games treat space battles like naval battles with extra dimensions. This
is serviceable, but can be visually confusing. In the example of Homeworld, it
is hard to see what is happening once a battle begins. Generally the capital
ships will be separate, forming a rough battle line, but they can be split on
various levels from the z-axis. The fighter craft will be intermixed between
the lines. Given enough ships this can make for a very confusing battle. With
ships all over the place it can be hard to see if your forces are winning or
not. A strategy game should not do that. Good strategy games offer clear
feedback if you are winning, losing, or drawing. If you cannot tell what state
the battle is in, you cannot make interesting choices to try and alter the
state. At that point you are not playing a game, you are just watching. The
spectacle of watching a battle unfold however should not be neglected. Space
battles have their own majestic quality. so there must be a vibrant color
palette in both ship and space.

What are the conclusions I have drawn: 1. Current space strategy games draw
heavy influence from naval simulations. 2. Strategy games need to always convey
the state of the battle. 3. Battles in space must be visually engaging.

With this in mind I want to suggest a different influence for games set in
space. Instead of a naval influence we should instead look to the battles of
Napoleon. With a naval influence the number of ships involved in a battle tend
to skew toward the low end. Maybe reaching a 100 capital ships in a lively game
in Homeworld. These numbers are far too insufficient. I want battles to number
in the tens of thousands. There was near to 200,000 soldiers involved in the
Battle of Waterloo. We should aim for similar numbers of space craft. This of
course brings up issues of controlling so many units at once. If we take
inspiration from games modeling this period such as Empire Total War or
Ultimate General: Gettysburg you
can see we do not handle individual soldiers, but collections of them, maybe
100-300 at a time. In this same way we should organize our ships in squadrons
of a similar number. The games I mentioned tend to only deal with about 30-60
thousand units in a battle, so we may want to increase our unit size to around
a 1000 ships per collection. Now that we have split our army into neat
collections of ships we can have both a large number of ships in an engagement
and we can far more easily move them. In Homeworld you may have to move and
organize around 50 capital ships at any one time. In my model of collections of
a 1000 or more, we can easily have players controlling 25,000 ships and still
moving around less pieces than in the Homeworld example. More ships, easier
control.

To the second point, we need to make sure the game always conveys the state
of the battle. To solve this problem look towards Scourge of War: Gettysburg or
Sid Meier’s
Gettysburg. Both games track how effective a particular unit is doing, both
in dealing damage and sustaining damage. If a unit is taking more damage than
it is dealing it is losing, the inverse, it is winning. So to should our game
always have available this information. Either as a number prominently
displayed, or as some visual element. Secondly, the nature of a Napoleonic
style battle is many units in neat lines maneuvering against the enemy. With
such rigid formations we can avoid the issue of ships intermingling like they
do in Homeworld. This also has the added benefit of always showing a clear view
of the battle which is important for both determining who is winning (the
state) and what moves to make next (the heart of a strategy game).

Finally, we need to ensure our battles are interesting to watch. This is a
bit hit or miss in the examples I have given. Homeworld has a lot of ship
customization, but SIns of Solar Empire and Nexus have little. If we look to
the armies of
Napoleon’s time we can see a great variety in uniforms. Lots of bold
vibrant colors. So to should our ships sport such dashing design. We should
have a great deal of customization of fleet colors and fleets should lean
towards bright colors, instead of dull navy gray.

To summarize: 1. Draw inspiration from Napoleonic wars, not naval ones. 2.
Enforce collections of many ships and rigid formations. 3. Emphasize bright
colors.

Now that we have solved some of the problems of the genre, at least on
paper, let us look to differentiate the title a bit. As mentioned, Napoleonic
battles should be our inspiration. To that end we should emphasis a rock,
paper, scissors balance. In a battle of that time there were generally three
types of units: line infantry, cavalry, and artillery. In this relationship,
infantry is good against all other types as long as they can be kept at optimal
range, artillery beats all other types at long range, and cavalry beats all
types at close range. We should model our fleet on those types. Average speed
ships with average ranged weapons that fight in massed formation (infantry),
fast agile ships with melee or close range weapons (cavalry), and weak long
ranged ships (artillery). This simple balance make it easy to understand how to
place you units to optimize their potential. Most space strategy games do not
have a concept of cavalry or artillery. They tend to focus on ships that all
engage at or near to the same range, but with different weapons. The idea of
melee in space is pretty unexplored. Homeworld: Cataclysm
has a ship that pushes other ships away from a battle, but I know of no other
game that models very close range fighting. It would be a cool idea to explore
some in-universe explanation for this. Artillery in space is also little
explored. Sins of a Solar Empire features long range missile platforms, so we
would probably have ships equipped for long range missile launch in our
game.

Secondly we should consider adding a layer of logistics to our game.
Homeworld tracked fuel for fighter craft, but had no other supply mechanics.
Conquest Frontier Wars did have supply on a ship to ship basis and it was very
important to the game. Lack of supply ships could doom assaults. We should
consider adding similar mechanics to our game. Units should have two needs,
fuel and ammunition. As the battle progresses it would be necessary to ensure
ships do not run out of either or they would be unable to move or fire. This
adds some complexity, but opens up interesting strategic options, like cutting
off enemy resupply in battle.

The toughest point to consider is how to handle z-dimensional movement. Some
space games, like Sins only support moving on the x,y plane. Homeworld and
Nexus have full 3d movement. I think we should do the same. Players expect that
freedom of movement in space and it allows us some interesting strategy, such
as attacking an enemy from above or below. Our new emphasis on Napoleonic
battle helps us here as attacks from the flanks (or above/below) should inflict
additional damage. We should be careful of constraints here though. If we allow
too much z-axis freedom ships will start going everywhere for little gain.
Perhaps we could limit the area of battle somewhat so the units do not get too
separated. This will be tough to justify in-universe. We could set the area
engagement to be so large that we could enforce a communication delay between
ships. May be interesting to increase unit response times the further they get
from the flagship, the unit sending the orders. This would keep units close to
the flagship and make that unit very important. Do you move your flagship with
an assault so that you can relay orders quickly or do you create a complicated
battle plan and hope it is carried out as expected.

Overall It is not so much that we are making a new design, but repurposing
an existing design for a different setting. I want to shift our focus away from
individual ship management to that of a large scale battle of maneuver. To
those of you familiar with anime this setting is not so new, it is basically
how battles are fought in the classic anime series Legends of the
Galactic Heroes. Now if only the games
they made were localized.

Categories
Travel

Trip to India

IndiaHotel

At least it is not Oakland.

Almost a year ago I learned Oracle would be adding some people to its office
in Bangalore, India. Some
of these people would be working on a product I am very familiar with. Thus I
hatched some bugs, put them into some ears, and on February 1st found myself
and a coworker headed to India to impart our knowledge. This turned out to be
me my first mistake. As you know I am a lover of the greatest
American sport and February 1st happens to be the date of its ultimate game. I had thought
this was the date for the least ultimate game of the
year, but I really should have checked. Regardless, plans were made, hotels
booked, promises made, I could not deviate. Luckily, my team met with victory
on the field which I found out mid flight. This was the highlight from all my
air travel. Flying has got to be the worst indignity given unto woman and man.
Every time I had to board an airplane I was cast (begrudgingly) into some yet
new and wonderful rendition of security theater. A play with many actors, and
yet more directors. I danced off various items of clothing, twirled for the
benefit of machines and humans alike, and finally (with great flourish) had
various forms and paper stamped. Truly a modern marvel. And what, you may
rightfully ask, was my reward for my many labors? 17 hours of flying over two
flights. Every time I fly I think, “It will be fine, I will just sleep the
whole way.” How optimistic past Paul is. I can never sleep on a plane. It is
too noisy, there is too much vibration, I cannot get comfortable. Whatever the
reason, it is a losing prospect. Earplugs, pillows, small flight blankets, all
useless. The saving grace though: airplane food. I have such a low standard for
food that I actually enjoy airline food. I dunno, maybe its all the colorful
wrapping it comes in, but it always seems pretty good to me. Tis a bit weird
though, silently eating food next to strangers. The takeaway is, In the future,
I must acquire a greater title within Oracle. Not for the salary benefits,
strictly so I can book business class, otherwise known as: not baby class.
Every miserable time I have been flown there has been a baby not five rows from
me. There must be some airline supercomputer that ensures optimal flight baby
distribution. This is the only reason people book classes other than economy.
More leg room, whatever. Some different food, do not care. No screaming babies,
give me that ticket. It is like a little organic siren, howling every hour to
remind you that, yes you are still strapped into this metal tube with me. Fear
me giant, for I have a mighty roar. Unfortunately, I am still that lowly Oracle
peon. Bring on the babies.

India though is awesome. Perfect February weather. Clear skies, a dry 70
degrees, nothing but sun. I am told this is the weather all year round. As much
as I like the seasons, snow is only cool for one storm. Anything after is just
messy commutes and delayed arrival. Lets talk logistics. first thing the
hotel:

IndianHotelInside

I was not ready for the swankiness. This was some no name Hilton. Yup, the
same company I stayed with for Java One and OpenWorld. I thought the one in
Oakland was alright for sure, but nothing special. Its totally different in
India. As we were driving to the hotel, the driver kept zipping us down these
small narrow roads. There are cars and people everywhere (city of 4.3 million)
and we are just bumping down these not great neighborhoods. I am thinking, “I
have been watching too much Boardwalk Empire, every gangster dies this way.”
Then (no joke) we take one turn and it is glorious, gentrified, guarded office
park and hotel. The security is a little strange at first, I was not aware
crime was that bad. They even checked the car for a bomb, which as an aside
must be the worst job in India. You know you are only ever going to find one
bomb. Regardless, I thought the facade was going to fall away once in the room,
that was not true. There were so many lights and switches it took 5 minutes to
turn them all off when getting ready for bed. I had so much space I had a guest
bathroom, A GUEST BATHROOM. Who am I going to have over. “Oh, thanks for coming
guest, nice to have you. You need to use the bathroom? Use the guest bathroom
you filthy plebeian, the master bathroom with its separate shower and bathtub
with tv is for my use only!” They even gave me two jars of nuts for some
reason. I hate nuts (except peanuts), but I took them anyways. There were three
tvs in the whole suite. One in the bathtub, one in the living room, and one in
the bedroom (not 10 feet from the other one), just in case you wanted to watch
tv, but also wanted to lie in bed and could not be bothered to go into the
other room. I have an actual kitchen, with pots and pans. There was even a
switch to tell housecleaning you did not want to be disturbed. A switch, for a
light outside your room. No door knob placards here in India. This hotel also
gets the award for best free breakfast. A lot of places just put out some stale
baked goods and dry cereal and call it “continental”. Not the Hilton in India.
Imagine a college dining place, with all the stations and options, now imagine
it was good (minus the floppy bacon, crispy or get out), this is the Hilton in
India. The only negative about my stay was blowing up my radio. I brought the
correct plug converter, but you need an adapter as well or else the device will
be given too much power. This manifests itself as a loud pop and thin wisps of
smoke. My clock radio is now dead, casualty of traveling

On the subject of casualties, while in country Oracle blessed us with a
personal driver. This was incredible and made me feel like a boss, spelled
b-a-u-s. The thing is driving in India is terrible. No one stays in their lane.
Sure there are lanes, but crank up the volume and people will start forming
extra lanes. Two lanes become three, ones become two. This is because everyone
is driving (4.3+ remember). Dads with three kids on their bike, tiny trucks
loaded with food, buses packed with workers. Its crazy and everyone is trying
to shoot for the gap and get in spaces there is none. I sat shotgun a few
times, cars are not meant to be this close. Every turn looks like the start of
an accident. Lights are optional in some cases and so is right of way. Luckily
the office is not too far from the hotel. The placement is odd though. Oracle
could have built it on the nice office park the hotel was on. Instead it seems
like they picked a slum and installed an office park in the middle of it. Not
to worry though, a giant wall surrounds the place to keep out the riff raff and
ragamuffins. It is a strange feeling to be inside the wall looking out.

The actual training though, who cares. I talked for about two full days.
They taped all of it in glorious HD, so there exists 16 or so hours of me
perfecting the dry technical delivery.

All the talking though produced quite the appetite. First day come lunch I
was stoked for that authentic Indian. In comes the boss with Pizza Hut. The
offer was nice, and I was hungry, but what is the deal, this is Pizza Hut, not
Indian. All was resolved come dinner though. We went to a place called Barbeque Nation. The deal is
each table has a grill at it and they keep bringing food on spits for the
grill. I am eating all this food with strange names, and it is good, but spicy.
I am talking spice sweat spicy. Like you just woke up from a bad dream sweat,
but caused by spice. So I gorge myself like everyone else and then they say,
“that was the appetizer, it’s buffet.” You mean there is more food? So I eat
even more food. This is where I hit spice critical. Before it was under
control, drinking water between every bite, but now my mouth is just an oven.
So I bail and eat desert. Paul G top tip: mouth too spicy, get some Indian ice cream.

That was my three days, survive traffic to the office, talk, eat lots of
spicy food, survive drive back. Make sure to leave early or be caught in
horrible Bangalore gridlock. On my last day I thought it would be a good idea
to fly out at 2;50 in the morning.This was not a good idea. I had not
anticipated being so tired. Generally I am an owl of the night. So when I was
nodding off at 11PM, I knew it was going to be trouble. The problem with being
sleep impaired in India is all the bureaucratic nonsense you are subjected to
on leaving. I thought entering was bad enough: multiple forms and an extra
security check (huh). Just try leaving the country. You get your passport and
flight details checked at the door (good thing some flight offices are outside
the airport). Then you check in, go through immigration (passport checked
twice), go through security, passport checked twice. All the while people are
stamping your boarding pass with all kinds of stamps and symbols. Finally, you
get to the gate and then on boarding (which there is no announcement so be
close to the gate) they check everything again. Even the little tag for my
carry on. Glad I did not discard that, would probably not have made it out of
the country. I get being thorough, but the law of diminishing returns comes
into play here. My reward for my hoop jumping ability: 17 hours, two flights,
snowy cold Boston. At least the Paris airport looks like one of those curved
space stations.

ParisAirport

That was India in a nutshell, really far away with a lot of spicy food, and
great weather. I give it six spicy chicken things out of 15 glasses of
water.

Categories
Philosophy

You Just Need One

Take a trip back with me to those halcyon days of 2002. Back when I was in
5th grade a game would come out that would set the template for an great number
of copy cat titles. That game is Medal of Honor
Allied Assault. Fear not though, this post is not about this game. It is a
great game no doubt, with a number of high quality sequels (although the
further out you get from the original the worse they get). No this post is
really about the game’s intro. Take a gander at it here. Did you catch the last
line?

Can one man truly make a difference?

Normally we can all just roll our eyes at the omission of both genders, but
that oversight is kind of a big deal here because I want to apply that question
to
this article. Our protagonist is Alayne Fleischmann, who was employed by
JPMorgan Chase during the recent financial crisis. Her story is a good one so I
suggest you read the whole article before continuing.

Having read that, let us take stock of the results:

  • Mrs. Fleischmann told people at JPMorgan what they were doing was
    fraud
  • JPMorgan laid her off.
  • JPMorgan paid the government 9 billion partially due to her testimony.
  • No executives were charged.

By some accounting, yes she did make a difference. JPMorgan was so afraid of
her testimony that they worked very hard to pay off penalties so she could not
testify. But I am going to postulate that no, she did not make a difference.
Show me the executives who lost their jobs, show me that JPMorgan does business
fundamentally differently, show me the laws that enforce greater oversight
(counterpoint).
Granted, It is a bit unfair to look at these complex organizations and judge
their interactions to find a clear difference in operation. I get that, but I
doubt it provides any solace to Mrs. Fleischmann, who lost her job, who dealt
with the legal fallout for years, and who is unemployed according to Wikipedia. Show me she
made a difference.

It is a shame right? She ought to have something to show for it, something
should have changed? And here we arrive at the point: acting to your
ideals is the only reward you deserve. It is great when things work
out. Wrongs are righted, justice is delivered, lifetime movies are made, the
works. Plenty of times though you act expecting the cherry and get the pit. You
can be exiled from your
country, you can be on the losing side, you can even die. The
only reward these people deserve is the satisfaction of acting to their ideals.
After that nothing else is guaranteed.

In a way it is depressing to think this, that you can do good and nothing
can change. I would instead postulate a different analysis, that understanding
this is the way of things is liberating. I do not need good things to happen,
the universe does not owe me a reward for being on my best behavior. I just
need to be true to myself and I can be content with the outcome.

This is why I am so happy people like Mrs. Fleischmann exist. She acted
against her own financial interest knowing the outcome was in doubt because her
morals were so strong, such a core part of her being that to not act would have
changed her. It would have made her something she did not want to be.

She did make a difference, for herself. She was tested, her morality was
tested, and she made a choice to be true to herself. You only need one person
to do that.

Categories
Philosophy

I Kill Animals For Sport and I Enjoy It

I love Inflammatory titles. I do not do this just to stir up some passion in
you dear reader, instead I strive to get to the point as quick as I can. With
this hobby of mine there can be no denying its aims. I go into the woods, I try
and find small cat sized birds (pheasants), and I try and kill them with a gun.
If you still do not believe me, and frankly it may be hard to blame you given
the rest of the articles on this blog, here is some recent photographic
evidence.

So why do I do this? You may be tempted into thinking I am a sadist. I am
sure that would be the opinion of PETA. To be fair, It would be untruthful of
me to say that I do not derive some base thrill in the act. Humans have been
hunting animals to survive before we could yet form words. The need is now
passed, but the instinct and feeling remains. This is not the reason though. A
popular explanation is hunting is just another aspect of a nature lover. I too
will confess to enjoying the forest scenery in spurts. It is generally too
early or not light enough for me to fully enjoy it however. You would think an
ex-boy scout would take more joy just being in the woods, but I have always
been more at home in my home. How about enjoying the sport aspect? That thought
is pretty close. There is a fair bit of competition between human and prey.
Pheasants are pretty cunning animals. They hunker down until you are right on
top of them and can move deceptively fast on the ground. Their speed through
the air is nothing special, but given the chance, they can put much distance
between themselves and you with wings alone. Even with all my technology and
skill, my success rate this season is 0%, which is worse than seasons past, but
not by much. This is not my main reason though. Consider a popular question
poised when I tell people I hunt: “Do you eat what you get?”

Yes, emphatically yes, that is why I am getting up before dawn and walking
around in the cold. Why I am covered in bright orange. Why I am wading through
muddy field with tall grass. I am not looking for Pokemon, I am looking for
meat. To put it simply, I eat the flesh of a once living creature. I have to be
willing to do some of the dirty work myself. We live in an industrialized
country with an efficient meat industry. All the blood work happens behind the
scenes. All we get is a Styrofoam plate, some plastic, and a red hunk of
organic material. We are so removed that it becomes easy to rationalize and
forget that this was once a living creature. A creature with thoughts, however
simple. One of those thoughts was survival, but we ignored that for our own
gain. We are queens and kings of the food chain so we have that right, but as
royalty we have a noblesse oblige and that is to not forget that we killed
something to live. I must not forget that, but I have to be pragmatic. I cannot
raise cows and chickens. The expense, the time, the skill, the first I care not
for and the last two I lack. This is my own small recognition of what others do
on my behalf.

Do not fool yourself into thinking you are some how lessened for not taking
part in this little ritual of mine. For me, I must act to appreciate their
sacrifice. Just appreciate that something died so you can live. Something to
chew on.