Archive for May 2016
Posts (11) :: Photos (42)Posts
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Totally different yo (Click to view full-size) Totally different yo 31 May 2016 7:49amClose I am of course a long-time Magic the Gathering player. Over the past year or so I’ve also been playing Blizzard’s digital CCG Hearthstone (limiting myself to free to play since who has money to spend on two CCGs?) and I’ve been thinking about the design parallels and differences between the two.
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A while back I answered a question over on Quora about how I got started down the path of programming. It’s not a particularly interesting story, but I still thought I’d record it here for posterity. Sometime when I was much younger, maybe somewhere between twelve to fourteen years old, I remember having some sort of QBasic programming learning book at home. I forget how we got it, I think my uncle brought it home for me sometime for some reason.
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The Making of Karateka by Jordan Mechner My rating: 4 of 5 stars The book is literally a collection of journal entries detailing young Jordan Mechner’s days as a university student at Yale at the same time working on what would be his first published game. I found it both inspiring (though some might consider me the wrong age to be inspired by it) and amusing as a look into the life of a young man in the early 80s.
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Relevant XKCD: Sometimes I have this inexplicable urge to argue with people. With recent events I’ve found myself getting into more discussions, debates and otherwise friendly arguments online. The quality of these interactions hasn’t always been the best, and many times I feel like I should have stopped engaging sooner or maybe not participated at all. I’ve considered some points to help me decide in the future whether to bother engaging other people online.
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Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds by Scott Berkun My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’ve been following and reading Scott Berkun’s blog on and off for the past 5 years or so, so I already have a passing familiarity with this work. Mindfire collects some of the best essays from his blog into an easy-to-read format that you can digest in one-to-two sittings. Berkun writes about a number of diverse topics such as how to think critically and how to interact with other people and how to spend your attention.
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"Everyone knows the third movie is always the worst" -- Jean still too much focus on Jennifer Lawrence/Mystique some great soundtrack choices Quicksilver scene maybe just a tiny bit too long. Tradition of defying the rules of physics continues (I hope someone does the math on how fast he was probably moving) nice 80s wardrobe lol not particularly faithful to the source material plot is all over the place, a lot of WTF moments here and there.
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Or “How Did A Ceramic Pot End Up In Stellar Orbit”? (Click to view full-size) 18 May 2016 11:55pmClose Stellaris is a 4x space strategy game available on Steam. The game is created by Paradox, well-known for a number of other grand strategy games mostly with a historical basis such as Crusader Kings. I’ve owned Crusader Kings II for a while now but never got into it too deeply because (a) it’s just a bit too overwhelming; and (b) I find the combat way too obtruse.
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“The price for being the best is always having to be the best”
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We shouldn’t have to keep telling people that Ferdinand Marcos was a terrible president and that the Martial Law he imposed was terrible for the country. Imagine if a significant percentage of German citizens kept insisting that Hitler was a great man and the more sensible Germans had to keep trying to educate them on why that wasn’t true and why World War II was a terrible idea and that they wanted to elect Hitler’s descendant to a position of national prominence.
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Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut My rating: 5 of 5 stars Cat’s Cradle is only the second Vonnegut book I’ve read, after Slaughterhouse Five. I find myself fascinated with how he unveils his narrative in short, seemingly disconnected bursts, something much more obvious in this book. Like S5, CC’s plot starts close to normal ordinary fiction and ends in a completely different place that’s strictly in the realm of sci-fi. A great read, and very easy too given the structure of ridiculously short chapters View all my reviews
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This has been one of the most divisive and shenanigan-filled election campaign seasons ever, and politics is normally crazy in this country so that’s saying something. There’s a strong use of social media this time around, and it’s led to the internet being a hotbed of opinions and propaganda and memes and lies and half-truths and threats of violence. I was hoping greater citizen involvement via social media and the debates would mean citizens have more information and thus would get to be more discerning, but it seems that things have only gotten worse.