Years ago in university I had a full-credit course which was actually a glorified turn-based strategy game.  In this game, we grouped off into 6 teams of about 8 and we would have a week to determine the parameters of our next turn.  When the turns were all contributed, the professor would fire them into the server and determine how successful each team was.

The novel thing about the course (aside from the whole game=course concept) was that they had university alums acting as a Board of Directors, who our team would have to report to.  They would analyze our performance and question our decisions, and we’d have to defend them.  Our grade would be a combination of how the Board judged us, and on our actual performance in the game relative to the other teams.

Each team operated a factory making widgets, so the parameters we had control over were things like factory capacity, price, quality of source material, and so forth.  The one basic constraint was that you couldn’t drastically expand capacity from week to week, so you had to play a bit conservative or go broke.   My contribution to the team was a spreadsheet using a evolutionary algorithm to optimize our decisions based on an array of probable actions by our competitors.  So our success would depend on the technical terror I had constructed.

The first week turned out to be a huge success.  We utterly destroyed the competition, so severely that it was kind of embarrassing.  The other teams sucked really hard and made a bunch of dumb decisions.  So as a group we decided to play the next round more conservatively, because obviously the other teams could now see what we did and improve their standing.

They did not.  We increased our lead over the competition, even in our conservative state… but now we had to report to our Board.  Obviously our top position was good, but they were not impressed that we didn’t play our lead to the full advantage.  Which is all fine and dandy, so we played it less conservative the next rounds.

Each time we started a new round we figured that finally the other teams would figure out the game and start catching up.  I mean, it really wasn’t that hard to do.  Except each time they did not, and we steadily increased our lead to the point where by the last few rounds we were making the most expensive product on the market for among the lowest cost, and by far the most sales.

The widgets our team made were the stuff that suits dream about, a blessed love child of Apple, Google, and Nintendo.  We owned, and it was terribly funny trying to imagine what these other poor teams must have been going through.  Our board kept on prodding us to be more aggressive, and eventually we stopped worrying that the other teams were going to clue in.

However, the final glory was still to come.  Our final board meeting was up, and we had just finished a round of ultra-aggressive pricing and capacity and were now more successful than all of the other teams combined.  The board was going to love us, and we knew we were all getting an A.

I had one more ace up my sleeve for the Board though.  I calculated the P/E ratio of our competitors and how that related to market capitalization in the real world.  I found that the likely market cap of our competitors was less than the in-game cost of expanding our factories.  So to bypass the game’s constraint about adding capacity, I proposed to our board that the best course of action would be to purchase our competitors for their factory space.

The board ate it up like crack covered strawberries.  I ended up with an A+, by far the highest mark I ever received in any course.  And it was completely awesome.

Did you ever play old-school BBS games way back when the Internet was just a fad?

Specifically, do you recall the awesome multiplayer RPG “Legend of the Red Dragon”, aka LORD?

I’ve recently set up a version of this on my server and it’s completely awesome, so if you have a hankering for some nostalgic fun let me know and I’ll set you up with an account.

In Rainbows is completely fantastic.  Buy it now for the low-low price of whatever you feel like.  It’s worth at least that much, I promise.

• Anya (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

At the top of the list for a good reason.  Her peripheral character stole nearly every scene she was in, and made the last few seasons of BtVS bearable.  Attitude: been there for 1000 years and thus seen it all, stunningly literal, comically absurd fear of bunnies, and a healthy dose of self-interest to boot.

• Hiro Nakamura (Heroes)

Hiro enters our view as just another bored cubical dweller, but manages to distinguish himself through hope and childlike enthusiasm.  Who didn’t stare at a clock and want it to stop time?  Hiro did too but he made it work… and we love him for it.  It would be far too easy for this character to be cliched or dull, but Hiro makes it all seem fresh and enjoyable.

• Captain Mal (Firefly)

I had said for years that Han Solo deserved his own show, smuggling things from one dingy port to another with his band of colourful cohorts.  Firefly brought my dream to light for a period of time ever so brief.  Malcom’s survival instinct drives his character and is why he is still alive, but he still cares about doing the right thing when it doesn’t contradict his self interest.

• Atia of the Julii (Rome)

Conniving, backstabbing, manipulative, vindictive, ruthless, and downright evil.  Atia takes the term “bitch” and kicks it up to a whole new level.  And she does it with such grace and style that she somehow avoids being hated for it, even though she clearly is the worst of villains.

• Lt Columbo (Columbo)

Everyone’s favourite mumbling bumbling detective whose skills puts Sherlock to shame.  Columbo throws ‘em off guard with his demeanor and beats the murderers at their own game.  Even though he has to learn something pretty niche to do it, he’ll get you.  Just one more thing: he’ll get you to confess too, sucker!

• Dominic Da Vinci (Da Vinci’s Inquest)

Millions of shows have tried to portray a noble determined do-gooder in a position of authority, and usually fail to resemble anything realistic.  None have surpassed the character of Dominic Da Vinci on his little known Canadian television show.  Da Vinci oozes charisma as he treats people from all walks of life with respect.

• Jean-Luc Picard (Star Trek: TNG)

Why was TNG so much better than its Trek successors?  The shortest answer lies with a certain French starship captain with a suspiciously British accent.  He brings Shakespearean seriousness to the scene in a way that isn’t corny or forced like so many imitators.  There are four lights.  Seriously.

• Lennie Briscoe (Law & Order)

Lennie rules.  It is no coincidence that Law & Order has been in steady decline since his untimely departure.  Lots of cop shows deliver corny one-liners, but with Lennie it was just plain awesome.

• Nancy Botwin (Weeds)

Suburban housewife trapped by unfortunate circumstance… sounds like the plot of a very routine and predictably dull show.  But Nancy has such an energetic and free spirit that her character seems refreshing instead.  Also attractive is her sense of fearlessness in the face of extremely difficult and dark situations.

• MacGyver (MacGyver)

Put MacGyver in a prison cell with a paper clip and some peanut butter, and he’ll make a grenade launcher, stop the evil baddies and save the day as well with time left over for the damsel in distress.   I mean c’mon, how cool is that?  Ingenious inventions to get out of tight situations, it’s shocking there have been no successors to his throne.

• House (House MD)

Acerbic and spiteful, House excels at his job and that’s about his only character trait.  His tell-it-like-it-is attitude is combined with brazen deceitfulness when faced with obstacles.  House is better than you, you know it, he knows it, his boss knows it — and thus you put up with his entertaining shit.

• Bubbles (Trailer Park Boys)

Bubbles is an innocent misplaced in a sinful world full of criminality.  This is not to say that he’s above the law, but he means well and maintains his naivety while everyone around him strives to make it big.  Best seen in contrast to his alter ego Conky, Bubbles brings morality sorely missing from his cohorts.

• Tobias Funke (Arrested Development)

In a cast of standouts, Tobias managed to stand out.  Everything about him was just awesome, from his cutoffs to his marriage to his parenting skills to his jobs.  Everything he did, said, and acted out was funny and witty and awesome.

• Butters (South Park)

Bubbles from TPB transplanted into the South Park world.  The main difference in South Park being that the delightfully innocent Butters ends up being the recipient of the other kids torment.  Also like Bubbles has a swell alter-ego (Dr Chaos) who acts out the aggression which Butters represses.  Butters is all too often too naive to understand the actions of everyone around him.

• Chloe (24)

I’m sorry, but you have to respect someone who turns the act of pouting into a cornerstone of their character.  Chloe, the queen of pouting, manages to sustain grumpiness and grudges while everyone around her is trying to save LA from being assassinated with a presidential terrorism nuke.  Or whatever it is they are facing that day.  They can kill off anyone on that show, hell –even Jack, but they cannot kill off Chloe.

• 9th Doctor (Doctor Who)

I never liked Doctor Who, but when the series re-emerged a few years ago I gave it a chance.  And I loved it, the 9th Doctor had such energy and zest for life and the universe through time.  To him, everything was cool and exciting and every adventure was full of life.  At the same time he was detached from day-to-day events because of his unique perspective on the universe as only he knows it.

• David Brent (The Office UK)

He’s a self-absorbed idiot who thinks he is much funnier than he is… and yet is still somehow loveable because he really does mean well.  He’s the boss who is so terrible that he that makes our own look great in comparison — a pretty good accomplishment all by itself.

Yeah, it’s overhyped today, the media talks about it way too much, blah blah blah.  But right now I don’t care.  Maybe I’m getting sentimental in my old age, who knows.
This is a picture of Manhattan that I took in Feb 1998 from the observation deck at the World Trade Center when I was visiting NYC with my good friend (and sometimes commenter) Joey JoJo Shabadu Jr.  I still can’t really believe it’s not there anymore, even though I’ve been to the site since then.  Pictures of the NYC skyline just seem like they are missing something, even five years later.

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Miss me?

To celebrate my return, here is a picture of Margaret Thatcher with a hilter mustache.

The gleaming eagle
Swoops down and catches its prey
Then goes to its nest

The desert sand blows
On a deserted island
Then goes in the sea

A drop of water
Is a crystal in the sea
That shines in the sun.

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One thing that really interests me is how living in urban centres distances ourselves from the social constraints that you would have in smaller groups.  For example: in a tribe of 100 people, if you do something antisocial like let your dog poop everywhere everyone else will treat you like garbage.  But in a large urban society, those societal pressures don’t really apply for better or for worse — the good or bad things you do that would be rewarded or punished in a smaller setting are just ignored.  If your dog poops on the sidewalk you just move on, and you don’t really have to worry ever seeing anyone again even if they give you a nasty look when you walk away.

This has a lot of implications, for example how small town people don’t like “big government” and large cities are usually full of liberals who regulate everything.  It just makes sense in the different contexts, because in the smaller towns there is a relatively greater chance that societal pressures will be able to accomplish things that big cities require rules and regulations to accomplish.  That’s obviously just one part of it, but I digress.

What adds to that discussion is an article I ran across from South Korea, where the internets are so pervasive that the societal pressures of small groups can sometimes even apply on a larger scale.  Read this IHT article and note especially the bottom paragraphs.  Even in (assumedly) a large city, the mob rule of the internet has transformed a large city into using negative social pressure to punish someone for letting their dog poop on the sidewalk — something that would have otherwise just been anonymous.

Regardless whether you think the reaction was overboard or not (I certainly do), it has interesting (to me) implications about what this means in our society.  Is this mob rule going to replace some of the rules that we enforce today?  Instead of a $500 fine for people not cleaning up after their dogs, maybe the parks should just post photographs of offenders on a blog somewhere to get better enforcement.  Okay, maybe not.  But nonetheless it has implications for the future.

In Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, when the muppets are robbing the rich people’s house one of them grabs a giant pair of antlers and tries to put it in his sack before his partner stops him.

I always loved this scene.

As a gift to my good friend joh3n whose first child was born just a few days ago, I made for him a Book of Zogg. This was one of the coolest things I have ever done — though I give credit for the idea to my lovely wife. Read more for the pictures in all their glory!

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I was pretty sad to learn the other day that Harriet the Tortoise had a heart attack and died at the age of (about) 175. Aside from just being awesome, Harriet was collected by Charles Darwin himself during his Voyage of the Beagle days from the Galapagos Islands and brought back to UK with him. Later in life, Harriet was brought back to Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo, where I was lucky enough to see her while visiting that crikeyiffic place a couple of years go.

It was pretty strange to see this turtle walking around, knowing that it had personal contact with one of the greatest people to ever walk the face of the Earth. For me at least, Darwin has always been more myth than man, even if you know he was a real person who actually existed blah blah blah it was still pretty neat to see something that he had collected that was still alive. This was no museum piece, it was a living breathing piece of history and gave me and infitismally small connection with something that I usually think of as the very far distant past. Forget about geological time, in tortoise time it’s only been one generation.

So I’m sorry to see Harriet go. Other science nerds will no longer get this same strange feeling from meeting her and this connection with the past is officially gone. But at least I was lucky enough to get that for myself, just in time. RIP, Harriet the Tortoise.

When this came out, it was the coolest game ever. Probably because it had an awesome level editor which was very unique at the time.

1) The official zombo.com t-shirt, which is totally awesome.

2) A notice from DHS saying that I need to be fingerprinted yet again. This will be the third time they will do the exact same procedure. Mental note: don’t forget the date Aug 17.

I miss Arrested Development.  Frigging Fox, why do you have to destroy so many good things?

One of my all time favourite sites on the internets, philosopher Gene Ray’s Time Cube is truly a work of art. The most recent update is, of course, the title of this entry. But one must not forget the classic diagram that proves his theory:

Gene Ray, thank you for never ever giving up.

As informed in the comments to this entry by my dear friend Joey JoJo Shabadu Jr (son of Joey JoJo Shabadu Sr), I regret to inform the blogosphere of the passing of a the dear departed bulb of the pink lamp. I can only assume the lamp looks something remotely like the one pictured above, and the bulb looks something remotely like the one pictured below.

You will not be forgotten.

The source of Real Ultimate Power is within us all.