Personal Dork Assistant

Christ on a Pogo Stick

I'm a programming dilettante at best, i.e. I can learn any language real fast as long as I don't have to write anything more complicated than Hello World. This means that I prefer lighter languages with less syntax so I can pick 'em up faster. That's why I've never gotten around to picking up Perl, the language with more syntax than you can shake a stick at (that's not even including the abomination that is regular expressions, which is such a big Perl feature). As if the unholy number of operators in Perl 5 isn't enough, Perl 6 is poised to add even more cruft on top of that. I think this Slashdot comment said it best:

You have { } for blocks, and for automatically parameterized blocks (ie. anonymous functions).

You have =, := and ::=, ~=, ~~, .... = does assignment, := does binding and ::= works at compile time and is normally used to define types and such, ~= is pattern matching, and I have no idea what ~~ does.

You have the new <== and ==> pipeline operators. They are dataflow operators. Like so:

$foo ==> my_func ==> $bar;
is the same as
$bar <== my_func <== $foo
is the same as
$bar = my_func($foo);
is the same as ...

You already had the $,@,%,& to prefix variables with.

You have more uses for * now, as in slurpy arrays and splicing. As in, the * can make an array parameter slurp up all the remaining arguments, or it can make an argument flatten into a list of arguments.

They've added some wierd << foo >> syntax that I didn't even bother to read about as I was in syntax shock.

They've added ^ which indicates that a variable in a block is actually a parameter and therefore the blocks is actually a parameterized blocks (ie. anonymous function). So, now you can't tell if something surrounded by { }'s is just a block of code or whether it's an anonymous function. Although, I don't think this is a problem as it's usually obvious from the context.

Um, fuck that.

Reporting In

No big pre-release tournaments for Eighth Edition, instead individual stores hold sealed deck tourneys with some WotC prize support. Went out to a little store in Pacific Beach for a chance to play a sealed tournament and the foil Rukh Egg. I'll take the old art over the new one any day, but the foil sure makes it look pretty. WotC sure didn't expect much of a turnout, though, since they only sent twenty foil cards in the prize package. Well, they weren't far off, as there were 24 people playing, which still meant that one would need two match wins in the five-round swiss to guarantee a rukh.

Had some really nice cards in all the colors, which actually made deckbuilding difficult. Lots of creature-kill in black (with a foil Bog Wraith and a Fear for evasion), all fliers in blue (plus two Flight enchantments), two mountainwalkers in red (plus Panic Attack and Enrage as finishers), tons of healing tricks in white, and solid beef in green. Ended up playing black/red two-color because I saw everyone take mountains, and the mountainwalkers could be huge.

Ended up losing the first round in three games, though, as my smaller red creatures couldn't hold up against his green beef in a longer game, and my black creature kill couldn't do anything to his black creatures, especially the Drudge Skeleton as a blocker, and two flying Imps which ate me up. Was actually racing him in damage in one of the games, when I played my Wall of Stone as a tough 0/8 blocker, but then he Sever Soul-ed my wall to kill it and gain eight life from its toughness. Couldn't outrace that.

Oh well, coming up the bottom of the Swiss has been a decent strategy for me in the past, and it worked for me here. Raced through three scrubs (casual players, if you want to be poltically correct about it) with mountain/swamp-walkers and some proper application of Fear. Enrage is basically a Fireball when combined the unblockable guys, and Panic Attack also finished off a few games by keeping their blockers out of the way.

So I was 3-1 going into the last round. Got paired up to the lone 4-0 player, who was a guy only a few rating points short of qualifying for the Pro Tour. Personally, I think it was insane for him to risk it at a chickenshit tourney like this. With such a weak field, each match win for him would only barely be worth one or two rating points, while a loss would be a seven or eight point loss for him. There's a little bit too much luck involved with the cards you're dealt at sealed deck. At least with booster drafts there's skill inolved in your card pool. Anyway, that wasn't a problem for him here, as he got a little of the old school Necro flavor going with Coercion, Abyssal Specter, and Phyrexian Arena. Couldn't kill the spectre with my black creature-kill spells, so he was drawing two cards a turn (and paying one life, BFD) while I was netting zero cards and taking two damage a turn. Not surprisingly, I didn't last long. Second game didn't go much better as I was due for the daily mana screw. Got two lands my opening draw and didn't draw more, but he was being mana-flooded, albeit with only one Swamp. Took some initial damage, but I was drew some land and finally stabilized the board. Of course, just then he rips Blaze off the top of his deck and burns me out with all the land he had conveniently built up. Wouldn't have mattered too much anyway since I was still way behind and he had the Phyrexian Arena in hand for the card advantage if he hadn't drawn the finisher right then.

So it was just bad luck that paired me up vs. the 4-0 player rather than against another 3-1 player, right? Turned out it wasn't all bad, since playing the undefeated player improved my cumulative opponent match win percentage, which was the first tiebreaker. The store guy tossed in some limited edition foil cards as prizes for the top eight finishers. My improved tiebreakers put me into a tie for the last prizewinning spot. The second tiebreaker is my game-winning percentage, and those were good enough for me (thanks to the easy 2-0 wins in the middle rounds) to put me into eighth. Losing in the very first round had hurt my opponents' match-win percentage, since they all already had at least one loss when they played me, and likely another loss after our match, so I needed the help in the last round. Anyway, it got me an extra foiled Creeping Mold out of the deal. Also traded the City of Brass I pulled out of my 8E packs to a kid for his 8E foil Swamp (black-bordered, too) and Diabolic Tutor (only an 8E white-bordered uncommon, but a useful card reprinted from a set I don't own). He probably got more out of the deal in terms of pure $ value, but then I already have two sets of City of Brass, and the foil lands sure are pretty.

More Comic-Con Notes

Spent Friday morning trolling the anime companies' booths for free stuff. Bandai's the big winner here, with at least five different T-shirts to give away over the weekend plus the usual stationery, posters, etc. Now I was glad to have got the .hack//SIGN soundtrack since the closing song was about the only one I might not butcher at the karaoke station. Plus the plushie gruntie clipped to my bag got quite a few envious inquiries (yeah, it's a pathetic way to boost one's ego, but I'll take it). The poor marketing girl just couldn't get anyone else to sing on stage, even with the cool swag. It's not as if anyone else gave a crap, and the hall was much too loud for anyone in the aisles to hear my warbles. Unfortunately, almost everyone sang songs from .hack, since it's the only choice that's been on TV and the opening is the only English song on the list (although it had such a Japanese accent that I didn't even realize it was in English until I saw the subtitles). More reason for Bandai to release anime soundtracks on CD.

Seems like everything is being turned into a CCG nowadays. The Initial D game was kinda bland, with lots of numbers running around but not much car racing flavor. At least it played fast, with lots of back-and-forth action, as each player play cards representing maneuvers trying to beat the difficulty number on your opponent's previous card. You have to discard cards to make up any difference between the value on your card and the difficulty set by your opponent. Of course, there's complications like different maneuvers being more effective in curves or straights, different colors which probably represent different maneuver types that also have to be matched, and various draw/discard/modifier effects that come with played maneuver cards. Maybe if I've seen more of the anime and could get excited about the gadgets and characters.

.hack//ENEMY is Decipher's contribution to the budding multimedia empire. Playing only one card (a Player Character, Monster, Item, or Hidden Card which can be flipped over for effect in combat) per turn is an annoyingly arbitrary limitation. The game plays well enough otherwise. Lots of icon-matching, and drawing for destiny points for randomness in combat, both of which seems to be Decipher staples. The icons in play act as play costs for cards in hand, forcing a slow buildup, and the one-card limit forces you to choose between defense (building up your Player Characters with items and hidden card tricks) and offense (monsters to attack their PCs). Seems like a balanced and fair system, but it's a little limiting.

More on the anime CCGs front, tried out a demo of the Yu Yu Hakusho game, from the people who brought you the Dragonball Z game! Passed on the DBZ game, although I should've gave it a try since it was likely better than YYH. They only had a preliminary demo there. It was insulting to even call it a demo since you only played a single, carefully choreographed turn. They even had a film loop of a perkily underage teenage girl (obviously reading off a teleprompter) going over exactly how to play your single hand. It wasn't even a very compelling hand. You have your character, slap a few Techniques and Items on him to increase his attack value, and do one point of damage if your attack exceed his defense value, and two points if you can double his defense value. Four points of damage and your character lose the fight (out of four or five fighters per round). Talked to the demo folks who've seen more of the set, and they confirmed that there's not much more than that. Each turn is basically a static puzzle to maximize your attack value. There's nothing the defender can do to change the math to slow down the attack. Plus the attack use discarding as the play cost, which further limits future play options, although the draw step is generous. Definitely a big blah.

The WotC Star Wars game is what Richard Garfield wishes Magic could've been: a big creature battle with slowed down build mechanics. Heck, even Magic is moving in that direction, with cards like Counterspell rotating out. Dice and persistent damage add flavor to combat, even though the dice and chits take away from its CCG-purity. It's hard to see any potentially funky decktypes with a pre-built demo deck, but I'm sure theres something sexy to be done with lots of Force-adding cards and Jedi tricks. The WotC guy was definitely the best demo-er of the bunch. Solid game, with lots of things going on in the different zones and interactions amongst them, but not hard to play, even if you need about a dozen D6's handy.

Always been slightly curious about Warhammer and friends, so I went by the Games Workshop booth. Played a demo of the Lord of the Rings game, which is basically Warhammer Lite. GW had knowledgeable and enthusiastic demo guys, which helps, and lots of cool terrain and painted figures set up for the hard sell. The scenario (Riders of Rohan vs. some Urukai) was designed for simple dice rolls and results, but a little digging revealed the real rulebook in its thick, full-color glory, with more stats and modifiers than you can shake a stick at. My problem with miniature games is that I get way too bogged down in every little thing, getting caught up in all the ranges, modifiers, and degrees of freedom in movement. Of course, speed comes with familarity, but frankly I wouldn't really play these games often enough to really get comfortable at them. Not to mention that GW and WH is about the only system better designed to suck up $ than WotC and Magic.

The best game of the bunch might've been Fleer's Ophidian. I didn't even know ophidian was a real word rather than just a Magic card. It's not based on a licensed property, so the backstory is paper-thin, about some sort of sci-fi gladiatorial combat. This got really annoying when the demo guy insisted on describing all the game mechanics in grandiose analogy with the theme. The turn mechanic is slightly innovative, in that you get to keep playing cards as long as you play "positive actions," which are generally aggressive actions like attacking, advancing a gladiator from the Support zone to the Attack zone, etc. You lose the "Flow" whenever you play a Negative action like healing or items/monsters. You can also retake Flow by spending a Cheer point which is earned for a successful attack. Certainly encourages action, anyway. Too bad the game is DOA with the lousy theme and complex (not necessarily bad, just complex) rules.

Spent a little time watching anime in the three(!) video rooms they set up for the occasion. There were projectors being fed by Panasonic progressive DVD players and the picture was pretty damn impressive (big!). They had good light control and animation with its punchy colors and sharp lines is ideal material for a digital projector. Did have to jump in once to fix the subtitle and audio setup since the Panasonic players have the most retarded interface design, lots meaningless icons and way too many convoluted arrow keypresses to get anything done. Too bad front-projections is totally and utterly impractical at home. Yeah, the folks like the light and airy design, but it sure sucks for home theater.

Thanks to Bandai, etc., I scored seven freebie T-shirts plus a couple of caps over the weekend. Considering I do laundry about once a week... No, wearing anime/gaming T-shirts every day probably isn't a good idea.

Thursday Comic-Con Diary

12:30
Got to the SD Convention Center. I didn't know what I was expecting, but it was bigger than I thought. Big enough to fill up all the fucking parking spaces, anyway. Had to park at a metered space in the waterfront park around the back of the convention center. Meters are only for two hours and there are many dire warnings of towings & worse.

1:10
Made my way around to the front of the convention center only to find the line wrapped around the front of the (large) building. Good thing I had my whole geek arsenal with me, iPod in the pocket and GBA SP in hand. Got in line and cleared a couple of WarioWare mini-games in the meantime. Thankfully the line moved quickly and I got my badge in due course.

1:30
Went by the Penny Arcade booth to get a CTS shirt. Wanted to say something about them defiling my family name, but whatever. Did get to check out a color Sidekick that somebody there had. Cool toy. Wander around the (huge) exhibit room but only get a cursory glimpse of a small part. Hey, that's what the weekend is for.

1:45
Eat lunch in the Embarcadero Marina Park. Sat on a bench on the fitness course along the water. Had a nice view of a Marine assault ship parked across the water on Coronado.

2:10
Fed the meter, then made my way back to the convention center for my first panel, Dark Horse's manga line. It was just one guy there (his partner was MIA). Manga is probably not Dark Horse's main comic line, and the guy seemed worried about all the competition, especially with a big American publishing house like Del Rey (a.k.a. Random House) making a deal with a big Japanese publishing house like Kodansha.

3:30
Stayed in the room for the Bandai panel. Good thing I didn't have to move, since the room was packed in a hurry. They had a real slick trailer for their upcoming releases. Frankly the pictures all kinda blended together as everything moves to the computer-painted look. Of course, they announce the .hack soundtracks as separately available discs right after I splurge on the limited edition DVD box to get the CD. Of course, I have to keep buying the limited edition DVD releases since a separate box for the CDs might come with the 5th LE DVD release. As digital bits become more and more worthless, they'll have to sell tchochkes and "limited" items to squeeze money out of their content. Works as long as we have disposable income or a big credit limit, I guess. There's a giveaway, but I have absolutely no chance vs. the collected otaku at the trivia questions. At least the Bandai guy saw my T-shirt and thanked me for buying the .hack LE as I walked the door.

4:30
Should feed the meter but go get a good seat for the Pioneer panel instead. It's good that they have real production people there for the panel, but it's not so good that their English is not so good. No multimedia of any sort in the presentation, probably because half their newly licensed shows are barely in production, much less finishing their Japanese run. I'm not sure if it's a good trend, American companies (or subsidiaries) buying up rights to shows based on specs and limited previews, and in more and more cases even co-funding the initial production. Makes it into the same process as Hollywood hit-making, with all their hit-and-misses. I think it would be better for the American companies to act as filters rather than producers, but I guess there's so much competition now that they have to get in early or not get shows at all. There will be a market correction at some point, but that's not my problem, is it?

The Pioneer guys conduct their giveaway with a group rock-paper-scissors session, with the crowd against the Pioneer guy and eliminating people along the way until the survivor wins the prize. Of course, I lose on the first throw for five rounds in a row. So much for that.

5:45
Went to the car to find a $25 parking ticket on the windshield. No reason to feed the meter now.

6:10
Got back a little late for the Steve Jackson panel. Wished I had my Car Wars rulebook for him to sign. Lots more new card and board games "because that's what the market wants right now." There's still more GURPS books in the pipeline than you can shake a stick at, though. They're distributing Greg Staffords new Glorantha stuff, basically as a favor to him, which is pretty cool. Too bad I don't play any of this stuff anymore. I prefer the more abstract German-style boardgames, and who has time for RPGs these days? Still, it was a cool panel and a good chance to get off my feet after a long day.

7:00
Go check out a showing of Kung-Fu Master. It's in Cantonese with English subtitles, which is just about the worst of all worlds, as I can't really follow the Cantonese dialog except to notice the inadequacies of the English translation. The English removes all semblance of cleverness in the idiomatic expressions and leaves a hokey, badly-written TV show, which is good for some laughs, but not in a good way. Sat and watched for a while, then realized that I don't watch this stuff at home, on VCDs with useful Chinese subtitles on a better A/V system, so why bother with it here? Go home and soak my feet instead.

Poor Bastard

I guess they had to come up with something to fill the slowest American sports week of the year. Adam Bernero got traded from the Detroit Tigers to the Colorado Rockies for a backup catcher. Bernero had only one win vs. twelve losses, and his ERA is a bloated 6.08, but he only got 2.5 runs a game from his offense (worst in the league), which made him one of the unluckiest pitchers in the game. Oh, talk about bad luck, is there a worse place for a struggling pitcher to be than Coors Field? High altitude might actually make that 6.08 ERA look good in retrospect. Good trade for both sides, though, as Rockies get a pitcher who's probably not as bad as he looks, and Detroit gets a decent-hitting catcher who's never got a real shot at the MLB level, and Detroit can use all the decent-hitting they can get.

Life in the Southland

This lady (LA Times registration req.) is the perfect blend of ernest grass-roots activism and ruthless paternal NIMBY-ism that makes LA populism so strange.

She and her associates at Pasadena Heritage, a preservation group that would inspire the launch of other such groups nationwide, have defeated plans to bulldoze many of the buildings in Old Pasadena. They saved the grand Colorado Street Bridge from the wrecking ball. Their power might help determine whether an NFL team plays in the Rose Bowl.

More than a few developers have left town sputtering mad, complaining about "hysterical preservationists."

Others seek Bogaard's counsel, occasionally stopping for coffee at her stately Victorian home off South Orange Grove Boulevard, a street where Pasadena's elite have lived since the 1890s. Bogaard, a willowy blond with a preppy, proper air, listens politely as her callers lay out their plans. She gives advice, tips and, if they're lucky, her blessing.

Hey, I liked Old Pasadena when I had the time to get out there, and Pasadena actually has some history worth preserving, by SoCal standards anyway.

I see dead people...

• Spics
• Niggers
• Sand-niggers
• Breeders
• Towelheads
• Freaks
• Infidels
• Rugrat
• Gravitationally challenged
• He deserved it
• Darwin Award?

Hey, at least the kitten made it. But maybe not for long.

Macropayment > Micropayment

So a random (albeit slightly influential) artist is selling his latest web-comic for 25 cents. Micropayment systems is a solution without a problem (or is it a problem without a solution?), since most web content is pretty worthless anyway, and by pricing your content that low, you're running awfully close to that worthless threshold, at least perception-wise. Frankly, anything worth 25 cents can probably be sold for a buck, as Apple is trying to do with music. It's all about upsells and value-adds, as demonstrated by the Penny Arcade guys. Almost $1K for a pencil sketch? That's a lot of quarters. Sure, the PA boys present themselves as above marketing hype, etc., but there's some savvy selling in their auction announcement blurb:

Penny Arcade is going to the San Diego Comic-con this month and we need some green to grease the travel wheels. So I have decided to auction off an original drawing of the entire PA crew. If this sort of thing interests you at all I highly encourage you to bid as the next auction probably won't be for a long time. It's a pencil drawing on bristol board and I'll be happy to sign it to whoever the lucky winner is. I'll also stick it in an envelope and mail it to wherever you live along with a cool Penny Arcade sticker.

So they appeal to altruism ("help to send poor starving artists to San Diego!"), fairness ("let the free-market auction decide on the fair price, bid high bid often!"), scarcity ("it's a once in a kinda-longtime opportunity!"), and a personal touch ("I'll lick the envelope with my own personal tongue"). Hey, it works. And I might even go to the Comic Con now, even though comics is about the last geek hobby that I've never got into. Well, there's always anime, although I can't stand manga in English. I'm not virulently anti-dub when it comes to anime, but if I do decide to start in on manga, I'll definitely stick with the Chinese translations. Parsing the Asian cultural context in English is just too much of a cognitive dissonance for me. Besides, the Chinese books are a third the price of the US versions (depending on currency fluctuations, stupid strong dollar policy). $10 for an English (slim, black-and-white) volume is ridiculous considering even a short series can easily go a dozen books.

Anyway, I'd probably get a Cardboard Tube Samurai shirt, because I used to play that (non-video!) game when I was little. I can't decide if the new design is politically-incorrect-chic or if it's ignorant racist bullshit like the Abercrombie and Fitch fiasco. The fact that they're pasty video-game nerds doesn't work in their favor here.

Small Taste of Success

1. Slice up a shallot, couple of ribs of celery, and a clove of garlic. Sweat over medium-low heat in some olive oil. Toss in a few parsley stalks, too.
2. Once vegetables are soft, add half-cup of white wine and squeeze in half a lemon. Bring the liquid up to a simmer and then toss in a dozen mussels. Cover the pan.
3. Steam the mussels for a couple of minutes. Pick out any opened (i.e. done) mussels so they don't overcook, then replace cover and keep checking for done mussels once a minute or so.
4. After four or five minutes, any mussels that are still closed are probably dead and ain't never going to open, so off to the garbage they go, along with the cooked aromatics, leaving the reduced liquid.
5. Throw in a knob of butter and a splash of half-and-half (what I had, heavy cream might be better, but maybe not better for you) and reduce to saucy consistency. Salt and pepper, of course.
6. If one times everything perfectly, one would add in 90%-cooked pasta (I had spaghetti, linguine would probably work better) directly from the boiling pot and toss to coat. Put the mussels back in to warm. Add chopped parsley and a basil chiffonade for color.

Yeah, the mussels were better in Belgium, and I shouldn't have left the shellfish in the fridge for the extra day, but the seafood flavor really helps the pasta. Undersalted again, which is what happens when one doesn't cook consistently, but at least it's easy enough to fix. Now what do I do with the big bunches of parsley and basil (stupid grocery store) now that I've used my two stalks?

Life's a Bitch

Basic economics treat labor as just another factor of production, another raw material for the machine. So it was only a matter of time after the rise of just-in-time manufacturing before just-in-time jobs streamlined labor practices. Of course, silicon chips don't get their feelings hurt when you hold back delivery for a few days, but bad things happen when hiring is held back.

They called their findings "largely positive for the economy overall," but said it was unclear if workers benefited over the long haul.

Now what the fuck's the point of that?

PSA

Donut peaches are awesome. That is all.

So much for Two Systems

Hong Kong is about as apolitical a place as there is on Earth, so it's surprising to see hundreds of thousands of people turn out for a protest. Or maybe not, once one realizes that Article 23 allows China to turn Hong Kong into a police state. Heck, most of them probably wouldn't even mind that, if it weren't for the 8% unemployment and the shoddy containment of SARS. The legislature only passed the law in the first place because the body was arbitrarily stacked with pro-China members, not to mention Tung Chee-Hwa, the hand-picked head stooge of the government. The government actually tried to stem the protests by distributing 10,000 free tickets for movies showing at theaters during the demonstration, and declared that all public swimming pools and museums were free for the day. How pathetically cynical is that?

Anyway, this should give the Taiwan-independence folks plenty of ammunition to last a while.

Beats Money Market

Best Buy had a Preferred Customer Weekend and had the Cowboy Bebop Movie on sale, so let's burn buck-fify of gas to save a dollar-forty. Turned out that both San Diego BB's were sold out of the CBM, which is some sort of signpost of an emerging cultural trend or something like that, but at the time it was just a real big pain in the ass. The trip wasn't a total loss, though, as I found a copy of the .hack//SIGN Limited Edition Volume 1 sitting on the shelf. Don't be fooled by Amazon's "Available in 1-2 Business Days" tag. The eBay prices tell the real story. Didn't even have to pay MSRP, thanks to the 10%-off Best Buy coupon. So despite all the people there picking up the Bebop movie, nobody recognized the collectable value of the .hack//SIGN box. Curious, especially considering .hack//SIGN is running on Cartoon Network, too.

The smart thing to do would've been to leave the box shrink-wrapped and put it on eBay in six months, but I'm just not that sort of guy. Frankly, I was perfectly happy to watch the show on CN via Tivo (only way to go when it's on Saturdays at midnight), but I liked the soundtrack, and the limited edition release was the only way to get it, aside from cheap Chinese bootlegs or expensive Japanese imports. The tulip-investment aspect barely justifies paying triple the price of a normal DVD for an extra cardboard box, a CD, a T-shirt, a plush toy, and some stickers. Of course, the otaku eats it up. Used to be that the boxsets are released as a less expensive collection after the individual discs have been out for a while. Now, the box is a costly "bonus" included with the first disc encouraging you to buy the series and fill the box. And with releases like .hack//SIGN, people are begging to be ass-raped at the register in exchange for even more sweatshop-produced tchotchkes (plushie made in China, T-shirt in Burma). Hopefully the XL t-shirt will shrink a little bit with washing, since wearing it as a full length dress isn't really an option for me, I don't think. Fucking fat fucks. I bet any shirts in Japanese releases aren't XL. At least I now have semi-appropriate attire if I decide to go up to Anaheim for Anime Expo next week.