I started playing Binary Domain by accident. I was playing Killzone 2 and getting frustrated at one stage. That's the fault of the first person shooter experience: while you have no problem figuring out where you are, it's sometimes difficult to map where your enemies are relative to you because they're moving while you're moving, and if you're playing hide-and-seek like in that particular stage of Killzone 2, you can end up dying repeatedly because your mental map can't compensate for the AI's movements without a frustrating (to me) amount of repetition.
I ended up finishing Binary Domain first, because the third person shooter perspective is just more intuitive, and to me, more fun. The implementation in Binary Domain is also very well done. One of my favorite things about the Uncharted franchise is that you almost always have a buddy with you to help out during combat. Well, in Binary Domain, you can have up to 4-5 buddies, and sometimes the story divides you up into teams and you get to decide who to have on your team, which lends you the ability to customize your play experience. Your conversations and banter on the team will be very different depending on who you chose to take on any given mission.
What's more, there's a trust mechanic, where how you perform with each team member (buying them upgrades) as well as combat performance increases trust, and accidentally shooting them in combat lowers trust. This affects the ultimate outcome of the game and ending in various ways, which I think is pretty cool. Furthermore, at easy difficulty, the game is not frustrating, and the fact that you're shooting robots means that this is one of those games that's easy for a parent to let a child play.
What's more, the game's story is very good for a video game. It's set in a science fiction universe with global warming, robots, and even features ethical dilemmas which I thought were appropriate when we start mixing in AI along with advanced robotics. The problem here is that the game is very linear, so you're dragged along by the story and ultimately have no control over the ethics (or even your choice of love interest), but for what it's worth, this is not the usual poor story line game.
The big weakness of the game is the AI companions. They're just not very effective, even on easy mode. Now, part of it is by design: in the big boss fights, it'd be kinda lame for the player protagonist to not make the killing blow. However, it's also kinda silly to have a very long dragged out fight while your companions who seem to be competent the rest of the time suddenly be unable to hit the broad side of a barn. The other problem is that sometimes they blithely walk into your zone of fire, thereby causing you to hit them through no fault of your own. That's frustrating if you're trying to build a high trust level with the rest of the team.
But none of this was enough to keep me from playing the game all the way to the finish. It's a lot of fun, and while it doesn't beat Among Thieves, I think that it's a game that's under-rated by the standard gaming press reviews. Third person shooters are still rare as a genre, and this one is very well done. Recommended.
P.S. There's one final scene after the credits roll, so keep the game running through the end credits.
Monday, October 27, 2014
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Review: The Flash Boys
Books about Wall Street have a way of being incredibly depressing. For instance, Elizabeth Warren's story about fighting Wall Street has a main theme, which is, "Bank meets consumer, Bank screws consumer, ad nauseum." I'm happy to report that The Flash Boys is an exception to this rule.
The book is about high frequency trading: the practice of front-running investor's trades electronically in order to capture the bid-ask spread. It's an obnoxious practice, but generates so much profit that the firms doing so are willing to spend hundreds of millions relocating servers to be closer to the exchanges. Obviously those folks are the villains of the book.
But the book does have a hero, IEX, co-founded by Brad Katsuyama. Lewis follows the discovery (by Katsuyama, amongst others) of the existence of HFT, the desire to build an exchange immune to predation through HFT, and the creation of IEX and its team. The story is told well, as compelling as any thriller you might have read, and I found myself turning its pages furiously. It's also a short read.
I tried to think of ways IEX was built that might make them prone to the kinds of conflicts of interests that have plagued other exchanges, but came up short, so I think Lewis has done the story justice, rather than just acted as PR agent for IEX.
Recommended.
Hat tip to Larry Hosken for pointing me at this book.
The book is about high frequency trading: the practice of front-running investor's trades electronically in order to capture the bid-ask spread. It's an obnoxious practice, but generates so much profit that the firms doing so are willing to spend hundreds of millions relocating servers to be closer to the exchanges. Obviously those folks are the villains of the book.
But the book does have a hero, IEX, co-founded by Brad Katsuyama. Lewis follows the discovery (by Katsuyama, amongst others) of the existence of HFT, the desire to build an exchange immune to predation through HFT, and the creation of IEX and its team. The story is told well, as compelling as any thriller you might have read, and I found myself turning its pages furiously. It's also a short read.
I tried to think of ways IEX was built that might make them prone to the kinds of conflicts of interests that have plagued other exchanges, but came up short, so I think Lewis has done the story justice, rather than just acted as PR agent for IEX.
Recommended.
Hat tip to Larry Hosken for pointing me at this book.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Review: The Inquisitor's Apprentice
I loved Chris Moriarty's Spin State, Spin Control, and Ghost Spin, so when I saw that she'd written a series of young adult books starting with The Inquisitor's Apprentice, I didn't hesitate to check them out from the library.
The Inquisitor's Apprentice is set in an alternative history turn of the century New York City. Those were heady times, and historical figures such as J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, Harry Houdini, and Teddy Roosevelt perform more than just cameo appearances in the novel, lending the novel a lovely "I've been there" feel.
The story's told from the view of Sacha, a 1st generation Jewish immigrant living in the tenements with his parents, who've escaped from Russia and lived through a harrowing past. Sacha discovers that he can see magic performed, and is then conscripted into being an Inquisitor's apprentice.
In this version of New York, magic is real (and everyone knows it), but is illegal, and an Inquisitor is a special department of the police force charged with policing the use of magic and the investigation thereof. Sacha's apprenticed to Inquisitor Wolf, one of the most prominent investigators of the era, and is swept up in a plot apparently intended to end the life of Thomas Edison.
This was an incredibly promising premise to the novel, and had me very excited to read it. The description of turn of century New York is awesome, and Moriarty's description of Jewish culture (especially that of Russian immigrants in New York) is authentic and feels real. The introduction of Jewish mythic elements in the form of the dybbuk, and integration into various pieces of city paraphernalia such as the rag and bone man and china town is well done and taps into your imagination.
Yet the novel falls flat. The protagonist, Sacha, is weak-willed and lily-livered. Rather than taking action, he's dragged into one event after another by his mentor, his friends, and his colleagues. He lacks common-sense, and has no self-control over his emotions. He's a thoroughly unlikeable protagonist, and unfortunately, I don't think it was intentional on Moriarty's part. I think she bent over backwards to make a heroine out of Sacha's cohort intern, Lily Astral, not realizing that she'd weakened her protagonist to the point of unlikeability.
The resolution of the novel is also incomplete, obviously setting up for the next novel in the series. I cannot recommend this novel over any of Moriarty's other novels, so I'm not sure I'd get around to reading The Watcher in The Shadows.
The Inquisitor's Apprentice is set in an alternative history turn of the century New York City. Those were heady times, and historical figures such as J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, Harry Houdini, and Teddy Roosevelt perform more than just cameo appearances in the novel, lending the novel a lovely "I've been there" feel.
The story's told from the view of Sacha, a 1st generation Jewish immigrant living in the tenements with his parents, who've escaped from Russia and lived through a harrowing past. Sacha discovers that he can see magic performed, and is then conscripted into being an Inquisitor's apprentice.
In this version of New York, magic is real (and everyone knows it), but is illegal, and an Inquisitor is a special department of the police force charged with policing the use of magic and the investigation thereof. Sacha's apprenticed to Inquisitor Wolf, one of the most prominent investigators of the era, and is swept up in a plot apparently intended to end the life of Thomas Edison.
This was an incredibly promising premise to the novel, and had me very excited to read it. The description of turn of century New York is awesome, and Moriarty's description of Jewish culture (especially that of Russian immigrants in New York) is authentic and feels real. The introduction of Jewish mythic elements in the form of the dybbuk, and integration into various pieces of city paraphernalia such as the rag and bone man and china town is well done and taps into your imagination.
Yet the novel falls flat. The protagonist, Sacha, is weak-willed and lily-livered. Rather than taking action, he's dragged into one event after another by his mentor, his friends, and his colleagues. He lacks common-sense, and has no self-control over his emotions. He's a thoroughly unlikeable protagonist, and unfortunately, I don't think it was intentional on Moriarty's part. I think she bent over backwards to make a heroine out of Sacha's cohort intern, Lily Astral, not realizing that she'd weakened her protagonist to the point of unlikeability.
The resolution of the novel is also incomplete, obviously setting up for the next novel in the series. I cannot recommend this novel over any of Moriarty's other novels, so I'm not sure I'd get around to reading The Watcher in The Shadows.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Review: Powerstation PSX-3 Jumpstarter/Air Compressor
My old cheapo tire inflator bit the dust, and I wanted a better unit. I figured that I might as well get one that could jump start a car as well, since that would eliminate the need for a power cable to the unit.
My preference is to buy on Amazon, but the PSX-3 is one of those items that's much cheaper at Costco, where it retails for $75 instead of the $120. My guess is that the heavy weight of the unit ensures that Amazon will never be price-competitive with Costco.
The unit charges fast and comes pretty much pre-charged. If you follow the instructions and top off the charge every month or so, it'll never take more than an hour to fully charge, even after using it to jump start a car, which I've done a few times.
The inflator has a gauge that's inaccurate (i.e., it under-reads by about 5psi), but if you're using it to top off your tires you should have an accurate gauge anyway.
The jump start is very easy to use, far easier than jump starter cables. You plug in both ends to a car battery, flip the switch on, and then start the car. No worries about sparks jumping, because you only flip the switch after using the alligator clips. It also comes with a flash light.
The unit's a little heavy, and I'm not sure you'd keep one in the car at all times (though it'd definitely be a must-have for car camping), since you'd have to charge it every month, but for what the unit does and the fact that I use it every month to top off the tires (and the occasional jump start), it's the cheapest unit I've found that does the job, and it's far more robust than the cheaper inflators I've seen.
Recommended.
My preference is to buy on Amazon, but the PSX-3 is one of those items that's much cheaper at Costco, where it retails for $75 instead of the $120. My guess is that the heavy weight of the unit ensures that Amazon will never be price-competitive with Costco.
The unit charges fast and comes pretty much pre-charged. If you follow the instructions and top off the charge every month or so, it'll never take more than an hour to fully charge, even after using it to jump start a car, which I've done a few times.
The inflator has a gauge that's inaccurate (i.e., it under-reads by about 5psi), but if you're using it to top off your tires you should have an accurate gauge anyway.
The jump start is very easy to use, far easier than jump starter cables. You plug in both ends to a car battery, flip the switch on, and then start the car. No worries about sparks jumping, because you only flip the switch after using the alligator clips. It also comes with a flash light.
The unit's a little heavy, and I'm not sure you'd keep one in the car at all times (though it'd definitely be a must-have for car camping), since you'd have to charge it every month, but for what the unit does and the fact that I use it every month to top off the tires (and the occasional jump start), it's the cheapest unit I've found that does the job, and it's far more robust than the cheaper inflators I've seen.
Recommended.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Review: Hario Mini Mill
Lots of people raved to me about the benefits of grinding your own coffee from coffee beans rather than buying pre-ground coffee. It sounded like a good thing, but I wasn't willing to spend the big bucks that the electric burr grinders cost, nor did I really want to devote counter space to something that wouldn't necessarily get daily use, given that my experience with coffee enthusiasts seems to be that they'll rave about any minute changes in coffee, while I'm simply not that sensitive.
The Hario Mini Mill, at $25, seems worth a try. Sure, it's a hand grinder, so it'd take longer to grind, but on the other hand, the extra couple of minutes is just not a big deal, and if it doesn't work out I'm not out too much money. I bought the Major Dickason's blend, a highly rated coffee now on sale at Costco's for about $13 for a 2 pound bag. The net result is that this isn't quite an apples to apples comparison, since I was using Gaia's Organic pre-ground before.
The first thing I noticed was the aroma. The coffee beans definitely smell quite a bit more than the pre-ground. If you're into smells, this is probably the biggest difference between pre-ground and grinding your own. I'm not into smells.
The grinder's fairly easy to use. Set the grind, then pour coffee beans into it, and then grind. The grinding is very fast about a minute or so, so it's really not a big deal as far as your daily routine is. The big difference here is that grinding your coffee sets the coffee grounds much looser than using pre-ground coffee and scooping it using the Aeropress scoop. The result is you get much less coffee grounds out of 2 scoops of beans than 2 scoops of pre-ground. This makes a big difference, so while I was filling up the Aeropress to level 3 with 2 scoops of pre-ground, for a similar strength of coffee I'd only fill it up to 2 with my own grind.
The resultant coffee smells much stronger than the pre-ground stuff, and the coffee is very smooth. But the taste? I'm sorry, I just cannot tell the difference. If anything, I think the Major Dickason's doesn't taste as sweet as the Gaia pre-ground, but I cannot tell whether it's because of the difference between the coffees, or because the grinding makes the coffee worse.
I bought a can of the Kirkland Decaf (48ozs at $13), and the big difference seems to be that the pre-ground stuff is much harder to push through the Aeropress than the self-grounded coffee. And honestly, if you took away the grinder and made me drink the kirkland decaf, except for the missing caffeine, I'm not sure I'd prefer the self-ground coffee.
I'll keep the grinder, if only because a lot of variety of coffee beans don't come pre-ground, and I really don't feel like grinding it at the Costco grinders which don't ever seem to get cleaned. At $25, it doesn't seem unreasonable. But if you're a casual coffee drinker like me and aromas don't do much for you, I don't think I'd believe any of the coffee enthusiast's enthusiasm about self-grinded coffee. The smell thing is all the self-grinded coffee has going for it. It makes zero different to the taste as far as I'm concerned.
The biggest difference, I think is that the bother of grinding might make me drink less coffee, which isn't a completely bad thing (I'm at one cup a day).
The Hario Mini Mill, at $25, seems worth a try. Sure, it's a hand grinder, so it'd take longer to grind, but on the other hand, the extra couple of minutes is just not a big deal, and if it doesn't work out I'm not out too much money. I bought the Major Dickason's blend, a highly rated coffee now on sale at Costco's for about $13 for a 2 pound bag. The net result is that this isn't quite an apples to apples comparison, since I was using Gaia's Organic pre-ground before.
The first thing I noticed was the aroma. The coffee beans definitely smell quite a bit more than the pre-ground. If you're into smells, this is probably the biggest difference between pre-ground and grinding your own. I'm not into smells.
The grinder's fairly easy to use. Set the grind, then pour coffee beans into it, and then grind. The grinding is very fast about a minute or so, so it's really not a big deal as far as your daily routine is. The big difference here is that grinding your coffee sets the coffee grounds much looser than using pre-ground coffee and scooping it using the Aeropress scoop. The result is you get much less coffee grounds out of 2 scoops of beans than 2 scoops of pre-ground. This makes a big difference, so while I was filling up the Aeropress to level 3 with 2 scoops of pre-ground, for a similar strength of coffee I'd only fill it up to 2 with my own grind.
The resultant coffee smells much stronger than the pre-ground stuff, and the coffee is very smooth. But the taste? I'm sorry, I just cannot tell the difference. If anything, I think the Major Dickason's doesn't taste as sweet as the Gaia pre-ground, but I cannot tell whether it's because of the difference between the coffees, or because the grinding makes the coffee worse.
I bought a can of the Kirkland Decaf (48ozs at $13), and the big difference seems to be that the pre-ground stuff is much harder to push through the Aeropress than the self-grounded coffee. And honestly, if you took away the grinder and made me drink the kirkland decaf, except for the missing caffeine, I'm not sure I'd prefer the self-ground coffee.
I'll keep the grinder, if only because a lot of variety of coffee beans don't come pre-ground, and I really don't feel like grinding it at the Costco grinders which don't ever seem to get cleaned. At $25, it doesn't seem unreasonable. But if you're a casual coffee drinker like me and aromas don't do much for you, I don't think I'd believe any of the coffee enthusiast's enthusiasm about self-grinded coffee. The smell thing is all the self-grinded coffee has going for it. It makes zero different to the taste as far as I'm concerned.
The biggest difference, I think is that the bother of grinding might make me drink less coffee, which isn't a completely bad thing (I'm at one cup a day).
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Review: The Dark Defiles
The Dark Defiles is the final book of Richard Morgan's fantasy trilogy that started with The Steel Remains and The Cold Commands.
I'm a huge fan of Richard Morgan, but the problem with his approach to fantasy is to take all the complexity of modern fantasy and dial it up to 10. The result is a mix of races (dwenda, aldrain, kilrathi), fantasy (magic, dark magic, and super science) and situations that would take a very long novel to explicate.
Well, The Dark Defiles is a very long novel, but I'm not sure it fully succeeds in the explication. It's also only somewhat satisfying. The three main characters, Ringil Eskiath (the gay Barbarian swordsman), Egar Dragonbane, and Archeth (the last half-breed Kilrathi left on the planet) are split right at the start of the novel, and become only two by the end of the story.
As the story proceeds, it becomes more and more clear that the story is a far future science fiction novel, rather than a standard fantasy. This is all very nice, though it's been done before, it's usually done in some long drawn out series because most such authors seem to think it's a cool trick that should be drawn out. Morgan has no such compunctions and has no issues doing one big reveal after another.
Nevertheless, the book is deeply flawed. While the previous novels in the series do a good job of upending standard fantasy tropes, The Dark Defiles spends a bit too much time wallowing in its own meta-fiction, therefore eliminating any chance that you care about the characters. In particular, Archeth seems particularly dense for being an immortal being whose the last daughter of a race of super-engineers.
Furthermore, even the meta-fiction leaves too many questions unanswered. For instance, if the world was so broken when the Kilrathi arrived, why did they bother fighting for it? And the questions of where the random other deities that popped out remains unanswered. Even the fates of our protagonists is annoyingly left untied.
I don't want to leave you with the impression that the book isn't worth reading. The action sequences are done in ways that only Richard Morgan can. You'd be hard put to come up with a better effects budget than what occurs in the mind's eye, and Morgan shows how to do it. Each individual section of the book is comparatively well written, it's just that the whole doesn't quite come together properly and the result is unsatisfying.
Ultimately, the mystery of why this book took so long to come out, and why it was comparatively disappointing is solved when you read the afterword: the author had a son during the writing. That explains everything. Nobody can be coherent after one of those events, and it explains why the novel is so chaotic and unpolished.
If you're a fan of the fantasy genre, this book's definitely worth reading because it does a good job of being very different from what anyone else has done in the genre. If you're a fan of Richard Morgan, however, be prepared to be very disappointed. It's more ambitious than Altered Carbon, but fails far short of those ambitions and hence is probably the second weakest book in his portfolio.
I'm a huge fan of Richard Morgan, but the problem with his approach to fantasy is to take all the complexity of modern fantasy and dial it up to 10. The result is a mix of races (dwenda, aldrain, kilrathi), fantasy (magic, dark magic, and super science) and situations that would take a very long novel to explicate.
Well, The Dark Defiles is a very long novel, but I'm not sure it fully succeeds in the explication. It's also only somewhat satisfying. The three main characters, Ringil Eskiath (the gay Barbarian swordsman), Egar Dragonbane, and Archeth (the last half-breed Kilrathi left on the planet) are split right at the start of the novel, and become only two by the end of the story.
As the story proceeds, it becomes more and more clear that the story is a far future science fiction novel, rather than a standard fantasy. This is all very nice, though it's been done before, it's usually done in some long drawn out series because most such authors seem to think it's a cool trick that should be drawn out. Morgan has no such compunctions and has no issues doing one big reveal after another.
Nevertheless, the book is deeply flawed. While the previous novels in the series do a good job of upending standard fantasy tropes, The Dark Defiles spends a bit too much time wallowing in its own meta-fiction, therefore eliminating any chance that you care about the characters. In particular, Archeth seems particularly dense for being an immortal being whose the last daughter of a race of super-engineers.
Furthermore, even the meta-fiction leaves too many questions unanswered. For instance, if the world was so broken when the Kilrathi arrived, why did they bother fighting for it? And the questions of where the random other deities that popped out remains unanswered. Even the fates of our protagonists is annoyingly left untied.
I don't want to leave you with the impression that the book isn't worth reading. The action sequences are done in ways that only Richard Morgan can. You'd be hard put to come up with a better effects budget than what occurs in the mind's eye, and Morgan shows how to do it. Each individual section of the book is comparatively well written, it's just that the whole doesn't quite come together properly and the result is unsatisfying.
Ultimately, the mystery of why this book took so long to come out, and why it was comparatively disappointing is solved when you read the afterword: the author had a son during the writing. That explains everything. Nobody can be coherent after one of those events, and it explains why the novel is so chaotic and unpolished.
If you're a fan of the fantasy genre, this book's definitely worth reading because it does a good job of being very different from what anyone else has done in the genre. If you're a fan of Richard Morgan, however, be prepared to be very disappointed. It's more ambitious than Altered Carbon, but fails far short of those ambitions and hence is probably the second weakest book in his portfolio.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Review: Africa
It is no secret that if you want to use your HDTV to the max, you attach a blu-ray player to it and then play one of BBC's nature documentaries. When I first upgraded to a HDTV in 2009, I watched Planet Earth, and it was an experience to behold and enjoy. When I upgraded to my new LG Plasma Display, I picked up Africa just to see.
What makes the BBC blu-rays so great is that they're made and formatted for the standard HDTV screen. Movies are formatted for the 1:37:1 aspect ratio rather than the 16:9 HDTV aspect ratio, and as a result when you watch a movie, you get black bars at the top and bottom of your image, which means that Baraka, for instance, while being mastered in 8K before being down-sampled to 2K, looks gorgeous, you don't quite get to make full use of your 1080p display compared to what Africa or Planet Earth provides.
Africa comes in 6 episodes, with 3 episodes per disk. Each episodes spans an hour, and covers the Kalahari, the Svannah, Congo, Cape, Sahara, and a wrap up episode that covers the bigger picture. Each episode comes with a behind the scenes section that's about 10 minutes long. The footage is nothing short of amazing, including Starlight cameras that reveal the nocturnal behavior of black rhinos, and a slow motion capture of a battle between 2 giraffes in a desert.
I'm normally very impatient with every "behind the scenes" documentary, because most of the time I'd watch them and say, yeah, you had a multi-million dollar budget, good for you. But some of the footage that the series provided were so jaw-dropping that I actually looked forward to the "behind the scenes" documentary. In one of the episodes, the crew shot silver ants in 50C heat in the Sahara desert, which looked brutal as heck.
I wasn't looking forward to he last episode, because normally these documentaries tend to be a huge downer. After all, nearly every non-insect species featured in the TV series is nearly about to go extinct (one good reason to own this Blu Ray). But the last episode was actually surprisingly optimistic, including detailing a huge multi-country plan to surround the Sahara with trees to prevent further desert incursions.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the series. Since you can't easily stream the series without losing video quality, the best way to enjoy it is to borrow it from a friend, rent it, or watch it over the air (though I'd be surprised if the presentation is better over the air than from a blu ray).
Highly recommended.
What makes the BBC blu-rays so great is that they're made and formatted for the standard HDTV screen. Movies are formatted for the 1:37:1 aspect ratio rather than the 16:9 HDTV aspect ratio, and as a result when you watch a movie, you get black bars at the top and bottom of your image, which means that Baraka, for instance, while being mastered in 8K before being down-sampled to 2K, looks gorgeous, you don't quite get to make full use of your 1080p display compared to what Africa or Planet Earth provides.
Africa comes in 6 episodes, with 3 episodes per disk. Each episodes spans an hour, and covers the Kalahari, the Svannah, Congo, Cape, Sahara, and a wrap up episode that covers the bigger picture. Each episode comes with a behind the scenes section that's about 10 minutes long. The footage is nothing short of amazing, including Starlight cameras that reveal the nocturnal behavior of black rhinos, and a slow motion capture of a battle between 2 giraffes in a desert.
I'm normally very impatient with every "behind the scenes" documentary, because most of the time I'd watch them and say, yeah, you had a multi-million dollar budget, good for you. But some of the footage that the series provided were so jaw-dropping that I actually looked forward to the "behind the scenes" documentary. In one of the episodes, the crew shot silver ants in 50C heat in the Sahara desert, which looked brutal as heck.
I wasn't looking forward to he last episode, because normally these documentaries tend to be a huge downer. After all, nearly every non-insect species featured in the TV series is nearly about to go extinct (one good reason to own this Blu Ray). But the last episode was actually surprisingly optimistic, including detailing a huge multi-country plan to surround the Sahara with trees to prevent further desert incursions.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the series. Since you can't easily stream the series without losing video quality, the best way to enjoy it is to borrow it from a friend, rent it, or watch it over the air (though I'd be surprised if the presentation is better over the air than from a blu ray).
Highly recommended.
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
Trains for Toddlers
Bowen is a train fanatic. He says so himself, and I'm not sure I can disagree. The big problem with train sets is that there's an annoying number of standard, and some of them (but not all), are cross compatible. We ended up with two different non-compatible sets.
The wooden sets are mostly cross-compatible. The best way to get started is to buy the track pieces separately from the trains and the special pieces. That's because if you buy them together, you end up with an extremely expensive set. The best deal on the tracks can be found on Amazon where you get 56 pieces of the track pieces in various configurations for $29. This is much cheaper than the big brands, and more importantly, comes with the male/male and female/female connecting pieces. You cannot beat the price and the quality in my experience has been great. What you want to do is to avoid the kits that come with fragile pieces like railroad crossings. Those will get broken due to the poor packaging that inevitably come with the cut-rate prices.
For the special pieces, you can buy the name brand ones. Even though those are more expensive, they won't be broken easily (either by the child or by shipping). We bought the Brio railroad crossing and he loved it so much that he took it with him to the train station and used it to imitate the real crossings. It was hilarious at first but he never gets tired of doing this so now I'm annoyed.
For the turntable we could get away with the cheap ones because those aren't fragile.
Trains from brand name manufacturers are always expensive. The best thing to do there is to wait for a sale and then pick them up. I first bought a battery powered Salty, but it turned out that he prefers to push the trains around the track himself (or better yet, get daddy or mommy to do it for him), so now I buy the cheaper non powered wooden trains. We haven't gotten around to any of the special overpasses and things like that, but I'm sure the time will come when he's ready for it.
The other non compatible set we started with were the Take-n-play series. These are quite a bit fancier, but turned out to be far more expensive. We started with the Great Quarry Climb, which has a fun mechanical climbing bit, and great rolldowns as well as a turntable, and then followed up with the Misty Island package. To my surprise, the packages do actually fold up and put away nicely when you're done, and the constrained design means a younger toddler can play with them fairly easily. The little play pieces are also fun. However, you can't buy cheap knock-offs, so you end up with expensive connector sets that aren't comprehensive or satisfying. And forget about railroad crossings and other such fun things. Those don't exist in the Take n play world.
The net result has been that we're likely to expand the wooden sets but unlikely to add to the plastic sets. Or maybe he'll just outgrow playing with trains eventually.
The wooden sets are mostly cross-compatible. The best way to get started is to buy the track pieces separately from the trains and the special pieces. That's because if you buy them together, you end up with an extremely expensive set. The best deal on the tracks can be found on Amazon where you get 56 pieces of the track pieces in various configurations for $29. This is much cheaper than the big brands, and more importantly, comes with the male/male and female/female connecting pieces. You cannot beat the price and the quality in my experience has been great. What you want to do is to avoid the kits that come with fragile pieces like railroad crossings. Those will get broken due to the poor packaging that inevitably come with the cut-rate prices.
For the special pieces, you can buy the name brand ones. Even though those are more expensive, they won't be broken easily (either by the child or by shipping). We bought the Brio railroad crossing and he loved it so much that he took it with him to the train station and used it to imitate the real crossings. It was hilarious at first but he never gets tired of doing this so now I'm annoyed.
For the turntable we could get away with the cheap ones because those aren't fragile.
Trains from brand name manufacturers are always expensive. The best thing to do there is to wait for a sale and then pick them up. I first bought a battery powered Salty, but it turned out that he prefers to push the trains around the track himself (or better yet, get daddy or mommy to do it for him), so now I buy the cheaper non powered wooden trains. We haven't gotten around to any of the special overpasses and things like that, but I'm sure the time will come when he's ready for it.
The other non compatible set we started with were the Take-n-play series. These are quite a bit fancier, but turned out to be far more expensive. We started with the Great Quarry Climb, which has a fun mechanical climbing bit, and great rolldowns as well as a turntable, and then followed up with the Misty Island package. To my surprise, the packages do actually fold up and put away nicely when you're done, and the constrained design means a younger toddler can play with them fairly easily. The little play pieces are also fun. However, you can't buy cheap knock-offs, so you end up with expensive connector sets that aren't comprehensive or satisfying. And forget about railroad crossings and other such fun things. Those don't exist in the Take n play world.
The net result has been that we're likely to expand the wooden sets but unlikely to add to the plastic sets. Or maybe he'll just outgrow playing with trains eventually.
Tuesday, October 07, 2014
S24O With a Toddler
I've never participated in a S24O, mostly because back when I didn't have kids, I'd always have time and would use as much of a weekend as possible. This October, however, with temperatures into the mid 90s and our home AC out of commission because of construction, I decided would be appropriate to take Bowen out on his first camping trip, which would turn out to be an S24O, and involved more cheating than the Tour De France.
Preparing Bowen was a multi-month affair. Earlier in the year, I'd set up a tent in the front yard and let him play in it. Then last week, I took out sleeping bags and he immediately took a liking to them, even demanding to sleep in the sleeping bag when we were in the house.
California's State Beach campgrounds book up months in advance, especially on weekends, but there's a little known loophole that only cyclists know about, which is that if you show up on a bike, you get access to a hiker-biker site in many state parks. Not only are those sites unreservable, they effectively never fill up. It used to be that California's State Park policy was that no matter how full they were, they would never turn away a cyclist or hiker. I don't know if that policy had changed, but at New Brighton State Beach on October 4th, there were way more than 5 cyclists that the state park brochure said they had room for. The hiker biker sites used to charged $1 per person, but with California's budget situation, they've since raised the price to $5 per person.
I took the bike I used to take Bowen to and from school, and attached the Yakima trailer to it. This gave us room for the tent, sleeping bags, stove, extra clothing, food, and even his beach kit. With all this and Bowen, the bike weighed in excess of 80 pounds (the Yakima trailer by itself was more than 20 pounds), which meant that riding over the mountain would have been scary, and the bike wasn't quite set up to do that kind of riding anyway. But I said I was going to cheat, so I thought nothing of piling all this into a car, driving over the mountain, and then parking outside the park around the corner where I found some free street parking.
Riding on a bike with that much weight in strange places was quite different, but fortunately I'm a decent bike handler. I wouldn't recommend that anyone with less than competent bike handling skill and a lot of touring experience try the setup I did. Even for me, the descents felt scarily fast, and the climbs, such as they were, were quite painful. Add in a live toddler occasionally fighting you for the controls or wriggling, and most cyclists probably just aren't going to be up for it.
On arrival at the park entrance, we were told that the hiker biker site wasn't going to open until 4pm, but we were welcome to hangout at the beach in the mean time. We took them up on it, and arrived just as a wedding party was breaking up. They thought Bowen was cute, however, and handed him one of the party favor: a paint brush meant for brushing sand off your feet. That meant Bowen played with it for a while, though he also played in the sand and even splashed about in the ocean for a bit, though he discovered quickly that he did not like the cold water.
Back at the park entrance to checkin, we had 2 cyclists ahead of us but rather than charging us $5 a person, the park ranger decided that the park policy was $5 per bike. I was quite pleased with that. I was quite sure, however, if I'd showed up on a tandem the policy would suddenly have been $5 per person once again.
Pitching the tent was easy, and cooking and making dinner went surprisingly well. The funny thing is that toddlers behave better when there's only one parent around, so I could boil water, cook noodles, and even run off and borrow a can opener for the pork and beans without incident. At home, Bowen would have to be almost force-fed his dinner, but here at the campground, he actively fed himself dinner, then helped himself to a banana and apple.
After dinner, we used the coin-operated showers. Kids don't appreciate scenery, so I had to persuade and cajole Bowen into going for a walk to see the sunset, but it was worth the effort.
Preparing Bowen was a multi-month affair. Earlier in the year, I'd set up a tent in the front yard and let him play in it. Then last week, I took out sleeping bags and he immediately took a liking to them, even demanding to sleep in the sleeping bag when we were in the house.
I took the bike I used to take Bowen to and from school, and attached the Yakima trailer to it. This gave us room for the tent, sleeping bags, stove, extra clothing, food, and even his beach kit. With all this and Bowen, the bike weighed in excess of 80 pounds (the Yakima trailer by itself was more than 20 pounds), which meant that riding over the mountain would have been scary, and the bike wasn't quite set up to do that kind of riding anyway. But I said I was going to cheat, so I thought nothing of piling all this into a car, driving over the mountain, and then parking outside the park around the corner where I found some free street parking.
Riding on a bike with that much weight in strange places was quite different, but fortunately I'm a decent bike handler. I wouldn't recommend that anyone with less than competent bike handling skill and a lot of touring experience try the setup I did. Even for me, the descents felt scarily fast, and the climbs, such as they were, were quite painful. Add in a live toddler occasionally fighting you for the controls or wriggling, and most cyclists probably just aren't going to be up for it.
On arrival at the park entrance, we were told that the hiker biker site wasn't going to open until 4pm, but we were welcome to hangout at the beach in the mean time. We took them up on it, and arrived just as a wedding party was breaking up. They thought Bowen was cute, however, and handed him one of the party favor: a paint brush meant for brushing sand off your feet. That meant Bowen played with it for a while, though he also played in the sand and even splashed about in the ocean for a bit, though he discovered quickly that he did not like the cold water.
Back at the park entrance to checkin, we had 2 cyclists ahead of us but rather than charging us $5 a person, the park ranger decided that the park policy was $5 per bike. I was quite pleased with that. I was quite sure, however, if I'd showed up on a tandem the policy would suddenly have been $5 per person once again.
Pitching the tent was easy, and cooking and making dinner went surprisingly well. The funny thing is that toddlers behave better when there's only one parent around, so I could boil water, cook noodles, and even run off and borrow a can opener for the pork and beans without incident. At home, Bowen would have to be almost force-fed his dinner, but here at the campground, he actively fed himself dinner, then helped himself to a banana and apple.
After dinner, we used the coin-operated showers. Kids don't appreciate scenery, so I had to persuade and cajole Bowen into going for a walk to see the sunset, but it was worth the effort.
A near full moon rose in the late afternoon, and lit up the night like a spotlight, but when it came time for milk, Bowen started demanding to go home, refusing to consider getting fed by daddy. Fortunately, by this time there were many families in the campground with lit up campfires, so I visited one of our neighbors with campfires, distracting the little guy from his milk routine. Cyclists tend not to light fires, since it's a chore to get firewood and the equipment required to light it, but car campers and folks in camping trailers usually have them.
The folks were very welcoming, and gave Bowen first a marshmallow, and then let him make himself a smore. I asked them how far ahead they'd reserved their campsite, and they said 7 months ago. They had 3 kids, at ages 3, 6, and 9. I told them this was Bowen's first time camping, and mommy asked the little one (Piper) how old she was when she was first camping. Piper replied, "3". Mommy then said, "No. You were 2 weeks old when you first started camping." The sugar load made Bowen very happy, at which point he was willing to go back to the tent where he let me brush his teeth a second time and go to bed. He complained of itchiness and demanded Benadryl, after which sleep came easily.
He slept well all night, despite the fireworks from the nearby boardwalk and the noisy freeway, but woke up in the morning while I was away from the tent on the toilet. I came back to find him unzipping the tent trying to get out. I persuaded him to get back into the tent, but he was once again whining to go home. So I packed everything up while he helped himself to half a banana. It was beautiful out and the other camping cyclists told me that they didn't expect him to stay quiet all night, and were pleasantly surprised.
After we loaded everything up, we rode back to the car where he sat patiently in his car seat while I uncoupled the trailer, loaded up all the baggage, the bike and everything into the car. He ate half a bag of chips on the way home, and happily demanded his milk from mommy when we got there.
All in all, a good trip but I'd pick a quieter campground next time, and bring marshmallows and maybe a smore making kit.
Lessons for next time:
- Bring more clothing. Not just because it might get cold (it never really got very cold), but because you cannot under-estimate the number of times he's going to get dirty. He got very very messy.
- Bring more quarters. Showers are quarter operated. Good thing the ranger station had change to give me, but I wiped out all their quarters, so the next poor dad who showed up on a bike would have been SOL.
- Bring marshmallows, smore making kit, and campfire kit. Need to distract the little guy from "mommy milk time."
- Brush his teeth just before bedtime so I don't have to brush it twice.
- Buy a battery for my lightweight CPAP machine so I don't have to lug the 5 pound battery in addition to the expensive heavy weight CPAP kit. The short cord hose would come in handy as well.
Monday, October 06, 2014
Gaming the Coding Interview
Paul Graham's essay on how you can't really game startups had me thinking about the coding interview. Google had a lot of studies showing that the interview as practiced by Google wasn't very effective: in other words, interview scores don't really correlate with actual job performance. In part, this is because Google's not a startup any more --- political ability probably determines your promotions and effectiveness within Google than simply being good at engineering. But a major part is also that the coding interview is very susceptible to being gamed.
For instance, if you read Cracking the Coding Interview and were diligent about it (i.e., actually worked through the problems and practiced at them), you'd stand a good chance of doing really well during Google's interview process. Lest you think that this is a recent phenomena, even in 2003, Google's interview process was very similar. I remember being asked to reverse all the words in a sentence, and a few other puzzler type questions, and even during my interview, I remembered one interviewer telling the next one as the hand-off was happening, "this guy knows all the standard interview questions." Back then, Gayle's book didn't exist, but 10 years of interviewing for startups and interviewing at startups had hit me with every interview question that could be easily covered in a 45 minute session.
I will note that Facebook does have tougher interviews today than Google (they're hiring slower and therefore can be more picky), but from what I've seen their interviews are no less subject to being gamed.
When I look back at the interviewing process, there's really only one company that's stood out for having an interview process that couldn't be easily gamed, and that's Wealthfront in late 2012. I only include the date because in between, startups can change a lot and for all I know they could be interviewing like Google today.
The way Wealthfront conducted their interview was by pair programming. The candidate would come in, and pair program real problems with their "interviewer". The experience is intense, and in many ways eliminates the possibility of hiring someone who couldn't even write correct java syntax, or construct unit tests for code he'd just written. It's a good way to go and difficult to game, since you have to actually be able to design, structure, and turn ideas into code all the way to the testing and debugging steps.
Another good idea I've seen at certain startups is to put the culture fit interview first, before any technical interviews get done. The reason for this is if you get a candidate who's stellar on the technical side, it's actually very difficult to reject him for cultural reasons. I can attest to this, as one of my early hires at Google bombed out precisely for that reason, though without doing much damage. By putting the cultural fit interview first, you eliminate the bias to hire, even though you might waste a bit of time.
For instance, if you read Cracking the Coding Interview and were diligent about it (i.e., actually worked through the problems and practiced at them), you'd stand a good chance of doing really well during Google's interview process. Lest you think that this is a recent phenomena, even in 2003, Google's interview process was very similar. I remember being asked to reverse all the words in a sentence, and a few other puzzler type questions, and even during my interview, I remembered one interviewer telling the next one as the hand-off was happening, "this guy knows all the standard interview questions." Back then, Gayle's book didn't exist, but 10 years of interviewing for startups and interviewing at startups had hit me with every interview question that could be easily covered in a 45 minute session.
I will note that Facebook does have tougher interviews today than Google (they're hiring slower and therefore can be more picky), but from what I've seen their interviews are no less subject to being gamed.
When I look back at the interviewing process, there's really only one company that's stood out for having an interview process that couldn't be easily gamed, and that's Wealthfront in late 2012. I only include the date because in between, startups can change a lot and for all I know they could be interviewing like Google today.
The way Wealthfront conducted their interview was by pair programming. The candidate would come in, and pair program real problems with their "interviewer". The experience is intense, and in many ways eliminates the possibility of hiring someone who couldn't even write correct java syntax, or construct unit tests for code he'd just written. It's a good way to go and difficult to game, since you have to actually be able to design, structure, and turn ideas into code all the way to the testing and debugging steps.
Another good idea I've seen at certain startups is to put the culture fit interview first, before any technical interviews get done. The reason for this is if you get a candidate who's stellar on the technical side, it's actually very difficult to reject him for cultural reasons. I can attest to this, as one of my early hires at Google bombed out precisely for that reason, though without doing much damage. By putting the cultural fit interview first, you eliminate the bias to hire, even though you might waste a bit of time.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Power Tools for Home Use
Once you become a home owner, you end up with lots of little jobs that you have to work on that are too small to call a handyman for, and too big for a manual screw driver. This is especially the case if you have a rental property, since some renters will call you for literally anything from flipping a breaker switch to lubricating a vent with WD-40.
I ended up with 2 fairly decent pieces of kit for work around the house. The first is the Denali 3.6V Cordless Screwdriver kit. It's a fairly small and handy set, and comes with drill bits as well as screw driver bits. It doesn't have a lot of power, but it's also fairly safe to use. It's not meant to drive screws into studs, but it's perfect for say, screwing in a long screw onto an existing pre-drilled slot, installing keypad locks, and other such small jobs. The low power is actually useful for delicate jobs, as you won't risk driving screws that are canted or hammering in things that shouldn't be hammered.
For jobs that require more power, I ended up with the Makita 10.8V Impact Driver and Drill. The set is now obsolete, and has been replaced by the 12V combo. They are quite a bit more powerful, capable of driving screws and drilling holes into studs. The battery life is incredible, and the charging time ridiculously fast, though my usual complaints about people who design chargers that go from red to green to indicate charge status apply.
What's nice is that the set is fairly light, which translate to less fatigue. You might not think this a big deal, but when you're squatted down and bent over trying to get a screw hammered in at a corner this becomes huge. The biggest issue is that there was a lot of confusion for me as to what drill bits/screw-driver heads were compatible with this. The poor reviews on the Markita branded bit set scared me from buying them, but after collecting a few sets that were incompatible from the local hardware store I realized that I should have ignored those lousy reviews and just bought them. For a typical home user, these sets are essentially consumables and you should plan on replacing them every few years anyway, so why sweat the crappy reviews?
In any case, in terms of the number of handyman calls I've avoided as a result of owning this set of tools, I've more than made back triple the cost of the tools, so these come recommended.
I ended up with 2 fairly decent pieces of kit for work around the house. The first is the Denali 3.6V Cordless Screwdriver kit. It's a fairly small and handy set, and comes with drill bits as well as screw driver bits. It doesn't have a lot of power, but it's also fairly safe to use. It's not meant to drive screws into studs, but it's perfect for say, screwing in a long screw onto an existing pre-drilled slot, installing keypad locks, and other such small jobs. The low power is actually useful for delicate jobs, as you won't risk driving screws that are canted or hammering in things that shouldn't be hammered.
For jobs that require more power, I ended up with the Makita 10.8V Impact Driver and Drill. The set is now obsolete, and has been replaced by the 12V combo. They are quite a bit more powerful, capable of driving screws and drilling holes into studs. The battery life is incredible, and the charging time ridiculously fast, though my usual complaints about people who design chargers that go from red to green to indicate charge status apply.
What's nice is that the set is fairly light, which translate to less fatigue. You might not think this a big deal, but when you're squatted down and bent over trying to get a screw hammered in at a corner this becomes huge. The biggest issue is that there was a lot of confusion for me as to what drill bits/screw-driver heads were compatible with this. The poor reviews on the Markita branded bit set scared me from buying them, but after collecting a few sets that were incompatible from the local hardware store I realized that I should have ignored those lousy reviews and just bought them. For a typical home user, these sets are essentially consumables and you should plan on replacing them every few years anyway, so why sweat the crappy reviews?
In any case, in terms of the number of handyman calls I've avoided as a result of owning this set of tools, I've more than made back triple the cost of the tools, so these come recommended.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Review: Able Brewing Disk for Aeropress
Steve Grimm raved about the Able Brewing Disk for Aeropress, and I liked the idea of not using disposable paper filters for each cup of coffee, so I ordered it to try.
First of all, the price is $12.50 per disk on Amazon, which means that compared to paper filters, you'd have to brew 1000+ cups of coffee in order to break even. I'm not sure I'm convinced that the disk will withstand that much brewing, but I'm guessing that heavy drinkers will break even in a year. Secondly, while it's true that not using disposable paper filters is a possibility, it depends on you having a nice place to air dry a tiny disk which wouldn't fit on most drying racks and would be super easy to lose otherwise. So I end up having to dry it with paper towels, which defeats the purpose of not using paper.
Finally, there's the taste. I can't tell the difference between paper and stainless steel. So for me, I think I've hit the point of diminishing returns on coffee taste improvements. I'm starting to get skeptical of those who think that grinding your own coffee is awesome for this reason. Anyway, not recommended. Poor ROI.
First of all, the price is $12.50 per disk on Amazon, which means that compared to paper filters, you'd have to brew 1000+ cups of coffee in order to break even. I'm not sure I'm convinced that the disk will withstand that much brewing, but I'm guessing that heavy drinkers will break even in a year. Secondly, while it's true that not using disposable paper filters is a possibility, it depends on you having a nice place to air dry a tiny disk which wouldn't fit on most drying racks and would be super easy to lose otherwise. So I end up having to dry it with paper towels, which defeats the purpose of not using paper.
Finally, there's the taste. I can't tell the difference between paper and stainless steel. So for me, I think I've hit the point of diminishing returns on coffee taste improvements. I'm starting to get skeptical of those who think that grinding your own coffee is awesome for this reason. Anyway, not recommended. Poor ROI.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Video Games
After playing through a series of video games, I'm realizing a few things about video games if you're a time-pressed adult. The first is that the kind of games critics love aren't necessarily the kind of games you have time for. This is true even if you're a kid, since repeated exposures tend to inure you to what everyone else considers fun.
The reality, however, is that as an adult, you don't have a lot of time to get good at any particular video game, so games with difficulty settings that are accurate work much better than games that make you repeat something endlessly until you succeed. In other words, Dark Souls is probably not for you (or me).
Similarly, RPGs that have a big grind component are also pretty worthless. There's too much repetition, and all that grinding doesn't build to a story. I think the last time I finished an RPG was Baldur's Gate. Even then, it felt too long.
Similarly, unexplained difficulty spikes in games are also annoying. I've noticed that Ninja Theory is a big culprit for me, with at least 2 of their games (Devil May Cry and Enslaved) causing me to abandon because I couldn't get through a section and there's no way to see why. Another example is Bioshock, which lets you do the game completely wrong to the point where you can't possibly finish the game unless you restart the game from scratch, and no one who values his time is going to do that. Critics love that about games, but as a general consumer, you don't have time to repeat a 10 hour game.
Strangely enough, certain indie games also trigger that reaction for me. Part of it is that if a game relies on me playing for say, 2-3 hours at a go, I rarely get to that point. Which means that if the game expects me to be able to explore and understand the context intuitively, there's no chance that I get sufficient immersion to be able to "get it." Both Fez and Braid are like this for me. In fact, most platformers are. Again, the key to being able to finish platformers is repetition, and if you don't have endless amounts of time, you're just not going to take to them.
Not all indie games are like this. Flower and Journey come to mind as great games that don't require endless amounts of time.
What does that leave you? AAA games. Those have to reach a wide audience, and so have the easier difficulty settings properly play tested. They have high production values, and don't force too much commitment. The Batman Arkham games are a prime example. The same goes for the Uncharted series, or the God of War series, and even Killzone.
Notice something about that list? Yup, it's mostly Sony's development studios that are producing those games. No wonder Microsoft had to tie up the next Tomb Raider as an exclusive: they really don't have anything for busy parents otherwise.
The reality, however, is that as an adult, you don't have a lot of time to get good at any particular video game, so games with difficulty settings that are accurate work much better than games that make you repeat something endlessly until you succeed. In other words, Dark Souls is probably not for you (or me).
Similarly, RPGs that have a big grind component are also pretty worthless. There's too much repetition, and all that grinding doesn't build to a story. I think the last time I finished an RPG was Baldur's Gate. Even then, it felt too long.
Similarly, unexplained difficulty spikes in games are also annoying. I've noticed that Ninja Theory is a big culprit for me, with at least 2 of their games (Devil May Cry and Enslaved) causing me to abandon because I couldn't get through a section and there's no way to see why. Another example is Bioshock, which lets you do the game completely wrong to the point where you can't possibly finish the game unless you restart the game from scratch, and no one who values his time is going to do that. Critics love that about games, but as a general consumer, you don't have time to repeat a 10 hour game.
Strangely enough, certain indie games also trigger that reaction for me. Part of it is that if a game relies on me playing for say, 2-3 hours at a go, I rarely get to that point. Which means that if the game expects me to be able to explore and understand the context intuitively, there's no chance that I get sufficient immersion to be able to "get it." Both Fez and Braid are like this for me. In fact, most platformers are. Again, the key to being able to finish platformers is repetition, and if you don't have endless amounts of time, you're just not going to take to them.
Not all indie games are like this. Flower and Journey come to mind as great games that don't require endless amounts of time.
What does that leave you? AAA games. Those have to reach a wide audience, and so have the easier difficulty settings properly play tested. They have high production values, and don't force too much commitment. The Batman Arkham games are a prime example. The same goes for the Uncharted series, or the God of War series, and even Killzone.
Notice something about that list? Yup, it's mostly Sony's development studios that are producing those games. No wonder Microsoft had to tie up the next Tomb Raider as an exclusive: they really don't have anything for busy parents otherwise.
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Review: Killzone 3
Since I was so surprisingly engrossed in Killzone Mercenary, I decided to pick up the Killzone Trilogy. If this was a novel series, you'd want to start your consumption from the beginning of the series. But video games, unlike movies, improve dramatically over time, so you want to start in the inverse order with Killzone 3 first.
Basically, the game is setup to have an arena of play, followed by a cut-scene, and followed by another arena. The mode of play most of the time is FPS, but occasionally, you get a rail shooter. To mix things up, on occasion you get to pilot a jetpack (though incompetently), and a mech. These are a lot of fun, albeit they tend to break up the flow since they have completely different mechanics.
The story told in the cut scenes is entertaining enough, though not high art. The ending sucks, but seems in character for what's been going on in the series: the characters continually argue and bicker with each other while the protagonist hothead runs off and does something randomly crazy. It makes for a fun game, but a cliched story.
In any case, the game's got a few things that makes it fun even for a terrible FPS player like me:
Basically, the game is setup to have an arena of play, followed by a cut-scene, and followed by another arena. The mode of play most of the time is FPS, but occasionally, you get a rail shooter. To mix things up, on occasion you get to pilot a jetpack (though incompetently), and a mech. These are a lot of fun, albeit they tend to break up the flow since they have completely different mechanics.
The story told in the cut scenes is entertaining enough, though not high art. The ending sucks, but seems in character for what's been going on in the series: the characters continually argue and bicker with each other while the protagonist hothead runs off and does something randomly crazy. It makes for a fun game, but a cliched story.
In any case, the game's got a few things that makes it fun even for a terrible FPS player like me:
- Plenty of NPC allies. You're almost never alone, and there's always fire support and if you don't rush off in front of your allies, someone will revive you even if you're killed. This is huge! It cuts down on the frustrations a lot, and you're never stuck for long.
- Plenty of variety in game play, and multiple paths to victory. In particular, even the stealth section is forgiving. You don't just die because you didn't stealth right. You get a chance to pick up an enemy's weapon and just blast your way through. Again, not frustrating.
- Lots of eye candy. The environments change a lot, and it's very different each time.
- Plenty of ammo reload locations. I think I ran out of ammo once. And you can always pick up the enemy's weapons.
In other words, the game's perfect for a beginner, and the game's not so long that you get bored or sick of the game play. I ended the game wanting more, which is always a good sign. The ending was a bit anti-climatic, but maybe it's just an invitation to start over with the Playstation Move controller.
I played the game in 3D for a bit, and it's OK, but didn't add enough to the experience for me to want to put on those 3D glasses in addition to my normal glasses.
All in all, the game's entertaining, and worth a play, even if you suck at FPS. Recommended.
Friday, September 26, 2014
Review: True Romance
Somehow, I missed True Romance when it first came out in the theaters, and when I saw that Amazon was having a sale on a Quentin Tarantino movie that I'd missed, I jumped on it for $5
The plot of the movie is a lot like No Country For Old Men (another $4.50 blu ray): two innocents find a drug stash in the most unlikely set of events possible, and then try to flee while profiting from the drug stash as quickly as possible.
The movie's a fantasy, of course, but it's classic Tarantino fantasy, with lots of unlikely events, heart-wrenching violence, and somewhat believable characters. What ties it together is that the movie moves fast enough that you're never given time to think it through.
The movie never bogs down, and the ending was interesting enough that I watched the alternate ending just to see what the alternative was, and agreed with Tarantino that the movie deserved the original theater ending.
A fun watch, and worth $5.
The plot of the movie is a lot like No Country For Old Men (another $4.50 blu ray): two innocents find a drug stash in the most unlikely set of events possible, and then try to flee while profiting from the drug stash as quickly as possible.
The movie's a fantasy, of course, but it's classic Tarantino fantasy, with lots of unlikely events, heart-wrenching violence, and somewhat believable characters. What ties it together is that the movie moves fast enough that you're never given time to think it through.
The movie never bogs down, and the ending was interesting enough that I watched the alternate ending just to see what the alternative was, and agreed with Tarantino that the movie deserved the original theater ending.
A fun watch, and worth $5.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Review: Indie Game The Movie
I will admit that I know Jon Blow, one of the 3 game developers featured on Indie Game, and that was one of the draws of the movie to me. The movie covers 3 indie game developers, using Jon as the "voice of experience", Super Meatboy, and Fez. Super Meatboy's development team (2 people) was clearly the star of the show, since Fez was still under development when the movie was done.
The movies explores a number of interesting themes, but strangely enough, didn't talk much about game play. All 3 games are platformers, and when you think about it, that's about the limit of what a small team can manage without outside funding or without spending a ton of the developers' capital.
The development process isn't very well touched on, since a lay audience isn't going to understand much of how a typical developer goes about his day anyway. What's interesting is that with the exception of Jon, who can code and design, both the other titles feature a non-coding designer with a programmer. It's definitely not just one person slogging away. This makes sense, it takes unusual talent and dedication to start something like this without a co-founder.
All in all, the movie was a fun watch, but strangely slow pace and rather shallow. You're forced to read between the lines to extract any value from it. Not recommended.
The movies explores a number of interesting themes, but strangely enough, didn't talk much about game play. All 3 games are platformers, and when you think about it, that's about the limit of what a small team can manage without outside funding or without spending a ton of the developers' capital.
The development process isn't very well touched on, since a lay audience isn't going to understand much of how a typical developer goes about his day anyway. What's interesting is that with the exception of Jon, who can code and design, both the other titles feature a non-coding designer with a programmer. It's definitely not just one person slogging away. This makes sense, it takes unusual talent and dedication to start something like this without a co-founder.
All in all, the movie was a fun watch, but strangely slow pace and rather shallow. You're forced to read between the lines to extract any value from it. Not recommended.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Vanguard's Unique Corporate Structure
One thing I've come to realize over and over again, is that very few people understand what makes Vanguard such a unique company. Some might even be confused by my referring to both Vanguard and TIAA-CREF as non-profits, which is both strange and unfamiliar given that most people think of non-profits as charitable institutions, while Vanguard is clearly not one.
What makes Vanguard unique is the ownership structure. A traditional financial institution such as Fidelity or Charles Schwab or any of the traditional Wall Street banks and investment banks is a privately owned company that manages mutual funds or other financial services for its customers. This leads to a conflict of interest: the owners of Fidelity, for instance, make more money if it charges its customers more. That means that Fidelity becomes more profitable, the higher the expenses it can charge its customers. As you can imagine, Fidelity's expense ratios (other than a few funds where it competes directly with Vanguard) are quite high as a result.
Vanguard the operating company, however, is owned by the mutual funds it operates. In other words, the mutual funds own and direct the operating company. With this ownership structure, there's no conflict of interest between the customer of a Vanguard fund and Vanguard itself: the lower the expenses Vanguard manage to operate at, the more profitable the mutual funds are, and better off the Vanguard customer is.
Now, this is by no means a panacea. For instance, you can imagine a corrupt situation where Vanguard's operating firm's officers serve as the officers of its mutual funds, and so they vote their own compensation packages sky high while hurting Vanguard's customers. There's no guarantee that this can't happen, but given that large financial institutions with no relationship to Vanguard's officers get to vet and do due diligence of Vanguard's funds before they invest, there's good reason to believe that the market will serve as an adequate watchdog and prevent this from happening.
The result of this ownership structure difference is substantial: Vanguard's dramatically dropped its expenses for the vast majority of its customers over its life, and it continues to do so today. And if you ask me why I'm an unabashed Vanguard fan (over Fidelity, Schwab, or even Wealthfront), I'd point to this structure as being unique and unreplicated in the financial industry.
What makes Vanguard unique is the ownership structure. A traditional financial institution such as Fidelity or Charles Schwab or any of the traditional Wall Street banks and investment banks is a privately owned company that manages mutual funds or other financial services for its customers. This leads to a conflict of interest: the owners of Fidelity, for instance, make more money if it charges its customers more. That means that Fidelity becomes more profitable, the higher the expenses it can charge its customers. As you can imagine, Fidelity's expense ratios (other than a few funds where it competes directly with Vanguard) are quite high as a result.
Vanguard the operating company, however, is owned by the mutual funds it operates. In other words, the mutual funds own and direct the operating company. With this ownership structure, there's no conflict of interest between the customer of a Vanguard fund and Vanguard itself: the lower the expenses Vanguard manage to operate at, the more profitable the mutual funds are, and better off the Vanguard customer is.
Now, this is by no means a panacea. For instance, you can imagine a corrupt situation where Vanguard's operating firm's officers serve as the officers of its mutual funds, and so they vote their own compensation packages sky high while hurting Vanguard's customers. There's no guarantee that this can't happen, but given that large financial institutions with no relationship to Vanguard's officers get to vet and do due diligence of Vanguard's funds before they invest, there's good reason to believe that the market will serve as an adequate watchdog and prevent this from happening.
The result of this ownership structure difference is substantial: Vanguard's dramatically dropped its expenses for the vast majority of its customers over its life, and it continues to do so today. And if you ask me why I'm an unabashed Vanguard fan (over Fidelity, Schwab, or even Wealthfront), I'd point to this structure as being unique and unreplicated in the financial industry.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Review: Windows 8.1 Pro
A couple of years ago, I upgraded my desktop top Windows 8 Pro. Just a few months later, the machine corrupted its own hard drive, but I was fed up with the start screen, and so reverted back to Windows 7 from and old backup. The desktop is still running Windows 7, and my Windows 8 Pro license went unused. I was feeling a bit cheated by Microsoft, to say the least, despite the $40 I paid.
Recently, I noticed that my wife's Surface Pro with Windows 8.1 felt quite usable, and booted to the desktop while booting very fast (10s). The old X201 was taking minutes to resume from hibernate, and 30s to boot from a cold start, and being a laptop, was doing that frequently, so I thought it would be a good candidate for Windows 8.1 Pro, since my old license would get a free upgrade to it.
The installation process is fairly painless, but did take most of the day (I could use the PC most of the time while the upgrade was happening, so it wasn't too bad). And to my surprise, when I was done, the laptop did boot up in 10s, and resumed in about the same amount of time from hibernate, indicating that the improvements in performance wasn't really dependent on CPU performance.
Performance seems pretty fast most of the time as well, as UI elements pop up, and the device seemed to suck much less memory. The device even seemed to sleep more consistently than before, which I was impressed by. And of course, in the intervening 2 years, I'd gotten used to the start screen (though I do hope Windows 9 brings back the start menu), so it no longer bothered me as much. The charms bar was still annoying at times, but by and large it's been ok.
One of the most annoying things about Windows 8 was that you were forced to login using a Microsoft account, but that didn't correspond to any accounts on my beloved Windows Home Server, so effectively you lost access to it. Fortunately, Windows 8.1 fixed that using the Credentials Manager, so now I can happily use my Windows Home Server, which is still easily the best file server I've used at home.
Needless to say, I won't be going back to Windows 7 on the laptop any time soon, so I'd label this upgrade recommended. I'm impressed that Microsoft has actually fixed issues I care about in this release, though obviously, the start menu is still the much needed improvement that I'm waiting for.
Recently, I noticed that my wife's Surface Pro with Windows 8.1 felt quite usable, and booted to the desktop while booting very fast (10s). The old X201 was taking minutes to resume from hibernate, and 30s to boot from a cold start, and being a laptop, was doing that frequently, so I thought it would be a good candidate for Windows 8.1 Pro, since my old license would get a free upgrade to it.
The installation process is fairly painless, but did take most of the day (I could use the PC most of the time while the upgrade was happening, so it wasn't too bad). And to my surprise, when I was done, the laptop did boot up in 10s, and resumed in about the same amount of time from hibernate, indicating that the improvements in performance wasn't really dependent on CPU performance.
Performance seems pretty fast most of the time as well, as UI elements pop up, and the device seemed to suck much less memory. The device even seemed to sleep more consistently than before, which I was impressed by. And of course, in the intervening 2 years, I'd gotten used to the start screen (though I do hope Windows 9 brings back the start menu), so it no longer bothered me as much. The charms bar was still annoying at times, but by and large it's been ok.
One of the most annoying things about Windows 8 was that you were forced to login using a Microsoft account, but that didn't correspond to any accounts on my beloved Windows Home Server, so effectively you lost access to it. Fortunately, Windows 8.1 fixed that using the Credentials Manager, so now I can happily use my Windows Home Server, which is still easily the best file server I've used at home.
Needless to say, I won't be going back to Windows 7 on the laptop any time soon, so I'd label this upgrade recommended. I'm impressed that Microsoft has actually fixed issues I care about in this release, though obviously, the start menu is still the much needed improvement that I'm waiting for.
Monday, September 22, 2014
Review: Gobble Dinner Service
In the past, there's been plenty of food startups, from kitchit to gastronauts. None of them have addressed what I consider the best possible market: busy parents. We ran into Gobble and decided to give them a try, since they were promising fast meals that were done right.
The idea behind Gobble is this: you get pre-packaged, pre-prepared gourmet food delivered to your door in refrigerated packages. Each box comes with 3 meals, and you're in a subscription service, so you can cancel any time. Each meal comes with a preparation card, and it takes about 10 minutes to prepare each meal, and you'll be done. It's a nice concept, though as with all sorts of food, everything depends on the execution.
The central premise behind any kind of delivered food service like this is Sous Vide. Since the food has been already vacuum-packed while cooking, it's an easy step to simply go the next step to freeze it and then deliver it to your door. The biggest problem is that most people don't have a sous vide setup, so I was curious as to how they did the reheating.
It turned out that about only 2 out of 3 meals are done via sous vide. The fish and seafood dishes have ingredients that are so easily cooked that stir fry does it. The other sous vide meals are finished via either stir fry, or a searing step followed by an oven. This last method means that Gobble cheated on their marketing: it takes way longer than 10 minutes to pre-heat the oven and then for you to stir fry and present the meal.
The other problem I had with them was the delivery. The service uses On-Trac, which has a history of extremely late deliveries to my home. Indeed, the first delivery was so late that our Gobble meal turned into Pizza take out by the time the van driver showed up at my home. I called customer service and they apologized and gave me a $10 credit, but if I'd had hungry kids and a hungry wife, $10 wouldn't have come close to making up for it. There's also the problem of picking up the old container. I have no idea when they intend to collect them or if I'm supposed to throw them away.
As for value for money, the cost of the meal is about $12/person. This is approximately about the cost of eating out, except you don't have to tip. The variety of meals are decent, though the portion size ranges from barely adequate to substantial. It's very clear that each meal is sized not by calorie needs but by how much each ingredient costs: the chicken dishes are substantial, the beef dishes are usually supplemented by beans, and the seafood dishes would not keep a teenage boy well-fed.
The meals are decent, though everything is Americanized, so the curry tastes kinda bland and the chili is very mild. But it's all been very good, though not as good as if you went all modernist cuisine on it.
In any case, since we do have a sous vide machine, I'm not sure we'll continue after a month's trial, but I can recommend them to people without sous vide machine. It's also a nice way to get recipe ideas. In any case, if you do want a referral code for a trial e-mail me and I'll arrange for you to get one. Or you can just click through above if you're impatient and do without.
This is one of the few services that I think deserves success, and serves the South Bay quite well. Recommended.
The idea behind Gobble is this: you get pre-packaged, pre-prepared gourmet food delivered to your door in refrigerated packages. Each box comes with 3 meals, and you're in a subscription service, so you can cancel any time. Each meal comes with a preparation card, and it takes about 10 minutes to prepare each meal, and you'll be done. It's a nice concept, though as with all sorts of food, everything depends on the execution.
The central premise behind any kind of delivered food service like this is Sous Vide. Since the food has been already vacuum-packed while cooking, it's an easy step to simply go the next step to freeze it and then deliver it to your door. The biggest problem is that most people don't have a sous vide setup, so I was curious as to how they did the reheating.
It turned out that about only 2 out of 3 meals are done via sous vide. The fish and seafood dishes have ingredients that are so easily cooked that stir fry does it. The other sous vide meals are finished via either stir fry, or a searing step followed by an oven. This last method means that Gobble cheated on their marketing: it takes way longer than 10 minutes to pre-heat the oven and then for you to stir fry and present the meal.
The other problem I had with them was the delivery. The service uses On-Trac, which has a history of extremely late deliveries to my home. Indeed, the first delivery was so late that our Gobble meal turned into Pizza take out by the time the van driver showed up at my home. I called customer service and they apologized and gave me a $10 credit, but if I'd had hungry kids and a hungry wife, $10 wouldn't have come close to making up for it. There's also the problem of picking up the old container. I have no idea when they intend to collect them or if I'm supposed to throw them away.
As for value for money, the cost of the meal is about $12/person. This is approximately about the cost of eating out, except you don't have to tip. The variety of meals are decent, though the portion size ranges from barely adequate to substantial. It's very clear that each meal is sized not by calorie needs but by how much each ingredient costs: the chicken dishes are substantial, the beef dishes are usually supplemented by beans, and the seafood dishes would not keep a teenage boy well-fed.
The meals are decent, though everything is Americanized, so the curry tastes kinda bland and the chili is very mild. But it's all been very good, though not as good as if you went all modernist cuisine on it.
In any case, since we do have a sous vide machine, I'm not sure we'll continue after a month's trial, but I can recommend them to people without sous vide machine. It's also a nice way to get recipe ideas. In any case, if you do want a referral code for a trial e-mail me and I'll arrange for you to get one. Or you can just click through above if you're impatient and do without.
This is one of the few services that I think deserves success, and serves the South Bay quite well. Recommended.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Review: Locked In
Locked In is John Scalzi's latest novel. It's a quick fun read, and not very deep, but a good example of how a good science fiction writer can take a single topic, extrapolate it to the world around him, and then weave a decent story.
The story involves Hadens. Much like a movie, the world that Scalzi wants to move in is so complex that it has to have a prologue. Basically, a virus has left a large population of people locked into their bodies, so they can only interact with the world through remote-drones (called threeps), or an integrator, which is a human who's set up to receive remote control just like a threep would be. The intricacies around the plot revolve around what it's possible or not possible to do with an integrator, so Scalzi ensures that you get all that information up front. That's the science fiction part.
The main character, Chris Shane, is a Haden who's a rookie FBI agent. On his first day of work, he and his partner are assigned to a mysterious murder, and as they unravel the plot, we see that it's not just a simple murder, but also implicates that big changes are coming to the world that Scalzi has set his plot in.
The plot is by far the weakest part of the story. Not only is the villain's intentions rather far fetched and unbelievable, the means by which he aims to achieve his goals seem rather amateurish. Certainly, that a rookie agent seems to have had such an easy time unravel-ling the shenanigans makes everything seem very pat.
Nevertheless, it's a fun read and quite compelling. A worthy airplane novel. Mildly recommended.
The story involves Hadens. Much like a movie, the world that Scalzi wants to move in is so complex that it has to have a prologue. Basically, a virus has left a large population of people locked into their bodies, so they can only interact with the world through remote-drones (called threeps), or an integrator, which is a human who's set up to receive remote control just like a threep would be. The intricacies around the plot revolve around what it's possible or not possible to do with an integrator, so Scalzi ensures that you get all that information up front. That's the science fiction part.
The main character, Chris Shane, is a Haden who's a rookie FBI agent. On his first day of work, he and his partner are assigned to a mysterious murder, and as they unravel the plot, we see that it's not just a simple murder, but also implicates that big changes are coming to the world that Scalzi has set his plot in.
The plot is by far the weakest part of the story. Not only is the villain's intentions rather far fetched and unbelievable, the means by which he aims to achieve his goals seem rather amateurish. Certainly, that a rookie agent seems to have had such an easy time unravel-ling the shenanigans makes everything seem very pat.
Nevertheless, it's a fun read and quite compelling. A worthy airplane novel. Mildly recommended.
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