Teton/Yellowstone RV Trip: Day 3: Rafting on the Snake River

The rafting trip was broken into 2 parts: the scenic tour in the early morning, where everyone was allowed to go, and the late morning white water trip, where Bowen was excluded and my father elected to stay behind to watch him.

The morning trip was indeed a slow float down the river, where everyone stayed dry. Our river guide, a 27-year old woman from the East Coast, was formerly a pre-med before deciding that it wasn't for her and came to Jackson to lead an outdoor life as well as retrain for education.

We spotted 10 bald eagles, multiple ducks, and Bowen got a chance to row with the guide. I expected a struggle to keep him off the white water trip, but it turned out that an early explanation had stuck, so he agreed to stick around the rafting office and take care of Grandpa.

The white water trip was at most a class 3, since it was summer and the water was low. It was fairly tame by white water standards, but it was a lot more active than the earlier trip, and we got wet quite often.

There was even a section where you could jump off the boat and swim, and the weather being warm enough to do so this time, quite a few folk took the river guide's offer.

After that, we visited the Pearl Street Market to buy lunch, and then were driven back to the Fireside resort. We spent the rest of the evening doing laundry.

Teton/Yellowstone RV Trip Day 2: Bear Lake State Park to Fireside Resort

We got up early the next day to make the remaining drive to Jackson, Wyoming, where I'd pre-booked a site at the Fireside resort for 2 days. I'd gotten to realize early on that a 32' RV was hard to get a space for, and so had booked about the first 9 days of the trip.After that, I figured I'd be competent to fly by the seat of my pants.

The reason for staying here two nights was because I'd signed us up for a rafting trip the next day. We'd arrived early enough to be able to take the bus into town and walk around, so we did so. We then had an early night so we could wake up in time for the pickup from the rafting company the next day.

Tetons/Yellowstone RV Trip Day 1: Salt Lake City to Bear Lake State Park

In early April, we thought it might be a good idea to take the family to the Tetons and Yellowstone for some RV camping. Because of the number of people involved, I thought that an RV might be practical. I've never tried it before, but given my experience with relatively large sailing catamarans, I didn't think that maneuvering an RV would be especially difficult.

Because of the number of people involved, I was forced to reserve a fairly large motorhome. I ended up picking a class B Sunseeker 3170 from Utah RV Rentals.

Because of a few last minute change of plans (driven entirely by external circumstances beyond our control), neither Boen nor Xiaoqin could come, so my parents were recruited to come along instead.

On August 3rd, we flew a 6:15am direct flight from San Jose to Salt Lake City, where upon landing the representatives from Utah RV Rentals met us, tossed everything into an open-top pick up truck, squeezed all 6 of us into the cab, and drove us to pick up the RV. You might think me insane for deliberately picking an absurdly early hour, but my reason for doing so came from my experience with sailboat charters: I expected the check-out to take 2 hours, and then wanted another couple of hours for provisioning, and then to gingerly make my way to Bear Lake State Park, where I had a fully hooked up connection.

The check-out doesn't take nearly as long for an RV: you're presumed to know how to drive a car. The systems aren't nearly as complicated, and RV rental companies seem to be really casual about teaching you how to operate systems. For instance, on a sailboat, the propane is usually cut off whenever you're sailing, but on an RV it's apparently OK to turn on the propane while driving!

We left the RV rental place around 11:00, made our way to a Costco, and then proceeded to eat lunch before buying about 10 days worth of consumables. The RV handled pretty nicely, much closer to a boat than a car, but much less bulky and more maneuverable than any sailboat I've had to drive. What caused us to drive slowly, however, was an unusual storm, which made visibility poor and traffic on I-15 slow an uncharacteristically slow 45mph. We did leave before rush hour traffic, so we were able to get onto the smaller roads past Ogden fairly early.

If you use Google Maps to visit Bear Lake State Park, it'll take you to the wrong one. What you want is the Rendezvous Beach campground. We got there at around 5:00pm, proceeded to set up camp and dinner, when Kevin arrived. The kids got to play, and we got to walk around in the park, which wasn't particularly pretty, but it was only a temporary stop.

As expected, Bowen loved RV camping, and after playing was happy to sleep in the same space as me above the cab of the RV. He kicked around all night, however.

Review: Isaac Newton

I have fond memories of James Gleick's excellent biography of Richard Feynman, so I checked out Isaac Newton from the library hoping for similar excellence. To my surprise, it wasn't nearly as good, though upon reflection, I shouldn't have been so surprised.

With Richard Feynman, many of his colleagues were still alive when Gleick wrote his book, and so we were able to get personal, up close stories about Feynman. Feynman also left behind tons of media from books to lectures to actual videos (such as from his famous exposition about the O-ring problem in the Challenger disaster).

By contrast, Newton was secretive, frequently writing his notes in cryptography, and separated from the modern age by 300 years: enough time for even his undeciphered writing to be cryptic and full of spelling that seems ancient by the standards of modern English. He never married and had no children, and so left behind few who could explain his personal mannerisms in an informal setting or know what he was really like.

Given these limitations then, Gleick does a reasonable job for the layman, explaining certain myths (such as the Newtonian conception of gravity) but at the same time not really providing sufficient context for important inventions such as Calculus and differential equations. The overall picture that emerges is complex, and Gleick does a good job of explaining to the reader that as the bridge between pre-modern pre-scientific Europe, Newton wasn't just the first scientist and mathematician, but also the last alchemist who also poisoned himself in the quest to turn lead into gold.

My criticism of the book is that Gleick doesn't really provide sufficient context for Newton's contemporaries. We get some tantalizing glimpses of Charles Boyle, and of course there's Leibniz, but none other than Leibniz are given serious treatment, so we don't really see the context in which Newton worked.

I recommend this book despite the faults, because of the limitations Gleick had to work with. Newton was (and arguably still is) an incredibly important figure in modern scientific enterprise, and it's a worthwhile read to see the origins of insights that came from the great man, as well as getting a (admittedly very limited) glimpse of the context in which he worked.

Review: Foundation and Chaos

Foundation and Chaos is the second book in the post-Asimov Foundation trilogy. I missed it when it came out in 1998, and decided to skip the first novel because it was generally panned by reviewers.

The novel is interesting making references to Asimov's universe that I've long since forgotten, but also drawing the importance of robots, for instance, in the evolution of human kind to the logical conclusion. It's fun and a little bit creaky, but still entertaining.

The protagonist of the trilogy is clearly Hari Seldon, who of course is the prophet/leader depicted in the original Foundation trilogy. As a prequel, the novel grants us relatively little insight into what psycho-history is, what the parameters are, and of course, depends too much on the rise of psycho-history as the brilliant work of one man, while we know that most scientific work usually depends on not just theoreticians and mathematicians, but also experimentalists. Yet the rise of psycho-history (as depicted in these novels) appears to depend entirely upon mathematics without any empirical evidence, which seems really far-fetched, to say the least. I raise this as a criticism because the authors of this second trilogy are all writers with real scientific credentials, as Asimov was.

In any case, the plot revolves around the rise of telepaths (called mentallics in the novel) who can influence other people or even groups of humans. Readers of the original series would know that this plays a critical part in the second foundation. It's an interesting romp, but ultimately fails to compare to the scope and grandeur of the originals.

Nevertheless, it made me want to go back and read the original series again, which can't be a bad thing.

Review: Armada

Armada is Ernest Cline's love letter to the 1980s media, including video games and movies.His first novel, Ready Player One was also from the same mold, so if you read that novel and wished for more, well, here it is.

Treading the same waters is a dangerous game, but Cline pulls it off. The plot is a remix of The Last Starfighter, where video games are used as a testing ground to train and recruit fighter pilots (and mech warriors) for a secretly planned war against an alien invasion. Except this is updated to modern times, where it's a MMO shared world shooter.

The twist that Cline adds is that all the obvious plot-holes of The Last Starfighter are covered. Cline covers all these issues in a fun and straightforward way, with the protagonist constantly questioning the underlying premise he's presented with. The net result is that you never feel like you're being taken for a fool, while Cline still gets to throw in all the fun and important action hijinks that's a crowd-pleaser.

Nevertheless, the entire novel still feels like a re-tread. If Ready Player One satisfied your 80s nostalgia, there's no need to read this book. It's fun, but it does feel a bit too obviously an attempt to repeat the prior success without adding a whole lot.

Review: Fables #22 - Farewell

"This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper." T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" is as good a description as any of the last Fables graphic novel, titled "Farewell."

In many ways, Fables was a victim of its own success: with a video game, several spin-off comic book titles, and a run spanning well over a decade, there came a point where the story wore out its welcome.

In recent issues, Willingham managed to kill Bigby Wolf, one of the fan favorites. Of course, death in the world of the fables isn't necessarily permanent, and he comes back, albeit in changed form. I don't know when Willingham decided to end the series, but in many ways the ending feels rushed: not only does Wolf's resolution feels rushed and hurried without any real explanation (or at least, an explanation that can carry weight in the milieu of the Fables), the final epic battle is also averted with far too much common sense, but without a sense of a dramatic reveal that characterized the best of the series.

It's interesting to see Willingham even acknowledge (through one of the characters) that in many ways, Fables should have ended with issue #100, with the defeat of the adversary. In many ways, the 50 or so issues after that climatic event felt like treading water. Though there are a few gems, (Fables #18: Cubs in Toyland in particular evoked such strong memories of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman that I checked the credits page to make sure it wasn't a Gaiman story) the worst of the series felt like the author was drunk on success and too rich to care any more.

In any case, this final volume is a celebration, with lots of little stories celebrating some of the characters in the series. It's unfortunate, however, that in many cases, the characters were not fleshed out enough for me to care (or in some cases remember) about them. Nevertheless, Willingham's to be commended for not pulling a Robert Jordon and dying before finishing his epic, a rare trait in these days of multi-volume epics that are abusive of readers (graphic and prose) otherwise.

Review: Call of Duty - Advanced Warfare (PS4)

In my many years away from computer games, I'd somehow missed the rise of the Call of Duty series. A victim of Amazon's "Prime Day", I dutifully bought a copy of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare when it appeared to be really cheap. The series has a reputation for having short single-player campaigns, but at half-price, I figured I could resell the disk if I didn't enjoy the multiplayer. (I expect not to play the multi-player game as I'd probably get slaughtered, and as someone who frequently gets interrupted in the middle of a game, I'd probably annoy all the other players by having to bail in the middle of a session)

I will say that I'm impressed. Much like Killzone 3, it's a surprisingly fun and linear first person shooter. But the difficulty setting (especially at "easy") is such that even I could play it through. What's particularly fun is that much as you could imagine it would be, you don't have to kill every enemy while progressing through a level to proceed. The game will proceed anyway if you simply charge forward. In the case of several of the set pieces, the game runs as though it were a Disneyland ride, rolling along at a breakneck pace while you do your best to nail as many enemies as possible, dodge obstacles, or simply keep up.

And just as with the Uncharted series or Killzone, you're never alone: you always have an NPC to guide you. This serves two purposes: in many cases, the NPC's there to tell you where you go. Secondly, the NPC serves as a marker, following you in case of assault, and even occasionally giving you a chance to assist. Unlike certain other games, the NPCs never nag at you, and only occasionally give you orders.

The story is thin, an excuseveneer to have fun. But boy, not having played one of these before, they're incredibly fun. Each segment of the single player campaign is unique, with set pieces that are never repeated in others. Whether it's night vision goggles, mute charges, or some new high tech warfare gadget, you're never given a chance to get sick and tired of the "oh wow" high tech special effects. The price of this of course, is player agency: you get one chance to drive the giant robot, one chance to drive a tank, one chance to drive the hoverbike, but you will never find one to hop on and use where the game designers have not placed it front and center (and an unavoidable part of the story). Nevertheless, when you do get the chance, you'll get a grin on your face and enjoy the heck out of it, because the entire set-piece is designed around the capabilities of your new toy. If this is part of the formula of the Call of Duty series, I can see why people line up for a chance to throw $60 every year to take part in the franchise: it's a heck of a lot more fun than most movies.

Technically, the game's a masterpiece as well. There's slight stuttering in scenes where you're in close quarters with your comrades, but never in combat. Once you're in combat, the game runs (on my PS4 at least) at a full 60fps, and looks gorgeous. The cut-scenes look like they're from a high-budget Hollywood action movie, and the in-game graphics aren't a lot worse. The set pieces have a few annoying QTEs, but no worse than any of the Uncharted games.

I will admit that I bought Wolfenstein: The New Order at half the price I paid for this, but even on the easiest difficulty level I'd get stuck. By contrast, Call of Duty was compellingly playable, had a much lighter story, and I never cared that I didn't find a single piece of Intel that was supposedly scattered throughout the levels of the single-player game: I got too engrossed and caught up in the situation presented, and never gave a thought to rooting around for hidden rewards when I could be off in another fire-fight with my squad-mates.

That speaks volumes as to how playable and how much fun the latest Call of Duty installment is. Wolfenstein, by the way, got much better reviews (and is a dedicated single player game to boot), but I suspect you'd have to be much more jaded (and competent) a FPS player than I am to pass up Call of Duty over the Wolfenstein series.

Recommended.

Review: Tippi - My Book of Africa

I bought Tippi: My Book of Africa for the photos. Tippi's parents, both photographers who worked in Africa for a period, took the opportunity to shoot photographs of her playing in the wilderness, with animals, and with natives.

Fast forward a couple of years, and Bowen's suddenly decided that he was interested in Africa. While the BBC series (impressively shot and presented) was fun for him, the Tippi's book was much more fascinating for him: for one thing, it was written by a 10 year old, and the photographs (many of which were staged or set in reserves with tame animals) more intimate. So I've been asked to read the book over and over again for him.

The book's voice seems very authentic. Life, philosophy, racism, and fear are all talked about from a ten year old's point of view and consciousness. There would be wild sweeping pronouncements followed by "I don't know." It's very rambling, and frequently repetitive. But Bowen can't get enough of it and so I'm forced to read it over and over again.

Because of the photographs, it's not an ideal bed-time read. You really should have good lighting to see the photos properly. On the other hand, as an authentic voice and as exposure to your child as an example of, "Yes, you can write a book too." It's pretty ideal.

Recommended.

Review: The Fox Effect

By now, it's not a controversy that viewing Fox news will actually have a detrimental effect on your knowledge. But there was a time when this wasn't common knowledge, and people had to take Fox News seriously instead of being the propaganda machine that they are.

The Fox Effect is an effective documentary book about that period of time. It covers the founding of Fox News, its rise in its media, and its strategy towards coverage:

1. One or more Fox hosts will launch a series of lies.
2. Fox will provide wall-to-wall repeated coverage, with the Fox hosts repeating each other.
3. Fox will then attack other media outlets for not covering "the controversy".
4. This would lead to political ramifications, either from people being fired by administrations afraid of controversy, or someone losing an election.

The book is very effective, though very painful for me to read. The series of lies propagated by Fox and the blatant leverage of their platform as a campaign platform for the GOP was of course played out in 2010, almost killing the Affordable Care Act, and not relenting on it.

Furthermore, it's clear that the authors of the book bent over backwards to try be as sympathetic to Rupert Murdoch as possible, often repeating his statements about how regretful he was about the damage Fox has done, while at the same time noting that Murdoch not only endorsed Fox strategy in many cases, but also gave money to the causes it actively campaigned for on its behest.

The book ends on a hopeful note that today's media now recognizes Fox's M.O., and that Fox's attempt to go after the authors' organization did not bear fruit because Media Matters itself saw it coming and managed to stop the process before it got to step 4.

In any case, a worthwhile, if depressing read. Recommended.

Review: NXR-RH3001 Professional 30" Under Cabinet Range Hood

After our recent remodeling I now have a deathly fear of home improvement projects. Unfortunately, our microwave range hood's microwave function went dead recently, and our remodeling also left us with some ridiculously sensitive smoke detectors, so I went crazy and bought the most powerful range hood Costco has: the $500 800 cfm "Professional" model.

Being tired of remodeling, we paid someone to do the install. He had to make a couple of trips to Home Depot since the hood didn't come with all the parts, but we kept going instead of returning it because he said he had experience with the unit and thought it was an excellent choice.

The hood extends down quite a bit more than the microwave did, but that's not a bad thing: it just means that the hood is closer to the cooking pots and what not. The lights also work better since they're closer to the stove.

At full 800CFM, the thing isn't excessively loud, and was indeed the same noise level or less than the microwave hood it replaced. What's most important, however, is now when I get out the blow-torch to sear steaks, the house's smoke detectors don't go off, and you can visibly see the hood sucking up all the smoke and grease.

At lower levels (the hood has 4 different motor speeds), you can barely hear the device.

Recommended. Should have done the upgrade ages ago.

Review: Never Alone (PS4)

Never Alone is a puzzle-platformer whose primary purpose is to provide cultural understanding of the Inupiat Alaskan natives. The game tells a story (in the Inupiat language with subtitles provided) about a girl who sets out to free her village from an eternal blizzard. The story is well told and full of atmosphere, with cut-scenes provided through faux-historic pictograms. It's pretty, and part of the reason I kept playing even though I don't usually enjoy platformers.

The game is clearly written to be played with two players at once: if you're a solo player, you'll have to flip between the two characters (the girl and her arctic fox) in order to get through some of the puzzles. Because certain puzzles have a time limit (especially near the end of the game), this could lead you to repeat sections over and over until you get it right, which can be frustrating. Fortunately, the game's checkpointing system is fairly well thought out, and you usually will not repeat any puzzle which you can do once.

The closest comparison game I'd compare this to is Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Both use a puzzle platformer to tell a story, and because the game has a goal other than to provide extended play time or to challenge the players, the puzzles are straightforward.

As a single player, however, the approach of Brothers is the considerably better one, with the controls for Never Alone never really feeling comfortable, and frequently awkward. However, what the game excels at (and this is an excellent reason to play and experience the game) is mapping the platforming adventure to the environment of the harsh arctic circle. Frequently, the most dangerous part of the game is the environment, not the polar bears or the enemies, real or mythical. Furthermore, the game ends just about when it starts to wear out its welcome (3 hours 10 minutes is the average), a rare demonstration of restraint amongst video games.

I got this as part of the Playstation Plus subscription. I can't imagine paying the full $14.99 price for this game, but considering the other PS+ games that never get played more than a couple of times, I'd say that this game is considerably more respectful of my time than other games, is beautifully rendered, and therefore worthy of your consideration if it were to be suitable discounted (it was recently on sale on steam for $6.99, and on PSN for $6.00). Considering that it includes 24 videos that essentially form an hour long documentary about the Inupiat Eskimos, that would be a very attractive price if you have an interest in the topic.

The game is available on XBox One, PS4, PC, and Macintosh.

Recommended.

Review: Joss Whedon: The Biography

I generally enjoy Joss Whedon's work. I hesitate to call myself a fan, since I don't like all of his work. For instance, I enjoyed Buffy, but I found Dollhouse too silly. I disliked the fakeness of using Mandarin in Firefly, but I enjoyed the series anyway. But I was curious enough to check out a copy of the Joss Whedon biography from the library, despite it being a major pain in the neck to read, because my library provided the ebook on hoopla, a library ebook provider that cannot seem to get session management right.

The book covers Whedon's early life right until Agents of Shield (which I still haven't gotten around to watching). The early part of the book's very well done, with interesting exposition, and a largely unvarnished picture of a bright and talented, yet unmotivated student muddling through school until he found what he loved. Then a great teacher he respects turns him around, and he embarks on the typical career path of the late 80s: moving back with his parents.

Since he's a 3rd generation TV writer, he did get a leg up on everyone else, but he also got screwed, just like many other talented folks. The story of how he rewrote almost every line on Speed but then was dropped from the credits page is poignant and reflective of how the rules can screw you if you don't know them. The detailed story behind his work on the first Toy Story movie was also fascinating, and I enjoyed the account from both sides (with Whedon the script-writer envious of the animators, while the animators were in turn in awe of his ability to tighten up dialog).

From then on, the book, however, stops being interesting, mostly because almost everything is fairly well known (Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Dollhouse, Serenity, The Avengers aren't exactly stories you would have missed unless you were living under a rock somewhere). The opportunities for Pascale to shed light on the issues Whedon might have had with Gellar are completely dropped, for instance. (It's quite clear that Gellar isn't in Whedon's inner circle, which considering how often he enjoys using the same staff in different productions means there's something there that's not reported)

The tone of the book also shifts clearly into fan-mode at this point. I fully expected there to be a chapter on how Whedon walks on water in the later portions of the book.

Whedon's in his 50s now, and I'm wondering if it's still too early to pass judgement on his work. In any case, however, this book is not the source to go to for that. It's clearly written too much from a fan's point of view, and has too many holes in it. In any case, Whedon's clearly successful, and well worth following in the future.

Review: The Last of Us - Left Behind DLC (PS4)

I normally don't buy DLC content. Invariably they're either set too difficult (typically only hard-core fans buy DLC, and they want a challenge), or don't add much to the story or single player experience. But my recent play-through of Max Payne 3 made me long for more Naughty Dog content, and that in combination with a recent sale that allowed you to buy Left Behind as a standalone game on the PS4 game at $5 allowed me the indulgence of the DLC.

My previous year's review of The Last of Us was ambivalent at best. But some of the most scintillating moments of the game was when I was playing as Ellie, the character Joel was tasked with protecting. (At the end of The Last of Us, we finally realize that rather than Joel saving Ellie, the game was about Ellie saving Joel) In the entirety of Left Behind, you get to play as Ellie. The story composed of two separate sections, each alternating with the other. In the opening sequence, you open with Ellie desperately trying to find supplies while Joel is incapacitated (this isn't much of a spoiler). In the flashback, you play Ellie before she meets Joel about the events that lead up to her ultimate need to be transported.

The two stories intertwine and alternate, and reinforce each other. More than anything else, what Left Behind oozes is self-confidence. What other game would provide a good half hour of "game play" where you're two kids fooling around in a deserted post-apocalyptic mall where there's no way to fail, but isn't a tutorial? This is video-game storytelling at its finest, with you building and discerning the relationship between characters directly through interaction. The game isn't heavy-handed, and the lack of consequence of failure actually frees the player to enjoy the contrast with the main storyline's seriousness.

The serious game play is well done, and arguably much better than in the main version of The Last of Us. Ellie gets to play the zombies and clickers against the party that's hunting for her, and intelligent play can be used to great effect. I still died a couple of times, but unlike in the original game, I never felt it was unfair or I was misled. The amount of stuff I could scavenge still felt parsimonious (despite playing the game set on easy), and I still felt like I was being forced to atone for being a rat-bastard DM, but twice I managed to get the Zombies to prey on the Bad Guys was far more satisfying than the grinding I had to do in the original game.

The other interesting to note is that I played the original game on the PS3, but Left Behind on the PS4. (There's no save game state that carries over between the two, so it's OK to play that way) The PS4 version of the game is significantly faster to load and start, and also has better models, but not so much so that I'd forgo the game on the PS3. In fact, I'd say that by far the most important feature of the game is instant resume, which I love given that I often get interrupted and have to turn off the PS4 to do something else before coming back a day or so later. (I also have the PS4 hooked up to a 5.1 surround sound system rather than merely stereo, and that also makes it impressive, but the PS3 would also happily hook up to a 5.1 surround system as well)

It's unfortunate that the full emotional impact of the DLC can really be felt after you've played The Last of Us (though I'd say that the promotional material overstates the spoilers in Left Behind: you can safely play it the minute you get Ellie as a playable character in The Last of Us, and in fact, it's probably best played that way), but if you've already played The Last of Us, Left Behind will leave you feeling even more impressed than at the end of the original game. Highly recommended.

NOTE: if you have a PS4 and haven't played The Last of Us, Amazon sells it in digital release for $14.45. The full game includes this DLC, which is a bargain if you have never played it before.

Review: Mindhunter

I have finally succumbed to the failure of the avid book reader's memory. When I saw that the kindle edition of Mindhunter was at $1.99, I tried the sample and read it, and enjoyed it and bought it. Two chapters later, I realized I'd read it before: somewhere in 1993, before I had a blog (well before blogs existed), which is why a search for my own review of Mindhunter never surfaced it.

Nevertheless, I didn't mind too much, as the book was a great read and I ploughed on through the book reading each chapter breathlessly.

Ultimately, this is a non-fiction account of a detective's cool magical trick: that of being able to profile the criminal through thorough examination of a crime scene. When you read newspaper reports about how the police have determined that the killer was a "white male, age 30-35, drives a volkswagen, has a high school education, and probably smokes and drinks and has a beard", and then wonder "how the heck did they do that?", this is the book for you.

John Douglas was one of the pioneers in the FBI Investigative Support Unit, and did the early research and studies on what makes serial killers tick. As a result, we get first hand accounts of how he profiled and helped to capture (and in some cases failed to capture) the serial killers that he was brought in to investigate.

A lot of the profiling comes from an understanding of the background of the killer: the kind of person who could commit most of these crimes is pretty dysfunctional, and hence can only fit into certain backgrounds. There's also some interesting statistical analysis, for instance, killings rarely cross racial boundaries. Furthermore, what's interesting is how the killer often tries to inject himself into the police investigation, leading to some proactive methods by which he can be caught. And of course, it's almost always a male serial killer. Though there are a couple of chilling examples of women killers in the book, they almost always target their immediate family rather than strangers. (There's one example in the book of a woman hiring a hit-man to take out her FBI agent husband to get the insurance money)

The book does have a hidden agenda: Douglas is very much pro-death penalty, and after reading the book, you can see why. There's no way you could handle the thousands of horrifying cases he has without coming to the conclusion that certain criminal types just cannot be turned around: by the time the killer has committed multiple murders, there's nothing that can be salvaged from his psyche. Furthermore, because such personalities are very focused on returning to prior behavior, they're capable of fooling psychologists, social workers, and others into thinking that they've been rehabilitated. When such people are let out on parole, they inevitably kill again. Reading this book makes you think that maybe the Batman comic books aren't so silly after all, where the super-criminals inevitably get let out of prison to repeat their crimes.

Douglas is also unsympathetic to the insanity plea. He notes that none of the "criminally insane" ever feel so compelled to act that they commit their crimes in front of a uniformed police officer. In several cases, he notes that the serial killers would visit a location with the intent of committing their crime, discover that conditions weren't favorable, and back out. This meant that when they committed their crime, they were in full control of whether or not to go through with it, and that they knew that it was wrong, but committed the act anyway.

In any case, the book is compelling reading, and well worth the time and $1.99. Pick it up!

Review: Max Payne 3 (PC)

I will admit that I'm one of those people who always power down his desktop whenever he's not using it. The reason is that my desktop is power hungry (idles around 150W). But with Google Photos recently providing unlimited storage, I decided to just keep the desktop on and upload all 66,000 photos (including many in RAW format) into the cloud. Since the PC was already on all the time (the process is taking weeks!), this reduced the mental barrier against playing games on the PC, and hence I ended up playing PC games that I never got around to doing so. This is an entirely irrational decision, because the difference between running the 7870 GPU idle and loaded is more than the cost of powering up and running the PS4 (which has essentially the same GPU!).

I'd picked up the Max Payne 3 and GTA IV package for $3 a year or so back. GTA IV was completely unplayable, especially after the delectable Sleeping Dogs: the characters were detestable, the controls were sloppy, and the driving unbearable. Max Payne 3, however, is essentially a cover shooter (or at least, on Easy you can play it like a cover shooter), which is one of my favorite genres, so I played it through to see what the incredibly high reviews were about.

The game is long, but a lot of it is because of incredibly long cut scenes. From reading the forums online, apparently these cut scenes were a result of the previous generation consoles taking so long to load assets from disk that they had to put in movies so you weren't staring at a loading screen for a long time.

The shooting part of the game is just fine. Apparently though I was playing it wrong: you're supposed to treat it like a running shooter rather than a cover shooter, but whatever. The flaws in the game, however, turn it into a frequently frustrating experience. Unlike Uncharted 2, the game wrests control from the player all the time, leaving one with a feeling of a complete lack of agency. This is compounded by the game's collectible system: frequently, what you're supposed to do after a fight is to run around the room picking up ammo and collectibles. But if you were to stumble into an exit zone (which aren't clearly marked), then suddenly the game takes over and you're driven into a cut scene where you're not allowed to retreat and explore. This is annoying as heck if you ran down your ammo shooting the previous room and then are moving into the next room with a huge disadvantage. Even worse, it means you're pretty much guaranteed to miss clues that advance the story.

Fortunately, on easy mode, if you die enough times, the game gives you more and more health packs and ammo until you can finish the scene.

The story has excellent production values, with excellent voice acting, but the plot is ridiculously predictable. You could tell who the bad guy is within the first hour, and everything else is just an excuse to gun down lots of other people. There are no puzzles, and the pacing is extremely uneven, with some shooting scenes ending and transitioning almost immediately into another shooting scene, while you sometimes go through long cut scenes only to endure a pointless wandering around before stumbling onto another fire fight.

The game's technical implementation is nice: you can play either with a controller or with keyboard and mouse, with the mouse giving you far more control and faster action at the expense of it being in a pain to enter bullet time. But you don't have to choose your control scheme: you can switch between one or the other at will, and the game picks it up and moves pretty nicely despite all that. I ran Max Payne 3 at my monitor's native resolution of 2560x1440, and the GPU wasn't maxed out the entire time, though (as expected from an extra 200W of power draw) the room did get warm.

What's interesting is how little the CPU of my 6 year old Core i7 920 was taxed: despite the uploading to Google Photos in the background, I never noticed any jitter and slow down due to the number of background processes running (including the web-browser). In daily use, I notice the web browser slowing down as I can frequently out-type the blogger text-edit field! Clearly the web-browser guys can learn a lot from the video game guys about interactive application performance and latency.

Of course, for $3, I got my money's worth, but I can see now why the Uncharted series is so revered: even Rockstar games with (essentially) an unlimited budget cannot hold a candle to what Naughty Dog did on a relatively tiny budget. Though I guess if you're a PC-exclusive gamer without access to a PS3 or PS4, this is as good as it gets.

Review: The Annihliation Score

The Annihliation Score is Charlie Stross' latest laundry novel. I gave up on the Laundry series after The Apocalypse Codex, but the kindle sample for this latest installment was intriguing, and filled with enough changes that I bought it and read it.

The first change is that Bob Howard is no longer the protagonist/narrator. Instead, we get his wife, who's a much different character. The opening is entertaining, but unfortunately after a while Mo whines just a bit too much for me to enjoy the narrative. She's self-centered, unappreciative of her husband, and obviously headed towards a nervous breakdown as she becomes increasingly neurotic.

The series pivots towards superheroes as the latest manifestation of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, the rise of the old ones. A series of super-crimes results in the authorization of a government-mandated super hero team to fight crime. This could be fun and funny, but instead Stross chooses to emphasize the bureaucracy and cross-functional coordination mess (with Mo as the director) rather than the fun. And then he ends the novel with a reveal that actually undermines the entire premise, tying it off back to the laundry.

I bought the book hoping that it'd be a good change from the series so far, but it seemed to be a sideways shift, rather than a quantum leap in quality or even a major change in setting. As an airplane novel it's serviceable and probably much better than the usual dreck. Compared to the early laundry novels, it's disappointing.

Review: Exploring Calvin & Hobbes, An Exhibition Catalog

I'll admit that I'm a sucker for deals, so despite having had lousy success with comics in the past on the Kindle store, I picked up Exploring Calvin & Hobbes for $1.99 when it went on sale. So this is as much a review of the Kindle Cloud reader as it is the book.

As a book, this is decent stuff for $1.99. You get a long interview with Bill Watterson (which is unusual, since he doesn't usually do interviews). There's a lot of good stuff in there, especially his indictment of modern childhood:

Really, I suppose the biggest gift my parents gave me was a lot of time. There was never a sense that I should be doing something else. If I was up in my room drawing, nobody bothered me. That kind of time is just indispensable. It's not a luxury, it's an absolute requirement. You've got to mess around---it's the only way to figure stuff out. (Kindle Loc 15)

I drew a couple of strips where Calvin and Hobbes are sitting alone in the car while Calvin's mom or dad shops. My parents did that all the time when we were kids, but if you did it now, someone would call the police. I imagine today's readers wonder what's wrong with me that I'd draw something like that. (Kindle Loc 36)

 The book's marketing literature talks about how there are various notes on the panels, but disappointingly, those are the curator's notes, not Watterson's. By far the most frustrating thing about the Kindle Cloud reader is that it doesn't let me highlight text, or even copy/paste quotations (i retyped all the above quotations!). Needless to say, the search functionality is also missing, as is bookmarking. This makes me glad I didn't pay full price for this (or any other comic), as obviously my basic Kindle is useless for reading comics. What's annoying is that the full blown Windows client doesn't work on comics either!

If I was running Windows 8, I suppose I could attempt using the Kindle App, but as it is, I'm forced to browse back and forth to extract the quotes I reproduced above, which was quite frustrating.

Nevertheless, the long interview was worth the $1.99, and the extra cartoons and notes are just icing on the cake. Recommended for Watterson fans, though I suppose you could just check it out from the library for free.

Regardless: don't pay for Kindle comics. They're just not worth it. Sad to say, pirated comics probably deliver a much better user experience.

Review: Entwined (PS Vita)

Entwined is a Playstation exclusive art game. I imagine whoever picks the games to fund must have a fun job: it's a lot like being a VC in that you're largely picking teams on their potential, but the stakes are a lot lower, and the results are more about fun and diversity than purely about making money.

Not to say that the money isn't good. For instance, when Sony picked flow, Flower, and Journey to fund for the PS3, they ended up backing a game studio that's generated an experience that's unique among games, and that success was so profitable that Sony went on to port the game to all their other platforms.

I'm sure the same kind of thinking went into funding Entwined.  By essentially hiring fresh graduates from CMU, and pairing them with some veterans, they hoped that lightning would strike twice. Entwined uses a unique mechanic: essentially, you use the twin joysticks on the controller to control two different characters. Your characters then need to capture balls by running into them, and stay in certain zones that represent some form of tunnel. If you miss those zones, you lose energy (as displayed by a bar in your HUD). When you max out both characters' energies, they merge and you're rewarded by a free flight where you capture more colored balls with no chance of losing energy, and then it's onto the next level (there are 9 levels in all).

The game's hypnotic in a sense, as you gain tunnel vision while playing through a level. The music's beautifully written and complements the patterns. It's a very simple game, yet it commands your entire attention as the patterns you have to fly the characters in can vary, sometimes by moving in the same direction, but also sometimes flying in opposite directions or in complementary patterns. You can't ever die or lose completely, but as the levels get harder it's harder to sustain maximum energy, and so the game can get frustrating.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't quite work. There are two major flaws: first, the controls are very finicky, requiring you to hold tension in the joysticks for the entirety of a level. Since I first started playing this on the Vita, I thought it was because the Vita's joysticks were so small that I hurt my thumb. But when I switched to the Playstation TV's Dualshock 4, I suffered from the same issues. Playing more than one level at a time on this game is just asking for trouble.

The other part is the lack of story: both Flower and Journey had excellent stories with which to motivate the player through the experience. The visuals were beautiful, as was the music, but neither games suffered from the same frustrating control problems that Entwined did.

I didn't consider Entwined a waste of time, but I also picked it up as part of a Playstation Plus subscription. I can't find myself recommending this game to anyone who'd have to pay full price ($15). And even at a discount, you're better off playing Flower or Journey instead. Nevertheless, it's a good change of pace from the usually shooty-shooty bang bang games.

Review: Deadlight (PC)

The funny thing about PC gaming is that it's filled with deals, humble bundles, and what not. Because of those deals, I sometimes end up with games in my Steam library that I have no memory of how or why I bought them. Most of them turn out to be pretty crappy, while an occasional few turn out to be gems. Deadlight is one of the latter.

Deadlight has two things going against it: first, it's a puzzle platformer, and I usually dislike platformers. Secondly, it's got zombies. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty much done with zombies, and that's by itself a turn-off nowadays.

Against that, it has several things going for it. First of all, the art is gorgeous. This has to be one of the prettiest platformers I've seen. Most indie platformers for whatever reason take pains to look like retro-games from the 8-bit era, but I didn't pay for a high end video card to stare at pixelated garbage. The music is also well-executed. Far more importantly, however, is that the game's puzzles are logical. There were very few places where I couldn't think through a puzzle and figure out what I'm supposed to do. (Only 2 locations required me to youtube it, and after the reveals I did a face-palm every time) Because of this logical nature, I found myself drawn into the game, playing on and on for just one more level until I got to the end!

The story's fun, and even justifies some of the extreme platforming. Some of the reviews on Amazon complain about the latency of the controls, and indeed there are several sections where being off by a few milliseconds would force you to restart, and you'd just have to play over and over again in order to get through it. That's not so fun. But if even I can do it, it shouldn't impose a challenge for most players. It could also be that if you have a less than capable PC, the latency could be so bad that the game's unplayable. (I played with an XBox 360 wired controller: it's entirely possible that the game is worthless with keyboard and mouse, since it was originally designed for the XBox 360)

All in all, a worthy experience. There's no need to pay $15 for it though. Just get it as a humble bundle or steam sale, and don't pay more than about $5 for it. Recommended.