Sunday, April 24, 2005

The Winner

After a tough round of judging, and my mother reminding me "when was the last time you took a bath?" all the time, a decision has been arrived upon.

Yes, the winner of "I don't get it, why would'nt they like my blog" award is

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Chronicles of an Eclectic Life
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the winners would get false pride and satisfaction by this award.
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Nominees

And the Nominees for the "I don't get it, why would'nt they like my blog" award are:



Winner will be announced in 1 minute.
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Delicacies

When I woke up this morning, I started my day with some tasty mango juice and loads of chesse!! After that began my regular round of surfing, which popped up in my mind Cult of the Dead Cow Blog, which I had grew fond of but discontinued following it lately. As always, the postings were nothing short of thought-provoking and informative. I guess nerds are best at that.

That site contained a link to this old, but wonderful article:
Orwell's Elephant and the Parading of Qusai and Odai Hussein
by Pierre Tristam

It relates the ideas expressed by George Orwell in "Shooting an Elephant" to the acts of USA in showing its superpower status.


Other than that, I also learnt something more about Backmasking, which is art of putting hidden messages in your songs consciously/unconsciously. Led Zeppelin is said to have excelled at it. Hell, those who work on this even found Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to be condemning Allah.


Then there's a long biography of Carlos, the Jackal: International Terrorist. Some claim him to be the most dangerous person on the planet, who has been responsible for many of the famous assasinations.

I also found a great review of Song 2's "Coffee and TV" music video, which is a 6+ min delight.


Will keep giving more and more from the world of the net.
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Thursday, April 21, 2005

Stalker: Shadows of Chernobyl further delayed

yes, the game has been delayed once again. its old news, but i've come to know abt it recently.

seems like either the stalker developement team is either master of procrastination or crazed to be consummate with their work. lets hope that latter on stands correct.
i cannot wait to be a STALKER, roaming through "The Zone" and "Sarcophagus".
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Black Caricatures: Gollywog and Picaninny

Let me start off with the links first:

Blytons, Noddies and Denoddification Centres: the changing constructions of a cultural icon
The Gollywog Caricature
The Picaninny Caricature
More links on everthing2.com


My interest in the topic grew as a result of coming accross a torrent of "Black Little Sambo" video short. I learnt that it was banned because of being "racist", same as Noddy. Further delving revealed that it all was a part of bigger scene.

all have been victims of "political corretness" revolutions in positive or negative sense.
Gollywogs are grotesque dark creatures with jet black skin, large eyes, clown lips and disorderly hair.
Picaninny remains the most controversial representation of black people. Detailed as greedy slobbers, who had unkempt hair, bulging eyes, red lips and large mouths to stuff melons in.
I also found about controversy regarding Uncle Remus, a black story-telling character in "Song of the South". The movie was slowly phased out for being racist.
In a stew over Brer Rabbit
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Friday, April 08, 2005

bad omen 24x7

why is it that everytime i look at my clock, the time's either 1:11 or 12:12. AM or PM.
i swear that rarely do i get a nice non-scary time like 2:47 or 9:51.

usually its associated with bad omen. that, or i'm just lucky. but looking at the events lately, i can confidently stick with the first one.
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Thursday, April 07, 2005

Interesting Read

Shamelessly lifted straight out of the frontpage of Penny Arcade, run by witty and genius minds. Stick around, and you'll find out what I mean.


We met Geoff Zatkin when we were invited to speak at Digipen a while back. Being a person who plays a lot of videogames I'd created this image of a wizened "game designer" that was part shaman and part puppeteer, and to actually come into contact with one was intimidating. He's a nice enough guy, but when people asked us questions on the panel we would just spit up something offensive and he would respond with a series of extremely relevant statistics. To think that his art is committed largely in the tables of Excel, submerged in numbers and their relationships to one another is something that really humanized the process for me.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give to you… Monolith's Geoffrey Zatkin. He was one of the original designers on Everquest, worked on the star-cross'd Sovereign, Everquest 2, and Matrix Online. His current game is, as of yet, unannounced.

So, I've been working professionally in the games industry for over eight years now and I can tell you – we're a funny bunch of people. As a rule we don't dress that well, geek out over "unfashionable" things, spend too much money on superfluous technological gadgets and, dare I say, might look a bit funny. Every game industry veteran I know can tell you stories of "that guy" who slept in his office, never showered and smelled... um... Or about the tester that, after 30 hours of caffeine induced productivity, purposefully downed some testing department concoction for $50 of pooled change.

We're a young industry. Nobody wants to make anything second rate so we inevitably take on wildly ambitious projects. We also have some genetic inability to schedule accurately and therefore end up working massive unpaid (since most of us are salaried) overtime. Some people that went to business school take advantage of this and turn game industry workers into slave labor. And don't think I'm just talking about EA. Your industry heroes work like dogs too. Ask a Blizzard employee what their "core" hours were for the last year+ before WoW launched. Or a Bungie employee leading up to Halo shipping. And those are the lucky ones. For every studio that turned out a brilliant game, multiple other teams of equally cool people ended up wasting years of their lives working on games that never saw the light of day, came out stillborn or got pushed out early and died an ignominious screaming bug-filled death.

Don't even get me started on the core work hours for Japanese studios.

We're young and we're stupid and we work too much. But now some of us are getting older and a bit smarter. We try to plan our schedules better so as not to alienate our families. But there are a lot of people that want to work in the games industry – so if you won't do it, someone else might.

So we try to schedule better AND put out quality stuff.

The average price of making games has been escalating rapidly. Too many features have become standard (multi player, obligatory tools for player made content, matchmaking, cut-scenes, transforming donkeys, etc.), the caliber of graphics has risen (ironically, teams are getting bigger AND games are getting shorter because of how long it takes to make the higher quality art) and a myriad of other market factors. Nothing you buy from a store was made by a few people in a garage anymore. It hasn't been for years. One of my buddies was speaking to a high school class a few weeks ago about the game industry. After a few moments of disconnect, she asked the class what they thought the development cost of the last GTA game was. Most students thought it was around $500,000. She informed them that they were short about two zeros.

And some of these games make a ton of money. Most of them don't. And for the hell we go through, most of the industry doesn't pay that well. There are exceptions – some people make out very well. But let me warn you in advance – most of us don't exactly drive Ferraris. Don't get into video games for the money. Do it because you love games. If you want to make money in the industry, own the company. Create a good new IP (intellectual property) that appears in a single well received game. Then sell your company (and the IP) to a bigger company (like EA). Then leave. Don't stay – it will break your heart.

Or better yet, be a publisher.

I'm a lead game designer. And no, I don't play games all day. I play games at home in the evenings, trying not to piss off my wife because I'm spending time with my mistress (i.e. my computer) and not her. Watching me work is boring. I'm either writing something in Word, juggling columns and mathematical formulas in Excel or mocking up exciting diagrams in Visio. If I get really crazy, I might Photoshop something up to show an artist what I'm talking about. The "lead" part of my title means that I get to spend about 25%-50% of my day reviewing my team's documents and scheduling tasks so that we don't hold up the other departments. Then I sit in hours of meetings to make sure that everyone understands the design… and to learn why the programmers, artists, testers, producers and even other designers want to string-up me up this week. If I'm lucky, I have time to walk across the street and get a mocha.

At PAX this year I was a judge for their "pitch your idea for a game" sit-in. I got to break a lot of hearts by telling the audience a very sad fact – that in my 8+ years as a professional game designer, not once has any boss of mine ever asked me for an idea for a new game. Not once. Again, unless you own the company, you get assigned a project (or jump ship to another company working on a game that sounds interesting). Sure, I've helped flesh out any number of games from concept to fully realized design. And that's the hard part. Coming up with a good idea for a game is like coming up with a good idea for a novel. Everybody does that. But very few people have the discipline to sit down and write the book. The ideas are easy – the execution of the idea is the hard part.

The burnout factor is high. Like writing a book, there are a lot of people that half way though a project throw up their hands, burn their computer, shave their dog and trek off to outer Siberia to live the rest of their lives as hermits.

So, to summarize, we're a young industry full of pale, egotistical people that dream up ambitious games, work impossible hours and sometimes smell a bit funny.
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Beck : E-Pro

I've been exposed to Beck only recently (yes i know you must be mocking me right now). Much due to the media coverage his new released album "Guero" was getting. What got me more interested was that the music video for "E-Pro", the first track from his new album was made by Shynola, the same folks who created the music video for Junior-Senior's hit single "Move your feet" and Radiohead's Blipverts and "Pyramid Song".

So I decided to dig in deeper and deeper into the history and discography of his, and also developed great respect for Shynola in the meantime. I'll ask them some things regarding the video, as nothing could be found on the net.


First here's something about the video: Song begins with lyrics "See me comin' to town with my souls", which is accompanied by video of Beck coming out of a coffin. He digs up his dog while zombies flung their arms to get him. He escapes on a bicycle, which converts into a huge spider that climbs over buildings. Very nice perspective manipulation during this part. Then Beck lands in a forest where birds chase him off from a diamond kept in nest. The birds rip out his head and throw it in the ocean. Beck is caught by a fisherman, who blasts him back to the graveyard. Beck jumps on to a rail of music notes floating through the air. Video ends with him standing on a lone music note in the air.

Video looks like drawn from crayons. I couldnt find any site giving any details as to how it was made, not even website of those who created it.

The song itself is very engaging. Begins with some swinging guitars, trademark of his single "Loser", which was THE slacker song of 90s, which soon turn into a full-scale orchestra.
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Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Unsure of origin, but damn funny

Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his name had hilarious possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with laughter, singing:

Half a pound of tuppenny rice
Half a pound of treacle
That's the way the chimney smokes
Pope Goestheveezl

The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron Hans Neizant Bompzidaize was elected Landburgher of Koln in 1653.
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Hate to say it

I hope somebody makes a regular mistake of going through my daily twaddle.
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GWB and hypocrisy

Quoth Mr. Geroge W. Bush: "Throughout the West, John Paul's witness reminded us of our obligation to build a culture of life in which the strong protect the weak,"

Strong is not only supposed to protect the weak, it is supposed to provide and example. It should not breed contempt among those whom it claims to have helped. The strong should not stay behind when girls are being raped, militias are being formed, and law is being ridiculed.
Unfortunately the Bush administration has done none. Only that he has not further aggravated the devil.

over the years, he's been mocking the preachings of the same person. when he's dead, he honours him. what a big hypocrite!

Certain facts and ideas stolen from:
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Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Arrgh Mozilla

I'd been developing a habit lately - loading full webpages in the browser.
Why so? So that I can access them later through history or get back to the vast resources on the net whenever i needed.
Unfortunately i forgot. Mozilla sucks everything other than "secure browsing". One improper shutdown, and I lost everything. Opera is so much better in this respect. You can resume your broken session.
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HIPs or Human Interactive Proofs

While making a rare visit to my discarded Hotmail account, the following text came when i logged in:
MSN Hotmail is also working to help stop junk e-mailers from misusing Hotmail accounts by providing a tool called Human Interactive Proof (HIP). To help our ongoing fight against junk e-mail, please fill out the text when prompted.
Want more information?

While the provided link took me to "An Idiot's guide to using Email" page, I decided to search on HIPs.
Remember those distorted, broken numbers you were asked to enter on most of the sites when creating an account, or when downloading a file? Turns out they all are a part of "CAPTCHA Project".

On the homepage were examples, which showed how urgent need it is to develop such technologies. Here's one
Online Polls. In November 1999, http://www.slashdot.com released an online poll asking which was the best graduate school in computer science (a dangerous question to ask over the web!). As is the case with most online polls, IP addresses of voters were recorded in order to prevent single users from voting more than once. However, students at Carnegie Mellon found a way to stuff the ballots using programs that voted for CMU thousands of times. CMU's score started growing rapidly. The next day, students at MIT wrote their own program and the poll became a contest between voting "bots". MIT finished with 21,156 votes, Carnegie Mellon with 21,032 and every other school with less than 1,000. Can the result of any online poll be trusted? Not unless the poll requires that only humans can vote.

Here's an excerpt from another website explaining HIPs
Classical cryptography has often factored humans out of the equation: when we say Alice and Bob can communicate securely (or authenticate, or sign, or perform a zero knowledge proof), we really mean Alice and Bob's computers can communicate securely. This has resulted in humans being a major security hole in practice. Human Interactive Proofs (HIPs) are an attempt to bring humans back into the picture.
HIPs provide solutions to at least two basic problems in human-related cryptography: telling human users apart from computers (or `bots'), and authenticating single humans securely in the presence of very powerful eavesdroppers.

Few have already broken certain algorithms. CAPTCHA homepage has the list. With quite high accuracy rates too. Nice to see Indians featuring in teams' rosters.
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