Chris's new puppy

Brother Chris got a new puppy today. Sister Chris's dog Scooby died a couple of weekends ago and she has been absolutely lost without a dog. She picked this little fella up today from the shelter.
I think the pictures say it all.
 
 
 

InfoCom Games

Remember the old text based Infocom games like Zork?

Chris and I were talking during lunch today about how great the old text based games were. Neither of us like the "twitchy" type games all that much. I (currently pretty infrequently) play an online game called Ultima Online (UO). The game is 9 years old now, so it still has strong text roots. It is a game where the bulk of things to do are nearly impossible to do by yourself. This strong group play aspect necessitates a fair amount of organization and group communication. I will claim that the bulk of my typing skill gains (if any) over the last 3 years are likely a result of playing UO. There a many a night where I have loged in and not done anything but talk to my friends in the game.

Possibly triggered by a lunchtime conversation shortly prior with Anthony (a new coworker) about literacy, Chris and my text based game conversation drifted towards kids learning to read and write and Infocom games.

We decided that the world (or at least the bulk of America) would be a more literate place nowadays if we still had the old Infocom games. Well, at least that is what I got out of the conversation - I can't speak for Chris.

We talked about how great it would be to create a text based game that would appeal to both kids and adults (the two of us might be a bit of both) today. We discussed a few updates that would be needed in order to make a text based game interesting to today's children. Now mind you, neither of us have any children (currently - although Chris got a new puppy today), so our ideas might be a bit off-based.

The ideas discussed range from cut scenes to real-world rewards.

The most important part of a good text based game is a good storyline. You need a good plot, goals, etc. in order to keep yourself involved in the storyline. I think this is a bit lacking in many modern games. Some of story lines bounced around ranged from a text based football game, to a story about hunting for the Loch Ness Monster - where you have to acquire the scuba gear and boat and whatnot and then go diving, searching for Nesse while keeping track of your air supply.

We figured that it would be very difficult to get kids interested in a text based game long enough to actually get into the game. One way to garner this attention would be the addition of visual cut scenes. Fairly frequent in the beginning of the game, they would highlight important discoveries, actions, encounters, etc. in the game. An intriguing twist to the cuts scenes, would be that they only depict what the game has already described in text. For example, if you walk into a clearing with a tree and trigger a cut scene, you would see a clearing in a woods with a lone tree in the middle. If, however, you had examined the tree, and found a birds nest, the cut scene would also depict the birds nest. This way no more game information could be garnered from the visual displays - well, not directly. Subtle things such as a full tree with a bare section of branch visible might inspire a closer look at the tree - triggered by textually prompting an examination of the tree of course.

Today's computing environment also gives ready access to the Internet. Communication and interaction with other people could be an interesting aspect of the game. Working together to accomplish a goal would be rewarding.

Another aspect of enticing children to play text based games would be real world rewards. I don't believe that today's parents are nearly as computer illiterate as Chris and my parents where when they got us our first computers. There could be a oversight and goal setting portion of a text based game that parents could access, monitor, and set. With real world rewards such as treats, trips, toys, sleepovers, whatever is appropriate, the children could be further enticed to start playing the game and to keep playing it.

Some criteria for reading and typing could be word difficulty in reading, typing speed and accuracy. The game could have a built in thesaurus where depending on the child's reading level, more difficult words would be swapped in to describe the proceedings in the game. Vocabulary usage could be bolstered by interacting with characters that only speak with certain "dialects" that happen to contain the more difficult words and not the simpler words.

In a playing to learn how to read type environment, a built in interactive dictionary would need to be included. This could also be textual, visual and aural to accommodate different learning styles.

An alternative aspect of this would be to offer the game in foreign languages, either to help foreigners to learn English, or Americans to learn a second language. I have tried to learn foreign languages with software before, and they didn't work so well for me. Maybe the more interactive reading and writing and thinking might improve the results.

What do you all think? As the comments may be long, feel free to comment on your own blog, linking back to this one.

[UPDATE FEB 1]
Chris has written his 2 cents worth, I decided to add it here to this post instead of creating a new post for his comments. He doesn't have a blog of his own.

*****************************************
Chris
*****************************************
Yes, folks I am definitely showing my age and talking about Infocom games. For the young ins out there that have no clue what an "infoCom" game was let me take you back to a different time and difference place.

These were the days of Home Computers that were ground breaking when you had 64K of RAM, that's right 64K. Believe it or not it was powerful enough to run every game on the market and you didn't have to buy another stick of memory or a new video card to run it. The most popular Home computer was the Commodore 64. They were introduced way back in 1982 with a hefty price tag of $595.00. No monitor, no printer, no modem, no network card, no hard drive, floppy driver, or cassette tape (that's right folks and you thought cassette tapes were used only for music.). I got my Commodore 64, 5 1/4 floppy drive, and dot matrix printer the Christmas of either 83 or 84. I was in heaven. I had no idea of how to use it but i knew it was the coolest thing in the Sears Christmas Catalog. Luckily, I already had a TV to hook my new computer to.

I eventually started to acquire computer games and and shared with my friends that had the same system. My handful of computer geek friends were drawn to the text based games of InfoCom. These games were text only. No graphics or sound. You had to use your imagination to envision the world that you were reading. We truly enjoyed the adventure and in the long run we gained valuable skills that we use each and every day. At the time there were graphical type games out like F-15 strike eagle which was a great dog fight plane simulator. I had it and spent many hours flying over Russia (i.e. the cold war enemy at the time), and shooting down MIG's. Compared to the graphics of today's games it was no comparison.

InfoCom had many different type of adventure games. The most popular were the Zork series where you were in search of treasure and had to solve problems to get the gold or to open a door. You had to read the descriptions very carefully and "see" the clues that were hidden in the message. For instance, you may go north on a dirt road. and you may go north again but this time the description says that there is a puddle in the middle of the road blocking your passage to the north. Did you see the hint? It's the puddle, you could step over the puddle, only to slip and fall in. You could go around the puddle but it is way to wide and the bushes on either side that are filled with sharp thorns that are sure to rip your skin to shreds....what to do?

This was the awesome, did you feel yourself in the situation by just using your imagination? We would spend entire weekends immersed in new worlds and puzzle solving. There were other types of adventure games like in Deadline, you played a detective that had to solve crime. You would interview witness, gather evidence, and make arrests. In my favorite game you played a Archaeologist that was searching for treasure in a pyramid. It was called Infidel. The beginning of the game you were stuck in a desert and all of the workers had left because you could not find the entrance to the pyramid. So guess what, you have to find the top of the pyramid and dig for the opening. It was great.

As the years progressed and graphics became better and better, the way of the text based games were left in the dark. We now have these extremely powerful computers and game consoles that can make the characters and situations look real. But for some of us, we still like to use our imagination rather that having feed to us with a spoon. As you read before, Mike and I were discussing these games and thought it would be great to bring it back. Not only for my generation of gamers, but to hopefully stimulate the youngsters of today to use their imagination and to learn to read and type. There were a lot of ideas that were thrown around, some good and some not so good, but we believe that there could be a market for parents that may have been exposed to this type of game in their childhood and would want their children to experience the same things they did and hopefully learn a few things along the way.

Chili Cookoff

It is 73 degrees here in sunny south Florida. I am at the Chili Cookoff. Bikini tops and Daisy-Dukes everywhere. Half of them even have yellow armbands.
Today's entertainment is Taylor Swift who just got off the stage, Montgomery Gentry, Trace Adkins, Sugarland, Jo Dee Messina, Darryl Worley who just got on stage, and Jernie.
Good weather, good music, good food, and good scenery. What more could a guy ask for.

Beached Jellyfish

I went for a walk tonight while I was waiting for my potatoes to cook for my Pork Roast. I saw a lot of these blue colored floating jellyfish. There where many dozens of them along the couple of mile section of beach I walked. I did a pretty good job avoiding them, I only stepped on one. It popped like a baloon. Pretty unearving when your not expecting it.

Random Pork Roast.

I needed to clean out some veggies I had laying around before they finished going bad. Grape tomatoes, a bell pepper, shredded carrots.

Into the crockpot goes a bottle of beer that Katie hasn't drank yet, a can of low sodium beef broth, half a container of grape tomatoes, and a bag of shredded carrots. I was expecting the carrots to cook down to nothing, they almost did.

Off to the store I went. Pork Rump Roast, cheap. Large yellow onion, a red potato and a white potato. I wanted to see if I could tell the difference in the end.

Once home again, the roast gets cut in half, cleaned up a little bit and browned all the way around. While the meat is browning, I remembered I had the red bell pepper, that gets cut up along with the onion and into the crockpot they go. Meat goes in on high.

I do some chores, clean fish tank, talk to Matt, do whatever for a couple of hours. I then cut up the potatoes and add a dollop of Hoison sauce for a bit of flavor and saltyness.

I go take a walk along the beach for a couple of hours.

Upon getting back, I add some tapioca to thicken the liquid into a gravy.

It looks good. I am not sure what all to season it with. I forgot I had bay leaves, so those didn't go in. Bummer.

Pork Rump Roast
Shredded Carrots
Grape Tomatoes
Potatoes
Onion
Bell Pepper
Bottle of Beer
Beef Broth
Hoison Sauce (Vietnamese sauce that I can best describe as a thick soy sauce)



For being something just thrown together, it actually is pretty good. It needs a little something-something, I don't know what, but it is good nonetheless.

Video: How Dogs Became Man's Best Friend

National Geographic News has an interesting Video Clip on why dogs may have become "Man's Best Friend".

The point of the movie is that dogs have learned to interpret human's gestures.

I remember hunting with my dad once with his hunting dog, and he was able to direct her to go into a particular clump of brush. I asked him how he did it and he said that she looked back frequently, and he simply held up his right or left hand depending on what direction he wanted her to go.

I have been bouncing an idea for a "singing waterfall" around in the back of my head for a while now. Well, since the Chicago Auto-show of what, 2003m 2004? I don't remember when exactly.

Jeep had an interesting display involving a waterfall that was manipulated to "spell" out the Jeep advertisements in falling water. It was pretty impressive.

A discussion with Matt recently brought it back up. We talked about it, and I decided that I just as well 'put it to paper'.

The premise of my singing waterfall is that water falling into different sized containers make different sounds. If you could change the size or shape of the splash pool in a waterfall, you could change the pitch of the pool. If you somehow managed to be able to dynamically control the size and shape of the splash pool, you could make the waterfall play music or "sing".

I am not sure how to change the shape or size of a splash pool without making a lot of noise doing it.

Who is to say that you can't have multiple pools, and you change the water volume flowing into each splash pool.

For my intents, there are 2 types of waterfalls with multiple splash pools, serial pools and parallel pools (or a combination of the two, but, lets keep it simple for now).


Serial Pools, water flows from one splash pool to the next.


Parallel pools where the water is split into many thinner individual falls.

By controlling the rate of water flow into the individual splash pools, the overall tone of the waterfall as a whole should be able to be changed over time. The addition of electronic valving and water outlets to feed individual streams into individual splash pools should give you the ability to play music with a waterfall.

I am thinking that by creating a wide parallel waterfall you could compartmentalize individual splash pools and create a waterfall with the capabilities to produce a wide range of musical notes.

Sheet waterfall with streamlets of heavier water flow.

By controlling the individual streamlets of water flowing into the tuned splash pools a singing waterfall that doesn't look like it is being manipulated should be achievable. A steady stream of water across the waterfall sheet would give a consistent undertone. Increasing and decreasing the individual streams give you the notes.

I would have individual (or multiple) feeds each controlled by an electrically controlled valve to turn on or off a stream of water. These water feeds would be positioned and separated in a way that turning one on would have it provide water flow to the appropriate splash pond.

There is enough water control information out there that I won't get into that here at this point. Looking into that is more appropriate when I.. uhm.. have a place to put a waterfall. Although the micro-controller could be interesting because to get the music to play on key, the lengths of the feed pipes and the time it takes for the water to fall from the top of the falls to the splash pool will need to be accounted for. The larger falls will need to start and stop sooner then the smaller falls. Interesting... Sound buffers and delays... Hrmm...

I think the challenging aspect of this idea is the splash pond design and construction. I think a fair amount of trial and error is in order to spec out an individual fall to produce a given note. Aspects such as size, depth, shape and water volume held of the splash pool combined with water drop height and volume of flow would all need to be cross correlated by experimentation to be able to get the desired dynamic range in the output sound. The construction materials could also possibly also greatly affect sound quality. A soft bottomed sand splash pool may absorb a significant amount of the sound created. Stones & concrete vs shaped and colored concrete may also effect the resulting sound of the splash pool. A hollow resonance "drum" may need to be created for a splash pool to get the tone or volume right.

I think that once these variables are mapped and graphed, the actual waterfall could be designed. You would know what notes would need to be created, so you would create a waterfall with that in mind. The layout of the space around the waterfall will probably need to be taken into consideration so that some smaller, higher pitched splash ponds aren't acoustically blocked by foreign objects like rocks, bushes, tress, plantings, or even blocked by some of the falls itself.

Once the singing waterfall is complete, it could be so much fun. Build a controller that could take a MIDI feed and play the music on the falls. Tie the falls into the home security system so if somebody comes to the front door when your out back, the falls plays the old fashioned door chime sound. If the kids are up to no good, the whole thing could get really quite... You could have the falls chime the time like a grandfather clock. It could forecast the weather for you. If your trying to sleep, it could play a lullaby or a nice, smooth, relaxing white noise. If your busy in the garden it could be running hard, creating a drumming thundering noise that would be great working music.

Gosh, I like this idea so much I may have to build it.

If you have any thoughts, or use any of these ideas, feel free to let me know. I would just like to see a singing waterfall.

***
Forgive my use of somebody else's photos. They are beautiful and I don't have anything that will illustrate what I am talking about myself.

My life's progress

39% down, the rest to go.

I can focus on what I haven't done yet.
No major inventions
Not making near what I was "told" I would by my college
No new Mac Laptop
No new car
No house
No Wife
No Kids
No...

Today is a happy day right?
I got my Health
I got a good job
I got a good woman (no ring yet... wait, happy thoughts)
I got a car that runs
I got a roof over my head - a very expensive one I might add
I got 2 19 inch monitors for my home computer
I got my friends

I got the remaining 61% of my life to finish up with what I want. I got a pretty good leg up on it already.

Updated Aquarium Time Lapse

Here is the latest time lapse of my fish tank.


I need to make a few changes,
1) I need to change how the camera is set, so I don't keep tripping over the cable and moving the camera.
2) I think I need to take a pic every half an hour instead of every hour. It's currently less then a second a day I think.
3) I need to tune the camera before I start the timelapse so there isn't these color changes part way through.
4) I need to find something cool to take a picture of. Maybe where my fish are hiding?
5) I think I need a camera with a wider field of view, or figure out how to move the camera further from the tank.

Pan's Labryinth.

Katie and I went to see a movie on her birthday. Her sister-in-law came along too.

The movie we saw was Pan's Labryith.

2 things you should know about it before you see it.
1) Its graphic
2) Its in Spanish and is subtitled



I must say I rather enjoyed the movie. After a couple of threats from Katie for bringing her to a SUBTITLED movie... In the end Katie said it wasn't bad.

I won't spoil it for anybody. If you can deal with subtitled movies, it is probably worth seeing.

Adding new fish

I add fish to my tank differently then anybody else I know. I usually have pretty good luck too.

I put the fish into my cleaning bucket with the petstore water. They all go into the bucket. I then use a piece of airline tubing to siphon a small amount of water out of the tank into the bucket. Done slowly, I acclimate the fish over several hours in a nice, gradual way. After sometimes as much as 4-5 hours, I net the fish out of the bucket, and dump them into the tank.

Kuhlie Loaches

Here are a couple of my Kuhlie Loaches in my TV tank. I love these little buggers. They can be so much fun to watch flit around in the rocks.

Tiger Barb Video

Here is a quick video of the tiger barbs. They are just hiding. Cory Cats are so much fun to watch. They never sit still.

Fish!

I picked up half a dozen Tiger Barbs and a couple of cool looking Cory Cats last night. I have always liked tiger barbs. A lot of people complain that they can be pretty mean. I think I always have so many that they never bother anybody else but themselves.

My Amazon Sword Plant looks to flower soon?

Happy Dance

I am NO LONGER dirt floor poor! I have done it. I have paid off one of my Credit Cards. At one point while I was in Florida (within the last 2 years or so) the balance was $2700.

It is done. I missed last years new years resolution by 1 month.

1 Credit Card down, 1 to go. Now to pay this one off by the end of the year...

Chicken Fried Rice

It sucks cooking for yourself!
I had cooking club this weekend, but ended up not going. That is AFTER I bought $50 worth of groceries for it. I couldn't find any rice paper at any of the local markets. Katie was down, and I would have had to send her home really early in order to go to a market that had some.

Now, to eat up these groceries...

What do you do with bean sprouts?
Chicken Fried Rice!

Chicken Friend Rice
Publix brand Frozen Seasoning Mix (onions, peppers, and some other stuff too)
Rice
Chicken Broth
Chicken
Soy Sauce
Eggs
Bean Sprouts
 
I put the frozen veggies on to warm up a bit. Cooked 1 cup of rice with 1 can of reduced sodium chicken broth (covered) until most of the moisture was gone. I then added the chicken and cooked the 4 eggs before I stirred them in. Soy sauce and bean sprouts very last so I didn't cook them to death.
 
It actually tasted pretty good! I am quite proud of myself. Not that it was really hard. Just a matter of doing it. I even washed my pan the same night! Well, I wanted to hard boil the rest of the eggs so they wouldn't go bad.
 I had gotten something new, it's called Hoisin Sauce. It is pretty good.

Snow Angel

Uhm... I think I forgot to mention a key step in making a snow angel.

Katie went out and played in the snow just about every day when we where up north. The snow was never right for a snowman when we had time to make one, so she didn't get to make a snow man. As you can see, it was dark out when we where out in the snow this time.

New blog design

One of the things I liked about this new website template is the ability for it to work on many different screen sizes.
  This is how it looks on my 19" monitor at whatever resolution it is set at. I am too lazy to look it up. This takes full advantage of the huge and wide screen formated monitors out there today.


 This is what it looks like at 1024x768. The rightmost column, the thinnest one, tucks down under the middle column. This is your more typical 2 column blog design.


 One of my design critera is that it has gotta work for my Nokia 770 at least 'functionally'. I don't expect it to be wonderful, just not tons of scrolly scrolly to get anywhere!

New website design.

Well, I couldn't sleep tonight, tired, can't think straight, but can't sleep. Lots of fun.

I had stumbled across an interesting site layout at bloggerdesign.com/. It is rather ironic that it's a "blogger" design site but it uses Wordpress. Anyway, I liked the 3 column layout that folds up nicely for smaller screens. Resize the screen, the side columns collapse down and towards the left margin. It works OK for 800x600, a little too much right whitespace, but tolerable. it looks good at 1024x768, and freaking awesome on my 19" monitor, what ever it is set to.

There is a little mini-nav bar on the left edge of the screen that is pretty cool, but I need to find some icons for it. It is not being populated for the time being.

I like how the post area is about 25% bigger. In the posts, the images and videos where kinda cramping any text that was flowing around them. I also like the wider side column, it is big enough for my fish-cam and my google calendar. I was thinking of running the wider column for stuff internal to my blog, and the narrower column for stuff external to my blog. The calendar kinda sorta breaks that, but I guess it is still about me, so I will say it is internal to the blog.

I think I have a good site template, I just need to work on making it "pretty" now. I want to make some kinda of fancy top for the 2 side columns and a curve/angle for the bottom right edge to lead the columns back into the main column.

I would like the design elements to be freshwater aquatic plant themed. Not sure how I would do it, so it probably won't happen. All of my designs are so... blocky looking. **sighs**

Well, if I am going to be worth $.02 at work tomorrow I had better try and get some sleep.

Everything I own...

I stopped and checked in on my storage unit in Menomonee Falls, WI. Most of what I own is in that 10ft X 10ft storage unit. I miss my 110 gallon fish tank, my tool box (you see it? it's too heavy to bring on the plane), my RC cars, my photo albums, and.. well... everything else!

One of these days when I get a place to live I will bring it a bit closer to where I live.

Sighs...

Catching up on car photos.

It looks like Picassa can finally post to blogger! YAY! Thanks to the folks at Google. It took long enough! The Picassa/Blogger link is a killer app in my book. Thanks for not making me have to look for a replacement.

Anyway...

I posted a few posts to my car blog to catch up...

• www.YouParkLikeAnAssHole.com/


• LUDE


• GOBUGGO


• Karmon Gia


• 1 BMG


• Squint


• 275 G


• Old Firetruck



• FOXX


• US Airways.


• My Love 5


• RAM TOOL


• Tailgating


• Busiest Highway in Wisconsin


• Stretch Excursion


• SPLOCH


• MANGIAA



• WCKED


• GOD FEY


• I CAR 02


• BECSPNY


• HIGGY S

Timelapse Aqurium Video

This is a timelapse of my fishtank.



I am futzing with the camera to see what cool things I can do with it. I am thinking that a timelapse of the Amazon Sword plant flowering would be pretty cool.

Aquarium Update

Well, I had planted some new plants into my fish tank right before I left for vacation, wished them luck, and left them alone for almost 3 weeks.

I didn't expect to need to weed my fish tank when I got back!


This is what the tank looked like the day I planted it.


This is the tank 3 days later, notice that the red leaved plants (Narrowleaf Ludwigia) has started to grow a lot already. I also went and tried to train my glossostigma to form a carpet.


Two and a half weeks later. The Narrowleaf Ludwigia grew a phenomenal amount. That green smear in the center is a long hair algae I think. The green on the top is a form of duckweed of some sort. The roots are pretty cool though, they form curlies. My Glosso really took off, it is already too thick to really get to mat down well into a carpet. My Microsword didn't seem to really take off like I would have liked, but it is probably being shaded out by the Ludwigia.


Here is the tank after some weeding. I have a large bundle of Ludwigia in the back left corner. Kinda shady, but I don't think it will be staying there long. I tried to push the Glossostigma down, but I don't think that will stay well, maybe after pushing it down for a couple of weeks I can keep it down.


when I was pruning my Amazon Sword, I noticed the funny shaped stalk pictured above. It looks like it may be flowering soon.


I pointed the camera further up the tank so I can watch the flower stalk. It is in the lower left corner. Lets see if we can get a good time lapse of it growing and flowering.

If anybody wants some plants let me know. I am going to start tossing my culls here in a few weeks it looks like. If you want some cheap plants and are willing to wait until I do my weeding, contact me and we can make arrangements.

Photos of my Vacation

Click here for my 2006 Christmas Vacation Photo Gallery

Here are some photos of my recent Vacation back home. Katie came along, poor thing, and met most of my friends from college. If you have some photos from new years, please, send them my way.

Home again

Home Again, Home Again,
Clickety Clack!

Well, I am home. Talk about a wirlwind!
I have photos! Boy do I ever. I will be posting them here over the next week or so. I gotta sort them and caption them and whatnot. Not wanting to do it today...

Dreading going back to work tomorrow!