Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Amber's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
4:15 pm	Relief Everything is okay. Smells like someone had the mother of all barbecues in there, but there's no water damage or heat damage. Haven't tested the hard drives yet, but they should be okay as well. Now we just have to move. Current Mood: optimistic (1 Comment |Comment on this)
12:27 pm	Fire update They've finally deemed the building safe enough to let us in to take stock and salvage what we can. Call me materialistic and electronically-dependent, but the top things on that list are my DS and computer. Because sitting around passive-aggressively fighting over who gets the slow-ass computer here is driving me insane. Oh, and look! We made the news! http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=7248213 Alas, I did not appear on TV. Just imagine me standing behind and to the right during the indoor interview with a dumb "holy-shit-it's-a-newsman" look on my face. Maybe if there were a mirror on the scene... Also not pictured: a very irritated landlady behind the cameraman. They made it seem much more like a big deal than it actually felt, but probably about as much as it actually was. Weird. Pictures: http://www.berwynfirecompany.org/incidents.cfm (Our apartment is not pictured. You can imagine it in the 6th picture down on the second floor and to the right) (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 31st, 2009
2:23 am	Answering Questions Five From arctangent: 1) How's the job hunt going? Not great... nowadays I'm entirely domestic. I've given up on chasing anything that requires me to move away because of Mom (or for full-time work for the same reason) . Having applied to JET (again) I'm thinking of getting a local part-time job. 2) How's the Philly dating scene? Having not been outside the apartment outside of food shopping and other errands, I would not know. 3) Recommend me a game to play that you're reasonably sure I haven't played that would be my kind of thing. Pheonix Wright, or if you don't have a DS, Okami. 4) If you could resurrect someone who died in the past year, who would it be? Hard to say. No one I knew well died last year. And despite the swath of celebrity deaths, most of them had very little influence on my life. Aside from the ones I regret because their obituaries seemed interesting... I guess I'll say Michael Jackson since if Mom knew I used a res on someone else famous who I didn't even really know much about instead of him, I'd have some 'splaining to do. =P (also there's an overdone Thriller joke in there someway) 5) What's the most interesting thing that's happened in your life I don't yet know about? Uh... that would require interesting things to happen in my life. I guess that I'm running an online Exalted campaign (with the old group) that hasn't imploded yet... I guess meme etiquette demand that I give questions to people who ask. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
6:31 pm	I live! I've finished my work at least. Now there's nothing left to do except wait on the results of my theory exam. (boo! Hiss!) I was technically finished last night, but it really hasn't hit me until now that I'm finally free.... to do all the things I've pushed off in favor of work and worry. Like clean my room! And take pictures of flowers! And post resumes! My path is set. For the next week and a half. Even if I don't see it quite yet. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
11:55 pm	Note-Takers and Brain Extensions: Part 3 It's been a while since the last one, so let me give the short version of what I talked about last time. 1) Interface bloat = bad, customization = good. (caveat: feature bloat is REALLY bad) 2) Any computer program augments your memory, rather than replace it. Attempting to consolidate your scatterbrained userbase means you have to implement multiple ways of finding and filing. And let me add one more: 3) Accessibility is sexy. There are two basic functions of all note-taking programs: to save knowledge you've seen and to create, sort, and modify information you have. Both should be equally accessible. The first task is easy but requires instantaneous response, from wherever a user finds data they want to save. Browser extensions are sweet here, but nowadays fairly common. Apps for mobile devices are good too. The second task is the real problem, because it requires a lot of planning and integration of stuff I've talked about before. In addition to adding new notes, users need to modify old notes, and move notes from filing to filing (assume for the moment we've solved the search problem). This should be just as easy as creating new notes. The dedicated portion of your userbase will probably use these features more often then the ability to just create new notes. The vocal portion of your userbase (the writers) definately will, although in this day and age that doesn't mean much. Google Notebook was king here, and it remains unsurpassed in this field. Equaled, with programs like OneNote and services such as UberNote, but unsurpassed. Next post on the topic will be short and serve to highlight conventions that programs often use. After that will probably come the rundown, although I'm not looking forward to it (one reason why I haven't posted on this much is that I haven't made a decision on what to use) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
10:25 pm	It's alive. For certain definitions at least My laptop keyboard finally snapped and went on a rampage. And by "went on a rampage" I mean stopped registering a bunch of keys and switching another bunch. (not new problem, but previously manageable through heat-related voodoo) I have a new one now, but it only underscores the fact that my laptop is going through its last gasps. Oh, and Thursday I'm going down to DC for the Career Expo thingy (hey look ma, a career fair that hasn't been canceled down to economic downturn... because it's mostly government anyway). I suspect I will be ready to torch the place by the end, but I guess that's why it only last a few hours. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
9:04 pm	Note-takers and Brain Extensions, Part 2: Packrat Organization Shocking, ain't it? I'm actually *following up* on a crazy idea I had. Part 1 of this series is here. Part 3 should come within the next few days. Anyway, two days ago I talked about FLO, or the rule that given limited computing power, you're best off prioritizing your tasks and speeding the high-priorities as much as you can--and even if every individual task is just as important as every other task (to you), the nature of computers means that it is best to prioritize the ones you'll use the most often. Today I'm going to blather discuss other aspects of notebook program design, as well as the philosophies of users who choose them. It's kind of boring, but it'll lead into an actual practical discussion of actual programs at some later date. Organization: Hierarchical vs Freeform This is an old idea, so I'm doubtlessly retreading a lot of ground. A History Basically, when you're organizing crap you'd like to save on your computer, you need to be able to find it again. In the bad old days, searching was computationally expensive and searching for every fucking thing you ever saved was annoying, so your best bet was to create a hierarchical file system with a root directory up at the top and everything else as a subdirectory of that. When the user wanted to save something, he'd think of the best place to put it, put it there, and hope he'd remember it the next time he wanted it. If not... well, there were still search functions. Even when searching got faster (mostly, caching got more practical), hierarchical organization stuck around (see, Mac operating systems). Why? Because it turns out that grouping things the way you'd see them in a hierarchical system helps people remember them. People have trouble remembering lists of things longer than a certain number (an average of four or five, if I recall the study correctly), but they are able to do so easier if they form little subdivisions in their mind and shunting the objects into those categories, or informally, "chunking." Enter "tagging," or freeform association. This created groups that aided chunking the way a hierarchy did, but made it possible for cross-references to exist easily, and manually create hierarchies based on the intersections between tags. It also let you make nifty tag clouds. The Problem, and the Compromise The issue with tagging is that it requires as much management as a hierarchical format, in order to prevent "tagsplosion" or the creation of too many tags for you to handle. In addition, creating meaningful tags takes more thought than good folder names. Hierarchy provides context--without that context, it is imperative that you know what the tag means instantly, or else it is no good. Unintentional tag duplication can be a problem too, especially if you have hundreds of them and you haven't used some in months. This is not really a problem if your categories are broad and, more importantly, your use of the system is limited to one sphere of activity. It works great for email and topical blogs, both of which provide needed context, and their limited use prevents too many categories from being created. However, a note-taking program is often more than either of these things. There's a reason why I use the term "brain extension" seriously. The collapse of many disparate systems of thought, and spheres of activity (work, culture, play) into one tool, make a good organizational system imperative. Defense of the Packrat: (One Reason) Why I'll Miss Google Notebook Most of the problems that arise with both tags and hierarchies can be ameliorated with a good spring cleaning every once in a while. Throw out old things as you introduce new ones. That's a good way to reduce clutter, but here's the thing: not only are we losing something every time we do it, but thanks to cheap HD space, we don't really have to do that anymore. If knowledge is power, we are better off using it than throwing it away. I hold to the motto "Keep Everything, And Use It Wisely." whenever I can. It is a bad habit in many cases, but in a world with virtual storage, it is significantly more practical. One reason Google Notebook was perfect because it combined the ideas behind hierarchical organization and freeform organization, and ended up being more than the sum of its parts. Hierarchy-wise, you had notebooks and notes. Notes were just text boxes that gNotebook automatically created for you. If you wanted to go to a specific note within the notebook, you "collapsed" the notes into the first few words of the note. You could use this feature to add titles at the top, and the result was that a fully collapsed notebook functioned like a table of contents. You also had labels. Functionally, notebooks were just labels that were more important than normal labels. But using them in conjunction each other could be tremendously useful. Once you were in the notebook, gNotebook could show you a list of all tags *just* for that notebook. Not 200 tags for all the notebooks you owned; just 20 or so for the tags in a notebook. It tremendously increased the power of a simple organizational system, while maintaining the flexibility associated with free-form association. In addition, hierarchical notebooks provided for large groupings without having to add the same tag twenty times. Finally, gNotebook featured nested sorting and filtering. What you could do with a Notebook (list all tags *just* in that notebook), you can do with individual labels themselves. And there was the ability to search notebooks as well, and filter results *again* by tagging. The end result was that gNotebook made it really damn easy to find things. It also made it easy to change your organization on the fly (why that might or might not be important is a subject for tomorrow) So that's an overview on the organizational philosophies. Next time I'll start back up on FLO, and how it applies to user-interfaces and the difficulty of developing good interfaces in feature-rich programs. (Comment on this)
Monday, February 2nd, 2009
11:59 pm	Note-takers and Brain-Extensions: The Ruthless Pursuit of Perfection Note: Part 1 can be found here. As everyone who actually cares about the issue doubtlessly knows, Google Notebook was kicked out of the family about two weeks ago. Service will continue, development will not. Most notably development of the Firefox plugin which needs constant updating along with FF in order to not spiral into unusability. So, a bit of a problem. The plugin is damn useful and a large part of why I picked up gNotebook in the first place, ditching Treepad (more on that later). This has given me the opportunity to examine what my requirements are as they pertain to these kinds of things, as well as view a great many other opinions on the matter. It all leads to one conclusion: there is no perfect universal notetaking software, because there is no one universal user. (cue the "duhs" from the audience) This is in part because of the First Law of Optimization (as related by one of my CS professors), which reads approximately as follows: the more important the task, the faster accomplishing that task should be. You can word it slightly differently depending on whether you're optimizing UIs or computer architectures or toaster settings but it's the same gist each time. Optimizing note-taking software is mostly a matter of optimizing the UI. Doing so requires close attention to both the organization of the computer and the brain of the user. The FLO then becomes the following, from the user's perspective: The more frequently I need to do something, the faster it needs to be. A clever UI accomplishes this, providing an optimal fit for the user's brain, accomplishing a set list of tasks in a minimum of actions. Good implementation makes this UI possible without major delays (more important than a lot of web-designers realize) With that in mind, there are several considerations to be made when designing this kind of software, and the issues at hand aren't always obvious. I'm giving a rundown here of the kinds of issues that are important to me. 1. Online vs Offline There are many, many note-taking programs in both camps here. Foremost among the offline crowd is Microsoft's OneNote, a heavy duty, feature-rich monolith of corporate power and awesome (in the medieval sense of the word). More modest (and numerous) online offerings include the (mostly deceased) Google Notebook, Evernote, Ubernote, Zoho Notebook... and even more that I won't cover unless someone asks me about them. There are two issues at play here when deciding whether to go with an offline or online service. (if one must choose; we will see that you can combine both if you're willing to spend the money). The first is data accessibility. This is an old debate: is it better to store your data on your computer or online? Storing your data on the computer invites data loss if something happens to it (preventable with backups) Storing your data online invites data loss if the company goes belly-up. Storing your data online lets you access it from anywhere you have a web-browser, whereas an offline service forces you to transfer files every time you switch computers. How important that is depends on how often you want to do that. But that's obvious. What isn't so obvious is the second issue: User Interface Adaptability. This follows from the idea of user's FLO: common tasks (such as creating a new page or retagging a note) should be accomplished in a single click, with a single button. This isn't a problem if your program has only a few functions. However, the more bells and whistles a program boasts, the more buttons you need. Carefully designed layouts are required to ensure that the user finds the function they need with a minimum of delays and confusion. That won't be enough, eventually. Buttons become menus, which are useful for program functions that a) are needed less often and b) are easily grouped within the user's mind. What determines how functions are grouped, and how often they are needed? Ultimately, the user. Ideally you want an infinitely customizable interface (with good defaults). However, that's not nearly as easy to do on the web as it is with a vanilla windowed program. In fact, I have not seen a single note-taking program with an customizable interface, and the closest anyone has gotten has been collapsible windows in the sidebar. On the other hand, OneNote is king here. OneNote doesn't *have* to come up with the ultimate interface, it just has to come up with a decent one and show the user how to change it. Tomorrow (or Wednesday, or next week, or whatever) I'll look at other design choices are involved in making note-taking programs. Sometime after that I plan to give a rundown of the various programs (Evernote, Zoho, One Note, uberNote, tree-based note programs, and anything YOU use yourself), using a crazy dwarf-related task that most people wouldn't think of when they think of note-taking programs. (Except me. Mother always said I was a "special" child) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
11:58 am	So it goes, dans la belle internet So it appears that someone *else* from BoingBoing turns out to be a passive-aggressive douche-wazzle. In this case, a racist one. Xeni gave a sortof-apology about the Violet Blue incident; let's see if this even garners enough publicity to force Teresa Nielsen Hayden to do the same. (probably not; this is lj after all) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 15th, 2008
7:15 pm	Inferiority Complexes Why is there so much self-existential angst about what makes a game, among developers and critics? "It's not a game; it's a toy." "It's not a game; it's interactive poetry." Of course now that I know that video games were originally created by nerds for nerds, everything falls into place. Did movie guys ever have these problems? (Comment on this)
4:47 pm	The Great Blog Post of Scholasticness... ... will theoretically occur. It all started when I got this paper assignment which said to argue something about video games in less than 4000 words (actually 3750, but as far as I'm concerned, I won't make that goal). What began as a humble(?) examination of the conception of fun and art has since ballooned in direct proportion to how many reasonably intelligent-sounding developer/reviewer blogs I could cram in (not to mention all the indie games I could link to. Must.... resist... further... bloat). And as such, it will be appearing here before it appears in the class blog itself (where I think it's supposed to go eventually). You have been duly warned. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 27th, 2008
7:05 pm	Vacation Anime Report: Lovely Complex Whenever I come home for a break, Dad shows me various anime he's found over the course of the semester/whatever. So I'm blogging about it because I have nothing better to do. Today's anime is Lovely Complex, the high school romance of an amazon and a midget. Tongue-in-cheek, and energetic, with seemingly infinite awkwardness interspersed with the romantic elements. Hitting the highlights: -The girl realizes her feelings by the fifth episode, and confesses to the guy by the seventh (it then takes another two episodes for him to realize that she's confessed, and then she chases him for another twelve, while he dithers like the more usual anime idiot, and they finally go out in episode 19). -ThoseTwoGirls spend a lot of time pushing the main couple together, but they also spend a lot of time with their respective beaus (even if most of their dialogue revolves around the main couple) -Trashes a lot of romantic concepts. Fireworks festivals, Valentines Days, and even a TrappedInAFreezer come and go... and are all incredibly awkward letdowns. Some of the sweetest scenes arise spontaneously. -Couple starts out knowing each other and become friends over similar interests before any chemistry happens. -Drawing style's less BESM and more BEBM, especially the main character, who is frequently drawn with buckteeth or pokey lips. Otherwise fairly outlandish, a la Azumanga Daioh. -They introduce a "cool bishounen crush" in the first episode, and by the end of it he's turned into a total dork. (an adorable dork, naturally) Everyone else, of course, is also a total dork. -The girl's a gamer with a taste for dating sims (and apparently console RPGs, given the way she talks in her sleep); everyone worries about her being obsessed, and... nothing happens. -Despite many comical misunderstandings, the only thing that threatens to break up couples is self-admittedly stupid mistakes and worries about the future. (all three main couples have to worry about diverging paths) -They leave the BeautifulAllAlong scene until like the last episode. -The major conflict is over two episodes before the end, which lets them shift to a secondary couple's trauma. -Coincidential meetings happen about as often as they do in other anime. Eh. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
8:27 pm	Chilly It is rather cold today. There was a little snow outside the window during Law & Econ, and a lot of snow outside the window during the video game class. Now it down in the negative-C range. People refer to this temperature (and those below it) as "bitter cold" but I've never understood the phrase. It is sweet and pure, a bit like spring water. It is silent and bright, like the snow that treads on its heels. I like its effect on me. My legs work swiftly and without complaint. My mind works even faster. Facing a cold night is like facing fear. Everything in my body threatens to lock up, until I tell it, "No, relax; we've got this." And indeed we do. Chill washes over me, but I am still there. And I am more me than I will be once I enter the building and the oppressive warmth swaths my mind in a blanket of lethargy. For the moment, I am face-to-face with perfection and clarity. It is unmistakably hostile, but that's fine. As I suspect I will be sick of it too, by mid-January. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, October 13th, 2008
11:12 am	On behalf of others: From my senior conference advisor: We are running a test of our music game on face book today at 5pm today (Monday). If you are free today at this time, please join in with people from all over the world and check it out!! If at any point the game stalls or freezes please hit refresh (the arrow on a circle) at the top of your browser and start playing again. The application in question is Herd the Music. A link to it is here. There is also an related survey. As I am given to understand, you can play at any time, but if you play at 5 you might have a chance to play with real people as opposed to sycophantic Bob-bots. Also "Herd the Music" as a title is both overly cute and underly memorable, but I've said this before. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
8:46 pm	Out of Chaos, Order. (memelicious) Your challenge is to write crossover fanfiction combining Step by Step and 1984. The story should use a party as a plot device! Generated by the Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Idea Generator Current Mood: okay (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 4th, 2008
6:46 pm	Oh, ok. I'm just catty, then. Thank you, internet, for the clarification. It's not that I resent the idea of an inexperienced, gender-swapped Bush clone a heart-attackbeat away from the presidency, I'm just jealous that she's prettier than I am. Also, it's no big deal to make rape victims pay for their own rape-kits; they like, totally were asking for it. And, besides, omg, look at that hair; it's so last season. I think I'm going to declare today another "satire day." Current Mood: tired (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 21st, 2008
11:08 pm	So That's It! (RPG blather ahead) Finally figured out what bothers me about WoD: How so much of the fiction jeers hackneyed cliches then turns right around, trips, and falls into a deeper pit of cliched hackneyness that is somehow more "authentic" than the old one. This is also what bothers me about the ''Exalted'' tagline "Don't listen to those old men who say the world used to be a dull and boring place, full of dirty peasants; it was actually REALLY COOL." (the added irony of course is that ''Exalted'' used to be a setting that was so profoundly fucked up in so many creative ways, the best case scenario was its eventual transformation into the WoD. There's a Sour Grapes trope in there somewhere, but I'm too tired to care) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
12:33 am	On Navel-Gazing I think the problem I have right now is the same one I had in high school when I was trying to be a "writer" except playing freeware games is a lot more fun than reading peoples' crappy fiction and poetry. Also there's less stupid drama. (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 30th, 2008
2:50 am	Warning: Game Creation Rambling Ahead I haven't been working on the code for Vector so much as kept busy by trying different games just long enough to run out of new things to do. For some games, this is very short. And most of the code work has been organizing things I should have done a while back. Game Maker is a toy, but it is a toy that I desperately need. Its principles are simpler than any modern game engine, mostly because modern game engines are built under the assumption that you know all the little organizational conventions borne of working with raw code. Game Maker lets you do anything you want--upon which you make the conventions out of convenience. Let me give a simple example. Game Maker is event-driven by design. Every object you make has events attached to it which drive various behaviors, from "press 'w' to move up" to "if the monster reaches 0 HP, destroy it". For a simple game, you can add every event to every object that requires it, and you'll do okay. For more complex games, however, this doesn't cut it. If you press 'ENTER' are you typing in a character's name? Are you selecting an attack? Are you inspecting an object? If you make all objects call the 'press ENTER key' event you have a clusterfuck. The easiest way to sort everyone out is to have an event handler (built into most game engines on some level) which passes control from your character, to your menu, to the limited control you have over a cutscene. But Game Maker doesn't ever give you one; you have to design it yourself. It's things like this that make me think about just what it is I'm doing. And I think I have an answer. One of my previously unstated goals concerning Vector is to make CRPG CTB-style1 combat interesting. That means getting rid of just about everything else--at least for an initial release. One interesting game I played recently took the approach of dividing itself into segments--essentially separate games with the same character and gameplay. But each new segment added depth to the combat system, making it look like a platformer at first, and gaining elements of an RPG (your "super attack" that required charging became "magic" that you could customize) as it went on. I should probably copy the philosophy if not the result. Well, it's a start. 1 - CTB stands for Conditional Turn Based. Basically it means that after every character's turn, that character's new initiative number is calculated from that point, based on speed and the action type. FFX is the most famous example (FFT had a primitive version); Shadow Hearts 2 and other RPGs followed suit. It's simple elegant, it's miles ahead of the and Squeenix can burn for ditching it in FFXI and FFXII and replacing it with half-assed attempts at "real-time-but-not-really-ha-ha." (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
9:11 pm	A Closed Letter, Diverted Dear shounen anime, STOP WRITING FEMALE CHARACTERS. Seriously. You embarrass yourself every time. It's not funny anymore. Technically, it never was. Just get rid of all the female characters and continue with the male ones. See, I get to see Ho Yay and straight dudes get to see action and stuff. It's win-win. Really. If you're worried that sex doesn't sell, put in a scantily-dressed spirit with DD-breasts and a sexy voice. In the opening credits and first episode. And then never show her again. Then maybe I won't have the impulse to sic flaming monkeys on your stupid island. (7 Comments |Comment on this)