Avatar

I watched Avatar today. On one hand I really loved the visuals. It is extraordinary to actually watch a CGI film in 3D, with force feedback seats. That added significantly to the experience. I still wonder at how the latest 3D technology works, with what appears to be polarized glasses instead of the old red-blue variety. Great stuff. Slick action sequences, scenes that could have been straight out of World of Warcraft or some other fantasy-themed RPG...that's the ticket.

Now, the problem I have with the show is that the storyline is tired. Essentially, it's a reskinned Pocahontas meets Last Samurai. Colonial fella meets exotic native tribe, falls in love with exotic native tribeswoman, fights on side of exotic natives, natives win. If anything, the Na'Vi were something of a cross between African tribespeople and Native Americans, what with the attitudes towards the world as sentient (it really was in this case) and mystical rituals looking like they came from a documentary on Africa. And then of course we will have the customary reference to the War on Terror and environmentalism (with humans coming from a "dying world"). In the end, as is expected, the exotic tribespeople get their butts handed to them by modern firepower but win in the end due to a Deus Ex incident. Maybe we're (thankfully) still guilty about what we did with the natives back then.

Did I like the show? Hell yeah. I like great big CGI battles (even more so in 3D with force feedback) and epic duels. Preferably with lots of slaughter. Storyline...well it's tired, but still a goody. Can't say I didn't expect what happened in the end. I think many would see that coming from a mile away. Still, I'd give the movie a 8/10. Mostly from the gorgeous visuals and action sequences.

I could not help but notice that Full Metal Jacket reference, however. Damn do I love a machinegunner that says Git SOME!

Farcry 2

Farcry 2. A shooter game. Yup that's mostly it. Farcry 2 is a shooter game with malaria and some treasure hunting thrown in and a storyline of some sort that is what I'd call shooter porn. Dangerous fella ships weapons around (threat to the World Order), so obviously our brave hero has to get in there and stop the horror. Typical.

Ok what's good. I like the visuals, the feel of driving vehicles, the standard weaponry. I especially like the way explosions finally wipe people out in a respectable radius and are quite proficient at starting fires...which in turn spread all over the place according to the wind. Nifty. Weapons jam and blow up when worn out...not so nifty, but ok it's semi-realistic. I really would have preferred it if the sniper rifles had either variable scopes and/or longer ranges, tho.

Now for the bad. Besides the story, which is as good as nonexistent. We don't care about stories in shooters, silly! Anyway, I am quite annoyed by the whole malaria and enemy spotting spiel. Right so we have the hero down with malaria, which gives periodic debilitating attacks...sometimes in the middle of battle. Fair enough...so we have malaria medicine to deal with the attacks. That's really great, except the meds don't cure the malaria. They treat the symptoms or something, because the malaria intensity level actually varies as the story progresses! Not to mention it's actually possible to run out of malaria meds so you wind up crippled in the middle of nowhere...without even an enemy to take you out.

Now about enemies spotting...you. Enemies have an uncanny ability to spot the hero through foliage. In fact, it is entirely possible for an enemy sniper to peg you right through a tree's foliage when you can't see the enemy if you're looking right back at the time. Come on guys! Dammit, man. I hate getting shot at by an enemy that should not be able to see me!

It may be nice that the world map is reasonably large and has bus interchanges whereby it becomes possible to cross the map without having to drive through the darned thing. Problem being, of course, that since the maps are quite big, there's a goodly bit of driving around to be done anyway. And of course the mission area will be somewhere far from where you are, so...drive away. That would be no problem, except there will be populated guard posts along the way...with a bunch of enemies shooting at you. No...if you depopulate them with a hail of lead, they'll be repopulated eventually. Nasty.

I like shooting enemies. It is fun. Especially with my sniper rifle. But even for me, it gets pretty old after awhile, primarily because I get virtually no kickback for doing it. No special weapons upgrades or items to pick off them or leveling up my hero. Well...I suppose I could just get in a vehicle and zip past so I can get away. Right? Wrong. They'll pop into the tacticals parked in the area...and use the mounted machineguns to shoot, so they'll have to die anyway.

Yes. The answer was staring me in the face. I shall use explosives to take out their vehicle. Well...not exactly. Since they regard their vehicle's machinegun as a sort of melee weapon, they're busy trying to kiss my vehicle's butt even after I get out of mine. Say hello to my grenade launcher! *BOOM* Dammit...now I just blew up my own ride along with theirs. Well I hope you're happy, because now I'm going to have to walk to my mission...or pick up a ride along the way -_-

Indeed, it is entirely possible to have a game with such great physics, gorgeous graphics, large maps, spreadable bushfires and nice numbers of enemies...yet still make it less than fun.

3-Pin Fiasco

I realize I made a silly mistake when buying a multi plug extension. Worst of all, it was discovered way too late for me to really do anything about it. Anyway, the problem was 'coz I didn't know what an adapter-free 2-pin socket looked like! So when I saw that sloping slot for 2 pin plugs, I automatically assumed that they would fit.

Big mistake. The first time I tried to slot the 2 pins in, they got stuck. Ok I guess it's a virgin socket. A bit of action would loosen it up. Nope, no such luck. If anything, they got even MORE stuck. Which was bad.

Anyway, it's lucky that I happened to have a lot of 3 pin adapters left over from my last project, so the situation was salvageable. Just a self note: Don't do that again. -_-

Rapid Cognitions

I just finished reading Gladwell's Blink, and it is a fascinating book indeed. One part mentioned the capability of rapid cognition, and I think it is a rather good insight on why people do the strange things they do. Humans are very capable processors and can produce rapid cognitions at incredible speeds. Examples of rapid cognitions include evaluating whether someone is a threat who is about to attack, and evaluating someone for friendship potential.

However, rapid cognitions can be overridden, as proven by the experiment whereby people seen performing poorly are evaluated as poor performers regardless of their context. This was mentioned in Gladwell's Tipping Point. The combination of the two explains why snap judgements can go so wrong, even when people would not consciously act that way. For example, a person may not be consciously racist, yet still associate racial minorities with crime simply because crimes perpetrated by minorities appear in the papers pretty often. That rapid cognition also proves resistant to facts to the contrary, like statistics that can be completely contrary to those beliefs.

While rapid cognitions are certainly useful in situations where snap decisions are essential, those situations are comparatively rare in urban life (except perhaps in the case of a mugging or potential car accident) and time can in fact be taken to rethink snap decisions. The problem, perhaps, is an inability or unwillingness to consider information to the contrary. Understandably, some may argue that feelings (a part of rapid cognition) are an intrinsic part of being human, and one should not be living like a machine thinking everything rationally over. However, part of the quest to be a fully realized human also involves not blindly following those "feelings" like some dumb animal. Doing so would likely maximize the potential of human cognitions, and prove greatly beneficial when truly integrated into daily life.

Sucker's Market

It seems that small markets lacking depth are often sucker's markets. That is, the prices that are settled on tend to wind up being wildly inconsistent with the evaluations of larger markets. More importantly, it is disturbingly easy to game a low depth market.

Assume that a market has say a trading volume of 5. Of the 5, 2 have anomalous trades that bring the last done average down. With 40% of the market selling at anomalously low prices, other sellers are obliged to follow. Of course, it would be easy to try selling at a higher price and hoping that demand will force others to buy at what's a fair market price. Unfortunately, most will not be thrilled by the prospect of paying more than they have to. Even worse, it is also likely that a low volume market has a small pool of demand, which means hoping and praying will not do a lot of good. More importantly, the trades may be phantom trades, whereby the same trader buys and sells the exact same item on the market. That will significantly change the perceptions of other potential suckers who actually check the history of the small market. The converse can apply, where buyers (who usually urgently need the item) can be convinced that prices have gone up.

Conversely, that is a lot harder to pull off on a larger market. Someone trying to do the same thing would require immense resources. Even if they made their gains, the high volumes traded will quickly equalize the anomaly. Of course, due to market imperfections, it is also possible for anomalous trades and unusual averages. Yet, a larger market is more able to compensate for such issues compared to a small one.

Tipping Point

While I was reading Gladwell's Tipping Point, I considered the tipping point of a country's population level. Granted, short of the four horsemen, human populations do not generally plummet when past a tipping point. However, it is possible for a population to tip from growth into decline given certain factors.

Some countries have low fertility rates, and consequently an ageing population. Of course, this is an undesirable situation in terms of productivity, as the country's productivity declines as well. I believe the factors involved in aiding the tipping point along include high cost of living and high consumer demand.

In a scenario where the cost of housing is astronomical, as is private transport and that of bringing up children, the power of context drives people towards focusing more and more on productivity. This productivity is not aimed directly at acquiring luxuries, but in the basic things that are family life. This alone is not sufficient to tip the balance, as the incomes of most families can at least support housing and children.

However, when advertising and keeping up with the Joneses are thrown into the fray, the balance begins to shift. By desiring more than the basics of life, and even the drive to acquire luxuries that one would not otherwise need (that's just for keeping up with others), an average household's income simply cannot keep up with the demands. One of the many things that result is debt. In effect, earners become unable to build up savings for their retirement. More importantly, there is less of an income surplus to support children while maintaining a good quality of life. As a result, birth rate declines when parents decide they can afford one child at best.

A country that seeks to dig itself out of that rut would be rather unfortunate in assuming that the simple encouragement of people to have more children would work in isolation. That does not address the root of the issue. Unfortunately, tt is also incredibly difficult to lower the cost of living, though that would very likely help the birth rates. Moreover, it would be economically detrimental to actually lower consumer demand. Ironically, the best solution appears to involve allowing the population to decline. This may sound odd, but it seems that economies in countries can only comfortably support a fixed number of people before the balance becomes tenuous. After which, not only does the birth rate decline, it also becomes hard to attract foreigners to actually live where the basic costs of living are astronomical.

Gaming Motivations

I have wondered for some time why some gamers are quite disinclined towards playing certain titles, especially if the titles are difficult. After all, it does seem like a joy to beat the levels. Is that not fun? Is fun not the primary objective of gaming?

Apparently, fun is indeed the primary objective. However, the fun experience is achieved differently depending on the gamer. For example, my idea of fun is beating the level, so it matters little if the levels themselves have limited fun value: I'll experience enjoyment if I manage to conquer it. However,the process of beating the level may not be fun at all. In fact, it could be downright frustrating or just too hard. That is not a deterrent for me, however.

Yet, it is quite apparent that the experience of the level is of utmost importance to many gamers. In fact, beating the level can become quite irrelevant once they decide that the process was not enjoyable at all.