Super 8

Goonies meets ET. If you liked the old Spielburg classics, I think you'd really like this one. It's certainly a throwback to the old stuff, and strangely anachronistic for our current film styles. I say anachronistic because it gives more of a sense of forced nostalgia in an era of totally different film styles, even though the piece itself is indeed rather good.

So. We have an intrepid squad of film-making youngsters turned investigators when they start to look into the strange goings on in their small town. Set in the late 1970's to early 80's, it does invoke a certain nostalgia for those who remember the era.

What's there not to like? The alien here doesn't talk, it's seriously pissed off, and the rest of the movie is effectively the Goonies with moviemaking thrown in. In fact, even the movie they made was endearingly slapped together kid-style without trying to go all Blair Witch on our asses. To boot, the kids are quite good with their acting, portraying rather convincing characters (not that I could really tell, since I'm that bad with body language and all)

Overall I'd say I liked it, though it broke no new ground. That's not to say that it really had to, but it is what it is. 7.5/10

Command And Conquer 4

Yup. I finally got down to actually trying that monstrosity. And I don't mean it in a good way, as much as I like some monsters. Command and Conquer 4 is what appears to be a rather poor attempt at reimagining the gameplay of the C&C series. Simply put, Tiberium Twilight makes me sad. I'm officially calling it the equivalent of Twilight (the movie) in the C&C series.

Ok good things first, because the rest is just upsetting. I find it awesome that the designers decided to try to reimagine the RTS gameplay, with a mobile base and different unit paths depending on the player's current class. In fact, they made a clear effort to emulate Relic's capture point centric gameplay. Overall, the high concept had quite some potential.

Now the bad. Which is practically everything else. Command and Conquer has always been about tech tree climbing and massed armies. In fact, it's what sets the franchise apart from the other RTS with population caps and hence limited squads engaging in combat. Nobody will ever forget the tank rushes and their equivalents. What came out of the mix was combat that felt pointless. In lieu of resource gathering, there was the forced gathering of tiberium crystals on the map for upgrades while moving small squads of troops that just didn't feel particularly differentiated (they were, btw) and really no sense of omgsomeone'sstealingmygold.

The campaign was unpardonably tepid, and the game was clearly made for multiplayer...which the C&C franchise wasn't really optimal for. The missions in 4 were even worse than in 3, failing to deliver the sort of FMV goodness that made the early games in the series. After hearing about what happened to Red Alert as well...I'm just sad.

Kung Fu Panda 2

Po is back, and he's funnier than ever. It's rare for me to see a sequel that's actually better than the original, and this one is it. It also means I'm bracing myself for disappointment over its sequels, as mean regression will set in sooner or later. I'm gona enjoy this high while it lasts.

So. What's improved? Everything. Storyline, art quality, lighting, action. It's all over the top and just as implausible as it was before. It's even thrown in a touching rendition of Po's history and how he came to be adopted by a silly old goose. All I can say is that his journey of self discovery continues, and is every bit as meaningful (perhaps more so) than it originally was. Awesome sauce! (And there's no charge for awesomeness)

I'd say if you haven't watched it already and it isn't on the big screens anymore, rent the gorram thing. It's totally worth it. 8.5/10.

That Strange Bag

I had a rather weird experience today, so I suppose I shall document it, as is customary. I bought a tripod today. It came in a regular thin plastic bag. Usual stuff. I'm quite excited about the tripod, by the way. My mom is egging me to get rid of the junk in my room, but that's another story for another day.

Well anyway this morning, I realized that the stone from my bracelet was coming off, but I figured it'd hold so I wore it out and planned to fasten it later in the day. As Murphy's Law dictates, I suddenly decided to check my wrist and found that the gem was gone. Bummer! I dumped my bracelet in the bag since it was largely useless without the center piece.

As I was getting off the bus enroute home, I saw something black sticking to the bag. Turned out it was my pocket knife. In fact, the knife's pocket clip somehow got stabbed into the bag and the bag effectively stole my pocket knife from my pocket. Bad bag!

Then when I got home, I wanted to take the bracelet out and fix it with something else I had lying around. Well what the heck...there was something shiny rolling about in it, along with my bracelet. Turns out my bracelet's gem actually fell into the bag as well. *looks at bag suspiciously*

Creators, Players And Followers

All systems come from somewhere. There are rules either created or derived, and everything follows from there. In people systems, there are three main categories, as there are in other participatory systems: Creators, players and followers.

Arguably, a creator in a system is the most creative, if not necessarily the most powerful. They are the ones who helped set up the system, though sometimes systems create themselves and are purely procedural. I would also consider a really high end player to be a creator, since the player seeks not to play within the rules anymore, but to change the system itself.

Then we have the regular players who understand the system to varying degrees, but will operate primarily within the confines of the system without attempting to change them. Some players may become sufficiently adept to actually become a quasi-creator. A true player works the rules to their advantage, or to the advantage of those whom they wish to benefit.

Finally, we have the sheep known as followers, who play exclusively within the rules without making any special effort to maximize their personal benefit from the rules. Indeed, a follower may even operate through hearing of the rules from others, and thus have an indirect understanding of what they are.

Karma Does Not Exist

I am a karma skeptic. I do not believe that there's a cosmic force of fairness out there, which will punish evildoers and protect the good. As far as I can tell, that does not happen. Bad people get away with the bad things they did, good people get bullied, the world trudges on.

Actually, if it does exist, it is currently patently unverifiable. There's no objective way to measure karma. Everything can be claimed to be attributed to something unknowable. Oh that bad guy will have his just desserts in his next life. *BZZZ* Unverifiable. Something bad will happen to the person sometime in the future for what he just did. *BZZZZ* Doesn't always happen, and if it happens it seems like something that could possibly happen to anyone anyway. Ok so I murdered someone and someone I love gets into a car crash a week later. Would that necessarily mean that my actions caused the car crash somehow? Can it be verified? *BZZZ* Nope.

Despite all this, people believe in it anyway and look out for the signs of karma in action. A dictator starts having deformed children. Karma. An evil businessman who ripped everyone off gets arrested. Karma. It gives people a sense of comfort in the illusory innate fairness of the universe. I've learned that this matter is one of belief, and no amount of rationality will serve to debunk it. I've challenged others on the matter and only received an unverifiable challenge in return: Why don't you do something bad. You'll see what happens. Well no. I won't see what happens, 'coz it doesn't happen immediately after, I can't predict when it'll happen and even if it did I can't be sure that it wouldn't have happened anyway regardless of my actions.

In my view, the universe is as fair as the humans make it. Nothing more, nothing less. And as things go, humans make it unfair. Big deal. I accept that something bad may happen to me at some undefined point in the future and there's nothing I can do about it. But that isn't karma. That's just how life is. It's unfair. Live with it.

New Games

I've been observing the Western game industry and am frankly quite saddened by the fact that they're stagnating in design ideas and seem to view improved graphical quality as an "upgrade" of old franchises. If there are any major gameplay differences, chances are they are incremental at best.

With the introduction of more atmospheric games like Arkham Asylum and Bioshock, I'm wondering at the untapped pool of design ideas. It is truly difficult to come up with something new, but there's always something that many people can relate to. And that would involve mashups of what they have experienced in one way or another. Here, I am thinking of childhood experiences and games.

One thing that truly appeals to players of atmospheric games is the novelty of the experience. What I am considering is what would it be like to abstract a childhood experience, with the fears and fantasies and make a totally different gameplay and atmosphere with it? As a child, everything is new. There is joy in discovery, and fear in the unknowns. Everything is just bigger out there. Can a game be made out of it?

It is a shame that I have precious few childhood memories. I barely remember my past and I don't even recall childhood games...if I played any at all. I probably did, I think. Ah, well. That would throw a wrench in the works should I try to tap my own experiences for this endeavor, but I'm sure a sufficiently savvy game designer would be able to pick up from here.

Sucking Up

Everyone hates a suck up. It's often painfully obvious that someone is sucking up to a superior, and oftimes the superior seems to be quite oblivious to it. And then there are those who take it to another level, and actually masquerade as hard workers.

I had a discussion with a friend on the matter some days back, and he pointed out that these brown noses are disguising their sucking up efforts as initiative rather than hard work per se. Simply put, the strategy here is to volunteer for as many non-work gigs as possible as long as they're visible to the superior in question. This creates the impression of an outgoing worker full of initiative. It is especially insidious with highly social suckups, because they really do genuinely enjoy participating in such activities, and will have an air of genuine enthusiasm for them.

Herein lies the problem: while these activities have little bearing on actual productivity, they are often in line with management's goals of "team building" and other similarly social-oriented management objectives. It is therefore not hard to see how such people will appeal to the managerial bunch, and indeed may wind up in management themselves.

Of course, this raises some evaluation dilemmas. For one, can someone be regarded as a suckup for actively participating in activities that management likes and endorses when one genuinely enjoys them (regardless of ulterior motives)? For those who do have ulterior motives, is the time and effort spent in such activities justified in terms of the gains? And finally, while visibility will let one be honestly evaluated in a superior light as far as the manager is concerned, is this unfair to other less social but equally effective (often the case, given that they're focused) and genuine hard workers?

I think the general consensus is that performance evaluation is broken and is likely to stay broken for the forseeable future given the limits of human cognition: it is unlikely for a manager to be able to really focus on objective performance evaluations on top of other duties, and humans do rely heavily on things they can observe to make judgments. The optimal solution in this case for less-social employees seems to be to have a token participation in such activities (preferably one that the employee favors). Alternatively, going for high visibility assignments can have a similar effect without involvement in non-productivity related activities. Ah, the joys of working within a broken human system.

The Night Shift

People are generally resistant to radical change, and that does prevent certain more radical considerations from really taking root. I was pondering the merits of the night shift some days back, especially in relation to the fact that it's awfully hot in the daytime and frankly not a very enjoyable work experience in general.

Background. It's mighty hot in the daytime, especially in the tropics. The daylight hours are like clockwork and the temperature never varies greatly. Given these conditions,the air conditioning system of office buildings will be working overtime to cool the place and that takes quite a bit more power than it would were the temperature several degrees lower. In fact, a goodly number of people actually do want the night shift, but it's rarely considered as a true possibility in most companies.

Given the facts, it should actually be feasible if the night shift were implemented at a national level. Amongst the concerns of such an implementation include difficulty in adapting to the new hours, and inability to socialize with friends. Kids, too. But if it this thing were to be the norm, I seriously doubt that would be as much of a concern. As a side effect, I forsee that street crime at night would go down some, as more people are out and about so there are fewer secluded places during the dark hours.

Of course, given how the day shift has been so ingrained in societies everywhere since time immemorial, I'm not sure I'd see a normative shift anytime soon. Well, one can wish...

On Busty Boosters

In this current generation, women are made to feel small if they are...well...small breasted. There is an unrealistic expectation of wasp waists combined with melon assets. But that's not the point of this post. It is about the widespread scam of breast enhancing supplements.

I've been thinking about the matter a lot, and pondering the science in addition to personal reviews. The general consensus is that these things either work a "little bit" or not at all, but it seems that new (and veteran) fools will try the latest product anyway in the hope that this time it'll be different.

I especially liked one observation by a skeptic on the matter. She pointed out that menstrual cycles play a part and can color the observations of bust enhancer users. From my perspective, the matter of bust size is highly salient amongst the growth seekers. That means they will most certainly be watching any changes very carefully, and consequently any changes that are noticed will be magnified in their perception. Throwing in the cycle thing, basically they're going to observe enlargement when the cycle comes. It's also called water retention. Interestingly enough, the leaflets boast being able to effect changes precisely within that time frame. Hmmm! And the "changes" are said to subside after some time. Hmmmmmmm!

Well there's the physics behind it. Unless those supplements are able to channel fat into the area one way or another, it's quite unlikely for the changes to be permanent. Most likely the stuff just has minimal effectiveness if at all, and most likely induces water retention or other sorts of swelling instead of real growth. Bummer, eh?