Wreck-It Ralph

A movie about video games and featuring video game characters. What's there not to like? Wreck-It Ralph will appeal to gamers for sure. Especially veteran gamers.

The movie is a typical hero's journey style narrative, with the usual redemption theme. The difference is that they manage to create the impression of a living world (a'la Toy Story) in the arcade, chock full of references to the characters and their current state of being. Oh Q*Bert, you poor thing!

While the movie brings nothing new into the narrative space, the characters invite sympathizing if not outright empathy and the redemption story can be particularly poignant to certain folk. I personally liked it, and figure the movie deserves 8/10.

Motivation In Life

What do you live for? Why do you go to work every day? These are questions that I ask myself from time to time. I've even asked my friends about it. The answer I often get is that the appropriate response is "Money". I find this response strange, because I do not go to work for the money.

A cheap retort some people have for my statement is that I might as well hand over all the money I earn because I don't need/want it. That's cheap because they know I can't answer that, and more importantly it's beside the question of motivation. I could easily retort that since they aren't working for the air they breathe, why don't they just stop so that I can get more oxygen?

I guess the point is that if one's at work exclusively (or at least primarily) for the money, one will find it hard to stay on when the going gets tough. In fact if I worked for money, I'd just go to another place that offered more money. Because the work doesn't matter. I guess that's one way to live, but it's largely without a true aim. There's no end point to money, and honestly the applications of money can be somewhat limited. At some point you have so much money you don't really know what to do with it. But before you can get there, you'd probably need a good dose of passion.

Passion is what gets people up even if the work's painful, and I guess that means one needs to work in a line which one likes. In some smaller economies that's just not possible, but should one have the fortune to do so I think one just doesn't work another day in their life. Ultimately, with passion, one has a motivation besides money to keep doing a good job, which tends to improve one's skills, which tends to attract money anyway. Interesting, no?

If I Were God

I was pondering what my conversation with myself would be like if I were God. This is what came out of it:

Me: Ok so let's get down to the questions. Players have been complaining about the recent game balance fixes that just don't make sense. Do you intend to fix them anytime soon?

God: Uhhh...there haven't been any recent patches. There haven't been patches for thousands of years.

 Me: ... none?

God: Yup. I basically put a few rules in place a couple billion years ago, then sat back to watch the system develop. It's really just injecting some order in the primordial chaos.

Me: What did you do after that? God: I rested. Then played video games. And played with knives and took photos. And read books...

Me: Ok... Uh... So you're telling me that all of existence is just basically a random system?

God: Not random. Just randomness with a few simple rules to allow it to evolve by itself.

Me: Right. Well we've been hearing lots of complaints about the lack of customer support over the last few millennia. Do you intend to release a patch to address some emerging imbalances in the system?

God: Nope. Actually that was written in the patch notes. It says no further patches will be provided.

Me: Patch notes...?

God: Yeah nobody ever reads patch notes.

Me: Wow. That's...unexpected. So I guess it begs the question: Why was Reality created?

God: I was bored.

Me: There's no meaning to life, huh.

God: That's not a question, but yes. You guys made all those meanings up.

Animals

Those who know me will be familiar by now that I regard the majority of humans as animals. That is, as creatures that live primarily by their base urges and instincts rather than conscious thought. When thinking about the animals in the arena of statecraft and particularly economics or public policy, I find the label particularly apt. The average human is predominantly obsessed with their day to day existences and "survival", and thus leave no room for considering the wider world that affects them no less. I have raised this issue with friends, who have pointed out that poorer people have no time to consider such things as they're too busy trying to stay alive and feed their families. The suggestion gave me pause, because it seemed plausible. However, I quickly recalled where we stand right now, standing on the shoulders of the geniuses who have built up the high technology that we take for granted today. Surely these people had to have thought beyond their everyday lives to bring humanity forward step by painful step. Surely these people didn't start off in a world of plenty the way we are today. Of course, I should qualify what I mean by world of plenty. True, there is certainly hunger and extreme poverty all over the world. However, considering the incredible populations we have this day and the fact that we're feeding a goodly bit more of them than we did back in the day is indicative of the progress made towards sustaining the population. Despite this state of humanity, we do not see a sudden flourishing of amazing new developments and the spontaneous emergence of new philosophies that serve the betterment of humans. Instead, all I see is the blind pursuit of material wealth by animals. Is this the boon that wealth brings, now that there is a great big group of people who no longer fight for survival and have the capacity to ponder greater things?

Politics

It is interesting to note that the average human dedicates so few mental resources to the comprehension of grand strategy that their comprehension of the words of politicians may as well be nil. Simply put, a politician needs only manipulate their emotions and reframe their thoughts in order to push forward a plan that would make little sense to any learned thinker. The politician operates without independent scrutiny or intellectual audit. When I think about how politics works, I cannot help but be both amazed and disgusted by it. I am amazed by how easily it works when one understands the principles, and disgusted by the same. Can it be that the majority of humans are little better than animals in comprehending such matters? This is applicable in the workplace as well, whereby a more politically savvy co-worker may climb the corporate ladder and thus gain more command than one of his/her intellectual capability may suggest. In fact, it seems that the people who dedicate more time/thought to developing political prowess than technical skill wind up on top. This creates a vicious cycle that is detrimental to organizations. It seems to me that there is a sweet spot that must be hit whereby a person has a basic grasp of political savvy while primarily developing technological savvy. A good example of the archetype would be successful technopreneurs who successfully market their own product while being rather adept at the technologies themselves. This, I think, would be a fairly productive balance point.

Reviving Creativity

I was walking around taking photos just now, and I was getting night shots that few other people have taken. I walked a path that virtually nobody took, and was rewarded for it. Now that I've done it, it seems so obvious. However, something kept me from even trying in the first place. I think I may know what that is. We go through lives guided by rules. Some are written, some rather more tacit. It is the unwritten rules that seem to hold us back the most. Tonight I walked on a bridge, but the path is so unknown that even the exit at the other end was barely accessible. To be fair, its entrance is obscure, but the most important barrier is simply that it's a highway bridge and it just never occurs to people that it can be used for anything but driving on. Simply put, while the access is obscure, a mental rule was pretty much serving to keep anyone from even trying. I think this is one of the many steps one may take towards reviving creativity. The more rules one keeps sacred in one's world view, the harder it is to take steps off the beaten track. It is by far easier and more comfortable to stay within the common bounds, and never violate them. Sadly, that is also a rather stifling path for one to take through life. To those who wish to try it, break an unwritten rule today. It isn't illegal, but one may be quite surprised at what one may find out after breaking it.

San Francisco

I had a fine fortnight's stay in SF to visit my cousin. I acquired an EM5 camera to do the job. I figured what the heck, if I were to go on a trip like this, the least I could do for myself was to get a hardware upgrade. I did not regret the expenditure. Overall we had fun together, seen the city and done some neat stuff. Heck I even had the opportunity to see the Folsom Street Fair and missed the shuttle flyby (AAARRRGGGHHHHHH~~~!!!!!) I even had a sweet lot of photos alongside a huge pile of jerky and chocolate. It returning from such trips that feels rather bittersweet. On one hand I have the memories to keep me going. On the other, it just makes me long to see more of the world, and knowing just how cloistered I really am. I need to get out more. Funny quirk of being nocturnal: I don't experience jetlag the way most people do. I mean I do get desynched but ultimately I'm actually perpetually jetlagged, so I actually have moments of wakefulness at a more usual time after such a trip. America, I shall miss you. For now.

Self Help Scam

I was having fun reading Rich Dad Poor Dad over the last week. I regard it as light reading, seeing as how it's an entire book written about a few very basic (and by now commonsense) ideas that are backed up by experiences that go so incredibly well that it simply leaves one wondering at just how unembellished they are. Simply put, it is the kind of book that just makes one wish to go get a proper financial education, and that's probably its greatest value. Now, self-help books have been rather popular for quite some time now. In fact, they seem to have a goodly bit of entertainment value. However, I do question the value of self-help tomes. Like the intellectual junk food I was talking about earlier, self-help books seem to be rather good at giving people a nice warm and fuzzy feeling inside, but come out of it little better off (if at all) from the reading experience. Some have criticized self-help books for being scams. I don't know if all of them are, but I certainly do think they have done rather well to make the authors (and their publishing houses) significantly richer than they started off. After reading a book like this and the other intellectual junk food, I would think it is just simply wiser to find a good text on the subject one is truly interested in and just read that. At the very least it'll impart some technical knowledge in the matter.

Reading Trash

It is said that books are food for the intellect. And then there are books that I prefer to term intellectual junk food. I've read a few trivia books over the years. I think they might be familiar to many people: the bestsellers that tell readers about all sorts of amazing stories that boggle the average person's mind. In fact, the books are great big collections of Did-You-Know's. My first encounter with such a book had me hooked, at least initially. Wow. It has that stuff? I did not know that. This book is teaching me stuff! After reading it, I pored over the stuff I (thought I) learned. Much as I tried, I could only recall the specific cases. Oooh so this is what a Black Swan is. That is what Flipnosis is about. So that's what it's like to be Fooled By Randomness. However, what I failed to glean from the readings are the first principles of the phenomena. That is, how I might go about replicating them or perhaps avoiding them. In short, the books left me scarcely better off than when I started. Perhaps I traded the cost of the books for the ability to impress my friends with my knowledge of trivia. Ultimately, the books aren't bad per se in that they're outright lies, but that they do not truly better a person. What's worse is that they give readers the illusion that they've been bettered, when the reader is not taught the underlying principles of the phenomenon. I am now no better at spotting a potential Black Swan or actually changing someone's thought patterns through Flipnosis or anything else along those lines. There just is no substitute for a proper (self) education in the matters by reading proper books designed to teach precisely those things.

Cultural Differences

Sometimes I go on the train and differences in upbringing can become incredibly apparent. There are the people who jostle with abandon and not bother to apologize for the manhandling, and there are those who tell their children to apologize for merely bumping my backpack. One certainly sounds crass and callous while the other's pleasantly polite. The two examples of humanity came from different walks of life, with different cultures. One came from a background where parents teach their children to rush to board a train and secure their seats, whereas the other came from a more sanguine culture where it's proper to respect others. Likewise, I've observed individuals who recognize that it is impolite to stare and will soften a fascinated look with a smile, while there are others who would stare and look guiltily away when noticed only to surreptitiously administer the stare when the notice has passed. Those of the more genteel upbringing would undoubtedly find it unusual that any decent folk would behave in that manner. However, what fascinates me is how the other specimen has been cultivated in an environment where such conduct is (implicitly perhaps) perfectly acceptable. Cultural standards sure do differ greatly.

Language And Thought Processes

Some may believe that racial traits carry influence a person's thought processes and attitudes, thus shaping one's character. I know my parents believe that. However, I think such a view is not just racist, but grossly oversimplified. I propose an alternative view, that a fairly obvious contender for the racial differences (where present) lies in language itself. For example, a language that has honorifics in its basic grammar is likely to breed thought processes where respect and hierarchy are salient. This does not necessarily breed a respectful individual, but it certainly does make the individual think a lot more about respect (gaining, losing it, etc) than one that has a language that is less steeped in honorifics. I have seen examples of people of certain ethnicities behaving in completely different manners depending on their country of upbringing. Clearly, if there is a genetic basis in their behavior, there would be a common thread between them in that sense. However, there is not. Instead, I see them conforming more to the cultures they are steeped in and the language(s) that they speak.

Max Payne 3

I've been playing Max Payne 3 on hard for a couple hours now, and I say this: I am disappoint. I may not have finished the game so far, but I think I've seen enough to make that pronouncement. Ultimately, Max Payne 3 plays exactly like an interactive movie: You interact for 3 minutes, watch 10 minutes of movie. It seems unfortunate that the developers have somehow managed to create a rather cinematic gameplay experience yet seem reluctant to let the player get more playtime to truly appreciate it. Perhaps I've been spoiled from playing the likes of Half Life 2, where every single cutscene is interactive at least in some way. I don't think so, however. It just seems like a rather overblown attempt at forcing a cinematic experience through taking control away from the player, instead of getting the player engaged in the narrative. There are many ways to cue the player to approach certain areas so that they enter a dramatic part of a story of their own accord, and allowing gameplay to continue while characters jaw one another to death. The other major problem with the game is the narrative itself. Where Max Payne 1 had memorable characters and a rather fine parallel with Ragnarok mythology, Max Payne 3 has characters that are forgotten as quickly as they stop gabbing, and the Noir style monologues seem to go on for their own sake. The way the story flows somehow manages to talk about urgency without showing any. There never was a point where the game got my pulse racing. Overall I'd say that my single player experience so far is 4/10 at most. Graphically, the game's fairly pleasing, but gameplay and narrative wise, it is just quite the flop.

Wardrobe Analysis

It is always fun to dig through one's wardrobe and analyze its contents. Garment choices reflect upon a wearer's personality and even the moods of the season. I found some interesting patterns in mine. I've found, for example, that my color tastes have shifted in favor of blacks and reds, with a tendency towards checkered patterns. If anything, I don't actually have yellows in my wardrobe, and the few greens I've got are rarely if ever worn. I guess it does suggest a shift in the general tone of my being in the recent years, and in this instance I could probably fairly say that my tastes have changed for the darker and the colors reflect that. Other than that, it was certainly an interesting moment where I learned something about myself.

Bourne Legacy

Another Bourne movie. Except this time, without Jason Bourne proper. Which is odd. It's a lot like having a James Bond movie where Q talks about Bond and does all the action. Personally, I find that it's a stretch to call it a Bourne movie at all. I guess Matt Damon's absence is just one part of why I find this movie less than satisfying. There's the matter of the action, with long drawn out chase scenes and unsatisfying fight scenes where you expect a climax only to be faced with an anticlimax. I find that highly unfortunate. That is not to talk about the twist in the storyline which I find cumbersome at best, requiring excessive explication to put forward where a simpler narrative would've sufficed. Overall I can say that I did not enjoy this movie. There's the obligatory occasional explosion and high octane chase scenes that are mediocre at best with their excessive reliance on shaky chase cameras and overall lack of a satisfying conclusion. Coupled with the absence of Bourne himself, I would just have to rate this movie a failure. It gets a 3/10 from me.

The Dark Knight Rises

So I finally got down to watching Batman. This time, Batman faces Bane in a high stakes struggle over Gotham (what's new?). The movie is everything one might expect from a Nolan Batman installment, though I guess I still preferred the prequels. The story has hints of the No Man's Land and Knightfall story arcs, with all that entails. I really do appreciate that the director's striking a balance between the creation of an independent narrative and the established comic series. Kudos for that. I also liked the reimagination of Bane as a somewhat intellectual figure with a background in the League of Shadows. Sadly, despite the characters and the story itself, there were a number of inconsistencies in the movie that just took me out of my suspension of disbelief. I did not appreciate that the city did not quite give me the feel of one under siege, nor did Batman/Bruce's difficulties feel convincing enough for me to immerse myself. Overall I did like the movie, but I think this is just not quite up to the standard of the other Nolan Batmans. Perhaps Heath Ledger's death had something to do with this. Regardless, I'd give it a 7.5/10.

Fantasies

Sometimes I think about the popular fantasies of humans, and wonder if there's something to it. In our modern age, anyone who believes in "special powers" like telepathy and other preternatural abilities would be ridiculed on reflex. I am neither believer nor skeptic, but am rather curious about the whole thing. What if those fantasies were real? What if those fantastic abilities remained untapped? Sadly, I have yet to personally encounter compelling evidence of the existence of genuine preternatural abilities. Yet, the limitations of empirical observation are apparent to me at the same time. It is something that people across various cultures have wanted to believe in, and sometimes I wonder whether there's more to it than we've been taught in school. One thing I've been pondering is the matter of human abilities in general requiring training to grow. Given that nobody's really interested in cultivating preternatural abilities these days, it's perhaps unsurprising that any extant abilities would wind up atrophying anyway. It is something I've been considering, but it still swings both ways. It might be too weak to use with any regularity, or it simply does not exist.

A Hurt Toenail

I've been out of krav maga training for a month now. That is rather unfortunate and it annoys me to no end. It is equally unfortunate that the cause of my missed trainings came specifically from an accident there. I was attempting to perform a kick block one night, when I accidentally wound up ramming my toe into someone's shin. That hurt and resulted in a bruised toenail. It seemed mostly fine after that, so I didn't quite heed it. Sadly, it wound up getting infected a fortnight later, and it was sufficiently tender that I just could not wear shoes for a while. Obviously, that precluded training. Now, nearly two months later, the toenail's mostly healed but there's still something up with it that it's slightly tender when I press on the top of the nail. It's improved some, but I guess I am just generally reluctant to aggravate it. Hopefully it'll mend soon.

Molestation

Social taboos are interesting and sometimes frighteningly powerful. Sexuality is the subject of numerous taboos in modern society. Thinking about that makes me consider exactly what the impact of molestation is. It is obvious that it has profound effects on the victim's psyche, causing lasting trauma that is extremely hard to recover from. Objectively speaking, being groped by someone is little different from being brushed up against on the train or in some other public place. However, in reality the sense of violation is so extreme that it can lead some to commit suicide or engage in other self destructive behavior as a result. At first blush, I imagine molestation is a cue for a person to signal his or her sexual availability. Someone who does not respond strongly to a molestation is indirectly deemed to be sexually deviant, in not making a solid effort to protect one's sexual purity. I find it unfortunate that the burden of protecting one's sexual purity falls unevenly on the shoulders of the female of the human species.

Kaputt

My computer has been ailing for some time now, and it seems to have chosen to go fully kaputt today. That is most unfortunate. After checking it, it seems to me that the problem is caused at least in part by the thermal grease under the CPU which has hardened into something akin to hardened thermal gunk. It is clearly time for some servicing. This will be the first time I had to replace the stuff, but well there's always a first time for everything. I find it interesting that the average lifespan of my computers is around 3 years. After 3 years in my service, a computer will have some sort of critical failure that will require major servicing. After that, something usually fails altogether and that's when I call for a complete overhaul. By that time the system's usually sufficiently old that it needs some sprucing up anyway. The timing is a little unfortunate this time, seeing as how I am trying to save up for some major expenses, and I'd probably need to get on with real servicing rather than replacing the system altogether. Fortunately, I don't actually feel the need for a replacement considering how system requirements for games do not appear to have increased all that much in the recent years, so my system tackles the newer releases rather well.

Small Towner

I remember those movies where a small towner comes out to the big city to seek their fortune. I remember how inspirational those movies felt, somethin of a coming of age story. Strangely, after thinking it over, I realize that the reason such movies resonated with me was 'coz I pretty much felt the exact same way. A strange thing, considering that I'm from a large city myself, with a population of millions. The difference here is that the city is more like an island, with a woeful lack of greater exposure. Overall I dare say that I seek that exposure, and to broaden my horizons. I know it will be tough, but well thta's part and parcel of growing up. How odd that I should feel this.