I'm not entirely sure what gave me the idea that I would be able to read a book a week while taking two accelerated courses and two on campus courses. I will try again in 8 weeks, when my accelerated courses have wrapped up and work double time during the summer to catch up and then get ahead for the fall classes I'm going to take. In the mean time, here are some of the things that I have learned this week:
White matter is white because of a fatty myelin sheath that insulates it from the sea of ions that the body is comprised of. Alternatively, grey matter is grey because of the lack of myelin.
Nerve impulses travel roughly 2 mph in grey matter, but up to 225 mph in white matter.
During the paleolithic era, when humans first started drawing on cave walls the paintings were all of animals. It wasn't until the neolithic era that humans began appearing in these paintings.
The history of Egypt is much more interesting than I had ever imagined.
When taking a business card, you should comment on it rather than putting it directly into your pocket.
Young people have no idea how to communicate and are very awkward.
That's all I can recall for now because I'm overworked and sleep deprived. It's probably going to be a rough 8 weeks, but I think that I can handle it. I still haven't decided how I feel about my classes, but will probably post a conclusion soon.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Sunday, January 12, 2014
2. The Art of Failure
Another book from the Playful Thinking series, this week's book was The Art of Failure. It was written by a professor at the NYU Game Center. The author discusses the paradox of gaming (much like the paradox of painful art), which goes something like this:
1. As humans, we avoid the negative emotions that failure cause us.
2. Games present us with the constant threat of failure.
3. People seek out opportunities to play games, which often result in failure.
Ultimately, the most likely explanation for why we play games similar to why we watch horror movies. Research shows that while we consume any sort of fictional media, there are two parts of the brain that remain consistently active for the duration of the event. In the case of the horror flick, one of these parts focuses entirely on the movie. This is why you jump when something scary happens. The other part keeps track of all of the other things going on around you, what the people in the theater are doing, where you are, and reminds you that you are watching a movie. This is why you don't run out of the theater when something scary happens. While we can be fully engrossed in a game and any failure can be devastating, we always have the option of walking away and telling ourselves that it was just a game.
The author performed a small case study in which he asked people to play a short game he had created and rate their enjoyment of the game. The study showed that players who completed the game without failing once rated the game lower on average than players who failed at least once. Players who failed too frequently to complete the game rated the game only slightly lower than players who never failed. The author also talked about specific and general causes of failure and how these perceptions can change the way characters react to the failure and how much they enjoy the game.
Failure in the storytelling aspect of a game is a tricky subject. While most literature and film is shown in a third person perspective, games usually force the player to take on the role of the protagonist. In fiction, we can feel empathy for the protagonist as we watch his (or her) world fall apart, this generally doesn't work well in games because the players' and protagonists' goals are generally aligned. A failure (personal tragedy) for the protagonist is a failure for the player. There have been a few games that have successfully pulled off tragic endings (namely, Red Dead Redemption) and there are games that focus on deception and complicity to keep the players' and protagonists' goals in line.
1. As humans, we avoid the negative emotions that failure cause us.
2. Games present us with the constant threat of failure.
3. People seek out opportunities to play games, which often result in failure.
Ultimately, the most likely explanation for why we play games similar to why we watch horror movies. Research shows that while we consume any sort of fictional media, there are two parts of the brain that remain consistently active for the duration of the event. In the case of the horror flick, one of these parts focuses entirely on the movie. This is why you jump when something scary happens. The other part keeps track of all of the other things going on around you, what the people in the theater are doing, where you are, and reminds you that you are watching a movie. This is why you don't run out of the theater when something scary happens. While we can be fully engrossed in a game and any failure can be devastating, we always have the option of walking away and telling ourselves that it was just a game.
The author performed a small case study in which he asked people to play a short game he had created and rate their enjoyment of the game. The study showed that players who completed the game without failing once rated the game lower on average than players who failed at least once. Players who failed too frequently to complete the game rated the game only slightly lower than players who never failed. The author also talked about specific and general causes of failure and how these perceptions can change the way characters react to the failure and how much they enjoy the game.
Failure in the storytelling aspect of a game is a tricky subject. While most literature and film is shown in a third person perspective, games usually force the player to take on the role of the protagonist. In fiction, we can feel empathy for the protagonist as we watch his (or her) world fall apart, this generally doesn't work well in games because the players' and protagonists' goals are generally aligned. A failure (personal tragedy) for the protagonist is a failure for the player. There have been a few games that have successfully pulled off tragic endings (namely, Red Dead Redemption) and there are games that focus on deception and complicity to keep the players' and protagonists' goals in line.
Thursday, January 09, 2014
100 Years of Physics
Sometime during the 14th century, the Italians developed a way of grinding glass so that the new curvature of the glass bends light in a way that changes the focal point of the light. These lenses were often used in spectacles to correct one's vision. More than a century after lens making had become relatively commonplace, two Dutch lens grinders combined a pair of lenses in a tube allowing them to make objects appear larger than to the naked eye. Thus, the microscope was born. The next four hundred years saw many improvements and novel new uses for these devices, and you can now buy a basic one on Amazon for under $50.
Microscopes are frequently used by students in high school biology classes to examine the structure of cells and how cells can interact with each other or their environment. The ones I used in high school were fairly sophisticated - multiple magnification levels, safety features so you don't scratch the lens when changing levels, backlit from the bottom through a diffusion grid. I didn't really think much of the technology behind them, and I still don't, because microscopes are a fairly common object in the time period we're living in. Microscopes provide crucial insight into basic biological structure that can't be obtained from a book.
In the same way that microscopes are essential in biology classes and the Bunsen burner is essential in chemistry classes, particle accelerators will one day be essential in physics classes. In 100 years particle accelerators will be available in the physics classrooms of every high school.
Recently physicists at the University of Texas created a "Table Top" particle accelerator, capable of reaching energies only previously achieved at major (read: billions of dollars and hundreds of feet in length) facilities. The size is reduced by a factor of about 10,000, and I assume that the cost of constructing the accelerator would be reduced by a similar factor. Assuming that the price of a linear accelerator is an even billion dollars, the price of the table top accelerator would be a mere hundred thousand. Big bucks for you and me, not so much for a university or school district.
Particle physics have paved the way for some of the most important discoveries of modern technology. While computers predate the current atomic model, it wasn't until the widespread acceptance of quantum physics and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle that we learned how to miniaturize the transistor using a single electron flowing through a silicon wafer, that the modern computer revolution occurred. Modern communication systems, industrial systems, and surgical techniques all rely on lasers to perform precise operations, none of which would be possible without a clear understanding of both the wave and particle nature of light.
Much as early microscopes helped accelerate the progress of biology (and therefor medicine), particle accelerators have helped accelerate the progress of physics (and therefor technology). Just a few hundred years ago having access to a microscope would have been a great privilege, but now it is trivial to find or buy one. A hundred years from now the same will be true of particle accelerators and we will be in a completely new era, where everyone has access to pieces of the puzzle that is the mysterious nature of physics, and an era in which we may discover everything there is to know about the subject.
Of course with the discovery of new physics fundamentals will come an entirely new generation of technology to exploit those fundamentals. From the manipulation of gravity and time, to warp drives and teleporters, to things that our still Newtonian brains haven't even considered to be within the realm of imagining.
Microscopes are frequently used by students in high school biology classes to examine the structure of cells and how cells can interact with each other or their environment. The ones I used in high school were fairly sophisticated - multiple magnification levels, safety features so you don't scratch the lens when changing levels, backlit from the bottom through a diffusion grid. I didn't really think much of the technology behind them, and I still don't, because microscopes are a fairly common object in the time period we're living in. Microscopes provide crucial insight into basic biological structure that can't be obtained from a book.
In the same way that microscopes are essential in biology classes and the Bunsen burner is essential in chemistry classes, particle accelerators will one day be essential in physics classes. In 100 years particle accelerators will be available in the physics classrooms of every high school.
Recently physicists at the University of Texas created a "Table Top" particle accelerator, capable of reaching energies only previously achieved at major (read: billions of dollars and hundreds of feet in length) facilities. The size is reduced by a factor of about 10,000, and I assume that the cost of constructing the accelerator would be reduced by a similar factor. Assuming that the price of a linear accelerator is an even billion dollars, the price of the table top accelerator would be a mere hundred thousand. Big bucks for you and me, not so much for a university or school district.
Particle physics have paved the way for some of the most important discoveries of modern technology. While computers predate the current atomic model, it wasn't until the widespread acceptance of quantum physics and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle that we learned how to miniaturize the transistor using a single electron flowing through a silicon wafer, that the modern computer revolution occurred. Modern communication systems, industrial systems, and surgical techniques all rely on lasers to perform precise operations, none of which would be possible without a clear understanding of both the wave and particle nature of light.
Much as early microscopes helped accelerate the progress of biology (and therefor medicine), particle accelerators have helped accelerate the progress of physics (and therefor technology). Just a few hundred years ago having access to a microscope would have been a great privilege, but now it is trivial to find or buy one. A hundred years from now the same will be true of particle accelerators and we will be in a completely new era, where everyone has access to pieces of the puzzle that is the mysterious nature of physics, and an era in which we may discover everything there is to know about the subject.
Of course with the discovery of new physics fundamentals will come an entirely new generation of technology to exploit those fundamentals. From the manipulation of gravity and time, to warp drives and teleporters, to things that our still Newtonian brains haven't even considered to be within the realm of imagining.
Sunday, January 05, 2014
1. Uncertainty in Games
Being the holidays, this week has been hectic for me. I decided to finish a book I got last year called Uncertainty in Games. It's part of MIT's Playful Thinking Series, which currently has just two books, but is worth checking out.
The book was a very interesting look at different and sometimes surprising sources of uncertainty in popular genres of games. For example, classic Mario games have no random elements. The game levels and enemy locations are exactly the same every time you play through. All of the games' uncertainty comes from the player's ability to time their actions correctly as they run through the levels. Strategy games such as chess rely completely on a player's opponent for uncertainty.
Zynga's Facebook games are interesting because the company makes money from uncertainty. Players have an amount of uncertainty in their every day schedules, so they never know if they will make it back in time to perform the next action that they need to take. This keeps players coming back on a daily basis, and in some cases paying real world money to correct a missed opportunity. In the long run, it is the uncertainty in the story line (if you would call it that) and future improvements that keep players returning to the games. An "I want to know what they will add next," sort of addiction. Of course, there are small random bonuses that players occasionally receive, but these have a very minor effect on the game.
In fact, most games are designed in a way such that randomness has relatively little effect on anything. In war games such as Risk, every battle is determined by the rolling of dice, an intrinsically random event. However, throughout the course of the game, the outcome of the die rolls will regress toward the mean, statistically evening out. This is a purely mathematical concept and doesn't require the player have any knowledge of it. It does mean that while the victor of every battle is randomly determined, the uncertainty in these types of games (and most games where a die roll or card shuffle provide a level of randomness) lies in each player's ability to out-strategize the other.
In the end, there is no tried and true rule to determine how much or which type of uncertainty to incorporate into a game, but many of the most popular and fun games have many layers of uncertainty that have been finely tuned to craft an entertaining and enjoyable experience.
The book was a very interesting look at different and sometimes surprising sources of uncertainty in popular genres of games. For example, classic Mario games have no random elements. The game levels and enemy locations are exactly the same every time you play through. All of the games' uncertainty comes from the player's ability to time their actions correctly as they run through the levels. Strategy games such as chess rely completely on a player's opponent for uncertainty.
Zynga's Facebook games are interesting because the company makes money from uncertainty. Players have an amount of uncertainty in their every day schedules, so they never know if they will make it back in time to perform the next action that they need to take. This keeps players coming back on a daily basis, and in some cases paying real world money to correct a missed opportunity. In the long run, it is the uncertainty in the story line (if you would call it that) and future improvements that keep players returning to the games. An "I want to know what they will add next," sort of addiction. Of course, there are small random bonuses that players occasionally receive, but these have a very minor effect on the game.
In fact, most games are designed in a way such that randomness has relatively little effect on anything. In war games such as Risk, every battle is determined by the rolling of dice, an intrinsically random event. However, throughout the course of the game, the outcome of the die rolls will regress toward the mean, statistically evening out. This is a purely mathematical concept and doesn't require the player have any knowledge of it. It does mean that while the victor of every battle is randomly determined, the uncertainty in these types of games (and most games where a die roll or card shuffle provide a level of randomness) lies in each player's ability to out-strategize the other.
In the end, there is no tried and true rule to determine how much or which type of uncertainty to incorporate into a game, but many of the most popular and fun games have many layers of uncertainty that have been finely tuned to craft an entertaining and enjoyable experience.
This Year's List
There are a few things I would like to accomplish this year and are as follows:
1. Read or finish a book a week.
2. Turn some of the scenarios in my head into short stories or books.
3. Create a new blog template from scratch, or close to it.
4. Create and stick to a maintenance schedule for the tings that need it.
5. Get my finances back in order after buying a house.
We'll see how this goes.
More on #1 in a few minutes.
1. Read or finish a book a week.
2. Turn some of the scenarios in my head into short stories or books.
3. Create a new blog template from scratch, or close to it.
4. Create and stick to a maintenance schedule for the tings that need it.
5. Get my finances back in order after buying a house.
We'll see how this goes.
More on #1 in a few minutes.
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