C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

The Command Line Podcast has an episode featuring a recording that cmdln did of himself and Vernor Vinge on the panel, "Secure Hardware Environments".

Exercise should be a game. Right now, from a game perspective, the repetitive motions are just like level-grinding. The genius of Dance Dance Revolution is that it takes the boredom out of exercise. To expand on this, a game should use all four limbs and not just jumping around. Something different from a rythm game, though. I'm thinking of a fighting game. A couple of hacked Wiimotes, one in each hand, could be detected in eight positions around a circle. The player stands on a dance pad, to control dodging.

Unless something unexpected happens, I think this plan is firm enough to announce. Last night I visited Mike, Karen, and Bahb Son Of Bob (palindromeg33k). It looks like I can move in to their town-house-like thing in Novi. This will take place some time after Mike ships out to the Middle East this weekend.

There is broadband there, so my remote work will be un-interrupted save only for the time it takes to pack and unpack. They have a machine that washes your dishes for you. This apartment complex also has not one, but two types of laundry machines! One washes, the other dries!

Living with the comic genius Bahb, the possibilities stagger the imagination. Consider in isolation, if you will, merely the opportunities for gaming. To say nothing of collaboration on webcomics and podcasts!

I'll live a lot nearer to Blasted Bill (blastedbill) and finally get to see more of him again. Today he came over and fixed my car so that it will start, confirmed that I have two dead motherboards, and helped me retrieve data off my Windows computer. He loaned me a device that fits a hard drive and adapts it to USB. We got a good start on patching together working components from the eight computers in my house into one Frankenputer. In the meantime I have been using a Mac Mini courtesy of my employer. But I am now rapidly regaining full computational capacity around here.

Is anyone coming to tomorrow's Penguicon handoff meeting who would bring a Firewire cable to loan to me? Also I could use some thermal paste and a spare PC power supply. I'll be back up and running and have my data restored in no time.

Finally I get to read "Sun of Suns" by Karl Schroeder. The publisher, Tor Books, is making it available for free as PDF, html, or Mobipocket formats! Well, I shouldn't say I'm "reading" it. I can't wait to free up some free time for reading, so I put it into Readthewords.com and synced it to my audio device. So I've been listening to a computer read it.

Karl Schroeder likes to present very accessible swashbuckling adventures, but that is a clever disguise. When you get beneath the surface, books like "Ventus" (now available as a free e-book) and "Sun of Suns" are super-intellectual science fiction. So it satisfies both audiences.

"Sun of Suns" takes place inside a planet-sized balloon full of air called Virga. The only gravity is provided by centrifuge cities built of wood, and Virga is full of tiny artificial suns. The greatest of these suns, Candesce, creates forms of radiation that block the artificial virtual-realities that form the backdrop for the rest of Karl Schroeders universe, where books like "Permanence" and "Lady of Mazes" are set. The zero-gravity non-vacuum environment and the restrictions on high-tech create a setting where flying boats (that wondrous old trope of whimsy), become not only possible, but easy and necessary. Here is a haiku I wrote yesterday.

Read on, "Sun of Suns"
Credulity satisfied
How can there be fish?

7 PM until late at the Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti (720 Norris St), there's a release party for version 8 (codename "Hardy Heron") of Ubuntu Linux!

For those who email me to say they don't have the context to know what I'm talking about on this LJ half the time: Ubuntu Linux is basically a free alternative to Microsoft's Windows, Explorer, and Office. It works great and it's really easy. You should try it.

With any luck they'll be handing it out on CD for free tonight so you can beat the current swamped rush of downloaders. I'll be at the party. Join in!

This year's Penguicon included the fulfillment of several of my long-standing ambitions. There is so much more ground to cover in each of these ambitions, but momentum is well and truly rolling now.

One of these is organized puppetry, which I haven't done since childhood. We did a rollicking performance of a marionette adaptation of "A Shoggoth On The Roof". Over the past year I, Jer, and Allison, have become good friends with Naia, Andy, and "He-Of-The-Daily-Changing-Name". They are the Dreamland Puppet Troupe of Dreamland Theater in Ypsilanti. Rehearsing with them was one of the most enjoyable parts of helping to organize the convention. We plan to do another show this year: "The Trouble With Death Traps". We have received the enthusiastic support from the author, Marjorie James.

That was an example of the type of glittery theme park attraction that I love. Another is the Giant Singing Tesla Coils. You have to hear them in person to get the full effect-- it is not for nothing that they are known as Zeusaphones. Thanks to Steve Ward and Jeff Larson for inventing this glorious thing. As I sat on the lawn listening to one of their concerts, I realized (1) it felt exactly like being back at EPCOT Center, (2) by helping us to bring things like this together in one place, I am doing what my life is about.

Another thing I have wanted for years is to meet Eliezer Yudkowsky of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Not only did I get to meet him, we became friends, had a lot of fun chatting with Vernor Vinge, and Eliezer and I are now "fans" of each other. Meanwhile, He-Of-The-Daily-Changing-Name decided I was his guru. I can never tell whether HOTDCN is serious about anything or if it's just performance art. Eliezer and HOTDCN caused a snowball of ersatz toadying which accumulated downhill into absurdity from there. Soon I was leading a large crowd of people from room party to room party. We must get Eliezer back soon! He has proposed such wonderful panel discussions as "World's Funniest Dystopias".

I also was lucky enough to receive an invitation to the Lingerie Party. It too was an exploration of long-standing interests, which for me are so obvious and uncomplicated as to require no further comment. Thus ends the checklist.

The convention swept me along like a whirlwind: a conga line, a pretty face, a phone call, repeat.

Saturday afternoon I stood in the bright sun by the Brazilian Beef grills, listening to the chatter of geeks in paradise, and declaimed a desire to holograph that moment in my mind and freeze it for all time. A lady named Lauren who had accompanied her son to the convention overheard this. She told me it was possible. She then taught me how to create a permanent memory by focusing on all my senses of standing there in that moment, and bringing it back up every hour or so. Whenever she saw me the rest of the weekend she reminded me to focus and concentrate on all the senses of that moment to lock in the memory. The moment is still
vividly
fresh
I am tearing up a little.

The playtest of the lavish prototype for my new board game "Lemuria" was well received. I had more applicants than available play slots, and received valuable feedback from a different audience than those with whom I had previously playtested it. More on that later.

In other news, misfortune befell my Coffee Ritual almost completely across the board. Saturday I had to cancel it and Sunday we soldiered on. At least there was coffee, but that was all there was. Everyone enjoyed it, actually. I converted it from parody High Church to a Pentecostal revival meeting and invited the whole audience to testify to their love of coffee. David Bloom from Ann Arbor SPARK particularly entertained me with his trembling supplication, on his knees asking for more coffee. My "testimony" was the story of a few weeks ago, pulling an all-nighter at Tracy Worcester's place, working on the Penguicon program schedule. I was worthless after about 3. I started to have psychedelic visions and passed out at 8 in the morning. This is why I don't stay up past about 2 usually.

Speaking of soldiering on, Allison Anderson broke her toe doing Program Ops! She is now truly a Penguicon veteran with the injuries to prove it. Fortunately it was not serious and she decided to soldier on, in a wheelchair. We're so grateful to her.

I enjoyed the discussion of "Sequencing the Genome of Fiction" with two of my favorite Penguicon presenters, Sarah Elkins and Catherine Devlin. I asked to do this panel to basically provoke interest in replacing fiction magazines the way Pandora.com has made music radio obsolete (it just doesn't know it's dead yet). netmouse  was in the audience and I asked her to tell us about her cool related project.

At the Dead Dog party I finally got to sit still long enough to meet Jono Bacon, the community manager for Ubuntu Linux. He loves Penguicon, and we made many fine plans. That is all I will announce... for now. ;)

Thanks to all the new people who have come forward to play a larger part in Penguicon. Brian Robinson. Phil Salkie. Mark Lenigan. Austin Howard. Nathan Jiskra. Limey and Amy Zrnich. Dan Diebolt. And many more. I have enough business cards to wallpaper with. The existing concom and staff positions are all but full, and now I'm creating ones that never before existed. But keep volunteering!

To sum up on how I feel, here's the lyrics to the music that was in my head this weekend, from "Meet The Robinsons". If you have the song, listen to it while looking at Penguicon photos. SRSLY.

The future has arrived
Nobody can doubt
The future is what every thing's about
It's better for you and it's better for me
It's better than what everybody thought it would be

The future has arrived
The future has arrived today

The future's arrived, as light as can be
Just open your eyes, it's as plain to see
Just don't be afraid, just keep going on
One step at a time, and you can't go wrong

It's time to CREATE time to GROW, if you feel right
The world yeah she's changing
And life's rearranging
To make you feel ALIVE!

THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED
THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED TODAY
THE FUTURE'S ALIVE
THE FUTURE IS ALIVE TODAY

This is to hand out this weekend, to make sure that anyone who might help or present at Penguicon 7.0 in 2009 knows how to get in touch with me and has a physical reminder to do so. Only $10 for 250.

Edited to add: In order to keep clear in my head which computers you're offering advice about, it's probably a good idea for me to label the references below to indicate the four computers.

Now in addition to my Linux computer (A), the one that is running Windows (B) is not working either. That leaves only the old graphite G4 Mac (C).

The Windows computer (an Athlon XP 1700+) (B) gets to the "Press DEL to enter SETUP" phase of bootup, and freezes there.

I cleaned the dust from the heat sink of the Linux computer (an Intel Pentium 4) (A). Now I no longer hear it spin up and spin down, up and down, up and down. The fans run continually. But it still doesn't beep or put anything on the screen at all. I think it can use some replacement thermal paste on the processor, but I have none.

I tried hooking up the computer that I got from the trash a few months ago (D), on which I installed Linux.

FastTrak100 (tm) "Speed" BIOS Version 1.31 (Build 22)
(c) 1995-200 Promise Technology, Inc. All rights reserved.
Scanning IDE drives .................................................

Warning - FastTrak does not detect proper interrupts,
Please check your PCI IRQ setup, and make sure the PCI slot 
support Bus Master operations

At least I thought I had installed Linux on it (D), but I don't know how that could have worked if it can't detect the hard drive and isn't booting from the Feisty Fawn release of Ubuntu Linux which in the CD drive.

Correction! Now it (D) boots to Ubuntu from the CD! Thank you, "Live CD"!

I'll be away from the internet until 6PM today and tomorrow. So if you find yourself composing an email to me during that time, I welcome you to call me instead: 248-787-7436.

We're recording an episode of Penguicast and mentioned this, so I'm putting it online. Enjoy!

Hello, my old acquaintance. You're late this year! You usually arrive in March and don't leave until the program book has gone to the printer. Arriving after it has gone to the printer is a new trick.

But you need new tricks, don't you? I'm gaining mastery. Well, I'm banishing you now. Arrivaderci, Annual Pre-Penguicon Stress.

I admit it. I've had bad experiences with roleplaying games. Ken Burnside of Ad Astra Games once told me that the essence of roleplaying's appeal is the opportunity to be a hero of epic proportions, whose actions can change the world. But confronted with such an open-ended challenge, I fail to think of solutions to my character's problems. I always think of better solutions later, when it's too late. Epic world-saving is not a winnable scenario for me in realtime. I fail and fail and fail, which is stressful, and not at all relaxing.

The player can't just adapt to an unfamiliar universe overnight. But the player's character has had their entire life to do so, and is expected to be pre-adapted. So I experience what feels like amnesia. My character has a whole history that I don't know. Sure, I could make up a history, but it probably wouldn't fit what behaviors would really be appropriate to the setting. In a new word, I don't know how to behave under a new set of rules for reality. If, for instance, I discover tomorrow that magic works, I would have to react toward life the same way I shout at the TV screen, "don't go in that room, you're obviously going to get killed in there!" My best plan would be to vanish from my life, hide in a remote location where no one can find me, and cautiously explore how the universe differs from the one that I knew. I'd need to keep this up until I figure out how to have the level of competence expected of a child in that universe, and then the level of an adolescent. Only then could I think about beginning an adventure.

Book knowledge is no replacement for experience, because unlike computer games, group-social pen-and-paper RPGs don't give you another try to get it right. If you only had one attempt to get through the popular video game "Portal", you wouldn't get far on book knowledge, because your imagination would fail to come up with sufficient uses for portals. It starts to come as naturally as breathing later on, and then it says, "Now you're thinking with portals." The same can be said of magic systems, or hacking a computer a hundred years from now.

Until that happens, my roleplaying character does not have the personality and behaviors of a resident of a fantasy realm, but a man in his early thirties living in Michigan in the early part of the 21st century. It would be more like Scott Bakula in "Quantum Leap" than it would be like playing a role. I have to learn the role first.

I'm still interested in roleplaying games. What I would like, some day, would be a campaign in which my character is a normal person with no unusual challenges and no weight of the world on his shoulders. The stakes must start out meaningless. In the first session, quirky and humorous things would start happening to reveal the non-normal parts of the roleplaying setting. I would bungle or neglect the use of special powers, but this would be OK, because they are just as new to the character as they are to me. Good examples would be a cryogenically frozen corpsicle who is revived in the year 2099 in "GURPS Transhuman Space", or someone undergoing an Awakening in "Mage". They would start out as residents of the world I already inhabit, and grow into another one.

I'm using only my Windows and Mac computers because my Ubuntu Linux box has some kind of problem: when I turn on the power supply switch, the fans spin up, then spin down, then spin up, etc. The monitor displays nothing. I don't know what's broken.

It's my best and most-used computer. If I haul it along to the signage party on Friday, would there be time for anyone to take a look at it?

My roommate in freshman year of college was a chap named Keith Kelley. He was nominated for Student Body President. At Pensacola Christian College, this was a meaningless position of a functionally meaningless organization, since students were explicitly disallowed -- on pain of expulsion-- from taking an organized position in opposition to that of the administration.

Well, Keith didn't know what to say in the single campaign speech that each candidate was allowed. As an empty popularity contest, forbidden to exercise leadership, every speech was a standup comedy routine. Keith felt himself ill-suited to this skill. Finally, the day before the election, he said, "Matt, at the moment, your quirks are the only funny subject I can think of. I'm just going to talk about you. They'll probably laugh, but you always take that with good cheer. Is that OK?" And he told me what he would say in his speech. I happily permitted this.

He delivered it just as he had said. "I don't know what to say in this speech... let me tell you about my roommate, Matt Arnold. He's a great guy, and also a total nerd. I mean that in the nicest possible way. For instance. He listens to Nintendo music on cassette!" They did indeed laugh, and I hammed up the attention while attempting not to attract the notice of the hall monitors in the audience who might demerit me for disruption. "I'm ahead of my time! Just you wait and see!"

Fast-forward fifteen years. Right now I'm sitting at NOTACON watching the Blockparty Demo competition with a few hundred appreciative hackers and artists. The objective of a Demo is to get something artistically and technically impressive out of the smallest amount of computing resources. The master of ceremonies is pointing out, to general admiration, that the tune we just heard only occupied 4k of disk space.

When one of the Demos displeases us, we hurl grip-exerciser squishy squeeze balls at the stage.

So fifteen years later, hand-crafted pixelart animations with 8-bit chip music are still enjoyable and desired for their own sake. It's like I told Keith 15 years ago: I was ahead of my time.

In the same spirit as my last post, here is a game review of real life.

The way my mind works, I do a better job when I find a way to do it in the form of a game. It is a distinct switch of mindset. In that frame of mind, I have been looking at my hypnotically repetitive day job and thinking, "There's the seed of a puzzle game here, but the task I have been set bears many game-design flaws." And yet, I know what it's like to do work that is as addictive as a game. I've realized that you don't have to be making any money to be a workaholic! Penguicon has been my EverQuest.

EverQuest was nicknamed "EverCrack" because it was so addictive. (Don't worry, I know better than to let myself be hooked by such games.) But make no mistake, level-grinding and gold farming are work, no less than my day job, and requiring just about the same level of attention. Workaholism is a "level-grinding" addiction that releases the same brain chemical rewards. It's only the traditional definition that includes "earning an income" as part of what it means to be a workaholic.

It seems to me therefore, that massively-multiplayer online games are missing out on their real form of money-making potential, one which may reshape a segment of the workforce of the 21st century.

Know what my holy grail is? I want to develop something like the Google Image Labeler Game. Someday I'll find something of financial value that no one wants to do, that cannot be automated, and around which I can design an addictive internet game. The game will produce a service of value as a side effect-- a service which the players don't even have to know they're providing. That's a sadly under-utilized form of monetization. If I harness workaholism and game-aholism together... that might be the day my ship comes in!

On Saturday, I'll have to miss the last Penguicon concom meeting because I'm going to man a table and promote Penguicon at NOTACON in Cleveland. For the last couple of months, I was struggling to arrange for Penguicon to preregister me for this out of my 2009 promotion budget, until it was too late and NOTACON prereg had closed. However, I had forgotten all along that I registered for it at Ohio Linux Fest back in the Fall! So it's all set. I only have to figure out where to inexpensively park the car. I'm looking forward to seeing friends and making new ones.

---

On the first Sunday in April, there is a sort-of-parade, sort-of-mob-scene in downtown Ann Arbor with giant puppet costumes called Festifools. It reminds me in some ways of EPCOT's Millennium Parade. I eagerly signed up to help operate the puppets. Be there on Main St. between Washington and William from 4 to 5 PM to witness the spectacle!

I would like to purchase the following things, or their equivalents, at garage-sale prices.