tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2480577987922660932024-02-20T10:50:12.708+01:00Illegal AlpacaProud member of the Pickle United NationsT-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-62553693858204046092014-03-15T14:55:00.001+01:002014-03-15T14:55:08.927+01:00The infinite pi in the skySo Pi Day has just come and gone. I wouldn't ordinarily notice, seeing as this "holiday" is not really celebrated in my country and nobody in my (admittedly very small) social circle gives even half a shit about it. And even though I could write for days about how its appointed date can only be applicable in the backwards crazy-ass American date notation where for whatever reason you put the smallest unit in between the largest two, or about what's even the point of celebrating pi as it will be there whether you like it or not and how doing so gives you about as much "geek cred" as knowing what that Nintendo thing is, I can generally let stupid people have their stupid rituals and go on with my life. At least, that was until I came across <a href="http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2014/03/pi_day_2014_10_ways_to_celebrate_the_infinite_and_irrational_pi.html">this</a>.<br /><br />It appears as a pretty harmless article. Okay, so it's Pi Day and you want to celebrate pi? Well, here's ten ways to do it. Alright, that seems harmless enough... uh... What's that in the headline? Pi is infinte? <br /><br />Um...<br /><br />Okay, that's a pretty dumb thing to say, but this is just a news story and Bob knows that journalists don't really hold all that much factual knowledge. Surely this is a mistake no actual pi fan would make. <a href="http://thefrogman.me/post/79557370717/pi-is-infinite-and-irrational-at-some-point">Right?</a><br />
<br />...<br /><br />Okay, guys, listen closely. I know this will come as a shock to you and you won't believe me at first, but you need to hear it. Ready? OK, here goes:<br /><br />
<b>Pi is not infinite.</b> And we know it's not infinite because its value lies between the two very finite values of 3.14 and 3.15. We know this because every circle in the universe has a finite non-zero radius and circumference. We also know this because we know that infinity is technically not a number.<br /><br />Words have meanings, especially in the scientific world, and "infinite" <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/infinite">is one of them</a>. Using it to describe pi is about as big a boner as calling gravity "just a theory" - that word just doesn't mean what you think it means, Charlene. Do you want to talk about how "the digits just go on and on forever"? We already have a term for that, <i>and you already used it</i>. <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irrational%20number">Irrational</a>. Now, granted, that definition is a bit more strict than that, but having a nonterminating decimal notation is a direct consequence of its primary properties.<br /><br />What? You still don't believe me? In that case, allow me to shatter your very perception of the number by using a little mathemagic. For my next trick, I shall transform this ugly 3.141592654... into a neat little 10. How did I do that? Simple, I wrote the number pi... in base-pi. Wow, look at that! We have pi, and it's not infinite! It only has two digits, a sleek 1 and an imposing 0! <i>What sorcery is this?</i><br /><br />I understand why you celebrate the Pi Day. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I understand it. You are enthusiastic about this mathematical phenomenon, this number that is so simple and yet so advanced, it's so easy to understand, but has just so many ramifications, not just for mathematical calculations, but even the real world. You want to show off your enthusiasm to the world and share it with others. But you're not helping anybody by spouting misinformation about this magical constant.<br /><br />One of the goals of Pi Day is to encourage people to learn more about mathematics. Maybe you could start by getting your facts about its mascot straight.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-15463648772891325242013-05-05T16:21:00.000+02:002013-05-05T16:21:42.950+02:00Trust me, I do know what's funnyFuck laugh tracks. Fuck them and the mentality behind them, whether it is "you're so dumb, we have to tell you when to laugh" or "you're much more likely to laugh when you hear other people laughing". In either case, laugh tracks should die, and along with them, all the people who need them, both the creators and executives who think they'll make their shows better, and the viewers who are too dumb to recognize a joke on their own. Seriously, go jump off a building or something. You won't be missed.<br />
<br />
"But T-Jack, modern shows usually use live studio audience instead." Well fuck you, hypothetical reader with good intentions. It really pisses me off to no ends when somebody thinks that they're somehow "better" for using live audience's reactions instead of sound clips. First, those people largely do what they're told, anyway. You think those applauses and laughter are genuine? Why do you think studios have large prompt lights with these instructions on them? No, I can't believe these people think they're better for taking living humans and making them do a computer's job. I don't even know if it's a paid job or if those people have to pay for tickets, but you know what? It doesn't matter. Whether you make a living off of laughing on command or pay for it, you are scum. Please refer to the end of the first paragraph.<br />
<br />
"But live audiences can provide a much wider range of responses than a laugh track!" Or, in other words, my TV can produce more reactions that the show completely fails to elicit in me. Newsflash, dipshits, there is no difference between canned and actual laughter from the viewer's standpoint, and you don't get to <a href="http://www.chucklorre.com/index-bbt.php?p=282">be smug for thinking otherwise</a>. Just look at that picture. Look at the pompous photos and the self-righteous caption. Look at that piece of shit! Fuck you, Chuck Lorre Productions. If you really cared about what the viewers think, you would write a better show.<br />
<br />
Some of the funniest shows I've seen had no laugh track at all, except for instances where it was being deliberately mocked, Scrubs and Community being some of them. Hell, the dubbed version of M*A*S*H I grew up with had the laugh track completely removed, and the DVD gives you the option to turn it off. So with such a good record of shows without a laugh track, why do production companies still use it today? The only explanation I can come up with is the Universal Explanation: the malevolence and stupidity of the human race.<br />
<br />
Also, wow. For someone who doesn't watch TV, I sure do hold a lot of vitriol against it.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-67121743123685797052013-04-23T17:55:00.002+02:002013-04-23T17:57:47.390+02:00On telling stories and throwing bricksA brick joke is a seemingly underwhelming joke that, unbeknownst to the listener, serves as a setup for a punchline that is told much later. It got its name from the stereotypical form of two otherwise unrelated jokes connected only by their endings. In the first joke, a brick is tossed away, and in the second, it appears out of nowhere and lands.<br />
<br />
Lately, I've been thinking about storytelling in terms of juggling bricks. If you consider a story to be a series of setups and payoffs, a "brick" would be any plot thread or element that plays a certain role in the story, "throwing" it would mean introducing it and "catching" would stand in for it playing its role in the story. Take for example the classic example of Chekhov's Gun: The rifle on the mantle. When it's first shown, the writer takes a metaphorical brick, writes "gun" on it and chucks it in the air. Later, when somebody grabs the rifle and shoots it, the brick falls down, the writer catches it and puts it aside.<br />
<br />
So am I just describing basic storytelling in different terms? Well, yes, I am. I'm describing an abstract concept in concrete terms of everyday objects, makng it easier for the human brain to understand and work with it. The brick-juggling metaphor can tell you how to tell a story.<br />
<br />
A good story, the idea goes, is like a good brick-juggling performance. The juggler should be doing something at all times - a scene which doesn't move the plot forwards, either as setup or payoff, should be cut. There should always be at least one brick in the air - if you resolve all plot elements in the middle of the story, you might as well cut the story in half. Letting the brick fall on the ground and break - abandoning plot threads without resolution - is viewed as sloppy, while catching bricks that were never thrown - pulling plot resolutions out of your own ass - is just weird. And the more intricate the juggler gets with how he handles each individual brick, the more interesting the performance gets. If you just throw twenty bricks, one by one, and then catch them, the audience will get bored quickly. Better get creative - bounce bricks back up, throw some sneakily, that sort of thing. Often, a performance is the most enjoyable when you can watch it again, knowing well what to expect, and still be surprised at tricks you didn't notice the first time.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-82905345197519292892013-02-25T20:00:00.002+01:002013-02-25T20:00:45.580+01:00Things of Interest: FreefallHere's an awesome little webcomic that is criminally unknown. Although, "little" may not be the best word to describe it. Although it uses the three panel format native to most newspaper comics, Mark Stanley's <a href="http://freefall.purrsia.com/default.htm">Freefall</a> already has over fourteen years of contionuous tri-weekly updates, during which it was able to explore many serious issues wrapped in a nice and well-thought-out hard sci-fi package.<br />
<br />
The story is set in distant future on the planet Jean, still in its early stages of terraforming. Human colonists, living safely in the few habitable places on the planet (giant dome cities), are working on turning the hostile Jean into a more hospitable Earth-like planet, but also establishing their culture and improving their homes and lives. And in the middle of all this, we meet our main characters.<br />
<br />
Sam Starfall is the "heroic" "captain" of the "spaceship" Savage Chicken. Well, he's more of a petty criminal who's already managed to teach most of Jean's population to watch their wallet whenever he's around. Sam takes the shape of a humanoid in a blue environmental suit, but he's actually a Sqid, an intelligent squid-like alien scavenger (a fact he often uses to justify his crimes). His sidekick is Helix, a none-too-bright warehouse robot and apprentice ne'er-do-well. Although there is a moderately tragic backstory to Sam, these two are mostly used as a comedic duo, and their wacky adventures usually don't have much impact on the overall plot.<br />
<br />
The more serious plot threads are carried out by the third and final crewmember, gravitational engineer Florence Ambrose. She, unlike Sam and Helix, has a strong sense of morality and upholding the law. From this stems the early plot's main conflict, as both Sam and Flo attempt to convert each other to their way of seeng the world. Florence, as a part of her occupation, is very knowledgeable about technology, and thus is used to explain, or have explained to her, many of the background elements of Freefall's technology, from various details of Jean's terrafroming, to methods of interstellar travel, to theory and reality of artificial intelligence. Oh, and she's also a Bowman's Wolf, a specimen of red wolf genetically engineered to raise her intelligence and give her bipedal locomotion and hands capable of operating small objects. Her backstory, explaining why she is what she is, is revealed throughout the comic's long run, but the most important fact is that technically, she is classified as an AI, putting her at the same level as Jean's innumerable robotic population.<br />
<br />
Oh, yes, the robots. Surrounding them is the main plot of the comic. Since Jean is still largely inhospitable, the planet houses over a hundred thousand times more robots than humans. Normally, this shouldn't be that much of a problem, since all robots are created as the stereotypical Three Laws Compliant, inherently logical and kinda dumb machines, but as Florence soon finds out, the robots start becoming more human-like in their character once they age beyond a certain point. And while Florence investigates the causes and ramifications of this bevaior and the robots themselves start establishing their culture and building towards their push for AI rights, certain humans attempt to undermine them in order to "save" humanity.<br />
<br />
Of course, only a small percentage of the strips are dedicated to this main storyline. Most of the comic's run focuses on various episodes in the character's everyday lives. Sam and Helix try to return something they stole in the past, only to incite a hostage situation at the local museum. The crew gets a job deploying sattelites in Jean's orbit, only for Sam to accidentally have a video of him getting his scarf stuck in the toilet sent to other ships' captains. Florence goes shopping for ship supplies, while accompanying a friend to the mall. Sam steal some bread, which results in a fight in the Strategic Pie Reserve Warehouse (<a href="http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1800/fc01752.htm">seriously</a>). The thing is, the stories are not only consistently funny, they also flow into each other naturally, forming a consistent narrative all the way through.<br />
<br />
There are currently over 2,300 Freefall strips published, so if you decide to pick this webcomic up, you'll have a lot to chew through, but let me assure you it's all worth it. You shall be entertained, and a bit educated, all the way through to the, well, today.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-48533132589609729172013-02-11T18:51:00.000+01:002013-02-11T18:51:39.039+01:00I'm a rogue, I do rogue stuffHere's something that annoys me greatly about traditional RPG systems, something that, unfortunately, is seen as inherent to the very core of role playing games, and that something is the concept of character classes and experience levels. I do realize that RPGs have to take certain liberties with "realism" in order to offer you, the player, comprehensible rules of the game universe, which is how we get hit points as a stand in for a character's health or skill ranks that quantify the character's abilities. However, I believe that the traditional class and experience systems are far more restrictive than they need to be.<br />
<br />
For those of you who don't know, a "class" is the RPG term for a character's profession. One way to look at it is that a class is basically a pre-packaged bundle of skills, feats and special abilities that define the character's role in the adventure. Fighters fight, wizards cast spells, bards do bard stuff, rogues do rogue stuff. The problem with this is, though, that your character usually ends up defined entirely by their class. You're not Lord Gabriel of Asken, you're The Fighter. You're not Moonslip the Orphan, you're The Thief. Players are discouraged from differentiating their cleric from the bajillion other clerics that came before. The cause of this problem is the way in which the class system restricts what skills is any given class allowed to possess, either by making investing in cross-class skills expensive or outright impossible. If you're lucky, your system will allow the thief instruct the ranger on how to pick pockets or let the monk train the mage in advanced staff combat skills. If you're not, well, better hope you like having no identity.<br />
<br />
I have encountered a particularly nasty case of this in the Czech knock-off version of <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i> called <i>Dračí Doupě</i> ("<i>Dragon's Lair</i>"). In this system, a character's abilities are given entirely by their class, of which there are five (each of which then branches out into two different prestige classes at level 6). The rules spend a lot of time outlining what each class can or can't do, including what equipment they're allowed to use, but then the DM's Handbook contains a section that essentially says "well, of course these things aren't forbidden per se, you just have to think real hard about why they're said so and rule accordingly". In other words, the system forbids perfectly rational actions (such as a ranger using a stolen heavy weapon when breaking out of jail or a wizard wearing armor) for no reason other than ballancing issues and then provides the DM with no way to resolve these issues apart from "use your best judgment".<br />
<br />
I have mentioned the traditional experience system, too. Unlike the class system, this one doesn't really irk me all that much and I can see why it's so popular, after all, a character's level is a clear indicator of how strong that character is. Also, it provides an easy way to simulate the growth of a character's capabilities. My only problem with it is that it's really not all that important and it allows the flaws of the class system to exist. This is especially evident in systems that allow players to make multi-class characters, as their experience levels count towards their classes, not the character as a whole. I like to say that the levelling system solves problems that would otherwise not even exist.<br />
<br />
Saying all this, I believe it's no surprise that I have decided not to implement a class or levelling system in my homebrew, instead opting to go with an alternate system that has appeared in parts in other games. The cornerstone of this system consists of what I call "advancement points" that are either "bought" for collected experience (the homebrew specifically set the price of one advancement point as 100 experience points) or awarded directly by the GM. These points are then used to, well, advance the character, mainly by increasing skill ranks, but also by buying feats or improving hit points (if your system has those things). I'll be the first to admit that this system is far from perfect - it is rather simplistic, even though its implementation requires balancing out the costs and the rate at which the points are awarded - but I like the way it smooths out character progression.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-49274167415288364102013-01-18T14:59:00.000+01:002013-01-18T14:59:31.958+01:00Die Selection systemToday, I'm going to build on what I said in my last postabout good RPGs only using a minimal number of different dice rolls. Now, you may not believe it, but I have tried to design my own homebrew RPG system in the past, although unsuccessfully. Oh, who am I kidding, of course you're going to believe it. The point is, I do have some basics thought up.<br />
<br />
The main thought of that system was to put as much decisive power into the GM's hand as possible and minimise the effect that a character's stats would have on that character's player's roleplaying, and the way I did that was by simplifying the number parts of that system as much as possible. Part of that simplification was the Die Selection system.<br />
<br />
The point of the DS system is that each roll is tied to an attribute, usually a character's stat, and that attribute can have one of three values, which are 0 (null), + (plus) and - (minus), with null being average, plus being good and minus being bad, obviously. This has the effect of simplifying character stats, since their attributes' values are only given by one of the three symbols, not a numerical value, thus achieving the second goal stated in the previous paragraph.<br />
<br />
The roll itself uses two dice, and although I'll be using d10s for reasons I stated in my last post, they can be of any kind. The only rule is that they have the same amount of sides and different colors.The way it works is that you roll both dice and, barring unusual circumstances that I'll talk about soon, you <i>select</i> which one applies as the result based on the attribute tied to the roll. If the attribute's value is:<br />
<ul>
<li>plus, the higher number rolled applies. </li>
<li>minus, the lower number rolled applies.</li>
<li>null, the die that was selected beforehand applies.</li>
</ul>
That last example is why the dice need to have different colors. For example, let's say that you have a blue die and a red die, then you can say that "For all my null rolls, the blue die will apply". But then why even roll the red die? There is a reason for that.<br />
<br />
Critical successes and failures (or crits and botches for short) are a big part of any RPG system, which is why I added them into the DS system, too. But I had to find a way that would implement them in an easy way that would give you the same chance of a crit or botch regardless of the roll atrribute. And I found one. So the way critical rolls work is, if the sum of your rolled numbers is 3 or lower, you have rolled a botch, and symmetrically, if the sum is 19 or higher, you have rolled a crit. Critical rolls are resolved before the die selection, meaning "crit" or "botch" is a result of the roll <i>instead of</i> a numerical value, not <i>in addition to</i>. As for what they mean, well, there are multiple ways to handle them. You could say they're autimatic successes/failures, you could have a confirmation roll à la the d20 system or you could come up with your own far more original solution. I'd say let the GM decide.<br />
<br />
Now I'll be the first one to damit that this system is far from perfect. One thing in particular that rubs me the wrong way about it is the way how a minus roll will almost never result in anything more than 4 and a plus roll will scarcely drop below 7. But then again, that's kind of the point and let's be honest here, if you find yourself in a situation where a minus roll is inevitable, you've probably done something wrong. Or the DM hates you.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-63279430591204214272013-01-07T15:34:00.002+01:002013-04-23T17:57:12.550+02:00Ten-Sided Master Raced10s are the only dice that are worth having and using, all the other dice suck. d6s are baby toys, and who the fuck would in their right mind even use a d20? You could just as well roll a marble. d8s look like d6s that got the number of faces and vertices wrong and what the fuck is even a d4? What, you couldn't even afford a face that would, uh, face upwards? You have to read the value off of a point? At least d12s look cool, what with being made of pentagons and all. They're almost as good as d10s, but only almost.<br />
<br />
Okay, now that I got the silly out of my system, let me get a bit more serious on this subject. I do believe that ten-sided dice are the best choice for tabletop RPG, a belief I share with Jacob, who nicknamed it rather beautifully "the glorious ten-sided master race". I don't know his reasoning, but my train of thought stems from what I think an ideal RPG should be like.<br />
<br />
My ideal RPG would be focused on the role-playing aspect of the game, not on the sheet of paper that defines your character. It would be less about rolling high numbers and more aboput making the right choices in difficult situations. It should also not limit what kind of stories you can tell in them, by which I mean it shouldn't define special rules and, especially, rolls, because once it does, it starts to limit potential stories to a particular genre, or worse yet, setting. Fantasy RPGs are especially guilty of this when they start defining magic systems so interwoven with the central rules that if you take it out, the whole system collapses into an unplayable mess. For those reasons, I think the ideal RPG would have complex rules and very simple dice rolls. Ideally, one single roll.<br />
<br />
So why should that one roll use ten-sided dice? Well, it's partly mathematics and partly convenience. Convenience, because some dice are simply "better" at giving random results than other. For one, the general shape of a die influences how well it rolls. I admit, this is a very subjective point, but from my experience, d4s and d8s are very bad in this regard due to their very angular nature. This would imply that the less angular a die is, and the more faces it has, the better it rolls, but there's more to it than just that. You see, most gaming dice aren't exactly fair. They're made in a device called "rock tumbler". Those interested can research the whole process in their own time, but for what I'm saying here it's only important to know that the end result is a die with rounded edges that is more dense in certain parts. While this irregularity only poses as a very small influence on the randomness of that particular die, it's still there and the easier it is for the die to, in physics terms, change from one state to another, the bigger the influence is. This phenomenon is particularly noticeable with hundred-sided dice (yes, <a href="http://biffleys.com/100sideddie.aspx">they exist</a>, although they're made using more fair methods), but it's mainly a big problem with modern twenty-sided dice. For example, my good ol' purple d20 tends to land on 18 and adjacent numbers (2, 4 and 5) more than anything else.<br />
<br />
Following the above logic, the best choices for our one true die are d6, d10 and d12. So why do I choose the d10? As I said before, mathematics. In the most simple case, a one die roll, I don't think the scale of 1-6 is large enough to allow for convenient division. In a simple success/fail case, the probabilities only move in sixths, and the problem only worsens in cases where we have multiple results. In this regard, the 1-12 scale is clearly superior, because it's divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6. So the d12 sounds like an ideal candidate, and in a way it would be, were I not human. But I am, and as a result I'm primed to think in base-10, which makes operating with numbers between 1-10 much easier, which comes in handy when you need to roll more than one die, not to mention that humans just instinctively understand the scale of 1 to 10 better than any other. There's also the ability to perform a so-called "percentile roll" (d%) that provides you with a scale of 1-100.<br />
<br />
In terms of major RPG systems, at least those that I'm somewhat familiar with, d10s are important in Vampire: The Masquerade, and probably other World of Darkness systems as well, with what I think is a very beautiful roll mechanic, where the player's stats influence not an additive modifier to the roll, but rather the number of d10s that they roll. I have seen versions that use d6s rather than d10s, but I believe that was a homebrew "hack" of the game, not any official version. There are other major systems that utilize different kinds of dice, for example GURPS (d6) and the d20 system (guess), so don't think that the d10 is unviersally revered as the Jesus of dice. This is all just my opinion, so feel free to disagree.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-13270424171919737782012-12-31T14:37:00.001+01:002012-12-31T14:37:21.778+01:00Things of Interest: TGWTGI have been pissing and moaning about a lot of stuff lately, and I suppose it's time to offset that with something positive. With that in mind, I love That Guy With The Glasses. The site, not the guy himself (although Doug Walker is a pretty cool guy). I don't know why, but there's just something about the format of a <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VideoReviewShow">Video Review Show</a> that I enjoy. Maybe it is the same part of my brain that enjoys wading through TV Tropes pages, the part that loves analysing fiction and finds great value in well crafted stories. Maybe it's the way these people can take a bad movie, a bad videogame, a bad comic, and create quality entertainment based on these things. In short, I am a sucker for internet reviews.<br />
<br />
But you are surely educated people, dear readers, and I don't have to tell you about a site that has already been around for over four years. Instead, I would like to just gush about two of my favorite reviewers on the site. Most of the shows I watch regularly are the big ones, the ones that basically everyone watches. The recently concluded <i>Nostalgia Critic</i>, <i>Atop The Fourth Wall</i>, site affiliates <i>Angry Video Game Nerd</i> and <i>The Spoony Experiment</i>. But there are others, as well.<br />
<br />
The first man I want to talk about is Kyle "Oancitizen" Kallgren, the host of <i>Brows Held High</i>. What I like about this show is that Oan focuses on arthouse movies, a subject very few people dare to tackle, and manages to do so without sounding too much like a snob. Well, except when it's intentional for the sake of a joke. The reviews are informative and funny, drawing heavily from the concept of a high-brow critic watching medium-brow movies. Kyle is also a great singer, probably the best on the entire site, and a magnificent actor - of particular note is his chilling performance in the special hour-long review of <a href="http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/oancitizen/brows-held-high/37590-brows-held-high-ep-50-melancholia">Melancholia</a>. I highly reccomend his work. Kyle Kallgren doesn't have his personal website yet, but you can check his work out <a href="http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/oancitizen/brows-held-high">his section </a>over at TGWTG.com.<br />
<br />
Next up is probably my favorite person on the entire Internet, Nash Bozard, host of the Live365.com-based Radio Dead Air and creator of several TGWTG shows: <i>What The Fuck Is Wrong With You?</i>, a look at the stupidest and most insane stories taken from real newspapers; <i>Musical Chair</i>, favorable reviews of Nash's favorite lesser-known musicians; <i>Classic Doctor Who Reviews</i>, a recently concluded review series and its successor, <i>Here There Be Dragons</i>. I think the main reason why I like thiss guy is his frank, no-bullshit approach to comedy. His on-screen persona is that of a bold man, not afraid to tell anybody what he thinks (unless there is a threat of bodily harm involved). He pulls no punches and doesn't shy away from poking fun at anybody, <i>including</i> himself. I must admit that when I first saw his TGWTG introductory episode of WTFIWWY?, I just had to go back and watch all 17 previous episodes, too, (twice) and his Doctor Who reviews are at least partly to be blamed for me getting interested in the series proper. If you are interested in Nash's work, you can find his shows on <a href="http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/nash">his section</a> at the TGWTG website and information about Radio Dead Air (including the Monday night live show that is home to the Live version of WTFIWWY?) on <a href="http://radiodeadair.com/">his personal website</a>. Go check them out, you won't be disappointed.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-39924591900808641572012-12-21T15:10:00.000+01:002012-12-21T15:10:58.068+01:00Nothing is my middle nameI come from a culture where middle names don't really exist. All you have here is a first name (which also cannot be anything, like in the more idiotic parts of the world - but that's a topic for another time) and a last name and you better like it, buddy boy. And here's the kicker: it works. Sure, our laws permit having more than one first name, but almost nobody does that, and I think the only person I've ever met in real life that had more than one was from Saudi Arabia. Great guy, by the way. So as you can imagine, I don't understand this whole culture built around middle names, why, I'd even go as far as to say that they're stupid and useless. I am, however, a progressive little kangaroo, so I set out to do a little research (read: a five second Google search) on the matter before dismissing it completely.<br />
<br />
Middle names, as <a href="http://askville.amazon.com/middle-names/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=7545792">this page</a> tells me, have first seen major use in the 18th century by aristocratic families before spreading out among the plebian crowds, until the end of the 19th century, when nearly every baby was given one. Well, at least in the USA. So, in other words, middle names are the product of the upper class's attempts to be different from the middle and lower class and their attempts to be equal to the upper class. Lovely.<br />
<br />
When I asked Jacob about the "why" of middle names, he said pretty much what <a href="http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_do_you_have_a_middle_name">this Wikianswers page</a> says: Middle names are means to "honor" your ancestors or other important people. I suppose I see the point of that, but really, if you want to give your son your dead grandfather's name, just give it to him as a first name.<br />
<br />
However, most of the reasons to give your baby a middle name that I found come from <a href="http://life.familyeducation.com/baby/baby-names/45471.html">this article</a> over at FamilyEducation.com. The article itself lists five reasons, though it's more like two reasons, one of which is really stupid, for the reasons I shall outline below.<br />
<br />
<b>1. It's commonly accepted.</b> Right off the bat, we have the stupid argument of "you should do it because everybody else does it" that permeates the whole list. Isn't this something the stereotypical TV mother warns against? "If everybody else jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too?" And don't give me shit about how "everybody else is wearing clothes, does that mean that I should go outside naked?" If people do it because they have a good reason, you should do it because of the "good reason" part, not the "people do it" part.<br />
<br />
<b>2. It fits on most legal forms.</b> Now bear with me, because I'm going to lay some pretty heavy logic on you. It fits on most legal forms because everybody has one because everybody does it. See? This is just like reason 1, except rephrased and more stupid. "omg theres a spac 4 it on dis form, i must hav 1"<br />
<br />
<b>3. It prevents your child from receiving the middle name Nmi.</b> The article explains how computer programs in the past were coded to recognize exactly three names, and if you didn't have a middle name, it would file you with NMI (short for "no middle initial") instead. So, not only is this pandering to bad programming practices, which by the way are practically nonexistent nowadays, but it's also just a rephrased reason 2, which itself is a rephrased reason 1. Jeez, it's like Stupidception in here. "We have to go dumber."<br />
<br />
<b>4. It gives your child more flexibility when it comes to deciding the name he or she wants to be called by.</b> This is the only reason on the list that isn't just "you should do it because you should do it", and while it does have some logic to it, it still feels pretty lackluster. For one, it can be applied circularly, as in "why should your child choose from two names when it can choose from three" and so on, and for another, it feels like something that arose from the common-having-of-middle-names thin in the first place. As I said before, I come from a culture where people don't usually have that choice and I have never encountered anybody having a problem with it. You just get used to it, I guess. Plus there is such a thing as a "nickname".<br />
<br />
<b>5. Not giving your child a middle name can set him or her apart from the
rest of the kids, just like an unusual or an uncommon name can.</b> Little kids are shits and will make fun of each other for absolutely anything, so if you don't have a middle name, you will be ridiculed for it. Does that mean that if you do have one, you will be spared? Hell no! They will tear into you no matter what it is, and if they can't find anything wrong with it, they'll latch onto something else. You can't escape it. Also, the smarter of you have probably already noticed that this is another one of those "everybody else does it" reasons. If you can't see why, I'm not going to explain it to you. Use your head.<br />
<br />
So yeah. My first hypothesis of "middle names are dumb" has not been disproved so far, and I doubt it ever will be. But don't let that stop you from permeating their use, I guess. After all, we have to be tolerant of the stupid people, too.<br />
<br />
Don't know why, though...T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-61644210882938903202012-12-12T10:44:00.001+01:002012-12-12T10:48:02.331+01:00I am a sentimental sissyWe have recently started a new Tekkit map. For those of you who don't know it, Tekkit is a popular mod, or rather a compilation of mods, for Minecraft that includes advanced machines useful for automation and very powerful alchemy stuff. We have always mainly used the alchemy part in the past, so this time Jacob decided we'd try working with the machines instead.<br />
<br />
The beginning was pretty standard. We punched a few trees, wandered away from spawn and found a place to start mining. We set up a camp in a cave on a small island near a larger continent, which we later upgraded into a house on the island's surface. We mined some materials, created a portal to the Nether, crafted a Philosopher's Stone and a few basic alchemy machines, just to make getting materials for the IndustrialCraft machines less of a hassle.<br />
<br />
This is when Jacob started branching out to the Industrial District, as I have named it, first placing a few Coal Coke Ovens there, but later adding a Blast Furnace and an automated Quarry. I have meanwhile started experimenting with the Automatic Crafting Tables, ultimately designing an assembly line for Low Voltage Solar Arrays (a nasty piece of work, that requires about eleventy zillion other crafted items just so you can get the components for one array).<br />
<br />
It was at this point when we split the work between us. After installing a protective forcefield in the house, Jacob has taken over the Industrial District, eventually renaming it to Industrial Wasteland, as he slowly constructed giant concrete buildings to house our machines, and I have stayed at the headquarters to supervise the production of building materials. The two outposts were connected by a long railroad track, so at first we drove a minecart whenever any of us needed something from the other place, but then I figured out it would be much easier to just send a chest cart back and forth. Using Skype to communicate also helped. As Jacob noted, it was almost like doing actual work, but I thought it was fun.<br />
<br />
But eventually, the headquarters became obsolete. Most of the hard work was being done at the Wasteland, and the parts that weren't were easily movable, so after Jake finished the housing for the machines, he came back to the headquarters and we started to gather the materials to at least upgrade our machines while we were moving them. That part was very hectic, particularly obtaining 10 diamonds, even with the help of our alchemical equipment. But eventually, that was done and we started packing up everything from the headquarters to move it to the Wasteland.<br />
<br />
I think it was me who first noted that it felt like leaving home to go live in a different city. And even though it didn't have any right to, it did feel like that. We took the pipes and cables from the basement, we took the beds from the master bedroom, we took the torches and the chests and everything that was in them. In other words, we took everything we would need so that we wouldn't have to come back for it later. We turned the forcefield off for the last time, not just the projector, but also the core. We were ready to leave for good. We exited the house, got into our minecarts, said one last good-bye and embarked towards the Wasteland. And then a skeleton ruined the moment when it shot me on the way there.<br />
<br />
Jacob later commented, or rather <i>complained</i>, that it was a genuinely sad moment, and I can't help but agree, although I'd say it was the good kind of sad. And I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe it has something to do with what a TV Tropes page that I can't currently find says, which is that "the worst thing a piece of fiction can do is to make the viewer feel nothing", and it was the feeling of feeling that made this "work" for me. Maybe it was the fact that the sadness signified a major step forward. Or maybe I'm just a sentimental sissy. All I know is that I'm glad I've gone through this. It just goes to show that even games like this are capable of producing beautiful moments.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-55088580267766495432012-12-09T18:32:00.000+01:002012-12-09T18:42:16.680+01:00Disgrace to SherlockI liked the CSI series when it first came out. It was innovative in its incorporation of the latest technologies in crime-fighting and in the way it told the story of the Crime of the Week (TM). I distinctly remember a scene from an early episode where two characters... well, investigate the crime scene, and as they piece together what happened, ghosts of those events happen around them. For instance, they mention a car going out of control and a ghost car drives through the scene.<br />
<br />
In other words, it was a gimmicky mess of a show.<br />
<br />
Long before I stopped watching TV, I started getting bored with all these "police procedural" shows, not jusst CSI, but Law & Order, NCIS and I don't know what else. They just all looked the same to me, not just shows, but different episodes of the same show started blending together. They were all going by the same plot: they find a body, uncover some forensic clues, talk to some people, there's a twist, more clues, more people, until they arrest the guilty guy. I kow that I'm not being exactly fair here, after all that's how all detective stories work. I'm just trying to illustrate here how boring these shows were to me. Somewhat paradoxically, too, since I'm a casual fan of detective stories.<br />
<br />
I only discovered what exactly my problem was much later, when I was doing a little research on Agatha Christie's stories (for totally unrelated reasons, I swear) and noticed the main difference between old-school whodunnit novels and modern crime shows. <b>The novels place much greater importance onto the story, the relationships and fates of all the people influenced by the crime.</b> For the most of the story, the detective's investigation only serves as a framing device to tie these stories together, uncover past plot details and occasionally push the story forward himself. It is only in the final summation that his work becomes important, when he uses everything he has learned to reveal the final twist and resolve the conflict that has started the story in the first place - the culprit's identity.<br />
<br />
My problem with the "police procedural" shows lies within this term - that is, they focus less on the story and more on the procedures the protagonists use in order to find the truth. They do usually have some small semblance of a story with at least one twist per episode - maybe the victim was sleeping with his friend's wife or borrowed somebody a large sum of money - but those are all minor tired clichés pushed into background to make space for all those shots of pretty people in labcoats looking into microscopes. The main question becomes "How exactly are they going to catch the criminal?", but unfortunately the answer is "The same way they always do." If you have seen, and let's be generous here, one season of any such series, you've seen them all.<br />
<br />
But you know what they say, <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesAreTools">Tropes Are Not Bad</a>, and I would be remiss if I didn't point out that even this sort of show can be good. Take Columbo, for example. The whole series is about the detective's journey to the crime's solution, to the point that the first scene actually shows you whodunnit. After that, the story is less about what exactly drove the killer to his awful deed and more about Columbo's bumbling around, driving the culprit into a false sense of security and letting them construct a pile of lies so large he can take it apart with his one final move. My point here is, if you write a story about how a detective catches his man, make it entertaining, not repetitive.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-81757688905041054562012-11-30T12:21:00.000+01:002012-11-30T12:21:47.022+01:00Do not buy HP laptopsMy first laptop was an HP Compaq 6730s. I distinctly remember the day I got it - I had to travel to the nearby city to pick it up and after bringing it home I immediately set it up and started obtaining necessary software. Y'know, browser, file manager, that sort of stuff. I was so happy.<br />
<br />
What a stupid kid I was.<br />
<br />
The main problem with HP machines is that they're overpriced compared to pretty much all the other manufacturers'. Some people say that they're of much higher quality than the rest, which justifies the price. I have to admit, I don't see how that would be true. A few months after I got that laptop, I had to have it serviced because the touchpad started acting up. I know, I know, that was just a part defect and those are bound to happen; after all, the replacement touchpad works well to this very day. That doesn't excuse the obscene lack of the very useful "Turn Off Touchpad" button, though.<br />
<br />
Where HP really fucked the dog with this laptop, however, is an issue that has surfaced recently. Just so you understand, I have since moved to a new laptop, Lenovo G560, a frankly superior piece of work, and given my old one to my father. Problem is, with a laptop this old, the cooling fan has become really dirty and ineffective. "So what? Just clean it," I hear some of you say. But the more knowledgeable among you know what the real problem is.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.insidemylaptop.com/disassemble-hp-compaq-6730s-6735s-notebook-remove-cooling-fan/">Just clean it, you say?</a><br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
What I just linked to are instructions on how to access the fan in that computer. Did you read through all of that? If not, congratulations, you have a brain. But let me sum it up for you. <b>In order to access the fan in HP Compaq 6730s, you have to remove the DVD drive, monitor and motherboard.</b> That sentence alone should elicit a reaction of "WHAT THE FUCK HP" among the tech-savvy crowd.<br />
<br />
Why would you bury the fan under all that shit? There is literally no good reason to make cleaning the inside of your computer into an excercise in advanced computer assembly. Why couldn't you just include a separate fan cover on the laptop? Is removing dust build-up really something you want people to bother your licensed technicians with? Or, in a word, <b>THINK</b>!<br />
<br />
As I have stated before, I am now on a Lenovo machine and I absolutely love it. It has no noticeable drawbacks like the Compaq, and all you have to do to clean the fan is remove the motherboard cover on the bottom. Unscrew the cover, pop it off, unscrew the fan and go to town with it. There's no monitor removal involved.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-3916855161659492712012-11-28T13:46:00.001+01:002012-11-28T13:46:35.344+01:00So who exactly is the player supposed to be, anyway?This one will be short, mostly because it's not some profound truth, but I still think it's a concept worthy of discussion.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure who actually came up with the idea, but I have to give at least partial credit to Jacob. When he was screensharing his <a href="http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/">Dwarf Fortress</a> session with me over Skype, the question surfaced what exactly was the player's role in that game. It couldn't be the colony leader, because that's just another unit inside the game. That's when we came up with the term <b>Abstraction of Collective Executive Power</b>. Simply put, every one of the player's decisions is a decision of a dwarf, not necessarily the leader, but any dwarf that can make that decision. This can be applied to other games as well, for example <a href="http://www.ftlgame.com/">FTL: Faster Than Light</a> or the Jagged Aliance series (in which you play as a guy hired for mercenary job, but there is still no realistic way you could coordinate the fights the way you do).<br />
<br />
This revelation resulted in unintended hilarity when we realized what promoting Jacob's mayor dwarf to the title of Baron must have looked like. For those of you who don't know, every in-game year your outpost is visited by a caravan of traders from your home civilization and with them comes an outpost liaison who meets up with your leader dwarf (outpost leader or mayor) to discuss various stuff, and after you fulfill certain requirements, one of those things is that your outpost has become a barony and you are given the option to choose one of your dwarves to become a Baron. So choosing your current mayor is akin to him answering the question "So, do you have somebody who could be the Baron here?" with shifty eyes and "Uh... yeah. Me."<br />
<br />
Although, who wouldn't say that?T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-88384991240452110912012-11-13T16:45:00.000+01:002013-04-23T18:08:56.766+02:00The Bass-Base FiascoEnglish is not my native language. I have had to learn it over the course of many years and I still haven't exactly mastered it. However, I absoluetly adore it. I can't help it, you could say that I'm somethig of a language geek, to the point of slight Grammar Nazism. I love the way it sounds and looks, and I appreciate that it has terms and phrases that my native language lacks, which makes it easier for me to discuss certain topics (mainly tropes). There is only one thing that I hate about English.<br />
<br />
This is what I call <b>The Bass-Base Fiasco</b>, after a particularly bad case, but you probably know it better associated with the word "ghoti". For those of you who still don't know what I'm talking about, this post is about my frustration with the absolutely butt-fucked relationship between spelling and pronunciation of words in the English language.<br />
<br />
What's my problem with it? It makes no goddamn sense is what! I could give you examples, but chances are that you can think of at least three cases all by yourself. Generally speaking, this problem mostly manifests in instances where either two words or parts of words are spelled the same but pronounced differently, or they're spelled differently and pronounced the same. The example that I like to give regarding this phenomenon are the words "bass" and "base", obviously. "Bass" (kind of ghoti- I mean fish) and "bass" (musical instrument) are spelled exactly the same but pronounced differently. On the other hand, "bass" (aforementioned instrument) and "base" (foundation) are spelled differently, but pronounced the same. That's what my name for the phenomenon stands for - you can never be sure how it's pronounced if you see it written down, and you won't know how it's spelled if you hear it spoken out loud.<br />
<br />
I like to compare the English spelling-pronunciation system to the German one. I studied German for a few years back in primary school; I can't speak it all that well, but I do know the basics. This particular comparison concerns the letter groups "ie" and "ei", which exist in both languages, but their rules are radically different. In German, their pronunciation is fixed, so (barring compound words) all "ei" are pronounced [eye] and all "ie" are pronounced [ee]. In English? Anything goes. Because I've never seen <i>An American Tail</i>, this has caused extreme grief when I encountered the protagonist's name for the first time. And the second. And the fourth. In fact, I still have problems with it.<br />
<br />
I'd liken the two languages to chairs. German is a normal kitchen chair. It has rough edges and doesn't look all that well, but it does the job and that's what's important. English, on the other hand, is an art deco monstrosity that may look good, but you need someone to explain how exactly to sit on it, and even after that it's not at all comfortable, because you still constantly fidget around, trying to find a position in which you are jabbed by various bumps and edges the least. Meanwhile, Russian is a weird thing that you can never quite figure out, but its constructor will swear it's even better than German once you learn how to use it.<br />
<br />
I have mentioned the word "ghoti" in this post. I will not waste time explain it here, just say that it's an alternate spelling of the word "fish". For a better explanation, please use Google. I would, however, like to point out <a href="http://www.3dham.com/ghoti.html">this page</a>. I just love how the guy explains how the ghoti phenomenon makes no sense while absolutely missing the point. Let me ask you a question, asswipe: What do you think is better - a language in which the pronunciation of written letters or letter groups is dependent on their position in the word, both absolute and relative to other letters or letter groups, the time of day and the position of the Moon in relation to the Orion constellation, <i>or</i> a language in which the pronunciation of written letters or letter groups is dependent on what those letters or letter groups actually <i>are</i>? Think about it.<br />
<br />
In conclusion, I would like to propose that any time someone answers the question "How is that spelled?" with "Exactly what it sounds like", they shall be replied with a hearty "Fuck you" and a kick to the face.<br />
<br />
<b>Edit:</b> In a fit of synchronicity that is not really too unusual for me, Cracked.com's Chris Bucholz has released a frankly superior article on the same topic. I swear I only read it <i>after</i> hitting the "Publish" button here, but I would not forgive myself for not pointing this out.<br />
<br />
Link: <a href="http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-reasons-to-forgive-yourself-being-bad-speller/">4 Reasons to Forgive Yourself for Being a Bad Speller</a>T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-6484125032983647642012-11-04T13:41:00.002+01:002012-11-04T13:41:13.711+01:00Shitty old board games you've probably never heard ofAt one point in my life, I was particularly invested in creating board games. They weren't anything special, after all, I was still in Secondary School at that time, but they were fun. So today, I'd like to share with you two of my most successful entries in the genre. Note: If there's anybody out there who makes board games for a living, feel free to steal these, make 'em better and sell them.<br />
<br />
The first one was called <b>Horror</b>. It was inspired by slasher movies and focuses on a group of people of indeterminate age, who are locked in a house and stalked by an unknown killer. What you need for this game is a floor plan of a house with highlighted rooms, a set of room cards (three cards per room) and a bunch of differently colored figures (two figures per player). At the start of the game, put all figures in the entrance hall (or its equivalent on your map), shuffle the cards and divide them into three decks, laid face down next to the board. Each turn, everybody moves their figures around the map and then one player draws a card. The room indicated by the card is visited by the killer - all figures in that room are considered dead and either laid down in that room or simply removed from the board. The game ends once all three cards of any one room have been drawn. Players gets a point for each figure of theirs that has made it to the end alive and the game is started over. The first one to reach five/ten/hundred points wins.<br />
<br />
I realize now that this game was largely based on luck - you can't influence what room is going to be drawn in any way, except when it's your turn to draw, you can choose one of the three decks. Nevertheless, this was probably the most popular game among my friends. I think what made it so fun was, at least in part, the "art design" by a friend tasked with creating the board and cards. The house was shadowy and had a lot of neat little touches, like a bloodpool on the bathroom floor, and the cards had little illustrations on them, like a corpse in an armchair on the Living Room card or a jar of pickled eyeballs on the Pantry card. And yes, you could hide in the pantry in this game.<br />
<br />
The second game was called <b>Fortress</b>. It takes place on a stone fortress in the middle of an ocean (yeah, I don't know either). You're going to need a number of building blocks - we used a set of 55 wooden cubes, but you can use anything you can get your hands on; a 0-9 set of domino blocks can work really well - and one figure for each player. At the beginning, pile the blocks into columns - our fortress had a rectandular 4x4 grid, but again, you are free to make your own; hexagonal grid may work just as well. Players then place their figures onto the fortress. One block is considered one space - multiple figures can stand on the same space, but one figure can't stand between spaces.<br />
<br />
After all that is done, the game begins. The players take turns in a fixed order and a turn consists of two steps. The first step is moving - you can move your character to any adjacent space of the same height. Ascending or descending during moving is strictly prohibited. The second step is removing any top block from any column - you can remove the block under your figure under any circumstances, but you can remove any other block only if there's nobody there. Both steps are compulsory - if you can't perform any one of them, if you fall into the water by removing the very last block from under your feet or if you yield, you lose and your figure is removed from the game. The last person still in the game wins.<br />
<br />
This was a more tactic-oriented game, and perhaps that's why it was so enjoyable. We loved to pit our minds against each other. Oh, and here's a freebie tactic: It was discovered by a friend, actually the same friend who made the board and cards for Horror, and we called it "kamikaze". It basically consisted of moving onto the space with every other player on it and trapping them all there. Since nobody could move after doing so, and since the player who performed the move was the last one to have to move again, he would stay in the game after everybody else had been eliminated and thus win. After the discovery of this tactic, our games devolved into everybody attempting to be the first one to pull it off.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-83621983465272308722012-11-02T14:34:00.000+01:002013-04-23T18:14:27.580+02:00The Two Episode RuleHere's a little piece of wisdom that I figured out on my own some time ago. I call it the Two Episode Rule and goes something like this: <b>To decide whether you want to watch a series, watch the first two episodes. If you liked them, chances are, you'll like the rest, too.</b> A corollary to this rule states that <b>multi-parters only count as one episode.</b><br />
<br />
I actually discovered this rule on accident, thanks to a sitcom that most of you have probably never heard of, Comeback. A few years ago, when this series first aired, my family and I watched about the first ten seconds of the first episode and then switched to another channel in disgust. But then we decided to give it another chance, and actually watched the full second episode. I have remained a fan of this series ever since. Now, our skipping the first part was actually a very fortunate thing, as later, when I watched it, I found out that it was pretty lackluster, compared to the rest of the series. I think that had we not skipped it that first time, we would've not tuned in the next week and thus missed out a lot of the later Comeback goodness.<br />
<br />
Over the following years, I have put a lot of thought into this phenomenon and eventually arrived at the Rule in its current form. Here's the reasoning behind it: The pilot episode will invariably be different in tone from the rest of the series. Not only is its goal to introduce the viewer to the universe, but also to provide an exciting start to the overall story to rope the viewer in. The pilot is also often a two-parter, which is the reason behind including the corollary. Keeping that in mind, it is easy to see that the second episode is actually the first "normal" episode the viewer will see, which makes it a better indicator of the things yet to come.<br />
<br />
One weird thing that I've noticed since I formulated the Rule is that the second episodes are often among the best ones - take for example <i>Red Dwarf</i>'s "Future Echoes". It's as if TV makers are aware of this phenomenon and live by the rule "put all the exciting stuff in the pilot and all the good stuff in the second episode". I'm not sure whether that would prove the Rule or invalidate it, but it'd certainly lend credence to the logic behind it.<br />
<br />
Now I know what some of you are thinking: "But T-Jack, wouldn't it be easier to just ask a fan of the show to recommend an episode and base your decision on that?" And I know that because that's what a friend of mine said when I explained the Rule to him. Well, you could technically do that, but that method has a few drawbacks. First, a fan of the show is almost certain to point you towards his favorite episode, i.e. the best one, which is not exactly representative of the whole series. Second, you'd have to be wary of spoilers. And third, this method is not easily applicable if you can't contact a fan, maybe because the show is really obscure or just starting out. For that matter, this is what the Rule tries to emulate - a viewer's reaction to a new show. You are being introduced to the series exactly the way the creator intended.<br />
<br />
I should note one more thing, though: Don't forget that this is only a rule of thumb. In every show, episode quality can fluctuate wildly even within one season. It is usually safe to assume that after five good episodes the quality won't go down the toilet, but it can happen. The Rule can also give false negatives - some shows are known for getting better along the way, Growing the Beard as it is called in tropese. So I guess don't rely <i>only</i> on the Rule to tell you if a show is good. Remember, it is only supposed to be the first indicator of many.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-61823239091022621012012-11-01T14:58:00.000+01:002012-11-01T14:58:04.925+01:00On the meaning of dreamsMy dreams are a mess, and I believe that most other people's are, too. I hear that there are some who have tiny little organized dreams that follow the three act structure, but when I drift off into the slumberland, I am greeted by a chaotic clutter of ever-changing locations, people that I don't know and yet I remember them from my past and items that randomly appear and diappear off-camera. Only problem is, the human mind is incapable of accepting such chaos, and so we've had centuries of people trying to uncover the meaning of dreams. Do they tell us our future? Or do those things actually happen in some distant land? We don't know. Not even modern science can tell us what exactly causes these visions. So, as some poor schmuck with a blog, I am contractually obligated to explain what exactly they are.<br />
<br />
Okay, don't expect anything groundbreaking from me. I'm going by the most commonly accepted hypothesis that dreams are the product of our brain sorting out all the thoughts and knowledge gained during the day. As such, I don't believe that your dreams can't tell you anything about the future or any voodoo bullshit like that. They can, however, tell you about yourself.<br />
<br />
This is something that I figured out a few months ago after dreaming about my brothers threatening to put gum in my dolls' hair. Did I mention how fucked up my dreams are? I don't have any dolls and only one of my brothers is still living with me. However, I soon noticed that this dream could very well represent a specific thing I had been obsessing over around that time, and that's probably why I could remember that particular part of that particular dream. In other words, my hypothesis is that <b>if you can recall a dream well, it is a metaphorical representation of something that is very important to you</b>.<br />
<br />
Now, the bad part is that it is a metaphor, meaning you have to decode it first. The good part is that the metaphor was made up by your very own brain, therefore it should be easy for you to do that. Therefore, I fully encourage you, dear readers, to try this at home. Take a dream you can recall and decypher its meaning. Or at least think about it real hard. If the dream really has a hidden meaning, it should come to you naturally.<br />
<br />
What got me to writing this post was the dream had today, or at least the part I can remember. I, and a whole bunch of other people, went to my friends' wedding, but when we got there, it turned out to be a bit of a prank on the wedding goers. It was actually my wedding. Now ignoring the setting of the scene (seriously, why can't I ever have a night of mindless action and violence?), the thing that stands out the most is the trick played on the audience, and what I think it means is holding secrets as a storyteller.<br />
<br />
I consider myself a sort of a showrunner for The Bell Tree's ongoing adventures, weaving complex stories into the narrative through varios means. And since we often work on the albums as a group, that means that I have to dispense information to the other members carefully, to make sure that I don't reveal how the story's going to end prematurely, while still providing enough foreshadowing so that they can figure it out themselves, and for a long time now I have been fearing that maybe I'm not giving them enough material to do so. But that's a topic for another day.<br />
<br />
So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that if you obsess over something too much, your brain will take it, scramble it up into an incoherent mess and throw it back at you at night. That sneaky motherfucker.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248057798792266093.post-19221462629428447582012-10-29T14:49:00.001+01:002012-11-01T14:58:15.806+01:00Hello, world!My name is T-Jack and I have decided to write a blog. It will not be a thematic blog, or a super-duper personal diary blog, it will just serve as a place to store and publish my various thoughts and ideas as well as a practice grounds for my non-existent writing skills.<br />
<br />
What led me to creating Illegal Alpaca was my recent departure from the position of a reviewer at <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.cz/">xkcd-sucks blog</a> (the good one). The main reason for my retirement, as I state in my goodbye post on that blog), was that I felt like I had nothing more to say on the subject and that I was just repeating myself over and over again. However, my urge to write and create remains, which is where this blog comes into play.<br />
<br />
That is not to say that Illegal Alpaca is the first thing I've ever done. A long time ago, I was a member on an ancient <a href="http://www.cavestory.org/">Cave Story fansite</a> forum, where I not only wrote a few little things that are best kept forgotten, but also met a fascinating fellow who goes by the name Jacob. It was through him that I joined a small group of friends called <a href="http://thebellgrove.b1.jcink.com/index.php?act=idx">The Bell Tree</a>. We try to tell stories through <a href="http://thebellgrove.b1.jcink.com/index.php?showtopic=139&st=0&#entry1511">scenes posed in Garry's Mod</a> (just a note for those who will look at those albums: I am not a brony. I just know insane amounts of them), even if we're not exacly successful. Also of note is the only fanfic I have ever written, <a href="https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4f9ws-V2OMLOFVFbjQ5Y29uTW8">What Now?</a>.<br />
<br />
I am also an avid gamer and <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/T-Jack">troper</a>. I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy, especially when coupled with British comedy. I am a board game enthusiast, to the point that I used to make up my own. Oh, and I have a USSR flag on my desk. I got it in seventh grade when I was on a school trip to Austria.<br />
<br />
Well, that should be enough about me. I promise that future posts will not suck nearly as hard as this one does. Oh, and I apologize for the corny title.<br />
<br />
Actually, no. I don't.T-Jackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07491635246792445211noreply@blogger.com0