More Paranoia Postings

Before I get into that just want to update that I am making progress on the couple of card/board games I am designing. Fun stuff.

I keep a notebook with me on all times. This is because it is useful to have on me. Recently, a friend asked me why. I told him it is useful to have on me. He said “ok, but why?”. Good question. After some meditating, I realized it comes back to my paranoia. In truth, me memory is not that bad. If I come up with the idea to bake a bacon-cake (whatever that means) or a mechanism for a card game, most likely, I will be able to remember it later. But that isn’t one hundred percent. How many ideas do I have that I forget? The first step is logging. In fact, the simple act of writing things down, making an action on the thought, usually is all that’s required to help me remember. That is partly why I don’t have an organizational system with the notebook. No sections for ‘food ideas’ or ‘game ideas’ or ‘story ideas’ or ‘doodles'. The system is organized by date. As in, I write whatever it is at the farthest point in the moleskin. (Has to be moleskin). Flipping through the notebook later is very eclectic, and – while reminding me of some beautiful things, such as shark-ta-squid, mostly its things I already remembered and acted on. But there it is, in my notebook, archived for all time. Additionally, many ideas, such as song lyrics or story ideas, get put in the cloud. I have a very large collection of Google Docs documents. Am I going to forget everything? Anything? Without the notebook, maybe. With, no. If I lose the notebook, which I have before, I figure things out.

Anyway, I keep a notebook with me at all times, because it is useful.

We need card games and programming

That multitouch project you all may know about? Yeah, I have moved away from flash and into the world of JavaScript, HTML5 and other niceties with web languages to create the interface. How? Firefox 4 beta multitouch support. More information later, perhaps.

Now I am up to two very realized card games that only need a little bit of polishing. One is the devils assistant, see a previous post, and the other involves rescuing orphans from a fire. (or cats from a tree, or mining for gold, or otherwise level-up-until-repeatable-collection mechanism).

I need to sleep more.

Look, I Can do Graph Jokes

 

For Accuracy:

We can assume the curve max’s out at 10 years age difference, and that after 54 that plummets, and it increases after 23.

We can assume these are ‘new’ relationships.

Mind and Body

The brain is the mind, for without the brain there is no mind. Mind is a construct to explain complex, deep, and otherwise unexplainable emotions, feelings, and [mostly] thoughts. It is fun and meaningful to say that we are not just ‘Jabbering robots’ or biological machines, that we are more that. But it is not true, sort of. It is not true as we are machines. Everything is a machine that follows laws of the universe. But it is true in that we are not simple. We are complicated. Ridiculously, ineffable complicated. Understanding our complexity could be akin to understanding the true scale of the universe. We are past simple input-output in that we are aware of the processing. You could say we are the processing, this processing is out mind.

Do you believe in a human soul? A 21-gram human essence?

Where is the line of this mind drawn? If we take a human and remove most of their capabilities, say by removing half their brain, electro-shocking the other half, putting them in in a coma, removing myelin sheaths and so forth that they are incapable of any neurological transmission over their core – breathing, beating their heart, etc. They can not think. Do not confuse this person with one in a coma, who can not communicate and possibly does not think. Our person can not think. Are they human? Now they truly are just a jabbering robot. An input-output processes-less machine. They are still alive. Trees can not “think” and are still alive, as are single celled beings. So we have a non-thinking, no mind, living human being. Curious isn’t it?

Devil’s Assistant Sentence constructing card game in works

So my mission after leaving GenCon last year was to design my own game. I got off to a good start but then gave it up. Now, I got some ideas, and am taking another whack at it.

I have a few legit board games in my mind, but I will explain the one simplest one here.

Keep in mind that this is totally my idea, and I have all my intellectual property rights. Don’t steal this, please.

The game is just one large deck of cards. Each of the cards have a noun, verb, adj. on them, etc. By putting words together, one makes sentences. The are past tense first person descriptions of something you have done.

The setup: The devil is in need of some new assistants and is looking for some of the most heartless bastards he can find. Players take turn being Beelzebub (dealer) and deals [5] cards out to each player. Players may swap up to [2,3,4?] of their cards with Beelzebub while trying to assemble sentences. If they can’t create a sentence, they lose. The player with the best sentence, as determined by that rounds Beelzebub and general consensus, gets a point (goes up a level in hell). The sentences must be structurally solid, but that’s about the only rule. The idea is to do the most horrible things in order to win Beelzebub's competition to be the devils assistant. You are telling Beelzebub what you have done with the sentences! You Getting it?

Still don’t get it? let me link you. Click here to view.

Anyway, I have come up with a workflow to get this game made: Print out fortune cookie type with these words on them, playtest with friends. Keep adding more and more words until a balance is achieved. Design playing card fronts, backs, and get them printed. From where? Things to consider.

More snow

Hello. Another blogger blogging about snow. It's awesome, but sucks? Yeah.

Video Metadata

I have been taking a lot of B-roll type footage for the video project I am planning. The project is a video summary of my senior year of high school. I essentially narrate a timeline, and the video underplays the narration. When I say “I got accepted into Miami, IU, Depauw, and Rose-Hulman”, each of those will have a cut of the acceptance letter, opening something, or whatever. The hard part now is writing the script, and getting the footage. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to categorize the footage on my computer.

I went with Keywords for metadata, and a folder/filename system organized by date taken. A year folder, Month folders, day folders. The filename itself is yearmonthday_sequencenumber. I have a keyword for every person applied (with bridge!), place taken, and for specific events, and possibly general content.

Hopefully I will be able to take advantage of the metadata when I am putting the video together!