The Idea Oubliette

Oops… I disappeared!

2011-03-15T09:38:00.004-03:00

Yep, been a long, long time since I last posted. Over a year! A lot's happened in the past year; kinda crazy.

First, I'd like to thank Unstranger for his comment on my SpaceRat post. I'd like to think I'm a decent writer, and if at least one person found it readable from a non-tech perspective, then so much the better!

In late October the Mrs and I moved to Halifax, and I got a job writing code for a video game company. Oh yes, the dream has come true. :D I'm loving the work and apparently they're loving my performance! I started off on contract and just recently got hired on permanently. The raise that came along was great too. ;)

What else… what else… The Mrs and I came out as polyamorous to our families. It wasn't a smooth ride and it still isn't for some of them. But all in all, how each of us reacts to things is our own cross to bear and we can't expect others to react in particular ways, even if we'd like them to.

I turn 33 tomorrow, and so I took the week off work. That's why I'm here; I have some spare time. Even if you love the work you need to take a break at some point.

We got a new puppy just before moving here. He's a bug-eyed little monster that we love anyway. Hehehe. He loves tormenting his older brother and barking at things. Silly dog.

I think that'll be it for now. If I think of something else in the next little bit I'll post it. If I have the time. Now to try and get myself to work on a secret project I started last summer and have yet to complete!

The Snow

2010-02-18T12:44:00.001-04:00

There has been a snow storm. It wasn't as bad as the forecast had made it out to be. The wind blew the snow around into big drifts, leaving some parts largely uncovered by new snow.

At some point I have to clear the driveway of this snow. It's begun to melt, since the temperatures have risen above freezing. They're going to keep rising over the next couple of days.

Wet snow does not clear easily. A snowblower can't manage it very well and it's quite heavy to shovel. However, the fact that it's in drifts may make shoveling easier. I can hope, anyway, because the snowblower won't work well on the snow as it is right now.

300 feet of driveway is a pain to clear. But I think the natural beauty we have is worth the inconvenience of a bit of snow part of the year. At least we have nowhere to go at the moment.

Another post

2010-01-29T10:52:00.001-04:00

It's been over a week since I've posted here, and I apologize to my loyal readers who have probably all headed to the hills.

Twitter has been keeping me distracted, while my bipolar disorder and newly-diagnosed ADHD have left me feeling less than effective. It's hard to push yourself to try to succeed when you feel you've been so far from stellar that bothering with anything is a waste of time.

But things are picking up. I'm on new medication, I have great friends, an incredibly supportive wife and a window into new techniques to help keep my problems in check. There's definitely a gleam of hope where a short while ago there was none.

I'd love to find employment, but my chosen field of expertise, software development, seems to be yielding little, if any, job prospects in the area. I can always cast out a wider net in my search, since so far I've only looked at Nova Scotia. However New Brunswick and PEI are both a stone's throw away. PEI is apparently the game development capitol of the Maritimes, and it's a field that's interested me since I first learned to program as a kid. I guess it might have been what drove me to begin learning.

A bright light is on the horizon, and I'm heading into it. If you come across a job posting that might suit me, let me know. For now I'll keep charting a course towards a brighter future.

Direction - I Haz It?

2010-01-19T12:30:00.000-04:00

Yep, I know what I wrote in If I Grow Up… I had a direction and I wanted to follow it. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I want to write, I love to write, I’m going to write. But do I want to make a living off of it? Perhaps I just want to do it for fun.

There’s a bit of a problem with this, in that I crave something to do. The most lucrative thing I can think of is developing software. I like doing it, and I tend to do it anyway, just like writing. There’s at least one project that’s really got me interested, and I’m sure I can cook up more ideas when I’ve finished it.

Finishing What I Start! It’s always been a bit of an issue for me. I’m just going to have to try harder to stay on target and not lose steam before I’m done. I’ll have to nail down my requirements and feature list well before I start coding, and freeze those requirements for version 1.0. There’s always room for improvement later on, and if the first version isn’t solid, what kind of a message does that send to users?

Polish It! Polish is one thing I’ve had trouble with in the past on my personal projects. I tend to get some small details down really nicely, but the overall product is something I’ll have to pay a lot more attention to. If I need to pay someone for a good set of icons, I’m going to have to shell out for it and not balk at the expense. Polish is key to a product that sells and encourages word of mouth.

Marketing? Yep, another part of the process I’ll need to deal with and pay for. It’s inevitable if you want to push a product and make it popular. This is especially true with the iPhone OS App Store being flooded with cheap or free apps. You’ve got to sell your product in a way that justifies a cost high enough that it doesn’t leave you without suitable return on your investment. In-app advertising is, as far as I’m concerned, not the kind of thing I’d want to rely on. A lot of the apps I’ve seen use the same advertising services, and the same products get flogged across the apps the consumer uses. It also cheapens the user experience. I’d rather make a feature-limited free version than a full version with ads.

Platform? I’ve always been a Mac guy, so the iPhone OS and Mac OS X platforms are a shoe-in. If I write any utilities I’d likely create a Mac and iPhone OS version with some way to synchronize between the two. The App Store is a bit of a sticking point, but having a way of simplifying distribution, payment and updatings of at least the iPhone half of a product would be great.

Product Types. Ideally I’d like to write small utilities that help make people’s lives easier, as well as small casual games. While I’m confident in my ability to produce a polished product in the first category with little external help, I’d definitely need someone external for graphics and sound for any decently polished game.

That’s what I’m looking at right now. I’ll still be writing here, hopefully with the original frequency I had in mind for my blog. I don’t think it’s healthy for me to let things distract me from writing, and I’m going to make a more solid effort to give myself time to write. I’ve been terrible lately, spending way too much time on twitter. The people are great, and I think that’s part of what’s got me stuck to it.

I suppose I should get to writing up a requirements document for that utility I’ve got in mind!

English Journey in Jeopardy?

2010-01-07T12:42:00.002-04:00

UPDATED!

It seems almost certain that Sophie will be getting laid off at the beginning of next month. As such, my trip to the UK is nixed, unless I get some sort of windfall of cash.

Layoff plans

In order to cover expenses, and possibly have some money left over for the trip, I’ll be looking at getting a part-time job. With my constant headaches and the possibility of depression, I’d have to get something pretty stress free, and not in a noisy environment. I’m not entirely confident in my ability to show up to work every day.

Our income would be significantly reduced, so a lot of what I make from a part-time job would go to bills and such. Part-time is definitely about the limit I could handle.

Implications

There will be no trip, as it stands.

The primary implication is that I might not be able to buy my plane ticket. I think that’ll be the single biggest expense of my trip. Food is probably next, and I *was* a university student on a budget, so I know how to keep from overspending there. Then it’s lodging. I can’t go any less expensive than hostels, unless I sleep in a cardboard box or on a park bench. Yeah, that’s not happening. Train and bus fare shouldn’t be much, and I’ll walk whenever I can.

Where does this leave me?

I’m hoping this wont leave me in a situation where I can’t make the trip. My dad needs dates so he can start booking air travel for himself to and from Belgium, and my return ticket from there. If I get a part-time job, I should be all set with respect to money. If I can’t hold it, well, we’ll have to see from there.

I don’t want to let my tweeples down, the ones I’ve told about the trip. I want to see you guys and I’ll do everything in my power to get there. If you can find me info on how much it costs in London, Liverpool and Edinburgh to eat modestly per day, that’d help quite a bit.

Am I Jonesing for the Internet?

2009-12-30T11:27:00.000-04:00

I’m feeling a little agitated and jittery today. My internet access is down due to some nasty snow and wind. Are the two related? They might be. I know I’m certainly missing my twitter friends and feeling less in touch with the world.

How long is this weather going to hold? I can’t look that up. Sure, I could pull out a radio and listen in, if I had one. I might somewhere, but I’m at the mercy of the broadcaster to decide when to report the weather and how much of it to report.

Some argue that internet access should be a basic human right. Does this point of view hold water? I suppose it could be argued that since the internet allows us to draw together into a larger community that it is an essential part of improving the human condition. Its use in political organizing and to connect dissidents in repressive regimes can certainly help make the case for it as a basic human right.

Is the jitteriness really from not having the internet? My doctor did just increase my dose of modafinil, and my body might be reacting to the increase in alertness and stimulation. Last time I was off the net for a while I didn’t jones like this, so maybe it is indeed the medication. I’m not sure.

But am I just trying to justify an unhealthy dependence on the internet? Perhaps. I’m isolated due to my lack of driver’s license and rural location, however, and rarely have any sort of other connection to humanity. Apart from Sophie, that is. So is my reliance on the internet unhealthy? I can’t give you a real answer to that. All I know is that right now I feel a need to connect with good friends and inform myself about the world. I can’t say that that’s entirely unhealthy.

Empathy and Schadenfreude

2009-12-11T08:00:00.000-04:00

Empathy is the ability to look at another person, see their emotions and experience a sympathetic emotional response. It’s an ability present in humans and chimps, and perhaps some of the other equally intelligent animals out there. It’s what helps us care for and about those in need around us and rejoice in their success.

It’s generally considered to be a female trait, but I think it helps to define us as human beings. An uncaring perspective, relegated to simply reacting to the emotions of others without understanding them, can lead to a worldview unable to take that dimension of the human condition into consideration.

It’s easy to see how empathy could have helped our distant ancestors. With the ability to care about the suffering of others they were able to see a need for compassion. This mutual support would have allowed for closer knit communities and more caring for those most in need.

Some studies have found that people with conservative viewpoints are less likely to have fully developed senses of empathy. It can generally be seen in calls to war, the subjugation of others and attempts to force personal worldviews onto the lives of others. Rejection of the importance of the emotional component of human life can make for an inhumane person that fails to sway any but the most angry and bigoted of people.

On the opposite side of empathy is schadenfreude, or taking pleasure in the suffering of others. It’s often associated with a desire to see someone punished for perceived crimes. For instance: a working class man chuckling when his boss gets taken to jail for tax evasion. Studies have revealed that this feeling is much more prevalent in men than women. Whether that’s a cultural phenomenon or endemic to the human condition is hard to determine.

Possible evolutionary explanations for schadenfreude are that it helped encourage the punishment of those who acted against the interests of the community. A troublemaker would have been a big problem in early human groups, as survival was a main concern.

Do schadenfreude and a lack of empathy make for a lack of humanity? Perhaps not schadenfreude, since in a sense it holds us together in the desire to punish those who make life harder for all of us. A lack of empathy, however, seems to certainly make a person less humane, but less human? Perhaps denying a person’s humanity is a stance that in itself removes our own humanity. But that could just be my empathy talking.

A Trip to the United Kingdom

2009-12-08T10:41:00.000-04:00

I have never had the pleasure of traveling to Europe before. In fact, I’ve never left the borders of North America, having only visited parts of Canada and the US. In June 2010, it seems that this is going to change; my father will be taking me to Belgium both to visit relatives and see the sights. Realizing how easy it would be to simply take some of that time to visit the United Kingdom gave me the idea to have a few tweetups with my UK tweeples, and of course, see the sights.

My basic idea is to take a week of my European trip to travel through the UK. I’m planning to have stays in London, Liverpool and Edinburgh. There’ll be a plane trip from Halifax to London, then a train trip to Liverpool, followed by another train trip to Edinburgh, and finally a plane to Brussels to join my father in Belgium.

I’m planning to get to London between the 10th and 12th of June, with a departure from Edinburgh between the 18th and 20th of the same month. How much time I spend in each city will depend on what I end up planning for them.

Should I put Canadian flags on my luggage and backpacks? Is that still a good idea, or has our current government soured the world to Canada? Stephen Harper is an ass, and I’m terribly embarrassed that my fellow Canadians elected his party of knuckle-dragging, petroleum-guzzling, bigoted troglodytes. I also apologize for Céline Dion. I should have nipped that in the bud at the beginning.

There are some things I’d definitely like to do, but as for the rest of my time I’d like some input from people living in the areas as to what’s worth doing. Tweetups are a must! I have no objection to multiple tweetups in each city, and I’d encourage such behaviour. Hehehe…

Meeting famous UK tweeters would be cool. I have no expectations to meet Graham Linehan, Stephen Fry, James Moran, Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost or Robert Llewelyn, but I certainly wouldn’t object to it. Hehehe… I don’t know if that’s the full list of the UK twitter celebs I follow, since I’m without Internet access as I write this. Not sure where Neil Gaiman will be then, since I believe he lives most of the time at his home in the US.

If I could apologize to Douglas Adams’ widow in person for being an ass to him through email in the ‘90s, that’d be great. I pissed him off royally and have always felt bad about it. I’d think that he shared his frustration and anger with her, so I hope she wouldn’t try to kick me in the groin. Slap in the face would be acceptable, however, since I was an enormous asshole to him.

My general goals for the UK leg of the trip are as follows:

Meet my tweeples
Visit various structures, both historic and pre-historic
Enjoy the culinary delights of England and Scotland
See the countryside
See Hadrian’s wall
Experience English weather

My specific goals for London:

Visit the Tower of London
Visit the Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park
Get in a good bit of fish & chips
Take him out to visit the Queen, always shouts out something obscene
Maybe see Buckingham Palace

My specific goals for Liverpool:

Visit Beatles related locales (yes, I’m a Beatles fan)
Visit the port
Do something typically Liverpool (I’ll need suggestions)
Check out Manchester, see if I can find Claude

My specific goals for Edinburgh:

Visit Elliott clan related locations (I’m an Elliott)
Try some authentic haggis (Hehehe…)
Take in some traditional Scottish music
See the Scottish moors in moonlight and daylight

I’ll be staying in hostels while I’m there. If you know of any specific ones that have better reputations or have a good cost to benefit ratio, that’d be great. If you feel so inclined, I’ll also accept a camping mattress and sleeping bag in your broom closet.

There are a couple of issues I’ll have to deal with. First and foremost is that I’m not much of a driver. I may have my complete license by then, but I wouldn’t be comfortable driving on the other side of the road when I’m so inexperienced. Might try it out just for fun.

Trains and buses will be my main modes of transit, unless I can get into better shape and bike a bit. I don’t know the price of bicycle rental, but it may be cheaper than buses. I’ll need some input on that.

I can’t drink, so anything that requires drinking is out of the question. I wouldn’t mind visiting pubs, as long as I’m assured of non-alcoholic beverages. Anyone with me should feel free to imbibe to their desired level of inebriety. I may be happy to be a designated driver in that case. Me sober is definitely likely to be safer than someone drunk off their ass.

If I get into better shape, I should be fine. However, at the moment I tire relatively easily. That’s why I’d like a week; I can take things in slowly. However, if I do manage to be healthier it’d be great to see more rather than less.

Some sort of help from my local tweeples would be handy. Maybe someone available during the week days to help guide me to where it is I’m going, or someone to help plan outings the day before. I’ll try to look up as much as possible ahead of time online, but someone local usually knows the “hidden” spots as well, and company is always welcome. I’ll pay in kebabs and chips if desired. Hehehe…

Places that have free WiFi are very welcome. I’ll bring along my iPod Touch to tweet and blog. Probably cheaper and easier to find a UK USB charger over there when I arrive rather than look for one here. If I could find a way to upload pictures from my camera that’d be great. Not sure if my iPod could do it.

Now that this is in the works, I’m looking forward to it quite a lot. My mother’s side is all descended from Scotch and Anglo-Saxon lines. It’ll be interesting to see the Motherland. Hehehe… It’ll be a big bonus to meet my UK tweeples, since some of you have become really good friends. Hopefully everything will work out nicely and I’ll have a fantastic time!

Why I Follow the Tweeps I Do

2009-10-02T10:06:00.003-03:00

140 characters is just not enough to do justice to the people I follow that make my Twitter experience so great. Either that, or I’d have to flood people’s timelines with many, many tweets. That’s just wrong... But if I forgot you, and you feel wronged by it, feel free to chew me out publicly in tweets. If I mess up the links to your twitter pages, I'm sorry. Beatings are encouraged.

First and foremost: @JardinDeSophie because she is my wife and the bestest. I don’t know where I’d be without her.

@betagoddess One very special tweep who will be silent forever. I miss my mother.

Good people: People who have engaged me in conversation, some of them have helped me through the hardest time of my life. @ladyloki @botticellirejct @mergyeugnau @bird42 @ram327 @WongoWoman @CS999 @doodledawne @KingBobulousIII @sundaeg1rl @M20Mermaid @damarisens @mr_craig @JulesHardy @Noadi @Angry_Atheist @happy_atheist @TheMadderHat @kpibca @Smithengarde @Scriblit

Atheists: These tweeps I follow because they don’t believe in silly things like sky cake. @theadividual @theonides @achura @AtheistDoug @almightygod @_SATAN_ @pzmyers @AthOnTwi @jref @AtheistInWA @ainajaharah

Facts and Figures: One reason I follow certain accounts is for the information they convey. These accounts always have great tidbits. @factlets @mindhackz @make @BioscienceNews @SpaceAstro @HowStuffWorks CBC Twitter Feeds @mashable @archaeology @NASA @whycenter @BadAstronomer @DiscoverMag @Discovery @qikipedia @sciam @Lifehacker

I’m not including celebrities, simply because I’m sure if you’re interested in them you’ve either found them already or will soon enough.

That’s it for this week. I might just use this every week, until I find other interesting tweeps, which I’ll probably just add here. I may add other categories for those that I don’t have up here yet.

If I Grow Up

2009-09-29T13:00:00.004-03:00

I’ve figured out what I want to be if I grow up: a writer. In fact, by writing this I’m living the dream, aren’t I? I guess things have been building up to this my whole life; I’ve been reading since I could, and writing even when I didn’t have to.

Whatever my mood has been, as long as it wasn’t too severe, I’ve always written. When I was down, I wrote depressing poetry or prose. When I was up, I wrote whatever popped into my head. Now that I’m stable, I can take the time to write coherent, sensible articles.

What are you going to write? It’s a good question, and I like it quite a bit. I’m going to write articles here, like the ones I’ve written so far. I’m going to write for HandmadeNews.org, with my first article there out just recently. I’ll always be writing emails. Sometimes I’ll write things down in my notebooks. If I feel like my writing is worthy of it, I might write a screenplay Josh Olson would enjoy reading. I wont bring it to him to read, though. If it’s good enough it might make its way to him.

What about your degree? It took me a bit longer to finish my computer science degree than most, partly because of my involvement with the co-operative education program I was in. I like writing software, and I like thinking and reading about it. The time I spent there I consider formative, and it will certainly help me out in my current endeavour.

What about the other things you enjoy doing? I’ll keep doing them, but with renewed purpose. The electronics projects I work on, my small programming projects and bits of art I produce will all be used to service my writing. When I make something, I’ll write about it. I’ll let the people who want to know hear about it. Anyone else can choose not to read it.

How are you going to make money? A good question, everyone needs money these days. I don’t need much, though. Apart from my love of gadgets, I have simple needs. Food, clothing, shelter. I have the love of my life to keep me well loved, I have my family, and more of that simply couldn’t be bought. I’d really rather be famous for my love of the craft than rich because my work sells well. I wouldn’t mind both, but we’ll see how it all turns out.

“If” you grow up? Never assume you are mature; it’s a very immature viewpoint. And to quote the Peter Pan musical, “If growing up means it would be, beneath my dignity to climb a tree, then I wont grow up, never grow up, not me!” Besides, if you stop taking joy in simple things, then what reason do you have to write?

What Kind of Games?

2009-09-26T10:36:00.001-03:00

I started programming when I was young, with the hopes of writing video games. I think a lot of kids start that way. When you like something, or someone, you try to emulate what you’re seeing. But how has that early dream turned out?

They tell writers to write what they know. It’s good advice. How can you write about life in the Serengeti without have someone to give you a first hand account or having been there yourself? You can always use your imagination, and that’s all you can really do when writing fantasy or science fiction. It works for writing video games. How can you expect to write a genre you don’t immerse yourself in?

These days I spend most of my gaming time playing casual games. I’m busy doing other things, and don’t want to spend long stretches just sitting at the console or computer. Recently I read an article about the kind of video games the most people tend to flock to. Typically they’re games that are relatively simple and involve sorting things in some way. It bears out in my own tastes.

In late 2008, I entered the uDevGames contest, and submitted a casual game for consideration. It didn’t do too well, but I hadn’t spent enough time on it. The graphics are primitive and my soundtrack stinks. However, I think I’m going to revamp it for an iPhone/iPod touch release. I’ve been working on better graphics, for one. The basic game play appealed to the people who played it, so that wont be changing. I’ll add a few more game elements, and a high score list, of course.

Another favourite genre of mine is the story-driven RPG or adventure game. This is by far one of the most involved type of game you can develop. I’ve started innumerable aborted attempts at designs, filling notebooks with my ideas.

As long as everything works out as I’d like, a new version of GnomeSpy will be in the works. It’ll satisfy my desire to write video games, while giving me a base to improve on. Maybe I’ll put in a bit more story, for a little extra flavour. Who knows, it might become popular.

Terry the Space Bum

2009-09-13T02:00:00.000-03:00

Here's a quicky I wrote trying to mix science fiction and horror a little.

It was always a bit cold in space stations, Terry thought. Sometimes it made it hard to sleep on the metal deck plating, but then again, beggars can't be choosers. He'd been waiting for a transport for weeks, so he could hitch a ride out of Titan Station, but strangely, none had come. In his experience, even remote research stations like this one tended to get weekly supply shipments.

There was no trouble keeping out of sight from the scientists on board, they were too consumed with whatever research they were conducting. Just as well, he thought, it gave him an easier time when dipping into the food stores. Not fantastic fare, certainly not 'an epicure's delight,' as the last transport's in-flight magazine had described his previous home's cooking.

But then again, there was no beating Mars colony's Advanced Flavour Enhancer 3000; it made even stale bread taste delicious. He had tried to sneak some out with him, but there must have been some kind of theft-prevention device that evaporated the stuff when he left orbit. It was a finicky substance even on Mars' surface, but they produced enough that even a space bum like Terry could snatch a bit here and there.

Thinking of the time since the last transport dropped him off here, he realized that this station didn't have forced day and night. He had been relying on the chronometers in the station to keep track of time, and they could be running on some standard the scientists had picked. The last few research posts and stations he'd visited seemed to keep different time standards, probably picked by the scientists there for some reason known only to themselves. But Terry still had his watch on those visits, and it was set to Earth standard. He had been able to tell how fast or slow the local time ran.

But it didn't much matter, the station was well stocked, enough for a year, given the number of scientists manning the station, and himself. He hoped that wasn't a sign that he'd be there quite that long, but the more remote stations kept larger stocks, 'just in case.'

It was into the second month that he started hearing the noises. Every station had its own set of creaks and groans, but these were different. Whispers around the corner in a corridor, rustling in drawers, the scrape of nails on metal, just out of sight. At first he thought it was the scientists, but the station computer kept track of them, and none of them were anywhere near his location. He had welcomed this feature when he first arrived, it allowed him to keep out of their way. But now, with these sounds, it was becoming a recrimination, as if saying 'you have to be crazy if you think you're going to survive here.'

The sounds continued into the next month, and he was becoming progressively more and more on edge. When he started seeing things, shadows flickering near the sounds, he started to question whether or not all those old science fiction stories dealing with space insanity had some kind of prophetic quality. Sure, the Sol Health Organization said there was no evidence that any could actually go space-crazy, but he had always wondered about that.

The shadows were mostly formless, but occasionally he'd catch a shadow of something pointed, like a knife. With all the new ways of killing people that had been invented recently, the knife was still a good old stand-by. Never runs out of power, doesn't get jammed, can be concealed just about anywhere. He was beginning to wonder why he didn't carry one.

By the fourth month, the sounds started getting more and more menacing. The whispers took on an angry tone, the scraping sounds became a little more violent. He couldn't reveal his presence to the station's crew, but at the same time he was getting very scared, and thought that perhaps the crew would be able to protect him.

In the fifth month, when he started catching glimpses of something making the shadows, he was almost about to pop into the main science lab and for protection. He was drawing near, keeping an eye on the computer monitor throughout to see where everyone was. Then the screaming started, horrible, pained screams, little splashes against the walls and dull thuds afterwards. The monitors showed the dots representing the scientists slowly fade, one by one, as they were apparently being slaughtered. One dot remained, and he heard pleading screams, "No, no, please god, no!" When he heard the scraping noise start again, and head towards him, out of the lab, he ran.

In his excited state, it took him a while to figure out what to do. There was, in case of emergency, a special craft designed specifically for returning the crew to Earth. He had to get to it and get back, so he could tell someone what had happened. Luckily it was attached to the station near the docking bay, where he had first arrived. It was in the opposite direction from the lab, and so that's where he went.

It took him a little longer to get everything set up, being this excited, but he did finally disengage the holding clamps and get the launch thrusters going. It wasn't until the station appeared as a distance dot in his rear viewport that he let himself start breathing normally again.

"Did you see his face?" one of the scientists laughed to the others, back, safe, and in the lab.

"Man, that was the most fun I've had all year!" another replied.

"But he just took our escape pod," said a third.

"And the resupply ship's already left Earth," added the fourth, "so we can't get it to pick a replacement up for us."

"Oh crap," said the first, "it looks like when the pod took off, it tore a crack in the station's hull. We're leaking atmosphere."

Losing a loved one, as an atheist

2009-09-12T18:51:00.002-03:00

When I was around 11 or 12, I started to question the received wisdom that there was a deity. I came to the conclusion that all signs pointed to no. Do I outright, unequivocally and without reservation deny the existence of such an entity? No. However, I don’t see it as a likely scenario, and until I’m presented with hard evidence, I have enough reason to say that there isn’t.

Some people take comfort in their religious beliefs, especially their belief in an afterlife. I have no interest in an afterlife, either for myself of my loved ones. In the past five years I’ve lost both my grandmother and mother, both of whom I loved dearly.

No amount of belief in an afterlife would soothe my pain. I mourn at the fact that they are lost from my life, right here, right now. I imagine it’s the same even for those who believe that the dead pass on to somewhere else. You can’t escape the fact that their tangible presence is forever gone from your life. Unless you believe in ghosts, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

I have my memories of them, and if I filter those memories, I can choose to only remember the good things. I can remember my mother’s kind words, my grandmother’s stolid support, and their love for each other. Aside from senility, nothing can take those memories from me, and I wont ever let anything try to. They’re mine to keep, and I’ll treasure them until I die.

I loved them both, and it’s hit me hard, especially my mother’s recent death. As a non-believer, I don’t have to question why a god would choose to take my mother away at 59. I don’t have to ask why they would let such a thing happen, if they hadn’t directed it specifically. Even if there is a god, I don’t care why. Our universe operates under certain natural laws, and I’m okay with that. Those natural laws brought me to life, and gave me a happy life with my mother’s constant support. Would I trade that in for false hope of an afterlife? Never. I wouldn’t dream of it.

To me the beauty of the natural world is that it is there in its own right. It doesn’t require any omnipotent fiat, it operates within a consistent set of rules, and it has brought itself to this complex state from incredibly simple components. Belief in some sort of deity would actually take away from the universe’s beauty; it would steal from it its grandeur and splendor. To stand on its own legs it demonstrates a quality of greatness.

Would my grief be at all assuaged by thoughts of an afterlife? No, I am certain it would not. I loved them, and they’re gone from my life forever. I’m not angry at anything for their loss. I’m left with memories to cherish, love in my heart for them still, and the knowledge that what they left behind came from themselves.

Living with Bipolar Disorder

2009-09-04T13:02:00.001-03:00

Feeling down when something bad happens is normal. Feeling elated when something good happens is great. Bipolar disorder is neither. Previously referred to as manic depressive disorder, bipolar disorder consists of mood episodes ranging from deep, dark depression to the sense of invincibility and superiority that is characteristic of a manic phase. It disrupts the lives of those who suffer from it and all those around them. Luckily, however, with the right course of treatment it can be kept under control.

Bipolar disorder has been found to be linked genetically and physiologically to schizophrenia. A person suffering from bipolar disorder can experience the same sort of hallucinations and delusions as someone with schizophrenia. Both have a genetic component, with a number of genes interacting to create a pre-disposition to these disorders. The families of those afflicted often include others with one of these disorders, mood disorders or alcoholism.

Depression is a common symptom of many health problems. It can stem from difficult situations or simply an inability to cope with the stresses of everyday life. In the case of bipolar disorder, depression is a component of a mood cycle that can send the individual on a roller coaster of trouble. My own experiences with depression have affected me greatly. For 6 months in 2004, I had to leave work in order to recover from a severe episode. There were days I never left bed, others where I couldn’t even face leaving home to walk my dogs. It’s debilitating, but only one aspect of bipolar disorder.

The phase most associated with bipolar disorder, by the public, is mania. Mania can consist of impulsive behaviour, a sense of elation without reason, inappropriate behaviour, delusions and hallucinations. This phase is incredibly disruptive to the social community around the individual. It can lead to lost jobs, lost friendships, massive debt from impulsive spending or gifting, serious jail time and the contraction of STDs from high-risk sex. Luckily, in my case mania has not been a big component. It has surfaced, however, and has ruined at least one of my most treasured friendships. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Hypomania, as its name implies, is a milder form of mania. It is often characterized by increased creativity, increased self-confidence and an increase in productivity. Persons in this state are often more social, displaying an unusual amount of charm. This phase is one of the reasons some people with bipolar disorder stop taking their medication. When the effects of hypomania are dampened by medication, many individuals stop their treatment in an effort to regain some of the benefits of this mood. It is, however, a symptom of the disorder, and should be regarded as such and treated accordingly.

An individual suffering from the disorder can also find themselves in a mixed state, where depressive and manic symptoms mingle to create a special kind of hell. Irritability, delusions, lack of energy and a short temper are a few of the traits that can be found in a person in this state.

There are a number of diagnoses within bipolar disorder that are characterized by the individual’s specific history of these different phases. However, I am not a psychiatrist, and if you think you are experiencing these symptoms see a qualified psychiatrist as soon as possible.

Treatment requires a number of approaches. From the pharmacological end, sometimes anti-psychotics are required. Mood stabilizers are a common prescription, since in most cases the extreme peaks and valleys need to be brought in check. Some individuals also require an anti-depressant to lift them up out of recurring depressive episodes. Medication is usually the front line of the battle, as it can be impossible to work with an individual who is hallucinating, delusional or otherwise unable to fully cooperate.

Cognitive behavioural therapy can help the person suffering learn how to rein in their mood. It’s been shown to be one of the few talk therapies that can actually help in the treatment of depression. There have been clinical trials demonstrating its effectiveness, and I can attest that it worked for me.

Symptoms can manifest themselves at a relatively young age. Occasionally children who later turn out to have bipolar disorder are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The stimulants used to treat ADHD can often aggravate the child’s condition and make treatment down the road more difficult. It is always important to make sure you tell your child’s doctor, as well as your own, of any and all family history of psychiatric illness or symptoms similar to those of bipolar disorder.

My own history of bipolar disorder has sensitized me to the issues facing individuals with psychiatric disorders. Unfortunately, much of the population is unaware of the nature of these illnesses, and often attribute the symptoms to personal failings on the part of those suffering. A terrible stigma is attached to bipolar disorder and it can be difficult to shake.

An Open Letter to David Hewlett

2009-09-02T12:56:00.000-03:00

Dear Mr. Hewlett,

I’m writing to you in the hopes that you’ll read this and learn a bit about the great woman who was my mother and a big fan of yours. Helen died recently at the much-too-young age of 59. In April she found out she had pancreatic cancer; less than 5 months later, she passed away.

If you don’t read this, that’s okay, I guess, because it’s also a part of my grieving process. I think you’ll be touched by it, but at the same time, it’s helping me deal with the loss.

My mother as your fan

Every movie you were in, she wanted to see. She didn’t get a chance to before she went. I had wanted to buy her A Dog’s Breakfast for Christmas; I think she would have really liked it. I think Cube would have given her a bit of claustrophobia, but didn’t it do that for everyone?

She loved Atlantis. I think your performance was a big part of that. Joe Flanigan and Paul McGillion may also have had something to do with that. The episodes she watched of SG-1 were mostly the ones with McKay in them, because of you. Maybe she saw a bit of me in McKay, as I’m definitely a geek, and I’ve been known to have arrogant moments.

She was so excited to get the season 5 DVDs recently, but she never got to watch any of it. I think my dad is the one most saddened by that fact. They watched all of Atlantis together, sharing in the joy of watching an entertaining show. There were lots of shows they enjoyed together, and wont have the chance to anymore.

McKay, I felt, made Atlantis. I’m a big fan too, and have probably seen many more of the movies you’ve been in than she did. I’m sad she didn’t get to see more, since I’ve always enjoyed your performances.

There are other aspects of her involvement with fandom, and if you’re interested I can tell you about them directly. This letter is mostly about the other parts of her life.

My mother as a great woman

There are no monuments erected in her honour. There never are for the everyday heroes. But I think she would have felt a little uncomfortable if there had been. Her biggest failing was that she often under-sold herself. She was a great woman, and with more self-esteem she would have seen it, I think.

From a young age she instilled in me a love of reading. She’d read to me every night from any number of books. The Hobbit, the Chronicles of Narnia, E. B. White’s books, anything she thought I would enjoy. I started going through her collection of sci-fi and fantasy books before I left elementary school; big, thick volumes of Anne McCaffrey and Stephen King. While I liked watching shows like Reading Rainbow, I didn’t need them to boost my love of reading.

Literacy was an important skill to her. She volunteered at local schools, helping kids who had trouble reading. I’m sure her love of reading helped those kids along more than anything else. Her patience no doubt also played a role, but I think if an educator shows great enthusiasm for the subject, the student will pick it up at least a bit.

She was part of a women’s group in her area. I believe she was the youngest there, and many of the women didn’t drive because of their age. Along with another woman, she would drive those who couldn’t to and from their meetings or outings.

Her support kept me going through some of the hardest times of my life. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here writing this. It might be that others wouldn’t have managed to pull through if she hadn’t been here either.

She was generous and caring, and helped those she could. She always looked out for the underdog, knowing that it was a hard place to be. The popular and successful deserve support as well, but it’s always the downtrodden who are elevated more by a helping hand.

I owe my creativity, intelligence and curiosity to her. She bought our first computer when I was quite young, and without it and her support, I never would have taken a degree in computer science. Without her I would have never had a minor in linguistics to go with it. I wouldn’t have the breadth of knowledge I do, or the desire to expand it. I know she was proud of me, and I hope that she knew how big a role she had in helping me to where I am now.

She’s had one funeral service already, shortly after she passed. There are another two scheduled in the next two months. Three services might be unusual, but I think she deserved the extra recognition and the opportunity for as many as possible to celebrate her life. She was a wonderful woman, full of life and compassion. I’ll never forget her, and while there’s no monument out there in her honour, there’ll always be the one in my heart.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I appreciate it.

Sincerely,

James Dessart

Change in tone

2009-09-02T12:04:00.002-03:00

My next few posts will be very personal. My mother passed away last week, and I need to write in order to properly grieve. I want to share my thoughts, and I hope they might inspire or touch some of you.

Article interruption

2009-08-28T13:51:00.002-03:00

I know I've been publishing an article every Tuesday and Friday since I started this blog, but there's been a death in the family, so I've been a bit preoccupied. I'll try to get a new article out soon, probably related to that particular situation.

SpaceRat - an exercise in game programming

2009-08-25T12:00:00.000-03:00

Almost entirely throughout my life, I’ve had access to computers. In most of that time I’ve wanted to write computer games. Most of my attempts have been aborted early on, before even getting code written. Stacks and stacks of paper have been used to sketch characters and scenery. One day in 2001 I decided to put together a small Space Invaders-like game named SpaceRat.

SpaceRat began as a set of graphics I had created for a friend’s clone of Space Invaders. I had drawn a “hero” space ship and some enemy ships. There were a number of enemy sprites that I did not use in SpaceRat, simple because they did not fit the look I was going for.

Starting off with pre-made graphics gave me the push I needed and gave me the opportunity to jump straight into programming the game. I was still in university, but was then employed in a co-operative education placement for discreet, a division of AutoDesk. Health problems prevented me from actually working at the time, and so to judge my ability to return to work, I decided that writing a game would be a good gauge.

Since I had been working at co-operative placements for my third year, and been a programmer before I had even entered university, I was able to develop a certain affinity for object-oriented design and clean code. It was with that premise that I set down the basic classes for the game’s mechanics. While the view and model aspects are not entirely factored out, the size of the codebase made that sort of thing overkill.

The game mechanics were simple from the start; rectangular bounding boxes for collision detection and a very simple physical simulation. You could say that it’s a trivial game engine, and you’d be right. I kept it simple so that I could concentrate on getting the entire project completed. While there is definitely room for expansion, with many tasks sitting in a TODO file, the basic engine is complete.

My favourite part of the completed project has always been the star field in the background. Many games with one simply scroll a static set of uniformly-sized stars at a set speed. I was never happy with that, and so I went for stars that varied in size, colour and speed. The result was a star field that gave a sense of depth and realism that just isn’t possible with a bunch of single-pixel stars all moving at the same speed. When I rewrote the engine to support Quartz, Apple’s Mac OS X 2D drawing API, the star field was able to take on an even better look.

I had originally written the code in Mac OS 9 using Carbon-compliant APIs. At the time I was using Metrowerks CodeWarrior, as it was the IDE I was most comfortable with. While the application worked natively under Mac OS X, there was no chance of porting it to x86 without a change of IDE and modifying the API used to draw the graphics and play sound.

The first hurdle I chose to jump was the XCode transition. This was pretty painless, since I had not used any Mac OS 9 specific APIs. The application would no longer be compatible with Mac OS 9, however, but this didn’t bother me at all. I was no longer using Mac OS 9, and many people were already making the move to Mac OS X.

The next step was to modernize the graphics. I had been using QuickDraw, Apple’s venerable drawing API. This was one of the APIs Apple was quick to drop in the move to x86, as it would have been quite difficult to port to a new architecture and didn’t support the modern features Quartz does. Given my simple rendering methods, it was almost trivial. I just had to flip the coordinate system and deal with the sprites as images files rather than icon resources. It also gave me the impetus to move from an integer based physics model to a floating point model. This allowed for smoother movement and smaller velocities than I had started with. The star field improved tremendously with that change alone.

The Quartz transition was good practice for me and gave me insight into Mac OS X’s graphics model. It’s a massive improvement over QuickDraw, which had still been based on a pixel-level resolution and didn’t support anti-aliasing.

One massive sticking point which has blocked me from making the complete x86 transition is my use of Apple’s Sound Manager. It too was dropped in the x86 Carbon transition, and I never took the time to find a fully suitable replacement. In any case, my sound engine had always been sub-par. When I do get around to making the change I’ll probably add 3D sound to give a more immersive experience.

The actual game is fun to play, but after the first level the levels repeat with no sense of real progress. There’s no high-score system, no real level structure and only one type of enemy. Definitely an area that’s seriously lacking panache. I’ve been lazy here, since my original goal had been reached ages ago. There’s certainly room for improvement, but I had never created graphics for new characters beyond what I already had when I started.

While the game itself is not all that fun to play, it does provide some entertainment value. It was certainly an excellent project for learning, and might be of use to someone out there to see how to make a simple game. I have left some of the QuickDraw code in the project, for comparison to the Quartz rendering methods. One good example is SRCgImageSprite versus SRIconSprite.

I can always hope someone will find the code useful, and perhaps the game a little fun. With luck, someone else will come along and fill in the gaps. I’m making the latest code available under the BSD license, so feel free to make modifications.

Comments

2009-08-21T22:07:00.001-03:00

It seems comments weren't working, so I've fixed it. I think my template messes the embedded comment box.

The Sky

2009-08-21T12:00:00.001-03:00

When you’re far away from the city lights, the clear night sky is a beautiful thing. The constellations shine brightly, the Milky Way stands out clearly, and the Moon can provide all the light you need to see by.

Living out here, I’ve had a chance to see wonderful things in the sky. Recently, the Perseid meteor shower provided my wife and I with a romantic bit of evening, with beautiful, astral accompaniment. We saw some spectacular meteors fall that night, and it was a welcome change from the cloudy night we had had previously.

In the winter, on a snow-covered night, with the full Moon out, the snow sparkles beautifully and you can see almost as well as during the day. The silence is stirring and inspirational, and you can stand there in your winter gear, relaxed and at peace, almost losing track of time completely.

To facilitate my Moon viewing, I wrote a small program called MoonPhase. You can find it where I keep many of my little projects at my main website. It shows the current phase of the Moon and lets you check out what the other phases look like.

One of my favourite pieces of astronomy software is Stellarium. Once you figure out the interface and set in your latitude and longitude you can see a view of the sky from your current location and time. Controls are provided to speed up the time of the display so that you can see what the sky will look like later on in the night. It helped me locate the Perseids this year and had me pointed in the right direction.

Cultures around the ages have looked to the stars and seen animals, people or tools in the patterns formed there. The names and exact shapes of these constellations vary, of course, but the human ability to make patterns lies at the centre of our creative ability to find a pattern and give it a life beyond its objective reality.

My father is an amateur astronomer and has a great telescope that he purchased with his retirement gifts. He’s a member of an amateur astronomy club (text in French, club meetings in French) in the Montérégie area of Quebec. The club has regular meetings where members give presentations on astronomical topics of interest. If you’re interested in joining one, there just might be one in your area listed here.

The night sky has many beautiful sights for the appreciative individual. When you next leave the city lights at night, look up and see if you can’t pick out a constellation or two. You can always make up your own; that’s how they first got their names!

KnitPicker - a knitting stitch counter programming project

2009-08-18T12:00:00.000-03:00

The art of knitting lace is an intricate process; it takes great skill with knitting and the ability to keep track of complex knitting instructions. One day, my wife Sophie was knitting a particularly complex pattern, and she complained about not being able to keep track of how many stitches she should have for a particular row or how many should be left in the next row. Enter the programmer!

I’ve been throwing together little utilities for myself for ages. Sometimes I want to calculate some value that would take too long by hand; sometimes I want to sort a list in some particular way. Other times I have trouble deciding what to have for dinner, so I’ll write up a list of options and then pop in a random number to pick from it. I have one such script from ages ago that I used regularly when living in Montreal.

It was clear to me that Sophie needed software to handle her problem. With instructions spanning up to a hundred stitches, it’s the sort of thing that’s hard to keep track of in your head, and would take quite a bit of paper to work out by hand. Computers are great at keeping track of numbers and even better at doing arithmetic.

Knitting instructions use a very simple notation: k1 means “knit one stitch,” psso means “pass slipped stitch over,” and so on. These simple steps are listed in sequence to form a row of knitting, and this is the sort of thing a computer is great at processing. The kind of software that does this sort of processing is called a parser. A parser takes a string of characters and breaks it up into individual components called tokens.

I’m not a great parser writer, but I knew of a handy bit of software called Lex. It can analyze different pieces of each token and easily extract numerical information. This made it the right tool for the job, and its ease of use was an added bonus.

I wrote up a quick bit of Lex code, threw together a quick UI with Apple’s Interface Builder, and made the text field update its book-keeping every time the user typed in a new character. This made for a live-updating stitch counter that a lace knitter could use as they worked their way through a pattern. And so KnitPicker was born.

There are some limitations to the software at the moment, such as the lack of support for patterns that contain instructions on repeating a particular section. I had planned to eventually add such support, but never got around to it. Sophie had stopped knitting lace due to problems with carpal tunnel syndrome, no one else was using the software and I had other things to concentrate on.

Had there been other users demanding such a feature, no doubt it would have been added. I did take some time to research the problem, and I’m confident it would not be a big deal.

You can find KnitPicker at my main website, along with other things I’ve thrown together. All in all it was a good learning experience, and for a short while provided Sophie with a useful tool. It’s fun when you can meld your partner’s interests with your own and work out something productive.

Interactive Fiction - Finding the Mouse

2009-08-14T14:15:00.000-03:00

For as long as I’ve been using computers I’ve known of text adventures. Using your imagination and the words on the screen, you construct a world in your mind and then interact with it through the computer by typing in commands. The goal is usually to solve different puzzles in order to come to some sort of winning scenario.

Nowadays text adventures have given way to interactive fiction, or IF. Much like text adventures, there is often a goal to reach. However, some can be entirely freeform and offer the reader a variety of scenery and possibilities to explore. They still stick to text as their means of communication and rely on the reader to imagine the scenery. There’s still usually some sort of puzzle to solve, and this can provide a lot of fun for some.

The interactive fiction community is still going strong. There are plenty of archives out there for the curious reader to explore; the most prominent being the IF Archive. There’s a newsgroup at rec.arts.int-fiction (Google Groups link) that’s still quite active. New tools for building IF works have been developed recently that can interpret a designer’s plan in descriptions close to natural language.

I’ve experimented with writing these sorts of adventures for a long time. Early on in my programming experiences I tried to write one in BASIC. The limitations of the platform I was using slowed me down, and my relative green-ness and lack of community to rely on caused me to give it up.

A few years ago I heard about a 1-2K text adventure challenge. The idea was to write a text adventure and its interpreter in 1-2K of executable code and data. I never got around to submitting my entry, as I still had some issues in compressing the text into a small enough space to allow for some code to actually run the adventure. Recently I decided to resurrect that little adventure and develop it with Inform 7.

It took a bit of work to get the adventure to work just right using the features available in Inform. It’s certainly no longer anywhere near as small 2K, given the rich set of commands that Inform gives each and every IF work it produces. These commands allow for more leeway for the player to express their actions.

If you’d like to play my adventure, you can find a Java applet to play it here. If you have a z-code interpreter already, you can download the adventure itself. The basic premise is to find your computer’s mouse so that you can surf the web. The optimal solution can be done with six turns, so the adventure shouldn’t take you too long once you figure out what to do.

I’m going to be updating it from time to time to polish it up, so if you tried it and it was a bit rough, maybe give it another chance later on. The web page makes the story’s modification date available, so you can see when I last updated it.

The news group community has been really great in helping me out with it, and I’d like to thank them here for their support. Guys, thank you so much!

The world of interactive fiction has grown since the days of the earliest text adventures. A certain maturity has given newer titles more depth and flavour, and new possibilities with recent development tools have given writers more time to spend on the story, rather than on the mechanics of dealing with the interpreter. It’s an interesting field, and well worth looking into for anyone who enjoys reading.

Canadian Medicare and #welovethenhs

2009-08-14T13:20:00.000-03:00

Health care, of all the services available, is almost certainly the most important one many of us will ever make use of. Without adequate health, our performance degrades at work, our enjoyment of life decreases and some of our routine responsibilities become uphill struggles. And yet, in some nations not everyone has affordable access to it.

In Canada, we have tax-funded, universally accessible health care under the label Medicare. Tommy Douglas, a former premier of Saskatchewan, fought hard with the Federal government of his time to develop Medicare. For his efforts Canadians voted him the Greatest Canadian in 2004 through a CBC-run television series.

Another prominent Canadian involved with supporting the creation of a system of socialized medicine was Norman Bethune. He went to China during the Japanese invasion in 1938 and acted as a battlefield surgeon, bringing anti-septic practices to Chinese medicine, a system of training doctors and nurses, and treated both Chinese and Japanese casualties.

As someone with an occasionally debilitating illness, I would be potentially homeless without Medicare. When I had to leave my job to recover from one severe bout, and left without any sort of income, I would have been bankrupt if I had had to pay for my medical treatment. It was only through Medicare, and Quebec’s tax-funded prescription drug insurance, that I was able to manage the recovery I did. In subsequent bouts, where I did have an income, it still came to my aid to keep me from losing my already reduced income.

With my mother currently battling cancer, I can only imagine the costs to our family if Medicare were not around. Her treatments happen regularly, her initial diagnosis took place in a timely fashion, and I’m satisfied that the oncologist and nurses are doing their best for her.

I think it’s clear that I am a big proponent of Medicare. There are other Canadians, however, who oppose it and believe it should be reduced in scope and replaced with private options. Chief among them is the Fraser Institute, who recently released an article pointing out weaknesses in Medicare.

While there are indeed weaknesses in Medicare, one has to consider the source of this griping. The Fraser Institute is a “free-”market think-tank, that is generally against government spending in favour of private options. That’s certainly a view point that has some, if dubious, merit. Generally those advocating such policies have the money to fund or use more expensive private alternatives to currently public services. In fact, the Fraser Institute’s contributors include a long list of wealthy individuals looking to dismantle Canada’s public services. Hardly freedom for those without the means to exploit the “free-”market.

So what does “free-”market economics bring us? The recent economic crisis, for one. It allows those with means to expand their portfolios, owing to the fact that no one is looking over their shoulders. It entails a transfer of wealth from those willing to spend theirs to those who tend to fund their own interests through organizations like the Fraser Institute and those corporate bodies that fund such organizations.

Generally, people living in countries with socialized medicine are quite attached to that service, and are willing to defend it vehemently. Graham Linehan, creator of the hit show IT Crowd, recently started a campaign on Twitter to allow fellow residents of the UK to speak out about how much they love the British, tax-funded health care system. By using the tag #welovethenhs, British Twitter members can post their views for the world to see. To give an example of its popularity, after loading the page for the tag I waited a couple of seconds. In that time, the tweets using the tag increased in number by 22. Another few seconds and a further 31 tweets appeared.

When interviewed by Channel 4 about the Twitter campaign, Graham Linehan spoke out against the current movement in the United States opposing socialized medicine. His aim is to “provide ammunition for those people who are fighting back against the scare stories in America.”

In fact, some Brits who have been featured in such scare tactics have spoken out against their stories being used out of context. They were asked to comment on their health-care experiences, being told it was for a documentary. The footage was then used in scare ads funded by opponents of President Obama’s health-care plan. While these women had some rough experiences with the NHS in the UK, both later said that they are fully supportive of their country’s socialized medicine. One felt as if she had had her naivety tested by this experience with American political media.

When I graduated from my government-subsidised university program I was quite well paid for a recent graduate. While I was contributing quite a bit to the government in the form of taxes, and I think they could have been lower by reducing government waste, this didn’t bother me all that much. Why? I want others to have the chance to benefit from affordable post-secondary education. I want others who are less fortunate than I was not to have to worry about whether they can afford health care if they get sick. Many university graduates do not get hired, and even those that do are often not paid well, in jobs that do not do their degrees justice. By reducing their burden, I free up their hard earned money to possibly find its way back to me in the form of software development contracts, or by supporting local businesses so that they can bring me goods and services at a lower cost.

Piet - an esoteric programming language

2009-08-11T16:00:00.000-03:00

There’s a certain group of programmers out there that like to come up with programming languages just for the fun of it. Some of them have profanity as their names, and some are based on internet memes. Whatever the case may be, some individual out there enjoyed thinking up the language, and many of these languages are actually useable.

One esoteric language that stands out, for me, at least, is Piet, created by David Morgan-Mar. Based on the idea of making programs that look like abstract art, Piet allows the programmer to express their software in the form of coloured blocks. Numbers are represented by blocks of pixels containing a pixel count equal to the number itself. Operations are performed by changes in hue or darkness.

As an example, here is a Piet program I wrote to output the string “Hello World”. This image is in fact the entirety of the program, and can be run in any of the Piet interpreters out there. Other examples of Hello World programs are available on David’s site, as well as some other programs cooked up by Piet enthusiasts.

One property of a programming language is that it can be Turing-complete. What this means is: can the programming language be used to solve any arbitrary computing problem? In fact, extra kudos go to those esoteric programming language creators who create one that is Turing-complete.

It is believed that Piet is Turing-complete, but as of yet no one has stepped forward to implement a program to test this. However, given a stack of unlimited size, a reasonable interpreter for the language Brainf*ck could be implemented. Brainf*ck itself has been proven to be Turing-complete, and since Turing-completeness is transitive, a programming language that can interpret a Turing-complete language can be said to be Turing-complete as well.

Piet can be used to produce some functional, beautiful pieces of software, and it definitely piqued my curiosity when I first found out about it. Maybe you’ll find it interesting too, maybe you’ll write something in it, maybe you’ll join the discussion forum. Whatever the case may be, it’s one language that definitely has something special going for it.

Aldebaran Colony

2009-08-08T16:00:00.000-03:00

This is a quick little story I whipped together one day as a writing exercise. That's mainly the sort of stories I'll be putting up; 1000 word vignettes that I wrote during a day. Here it is:

Why they had thought they needed a podiatrist on the colonization team was something Harry Jones couldn’t figure out. He wasn’t even one of the best podiatrists, although he had his moments. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t happy to be along. He was, in fact, overjoyed when he was given the news. It had just come as a bit of a surprise to him that he had been selected to join the ten thousand other people on the colony ship bound for Aldebaran 5.

The ship had been equipped with a new Petrescu-drive engine, which would allow them to cross the distance between earth and the Aldebaran system in about 15 seconds. There had been some hushed conversations between the scientists setting up the engines, but Harry was confident that the colonists’ best interests were being kept in mind. After all, it was the first colonization trip outside of the solar system, and no one wanted a bad precedent set. Even when the scientists made sure to rush off the ship before the flight, Harry took no notice.

Loading up the ship hadn’t been much on Harry’s mind either. The loading had to take place in orbit, and the colonists would only be sent up once the entire ship had been packed. There was a special crew for loading all the belongings that had been sent up previously on an unmanned rocket. The colonists had each been allowed to bring along whatever personal effects they wanted. Given that the Petrescu engine operated on principles that weren’t affected by mass, it had been decided that restricting what the colonists could bring on board was simply more trouble than it was worth.

It wasn’t long after Harry had sent up his entire collection of 20th century science fiction novels that the call to fly up to the ship came. The colonists were being ferried up into lunar orbit by economy class earth-moon shuttles that had been repossessed by the bank that was funding the colonization trip. The shuttles were in bad repair, but Harry felt they did the job well, and that was all that counted. Sure, the trip out to the ship was a little bumpy, but the cabin never depressurized once, and so Harry was happy. It was actually Harry’s first trip into space, and he was excited enough that the bumps just reminded him of a roller coaster he had been on a few years earlier.

The colony ship itself was massive, and Harry was certain he was going to get lost. However, there were helpful terminals all around the ship that seemed quite happy to do Harry’s getting lost for him. Wherever they sent him, though, Harry found he always ended up somewhere he needed to be. The one place they seemed to get him to reliably was his quarters. An attached washroom was the only one he knew of on the ship, although he figured the other colonists had their own.

It wasn’t long after all non-colony personnel had scurried off the ship that the imminent Petrescu insertion was announced over the ship’s loud speakers. Harry had had to ask someone else to repeat the announcement, though, since the speakers seemed to emit a lot of noise that clearly wasn’t speech. However, the helpful terminals had the full text of the announcement, along with some useful facts about the Petrescu engine’s operation. Mentioned among the side-effects on humans was the fact that the insertion was rather unpleasantly like being drunk. Harry seemed to be the only one who caught the reference, and was certainly the only one who laughed at it.

When the designated time arrived, Harry was fully prepared to experience what a glass of water must feel like. Unfortunately, he was knocked the ground by a lurch as the engine engaged, and was knocked unconscious for the duration of the insertion. When he came to, he was disappointed to find that he had missed it. He was also surprised to find out that the pilots were incredibly surprised that they had made it through alive. When he asked one of them why they were so surprised, he was informed that the Petrescu engine had a 50-50 chance of killing everyone on board. The entire flight crew had been selected from criminals awaiting execution for thought crimes, and they had figured that at least, if the engines had killed them, it would have been a faster death than the ones they faced back on earth.

It took only a few hours after that to get into orbit around Aldebaran 5. The plan was for the ship to slowly lower itself through the atmosphere and then finally land on firm ground and proceed to fall apart. Harry was informed that this falling apart would be fine, that the colony ship was, in fact, simply going to become their new city. The ship had been in many pieces in the first place, so Harry wasn’t too concerned about it. Certainly the bank had taken every possible failure point into account.

The landing passed by rather uneventfully, and Harry was pleasantly surprised by how slow and relaxed the ship seemed to fall apart. He was in his own quarters at the time, and as the ship fell apart, he noticed that a new door had opened off his living room that led into what was obviously his new office. It seemed that someone had taken the time to move his equipment from his office on earth into this one. Even his over-sized, cartoon-style model of the human foot was there, and Harry was happy someone had actually remembered it, even though he had completely forgotten about those details himself.

As it turned out, a podiatrist was exactly the person who had needed to be included in the colony. In the first hour alone fifteen people had come to him complaining of foot injuries caused by the local terrain. A person could be walking along what seemed to be flat ground, when suddenly a short spike would shoot out of the ground through the person’s footwear. The spikes were apparently part of an underground plant that responded to vibrations from the surface. Luckily someone had thought to pack a lot of bandages into Harry’s equipment store.

However, it was with great disappointment that Harry discovered that someone had neglected to pack food for any extended period of time. A nutritionist who had also been recruited for the colony was teamed up with a botanist and a toxicologist to examine the local flora and fauna to see if there wasn’t anything native to eat. As it turned out, the underground plant was a perfect source of nutrition, and so the members of the colony proceeded to dig up as much of it as they could.

On the second week of their new colony, Harry began to feel rather ill. Using his diagnostic equipment, he planned to take a quick scan of his abdomen to see if there was anything visibly wrong in his gut. As he turned the scanner on, a short spike drove itself out his stomach and into the scanner’s receiver. It seemed that the plant was not, in fact, any good to eat.

The Buddhabrot

2009-08-07T18:00:00.000-03:00

Ever since I got my first glimpse of computer-generated fractals, I was hooked. The Julia and Mandelbrot sets captured my imagination, and I knew I had to make my own generator. At the time all I felt comfortable programming was a TRS-80 Colour Computer 3, and I had a shaky knowledge of the complex numbers needed to calculate such fractals. My first attempts failed to properly render the Mandelbrot set, since I had not realized the need for an extra step.

When I finally got comfortable with C, I wrote another Mandelbrot generator. You can find it at the bottom of this page. It requires a pre-Mac OS X PowerPC Mac, but has some nifty optimizations I was quite proud of at the time. However, unlike some Mandelbrot generators of the time, the optimizations still just got pixels onto the screen faster, and eschewed any larger-scale optimizations. Other programmers had used techniques such as outlining boxes in the fractal, then filling them in with the colour of the border. This made calculating the fractal itself faster, but had some room for error.

When I discovered that someone had developed a new take on the Mandelbrot set, I got excited. Despite the religious connotations, I find the Buddhabrot quite aesthetically pleasing. It has a sort of ghostly appearance that appeals to my sometimes morbid bent.

How the Buddhabrot differs from the traditional Mandelbrot rendering method is that it tallies counts of how many times an iteration of the basic formula passes through a particular location. When scaled into a 256 grayscale image, the somewhat random looking points begin to take on a Mandelbrot-like image that some have likened to images of Buddha.

With a little work, the Buddhabrot can be extended into 4 dimensions. It creates what the original developer calls a Buddhabrot Hologram, or Buddhagram. You can rotate the image such that it appears to be a 3-dimensional object, and manipulating the 4th dimension allows for some further animation.

Always interested in programming my own fractal generators, I put together a version of a Buddhabrot program myself. It requires Mac OS X (not sure what minimum version, probably 10.4 or 10.5), and there are no optimizations whatsoever in it. The “Hog” control determines how much processor time the generating process will take. The settings drawer allows you to control the various parameters of the process, such as maximum iterations before each starting point’s iterations are cut off. You can also change which plane of the Buddhagram is calculated, and drag the image to other applications.

Have fun with it, I had fun making it. If you’re interested in the source code, just send me an email. If there’s enough demand, I’ll post it up here in an update.

The Idea Oubliette

2009-08-07T17:54:00.000-03:00

A lot of thoughts pass through my mind in any given week. Some of them drive me to research a particular subject, others get me started on a project. But I have more ideas than I can use myself, and so some of them I'll take a look into and post them up here. Sometimes I just want to try something out, and I'll post my attempts up here.

Every month or so I'll also post a short story. These will be about 1000 words, and usually science fiction. I occasionally get a hankering to write horror, so maybe there'll be some of those as well.