Cucumber Eye Frizbees

When this family began, the first baby could only just about hold a mouse. Yes, as soon as they could do that they were exploring mimmies computer along with everything else the great world had to offer. It was part of the scene and part of their new little lives along with dandelions, clouds, peas, stones, butterflies and everything else. Then after that we went into about seven years of intense crafting. The productivity of the young is stupendous by the way.

This house became a truly wondrous cave full of glue and sculptures, paint and pictures. Clay, salt dough, old sprirographs collected from charity shops, rescued barbies, rocks, homemade kites, cardboard houses, collages, stars, moons, suns, butterflies, fluffy toys, things that talked to you when you stood on them at midnight, spiders, seedlings, meandering crayons, poetry, practice writing, drawings, paintings. I seldom left the house without glitter in my hair or opened my handbag without distributing sequins upon all and sundry. I liked it very much 🙂 – I think you can tell.  A lot of time was spent clearing workspaces, organising the general production and finding places for everything. The kind of housework I truly do not mind.

About 5 years into that crafting phase school erosion began in earnest, and although crafting continued unabated for a while, mental escape became more of an issue. This happens to us all I think. So, the focus shifted. Suddenly there grew piles of books, an interest in handheld gaming toys. Things that allow you to escape for a little while to another world and have some headspace that isn’t to do with grades, friends, competition. Discretely (and a bit sadly) I began storing the best of the crafted and gently steering the need for a mental haven into making a game ourselves as documented pretty much in this blog. Nothing too hefty, all more exploration and experiment. And above all everyone here and anyone that ventured in was encouraged to play!!!

This paid off of course – is it really all that surprising? The grades of my gamers are uniformly excellent, and years in maths are skipped. Etc. Games make you think, whether playing or creating them. So, that lasted a goodly while too, and now it’s teenagers, and the computer is fading. It looks like it’s going to be a few years of creating our own cosmetics, and otherwise developing personal style. They are finding themselves. (I will continue computer work in the background – I’ve discovered a couple of gaps in the schooling. Plus, I think I just like it.)This is also (as also documented) the best time to deconstruct, declutter and generally redo everything ready for their early adulthood, and my bit where they go off and do own thing. I solo half the time as it is, so that’s not going to be a big strain but at this point I can make my domestic environment more conducive to the things I like. What a lot of words. I’m having a big redo in preparation for the next years.

I will not write our eye-frizbee recipe fully since it didn’t quite work out (cucumber, green tea and witchhazel are what is in it). It was meant to be eye-gel. It smells great! And is quite nice to hold in one’s hand… very cool and smooth, but I think we should try again hahaha – oooo fun! I do hope I’m in for five years of cosmetic production to match the crafting and computer/book phases.

This weekend – avocado!

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The Eternal Problem

sometimes only a diagram will do:

sigh…

You know it’s been 20+ years since I tried this coding lark, things have improved but not a lot. http://www.gaslampgames.com/2013/03/20/cpu-and-gpu-run-time-profiling-in-simulation-land/. Too many moving parts that all do their own thing. Parts get all picky about what they’ll work with and barely remember that if  their stuff doesn’t join up with other stuff,  it isn’t worth using. Wonder how many incompatible dodos “cornering the market” has bred during those years. Clearly I didn’t miss anything much. Appalling lack of progress – just like dentistry which remains painful and barbaric and hasn’t moved an inch forwards on that rather huge issue in thirty years either.

Grr.

Here’s someone else’s take on it; his is much more interesting than mine, I may add:
http://ubercode.de/blog/why-asm-js-is-a-big-deal-for-game-developers

Plod, plod, plod

Yes, it’s one of *those* times again. Footsoldier stuff. No thinking just keep going, my soul is not singing like a sewing machine like it usually does. It’s just mundane things that have to be got through – and once again like a few weeks ago, just rather a lot of them. So, got nothing to blog about.

I have been mostly taking refuge in EQ2 because the last thing I want when I stop is more mundane slogging. A little adventure and no nonsense about play gated behind maintenence is suiting me better just now. Plus, I keep discovering new things I didn’t know were there… is there no end to the content, systems, lore? – it’s a very big game and it takes me out of the rut I’m in beautifuly. It is much bigger than I had realised. I notice it’s much livelier now than it was before – I think people are playing it more, or returning to it as other games disappoint. I still think the SOE marketing is barking, but the game itself remains something out of the ordinary.

Wurm… is sitting evilly with life at the moment, since it just replicates the tedious work already done for real during the day. And I feel crowded !!  Deeds being founded left right and centre as people return and new people arrive, which is great for Wurm, but not great for me. Last thing I need is to log on and have someone’s nose up my bhind whichever way I turn.  All in all it feels like just another version of what I would like a break from. I have been plodding along there too, but mostly to set things up for not being there daily. Or being there for only a very short time daily, or something – it’s absurd the level of commitment ideally needed. Like having a wife, or a mortgage, or a job – that size of big commitment, which is no good for me since I need my commitment for more appropriate things. On the other hand, it has that magic of being another world – so there’s still that.

Games that run on this laptop (old Intel chipset)

Updated: am looking for the list I made of games I tried for “aahsum dev” purposes. So… the table isn’t complete yet. Amg I need sleep.

I’m not sure how to do this – would like something I can update regularly. A table or something… so… I’ll just fiddle with it. Scuse fiddling. As it happens my trusty machine is now (and only now!) on the list of Things To Replace But No Rush.

Although I love it muchly for freeing me from the malevolent mess of dust-gathering wires and grime that used to sit like a frog in the corner known as a desktop (keep yer ego-boosting piece a junk!)(now decluttered), the laptop is getting a little long in the tooth and might just keel over one day. It still works fine though. Games don’t decide when I upgrade. I do ! Anyway, it will be a while before I save up enough for the replacement, probably an Asus,  and meanwhile I thought it would be interesting to make a note of what runs and doesn’t. For other laptop owners, for older laptop owners, for people stuck with Intel graphics in a world where they are so oft scorned. Awwwww.

Take heart, the failures are few. Regarding newer games – they optimise them just fine when they need a broader sub base or get serious about the cash shop. Amazing isn’t it. Rift previously didn’t run at all.

See, bog standard:

Mobile Intel (R) 965 Express  Chipset Family.

In no particular order (what an ugly table – my Word skills are terrible). This isn’t a comprehensive list of all possible games, just a documentation of one person’s tryings out:

Runs well and looks good	Game	Comments
	Startrek Online
	Guild Wars 1
	Allods
	Botanicula
	Treasure Adventure
	Stranded 2
	Creatures 1 and 2	Tx to Gog
	Wurm Online	Leaving this here but l have that flickering thing since that patch. Lowering settings makes it worse. Hopefully this will get fixed one day.
	Starcraft
	Populous  the Beginning	Tx to Gog
	Ryzom
	Missing Ink
	Champions Online
	Sacrifice	Tx to Gog
	Uncharted Waters
	Free Realms	Cash shop front end. Of course it runs!
	Puzzle Pirates
	Samorost
Only need slightly lower   settings
	World of Warcraft	Lower settings for raiding only
	Forsaken World
	EQ2	Lower settings sometimes in cities and odd places. Can lag one day and not at all another time, so probably not me.
	Anarchy Online	Actually… I’m not sure how this game is meant to look – maybe this   is it.
Runs well with low settings
	EQ
	Legends of Grimrock
Runs badly but runs (playable though, all of these but you get tired of the sludge).
	Rift	Previously didn’t run at all, but they optimised it some.
	Skyrim
	Fallen Earth
	Vanguard
	Might and Magic VII	Not Gog’s finest redo.
“No Money From Me” prizes(don’t run at all)		Not many here. Look at the company Blizzard keeps nowadays eh.
	PotBS
	Aion
	Diablo 3

 post doninarush – huggies – Av

srs dps maximising

Forgive me, its Monday.

tldr:
1) here’s how to do it
2) it’s not fair play
3) fairness is an annoying, persistent nuisance to number ridden idiots in all spheres of life
Actually I don’t take dps seriously, here’s all why and how to fix it as a side dish.

Economy consists of demand, supply and unfair advantage. Someone else probably said it better before, but I came to that conclusion while wondering why in this era we are obsessed with measuring things – via a long windy thought process while attempting to make salmon pate (with the obligatory side wander into male obsessions, but I’ve given up teasing men.)(For now.)(no, I have. It’s fun I know I shouldn’t.)(srsly.)

Dps is pretty much the same – the numbers are a limited tool – mostly diagnostic, but in the intersphere they are what people use to convince other people that they are skilled. Speaking as a leader, I can tell you skill = (mostly) doing the right thing at the right time and is built up through experience. Most people “kinda recognise” it when they see it – you can’t measure it though, o dear. And actually I’m speaking as a happy ex-leader now, but that goes in some other post.

Dps and skill are not the same, but you can kiddie on they are, and what’s more most people will fall for it. So to increase your dps might be a worthy goal. After all half the fun in the game is bragging…. hahaha – (errr, gives away a big weakness but that goes in a pvp post sometime).

Very similar to my patent and food based economic model, Your Real DPS = (some measurement-or-other/time) + unfair advantage.

Measurement/time can be maximised in just about every game by judicious application of ye google. Do the homework, find out the gear, stats, spec, gem, rotation, glyphs, whatever for your avatar. Applying this tediously gained knowledge gets you just past halfway and (bewilderingly) not one bit further. Where you get to stand out is all in the second bit.

For unfair advantage, only a little thought is required. Is the game company selling a new expansion and a new class? Pick that class. Does there seem to be an obsession with buffing one class (koff *mages in some game* koff) – pick that class. If you type well, keybind and watch others gasp as you effortlessly pull everything in the room before anyone else even moved. If you are going in that direction (not advised) you can also hog the healer, never change targets and move as little as possible. That increases dps too, briefly – before you get kicked (but you never know the group might impressed with your greatness and not know these little tricks).  There are usually more little clevernesses if you get to know the mechanics – but a pretty good example is indeed that if moving decreases dps, don’t move. (mind to scream at the healer so nobody notices what you did thar.)

If you have a good computer, increase your considerable advantage by playing without addons & with all background processes terminated, and low settings if need be. Tweak your computer for performance if you know how to. It’s not supposed to matter but guess what – hardware and client performance affect dps. Increase your bandwidth if you can, might as well. E-Sports are not run on anything slow or low end, I am ….reasonably sure of that 🙂

Gear has a very noticeable effect on dps. Most games attempt to limit the acquisition of good gear for reasons worthy of a whole debate which I dont want to insert just here. So… know all the sources for your gear and make good use of them. Ingame currency to buy stuff? Earning it becomes important then. Random git-groups? Grit teeth & do them. Pay to win – well obviously. If it’s part of the game it’s unfair, but not game-illegal. The devs are having trouble balancing pvp? Woohoo paydirt!!!!! – they are going to overcompensate someone in their flailing efforts to keep things on an even keel. Build up a stable so you can hop about from advantaged avatar to advantaged avatar.

In short, once the basic homework is done, unfair advantage is what gets you to the top. Find it and use it if you are so inclined. People often have a unique thing they can do quite well – situational awareness maybe, or ferret reflexes, or good strategic sense. If it’s strategy, for example, go watch videos & plan your positioning and shots using the information gained thusly. I get more fun from trying to match the game’s limits to my strengths than I ever do from number comparing. It’s a personal preference but it will up my dps too if I need it to. A lot of discovering advantage is thinking outside the game and doing some legwork. Not hard, time consuming yes, but not hard.

“Unfair” is definitely what I’m talking about by the way, not “illegal”. Apart from being wrong  (if you don’t know what “wrong” is it’s time you sat down & worked out who you want to be and why), going beyond the law isn’t really necessary. There’s plenty of unfairness around to take advantage of – an unlimited supply. (Unfair is you are pretty and I am ugly – illegal is if you steal my kidney too.)

I am also, deliberately, not using the neutral term “inequitable” because I want to go back to economics to wind up this post up. Demand, supply and unfair advantage. Demand & supply left to themselves in a vaccuum will indeed self-regulate. The big problems come from that annoying bit of my equation which you cannot measure. O woe, what shall we do? No nice reliable numbers for unfair advantages! Heheh, and so under the numerical radar, evolved cartels, wars, monopolies, locusting, bad work practices, undercutting…. Time to put the ruler away methinks, and get to looking at how and why things happen the way they do without that crutch, and thats a job not just for me but for all of us. This over-reliance on measuring stuff is a big big big big big mistake.

And that all came from listening to Radio Gore at 4.30 am. It’s time for the annual checkup. This morning – I measure around one hour (5.16) before the first detailed torture description. It’s turned off. I have a school run to attend to and a solid week to commence – I am (over) informed and have instinctively responded with a sense of abhorrence and outrage.

This ties it all up with a neat bow. We are born with a sense of fairness fully formed, and a drive toward goodness also (who knows why) – with the exception of some few individuals (psychopaths).  However much this is subverted, repressed and diverted it absolutely remains with us, is universal and does not go away no matter what pretty stories we tell ourselves as we cheat, lie, kill or whatever the poison is.

A universal sense of fairness is the (non-measurable) string which can also be effectively pulled to untie even the most mighty economic knot. The single moment in which you realise someone is manipulating you for gain, as with dps or Radio 4, is the moment their motives become transparent.

It’s totally up to the individual how or why they unfairly raise their dps, how much money they unfairly take from others, and (not letting Radio 4 off the hook) how much torture they pepper their broadcasts with hoping to raise their ratings, or cred, or whatever else it is they need to retain funding.  They are of course using the unfortunate individuals they purportedly inform us about to further their own agenda. See, pull the string & all is clear.

It’s up to us collectively how much unfairness is tolerable. We recognise it instinctively, and it offends some part of us, so that part is less of a problem than anyone arguing definitions will ever admit. Violations of fairness cannot be hidden very well or for long either. Our nose for unfairness is pretty accurate and comes along in the package of being intrinsically moral beings. Unfairnesses can be prettied up, talked around, excused or justified, but they sit there, often for all to see, or come to light unexpectedly despite much careful burying. And of course they register internally.

Normalising greed and lauding predatory behaviour is beneficial to the greedy and predatory. Once you see that trick, it’s all over. Suddenly half the things people do make a different sense and a jackasses sitting on more than they could ever possibly need or consume, having destroyed whole environments and all living beings within them to get to that pinnacle – can be correctly discerned as mentally unbalanced.

So take heed young dps er before you should succumb
to horrid moral turpitude while chasing rules of thumb.

I said I would give up poetry…. I lied!

I suppose some silly sausage will come along and argue that humans are intrinsically amoral (fancy version) or immoral (self-serving version) – not much I can do about that. Some things you just need to figure out for and within yourself.