Schierer Space

Those are air-quotes in the title, since there is a bit of effort required to land your “free” copy of Portal, but the game is worth it. Until May 24th, Steam is making the game Portal available for free download. To invoke this free-ness, you have to register with Steam (bleh), download their licensing/downloader program (yuck), let it upgrade itself multiple times (double yuck), download and install Portal through their service (pretty fast actually, their servers pretty much saturated my broadband link for the duration), and then…

Play the most novel concept for a game I’ve seen since Deus Ex. I don’t give this title lightly, but this game gets five arbitrary happiness symbols out of five for being essentially a first-person-puzzle-maze game. Imagine the classic 2D puzzle games like Boulder Dash or that-game-where-you-slide-blocks-around-to-escape-a-maze except in 3D. Not just that, but with really amazing twists on such basic concepts as conservation of momentum. I’d tell you more about how this works, but the game has such an amusing way of introducing those concepts as you go that it is marvelously self documenting. The system requirements are quite nominal that you don’t need a massive new machine to run it.
Did I mention the game was funny too? Listen carefully to the background intercom messages (and the reactions of the other entities in the game) as you proceed. This all combines to give a strong sense of being a rat in a giant laboratory. Amusing and impressive.

I only wish the main thread of the game had been longer^[1]

I will probably play again (and try the ‘challenges’), because there are probably hundreds of different ways to solve each puzzle.

Go get it. Have fun. There will be cake.

1. As a combination of a particularly cranky 3 month old girl, insomnia and instant addiction, I played through the plot in one sitting this morning. It took about 4-6 hours. [↩]

Yes. This solid state drive has a larger capacity than this (rather old and probably unreliable^[1]) hard disk drive. It also has about 10x the throughput and several orders of magnitude better access time. No moving parts will do that for you.

It is, unfortunately, rather painfully more expensive, however.

1. It’s labeled “BAD” for a reason. [↩]

As I mentioned previously, K’s new machine is running Windows 7. So far, I’ve been pleasantly surprised and slightly impressed. To put this in perspective, note that we never bothered with Vista and have been content WXP users for some time.

The primary reason I upgraded was because A) I got the upgrades cheap in a pre-purchase deal last July and B) 64-bit support is included with the license. By building a new machine, compatibility wasn’t an issue, so what better time than a fresh build to try a new OS.

With the exception of two installation problems, the install was quick and easy. Both issues were in the operator error category. The first, was the fact that I installed the OS onto a freshly formatted drive… blowing away the XP install needed to register the upgrade license. Oops.
The second was a BIOS issue where I installed everything with benign (read as: maximum compatibility) settings, and then AFTER installing changed the access mode for the hard disk. This confused the boot loader pretty severely, and I had to repair the install to fix it.^[1]

The interface is largely intuitive, and the window preview features for the taskbar are quite handy. My understanding is some of these features were introduced in Vista, but I never experienced them. The Control Panels and help are actually helpful which is pretty remarkable to say the least. I like how they are organized by Topic and subtopics. For example, “Hardware and Sound” has commonly used sub-tasks, (i.e. View devices and printers, and Add a device) explicitly shown. If those are the actions you want, you can click to them directly, otherwise, they give a reasonable idea of what sort-of activities are to be found in the “Hardware and Sound” control panel. If you click the main link, several new ‘main’ topics appear each with sub-topics shown. From a user interface point of view, I find this marvelously self documenting.

I’m now playing around with the Windows XP Mode Virtual Machine. Apparently K’s Palm Centro has no support for Windows 7 and even less for 64-bit machines. Accordingly, I’m trying to install the synchronization software into the virtual machine. The beauty is that from a user perspective, once installed, the applications running in this virtual environment appear as any other application on the main Win7 desktop. Of course it needs to interface with Outlook too, so now I have two installations of Outlook,^[2] one in Win 7 and one in WXP to allow the Palm to synch. Both Outlooks point to the same user file, so they will be in synch automatically. The Palm software is not impressing me with its modularity. Perhaps this is why they are getting their lunch eaten by Blackberry, Microsoft and Apple.

1. The BIOS would start the OS load, then the OS load would puke after about 5 seconds. [↩]
2. Which of course is driving the Windows online validation to fits, so we’ll see how long it is before the WXP virtual install disables itself… or the Microsoft goons come crashing through the windows(!) with stun grenades. [↩]

It’s about freaking time somebody implemented this! Thunderbird 3.0 just noticed that I had the word “attached” in my email and put up a reminder to check if I had intended to attach something to the message.

Sweet.

It allows you to add the attachment immediately, or “Remind Me Later” so that it prompts you if you try to send without the attachment in place.

Although it is too late for any commentary on this research to impact my purchasing decisions (the PC is already built and I’m using it right now), I’d still like to get it up before it is completely obsolete. So let’s go…

As always, building a new PC requires the integration of a few primary components which are listed in the order I generally consider them. Although in this case, I bought the power supply first. The same unit I used to replace the noisemaker that was my previous PS, the 500W OCZ supply from NewEgg, was once again available for $39.99 after MIB. Anyhow, the list goes…

1. CPU
2. Motherboard
3. Memory
4. System Disk
5. Video
6. Power Supply
7. Case
8. Optical Drive
9. OS
10. Peripherals

Much detail and rambling on after the fold… you have been warned.
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With a new member of the household, it’s been pretty busy around here. I have much to report, but haven’t had time to do any reporting.

Here is a list of what I’d like to take some time to write about… as a promissory note and a to-do list.

1. R is growing fast. We have a 1 month growth chart pic and many more. I will get these online soon.
2. N continues to be a joy. He’s learning so fast now I’m not sure school will be ready for him in two more years. He’s working on reading and spelling simple words. He’ll be 3 in May.
3. Snow! We finally got real winter weather here in central NY. Pics of outdoor snow constructions will be coming soon.
4. New PC research. With our tax returns burning a hole in our bank accounts, I’ve begun the process of specing out a new machine for K. We also need to get Win7 installed before N wipes out our much-more-difficult-to-secure WXP household PC.
5. New PC constructed. I’m using it now to write this post… and will use it to edit the pics to post them. I owe you comments on Win7, and performance of the new machine. Not to mention the build process itself. Must keep installing stuff if I’m going to get into a position to clear out this list.

Ok. Must get back to installation.

Cooties took a bit more effort to model in Excel than HHCO because the game has distinct states. The objective is to collect all the body parts of your Cootie bug which include: 1 Body, 1 Head, 1 Mouth, 1 Pair of eyes((A single molded piece)), 1 Headgear^[1] and 6 Legs. However, you must collect the Body followed by the Head before any other parts may be collected. Each part is selected based on the throw of a standard 6-sided die. If you successfully add a part to your bug, you get to roll again in the same turn. I didn’t model this, but rather did the statistics based on number of rolls required.

The average number of rolls required to complete the bug, based on 100 Monte Carlo runs, is 44 rolls. I’d estimate a tolerance of about +/- 5 rolls. Any individual player is not likely to reach this number, however, since any one lucky player at the table will end the game considerably earlier.

There is about a 20% chance of victory by 28 rolls for any single player. For four players, the game is over 60% of the time by this point. By 40 rolls, about 45% of players will have won meaning our table of 4 will have completed over 91% of the time. I did have one ‘simulation’ exceed my modeling table with no victory after 100 rolls. The next highest was 77 rolls, but the density increased significantly below that.

Now if we can just get Nate to settle down enough to roll when it’s his turn we might actually get through a game in under 30 minutes.

1. In the modern version this includes antenna, a hat or a bow. [↩]

Well this is the requisite Avatar response post since it seems like the primary thing to write about these days other than the impossibility of complete aircraft security.

Overall, my reaction was very positive. I’m notorious for pointing out the inconsistencies in computer generated effect and plot lines. But strangely, perhaps intentionally, it was the live-action sequences that felt out of place in this film. I’m not sure that I ever felt like the environment was truly photo-realistic, but it wasn’t cartoon-ish either. The film moved along at a steady pace, with the occasional ‘slow’ section was more than filled with eye candy. The same technique was used to distract you from the occasional plot hole… quick, change scenes to something pretty and the audience won’t notice the flaw. I saw the 3D showing (for the exorbitant price of $13), and the depth given by this illusion was worth it. The depth made the scenes more enveloping, and they didn’t kick you in the occipital lobe too often.

This is not a spoiler for anyone who has seen the previews, but stop reading if you’re the nervous type about such things.
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I just completed a relatively significant upgrade of the blog database as well as a normal WordPress software update. It looks like things are up and running, and if all went well, you won’t notice. Let me know if you do.

Yes really.

Nate got a series of classic kids games for Christmas: Hi-Ho-Cherry-Oh, Candyland, Memory and Cooties. With the exception of Memory, these are all games of complete and total chance. For those that haven’t played,^[1] three of them basically go like this:

1. Invoke a random event.
2. Execute required action.
3. Has victory condition been met?
   • If so, yippee.
   • If not, repeat from step 1.

For Hi-Ho-Cherry-Oh, the randomizer is a spinner with 7 positions. Four positions let you take from 1 to 4 cherries off your tree, two positions penalize you 2 cherries and the last causes you to loose all of your cherries. Once you have collected 10 cherries, you win.

So being the geek that I am, I found myself wondering the average number of cherries gained per spin. At first this is simple (1+2+3+4-2-2)/6=1. Unfortunately, there is that nasty bucket which is a variable penalty. Rather than create the entire statistical equation,^[2] I simply created a Monte Carlo simulation in Excel. After about 100 ‘games’ it was clear that the average payout is between 1 and 1.1 cherries per turn.((This is determined as the 10 cherries needed to win divided by the number of spins required to get there. Even though the last spin might put you over 10, you can’t get that many off the tree.))

The shortest game is three spins (4,4,4;4,4,3;4,4,2;4,3,3). There are 10 winning series as the spins could come in any order and 343 possible outcomes. The odds are 2.9% of winning in the minimum amount of time. Of course the odds of a shorter game improve with more players as the game ends if any of the players succeeds, so roughly this increases to 11%. The maximum game is theoretically infinite, but about 40% of the time 10 spins or fewer are required (85% of the time for four players). By 20 spins, a solitaire game is over 75% of the time (with four players this would increase to 99.6%).

Ok, I now return you to your regularly scheduled intra-holiday period.

Maybe I’ll work on Cooties tomorrow. Candyland is just too annoying.

1. Really? [↩]
2. Involving Markov chains, etc. [↩]