Trapped on a Strange Planet

Christmas haul

2009-12-27T04:55:19Z

What I got this Christmas:

Books:

The Metamorphoses of Tintin, or Tintin for Adults by Jean-Marie Apostolidès
Cocktail Boothby's American Bar-Tender by William T. "Cocktail" Boothby ("Endorsed by all Clubmen and Mixologists")

CDs

The Ventures - Walk Don't Run: The Best of The Ventures
Devin Townsend - Ziltoid the Omniscient
Vijay Iyer Trio - Historicity

and a Slinky.

Also, new suits in preparation for an upcoming job interview. Not shown because I'll be picking them up on Tuesday.

I got my dad several jazz CDs: The Man Who Cried Fire by Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Guitar by McCoy Tyner (featuring Bela Fleck, Bill Frisell, Marc Ribot, John Scofield, and Derek Trucks), and a box set of Sonny Stitt (with booklet by Harvey Pekar). For my mom it was books: the Oxford Book of English Verse, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, and Ursula Vernon's Irrational Fears.

Dinner was our traditional Christmas spread: roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, stuffed mushrooms, and creamed spinach garnished with hard-boiled egg yolks and toast stars. This year mom supplemented the usual menu with homemade dinner rolls. Dessert was a trifle made with custard, pound cake, sherry, sour cherry jam, and Cherry Heering.

I hope you all had a merry Christmas!

Ninja Assassin

2009-12-17T21:38:22Z

It's looking more and more like the Wachowski Bros. got lucky once.

Just saw Ninja Assassin last night. It's worth it just for what must be the lamest ending theme ever. "Listen to the voice of Buddha", guys? Really?

Anyway, movie: dumb as hell but pretty fun. Almost as ridiculous as Kung Fu Zombie, though not nearly as insane. Certainly gorier, though the gore is so over-the-top that it becomes cartoonish, like Dead Alive. People in this movie spray gallons everywhere: cutting off a finger launches more blood than is actually present in a human body. And they love (read: overuse) the effect of blood splattering against the screen, though it has an orange-ish hue that makes it seem more like the result of getting a spastic kindergartener hopped up on Pixy Stix and letting him loose with a bucket of red tempura paint.

The ninja in this movie fail at stealth. They can do all of this cool disappearing-into-shadows stuff, but whenever a bunch of them were sneaking up on somebody in a group, they whisper a lot really loudly. Guys, people can hear you when you do that. And pretty much all stealth and secrecy goes out the window by the time ninjas are running all over the road and getting hit by cars.

The Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu in in full effect in this movie, though it's relative to the number of opponents. One ninja is a murder machine, and a group can take on an army, but that same group vs. one guy will have a hell of a time of it, and a zillion ninja at their home base drop like flies. You can even see it in effect in individual fights: in one fight Raizo takes on about six other ninja and totally slaughters them with nary a scratch until he's down to one, who's suddenly able to go toe to toe with him.

The movie bogged down whenever it paused the action for some plot or flashbacks (tons of flashbacks in this movie). The plot is pretty thin, and full of holes. It's not so much a case of Fridge Logic as reaching-for-the-Junior-Mints logic. How has a group that'll run out into busy traffic to catch a guy and pelt a car with shuriken* able to stay secret for thousands of years? How can a guy whose first attempt to assassinate some fat guy went horribly wrong and ended up with a brutal brawl (highly reminiscent of the opening of Casino Royale BTW) suddenly turn into Lord King Badass a few minutes later? How can an army with a bunch of APCs and Humvees sneak up on a mountain fortress that is clearly shown as being accessible only by a narrow path with cliffs on all sides? How can you not laugh when a character says in all seriousness to somebody trying to kill him, "Whatever they're paying you, I'll double it!"

The female lead is mostly ineffectual and not very interesting. It's really Raizo's movie, so during the early scenes that focus on her I found myself waiting for the movie to get going again. Her boss was kind of likeable at least.

On the other hand, Sho Motherfucking Kosugi, bitches! His lines were mostly hokey but he still came off as threatening. Also, he has Akuma's teleport dash from Street Fighter.

Quick trailer reviews: The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus looks like it has a bunch of nifty visuals, and also Tom Waits as the Devil. Cool eye candy at the very least. Sherlock Holmes looks like it may rival Disney's Hunchback of Nortre Dame in terms of Hollywood completely missing the point. It does have a few amusing bits, though; it just has jack-all to do with Arthur Conan Doyle.

Incidentally, the Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley (at least, the theater I was in) are now equipped with love seats instead of the usual theater seating, and bean bag chairs in the front. WTF? Not complaining, but, it's just weird. They had built-in cup holders and everything, so it's clearly not like how the Parkway has a bunch of old furniture: this stuff was made for theaters. Is this the new trend?

*BTW, is it just me or is shuriken a really terrible weapon for a group trying to keep people from finding out that they exist? It's highly distinctive, and you use it by throwing it away.

Mwa ha ha ha ha!

2009-12-12T06:52:48Z

Lionheart Chess

2009-12-08T18:29:34Z

Been working on another chess variant. It's a "large board" (10x10) type, and to some extent a kitchen sink variant incorporating a bunch of pieces I find interesting. Still, even though it's not really finished yet, I think it holds some promise.

Each side starts with ten pawns on the third rank, "elemental" pieces on the second rank, and "complex" pieces on the first rank. The elemental pieces are the Rook, Knight, Bishop, and Squire. The complex pieces are the Lionheart King, Queen, Archbishop, Marshall, Cavalry, Gryphon, Hippogriff, and Unicorn.

The Rook, Bishop, and Queen move as they do in standard chess. The Knight is enhanced: It moves as a standard chess knight but, if the square it jumps to is unoccupied, it has the option of sliding one more space diagonally away from its starting rank and file. This sliding move may be used to capture. The Squire (S) moves like a standard chess King, but is not royal: it is not prohibited from moving onto a threatened square, and can be captured like any other piece.

The complex pieces consist of each compound of two elemental pieces, and a "bent" or extended form of each elemental move. The compounds are the Queen (Rook + Bishop, of course), Archbishop (bishop + knight), Marshall (Rook + Knight), and Cavalry (Knight + Squire).

The Gryphon is taken from Grande Acedrex, a very old variant of medieval chess (Shatranj), where it is called a giraffe. Its move is one step diagonally followed by any number of orthogonal steps away from its starting rank or file. It is a "bent rook". The Hippogriff* is its counterpart, starting with a single orthogonal step and proceeding diagonally away from its starting rank and file. It is a "bent bishop".

The Unicorn is a bit odd: it slides any number of spaces, alternating orthogonal and diagonal steps. If another piece is in its path, it may jump that piece like a standard chess knight, but must stop after the jump. This is the extended version of the knight-move.

The Lionheart King takes the place of the bent or extended Squire, and is the royal piece that must be checkmated to win. It takes its name from the lion from Chu Shogi and Dai Shogi**. It moves as a standard chess king, but as a half action, and a player may make one or two half actions in a single turn. It is thus able to capture two pieces in a turn, or capture and move back to its starting square (the latter called igui), though there are restrictions. It cannot end its turn on a threatened square (same as standard chess), it cannot capture on or move through a threatened square to capture unless it captures the only piece threatening that square ("check en passant"), it cannot take its second step if it captures a pawn on the first step ("pawn stalling") and if it starts its move in check it may only take one step unless the second step would capture the only piece giving check ("staring down"). There is no castling; the king is much more mobile in this variant, so there seems to be less need (also, the king and rooks start on different ranks).

Pawns have the same basic move as in standard chess: moving passively one step directly forward, and capturing one step on either forward diagonal. There are a few differences, however. When sitting on the third rank, it can also move passively one step diagonally forwards, but loses this ability as soon as it has left that rank. A pawn move is a half-action, like the Lionheart King's move, but a single pawn cannot be moved twice on a single turn (in other words, you can move two pawns per turn). The only exception is if the pawn has not moved on a previous turn: in that case, it may make two passive moves. A pawn that has made a double move as its first move may be captured by an enemy pawn on the opponent's following turn as if it had only made the first of its two moves (en passant capture). No more than one pawn may capture on a single turn.

To balance first move advantage, white's first pawn move is a full action.

Pawns may promote when they reach the 9th or 10th rank. A pawn may only promote to a piece that has been previously captured by the opponent. Promoting a pawn is a half action, with two restrictions: no more than one of each player's pawns may promote in a turn, and a promotion cannot be the only action taken (at least one half action must move a piece). All of the pieces that a pawn may promote to move as a full action, so it's not possible on a single turn to promote a sitting pawn and then take the promoted piece's move.

Half actions may be mixed. For example, in a single turn a player may move two pawns, or move and promote one pawn, or move a pawn and the king (one space), or move the king two spaces, or move the king one space and promote a pawn.

I haven't really decided on a board setup yet. I think I want to keep the king and queen next to each other in the middle. There are 4 2nd-rank piece types and 10 files, so there will be four of one piece on that rank (probably the guards; they're a bit cannon-foddery) and two of each of the others.

*In his article on bent riders on chessvariants.org, Ralph Betza names this piece the "Aanca", but I don't like that name. It's just Spanish for "gryphon". I prefer Hippogriff because it is like a gryphon, but also like a horse (knight): its move includes the Xiangqi horse (mao, a knight that cannot jump), and it always ends up on a square of the color opposite the one it started on. CV.org uses "hippogriff" for a limited form of the Gryphon, but they seem unlikely to coexist in a single game.

**Old, larger variants of shogi. Chu shogi ("middle shogi") was played with 46 pieces per side on a 12x12 board. Dai shogi ("large shogi") used 65 pieces per side on a 15x15 board. Sho shogi ("small shogi") was played on a 9x9 and evolved directly into modern shogi.

Are they still on Melmac?

2009-12-02T00:28:32Z

Dragon Alf by ~Freideugoi on deviantART

Attention, Internets

2009-12-01T23:09:53Z

I do hereby decree that Kanye West interruption icons are officially Old Meme.

Time to bring back the seasonal userpics

2009-11-27T16:29:11Z

Thanksgiving is over, so the Christmas season has semi-officially begun. Time to break out the Christmas avatars and the Pac-Man Christmas Album!

Black box pawns

2009-11-24T00:48:36Z

Got to thinking about chess variants lately. Specifically, spicing up pawn promotions.

In standard chess, technically a pawn that reaches the back row can promote to any first-rank piece other than the king. In practice, it almost always promotes to a queen, and only very very rarely to a knight. There's no point in promoting to rook or bishop, since the queen contains the moves for both. The choice of promotion would be more interesting if the pawn could promote to any compound of simple first-rank pieces: the queen (bishop+rook), archbishop (bishop+knight), or marshall (rook+knight). Possibly other pieces of similar strength as well.

The idea of allowing pawn promotion to fairy chess pieces not found in the starting array is not new. My idea is for the promotion to be undeclared, and revealed by how the piece is moved. There would therefore be an element of deduction on the part of the opposing player. For example, if the promoted pawn slides orthagonally, the player knows that it has a rook component (a queen or marshall); if it later makes a knight's move, it must be a marshall.

A bit like a particle in quantum mechanics, its move only "collapses" into something definite as it is observed. Until the player commits to a specific move, it could be anything. In other words, the player doesn't have to decide on a promotion as soon as the pawn reaches the back row, but fixes components as he goes. If only one component has been used (for example, an orthagonal move meaning the piece is part rook), the player can still keep his options open and decide whether it's also part knight or part bishop later.

We can say that a pawn that has reached the 8th rank but has not moved yet is unexposed: its nature is not known. One that has made only one type of move is partly exposed. One that has made two types of moves is fully exposed: its move possibilities are fixed, and it is effectively

The problem here is that a pawn that is not yet fully exposed is immensely powerful. If it is unexposed, it threatens all of the squares for any of its potential moves (since it's free to choose any of those moves as a component). If partly exposed, it still threatens all squares for all possible components, because it is still indeterminate between the two unknown components. This is way too powerful, effectively an amazon (rook+bishop+knight): the game Maharajah and the Sepoys pits a single royal (kinglike: unable to move into threatened squares, game lost if it cannot escape capture) amazon on one side against an entire chess army on the other, and the full army only barely outclasses it. To fix this, we can rule that squares are only threatened if the player reveals that they are on his turn (explicit), or they are threatened by a move that has already been exposed (implicit). If the space is not threatened (explicitly or implicitly), the promoted pawn is not allowed to capture a piece that moves there on the next turn (although it may fix a component later that would have allowed it to make that capture if it had been set beforehand).

This rule could also be limited to determining threatened squares only for purposes of giving check (since a king is not allowed to move into check).

Let's add another possible promotion to the mix. A piece with the king's move (minus royal restrictions and castling) is called a "mann", and is a valid basic piece that could be used as a component. The combination of a mann and knight is called a centaur, and while it is short-range and seems weak, it is actually a pretty strong piece in the same range as the previously mentioned compounds (and maybe a bit stronger than the bishop+knight). Mann+bishop and mann+rook can be safely ignored; while perfectly valid pieces in their own right, they are both subsets of the queen and therefore redundant in this case.

The addition of this piece causes some interesting complications. A single-space move, orthagonal or diagonal, no longer unambiguously reveals a full component (a knightwise move still reveals a knight component on its own). A piece that has made a knight's move and a single-space orthagonal move may be a marshall or a centaur (if it also makes a single-space diagonal move, though, it's clearly a centaur; if it slides more than one space orthagonally, it's clearly a marshall). A piece that has made a single-space diagonal move and a knightwise move could be archbishop or centaur. One that has moved only like a king may be queen or centaur.

Now another type of piece: the bent riders gryphon and aanca. Technically these aren't compound pieces at all: a gryphon moves one space diagonally followed by sliding at least one orthagonally away from the starting space; the aanca swaps these (one orthagonal, multiple diagonal). However, I believe they around the same range of strength, especially in the endgame when the board is relatively cleared out. They also make deductions more complicated, because they include the knight's move, but not exactly. Unlike a knightwise jump, they can be blocked: a gryphon on a diagonally adjacent square, the aanca on an orthagonally adjacent square. An unimpeded knight's move could be any piece but a queen, but if there was a piece in the way, the possibilities narrow.

While it seems like this element of uncertainty would be a sort of "wild card", the game is still actually deterministic. It may not seem so, but it is still a complete information game: the possible moves of every piece are known to both players.

Another way of achieving a "black box" effect of pawn promotions would be for a player who promotes a pawn to determine at the time of promotion which piece it now is, note it down, and hold to that decision. Under this rule, there would be no "declared threat": if the piece can capture with one of its moves, it can, and if the opposing player moves his king to a threatened square, he must be told that he has moved into check and allowed to take back the move. While this is probably easier to understand, it actually does add an incomplete information aspect to the game, and would play very differently. Call this one "Clue Chess".

Jack-o'-lanterns 2009

2009-11-01T21:31:01Z

I'm pretty proud of how they turned out this year. The one on the left is my dad's, and the one on the right is mine. Dad was working around several bite marks made by (we think) squirrels, while the mouth of mine started with a gouge I made accidentally when I was gutting it. Mine was going to be a triclops, but the middle eye wasn't centered enough and I decided I liked the lopsided face more.

There were a lot more trick-or-treaters coming by this year than there have been in recent years, which was nice.

I finished off the night watching the MST3k of the classic crapfest Robot Monster, a movie so cheap that they couldn't afford a robot costume, so they used a borrowed gorilla suit with a helmet instead. Season One of MST3k was...odd. Not a big fan of Josh Weinstein. Larry, the second mad scientist, wasn't that funny (replacing him with TV's Frank was a good move, because the boss/lackey dynamic had more comedic potential) and I prefer Kevin Murphy's sarcastic, slightly fabulous version of Tom Servo to Weinstein's deadpan one. They were still definitely working out the kinks: they wasted pretty much the entire opening credits sequence to the Commando Cody episodes that preceded the film proper with unfunny variations on "not another one" and "wow, this is bad", and in general there weren't really enough quips. The show really hit its stride in Season Two; two of my all-time favorites are from that season (First Spaceship on Venus "Secretly, we've replaced their planet with Folger's Crystals" and Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster "Kabob, and Ka-Steve!").

Facebook: website coding FAIL

2009-11-01T00:38:44Z

Facebook and Mozilla apparently don't get along. I can't post status updates from my home computer. If I click on the "What's on your mind?" box, it goes blank, changes size a little bit, and doesn't accept any input. If I type anything, the browser thinks I'm trying to do a find-in-page, because it doesn't recognize that box as an object that takes focus.

Why in the everloving fuck do so many sites insist on rolling their own text input widgets? They're inevitably slower than normal ones (Last.FM really took the cake here for a while, with a text widget that would make a network call for every letter typed just so it could display a little "376/500 characters" thing) and usually glitchy. The vanilla text boxes work fine! Use them!

The threads in the support forums indicate that this problem has been around for the last couple of months, and are full of people saying that they've gotten no response from tech support.

Just in time for Halloween, the most epic horror movie ever made

2009-10-31T21:37:31Z

Dragged kicking and screaming into Web 2.0

2009-10-27T23:04:09Z

I finally got badgered into getting a Facebook profile.

I have no idea what I intend to do with it, and it'll probably go the way of my MySpace page (which I check about once a year, when I remember it exists). But still, yep, there it is.

Watch me get whupped on!

2009-10-27T05:23:53Z

Still haven't had time to put together a real comprehensive post on my trip, but to tide you all over here's a couple of videos of me at the tournament:

My match from the men's team randori event:

The freestyle kata I did with Ash:

I don't think there's any video of my individual randori match, or my koryu dai san suwari waza with Aaron from the kongodantaisen.

Only in Japan

2009-10-25T05:08:01Z

日本語で：　これはBKのMSウィンドーズ７ワーパーです。七百七十七円ハンバーガーです。パッティーが七枚あります。日本だけで七日だけで売り物です。こわいですね？

英語で：　This is Burger King's MS Windows 7 Whopper. It's a ¥777 hamburger. It has 7 patties. It's for sale only in Japan for 7 days. Scary, huh?

Sheepimation

2009-10-24T06:32:53Z

This is what happens when shepherds get really bored

Safe for work. Honest.

Fashionably late, of course

2009-10-24T05:13:48Z

Happy birthday, Maggie!

R.I.P. Captain Lou

2009-10-16T07:46:06Z

Captain Lou Albano, dead of natural causes at 76.

To soothe the pain of his loss, here's a few videos to remember him by.

In the not too distant future

2009-10-10T02:44:34Z

...I just got Rickrolled by Mystery Science Theater.

I got

2009-10-07T19:53:11Z

The Muppet Show season 2 for my birthday.

HELL YES. Also: Logicomics, a graphic novel biography of Bertrand Russell, which looks interesting.

And a tie. I guess I am getting old.

I am

2009-10-06T21:36:42Z

30.

And I really feel like watching some MST3k, but I won't have any time until the weekend. :(

You're gonna love my nuts

2009-10-02T06:32:21Z

Vacation post still pending

2009-10-01T18:10:50Z

In case anyone's wondering why I haven't posted about my trip yet, it's because about half of my photos are on a laptop that is still currently in Japan, travelling with a friend. I'd maxed out my memory card (due to shooting video of matches, which I may be able to YouTubify later) about halfway through and needed to make room. He'll be back next week, I think, though I may not be able to meet up with him until the following weekend.

In the meantime, if you hear any rumors about me at the tournament afterparty, they are scandalous lies.

IN AMERICA (and England)

2009-09-30T06:14:35Z

This game has to be seen to be disbelieved. Metal Wolf Chaos, the heartwarming story of a President of the United States and his trustworthy mecha. Think Air Force One in mecha anime form, but with dialogue ten times worse.

And speaking of SIPPING some DELICIOUS DARJEELING TEA, behold the Chap Olympics, a sporting meet for "traditional gentlemen who are against the vulgarity of modern culture", including events such as the Three-Trousered Limbo, Pipe Relay, and a competition to mix a dry martini (without the aid of a butler).

I have returned

2009-09-28T06:56:58Z

I lost all of my matches, ate some good food and some terrible food, drank way too much beer, saw Nijo castle and the Heian Imperial Palace as well as several temples and shrines, and generally had a blast. I will be back.

More substantive posts (with photos!) to come.

Now, to bed. It's good to be home.

Big ol' jet airliner, don't carry me too far away

2009-09-18T14:53:28Z

The airport shuttle will be picking me up in about a half hour. Japan here I come!

I'm bringing my laptop, but I'm not sure how many Internets I'll have over there