Category: Uncategorized

A long time ago I purchased a copy of Settlers 6 by Ubisoft to run under my old XP system. It’s a real-time strategy game, with city-building and only a little combat (in most scenarios), so it easily fits into the category of game I usually enjoy (which I wrote about back in April last year ). I ran through the first nine scenarios OK, but ran into a lot of trouble on the tenth, Juahar. I stopped playing the game out of frustration and shifted back to others like Pharaoh/Cleopatra that I liked better.

When I recently updated to a new machine with Windows 8, I installed it again but decided I’d consult a walkthrough to avoid the kinds of frustrations I ran into the first time around. This led me to think about what kind of advice I really wanted. Basically, the walkthrough, though excellent, often gave me too much information for optimal enjoyment. Don’t get me wrong — the walkthrough was well written, and I’m delighted to have had it to look at. It turned the scenario from something frustrating to something enjoyable. But I’d have enjoyed the game more if I knew a little less.

Continue reading “Walkthroughs versus Let’s Play versus What I Really Want”

Last November failblog posted George Takei’s description of the hierarchy of geekdom:

• Geek: Understands, creates, and fixes Really Cool Stuff.
• Nerd: Understands and collects Really Cool Stuff.
• Dork: Confused by Really Cool Stuff.

Personally I think he got Geek and Nerd reversed, since most geek websites I visit are primarily about popular culture rather than creating and fixing things — but lots of people use “geek” and “nerd” nearly interchangeably. But the main thing that occurred to me is that he left out one more category — one we no longer have a word for:

• [?]: creates Really Cool Stuff by cleverly combining things nobody else would have thought to put together.

We used to have a word, but in popular parlance it came to have a much narrower and almost entirely negative meaning.

That word is “hacker.”

Continue reading “George Takei’s geek taxonomy”

My wife teaches our primary introductory programming class, CISC 121 , and regularly has to advise students whether to take the even-more-introductory class first. The even-more-introductory course, CISC 101 , presumes no programming experience at all. The primary course presumes “some previous experience with programming” but many students find they don’t have enough such experience.

It occurred to me that there’s a useful analogy to explain to students why their little bit of programming experience isn’t enough for the regular course: levels of programming skill are much like levels of writing prose.

Continue reading “Programming and Writing: an Analogy”

Anyone who spends more than few milliseconds reading Internet forums and unmoderated comments discovers that the anonymity of the Internet encourages some people to make the kind of inflammatory remark they’d likely never make face to face. If called on it, some people “apologize” (not) by claiming they can’t help it because they lack social skills. Apparently some go even further, pretending they have Asperger’s Syndrome , a recognized psychological condition. Being an Aspie is supposed to be some sort of trump card to cut off criticism.

Personally, I expect that very few of these claims (“pretend” is Norman English for “claim”) are valid.

Continue reading “Aspies are not A**h*les”

1. There is one right answer to every question, and Mommy knows it.
2. There is one right answer to every question; if Mommy doesn’t know it, someone else does.
3. There is one right answer to every question, but maybe nobody knows it.

Continue reading “Cognitive Flexibility”