Food Adventures

So this past week my girlfriend and I decided to do our on BBQ Chicago-style pizza, here is the link to here post about it, it was amazing: http://andrealynchlens.com/wp/?p=23 .

On the internet learnings

So, a big trend now are webinars or web lectures.  The Khan Academy is a great example.  I’ve been using to recently to hone up on some of my know atrophied math skills, as well as generally re-familiarizing myself with different concepts.  Additionally a conglomeration of universities have begun providing lecture series online for anyone to attend, do assignments, and receive a certificate of completion.  This is such a great environment.  Here are individuals providing lectures, for free, largely to provide those seeking the knowledge willingly (as opposed to some degree requirement), promoting a really productive learning environment.  Typically these lectures are offered in 10-15 minute bites, and are about 5-8 week programs.  These used to be limited to topics in field of computer science and mathematics but Coursera.org has expanded to include topics on sociology and literature.

There is one observation I have.  This isn’t a place for professors to slack off.  Often times the enrollment for these courses are large and global, and criticisms come (and fair ones at that, I may add).  An example, I’m taking two courses at the moment.  On the first day, one offered the complete listing of course lectures to be viewed at your leisure (in 10-15 minute blocks), the assignments, quizzes, and syllabus.  The other, offered a cursory introduction lecture summarizing the topic a little haphazardly, and stated that the syllabus and further information would be provided at the beginning of the next week. This week all that is available is the next lecture, of similar quality.  While I can appreciate the priorities and responsibilities of a professor, these web series aren’t “sprung” on them, and they are allowed time to prepare, as evidenced by materials prepared in other subjects.  If you’re unable to dedicate your time to the project, please allow someone else with more attention to detail suitable for format to take the helm.  Otherwise you’re hardly doing yourself any favors.

In completely other news, my girlfriend and I will be trying our hand at making a BBQ Chicago-style pizza.  News to follow (next week).

On the gaming apocalypse

So it has been quite awhile, I wasn’t kidding when I said fall gaming was going to wreck me.  So a bit on that.  Deus Ex:  Human Revolution was fantastic, it was just the sort of game I was looking for.  Sure it seemed to reward players for being slightly more stealthy, or slightly less ….murderous…, but in the end the difference in rewards didn’t prevent your character from maxing out, or causing you to miss any content.  Rather your physical decisions in situations (not press “A” for good guy, “B” for bad guy) would actually change the outcomes.  For once, I actually found myself doing something unique, playing a role in a single player video game.  Typically when I play these games, I find myself playing from the prospective of the developer “Oh okay I’m supposed to say this in the dialogue option to make sure I get the key from that guy without having to stab his wife” and so on.  However, this time I’d get into a situation and say “I’m a former Cop, these guys aren’t shooting me, I have to detain them without alerting the guy guarding the hostages…”  It was a pretty terrific experience and that sense of immersion really brought out some of the plot twists and action set pieces.  There were other great little tidbits, too.  Many conflicts could be resolved by conversation, and one particular interaction even had the opposing person commenting if you dwelled too long on making a conversation choice.  The only unfortunate thing about the game was it ended fairly abruptly.

It was almost as if the dev’s were having too much fun making the game and realized next week they were going to have to submit something.  Many times these designs are made to accommodate  DLC to finish the story.  This is becoming more problematic in the industry (Heyo Mass Effect 3), and doesn’t give much incentive for buyers to purchase what is effectively an “incomplete” game when it is initially released.  I don’t mind side-missions or downloadable content that may add a mission that when I finish it I get a reference made somewhere else, however, give us legitimate purchasers the story in one sitting.  It’s like good cooks say, take the extra time and have the customers wait and guarantee they’re getting the best product and complete experience possible.

Next brings me to Battlefield 3.  I’ve been a huge fan of the battlefield franchise, the only games I’ve never really picked up were Vietnam and the original Bad Company.  They’re a great combination of the over-the-top mechanics and strategic team play on large levels.  BF3 at first was not an exception to this.  It was great to play in lush jungle levels, urban cities, sprawling deserts, or mountain hideaways.  To be honest I haven’t bothered with the singleplayer, I feel it was a bit idiotic of them to commit so much time to a feature the core Battlefield series had nothing to do with.  The time spent on that content could have helped develop some more multiplayer maps or components.  There are balance issues and odd quirks (flashlights still managing to blind you in broad daylight), but the gameplay remained fast and fun.  That was until the latest round of patches (I play on the PS3 version…no snickering).  The server rotation scheme renders their quick match methodology useless.  I almost exclusively play Rush mode, where a map is progressively explored by capturing two stations by an attacking team.  I like the mode because you have to use coordination, and it is just generally tense.  Now however, servers have added random rotations, so I may join a rush game for 5 minutes before the rounds end, to find I’m now going to conquest or (if the gods hate me) a squad rush or deathmatch game.  It was one of those decisions that made you tilt your head and think “You never considered running this by the community, eh?”

Lately I’ve moved on to playing Star Wars:  The Old Republic.  So, one “confession” is I’m a gigantic Star Wars nerd.  Love it.  Second, I typically cannot abide MMOs.  They can hold my attention for about 2-3 weeks and I just get bored with the grind.  What Bioware did here was clever, for the most part.  You essentially have a cohesive, voiced, and contained storyline for each class that you choose to play as.  So going to each town/planet/warzone makes a modicum of sense in a broader view of things.  Additionally, the player versus player content is pretty entertaining.  However, now that the game has been out for awhile, clear server imbalances are coming up.  Each server has a Republic (“good guy”) and Sith Empire (“bad guy”) faction that players join, each with unique classes and stories.  When you go fight in a Warzone (Think little battlegrounds with objectives) most of the time the opposing factions on the server are fighting.  As time has progressed one side has started to amass more players than the other, making these warzones very difficult to progress through.  Hopefully Bioware implements cross-server PvP similar to what World of Warcraft did to even out these imbalances.

Anyway I’ve written much more about video games than I had intended to.  Deal with it.

Cry havoc! And let slip the games of Fall!

So, like I mentioned before, this summer had a wealth of super hero and generally great flicks. Nothing that’ll win any Oscars, mind you. But the sort that leaving you chewing popcorn until you fossilize kernels into your enamel. What was nice about the Summer movie rush, was that they seemed to be fairly evenly spread. Each month there was something that you were willing to take out a small loan to go see.

Now the games industry on the other hand…This summer was a pretty spartan (not a Halo reference) affair. See, I’d imagine this would be the time to really capitalize on your target audience. Most of us have more than ample free time in these months. I actually used to use it as a time to catch up on any backlog of electronic, written, or other forms entertainment. But, nope, not a whole lot this year. Sure, there were some delightfully quirky titles, and a few diamonds in the rough. The big heavy hitters, though, they had to wait until all the conferences and conventions were over to make sure they had everyones undivided, drooling attention.

Of course, this now means there is a deluge of games. We’ve seen the release of the new Deus Ex, September has some games that people are excited about, October sees Rage, Batman: Akrham City, and Battlefield 3. I’m only quasi-complaining, it’s great all these titles are coming out, but man it is going to be an e-slap fest for attention whoring.

Really, what it boils down to is this…I’m probably going to have to sell my other kidney to afford this Fall gaming season.

An aside about movies

So, it isn’t much of a secret, but I’m a fairly big geek.  I work with robots, programming, etc. regularly, so I suppose it is par of the course.  In addition to these technophile tendencies, I also enjoy all manner of pop culture:  video games, sci-fi movies, pen and paper rpgs…linux.  These are interesting times, a new counter culture has emerged making these things …cool.  Maybe that is a bit too progressive, they’re cooler.  Much like shooting yourself in the shin instead of the foot.  A result of this, is a big drive to bring some of these media to a mass audience.  What better way than film?

Comics have had bittersweet film adaptations in the past.  Often times directors wanted to gain notoriety by telling some half-hearted story with a beloved hero, rarely wanting to pay an homage to them.  Some proved monumental for their achievements in special effects at the time, like Superman in ’78, but until recently they all had this campy feel and lacked a certain “soul” the comics had.

Lately, directors that grew up with the stories and are fueled by that fanboy fanaticism have taken the helm.  Christopher Nolan, Jon Favereau, Bryan Singer (for X-men not his Superman flick), and Sam Rami all had a passion not just about the characters, but the nature of the comics themselves.  Thankfully, studios have been able to relinquish control to some degree, too.  Even the most passionate and enthusiastic directors have to bend a knee, now and then.

It’s a shame to see some films like Green Lantern, though.  This was an opportunity to really tell the story of an ongoing space opera, not only epic in scale, but fun on that Star Wars level.  I won’t really comment too much more on the film, since I really can’t bring myself to see it.  Out of the DC universe, the three characters I feel a strong dedication to are Batman, Green Lantern, and Superman.  This film just seemed to do too much too soon.  Parallax (the giant yellow thing in the trailers) is one of the Green Lanterns biggest threats, having Hal fight him in the opening movie would have been like Luke pants’ing the Emperor in A New Hope.  In general, it appeared to ignore the soul of the comics, a sense of heroism and wonder in new frontiers.

Fingers crossed for Captain America.

Robots and robots, with a side of robots

So things have been amazingly busy lately.  We’ve been deploying new robots, like the breakbot, which is meant to help reduce repetitive stress injuries at the workplace.  This little guy was built from scratch using Arduino microcontrollers and hobby electronics, all encased in little tubs hastily gathered from our local Target.  They have a couple of motors in them to allow two degrees of motion, a tri-color LED to reflect the robots “mood,”  a piezo sensor that allows for feed back if the robot is petted, and also an RFID card reader as a primary means of telling the robot that you’re leaving or just coming back from a break.  We’ve placed them at participants desks and now we’re currently analyzing all the data to help better inform our next design phase.  Additionally, we’ll be deciding if we want to develop this as a research tool for others to utilize, or a type of product to market.

Breakbots (photo thanks to Kevin Walorski)

The other project we’ve finished was utilizing our Videre Erratic robot at the local Wonderlab robotics event.  I programmed the robot to respond to reacTIVISION fiducial markers.  If it saw a particular marker it would move forwards, backwards, or rotate clockwise/counterclockwise.  We then glued the markers to little “shields” for children to hold and present to the robot as a means of controlling it.  At Wonderlab, we had a small arena set up where the children could freely drive them around, run into cardboard boxes, or set up little mazes for them to drive through.  It was really enlightening sitting back and watching the group dynamics.  We didn’t really give them any specific rules for interacting with the robot, and the robot was designed so it could see multiple markers at the same time, so sometimes it would get “confused.”  There was another set of LEDs that would reflect what command was given to the robot (certain colors corresponded with certain commands).  The kids would eventually understand the robot seeing more than one command at a time was a bad thing, they’d start forming lines, or taking turns.  Siblings fought tooth and nail for superiority.  All in all, a very fun and informative experience.

Showing what the robot is actually seeing

Now we’re working on shifting away from the Erratic platform to using iRobots Create robots.  They’re better supported, more widely used in research, and just plain affordable.  So far, we’ve used them to better understand an individuals feeling of privacy in an assisted care setting, we’ll be investigating different control methods and how that effects immersion (or “situational awareness”), and finally seeing if we can develop a socially aware Roomba.

A new look for a new year

I don’t update regularly, yet, but things may be quiet for awhile. For a personal project I’m going to try and redesign my home page and try and integrate my blog with it there. I’m using JQuery and JQuery UI for the moment. It seems like these to frameworks will support what I need and have in mind. After seeing the latest Tron movie I had the urge to start a geeky project and this seemed like the best quick release.

It seems the movie world is picking up actually. There are a wide array of good flicks out that I highly recommend: Tron 2.0, True Grit, Black Swan. It is almost the complete opposite in the gaming world. It is mired by half-hearted and quick cash-in sequels and spinoffs. Not much to look forward to there.

Fallout New Vegas

So, I’ve been playing this, and I really want to like it. I want to get into the story, I want to care about characters, and I want to give a damn. Notice how often I’m saying want?

Really everything really feels slap-dash, rushed, unpolished, and generally uninteresting. The color palette is as bland as the world we’re inhabiting, the engine is even showing its age now. I wanted to believe that this game wasn’t a glorified expansion to the original, and that it was a throwback to the origins of the series.

But in playing it more and more, all I realize is that it is a rushed attempt to cash in on the Brahmin that is Fallout. No wonder I’m getting jaded.

A quicky

So, work has been going well. Our break taking robot is coming together nicely. Getting rid of the reliance of a network to transfer and store information has been a pretty huge relief. Funnily enough, abandoning these complex technologies have given the users more interactions with the robot. They actually indicate when they’ll be taking the breaks, if they’re going away, etc. It’s fun to see people sit down and get to know the robot. They’ll try to pet it and play with it, and just get generally amused by it.

My recent task was finishing off the behaviors for our bigger robot Steve (He’s a rover, I was asked to name him, Steve it was). I programmed some of his behaviors based on information piped in from an OpenCV program recognizing geometric shapes. We’ll be show casing this guy in Wonderlab on January 22.

Lastly I’ve been playing with a concept based in crosswords. I was solving them with my girlfriend quite a bit over Thanksgiving (plane trips are long and boring). So I’m going through some mathematics on my idea, seems like I may be doing a clustering proof, but we’ll see what comes of it.

Lots of cobwebs

So life took precedence and I’ve let my blog fall to the way-side.  I’m currently working as a Research Assistant building robots for the Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI) group here on campus.  We have plenty of big projects in the pipe, so it is a terrific way to keep busy.  Our break bot is in its second iteration.  This time we’ve abandoned using interpretive means of detecting presence (a combination of heat and motion detection) to using an interaction with the robot that is the indicator.  This means we have to less data analysis on-the-fly (which is a bit intensive for the poor lil’ arduino) and we can have more accurate responses.  You can even pet and play with this prototype!

We’re also working on ways for communities/groups to control a robot for a telepresence task.  But, instead of the individuals sitting around the room like a committee, they’d be anonymous users on the internet.  So, you have to determine some novel ways for the “group” to come to a consensus.  We’re hoping to have one of our ideas ready for an exhibit in Wonderlab this January.

Some of the game development has stalled, and changing directions.  We’re trying to find ways to get around the fact that we’re two people trying to program and develop a whole game.  The biggest issue is the art and art assets.  We’re thinking of using a more pixelated style.  Almost like abstracted 8-bit sprites.  So we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve also been really impressed with Call of Duty:  Black Ops.  It takes a slightly different approach and delivering the narrative of the main character.  I won’t go into any details, but it plays out a little bit more theatrically than a typical “We got through the War” scenario.  I’m not really a big fan of Activision and EA’s business method of churning out sequels in rapid succession, but this game does have some neat gems to it.  Especially if you play around with the main menu, there are some pretty sweet easter eggs.

In other news, Tron:  Legacy is looking pretty entertaining and should be one of those few movies that makes sense seeing it in 3-D.  I never actually saw Avatar in 3-D, I saw it once and never really felt like wasting 3 hours that way again.  Even if it meant I got to have digital bugs and flora “leap out at me.”  I don’t like how most films are attaching 3-D as a buzz word and not utilizing it for immersion.   Heaven for bid content actually draws us into a movie, instead of gimmicks.