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It's All Grist for the Personal Mill

Upgrayedd

Feb 14

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in C++/C#/SQL/Web Programming, Computer, Family | No Comments

He spells it with two D's, for a double dose of his pimping...

Over the last couple of days I’ve been upgrading my computer system at home.  The impetus is twofold:

  1. I got a version of Windows 7 as a prize in the 2009 Interactive Fiction Competition, and finally decided to use it to do a full reinstall on our primary email machine.  It’s an old Dell XPS, and we’ve had it for 5 or 6 years.  It’ll run Windows 7, and it’s gotten so encrusted with remnants of old software over the years that it isn’t particularly reliable any more, so I backed up all our photos, videos, music, and email, made a list of the apps we absolutely need to reinstall, and took the plunge.
  2. Thomas has been relentlessly hounding me for his own website.  It’s a huge hassle to administer my webserver, though, because I have to reconnect mouse and keyboard and monitor cables.  When I finally got around to it, I discovered the webserver was over 6 months behind on recommended updates, so I spent a good amount of time bringing it up to date.  I also added Mozy remote backup to it, since it handles all my web content and my Perforce source code control depot.  I recommend Mozy very highly; I’ve used it for years and it’s cheap, fast, and reliable.

For good measure, I’m putting Windows Live Mesh on all three of my machines.  This is a very nice, featureful, fire-and-forget RAS package for Windows and Mac computers, published by Microsoft.  It allows easy file sharing and remote access for XP, Vista, and Windows 7 machines.  I found it extremely easy to set up and get started with.

After I got the mesh set up, I was able to quickly install two new websites — one for Thomas, and one for Robin.  Right now they’re just skeletons, but we’ll be fleshing them out soon.  Thomas wants to host Flash video games on his site, which should be an interesting experience, and Robin has long wanted her own blog.  Now she has one!

The Windows 7 upgrade on our main machine is in progress as I type this; I’ll follow up soon and let you know how it worked.

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Implicit Association Test

Feb 10

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Reviews, Websites | No Comments

There’s a very interesting website that purports to test your unconscious association between different classes of things.  Many of the tests are to identify whether you have a implicit preference for certain types of people (black or white, old or young, slim or overweight, etc.) but there are other tests that operate on names or religious imagery, etc.

The tests are apparently based on reaction time and number of mistakes made.  In the race/weapons test, which is the only one I’ve taken, you’re shown pictures of white and black faces and asked to quickly press a key to categorize them as white or black.  You’re then shown pictures of harmless object or weapons and also asked to quickly categorize them.  The system then shows you pictures of faces and objects interspersed, and asks you to categorize them as “white or weapon” or “black or harmless”, and then switches to “black or weapon” and “white or harmless”.

It appears that what it’s measuring is whether you will more quickly/easily be able to associate black faces or white faces with violent objects based on how fast and accurately you can categorize the images you are shown.

I was pretty fascinated with this methodology; it seems pretty valid to me, and I’m interested to try out some of the other surveys.  I’d love to know the heuristic they use to grade the results.  Interestingly, they give you a questionnaire at the end where they ask you how valid you think the study is, and I suspect this is a major part of their analysis.  They try to give you an out — one of the questions gives you the option to say that the survey reflects the culture to which you’ve been exposed, but doesn’t say anything about you personally, while other options let you say you think the test is a valid reflection of your conscious or unconscious preferences.

My guess is that those people who achieve “desirable” results (no association of weapons with race) will be more likely to ascribe validity to the survey and to believe it reflects their true outlook, and frankly that might be the whole point of the study.  Regardless of whether the picture association component is meaningful or not, they could just be measuring how much more likely you are to put faith in a seemingly authoritative statement that tells you something good about yourself as opposed to a similar statement that tells you something bad about yourself.

Ah, psychology is great!  No other field of science gets to combine experimental design with stage magicians’ sleight of hand.

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Ferb, I Know What We’re Going To Do Today

Feb 8

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family, Humor, Reviews | 2 Comments

I don’t really watch a lot of cartoons these days.  I’m pretty busy with 3 kids, plus I generally prefer to read or play on the computer rather than watch TV.  When we do watch TV it’s usually The Biggest Loser or American Idol — shows that Robin and I both like and that we watch together.

On weekend mornings, however, we usually turn the TV on for Thomas and Katherine, and what they generally watch are cartoons.  They watch a wide variety of different shows, but the one that always gets me to sit down and watch with them is Disney’s Phineas and Ferb.

This is a very cute show that combines kid-friendly situations and antics with humor that appeals to both kids and adults.  And unlike The Simpsons, the two aren’t really separate; there are not really two levels to the show.  If you’re laughing, your kid probably is too.

An episode of Phineas and Ferb is fairly structured.  The premise is that it is summer vacation, and the eponymous brothers are trying to find fun things to do to occupy the day.  Phineas (it’s almost always Phineas) comes up with a Big Idea, which they set about implementing.  This usually ends up being some mammoth construction or engineering project, such as building a giant car wash, rollercoaster, or day spa.  Phineas, the short redhead, is the “mouth” of the group and the idea man, and Ferb is the technical genius (although neither boy is a complete slouch in the other’s area of strength).

The major obstacle is almost always the boys’ older sister Candace, who plays Daffy Duck to the boys’ Bugs.  Early on, she catches on to their plan and tries (inevitably futilely) to “bust” them by dragging their mom over to see whatever giant construct the boys have put together in the backyard.

Depending on the episode, some of Phineas and Ferb’s friends might show up to participate in whatever the scheme might be.  The most commonly appearing are Isabella Garcia-Shapiro, the overachieving Fireside Girl and the ballerina to Phineas’s Harrison Bergeron; Baljeet Patel, an East Indian supergenius and geek; and Buford Van Stomm, a tough kid who oscillates between bullying and friendly behavior.

Candace, besides her obsession with “busting” the brothers, is even more obsessed with fawning over her boyfriend Jeremy, and she often ends up madly juggling these two imperatives (often failing amusingly) as the plot unfurls.

At the same time as this is happening, there is almost always a side plot involving the boys’ pet platypus Perry.  Perry is actually a secret agent known as “Agent P”, and gets summoned to his secret underground base under the kids’ backyard to receive a mission briefing from Major Monogram, the head of the Agency.  This mission always involves dealing with the nefarious schemes of Doctor Heinz Doofenshmirtz, a crazed evil genius who invariably hatches some grandiose plot rooted in one of his many childhood traumas.

In his agent persona, Perry sports a stylish fedora, and although he can’t talk, he communicates very effectively using eye rolls and other facial expressions.  As his struggle with Doctor Doofenshmirtz reaches its climax, whatever bizarre device the Doctor has created usually misfires and either inadvertently resolves whatever jam the kids are in, snatches victory away from Candace just as she’s about to bust the brothers, or saves the day for Candace just as she’s on the verge of doing something monumentally stupid in front of Jeremy.

It’s all put together with excellent comic timing, and the voice work is great.   Candace and Dr. D. in particular are excellently done — Candace constantly skates the edge of hysteria while still projecting a unique personality, and the Doctor delivers some incredibly bizarre dialog with feeling and humanity.  Another appealing thing about the show is that the animation is fairly normal-looking instead of the almost aggressively ugly drawings in some other kids’ shows.

But the thing that really makes the show shine is the message and the relationships between the characters.  Despite Candace always trying to bust the brothers, she really loves them and has worked hard to protect them when they needed it.  In turn, Phineas and Ferb always try to help Candace out when she’s distraught over something (usually Jeremy).  Likewise, Perry and Dr. D., even though they’re each other’s “nemesis”, have each gone out of the way to protect the other when something seriously threatening is happening, and in fact exchanged gifts during the Christmas special episode.

All in all, the show presents kids using their imaginations and having good clean fun while displaying positive personality traits and resolving conflicts in a healthy way.  And it’s freaking hilarious!

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The Fading Dream

Feb 5

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Computer, Games, Humor | 3 Comments

There is a once-great nation in the world today — a nation seemingly strong and powerful, but riddled with internal decay.  A land with an uncertain future.

This nation was founded in time immemorial by an intrepid few — settlers from a far more powerful country, who brought their culture along with them to this new, virgin land.  Over time the prevailing mores and social structures would change, but in the early days the new land was in many ways very similar to the old country.

The forests, plains, and mountains of this new land were vast, but required hard work to fully develop.  The first settlers of this nation prized self-improvement and expected that they would improve themselves with time.  This bred a spirit of rugged individualism, but also fostered cooperation.  Paradoxically, their self-reliance and desire to better themselves drove them to work together to achieve ever greater achievements.

It wasn’t long before the new nation eclipsed the old, boasting more settlers and far greater wealth, despite the greater age of the mother country.  The rest of the world started to look to the new land as the leader in innovation, and immigration boomed to unprecedented heights as settlers from all over the world wanted a piece of the “good life”.

Unfortunately, with the increase of population came poverty and other social ills, and political pressure increased to provide support for the ever-increasing members of society that couldn’t seem to be productive or carry their own weight.  The original culture, where skills were prized as essential for both personal and societal advantage, began to be replaced by a growing sense of entitlement — that the nation itself owed its citizens an ever-increasing standard of living, regardless of whether the people could produce it or not.

The politicians, of course, were more than willing to give in.  The currency underwent severe inflation as the administration sought to assure everyone a basic standard of living, and although ever more sophisticated consumer goods became available, the prices continued to rise to astronomical levels.  Unfortunately for the administration, however, the hyperinflation didn’t have the desired effect.  Currency was more plentiful, but you still had to earn that currency yourself, and not everyone was able to hold a job.

The next step was to provide full employment through a menial public works program.  Legions of the underclass flocked to these simpler, less-demanding jobs as a means to achieve their dreams.  But this type of employment was considered unpleasant and degrading, and the citizens agitated for their leaders to provide a mechanism whereby they could work in businesses of their choice, but be guaranteed a certain level of income regardless of their actual profitability.  This was a far cry from the successful giant corporations of the nation’s early days, which were large industrial enterprises that employed many workers with a high degree of competition for positions.  Workers were expected to be skilled in those days and those who couldn’t pull their weight were thrown out with little concern.  These new businesses were smaller, and government subsidies (at the cost of pushing the inflation rate ever higher) reduced the risk these businesses needed to assume.

In the end, even this was superseded by an almost Marxist regime.  No longer would small businesses be formed via a person’s circle of friends and acquaintances.  What about those people who didn’t have contacts even competent enough to file the government paperwork and go through the motions required to collect their paycheck?  The government solution was to remove the limit on the number of businesses a person could be a partner in, and at the same time randomly match aspiring business owners together, in the hopes that the more entrepreneurial types would carry the load for the less capable since they could collect an additional government paycheck for a small additional amount of work.

The nation wasn’t quite at “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”, but it was close, and getting closer.  Could it really take long for them to take that one final step?

What’s that?  Oh, right!  What nation am I talking about?

Why, World of Warcraft, of course!

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No Update Today

Feb 3

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

Sorry, no update today.  Too busy at work and home.  I’ll post more Friday!

Hoosegow

Feb 2

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Computer, Games, Interactive Fiction, Reviews | 1 Comment

If you’re interested in one-room escape games, JayIsGames is hosting a competition for them.  One of the entrants is Hoosegow, an interactive fiction game by Ben Collins-Sussman and Jack Welch, the team behind this year’s IFComp winner Rover’s Day Out.

I did some design review on this game, although I wasn’t able to beta the finished product.  It’s another well-written, fun little adventure with a tongue-in-cheek Western style that should have wide appeal.  I was very impressed with it.

It doesn’t look like JIG is showing the contest details at the time I’m writing this, but it should be up soon.  Check it out when you get a chance!

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Narcissism on The Biggest Loser

Jan 29

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Writing and Philosophy | No Comments

Robin and I are big fans of the television show The Biggest Loser.  If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a weight-loss reality show where a number of severely overweight people are taken to a “ranch” and put through an intensive training program with two top physical trainers (Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels).  They compete in weekly weigh-ins and the people or team that lose the least are put at risk of elimination.

This makes it sound like a typical sleazy reality TV show, but The Biggest Loser generally tries to stay positive, with even the contestants who are eliminated first gaining a new outlook on life and, with the help of the show, losing a large amount of weight.  It’s a very positive-sum game.

Of course, though, the risk of elimination leads to “gameplay”: exploiting the parameters of the show to optimize weight loss to when it’s most valuable.  Although it’s never discussed on the show, the tactic of choice seems to be “water loading” — drinking large amounts of water to keep body weight high.  Contestants do this when they have immunity from elimination for the week, so they can load up to display only a pound or two of weight loss, and then really show a huge loss the next week.

In the current season, the red team has done this two weeks in a row.  This isn’t unusual in and of itself, but the interaction between the trainers and the red team (Melissa and Lance) is.  Melissa is the one who’s been sandbagging, gaining a pound one week and losing one the next.  When the trainers and the host questioned her about her gain the first week, she played dumb, claiming she didn’t know why she wasn’t losing.  When she lost only one pound the second week, they really jumped on her, up to and including calling her a liar to her face.

Her reaction was interesting to me.  Although her lies on the scale are completely transparent — you know she’s lying through her teeth — she gets enraged, tearful, and defensive when confronted with that fact, and that outrage is real.  Real enough that it cowed Bob, who questioned his own knowledge of the biology of weight loss when faced with her strident denials.  Jillian wasn’t fooled, but chose to just “move forward” rather than try to crack her stonewalling.

It just didn’t make sense to me why she would:

  1. Maintain such a pointless lie about something that is a legitimate gameplay tactic, to the self-destructive point of pissing off her fellow competitors and the trainers, while
  2. Exploding in rage when her integrity was challenged.

And you’ve got to wonder what all this is going to look like to her teenage and pre-teen kids.  Great example, Mom!

She has to know this can’t continue; in fact, she miraculously lost 11 pounds this week, even though she again had immunity.  Amazing!  Two weeks with net zero weight loss, and now 11 pounds this week!  It’s a miracle!

Well, as Jillian knew, it was because you can’t realistically drink 30 pounds of water.  I’m sure she’s water-loaded as much as she can, but that’s as far as she can go, and the rest had to show on the scale.

What’s the explanation?  Particularly for the rage?  I’m guessing, in the style of The Last Psychiatrist, that it’s narcissism.

Melissa sees herself as a honest person.  Sure, she’s in a reality TV show, so she’s playing the game.  She’s lying with every word, deliberately provoking other team members, and basically acting like a huge witch, but that’s not really her.  She wants herself to be perceived based on her own internal image of herself, not on her actual actions.

That’s why Jillian and Bob calling her on her lies is such a threat to her.  “You’re calling me a liar!  My ethics and integrity are everything to me!”  Sure, they are.  In reality, her appearance as an ethical person with integrity is everything to her.  Actually behaving ethically and with integrity, not so much.

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Video Hosting Rethought

Jan 27

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in C++/C#/SQL/Web Programming, Computer | No Comments

After seeing the performance of my self-hosted video solution, I rethought the wisdom of trying to host myself.  First of all, performance from anywhere but home was pretty poor; the stream preload could keep up with the video playback, but only if everything went exactly right.  Once a hiccup occurred, it hung up and took an inordinate amount of time to recover.

Also, my upload bandwidth at home is limited.  If several people tried to view a video at the same time (I know I flatter myself, but it could happen), performance would really go down the tubes.

So I decided to host through Vimeo.  They’re free, support the features I’d like, have a nice player interface, and aren’t obnoxious like YouTube.

With luck, offsite-hosted video should be much more performant for viewers.  To test, the Vimeo-hosted Bionicle video is displayed below.  I personally think the quality is better, not to mention the performance.

Enjoy!

Bionicle from Matt Wigdahl on Vimeo.

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Video-Enabled!

Jan 25

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in C++/C#/SQL/Web Programming, Computer, Family | No Comments

I’ve now figured out how to embed home video in the blog in a nice, streaming player.  The Wordpress “Stream Video Player” plugin is the core technology; once this is in place it’s a simple matter to extract the video from the digital video camera, format it up with Windows Movie Maker (or equivalent software), convert it to a .flv file (Flash-format video), and inject streaming metadata into it.  Then you just upload and embed it into the post!

The result is a very nice embedded video player that supports random access to the video and doesn’t give you the issues that come with using YouTube.  The video is hosted locally and I can freely remove it or change it if I need to.

So here’s the first video I made — Thomas demonstrating his expertly-constructed Bionicle vehicle, complete with functioning weapon.  The age range on the box is from 9 to 16 years old; he built the whole thing himself (with just a bit of guidance from me) at age 8.  Note the complexity and the sheer number of parts, including a functioning gear train!  Also included is bonus footage of Jonathan fussing.

Edit:  I’ve removed the self-hosted movie.  See the next entry for the Vimeo-hosted version.

I Want Glue Teeth

Jan 20

Posted by robin in Family | 1 Comment

Well, Katherine is now down to one set of bottom incisors.  Her adult teeth were coming in behind her baby teeth instead of replacing them.  In December one of Katherine’s home therapy implementors discovered that an adult tooth had come in behind her baby teeth and an x-ray confirmed that Katherine was well on her way to having a second row lower incisors. With full roots still in place, the baby teeth would not come out on their own.

See photos.  The “before” shot is pretty blurry because Katherine and a cell phone camera are not a good mix.

Katherine’s substantially delayed communication skills are completely inadequate to assure cooperation for four extractions so we opted for full intravenous sedation.  So with medical paperwork submitted, a copy of her last check-up, and an on-the-spot check of vitals and weight, Katherine was cleared for sedation.

All-in-all things went very well.  With her last bit of sustenance 16 hours behind her, Katherine arrived at the dentist office with a chip on her shoulder.  She waited, mostly patiently, for 45 minutes while the anaesthesia team finished with the child ahead of her, thanks to a novel waiting room and a couple of games on my Ipod Touch.  We only had two short rounds of high-pitched shrieking and mild self-injurious behavior.  The first when she didn’t want to cooperate with the nurse taking vital signs and the second when Katherine lost patience with my attempts to take “before” shots of her lower jaw.

When we went back to the procedure room, they started with a shot of ketamine in the tush while I distracted Katherine with the game she had been playing.  Needless to say, she was on to them after that! They tried to follow the shot by taping some gauze over the injection sight and Katherine was having none of it.  There was no way she was going to trust them anywhere near her buns a second time!

A few seconds later she returned her attention to the Ipod game, a very cute little app called Cookie Doodle where you roll out, cut, bake and then decorate a cookie.  She was in the sprinkles phase of the game and I watch with amusement while her little finger tapped the screen slower and slower until her finger just rested in place on her Christmas Tree cookie.  Then I laid her gently on the dentist chair and went to the waiting room.

The dentist made good use of the unconscious state of her patient and did a full set of x-rays, a cleaning and a fluoride treatment in addition to the four extractions.  Everything went well and it wasn’t long before they let me join her in the recovery room.  She was so groggy that I wasn’t sure if she was even aware of my presence.  Then, as I began to talk to her, she started to try to get up.  She wanted to blow that Popsicle stand!  This was comical in the extreme because she couldn’t even hold her head up!  Her eyes were still half closed!  But she repeatedly succeeded in dropping a foot off one side or other of the dentist chair.

To keep her from falling on the floor and because I thought it would be her preference, I slid her onto my lap.  She was more content there but asked for “car” and “coat” and then “I want saxophone” (don’t ask me where that last one came from but she said it very clearly).  After realizing that, at least for a short while, I would need to support her head like a newborn infant, I requested the use of the wheelchair that I had earlier declined.  I didn’t think I could adequately support her lanky 45 lbs all the way to the car plus I wanted the opportunity to get her booster in a reclined position so she wouldn’t fall out of it during the drive home.

Katherine was in much better shape after the 25 minute trip home.  Although still quite wobbly, she was able to stand and walk on her own.  Chelsea — who had stayed with Jonathan and was secured for the entire afternoon — or I followed inches away from her for another 30 minutes to prevent any falls.  Despite the residual meds and being awake from 2:30 to 5:30 AM the previous night Katherine did not have much interest in resting and none at all in sleeping.  She was obviously hungry and thirsty but was unable to find anything to her liking until she was cleared for ice cream around 2:30.  Up to that point she had tried and rejected my soft drink and Chelsea’s (we got another chuckle when it took her three tries to get a straw in her mouth) and rejected outright two flavors of jello and two flavors of popsicle.  Fortunately a little ice cream broke the ice and she was more open to other foods after that.

With motor skills recovered and eating back on track, the missing teeth are now the only problem.  She is definitely still in pain without analgesic but that is easily handled.  The main problem is that she wants her teeth back.  She is legitimately sad that they are missing and is sporadically upset about their loss.  She is also trying out various requests to get them back.  She is most persistent with “I want glue teeth” (she asks us to glue or tape anything that is broken) but she also pleads “I want help teeth”, “I want teeth” and “Oh no, teeth”.  We just keep telling her “teeth all gone” and showing her some pictures of other kids with missing teeth.  Hopefully acceptance will come soon and we’ll be able to put the whole experience behind us!

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