Kid commentary on super colliders and origins of the universe

I was talking to the kids today about the exciting discoveries that may be happening at the Large Hadron Collider & CERN.  I tried to explain, in grade school terms, smashing atoms to find out what they are made of.  Of course, they ask why you would do that.  I replied, "to know how the universe was formed".  Noah, to my surprise, stated, "That's easy".  Shocked, I ask him to explain.  He simply stated, matter-of-factly, that "God created it".  Priceless.  We are certainly getting our money's worth from Catholic school education :).

Suddenly, I found myself caught in a difficult spot between Creationism and Science. Fortunately, I think I managed an reasonable response by stating, "Ah.  The question reallly isn't about God creating the universe, it is about HOW he created it".  Dodged.... for now. :-)

This is a priceless conversation.

PAX 2010: Day 2

Another good day at PAX today. Spent a good bit of the day at the exhibit hall with Nephew Rob playing various games there.

First up was Halo Reach. Pretty good for a console shooter (which I don't generally like). Seemed to play like the other Halo games with some minor improvements.

And one of the finds of the day was a remake of Archon. Yes... the very same Archon of 1983 fame. Played it for a little while with Rob. It played very much like the original, but had some new features which were pretty neat. I spend some time talking to the developer, who was pretty cool. He actually bought the Archon franchise from the original developer, which should give him additional options to continue the franchise. http://www.archonclassic.com

Also saw another neat game called Spy Party. Pretty fresh idea, fun gameplay, and depth will make this an interesting one when released.

In the evening, actually played a 1 hour D&D game with Sam and Rob. This was their first time at playing D&D, and they both really enjoyed it. The game was based on the D&D essentials rules, so it took some getting used to. The DM was great and helped us keep things going. Everyone liked it enought that we will probably play again tomorrow.

We finished off the night by playing Settlers of America, which is a off-shoot of the Settlers of Catan game. It was a lot of fun. Sam and Rob even liked it.

14 Years of Intel Life

14 years ago today, on October 16th, 1995, I joined the ranks of Intel.  It has been an interesting, rewarding, and trying career so far.  Overall, I’m pretty happy and enjoying working for a company at the helm of the computer technology industry.  Oh, and year fourteen means that I just became eligible for my second sabbatical… 8 weeks of vacation given every 7 years of service.

I’m curious where I will be in another 7 years..should I survive that long :)

Thirty Great!

Well.. another year, another birthday. Today I turned 38, which apparently also goes by the names "thirty great" and "thirty old". Whatever you call it, I'm happy to have made it another year :).

It was a great day. It is a special treat to get to celebrate with my family in the house I grew up in :).

The day started out with a start as Katy woke me by playing a SpongeBob Squarepants singing birthday card over and over. That is something that will wake the dead. That was followed by some wonderful birthday wishes and even a rendition of happy birthday.

We spend most of the morning relaxing at home. It is always fun playing with the kids.

Around lunch we headed to Valdosta to do a little birthday present shopping. We started off the adventure with lunch at Ruby Tuesday. Not bad, but not as good as I remember from years ago.

After searching through a few stores, I settled on 2 new pairs of shoes :). I will say that I was disappointed with Hilbert sports... not one single Georgia Tech shirt anywhere. There were Tarheel shirts?!?! Jeez.

After returning from Valdosta, we all went over to my sister Nikki's house for a birthday cook-out. It was awesome. Me and the kids went swimming. My grandparents and uncles joined us a little later. The food was perfect. Grilled hamburgers, french fries, brots, and birthday cake. We ate and talked for hours. The evening ended with a lightsaber duel between Darth Noah and Jay Skywalker while Katy and Clay tried to corner the market on toads.

The kids surprised me with a few classic presents. First there was a home-made maracas made from a solo cup and Styrofoam peanuts. Katy also gave me a G.I.Joe T-shirt and Noah gave me a writing pen featuring a soccer ball picture, wild rubber "hair" at the top, and a key chain.

It was a great one!

Request to Video Game Industry: Positivity Mode

Video Game Positivity

My children, 5 and 6.5 years old, enjoy video games. They both have an assortment of games for their Wii, Nintendo DS, Leapster, and various family computer games. Over the last couple of years of watching, helping, and reviewing games with them, I have a request of the video game industry based on some of my observations

Observation: Both of my children experienced disappointment, frustration, and a depressed feeling on occasion due to the video games. This includes age-appropriate, E-rated games targeted at their age from the big names in the industry (Disney, etc). What seemed to be causing these feelings is what I can describe as “negativity” the games were portraying. In pretty much all of the games, if the player did not come in first or accomplish some goal, there was an environment of negativity portrayed on the screen which had a profound impact on their experience. For example, on one racing game, less than a first place finish resulted in your toon hanging its head down, kicking the ground, while depressing music plays and audio clips boo the player and state quite forcefully, “You Lose!”. Statements like “I'm a looser”, “I hate this game”, and “Dad, will you help me so I will not be boo'ed” were often issued by my kids after this treatment a few times. After talking to them about it and additional observation, it became clear that it wasn't the fact that they hadn't come in first that bother them, it was negative sensory input that was being produced which was affecting their emotional state and enjoyment of the game.

Request to game industry: Create a “positivity” option in all E and under 12 year old targeted games.  Feel free to

The goal of the request is to make changes in the game behavior when “positivity” mode is enabled, removing all the negative media experiences and comments while the mode is enabled. This would allow parents to enable this mode for smaller kids or kids that have demonstrated negative impacts from the standard mode of gameplay, while preserving the “normal” mode of reinforcement for more mature children, adults, etc.

For most video games, I believe adding the “positivity mode” would be a fairly simple affair.  For the end-of-event score and feedback screen, simply have 2 different sets of media which, one “normal” and one “positivity”.  When the end-of-event  is entered, the game chooses the media to play based on the positivity settings.  It may be acceptable to still have gradations of positivity, so that a better score receives more pomp and glamour.  Even if the player does poorly, in positivity mode, the game should show a toon with some level of positive image and some form of encouraging or positive music and speech.

 

Additional options that may require a little more investment:

• In positivity mode, simply don’t keep score, or use some more abstract form of scoring. 
• In positivity mode, track the player performance on successive plays of the event and make positive reinforcement when the player demonstrates improvement.
• In positivity mode, multiplayer scores are added together instead of being used to determine a winner against the human players.  Players can still play in somewhat of an adversarial mode, but adding the scores may create different objectives in the game.  A very good example of positive multiplayer is the “teamwork” games in Outdoor Challenge for the Wii.

So there is the request.  I encourage the video game industry to seriously consider it.  I will happy direct my purchasing behavior to games that implement a “positivity mode” or has a more positive gameplay experience.

-- CsB

Last Chaos

I have been playing around with a free MMORPG recently.  It is pretty good for a free MMORPG... I would recommend it to anyone wanting to try a MMORPG out.  It plays a good bit like Lineage2 (which I played for a couple of years).  If you play, I'm on the "H" server (can't remember the whole name).  Let me know and I'll add ya to my friends.

http://lastchaos.aeriagames.com/

Interesting observations from Costco

I just returned from a trip to Costco.  

• Costco now has their own beer!  I couldn't help but buy some :).  It says it is hand-crafted and made by a brewery in San Jose.  We'll see how it is later this evening
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