My little corner of the Web, to talk about things as and when they become available.
I have a lot of things I find interesting, and hopefully I will be able to write more about them here. This blog is an experiment, an exercise in creation, an outlet for getting things out of my head so they can live longer in a relatively nicer place.
The author of this article over at Deadspin was talking about how the Internet has given people a platform to communicate, and in the process made everyone insular to paradigm changes.
Now, people have been using what was outside themselves - the environment, other people, concepts and ideas - for their own benefit, for as long as there have been people. Prior to the Internet, the process of repurposing was way more difficult than it is now. Now, new connections and new "spins" on something happen at the speed of light. It's the process that birthed all the inventions that have bettered mankind; by standing on the shoulders of giants we are able to reach higher.
The problem lies in the negative externalities - where it is difficult and rare to see good things happen, it is so much more likely for sh!t to happen. The byproduct of the process of repurposing are those products of appropriation, the failed experiments, and the inane. The technology of today provides so many possibilities and tools for scientists and engineers and inventors and thinkers to plumb, which they are doing with rigor and care; the rest of us have to put up with... well, you know. Everything else.
What are the effects of this phenomenon on us? There's no prior case of such a thing happening. So I guess we find out for ourselves... lucky us.
This article by Jia Tolentino over at Jezebel is an inspired piece of writing; it elegantly expresses what's taken me several posts to articulate; Ms. Tolentino fleshes the issue out completely and clearly. I wish I could add more insights, but this article just is that good. I can't think of anything to do except reread.
She decided to become an idol against her parents' wishes. She auditioned for SM Entertainment and was rejected fifteen times. She then went to JYP, where she got accepted... only to be let go once she was one step away from debuting.
She then honed her craft the next couple of years, working part-time at sales to save money. She got into FNC and then spent more than half of her savings to finance her trainee life in this company. She trained (again) for two years before finally debuting as part of a girl group. Because of their CEO's concept for the group, she had to learn to play lead guitar - but the girl band concept didn't take off. It took three more years before AOA began to pull in decent revenue.
The thing that gets me though, is that for all her effort, if it hadn't been for a friend helping her get into FNC her prospects to debut would have been pretty bleak. But if she hadn't worked so hard, she would never be known now as such a great vocalist.
During the T-ara bullying scandal, one member was called out and most of the other members got persecuted for it. But when Jessica Jung of SNSD got booted out, the negativity hardly touched the group; if anything, it was Ms. Jung got the brunt of it.
Why? Because the T-ara members tweeted about Hwayoung's unprofessional behavior, maybe. He who casts the first stone - since Ms. Jung tweeted about what happened first, she's the aggressor.
(The above paragraph still doesn't make sense to me, thirty minutes into editing this post. It doesn't have to - it's a script that we fall into, the idea that there's a bad guy and good guy in any conflict.)
People surrender their higher brain functions in a crowd. And crowds figure into cases of unintended consequences.
Groups are fickle, but the sad thing is to get anywhere in this world we have to work with them. We have to work in groups to reach a goal; but one thing I found to be useful is that we don't have to put up with the group outside of reaching the goal.
My guess is, these people were so in the moment their thinking was at the level of the concrete - like, "Something that I consider wrong is being done; so I have to stop it." I guess basic human decency would have been too abstract?
My martial arts teacher and I had a discussion a month ago. It was about what would happen if there were no one to take on a martial school and the reigning masters all died. He was of the opinion that the skills could still be recreated from the writings and videos of those who came before. Plus, there would be those born with a natural aptitude for these skills, and then they could help bring about the evolution of a style that's similar to, if not greater than, the extinct school's.
I had the opinion that in the Chinese martial arts, there is a lot that depends on training and learning from others. Push hands, sparring, drills, all these have to be taught by a teacher; applications have to be practiced against cooperative and resisting partners alike. We can't rely on the chance that some Messiah will come who will resurrect the art - he might never come. Because of the curse of knowledge we can't be sure if the masters' writings will be able to give us a proper education beyond the absolute basics. Pictures of stances don't show the progression between those stances. Videos may not be able to properly display the angle, distancing, and relative position of the body parts; clothes would obscure the movement of the muscles; and videos definitely do not display the intention that must be behind every movement. And that's all without taking into account that the Chinese martial artists are notoriously deceptive about their practices.
There is so much you don't know you learn while training with your teacher. If these things are not passed on physically, through interaction, it's doubtful that your skill won't get into a rut. This is another reason why I've come to distrust distance learning programs for the martial arts. You can learn some postures and drills, but eventually one will need to seek real-time correction and testing to progress.
But this begs the question, once one has become a master, how does one advance his skills? My teacher told me, the master must raise students of his own, who will then practice with him. This is another reason keeping secrets is detrimental - if you never help anyone to equal you, you'll have no one to practice the most advanced drills with.
It's a difficult concept. There's the defining of things that you absolutely will not tolerate: the lines you will not cross, the lines you will not let others cross. But there's also the active enforcement of these lines; the very instant (or somewhat close to it) that these lines are crossed you must act to uphold them. And then there's also how and when you uphold the line - how hard do you push back? How do you make the other person not want to push back again? How do you make it so you avoid others pushing? How do you even accurately determine that the line was crossed?
Right now you also have to worry about the digital boundaries. I honestly haven't been keeping up, which is why this article I found was a godsend. It details some good software to secure my browser; it also educates quite well on the nature of the problem plaguing online privacy. I suppose it's strange that a web developer isn't more up-to-date with these things - but since I have not had to work on the analytics side tracking user information isn't that a big thing in my mind. This is a bad headspace to be in, so I highly recommend the article as a way to get started for everyone.
Experts are especially prone to claiming they know more than they do. Because it benefits them more for others' perception of their expertise to continue. Because being ignorant is socially undesirable, and may lead to all sorts of bad consequences. Because for many things in modern life faking it is sufficient to get through.
Believing the lie, though, is something else entirely. Because it can lead you to not paying more attention to the stakes of what you're trying to bullshit. A professional does his assigned job, and asks for help when he needs it. The product is the point, and compromising it because your personal stuff got in the way is inexcusable.
This is something I try to keep in mind, because the self-delusion has been mine. Hindsight has been painful, and I have had made many mistakes. In the field that I work in now, I have to focus on making sure that I communicate correct information or the project can get derailed.
For examples, take every episode of Kitchen Nightmares. At my work there's the guy in a supervisory position who brags that his job is to "plan things," but who had to do nine hours of overtime for a presentation the next day. And there's the woman who keeps arguing over the usage of "If I were..." and "If I was..." She keeps talking about present progressive tense and whatnot - but the correct grammar has to do with past/present tense indicative versus subjunctive; the way she was BSing makes me think she didn't look it up, even though we're all in the age where looking up the correct answer only takes minutes.
In the midst of browsing the great funland that is the Internet I once again came across information regarding Japan's 1970's-era female gangs, called sukeban. They're precisely what one would think they are; but in this informative post it was explained why these delinquents weren't all just caged in some government-run institution: the police were of the opinion that the members of these gangs would just one day grow up and walk away from "the life."
That gave me pause. This attitude is probably from the same mindset that birthed the concept of chuunibyou. Japan isn't the only country with this concept, South Korea knows it too. My country though, doesn't have a term like this.
In the West, there's "It's just a phase." It's an acknowledgement that at some point early in our lives we will do sketchy shit - and as we grow older and more experienced in navigating the world, we choose more and more to forego the sketchiness and tread the straight, narrow and stony. It's an assurance that our past bad decisions won't be held against us, provided those bad decisions weren't egregiously bad.
I think part of what makes a great society is that it is forgiving to the people that make it up. Over here my countrymen always harp on about discipline and stricter punishments and shaming over the smallest infraction. In America things are even more draconian for those who have the misfortune of being caught.
I'm not trying to say that punishments are unwarranted, far from it. I guess what I'm trying to say is - I hope we all keep in mind what we have had the luxury to forget.
It's Dan Hibiki. I still have yet to play him mind you, but he's definitely caught my interest. I feel like if you win with him it's undoubtedly due to skill and not because of character choice. And he's fun:
I learned this recently. Price is a signal of how much one party values something. Spending money can be a signal of how committed someone is, a way of showing that he knows he'll make the money back. Or it could be that the cost he's paying right now is peanuts to him. A high cost doesn't automatically mean you're getting what you pay for.
Last Saturday I attended an event for Amazon Web Services. It was really informative and interesting, but the one that left a lasting impression was the DIY seismograph one of the presenters debuted. It was a dinky little thing, an accelerometer connected to a toothpick needle and handwritten dial. The whole thing relied on an Arduino to send data into AWS, and can send push notifications to a cellphone or turn on an alarm over the Internet.
The kit for portable seismographs will cost into the thousands of dollars. The DIY device showcased at that talk will cost much less, and can be tuned for different functions and greater/lesser sensitivity. It can be distributed to different areas, and AWS provides the analytics tools. The push notification capability alone exponentially increases the speed of info dissemination.
This device is revolutionary because it transfers potential into the hands of the regular people. It has the ability to outperform bloated institutions that are more concerned with perpetuating themselves than actually performing the purpose they were created for. Where I am for example the weather services are a joke. But what if instead of a motion sensor we attach to the Arduino thermometers and hygrometers and anemometers and rain gauges and tide gauges? What if we didn't have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to wait for advisories, and we could depend instead on a message on our phones?
Overheard how one bro lost respect for his brother because the latter pronounced sauce as sows (as in, He sows corn in his field everyday.). This same bro later characterizes someone as "matured," and another as a "dooshbug."
It's a pretty cut-and-dried story. Except it turns out the bigot detective was actually an informant for the FBI.
We all lose battles. It's fine if he loses this one - he's already done more than anyone in his lifetime. People are going to live more peaceful lives in Louisiana because of what he did.
This made me remember that for all the integrity media trumpets it has, the bottom line is they get paid to have people tune in. Their incentives are not my incentives.
This was a cool trick I learned from a co-worker, which he in turn found from StackOverflow. I'm putting it here as a reference, because it's so simple and useful. So, let's say you want to have the browser download an Excel file instantly without using plugins or Interop. You put the following lines in your controller method:
Then you have the method return a PartialView. The PartialView will have an IEnumerable of your view model:
@model IEnumerable<[view_model_here]>
Then you can just add the markup and styling for the data. When you run the application and use the controller method, it will cause a download attachment to occur.
Remember The Pretender? I really loved that show. In hindsight I think it was the freedom Jarod had to be anything that caught my fascination. And now I've finally hit upon a procedure to learn quickly.
I found out about him since the channel I linked to in my previous post had another video about him. I found his blog in short order - color me impressed. I know what book and DVD I will be buying next...
The microbiome inside our bodies has never been properly understood; recent findings have clearly proven there are surprising connections between the state of your gut's microorganisms and brain development, gut health, anxiety, and even mental health.
The very activity of creating fermented foodstuffs actually has interesting economic consequences. I would recommend reading this blog post in the Wild Fermentation site to learn more.
I love the smell - it makes my mouth water. I love the deeply rich medley of flavors. It's good for you too.
Even if there were nothing else Korea achieved in its long history, I would still say God bless them for bringing kimchi into the world. It is a fond dream of mine to one day travel to the country and spend my time sampling authentic Korean cuisine - including their best kimchi.
Now, it seems like that dream is in danger. I understand the economics - the mere presence of a cheaper alternative in the market drives prices down, regardless of its quality. I get that China is more effective in terms of producing the stuff. There is, and let me emphasize this, nothing wrong or illegal at all about what's happening right now.
But while we're talking economics, let's talk about unintended consequences. The recipes for kimchi from Korea have a unique history. Some may have been passed from parent to child; others may have been refined over decades to appeal to the most people. Korea's population ate their mother's kimchi as the country went through both terrible and great upheavals. Kimchi is part of Korea's culture, but the Koreans grew into their culture because of such daily things like kimchi. To have this diversity and heritage just up and lost without much of a fight to generic product... sort of hits me hard.
It's a lot like how there was a wealth of gong fu in China before the Communists; if the latter had their way all these arts would have been replaced by wushu - which is really an amazing thing, let me tell you. But wushu is not gong fu.
The thing is, shaming is a mechanism to enforce societal rules. It serves to help solidify the lines between who is in the group and who is out, between who has a high social standing and who doesn't. Because if you weren't higher than the other person in status, you wouldn't be able to freely punish them, would you?
And so punishing someone for a transgression, even if it weren't strictly criminal, confers status on the one doing the punishing - they are gatekeepers of what is "right," they have a role in the group, and they are willing to enforce the duty that comes with their role. For the good of the group. Not the welfare of the members, just the good of some abstract concept of "the group."
Shaming shares similarities with physical assault - in both cases perpetrators target the victim who won't track them down and butcher their families in retaliation. Both are done for gain - whether it's to fit in more or gain status or, as in the case of companies who got involved in the circus that was described in the talk above, get money. But most importantly, shaming is done by people who can't do anything else - the elites don't bother to get into these petty squabbles. In fact, doing so is all downside for them. Criminals don't have any other avenue to get their fix or get to tomorrow; in this then we see that shaming is a tool of the mediocre.
Here's another article about online shaming. Sadly, all that vitriol won't bring Cecil back. Nor does it stop the continued poaching of these endangered animals.
I had the opportunity to hear Dr. John R. Williams give a talk titled, "Talking to Light Bulbs-- How the Internet of Things is transforming everything." This was a particular treat, listening to the man at the bleeding edge of innovation in my field give context and perspective to the IoT movement revolutionizing modern life. This is my attempt at setting down the points that resonated during that speech.
Right now, the best taxi service in the world doesn't own cars; the best retail service in the world doesn't have a physical location. And the best hotel service, doesn't own a single hotel. Data is being generated at an exponential pace, and analyzing this data is enabling the above to happen - it's even helping teach farmers how to be better at their job, beyond their own personal experience.
The beginnings for this were set up with the founding of the World Wide Web. Originally just to be used by the United States military to keep track of their stuff, the purpose soon expanded. Another milestone was in the development of HTTP - according to Dr. Williams at the time because HTTP was text-based it could get past firewalls since text was deemed safe; this made HTTP more useful than binary protocols.
The Internet was intended to support documents only. The coming about of Javascript birthed the creature known as a web application, which soon supplanted that original vision; it enabled developers to build programs on browser engines, which meant that these web applications can run on whatever device can run a browser. Now web applications are ubiquitous - practically all web pages aren't static documents, but rather are code that aggregate information from a multitude of sources. The code also has a second ability - it can track the user, and send out this information.
The revolution has only been helped by the open-source movement and the practice of releasing API's; developers can mash up different technologies and come up with novel applications. One example of this that Dr. Williams showcased was an app created by his students - the app leveraged the Meetup API to provide real-time information about meetings, filtered to those meetings comprising more than fifty people. The point of the app was to provide taxis with information on where to go for possible fares.
The coolest thing though that was demoed during the talk were the talking light bulbs. This was connected lighting - light bulbs able to change hue to create an atmosphere, able to turn itself on to wake you up, able to be toggled into security mode from your phone. Lights that can turn themselves off and on again to notify you of an emergency or a phone call. Light bulbs that turn on as you approach your house.
The Internet of Things isn't all upside. It has proved to be a very disruptive force - many old businesses do not exist now because they have been made obsolete. Some companies have found success by embracing these changes and adapting to the changing times. The problem is that companies grow so successful they think they are too big to fail - it takes a special effort to always be on the lookout for the next sea change. Companies need to always be observing and orienting, and they need to decide and act quickly. In software development, this methodology is embodied in Agile programming - which in turn owes a lot to John Boyd and his OODA loop.
But IoT isn't just dangerous for companies that don't adapt; in many ways it's dangerous for its proponents as well. With increased connectivity and generated data and the current trend toward analytics, many people fall into the trap of thinking that the sky's the limit, that they can predict anything, and that the more information they put in the more in control they are.
This is understandable because for the longest time the prevailing mindset was that we can create mental models of phenomena to understand them. As more information comes up that shows minor problems with our mental models, we can make changes accordingly.
But what if a single infinitesimal change resulted in behavior completely different from that predicted by the model? The discovery of chaos and the butterfly effect mean that very small initial differences can result in huge perturbations. Dr. Williams illustrated this with the three-body problem - while it may be easy to predict the movement of a body hanging off another like a pendulum, adding a third body to the pendulum bob just makes predicting movement a hopeless endeavor.
Dr. Williams also related an anecdote about his colleague who was trying to predict the weather. During his calculations, the colleague made a mistake on the digit at the fifth decimal place; the result was that all his model's predictions were wrong. The colleague concluded it was impossible to predict the weather, because our measuring tools will never be accurate enough. And that's without taking into account the tools changing what they're observing as the measurements are being done.
Even in analyzing data one doesn't make use of all of the data; Dr. Williams mentioned that in order to make predictions often they just look at a fraction of the data - because data is almost always dirty, and making the algorithm fit the data too closely makes it too sensitive to these minute changes we've been discussing that result in wildly off predictions.
So there have to be boundaries. Within those boundaries, we have to allow for patterns to emerge on their own, perhaps introduce new strange attractors or dampen non-helpful ones. Of particular help would be the Cynefin framework developed by Dave Snowden.
Overall, it was a great talk. The above video was also used by Dr. Williams, but I couldn't find the other material I remember he used. I find some similarity with N. Taleb's ideas; lots of stuff to ponder.
I never used to pay attention to these things before, but as I grow older I realize these are moments that are precious because of their rarity - and as I appreciate more that there are other people out there who will die just minutes before these occurrences...
In my youth I focused on academics. The result was, I graduated - just like billions of others around the world, and the billions more who will come after me. I studied and did not see any value in arts or physical education. The consequence is I am lacking in ways that other people are not, them having had a more active childhood than I. The paper my parents spent so much for me to get - getting it resulted in me working a post that can be easily replaced should I ever decide to leave. I have to keep studying and finding training because my skills quickly become obsolete in my industry.
I know now that the brain's plasticity does not remain into adulthood; for anyone who disagrees, try learning a new language in your thirties and compare it to learning your mother tongue - or even a second language - growing up. I remember even reading that the brain cells are completely replaced every ten years. Whatever achievement you got growing up, it's not yours: it's someone else's merit, someone who is now quite dead.
Beauty, strength, speed, wit - all these fade with time. Things that were perky before sag as gravity lays a greater claim on it. People in relationships change, and the challenge is in finding something to love in this stranger who calls herself your spouse. The money you save depreciates in value every year - and the inflation rate is something entirely out of your control.
And then there's other people. Be it out of jealousy or pride or small-mindedness or whatever, there will be those who will see fault in how you work or live or do business. Who will run away with your reputation in a narrative not of your choosing. All to pull you down - perhaps to raise themselves up? Or just so there's more people at the bottom...
And then there's you. You, who is so afraid of things changing and becoming more uncertain that you would sabotage yourself just so you won't have to change.
The general trend is down. Everyone goes down; it takes a special amount of effort and will and luck and thinking to move UP. And whatever it was helped you raise yourself up, isn't guaranteed to raise you up again should you fall. If it is available the next time around, that is.
Whatever advantages you bring now get used up or are rendered irrelevant. So go make more.
Forging a path forward is messy - expect to be soiled. But this is the very nature of the universe - so go ahead, no matter how dirty or disgusted with yourself you get. The fight is yours alone. Keep moving.
We were made to strive in this environment. We need to remember that we have to work hard, and whatever respite we get is temporary. Let's painfully struggle, to our very last breath. >:D
The art is impressive, but not very special. And yet somehow a woman stands to rot in prison for twelve years because of it. This blog isn't much, but let me at least make sure in a way only I can do that the works of she who is being silenced will never be forgotten.
You can read why she drew this here. And let me just say, any country capable of this will never attain whatever it is their God promises them after death.
This article mentions another reason for why the original Thief series was so good. It's the fact that you can come up with these strategies and tactics. This is present in Trine, should be present in Team Fortress 2, and is present in every fighting game I love.
From the blog Rory Miller, whose writings have been teaching me a lot about how not to be a douche. The following is a nice twist on the doctrine about wolves and sheep, something I've also been brainwashed about for years.
First of all, two things: I did not play multiplayer games as a child, a teen, and a young adult. It's only in my thirties that I got into Team Fortress 2 and was exposed to the fun of multiplayer.
Second, I got Trine on a lark because it had good reviews and was on sale at the time. I played for under an hour and liked the graphics, but didn't really get hooked. Trine was soon going to be part of my Steam backlog.
I read about the Dead MP Games Resurrection Group and joined. They had a scheduled Trine multiplayer game for today, so I thought why not? I played Trine for about an hour just to familiarize myself before the session.
My goodness, this game. I suppose it's a distant ancestor of Dark Souls? Because I died a lot - and I was not prepared.
I played with two members of the Steam group - they were in a party, one of two that were active at the time of the session. We were bad and awkward - but it was fun. There's a rush when you know the other character on your screen has a flesh-and-blood brain.
After the session, I played Trine again. On my own this time, I noticed that a lot of the puzzles in the game could be solved not just by timing and reflex, but also by the unique capabilities of each of my people. I found myself turning toward the Wizard a lot for solutions.
You have no idea how fulfilling getting this to happen was...
smokers congregate where the purpose is an afterthought generating excreta - sticking it in deeper than any penis or finger or tongue an orgy wrapped in foul vapours, raping all who come across it not sparing even the children
doing it standing, sometimes perched precariously all for that little tingle that's gone so soon braving the heat and the dust when it's done everyone's the same, only more putrid not meeting anyone's eyes.
because: the most important thing you will do in your life is this you will pass the days dead-eyed until you are lit up again.
When you think about it, solitary confinement is an improvement in terms of cruelty dealt to the victim; where older societies would exile a transgressor, they never barred them from making a new life for themselves elsewhere. The point was that the transgressor was no longer present, and he no longer had access to his friends and family and other resources too big to carry.
My country had a similar punishment along these lines.
Here's the first thing I did after reading about all that has happened to Sir Tim Hunt: I tried to find a video of the speech. Context is everything, right?
I couldn't find a video of the relevant portion that has everyone so upset. I did find this:
All of this hate, and we can't even find one incriminating clip?
Here's how the man himself explained it, courtesy of Wikipedia (original source of snippet can be found here):
Crucially, Hunt said, he then added the words, “now seriously” before going on to praise the role of women in science and in Korean society. “The words ‘now seriously’ make it very clear that I was making a joke, albeit a very bad one, but they were not mentioned in the first reports and I was deluged with hate mail,”...
Ok. So we have no context. This could have been everything people are saying it was; or this could instead be a British person making a dry remark that's meant to not be taken seriously but does hint at some personal misadventures that are better left unsaid.
We ran with this, didn't we? And we're such good people. And the world is better for what we did.
I've written before about my love for the Hitman franchise before. The only games I haven't played yet are the Sniper Challenge and Hitman GO. The latter because I don't have an iOS device, and the former for reasons I'll be talking more about below.
I was glad that they were rethinking their approach to the game so that there would be more similarity with Hitman: Blood Money. Bigger levels and more stuff happening in the levels are a great thing. The switch to a more episodic digital release was also intriguing, doubtless this was influenced by the success of Hitman GO's own model. There will also be improvements to the Instinct mechanic, which is welcome; the Hitman games have always suffered from the randomness caused by Agent 47 not having good enough feedback from the world he's interacting with.
Where the old Thief games had shadows and great sound rendering and the light gem and highlighted interactive objects:
Gameplay by Lytha, of "Lytha Way" fame
And Mark of the Ninja had vision cones and shadows and "sound bubbles":
The Hitman games never had a similar mechanism warning you if there's someone about to enter the room. The Suspicion meter was there mostly for disguises, so exploring without a disguise - i.e., using actual stealth - was always a fraught affair. Things were less about using cunning and more about tensely being on point with timing.
The thing that turns me off about all this is that by being in a spaced digital release model you have to churn out regular, quality content to keep people engaged with the game. Absolution's Contracts mode was fun but these days no one plays it - the problem is the same, you have to do something new to keep people from getting bored.
And there are elements to the Hitman games that will bore; remember that the NPC's in any Hitman game are scripted to do the same kinds of things. Miss the timing? Just wait and the characters will do it again - doesn't matter if you get discovered, let the heat die down and things will eventually go back to normal. Blood Money addressed this with the Notoriety mechanic, but the effects weren't within a mission - it was more the next mission became harder because you were sloppy. Which means you are more likely to continue being sloppy, while careful players aren't affected.
I think what Hitman has been missing is the improvisation aspect. Sure, they say there will be many ways to take someone out, but all these ways have been pre-programmed. Just be at this place at this time with this item then click the mouse. That's basically what the Sniper Challenge is - shoot here now while the target is there and something happens.
Let's check out fighting games for a second. In a fighting game there are characters who have special moves they can do by the player pressing a button or a combination of buttons. The moves have certain properties like recovery speed or set-up time or invulnerability or unblockability that affect how they are to be used/defended against. But most crucially, the moves can also be chained together. You could argue that it's also a timing game - a very strict one at that - but the prospect of dealing huge damage with the other player not being able to do a thing makes the grind worth it. Also, a lot of these combos don't just get told to us - they have to be discovered. Often it's the players themselves who come up with them, then they share the combos online.
In this way, players make their characters truly theirs. There's nothing equivalent to that in Hitman, before or now. If I were the lead designer, at the very least I'd make the game into a huge PvP fest - players are freelance clones of 47 who compete for contracts against NPC's and each other. Maybe each player gets to develop a main specialty, like infiltration or bomb-making or sniping. Or John Woo-style parkour and double-wielding. The best-performing player could get to actually use 47 as their avatar.
In conclusion, I think to take the franchise to the next level a world of assassination isn't needed - rather, a world of assassins should have been the hook for this reboot.
I bought this game about three months ago. It joins Dead or Alive 5 Last Round, Kings of Kung Fu, and Skullgirls on my Steam library.
I have a thing for fighting games. But what started it all was King of Fighters. Everybody else was on to Street Fighter, but I stayed true to Chin Gentsai and Mai Shiranui. Then, after a few years it was K9999 and Ryuji Yamazaki; I had a brief flirtation with Oswald but by and large I've been a Chin man. Now though I find myself gravitating to Ryuji and Vanessa. Oh, and Kim Kaphwan's moves are pretty cool too...
I gave Street Fighter IV a try when it was free to play on Steam one weekend. I thought I might enjoy Hakan and Rufus - boy was I disappointed. I do believe the game is well-designed, it's just that I couldn't bring myself to care for these characters on the same level as I do DOA's Eliot and Gen Fu, or Skullgirls' Parasoul, or KOF's Chin. And when I can't care about a character, I don't bother playing since it isn't worth it to learn playing anybody in the roster well.
See? I really wanted to love Rufus.
In general, I start liking the quirky, side characters first in a fighting game. I got into Guilty Gear XX #Reload at my local arcade because of Zappa. Chin was among my first in KOF, and the only reason I got into Eliot was because he was the only fun unlocked one in the Xbox 360 version of DOA 4 that I played. I've never gotten into the main protagonists like Ryu or Kyo Kusanagi or Sol Badguy.
After establishing my quirky main, I start looking for the tactical characters. Venom had so much versatility, I never mastered him at all; darn False Roman Cancel timing always eluded me. Yamazaki is fun too, and even up to now I'm learning all sorts of things. His Nejikomi move, for example, is nice to use while backing up or blocking. Since the keys you need to press for Nejikomi start with a Block movement, it can be buffered from a block. It's a pity I can't test it out on anyone online, everybody's into KOF XIII. Which doesn't have Ryuji or Vanessa.
I like Dead Or Alive because a lot of the characters use Chinese martial arts - not just in name, there are actually identifiable moves from the style that appear in the game. It speaks to my other hobby.
I wish AOA Black would come out again. They were on to something quite unique in the world of Kpop, now that the dance subgroup is doing well maybe FNC can experiment more, have more band-centered releases.
I get a lot of inspiration from seeing these videos - they really showcase the depth and rich history of boxing.
This breakdown is of particular interest to me because of how the style I've been taught likes to be close, at infighting range. I would also add that by leaning the left shoulder into the body Mr. Henry Armstrong ensured his opponent never got to target his centerline while his left arm was in prime position to go full-power with the uppercuts.
Really starting to get into Chinese dramas... which is a problem as we don't get Chinese programming where I am. I really wouldn't mind if a DVD collection came out, but right now I'm trying to find it online where I can.
The series that I want to talk about is "Painted Skin." It was an offshoot of a very successful 2008 movie; the series was released in 2011. The series follows roughly the same events as the movie, but more emphasis is given to the characters' relationships and development.
The series also has some beautiful, quiet moments - although, full disclosure, I found myself skipping a lot because I was more interested in the villain Xiaowei (played hauntingly by Fiona Sit). I ended up rooting for her to get a happy ending.
I've already watched the end, and right now am in a thoughtful mood. If only there were a sequel...
Koding is an interesting project. I've been getting into Python and Data Science the past few months , and I've been looking for a good enough IDE. I'll be looking into this moreover the next couple weeks.
