Russell Miner's Random Musings

Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle on Vimeo

2012-02-27T14:31:00.000-08:00

A really great talk, and some good insight into what its like to be a software engineer.

Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle on Vimeo

Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle from CUSEC on Vimeo.

The Greatest Card Trick I have ever Seen

2011-12-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

The greatest card trick I have ever seen: starting at 2m 50s

I am a fan of Magic. I have been since I was a young boy. I was also lucky enough to get some training from several magicians. I never pursued it too far, but I did learn enough to know many of the basic principles of magic.

I also am a huge fan of Penn &Teller. They have a unique approach to magic, they are funny as hell, and their tricks are VERY good.

Recently I learned about a show that aired on British TV called Penn & Teller: Fool Us. This show is quite simply brilliant. They invited some of the best magicians in Britain (and the world) to come on their show, and perform a trick in front of them, and try to stump the two expert magicians. If they could explain how it was done, they would (albeit in a considerate way so as not to ruin the magician's trade). If they were truly stumped, then the visiting magician was declared a winner, and that magician would be invited to perform on the Penn & Teller stage in Vegas.

The result of this is a show that you get great performances, and some great peeks into magic theory.

And to that end, I present to you what I consider to be the best card trick I have ever seen, performed by Shawn Farquhar on Penn Jillette.

(see video I posted above)

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Addendum:
Oh..I also found this trick from Shawn also... pretty amazing:

Star Wars: The Old Republic, My New MMO

2011-12-20T07:28:00.000-08:00

Its no secret that I love video games. Its my passion, and my now my career. My favorite genre of games has to be the MMORPG (Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game). This genre provides an experience unlike any other with its massive worlds to explore, epic story lines, and a depth of game play that takes months if not years to master. Once you have played an MMORPG, its hard to not yearn for another.

I have been playing the 700lb Gorilla of MMORPGs (I'll just call them MMOs for now), World of Warcraft since its beta stages (a whopping 6+ years!) and while that game has continued to define the genre, no other MMO has managed to come along that was good enough, polished enough, and honestly compelling enough to take my attention away for more than a few weeks. World of Warcraft at its peak, had over 12 million subscribers worldwide. A truly massive game in terms of its impact on the industry, and on Blizzard Activision's bottom line.

So it was with great anticipation in the industry, and to me personally, when a company known for its amazing single player RPGs, was going to press into the MMMO space and try to launch their own. Better yet, they were using what many consider the best license out there... Star Wars. If any game could de-throne World of Warcraft, surely a Star Wars game could be it.

There was skepticism, to be sure. The last attempt at a Star Wars MMO was a flop. Many mistakes led to that failure, not least being the fact that the most iconic feature of star wars, the light saber wielding Jedi, were nowhere to be found.

Interestingly, it was on the heels of that Star Wars disaster that Bioware, the very same company about to undertake this new MMO endeavor, previously released their stellar single player RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic . They cleverly used a part of the licence not often utilized, setting the game a full 3 thousand years before the events of the movies. This let them leverage the feel, the music.. etc, without the cumbersome complications of conflicting story lines and characters. Oh.. and it was a Star Wars universe simply POPPING with Jedi and Sith.

This RPG had a compelling story, and you got to be a total bad-ass jedi. You took on efforts of Galactic import, where whole star systems hung in the balance. You tread the balance between the light side and the dark side of the force, and you met a cast of memorable friends and enemies. It remains a true opus of both RPGs, and of Star Wars adaptations.

And so, many years (and many more RPG hits) later, Bioware finally decided to try to do their own MMO, and it was going to use the same formula as their previous successful Star Wars game.

This new game, Star Wars: The Old Republic would take place still in that universe, thousands of years before the movies. The game would feature jedi and sith, and the conflict between them. It would showcase a myriad of heroes and villains and settings that are the bread and butter of Star Wars. And most importantly, they would introduce a feature to MMOs that had been notably lacking, your own personal story line. They would tell this story with enough voice acting and in-game cinematics to make a Hollywood director swoon.

I have been playing this game since its "soft pre-release" launch last week. I have played many hours of the game already, and I have gotten my feet under me enough to get a real sense of the strengths and weaknesses of it. What I can say is...

Ladies and Gentlemen... we have liftoff.

Today is the official launch of the game to the public. Surely there will be some server hiccups, and I cannot vouch for the end-game content of yet, but I can say that this game is the first MMO I have seen that actually has a chance to dent the market of World of Warcraft. It is a truly special game with unique stories, plenty of action, and the warm fuzzy of the Star Wars universe all over it.

I invite you to check it out and enjoy some of your fun time exploring a universe of action and adventure like you always wished you could.

"Chicken Wiring"

2011-12-12T13:16:00.000-08:00

How chicken wire is made - Boing Boing

As I trolled Boing Boing today, I came across this great video of a chicken wire machine weaving chicken wire fencing. It occurred to me how this kind of manufacturing still goes on. In this technological age, and in our land of plenty that is the US, its easy to not pause and think about where the everyday objects around us come from. This is likely why How Its Made and its ilk are such successful shows.

In many ways, watching the mesmerizing machine making the chicken wire reminds me of the machines of the industrial revolution. You can sit and gaze at the machine, with its relentless, yet hypnotic sounds, and just wonder how much it would crank out in.. an hour... .a day.... a month. Yet this is basically the extension of that same old cotton mill or weaving loom that was powered by a water wheel.

Then I get to thinking about the relentless work that robots can perform. Sure, we have them in factories now, basically acting like a far more precise mechanical loom, but I mean the ones that we will eventually have among us. Living in our houses, driving our vehicles, cooking our food...etc. The fascinating thought to me.. while not exactly revolutionary... is that we will have these generalized machines that we can set to a task that can accomplish more than a human ever could. And.. then it starts to get kind of creepy. No wonder we always imagine stories of robots amok. I mean.. left unattended, that robot could make LOTS of chicken wire.

And so.. I propose a new turn of phrase... "chicken wiring"...its for when robots run amok doing the same task for too long.

Voyager 1 becomes first man-made object to taste galactic space | DVICE

2011-12-09T08:09:00.000-08:00

This makes me feel happy, and tiny at the same time.

Voyager 1 becomes first man-made object to taste galactic space | DVICE

Voyager 1 should have enough fuel and propellant to continue traveling outwards (and sending back data) until at least 2020, by which time it'll be about 12.5 billion miles from us. And even apart from all the valuable science that Voyager is performing, we should all be very proud (as a species) that we've managed to send a little piece of ourselves outside of the insignificant little corner of the universe that we call home.

Kids and Systems

2011-12-09T07:18:00.001-08:00

Today I came across this article:
http://boingboing.net/2011/12/08/how-lord-sugar-taught-me-to-ha.html

And within it was this quote:

When you give a kid the power and the freedom to explore a system, they'll discover unexpected ways to manipulate it, faster than most grown-ups will. Youngsters are selfish and impatient, refusing to defer gratification for arbitrary or social reasons. It's a learning strategy that works well, even if sometimes favors people who don't work well with others.

I think this is completely true, and part of the joy of watching my son interact with games (video and board) is watching how he approaches problems and the rulespace in ways I didn't think about.

Hello World

2011-12-08T07:00:00.001-08:00

Trying out a new blog solution. One I might actually use. My old Wordpress was frankly an abandoned mess of a different time. I am nuking it, and starting over using a hosted blog solution, and hopefully one that makes more sense when integrated with the current social scene like Facebook and Twitter.

You can expect that I will post stuff here that I find interesting, or worth thought, or just plain cool. I'll try to leave my family/personal stuff to Facebook, but don't begrudge me a cute pic of my kids or my life once in a while.

Thanks for visiting, and I hiope you enjoy!

Also for best viewing, I suggest the "Sidebar" layout from the dropdown. I think its the one I prefer.