The Rolling Dead: Tis the season...

On the train heading home and witness to moment of Yuletide serendipity: listening to a melancholy rendition of Silent Night while, across the aisle, a fastidious middle-aged man rips a Christmas card into smaller and  maller pieces that he carefully piles onto the seat beside him.

The Coefficient of Chaos

So, returned to the ranks of electrically-powered civilization this
weekend about four days after the LA windstorms.

I lost power on account of storms numerous times when I lived in the
South, but this was actually the first time I can recall it being so
long or widespread. I had to throw out all the food in the
refrigerator, after KP found that the grocery stores in neighboring
cities with power had two hour waits at ice making machines.

LA had a city-within-a-city feeling, with those caught in the blackout
moving around shell-shocked, while the rest of the folks went about
with life as normal. Despite the mess, it was reassuring to know that
a few miles away everything was still working, and it made me wonder
if anyone had done psychological modelling of how long lasting and
pervasive a breakdown of power and communication grids would need to
be to have a good chance of tipping society over the brink and into
unrest.

Obviously, there is a defineable gradient between the circumstances
where your neighbor stops by to see if he can borrow batteries and
where he stops by to cannibalize your family.

Podcast the Commute: Jean Luc Picard as a Model for a Gamer in Chief

In the second podcast of the mini-backlog, I go way down the geek rabbit hole.   Basically, the premise is this: at some point, the President of the United States will be someone who plays videogames.

And, in wondering whether we can take a person in power seriously if they actively enjoy the act of play, and why that idea seems like such a hard sell, I realized we've already got a perfect example of an authority figure who has no problem playing make-believe in front of his subordinates (and one who is somewhat of a stick in the mud at that):  Captain Jean Luc Picard.   Man in power who shifts seamlessly from dress-up on the holodeck to saving the world from space bugs (or, more frequently, to jabbering on some diplomatic mission).

Delusional nerd fantasy or inevitable paradigm?

Podcast The Commute: Love is a Battlefield (3)

In the first of a pair of overdue podcast posts, I spend an inordinate and potentially embarrassing amount of time musing on why Battlefield 3 may be my favorite multiplayer game ever.

It's like how playing with kittens is basically the cutest thing that you can do on the planet, and so if you don't like kittens something must be wrong with you as a human being, except that instead of kittens, you are playing with pretend explosives.

The Rolling Dead: Missing My Aural Aura

Ran late today and forgot to grab my earphones. It's amazing how much
louder the subway is.

Strange thing how it happens, but when I'm in a crowd and put on
headphones, I have a feeling of invulnerability. Same thing actually
happens when I put on glasses--maybe because I don't wear them much.
It's like I'm watching everyone through a window at a safe distance.
I consciously realize that this idea is bonkers. I'm just as likely to
get shivved while listening to a podcast. Exponentially more likely,
probably, since I won't hear them coming.

I remember, when I got my first iPod and would listen to it with KP
around, she used to say I was like a teenager ignoring his family.
Now I'm on the train and I look around and half the folks have wires
coming out of their ears and the rest are looking down and clicking
their thumbs against little glowing rectangles, like I'm doing now.

Some are doing both.

I realize that I have no idea if this train car is full or empty.
Never even glanced up at the person who had been sitting next to me
the whole trip and just got up and left.

Public transport indeed.

The Rolling Dead: Entry #1

Given that I can't record episodes of The Commute while riding the train, I've been using (some) of that time working on a series of vignettes, essays, and other short and and assorted ramblings inspired by the time of public transport.   Working title is The Rolling Dead.

Selected entries will make appearances as time goes on, but here's a quick outtake:


As Much as I Can Say About My Seat
Before Arriving at Wilshire and Western

Safe from stain,
Jackson Pollock as urban camouflage.
The choice of colors and patterns
matched to our biology.

Speckles of blue and black
that tire
the cells of our eyes,
rods and cones chaotic,
like television static.
"Dithering" is what graphic
artists call it.
Which, you know,
appropriate in context.

Across the dithered field
long ropy ribbons of
yellow meets orange mixing to red,
splayed out in bursts and splots.
I wonder what discharge
this is meant
to mimic.

Bile green streaks
and curls,
like the splash of a cough against glass.

Dip-dip dots in rough
but clear lines, like a spill
from cup or vein.

This is our last stop.
Thank you for riding.

Battlefield 3 Plays Better With Old Brains

A short while ago, playing the dogfight-focused Coral Sea map of Battlefield 1943, I shot down 16 enemy planes in a row and ended the round without suffering a single death.  Though I've played a lot of FPSes, I am not accustomed to such results--far from it.  I've gotten used to watching my aging shooter skills slowly slide down the wrong side of the bell curve, and this particular outcome was so unprecedented that I considered retiring from the game on the high note.

But, as I reflected, I realized that compared to other shooters, the Battlefield games' core mechanics specifically play to the strengths--and the failings--of the brains of older gamers. Whether intentionally or as a by-product of these design choices, it means that the series is poised to have the long-term advantage over its competition as the average age of gamers increases, and their minds, like mine, continue to geriatrify.

If You Can Dodge a Wrench...

Not too long ago, in head-to-head firefights I started becoming consciously aware of moments where I had barely enough time to see a fleeting silhouette and register "bad guy with gun: I really ought to shoot hi--" before my avatar crumpled to the ground. Because of this, I envision that there will eventually be a time where I don't ever see the guys with guns, and my playtime becomes nothing but an endless string of death animations (and, at that point, I will retire).

The throwaway explanation is that my reflexes were starting to dull like an old golf pencil.  But what is often referred to as the single concept of "reflexes" is actually the end result of a combination of biological and neurological processes working together.  A degradation of some of these processes will have a more pronounced effect than others on our "twitch" skills.   But Battlefield's design--including larger environments and slower-to-develop encounters--minimizes the impact of this degradation, and in some cases, actually takes advantage of processes that older brains can do better.

The first component of hand-eye coordination is vision, and the first rule of vision is that seeing takes place in the brain, not in the eyes.  In fact, a lot of the time the brain sees what it expects to see, not what is actually there.   The most obvious example of this is the literal blind spot-- the part of the retina where the optic nerve connects, which has no light-sensing cells. 

We don't notice that we have a blind spot because our brain fills it in with an approximation of the input that it thinks is missing.  Instead of a black circle in our vision, the brain seamlessly photoshops in a little bit of the background in real time. But, importantly, if something is in our field of view but falling in a blind spot, not only do we not see it, we believe that there is nothing to see. (Over time, other parts of retina may also become physically damaged and create additional blind spots, which can be a danger for older drivers, as cars and pedestrians can simply seem to appear; one bit of good news is evidence that playing games actually improves contrast sensitivity and motion tracking, some of the first elements of vision to fade with age.)

Another element that affects reacting quickly to visual input, and one that is probably more relevant to videogame skills, is so called "inattentional blindness."  In a nutshell, this means that when the brain is occupied with a high-concentration task, it sometimes does not even register other stimuli, even things that would otherwise be obvious or shocking.  (You can see an example here.)

Finally, much of what we think of as our ability to "act fast" is actually not really about quick reaction to  a unique situation, but rather about quick recognition of how to deal with a familiar situation. Psychologists use the term heuristics to refer to this kind of unconscious decisionmaking, and it means that as our experience with a similar situation grows, we don't orchestrate our response as a series of discrete tasks, but instead start to comprehend the "whole state" at once.

It's what chess players mean when they talk about "seeing the board," but a more commonplace example is thinking back on the way it felt to learn to drive.  At the time, choreographing the negotiation of traffic patterns and red arrows and lane markers outside of the car with the complex series of control inputs inside took all of your concentration, was exhausting, and probably gave at least one other driver a case of PTSD.  Now, you'd probably think nothing of making the same drive while juggling a cell phone, a value meal, and, if you're lucky, one or more lovely companions. 

In effect, once you're an experienced driver, your brain can run along on autopilot until some unusual event--a swerving maniac, a giant donut rolling through traffic--kicks it back into high-processing mode, where time seems to slow down, giving you plenty of time to react (this is an illusion: you're not actually see things in slow motion; you're just paying more attention).  And the amount of attention your brain can providein any particular situation also depends on experience.  A pro race driver deals with swerving maniacs all day long, and when he encounters one, he effectively has a surplus of attention to address the situation.   He's not just reacting, he's reacting with purpose. Whereas my brain might get only as far as processing "can I avoid hitting him?,"  an experienced driver might ask  "can I avoid hitting him and not lose my position?" And a really experienced driver might have time to consider "can I avoid him and turn his mistake to my advantage?"

Prepping for a Long Tour of Duty:

All of this is background for the ways that Battlefield, compared to its nearest rivals (i.e. Call of Duty), makes a number of design choices that diminish the effects of reflex and emphasize the effects of recognition and experience--and plays better with old brains as a result.

The first factor is the large size of the environments.  Even in both games' infantry-on-infantry gametypes, Call of Duty's smaller maps tends to have engagements that come at a faster pace in closer quarters and frequently result in face-to-face gunfights where both players see each other nearly simultaneously and race to line up their crosshairs first.  In these situations, a tenth of a second difference in players' response times might well determine the victor.

In Battlefield, especially in "Conquest" gametypes where players descend on multiple objectives from various directions, one player will often see another at a range too far away to effectively target but will also remain unspotted himself, so the engagement becomes one of slow positioning rather than speedy aim.   That first player might have to, for instance, creep from building to building to allow him to flank an unaware sniper--and because the maps are large, it's less likely that the carefully flanking player will be gunned down en route.   Because Battlefield stretches out these infantry encounters from fractions of a second into several seconds or more, either player's immediate reaction time represents a much smaller portion of the encounter and, consequently, confers less of an advantage.

Even more notable are the effects of vehicles on players' interactions.   First of these is the fact that the addition of vehicles, in and of itself, allows a multitude of new play scenarios to arise.  Faced with the rumbling of a tank in the distance, a player has a few precious seconds to plan their response.  Do they hide until it passes?  Make an exposed dash across the road to lay mines?  Try to move into position for a rocket strike?  Run toward a tank of their own? The more strategies and situations that are possible, the more important that experience and attention (as opposed to simple reflex) become to applying the right response to the right circumstance.  Again, it's a heuristics problem, but in this case a player must be a mix of both the chess master and the race driver--both understanding the whole problem quickly and still giving themselves enough time to act. 

The vehicles themselves, with their limited movement and slow responsiveness, are also a physical manifestation of Battlefield's design emphasis of demanding well-considered responses to particular situations.  The World War II era aircraft of BF1943 are a prime example of this.  Because the planes' cannons are always pointed in their direction of travel, the only way to "win" an engagement is for a pilot to end up in a position where they can hit the other pilot but can't be hit themselves. 

When two players square off, they must immediately take into account the other player's position, trajectory, and likely strategy, and then determine the right controller inputs to plot an intercept course.  These decisions are made over a second or two, but this is still much more slowly than in a quick-draw infantry duel.  And even though the decision happens relatively quickly, the execution takes time and can't easily be corrected.  If you've made an initial mistake in your response--turned too sharply or two quickly--you'll generally overshoot your target or end up a target yourself.  

So, once again, the mechanics of the vehicle combat take each engagement and stretch it out, making reflexes less of a determining factor than experience in determining the right course of action, a skill that can actually improve with age (after all, John Glenn flew to space at 77).  

Of course, these thoughts are all drawn from my experience on the Battlefields of the past. I played the Battlefield 3 beta on Xbox 360 (which did not include any of the larger maps) and it's possible that this latest game could entirely change the series' philosophy and feel.   I hope not, though.  My mind, quite literally, may not be able to take it. 

Podcast The Commute--Ramblings and Misdemeanors

This episode of The Commute was an improptu recording from a couple weeks back when the automated ticket dispensers for all of the Gold Line trains malfunctioned and wouldn't take credit cards, forcing me to drive to work because I didn't have any cash (the same thing then happened a week later and I decided just to jump on the train anyhow, which lead to a whole host of misadventures which I'll chronicle at some point).

In any case, the drive game me the opportunity to record some thoughts on the recently ended Battlefield 3 beta for Xbox 360.  In short: buggy as heck, but I'm looking forward to the release.

I'm working on posting more of the backlog episodes of The Commute, and will try to drive in to work a few times later this month to record some new episodes.   In the meantime, I've managed to fight through motion sickness on the train to write a couple of draft articles which I'll hopefully be cleaning up and posting soon.

Comments: podcastthecommute@gmail.com

Unfinished Sympathy: The Reasons I Think I Feel Sad About Steve Jobs

When I learned that Steve Jobs had died, it was in a manner absolutely devoid of technology--I overheard one co-worker whisper the news across a desk to another. But, in testament to how technology has conditioned us, I didn't join their conversation to ask about details but instead rushed to Google, seeking confirmation. After several minutes of fruitless searching--and just when I thought the report might have been another Twitter hoax (of which I learned there had been several)--I had a thought to check the Apple website and found their solemn homepage.

I had an immediate sensation--physical and sinking--and I realized that I was feeling genuine sadness at the news. And--don't get me wrong--I wasn't exactly sure why. 

Of course, I have experienced the common human empathy at learning that another human being is gone forever, even one who is a total stranger. But the news about Steve Jobs' death felt like news--if not about a friend, at least about a regular acquaintance. Someone who might have sat in the desk next to you. And this was obviously not the case. I had never met him, never seen him in person or--until viewing a YouTube video a few months ago--never even heard the sound of his voice.

I assumed that some of my emotional reaction might have been a result of personal coincidence and projection. Before law, I had worked in and taught web design, which meant that, by trade, I had been a devotee of Apple even when Apple was faltering (and, believe me, I still regret not buying shares). By chance, the director of my department had also volunteered for a pancreatic cancer foundation and had told me the grim statistics of the disease. So when Jobs made public his diagnosis and that his form of pancreatic cancer was (relatively) curable, I knew the bullet he had dodged.    

At 56, Jobs was also not much younger than my father, also a thin, balding man sporting a greying beard and an affinity for comfortable shoes.  So Jobs' death obviously accentuated my father's mortality and consequently my own.  It also reinforced that my own worries about dying "before my time" had begun shifting away from the selfish fear of losing the world to the fear of leaving my own children behind in it alone and unprepared.   With respect to Steve Jobs, I'd had flash of that empathy a few months back, after he resigned from Apple, when I read that he'd named one of the early Apple computers after his first daughter Lisa.  I wondered what legacy I'd eventually be leaving my own.

And this is what I didn't really understand about my reaction, because--and, again, I don't mean anything critical--Steve Jobs is not typically the kind of person who would have touched or inspired me. I don't aspire to entrepreneurship, don't really follow the business world except in passing.  I also generally don't think of myself as feeling personally connected to those whose work I admire. When I consider the artists and other strangers who have affected me, the list is short and seems to stem mostly from being exposed to their work at a time that, only serendipitously, matched up with the concerns of my own life.  I don't know, for instance, if I had read the "tragically romantic" Hemingway for the first time as a man in my thirties rather than my teens, whether I could have thought of him as anything but dour and self-absorbed.

But, unlike an author from whom I may have read a thousand hard-wrought pages, I don't really feel like I know what Steve Jobs thought about anything.  And, from what I have seen reported of him as a person, he was not someone I would have liked very much.  He was apparently temperamental, harsh, and arrogant.  After his death,  I learned that he had even spent years in court denying that Lisa was his child.  

But I was sad to hear of his passing, and that sadness was honest, and it came from somewhere. And the nearest I can figure, it is because he helped create a lot of the things that allow us to share moments with the people we do know and love, the people who are not strangers. The other day, I copied the entire contents of my wife's iPhone onto our computer. She'd carried it with her everywhere, and it had hundreds of photographs and movie clips of our daughters growing up. In a few keystrokes, I was able to sit beside her and watch a time-lapse slide show of the last two years of our lives. 

Steve Jobs' company gave us many of these things, and--though it is probably unfair to all of the others who worked there--he was the face of that company. I don't know them, or him, but because of them I know my own girls a little better. And that seems a proper legacy.

Court Approves Lawsuit Against Toyota Over Cyberstalking Ad Stunt | Threat Level | Wired.com

http://m.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/09/toyota-
$10m is reaching, but it's hard to believe that no one considered this might be seen as a bad idea.
jb.

The Commute: A Minor Infraction

Concluding the tirade of overdue tirades, this episode of The Commute includes, for your consideration:

• My contemporaneously recorded evidence that I DID NOT commit a moving violation
• A fleeting expletive,

and, somewhat unexpectedly,

• A lengthy discussion of the difficulties of obtaining trademark protection for popular videogame mods 

The Commute: The Old Folks Win

Continuing the mini-backlog, this episode will regale with:

• Predictions on how the aging  audience will affect the popularity of the upcoming crop of military shooters 
• Tales of astounding virtual heroism, and
• Admissions that I am really lousy at teaching a man to fish.  Or a small child, for that matter

The Commute: The Backlog Commences

I've been, not uncharacteristically, slow in posting the backlog of episodes of The Commute so I'm working on making amends with a trifecta of incongruous ramblings.  In this edition:

• How every O. Henry predicament can be solved by just being selfish
• Why it's best not to record a podcast on public transportation, and
• A narrowly-avoided mid-episode collision!

More to follow shortly, so enjoy the show!

On the zen of catastrophe:

I do not know if this makes him a very lucky man, or a very unlucky one....

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/08/31/arizona.eye.socket.shears/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Podcast The Commute 001 (The Financial Commutapocalypse)

Hey, all

I think finally got the podcast hosting kinks ironed out, so enjoy this first episode of The Commute:  the podcast for people stuck in their cars, produced entirely by someone stuck in his car.

I started recording these as a way of avoiding going totally insane when I moved back to LA and started spending about 3x as long driving to work.  The episode's a short one, but there was still fun to be had ruminating upon:

• Family abandonment
• Redistribution of wealth
• The benefits of union membership, and 
• The best videogames to play while partaking of good bourbon

This is actually not the first episode I recorded, so I'll be posting up some of the backlog of episodes soon.  If you liked this one, then the others are just like it, but much better!  If you hated this one, then the others are nothing like it, but also much better!

In the meantime, fire your comments to podcastthecommute@gmail.com

http://www.ourmedia.org/ia/details/BaldricaTheComm...