SIWIK@16: Loneliness

Hey, it's me, your older, more experienced self, sending advice back through the years. It's actually been a while since I wrote that last note -- over four months by my calendar -- but knowing that you're going to read all of these between the summer of 1983 and the late spring of 1984 makes it hard to feel a sense of urgency with these things. Sorry about that.

You may remember me writing this in that previous note:

Next up, the bad news. These hot chicks are not all desperately looking to have sex, and they're certainly not all looking to have sex with you.

I'd intended this as a friendly reminder that having sex isn't the be-all and end-all of every friendship or relationship you're going to have with a woman, especially if she's attractive. However, I now realize that there's something I should have mentioned in the context of 'not every hot chick is going to want to have sex with you'.

'Not every', in this context, means 'none'. And it's mainly your own fault. There are three things specifically working against you:

1. You're heavy. Well, 'heavy' is putting it lightly. You're huge.

This is a problem, because you're living in a society that considers obesity to be unattractive. It's a bigger problem, because, despite how much you may decry the 'shallowness' of women who can't look past your weight, you feel exactly the same way -- not one of the women you're going to end up pining for over the next 25 years of your life is remotely as huge as you are. Why should you be surprised that the women you're attracted to don't find your weight attractive when a big part of the reason you find them attractive is that they're shaped like normal people?

And yes, I know you have a ready-made reason for why you don't want to lose the weight "just to get a girlfriend" -- that you'd eventually gain the weight back and lose the girlfriend because you weren't the guy she fell in love with, despite that being the guy you are. Very admirable of you, but it's not going to make you any more attractive.

2. You occasionally give off unpleasant odors.

Yes, I know it's not always easy for a huge guy to daintily clean every part of himself. And yes, I know that sometimes the food you eat comes back to haunt you in embarrassingly smelly ways. But remember that girl in gym class you thought was attractive, until you noticed the distinct odor of feces every time you spent more than a few minutes around her? That was pretty off-putting, don't you think?

You're going to go through long stretches of time like this, and your friends aren't going to be of any help, because you don't smell like this all the time, and they'll think it's impolite to point it out when you do. And you're not going to notice it yourself most of the time, because it's amazing what you can get used to when you're around it all the time.

I'm not just talking about poo, either. You're actually going to be kicked out of a dentist's office at some point in the future because your breath is so bad that she can't stomach working over the cesspit of your open mouth. So there's that.

But both of these are really just symptoms of the bigger point...

3. You don't care to take care of yourself.

You know how your mom nags you all the time to clean your room? You know how you feel that, once you're out on your own, you're finally going to get away from that damned nagging?

Trust me, she actually means well.

You're not going to want to bring anyone over to any of your living spaces, because they're disaster areas. Sure, you'll tell yourself that they could be worse, that you at least don't have rotting food lying around, but that's just because of your odd childhood being friends with someone living in a house that, the moment his family moved out, was condemned as a health hazard. That's not the benchmark you're trying to beat here.

Of course, though you realize you're embarrassed to bring anyone over to your place, you're not embarrassed enough to actually keep it in order, any more than you'll keep yourself in any more order than strictly required.

And that's going to make you a very lonely person.

You'll have friends, plenty of them, and good ones too. It's just that, after you've lived with them, they won't quite be as excited about your friendship as they were.

It's also not going to be surprising when you get out of town and finally find yourself having girlfriends, because when you're away from this 'comfort zone', you'll find yourself making more of an effort, knowing that you have to work a bit harder to 'fit in'. I'm not sure how to get you out of that 'comfort zone' on a regular basis, but if you can find a way, your adulthood is going to be a lot less lonely.

The Snuggie and the Web Calendar

Long ago, there was a county where people lived and grew food.

The wealthiest family in the county grew apples, and they were acclaimed to be the best apples available at any price. Other families grew other crops, like corn or beans, and they weren't as wealthy as the family that grew apples, but that was OK because everyone had enough.

Then, one winter, as some of the poorer families were meeting to drink and pass the time, the eldest son of one of those families observed, "You know, apples are a very profitable crop. I don't see why we can't all grow apples, and then we'll all be wealthy!" The others nodded in agreement, and went home to tell their families, and word spread like wildfire.

That spring, all the other families in the county plowed under their fields and threw out their seed, planting apple trees instead. At harvest-time, the square was filled with families selling their newly-grown apples.

Two months after the harvest, everyone was dead. From apple poisoning, most likely.

The story doesn't begin with Jonathan Coulton, but he's the guy you're most likely to recognize, so we lead with him. Earlier today, Coulton posted an essay to his weblog; a rambling, largely thoughtful musing on a couple of 'money guys' who seemed to think that Coulton was largely a fluke and that his success as a musician -- enough to earn a living doing nothing but his chosen trade -- probably wasn't a 'viable business model'.

On the one hand, I think the so-called money guys had at least one reasonable point: if you're planning to go into business for yourself, and your business model is "I'm going to be Jonathan Coulton," then you're probably not going to make it. After all, there's already someone in the market with much more expertise and experience at being Jonathan Coulton that you have, so you can't help but fail to measure up.

On the other hand, Coulton pretty much makes the same point in writing, "'Writing a song that gets discovered on Slashdot' is not a business model, any more than 'putting sleeves on a blanket' is a business model." Which pretty much seems like it should be common sense, but apparently requires some re-iteration. (More on this later.)

It's what Coulton wrote next that got me thinking:

I make songs that are good and then I sell them (and concert tickets, and Tshirts) to the people who want them – that’s my business model, and it’s patently obvious that it’s replicable because I stole it from every other recording artist in the world.

The first thing that struck me was that Coulton's making a value judgment that's not really necessary, in the sense that he's saying that his songs sell because they're 'good'. I'm not here to argue with Coulton; he's entitled to his belief, and I'm sure he puts a lot of work into his music, and his fans would almost certainly share his opinion. No, my point is just that something doesn't necessarily have to be 'good' to be salable. (If you don't believe me, feel free to browse whatever week on the Billboard charts you'd like for the past few decades. I'm sure you can find something to criticize.)

The point is not that Coulton's songs are (or are not) good; people like them. Considering how much music Coulton has given away, I'd argue that people liking his songs isn't really the point, either, since what he seems to be selling most is entrance into a lifestyle decision -- one where being a nerd is awesome and flying one's freak-flag is celebrated. Consider, Coulton is also currently organizing his second cruise -- this is a guy who can sell out cruise ships, which arguably isn't totally about the music (though in his essay Coulton says he rarely tours or does concerts any more), but about being able to say that one was on a cruise ship with Jonathan Coulton.

Coulton has found an audience that identifies with him and is willing to pay for the privilege of showing their sense of identification. Before we go on, let me say that there's absolutely nothing wrong with this whatsoever; Coulton has every right to make a living based on people wanting to identify with him. But we should make it clear that, insofar as there's any 'business model' here, that's the real business model.

Coulton drops a lot of names that are arguably as famous or more famous than his, but the trick works for people less famous, too. My best example: Lojo Russo, who started out playing for "hippies at ren faires" (to borrow Coulton's phrase), and whose closest brush with fame is probably being turned down for the Minneapolis Lilith Fair in 2010 despite winning the fan vote.

You don't even have to restrict yourself to music: there are any number of authors, both of fiction and non-fiction, who've cultivated small yet devoted fan-bases and seem to be able to earn a living catering to those fan-bases. Supernatural teen romance is the hot topic of the day, but it works in sports as well, where Rob Neyer turned a gig as Bill James's research assistant into book deals and a long-running engagement as one of ESPN's best commentors. Heck, for that matter we could even mention my personal nemesis, Aaron Gleeman.

So the business model works even if it doesn't make you internet-famous. Or, well, it works for some.

The thing this reminded me of, and the main reason it got me thinking, was an internet argument from a couple of months back. Coulton himself is saying that the business model works, but he's not advocating that everybody go ahead and try it. The argument started when somebody did.

Justin Vincent, a self-described 'solopreneur', posted an essay on his own blog called "Entreporn, The Fallacy That Wastes Your Life". He's reacting to a venture capitalist referring to so-called 'lifestyle' businesses as "dipshit companies", which is to say, the venture capitalist is uninterested in investing in such businesses. However, in reacting to the unnamed VC's derision, Vincent swings too far into hyperbole:

The absolute truth is that each and every one of us can build a business that can support us. We don’t need to build a million dollar business to survive. We just need a regular paycheck. Just like the paycheck that we already get working for someone else, except it’s a paycheck we pay ourselves.

If you build a micro business it means you’re your own boss, you make your own rules, you live life on your own terms.

If you genuinely have the spirit of an entrepreneur inside of you, it’s perfectly possible to build a $10k/month webapp business that can set you free.

But even better, once you have the knowledge that comes along with building a succesful (sic) $10k/month business, you also possess the exact same knowledge that it takes to build a $100k/month business.

Somebody decided to call bullshit on this idea:

As pg points out, the ideas that led to the businesses that have formed the infrastructure that enables web lifestyle businesses could not have, themselves, been lifestyle businesses. Someone has to think big, take risks, and deploy significant capital in the interest of a dramatically better world. If you don't want to be that person, great, but don't tell the risk-takers that they're "wasting their lives". Would you say the same to scientists who take big risks? Artists?

Boil it down, and the message is simply this: no, not everybody can succeed doing what you're talking about.

The specific avenue of attack chosen was to point out that somebody has to run a 'non-lifestyle' business to allow the folks who want to run 'lifestyle' business to have things like phone service and commercial-class internet connectivity. He could just as easily made a different point, in defense of the inevitable attack against his argument by someone who develops a web calendaring/time-tracking app, by pointing out that there are plenty of other online time-tracking tools out there. Plus there are plenty of OS-specific or hybrid-OS/web time-tracking and project management software packages out there.

One web calendaring app or geeky folk-rock musician is interesting, two is even more interesting, and three can make a suite or a super-concert. Twenty, though? Fifty? Two hundred? At some point you're going to find the population self-organizing on a bell curve, and there's no guarantee that you're not going to find yourself either in the bulgy middle or at the stinky tail end.

But most cringingly, though, is that guys like Vincent and other 'bootstrappers' seem to believe that you can not only make this a working business model, but do so in a small timespan, along the lines of a three-to-five year business plan.

At first glance, looking at Coulton's career, you might actually buy into this, since it's been just over five years since that famous Slashdotting (of Coulton's song "Code Monkey"). Then consider that Coulton's first studio album actually came out in 2003, and that Coulton himself likely honed his craft in any number of unknown, anonymous exhibitions between that date and his Yale college days in the early 1990s.

There are almost certainly still fields where a dedicated practitioner, after years of seasoning, can stumble across a moment of greatness and ride it to, if not fame and fortune, then enough of each to live on. But I wouldn't bet on being able to follow in Jonathan Coulton's footsteps.

CITS

In many role-playing games in which character creation is done on a point-buy system (Champions, GURPS, etc.), the games contain concepts called limitations and disadvantages (or something similar).

A limitation is generally applied to a character power or ability, and specifies a situation or condition in which the power isn't as effective as it usually is. (doesn't affect wooden items, damage reduced by range, etc.) A limitation can instead specify a drawback that occurs when the power or ability is used. (character takes damage equal to damage inflicted with power, etc.)

A disadvantage is generally applied to the character as a whole, and can run the gamut from the character taking extra damage from a particular attack form, being harmed by environments or substances that are normally harmless, having particular psychological quirks, having special physical requirements (a special diet, for instance), or even some genre-specific disadvantages, such as a secret identity in a superhero game.

The reason to take these game elements is that they provide cost-breaks or even free building points to add to your character. Having a power ring that doesn't affect the color yellow costs fewer character points than having one that isn't limited like that.

In every point-buy RPG I've ever played, there has been a rule that generally boils down to this: A limitation that isn't limiting, or a disadvantage that doesn't disadvantage the character, isn't worth any points. The best example I've seen is a character with a 'cosmic awareness' power that allows her to know pretty much everything about whatever she's concentrating on, and then tries to get building points back by taking the disadvantage 'Blind' -- if her cosmic awareness provides all the information that her sight would normally provide, then being blind really isn't limiting to the character, since she can just use cosmic awareness to get the information she'd normally get from her eyes.

However, there are some situations where a disadvantage or limitation seems limiting, but really isn't, based on the full suite of other abilities or powers the character has purchased. These kinds of situations can provoke arguments between players and GMs based on whether the character's limitation meets the criteria for the 'not limiting thus no points' rule.

To avoid these arguments, I've come up with a concept I call CITS (Character Individuality Too Severe); if a character has a disadvantage, but always seems to be able to use a power or ability to avoid the effects of the disadvantage whenever it's presented, I'll declare CITS on the character, reducing the point value of the disadvantage to zero, and consuming experience points (or whatever in-game currency is used for character improvement) until the amount of points gained from the disadvantage is 'paid off'. To avoid this ruling, the player must describe some situation or set of situations in which his powers and abilities would not be able to avoid the effects of his disadvantage. (In other words, the player has to explain to me, the GM, exactly how to trigger his disadvantage.)

The Steve Trevor Paradox

Stories about time travel frequently mention, and are sometimes focused on, the most famous of all time-travel paradoxes, the Grandfather Paradox:

Say you were able to go back in time, and in doing so, caused your grandfather to die before meeting your grandmother and giving birth to one of your parents. You create a paradox in which, since one of your parents isn't born, you can't exist to go back in time to kill your grandfather, but if you don't exist to kill your grandfather, nothing stops him from meeting your grandmother and giving birth to your parent which means you do exist to go back into time...

Pretty mind-bendy, eh? Well, after watching the animated Justice League season one ending episode, The Savage Time, I've found a different, somewhat less mind-bendy paradox.

I should start by saying that the DC Animated continuity of the Justice League and its characters is fairly different than the continuity of all other appearances of the DC Comics characters depicted. In both the original Wonder Woman comic book as well as the 1970's television series, Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor worked together against their mutual enemies. In the Justice League animated series, however, the princess Diana of Themiscyra takes up the Wonder Woman regalia and departs for 'man's world' in the initial episode, Secret Origins. The Wonder Woman of this story universe doesn't meet Steve Trevor until traveling back in time to attempt to undo a change that allows the Nazis to win World War II. (No superhero team's story arc is complete until they've visited Nazi World, after all.)

So the Justice League goes back in time, helps defeat the Nazis, and returns to the present. The episode (and the first season) ends with Diana going to a veterans' home to see Steve Trevor.

How does Steve Trevor respond? That's the crux of the paradox.

To Wonder Woman, almost no time has passed since meeting Steve Trevor as a dashing ex-spy in the past and seeing him again in the veterans' home in the present. To Trevor, however, decades have gone by, most of which didn't include a Wonder Woman at all. Here would appear to be the options:

a) Either Trevor remembers Wonder Woman enough to recognize her when she first appears as part of the events of Secret Origins and helps found the Justice League, in which case he might legitimately wonder why she didn't visit sooner, or

b) Trevor doesn't remember Wonder Woman ever existing until the moment she returns from the past, in which case it makes perfect sense.

The former isn't such a big problem. The latter, however, is. If Wonder Woman's changing of the past back to its original shape erases her existence prior to her return from the past, then the world she's returning to isn't the same as the one she left -- for starters, where does she come from now, since no one on Themiscyra will remember her?

What about previous Justice League episodes, where the League was only successful because of her presence (as in Secret Origins)? Or other episodes where the League only learns what's going on because of Wonder Woman's actions (as in Paradise Lost)?

Of course, it's not a paradox if version a of events above is true. But in that case, why is Trevor so happy to see Diana?

Thoughts on Japan

First thought -- wow. Seriously humbling. I spend time thinking about how advanced humanity seems to be; how we're the most 'advanced' species on the planet in the sense that we mold and shape our environment to suit us, then something like this happens and reminds you how little power or control we all have in the larger picture.

How can someone look at the footage from Japan in the aftermath of these quakes and think that global warming will be something simple or easy to fix? It boggles.

Second thought -- let's give the engineers their propers, but let's also not go too far.

The previous candidate for the worst earthquake ever recorded was in Chile in 1960. Accounts of the number who perished in the Chile quakes vary, but every estimate is smaller than the current estimated 7000 dead in Japan.

Yes, it's true that Chile of 1960 had less population density overall than 2011 Japan, and it's also true that Chile, even today, likely has less 'advanced' infrastructure that would be vulnerable to earthquakes (skyscrapers, elevated concrete roads, etc.). It's also true that, while the epicenter of the Japanese quakes was some distance off-shore, the Chilean quakes were centered below land -- very near the populated town of Cañete, which today is as large as a typical U.S. suburb.

Let's wait a bit before canonizing the architect's of Japan's buildings and building codes, shall we?

Third thought -- can we please stop with the nuke gawking?

I do get why we're doing it. On a philosophical level, we're a generation still looking for our identity, so when our parents talk about Vietnam and their parents about World War II and their parents about the Great Depression, we want to feel like we have our own 'thing' to point to. Thus far, that 'thing' looks to be natural disasters -- hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, blizzards. If that's our thing, we should be at least knowledgeable about it.

The bigger driving factor, I think, is the novelty. Not only does this have the potential to be the worst nuclear disaster in history, but it's happening during what may end up being a unique time in history -- a time when media is both fast but largely unsupervised. The story from Three Mile Island took years to completely get out to the public. And while Chernobyl was known to be a disaster while it was happening, the idea of getting a live feed from people standing outside the containment building would have been unthinkable in the 1980s.

My problem is that, because we have the ability to share so much information so quickly, we're in danger of getting a bunch of really bad information into the pipeline that'll take a long time, if ever, to 'flush out' -- the chances of nuclear power making a comeback in the U.S., which looked promising given the recent oil shocks, now might be as dead as the Vikings stadium chances.

Some folks get this -- Rachel Maddow is doing an excellent job of trying to be precise when describing what's going on with the nuclear reactors in Japan. But even Maddow is oversimplifying or otherwise being imprecise in certain areas -- for instance, she describes 'the radiation' moving around Japan, as if the neutrons, photons, and other particles were leaping directly out of the reactor and cruising around Japan looking for people to irradiate. The key (as Maddow's guest Arnold Gundersson tried to explain) is that particles -- not just fuel particles, but even dust, rust, or other normally non-hazardous particles made hazardously radioactive by its exposure to neutron flux -- can get onto people and end up serving as a very local, very potent source of radiation.

In other words, the real issue is fallout -- a term that we're far more accustomed to hearing with respect to nuclear weapons, but that applies here as a matter of public safety and thus should be called by its name. Of course, now that I say that, I have to admit that I wouldn't trust Fox News anywhere within three time zones of the word 'fallout'.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

SIWIK@16: Hot Chicks

There's a book out, called Dear Me: A Letter To My Sixteen Year Old Self, in which celebrities write short letters to themselves at the age of sixteen. It's an interesting idea, and one I support, though the more I think about it, the more I realize that I'd want to send a lot more than one simple note back through time to my own pubescent avatar.

Thus, Sh...tuff I Wish I Knew @ 16. Part the first:

* * *

Hey,

Congratulations. Now that you're becoming a high-school senior and discovering that the world isn't just classrooms and grade-point-averages, I thought I'd send along a little...well, older-self advice. Yes, you're coming out of your shell, spreading your wings, whatever you want to call it. And yes, you're a pretty bright kid for all that. But trust me, by the time you get to where I'm sitting, there's going to be a lot of stuff you're gonna wish you knew back where you're standing right now. If you're reading this, and you believe it, maybe you'll be lucky enough to learn some of it.

First, you've noticed that there are these creatures around you who seem to be able to command your attention whenever they like. While your standards (not just because of your age, but because it's the danged '80's) are a bit different than mine, we'll split the difference and refer to them as 'hot chicks'. Pretty amazing stuff, eh?

Want to know how you can spend more time around them? Thought so.

First step -- take a deep breath. They're not goddesses, they're people, with interests and curiosities and opinions all their own, just like other people. You don't have to prove yourself worthy to hang around with them. Heck, keep on the path you're on (trying new things, stretching your wings, showing your talents), and they're going to be just as interested in you as you are in them.

Well, OK, not 'just' as interested. We'll get to that in a bit.

But first things first -- there is literally nothing preventing you from being friends with every hot chick you meet, from here until middle age at least, except your own preconceptions. That's what we're here to work on.

Next up, the bad news. These hot chicks are not all desperately looking to have sex, and they're certainly not all looking to have sex with you. You may find this disappointing, but actually, it's an advantage -- once you get that idea out of your head, that if you don't end up screwing one of these girls you're wasting your time, you're going to end up with a much happier late adolescence and early adulthood, trust me. Because the advantages? Oh, ho, man.

Y'know how other guys assume that any guy who hangs around with hot chicks and isn't trying to screw them must be gay? Those people are jealous. Making them jealous is a good thing.

Next, you know that warm fuzzy feeling in your stomach you get just looking at a hot chick? You're going to get that a lot. And, even better, the even more amazing feeling when one smiles at you, laughs at or even with you, and gives you a hug in front of six other guys. Oh, and there's this absolutely incredible feeling you get when you walk into a room with a hot chick dressed to the nines on your arm, and every other guy in the room stops to look. Trust me, it's awesome.

OK, now that the vain part of you is satisfied, let me talk to the smart part.

You know that feeling you get that nobody understands you? That nobody can really relate to what goes on inside your head, because they can't see the world through your eyes? Even that feeling you get sometimes that other people assume they wouldn't understand what's going on with you, so they just don't try? Guess what? Hot chicks get it.

I'm not saying they get you, necessarily, but the truth is that most are assumed to be a lot happier than they are, most see life from a perspective that other people don't get, and especially, most are sick and tired of being thought of as just 'pretty faces' and dismissed.

You are going to be the best damned friend these women ever had, and it's going to be awesome. But again, not like you think right now.

No, no, I get it; I'm you, remember? You don't have to explain to me that you're looking for something more than just physical stimulation. I know. Here's the problem, though: the one thing you're not ready for yet is that people, not just hot chicks, but people in general, don't fall the way you do. This isn't yet the time to explore that, so let me just explain how that affects you here:

You don't have to try to explain to every single one of these women how much you care about them.

For starters, they'll see it for themselves in your friendship. And trust me, the hot chicks you'll be attracted to have brains enough to figure that out for themselves.

More importantly, though, if you dump your feelings over some poor girl's head, you're going to be hitting exactly the same button that the clueless guy who just wants a quick lay is hitting, and you're not even going to realize it. Trust me, it's not a sex/love/romance/commitment thing. It's just that you're going to be pushing her toward something she's not sure she wants to give. It's a combination of trust, plus putting demands on someone as a price for your friendship. It may seem more noble that you're asking for her heart instead of her underpants, but it's the same basic conflict.

And yes, I realize that saying that is the easy part. I'm writing to you from nearly 30 years in your future, and I'm still not sure how to keep the part of me that wants to pledge undying love quiet. But here's the thing -- if you don't think you can get past that, if you feel as though you're going to want to constantly remind this woman how much she means to you, then do both of you a favor. Don't. Start. If you go for it anyway and can't keep yourself in check, god knows it'll be painful for you, and believe it or not, it's not going to leave her unaffected, either.

If you can work your way around that, then you're going to have some of the best times of your life ahead of you, believe me.

No. No. Stop. Don't give me that 'what if she...' business. Like I said, the hot chicks you're going to be attracted to have the brains to figure it out for themselves, and if by some chance one does decide that she wants to take you up on those feelings, trust me, she will find a way to let you know.

Good luck, kid.

The Five Weekend Myth, Debunked

This year, July has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays, and 5 Sundays. This happens once every 823 years...
- Too many Facebook statuses to count

If you want to believe that people are stupid, have really short memories, and really suck at math, here's your chance. There's a meme going around that July 2011 will have 5 full weekends, and it'll be the first time this has happened in centuries.

It won't be. In fact, the last time this happened was in October of 2010 (yes, not even three months before this post), and the same meme went around the web then.

If you're thinking, "Omigod! This thing only happens once every few centuries and it's happened twice in less than 12 months! Awesome!" Well, I have bad news for you: this happens all the freaking time. Rather than just pull out a calendar and show you how often this happens*, I'll try to explain using math.

* - SPOILER ALERT: By the end of this post, I'll be pulling out a calendar to show you how often this happens. Yes, I'm a hypocrite.

Let's begin with something easy. Any month that starts on a Friday will have five Fridays: the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th. If that month happens to have 31 days, then it will also have five full weekends, since Saturday will be the 30th and Sunday the 31st. (It is true that, because of this, only a month with 31 days can have five full weekends -- so if someone tries to claim that a shorter month will also have five full weekends, you can debunk that really easily.)

So, how often do months with 31 days roll around?

Thirty days hath September
April, June, and November
All the rest have thirty-one
Excepting February alone

The old rhyme is right on, and by a process of elimination we can easily see that there are seven months each year with 31 days (January, March, May, July, August, October, and December). So you start with seven chances every year to see a month with five full weekends.

Next, note that just about every month contains a number of days that doesn't work out to an even number of weeks -- only February (in non-leap years) has exactly 28 days. So, since the number of days in each month is causing the start of each month to shift around the week, chances get even better that you'll see some month in any given year start on a Friday. This is not to say that every year gets a month with five full weekends (in fact, 2012 has no such month), but here's the thing:

If a given year doesn't have a month that starts on a Friday, the next year is more likely to.

Why? Because the number of days in the year also don't divide evenly into weeks. If they did, then years would start on the same day every year, and the progression of weeks would be eminently predictable -- July might always start on a Sunday, for instance, as it will in 2012. But because the normal year has 365 days, while an even 52 weeks contains just 364 days, each year progresses by a day on the weekly calendar. So in 2012, January will start on a Sunday, not a Saturday like it did this year.

So if you have a year where all the 31-day months start on some day other than a Friday (like 2012), the shifting of all those starting days by one (or two, in the case of leap years like 2012) means that you get seven new shots at the apple, so to speak.

And lo and behold! The next 'money month' that only happens once every 823 years will actually happen...in March of 2013.

"Okay, okay," I hear you thinking, "so it's not as rare as all that. It's still gotta be pretty rare, though, right? I mean, three times in less than three years has to be a fluke?"

No, my good person, it doesn't. If you understand enough math to build a calendar, you can build what's called a perpetual calendar, in which any combination of day, month, year, and day of the week can be determined. And since the math required to calculate calendars has been around for many centuries, the ability to produce perpetual calendars has also been around for centuries -- see that Wikipedia page linked above, which contains an image of a Swedish perpetual calendar used to calculate which day Easter falls on...from 1140 through 1671.

But for our purposes, this perpetual calendar works best. The provider of the calendar gives you a handy guide for using it as intended, but we can also use it to find out how often five-full-weekend months come around:

• Start at the '1' in the 'days of the month' box in the lower right of the calendar,
• Go to the right until you reach the 'Friday' on the same row.
• Go up.

Each month you see, in each year in the same row -- both to the left and right of the month names -- starts on Friday the 1st. And thus each such month with 31 days will have five full weekends. The particular calendar I've linked to covers 1775 to 2025, a span of 250 years. And during that 250 year span, it's easy to see that there are a lot of five-full-weekend months**; heck, there are years that have more than one month with five full weekends, such as 2010, for example. Yes, the very year in which people started sharing online about how rare it was to see a month with five full weekends was a year that had two such months!

**If you don't feel like doing the comparison yourself, the total is 227 five-full-weekend months during this 250 year period, or nearly one every year.

In truth, a year like 2012 that won't have a five-full-weekend month in it is actually somewhat more noteworthy, even if it's not particularly rare, either. According to the same calendar, 36 of the 250 years on the calendar won't see a five-full-weekend month.

And OMG! Every one of those years has June as the month that starts on a Friday! That has to be when the aliens will come!

Or not.

Retrenchment

It's been a while since I've posted, and while there aren't a whole lot of good reasons, there are some reasons.

The main one was that my laptop, Bookley, appeared to have given up the ghost one Saturday morning. I awoke, preparing to do a few last-minute tweaks before heading off to Saturday gaming, but Bookley's video output seemed dead. Undeterred, I tried hooking him up to an external monitor, but still no luck. I didn't have the time to spend troubleshooting, so I resolved to work on it once I got home.

The more I tried to figure out what was wrong with Bookley, the more I became depressed. This just seemed the latest in a whole series of minor disappointments with the laptop and, by extension, the company that made it. For starters, I'd paid over $3000 for the machine when new, and included in that price was a three-year AppleCare plan, deciding that such a large investment in a computer was worth protecting. But while I registered the computer, I didn't realize that the AppleCare had to be registered seperately, and thus after about 18 months or so, my AppleCare ID had been retired as being 'unused' and assigned to a different machine. By that time, Apple was in the habit of registering all AppleCare plans at the store (probably to specifically avoid this problem); I later ended up purchasing my own replacement battery, when the battery replacement would otherwise have been under warranty, because while I could prove I'd purchased the plan, I didn't have an account against which the store could charge the warranty repair, and I couldn't get an account unless I found the original AppleCare registration card that came with my computer.

So, for nearly two months, I wrote Bookley off as a lost cause and tried to decide what my next computer would be. I'd since purchased both an iPhone and iPad, so I didn't really need a machine for basic e-mail and Internet tasks; instead, after inventorying the actual computer applications I was going to be using, I came to the conclusion that an inexpensive Windows machine would actually meet my needs and my budget, so I started looking at building my own.

Then, finally, seemingly on a whim, I took Bookley into the Apple Store where I'd bought it so that they could tell me, officially, what was wrong. It turned out that my MacBook Pro was one of the ones with faulty NVidia graphics processors, and that the repair would be free of charge, even though I didn't officially have a warranty. I settled in to wait for the repair to come back.

While I was waiting, a leaking brake line turned into a full-on brake failure, which necessitated my taking in the Intrepid for service as well. This one I had to pay out of my own pocket for, though it was also a good excuse to get some needed work done on the front tie rod; all that appears to be left is to replace a leaky gasket on the gas tank (it leaks slightly when the tank is filled, but not otherwise) and replace the shocks and the car will seem nearly good as new.

Lastly, the week before all this happened, I celebrated a personal holiday I called My John Candy Day -- it was the day I was exactly as old as the comedian and actor John Candy when he died in his sleep on the set of the movie "Wagons East".

The combination of renewal represented by the return of Bookley and the refreshment of my car, plus the reminder of my own mortality produced by My John Candy Day has given me a much-needed opportunity to consider what I'm doing with my life.

It's funny, in both the humorous and strange senses; many people who've known me have seemed to assume that I'd do great things. From my own perspective, though, while I've been able to make some things that people assume are difficult look very easy, I've always understood that doing anything of significance and doing it well would require more work, dedication, and downright stick-to-it-ive-ness than I generally figured I had in me. As such, my life to date has been a string of brilliant ideas, hung on a line like glistening pearls, with long stretches of nothing but string between them.

I wish I could say this reflection has given me the inspiration to get up -- or buckle down -- and so something worthy of the gifts that have been bestowed upon me. One problem, though, is that I realize that people often say things, not because they believe them to be true, but because they believe you'd like them to be true; knowing that, I could never entirely trust any praise coming from someone I knew, and I never found myself impressed enough with my own abilities to try to argue the point with my own poorer self.

But, as the month ends, opportunities are knocking. National Novel Writing Month is about to begin, and while my last two attempts have been meager--or perhaps 'meager' is being too kind--there's a vague sense that this year could be different. I'm not considering doing it to impress someone or to insert myself into a social scene; I actually have a few ideas that, if I can choose one, might blossom into, well, not genius or probably even success, but at least a worthier effort than I've put together before.

Bookley's return also opens up the opportunity to record my third 'hobbyist audiobook'; I recorded David Foster Wallace's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" as a Christmas present for an overseas friend, then followed up with Raymond Chandler's "The Simple Art of Murder" as more of a project I could 'show around'. C.S. Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters" are calling me next -- it would be the longest such project I've attempted, but is also the most interesting from a personal perspective.

Perhaps the key is simply realizing that these things are doable; that I control much more of the outcome than, say, trying to find a girlfriend or looking for a new job. Start with the things you can do. Go from there.

Let's see if I follow through.

Gen Con 2010 - Day One

The first item on the agenda for the first day of the convention was the dealer's room.

I'd 'invested' in a VIG badge again for 2010, fueled in large part by the feeling of awesomeness I'd had in 2009 by being a VIG and taking advantage of all the perks of the program. Some of the options were better than the previous year, as the VIG organizers took the lessons of 2009 and applied them to improve the VIG experience (best example: there was no drink shortage in 2010 as there had been in 2009, and there was also more non-carbonated juice options, which I took full advantage of). Other options weren't as impressive as in 2009 (best example: though there were technically two swag bags in 2010, even both combined failed to be as impressive as the single 2009 swag bag, including the bag itself).

One of the big reasons to do VIG, however, is that on Thursday, with the rest of the con-goers waiting around until the official 10am opening time, VIGs (along with a few other limited classes of individuals, like press) got to enter the hall an hour early. Though there was a long line to get into the hall, the hall itself was so huge that by the time Chip and I had managed to navigate the line and get into the hall, the cluster of VIGs before us had been reduced to a vague mist of consumers that clustered just a bit around the larger vendors in the hall. I ended up picking up more magnets for my Alea Tools kit, stopped off at the Paizo booth to grab a couple of copies of the Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide for two friends back home who'd requested it, and helped Chip go through the list of Reaper miniatures he'd brought to collect at this year's con (though in honesty, it was more like Chip was going through the list while I stood back and flirted with the woman in costume). After our tour through the hall, which ended shortly after the general admission started at 10am, we waded through the now crammed exhibitor's hall to escape back to our hotel room, dropped off our various bits of swag, and headed off to D&D HQ - a.k.a. the Sagamore Ballroom.

The first thing we did at Sagamore was participate in a convention delve -- a delve is a short (in this case, hour long) D&D adventure in which you participate with pregenerated characters and try to complete as much of the adventure as possible without dying or running out of time. This year's main delve (the Lair of the Dread Witch) featured pregenerated characters using the new D&D Essentials toolkit, and not only were the characters far simpler than the 4E characters we'd gotten used to, the adventure they were participating in was viciously difficult, a seeming continuation of the ethic of the Dark Sun D&D Encounters series in which someone designing the encounters simply decided to prove to people that 4E isn't the candy-strewn cakewalk that its detractors claim it is. One brutal hour later, I decided to skip the delve for the rest of the con, though Chip gave it another try and, if anything, had an even worse experience in his second attempt.

After delving, I headed up to grab lunch in the room (the first of many PB&Js) while waiting for what I expected to be the highlight of the convention: True Dungeon. True Dungeon is a 'live action' D&D experience, where a group of up to eight players takes on the roles of traditional D&D classes, but acts out the adventure by walking through a constructed 'dungeon', physically interacting with puzzles and traps (and occasionally even monsters!) and generally enjoying the hell out of the experience. Even better, I'd managed to secure an entire block of eight tickets, and all of our group was in for the run -- the first time I was set to do a True Dungeon run entirely with people I knew.

The start of the adventure was fine -- we motored through puzzles and mowed down monsters (including a very attractive ice demon in a neat optical illusion room) before finally reaching the final challenge -- Smoke the red dragon! Sadly, we were a horribly under-geared party (at least three of us were playing for the first time ever) and we ended up being unable to slay Smoke before his fiery breath killed us all -- the first time I'd ever failed to successfully complete a True Dungeon run. The disappointment was short-lived, though, as it became clear that most parties were unable to defeat Smoke (though a tweet from celebrity Wil Wheaton bragged that not only had he defeated the dragon, but he did so with a critical hit at just the right moment -- more on this later).

After True Dungeon, there was a bit of time to rest up before my annual GenCon LARP experience. This year, I'd chosen a scenario entitled 'Nyarlathotep and Miss Jones', set in a mansion where a 70s-era porn film was being shot. One reason I enjoy doing LARPs in general is that the male-female gender ratio is a lot better balanced at LARP games than at nearly any other game, and this year certainly disappoint -- a few of the women were even glamorous enough in their costumes so that they seemed as though they could have pulled off being actual porn starlets. (And, as is the case with much of 70s porn, the men were, well, not quite up to the same standard.)

My friend Michael accompanied me for his first-even LARP experience, and his character was Hymen Schtupwell, the world's oldest living porn star. He took to the role with aplomb, turning it into an almost Mr. Magoo-like experience, where he was nearly constantly in the center of the great plots unfolding during the adventure without any conscious realization or physical impact on those plots, but managed to survive anyway due to exquisite timing plus a bit of dumb luck. My own character, the plastic surgeon Dr. Benson, was not so fortunate, falling victim to his own obsession with female beauty with led directly to his demise at the hands of the tentacled horror summoned at the climax of the adventure.

It was nearly 11 by the time the porn LARP and its post-mortem ended, so Michael and I went our separate ways and headed back to our hotel rooms to crash and prepare for the next day, which would include the beginning of our LFR Mini-Campaign experience for 2010.

GenCon 2010 - Day Zero

Another GenCon has come and gone, and I'm hoping to capture as much of what happened here as possible.

Day Zero, as mentioned in previous sets of GenCon posts, is the travel day, and like last year, Chip and I were traveling to GenCon by air. Unlike last year, we were making a stop-over in Milwaukee rather than flying non-stop, and we were also planning to arrive in the mid-afternoon rather than late at night (as I'd managed to get the travel day off from work, which I didn't do last year).

Of course, I couldn't easily fall asleep the night before GenCon; I did finally drift off somewhere between 4:30am and 7:15am, when I got back up again, and started to prepare for the journey to Chip's. I was about a half-hour behind our agreed-upon schedule by the time I picked him up in front of his condo, but we serendipitously caught the shuttle from the off-site airport parking location we stopped at just as we arrived and made up a good chunk of time that way.

Going through the TSA checkpoint in Minneapolis-St. Paul International is always a trial for me somehow. Either I get bogged down with all the crap I have with me and hold up the line for dozens of others (as happened two years ago) or end up losing my pants while sending my suspenders through the scanner (as happened last year). This year I actually lost my boarding pass somewhere between the point where I had to show the pass and my ID to the initial guard, and the point where I collect my stuff at the far end of the conveyor after the X-ray machine. Fortunately, I was able to request and get replacement boarding passes at the gate, but it was still embarassing and frustrating. Count me in with Patrick Smith and others in the crowd that believes that the giant checkpoints and the mind-set they inspire is really little more than 'security kabuki', meant to provide a reassuring show rather than actually make air travel significantly safer.

The flight to Milwaukee was on a small Embraer 135 or 145 with one seat on the left of the aisle and two on the right, with carry-on bins only on the right aisle. Chip ended up having to leave his bag in the jetway to be loaded into the plane, then picked it up on the tarmac in Milwaukee after we arrived. I'd checked a bag, and paid $20 for the privilege, so I didn't have to do this bag juggling.

Milwaukee was notable for two things -- there was a Johnny Rocket's located just across from where we were waiting for our connecting flight, with just enough time to enjoy a hearty lunch, and I kept noticing a woman in a tan jacket and blue shirt who'd sat across from us on the flight from Minneapolis. She'd gone into the Johnny Rocket's before us, then stopped in the bathroom next to the Johhny Rockets, and my fevered and lonely brain quickly concocted a tale by which she was curious about us (specifically me) but was too shy to actually approach, and so she hoped that by hanging about, I'd eventually get up the courage to approach her.

As I explained this to Chip, he uttered the first in a long series of exasperated "Oh, Dave"s for the weekend.

The flight into Indy was uneventful, and once we arrived, got our baggage assembled, and caught a cab into town, we pondered stopping by a grocery store to pick up perishables that our friends Aaron and Justin weren't able to bring in their car from the Twin Cities. The cabbie informed us that there wasn't any grocery store easily en route from the airport to downtown Indy, so we abandoned that scheme, and just as well as it turned out.

Last year, we'd been bumped up to the Presidential Suite, complete with player piano, kitchenette with toaster and refrigerator, and other perks. I'd requested 'a' suite from GenCon VIG housing, and didn't realize until I arrived and checked in that there's more than one kind of suite in the Indianapolis Downtown Marriott -- instead of the Presidential Suite, we were staying in an Executive Suite. It was still a suite, and had a writing desk and pull-out table, but didn't have nearly the space or amenities of the room we'd stayed in last year: there was a space with a coffee maker but no kitchenette with ice maker and refrigerator (so we ended up filling one of the two sinks with ice and keeping the few 'refrigerate after opening' things we'd brought in that), there was a bathroom but it was a normal-sized hotel bathroom, not the luxurious space with the separate granite shower and the 'water closet' to hold the commode. The room we got wasn't at all disappointing except in comparison to the room we'd expected to get, and this was one of the handful of minor disappointments that haunted us all weekend.

We still ended up inviting everyone over to visit after they all arrived in town, but rather than spend the evening in the room (which was decently roomy for four, but cramped for the eight we'd expected to entertain), we went to Shula's steakhouse for dinner. The temperature in Indy that day was about 100 degrees, and the air conditioning in the restaurant seemed only sporadically able to handle both the heat from the outside and the warmth of the bodies in the dining area, but the dinner was outstanding -- I had a Kansas City cut with sides of grilled asparagus and hash browns (I embarrassed myself a bit by forgetting that in a place as fancy as Shula's, the side dishes were all a la carte) -- and I settled in for a game of Betrayal at the House on the Hill with Chip, Aaron, and Justin feeling a slow descent into food coma. The combination of the hearty meal and the busy day allowed me to collapse easily into bed at about 11pm local time and drift off almost immediately to sleep.

And then...it came to LIFE!

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

If by "write like Stephen King" you mean "should have a lot more output, since I clearly don't think very much while I'm spilling this stuff out of my brain," then yes. Guilty as charged.

Hat tip to traladeda for the link.

The Failure of 'Branding'

A brand is the personality that identifies a product, service or company (name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them) and how it relates to key constituencies: Customers, Staff, Partners, Investors etc.
- "Brand", wikipedia.org

If I may say so, the above definition is bullshit, and people (as in the unwashed mass of people) are finally starting to recognize that.

During the first decade of the 21st century, the concept of 'branding' as a way of distinguishing one product or service from another went from being a useful exercise to being something of an obsession or religion. This change grew hand-in-hand with the number of high-level managers in various corporations who decided that 'brand management' was the key to making a marketplace statement and created entire divisions of people who dutifully cranked out ideas, not for improving or widening the appeal of the company's products or services, but somehow improving the 'brand'. The afore-linked Wikipedia page is nearly a copy-paste of what might be found in a 'brand management' textbook, trying not just to explain the benefits of branding, but also attempting to persuade you that branding has benefits, and that those benefits are of significant and irreplaceable value to an organization.

A number of things have come up in the world recently, though, that convince me that this trend toward greater and greater emphasis on 'branding' is ultimately self-defeating, and that process of self-defeat is already well underway.

First up was discovering The Manifesto -- a call to action for freelance and beginning writers to avoid treating oneself and the audience as a matrix to be navigated using the principles of 'brand management;. You should really read the whole thing, but here's the specific point that applies to the thesis of this blog article:

I am not saying that it is a bad or dishonest thing to try to sell your work. It is not. What I am saying is that I am tired of the rush to commodify everything, to turn everything into products, including people. I don't want a brand, because a brand limits me. A brand says I will churn out the same thing over and over. Which I won't, because I am weird.

Now, one could say that such an attitude is self-defeating; after all, the author of The Manifesto, Maureen Johnson, notes in an earlier paragraph a number of well-known writers who ostensibly are brands, along with their brand identities. One could argue, likely with some success, that recognition as a commercial writer (that is, a writer who sells her writing rather the one writing, say, for posterity) is closely tied to the degree to which your writing identity is easily identified.

But do you really want to be a successful commercial writer, or do you want to be a Writer? There isn't any secret formula for breaking into the 'pantheon' of so-called 'great writers', but a fairly consistent characteristic of such writers is that they defied brand recognition: David Foster Wallace wrote fiction, non-fiction, and essays that straddled the line. Isaac Asimov wrote about damned near everything. Shakespeare was both a playwright (writing tragedy, comedy, and dubious history) and a poet. Being 'put in a box' doesn't necessarily help you achieve these things.

The larger point, however, came later, when I discovered something odd about the game company that defines my life as much as any other: Wizards of the Coast. WotC is a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc., itself a huge game and toy company, but even ignoring that connection, WotC is without doubt the largest manufacturer of role-playing games and RPG material in the U.S. and probably the world. They also produce the trading-card-game Magic: the Gathering, the most popular game of its type in the world. These guys are Big Wheels in gaming.

So how come they're slowly being recognized less and less for that?

There are two major sets of awards given out in the games industry: the Origins Awards, assembled and voted on by the Academy of Gaming Arts and Design (an industry group composed of game publishers and creators) and named after the major gaming convention where the awards are given out, and the ENnies, a fan-based set of awards given out at GenCon each year.

As recently as 2008, Wizards of the Coast was well-represented in each set of awards. The 2008 Origins Awards saw WotC win two awards (Best Miniature Figure or Line of Miniature Figures and Best Collectible Card Game), and have influence on a third (Best Fiction, for a work based off the Dungeons & Dragons game and edited by at least one former TSR/WotC employee in James Lowder). In the 2008 ENnies, WotC was nominated in eight different categories (though in fairness, four of those nominations were for a single product, the Star Wars SAGA Edition RPG), winning silver in three categories and gold in four.

Fast forward to 2010 - WotC continues to churn out product at a rate commensurate to a publisher of their size, yet for some reason they can't get the same recognition for it. Though WotC is still a member of GAMA (they presented plans for both their Magic: the Gathering and D&D product lines at the 2010 GAMA trade show), WotC failed to garner even a single nomination for the 2010 Origins Awards. They did a bit better for the 2010 ENnies, garnering three nominations, but I have to see this as something of a slap in the face to WotC given that Paiso Publishing received ten nominations for a product -- the Pathfinder Role Playing Game and its associated regalia and adventures -- that's simply an extension of the Dungeons & Dragons "v3.5" rules that WotC abandoned with their move to D&D Fourth Edition. Even more to the point, Hero Games received three nominations for Hero 6th Edition, a game that's little more than a copy-paste of the 5th Edition game (though it was divided into two different books after complaints about the quality of the 592-page (!) Fifth Edition Revised book).

One would think at the very least that WotC would have been nominated under the category of Best Website: the official Dungeons & Dragons home page is updated regularly with news and product information, and while some of the gaming material released there is available only to those with a "D&D Insider" subscription, a fair amount of free material is made available to those who are just visiting, including the entire contents of the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure, including digital maps and Quick-Start rules.

Perhaps people don't like the emphasis on the D&D Insider subscription. Perhaps they're disappointed with a re-design that is ostensibly geared toward making it easier to find material useful for you based on game role (player, DM, reader of fiction, etc.) but in reality just making the entire navigation more convoluted and confusing.

Or maybe they just can't find the thing. After all, the D&D home page isn't the main Wizards of the Coast page -- going there allows you to see that the main company portal is divided into 'brands'. Though there's a handy list of 'brands' below the main splash art, clicking on the D&D image there doesn't actually take you to the D&D home page linked above -- but rather to the D&D 'brand' page where you can download the D&D fansite kit, read an explanation of just what D&D is, connect to the D&D presence on Facebook or Twitter, and, oh yeah, find a small box on the right-hand side of the page that invites you to 'Visit Official Site', which is where all the real info about D&D happens to live.

So if you don't already know where the official D&D home page is, you'll have to click twice through two different pages that are, for all practical purposes, useless to you to find out anything but the most generic information about the game. ("Dungeons & Dragons is the game that started the entire roleplaying game category. And D&D remains at the pinnacle of fantasy RPGs, offering the excitement of imaginative, shared storytelling and lots of social interaction—both in the game and around the table." Yawn.)

OK, now we know why WotC wasn't nominated for best website.

I've met a number of people who work in brand management for WotC, usually at conventions like GenCon and D&D Experience, and they're good people. More to the point, they seem to be fairly humble people who recognize that the work they do isn't as important to the survival of the game as the work of the writers and artists who bring D&D to life. But I have to wonder how much influence these guys have behind-the-scenes, because the web presence all but celebrates them to people who don't know any better, and the games themselves seem bent around a premise of 'branding' that diminishes both the games themselves and their value as a brand.

Contrast this with a company that branding people love to use as an example: Apple. Apple is one of the most recognizable and admired brands in the world, with an identity that most corporations would break international law to acquire. That identity includes some iconic advertising, from the legendary '1984' ad that introduced the Macintosh personal computer to the 'Think Different' campaign that signalled Steve Jobs's return to Apple, to the 'I'm a Mac, I'm a PC' campaign that made Windows fanboys everywhere despise Justin Long.

But if you go to Apple.com, you don't see a vague piece of artwork suggesting Apple's 'brand', you see the current hot product (in today's case, the iPhone 4). You don't see a navigation menu that invites you to sample Apple's 'brands'; you see a list of things that people going to Apple would want to know more about -- a link for each product line, a link to the store to buy things, and link to Support to find out why the thing they just bought isn't working the way they think it should be.

Steve Jobs doesn't stand on stage at his keynotes and wax poetic about the direction the Apple brand is heading -- he introduces the new product and explains why it kicks ass.

There's no doubt that Apple uses branding techniques. But Apple uses those techniques in the service of selling products; it's the products that take center stage and, in the end, truly define the value of the brand. Allowing branding to overshadow the product, and to pretend that the branding itself is what provides value, as WotC seems to be doing, is ultimately a failure of branding -- the ultimate failure of branding, in fact.

iJinx - Apple vs Adobe

As recently as six months ago some technology experts thought Flash was would dominate Web multimedia. Now some are saying the technology is doomed.
- NPR.org, All Things Considered, "What's Behind Apple's Clash With Flash?"

Ah, yes, the wonderful world of overly reductive thinking. Flash will dominate the Web! No, Flash is doomed! Wait, what's all the hi-jinx about?

NPR is, as is its wont, getting in late on a story that most of the tech press has already covered to death: the disagreement between Apple and Adobe about the need (or lack of same) for Adobe's web video and animation software, Flash, to run on the various Apple iDevices, particularly the recently released iPad. I'm not blaming NPR for this, particularly -- they're not tech press, and in coming to the story late, they have at least a chance of catching the story after much of the hype has given way and can get at the actual issues involved.

But if you listen to the audio of the story, as it played on NPR's weekend 'All Things Considered', you might think that NPR is reporting on a personal grudge between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and, well, anything he doesn't like. Sadly, the NPR folks really dropped the ball on this one, missing a chance to cover a really interesting development in consumer technology and instead treating it as tabloid pablum, yet another 'celebrity man in charge pouts to try and get his way' story.

Apple's unwillingness to let Flash run on its mobile devices, the iPhone, iPod Touch, and now iPad, has been known for some time. For years, when Apple engineers or PR people have been asked about Flash on the iPhone, the response has been pretty consistently that Apple has no plans to implement Flash there, and that policy has formally been extended to the iPad. Two things, though, really made the tech press blow up about this over the past few weeks:

1) In early April, just before the announcement of the iPhone 4.0 operating system and the subsequent release of the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) version 3.2 which would allow non-privileged developers the chance to start developing apps for the recently released iPad, Apple announced a change to their Developer Agreement -- the licensing agreement that developers have to agree to before they can download or use the SDK.

The change greatly expanded the definition of 'using Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple' to specifically forbid not just private Application Programming Interfaces (or APIs) (as was already specified in the prior version of the agreement), but also any compiled code executing against Apple's Documented APIs in anything but a handful of core computer languages.

Mac tech press writer John Gruber (in the article noted above) suggested that the move wasn't made to specifically target any given cross-compiler. Other writers, however, noting that the timing of Apple's announcement was only one day prior to the planned release of Creative Suite 5 by Adobe, in which one of the key selling points would be the ability to compile applications written in Flash as native iPhone and iPad apps, becan writing of how Apple was 'targetting' Adobe and Flash, and that this change was nothing less than the initial salvo in a 'war' between Apple and Adobe in which Apple's intention was nothing less than the death of Flash as a web platform.

Kinda silly, sure, but hey -- maybe it was just a slow news day. Regardless, it got the usual suspects' dander all up about freedom and choice and apple pie (although, ironically, the specific BoingBoing post I linked to above is actually remarkably level-headed about the whole thing).

However, fuel was thrown onto the fire when...

2) Last Thursday, Steve Jobs himself (or at least an uncredited ghost writer) published an essay on Apple's public web site explaining the decision not to allow Flash on Apple's mobile devices.

Right off the bad, Jobs takes time to address those who've seen fit to criticize Apple's decision (which has largely been reported not so much as Apple's decision, but as Jobs's own), and in a way that points out how ludicrous it is to consider Apple and Adobe 'at war' over anything -- Jobs reminds people who might not be old enough to remember that Apple was Adobe's first major customer, and that combining Adobe's PostScript technology with Apple's LaserWriter printers created the desktop publishing industry. If anything, Jobs's first paragraph sounds more like the admissions of a lovelorn former beau disappointed that his sweetheart has left him for a perceived faster lifestyle in the 'big city'.

Jobs then proceeds to list six specific points attempting to refute the idea that Apple's decision not to allow Flash on Apple's mobile devices is a 'business decision':

1) Though Apple's own iPhone OS is closed (i.e. 'proprietary'), the technologies Apple uses to allow its iPhone OS products (specifically the iPhone and iPad) to connect to and render the Internet are open standards. Flash, meanwhile, is a closed, proprietary Internet standard.

2) When Adobe says that 75% of video is encoded in Flash and that devices that don't support Flash cannot therefore access the 'full web', Adobe is being disingenuous; much of the video encoded in Flash is also available as open H.264-encoded video, which the iDevices can play just fine.

3) Enabling Flash on Apple's iDevices would expose them to security issues, as well as cause performance and reliability issues that users would blame on the devices, not on Flash.

4) Enabling Flash would reduce battery life on Apple's iDevices.

5) Flash isn't designed as a multi-touch interface language.

6) Adobe wants to convince developers to use Flash as an intermediary language to enable programs originally written in Flash to run on Apple's iDevices.

Point 6, as you probably can tell, speaks directly to the change in Apple's developer agreements (see 1 above), and Jobs spends a few paragraphs unpacking just what that means.

Adobe's immediate response came via its own CEO, Shantanu Narayen, who put together a hasty and probably ill-advised attempt to rebut Jobs's claims in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Though Mr. Narayen's comments don't come down to a point-by-point refutation of Mr. Jobs's own article, the Adobe CEO basically argues that Apple's decision is more about control, both of the platform and the developer community that serves the platform, and that it's Adobe, not Apple, that is thinking in terms of openness and 'cross-platform' capability.

That's pretty much a load of hogwash, unfortunately.

My own feeling is that each of Mr. Jobs's points is accurate, though some are more relevant to the argument than others. For instance, the 'openness' argument doesn't really hold a lot of water with me, even if Jobs's characterization of the difference between Adobe's and Apple's approach to web standards is basically accurate. Nevertheless, it's clear that Adobe wants this 'fight' characterized as 'big bad Apple versus humble Adobe', which, sadly, also won't wash for people who know the backstory.

For instance, when Jobs says this:

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform.

...he's talking right to Adobe and Adobe's Mac user base. From intransigence over PostScript to a long delay in implementing changes required by MacOS X into their Mac professional applications, Adobe has long been exactly that third-party holding back needed advancement in the Mac platform for their own business purposes. If Apple was trying to 'kill' Adobe, or just 'kill' Flash, the notoriously vindictive Jobs would have more than enough justification in doing so right there.

But a curious thing happened on the same day that Jobs's and Narayen's comments hit the web like a couple of tons of bricks: the blog of one of Adobe's Flash player engineers announced that Adobe was releasing a beta version of Flash Player for MacOS X that uses Apple's MacOS X video acceleration APIs that allow the OS to pass video decoding to a dedicated Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) rather than being done in software as it currently the case. The change was done with Apple's assistance, and works for most Apple hardware shipped in the past year running the current version of MacOS X Snow Leopard.

If Apple was trying to kill Adobe, or even to kill Flash on the desktop, then why bother helping Adobe implement this feature? Interestingly enough, this feature in MacOS X is precisely one of the things that, if also implemented in iPhone OS, would make one of Mr. Jobs's points about Flash all but disappear -- hardware decoding would virtually eliminate the battery life penalty Mr. Jobs says Flash would impose on Apple's iDevices.

What Steve Jobs (or Apple's engineers, whichever was truly responsible for the decision) is trying to do is make sure that the user experience on iPhone and particularly iPad when interacting with the web is as 'magical' as Apple's marketing materials say it is. As an iPhone owner for nearly two years, and a recent purchaser of an iPad 3G, I appreciate this attention to my experience, and if not being able to access Dungeons & Dragons Tiny Adventures on my iPad is the price I pay for owning the most intuitive web device I've ever owned, then I pay that price willingly.

Interlude - The iPad Conundrum

“Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
- Andy Rooney

So you may have heard about this new tech device that's out there called the iPad. It's been described by its creator as “magical and revolutionary”, and as all kinds of other things by other reviewers. Based on my own analysis, including a 20-minute session in my local Apple Store taking the thing for a test-drive, it's not really something I need, but it is something I want.

That's not strictly the conundrum referenced in the title, but it's on the way there.

One of the most clear-headed analyses of 'do you need an iPad' that I've read was put together by Ted Landau, a long-time Mac technology writer. He has this to say about my specific situation:

Suppose you own both a MacBook Pro and an iPhone, do you also need an iPad? No. If you also own an iMac,even more emphatically no. In these cases, the only real extra that the iPad provides is the ability to run iPad-optimized apps that you cannot run on any of your other hardware. This is not a big extra at this point. With the hardware you already own, you can already do just about everything else.

That makes perfect sense to me. I don't need an iPad. So why do I still want one?

Blame the devil Andy Ihnatko, particularly this description of his iPad, not from any of his excellent Sun-Times reviews of the device, but from his personal blog:

The iPad was a superstar on my first day at the conference. Not for the attention it got; for its performance. It underscored every positive impression it made upon me during the week when I wasn’t allowed to use it in public.

1) The battery life is spot-on. I was using my iPad from the moment I awoke at 8 AM to just before I sloped into a car to go backto my house at 8:30 PM. In between, if I ever had the slightest notion to do something with the iPad, I did it without any thought as to the need to “keep some battery in reserve for emergencies....”

2) The iPad shone through in the “I need to write and publish something straight away, even though I didn’t plan ahead and bring a real keyboard” scenario....

While sitting in the back listening to a panel, I checked my email and found an invitation to an Apple event on Thursday. I wrote about 500 words about it using the virtual keyboard, edited it, and published it to my blog. As I’d expected, I couldn’t type as quickly or as accurately as I can on my MacBook keyboard, but even with this little slate balanced between my knees I was typing fast and naturally. It’s a perfectly usable keyboard. With the added advantage that when I don’t need a keyboard, it goes away completely. Big, big win all around.

3) The iPad is the perfect choice when discretion is important.... At the CoWA (and many other conferences) I don’t use a computer for slides. I just use it for reference. The screen keeps a rundown of the points I want to make, in their order, as well of a list of any names or data that I need to mention. I might also want to open a browser window and check on a fact or two. Good stuff. But I don’t like using a full notebook up there. To the audience, it looks like I’m dividing my time between my participation on the panel and my Twittering about how awesome last night’s “Amazing Race” was.

The iPad is the first computer that scored tens all the way across the board. The screen is viewable from any angle; I can just keep it lying flat on the table and still read the screen perfectly. It has a big screen, so I don’t need to squint and hunt to find my place in my notes. And it’s fast and it’s powerful and has a big, typeable keyboard.

4) Carrying it around isn’t a hassle. Not in the least. Yup, you’re going to want to have a bag of some kind with you. I refer back to my earlier comment about the inconvenience of carrying books and magazines. I normally have a smaller version of my Indiana Jones satchel with me at conferences. The difference is that I’ve just deleted about four or five pounds from my normal load: My 1.5 pound iPad takes the place of a 5.5 pound MacBook plus its charger.

The most important point is that the iPad does a better job in this environment than a MacBook or any other notebook. I slide it out of the newspaper pocket of my bag, click the Home button, and it’s awake and ready to assist. When I’m done, I click the Power button and slide it back; no need to wait for the machine to Sleep or the hard drive to spin down. And I don’t even think about battery life. So I use it all the time.

Herein we begin to approach the conundrum itself. Ihnatko, in this essay, implicitly addresses the primary complaint about the iPad I consider legitimate: Why would you need an iPad when you have an iPhone?

I purchased and downloaded the iBlogger app for iPhone a long time ago; you can even see evidence where I used the app to update this blog. You may also notice that I haven't used iBlogger to update this blog for, oh, about half a year now. (There are a couple of entries from November that have the 'posted with iBlogger' footer on them, but those entries were, in actuality, originally posted using MarsEdit and only edited with iBlogger later.)

Twitter is awesome on iPhone – you type out your 140 characters or less and away you go. It's a pithy, quick-hitting format that doesn't punish you for using a small virtual keyboard. And the iPhone virtual keyboard, while fine for Twittering, text messaging, or other quick-format posting, really doesn't lend itself to the long-form, rambling kinds of things I like to do in blog posts, and especially doesn't lend itself well to sprinkling hyperlinks in among all that rambling text. MarsEdit is my tool of choice for that kind of work.

But an iPad would be significantly better than an iPhone at this task. Enough to make me give up MarsEdit on my MacBook Pro? No, but probably enough so that I'd actually consider blogging rather than Twittering when I see something I want to comment about.

Also, there is video. I have nearly half the space on my 8 GB iPhone devoted to video files, including (currently) two episodes of the Canadian series “Slings and Arrows”, two episodes of “Star Trek: Enterprise” (the mirror-universe episodes, natch), the Season 2 finale of “Leverage”, the Pixar animated short “Presto”, and two full-length films, “WALL-E” and “Sky High”. That's over six hours of video, more than enough to get me through any long stretch of otherwise soul-crushing boredom, assuming I have access to external power. (I highly doubt my nearly two-year old iPhone's battery would last through a video marathon of all the content I have on it.)

But this isn't all the video I have in iTunes. Thanks to the wonder that is Handbrake, I have the entire run of the Connections series, all the remaining episodes in seasons 1 and 2 of S&A, at least one episode each of the original series and Next Gen “Star Trek” series, and a couple more movies. While I could fit all that content on an iPad, I still couldn't watch all of it, but I could watch everything I currently pack on my iPhone, plus have about another three-to-four hours of battery left, based on estimates provided by reviewers.

Oh, and then there's the Netflix iPad app, and I am a paying subscriber to Netflix (it's how I watched much of Leverage over the past two seasons).

Watching video on iPhone isn't horrible– I've done it more than once while laying in bed, either at home or in a hotel room, and it's a decent experience. But the larger iPad screen opens up the possibility of a much better video experience, which while not necessary, is tempting and desirable. So again, clear upgrade over the existing technology.

Oh, yeah, iBooks. I've downloaded a number of e-book readers for iPhone (I have Stanza, eReader, and Kindle for iPhone all on my phone currently), and they all seem fine for what they do. The option of reading those books at a larger format size is interesting, but not compelling all by itself. What is compelling, though, is combining the iPad reader with the possibilities that an application like Calibre allows.

Calibre is to e-books what Handbrake is to digital video: a universal converter and translator. I have much of my D&D 3.5 gaming library in PDF format, thanks to a good friend, and the possibility of converting those PDFs to ePub format and being able to access them during a game on an iPad is compelling. Add in the iPhone Dicenomicon and SpellbookMaster apps, and I'm very close to being able to play an entire session of D&D using one piece of hardware, which is smaller and thus less obtrusive than the hulking Windows laptops other players bring to the table. That goes beyond compelling to 'wicked awesome' territory.

So yeah, I'd like to think I'd do a fair amount with an iPad.

Here's another facet of the conundrum: What would you do for network connectivity?

Part of the reason that the iPhone has been such a ludicrously useful device for me is that it allows me to stay connected to things in a way I hadn't imagined possible. It's a phone, so I can call people and they can call me. But it also allows me to connect to Twitter, and Facebook, and e-mail, and with a combination of e-mail polling (set to check my accounts every hour) and push notifications (for Facebook), I don't fear missing out on important communications, regardless of the format. And, in a real win, the integrated contact information that the Apple Contacts app provides means that I can track all of that information for each person I need to keep in touch with, and the iPhone can even help me by providing that information depending on which app I'm using (by, for instance, giving me Chip's e-mail address when I need to forward a GenCon hotel housing request to him).

Moving from an iPhone to an iPad would force me to lose some of that connectivity.

I could, as originally planned, wait for the 3G iPad, then sign up for the unlimited AT&T iPad contract-free data plan. Here I lose just the phone, along with the convenience of being able to dial the phone based on my stored contact information. Though my iPhone makes me a 3G superman, I have friends who still prefer more traditional technological communications, and so I'd miss not having the ability to call them.

More to the point, my iPhone is currently my only phone, so I'd have to either continue to use it, but mainly as a phone rather than a communications hub, or replace it with a less expensive phone.

Ihnatko's solution is Mi-Fi, the personal cellular modem that serves as a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot where ever you are. I'm not sure which provider he uses, but there are at least three providers in my area, which means I wouldn't necessarily be tied to AT&T (though the AT&T service has actually been pretty good, thanks to AT&T adding a cell tower in my neighborhood shortly after I bought the iPhone); I could go with Verizon (the provider for my original pre-paid cell, whose signal may still suck in my apartment) or Sprint (which I've never tried, and which also has announced that they're close to rolling out their new 4G network in the Twin Cities, so there'd be that) instead.

The bad news is that Mi-Fi, for me, would be a $60/month plus tax two-year commitment, and the Mi-Fi plans from Verizon and Sprint are not unlimited data plans.

Complicating the issue is that my employer has an arrangement with AT&T which allows me a discount on my iPhone plan; I'm currently paying less than $70 a month (including tax) for my iPhone service with unlimited data. Adding even an inexpensive phone to a Sprint Mi-Fi plan would cost more than the existing iPhone plan, and would provide me with less service.

If I had Mi-Fi, could I get rid of my $65 a month cable modem package? Maybe, if I was willing also to give up online gaming – the MiFi bandwidth limit would probably keep me from playing Magic: the Gathering Online or Star Trek Online to any appreciable degree (or run the risk of paying huge overage charges) – and also restrict myself from going nuts with the Netflix iPad app (which sort of defeats the purpose of getting excited about that app). So I'd be paying less per month under this paradigm, but getting way less satisfaction – part of the fun of having things set up the way they are now is being able to do things without worrying if I'm hitting bandwidth caps or download limits.

However, if I don't go with Mi-Fi, then I face a different problem. My employer will help me defray the cost of my iPhone plan, but won't allow me to connect my phone to their wireless network (and in all honesty, I probably don't want my phone on their network anyway, since the cellular network is far less restricted). But a 3G-less iPad, at work, would be a very nice looking piece of metal and glass that can only do things that already exist on the device, and that don't require any network connectivity. It wouldn't be a 'brick', per se, but it'd be way less useful than my current iPhone in the same environment. This wouldn't be a problem at home, or at the friend's place where I play D&D, but plenty of other places would become exercises in 'how much is it going to cost me, either financially, spiritually, or both, to get hooked into a Wi-Fi network here?' Again, that makes the iPad experience a far more conditional one than the one I have with my iPhone; the non-3G iPad is only 'insanely great' where I can get a Wi-Fi signal, whereas my iPhone is almost always awesome.

I'm not really worried about portability. See Ihnatko's article that describes the iPad as being about as obtrusive as a book or magazine, and though I'd want a bag to carry it in (I tend to drop books or magazines that I carry for long stretches at a time), I have just such a bag – the Israeli paratrooper bag I received as VIG swag at last year's GenCon.

And note Ihnatko's comments about accessibility – even with a laptop/netbook in sleep mode, you have to wait a bit for it to 'spin up', and then either spin it back down or wait for it to go back to sleep on its own, the latter of which tends to eat up precious minutes of battery life on non-useful functions. With the iPad, when you want it, zing! It's ready for you. When you're done, zoop! Away it goes without losing any extra juice. When you need it, you just use it, which is exactly the experience I expect after having owned an iPhone for nearly two years now.

The iPad handles basically everything I find good-but-not-awesome about my iPhone and makes it awesome. The challenge will be to find a way to get that without having to take half-a-step backward and turn something that's currently awesome on my iPhone back into good-but-not-awesome.

Paintball, Part the Fourth - Standing My Ground

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
- Winston Churchill

Game Three: Civil War
Venue: some open field

After completing the VIP games, we moved to an open field next to the field where we played VIP and started a game that the referees refer to as 'Civil War'. The game consists of dividing into two teams. Each team then lines up on one side of the field, with the two lines anywhere from 100 to 150 feet apart, and each player in each line standing at least arm's length apart from the next player in line.

Each player on one line then fires a single shot at any player they choose in the other line. Anyone hit is eliminated, and any survivors get to return fire, again firing only a single shot. Any survivors after the exchange of fire take two large steps toward each other, then the process repeats until one team is entirely eliminated.

I discovered that the game isn't called 'Civil War' because the actual American Civil War was fought this way; this Napoleonic-era 'let's all stand in long lines and shoot each other' was used early, as part of the 'state of the art' in warfare, but was slowly abandoned after Gettysburg. The game is called Civil War because playing it reminds you of reading Civil War-era diaries and letters written by men describing what it felt like to have iron balls whizzing past their heads, and feeling as if you understand their sentiment.

Also, because both you and your target are stationary, Civil War is an ideal game to observe the aiming characteristics of your air-powered gun -- or, to be more accurate, the lack of aiming characteristics of most paintball guns. Begin with the ammunition: a small, hard pellet filled with liquid paint. There seem to be many ways for a paintball pellet to be unbalanced or lopsided in some way, even as the surface of the pellet is a uniform spheroid. For starters, the paint may not completely fill the interior of the pellet, resulting in an air pocket that leaves the pellet not of uniform density and weight. Or even if pellets without air pockets, tiny cracks can form that allow small amounts of air into the liquid center and cause some of the paint near the crack to congeal into semi-hard latex, also resulting in a lopsided interior. (Cracks don't appear to be terribly common, but are common enough that severe cracks can even cause a ball to break in its storage bag during shipping; the experienced paint-ballers among us warned that if we noticed a broken ball among our ammo, to simply throw out the ammo from that bag, as it would be difficult to determine which balls had been adulterated by having paint from the broken ball leak on them and thus become lopsided externally rather than internally. The guys running the paintball field took that opportunity to remind us that they didn't take exchanges on ammo.)

To the vagaries of the ammunition, then add the characteristics of the weapon. The standard rental paintball gun, as noted above, was something of the size of a submachinegun, having a barrel about two feet long or perhaps slightly longer. Unlike the barrels of actual guns, paintball gun barrels are not 'rifled'; that is, almost all guns made today have grooves cut into the barrels in a helical manner, so that the bullet traveling along the barrel is induced to spin, which provides something of a gyroscopic stability during flight and allows the bullet to stay on a true line longer, making it more accurate. I suspect paintball gun barrels are not rifled for two main reasons: first, since the ammunition is round, like a Civil War-era Minie ball, the rifling would have far less impact on the paintball than it would on a projectile shaped more like a bullet. (You can apparently purchase both rifled paintball gun barrels and vaguely bullet-shaped ammo to go with them, but these things are described as 'ridiculously expensive' even by the guys so much into paintball that they have their own guns, ammo with different colored paint, and camouflage clothing; i.e.: the guys who've clearly already invested hundreds and perhaps thousands of dollars into this hobby.) Second, on the rare occasion that a paintball pellet does burst in the barrel, having a rifled barrel would make the gun far more difficult to clean, and refusing to clean your own gun is tantamount to throwing it away; even a fairly tiny imperfection in the barrel can make it so that instead of firing high-velocity balls of paint at your enemies, you are instead firing a vague pink mist with virtually no effective range.

All this is a long-winded way of explaining why, when I fire a round during this game, I can watch it curve and curl off the path I intend for it to take. I am on a team that is eliminated once and is victorious once (though I am 'killed' in both games), and I can't be certain that any of the shots I fired in this game actually hit a target. The good news is that I fire barely over half a dozen rounds myself, and thus have still barely scratched my allotment of ammunition for the day.

Before moving on to the next game, I should also point out that this is the game that features the strangest of all injuries that happens today. Ed, an older fellow who is something of the designated 'sad sack' in any group he happens to be in, is hit in the throat by a ball during this game (which also points out the relative inadequacy of the safety equipment being used; everyone, including the veterans, is surprised at the location of the injury, as if nobody noticed that the facemasks provided by the paintball groundskeepers barely cover our jaws much less our throats). The injury provokes some concern at first -- I myself have visions of being hit in the Adam's apple, which then fractures and strangles me from within my own throat, slowly and horribly -- but once it's clear that only Ed's pride is seriously hurt, his wound, which has produced an angry red welt which, once cleared of paint, strangely resembles a livid vagina, is mockingly commented upon for the remainder of the day.

After the Civil War game, we pack up again and once more take the looooong hike back to the picnic tables, the compressor, and our stored gear. We are the only customers on the range today, so we're taking very casual care of our snacks and spare ammunition and other stuff, just leaving it all setting out at the tables while we're gone at one battleground or another. It makes us almost feel as though we own the place, which in a sense, we sort of do, at least for the next hour and a half.