Summer Update and My Game

I haven't updated my blog in a while, so I thought I'd say something about what I've been doing lately. So far this summer I went to Karuizawa and Izu. Tomorrow I leave for Kiyosato for a week to teach English at a camp for kids. I did it last year and it was pretty fun. Tomorrow is also the 3 year anniversary of my first day in Japan! It's hard to believe.

The past month or 2 I've been working a lot on making a web-based turn-based strategy game. The original goal was to make a mock-up game to test the rules for a possible board game, but now I've taken it in a new direction. The ultimate goal now is to adapt it for Facebook and play with family and friends.

The idea of the game is simple: Each player has robots. The robots are given orders and carry them out simultaneously. The catch is that you have to tell the robot what to do in advance, therefore trying to predict what your opponents will do. I want to do things like capture the flag later, but at the moment the object is to just take out all the opponents.

All the art work is done by me. For those who are curious, I'm coding it entirely in Ruby on Rails and Javascript. I'm using the YUI library for a lot of things including animation and ajax. Check out these screen shots from my latest version. I'm hoping to get a version online soon, but I'll be busy the rest of the month so it might have to wait until September.

Electric Cars

Open-mindedness

This pretty much says it all folks.



An important point: Believing something does not exist is not the same thing as saying it does not exist. This is a common misconception of atheism.

What would you do?

On a hidden camera show a gay couple crashes a bar to see how homophobic people are.



It went much better than I expected. It was actually pretty encouraging, but I wonder what the results would be in other cities or even other countries.

Teaching Practices

According to Bill Gates, many schools in America don't allow the principal to come watch classes without prior notice, and no more than once or twice a year. I always wondered about this, because I don't really remember how things were when I was a kid in terms of people watching the classes. The system here in Japan is drastically different:

1. The Principal visits every teacher without notice once a month. He does a review of their lesson and teaching style and gives them input afterwords.

2. There are a few days every quarter that are like an open house. Unlike the after school open house in the US, these are during school hours and last for 3 days (all these numbers vary by the area, but this is the general idea). The parents come and go as they please and can sit in on the classes.

3. There are study lessons throughout the year. One teacher will prepare a special lesson (sometimes it will be team teaching), and they present the lesson with all the other teachers watching. They all stand in the back wearing suits holding clipboards, and someone usually has a camera. Often times there will be a high level official there from the board of education, and after the lesson, which is usually after lunch on a half day, there is a long meeting to discuss the class. These lessons are sometimes for the teacher to show techniques to the other teachers, or for the other teachers to critique the main teacher. There are themes, like team teaching, or science projects. I've done quite a few of these where the theme is usually team teaching. I'm supposed to be an assistant teacher, and this is usually the only time that's true.

4. In some schools, including both of mine, there is one day a year during which the entire school is open to the public. Parents come, teachers from neighboring schools come (for 5th and 6th period, so all their kids have gone home), and anyone off the street can come in and watch the lessons or look at things the students have made in the hallways. I've never had a lesson during one of these, but I've been to a couple and it's quite an experience.

The level of accountability and the lack of reward for good teaching in the US is depressing. It's amazing that good teachers exist at all, frankly.

I don't have this gene

But I think some of my siblings do.

Most experts now agree that crossed wires in the brain are probably responsible for the photic sneeze reflex.

A sneeze is usually triggered by an irritation in the nose, which is sensed by the trigeminal nerve, a cranial nerve responsible for facial sensation and motor control. This nerve is in close proximity to the optic nerve, which senses, for example, a sudden flood of light entering the retina. As the optic nerve fires to signal the brain to constrict the pupils, the theory goes, some of the electrical signal is sensed by the trigeminal nerve and mistaken by the brain as an irritant in the nose. Hence, a sneeze.

Link

A Couple Videos

This guy is my hero.



This is amazing. It's as if it's out of a movie (Terminator?)



Oh, and it turns out that's a tree farm for IKEA.

Some stuff

Michio Kaku Explains the Multiverse Theory

Quantum Teleportation Between Distant Matter Qubits: First Between Atoms 1 Meter Apart

Our world may be a giant hologram

The Science of Spore

I have read a lot of science blogs complaining about how unscientific Spore is. As soon as I saw the creature creator I knew this would be the case... but it's true that the game is ridiculously unscientific from an evolutionary standpoint. This wouldn't be a big deal if they didn't go out of their way to market as and educational tool.. but they do. I have just two simple suggestions they could have used to make it much better.

Tech Tree! While it is fun for the creature creator to be able to do anything with all the parts, in the game, you should be limited to a tech tree where you choose paths to go down. This would also prove much more evolution like. You can't use the huge three prong claws until you have the small claws first.

Small changes. The evolve step should perhaps limit you more in terms of drastic changes. As the game is now, you can literally change the entire creature at any time. This change would make it more challenging to get what you want and more rewarding when you do.

All in all, I'm glad I never bought the game. The few hours of tinkering with it were enough. Nice graphics and creator mechanics, but that was about it.

Prop 8 the Musical

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die