Minecraft One-Way Gate

There was a thread on the forums of a Minecraft server I frequent which was discussing trying to make a rather complicated gate system for a series of railways that would lead to various location within the server. I like the look and feel of multiple entry ways as opposed to a single programmable entry way, but the problem did arise that they needed a way to keep the lines going in one direction. If another player is on the tracks heading in the opposite direction, the system bottlenecks.

Here is my first, rather painful attempt at a solution:

I found out serendipitously that players can go through blocks that would otherwise stall them as long as they are riding a mine cart at significant speed. And with the introduction of the Powered Rail and the Detector Rail, you can use the above information to make a brake one direction and a boost the other. A player who enters this gate from the side with the Detector Rail first (in this case, the left side) will hit the Detector Rail, which powers the Powered Rail and boosts them through. Anyone entering from the other direction will brake when crossing an unpowered Powered Rail.

I feel the overhanging blocks are necessary, because otherwise someone could just walk beyond the brake and render the brake system useless. Players will take very minor damage when crossing the low hanging blocks, so that needs to be taken into account.

The Video Game Diet

I have had minor struggles with my weight over the years. It had never gotten terribly overweight; I usually try to stay around 180 lbs., but every once in a while I would hit 200. That never lasted long, as my normal eating habits would kick back in and wean me back to the 180 mark.

For whatever reason, my student teaching last semester ruined my usual dietary plan. I'd finish the day, have some relatively minor gripe about a student, and say to myself, "Screw it! You deserve a Blizzard after this day!" Coupled with my inability to control my portions (Hamburger Helper is not designed for one), and my hopeless addiction to caffeine (soft drinks, not coffee), I suddenly ballooned to 230 lbs.

I didn't have a scale at my apartment in Bryan, TX, so at the time I didn't actually know what my weight was. But I could easily tell I was much larger than normal, because I couldn't fit into anything anymore. I finally was able to find a scale when I was out interviewing for a teaching job, and then I knew I needed to do something.

Fad diet programs never appeal to me; neither do drastic exercise routines. I understand that I need to do something other than slothing around my house or apartment, but you're not going to find me doing 100 crunches a day. Some exercises are completely out of the question for me, anyway. I have abnormally flat feet, so any extended walking or running causes massive muscles cramps near the arches (parenthetically, because they are nonexistent) and throbbing shin splints. It's not the motion that does me in, it's the rhythmic, extended pounding on the ground that causes the pain.

My initial exercise idea was an elliptical machine, since it covers nearly the same bases as walking, running, or cycling, and like cycling the platform your feet press against follows their natural motion. And, as I am a terribly nerdy man, I had recently bought Pokemon Soul Silver, and the game came with a pedometer called a Pokewalker that could be used to level up any Pokemon that you caught on your Nintendo DS cartridge and transferred to the device. So now I had, in my mind at least, a tangible reason to get off my butt and work out.

And I did that for a while, and it worked for a while, but I got tired of the routine of it all: get up in the morning, walk to the apartment's gym room, use the elliptical for 15-20 minutes, walk back to the apartment, take a shower. When I moved back to my parent's house for the summer, I switched to playing tennis with my friend, which is a more enjoyable exercise. But I still needed to change my diet. My usual eating habits are good at staying at a certain level rather than lose weight. So what did I change?

This is where The Video Game Diet comes in. I have subscribed to this method of losing weight several times, and it has always worked for me. While there maybe more requirements for other people, the three basic ingredients for the diet are as follows:

• One or more thoroughly engrossing video games with either perpetual re-playability or substantially long gameplay.
• Easy access to water or other light drinks.
• Difficult access to snacks.

For those that might not see it yet, the diet is simple. Play a game that you cannot walk away from easily, and when you get hungry, drink water. You still eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, but for me, if I have something to do, I'm not bored. And if I'm not bored, I don't just find something to eat to get through the boredom.

In my opinion, there are three categories of games that accomplish the first requirement: Role-playing games (of any variety), strategy games (can be of any variety, but works better with turn-based strategy games), or online first-person shooters. Specific games that have worked well in the past are:

• World of Warcraft (the ultimate Video Game Diet game);
• The Sid Meier's Civilization series;
• The Halo series online multiplayer;
• Counter-Strike;
• Day of Defeat.

World of Warcraft and Civilization work well on some levels but not on others. Both games are essentially endless, but at any point you can walk away and abandon the no-snacks rule, so you need some self-discipline. Counter-Strike can have this problem as well, since you have only one life per round and the time it takes to end a round can sometimes be long enough for you to go and grab a bite to eat. But endlessly respawning games like Halo multiplayer and Day of Defeat require you to stay near the console or computer if you care about helping your team out.

I call it The Video Game Diet because video games are what I can easily become so engrossed in that I fight off my hunger pangs just so I can make it to the next level. But, really, a lot of things can be substituted for video games. A job works well, as it is harder to find readily available food to munch on unless you plan ahead or wish to spend money. I find movies and television not to be good compliments for the diet because of the lack of interactivity. You can become just as engaged in a television show as you can in a video game, but you can also have a big bowl of greasy, salty popcorn sitting in your lap.

The ultimate goal is to find a way to stay out of the kitchen. Whether that means running errands all day or playing a campaign of Civilization is up to you.

Same color illusion

Here's a quick hit. I originally wanted to talk about the concept of saccadic masking, but as I am not an expert on our visual system, I would have probably quoted the Wikipedia page verbatim. So, I'll go with one of my favorite optical illusions, the same color illusion.

Look at the image above. There are two squares (parallelograms, really, but close enough) labeled A and B. Look at the colors of the squares that the letters rest in. (I often have people get confused and think they are supposed to look at the colors of the letters. Don't.)

Is there any difference between colors of the squares?

To me, it seems like square B is lighter than square A, as we can use all of our context clues to infer as such: The board is checkered, with the main diagonals a lighter colored gray than the other squares. Square B is a bit darker than some of the other squares on the diagonal, but that's because it is in the shadow of the green cylinder. So where's the illusion?

Try doing this: instead of focusing on the two squares, look at the white space around the checkerboard. Let your peripheral vision take in the two labeled squares. Do you see the curtain being pulled back now? Or are you still not convinced there is an illusion?

Here is a guaranteed way to solve this mystery.

• If you have an image editing software on your computer (if all else fails, use Microsoft Paint), save this image and load it into your editing program.
• There should be a tool somewhere in the program that looks like an eyedropper. This tool takes a color from an image and makes it your primary color for use with your other editing tools (like the paintbrush, for example).
• Take your eyedropper and select the color of square A by hovering over the square and left clicking.
• Then, switch to your paintbrush and paint a little circle somewhere in the white space of the image.
• Next, take your eyedropper and select the white space around the checkerboard.
• Then, still using the eyedropper, select the color of square B.
• Finally, switch to your paintbrush tool again and paint a little circle right next to the previous circle you just created from the color of square A. Overlap the colors if you want.

The illusion is revealed. Both square A and square B are the exact same color! Is it a trick with the image? Are they not actually the same color, but my methods of seeing the illusions created a false sense that they are the same? There is a trick, but it's one you are playing on yourself.

From what I can understand from the reading I have done on this illusion (not to mention a few wild guesses), your eyes and minds inability to cope with the pseudo-three-dimension of the image is your downfall. Instead of understanding that you are actually looking at a flat image with colors that are not affected by light and shadow, your mind uses what it knows about three dimensional imagery and lighting and convinces your perception that it needs to follow a set of rules, which could be:

• The board is checkered with an alternating pattern of a light square bordered on all sides by dark squares, and vice versa.
• The green cylinder is casting a shadow over square B and a few adjacent squares, so these colors are darker, but still maintain the pattern above.

If we were to have an image of square B as a light square, but surrounded in all direction - including top left, top right, bottom left, and bottom right, as well as decrease the size of the shadow so it only fully covered square B, then the top left and bottom right squares, unaffected by the shadow, should immediately look the same color as square B.

You have any optical illusions that you find fascinating or mind-blowing?

Stories from the Wastes - Concessions Confessions

Now, for the spirit of this blog. Until I can get the means and opportunity to create the podcast I want, I'll be writing a series of posts that delve into the various topics that my inspiration - the Midwest Wasteland podcast from the guys at Video Game News Radio - have mentioned on their shows. I have not had the plethora of wacky experiences they have, but even in my relative infancy, I think I can bring some nostalgic humor to the Internet.

I worked at a major movie theater for about five months. I had signed up for a class in high school that allowed me to leave school early as long as I had employment. The class was only offered to juniors and seniors, and in my junior year I had worked at a grocery store as a bagger and cart collector. I eventually quit after working there for four or five months and not getting a promotion to cashier. I don't really know why I cared, as I enjoyed pushing the carts around at night. I'd spend most of my time running around in the nearly empty parking lot, riding my cart though the roaming flocks of blackbirds that would cluster around spilled grocery items.

But senior year came, and I needed to find another job or be forced to switch out of the work "class" and into a real class. My friend Matt offered to try and get me a job as an usher at this movie theater, but when I went in for the interview, the only position open was working the concessions. Again, I didn't care at the time, because this guaranteed me one less hour of school each weekday.

I quickly learned that I had accepted probably the hardest job in a movie theater. For attire, we had to wear a t-shirt with either the theater's logo or some advertisement for an upcoming movie, black slacks, black shoes, black socks, a black belt and (are you sensing a theme?) a black apron. Fairly standard work clothes, but there is a hitch: working as a consessions is extremely messy. If you're not walking on sticky syrup from a spilled soft drink, you're smearing hot butter on your pant legs or dusting yourself with powdered cheese. So it was often a lesson in futility if you were trying to stay clean, so the managers told us just to wear the same outfit for a week before you throw it through the wash. Maybe I had still not developed a keen sense of smell yet, or I have suppressed the thoughts of my odor, but I have no memory of what must have been a foul conglomeration of burnt popcorn, greasy butter, cheesy powder, and sticky sweet syrup.

The work level varied from long stretches of utter boredom to frenetic races to provide everyone in line with their confections when hit movies were about to be shown. All the while, I would see my friend Matt, leaning on a broom, chatting up some girl (one of which turned out to be his future wife), waiting for the next movie to finish so he could sweep the aisles and shoo off all the rats. (If you don't think your local movie theater has rats, you're sorely mistaken.)

The frantic pace during those times didn't get to me much, because I'd welcome the work after the endless drudgery between seatings. Most of my fellow concession workers were vapid slugs who spent most of all their downtime trying to hit on the fat stoner girl who worked back there with us. We did have a few moments of inspiration during the downtime, though. We could eat and drink all the popcorn and coke we wanted, but just not when customers were around and not with any of the official paper cups and plastic bags for the buyers. We'd create little pouches out of the hot dog wrapping paper, then wait for the moment the first kernels of popcorn came bursting out of the popper, all smothered with grease and butter and soft and chewy when munched on, by holding our pouches right under the overflow. Sometimes an unpopped kernel would be pushed out of the tin and land on my hand, scalding me with the molten hot oil, but the minor pain was well worth it. We also had to use little Dixie cups for the soft drinks, but with endless refills, size didn't matter. Finally, we had these cheap surgical gloves we had to use to handle the hot dogs and hot dog buns with, so we'd fill the fingers with fruit punch and hang them upside-down in the freezers in the back room and had little Popsicles.

The most ridiculous thing we ever did on the job, however, wasn't at all for our benefit. In fact, if we would have been caught doing it, anyone associated with it would be been immediately fired. There was a roach infestation (again, like in all theaters) and one of my co-workers had managed to catch one in our Dixie cups. He wanted to kill it, but didn't want to touch it, so he smothered it with the hot popcorn butter. Then he started showing the rest of the shift what he had done. In a moment of inspiration (or idiocy, depends on your perspective), I took the Dixie cup. There were a few small freezers out on the back counter where we would store these little ice cream snacks called Dibs. The door to the freezer was clear so a consumer could see them. So I took the roach- and butter-filled Dixie cup and put it in the freezer. I couldn't just put it in the freezer openly, or have it sitting there viewable, so I positioned it directly behind a Dibs container, and moved the other Dibs on each side closer to the middle one to block off all view. As I put the cup in the freezer, however, I noticed that the cockroach wasn't quite dead yet, but I didn't want to touch it either, so I just figured the combination of thick butter and cold temperatures would surely finish it off. After the next wave of customers had filed in and got their food (luckily, no one wanted Dibs), I told the rest of the shift that it wasn't quite dead. We had planned on letting the butter freeze, then adding more hot butter to thaw it out, then see if the roach went all Lazarus on us and came back to life, but by the time my shift had ended, only a small layer of the butter had frozen over.

I worked there for about four more months, then realized that the work "class" I was in did not seem to check whether I was still employed after the initial paperwork, so I quit. I never got moved to usher and work the cake job, but I didn't really need the money so quitting was a better option than begging for reassignment.

So there was my first "Stories from the Wastes." As I remember more interesting events that have enough meat to them to call for a blog post, I'll continue the series. I hope it brought a few laughs, or at the very least got you thinking about terrible jobs you have had in the past.

Trine

PC Game Review: Trine

Trine is an action-adventure, side-scrolling video game developed by Frozenbyte and published by SouthPeak Interactive.

After a series of events that cause a thief, a wizard, and a knight to come in contact with a mystical object known as the Trine, the three characters souls become bound to each other. The only way to remove the effect is by collecting three artifacts and defeating the monster that has mysteriously awoken the dead throughout the kingdom.

Trine plays like a modern re-imagining of the Blizzard SNES title The Lost Vikings. You have control over three different character types, the aforementioned Thief, Wizard, and Knight, who all bring their own strengths and weaknesses to the fight. The wizard uses his magic to create objects to reach otherwise inaccessible areas as well as telepathically move his own or other objects in the game. He has almost no offensive output, however. The thief uses a bow to attack enemies at range, and also has a grappling hook for swinging across great distances, Pitfall-style. In melee combat, she can get easily overwhelmed. The knight remedies this with his sword and shield combo, but fails at agility-based tasks like swimming.

Unlike The Lost Vikings, you are essentially playing one character who can shift into three classes. This is done on the fly, so you can quickly shoot down an archer with your thief, swap to your knight for clearing out the enemies charging in front of you, then create a box with your wizard to give you the height to reach the next ledge and escape the pursuing horde.

If you are looking for a story in your action game, Trine is not going to provide one for you. While there are numerous voice-overs (competently done) that advance your characters' story, it is hardly intriguing, and provides more of a means to an end rather than a gripping narrative. The game is full of puzzles that seem to require specific characters to pass, but since each character has his or her own health bar and can "die" and be unusable until the next checkpoint, there is usually a less obvious path that is specific for the classes you have left alive. This allows a bit of freedom in how you get through obstacles, but I found that I rarely used my knight for puzzle solving and only pulled him out during big fights because of this. The combat is decent - consisting usually of you spamming the attack button or charging your bow to shoot at range - but you have the tendency to get in a lot of "tie" hits, where both you and the enemy are damaged. But since the enemies can at certain areas constantly respawn, you end up dying pretty easily.

The graphics are aesthetically good, with nice lighting, shadow and fire effects. My machine slowed down a bit when I reached fire-heavy areas like lava pits, though this might not be the games fault. The color palette ranged from vibrant greens and purples in forest areas to dusty browns and grays in underground levels. The animations would have flowed well and seemed authentic if not for a bit of chugging during the more intense combat sequences. The game has a good physics engine, realistically giving appropriate weight to all movable objects. The level design at the beginning was fun and interesting, but ideas were reused so often that I could predict where the other paths were going to be. For those who enjoy level design built around jumping over lava (and poisonous, acidic, or pointy equivalents) this is the game for you. And the further into the game you get, the more often the designers fell back on this gaming stalwart. This makes re-playability a mixed bag. While the game is simple enough that numerous playthroughs are possible, there isn't much else to do beside completing the fairly standard set of achievements or trying to navigate an already repeating set of obstacles once again on a harder difficulty level.

I have yet to try the multiplayer. If I do and it significantly changes my opinion on the game, I'll write an addendum to this review.

Overall, the eight to ten hours of gameplay don't justify the $19.99 price tag, but if you can find it on sale like I did, it's more than a competent enough game.

The Fourth of July, Kayaking, and Bruises

Last Sunday was the Fourth of July. Whenever I have been at home in Katy for the 4th, our celebration is nothing more than my parents trying to convince me to go see the puny fireworks display at the local fairgrounds, at which I flatly refuse and go about my evening/night as if it is any other day. This year, however, my friend Paul invited me to go with his family to visit their cousins in San Antonio. While that itself doesn't sound quite so intriguing, he mentioned that we would be kayaking down the Guadalupe River, which sounded fun. So I headed out on the three and a half hour drive to his cousin's house near Boerne, TX on Saturday, and went to kayak with them early Sunday.

I have never been kayaking before, but I have had experience rowing a boat around Battle Ground Lake State Park, up in Battle Ground, Washington. There are two major differences, as I found out. On the lake, I spent most of my time paddling backwards with the paddles in rings on the sides of the boat. Thus you can use your bicep muscles and your abdominals to produce your momentum, as well as paddle simultaneously on both sides of the boat to keep the boat straight. As well, like backing up a car, you have to condition yourself to think oppositely in terms of directions to navigate. In this kayak, while you are no longer using rings from your paddle, you are facing forward, so the arm closest to the paddle in the water is still using its bicep. Your other arm, however, pushes outward to create the additional force, and uses your flaccid triceps muscle. Additionally, this motion - along with the instability of the kayak - does not allow for the use of your body to provide extra propulsion. Finally, only one paddle is in the water at any time, so unless you have equally built up both arm muscles, you have the tendency to over-steer and use a lot of your energy going in directions other than downstream. And since my mindset brought me back to Battle Ground Lake, I kept flipping directions accidentally, and would only get it right if I just reacted naturally instead of thinking about where I want to go.

So I'm woken up in the morning by Paul's mother, and after getting ready for the trip and grabbing a quick breakfast, Paul's mom notices I only have flip-flops for the kayaking, as opposed to sandals with straps. She politely offers a pair of size 11 flip flops she finds around the house. I accept them, and don't bother to tell her about my foot abnormalities (I'm sure I'll cover this eventually.) I strap on my borrowed sandals and the group - Paul and his mom and dad, Paul's cousin and his mom and dad, and I - walk the few blocks down the road to the place on the river bank where the rented kayaks will be. About halfway into the walk, I notice a blister has both formed and ruptured already on the right side of my right foot's ankle.

Great start.

We get out kayaks, haul them down into the river, and set off. Paul's uncle immediately flips his kayak. At least we've popped that cherry. Five to ten minutes later, I see Paul randomly flip his kayak and lose his sunglasses in the process. About a minute or so later, I flip my kayak. I don't even remember how, but I manage to get back on the kayak easily enough. The riverbed was fairly shallow, so I just leaped out of the water and landed on my kayak.

Keep in mind this is all happening on the calm portion of the river. It had been raining fairly heavily off and on over the past month, so the river was high, but not horribly so.

We reach the first set of rapids. The kayak renter told us that we should always try and go through the rapids single-file, since when someone flips their kayak it'll be easier for the next kayak to avoid them/the area of rapids that flipped them. Paul's cousin goes through first. He gets through cleanly. I later learn he was using a fishing kayak, which is designed less for speed and more for stability, so he easily slid over any trouble.

I went through next, and navigated all the way to the end of the rapids before I inexplicably flipped. I believe everyone else made it through successfully, but I may be mistaken, since I was paying more attention to getting back onto my kayak. I manage to flip the capsized kayak back over, then wait for one of the other party members to grab it to give it some stability. When I first flipped it, the river was calm, so I didn't need much help, but after the rapids the current was still heavy. I leap onto the kayak, but instead of maneuvering midair to land on my butt, and land on my knees. I try to get on my feet, then plop down onto the seat, but flip the kayak again. Then I hear the familiar sound of rushing water.

I didn't know this, and the renter/guide failed to stress this or perhaps even mention it at all, but about a football fields length after the first set of rapids is another, smaller set of rapids, that if on a kayak can easily be navigated. I, however, was not on a kayak. I had yet to reach the rapids, so my first reaction was to grab my kayak, get some footing to stand in place in the rushing current, and then leap on just before I reach the rocky rapids. My kayak was still withing arms reach, so I grabbed a hold of a strap that was dangling behind the kayak and try to pull it toward where I had just gotten a foothold. All this did was tire me out, as the strong current made the light kayak feel as heavy as a boulder and pretty much unmovable. After ten seconds or so of trying to pull it closer to me and failing, I let it go and proceed with the only option I have available to me: ride the rapids bareback.

I had a life jacket on, so I didn't need worry about staying afloat. I have watched many episodes of Man vs. Wild and Survivorman, so I knew to keep my feet up and just float down instead of try to walk through the rocky riverbed. Even if I hadn't know beforehand, Paul was yelling over and over at me to do so. So I start to ride through the rapids. BOOM! Get a rock right to my lower back. POW! Another rock nails me in my pelvic bone. SMACK! A large rock knocks me sideways. I look downstream and notice a gigantic rock right in front of where the current is taking me. The pain from the other rocks smashing into me made me want to take a more active role in avoidance, so I lowered my feet into the water to try and push myself in a different direction. CRACK! A hidden rock wrecks my left leg. CRACK again! Another one hits my left leg again, but just a little higher. Luckily, I was successful in avoiding the behemoth in front of me, so I was able to lift my legs back up and avoid the possibility of shattering my leg. I finally make it through the rapids, and in the calm currents after it, I got onto the kayak correctly.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. The final set of rapids I got through, but nearly shook myself out of my kayak again at the end.

When we reached our exit point of the river, I was finally able to assess the damage. Nothing was that serious: a few minor scrapes on my left shin, a cut on my lower back, a scrape of my left index finger, and four additional blisters from the sandals, two on each foot. I have a fairly high tolerance for pain, so the only part that hurts is on my index finger. Since I can see the injury, my body suddenly reminds me that scrapes are usually painful, while the other injuries are more or less hidden by clothes or body hair (gross!).

Happy belated Independence Day!

Steam Sale Extravaganza

Steam had a sale all last week on over 200 titles, and would further discount on sale items to even lower prices each day, with the new discounts lasting 24 hours. I had just received my new PC, and as well have just recently graduated from college, so I had an empty hard drive and wads of spendable cash. So I kind of splurged on the sales. I purchased:

• Star Wars: Empire at War Gold;
• Thief: Deadly Shadows;
• Trine;
• Titan Quest;
• Titan Quest: Immortal Throne;
• The Witcher: Enhanced Edition;
• Torchlight;
• Sacred Gold;
• The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom;
• Day of Defeat: Source.

Ended up only having to pay just over $50, so I feel I got a steal of a deal. I've been playing mostly Torchlight and Day of Defeat: Source. I've been playing Torchlight because I wanted a Diablo fix (which happened to be the same reason I bought Sacred Gold and Titan Quest), and Day of Defeat: Source has been played a lot because I loved the original Day of Defeat when I was in high school.

It is a shame that not as many people play Day of Defeat (DoD) as play Counter-Strike: Source, because I feel it is a superior game. It has the same intensity of Counter-Strike matches, but you don't have to worry about getting obliterated instantly and spending the next five minutes watching some Terrorist try and find where the bomb carrier died so he can complete the objective. I loved playing as the Wehrmacht (Germans) and playing as a Rifleman (using the K-98). Unlike the Allied M1 Garand, the K-98 has a much more powerful shot, thus more likely killing your opponent in one shot, and the ability to reload your clip before you have fully expended your ammo in your current magazine. The K-98 also seems to be more accurate, with the ability to easily take both advancing or sniping positions with relative easy. If I am forced to play as the Allied, I either use the Springfield sniper rifle, or the Thompson, as I feel fairly weak with the Garand.