Also, it prevents the Terminators (T-800, T-1000, etc.), flat out.

Picture unrelated.

WordPress instructions for creating Network sites.

A side effect of that focus, on using the internet to my benefit in order to gain the upper hand on everyone who doesn’t, is that I spend a lot of time on the web trying to make it useful for me.  It’s an amazing tool, one whose uses haven’t all been understood, like a Swiss Army knife with fractal bits and doo-dads becoming exponentially more complex the closer you look, a tool that defies a simple printed legend.

The danger, as I have been told, is that relying too heavily on the web (and, when finally available, on virtual reality) will desensitize me to real reality (the existence of which I will not discuss here) and prevent me from ejoying the real world.

Tl;dr: “Get off that damned computer and go outside!”

I, a devotee of the internet, try to swim against that current and use the internet for whatever I see folks refusing to use the internet for: shopping, news, sight-seeing, watching sports, communicating, etc.  I know it’s not the same thing and has its own Pros and Cons (e.g. Amazon has a huge selection, but the place down the street actually has the item you want) but I like to think I’m supporting the improvement of the online mechanisms that will one day overtake the brick & mortar alternatives.  Yes, Amazon will be 100x more devastating than Wal-Mart, whose local-economic-devastations I deplore, but I still <3 Amazon.

Virtual sight-seeing, whether browsing Flickr albums, spanning the globe in Google Earth, or watching YouTube videos, has provided me access to more locales and details thereof than I could ever have hoped to experience directly.  Old refrains of “it’s better in person” or “seeing it is nothing like being there” ring true, but I’ve been some places and, for my purposes, seeing it in enough detail is often enough.  (See also: war journalism)

However, it has recently come to my attention that there are some things our technology can’t provide over the internet.  I knew there were such things, of course, the internet only mediating 2 of our 5 senses, but these examples were new to me.  It turns out I’d taken all the modern advances in computer imaging and high resolution ultra-high-contrast display devices to be more miraculous than perhaps they are.

As it turns out, the internet, your computer, and (most importantly) your computer monitor are unable to show you a decent Cyan.

Not the makers of Myst, but the color.  The ‘C’ in the CMYK color model actually can’t be displayed (properly) by the devices specifically programmed to understand that it exists.  Another color (and probably not the ONLY other color) is International Klein Blue, or IKB.

Tetrachromacy (extra rods and cones to distinguish more different colors) and color-blindness prove that vision defects exist in real life, but at least someone can see those shades; it’s not a complete loss.  When we look all look at computer screens with the same abilities and disabilities then none of us can experience these real-world phenomenon.

Reading articles on the internet with pictures of colors I cannot see evokes the Magritte pipe, but with an aqua bowl and an ultramarine stem, and should remind us all (again) of the treachery of images.

Cyan and IKB, I miss you, though I think I’ve never met you.

There’s a billion other questions about the Street virtual environment, ranging from the plausible or existent (hyperlinked virtual books in Hiro’s library workspace) to the nonsensical (sword fights in the Black Sun).  I place street racing in a shared virtual environment right in the middle of that plausibility spectrum: it seems possible, but the mechanism isn’t obvious.

I’ve considered the problem since first reading the book and my thoughts ran along the lines of “speed has to be earned”.  Obviously your opponent wouldn’t be reliable so there would need to be independent observers (be they server software or client software) to “approve” of your speed.  For you to move from point A to point B in a peer-to-peer-mediated environment (as I imagined a real-life Street to be, despite the text stating that corporations owned the servers) you’d need all those peers who might see you to accept your high speed travel.  What incentive could you give them?

I figured there must be an answer that could be provided by doing work for them, but what kind of work?  What kind of useful work can I do for the people I drive by to induce them to respect my claims of superior velocity?  And how can I count on them to be fair?  I could offer up my bandwidth, mirroring their content to passing neighbors, taking the load off the observers.  That sounds nice, but you’re bandwidth limited and that’s an increasingly depressing plan given the bandwidth caps ISPs are enforcing.

I recently stumbled onto BitCoin, which reminded me of this whole question and induced me to write this post.  Your computer does work, crunching numbers and processing data, and this earns you credit that is reviewed and respected by your peers.  BitCoin isn’t a perfect model, because it has a randomized payout effect, but it’s an interesting model.  It seems like an evolution of the distributed processing projects I participated in during my youth (such as the RSA challenges on Distributed.net, but also SETI@Home and its ilk).

Some kind of CPU/GPU-processing based, non-random, communally respected system for generating “credits” could be useful for putting petrol in the virtual tank of your digital dragster.

The Top 10 Tiny Gods Posts of 2010

10. “The Coolest Thing Ever” by Pasty

This post from back in late June was filled with angsty anti-Apple complaints plump with sarcasm and accusatory snideness.  This was the single worst post of the year.

9. “Hello from Pax!” by Chuck

This one was relatively content free, provided solely as a landing post for recipients of one the greatest, nay, one of the very greatest buttons distributed to Buttoneers at PAX Prime 2010.  The TinyGods “Smiles Are Free” buttons contains our URL. Whether anyone followed it or not is a mystery for the ages.

8. “Semantic Data” by Pasty

Some products of a frantic sci-fi addled psyche are more useful than others.  This one is just middling in entertainment value but it edges the previous posts in one critical statistic: word length.

7. “Today in ASCII” by Pasty

About as much content as your above-average person’s above-average tweet, this post is notable in that it was on the receiving end of the only non-TinyGod comment of the year.

6. “Tiny Gods Game Jam 2K10” by Mandrake

This is the first in an epic trilogy of GameJam related posts by Mandrake.  The series details the rise and ascent into orbit of the fruit jam of our loins: Planet Escape.

5. “More Jamming of Games” by Mandrake

This status update from the TGGJ2KX formed the 2nd Act of the narrative.  Fun fact: the runners-up for being chosen as our game project were called “Word Escape” and “Chicken Formation”.

4. “We Have Gravity” by Mandrake

Like all great trilogies, this one ends after the third installment.  And what an adventure it was we took together.  With top-notch reporting like this we truly owe Mandrake some sort of Pulitzer for Game Jammery.

3. “Unboxing Photos: Crave Case” by Pasty

Sorry, 10-4, but this one kicks your arses by virtue of having photographs.  They weren’t very good, and they were of a stomach-turning subject matter, but they were worth simply thousands of words.  Crave that case, babies!

2. “Beat ‘Em Up Heaven” by Mandrake

Not for nothing, this was the longest and bestest post of the year 2kX.  Wrap your puny mortal mental prowess around this concept: a review for 3 video games all-in-one. It was fun to read, and you didn’t feel guilty, greasy, or regretful after you finished it.  I give it multiple opposable thumbs.

1. “Top 10 Posts of 2010” by Pasty

What post could be better than this?  All the goodness of the entire year’s corpus of flash-frozen literary gems, condensed here on the manically lit walls of an interweb alleyway.  You may or may not have been good this year, you may or may not deserve this, but the gift has been given and may not be regifted.

See you next year.

Now the funny thing is that Sullivan asked me what this day would be next year: 111101 -> 0x3D which translates to an =.

Today is a single horizontal dash in ASCII, this day next year is two horizontal dashes. It’s trivial down to the bone, but it’s fun nonetheless.

The first of the three that I played was for Shank, an action-packed murderfest. After playing through the demo, which consists of the game’s first level, I immediately bought it. This game is nothing but non-stop death and it is awesome. I was a little worried at first that all of the different weapons and combos that you can use would make the controls difficult, but that is far from the case. Pouncing on a guy, stabbing him a few time in the chest and then shooting the enemy that is running up behind you before pulling out your chainsaw and gutting somebody else is easily accomplished. That is good because such combos become a necessity as hordes of enemies are thrown at you with varying weapons and tactics. If you are a fan of action games, you must pick this one up. The only thing that I find a bit disappointing is that the cooperative campaign can only be played locally and not over Live.

Next, let’s take a look at some ninja combat. The Naruto fighting games have all been great, and Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 looks to be no exception. The gameplay is fairly simple and the art is beautiful. The demo takes place after Naruto returns from his three years of training with Jiraiya, and has met back up with Sakura and Kakashi. Kakashi challenges his former pupils to the same challenge that he presented to them when they first began to study under him: they must take two bells form his belt. There is a little more to this particular battle than a standard 3-round fight. It plays more like a boss fight where there are some patterns that you need to learn as you look for openings where you can deal some damage. You can call Sakura in for assistance, but it’s not a tag-team fight. I’m really looking forward to the full game, which is supposed to be out this fall.

Last up we have Scott Pilgrim. I was pretty excited about this one too. The music was done by Anamanaguchi and the art style is fairly retro. The story seemed silly enough that the game would be really entertaining. First of all, it has a lot in common with River City Ransom. There is a leveling system which I haven’t explored yet. Enemies drop money, which I haven’t spent yet. There are all sorts of weapons lying around that can be swung at enemies or thrown (including the enemies themselves.) There is a multiplayer option which lets up to four people play cooperatively, but that is only available locally. The game is tough, but really repetitive. To be honest, I didn’t spend much time with it because I wanted to get back to Shank. Scott Pilgrim will definitely satisfy anybody looking for an old school brawler experience. It is unfortunate that it was released alongside a stronger game that falls roughly in the same genre.

Uncoolest thing ever: holding Apple accountable for giving the iPhone 4 shitty reception and shitty construction.