Some math on Mafia Wars...fair warning: Geek alert.
So, Mafia Wars on Facebook. The Reward points you earn in the game can be used to buy other goods, including in-game money. You can also pay real US dollars for reward points, making it possible to develop a conversion factor between the two.
At today's rates:
You can puchase reward points at the rate of 42 for 8 dollars...
42 Reward pts / 8 US Dollars = 5.25 R pts / USD
And you can purchase in-game money as follows...
206000 MF$ / 10 R pts
Allowing for a calculation of an exchange rate between in-game money and out of game money...
206000 MF$ / 10 R pts = 108150 MF$ / USD
Okay, so, so far we seen some interesting stuff, but I'm sure you're asking yourself, "Damn Dave, you need to get out more." You're probably right, but the point to all this is the following:
Since I can also earn in-game money by playing the game, I can reverse this calculation and find out how much my in game money is worth in real dollars. This means that if I could sell my in-game dollars at the same rate they sell them to us at, I would have...
900,000,000 MF$ * 1 / 108150 USD/MF$ = 8321USD (rounded)
...over 8000 dollars in the real world. Not bad for for the spare time I've put into the game while checking facebook.
You may have heard of this in other games where people really are doing this: Link
Showing posts with label geek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geek. Show all posts
28 November 2009
25 October 2009
Want to see an example of a terrible corporate website? Dominos.com
(Except the real time pizza tracker, that's actually really cool.)
(Except the real time pizza tracker, that's actually really cool.)
17 October 2009
Google wave, more digital history
The whole thing is long, but the first few minutes are very interesting. Google Wave is a response to the following question: What would email be like if it was invented today?
Google Wave video
As the speaker notes, the original protocols for email were created more than 40 years ago, pre-dating internet as we know it. One way this affected the way email works is that it basically mimicked the only existing way (at that time) of sending information from one person to another over long distances and asynchronously: normal mail. One person talks to one person, and maybe the second person replies.
If you overlook the fact that the processing power and computer networks that we now take for granted were at that time only the wildest speculation of the smartest and most studied people in computer science, email is a very unimaginative advance. All it did was take the snail mail paradigm and transfer it to the digital environment: send-receive.
As I understand it, a "wave" is a rethinking of the communication paradigm. With email (and snail mail before it), the basic idea is to communicate one set message to one or a few people, and maybe there is a reply. The letter is a fixed product, and is only accessible based on the efforts of the participants, i.e., to give access to the letter, someone who has it has to send it to someone who doesn't. In turn, if a reader wants to provide feedback, they have to reply and specifically send to previous readers and writers. There is no master source of information except a person who has read all the letters, if there even is such a person. (If you've ever tried to collaborate with multiple people on a long term project via email, you know how hard this makes things at times to keep everyone current on what's been done, what needs to be done, what's changed, etc.)
A wave changes this paradigm by starting from the beginning as a message that exists apart from the participants. Rather that starting with the person, who you will tell something, you start with the something you want to communicate, and linking your friend to it so they can read it. Once created, the message exists apart from the creator, in some place where lots of people can access it, like a computer server.
To explain it a little more concretely, let's say you want to tell two friends about a boat trip. You start by creating a wave (which looks mostly like a webpage) titled "Boat Trip." You write a short message and then link your friends digitally. When one next logs in, he sees he has a new wave. He opens it, reads it, and replies. (So far, just like an email.) But then they say, "Hey, that was a good story. Do you have any pictures? Oh, and do you mind if I show this to some of my friends?" When you next log in, you see the reply, and the question, and say "Sure." Your second friend later logs in, and instead of just seeing the original message, sees the whole conversation. He replies also and says, "Yeah, cool trip. Here's some pictures of my last trip." And he posts them to the wave. Your first friend logs in, sees your reply, and links other friends. He also comments on second friend's pictures. Later arrivals to the conversation also get to see all items added to the original message. As you can imagine, it's already starting to get pretty convoluted, but items are laid out in chronological order, with each item date stamped and lated comments sub-bulleted. But to make it easier to actually see how the conversation evolved, there are history buttons (like on a wiki page) that allow you to start at the original message and watch each addition in the order it was made.
The closest analogy I can come up with is that a wave is more like a book. Some one writes it and leaves it in the library for others. As they read it, they can add to it, creating a later edition to the book, which sits next to the original on the shelf, and so on.
An upside to the email paradigm is that between two people, the information is fairly easy to organize. If you printed out a series of emails and replies between two people and put them in order, you would basically create a physical book that tells the story.
By contrast, a wave is much less meaningful outside a digital environment, where it cannot be manipulated real time by the reader to see the changes over time (and by the way, the above description is only the most basic introduction to the capabilities of a wave). While I anticipate waves will revolutionize and much improve group collaboration, they also mean we will be tied firmly to the electronic world; truly digital history.
Google Wave video
As the speaker notes, the original protocols for email were created more than 40 years ago, pre-dating internet as we know it. One way this affected the way email works is that it basically mimicked the only existing way (at that time) of sending information from one person to another over long distances and asynchronously: normal mail. One person talks to one person, and maybe the second person replies.
If you overlook the fact that the processing power and computer networks that we now take for granted were at that time only the wildest speculation of the smartest and most studied people in computer science, email is a very unimaginative advance. All it did was take the snail mail paradigm and transfer it to the digital environment: send-receive.
As I understand it, a "wave" is a rethinking of the communication paradigm. With email (and snail mail before it), the basic idea is to communicate one set message to one or a few people, and maybe there is a reply. The letter is a fixed product, and is only accessible based on the efforts of the participants, i.e., to give access to the letter, someone who has it has to send it to someone who doesn't. In turn, if a reader wants to provide feedback, they have to reply and specifically send to previous readers and writers. There is no master source of information except a person who has read all the letters, if there even is such a person. (If you've ever tried to collaborate with multiple people on a long term project via email, you know how hard this makes things at times to keep everyone current on what's been done, what needs to be done, what's changed, etc.)
A wave changes this paradigm by starting from the beginning as a message that exists apart from the participants. Rather that starting with the person, who you will tell something, you start with the something you want to communicate, and linking your friend to it so they can read it. Once created, the message exists apart from the creator, in some place where lots of people can access it, like a computer server.
To explain it a little more concretely, let's say you want to tell two friends about a boat trip. You start by creating a wave (which looks mostly like a webpage) titled "Boat Trip." You write a short message and then link your friends digitally. When one next logs in, he sees he has a new wave. He opens it, reads it, and replies. (So far, just like an email.) But then they say, "Hey, that was a good story. Do you have any pictures? Oh, and do you mind if I show this to some of my friends?" When you next log in, you see the reply, and the question, and say "Sure." Your second friend later logs in, and instead of just seeing the original message, sees the whole conversation. He replies also and says, "Yeah, cool trip. Here's some pictures of my last trip." And he posts them to the wave. Your first friend logs in, sees your reply, and links other friends. He also comments on second friend's pictures. Later arrivals to the conversation also get to see all items added to the original message. As you can imagine, it's already starting to get pretty convoluted, but items are laid out in chronological order, with each item date stamped and lated comments sub-bulleted. But to make it easier to actually see how the conversation evolved, there are history buttons (like on a wiki page) that allow you to start at the original message and watch each addition in the order it was made.
The closest analogy I can come up with is that a wave is more like a book. Some one writes it and leaves it in the library for others. As they read it, they can add to it, creating a later edition to the book, which sits next to the original on the shelf, and so on.
An upside to the email paradigm is that between two people, the information is fairly easy to organize. If you printed out a series of emails and replies between two people and put them in order, you would basically create a physical book that tells the story.
By contrast, a wave is much less meaningful outside a digital environment, where it cannot be manipulated real time by the reader to see the changes over time (and by the way, the above description is only the most basic introduction to the capabilities of a wave). While I anticipate waves will revolutionize and much improve group collaboration, they also mean we will be tied firmly to the electronic world; truly digital history.
04 February 2009
16 December 2008
01 December 2008
Pet peeves
A pet peeve of mine: when it is easier to find a particular news article using a generic google search than with the site's built in search engine.
Example: try to find the following article:
"As gas prices fall, gas stations' profits actually rise," by Paul Davidson in USAToday on 1 Dec 08.
Example: try to find the following article:
"As gas prices fall, gas stations' profits actually rise," by Paul Davidson in USAToday on 1 Dec 08.
04 September 2008
Office 2007
The AF recently switched over to Office 2007 at work...am I the only one totally dumbfounded by the new menus (or I guess they are called "Ribbons" now...)? Just when I had learned a bit about the things Office could do and how to do them, they go and change it...
06 August 2008
Delicious
Okay, so nerding out the other day I started a Delicious account. I read a lot of news online, and I finally got curious about the logo I kept seeing everywhere. Trying it out for now. Seems cool, lets you keep you bookmarks apart from a specific computer, a way of becoming hardware independent.
Bookmarks
~~~
16 Dec 08:
Later post
Bookmarks
~~~
16 Dec 08:
Later post
03 July 2008
23 June 2008
digital life: pandora; tags
A site that illustrates the movement of life to the internet.
Pandora.com, where you can listen to free music all day. To generate a personalized play list, enter a song or artist you like, and they will find other music like it. An offshoot of the Music Genome project, which involves categorizing all music according to the the included elements (a truly monumental project.) Anne and I have discussed this (she's the one who actually put me onto the site in the first place) and neither of us can think of a way to do this other than to listen to all the music involved and enter it in a database/tag it in some way. Pretty time consuming, and I am grateful to be the beneficiary of the work.
Also a note on labels/tags: I've been meaning to try and define them to make it easier to sort entries. I'm not really going to go back and work on them all, but I will work on it as I go along.
Tags:
geek: things of a nerdy nature, video games, internet applications, math jokes, etc.
blogger: posts dealing with the mechanics of actually using blogger.
tags: a post that includes the definition of a tag
links: a post containing links to some other site or some other post
people: mentions someone other than me
Pandora.com, where you can listen to free music all day. To generate a personalized play list, enter a song or artist you like, and they will find other music like it. An offshoot of the Music Genome project, which involves categorizing all music according to the the included elements (a truly monumental project.) Anne and I have discussed this (she's the one who actually put me onto the site in the first place) and neither of us can think of a way to do this other than to listen to all the music involved and enter it in a database/tag it in some way. Pretty time consuming, and I am grateful to be the beneficiary of the work.
Also a note on labels/tags: I've been meaning to try and define them to make it easier to sort entries. I'm not really going to go back and work on them all, but I will work on it as I go along.
Tags:
geek: things of a nerdy nature, video games, internet applications, math jokes, etc.
blogger: posts dealing with the mechanics of actually using blogger.
tags: a post that includes the definition of a tag
links: a post containing links to some other site or some other post
people: mentions someone other than me
timestamp
Okay, this is annoying.
I just changed my timezone back to pacific (Zulu-8) from Iraq (Zulu+3), and this changes the timestamps on ALL entries, including the ones when I was in Iraq.
I just changed my timezone back to pacific (Zulu-8) from Iraq (Zulu+3), and this changes the timestamps on ALL entries, including the ones when I was in Iraq.
29 March 2008
minor changes
Not much to post today, trying to catch up on sleep and masters work on my short day, I did work on a couple of longer entries I'm not satisfied with yet.
In an effort to encourage comments, I have opened the blog up for anonymous comments. (I also turned on email notifications for comments, I will know when people post them, I've been bad on responding to a few of them.)
In an effort to encourage comments, I have opened the blog up for anonymous comments. (I also turned on email notifications for comments, I will know when people post them, I've been bad on responding to a few of them.)
07 March 2008
coping mechanisms; alarm clock; dwell ratio
Some tricks I have picked up over the years for maintaining control of my emotions while deployed.
#1: get enough sleep. This is one is relatively personal to me, but if I can get at least 8 hours of sleep a day, my ability to be emotionally positive, mentally proactive and put up with stress is much increased. I read about a study not that long ago that advanced the idea that sleep deprivation causes an emotionally younger or child-like state (i.e., more prone to tantrums, less reasonable, etc.)
#2: goosefraube. I stole this from the movie Anger Management. This I just use when I catch myself getting spun up over a situation. I say "goosefraube" and try to just focus on the task at hand. (In think it is intended to sound German...which was the language I took in school, but that was a long time ago.) That or I use the line from Wedding Crashers: "I don't want to talk about last night, because it's just going to make me mad."
#3: trout. This I stole and modified from another source (A.I.), but I don't want to take the time to go into it here. This one is most effective in groups, and to understand how it works, you need a little background on a all too common problem: the stupid policy. For example, let's say your organization sends out a summary email on a certain topic every day. And this email goes to several different people or addresses. As virtually everyone who knows how to use email can tell you, it doesn't matter if you put an address in the To: line or the CC: line, the email will still arrive. Despite this, one of the listed orgs calls you angrily and demands that from now on, they be put in the To: line. The email still got to them, but they were on the wrong line. And all of the folks involved are sitting in the combat zone, and this is what they needed to pick up the phone and take 15 minutes of your time to talk to you about.
Trout comes in when your friend tells you this story in a room full of other people, all in the same squadron. Everyone in the room knows this is a stupid policy/act, and everyone agrees. And yet someone always plays the devil's advocate and speaks up (usually in jest) to defend the policy. When this happens, this person now becomes the proxy authority figure, and the victim of said policy unleashes all of their (righteous) anger on this flesh and blood effigy. The point is, it just pisses everyone off to have the conversation after describing the stupid policy. So when someone asks the leading question, such as, "Doesn't the email get to them either way?" The proper response to just say "Trout," and drop the whole conversation right there. I have found this tactic both extremely useful and extremely entertaining since my last rote, and spread it to new organizations I join so I can use it.
[Controlled detonation occurring outside the building right now as I type.]
I am using my mobile phone from home as my alarm clock. (I was somewhat hopeful it might find a network here to use (it's quadband GSM and unlocked with an international SIM), but no dice.) You have to use a battery powered alarm clock here because for some reason (some say converted 220V power), wired clocks gain a few minutes every day. Since I was already bringing my mobile phone, it saved space and weight in packing.
Military term of the day: dwell time/ dwell ratio. Dwell time is the amount of time you spend at home between deployments. Dwell ratio is the ratio of home time to deployed time. A dwell ratio of 2:1 would mean that for every month you spend deployed, you spend two at home. A lot of army troops are roughly at a 1:1 right now. All the stateside C-130 squadrons have been at 1:1 since OEF started in 2001.
#1: get enough sleep. This is one is relatively personal to me, but if I can get at least 8 hours of sleep a day, my ability to be emotionally positive, mentally proactive and put up with stress is much increased. I read about a study not that long ago that advanced the idea that sleep deprivation causes an emotionally younger or child-like state (i.e., more prone to tantrums, less reasonable, etc.)
#2: goosefraube. I stole this from the movie Anger Management. This I just use when I catch myself getting spun up over a situation. I say "goosefraube" and try to just focus on the task at hand. (In think it is intended to sound German...which was the language I took in school, but that was a long time ago.) That or I use the line from Wedding Crashers: "I don't want to talk about last night, because it's just going to make me mad."
#3: trout. This I stole and modified from another source (A.I.), but I don't want to take the time to go into it here. This one is most effective in groups, and to understand how it works, you need a little background on a all too common problem: the stupid policy. For example, let's say your organization sends out a summary email on a certain topic every day. And this email goes to several different people or addresses. As virtually everyone who knows how to use email can tell you, it doesn't matter if you put an address in the To: line or the CC: line, the email will still arrive. Despite this, one of the listed orgs calls you angrily and demands that from now on, they be put in the To: line. The email still got to them, but they were on the wrong line. And all of the folks involved are sitting in the combat zone, and this is what they needed to pick up the phone and take 15 minutes of your time to talk to you about.
Trout comes in when your friend tells you this story in a room full of other people, all in the same squadron. Everyone in the room knows this is a stupid policy/act, and everyone agrees. And yet someone always plays the devil's advocate and speaks up (usually in jest) to defend the policy. When this happens, this person now becomes the proxy authority figure, and the victim of said policy unleashes all of their (righteous) anger on this flesh and blood effigy. The point is, it just pisses everyone off to have the conversation after describing the stupid policy. So when someone asks the leading question, such as, "Doesn't the email get to them either way?" The proper response to just say "Trout," and drop the whole conversation right there. I have found this tactic both extremely useful and extremely entertaining since my last rote, and spread it to new organizations I join so I can use it.
[Controlled detonation occurring outside the building right now as I type.]
I am using my mobile phone from home as my alarm clock. (I was somewhat hopeful it might find a network here to use (it's quadband GSM and unlocked with an international SIM), but no dice.) You have to use a battery powered alarm clock here because for some reason (some say converted 220V power), wired clocks gain a few minutes every day. Since I was already bringing my mobile phone, it saved space and weight in packing.
Military term of the day: dwell time/ dwell ratio. Dwell time is the amount of time you spend at home between deployments. Dwell ratio is the ratio of home time to deployed time. A dwell ratio of 2:1 would mean that for every month you spend deployed, you spend two at home. A lot of army troops are roughly at a 1:1 right now. All the stateside C-130 squadrons have been at 1:1 since OEF started in 2001.
02 March 2008
digital history
I have a couple of buddies here who are really into World of Warcraft. It is an interesting development that so much human energy these days is directed into cyberspace, into a non-physical medium. The IRS is starting to talk about taxing activities performed for money in
cyberspace on sites/services like WoW and Second Life.
cyberspace on sites/services like WoW and Second Life.
The part of all this that I find fascinating is the capacity we now have for living in a cyber world, where our environment is completely under our control and the normal limitations of space and logistics, in terms of interacting with people and what we can save for posterity, do not exist. Within reason, there is no real limit to the things we can save for future generations in the digital world. Unlike in the real world, there is no limited land, no worry of flooding, no fires or earthquakes. When something is created in the digital world, it lasts forever unless someone chooses to delete it, or the real world is so rude as to intrude by destroying a physical component to the system with one of the aforementioned disasters.
I believe that there are few things we do of lasting importance in life. A large part of most people's energy, every day, is spent just staying fed and warm (if they're lucky). These are practical pursuits, but in the end, they are just subsistence. What truly makes us unique among all the life in this world (if anything)? To me, it is the things we contribute that last beyond us. The accomplishments we complete, the children we have. Before now, even the greatest of accomplishments became anonymous after a long enough time. The cyberworld allows us, for the first time, however, to save a personal record on virtually everyone who wishes to do so.
One of the most interesting (and often necessary) things to do when joining a new organization is to sit down and start going through all the random directories and drives I have access to to find out how they do business. It is interesting the things you find. In my last squadron (the 39th), I was cleaning out all my old files and work and started doing some digging. I found a bunch of old documents in the pilot flight directory. I found a bunch of documents from July, August and early September 2001, dealing with things like airshows, stateside missions, quarterly awards. Then there was nothing until mid-October, when all I could find were deployment crew lists. The squadron was still on that deployment when I joined them in Manas in June of 2003.
Future historians will need to become adept at looking a digital documents, just as current historians examine physical documents. I doubt that anyone yet teaches a class on digital history, but I am trying to become one myself. It has become a hobby of mine to find ways to organize and save files on virtually everything I can find. It is an interesting challenge; the sheer amount of information out there is the greatest obstacle (this is the other side to the two-edged sword of the ease of document creation and retention we now enjoy).
An interesting manifestation of this shift to the digital realm is my automatic document feed scanner, which basically works like a printer in reverse. Now, a document isn't really secure until you have a digital copy.
tags: history, email, geek
[edit same day: carriage returns]25 February 2008
Humor
I've noticed that one's sense of humor seems to get sharpened while deployed. One good source of laughs for me so far this rote is XKCD.com. Very funny, and actually educational as well. And incidentally, f*ck coconuts.
On the topic of web-based humor, see also Homestarrunner.com, which I became addicted to on my first rote.
I also started playing with labels, which are useful for sorting various entries into neat categories, such as the geekiness of playing with labels, as in this entry.
Okay, enough for today, I need to sleep.
On the topic of web-based humor, see also Homestarrunner.com, which I became addicted to on my first rote.
I also started playing with labels, which are useful for sorting various entries into neat categories, such as the geekiness of playing with labels, as in this entry.
Okay, enough for today, I need to sleep.
24 February 2008
technical details / nerding out...
Oh, and I just figured out how to update my time zone, so dates and time will now be accurate for Iraqi local time.
And I added a web call button using Grand Central, but of course I won't receive calls here. But if you call and leave a voicemail, I will be able to listen to it.
And I figured out how to put the Facebook link on the right hand menu instead of in a post.
Got to run now, i am late to take a shower before I go to work.
And I added a web call button using Grand Central, but of course I won't receive calls here. But if you call and leave a voicemail, I will be able to listen to it.
And I figured out how to put the Facebook link on the right hand menu instead of in a post.
Got to run now, i am late to take a shower before I go to work.
23 February 2008
Posting by email
Working things by email is the best option while deployed, since email is about the only electronic resource we have that isn't heavily restricted (either for security or due to limited resources, and even that varies: often large attachments are automatically stripped off).
Photo is me next to the plane with a service star. The picture was
taken in the states, not here. Deployed photos coming soon.
<<deployment photo.JPG>>
19 February 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
