Programming and Pictures, oh my

a place to put photos, showerthoughts, and things I learned about things

[kingcritter]

Short Story: THE ISLAND

Across the violent seas sailed I, I with with my fleet scattered in the waters around me, I with a prize bound on the deck of my trireme: the notorious leader of the failed revolution, the scourge of the Greek republic, the defiler of the house of the gods, the one whose blood, spilled only on the grounds of the temple of Athens -- not on the field of battle, the priests had made clear -- would satisfy the gods' wrath and bring an end to the droughts that had stricken the land; and so too would the action bring an end to the shame that had befallen the house of my family when this traitor took up arms against his kin.

But the ill winds that lady Fortuna brought to bear on us that day grew only stronger, and soon my flagship was borne by howling winds to a lonely, desolate island, upon whose rocky shores we found ourselves thrown, the hull of my ship splitting asunder like a rotten fruit, bodies spilling forth like maggots.

Cast upon the rocks, battered and bruised, I found that I was not the sole survivor: my captive, miraculously alive and unbound, was dragging himself out of the waves, and in that moment our eyes locked and I felt the threads of destiny weave ever tighter; I knew how this would end.

He ran and I gave chase, sword in hand, through the torrential rain, betwixt boulders and scraggly vegetation, until the rain abruptly ceased and I staggered into sunlight, before me standing the traitor, and beyond -- in the center of the island -- the Titan of legend, Atlas, celestial sphere balanced upon his broad shoulders, and under his quiet gaze, I did then thrust my sword through my brother's heart, and his soul departed alongside my dreams of redemption.

Atlas then spoke thusly: "upon my shoulders sits the celestial sphere, and this is true; yet if you cast your eyes to the heavens, you see the same sphere, and not any other; so too exists a man's life" -- I pondered his words as I cleaned my brother's blood from my blade, as I awaited the end to the storm and the rescue thereafter, and all through my life; it is only now, on my deathbed, that I begin to understand, and I find myself afraid of the unknown: is this the shipwreck, or the rescue?

[kingcritter]

Short Story: SHEEPDOG.EXE

"...and here's the break room. Help yourself to as much coffee as you want. If you've got a packed lunch you can stick it in the fridge there. Bathrooms are over here..."

I followed my tour guide -- Micheal, he said his name was -- as he continued down the hallway. It wasn't a bad looking place, from what I'd seen so far. Decent, by the standards of a small IT firm in lower Manhattan: grey carpet, leafy green office plants, frosted glass doors for the private offices.

"...and this is where we get our work done." Micheal held open a door and ushered me through. I stepped into a large room, partitioned by low-walled cubicles. In large block letters on one wall was the company motto: "MAKING THE WORLD A SAFER PLACE."

"Your desk is over this way." As we threaded our way between cubes, I noticed that despite the size of the room, most of them were unoccupied. In the ones that were, the occupants sat hunched over their keyboards, intently focused on whatever their tasks were. Many were wearing headsets and speaking in low tones.

We reached our destination, a cube near the center of the room, identical to the rest. Micheal explained he'd be sitting with me for the rest of the day, to show me the ropes. The first half hour was spent setting up my workstation; logging into the company intranet, configuring Outlook, and other mundanities. Micheal was a good instructor, and I found him pleasant to talk to; I hoped we'd be working together in the future as well.

"Before we start with the real work," Micheal said, "how much do you actually know about what we do here?"

I smiled ruefully. "Not a lot, honestly. Your website just said something along the lines of 'Axiom Technology is a leading innovator in dynamically networked response solutions,' and the woman who interviewed me didn't give me much more info -- something about analyzing surveillance data?"

Micheal smiled back. "No worries; I didn't know much either, when I first started. Luckily, it's pretty easy to learn. Double click that icon there."

I clicked where he was pointing on my monitor, on an icon of a cartoon dog, labeled: SHEEPDOG.EXE. A splash screen appeared, with a loading bar overlaying a photo of a Border Collie nipping at the heels of a fluffy white sheep. "Aw, cute," I said. I wasn't the world's biggest dog fan, but Collies and their floppy ears always made me smile. After a few seconds, the application finished loading and the main interface popped into view. "Not what I was expecting," I said.

The screen I was looking at resembled some kind of farm-themed game. It was a birds eye view of a grassy pasture, crisscrossed with wooden fences. Milling around within the fence's boundaries were thousands of small sheep sprites, with a few hundred dogs clumped together in various spots on the pasture. It all had a very bright and cartoony visual design.

"What you're seeing," Michel explained, "is real-time footage from aerial surveillance drones. We have an AI that translates the imagery into something easier to understand. It's unconventional, but we found that the raw footage was, ah --" I saw his eyes flick to a nearby empty desk "--distracting for some employees. If you ever need to see the raw feed, though, click that button there."

I clicked, and now I was looking at a city from above. I could see how the fences from the previous view matched up with the edges of buildings, and the sheep and dog icons corresponded to people. Much of the view was obscured by clouds of thick black smoke from burning buildings and flaming makeshift barricades that blocked off some roads. Micheal showed me how to switch to infrared and thermal cameras to peer through the smoke. "Impressive, " I said. "Is this local?"

Micheal shrugged. "Could be, but we have customers all around the world; this might not even be in the States." He reached for the mouse and clicked back to the cheerful pasture view. "The nice thing about sheep herding is that it's the same everywhere."

The rest of the day passed quickly. Micheal showed me how to select groups of sheepdogs and move them around the map, just like in a game. He explained that when I issued commands, they'd be relayed to the sheepdogs via the companion app the company developed.

Mixed in with the regular sheep were some black sheep; the sprites showed them as angry looking rams with curled horns. Micheal explained that these sheep were dangerous to the sheepdogs, and could turn the regular sheep into rams if left alone. I learned how to direct groups of sheepdogs to thrust into the herd to extract the black sheep and load them into waiting sheep transports. When Micheal instructed me, that's the terminology he used -- he said it was company policy.

At one point, I noticed that if I clicked on an individual sheepdog, a video camera icon appeared. I selected a sheepdog from a group that had surrounded a black sheep and clicked the icon. A window popped up; it was the feed from the sheepdog's body camera. The grainy footage showed a group of heavily armored figures standing around a body lying limpy on the pavement. One the armored figures was hitting the body with a baton; it was hard to tell -- because of the low quality of the feed -- but it looked like there was a pool of blood around the body's head.

Micheal deftly reached over and tapped a key on my keyboard. "The bodycam feed is there if you need it, but honestly, you shouldn't ever need to look at it. Company policy discourages it; it's just too distracting. Now, let me show you a strategy called kettling..."

Micheal instructed me how to strategically move the sheepdogs to surround the sheep and cut off escape routes. That way it was easier to pluck out the black sheep. I noticed that as the cordon of sheepdogs tightened, more and more sheep turned into angry rams. I didn't mind; every black sheep I captured was recorded on a score counter in the corner of my screen, and I received a little burst of dopamine whenever the number went up.

When the day was over, Micheal showed me how to view the score screen. It showed company wide statistics for the day's efforts, and I was pleased to find myself in the top half. Micheal clapped me on the shoulder and called me a natural born sheep wrangler. I was quite proud of myself. I liked this job, I decided. It paid pretty well, it was fun and engaging, and best of all, I was making the world a safer place.

[kingcritter]

Short Story: THE DANCE

I am a little girl, sitting on my mother's lap, watching the people of my village dance. I won't remember the details of this moment, but the feelings of wonder and joy I experience as I watch the figures leap and twirl will last me my entire lifetime.

I am a few years older. I begin to learn the dances of my village. I twirl, I leap, I stumble and fall in the dirt. My teacher, a village elder, laughs and helps me to my feet. He tells me that he can see the talent in me.

Fall gives way to Winter, Winter to Spring. I play in the forest with my brother. My father teaches us the dance of the forest, how to gracefully step from shadow to shadow without a sound. It is a fun game. I do not understand the significance.

It is Summer, and I learn the dance of the harvest. I learn to sweep a scythe, to thresh the grain. It is hard work, but we sing songs as we do it, letting the rhythm control the motion of our arms.

I am growing into a young woman. Summer solstice approaches, and I learn the dance of the sun. We form two lines, weaving between each other in graceful harmony, driven on by the steady beat of a drum.

A rider has arrived in our village. He wears the colors of our distant lord, and brings news of a foreign invasion. He assures us we will be safe, but our lord needs more supplies to ensure that safety. We load grain onto wagons, and send them out. Our winter grain stores are close to empty. There is no dancing today.

My breath leaves trails of icy smoke as my brother and I make our way through the forest. Snow crunches underfoot. We are empty handed; today's hunt was not fruitful. We hear the commotion before we see: war has come to our village. Fragments of shouted orders, spoken in a foreign tongue, drift across the fields to where we crouch at the edge of the forest. The invaders need supplies, they need food.

I see my mother and father, silhouetted against the setting sun. I watch as they lead the soldiers to the grain storage sheds. I watch as the soldiers, convinced that my village is hiding the supplies, draw their swords and cut down my parents. The village burns, and the flames dance.

When the soldiers realize there is no grain hidden anywhere, they begin to forage in the countryside. My brother and I dance the dance of the forest, and slip away unseen.

I am a grown woman, and I dance to the beat of a drum. With my brother and a hundred more at my side, we dance as one across the muddy plain, towards the winding caravan of soldiers. A horn sounds, the soldiers scramble into formation, and we collide in a dance of war. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my brother fall, but I push it out of my mind. The dance of sorrow can wait.

I break through the line. Bodies and blood are trampled into the mud. I see an officer standing back, yelling orders. I sprint towards him, flail in hand. A human head threshes as easily as a bushel of grain. He sees me coming, raises his curved sword. As we circle and strike, parry and deflect, I hear the words of the village elder teaching me my first partnered dance: lead your partner, do not be led.

I take two steps forward, one step back. My partner sees an opening, lunging forward, slashing wide. I deflect the blade and bring my flail down on his head. He crumples to the ground, silent and still. I look down and wonder if he's the one who killed my parents all those years ago. I don't know, and I decide it doesn't matter, for today, I dance the dance of revenge.

[kingcritter]

Short Story: BALLMER PEAK

Blink. Blink. Blink.

The little green cursor on my terminal screen, prompting me to write something -- anything! -- steadily blinked at me. Mocking me, I was sure of it. I slowly lifted my hands to the keyboard, feeling as though I was dragging them through molasses. Sweat beaded on my brow.

I can do this, I lied to myself. I knew I just needed to start, and then the floodgates in my brain would open and my fingers would dance across the keyboard and I'd finish this assignment before the deadline and I wouldn't be fired and blacklisted from any future programming jobs and my wife wouldn't leave me and my children wouldn't hate me and oh god I'm doomed.

With sluggish fingers I typed:

> print "hello world"

My brain's floodgates remained resolutely closed.

I slumped forward onto my desk, burying my head in my folded arms. I had a month to finish what I was becoming convinced was more than a month's work. I'd been so proud at the beginning, a year ago -- which now felt like a lifetime -- when I was selected to work with the renowned Dr. Sandburg on the task of integrating the nation's nuclear arsenal with the Strategic Defense Initiative network. It had all gone so well in the beginning, until disaster struck...

I missed Sandberg. In the 10 months we worked together, I learned so much from him. He was a brilliant man who never met a problem he couldn't solve. I wished I could talk to him now...

I sighed, slumping back into my chair, looking at the picture that hung on my office wall. Dr. Sandberg, myself, and the rest of the team, all looking so fresh faced and happy, unaware of the tragedy that lurked in our futures.

My gaze wandered around my office. No amount of interior decoration could cover up the suffocating blandness of a government office building, and to be honest I hadn't really tried. Besides the photo of better times that hung on my wall, I only had a few sturdy bookcases, a messy desk currently cluttered with reference books and three-ring binders full of technical specifications, today's newspaper ("NIXON ACQUITTED", blared the headline) and a few other odds and ends.

I had a polaroid photograph of my wife taped to the side of my terminal. I'd taken it last month when we had a picnic. Golden sunlight backlit the hair that framed her face, creating an almost angelic appearance. Her radiant smile, even frozen in time like this, was still infectious enough that I found myself reflexively smiling back. I sure was a lucky guy... well, in that regard, anyway. My smile slipped as I remembered my current predicament.

I heaved a dramatic, self pitying sigh, and stood up and trudged for the door. Perhaps a walk to the water cooler would clear my mind. It hadn't worked the last twelve times I'd tried it in the last hour, but maybe the thirteenth time would be the charm.

As I rounded my desk, my eye was caught by a knick-knack I had sitting on top of one of my bookshelves. It was a length of a miniature white-picket fence, made from toothpicks, mounted on a simple wooden platform. It had been a gift from a senior programmer, Devin Smith. Back when I first arrived at the agency, fresh out of MIT, I had discovered an off-by-one error during a review of Devin's code.

Off-by-one errors, popularly known as the "fencepost problem", result from incorrectly iterating over a collection of elements. It's an abstract problem that can result in very concrete real world problems. A computer-controlled machine at a Ford factory might miss a critical rivet; a fully computerized waste treatment plant might dump raw sewage into rivers when it tries to fill a tank it doesn't have; and in one very real, still-classified example, a seventy million dollar CIA spy satellite had plunged into the atlantic ocean shortly after lunch, when only twenty-eight of the twenty-nine decoupling explosives ignited.

The fencepost problem was one that had plagued programmers since the dawn of the computing age, and wasn't always easy to spot. Devin Smith had been so impressed (and, I suspect, slightly embarrassed) that a rookie had discovered a bug in his code, he made and gifted me the miniature picket fence. As I gazed down at it, I realized that since the deaths of Dr. Sandberg and the rest, I'd been so busy I'd barely talked to anyone else. There may not be anyone left with specific domain knowledge of my current project, but others, surely, had faced similar problems.

Who to talk to... Devin? I chuckled to myself and placed the toothpick fence back on my shelf. I wasn't that desperate.

I knocked on the open office door. "Larry? Do you have a minute?"

Larry Goldsmith looked up from his desk and peered at me over his spectacles. "Ah, Kevin! Come right in!"

In the programming world, older programmers are affectionately known as "grey beards." Larry Goldsmith not only had a literal grey bread -- a great big bushy thing that complimented his Santa Clause-esque physique -- but had also been in the business for most of his sixty years of life. He had worked on the Apollo project, where programming involved hand-weaving wires through magnetic cores. I

I took a seat and quickly explained my problem. The work was 95% done, but this last, critical five percent was proving to be intractable. Anytime I tried to work on it, I felt overcome with anxiety and helplessness, and I couldn't write a single line of code.

When I was finished, Larry leaned back in his chair and tugged his beard thoughtfully. "I see, I see... honestly, I'm surprised you haven't had a mental break yet, with the pressure you must be facing. To lose your team -- your friends, your mentor -- so suddenly and in such a tragic way, and shouldering the weight of the whole project, I can hardly imagine what you must be going through." His face twisted in anger, and pounded a meaty fist on the desk. "Damn communists! Dr. Sandburg was a good friend of mine, and to die in a goddamn Pizza Hut, of all places..."

"Well, we never proved it was the Russians --"

"Bah," Larry replied dismissively, "I don't believe in coincidences. A gas line explodes and wipes out almost an entire team working on nuclear response technology, and I'm supposed to believe it was just chance? Nonsense."

"Well, I'm only here because of chance. The only reason I wasn't there is because I came down with the flu the day before." I smiled bitterly. "You know, the only reason we were celebrating was because we'd just hit the final milestone before delivery. The last component needed -- the part I'm now stuck on -- was the integration with the Minuteman silos. Dr. Sandburg was going to write that part himself, because he had the most knowledge of the interface."

I fell silent, slipping back into depression. Larry studied my morose posture with a critical eye. After a moment, he broke the silence with an unexpected revelation. "I'm sure I don't look like the type, but I am a strong believer in the benefits of meditation, of becoming a more, ah, spiritually connected man."

I cocked a dubious eyebrow. "Really?"

Larry chuckled. "Really! In fact, I've gone overseas and spent time with holy men of various religions and practices. In fact, I even visited the bhudist monks in the Vietnam territories, after we won. And I have to tell you, getting in touch with your inner self can help in so many ways. I think your problem is that you're too stressed out to concentrate -- you need to cleanse yourself of your worries and doubts before you can move forward. Here, I'll lend you a book about it…"

Larry rummaged in his desk drawers for a moment. "I know it was here somewhere... ah! Found it!"

I took the proffered paperback. The cover featured the silhouette of a man in a lotus pose, and the title "Becoming the Better You," by someone by the name of "Thích Quảng Đức". The book was somewhat worse for wear; clearly Larry had gotten his money's worth out of it. I was doubtful, but... well, if it worked for Larry, maybe it'd work for me. I thanked him, exchanged a few more pleasantries, and returned to my office. I cracked open the book to page one and started my spiritual journey.

The deadline was in a week. I'd read the book, cover to back, and then back to cover, and tried everything it suggested. All I had to show for it was a few hundred lines of mediocre code, and an even worse case of depression. Okay, I thought with all the determination I could muster, one more time. I closed my eyes, then took a breath, counted to three, exhaled, and repeated. I cleared my mind the way the book had taught me, pushing my worries to the side, one by one. I felt myself becoming more relaxed. Maybe this time it was actually working. Maybe this time I would have a breakthrough. Breath in, breath out. Breath in, breath out. Breath in...

I opened my eyes. My terminal was still blank. I looked at the clock, and realized I'd just slept for four hours. I swore loudly and threw the book across the room. It missed the trash can, but I didn't care. Okay, I thought. Meditation isn't more me. I stood and headed for the door. If the world of spirits lacked the answers I sought, perhaps the world of science would have them.

I found Harvey Ketiel in his cubicle, sorting through a stack of paperwork. Harvey was a psychologist, and although we never saw each other on an average workday, I'd become friends with him through the company bowling league. Ah, bowling... one of a hundred fun things I hadn't done in months.

Harvey glanced up when he heard me approaching, then did a double take. "Kevin? You're the last person I expected to see today, but I'm glad I did!" I grinned and took a seat, and we chatted for a few minutes, catching up on what we'd been up to. The conversation soon moved to my purpose of being there, and Harvey listened intently as I described my problem.

"I think," he said, after I'd finished, "I know exactly how to help you."

"Well, that's a relief! Hopefully it doesn't involve shock therapy or anything similar?"

Harvey laughed. "Nah, man, just an egg timer. I just read about it, it's in one of these..." He shuffled through a stack of scientific journals, pulled on out, and flipped through it. "Ah, here it is. It's a focusing technique called the Pomodoro Method, and this study showed that subjects in the experiment that used the method became 83 to 240 percent more efficient at the tasks they were assigned."

"And all I need is a timer?"

"Yup! You simply set a timer for thirty minutes, do your work, then set a timer for five minutes and do anything other than work. The theory is that it's easy to concentrate and get past things like writers block when you set a time limit. Basically, your brain is terrified of working for an indeterminate amount of time, but you can easily convince yourself to work for a measly half-hour, and then another half-hour, and then another until all your work is done! It's like magic, except it's science."

"Well, it certainly sounds easy. I'll give it a shot!"

I took my leave and headed back to my office with a feeling of renewed optimism. I only had a week left, sure, but looking at it another way, I had a whole week! I could do this, I knew I could.

The deadline was tomorrow. It was 3:35 PM. I was not finished, not by a long shot.

The Pomodoro method had helped, for sure, but the core problem of self doubt remained. I found myself spending whole days writing and rewriting the same functions, unsatisfied with the quality of work and knowing I could do better.

Perhaps it was time to admit defeat. Grovel at the feet of upper management and hope I wasn't fired. I looked bleakly around my office. It wasn't a great office, but at least it was mine. I didn't want to start over in a cubicle somewhere else... my eyes alighted, as they had a month prior, on the model picket fence. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I thought. Time to talk to Devin Smith.

The elevator ride down to the basement was a quiet one, giving me plenty of time to think about Devin. It wasn't that I was scared of Devin, it was just that... well, he was unsettling, and everyone knew it. His office (called by some of us, though not to his face, his lair) was in the basement, near the mainframe that our terminals connected to. It was there because he wanted it to be there, saying that he liked the privacy. No one objected, because no one was even sure who he reported to or what projects he worked on.

With his long black hair and frequent sneering criticisms of the very government he worked for, rumours swirled that he was a homosexual or a communist, or maybe a homosexual communist. But someone higher up must have liked him, because he never faced any trouble for either allegation. And then there was the open secret that he kept a loaded .45 in his desk...

The elevator doors creaked open, and I made my way through the concrete hallways until I reached Devin's office. The door was closed, but I could see light seeping out from beneath it. I knocked, and entered after hearing a curt "come in!"

The overhead light wasn't on, the only illumination coming from a desk lamp. Harsh shadows engulfed the office, making Devin's angular face all the more sharper. He sipped from a coffee cup and motioned towards a simple plastic chair. "Sit."

I did as ordered. I knew Devin has served in Vietnam, and though he never talked about his time there, I was confident he must have been an NCO, because when he told someone to do something, you could hear in his tone that he expected to be obeyed.

"Well, well, well," he drawled. Kevin Schumer. I haven't seen you around recently, but I'm not surprised. I hear the Minuteman integration is kicking your ass -- that right?"

"Well, I wouldn't say kicking my ass," I started to say defensively, then stopped. "No, sorry, you're absolutely right. That's actually why I'm here..."

As I recounted my tale of woe, Devin said nothing, content to merely sip his coffee. His shadowed face was impassive and inscrutable.

"...and so," I finished, "I came here. I know you've done lots of great work -- I mean, I don't know what you actually do, haha, no one does -- but uh, it's, uh, I'm assuming it's good because you haven't been fired, haha..."

Devin sipped his coffee and continued saying nothing. I nervously cleared my throat, trying to forget the conversation I'd had with a coworker, in which she swore she'd seen a photograph of Devin in Vietnam, wearing a necklace of human ears. "What I'm trying to say is, do you have any suggestions for what I can try? I mean, it's probably too late now, but..."

I fell silent. Devin carefully placed his coffee cup back on his desk. He leaned forward, steepling his fingers. "Do you think you lack the ability to write this code?"

"I... I don't know, honestly. I hoped I did, but it hasn't been working out so far..."

"You said that Dr. Sandberg was going to write this code originally, correct? What knowledge did he have that you don't?"

"Well, he knew the Minuteman interface better than anyone --"

"How did he acquire this knowledge?"

I frowned. "Well... I guess he just read through the technical specifications --"

"And you haven't?"

"Of course I have," I snapped. "Over and over again. But I don't have Sandberg's years of experience, or his deep understanding of system design, or --"

"I think you're wrong. Sandberg picked you specifically as his second in command, and he wasn't known for making bad decisions. I think you have both the knowledge and skillset to pull this off. What you lack is the confidence. Riddle me this: if the code you needed to write already existed, and someone were to read it aloud to you, how long would it take to type it in?"

I thought about it for a moment, comparing the expected work to previous projects I'd worked on. "Um, probably about eight hours?"

"Then it shouldn't take much longer to write it from scratch, because you know what? You already wrote the code in your mind, you just don't know it. All you have to do is turn off the thinking portion of your brain and let the code flow through you. And for that, I have something that will help you. This coffee mug isn't filled with coffee, you know."

I was momentarily nonplussed at the seeming non sequitur. "What?"

Devin opened a desk drawer and pulled something out. I saw a glint of silver, and was briefly convinced I was going to see the rumoured .45 up-close and personal. But then I realized it wasn't a gun, it was a silver flask. Devin spun the cap off and tilted the contents into his mug, refilling it.

"This is the secret to my success -- whenever I need to do something difficult, dangerous, or potentially risky, I get drunk. The part of my brain that thinks things like "your manager won't ever agree to this idea" or "maybe there's children in those huts" turns off, and I can focus on what I need to do. It's what got me through the war, and it's what's kept me employed." He held the flask out. "Here, take it."

The hours passed in a blur. Devin had been right -- my doubts were erased, my confidence was at record high levels. My fingers danced over the keyboard, producing code of amazing quality. When I began to get tired, I chugged a cup of black coffee and resumed work. After everyone else in the office had left for the day, I grabbed the coffee machine from the break room and sat it on my desk.

When I finally finished, real birds were chirping in the tree outside my window, and metaphorical early birds were beginning to arrive in the office. I copied my code onto floppy disks, addressed them to the appropriate office in the Pentagon, and delivered them to the mailroom for delivery. They'd be at their destination by mid day, and the code would be loaded into the Minuteman silos in the coming weeks -- the final part of the United State's complete missile defense and nuclear response system. Right on schedule.

I tried to take a victory swig from the flask, but it was now empty. Well, no matter -- it had served its purpose. I put it in my desk drawer and headed home.

I was asleep before my head hit my pillow.

I locked my car, tugged on the handle to make sure it was locked -- just a habit; it's never not been locked -- and headed towards my office building. It was a bright and crisp August morning, almost three weeks after I'd finished the Minuteman integration project. It may have been Fall, but I had a spring in my step; management had been very pleased with my performance, and I'd been promoted. Today would be the first day leading my own team.

I was blissful enough that it took a few seconds of hearing a low, distant rumble, before I truly registered what I was hearing. I spun around and looked out towards the countryside, through a gap in the nearby office buildings. A rocket was rising into the sky, atop a pillar of flame and smoke. I knew it was from one of the Minuteman silos scattered around the country, and the rocket was carrying a nuclear payload and destined for Russia.

I couldn't believe the crazy Russians had actually done it. They'd gone and started World War Three --

Wait. Something was wrong. I spun around frantically, looking in all directions. I knew the playbook -- a nuclear response wouldn't just be one rocket, there should be dozens of missiles in the vicinity launching simultaneously. But I only saw the one...

I watched it rise higher and higher. With a sinking feeling, I realized that its trail of exhaust looked for all the world like a single, solitary fencepost.

[kingcritter]

The Beginning

Today marks the start of my next big project: designing, and eventually implementing, the first Pokemon game. Not game design (Nintendo helpfully already did that) but rather the software design.

I am doing this as a learning exercise, in order to get hands-on experience designing and implementing a significant project. I took a university class last quarter titled “Object Oriented Design” in which we (in teams of two) designed and implemented a board game. This was extremely enlightening: I had no idea good design was so hard.  The finished product was sub-par, but I took the lessons learned to heart. I chose Pokemon for this project partly for nostalgic reasons, as well as its popularity. If I tell people I designed and wrote a Pokemon clone, people (especially people considering offering me a job!) will have an idea of how much work I did. 

Today’s Work

I started by filling a page with with a list of things that are in the game that I will have to keep in mind when designing it. Pokemon, items, NPCs, dialog, map, HMs, buildings, stores, etc. This stage was just vomiting words on paper to get my mind on track.

I then started brainstorming what classes I would have, which quickly unfolded in complexity. I started with a hypothetical Pokemon class that would hold things like exp, level, moves, hp, etc. I then had to consider how these pokemon objects will be created. Obviously, 151 subclasses for each pokemon is probably the wrong way to go about things. What I’ll probably do is store the information (name, level-up points, moveset, etc) in some sort of database, than have a factory function create a pokemon and fill in the details based on either specified values (in the case of trainers) or randomly generated values, in the case of wild pokemon.

Considering items, the only things I tentatively decided on is that there would be a consumable interface for items pokemon can use (potions, activex, etc) and the pokemon objects would have some sort of consume()  method. 

Battles will be managed with a BattleManager class. This class is instantiated every time a battle occurs, and keeps track of participants and the rules, e.g. who moves first, whether a confused pokemon hurts itself, etc. It also receives the moves (some kind of Moves class) and applies them to the enemy pokemon. 

Tiles will be sublcassed from an abstract tiles class and have a function that’s called when the player steps on it. Normal floor tiles will just do nothing, but ledges will shuttle the player down another tiles, teleportor tiles will teleport, and grass tiles will calculate the encounter chance and instantiate the battle manager if needed.

[kingcritter]

Deep in the jungle... The revolutionaries looked *fabulous.*

[octobermire]

The Red Sponge: Spongebob’s Role in Enforcing an Oppressive, Capitalistic Society

Every millennial who grew up watching “Spongebob Squarepants” has come to the same horrifying conclusion: you have turned into Squidward. No matter how buoyant, how cheerful, how optimistic you were as a child, there comes a point where you begin to identify with Squidward more than any other character in the show.

You could explain this phenomenon with the disillusionment and cynicism of growing up, or the burdens of being a teenager in a post-John Hughes society. There is, however, an even simpler answer. Spongebob is an allegory for Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto. The show revolves around Spongebob, the hardworking proletariat, accepting a low-level fry cook job and enduring Mr. Krabs’ exploitation with a grin on his face.

The face of compliance

It’s not hard to draw the parallels between Mr. Krabs and the bourgeoisie. He’s a cheapskate who underpays and overworks his employees for his own personal gain. Mr. Krabs famously ripped off his own arms (claws?) to retrieve a dime that fell down the drain. He took his workers on a boating trip to retrieve his millionth dollar from the jaws of a giant clam. He has zero regard for his employees’ safety and almost routinely puts them in danger for his own benefit.  Mr. Krabs’ daughter, Pearl is an extension of the bourgeoisie archetype. She’s vain, self-centered, and largely unaware of others’ misfortune. She lives in a bubble, obsessed with clothes, makeup, and celebrities — because she has the leisure for such frivolities.

Remember when Pearl gentrified The Krusty Krab

Speaking of living in a bubble, Sandy is not exempt from analysis. Sandy is quite literally shielded away from the rest of the world. She represents the intellectual elite, using her privilege and higher education to jeopardize working class jobs and further the industrial revolution. Her endeavors into space mirror the Cold War-era “Space Race,” capitalism versus communism. Her voyage ends on the moon, just like the U.S.’s did. On top of her scientific record, Sandy is independent and self-sufficient, exemplifying capitalistic ideals of individualism.

If Sandy is the intellectual elite, then Patrick Star is just the opposite. Patrick represents the bourgeois caricature of the working class that capitalists want you to buy into. He is ignorant, undereducated, and lazy. He lives under a rock, likely because he can’t afford anything else — although he doesn’t seem to mind. Patrick appears to deserve his poverty because he does nothing but sleep, yet he also seems at peace with his lot. This idea of the happy, unproductive bum simultaneously vilifies and justifies the proletariat. “See, they’re poor because they just don’t work hard enough! In fact, they like being poor!” Patrick Star is arguably one of the most offensive cartoon depictions of this generation.

Blatant vilification of blue-collar workers

Spongebob, on the other hand, represents the ideal proletariat. Spongebob is hardworking, humble, and endlessly optimistic. He’s a lot like us before we realized the inherent evils of a capitalistic society. Day in and day out, Spongebob gleefully works a minimum-wage job flipping burgers with no hope of promotion. He’s a cog in Mr. Krabs’ greasy machine, but he doesn’t even realize it. He just continues to skip to work every day, chanting “I’m ready!”. Ready for what, Spongebob? Ready for the bourgeoisie Kool-aid he’s been absorbing through his poriferous sponge body.

Spongebob is the ideal worker, and as children, we aspired to be just like him. The very first episode of Spongebob showed him getting his first job as fry cook. According to the show, the very best achievement you could receive is being gainfully employed. Not only employed, but tirelessly productive and efficient to maximize your manager’s profits. Spongebob famously served busloads of anchovies at a never-before-seen pace. It wasn’t enough that Spongebob could perform his job well; he had to go above and beyond his duty in order to seem valuable. These are the principles we instilled in the youth of today. What went wrong?

Back, finally, to Squidward. Squidward isn’t like Spongebob or Patrick. He isn’t satisfied in his low-level employment. What Squidward seeks is artistic satisfaction and world renown. He covets the success of his employer without achieving the work ethic necessary for someone of his class to ascend. Squidward has realized that the cards have been stacked against him at every turn, and resigns himself bitterly to the clutches of capitalism. If Squidward were less jaded, he could be the catalyst to prompt full-scale class warfare, perhaps ending in a communist utopia. Unfortunately, Squidward’s defeatist personality and egoism prevents him from implementing social change.

Mfw I realized I will never dismantle oppressive power structures that infiltrate our economic landscape

That is why we are all Squidward. We’ve uncovered the limits of capitalism and realized that hard work may not always pay off. We’ve begun to notice the oppressive economic and social structure that infiltrates our everyday life. We yearn for something higher, but feel that change is out of our reach. We become bitter, combative, self-deprecative, and cynical. There’s a reason Squidward is the unhappiest character on “Spongebob.” Not only for faults of his own, but for his own rotten luck. The show subliminally punishes Squidward for his views, hoping to prod viewers back towards Spongebob’s blithe, unfounded optimism.

Their efforts were to no avail. Millions of millennials are finding themselves disillusioned, realizing all along that Squidward was the reasonable one. He had a right to protest Mr. Krabs’ vile working conditions, and his sarcasm was merely a coping mechanism for the injustices placed against him. Squidward is the dissatisfied proletariat, and we identify with him more than ever. The difference is, we have the energy and collective power to succeed where he could not. Together, we can rise up and defeat the bourgeoisie, establishing an egalitarian society that does not prey on the lower classes. In the words of Spongebob, “I’m ready.” Are you?

I still hate that this makes so much sense.

[kingcritter]

After accidentally staying up to watch the sunset last weekend, I decided that I need to stop drinking so much caffeine when I get drunk.

[kingcritter]

took some photos

[kingcritter]

I just had the mind-blowing realization: The Matrix is run by an alternate universe Skynet that realized using humans as power sources was more efficient than wiping them out.

[kingcritter]

Writing a binary search function is a really good exercise. :o

[kingcritter]

In python, "x is not y" is not the same as x != y". That was a tricky bug. -_-

[kingcritter]

Took some Instagramish shots with a borrowed 5D today. 

[kingcritter]

Programming Day, 'erry day!

Today was the first day of what I hope will become a routine: I'm going to programming something, anything, and upload it to my github repo. I've already got a nice routine going with math, so I think I can add it to my schedule.

[kingcritter]

So apparently this is now a blog about my nails? I guess? But I really do love this royal purple shade, especially with a glossy topcoat.

[kingcritter]

Focus

Location, location, location. As important for studying as it is for selling a house. I have a terrible time focusing on schoolwork, especially math, so this quarter I'm doing something different: every day, without fail, I'm going to the tutor center in the library, turning my phone off, and doing the next day's homework. I don't leave until I'm 100% done.

And you know what? It works!

Today I decided to see if the same holds true for CS work, and sure enough, a few hours in the CS lab and I was actually able to code and learn things, instead of coding five lines and checking facebook for an hour. 

[kingcritter]

It's crazy how much older I look when I have facial hair.