Category: Life

Dave Eggers at TED

John Winkelman

I have been a big fan of the various works and projects of Dave Eggers for several years. He brings a wise-yet-quirky view to things that quite often rings true with me.

Recently, Mr. Eggers won a TED Prize, and a couple of weeks ago his TED Prize Wish speech was uploaded to the TED website. Therein he tells of the history of the writing workshop 826 Valencia, and its various offspring and spin-offs. Very funny, very inspiring, and it gives me an unaccustomed level of hope for the future.

For more inspiration, watch every other video at the TED website.

Encyclopedia of Life

John Winkelman

A random bit of browsing this morning revealed to me that, with little apparent fanfare, the Encyclopedia of Life launched a few weeks ago. Right now there are about 30,000 animals in the database, which is about 1% of what they hope to accomplish over the next ten years.

Here are some notable links related to the EOL:

E.O. Wilson’s TED Prize wish.
Kevin Kelly’s meditation on the EOL.
Write-up at the New York Times.

I could go on at length about the significance of this project, but I think of Mr. Wilson just about covers it in his talk.

Practicing

John Winkelman

One of our students, Anna, recently took several photos of one of our kung fu classes. She has posted them, along with others she has taken along the way, in a gallery at her DeviantArt page. She has also graciously allowed us to post some of her photos on Master Lee’s website. I will be putting those up as I have time and energy.

Class has been going well this year. We have more students than I have ever seen, with a steady influx of new people. The youngest is about seven, and the oldest in his early seventies. We are already signed up for the annual Festival of the Arts show, about which I have high hopes. The shows just seem to keep getting better and better, which is a tribute both to Master Lee and his students.

I love what I do.

PicLens is The Bomb

John Winkelman

My good droog Scott turned me on to an awesome Firefox browser plugin called PicLens. PicLens is a 3d browser built on top of Firefox which allows for browsing of online collections of images, such as you might find at Flickr, Deviant Art, or looking at a Google Image Search result. The experience is pretty seamless, and there is a search bar sitting unobtrusively in the upper corner, out of the way of everything.

Launching it is extremely simple. Either click on a small icon installed in the upper right corner of the browser chrome, or hover over the images on whatever page you happen to be visiting. If you see a small blue arrow appear in the lower left corner of the image, click on that arrow and it will launch PicLens.

This is a much more elegant and engaging way to peruse stacks of pictures than is the usual browser interface. And at a lowly 1MB download, it is well worth the time to try it out.

RIP, Gary Gygax

John Winkelman

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, passed away today at the age of 69. I and millions of other geeks are in mourning. It is safe to say that he helped make me the geek I am today. Dungeons and Dragons led to computer RPGs, which led to programming games on the Commodore 64 , which led to being computer savvy enough to be able to dive into programming as a profession when my life as a retail employee had reached its end.

Had GG never been, the world would be a much more mundane place.

Ave Atque Vale.

Exploring the System

John Winkelman

In the past two years I have spent a lot of my free time working on two computer games. They were both entries in the annual “Four Elements” (“4E”) contest put on by the website GameDev.net. Both were (well, ARE, actually) economic games, manifested as trading simulations.

I have always liked games where you start out with nothing, and by virtue of personal fortitude, business acumen and a bit of luck, amass a fortune and gain whatever rewards come from the experience. The 4E games were my attempt to make those games better. And maybe win some money.

I recently finished reading the Baroque Cycle for the third time, and when I finished the second book in the series I went to the library and picked up Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. I am part-way into the first chapter. At the beginning “economics” is defined as “…the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternate uses”. In other words, why do people decide to spend money on A instead of B?

This is some seriously interesting stuff, and may help me refine my games, if I am ever in a position where I can bring them to completion.

A friend recently pointed me to a series on Google Video called The Century of the Self (links to videos at the bottom of the page), which explores how governments have used Freud’s theories to “engineer consent” in various populations. One off-shoot of this was Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, who is generally recognized as “the father of public relations”. Basically, he showed organizations how to take his uncle’s theories and put them to use in convincing people to buy things.

I am convinced that somewhere in the intersection of these two basic texts is the seeds of a Big Idea I can put to use somehow, either in a game, or in some aspect of my “real” life – although making it real may require some research into how the stock market works, and perhaps some delving into psychology.

In any case, I have something to keep my mind occupied for the next couple of months.

My Take on Politics

John Winkelman

As this voting season heats up I have taken the time to think about what it is about the political process which so badly sticks in my craw. Here are some random, unordered thoughts.

-I do not believe that any politicians who make it to the national level have any interest in anything but maintaining or increasing their own power.

-I don’t believe anyone gets into politics in the first place without having a healthy dose of self-interest.

-I believe that the more power one accrues in politics, the less enlightened that self-interest becomes.

-I don’t believe our representatives genuinely represent anything any more.

Watching the republican and democratic primaries over the past couple of months, along with the political ads, only enforces my dim view of the people who want to be president. Look at all the attack ads. Look at the mud-slinging. Look at the waffling and character assassinations and not-so-cleverly hidden past transgressions.

Look at the dishonesty and spin.

If the candidates are directly responsible for these vile, pathetic, evil bits of media feces, then I want none of them in my country, much less running it.

If they are NOT directly responsible for the attack ads, then their supporters – those who they represent – are. What does that say about someone, if he or she represents the kind of people who take joy in committing vicious character assassinations?

If the people creating the attack ads and propaganda are soldiers-for-hire, then I have this to say: You are very talented. Please do something more constructive with your time.

In the spectrum between “Would sell my soul to save my mother,” and “would sell my mother to save my soul.” I believe that the higher in the national power structure a politician rises, the farther toward the second pole he or she moves.

This might simply be the only kind of person who can accrue any political power. We can only hope that those people have a sense of enlightened self-interest once they get to that level. I have my doubts.

I have believed, since the Clinton re-election campaign, that all presidents (and pretty much everyone else at or near that level) are sociopaths to some degree or another. It may be that, in order to sleep at night, having made the decisions people with vast amounts of power have to make, a person must have little or no conscience.

So where does all of this leave us? Are we in possession of a political system which can only elect the most vicious dogs in the pack? Looking at the media from the past few weeks, I am beginning to be afraid that that is the case. If so, and if we are unwilling to completely revise the political process in this country, then at least let us be honest about the character of the people we are choosing. None of them are “Average Joes”. All of them – by virtue of extraordinary character, extraordinary connections, extraordinary viciousness, or extraordinary resourcefulness – have amassed more money than most of us will see in several lifetimes. And they are using it all on advertising.

Let us see, then, if whoever wins is able to accomplish as much while in office as he (or she) was able to accomplish on the way there.

And let us hope not too many of their mothers are sold in the process.

Good Deeds

John Winkelman

My good friend and cow-orker Marie-Claire has recently launched a new blog called For Grand Rapids. MC is at the beginning stages of a project to get municipal wireless internet available to everyone in Grand Rapids, and ForGR is where she stores her noted and ideas, and invites everyone who reads to contribute their thoughts.

Her most recent post is a good place to start, as it contains a summary of everything she has done thus far.

…and how appropriate that she should launch this website during Random Acts of Kindness week.