If you give a mouse a computer

My friend built a new computer, so she gave me her old one. Which is better than my current one. What would you do? I'm guessing you'd pull open the cases and see if you can just jam your old hard drive in the new one and get going. Or that's what I'd do. But alas, where is the very short and thin connector (SATA) like goes to this hard drive? I cannot seem to find it.

Well okay, no problem, I can just plug this other hard drive in that has the usual wide thick connector (they claim to be Ultra ATA, but I see nothing particularly ultra about them), tell it to pretend to be my current hard drive, and put it in the other one. Okay that one didn't work, let's try the other one. No luck. Two dead hard drives. It's a good thing I wasn't using them. But maybe... yes, it appears that the motherboard does in fact support my hard drive. Even better, it has a bajillion (give or take six) sockets. So I can just plug it in after all. Sweet! But I guess it needs power. Hm. Power supply only has those stubby, hard to insert/remove four-pin thingies.

I guess a new power supply is called for.

But wait... I have a perfectly good one right now! It's just... 150 watts lower. I wonder if that's enough. But maybe I'm not being creative enough. Not at all. I should pull out the old power supply, stick it in the new computer, not really attached, just floating there in the space where a normal person would have a DVD drive, and plug that in to the SATA. I'm sure that can cause all manner of horrible problems.

In the meantime I pillaged the video card, so now my Windows XP is much uh... XPer.

I'm going to Madison tomorrow

It's a halfway last minute almost planned as part of a preliminary preparatory search for housing and housing-related information in anticipatory preparation for the semi-imminent departure of myself and transplantation of residence from the suburbs of Chicago to the places in close proximity of the city of Madison near the area of the campus of the University of Madison.

In other words, I'm driving up to see if I can avoid being homeless this fall.

Anyone have any suggestions in regard to housing or places I should eat?

With luck I won't get mistaken for a Republican and stoned to death by a passing anti-Walker rally. Or maybe I'm thinking of Syria.

Finally, an application for a BS in Psychology: Starcraft

Specifically, BS in Starcraft.

I'm a harasser. My friend is a macroer. She can manage the constant building of massive armies of doom (usually their own doom, judging from the casualty numbers). But me? I'm an asshole. I'm a manipulative, irritating, passive-aggressive, jackass who does not ever give you a break but you can't quite lash out at me because oh poor little me what did I ever do to you?

As a bad player, I am well aware of the concept of negative momentum. You're losing and off-balance, so you keep losing and stay off-balance. Economy wrecked? That means a slow recovery and reduced aggression. Economy threatened, but not actually damaged? Reduced aggression too, there's defense to do! And then the other side has the initiative. They can now choose where to attack. They can build anywhere they want, because you're holed up, waiting for the next attack. Meanwhile you cannot expand, because expansions are vulnerable, so you starve in a little hole, wondering if you can ever escape.

I've been on this side. It doesn't help that I'm often overly defensive, not expanding until I think I can fully defend, which is a ridiculous notion, since failure to expand means limited resources which make it harder to build up a force to defend with, meanwhile the lack of pressure means my enemy can build up more as well.

It's all about the mind games.

While my friend builds armies that knock at the front door, I'm somewhere else, killing workers, hitting expansions, knocking out a building here and there. I won't win the game. I can't. I'm not an existential threat. But I cannot be ignored either. "Pay attention to me!"

It's trolling without words.

My reapers blow up a bunch of workers and sure, it hurts, it's an economic setback, but it's hardly a death blow. Well, unless your attack gets delayed by the need to defend. Unless you get nervous and have to keep more units back to defend against this. But which angle? Better cover them all. Now you're not attacking, but defending, but defending what? I dare you to leave and you don't dare to. This is what happens when facing bad players. They get totally paralyzed. I tell them sit and stay and they sit and stay, while my friend walks up with a hammer. They see her coming but they obediently sit and stay and wait.

Somewhere in there I transition to banshees, pretty much directly after, possibly taking the tech labs and abandoning the reaper tactics entirely. They're really just a filler until I can get the more flexible banshees.

Better players fare, well, better. They might not hide quite so much. But they aren't immune. Gotta deal with the harassment. Better leave a few units back. Maybe too many. Better build a few more anti-air. Maybe too many. Better get more detectors. Maybe too many. But never quite enough. But cannot not build them.

In this latter scenario my harassment isn't physical, but mental. I'm effectively neutralized as a threat. In one particular game I was almost certain that at any moment I'd get rolled over by one serious attack, but I kept the banshees out there and visible in a false show of strength. I still cannot be ignored. So my enemy tweaks his unit mixes, changes the build slightly, isn't quite comfortable. Or fully effective. Too much anti-air is trouble when a ground army rolls in. That ground army was my friend's, terribly expensive and easily lost, but with momentum, and expansions, who cares about lost resources? A 2-1 loss ratio means nothing if the resource income is 3-1, or more.

It isn't even necessary to attack a player to influence them. They can see what happens to their ally. They react to what didn't happen to them, but could.

I've pushed protoss into spamming stalkers or photon cannons. Depleting resources, hundreds or thousands, merely to deal with a few hundred worth of banshees. Missile turrets spammed. One zerg player rushed for hydralisks before realizing that it would be siege tanks, not banshees, that would ultimately destroy him, and of those I had no shortage (at least as far as he could tell!), so he quit.

It's a bit like the adage of how we always prepare to fight the previous war. I'm the first attack and very visible. So enemies prepare for that. Meanwhile my ally is barely noticeable, might as well not exist at all, until they show up with tomorrow's war.

It was a good day. I wonder what the next day, back to a comfortable losing streak, will be like. Win, lose, still pretty damn fun.

Could I play vanilla or BC WoW?

It's a proven truthiness that BC and vanilla were far superior to LK and Cataclym. But I'm left with a nagging doubt. Not about their superiority, but their playability. If Blizzard released classic or BC servers, would I play again? I'm certain I'd resub, but for how long?

While I had no problem with the manual group formation, I think I would now. The idea of trying to form a group and possibly not succeeding, an event which was not rare, is hard to imagine now. LFG! *crickets* Huh. Now what?

And while I find the notion of interchangeable instances to be silly, would I want to say LFG Scholomance and really mean only Scholomance? Though I don't think I was ever so specific, since there always seemed to be something to get from another place, it just wasn't my highest priority. So let's say Scholo, dead Strat, and Maraudon (need NR for AQ!), what if for some reason people are only running UBRS? Maybe I'd go there too, since my dungeon chest never dropped.

Speaking of resistance, would I enjoy it? While I like the idea, and I liked the system back then, would I actually enjoy farming specific bits of gear for one or two raids and then stashing it away forever? I am going to assume that if resistance gear stayed we'd have gotten some sort of storage system for it, so bag space won't be the ruination of the resistance concept, but it may still fail to be any fun.

On a slight tangent, I do believe that many of the flaws of early WoW could and would have been fixed up a bit. In other words, I'm not advocating or comparing to the worst of the problems, but what I feel would have been the evolution of WoW, if it had been patched and improved, but maintained a similar philosophy. So things like awful talents would have been fixed, along with class balance and some of the strangely stupid diminishing returns on reputation.

Then there's my beloved and long lost Alterac Valley. I loved the ridiculously long games. My first game turned out to have lasted 25 hours (I wasn't there the whole time) and I'd been in there for a few, which I later learned was fairly short for old AV. Would that still be fun? The futility of an instant win promoted playing just for the fun of it, and encouraged any attempt at all at creative tactics, such as when my warlock summoned half our team behind the enemy line (back before ritual of summoning). But now, I might just wonder "will this ever end so I can get my points?"

It makes me wish I had more (or perhaps any) experience in other MMOs, to see what they do over time, how they change, but also, how the player changes. Do games get worse (or better, but for a different audience)? Do players burn out? Or do they learn new expectations and those are the true problem?

Only noobs think I'm elitist

Tobold is making grand claims again, telling us all what to do and the correct way to think. Check this one: Winning is not the purpose of playing.

He almost gets it, but continues straight past. "It is the playing itself which is the purpose of a game, not the winning."

Playing for what? Children play to learn. Adolescents play for fun. But adults play to win. Why? Because winning is a source of fun and a way of learning. It's a two-for-one deal.

However I do agree with his support of the 50-50 win-lose condition. We all start in the middle and then lose or win our way to a bracket with our skill peers. At that point we'll run about 50-50, with possible slight movement if we're getting better or worse, relative to other players. If we look at the overall sample, we will almost never see a perfect 50-50, nor should we expect it, since it would only be achieved by a player being placed perfectly in their skill bracket. But we will see a trend toward 50-50.

But to get back to the title of my post, "They believe that they are superior to the rest of the players." Uh, yea. It's called being better than everyone else, and only noobs strive for anything else.

"By de-emphasizing the importance of winning, we get back to the true purpose of playing, the playing itself and having fun. A good match is one where you had fun, regardless whether you won or lost. If you manage to mentally disconnect having fun from winning, you can get a fun:unfun ratio of much better than 50:50, in spite of the perfectly balanced win:loss ratio."
Good idea. Let's not just reward losers, but also not reward winners.

Or we could ask Ghengis Khan whether he unified the warring Mongolian tribes and kicked some serious ass by "having fun, regardless of whether he won or lost" or if he focused on winning, thereby defeating all the losers and securing a place in history. But maybe Tobold already has his place in history. He's the e-blog-famous apologist for losers.

User Interface

Also known as "UI, but UI is too short of a post title, since we all know the title must be more than two letters. For other examples, see 'FU' and 'H8', neither of which make particularly great titles, due to saying very little except some sort of generic dislike." On the other hand, run-on titles aren't so great either.

Does WoW have a good baseline UI? I have no idea. Maybe? Perhaps it is what scares away those 30% who don't get past level 10. Or those 30% just don't like MMOs or whatever you prefer to call WoW.

But who cares? WoW has a customizable UI. If it doesn't get the job done, we change it. Can't heal? UI! Can't tank? UI! Can't use the AH? UI! Can't DPS? UI!

UI? UI!

You-eye. Ooo-eee.

I don't much like this approach. It's not merely a bandaid; it's a lie. Yes, a lie. What does a custom UI say? Well okay, it could just say "I want something prettier" and that's fine. But beside that, what does it say?

"You can't play this game well enough and the problem is not your skill or the game design; the problem is that you're not looking at it correctly."

Now maybe I'm crazy, but shouldn't the default game UI be the correct way to look at the game, or at least sufficiently close that everyone (+-100%) do not feel the need to change it? Can you imagine a car like that? Oh sure, all the stuff works, and you can customize it, but maybe the windows should be at eye level, rather than foot level, by default. Of course we could drive with the windows that low, but the angle would mean a really short visual range, so drive slowly!

Healers like to whine. About how they are fighting the UI rather than playing a game. Psh. Everyone is fighting the UI. Every class has the information it needs not where it is needed, which is to say, where we are looking. Why are my cooldowns hidden away at the bottom of my screen? Why is the health of my party over on the right? The action is in the center!

We could say that these are skills to learn. Well sure, we can go with a "learn the UI" approach and block extensive customization. That sounds awful, right? Maybe. Or maybe not. Most games use this approach. Such as Starcraft 2, which I hope is an interesting topic for you, because I'm going to be talking about it a lot (or I might suddenly stop after this post, it could go either way).

Starcraft has a pretty awful, inefficient UI. If I want to build a marine, how do I do that? There's no "build marine" button. Instead I have to find a barracks, select it, build the marine. The particular barracks matters as well. It's some crazy complex stuff (not really, but let's pretend for the sake of exaggeration). I'm attacking over here (lower left), but building over here (upper right), see the problem? Just awful. But.

That's the UI that we all use. That is what we learn. We can tweak it slightly with some hotkeys and control groups, but none of us have a fancy light that pops up and says "carrier group spotted in minimap, build marines." Which may be a good thing because I'm not sure how well marines counter carriers. Maybe vikings would be better? Pretend I didn't go on that tangent (I wonder what this button labeled "backspace" does).

There's another layer to it: the actual game. The UI is not layered on the game, it is the game. The barracks builds marines. Let's say that again: the barracks builds marines. The build unit menu does not build marines. There is not so much a UI that I fight to build marines, but the game, and that game within the world simulation that it simulates. Of course with careful use of hotkeys and rally points players can halfway imitate a build unit menu despite using barracks, but ultimately the barracks builds the marine, so I have no choice but to be aware of the world and what is going on, rather than the UI. If that barracks is on fire, I do not have an alert of burning buildings, but instead the place that builds marines also can burn, so again, I am not playing the UI, but the game.

I guess what it ultimately comes down to is this: When I see someone playing, I want to think "wow, he's really good at this game" rather than "where did he get that UI?"

You may now commence commenting about how you healed hardmode something with the default UI and I'm just bad.

Being gold level doesn't mean you're remotely good at Starcraft

I finally got Starcraft and before finishing the single-player campaign, decided to delve into the scary world of getting zealot, zergling, or ze marine rushed, also known as multi-player. The first step is to say, "no, I am already awesome, I don't need practice matches." Then you do a few games to figure out an initial ranking.

It sounds like a great system. Win a bunch and you're probably a good player. Lose and you can go in the copper bracket (it's like bronze, but worse*). This way when you're playing for real glory and fame, you're playing for the correct amount of glory and fame and against people with similar capabilities in amassing glory and fame.

Sure sounds great. But me? I like to ruin the system. I didn't mean to, but it happens.

My placement matches were mostly filled with me rolling over mediocre players in about 15 minutes. I wasn't playing great or anything. Okay. Average, I'd say. Not especially fast or with any great strategy. My micro is pretty good, but that doesn't compensate for my awful macro. But my opponents... Impressively bad.

So I ended up in a gold bracket, which I think is supposed to be good. Ranked 8, which sounds pretty good to me. So of course I was frightened. Gold? I'm not a gold level player! I watch Day9 and he's talking about how really basic stuff like having a plan for your buildings is how you get out of silver or bronze, and that's what I fail at. My fail is silver-level, not gold. I should be bad at, I dunno, reaper kiting, not basic construction.

But maybe I'm expecting too much. Not only does me being at gold not mean I'm good, other players being at gold doesn't mean they're good either. My first few opponents were awful. I faced an enemy who, based on the replay, built no offensive units for at least 5 minutes, until finally he built: one reaper. His refinery went up before his first supply depot. The next opponent wasn't awful, but a slightly slow zerg player, which is disastrous for a race that must expand quickly.

Then there were the possibly good players who quit before the game was anywhere near over. They'd launch one attack which got beaten, and then surrender. I'm not an aggressive player, so it's not as if these were players making their final push for survival or trying to retake the initiative: they already had it. Though the most recent player like that at least made sense to quit, based on his strat failing horribly. He rushed, slowly, with marines and... all his SCVs. It might have worked if he'd been faster, but he delayed and I had a bunker up. So everything died and he had 10 minerals. Recovery wasn't totally impossible, given my defensive nature, since he at least had an orbital command, meaning mules could get him going again if I wasn't quick.

But before long Starcraft realized that I was clearly faced gold-plated players and set be up against solid gold. Those players promptly crushed me into the ground. Painfully. The kind of defeat where you watch the replay and start running through the tactics and seeing what you could have done better, and then realize that the second wave was right behind so you were screwed no matter the tactics.

Despite my losing record, I actually feel pretty good about 1v1. I'm ever so slowly improving. Besides, until I fall into silver, I'm ahead of where I should be, so until then I don't think I'm really losing. Sadly, 2v2 isn't the same story. My first ranking match I was with a pretty good ally and we were able to work together for a solid win. Then I got a string of bad allies who felt more bronze than silver (my 2v2 is silver), so I figured I'd try 1v1 where I could only fail myself.

Happy Independence Day, Americans! Hey Britain, how's it feel seeing your empire get crushed by a bunch of jackasses with poor equipment in a distant land? Is there anything that makes it feel better?

Clean your computer, carefully!

Spring cleaning and my niece's growing and therefore growing demand for toys led to the partial emptying of the attic at home. My room is right across from the attic, with the computer aimed right at the door. Over the several days of the door open and dust being wiped and blown off boxes, my main fan kept on doing its job of drawing air in the front and out the back. Along with all the dust. This put a nice thick coating on everything from my video card to my heat sink.

In college I had classes in a room down the hall from one of the wind tunnels they used for experiments. It was loud. My computer was louder. Yep, turns out dust interferes with radiation (however this does not make radioactive dust safe) of heat, which meant that the fan had to run faster to try to speed things up. Fortunately, Intel in its finite wisdom decided to make the Pentium 4 throttle its speed if it got too hot, so my computer just ran loud and slow rather than quiet and melted.

But I wasn't going to stand for this. If there's one thing I hate, it's unproductive loud things blowing hot air, which is why I like politics. So I opened up my computer and took out anything that wasn't screwed down. And some things that were, thanks to my screwdriver. That included the video card, RAM, hard drive, other hard drive, main fan, heat sink, and for the hell of it, the CPU itself. Then I did the logical thing: carefully dusted them with canned air in order to avoid damage to the delicate electronics.

Nah, I'm kidding. I used an easily-frayed paper towel and a small bowl of water which I left on the floor near the computer. Sometimes I think I'm trying to make an excuse to buy a new computer. Which I almost needed. After I stuck it all back together it didn't work. Oops. So I rearranged things and restarted and swore a bit. Then it worked better.

But let me tell you about this stuff called thermal cement. You know how oven mitts keep you from getting burned, but if you pour water on them they instead boil your hands off? It's like the water, except instead of your hands it's a heat sink and instead of a pan of delicious chocolate brownies it's a CPU and instead of being a bad thing it's a good thing. And the oven mitts are the poor conductive properties of air. So I replaced my dust-insulated heat sink with an air-insulated processor, thanks to not using enough thermal cement. Or originally, not using a fresh coat. Then I gave a nice thick (but not too thick) layer, stuck it back in place, and viola (not to be confused with a violin), my computer ran quietly.

It's nice when running a game doesn't cause my fan to out-drone political commentators, since I often have them playing in the background while I play Civilization.

The moral of the story is: you can't trust the system. To run quietly without proper cleaning.