Posts | Comments

Archive for June, 2007

This is a post mostly for my own reference as I keep screwing these upp still.

まだ (still)、また (again)、and もう (already) can be confusing sometimes, so here are a few examples where each is used correctly:

  • まだ:
    • まだ起きてるか? — Are you still awake?
    • まだ仕事してるけどさ。。。 — I’m still working (though I’m not exactly thrilled about that fact).
    • まだまだだ! — Still some way to go before we’re done.
  • また:
    • また明日! — See ya tomorrow.
    • また迷子になった? — Did you get lost again?
  • もう:
    • もういいよ!– Enough already!
    • もう辞めて! — Will you stop it!
    • 1時間前に始めたのにもう終わった! — I started an hour ago but I’m already done.
    • もうすぐだね。– It’s almost time (for something that the listener knows about).

My ISP:

  1. blocks outgoing port 25.
  2. screws their own sendmail servers up and doesn’t manage to fix them in 24+ hours.

Go Bredbandsbolaget!

The midsummer weekend I ended up spending at my buddy’s place, playing GameCube games. I started out by wasting the Friday playing Resident Evil 4 which, in contrast to Eternal Darkness, pretty much sucked. A retarded story, the same old zombies, the same old dilemma (”oh no I don’t have any ammo…”). The only new part about it was the President’s daughter who followed you around. I accidentally stabbed her to death once, as I was trying to stab open a barrel (those barrels have stuff in ‘em, dude!)…

Then I went over to Eternal Darkness and ended up staying until I finished the game (with lots of hints from Kenneth). It’s a game based in the Lovecraft world, with the Ancients and all that. The main character is the granddaughter of an old lad who lived in an ancient mansion, who had been found dead as the game begins. Alex, the granddaughter, decides after two weeks that she’ll get to the bottom of it on her own, since the cops seem clueless, so she decides to explore the mansion and doing so, she finds the Tome of Eternal Darkness. As she reads on, the story unfolds, and you take on the roles of various people in various ages, starting with Pious Augustus in ancient Rome. Each character you play finds the Tome of Eternal Darkness, and thus “finds out” about all the things that happened up until that point. By doing so, each character gains the abilities that you have gained so far.

No game set in the Lovecraft world is complete without the aspect of insanity, and they really pulled that off awesomely in this game. You have “the usual” health and mana, and you also have sanity which “drops” as you encounter monsters or see/do things that affect the human mind. In the case of Alex, she gets more and more insane as she reads the Tome and the game story progresses. Luckily, you eventually get the ability to “recover” sanity using a magic spell.

As I played that game, I recalled hearing the Skotos people for Lovecraft Country talk about how Nintendo wanted to patent a game aspect for insanity. I’m pretty sure this is the game they were talking about, and as always when I hear things like that, I marvel at the stupidity of software patents. If it wasn’t for that, I’d definitely recommend this game to the Lovecraft guys, as it’s a huge source for inspiration, and made me want to jump in and start playing Lovecraft, for possibly the first time in my life (I’ve not been a fan, but I’m becoming one after this :P).

Then again, I’m sadly outdated in terms of the latest-and-greatest in game design, having been a linux user for a decade, and more or less abandoned hope on games entirely. This game is 3-4 years old I think, but to me it was a really cool experience. But if you haven’t tried this one out and if you have a GameCube OR a Wii with a GameCube controller (they’re compatible), I suggest you do!

http://xkcd.com/c279.html

Just read it. :)

More news from Japan! As before, a bit of a collage, really. I re-state the previous that I am not sure if the negative things I bring up are due to media working differently in Japan, whether the English translation page of the MDN Japanese news is the reason, whether Mainichi News itself is the reason, or whether things simply are “different” there. But I can with a great bit of certainty say that the Japanese news items differ quite a bit from those I see here in Sweden, or in the United States.

That’s it for now.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to create something that is generally referred to as a “neural network”. The concept behind neural networks is the desire to “simulate” the decision-making that our minds are capable of and computers aren’t, namely “generalizing”.

A computer is very good at calculating insane algorithms or at following precise orders given to it from a program, but it’s incapable of the generalizing that we do everyday, for example when we see a human being that we’ve never seen before, and still acknowledge the fact that we are looking at a human being (or a ball, or a dog, or whatever). Neural networks are one of the solutions to this kind of generalizing.

In any case, since childhood, I’ve occasionally been hit with bolts of ambition to reproduce such a neural network, coming up with my own little ideas for how they could possibly work, and failing every single time. Well, I tried it again recently and pulled it off, and was in for a few neat surprises on the way…

Before I continue, though, the math for these things is sadly beyond my level of comprehension; I’ve had to stare myself blind at others’ code, guessing what some math professors might mean when they say [insert insane algorithms here], and so on — chances are my implementation is off the rocker by several miles, but it’s doing what I wanted it to, and that’s sufficient for now.

The implementation was basically a mishmash of “evolution-simulation” and “neural network”. A number of critters were added to an environment, and were given the alternatives “eat, drink, reproduce, or do nothing” every “cycle”. A number of factors decided when a specific decision was a) possible and b) a very good or very bad decision. If the decision was very bad, the “mind” of the critter in question was modified slightly to not think so highly of that particular action in those kinds of situations in the future. When a critter reproduced, there was a 5% chance the child mutated, i.e. random modifications made to its mind. This became a rather important aspect as it turned out later on. A critter could only reproduce once every 20 cycles, and if it tried earlier, the counter was reset to 0 (i.e. it’s a very bad idea to try when you can’t).

Once the critters ate and drank and, uh, reproduced efficiently enough, the population in the world literally exploded. After about a hundred cycles, they quadrupled in quantity, and kept going infinitely (or rather, until my memory ran out). Every time this happened, I made things trickier for them and reran the test, and without exception, they managed to (eventually) find a way to overpopulate themselves.

One of my first surprises was the fact that they realized that NOT EATING was a great idea. And it turns out they were right. All actions use up 2 cycles (if you do something, you have to idle the next cycle), and if they only drank they would, most of the time, survive long enough to reproduce before they starved to death. And by reproducing so much earlier than the other critters, they literally took over the world. (The reason they had to drink was because thirst increases at a higher pace than hunger, in conformity with how it works in the real.)

In order to cope with the ever present overpopulation problem, I introduced another factor — food availability. Food availability was per-race, and decreased as the population of the particular race increased. An overpopulated race had a much lower chance of finding food than a regular one, so what would happen was that, initially, a few dominant races would appear, grow to overpopulation, and then a number of them would die of starvation and they’d “fall down” to good levels again and go on their merry ways. So I figured that wasn’t very interesting, and decided to add the “turn-predator” syndrome.

The turn-predator syndrome basically comprises of this: an overpopulated herbivore-race has a small chance of “mutating”; if it does, 30% of its population branch off into a new, predating race. This can only happen if there are 0 predators in the world (when I initially let it happen at any time, predators eventually took over the world; then died out because they didn’t have any grassophiles to gnaw on).

Let me tell ya… when I did that, I wondered if I’d done something wrong somewhere. There was this perpetual, evil circle thing going on. The grassophiles would start off on their own, grow to a certain size, then one of them would branch into a new predator race, and then gobblegobble… they’d all die out in a few hundred cycles. Doesn’t matter how many of them there were, they’d simply vanish from the face of the planet. Whenever there was a wipe, the system would recreate ~300 random grassophile races and let them go until the same thing happened. Over and over and over again. Sometimes in a matter of 50 cycles, sometimes in a matter of 5000 cycles, but it kept on happening.

And then it struck me that the critters have an in-born desire to reproduce, but they did not have a desire to NOT reproduce, when reproducing was a bad idea (when the race in question is overpopulated). So I put that in, and boom!

Well, “boom!” is an exaggeration. The evil circles were gone anyway. After a few civilizations, they “got it”, and they got it in a very distinct way.

The ratio herbivore/predator was stubbornly stuck at ~5.5. That is, 5-6 herbivores in the world, for every predator. I also observed a precise pattern in how the world population increased…

Basically, there is an abysmal difference between the population that “is lucky but doesn’t get it (yet)” and the population that “gets it”. The former flutters up and down in wild, irregular manners, and either crashes (wipes) or gets a grip and gets it. The “gets it” population stays mostly still; it increases and decreases slightly, and occasionally it takes little jumps, upward. If plotted on a graph, it would look sort of like a stock report for a company that’s doing pretty well with both ups and downs, but an overall, green little line that kept going ever upward.

Something else I noted was when populations seemed to get it, but, somewhere, either due to bad luck or for some other reason, crashed. I kept thinking that the “system” was so incredibly fragile, but at the same time so surprisingly robust. Just like how biology classes teach you how eco systems function.

There’s a lot more, but to be honest, I somehow doubt anyone will read all this, so I’ll put an end here. I’m incredibly excited about seeing where this is headed, though, that’s for sure. The last couple of days, I’ve been able to focus on nothing else!

A few weeks ago, I decided to get up-to-date on the American shows that interest me, which was mainly BSG and Lost. BSG because I love the theme, and Lost because, well, Annie is talking about it all the freaking time! For someone to talk about it all the time it *HAS* to be good. I refuse to believe she’s insane. ;)

Anyway, BSG was just a curiosity thing, but was triggered by Stace’s post about Star Wars and such awhile back in her blog

So here I am, watching BSG and Lost when I have the chance to do so (which is usually at nights only, before bed). I started with BSG, so I’m only a few episodes in (well, about 10 episodes into the first season) of Lost so far. BSG I’ve almost finished watching, but I’m a little worried about “the final plot” on that one (I’m on season 3, somewhere at the beginning there).

I’m not sure why I’m telling you about this, but I figured some of you might get a kick out of knowing. :)

I got this in an email the other day. It’s pretty freaky (I have no idea about the accuracy of this but it’s pretty cool).

(Uh, the WP theme is screwing the images up but you can “view image” to see the whole thing.)

(Update: if I hit enter a lot the first image will appear below the menu. *giggles*)

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

(I’m not sure about copyright stuff for this, but I’m sure I’ll be informed in due time if necessary.)

Customer service is an interesting phenomenon. Most of the time it doesn’t work. Most of the time it makes the situation worse for the customer, at least at the times when they don’t get what they want, and sometimes even then. Anyway, the reasons I switched to DreamHost are numerous; Nino’d switched and was happy with their service, I’m moving abroad so I can’t maintain enrogue anymore on my own, and the DreamHost blog is hilarious… That last part is probably not a wise reason to switch over to some company, but to me it made a big difference.

So, speaking of customer service, since I switched I’ve played around a lot and ended up sending up a file using the Files Forever feature… which I didn’t really understand what it was, so I ended up having a $0.01 bill waiting for me. I was concerned with the penalty fees my bank would charge me for such a small transaction, so I emailed DreamHost about it, and here’s the discussion (3 emails):

Hello Kalle,

Tell you what…pull that file down, shoot me back a reply, and I’ll credit your account to even it out. Not too worried about the penny.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Thanks!

Jeffrey

Hi Jeffrey,

I’ve set the file to “hidden (I can’t even see it)” as I didn’t see a way to actually remove it.

Very sorry for the trouble, and thanks for the help. :) I’ll double-read the instructions the next time, you have my word.

-Kalle.

Hello Kalle,

Hey…no need to apologize. To show just how much we DON’T mind, I went ahead and credited you $0.02!! How’s THAT for customer service?

Let it be known that DreamHost is the best hosting company EVER!

Heh…anyway, we’re square. Let me know if you need anything else!

Thanks!

Jeffrey

So funny!

zwoc@zabre:~$ enrogue
Linux enrogue 2.6.8-2-686 #1 Tue Aug 16 13:22:48 UTC 2005 i686 GNU/Linux
n.
1. An unprincipled, deceitful, and unreliable person; a scoundrel or rascal.
2. One who is playfully mischievous; a scamp.
3. A wandering beggar; a vagrant.
4. A vicious and solitary animal, especially an elephant that has separated itself from its herd.
5. An organism, especially a plant, that shows an undesirable variation from a standard.

adj.

1. Vicious and solitary. Used of an animal, especially an elephant.
2. Large, destructive, and anomalous or unpredictable: a rogue wave; a rogue tornado.
3. Operating outside normal or desirable How could a single rogue trader bring down an otherwise profitable and well-regarded (Saul Hansell).

v. rogued, rogu-ing, rogues
v. tr.

1. To defraud.
2. To remove (diseased or abnormal specimens) from a group of plants of the same variety.

v. intr.

To remove diseased or abnormal plants.

[Origin unknown.]

(dictionary.com)

Last login: Sun Jun 3 02:04:38 2007 from zabre
zwoc@enrogue:~$ sudo halt
Password:

Broadcast message from root (pts/0) (Sun Jun 3 02:05:04 2007):

The system is going down for system halt NOW!
zwoc@enrogue:~$ who
zwoc pts/0 2007-06-03 02:04 (zabre)
zwoc@enrogue:~$ Connection to enrogue closed by remote host.
Connection to enrogue closed.
zwoc@zabre:~$

And thus my reign (heh) as sys admin ends after over 4 years of keeping enrogue running at my home. I’m hoping a lot of people benefited from it all, and it was all good fun. The reason I chose to stop is not because it got boring (although hardware needed replacing) but moreso because I won’t be able to maintain things once I move to another country.

kallewoof.com is powered by WordPress. Design by Nofie Iman.