Author Archives: Nikky

About Nikky

I'm Nikky, and I'm fairly awesome.

Denver: Cold, Clear, and Casa Bonita

1 Reply

Earlier in November, we decided to visit the lovely city of Denver. Now if you’re anything like me, you’re probably asking yourself a couple of questions: the most predominant being “wait what? Denver? Why Denver?” That’s a great question. I’m not sure, but I think it involves a great deal on airfare.

Flying in, we reviewed our options about what we know of this fair city. Turns out that the answer was “not much.” Other than something about Coors and Denver’s famous elevation, our knowledge hovered somewhat around zero. Then we were told by the pilot  to buckle up, as the landing would be a little rough. And rough it was.

This is because we were flying into an active snowstorm. Awesome.

Continue reading →

Vending Fun

Leave a reply

And sometimes, I do this.

Hello-
 
It was a dark grey and thoroughly rainy Monday afternoon at the UW
Tower when unassuming employee 123123, working on his performance
review mere hours before it was due, decided to partake in a rare
cookie break. Deploying to the fourth floor vending machines, Nikky
spotted the ever delicious “Famous Amos” cookies in the vending
machine. They aren’t exactly “ever delicious” as I may have described
in my previous sentence, but they are byte-sized, contain chocolate,
and aren’t completely terrible. Pulling out his Husky Card of Justice,
Nikky swiped the vending machine’s card reader with the well-practiced
effort honed in while living at McMahon hall for two years, entered in
the proper number for these snacks, and waited.

After a few second of rather indecisive action by the vending machine,
it beeped a flat tone to specify that a transaction was complete, and
went along its merry way. Unfortunately, no cookies dropped. Were the
Powers of Chaos afoot?

After a brief moment of re-evaluation of my options and the fact that
all of the other choices were even less tasty, I did the only thing a
red-blooded American could do: swipe my card again and order another
package of “Famous Amos” cookies with the hope that I would get two
packages of cookies the second time. The vending machine, which was
clearly channeling some dark creature (Cthulhu?) made even less of an
effort to dispense with a product.

No cookies were dispensed to Nikky this day, and by the second time
the vending machine failed to produce cookies, I had decided that I
should cut my losses and get something tasty on the Ave instead.

Please refund the Husky Card Account for employee 123123 $3.00.
I’ve attached a picture of the cookie slot after my second failed
attempt.

Group One Reports Enemy Contact

Leave a reply

As I just wrote about, Homeworld is one of my favorite games for a multitude of reasons. Another aspect that makes this piece memorable is the voice acting of your Mothership, which is handled by the Canadian folk singer Heidi Ernest of the band The Western Investor. She provides a calming voice with a hint of ever present loss and the crushing responsibilities that have now befallen her character while directing the activities of the fleet that is now under her command. Extracting these files was no easy task. They were packed in a proprietary container that needed to be extracted using tools originally written for Windows ME; after slogging through a bunch of dependencies and managing to get the program to run, I had 5000 files in another proprietary format that required me to install and use an ancient WinAmp plugin. Converting them to wav files commenced from there, and after an hour or two of work I finally had a few thousand files to my name with absolutely no titles other than an ordered number. Here are a few of my favorites; please excuse the audio quality: the initial bitrate of these files is pretty atrocious.

Frigate Lost

Whenever a frigate-class or larger ship is destroyed, a status message is overheard.

Kharak is Burning

Played after discovering their home planet was utterly destroyed by a previously unknown group of enemies.

Marshaling the Fleet

Mothership is Under Fire

The Mothership, while tough, is relatively defenseless other than a few point-defense cannons.

Combat Group Status Reports

As various combat groups ply the wastelands of space, reports filter in from the Mothership coordinating their missions.




Homeworld

Leave a reply

This is something I wrote a while back, but never got around to publishing.

Homeworld is a masterpiece. A truly 3-D space real time strategy game, Homeworld deftly wove a compelling story while smartly relying on one of the best soundtracks ever made and beautiful ship designs. I’m not even sure I could possibly tell you how amazing this game is without making a mockery of its true grandeur, but here we go.

This was a game that used its instructional manual to full effect; it strove to give the user a background to the journey they’re about to embark upon. Titled a “historical and technical briefing,” this beautiful manual told a story of a people as they discovered that they were not native to the planet they had considered their home. With interesting sidebars and compelling tidbits, the backstory is still an absolute joy to read as the guide traces the story of how a people began a massive undertaking to construct a mothership that would take them to their true Homeworld, and the subsequent religious strife between the kiths (clans) that broke out when they realized that all that they had understood and known was nothing more than a misconception. Preparing to launch their first vehicle in process of constructing the mothership, a frenzied mob of religious revivalists attempted to break through to the rocket, and as

Per Doine slipped through the cordon and prayed for salvation beneath the rocket’s main engines until they ignited, vaporizing him. He died a martyr for the cause.

Citing middle-eastern influences, Paul Ruskay created one of the most compelling soundtracks ever made for a game. When one of the opening missions begins with a very low shot of the Mothership as a haunting vocal arrangement of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings begins to play.

Adagio for strings:

‘You then move your camera and discover that your old home planet has been completely destroyed: killing all of your friends and family left behind. When battling through pirates, a tribal soundtrack is playing; the scared garden dwellers has a certain mystical and changing tone to it, and when fighting those who had destroyed your planet, a strong and bold song arises.

Imperial battle music:

The missions are all mixed and compelling: while each one requires a very specific fleet arrangement and strategy, you’re constrained by the fact that resources are limited and that your ships and supply carry over from the previous missions: if you invest too heavily in anti-fighter ships in one mission, you may run out of resources when you need to build your anti-capital ship frigates in the next.

Homeworld still runs remarkably well on modern hardware and Windows 7.

Messing with Trader Joes Customers

1 Reply

The customers at the U-District Trader Joe’s in Seattle are an oddly-stressed bunch of students, employees, and housewives. They’re often terse, slightly confused, and more often than not extremely cranky. So I naturally like to mess with them in small controlled experiments. Here’s one of my favourites.

Setup

Go to Trader Joe’s in a mid-afternoon or other period where they’re busy, but not crush-level busy. When you’re ready to check out, look for two adjacent checkstands that both have customers currently being checked out, but have nobody else in line. Simply speaking, you’d be the first person in either line if you get in one.

Procedure

Instead of getting in one of these lines, simply stand in the middle between the two. The reasoning (which is entirely logical to me) is that I can just get the next available checkstand, and then anyone who wanders in behind me can get the other one. It’s simple. It’s fair. It works well.

The Results

I did this today, when TJs was hardly busy. There were two mothers and their children checking out ahead of me, and I just placed myself between the two, content to getting whatever one was next. Then a female (and it’s always a female, for some reason) walks up and we have the following conversation:

Customer: What line are you in?

Me: I’m in neither; I wasn’t sure who was going to be done first, so I’ll just get the next one that opens up.

 

She doesn’t respond. I consider the conversation over and that she accepted my plan of action.

Then I hear a line told in only a way that someone who has rehearsed it many times in the past with her failed relationships.

 

Customer (annoyed tone of voice): Can you commit?

Me (incredulous): What?

Customer: Can you commit to a line?

Me (seeing one that was almost done by then): Okay, I pick this one.

Conclusion

This whole exchange is a little unsettling, and it’s happened more than once to me. I’m basically forced to choose between a few different conclusions:

  • They are unable or unwilling to stray from the queueing paradigm in favour
  • They believe that by forcing me to choose a line, I may pick the incorrect one, and thus have to wait longer to be checked out even though I was next.

The latter concerns me much more than the former, as it implies that there are people who are basically saying “rather than being fair, I have a chance of making this person pick the wrong line, and thus I’ll actually be checked out before him.” They see it as something of a 50/50 chance of getting ahead by screwing the person in front of you. Well, howdy 21st century!

Desktops, iPhones, and Electronic Wonders

Leave a reply

A few disparate thoughts have been flowing through my mind, and a few of them relate to technology. I should rename this to “nikky rambles on a bit about things.”

Building your Desktop as a Rite of Passage

The best way to spot a nerd is to ask about their desktop computer. They have one, of course, and it’s always a custom-built machine with beefy specs, jerry-rigged hardware, and the look of a machine that they picked out and created. Whenever we go out and get our first real jobs, we always go out and make a new desktop. It may not look that pretty, but they’re a rite of passage to truly reach nerdvana: where the central computing hub is complete with Model M keyboards, IPS monitors, and SSDs.

iOS as a Tonka Toy

I realized the other day that iOS has a very consistent design language: one that focuses on making a user feel comfortable with a touchscreen even though they’ve never used one before. it was revolutionary at the time, but it seems like Android has overtaken iOS lately in terms of multitasking, notification, and vendor-supported apps. iOS uses outdated design language that isn’t too relevant in a time where most of us are familiar with touchscreens, and I’m afraid Apple is too scared of their profit margins to change this. Or they’re going to use the non-standard “lightning” plug as a way to raise the $100 billion required to give iOS a much-needed facelift for this decade.

Keyboards Aren’t Going Anywhere, and Neither are Computers

Computer sales are flat. That’s understandable, as a lot of laptops and desktops are just glorified media centers and most users are realizing that tablets and smart TVs are better options for them. But the pundits and naysayers often decry the end of the computer era, and that’s absolutely insane. The keyboard is still the most efficient way of getting information and text onto a computer. Voice recognition sucks, and will continue to suck for a very long time. It’s not the end of the computer; only the end of the computer being used sub-optimally.

Why are Open Source Users Flocking to OS X?

I’ve noticed a lot of users who are very familiar with open source frameworks, languages, and communities migrating to the very closed and proprietary OS X. I’m not sure if this is because they think that the Unix core of OS X is “good enough” for an environment to work on OSS technologies, because Apple is “cool” or something else entirely. The culture of hacking and knowing your OS inside and out go hand-and-hand, and I’m wary of those who forsake Linux desktops in favor of OS X.

Galer Traverse

Leave a reply

A few years ago I read an article about stairways and pathways in Seattle that are not always visible or well-traveled. This is especially intriguing for me, as I enjoy finding places off the beaten path for my home city as well as look to find places of solitude and mystery. In many ways, this is a substitute for when I’m not in some ancient foreign city going through beautiful back alleys that have been well-travelled throughout the centuries.

So I went on one of the suggested routes, which was called the “Galer Traverse,” which essentially starts at South Lake Union and ends up in West Queen Anne while tracing a route through a myriad of stairways and streets. Walking from my apartment on Capitol Hill to the starting location (which was a fun and new way to get there), I sidetracked through the South Lake Union park. Which is just an amazingly soulless corporate park that was clearly designed by someone who wanted to create a park in order to engender good will without actually making a park that people would want to use. So. Much. Concrete. And instead of grass? Hey let’s have gravel instead. That sounds great! People will love it!

Reaching Galer and Westlake Ave, I began the climb on a stairway that was attached to some faceless warehouse. After going through various neighborhoods, finding a few fully shaded picnic tables next to Aurora Ave (and the remains of a homeless camp), and finding Queen Anne High School, I had completed the first half of the traverse. And thank goodness, as it was steep at points.

After that I mostly wandered around West while going through various parks and streets. Queen Anne is a neighborhood that I haven’t explored much, but it had its charming points and viewpoints that were just as good as the very popular Kinnear park–without the tourists.

Photos? Well, I only took eight the entire trip. I was having too much fun wandering around to remember to take pictures.

This was a fun little urban hike that should only take a few hours and gives you some great views of Seattle while doing so.