The Long Road

Archives: March 2005

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Alright, you know how everyone thinks about what they’re saying before they say it (or at least they should be..most of the time…). Does anyone else try to predict how the other person will react to what you’re saying? To take it a step further, does anyone try to get certain reactions out of people, sorta trying to manipulate the conversation and the other person with what you’re saying?

I’m usually aware of how others will react to what I say (on IM at least, totally oblivious in person) but have a lot of trouble moving people into the emotional space I want them to be in.

This entry is inspired by my friend’s friend whom I began talking to a few weeks ago. In all my conversations with her, I don’t think we’ve had any kind of genuine exchange. It feels like she’s actively aware of my reactions to what she’s saying and adjusting; though, I’m not sure what she’s adjusting towards and it's super frustrating because I’m doing the same thing while realizing she’d doing it too and it just leads the conversation into strange awkwardness.

She's led me to thinking, how genuine are my conversations in general? How much of what I say or dont say is actually for the purpose of manipulating someone and not for the sake of conversation?

Is this something everyone does or only some people? And to what extent do people do it? I think dAN and melpie know what I’m talking about…even if I don’t.

Posted by Rayne @ 07:46 PM EST [Link] [149 comments]

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Another model of time travel can be found in the “Back to the Future” movies. In this trilogy, Marty McFly and Emmett Brown travel through time and affect small changes that alter their lives and those of their friends and family. In the first movie, Marty travels to the past and accidentally prevents his mother from meeting his father. His accident changes the timeline in such a way that his siblings begin to disappear from the picture he has of them; since his parents never met, they were never able to have children. Marty, being the youngest to the three children began disappearing last but he was able to make his parents meet before he vanished completely. Of course, never mind that the picture itself should be fading away also.

Because we can see that Marty and his siblings were disappearing, we can postulate that time travel in these movies did not function like in “The Time Ships”. “Back to the Future” treats time as one single alterable stream. Marty was erasing himself from history completely instead of creating a new timeline where he did not exist.

One question that comes up with a single-timeline model of time travel is the idea of a “temporal paradox”. These paradoxes occur when events occurring due to time travel create a situation where the events in question are impossible. Models with single timelines are the most prone to paradoxes. For example, if Marty prevented his parents from meeting and thus giving birth to him, how did he ever prevent his parents from meeting in the first place? He should be non-existant.

“Back to the Future” prevents some temporal paradoxes by allowing changes to the time stream to take a certain period of time to show themselves. As soon as Marty prevented his parents from meeting, he should have no longer existed but instead he slowly disappeared. This movie’s model allows that all of an individual’s past activities are not undone if that individual is erased, they simply cease to exist after a certain point.

This movie trilogy is not meant as a rigorous look at time travel and falls apart upon close analysis. For example, at the end of the first movie Marty returns to 1984 to find that his entire family has become assertive, successful, and fit yet Marty himself has not changed at all and has no memory of this version of his family.

For the trilogy’s time travel mechanics to work, it needs two provisions. The first one is that changes to the time line take time to ripple outwards. That’s why Marty didn’t disappear right away and that’s why in the 2nd film Biff was able to get back to his own 2015 after giving his 1955 self the sports almanac but when Marty and Doc went home the changes had already hit 1985. The second provision that the trilogy needs is a bit sillier – once someone has time traveled, their memories and personality cannot change no matter what’s happened due to others time traveling. This would explain why Marty was still himself while his entire family changed at the end of the first film and why in the third movie Doc Brown in 1885 does not remember finding his own grave in 1985.

Time travel in this trilogy is facilitated through The Delorean, a 70s sports car that has been outfitted with some advanced technology. Unlike Wells’ time machine which moves through time at a different speed than the rest of creation, the Delorean allows its passengers to jump through to different periods in history. Time travelers in the Delorean do not experience any time at all while traveling, they are simply in one period and then the next.

Posted by Rayne @ 03:17 PM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Monday, March 28, 2005

Although Wells’ book deals with time travel, it never addresses issues that can appear due to time travel; issues such as what happens when one significantly alters the past? These and other questions were left to later authors to explore. One such author is Stephen Baxter who, in 1995, wrote the official sequel to Wells’ “The Time Machine” entitled “The Time Ships”.

“The Time Ships” extensively discusses the structure of time and multiple universes. The time traveler from Wells’ book continues his trip in the sequel, going back to the year 802701. He is shocked to discover that he has returned to a world that is completely unlike the one he had left. He finds that the Morlocks are no longer underground dwelling savages but have instead evolved tremendously to the point where they have built a Dyson Sphere, a giant habitat enclosing the sun. It is hypothesized by the characters that the time traveler inadvertently changed the future when he went home and told his friends of his adventures. His story was able to set into motion a chain of events that resulted in this new future.

From there, the book relates that instead of actions changing a given timeline, it is instead that actions create new timelines entirely. That is, when the time traveler went back to tell of his adventures in the future he created a new and distinct future such that there were now two timelines co-existing, the one from “The Time Machine” and the new one with the advanced Morlocks. The time traveler continues his journey through time creating more fractures as he travels but he can only exist in the new timelines he creates and cannot move to older ones. The author, however, does have instances where the characters travel to the past without altering the future they came from and is never clear on which actions cause change and which don't (but I think the guy's just being inconsistant. Some major stuff happens at some points that dont change the timeline). With a multitude of realities existing all at once, the time traveler eventually encounters technology advanced enough to allow him to step into whichever timeline he desires and ends up going to the original 802701 of Wells’ book.

The book suggests that time travel creates alternate realities and that the time traveler’s invention and its successors are the reasons behind the existence of a multi-verse – a universe of possible universes. Temporal paradoxes do not exist under this model since timelines are never changed, new ones are made instead.

Posted by Rayne @ 02:24 AM EST [Link] [2 comments]

Friday, March 25, 2005

One of the first major works in time travel fiction is “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells; it is also this book that is generally credited with popularizing the term “time machine”. Wells’ story centers on a scientist who has traveled to the year 802701 on the machine he built himself. The time traveler describes his machine to a group of friends as an extension of other vehicles, such as cars and airplanes. Cars allow people to move in 2 dimensions, the (relatively) flat plane of the earth, faster than walking does. Until a vehicle was made that allowed flight, humans were restricted to living and traveling in 2 dimensions. Wells’ character argues then, that people don’t have to live in only 3-dimensions; all they need is a vehicle that can facilitate travel through the 4th dimension – time. His time machine would be this vehicle.

The way Wells’ time machine functioned was as follows. The time traveler would sit in the machine wherein they would activate a lever that would let them go forward or backward through time. If the traveler chose to go forward, he or she would witness that all movement around them would accelerate greatly; days would go by in what would seem like minutes or even seconds. Although one would logically expect the reverse to be true for an outside observer, that is, that it would seem as if the time traveler were no longer moving, Wells’ character and his vehicle simply became invisible to others.

Traveling backwards through time had a similar effect. Instead of everything moving simply faster, they also moved in reverse. For example, the sun would appear to rise out of the West and set in the East instead of its normal East to West path.

The time machine in Wells’ book is very much like a car. Where a car allows its passengers to cover greater distances than it would be possible otherwise, the time machine allows its passengers to experience time at a faster rate than normal.

Posted by Rayne @ 07:02 PM EST [Link] [3 comments]

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Time travel is a theme often explored in science fiction. The ability to go through time, to explore the future and visit the past, are whimsical themes that are touched upon regularly. Although science is not yet capable of sending people across time, it has not stopped writers from hypothesizing on what time travel is like and how it is possible. Because time travel has yet to be achieved by humanity, and any science related to it is at best basic, science fiction writers can make up any number of rules regarding time travel without fear of violating established science. This fact opens a wide breadth of storytelling possibilities, as long as the writers stay within their pre-defined confines of what is and isn't possible with time travel.

(this is going to be at least 8 parts...)

Posted by Rayne @ 08:42 AM EST [Link] [3 comments]

Sunday, March 20, 2005

We were recently asked in class why the level of CS enrollment in universities has been dropping so significantly. The answer seemed obvious to me. The reasons were purely economic.

Back in the late 90s’ dotcom boom, it seemed like anyone remotely linked to the high tech sector were becoming overnight paper millionaires. The demand for CS’ers and the accompanying large salaries were enough to drive up enrollment. A torrent of students who came in were likely ones who may have well chosen some other field had CS not held the promise of not only getting a job, but a well paying one. With the dotcrash in 2000, all that went away and CS enrollment plummeted.

It’s probably safe to say that most of us attend university nowadays to find ourselves a job; this overrides any idealistic notion of going to post-secondary purely for the pursuit of higher knowledge. I would argue then that the drop in CS enrollment in nothing but economic forces performing some market correction. We’re just going back to enrollment numbers that we would have seen had there not been a glut of enrollees who were looking to make it rich.

And besides, do we really need more students enrolled in CS? Those who enrolled in the same year as I did were the last ones to do so before the crash, and we're now all graduating. And although the number of jobs is slowly growing again, anecdotal evidence from a few of my peers suggest that we still have way too many CS'ers for the number of jobs available.

Posted by Rayne @ 05:52 PM EST [Link] [11 comments]

Monday, March 14, 2005

Some of you may remember the trouble I had trying to dye my hair a while back. I decided recently that I'd just bleach it. The results are much less than what I was expecting. At first, I was very confused by the warning labels. "apply 3 cms from scalp" but then, my hair's only 3 cms long. But whatever, after consulting some people, I decided to just do it anyways.

Here is what my hair normally looks like. The bleach is this really pasty stuff that totally molds your hair. It's actually what I wish my hair could look like all the time, except white and not that odd-blue. After a few minutes, some strands of orange were visible. I ended up leaving the bleach in for 90 minutes. I think the box recommends somewhere between 30 and 60.

The resulting hair is orangy. What I wasn't expecting is the really strange texture that my hair has now. It is now pretty much limp, lifeless, and straw-like; nothing like the full bodied hair I use to have. The hair's behaviour is totally different; it clumps together really easily, it doesn't move by itself, I can sleek it all back with nothing but water from the shower, and need only the smallest amount of gel to spike it. I also have to dry it now since water seems to stick to it like crazy. A good shake no longer does the job.

And just for melissa pi, a gratuitous pic.

Posted by Rayne @ 10:03 PM EST [Link] [13 comments]

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Here's a website I made this week for a project in CS480. I'm sure the layout looks familiar to everyone. This was really my first attempt at doign something a bit more "professional" or "corporate" looking. It's still elegant and simple using nothing but HTML, the way I like it. I'm very much against the use of java or other scripting languages for purely making things look better. Although my gratuitous use of irrelevant pictures here...

And here is a look at what the page looked like while in progress. I began writing it with tables but had a hell of a time getting the table to look exactly like I wanted it to and couldn't figure out how to do a bunch of things and ended up scrapping everything at like 2am to start over using DIVs. Looking at the code behind the two versions, I think you'd all agree that the final version's looks much cleaner. The picture of the brown earth wasn't really doing anything for me either, though the search for and photoshoping of pictures was fun. That blue earth picture is just gorgeous!

The class was given 3 options for this part of the assignment, do a web page, an in-class presentation, or a poster presentation (like a seminar type thing). I think it was OBVIOUS that the majority of a CS class would choose to go the webpage route. Really, it shouldn't have even been an option just to force us to do something a little different. Regardless, check out this list to see what some of the other students' pages look like. It's fun seeing all the different ways people came up with presenting things. Some students really did not put any effort into their design though, or maybe they did and it just came out looking the way it did. I think mine stands somewhere above average in looks but certainly not as polished as some of the others.

On mine, read the part about outsourcing to Canada; it's actually pretty interesting if I say so myself and check out my poor attempts at humour on the links and contact us page. Skip/skim the rest.

Tangenially, I really like the new look of gelatometti, the green lines that frame everything are very eye catching. They got the design from the guys behind CSS Zen Garden who do the same "skins" thing as I but...better.

Posted by Rayne @ 04:44 AM EST [Link] [10 comments]

Monday, March 7, 2005

Or to be un-acronymized, Master of Orion 2: Battle at Antares. For those not in the know, it is a turn-based strategy game from the late 90s. As the title of this entry suggests, this game is damn addictive. I’ve put off all kinds of school work and slept very extremely minimally just to play.

MOO2 is very well regarded in gaming circles, and I can certainly see why. The game is interesting in that it does not have a plot, or missions to beat, or a “story mode”, or any of those other conventions. It is purely made for skirmishes. You pick your race, set your settings, and try to own the galaxy. There’s something really liberating with the fact that you don’t have to commit to playing X hours to beat it.

What’s really good about the game is the way races are made. There’s a total of 10 points you can use to allocate special skills or characteristics to your people, you can also penalize your race in certain areas to have additional points to put into other skills. So for example, the custom race I’ve recently built does not need any food at all, is telepathic (can conquer planets without landing troops), but can’t have diplomatic relations with other races except for declaring war or signing peace treaties while normal races can trade tech, money, engage in research and economic trade agreements.

The only downside to this game is the fact that turn-based games tend to be SLOW. Playing against the computer is very reasonably paced, though ship-battles can be a bore if you’ve got like 2 dozen ships on each side – at which point the “auto” button comes in mighty handy. When playing with human players though, the pace of the game slows down significantly; everyone has to be done their turn before you can start your next one. If one player is dallying or is engaged in a battle all you can do is sit back and stare at the bloody turn screen, while entertaining text messages like “Combat is reported between the Psylons and the Elerians” appear. Not the best way to spend time.

Speaking of network play. MOO2 was made way before WinXP and thus is using some older network protocols that have never been updated. To get around that we installed kali, but the synchronization at the end of every turn took much too long to be playable. MOO2 also comes with a DOS executable which bypasses Windows networking; however, seeing as Windows is no longer built on DOS, we could not use that option. The solution? Install a virtual PC on WinXP that runs Win98 and run MOO2 and kali on THAT. Although, there’s no sound when done this way. D’oh!

Posted by Rayne @ 03:30 PM EST [Link] [5 comments]

Tuesday, March 1, 2005

The Tamarians in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s episode entitled Darmok spoke only through metaphors. This was an inventive way of having a first contact language barrier that could not be surmounted by the Universal Translator. The episode wishes us to believe that such a race has been capable of building warp-capable ships and exploring the universe. I think such a proposition is impossible.

First of all, the parties involved both have to have to same experiences, and know the same stories to understand the metaphors. Picard did not know the story of Darmok and Jilad so he had no way of understanding what captain Dathon was trying to express. This is likely to be a similar problem within the Tamarian race, they cannot possible know all the all same stories and share the same experiences. Another problem arising from the use of metaphors is that the interpretation could vary from person to person. For "Darmok and Jilad at Tanagra" to mean what the Tamarians have come to know it to mean, all would have to agree that the most important part of the story, and the thrust of it, be that Darmok and Jilad came together to fight a beast a left as allies, but when an interpretation of “teamwork will prevail where 1 man cannot” is just as likely an interpretation, the use of the metaphor leaves the intent too vague.

Secondly, if they’re strictly limited to the use of metaphors, they cannot explain basic concepts that do not yet have metaphors associated with them. For example, Captain Dathon could do nothing but keep repeating "Darmok and Jilad at Tanagra" to Picard, he had no other way to explain what he wanted to achieve than those words and the experience he was hoping to share. Maybe it's my lack of imagation but how would it possible for them to communicate new ideas, experiences, or thoughts that are beyond the limits of their current experience?

Posted by Rayne @ 06:06 PM EST [Link] [6 comments]

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