The Other Woman

I was talking to Albert today about good traits in a partner, and he said he wanted to find someone who was completely opposite to him in every way, in particular, he wanted someone who was extroverted, because he is incredibly introverted. The idea being, he wanted her to push him to go out more often. I don't quite know if it'd work out like that.

As an example, I have two friends, Patrick and Denise. Well, Denise is my friend, and Patrick is her boyfriend, but we hang out together sometimes. Patrick found out that I play Dota, so he asked to add me to Steam, and I gave him my Steam ID. He is very rarely on, but we have played a few games together.

Denise likes to socialise a lot - she is always organising movie nights, and dinners and inviting a heap of people. She's really nice, and I enjoy spending time with her, but sometimes I feel like it's just too much. She often laments that she feels unappreciated by Patrick, as he doesn't seem to want to spend as much time with her as she'd like - he'd rather go off to his room and work on his own projects or play games, whereas she wants to do things like go out for walks or do some kind of activity. I get the feeling that she is a lot more extroverted than he is.

Last night, I was waiting to play a game of Dota (it was about 20 minutes until the Chinese New Year event in the game) and I got a message from Patrick, "Hey, are you up for a game?" I invited him to join our party for the event, and we played a game. During the game, he passed along a message Denise had for me, and I replied.

This morning, I messaged Denise, and even though she's usually talkative, she barely said anything. The conversation kinda ended when she mentioned Patrick said he was playing Dota with me last night, as she said it in a really hostile way. I'm probably imagining things, but I got the feeling that she was upset at me for playing Dota with Patrick. Maybe she wanted to spend time with him and he said he'd rather play games? I don't know, I didn't want to prod into their private life. Just in case anyone was thinking it, despite the title of this post, I 100% do not think he would rather spend time with me than with Denise. I think he genuinely cares for her, and that he just enjoys gaming. I should also reiterate that I barely see him in game, so I doubt he spends 

Which makes me think, who am I supposed to be loyal to? Denise is my friend, and she has mentioned to me that she would like to spend more time with Patrick, and I am in a position where I could suggest it to Patrick, so shouldn't I do it? On the flip side, they're both adults, and if Patrick would prefer to play games, shouldn't I respect that and not try to interfere?

Unintentionally, I felt a bit like the other woman - except I don't think I am. Well, I think it's unfair to make me out to be the other woman, because I never asked him to play, I just invited him to join us after he asked. But I don't know, is that close to accepting a date with a man you know is married, just because he asked? It's that crazy logic of "Their relationship must be bad if he's looking for external intimacy, I might as well enjoy the sinking ship". I do have a personal rule that I will never invite him to play, even if he's not in a game and we have room in our party. I guess a part of me believes that's crossing the line as I am directly encouraging him to spend less time with Denise.

At the bottom of it, I think the real issue is just the difference in their preferences. I get the feeling that he really enjoys smaller outings with maybe two or three others, and having deep conversations about the world. Denise seems to prefer larger parties, as whenever we have a dinner, there seems to be fifteen to twenty people on the guest list. He handles these events really well, but I guess he's one of those people who needs to recharge after a large social outing, whereas she leaves it craving more.

I feel a bit bad for her, as I sometimes get the feeling that she's a bit lonely, so I try to make an effort whenever she organises something even if I don't quite feel up to it. I should stop berating myself for playing Dota with a friend. I will try to tell Albert that perhaps dating someone who is extremely extroverted is probably not ideal for him. That is the lesson I learned today.

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As a special bonus for today, if you live under a rock, or somehow managed to dodge the dress, what colour do you think it is?

http://i.imgur.com/9VWYggm.jpg

The /r/askscience thread explaining the dress.

Agile Wedding

I told some people at work about our Wedding planning agile board, and they keep telling me I'm really nerdy, but I think it really helps.

Agile software development is becoming quite popular these days, which is funny, because in the subject we had about software development, the lecturer kinda poo-pooed the whole thing as rubbish, but having used it in practice, I can see how handy it is. If you can't be bothered reading the Wikipedia article, here's the gist of it.

The old method was to define the software, then move on to building the software, then testing it, to make sure it works, then shipping it. Usually, there is quite a long gap between the definition stage, and the shipping stage, and often things have moved on, and what eventually gets built was not what they wanted. To find that out when shipping means a huge amount of money is wasted. Instead, agile tries to smaller define, build, test, ship cycles, where you start building the essential features, and expand from there, checking at each shipping stage whether you're still on the right track. Because you've built something tangible, even if it's small, the end users can offer feedback because they can actually see/use it. This also means if the end user thinks what you've built so far is completely wrong halfway through your process, they tell you earlier and you can make changes faster.

One of the tools used in agile development is a story wall. Each task is broken down into "stories" that define a particular thing that needs to be done, and what criteria that activity has before being considered completed. You estimate roughly how large each story is, so you have a rough idea of how long it'll take, and then each person picks one or more stories and runs with them, with the idea being they pick up more stories than they can realistically complete in a pre-defined cycle (e.g. 3 weeks). Stories are arranged in order of priority, so you know what the important things are. It's really important to remember that not every story needs to be completed, which is why there is a prioritisation step. Cards were sorted into 4 columns:

• Backlog: Cards that hadn't been picked up yet
• In Progress: Cards that were currently assigned to one of us
• In Testing: Cards that were just waiting to hear back from someone (e.g. waiting for confirmation from a vendor)
• Done: Cards that had been completed

So MrMan5.5 and I sat down and worked out all the tasks we needed to complete for the wedding. We sorted out dependencies (stories that rely on other stories to be complete) and estimated them. Then we sorted them by priority. The idea was that every Sunday, we would get together (in a "stand up") and report the status of our current story/stories, and re-prioritise if necessary. That way we could keep track of who was doing what (to avoid doubling up on things), and get an idea of how close we were to having the entire wedding planned.

Well, as Sun Tsu says, no battle plan ever survived first contact with the enemy, and things did not quite go as smoothly as we thought. The fact that the wedding was so far away, and that we had more pressing issues to deal with at work made it really easy to slack off. The Sunday "stand ups" happened once, and it was on a Tuesday. However, I think the card system worked well. It was good knowing that we both had tasks assigned to each other, and when we finally did complete tasks, it was nice to move the cards over to the "Done" column.

We took a look last week, and we really only have seven cards left in the backlog, which means we're nearly done with the wedding! I've been stressing a lot about it lately, and wondering if we were going to get things done in time, but I feel a lot better about it now. There were a few cards that we ended up tossing, as we realised they're not all that important in the grand scheme of things. Having the story wall helped us decide that as well.

Even now, the last few tasks are mostly nice-to-haves. We have all the essential things in order to have a wedding: someone to officiate it, somewhere to get married, clothes to wear at the wedding, guests to see us be married. All the rest is icing on the cake, really.

The Last Lecture

Warning: I think this post is more on the sad side, so if you don't want a sad start to your day, then perhaps save this to read later.

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The Last Lecture is a book co-authored by Randy Pausch, named after his famous last lecture given at Carnegie Mellon University, inspired by a series of talks where people were asked to give a talk as though it were their last chance to impart some wisdom on the world. Now I'm not going to claim to be well-travelled, or all that wise, but I thought I'd give it a go.

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Growing up, I ran away from home three times. Once in my third year of high school, I packed my bags full of all the lollies we had accumulated from showbags from the Melbourne Show (I stole my brother's lollies, too, which I now feel terrible about), which I figured would last me at least four or five months if I rationed them out carefully. I have very little knowledge about nutrition, other than I had been told sweets made you fat because they were full of energy, so I figured if I had a pile of sweets, I could eat one a day and have enough energy to keep walking wherever I was going to go. I was in a suburb that I was not familiar with at all, but if I kept walking in the same direction, eventually I'd end up somewhere far enough away that I could start over, away from my family and friends.

It took my family about four hours to find me and bring me back to my uncle's house, in which they sat me down in my cousin's bedroom, and my cousin was told to watch over me. My mum, a bunch of my uncles and aunts came in to try and speak to me to work out what was wrong, but I remained a stone and said nothing. I did give my brother back his lollies though.

The next time I ran away was a couple of years later. This time I was in familiar territory, so I made it even further, and I had a slightly better plan of rations, taking a loaf of bread from the kitchen and all the money that I had squirreled away over the years (about $250). At $2 for a loaf of bread back then, I knew I could last months. My plan was to beg for any kind of crappy work that they'd give me earn enough to buy a train/bus ticket out of here, and one day a plane ticket oversesas so that I could start over without friends or family. It took them most of the night to find me this time. Again, my mum, aunts and uncles tried to find out what was wrong, and again, I kept my stony veneer.

The last time that I ran away was in my second year of university. The only thing I had was my Nokia phone in my pocket. The plan was to make it to the top of the hill overlooking the train tracks, hop on a train that would take me far, far away from friends and family, and everything would be taken care of.

As the first train sped past, I found myself unwilling to move. I watched it leave, and figured that I had 30 minutes to say my goodbyes. I pulled out my phone and began flipping through my contacts. High school friend I had no interest in talking to, another high school friend, my brother who I wasn't speaking to at the time, someone I met in Japanese class that I hadn't seen since first year. The As blazed past, as did the Bs, Cs, Ds and Es. A few more letters down and I hit MrMan1. I can't remember why I called him, but I did. I didn't tell him where I was, or what I was doing, I just asked him to talk. So he did. And I listened. I thought I was completely invisible to this guy, and here he was doing some bizarre favour for me, no questions asked. That''s when I realised how much of an amazing support system I actually had. I was just so caught up in my life, and how hard uni was, and the maybe baby, and the feeling of being so alone despite being surrounded by people, that I never noticed that there are people out there who will drive for hours around the suburbs just to find me because they care about me.

There's a quote I saw on Reddit that made me feel really sad. "We're often so busy growing up that we don't realise our parents are growing old." My parents didn't push me so hard because they wanted to brag to other Asian parents about my grades, they just didn't want me to lead the life that they had, where there was a constant struggle for money, and their job opportunities were severely limited. A lot of the things that I hated them for as a teen are things I now see that they did out of love.

In the past year, with the engagement party, and the wedding, I've realised how many people are important to me, but also how many people I'm important to. Life is too short to be spent worrying that the super executive boss finds out about this project that I'm working on, and maybe he'll be impressed enough to give me a promotion. I know it sounds like I've lost ambition, but I think it's just a priority shift. I would rather spend most of the rest of my life with the people who make me happy, than slaving away for someone who doesn't care about me.

I've expressed my frustrations at my mum's slightly overbearing parenting in the past, and how she never listens to me, but I feel like in the future, I will miss these moments, so I should make the most of them. And worse is my relationship with my dad. I spent so many years scared of him, because my mum did not believe in hitting us as kids. Instead, she would tell us that she would tell my dad that I'd been naughty, and he'd get his belt out and hit us instead. There were so many days that I dreaded my father coming home from work. Now that he has retired, I think things are better between us, and I would also like to work on spending more time with him if possible.

So that's my lovely wisdom for you: life goes by so quickly, that you often don't get a chance to appreciate all the wonderful people who helped you get to where you are today, even if it may not have seemed like they were helping you at the time. There are more people who care about you than you think. And also as a side thing I think is worth working on: there are people in your life that you don't need, and you do what you can to get along with them if you must, but if, in the end you find you are just not compatible, then it's OK to let them leave your life.

Skillshot

Someday came earlier than I thought it would. So, when looking for professional female gamers, the first result from Google is this Business Insider article from 2014 listing the highest paid female gamers. In case it's taken down, here's the list:

Name	Income*	Game(s)
Seo 'ToSsGirL' Ji-soo	$5,753.13	3 tournaments - Starcraft
Mirlet 'Hitomi 1' Delgadillo	$6,000	3 tournaments - Dead or Alive 4
Samantha 'Ricochet' Whale	$7,000	1 tournament - Dead or Alive 4
Jennifer 'jso' So	$7,000	4 tournaments - Counter-Strike
Christine 'potter' Chi	$7,800	5 tournaments - Counter-Strike
Alice 'ali' Lew	$7,800	5 tournaments - Counter-Strike
Alana 'Ms.X' Reid	$10,000	1 tournament - Quake III Arena
Livia 'Liefje' Teernstra	$14,000	2 tournaments - Dead or Alive 4
Jamie 'Missy' Pereyda	$15,000	1 tournament - Quake III
Rumay 'Hafu' Wang	$16,200	5 tournaments - World of Warcraft
Vanessa 'Vanessa' Arteaga	$20,000	2 tournaments - Dead or Alive 4
Sarah 'Sarah Lou' Harrison	$50,000	1 tournament - Dead or Alive 4
Marjorie 'Kasumi Chan' Bartell	$50,000	1 tournament - Dead or Alive 4
Sasha 'Scarlett' Hostyn	$81,282.44	30 tournaments - Starcraft II
Katherine 'Mystik' Gunn	$122,000	3 tournaments - Dead or Alive 4, Halo:Reach

*All amounts are listed in USD

When it comes to a livable wage, those amounts aren't very much at all - but pro female gamers do exist! Also, I'm really playing the wrong game as Dota 2 is nowhere to be found on that list. I can understand how hard it would be to continue being a professional gamer if they're the winnings you can get from tournaments.

So let's look at another potential source of income for gamers: streaming. Streaming on sites like Twitch allow you to broadcast yourself playing a game, and others can watch and comment in the chat. Some streams have donate buttons so spectators can donate to the streamer. There is also an option to subscribe to certain streamers (I think they need to be a partner), and you get special benefits in exchange for donating money to them monthly. One of the theories (if the MagicAmy is really a male playing thing is true) for why someone would go to so much effort to have a girl show her face during tournaments, is that it's much easier for a female streamer to gain a following than it is for a male one. I don't have any statistics on this to back it up though.

However, having a successful stream doesn't mean that you are a good gamer. It just means that you are entertaining. Looking at some of these lists of top female streamers, itsHafu (the same Hafu who is #6 on the highest paid female pro gamer list) and a couple of others are generally the only ones who is credited with being highly skilled at the game - one of the articles says Hafu puts a crazy 60-80 hours per week into her stream, that's way more than my full time job (for a bit of a laugh, check out this ridiculous question about how to make programmers work 60 to 80 hours a week). The rest are described as charming or caring of their fans. Or hot - although Twitch's new dress code means you cannot stream nude, or wearing sexually suggestive clothing.

Having streamed a little myself, I find it incredibly hard to be able to think about the game and remember that I need to talk to spectators (I had 1, hahaha) at the same time. It's a really tough thing, to be able to focus on the game so you don't play badly, but also try and think of things to say so that your stream doesn't get boring. I wasn't even streaming a real-time game, it was a slow turn-based game and I still struggled! Although I'm hoping that's something that gets better with a bit of practice.

While there aren't that many skilled female gamers around, that doesn't mean they don't exist! It's probably just a reflection of the number of females playing games overall. If you think about it, if only 0.1% of the population can reach professional level play (I just pulled that number out of my ass), and the population is predominantly male (for now), then it makes sense that you only see a small number of females in that 0.1% - assuming all other things are equal. And if you think about it, if skill is normally distributed, there are fewer people at the higher end of the skill ladder. Even if you are only in the top 5% of gamers, that still makes you an incredibly skilled player.

It's so easy to watch someone else play and pick up all the mistakes that they make. They are the ones playing under pressure - your analysis can be performed in the comfort of your squeaky computer chair, and if you're wrong, you might have a few people on the Internet argue with you, but no big loss. They are being watched by hundreds or thousands of viewers. When kyxy (male Dota 2 player) denied the Aegis at The International 3 (which was one of the contributing factors that lost them the game), so many people freaked out, called him a noob, etc. Yet he managed to make it to the biggest Dota 2 tournament of the year, a feat many of the armchair analysts have never even come close to.

So next time you are watching a girl stream, and you think, "She's not even that good, people are only watching because she's a girl," think about this: 1) she is practicing, and likely to be improving, even if only a little, 2) you are judging her from a spectator's point of view, where it is much easier to pick up mistakes, 3) it's tough to talk and play at the same time. Most importantly 4) if you don't enjoy the stream, just leave - the people who are there are there because they want to watch (or are curious, but they may leave if they realise it's not their cup of tea). I don't see the point in going to someone's stream to abuse them for being bad and only getting attention because they're a girl.

Every Little Thing He Does is Magic

Today's lovely drama, brought to me courtesy of Julian, is the mysterious identity of Hearthstone player MagicAmy, there's a long-ish summary here. Pretty funny drama, from a spectator's point of view, lots of speculation going on.

TL;DR Some people have dug up "evidence" that popular player MagicAmy (a female player from Korea) doesn't actually play Hearthstone at all, but she is on camera while a Canadian guy living in Korea is the one who actually plays. Nothing concrete has come out yet, as far as I know, but a lot of the evidence does point to it being the case, or at least points to MagicAmy being somewhat shady (someone posted a screenshot of various transfers from him to her to the value of about $5k).

One of the pieces of "evidence" was the fact that during some tough games, there were some tense moments like the opponent managing to draw the one card he needed to get out of a sticky situation, and the entire time MagicAmy just looked really bored and expressionless, where you'd expect a regular player would look shocked or concerned. It makes me wonder what my expression is when I'm playing Dota. I think controlling my face is the last thing on my mind in the middle of a tough fight, because there is just so much information to take in, and you need to be able to process it all really quickly, you don't have any brain power spare to be worried about what your face is doing. It's kinda like the O-face. I doubt many people outside of the adult film industry are worried about their facial expression in the middle of an orgasm.

I don't really care all that much about someone pretending to be a girl online, but I do care if the accusations that she had someone play for her/coach her during her qualification match for the ESL tournament turn out to be true. The former is not the best situation, but not too horrible. The latter, in my opinion, is completely unfair. Still, as of this moment, I don't think any concrete proof has come out yet, although MagicAmy has been released from her Hearthstone team - though both sides seem to be trying to imply that it was a mutual decision.

It's kinda crazy how much of this goes on. There was an all-girl Dota 2 team, whose name slips my mind right now, who were playing in an online tournament, and refused to check-in on Skype (which is part of the tournament rules). The organisers allowed play to continue, but after the game ended, the tournament organisers declared that they had performed an investigation, and one of the team members playing was actually the boyfriend of one of the players, rather than the player herself. They said that among other things, they thought the playstyle of the person was far more advanced than that player had demonstrated in previous tournaments.

It seems to be a bit of a hot topic at the moment - can female players ever be on the same level as their male counterparts? It's 11:30pm now, but I have just finished the photo book for the wedding (hooray!), so I'm going to reward myself by going to bed now. To be continued someday...

Full of WiT

I attended a seminar that was focused on why women don't tend to consider a career in technology. It had a panel of women who are in tech and went into their backgrounds and why they love being where they are.

The first panelist took a course in multimedia and ended up continuing into software engineering. Now she manages technology projects. The other three panelists had no backgrounds in tech, but were in the right place at the right time and were offered management positions in tech teams.

All of that sounds great, and I am glad to see more women in tech, however what really irritated me was the fact that each panelist strongly stressed how un-technical they were. One of the audience members asked, "So when you're in a meeting with techies and they're speaking their language, what do you do?" The response from the panel was that every area has their own acronyms and jargon, and that it's OK not to understand everything. I completely agree on that point, there's nothing wrong with not knowing everything. However, they continued to stress how it's not so hard and that anyone can learn to code! Plus, they still don't understand what's going on half the time and they're getting by.

I'm not disputing that anyone can learn to code, and I don't want to make programming out to be some kind of mystical exclusive club open only to those of a specific level of intelligence. I do have an issue with the panel trying to make it sound like you can have absolutely no idea what's going on, have no desire to learn, and be able to work effectively. The whole panel seemed to me like they were saying, "You've got the soft skills, let the techies do their thing and you can just manage them."

It reminds me of Jen, from the IT Crowd. As funny as it is to watch, the thought of having a manager who doesn't care what you do as long as things are running smoothly does not appeal to me at all. Because when things go bad, as they inevitably will, I want someone who can tell our stakeholders, "We're working on a fix. We will update as soon as we can," rather than cracking the whip at us, complaining that it shouldn't have happened, and asking for up-to-the minute reports so that they have something to tell the higher ups every minute to make it look like they're doing something. Or they misunderstand what you tell them, and promise something completely infeasible, but demand that you do it because they already told senior management that it'll be done.

Still, my experience of being a woman in tech is a bit of a mixed bag. One of the senior developers, Mike, was telling me that when he was interviewing for his position, it was down to himself, and one other developer, who was a woman. He said that his area manager wanted to hire the woman, because "that's what you're meant to do, right?", despite the fact that he performed better on the technical test, and had more relevant experience in our area. The developer lead (who would have to work directly with the new hire) argued for hiring Mike instead, and eventually that's what happened. When I heard that story, all I could think about was that my manager was the one who had a strong push to hire me after I finished the grad program, despite the fact that there was another grad who was in the team at the same time as me, and who I think is more technical than I am. However, luckily for us, we were both able to get a job in the team.

Nobody on my team treats me badly because I'm a female developer, at least I've never gotten that impression from them. The worst they do is whenever I go to one of those women in technology events, a couple of them will ask why there are no men in technology support groups or things like that. I got to go to a business women's breakfast where the guest speaker was former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and a couple of people complained again (although they were all happy when I opened my bag of free gifts from the breakfast and shared it with them). So when the next breakfast was advertised for International Women's Day, I invited them to come, but they all complained about how early it was. Sometimes you just can't win.

I've never been offended by any of the jokes the other developers tell, but I think I've been desensitized by a lot of it from playing games online. One of them will apologise to me whenever he thinks he might have gone over the line with one of his dirtier jokes, but that's about it as far as being treated differently goes. I was given easier stories to complete when I first started, but that was more to do with the fact that I was new to the team and didn't have that much experience with the frameworks they use. Now I am being given much more difficult tasks, which is good for my growth, I guess, but sometimes I feel like it's too hard! I always seem to slog it through in the end though, so it can't have been too difficult.

I can't really compare the experience of working as a women in tech to other sectors, as this is my only full time job. I don't know if there was a glass ceiling at the casino or at the supermarket, because I hadn't thought that much about my career prospects at the time. I would like to think that in my team at least, people value you if you can do your job. The conversations are quite nerdy, which I think is awesome though I can understand isn't everyone's cup of tea, but a lot of people in my team are married with kids, and so there's also a lot of everyday life talk. Oh, I should probably remind people that while I do work in technology, I work for a bank, so this might not be a good representation of women in tech for dedicated software companies.

I'm all for promoting gender equality in the workplace, but I don't think that should be done at the expense of dumbing down what the position really entails. You don't need to be a hotshot developer to be able to manage them, but I believe it's best if you at least have some idea of what they're doing. There are tons of posts out there about how why good developers leave, and one of the major ones is bad management. I would be incredibly frustrated if I tried to explain that I needed something from my manager, but they didn't see the importance of it. The manage needs to have faith in their employees, but on the flip side, the need to be able to see when the employees are just walking all over them. If they don't really have the knowledge to back that up, then I worry about whether they can make informed decisions.

That being said, being technical won't necessarily make you a good manager. I recently found out that my manage has been promoted to a new role, so they are looking for his replacement. I asked him why he didn't just promote one of the senior developers on our team, and he said he asked, but none of them wanted the job. I was a bit surprised by that, but now that I've thought about it, some of them would struggle to be a good manager. A lot of them hate getting bogged down by paperwork, and get frustrated at the numerous number of meetings they need to attend. One of them (who has temporarily taken on a project manager role) got really frustrated about not having written any code for two days. My boss said I'd do really well at it, but I told him that I wasn't ready. I don't think I've earned the respect of my peers in order to be managing them, and I don't think they'd take it very well, even if they all turned down the role themselves.

A Short Order

It seems like The Order: 1886 has caused quite a bit of a stir lately. I haven't played it, but here's a review from Giantbomb where they play the game (41 minutes, no transcript, but there is a text review as well).

The Order is set in a fantastical, but somewhat grounded alternate take on Britain in 1886. In this timeline, the order of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table still holds sway as men and women who have found ways to extend their lifespans to hundreds of years. Or, at least, that's the implication. In this take, the knights of this order are battling the half-breeds--Lycans, to be specific. That's fancy talk for "werewolf," in case you didn't know. To battle this threat, they'll use a lot of standard video game weaponry, like an array of pistols, a few rifles, and some more "science" weapons, like a lightning-launching arc gun or a piece that fires thermite dust at targets only to ignite said dust with a launched flare, burning your targets where they stand.

The issue with the game seems to stem from the fact that it's about 5 hours long.... with roughly 3 hours of cutscenes. And a generous helping of everyone' favourite game mechanic - QTE (Quick Time Events, a.k.a. press X to Jason (where you have to press buttons in time in order to perform certain actions)). Despite the short length of gameplay, the game retails at what I assume will be full price (it's listed at $60 in the US, so who knows what kind of crazy price it'll have over here). The reviewers in the video said that even the parts of the game where you do get to play are very repetitive. It's the same QTEs over and over again.

Someone at work asked the question, "Is it really that bad that the game is short? Especially if people are informed of the fact beforehand, which anyone with an Internet connection should be."

Personally, I would have felt incredibly ripped off if I had paid $75+ for a game that was only 5 hours long (I picked $75 because that's roughly the AUD value of the USD at the moment. :( ). That probably stems from my childhood, where my siblings and I didn't have any pocket money, so any games we had were birthday/Christmas presents, or by convincing our Dad that he wanted the game (which wasn't that easy other than first party Nintendo games). So we chose our games carefully. This was before the days of extensive game reviews, so that meant sometimes our choices weren't all that great, and we ended up with a dud of a game that wasn't all that fun, or only lasted a day or so. It was so disappointing, because it would be a long wait until the next game. So we valued replay-value quite highly.

There's also the tough competition out these days. From the free-to-play games, to the cheap phone games, to the amazing discounts you can get from buying a digital copy of the game through Steam or Greenman Gaming, $75 could buy you a lot of enjoyment. I bought Plants vs Zombies for $9.99 and have 94 hours of gameplay logged (although some of that is just idling with the Zen garden). In my mind, I kind of equate $10 to 2 hours, because that's a cost of a movie ticket, and a movie is roughly 2 hours. That's why when I look at game purchases, I look at how much entertainment I'll get out of it, including how much time I'm likely to get from it. If a game looks like it'll have a low replay-vale, then it really drops a lot in my eyes. Games that are more "Hey, I want to do something new", like Papers, Please, will modify my judgement call, but overall, it's a cost-benefit judgement for me.

May not be the best way to think about whether a game is worth buying, but that's my approach. Though I have been leaning towards just buying games that sound interesting, since I have more money than time these days, and I'm not losing a huge amount by spending $15 on a cool sounding game. Which is why buying a short game these days doesn't bother me as much as it used to.

One of the arguments in favour of the game is that it shouldn't matter if it's short if it's also amazing. I understand the argument, but a game would have to be really, really good. I was dubious about To the Moon, which MrMan5.5 tried to get me to play for a very long time. I clocked 4 hours in it, and I felt some of it was very repetitive, but the story was really good, and I'm happy that I bought it. Based on the Giantbomb review, I don't think The Order is going to fit the bill. Being a short game isn't itself bad, but being a short game with a high buying price, while not being that great isn't good.

A game that I have played, that fits the whole not very long, QTE and cutscenes game is Heavy Rain (where "Press X to Jason" comes from). Admittedly, I bought that game heavily discounted. This game is almost exclusively QTEs (I say almost, because there are some parts of the game where you have a long time to react - or at least it seems that way). I think the game was marketed more as an interactive movie, rather than a game-game, so I wasn't disappointed in that aspect at all. I really enjoyed the story, and the QTE aspect of it wasn't incredibly repetitive, i.e. it wasn't just the same thing over and over again. Also, the game did a really great job of sucking me into it, making me feel like I was all the characters that I was playing as. And not that I really took advantage of it, as one play through was enough for me, but you could get different endings to the story based on various choices you make throughout the game.

The difference for me, is that Heavy Rain never tried to disguise what it was, and so I felt like I got what I paid for. I don't really like the argument that if you do your own research, then you deserve whatever you get. Especially when you consider that some people pre-ordered the game. Someone has to suck it up and play it first, so if everyone just waited for reviews, then you'd probably only have game journalists reviewing things, and given the events that transpired last year, can we really be sure that they're giving an honest review of the game? I don't know if Giantbomb is legit, but they do provide the games database that Twitch uses, so they're doing something nice.

All in all, I don't mind that here are short games out there, as long as they're not trying to deceive you of the fact. If they're short and they're charging you a lot of money, then they'd better be really interesting.

A Special Name

Well, they say things look different in the light of a new day, and so they do. I do think I overreacted a little, but oh well, it's done now, and I'm going to live with the choice that I made.

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Today, Grad Daniel asked me whether I knew someone, giving me her name. I didn't know of her, so my first instinct was to Google her. The first result was:

HOT MILF VIDEOS FEATURING (person's name)

Well, I don't think I've ever hit Ctrl+w so fast in my life, given that I didn't want someone glancing at my screen. There's also the fact that my search has now been logged by the company's security gurus. I stomp over to Grad Daniel's desk, and ask him why he is asking me about MILFs. He explains that he just got an email from someone with that name demanding that a certain issue be fixed right now, which was sent to a very large distribution list (something that's generally frowned upon, as you end up spamming many people unnecessarily - one of the downsides to having a distribution list called "Technology" is that every now and again, someone mails the list, which has a few thousand people on it, asking for help getting their password changed. Then starts the ridiculous reply-all messaging, "This list is not supposed to be used for password changes!", etc).

I remember when we first got the Internet at home, one of the first things I did was Google my own name - since some of my classmates did it at school, and one of them found a news article that mentioned them from some sports club or something like that. I wasn't really expecting to find anything about myself, but I was curious, so I did it anyway. Lo and behold, I found out that I share my name with a porn star. Although she has become a lot less prominent since, and someone else who shares my name is now the top result.

It worried me for a long time though, especially when people started writing about how recruiters will now do an online search for you, to try and get a glimpse of the person behind the resume. I don't know if I've ever been turned down because someone has looked me up and found the adult video actress instead. Though I like to think that it's unlikely, because she is American, I recently had an automated background check fail, because the details I supplied didn't match a person with a similar name living in Singapore (note: I said similar name, we did not have the same name, and the name on all of my documents matched the name I supplied in the application).

I wonder how easy it would be for me to impersonate one of the other people in the world with the same name as me. Especially in large companies, where it's unlikely that the human resources team can remember what every single person in the company looks like, and there are often people who don't upload their photos to the company directory - or have outdated photos. Which reminds me, I should probably upload a photo of myself that isn't from when I was super tanked for the Arnie Twins' birthday - which may or may not be a picture where I found some really muscly dudes and photoshopped my face onto one of them, and which I may or may not have sent to someone who works in the industry that I want to move into. Not the best idea....

This is where super spy training would have really come in handy. I think movies make such a big deal about how good spies are at shooting things, or climbing down the rooves of skyscrapers to get into some office building (see James Bond), but one of the best skills they have is to be able to convincingly lie about something, which may be something they don't even know anything about. I wonder how they get so good at it, as it's not really something you can practice, unless you are a sociopath, and you like going out to meet new people just to lie to and manipulate them. I guess I'd never make a very good spy. Better stick to my day job.

F IT

Perhaps trying to get 1000 words per day is a little ambitious.... I'm just looking through some of my only blog posts the last time I tried blogging every day, and some of them are only 2 sentences long!

Well, this one is going to be nice and short, too.

The other thing I picked up from the Men's Health seminar is that sometimes when you feel really angry, and you are struggling to think straight, a good trick is to ball up your hands into fists, take a deep breath, open your fists downwards, like you're flicking something away, and say, "FUCK IT".

I don't know how long I can keep this up. 100 seems so far away.

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I should probably explain myself, because I hate it when people make posts like, "Some people just make me so angry!" and never explain why they're angry and it seems like they just want to be consoled. I don't really want to be consoled, I just mostly want to rant.

And if this sounds like I should hop on a plane and start ravaging the streets of Tokyo, then feel free to tell me that, too.

Two of my bridesmaids asked if I wanted a hens night. I said I didn't want to, as it's not really my thing, and the only one I've ever been to nearly ended up breaking the marriage. But they both said it'd be fun, and they'd plan it for me, I just needed to give them the names of who I wanted to go, and pick a date. So I said OK, and gave them the names (my friends from high school), and made a Facebook event for it. Buh-bow. Date is not good, bridesmaid 1 is not available. OK, change the date. 2 of them aren't available. Discuss when is good. Change it to that date. Oh no, that date is not good either. There really aren't all that many days left between now and the wedding, and I'm busy for quite a few of them now.

All three of them start to say, "Don't worry about me, just go with the other two," which just makes me feel like none of them really want to go. I don't want them to be there if they don't want to be there.

It's not like I can even be angry at them for not being able to attend, as they all work weekends - one is a doctor, one is a pharmacist, and one is on tech support. I'm mostly angry that I didn't want to do this in the first place, but they said that it'd be fun, only it's too difficult to find a date that works.

I just wish I had gone with my initial thought, and gone with Autofix as a bridesmaid. I get the feeling that if I had asked him to organise it, it'd be done already. And it'd probably be something awesome like going to a LAN cafe.

Anyway, it's my own fault for not sticking to my guns at the start, so I don't really have anyone else to blame. I will know better for next time, if there ever is a next time.

End of the Line

We had a men's health spokesperson come in to speak to us at work to promote men's health, in particular, their mental health. He was a comedian, so his entire presentation was hilarious, and everyone really enjoyed themselves. One of the things that he got us to do was play a yes/no guessing game. So four people volunteered to leave the room, and we picked an object. Then the four people came back in, and could take turns asking yes/no/maybe questions and the crowd would answer them. What the four people didn't know was that there was no object. If they asked a question that ended with a vowel, we answered yes. If they asked a question that ended with an S, we answered maybe. If they asked a question that ended in a consonant (except S), we answered no.

I thought it was a bit silly, as we didn't really achieve much other than to completely confuse the four people - though they did end up guessing some bizarre thing with a pipe, I can't remember what it was, and I'm pretty sure it didn't make sense. The guy explained that the whole point of the exercise was to teach the audience how to listen to an entire question before answering, which we had to do because our answer depended on waiting for the last letter of their question. He said that often when two people are having an argument, one will interrupt the other person before they get to finish speaking. So that person will then interrupt the first person back. All it does in the end is result in both people getting frustrated that they aren't able to get their point across.

I've been thinking about that in the dynamic of the work place. When I started, I didn't contribute all that much in meetings, I was mostly just there to learn things from other people, and so when people cut me off, it didn't bother me at all. Chances are, they were correcting something I had said, and the correction meant that there was no point continuing down that line of thought anyway. Now that I have a few years under my belt, I am trying to say more, and there are some applications that I know better than anyone else on the team, since I wrote them. However, since I am still the most junior developer on my team, I feel very uncomfortable interrupting people when they're mid sentence, so I often try to wait for a gap in the conversation.

A couple of weeks ago, I was dragged into a discussion about the way our system validates a particular request. Our business analyst and the lead developer were talking about how the system should behave, and they got into a heated argument about what the best approach is. I actually knew that because of the version of the software we were using had a limitation, one of the options was already off the table. When I tried to bring that up, the lead developer cut me off, and continued arguing with the business analyst. It's actually because of moments like these that I've learnt to try and be as minimalistic as possible with my words, because I usually only get a sentence or two in before I'm interrupted.

Sometimes I want to yell, "Can you please just let me finish?!" but I know that's incredibly unprofessional, so I politely sit and wait my turn. I'm not sure what to do, I know that I am often considered the baby of the project team, and people will often talk about music, movies or events and then say that I'm too young to know what they're talking about. In the case of the oldest person on the team, that is occasionally true, but there's only 4 years between me and the lead developer! I guess it's the stupid Asian youthful looking genes biting me on the ass.

I am trying to push myself to speak up a bit more though, because I feel like a well-timed line from me could save ten minutes of arguing, and when the $120 an hour porridge lady is involved, that's saving the company $20 for about seven words of effort. Plus, every year, my feedback from others is that I should try to speak up more in meetings. Which I mostly wrote off as them trying to say something that's negative, but isn't too negative that it seems bad. But maybe it's true, I should try to speak more, especially now that I actually have things that I can contribute.

I think the other bad image I have cultivated for myself due to this mostly silent behaviour is that people expect me to say something incredible when I do talk, like the trope The Voiceless (warning: link to TV Tropes). It just adds so much pressure to saying things. Or maybe it's all in my head. I don't know.

On the other hand, I have this annoying habit of trying to finish other people's sentences - although this only applies to people that I know well. I hate it when I do it, but I can't seem to stop myself. Maybe I should also put more stock into waiting for someone to finish talking before opening my mouth to respond. Dealing with people who aren't frustrated is always a bonus.

Unrequited

I've been thinking about whether requited or unrequited love is easier to get over when you have feelings for someone that you shouldn't (I should spend less time on the relationships subreddit, but I'm just addicted to reading these stories!). I'm leaning more towards unrequited love being easier to get over, because it has never really had a chance to form a root, so eventually, you can write it off as the other person not being interested, so it would never have gone anywhere anyway. On the other hand, you could argue that requited love is easier to get over, because you get a chance to play it out, and see where it goes, and find out that you actually can't stand this person when you have to spend more than a week with them.

So I said I was going to say goodbye to him, but I think he is a good example for this post. I was hung up on RH for a long, long time. Even after he stopped talking to me. The part that made getting over him hard was that his friend basically told me that he was interested in sleeping with me. I spent a lot of time thinking that I had made a huge mistake when I told him to block me. I just kept thinking, what if he was the one?

The opposite was someone I got along really well with. I developed a crush on him, only for him to drop the bomb - he had a girlfriend. I never said anything, and not long after, I dropped it.

My theory is that as long as you never find out that your feelings are returned, it only ever stays in fantasy land. Just like how you can have a crush on a character in a TV show, or a famous musician, you know in the back of your mind that it'll never happen. The entire thing is outside of your control. But once you find out they feel the same way, suddenly the range of options has drastically expanded. When I was in first year, I met MrMan5, who was a third year student at the time. I had a bit of a crush on him, but it didn't really mean anything, because I was dating YN at the time. Plus, he didn't ever notice me anyway, since I was JAFFY, so it didn't really register, and just became a background thing. I am not sure what would have happened if I had found out he was interested in me, because that would have been complicated by YN (and he had a girlfriend at the time as well, but I only found that out later). Again, he never expressed any interest in me, so it was really easy to move on from him (well, it took me 4 years, but I got there in the end, and it was never really a serious crush anyway).

I read a story on Reddit about a married guy who ended up going back to uni. He met a girl in one of his classes, and they got along really, really well. So much so that he ended up preferring to spend time with her than with his wife, and he couldn't stop thinking about her. He asked Reddit for advice on what to do, as he didn't want to leave his wife (as he is mostly happy with her), but this girl seemed like such a perfect match for him. As an added bonus, she seemed to be attracted to him.

A lot of the responses mentioned the fact that it was the honeymoon phase with this girl. He only saw her at uni, and they were both on their best behaviour. Unlike his wife, who he sees all the time in various situations. He is around his wife often enough to see all those little things she does that annoy him. He sees her without make up, or after she has just bawled her eyes out watching Up and looks so unattractive. With the uni girl, she probably always looks well-put-together. They're only together for a few hours when they have classes, so the annoying traits probably go completely unnoticed. Someone replied telling him not to tell the uni girl how he feels (unless he is seriously considering leaving his wife). All the awesome things about her probably won't be as awesome once he has spent a decent amount of time with her.

I'm not sure what happened to that guy, as he never posted again, but I have a feeling that trying to push away this other girl for the sake of his marriage is eating away at him. However, I think if he did confess to her, he would be strongly tempted to cheat with her, or leave his wife for her, only to find out that it was a honeymoon period. I don't think either of those options is very good. Though there is the outcome where he finds out that he is much happier with the uni girl, and that is definitely a possibility.

I am definitely on the unrequited love train. If there's someone out there that you think might be bad for you, keep your mouth shut, and move on, if possible. That being said, if there is someone out there that you do have feelings for, and you think that they would be a good match for you, then you should totally go for it! Remember, all of this was about having feelings for someone that you shouldn't have feelings for. Not that I am in this situation right now, so please don't try and read something into this blog post that isn't there! I don't have time for crazy impossible romantic fantasies at the moment, I have Year Beast Dota 2 games to play, and hats to win!

(NSFW) Reflection in the Lake

This post is rated R, for sexual content, and possibly TMI if you tend to visualise things and don't really want the image of me and MrMan5.5 having sex, so read at your own peril!
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Had a bit of a sombre Graham moment today. Is being attracted to someone who is attracted to you narcissistic?

So after that post about getting myself in the mood for sex more often, I went and watched a heap of porn, and didn't masturbate or anything. This took an unbelievable amount of self-restraint, but it was for a good cause! The result being, when MrMan5.5 was ready for some bedroom gymnastics, I was incredibly aroused. I don't think I've ever been that wet in my life - I guess that's a good argument for delayed gratification increasing the pleasure later.

Usually we like to play a bit beforehand, but once he felt how wet I was, he pushed himself inside me right away. It felt like he couldn't control himself and he just had to have me right then. That was such a turn on for me. Afterwards, I thought maybe it's a bit narcissistic, to be aroused by someone being turned on by you.

It does feel really nice to be externally validated, like when people praise you. Sometimes I feel the need to be validated by strangers on the Internet, because I know that they don't know me, so if they do say something nice about me, it's because I did something well, and not because of our past history together. I'll admit to occasionally looking at my Dota 2 profile to look at how many commendations I have. (You can commend people that you play with, which just adds to a number on their profile page, though they can't see who commended them, or what note you left, if you chose to leave a note.)

Considering I've spent a lot of my life being praised for intelligence, it feels good to find someone who finds another aspect of me attractive, especially given that in high school, I had a lot of issues with skin and weight, and just accepting physical appearance in general. That's probably like really attractive people wanting to find someone who can see their inner beauty, or people who are rich wanting to find someone who just isn't attracted to their money, so I can't say that it's a deep revelation.

Still, the whole narcissism thing made me think about some of the stuff I have done in the past. With Charmeleon, I went through a phase of wanting to have sex in public places (though only at night, and only at places where children were unlikely to be), and I thought maybe there was an exhibitionist inside me trying to escape. I don't know if that's true, but the excitement of maybe getting caught, and the potential case where someone who caught us might want to join us just made the whole experience more thrilling. We didn't end up doing it anywhere exciting though, once on the beach, once on the roof of his house, once in a park (although if you looked, you would have just thought I was sitting on his lap, at least, I hope so anyway).

I'm starting to think maybe I am an exhibitionist. I really like the idea of someone else watching us have sex, although similar to the rape fantasy, I'm not entirely sure I actually want it to happen, or if I just want to roleplay something like it. I don't know how you could roleplay this though, as there needs to be a third person. I read a horrible reddit thread where someone agreed to let a female friend of her boyfriend watch them have sex over Skype. When her boyfriend finally reached orgasm, he shouted the name of the person on Skype instead of his girlfriend. The friend later texted her to say, "I'm sorry...", and added another text, "... that your boyfriend thinks of me during sex with you." And then it turns out she took screenshots of them having sex. I don't really want to open our relationship up to that kind of complicated situation. I don't want one of our friends to watch us, and I don't trust a stranger to watch us either.

Wow, huge tangent. Back to the Graham-esque narcissism pondering. I think people are inherently attracted to themselves, or at least some aspect of themselves. Which in turn makes them attracted to people who are like themselves - even if it's only as friends. I feel like all of my closest friends are like certain aspects of me. But similar to the fate of Narcissus, I don't know if that kind of attraction is good for a long-lasting monogamous relationship. If you spent all day admiring yourself, you would never hear dissenting opinions, so all of your thoughts would be echoed back at you, and would probably cause you to become one of those close-minded, fanatical crazies. Which might be OK if you two isolate yourselves to some remote part of the planet, but for most people, that's not a realistic possibility, and you'll have to integrate into society. I guess this is how people like the wife in Amy's Baking Company can delude themselves into thinking that they're an amazing chef.

When talking to our marriage celebrant about our relationship history, one of the things she made me realise that I love about MrMan5.5 is that he keeps me grounded. If there's something that I believe that he thinks is ridiculous, he will tell me (although sometimes he has to pick his battles, because there are some things that I get quite prickly about). This isn't a super sexy trait, but it's so important to me, because I want to keep improving, so I'm glad he does it. I want to avoid becoming deluded about something, if possible. No Narcissusfodder please. That's an open invitation, by the way. If you think there's something that I believe in, that you think is completely ridiculous, please let me know and hopefully we can have an intelligent discussion about it (GP: yes, I did get your email reply to my blog post about parents making their children leave LoL games, and Ephant, I also saw your reply. Replying to both of these has been on my to-do list!). I may not change my mind, but I would like to at least be informed of other points of view.

Stronger

I was reminded about the time someone followed me to a car park, and so I felt the need to dig up this old post. Phrost's comment:

This post is full of fail on so many levels. Possibly all the levels. Faaark Anna.Quoting back to the post you linked yourself: "I’m not much of a touchy-feely person. I don’t like hugs, not a big fan of kissing." Um… wot? You just let some guy get touchy feely with you. Yes, let. You didn't have to. You could have gone the much more sensible and appropriate route of shouting to get someone’s attention. Eff eff ess. Sorry if this post lacked sympathy at what must have been a fairly traumatising experience, but you handled the situation really really stupidly.

really summed up how stupid my actions were. It has been nearly 6 years, so I've gotten some distance from the situation now, and I can honestly say he was completely right. Why didn't I fight back? Why didn't I try to get some help? Why didn't I do so many things?

The answer to that was that I couldn't think properly. I don't even remember that guy's face, or really anything about him, but I do distinctly remember the feeling of fear. Every time I tried to think of a course of action, I felt like it was getting short circuited. Any physical response I could come up with was quickly shut down by the fact that he could easily overpower me. For some reason, I had this belief that as long as I was standing up, I'd be OK, so I didn't want him to try and tackle me to the ground. I guess it mostly worked out, as there was no rape. He just kissed my neck, said, "I'll never forget this", and walked away.

Now that I've been working out at the gym a lot, I think if the same thing were to happen to me again, I'd feel a lot more confident about taking someone on. Even if they're larger than me, I feel like I wouldn't go down without a fight. However, I've read that there's some guys who get off on having their victim fight back. So I don't know, I guess I'll just have to read the moment.

I had lunch with the PGC today, and some of them were talking about having been mugged just walking around in broad daylight. One of them was in her car, and someone came up to the driver's side, opened the door, and shoved her across to the passenger seat, then proceeded to take her GPS and phone. She said that she couldn't even remember what happened, it all happened so quickly. All of a sudden, she found herself seated in the passenger seat, and she wasn't entirely sure how she got there, but it was all over before she had even managed to cry out in surprise.

It makes me think, all the people who argue that the person should have fought back, or at least done something, don't really take into account what's going through your mind at the time. The memory is pretty fuzzy now, but I do recall thinking at some point, "Is this really happening to me?" I don't know, maybe that's the mind's defense mechanism, to just shut down and pretend it's all a dream, but I have a feeling that moment of doubt definitely slowed my response time by quite a bit.

I should definitely have shouted for help, or done anything else other than just stand there like an idiot. If anything, at least I'm much better at running away now than I was six years ago, so if it were to happen again, I really hope I'm wearing sensible shoes! Another thing that I'd do differently is that I'd try and stomp on his foot. I assume that the kind of person who would assault someone like that would be very experienced in defending against knee-to-the-groin type attacks, but it's a lot harder to notice that someone is about to stomp on your foot. Plus, as I learnt from Miss Congeniality, the instep is a sensitive area (and it's always important to SING - go for the Solar plexus, Instep, Nose, Groin).

With any luck though, it'll never happen again. I think with all my yoga and pilates work, my posture is a lot better, and I believe that I walk with more confidence now than I did six years ago. So maybe I'll be a less viable target.

Stronger By An Order of Magnitude

Graham got me to watch a supercut of the episode of Law & Order: SVU (YouTube video - has some graphic violence) which seems to be inspired by the whole Gamergate incident. I found the episode kinda hard to watch with all the gaming terms shoe-horned in to make it seem foreign, and it seemed to really go for the whole gamers can't tell the difference between games and reality, and they're all violence-obsessed males who just want to feel up girls and kill people (note: I haven't seen the whole episode).

Gosh, I don't know where to begin. I'm sure there are tons of essays online about how it's just the loud, crazy minority of gamers making all the others look bad, and they're probably much better written than something I could ever write. Even though I do care about the perception of gamers, and I try to give people a good impression when I meet them and tell them that I play games, I wouldn't consider it a huge passion of mine anymore. Haters gonna hate, right? Instead, I'd rather channel my energy into finding other like-minded people.

I've been tossing up the idea of streaming, although our current Internet connection doesn't have enough bandwidth for me to do it and for MrMan5.5 to be able to play his games, so this is probably something that'll have to wait until we get the NBN or something like that. The reason I want to stream is that I want to find others who would play with me. I'm super paranoid that people hate me, and so whenever I play with strangers, I just try to fly under the radar and not be noticed so that they won't yell at me. It's actually pretty funny, during lunch at work, I was about to ask whether one of my co-workers thinks the new guy hates me, and I got about half the question out when he said, "He doesn't hate you!" I guess I must say it a lot. (Turns out he doesn't hate me, and we are now whiskey buddies, where whiskey buddies = me constantly reminding him that I'm never drinking whiskey again.)

I figure anyone who can put up with watching my stream must be able to put up with playing games with me, so it'd be a good place to start. And I think it'd be really awesome to push myself to do something fun. Intern Daniel posted a link to my Facebook wall with a Dota 2 fitness regimen, but I think it's a lame low-tier workout, since it's just like a drinking game except with push ups, where you do push ups if X happens in your game, and I think the things on the list happen rarely when people are playing seriously.

Here it is if you want (9gag link):

Game lost: 20 push ups
Russians in team: 10 squarts per Russian
GG called after firstblood: 20 cross punch sit ups
"Report XXX": 10 leg raises each time
5 Carry team: 20 tricep dips
No wards/courier: 20 jumping lunges
Pudge/Riki insta locked: 20 bicycle crunches


Not a huge fan of JennCroft's one either (Imgur/Reddit):

Pre-game:
30 squats
10 burpees
10 push ups

Every death (rotate):
10 jump squats
10 crunches
Plank until respawn
10 dips
10 push ups

Mostly because someone mentioned you're likely to be really dizzy after doing them, and it's just going to make you play worse, which means you need to do more of them, etc. I really like the idea of tallying them up, because in Dota 2, you can do what's called a "buyback", where you pay gold to have your hero respawn instantly, rather than waiting for the full death timer, and in some close games, this can mean the difference between a win or a loss. I don't want to let my team down by saying, "Sorry guys, I can't buyback, I need to do 10 dips first!" Also, I don't want to get sweat all over my rainbow keyboard! :(

Still, if I don't work out more, I'll be at 66kg for the rest of the year, gotta try harder! Intern Daniel laughs at my really bad push ups and burpees. He also told me about how his coach gets them to run laps with their hands in the air above their heads as a punishment, which I thought sounded stupidly easy, so I said I'd carry a box over my head all the way to the train station. So much pain, so so much pain, and he was laughing the entire time. He has challenged me to do one proper push-up by the end of the year.

Julian says people would be willing to watch a stream featuring someone doing push ups and stuff because of Dota deaths, so maybe that can be my thing. A push to make myself stronger, but also to meet new people.

Fodder's Dota 2 Work Out/Punishment

Starting set:
5 x sit ups
5 x push ups
1 x support rotation (front support, left support, back support, right support - 20s each)
1 x glass of water (gotta keep hydrated!)

Set modifications:
Additions
Death: + 1 sit up/push up
Enemy gets first blood: +5 sit ups/push ups
Enemy gets godlike streak: +5 sit ups/push ups
Enemy gets Roshan: +1 support rotation
Enemy buys a divine rapier: +1 support rotation
Enemy hero gets a rampage (kills all 5 of us): +1 support rotation

Subtractions
Kill: -1 sit up/push up
I get first blood: -5 sit ups/push ups
Assist: -1 sit up/push up for every 5 assists (rounded down)
Gold per minute: -1 for every 400 (rounded down)

The modified numbers for sit ups and push ups can be assigned however you like. If you are feeling the burn in your core, then assign extra push ups. If your arms are starting to shake, go for the sit ups.

I don't know how unrealistic this is, and I hope that the people I play with will be OK with waiting for me to do all of these things between each match. The support rotation will take at least 80 seconds. Maybe I should shorten that one down to 10s each. I think I'll run this by Intern Daniel on Monday to see what he thinks. If you have any feedback, feel free to leave a comment or email me!

But back to the original topic (I do seem to like being side-tracked), am I worried about being harassed online? A little bit. I don't think I have a thick enough skin to be able to handle lots of abuse. Requests to show my boobs and stupid stuff like that I can handle, but I think if people started telling me that I'm really bad and that I should stop playing, it would start to get me down. But to be honest, I think it's something I really need to work on. I can't keep relying on validation from others to give me confidence, I need to find it within myself.

This is especially true in the workplace, as people aren't going to constantly tell me that I'm great. Everyone is just expected to do their job without needing their hands held. If I ever want to be respected by my co-workers, I need to be able to be confident in my own abilities, even when it seems like everybody is so much better than I am that I feel like I must be the worst person in the world. As I tell people who flame new players in Dota, everyone was new at some point. Though I'm starting to get past the phase of being new, and I can't hold on to that excuse anymore either. My boss thinks that I should start working towards becoming a senior developer, so I've been trying to convince myself that I'm worth it.

How Many Words Does a Staged Picture Tell?

MrMan5.5 and I had our engagement portrait done. I don't really know if it's still an engagement portrait if we got it done years after getting engaged, but that's what the photographer called it, so that's what I'm going to call it. I've always seen photos like that at other people's houses, but the way that it's done look so natural that it never occurred to me that they were taken by a professional photographer in a studio. I just thought a friend happened to get a really nice candid shot at a party or something. It always made me think that they must really be in love to just be casually looking at each other like that. Oh, and that they're both so good looking!

Now I have been behind the veil, and I know the truth. It's actually amazing how much good angles and lighting, and a professional eye can do. Oh, and lots and lots of make up. We don't have any of the photos yet, as they're being touched up before being sent off (another thing that probably makes the photos look all that much nicer), but even the semi-touched up versions looked amazing. What surprised me was the fact that the way we looked when we were posing did not resemble the final photo at all.

There was one photo where she got us to put our heads together, but lean forwards (the photo looks kinda NSFW, so I'll keep this one behind a link), which was incredibly awkward, and felt really uncomfortable, but somehow, the photo in the end looked amazing. I think I felt incredibly awkward during the entire shoot, and I don't remember smiling all that much, but she ended up showing us over 40 photos in which we were both smiling and laughing. Which probably goes to show that she's an amazing photographer, and I'm really glad we decided to go with her.

To be honest, the entire thing gave me a bit of a confidence boost. It makes me feel a little better about not looking like a movie star. I always thought those "See X without their makeup on!" photos were just paparazzi catching them on a bad day, but while I'm sure they're still incredibly attractive, I can kinda see how skilled professionals can make them look much, much better than they really do.

Also, I'm not sure where that thing about the camera adding 10-pounds comes from, because judging by the photos we saw today, I feel like it was more the other way around. The photos she took made us look skinnier than we actually are, and no, it wasn't all MySpace angles.

According to Mental Floss, photos tend to make us look fatter/more flat because of the fact that when we see something in real life, we see with two eyes (well, most of us do), but when a camera records a photo, it is only through one lens. The post links to an article where you can see a straight-on photo of a mug, along with a composite photo made up of two photos that simulate what each eye would have seen (there's a gif at the bottom that alternates between the two so that you can see the difference). The post says that adding depth cues by doing things like creating shadows, can help give an otherwise flat photo a more realistic look.

All in all, it was an interesting experience. I don't think I'd ever be able to become a model, as I really don't like people looking at me that closely, but I have a better appreciation of the skill of photographers - and the power of photoshop! I've been subscribed to /r/learnPhotoshop for a while now, but I've never really sat down and done any of the tutorials I've seen posted. I should really give it a shot!

Oh, and happy Valentine's day, everyone! I hope that you get whatever you hope to get out of it!

Porridge

For reasons that I cannot understand, given my office is staffed with seemingly fully grown adults, there is usually a pile of dishes and mugs left near the sink, despite the fact that we have two dishwashers. Some people also seem to fail to rinse the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, so they sometimes come out with bits of food still on them. There have been countless emails about how nobody's mum is going to put the dishes in the dishwasher, and we're all grown adults so we should be able to clean up after ourselves. My contribution was a picture of a sad-looking puppy with the caption "Dirty dishes make this puppy sad." Unfortunately, it hasn't done much to solve the problem, and the company decided to hire some cleaners to put the dishes in the dishwasher, and empty them.

It seems that isn't enough. Another angry email went out today, along with a photo of a couple of mugs near the sink. In reply to that, someone wrote:

"I just put the dirty dishes away.

It took me 15 minutes, which I estimate cost $50. Given that I probably don't earn as much as anyone else here, perhaps it's worth hiring a cleaner. 

Also, if you are eating porridge, you should rinse your bowl out before putting it in the dishwasher. 

If I catch anyone putting a dirty porridge bowl in the sink, I will take it out and force them to eat it with their dirty spoon."

I had heard that she (the sender) was blunt, but this was my first interaction with her. I was actually astonished that she would send out such an email. For one, that is such an aggressive email to be sending out. She's also fairly new to the company, so it's not like she has built up rapport with people to be able to say things like that. Also, seeing as I'm one of the seemingly few people who don't earn as much as she does (unlikely), I found that comment really snarky. I really doubt that she thinks she earns the least out of everyone on the floor, especially when she sees us junior people around. Given her rough estimate, she makes $249600 per year. We added the salary of all the grads and interns on our floor, and we together, the four of us don't even make that much.

Now, whenever I see her getting a coffee or something like that, I can't help but think, "Damn, well there goes another $20." I can kinda see why they don't encourage people sharing how much they get paid.

I've never really had a problem telling the other grads and interns how much I earn. I feel like we are roughly in the same bracket, although I am a year ahead of them, so it'd be understandable if I made more. I guess we just all band together. When we were rolling off the grad program, we were all just glad that someone was willing to hire us, so none of us really negotiated our salaries. Now we're all a little bit wiser, so we're trying to help each other out.

But back to the porridge. One of the senior developers on my team wants to organise a porridge day, where he will bring in a big bag of oats, and we all make porridge for breakfast. While I am usually happy to join him in office pranks, I don't think he has any idea what he's getting into. I tried very hard to discourage him, but I get the feeling that he's one of those people who hates it when someone tries to tell him what to do.

Note: When I say office pranks, I don't mean anything cruel. Some of the things I've done include: making mugs with my boss's face on them saying World's Best Boss, and organising a meeting with all the developers where we drink out of these mugs and see how long it takes him to notice; or cover someone's desk with balloons and streamers on their birthday.

I'm actually a bit worried about this developer now. I have the worst poker face, and as soon as he suggested the porridge thing, my face lit up like it was the best idea ever. I tried to suppress it, and tell him it was a terrible idea, but I'm pretty sure he knew what I was really thinking. I have the day off on Friday, so I hope he doesn't do anything stupid while I'm not there. Damn, I should have told him that I wasn't in so that he would be doubly motivated not to do anything. Oh well, since I get in before him, he should see that I'm not around, so he'll keep the oats to himself, and I'll deal with this on Monday.

Response to an Open Letter to Parents of League of Legends Player From a Dota 2 Player

Maybe because he just likes being mentioned in my blog, but maybe because he's also a secret mind reader and knew that I've been looking at crappy wedding stuff for the past hour and haven't even begun my post, but at the request of the mighty Gary Paul, I've been asked for my views on this letter: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/miscellaneous/bEhf1EPt-open-letter-to-parents-of-league-of-legends-players.

The general gist of the letter is:

Don't let your kids start playing a game of LoL if they don't have enough time to play a full game (usually 6o minutes), and if they are already in the game, don't force them to quit unless it's an emergency, because you are affecting 9 other people.

(See, this writing practice thing is helping, I managed to summarise a 529 word post in 47 words.)

GP says:

I am currently struggling to deal with the sheer level of self-delusion in that post, but as you play HoN I was curious if you had any insightful thoughts on the matter.

For those unfamiliar with LoL, Dota or HoN, the game is (typically) a match between two teams of five players. The game tries to match you up so that both teams are fairly even, so for simplicity's sake, let's just assume both teams are completely equal at the start of the match. The aim of the game is to destroy the other team's monument inside their base. In order to do this, both teams will kill non-player monsters, and players from the opposing team to get gold and experience points (EXP). The more EXP you have, the higher your level, and the stronger you become. Gold also allows you to buy items which also make you stronger. As such, this game tends to have a bit of a snowball effect, as the stronger you are, the better you are at killing monsters and other players, which means you level up and buy more stuff to get stronger, etc.

However, if an opposing player on the other team gets ahead in gold and EXP, not all is lost, because you can simply group together as a team, and take them out by sheer numbers if you co-ordinate well together. This is why teamwork is such an important skill in these games, because you can overcome uneven odds by working really well together and helping each other out.

Note: unlike in some multiplayer games, in MOBAs, if you lose a player on your team, it's not like someone else can join the game and replace that person. So if that person is gone, unless they come back within 5 minutes, they are gone for good.

So imagine you start a game, only to lose a player on your team. Through no fault of your own, you are now at a huge disadvantage, because your team only has four players, and the other team has five. The game tries to compensate for this somewhat, by having gold and EXP split between players, so with only four players, you could keep up somewhat to make up for the loss of a player. When this happens late into the game, then not only has a person been leeching EXP and gold for nothing, but it's highly likely that they had a role in the team and it will be quite difficult for another player to transition to that role. Perhaps they were the one who jumped in first to soak up the initial damage, allowing other team members to go a glass cannon role (high damage output, but low survivability). One of the remaining team members may need to sell the items they've already bought (at a 50% loss) and try to make up for the loss of that role. Not to mention the fact that the leaving team member likely died to the other team, which gives them extra gold and EXP and puts you at a further disadvantage than if they hadn't been there at all.



So to use a crappy sports analogy, imagine you are playing soccer. Except this is a special type of soccer where every time you score a goal, you run faster and kick harder, and same goes for your opponents. First team to score ten goals wins. You start the game, and you say to your friend Johnny, "I know you're really good at scoring goals, so I'm going to keep passing the ball to you so you can score." The game goes fairly well, with some good passes from your team, Johnny manages to kick seven goals, and he's running like the wind. Your team is high-fiving each other, smiles all around. Though your team also let through a few goals, so the other team has some strong players, too. You haven't kicked any yet, and you're starting to feel a bit tired as you've been running for 50 minutes now, but you only need three more goals to win.

Except what's this....? It's Johnny's mum storming angrily down the pitch. "JOHNNNNNNNNY!" She screeches in her overly nasally voice. "It's time to go to your brother's violin recital."

"But mu-um, I've only got 10 more minutes to go, and we're about to win!" Johnny pleads.

"No buts. Get in this car right now, young man!" Johnny's mum says, as she picks him up by the collar and drags him out to the car.

Your mind is numb, the thoughts slowly going through your head:

Johnny kicked all the goals.... The rest of the team, we have nothing. We have nothing. The past 50 minutes....

You hold on as well as you can, but without Johnny, you are pretty outmatched now. The faster players on their team demolish your team and they score seven easy goals.

As you walk home, you can't help but think that you outplayed the other team, you did the best that you could, but you lost because of Johnny's mum. Fuck Johnny's mum, she's such a bitch. Couldn't she have waited a few more minutes? Then you go and write an angry post masquerading as a letter on the League of Legends forum, where Johnny's mum will never find it.

---------------------------------------------

I'm not entirely sure what was self-deluded about the letter. I believe that by joining a game, you are making a commitment to the other four players on your team. Even if it turns out that the other four players on your team are sea slugs with the reaction speed of someone in a deep coma, you are still obligated to play it out (others may disagree with me on this point, I know Phrost is of the belief that if the game stops being fun, then you should stop playing it. I understand his point of view, I just disagree with it). If you know ahead of time that you will not be able to commit to a full game, then you should not join.

I've played in games where at the start of the game, a teammate has said, "I have to pick someone up in 40 minutes, so let's end this fast, OK?" So now the whole team is forced to take a much riskier strategy because of someone else's poor planning. I've played in games where we have made mistake after mistake, and are fairly far behind, only for the strongest player on the other team to leave, and we make a comeback, but it feels like a hollow victory.

Sure, it's just a game, but like any group activity, there's a group of people involved (duh). If you've made a commitment to them, unless you have a good reason, you should do your best to adhere to that commitment. I do think that parents should be more considerate about dragging their kids out of half-finished games, but I think the stronger point of the letter was that the kids should be more mindful of joining games when they know it's unlikely that they'll have time to complete them. I think it's the parents' job to teach them that.

I kinda feel like that letter should apply to life in general. Don't schedule a dinner with a friend, then, after they've travelled for 40 minutes to see you, say that you have to be somewhere else in 10 minutes, so you'll just have some water, but it was good to catch up, bye! I feel like it's really more about time management, and thinking about how your actions can affect others.

I was notorious for always showing up late for things, and I had a very bad idea of how long it really took me to travel from A to B (these things are likely related). Now that I have a couple of friends who do the same, I know how it feels to stand around for an hour and a half waiting for someone. I've become much better at planning my life (not perfect, but much better).

Well, this ended up a lot longer than I planned. TL;DR Be more considerate of your commitments to others, and also be considerate of other people's commitment to others.

(I think this is the first 1500+ word post of the year!)

Democratic Spill

Given the current political climate, I thought it'd be appropriate to finally mention a cool game I played a while ago - Democracy 3. Well, I want to preface this by saying that it wasn't the game I was expecting, and I didn't end up playing it for very long (though I eventually want to get all the achievements in the game), however, playing it gave me a better understanding for how hard it is to run a country while trying to stay elected.

You spend most of the game on this screen, which looks incredibly messy, but that's because there are so many things you need to balance in the game! 

The most important section for getting re-elected is in the middle. The bars for each category show how much that demographic like you, and the grey shading in the background shows how much of your total voters are of that demographic. 

You can also mouse-over various parts to see how they're connected to other parts. Red arrows means it has a negative effect, green arrows means it has a positive effect. Though you can't see it from the image, the faster the arrows are moving, the stronger the effect.

The way in which you influence the game is through policies which you can add/remove or alter the extremity of.

As you can see, there's an implementation time for the policy, because it takes time to introduce stuff.

Once you decide to implement it, you can see the effect it has on the different demographics, and you can adjust the slider for how extreme you want it to be, which may end up costing more money, but having a larger benefit.

So that's the gist of the game!

What have I learnt from the game? Capitalists hate me. All the time. No matter which country I play as, I usually end up with death threats from capitalists. If not them, then the religious people, or the patriots.

I really cannot cut down on welfare. It just feels wrong to me. Even though it is by far the largest expense that I have, I feel things like disability benefits are the right thing to do, even though it's hugely unpopular with my voters. That's my biggest problem with this game - I can't seem to let go of my personal beliefs when playing it (by problem, I don't mean it's a flaw in the game, I mean it's a flaw in me that makes the game more difficult than it should be). There are some policies that are completely against my values, that I can't bring myself to implement them even though it would really help my popularity with certain important demographics.

The reason the religious groups always want to murder me is probably because I am very pro-science. Well, pro-choice. I don't like policies that force people to do things. For instance, there's a policy that involves forcing very child to pray at school. I have nothing against praying, and in my yoga classes, we do a lot of meditation and spiritual things, but I don't like the idea that something is compulsory for all children. 

I guess Grad Paul was right about my political leanings, although I don't seem to be as socialist as he claims according to the in-game political compass. It's interesting to see that most of my friends also lie in the same area.

(I'm the one with the eye and the barely visible santa hat.)

Another thing that has really boosted my sympathy for the government is the implementation time of policies. I can't count the number of times I've had capitalist death threats, or had one of my capitalism-leaning ministers threaten to quit, while I have an awesome policy that'll be popular with the capitalists on its way, they just have to wait a few more quarters. It is incredibly frustrating. I can imagine it's only worse for real politicians, as in this game, my policies go through regardless of whether my cabinet supports me, but I believe in Australia, it has to be debated and voted on, and it's all about getting enough support from the others to push it through. And you also have to handle seeing yourself on the news and hearing the public's backlash firsthand. Luckily this game spares you that aspect of politics, because I don't think my skin is thick enough to handle it.

Overall, I think it's a fun game, but I don't think it has much in terms of replayability. The countries aren't all that different (though I've only played three so far: UK, Canada and Australia), and maybe because of my personal beliefs getting in the way, they always end up the same for me. Although I think there is a mode to make the starting state random (rather than based on what the creator has put in for a particular country), so I might try that some day.