Blog Wednesday

On my calendar, I have a weekly appointment, every Wednesday from 6:00 to 7:00 PM.  It says Blog.  Its been there for years…in fact, it has been more than a decade, and it might be two decades.  I started this blog, and I wanted to come once a week and write something profound…or funny, or at least entertaining.  Based on the number of readers of the blog, I would have to say that I have failed in that last.

But, I am not really here to write about my blog.  I am here to write about that appointment.  When I check my calendar, I see it, and occasionally I think that I ought to try to keep that appointment, as I am actually doing today.  Well, I have to admit that I am rather late this Wednesday, it is almost 9pm as I write this.

Then again, at least I am here writing.  That appointment has largely been ignored since I placed on my calendar, and I definitely need to put it back a bit.  I now work till 5:30, and I pick up my wife at 6pm and were lucky if we are home by 6:30.

I have just been distracted by my wife, and a pussy cat.

So, good intentions and tradition be damned.  I think that I will move the appointment to 8pm and see if I can sit down and write a little more often.

Plus, I don't really need to write every Wednesday to post to this blog.  I have 9 blog posts sitting in the wings.  The problem is that they aren't finished…well, maybe one or two of them are, but some need a lot of work.

But today I wanted to write, and then move on.

Ingress, Part 3

Finally, in part 3 I will get to my very personal thoughts on Ingress.  The game is so big and complex that is has taken me close to 1500 words to give what I still think is a fairly basic impression of the game.

I used to play Ingress harder than I do now.  I was very gung-ho in the early days.  I progressed quickly, but I tend to do that in all the games I play.

I mentioned in part 2 that Ingress is a loner game.  I'm a bit of a loner.  I started off trying to meet up with other players, and even considered attending one of the game-wide Events, when Austin was a major site.  The problem is that I have a bad back and two bad knees, so lots of walking is hard, and the events tend to involve a lot of walking, from what I've been told.

And then I got a bit disillusioned with Ingress.

My biggest problem with Ingress is that there is no permanence.  You can spend hours hacking, capturing, linking, fielding, etc. and feel really good about what you have accomplished, then go back the next day, and it is all gone.

The proper way to look at it is that the other side has now given you the opportunity to do it all over again.  And I see that, but it is still a bit depressing.  Especially, when you have setup a good farming area, and someone has taken it down, and rebuilt nothing.

Ingress is a lot of repetitive actions.  You go to portals.  You hack portals.  You link portals.  You move on to another portal.  It gets boring at times

My favorite way to play Ingress is to collect many portal keys.  I have about 300 at any given time.  Then, you sometimes get lucky as you move around hacking portals and attempting to link them, and that can be fun.

You can also go out with a specific plan about what you want to link.  I used to go out in basically a big circle around where I live and try to field the entire area.  I do not do that as often anymore, after one day when I headed out on the circle and created field after field, linking back to a portal by my house.  I had spent weeks collecting keys for that portal, as well as others nearby.  In the middle of my circuit…maybe more like three quarters of the way around, I was suddenly unable to link back to my home portal.  I found that someone had come along behind me and taken down that central portal and destroyed most of my work.

Now, you need to understand that this really had little effect on me…game-wise.  I had still earned all the points for creating all those fields, but basically, after hours of work, I was left with nothing to show for it…well, except the AP.  It was frustrating.

The game giveth, and the enemy taketh away.

I still play, but not with the fervor of the past.

Why Aude Khatru?

The story starts more than 40 years ago.  In fact it was either 1973 or 1974.  The confusion is over the year in which the list was published.  What list?  A list of the best albums of 1973.  I think it was in Playboy, and the list was probably published in early 1974.  The top three on the list were…

1. Yessongs - Yes
2. Light as a Feather - Return to Forever
3. Chicago 6 - Chicago

Chicago 6 was one of my favorite albums at the time, and I had to find the two albums that beat it out.  I headed down to my local record store, The Wherehouse.

Now, a quick aside…back in 1974, most single LPs were $3.99 at the Wherehouse.  A lot of my present collection of LPs were bought around this time, and at this price.  In a moment you will see why this is important.

I did not find a copy of Light as a Feather, and it would be a couple more years before I heard Jazz Fusion Supergroup Return to Forever, but I did find a copy of Yessongs.  The problem is that Yessongs is a triple LP, and it cost $10.99.  That sounds like very little now, but for a 17 year old who worked for $1.90/hour, that was a lot of money.  A lot of money for something I had never heard before.

But, I bought Yessongs, and from the moment I heard the strains of the Firebird Suite, which Yes used as an intro to the concerts recorded for Yessongs, I was blown away.  I had never heard anything like it, and I loved it.

I want to say that it changed my life, but other than my taste in music, I am not sure that is really true.  What I can say is that I have never lost my love for the music of Yes.

Khatru comes from the Yes song Siberian Khatru.  I use it as a mark of my love for the music of Yes.

What does Khatru mean?  Hell if I know. 

Jon Anderson, the vocalist for Yes, who wrote the lyrics, said that it meant "as you wish" in Yemeni.  Yemeni isn't actually a language, at best it is an Arabic dialect, and Khatru does not seem to have a meaning anyone can pin down.

Many years ago, my wife found a website that said that Khatru meant Mongoose in Egyptian, or something like that.  I do not remember exactly, and I can no longer find the website.

So, back to the question, what does Khatru mean?  Khatru means, one who considers the group Yes to be important enough to his life to take a word from a song and use it as part of his online name.

That leaves us with Aude.

Aude is a department in southern France.  When I went to France in 1976, Carcassonne in Aude was the first city where I lived.  The river Aude flows north from the Pyrenees and turns east in Carcassonne before heading out to the Mediterranean.  I spent a month or two in the small town of Limoux, which is also on the Aude.

In latin, Aude means dare, as part of the phrase "Sapere Aude" from the First Book of Letters by the Roman poet Horace.  It is my understanding that this is the origin of the French word "audace"  and the English "audacity."

That isn't why I picked it, but I like it.

Then recently, I found that Aude is also a french feminine name.  I don't remember meeting anyone named Aude while I was in France, but I didn't meet more than a few hundred French during my two years, so I may have been unlucky, or it may have been more commonly used since.  This has nothing to do with why I picked it, and it doesn't matter to me now.

Oh, and Aude is pronounced "ode."  Just like the type of laudatory poem.

So, that is why Aude Khatru, or more commonly, AudeKhatru.

Ingress, Part 2

Okay, so previously I gave a primer on Ingress, and now it is time to go into a bit deeper detail.

If you get into Ingress, you will learn that there is a big story that goes with the game, and that has been playing out for the last five and half years.  Niantic has tried to engage the players by creating a story that is pushed forward by periodic videos that often look like News Reports.  During those five and half years many things have been added to game, both story and mechanics.  You will learn all about that if you play, and you won't care much if you don't

So, the game actually plays like this.  You drive around to different portals and hack them, and then attempt to link them to other portals.  Now, you do not do the hacking and linking while moving…at least  you shouldn't, and in Austin, Texas, where I live, it is actually against the law (no hand held devices while driving).

Portals are far enough apart that you will almost certainly have to drive to find more than a few.  The game really should play out by driving to an area, parking your car and then walking around to hack all the nearby portals. 

As an example, there are at least a dozen portals within a mile of my house.  However, there are only two  within 200 yards of my house, so it depends on how far you want to walk.  I find that most people drive into an area with a lot of portals, and then walk to hack those portals.  Some parks and churches will have several portals in a small area, so it becomes easy to hack many portals with minimal effort.

Ingress is largely a loner game, but not necessarily a lonely game.  You go out hacking when you have time, and that often means you do it alone.  You don't need other people to play the game.  However, there is a Comm function in the game that allows you to talk to other players.  It can be filtered to your Faction and a distance, so you can talk to local players on your side.  That means you can find other players near by and work together. 

The Austin Ingress community is pretty good, and the Austin Enlightened group even has a webpage, and they use Google+ and Slack to communicate outside the game.  This allows the local group to coordinate efforts and create local events.  There are also game wide events, which center on specific cities around the world, usually a few major sites, and then more minor sites.  Hundreds of people meet up and compete for the day.

Lastly, one of the things I like best is that while the Resistance and Enlightened are rivals, there is no real animosity between the factions.  Though the ingame story pits them as rivals struggling to control the destiny of mankind, the players are just playing a game and having fun.  That is probably the best thing about Ingress.

Five and a half years and still going strong.

Ingress

I've been playing Ingress for four years, and I suppose it is time that I said something about it.  If you want a less personal view on what Ingress is, head over to Wikipedia.  The article there pretty good though completely cold and impersonal.

Ingress is an Augmented Reality Science Fiction game.  Here's the story, more or less, as the game creators would tell it.

In 2012, along with finding the Higgs Boson, the scientists at CERN also found something called Exotic Matter (XM).  What Exotic Matter is, is hard to describe, but it is pouring in through portals, and it can be used to effect the minds of human beings.

A small company developed a scanner than runs on a smartphone that can detect XM.  The scanner can also be used to capture the portal, and to hack the portal.  Other information has come out slowly, about a mysterious alien race called the Shapers.

The Shapers said that they had come to help human kind take the next step in their evolution.  Some believed the Shapers and called themselves the Enlightened.  Others think that the Shapers are coming to conquer and called themselves the Resistance.

And that defines the choice you make when you enter the game.  You must choose a side, Resistance or Enlightened…Blue or Green?

As far as game play is concerned, it is that simple.  Either the portals you capture turn blue, or they turn green.

The game is actually scored by Mind Control Units…sounds ominous doesn't it?

After you capture portals, you try to link the portal to other portals.  Do I need to say that you can only link to portals of the same color? 

So, the process goes like this.  You use your scanner to hack a portal.  You have to be close to the portal to hack it or capture it.  When you hack the portal you get gear.  The two most important pieces of gear are resonators and portal keys.  You capture a portal by putting a resonator on the portal.  You use the portal key to link another portal to the one you have a key for.

So, restarting the process from the beginning, and assuming you found an unclaimed portal.  You hack the portal for gear.  Then you use the resonator you just got to capture the portal.  Actually, you have to put 8 resonators on the portal to fully activate it.  And, we will assume you got a portal key for it.  Then you travel to another portal, repeat the process and then you can link portal 2 back to portal 1.

Unfortunately, you still haven't made any points for your team, though you will have gained Agent Points (AP).  Quick aside, I have heard them called Access Points as well, but I would swear that they were called Agent Points when I joined.  The player is an Agent of either the Resistance or the Enlightened.  AP are basically the experience points of Ingress, and they work pretty much like XP in every other game ever created.  AP is how you level up, and there are perks as you level up to max at level 16.

Next, you would go to a third portal and claim that.  Now, if you have three portals and a key for each portal, you can now link them in a triangle.  This creates a field.  Technically, the name is a Mind Control Field.  That's right, this is where the Mind Control Units come from.  The field gets a value, Mind Units (MU), which, at least supposedly has to do with the number of people who might be affected by the field.  Larger areas have more MU, but more densely populated areas have more MU.  A field covering part of the inner city would have very high MU, while a much larger area out in the country would probably have fewer.

There is more to the game, but this is the basics.  You can work with other agents in your area to create larger fields, and to cover more of your city with fields.  You can even work with far away agents to cover whole states.  There have even been links across the Atlantic.

This post has gone on long enough, and I haven't really said anything about what I think about the game.  So, stay tuned for a future post with impressions, and maybe a little more about the reality of game play.

Never Trust Barbeque Sauce

That's right, never trust barbeque sauce.

And, if you have to trust barbeque sauce, wear a red shirt.

That is today's wisdom, and here in Texas, that's important wisdom, because if you do not know the wiliness of barbeque sauce, then you are lost.

And, never trust anyone who was born after the Beatles came to America, 1964.  If they weren't born by then they are too young to really understand the important things in life.  I may only have been seven, but I remember...well, I had older sisters.

There is only one Star Trek, the original.  It isn't Star Trek: TOS, it is just Star Trek, the first, the original, the one that doesn't have to have a subtitle.  I remember watching it first run, I was 9...at the start of the first season.  I had to beg my Mom and Dad to let me stay up late every Thursday, because it ran 30 minutes past my bedtime.

I remember the moon landing in 1969.

I didn't trust the president then, and I don't trust the president now.  Then it was Tricky Dick, and now it is Cadet Bone Spur.  One was a dishonest politician, and the other is...should I be nice, or use the "m" word?

In fact, it is a bad idea to trust any kind of sauce.  They sit there on your plate, looking longingly at your shirt.  I can just imagine the bits of sauce yelling up from the plate at the sauce on your fork...

"Jump!  Go on!  Do it!  Shirt! Shirt! Shirt!"

And then cheering when their fellow sauce bit hits your shirt.

Have I rambled on long enough?  No, let's keep going.

Remember to pet your dog and kick your cat.   No!  Wait!  Not kick, what's the word I am looking for...stroke, yes, that's it.  Start over.

Remember to pet your dog and stroke your cat.  It doesn't take red sauce stains off your shirt, but you'll smile and you won't care as much.

And now, take a deep breath.  And another...now cough, you know you want to, and now get up and get another soda from the kitchen.

And remember....

Never trust barbeque sauce.

HP Elite X2

My work gave me one of these a couple of weeks back, and so I thought I would give an early review.  In case you cannot tell from the picture, the Elite X2 is a lot like the Surface Pro...the latest one.  I'm not sure what number they are up to, and I don't care.

It's a tablet with a detachable keyboard.  The keyboard is much like the Surface, in that part of can cling (probably magnetically) to the lower edge of the tablet, the part below the actual screen.  This gives it that desired ergonomic, slanted keyboard.  

Now, I have tested a recent Surface with the slanted keyboard, and I did not really like it.  The keyboard is not supported between the screen and the front edge, and on the Surface, this makes the keyboard bounce in a way that I found...disconcerting.  I had an original Surface RT, where the keyboard rested flat on the table or desk, and I got used to the flat keyboard.  I did not really like the new Surface TypeCover for extended typing.

But, you should note the silver upper side (I keep having to avoid the word "surface" to avoid confusion), which is a bit sturdier than the plastic upper side of the Surface TypeCover.  I don't know if it is metal or what, but it is a bit stiffer than the TypeCover, and so typing this review on it is not disconcerting in the same way as the Surface TypeCover.

So, I like the keyboard.  It should be said that I really like laptop keyboards.  I love the feel of not having to move the key more than the tiniest bit.  I feel like I type faster, even though I have no objective proof to back that up.

The screen is very bright, and extremely sharp.  It is a 12 inch screen with 1920 x 1280 resolution, and that is the first problem...at least for me.  That is an extremely high resolution for a 12 inch screen.  That is the same as the resolution on my 24" monitor.  Everything is very small, and for a 61 year old man with less than perfect eyesight, that is a bit much.  And, as anyone who has used an LCD knows...well, at least the ones who have tried to lower the resolution, things can get a bit fuzzy if you lower the resolution.  There are other ways to effect changes in the size of text on the screen, but even they are less than ideal.

I feel like this resolution is a downside to this device.

I like the pen, but I have to admit that I have not used it much.  The kickstand works well, though I have not had a real need to adjust it from a single position.  The kickstand has a first position with what I would call a soft lock.  When you push it out, it goes out a bit and stops.  This position is good for typing.  There is no click at the stop, but the resistance gets stronger, and from that point it simply requires a little more pressure to move it along until the screen is nearly level with the desk surface.  This makes it very easy to snap the kickstand out for writing, and then you can adjust it for other things you might be doing with your Elite.

There is a tiny problem with the keyboard, but it is how close it sits to the bottom of the Windows desktop.  It makes it difficult to touch the icons on the Taskbar.  It is about the smallest of problems, but I am trying to be thorough. 

I have not had a chance to check out the Bang & Olufsen speakers.  Speakers can be a problem in a work environment, especially when you work in a cube with others in close proximity. 

I like the Elite X2.  A while back, I looked at the Spectre X2, which is the consumer version of the Elite.  Now, I want the Spectre, which should have most of the same features at a better price...at least I hope so.