Fugu Talk

Through the magic of Facebook I’ve reconnected with some of my classmates from Iowa City West High School (which I’ve noticed is convenient name, as I found some document frames at Staples already containing a “West High School” diploma). I’ve found it interesting to see many are still attached to the city and have stayed there or returned there. I guess I wasn’t really there long enough to bond with the place – just my high school years – so when I returned for my 10th year high school reunion I hardly recognized the area.

But living in the LA area has accentuated some fond Iowa memories. For one thing, I remember in downtown Iowa City, cars would always stop for pedestrians crossing the street, wherever they happened to cross. So it’s a miracle that I didn’t end up on a windshield when I went to Boston for college (that actually happens to a few freshmen every year). And once while I trudged to school, a driver stopped and offered me a ride. Which I took. Around here, that would result in an Amber Alert.

Of course, it’s been a while, and things may have changed. But I suspect not a lot. When I drove back there for my tenth year reunion, I stayed overnight at a hotel by a truck stop cafe, and when I ordered breakfast my brain misfired and I requested hash browns instead of what I meant, corned beef hash. The waitress asked “Just hash browns?”, and when I confirmed, returned with a heaping plate of hash browns, enough for more than a meal. And the check listed $.99. Maybe the waitress figured I was an impoverished foreign student. Anyway, best plate of hash browns I ever had.

A while back, Goodreads changed their Terms of Service to include one of those all-encompassing indemnification clauses that I detest. When I complained about it on one of the Goodreads groups, a member asked me to explain the issue “in layman’s terms”. Now, that’s a problem if web site users are implicitly agreeing to a contract without the ability to understand it.

Some sites don’t have this broad indemnification clause, e.g. Twitter, Facebook and last I checked, TripAdvisor (this clause is particularly disquieting on a site that relies on user-written reviews, so it’s disappointing that Goodreads has it – what if someone sues Goodreads because they don’t like a book review you wrote? Don’t laugh – it happens on Tripadvisor)

I can mostly avoid sites with that indemnification clause (I stuck with Goodreads, but limit myself to just rating rather than reviewing books). It’s hard to avoid using Google, though, which uses this clause on everything including YouTube. So I was hoping that Vimeo had something better, especially since I just noticed that Vimeo now works on the iPhone and iPad. My hopes are dashed, but they deserve kudos for putting a “Vimeo Speaks” column of explanatory text alongside the TOS legalese. Here’s their indemnification clause in “layman’s terms”:

Before I go to sleep, I try to recount my accomplishments for the day. Sort of a personal scrum meeting. Also, it helps avoid insomnia. I won’t inflict that on you readers in the form of daily blogs (that’s what Facebook statuses are for), but it’s been a busy month, so I’ll list the highlights:

• Got an iPad. I considered waiting until my birthday (that’s how I rationalized getting my first MacBook Pro), but I felt I should get a move on in updating my iPhone apps. Besides, they were in stock at the Apple Store.
• Updated HyperBowl for the iPad. Not too bad – it took a couple of days, got rejected because now it needs to support multiple orientations (at least upside-down), resubmitted, and got accepted.
• Filed my taxes. I actually start in December, filling it in and itemizing deductions over the months until I can’t stand it anymore. I always leave some money on the table in return for keeping some last bit of sanity. It’s a fair trade, I think.
• Celebrated my birthday by spending a couple of days in San Clemente to relax. Instead of visiting the beach, I raided the local used book store, Mathom House Books. Picked up a dozen sci-fi novels.
• Updated the individual HyperBowl lane apps for the iPad.
• Dropped by the doc for a periodic blood test. Whereupon they called me up and said they got the results and I needed to come in immediately. Whereupon they said, never mind, sorry about that.
• Watched the season DVD set of Breaking Bad.
• Watched the season 2 Blue-Ray set of Sarah Connor Chronicles.
• Updated Fugu Bowl for the iPad.
• Brought my car in for an oil change. Good news is I only drove a thousand miles since my last oil change five months ago. Bad news is I still ended up spending three hundred dollars.
• Caught up on Flash Forward on the iPad using the ABC Player.
• Caught up on Lost on the iPad using the ABC Player.
• Did some major work on Blue Mars. You’ll see it in the next beta release.

Now I need to get going on the next set of iPad releases. But first, I’m going to start catching up on Caprica episodes…

I’m a proponent of trip reports. They force you to think about what you saw at the conference, the company gets more for their money if you disseminate the information, and it will allay your coworkers’ suspicions that you spent the whole time partying.

Since I’m self-employed and paid my own way, and I didn’t really spend much time at GDC, it’s not quite so useful for me to give a trip report, but I’ll do it anyway.

First, let’s get the conference part out of the way. I primarily went there to network and had a nice dinner in Chinatown with developers from my client (Avatar Reality, the developer of the virtual world Blue Mars) and a croissant with the head of the charity Get Well Gamers.

I only went to the expo for a few hours, and I will repeat my annual complaint that CMP is really milking the event, selling only a three-day expo pass for $250, and it was an unpleasant surprise to find they were not accepting IGDA discounts for on-site registration (the people at the desk didn’t seem to know what IGDA was). I stopped by the IGDA booth and they seemed surprised, too. I generally don’t consider splurging for the whole conference package because, 1) I tend to fall asleep in talks and 2) again they’re milking it, charging separately for the “Mobile Summit”, etc. I remember in my dot-com days that Java One was expensive, too, but once you paid for it, you got the whole conference.

The expo seemed smaller than the last time I went two years ago, and I wouldn’t say there’s a lot new, except two of the middleware packages I use, Unity and Scaleform had more sizeable presences than two years ago, and their reps looked really busy. At the Unity booth, I had a nice talk with the dimeRocker folks and fellow Unity developer Jonathan Czeck of Graveck (it’s always fun talking to other engineers – with marketing, it’s a toss-up, sometimes they’re cool, sometimes they stand there looking bored until someone with an expensive suit shows up). Aside from that, noticed there were a lot of companies offering virtual currency solutions and a pretty cool VR input device that resembled a giant hamster ball.

Aside from that, I eschewed the parties (my return flight seemed to full of hung-over game developers) and checked out the town. Some observations: City Lights Bookstore is a pretty nice bookstore – it doesn’t seem to have any computer books, but there’s a decent sci-fi section. The Crocker Galleria isn’t what it used to be, apparently hit hard by the doldrums of the Financial District. Beard Papa Sweets are tasty. So was the chocolate place next door. Considering the frequency of rain in San Francisco, you’d think some place around the Moscone would sell umbrellas. Smoking is prevalent – get caught walking behind a smoker and you’ll get a lungful. The Museum of Crafts and Folk Art is small, but it’s got a cool gift shop (some carving are from an astrophysics grad student in Arizona). Food in San Francisco is expensive. The Filoli Gardens is amazing. Joy Luck Place in San Mateo has excellent dim sum (I hear Martin Yan of Yan Can Cook goes there). HyperBowl is back in the Metreon and in excellent condition, although it costs $5 per play. Every block in San Francisco, you’ll see Asian faces – yet in Monk, one of my favorite San Francisco shows, I only recall seeing Asians as a laundress and Chinatown gang members. I don’t know if I saw any Chinatown gang members, but I did see a lot of tourists and touristy shops. I have to admit, I bought some touristy stuff – a fan and an abacus. It’s research (think iPhone/iPad app  – I’m serious!).

This weekend, thanks to Daylight Savings Time, I instantly moved ahead in time one hour. After watching Lost this season, I was disappointed the experience wasn’t accompanied by a blinding flash of light. But it did make me think of some time travel stories that have made an impression on me:

• This year, of course, it’s Lost, that somehow keeps a story that looks like it’s going to veer out of control moving along and constantly suspenseful. The biggest mystery – did the writers plan this all along or were they making it up?
• A Sound of Thunder – the original Ray Bradbury story, not the movie. Gives the “butterfly effect” a whole new meaning.
• Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
• Timecop – when will Van Damme receive his lifetime achievement award?
• The Robert Heinlein story in which a man travels back in time and fathers himself
• The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode in which the crew travels back to Roswell
• The Star Trek: Next Generation episode in which Data’s detached head is unearthed
• The Futurama episodes that riff on the previous three
• The Terminator
• The Sarah Connor Chronicles – it’s got enough going on that it deserves to be separated from the movies

While watching Freaks and Geeks on DVD recently, all the references to drinking “pop” brought back a bit of nostalgia for the Midwest. I just say “soda” now, or more often, specifically a Coke, Pepsi, or occasionally a Jarritos. I wish, just once, I’d ordered a “tonic” in Boston, but never tried it. If you want to order carbonated beverages in a knowledgable manner around the country and around the world, check the Wikipedia article.

Coincidentally, I just found this can of Pepsi that I left in the freezer – it puts the “pop” in pop.

I hate flying partly due to the uncomfortable seats and stale air, but largely because it’s just uncivilized. On a typical trip, chances are I’ll see travelers cutting in line, rude TSA personnel, surly airline employees waiting for their company to merge with another airline and its own surly employees, passengers who want to exchange seats, and I just noticed recently, there are a lot of guys who don’t wash their hands when leaving an airport bathroom (now that’s a biological threat)

Occasionally, I’ve observed behavior so bizarrely rude that it’s entertaining. On a recent flight, a passenger across the aisle leaned over and placed her drinks on my tray table. (my first reaction – how did she get two orange juices? And then, heeey!) Then there was that lady who killed time as our plane was stuck on the tarmac by clipping her toenails. And the couple who insisted on sitting on both sides of me and then spent the entire flight passing items in front of me.

But I don’t travel that much. Googling “airline horror stories” turns up quite a bit. My favorite (found on Yelp) – a first class passenger so incensed that coach passengers were deplaning first that he exited via the emergency slide. So I understand why those auto execs travelled by corporate jet. But really, since they were attending the same meeting, couldn’t they have shared a ride?

A surprise discovery during my stay in Waikiki last week - Origamido, a gallery on the second floor of the International Marketplace that showcases some marvelous origami works. Besides picking up some how-to DVD’s and a book from the store, I watched a fascinating documentary, Between the Folds, which spans origami artists ranging from Michael LaFosse of this gallery to French artists who crumple rather than fold to a 20-year old MIT professor who received a MacArthur “genius” grant.

I recently returned from my fourth trip to Waikiki. Some like the sun and surf – me, I like the food. I’ve got a few favorite eateries in the area by now, such as Ono Cheesesteak (breakfast sandwich with a cup of Kona coffee for $2.95), Jimbo’s  for Japanese noodles, and Fatty’s Chinese Fast Food (where you sit on a stool around an old-fashioned wok kitchen) in the International Marketplace.

Among new places, I tried a Puka Dog, also in the marketplace, with garlic mustard and pineapple relish.

And on the higher end of the scale, uni “sea urchin” pasta at Taormina.

The problem with vacations is I always need a vacation after the vacation. No exception with my recent Vegas trip – I’m still trying to get back into work mode!

I always have mixed feelings about Las Vegas – like, drive there or fly? A drive would take at least five hours, and the last time I drove, I stopped at a hotel on the way back after two hours on the road because I was just too tired. A Jet Blue flight from Long Beach is typically just 45 minutes. But it’s $200 round trip, and my last two flights there had five hour delays. At least the airline gave us some flight credits.

And then there’s Vegas itself. Where the posh meets the crass. For posh, you can’t beat the new Encore. It opened just before Christmas (with some excellent promotional rates below $200/night), so I probably stayed in a room that had never been used, the 700+ square foot room had a large TV swivelling between the bedroom and living room area, the bathroom had a separate shower and deep tub and small TV, everything from the drapes and lights to the privacy indicator was controlled by a bedside panel, maid service came twice a day, and, a nice little touch, one of the alarm clocks was an iHome that let me recharge my iPod.

The luxurious experience was only tarnished, while I soaked in the tub, by rowdy teenage girls banging on the door to the next room, while some kids in the room yelled at each other “don’t let those little bitches in”. And that was their more polite talk. They only quieted down after their parents returned from their gambling binge at 1am, and then it was all “hi mom, hi dad, goodnight mom, goodnight dad”. I considered blasting the Chinese movie channel at them for the rest of the night but instead got the very helpful and friendly desk people to get me a new room.

I met another vulgar group in the elevator at the nearby Palazzo, also one of the more ritzy hotels. As these guys took turns crudely discussing female anatomy while there were other women in the elevator with us, I flashed to the Mad Men episode where Don Draper, in a similar situation, grabbed the hat off one cad and said “take your hat off in front of a lady”. That was pretty cool, I thought, as I exited the elevator without saying anything. I guess I’m no Don Draper. Later, in a Seinfeldian moment, I entered an empty, farty-smelling elevator only to have it stop on another floor where a good-looking woman entered. What was I going to say – it wasn’t me? Jerry Seinfeld would have – to no avail, or course. Oh well, I guess I’m no Jerry Seinfeld, either.