My little secret - Mark Boulton

A black belt is a big aim in train­ing for kar­ate. I had worked damn hard for many years to get mine. Then things start to get a bit more intern­ally focussed. You train for you, not the next belt. After ten years of belt chas­ing, this was a bit of a change in mind set and, in truth, I never adapted. 
via markboulton.co.uk

...seems it isn't confined to art or games, the problem of grasping how to do something for yourself, and not the next shiny Achievement.

Which makes me feel slightly bad about how marketing is really moving towards building Achievement systems into everything. But at the same time, it works. Alas!

Maybe the problem is that when it comes down to it, people tend to prefer the safety of following a path, or being led, to the responsibility that comes with freedom of choice.

A Sandwich, A Wallet, and Elizabeth Taylor's Cousin | 43 Folders

THE MORAL(S)?

  1. The Sandwich Guy can’t do much for you until you’re hungry enough to really want a sandwich.
  2. Once you’re hungry enough, you still have to pay money for the sandwich. This won’t not come up.
  3. Few people become “a good customer” without understanding both 1 and 2.
  4. Few companies become “a smart business” without understanding 1, 2, and 3.
  5. Basing his business on an understanding of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 doesn’t make The Sandwich Guy a dick; it makes him a smart business.
via 43folders.com

Ostensible Customer. That's a very good name.

The Artificial Ape a.k.a. Once You Start Seeing Parallels in Virtual Environments, You Can't Stop

There may, in fact, be a choice to be made. Although Robin Torrence is right to contrast the flexible responses of people in resource-rich, unpredictable environments with the highly logistical survival routines of those in high-latitude, harsh environments, the correlation is only general. As the archaeologist Everett Bassett has pointed out, the farther north or south you get, the more risk-reduction strategies are forced to diverge. The orthodox strategy is to become ever more specialized, going big on sleds, kayaks, harpoons, fall-traps, summer gear, winter gear, big-game gear, small trapping gear, and so on. As things become harder to find and hunt, water and wind get colder, and light and dark shift from a twenty-four-hour cycle to a twelve-month alternation. Investment in the insulating, adaptive technology is attractive. This is the "life-pod" approach, where getting food and staying warm are guaranteed by technological fixes at every point. The alternative strategy is a dramatic opposite and involves extreme opportunism. It is unorthodox, because in such demanding environments you need to be really good, divesting yourself of every encumbrance for maximum flexibility, weighing energy costs with potential risks at every moment. In the orthodox case it can be fatal if the gear fails, in the unorthodox case, if you do.

[...]

Perhaps this explains the expedient technology of the Tasmanians. Instead of sitting down for a long time to make a complex tool that you might lose or damage, you hardly break stride to knap a sandstone blade edge and deal with that seal. The Tasmanians were highly skilled land hunters, yet they used neither spear thrower nor stone-tipped projectiles. They did not have ground stone tools because grinding stone is very laborious, whereas efficient knapping can be a matter of a few highly skilled strikes. Everything was quick, and replicable. If a blade was lost, you made another one, or picked up an old one and refreshed the edge. Being without clothes reduced your other possessions, so that what you owned was yourself. Entailment was minimized. This was Hermann Buhl's logic on Nanga Parbat: not naked, but with an absolute minimum of gear. It could be described as reverse entailment.

The Artificial Ape
Timothy Taylor

The basic premise of The Artificial Ape is that technology has evolved us, as much as we've evolved it. The technologies we've come up with present a third force, together with environmental/natural selection, and culture, that are even now changing how humans evolve. We're smaller and weaker than our ancestors, simply because with the technologies we have at hand now, we don't need to be larger, or stronger, or even the same as they were. It's a fascinating book, and very persuasively argued.

However, as nuggets are wont to do, this is where I tangent off from what Taylor talks about. Reading the two quoted paragraphs above, I couldn't help but feel as if he were describing World of Warcraft (orthodox) and Guild Wars (unorthodox) in anthropological terms, with going big on specialised technologies being the veritable smorgasboard of add-ons available for WoW, vs GW's very, very minimalist, pared-down system. The statement, 'In the orthodox case it can be fatal if the gear fails, in the unorthodox case, if you do.' was the nail in the coffin - or the icing on the cake, if you prefer.

The second paragraph also rings very true for me when juxtaposing these two MMOs. Many's the WoW-player I've heard lament in GW that 'there's nothing to DO at 20!' There is - but it's all about yourself. What you own is... yourself. There's no sense of, 'Oh I should be raiding now, I need more stuff so I can get more stuff...' GW gives you an immense amount of freedom in terms of deciding what you want your endgame to be about - and it's that exact freedom that can lead to people not knowing what to do, just like how it's easier to create a project if you're told the goal and purpose, rather than being just told to go and do whatever you like.

I'm not trying to say that one type of design is necessarily better than the other - just that they're different, and work along different lines.

I hope ArenaNet remembers that, while they develop Guild Wars 2.

Stephen Fry on Catholicism, from the Intelligence Squared debate.

via youtube.com

Wonderful (and funny, of course) speech on why the Catholic Church is not a force for good.

Particularly amusing to the nugget:

It's the strange thing about this (Catholic) church, it is obssessed with sex. Absolutely obssessed.

Now they will say that we with our permissive society, and our rude jokes are obssessed.

No - we have a healthy attitude, we like it, it's fun, it's jolly, because it's a primary impulse, it can be dangerous and dark and difficult. It's a bit like food in that respect, only even more exciting.

The only people who are obssessed with food are anorexics, and the morbidly obese. And that in erotic terms is the Catholic church, in a nutshell.

Saved By the Kittehs! Sort of.

Note to self: When giving a friend a furry Domokun bag as a present, do not leave your house keys in said bag. Take particular care not to do so when said friend is in another country, which you are only visiting temporarily. If you fail to follow this note, the following may result...

Tired nugget waddles along in cab queue after 12 hour (transit included) flight from Oz.

Tired nugget feels around in bag for keys.

Horror dawns upon the nugget of tiredness. There are no keys. THERE IS NO SPOON!

O.o

NOOOOOOOO!

Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit.

People in queue begin to look at nugget strangely. Nugget ignores them and proceeds to grope both bags in fashion worthy of John Wilmot. People begin to move away from a nugget. Nugget ignores them and continues to grope baggies all the way to the cab... and back home.

Where the nugget admits defeat, and the fact that while there are indeed keys to the abode of the nugget, they are most certainly over thaar. In Australia.

*DING!*

The nugget remembers that the cat-sitter has extra keys! All that has to be done is to call her and pick them up! Yippeh!

...only of course, the nuggetphone is in the nuggetabode. Because the nugget sekritly hates bringing her phone anywhere, and she most certainly does not bring it overseas.

Patheticnug begs Kind Cab Driver for use of his cellphone. Patheticnug then proceeds to call kittehsitter! Who of course, does not answer. After manee manee calls, plus a poke at the pager, Patheticnug gives up, and gives Kind Cab Driver the only residential address she knows in this, her home country. (Yeah, yeah, I know just ONE.) For reasons that shall not be detailed herein, Patheticnug does not expect a warm welcome at said address, in fact, Patheticnug is not sure she will have enough welcome to even crash for the night on the floor, and pick up Kitteh Sitter Keys from Kitteh Sitter in the morning. Nonetheless, onwards!

Patheticnug then explains to Kind Cab Driver that should lodgings not be available at the given address, he should drive her back to her Nugabode which she Cannot Enter, and she will sit outside for the night.

Kind Cab Driver stares at Patheticnug, and it's clear that what he's actually seeing is Insanug. -_- He then suggests that Insanug might like to get a room at a cheap hotel in the area of given Address of Unwelcome, rather than sitting outside of the inaccessible Nugabode all night. Insanug is wildly grateful, the thought not having even started to grow within the juiciness of her now somewhat soggy batter.

Just then, the phone ringz! Aha! It is the colleague of Kitteh Sitter who, upon being informed of Insanug's tragic situation, doth report that illness has descended upon Kitteh Sitter, who may not answer her cellphone, but Insanug is welcome to the number with good wishes attached!

Alas, Kitteh Sitter, she does not answer.

Sadly does the Insanug instruct Kind Cab Driver to continue upon his way towards the Address of Unwelcome.

But then does the Supreme Bean smile down upon the Insanug, for before her conveyance doth reach the Address of  Unwelcome, the Kitteh Sitter responds!

WHEE! And so it's off to the other side of the island, where keys are picked up, Kitteh Sitter is heartily thanked, Kind Cab Driver is heartily tipped, SplattedNug is delivered home, and Kind Cab Driver is also heartily thanked, and paid (of course).

And thus does end, happily ever after, the tale of How the Kittehs Saved the Nugget.

-_- And next year, you can be sure I'll check that I have my damn keys before leaving for my flight.