Kai34's Xanga

Life Lessons from Video Games

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:33:33 GMT

"In the time of gathering together, we should make no arbitrary choice of the way. --I Ching

Like most little boys, I grew up with a fascination with war movies and war games. I think that gusto for conflict has been around since time immemorial. What is unique about our generation is we were around for the advent of the real time strategy game (RTS). I know that sounds hyperbolic but hear me out.

Early iterations of RTS, like Dune 2 and Warcraft 1, were groundbreaking in that they showed computer processing power was finally at a level where 200+ units could be represented in way that was graphically and behaviorally adequate. This is something earlier contests, whether computer games, board games, or sports, could not emulate. You now could participate in conflicts of a completely different scale. Concepts like advantages of position, numerical superiority, resource management could actually be played out in a way that mattered far more. Unfortunately, these games were single player. You played alone against computer AI and the save/load feature made it so you could rewind time. Everyone was a strategic genius b/c save/load allowed you to rewind time and make every decision optimally.

Warcraft II popularized multiplayer RTS. I remember the first time I ever played multiplayer--against my friend Remy--and he totally kicked my ass. Things were pretty hard with no save/load. Not being able to rely on save/load really highlighted to me the importance of understanding and manipulating the temporal and the dynamic. Since battles could not be replayed and units lose or gain strength over time, you had to make decisions about when to fight and when to play for time.

These concepts have really stayed with me. I use them at work, I use them in my relationships, I use them when managing my finances. Take for instance, work. There are many opportunities to take on somewhat trivial projects that nevertheless put you in the limelight. To me, this is like the footman rush in Warcraft III. You make a bunch of low quality units early and hope to overwhelm your opponent. If, however, he survives the rush, your opponent can win later with technologically superior units. The analog in work would be to work on more important, less immediately pressing projects. The risk in that is that other guy who took the crappy but more flashy project may have consolidated enough political capital and authority such that it doesn't matter what you do in the future.

Relationships. I used to think if you liked a girl, you just walked up to her and said "I like you." Then, I learned about the dynamic nature of a girl's affections. They're constantly in flux, sometimes high, sometimes low. You want to wait for that magic moment, the golden window. It's like that moment in Dota where the other team has been beating the hell out of you, but you somehow win a team fight. Positionally, you've been weaker all game but you now have an opportunity to permanently change the status quo. Good players are always biding their time, able to recognize those moments and capitalize on them. They can read the flow of the battle. Like sharks in the water, they can sense the
"Oh shit!" moment. It's like this in group debates. One guy might be dominating the conversation. He's got some momentum from some good points he made earlier. You disagree but it's a bad time to debate with him when he's got that momentum. Your arguments become much more effective when he's lost some of that, when he's talked so much the group is starting to tune him out. That's your "oh shit" moment.

The most influential book I've read in the last two years was Mao: A Life. His entire being was governed by these ideas and he carved a future out for both himself and his people. Being able to read disparities in strength, having the patience and wisdom to mitigate or exacerbate them using timing. These are very simple, basic ideas but just like the harmonic scale is a relatively simple idea, the music that has and can be created from them is... endless.

Van Jones

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:15:46 GMT

This guy actually spoke at Solaria. I didn't like him. He knew far less about PV than his influence would suggest. We need real leaders not demagogues.

Larry David, what the hell have you done?

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:16:59 GMT

Seinfeld first introduced us to neurosis as comedy. Gilmore Girls somehow took that and convinced females between the ages of 15 and 45 that men find neurotic behavior disarmingly cute. "Hi, I'm a girl and I have some mind-bogglingly inane fetish that people will use to one-dimensionally represent me. Find me winsome and charming!"

Why on earth would you think being more psychotic than you already are is a good thing?

English Patient / Grey

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:53:02 GMT

Betrayals during war are childlike compared with our betrayals during peace. New lovers are nervous and tender, but smash everything. For the heart is an organ of fire.

We die, we die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have entered and swum up like rivers, fears we have hidden in, like this wretched cave. We are the real countries, not the boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. I know you will come and carry me out into the palace of winds. That's all I've wanted — to walk in such a place with you, with friends, on earth without maps.

I picked up a stray kitten 2 weeks ago. Never thought I'd have a pet, much less a cat, but I really liked Grey. Affectionate, intelligent, well-behaved. I stayed out too late Friday night. When I came back, he was gone.

Last night, I rewatched the English Patient with my roommates. It's always been one of my favorite films but I haven't seen it since college. It was a lot more poignant after my experiences these last few years. What the movie highlights well, maybe b/c of the wartime setting, is the impermanence of everything. In the peace time First World, we are able, as much as possible, to establish a feeling of continuity. Something about our psychological makeup needs that. Maybe it's b/c we're eternal creatures.

It's all an illusion though. This life is a series of chance encounters. Some simply pass by, other change us absolutely and irrevocably. We wish these would remain forever but just as abruptly as they come, so too can they leave. They are as finite as our lifespans.

What I've learned: treasure the moment. It's all we have. If you see a chance at happiness, grab it. When it leaves, do not overly mourn for it is the nature of things. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Rich Mullins

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:13:49 GMT

Anybody know Rich Mullins's story? It's incredibly sad. I used to think his songs were crap, lol. But there was one I heard on the radio on the way to Seattle that really moved me. B/c it was his life.

I would always be frustrated with all those relationships even when I was engaged. I had a ten year thing with this girl and I would often wonder why, even in those most intimate moments of our relationship, I would still feel really lonely. And it was just a few years ago that I finally realized that friendship is not a remedy for loneliness. Loneliness is a part of our experience and if we are looking for relief from loneliness in friendship, we are only going to frustrate the friendship. Friendship, camaraderie, intimacy, all those things, and loneliness live together in the same experience... I have no interest in anybody else and she is married to someone else so that's the way it goes and I don't mind that. Right now I cannot imagine that life could be happier married than it is single so I'm not in a panic about getting married. And I think, you know, maybe God wanted me to be celibate and the way that he accomplished that was to break my heart. So that's the way it goes.

I really look up to him though. Quote from wikipedia. His is the brand of Christianity I want in my life.

Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these my brothers you’ve done it to me. And this is what I’ve come to think. That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in a beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken....

I would rather live on the verge of falling and letting my security be in the all-sufficency of the grace of God than to live in some kind of pietistic illusion of moral excellence--not that I don't want to be morally excellent, but my faith isn't in the idea that I'm more moral than anybody else. My faith is in the idea that God and His love are greater than whatever sins any of us commit.

Support Officer Crowley

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:52:40 GMT

I do not understand, on any level, how being asked for ID at the site of suspected burglarly can be construed as racist. What was he supposed to do? Walk away assuming Gates wasn't a burglar just b/c he yelled at him?

Here's the police report.

Kudos to Crowley for not apologizing. Harvard prof or not, Gates acted like a punk. Maybe worse was the Mayor of Boston acting like a complete coward and failing to go to bat for one of his men b/c of an astoundingly irresponisble application of presidential political pressure. I'm glad he didn't back down and let his name get dragged through the mud without a fight.

Not Big Enough

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:28:57 GMT

My favorite section of Desiring God is John Piper’s chapter on money. It’s essentially one long meditation on why the apostle Paul called money the root of all kinds of evils. Money, Piper postulates, is a phenomenon unlike any other in the multiplicity of things it portends to offer. Beyond just the stuff you can get with it, we think money can—and to, some degree, it does—provide things like power, security, esteem, and freedom. These are elemental human desires, neither good nor bad in and of themselves, just like money is neither good nor bad in and of itself. Paul’s admonition is seeking these things in a source other than God has the potential to corrupt us. Contrapositively, faith, is trusting in God to provide these things even in the midst of circumstances that would suggest otherwise.

I started going to church again. For the most part, it’s been good but I attend not without some misgivings.

Case in point, one of the first church email threads I responded to was a reminder to vote yes on prop 8. I’m really against prop 8, not because I don’t think homosexuality isn’t roundly condemned in scripture, but because there are a lot of things that are roundly condemned in scripture that anybody with common sense would not try to codify into national law. In the grand scheme of things, there are maybe two verses in the Bible that address homosexuality while whole chapters and books are devoted to things like idolatry, pride, and self-righteousness. Jesus’s discourse on divorce is far more thorough and far more vitriolic than anything said about any form of sex. Prop 8 debate aside, what I found most interesting wasn’t the actual positions in the debate but the premises that lay beneath those positions. At the heart of the evangelical vote of yes on prop 8 is what is seen as a defense of God’s holiness. If legislation identifying sin can be enacted, God’s idea of holiness will have been advanced and the Kingdom of God will have won a great victory.

To that, I say your idea of God is too small. Think back to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. Few words have said more. In it, he Christ equates hatred to murder, a stray glance to adultery, swearing to blasphemy. In terms of holiness, the bar is set really really high. The premise of the Gospel is that we all fall short of it and it is grace that enables to get on day to day without panicked dread of our eventual demise. The preaching and living of the Gospel of Costly Grace is only thing that advances the holiness of God. It is this premise that allowed Jesus to be so at home with the dregs of society. Notorious embezzlers (tax collectors), prostitutes, carnally minded fishermen—these were his closest friends here on this earth. It is this premise that led Paul to write half a Bible without a single encouragement for Christians to line up in protest of Nero’s marriage to Sporus, the first homosexual union by a Roman Emperor. No, Jesus and Paul both had a singular focus—the propagation of the message of grace alongside individual reception and repentance. For the life of me, I just cannot see Jesus at Starbuck’s, rallying up the troops with emails extolling the virtues of prop 8. This tiny god—let’s call him legalism—is not the God I know. He is not the God of my youth, he not the God of the Scriptures.

One other thing that really bothers me is what my church does with its money. We’ve an annual budget in the millions. Our church isn’t so much a home for Christ as it as a freaking complex for Christ. There are dozens of rooms loaded with goodies like flat screen Samsung TV’s, digital projectors, and sound equipment. We’ve our own gym that’s about the size of a 24 hr fitness. Sunday service is like a full blown concert. For those that can’t see in the back, there are multiple cameraman running around, outputting live feeds to 50 foot projections. We have conferences where Taiwanese movie stars make appearances.

It isn’t so much the extravagance that bothers me, it’s the confidence we have in that extravagance. I’ve attended 5 sermons now where the head pastor has talked for extended periods of time about a new multimillion dollar building we’re about to take over for the “advancement of international ministry.” I think of Jesus, walking the earth destitute. I think of Paul, a highly educated man, who gave it all up and wandered asia as a common laborer, making tents to support himself. I think of Piper’s chapter on the power of money and Jesus’s experience in Nazareth where he could perform no miracles b/c the people lacked faith. I think of the two North Korean high school students I met on NK-Chinese border, so malnourished they had stunted bone structures resembling elementary school kids. I think of flat screen TV’s, and I’m sad.

I write not b/c I delight in the hypocrisy of others. The thing about being self aware is whatever delight you took in exposing the hypocrisy of others eventually turns into depression b/c you start to see those very same things in yourself. I mean I can’t quite picture Jesus in a fully restored 330 hp RX7, either (though I’m pretty sure he’d stand by the side of the road in his sandals and say “Sweet ride”).

No, I write b/c the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard, the most fulfilled I’ve ever been, was beholding the beauty of the God of the Bible. It’s said that Elijiah was surrounded by wind, earthquake, and fire when the Lord spoke to him but He was in none of these things but a still, small voice. Wind, earthquake, and fire surround me too. I’ve looked in them, I thought he was there. It upset me when he wasn’t but somewhere nearby his still small voice resides. I hear it, and I’m happy.

FD3S autox run

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:47:35 GMT

Just something I found on the interwebs. The guy's got insane control.

My Day In the Sun

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:18:59 GMT

I went to my first autocross event on Sunday with my friends D & R. It was a blast!

First off, the makeup of the contestants was interesting. There were a couple rare cars: an Elise, a 1960's AC Cobra, and a Caterham. Then you had respectable, contemporary cars like 911's, WRX's, EVo's, RX8's, BMW's, and a VW R32. There were heavily modified cars--a slew of Civic Hatchbacks from the late 80's, CRX's, a Porsche 935 (think Jazz from transformers). Lastly, you had flat-outridiculous cars like a 1970's Toyota Starberk (sp?), stock Mustangs, a dodge Neon, and, most infamous of all, the 1990's era Camy so popular among Bay Area Asian mother. It was just a lot of fun seeing all these very different kind of cars doing laps on the same track.

Secondly, the people are there are pretty cool. Everybody was around my age or older, generally sensible, and pretty good drivers. My friend D is a pretty good driver and he had one of the slowest lap times Granted, that was because his rear tires were failing but I don't think he'd have eked out better than a 72s lap time which still be on the slow end of the distribution. Just to give you an example, the Camry and the Starberk both lapped ~68s.

Most surprising car for me was the RX8. All 3 8's posted good times, one posted a top 5, maybe even top 3 time. Fastest time for the day was 64s, set by the Porsche 935 (which was modified like f*ck. Thing was louder than an airplane). The GT3 followed and then either a Miata or the 8. Go Mazda! The Lotus and Caterham did decent but not as well as I'd hoped. I think it was the drivers.

I didn't get to race. I didn't have a helmet and, b/c my new ECU and boost controller are not installed, so I blew an inlet line into my intercooler. It was a cheap fix (free! haha) but I had to wait til Monday for the replacement part. I'm definitely going again, though. $50 for a day of fun.

I'll post pics of the race and of my FD soon. Just got my 99 spec bumper and wing installed. After I replace the ecu and boost controller, I'm pretty much done. New engine, new turbos, new suspension, new brakes, RE-11 tires, and an updated, modern body. All told, I've probably sunk $30k into this car which is about what I expected. Took longer than I thought but I'm way more happy with it than with any other car I would have got with the same price. Watching the $30k luxury sports cars and the Rx8's run at the track reinforced that. BMW's were D class cars, 8's were B class. FD's are SS class, meaning I'm grouped with Lotuses and C06 vettes and 911 GT3's. Winning that division may be unrealistic, but I think the categorizations tell a lot about what the car is capable of.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Mon, 11 May 2009 08:52:23 GMT

It kind of makes me laugh how people are just writing off the Rockets and presuming LA is going to win this series. Just saw an ESPN interview of Magic Johnson and his take is the Lakers embarassed themselves. This is a series they OUGHT to be winning and the solution is for derek fisher and kobe bryant to show more leadership. LMFAO.

The Rockets are better without Yao, at least against the Lakers. Yao was decent in game 1 when they didn't front him but he was pretty useless in games 2 and 3. His +/- in game 2 was -29, the worst of any Rocket player. He simply could not get good position, Gasol usually beating him to his spots. If Yao can't establish himself in the paint, it's better for both the Rockets offense and defense to have another player who can move.

I really like the Rockets roleplayers. They're all athletic, strong, and have high basketball IQ. That combination allows them to have a defensive structure that is incredibly hard to penetrate. On offense, they have stupdendous ball movement and all the players (except maybe Artest) exercise excellent judgement when it comes to shot selection.

I'm reminded of the Mavs Warriors series of '07. Houston is just a really bad matchup for the Lakers and it's going to take more than "leadership" to win the series. On offense, Ron Artest commands a double team, they can't guard Brooks, and Scola is just manhandling Odom. Magic Johson talked about the Lakers having better talent and how Gasol & Odom should be salivating at the opportunity to play against a Yao-less rocket team but the Rockets have Chuck Hayes and Scola. Again, Scola owns Odom and Hayes is more than enough to guard Gasol who's really a PF anyways, not a true center. Magic thinks they ought to be abusing the Rockets at the center and PF position but he has no idea how good some of these unheralded names are. Then, there's Kobe. B/t Artest and Battier, the Rockets have two of the premier wing defenders in the game. They are not going to stop him but they can force him to shoot highly ineffient shots. Even in game 2, where he shot 12-20, those were all crazy trick shots from that outside. The law of averages tells us he can't keep that up. Hence the 7-17 performance tonight.

I really love the Rockets not b/c I'm Chinese and am a diehard Yao fan but b/c Daryl Morey is like the awesomest GM ever. Using statistical analysis, he's assembled a bunch of roleplayers from late first rounders that are good enough to challenge championship caliber teams. Imagine how good the Rockets would be if they had both a healthy TMAC and Yao. It is insane.