Life of Andrew

More Boring Blog Statistics

As a follow-up from my last post here are some more visitor statistics courtesy of Google Analytics. These are for sandfly.net.nz as a whole, not just this blog.

Last year I got nearly 18000 visits from over 4000 cities (not all appear on this map) in 128 countries. The top 5 cities are Auckland (with over 2000 visits), then London, Wellington, New York and Bangalore(!) It seems like the cities with a strong C++ development culture are better represented, but that is somewhat of a guess.

These graphs show what browsers and operating systems people are using. Windows is still the most used OS at 58% but MacOSX is doing alright with 29% (Linux does 10%). This probably reflects the techie slant in the subjects I write about.

44% of my visitors use Firefox (which is what I use most of the time), but it is a three horse race for runner up between Safari (19%), IE (18%), and Chrome (13%). Chrome seems to be picking up in recent months so this graph might look quite different next year. A lot of people profess hatred for Safari, but it seems to be holding its market share (only on MacOSX though, hardly anyone uses the Windows version.) The really good news is only 2.6% of visits last year came from IE6 – the sooner that browser dies the better.

I wonder the same graphs would look like for other comparable sites.

Posted in Computer | No Comments »

200th Post – State of the Blog

Yes, the title is correct – this is the 200th post on Life of Andrew. I started this blog almost exactly 4 years ago as a way of practising my writing. At the time I thought that 1 post a week was a good target, I guess I have fallen slightly short of that but not by much. I don’t know if my writing has improved, but it has been fun.

I case you were curious, here is a quick look behind the scenes:

This is a graph (from Google Analytics) of the weekly page views of Life of Andrew (this doesn’t count the rest of sandfly.net.nz.) I usually see between 30 and 60 page views a day, sometimes more if a particular entry gets linked somewhere. This hardly ever happens but I will admit to self-spamming certain sites occasionally to see what traffic turns up. I added the social media buttons to each post to see if that would encourage readers to post links to various sites but so far that hasn’t happened even once. I don’t know why the basic trend seems to be down, perhaps I haven’t written anything interesting lately.

By far the most popular post on the site is The HTML5 Video Tag’s Fatal Flaw – a rant about the then-new web standard which received some attention from Important People In The Industry. I wrote it while starving myself in preparation for oral surgery after two weeks of painful tooth ache – by far the best preparation for any type of rant, perhaps I should try it more often. It still gets a lot of hits, mainly from people searching for “HTML5 Video”. I hope it doesn’t put anyone off.

According to FeedBurner 44 people subscribe to Life of Andrew. I am not really sure I believe that number – I suspect it double counts people that read RSS feeds on more than one computer. But hello to however many there are of you out there.

Posted in Computer | 2 Comments »

Facebook “Like” Stamp

I am going to come out and say it : I like Facebook.

Yes, I know it is a soulless corporate entity that sells out it’s user base by allowing the various third-party apps to harvest data for nefarious ends. However the core idea is great and the site works well if you ignore invitations to install every little app (no, I do not want to be a ninja or a werewolf – fuck off!) I most appreciate the ability to keep up to date with the various comings-and-goings of my social circle without having to actually have tedious conversations with them.

In fact, I wish real life was a little more like Facebook. And now it is with this product:

You can buy them from wearenation.co.uk, although at £9.99 (sans ink) you had better like a lot of things to get your money’s worth.

I found this via Better Living Through Design, a very cool site that I have only just been made aware of.

Posted in Culture | No Comments »

I Write Like Arthur C. Clarke (Apparently)

I Write Like is a website that analyses a sample of writing and finds the closest match to a famous author’s style. Running through a couple of my favourite entries from this blog gives the following result:

I write like
Arthur C. Clarke

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Could be worse. I did read an awful lot of Arthur C. Clarke’s output when I was younger so I supposed it rubbed off on me.

Posted in Culture | 3 Comments »

Game Review : Citadels

Citadels is an easy but fun card game where the players compete to construct the most impressive city by amassing wealth to spend building various districts (docks, university, cathedrals, etc). The game ends when a player plays an eighth district then everyone’s city is scored (and certain bonuses added) to determine the winner. Simple.

Or not so simple. There are 8 role cards, each player will get one of these each turn which will enable certain actions. For instance, the Magician role can swap hands with another player, the Architect can build more in a turn, the King gets first choice of roles for next turn, etc. Because there are more roles than players and the roles are chosen secretly in turn, the way to win lies in choosing the correct role at the correct time. Some of the more expensive districts also confer additional bonuses apart for score such as more money or protection from certain attacks so thinking several turns ahead is required.

Citadels can be quite a sneaky game – many of the roles allow you to ruin your opponents plans by stealing cards or money, or even destroying their hard won districts from under them. But it is hard to get an unassailable lead and the way the roles work means that no player can really feel ganged-up on. It is also one of the few games I have played that actually works better as a 4 or 5 player game (haven’t tried 6 or more) without leaving some players in an unwinnable position.

The game itself is attractive and the cards are well designed. The one flaw is that the role cards get constantly handled and can get bent or scuffed up, which is a problem since they are supposed to remain identical to maintain the secrecy required. The basic game is flexible, the official website has a whole bunch of alternate rules to turn it into a children’s party game or a drinking game (although hopefully not at the same time). With 4 or 5 players the game takes about an hour to play.

Highly recommended.

Posted in Games | 2 Comments »

Card Game Review : The Spoils

I think it is best to say two things right up front : firstly, The Spoils is a collectable card game just like Magic the Gathering. If you are not familiar with this form of gaming the rest of this review is going to be impenetrable, but in short each player builds a deck of cards from a much larger pool and then plays this against the opponent’s deck. Different cards have different effects, the skill in deck building lies in picking cards that compliment each other. The collectable part comes from the method of acquiring these cards, instead of just buying a full set you typically purchase small packs containing a random selection of cards, so each player is building decks from a different subset. Vast secondary markets exist for players wanting to trade surplus cards with others, sometimes for surprising sums of money since some card are deliberately printed in small numbers.

Secondly, The Spoils is a collectable card game just like Magic the Gathering. Seriously, it is basically Magic with a quick paint job and the VIN ground off. This is not necessarily a bad thing – I like Magic the Gathering, but the similarities are pretty blatant. I can almost imagine playing a Spoils deck against a Magic deck in the same game, most of the rules work in exactly the same way, only with different keywords (cards don’t get tapped, they become “depleted”, etc.)

Having said that, Spoils does differ in a few interesting ways which seem to be designed to make the decks play more consistently. A common problem with Magic is that sometimes you just don’t draw enough land cards of the correct type to play your hand full of spells. In The Spoils, you start the game with two staple resources (basic land) cards of your choice already in play – this hugely helps if you are running a 2 colour deck since you can ensure that you have both colours available.

Additionally, the costs for all cards are colourless – you can tap (sorry, deplete) any colour to pay for them. However, most cards have a “threshold”. A certain character (creature) might have a threshold of 3 rage (red) with a cost of 4 – to put this creature into play you must deplete 4 resources (of any colour) but you can only do so if you have at least 3 red resources out (depleted or not). Along with the staple resources there are special resource cards that still produce a single mana but count for double when calculating threshold, as a special bonus the card art for these special resources features scantily clad ladies for no particular reason.

You can play any card in your hand as a resource by playing it face down. These work just like regular resources but do not count towards threshold at all. Although you can usually only play a single resource a turn, you can deplete 3 resources to put another resource into play at any time.

Combat works much the same as it does in Magic, the big difference is that characters have an extra Speed statistic. This works much the same as first strike but with multiple levels, the faster character hits first and suffers no damage if it kills the other character outright.

These changes do make for a smooth game – it is almost impossible to imagine getting screwed by a bad starting hand in Spoils (especially since the mulligan rule is very forgiving.) On the other hand, one of the things I like about Magic is the unpredictability that forces you to have backup options in your deck if you don’t get what you want, Spoils is more forgiving but I think less flavourful. You could get much the same effect in Magic with a couple of house rules.

The card design is good without being brilliant, the art is perfectly OK if sometimes a little tacky. It may seem like I am damning The Spoils with faint praise, but there is actually a lot to like. It is just that The Spoils has little reason to exist in a world that already contains Magic the Gathering.

Posted in Culture, Games | No Comments »

TV Theme Quiz Answers

Both the TV Theme Quizes generated a lot of traffic but not many people emailed me about them. For those keeping score at home, several people completed the first quiz but the best score I heard for the second was 20 out of 26. In retrospect, I think some of the second quiz was a little too obscure – if I ever do anything similar I will try to tone it down a little.

Anyway, everyone has had plenty of time so here are the official answers.

Questions and complaints in the comments.

Posted in my projects | No Comments »

Robots, Robots, Robots

I really like what people have been doing with robotics in the last few years. Now that powerful CPUs are cheap and wireless communications ubiquitous, whole new areas are opening up for hobbyists to explore. Sure, someday those robots will undoubtedly rise up and destroy humanity, but until then why build a single robot when you can build 32:

I love how the knights’ horses thrash their forelegs while they are moving – genius! There is a little more information at the Monster Chess Site. I hope they have a good supply of batteries.

Bonus robot video:

Posted in Computer, Culture, Links | 2 Comments »

Welcome to the 151st Ranked Blog in NZ

You find the most interesting things trawling through the “Incoming Links” section of the WordPress Admin Dashboard. According to this page at halfdone (I’d never heard of them either), Life of Andrew is the 151st in their list of NZ blogs that are “about something”.

I am not entirely clear how they calculate the rankings, but I am happy with 151 – surrounded by other blogs handling the big issues of the day: 150 (MENZ Issues: Promoting a Clearer Understanding of Men’s Experience, example post: “Feminists in denial about how they are failing girls“) and 152 (Web of Evidence: What They Don’t Want You To Know, example post: “Numerous Long Fibers Seen Floating Through The Air In Whangarei, NZ” )

And people say that bloggers are just weird malcontents.

Posted in Computer, Culture | 3 Comments »

Film Review : The Holy Mountain

A Christ-like fool of few words wanders around Mexico having surreal adventures before ascending into a tower to find a wise alchemist who becomes his guide on a journey to the titular mountain. Is it a Christian allegory? Is it a celebration of hippy mystical excess? Was it made in 1973? Is it social satire? Did the production crew take a lot of LSD? Was John Lennon’s money well spent? Is this movie worth watching?

The answers to all these questions are unknown, except for the ones about 1973 and LSD. The answer to both those questions is: “Hell Yeah!”

The Holy Mountain starts promisingly – a main character awakes in a pool of his own urine and gets into a fight with a deformed dwarf whom he soon befriends. Heading into town they make money from tourists by staging historical mock battles with reptiles and toads. The fool gets into various situations before which may or may not be intended to mirror the life of Christ or the cards in a tarot deck or both or neither. In any case, this part of the film has some eye-popping imagery and is nearly silent so you can make up your own story.

Things start getting a bit ropy when the fool meets the alchemist. The film basically slams to a halt as the fool is taught various rituals whose symbolism is only outweighed by their tedium. Things get worse when 7 other people are introduced – the rituals get even longer and less interesting. Finally they all set off for The Holy Mountain, meeting various temptations along the way.

This is a film I really wanted to like. I don’t mind the bizarre imagery, nudity, occasional graphic violence and ham-fisted social commentary. The first few scenes set things up nicely, but The Holy Mountain becomes so tedious once the story starts that it doesn’t even hold up as a slice of history.

Not recommended. Maybe it’s better if you have access to drugs, but you would probably be better off just taking the drugs.

Posted in Culture | 3 Comments »

TV Theme Quiz II : The Themes Strike Back

It was bound to happen. People seemed to enjoy the first TV Theme Quiz so I fired up Audacity and created another 30 seconds of familiar ditties. Things were solved pretty quickly last time so I tried to make this one just a smidgeon harder – we will see if I succeeded.

This quiz works in much the same way as the last one but I have tweaked the Javascript a little. I never thought that anyone would bother reversing the hash used to hide the answers on the first quiz but one of my friends admitted that they had done just that. A little salt should clear that problem right up.

This is the post you should comment on for hints and bragging. I only ask that you refrain from posting the actual answers, at least for the first few days. I think it is better to let people work things out for themselves.

Posted in Computer, Culture, Games, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Does This Look Strangely Familiar?

Yes, it is the long rumoured American version of Outrageous Fortune. Actually, according to Wikipedia, it is the second attempt at a US remake – the first did not get past the pilot stage. It will be interesting to see if it turns up here.

Posted in Culture | No Comments »

A Name and a Number – 48 Hours Filmmaking Competition

2 weekends ago I participated in the annual 48 Hours Filmmaking Competition. Each team had to make a film containing a character named Sydney, a broken toy, the line “When you look at it that way”, and a dolly zoom. Cutting straight to the chase, here is the result:

I don’t think it turned out too badly – technical limitations aside I think we had a fairly decent story. The audience seemed to enjoy the film during the showing and the reviews have been generally favourable (more or less.) Unfortunately we were disqualified from the judging due to technical problems with the master we submitted on the day, but it didn’t matter in the end. One of the other teams in our heat submitted a brilliant film that was always going to be the finalist.

This is not the first time I have been involved in the 48 Hours Competition. I did it about 5 years ago with a much more professional team in Auckland. The experience was so stressful that I almost didn’t take the opportunity this year but I am glad that I did.

Bevan, the producer/director, assembled a random collection of people with little/no experience, many of whom could not be present for the whole weekend. Our equipment consisted of an 10 year old handicam (borrowed on the understanding that the owner’s daughter would be cast), a tripod and (for part of the time) some lights. So unlike my previous experience which involved hours of makeup, set dressing, rehearsing with proper actors and messing around with lighting rigs we just got on and shot stuff as we could. We actually had most of the shots on film by mid-afternoon on Saturday, about the time my previous team started shooting!

In case you are wondering, I was the main camera operator by dint of my knowledge of white balance. Having a camera with no-focus ring and no way to control the aperture made the job pretty simple. I only dropped the camera on concrete once, it actually worked better afterwards.

I think the strength of A Name and A Number is the story, a lot of films in the competition look and sound better but have plots that don’t resolve properly. If you think our film doesn’t go anywhere you should see some of the others. Although the film is humorous, the story is told in a serious tone (it was originally intended to be a psychological drama) which I think helps – a lot of the entries try to be funny which is hard to (intentionally) pull off. Lame drama is more watchable than a lame comedy.

Posted in Culture, my projects | No Comments »

Game Review : Cutthroat Caverns

A motley band of adventurers descends into the inky darkness of the caverns in the quest for the fabulous artefact rumoured to lie somewhere deep within. Working together they should be more than a match for the terrifying creatures that wait in the shadows, but each member knows that only the most glorious amongst them will be able to claim the prize; perhaps a little backstabbing may help things along.

Cutthroat Caverns (boardgamegeek, publishers site) is a clever little game where players fight monsters as a team to gain “prestige”, the player at the end of game (usually 10 encounters) with the most prestige wins. Combat is handled by cards (there is no board), during each round the players each play one (or sometimes more) attack cards face down. These are then revealed to determine how much damage the current creature has suffered. If the creature is still alive, it gets a chance to retaliate in kind, usually striking a random player for some damage of its own.

The fighting continues until the creature’s health is reduced to zero – the twist being that only the player that struck the killing blow gets all the prestige regardless of how much damage they did over the course of the rumble. This scoring system provides the tension in the game; you usually have a range of attacks in your hand but there is no point playing your strongest cards unless you are sure that you are going to be the one who makes the kill. On the other hand, someone is going to have to do some damage to the monster or else it will make mincemeat out of party.

In addition to attack cards, there are also “items” that can be picked up along the way (representing potions and magical amulets, etc) which confer certain benefits. There are also “action” cards that can be played at certain times to aid or disrupt attacks, hopefully in ways that will be of benefit.

So far so good, Cutthroat Caverns neatly encapsulates the cheesy DnD hack-n-slash games without all the bother. What really makes the game fun is the variety of the monsters, each one is almost a different game. Some attack randomly, some can not be damaged by certain attacks, some attack the players that attacked for the most damage (or least damage, or simply who hit first) last turn, others damage everybody equally at the end of each turn. It is this randomness (10 creatures are drawn each game out of a larger pool) that ensures that each game is totally different.

Although the game has a high random component, it seems remarkably well balanced. Most of our games have ended with the party very nearly dead at the end of the 10 creatures, which leads to some very tense final encounters. It is possible to get killed, which removes that player from the game, but this will normally only happen towards end so it is not too unfair.

Cutthroat Caverns is obviously aimed at players who enjoy the trappings of role playing, but the game is simple and fast-paced enough to appeal to nearly everyone. If anything, playing it reminds me of Magic the Gathering, it is a much easier game but supports the same fast paced shifting of strategies and crazy reversals. 3 to 6 players are able to play, the more the merrier.

Highly recommended.

Posted in Games | No Comments »

Film Review : A Boy and His Dog

World War IV blasted the surface of the Earth to a barren wasteland across which roving bands of scabby bandits compete for sparse food supplies. Vic (Don Johnson!) is a young man who has teamed up with a telepathic dog to survive – Vic finds food for them both while the dog make itself useful sniffing out women (in short supply) for Vic to rape.

Yes, rape. What is it about 70s Science Fiction and rape? I have noticed this trend – up until the late 60s scifi was all space ships and aliens with heroic main characters. Not that they all portrayed woman as equals and complex characters in their own rights, but the protagonists at least had good intentions.

Then sometime just before 1970 somebody decided that scifi had to be all dark and twisted and a lot of stories started to appear where the main character basically rapes people. Sometimes this can work as social commentary but often it just comes across as exploitative and nasty. Was this a reaction to feminism? I don’t know, but it sure is irritating. Thankfully, not too many of these stories got made into films.

A Boy and His Dog almost gets away with the rape device since Vic is not very successful and is eventually taken advantage of by his supposed victim. A second point in the film’s favour is the humorous script and a light touch. Nothing is treated particularly seriously as the gormless Vic gets into one bizarre predicament after another in his quest for sex. Indeed, the general plot of the film and particularly the closing scene point to the whole exercise being conceived as the world’s most elaborate shaggy dog story, with the joke being on the audience. The second male lead actually being a shaggy dog may also point to this interpretation being correct.

What could have been a horrific and repellent story is redeemed by a well realised film that is a ropey in some places but pitched so perfectly that its flaws can be overlooked.

Recommended, but only if you like this sort of thing. Otherwise avoid.

Posted in Culture | 4 Comments »