Hugo Month - Embassytown

Embassytown is science fiction novel by China Mieville. It is written from the perspective of Avice who was born and raised in the titular Embassytown. A town that exists to maintain relations between humanity and a unique species called the Ariekei.

The Ariekei have no interest in spaceflight and so can only be found on this one planet but are significantly more advanced than humanity in terms of biotechnology. Their cities and most of their equipment are strange biorigged devices even the very buildings themselves are living organisms.

What really defines the Ariekei however is their language. They evolved with two mouths, making their language impossible for a human to speak independently, their speech is in many ways mixed up in their thoughts. They require another united mind to speak the words for them to register as language, this prevents the use of speech synthesis and language translation software. Whilst human can learn to understand the Language, they cannot speak it save in remarkably well synced pairs. The Ambassadors in Embassy town are specifically bred and raised as clonepairs for this purpose.

The Language is very literal and inflexible, at the beginning of the book Avice becomes part of it, she is a Simile, the girl who ate what was given to her, allowing the Ariekei to express ideas that were previously more difficult.

I found the events of the book particularly interesting as they related to the Language, what makes it special and the moral choices the characters are confronted with. Is it right to teach a species incapable of lying how to do so? How does that then change a society and its language?

This book hooked me in as it started exploring more of what the Ariekei were and what their language actually meant. I enjoyed it a lot more than I initially expected to.

My Hugo 2012 Novel rankings are:

1. Deadline
2. Embassytown
3. Leviathan Wakes
4. Among Others


I have chosen not to read A Dance With Dragons, the other novel up for a 2012 Hugo, it is the fifth book in the Game of Throne series and I have not read any of the other novels, I tried reading some of it but I was far too lost for my reading to be fair to it. Instead I have moved on to reading through the Hugo nominated novellas.

The Death of a Laptop

My laptop, Ran11x, has alas ceased to be useful as a laptop. It is an m11x, a model of laptop that Dell has now discontinued. It served faithfully for about 2 and a half years. Like many 1st generation m11x's it developed hinge problems that resulted in it ceasing to be very portable and with an update last night, it ceased to display anything on its screen.

As a result I am currently extracting my data from it and trying to decide two things: What to do with it and what to replace it with.

What to do with it

The laptop still actually works, I can plug it into an external monitor and use the projector shortcut to get it to use that display. Given that I have a desktop I really don't need it on my desk, I don't have a spare display and even if I did, I would rather use that as an extra screen on the desktop.

That said, it is a separate machine which means I can use it to experiment with things, one idea is to install Windows 8 on it. I can format it and do a fresh install, I don't need to worry about update woes and I don't need to care if the new machine isn't quite so useful. I had actually already planned on doing this sometime during my holidays.

Since it takes HDMI I can plug it into the TV as a media PC. We already have one running Linux in my house and we have a spare wireless mini-keyboard and mouse. It seems a bit silly to have two machines set up to do the same thing, but this means that we can use them for different things. The Linux machine is there to play media and to access remotely via SSH, Ran11x can be used for gaming. It has a 500GB drive which isn't quite enough to fit all of my Steam games on it, but I can try to pick games that can either be played with the mini keyboard and mouse or games that can be played with a 360 controller. This is option is especially tempting because I can even use it for Artemis which is a game that I really would like to play with friends before I move out.

I should be able to do both of these. I can still play around with Windows 8 on the TV and have a set up for TV gaming. Does anyone have any other cool ideas? Everything other than the screen appears to work without difficulty.

What to get to replace it

I don't necessarily need to replace Ran11x, I could instead try to repair the screen, I would rather get the parts and try to do this myself if I can do it cheaply. The laptop is now old enough that this isn't really a priority, I probably won't really need a laptop until I head overseas later this year.

Whilst I have my Transformer Prime, it is not quite good enough to be a laptop replacement. As I found earlier this year when going away with just the tablet, Android is simply too limiting to be my only OS. Having only mobile and webapps can be really painful. Especially if I am trying to use office. The mobile versions of Google Docs are awful. They are slow and have really strange behaviours at times and I have regretted trying to use them every time. The limitation of having only 1 application on screen at any time is surprisingly annoying even when using a small screen.

I really would like a PC of the same kind of size, about 11". Ideally one that can play a good selection of games (because it is my primary hobby) and one that can run real apps. I guess this is what ultrabooks are intended for. Does anyone have any recommendations for good 11-12" laptops that can run modern games at a decent framerate?

The other thing that I conceptually find really tempting is the Surface Pro, tablet form factors, still has the ability to use a physical keyboard, an OS with a fair amount of work put into the touch interface that still has a good keyboard and mouse interface that lets me run office, steam and any other desktop apps I want; provided that it has decent battery life and isn't too noisy or hot it seems like a great idea to me.

Ideally I would like to replace Ran11x with a new laptop before I head to Europe in December. Probably close enough to the trip that I can claim back the GST.

Hugo Month - Leviathan Wakes

Leviathan Wakes is a novel by James S. A. Corey which is published by Orbit Books.

It is the first book of the Expanse series, and it begins with a mysterious attack on an outer belt freighter.

The beginning of this book reminded me a lot of a version of firefly set within our solar system. There are the old established inner planets of Earth and Mars who nominally rule via a join space fleet. Then there are the outer belts, significantly poorer in terms of both population and military power but they have significant raw mineral resources which the inner planets are reliant upon. It quickly became its own story and the similarities with firefly quickyl fade away.

The novel is ultimately about the beginnings of a war that no one wants, the inner planets have a massive military advantage in terms of forces but being mostly planet bound are incredibly vulnerable to the comet drop offensive technique that would be the obvious last ditch response by the outer belt.

Outside of the prologue the novel is written from the alternative perspectives of two different characters, an earthborn independent ship captain and a corporate policeman. Their stories initially start quite separate but quickly overlap and intertwine for the majority of the book.

I enjoyed reading through this book, it was a much closer fit with me than Among Others but I was not quite as invested as I was with Deadline. Hence, my Hugo 2012 Novel rankings are:
1. Deadline
2. Leviathan Wakes
3. Among Others

Note Taking App - Edit and Review Mode UI Design

In the last post I showed two different designs and approaches for taking notes in lectures. They both have their advantages and drawbacks. It was important to also consider that Andrew's needs are different in lectures and out of lectures. In lectures times are constrained and it is possible for important information to be conveyed while Andrew is trying to do something else. While he is trying to get a photo of a worked example on the board the lecturer may be talking about a related but different concept that also should be included in the notes. This makes it important that actions are not atomic, that a task can be temporarily paused whilst a higher priority task is addressed.

This is not true when reviewing and editing notes outside of a lecture, here Andrew has considerably more time to complete tasks and it probably is best not to encourage him to jump around too much.

Outliner

The outliner approach does not really need any adjustment from inside to outside of lectures, the non-text elements (images and sound bites) can easily be covered in surrounding text. The only obvious visual difference is that the Outliner does not need the sidebar in this mode.

If I choose to go with the outliner process, it is probably not really worth differentiating between the two different modes of lecture creation. The only consideration is whether or not it is worth removing the sidebar to provide more screen real estate.

PDF Annotator

The annotator is a lot more hungry for screen space. In the lecture, new notes are created by tapping the screen, creating those yellow dots. Only the note that is currently being created/edited is expanded.

Outside of the lecture, the default is for all notes to be expanded, this also means the app automatically rearranges the notes to remove any overlaps. When the notes are expanded they should not obscure any elements in the original notes nor should they obscure other expanded notes. The idea here is that the yellow dots remain but an arrow is automatically generated pointing to the expanded note. Expanded notes are automatically sized based on the amount of information contained.

A short tap will hide the expanded note. Which allows Andrew to hide information he is not currently trying to revise this will also cause nearby notes to try to automatically rearrange themselves.

A long tap brings up the note into a much larger mode for further editing. It is here where the editing tools are found, primarily based around adding and formatting further text. The plan is to use pretty standard text editing settings, the ability to change font size, bold

There aren't any plans to include picture or audio editing tools here. A further long press on the non-text element in a note should allow Andrew to open the image/sound in another application on the device that has told Android that it is an app that can handle pictures or sound. Ideally he will then actually choose an image editing app rather than a gallery or music playing program.

Again, I would be very interested in hearing feedback on this design.

In order to try to encourage comments on this series, the best comment on any post on my blog with the design tag made before 11:59PM on 12/07 will get their choice of The Orange Box, The Ship or Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death. Provided they also provide me with contact details.

Completed: Alan Wake

I originally wasn't planning to get or play Alan Wake. I thought the concept, a horror writer in his own story, was interesting and I like the idea of rewarding developers who do good ports of console games to PC, but I tend to steer clear of horror.

The most recent Spoiler Warning covered the game however, and combined with a well timed sale early in the season I decided to pick it up and play it. I actually tossed up between buying it on Steam and buying it on GOG.com, I ended up going with Steam because I feel that it has a better system for handling updates.

Alan Wake is the story of a popular writer and his wife Alice who move to a small town called Bright Falls to get away from the city and Alice hopes this will also allow Alan to get past a writers block he has had for some time. Things quickly go wrong as Bright Falls is situated next to a place called Cauldron Lake which has some strange properties.  Typical video game plot ensues, Alice vanishes, Alan then sets out to get her back. While doing so he starts to find manuscript pages in his hand writing describing events that either have just happened or events that are currently happening. The game is not particularly scary but has many horror references as well as apparently plenty of Twin Peaks references which I missed being pretty unfamiliary with the source material.

The game is split into 6 episodes, followed by 2 DLC episodes (which come with the PC version), which are complete with previously on Alan Wake segments at the beginning. I really like this concept, it provides the game with natural stopping points every couple of hours or so. It could have been handled better than it was, the previously on Alan Wake segments were completely superfluous when you literally just finished the previous episode a minute or so ago, the game should be able to tell when previous chapters were played and only play previously on sections covering information that is say at least a week old.

The game was entertaining but did not particularly grab me until about half way through. Despite the episodic structure my typical play sessions were around half an hour or so until I hit Episode 4, then I played through the next 2 episodes back to back until I realised that it was in fact 1:30am and I was participating in a karate tournament the next morning. It caught me quite off guard that Alan Wake was suddenly able to keep me so involved and interested in seeing what was going to happen next in the story.

A lot of the actual game content of Alan Wake is the combat, which is a pity because the game pretty much has 4 enemy types and 1 non-creature enemy, all of these are introduced in the first two episodes and the game merely throws these enemies at you in slightly different environments and in different amounts. Initially this works fairly well, enemies are pretty much invulnerable until the darkness has been burnt off them via either a torch or other light source, which means you have to juggle your positioning and your ammunition and the game does a good job and making sure that you typically have enough enemies attacking you from multiple angles that this is challenging. Unfortunately this is pretty much the only approach for most of the 6 episodes in the game, the DLC episodes manage to really play around a lot with the basic game mechanics and enemies which by then was a very welcome change.

I was kind of amused at the blatant in game advertising, it isn't as bad as other games I have heard of, but it is very obvious that both Energizer and Verizon did a fair amount of in game advertising along with a car company. There is even a very mood breaking optional TV that you can turn on in the midst of a fairly tense escape from an otherworldly horror that exists only to show you a dated verizon ad as well as a likely similarly dated car ad.

I ended have having a great time with Alan Wake, the story is sadly pretty backloaded, it only really picks up about halfway through and most of the early content could have been trimmed and reordered to significantly improve the game. I especially liked the DLC episodes which were surprisingly easy to miss given that the game doesn't automatically continue through to them nor does it remind you about them at the end, even though they come with the PC version. I definitely would recommend people look into it especially if it goes on sale on Steam or GOG.

Games list at time of post: 400 unfinished titles    

Changes since previous post: Finished 0 titles, added 0   

Completed: Diablo III

Diablo III is a game that I bought after a fair amount of deliberation with the intention that I would play through it with my brothers. This never really happened, I have had 2 fairly brief play sessions with each of my brothers. Instead I played through most of Diablo III by my self and occasionally with friends. It is a pity and I would like to try to arrange to create new characters and play just with my siblings but we have fairly significantly different schedules which complicates things.

The story and gameplay are pretty standard fare, though admittedly more epic in scope. Diablo had you in a crappy little town, Diablo II let you travel from crappy little town to other crappy little towns or areas in significant decline, save for a brief spell in an outpost in Hell. Diablo III sees the player begin in a new version of the original crappy little town but progresses to have sections in capitols and large scale battles taking place that you are influencing the outcome of. The story was entertaining but not worth a great deal of examination and certainly not something that convinces me to play the game over and over again on higher difficulties.

I quite liked the art style used in the game, it uses colour without being too colourful and whimsical. It feels almost like it was painted.

The companions in this game are great, they are only available in singleplayer, but they are genuine characters that banter with yours as you fight and explore your way through Sanctuary, asking about what your character thinks of the other companions or commenting that this enemy is probably carrying something interesting. They are a massive improvement on the largely interchangeable companions from Diablo II to whom I never formed an attachment and also had an irritating tendency to just die on me.

There are some significant changes to the Diablo system introduced in Diablo III. Your character can hold a lot more stuff in their inventory as a result of reducing the size variation of items to two sizes, 1x1 or 1x2. There is free and unlimited respecing of your character, you can easily swap between different skills and suffer only a short cool down upon doing so, allowing you to try out new strategies when you find your character just cannot handle a particular boss.

The new leveling system especially encourages players to try out new skills and rune combinations as they become available, especially once elective mode is turned on and they can focus further on particular skill types. Each character is mechanically different, not just in terms of different skills but in the charging mechanism for their skills. Finally because it is always online the integration with friends lists makes it very easy to see what others are up to and invite them to join you or to join them in their quest.

The game's ties to BattleNet are also a weakness, the launch period was pretty laughable, predictably their authentication servers went down and there continued to be periodic outages for the next few days. Being in Australia means that any maintenance that occurs tends to hit right in a prime time slot, around 9pm or so, where I and my friends are most likely to want to play. My play session with my oldest brother was cut short primarily because I was getting about 3 seconds of lag whilst playing, which makes for a very poor play experience.

Despite that, Diablo III really managed to suck me in and get me playing and even just logging in 'to check the auction house' even for a week or so after I finished Normal difficulty. This is despite being released at a fairly busy time for me in the Uni semester. If it ever actually goes on a decent sale and you don't mind always online DRM then D3 is probably worth a buy.

Games list at time of post: 400 unfinished titles    

Changes since previous post: Finished 4 titles, added 8   

Hugo Month: Among Others

Among Others is a novel by Jo Walton that unfortunately just did not click with me.

This book is written as a series of journal entries by the main character roughly covering between 1979 and 1980. The main character has recently suffered significant trauma and has been transplanted from Wales to England, where under the care of her father and aunts she is then sent to boarding school.

This is a book about science fiction, fantasy and loneliness. The book contains a lot of talk about magic, where magic is a real thing with rules that are only understood by the main character when she encounters them. Magic is something that she has grown up with and is both self-evident and entirely unprovable where almost all magic that takes place is explainable by other means.

Morwenna has taken refuge primarily in science fiction, the book is filled with her thoughts on the books she has read, the ones she has heard are coming out and speculations about themes and plots. It is where she can spend her time to avoid dealing with her classmates who she doesn't really understand and the key to entering into a community.

As I said, this novel just didn't really click with me, there didn't really seem to be much in the way of threats, it was a young woman who might very well be a bit crazy, stumbling her way through unfamiliar circumstances. There were plenty of people who were sympathetic and willing and able to help her and she was able to get help where she needed it. I think that the constant naming and discussion of other SF works put me off, along with her apparently amazing talents most of her subjects (especially science) but apparently being terrible at maths.

As a result my current Hugo Novel rankings are:

1. Deadline         

2. Among Others