Thomas@Media

As the title of the blogs may tell you guys, this shall be the last post of my world-famous blog (right). The reason why I’ve written these blogs is partly because I wanted to write stuff down, otherwise my blogs wouldn’t be as big as they would have become now, but mainly because the entire blog is a requirement set up my our teacher for a course called Business Information Technology as you might have read in my first post (in case you are first time reader of my blog.) A part of the requirements of writing the blogs is that I should have a minimum of 10 posts, forming a total number of words of 2000 words at minimum. Since I’m way past that number of words (like already while writing my fourth blog) I decided to shorten my posts a bit because I had other, more urgent things to do.

Not only the number of words and posts should meet minimum criteria, I have to analyse things as well, otherwise this would be a really simple assignment. Another thing that should be done is that I had to set three goals in Google Analytics and try to set up my blog in a certain way that I can reach or complete those goals. One of those goals is that the minimum amount of time that people should take to visit my blog should be 1 minute. Since my average time listed in Google Analytics is averaged on 1.5 minutes, I can say that my job here done ;). Other goals were there as well, but I don’t want to get all too technical.

In conclusion, this was my last post of this blog and I hope you readers where amused and interested in the things I got to say. If I might start something new I will definitely post it in this blog with a reference that new blog, but I don’t see that coming anytime soon, because I will have a very busy life in the near future, full of important stuff and because this blogging won’t be mandatory anymore I don’t think I’ll write anything like this in the future.

See you all and have a productive life ;)

Thomas

A very short post this time, containing a video that can be found below this text. The video is the requirement from an assignment for Business Information Technology (yes, the same course that gave me a reason to write this whole blog) and tells the story about a professor’s life that we interviewed. We did the video as a group and completed the assignment with a pass.

The video:

From the 19th of April, the Playstation Network (PSN) was shut down, isolating 77 million gamers from their beloved network. Time after time Sony argued that the PSN is back on track very soon and that for all the days it was down, the gamers will get some free gamers. Games that are probably too bad to play anyway. Oh well, as long as the gamers are pleased. But that’s exactly why I’m writing this post, because I don’t think the gamers are very happy with this happening.

First of all, the free games are not really chosen by the gamers themselves, but only from a list of four games. That really sucks, because if my online capabilities from my Xbox 360 would be denied to me for almost a month, including not being able to download demo’s or trailers, I would be quite pissed. So pissed that would be only happy if I can choose a free game from a much bigger list and not a list of crappy games that are likely to be already a couple of years old. If I was Sony, I would really think about adding more games to that free list and helping all those gamers a bit more.
Secondly, I hope lots of gamers will sue Sony for this, simply because I would lose my mind if my credit card data would be stolen from me and I would not be able to do anything about it. So instead of free games and a little free on-line time, Sony can count on an extra sum of money that Sony should pay to their customers.
And finally, did anybody notice how much time Sony took to actually shut down the network. Like they were thinking “Hmmm, wonder if they stop hacking by themselves, I mean they should have enough credit card data by now, right?” Just shut the whole system down immediately! God knows how many million credit card data could be saved by acting instantly.

Oh well, I hope that Sony learns from this failure and by stating that, I’m already at the end of this small post about the failure of Sony and my angry outburst towards them. I hope they’re are really ashamed of themselves. :---(

Stay tuned for my final blog post!

As you guys know, the fact that over 12.000 gamers are addicted to playing online video games is spreading through-out all media. Reading all this, makes it a good reason to tell you my experience with the game that caused most of this, the Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft and why it’s so addictive. Not for me (thank god) but for most others.

The first time I installed the popular game World of Warcraft I was wondering why in God’s name someone would make the choice to play a certain this game 10 hours a day. Since I am kind of certain that I am not the type of person that gets addicted to things like games, gambling or drugs easily, I fired the game up and choose a mage, one of the types of so-called classes a player can pick for his/her character. “Hmmm, the graphics don’t look that sharp to me, so it can’t be that. Unless all the people who are playing the game are all groovy old-fashioned people who only dig old crappy games,” was the first thought that ran through my head. After a couple of hours wondering in a field of farms I got my first item. “OK, that’s cool, I got a crappy sword and I played three hours for that thing. That sucks.” The sword didn’t work well for me either and almost causes me to die, with a bit of frustration following. Then, after another hour of playing someone next to me (in the game of course) ran up to me and said to me: “Yo dude, why the hell are you playing with that sword?” Surprised as I was that another real person actually spoke to me through a game (that was my first time that happened) I reacted that it is the only weapon I have, next to a dumb walking stick that almost deals no damage at all. After he calls me a n00b (which is a newbie in videogame/nerd-talk) he asks me to make a team together so he can guide me to another part of the world where I would fine a weapon. “OK, so far so good, this is getting interesting,” I thought and I teamed up with him and followed him so something that blew my mind: an entire castle full of real playing characters all working together like in a real world, doing business with each other, trading stuff, communicating, dancing, making materials for each other, and so on. Nothing on the scale of collaboration didn’t even come close to anything I’ve ever seen before. Still being a bit numb, I see someone if the far corner of the main hall in the castle shouting “Fairy staff level 5 for sail, 50 copper!” 50 copper, that’s a lot less then I thought it would cost, because other computer-controlled player asked much more for such a staff. I can pay that easily! So I bought it and that made something happen in my head. Despite the crappy graphics, I felt something that was very nice: a feeling that I have actually accomplished something. Like if you have made a lot of homework in real life or if you helped somebody out with a problem. I felt like a new being, someone more than I was before. “Snap out of it! It’s only a game!” “Oh yeah, that’s right. (....) Wow, what just happened?”

The story above is a bit exaggerated (especially the last part, haha) but it tells the story of most of the 12.000 people living in the Netherlands who are currently addicted at this game or a similar game. My experience is that the depth of World of Warcraft surprises many gamers in the sense of realism. Not because of the graphics (which are crap, especially today), but more of the complex systems of doing business with each other and collaborating like nothing you’ve ever seen in a game working so well. The extra layer of fantasy is, although I am more of a sci-fi guy myself, very appealing. Because of this, my entire 2008 summer vacation of 8 weeks where spent on playing this game. I started playing this game exactly at that moment, because school wouldn’t have to suffer on it in case I would become an addict. But it didn’t happen. In the 8 weeks, I reached the maximum level (level 70 at that moment), but then the fun was over, despite the fact that many more dungeons and areas await when you reach that level. I played for two more weeks during my free-time from school, but it actually wasn’t fun anymore, so I uninstalled it from my PC.
I can understand that many people who don’t have to go school, are unemployed, are depressed, are socially not able to make friends are VERY sensitive to get addicted to this game. I kid you not, when you have a lot of free time on your hands, it’s a very entertaining and addicting way of spending your time. But trust me, there’s no such thing as “Oh well, I have to sleep in about 1 hour. Let’s play a bit of World of Warcraft”, because you’ll play for 5 hours straight easily. There’s no end to this game and the producer of this game prevents you from ever completing all the quests by updating the game as much as possible.

By re-reading all the stuff I’ve written in this post I realise this is more of a “DON’T PLAY THIS GAME”-blog than a more neutral post about this game. That was not my intention, because for the rest of all the gamers in the country, this game can be played just an hour every day and only a few become hooked. It’s a fantastic game, but for some players it’s just too fantastic. This is getting cheesy but I will still will say it: don’t waste your time playing this game too much, if you actually don’t have the time to play it. School, friends and your job are more important and if you don’t have those things, go find them for the love of God and NO, no friends-searching in World of Warcraft!!

Next to posting blogs about technological issues, a problem about working with e-mail emerged for me a couple of weeks ago that was more of a psychological nature. While working for a project, I noticed that not only me, but also other people tend to slack off a bit if the general communication about the project goes through e-mail instead of face-to-face. Most of the team members tend to just read information by e-mail and not responding to it while if the same information is given by face-to-face communication, there a likely to respond. At the end of this process of passiveness on most team members, much of the work that should be done is still on queue and not everyone is updated to the latest information about the project. This troubled me a bit, because much professional communication is done by e-mail and it led me to wonder what percentage of the people that the e-mail is directed to actually read it. Because of this, much work is done at the end of a certain stage of the project and deadlines are just met or even missed.

As I mentioned, the biggest problem for this lack of activity is the passive nature of some people who are communicating by mail. They don’t have the will or energy of reacting in general to e-mail and just watch by how discussions are solved by other group members. This can be justified, because sometimes the extra information a person can add to discussion is not relevant, but the problem is that the passive individuals tend to think that way too quickly, because they’re not certain of their cause. This is especially the case when there are two or more individuals in the team that are more gifted, experienced or dominant than that person, leading to more uncertainty about adding pointless information to a discussion. This uncertainty is easily combined (but also easily confused) with laziness and lack of self-discipline, that should be punished, although only sometimes the cause of the passive nature of someone is known. A good face-to-face talk can clarify things.

Of course things are not always as easy just by talking to someone about why they are not doing there active best on e-mail. If things don’t get clarified by talking about slacking off during e-mail communication, there’re two things that can be done. The first thing is that communication by e-mail could continue like nothing has happened. In this case, the active members should count on the passive member to read the e-mails and contribute enough work to balance the total scale of work to the other members. At this point, when the project continues to suffer due to bad communication, important information can no longer be transferred by e-mail but only though face-to-face communication. Important stuff should only be exchanged in face-to-face meetings, because nothing else helps.

It’s understandable that too many meetings instead of e-mail communication can lead to an insufficient and inefficient way of working together. Some people just live too far to go to school for a meeting of an hour or less. This can lead to a lot of frustration of the active members as well. This is point that luckily almost no group has to go though, because in most of the cases, the passive member has become an active one out of fear of being kicked out of the group of being punished. But if the other group member are so frustrated by all travelling for meetings just to satisfy a single or two group members, they should really consider of releasing the passive members from the project team. This is a harsh measure, but sometimes just necessary if all else fails.

As you know or may not kno,w I’m studying Communication & Information Sciences at the Tilburg University and I’m specialising in Human Aspects of Information Technology or in short HAIT. Next the general courses such as methodology and statistics, I’m also learning some courses that are specialised for HAIT-student. One of those courses is called Cognitive Modelling and it’s all about modelling certain types of human behaviour or the behaviour of automatic processes in nature. For this course, we were given the assignment of developing a model that simulates collaboration in which all the participants have a certain degree of mindfulness. Mindfulness is shortly described as a state of mind that causes an individual to elevates himself above his personal emotions and is fully aware of the needs and emotions of his/her surrounding individuals. So it’s like a type of awareness for one and the people around that one person and we had to simulate that awareness into a very concrete and program-like manner.

So how did we do that exactly? Well, for starters we used the program called StarLogo: a simulator for simulating behaviour and interaction of simple animals, rabbits if you’d like. We had to simply the term mindfulness to a state in which is it usable and simple enough. For a team from people who are working together to accomplish certain goals and have different tasks, we translated that part into a group of 6 bunnies, technically called agents and let them roam in the simulated environment. These agents have to survive and in order for them to do so, we did let them search for food and they have to look for that food and communicate the locations of the food to other team members. The big problem we had was that mindfulness is quite an abstract concept and therefore it’s difficult to get it translated to actual behaviour. An aspect of mindfulness proved quite helpful in this process of translation and that is the fact that emotions can cloud someone’s judgement in communication processes. In the model, we translated it as a type of disturbance of the exact location of the food that is communicated from the person who finds it. Also, if someone is not mindful, that person can be a bit egocentric and we translated that into a choice that an agent has in the model if he finds some food, whether he can use all the food for himself or be mindful and share the remaining energy the food has to the agent closest to him. These aspect are concretised by making the variables called emotions and mindfulness and by increasing those variables, the agents are less communicating.

For more aspects and the precise variables you could check out the model yourself and play with it youself a bit. It’s found at the following links

The program StarLogo (required to play the model):
http://education.mit.edu/starlogo/
The model itself:
http://www.nexxtgen.nl/mindfulness.slogo

Hope you have a bit fun the model, although it’s not entirely completed yet and stay tuned for upcoming blogs!

A combination of boredom and the need to spoil myself a little bit led me to purchase a new game voor my Xbox. After a bit of searching it appears the game Crysis 2 is highly recommended, not only because of the gameplay, but especially due to the awesome computer graphics. Since I’m a bit of a graphics-junkie myself, I decided to buy it. I wasn’t really expecting much of the graphics, since I already saw a couple of videos of it and I’m quite accustomed playing really nice looking games like Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2.

But how surprised I was to see the incredible graphics appearing on screen: incredible razor-sharp textures, unbelievably realistic lightning and blur-effect just like in real life. Well, not really like real life, but you get my point. I really did think that it wouldn’t be possible that my already 6 years old Xbox 360 could create such graphical power. You could tell that the Xbox had problems with it, whenever large areas where rendered the framerate dropped a little bit below the minimum framerate of 25 for smooth gameplay. This worried me a bit and led me to believe that, although the graphics look great, gameplay should never be sacrificed to gameplay at all; they always should be in balance of each other and if I would choose between them it would be gameplay. Too bad, gameplay always will remain at a certain level during the development of games throughout the years and graphics will (at least most of the time) improve, causing many games to be focussed too much on graphics alone and less on gameplay.

The evolution of graphics has always been eluding us, because we don’t know where it will end. Of course, developers of games always will increase their system requirements just above the average system specs to force the gamers to buy new computer systems, like the PC-game Crysis which was released a couple of years ago and caused many die-hard gamers to ugrade their systems, myself not included. But how many times are the graphics from such a level, that gamers are bound to buy such a new system, not because their hardware don’t cope with the new requirement, but because they think the graphics are not new enough? I think the difference between current-gen and next-gen games will become smaller, especially in the (far) future, but will never disappear. This has to do with several problems I think will emerge in the future and one of them is money.

When graphics become more beautiful, it means that the graphics engine needs to be tuned in more detail and this costs more time and thus more money. When in the far future, every little detail of the real world has to be copied to the virtual world, so much money will be spend on doing this that creating an entire full-length game is almost an impossible task. This gap is partially filled by using automated technology that does the job for you, like scanning objects in great detail and capturing motions. Especially this last technique is a well-known technology for not only capturing general body movements for games using martial arts, but also for copying facial expressions. The game Heavy Rain is a very good example and proves how realistically digital faces can become. To further process these captured images still remains a big task.

So as I mentioned, money and time are two very important aspects of the stagnation of computer graphics and I think some serious automating technology has to come in play to partially create a virtual environment for you, but there is also a limit not only to the software (which is the programming of computer graphics) but also the hardware. In the past years, computer chips are baked at as increasingly smaller scale, from 90nm (nm = nanometer; 1 nanometer = 1/1.000.000 milimeter = 1/1.000.000.000 meter!) to 45nm. Sooner or later, when this scale reaches the absolute atomic level and squishing even more data on the same surface, psychics prohibited that scale to be increased even further. This is a very big problem and I think a fundamentally different computer chip has to be developed to gain more power from computer chips when this stage is reached. In the far future, I think that computer chips are not only produced by inorganic materials, but also holds organic materials as wel, such as a neural network formed by real (human) biological neurons. Time will tell, but I would sure would like to know if we will reach that phase as a everyday technology during my lifetime.

In case the problems I mentioned above are all solved, moral aspects come into play when computer graphics reach the point of absolute realism. If someone does not see when a game is played or not, how can they know if the lives they live are their real lives, especially when feedback given by the computers is directly putted into the human brain and other feedback-related devices do not longer exists? Stealing information or changing the perception from a human being should create a whole new dimension of cyber criminality, just like in the movie Inception. (If you haven’t seen this movie, shame on you!)

OK. That’s all about computer graphics and although I really planned on posting just a small blog this time, it turns out that this is one of my biggest blogs yet! Oh well, you must know the feeling to write everything you think about, once you start writing.

Stay tuned for upcoming blogs!