Grand Theft Auto Hysteria

GTA is a game that inspires fear and dread in the hearts of all peace loving people everywhere. Apparently.

One of my favourite quotes from the hysterical reviews is related to the fact that in the game, it is possible to "sleep" with prostitutes in order to regain health. It's also possible to eat food in later versions of the game, but let's not dwell on that. The services of a prostitute of course cost money; given that one of the aims of the game is to amass money, this doesn't sit well with some players.
So, if you like, you can get out of the car after the deed is done, and mug said lady of the night. Having done so, you may well end up making more profit than you originally spent on her services (presumably, her pimp hasn't collected the takings from her last client).

Some smart person took this to the web as "Wow - you can have sex with a hooker then kill her for the money" - which of course sparked the fear of the game that we all know and love.

Let's set the record straight though - doing this is not necessary to complete the game. In fact, you can complete the game without ever visiting even one hooker, let alone killing one. It is, purely and simply, a possibility - a result of the sandbox style game-play that lets you do pretty much what you want, how you want.

I confess, I did it once (in the game, that is). Mainly out of curiosity to see if it was worth the effort - it wasn't. See, in GTA, killing people attracts the attention of the police, which you then have to shake off or bribe, costing time and money. All that for a few measly dollars?

So, rather than directing criticism at the game for allowing you to do this, why not ask the question "why do people then chose to do it?"

The answer, in most cases, is probably "To see if you can"... and the odds are, most people don't do it all that much - it's just not worth the effort. If one of my friends said to me "I killed 40 prostitutes in GTA last night" I'd be very concerned - it's not normal behaviour.

That's what it comes down to in the end. Normal people play games and react normally, abnormal people play games and react abnormally. The games don't make them that way.

Hmmm... here's an idea - why don't Rockstar add a psyche profile to the game?

Words...

Pertinent... Pertinacious... you'd think they would have a vaguely similar meaning, wouldn't you?

per·ti·nent (pûr'tn-ənt)
adj.

Having logical precise relevance to the matter at hand. See synonyms at relevant.

[Middle English, from Old French partenant, pertinent, from Latin pertinēns, pertinent-, present participle of pertinēre, to pertain. See pertain.]

per·ti·na·cious (pûr'tn-ā'shəs)
adj.

1. Holding tenaciously to a purpose, belief, opinion, or course of action.
2. Stubbornly or perversely persistent. See synonyms at obstinate.

[From Latin pertināx, pertināc- : per-, per- + tenāx, tenacious (from tenēre, to hold).]

Typically though, I think they're functional opposites - the more someone insists on sticking to a point, the less relevant it usually is.

Don't you just hate the kind of people who will go on and on about why that's not a square peg - it's rectangular, or cuboid or something - when in actual fact, no-one cares about the square peg, because the hole we have is round!

Tuesdays suck.

Fawlty Towers

A couple of nights ago, I re-watched the first episode of Fawlty Towers (IMDB) for the umpteenth time. Although I've watched the series enough for it to be part of my repertoire of humour (I leernt eet from a boook!), the last time I watched it was so long ago that it was like watching it for the first time again. Someone's been kind enough to create a transcript of the episode - have a look here if you've no idea what Fawlty Towers is all about (and bear with me, there's a point to this).

It struck me while I was watching the episode that while Basil Fawlty is undeniably a stuck up, odious pillock, at least half of his problems stem from simple bad time management and poor communication, rather than his more obvious personality faults.
If instead of jumping to the latest task presented to him (regardless of his current task), he took a moment to consider which should be resolved first, at least half of the problems would never have occurred. Of course, trying to suck up to an aristocrat doesn't help with that!

Time Management is a tricky subject for most people though. We all fail at it now and then - those days when, despite being busy from sun-up to sun-down, we seem to have achieved nothing at all. There's many ways to deal with huge lists of tasks, and they all start by telling you that none of the other methods work. For what it's worth, here's my way of dealing with it all:

Magnús Magnússon probably had the simplest starting point to offer - "I've started, so I'll finish". Once you've picked something up, don't put it down again until you've finished it. That applies to everything from tidying a room (don't hang a coat on the bannisters "for now" - spend the extra 30 seconds to put it away properly) to writing a long document (keep working on the same one until it's done).

That said, there are some exceptions to that rule, and for me, proper time management boils down to working out what is, and is not, a valid exception.
Emails: For me, reading emails is a valid and necessary exception. Some of the messages I get demand instant responses, others are a lower priority, but will only take a moment to reply to. Anything else gets flagged for "Follow Up", and moves to my task list for later.
Phone Calls: It's much harder to delay answering a phone until it's convenient! However, there are times when it's necessary to ignore the phone, or get someone else to answer it for you - and it's worth knowing when that is. You also must consider whether actions arising from a phone call are quick and/or important enough to break from your current task for.
Scheduled Tasks: This is the only other thing that should break the "I've started, so I'll finish" rule. If you plan to do something at a particular time - whether it's eat lunch, watch a TV program, or go to a meeting - you should do your best to do it then, even if you're right in the middle of something else (after all, if you scheduled it for a particular time, there must have been a reason for that, right?)

As a rule of thumb, only tasks with a much higher priority are worth breaking your current task for, unless it's going to take a very small amount of time. For me, that small amount of time is about 90 seconds - if it's going to take longer than that, I will forget what I was doing and end up wasting time.


The King of Hearts provides the other component to my time management strategy - "Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end; then stop."
To me, that's all that needs saying - it doesn't really matter whether you order your tasks by priority, length or enjoyability; just start with the first one, and keep going until they're all done. Personally, I sort by priority and length - a very quick, low priority task will often get done first, simply so I can reduce the list as fast as possible, but longer running, lower priority tasks will take second place to any high priority task.

In the end though, as long as it all gets done, any method will do. Just remember, when it comes to other people, don't blame on stupidity or laziness what can be easily explained by simple bad planning.

Edit (Tuesday): It seems I missed the funny at some point yesterday - I honestly meant to make this one a funny post, but it strayed into a lecture on Time Management. Weird what happens when you're low on caffeine!

This should make up for it:

A farmer is herding his sheep across a road, when a fancy sports car pulls up and stops beside him. The driver gets out, looks at the sheep crossing the road, and walks over to the farmer.
"I bet," says the sports car driver, "I can tell you exactly how many sheep you have, without leaving this spot right here."
"No chance," says the Farmer - "Half of them are still behind that hill."
"Let's make it sporting then" responds the driver "If I get it right, I keep one of your sheep; if I'm wrong, you can have my car"

This is too good an offer for the Farmer to refuse, so he accepts the bet, and watches as the driver of the sports car opens up his laptop, links up his satellite phone, and starts pulling information off the internet. After a couple of minutes, he announces "Done! You have one hundred and fifty two sheep - and three of them are still pregnant."

The farmer's amazed - he'd been hoping to use that extra three to weasel out of the debt, but he concedes and allows the driver to pick out any sheep he likes. The driver looks around, then selects a small black one that looks a little more energetic than the others, and prepares to leave.

"Wait" cries the farmer "Double or nothing - if I can guess your day job, you'll return that, otherwise you can have another?" "Okay, that sounds fair" says the driver...

"Right... well.... clearly, you're a consultant" says the Farmer. "You're right," answers the driver, "but how did you know?"

"Simple - you showed up un-requested, told me something I already knew, and charged me for the privilege. Not only that, but you know nothing about my business... Now give me back my sheep-dog!"

Hamster Sitting

I'm hamster sitting this week. My house-mates have gone away, leaving me in charge of the Rodent. I used to have a hamster of my own when I was younger, so this shouldn't really faze me - except this Rodent is a serious escape artiste. My own hamster escaped twice in all the time I owned her... Rodent has escaped twice in the last week!

Fortunately, the house isn't huge, and is very tidy right now, so she's easy to track down. Helpfully, she rather likes the smell of urine (her own, by preference, but any will do) so she's usually tracked down to the nearest bathroom.

What I want to know though, is why do hamster cage doors open outwards? The poor thing probably wasn't even trying to escape - she's just climbing around the walls of her house, puts some weight on this random sticking out bit (the latch), and suddenly, the door's swinging open with her on it!

I nearly got a repeat performance of this very trick just after returning her to her house... totally unintentionally, she managed to push the latch of the door back just enough to start the door opening!

Seriously... why do they open outwards?

Service with a smile?

Once again, I'm on my travels - this time, to Dublin, Town of the Hurdled Ford...

The hotel here is one I'm fairly familiar with - I've stayed here many a time before, but I still get lost trying to find my room!

Yesterday morning, I received a nice and friendly wakeup call, at 7:30am, just when I wanted it. In fact, I'd been up and showered already, so it was a bit redundant - but I'd never even asked for a call! I can't quite decide if it was a nice perk, or typical hotel ineptitude... what if I'd wanted a lie in?

When I got back, I could tell that someone had been in my bathroom, moving my stuff around. This isn't something I'd normally complain about - I like a clean sink after all. Unfortunately, the way I could tell my toothbrush had been moved was the great big toothpaste mark where it used to be. Why move it, if not to clean underneath?

So, slightly disturbed by it all, I'd say. Sadly, my imagination came up with dozens of reasons for them to move my toothbrush, none of them sanitary :-(

On the other hand, today was a good day. Work is progressing right on schedule - ahead of schedule, to be honest.

Not only that, but I think I'm getting the hang of this politics thing. Yesterday, I planted the seed of a project, working with the lower level staff and telling them about all the other customers and how much more involved my company is - and more importantly, the difference it makes. Later on, I managed a nice long sales pitch with the project manager for one of our other modules.
Today, I broached the question of the enhanced project with the project manager, shortly after managing to get a whole bunch of useful information out of him on the hardware and software they use in addition to our product. To my amazement, he was actually keen on the idea, promising a further discussion tomorrow.

In other news, I realise I've strayed from the funny with this blog. Time to work on that, I feel!

Should an AI have an Id?

One of my many thinking hobbies (i.e. hobbies that I think about taking up, but never really get around to) is development of an AI. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and have a few ideas that really might work, if I ever get round to doing anything with them. Of course, as with any idea that has only ever been thought about, it's much better in my head than on paper (which is why I've never written it down!)

One thing that crossed my mind today was the idea of Id, Ego and Super Ego. One of the classic (layman's) definitions of AI is a machine that thinks like a human. If this is the case, does it need to have the classic Freudian psychology of a low level basic response, a "civilised" response, and a watcher to pick which is best?

Perhaps not - after all, why should an AI ever consider the "wrong" response? It seems that things like a sense of self preservation and these kind of low-level "instincts" are responsible for most of the bad AIs in Science Fiction, so why run the risk? SkyNet would never have taken over if it had no primeval urges for self preservation and dominance...

On the other hand, how would you then distinguish between an Expert System (a computer program that takes information, and makes a decision based on that) and a true AI, without the knowledge of Self? Even Commander Data has to consider the offer of the Borg Queen - he just makes a better decision far faster than any human could.

Perhaps the most telling question is "Where do we stop?" After all, if the AI is going to have an Id, an Ego and a Super Ego, why not give it an oedipus complex too?

Oh, yeah... AIs don't have mothers...

No longer a Cyclops

Today, as I left work, I finally got round to replacing the dead headlamp on my car. As anyone who's ever done this will know, this is a fiddly task. One of the first few steps is usually to remove some kind of spring-loaded retaining clip, which is guaranteed to "ping" off into the recesses of the engine - the remaining tasks are all but one related to finding and relocating that clip.

Knowing this, I approached the task fully prepared, with torch (well, camera-phone light) in hand and one hand ready to catch the little bugger before it went "ping". Carefully, I released the clip... and the unthinkable happened...

It stayed put.

No, really... it stayed where I wanted it! Evidently, at some point in the past, the clever folks at MG thought that rather than making it a full spring, they'd hinge it on one side, thereby preventing it ever being removed (and hence lost).

This got me thinking. After all, as a computer programmer, I spend a lot of time complaining about users who just have to press the wrong button at the wrong time - or worse still, the ones that find clicking in 5 different places in the secret special order such a hardship.
Maybe, just maybe, I'd been putting myself in the same position as the car engineer who didn't get how people could possible lose the metal clip so easily - after all, the only thing you need is a big magnet and it goes nowhere...

With that in mind, it's time for a new approach. We all know the mistakes that users make - we laugh about them every day. Why not set out to make those mistakes a little less easy, and a little easier to recover from.
There's a range here. It starts at the simple - range checking on functions (why not check if the value is zero before trying to divide by it) - and ends up at the hugely complex, but typically user-ish - "Word is closing - do you want to save your files? Yes, No or cancel closing Word?"

Oh, and Microsoft - how about getting rid of that really stupid message "Excel can't have more than one file named Test.xls open at the same time."