I have been writing for another blog for about a month for American Univeristy Law School's National Security Brief. A brief is a publication that a law school puts out about legal issues. The one I am one is about National Security as you can guess.
We are currently doing blog work until we come out with our spring publication, which I most likely won't be writing for since I am just in my first year. My posts day is Sunady and my posts are labeled VD and my most recent two are about Nevada fusion centers and the train bombing in Russia.
http://nationalsecuritylawbrief.com/
Monday, November 30, 2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
howdya like video games?
Figger I ought to write after James' un-fucking-believable analysis. And to prove him wrong, I'm gonna write about video games
My ex-roommate modded my nintendo wii so I have like 28 billion games to play. I'm making my way through them slowly, mostly in the early level and training phases. By the far the most arresting game is New Super Mario Brothers. It is a dastardly difficult 2D platformer, with dementedly hairy puzzles and a brilliant bend towards multiplayer. If anyone is as obsessed with the Nintendo formula as I am you will understand that making Mario multiplayer is a goddamn revolution. Dynamism pops, and both co-op and competitive gameplay is around every bend, with each moment throwing something wild at you.
It's an extremely interesting blend of throwbacks when you look at it. The board layout directly resembles SMB3, with the world progression so far identical (grass, desert, ice) and power-ups available from the board screen (ice flowers and penguin suits make sparkling debuts here). However, I feel as though there is a terrific re-introduction of SMB1 in the mostly horizontal layout and speed-through feel that one achieves. Nonetheless, Super Mario World definitely shows through with the puzzle elements, the Koopa kids, the inclusion of Yoshi and the general artistic look. I feel the latter is one setback of the game which I feel is lacking in power and innovation. When you could have one tenth of the whimsical magic Super Mario Galaxy had, you have repetitive platforms and boring backgrounds. I never forget that the Wii is an inferior system.
Which leads me to my next game: The Conduit. I almost bought this game before I realized I can get any game I want for free through this pirate system. The reviews threw it up as one of the best shooters for the Wii (no surprise, what's the fucking competition?), considering the Wiimote's aptitude in this field and the revolution in customization (tweaking can and may occur constantly). Once again, in character models, board repetition, and enemy AI, this game is a disappointment but there are some puzzle elements to be enjoyed. I'm only one level deep, though and I look forward to some interesting weapons.
I'm picking up Excite Bots: Trick Racing. Still very early on, I feel like this is a diamond in the rough. Fast and fun, with lots of style and replay value (many purchasable and unlockable elements) this game may catch more of my attention once I get a little more into it. Multiplayer has not yet been experienced, though (and may not be an option! Hard to believe, but hard to find: I doubt it's an unlockable...)
Wii Sports Resort is a fun diversion and a great crowd pleaser. Fencing definitely gets your claws out, but it can revert into thoughtless slashing with no formula to a proper fight. Flight is cute but slightly pointless, and the dog-fight option doesn't really hash out. Jet-ski is fun and challenging. I look forward to beating my high score from the first time I played it. Ping Pong is certainly masterable considering spin is an element, but there's only so much you can play, right? This goes for most of the modes here, especially the more repetitive ones like canoeing, wakeboarding and biking. A major winner in my eyes, is Frisbee (don't act so surprised). Frisbee Golf has an 18 hole course that I haven't dove into but it is responsive, challenging, and fucking sick when you (I) get a hole in one.
No More Heroes has style up the wazoooooo and a terrific script but it seems as though it is very limited on the action and exploration side of things.
House of the Dead: Overkill is a fun, easy shooter with a terrible terrible terrible script attempt at a pulpy B movie.
Lost Winds 2 is supposed to be amaaaaaazing but I haven't started it yet.
I look forward to booting up Trauma Center: New Blood with a co-surgeon at my side. Any takers?
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Jobbob
If there's one thing that really sucks about my job, its the whole even-if-yr-done-for-the-day-don't-even-think-about-leaving-before-4PM bit. Though it does give me ample opportunity to study.
So yeah I'm typing this in the Teacher's Room (Shokuinshitsu) at Kawai.
So yeah I'm typing this in the Teacher's Room (Shokuinshitsu) at Kawai.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
200 Post Breakdown.
Ok friends. Lets get mathematical. I decided to dig into the blog as a scientific tool to define our collective friendship. As you will find there is nothing scientific about it. Anyways, enough intro--I'll let the numbers do the talking. Keep in mind these statistics arecomposed from a snapshot of the blog at 200 posts--things have changed since then.
Looking at the aggregate figures, it took us 264 days to reach 200 posts. That's a rate of .76 posts per day. If this were a daily publication with 12 staff members, that's pretty weak. While the honeymoon period (February/March) saw a good flow of over 1 post a day, production in September slowed to a trickle of 1 in every 4.29 days! Now for some really meaningless statistics. The average contribution to the blog is 16.67 posts at 8.3%. That means on average, each person contributes 8.3% of the material. (Please someone rip me down for using these numbers). More meaningful are these: 4 people contributed more than the mean, 1 person is extremely average in their numbers, and to put it like any good conservative would, the top 33% contributed to almost 75% of the blog!
As you can see, Matt K is leading the pack being responsible for more than 1/4 of the posts at 55 total. Way to go Matt K. Lets focus on Matt K, the ideal blogger.
Looking deeper, Matt K's production over the first 7 months of the blog when he was living in Pittsburgh was at close to 7 posts per month--about 30% of the new post activity. Since moving to Japan his personal post rate (PPR) has slowed to 2.67ppm about 23% of the new post activity in the last 3 months. While Matt's production has certainly slowed, it has not been far out of step of the rest of the contributing community. And who can blame him? He's living in Japan now! This probably means he's out doing other more interesting stuff. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that he's drawing 2/3 the comments he was when he was posting at more than twice the rate. This seems counter to the theory that the less you post, the more attention you will drawl. Very interesting...
Check this:
At first glance it looks like Matt K. published the post that garnered the most attention in terms of comments received. However, looking closer we can see that two of those comments are 'Post deleted by author", both deleted by Matt K. Surely then Peter holds the superlative of having the most comments on a single post. WRONG. 1x 'Post Deleted by Author' - Andrew. Indeed, there were three posts, all by separate authors who hold the position of most interesting post based on comments received index. Andrew's interesting post found here was about his year with Americorps. Matt K.'s most interesting post is surprising as it was rather short. And Peter's was about books. All three posts fell fairly evenly throughout the life of the blog so no conclusions can be drawn from that. Also of note: Matt Nye's single post received no comments. Did anyone even read it? It came with a picture. It was awesome.
Digging deeper into this idea of comments implying interestingness, we can see who is more interesting than others:
As we can see, while Matt K. maintains a high rate of blog (ROB), his posts attract an average amount of comments. At the other end of the spectrum, Vince has 5 posts, all with comments and more than half receiving multiple comments. The award for talks least says most goes to Vince. The award for talks most says least is Matt Nye. At 88% with 25 total posts, James seems to be the most interesting person on the blog though after writing this sentence he will probably not get another comment ever. To prove this point, take a look at this Linear Regression Analysis:
Correcting for outliers, the linear regression line shows a negative correlation between posts and percentage commented on. This means that the more you post, the less your posts will be commented on per post. Ignoring the R value in the graph (as it is being thrown off my the stellar performance of James' posts) there is a fairly strong correlation between these numbers. It can be said that if you post just once, you can expect an 83.18% chance of receiving a comment. For every additional post, you can expect that percentage to fall by 55 basis points. Now. Note the circled point. This is James' comment percentage, rising above the rest. Thank you.
Moving on, we can take a more artistic but less objective approach to the 200 post blog breakdown. 38% of Andrew's posts contained videos--a blog-high--and 3 of them contained more than one video. James has the most awesome posts. Jonah's posts have migrated from video game reviews into movie reviews, both of which are appreciated by the readership. Kirby has never posted. Not once. Yet he's listed as a contributor. Lauren needs to post more because I personally enjoy what she cooks up. Matt only posted once though I've given him credit for two posts. Woops! Matt K. is the strongest power user of the blog, though his activity has fallen since moving to Japan. Collin is not even a contributor yet I've included him here because I saw his name written somewhere once. Melanie talks about Peter a lot in her entries. Nick is below average in posts, but beating the average for comments. Perhaps saying less makes people listen more...Andrew. Peter rarely gets more than one person to comment on his posts. Kinda lame if you ask me. Vince's posts are incredibly potent, summoning 100% of our commenting power.
Finally,
wasitrollingbob: can you make the end result that matt nye is the most productive person on the blog?
wasitrollingbob: BEND THE DATA
In conclusion, Matt Nye receives the award for most productive member of the blog for the first 200 posts. Keep up the good work Matt, you are a role model(is he even going to read this?) and your work is a benchmark for the rest of us to aim for.
Thanks.
Looking at the aggregate figures, it took us 264 days to reach 200 posts. That's a rate of .76 posts per day. If this were a daily publication with 12 staff members, that's pretty weak. While the honeymoon period (February/March) saw a good flow of over 1 post a day, production in September slowed to a trickle of 1 in every 4.29 days! Now for some really meaningless statistics. The average contribution to the blog is 16.67 posts at 8.3%. That means on average, each person contributes 8.3% of the material. (Please someone rip me down for using these numbers). More meaningful are these: 4 people contributed more than the mean, 1 person is extremely average in their numbers, and to put it like any good conservative would, the top 33% contributed to almost 75% of the blog!
As you can see, Matt K is leading the pack being responsible for more than 1/4 of the posts at 55 total. Way to go Matt K. Lets focus on Matt K, the ideal blogger.
Looking deeper, Matt K's production over the first 7 months of the blog when he was living in Pittsburgh was at close to 7 posts per month--about 30% of the new post activity. Since moving to Japan his personal post rate (PPR) has slowed to 2.67ppm about 23% of the new post activity in the last 3 months. While Matt's production has certainly slowed, it has not been far out of step of the rest of the contributing community. And who can blame him? He's living in Japan now! This probably means he's out doing other more interesting stuff. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that he's drawing 2/3 the comments he was when he was posting at more than twice the rate. This seems counter to the theory that the less you post, the more attention you will drawl. Very interesting...Check this:
At first glance it looks like Matt K. published the post that garnered the most attention in terms of comments received. However, looking closer we can see that two of those comments are 'Post deleted by author", both deleted by Matt K. Surely then Peter holds the superlative of having the most comments on a single post. WRONG. 1x 'Post Deleted by Author' - Andrew. Indeed, there were three posts, all by separate authors who hold the position of most interesting post based on comments received index. Andrew's interesting post found here was about his year with Americorps. Matt K.'s most interesting post is surprising as it was rather short. And Peter's was about books. All three posts fell fairly evenly throughout the life of the blog so no conclusions can be drawn from that. Also of note: Matt Nye's single post received no comments. Did anyone even read it? It came with a picture. It was awesome.Digging deeper into this idea of comments implying interestingness, we can see who is more interesting than others:
As we can see, while Matt K. maintains a high rate of blog (ROB), his posts attract an average amount of comments. At the other end of the spectrum, Vince has 5 posts, all with comments and more than half receiving multiple comments. The award for talks least says most goes to Vince. The award for talks most says least is Matt Nye. At 88% with 25 total posts, James seems to be the most interesting person on the blog though after writing this sentence he will probably not get another comment ever. To prove this point, take a look at this Linear Regression Analysis:
Correcting for outliers, the linear regression line shows a negative correlation between posts and percentage commented on. This means that the more you post, the less your posts will be commented on per post. Ignoring the R value in the graph (as it is being thrown off my the stellar performance of James' posts) there is a fairly strong correlation between these numbers. It can be said that if you post just once, you can expect an 83.18% chance of receiving a comment. For every additional post, you can expect that percentage to fall by 55 basis points. Now. Note the circled point. This is James' comment percentage, rising above the rest. Thank you.Moving on, we can take a more artistic but less objective approach to the 200 post blog breakdown. 38% of Andrew's posts contained videos--a blog-high--and 3 of them contained more than one video. James has the most awesome posts. Jonah's posts have migrated from video game reviews into movie reviews, both of which are appreciated by the readership. Kirby has never posted. Not once. Yet he's listed as a contributor. Lauren needs to post more because I personally enjoy what she cooks up. Matt only posted once though I've given him credit for two posts. Woops! Matt K. is the strongest power user of the blog, though his activity has fallen since moving to Japan. Collin is not even a contributor yet I've included him here because I saw his name written somewhere once. Melanie talks about Peter a lot in her entries. Nick is below average in posts, but beating the average for comments. Perhaps saying less makes people listen more...Andrew. Peter rarely gets more than one person to comment on his posts. Kinda lame if you ask me. Vince's posts are incredibly potent, summoning 100% of our commenting power.
Finally,
wasitrollingbob: can you make the end result that matt nye is the most productive person on the blog?
wasitrollingbob: BEND THE DATA
In conclusion, Matt Nye receives the award for most productive member of the blog for the first 200 posts. Keep up the good work Matt, you are a role model(is he even going to read this?) and your work is a benchmark for the rest of us to aim for.Thanks.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Can't beat Matt's posts
Ok I know there is no way to top Matt's posts especailly since I no longer have a life besides reading law school cases. With that high beat lead in I thought this one case was funny. This women contracted with a dance studio to teach her to dance and paid them over the course of two years $31,000 (this case took place in 1968) and they told her she showed great potential. Typically, for a contract not to be valid through fraud it has to be about a fact. For instance, I sold Peter my car and told him it was fine but it didn't have wheels. The court made a special circumstance in this case because she was such a bad dancer that obivously the dance studio was lying to her. The exact quote was, "the lessons sold to her (were) in total disregard to true physical, rhythm, and mental ability of the plaintiff." So basically this lady not only go screwed out of a bunch of money but a court of law is saying she is a really horrible dancer.
And that is the most exciting thing that happened to me this week.
And that is the most exciting thing that happened to me this week.
Friday, November 20, 2009
If You're Like Me...
... then you've wanted to chug as much grape Dymatapp as you possibly can since you were 2. But, unfortunately, have never actually committed since its, well, medicine. That is... UNTIL NOW. Japan had the sagacity to take that whole medicine problem out of the sweet, delicious nectar that is the essence of Dymatapp, and put it in a little glass bottle. This product is called Lipovitan D, and because of it, life is good. And, as an added bonus, its a good deal stronger than Red Bull, so far as
"energy drinks" go.
"energy drinks" go.
FuN zOnE
Matt thinks he's soooo cool because he's teaching in Japan and posting sweet pics, well I'm pretty much gonna show him what's up!!!1
things I'm currently doing at work:
- trying to get one of our clients to tell me "yes, go ahead and buy the $4,000 rug for the spa, I think it's FABULOUS."
- listening to Hot97.
- trawling the internet for a wooden bench that has no back, BUT has storage space for TOWELS UNDERNEATH!
iusgffy y1lwdhhwsdooy o9dy9ewydddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
o sry i just passed out on my keyboard from all the excitement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
things I'm currently doing at work:
- trying to get one of our clients to tell me "yes, go ahead and buy the $4,000 rug for the spa, I think it's FABULOUS."
- listening to Hot97.
- trawling the internet for a wooden bench that has no back, BUT has storage space for TOWELS UNDERNEATH!
iusgffy y1lwdhhwsdooy o9dy9ewydddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
o sry i just passed out on my keyboard from all the excitement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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